In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq Strategy."

The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges--in fact, "ALL state enterprises"--to foreign operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws.

And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance--or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that--even if we didn't go in for the oil--we certainly won't leave without it.

If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.

From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.

Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right. In Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business political operatives and right-wing muscle groups--including the Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association--where Norquist quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.

Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade union for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" scheme.

Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office. Below a huge framed poster of his idol ("NIXON-- NOW MORE THAN EVER"), Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury, Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, shaping the post-conquest economic plans--from taxes to tariffs to the "intellectual property rights" that I pointed to in the Plan.

Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of America.

And then there's the oil. Iraqi-born Falah Aljibury was in on the drafting of administration blueprints for a post-Saddam Iraq. According to Aljibury, the administration began coveting its Mideast neighbor's oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when the White House convened a closed committee under the direction of the State Department's Pam Quanrud. The group included banking and chemical industry men, and the range of topics over what to do with a post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said Aljibury, "It became an oil group."

This was not surprising as the membership list had a strong smell of petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil industry advisor, the secret team included executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco. These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003, direct the drafting of a 300-page addendum to the Economy Plan solely about Iraq's oil assets. The oil section of the Plan, obtained after a year of wrestling with the administration over the Freedom of Information Act, calls for Iraqis to sell off to "IOCs" (international oil companies) the nation's "downstream" assets--that is, the refineries, pipelines and ports that, unless under armed occupation, a Mideast nation would be loathe to give up.

The General Versus Annex D

One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws and selling off Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An insider working on the plans put it coldly: "They have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming out saying it's going to be a democratic country ... but we're going to do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn't vote for."

In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and what the Bush administration planned for them, the Iraqis had an unexpected ally, Gen. Jay Garner, the man appointed by our president just before the invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the soon-to-be conquered nation.

Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent autocratic function in the Kurdish zone after the first Gulf War. But in March 2003, the general made his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh off the plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, preferably within 90 days.

Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard object: The Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a nation's oil industry--let alone redrafting trade and tax laws--can't be done in a weekend, nor in 90 days. Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the free-market makeover of Iraq. And there's the rub: It was simply inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let America write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum industry.

Elections would have to wait. As lobbyist Norquist explained when I asked him about the Annex D timetable, "The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election." Our troops would simply have to stay in Mesopotamia a bit longer.

New World Orders 12, 37, 81 and 83

Gen. Garner resisted--which was one of the reasons for his swift sacking by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the very night he arrived in Baghdad last April. Rummy had a perfect replacement ready to wing it in Iraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul Bremer may not have had Garner's experience on the ground in Iraq, but no one would question the qualifications of a man who served as managing director of Kissinger Associates.

Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old palace--and adding an extra ring of barbed wire--"Jerry" Bremer cancelled Garner's scheduled meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders called to plan national elections. Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government himself. National elections, Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. The extended occupation would require our forces to linger.

The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to lock in the laws, regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with the Economy Plan.

On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan. In May, for example, Bremer--only a month from escaping out Baghdad's back door--took time from fighting the burgeoning insurrection to sign orders 81--"Patents,"and 83, "Copyrights." Here, Grover Norquist's hard work paid off. Fifty years of royalties would now be conferred on music recording. And 20 years on Windows code.

Order number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003," was Norquist's dream come true: taxes capped at 15 percent on corporate and individual income (as suggested in the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. Congress had rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in Iraq, with an electorate of one--Jerry Bremer--the public's will was not an issue.

Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a free market. Order 12, "Trade Liberalization," permitted the tax- and tariff-free import of foreign products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat. For Iraqi farmers, already wounded by sanctions and war, this was devastating. They could not compete with the U.S. and Australian surplusses dumped on them. But the import plan carried out the letter of the Economy Plan.

This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the occupation's agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself an import from the United States. Prior to George Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a company funded by Cargill.

There's no sense cutting taxes on big business, ordering 20 years of copyright payments for Bill Gates' operating system or killing off protections for Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government is going to take it away after an election. The shadow governors of Iraq back in Washington thought of that, too. Bremer fled, but he's left behind him nearly 200 American "experts," assigned to baby-sit each new Iraqi minister--functionaries also approved by the U.S. State Department.

The Price

The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.

After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in Washington. He had little regard for the Economy Plan handed to him three months before the tanks rolled. He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil assets and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. "That's one fight you don't want to take on," he told me.

But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer cancelled municipal elections, including the crucial vote about to take place in Najaf. Denied the ballot, Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This April, insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21 U.S. soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.

"They shouldn't have to follow our plan," the general said. "It's their country, their oil." Maybe, but not according to the Plan. And until it does become their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to remain to keep it from them.

Originally published in TomPaine.com

In the first step of this process, we are presented with and idea, value or concept, that is external from the individual. In this example, the concept that the, "tax payer," should shoulder the responsibility of a bank's (i.e. financial institutions - there are so many I, I won't list them all) lack of integrity (financial and otherwise) was outside the expectation and value norms many tax payers had. Tax payers as individuals have to balance their checkbooks every month. Fiscal responsibility is a hallmark value of the, "the average tax payer." Now the average tax payer was being told that bailing out these irresponsible financial institutions, that did not adhere to their fiscal values, had to be the primary value to preserve their own.

Politicians, bankers and CEOs understand this process VERY well (they should, the revolving door between Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and Financial CEOs has left them well practiced at covering each other's dirty laundry-Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio on the Bill Moyers Journal,2009). This new concept needed to be presented to the public just right. And so..., a wave of information, disinformation, and marketing, began to fill the air. We began to become familiar with new terminology, company names; pundits filled the airwaves and TV. What was once vague or completely unknown began to have a face and a vocabulary and a ready-made solution.

This is where the slight of hand becomes boggling and we move into the next stage of social construction. As the public faces of an economic fix began to glow with a solution, they moved the tax payer into a level of objectification that made, "bailing out the financial institutions," take on a life of its own and morphed the concept of a bailout to an objective reality. Here, politicians, investigative boards, and the free press could have begun to point out fallacies in reasoning, the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, shown earnings that belied the crisis consensus. But that didn't happen. Instead, the bailout became the reality through a combination of deliberate deception, believable authorities (of course that could be questioned now), and the marketing of fear by politicians and broadcast news. The marketing of fear cinched the deal. We heard over and over about the Great Depression and that if we didn't fix this problem quickly we would slide right back into another one. The average tax payer came to believe that the crisis was real and the bailout was a necessary, what else could we do? We can't let the banks and other financial institutions fail, it would destroy our way of life.

Finally we have made it to the last step of social construction, internalization. Now the American public, the average tax payer, country-wide shared the conviction that bailing out the banks was the only solution to saving the country and keeping us from descending into another depression. There was some objection, but not in the mainstream newscasts, and it was made to sound pro forma or, even worse, the way of staunching the financial bloodletting. The bailout solution had become an objective reality. Whatever the cost, we were now ready to let congress and the President spend trillions and do the bailout.

Why? In watching multiple interviews with Bill Moyers, guest after guest came on and told some shocking truth about the "real" story behind the bailout. Stories told by Simon Johnston, a professor of Global Economy and Management at MIT's Sloan School of Management, that the CEO of Bank of America told his stock holders, they had the best year ever. What? Stories form William Black former Director for the Institute for Fraud Prevention, now a professor at the University of Kansas, that the head of these institutions knew what would happen, knew they could push the bill for the bailout onto the taxpayer and there was only one reason to do it; it paid. Why would they do that? Information given by Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio who points out the like revolving door between Washington DC, Wall Street and the Finance Committee - we just keep recycling the same people with obvious conflict of interest into the top decision-making jobs.

If what they say is true, the average American taxpayer has been duped. I think the "why?" is a very good question; it says a lot about what allowed such a miscarriage of public faith and finance. When the whole financial mess is looked at though a cultural lenses, it begins to make sense. The values and norms of the Uber rich and powerful are not the same as, "the average American taxpayer." We are two different cultures co-existing in the same geographic space with extremely different values and standards. In the Uber rich and powerful culture, the average taxpayer's money is theirs. Money and power are their birth-right; there is no guilt on their part because this is just business as usual. To be among this elite, there is no place for "American" values like honesty, integrity, or responsibility to American taxpayers; their standards of right and wrong, good and bad are not the same- at all. Frankly, while the power brokers of America understand this and use it to manipulate, we, the taxpayers never seem to really be able to wrap our heads around it. It is just so far from our values and standards; so over and over we are unable to believe that such a financial crisis could be perpetrated deliberately; and over and over we vote for big bailouts. As I listened to Bill Moyer ask his guests over and over, "why?" and all the guests could answer with was another story of even more egregious behavior, I realized, they don't know. They cannot say, "Because, we don't really matter to them." They don't care if we lose our homes. They don't care if we lose our retirements. THEY DON'T CARE. Not only do our values not matter to them, we don't matter to them, because we are not a part of their culture. Paraphrased from William Black on the Bill Moyer show and his book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, fraud is at the heart of most bank and financial institution meltdowns. Mr. Black lays the corruption out and does not shy from saying that the CEOs and politicians don't care. But he still calls it fraud. My point is; that the average American meaning of fraud with all its moral and legal connotations does not exist for those in power. They don't think they have done anything wrong - it's a different culture. Here is another way to look at it; with all these credentialed people crying out foul, writing books that cry foul, lecturing at universities and crying foul- there is no mass movement or outcry by the majority of Americans to remove any of the CEOs, politicians or committee members that are up to their eyeballs in this. None.

Ever wonder what it feels like to live in a, "third world country," at the bottom of the world economic structure? Well, this is it. Just as we don't care about what's going on half way around the world because it doesn't affect our daily lives and they are not part of our culture; the Uber rich and powerful of American don't care about the rest of us. We are as good as half a world away to them.

Bibliography
1-Henslin, James. 2005. The Essentials of Sociology. Pearson: New Jersey.
2-Bill Moyer Journal, 2009. Interview of Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Simon Johnson, professor of Global Economics and Management at MIT's Sloan School of Management.
3- Bill Moyer Journal, 2009. Interview of William Black in CSI bailout. Former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention and author of, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is To Own One.

Katrina Weener is a student in my Sociology 204 class

However, the current crisis is hitting Portland, and the rest of Oregon, particularly hard, with state-wide unemployment levels competing with hard-pressed California for fourth place nationally.

Just released September figures show a 0.5 percentage point drop in unemployment from Augusts' adjusted figure of 12 percent. The decline is attributed to discouraged workers departing the job market. The economy's continuing weakness was shown with the loss of 10,300 jobs. This crisis of unemployment is exacerbated by cuts in social services, as well as inflated housing prices, despite a glut of housing in the area.

The official Oregon unemployment rate now stands at 11.5 percent, not far below last May's 12.2 percent, the highest level since statistics were kept in 1947. This statistic does not include either the underemployed (those who previously had full-time jobs last year and currently work part-time) or so-called "discouraged workers" (those workers who, it is claimed, have given up looking for employment).

Despite having the fifth highest rate of economic growth for the period of 2005-2006, a mere four years ago, Oregon is now one of many states with negative growth. Manufacturing employment is at its lowest since statistics have been kept, losing over 27,000 jobs, 14.1 percent, in the last year, while construction, despite a gain of 1,000 jobs last month, has still dropped 13,700 jobs, 14.8 percent, from a year ago.

The high point of manufacturing in Oregon was October of 1997 when nearly 230,000 workers were employed in that field. Currently, the number employed is 165,400, a decline of 28 percent.

While Portland has been hit hard, urban areas outside of Portland have been hit even harder, and their economic situation can be regarded as dismal. For the month of August 2009, the cities of Salem, Eugene, Medford and Bend had unemployment rates equal to or greater than that of Portland-Vancouver metro area. Bend, located in Central Oregon, had an unemployment rate of 15.8 percent.

According to an analysis by the New York Times published in July, a broader measure of unemployment reached 23.5 percent in the spring.

Further out, from where the busy interstates of I-5 and I-84 intersect in Portland, these communities have been torn apart earlier, faster, and more severely. Drives through Medford or Salem reveal empty storefronts and foreclosed houses that are difficult to ignore.

The drive to increase the exploitation of workers finds clear and sharp expression in agriculture and construction. At any time during the day in Portland, scores of workers can be seen lining up at day labor hire sites, or even just sitting around in large groups waiting for employers to come by with a truck. A representative of the Oregon Department of Agriculture commented that the recent downturn has "turned a lot of construction workers back into agricultural workers" and remarked sardonically that "there was no shortage of labor in agriculture" this year.

Statistics on day laborers, agricultural workers, and migrant workers is hard to collect due to both the ephemeral and transient nature of such employment, and because many workers in this field are undocumented and subject to constant harassment by the state. Official censuses are performed only once every five years and pressure exists on employers to not divulge their undocumented employees.

Oregon also suffers from a lack of affordable housing, despite massive overbuilding of condos during the recent real estate bubble. Thousands of units, intended for sale as condos, lay empty, particularly near the waterfront and Peal District sections of Portland, and are now, with the collapse of the housing market, being offered as rental properties. Working class neighborhoods in North Portland, St. John's, and the Belmont/Hawthorne area are sure to be next in the sights of developers who seek to drive out workers and replace them with higher rent tenants.

Not even rudimentary cots are available for many of the city's poor, who live in tent cities near the Burnside Bridge and other places along the waterfront and in the vacant-lot remnants of Portland's Chinatown. A recent report shows that about 1,500 homeless are forced to sleep outdoors on any given night. The homeless population in Oregon has exploded in recent years, a shameful fact considering the high number of homeless workers in the years of alleged economic prosperity.

A Housing and Urban Development 2008 analysis released this past summer identifies Oregon as having the highest proportion of homeless in the nation. Homelessness was 0.54 percent in Oregon, followed by Nevada with 0.48 percent.

The official figures of homelessness paint a grim picture: 16,221 homeless individuals on a one-night head count of shelters. This figure is likely only half of the total picture, as according to state statistics, less than half of the state's homeless are sheltered on any given night. While slightly more than half of the homeless are on their own, a significant minority consist of families with children, the overwhelming majority of whom are under age 11.

Further, the curtailment of vast portions of the city's mass transportation system, TriMet, will make it harder for working people. TriMet, which serves not just Portland proper, but several surrounding communities of considerable size (such as Hillsboro which will largely be inaccessible from Portland on weekends), plans to slash service, cutting entire lines, re-routing buses, and reducing the number of buses on the road, making Portland's famously quick and efficient public transportation set to become an overcrowded and unwieldy mess.

Twelve bus lines have been eliminated entirely, weekend or Sunday service was eliminated on an additional twelve, and hours or frequency were cut on no fewer than twenty-nine bus lines. Most telling is the elimination of free access for buses in Portland's famous Fareless Square, a significant area of downtown and certain adjoining areas, where riders have never been required to pay fares. Bus stops along Burnside, one of the main roads that split the city in half between North and South, bear signs reading "Service Temporarily Discontinued," and one wonders for how long.

The cutting of bus lines will heavily impact the poorest workers in the city who cannot afford loans for motorized transportation, nor the extortionist insurance payments which accompany this ownership. Many workers move to Portland precisely because of its mass transit system and rely upon it to get to work. They will be forced to either spend more unpaid time traveling to and from work, or search for new jobs where little are to be found.

In such a climate, demand for social services is rising while the ability of capitalism to cope is dwindling. Oregon, like so many other states, is seeing a decline in tax revenues and a related budget deficit. Oregon is looking at a deficit of between $850 million and $1 billion dollars for the current budget.

Democratic Governor Kulongoski went on record in a public statement calling this "sobering news for Oregon" and speaking of "difficult decisions" for the legislature which will "prioritize the core services performed by government" by "putting partisan politics aside." He ended his thinly-veiled plan of attack on Oregon's working class by saying "[t]oday is truly when the hard work begins."

Kulongowski's statement is filled with poorly concealed euphemisms referring to his impending plan to cut social services throughout the state. State Economist Tom Potiowsky indicated more attacks on social services than Kulongowski, telling the Salem Gazette-Times, "We're falling, basically, into a pit."

Kulongowski and the legislature responded by closing government agencies for ten days over the two-year budget period, with 26,500 workers forced to stay home. An estimated $2 to $2.5 million for each furlough day will be wrung from the pockets of workers who can ill-afford such a cut. The Service Employees International Union spokesman Ed Hershey signaled the union's support for this attack on public workers, saying, "I think the state wisely negotiated over these. If there have to be furloughs, these seem to be days that would least impact services."

These attacks on the living standards of working people include $65 million dollars cut from K-12 education, and $19 million in social services, including day care for the children of low-income workers. While the state has millions of dollars in a reserve fund, Kulongowski has made clear he will veto any attempt by the legislature to tap into that fund.

Food stamp enrollment is up 25 percent (and is 25 percent greater than the national average). Housing foreclosures are the 14th highest in the state, but this statistic is highly misleading, as masses of working people in Oregon choose to rent, due to the relatively lower cost of rentals in the state.

Using the combined metrics of housing foreclosure, unemployment, and food stamp participation, the non-profit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation ranked Oregon third on its state economic distress scale, underscoring how deeply Oregon is affected by the sum total of high unemployment, foreclosure rates, and underfunded social services.

However, while the real income of Oregon's lowest 20 percent of population has declined by 17 percent since 1979, that of the wealthiest 1 percent has skyrocketed by 210 percent.

Oregon is one clear example of the inability of capitalism to solve the problems of working people. Condos, built by speculators in hopes of reselling in a Ponzi-like scheme to other speculators, lay empty throughout Portland, while homeless workers huddle in tent cities. The unemployment rate has skyrocketed, even though any attentive person could find dozens of things--in infrastructure repair, social services, and health services to name only the most glaringly obvious--that need doing, and that the workers of Oregon would no doubt be happy to do.

The large urban centers are known to lean heavily Democratic. Salem, the state capital, is dominated by the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party holds all major statewide executive offices (Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Commissioner of Labor and Industries, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the State Land Board). As well, both houses of the Oregon Legislative Assembly are firmly in the hands of the Democrats. This is the party that leads the current attacks on workers.

Yet, it was. These victims identified a problem and named it "predatory lending" in the late 1990s. Their campaign to reform Household International (also known as Household Finance and as Beneficial) played out from 2001 to 2003, concluding with a settlement that includes a ban on badmouthing the company. That's why more people haven't heard about this. The families who fought back and defeated Household are barred from bragging about it or teaching the lessons they learned, because that would require recounting the damage that Household did to homes and neighborhoods. These families are members of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

I was ACORN's communications coordinator during much of the Household campaign, but left before it ended. No one has asked me not to tell this story.

In low-income minority neighborhoods in the United States, what little wealth there is, is in home equity. Home equity makes up 74.9 percent of the net wealth for Hispanics in the bottom two income quintiles (0-40 percent) and 78.7 percent of the net wealth for African Americans in the second income quintile (20-40 percent). There have been gains in minority home ownership over the past few decades, in part as a result of the work by community groups like ACORN and National People's Action to force banks to make loans in these communities, but the home ownership is fragile and not protected by additional savings. Lenders in the past decade have focused on stripping away equity and community groups have been forced to focus on keeping out loans that are worse than no loans at all.

Most high-cost loans are refinance loans. Too often they are marketed aggressively and deceptively, including through live- checks in the mail that result in very high-cost loans that the lender will be only too happy to refinance into a new mortgage. Often these loans are made with excessive, sometimes variable, interest rates, outrageously high fees, and fees financed into the loans so that the borrower pays interest on them and often is not told about them. They are made with bogus products built in, on which the borrower also pays interest. Hidden balloon payments force repeated refinancings for additional fees each time. Mandatory arbitration clauses attempt to prevent borrowers from taking lenders to court. The practice of loaning more than the value of a home traps borrowers in loans they cannot refinance with a responsible lender. Consolidation of additional debts further decreases equity, placing the home at greater risk. Quiet omission of taxes and insurance from a mortgage that previously included those charges results in a crisis when yearly bills arrive.

Predatory lenders turn the usual logic of lending upside down. They make their money by intentionally making loans that the borrowers will be unable to repay. They charge fees for each refinancing until finally seizing the house. Fannie Mae has estimated that as many as half of all borrowers in subprime (high-cost) loans could have qualified for a lower cost mortgage.

High-cost loans are not just made to people with poor credit. They're often made to people who have poor banking services in their neighborhoods.

ACORN members don't take abuse of their neighborhoods lying down, and Household was a leading cause of the rows of vacant houses appearing in ACORN neighborhoods in the 1990s. ACORN launched a campaign to reform Household that included numerous strategies. One, an ACORN stand-by, was direct action. Repeatedly, ACORN members in numerous cities around the country simultaneously protested in Household offices to demand reform. At the same time, ACORN was working to pass anti-predatory lending legislation in local and state governments and Congress. ACORN members made sure that in each case the victims testifying were victims of Household and that Household's abuses were highlighted. When ACORN released major reports on predatory lending, the examples included were always from Household.

ACORN also worked with the Coalition for Responsible Wealth to advance a shareholder resolution that would have tied Household's executives' compensation to ending its predatory lending. In 2001 Household held its shareholders meeting in an out-of-the-way suburb of Tampa, Florida. A crowd of ACORN members was there with shark suits and shark balloons to protest.

The resolution won 5 percent. Over the next year, ACORN pressured state pension funds and other shareholders. Household held its 2002 meeting an hour and a half from the nearest airport in rural Kentucky. Members made the trip by car from all over the country. The protest may have been the biggest thing the town of London, Kentucky had seen in years. The resolution won 30 percent.

As a result, various local and state governments threatened to divest from Household. ACORN also put pressure on stores like Best Buy that used Household credit cards. At the same time, ACORN Housing Corporation was assisting many Household victims in either refinancing out of their Household loans or at least canceling some of the rip-off services built into their loans, such as credit insurance. ACORN was also getting the word out to stay away from Household.

ACORN wrote up numerous accounts of Household predatory loans and took them to the attorney generals in state after state urging investigations. ACORN similarly pressured federal regulators to act. ACORN assisted borrowers in filing a number of class-action suits against Household targeting those of its practices that were clearly illegal even under existing law. They let Wall Street analysts know what Household stood to lose from these lawsuits, as well as from various reforms that Household periodically announced in its attempt to hold off the pressure.

But ACORN members never let up. They protested again and again at Household offices and held press conferences in front of homes about to be lost to Household. They protested the secondary market that was putting up capital for these predatory loans and they held a major protest at the trade group that lobbied in Washington for Household and its fellow sharks. Then, in the summer of 2002, in the wealthy suburbs north of Chicago, victims of Household from around the country poured out of busses by the thousands onto the lawns of the board members and the CEO of Household. They knocked on doors and spoke to those who had hurt them from a distance. When the police made them leave, ACORN members plastered "Wanted" posters all over the neighborhood telling the board members' neighbors what crimes the Household executives were guilty of.

Through all of this, we worked the media. I kept a database of victims' stories and contact information and put them in touch with reporters whenever the reporters were willing to tell not just the victimization story but also the story of fighting back. We generated several hundred print articles and several hundred TV and radio stories about Household's predatory lending practices. We worked the small neighborhood papers, flyers in churches, posters on walls. We provoked lengthy articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times , and Forbes Magazine . We kept up an endless barrage in the trade press: the American Banker, National Mortgage News, etc.

A handful of ACORN staff people with great expertise and unrelenting effort organized thousands of members to drive this campaign until Household agreed to pay victims $489 million through the 50 states attorneys general, and later agreed to pay millions more through ACORN, as well as to reform its practices.

This campaign was an example of what can be done if enough different angles are pursued at once and the company ripping you off is put on the defensive and constantly hit with the unexpected. This campaign increased the size and power of ACORN to effect future progressive change. This is good news for low-income neighborhoods, but bad news for Wells Fargo, the predatory lender next on ACORN's list.

DAVID SWANSON is a longtime activist for social justice. He has worked hard in recent years to obtain an impeachment against the Bush camarilla. He is also the author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union

Women are less likely than men to qualify for their employer's insurance program, because they are more likely to work part-time and to have lower-wage jobs. Instead, since they are more likely to depend on their spouse's policy than men, they are more susceptible to losing insurance because of divorce or widowhood.

In 38 states, it is legal to discriminate on the basis of gender when selling insurance. Policies sold to women or their employers can cost 40 percent more than insurance for men -- even when maternity benefits are excluded. Currently permissible practices, such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or charging more for those with a history of health problems, disproportionately affect women, who are more likely to seek help from a doctor and to need ongoing care. One of the most egregious current practices allows insurance companies in eight states and the District of Columbia to deem domestic violence a ``pre-existing condition'' and deny coverage to its victims.

For women, healthcare reform must embrace principles and practices that will end gender discrimination and provide affordable quality healthcare for all, including access to the full range of reproductive health options. Tinkering around the edges and adding stopgaps won't be enough. Relying on the insurance industry alone to accomplish what it has been unable or unwilling to do for the last 50 years will only prolong an untenable situation.

New solutions must involve innovation and imagination, including creation of a public health insurance plan option to lower costs and ensure universal affordable coverage. Such an innovation has the support of three-quarters of Americans according to a recent SurveyUSA report -- a result that hasn't changed since 2003. A new poll published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that 73 percent of all doctors favor a public option. Yet the public option is repeatedly dismissed out of hand in the back rooms on Capitol Hill, even by supposed moderates.

It's up to us to ensure that our elected representatives understand that half-measures won't do. The dire consequences of our patchwork healthcare system are both morally and fiscally indefensible. The 2006 estimate of ``excess deaths'' attributed to being uninsured was between 22,000 and 27,000 among all adults age 25-64. Our system's failures earned us a ranking of 35th among countries with a national healthcare system, while we pay the most for poorer results.

Discrimination against women must be rooted out, and we must insist on a public option. Only then will all of us enjoy a standard of health care that Congress itself takes for granted."

*******

I would add to those points Ms. Ratzan made that health care concerns for women are not only questions of accessibility and cost, but also the quality of care provided once inside the examining room and/or hospital door.

So engrained is the prejudicial, and therefore dangerous Freudian idea that women are "hysterical" that all of us could list dozens of instances in which -- regardless of ethnic or educational background -- the health issues of women were dismissed as psychosomatic. Conditions which later proved to be, among other things, herniated discs, a heart attack and fatal ovarian, bladder and kidney cancers.

But the gender bias does not stop there. Treatments, as well as observations made during them, can reflect engrained prejudices and therefore become abusive. Many of these abuses are definitely gender-specific in that they are age and appearance related. The elderly neighbor I cited with herniated discs -- the who had been telling her neighbors and friends that she was in so much pain she had not been able to sit or stand or lie down comfortably for days -- was actually accused by the male resident on duty in the ER as being nothing more than "an addict seeking painkillers." She was sent home without a proper diagnosis and without any pain relief; she alleged, later, that the resident had " alerted the authorities" (I don't know what authorities) that her name should be added to a list (I don't know what list) of potential drug abusers. When taken to task for his behavior by my neighbor's daughter, his initial response was: "Well, sorry. But we all know that women of that generation are prone to be pill poppers."

At the opposite end of the age spectrum, another neighbor -- a young, attractive woman -- learned, much later, that she had suffered nerve damage during uterine surgery for fibroids -- damage that was so severe that it created permanent red/ purple patches on her inner thighs. Nonetheless, she was told by her surgeon in a follow-up exam that "it must be an outbreak of Herpes." Despite the fact that the young woman swore she did not have, nor had she ever had Herpes and invited the surgeon to check with her Ob/Gyn, the surgeon insisted he was correct. So one is left to surmise that either the surgeon was attempting to cover his tracks, in the literal sense, or he made snap judgments based on her age and appearance.

Gender bias is an important point that has not been part of the healthcare reform discussion. For reform to be meaningful to women, it must include reforms in attitude as well as in accessibility and cost.

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the Justice Department to investigate [5] whether Rep. Ross had "engaged in bribery and honest services fraud" in relation to the sale. 

While Rep. Ross refused to discuss the story with ProPublica, Maddow or CNN, he did issue a statement yesterday to which we promptly responded [6] noting that Ross did not "deny that he received significantly more than an arms-length fair-market price for the building."  Additionally, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published an article today (available on his Web site [7]) quoting two pharmacy experts who say the assets were sold "well within the ballpark" of what similar assets would bring; neither expert has knowledge of this particular sale.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.

The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out.

Ross sold Holly's Health Mart in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 -- an eye-popping price for real estate in a tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock.

"You can buy half the town for $420,000," said Adam Guthrie, chairman of the county Board of Equalization and the only licensed real estate appraiser in Prescott.

But the $420,000 that USA Drug paid for the pharmacy's building and land was just the beginning of what Ross and his wife, Holly, made from the sale of Holly's Health Mart. USA Drug owner Stephen L. LaFrance Sr. also paid the Rosses $500,000 to $1 million for the pharmacy's assets and paid Holly Ross an additional $100,000 to $250,000 for signing a noncompete agreement. Those numbers, which Mike Ross listed on the financial disclosure reports he files as a member of Congress, bring the total value of the transaction to between $1 million and $1.67 million.

And that's not counting the $2,300 campaign contribution Ross received from LaFrance two weeks after the sale closed.

Holly Ross remains the pharmacist at Holly's Health Mart under USA Drug. Neither she nor her husband agreed to speak with ProPublica for this story.

At the time of the 2007 sale, the county assessor's office valued the pharmacy's building and the land on which it sits at $263,000 -- nearly $160,000 less than the Rosses got for it.

Because an assessor's valuations don't always reflect true market value, ProPublica hired Guthrie to appraise the property. He placed the current value of the lot and building at $198,000, substantially lower than the county's assessment, which was raised from $263,000 to $269,000 this year. Guthrie explained the difference between his appraisal and the county assessment by saying county assessments have been running higher than actual market value.

Mike Ross frequently speaks for the coalition of House moderates known as the Blue Dogs, a group that helped force changes to the version of the health care reform bill drafted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The role has lifted him to national prominence in recent months.

"We held the bill hostage in committee for 10 days to make it better," Ross, a member of the committee, told reporters Aug. 5 in Little Rock. "We protected small businesses. ... And we ensured that if there is a government option, it will be just that, an option. It will not be mandated on anybody."

Ross bristled at suggestions he was trying to kill the bill.

"I wasn't trying to kill health care reform," he said. "If I was, I wouldn't have been in negotiations for 10 days." LaFrance has amassed a privately held chain of more than 150 pharmacies operating in five Southern and Midwestern states under a variety of names, including USA Drug. It was the 15th-largest drug chain in the country in 2008, with an estimated $906 million in sales, according to Racher Press, which publishes business intelligence reports.

The pharmacy industry is aggressively lobbying Congress in an effort to protect its interests in the health care debate. Ross, who belongs to the 52-member Congressional Community Pharmacy Coalition, has introduced and supported legislation backed by pharmacy trade groups.

On Aug. 1, the National Community Pharmacist Association issued a news release thanking Ross for an amendment to the health care reform bill that would create greater transparency in the operations of pharmacy benefit managers, who act as clearinghouses for insurance company reimbursements for pharmaceuticals.

In June the National Association of Chain Drug Stores issued a news release thanking Ross for introducing legislation authorizing payments to pharmacists to train patients in how to manage their medications.

Health-related interests have donated $342,475 to Ross since 2007, according to federal campaign data maintained by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. No other business sector has given Ross as much.

Ross and LaFrance declined to be interviewed for this story. LaFrance's son, Stephen L. LaFrance Jr., who helps run the chain, asked for questions to be submitted in writing but didn't respond to them.

Ross's spokesman, Brad Howard, said the real estate deal was "open, honest and by the books." He described Ross and LaFrance as "acquaintances" but declined to say whether they have discussed the pending legislation, adding that Ross has discussed health care reform with many of his constituents.

The $157,000 gap between the property's assessed value and the price LaFrance paid wasn't unusual, Howard said, because assessments are done for tax purposes and typically don't reflect the full market value of the real estate.

"The appraisal always differs from the assessment, and you can't really compare the two," Howard said.

In an interview on Sept. 2, Howard told ProPublica that the appraised value of the real estate at the time of the sale "was somewhere around where the purchase price was, which was, you know, I think was, like, $420,000." He said he didn't have a copy of any such appraisal and suggested obtaining it from LaFrance, who did not respond to requests for a copy. Last Friday, however, Howard said he could "only assume there was an appraisal done on the property by the buyer in 2007" and that he "never said" the property was appraised at $420,000.

Nevada County, which includes Prescott, hires an outside firm -- Arkansas CAMA Technology Inc. -- to update its assessments every five years. After LaFrance bought Holly's Health Mart in 2007, someone from CAMA called the headquarters of LaFrance's pharmacy chain to verify the sale price for the lot and building, in part because "it was such an expensive sale for that area," CAMA employee Mike Shepherd told ProPublica.

"Commercial property values in Nevada County "have stayed flat" in recent years, Shepherd said, adding, "I would say flat or a slight increase, maybe. That would be pretty slight, though."

Brenda Williams of Nevada County Real Estate in Prescott said county property assessments tend to be slightly below market value but usually "no more than 5 percent."

"Being in the real estate business, I know that I see the tax card every time, and it's usually assessed a little bit less than the actual value or sales price, a little bit less but not that much less," she said. Asked about the value of the lot and building housing Holly's Health Mart, she said, "It might cost $250,000 to build it. I wouldn't have a problem with that $200 and something thousand. But not over $400 [thousand]."

The Rosses bought the lot in 1999 for $10,000, then constructed a building that the county assessed at $225,000.

Two months after the 2007 sale, LaFrance's concerns about health care reform were spelled out in an article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

"Universal health care will ruin our health care in America," LaFrance told the reporter. "There'll be long lines, they won't be able to get treated, potential doctors will be afraid to go into medical school, there will be an outflux of doctors -- in my opinion. It's not broke, and don't fix it."

Describing the drug industry as "very big business," he said the high prices charged for prescription drugs are possible only because insurance companies and the government underwrite about 95 percent of the cost.

"So when the customer pays $7, $10, $15, $20 [for a prescription co-pay], it doesn't hurt him. They don't realize that the insurance company is paying the other $125. That's kind of a double-edged sword; if it wasn't for insurance, the American pharmaceutical industry wouldn't be able to charge the prices it charges today, because the public wouldn't put up with it," LaFrance told the Democrat-Gazette.

"Our sales are higher because it affects the top line of sales," he added. If the government doesn't interfere, there are "nothing but good days ahead."

-- ProPublica Research Director Lisa Schwartz and Researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this story. ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

n this interview she talks about the collapse of industrial civilization - what it may look like, reasons for its occurrence, the effects of collapse and, how to relocalize and create sustainable communities in the throes of collapse. Through the lenses of psychology, spiritualism, and history Carolyn explicates that collapse is a dynamic affair, not sudden, but a drawn out process of erosion that will test our subjective relations and our consciousness, while shaking off old paradigms, and what we can do to maintain a sense of peace, pragmatism, and community.

Frank Joseph Smecker: You maintain that the collapse of industrial civilization is occurring now ; can you define collapse? And explain why industrial civilization is eroding at its very foundations?

Carolyn Baker: First of all, I'm talking about a process that is slow - not like falling off of a cliff but more like rolling down a bumpy hill. Most of us know what collapse is beginning to look like. It begins to look like massive departures from organized religions alongside Catholic diocese child-sex scandals. It begins to look like rising unemployment and a growing gap between classes. Wouldn't you agree that an educational system that can only produce standardized children by forcing them to take standardized tests five hours a day, four days a week, is functioning in a state of abject disintegration? Or what about the health care system that is so broken and unequal? Collapse is primarily the demise of the chief institutions such as education, health care, political, financial -

FJS: Collapse can also be recognized on account of its effects upon the ecological balance of the planet such as a burgeoning endangered species list, climate change and melting glaciers - the desiccation of arctic permafrost, the acceleration of droughts and desertification... the list is damn long...

CB: Absolutely - everyday the endangerment or imminent extinction of a species, if not several, is announced. We are reminded of the melting polar ice caps, the plummeting of giant ice shelves into the sea; fires raging in places they seldom had in the past. Yes, the list is sadly long. Aside from the effects and appearance, collapse is mainly the demise of a paradigm of growth, expansion - of domination and control, of separateness. This paradigm is vanishing and it will have to be replaced. My work not only points this out, but is also a tool to educate about inclusion, local community-geared organization, and small-scale production versus pyramidal hierarchy - which clearly doesn't work. It's apparent that the large institutions don't work: federal and state governments are rapidly going bankrupt. Solutions will have to come from relocalized communities. In terms of energy, it's pretty clear now that we've passed 'peak' regarding oil production. This is crucial because we've relied so long on cheap and abundant fossil fuels. No longer is production easy and cheap; we are now moving away from affordable hydrocarbon energy. And the truth is, the whole hierarchy-from-the-top-down approach is no longer working. The big secret (which is really no secret at all) is that the institutions themselves are collapsing and, you can't have a recovery without access to energy and you can't access energy without money - it's a catch twenty-two! We're printing more money to access more energy, which is becoming harder and more expensive to access and produce and, in turn, we are going further into debt thence more bankruptcy. We have come to the end of large bureaucratic government institutions.

FJS: You assert that there is nothing government can do to stop collapse - that there is no large-scale political change that will mitigate collapse, not even major reformation like replacing capitalism with socialism will stop the dominant culture from destroying the planet and marching toward collapse. How so?

CB: Let's face it, a presidential candidate cannot even receive substantial votes, let alone be elected, unless he is solidly in the pocket of the corporate interests of the US - the same corporate interests that rely on unsustainable growth and exploitation of the natural world. Besides, no one candidate is remotely capable of executing a fundamental paradigm shift within the span of four to eight years. As for our 'democratic' process, during the initial stages of the economic meltdown many players in Congress looked the other way - there may be no more than six people in congress I can say I absolutely trust; it truly is the fox guarding the chicken house! Anyway, as I stated earlier, collapse is occurring as a result of specific paradigms that have been held for centuries that are resulting in the destruction of the human and non-human realms. Merely replacing capitalism with socialism will not work. Changing systems is ineffectual not only because an opposite system is still a system but also, most importantly, only the political and economic structures are altered, while the fundamental paradigm - one of control and domination, remains intact. Father Thomas Berry wrote in The Dream Of The Earth , "both liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism committed themselves totally to the vision of industrial progress which more than any other single cause has brought about the disintegration that is taking place throughout the entire planet."

FJS: Apparently, the collapse of industrial civilization is the inevitable outcome of a contrived system inherently intent on growing exponentially in a finite world with set - i.e. invariable - limits. Do you believe that the purpose of "limitless growth" is designated for the notion of progress, a philosophical idea that was latent in the "Christian notion of self-perfection for divine ends," an end in which the future is static and "Heavenly?"

CB: Since the Enlightenment, it has all been about reaching a static age of perfection - which goes against all indigenous wisdom. The first thing that was done to the indigenous by Westerners after colonization was the taking away of indigenous rituals because they were seen as impediments to 'progress.'

FJS: So the whole proselytizing thing can also be seen as a swapping of religions, so to speak - supplanting an indigenous worldview with a 'civilized' worldview that worships production and progress?

CB: To call it a 'swap' is an understatement. To shift indigenous religions with Christianity is a rape - a violation that has led us to where we are now. And if we don't stop to recognize this and don't understand why we are where we are, there is no chance of a new paradigm. I wrote a book a while back called U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You . It's basically a history of the US from 1865 to now, and can be a useful read to know how we got from even there to here, and it is available at my website or at Amazon.

FJS: In your recent book, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path Of Industrial Civilization's Collapse , you have written that "the more we honor and celebrate our inherent animal nature, the more likely we are to effortlessly honor our limits." Would you agree that civilization's transgressions of natural limits is linked to the suppression of our inherent, intuitive animal instincts?

CB: Absolutely. Derrick Jensen wrote in Endgame, Volume I, that: "The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of any economic system." And that, "Any economic system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and really stupid." We're the only species, that I'm aware of, that doesn't honor limits. One of the deeper layers explaining our disconnect from nature is our "fear and loathing of the body," of our instinctual wildness and, our vulnerability to death. This all causes us to distance ourselves from the reality that we are indeed animals. And also, native peoples, as a result of their intimate connection with nature, are glaring reminders of our animal-ness. To be 'civilized' is synonymous with being domesticated, restrained, and repressed, and if we are to participate in instinctual behavior, let's use sex as an example, we are encouraged to do it in a controlled, sanitized, or even surreptitious fashion. I think it's pretty important we all begin to realize that it isn't wild animals that are soiling their nests and desecrating their habitat, but rather humans. I'm sitting here right now looking out at beautiful rolling green hills. I often see deer grazing along the hillside, and you know what? They don't ever come to my house because they have limits! Animals live within the limits of their environment because their lives depend on doing so. In the new paradigm, other animals and creatures will be the elders; they will be the wise ones who will help us remember our animal origins and animal destiny. Animals already teach us surrender, acceptance, and limits. There's a great quote by Eckhart Tolle in which he states: "No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the earth that sustains it...Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats.

FJS: Why do you suppose so many people reject the truth, or at the very least, the notion of, collapse and refuse to ask these necessary questions?

CB: Collapse is terrifying; we're not going to bounce back. Besides, many people are still entrenched in the 'Myth of America' - that anyone, or the US as a whole, can be triumphant. Plus, people who are hurting from bankruptcy, foreclosure, unemployment - it's hard for these folks to accept that this is permanent: it's not going away.

FJS: Decades ago, psychiatrist R.D. Laing developed three rules by which he believed a pathological family (one suffering from abuse, alcoholism, etc.) can keep its pathology hidden from even its own family members. Adherence to these three rules allows perpetrators, victims, and observers to maintain the fantasy that they are all one big, happy family. The rules are: Rule A: Don't [talk about the problems and abject conditions]; Rule A1: Rule A does not exist; Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A1, and/or A2. These rules aren't exclusive to nuclear families but also apply to larger cultures, especially cultures that are violently abusive to its own people and the land, lest the people recognized the flaws of such abject behavior. Would you agree that these rules are adhered to within the dominant culture, heightening collective denial and silence in the wake of collapse?

CB: Exactly - without question. The American culture can be compared to one large dysfunctional family, and it can also be compared to an addiction model. By maintaining denial we enter a very dangerous realm. As Carl Jung emphasized, whatever we deny or pretend to ignore does not go away, but only becomes larger in its power and influence, not only within the psyche, but throughout our external world too. And anything we do to resist or postpone the collapse will only make it worse. In 2007, the Pentagon announced that it is conducting simulation exercises in specific US cities in preparation for possible chaotic scenarios resulting from climate change, a nuclear attack, pandemics, or natural disasters. Clearly, law enforcement and the military are anticipating the possibility of dealing with an unruly citizenry. The possibilities of martial law, suspension of the Constitution, and immediate imprisonment for dissenters or generally unruly individuals are daunting - it's no wonder we don't want to think about the reality of collapse and the full extent of its consequences. But again, whatever we deny or ignore only becomes a larger threat. If we don't attend to the reality of collapse that is happening now, we risk not only encountering it without a lack of pragmatic preparation, but we're very likely to deprive the deeper, eternal layers of ourselves, obviating any effective community building.

FJS: Would you agree that hope, righteousness, and 'keeping a positive outlook' also keeps the truth at bay while galvanizing complacency?

CB: Ah yes, hopium .

(There's a brief pause as we both chuckle)

CB: The longer we dwell on false hopes - which I would define a false hope as an external hope: that something out there will fix this, that technology will save us, or that a newly elected president will bring change - the longer we persist in this the harder the collapse will be. Hope must come from within, from inside you, and really, I don't like to use the word 'hope', I don't like it - I prefer 'inspiration.' And let's be honest, calling someone 'doomerish' or 'keeping a positive attitude' that doesn't honestly address today's daunting conditions doesn't change the fact that we are witnessing the unprecedented extinction of 200 species per day; it won't reverse peak-oil or stop famine or resource wars. I believe that new solutions come from holding the dark reality alongside one's vision - what many indigenous called 'holding the tension of opposites.' I say down with hope, up with holding the tension of opposites! As for righteousness, I wrote in Sacred Demise that a righteous attitude often leads to detachment from reality: it bypasses any emotional response one may have to the desperate situation we and all other life are in on this planet - it makes the state of the planet someone else's problem, not ' my ' problem. It implies that one is above emotions and doesn't want to soil his/her 'sanitized' psyche with them. And as for the addiction to a 'positive attitude,' well, upholding the latter in the face of the end of the world as we have known it is beyond irrational - it's a humancentric obsession, as if the only thing that matters as the world burns is to feel good about oneself. And to add to your previous mentioning of R.D. Laing's three rules for a pathological family - anyone who keeps a positive attitude in this culture - the culture of civilization that is killing the planet - killing all of the people and species we all love - that person is not only irrational and deeply afflicted with denial, but is exactly like a member of an abusive family system in which physical and sexual assault are occurring in the home on a daily basis, but that family member insists on 'thinking good thoughts' and resents anyone and everyone who says what is so about the abusive system.

FJS: You also wrote in Sacred Demise that collapse can be seen as a metaphor for growth. For starters, what is the connection, if any, between the dominant culture's fear of death and the ubiquitous fear to confront the reality of collapse? And moreso, can you discuss how growth cannot be attained without requisite loss?

CB: The bottom line of confronting collapse is facing our own mortality. If we refuse to do this, collapse will be horrifying. We need to be more of a culture of adults then of children. We need to accept that there is an end - there is an end to this 'party' we've been having for the last two hundred years or so, as there's an end to each and every one of our individual lives. An integral part of restoring life is the willingness to be present with death. Acknowledging this will help us weather the collapse. The indigenous have known for thousands of years that life is comprised of loss - their traditions, rituals, and ceremonies help deal with loss: they devote a great deal of time and energy into preparation for life's losses and, their traditions teach that loss is an enormous and necessary part of the human experience. Part of becoming a mature, initiated adult is to learn and grow from loss. We just can't grow without it, and, despite the pain, it is food for growth. A huge point in Sacred Demise is my view on the collapse process as comparable to the indigenous view of the cycle of life. First the child is born into life, then later on there is the puberty-initiation process - which is far greater than just a rite of passage - it is a brush with death, a connection with loss, and an emergence into adulthood. What we're experiencing globally with collapse is a global initiation into new growth and true adulthood, elderhood - not age per se - it has more to do with wisdom than age.

FJS: In your introduction to Sacred Demise you write that the collapse of industrial civilization is a "necessary evolutionary trauma in the odyssey of planet earth." Can you explain what you mean by this?

CB: Collapse is undeniably going to be painful. But it will also be an enormous precedent for the transformation of the human consciousness. Again, with loss comes growth - or at the very least, the conditions for growth. We can embrace collapse and accomplish small tribal living and local problem solving - this is really a tremendous opportunity to organize locally. It's very important to hold the visions and potentialities of transitioning in the wake of collapse. One initiative I have become a part of is Transition Town ; this is not a magic, silver bullet but it is a viable option and vision, and much better to hold onto than only the dark realities. Remember the tension of opposites.

FJS: Can you talk a little about Transition Town ?

CB: Absolutely. Basically, Transition Town is a worldwide network organizing around energy breakdown, but is also a community response to climate change, economic meltdown, and even the possibility of the complete evaporation of the dollar; some Transition Towns are working on creating local currencies. The Transition Town group in Montpelier , Vermont (Transition Town Montpelier) is currently holding a nine-day Village-Building Convergence to educate the local communities regarding the exigencies of collapse such as emergency response and feeding communities. This is a prime example of embracing collapse in order to strengthen community relations and redefine social arrangements so as to be sustainable and non-hierarchical.

FJS: You write that one can find beauty in collapse; what role does beauty play in the throes of collapse?

CB: We must find beauty in everything we do. Part of the reason we're in the paradigm we're in now is that many people lost a sense of, and connection to, beauty in life, in nature on earth. As for collapse, there can be tremendous beauty in preparation for collapse and community organizing. In a section in his book, A World Made By Hand , James Howard Kunstler writes about homemade musical instruments, for example. Combined with dance, voice and music can solidify the community in sacred ritual, merriment, and conviviality as they have for thousands of years among our ancestors. This to me is beautiful. Poetry, too, is so important. Music, art, story telling, and ritual - all of this we must express and enjoy. We have the opportunity to relearn the language of soul. The language of industrial civilization is so linear - the soul wants us to learn a new language. Beauty is that magnificent and mysterious bridge to nature, to ourselves, and to the sacred. If our work is to further open our hearts, allow our egos to die, and fully surrender to the greater self, then beauty is the consummate facilitator of that process.

FJS: There is a poem written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes that you share with your readers in Sacred Demise -

CB: Yes, it's titled Father Earth .

FJS: Yeah, that's the one - it's a very beautiful poem.

There's a two million year-old man no one knows.

And the soil beneath her is fertile and black with her tears.

Like the Manson Family, Limbaugh's Lackeys completely accept the paranoid fantasies of a manipulative con artist as reality. Like Charlie Manson, Rush Limbaugh exercises his control over his Pavlonian-trained dogs irresponsibly and capriciously with no regard for the consequences to his followers. And always at a distance.

Like Manson, Rush never confronts his targets personally but dispatches his programmed pooches to do his dirty work.

Lately, those pathetic puppies have been yapping away at public meetings, trying to prevent healthcare that would help them and their families live longer, healthier lives.

But these performing dogs care little for their families or their future and do as they are told. Their lack of understanding of the issues is as evident as their inability to think, speak or act on their own. The less they know, the louder they howl.

Just a word from Rush "Goebbels" Limbaugh and they are falling all over themselves, and each other, in a frantic rush to kowtow to the Fat Mouth Manson and his corporate handlers.

They would rather live on their knees than stand up for themselves and their families and demand health care reform, higher wages and better lives. These are the real family values that can only be achieved by an aggressive left-wing agenda that will begin our journey up the firm and verdant slope to socialism.

After getting their asses handed to them on this issue for months precisely because of the never-ending snipe hunt for a bipartisan healthcare reform bill and then throughout August being publicly bullied, taunted, bitch slapped and manipulated while staring like a deer into the headlights it seems the oh so smart corporate Democrats running the show in DC have learned absolutely nothing. How can this be? What can those people be thinking if the answer they've come up with is essentially more of the same? How can they conclude that what we need is more capitulation, further retreat and finally sacrificing real healthcare reform for an insurance company subsidy program that will fatten those malevolent interests even more than they are, that costs far too much, and returns far too little to the common people? Do they know how weak they are making themselves look in the eyes of the American people as they insist on playing the submissive role to the Republicans' and how it demonstrates anything but leadership as they keep the sworn enemies of any healthcare reform in the driver's seat even though the legislative and executive branches are controlled by Democrats?

It is embarrassing and shocking really to come to grips with just how isolated and out of touch the DC Democrats are on this issue (excepting of course the relative handful of committed progressives who have been vocal in their opposition to further capitulation). From day one the corporate DC Dems have played the obsequious handmaidens of the parasitical special interests on healthcare and to their allies, the congressional Republicans, who openly declare not only that they are against reform but that the President is a foreigner hell bent on imposing Soviet style totalitarianism on America combined with Nazi style euthanasia policies and taking the guns from crazy white people everywhere. They handed control of the message to the Republicans from day one too, making the fundamental question one of cost instead of whether or not healthcare will no longer be a privilege in America but a right that every citizen is entitled to in this country just as citizens are in all the other industrialized countries on earth.

When will it occur, and what will it take at long last, for the DC Dems to understand that they cannot represent the corporate interests and the interests of the common people of this nation on healthcare not to mention most other important issues facing the nation? When, at long last will they understand that the situation has become so acute and out of balance that the Washington game of buying off corporate support with massive giveaways to special interests and throwing a bone or two to the people is no longer acceptable? When will they realize that healthcare for all is not an academic mind tease or a parlor game but a life and death issue for 18,000 Americans annually and that it is the difference between keeping their lives together and bankruptcy for a million families every year now? Establishing a viable healthcare system worth having and that serves every citizen is a moral question, not a question of cost. How the lack of healthcare, skyrocketing costs for premiums and deductibles, the lack of good insurance and the denial of benefits are harming human beings are the fundamental issues at stake when you get right down to it, not the cost of covering everyone for the benefit of the for profit insurance industry. And when oh when will the ever so smart minds of the DC Dems realize that the costliest possible approach is the one they seem to want to foist upon us which is one that does not cover everyone, keeps our grotesque and broken system in tact while enriching the insurance companies yet only tinkering at the margins of reform? Providing massive subsidies for people to pay for rotten insurance policies is not a solution to anything and it isn't acceptable. If that's what we get in the end it's hard to imagine what it is we've won other than a pig in a poke for the common American citizen and his or her family.

The bottom line is that sometimes you simply have to fight for what you really believe in and let the chips fall where they may. Yes, you risk losing but winning isn't the only thing that matters. It matters what you win too. If you fight for what is right, but lose, at least you have done so with some honor and the whole world knows what side you are on. To whimper and whine and capitulate to the greediest and most parasitical special interests only to "win" a bill that is no longer worth having can be worse than losing.

It is long past time for the President to come out in his speech to Congress next week strongly in favor of real healthcare reform: not merely insurance reform. It's time for the President to lead by fighting for what he said he believes in on healthcare reform and not to turn tail and run on the public option and instead hide behind weak euphemisms like "choice" and "competition" which means the score at the end of the game will be 100-0 in favor of the interests of the insurance companies vs the interests of the nation, our people and our businesses. If the President fails to do this but instead tries to sell the nation on a watered down, pale imitation of reform that isn't really worth having then why should the common people waste their time supporting it? If people are rational and act according to their interests there would be no reason for the people, in that case, to waste their time and energy. I hope the reports are wrong and the President is going to really change his strategy. I hope that instead of what is being reported, the President comes out of the gate next week no longer burdened by the bipartisan fantasy of what never was and never will be and instead comes out swinging as he should have been doing all along. If he does that the people will support him. Anything less and the people will turn away with a sour taste in their mouths because the DC Dems once again decided that being weak was smarter than being strong and fighting for the interests of the common people.

In a new report [2], the Center for Public Integrity found that "of the 25 top participants in the program, at least 21 were heavily involved in the subprime lending industry," most through specializing in servicing subprime loans, but several both serviced and originated the loans. By far the largest is scandal-ridden Countrywide [3], now a part of Bank of America. More than 10 percent of the $50 billion of TARP funds earmarked for the foreclosure program has been set aside for Countrywide [4]. The money will be used to pay Countrywide for modifying loans, but will also go to investors in the loans and Countrywide borrowers who keep current after modification. Despite these carrots, a recent Treasury Department report showed Bank of America lagging behind the other major lenders [5] in its pace of modifying loans.

The Center for Public Integrity's report is a follow-up to an earlier one that identified the top 25 subprime lenders from 2005-2007 [6] and their financial backers, many of which were financial firms that received TARP funds [7] through other programs.

If you are not already familiar with this situation, the background is in this 50-minute video by John McTiernan, director of Die Hard 1 and 3, Hunt for Red October and Predator: The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove. OpEdNews.com will be on a mission to set this wrong right-- and we hope you will help. (I never recommend videos, but this one is sooo important. You will not regret watching it.)

When Thomas Jefferson faced similar prospects, he fired the attorneys, freed the wrongly- prosecuted and imprisoned and began impeachment hearings. We expect nothing less of President Obama. Not only US Attorneys but judges have abused their office for politically-motivated witch hunts. The most famous case is Don Siegelman, former Governor of Alabama, who became a target of Rove's machine after he had the audacity to ask for a recount in the suspicious 2002 election in which he 'lost' to Bob Riley. This must not stand. As John McTiernan says, Americans must not reach a point where they fear the judicial system and that has happened to over 700 victims of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.

Obama has has invited us to push him. Let's take him at his word! Lives and families have been destroyed by the monsters still in their jobs as prosecutors and judges. Obama, through Holder, must insist on investigations and prosecutions.

Dana Jill Simpson was an Alabama Republican who worked for the Riley campaign, until she became aware that Rove was concocting charges of 'corruption' against Siegelman in order to influence the election. She bravely came forward with this story, but her house has since burned down, and she has repeatedly been threatened. When Karl Rove lied about his role in the Siegelman case, she wrote this article; My Response to the article "Closing in on Rove". There are over 700 victims, like her, who deserve justice.

Ironically, if these shameful bush initiated, GOP backed practices were brought to the public's attention, the right wingers who are now afflicting the Obama Health Reform efforts like swarms of gnats would be in retreat, doing all they could to clean up their image and distance themselves from these horrendous perpetrations.

Meanwhile, Governor Don Siegelman still awaits sentencing and incarceration. How can Holder allow this to stand when he has released Alaska's senator Stevens who was clearly a red herring meant to distract from the otherwise massively partisan witch hunt Rove directed in his corruption of the DOJ?

The fact that the attorneys who perpetrated such injustices are still at their jobs, still threatening people is insupportable. We must create a huge uproar, a massive demand from all corners of the media, from the blogosphere, that he fire the remaining attorneys immediately.

Some argue that the Republicans, like Jeff Sessions, are holding back appointments of replacements. That is a pathetic argument. You don't leave a fox guarding the henhouse just because you haven't found a solid guard dog yet. First, you get rid of the fox.

Judges, too, appointed by Bush with a political agenda, played a role in partisan prosecutions. They must be investigated, impeached and prosecuted. Those who are found guilty should be imprisoned.

There is plenty of evidence of a strong connection between the Federalist Society and these tainted attorneys and judges. Perhaps that's where the search should begin... starting with Holder. And if Holder doesn't start cleaning this Katrina-level catastrophe very soon, he should be cast out. America deserves better.

You can play a role. Write to your local daily paper. Educate your friends and colleagues. Contact the DOJ. Conctact John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee, contact Patrick Leahy, head of the Senate Judiciary committee. Write to Obama. Tell your local Democratic leaders. Blog about it. Tell the mainstream media they should be covering this daily, that they should be counting down every day that Holder and Obama have failed to removed these rogue attorneys. Do it today.

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com.

Instead, let's make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare.

It would be so easy. You don't have to reinvent the wheel with this so-called "public option" that's a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won't - just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy you're so comfortable with.

Just pass a simple bill - it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people - that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.

So it's revenue neutral!

To make it available to people of low income, raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.

Most of us will do damn near anything to get out from under the thumbs of the multi-millionaire CEOs who are running our current insurance programs. Sign me up!

This lets you blow up all the rumors about death panels and grandma and everything else: everybody knows what Medicare is. Those who scorn it can go with Blue Cross. Those who like it can buy into it. Simplicity itself.

Of course, we'd like a few fixes, like letting Medicare negotiate drug prices and filling some of the holes Republicans and AARP and the big insurance lobbyists have drilled into Medicare so people have to buy "supplemental" insurance, but that can wait for the second round. Let's get this done first.

Simple stuff. Medicare for anybody who wants it. Private health insurance for those who don't. Easy message. Even Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley can understand it. Sarah Palin can buy into it, or ignore it. No death panels, no granny plugs, nothing. Just a few sentences.

Replace the "you must be disabled or 65" with "here's what it'll cost if you want to buy in, and here's the sliding scale of subsidies we'll give you if you're poor, paid for by everybody else who's buying in." (You could roll back the Reagan tax cuts and make it all free, but that's another rant.)

We elected you because we expected you to have the courage of your convictions. Here's how. Not the "single payer Medicare for all" that many of us would prefer, but a simple, "Medicare for anybody who wants to buy in."

Respectfully,

Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program The Thom Hartmann Show. His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It," and "Cracking The Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion." His newest book is Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture.

There are individuals who have been aware of these issues for decades; however, nothing has been done to address them due to the sociopathic nature of greed and lust for power at the highest levels of politics, governance, and commerce. Moreover, the vast majority of the populace has been only too happy to remain in blissful ignorance in order to avoid taking any responsibility and in order to be able to continue to deny that our culture is rotten from within. Apparently, most of us would prefer to watch some fake "reality" television program. We evidently prefer a fabricated reproduction of the real to that which is truly real - rather than face, head on, the truth of life as it actually exists.

The only solution to this trinity of situations anywhere in the world is the creation of sustainable community. There are many kinds of communities in the world, few of which are sustainable, Cuba being an exception.

Sustainable community is critical to the continuation of human life on earth, and many are beginning to rhapsodize about creating local communities. The reality is that the vast majority of individuals in Western culture have absolutely no clue about fashioning such.

This series of articles will attempt to identify, confront, and address the deep challenges of creating and living in sustainable community. It will, of necessity, be a good example of a complex living system. A simple definition of a complex system from Wikipedia states that "a complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties (behavior among the possible properties) not obvious from the properties of the individual parts. This characteristic of every system is called emergence and is true of any system, not just complex ones."

This means that, with respect to the emergence of these articles, fluidity, change and chaos are and will be factors as we go along.

The Big Trinity

Climate change is finally making its way into public consciousness and discourse. Increasingly, we will find that our daily lives are irrevocably changed due to changes in climate. Simply put, the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 parts per million. We've already surpassed that number and even if the whole world stopped putting more carbon into the atmosphere this very moment, the carbon levels would continue to climb for a long time.

Clearly, the US, China, Great Britain and India are not about to stop gorging on and spewing non-renewable poison. Coal is the dirtiest of all fuels and coal plants continue to befoul and destroy the planet and the atmosphere, particularly in China and the US. By the way, there is no such thing as "Clean Coal." "Clean Coal" is an oxymoron, and one has to be a moron to believe it.

The US, in particular, rather than creating an all-out mandate for renewable resources, is perfectly willing to engage in endless war. This, in itself, requires enormous infusions of oil. This means that we will be fighting to gain the few remaining drops, and that humanity (not to mention all other forms of life on earth) is in big, deep trouble.

The fossil fuel situation (Peak Oil and Gas) is not understood by the vast majority of the citizenry. That will shortly change, bringing with it tremendous shocks to the public. Everything that we depend upon for life, such as food, water, heating and cooling, transportation, health and medical care, and access to other affordable staples that we have long taken for granted, will become less and less available to the average person.

Economic meltdown is already here - in spades - and the economies of the "first world nations" will never go back to being what they were. Unemployment, the housing crisis, the looming commercial real estate crisis, homelessness, lack of healthcare, increasing costs for food, and lies, greed, and sociopathic malfeasance in the realms of finance, politics, and commerce make daily headlines in primarily alternative news sources. The mainstream media continues its assault on intelligence and reason. Unfortunately, there is not yet a critical mass of individuals that understands spin from truth.

Capitalism is defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as: "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital (from Late Latin meaning "top of the column" goods), by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market."

We are now learning that the "free market" has been anything but free and that few citizens have access to "capital" goods.

Why, one might ask, does the foregoing matter? It matters because most individuals in Western culture equate Communism (a political system) with Socialism (an economic system) and have knee jerk reactions to any system other than Capitalism. This is due to a lack of real knowledge and understanding. There have been many people in the past who have warned of the coming demise of capitalism, including the great theologian, Paul Tillich, author of The Courage To Be.

In the years to come, we will all be required to possess a large measure of "the courage to be." The question is: what social form will our "courage to be" take? The human being is nothing if not creative and imaginative, and these new forms of social interaction will be created as necessity demands. More than likely, these new forms will more closely resemble what we think of now as socialism than capitalism and communism. Our new societies and communities, in order to be sustainable, will require it.

The reasons that many people dream of living in some sort of sustainable community are many: they may be sick and tired of politics as usual, power structures, irresponsible, greedy lifestyles, have serious ecological concerns, be worn out with making money just to spend money - for all sorts of reasons based upon their own individual values and beliefs. So many people are starving for an alternative.

The difficulty is that creating a truly sustainable, compassionate, joyful community is anything but easy and requires that we engage not just our heads, but our hearts and souls as well. Absent heart and soul, any community is destined to fail. Western culture, including many of those that dwell therein, is not known for valuing either.

The first impediment to the creation of community, much less sustainable community is that we have no clue as to how to go about doing so. Western Civilization, in its thousands of years' drive for power, control, and wealth, has decimated every indigenous culture on the planet. Western belief systems carry the mantra that "might makes right." Just because we have the power to do something does in no way mean that we should - a fact that we will soon come to realize and confront in our daily lives.

The very people who might have had something to teach us are long dead. Even though there are written remnants of indigenous wisdom that are helpful to us today, reading about indigenous cultural communities is hardly the same as being able to experience them first hand.

What this means is that we are on our own - castaways of our own making - and are completely unprepared to face the tsunami of change that is upon us, due to our unwillingness and inability to face the truth. We in Western culture cannot expect or even hope to avoid the ramifications of our actions and inactions. We have hidden from our own internal personal and cultural darkness and shadows for millennia. The Piper has arrived in town for payment.

In the second installment of this series of articles, we will begin an in-depth discovery and discussion of the primary challenges of the creation of community. Stay tuned.

Martha Ireland is a social entrepreneur, author, poet, educator, public speaker, organizational and social theorist, human performance and business consultant, futurist, and social architect. Visit her website at Sustainable Strategic Solutions. She may be reached at [email protected]

Wealth, or the lack thereof, has been on the minds of many these long and often hotter, wetter, colder or drier summer days. Pundits compete daily with their predictions for when the recession will end and the economy will "recover." Will it be 2010? 2011? Those like Robert Reich and Gerald Celente claim that our current economic difficulties are not going to end and that we're in for a long-term--perhaps even permanent--state of decline.

Meanwhile, I have many friends and colleagues who are suffering financially, as I imagine you do, too. They're looking back on a lifetime of thinking they were, or someday could be, wealthy. Now they're sensing that not only will they most likely never be wealthy but find themselves slipping into what feels more like poverty. For so long so many have held fast to the American Dream that they're the wealthy in waiting, but now they wonder.

I recently had the opportunity to visit my fellow ecopsychologist and dear friend, Allison Ewoldt, and the subject of our global economic woes came up. She told me that our discussion reminded her of a Reconnecting with Nature workshop she had attended a few years ago where participates were inspired to ask nature, "What is wealth?" What she experienced that day had such a great impact on her life and her relationship with money that she decided to capture it in an article so others could also benefit from the wisdom she gained. Here is how she describes her Reconnecting with Nature activity on that memorable afternoon:

"Our physical reality is formed by energetic attractions we perceive through our senses, so Reconnecting with Nature activities begin with our sensing an attraction in nature. Usually as I go into nature something claims my attention right away, but this time was different. As I walked alone along a forest path asking permission from nature to learn its lessons on wealth, I waited for something to attract me. Everything looked beautiful, but nothing in particular caught my attention. As time went by I realized that this time my attraction was not the vibrant color of a flower, the beautiful song of a bird, the strength of a massive tree, or the softness of the moss on a rock. It was the forest in its entirety. This attraction held my attention, so I sat on a small boulder to 'listen' as its wordless lesson began.

How does one express a non-verbal, purely sensory experience in words? Something is always lost in the translation, but I will try. As I watched, a wealth of diverse, teeming life before me became apparent. I saw:

· The insect attracted by the flower, gaining sustenance from it as it helped in-kind by assisting pollination.
· The plants reaching for the life-giving energy of the sun and sharing it with the caterpillar.
· Roots attracted to the damp, moist earth while holding the earth in place.
· The 'dead' leaves and trees transforming before my very eyes into new earth for new life.

As I became aware of the exquisite interconnected richness of the forest, my consciousness shifted and I stopped seeing separate entities. Instead, the physical reality before me became a beautiful, continuous flow of mutually attractive relationships collectively giving rise to Life. Everything was receiving just enough energy to sustain itself in health, returning energy in like quantity back to the web of life of which it was a part. Even death of an individual element gave rise to the health of the whole. I began to sense myself as part of this whole--and I, too, experienced the seamless flow of energy, the joyous fulfillment of mutual support and reciprocity.

'Ah,' said my rational language-based brain, never too happy to be wordless for long and thus determined to translate my nonverbal awareness.'This is the lesson about wealth you are seeking. True wealth is a seamless flow of energy shared through a web of mutual support and reciprocity that's held together through our natural attractions. When we experience a separation from life's supportive web, the result is fear and fear blocks our flow of life-giving energy, damming it up and leading to greed. In blocking the reciprocal flow of shared energy we disrupt the intricate and exquisite balance in the web of life, and soon many problems arise--poverty, crime, degradation of the environment which sustains our very lives ... the list of negative consequences is almost endless.

'The irony is that those who take and hoard more than they need without giving back equally, thinking that this makes them 'wealthy,' are really impoverished of spirit and bereft of the true joy and fulfillment that only being in the flow life can bring. Energy flow, besides being the basis of wealth, is also necessary for health--individual, social, and environmental. When energy is blocked--again, because of fear, the major symptom of disconnection, and trauma--the result is illness. Health and wealth are really identical. They're the result of a seamless energy flow of mutual support and reciprocity.

'Then an additional thought occurred to me. Energy flow, besides being the basis of wealth, is also necessary for health, individual, social, and environmental. When energy is blocked -again, due to fear - the major symptom of disconnection - the result is illness. So you see? Health and wealth are really identical. They're the result of a seamless energy flow of mutual support and reciprocity.

'As we returned to the workshop at the appointed time and shared the wisdom gained from our attractions in nature, our personal values shifted closer to those of the web of life of which we are a part. And we felt wealthy beyond measure."

After Allison told me about this experience during a recent visit with the Ewoldts in Tucson, her husband Dave, who is a sustainability consultant, added, "True wealth can be best measured by the number and quality of mutually supportive relationships an individual organism can create and maintain. When set against the backdrop of the web of life that has been evolving sustainably for eons, we see that finding a support network of mutually attractive relationships is actually the prime activity of all living organisms. The living systems that we humans create would reflect a higher degree of wisdom were we to mirror this process. This type of wealth is naturally abundant."

Then Allison summarized her lesson from nature about wealth in one simple sentence:
"There is no profit-taking in nature, and the prevailing concept of profit is the key to the unsustainability of our current economic system."

I believe this particular summer in all it's unfamiliar diversity of temperatures and weather features brings a particularly timely lesson. We've been taught to measure our wealth in dollar signs and material possessions. But I see neither dollar signs nor possessions in the wild forest that surrounds our home here in Pine Mountain. Instead I see abundant health and wealth. I see that seamless flow of energy of which Allison speaks and I wonder, how might we find such wealth in our lives? How can we use the opportunity today's economic upheavals present to rearrange our lives so that accumulating dollars and possessions need no longer fill the bulk of our days, but that instead we might simply enjoy being part of the miracle of Life itself?

Summer, the growing time, provides us with a hint. Maybe what we see in our economy today is really both a decline and an incline. If we look at the origin of these two words we find that decline is from the Old French decliner, "to bend and turn aside," or from the Latin declinare, "to bend away from." Incline, on the other hand, is from the old French encliner or the Latin inclinare, meaning "to bend or bow toward."

Could the feelings we're experiencing now as we grapple with today's economic and environmental conditions represent a deep need to turn away from a way of life that has not been truly nourishing and to lean or bow toward our desire for the true sense of health and wealth that comes from being part of a seamless natural flow of energy with its joyous fulfillment of mutual support and reciprocity?

If, like the plants of summer, we were each to reach deep into the earth of our being and draw on the great innate wisdom there, a new way of life might sprout and flourish for us to harvest. That life might look quite different from our lives today, but might be far richer than we can imagine now.

Blessings of Summer,
Sarah

After the presentation a former member of the National Security Council who happened to be seated to my right turned to me and said, "[The QDR] seems like a fraud."

More recently Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Chairman of the House Armed Services air and land forces subcommittee, referred to the QDR as a "PR stunt" and a "PR exercise" (as reported by Marjorie Censer, Inside the Pentagon, 18 June 2009.) Rep. Abercrombie then went on to offer a less than precise elaboration, saying, "It's all Thunderbird stuff, booms and all that."

I can not be all that sure what the former National Security Council member or Rep. Abercrombie meant by their characterizations of the QDR. But, having followed all four QDRs fairly closely, I can make an educated guess at what they are getting at.

Congress has intended that through the QDR the Pentagon will make a serious attempt to reconcile the national defense strategy to the defense posture of the services and from that presumed point of congruence reconcile it to the defense budget. Policy analysts frequently complain that strategy, posture and budget are dangerously out of whack. If the QDR process addresses this problem and then does the analytical and policy work required making real advances toward reconciliation then we can judge that it is meeting it stated purpose. If it results in a public document that uses rhetorical flourish in order to mask disjuncture of ends and means and to perpetuate prior posture and budget directions, then it is something like a 'fraud' or 'PR exercise.'

The unfolding 2010 QDR process gives us a good opportunity to look for evidence of either real reconciliation or PR exercise. A few pieces of evidence:

The complete article may be read here

Charles Knight is the co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives and editor of the Defense Strategy Review page - http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/. The webpage will closely follow the 2010 QDR process and track accumulating evidence of 'sincere effort' or 'PR stunt'.

When the "public option" campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge "Medicare-like" program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation's largest health insurer, public or private. But today "public option" advocates sing the praises of tiny "public options" contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "public options" described in the Democrats' legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the "public options" cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the "public option" movement haven't told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It's high time they did.

The bait

"Public option" refers to a proposal, as Timothy Noah put it, "dreamed up" by Jacob Hacker when Hacker was still a graduate student working on a degree in political science. In two papers, one published in 2001 and the second in 2007, Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, proposed that Congress create an enormous "Medicare-like" program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today.

Hacker claimed the program, which he called "Medicare Plus" in 2001 and "Health Care for America Plan" in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient - large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead. (Medicare is the nation's largest health insurance program, public or private. It pays doctors and hospitals about 20 percent less than the insurance industry does, and its administrative costs account for only 2 percent of its expenditures compared with 20 percent for the insurance industry.)

Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population. These predictions were confirmed by the Lewin Group, a very mainstream consulting firm. In its report on Hacker's 2001 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker's "Medicare Plus" program would enroll 113 million people (46 percent of the non-elderly) and cut the number of uninsured to 5 million. In its report on Hacker's 2007 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker's "Health Care for America Plan" would enroll 129 million people (50 percent of the nonelderly population) and cut the uninsured to 2 million.

Until last year, Hacker and his allies were not the least bit shy about highlighting the enormous size of Hacker's proposed public program. For example, in his 2001 paper Hacker stated:

[A]pproximately 50 to 70 percent of the non-elderly population would be enrolled in Medicare Plus.... Put more simply, the plan would be very large.... [C]ritics will resurface whatever the size of the public plan. But this is an area where an intuitive and widely held notion - that displacement of employment-based coverage should be avoided at all costs - is fundamentally at odds with good public policy. A large public plan should be embraced, not avoided. It is, in fact, key to fulfilling the goals of this proposal. (page 17)

In his 2007 paper, Hacker stated:

For millions of Americans who are now uninsured or lack ... affordable work place coverage, the Health Care for America Plan would be an extremely attractive option. Through it, roughly half of non-elderly Americans would have access to a good public insurance plan.... A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies. (page 5)

Hacker's papers and the Lewin Group's analyses of them have been cited by numerous "public option" advocates. For example, when Hacker released his 2007 paper, Campaign for America's Future (CAF) published a press release praising it and drawing attention to the large size of Hacker's proposed public program. The release, entitled "Activists and experts hail Health Care for America plan," stated:

Detailed micro-simulation estimates suggest that roughly half of non-elderly Americans would remain in workplace health insurance, with the other half enrolled in Health Care for America.... A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies.... Because Medicare and Health Care for America would bargain jointly for lower prices ..., they would have enormous combined leverage to hold down costs.

When the Lewin Group released its 2008 analysis of Hacker's 2007 paper, CAF's Roger Hickey wrote in the Huffington Post, "efficiencies achievable ... through Hacker's public health insurance program" would save so much money that the US could "cover everyone" for no more than we spend now.

The switch

Now let's compare the "single national health insurance pool covering nearly half the population" that Hacker and other "public option" advocates enthusiastically championed with the "public option" proposed by Democrats in Congress, and then let's inquire what Hacker and company said about it.

As readers of this blog no doubt know, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and three House committee chairman working jointly, published draft health care "reform" bills in June. (The third committee with bill-writing authority, the Senate Finance Committee, has yet to produce a bill.) According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "public option" proposed in the House "tri-committee" bill might insure 10 million people and would leave 16 to 17 million people uninsured. The "public option" proposed by the Senate HELP committee, again according to the Congressional Budget Office, is unlikely to insure anyone and would hence leave 33 to 34 million uninsured. The CBO said its estimate of 10 million for the House bill was highly uncertain, which is not surprising given how vaguely the House legislation describes the "public option."

Here is what the CBO had to say about the HELP committee bill:

The new draft also includes provisions regarding a "public plan," but those provisions did not have a substantial effect on the cost or enrollment projections, largely because the public plan would pay providers of health care at rates comparable to privately negotiated rates - and thus was not projected to have premiums lower than those charged by private insurance plans. (page 3)

Obviously the "public option" in the Senate HELP committee bill (zero enrollees; 17 million people left uninsured) and the "public option" in the House bill (10 million enrollees (maybe!); 34 million people left uninsured) are a far cry from the "public option" originally proposed by Professor Hacker (129 million enrollees; 2 million people left uninsured). Have we heard the Democrats in Congress who drafted these provisions utter a word about how different their "public options" are from the large Medicare-like program that Hacker proposed and his allies publicized? What have Professor Hacker and his allies had to say?

In public comments about the Democrats' "public option" provisions, the leading lights of the "public option" movement imply that Hacker's model is what Congress is debating. Sometimes they come right out and praise the Democrats' version as "robust" and "strong." But I cannot find a single example of a a statement by a "public option" advocate warning the public of the vast difference between Hacker's original elephantine, "Medicare-like" program and the Democrats' mouse version.

For example, on June 23, Hacker testified before the House Education and Labor Committee that "the draft legislation prepared by [the] special tri-committee promises enormous progress." He went on to enumerate all the benefits of a "public option." Yet the House tri-committee proposal bore no resemblance to the public plan he described in his papers and that the Lewin Group analyzed. Later, when Kaiser Health News asked Hacker in a July 6 interview why "your signature idea - a public plan - has become central to the health care reform debate," Hacker again praised his "public plan" proposal and offered no hint that the "public option" so "central to the debate" was very different from the one he originally proposed.

Ditto for Hacker's allies. Representatives of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the organization most responsible for popularizing the "public option," repeatedly describe the House and Senate HELP committee bills as "strong" or "robust," always without any justification for this claim, and have repeatedly failed to warn the public that the "public options" they promote today are mere shadows of the "public options" they endorsed in the past. On July 15, the day the HELP committee passed its bill, Jason Rosenbaum blogged for HCAN:

The Senate HELP Committee has just referred a bill to the floor of the Senate with a strong public option.

Searching the websites of the organizations that serve on HCAN's steering committee - AFSCME, Democracy for America, Moveon.org and SEIU, for example - one will find not a shred of information that would help the reader comprehend how small and ineffective the "public options" proposed in the Democrats' bills are, nor how different these are from the one Hacker originally proposed. Yet these groups continue to urge their members and the public to "tell Congress to support a public option."

Hacker's original model compared with the Democrats' mouse model

It has become fashionable among advocates of a "public option" to trash the expertise and the motives of the Congressional Budget Office. But the CBO's characterization of the "public option" proposed in the Democrats' legislation is entirely reasonable. This becomes apparent the moment we compare Hacker's blueprint for his original "Medicare Plus" and "Health Care for America" programs with the "blueprints" (if tabula rasas can be called "blueprints") contained in the Senate HELP Committee and House bills.

Hacker's papers laid out these five criteria that he and the Lewin Group said were critical to the success of the "public option":

• The PO had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people, that is, it had to begin like Medicare did representing a large pool of people the day it commenced operations (Hacker proposed shifting all or most uninsured people as well as Medicaid and SCHIP enrollees into his public program);
• Subsidies to individuals to buy insurance would be substantial, and only PO enrollees could get subsidies (people who chose to buy insurance from insurance companies could not get subsidies);
• The PO and its subsidies had to be available to all nonelderly Americans (not just the uninsured and employees of small employers);
• The PO had to be given authority to use Medicare's provider reimbursement rates; and
• The insurance industry had to be required to offer the same minimum level of benefits the PO had to offer.

Hacker predicted, and both of the Lewin Group reports concluded, that if these specifications were met Hacker's plan would enjoy all three of Medicare's advantages - it would be huge, it would have low overhead costs, and it would pay providers less than the insurance industry did. As a result, the "public option" would be able to set its premiums below those of the insurance industry and seize nearly half the non-elderly market from the insurance industry. According to the Lewin Group's 2008 report, Hacker's version of the "public option" would, as of 2007:

• Enroll 129 million enrollees (or 50 percent of the non-elderly);
• Have overhead costs equal to 3 percent of expenditures;
• Pay hospitals 26 percent less and doctors 17 percent less than the insurance industry (but these discounts would be offset to some degree by increases in payments to providers treating former Medicaid enrollees); and,
• Set its premiums 23 below those of the average insurance company.

I question some of Hacker's and the Lewin Group's assumptions, including their assumption that any public program that has to sell health insurance in competition with insurance companies could keep its overhead costs anywhere near those of Medicare (Medicare is a single-payer program that has no competition), especially during the early years when the public program will be scrambling to sign up enrollees. A public program will have to hire a sales force and advertise. It will have to open offices. It will have to negotiate rates, and perhaps contracts, with thousands of hospitals and hundreds of thousands of clinics, chemical treatment facilities, rehab units, home health agencies, etc. Or it will have to contract with someone to do all that. But I have little doubt that if a public program were to open with a large enough customer base, and it had the advantage of a law requiring that only its customers receive substantial subsidies, it could do what the Lewin Group said it could do.

Now let us compare Hacker's original model with the mousey "public options" proposed by the Senate HELP Committee and the House. Of Hacker's five criteria, only one is met by these bills! Both proposals require the insurance industry to cover the same benefits the "public option" must cover. None of the other four criteria are met. The "public option" is not pre-populated, the subsidies to employers and to individuals go to the "public option" and the insurance industry, employees of large employers cannot buy insurance from the "public option" in the first few years after the plan opens for business and maybe never (that decision will be made by whoever is President around 2015), and the "public option" is not authorized to use Medicare's provider payment rates. (The House bill comes the closest to authorizing use of Medicare's rates; it authorizes Medicare's rates plus 5 percent).

Is it any wonder the CBO concluded the Democrats' "public option" will be a tiny little creature incapable of doing much of anything? More curious is that CBO gave the House "public option" any credit at all (you will recall CBO said it would enroll maybe 10 million people). The CBO should have asked, Can the "public option" - as presented in either bill - survive?

Put yourself in the "public option" director's shoes

To see why the "public option" proposed by congressional Democrats remains at great risk of stillbirth, let's engage in a frustrating thought experiment. Let's imagine Congress has enacted the House version (it is not quite as weak as the HELP Committee model and thus gives us the greatest opportunity in our thought experiment to imagine a scenario in which the "public option" actually survives its start-up phase). Let us imagine furthermore that you have been foolish enough to apply for the job of executive director of the new "public option," and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (the federal agency within which the program will be housed) decided to hire you. It's your first day on the job.

You know the House bill did not create a ready-made pool of enrollees for you to work with the way the 1965 Medicare law created a ready-made pool of seniors prior to the day Medicare commenced operations. You realize, in other words, that you represent not a single soul, much less tens of millions of enrollees. You will have to build a pool of enrollees from scratch. You also know the House bill authorized some start-up money for you, so you'll be able to hire some staff, including sales people if you choose. You can also open offices around the country, and advertise if you think it necessary. But you know you can't pay out too much money getting the "public option" started because the House bill requires that you pay back whatever start-up costs you incur within ten years. In other words, you may hire enough people and open enough offices and buy enough advertising to create a critical mass of enrollees nationwide, but you must do it quickly so that your start-up costs don't sink the "public option" during its first decade.

The only other feature in the House bill that appears to give you any advantage over the insurance industry is the provision requiring you to use Medicare's rates plus 5 percent, which essentially means you are authorized to pay providers 15 percent less than the insurance industry pays on average. But the House bill also says providers are free to refuse to participate in the plan you run.

So what do you do? Let's say you open offices in dozens or hundreds of cities, you hire a sales force to fan out across the country to sign up customers, you advertise on radio and TV to get potential customers (employers and individuals) to call your new sales force to inquire about the new "public option" insurance policy. What happens when potential customers ask your salespeople two obvious questions: what will the premium be and which doctors they can see? What do your employees say? They can't say anything. They haven't talked to any clinics or hospitals about participating at the 15-percent-below-industry-average payment rate, so they have no idea which providers if any will agree to participate. They also have no idea what the "public option" premium will be because they don't know whether providers will accept the low rates the plan is authorized to pay. And they have no idea about several other factors that will affect the premiums, including how much overhead the "public option" will rack up before it reaches a state of viability, or who the "public option" will be insuring - healthy people, sick people, or people of average health status.

So, let's say you redeploy your sales force. Now instead of talking to potential customers, you direct them to focus on providers first. But when your salespeople call on doctors and hospital administrators and ask them if they'll agree to take enrollees at below-average payment rates, providers ask how many people the "public option" will enroll in their area. Providers explain to your salespeople that they are already giving huge discounts, some as high as 30 to 40 percent off their customary charge, to the largest insurers in their area and they are not eager to do that for the "public option" unless the plan will have such a large share of the market in their area that it will deliver many patients to them. If the "public option" cannot do that, providers tell your salespeople, they will not agree to accept below-average payment rates.

In other words, you find that the "public option" is at the mercy of the private insurance market, not the other way around.

This thought experiment illustrates for you the mind-numbing chicken-and-egg problem created by any "public option" project that does not meet Hacker's criteria, most notably, the criterion requiring pre-population of the "public option." If the pre-population criterion isn't met, the poor chump who has to create the "public option" is essentially being asked to solve a problem that is as difficult as describing the sound of one hand clapping. You need both hands to clap.

How did the "Medicare Plus" proposal of 2001 (when Hacker first proposed it) get transformed into the tiny "public options" contained in the Democrats' 2009 legislation? The answer is that somewhere along the line it became obvious that the Hacker model was too difficult to enact and had to be stripped down to something more mouse-like in order to pass. Did the leading "public option" advocates realize this early in the campaign? Or midway through the campaign when the insurance industry began to attack the "public option"? Or late in the campaign when they found it difficult to persuade members of Congress to support Hacker's original model? Whatever the answer, will they find it in their hearts to tell their followers their original strategy was wrong?

I suspect the answer is different for different actors within the "public option" movement. Hacker surely knew what was in his original proposal and surely knows now that the Democrats' bills don't reflect his original proposal. Hacker and others familiar with his original proposal were probably betrayed by the process. As the "public option" concept became famous and edged its way toward the centers of power, they couldn't find the courage to resist the transformation of the original proposal into the mouse model.

For other actors within the "public option" movement, ignorance of Hacker's original proposal and of health policy in general may have led them to rely on more knowledgeable leaders in the movement. Their error, in other words, was to trust the wrong people and, as the "public option" came under attack, to cave in to group think. This error was facilitated by the "public option" movement's decision to avoid mentioning any details of the "public option" whenever possible.

What next?

Those of us in the American single-payer movement must continue to educate Congress and the public on the need for a single-payer system. We must also convince advocates of the "public option" that they have made two serious mistakes and, if they learn quickly from these mistakes, that real reform is still possible.

The first mistake was to think that a "public option" that merely took over a large chunk of the non-elderly market (as opposed to one that took over the entire market) could substantially reduce health care costs and thereby make universal coverage politically feasible. Any proposal that leaves in place a multiple-payer system -- even a multiple-payer system with a large government-run program in the middle of it -- is going to save very little money. Even if Hacker's original Health Care for America Plan had taken over half the non-elderly market and then reached homeostasis (something Hacker swore up and down it would do), the savings would have been relatively small. The reason for that is twofold. First, any insurance program, public or private, that has to compete with other insurers is going to have overhead costs substantially higher than Medicare's. (It is precisely because Medicare is a single-payer program that its overhead costs are low.) Second, the multiple-payer system Hacker would leave in place would continue to impose unnecessarily large overhead costs on providers.

The second mistake the "public option" movement made was to think the insurance industry and the right wing would treat a "public option" more gently than a single-payer. Conservatives have a long history of treating small incremental proposals such as "comparative effectiveness research" as the equivalent of "a government takeover of the health care system." It should have been no surprise to anyone that conservatives would shriek "socialism!" at the sight of the "public option," even the mouse model proposed by the Democrats.

The bait-and-switch strategy adopted by the "public option" movement has put the Democrats in a terrible quandary. Seduced by the false advertising about the potency of the "public option" to lower costs, Democrats have raised public expectations for reform to unprecedented levels. Failing to meet those expectations during the 2009 session of Congress, which is inevitable if the Democrats continue to promote legislation like the bills released in June, is going to have unpleasant consequences. Is there no way out of this quandary?

Conventional wisdom holds that if the Democrats don't pass a health care reform bill by December, they will have to wait till 2013 to try again. But if the "public option" movement were to join forces with the single-payer movement, the two movements could prove the conventional wisdom wrong. This won't happen, obviously, if the "public option" movement fails to perceive the reasons it failed.

It is conceivable the "public option" movement could decide the bait-and-switch strategy was wrong and that their only error was not to stick with Hacker's original model. It should be obvious now that that would also be a tactical blunder. We have plenty of evidence now that conservatives will react to the mousey version of the "public option" as if it were "a stalking horse for single-payer." We can predict with complete certainty they will treat Hacker's original version as something even closer to single-payer. If a proposal is going to be abused as if it were single-payer, why not actually propose a single-payer? At least then, when a particular session of Congress comes and goes and we haven't enacted a single-payer system, we will have educated the public about the benefits of a single-payer and have further strengthened the single-payer movement.

To sum up, "public option" advocates must choose between continuing to promote the "public option" and seeing their hopes for cost containment and universal coverage go up in smoke for another four years, and throwing their considerable influence behind single-payer legislation. At this late date in the 2009 session, it is unlikely that a single-payer bill could be passed even if unity within the universal coverage movement could be achieved. But if the "public option" wing and the single-payer wing join together to demand that Congress enact a single-payer system, December 2009 need not constitute a deadline.

Kip Sullivan belongs to the steering committee of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

According to the inspector general, of the 360 banks surveyed, 156 said they'd used some of the funds to boost their capital cushion, 110 invested some of the money, 52 repaid debts, and 15 bought other banks with the funds. (A total of 611 banks have received bailout funds.)

Three hundred banks, or 83 percent of those surveyed, reported that some of the money had gone to support lending, but fewer than a third said their lending levels would have been lower [5] without the federal money.

Neil Barofsky [6], the special inspector general, said the Treasury Department should require banks to report how they use TARP funds. Currently, Treasury does not require banks to track TARP spending, nor do banks need to keep TARP funds in separate accounts. There are also no consequences for using funds for purposes other than spurring lending.

The Treasury Department dismissed Barofsky's call for greater transparency. Assistant Treasury Secretary Herbert Allison [7] wrote that because banks distribute TARP funds into general accounts, "it is not possible to say that investment of TARP dollars resulted in particular loans, investments or other activities by the recipient."

The AP says Barofsky countered by saying that banks likely have internal budgets for using the funds, so they could report on the general uses of the aid.

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT President Barack Obama has done some serious back-pedalling on the issue of health care reform during his journey to the White House. It's a well-worn path trod by, among others, Hillary Clinton during the 1990s and by Ronald Reagan during the 1980s.

The wind at their backs comes from the medical, pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance industries which together have spent more than US$4.2 billion on lobbying during the last 10 years. A recent report in the Washington Post [1] says that, in the current battle against a government insurance plan, the health industry is spending $1.4 million a day lobbying key figures in the capital.

The fight over universal health care in the United States is being fought on three broad fronts reflecting three different positions: those for, those against, and those who are calling for a "private-public option" that would provide American consumers with "choice." Canadians are probably most familiar with the divide between those on the first front who support a public, universal, national health insurance (single payer) scheme, and those on the second who are against any public involvement in the health sector.

Everybody in, nobody out

Advocates [2] of a public single payer include Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers, the latter of whom brought a bill [3] before the House of Representatives that would provide U.S. residents access to "all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, prescription drugs, emergency care, and mental health services."

The Conyers bill, taking a page out of Canada's health care legislation, would prohibit private insurers from selling coverage for services already included in the public insurance plan. The bill, which now has 93 co-sponsors [4] (20 per cent of House members), goes significantly further than Canadian legislation in prohibiting private, for-profit facilities from participating in a national, expanded and improved Medicare scheme. The plan would be financed with existing health care funds, as well as increased taxes on the top 5 per cent of income earners, a modest tax on stock and bond transactions and payroll and self-employment taxes.

In another departure from Canada, the Conyers bill would stream Native Americans in to the national health program. Support for the single payer option outlined in the bill is coming from the United Steelworkers [5], U.S. Physicians for a National Health Plan [6], the California Nurses Association [7] and, according to polls [8] conducted between October 2003 and February 2009, between 59 per cent and 75 per cent of the American public.

Public support for single payer was also strong when Hillary Clinton attempted to introduce modest reforms to the U.S. health system. What advocates learned then is being applied now. During the past several years, advocates have raised awareness about the benefits of a national, public health program -- in spite of the heavy-handed propaganda from the health industry. Between December 15 and 31, 2008, for example, more than 4200 "house parties" were held across the United States largely at the encouragement of Obama's legion of organizers. Ironically, while Obama has jumped off the single payer bandwagon, he has inspired a groundswell of support for "everybody in/nobody out" that is not only determined but knowledgeable as well.

The second front
The people campaigning for the U.S. status quo -- private, high-priced, employer-controlled health insurance -- include some notable Canadians, including Brian Day [9] and David Gratzer [10], whose views we have seen reflected within the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) in recent years.

Among the significant voices opposing [11] single payer are the American Association of Retired Persons, the Business Roundtable, The Lewin Group, Families USA, PhRMA and the American Medical Association [12], which argues that services should be "provided through private markets, as they are currently." The AMA's Principles for Health System Reform [13] include a "robust private insurance market" and "sustainable public programs for vulnerable populations."

That position, an echo of the one taken by the CMA nearly half a century ago, was rejected by the 1964 Royal Commission on Health Care [14]as being too costly and too short of the goal post. But the corporate media is also doing what it can to support the status quo, sweeping any discussion of single payer under the rug (a repeat performance of 1993 efforts at health care reform). A March 2009 study by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) [15] found a virtual blackout in the mainstream media of any reporting about the single payer option, despite support among a large majority of Americans.

The take-forever option
The third front -- those in favour of incremental progress -- appears to be a tactical alliance between the health and insurance industries, on the one hand, and those with financial links to the health and insurance industries on the other. Senator Max Baucus, chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, is described as the Senate's "point man" on health care reform and a leading opponent of a universal public program.

In June, the Standard [16], a leading newspaper in Baucus' home state of Montana, reported that Baucus had received "$1,500 a day, every day, from January 2003 through 2008″ from the health and insurance industries, more money than any other elected member. During the last two elections Baucus has also attracted almost $230,000 from the pharmaceutical industry, another strong opponent of a single payer system.

On June 2, Baucus announced that "everything is on the table" -- everything, that is, except for single payer. "It cannot pass," he told reporters, and could endanger any meaningful reform. During Senate Committee hearings on health care reform last month, single payer supporters showed up at a Finance Committee hearing to protest against their exclusion from hearings. They were arrested. But after hearing from angry, pro-single payer voters back home, Baucus softened his position -- he has drifted to the incremental middle.

This is probably not surprising since one of the senator's key paymasters, the insurance industry, has now decided that a pubic-private partnership might save its place in the health care pocketbook. On May 5, Karen Ignagni, head of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), announced that the lobby group had issued "a transparent call for a full-scale renovation and a complete overhaul of the existing regulatory mechanism" that governs the industry.

AHIP, representing some 1300 health insurers, has promised -- not for the first time -- to end its long-standing practice of claim denials, discrimination and premium-gouging. Industry observers are not holding their breath, but the "middle ground" is becoming crowded with health industry representatives, politicians on their payroll and the White House. Ironically, government funding to cover the 47 million uninsured, if channeled through subsidies to the private insurance industry, could significantly increase its revenues. What the industry does not want, however, is further government regulation. The goal of industry advocates of this so called 'middle way' is new public money without strings. Depending on the content of future legislation, it could be a bonanza for industry investors.

Sidelined in the entire debate is the AFL-CIO, which has remained mum on the single payer option supported by some of its affiliates. The labour movement's key speaker on national issues, the AFL-CIO seems to have adopted the view that anything is better than nothing. Its website [17] asks "What's Wrong with America's Health Care?" -- but clearly "everybody in/nobody out" is not one of the solutions to the myriad of problems listed.

The Federation is a member of the Health Care For America Now [18] coalition that supports a private insurance option. At a June 25 demonstration [19] in front of the US Congress, an unidentified AFL-CIO representative argued that single payer was "a kind of thing that throws everybody off the track," articulating fears that even modest reforms like affordable premiums and coverage for the uninsured might be sacrificed to an unobtainable goal. "We feel that health care reform is the way to go," she said, "because something has to be done NOW!"

So what does this have to do with us who live above the 49th parallel? The answer, for better or worse is "plenty."

The Canadian and U.S. insurance markets are almost entirely integrated, thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Agreement. A quick look at the list of members of the Canadian Life & Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) shows some important overlaps with AHIP in the United States, including Manulife (through its subsidiary, John Hancock Financial Services), Aetna, Cigna (which purchased Great-West's US subsidiary last year for US$2B), MetLife, New York Life Insurance, Prudential, State Farm, Transamerica and Zurich.

The CLHIA's June 2009 report contains a number of recommendations to strengthen the industry's role in the provision of insurance, including tax and financial incentives to enable Canadians to purchase of private insurance. The industry has already secured significant subsidies for private insurance coverage amounting to $5 billion in 2004, according to health economist, Robert Evans. The industry's submission to the post-Chaoulli consultation in Quebec cautioned the province, "It is not enough to lift the prohibition on private insurance in the sectors financed by public plans in order for private complementary insurance products to spring into existence. Privates insurance must also be allowed to provide added value." An example of "added value" would be queue-jumping.

But more to the point, Canadian governments are staging an assault on health care at the urging and with the support of insurers, employers, private providers, the media and right wing ideologues. Since 1995, for example, when Alberta became the first province to remove outpatient physiotherapy from the pubic insurance plan, a whole section of the health sector -- outpatient rehab services -- was privatized and delisted, reducing patient access but boosting insurance industry profits.

That was a short 10 years, and the privatization "train" is still going full steam ahead. But, like the ever-growing number of uninsured Americans, the number of people with private benefits in Canada is also falling and, of those who are covered, high deductibles, co-pays and claim denials are the order of the day.

Whatever happens in the U.S. it will have an impact on our ability to not only protect medicare in Canada, but to expand it as well -- an issue that is becoming more and more urgent.

We share a continent with Americans, and soon, if economic integration continues, we may share a health care system with them as well. It is in our interest to see Americans get what they have needed for so long: a national health system that provides universal coverage based on need, not on ability to pay.

Colleen Fuller is a health care activist with the B.C. and Canadian health coalitions. She is the author of Caring for Profit: How Corporations Are Taking Over Canada's Health Care System (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives/New Star Books, 1998) and, with Diana Gibson, The Bottom Line: The Truth Behind Private Health Insurance in Canada (NuWest Press/Parkland Institute, 2006).

Source URL (retrieved on Jul 15 2009 - 7:40pm): http://www.rabble.ca/news/2009/07/whats-stake-us-health-care-debate [2]

Links:

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/05/AR2009070502770.html?wprss=rss_print&sid=ST2009http://www.http://www.washingtonpost.com:80/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registration/register

[2] http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=489

[3] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR00676:@@@D&summ2=m&

[4] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR00676:@@@P

[5] http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3961

[6] http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php

[7] http://www.calnurses.org/

[8] http://www.wpasinglepayer.org/PollResults.html

[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBzie4kq6MA

[10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DII7v8yeRjs

[11] http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/07/health-cheat-sheet-moneyinpoli.html

[12] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/politics/11health.html?_r=1

[13] http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/advocacy/current-topics-advocacy/health-system-reform/ama-hsr-principles.shtml

[14] http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss/com/fed/hall-eng.php

[15] http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3733

[16] http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2009/06/14/state/hjjajdifjijigd.txt

[17] http://www.aflcio.org/issues/healthcare/whatswrong/

[18] http://healthcareforamericanow.org/site/content/statement_of_common_purpose

[19] http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3937

[20] http://www.rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/i-read-news-today-oh-boy/2009/06/will-get-fooled-again-iran-public-health-care-and-fa

[21] http://www.rabble.ca/babble/national-news/public-health-care-under-attack-bc

[22] http://www.rabble.ca/user

[23] http://www.rabble.ca/user/register

The latest manifestation of this continuity came last week when Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced plans to transform the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP) from a pilot project into a permanent budget item. Blair also announced plans to establish a "Reserve Officers' Training Corps" to train unidentified future intelligence officers in US college classrooms. Like students receiving PRISP funds, the identities of students participating in these programs would not be known to professors, university administrators or fellow students -- in effect, these future intelligence analysts and agents would conduct their first covert missions in our university classrooms.

Four years ago I wrote a series of CounterPunch exposés on the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), then a pilot project funded under section 318 of the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act. PRISP links undergraduate and graduate students with US security and intelligence agencies like the NSA or CIA, and unannounced to universities, professors or fellow-students, PRISP-students enter American university campuses, classrooms, laboratories and professor's offices without disclosing links to these agencies. PRISP was originally conceived by anthropologist Felix Moos, long a proponent of using anthropological knowledge in waging of counterinsurgency campaigns -- an area of growing interest to the Obama administration as it prepares for prolonged soft power counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan.

It seems likely that many of the affected disciplines will offer little resistance and some may quickly warm to announcements of any new funding stream. Traditionally, the disciplines of political science, history or area specialists coming from the humanities have seldom resisted such developments; but for disciplines like anthropology, these undisclosed intelligence-linked programs present devastating ethical and practical problems, as the non-discloser of funding and links to intelligence agencies flies in the face of the basic ethical principles of the discipline. But even without the problems for individual disciplinary ethics codes, the presence of these undisclosed secret sharers in our classrooms betrays fundamental trusts that lie at the core of honest academic endeavors.

While the National Intelligence Director's move to make PRISP a permanent budget item will damage the academic freedom and integrity of American universities, it will likely be met by the open arms of university administrators facing crashed university endowments and dwindling budgets. That some administrators would so easily accommodate themselves and their institutional integrity for the promise of funds should be of little surprise, but I fear that the combined forces of the current economic collapse conjoined with President Obama's ability to bring a new liberal credibility to the this warmed-over Bush era project will induce many faculty and students to seriously consider participating in these programs. Times are hard and as funds get scarce it will be increasingly difficult for many to say no.

This development is just the latest installment in on ongoing efforts to increase the militarization of American higher education. None of this should be surprising in a nation that alone spends about 48% of the planet's military budget. In the social sciences, these shifts away from broad funding sources designed to create independent knowledgeable scholars, to those now requiring indentured servitude has been a long time coming.

Back in the early 1990s when the National Security Education Program (NSEP) was first introduced it was widely condemned by professional associations like the Middle East Studies Association and the African Studies Association, Latin American Studies Association for blurring the lines between independent scholarship raised by NSEP's its requirements that program participants later seek employment in governmental agencies. But with the depressed economy, plummeting endowment funds at universities and foundations, the difficult academic job market, and scarce academic funding sources, I fear that professional associations' reactions against these developments will be muted. As pilot programs, PRISP and the Intelligence Community Scholars Programs made scarce funds available to students, as traditional non-payback funding programs were being cut. Programs like PRISP that seek to tie young scholars to agencies like CIA early in their career as a means of bringing new ideas and skills to these agencies will fail in meeting the claimed goal of getting these agencies to think in new ways because such ties to institutional culture early in student-agent careers will increase the influence of agency cultural groupthink while diminishing the impact of academic culture. If the Obama administration really wants to improve governmental agencies' knowledge of and approaches to the world, they need to increase funding to a broad range of educational funding programs that do not encumber or limit the range of knowledge in the ways that programs like PRISP do.

This move to establish PRISP as a permanent budgetary item is the sort of program that likely will speed through congress -- which can then claim it is both supporting education funding, and military and intelligence sectors, with a bonus feel-good work-ethic mandate thrown-in by requiring students to payback their funds through required future governmental service. But this push will be done without an outside assessment of PRISP as pilot program. PRISP needs an independent assessment of what it has accomplished -- including an assessment of the impact of the predatory penalties facing former PRISP students who come to realize that they do not wish to fulfill their commitments to work for these agencies upon graduation. Because of the lack of transparency surrounding PRISP, we have little idea what is really going on with the program. Last year I was able to identify one social science recipient of PRISP funds who explained to me that PRISP had been such a failure in finding social scientists to fund that PRISP had sought out this person and provided them with funds for work that was already underway just to spend-down the PRISP budget. Given these recent difficulties with the program, I wonder if the current expansion of PRISP is a supply-side effort to troll the pool of increasingly underfunded and debt-carrying desperate young scholars with few other funding options.

Professional associations like the American Association of University Professors, the American Psychological Association and the American Anthropological Association need to speak out in opposition of the permanent establishment of PRISP. PRISP risks further blurring already hazy borders marking proper independent academic roles, and it stands to confuse academic identities in ways that many will not even realize. Some of these processes are reminiscent of a recurrent motif in Philip K. Dick's stories where protagonists becomes unclear of their own agency and identity; becoming unsure of their own histories and memories, or true political alliances -- in effect becoming undercover agents with identities unknown even to themselves. As this new generation of programs covertly brings undeclared and unidentifiable students into our universities they disrupt university identities and transforms the roles all who teach, research, study and work there in ways that they will not necessarily understand -- as institutions of higher learning further lose their independence and become unwitting agents of state intelligence functions.

Such an order would embrace claims by former President George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials are growing increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may prove impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January 2010 deadline.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt did not directly respond to questions about an executive order but said the administration would address the cases of Guantanamo detainees in a manner "consistent with the national security interests of the United States and the interests of justice."

One administration official suggested the White House was already trying to build support for an executive order.

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order can be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should either be prosecuted or released.

The Justice Department has declined comment on the prospects for a long-term detention system while internal reviews of Guantanamo detainees are underway. The reviews are expected to be completed by July 21.

In a May speech, President Obama broached the need for a system of long-term detention and suggested that it would include congressional and judicial oversight. "We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. They can't be based simply on what I or the Executive Branch decide alone," the president said.

Some of Obama's top legal advisers, along with a handful of influential Republican and Democratic lawmakers, have pushed for the creation of a "national security court" to supervise the incarceration of detainees deemed too dangerous to release but who cannot be charged or tried.

But the three senior government officials said the White House has turned away from that option, at least for now, because legislation establishing a special court would be both difficult to pass and likely to fracture Obama's own party. These officials, as well as others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

On the day Obama took office, 242 men were imprisoned at Guantanamo. In his May speech, the president outlined five strategies the administration would use to deal with them: criminal trials, revamped military tribunals, transfers to other countries, releases and continued detention. (Read our sidebar: "Review of Gitmo Detainees Has Been Slow and Complex.")

Since the inauguration, 11 detainees have been released or transferred, one prisoner committed suicide and one was moved to New York to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Administration officials said the cases of about half of the remaining 229 detainees have been reviewed for prosecution or release. Two officials involved in a Justice Department review of possible prosecutions said the administration is strongly considering criminal charges in federal court for Khaled Sheik Mohammed and three other detainees accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The other half, the officials said, present the greatest difficulty because these detainees cannot be prosecuted either in federal court or military commissions. In many cases, the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services, or has been tainted by the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Attorney General Eric Holder agreed with an assessment offered during congressional testimony this month that fewer than 25 percent of the detainees would be charged in criminal courts and that 50 others have been approved for transfer or release. One official said the administration is still hoping that as many as 70 Yemeni citizens will be moved, in stages, into a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia.

Three months into the Justice Department's reviews, several officials involved said they have found themselves agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees can not be charged or released.

The White House has spent months meeting with key congressional leaders in the hopes of reaching agreement on long-term detention, even as public support for such a plan has wavered as lawmakers have sought to prevent detainees from being transferred to their home states.

Lawyers for the administration are now in negotiations with Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., over separate legislation that would revamp military commissions. A senior Republican staff member said that senators have yet to see "a comprehensive, detailed policy" on long-term detention from the administration.

"They can do it without congressional backing, but I think there would be very strong concerns," the staff member said, adding that "Congress could cut off funding" for any detention system established in the United States.

Concerns are growing among Obama's advisers that Congress may try to assert too much control over the process. Earlier this week, Obama signed an appropriations bill that forces the administration to report to Congress before moving any detainee out of Guantanamo and prevents the White House from using available funds to move detainees onto U.S. soil.

"Legislation could kill Obama's plans," said one government official involved. The official said an executive order could be the best option for the president at this juncture.

Under one White House draft that was being discussed earlier this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system. (Last month, ProPublica explored the key issues around preventive detention.)

Such detainees -- those at Guantanamo and those who may be captured in the future -- would also have the right to legal representation during confinement and access to some of the information that is being used to keep them behind bars. Anyone detained under this order would have a right to challenge his detention before a judge.

Officials argue that the plan would give detainees more rights and allow them a better chance to one day end their indefinite incarceration than they have now at Guantanamo.

But some senior Democrats see long-term detention as tantamount to reestablishing the Guantanamo system on U.S. soil. "I think this could be a very big mistake, because of how such a system could be perceived throughout the world," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told Holder.

One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare. Al-Qaida operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities. Suspects captured elsewhere in the world could be transferred to the United States for federal prosecution, turned over to local authorities, or returned to their home country.

"Going forward, unless it's an extraordinary case, you will not see new transfers to the U.S. for indefinite detention," the official said.

Instituting long-term detention through an executive order would leave Obama vulnerable to charges that he is willing to forsake the legislative branch of government, as his predecessor often did. Bush's detention policies suffered successive defeats in the courts in part because they lacked congressional approval and tried to exclude judicial oversight.

"There is no statute prohibiting the president from doing this through executive order and so far courts have not ruled in ways that would bar him from doing so," said Matthew Waxman, who worked on detainee issues at the Defense Department during Bush's first term. But Waxman, who waged an internal battle inside the Bush administration for more congressional cooperation, said the "courts are more likely to defer to the president and legislative branch when they speak with one voice on these issues."

Walid bin Attash, who is accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and who was held at a secret CIA prison, could be among those subject to long-term detention, according to one senior official.

Little information on bin Attash's case has been made public, but officials who have reviewed his file said the Justice Department has concluded that none of the three witnesses against him can be brought to testify in court. One witness, who was jailed in Yemen, escaped several years ago. A second witness remains incarcerated, but the government of Yemen will not allow him to testify.

Administration officials believe that testimony from the only witness in U.S. custody, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, may be inadmissible because he was subjected to harsh interrogation while in CIA custody.

"These issues haven't morphed simply because the administration changed," said Juan Zarate, who served as Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The challenge for the new administration is how to solve these legal question of preventive detention in a way that is consistent with the Constitution, legitimate in the eyes of the world and doesn't create security loopholes that causes Congress to worry," Zarate said.

Now, at the age of 23, Chris is a college graduate on his way up the corporate ladder, and Taylor sits in an 8' X 12' cell, his home for the next 5 years.
What happened? What went wrong for Taylor in the years between kindergarten and adulthood? Who is responsible?

From the time each child left the house on that first day of school and reached beyond the boundaries of the family, their lives followed different paths.
On the first day of school, Chris' mom had a meeting, but Chris' dad, who was an executive with a locally-based, national insurance firm, took the morning off and drove Chris to school. Chris arrived with fresh haircut, and new outfit and backpack.

The classroom was well equipped with audio-visual aids including three computers, a wide variety of supplies, and unmarred desks and chairs. The piano sat behind a new area rug in bright colors that depicted the alphabet. Outside the large windows Chris could see a sprawling, multi-activity, play structure. Chris' school had a cafeteria, a gym, and a small auditorium that would be part of school life from 1st grade on. The grade school staff included two counselors, and a nurse and psychologist that were shared with one other school.

Taylor woke the first day of school full of enthusiasm. Best jeans and tee shirt were topped by new shoes bought on payday and stared at for subsequent days in anticipation of wearing them for the first time. The used backpack belonged to Taylor's older brother, James, and a prize possession since it sported the colors and logo of the state college basketball champs.

James fixed Taylor's breakfast as their father had already left for work and their mother was asleep after her night job. They walked the three blocks to school hand in hand.

Taylor's classroom was in a two story brick building. At the front door a man greeted the two and nodded to James to pass. They entered through the framework of a metal detector down a dimly light hall. Ahead Taylor could see the shine on the linoleum emanating from double glass doors chained at the other end. Taylor's classroom had no piano, no computer, no rug, limited supplies, and mismatched, but serviceable, desks and chairs. The grade school staff included one counselor and a nurse that was shared with the six grade schools in the district. The playground consisted of a basketball court, several marked off games on the blacktop and a set of six metal, strapped-seated swings.

Throughout their school years, Chris and Taylor experienced very different lives. Taylor's dad had worked at a box-making plant while going to night school at the local community college. Taylor's mom had worked full time and cleaned houses on the weekends during this time to make ends meet. Both of them worked hard toward becoming a part of the American Dream, an upper middle class, homeowner with comparable social life and economic stability.
After Taylor was born, his mother went to work nights in order to take care of him during the day. His father had completed his schooling and, now, worked days.

As a black accountant in an insurance firm, Taylor's dad was passed over several times for promotions in the following years. His mom, still, cleaned a few "regular's" houses on weekends. They had applied for a house loan but could only qualify for a subprime loan with monthly payments they couldn't afford while raising a family. They like many others were caught in the middle, earning too much to qualify for government programs that might have helped, directly or indirectly, through healthcare or childcare, and too little to put back, to save or invest on their own.

Chris was from a white, upper middle class home. Living in a school district with high property values and, therefore, a substantial tax base, afforded Chris a commendatory secondary education. And, with hard work and good grades, an Ivy League college followed.

Taylor's mother went to work in an upscale dress boutique once Taylor was in school full days. Not wanting to buy in an area where property values continued to fall and not being able to afford a house in a better neighborhood, the new job enabled them to put money aside to build a larger down payment for a house. That is, until a boutique patron found money missing from her purse and accused Taylor's mom, who lost her job on the patron's suspicions.

When Taylor was 8, his mother went back to work cleaning houses, leaving James, age 12, in charge. Over the years James' much-older, social group became Taylor's. By the time Taylor's parents realized they had a problem with James, his influence over Taylor was strong. Taylor had looked up to his brother all his life. James was cool, James had the answers. The "gang" of friends was not violent and, mostly, ran the neighborhood, sometimes shoplifting from the neighborhood convenience store or writing graffiti on street signs or sides of buildings. As long as Taylor kept his grades up, his parents looked no further for signs of trouble. And, Taylor himself saw his activities as "normal" compared to the activities of other youth in his neighborhood.

As Taylor's awareness of the outside world developed throughout high school, his awareness of the injustices of being black and poor began to grow bringing with it an anger and resentment for those more privileged. He saw how badly society had treated his parents and he saw other sons and daughters of white, affluent families driving nice cars, having nice clothes, the newest electronics or going on graduation cruises and obtaining admittance to prestigious colleges and universities. He was resentful and jealous and that fueled his anger. His personal examples of people "doing well" were pimps and drug dealers who sported fancy cars, expensive jewelry, and an air of success and confidence.

Taylor wasn't the only one at his school whose eyes smoldered from the inequalities they had suffered. Violence erupted in the halls and students formed tight groups after school either for safety in numbers or to intimidate. The school, and the system it functions within, had failed Taylor. As the institution that has the most affect on each child's life outside of the family during formative years, Taylor's time at school and the social structure that it reinforced created a hostile, depressing and, often, hopeless atmosphere. His family, loving and caring though they were, worked long hours and had many pressures. The seeds for bigger trouble were blowing in the wind.

So how did Chris and Taylor come to their individual circumstances at 23?

At 22, Taylor had moved to an apartment with his pregnant girlfriend and brother, James, and two friends. The economy was in a slump and many labor jobs were being eliminated. Taylor was laid off from this job at the local food processing plant. He worked, for a while, at a local fast food restaurant, but his peers felt he was selling out and lost respect for him. James and the other roommates were into petty crimes and drug dealing to pay their bills, and they always seemed to have money in their pockets. Taylor started selling marijuana. He refused to traffic in the crack cocaine of his neighborhood, feeling it was the scourge of his black brothers.

At this same time, Chris was just graduating college and a grand celebration was being planned. Marijuana was not unfamiliar to Chris either. There was an accepted attitude that partaking during last night study sessions and philosophical discussions was cool and part of being amongst the intellectuals.

The day of the party, one of Chris' friends suggested that they purchase marijuana for the celebration. Striking out with their usual connections, they headed for the seedier part of town to try their luck. After several inquiries, they were directed to Taylor who sold them 1 ounce.

Upon the exchange, all parties were arrested by the police who had been observing from nearby. Chris' dad hired a private attorney that was recommended by his employer; and as a first offense, Chris was allowed to enter a diversions program of drug-awareness classes. The result of completing the program was a complete expunging of the offender's record. The maximum sentence for his offense would have been 10 years.

Taylor had served 6 months for a first offense possession of marijuana at age 19. Although he qualified, there was no diversion offered to him. As his second offense, his public defender was not able to keep Chris out of prison and he was sentenced to 5 years. The maximum sentence for his offense would, also, have been 10 years.

Chris has put the unfortunate experience in the past, an indiscretion of youth. His biggest regret was missing his graduating party, a reward for his years of hard work. Taylor will live with his "unfortunate" experience every day for the next 5 years and beyond. In a three strike state, Taylor now has two strikes and one more could put him in prison for the rest of his life.

Black students are more likely to attend schools in areas with high concentrations of poverty. Because most of our school's revenues come from property taxes, school districts with the most poverty also have the poorest schools, with less qualified teachers, lower expectations and a less challenging curriculum. At the time of college admittance, these schools are not considered to have proper educational foundations for higher education. Even children who graduate from these schools with good grades have a hard time finding a college who wants them.

To make matters worse for the young adults who manage to graduate and are willing to take on the responsibilities of adulthood, the employment situation for labor jobs is dyer. With the passing of legislation and the implementation of policies that encouraged U.S. companies to move their labor production outside the country, unemployment rates for those in poverty, many of whom were African Americans, have been considerable. Recently the practice of doing credit checks for prospective employees has, also, hurt employment opportunities for the poor. And, with our recent economic woes that situation has deteriorated even further.

Add this to the fact that our justice system is biased towards blacks, and one can see why blacks made up 41 percent of the nation's prison and jail inmates in 2006. In the area of drug offenses alone, blacks make up 36.8% of those arrested for drug offenses, 42% of those in federal prisons for drug felonies, and 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies. This despite the fact that there are estimated to be 5 times more white drug users than black. And of the persons convicted of drug felonies, blacks are more likely to go to prison (51%) than their white counterparts (38%).

Often targeted with racial profiling, a study from Maryland showed that, although comprising only 17.5% percent of the traffic and speeders on Interstate 95, African Americans comprised 70% of the traffic stops.

In states where the "three strikes" law exists, blacks are also unfairly targeted. Studies in Los Angeles and San Francisco showed that the three strikes law was applied to blacks at a rate 17 times higher than whites and 13 times higher than whites, respectively.

The answer to this inequality is not to increase prison incarceration for whites but to reduce the rate of incarceration for non-violent drug offenders in lieu of drug treatment and job training.

The results of the current policies are:

• 1,559,200 children has a father in prison at midyear 2007; nearly half (46%) were children of black fathers.

• A majority of parents in both State (62%) and Federal (84%) prison were held more than 100 miles from their last place of residence."

• Because census data includes an inmate's residence as the state in which they are incarcerated, every dollar transferred to a 'prison community' due to the county's population, is a dollar that is not given to the home community of a prisoner. These communities are among the most disadvantaged urban areas and the most in need of aid. For example, in New York State, 2/3 of the inmate population comes from New York City but 91% are housed in prison in upstate New York.

• Throughout the 80's and 90s, the number of prisons grew from 600 to over 1,000. Ten states had more than 20 new prisons with Texas topping the list at 120. And even with the increase, the currently prison system is operating at 32% over capacity. This, in part, is due to mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug users.

• The nonviolent prisoner population in America is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska.

• There are three times as many black people who live in prison cells as in college dorms

• Overcrowding and unchecked health issues have resulted in an AIDS rate 3 times higher than the general population, and positive or latent tuberculosis cases 50-100% higher

• The average cost of housing an inmate at a state prison is $67.55/day or $24,000/year. Per day states spend over $17million to house non-violent drug offenders, over $6trillion per year. For every dollar spent on incarceration, one less dollars is available for education, or health care. Federal spending is estimated to be $3billion.

• Department of corrections data show that about a fourth of those initially imprisoned for nonviolent crimes are sentenced a second time for committing a violent offense. Even if the current system doesn't cultivate violence, it can be seen that it doesn't help to reduce violent habits.

• As the Hispanic population becomes significant enough to warrant studies, the same pattern of judicial bias is emerging.

Marc Morial, former New Orleans mayor, feels that "conservatives blame a lack of family values while liberals blame a lack of government programs, with neither side seeing the whole picture." He believes that minority students need more early children education, longer school days and years, and meaningful summer jobs. "We need to get serious about true investment on the front end."
U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) points out that we are sending huge numbers of blacks to prison only to have them return to society with no jobs or job skills, no quality of life, and a growing environment of unrest and crime. "It warns us that we are risking an entire generation of African-American young men."

Maybe Chris will feel differently after trying to buy a first home and finding that her sex is working against her in a way that can't be ignored. Until now socialization has blinded Chris to any disadvantages to her male counterparts that she may have experienced.

Reflecting on Taylor and Chris and their paths to adulthood, is the future any brighter for Taylor with a strike two, felony conviction and limited education? Will Chris ever be enlightened to the inequalities that her privilege manifests? And more importantly, will she act upon whatever insight she does gain?

Although each of us is an individual with freedom to make choices concerning our paths in life, the playing field is not equal for all. We must always try to be aware of our circumstances in relation to others, and we must act upon the inequalities that are revealed to us throughout life.

---

1 Common Sense for Drug Policy: Race and Prison. http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/64. Copyright 2000-2008.

2 Associated Press: More blacks Latinos in jail than college dorms, "Civil right advocates say Census Bureau figures are startling, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21001543/. September 2007.

3 Racial fairness questioned "4 in 10 young black men caught in justice system? " http://www.casaplumeria.com/rapsheet/race.htm . Prensa Pacifica: Ocean Park, Ca. Copyright 1996.

Colored people and people with different features do not have the luxury of shedding their skin and leaving their race behind. They hold on to what this difference means for them and that is their ethnicity. They accept it as part of their identity because they have no choice, they can't hide it. I had met a Japanese-American family in NY when I was growing up and I asked the parents when they had moved to the US. I was a kid so they were tolerant of the question and they answered me. The woman told me that they had just moved to NY a year before but they were born in California, I asked "Then when did your parents move here?" She said "Our parents were born there too." I must have looked really confused because she told me that her great-great-great-grandparents had come to the USA on a boat in the 1800's. Then I must have looked even more confused because she asked me with a chuckle; "Why are your eyes crossed?" I said "If you were born here and your family has been here for so long, then how come you haven't turned white yet?"

I was 11 and we had just moved to the US, for one reason or another my younger sisters and I thought that becoming American meant turning white... We even had preferences on what colour hair and eyes we wanted. Well we couldn't turn our skins white, we coloured our hair as teenagers but more to look cool than to look white- or maybe not... Our skin colour is the same, maybe a bit lighter in the winter than summer- but pretty much we have a healthy "tan" all year round. I know that I do not identify with my cousins who live and grew up in the Philippines as well as I do with my friends who grew up here in the US. I call myself an American, but I am not white. My children are American but they are not white. My husband is American but he is not white. My cousins, nephews, and nieces who were all born here are all Americans and none of them are white! Why is it that as a child I thought all Americans were white? I knew about different countries and different races; we had Geography and World Cultures in the school I had attended.

My explanation is the Filipino obsession with American shows like "Baywatch" and "Mac Gyver" who always had white leading roles and were the quintessential American examples we had access to. We watched movies produced in Hollywood like "Star Wars" and "Goldie" and we just knew that the actors had to be American because they were white. Being white was idealized. When we were told by our parents that we were moving to America we were excited and anxious. Talk floated about amongst the elders that it took at least five years to become an American citizen, sometimes longer. There was talk about how the children will become lighter because of the cold seasons and the time spent indoors. My sisters and I heard these talks and we whispered to each other the wishes that we had when we became Americans. I wanted to be blonde with purple eyes like Elizabeth Taylor's. My sister had wanted to be blonde too, but with blue eyes because it was her favourite colour. The fact that the shows and movies we watched may have had some coloured people was lost on us. We obsessed over American music, memorising lyrics to whole albums by Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. The only thing we could not do was dress like the Americans we saw on the TV shows and movies. We didn't have access to the type of bathing suits Pamela Anderson's character "CJ" wore, nor did we have her physique. We believed what the media told us about Americans, we believed the violence that was portrayed by the blacks (whom we did not consider American but African) and the Latinos (who could not be American because all the ones we saw on TV were from Mexico, Cuba, or Spain). It was a shock when we finally did move to New York City; is this the only city in the USA where whites are considered the minority? We moved to the US the beginning of summer and I did not see a single white person until the first day of school two months later. There were two white kids in my 6th grade class. All of my teachers were white.

In the 7th grade I met a white girl named Jaime who had red hair. One day in the lunchroom our entire table was talking about what countries our families were from. Jaime loudly proclaimed herself Irish and the only real white person in the class, an Italian girl (who had a tan complexion) automatically piped up and said "Uh-uh, Italians are white too!" They argued about who was "whiter" and more "American" between the two ethnicities. They argued that the whiter your skin then the more American you had to be, the Irish girl was gaining an edge- they started talking about how many red-heads, blondes, and brunettes they had in the family. They talked about how they had relatives who had fought in the civil war and how white their skin was. They had an audience; young, eager, 13 year old girls who all wanted to say something but could not (none of us were white you see). Meanwhile another girl whose family had just moved to USA from Poland the year before had been listening to the exchange from one table over. When there was a pause in the "conversation" she shortly told the two "I am blonde and I have blue eyes, I am whiter than either of you." The only other white person in this area of the lunch room and she ended the debate with her statement. We all knew that a statement like that was all it would take. For the life of me I still don't know why I didn't just say "Does it really matter who is more white? Does it really matter what colour skin you have?" No one said it. I knew that it did make a difference. I knew if I said anything I'd be ostracized for trying to break up something I have no experience with or worse; that I was trying to pass off as white. Even at a young age I knew that it did matter. Why else would half the colour guard consist of white kids and the other half a representation of the other races in the school? Whites were the minority, yet the majority of representation for our school went to them. Almost all of my teachers were white. Mr. Paez was a dean and he was Hispanic, Mrs. Granger, my gym teacher and her assistant Ms. Wilson were both black. We had a Jewish teacher, Mrs. Levine- she was white as well. Everyone else was white, all of our authority figures. Except the security guards, they were always black at every single NYC public school that I attended from 6th grade to High School.

Growing up in NYC exposed me to a myriad of cultures. I knew the difference between a polish, a brat, a sausage, and a plain Sabrett's hot dog before I had even tasted them all. White people that I knew growing up always had an ethnic association. There were the Greeks, the Poles, the Germans, the Italians, the British, the Swedes, one person who claimed to be ethnically Southern, the Russians- who after the cold war officially declared themselves Czechs, Ukrainians, Latvians, Armenians, and the list goes on... All these white people were moving in from other countries, and they all had their ethnicity intact. They are a part of the white race. My aunt had lived in the United States longer than they have, but she was still denied certain privileges that were automatically given to the newcomers with the pale complexions. Of course some of the newcomers' privileges were suspended once another white person hears their accents, but nonetheless- they never walked into a Nordstroms and had security cameras follow them around because of their colour "predisposes" them to theft. Of course that is unless they are young and were dressed in baggy, hip-hop style clothing. Then it doesn't matter so much, the cameras will follow regardless of your race, age and style becomes the equalizer.

"Binghamton Shooter" Jiverly Wong also garnered front-page headlines nationwide and set off a cable news frenzy when, "bitter over job loss," he massacred 13 people at an immigration center in upstate New York. Similarly, coverage was brisk after Pittsburgh resident Richard Poplawski, "upset about recently losing a job," shot four local police officers, killing three of them.

But where was the front-page treatment when, in January, Betty Lipply, a 72-year-old resident of East Palestine, Ohio, "who feared she'd lose her home to foreclosure hanged herself to death" shortly after "receiving her second summons and foreclosure complaint from her mortgage lender"? And where was the up-to-the-minute cable news reporting on the two California dairy farmers who "killed themselves... out of despair over finances, according to associates"?

Mass Murder, Mass Media, and Missing Stories

Last summer, in the pages of the Nation magazine, Barbara Ehrenreich called attention to people turning to "the suicide solution" in response to the burgeoning financial crisis. Months later, major news outlets started to examine the same phenomenon. Last fall, a TomDispatch report on suicides and a range of other extreme acts -- including self-inflicted injury, murder, arson, and armed self-defense -- in response to foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, and layoffs, was followed, months later, by mainstream media attention to the notion of "econo-cide" -- prompted, in large part, by a spate of familicides (murder/suicides in which both parents and their children die).

While it's impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to people resorting to drastic measures, violent or otherwise, many press reports suggest that the global economic crisis has played no small part in a range of extreme acts.

An analysis by TomDispatch of national, regional, and local news reports in 2008 and early 2009 indicates that a silent, nationwide epidemic of drastic measures may be underway. News of such acts linked to economic woes -- from armed robberies to pay the rent to financially-motivated suicides -- has filtered out of cities and towns in no less than 30 states, many of which have seen multiple incidents. And since only a fraction of such acts ever receives media coverage, what is being reported, even if mostly in local newspapers, qualifies as startling.

For every Jiverly Wong, who garners days of cable-news coverage, there are untold despondent and desperate dairy farmers and retirees battered by the economy and at wits' end who respond by subjecting themselves, others, or property to violence and are hardly noticed. What follows is a sampling of such incidents, most reported locally, and organized by month -- no month lacked such reports -- since the beginning of this year.

January 2009

David Kelley lost his job in September 2008. As values plummeted on his Clairemont, California, home as well as the rental properties he owned, he reportedly became "overwhelmed by debt and depression." On January 5th, he shot himself. "He saw his good life and successful career slipping away," said his stepmother. "He couldn't see beyond the struggles he was having."

According to a police report, Manchester, Missouri, resident Frank Kavano, 66, who killed his wife and then himself, left a suicide note that mentioned "financial issues and difficulty in the marriage."

After losing a bet on a college football bowl game -- on top of losing his home to foreclosure -- Dante Vinci, age 48, reportedly stabbed a man to death outside a Reno, Nevada, sports bar.

February 2009

According to a news report, Gregory and Randolph Graham, third-generation car dealers from Ligonier, Pennsylvania, "watched helplessly over the past year as their business collapsed under the weight of the recession." One night, Gregory, 61, set fire to some of the cars at his dealership and "died of a heart attack next to the burning wreckage." Days later, Randolph, 51, "was found dead, slumped over the wheel of his car in what may have been a suicide."

When Otero County, New Mexico, sheriff's deputies tried to serve foreclosure papers on Miguel and Inga Gutierrez, the couple armed themselves and opened fire. After a 16-hour standoff, Miguel was found dead and Inga was taken into custody.

"Unemployed, awash in debt and hiding an October foreclosure from loved ones," 55-year-old Wayne "Mike" Anderson of Stratmoor Valley, Colorado, shot himself to death as a sheriff's deputy, ready to evict him, stood at his doorstep.

In Glyndon, Maryland, advertising executive Howard "Jack" Marks Jr., 63, killed himself after, his wife told the police, financial woes left him in danger of losing his business.

According to news reports, 53-year-old Jeffrey P. McKnight of Pataskala, Ohio, was "struggling financially and overwhelmed with caring for his elderly father" when he set his house ablaze and then killed his dad and himself.

Reportedly "upset over being unemployed and his financial status," George Vincent, 49, of Fort Meyers, Florida, drank copious amounts of beer, after which his wife called the police, telling them her husband was drunk, armed, and suicidal. When Vincent pulled a gun on responding officers, they opened fire, killing him, in what the state attorney's office deemed to be a case of suicide-by-cop.

March 2009

Lonnie Glasco walked into the San Diego, California, bus-maintenance depot where he worked as a mechanic and shot two fellow employees, one fatally, before police gunned him down. A friend said Glasco, 47, was "despondent over losing his wife and his home."

Michael McLendon, age 28 and "despondent over his inability to hold a job," fatally shot nine people in Samson, Alabama, and killed a 10th in a neighboring county.

After 46-year-old Springfield Township, Ohio, resident Michael Swiergosz's home went into "foreclosure and had been set for sheriff's sale," he barricaded himself inside "during a standoff with authorities that lasted three hours," before being arrested.

April 2009

In Warrenton, Virginia, police said that "domestic issues," likely compounded by "job-related stress," lay behind 39-year-old Bruce Curtin's decision to kill his wife and then himself.

Distraught in the face of eviction for failing to pay rent, Ginette Denize, 48, of Canarsie, Brooklyn, New York, turned on the gas burners of her stove, started banging on her landlord's door, and returned to her apartment. Police soon arrived and, when one of them reportedly tripped and fell in her kitchen, she allegedly "hovered with a knife over" him. The two other officers then opened fire, killing her. It was conjectured that the shooting might have been a case of suicide-by-cop.

Angered that someone else was living in the home he had lost to foreclosure, Derek C. Hightower, 24, of Bristol, Wisconsin, reportedly set a fire that "destroyed the garage, the house and three vehicles."

Michael Knudson's former girlfriend wondered whether he "somehow thought he was saving his mom and brother from the pain and loss of the foreclosure [of the family home] in some misguided way." Eviction was scheduled for April 7th. Days before, say authorities, the 39-year-old killed his mother and brother, buried them in "a shallow grave" nearby, and burned down their Hudson, Ohio, home.

Police reported that Mark I. Levy, a 59-year-old Bethesda, Maryland, resident, who had been a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration and "was about to lose his job because of the economy," died of "an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound."

Under investigation by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies for possibly "scamm[ing] clients out of millions in a side investment business he ran," Garden City, New York, resident William Parente, 59, "beat and asphyxiated his wife and daughters in a Maryland hotel room" before killing himself.

With talk of layoffs in the air and reportedly fearful of losing his job at California's Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Mario Ramirez entered his workplace and shot two immediate supervisors before killing himself.

Reportedly $450,000 in debt, 34-year-old Middletown, Maryland, resident Christopher Wood shot and killed his wife and children before taking his own life.

At a home north of Frederick, Maryland, a man threatened to kill workers from a company that clears out recently foreclosed homes, prompting SWAT team members to be called in. Not far away, outside Baltimore, a man attempted to commit suicide while being evicted from his home.

In Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, a 27-year-old man, upset about losing his job, killed himself. A week later, another area man, who had threatened to kill himself "after recently losing his job," surrendered to authorities after a five-hour standoff.

In North Carolina, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department reported 10 "suicide threats or attempts" over the weekend of April 18th and 19th. Bill Cook, the director of the Mecklenburg County Mobile Crisis Team, told the press that economic woes had contributed to the spike.

May 2009

Faced with eviction, 33-year-old Motalekgose Mothuse Valela allegedly warned the property manager of his Dallas, Texas, apartment: "No one comes to my place without me being there, and I don't care who it is: the constable, the police or the sheriff... I will blow them all up and blow this place up," according to court documents. He reportedly also affixed a note to his door reading, "Bomb set on door, don't touch," resulting in a standoff with the Dallas police bomb squad and SWAT team which lasted several hours, before he eventually surrendered.

According to Indianapolis, Indiana, Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Thompson, 27-year-old Candance Macy lured her landlord to her residence "with the intent to kill him" in order to avoid eviction. Reportedly, Macy claimed that "she had lost a ring behind a stove in the kitchen and... she had asked him to retrieve it. When he stooped down to look for the ring, Macy allegedly stabbed him in the back at least four times and several more times on other parts of his body." He was reported to be in serious condition.

In Rhode Island, during an eviction proceeding, a Pawtucket Housing Authority employee found a "man lying in a bed with a knife sticking out of his neck, and quickly phoned police, reporting either a stabbing victim or possible deceased person." When police arrived and approached the man, he "suddenly sat up, with the knife hanging from his throat." The knife fell from his neck and the man began threatening the officers with it. "You will have to shoot me. I have nothing to live for," he told them. Eventually, they persuaded him to drop the knife.

After Allen Park, Michigan's Mark David Fussner, 44, refused to obey an eviction order and threatened to shoot court officers, the police were called in. As one of the officers approached, Fussner reportedly fired birdshot from a shotgun, wounding him. Other police on the scene returned fire and for the next two hours, the sound of gun shots reverberated through the neighborhood. Fussner was later found dead in his basement. It was unclear whether he died of a self-inflicted wound or was killed by the police.

A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic

While news reports indicate that extreme acts precipitated by economic disaster have occurred in at least 30 states, similar incidents have undoubtedly occurred in most, if not all, of the remaining 20 states. Suicides are normally under-reported in the press, while murders linked to the economic crisis may never be reported as such. Many extreme acts, in any case, go unnoticed by those not intimately affected.

There is, of course, no way to know which of these and similar acts might have occurred even if there had been no global economic meltdown. One thing is certain however: there will never be a full accounting of the lives ruined or lost under the pressure of economic disaster, nor will anyone ever raise a monument to the victims of foreclosure, job loss, and business failure, of busted pensions and dynamited 401(k)s.

There will be no memorial wall in Washington with names etched into black granite -- not for these people, neither the desperate who killed themselves, nor those who lashed out and murdered others. Who will remember the Knudsons in their shallow grave, or Christopher Wood's dead children? No statue will be raised on Wall Street to solemnly remind the former masters of the universe of the Main Street consequences of their financial manipulations. No equivalent of the Arlington National Cemetery will ever be laid out for the dead of this crisis or filled with headstones reading: "Beloved Mother, Killed by Capitalism" or "Devoted Husband and Father, Sacrificed in the Name of Greed."

Instead, the bodies will just continue to pile up. A daughter here. A father there. A family in a nearby neighborhood.

No one will ever know how many. And no one will record their names for posterity.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the recent winner of a Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. A paperback edition of his book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books), an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, has recently been published. His website is Nick Turse.com.

[Note for Readers: This is Nick Turse's third report on the rising body count in America as part of his Tough Times series, analyzing the human fallout of the global economic crisis, at TomDispatch. The first two were: The Rising Body Count on Main Street (Oct 19, 2008) and Meltdown Madness (January 28, 2009).]

This isn't a mass-consumption book nor should it be. My life and experience have taught me that few humans have evolved or are aware enough to even grasp its significance. The book is like a great sacred text from antiquity that makes us love our forbears and take comfort in our connectedness to them. If intelligent life is able to find "Sacred Demise" in two or three millennia I can see it being revered as a great testament to what our potential as a species might have been... or might yet become.

"Sacred Demise" is an incredible how-to, first-aid, healing map and manual of how one can navigate an aware psyche through the emotional and spiritual challenges of collapse - to find and to give love, comfort and even great joy in the midst of pain, despair and death. It teaches and reminds us that death is not a bad word but a "parenthesis in eternity" as Joel Goldsmith wrote. I know of no one who has had the courage to address these crying needs in detail and Baker is uniquely qualified to do it. Every ounce of her heart, mind and soul were committed to this book's writing and that is clearly evident throughout. This book is an act of love. I am no different than any human in that I respond instantly and involuntarily when I see that someone has the courage to place a naked heart in front of my eyes. It reminds me that we are never stronger than when we are most vulnerable.

The book's genesis comes from Baker's clear statement that, "while many individuals will be able to physically navigate collapse, some will not be able to do so emotionally". I consider the book to be profoundly spiritual, although others may approach it as a psychological or cultural text that finally and beautifully addresses what I have seen as a crying need to deal with the emotions that collapse surfaces. Emotions ignored always return to bite us on the behind. They sap rather than enhance our strength. "Sacred Demise" is an emotional and spiritual guide for the treatment of those of us who understand what collapse means and by which we can give comfort, aid, assistance and great strength to ourselves and to those we love.

As Baker points out consistently - while fearlessly acknowledging that civilization and the species may become extinct soon - here is a pathway to choose not only which physical parts or our lives may endure, but what core values survive the transition and die-off. She reminds us that to be truly effective, "we must come to grips with our own mortality."

I have known Baker for many years. We have worked closely together and shared many painful "initiations". I am not at all surprised that she cites many spiritual books that I have long treasured and also delves deeply into Native-American spirituality for its close connection to a planet that "civilization" has cut us off from. Nor am I surprised that we have both arrived at exactly the same conclusions. What I am surprised at is Baker's Herculean research, her incredible depth and her broad, multi-discipline and multi-cultural approach. She does not confuse the reader, she refreshingly reminds us that truth and knowledge based upon harmony and balance with all life are universal truths once liberated from artificial labels and knee-jerk induced intellectual door slamming..

The book's greatest use will be in guiding and comforting those of us who are "hospice" workers for industrial civilization. Having written on the subject of collapse for almost a decade I have longed for something that would comfort me and the great many who have labored to awaken mass consciousness to the gravity of the current crisis. As on a battlefield one inevitably asks, who or what will care for the caregivers? This is that book.

Reprinted from MIKE RUPPERT BLOGSPOT

[Books by Mike Ruppert: "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" and "A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-five points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money"]

Here I offer a brief glimpse into the less obvious but far more insidious phenomenon of "soft" colonization. That scholars and political thinkers have talked at length of such processes only establishes the uncomfortable reality that history is bound to repeat itself in all its ugliness, unless the human civilization makes a concerted effort to eliminate the use of brute force from human affairs.

Gandhi, the apostle of non-violent resistance said:

"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people's houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave."

This is an idea rendered irrelevant in the current scenario, where the mightier among the world's nations have secured the mandate to invade, with impunity, any society and any state that can be exploited for resources. Unlike earlier times, modern-day invasions are invariably camouflaged by a façade of elaborate deceit that claims altruistic intent as the motive of assault. In this new scheme of things, resistance is deemed as insurgency and dissent is unpatriotic. Those that are invaded do not have the luxury to decide between being beggar and slave. Culture would be the last thing on their minds as they struggle to stay alive. Yet it is the loss of their culture that ultimately causes the disintegration of these societies to the absolute advantage of their victors.

It is said that history is written by the victor. What is not said is that destroying the enemy is only half the purpose of a victor. The other half is the subjugation and drastic alteration of the self-perception of the enemy, so as to gain unquestioned control over every aspect of the subjugated state, its populace and its resources, so that having won victory it can get on with the "much bigger business of plunder," according to Franz Fanon, philosopher, psychiatrist, author and a pre-eminent thinker of the twentieth century.

At one level we have the Human Terrain System (HTS) I have written about previously wherein social scientists are embedded with combat units, ostensibly to help the occupiers better understand the cultures they are occupying. The veiled intent is to exploit existing schisms and fault-lines in these societies to the occupier's own advantage through the policy of divide and conquer.

As Edward Said stated in "Orientalism":

"... there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge - if that is what it is - that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external dominion."

It is extremely obvious that the HTS belongs to this second category.

At another unquestioned level, the "democratization" and "modernization" of a "barbaric" society goes on. The embedded scholars of HTS evidently find no evidence of these cultures having withstood decades of international isolation and assault, yet sustained their sovereignty by the sheer dint of their education, culture and a well-integrated diverse social fabric. So the US sets up a range of state-funded programs, ostensibly to empower the women and youth of the target society, in the ways of democracy and modern civilization. Whether or not that suspect goal is accomplished, the badgered collective consciousness of the invaded people, traumatized by loss and conflict, does begin to submit to the "norms" of behavior prescribed by the victor, even when they are in violation of actual norms of society that may have prevailed prior to invasion.

Transform

Fanon said:

"A national culture under colonial domination is a contested culture whose destruction is sought in systematic fashion."

Describing the psychopathology of colonization he said,

"Every effort is made to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior, to recognize the unreality of his 'nation', and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own biological structure."

Fanon's speech to the Congress of Black African Writers in 1959 is an uncanny description of Iraq's tragedy today:

"Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women ...

"For culture is first the expression of a nation, the expression of its preferences, of its taboos and of its patterns. It is at every stage of the whole of society that other taboos, values and patterns are formed. A national culture is the sum total of all these appraisals; it is the result of internal and external extensions exerted over society as a whole and also at every level of that society. In the colonial situation, culture, which is doubly deprived of the support of the nation and of the state, falls away and dies."

At times we may witness blatant violations as in the distribution of backpacks with US flags to Iraqi children.

A more repulsive example is the Skin White Serum. One of many companies engaged in selling skin-bleaching cream is Skin White Research Labs. They proudly sell Skin White Serum in "over 30 countries." There are countless other companies involved in this market, selling similar products, like Skin White Bleaching Cream and Xtreme White.

The hidden message here is that, politically, those in the culture being colonized should seek to cover their brown skin, which is in fact part of their ethnic identity, and aspire to the culture, power and influence of the dominant culture at the expense of their own.

Somewhat less subtle is the corporate colonization of Iraq's culture. An example of this is Iraqi girls carrying Barbie backpacks in the Sadr City area of Baghdad.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the dominant culture for a while now has been the US military. Since it has all the firepower and the brute force, it sets the norms and the standard. This is done by repeated suggestions through propaganda, and advertisements suggesting that the local population is of lesser worth than the occupiers of their country in their appearance, their beliefs, their customs and their way of life.

The material practices of society sustain its culture, which is the lifeline of identity, and affirmation that the progress of a nation depends on. Social custom, production systems, education, art and architecture are a few of the visible pillars of culture.

Community and custom become the first casualties when an entire people, unequal in the face of military might, struggle to survive under perpetual fear of loss and death. In a state of vacuum, the threatened society will grasp whatever is offered by the occupier as a "better" way of living. In the process it is bound to lose its own tried and tested self-sustaining modes of living.

With the destruction of infrastructure, education, health and livelihood sources are destroyed. When rehabilitation and restoration come packaged in alien systems of knowledge (read-USAID), that, too, is accepted in the absence of what existed earlier.

Literature, art and architecture meet with more systemic demolition.

My artist friends in Baghdad have reported,

"The occupation forces encouraged the rebels to loot museum and libraries. Five thousand years of history and art were irretrievably lost in hours. It is a loss for the world, not Iraq alone. Buildings can be fixed, so can electricity, but where can I find another Khalid al-Rahal to make me a new statue for Abu Fafar al-Mansoor? How will I replace the artifacts dating back to thousands of years? Iraq is altered forever."

I have heard from ordinary men and women in Iraq, "We need our art, because it connects us with what has brought us here, and reminds us of where we are headed." Dr. Saad Eskander has been director general of whatever remains of Iraq's National Archive and Library and he says, "This building was burned twice, and looted. We have lost sixty percent of our archival collections like maps, historical records and photographs. Twenty-five percent of our books were lost ... It has crippled our culture, and culture reaches to the bottom of peoples' hearts, whereas politics do not."

It is not difficult to see that the extent of devastation caused by the invasion and occupation of Iraq goes beyond loss of life, livelihood and property. The historical and cultural roots of the nation have been destroyed.

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last four years.

The Republican attacks were bogus. A 2008 McClatchy investigation revealed that the overwhelming majority of Guantánamo detainees taken into custody in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent of wrongdoing or bit players with little intelligence value. A substantial number of those prisoners were literally sold to U.S. officials in exchange for bounty payments offered by the U.S. military. A Seton Hall Law Center report has debunked Pentagon claims that many released detainees have "returned to the fight." And no one has ever escaped from one of the U.S. super-max prisons, which house hundreds of people convicted of terrorist offenses.

The Republicans have continued to oppose the effort to close Guantánamo. In an attempt to burnish his image and forestall war crimes charges, Dick Cheney now leads the charge, making ubiquitous attacks on Obama. Keeping Guantánamo open is "important," Cheney declares. He claims that closing Guantánamo would endanger Americans, and warns that if detainees are brought to the United States , they would "acquire all kinds of legal rights." Obama is also taking heat from the intelligence community. Those officials, like Cheney, seek to justify what they did under the Bush regime.

And now even the Democrats are piling on the bandwagon. Reacting defensively to the Republican attack campaign, the Senate voted 90 to 6 to deny Obama funds to close Guantánamo until he comes up with a "plan" for relocating the detainees there. "We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions on Guantánamo to try these cases," said Democratic Senator Jim Webb on ABC News. "I do not believe they should be tried in the United States ," he added.

The pressure has caused Obama to buckle. Timed to coincide with a Cheney speech to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Obama announced an appeasement plan to deal with the 240 remaining Guantánamo detainees. Parts of his plan would threaten the very foundation of our legal system - that no one should be held in custody if he has committed no crime. These are Obama's five categories for disposition of detainees once Guantánamo is closed:

1) Those who violated the laws of war will be tried in military commissions.
Obama's plan would backtrack on an early promise to shut down the military commissions. Obama now claims that such commissions can be fair because they will no longer permit the use of evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods. He fails to mention, however, that the Pentagon is using "clean teams" to re-interrogate people who were previously interrogated using the prohibited methods. When they once again give the same information, it miraculously becomes untainted. Obama also fails to acknowledge that those tried in the military commissions are forbidden from seeing all the evidence against them, a violation of the bedrock principle that the accused must have an opportunity to confront his accusers.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court has disagreed with this part of Obama's proposed plan of action. In Ex parte Milligan, the Supreme Court declared military trials of civilians to be unconstitutional if civil courts are available.

Prisoners falling in this category should be tried in the courts of the United States , because the laws of war are actually part of U.S. law. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. The Geneva Conventions and the Hague Convention, which the United States has ratified, contain the laws of war.

2) Those who have been ordered released from Guantánamo will remain in custody.
Seventeen Uighurs from China were ordered released after they were found not to be enemy combatants. But they continue to languish in custody because they would be imperiled if returned to China , which considers them enemies of the state. Suggestions that they be brought to the United States have been met with paranoid NIMBY (not in my backyard!) protestations. So, under Obama's plan they will remain incarcerated in a state of legal limbo.

3) Those who cannot be prosecuted yet "pose a clear danger to the American people" will remain in custody with no right to legal process of any kind.
These are people who have never been charged with a crime. Obama did not say why they cannot be prosecuted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates claims as many as 100 people may fall into this category. Included in this group are those who have "expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden." They will suffer "prolonged detention."

Obama's plan for "prolonged detention" is nothing more than a newly-coined phrase for "preventive detention," a policy that harks back to the bad old days of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the internment of people of Japanese extraction in the 1940's. If Obama succeeds in convincing Congress to legalize "prolonged detention," the United States will continue to be a pariah state among justice-loving nations. The U.S. Congress, still rendered catatonic by post-9/11 rhetoric, will probably capitulate along with Obama.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that Obama's new system of preventive detention will just "move Guantánamo to a new location and give it a new name."

4) Those who can be safely transferred to other countries will be transferred.
Obama noted that 50 men fall into this category. It is unclear what will happen to them when they reach their destinations.

5) Those who violated U.S. criminal laws will be tried in federal courts.
Obama cited the examples of Ramzi Yousef, who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was identified as the 20th 9/11 hijacker. Both were tried and convicted in U.S. courts and both are serving life sentences.

This is the only clearly acceptable part of Obama's plan. All detainees slated to remain in custody should be placed into this category. The federal courts provide due process as required by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which does not limit due process rights to U.S. citizens: "No person ... shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."

The federal courts are well suited to deal with accused terrorists. Indeed, federal judges who have presided over such cases say that the Classified Information Procedures Act can effectively protect classified intelligence in federal court trials.

If Mr. Obama proceeds with the plan he announced this week he will empower those who point to U.S. hypocrisy on human rights as a justification to do us harm. Obama's capitulation to the intelligence gurus and the right-wing attack dogs will not only imperil the rule of law; it will actually make us more vulnerable to future acts of terrorism.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of " Cowboy Republic : Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the War" and co-author of the new book, "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent." Her articles are archived at Collapse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brzezinski was right, of course. Obama was the perfect choice for president. Not because of his experience. He had none. He was a two year senator with a resume' small enough to fit on the back of a matchbox. Still Obama had what Brzezinski and Co. were looking for, symbolism; the kind of symbolism that connected him to people around the world and made them feel like one of their own had finally clawed their way to the top. Even better, Obama was a charismatic populist who could fill stadiums with adoring fans and put a benign face on America's interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. What more could Brzezinski hope for? After 8 years of dragging "Brand America" through the mud, the country would finally get the emergency facelift it needed and begin to restore its battered image as the world's indispensable nation.

For leftists, Obama has been a total bust. He's escalated the war in Afghanistan, increased the cross-border bombings of Pakistan, hemmed and hawed about prosecuting war crimes, refused to actively lobby House members to make it easier for workers to organize (EFCA), and surrounded himself with bank industry reps who've committed $12.8 trillion to sinking financial institutions with no assurance that the money would be repaid. Apart from a trifling bill on stem cells, Obama has done absolutely zero to confirm his bone fides as a liberal. The truth is, Obama is neither liberal nor conservative; he's simply an inspiring orator and a skillful politician who has no strong convictions about anything. If he achieves greatness, it will be because he was thrust into a crisis he couldn't avoid and reluctantly acted in the best interests of the American people. That possibility still exists, although it seems more unlikely by the day.

Foreign leaders are clearly relieved to see the last of George W. Bush, and they appear to be willing to give Obama every opportunity to mend fences and break with the past. But Obama has made little effort to reciprocate or show that he's serious about real change. The emphasis seems to be more on public relations than policy; more on glitzy photo ops, grandiose speeches and gadding about from one capital to another, than ending the chronic US meddling and militarism. Where's the beef or is it all just empty posturing?

No one's ready to write-off Obama just yet, but he needs to show he's the real-deal by taking steps to ratchet-down the war machine and reign in the corporate elites and bank vermin. But is it really possible for one man-however well-meaning-to change the course of a nation by standing up the gaggle of racketeers who pull the strings from behind the curtain? Keep in mind, America's history of violent interventions, unprovoked wars, color-coded revolutions and coup d' etats has a long pedigree that stretches from Bunker Hill to Baghdad. That river of blood did not begin with George Bush and it won't end with Barack Obama. Every generation has produced its own litany of crimes, from Wounded Knee to Nagasaki to My Lai to Falluja. In Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech, the playwright invokes one such incident which epitomizes the pattern of hostility which has been repeated over and over again wherever the Washington mandarins detect opposition to their iron-fisted rule.

Harold Pinter, Nobel Acceptance Speech

"The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it."

Analysis

Pinter's speech is a somber indictment of US foreign policy; a policy which is now cloaked behind the rock-star facade of Barack Obama. Nothing has changed and, perhaps, nothing will change. The same barbarous campaign that thrived under Bush has been passed along to Obama intact. Wherever there is resistance to US ambitions; there lies the enemy. Whether it's Marxists in Bogota, nationalists in Kosovo, Bolivarians in Caracas, Shia militias in Beirut, Islamic moderates in Mogadishu or Quakers in Toledo. They're all enemies, every one of them, and they need to be dealt with.

Obama is no fool; he knows he's being used. He knows he wasn't chosen for his enlightened views on health care and stem cells. He was picked because the men in charge needed a new poster boy to hide behind while they carry out their illicit activities. Obama is not so much of a Commander in chief as he is master illusionist, diverting attention from the stealth war that goes on relentlessly with or without his consent. Here's Pinter again:

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis...It's a scintillating stratagem."

Consider how the news was shaped to make it look like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were carried out for altruistic reasons. Thus, the war in Afghanistan became "Operation Enduring Freedom", stressing the selfless generosity of bombing a country into oblivion and reinstating the thuggish warlords to power. The same strategy was used for the invasion of Iraq which was celebrated as "liberation from a brutal dictator." Liberation which cost the lives of over 1 million Iraqis and the displacement of 4 million more. Still, no one in the UN or so called international community has pressed for removing the US from the Security Council or prosecuting its leaders for war crimes. It's a testimony to the success of the US media in upholding the "tapestry of lies" of which Pinter speaks. Under Obama, the charade has only gotten worse. The coverage of the war has stopped entirely. War? What war? What matters now is Obama's cheery banter with Jay Leno, or Michelle's well-proportioned arms or Malia's adorable Portuguese Waterdog. America is whole again. Let the killing resume.

Pinter: "What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us."

Obama doesn't need to solve the world's problems. He doesn't have to reverse global warming or slow peak oil, cure AIDS or end world hunger. All he needs to do is meet the minimal requirement of his job as president, which is to deliver justice to his people. That's why the prosecution of Bush for war crimes is more important than any other issue on the docket. Justice precedes everything; it's the thread that keeps the social fabric stitched together. Justice for the victims who were killed in their homes with their families while they were sleeping or eating dinner. Justice for the people who were bombed in wedding parties or going to work or at the mosque praying to God. That's what people want from Obama. Justice, nothing more. The Reverend Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It's up to Obama follow that arc and take at least one step on the path of legitimacy, accountability and justice.

>Pinter: "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice."

It's highly unlikely that a black man with a background in community organizing really believes that expanding the war in Afghanistan is the right thing to do. Nor is it likely that he supports wiretapping, the crackdown on immigrants, penalizing sellers of medical marijuana, trillion dollar bank bailouts or "enhanced" interrogation. He is merely reading from the script that he has been given. But as the economic crisis deepens and the country becomes more radicalized and politically unstable, that script will have to be tossed aside. Obama will have plenty of opportunities to shrug off his handlers and show what he's really made of. Perhaps he is great man after all.

Pinter: "When we look into a mirror, we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us."

Go ahead, Barack. Smash the mirror.

Mike Whitney's scathing analyses of the plutocratic status quo are widely distributed on the web.

RELATED:

Wiki profile on Pinter

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s).

I can honestly say we all did well in school at that time. We even participated in extra curricular activities together, we had no problems getting along with each other and we often shined because we were the minority, and because we were Asian Americans. We were the "smart Asian kids." Something changed along the way by the time high school hit. My family moved from Milwaukie to Happy Valley. By my senior year of high school, I had gone through a major identity crisis. When I moved to the Clackamas area, there were nothing but Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipino students. Clackamas high school was incredibly diverse -- Asian American students were labeled as the "smart kids." Although we were labeled that, my grades and attendance didn't match up with my title. The people I was hanging out with were primarily Lao & Cambodian Americans. There were very few of us, maybe around eight all together. I skipped school, rebelled and my parents had no idea. My parents believed everything I told them -- why I was missing school, why my grades were low -- I had an excuse for everything. The friends around me were doing the same thing. We took advantage of our parents' trust for our own selfish reasons.

My parents came from war torn Laos as teenagers during the late 70's. I was born and raised in America. They've worked very hard to be where they are right now and they are definitely living the American dream. They never really talked about it, so I never really took it seriously. Like my friends in high school, we seemed to have come together because our parents didn't understand us, nor did they discipline us for our actions -- it wasn't because they didn't love us -- it was because they didn't really know how to talk to us without upsetting us.

I bring this all up because as I read the first chapter of our text book, one of the "Unsettling Facts," hit a cord with me. I can't say I was exactly shocked, but I was definitely disappointed. At the same time, as I read it over and over again and the more I read it, the more I realized it was a good thing. The bittersweet fact reads, " Despite the idea that Asian Americans are seen as a "model minority,' poverty among Asian American families is higher than that among White American families and has increased in recent years; among certain Asian American groups, namely Lao(tians) and Cambodians, poverty strikes two thirds of all families" (pg. 9).

In a social sense, it automatically clicked in my mind when I read the fact. I know why so many Lao and Cambodian families struggle with education and poverty, I know why we're not as successful as the other Asian nationalities. I know all of this because I have lived it. We're looked down upon in Asian groups, but the society around us has always grouped us with other Asians, when in fact Southeast Asians are so completely different from the typical "Far East" persona. Although I refuse to make excuses for the people who share the same heritage as I, because I feel if I can do it, anyone can, I know that we need extra and focused support. In our communities, we're lacking it and although there is no direct evidence, there's definitely some sort of correlation between support at home affecting students' decisions to pursue higher education.

Sociologists "try to reveal the social factors that shape society and affect the chances of success for different groups," (pg. 9) and I feel by doing this they are exposing the facts. There's something happening right now among SE Asians in Portland, as more of us go to college and learn to think intellectually, we are also learning about how our people aren't doing so hot. But what makes sense is that we understand why it's happening because we've lived it. What's important is that we are finally doing something about it because as our "other Asian" peers succeed, we are often left in the shadows wondering why we don't share their success.

By illuminating the issue with the study of Sociology among groups like Lao and Cambodian Americans we can pin point certain issues. It's not that our culture is so different, its that mainstream America is starting to understand the diverse group of Asian Americans. We cannot continue to be grouped as one big chunk because we are so different from each other. Imagine an entire continent being grouped together as one, that's like saying Mexicans and Canadians are the same. As we become classified as a separate group, messages are easier to convey.

Studying diversity among different Asian ethnicities is so important because it gives light to an unknown variable. In our textbook, the term diversity is defined as, " a broad concept that includes studying group differences in society's opportunities, the shaping of social institutions by different social factors, the formation of group and individual identity , and the process of social change" (pg. 11).

Social change is finally starting to happen more and more in SE Asian societies. As a student at PCC, I have become so inspired to be positive for Lao Americans. I have read facts similar to the one in the book about Lao Americans being among the poorest in Asians in America. In Oregon, we do not have the type of support for Lao American students like we do for, say Chinese Americans. Because we don't have a significant identity, we are less likely to shine. Some of my peers and I have come together to organize a group called "LAAS," which stands for Lao American Alliance for Students. It is our hope, that by creating this group we are able to enrich the lives of American born Lao students who know nothing about their heritage and roots, but struggle in American culture as well. We are also hoping to educate more students about the importance of higher learning and why it is essential to the progression of our peoples in America and lastly, we hope to empower students to do something positive, to change the perspective on Lao Americans by exposing what we know about our beautiful culture to others. We hope to spark an interest, and by doing so we will gain more exposure and become better known. It is also my personal hope and passion to help Lao parents understand their children and to instill the encouragement, love and support needed at home; things that are essential to help a student excel. I really hope that my message will be heard and I don't know if I have conveyed my message properly but I know that sociology has a big part in what we are trying to do to help Lao Americans strive for better lives.

Works Cited

Andersen, Margaret and Howard Taylor. "Sociology in Everyday Life." Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning, 2008.

That is now happening. Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain have long had "universal jurisdiction" statutes, which allow their national courts to pursue and prosecute prima facie war criminals. What has changed is an unspoken rule never to use international law against "ourselves," or "our" allies or clients. In 1998, Spain, supported by France, Switzerland and Belgium, indicted the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, client and executioner of the West, and sought his extradition from Britain, where he happened to be at the time. Had he been sent for trial he almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity. Home Secretary Jack Straw let him escape back to Chile.

The Pinochet case was the ignition. On 19 January last, the George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley compared the status of George W. Bush with that of Pinochet. "Outside [the United States] there is not the ambiguity about what to do about a war crime," he said. "So if you try to travel, most people abroad are going to view you not as 'former President George Bush' [but] as a current war criminal." For this reason, Bush's former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who demanded an invasion of Iraq in 2001 and personally approved torture techniques in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, no longer travels. Rumsfeld has twice been indicted for war crimes in Germany. On 26 January, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, said, "We have clear evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld knew what he was doing but nevertheless he ordered torture."

The Spanish high court is currently investigating a former Israeli defence minister and six other top Israeli officials for their role in the killing of civilians, mostly children, in Gaza. Henry Kissinger, who was largely responsible for bombing to death 600,000 peasants in Cambodia in 1969-73, is wanted for questioning in France, Chile and Argentina. Yet, on 8 February, as if demonstrating the continuity of American power, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, said, "I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger."

Like them, Tony Blair may soon be a fugitive. The International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, has received a record number of petitions related to Blair's wars. Spain's celebrated Judge Baltasar Garzon, who indicted Pinochet and the leaders of the Argentinian military junta, has called for George W. Bush, Blair and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar to be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq -- "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history: a devastating attack on the rule of law" that had left the UN "in tatters." He said, "There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation to start without delay."

This is not to say Blair is about to be collared and marched to The Hague, where Serbs and Sudanese dictators are far more likely to face a political court set up by the West. However, an international agenda is forming and a process has begun which is as much about legitimacy as the letter of the law, and a reminder from history that the powerful lose wars and empires when legitimacy evaporates. This can happen quickly, as in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of apartheid South Africa -- the latter a spectre for apartheid Israel.

Today, the unreported "good news" is that a worldwide movement is challenging the once sacrosanct notion that imperial politicians can destroy countless lives in the cause of an ancient piracy, often at remove in distance and culture, and retain their respectability and immunity from justice. In his masterly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde R.L. Stevenson writes in the character of Jekyll: "Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter ... I could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and, in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete."

Blair, too, is safe -- but for how long? He and his collaborators face a new determination on the part of tenacious non-government bodies that are amassing "an impressive documentary record as to criminal charges," according to international law authority Richard Falk, who cites the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul in 2005, which heard evidence from 54 witnesses and published rigorous indictments against Blair, Bush and others. Currently, the Brussels War Crimes Tribunal and the newly established Blair War Crimes Foundation are building a case for Blair's prosecution under the Nuremberg Principle and the 1949 Geneva Convention. In a separate indictment, former Judge of the New Zealand Supreme Court E.W. Thomas wrote: "My pre-disposition was to believe that Mr. Blair was deluded, but sincere in his belief. After considerable reading and much reflection, however, my final conclusion is that Mr. Blair deliberately and repeatedly misled Cabinet, the British Labour Party and the people in a number of respects. It is not possible to hold that he was simply deluded but sincere: a victim of his own self-deception. His deception was deliberate."

Protected by the fake sinecure of Middle East Envoy for the Quartet (the US, EU, UN and Russia), Blair operates largely from a small fortress in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, where he is an apologist for the US in the Middle East and Israel, a difficult task following the bloodbath in Gaza. To assist his mortgages, he recently received an Israeli "peace prize" worth a million dollars. He, too, is careful where he travels; and it is instructive to watch how he now uses the media. Having concentrated his post-Downing Street apologetics on a BBC series of obsequious interviews with David Aaronovitch, Blair has all but slipped from view in Britain, where polls have long revealed a remarkable loathing for a former prime minister -- a sentiment now shared by those in the liberal media elite whose previous promotion of his "project" and crimes is an embarrassment and preferably forgotten.

On 8 February, Andrew Rawnsley, the Observer's former leading Blair fan, declared that "this shameful period will not be so smoothly and simply buried." He demanded, "Did Blair never ask what was going on?" This is an excellent question made relevant with a slight word change: "Did the Andrew Rawnsleys never ask what was going on?" In 2001, Rawnsley alerted his readers to Iraq's "contribution to international terrorism" and Saddam Hussein's "frightening appetite to possess weapons of mass destruction." Both assertions were false and echoed official Anglo-American propaganda. In 2003, when the destruction of Iraq was launched, Rawnsley described it as a "point of principle" for Blair who, he later wrote, was "fated to be right." He lamented, "Yes, too many people died in the war. Too many people always die in war. War is nasty and brutish, but at least this conflict was mercifully short." In the subsequent six years at least a million people have been killed. According to the Red Cross, Iraq is now a country of widows and orphans. Yes, war is nasty and brutish, but never for the Blairs and the Rawnsleys.

Far from the carping turncoats at home, Blair has lately found a safe media harbour -- in Australia, the original murdochracy. His interviewers exude an unction reminiscent of the promoters of the "mystical" Blair in the Guardian of than a decade ago, though they also bring to mind Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times during the 1930s, who wrote of his infamous groveling to the Nazis: "I spend my nights taking out anything which will hurt their susceptibilities and dropping in little things which are intended to sooth them."

With his words as a citation, the finalists for the Geoffrey Dawson Prize for Journalism (Antipodes) are announced. On 8 February, in an interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Geraldine Doogue described Blair as "a man who brought religion into power and is now bringing power to religion." She asked him: "What would the perception be that faith would bring towards a greater stability ...[sic]?" A bemused and clearly delighted Blair was allowed to waffle about "values." Doogue said to him that "it was the bifurcation about right and wrong that what I thought the British found really hard" [sic], to which Blair replied that "in relation to Iraq I tried every other option [to invasion] there was." It was his classic lie, which passed unchallenged.

However, the clear winner of the Geoffrey Dawson Prize is Ginny Dougary of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Times. Dougary recently accompanied Blair on what she described as his "James Bondish-ish Gulfstream" where she was privy to his "bionic energy levels." She wrote, "I ask him the childlike question: does he want to save the world?" Blair replied, well, more or less, aw shucks, yes. The murderous assault on Gaza, which was under way during the interview, was mentioned in passing. "That is war, I'm afraid," said Blair, "and war is horrible." No counter came that Gaza was not a war but a massacre by any measure. As for the Palestinians, noted Dougary, it was Blair's task to "prepare them for statehood." The Palestinians will be surprised to hear that. But enough gravitas; her man "has the glow of the newly-in-love: in love with the world and, for the most part, the feeling is reciprocated." The evidence she offered for this absurdity was that "women from both sides of politics have confessed to me to having the hots for him."

These are extraordinary times. Blair, a perpetrator of the epic crime of the 21st century, shares a "prayer breakfast" with President Obama, the yes-we-can-man now launching more war. "We pray," said Blair, "that in acting we do God's work and follow God's will." To decent people, such pronouncements about Blair's "faith" represent a contortion of morality and intellect that is a profananation on the basic teachings of Christianity. Those who aided and abetted his great crime and now wish the rest of us to forget their part -- or, like Alistair Campbell, his "communications director," offer their bloody notoriety for the vicarious pleasure of some -- might read the first indictment proposed by the Blair War Crimes Foundation: "Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, 4 million refugees, countless maiming and traumas."

These are indeed extraordinary times.

The US policy that has led to this recent violence has been long in the making, as it has only been a matter of time before the tenuous truce between the groups came unglued. For it has been a truce built on a deeply corrupt US policy of backing the predominantly Shia Iraqi government forces while paying the Sunni resistance not to fight both government and occupation forces.

Most of us remember all too well the praise from the Bush administration lavished on the Awakening Groups, a Sunni militia comprised of former resistance fighters and al-Qaeda members (according to the US military), each member paid $300 per month of US taxpayer money. They grew in strength to 100,000 men.

US aid to the Councils was cut off last October on the understanding that the members would be absorbed into Iraqi government forces. To date, less than a third have been given government jobs.

Two months ago I visited the al-Dora area of Baghdad, a sprawling area controlled by Awakening forces. One of their commanders told me he was concerned about the fact that most of his men were not being given government jobs. "They are lacking pay, and most of them are becoming more angry by the day, since they have had more broken promises than they can handle," he explained as we drank tea, "Many of my men have not been paid since October. This cannot continue."

Meanwhile, the US-backed Iraqi government led by US-appointed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to target the leadership of the Awakening Groups. Maliki perceives the Awakening groups as both a political and military threat, and since October has been targeting their leadership in parts of Baghdad, as well as in Iraq's volatile Diyala Province.

In the wake of the spasm of violence in Baghdad last weekend, The Washington Post reported "As Apache helicopter gunships cruised above Baghdad's Fadhil neighborhood, former Sunni insurgents fought from rooftops and street corners against American and Iraqi forces, according to witnesses, the Iraqi military and police. At least 15 people were wounded in the gunfights, which lasted several hours. By nightfall, the street fighters had taken five Iraqi soldiers hostage. The battles, the most ferocious in nearly a year in Baghdad, erupted minutes after the arrest of Adil Mashadani, the leader of the Fadhil Awakening Council, which is composed mostly of former Sunni insurgents who allied themselves with the US military in exchange for monthly salaries that are now paid by Iraq's government."

Of course, the reason given to justify government's detention of the Awakening leader of the area, the incident that triggered the bloodshed, were "terrorist acts" by the group, according to Iraq's chief military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta. Predictably, the Awakening group spokesman for the area, Abu Mirna, told the Post, "We will fight them till the end if they don't release him."

It was convenient policy to have set up the Awakening groups to temporarily quell overall violence in Iraq. Resistance fighters rushed to join the ranks for the paycheck, as well as US military protection from Shia militias, which now largely comprise the government security apparatus. Now, however, clearly the US has lost some of their interest in continuing to support the Awakening groups, and the Maliki government is ratcheting up its efforts to dismantle them. Predictably, members of the Awakening are fighting back - for without a paycheck, and with yet another broken promise by the occupation forces to spur them on, why should they sit back and allow themselves to be detained, killed or further betrayed?

However, let us not martyr the Awakening Groups. Most of the leadership of the Awakening Groups are thugs, as are many of the members. Within weeks of the formation of the groups back in 2006, Iraqis living in areas that began to come under the control of Awakening groups began complaining of the brutality of the fighters in their area. Extortion and bribery became rampant, and many Iraqis view Awakening forces as collaborators with the occupiers of their country.

For example, I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with the president of the Fallujah Awakening Council, Sheikh Aifan Sadun, who, like other Awakening leaders, has hundreds of security personnel under his control. It was just before the January 30 elections in Iraq, and he was vying for political power against a rival Sunni group in the city - the Iraqi Islamic Party. Sheikh Aifan, who spoke with me while driving his $420,000 custom-built heavily armored BMW through the city that was destroyed by two US sieges in 2004, was accusing his rivals of rigging the upcoming elections.

He told me he would use "any means necessary" to fight them if they stole the elections. It was and is all about power for these Awakening leaders. And money. Shiekh Aifan, like most of the Awakening leaders, quickly got into the "construction business" when the US military stopped direct payments to them last October. Now those payments come in the form of "construction contracts." Sheikh Aifan himself has been awarded "contracts" worth $250 million - keep that in mind during this tax season, because it is your money that is paying for things like his own private militia, his BMW and his mansion on the outskirts of Fallujah.

In nearby Ramadi, the capital city of Al-Anbar, Sheikh Ahmad Abo Risha is president of the Awakening Council for the entire province. Just before the election, he, like Sheikh Aifan, was making moves to ensure he maintained his grip on power. His rival in the elections was Sheikh Hamid Al-Hayis, also an Awakening Council leader in the city, and from the same tribe. Abo Risha did not have kind words for Al-Hayis. "Al-Hayis has relations with government people and oil contracts, and he gets money from this by using his position which we helped him acquire," Abo Risha told me at the Awakening Council of Ramadi headquarters. "I'm from a long line of sheikhs, but Al-Hayis has only been a sheikh since 2006 when we started the Awakening," Abo Risha said. If Al-Hayis were to win the elections, "there will be a revolution."

When I asked Abo Risha about the Islamic Party, which Sheikh Aifan was accusing of trying to steal the elections, he told me if the Islamic Party took the elections by fraud, "It will be like Darfur."

None of these threats came to pass, as both men were victorious over their rivals. But their bellicose rhetoric is indicative of the kind of people they are, and the lengths they are willing to go to in order to maintain and/or seize power.

Despite the corruption and inherent infighting with the Awakening Group leaders, most of them, and the tens of thousands of men under their control, will certainly fight when attacked or provoked, as evidenced by this past weekend in Baghdad.

Broadening the frame of reference, keep in mind that government detentions, killings and threats towards Awakening Group leaders and members are ongoing in neighborhoods of Baghdad, as well as across Diyala province. We should expect violence in the areas of Baghdad they control as the Iraqi government continues to make moves towards taking them out in advance of the national elections scheduled for later this year. Thus, keep your eyes on the following areas of Baghdad in the coming weeks and months: Adhamiyah, Amiriyah, Gazaliyah and al-Dora, to name just a few. More broadly, also watch Baquba and surrounding areas where Awakening Groups are largely in control.

And keep Al-Anbar in mind. The province, which is one-third the geographic area of Iraq, is largely controlled by Awakening groups. This is the area where the fiercest resistance to the occupation has occurred, and if US occupation forces or the US-backed Iraqi government begins to move on men like Sheikh Aifan or Abo Risha, it will bring predictable results.

As Awakening Group member Abu Ayad, 58, told the Post, "We will all become suicide bombers" if his leader, Mashadani, is not released by the Iraqi government.

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last four years

The stories we tell ourselves about the future will, in the end, define it more than our technologies or our practices. In the end, practices are vulnerable to shift in meaning - one can see poverty or wealth in a simple, subsistence life, for example. Fixing meaning is the only way to sustain ethical practice - modern society at its root transforms things that are good and sustainable into things that are backwards and impoverished. Few other books that I know of on our coming triple crisis - the end of economic growth, peak oil and climate change - has begun to answer the deeply important question "how shall we view this, how shall we speak of it."

I often joke "I'm not spiritual, I'm religious." That is, I am something of a skeptic about spiritual approaches that pick and choose appealing bits from faiths, without addressing or fully dealing with the whole structure of religious belief that underlies them. I worry about the lack of rigor of such an approach, and so when Baker sent me a copy of her book, I was afraid I'd struggle to find something good to say. I was thus, favorably impressed by the way that Baker uses her raw material to speak about spiritual life in ways that are not pallid or empty, but are deep, rigorous and complex.

Baker is unflinching in her diagnosis of our situation, and never pulls her punches. She does not offer false hope or false reassurance. What she offers is a deeply complex and valuable narrative in which to contextualize our experience, a great deal of personal wisdom, and a long historical view of our present state. It might seem that these things are small in comparison to what we lose when we look honestly at our situation, but they turn out not to be.

Perhaps the best and most useful thing I can say about Carolyn Baker's book is this - it manages to leave you consoled, sustained and in new ways prepared to face the future. Despite the fact that its unflinching honesty takes away denial as a choice, it leaves us better off than before. And what more can one say about a book?

Sharon Astyk is the author of DEPLETION AND ABUNDANCE: Life On The New Home Front and A NATION OF FARMERS: Defeating The Food Crisis on American Soil. By all means, check out her BLOG.

One of the four states that is not insolvent is an unlikely candidate for the distinction--North Dakota. As Michigan management consultant Charles Fleetham observed last month in an article distributed to his local media:

"North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000, known for cold weather, isolated farmers and a hit movie--Fargo. Yet, for some reason it defies the real estate cliché of location, location, location. Since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%. This year the state has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion!"

What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The answer seems to be: its own bank. In fact, North Dakota has the only state-owned bank in the nation. The state legislature established the Bank of North Dakota in 1919. Fleetham writes that the bank was set up to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. Three elected officials oversee the bank: the governor, the attorney general, and the commissioner of agriculture. The bank's stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It loans money to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans), and it purchases municipal bonds from public institutions.

Still, you may ask, how does that solve the solvency problem? Isn't the state still limited to spending only the money it has? The answer is no. Certified, card-carrying bankers are allowed to do something nobody else can do: they can create "credit" with accounting entries on their books.

A License to Create Money

Under the "fractional reserve" lending system, banks are allowed to extend credit (create money as loans) in a sum equal to many times their deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this:

"[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people--or the government--deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up." (3)

That banks actually create money with accounting entries was confirmed in a revealing booklet published by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money Mechanics. 2 The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it had reached 50 pages long. On page 49 of the 1992 edition, it states:

"With a uniform 10 percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts [loans created as deposits in borrowers' accounts]." (4)

Dangerously inflationary? Not if the money were used to create new goods and services. Price inflation results only when "demand" (money) exceeds "supply" (goods and services). When they increase together, prices remain stable.

Today we are in a dangerous deflationary spiral, as lending has dried up and asset values have plummeted. The monopoly on the creation of money and credit by a private banking fraternity has resulted in a malfunctioning credit system and monetary collapse. Credit markets have been frozen by the wildly speculative derivatives gambles of a few big Wall Street banks, bets that not only destroyed those banks' balance sheets but are infecting the whole private banking system with toxic debris. To get out of this deflationary debt trap requires an injection of new, debt-free money into the economy, something that can best be done through a system of public banks dedicated to serving the public interest, administering credit as a public utility.

Some experts insist that we must tighten our belts and start saving again, in order to rebuild the "capital" necessary for functioning markets; but our markets actually functioned quite well so long as the credit system was working. We have the same real assets (raw materials, oil, technical knowledge, productive capacity, labor force, etc.) that we had before the crisis began. Our workers and factories are sitting idle because the private credit system has failed. A system of public credit could put them back to work again. The notion that "money" is something that has to be "saved" before it can be "borrowed" misconstrues the nature of money and credit. Credit is merely a legal agreement, a "monetization" of future proceeds, a promise to pay later from the fruits of the advance. Banks have created credit on their books for hundreds of years, and this system would have worked quite well had it not been for the enormous tribute siphoned off to private coffers in the form of interest. A public banking system could overcome that problem by returning the interest to the public purse. This is the sort of banking system that was pioneered in the colony of Pennsylvania, where it worked brilliantly well.

Restoring Michigan to Solvency

Among other advantages to a state of owning its own bank are the substantial sums it could save in interest. As Fleetham notes of his own ailing state of Michigan:

"According to recent financial reports (available online), the State of Michigan, the City of Detroit, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the Wayne County Airport, the Detroit Public Schools, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University pay over $800 million a year in interest on long term debt. If you add interest paid by Michigan cities, school districts, and public utilities, the cost to our taxpayers easily tops a billion a year. What does Wall Street do with our billion plus dollars? They decorate their offices like kings."

Interestingly, the projected state budget deficit for 2009 is also $1 billion. If Michigan did not have to pay over a billion dollars in interest to Wall Street, the budget could be balanced and the state could be restored to solvency. A state-owned bank could not only provide interest-free credit for the state but could actually generate revenues for it. Fleetham notes that in 2007, the Bank of North Dakota earned a net profit of $51 million on a loan volume of $2 billion. He comments:

"Last year, Michigan citizens paid over $5 billion dollars in personal income tax. With a state bank like North Dakota's we could reduce this burden, fund new businesses, and restore our crumbling water and sewer systems. And we don't have to feel sorry about Wall Street losing our business. They didn't 'earn' the money they lent us. They created it in computers and charged us interest to boot. Let's follow North Dakota's lead and get free from Wall Street's web."

Taking the Initiative in California

California could do this as well. Robert Ellis is a Tucson talk show host who once worked on Wall Street and has been involved in setting up several banks and financial institutions. In January of this year, he proposed in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger that California could resolve its financial woes by setting up a bank on the model of the Bank of North Dakota. Ellis wrote to the governor:

"I admire your tenacity in dealing with California's financial problems. Your idea of using IOU's was ingenious but there is a better way. The State of California can charter its own bank and issue its own checks to all state employees... . It can also pay all its vendors, contracts and contractors through the bank... . Additionally, once the bank is operational, you can fund your own state projects and you determine the interest rate paid as opposed to being at the mercy of the banks you currently deal with or the interest rates the investment bankers make you pay to issue bonds. By doing this, you will put the state in control of its own destiny and make it the benefactor of its own money.

"... What I am proposing is not new. It has been done by one other state in the nation [North Dakota]. Why should you continue to pay the banks for services and interest on loans when you can receive that interest for the benefit of the state of California? Wouldn't it be better if you could fund your own infrastructure projects without having to get the approval of independent banks or investment bankers? Additionally, you set the interest rate on your own projects. You can even set it at zero if you deem the project worthy enough."

Ellis offered his services in setting up the bank, which he thought could be chartered in a few short months. The Governor has not replied, but some pressure from constituents might encourage a response.

Failing that, there is the initiative and referendum process pioneered in California. It allows state laws to be proposed directly by the public, and the state's Constitution to be amended either by public petition (the "initiative") or by the legislature submitting a proposed constitutional amendment to the electorate (the "referendum"). The initiative is done by writing a proposed constitutional amendment or statute as a petition, which is submitted to the California Attorney General along with a submission fee, which was a modest $200 in 2004. The petition must be signed by registered voters amounting to 8% (for a constitutional amendment) or 5% (for a statute) of the number of people who voted in the most recent election for governor. (5)

As Gandhi said, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow." We the people can beat the Wall Street bankers at their own game, by moving our legislators to set up publicly-owned banks that create credit using the same banking principles that are accepted as standard and usual in the trade by bankers themselves.

CITATIONS:

1. Anne Davies, "Lockdown Vote Saves California from Bankruptcy," theage.com.au (February 21, 2009).

2. John Mitchell, "46 of 50 States Could File Bankruptcy in 2009-2010," Freedom Arizona (January 30, 2009).

3. Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973), excerpted at sonic.net

4. Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at rayservers.com.

5. "California Ballot Proposition," Wikipedia.

.......
Ellen Brown, J.D., wrote this article in March, 2009, for Path to a New Economy, a collection of online articles for YES! Magazine, on economic and financial solutions. Ellen developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, and Forbidden Medicine. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

The Cruise case points to the overlooked notion that the internal mechanisms of Hollywood are not determined entirely by audience desires, as one might expect, nor are they geared to respond solely to the decisions of studio creatives, or even those of the studio heads themselves. In 2000, The Hollywood Reporter released a top 100 list of the most powerful figures in the industry over the past 70 years. Rupert Murdoch, chief of News Corporation, which owns Twentieth Century Fox, was the most powerful living figure. With the exception of director Steven Spielberg (no. 3), no artists appeared in the top 10.

Each of the dominant Hollywood studios ("the majors") is now a subsidiary of a much larger corporation, and therefore is not so much a separate or independent business, but rather just one of a great many sources of revenue in its parent company's wider financial empire. The majors and their parents are: Twentieth Century Fox (News Corp), Paramount Pictures (Viacom), Universal (General Electric/Vivendi), Disney (The Walt Disney Company), Columbia TriStar (Sony), and Warner Brothers (Time Warner). These parent companies are amongst the largest and most powerful in the world, typically run by lawyers and investment bankers.Their economic interests are also sometimes closely tied to politicised areas such as the armaments industry, and they are frequently inclined to cozy-up to the government of the day because it decides on financial regulation.

As Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Professor Ben Bagdikian puts it, whereas once the men and women who owned the media could fit in a "modest hotel ballroom," the same owners (all male) could now fit into a "generous phone booth." He could have added that, whilst a phone box may not exactly be the chosen venue for the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone, these individuals do indeed meet at plush venues such as Idaho's Sun Valley to identify and forge their collective interests.

Of course, the content of a studio's films is not, as a rule, determined entirely by the political and economic interests of its parent company. Studio CEOs typically have considerable leeway to make the pictures they want to make without direct interference from their ultimate masters. At the very least, however, the content of Hollywood studios broadly reflects their wider corporate interests, and, at times, the parent companies behind the studios take a conscious and deliberate interest in certain movies. There is a battle between "top down" and "bottom up" forces, but mainstream media and academia have traditionally focused on the latter, rather than the former.

Consider last year's blockbuster Australia, the epic from Baz Luhrmann. Two of the film's most salient aspects were that, firstly, it glossed-over the history of Aboriginal people, and, secondly, it made Australia look like a fantastic place to go on holiday. This should come as no surprise - Twentieth Century Fox's parent company (Rupert Murdoch's News Corp) - worked hand-in-hand with the Australian government throughout the film's production for mutual interests. The government benefited from Luhrmann's huge tourist campaign, which included not just the feature film itself but also a series of extravagant tie-in advertisements (all in apparent support of its ham-fisted Aborigine "reconciliation" programme). In turn, the government gave its favourite son tens of millions of dollars in tax rebates. The West Australian newspaper even alleged that Murdoch had his "journalistic foot soldiers" ensure that every aspect of his media empire awarded Australia glowing reviews, an assessment nicely illustrated by The Sun, which enjoyed the "rare piece of good old fashioned entertainment" so much that its reviewer was "tempted to nip down to the travel agent."

There are historical precedents for such interference. In 1969 Haskell Wexler -cinematographer on One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - had considerable trouble releasing his classic Medium Cool, which riffed on the anti-war protests at the Democrat Convention the previous year. Wexler claims he has Freedom of Information documents revealing that on the eve of the film's release, Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley and high sources in the Democratic Party let it be known to Gulf and Western (then the parent company of Paramount) that if Medium Cool was released, certain tax benefits and other perks in Gulf and Western's favor wouldn't happen. "A stiff prick has no conscience," Wexler told us angrily, referring to Hollywood's business leaders, "and they have no conscience."

Wexler explained how this corporate plot was enacted so as to minimize attention: "Paramount called me and said I needed releases from all the [protestors] in the park, which was impossible to provide. They said if people went to see that movie and left the theatre and did a violent act, then the offices of Paramount could be prosecuted." Although Paramount was obliged to release the film they successfully pushed for an X rating, advertised it feebly, and forbade Wexler from taking it to film festivals. Hardly the way to make a profit on a movie, but certainly an effective way to protect the broader interests of the parent.

Then there's the more famous case of Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), the Michael Moore blockbuster which the Walt Disney Company tried to scupper despite it "testing through the roof" with sample audiences. Disney's subsidiary Miramax insisted that its parent had no right to block it from releasing the film since its budget was well below the level requiring Disney's approval. Disney representatives retorted that they could veto any Miramax film if it appeared that its distribution would be counterproductive to their interests. Moore's agent Ari Emanuel alleged that Disney's boss Michael Eisner had told him he wanted to back out of the deal due to concerns about political fallout from conservative politicians, especially regarding tax breaks given to Disney properties in Florida like Walt Disney World (where the governor was the then US President's brother, Jeb Bush). Disney also had ties to the Saudi Royal family, which was unfavourably represented in the film: a powerful member of the family, Al-Walid bin Talal, owns a major stake in Eurodisney and had been instrumental in bailing out the financially troubled amusement park. Disney denied any such high political ball game, explaining they were worried about being "dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle," which it said would alienate customers.

Disney has consistently spread pro-establishment messages in its films, particularly under subsidiary banners such as Hollywood Pictures and Touchstone Pictures (although Oliver Stone's 1995 Nixon biopic is a notable exception). Several received generous assistance from the US government: the Pentagon-backed In the Army Now (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), and Armageddon (1998), as well as the CIA-vetted Bad Company (2002) and The Recruit (2003). In 2006, Disney released the TV movie The Path to 9/11, which was heavily skewed to exonerate the Bush administration and blame the Clinton administration for the terrorist attacks, provoking outraged letters of complaint from former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.

The nature of Disney's output makes sense when we consider the interests of the higher echelons of the corporation. Historically, Disney has had close ties with the US defense department, and Walt himself was a virulent anti-communist (though reports about him being a secret FBI informant or even a fascist are rather more speculative). In the 1950s, corporate and government sponsors helped Disney make films promoting President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" policy as well as the infamous Duck and Cover documentary that suggested to schoolchildren that they could survive an atomic attack by hiding under their desks. Even now, a longtime Directors Board member of Disney is John E. Bryson who is also a director of The Boeing Company, one of the world's largest aerospace and defence contractors. Boeing received $16.6bn in Pentagon contracts in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan. This would have been no small incentive for Disney to avoid commissioning films critical of Bush's foreign policy, such as Fahrenheit 9/11.

It is hardly surprising that when Disney released Pearl Harbor (2001) - a simplistic mega-budget movie made with full cooperation from the Pentagon, and which celebrated the American nationalist resurgence following that "day of infamy"- it was widely received with cynicism. Yet, despite lamentable reviews, Disney unexpectedly decided in August 2001 to extend the film's nationwide release window from the standard two-to-four months to a staggering seven months, meaning that this 'summer' blockbuster would now be screening until December. In addition, Disney expanded the number of theatres in which the film was showing, from 116 to 1,036. For the corporations due to profit from the aftermath of 9/11, Pearl Harbor provided grimly convenient mood music.

But whilst movies like Australia and Pearl Harbor receive preferential treatment, challenging and incendiary films are frequently cast into the cinematic memory hole. Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986) was a graphic expose of the Salvadorian civil war; its narrative was broadly sympathetic towards the left wing peasant revolutionaries and explicitly critical of U.S. foreign policy, condemning the United States' support of Salvador's right wing military and infamous death squads. Stone's film was turned down by every major Hollywood studio - with one describing it as a "hateful piece of work" - though it received excellent reviews from many critics. The film was eventually financed by British and Mexican investors and achieved limited distribution. More recently controversial documentaries such as Loose Change (2006/2007), which argued that 9/11 was an "inside job," and Zeitgeist (2007), which presents a frightening picture of global economics, have been viewed by millions through the Internet when corporate media wouldn't touch them.

Universal studios' contemporary output has been less rigidly supportive of US power, as films like Children of Men (2006), Jarhead (2005), and The Good Shepherd (2006) indicate. Still, with movies like U-571 (2000) and Charlie Wilson's War (2007), it makes sense that Universal's parent company is General Electric, whose most lucrative interests relate to weapons manufacturing and producing crucial components for high-tech war planes, advanced surveillance technology, and essential hardware for the global oil and gas industries, notably in post Saddam Iraq. GE's board of directors has strong ties to large liberal organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation. Whilst 'liberal' may sound like a positive term after the unpopularity of Bush's brand of conservatism, liberal organizations are cemented firmly in the bedrock of US elites and have frequently been architects of American interventionist foreign policy, including against Vietnam. They are prepared to ally themselves with conservatives over certain issues, particularly national security, so it should come as no shock to find that GE was close to the Bush Administration through both its former and current CEOs. Jack Welch (CEO from 1981-2001) openly declares disdain for "protocol, diplomacy and regulators" and was even accused by California Congressman Henry Waxman of pressuring his NBC network to declare Bush the winner prematurely in the 2000 "stolen election" when he turned up unannounced in the newsroom during the poll count. Welch's successor, the current GE CEO Jeff Immelt, is a neoconservative and was a generous financial contributor to the Bush re-election campaign.

Perhaps GE/Universal's most eyebrow-raising release was United 93 (2006), billed as the "true account" of how heroic passengers on 9/11 "foiled the terrorist plot" by forcing the plane to crash prematurely in rural Pennsylvania. Although the film made a return on its relatively low investment, it was greeted with a good deal of public apathy and hostility prior to its nation-wide release. At the time, Bush's official 9/11 story was being seriously interrogated by America's independent news media: according to the results of a 2004 Zogby poll, half of New Yorkers believed "US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and 'consciously failed' to act," and, just one month prior to the release of United 93, 83% of CNN viewers recorded their belief "that the US government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks." With the official narrative under heavy fire, the Bush Administration welcomed the release of United 93 with open arms: the film was a faithful audio-visual translation of the 9/11 Commission Report, with "special thanks" to the Pentagon's Hollywood liaison Phil Strub tucked away discreetly in the end credits. Soon after the film's nationwide release date, in what might be interpreted as a cynical PR move and as gesture of official approval, President Bush sat down with some of the victims' family members for a private screening at the White House.

GE/Universal's Munich (2005) - Steven Spielberg's exploration of Israeli vengeance following the Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics - raises similar suspicions. Although the Zionist Organisation of American called for a boycott of the film because they felt it equated Israel with terrorists, such a reading is less than convincing. Indeed, by the time Munich's credits begin to roll its overriding messages have been stamped indelibly into the brain by the film's Israeli Special Forces characters: "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," "We kill for our future, we kill for peace," and "Don't f*ck with the Jews." Predictably, Israel is one of GE's most loyal customers, buying Hellfire II laser missiles as well as propulsion systems for the F-16 Falcon fighter, the F-4 Phantom fighter, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. In Munich's167 minute running time the voice of the Palestinian cause is restricted to two and a half minutes of simplistic dialogue. Rather than being an "evenhanded cry for peace," as the Los Angeles Times hailed it, General Electric's Munich is more easily interpreted as a subtle corporate endorsement of the policies of a loyal customer.

On the most liberal end of the spectrum for movies in recent years has been Warner Bros. - JFK (1991), The Iron Giant (1999), South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999), Good Night and Good Luck (2005), V for Vendetta (2005), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Rendition (2007), and In the Valley of Elah (2007). It is indicative that following complaints about racial stereotyping in Warner Bros.' Pentagon-sponsored action adventure, Executive Decision (1996), the studio took the unusual step of hiring the services of Jack Shaheen, an on-set adviser on racial politics, resulting in what was critically received as one of the best films of its genre in a generation, Three Kings (1999). It may be no coincidence that Warner Brothers' parent company, Time Warner, is less intimately tied to the arms industry or the neoconservative clique.

But to have an idea of what happens to movies when you remove multinational interests from the industry, consider the independent distributor Lions Gate Films, which is still very much a part of the capitalist system (formed in Canada by an investment banker) but not beholden to a multibillion dollar parent corporation with multifarious interests. Although Lions Gate has generated a good deal of politically vague and blood 'n' guts products, it has also been behind some of the most daring and original popular political cinema of the past ten years, criticizing corporatism in American Psycho (2000), US foreign policy in Hotel Rwanda (2004), the arms trade in Lord of War (2005), the U.S. healthcare system in Michael Moore's Sicko (2007), and the U.S. establishment in general in The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006).

It hardly needs re-stating that Hollywood is driven by the desire for dollars rather than artistic integrity. As such, cinema is open to product placement in a variety of forms, from toys, to cars, to cigarettes, and even state-of-the art weaponry (hence the "special thanks" to Boeing in the credits of Iron Man (2008)). Less obvious though - and less well investigated - is how the interests of the studios' parent companies themselves impact on cinema - at both systemic and individual levels. We hope to see critical attention shifted onto the ultimate producers of these films to help explain their deradicalised content, and ultimately to assist audiences in making informed decisions about what they consume. As we peer up from our popcorn it is as well to remember that behind the magic of the movies are the wizards of corporate PR.

Matthew Alford is author of the forthcoming book "Projecting Power: American Foreign Policy and the Hollywood Propaganda System." Robbie Graham is Associate Lecturer in Film at Stafford College. References available on request.

NOTES

Most memorably, Cruise declared his love for Katie Holmes whilst bouncing up and down on Oprah (the chat show, not the woman).

The 2008 Fortune Global 500 list placed General Electric at no. 12 with revenue of $176bn. Sony was at 75, Time Warner at no. 150, The Walt Disney Company at no. 207, and News Corp at no. 280. By way of comparison, Coca Cola is at no. 403.

Interestingly, Disney's CEO Michael Eisner was personally involved when it pulled Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect show after the host committed the cardinal sin of saying that the US use of cruise missiles was more cowardly than the 9/11 attacks, with Eisner "summoning Maher into his office for a hiding" according to Mark Crispin Miller in the Nation.

A less convincing but nevertheless intriguing case can be made for high political/economic influence over the distribution of John Carpenter's satirical sci-fi They Live (1988), which depicted the world as being run by an invading force of evil space aliens, allied with the US establishment. The film was well received by critics (with the notable exceptions of the NYT and Washington Post) and opened at number one in the box office. It easily made its $4m investment back over the weekend, and although by the second weekend it had dropped to fourth place, it still made $2.7m. The distributing studio, Universal Pictures, published an advertisement during its run that showed a skeletal alien standing behind a podium in suit and tie, with a mop of hair similar to that of Dan Quayle, the new US Vice-President-elect. The Presidential election had been just a few days previous, on November 8th. Co-star Keith David observed: "Not that anybody's being paranoid but... suddenly you couldn't see it [They Live] anywhere - it was, like, snatched".

We stated elsewhere that representatives from Universal attended the screening. This was erroneous.

Shaheen also later assisted on Warner Bros.' Syriana (2005).

I don't mean to trivialize America's economic crisis. It is real. And it is serious. Many of my friends are out of work. But while all of us are busy pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, we can't forget about the millions of people in Africa that are still suffering.

Why? Well, it's hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you're barefoot.
Millions of HIV+ Africans can't even afford $0.43 a day to get the medicine they need to stay alive. But you've heard this all before. You've heard countless heartbreaking stories about AIDS in Africa. Yet there still is one largely untold story about the crisis. The story about how our efforts to end the epidemic are actually working. I've seen the evidence. I've seen it first hand.

I spent last month volunteering at a workshop for HIV+ people in western Kenya. It's called Imani Workshops. And for anyone who needs evidence that the aid we send to Africa is truly a hand up, and not a hand out, you need look no further than Imani. The goal of the workshop is to promote economic self-sufficiency for the region's HIV+ people who are too poor, too unskilled, or too stigmatized to secure a job or access credit. These patients, or "interns," are placed at Imani by social workers at an affiliated HIV/AIDS clinic. Once at Imani, interns spend three months at the workshop learning handicraft skills in jewelry making, pottery, paper making, and tailoring.

At the end of their three months, these certified Imani artisans head out to find a job and make room for the next round of interns. The Imani model empowers HIV+ people without encouraging dependency on the donor community. Furthermore, the workshop supports itself entirely through the sales of the products they make. Imani not only promotes economic self-sufficiency, it embodies it.

Imani Workshops is a program within one of Africa's largest, most comprehensive HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention models (AMPATH). Anti-retroviral drug therapy (ARV) is at the core of the model's treatment program (ARVs are the medicine HIV+ people need to stay alive). Without ARVs, Imani would not be possible. You see, Imani is run entirely by and for HIV+ people. But ARVs are just the first step toward restoring the health of those affected by HIV.

ARVs are the boots. Imani provides the straps. And from there, well, you get the idea.

Chris Murphy
Planning Director, Modernista
Proud supporter of (RED)

(RED) was created by Bono and Bobby Shriver to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund by teaming up with the world's most iconic brands to produce (PRODUCT) RED-branded products. A percentage of each (PRODUCT) RED product sold is given to The Global Fund, to invest in African AIDS programs, with an emphasis on women and children. JOINRED.COM

Consider: by 2005, the trade imbalance between China and the United States was 202 billion dollars, having multiplied nearly twenty-fold in just fifteen years. China now holds 922 billion dollars' worth of U.S. Treasury bills, and a total of almost two trillion in U.S. dollars. Its economy expands nearly 10% a year, while the American economy is hovering on the edge of a full-scale depression, and will need Chinese loans to bail it out. And while the American manufacturing sector gets weaker with each passing day, China has become the workshop of the world. It won't be long before it starts to flex its muscles militarily as well.

Such are the conclusions of a number of distinguished economists and political scientists. What few of them provide, however, is an explanation for this turn of events. A notable exception is a recent book by the Irish journalist Eamonn Fingleton, In the Jaws of the Dragon, which makes the point that while the Americans spend like there is no tomorrow, the top-down bureaucratic system of China forces its citizens to save rather than consume. In this authoritarian, state-capitalist arrangement, a number of policies make consumer spending very difficult, with the resulting savings generating huge cash reserves that are then deployed in boosting key industries. It's a coercive system, says Fingleton, and it works. (In fact, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did something similar during World War II, and the U.S. savings rate went from 5% to 25% in three years. The resulting capital was used to pay for armaments manufacture.)

Yet as Fingleton recognizes, the policy of restricted consumption and enforced savings has a deeper root to it, what he refers to as the "Confucian truth ethic." Although there are real differences among the various schools of Eastern philosophy, they do have a number of important things in common; and as with the Judeo-Christian ethic of the West, these things go very deep. Whether we are talking about the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects, or the Chuang Tzu, two items in particular stand out as central to this way of thinking: the notion that the truth is relative, or provisional; and that harmony is the ultimate end of society. Before I say any more about contemporary China, it might be worth our while to explore these themes in a bit more detail.

In a sense, harmony and radical relativism form the shadow side of the Western tradition, which prizes individualism and the reliability of (binary) logic and empirical evidence. This lends Eastern thought a "forbidden fruit" aspect, an exotic aura that exerted a strong influence on many young people in the U.S. during the sixties and seventies, especially. I remember my own introduction to it during that time, and the sense that a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. For Western individualism and scientific reasoning can finally seem oppressive, too tight a box to live in; in which case thought systems such as Taoism and Buddhism appear to be a breath of fresh air. "Go with the flow," we all told each other during those heady days in California.

A particularly significant milestone of the genre during that time was the publication, in 1974, of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was Pirsig's claim that this Eastern shadow tradition showed up in ancient Greece as Sophism, the bête noire of Plato and his school. In fact, so forbidden was this fruit for Pirsig that he finally went insane in the pursuit of the "lost" tradition. Whether or not the Sophists really were Taoists, however, is not the point. What matters historically is that they represented an alternate fork in the road to Platonic doctrine, and one which Plato did his best to squash. The founder of the school, Protagoras (after whom Plato named one of his dialogues), was fond of saying that "man is the measure of all things"; by which he meant that every person has his or her own truth, and that all of these are equally valid. Rhetoric was the issue, he taught his disciples, not logic; persuasion, not reason, was what counted in any given argument. For Plato, this was the philosophy of the mob, of people who were morally and intellectually dead and interested only in acquiring the gift of gab. As Pirsig notes, Plato won the battle-at least in theory-and the Western notion of truth (postmodernism and perhaps law courts excepted) is that it really does exist, and is not merely a function of who is speaking or how persuasive an orator he or she is. As the British philosopher A.N. Whitehead famously remarked, Western philosophy is essentially "a series of footnotes to Plato."

But the East went in a different direction, and for those accustomed to only one way of thinking, it definitely casts a spell. "Choosing is a disease of the mind," as one Eastern text puts it. All is in flux; there is no Yes or No. We must avoid getting attached to Right or Wrong, because they fluctuate depending on the person and the circumstances. "For each individual there is a different 'true' and a different 'false'," says the Chuang Tzu. By following the Tao, going with the flow, one attains the best possible outcome. As the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping once put it, the Chinese are "crossing the river by feeling for the stones."

That the truth is contextual, says Fingleton, means that expediency, or the optimization of what is regarded as beneficial, is the true priority. Thus Zhou Enlai, the consummate Chinese politician, was said to have never told the truth-or a lie. In effect, he made no distinction between the two; he just "felt for the stones."

Again, on an individual level, Eastern philosophy can afford a large measure of relief. The Western reality system exalts notions of intentionality and deliberate action; it holds that the world can and should be bent to the human will. But this doesn't really work in human life, does it? We all eventually have to confront the fact that there are many things in life-perhaps the most important ones-that are simply beyond our control. "Those who would take hold of the world and act on it," wrote Lao Tzu, "never, I notice, succeed." Hence the Chinese concept of wu wei, or not-doing; which, properly understood, is not the same thing as passivity. Rather, it refers to surrender, to letting things take their course, follow the Tao.

The word "Tao" appears for the first time in the Analects of Confucius, and means the right way of conduct for both the individual and society. According to the American sinologist Herlee Creel, contemplative Taoism, which operates on the individual level, strives for inner harmony. But there is also, he says, a purposive Taoism, which seeks to use the techniques of nonaction and nonjudgmentalism as a means to power. In other words, be without desire in order to get what you desire. This theme-which is essentially one of pure manipulation-features big in the Tao Te Ching, a book that (like The Prince, by Machiavelli) gives advice to kings and lords, and sees the Tao as a technique of control. "The sage, in governing," says the Tao Te Ching, "empties the people's minds and fills their bellies, weakens their wills and strengthens their bones." We are starting to approach the political philosophy of the Chinese state, in which 97% of the population (a total of 1.3 billion people) have full bellies (no mean achievement, by the way).

This, then, is a system of "soft authoritarianism," in which relationships take precedence over laws-which are, as Fingleton points out, only selectively enforced anyway. Confucianism, he says, is "every enlightened despot's perfect ideology." Its emphasis on harmony is easily twisted into an insistence on conformity. ("The nail that stands out is likely to get hit down," as the Japanese like to say.) It enjoins the people to passivity, and legitimizes authoritarian leadership. Indeed, it is hard to dissent from a system in which there is no right or wrong, true or false, but only that which supposedly promotes the commonweal. Those who try-like the Falun Gong movement that was founded in 1992, and whose doctrines are basically Buddhist-become the target of government crackdown in short order. The Communist Party's monopoly of power is presented to the Chinese people as a "natural" fact of life: the way, the Tao.

Much of Fingleton's concern in his book is over the way in which he sees America becoming "Confucianized," the way U.S. corporations play ball with the Chinese state so as to acquire influence and get on the gravy train. Thus Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft all agreed to abide by China's censorship rules in serving Chinese Internet users-for example, to expunge all references to Tiananmen Square and Taiwanese independence. In addition, top technology firms in the U.S. contracted with China to develop fire walls that block access of Chinese citizens to "dangerous" information, including important Western websites. Under the influence of the China lobby, pro-Chinese journalists and academics in the United States get their reputations enhanced, go to exclusive dinner parties, and receive lavish fees for lectures. Those who are critical are quickly left out of the loop, and barred from sources of research and information. In general, the Chinese system is one of institutionalized bribery, in which corruption functions like legitimate payment for services rendered. The process, says Fingleton, is destroying American values (Enron executives did wind up in jail, after all). It is China that is changing us, he concludes, not we who are changing China. We are not democratizing them-far from it. Rather, they are Confucianizing us.

All this is probably true, but it seems to be part of a larger, graver loss, that of the Enlightenment tradition itself. Eastern philosophy may be the shadow side of that tradition, but it should be clear by now that the shadow has a shadow. How can the West confront a nation whose government is endlessly slippery, and that meets confrontation with Sophism, in effect? And if, as Mao Zedong predicted, "the East wind will prevail over the West," what will it be like to live in a world dominated by an ethos in which the truth doesn't, for all practical purposes, exist, and in which everyone is expected to fall in step with some enforced "harmony"? There is a word for this type of regime: Orwellian. The loss of the Enlightenment yardstick of truth to some kind of pervasive amorality would represent a loss far deeper than an economic one, it seems to me. A Confucianized society in which truth is nothing more than expediency is its own kind of prison; "go with the flow" can become its own form of ego, and of repression.

Some time ago, I was talking with a Mexican colleague of mine, a very brilliant teacher and administrator who had read up on China and was aware of some of these issues. "There may come a time," he said with a sigh, "when we shall actually miss the gringos."

What a thought, eh?

Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. During 1982-88 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor's Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness-The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)-and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a "Notable Book" by the New York Times Book Review.

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (IPS) - CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus and Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) Commander General Ray Odierno have submitted assessments of Iraq combat troop withdrawal plans to President Barack Obama based on the premise that his 16-month withdrawal plan would pose significantly greater risk to "security gains" than the 23-month plan they favour.

But a senior commander in Iraq appeared to contradict that premise last week by declaring that security gains in the Shi'a provinces of Iraq are "permanent", and a field commander in Iraq says there is no objective basis for any Petraeus-Odierno finding that Obama's plan carries greater risk than their 23-month plan.

Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, U.S. commander for the eight southern provinces of Iraq, denied in remarks to reporters Feb. 12 that the security gains in that region were fragile, contrary to the premise that Odierno has publicly asserted. Oates cited the dramatic reduction in activities by Shi'a militia fighters and the holding of the Jan. 31 elections without any major attacks.

In a previous press briefing Jan. 14, Oates had told reporters that, even if violence were to break out after provincial elections, Iraqi security forces "are well prepared to handle that".

He also cast doubt on Iranian involvement with Shi'a militias in the south, saying he had "no evidence or reports of people training in Iran", despite periodic "anecdotal intelligence reports" of such training camps.

Oates said he had already reassigned combat forces in the region to non-combat missions, either training or economic development, despite grumbling by soldiers.

Although Oates did not explicitly address the issue of drawdown plans, he has been known to favour a more rapid withdrawal from Iraq than Petraeus and Odierno for some time, according to a military officer who served under Odierno and is familiar with Oates's views. "His belief is that we need to get out of the country and let the Iraqis take responsibility for their areas," the officer, who asked not to be identified, told IPS.

A field commander in Iraq, who spoke with IPS on the understanding that he would not be identified, asserted flatly that there is no greater risk associated with President Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan than with the 23-month plan, contrary to Petraeus and Odierno.

The officer said that the U.S. military presence has already "passed the tipping point of diminishing returns" in relation to stability and security in Iraq. "The longer we stay now, the less we achieve," he said.

Neither Petraeus nor Odierno has offered any public explanation for their argument that a 16-month drawdown plan would pose greater risk to stability and security than one lasting seven months longer. However, Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, an adviser to Petraeus, argued in Foreign Affairs last fall that the U.S. military presence is "essential to stabilize a system of local ceasefires" between Sunnis and Shi'as and between the militias loyal to Moqtada al Sadr and the Shi'a-dominated government.

But the field commander now serving in Iraq told IPS that the U.S. military mission in Iraq has "little correlation" with the present ceasefire between Sunnis and Shi'as. The Sunni-Shi'a conflict, said the officer, "is now one for political supremacy, not a counterinsurgency as defined in the Army's Counterinsurgency manual".

He said he had been briefed recently on the U.S. mission in Iraq and had been told it is still a counterinsurgency mission, as it has been for several years. There was "no mention of any peacekeeping function aimed at maintaining ceasefires," the officer said.

The idea of enforcing ceasefires is advocated by some in the U.S. command, he said, but that would be "a very different mission from counterinsurgency".

Biddle confirmed in an interview with IPS that the U.S. military peacekeeping role he advocates has not been adopted by the MNF-I command. A number of officers in the command, he said, still believe the U.S. objective in Iraq is "the gradual elimination" of all forces competing with the Iraqi government's security forces.

Ironically, it was Biddle who revealed in Congressional testimony last April that the reduction in sectarian violence in and around Baghdad beginning in 2007 for which Odierno had credited the U.S. troop surge was actually the result of the heavy defeat of Sunni insurgent forces in a year-long battle with Shi'a militias for control of Baghdad in 2006. Biddle observed that the U.S. military tried to stop the sectarian violence but played "no decisive role" in the ultimate ceasefire between Sunni and Shi'a.

In an online discussion on the Washington Post website Feb. 9, Biddle conceded that U.S. troop strength had been insufficient in 2006 to prevent the sectarian violence in Baghdad.

That revelation undercuts the Petraeus-Odierno argument that keeping combat troops in Iraq longer than 16 months would help maintain the present ceasefire between Sunni and Shi'a forces. In 16 months, U.S. combat troop strength will be only a fraction of its 2006 level, even under the Petraeus-Odierno plan.

The U.S. field commander said that, even if U.S. troops were given the mission of enforcing ceasefires, it would not give the U.S. military any additional influence over either side to remain several more months beyond the 16-month withdrawal period.

"At some point [U.S. troops] are going to have to leave," said the commander. "The Iraqis are going to resolve political differences without American military muscle to enforce it. It doesn't matter if that process begins in 16 months, 23 months, or 23 years. We gain nothing with the additional time."

"The 1st Cavalry Division cannot make the Shiites and Sunnis kiss and make up," he observed. "They can't make the problems of oil revenue sharing get resolved. Those are issues only Arabs and Kurds can resolve."

A second U.S. officer now serving in Iraq, who also asked not to be identified, expressed doubt that a 16-month withdrawal is logistically feasible, based on his experience in a specific area south of Baghdad. But he agreed that it is time to complete the turnover of responsibility to the Iraqi Army and rapidly withdraw U.S. combat troops.

"It's time for us to get out," he said in an interview. "If the U.S. military continues to do the job, the Iraqis are going to be lazy, and they won't do it themselves."

The officer conceded that the Iraq army "is nowhere near as competent as the U.S. Army," and that "there may be some breakout of bad things" after the troop withdrawal. Nevertheless, the officer warned, "If you don't give the Iraqis the mantle of responsibility, we will be there for another 25-30 years."

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

If you're reading this book you already know we're living in perilous times. By now most people are waking up to that fact. Even President Obama has warned us that difficult times lie ahead. Just days before taking office when asked if sacrifice will be required of everyone, Obama told the nation, "Everyone is going to have to give. Everybody's going to have to have some skin in the game."

But even recognizing that times are tough, chances are reading this book will feel overwhelming and unsettling at times. I know it has been for me and I've been studying, writing, and teaching about the implications of such threats as peak oil, climate change, and economic collapse over half a decade. But I'd like to suggest that we welcome whatever feelings of overwhelm or disquiet this book may stir in us, because like the medicine our mothers gave us as children, they will make us better.

I say this because Carolyn is not one to beat around the bush. Her focus is not on statistics, charts, and data demonstrating the factual realities of our eco-nomic situation. There are ample books with such information. Most of them touch lightly on the focus of this book, firmly acknowledging its importance, but skittering on to the facts.

In Peak Everything, for example, Richard Heinberg emphasizes that "Much of the human impact (of peak oil and climate change) will be measurable in economic terms; however, individual and collective psychological effects will perhaps be of equal and often greater significance." Having observed the effects economic collapse of the USSR in the 1990's, Dmitry Orlov agrees. In Reinventing Collapse, he writes, "Economic collapse is about the worst time for someone to suffer a nervous breakdown, yet this is what often happens."

Fact is, the future is going to be hard to swallow, not only presenting practical day-to-day challenges but deeply impacting our emotional and spiritual lives. In Sacred Demise Carolyn doesn't just touch on this fact. She dares to make it the sole focus of our attention, reaching far beneath the statistic, charts, and generalizations about their implications and delving deeply into the heart and soul of the inner traumas and turmoil we will most likely encounter. She zeroes right in on the very places we want to run away from, ignore, and rationalize, including the profound loss we will feel.

This naked honesty about such matters is only the context of the book, not its purpose. This is not a doom and gloom book. It's about looking squarely at the reality of our circumstances, as incomprehensible and uncomfortable as they may be, and exploring the potential for personal growth, transformation, and resurrection.

By openly sharing her personal experiences and the wisdom, poetry, questions, and activities included in the book, she draws upon herself to understand and grow from our circumstances by infusing them with compassion. Carolyn makes us feel safe venturing into the tender, vulnerable places.

She says let's look straight on at what we're facing and allow it to be a grand teaching to deepen our understanding of life and our place in it. While the reality of what we are dealing with may be overwhelming when seen with such stark honesty, isn't that what we yearn for? Isn't the failure to talk together in this way what unsettles us most? Like the young child whose parents won't talk about a life-threatening illness that's befallen their household or the child who on the way to the dentist is told "It won't hurt at bit," we don't want to be blindsided by realities that could be opportunities instead to prepare ourselves and make ourselves strong and capable.

After all, what is being overwhelmed but a just fast flowing river of experience we need to catch our breath for; a rug pulled out from beneath our feet to get up from, an unexpected encounter we can surprise ourselves with by responding to aptly? Chances are as you read on page-by-page you will begin to feel oddly relieved. You'll be getting your bearings in a reality that at first seems foreign and frightening but gradually reveals itself as a truth you have long known already.

Certainly that has been true for me. From the time I was a small child I sensed there was something very wrong with how things work in our human-made world. I spent many hours out of doors where everything seemed to make sense, but as I matured I concluded there must be some flaw within myself that was preventing me from understanding what everyone else seemed to grasped so easily, that our culture works to our best interest even if it appears otherwise. With that mind I undertook the arduous task of molding myself into what was expected of me hoping at some point everything would fall into place as promised.

It was not until I entered the ecopsychology PhD program that I came to see how terribly disconnected, distorted, and dysfunctional our human world has become; how tragically separated we've become from the natural world we are innately part of. As I began to learn from nature how naturally other life forms function, I was heartened by my four years in which I had the pleasure of experiencing how naturally and organically life could unfold. Oh, surely not without challenge or discomfort, but like riding down that fast-flowing river. At times it's surging furiously; at other times it's bubbling along gently. But it's always ever- changing and engaging, always keeping me on my toes, yet something perfectly natural I could navigate as long as I paid attention.

"Ah, ha!" I concluded, at last I will know how to live in our world! When I complete the program I will return to the "normal world" and just continue living in accord with nature's ways. But that was not to be. Returning to the "normal world" was one of the most difficult experiences of my life. My short-lived, free-flowing journey through life ran smack dab into a massive cultural dam of expectations and limitations as difficult for us to escape from as it is for any river to circumvent the manmade dams we've constructed to divert and contain.

This is when I realized fully how virtually impossible it is to function naturally and healthfully within the demands of our growth-oriented, consumer-driven, materialistic, and hierarchical culture. But that's the world that's crumbling now. While we may enjoy many of its conveniences and comforts, or at least have the promise of enjoying them, we also know the price we pay to pursue and maintain them is high. The stress, the long hours, the fast pace, the pressure, the fatigue, and the demands on our time by tasks far different from those we'd prefer. Our way of life is not only wearing down the natural world, it's also wearing down our psychic and our physical well-being. No matter how many possessions we garner or how much money we make, there is never enough to quell our yearning for a greater sense of peace, potency, normalcy, and well-being.

Granted, the difficulties we're facing will not bring us this kind of well-being anytime soon. Probably anything but, at first, because few of us are prepared mentally or spiritually for the onslaught of feelings, the tide of emotions, the rush of the unexpected that is engulfing us. After all, the world that anchors our daily lives now is collapsing right along with the dam upon which our current way of life in built. We don't know if we'll make it to the bottom of the spillway as the dam cracks and breaks away. Assuredly some of us won't. Even if we do, there is no guaranteed, made-to-order world awaiting us on the river once it has burst forth from the dam. For sure there will be no welcoming "comfort inns" along the shore. We're uncertain what the unleashed river of our life will look like or if we will have the knowledge, skills, and acumen to survive in it.

But life, death, mystery, uncertainty, paradox, and danger are all part of the natural world we inhabit. As Henry David Thoreau discovered and expressed so aptly after abandoning his attempt to climb Maine's Mt. Ktaadn, there is in nature "a force not bound to be kind to man, an awesome, primal force of evolving matter-in-motion," a force, I might add, that has proven to be beyond our control to manipulate and mould to our desire. This simple insight is not easily accepted in our culture where we learn that anything we believe, we can achieve, and it is something Carolyn invites us to address before it's too late.

Sacred Demise is an opportunity to do the emotional and spiritual preparation we need to be present, awake, and responsive in awesome circumstances we can't control or prevent. Each chapter invites us to delve deeper into ourselves, deeper into who we are and how we fit into the natural world outside our roles in a crumbling system. From that blatantly honest, deep place of our hearts and souls we can begin to find our way to a more natural way of life and glimpse how the grand unleashing of the waters constrained behind our current way of life could bring us the peace, potency, normalcy, and well-being we yearn for.

The operative word in this possibility is find. Throughout Sacred Demise, Carolyn refers to many insights from Viktor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who wrote in Man's Search for Meaning of his experiences in the Nazi death camps. Some years ago I had the honor and pleasure of interviewing Frankl. His rather stern rebuke of a question I raised left me with an enigma I spent many years wondering about. Not until midway through my ecopsychology program and many learning experiences in nature did I finally understand what Frankl was getting at and why he correctly me so sharply. I had made an innocent error common to our culture, an error we all need to correct to be prepared mentally and emotionally for the years ahead.

As I began to ask how we create meaning in our lives, Frankl interrupted me abruptly, "Not create meaning, find meaning." And so it is in the adventure Carolyn invites us to undertake in Sacred Demise. The pages that follow are an invitation to find meaning in a time of collapse so that when our preconceived and manufactured dreams for how we'd like things will often no longer be relevant, it needn't be also the end of joy and value. This is a worthy task because only from a place of such personal meaning can we build new lives along life's free-flowing river, if not for ourselves then at least for those who come after us.

Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist, provides continuing education courses for helping professionals through the Pine Mountain Institute and directs Let's Live Local, a non-profit organization working to build local resilience. She's the co-author of Middle-Class Lifeboat, and a trainer for the US Transition Initiatives Network.

BY MICHAEL PARENTI

Part opportunism, part careerism, part willful denial (or ignorance) of true capitalist and imperial dynamics, and part attachment to the comforts of being within the respectable fold of "permissible" criticism, Left Anticommunism continues to take a huge toll on the American left. In this typically comprehensive and incisive essay, Michael Parenti explores the reasons why the Left anti-communist stance must be seen for what it is: a de facto collaboration with the forces defending the corporate status quo. [This selection is from Parenti's book Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (City Lights, 1997). It is reproduced here by courtesy of the author. ]

LEFT ANTICOMMUNISM | [print_link]

By Michael Parenti

In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

Genuflection to Orthodoxy

Many on the U.S. Left have exhibited a Soviet bashing and Red baiting that matches anything on the Right in its enmity and crudity. Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about "left intellectuals" who try to "rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements" and "then beat the people into submission. . . . You start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn't lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the right. . . . We're seeing it right now in the [former] Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising Americans" (Z Magazine, 10/95).

Chomsky's imagery is heavily indebted to the same U.S. corporate political culture he so frequently criticizes on other issues. In his mind, the revolution was betrayed by a coterie of "communist thugs" who merely hunger for power rather than wanting the power to end hunger. In fact, the communists did not "very quickly" switch to the Right but struggled in the face of a momentous onslaught to keep Soviet socialism alive for more than seventy years. To be sure, in the Soviet Union's waning days some, like Boris Yeltsin, crossed over to capitalist ranks, but others continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves, many meeting their deaths during Yeltsin's violent repression of the Russian parliament in 1993.

Some leftists and others fall back on the old stereotype of power-hungry Reds who pursue power for power's sake without regard for actual social goals. If true, one wonders why, in country after country, these Reds side with the poor and powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves, rather than reaping the rewards that come with serving the well-placed.

For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the United States have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist Left.

Adam Hochschild: Keeping his distance from the "Stalinist Left" and recommending same posture to fellow progressives.

Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they "weaken their credibility" (Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in the Cold-War condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of communists so that it not be accused of being communist (Guardian, 3/16/83). If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchhunters. Purging the Left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1949 some twelve unions were ousted from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1.7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late 1940s, to avoid being "smeared" as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations.

The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those on the Right. Then and now, many on the Left have failed to realize that those who fight for social change on behalf of the less privileged elements of society will be Red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communists or not. For ruling interests, it makes little difference whether their wealth and power is challenged by "communist subversives" or "loyal American liberals." All are lumped together as more or less equally abhorrent.

Even when attacking the Right, the left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that "when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, [Reagan] will change not his mind but the facts." While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism "both of the Right and Left," individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote.

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a "willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual's point of view is really dangerous" (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.

EDITORS' SIDEBAR

GEORGE ORWELL (né Eric Blair). The events and characters in his famous novel, Animal Farm, satirize Stalinism ("Animalism"), authoritarian government and human stupidity, casting all revolutionary projects in a cynical haze of improbability. As could have been expected, bourgeois critics found the book irresistible. It was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005),^[3] and was number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels. None of this denies, of course, that Orwell was an extremely gifted writer.

ANTICOMMUNISM'S INTERNATIONAL "PEDIGREE": GEORGE ORWELL AND ARTHUR KOESTLER |||||| American liberals and professional anticommunists can take refuge in the example of distinguished figures such as George Orwell, who, after fighting the Fascists in Spain as an anarcho-sindicalist, turned his talents to invidious attacks on the Soviet Union and the communist vision, in general. A similar apostate is Arthur Koestler, a onetime member of the German Communist Party who promptly shed his allegiance to the revolutionary cause after emigrating to Britain. Koestler, along with Stephen Spender, Ignazio Silone, Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, and Richard Wright constituted the sextet behind The God that Failed, a volume packing the testimonies of famous ex-Communists who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays was the authors' disillusionment with and abandonment of Communism. The promotional byline to the book was "Six famous men tell how they changed their minds about Communism." The book, a classical work of Anglo-American anti-communist propaganda, was conceived by Richard Crossman, a British Labor politician and self-described 'socialist" who eventually became one of the Labor Party's leading Zionists and anti-communists, and precursor to Tony Blair.--Eds.

ARTHUR KOESTLER The publication in 1940 of ''Darkness at Noon,'' his classic novel about the Moscow trials, brought Koestler a celebrity he had never before enjoyed. It also made him one of the most discussed and despised ex- Communists in the Western world - a figure about whom intellectuals everywhere felt compelled to take a position - for ''Darkness at Noon'' was the work of a writer who had served the Communist Party for eight years in pre-Hitler Germany, in Stalin's Russia and in France and Spain in the 1930's before making his break. Its author thus became something of a leader in the intellectual cold war that accompanied the political cold war of the late 40's and early 50's - a position he attempted to relinquish when he made his farewell to politics in the mid-50's and turned his energies to other causes. In June 1950, Koestler attended and delivered the keynote address at a conference of anti-Communist intellectuals in Berlin that led to the founding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (a CIA-funded front). He was made a Commander in the Order of the British Empire in the 1970s.

Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish--while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in South Africa.

Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for "the poor little children who got fed under communism" (his words).

Slinging Labels

Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as "Soviet apologists" and "Stalinists," even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the Left we refused to uncritically swallow U.S. media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did.

Saturated by anticommunist orthodoxy, most U.S. leftists have practiced a left McCarthyism against people who did have something positive to say about existing communism, excluding them from participation in conferences, advisory boards, political endorsements, and left publications. Like conservatives, left anticommunists tolerated nothing less than a blanket condemnation of the Soviet Union as a Stalinist monstrosity and a Leninist moral aberration.

That many U.S. leftists have scant familiarity with Lenin's writings and political work does not prevent them from slinging the "Leninist" label. Noam Chomsky, who is an inexhaustible fount of anticommunist caricatures, offers this comment about Leninism: "Western and also Third World intellectuals were attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals." Here Chomsky fashions an image of power-hungry intellectuals to go along with his cartoon image of power-hungry Leninists, villains seeking not the revolutionary means to fight injustice but power for power's sake. When it comes to Red-bashing, some of the best and brightest on the Left sound not much better than the worst on the Right.

At the time of the 1996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: "Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize." U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.

Lenin in his office (1918): much excoriated, seldom read, and rarely understood, the father of the Russian Revolution remains a threatening figure to Western publics. [--Eds]

Lenin constantly dealt with the problem of avoiding the two extremes of liberal bourgeois opportunism and ultra-left adventurism. Yet he himself is repeatedly identified as an ultra-left putschist by mainstream journalists and some on the Left. Whether Lenin's approach to revolution is desirable or even relevant today is a question that warrants critical examination. But a useful evaluation is not likely to come from people who misrepresent his theory and practice.

Left anticommunists find any association with communist organizations to be morally unacceptable because of the "crimes of communism." Yet many of them are themselves associated with the Democratic Party in this country, either as voters or members, seemingly unconcerned about the morally unacceptable political crimes committed by leaders of that organization. Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of innocent life; the FBI was given authority to inflitrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist Party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a "national emergency"; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political associations and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witchhunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic that worked in favor of Franco's fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated. And for the better part of a century, the Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party protected racial segregation and stymied all anti-lynching and fair employment bills. Yet all these crimes, bringing ruination and death to many, have not moved the liberals, the social democrats, and the "democratic socialist" anticommunists to insist repeatedly that we issue blanket condemnations of either the Democratic Party or the political system that produced it, certainly not with the intolerant fervor that has been directed against existing communism.

Pure Socialism vs. Siege Socialism

The upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party "state capitalism" or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries "socialist" is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world--as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.

First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West, as were their personal incomes and life styles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess.

The "lavish life" enjoyed by East Germany's party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the "lavish" consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.

Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.

Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.

Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.

All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.

Chile's experiment in free market capitalism at gunpoint under Augusto Pinochet deepened the nation's pronounced ill distribution of income and wealth. Today, even under two successive social democrat regimes, more than 65% of the population lack adequate housing and food, and unemployment is rampant. [--Eds]

But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this "pure socialism" view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.

The pure socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little room for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they "feel betrayed" by this or that revolution.

The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism--not created from one's imagination but developed through actual historical experience--could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:

How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the "nature" of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this "nature" come from? Was this "nature" disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? . . . Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of "socialism" and the negative of "bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny" interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life. (Carl Shames, correspondence to me, 1/15/92.)

The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the "direct actions" of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic's own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.

Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:

It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe--and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them--all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. . . .

These leaders weren't in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make]. (Guardian, 11/13/91)

To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.

Decentralization vs. Survival

For a people's revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society's institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone's liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.

Stalin, Lenin and Kalinin (1919). The struggle to stabilize a nation in ruins after a a period of war, the severe turmoil of civil war, and Western encirclement, forced the hand of the Soviet leadership in the direction of centralization. The latter was later reviled by Western propaganda as a drive for personal power by revolutionary cadres inherent in all forms of communism. [--Eds]

Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. "Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta)," Engels writes. "[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces]." It was "the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other."

Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency--which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks' siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers' Opposition and other factional groups within the party. "The time has come," he told an enthusiastically concurring Tenth Party Congress, "to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition." Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.

Only a month earlier, in April 1921, Lenin had called for more worker representation on the party's Central Committee. In short, he had become not anti-worker but anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution--like every other--that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way.

Allied troops Vladivostok parade (1918). With the end of the WWI, the Allies, fearful of Bolshevism, openly intervened in the Russian Civil War giving support to the pro-tsarist, anti-Bolshevik White forces. Severely short of troops to spare, the British and French requested that President Wilson provide American soldiers for the Intervention Campaign. In July 1918, against the advice of the War Department, Wilson agreed to the participation of 5,000 U.S. Army soldiers in the campaign as the "American North Russia Expeditionary Force" (a.k.a. the Polar Bear Expedition) who were sent to Arkhangelsk, while another 8,000 soldiers, organised as the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, were shipped to Vladivostok from the Philippines and from Camp Fremont in California. Eventually, from North Russia to the Crimea, more than 180,000 soldiers from 13 nations were deployed. The Americans left in 1920, but the Japanese contingent remained until 1922. [--Eds]

By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base.

The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people. It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of an invasion from the West. "Money was spent like water, men froze, hungered and suffered but the construction went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history."

Stalin's prophecy that the Soviet Union had only ten years to do what the British had done in a century proved correct. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, that same industrial base, safely ensconced thousands of miles from the front, produced the weapons of war that eventually turned the tide. The cost of this survival included 22 million Soviets who perished in the war and immeasurable devastation and suffering, the effects of which would distort Soviet society for decades afterward.

All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not "make inevitable" the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of "suspect" nationalities.

Because of its sheer brutality, the Nazi invasion united the Russian people to an unprecedented level. Roza Yegorovna Shanina (1924 - January 28, 1945) was one of the innumerable Russian heroes who volunteered early for service. A much decorated Soviet sniper during WWII, she was responsible for 54 confirmed kills, including 12 enemy snipers, making her one of the greatest snipers of all time. She was awarded the Order of Glory on June 18 and again on September 22, 1944. Shanina died in a battle at the age of 21. Shanina had four brothers: Mikhail, Fedor, Sergei, and Marat. Mikhail died during the Siege of Leningrad in 1941, while Fedor was killed the same year during the Battle of Crimea. Sergei never returned from the war alive, leaving Marat as the only survivor. The price paid by most Russian families in what is known in that nation as The Great Patriotic War dwarves that of any other nation, including Germany itself. [--Eds]

The transforming effects of counterrevolutionary attack have been felt in other countries. A Sandinista military officer I met in Vienna in 1986 noted that Nicaraguans were "not a warrior people" but they had to learn to fight because they faced a destructive, U.S.-sponsored mercenary war. She bemoaned the fact that war and embargo forced her country to postpone much of its socio-economic agenda. As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola and numerous other countries in which U.S.-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmlands, villages, health centers, and power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousands--the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib or mercilessly bled beyond recognition. This reality ought to earn at least as much recognition as the suppression of dissidents in this or that revolutionary society.

The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist governments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the U.S. Left would be free from the albatross of existing communism, or as left theorist Richard Lichtman put it, "liberated from the incubus of the Soviet Union and the succubus of Communist China."

In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe seriously weakened the numerous Third World liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with U.S. global counterrevolutionaries around the globe.

In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. "Capitalism with a human face" is being replaced by "capitalism in your face." As Richard Levins put it, "So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay" (Monthly Review, 9/96).

Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it.

Michael Parenti's brave analyses of politics, media, and history have introduced generations of social change activists to the unvarnished realities of U.S. and world politics and fortified their arguments in the culture struggles of our time. Often alone and out front, he has set an example for left intellectuals by consistently defying all orthodoxies and refusing to play by the establishment's gatekeepers' conventional rules. His recent books include: Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights); Democracy for the Few, 8th ed. (Wadsworth); and God and His Demons (forthcoming). He is also the author of one of the finest and most thought-provoking volumes ever written on classical history, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (see below). Anyone who reads it will never take Shakespeare's idea of Julius Caesar, Brutus and the rest of this tragic cast in the same light. For further information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org. All books written by Michael Parenti are part of Cyrano's Journal's Library of recommended titles.

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Note: Photos, captions and sidebars are the sole responsibility of the editors, and they should not be attributed to Dr. Parenti.

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RECOMMENDED BY THE EDITORS: THE ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CAESAR--It's hard to recommend just one title in Michael Parenti's impressive collection, as we believe no serious student of contemporary politics should miss any of his volumes. Still, as an example of Parenti's versatility as a scholar, we have reposted here a reader's comment from Amazon.com which, in our view, captures well the value of this extraordinary history.

Pulitzer Prize Nominated Masterpiece, December 2, 2003

By	(Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews

The Assassination of Julius Caesar points out how numerous popularis fell victim to the optimates death squads, Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Drusus, Clodius and Rufus all sealed their fates by taking up the populist cause. Along with Caesar each of them lobbied and passed such policies as land reform, debt forgiveness, expansion of the franchise, giving the craft guilds more power, and greater food allotments.

Parenti makes for especially fascinating reading when he documents the reign of Sulla; the fascist autocrat whose policies weren't rolled back until Caesar's First Triumvirate was able to abolish some his more regressive laws. Also Dr. Parenti's sections on Cicero, the Machiavellian statesman who served autocratic interests, are sensational. He exposes Cicero's fomenting of the witch-hunt like Cataline Conspiracy. Egalitarian reforms and attempts to democratize decision making were treated as outright subversion by the optimates. Cicero upheld these values by constantly propagandizing against Cataline and his tepid reforms. We discover that Cicero was an odious creature who sold-out to power at every opportunity by often being quite an effective mouthpiece for the priveleged of ancient Rome.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar shows how Caesar was not a revolutionary but rather a reformer who worked to break the stranglehold of the senatorial autocrats. While not being perfect, Caesar dedicated himself to the popular cause and was well liked by the masses. Unlike Cicero, Sulla, Brutus, Cassius and Cato of whom none have flowers left at their graves like Caesar's tomb does to the present day. Parenti documents how Caesar was committed to rolling back the worst class abuses perpetrated by the wealthy and was fondly remembered for it. <-->

Here's a teaser:

Lest President Barack Obama's opportunistic silence when Israel began the Gaza offensive that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians (more than 400 of them children) be misinterpreted, his aides pointed reporters to comments made six months earlier in the Israeli town of Sderot. "If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that," Obama had said in reference to the missiles Hamas was firing from Gaza. "I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Residents of Gaza might have wondered what Obama would have done had he been unfortunate enough to be a resident of, say, Jabaliya refugee camp. What if, like the vast majority of Gazans, his grandfather had been driven from his home in what is now Israel, and barred by virtue of his ethnicity from ever returning? What if, like the majority of the residents of this refugee ghetto-by-the-sea, he had voted for Hamas, which had vowed to fight for his rights and was not corrupt like the Fatah strongmen with whom the Israelis and Americans liked to deal?

And what if, as a result of that vote, he had found himself under an economic siege, whose explicit purpose was to inflict deprivation in order to force him to reverse his democratic choice? What might a Gazan Obama have made of the statement, soon after that election, by Dov Weissglass, a top aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that Israel's blockade would put him and his family "on [a] diet"?

Read the rest at Mother Jones.

Manifest Destiny had run out of room, and the American Empire - a term used unblushingly in triumphalist literature of the period - now girded the entire North American continent, and its rulers were free to confer the blessings of civilization on untutored masses beyond our shores.

First in line for this unsolicited privilege were the Cubans and Filipinos. Chinese and Mexicans would taste - in the sense of being force-fed - the unpalatable fruits of American imperial benevolence, before Washington, under the reign of the unspeakably vile Woodrow Wilson, dispatched hundreds of thousands of armed missionaries for democracy to the battlefields of Europe.

American intervention broke a stalemate in WWI that could have resulted in a negotiated peace, thereby preserving Christendom. The allied "victory" helped cultivate several nasty strains of totalitarianism and bellicose nationalism, thus effectively inoculating mankind against an outbreak of peace and normalcy. This meant an unending list of imperial errands abroad, with America's Ruling Elite using means both relatively subtle (bribery through foreign aid) and vulgar (bombing and other forms of lethal "humanitarianism") to propagate its vision of social justice around the globe.

And as Washington eagerly audited the shortcomings of other regimes, the original beneficiaries of its civilizing mission - the residue of the various American Indian communities - were consigned to a wretched existence marked by intractable poverty, abysmal mortality rates, and pervasive despair. The status of the American Indians offered a reality-based counterpoint to America's self-enraptured rhetoric, and the reservation system served as a kind of portrait of Dorian Grey for the regime's image as guardian of liberty and justice. And the mass murder of Sioux at Wounded Knee served as a kind of graduation ceremony for the Regime as it prepared to export imperial violence abroad.

Roughly three years after the December 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, historian Frederick Jackson Turner treated an audience at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago to his soon-to-be-famous "frontier thesis" - namely, that the closing of the western frontier, which he called "the meeting point between savagery and civilization," brought an end to the first phase of America's national life. The conquest of the frontier, Turner claimed, had refined a distinctly American character, one that was restless and inventive, fiercely individualistic and disdainful of centralized power and hierarchical authority.

Turner's oration was, in some ways, a scholarly version of the familiar lounge singer ploy of inviting his audience to "give yourselves a round of applause." Then, as now, Americans were eager to view themselves as hardly, independent folk, even when they were taking part in a militarized, federally subsidized land grab of unprecedented scope and shamelessness.

True, settlers and pioneers were often bold and courageous people, and more than a few of them acquitted themselves honorably both in tragic combat with Indians, and in honest commerce with them when peace was achieved. But taken as a whole, Manifest Destiny represented the triumph of corrupt corporatism.

In Westward the Tide, a typically worthy offering, novelist Louis L'Amour, the justly renowned "Troubadour of the American West" (and an autodidact whose scholarly achievements were easily the equal of Dr. Turner's) captures the ambivalence of the expansionist period from Appomattox to Wounded Knee.

The dominant human type found on the frontier, he writes, "was a lean and cold-eyed man who feared God and nothing else.... He had courage, hardihood, and a stubborn will that balked at no problem as too great.... He was the man who refused to remain close to forts and so was often killed by Indians, his wife nursed her children with a rifle across her knees, and he tilled his fields with a gun strapped to his plough handles. He dared off Indians, the big cattlemen, the outlaws. He was the nester, the squatter, the man who moved west."

Whether they knew it or not, L'Amour points out, individualist pioneers acted as icebreakers on behalf of the forces of collectivism.

"Railroads came west on government subsidy and gifts of government land," he recalled. "They never advanced a foot without government land to sell, government money to spend, and the protection of the Army. The [pioneers] asked no protection from anybody, or if so, not for long, but moved on out ahead of the Army wherever their path was not blocked by too tight a line, and where they stopped they put down roots."

And wherever these individualists put down roots, the Leviathan State would soon materialize to install the necessary apparatus of coercive conformity. This process was captured by publisher George A Crofutt - an energetic evangelist of Manifest Destiny - in his caption to John Gast's 1872 painting "American Progress."

The much-produced lithograph portrayed the American State as a fair-haired, zaftig female precariously clad in a diaphanous robe, her alabaster brow garlanded with the "star of empire," gazing westward with an expression of benevolent resolution as terrified Indians are driven in terror before her. In her right arm is clutched a volume inscribed "Common Schools," which Crofutt exultantly described as "the emblem of our education and the testimonial of our National Enlightenment." With her left hand she threads the countryside with "the slender wires of the telegraph, that are to flash intelligence throughout the land."

Before this comely yet omnipotent maiden the land is alluring, yet desolate; in her wake can be found cities, "steamships, manufactories, schools and churches, over which beams of light are streaming and filling the air - indicative of our civilization," continues Crofutt. From the cities "proceed the three great continental lines" of federally subsidized railway, as well as a stream of pony express riders, pioneer wagons, stagecoaches, gold seekers, and others drawn irresistibly westward.

But the true focus of this artistic celebration of "our country's grandeur and enterprise," as Croffut understands, is the handful of Indians who flee before the "beautiful and charming Female" who embodies the American State.

"Fleeing from `Progress,' and towards the blue waters of the Pacific ... are the Indians ... with their squaws, papooses, and `pony lodges,'" he wrote in words oozing contempt. The Indians "flee from the presence of the wondrous vision. The `Star' is too much for them."

"American Progress," as captioned by Croffut, coupled civic sanctimony with an undisguised appeal to three of the basest instincts: Simple prurience; the tribalist impulse toward the worship of collective power; and the dehumanization of those not part of the chosen collective.

The goodness of America, on Croffut's reading, is ratified by the retreat of the Indian savages. Speaking through Matt Bardoul, one of his fictional heroes, Louis L'Amour gave voice to a less self-congratulatory view, concluding that the Indians withdrew in the face of "what some might consider a superior barbarism."

In 1874, two years after Gale unveiled his propaganda portrait, George Armstrong Custer, an agent of American "progress," led an invasion force into the Black Hills of South Dakota, a territory considered sacred to the Sioux and solemnly promised to them in perpetuity by treaty less than a decade earlier.

Like everyone of consequence in the employ of the American Leviathan, Custer looked upon treaties much the same way Lenin later would - as pie crusts, made to be broken as circumstances required. The Black Hills, Custer announced, were full of gold "from the grass roots down." This turned a trickle of illegal immigration into the Black Hills into a deluge, and Washington - true to form - decided the time had come to re-write its treaty with the Sioux.

In September 1875, Washington convened a conference with Sioux representatives in the hope that the Indians would (in Dee Brown's phrase) "sell their land in order to save the United States Government the embarrassment of having to break a treaty to get it."

The attitude of most Sioux was captured in a defiant gesture by Sitting Bull. Informed of Washington's desire to purchase the Black Hills, Sitting Bull replied by picking up a pinch of soil and releasing it to the wind. "I want you to go and tell the Great Father that I do not want to sell any land to the government - not even as much as this."

Faced with an owner not interested in selling land, the government did what it always does: It prepared to steal the land and murder those determined to defend it. Preparations began to "whip the Indians into subjection," as Indian Bureau Inspector E.T. Watkins put it.

Of course, it didn't turn out quite that way when federal forces collided with a huge coalition of Plains Indians the following June at what the Sioux called the Battle of Greasy Grass - or what the losers in that engagement called the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

After the Seventh Cavalry was routed and its vain and bloody-handed commander was sent to hell, the Leviathan embarked on a course of collective punishment. Not able to track down Sitting Bull, Gall, Crazy Horse, and other Indian commanders who had beaten their Army and defied the "Star of empire," Washington authorized the impenitent war criminal Gen. William T. Sherman - the General Westerman of the Union's war against the South - to treat all Sioux on the reservation as prisoners of war. This meant that those who had not fought would be punished as retaliation for the Indians' victory.

Although they were not definitively beaten on the battlefield, the Sioux were eventually broken through terror, political pressure, and the relentless logic of demographics. The Americans were too numerous to repel, their government too powerful to resist, their rulers entirely without pity or scruple.

Crazy Horse was determined to withstand the federal Army, but eventually be he made the bitter choice to bring his people onto the reservation in order to avoid starvation. When he learned that the same government that had stolen his lands and killed his people was enlisting Sioux to kill Chief Joseph's Nez Perce - a northwestern tribe experiencing the same treatment at the hands of the empire - Crazy Horse threatened to rebel and leave the reservation.

After an informant learned of Crazy Horse's plans, the chief was "arrested" by Indian Agency police - whose number included several Sioux Quislings, including Little Big Man -- and then assassinated by a US Army Private at Ft. Robinson.

After the death of Crazy Horse in the fall of 1877, his parents - part of a Sioux band hoping to withdraw to Canada and find sanctuary there with the exiled Sitting Bull - buried their son's body near a creek called Wounded Knee, on a parcel of land that would soon become the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Sitting Bull fled to Canada after the battle of Greasy Grass in the hope that his people would be protected as subjects of the British Crown. However, Washington's intervention prevented the Great Chief and his followers from obtaining a parcel of suitable land. In July 1881, Sitting Bull joined Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Red Dog, Spotted Tail and other Sioux chiefs in choosing surrender over starvation.

Imprisoned at Ft. Randall in violation of promises of decent treatment, Sitting Bull's resilient dignity proved to be an obstacle to federal Indian commissioners, who wanted to make sure that the resistance of the Sioux had been permanently broken. In his first meeting with the commissioners, Sitting Bull treated the bureaucrats with regal contempt, taunting them for "acting like men who have been drinking whiskey" in demanding that the Sioux formally turn over the coveted Black Hills.

Apparently, concern for the fate of his long-suffering band of followers caused Sitting Bull to temper his tongue in a follow-up meeting. Predictably, the Indian Commissioners weren't inclined to reciprocate; instead, they seized an opportunity to upbraid Sitting Bull for his defiance and harangue him about the manifold glories of the Imperial State.

"You are not a great chief of this country," lectured Republican Senator John Logan of Illinois. "You have no following, no power, no control, and no right to any control. You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all that you have and are today is because of the government.... The government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men."

Logan unbosomed himself of this totalitarian homily decades before Mussolini encapsulated the same worldview in his fascist credo: "Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."

Eventually, through the application of its favorite tactic - negotiation through extortion, in the form of threatening to starve the Indians if they didn't surrender their lands - Washington was able to secure ownership of the Black Hills. By an 1889 act of Congress, the pitiful remainder of the original 1868 treaty land was divided into six small reservations in South Dakota. The Sioux themselves were disarmed, deprived of their horses, and confined to reservation plots.

Prior to the 1889 treaty, the Sioux had been promised that the subsistence rations promised in the 1868 pact would continue. But once the Black Hills had been signed away, Washington saw no need to fulfill its end of the agreement it had wrung from the Sioux, and Congress promptly cut the rations by half. By 1890, the promised rations were being withheld outright. Several years of poor harvests left the Euro-American residents of South Dakota struggling; the captive Sioux were starving.

Confronting utter annihilation, the Sioux suddenly experienced a religious revival. A Paiute holy man named Wovoka was preaching an eschatological doctrine that combined mysticism with elements of the New Testament.

By 1891, he prophesied, the buffalo would return, dead warriors by the thousands would arise from their graves, and a great wind would sweep the White Man's government from the land.

Until then, Wovoka taught, the Sioux was to keep the peace.

"When your friends die, you must not cry," he insisted. "You must not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always. It will give you satisfaction in this life. Do not tell the white people about this. Jesus is now upon the earth."

Rather than resisting the Whites by force of arms, Wovoka explained, the Indians were to clothe themselves in a special "medicine garment" that would protect them from bullets, and perform a "ghost dance" in order to worship the messiah and express the hope that his kingdom would soon prevail.

This new religion - a kind of Indian Sufism, without the militancy that informs the original Muslim version - gave the desperate, starving Sioux a sense of hope and the beginnings of a new shared identity. So of course, it had to be suppressed with alacrity and severity.

In October 1890, Daniel F. Royer, a disgraced pharmacist and former M.D. (his license had been revoked in California owing to a drug addiction) was appointed Indian Agent at the Pine Ridge Reservation. He had no experience in Indian affairs; his appointment was done for purely political reasons. About two weeks later, Royer dispatched a panicky telegraph to Washington demanding military intervention and the arrest of the Sioux leaders.

Sensationalistic accounts of purported Indian plots clotted the air and darkened the pages of newspapers across the country. Royer and other Indian Agents issued arrest warrants for Indian "troublemakers" on any available pretext. In early December, the South Dakota Home Guard, a militia which had been created by Governor Arthur C. Mellete less than a month earlier, ambushed and massacred and scalped 75 Sioux Ghost Dancers.

Early on December 15, an aged Sitting Bull was surrounded by a task force of 43 police under the command of Lt. Bull Head, an Indian Quisling. The Great Chief was prepared to surrender peacefully, but after a large group of Ghost Dancers materialized to protest the unprovoked arrest he had second thoughts. After one of the Ghost Dancers produced a rifle, one of the policemen drew a gun and shot Sitting Bull in the head at point-blank range.

The murder of Sitting Bull prompted his half-brother, Bigfoot, to flee with his people to the reservation at Pine Ridge in search of sanctuary.

Bigfoot suffered from such severe pneumonia that he was coughing up blood; his weary, emaciated followers - roughly 120 men and about twice that number of women and children - weren't in much better shape. Yet Major Samuel Whitside, who intercepted Big Foot's band on December 28, insisted on treating them as a captured military force. Under the guns of the Seventh Cavalry - which retained the bitter institutional memory of its defeat at Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn - the band was taken to a camp on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek, where the Indians were to be disarmed.

Bigfoot and his followers were ringed with two troops of Cavalry; four wagon-borne Hotchkiss rotating rifles, which were able to hurl explosive charges up to two miles, were carefully positioned on a rise outside the camp.

Shortly after dawn on December 29, the Army began to collect rifles from Big Foot's followers. With weary resignation, the Indians surrendered the only independent means of obtaining food, leaving themselves entirely at the mercy of a capricious enemy that had frequently used starvation as a weapon.

Impatient with the pace of the gun turn-in, several contingents of soldiers fanned out through the camp, going from tent to tent to confiscate any hidden firearms. This prompted an understandable outcry from the women whose dwellings were violated.

One young man, a deaf-mute named Black Coyote, balked when his turn came to hand over his rifle. Holding his Winchester above his head, this young man - who had committed no crime and threatened nobody - somehow conveyed to several onlookers the sentiment that he had paid good money for his rifle and didn't intended to give it up. He was swarmed by several soldiers.

Shortly thereafter, a shot pierced the pregnant silence, inducing delivery of the massacre that became inevitable when the disarmed Sioux fell into the hands of a vengeful Seventh Cavalry.

"We tried to run," testified survivor Louise Weasel Bear, "but they shot us like we were buffalo." The ailing and helpless Bigfoot was gunned down, his disease-racked body left grotesquely twisted in the snow. He was joined by as many as 300 of his followers.

"Dead and wounded women and children and little babies were scattered all along ... where they had been trying to run away," recalled Ogalala medicine man Black Elk, who arrived shortly after the slaughter. "The soldiers had followed along the gulch, as they ran, and murdered them in there. Sometimes they were in heaps because they had huddled together, and some were scattered all along. Sometimes bunches of them had been killed and torn to pieces where the [Hotchkiss] wagon guns hit them."

Those who resisted survived. Black Elk recounted how two small boys had taken up sniping positions and killed as many soldiers as they could: "These were very brave little boys." Other Sioux had "fought soldiers with only their hands until they got their guns." An Army Captain named Wallace was surrounded by a scrum of Sioux mothers and beaten to death with clubs.

But this was not a "battle," as it was referred to for a century after the event. It was a massacre of helpless, innocent people by Leviathan's killing apparatus. When Black Elk arrived on the scene, what he saw was not a battlefield, but rather "one long grave of butchered women and children and babies, who had never done any harm and were only trying to run away."

When survivors sought medical help, they discovered that the first priority was to tend to the wounds of the handful of Army personnel who had been injured in the course of carrying out the slaughter. Many of them perished from exposure and untended wounds. For several days the ground at Wounded Knee was littered with the bodies of the dead. On January 3, 1891, the mortal remains of the victims were gathered and interred in a mass grave.

The military expedition that carried out the massacre cost an estimated $2 million in 1890 dollars. This did provide a welcome "economic stimulus package" for local communities. But it's worth remembering that it would have cost just a fraction of that amount to provide the starving Sioux with the rations they had been promised under the original 1868 treaty.

But Washington apparently believed the additional expense was worthwhile in order to extract the last full measure of submission from the once-fearsome Sioux. Providing the Seventh Cavalry with an opportunity to avenge its defeat, and thereby vindicate the power of the "Star of empire," was a lagniappe.

To this day, the U.S. Army proudly displays the "battle streamer" of what is called the Wounded Knee "campaign." Dozens of participants in that atrocity - which can properly be called America's Babi Yar - were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The monument to the "heroes of Wounded Knee Creek" still exists at Ft. Riley, Kansas.

Although it closed the curtain on America's Frontier Era, Wounded Knee was merely the overture to Leviathan's career in imperial butchery. The outward course of the "Star of empire" has been marked with atrocities displaying a family resemblance to that massacre and the tactics that led to it.

Just a few years later, the Empire mounted a counter-insurgency campaign that would lead to the imprisonment, torture, and slaughter of tens of thousands of "liberated" Fillipinos. At the close of WWI, Washington and its allies used the same tactic that had been so successful against the Sioux - deploying the weapon of starvation to secure submission to a treaty - against defeated imperial Germany.

The draconian "peace" that prevailed following the American-enforced starvation blockade thrust to power a totalitarian movement headed by a perverted little Austrian who thought that Washington's treatment of the Indians was a suitable model for dealing with "inferior" races in Europe.

A century after Wounded Knee, the same American Leviathan that had starved the Sioux into submission imposed a murderous embargo of Iraq that would last for more than a decade and kill hundreds of thousands of children. After using starvation and the denial of medical necessities to soften up the Iraqis, the Empire - already bogged down in Afghanistan -- launched an invasion Iraq.

And as Scott Horton of AntiWarRadio points out, wherever the Empire deploys its legions abroad, the territory not under imperial control is referred to as "Indian country." With entirely unwarranted optimism, most Americans assume that this only applies abroad. But every once in a while - as at Ruby Ridge or Waco - the Empire offers a bloody reminder that Wounded Knee remains the official template for dealing with any resistance, foreign or domestic.

In a fascinating interview with Scott Horton, Indian activist Russell Means describes how the American Indian Reservation System has been the incubator for totalitarian social engineering programs both here and abroad. The subjugation of the American Indian, he warns, provided the model for the ongoing dispossession of the American middle class.

As the financial system implodes, inhabitants of our de-industrialized country are having what remains of our wealth confiscated in order to serve the interests of the most corrupt elements of the ruling elite. The sky is thick with portents of impending military rule in order to suppress any organized resistance to this unprecedented plunder.

We will know that the Wounded Knee option is on the table when our rulers demand of us what they required of the conquered Sioux: The surrender of our personal firearms.

It is a glorious fact that America's private gun owners possess more firearms than the combined armies and police forces of the entire world. It is that fact, and perhaps it alone, that explains why the Regime hasn't succeeded -- yet -- in transforming our country into one giant Rez. We should never assume that this cannot change, in a hurry.

The wars unleashed thus far, specifically the "War on Terror" were launched to preserve the shadow money-lenders' political and military power.

This War on Terror is the greatest military sideshow that distracted the American people from the financial rape and plunder of their economy and the destruction of their Constitution.

Since the Summer of 2007, we have witnessed a concerted effort by the world's central banks and global commercial and investment banks to preserve the shadow money-lenders' financial power, one that is founded on fraud and structured in every detail as in the infamous Ponzi scheme.

In the last seven years, the Ponzi scheme was globalised by the Shadow Money-Lenders, siphoning hundreds of billions from so-called sophisticated investors and sovereign wealth funds. At its peak, the Ponzi scheme was estimated to be worth over $500 Trillion, with the Credit Default Swap (CDS) portion just under $60 Trillion!

Hidden behind the headlines of the financial destruction that is sweeping across the globe, lies another story - a dark tale of men who orchestrated the crisis and have amassed enormous wealth and power at the expense of the millions who are now unemployed and whose homes have been foreclosed. This select group of men is in absolute control of the unfolding events. Who are they? THE

HIDDEN POWER

The hidden power is almost indestructible because throughout the ages, any attempt to unveil their hidden agenda and to expose the men behind the screen has been labeled "a Conspiracy Theory" and those who risk their wealth and reputation to expose this power are accused of being "Conspiracy Theorists".

This is notwithstanding the fact that many insiders who were previously seduced by the power and recanted, have written about such men and their global agendas.

Some "do-gooders" who have visited my website have pleaded with me not to make any reference to the hidden power as "I would be condemned as a conspiracy theorist and lose my credibility." It is these do-gooders who are unconsciously, the allies and propaganda tools of the hidden power. They are the foot soldiers of the Hidden Power and the first to be slaughtered. They never learn and if they persist, must be considered collaborators.

I have made detail references to the hidden power in my books. I shall recap herein what the insiders have been saying for years. For those who are aware of these writings, it would serve them well to revisit these writings again so as to strengthen their resolve to expose the hidden power until total victory.

In essence, the hidden power is the Global Shadow Money-Lenders - the men and women who control and manage the Shadow Money-Lending System. And they also control all political leaders, directly and indirectly in every part of the world, in every country, Malaysia included!

Anyone who denies this is a fool from our perspective but an indispensable ally from the shadow money-lenders' point of view.

Please consider the following exposé by renowned insiders.

Napoleon Bonaparte

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain."

Niccolo Machiavelli

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."

President James Madison

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control of governments by controlling money and its issuance."

President Abraham Lincoln

"The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy."

President James A Garfield

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."

The Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna - Chancellor of the Exchequer

"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create money. The amount of money in existence varies only with the action of the banks in increasing and decreasing deposits and bank purchases. Every loan, overdraft, or bank purchase creates a deposit and every repayment of a loan, overdraft or bank sale destroys a deposit. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."

Sir Josiah Stamp - Bank of England

"Banking was conceived in inequity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the costs of your own salary, let them continue to create deposits."

President Woodrow Wilson

"A great Industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world - no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country."

(President regretted signing into law the Federal Reserve Act)

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes."

Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of Banking & Currency Committee

In 1932:

"The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks government at will ..."

In 1933:

"Roosevelt has brought with him from Wall Street James P. Warburg, son of Paul M. Warburg, Organizer and first Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve System..."

In 1950:

"This same Warburg had the audacity and arrogance to proclaim before the U.S. Senate: 'We shall have World Government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by Conquest or Consent'."

Senator Barry Goldwater

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money-lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States."

Henry Ford

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

The above is the truth laid bare before your eyes and which the shadow money-lenders have spent billions over the years for the control of the global mass media, and paid handsomely specially cultivated economists, historians and politicians to disseminate lies, divert attention and to cover up their hidden agenda.

The next quotation will shock most of you and will change your perspective of many global issues. It is written by a courageous Jew to another courageous Jew.

Benjamin H. Friedman

Letter to Dr. David Goldstein dated October 10, 1954

"The history of the world for the past several centuries and current events at home and abroad confirm the existence of such a conspiracy (to destroy Christianity and obtain global power). The world-wide net-work of diabolical conspirators implements this plot against the Christian faith while Christians appear to be sound asleep. The Christian clergy appear to be more ignorant or more indifferent about this conspiracy than other Christians ... It seems so sad."

A HISTORICAL DETOUR

To secure their global agenda, the shadow money-lenders needed a national base to first consolidate their power and to legislate laws that would secure their monopoly to issue money and credit. The target country was England and that is why the first central bank was the Bank of England. Almost all the laws that secured the money-lenders their unbridled economic and political power can be traced back to the legal basis for the establishment of the Bank of England as a central bank and their unfettered right to create "credits".

The £ was the currency of choice for world conquest and the result was the mighty British Empire, where the sun never sets! It was an empire based on debt. When the £ Ponzi scheme unraveled, Britain outlived its usefulness and the shadow money-lenders relocated to structure another Ponzi scheme.

The next target country was the United States and the vehicle was the Federal Reserve System. It was a long struggle, but the shadow money-lenders finally prevailed. Thereafter, they established the greatest financial empire in history, but they are still short of their ultimate hidden agenda, as arrogantly proclaimed by James P. Warburg - the establishment of a World Government by conquest or by consent!

Today, the shadow money-lenders have achieved unrivalled military power, but in the process they have put at risk the fiat money system. This is because so much money was required to maintain and sustain the military might of the US and its military bases in client states all over the world and the occupation of Germany and Japan since their defeat in 1945.

What is important to understand is that the shadow money-lenders are parasitic in nature and they have to feed on a continuous diet of debts. The financing of military adventures ensures a continuous stream of debts and compound interests. Debts beget more debts!

When the debts reach saturation point, the Ponzi scheme will collapse and hence, the need to revive and or re-establish another Ponzi scheme, failing which the shadow money-lenders' financial empire cannot be sustained.

BRETTON WOODS (I) - POST WORLD WAR II PONZI SCHEME

At the end of the Second World War, the United States was the indisputable super-power and largest creditor.

The shadow money-lenders created various covers for massive lending such as the Marshall Plan, supposedly to revive the devastated economies of Europe and Asia. Under the cover of the aforesaid altruistic economic plan of post war recovery, was the hidden agenda for the establishment of the US dollar as the one and only supreme currency to replace the £.

The shadow money-lenders had under their control the following sovereign debtors post World War II:

Canada

The countries of the South American Continent

The countries of Europe, west of the then "Iron Curtain"

The countries of the African continent

The countries of the Middle East

The countries of Asia, west of the then "Bamboo Curtain"

Australia and New Zealand

To secure the sovereign debtors' consent to the use of the dollar as reserve currency, it was agreed that the dollar was redeemable in gold at US$35 per oz of gold.

The shadow money-lenders never had it so good. Then they got greedy.

Like the goldsmiths of yester-years, the shadow money-lenders created more credits than there was gold to sustain the dollar reserve currency. There were also the numerous wars that needed to be financed, principally the Vietnam War and the proxy wars in Africa and Latin America. There was a huge drain in the gold holdings at Fort Knox.

This gave rise to a crisis of confidence in the Bretton Woods (I) dollar system.

To resolve the crisis and to maintain the unrivalled position of the US dollar, the shadow money-lenders devise a brilliant scheme - a variation of Bretton Woods (I)

BRETTON WOODS (II) - PURE FIAT MONEY SYSTEM

The dollar would no longer be redeemable in gold as decreed by President Nixon.

There were two parts to the overall scheme to secure full compliance.

Part 1 was the use of the simple bully tactic. The Cold War was engineered and intensified to create the myth that the Soviet Union would unleash a nuclear war against the "free countries" and therefore there was a need for collective security in which only the United States could provide the necessary defense, as it was the most powerful nation in the world.

The quid pro quo for the protection under the umbrella of the US led collective security was that countries must continue to use the US dollar in all international trades.

Notwithstanding the fact that the client states agreed to the new arrangement, there was still the fear by the shadow money-lenders that sooner or later the debtors will wise up to the fact that they were holding mere toilet papers. Should this happen, the dollar would be dumped as toxic waste and that would spell the end of the shadow money-lending system.

Part 2 was therefore initiated and the man chosen to implement the con-game was none other than Henry Kissinger. He secured an agreement with the corrupt Saudi monarch and lesser tyrants in the region that the oil price would be manipulated to hit the roof and in return for their untold wealth and financial power, all future crude oil trades must be denominated in dollars, and the petro-dollars must be repatriated to the United States, to be invested in dollar assets.

In a warped sense, dollar was now backed by crude oil instead of gold, as without dollars, no nation could purchase crude oil.

The dollar toilet paper over-night regained its stature and value as the global reserve currency.

Yet, and once again the shadow money-lenders got greedy. They came to the insane conclusion that they could create limitless credits (debts) out of thin air and none would be wiser!

By the late eighties, it was apparent to the shadow money-lenders that the demand and use of crude oil would not be able to sustain the level of dollar credits needed to support the debt pyramid.

Plan B, the Yen Carry Trade was put into action - borrowing yen at zero interest rate to invest in dollar assets, bearing higher interest rates. The Japanese could not complain, being a conquered race and still under military occupation, and so for over a decade, they suffered in silence. The dollar as the global reserve currency was saved, but, not for long.

The instability in the Middle East became a major concern. Saddam Hussein had grandeur ideas. He aspired to be the regional power but Desert Storm scuttled his grand designs. Iran having recovered from the devastation of the eight-year war with Iraq, began to assert itself and their growing strength was perceived as a threat to the security interests of the shadow money-lenders and their partners-in-crime, the big oil companies.

A Plan C was needed. The China card had to be played!

THE CHINA FACTOR

Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s announced to the world that China would practice socialism with Chinese characteristics. Being Red was not critical, for the colour of the cat was not important so long as the cat catches mice!

China wanted to modernize and catch up with the West. It had abundant cheap labour and a disciplined workforce. But development was slow and foreign investments were confined to certain regions.

Back home in the US, manufacturing concerns were being clobbered by the Japanese and the Koreans. Industry after industry became less competitive and costs were rising. A solution had to be found.

The shadow money-lenders have their share of worries - How to accelerate the momentum of credit creation in an economy that is slowing down? Less debts mean less compound interests and therefore less profits. Q.E.D.

The shadow money-lenders realized soon enough that if debt-driven consumption is the solution, then there must be a manufacturing base that can produce the massive quantities of goods that would meet the demands for debt.

China loomed large in the overall scheme of things.

The shadow money-lenders entered into an agreement with the Chinese along the lines of the petro-dollar agreement. There will be massive relocation of industries to China, massive investments in plants and equipment to produce goods for the US and European markets in exchange for dollar denominated trade. And more importantly, it was agreed that the dollar trade surplus would be re-invested in dollar assets.

It was an offer that China found hard to refuse. It was the fast track to economic development and the rapid modernisation of China. China agreed and the rest is history!

Debt exploded in the US and in Europe. Consumers were borrowing as never before to purchase the goodies from China. The recycled dollars from China funded the consumer bubble from home ownership to motorcars, electronic goods, toys, clothing etc. China became the world's factory and her economy surged. Within a decade, China accumulated dollar reserves amounting to $2 Trillion. Other Asian countries jumped on the bandwagon, and accumulated huge dollar reserves. These huge reserves must be invested and the US lured them to the exotic investments created by Nobel Laureates and rocket scientists.

THE DERIVATIVE CASINO

Financial engineering by the shadow money-lenders accelerated further credit creation. The United States led the way. During the past ten years, while income stagnated, consumer spending rose to a record $8.34 trillion fueled by cheap consumer loans - home mortgage, credit-card loans, car loans, holiday loans etc.

The securitization of the growing stream of compound interests from the wide range of consumers' debts was the natural and logical step in the next round of credit creation for the derivative casino. These debts were sliced and diced into tranches to form CDOs, synthetic CDOs, CLOs, MBS and CDS etc. and marketed worldwide. The demand for securitization was so great that banks and mortgage brokers were even willing to lend to borrowers on the barest of credit information. They were aptly called "Liars' Loans"!

In 2004, $157 billion CDOs were issued but rocketed to an amazing $557 billion in 2006. And when there were insufficient mortgages to be securitized into CDOs, Wall Street created the "synthetic CDOs" - bonds which have no underlying loans and or security but allegedly have an income stream based on a parallel contract and on contingencies which may or may not result in any interest payments. Investment is risk, stupid! Higher risks, higher payouts!

In the first quarter of 2007, the creation of CDOs surged further, led by Merrill Lynch which sold nearly $29 billion in February and March, sixty per cent more than the preceding two-month period; Goldman Sachs pushed $10 billion in March which more than double the value in February and Citigroup sold $9 billion in March, one third more than the previous month. CDOs were the rave and the ticket to glorious wealth.

The US, specifically Wall Street became the "Mecca of debts".

The rest of the world jumped on the bandwagon. So much CDOs were packaged and sold so quickly that no one even had the time to determine which and what securities were being securitized in the CDOs. "Just do the trade, just do the trade" was the chorus line for the traders.

The following table says it all - the Sub-Prime Fiasco.

The Shadow Money-lenders also came up with a scheme to protect investors and which brought another massive stream of revenue. The scheme was called "Credit Default Swaps" (CDS).

Total Face Amount of CDS was estimated as follows:

2001 $918.9 Billion
2002 $ 2.2 Trillion
2003 $ 3.8 Trillion
2004 $ 8.4 Trillion
2005 $ 17.1 Trillion
2006 $ 34.4 Trillion
2007 $ 62.2 Trillion
2008 $ 54.6 Trillion as of June 2008

The world became addicted to debt!

Then the housing bubble busted, and with it the gigantic Ponzi scheme.

Creditors are now faced with a dilemma, what to do with the loads and loads of dollar toilet paper, now derisively referred to as "toxic wastes" - stand pat, sell down, continue to be paid in dollar toilet papers or shut down the printing press?

We are now at this juncture.

THE SHADOW MONEY-LENDERS' LAST GAMBIT

The Fed's decision to cut the Fed Fund Rates to 0.25 percent means that the Fed has embarked on a Zero-Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) and to proceed with the policy of Quantitative Easing (QE) - to turn on the spigot for "limitless supply of credit".

In layman's jargon, to encourage more debts - mortgage debts, credit-card debts, car loans, and more importantly to revive the derivative casino, presently on life support. This was the drug addiction that sustained the global financial system in the last twenty years and more intensely in the last seven years!

The announced policy (ZIRP / QE) is the last bullet in the Fed's arsenal or as I have stated earlier, using another analogy, the final gamble, the last chip on the betting table. There will be no more ammunition left after this.

This huge gamble will take six months to play out but it will end in failure as surely as the sun will rise in the East tomorrow.

But a more sinister aspect of the zero-interest-rate policy which has not been highlighted by any economist or financial commentator is that the United States under the present Bush regime has declared to the entire world that the United States cannot and will not service anymore interest payments on the nation's outstanding debts amounting to trillions.

Bush has declared that the United States for all intent and purposes is bankrupt and have no means to service the interest due, what more the principal sum.

Bush, Bernanke and Paulson have therefore collectively agreed to give the "two-finger sign" to the world's creditors and in no uncertain terms are saying that:

You creditors, you a@#holes, you can jerk off. You know, I know and the whole bloody world knows that the US of A have no income to even service the interest which amounts to a few hundred billion a year.

So let us stop the pretense. We owe trillions and interest on top of that runs to hundreds of billions, which when unpaid is capitalized. And every year we have to borrow from you guys just to pay the interest so as to avoid a call on default. There were so many occasions when we have defaulted, but you guys allowed us to roll over to maintain the façade that the US of A is still floating.

We ain't floating like a bee, but we are sinking fast! Let's cut the crap and be real.

So this is the offer. And you jerks better listen good because this will be said once and once only.

You guys should be more than happy with so much interests already accruing on the outstanding. All these years, you guys have been only too happy to see us print the toilet papers in payment of your goods and to service the interests. It was an incredible con and what a free ride we had all these years. You guys were part of the con as well.

If you insist that I continue to pay you in toilet papers, why do you insist that we issue more toilet papers as interest payments? It is just more toilet papers. You guys are swarmed with toilet papers!

The toilet paper is worthless. So what is the point of paying "toilet paper interest" on outstanding toilet papers?

This is it! We are not paying anymore toilet paper interest. We are going to print more toilet papers to pay for whatever we want to purchase. If you want to sell to us, you will get toilet papers but with no interest. Period!

This is the greatest irony. The Fed, the world's biggest money-lender and its partners-in-crime are telling their creditors to stuff it! When debtors cannot pay the exorbitant interests and the principal, these financial predators demand that the debtors give their pound of flesh in lieu of cash. But when they borrow, they repay in toilet paper money abd get away with it!

And now they even have the audacity to give an ultimatum:

We are the biggest buyers in town. If you don't want toilet papers from us, that is fine by us. You can get tissue papers from the Europeans, bamboo papers from the Japanese and whatever that is on offer. Who is going to argue whether tissue paper would do a better job than plain toilet paper? Hey, this is a free market. Pick your choice!

This is the ultimate poker game. Bush, Bernanke and Paulson is betting that no one will call their bluff, turn away and stop selling anymore goods to the US of A. Bush is counting that the fear of recession and or social unrest in the creditors' countries will force the creditors to capitulate.

Unfortunately, this gambit will fail. The reason is simple. The US cannot supply the goods that the American consumers want, even the most basic stuff. The manufacturing industries are all anemic, while others are on life support. Without imports, the United States will have to shut down within six months.

There will be massive riots all over the US, with people killing for food and other basic necessities. Basic raw materials, commodities for manufacturing etc. will be unavailable. There will be no more cars on the freeways! Millions of Americans licensed to carry arms will stalk the streets for whatever scrap they can get their hands on.

You can bet your bottom dollar, the Shadow Money-Lenders and its military partner will impose martial law.

Preparation is already on the way.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S STARK WARNING

On Tuesday, December 9th 2008, President Bush in fascist speak stated that, "I have abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."

If you guys out there still don't get it, this is what Bush is saying:

I am imposing dictatorial rule!

This is because the opposite of "free market" according to conventional wisdom is "state-control economy". In a word, Socialism - Big Government.

The Fed and the Treasury, in connivance with Congress, have already approved and financed big time, the acquisition of the major banks in Wall Street through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), and the $700 Billion bailout plan. Several US financial commentators have already conceded that this is outright nationalization of the financial institutions.

Soon it will be the nationalization of the big corporations like GE, GM, Ford and Chrysler, all too big to be allowed to fail.

Too far fetched? Just look back to the events leading to World War I and World War II and to the dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s.

How did Franklin Roosevelt get out of the 1930s mess if not for big government policies and engaging in the wars in Europe, against Germany and Japan in Asia? He even decreed Americans could no longer own gold in any form. They were all confiscated. President Roosevelt ruled with an iron fist, and don't you believe otherwise.

Now that the entire world knows that the Federal Reserve Note (the dollar bill) is toilet paper and even though in law is "legal tender" (i.e. by law the toilet paper must be accepted as full payment of any debt, failing which the debt is deemed paid), the Shadow Money-Lenders cannot afford the risk of an armed open rebellion and the fiat money system to be overthrown. It is therefore necessary in these circumstances to enforce the use of the US dollar toilet paper by military rule and brutality.

To those who are not attuned to "dictatorship speak", there is no clearer message to prepare the elites for the coming catastrophe that the announcement that free market principles will no longer apply. The emphasis is on the word "free" and not the word "market".

We can argue till the cows come home whether my reading of events is correct. Time will be the final judge.

WORLD GOVERNMENT BY CONQUEST OR CONSENT

James P. Warburg, the son of Paul M. Warburg (first Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve System), had proclaimed that world government is their ultimate objective. But that objective cannot be achieved unless and until the United States is completely subdued. A world government can only come about if there is created a crisis that will engulf the entire world, starting from America. Such a crisis will not and cannot be resolved by any one country. It will have to be a global solution. And since countries can only work through a common mechanism, there is therefore a need for an international institution or mechanism.

The United Nations is the precedent from which a new world government will emerge.

Henry Kissinger, since the onset of the crisis, has been calling and cajoling world leaders to submit to such an endeavour if the world is to avoid a global calamity.

And it will be a socialist world government. Before anyone protest and declare that I have gone insane, let me state here once and for all, I am in full command of my faculties. I have done my research.

Capitalism and Socialism are two sides of the same money-lender's coin. Both ideologies serve a common master - the global shadow money-lenders.

For doubting Thomases, please consider the following facts:

1) The Russian October Revolution, led by Lenin was financed by bankers, to be precise, the bankers in New York and Berlin. In New York, the money was organized by the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co whose directors included Mr. J. Schiff and Mr. Warburg, founder of the Federal Reserve System. In Berlin, the German banker was the brother of the New York Warburg.

2) On January 16, 1962, the Look and Life magazine published the following statement by David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel who was then still in office:

"The image of the world in 1987 as traced in my imagination: The Cold War will be a thing of the past. Internal pressure of the constantly growing intelligentia in Russia for more freedom and the pressure of the masses for raising their living standards may lead to a gradual democratization of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the increasing influence of the workers and farmers and the rising political importance of men of science, may transform the United States into a welfare state with a planned economy. Western and Eastern Europe will become as federation of autonomous states having a socialist and democratic regime ... countries will become united in a world alliance, at whose disposal will be an international police force. All armies will be abolished and there will be no more wars. In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly united nation) will build a shrine of the prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah."

3) On the success of the Russian October Revolution and the abdication of the Czar Nicholas II, the British Premier David Lloyd George said in Parliament, that Britain had achieved one of its major war aims.

4) The principal aim of Capitalism and Socialism is the centralized rule of an elite political group which owns and or controls all the means of production and the issuance of money and credits - in the case of the former, through various forms of monopoly and in the case of the latter, public monopoly.

WHY WAR IS INEVITABLE

To prove the point, let me use a simple analogy.

It is often reported in the headlines of newspapers that a certain gentleman or woman had been brutally beaten up for failing to pay the debts due to a money-lender. In Malaysia, money-lenders are often referred to as "Ah-Longs". This is even the case when the debt is paltry. If the money-lender adopts the "soft method" in recovering a loan, it may encourage defaults and non-payments. Brutality ensures full compliance!

So is the case with nations. When the very survival of a nation is at stake because of economic and or currency warfare, do you really think that the nation at risk would not go to war?

The US invaded Iraq not because of the threat of Saddam's WMD but for the crude oil and because Saddam was selling crude oil in Euros instead of the dollar toilet paper.

The shadow money-lenders are in a desperate situation and they will start a world war to avoid the collapse of the fiat money system. The war will be financed by the major central banks and their proxies - the 8 to 10 global commercial and investment banks. As in World War I and II, the elites of the City of London and Wall Street will be the primary movers of this insidious plot.

Anyone who doubts this scenario need only to ask one simple question - Do you think the financial powers centred in the West would accept and tolerate their loss of financial power?

I am using such graphic terms because the average Joe Six-Packs have yet to appreciate the full import of the latest announcements by President Bush that the US will abandon "Free market principles", and by Bernanke of the Fed's Zero-Interest-Rate Policy. Worst still, the majority of the political leaders of the third world are equally ignorant. This was evident in the APEC Summit in Peru. Like the average Joe Six-Packs, these leaders have no idea how the fiat money system works. When Washington and London say "print", "open the spigots", "lower interest rates", and vice-versa they just follow blindly. There was just one rare exception, when Malaysia opted out during the 1997 financial crisis. Even then, this was temporary as the new Badawi regime has succumbed to the old ways.

Can this war be stopped?

There is a slim chance. If American patriots, who are lawfully armed, rebel and resist the imposition of martial law, world war may be averted.

The IMF has already warned that if the US fails to resolve the crisis, there will be massive social unrest. There will be blood flowing on the streets! Military power would be pitted against brave militias with a proud tradition of having once defeated the mighty British colonial power.

Dare we hope for a second American Revolution?

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Israel's sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying civilized life in Gaza. Israel's totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States.
The facts of Israeli extermination have become known: In the first six days of round the clock terror bombing of major and minor populations centers, the Jewish State has murdered and seriously maimed over 2,500 people, mostly dismembered and burned in the open ovens of missile fire. Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as defenseless civilians and officials.

They have sealed off all access to Gaza and declared it a military, free fire zone, while expanding their target to include the entire population of 1.5 millions semi-starved prisoners. According to the Boston Globe (December 30, 2008): Israeli military officials said their target lists have expanded to include the vast support network on which the Islamist movement relies to stay in power "...we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel (my emphasis)". A top Israeli in its secret police apparatus is quoted saying, "Hamas' civilian infrastructure is a very sensitive target" (ibid). What the Israeli Jewish politicians and military planners designate as "Hamas" is the entire social service network, the entire government and the vast majority of economic activity, embracing almost the entire 1.5 million imprisoned residents of Gaza.

Israel's 'target' list thus involves the 'total population', using the totality of its non-nuclear weaponry and for anunlimited time period (until the 'bitter end' according to the Israeli Prime Minister). Israel's defense ministry spokesman has emphatically reiterated the Jewish's state's totalitarian war concept emphasizing the targeting of civilians: "Hamas has used ostensibly civilian operations as a cover for military activities. Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target."

Like all totalitarians in the past, the Jewish state boasts of having systematically pre-planned the extermination campaign - months in advance - up to and including the precise hour and day of the bombing to coincide with inflicting the maximum murder of civilians: The rockets and bombs fell as children were leaving school, as graduating police cadets were receiving their diplomas and as frantic mothers ran out from their homes to find their sons and daughters.

The mass military extermination campaign was a follow up of its non-stop total economic embargo and unremitting selective assassination campaign of the previous two years: Both were designed to purge Palestine of its Arab population, first via mass hunger, disease, humiliation and violent intimidation and the proxy power grab by the PLO Quislings under Zionist puppet Abbas. When they discovered that mass hunger and selective Israeli murder only strengthened the population's links to its democratically elected government and the resolve of the Hamas government to resist Israel, the Israeli regimes unleashed its entire arsenal of weapons, including its new 'American gifts' up-to-date 1000 pound 'bunker buster' bombs and high tech missiles to incinerate large numbers of human beings within their deadly radius and to obliterate Palestinian civilization.

Moving directly from its totalitarian vision to its military blueprint to the savaging of Palestinian population centers, the Jewish state destroyed the principle university with over 18,000 students (mostly women), mosques, pharmacies, electrical and water lines, power stations, fishing villages, fishing boats and the little fishing port that provided a meager supply of fish for the starving population. They destroyed roads, transport facilities, food warehouses, science buildings, small factories, shops and apartments. They destroyed a women's dormitory at the university. In the words of the Israel leader: "...because everything is connected to everything..." it is necessary to destroy each and every facet of life, which allows humans to exist with some dignity and independence.

The Israeli totalitarian leaders knew with confidence that they could act and they could kill with impunity, locally and before the entire world, because of the influence of the US Zionist Power Configuration in and over the US White House and Congress. They knew they had the full backing of all the major Israeli political parties (Right, Left and Center), trade unions, mass media and especially public opinion. Israeli state terror is backed by 81% of Jewish Israelis according to a poll taken by Israel's Channel 10 (Financial Times December 30, 2008). Israeli totalitarian violence and extermination of Palestinians is extremely popular among the Jewish electorate, especially in raising support for the Labor Party candidate Minister Ehud Barak. They knew they would 'succeed' with virtually no casualties because they bombed, burned and dismembered a defenseless population totally lacking the minimum means to defend themselves from F16 bombers, helicopter gun ships and missile assaults. The vile depravity of the assault on the defenseless population is matched by the utter cowardice of the Israeli military command and its cheering bloodthirsty public ensconced behind their aerial monopoly. They suffered no threats of aerial retaliation, no wounded or dead pilots, helicopter gunners, as wave after wave swept in and over a defenseless imprisoned population in a crowded and besieged ghetto.

Hundreds of tanks and armored carriers are prepared to invade once the cities and towns have been leveled, once the population is too weakened by starvation to resist, once the leaders and fighters have been murdered and the normal Palestinian institutions of law and order have been pulverized, making way for the corrupt thuggish collaborators of the so-called Palestinian Authority...then and only then, will the Israeli General staff risk the skin of a precious Jewish 'soldier' and risk the anxiety and worry of their kin in Israel and the US.

Overseas Allies: The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO)

From the moment that the Israeli Government decided it would destroy the newly elected Hamas government and punish the democratic electorate of Gaza with starvation and murder, the entire Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the US, including the PMAJO, pulled all stops in implementing the Israeli policy. The PMAJO encompasses the fifty-two Jewish organizations with the largest membership, with the greatest financial clout and the most influential backers. The most prominent lobbyist within the PMAJO is AIPAC, which has over 100,000 members and 150 full-time operatives in Washington actively pressuring the US Congress, the White House and all administrative agencies whose policies may relate to the interests of the State of Israel. However Israeli political extends far beyond its non-governmental agencies. Over two score legislators in the Congress and over a dozen senators are committed Zionists who automatically back Israel's policies and push for US funding and armaments for its military machine. Top officials in key administrative positions, in Treasury, Commerce and the National Security Council, senior functionaries in the Pentagon and top advisers on Middle East affairs are also life-long, fanatically committed Zionists, who consistently and unreservedly back the policies of the State of Israel.

Equally important, the majority of the largest film, print and electronic media are owned or deeply influenced by Jewish-Zionist media moguls who are committed to slanting the 'news' in favor of Israel. The composition and influence of the ZPC is central to understanding three main characteristics of Israel's power: (1) Israel can commit what leading United Nations and international human rights experts have defined as 'crimes against humanity' with total impunity; (2) Israel can secure an unlimited supply of the most technologically advanced and destructive weapons and use them without limit on a civilian population in violation of even US Congressional restrictions and (3) scores of almost unanimous United Nations condemnations of the construction of genocidal apartheid barriers against a native population, starvation embargoes and the current extermination campaign in Gaza are always vetoed by the US representative.

Many critics of Israel's genocide in Gaza also condemn what they call 'the complicity' of Washington or 'the United States' without clearly identifying the actual socio-political forces influencing policy-makers or the 'dual' political loyalties and identities of the 'American' politicians who have long-standing and deep allegiances to Israel. As a consequence, most critics fail to counter, protest or even identify the ideology and politics of the organized power configurations which define US complicity with Israel, who intimidate potential critics, who write and mouth the pro-Israel editorials in the mass media and who filter out any criticism, any truth...even when Israel engages in sustained bloody extermination campaigns.

The ZPC and the Israeli War of Extermination in Gaza

The ZPC played a major role in all stages of Israel's extermination campaign against Gaza including a sustained propaganda effort. The ZPC orchestrated a massive successful campaign through the extensive network of American mass media, which it controls and influences. It fabricated an image of the Hamas administration in Gaza as a terrorist organization, which allegedly seized power through violence - totally denying its rise to power through internationally supervised, democratic elections and its defense of its electoral mandate against a US-Israeli backed PLO military takeover. The entire Zionist Jewish leadership backed Israel's land grabs, its ghetto wall around Palestinians, the hundreds of road blocks, the Jewish settlers violently taking over Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the criminal, genocidal Israeli economic embargo on Gaza designed to systematically starve the Palestinians into submission. Throughout the two years of this Israeli extermination campaign, American Zionists played a major role in leading the servile US government at home and abroad in backing each totalitarian measure: The vast majority of local synagogues became bully-pulpits defending the starvation and degradation of 1.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza caged on all sides by deadly force and the 'walling off' into economically and socially devastating cantons of the 4.5 million West Bank Palestinian population under foreign occupation. The US Congress shamelessly followed the Zionist lead, backing every single criminal measure taken by the State of Israel and approving dozens of resolutions, which in most cases were entirely written by AIPAC lobbyists acting as unregistered agents of the Israeli government (contrary to US federal statute, which requires foreign agents and lobbyists to be registered as such). Israel's demands for the most up-to-date US warplanes, including F-16s, Apache helicopter gun ships, and 1,000 pound bombs were secured by dint of effort of the AIPAC lobbyists and their clients in the US Congress. In other words, the American ZPC created the ideological cover and military instruments for Israel's 'total war' against the defenseless Palestinian population. Equally important, prominent Zionist leaders in the US Congress and members of the foreign policy establishment blocked or vetoed any international criticism of Israel - securing its impunity and immunity from any of the Congressional sanctions usually enacted against criminal states. In other words, Israeli policy makers operated with the knowledge that there would be no negative economic, diplomatic and military repercussions to their launching the planned Gaza extermination campaign because they knew, in advance, that 'their people' were in total control of US Middle East policy to the extent of actually repeating verbatim each and every propaganda lie in defense of Israel's total war against the entire population of Gaza.

In Defense of Israel's War of Extermination

The Zionist-controlled US print media, in particular the New York Times and the Washington Post, systematically fabricated an account that fit perfectly with Israel's official line defending its massive assault on Gaza: Omitting any historical account of the hundreds of Israeli armed incursions and 'targeted' assassinations of Palestinian leaders and officials (even in their own homes) which repeatedly violated the 'cease fire' agreed by Hamas and provoked its retaliation in self-defense of its people; omitting the years of an Israeli enforced starvation embargo of food and essentials that threatened the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians and led to the desperate efforts of the elected Hamas leadership to secure supplies for the people's survival via tunnels across the Egyptian border and through missile attacks against Israel to pressure the Jewish state to negotiate an end of the criminal blockade.

The Conference of President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and the vast majority of Jewish communal groups and congregations, gave enthusiastic and unanimous support to Israel's total war, its extermination campaign against the captive Palestinian population of Gaza. Even as images and reports of the massive destruction, killing and wounding of over 2,500 defenseless Palestinians filtered in the mass media, not a single major Jewish organization broke ranks; only individuals and small groups protested. All the 'Majors' persisted in thepolitics of the Big Lie: the destruction of hospitals, mosques, universities, roads, apartments, pharmacies and fishing ports were all labeled 'Hamas targets'. The systematic all-out assault by uncontested helicopter gunships against 1.5 millions civilians was erased by tendentious accounts of Hamas' homemade missiles falling ineffectively near Israeli towns.

A close reading of the most important propaganda organ of the PMAJO, The Daily Alert (TDA), during the first 5 days of Israel's assault, reveals the propaganda tack taken by the leadership of the pro-Israel power configuration. TDA systematically worked to achieve the following:

1. Exaggerate the threats to Israel by the Palestinian missiles from Gaza, citing 4 Israeli deaths, while omitting any mention of the 2,500 Palestinian dead and wounded and the total destruction of their economy and living conditions (without safe water, electricity, food, cooking fuel, medicine and heat in the winter).

2. Promote Israel's military assault as 'defensive', directed at eliminating Hamas rocket attacks while omitting mention of Israel's clearly stated purpose of destroying all civil organizations, social welfare agencies, educational facilities, medical clinics and public security institutions connected in any way with the elected Hamas government and any auxiliary agencies.

3. Cite select statement from Israel's allies and clients (Washington, the US media, Germany and the UK) blaming Hamas for the conflict without mentioning the vast majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly condemning Israel's brutality.

4. Reproduce Israeli slanders against any and all international human rights leaders and organizations that condemn the Jewish state's policy of genocide against the native Palestinians. In this regard, TDA is the foremost 'genocide denier' in the United States and, perhaps outside of Israel, in the world.

5. Repeatedly cite Israeli political and military leaders' claims of acting 'with restraint', 'safeguarding civilians', and 'targeting military objectives', even in the face of reports and images of mass civilian destruction and loss of life documented in the vast majority of (non-US) Western media.

6. Defend every Israeli bombing mission, every day, every hour, of every building, every home, and every economic, religious and educational institution in Gaza as 'defensive' or a 'reprisal', all the while quoting some of the most notorious, unconditional, perennial apologists of Israeli violence as if they were unbiased intellectuals, including Benny 'Nuke Tehran' Morris, Marty Peretz and Amos Oz.

7. The Daily Alert quotes US writers, journalists and editors who praise and defend Israel's 'total war' without identifying their long-standing affiliation and identification with Zionist organizations, giving the false image of a wide spectrum of opinion behind the assault. Never has even the most moderate Jewish or Gentile critic of Israel's massive extermination campaign appeared in any issues of The Daily Alert.

The principal American Jewish organizations have bombarded the US Congress, influencing, intimidating and purchasing the craven so-called 'representatives' of the American people, the media and public notables with lies in defense of Israel's total war to exterminate a people. Their public, brazen, open complicity in genocide can be considered crime against humanity: The willful promotion of acts of a state designed to destroy an entire people.

And yet these willing accomplices, these 'willing executioners' of state mass murder go uncontested within the US political class. One of their leading mouthpieces in the incoming Obama Administration, Chief Presidential Adviser David Axelrod, even cites an Obama campaign speech defending Israeli assaults on the people of Gaza. Israel arrogantly repudiates all calls to end this mass murder, because Israel knows that 'its people' are still in control of US policy toward the Middle East and will use their power in the new president's administration to block any condemnation of this crime.

To date the entire human rights and anti-war movements have failed to even mention, let along challenge, the most powerful propaganda and political organizations, which influence US policy and manipulate the mass media in favor of Israel's extermination campaign. They will play no restraining role on Israel's totalitarian policies as long as its principle US backers are free to lie, manipulate and defend each and every crime.

There is little hope for an independent US Congressional policy as long as Israel's war of extermination in Gaza can be defended by the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and Zionist zealot) Congressman Howard Berman in the following terms: "Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week. No government in world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terribly tragedy and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas." Thus Congressman Berman cynically omits the 2 years of Israel's embargo, the daily 'targeted' assassinations of Palestinians, the 'targeted' missile attacks against civilians, the land, sea and air blockades and the blatant 'targeted' destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza. No government, indeed a democratically elected Islamist government, can stand by while its people are starved and murdered into submission. But according to the respected Congressmen Bermans of the world, only the lives of Jews matter, not the growing thousands of murdered, dismembered and mutilated citizens of Gaza - they do not count as people!

What is to be Done

Israel's crimes against humanity demand a public response: social action, which will force it to cease and desist from its campaign to exterminate the people of Gaza. Because the Jewish state has assaulted a vast array of Palestinian social institutions, which resonate with those in our own society, we can and should mobilize them to condemn and boycott their counterparts in Israel:

1. We should urge the entire academic community to denounce Israel's bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza and the total destruction of all of its science facilities. An organized boycott of Israeli universities and all academic exchanges, especially scientific, should become university policy throughout the country. Special attention should be paid to the 450 US university presidents, who in the recent past, denounced a call by British academics for a boycott and who remain silent and complicit in the face of Israel's total physical annihilation of all ten faculties for 20,000 Palestinian university students.

2. All American health workers, doctors, nurses, technicians, should organize and denounce Israel's medical embargo against the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into the Gaza Strip. They must condemn Israel's bombardment of Gaza's Children's Hospital, the neighborhood pharmacies and the attacks on any transport of those critically wounded Palestinian victims of its aerial and missile attacks. Medical personnel should raise the fundamental ethical issues regarding the collaboration of US medical personnel and programs with the Jewish State's 'total war' policies of extermination.

3. All citizens should demand the end of all US military aid to Israel, especially F-16 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, 1000 pound 'bunker buster' bombs used by the Israeli armed forces on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and the murder and maiming of over 2,500 Palestinians, civilians, civil servants, police and national militia. In pursuit of a cutoff of US military aid to Israel, every effort should be made to target and denounce the most forceful, aggressive and successful Zionist advocates and lobbyists who influence the elected members of the US Congress and White House on foreign military aid budgets. No progress in ending US military aid for Israel's ethnic cleansing will succeed unless the peace movement and others appalled by Israel's mass murder tackles the Zionist lobby head on. This includes boycotts, rebuttals and demonstrations against the AIPAC, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the other 50 leading American Jewish organizations, which initiate and secure US governmental endorsement of Israel's extermination policies.

4. US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israel's crimes against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state.

5. Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and denounce its Navy's violent illegal assault, in international waters, of civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities of Gaza.

6. Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of Zionist 'op-ed' writers, 'news' reports and the self-styled Middle East experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into aggressors and exterminators into victims.

7. We should wage a battle of ideas everywhere (in every public forum) against the efforts by the Zionist Power Configuration to monopolize discussion over the Israeli policy of genocide, to censor, intimidate and slander critics of Israeli apartheid - as UN General Assembly President Manuel d'Escoto so aptly calls Israel's Ghetto Wall surrounding Palestinian villages. The outpouring of public protest over Israel's war of extermination is an enormous step forward in countering the Zionist monopoly of the mass media and encouraging the tens of millions of Americans who clearly recognize and privately despise Israel's crimes against humanity and resent the local Zionist elite's thuggery against those who speak out. Mass pressure on elected representative may sway some to reconsider their abject servility to their Zionist 'contributors' and their 'Israel First' Congressional colleagues.

8. A patriotic nationwide campaign should demand that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, come clean and register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. This might undermine the Lobby's appeal to American Jews, reduce its influence over Congress and open up judicial processes and investigations over its abuse of tax-exemptions, money-laundering and lead to revelations over its treasonous procurement of confidential US state documents for a foreign power. There is a powerful political and legal basis for such a denial of the 'Lobby's' tax-exempt status and legality, apart from the transparent and overwhelming evidence that all Zionist organizations act as transmission belts for Israeli state policies: In the early 1950's up to 1963, the forerunner of AIPAC was obligated to register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. More recently, an Israeli prosecutor presented evidence that the Israeli-Jewish Agency and its US counterparts were laundering billions of dollars especially for the funding of Israeli colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land, condemned as illegal under international law. Congressional hearings, law suits and further published research would reveal the role of the Lobby as a Fifth Column for the State of Israel against the interest of the people of the United States.

Until we neutralize the pervasive power of the Zionist Power Configuration in all of its manifestations - in American public and civic life - and its deep penetration of American legislative and executive offices, we will fall short of preventing Israel from receiving the arms, funding and political backing to sustain its wars of ethnic extermination.

When told that the great majority of the world's people are sickened and incensed by Israel's mass murder of the citizens of Gaza, we can easily imagine the contemptuous dismissal by Israel's top leaders, paraphrasing Joseph Stalin: How many bombers, missiles, fighter planes and powerful lobbies do they (the outraged people of the world) have?

James Petras is the author of "Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power," Clarity Press 2008.

The situation we see in Gaza today is one that was escalated by Israel and particularly the decision-makers in government. We have a very short-term memory when it comes to daily reports of rocket attacks so we often forget important events in sequence that brought us to this point.

Israel and Hamas were at their most peaceful state in the history of their coexistence for five months this year. During the Egyptian-brokered truce, aggressive attacks plummeted and for the first time in years, the alarm sirens indicating incoming rocket attacks had largely fallen silent.

All of this changed, however, on Nov. 4. While the world was in awe at an American election, Israel launched an aerial strike killing four people in Gaza it claimed were digging a tunnel to smuggle weapons. Yet this, the largest violation of the truce, was swept under the rug by a tsunami of U.S. election coverage. Hamas responded with rockets, and then Israel quickly reapplied a tight blockade, bringing us back to the cycle of violence.

While the world was busy with Barack Obama's historic victory, those in charge in Israel were laying the foundation of a pre-election opportunity to flex their muscles before their electorate. This is not new in Israel; in fact, it is standard practice in a country where security is such an important concern. We may remember Ariel Sharon's visit to the sacred Temple Mount, in a swarm of armed guards, right before the election in 2001. The intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which ensued, led the Israeli electorate to choose a right-wing hard-liner like Sharon over Ehud Barak.

Hanging in the balance of this election strategy are the lives of 1.5 million people in Gaza, already desperate for a normal life, and thousands more on the Israeli side who are tired of rocket attacks.

Though few are talking about it, this may be the most significant series of events in the history of the conflict. The two-state solution is on the line in the next several years because of ever-changing realities on the ground.

If President-elect Barack Obama does not take quick control of mediating the peace process after he assumes office, peace will not come during his administration and the two-state solution may effectively be dead.

Now, in this critical point in transition the players involved must align in favor of reaching an agreement and this can only happen with a unified Palestinian partner.

If peace talks fail to get off the ground during an Obama administration, we will look back at this point in time, and this important sequence of events, and realize how things could have been different. There has never been a more important time than now for American intervention in this conflict.

There is no doubt Israelis should have the right to security, just as Palestinians should have the right to security, but the current situation is leading to a lack of security for both peoples long into the future.

What Israel learned from the 33-day war with Hezbollah in 2006 was that the quickest and most efficient way to end rocket fire was armistice. Israel had that with a cease-fire with Hamas, and this can be achieved again but it will take quick and direct American involvement.

The recipe to cease-fire is simple: All cross-border attacks must cease and all blockades must end. Perhaps several months ago the Egyptians had the leverage to broker an agreement, but the situation has escalated beyond that now. It's time for the United States to step in because the long-term stakes are much greater than the short-term goals of politicians in Israel or Hamas.

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavor. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realizing that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theater presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonizing has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favored method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health center, a cultural center. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health center, the cultural center They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidized by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favor. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets! *

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honorable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?
Who was the dead body?
Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?
Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?
Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?
What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?
Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by Nathaniel Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape, London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

This pro-business, anti-worker faction of the Republican Party hated FDR as if he were Satan incarnate. It is this faction of the Republican Party that fought against child labor laws, the right of workers to organize, minimum wage laws, worker safety protections, and every other proposal that was designed to grant working men and women the rights and dignity they deserved. The modern descendants of these violently anti-worker conservatives control part of the Republican Party today. They are the ones who voted against financial aid to the Big Three automakers so they could kill off the United Auto Workers, their sworn enemies since the 1930s. We should not be surprised.

The other branches of the modern Republican Party have an interesting genealogy as well. The southern Republicans are the descendants of the racist fanatics that spent the century between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 violently suppressing African-American rights. They had been conservative Democrats up to the early 60s, but Lyndon Johnson's courageous stand for human rights drove them into a dark alliance with the Anti-Worker Republicans. The Social Conservative Republicans are an offshoot of the Southern Republicans in many ways, and they have allied with ultra-fundamentalists in other parts of the country. These people are determined to achieve "Dominion" over America, seizing power for themselves, and relegating anyone who dares to disagree with their "Holy" mission to second class status. The Social Conservative Republicans are committed to interfering with the private lives of every single person in America. They want to outlaw not only abortion under all circumstances, even rape and incest, but birth control, homosexual behavior, any "non-reproductive marital sex" (check out former Senator Rick Santorum's views if you don't believe me), any sex outside of marriage, and the right of families to let go of their dying loved ones. (Remember Terri Schiavo?) They want to dictate the most intimate details of everyone's life and destroy any notion that religion and public policy should be separate. They also want to see women in a "submissive" role. (Check out Kansas Senator Sam Brownback for a full dose of this repulsive nonsense.) The Social Conservatives are also bitter enemies of science, and they have spread dangerous falsehoods into all public discussion of science-related issues, even going so far as to blame the Holocaust on Charles Darwin!

In short, the modern conservative movement's leaders consist of those who despise working people, those who proudly defend America's horrible racist legacy, the worst of the religious fanatics, and all those who wish to preserve America as an all-white, fundamentalist Christian patriarchy. On top of that is a group I can only call the New Imperialists, (the Neo-Conservatives) dedicated to imposing our "will" on every other nation on earth. And their methods of acquiring and keeping power have been so vicious and ugly as to shame any decent person.

They screamed "Communist!" and "Socialist!" at Franklin Roosevelt, a man whose actions helped preserve American capitalism in its darkest hour. They tried to undermine FDR's attempts to deal with the rising threat of the Axis powers. Their friends in the newspaper business poured out non-stop anti-New Deal hatred in print. After the war, the conservatives latched on to Anti-Communism, not as a genuinely felt conviction, but merely as a means to attain power. Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon became the ugliest practitioners of the dark art of smearing opponents as "Reds". The Goldwater supporters in 1964 eagerly capitalized on white racism in the South and shouted that LBJ was also a traitor, along with all liberals. Because of Johnson's tragic prosecution of a war we should never have been in, Vietnam, and his failure to strongly suppress urban rioting in the 60s, the Right Wing was able to get off the floor. Nixon in 1968 blatantly used a strategy designed to appease white racists while appearing to be "moderate". Nixon deliberately tore the country in two in name of political gain, his worst legacy in my view. (He kept the Vietnam War going as well, even when he knew it was lost, to help gain reelection in 1972. I'll explain in another post why I believe this.)

When the Reaganites gained control of the GOP, they whipped up the Religious Right to support their goals, and an all-out assault on personal privacy and scientific rationality was launched. Creationist insanity was pushed tirelessly, as well as violently anti-gay rhetoric. It was a degrading but effective tactic. And all the while, anyone who objected was tarred as a "persecutor" of Christians and anti-God(!).

Throughout all of these ugly maneuvers a right-wing dominated media machine was growing. Right wing hate radio was used to paint all Democrats as traitors and anti-American. Radical Right newspapers, such as those supported by Right Wing financial godfathers Rupert Murdoch, Richard Mellon Scaife, and Sun Myung-Moon also spread conservative propaganda far and wide. Fox News jumped on the bandwagon in the 90s, giving platforms to the worst of the Radical Rights's pathological liars--Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Gibson, Cavuto, Kristol, and all the rest. The right-wing propagandists spear-headed the lunatic drive to destroy the Clintons, regardless of any price the country itself might pay. (The so-called "Liberal Media" is an absurd myth--conservative voices dominate our traditional media.) The Republicans have used this propaganda machine to try to destroy or undermine every progressive politician and policy in America. It is the Right Wing Noise Machine that has been the principal spreader of the fantastic lies and preposterous ideas of the Republican Party and its henchmen.

Today, look what the Republican Party stands for: opposition to American working men and women, the channeling of trillions of dollars to the richest Americans, hatred of gays, hatred of immigrants, continued smoldering racism, opposition to desperately needed health care reforms, opposition to all environmental protections, spitting hatred for science, hatred for public schools, hatred of all those who are not fundamentalist Christians, support for torture, support for rendition, and support for the fantastically corrupt Bush-Cheney regime. The conservative cancer is the perpetuation of all the worst features of American life--intolerance, fear, prejudice, and tribalism. It is this cancer that screams out that Barack Obama is "the AntiChrist", a "Muslim radical", "corrupt", "ally of Satan", and all the other filth we have seen hurled at our next president. The Radical Right is now going to try to destroy Obama and block every reform he tries to institute. We, the Progressive Netroots, must and will fight these dangerous radicals every step of the way.

It is time for the conservative cancer to be cut out of our body politic. All of our nation's most shameful acts and policies have their roots in it. The humane, progressive, and sensible American majority must, once and for all, put the right-wing minority in its place--and save our country from the death toward which the conservatives have so blindly pushed it.

J. Miller is a former teacher, now freelance writer living in paradise, also known as Kauai.

Citing a recent interview that President Bush did with Charlie Gibson in which Bush said, "The biggest regret of the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq," the New York Times editorial on 7 December 2008 said:

"After everything the American public and the world have learned about how Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney manipulated Congress, public opinion and anyone else they could bully or lie to, Mr. Bush is still acting as though he decided to invade Iraq after suddenly being handed life and death information on Saddam Hussein's arsenal."

The next day the White House responded saying, in part, "As the President has stated, he regrets the intelligence was wrong, but it was intelligence that members of Congress, foreign governments as well as the Administration all believed to be accurate."

So the narrative of blame continues -- all the while avoiding a much more sorry truth. Not only did the Bush White House lie and manipulate (for original source documentation see the "secret British memos" collected here -- www.comw.org/warreport/iraqarchivememo.html) but Congressional leaders -- including many prominent Democrats -- and leading organs of the mainstream media were all too willing to join the march to war and turn a blind eye to ample evidence of doubt. If Congress and the media were ignorant of the truth about Iraq's weaponry, it was a willful ignorance.

In late 2002 and early 2003 I did my own assessment from open sources.

For a study called "First Strike Guidelines: The Case of Iraq," first published in September 2002, I consulted dozens of reports, both official and unofficial, on Iraqi weapons programs. In particular I want to call attention to a thorough and careful assessment by independent British analyst Glen Rangwala -- "Claims and evaluations of Iraq's proscribed weapons," University of Cambridge, U.K., 05 February 2003. Six years later it is worth another look.

Not only were independent researchers such as myself and Rangwala finding it extremely doubtful that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, reported to the Security Council on March 7, 2003, just days before the invasion, that, "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq."

All these official and unofficial assessments were readily available to the press and to members of Congress, not to mention the national security staff in the White House. Neither "intelligence failure" nor "manipulation" begin to describe what happened to the judgment of the leaders of our government and of the mainstream American media at the time. The record will show that few of these powerful actors really cared about the facts at the time. They were ready for war making and the facts would simply have to fit their inclinations. Today their excuses and recriminations simply don't hold with the evidence.
_______________
Charles Knight is co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives at the Commonwealth Institute ( http://www.comw.org/pda/ )
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dust-up-between-the-New-Yo-by-Charles-Knight-081213-545.htm

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers withdraw their many lawsuits against state governments in their attempts to not comply with our environmental laws.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the management team which drove these once-great manufacturers into the ground resign and be replaced with a team who understands the transportation needs of the 21st century.

Yes, they could have given the loan for any of these reasons because, in the end, to lose our manufacturing infrastructure and throw 3 million people out of work would be a catastrophe.

But instead, the Senate said, we'll give you the loan only if the factory workers take a $20 an hour cut in wages, pension and health care. That's right. After giving BILLIONS to Wall Street hucksters and criminal investment bankers -- billions with no strings attached and, as we have since learned, no oversight whatsoever -- the Senate decided it is more important to break a union, more important to throw middle class wage earners into the ranks of the working poor than to prevent the total collapse of industrial America.

We have a little more than a month to go of this madness. As I sit here in Michigan today, tens of thousands of hard working, honest, decent Americans do not believe they can make it to January 20th. The malaise here is astounding. Why must they suffer because of the mistakes of every CEO from Roger Smith to Rick Wagoner? Make management and the boards of directors and the shareholders pay for this.

Of course that is heresy to the 31 Republicans who decided to blame the poor, miserable autoworkers for this mess. And our wonderful media complied with their spin on the morning news shows: "UAW Refuses to Give Concessions Killing Auto Bailout Bill." In fact the UAW has given concession after concession, reduced their benefits, agreed to get rid of the Jobs Bank and agreed to make it harder for their retirees to live from week to week. Yes! That's what we need to do! It's the Jobs Bank and the old people who have led the nation to economic ruin!

But even doing all that wasn't enough to satisfy the bastard Republicans. These Senate vampires wanted blood. Blue collar blood. You see, they weren't opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they're opposed to workers making a decent wage. In their rage, they were driven to destroy the backbone of this country, not because the UAW hadn't given back enough, but because the UAW hadn't given up.

It appears that the sitting President has been looking for a way to end his reign by one magnanimous act, just like a warlord on his feast day. He will put his finger in the dyke, and the fragile mess of an auto industry will eke through the next few months.

That will give the Senate enough time to demand that the bankers and investment sharks who've already swiped nearly half of the $700 billion gift a chance to make the offer of cutting their pay.

Fat chance.

Yours,
Michael Moore
[email protected]
MichaelMoore.com

My research showed that the U.S. Education system is failing many Latino youth. The following is a small subset of the evidence confirming this. "At 21 percent, the national Latino high school dropout rate is more than twice the national average at 10 percent." (Pew Factsheet: 2004) "By the end of high school, Latino students have math and reading skills that are virtually the same as those of White middle-schoolers." (Education Trust: 2003). College enrollment rates for Latinos have not increased over the last 20 years. "Only 20 percent of Hispanic students leave high school prepared for college, compared to 40 percent of whites." (Alliance for Excellent Education: 2008) In looking closer to home, Oregon is failing Latino youth as well. In Oregon, 50% of all sophomores meet or exceed state standards in reading and math. However, only 25% of Latino sophomores meet state requirements in reading and only 20% of them meet state requirements in math. (Employers for Education Excellence: 2008)

So why is the U.S. Education system failing Latino youth? In this paper, I will focus on a number of reasons and their sociological implications but this is by no means an exhaustive list. One reason is that many Latinos are poor. In 2002, in the United States, 22% of Hispanics live in poverty. Locally in Hillsboro, Oregon 23.5% of Latino families live in poverty as compared to 5.3% of White families. Additionally in Hillsboro, 25.8% of Latino children live in poverty as compared to 5.6% of White children. Poverty impacts Latino youth in so many ways. Often Latino youth face competing options; many need to work significant hours each week (20 - 40 hours) to help support their families. These youth have less time for homework, they miss school because of work and they are tired during school. Secondary school supplies and fees are expensive (e.g. the $100+ calculator needed for required high school math courses). Latino youth may not have all the basic school supplies needed to do well in their classes. Additionally, many families cannot afford the outside services needed by their youth. A friend of mine whose family is struggling financially has a son who is having difficulty with geometry. Tutoring would help him a great deal but she said it is just not an option due to financial reasons. Latino youth are more likely to fall further and further behind because they are less able to get the extra assistance that they need. Furthermore, there are activity fees for a lot of secondary school classes & activities. The normal school fees for my daughter to be in choir and play a second tier sport are hundreds of dollars. This limits participation for these Latino youth (e.g. no sports). Lack of transportation also has a negative impact on participating in school events/activities and getting homework assistance. So Latino youth may be discriminated against because they cannot stay after school to meet with a teacher because they do not have transportation home. Lastly, families in poverty experience many other hurdles (e.g. unsafe neighborhood, lack of proper medical care and proper nutrition) that have to impact student's school performance.

Minority groups (e.g. Latinos) often live in segregated neighborhoods. "Segregation can mean that minority groups are compelled to live separately under inferior conditions." (Anderson & Taylor: 292) 75% of Latino students attend segregated schools where minorities comprise 50% or more of the student population. "Segregation can mean that minority groups are given inferior educations." (Anderson & Taylor: 292) "Segregated schools tend to have fewer financial, human, and material resources than schools in more affluent areas. By the time students who attend these schools reach high school, the academic challenges they face have been compounded by years of substandard education." (Alliance for Excellent Education: 2008) "Segregation can mean that minority groups are given inferior educations." (Anderson & Taylor: 292) What this can look like to Latino youth is that their schools are understaffed, have outdated and inadequate resources and less qualified teaching staff. Furthermore, the teaching staff can be overloaded, discouraged and burned out. As part of a food assistance program I visited a particular elementary school in the Beaverton School district which would probably be considered a segregated school. Although both school buildings were both old, the contrast between this school and my children's elementary school was painfully evident everywhere I turned.

Latinos are commonly victims of stereotyping. "A stereotype is an oversimplified set of beliefs about members of a social group or social stratum." "Stereotypes based on race or ethnicity are called racial-ethnic stereotypes." (Anderson & Taylor: 275) Latinos are seen as lazy and of inferior intelligence. Prevalent attitudes include "you do not vote" or "you do not do well in school." Latino men are oversexed and macho (exaggerated masculinity). Latino women are stereotyped as "hot".

Latino youth experience prejudice and discrimination. A recent example of this is Oregon Ballot Measure 58. This ballot measure would have limited the use of foreign language instruction in public school from 1 to 2 years depending on the student's age. Chief petitioner Bill Sizemore says "the measure would save education money, contending that "these kids will learn English more quickly when they are required to do so."" Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are the language skills needed to interact in social situations and takes six months to two years to develop. So what is the problem with the ballot measure? Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP), what you need to succeed in school, may take up to 7-10 years to develop. This ballot measure would have caused the Oregon education system to discriminate against non-English speaking students.

Prejudice, discrimination, lower status, and stereotyping negatively impacts Latino youth. They are treated differently by teachers. "Social class stereotypes also affect teachers' interactions with students. Teachers are likely to perceive working-class children and poor children as less bright and less motivated than middle-class children. Teachers are more likely to define working-class students as troublemakers." (Anderson & Taylor: 90) Several Latino youth interviewed "painted a picture of schools where teachers had low expectations of them and little interest in whether they went on to higher education." (Immerwahr: 2003) Teachers expect less of them. Teachers spent less time with them. Teachers are biased against them. Additionally, they experience institutional racism "such as schools assigning Blacks and Latinos to lower tracks than Whites with the same ability test scores." (Anderson & Taylor: 280) So the impact is not just at the teacher level it is at the school level and at the institution level.

"Race, like ethnicity, lumps together groups that may have very different historical and cultural backgrounds, but once so labeled, they are treated as a single entity. This is called the out-group homogeneity effect, whereby all members of any out-group are perceived by an individual to be similar to even identical to each other, and differences among them are perceived to be minor or nonexistent." (Anderson & Taylor: 274) It is very evident that this is what is happening to Latinos. [My references did it. I am doing it throughout this paper.] One reference's definition of Latino high schoolers included Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, other Central American, Argentinean, Chilean, Columbian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Venezuelan, other South American and all other Hispanic or Latino. This is a large number of different groups including many million square miles. Why do we assume they all can be lumped together as one people group because they all are of Spanish descent? There are significant differences within these people groups including their ancestry (White Spanish colonists versus Plantation slaves), their "race" (some identify as White while other identify as Black), tenure in the US (newly migrated versus others who can trace their roots back to before the Spanish-American war), and how they came to the US (e.g. military conquest versus political refugees). By grouping all of these youth together as one entity, while it appears to simplify life on the surface, using this broad brush approach means you are mostly likely not meeting the needs of any of them well. All Latino youth are not the same so how can they possibly all learn the same way?

Latino youth struggle as their lives span two different, clashing cultures: between their school culture (predominately U.S.) and their home culture. "As Latinos move within the pressures of work, school, community and home, they have to contend with the pressures of diverging expectations related to overall behavior and language. These diverging expectations can be a focus of internal conflict and stress." (Taylor: 2004) There are many examples of this. U.S. culture stresses assertiveness, independence and achievement while Latino families are collective (e.g. the family expects you to be successful so you can help out the family). A Mexican family may only view Mexican TV, eat only Mexican food, and only speak Spanish at home. So a Latino youth may not be able to receive help on homework at home or develop the English language skills needed to be successful in school. Additionally, girls are often over-protected and not encouraged to explore all career paths. My husband and I wonder if this is why one of his students consistently spends the beginning of 1st period putting on her makeup. It is not OK with her family for her to wear makeup, yet it is rare for a high sophomore girl not to wear makeup. As a result of this cultural clash, Latino students experience the stress of role conflict. "A role is the expected behavior associated with a particular status." "These roles can conflict with each other, a situation called role conflict, wherein two or more roles as associated with contradictory expectations." (Anderson & Taylor: 114) Latino youth experience stress when their role of child conflicts with their role of student (e.g. competing options).

I have to admit going in to this I suspected that Latino parents did not see the value of education. My research said the complete opposite. "By significantly higher percentages than the rest of the population, the parents of Hispanic high school seniors believe that a college education is an essential prerequisite for a good job and a comfortable middle-class lifestyle." (Immerwahr: 2003) Latino parents strongly value education, but this is not translating into more education for Latino youth. Why is this? This is because many Latino youth are in charge of their education. One reference called this "child in charge." Latino youth are often the first generation to attend U.S. high school. Parents don't know how or have the skills (e.g. English) to navigate the U.S. educational system. While willing, parents are often unable to support their children in this arena. This results in students have a "stunning lack of knowledge of the rules of the game." (Immerwahr: 2003) Additionally, Latino youth are often misinformed about educational choices. "Like teenagers from every age, they sometimes speak with equal confidence about things they understand and subjects they don't know so well." (Immerwahr: 2003) This lack of knowledge, misinformation and ignorance leads Latino youth to make poor educational choices. My experience as a parent is that it is common for teenagers to make poor choices. However, these poor educational choices have much more life-long impacts with Latino youth because they may not have an adult in their life to assist with mid-course correction.

Clearly there is a problem with how the U.S. Education system is under-serving Latino youth. There are many reasons for this, but what do we do about it? During my research I found few solutions. One solution I did find is identifying and engaging more mentors for these youth. Successful mentorship increases when the mentors are Latino, have similar family background and upbringing, speak the same language and come from the same socio-economic status. This has been demonstrated in my Sunset High School College & Career mentor example I talked about in the first paragraph. A few years ago the school hired a Latino, Spanish-speaking woman to work with Latino students. She has had success in many areas with these students.

Instead of solutions to the problem, I found barriers. One specific barrier is non-Latino parents may fear that if there is real equity for all children, that it will hurt their own child's chances. This breeds competitiveness for student resources (e.g. the scarcity mentality). A second specific barrier is that a strong enough case has not been made that wider access to quality, higher education is in everyone's best interest. We have an individual versus global viewpoint. "The most recent national surveys show that nearly everyone believes that society needs more college-educated workers. Yet according to more recent surveys, the public still places primary emphasis on individual responsibility for attaining a higher education, and believes that the benefits of higher education go primarily to individuals. Also, people see college dropouts as a problem for those individuals who drop out, rather than for society as a whole." (de los Santos Jr, Alfedo G.: 2003) This encourages that thinking that "If I can do it (get through college) so can you!" This thinking is totally ignorant of the possible differences in support systems.

The biggest barrier is that Latinos are not the dominant group in the U.S. "The group that assigns a racial or ethnic group to subordinate status in society is called the dominant group." (Anderson & Taylor: 275) In the U.S., Whites are the dominant group. In this role, Whites have assigned Latinos to a subordinate (minority group) status in our society. Even though Latinos are the fastest growing minority group and expected to make up 30 percent of the US population by 2050, they are still a lower-status group. A privilege of being the dominant group is having the most power with respect to social institutions (e.g. the education system). The U.S. Education system is geared predominately toward White students. The implications of this are huge and widespread: who gets the most, best resources; how students are taught; and where students are taught. We see this in many of the reasons the U.S. Education system is failing Latino youth (e.g. poverty, segregation, stereotyping). These reasons stem from Latino youth having lower-status than White youth.

So if we can eliminate the prejudice and discrimination that Latino youth experience as a result of their lower-status, there is still a huge problem. Education is a social institution. As a social institution it is slow to change. Additionally, because education is a social institution it is subject to institutional racism. Institutional racism is "so much a part of U.S. institutions that discrimination can occur even when no single person is causing it." (Anderson & Taylor: 280) Latinos will experience institutional racism long after any individual is racist towards them.

Clearly the U.S. Education system is failing Latino youth and the outlook continues to be bleak. At first, this made me feel hopeless. But then I realized just by doing this paper, I have made a difference. I have demolished many stereotypes both my husband and I had. Additionally, we have both gained understanding and we can make a point of passing this on to others.

References
Anderson, Margaret L. and Taylor, Howard F. 2008. Sociology in Everyday Life. Thomson Wadsworth: United States.

Broughton, Ashley. 2008. "Minorities expected to be majority in 2050." http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/13/census.minorities/index.html.

2004. "Latino Teens Staying in High School: A Challenge for All Generations." Pew Hispanic Center Fact Sheet. http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/7.3.pdf">http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/7.3.pdf.

2003. "Latino Achievement in America." The Educational Trust. http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/7DC36C7E-EBBE-43BB-8392-CDC618E1F762/0/LatAchievEnglish.pdf.

2008. "Latino Students and U.S. High Schools." Alliance for Excellent Education. http://www.all4ed.org/files/Latino_FactSheet.pdf.

2008. "The Need - Oregon's Challenge." Employers for Education Excellence. http://e3oregon.org/tn_or_challenge.html.

Immerwahr, John & Garcia, Marlene L. & Madrid, Arturo & Molera, Jamie & de los Santos Jr., Alfedo. 2003. "With Diploma in Hand Hispanic High School Seniors Talk About Their Future." http://www.highereducation.org/reports/hispanic/hispanic.shtml

2007. "Hillsboro Community Profile." Washington Country Commission on Children & Families.
http://www.co.washington.or.us/deptmts/hhs/chld_fam/pdf/hillsboro07.pdf.

Taylor, Amy. 2004. "A Cultural Exploration of the Latino Community." http://www.nasponline.org/publications/cq/cq331latino.aspx.

Pilon, Bradley. 2004. "Immigrant Teenagers - Helping Them Adjust To Their First Year: Recommendations for Parents." http://www.nasponline.org/communications/spawareness/immigrantteen.pdf

Manning, Rob. 2008. "State Puts High Price Tag on Education Measures."
http://news.opb.org/article/2774-state-puts-high-price-tag-education-measures/

Haynes, Judie. 2007. "Explaining BICS and CALP."
http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/bics_calp.php

There were some surprises. One was that the election was not over after the Democratic convention. By usual indicators, the opposition party should have had a landslide victory during a severe economic crisis, after eight years of disastrous policies on all fronts including the worst record on job growth of any post-war president and a rare decline in median wealth, an incumbent so unpopular that his own party had to disavow him, and a dramatic collapse in US standing in world opinion. The Democrats did win, barely. If the financial crisis had been slightly delayed, they might not have.

A good question is why the margin of victory for the opposition party was so small, given the circumstances. One possibility is that neither party reflected public opinion at a time when 80% think the country is going in the wrong direction and that the government is run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the people, and a stunning 94% object that government does not attend to public opinion. As many studies show, both parties are well to the right of the population on many major issues, domestic and international.

It could be argued that no party speaking for the public would be viable in a society that is business-run to an unusual extent. Evidence for that is substantial. At a very general level, evidence is provided by the predictive success of political economist Thomas Ferguson's "investment theory" of politics, which holds that policies tend to reflect the wishes of the powerful blocs that invest every four years to control the state. More specific illustrations are numerous. To mention just one, for 60 years the US has failed to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association. Legal analysts call it "the untouchable treaty in American politics," and observe that there has never even been any debate about the matter. And many have noted Washington's dismissal of conventions of the International Labor Organization as contrasted with the intense dedication to enforcement of monopoly pricing rights for corporations ("intellectual proper! ty rights"). There is much to explore here, but this is not the place.

The two candidates in the Democratic primary were a woman and an African-American. That too was historic. It would have been unimaginable forty years ago. The fact that the country has become civilized enough to accept this outcome is a considerable tribute to the activism of the 1960s and its aftermath.

In some ways the election followed familiar patterns. The McCain campaign was honest enough to announce clearly that the election wouldn't be about issues. Sarah Palin's hairdresser received twice the salary of McCain's foreign policy adviser, the Financial Times reported, probably an accurate reflection of significance for the campaign. Obama's message of "hope" and "change" offered a blank slate on which supporters could write their wishes. One could search websites for position papers, but correlation of these to policies is hardly spectacular, and in any event, what enters into voters' choices is what the campaign places front and center, as party managers know well.

The Obama campaign greatly impressed the public relations industry, which named Obama "Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008," easily beating out Apple. The industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories. And it recognizes the benefits of undermining democracy the same way.

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that once again elections were bought: "The best-funded candidates won nine out of 10 contests, and all but a few members of Congress will be returning to Washington." Before the conventions, the viable candidates with most funding from financial institutions were Obama and McCain, with 36% each. Preliminary results indicate that by the end, Obama's campaign contributions, by industry, were concentrated among Law Firms (including lobbyists) and financial institutions. The investment theory of politics suggests some conclusions about the guiding policies of the new administration.

The power of financial institutions reflects the increasing shift of the economy from production to finance since the liberalization of finance in the 1970s, a root cause of the current economic malaise: the financial crisis, recession in the real economy, and the miserable performance of the economy for the large majority, whose real wages stagnated for 30 years, while benefits declined. The steward of this impressive record, Alan Greenspan, attributed his success to "growing worker insecurity," which led to "atypical restraint on compensation increases" - and corresponding increases into the pockets of those who matter. His failure even to perceive the dramatic housing bubble, following the collapse of the earlier tech bubble that he oversaw, was the immediate cause of the current financial crisis, as he ruefully conceded.

Reactions to the election from across the spectrum commonly adopted the "soaring rhetoric" that was the hallmark of the Obama campaign. Veteran correspondent John Hughes wrote that "America has just shown the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," while to British historian-journalist Tristram Hunt, the election showed that America is a land "where miracles happen," such as "the glorious epic of Barack Obama" (leftist French journalist Jean Daniel). "In no other country in the world is such an election possible," said Catherine Durandin of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris. Many others were no less rapturous.

The rhetoric has some justification if we keep to the West, but elsewhere matters are different. Consider the world's largest democracy, India. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, which is larger than all but a few countries of the world and is notorious for horrifying treatment of women, is not only a woman, but a Dalit ("untouchable"), at the lowest rung of India's disgraceful caste system.

Turning to the Western hemisphere, consider its two poorest countries: Haiti and Bolivia. In Haiti's first democratic election in 1990, grass-roots movements organized in the slums and hills, and though without resources, elected their own candidate, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The results astonished observers who expected an easy victory for the candidate of the elite and the US, a former World Bank official.

True, the victory for democracy was soon overturned by a military coup, followed by years of terror and suffering to the present, with crucial participation of the two traditional torturers of Haiti, France and the US (contrary to self-serving illusions). But the victory itself was a far more "extraordinary example of democracy at work" than the miracle of 2008.

The same is true of the 2005 election in Bolivia. The indigenous majority, the most oppressed population in the hemisphere (those who survived), elected a candidate from their own ranks, a poor peasant, Evo Morales. The electoral victory was not based on soaring rhetoric about hope and change, or body language and fluttering of eyelashes, but on crucial issues, very well known to the voters: control over resources, cultural rights, and so on. Furthermore, the election went far beyond pushing a lever or even efforts to get out the vote. It was a stage in long and intense popular struggles in the face of severe repression, which had won major victories, such as defeating the efforts to deprive poor people of water through privatization.

These popular movements did not simply take instructions from party leaders. Rather, they formulated the policies that their candidates were chosen to implement. That is quite different from the Western model of democracy, as we see clearly in the reactions to Obama's victory.

In the liberal Boston Globe, the headline of the lead story observed that Obama's "grass-roots strategy leaves few debts to interest groups": labor unions, women, minorities, or other "traditional Democratic constituencies." That is only partially right, because massive funding by concentrated sectors of capital is ignored. But leaving that detail aside, the report is correct in saying that Obama's hands are not tied, because his only debt is to "a grass-roots army of millions" - who took instructions, but contributed essentially nothing to formulating his program.

At the other end of the doctrinal spectrum, a headline in the Wall Street Journal reads "Grass-Roots Army Is Still at the Ready" - namely, ready to follow instructions to "push his agenda," whatever it may be.

Obama's organizers regard the network they constructed "as a mass movement with unprecedented potential to influence voters," the Los Angeles Times reported. The movement, organized around the "Obama brand" can pressure Congress to "hew to the Obama agenda." But they are not to develop ideas and programs and call on their representatives to implement them. These would be among the "old ways of doing politics" from which the new "idealists" are "breaking free."

It is instructive to compare this picture to the workings of a functioning democracy such as Bolivia. The popular movements of the third world do not conform to the favored Western doctrine that the "function" of the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" - the population -- is to be "spectators of action" but not "participants" (Walter Lippmann, articulating a standard progressive view).

Perhaps there might even be some substance to fashionable slogans about "clash of civilizations."

In earlier periods of American history, the public refused to keep to its assigned "function." Popular activism has repeatedly been the force that led to substantial gains for freedom and justice. The authentic hope of the Obama campaign is that the "grass roots army" organized to take instructions from the leader might "break free" and return to "old ways of doing politics," by direct participation in action.

Latin America

In Bolivia, as in Haiti, efforts to promote democracy, social justice, and cultural rights, and to bring about desperately needed structural and institutional changes are, naturally, bitterly opposed by the traditional rulers, the Europeanized mostly white elite in the Eastern provinces, the site of most of the natural resources currently desired by the West. Also naturally, their quasi-secessionist movement is supported by Washington, which once again scarcely conceals its distaste for democracy when it does not conform to strategic and economic interests. The generalization is a staple of serious scholarship, but does not make its way to commentary about the revered "freedom agenda."

To punish Bolivians for showing "the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," the Bush administration cancelled trade preferences, threatening tens of thousands of jobs, on the pretext that Bolivia was not cooperating with US counter-narcotic efforts. In the real world, the UN estimates that Bolivia's coca crop increased 5 percent in 2007, as compared with a 26 percent increase in Colombia, the terror state that is Washington's closest regional ally and the recipient of enormous military aid. AP reports that "Cocaine seizures by Bolivian police working with DEA agents had also increased dramatically during the Morales administration."

"Drug wars" have regularly been used as a pretext for repression, violence, and state crimes, at home as well.

After Morales's victory in a recall referendum in August 2008, with a sharp increase in support over his 2005 success, rightist opposition turned violent, leading to assassination of many peasants supporting the government. After the massacre, a summit meeting of UNASUR, the newly-formed Union of South American Republics, was convened in Santiago Chile. The summit issued a strong statement of support for the elected Morales government, read by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. The statement declared "their full and firm support for the constitutional government of President Evo Morales, whose mandate was ratified by a big majority" -- referring to his overwhelming victory in the referendum a month earlier. Morales thanked UNASUR for its support, observing that "For the first time in South America's history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems, without the presence of the United States."

A matter of no slight significance, not reported in the US.

The Administration

Turning to the future, what can we realistically expect of an Obama administration? We have two sources of information: actions and rhetoric.

The most important actions to date are selection of staff. The first selection was for vice-President: Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Senate Democrats, a long-time Washington insider, who consistently votes with his fellow Democrats but not always, as when he supported a measure to make it harder for individuals to erase debt by declaring bankruptcy.

Joe Biden, a hawk on matters of imperial policy, and an undependable ally of the ordinary American when it comes to his pocketbook.

The first post-election appointment was for the crucial position of chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among House Democrats and like Biden, a long-term Washington insider. Emanuel is also one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign contributions, the Center for Responsive Politics reports. He "was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry." Since being elected to Congress in 2002, he "has received more money from individuals and PACs in the securities and investment business than any other industry"; these are also among Obama's top donors. His task is to oversee Obama's approach to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, for which his and Obama's funders share ample responsibility.

In an interview with an editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emanuel was asked what the Obama administration would do about "the Democratic congressional leadership, which is brimming with left-wing barons who have their own agenda," such as slashing defense spending (in accord with the will of the majority of the population) and "angling for steep energy taxes to combat global warming," not to speak of the outright lunatics in Congress who toy with slavery reparations and even sympathize with Europeans who want to indict Bush administration war criminals for war crimes. "Barack Obama can stand up to them," Emanuel assured the editor. The administration will be "pragmatic," fending off left extremists.

Obama's transition team is headed by John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff. The leading figures in his economic team are Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both enthusiasts for the deregulation that was a major factor in the current financial crisis. As Treasury Secretary, Rubin worked hard to abolish the Glass-Steagall act, which had separated commercial banks from financial institutions that incur high risks. Economist Tim Canova comments that Rubin had "a personal interest in the demise of Glass-Steagall." Soon after leaving his position as Treasury Secretary, he became "chair of Citigroup, a financial-services conglomerate that was facing the possibility of having to sell off its insurance underwriting subsidiary... the Clinton administration never brought charges against him for his obvious violations of the Ethics in Government Act."

Former Citigroup's chief Robert Rubin: advisor to the Clintons and now Obama. Back in January 2008, Fortune Magazine itself berated him, saying, "A lending catastrophe has consumed homeowners, mortgage companies, and the financial system, but Robert Rubin, Citigroup's director and executive committee chair, doesn't seem particularly alarmed."

Rubin was replaced as Treasury Secretary by Summers, who presided over legislation barring federal regulation of derivatives, the "weapons of mass destruction" (Warren Buffett) that helped plunge financial markets to disaster. He ranks as "one of the main villains in the current economic crisis," according to Dean Baker, one of the few economists to have warned accurately of the impending crisis. Placing financial policy in the hands of Rubin and Summers is "a bit like turning to Osama Bin Laden for aid in the war on terrorism," Baker adds.

The business press reviewed the records of Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, which met on November 7 to determine how to deal with the financial crisis. In Bloomberg News, Jonathan Weil concluded that "Many of them should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama's inner circle." About half "have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both." Is it really plausible that "they won't mistake the nation's needs for their own corporate interests?" He also pointed out that chief of staff Emanuel "was a director at Freddie Mac in 2000 and 2001 while it was committing accounting fraud."

Those are the actions, at the time of writing. The rhetoric is "change" and "hope."

Health Care

The primary concern for the administration will be to arrest the financial crisis and the simultaneous recession in the real economy. But there is also a monster in the closet: the notoriously inefficient privatized health care system, which threatens to overwhelm the federal budget if current tendencies persist. A majority of the public has long favored a national health care system, which should be far less expensive and more effective, comparative evidence indicates (along with many studies). As recently as 2004, any government intervention in the health care system was described in the press as "politically impossible" and "lacking political support" - meaning: opposed by the insurance industry, pharmaceutical corporations, and others who count. In 2008, however, first Edwards, then Obama and Clinton, advanced proposals that approach what the public has long preferred. These ideas now have "political support." What has changed? Not public opinion, which remains much as before. But by 2008, major sectors of power, primarily manufacturing industry, had come to recognize that they are being severely damaged by the privatized health care system. Hence the public will is coming to have "political support." There is a long way to go, but the shift tells us something about dysfunctional democracy.

International Relations

Internationally, there is not much of substance on the largely blank slate. What there is gives little reason to expect much a change from Bush's second term, which stepped back from the radical ultranationalism and aggressive posture of the first term, also discarding some of the extreme hawks and opponents of democracy (in action, that is, not soothing words), like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Israel-Palestine

The immediate issues have to do mostly with the Middle East. On Israel-Palestine, rumors are circulating that Obama might depart from the US rejectionism that has blocked a political settlement for over 30 years, with rare exceptions, notably for a few days in January 2001 before promising negotiations were called off prematurely by Israel. The record, however, provides no basis for taking the rumors seriously. I have reviewed Obama's formal positions elsewhere (Perilous Power), and will put the matter aside here.

After the election, Israeli president Shimon Peres informed the press that on his July trip to Israel, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with the Arab League peace proposal, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel along with Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories - basically, the long-standing international consensus that the US-Israel have unilaterally blocked (and that Peres has never accepted - in fact, in his last days as Prime Minister in 1996 he held that a Palestinian state can never come into existence). That might suggest a significant change of heart, except that the right-wing Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that on the same trip, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with Netanyahu's plan, which calls for indefinite Israeli control of the occupied territories.

The paradox is plausibly resolved by Israeli political analyst Aluf Ben, who points out that Obama's "main goal was not to screw up or ire anyone. Presumably he was polite, and told his hosts their proposals were `very interesting' - they leave satisfied and he hasn't promised a thing." Understandable, but it leaves us with nothing except his fervent professions of love for Israel and dismissal of Palestinian concerns.

Iraq

He has been honest about his lack of principles, but the reality does not translate into a loss of support.

On Iraq, Obama has frequently been praised for his "principled opposition" to the war. In reality, as he has made clear, his opposition has been entirely unprincipled throughout. The war, he said, is a "strategic blunder." When Kremlin critics of the invasion of Afghanistan called it a strategic blunder, we did not say that they were taking a principled stand.

By the time of writing, the government of Iraq seems close to accepting a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Washington on the US military presence in Iraq - with reservations, according to Prime Minister Maliki, who said that this is the best Iraq could get and it was at least "a strong beginning." The talks dragged on, the Washington Post reports, because Iraq insisted on "some major concessions, including the establishment of the 2011 withdrawal date instead of vaguer language favored by the Bush administration [and] also rejected long-term U.S. military bases on its soil." Iraqi leaders "consider the firm deadline for withdrawal to be a negotiating victory," Reuters reports: Washington "long opposed setting any timetable for its troops to withdraw, but relented in recent months," unable to overcome Iraqi resistance.

Throughout the negotiations, the press regularly dismissed the obstinate stance of the Maliki government as regrettable pandering to public opinion. US-run polls continue to report that a large majority of Iraqis oppose any US military presence, and believe that US forces make the situation worse, including the "surge." That judgment is supported, among others, by Middle East specialist and security analyst Steven Simon, who writes in Foreign Affairs that the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy is "stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism. States that have failed to control these forces have ultimately become ungovernable, and this is the fate for which the surge is preparing Iraq. A strategy intended to reduce casualties in the short term will ineluctably weaken the prospects for Iraq's cohesion over the long run." It may lead to "a strong, centralized state ruled by a militar! y junta that would resemble the Baathist regime Washington overthrew in 2003," or "something very much like the imperial protectorates in the Middle East of the first half of the twentieth century" in which the "club of patrons" in the capital would 'dole out goods to tribes through favored conduits." In the Petraeus system, "the U.S. military is performing the role of the patrons -- creating an unhealthy dependency and driving a dangerous wedge between the tribes and the state," undermining prospects for a "stable, unitary Iraq."

The latest Iraqi success culminates a long process of resistance to demands of the US invaders. Washington fought tooth and nail to prevent elections, but was finally forced to back down in the face of popular demands for democracy, symbolized by the Ayatollah Sistani. The Bush administration then managed to install their own choice as Prime Minister, and sought to control the government in various ways, meanwhile also building huge military bases around the country and an "embassy" that is a virtual city within Baghdad - all funded by congressional Democrats. If the invaders do live up to the SOFA that they have been compelled to accept, it would constitute a significant triumph of nonviolent resistance. Insurgents can be killed, but mass nonviolent resistance is much harder to quell.

Within the political class and the media it is reflexively assumed that Washington has the right to demand terms for the SOFA. No such right was accorded to Russian invaders of Afghanistan, or indeed to anyone except the US and its clients. For others, we rightly adopt the principle that invaders have no rights, only responsibilities, including the responsibility to attend to the will of the victims, and to pay massive reparations for their crimes. In this case, the crimes include strong support for Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities on Reagan's watch, then on to Saddam's massacre of Shiites under the eyes of the US military after the first Gulf War; the Clinton sanctions that were termed "genocidal" by the distinguished international diplomats who administered them and resigned in protest, and that also helped Saddam escape the fate of other gangsters whom the US and Britain supported to the very end of their bloody rule; and the war and its hideous aftermath. No s! uch thoughts can be voiced in polite society.

The Iraqi government spokesman said that the tentative SOFA "matches the vision of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama." Obama's vision was in fact left somewhat vague, but presumably he would go along in some fashion with the demands of the Iraqi government. If so, that would require modification of US plans to ensure control over Iraq's enormous oil resources while reinforcing its dominance over the world's major energy producing region.

Afghanistan, Pakistan...

Obama's announced "vision" was to shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. That stand evoked a lesson from the editors of the Washington Post: "While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves." Increasingly, as Washington has been compelled to accede to Iraqi demands, tales about "democracy promotion" and other self-congratulatory fables have been shelved in favor of recognition of what had been obvious throughout to all but the most doctrinaire ideologists: that the US would not have invaded if Iraq's exports were asparagus and tomatoes and the world's major energy resources were in the South Pacific.

The NATO command is also coming to recognize reality publicly. In June 2007, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer informed a meeting of NATO members that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system. That is the true meaning of the fabled "responsibility to protect." Presumably the task includes the projected $7.6-billion TAPI pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, running through Afghan's Kandahar province, where Canadian troops are deployed. The goal is "to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran" and to "diminish Russia's dominance of Central Asian energy exports," the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, plausibly outlining some of the contours of the new "Great Game."

Obama strongly endorsed the then-secret Bush administration policy of attacking suspected al-Qaeda leaders in countries that Washington has not (yet) invaded, disclosed by the New York Times shortly after the election. The doctrine was illustrated again on October 26, when US forces based in Iraq raided Syria, killing 8 civilians, allegedly to capture an al-Qaeda leader. Washington did not notify Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki or President Talabani, both of whom have relatively amicable relations with Syria, which has accepted 1.5 million Iraqi refugees and is bitterly opposed to al-Qaeda. Syria protested, claiming, credibly, that if notified they would have eagerly apprehended this enemy. According to Asia Times, Iraqi leaders were furious, and hardened their stance in the SOFA negotiations, insisting on provisions to bar the use of Iraqi territory to attack neighbors.

The Syria raid elicited a harsh reaction in the Arab world. In pro-government newspapers, the Bush administration was denounced for lengthening its "loathsome legacy" (Lebanon), while Syria was urged to "march forward in your reconciliatory path" and America to "keep going backwards with your language of hatred, arrogance and the murder of innocents" (Kuwait). For the region generally, it was another illustration of what the government-controlled Saudi press condemned as "not diplomacy in search of peace, but madness in search of war."

Obama was silent. So were other Democrats. Political scientist Stephen Zunes contacted the offices of every Democrat on the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, but was unable to find any critical word on the US raid on Syria from occupied Iraq.

Presumably, Obama also accepts the more expansive Bush doctrine that the US not only has the right to invade countries as it chooses (unless it is a "blunder," too costly to us), but also to attack others that Washington claims are supporting resistance to its aggression. In particular, Obama has, it seems, not criticized the raids by Predator drones that have killed many civilians in Pakistan.

These raids of course have consequences: people have the odd characteristic of objecting to slaughter of family members and friends. Right now there is a vicious mini-war being waged in the tribal area of Bajaur in Pakistan, adjacent to Afghanistan. BBC describes widespread destruction from intense combat, reporting further that "Many in Bajaur trace the roots of the uprising to a suspected US missile strike on an Islamic seminary, or madrassa, in November 2006, which killed around 80 people." The attack on the school, killing 80-85 people, was reported in the mainstream Pakistani press by the highly respected dissident physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy, but ignored in the US as insignificant. Events often look different at the other end of the club.

Hoodbhoy observed that the usual outcome of such attacks "has been flattened houses, dead and maimed children, and a growing local population that seeks revenge against Pakistan and the US." Bajaur today may be an illustration of the familiar pattern.

On November 3, General Petraeus, the newly appointed head of the US Central Command that covers the Middle East region, had his first meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and other high officials. Their primary concern was US missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which had increased sharply in previous weeks. "Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government," Zardari informed Petraeus. His government, he said, is "under pressure to react more aggressively" to the strikes. These could lead to "a backlash against the US," which is already deeply unpopular in Pakistan.

Petraeus said that he had heard the message, and "we would have to take [Pakistani opinions] on board" when attacking the country. A practical necessity, no doubt, when over 80% of the supplies for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan.

Pakistan developed nuclear weapons, outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), thanks in no small measure to Ronald Reagan, who pretended not to see what his ally was doing. This was one element of Reagan's "unstinting support" for the "ruthless and vindictive" dictator Zia ul-Haq, whose rule had "the most long-lasting and damaging effect on Pakistani society, one still prevalent today," the highly respected analyst Ahmed Rashid observes. With Reagan's firm backing, Zia moved to impose "an ideological Islamic state upon the population." These are the immediate roots of many of "today's problems - the militancy of the religious parties, the mushrooming of madrassas and extremist groups, the spread of drug and Kalashnikov culture, and the increase in sectarian violence."

The Reaganites also "built up the [Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, ISI] into a formidable intelligence agency that ran the political process inside Pakistan while promoting Islamic insurgencies in Kashmir and Central Asia," Rashid continues. "This global jihad launched by Zia and Reagan was to sow the seeds of al Qaeda and turn Pakistan into the world center of jihadism for the next two decades." Meanwhile Reagan's immediate successors left Afghanistan in the hands of the most vicious jihadis, later abandoning it to warlord rule under Rumsfeld's direction. The fearsome ISI continues to play both sides of the street, supporting the resurgent Taliban and simultaneously acceding to some US demands.

The US and Pakistan are reported to have reached "tacit agreement in September [2008] on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets" in Pakistan, according to unidentified senior officials in both countries. "The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes."

Once again problems are caused by the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" who dislike being bombed by an increasingly hated enemy from the other side of the world.

The day before this report on the "tacit agreement" appeared, a suicide bombing in the conflicted tribal areas killed eight Pakistani soldiers, retaliation for an attack by a US Predator drone that killed 20 people, including two Taliban leaders. The Pakistani parliament called for dialogue with the Taliban. Echoing the resolution, Pakistani foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said "There is an increasing realization that the use of force alone cannot yield the desired results."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's first message to president-elect Obama was much like that delivered to General Petraeus by Pakistani leaders: "end US airstrikes that risk civilian casualties." His message was sent shortly after coalition troops bombed a wedding party in Kandahar province, reportedly killing 40 people. There is no indication that his opinion was "taken on board."

The British command has warned that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and that there will have to be negotiations with the Taliban, risking a rift with the US, the Financial Times reports. Correspondent Jason Burke, who has long experience in the region, reports that "the Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain."

Some Afghan peace activists have reservations about this approach, preferring a solution without foreign interference. A growing network of activists is calling for negotiations and reconciliation with the Taliban in a National Peace Jirga, a grand assembly of Afghans, formed in May 2008. At a meeting in support of the Jirga, 3,000 Afghan political and intellectuals, mainly Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group, criticized "the international military campaign against Islamic militants in Afghanistan and called for dialogue to end the fighting," AFP reported.

The interim chairman of the National Peace Jirga, Bakhtar Aminzai, "told the opening gathering that the current conflict could not be resolved by military means and that only talks could bring a solution. He called on the government to step up its negotiations with the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami groups." The latter is the party of the extremist radical Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Reagan favorite responsible for many terrible atrocities, now reported to provide core parliamentary support for the Karzai government and to be pressing it towards a form of re-Talibanization.

Aminzai said further that "We need to pressure the Afghan government and the international community to find a solution without using guns." A spokeswoman added that "We are against Western policy in Afghanistan. They should bury their guns in a grave and focus on diplomacy and economic development." A leader of Awakened Youth of Afghanistan, a prominent antiwar group, says that we must end "Afghanicide -- the killing of Afghanistan." In a joint declaration with German peace organizations, the National Peace Jirga claimed to represent "a wide majority of Afghan people who are tired of war," calling for an end to escalation and initiation of a peace process.

The deputy director of the umbrella organization of NGOs in the country says that of roughly 1,400 registered NGOs, nearly 1,100 are purely Afghan operations: women's groups, youth groups and others, many of them advocates of the Peace Jirga.

Though polling in war-torn Afghanistan is a difficult process, there are some suggestive results. A Canadian-run poll found that Afghans favor the presence of Canadian and other foreign troops, the result that made the headlines in Canada. Other findings suggest some qualifications. Only 20% "think the Taliban will prevail once foreign troops leave." Three-fourths support negotiations between the Karzai government and the Taliban, and more than half favor a coalition government. The great majority therefore strongly disagree with the US-NATO focus on further militarization of the conflict, and appear to believe that peace is possible with a turn towards peaceful means. Though the question was not asked, it is reasonable to surmise that the foreign presence is favored for aid and reconstruction.

A study of Taliban foot soldiers carried out by the Toronto Globe & Mail, though not a scientific survey as they point out, nevertheless yields considerable insight. All were Afghan Pashtuns, from the Kandahar area. They described themselves as Mujahadeen, following the ancient tradition of driving out foreign invaders. Almost a third reported that at least one family member had died in aerial bombings in recent years. Many said that they were fighting to defend Afghan villagers from air strikes by foreign troops. Few claimed to be fighting a global Jihad, or had allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Most saw themselves as fighting for principles - an Islamic government -- not a leader. Again, the results suggest possibilities for a negotiated peaceful settlement, without foreign interference.

A valuable perspective on such prospects is provided by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a specialist on Afghanistan who was UK ambassador to Moscow during the crucial 1988-92 period when the Russians withdrew (and the USSR collapsed), then becoming chair of the British Joint Intelligence Committee. On a recent visit, Braithwaite spoke to Afghan journalists, former Mujahideen, professionals, people working for the US-based "coalition" - in general, to "natural supporters for its claims to bring peace and reconstruction." In the Financial Times, he reports that they were "contemptuous of President Hamid Karzai," regarding him as another one of the puppets installed by foreign force. Their favorite was "Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist president, who attempted to reconcile the nation within an Islamic state, and was butchered by the Taliban in 1996: DVDs of his speeches are being sold on the streets. Things were, they said, better under the Soviets. Kabul was secure, women were ! employed, the Soviets built factories, roads, schools and hospitals, Russian children played safely in the streets. The Russian soldiers fought bravely on the ground like real warriors, instead of killing women and children from the air. Even the Taliban were not so bad: they were good Muslims, kept order, and respected women in their own way. These myths may not reflect historical reality, but they do measure a deep disillusionment with the `coalition' and its policies."

Specialists on the region urge that US strategy should shift from more troops and attacks in Pakistan to a "diplomatic grand bargain -- forging compromise with insurgents while addressing an array of regional rivalries and insecurities" (Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid in Foreign Affairs, Nov.-Dec. 2008). They warn that the current military focus "and the attendant terrorism" might lead to the collapse of nuclear-armed Pakistan, with grim consequences. They urge the incoming US administration "to put an end to the increasingly destructive dynamics of the Great Game in the region" through negotiations that recognize the interests of the concerned parties within Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and Iran, but also India, China and Russia, who "have reservations about a NATO base within their spheres of influence" and concerns about the threats "posed by the United States and NATO" as well as by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The immediate goal should be "Lowering the level of violence! in the region and moving the global community toward genuine agreement on the long-term goals," thus allowing Afghans to confront their internal problems peacefully. The incoming US president must put an end to "Washington's keenness for `victory' as the solution to all problems, and the United States' reluctance to involve competitors, opponents, or enemies in diplomacy."

It appears that there are feasible alternatives to escalation of the cycle of violence, but there is little hint of it in the electoral campaign or political commentary. Afghanistan and Pakistan do not appear among foreign policy issues on the Obama campaign's website.

Iran

Iran, in contrast, figures prominently -- though not of course as compared with effusive support for Israel; Palestinians remain unmentioned, apart from a vague reference to a two-state settlement of some unspecified kind. For Iran, Obama supports tough direct diplomacy "without preconditions" in order "to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior," namely pursuing a nuclear program and supporting terrorism (presumably referring to support for Hamas and Hezbollah). If Iran abandons its troubling behavior, the US might move towards normal diplomatic and economic relations. "If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation." And as Obama informed the Israeli Lobby (AIPAC), "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" - up to nuclear war, if he meant what he said.

Furthermore Obama will strengthen the NPT "so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions." There is no mention of the conclusion of US intelligence with "high confidence" that Iran has not had a weapons program for 5 years, unlike US allies Israel, Pakistan, India, which maintain extensive nuclear weapons programs in violation of the NPT with direct US support, all unmentioned here as well.

The final mention of Iran is in the context of Obama's strong support for Israel's "Right to Self Defense" and its "right to protect its citizens." This commitment is demonstrated by Obama's co-sponsorship of "a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria's involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles." The reference is to Israel's US-backed invasion of Lebanon in 2006, with pretexts that are hardly credible in light of Israel's regular practices. This invasion, Israel's fifth, killed over 1000 Lebanese and once again destroyed much of southern Lebanon as well as parts of Beirut.

This is the sole mention of Lebanon among foreign policy issues on Obama's website. Evidently, Lebanon has no right of self defense. In fact who could possibly have a right of self defense against the US or its clients?

Nor does Iran have such rights. Among specialists, even rational hawks, it is well understood that if Iran is pursuing a weapons program, it is for deterrence. In the conservative National Interest, former CIA weapons inspector David Kay speculates that Iran might be moving towards "nuclear weapons capability," with the "strategic goal" of countering a US threat that "is real in Teheran's eyes," for good reasons that he reviews. He notes further that "Perhaps the biggest agitator of all in this is the United States, with its abbreviated historical memory and diplomatic ADD." Wayne White, formerly deputy director for the Near East and South Asia in State Department intelligence, dismisses the possibility that Supreme Leader Khamenei and the clerical elite, who hold power in Iran, would throw away the "vast amounts of money" and "huge economic empires" they have created for themselves "in some quixotic attack against Israel with a nuclear weapon," if they had one. The probabil! ity of that is virtually undetectable, he points out.

White agrees that Iran might seek weapons capability (which is not the same as weapons) for deterrence. He goes on to suggest Iran might also recall that Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program when Israel bombed its Osiraq reactor in 1981, and that the attack led him to initiate a program using nuclear materials it had on hand as a result of the bombing. At the time, White was Iraq analyst for State Department intelligence, with access to a rich body of evidence. His testimony adds internal US intelligence confirmation to the very credible evidence available at once, later strengthened by reports of Iraqi defectors, that the Israeli bombing did not terminate, but rather initiated, Saddam's pursuit of nuclear weapons. US or Israeli bombing of Iranian facilities, White and other specialists observe, might have the same effect. Violence consistently elicits more violence in response.

These matters are well understood by informed hardliners. The leading neoconservative expert on Iran, Reuel Marc Gerecht, formerly in the CIA Middle East division, wrote in 2000 that:

Tehran certainly wants nuclear weapons; and its reasoning is not illogical. Iran was gassed into surrender in the first Persian Gulf War; Pakistan, Iran's ever more radicalized Sunni neighbor to the southeast, has nuclear weapons; Saddam Hussein, with his Scuds and his weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions, is next door; Saudi Arabia, Iran's most ardent and reviled religious rival, has long-range missiles; Russia, historically one of Iran's most feared neighbors, is once again trying to reassert its dominion in the neighboring Caucasus; and Israel could, of course blow the Islamic Republic to bits. Having been vanquished by a technologically superior Iraq at a cost of at least a half-million men, Iran knows very well the consequences of having insufficient deterrence. And the Iranians possess the essential factor to make deterrence work: sanity. Tehran or Isfahan in ashes would destroy the Persian soul, about which even the most hard-line cleric cares deeply. As long as the Iranians believe that either the U.S. or Israel or somebody else in the region might retaliate with nuclear weapons, they won't do something stupid.

Gerecht also understands very well the real "security problem" posed by Iranian nuclear weapons, should it acquire them:

A nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would of course check, if not checkmate, the United States' maneuvering room in the Persian Gulf. We would no doubt think several times about responding to Iranian terrorism or military action if Tehran had the bomb and a missile to deliver it. During the lead-up to the second Gulf War, ruling clerical circles in Tehran and Qom were abuzz with the debate about nuclear weapons. The mullahs...agreed: if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons, the Americans would not have challenged him. For the "left" and the "right," this weaponry is the ultimate guarantee of Iran's defense, its revolution, and its independence as a regional great power.

With appropriate translations for the doctrinal term "Iranian terrorism," Gerecht's concerns capture realistically the threat posed by an Iran with a deterrent capacity (Iranian military action is quite a remote contingency).

While as usual ignored as irrelevant to policy formation, American public opinion is close to that of serious analysts and also to world opinion. Large majorities oppose threats against Iran, thus rejecting the Bush-Obama position that the US must be an outlaw state, violating the UN Charter, which bars the threat of force. The public also joins the majority of the world's states in endorsing Iran's right, as a signer of the NPT, to enrich uranium for nuclear energy (the position endorsed also by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kissinger and others when Iran was ruled by the tyrant imposed by US-UK subversion). Most important, the public favors establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, which would mitigate and perhaps eliminate this highly threatening issue.

Popular Influence

These observations suggest an interesting thought experiment. What would be the content of the "Obama brand" if the public were to become "participants" rather than mere "spectators in action"? It is an experiment well worth undertaking, and there is good reason to suppose that the results might point the way to a saner and more decent world.

Noam Chomsky, one of Cyrano's Journal's earliest contributors, is the celebrated semanticist and foreign policy critic quoted by even President Hugo Chavez as an analyst to trust in international affairs.

Elite theory, then, holds that the people (or masses) are under the illusion that through their vote they control the direction of the ship of state, whereas the real captains of the ship-the captains of industry, the eminences grises-are not themselves on the ballot. The public does not get to vote for them, but rather for their paid representatives. Thus the post-election euphoria in the United States over Barack Obama is nothing more than a bubble, an illusion, because the lion's share of the $750 million he collected in campaign contributions (according to the Australian journalist John Pilger) came from Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and the huge hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. These corporations, it hardly need be said, do not have the welfare of the American people as their top priority; and it is also the case that having invested in a president, they expect a return on that investment once he takes office. And if history is any guide here, they are going to get it. It is for this reason that what we have in the United States, according to Harvard political scientist Michael Sandel, is a "procedural democracy": the form, the appearance, is democratic, but the actual content, the result, is not. As the eminent sociologist C. Wright Mills put it in 1956,

"In so far as the structural clue to the power elite today lies in the

political order, that clue is the decline of politics as genuine and

public debate of alternative decisions....America is now in considerable

part more a formal political democracy than a democratic social

structure, and even the formal political mechanics are weak."

C. Wright Mills, perhaps the finest American sociologist in the history of the profession. Much of his inspiration came from Marxism, which he utilized eclectically. Mills was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectuals in post-World War II society, and advocated public, political engagement over disinterested observation.

While it is undoubtedly true that elites occasionally act in a deliberate and concerted way, it was Mills in particular who pointed out that the reality was significantly more nuanced than this. For the most part, it is not that the rich or super-rich get together in some corporate boardroom and ask themselves, "Now how can we best screw the workers and the middle class?" No, said Mills, what in fact happens is that they socialize together, in an informal sort of way, and recognize their class affiliations:

"Members of the several higher circles know one another as personal

friends and even as neighbors; they mingle with one another on the

golf course, in the gentlemen's clubs, at resorts, on transcontinental

airplanes, and on ocean liners. They meet at the estates of mutual

friends, face each other in front of the TV camera, or serve on the same

philanthropic committee; and many are sure to cross one another's path

in the columns of newspapers, if not in the exact cafés from which many

of these columns originate....The conception of the power elite,

accordingly, does not rest upon the assumption that American history

since the origins of World War II must be understood as a secret plot,

or as a great and co-ordinated conspiracy of the members of this elite.

The conception rests upon quite impersonal grounds."

We are not, in short, talking about some sort of organized brotherhood, some quasi-Masonic financial clique, as it were. However-and this is the crucial point-in terms of concrete outcome, we might as well be. Mills goes on:

"But, once the conjunction of structural trends and of the personal will

to utilize it gave rise to the power elite, then plans and programs did

occur to its members and indeed it is not possible to interpret many

events and official policies...without reference to the power elite."

Mills' work falls more into the category of social criticism than of social science per se; he was not big on facts and figures. But in the fifty-plus years since he wrote the above words, his profile of American democracy as illusory has been fleshed out by numerous sociologists and political scientists armed with reams of data. The most recent work in this genre, Superclass, by David Rothkopf, identifies a global elite of roughly 6,000 individuals who are running the show, worldwide, and the top fifty financial institutions that control nearly $50 trillion in assets. Plot or no plot, the results are the same.

This, then, is elite theory, or what I call conspiracy with a small "c". And it is a real fact of political life, no question about it. But what may be even more significant than this are what I call Conspiracies with a capital "C", by which I mean the unconscious mythologies, or isms, that govern American life. This was the thing that Marx, and Mills, both missed (though the Italian sociologist Antonio Gramsci did come close to it with his notion of "hegemony," or the symbolic control of society): the elites aren't doing anything that the masses don't already agree with; which is why, certainly, in the United States, socialism never really had a chance. When Henry Wriston, who was president of the Council on Foreign Relations during 1951-64, wrote that U.S. foreign policy "is the expression of the will of the people," he knew what he was talking about. As many observers (even American ones) have pointed out, what the American people-less than 5% of the world's population-want is an indulgent and wasteful lifestyle, in which they consume 25% of the world's energy. Thus in the presidential debates of October 2008, Barack Obama referred to the 25% figure, and then talked about ways of ensuring that that rate of consumption continue unchecked. He did not, as did Jimmy Carter more than thirty years ago, argue that growth was not necessarily a positive thing, that Americans needed to burn less energy, and that the American military-the guarantor of that profligate lifestyle-had to be scaled down accordingly. Indeed, within two years of taking office, Mr. Carter was popularly regarded as something of a joke, and by 1980 Ronald Reagan, who told the American people they could have it all, was elected by a landslide. (Significantly, the first thing he did upon moving into the White House was to have the solar panels that Mr. Carter had installed on the roof removed.) So while it is true that elites run the show, they nevertheless govern with the (misguided) consent of the people. As the nineteenth-century Sioux holy man, Chief Sitting Bull, was supposed to have said, "possessions are a disease with them." But his was hardly the majority view-not then, not now.

What, then, are the major Conspiracies, or isms, of American life? I think we can identify four, in particular.

1. The notion of Americans as the "chosen people," and of the nation as a "city on a hill." This latter phrase-quoted by both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign-goes back to the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, as he was sailing from England to America on the Arabella in 1630:

"We shall find that the God of Israel is among us....He shall

make us a praise and glory....For we must Consider that we

shall be as a City upon a Hill. The eyes of all people are upon us."

The idea is that it would be America's unique mission to bring democracy to all the peoples of the earth, inasmuch as the American way of life was (obviously) the best. (Iraq is merely the latest manifestation of this way of thinking.) In fact, the Puritans took the Jews of the Old Testament as their model, in which the exodus from Egypt, and invasion of Canaan, was regarded as the paradigm for the establishment of the Colonies. Cotton Mather even referred to the Massachusetts Bay Colony as "our American Jerusalem." The notion that the story of the United States is the primary manifestation of God's will on earth has an enormous hold on the American psyche. "American exceptionalism," Alexis de Tocqueville called it; it is with us to this day.

2. Along with this we have Ism No. 2: the existence, in the United States, of a "civil religion." This was first pointed out by the sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967, the fact that despite the presence of Catholicism, Judaism, and numerous Protestant sects in America, the real religion of the American people was America itself. To be an American is regarded (unconsciously, by Americans) as an ideological/religious commitment, not an accident of birth. This is why critics of the US are immediately labeled "un-American," and are practically regarded as traitors. (Quite ridiculous, when you think about it: can you imagine a Swedish critic of Sweden, for example, being attacked as "un-Swedish"?) The historian Sidney Mead pegged it correctly when he called America "the nation with the soul of a church," while another historian, Richard Hofstadter, declared that "It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but to be one." As Graham Greene portrayed it in The Quiet American, this is not a position that encourages self-reflection.

3. The third unconscious mythology is the one identified by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893: the existence of a supposedly endless frontier, into which the American people would expand geographically. Eventually, it became an economic frontier, and finally an imperial one--Manifest Destiny gone global. This lay at the heart of the Carter-Reagan debate, for the notion of limits to growth is almost a form of heresy in an American context. The American Dream envisions a world without limits, in which the goal, as the gangster (played by Edward G. Robinson) tells Humphrey Bogart in Key Largo, is simply "more". De Tocqueville had already, in the 1830s, commented on the great "restlessness" of the American people; and more than a century later, the British journalist Alistair Cooke remarked that what were regarded as luxuries throughout most of the world, were regarded as necessities in the United States. If Americans never had much of an interest in socialism, they probably had even less interest in buddhism, the occasional Zen center notwithstanding. It was not for nothing that the historian William Leach entitled his study of late-nineteenth-century American expansionism, Land of Desire.

4. Finally, we have a national character based on extreme individualism--Emerson's "Self-Reliance." As the historian Joyce Appleby describes it, this originated in the shift in the definition of the word "virtue" that took place in the Colonies in the 1790s. Previous to that time, the word had a European (or even classical) definition, namely "the capacity of some men to rise above private interests and devote themselves to the public good." By 1800, the definition had undergone a complete inversion: "virtue" now meant the capacity to look out for oneself in an opportunistic environment. Whereas the former definition was adhered to by the Federalists, the Jeffersonian Republicans actively promoted the latter definition, as part of the new nation's break with England and all things European. Life was not to be about service to the community, but rather about competition and the acquisition of goods. This is summarized in the popular American expression, "There is no free lunch." The "self-made man" is expected to make it on his own.

There have been very few dissenters to this fourth ism; in many ways, American history can be seen as the story of a nation consistently choosing individual solutions over collective ones. One American who did dissent, however, was Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. In Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions he wrote: "The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin."

And "ruin" is the operative word here. While there is certainly an upside to these four isms-the sunny side of technological innovation and the Yankee "can-do" mentality, for example-in the long run these unconscious mythologies, in dialectical fashion, began to turn against those caught up in their magic spell. It surely cannot be an accident that 25% of all the world's prisoners are incarcerated in American jails (1% of the entire US adult population); that two-thirds of the world's consumption of antidepressants occurs in the United States; that 24% of the American population say that it's OK to use violence in the pursuit of one's goals, 44% support the torture of alleged or suspected terrorists, and 39% want Muslims in the US to be required to carry a religious ID on them at all times (why not just make it a yellow star, and be done with it?); that the country has the greatest percentage of single-person dwellings in the world, the highest homicide rate, the largest military budget (by several orders of magnitude), and the greatest number of square feet of shopping malls on the surface of the planet. The data on ignorance, which I have documented elsewhere, are breathtaking, and Robert Putnam's description (in Bowling Alone) of the collapse of community, trust, and friendship is one of the saddest things I have ever read. Dialectically, and ironically, American "success" became American ruin; the crash of October 2008 was merely the tip of the iceberg.

The power of isms, certainly in the American case, derives from the fact that they are unconscious, embedded deep in the psyche. They constitute Conspiracies in that those who hold them are like marionettes on strings, screaming "Obama!" (for example) without realizing that the new president can no more buck the elites running the country than he can dismantle the mythologies that drive its citizens-himself included. As for the individual, so for the nation: the only hope is to see ourselves as we are seen, from the outside, as it were. And therein lies the paradox. For the four Conspiracies close in on themselves, forming a kind of mirror-lined glass sphere that does not permit any dissonant information to enter. Sandel, Mills, Rothkopf, Bellah, Mead, Leach, Appleby, Putnam-America's finest, really-will never become household words, and if they did, it would probably be as objects of contempt. For this is finally the most terrifying thing about isms or Conspiracies: we do not choose them; rather, it is they that choose us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. Between 1982 and 1988 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor's Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. In 2000 The Twilight of American Culture was named a "Notable Book" by the New York Times Book Review. Other published work includes Dark Ages America (2006) and a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness: The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000). Dr. Berman has done numerous radio and television interviews in Europe, the United States, and Asia, and in recent years has lectured in Australia, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Venezuela, and New Zealand. During 2003-6 he was Visiting Professor in Sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and is currently Visiting Professor in Humanities at the Tecnológico de Monterrrey, Mexico City.

©Morris Berman, 2008

Amid the current capitalist crisis, fear spreads and scapegoatingsurges. Media and politicians charge the predictable suspects.

Arrests may follow. Few recognize the system as the problem, rather than this or that group reacting to the system's demands and pressures. True, the word "capitalism" now arises in public discussion. But there it means big business, big banks, or Wall Street, rather than the system that ties together all streets, businesses, workers, households, and the government.

Cruder right-wingers scapegoat the home-buyers now unable to pay for their sub-prime mortgages. The slightly more sophisticated denounce government intervention -- to help minorities and the poor become home-owners -- for whatever ails the economy. The crudest of all blend Wall Street, bankers, and crooked Washington insiders into conspiracies to profit personally and/or sell out the US to world communism or terrorism or maybe Muslims.

Hank Paulson, Goldman Sachs alum and emblematic of Wall Street's decades of unregulated greed, is now a convenient whipping boy for media pundits and politicians, but he, too, is nothing but a "normal" figure in the constellation of power players continually enabled by capitalism. (Note he's still very much in power.)

On the left, favorite whipping boys include Wall Street, bankers, hedge funds, overpaid executives, crooked corporations, and compromised politicians who let bad things happen "to our economy." More sophisticated leftists accelerate condemnations of "neo-liberal deregulation." Ever since Reagan's election, they say, government failures to regulate markets and control private enterprises facilitated the wild financial misdeeds that have now brought us low.

Neither side treats the capitalist system as the basic problem. Rather, both mostly agree that the interacting network of corporations with their boards of directors, salaried managers, and wage-workers are the necessary and appropriate foundations "of our economy." As that network, capitalism strikes them as inevitable, and thus not the appropriate target for right or left. Instead, they debate how much blame should attach to this or that group for "causing" the crisis: poor people or too much government intervention or too little or the overpaid rich with hedge funds or the corrupt bad apples fouling the system. Fingers point to culprits spoiling a capitalism -- "our economy" -- that would otherwise work just fine.

Consider the Wall Street vs Main Street debate. Many leftists and not a few rightists accuse Wall Street of "causing" the sub-prime mortgage mess (as if countless Main Street banks and mortgage brokers had not pushed profitable mortgages onto locals unable to afford them). They scowl that Wall Street invented "derivatives," those dangerous new financial gimmicks (as if Main Street types did not invest in and profit from them). Leftists claim that Wall Street got politicians to de-regulate the economy (as if many Main Street businesses did not likewise support and profit from deregulation). Many rightists claim that insufficient government de-regulation, because of Wall Street influence, caused the crisis (as if Main Street did not benefit from that government intervention). Rightists and leftists both largely blame Wall Street and Washington for together producing the housing and real estate bubble (as if Main Street did not cheer the rising prices and building of houses, the booming demand for household products, the resulting jobs, incomes, and tax revenues, etc.).

As capitalism's latest boom goes bust, Wall Street and Main Street shift from mutually profitable cooperation to a struggle over survival. Main Street fears Wall Street will use its power, money, and influence to dump the pains of economic crisis onto workers and governments (by cutting wages and jobs, paying fewer taxes, and demanding more government aid and bailouts). This will hurt Main Street. Capitalism works to shift economic costs down the economic structure and economic gains upward. So Main Street fights back with public opinion campaigns to blame Wall Street for the crisis. In this falling out among thieves, left and right mostly take sides rather than reject the system that spawned those thieves. The alternative position would be to demand system change.

System change does not mean what Paulson and Bernanke now plan: to buy shares of private US banks. In this partial "nationalization" of the banks, the US government will buy and hold bank shares and possibly place state officials on the banks' boards of directors. Private enterprises thereby become, partly and probably temporarily, public enterprises. This change is big for Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke because they always denounced public enterprises as socialism or communism.

But replacing private members of bank boards of directors (elected by and responsible to private shareholders) with public members (named by and responsible to state officials) does not basically change the system. The workers still work 9 to 5; they still follow the board's orders; and the goods, services, and profits they produce belong to the boards of directors to serve their interests. Those boards, whether private or public, still give the orders, sell the products, receive the revenues, and decide how to use the profits. The profound inequalities between workers and board of directors remain. The profound absence of democracy in the capitalist workplace remains. Both public and private boards of directors have historically sought to evade, weaken, or eliminate state controls and regulations limiting their freedom of action and their profitability (in the USSR as well as the US).

Capitalism has everywhere oscillated between private and public phases. Private capitalism minimized government interventions and mostly kept state officials off boards of directors. In capitalism's public phases, governments intervened and sometimes replaced private with public members of boards of directors. Crises of one phase often provoked transition to the other. The 1929 crisis of private US capitalism ushered in Roosevelt's New Deal state intervention establishing social security, unemployment insurance, and other costly -- to business -- programs and regulations). The 1970s crisis of state-regulated capitalism returned the US to another private capitalist phase, the Reagan-Bush era, which undid most of the New Deal. What will follow today's crisis of private capitalism? Will the pendulum swing back to state re-regulated capitalism? If so, the US business community will utilize decades of accumulated expertise in how to evade, then weaken, and finally eliminate state regulation. Re-regulation will thus likely be short-lived. Or might the alternative of system change become important?

System change would supplement re-regulation with a transformation inside enterprises. Suppose old boards of directors were replaced by new boards whose members understood and shared the goals of regulation rather than seeing regulation as limitations to be undermined. This might happen if the new boards comprised the collectivity of the workers themselves. Job descriptions of all workers would henceforth combine the particular labor of each with her or his full participation in the collective tasks of the board of directors.

In this way, workers-as-also-bosses could both shape economic regulations -- alongside other workers running other enterprises - and then carry them out inside each enterprise. The conflict of interests between employers and employees would be transformed once these were no longer different and opposed groups. This would be real system change. Without this, boards of directors, private and/or public, will continue to function in the future as they have in the past. They will undermine regulations aimed to make the economy serve society, will continue to run their enterprises undemocratically, will maintain economic inequalities, and will continue to generate economic crises like the one imposed on us all today.

Rick Wolff is Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the author of many books and articles, including (with Stephen Resnick) Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the U.S.S.R. (Routledge, 2002) and (with Stephen Resnick) New Departures in Marxian Theory (Routledge, 2006).

While the orgy of American hagiography and self-congratulation over having elected the First Black President shows no sign of peaking a week after the election, greedy Wall Street bankers, the permanent war industry of military contractors and mercenary companies, the predatory lenders, the pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies have the new administration's public and private ear, its wallet and dominate its inner circle. Their voices are everywhere in the mainstream media, on the lips of White House aides, and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, warning that an Obama administration will have to "govern from the center", and "tamp down the expectations" of the Democratic base who imagined they were voting in something like "Change".

"Tamping Down Expectations" Since 2004

It is not an exaggeration to say that Barack Obama's career since 2004 has been all about soaring promises to capture ardent voters followed by lowering standards to please his biggest financial contributors. An early foe of the Iraq war and Patriot Act during his US Senate campaign, Obama voted to continue one and pass the other once in office. Obama's pledge to withdraw from Iraq has more loopholes by now than swiss cheese. His promise to filibuster warrantless eavesdropping and immunity for telecom lawbreakers morphed into a vote for both, and his campaign trail promise to pursue Dr. King's unfinished quest for economic justice flipped into lobbying the congress in support of the multi-trillion dollar no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout.

The first appointments of the new regime are truly disturbing. Illinois congressman, Rahm Emanuel, the new White House chief of staff is a certifiable Democratic neocon who helped strongarm NAFTA, welfare reform and the Telecom Act of 1996 though congress for Bill Clinton. He served on the board of Freddie Mac while it was busy inflating the housing bubble, and was an early and unrepentant advocate of invading Iraq and bombing Iran. As head of the DCCC, responsible for recruiting and funding 2006 Democratic congressional candidates, Emanuel used corporate contributions to try to knock more than a twenty antiwar Democrats out of primary races in favor of pro-war Democrats. Confronted with choices between pro-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans, voters rejected most of Emanuel's picks, costing Democrats as many as ten Congressional seats.

Larry Summers, early front-runner to succeed Bush Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, was happy to be Enron's eyes and ears at Treasury, according to a handwritten note to his pal Ken Lay you can find at OpenLeft.com. Summers famously remarked that third world countries were "underpolluted". His solution to this "problem" is encouraging them to sell their share of "rights" to poison the planet's oceans and air to wealthy western corporations through a system like the present futures and commodities exchanges. Both the outgoing Bush and the incoming Obama administrations are enthusiastic advocates of this "market-based" approach. So much for a Change We Can Breathe In.

Wild-eyed but unrealistic optimists insist that hacks like Summers and Emanuel are just the smartest guys around, and their policies are not Obama's anyhow. But that fails the laugh test. There are plenty of smart political operators, and many equally brilliant economists who have called the mess right all along and would relish the chance to begin setting it right. Economists like Paul Krugman, Michael Hudson, or Joseph Stiglitz, for instance. You don't hire smart people for the new administration to do the opposite of what they built their careers doing. It defies common sense to expect anything else. Larry Summers will be looking out for his old friends and colleagues. Rahm Emanuel will be kneecapping advocates of single payer health care, opponents of the war, teachers, union members and anyone left of that rightward moving target they call "the center".

In a note titled "How to Treat A President Elect" David Swanson put his finger on why the worst thing we can do now is sit back and pray for president-elect Obama, to leave him alone and wait to see what he does. It's time to remind him in no uncertain terms why he was elected.

"There is no such thing as giving a democratic president a chance by leaving him alone. Precisely the way you give him a chance is by lobbying him to do what you want to see done. Anything else is an insult to him and to ourselves.

During the past eight years, we could have built the most powerful citizens' movements ever seen and never influenced our government's policy in the slightest. A powerful movement for peace and justice was simply ignored. Now suddenly we have a government that might listen, and now is the moment in which we should go silent? What sort of an awful antidemocratic sense of timing is that?

The best elected official in a democracy is one who listens to the changing opinion of constituents. The worst is the principled superior creature who scorns polls and prefers not to be called or faxed or Emailed or visited because he knows better than you what's good for you, and he can get more done if you leave him alone. We have to decide which kind of president we want to have come January.

The campaign to elect the president is over. The campaign to make the president DO what he was elected FOR is underway.

How We Can Do It: Basic Principles
There isn't any one way to do this, but there are some basic principles. We can never let our respect for high office, our admiration of his family and education, or reverence for the those that preceded him trump the urgency of our demands for peace, justice and democracy. No president or president-elect speaks from a burning bush, and nobody who works for a president is named Moses.

We should want to see an Obama presidency succeed, but that success is defined by how well he serves our interests, not his own and certainly not how he serves those who engineered the state of permanent war and economic depression we find ourselves in today. The constitution names the president "commander-in-chief of the army and navy and militia of the several states". Civilians don't have a commander-in-chief and don't need one. Power may come from the top down, but authority and legitimacy flow only from the bottom up. A president either works for us, or he is as illegitimate as the disgraced Bush-Cheney regime.

It's not enough to send the Obama transition team your suggestions on its web site, since only the administration knows who is sending them what, and you never meet or exchange information with anyone else who sends in suggestions. Very little of the organizing done for the Obama campaign will be useful in the coming period. Only the Obama campaign, and now the Obama administration possesses the email and phone lists. Organizers who don't work for the administration but who want it to serve the people, unless they have obtained and copied those lists, will be working from scratch.

It's time to call meetings and make demands. It's time organize group visits to your members of Congress. It's time to raise expectations, not lower them, to build and crank up the phone banks and email lists with messages to pressure the new administration to do what it was elected to do and not disappoint its base, as has happened so many times before.

Here's an issue to start with --- making it possible for people to fight in their own communities to raise their own incomes. The administration should make its top priority passage of the Employee Free Choice Act in the first month of the new Congress.

How the Obama Administration can Enable Its Allies and Build a Permanent Movement For Economic Justice: Passing The Employee Free Choice Act

The biggest thing the Obama administration can do to succeed in its first month, to boost the incomes and secure the economic well-being of millions of US families is to speedily pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Under the Reagan, Clinton and Bush regimes, the right of Americans in a workplace to organize a union, even to think out loud about a union, has almost disappeared. Working people have no leverage against employers, who, according to Labor Department stats, fired someone every ten minutes in 2005 for suspected union activity. Right now, that's illegal, but the fines are so light that employers wantonly violate the law and willingly pay the fine rather than allow workers to organize.

Swift and early passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will empower families to fight their own fights for economic parity on more equal ground than we have seen in a generation. While the productivity of American workers has nearly tripled over the last thirty years, wages have remained, when adjusted for inflation, flat. All the profits of increased productivity have flowed upward to the bosses. US executives often make 400 to 1000 times the wage of their workers, as opposed to only 40 to 100 times as much in Germany or Japan, which are still out-competing the US anyway.

If the Employee Free Choice Act is passed early, an Obama administration will create thousands of local organizing opportunities and thousands of institutional allies to help hold it on the course of peace and economic justice it was elected to take. If you want to see an Obama presidency succeed on the terms of the voters who elected it, the thing to do this week is sign the petition and join the one million others who want to lift up not just the fortunes of Wall Street, but those of ordinary families.

Visit the site of American Rights At Work and Learn more about the difference unions make in access to health care and education and democratic rights in the workplace. Forward the information, the videos and the petition to everyone on your list. Blog it and put the "one million strong" ad and the videos on your own web site, if you have one. And yes, call and email the Obama Transition Team. Organize something, or join something already organized to pressure the new administration to keep its promises. If you want change, be the change.

Every week for the next several weeks BAR will print a new suggestion or two on how you can help the Obama administration make good on the promise of "Hope" and "Change" that swept it into office. Whether it intends to, or not.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Atlanta GA. He can be reached at [email protected]

Note: We reproduce below an interesting comment thread from the original post at Black Agenda Report.

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NOTEWORTHY OPINIONS // Nov 13, 2008 at 11:09 am

Campaign insiders haven't much to show
written by cripes , November 12, 2008

Considering the long list of policy reversals, bad votes and terrible appointments we are getting from Obama's "change" administration, I am not persuaded that progressive campaign insiders can even be heard by the real insiders. No. Obama, like democrats before him, has taken the support of minorities, workers and the left generally for granted, making empty promises, and moving to the right.

This administration will need plenty of pressure, and soon. Call it pressure, call it support, I don't care, but one or two million people on the great mall, and converging on your congresspeoples offices is a start.

The vacation is over
written by michael , November 12, 2008

There's a great commentary in today's Bloomberg regarding Obama's Economic Advisory Board members. It reads like a who's who of fraudsters and corporate cronies.

Robert Rubin - helped Enron cook its books, got caught cooking his own and committed numerous accouting fouls while at Ford. Guess who's in D.C., hat in hand, looking for a piece of that TARP bailout?

Anne Mulcahy - While CEO at Xerox, got popped for accounting fraud.

Richard Parsons - Also got popped for accounting fraud. Both Mulcahy and Parsons were directors at Fannie Mae when they were caught breaking accounting rules

So was another member of Obama's new economic board, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. He's now a member of the executive committee at JPMorgan Chase & Co., which, like Citigroup, is among the nine large banks that just got $125 billion of Treasury's bailout budget.

Obama's economic crew might as well be called the Bailout Bunch. Another slot went to former White House economic adviser Laura Tyson. She's been a director for about a decade at Morgan Stanley, which in 2004 got slapped for accounting violations by the SEC and a month ago got $10 billion from Treasury.

Then you've got Emmanuel - consummate corporate insider. Of all the people Obama could have chosen as his chief of staff, couldn't he have found someone who wasn't once on the board of Freddie Mac? Disgusting.

Now, let me tell you what the Obama apologists are going to say in light of this "Status Quo You Can Be Sickened By" reversal. "It's great that he's choosing people who know how corrupt and broken the system so they can fix it", "who better to understand the problem than those with the highest levels of corporate experience", etc, etc. Poor arguments from even weaker minds.

Many of these guys should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama's inner circle. But who better to patch this economy in tatters than the very people responsible for tearing it to shreds? Who better to solve the myriad problems caused by white collar criminality than white collar criminals, most of whom held executive positions at the very companies that sent the economy reeling with "liberal" accounting and experimental derivatives.

The vacation is over, Obama fans. Time to hit him hard like you promised us you would. Enough with the idiotic "give him a chance, eeyore" claptrap. Those of you who voted for the man must now own up to what he's doing. When you've completed those letters brimming with indignation, please post a copy of them here so we can see that you're not full of shit. We'll be waiting.

...
written by Bint Deeb , November 12, 2008

You missed the most relevant negative about Rahm Emanuel -- that he is a devoted Israel-first Zionist whose every policy decision has been and will be made on the basis of how it benefits Israel. The point being that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (NOT the Arab-Israeli conflict, as the Zionists like to call it in another attempt to deny national identity to the Palestinians), is not simply a local conflict but is at the center of global instability.

As Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, recently said the conflict directly affects Americans in at least five ways:
• It isolates the US from major global markets, forcing it to embark on aggressive measures to secure markets rather than peaceful accommodation;
• It thereby diverts the American economy into non-productive production (tanks not roads), making it dependent upon deficit spending which only increases dependency upon foreign financing while diverting resources into the military rather than into education, health and investment;
• Support for the Israeli military costs US taxpayers more than $3 billion annually at a time of deepening recession and crumbling national infrastructure, not to mention the additional $30 billion the Bush administration with support from Emanuel and others, has promised to give Israel over the next 10 years;
• It leads to an American involvement in the world that is mainly military, thus begetting hostility and resistance which produce the threats to security Americans so greatly fear; and
• It ends up threatening American civil liberties by encouraging such legislation as the Patriot Act and by introducing Israeli "counterinsurgency" tactics and weaponry developed in the West Bank and Gaza into American police forces.

Most of the world sees the occupation of Palestine as an American-Israeli occupation and most of the world's peoples empathize with the Palestinians who represent the plight of all peoples who are struggling against the global system of American power and aggression that prevents them from achieving even the most basic political and economic self sufficiency and self determination.

But things really are different now -- with the collapse of Wall Street and the coming disaster in the economy and real people's real lives, the Bush ideology is finished. It's ix-nay on the Pax Americana. The US is no longer in a position to throw its weight around and all those countries that we pooped all over are making friends and moving forward; US militarism is a failed tactic. The thing that Obama must do is accommodate - accommodate the sick of war, pro-peace majority that elected him and accommodate the Muslim world that the US government has shat upon from a great height, literally and metaphorically, for the last umpteen years. And that means ending the still illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. That's the only way to restore the US standing in the world so what happens to the Palestinians takes on a global significance.

The appointment of uber Zionist Rahm Emanuel to Obama's top insider position does not bode well. It's change no one can believe in.

How Can We Hold the Obama Administration Accountable?
written by M. Olatunji Tchiguka , November 12, 2008

Noam Chomsky said that our task is to create a situation where popular organizations can make demands. And I agree. So the question becomes, how can we make demands and hold the Obama administration accountable when we, first, haven't demanded anything; second, when we don't have the constituency; third, when we are so disorganized; and fourth, when we don't have the economic resources? Are we able to acquire $150 million dollars in a month like Obama did in September?

And what are you prepared to do if Obama doesn't keep his promises? Engage in mass protest? Are you going to give your votes to a progressive third party candidate? Will you vote Republican? What are you going to do? What are you willing to do?

What are your Plan B and C?

confusion
written by not-a-customer , November 13, 2008

one major problem is that the lowest common denominator of the campaign is Obama himself. Most people act as if everyone in the Obama camp were a secret progressive, but this is manifestly not true. I know rabid zionists, people who advocate the war on terror and hope that Obama will bomb Pakistan, as well as people who are not certain about universal health care, because they don't want someone else to get health care off their money (whereas it's presumably ok to give that money to the bailout) -- all of them voted for Obama. Their common cause was simple: get the disastrous Bush team out of power. Once this was achieved, there was little else they had in common.

Even if an organizer had all the local lists and contacted successfully all the voters, how could we mobilize those people given that they do not even agree on basic matters of Iraq, Palestine or health care?

Organize we must if any resistance to the brutal system ever emerges, that's certain. But organizing will not come about through the Obama movement -- indeed, it must come through opposition to his team and to Obama himself. Otherwise, all this talk is just pitiful.

Obama doesn't give a F*%ck about what "Progressives" Think
written by Lou , November 13, 2008

And frankly I don't blame him. Go over to the Paul Street piece and you can get my "advice" for future Democratic Party Candidates, tongue-in-cheek, mind you, but actually right on point. "Progressives" are pussies, prone for bitch-slapping and pimping. They will NEVER bolt the Democratic party because of a lack of courage, or wisdom.

America will NEVER be more "Progressive" than Center/Right, especially in this era of rightwing media consolidation and Democratic Party sellout. Strategically, why should the Dems veer to the left? And to add insult to injury, you are basically wasting your time trying to get the "Average Joe or Jane" to grasp all of this. It's abundantly clear to me that Black, White, Rich or Poor, Americans are intoxicated with "American Exceptionalism" we can do no wrong and pull ourselves up by our boots, blah blah blah Bullshit.

I don't bother to even tell family and friends I voted 3rd Party or why, it's a waste of what precious little time I have on this planet.

I'm reminded of the Twilight Zone episode, "The Shelter" where the doctor barricades himself in the basement bomb shelter he prepared while his friends were giving him shit. Build your bomb shelters and for those who try to break in, make sure you have plenty of firepower to shoot their asses dead.

The reason BO "Might" go down in history alongside GWB is twofold:

1. The depth of his betrayal to "Progressives", and
2. Military folly regarding Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

BTW, I see Paulson is doing his damnedest to spend that $800B before Jan. 2009? You were told about the "oversight" lies, but you refuse to acknowledge that it.

I'm like Obama, "Fu#cK it."

agreed with lou
written by not-a-customer , November 13, 2008

One among many problems with the american public discourse is that one must resort to vapid expressions such as "progressive" or "liberal" to communicate with most people. I find those terms awful, but the word "radical" doesn't resonate in certain ears...hence the term "progressive" in my previous post.
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2 Bert Cameron // Nov 13, 2008 at 12:46 pm

It's clear already--even before inauguration--the center right path Obama is travelling. That's what passes for change in America? Meantime, the media do not let up with the celebratory orgy, and even many people who should know better, being so relieved that Bush & Co is no more (that may be a fiction) are also joining the party and the hosannas to Obama. It's ludicrous.

Thank you for putting this important issue squarely in front of the people.

Senator Obama's victory is most important in what it negated, the primary political narrative of our time. The conservative political and economic consensus, which has dominated this country since the start of the Reagan administration, is no more. Governor Sarah Palin's emergence is important in what it revealed, a snap shot into how and in what form the American right makes its comeback.

Both of these revelations have a similar starting point. They both come about due to the death of the old right. The conservatism of Buckley, Reagan, Gingrich and Bush the younger is no longer capable of garnering a working majority in American politics, a fact even more highlighted by the very profile of the candidate which routed them on Tuesday.

Many of us will rejoice in this fact, as we should, but we would be wise to remember that the collapse of what passes as the respectable right in any nation is the first sign of a society moving in a non-democratic direction.

The old right itself died a dialectic death, by which it passed on as the very result of the spectacular success of its policies. The destruction of the labor movement, deregulation, free movement of capital, massive military spending and the massive shift in wages and wealth to the top 10% of the country at the expense of the rest of the population undermined majoritarian political support for its programs.

In politics it is foolhardy to make predictions about the future course of events, politics is by its very nature fluid and unpredictable. If one is to do so, one must also be willing to draw a picture of a likely social and economic context in which our public life will be operating in.

The primary patterns of American social and economic development that we have experienced in the past 30 years are likely to continue and accelerate over the next 20 years regardless of who is in the White House. The deindustrialization of the country will continue finally placing the last of the unionized living wage income earning working class of the 20th century into the history books. The continued expansion of the information and service based parts of the economy and the generally meager wages and benefits it offers will further harden the income, education and opportunity gap between the top 20% of American society and the rest of the population, leaving the country more rigidly divided than ever in its history.

____________

Palin was chosen to be savaged because in order to savage her you would need to savage the realities, the life styles and thinking of the largest segment (though not a majority) of American electorate.

Senator John McCain, left. is joined by Samuel Wurzelbacher, right, also known as "Joe the Plumber". The McCain-Palin ticket cynically used Wurzelbacher as en emblem of their constituency, a blatant falsehood. Wurzelbacher himself lost no time in attempting to cash in on his newly found recognition.
Photo: Reuters

__________

This would be a bad scenario in any country, but it is a disastrous scenario in the United States given how it runs counter to the great American narrative. The American narrative, or what most people call "The American Dream", has always been a practical bargain. The rules were the following: you give up your former identity and allegiances, you do not think socially or politically, you do not question economic hierarchies, and in return you or your children will have a reasonable chance at achieving a better material life. In truth it was always a lousy deal, but it was a deal real and tangible enough to improve the lives of countless millions of people.

What was never part of the deal was the creation of a hard caste system of social and economic polarization. When the day arrives when the vast majority of Americans understand in the deepest recesses of their minds that this myth is shattered and that their children will have less opportunity and poorer economic prospects than themselves, all that we have ever thought or learned about American politics will become irrelevant.

Within such a context the primary task of the new Obama administration will be to weave together a new political consensus that will fill the political space left behind by the collapse of the old right. These discussions over the next few months are likely to decide the political direction of the United States for a long period of time.

An Obama administration will have two primary options to choose from. One choice would be to move center left and reestablish the social compact of a modern New Deal type program. Barring a further deterioration of the economic situation in the country, it is not likely the direction they will move in. The second choice would be to reassemble a new establishment center consensus, minus the most reactionary elements of corporate power, and create a soft Democratic Party Corporatism as the new vital center of American political life.

The second option is the more likely choice and also the path of least resistance. The Obama administration will not pay a great political price in abandoning the pretense of moving the country in a progressive direction for two primary reasons. First, for Senator Obama's political base the symbolism of his election is the change they were seeking and not an idea or program based on a set of policies. The second reason is the political weakness of what passes for the left in the United States, a line up of individuals and organizations stretching from MoveOn.org to the AFL-CIO, who in their misunderstanding of the nature of power confuse access with power itself.

The primary task of serious progressives over the next few months must be to prevent progressive votes of this Tuesday from being turned into another corporatist victory. No one should be very hopeful for the prospects of such an effort. I suspect as progressives spend their time fighting over tickets to the inaugural ball, the Wall Street and K Street branches of the Democratic Party will win the war of priorities and ideas of the new Obama Administration in a rout.

The significance of Governor Palin's emergence is in its confirmation that the old right is no more. When conservatism makes its comeback, it is likely to look and sound a lot like Sarah Palin.

Within the hierarchies of the old right, Sarah Palin's style of pseudo working class conservatism was reserved for the proverbial back of the bus. Her type was not to speak, but to be spoken to; they were assigned to work as the foot soldiers in campaigns and be ignored until the next election.

But as social divisions widen and opportunity declines, there will be an ever-decreasing market for the type of homely business conservatism dished along with breakfast at the local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club. The style of conservatism that Sarah Palin represents will be the only one that has a majoritarian future in today's America. The populist conservatism will be openly hateful, paranoid, anti-intellectual, belligerently militaristic and most significantly ideologically inconsistent and opportunistic.

To understand what these changes mean in practical electoral terms, we must first digress three months and understand the electoral and political rationale that went into the decision to nominate Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate -- a decision as learned as it was unabashedly cynical.

Sarah Palin was never chosen for her strengths, but in fact for her weaknesses. For electoral purposes these were her strengths. She was chosen to be savaged because in order to savage her you would need to savage the realities, the life styles and thinking of the largest segment (though not a majority) of American electorate. Her ignorance of the world, her religious practices, her out of wedlock pregnant daughter represented far more true pictures of the realities of American life than the cosmopolitanism of Barack Obama.

It was to be the juxtaposition of his professorship of constitutional law to the countless community colleges she attended, his perfect family to her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, his Harvard educated wife to the "First Dude" of Alaska. What they were trying to say to American voters was the following: Barack Obama might be the mask you want to put on in this hour of need, but you know in your heart of hearts it is Sarah Palin that is the more truthful nature of your profile.

Her selection was an attempt to make the election about the culture wars, and it nearly worked. Absent the timely melt down in Wall Street it would have likely led to a John McCain victory.

For any one who doubts the transformative nature of what Palinism signifies for the conservative movement, one needs to look no further than the negative reaction of so many prominent conservatives to the Palin nomination. From Peggy Noonan to Andrew Sullivan to many of the propagandist scribes of the National Review, her appointment was savaged as symbolizing the death of a certain kind of conservatism, which in fact was very much true.

It is hard not to have contempt for these intellectual half-men who in their moral cowardice despise the very forces they have spend their careers in unleashing.

As we look into the future regardless of what course the Obama administration chooses to take for the politically serious on both the right and the left, the future is not likely to lie in the center of a new elite consensus. In a system, which is entering a period of semi-permanent crisis, to plant oneself or one's party in its political center is to make yourself responsible for a political system which is forever failing, losing legitimacy and eventually its right to rule. In the long run, the future will belong to whichever political force flies the boldest flags, stands credibly far enough from those who will be held accountable for our troubles, and curses the loudest at the coming darkness.

JOHN BROWN is the nom de guerre of a professional political analyst. Email John Brown at [email protected].

click to listen The "Masked Avengers" are known in Canada for making prank telephone calls to politicians and celebrities.

" You know, I see you as a president one day too."

To which governor Palin responded:

"Haha [Laugh], maybe in eight years."

Sarah Palin was totally unaware that it was a prank.

When the fake President Sarkozy invited Palin to go hunting with him saying;

"I just love killing those animals. Take away a life, that is so fun."

Palin responded:

" Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together as we're getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone that way."

The Fake Sarkozy then spoke of his friend the Prime Minister of Canada Steph Carse (who is a Canadian pop singer).

Palin did not react. The name of the Canadian Prime Minister is Stephen Harper:

FAKE SARKOZY: Some people said in the last days, and I thought that was mean, that you weren't experienced enough in foreign relations, and you know, that's completely false, that's the thing I said to my great friend, the Prime Minister of Canada, Steph Carse. [Canada's Prime Minister is Stephen Harper]

GOV. PALIN: Well, you know, he's doing fine too, when you come into a position underestimated, It gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder.

Flashback on Previous Pranks: Governor George W. Bush during the 2000 Election Campaign

It is worth noting, that a prank during the 2000 election campaign also targetted then Governor George W. Bush, who quite unwittingly, revealed that he too did not know the name of the Canadian Prime Minister.

Governor George W. Bush was interviewed by CBC's Rick Mercer for a satirical TV show on Canadian Network Television. He was asked what he thought of Canadian Prime Minister's Jean Poutine's endorsement of Bush's candidacy.

Canada's Prime Minister in 2000 was Jean Chrétien, not Jean Poutine.

"Poutine" is a popular food in Quebec, consisting of French fries, gravy and cheese curd. (See image below)

Moreover, Poutine [Putin] is the name of then president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin (In French Vladimir Poutine). Currently Putin is Russia's Prime Minister, not to be confused with Québec favorite fast food.

Quebec's Poutine: French fries, Gravy and Cheese Curd "Jean Poutine", Prime Minister of America's "Northern Neighbor" had endorsed Governor Bush's candidacy. To which Bush responded:

"I appreciate his strong statement [,...] he understands I believe in free trade,...

He [Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine] understands I want to make sure our relations with our most important neighbor to the north of us, the Canadians, is strong and we'll work closely together."

(Note the similarity with Sarah Palin's response to "Fake Sarkozy").

Eventually upon becoming president of the United States, "W" got to meet "Jean Poutine". President G. W. Bush together with former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien Bush also got to meet "Poutine". Russia's president

Another interview with Governor Bush revealed his ignorance of key foreign policy issues. In a 1999 TV interview with Andy Hiller, he was asked about Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf, who had come to power in a 1999 military coup. According to analysts, the change of regime and the installation of Musharraf as president of Pakistan had been supported by Washington.

Below is an excerpt of this interview:

Bush: "The new Pakistani General, he's just been elected - not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the sub- continent."

Hiller: "And you can name him?"

Bush: "General. I can name the general."

Hiller: "And it's . . ?

Bush: "General."

Hiller: "And the Prime Minister of India?"

Bush: "The new Prime Minister of India is - (pause) No."

To which George W. Bush retorted with a question to Andy Hiller:

Bush: "Can you name the Foreign Minister of Mexico?"

Hiller: "No sir, but I would say to that, I'm not running for President." [emphasis added]

Upon becoming president, George W Bush got to meet General Pervez Musharraf, the man who was "elected" president of Pakistan in a 1999 US sponsor military coup.

Bush and Palin belong to the same generation of ignorant politicians who are not fit for office, who are mere figureheads, who can easily be manipulated into taking far-reaching decisions.

Governor Palin: "You've been Pranked"

Then, Fake Sarkozy proceeds to raise the issue of Sarkozy's wife Carla Bruni, and Sarkozy's sex life.

Governor Palin remains unaware of the prank:

FAKE SARKOZY: You know my wife is a singer and a former hot top model. And she's so hot in bed, she even wrote a song for you.

GOV. PALIN: Oh my goodness, I didn't know that.

FAKE SARKOZY: Yes, in French, it's called "Du rouge à lèvres sur une cochonne" [Translation:Lipstick on a hot sexy woman] or if you prefer in English "Joe the Plumber it is Life, Joe the Plumber". [emphasis added]

President Sarkozy with his wife Carla Bruni

The prank phone call to Governor Palin ended with the "Fake Sarkozy" referring to a controversial Hustler pornographic movie, produced by Larry Flynt featuring "a Palin look-alike". The movie is to be launched by Hustler Video.

Sarah Palin and Larry Flynt, producer of Hustler's "Nailin' Palin"

"The documentary they made on your life"

Fake Sarkozy refers to the porn movie as "a documentary" on Sarah Palin's life:

FAKE SARKOZY: I must say, Governor Palin, I love the documentary they made on your life - you know, Hustler's "Nailin' Palin".

GOV. PALIN: Oh good, thank you.

FAKE SARKOZY: That was really edgy.

GOV. PALIN: Well good.

FAKE SARKOZY: I really loved you. And I must say something else so governor, you've been pranked by the Masked Avengers, we're two comedians from Montreal. [emphasis added]

Political Implications

The Fake Sarkozy prank phone call with Governor Sarah Palin is comical and hilarious. Some people may find it distasteful.

What is crucial, however, from our standpoint, is to analyze and understand its political significance?

What does it reveal regarding Governor Sarah Palin, Republican candidate to the Office of Vice President of the United States?

What does it tell us about the US political system?

What can one expect if Sarah Palin were to be elected Vice President?

The prank reveals the true face of Governor Sarah Palin.

Palin's conversation with Fake Sarkozy confirms that she is ignorant and incompetent to assume high office.

Palin's conversation with "Fake Sarkozy" also reveals the fake nature of US "democracy".

Candidates for high office are pre-selected by powerful interest groups operating from behind the scenes. They are not chosen for their integrity, knowledge or abilities, but for precisely the opposite reasons.

Candidates to high office are expected to serve America's economic and financial elites, including Wall Street, the oil conglomerates and the military contractors.

The underlying objective -which applies in the case of Sarah Palin--, is to install politicians who are mere figureheads and who can be easily manipulated into making farreaching decisions, on behalf of the economic eleites and against the public interest, on the war, the financial crisis, homeland security, etc.

Listen to the Audio first and then carefully review the transcript. And then decide for whom you want vote for on Tuesday morning.

Here is the complete transcript of the prank Fake Sarkozy call (CKOI Radio Montreal):

BETSY (STAFF PALIN'S OFFICE): This is Betsy.

PRANKSTER. AIDE OF PRESIDENT SARKOZY : Hello, Betsy.

BETSY (STAFF PALIN'S OFFICE): Hi

PRANKSTER (AIDE OF PRESIDENT SARKOZY): This is Frank l'Ouvrier [Translated: Frank the worker, a pun on Joe the Plumber] I'm with President Sarkozy, on the line for Governor Palin, I am with president Sarkozy, on the line for Governor Palin.

BETSY (STAFF PALIN'S OFFICE): Yes, one second please. Can you hold on one second, please?

PRANKSTER (AIDE OF PRESIDENT SARKOZY): Yeah, no problem.

BETSY (STAFF PALIN'S OFFICE): Alright, thanks.

STAFF PALIN'S OFFICE: Hi, I'm gonna hand the phone over to her.

PRANKSTER: AIDE OF PRESIDENT SARKOZY: OK, thank you very much, I'm gonna put the president on the line

GOV. SARAH PALIN: This is Sarah.

PRANKSTER: AIDE OF PRESIDENT SARKOZY: Uh yeah, Gov. Palin?

GOV. PALIN: Hello.

PRANKSTER: AIDE OF PRESIDENT SARKOZY: Just hold on for President Sarkozy, one moment.

GOV. PALIN: Oh, it's not him yet. I always do that.

FAKE SARKOZY (Marc Antoine Audette): Yes, hello, Gov. Palin.

GOV. PALIN: I'll just have people hand it to me right when it's him.

FAKE SARKOZY: Yes, hello, Mrs. Governor?

GOV. PALIN: Hello, this is Sarah. How are you?

FAKE SARKOZY: Fine, and you? This is Nicolas Sarkozy speaking. How are you?

GOV. PALIN: Oh, so good, it's so good to hear you. Thank you for calling us.

FAKE SARKOZY: Oh, it's a pleasure.

GOV. PALIN: Thank you sir. We have such great respect for you, John McCain and I. We love you, and thank you for taking a few minutes to talk to me.

FAKE SARKOZY: I followed your campaigns very closely with my special American advisor, Johnny Halliday.

[Johnny Halliday is French. He is France's Legendary Number One Popstar, an icon in Europe]

GOV. PALIN: Yes, good.

French pop-star Johnny Halliday with President Nicolas Sarkozy

FAKE SARKOZY: Excellent, are you confident?

GOV. PALIN: Very confident, and we're thankful that polls are showing that the race is tightening. and...

FAKE SARKOZY: Well, I know very well that the campaign can be exhausting. How do you feel right now, my dear?

GOV. PALIN: I feel so good, I feel like we're in a marathon and at the very end of the marathon you get your second wind and you plough through the finish.

FAKE SARKOZY: You see, I got elected in France because I'm real, and you seem to be someone who's real as well.

GOV. PALIN: Yes, yes, Nicolas we so appreciate this opportunity.

FAKE SARKOZY: You know, I see you as a president one day you too.

GOV. PALIN: Haha [Laugh], maybe in eight years.

FAKE SARKOZY: Well, I hope for you, you know we have a lot on common because personally, one of my favorite activities is to hunt, too.

GOV. PALIN: Oh, very good, we should go hunting together.

FAKE SARKOZY: Exactly, we could go try hunting by helicopter like you did. I never did that. Like we say in France, like we say in French "on peux tuer des bébés phoques". [Translation: We could kill some baby seals]

GOV. PALIN: Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together as we're getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone that way.

FAKE SARKOZY: I just love killing those animals, mm mm, taking away life, that is so fun. I would really love to go as long as we don't bring vice president Cheney, HaHa [Laugh]

GOV. PALIN: No, I'll be a careful shot, yes.

FAKE SARKOZY: Yes, you know we have a lot in common because from my house I can see Belgium. That's kind of less interesting than you.

GOV. PALIN: Well, see, we're right next door to other countries that we all need to be working with, yes.

FAKE SARKOZY: Some people said in the last days, and I thought that was mean, that you weren't experienced enough in foreign relations, and you know, that's completely false, that's the thing I said to my great friend, the Prime Minister of Canada, Steph Carse.

[Canada's Prime Minister is Stephen Harper, Steph Carse is a Canadian pop singer]

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

GOV. PALIN: Well, he's doing fine too, when you come into a position underestimated, it gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder.

FAKE SARKOZY: I was wondering because you are also next to him, one of my good friends, also, the prime minister of Quebec, Mr. Richard Z. Sirois, have you met him recently? Did he come to one of your rallies?

[Quebec's Prime Minister is Jean Charest, Richard Z. Sirois is a Quebec Radio host]

Quebec Prime Minister Jean Charest

GOV. PALIN: I haven't seen him at one of the rallies, but it's been great working with the Canadian officials in my role as governor. We have a great cooperative effort here, and we work on all of our resource development projects. You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife, oh my goodness; you've added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours.

FAKE SARKOZY: Thank you very much, you know my wife Carla would love to meet you. You know, even though she was a bit jealous that I was supposed to speak to you today. HahHah [Laugh]

GOV. PALIN: Hah Hah. [Laugh] Well give her a big hug for me.

FAKE SARKOZY: You know my wife is a singer and a former hot top model. And she's so hot in bed, she even wrote a song for you.

GOV. PALIN: Oh my goodness, I didn't know that.

FAKE SARKOZY: Yes, in French, it's called "Du rouge à lèvres sur une cochonne"[Translation: Lipstick on a hot sexy woman] or if you prefer in English "Joe the Plumber it is Life, Joe the Plumber".

GOV. PALIN: Maybe she understands the some of the unfair criticism, but I bet you she's such a hard worker too and she realizes you just plough through that criticism.

FAKE SARKOZY: I just want to be sure, I don't quite understand the phenomenon Joe the Plumber, that's not your husband, right?

GOV. PALIN: That's not my husband, but he's a normal American who just works hard and doesn't want government to take his money.

FAKE SARKOZY: Yes, yes, I understand. We have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France, it's called "Marcel the Guy with Bread Under his Armpit". Oui.

GOV. PALIN: Right, that's what it's all about, the middle class and government needing to work for them. You're a very good example for us here.

FAKE SARKOZY: I seen a bit, but NBC, even Fox News wasn't an ally, an ally, sorry about as much as usual.

GOV. PALIN: Yes, that's what we're up against.

FAKE SARKOZY: I must say, Gov. Palin, I love the documentary they made on your life - you know, Hustler's "Nailin' Palin".

GOV. PALIN: Oh good, thank you.

FAKE SARKOZY: That was really edgy.

GOV. PALIN: Well good.

FAKE SARKOZY: I really loved you. And I must say something else so governor, you've been pranked by the Masked Avengers, we're two comedians from Montreal.

GOV. PALIN: Oh, [sic] Have we been pranked . What radio station is this?

FAKE SARKOZY: This is for CKOI in Montreal.

GOV. PALIN: In Montreal? tell me their radio station call letters.

FAKE SARKOZY: Hello? If one voice can change the world for Obama, one Viagra can change the world for McCain.

PALIN STAFF : I am, I'm sorry, I have to let you go, thank you.

FAKE SARKOZY: Yeah! Woohoo!

Thanks to Marc Antoine Audette and Sébastien Trudel, Les Justiciers Masqués, who in, a very real sense, have brought us Truth and Justice regarding the US presidential elections.

They carefully researched their "script". They have informed the American voter.

Global Research, also based in Montreal, says Bravo!

Click below for the Audio.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization or Uncommon Thought Journal

Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, palled around with characters almost as unsavory during his first campaign for the presidency in 1988. His campaign staff included a number of genuine pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic types from Eastern and Central Europe. Several of these worthies were leaders of the Republican campaign's ethnic outreach arm, the Coalition of American Nationalities, despite the fact that their checkered past was not a big secret. One of them, Laszlo Pasztor (or Pastor) had served in the pro-Nazi Hungarian government's embassy in Berlin during the Second World War. This had been revealed in a 1971 page-one story in the Washington Post.² When this past was again brought up in September 1988, the Republicans were obliged to dump Pasztor and four others of his ilk from Bush's campaign.³

And who has John McCain been palling around with? Who has been co-chair of McCain's New York campaign and a foreign policy adviser to McCain himself? None other than the illustrious unindicted war criminal and mass murderer Henry Kissinger, who must be very careful when he travels to Europe for there are committed and serious people in several countries there who will again try to have him arrested for the crimes against humanity he's responsible for ... Chile ... Angola ... East Timor ... Vietnam ... Laos ... Cambodia ...

By contrast, there is no evidence that Bill Ayers was involved in any Weathermen bombing that killed anyone; nor have I seen any evidence that on the very rare occasion that an anti-Vietnam War bombing in the United States resulted in a casualty that it could be ascribed to the Weathermen.

John McCain's bombings certainly killed - some two dozen aerial attacks upon the people of Vietnam, people who had neither done nor threatened any harm to him or his country. What label do we give to such acts, to such a man? His level of violence is matched by his degree of hypocrisy. Speaking of Ayers, McCain asked: "How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?"⁴

In his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days," Ayers writes: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." This is something very few Americans can accept, and I wouldn't even make the attempt to persuade them. But I personally didn't blame the Weathermen then, and I don't blame them now. The Vietnam War was in its eighth year of barbarity. I and the rest of the army of the powerless needed a few points up there on the scoreboard against the lords of the national-security corporate state. A bombing, with a suitably war-criminal target - like the State Department or the Pentagon - and taking care to prevent any casualties, told the bastards that we were still out there, that their impunity was not total, that this is how it feels to be bombed. Armed propaganda. It told the public that there was something more serious going on than a town-hall difference of opinion that could be reasonably resolved by reasonable people discussing things in a reasonable manner. And like an unhappy child having a temper tantrum, we needed some instant gratification. We were struggling against the most powerful force in the world.

The Weathermen were on the right side of that war. John McCain on the wrong side.

And who has Sarah Palin herself been palling around with? John McCain, and the Alaska Independence Party, a secessionist party her husband belonged to for seven years. "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand," Joe Vogler, who founded the party, once declared. Earlier this year Governor Palin shouted out to party members: "Keep up the good work. And God bless you."⁵

I do believe that secession of a state from the union is somewhat frowned upon by the powers that be, and if memory serves me, the last time it was seriously tried the government actually went to war. Who do these Alaskans think they are, the Kosovo gangsters whose secession from Serbia was immediately recognized by Washington?

This just in: John McCain (yes, the same one), as a congressman, met in 1985 in Chile with General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world's most notorious violators of human rights, credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians, jailing tens of thousands of others, and torturing a great many of them. McCain met with Pinochet apparently without any preconditions, which is what McCain has repeatedly criticized Obama for saying he would do with certain present-day foreign leaders whom McCain doesn't like. At the time of the meeting, the US Justice Department was seeking the extradition of two close Pinochet associates for an act of terrorism in Washington, DC - the 1976 car-bomb assassination of former Chilean ambassador to the US, Orlando Letelier, a prominent critic of Pinochet, and his American assistant. McCain made no public or private statements critical of the dictatorship, nor did he meet with members of the democratic opposition in Chile. Senator Edward Kennedy arrived only 12 days after McCain in a highly public show of support for democracy, meeting with Catholic church and human rights leaders and large groups of opposition activists.⁶

The John McCains of America, in and out of Congress, would much sooner pal around with Augusto Pinochet than Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or Bill Ayers.

The bourgeois triumphalism that attended the funeral of the USSR

Ronald Reagan left a deep mark in history (as George W. Bush will), but not due to his eminent qualities as a person or politician, which, as the wit put it, "he lacked in abundance", but because he faithfully represented the interests of the ugliest and most hypocritical sectors of the American bourgeoisie. His fanatical anti-communism and servility to the corporate royalty that really runs the US at all times, bloated the Pentagon budgets to obscene levels, helped to sell the public cowardly interventions against poor nations, bankrupted the Soviet Union, and set the clock back for the middle class at least half a century. It was Reagan--who thanks to media adulation remains one of America's most popular presidents, who initiated the disgraceful reign of the Ziocons, with their endless wars and deregulation of all vital areas of the economy. The current financial meltdown is one of Ronnie's historical children.

Reagan posturing before the Berlin Wall's Branderberg Gate, where he challenged Gorbachev "to tear down this wall." It was one of this charlatan's most frequently remembered performances.

Greed is a hot topic now. Stock brokers and others involved in the current financial crisis are angrily accused of being greedy. Time magazine declared that the nation's current troubles were "the price of greed". "Blame greed," echoed the Chicago Tribune. But these establishment publications can't be taken too seriously. Like other believers in the system, they're convinced that greed is a built-in, valuable, and necessary feature of capitalism and capitalist man, that it's indispensable for motivating entrepreneurs, and that it results in all manner of innovation and invention. During the years of the Cold War, this was a key element of the interminable discussions cum arguments between defenders of free enterprise and defenders of socialism; the arguments still continue, although most people now think that history has answered the question - capitalism has won. "The end of history", leading conservative Francis Fukuyama called it in his well-received book in 1992. He asserted that we couldn't expect to find a better way to organize society than the marriage of liberal democracy and market capitalism. Subsequent world movements such as anti-globalization and political Islam caused Fukuyama to have some second thoughts about whether history had actually come to an end. (He also came to renounce the war in Iraq which he had initially embraced on the premise that it would bring the joys of liberal democracy and market capitalism to the benighted Iraqi people.)

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the boys of Capital have chortled in their martinis about the death of socialism. Until recently, the word had been banned from polite conversation (now achieving new notoriety as a term of political insult). And no one seems to notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century was either bombed, invaded, or overthrown; corrupted, perverted, or destabilized; or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement - from the Russian revolution to the Vietnamese communists to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to Salvador Allende in Chile to the FMLN in Salvador - not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. It continues today with Washington's attempts to subvert the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia, and, of course, still, forever, Cuba.

The Empire's overreach and grotesque miscalculations in Iraq and Afghanistan have meant a stay of execution for Venezuela's effort to build a socialist system. Of course, the criminals in Washington would like nothing better than to destroy the Bolivarian revolution and flatten the eternally defiant Cuba, once and for all. [Pres. Chavez and Fidel embrace.]

Imagine that the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines had all failed because the automobile interests had sabotaged each test flight. And then, thanks to the auto companies' propaganda, the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.

It's widely assumed that the Soviet Union demise resulted from gross shortcomings intrinsic to its socialist system, that the economy somehow imploded from its inherent contradictions. But all the shortcomings and contradictions that could have been found in the Soviet system in 1990 could have as well been found in 1980, or 1970, or 1960. Unlike capitalism, whose volatility is legendary, as each day's headlines remind us anew, the Soviet system with its government ownership of the means of production and its command economy, whatever its other defects, remained relatively stable and uniform. The question is thus: What happened in the late 1980s in the Soviet system to cause it to unravel? I believe that the best answer to the question lies in the person of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985.

Gorbachev's long-time and ardent ambition was to model the Soviet Union after a West European social democracy and have the country accepted as such by the Europeans. That's the principal reason he put an end to the Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan; and why he instituted his historic economic and political changes at home (with their unintended consequences), and relinquished control over Eastern Europe without resorting to military force. The war in Afghanistan certainly had its effects, financially and psychologically, upon the people of the Soviet Union, and is commonly cited as a major cause for the nation's breakup. But the same can be said even more so of the effect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq upon the American people, millions of whom have marched against the wars, yet none of this has led to an American withdrawal from either place; not even close. Superpowers should not be confused with democracies.

Ayn Rand's social philosophy: Let the strong prevail, let the weak pay for their weakness

Wall Street insiders Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chief. Greenspan, an Ayn Rand zealot and fanatical libertarian and non-regulator, is probably the single man most responsible for the ghastly economic mess visited on American taxpayers and the rest of the world in 2008, and earlier. Rubin, a Clinton protegé (or is it the other way around?) is a Goldman Sachs alum. Lately he's been doing the rounds of the clueless newscasts, "interpreting" the financial disaster as an innocent but expert bystander, which he most certainly is not.

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms. ... So the problem here is [that] something which looked to be a very solid edifice and, indeed, a critical pillar to market competition and free markets, did break down. And I think that, as I said, shocked me."

A remarkable admission from Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, long-time opponent of government regulation of the corporate world, and friend and devoted follower of Ayn Rand, the selfishness guru who turned the emulation of two-year olds into a philosophy of life. "I have found a flaw," said Greenspan, referring to his economic philosophy. "I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact."⁷

Greenspan was induced into these admissions by tough questioning from congressmen at a hearing called in October to deal with the financial crisis. There was a time when Greenspan was looked upon as a guru by a largely unquestioning and unchallenging congress and media, no matter how dubious or obscure his pronouncements. He could have passed at times for Chauncey Gardener, the main character of the book and film "Being There". Gardener, brought to life by Peter Sellers, was a simple man with very simple thoughts and behavior, who might have been considered to be borderline "retarded", but fortuitous circumstances and the deference toward him by those of insufficient intellect and/or courage resulted in him being thought of as brilliant by people in high positions.

There was one noteworthy exception to this delicate treatment of Greenspan. In July 2003, Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont faced the Fed chairman across the table at a congressional hearing and said:

"Mr. Greenspan, I have long been concerned that you are way out of touch with the needs of the middle class and working families of our country, that you see your major function in your position as the need to represent the wealthy and large corporations ... I think you just don't know what's going on in the real world. ... You talk about an improving economy, while we have lost 3 million private sector jobs in the last two years. Long-term unemployment has more than tripled. ... We have a $4 trillion national debt. 1.4 million Americans have lost their health insurance. Millions of seniors can't afford prescription drugs. Middle class families can't send their kids to college because they don't have the money to do that."

"Congressman," Greenspan replied, "we have the highest standard of living in the world."

"No, we do not," insisted Sanders. "You go to Scandinavia, and you will find that people have a much higher standard of living, in terms of education, health care and decent paying jobs. Wrong, Mister."

Not accustomed to having to defend his profundities, Greenspan could do no better than to counter with: "We have the highest standard of living for a country of our size."⁸

This was quite a comedown from "in the world", and inasmuch as the only countries of equal or larger population are China and India, with Indonesia being the fourth largest, Greenspan's point is rather difficult to evaluate.

The idea that the United States has the highest standard of living in the world is one that is actually believed by numerous grownups in America, and most of them believe that this highest standard applies across the board. They're only minimally conscious of the fact that whereas they've made extremely painful sacrifices to send a child to university, and they often simply can't come up with enough money, and even if they can the child will be very heavily in debt for years afterward, in much of Western Europe university education is either free or eminently affordable; as it is in Cuba and was in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

The same lack of awareness about superior conditions in other countries extends to health care, working hours, vacation time, maternity leave, child care, unemployment insurance, and a host of other social and economic benefits.

In short, amongst the developed nations, the United States is the worst place to be a worker, to be sick, to seek a university education, to be a parent; or, in the land of two million incarcerated, to exercise certain rights or be a defendant in court.

To which the Chauncey Gardeners of America, including the one who used to sit in the Federal Reserve and the one presently sitting in the Oval Office, would say: "Duh! Whaddaya mean?"

The Rosenbergs as heroes

Ethel and Julius, a kiss before the end.

John Gerassi, professor of political science at Queens College in New York City, recently wrote a letter to the New York Times:

To the Editor: NYT

In his "A Spy Confesses" (Week in Review 9/21), Sam Roberts claims that folks "fiercely loyal to the far left, believed that the Rosenbergs were not guilty ..." I am and have always been, since my stint as a correspondent and editor in Latin America for Time and Newsweek, a "far leftist," and I have never claimed the Rosenbergs were not guilty. Nor have any of my "far leftist" friends. What we always said, and what I repeat to my students every semester, is that "if they were guilty, they are this planet's great heroes." My explanation is quite simple: The US had a first-strike policy, the USSR did not (until Gorbachev). In 1952, the US military, and various intelligence services, calculated that a first strike on all Soviet silos would wipe out all but 6% of Russian atomic missiles (and, we now know, create enough radiation to kill us all). But those six percent would automatically be fired at US cities. The military then calculated what would happen if one made a direct hit on Denver (why they chose Denver and not New York or Washington was never explained). Their finding: 200,000 would die immediately, two million within a month. They concluded that it was not worth it. In other words, I tell my students, you were born and I am alive because the USSR had a deterrent against our "preventive" attack, not the other way around. And if it is true that the Rosenbergs helped the Soviets get that deterrent, they end up among the planet's saviors.

- John Gerassi ([email protected])

[It will not come as a great surprise to learn that the Times did not allow such thoughts to appear in their exalted pages.]

Correction

I don't know how it happened, but the address (URL) I sent out for last month's report was incorrect. It should have been:http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer62.htm All previous reports can be found at www.killinghope.org

Notes

On October 12, Mr. Dershowitz, a prominent attorney, published an op-ed column in The Daily News (New York) titled "Both Barack Obama and John McCain are true friends of Israel ..." (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/10/12/2008-10-12_both_barack_obama_and_john_mccain_are_tr-2.html).

In his column, Mr. Dershowitz accused the Green Party and Green presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney of anti-Semitism and endorsed elections limited to two political parties.

Greens noted that Mr. Dershowitz has promoted 'torture warrants' to permit torture of individuals when a threat to US is detected, a position he shares with the Israeli government. The use of torture has been categorically rejected by numerous military, intelligence, and legal experts because of humane concerns, international laws and treaties, unreliability as a method for obtaining information, and because torture would place US military personnel and other Americans at risk of similar treatment in retaliation.

Justine McCabe and Julia Willebrand submitted the Green response to the Daily News' editorial department, which declined to publish it. The response was embargoed until last week to give the Daily News first right of publication.

It Isn't Easy Being Green
By Justine McCabe and Julia Willebrand
Co-Chairs, International Committee, Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org/committees/intl/
http://www.gp.org

Presidential election years aren't easy for those of us in parties outside the Democratic and Republican mainstream. Shut out of the national debates and most media coverage, our ideas seldom get a fair hearing, even though most Americans agree with us. But worse than no coverage is when our policies are dismissed, not on their merit or the facts, but by slander.

Case in point: a recent Daily News column by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. Known for his unwavering support of Israel, Dershowitz isn't merely content to ban Palestinians from the public discussion on the Middle East conflict. He uses name-calling to drown out any voices in this election except those of the established parties -- the two parties whose foreign policies have led to international animosity against the US.

Dershowitz epitomizes those who believe that any criticism of the state of Israel or its actions constitutes anti-Semitism. What they call anti-Semitism in the Green Party's national platform is actually adherence to international law, observance of human rights for all Palestinians and Israelis, and support for a nonviolent negotiated resolution to the conflict (http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/democracy.html#310677)

The Green Party takes no campaign contributions from AIPAC, its rightwing allies, or the oil industry. Unlike Democrats and Republicans, who accept such money, Greens condemn all violence against unarmed civilians, whether by Palestinians or Israelis, whether through the use of American-made F-16's or Caterpillar bulldozers. We oppose military aid to Israel and Arab countries. Unlike Barack Obama and John McCain, Greens have deplored Israel's violation of over 60 UN Security Council resolutions against collective punishment, confiscation of Palestinian land and illegal settlement by 400,000 Israeli colonists, and demolition of over 10,000 Palestinian homes. We continue to oppose Israel's violations of human rights that are recognized as universal by the international community: the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and the right of self-determination.

Ironically, unlike the Israeli press, the US media have tolerated little discussion on the issue. Otherwise, Americans would know that the Green position is shared by people like South Africa's Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Irish public sector union IMPACT, the British National Union of Journalists--all of whom recognize the apartheid-like conditions in Israel and the Occupied Territories and have endorsed a boycott to insist that Israel dismantle them (http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_11_28.shtml).

Dershowitz repeats accusations, lies, and distortions that have been leveled against former Democratic congresswoman and now Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney because of her principled positions and her refusal to take orders from AIPAC -- a lobby for a foreign government -- and its allies. However, he gets one thing correct: Obama and McCain have expressed the same uncritical support for the government of Israel and its actions, which guarantees no hope of peaceful resolution in the next administration, regardless of which candidate wins the White House. Why not just toss a coin instead of holding an election?

In the end, so eager are apologists like Dershowitz to shut down real debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other vital topics that they would limit the political field and banish "extremist" alternative parties. In fact, alternative parties have introduced such extremist ideas as abolition of slavery, women's right to vote, the 8-hour workday, and Social Security. The Green Party is here to remind Americans that unequivocal support for Israel's actions is a corruption of American values like justice and equality before the law -- values that most Americans still hold dear.

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193

Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information: http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml

Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml

Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers

Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections

2008 Green candidates to watch http://www.gp.org/2008-elections/candidate-news.php

Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for the White House
http://votetruth08.com
http://www.runcynthiarun.org

"Where's Kenny Rogers When You Need Him? The Big Boys Got Their Bailout, But the Elected Leadership and the Voters Meet at the Election Day Showdown"
By Cynthia McKinney, OpEdNews.com, Oct. 7, 2008
http://www.opednews.com/articles/-Where-s-Kenny-Rogers-When-by-Cynthia-McKinney-081007-748.html

Cynthia McKinney on video
http://www.youtube.com/user/RunCynthiaRun
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=RunCynthiaRun

BreakTheMatrix.com interview, Oct. 19: http://www.breakthematrix.com/node/28047

Democracy Now! interview, Oct. 16: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/16/breaking_the_sound_barrier_third

Music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx1NPlQjkqo

Rosa Clemente on video
Interview: Current TV/Rock the Vote http://current.com/items/89335393_the_organizer_and_green_party_vp_candidate_talks_about_her_inspirations

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, JF Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: "There you go again." His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.

It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?

Jefferson would be appalled at the degeneracy of the aristocratic republic he and others envisioned, were he to set eyes on today's America. But, lest we forget, much of the trouble originates in the mendacity and inequality inherent in a "bourgeois democracy" idea, where the bourgeois tail wags the democratic dog at all times, in the interest of a highly concentrated group of wealthholders.

On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for instance, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary.

Frederick Eikerenkoetter, aka "Rev. Ike". Although most crooked preachers have been and continue to be white Southern Baptists, African Americans are not spared the religiosity plague. A confirmed follower of Mammon, Rev Ike has stated that he owns a fleet of Rolls-Royces (a different color for every day of the week, appointed in mink), diamond rings, expensive suits, and multiple mansions as a sign of divine approval of his crass materialism. Thus, far from hiding his wealth, Reverend Ike makes it a point of his preaching. His theology centers around the "Science of Living" and "Thinkonomics," his own version of economics based on the premise that poverty, a lack of luck, poor health, etc., are the result of incorrect attitudes, a lack of confidence, a lack of faith and a failure to get in touch with the "presence of God within each of us." "Unlearning" these attitudes, according to Reverend Ike, leads to wealth and health and his own flamboyant prosperity, and that of some of his followers, is, he claims, evidence of this. (His television programs, for instance, used to include the "Blessing of the Cadillacs," where prosperous congregants were invited to drive their luxury cars past the church's doors for his laying on of hands.)

Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of social Darwinism.

But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. "In the south", Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order."

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time.

Jimmy Swaggart's stardom from religious telecasts and packed arena revivals was overshadowed when he was caught patronizing a prostitute and made a teary, televised confession. At age 8, he drew his poor, rural Louisiana town's attention when he mystically spoke in foreign tongues and uttered prophecies at a Pentecostal church revival. As a teenage evangelist and later as a pastor and traveling preacher, he used his commanding stage presence to emphasize submission to Jesus as the only way to escape human bondage to sin and Satan. By the 1980s, his Baton Rouge church had its own broadcast and publishing operations and a college. After the 1987 incident with New Orleans prostitute Debra Murphree was revealed in 1988, Swaggart's ministerial credentials were revoked by his denomination, the Assemblies of God. He apparently "sinned" again, for in in 1991 he was caught once more with a prostitute, this time in Los Angeles. Another teary mea culpa followed. How huge audiences continue to believe in and support such transparent con artists is a mystery that puzzles most Europeans and foreigners in general.

This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln's career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment, it is a recipe for confusion.

Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day men such as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the "liberal elites" destroying America.

The spectre of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the election of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite - like the neocons (some of them former communists) surrounding Bush - has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an over-educated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the rightwing elite has been successfully branded as elitism.

Obama has a lot to offer the US, but none of this will stop if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance.

George Monbiot is the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land.

See also: monbiot.com

Generally we conceive of the bourgeois in reference to their over emphasis on form and formality, in total contrast with the image of the bohemian radical. Bourgeois characteristics include emphasis on tradition, pretentiousness, conventionality, propriety, status obsession, respectability at all costs, an affected manner of speech and an overall comportment befitting such a description. The bourgeois personality is one of seeming rather than being.

To most ears both the noun and the adjective bourgeois ring negative and evil. Both upper and lower social classes detest that person and class. Bourgeois bastard! Fucking bourgeois! No wonder few people choose to identify themselves as bourgeois, preferring "middle class" or some such.

My family discussion is a good example. For some time my wife and I have benefited from an apartment exchange with a person in a central area of Paris so that in recent years we spend several months a year there. Though I prefer Paris to my home in Rome, my individualistic Italian, French-speaking wife doesn't share my enthusiasm. Scornfully, dismissively she charges that Parisians are too bourgeois. Too closed, too clannish. Bonjour, Madame, bonjour Monsieur, au revoir Madame, au revoir Monsieur, all day long. For her Paris is atrocious, people don't meet each other, they're indifferent, uninterested in relations with others, in their work, in their life. I can't pin her down as to what she really means but she stubbornly insists that Parisians are unbearably bourgeois. Clearly the sense in which she uses "bourgeois" is the most common in the world today.

In this essay I have in mind the socio-political meaning of bourgeoisie, the morally corrupt class that Marxism equates with the capitalist class. Precisely the corrupt bandit class of the USA currently being saved by the general taxpayers in the bipartisan-endorsed Great Financial Bailout of Wall Street of 2008. Which shows again that in the eternal class struggle the bourgeoisie is almost always the evil oppressor. As history has shown time and again, the crucial distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat is the distinction between evil--however camouflaged--and good. Yet, the modern age is known as the epoch of the bourgeoisie, that is, of capitalism.

That is the great contradiction of our epoch. Since modern revolutions eliminated monarchies and simplified the class struggle, western society has been divided into two hostile camps: the bourgeoisie, which runs things to its constant aggrandizement, at the expense of everything and everyone, and the proletariat which resists exploitation by it. The ethical pathos of Marxism is the exposure of exploitation of labor as the basis of human society.

One recalls that the bourgeoisie played a major role in the French Revolution. Since then, in the shape and form of the capitalist system, it has maintained the upper hand most everywhere, or sooner or later regained it, as in post-Communist East Europe. It has crushed the other classes and converted everyone else into wage earners. That is its nature.

For its prosperity the capitalist bourgeoisie depends on free trade. Except for down moments like today when things go haywire for free market capitalism, especially on deregulated and uncontrolled Wall Street and it turns back to the people to bail it out of the chaos it creates at regular intervals. [Note I say free trade, not fair trade, which is the way it ought to be but rarely is.]

Its survival depends on unending growth [a physical impossibility in a very fragile and finite planet] and constantly expanding markets, the continual acceleration and revolutionizing of production, undemocratic political centralization and today in Europe and the USA on the massive exportation of jobs to the poor world. Meanwhile bourgeois (bandit) capitalism--again following its nature--requires and has achieved an obscene level of concentration of property and wealth in a few hands. That is its constant goal. It thrives on the incessant creation of new desires subsequently morphed into needs throughout the world, and--true to its Darwinian, amoral nature--full-scale predation of the poor and weak. In that sense the bourgeoisie is through and through both cosmopolitan and sociopathic.

Paradoxically, or perhaps inevitably, those primary requisites for the bourgeoisie's existence provoke the resistance of the proletariat. It's a vicious circle. In a great dialectic the survival and non-negotiable dynamic of the bourgeoisie generate the resistance that can ultimately crush it. The resistance that according to Marxist theory will someday crush it. These days, there for everyone to see, for everyone to feel, the spreading sense of unease marking its successive economic-financial crises point to the eventual demise of bourgeois, bandit capitalism.

So why has it not already happened, one must wonder? Why hasn't it collapsed long ago? Though the bourgeoisie-capitalist class is small and the proletariat wage earners an overwhelming majority, why don't the exploited classes rebel and rebel, revolt and revolt, again and again? Why not? The reason is clear: the exploited classes are not only victims. They are also accomplices. Half victim, half accomplice. The historical paradox. The ruling class counts on this dichotomy to maintain the system. Divide and rule. Meritocracy. Rewards for obedience. Two cars and bigger houses for staying in line. A system based on money, domination, wholesale, constant political propaganda, and fear. Religion too, but especially FEAR. Fear of fear. Fear of change. Fear, fear, fear. A fearful people is an obedient people. Today's Americans are a sacrificed generation. Their illusion of true love has faded. Instead there is the feminine side--seduction and sex ever before us, in all its forms. But love is not the question. For love you still need illusion and innocence. And we are a disillusioned generation. All of us. Only fiction remains. And our bitterness, jealousy and fear. That's why you need an absolute, overwhelming desire to fight back. The only (current) alternative is to flee into the mountains or the desert, 20 miles from anyplace. No banks, no commerce, no bureaucratic offices in sight. Or perhaps resort to walking the labyrinth in the Chartres Cathedral in search of the final secret, the beautiful butterfly to change things.

At the same time there is a glut of everything in the Western world. Yet vampire bourgeois capitalism cannot cut back. Staggering, careening on its crazy course, it goes after more and more growth, to survive. It needs more and more production, more markets, more and cheaper labor, more consumers (while salaries everywhere are lower and lower so that consumption decreases), more power, more of everything, clearly unachievable forever. How fast can a man run, one asked after the new world record 100-meter dash at the Beijing Olympics? 9.5 seconds? Then tomorrow, perhaps 9 seconds. Then 8. But can it go on forever, faster and faster?

Bourgeoisie, Borghesia, Burguesia, Bürgerstand. Middle class! The French word bourgeoisie, originally in reference to inhabitants of towns or bourgs, is most expressive of the class's socio-political signification, especially in reference to the upper or merchant class, who are the capitalists. (Also in socio-political language the word bourgeois has pejorative overtones, smacking of undeserved wealth and nouveaux riches tastes.) Then (besides members of the brainwashed working class, a potent segment in America) there is their chief political support, the crutch of bourgeois capitalism: the so-called petite bourgeoisie, the class between the upper bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the shopkeeper class, the urban people, small-business, the target of populist leaders since the Roman Empire, the followers of dictators from Mussolini to Hitler, who are the flag-waving super Americans of today.

On the other hand, the European bourgeoisie is not to be confused with the American middle class. They are not the same thing. Sociologically, in the pejorative sense my wife means, both Italy and France are largely "bourgeois" North Europe is even more of the petit bourgeois category, East Europe and Latin America are by nature proletarian with a thin bourgeois-intellectual class at the top. The European bourgeoisie creates more culture, while in the USA because of social mobility (itself rapidly vanishing) culture and art can come from anywhere.

Since the rebellious years after 1968 fixed class relationships have diminished in Europe too, especially evident in Italy and the France. Europe is again rich. Life style is more bourgeois! Still, within that bourgeoisie are the most educated classes, which in the past produced also the intelligentsia wing and the revolutionary vanguard. Therefore, and in contrast with the USA, from that same European bourgeois class--also marked by set values and tradition--have emerged the movements for drastic social change.

Today with the Right winds of neo-liberalism sweeping over Europe, those times seem distant. The year 1968 belongs to another epoch. Still, the term bourgeoisie as used by the radical Left in Europe and the USA (many or most of whom are bourgeois renegades!) depicts the society the Left opposes. Yet nowhere else were whole peoples more jubilant than Europeans over America's recent fall back on nationalizations of the core of the financial system (which despite stringent efforts the European Union has not yet succeeded in eliminating completely) in an attempt to save temporarily its economic neck and the "American way of life" and reinforce the transformation to Fascism.

One doesn't forget easily that the bourgeoisie was guilty of permitting if not creating Fascism. The European and American bourgeoisie propped up Fascism (many astute observers have justly called it the "naked face of capitalism") in order to preserve its own social rule. The basis of its rule, private property and capitalism, was threatened by the proletarian revolution that Western Socialists (largely emerging from the same bourgeoisie), still in the throes of nationalism, were never able to pull off. For the European upper bourgeoisie, Fascism was little more than an annoyance that saved their system. Even World War II was preferable to proletarian revolution. We are witnessing a repetition of that history in the USA today.

The close collaboration of American and European capitalism right up until World War II was a confirmation of their secret alliance sans frontières. In the immediate post-war America's renewed alliance with the residue of Nazi Germany against Communist Russia was a resumption of the pre-war Fascist-Capitalist bond against Soviet Russia. In that sense the Fascist-Capitalist blood alliance created by the bourgeoisie of Europe and the USA protected each other against the working class.

George W. Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The U.K.'s Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The bourgeoisie in feudal pre-revolutionary France was a specific class. Much wealthier than the lower classes, it lacked the privileges of the aristocracy against whom it made the French Revolution. It made its revolution in order to rip political power from the hands of the aristocracy and acquire its privileges. It became the new ruling class. It was never authentically egalitarian.

Since then it has incurred the hate and wrath of all other classes. Deregulation is not new. Bourgeois slogans have always been 'no rules, no laws, all power to the middle classes.' Compromise with other powers, yes,--especially with organized religions and various forms of "democracy"--but forever at the expense of the working classes.

In the bourgeois world anywhere and under any form of government workingmen (and peasants) are destined to remain forever workingmen and hard laborers.

"Big Bill" Haywood, sworn enemy of capitalism and tireless organizer of the working class, one of the founders of the legendary Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W), which saw the A.F.L. as essentially a "class collaborationist tool." Consistent with this view, from its inception in 1905, the I.W.W. advocated the overthrow of the wage system, and putting workers in control of their own work lives through industrial organization, a form of early councilism.

The point about equality bears repeating: despite the high-sounding and immortal words, liberté, egalité, fraternité, the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution against royal power and the aristocracy, and executed in the beginning by the "people." The only things lacking to the "freedom" of the bourgeoisie were equal privileges and participation in the government, i.e. political power. It overthrew the king, took power and then did precious little for the sans culottes. The bourgeoisie emerged victorious. In the bourgeois capitalist world the words liberty, equality and brotherhood have remained to this day empty slogans. No more than that. The bourgeoisie has never cared or been bothered about class divisions; their ascension to power signified simply that the old ranks of privilege had been expanded to accept newcomers. Not the bearers of new oppositional values. That, in a sense, explains why the road to socialism has been so much harder.

Incidentally, the principle of "private property" so much bandied about by conservative propagandists to scare the incautious and ill-informed is a religion that has nothing to do with homeowners. It refers to ownership of the means of production: factories, fields, buildings, machinery, and money itself. That is great wealth and the political power to back it up. That religion was the economic basis of the French Revolution. That has never changed. For that same reason, the great Socialist revolution was always just around the corner, a hairsbreadth away. That again is the history of man.

Despite its grave shortcomings, the French Revolution was a great awakening. And despite its bourgeois character and the power it wielded, the communist idea kept coming to the front. According to Peter Kropotkin, in his memorable classic, The Great French Revolution, the word Socialism came into vogue chiefly in order to avoid the term Communism. Kropotkin: "Secret Communist societies became action societies, and were rigorously suppressed by the bourgeoisie." The fearful bourgeoisie first checked the revolutionary impulse in France and soon restored the monarchy to guarantee its survival. The spirit of the French Revolution was nonetheless contagious. Kropotkin closed his major work with immortal praise for it: "The one thing certain is, that whatsoever nation enters on the path of revolution in our own day, it will be heir to all our forefathers have done in France."

Soon Marxism came along to pinpoint and define once and for all the bourgeoisie as the exploiting class, the class that obtains its income from capital and commerce. The bourgeoisie is the ruling class in our time because it owns the means of production--land, factories and resources.

Moreover it has the means of coercion of the lower classes. By control of police and army it is able to keep in line and exploit the work of wage earners who live only from their labor. Perhaps in no other major country do Marx's theses more concisely describe the societal line-up than in the USA today. Therefore America cannot remain forever immune to the class struggle, quiet today, deathly quiet, mute, unvoiced, but potentially explosive.

A graffiti on the walls of the Sèvres-Babylone metro station in Paris noted by French writer Michel Houellebecq--reductive, curious, ambivalent, and even permissive slogan as it is--rings like a warning, the very minimum warning, to the tiny American capitalist class, new born Christian or not: "God wanted inequalities but not injustices."

Power in America is aware of the menace and the threat of the extension of the struggle for justice to all social classes, to el pueblo unido. Therefore the system's perfidious use of terrorism and fear, religion, unrelenting propaganda, the American way of life and the future of our children to hoodwink the people.

Happy, united, docile, and toothless, this sanitized, scrubbed down image of the American working class (which curiously includes here highly paid professionals, such as physicians!) is the preferred vision of American capitalists and their Madison Avenue hirelings. Seen in countless venues, from print media to television, it promotes a mythical kind of social harmony normally pursued by fascist regimes.

One often hears the expression exploitation of labor. What does it mean exactly?

It's basic. The heart of Marxism. Its validity is recognized most everywhere. The capitalist owner of the means of production pays wages and production costs and then sells the goods produced by labor, keeping for himself the difference between costs and sales. Part of his profit is Marx's "surplus value." It's the size of his profit that creates inequalities. The point is the worker creates the wealth of the greedy capitalist, who squeezes the workingman up to the limit, gaining thousands of times more than the worker can earn in a lifetime. That is injustice. The owner, the entrepreneur and his executives (here we mean also the real owners and CEOs of banks and funds, of stock markets, insurance giants, holding companies and the like) gain the maximum profit without actually doing any work. And he has the bourgeois government ready to bail him out when he fucks up, which his greed causes at regular intervals. That too is exploitation of labor. That is injustice.

Karl Marx used the word bourgeois to describe the social class that holds property and capital making possible exploitation. Though he recognized the bourgeoisie's industriousness, he criticized its moral hypocrisy for its exploitation of other men. As time passed he came to use bourgeois to describe not only the class, but also its ideology: class society based on capitalism and labor. A society of the capitalist and the worker.

Members of the American middle class are marked by considerable diversity, who however tend to overlap. They prize non-conformity, innovation and independence and tend to comprise also the artistically creative part of the nation. Education is a chief indicator of middle class status. Education is fundamental to prepare members of the class for creative and leadership roles. For that reason, writers, educators, teachers, journalists, artists and the mainline media owners come chiefly from the middle class (es).

It is that middle class-bourgeoisie that has written the bulk of modern social and political history. The history most of us know best is their view of history. Now that history must be re-written. Everything must be reviewed. Everything must be revised. All of it--World Wars I and II, the "forgotten" Korean War where it all started, the Cold War, the USSR, Stalin, Iran, Iraq. Everything. Especially 911. GW Bush in power is not the same thing as Reagan who set the scene. But something changed. What has changed? That is also a mystery that must be clarified.

One change is that the real American upper middle class is shrinking in size. And from generation to generation it is becoming more elite. Sociologists instruct us that at today's pace another generation will suffice to eliminate the class. The prohibitive costs of higher education today guarantee the manifest elitism in America and the continuity of power in the hands of the smaller and smaller and best educated upper, to a great extent capitalist class, who more and more constitute also the political class, the caste. The American middle class is the most representative of the America the world is familiar with, not very complimentary of that class in view of the widely diffused anti-Americanism in the world. Yet it is threatened with extinction.

That is, eliminated by way of a golpe. A coup d'état. Executed by elite America against mainstream America itself.

The fervor of bourgeois revolution infected Russia from the early XIX century. Originally Social Democracy developed independently of the working classes in Russia, just as in the West. But as the class struggle intensified and sharpened, Lenin and the revolutionary Socialist intellectuals came to differ from the rest. Lenin preached that the choice came down to one between "bourgeois ideology" and "Socialist ideology". The former pointed toward reform and the creation of capitalism before social revolution. Lenin aimed at revolution, here and now, before the creation and organization of a great working class capable of making the revolution itself.

As elsewhere revolutionaries in Russia were powerfully influenced by Marx's comments in his "Critical Notes on the King of Prussia and Social Reform" on "the feeble reaction of the German bourgeoisie to socialism" and, on the other hand, "the brilliant talents of the German proletariat for socialism." Marx often compared the impotence of the German bourgeoisie for political revolution, responsible for the political impotence of Germany itself, with the social capacity of the German proletariat.

His social analysis of Germany has held good for 150 years! In his words, "it is entirely false that social need produces political understanding." That sentence would apply more to the USA today than to anywhere else in the world.

Despised in America and America's sphere of propaganda as a "breeder of tyranny", Lenin was a tough intellectual and a shrewd student of the bourgeoisie. A relentless fighter for world revolution, Lenin was the first major political leader of the 20th Century to put Marxian insights into tactical and strategic practice.

Lenin and his Bolshevik Communists opted for the Socialist ideology. They reserved special hate for the bourgeoisie intent on maintaining its privileges at the expense of the workers. The Russian revolutionary foresight is especially meaningful in Third Millennium America. After Lenin came to power he made it clear that Russia was NOT an island of utopia. The idea of a "petit bourgeois utopia" was to remain forever anathema to Lenin and thus to the Russian Revolution. "It is a question of creating a Socialist state .... This is merely one phase through which we must pass on the way to world revolution."

In Lenin's mind everything anti-revolutionary was bourgeois. Bourgeois attitudes. Bourgeois ethics and morality. Bourgeois plots. Bourgeois peace. Bourgeois legality. Bourgeois reaction. Bourgeois imperialism. The bourgeoisie was not going to stop him. No hairsplitting! "We are turning more and more to the Left .... We will destroy the entire bourgeoisie, grind it to a powder."

In the Leninist concept "the bourgeoisie is the class which inevitably rules under capitalism, both under a monarchy and in the most democratic republic, and which also inevitably enjoys the support of the world bourgeoisie." He knew what he was talking about. The world bourgeoisie--Democratic, Fascist or Monarchic--never forgave or forgot the temerity, the audacity, the effrontery, of the Russian Revolution!

The Bolshevik leader had learned his lessons from the French Revolution. In his 1918 cry of "All power to the Soviets" he meant a resounding 'No!' to the bourgeoisie who instead demanded "All power to the Constituent Assembly." Lenin was not about to hand over parliamentary power to a certain bourgeois counter-revolution. The resulting bloody civil war between Reds and Whites of Russia was between those two battle cries, between those two classes: the red revolutionary class and the white malignant bourgeoisie.

From that moment it was all-out attack on the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. "Death to the bourgeoisie!"

Pravda wrote on August 31, 1918: "Workers! If you do not now destroy the bourgeoisie, it will destroy you. Prepare for a mass attack on the enemies of the Revolution...."

Then in "Catechism of a Class-conscious Proletarian" also in Pravda: "The bourgeois is our eternal enemy, forever boring from within." The writer meant bankers, rich merchants, manufacturers and landowners, officers of the old guard, priests, White Guard reactionaries, upper bourgeois classes. The professed aim of the Red Terror was not to wage a war against individuals but to eliminate the bourgeoisie as a class.

Instructive for modern readers is Alexis de Tocqueville's remark about France in L'Ancien Régime et La Révolution written long before Lenin was born: "For the first time perhaps since the beginning of the world one sees the upper classes so isolated and separated from all the rest that one can count their members and separate them as one separates the condemned part of the herd, and the middle classes reluctant to mix with the upper classes but on the contrary jealously trying to avoid contact with them: two symptoms which if one had understood them, would have announced for all the immensity of the revolution about to be accomplished, or rather, which was already made."

That rings familiar, eh! I mean the separation and isolation today of America's elitist capitalists from the rest of the people.

In his essay "The Transparency of Evil" Jean Baudrillard, unpredictable and surprising as ever, notes that each transparency raises the question of its contrary, the secret. Still, some things, he says, will simply never be visible. They will remain in the secret world and are shared in secret according to a kind of exchange different from that of the visible world. But since today everything seems to happen in the visible world, the virtual world, what happens to those things that were once secret? Step by step, delving into the secret within the secret, Baudrillard then chills you with this: they become occult, clandestine, evil. That which once was just secret becomes the evil that must be abolished. The problem is one cannot destroy them because to a certain extent the secret, like myths, is indestructible. Therefore it becomes diabolic and infects the same instruments designed to eliminate it.

I reflect on this equation of the secret, the visible and the diabolic and apply it to the subject here. Conclusion: capitalist power is the occult evil and resistance must abolish it. Our bourgeois governments profess democracy and transparency. Yet they operate in the secrecy that has morphed into evil, while continuing to boast of democracy and God.

Capitalism as an economic and social system can only work when there are new frontiers to discover. Since, as we have seen, new opportunities and eternal growth are basic requirements for capitalistic society and since they have been exhausted, I too believe America has completed its historic Manifest Destiny.

Destiny. American capitalism has long loved the word. Baudrillard recalls a story about the rules of destiny, "Death in Samarkand." On a square of a town, Death makes a sign to a soldier, terrifying him. He runs to the king and tells him that Death made a sign to him. Therefore he was escaping immediately to Samarkand. The king summons Death and asks why he scared his captain. Death answers that he didn't intend frightening the soldier, he just wanted to remind him that they had an appointment that evening in Samarkand.

Based in Rome, Gaither Stewart is Cyrano's Journal's Online's European Correspondent and Special Editor for Foreign Affairs. His political and cultural reviews reach a multinational audience with venues spanning the globe, from the US to Western Europe, Latin America and lately, Russia (Moscow's Pravda).

Even though Floyd traces back the myth of the free market to merely the Thatcher years, the imposture is far older, in fact it has been going

In just a matter of days, we have seen literally trillions of dollars offered to the financial services sector by national treasuries and central banks across the globe. Britain alone has put $1 trillion at the disposal of the bankers, traders, lenders and speculators; and this has been surpassed by the total package of public money that Washington is shoveling into the financial furnaces of Wall Street and the banks. These radical efforts are being replicated on a slightly smaller scale in France, Germany, Italy, Russia and many other countries.

The effectiveness of this unprecedented transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens to the top tiers of the business world remains to be seen. It will certainly insulate the very rich from the consequences of their own greed and folly and fraud; but it is not at all clear how much these measures will shield the vast majority of people from the catastrophe that has been visited upon them by the elite.

But putting aside for a moment the actual intent, details and results of the global bailout offers, it is their very extent that shocks, and shows -- in a stark, harsh, all-revealing light -- the brutal disdain with which the national governments of the world's "leading democracies" have treated their own citizens for decades.

Beginning with Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979, government after government -- and party after party -- fell to the onslaught of an extremist faith: the narrow, blinkered fundamentalism of the "Chicago School." Epitomized by its patron saint, Milton Friedman, the rigid doctrine held that an unregulated market would always "correct" itself, because its workings are based on entirely rational and quantifiable principles. This was of course an absurdly reductive and savagely ignorant view of history, money and human nature; but because it flattered the rich and powerful, offering an "intellectual" justification for rapacious greed and ever-widening economic and social inequality, it was adopted as holy writ by the elite and promulgated as public policy.

This radical cult -- a kind of Bolshevism from above -- took its strongest hold in the United States and Britain, and was then imposed on many weaker nations through the IMF-led "Washington Consensus" (more aptly named by Naomi Klein as the "Shock Doctrine"), with devastating and deadly results. (As in Yeltsin's Russia, for example, where life expectancy dropped precipitously and millions of people died premature deaths from poverty, illness, and despair.)

According to the cult, not only were markets to be freed from the constraints placed on them after the world-shattering effects of the Great Depression, but all public spending was to be slashed ruthlessly to the bone. (Although exceptions were always made for the Pentagon war machine.) After all, every dollar spent by a public entity on public services and amenities was a dollar taken away from the private wheeler-dealers who could more usefully employ it in increasing the wealth of the elite -- who would then allow some of their vast profits to "trickle down" to the lower orders.

This was the cult that captured the governments of the United States and Britain (among others), as well as the Republican and Democratic parties, and the Conservative and Labour parties as well. And for almost thirty years, its ruthless doctrines have been put into practice. Regulation and oversight of financial markets were systematically stripped away or rendered toothless. Essential public services were sold off, for chump change, to corporate interests. Public spending on anything other than making war, threatening war and profiting from war was pared back or eliminated. Such public spending that did remain was forever under threat and derided, like the remnants of some pagan faith surviving in isolated backwaters.

Year after year, the ordinary citizens were told by their governments: we have no money to spend on your needs, on your communities, on your infrastructure, on your health, on your children, on your environment, on your quality of life. We can't do those kinds of things any more.

Free-marketer Margaret Thatcher, mean-spirited to the bone, just like her US counterpart, the malignant phony Ronald Reagan. (Here she's attending his funeral.)

Of course, when talking amongst themselves, or with the believers in the think tanks, boardrooms -- and editorial offices -- the cultists would speak more plainly: we don't do those things anymore because weshouldn't do them, we don't want to do them, they are wrong, they are evil, they are outside the faith. But for the hoi polloi, the line was usually something like this: Budgets are tight, we must balance them (for a "balanced budget" is a core doctrine of the cult), we just can't afford all these luxuries, sorry about that.

But now, as the emptiness and falsity of the Chicago cargo cult stands nakedly revealed, even to some of its most faithful and fanatical adherents, we can see that this 30-year mantra by our governments has been a deliberate and outright lie. The money was there -- billions and billions and billions of dollars of it, trillions of dollars of it. We can see it before our very eyes today -- being whisked away from our public treasuries and showered upon the banks and the brokerages.

Let's say it again: The money was there all along.

Money to build and generously equip thousands and thousands of new schools, with well-paid, exquisitely trained teachers, small teacher-pupil ratios, a full range of enriching and inspiring programs.

Money to revitalize the nation's crumbling inner cities, making them safe and vibrant places for businesses and families and communities to grow. Money to provide decent, affordable and accessible health care to every citizen, to provide dignity and comfort to the elderly, and protection and humane treatment for the mentally ill.

Money to provide affordable higher education to everyone who wanted it and could qualify for it. Money to help establish and sustain local businesses and family farms, centered in and on the local community, driven by the needs and knowledge of the people in the area, and not by the dictates of distant corporations.

Money to strengthen crumbling infrastructure, to repair bridges, shore up levies, maintain roads and electric grids and sewage systems. Money for affordable, workable public transport systems, for the pursuit of alternative sources of energy, for sustainable, sensible development, for environmental restoration.

Money to support free inquiry in science, technology, health and other areas -- research unfettered from the war machine and the drive for corporate profit, and instead devoted to the betterment of human life.

Money to support culture, learning, continuing education, libraries, theater, music and the endless manifestations of the human quest to gain more meaning, more understanding, more enlightenment, a deeper, spiritually richer life. The money for all of this -- and much, much more -- was there, all along. When they said we couldn't have these things, they were lying -- or else allowing themselves to be profitably duped by the high priests of the market cult. When they wanted a trillion dollars -- or three trillion dollars -- to wage a war of aggression in Iraq, they found it. Now, when they want trillions of dollars to save the speculators, fraudsters and profiteers of greed in the global market, they suddenly have it.

Who then can believe that these governments could not have found the money for good schools, health care, and all the rest, that they could not have enhanced the well-being and livelihood of millions of ordinary citizens, and helped create a more just and equitable and stable world -- if they had wanted to?

This is one of the main facts that ordinary citizens around the world should take away from this crisis: the money to maintain, secure and improve the lives of their families and communities was always there -- but their governments, and their political parties, made a deliberate, unforced choice not to use it for the common good. Instead, they subjugated the well-being of the world to the dictates of an extremist cult. A cult of greed and privilege, that preached iron discipline to the poor and the middle-class, but released the rich and powerful from all restrictions, and all responsibility for their actions.

This should be a constant -- and galvanizing -- thought in the minds of the public in the months and years to come. Remember what you could have had, and how it was denied you by the lies and delusions of a powerful elite and their bought-off factotums in government. Remember the trillions of dollars that suddenly appeared when the wheeler-dealers needed money to cover their own greed and stupidity.

Let these thoughts guide you as you weigh the promises and actions of politicians and candidates, and as you assess the "expert analysis" on economic and domestic policy offered by the corporate media and the corporate-bankrolled think tanks and academics.

And above all, let these thoughts be foremost in your mind when you hear -- as you certainly will hear, when (and if) the markets are finally stabilized (at whatever gigantic cost in human suffering) -- the adherents of the market cult emerge once more and call for "deregulation" and "untying the hands of business" and all the other ritual incantations of their false and savage fundamentalist faith.

For although the market cult has suffered a cataclysmic defeat in the last few weeks, it is by no means dead. It has 30 years of entrenchment in power to fall back on. And the leader of every major political party in the West has spent their entire political career within the cult's confines. It has been the atmosphere they breathed, it has been the sole ladder by which they have climbed to prominence. They will be loath to abandon it, once the immediate crisis is past; most will not be able to.

So remember well the lessons of this new October crash: The money to make a better life, to serve the common good, has always been there. But it has been kept from you by deceit, by dogma, by greed, and by the ambition of those who have sold their souls, and betrayed their brothers and sisters, their fellow human creatures, for the sake of privilege and power.

Chris Floyd is a political journalist known chiefly for his strong polemical writings critical of George W. Bush and his Administration. Floyd was born and raised in Wilson County, Tennessee.

I have been writing my heart and guts out for the last few years that China is one the biggest culprits for its cold blooded murdering of animals. The more the money flows into China, the more they abuse animals. We should make a serious attempt to stop buying anything that is "Made in China". I don't use anything that is made in that country. I just cannot accept that kind of disrespect for life. I have not (and never will) traveled to China and most Asian countries (i.e. Korea, Japan, and Thailand). I have never flown by an Asian airline like Singapore or Korean. Canada is another egregious animal murderer. I have relatives there yet I refuse to visit and boycott Canadian products because of that nation's barbaric seal clubbing.

I am sure many of us would be appalled and repulsed if we saw these cold blooded murders happening in front of our eyes. We may have heard and seen this brutality against animals on television or the Internet, but many simply choose to look away. Why? Often due to apathy and indifference about the plight of the animals. Our attitude numbs our senses and lets us ignore all this savagery. Where is our compassion?

Remember that predatory exploiters don't discriminate and when all the animal are eradicated, these eco-terrorists will be after us humans! But it will be too late then. So if you don't want to get stomped, skinned, clubbed, electrocuted, or boiled alive, speak up and act on behalf of our animal brethren.

AN ANIMAL'S WORST NIGHTMARE

1. China's dogs and cats are boiled, stabbed, drowned, bludgeoned, strangled, poisoned, hanged, and electrocuted...experiencing unbearable pain as their legs are routinely broken while trussed up and hung in local markets for human consumption, or skinned alive and cast off like garbage- for the despicable fur trade.

2. Dogs [both owned and stray] are relentlessly hunted down by 'police authorized' roving mobs and savagely beaten to death by the hundreds of thousands-in the name of 'rabies' control.

3. Bears, suffer a lifetime of excruciating pain as they are surgically mutilated and milked each day for their gall bile. Their paws taken as delicacies for the Chinese restaurant trade or ground into powdered 'medicines'. The use of bear parts supplying the traditional Chinese medicine trade and exotic meat market is the major reason why bear species are declining around the world. Endangered species of bears are rapidly becoming extinct.

4. Rhino, both Black and White, are butchered for their horns and are now highly endangered.

5. Over 70-100 million sharks PER YEAR are 'finned' and their carcasses dumped into the sea- to accommodate China's growing taste for shark fin soup.

6. 20 million turtles are devoured in China EACH YEAR. Slaughtered alive and fully conscious, their heads are decapitated and crushed. Even after a turtle's head is detached from its body, if not crushed sufficiently to destroy the brain, it can survive up to ONE HOUR in agonizing torment. Two thirds of the world's turtles are now threatened with extinction.

7. TONS of elephant tusks are carved into ivory trinkets-their feet are hacked off for stools and coffee table legs.

8. Animals are used as 'dried' ingredients in traditional Chinese medicines and killed by the billion-tiger parts, crocodile bile, deer musk, sea horses, lizards, sea cucumbers, powdered antlers, dog penis, pangolin (scaly anteaters), only to name a few on a seemingly unending list. ALL are considered no more than 'products' to be abused and murdered in the most monstrous ways possible, even if it means permanently wiping many of these species from the face of the planet in order to fulfill often frivolous, antiquated and selfish needs.

9. China plays a role in the largest mass butchery of marine mammals on Earth, the annual Canadian seal slaughter [which has taken over 1.25 million innocent lives in the last 3 years, alone]. This abomination happens in part so that dried seal penises can be turned into aphrodisiacs to "theoretically" increase the libidos of elderly men engaging in sex with Asian girls as young as 7 years old.

10. Live domestic pets, as well as cows and chickens, are fed to lions and tigers for the "entertainment" of visitors at Chinese zoos. Zoo officials encourage guests to buy domestic animals on the premises and feed them to the carnivores through special vending flaps fitted onto tourist buses, allowing individuals to throw chickens and other FULLY Conscious animals to the waiting predators.

CHINA'S GROWING WEALTH MEANS AN EVER-EXPANDING COLLECTION OF EXOTIC WILDLIFE ON THE MENU!

A. A Chinese chef describes how to cook pangolin [endangered scaly anteater]: "We keep them alive in cages until the customer makes an order. Then we hammer them unconscious, cut their throats and drain the blood. It is a slow death. We then boil them to remove the scales...cut the meat into small pieces and use it to make braised meat and soup. Usually the customers take the blood home with them afterwards." [The blood is thought to have medicinal value.]

B. Live monkey brains are considered a delicacy: A "gourmet" can buy monkeys in the marketplace and send them to inns for cooking. The cooks first stuff the monkeys into tiny cages and force them to drink rice wine until they're intoxicated. They are then pulled from the cage and bound by their limbs (preventing movement.) Their skulls are hacked open with a sharp knife to reveal easily visible, pulsing blood vessels. The white brains are then scooped out and served as soon as possible; eaten when still warm with seasonings. Monkey brains become pungent if they are not fresh...if the skull was opened too long ago. Thus it is best to open the skull and eat at once, while brain cells are LIVING and blood vessels throbbing.

C. It is not unusual in many areas of China, to see live deer in pens or crocodiles in tanks at restaurants. Buying and eating rare animals is a common way of SHOWING OFF. In southern China, rare meat is known as ye Wei (wild taste), and people believe eating exotic animals can endow them with bravery, long life or sexual prowess. The Cantonese brag that they will eat ANYTHING that moves!

D. China's insatiable frenzy for non-human body parts is expanding, consuming and decimating everything in its wake. This ancient society of 1.3 billion people, many of whom appear to have no compassionate connection toward sentient beings, whatsoever, MUST BE STOPPED! WITHHOLDING MONEY IS THE SINGLE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY WE CAN FORCE POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE! Individuals engaged in animal abuse will NOT be immediately swayed by moral pressure, or legislation. Swift, significant change can come through economic losses to those who victimize! ALL of China's exports must be targeted for boycott!

TAKE ACTION!

A) Get your community involved-ask friends, relatives, co-workers and groups to take the BOYCOTT CHINA PLEDGE and sign the petition linked HERE!

Tell STORE OWNERS AND MANAGERS of small businesses that stock Chinese products that you will no longer patronize their stores UNTIL they carry NON-CHINESE alternatives! They WILL listen-they need your money to survive! Remember change comes from the BOTTOM UP, not the top down! Target the small retailers FIRST, and soon Wal-Mart and others will take notice and follow!

B) Compile receipts from NON-CHINESE items purchased and send copies to your country's Chinese Ambassador with a "Revenue Lost" boycott letter. The goal is to have millions of these receipts/boycott letters pouring in, EVERY SINGLE DAY, to all 165 Chinese embassies worldwide! An excellent ongoing project for school, community, civic and church groups!

C) MAKE COPIES of this petition page and hand them out as flyers everywhere you go!

D) Spread the word by posting this petition on websites, blogs and AR mailing lists!

HELPFUL LINKS: CHINESE EMBASSIES:

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/embassy_list.htm

ALTERNATIVES TO CHINESE GOODS:

http://edinburghfurfreecity.co.uk/boycottchina/index.php

Do it for the protection of our endangered wildlife and for the millions of domestic and companion animals being tortured and killed as you read these words.

On behalf of the billions of voiceless souls desperately in need of your help to save them, thank you!

Photos and videos of the wanton destruction of life:

1) http://www.tomregan-animalrights.com/gallery.html

2) http://www.harpseals.org/ (Seal Hunting in Canada)

3) http://www.furkills.org/

4) http://animalsaviors.org/

5) http://www.all-creatures.org/artphoto.html

Expect such indices as the Dow to tumble even much lower when the Pandora's box of derivatives is fully opened.

Believe it or not, the Dow is still not far from its all-time peaks, with a lot further to fall. The depression is still in its early stages. We are looking at $1 quadrillion of unregulated debt, with much of it at risk. (And we used to think $1 trillion was a lot.)

These are literally inconceivable sums. Counting one dollar per second, it would take 32 million years to count to one quadrillion.

The stock market in this era of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank is a giant craps shoot. Much of it is quite unregulated, especially the invisible market of derivatives. The sub-prime mortgage market collapsed, which is now being followed by a giant credit crisis. Now we are looking at the possible collapse of the derivative market.

President Bush failed at every business he has been associated with. He has always had his dad to bail him out to avoid bankruptcy. But this time his dad and even Henry Paulson can't keep Bush from facing the failure of his economic policies at the helm of the U.S. economy.

America's oversized debt pyramid has just begun to wind down. The Federal Reserve has announced that it is giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG), the world's largest financial conglomerate, in exchange for a nearly 80 percent stake in the firm.

The Associated Press calls it a "government takeover," but as Ellen Brown, J.D., author of The Web of Debt, says, this is not a real nationalization like the purchase of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac stock by the U.S. Treasury. "The Federal Reserve," she points out, "has the power to print the national money supply, but it is not actually a part of the U.S. government.

It is a private banking corporation, owned by a consortium of private banks. The private banking industry just bought the world's largest insurance company." But they used taxpayer money to do it.

Proposals for reforming the banking system are not even on the radar screen of establishment politics, but the current system is collapsing at train-wreck speed. Says Brown: "We need to stop funding the culprits who brought us this debacle at our expense. We need a public banking system that makes a cost-effective credit mechanism available for homeowners, manufacturing, renewable energy, and infrastructure; and the first step to making it cost effective is to strip out the swarms of gamblers, fraudsters and profiteers now gaming the system."

John Tiffany is the copy editor for American Free Press. He is also the assistant editor of THE BARNES REVIEW (TBR) historical magazine. For a sample copy of TBR (editor's choice) send $3 to TBR, P.O. Box 15877,Washington, D.C. 20003.

Just What Are Derivatives?

Derivatives are financial instruments whose value changes in response to the changes in underlying variables. The main types of derivatives are futures, forwards, options and swaps.

The main use of derivatives is to reduce risk for one party. The diverse range of potential underlying assets and pay-off alternatives leads to a wide range of derivatives contracts available to be traded in the market. Derivatives can be based on different types of assets such as commodities, equities (stocks), bonds, interest rates, exchange rates or indexes (such as a stock market index, consumer price index (CPI)--inflation derivatives--or even an index of weather conditions, or other derivatives). Their performance can determine both the amount and the timing of the pay-offs.

Stock index futures and options are known as derivative products because they derive their existence from actual market indices, but have no intrinsic characteristics of their own. In addition to that, one of the reasons some believe they lead to greater market volatility is that huge amounts of securities can be controlled by relatively small amounts of margin or option premiums. One reason derivatives are popular is because they can be transacted off balance sheets.

While mainstream opinion continues to vacillate between the approved economic dogmas of market correction and increased regulation, few have proffered any critical analysis of the structural crisis in the latest phase of capitalism.

The glaring absence of any such consideration in mainstream opinion is to be expected given the ideological blindness -- not to mention complicity -- of mainstream and business media in promoting the absolute supremacy of free market capitalism. But the deafening silence of many progressive media outlets on the systematic nature of the crisis is deeply troubling.

While the 2008 presidential election has justifiably received a great deal of attention and has been the subject of a substantial amount of political commentary, it should not be the case that progressives remain silent in light on the tremendous crisis engulfing capitalism in our moment. Nor should progressive analysis of the current economic crisis be framed by a cult of personality critique that places full blame on the rogue Bush-Cheney regime.

Nader is one of the handful of lonely voices denouncing the latest bailout as an exercise in costly band-aid measures for a system whose very internal dynamic leads to ever graver recurring crises.

If progressivism is to mean something more than just a euphemism for center-left Democrats or more than the latest Democratic branding strategy in light of the decades long conservative assault on the term liberal, then progressives must articulate a substantive critique of what John Bellamy Foster terms "monopoly finance capital."

What this means is that analyses of the current economic crisis should be grounded in the long term view of the increased growth and influence of the monetary and financial aspects of capitalist political economy since the mid-1960s and the evolution of this transformation throughout the decades of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and the opening decades of the millennium. As economist James Crotty noted in 1985:

[I]t is evident that monetary and financial problems have been and continue to be at the very center of the recurring economic crises that have afflicted most capitalist economies in the past fifteen to twenty years. These economies have experienced roller-coaster inflation, secular stagnation, domestic credit crunches, and recurring waves of bankruptcy. . . . The business press asks with regularity if an international financial collapse of depression-producing magnitude is very likely, or only moderately likely: the answer changes from time to time.

In this phase, capitalism represents nothing less than what Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy aptly describe as a "gigantic system of speculating, swindling, and cheating." Thus, the economic landscape has been marked by such developments as the deregulation of the savings and loans industry under President Carter, the 1979 bailout of Chrysler, the collapse of over seven hundred saving and loan associations in the 1980s, the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, and, of course, the devastating economic crises of the new millennium populated by names such as Enron, WorldCom, Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, and the list goes on.

The dominant responses to the current upheaval in the financial markets have been met with calls for more explicit and robust regulatory controls. Among other things, this rhetorical strategy fundamentally reaffirms the foundational principles and core correctness of market capitalism while offering an explanatory rationale that places blame on a few unethical individuals and rogue institutions. Moreover, it fails to shed light on the convergence of interests of business and political elites as well as the ongoing class war that has eviscerated the ranks of unionized labor, stagnated wages, and casualized workers across all sectors of the economy.

It may not be opportune to begin such discussions in final days of a closely fought presidential campaign.

However, if progressives ignore the deep and systemic crisis of capitalism that, at best, marginalizes the lives, dreams, and hopes of the majority of American citizens, progressivism in the 21st century will not only be impoverished, but will also be part of the problem and not the solution to the general crisis of democracy in America.

SECOND TAKE

In US capitalism's greatest financial crisis since the 1930s Depression, status-quo ideology swirls. The goal is to keep this crisis under control, to prevent it from challenging capitalism itself. One method is to keep public debate from raising the issue of whether and how class changes -- basic economic system changes -- might be the best "solution." Right, center, and even most left commentators exert that ideological control, some consciously and some not. Hence the debates where those demanding "more or better government regulation" of financial markets shout down those who still "have more confidence in private enterprise and free markets." Both sides limit the public discussion to more vs less state intervention to "save the economy." Then too we have quarrels over details of state intervention: politicians "want to help foreclosure victims too" or "want to limit financiers' pay packages" or want to "weed out bad apples in the finance industry" while spokespersons of various financial enterprises struggle to shape the details to their particular interests.

We need to recall that crises always generate "solutions" -- like all those above -- that preserve the basic system. We also need to advance alternatives not subordinated to the status quo, that open up the discussion by showing the risks of not changing the system and the virtues of doing so.

Let's begin with the issue of government regulation. Note first that corporations like investment banks, commercial banks, stock and mortgage brokerages, and so on are all run by boards of directors. These boards -- usually numbering 15 to 25 people -- make all basic corporate decisions. They hire the millions who do the work, and they tell these employees what to do with the tools and equipment they provide. Today's financial mess and economic crisis are first and foremost results of decisions by these boards of directors.

In previous economic crises -- especially the 1930s Depression -- financial corporations were subjected to government laws and regulations passed under pressure of mass suffering. However, the politicians who wrote those laws and regulations soon thereafter allowed financial corporations to evade them, then later to amend them, and finally to eliminate many of them. Politicians accommodated financial corporations because they were major contributors to their campaigns and major supports of their political careers or because they believed government intervention to always be "bad" for economic wellbeing. Financial corporations' directors used profits also to hire armies of lobbyists who shaped every government step in deciding whether and how to enforce laws, rewrite regulations, etc. Thus, US regulators depended increasingly on the financial corporations they supposedly regulated. Nor should we forget the profits financial corporations have always devoted to "public relations" -- costly campaigns to undermine the very idea of government regulation in school curricula, mass media, politics, and across our culture. So now we return to square one as deregulated finance -- having done its job of making billions for the industry -- produces another crisis and another set of calls for regulation.

In short, arguing over whether to leave finance to financial corporations or to have government regulate them is no real debate. In the US, financial corporations' boards of directors have dominated the operations of the financial industries either way. Since all regulations imposed on US financial enterprises have left their boards of directors as sole receivers and distributors of all profits, the boards used them to evade or gut the regulations. What the right, center, and left now debate is merely another set of regulations all of which again leave untouched the profits accruing to financial companies' boards of directors.

Finance has been grossly mismanaged by the institution of the corporation under deregulation: hence the crisis. Responding to this fact requires more than government reregulation. We need also to change the corporation in basic ways that can avoid or correct financial mismanagement. Nothing could better assure that new and tougher government regulations might work this time than making the workers inside financial corporations real partners with the government in monitoring and enforcing properly regulated financial activities.

To that end, we propose a radical restructuring of financial corporations. Their employees at all levels must become major participants in decision-making activity. That means elevating workers to significant membership on boards of directors and all board committees. Only then can employees know corporate realities and so make sure financial activities conform to the spirit and letter of regulations. Only then will inappropriate activities get reported to and investigated by regulators long before they accumulate into today's sort of crisis. Masses of employees institutionally empowered inside corporate decision-making are the nation's best hope for a better, fairer financial system than we have had to date.

In short, if the US government -- ultimately the tax-payers -- will now pay the costs and take the risks to bail out a failed financial system, then it has the right and obligation to change that system. We need such changes to avoid repeating the failures of the past. These changes would also introduce some democracy inside the corporation -- where it has been excluded for too long and with disastrous consequences.

The current debates also fail to face how the underlying economy helped produce the financial mess. Real wages stopped rising in the US in the 1970s, yet the American psyche and self-image, subject to relentless advertising, was committed to rising consumption. To enable that, workers with flat wages had to borrow to afford rising consumption. For the last 30 years loans replaced wages, but rising consumer debt introduces new risks and dangers. If, simultaneously, politicians use state borrowing to avoid taxing the rich while providing vast corporate subsidies and waging endless wars, the debt problems mushroom. Aggressive, deregulated financial companies grabbed the resulting "market opportunity" by devising ever more complex, hidden, and dangerously risky ways to profit hugely from the social debt bubble.

A sub-prime economy produced sub-prime wages, sub-prime borrowers, sub-prime lenders, and sub-prime government regulation. Bailing out and reregulating financiers -- the current plan being debated across the nation -- does far too little too late. The proposal above exemplifies the much bigger and more basic changes that now need active public discussion.

This essay is being published and distributed on this "web," the most voluminous database of independent, uncensored, worthwhile information in human history. Make no mistake, if not for this invention, our species might be in immediate and irredeemable peril. Without the web, the handful of media conglomerations that have swallowed up all of the major TV, radio, and print outlets, could promulgate misinformation with little or no hope of correction. In the pre-Internet age, proponents of unpopular or "fringe" thought systems were almost exclusively relegated to public access television and short-wave radio. Today, anyone with a web-cam and an opinion can freely broadcast his views around the globe, with a nearly unlimited potential audience. This unprecedented means to spread unfettered information and viewpoints has already affected stupendous real world changes. In the last year, the Presidential campaign of a relatively obscure figure, Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, achieved a groundswell of support based on and driven by Internet communications. Indeed, a whole new medium of communication - "blogging" - has arisen as a serious competitor of newspapers and magazines, even (in the minds of some) jeopardizing the commercial viability of print publications.

But human beings are intrinsically flawed, so nothing human consciousness has created has ever been perfect. The Internet is no exception. Our ugliness, weakness, ignorance and debasement burst forth coincident with our beauty, intelligence, power and grace. I'd like to believe that the latter human qualities predominate in our culture, including within the infinite cyber-maze that is the WWW, but sadly, they do not. I don't know precisely how many Americans are members of what might be called the "lowest common denominator," but I do know this denominator tends to make the most noise.

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When Andy Warhol observed, "Everybody is famous for fifteen minutes," he surely presaged this era of YouTube kings and queens, these MySpace gods and goddesses, a million faces and voices all competing for a fleeting moment of attention. An endless quest for "love" in the form of hit counts and five-star ratings. On the plus side, collective and individual narcissism can sometimes provide incentive for real creative brilliance -- many artistic and intellectual geniuses had immature or downright schizophrenic motives. But everywhere in cyberspace, we see the signs that the "inmates are running the asylum." If discourse, dialog, circumspection, and humility are the tools of the enlightened, then shouting, bleating, ignorance and arrogance are the tools of the wretched.

Forbes Magazine recently described the aforementioned YouTube as the world's largest TV station (it's also been characterized as "the world's largest magazine rack," and even "the world's largest focus group.") Make no mistake, the aggregate quality of content on YouTube might exceed that of the entire world's media conglomerations combined (in this context, *quality* refers to both entertainment and information). The FCC, corporate chairmen, and self-serving advertisers have no influence on 'YouTubers', so artists and advocates of every flavor are relatively free to express themselves - and freedom has always been the greatest catalyst of creativity. That's the considerable upside; the downside is the same as in every other medium -- the most inane, grotesque, inhuman spectacles always seem to attract the most attention.

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YouTube word searches yield some interesting results. A search of the words - fire fart - (unquoted) yield just under 4,000 hits. The first result has been viewed over 3,000,000 times. The video's description reads, "Did u know that one person's energy contained in farts for a period of 6 years and 9 months can be comparable to an atomic bomb??" (Now that's a question Mr. Wizard is most unlikely to have ever answered.) Videos related to this one include 'Jurassic Fart,' (3.6 million views), 'MythBusters - Do Pretty Girls Fart' (4.5 million views), 'Farting Idol' (2.1 million views), 'Beth's Gigantic Fart' (1.5 million views), and 'The biggest fart ever' (over 1 million views.) Perhaps this clarifies why extremely popular Internet items are described as "viral" -- the sickness is passed from one computer to another until finally most everyone is infected and dying.

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If cognition weeps over YouTube's most popular videos, it runs screaming "Jesus Christ, hallelujah" over the YouTube comment sections. At a ratio optimistically figured at 7,897 to 1, the illiterate, debased, feverishly grotesque remarks outnumber the intelligent, reasonable, and constructive ones. Even by the low standards of any unmoderated forum, logic and decency in YouTube comments are conspicuously absent. Of course, it's not entirely coincidental that all comments are restricted to a mere 450 characters, restricting most "conversations" to brute shouting matches. Nevertheless, the opinions and assertions of countless YouTube posters are consistently disturbing. Viciously racist, sexist, nationalistic, xenophobic, bullying, profane, perverted, upside down backward comments are the rule, not the exception. Indeed, it is not at all surprising that comments for Martin Luther King, Jr.s' "I Have a Dream" speech (over 4 million views) are presently disabled -- surely, the only other option for the video's owner was to allow the contamination of the page by virulent, sadistic, inhuman graffiti. It's also telling that many videos that lean toward profundity -- say, a speech by Gandhi with over 30,000 views -- have virtually no comments, while prank phone calls, celebrity sex videos, and professional wrestling matches receive new comments (or rather, attempted comments by people who never learned to read or write) roughly every 1.5 seconds.

This leads me to ask the question: exactly when and how was the Internet completely overrun by random "comments"? One is hard pressed to find a blog or purported "news service" that doesn't feature comment sections accompanying every essay, news article, video, and blog entry. Granted, on a few occasions, the intellectual content of the user comments may actually exceed that of the item they're responding to. But really, do all these pinched, short, unscreened, generally ill-formed and horrendously written "comments" enhance or diminish the power of the presentations? Imagine if history's greatest authors had been forced to include random reader comments in all of their books. On the inside jacket of Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," we might read: KevinOwnsUFuck98 writes: "Dude, u r fat & old. Wash your krotch b4 u spred your legs."

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We also see demonstrated the steady injection into the collective lexicon of so-called "leet-speaking" -- a form of quasi-shorthand via the worlds of 'gaming,' text messaging, and Internet chat rooms. Most of us who regularly communicate electronically (in other words, the large majority of the industrialized world) have at least a vague familiarity with this so-called 'jargon.' Some examples include LOL (laughing out loud), btw (by the way), j/k (just kidding), stfu (shut the f*** up), and WAY too many others to even partially list here. The question of whether this rather cryptic code actually stunts learning and language skills is controversial. But some language purists (i.e., generally people who either learned to read and write before the public schools had been hopelessly dumbed down, or through private schooling, or independent study) view "leet-speaking" as yet another in an endless series of devastating blows to English grammar. You knew it was only a matter of time, and it's finally begun to happen: some youngsters who've spent their whole lives jacked into electronic communications now utilize "leet-speaking" in their oral conversations. Have you recently heard a kid say "lol" or "lulz" as an expression of amusement, and wondered what the hell he was talking about? Well, now you know.

Now imagine the endless nightmare faced by moderators of Internet forums. Since everyone feels entitled to post public comments (no matter how inane, abusive, profane, or incoherent), and since any "filtering" of comments leads to accusations of *censorship,* how can one operate a forum while maintaining a minimum of decency and decorum? The answer is, regrettably few do, and most if not all are overrun by extended bouts of controversy and bedlam. This illustrates two things:

1) Internet communications must be handled more delicately than one-on-one human relations. The obvious reason for this is when two people argue over a computer, the usual human elements of empathy and politeness go completely out the window. For one thing, you don't see your *antagonist* -- the look in his eyes, that sense of another human -- nor can you know the full intent behind his every remark. Indeed, many corporations now guide their employees through comprehensive training on email and forum etiquette, advising them to always wait and reflect on their writings before hitting the irretrievable "send" or "post" command.

2) In the United States (and throughout much of the Western world, and beyond), education, literacy, and social decorum seem to be heading in the wrong direction, and have been for decades. Tragically, the electronic age only seems to have worsened our social malaise. The irony is, we "communicate" with one another more easily today than ever before. But for reasons stated above, these "communications" tend to lack real human connectedness. Consider that more Americans than ever utilize email, cell phones, text messaging, etc., to keep in touch with friends and family, yet increasingly we are isolated and lonely. One fairly recent news story illustrating this point reads: "...an authoritative study in the American Sociological Review found that the average American had only two close friends in whom they would confide on important matters, down from an average of three in 1985. The number of people who said they had no such confidant soared from 10 percent in 1985 to nearly 25 percent in 2004; an additional 19 percent said they had only one confidant -- often their spouse." (From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14126192/)

The purpose of this essay is not to scapegoat the Internet for our culture's decline. Rather, this preexisting spiral has continued unabated, despite our improved abilities to dispense and consume unfettered information, and to "communicate" with one another anywhere in the world. As I stated at the outset, the WWW is a reflection of human consciousness, for better and worse. And collectively, our consciousness is not in the brightest place right now. All statistics and rhetoric lamenting the failures of our educational system aside, simply look out your window at the street, at all those heavy-set frowning folks with their Ipods and cell phones. These bloated disconnected atoms in an icy-cold vacuum. And ask yourself just how in the hell "people like that" -- i.e. people like you, people like ME -- might ever hope to communicate with one another. On the Internet, over the phone, or screaming through our car windows with our pedals to the floor at 90 MPH.

POSTSCRIPT: The first version of this essay featured a few comments that may have been overwrought. In one instance, I stated, "Human education and literacy has reached its darkest depths in contemporary history." At best, this remark may have confused the reader, since "contemporary history" is a deliberately vague term. Also, in recent decades, many impoverished nations have experienced marked improvements in education and literacy, so to speak too broadly of a "human" decline in these areas may not be accurate. I hope this piece is mostly reasonable, and might stir some meaningful discourse out here in cyberspace.

Celebrating a meaningless way of life, based on consumerism and endless (and usually hopeless) attempts to rise up to the demands of society, lost in a sea of clichés and mottos, they try so hard to build a future that they forget an essential aspect of the whole matter: their inability to get out of their petty space-time-money continuum (meaningless movements meant to carry them "from rags to riches", to adequately fit into the perversely designed image of success described by contemporary propaganda). What people ultimately forget is this whole "theater" of becoming someone and climbing up the ladder of social (read financial) success has one basic need, beyond all human-constructed rules, needs and strategies: it needs a stage.

As unbelievable as it would seem based on the humanist and anthropocentric views which coordinate people's existence, we still need a proper place to make whatever dreams come true, a spacious environment for being able to pursue our ideals. Shockingly, the human heaven still needs the earthly ground, even though this basic fact is overviewed on a daily basis by obtuse, simple-minded, TV-addicted crowds, who seemingly have one primary goal, one final purpose: to consume as much as possible. In fact, the whole contemporary economic culture is based on a media-induced need to consume as much as possible, regardless of what we are leaving behind. That is, billions of tons of garbage, and a natural environment that starts to look like a wasteland.

While making every effort to make sure their children will have a "good life" (the degree to which life is good being calculated with a rather simplistic formula, generally involving money and nothing else), they actually deny their children and their grand-children the simple right of living a decent life, in a functional natural environmental. The arrogant detachment from nature has led to an ever-broadening disaster all across the planet, and things are changing for the worse with each passing second. Our relationship to the natural world (including animals) has never been so twisted, and its effects will soon become too potent to be mended by our highly praised science.

Until now, the greatest and best advertised result of science has been technology, which only widened the gap between man and nature - the former resting on the laurels of the new-found power over the environment, and the latter suffering unprecedented damage. The universalization of the indifferent attitude towards all natural elements is in sharp contrast with the alleged "high moral standards" which should conduct human behavior at all levels of the contemporary complex existence. Do these moral standards also apply to transforming forests into deserts, even while knowing (thanks to the same dearly beloved science) that this will endanger our future as a species? Do they apply to polluting our environment beyond any possibility of reconstruction? Do they take into account the suffering of animals, used as mere property? Could these moral standards find an apology or at least a logical explanation for non-human creatures being tortured in science laboratories, or enslaved in countless ways, for "entertainment purposes"?

Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is all too obvious, and it bears no connection whatsoever to any ethical standards. But if there is one law that science has discovered that has a proven functionality, it is the law of equilibrium. Everything tends to attain a state of perfect balance, when long-lasting stability is achieved. Of course, in achieving this, a whole dynamic of change is at play, exhibiting violent movements to restore the lost equilibrium; for every action, there is an equally powerful reaction. If we believe that science is the only true narrative, the most potent weapon we have in the self-ignited war against nature, why don't we believe that its laws apply universally? For some reason, we believe that we are somewhere outside the reach of the laws our science discovered. That the wrongs we do will not have any effect on ourselves. That all the violence used against animals and the natural environment will not take its toll on us. That somehow we will not have to pay the price of our selfish way of living.

Humanity's myths of power and control, forcefully put into practice through the increasingly extensive use of technology, are to be confronted with their morbid effects on everything (including ourselves, as individuals). For as long as we do not stand up for the right to live in a clean world, in a non-intrusive society and in a violence free community, nothing will ever change. We have learned one lesson very well, a lesson that is highly valuable in a culture which values power and money above anything else: not to contradict the mainstream, not to argue with the institutions of control, which are instrumental for our "happiness" and "fulfillment" in all the definitions acknowledged by society. The ones who do not conform to the rules of the majority are automatically labeled as extremists, radicals, or they are simply ignored by the system through its effective strategies of rejection. This practice of always adhering to the generally accepted patterns of behavior, without analyzing them or filtering them through one's own consciousness is reiterated over and over again, every single day.

Guilty for encouraging the indifferent attitude towards the real world around is not only the system itself (even though it is occasionally blamed by suddenly awakened individuals, crying out their agoraphobic despair and the futility of their attempts to earn their share of the culturally accepted success). People are deeply complicit. It is a mass process only because the chain is rarely questioned and never interrupted.

The business man who earns money from leveling a forest to build a hotel bears guilt, as does the father who takes his son for a "fun evening" at the circus to see elephants perform tricks and monkeys juggle colorful balls. The attitude is the same: indifference in its cruelest form. Whether it is destruction of the natural environment (which ultimately feeds the business man himself) or the suffering of the animals brutally forced to amuse the cold-hearted crowds, the damage done to the natural world and the cruelty against animals are tightly bound together. They both stem from the same ignorant philosophies that have been governing human behavior for centuries. In fact, man has always tried to find justification for his existence and for his deeds. And technology eventually became the "proof" that we are unique and possess every right to do whatever we please.

Henry Bergson argued that intelligence is connected to inference, and the latter is the beginning of invention. When a human manages to fabricate an object, that individual has attained the perfection of animal intelligence. According to Bergson and many others, the entire social existence of humanity gravitates around the invention of objects, around the utilization of artificial instruments. These inventions not only change the inter-human relationships, but shape the entire history of mankind. It is easily noticeable that nature has not found its place in this complex equation comprising only humans and their inventions.

It seems that the real dream of humanity is to attain such a high degree of technological advancement that we no longer need nature. The ultimate ideal of humankind is to live outside its natural environment, to create a new, artificial one, which could perfectly fit his needs without ever "fighting back". The "right" to ignore nature is divinely granted to humanity. As Pico della Mirandola argued, only man has the freedom to decide his own "nature", his own existence, according to his will. In contrast, real nature is forced to live inside the laws prescribed by the Creator/ God. Then again, people are the ones who "speak God's word" (whether it be Christian, Islamic, Hindu, or some other), so there is that "slight chance" that the message could be twisted. To push things one step further, Nietzsche went well beyond the usual down-sized image of Nature and well beyond sheer indifference and justifying destruction using the superiority of Man given by God. Not only did he ignore Nature's capacity to organize itself functionally, in a gratuitous act of hyperbolizing human self-esteem, he advised us not to grant Nature anthropomorphic features, not to believe that there are laws in nature. The natural is all about necessities. There is no final goal, so it has no chance. Just like the whole Universe, the natural world is to be thought of as something devoid of inner meaning, of any kind of positive evolution. These patterns of thought - only to mention a couple from thousands of different variations and degrees - have led to the present world image, substantially affected by contemporary media culture and capitalist "ideals."

The definition of man as the only creature on Earth gifted with the ability to think and to reason seems outdated when taking into account the current modes of consumption, the globally spread violence and the psychological profile of contemporary culture that strongly resembles the worst nightmare of science-fiction writers. We claim the right to live in an orderly world, yet economic, political and environmental chaos rule every aspect of our lives. As there is no room for nature in the technotopia we are striving for, the lack of resources will be felt acutely during the next few decades. Knowing about it and doing nothing will take its toll on a humanity too busy building its future to pay any attention to the "details" which will eventually stop its evolution.

Contradiction marks every aspect of today's thinking, from economy to morality and culture. All of them are obstructed by the only truly universal philosophy man has ever accurately applied: anthropocentrism. In a world where nature is systematically destroyed for the profit of a handful and the process is applauded by senseless, manipulated crowds, environmentalists are viewed as extremists. Even though we humans condemn killing as being morally wrong, wars are constantly raging for power, money and ego. The Constitution guarantees the right to live, but this only extends to the limits of our own species. Man, "the most noble of all creatures", is not yet prepared to radically change. Change is impossible while marching along the same path of "humanism" and "rationality" - coded names for anthropocentrism and rampant consumerism. We are free to choose, yet we fail to acknowledge the true complexity of our choices, the real effects of our actions or inaction.

Eric Hoffer said that "when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other". This does hold true, perhaps now more than ever, but with a twist: the patterns of imitation are channeled by artificially- induced "ideals" and distorted visions of human values. Written laws are not better than moral codes; while freedom of speech is granted to anyone, true freedom of thought is denied if you do not adhere to the institutionalized consensus. If anyone speaks out his mind against the majority, this is where freedom ends and abuse begins.

One poignant example comes to mind - though it is only a minuscule aspect of the entire picture of so-called "individual freedom". While it has been widely accepted that the planetary fauna is in permanent danger, with countless species facing extinction, hunting is not only allowed; it is legally protected. Everyone rich enough to buy a gun and heartless enough to shoot an animal for pleasure has the lawful right to kill. This obscene business leads to scenes of unimaginable cruelty, yet it continues because it is a reiteration of man's power over all that is natural. What greater honor for a "true man" than to kill a lion from the safe distance of his truck, protected by so many devices that even a 5-year-old could do the job without any risk of getting hurt? The suffering of the animal, the terror which marks its last moments, or the agony of being just injured and left to die a horrible death - they all mean nothing when the trophy is hung above the fire place, for all the friends to see.

If our laws are right, one also has the right to care about wildlife and has the right (if not the duty) to protect it. But if anyone interferes with a hunt, this is called "extremism", even "terrorism". Saving an animal is wrong - and punished accordingly - while killing an animal is legally right. If defense is bad and killing is good - couldn't it be that the laws themselves are twisted? While many people are decent enough to recognize that inflicting suffering on an animal is morally wrong, most simply change the channel or look away when they see a murderous act against an animal, stating that is too brutal, too disturbing to watch. But this politics of ignorance is just what enables the perpetuation of exploitative, barbaric acts against animals.

Violence against animals, along with the legalized destruction of nature in general, are so deeply embedded in our history that in some areas they are considered to be a part of a country's cultural heritage, a major element of its tradition. And the word "tradition" suddenly makes it right, no matter how morally repugnant something might be. Cruelty against animals reaches much further than mere meat consumption and it attains an almost privileged state when it is simply done for pleasure. Take the example of bull-fighting in Spain, where huge crowds gather to see a frightened animal being tortured to death, while men and women alike cheer and encourage the bull-"fighters" to show off their whole range of "courageous" movements. Cock fighting and bloody matches between dogs are in the same category of murderous amusement. The suffering of circus animals may not be so obvious, but it has been thoroughly demonstrated and documented. Still, it is considered a form of entertainment for adults and children alike.

If a child grows up seeing these atrocities and becomes accustomed to "normalized" violence, it will seem "natural" to them when they become adults. And the adult won't manifest any mercy when put in the situation to decide what is right or wrong with respect to animals or the environment. Education may be the most effective weapon against environmental destruction and cruelty toward animals, but if a solid and adequate educational program was implemented now, it could still be too late. Destruction and violence seem to advance at a faster rate than their counter-movements.

A globally spread awakening, a moral cleansing of humankind, and a departure from our present ways of thinking could provide the adequate solution for saving our future. If everyone actually exercised their true freedom of speech and thought and then consistently acted according to their documented beliefs, we would not be living on a planet turning into a wasteland and our consciences would not have to bear the guilt for the global slaughterhouse of nature we have erected. Stained with greed, our decaying consciousness still can - or at least should - redefine our self-imposed status of "superior beings" in accordance with new and sound concepts vis-à-vis morality, freedom, life and future. Because we will only have a future if we learn to make the right choices about the present.

And our disturbing present is the frail future that the generations before us built. If the same "evolutionary" trend continues and the insane exploitation goes on unabated, "future" will become a word devoid of meaning in the dictionary of indifference. Freedom to choose should be used. Or at least created. Before the apathy becomes universal.

Haralambie Athes has degrees in cultural studies and in environmental management. He is currently working on his PhD dissertation on Utopia and Ecotopia in Postmodernism. He resides in Romania and engages in activism for animal rights and the environment.

Like Allende, Morales faces a powerful economic and political elite aligned with the United States that is bent on reversing the limited reforms he has been able to implement during his nearly three years in power. Early on, Morales -- Bolivia?s first indigenous president -- moved assertively to exert greater control over the natural gas and oil resources of the country, sharply increasing the hydro-carbon tax, and then using a large portion of this revenue to provide a universal pension to all those over sixty years old, most of whom live in poverty and are indigenous.

The self-proclaimed Civic Committees in Media Luna (Half Moon) -- Bolivia's four eastern departments -- have orchestrated a rebellion against these changes, demanding departmental autonomy and control of the hydro-carbon revenues, as well as an end to agrarian reform and even control of the police forces. The Santa Cruz Civic Committee, dominated by agro-industrial interests, is supporting the Cruceño Youth Union (UJC), an affiliated group that acts as a para-military organization, seizing and fire bombing government offices, and attacking Indian and peasant organizations that dare to support the national government.

Bolivia's National Assembly inaugurates Evo Morales (2006)

Morales' efforts to transform the institutions of the country have focused on the popularly elected Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. The assembly was convened in mid 2006 with representatives from Morales political party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) holding 54 percent of the seats. In the drafting of the new constitution, the right wing political parties, led by Podemos (We Can), insisted that a two-thirds vote was needed even for the working committees to approve the different sections of the constitution. When they were overruled and a new constitution was close to being approved in November, 2007, members of the assembly, including its indigenous president, Silvia Lazarte, were assaulted in the streets of Sucre, the old nineteenth century capital where the assembly was being held.

Using words that evoked Allende's last stand in the Chilean presidential palace, Evo Morales declared dead or alive, I will have a new constitution for the country. He quartered the assembly in an old castle under military protection where it adopted a constitution that has to be approved in a national referendum. Labeling Morales a "dictator", the civic committees and the departmental prefects (governors) of Media Luna were able to stall the vote on the referendum, and instead organized departmental referendums for autonomy in May of this year that were ruled unconstitutional by the National Electoral Council.

Taking recourse in democracy rather than force, and searching for a national consensus, Morales then held up the vote on the new constitution, and instead put his presidency on the line in a recall referendum in which his mandate as well as that of the prefects of the departments could be revoked. On August 10, voters went to the polls and Morales won a resounding 67 percent of the vote, receiving a majority of the ballots in 95 of the country's 112 districts with even the Media Luna department of Pando voting in his favor.

However, the insurgent prefects also had their mandates renewed. Based on the illegal, departmental plebiscites held in May, they moved to take control of Santa Cruz, the richest department. UJC shock troops roamed the streets of the city and surrounding towns, attacking and repressing any opposition by local indigenous movements and MAS-allied forces. Not wanting to provoke an outright rebellion, Evo Morales did not deploy the army or use the local police, leaving the urban area under the effective control of the UJC.

Departments shown in blue constitute the focus of the separatist insurrectionist movement. (Map courtesy, BBC)

Simultaneously, the right wing -- led by the Santa Cruz Civic Committee -- began sewing economic instability, seeking to destabilize the Morales government much like the CIA-backed opposition did in Chile against Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. As in Chile, the rural business elites and allied truckers engaged in strikes, withholding or refusing to ship produce to the urban markets in the western Andes where the Indian population is concentrated, while selling commodities on the black market at high prices. The Confederation of Private Businesses of Bolivia called for a national producers' shutdown if the government "refused to change its economic policies."

The social movements allied with the government have mobilized against this right wing offensive. In the Media Luna, a union coalition of indigenous peoples and peasants campaigned against voting in the autonomy referendums, and have taken on the bands of the UJC as they try to intimidate and terrorize people. In the Andean highlands, the social movements descended on the capital La Paz in demonstrations backing the Morales? government, including a large mobilization in June that stormed the American embassy because of its support for the right wing. In July, the federation of coca growers in the Chapare, where US anti-drug operations are centered, expelled the US Agency for International Development.

This past week the Civic Committees stepped up their efforts to take control of the Media Luna departments. In Santa Cruz on September 8, crowds of youth lead by the UJC seized government offices, including the land reform office, the tax office, state TV studios, the nationalized telephone company Entel, and set fire to the offices of a non-governmental human rights organization that promotes indigenous rights and provides legal advice. The military police, who had been dispatched to protect many of these offices, were forced to retreat, at times experiencing bloody blows that they were forbidden from responding to due to standing orders from La Paz not to use their weapons. The commanding general of the military police, while angrily denouncing the violent demonstrators, said that the military could take no action unless Evo Morales signed a degree authorizing the use of firearms.

Talks between the various parties to the conflict are being held, but chances are slim a quick resolution will be found because the insurgents rely on US support to prevail against a weakened government.

What was in effect occurring was a struggle between Morales and the military over who would assume ultimate responsibility for the fighting and deaths that would ensue with a military intervention in Media Luna. The armed forces do not support the autonomous rebellion because it threatens the geographic integrity of the Bolivian nation. Yet they are reluctant to intervene because under past governments, when they fired on and killed demonstrators in the streets of La Paz, they were blamed for the bloodshed.

On September 10, as violence intensified throughout Media Luna, Evo Morales expelled US ambassador Philip Goldberg for ?conspiring against democracy. The month before, Goldberg had met with the prefect of Santa Cruz, Ruben Costas, who subsequently declared himself "governor" of the autonomous department and ordered the formal take over of government offices -- including those collecting tax revenues. Costas is the principal leader of the rebellious prefects, and the main antagonist of Evo Morales.

Evo among true friends. (From L) Salvadoran revolutionary leader Shafik Handal, Pres. Hugo Chavez, Fidel, and Evo.

September 11, the 35th anniversary of the coup against Allende, was the bloodiest day in the escalating conflict. In the Media Luna department of Pando, a para-military band with machine guns attacked the Indian community of El Porvenir, near the departmental capital of El Cobija, resulting in the death of at least 28 people. In a separate action, three policemen were kidnapped. The Red Ponchos, an official militia reserve unit of Indians loyal to Evo Morales, mobilized its forces to help the indigenous communities organize their self defense.

The next day Morales declared a state of siege in Pando and dispatched the army to move on Cobija and to retake its airport that had been occupied by right wing forces. Army units are also being sent to guard the natural gas oleoducts, one of which had been seized by the UJC, cutting the flow of gas to neighboring Brazil and Argentina. General Luis Trigo Antelo, the commander in chief of the Bolivian Armed Forces declared: "We will not tolerate any more actions by radical groups that are provoking a confrontation among Bolivians, causing pain and suffering and threatening the national security." In signing the order authorizing the use of force in Pando, Morales stated that he felt responsible for the humiliation of the military and the police by radicals and vandals because he had not authorized them to use their weapons. This was the quid pro quo for getting the military high command to act.

"Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, great avenues will again be opened, through which will pass the free man, to construct a better society..."--Pres. Salvador Allende, Last Address from the Moneda Palace (as it was being bombed), September 11, 1973

After sustained fighting with at least three dead, the army took control of the airport and moved on the city. An order for the arrest of the prefect of Pando was issued for refusing to recognize the state of siege and for being responsible for the massacre in El Porvenir. In Santa Cruz, the police arrested 8 rioters of the UJC. Peasant organizations have announced they will march on the city to retake control of the government offices. The dissident prefects, led by Costas, are still demanding departmental autonomy and refusing to accept a national vote on the referendum for the new constitution.

Evo Morales refuses to back down, declaring in a meeting with supportive union leaders, "we will launch a campaign to approve the new constitution." He did, however, indicate he may modify the draft to accommodate some of the demands for autonomy by the prefects. Like Allende, Morales continues to search for a democratic solution to the crisis in his country. For the moment, he has the backing of the Bolivian armed forces along with overwhelming popular support, thereby avoiding the ultimate fate of the Chilean president.

Roger Burbach is Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) based in Berkeley, CA. He has written extensively on Latin America and is the author of The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice.

See: http://globalalternatives.org/news

The fact that most people are unaware that medical research represents only the tip of the iceberg of this diverse industry called animal research that stretches from coast to coast and border to border, indicates just how skillfully the benign image of the humanitarian scientist has been disseminated. But animal research requires the production and use of 22 million animals a year in the United States and 100 million world wide, conservatively speaking, most of which are killed after being experimented upon. Most of this research has nothing to do with finding a cure for cancer, stroke, heart disease, or other debilitating, life-threatening conditions. In fact, most animal research is done to satisfy various commercial requirements or to test concepts in the manufacture of industrial and personal use products like cosmetics and fluoride toothpastes.

The more the public gets a closer look behind the closed doors of animal research facilities, the more the senselessness of their work becomes apparent. We know that birth defect experiments on animals cannot be applied to humans, so why are they done? We know that better pre-natal care and helping women to quit smoking can reduce infant mortality by over 35%, so why does ineffective nicotine testing on animals continue? We know that chemical and agricultural product testing on animals is irrelevant to any health applications for humans and could be done using non-animal methods, which is the preferred procedure for testing these products in Canada and Europe, so why are we pursuing it? We know that computer technology already exists capable of putting an end to animal testing for drugs, so what is the necessity of testing for drugs? We know that heart attacks can be prevented through diet and exercise, so why are we butchering animals in tests for heart disease? Certainly there is no need for secretive military testing on animals except to satisfy military paranoia.

The wheels on the huge gravy train funded by the tax dollars of the citizenry that the animal research industry has been riding for decades are beginning to creak. The medical establishment itself hides behind its own image without the courage to acknowledge the corruption in the fake applications for fake medical animal research projects to the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. These agencies squander billions of tax dollars in funding this fakery that has only pseudo-applications for human beings with few benefits, as described below. Linus Pauling zeroed in on the corruption when he wrote "Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them."

Animal medical research is done mostly in conjunction with university research laboratories or medical facilities. There we find the researchers who are the standard-bearers for the animal research industry, the ones wearing those neat, white coats. But let there be no mistake. Even this group narrows to an even smaller minority when it dares to proclaim they are "legitimate" researchers. That is because the overwhelming majority of medical animal research is not legitimate. It is curiosity research in a 'publish or perish' kind of atmosphere where the researchers must design something unusual to capture NIH or other government agency funding. These agencies approve research projects on the bizarre premise that the more bizarre an experiment is the more scientific it must be.

Whoever doubts the above allegation needs only to take into account experiments in which chimpanzees have been locked in old refrigerators filled with cocaine smoke (New York University), cats have had their brains severed from their spinal cords after which anesthesia was discontinued while they were locked in frames and experimented upon for hours (Rockefeller University), cats have been forced to vomit 97 times in the space of three and one-half minutes (Rockefeller University), and primates have been subjected to a continuous three hour-long studio-generated sound that was10 decibels louder than a shotgun blast (New York University). The designer of that experiment, Lynn Kiorpes, has been drilling holes in baby monkeys heads for fourteen years while collecting $1.5 million dollars from the NIH for studying artificially created abnormalities. The babies are either killed and dissected instantly or are subjected to years of continuing experimentation. She works in secrecy behind the hallowed doors of New York University, one of the most notorious protectors of institutional animal abuse in the nation, which itself has been charged with more than 400 violations of the Animal Welfare Act and has been fined $450,000, the largest fine ever leveled by the USDA.

The thirst by government agencies to fund unnecessary, cruel experiments on animals seems unquenchable, and our esteemed university medical facilities continue to lap up public tax dollars with little sign that they are embarrassed by their display of greed as they walk hand in hand with animal abusers up to the cashier's window. At the Oregon Health and Science University, researcher Eliot Spindel has been paid $7.6 million tax dollars by the NIH since 1992 (and will continue receiving funding until 2012) to literally rip baby monkeys from their mothers' breasts to study nicotine effects on infant monkeys. Sometimes the babies are taken through cesarean section, while other times the mothers are allowed to keep them for several weeks before they are torn away, driving the mothers nearly insane. Losing their babies causes tremendous suffering to these primates who are operated on five times during their forced pregnancies to implant nicotine pumps in their backs.

In 2005 the Justice Department awarded a University of Wisconsin professor, John Webster, $500,000 to electrocute pigs with Taser guns to try to determine if stun guns are safe, a cruel project that could be done using follow-up medical studies of Taser victims instead--as many previous studies have.

In 2003 at Columbia University, a whistleblower exposed experiments in which mother baboons and their babies in-utero were operated on repeatedly to measure the flow of nicotine through the umbilical chord; baboons had one eye removed in senseless experiments to induce strokes before being abandoned in cages without care or painkillers; and monkeys had metal pipes implanted in their craniums driving them into a frenzy in irrelevant menstrual stress studies. The suffering these animals endured ended only when they died from the effects of the experiments or when they were killed by their researchers.

The foregoing list barely scratches the surface of the unbelievably sickening, bizarre, sadistic research which medical animal researchers in their clean white coats engage and which is routinely rubber stamped by the NIH and other government funding agencies, thus robbing the public blind.

Because of public "unease" more and more animal research scientists have begun to ask if their research is worth the few results, negative publicity, and community contempt. By now animal rights organizations and whistle-blowers have brought cruel animal research projects to light so often that university and medical research facilities are forced to defend their animal policies to the public. Columbia University, for example, has set up a Standards of Care website where it asserts that it "recognizes its scientific and ethical duty to treat animals involved in research humanely, and requires that all faculty, staff and students involved in animal research maintain the highest standards of care." However, the undercover photographic evidence and other reports about the conditions in Columbia's animal laboratories indicate that Columbia's efforts to reassure a suspicious public are as much public relations as anything else, as proved by the barbaric stroke, tobacco, and menstrual experiments on baboons described above.

The same can be said of the University of Minnesota which advertises that their Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee works to assure that research and other activities involving animals are "justified by their benefits and minimize any pain or suffering." The university must have forgotten about one of their researchers, Marilyn Carroll, who for twenty-two years (at a cost of nine million dollars to taxpayers) has been using food deprivation to forcibly addict monkeys and rats to drugs including cocaine, PCP, nicotine, heroin, amphetamines and alcohol. Protests by animal rights groups including the ALF and SOAR (Student Organization for Animal Rights) have been raised against Carroll's lab over the years where primates are subjected to withdrawal so that they suffer seizures, nose bleeding, respiratory problems, skin infections, self-mutilation, incessant rocking, hallucinations, screaming, and depression. Some just give up and curl into a ball in a corner of their cage where they cower in terror. That the practice of torturing innocent animals in an effort to attend to the addictions human beings have created themselves might be considered unethical and unjust, not to mention Mengelian, seems not to have penetrated the consciousness of erudite, highly educated, researchers like Carroll.

The above examples, unfortunately, are par for the course. The University of California San Francisco is the fourth largest recipient of federal research grants, receiving over $420 million from the NIH annually. On a university webpage the text above a photograph of a cute white mouse nestled cozily in the pocket of an empty, purple surgical glove advertises that "the University has established policies on the use of animal subjects to promote their humane care." The text continues below the photograph in a statement all too similar to those made by Columbia and the University of Minnesota announcing that the university oversees all "research and instruction that involves vertebrate animals, in order to ensure that the highest ethical and animal welfare standards are met."

In reality, the University of California San Francisco has one of the worst animal care records of all university medical research facilities in the country. It has been in nearly continuous violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which in 2004 filed formal charges against UCSF for 75 Animal Welfare Act violations between 2001 and 2003. These included performing surgery on an ewe and her fetus without providing post-surgical pain relief; leaving monkeys and lambs unmonitored after surgery (which resulted in a lamb frothing at the mouth and gasping for breath); forcing marmoset monkeys to breed continually and give birth while still nursing infants (one marmoset mother gave birth seven times to fourteen babies in just over three years. Six of the babies died and the mother lost 70 percent of her bodyweight over that period); depriving monkeys of water resulting in severe weight loss, performing a craniotomy on a monkey without providing post-operative pain relief, and subjecting at least one monkey to multiple injections of a brain-destroying chemical through the carotid artery. Some of the most egregious violations were done by three of UCSF's top researchers, all of whom conduct brain experiments on primates and have received major NIH grants.

The foregoing are examples of what the University of California calls the "highest ethical and animal welfare standards." In July of 2007 the PCRM (Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine) filed a lawsuit against UCSF for its mistreatment of dogs, monkeys and other animals used in experiments.

In spite of the cruelty and hypocrisy associated with university and medical center animal research laboratories, it is still undeniable that a small minority of animal researchers actually do engage in animal research which they believe is for humanitarian purposes. They have made a deliberate, conscious choice that it is moral to put human health concerns above those of animals. It is doubtful, however, that even the most caring researcher would deny that experiments sometimes cause suffering and pain to the animals involved. Dr. Robert Kass, Department Chair, Department of Pharmacology at the Columbia Medical Center, wrote that "we test as humanely and effectively as possible," indicating that there are times when it is not possible to test humanely or effectively. Even so, this group of researchers do sometimes make discoveries that are applicable to humankind such as reported by Dr. Eric A. Rose, Associate Dean for Translational Research and Chair of the Department of Surgery at Columbia University who wrote: "The concept of cardiac catheterization was born here--animal research allowed the idea to become an applicable technique." Dr. Rose's defense of cardiac catheterization indicates he is concerned about the morality of animal testing. What Dr. Rose apparently fails to take cognizance of is that this technique might never have been necessary without the meat-based diets responsible for the arterial problems requiring catheterization. It could hardly be more patently unethical to slaughter animals in cruel ways and eat them, acquire a disease in the process of digesting and metabolizing them, and then slaughter and torture more animals to try to find a cure for the disease caused by eating them.

Should the medical establishment be unwilling to take the above argument into consideration, it can only be taken as a refusal to probe in any depth just what is moral and ethical and what is not.

Nevertheless, the sincerity of some medical scientists in attempting to solve medical enigmas is hard to deny. They use animals in their research out of a sense of compassion towards human beings. To them, animals are inferior and deserve compassion only insofar as it does not interfere with their research. Donald M. Silver, author of over 40 books on science for children and teachers who did cancer studies on mice at Sloan-Kettering Hospital in the 1970s, said that when doubts about his work arose, he only had to think about the terminally ill patients in the children's ward. As recently as two months ago, Doctor John Young, director of comparative medicine at Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in an interview on PBS, proudly pointed to a laboratory prisoner pig as an ideal subject for animal research because its cardiovascular system is similar to that of human beings. However, as proved by Dr. Dean Ornish, a regimen of diet and exercise can cure heart disease. He is the author of Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease, Eat More, Weigh Less and has been featured on all major medical journals and news media including NOVA on PBS. Perhaps Dr. Young doesn't agree with Dr. Ornish's methodology. Certainly, he must be aware of it. So why should a pig forfeit it's life for a human being with heart problems, especially those who developed heart disease by eating pigs or cows in the first place?

Dr. Young did not discuss that researchers at Purdue University have found that a pig's IQ is comparable to that of a chimpanzee.

He also pointed to terminally ill children as a moral imperative for conducting animal research. Those who agree with him like to pose questions like, "what if it was your own child suffering from cancer?" Certainly most people would hardly deny terminally ill children the best possible chance for survival with the best possible care, or, for that matter, any suffering human being even if it has been derived by experimenting upon animals. This is the direction that the world has taken up to the present. However, those who object to animal research did not invent the medical technology that is used in medicine today, and if they had, the means would be entirely different. Because treatment is the way it is does not justify continuing on the same tired path which Dr. Young advocates which, in the view of many, is so narrowly defined by its reliance on animal research that it prevents the kind of research that could really lead to cures for cancer, heart disease, stroke, and other devastating and deadly conditions.

For example, Dr. Ornish discovered how to cure heart disease without animal research. Dr. Young, with his animal research, has not. Yet Young believes he has the right to continue his cardiac experiments on innocent, highly intelligent creatures in spite of the fact that a cure is available. Let the reader be the judge. What is moral here and what is not?

If animal researchers like Dr. Young, Dr. Kass, and Dr. Rose really are interested in finding cures they might begin by having the courage to denounce the fake research of their colleagues like Eliot Spindel and Lynn Kiorpes for the fraud it is, as Linus Pauling has done, in order to free up hundreds of millions of dollars for serious, alternative investigations that might lead to real progress in the fight against the major diseases. The path that Dr. Young follows in is the same that animal researchers have been following for decades, and the result is always the same. They have just discovered that such and such when applied to rats, or some other species, cures such and such. Meanwhile, the real cure is always just around the corner unless someone like Dr. Ornish comes along and finds it..

The abandonment of animal testing in favor of alternative methodologies has already yielded significant results when it is tried, and several non-animal tests are being used to replace animal testing. This includes embryonic stem cell tests using non-human cells; human skin testing on leftovers from surgical procedures; cell and tissue culture (in vitro) studies used to screen for anti-cancer, anti-AIDS, and other types of drugs as well as for producing and testing pharmaceutical products like vaccines, antibiotics, and therapeutic proteins; comparative studies of human populations leading to the discovery of the root causes of human diseases including demonstrating the mechanism of AIDS transmission and how it could be prevented; and sophisticated scanning technologies (MRI, PET, and CT). Pharmagene Laboratories, based in Royston, England, studies how drugs affect human genes and the proteins they make. They use tools from molecular biology, biochemistry, and analytical pharmacology in combination with human tissues and sophisticated computer technologies in developing drugs so that the supposed need to test on animals is eliminated.

Scientists are certainly capable of discovering and inventing many other alternatives to animal research. While some medical researchers agree that an exhaustive search for alternatives to animal research is the future direction for medical research, the profession in general shows little enthusiasm and drags its feet.

It seems clear that when human beings venture forth in uncharted waters based on an intuitive sense of the possibilities ahead, only profound discovery and adventure lie in wait. That is the history of humankind and it is so fundamental to human existence that humanity can surely rely upon it. When it comes to medical research, what else is there - eternal dependency on a weaker animal species that cannot defend itself against humankind's cruelty and abuse? Surely we are capable of much, much more. Isn't it time we left our primitive views behind and began reaching for a higher destiny?

Our future must include widening our circle of compassion to include all species which cohabit the planet. In the process, we will be creating a vital, new template to apply to societal relations between nations that can end warfare between them. We will have been led there by our compassion for animals. And the partnership between human beings and animals that has been wrested away by the infamous practice of animal research will have been restored.

David Irving is a Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude graduate of Columbia University, class of 1980, School of General Studies. He subsequently obtained his Masters in Music Composition at Columbia and founded the new music organization Phoenix in New York City.

Dedication: To all those who must really work for a living. (Rome-Asheville, N.C.) I was back in Asheville where I started out. I found her gravesite in the obscure Green Hills Cemetery in the frontier territory of the West Bank part of this mountain city, across the French Broad River that the Cherokee called Tahkeostee. OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN JAN. 10,1869 JAN.22, 1968 HER HUNDREDTH YEAR

The poet is now forgotten. Her tomb lies far from the monumental cemetery-resting place of other Asheville writers such as Thomas Wolfe and O. Henry. In her long life she was neglected because she was a proletarian writer, no easy undertaking in her times in Western North Carolina. Concerning the workers' struggles in America last century, Dargan admitted that literature was secondary to her social commitment. 'The struggles lie closer to real experience than the flutter of an eyelid which has occupied bourgeois writers ....' A widely traveled Radcliff graduate, Olive Tilford Dargan lived most of her life in Asheville, NC. Acclaimed poet and novelist and in Who's Who, she was blacklisted during the McCarthy Communist Scare in 1950s. Other writers labeled her writings propaganda because she "hobnobbed" with Communists.

Dargan described her first novel, Call Home the Heart, published in 1932 by Longmans, Green and Company, under the pseudonym of Fielding Burke--as 'a proletarian novel depicting the role of mountain folks in the Gastonia, North Carolina cotton mill strikes,' also largely forgotten as are the wave of violent textile worker strikes that swept through North Carolina in 1929. The strike in Gastonia reflected the tensions rising from the industry's rapid development in the South after World War I when northern capitalists took over the southern mills to exploit cheap labor. Since Gastonia was the epicenter of the phenomenon, mountaineers from the Smokies swept into town to work in the mills. The Loray Mill (pronounced Low-Ray) was the first in the South to undergo new "techniques" such as speed-ups forced on the worker rather than new technology. That exploitation of labor ignited the anger of textile workers in the region and eventually walkouts began. The strike in the Loray Mills was the most famous and the most violent.

I still remember the red brick buildings, the chain-link fences and the little houses in Loray Village in West Gastonia that we passed each time we arrived in Gastonia where my grandparents lived. At that point my father always said, "Well, we're at Loray, so we're nearly there."

Mill owners and state law enforcement crushed those strikes so viciously that subsequent attempts to organize labor in the North Carolina textile plants were unsuccessful. Yet the history of the strike remains, recorded in novels like those of Dargan and in the writings of one of the organizers of the Gastonia strike, Vera Buch Weisbord, a Communist and member of the National Textile Workers Union, NTWU. No less than Marxist writings, such histories of the battles for social justice throw light on the eternal struggle between labor and capital.

The history of the clash in Gastonia offers the perfect setting for an epic film or a social play of an insurrection. All the classic characters are present: evil capitalist mill owners, exploited workers in hot dusty factories, tiny ragged children and their emaciated mothers and wives in the square wooden houses, strikers, scabs and strike-breakers and both dedicated and corrupt union leaders.

Dargan claimed the sequel to her first novel--A Stone Came Rolling, same publisher, same pseudonym--was even more proletarian. She claimed that she strove not to write propaganda while she fought with conflicting feelings about writing poetry and her social responsibility. Can one combine the two? she wondered. Or are fiction and social reality destined to take separate paths?

Dargan was an idealistic dreamer. To the end she continued to see good in a southern folk that has always been not only violent and brutal but also lacking in any kind of class-consciousness. They were no shield against the capitalism she detested. Neither her Asheville nor strike-ridden Gastonia 100 miles away were safe places for radicals.

PROLETARIANS, THE PROLETARIAT AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
This article should be dedicated to wage earners--especially in the USA and Europe--as well as to those peoples of the world who have no wages at all, the potentially class-conscious proletarians who have the capability of changing the reigning social-economic order. The prologue to this historical play begins in ancient Rome where the proletariat was the lowest class, the plebs, the masses. Then, a jump forward through the English Revolution to the French Revolution where the curious wage earner-spectator finds the same lower classes now represented by the sans culottes, the ragged have-nots of society, ruled over by the bourgeois and the royalty. Then, a half century later, Marx attaches the old label of proletariat to the workingmen and the downtrodden masses capable of war against the bourgeoisie. By the time of the Russian Revolution the working class there has become class-conscious and in the vest of the industrial proletariat--no longer simply ignorant masses--executes its revolution.

Textiles were at the front of the Industrial Age, and many legendary labor-management conflicts took place in and around textile mills and towns famous for their exploitative conditions. The poem below mirrors such realities.

THE MILL MOTHERS'SONG by Ella May Wiggins? Tune: Little Mary Feigan

(This song was sung at the funeral of Ella May by one of the women strikers)

We leave our home in the morning,? We kiss our children good bye,? While we slave for the bosses,? Our children scream and cry.

And when we draw our money,? Our grocery bills to pay,? Not a cent to spend for clothing,? Not a cent to lay away.

And on that very evening,? Our little son will say,? "I need some shoes, dear mother? And so does sister May."

How it grieves the heart of a mother,? You every one must know,? But we can't buy for our children,? Our wages are too low.

________________________

Ten years later, when those textile workers strikes spread over the American South, bombs flew, agitation was real and the potential for proletarian revolution was in the air. The missing factor in America was effective leadership as in Russia. There were only strikers for more pay, strikebreakers, scabs and suffering people. Marx, Engels, Mao, and especially Lenin warned repeatedly that trade unionism, per se, was not revolutionary; that without an effective leadership that looked beyond securing crumbs from the capitalist table, a form of endless meliorism, such approach was bound to fail and eventually degenerate into complicity with the system. A way of thinking in which the workers forever seek concessions from their masters, without ever challenging their hold over society, stifles the true political development of the masses, and fosters a sense of resignation toward the status quo. But the idea of the work stoppage, the strike, is not a dead-end. It remains a powerful and feared tool in the self-defense arsenal of the working class.

Pinkerton escorting strikebreakers, Buchtel, Ohio, 1884.

Online I found this eloquent testimony in the book by John A. Salmond, The General Textile Strike of 1934, From Maine To Alabama, University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London.

WE DIDN'T HAVE NO BACKING.... WE SHOULDN'T have done it. The South hadn't even begun to organize well by then, " remembered Kasper Smith, former textile worker and striker. "What happened in 1934 has a whole lot to do with people not being so union now." The veteran organizer, Solomon Barkin, made much the same point at a 1984 symposium commemorating the strike's outbreak. The strike's leaders had had little "experience with lead­- ing large strikes, " he asserted; there was no money to sustain the effort; "organizational preparation was practically nil"; there was little support from other unions, the federal bureaucracy or the president, "preoccu-­ pied" as he then was "with recovery rather than labor relations." More-­ over, the AFL generally had failed its local union base, especially those "which had been spontaneously formed" in the wake of the NIRA's pas-­ sage. They were essentially left to their own resources during the strike. There was no national direction, no widespread public or union support. This was not a national strike at all, but rather the sum of thousands of essentially local efforts, often with differing impulses and aims, and this was especially true of the cotton textile South, the strike's supposed epicenter, where the workers' sacrifices were the greatest, the repression the most severe, and the consequences of failure the most long-lasting.

No, the idea of the proletariat is not passé. The word proletariat still conveys the sense of resistance to oppression, of action, of force and strength, of an ideal. The words labor and capital, as Marx used them, are real-life categories. The capitalist and the wage earner are the personification of capital and wage labor. To disparage such words or use them in derision is to deny the dignity of human existence and to engage--wittingly or unwittingly--in conservative propaganda. For today as yesterday the proletariat is no less than the great masses of the world. It is the people. It is one of those words that are exciting and stimulating ... but in the abstract. In fact the concrete proletariat is hard to touch.

Though those masses personified by proletariat constitute a class, they themselves are seldom aware of it. To become a class of action the proletariat requires leadership, something those furious, hungry, striking textile workers did not have.

The proletariat is complex. It comprises much more than the industrial proletariat of the Russian Revolution. It comprises any wage earner, the property-less class, which sells its labor to the class of property, money and power who however do not work. Work in the marketplace implies necessity. (What Warren Buffet, David Rockefeller, or Bill Gates do these days is not work in the class sense; it is to direct and administrate their vast financial assets. Quite a difference. They could retire tomorrow and live a million years on what they have. Most wage-earners live a different reality. And who will fire them?)

Thus those two classes--those who work and those who don't--stand face to face on the stage of life, interdependent, but forever at war with each other. The capitalist class understands instinctively this eternal dichotomy dividing men since the Persians, Mesopotamians and the Greeks. But the super-indoctrinated American working class dulled by the "American dream" does not get it. On the other hand the middle class in America and Europe [especially members of the comfortable "upper middle class"] has not grasped that they too are now part of the proletariat.

Having a mortgaged home, a car and a TV does not change the proletarian's status because his very lifestyle depends on wages determined by the capitalist class which controls property, power and money. The wage earner depends on money lent him by the capitalist bank to buy his home, his car and his TV. The current subprime crisis demonstrates eloquently that those loans make the wage earner a prisoner of his employer, be it industry or banks or the state bureaucracy.

UAW strikers. Most people drive by such displays with nary an understanding (or sympathy) for what is at stake, often their own well-being.

Though the man who works for wages, blue collar or middle class, is a member of the working class, his wage earner status does not make him automatically a class-conscious revolutionary. He can be anything, from a priest to the blackest reactionary, which unfortunately is often the case in the USA. Otherwise how to explain the legions who applaud McCain and Palin these days?

Modern history shows that the American wage earner--the potential proletarian--is in reality the staunchest flag-waving defender of the capitalist system that exploits him, does nothing for him except pay him unfair wages, sends him to war to defend capitalist interests, and throws him aside at will. American wage earners are so amorphous, so blunted in their ballyhooed ignorance, so unstructured and ill-organized that they do not even constitute a conscious class. Their ignorance, atomization, and acceptance of their situation represents one of the great victories of capitalism.

The arrangement doesn't make any sense at all.

Many Europeans workers are still class-conscious. But not the reactionary American workingman. The absence of class-consciousness of the American workingman exemplifies Marx's statement that "the working class is either revolutionary or it is nothing."

Even more: not even the mildly class-conscious workingman is aware that he is willy-nilly engaged in a war with the capitalist class. He continues to accept his role as an indistinct part of an illusion of a society, as an abstraction of a cradle-to-grave category, destined to make no mark on society, to leave no traces of his passage though life.

However, those 1930s textile strikes in North Carolina show that his illusions may one day fall away. The day he and his new middle class companions wake up from their incubus and genuine, fully developed class awareness arrives, the newborn proletariat can then become revolutionary.

That day will be the death of American capitalism, as we know it.

Meanwhile, caution. Let's don't confuse revolution with either liberal reform or armed insurrection. Reform is adjustment made by the rulers in order to maintain power, as happened for decades in Tsarist Russia, and we saw under F.D.R. As a rule, reforms are too little and too late or woefully inadequate (by definition) to staunch the eventual descent into complete degeneration. Insurrection on the other hand is a local, spontaneous and one-issue matter, as was the 1929 Gastonia cotton mill strike. Insurrection is not revolution.

Since drastic and radical social-political change should be the goal of thinking world citizens today, everything that inhibits social solidarity, the blossoming of resistance, the redistribution of wealth, and the creation of a rebellious mindset against a negative myth are obstacles to be overcome.

But wait a minute! A myth? What myth? In this case--the myth is America itself. The Greeks too wondered how can you battle a myth? In the aftermath of the fall of Troy, Menelaus stood before Helen with his sword raised: he stared at the traitoress and let his sword fall. He couldn't kill her. Helen was a myth. Menelaus wondered how you can kill a myth. He was not a revolutionary. In the final countdown, myths too, that is illusions and false consciousness, must be destroyed to make room for legitimacy.

Speaking of myths, let's keep in mind that though born out of solidarity and resistance and reason, the United States of America has always harbored violence in its soul. We now see that peaceful, anti-war, mankind-loving America is a myth. A parallel violent world lives within American society. In America, violence and war are so much a part of life that non-violent opposition to its inbred violence seems to be hopeless folly and unreason. In comparison to America's homebred terrorism and violence, just a heartbeat away from mainline life, al-Qaeda is stuff for babies and schoolgirls. In comparison to today's institutional state terrorism, past student non-violent protest or even pistol-armed Black Panthers and Weather Underground insurrections appear as innocent as breaking plate-glass windows.

Another illusion to be overcome is that the abstract workingman-proletarian can develop class-consciousness alone. As suggested earlier, class-consciousness must be instilled from outside the class. That role inevitably falls to the intelligentsia and activists. Marx wrote in German Ideology that "one of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers (let's say, educated people), is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world." That is, to the world where the workingman lives.

Yet, proletarians reject interference by intellectuals. The American workingman appears allergic to knowledge and history. Therefore he is the most truant in class awareness. The American working people have forgotten that they constitute a class, that classes even exist. They act as if the class idea belongs to another planet. To the world of Communism! That it too is an illusion.

Countless Americans still believe in and play by the rules. For them the American Dream, though a bit dented, is alive. The system's propaganda, a type of pervasive indoctrination from cradle to grave, insulates the average mind against all manner of facts and challenges to the status quo.

Moreover, the poor economic classes of America accept the American Dream rhetoric that the rich deserve to be rich because they are smarter. Wealth is proof of their virtue. It is good to be rich. The poor are guilty for their poverty. As John Steppling points out on these pages, the American poor produce and reproduce the values of the ruling class, the values and ideals of the rich. The poor live in the illusion of real choices in life while in reality they live their little lives in servitude.

While the "people" are as if paralyzed, blind and dumb, in its name travesty after travesty are committed by those same capitalist leaders ­who betray the people routinely and abominably, making themselves traitors in the process and making the people complicit in their crimes against humanity. In Nazi Germany it was "we didn't know." In America today it is "we don't want to know". No false airs, please. That's un-American. Who cares about social theories? Who cares where Laos is located? Or Georgia? If Saddam Hussein wasn't responsible for 9/11, he could have been, which is the same thing. Only evildoers and anti-Americans believe he didn't have weapons of mass destruction. The wide admiration for ignorance, I think, is in imitation of the ignorance of the nation's leaders. And, as we know, ignorance is the handmaiden of the crime of Fascism.

By a strange coincidence I just opened at random the book The Origins Of Bolshevism by one of the forgers of the Russian Revolution, the Menshevik Theodore Dan, and found his remark about the "open war of the Orthodox folk (in pre-revolutionary Russia) with educated people." Also then, in those different but analogous circumstances of pre-revolutionary Russia, educated people were isolated from the masses. From that perspective the working class in the US has become politically worse than nothing. As a collective it has been molded into a reactionary force that keeps the power elite in power. Conditioned, brainwashed and hoodwinked, the bribed workers seem to believe ignorance is for their own good.

So what happened to the collective? Or, worse, was it always that way? Except for sporadic insurrections in face of starvation in the depression years and isolated periods of resistance, the American collective has never emerged in the glory it must harbor somewhere. (The relative passivity of the American masses has always puzzled foreign observers. Werner Sombart, a noted German sociologist and onetime avowed Marxist, indeed asked the inevitable question: Why is there no socialism in the U.S.? He could have also asked why is there no real socialism in Britain? America, although the most notorious case, is not alone as a major nation lacking a substantive socialist movement.)

Marx said that if the proletariat is not revolutionary, what good is it? And that is the pertinent question today. Is the American workingman, the wage earner, the proletariat, reformable? I pose that question for that American wage earner who does not pose the question himself.

Old Karl would have never believed that what he once perceived as the combative American working class would devolve into one of the most reactionary blocs of passive, ignorant humanity in the history of the modern world.

At this point we can't go much further in the American part of the proletarian tragedy without some class distinctions. Today, up there on the political stage we see the prancing billionaire puppets of the capitalist class who control property, money, and, consequently political power. Whom they decide to place at the top of the pyramid today to represent their interests and misrepresent the masses should be a matter of indifference to the blue collar-middle class wage earner masses. In my mind not voting for any of them is an acceptable choice if accompanied by compensatory revolutionary activity. The most one can say is that a growing number of Americans, now approaching a majority, either through choice or indifference have opted for the non-vote route, while a tiny minority finds satisfaction in minimal grassroots agitation.

And here, another character mentioned above steps on stage. Today, as in recent centuries in the Occident, there is an in-between class. It is part of the middle class, elsewhere and at other times called the petty bourgeois, from which emerge America's liberals and progressives. Many petty bourgeois beyond America's borders, chiefly in Europe, prefer to label themselves Social Democrats. Far from wanting to transform society in the interests of revolutionary proletarians, they aspire to making the existing society tolerable ... for themselves. In their own interests they want to counteract the rule of capital by the transference of as much power and employment as possible to the state of which they are an integral part. [The Social Democrats are on the run all over Europe, as their alliance with the capitalists to front for the system has finally backfired and many are deserting the center-left for the real left. --Eds.]

HOWEVER, in their conception of state and society, the workers, the wage earners, the proletariat, are to remain forever workingmen, wage earners, proletariat. Therefore the petty bourgeois (again, the liberals and progressives) social programs for better wages and security for the workers, with which they bribe the workers to stay in line.

That was the warning Marx and Engels brought to the Central Committee of the Communist League in 1850. But how modern it rings.

That's where the proletariat must step forward and shout, NO! I

t's true that every event that happens leaves traces. It is something like mirrors and their reflections. Except that in the mirror's reflections, the left is right, and the right is left. Illusions all! Illusions are like words unspoken that are no longer words at all. Sometimes we have to banish all possibilities of illusion. Sometimes we have to stop, close our eyes, and allow ourselves to see real reality, not illusion where right is left, and left right. Reality free of brainwash. Free of all those words and euphemisms we hear on TV and read in the establishment press. We can trust none of it.

One problem facing the wage earner-proletariat is the lack of a suitable program. I can't see an acceptable program for changing the world. The "Another World Is Possible" movement is at best a loose agreement around the planet that change would be a good thing. One answer to those who wonder what the new resistance wants is simple: they want a just society.

Sometimes it is comforting--but not much more than that--to recall that though protest movements of the past have been broken and scattered by Power, many of those people and like-minded others are still out there in society. They could rejoin the growing number of mature people with eyes to see and ears to hear.

But what are they to do? one wonders.

That has always been the question.

Studies show that the class of Power in the USA is surprisingly small, numbering in the tens of thousands. The potential opposition on the other hand is enormous, including all those Che Guevara had in mind when he quipped, "If you tremble in indignation at injustice then you are my comrade." El Che had in mind the proletariat of the world.

Though much of the ruling class is stashed away in corner offices on top floors behind batteries of secretaries, apparently in hiding, out of its vanity it still wants to be seen. For what is Power if no one knows YOU hold it? Members of the Power class are visible on stage each day, in TV, in Congress, in the military hierarchy, in diplomacy, multinationals, religions and the universities. The higher they ascend the ladder of Power, the more entrenched in the Power system they become. However, those at the very summit are in hiding, the rulers who really rule. The most dangerous are those who meet in secret societies like the Bilderbergers. We can suspect who they are.

The deliberate cult of the flag and blind "patriotism" keep a lot of people beholden to the rules of the business system.

Since it seems that the people sitting in the top tiers of our political-social theater have abdicated from the struggle, we tend to underestimate their power. For they too have a stake in the land. One forgets the potential force of those textile strikes of the 1930s. One forgets that organized workers can bring a small city like Asheville in North Carolina or a metropolis like New York or a company like General Motors to a standstill in a matter of hours. The reason that seldom happens is because the people have forgotten their own strength.

People don't think about their strength because of Power's astute use of myth and illusion: the myth of freedom and the illusion of happiness made of comfort and ease. And today, above all, more and more out of fear!

Though most people seem to prefer ignorance, some people are learning to distinguish between myth and reality. For many issues are glaringly real and evident: the Iraq War, globalization, US imperialism, legalized torture and genocide, the new American police state, and the degradation of social life in the West in general.

Solidarity too is growing. Resistance spreads. The superiority of "the American way of life" has revealed itself to be a great lie. The result of extended and prolonged resistance is inevitably state violence against dissent. State violence in turn has a multiplier effect: when Power steps in to taser dissenters, it intensifies resistance. An explosion becomes inevitable. First collective action, then civil disobedience, then state violence, then the explosion. This time around the explosion can become something much different than Power imagines. An organized people can shut down the nation without firing a shot.

A childish cartoon with super human powers. An apt metaphor for the unreality of the "American Way" and a complete negation of the ugly social truth underlying so much of American life.

The people! Today the American people are broken, fragmented and bewildered, devoid of unity of purpose, as existed briefly, let's say, during the Vietnam War. According to recent studies the vast majority of American people are still unaffected by America's ongoing permanent war. The discussion about whether 70,000 or over one million Iraqis have been massacred has a certain theoretical-academic air about it. Not even the mothers of the American dead in Iraq can get organized.

At the same time more and more people have lost faith in the electoral system. Some of them have taken on the job of breaking down the natural passivity of the dissatisfied and fragmented people who, though in potential agreement with revolutionary analyses, are unused to resistance because of the illusionist spin conducted by Power. Therefore the suggested antidote of not voting for any of them.

Peter Finch in Network (1976) as Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

Then there are the wars to be ended. If the people can't share the government's war effort, it can share in anti-war objectives. There is vast and growing poverty and social injustice to be resolved. There is a dramatic need for universal health care. There is a corrupt and mean political class to be removed. All of it. Both parties. There is every need to give power back to the people.

Grassroots organizer Abigail Singer, co-founder of Rising Tide North America and of a recent Southeast Climate Convergence conference in Asheville, North Carolina, said in an interview that voting is not enough because the electoral process has been sold to the highest bidder and that people who get into positions of power have to sacrifice whatever principles they started out with to the point that systemic change is impossible. Real change can come only from the grassroots.

At the same time a growing number of people are losing faith in nonviolence. Singer points out that capitalism itself is extremely violent. "If you're not nice and polite, some people consider that violence. But most violence is in business as usual and capitalism grinding on, killing workers, forests and oceans. We're surrounded by normalized violence and don't recognize it for what it is. Confronting this normalized violence in a direct way is not violent; it's necessary."

While liberals and progressives argue that you have to work within the system, the modern activist is mutating because the political climate has changed. The violence of government repression creates violent reaction in the same way war against Iraq creates new shahids. Violent resistance is nothing new: Black Power backed up the Civil Rights movement. Historically the US government didn't grant more workers rights because it became good but because people rose up and demanded their rights. People organizing to defend themselves reaches back through the history of man. Today in America some few people are coming together and developing new ideas of resistance. Their number is destined to grow to the degree that government repression grows.

After my youth in America I have lived my adult life abroad. Traveling to the USA today is to go abroad. Therefore I have acquired a double sensibility about my homeland. When I arrive there, abroad, but also at home, I feel double tensions in the air: the tension connected with the widespread fear of losing "the American way of life" and the tension of a minority of dissatisfied people also fearful because it knows it is living an illusion, and that mutiny--still so nebulous as to appear a chimera--will be necessary to change things. In America I sense both a fear of action and a fear of non-action. Perhaps also a fear of change, fear that things can only get worse. The fear, as one friend wrote me today, that something very bad is about to happen to America. A fear like that of a people inhabiting the wrong house, or the haunting fear that the real house it once inhabited is today occupied by usurpers and has lost its soul. One senses also a disturbing atmosphere of sick pragmatism and a depoliticalization coupled with widespread contentment with just analyzing the current situation rather than challenging it.

It is a good sign that across the land some grassroots activists are working to break down indifference. Radical change presupposes an end to blind acceptance of Power's fictionalized version of reality. Activists no longer need feel alone. Each person arrested in anti-war demonstrations acquires new faith in resistance and each of them creates new converts.

Acceptance of the legitimacy of Power, indifference to Power's deviations and passivity in the face of Power's threats against external enemies seem to have peaked. More and more people believe that Power gone mad has to be put aside. The eventual end of acceptance and passivity could result in a kind of explosion the world has never seen.

Today however that clash is still more hope than reality. Hope that a new strategy of liberation from the oppression of illegal American Fascism will mushroom. In other times, in an older language, that strategy would be called revolutionary theory. The old Leninist concept is apt here: there can be no revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory. The theory here, the strategy, must explain that it is not just George W. Bush, the system's current representative, or his replacement, who must go, but the system itself run by that tiny minority at the top.

But people don't rebel easily. People prefer reforms. People do everything possible to avoid social convulsion and upheaval, even compromising with a Fascist police state, precisely as happened in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

On the other hand, today's US government is aware that the spirit of mutiny/revolution is brewing. That is why it has armed itself with a set of illegal and anti-constitutional laws to crush it. At this juncture the alternative to ousting today's corrupt American system is a permanent police state, which if it becomes any more fixed than it is now just might last a thousand years.

The American people will have to decide what to do and how to act. Meanwhile many non-Americans agree that the most extreme problem of this century for mankind is the confused, powerful and violent United States of America.

Finally, as an epilogue, see what Henry David Thoreau (1817-78), great American author and philosopher, wrote in his "On the Duty of Civil Obedience":

"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.

"If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go.... if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong, which I condemn.

"But what shall I do? You ask. My answer is, If you really wish to do anything, resign your office. When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished."

Gaither Stewart, novelist, poet, and veteran correspondent, is Cyrano's Journal Online's Special Editor for European Matters. Normally based in Rome, he's currently on his way to Paris to take a fresh look at the business-induced rollback of the social contract in almost all nations in the European Union, including now France.

Now, I quote this because I've been pondering my own reactions to the Republican National Convention. And my growing awareness of the symbolic importance of Barack Obama's black face. And white little John McCain and Sarah Palin -- the zombies. Now, I have no illusions, trust me, about what Obama can achieve, but after sitting through chunks of the RNC, I found myself pondering exactly how lost and putrid US society has become. From Reagan to Clinton to Bush to ....McCain? Speeches from the likes of Rudy Guliani, Fred Thompson, and Joe Lieberman -- the scum found under rocks. The zombie nation. The white colonial tradition, joined at the hip in our *post colonial* world to rabid Christian fundamentalists and an Israeli murder state. King Leopold is long gone, but Kagame and Musaveni live on, and not so long ago Mobutu and all the rest of the sub-contracted killers for Empire.

Two fine specimens for the pantheon of all-time repulsives.

Now, again, Obama's foreign policy seems hardly different, and the choice of Joe Biden is particularly telling in this respect, but when the alternative is pure concentrate of insanity, a pure ignoble force of destruction, then one must pause. Obama is not Colin Powell, nor is he Condi Rice, for they don't count. They are not black. [As George Carlin reminded us, "They are white people who happen to be black.."] I was made aware of this during the Rev. Wright pseudo scandal when so many white american men I know complained about Obama and his attendance in Wright's black church. Never a word about Hagee, or even now about the whackjob backwater church of hate that Pitbull Palin attends --- no, it was a constant litany of complaint about tenuous linkage to Farrakhan and to Wright's *anti americanism*. But see, that isn't what was really going on, because what was really going on was the terror of having to look in the mirror -- to look at white America and its deadness. Black America is still alive.....despite the forces of co-option, and while the likes of George Jackson and James Carr and Huey Newton and MLK are gone, done away with like Lumumba or Malcolm, or other dark skinned movements....from the Sandinistas to such seemingly benign personages as Allende or Mossadegh, there is still a heartbeat of life that you can't find in McCain's household or in Palin's.

The Giuliani brand on display at the RNC, with its preferred theme background. It's all about marketing folks and the selling of synthetic humans.

Fanon said Europe had had it...was doomed. Well, yes, in the sense he meant, but certainly by any measurement the doom can be seen to have spread and intensified today in the US. Black churches are awash in music and life. And that includes Wright's. Obama likes The Wire, which is almost enough reason to vote for him. He is dancing along as a puppet, it's true, and Biden is the gatekeeper for liberal white America in this respect. But still... Still, the slight, though legitimate connection Obama has to black culture is vitally important. Sarah Palin is the distillation of all that is wrong with America. A mean-spirited half-educated former beauty queen runner up -- a snarky loathsome force of reaction, a mendacious bigot and lover of death... running alongside the semi-retarded (and semi senile) son of an Admiral. McCain is perhaps even more stupid than Bush, although such classifications are meaningless when IQ drops below the Mendoza line. Together they form such a vortex of bad faith and anger that nothing I've ever seen comes close. Kenin Malik observed, after 9-11, that the real question is not "why do they hate us, but rather why do we hate ourselves?"

Fred Thompson: yet another Republican worthy. Corruption, ignorance, stupidity, and opportunism reeking from every molecule in his being, the requisite for Congressional leadership in the US.

Yes, well, we can start with the genocide of Native Americans, and move on to slavery, and to colonialism and Hiroshima and the endless anti-communist hysteria of the last fifty years that cost millions of lives across the planet. America cannot heal its deep psychic wounds by pretending McCain/Palin is at all in any way different from King Leopold or Lord Kitchener. Will Obama as President begin something of a process of healing? No, I think that's too much to ask. Look at his advisors, and you see a lot of the same faces of Empire....and his political vision seems as truncated as that of Clinton, and yet, still..... Malik again... "The Western tradition is not Western in any essential sense, but only through an accident of geography and history. Indeed, Islamic learning provided an important resource for both the Renaissance and the development of science. The ideas we call 'Western' are in fact universal, laying the basis for greater human flourishing. That is why for much of the past century radicals, especially third world radicals, recognised that the problem of imperialism was not that it was a Western ideology, but that it was an obstacle to the pursuit of the progressive ideals that arose out of the Enlightenment." The demonizing of Muslims, Serbs, Russians, and domestically of inner city Latino and black teens is all of a piece. Obama might at least stop two of these, and one would hope more. In the end Barry Obama isn't going to change shit, but at least I won't have to look at McCain and his brain-dead beer heiress wife, and I won't have to listen to Sarah Palin at all ..... and maybe just having a black face sitting behind that big ass desk in the oval office will make me feel better. Maybe it has some residual good karma, I don't know. I do know that in the end my vote is more for myself. I don't think the great follies of electoral theatre amount to much, and Obama has been as war hungry as anyone ..... but maybe it's for me. It's just this bad dream I can't awake from, the flesh-crawling feelings of unease I get when I see a photo of Sarah Palin, or I have to hear the Republican base mouth what amount to naked racist rhetoric in the guise of virtuous Imperialism. Or see John McCain staring with that empty numb glare of those with terminal emotional disfigurement, loss of affect, sociopaths, those without souls .... the walking dead, the zombies. The US is already largely a nation of zombies .... but maybe having the face of those who had in the not too distant past toiled in plantation fields, or shined shoes, or who were hung from trees...having that face hang in every office building in the country, in every court house and in every embassy around the world....maybe that is enough reason to vote for Obama. --JS

Cyrano's Journal Online Senior Editor John Steppling currently resides in Lodz, Poland, where he teaches at the Polish Film Institute. The main archive of his articles may be found at VOXPOP, Cyrano's blog area devoted to theater, cinema and politics, which he co-edited with Guy Zimmerman.

In 2002, arch-conservative Matthew Scully wrote a book called, Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy, that was universally and uncritically acclaimed by the animal advocacy movement. Because this movement is overwhelmingly single-issue in its focus, and in most cases doesn't care about a person's views or politics except how they relate to animals, no one had a problem with the fact that Scully was a senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He wrote some of the key fear-peddling diatribes that got Bush elected and he was recently re-enlisted to help Bush sell the Iraq war "surge" to the American people.

As someone who is concerned about a person's overall political standpoint, and who would not embrace a Leftist who is a speciesist anymore than an animal rights person or vegan who is a racist, I had some serious problems with Scully and the fawning adulation of his book by virtually the entire animal advocacy movement. Many people, such as Karen Dawn (the founder of DawnWatch.com), saw it as a key sign of progress that the conservatives were embracing the animal cause (in welfarist form), and thus concluded that animal advocacy could be introduced to an entire new audience of people-some very rich, powerful, and influential ones at that.

No one mentioned that Scully had blood all over his hands by sycophantically serving Bush-Cheney (providing the "eloquence" they lacked) and the neo-con invasion and occupation of Iraq - all at the cost of more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi lives, over 4,000 US troop deaths, countless US troop casualties and destroyed lives, and over three trillion dollars.[i] And all based on lies and blatant deceit by Bush and his henchmen, all of whom - were there any justice in this country or backbone in the Democrats - would have been impeached and jailed for crimes of the highest order.

Nor could I understand the praise over Scully's book. Really, Dominion is two books: the first sections are indeed well-crafted and hard-hitting critiques of factory farming and hunting. But the bulk of the book was just nauseating, amateurish, antiquated medieval/early modern natural law theory which tried to justify the critique of animal cruelty in cosmic laws, rational imperatives-as if the issue of animal welfare or rights were not controversial and could not be seen in endless ways by diverse groups of people. It had a very uncomfortable authoritarian tone to it: here are the moral laws of the universe; here is moral truth. And he urged the same naïve Socratic belief that contaminates the thinking of the pacifists who dominate the animal advocacy movement - the idea that if we can only reason with people, show them this "Truth," they will no longer abuse animals. As if there were no violence and cruelty in the human heart, no desire to dominate the weak, no lust for profit off slavery of any group.

And consider the subtitle: notice that he is calling for MERCY (to the slaves) not LIBERATION (of the slaves). And we needed a burdensome arsenal of arcane metaphysics, philosophical, and legal theory to reach this conclusion? A few rights/abolitionist voices tried to expose the severe limitations of this overwrought speciesist and welfarist tome, but they were drowned out by the roar of the multitudes celebrating the movement's "revolutionary" breakthrough into new social sectors -- so "new," in fact, that there were now more white, elite, and "privileged" people in the animal advocacy/vegan movements than before.

To whatever degree he cares about animals, Scully's real constituency are rich, white, Republicans and -- having written speeches for Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 -- he had already become a shining star in the firmament of right-wing ideologues and corporate fat cats, each of whom need the best PR and BS teams they could assemble. And thanks to the fawning adulation of the likes of Karen Dawn, Scully overnight became the new darling of the animal movement. When not making the rounds of Congress or aerial warfare conventions, Scully continued to write speeches for Bush and anyone on the Right with the right fee. And, as it turned out, as so many of us were bracing ourselves for the nauseating Republican National Convention in early September 08, not wanting to hear another disingenuous word from "straight-talking" McCain but curious to hear about unknown Alaskan female governor whom he shrewdly chose to win Hillary's armies of disaffected, we learned -- at this crisis moment and critical juncture for the Far Right -- that Matthew Scully stepped in to write the kind of speech the McCain team thought necessary to disguise their malignant and predatory policies in terms of populism and family values. Right-wing soldier that he is, Scully stayed up the entire night before the speech and gave the magic words to which Sara Palin only had to give life in order to sell this sordid spectacle and sham to the US public and bring us another 4 more years of Bush--or probably much, much worse.

The moment was tense. The stakes were high. An unknown -- a woman! -- was walking onto the stage to accept her party's nomination for Vice President. But could she prove herself at the podium? Thanks to Scully's adroit words and Palin's androgynous mix of feminine soft talk and macho militarism, the chronically anxious Right erupted into a roar of elation as they felt they had, with the addition of Palin, finally found the ticket they wanted -- one entirely devoted to militarism and privatization, increasing their already obscene levels of wealth and waging a full-blown culture war against abortion, sex education in the schools, the ban on prayers in pubic places, and so on.

Well, as the right-wing pundits droned on all next day, Palin/Scully "blew it out of the water." Even Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joseph Biden said she was going to be "a tough debater" and had "a very skillfully written ...speech." And one awestruck fan gushed, "Palin sounded at times like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night."

Congratulations, Scully, you did it! You galvanized and unified the most reactionary forces of the country that want to finish the job -- on the Constitution, liberties, privacy, human rights at home and abroad, the United Nations, international justice, restrictions on trade, unions, animal protections and the environment -- that Bush brought to such a high level in eight years. There is nothing innocent about what Scully does: he is a hack, a propagandist, a demagogue, a mouthpiece for nihilistic ideologies that are anything but "pro-life." To the degree that Bush, Cheney, McCain, and Palin are truly menacing forces -- who threaten not only neighboring nation states but the entire planet itself, Scully is their Paul Joseph Goebbels: a total ideologue, a skilled orator (on paper), and a devotee to the party line.

Whereas Obama is known to have fairly progressive views on animals, Palin is an aggressive supporter of hunting and herself an avid hunter. She goes so far as to champion aerial hunting of wolves and threatened to sue the EPA if they listed the polar bear as an endangered species.[ii] Beyond her regressive views on animals, she has helped mobilize the base of the far Right in a way McCain could not do himself because she is such an extreme conservative. According to MoveOn.Org:

**Palin recently said that the war in Iraq is "God's task." She's even admitted she hasn't thought about the war much--just last year she was quoted saying, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

**Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group--who advocate for a vote on secession from the union--to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention.'"

**Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn't made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact.

**Palin doesn't believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade."

**Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP.

**Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest.

**Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.

**As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them--shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor." [iii]

Unfortunately, thanks to Scully, Palin's "homespun" speech (professionally crafted by a DC-insider), was a smash at the RNC, and she "hit it out of the ballpark" as nearly every conservative pundit said the following day. And so we have Scully -- who wrote a book critical of hunting - to thank not only for supporting a psychopath whose lust for killing animals perhaps rivals that of Ted Nugent, but for reinvigorating a fascist movement that has excellent chances at winning the next election, and taking the US even deeper into the innermost circles of hell, as somehow I suspect that McCain-Palin will be even worse for the US, the world, animals, and the planet than Bush-Cheney.

Karen Dawn of DawnWatch in 2001 at "an evening with Julia Butterfly Hill and Sophie B. Hawkins, hosted by Gloria Steinem."

And yet, still we hear hardly a word from the animal community about what a thug and criminal Scully is and what a traitor he is to the animals, to fellow humans, and to the entire planet. The most pathetic comment I have heard so far is from Karen Dawn, a well-known animal activist and social butterfly who runs the newsletter, Dawnwatch, which comments on media representations of animal issues. Given her social and economic status - the fact that she lives in the affluent area along the California coastline, that she is a regular in the LA party and cocktail scene, that she loves to see and be seen with celebrities - it is not surprising she takes an apolitical view of animal issues, and in fact believes that this movement ought to strive to be a powerful single-issue, DC-based powerhouse like the NRA.

Here is Dawn's self-serving, cowardly, and deplorable commentary the day after Palin's speech:

"The news this week is the Republican Convention, and the animal news is the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate. Before I write any further on that issue, I need to stress that DawnWatch is entirely non partisan. If you've read [her new MTV-style book] Thanking the Monkey you know of my commitment to non-partisan animal activism. It would be unfair to the animals for their advocates to alienate half of the human population. And in Thanking the Monkey, I explain that the somewhat common assumption [which I personally have argued for in detail] that animal advocacy is a left wing issue is false. Democrat voting records are better on animal issues overall, but the exceptions are shining. Republicans John Ensign of Nevada, and Christopher Shays of Connecticut are just two of those current outstanding exceptions. And former Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire, an ultra right wing conservative, is the only person to date to speak passionately against vivisection on the Senate Floor.

Perhaps most notably, one of the finest books ever written [!] on animal protection is "Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy." It is by Matthew Scully, who worked as a senior speechwriter for George W Bush, penning the book on his off hours. Scully sees his compassion, or mercy, for animals, and his vegan lifestyle, as perfectly in line with his Catholic conservative values ...

In an extraordinary twist of fate, Scully was selected to write Sarah Palin's speech, which aired last night. Let us hope that in the time Scully and Palin spent together working on the speech, he began to influence her thinking. I hope every Republican on this list will urge her to read his book!"[iv]

"Let us hope that in the time Scully and Palin spent together working on the speech, he began to influence her thinking." How naïve and deep in denial can this woman be?! Does Dawn think that Scully and Sarah had a reasonable and open chat about the evils of hunting?! That he gently reminded her that animals are not meat machines to shoot down in cold blood, just as he appreciatively received his lucrative paycheck for selling out the planet by helping some of the most dangerous forces in our history in their bid to win an election? I suspect Scully talked far more with Palin about his fee than her bloody proclivities to kill animals.

Dawn is indeed critical of Palin's zeal for hunting and her abysmal environmental record, but she would rather be an enabler to this carnage than offend her powerful, rich, and influential friends. I do not exaggerate when I draw a line connecting McCain/Palin to Scully and to opportunists like Dawn.

In contrast to Dawn's vapid view that we can bring all people and parties into the animal cause, another animal advocate (infinitely more authentic and profound than Dawn), Norm Phelps, penned (in a personal email to me) some extremely critical remarks on Scully and the far Right:

"I think the fact that Matthew Scully wrote her convention speech (which was a masterpiece of viciousness) should give us all pause about the notion that conservatives will ever be serious animal advocates. I used to think that AR [animal rights] was a non-political issue and that we should keep it that way in the interests of converting as many people as possible and having the greatest impact on society. I no longer think that. I now believe that the mindset that leads conservatives to pursue policies that are hostile to the well-being of most of humanity (everyone except themselves and those to whom they are close) almost invariably leads them to policies that are hostile to the well-being of most animals (everyone except those to whom they are personally close, such as their companion animals).

"There is nothing that I find more perplexing and discouraging than the blatant speciesism that is rampant in most progressive circles. But in spite of this, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the liberal to progressive end of the political spectrum is where we have to concentrate our efforts and where we will ultimately find our victory. Conservatives can, in many cases, be persuaded to welfarism (properly so called, not as redefined by the so-called "abolitionists"), but not to AR. Scully's vehement denunciations of AR in Dominion are, I think, an important indicator of this, as is the fact that this man who wrote so eloquently of the suffering of animals could put his gifts in the service of a woman who practices and celebrates all manner of barbaric cruelty to animals. Scully obviously considers the lives and suffering of animals less important than politics as usual."

Phelps is right to argue that the Left is just as abysmal in its views on animals, and yet draws this distinction:

"The speciesism of liberals/progressives contradicts their fundamental values, which creates an opportunity for animal advocates. The speciesism of conservatives reinforces their fundamental values, which creates a solid wall. But I still think it is dangerous for the AR movement, as a movement, to align with other social justice movements until we have succeeded in raising their consciousness about animals to the point that the alliance can be formed on a basis of at least approximate equality. And I think a lot of groundwork needs to be done before we reach that point. I guess where I'm headed is that we need to be taking that groundwork seriously and getting busy at it--which, of course, is what you've been doing for some time now."[v]

While I agree with Phelps that Leftists are Paleolithic in their views on animals and we should not be too ready to tie ourselves to a human rights/social justice platform as it is, and that we do need indeed to educate the Left, I have also disagreed with him (in quite friendly terms) that animal liberation is winnable without human and Earth liberation and a progressive alliance politics that fights against the main threat to the planet today, which is the capitalist grow-or-die economy.[vi]

But while we examine the problems with both the Right and the Left, let us not lose focus on the idiocy, cowardice, and opportunism in our own movement, for there are far too many "animal advocates" who are in fact advocates for something far less noble: money, power, glory, fame, and self--advancement. If it was not obvious with the writing of Dominion six years ago, Scully in particular has since revealed himself to be a sham, fraud, charlatan, prevaricator, hypocrite, and (neo-)con man, an enemy not only to animals, but also a de facto opponent of women, science, secularism, freedom of speech, and the environment.

Like the politicians he serves, Scully talks out of both sides of his mouth at once and serves each and every contradictory cause that advances his own good. No principled or consistent person writes a book against hunting, and then writes a speech for a vicious defender of hunting and avid killer herself. Can any animal advocate among us ever imagine doing this?! This is the moral and logical contradiction that would haunt a Kantian, someone with a conscience, anyone with principles or moral consistency. But it never troubles a utilitarian-opportunist.

In a nation rife with political and historical idiocy, layer upon layer of confusion, and pernicious myths linking capitalism with democracy and justice, the masses are so easily manipulated by the power elite that they can be convinced that the Clintons (who are at best center left on the political spectrum) are communists!

And nor is his work done. The Far Right loved his Palin speech so much that they will surely contract him again. Without hyperbole, I say that Scully is less a "progressive vegan and animal welfarist" than he is a reactionary and a dangerous man. He has been the words, phrases, metaphors, rhetoric, narratives, jokes, and overall a key voice and mouthpiece of the Extreme Right who want to take this country back to pre-Enlightenment, pre-secular medieval serfdom where rights mean only property rights, liberty falls to security and hierarchy, and democracy is a forgotten dream.

To end by reiterating a crucial point: Mathew (Straight-Laced, Compassionate Conservative, Corporate and Family Values Man,) Scully is not just a hypocrite or opportunist. He is a menace to all life, beings, species, and nature. This is not an ad hominem attack, it is simply a fact. Look who he works for and examine what they do. Because of the gigantic powers he brings to life, puffs up, drives forward, and legitimates with the rhetoric of his folksy, small-town populism, he represents gigantic global corporations that destroy families and communities. Because Scully casts the spell and brings out the smoke and mirrors that cover up lies and package a hideous program of destruction as "progress," and because he gets the job done, time after time, Scully is a significant danger -- and I do not exaggerate -- to this entire planet.

Scully's real project is not "dominion." It is domination-corporate hegemony of the planet and the advancement of the US Empire. To the extent his discursive artistry helps to disarm Congress and to lull Americans back into their complacent and jingoistic sleep, Scully shares responsibility with Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Rice, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Monsanto, and ConAgra for turning this beautiful planet into a living hell for most of its inhabitants and for leaving behind a wasteland and battlefield that will prove even more difficult (if not impossible) for future generations to survive, as ever more species vanish forever.

Notes:

[i] For data on the ever-mounting numbers of Iraqi civilians and US soldiers killed and injured, see the Iraq Body Count website at: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/. On the soaring costs of the war, see Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, "The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More," Sunday March 9, 2008, The Washington Post, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html.

[ii] On Palin's regressive record on animals and the environment, see John Dolan, "Party whores: Sarah Palin's Big, Sleazy Safari," September 2, 2008, AlterNet, at: http://www.alternet.org/story/97207/sarah_palin%27s_big%2C_sleazy_safari/; "Environmentalists can't corral Palin: GOP vice presidential candidate nicknamed the 'killa from Wasilla', Associated Press, posted September 4, at MSNBC.com, at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26546967/; and ""SARAH PALIN SUPPORTS SHOOTING WOLVES AND BEARS FROM AIRPLANES," Defenders of Wildlife, at: http://www.defendersactionfund.org/. This page includes a disturbing video link to what this barbaric practice that Palin ardently supports looks like in reality.

[iii] "Who is Sarah Palin," MoveOn.Org., at: http://pol.moveon.org/emails/palin_announcement.html?rc=homepage.

[iv] Karen Dawn, "Palin provides vital opportunities for animal friendly letters," September 4, 2008, at:
http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/archive/dw1000000dawnwat/20080904102648/

[v] Phelps cited with permission in a personal email to me on September 4, 2008.

[vi] Steven Best, "Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation, Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left," The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Volume 2, Issue #3, June 2006; at: http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol2/vol2_no3_Best_rethinking_revolution.htm

Steven Best, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. He has published numerous books and articles on philosophy, cultural criticism, social theory and animal rights. He has appeared on TV shows like Extra! and is frequently interviewed by national print and radio media including the New York Times and National Public Radio. Best is Cyrano's Journal Special Editor for Animal Rights, Speciesisim and Human Tyranny over Nature.

Most people had never heard of Sarah Palin when she was named the Republican VP nominee. But I'd been hearing her name all too often, because I belong to a group called Defenders of Wildlife -- and in her time as governor of Alaska, Palin has used her position as governor of Alaska to ruin the Alaskan wilderness in every way she could.

Her most recent "victory" came on Aug. 26, when Alaska's voters defeated Measure 2, an initiative that would have banned hunting wolves from airplanes for sport.

Palin organized a campaign against Measure 2 and funded it with $400,000 of state money. For most of us, the idea of zooming around in a private airplane over snowbound wilderness just for the chance to spot a terrified wild dog and blow it apart with a high-powered rifle is insane. But there's a whole culture out there in love with the idea. Palin did her part by playing the tired old Alaskan pioneer card, saying that lower-48 naysayers who dared to object to the idea of dive-bombing wildlife didn't "understand rural Alaska."

Alaska isn't really very hard to understand. It consists of a minority that loves the wilderness and an overwhelmingly Republican majority that wants to squeeze all the cash it can get out of the state before the oil dries up, the fish die out and the wildlife disappears. Nowhere else does the Republican formula of manipulating the suckers by playing on their silly hatreds and even sillier vanities play out more clearly than in Alaska.

To get an idea of Palin's core constituency, just go to the home page of Safari Club International, one of the groups that fought hardest against Measure 2 -- and is now gloating loudest over this proud victory.

An aerial wolf hunt. Watch for yourself what these depraved idiots are doing to defenceless animals. Good pals, of course, of Palin. Brought to you by an overwhelmingly Republican "ethic" mixed with big dollops of backward libertarianism. Alaska, poor Alaska, is individualism's favorite lab.

Even the name is a little skewed -- "safari"? When was the last time you heard that word? Most people are trying hard to forget the "safari" era, when rich white jerks had themselves carried into the African wilderness by nameless black servants, at vast expense, to kill animals they could barely identify.

But for Palin's core constituency, "safari" is still the dream. And Measure 2 would have interfered with that dream, the dream of strafing social canids from a Cessna plane. Alaska politics runs on the vast opportunities for graft offered by a small, easily manipulated constituency addicted to subsidies and self-delusion. Alaskans like to imagine themselves the last pioneers, hardy individualists, etc. -- which makes them classic suckers for Republican propaganda. And they also like the petty cash that trickles down to them from the mining companies, timber companies and hunting guides who make the real money. Palin, an undistinguished part-time sportscaster on a local TV station, was a perfect non-threatening mouthpiece for the companies that want to gouge as much oil, ore and timber from Alaska as they can -- while it lasts.

Palin is totally consistent in her anti-environmental stance. She not only wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, but actually vowed to sue the EPA if it dared to declare polar bears an endangered species.

It's hard for most people to understand this sort of hatred for the great mammal species struggling to hang on at the edges of this continent. But then, Palin is an Alaska Republican. And Alaska's Republican politicians are the most corrupt, ignorant and generally loathsome political clique in America, bar none. The so-called "dean" of the gang is Sen. Ted Stevens, finally indicted this year after a lifetime of graft. One of the crimes of which Stevens is accused sums up the relationship between Alaska's Republican ruling gang and its big-money backers: a construction crew hired by an oil company called Veco jacked Stevens's house up on stilts and added a whole new floor featuring two bedrooms and a bathroom -- just returning all the legislative favors Stevens had done for it over the years.

Palin was one of the founding members of Stevens' 527 corporate slush fund, which skated around campaign finance laws to allow the senator to raise unlimited funds from big oil and other exploiters. Stevens' fund bore the self-parodying name "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service Inc." -- which is pretty droll, considering that Stevens is not only corrupt but one of the stupidest people in the Republican Party, no small feat in itself. In fact, Stevens' only claim to the attention of the American people before he finally met his fate was for defining the Internet as "a series of tubes." Thanks to YouTube, you can actually hear Sen. Stevens dithering for several minutes before uttering that famous phrase. A warning, though: Listening to Stevens will cure you forever of the idea that America is a meritocracy.

On Aug. 26, Alaska's Republican voters showed their ethical level by choosing Stevens, this utterly loathsome, brainless greed monster, as their nominee to represent the state for another six years. The fact that Stevens had been indicted for corruption four weeks before the election didn't faze them a bit.

Palin summed up her long, sleazy and profitable association with Stevensby saying that the two of them were "singing from the same sheet of music." Isn't that quaint, that "sheet of music" metaphor, with its hint of the hymnal and the pew? Well, that's Alaska's republicans for you: a thin coating of hokey populist rhetoric over a vast subterranean reserve of sleaze. Palin's predecessor as governor was Republican Frank Murkowski, another nature hater who spent a long, sleazy career in the pockets of the oil, mining and "safari" industries. Murkowski's "endless ethical lapses" included an attempt to get the state to buy him a jet, and climaxed with his appointment of his daughter, Lisa Murkowski, to the U.S. Senate. That sort of unabashed nepotism was a bit much even for Alaskans and made Murkowski the most despised governor in the country, with an approval rating of 14 percent.

Lisa Murkowski has been busy in Washington, keeping up the family tradition of selling Alaska's natural resources as quickly and sleazily as she can. In 2006 she got an astounding 2 percent rating on environmental issues from Republicans for Environmental Protection.

In Alaska Republican Party circles, a rating like that is a badge of honor.

Palin fits right in with this slime. She has served the oil, mining and hunting interests from the minute she won the governorship. This summer, she showed herself willing to poison whole watersheds and destroy a huge, lucrative salmon fishery by opposing Measure 4. The proposal aimed to stop the proposed Pebble Mine, a huge operation, from discharging huge amounts of cyanide and mining waste into streams that flow into Bristol Bay, the site of the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Of course, Sarah Palin did her best to ensure the mining interests won. At first she had a bit of a problem: Under Alaska law, the governor isn't allowed to take a position on ballot initiatives. Palin squirmed her way around that rule in classic Republican style, by speaking as a private citizen, with true George W. Bush eloquence: "Let me take my governor's hat off just for a minute and tell you personally: Prop. 4 -- I vote no on that."

As one of the supporters of the initiative said, Palin and the rest of the state's Department of Natural Resources staff were so comfortably in bed with the mining industry that they borrowed a propaganda slide show from their industry backers when making the case against Measure 4. "The slide show (DNR) had up on the screen is straight from the one (mining industry representatives) use in their presentations around the state," said Art Hackney of Alaskans for Clean Water. "I think it's absolutely outrageous -- and somehow, unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me."

The reason Hackney isn't surprised is that fronting for anti-environmental exploiters is what Palin does. It's her job. So naturally, she spewed up the necessary lie, proclaiming that she had "all the confidence in the world" in the integrity of the Department of Natural Resources that was using themining industry's own slide show.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of Palin's disgusting record on environmental issues is the fact that it's hardly even being mentioned in the debate about her nomination. Most of the focus, for an audience of suckers weaned on celebrity gossip, seems to be about her mothering skills, her daughter's pregnancy and whether she was Miss Congeniality or just a runner-up in some beauty pageant. The fact that she makes her living helping to wipe out whole species, poison productive watersheds and play to the stupidest great-white-hunter fantasies of her constituency hardly seems worth a mention.

John Dolan, poet, sometime English professor, is an editor of the Moscow-based English-language alternative paper, The eXile. He is the author of, most recently, Pleasant Hell (Capricorn, 2005). Rumor has it that Gary Brecher, the notorious "War Nerd", is his alter ego.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

During mining operations copper ore had been blasted out of the bedrock, leaving long narrow ravine-like shafts. Once abandoned they had become filled with water. The steep rock ledges were burnt-orange, almost red in color. The water was bright aqua-blue, and milky with suspended sediment. The contrast between green forest, red earth, and brilliant blue water created an exotic visual effect.

Upon arrival we would race over the barren ground to the edge of the cliffs, and plunge one behind the other into the cold blue water. Once we calmed down from the initial rush, we would engage in the main purpose for our coming, cliff jumping. There was an increasing gradient along one side of the mine where we could jump from spots ranging in height from ten, to as high as sixty feet. We would freely charge out into the air from the lower cliffs, demonstrating different styles of cannon balls and dives. The approach at the highest place was more subdued. The cliff walls of the ravine were only thirty feet apart, and from a height of sixty feet an aggressive jump could end dangerously close to the opposite side.