outlawing state-sponsored murder - "the times they are a' changin' . . ."

slowly, hesitantly, creeping almost unnoticed at times, snail racing turtle . . .

WaPo:

Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) said yesterday that he plans to work for the repeal of Maryland's death penalty this legislative session. But he and some lawmakers predict that the measure has tough hurdles to clear before it gets to his desk.

"I've had a pretty consistent position on this," O'Malley told reporters at the State House. "Now that it's salient, I'm certainly not going to try to duck or hide. I would like to see us repeal the death penalty."
. . .

O'Malley's comments came in response to an announcement by two lawmakers that they would introduce legislation to abolish the death penalty and replace it with a sanction of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The bills were filed yesterday.

Lisa A. Gladden (D-Baltimore), the lead sponsor in the Senate, said that by her count, the measure was one vote shy of getting out of the Judicial Proceedings Committee.

"I don't think it's totally out of the question that we could pass a repeal bill this year," said Gladden, a public defender, who has introduced similar measures in the past. "I think other legislators don't want blood on their hands."

Gladden was emboldened yesterday by the group of lawmakers, religious leaders and supporters who joined her and Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg (D-Baltimore) at a news conference about the legislation.

The issue has gained prominence in the wake of a court ruling last month that halted executions in Maryland until new regulations on lethal injection are put forward by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. O'Malley said that the process will not start before the conclusion of the legislature's debate on the death penalty bill.

"That debate needs to happen," O'Malley told reporters.

Senate President Thomas Mike V. Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said he supports the death penalty but thinks there needs to be a "healthy debate" on the subject. He said he would not influence a vote one way or the other.

"I realize the trend is against the death penalty," Miller said, "but I think there are some crimes so atrocious that it's warranted."

death penalty pt. 2 - Clive Stafford Smith - "empty legal formalism"

Here's a good explanation of the Kafkaesque legal situation Kenny Richey finds himself in (see habeas corpus & the death penalty), written by his lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, a prominent human rights advocate who also currently represents some Guantanamo inmates in addition to years of tireless work fighting the death penalty in the southern states. Yesterday's Guardian published his take on the Richey case. The British papers have taken much more interest in his remand hearing than has the US press, and regularly express outrage at the US' death penalty legal apparatus.

Cruel but all too usual punishment

If Kenny Richey's death row appeal in Ohio fails, he could be executed on evidence that even his prosecutor admits is fatally flawed.

January 24, 2007

"Even though this new evidence may establish Mr Richey's innocence, the Ohio and United States constitution nonetheless allow him to be executed because the prosecution did not know the scientific testimony offered at the trial was false and unreliable." - Kenny Richey's prosecutor, Dan Gershutz

A far as weeks on death row go, this is a particularly busy one for Scotsman Kenny Richey. Today, a court in Ohio heard arguments in his appeal; tomorrow is Robbie Burns' birthday; and on Saturday, Kenny will have spent 20 years on death row. Two years ago, the same court actually overturned Kenny's conviction but the prosecution used legal technicalities to put him back on death row. He was 22 when Ohio decreed that he should die. He has spent almost half of his life waiting for execution.

For years, defence lawyers in capital cases were accused of manipulating technicalities to avert the execution of the palpably guilty. Now, the Ohio prosecutors use technicalities to manoeuvre the execution of the patently innocent. According to Dan Gershutz, whether Kenny is innocent - and he is - should not be relevant to whether he should die for the crime.

This might seem an incredible assertion by the man who is employed by the state in a criminal proceeding. One might think that any justice system should be designed to sort the wheat of innocence from the chaff of guilt. The execution of the wrong person should be the nightmare of any legal process - as it was in Britain when the abolition of hanging came hard on the heels of some terrible mistakes.

Yet American courts are cavalier about their execution errors. Incredibly, the US Supreme Court had sided with Kenny's prosecutor. The court held in the case of Herrera v Collins that, without more, "claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief." Translated into English, this means that as long as the trial seemed superficially fair - the lawyers were awake, the judge unbiased - the fact that it reached a spectacularly erroneous result is simply not an issue.
. . .

Tony Café has over 20 years experience as a fire scene forensic examiner, conducting over 1,500 fire scene examinations. He did scientific testing on the evidence that convicted Kenny. "If Kenny Richey were executed on the basis of this scientific evidence, then these chromatograms will become historical documents, examined by scientists all over the world to show just how wrong forensic evidence can be."

Other new evidence proves Kenny did not start the fire. Although the prosecution does not challenge the power of this evidence, still they insist on their legal right to execute him on the basis of a procedural technicality: that the prosecutor who presented evidence regarding the fire did not know it was false when he presented it. Empty legal formalism has Kenny in its deadly grasp. Innocent people should not be in prison, let alone awaiting execution.

It seems unlikely that today's appeal will save Kenny's life, although we must hold out hope. If he loses, Kenny's best chance of avoiding execution lies with being granted clemency by Ohio's new governor, Ted Strickland. Failing this, Kenny could have an execution date by early 2008.

Kenny, a proud Scot, will tomorrow celebrate Burns night in his cell, where he is locked up for 23 hours of each day. Perhaps Robert Burns inadvertently summed up the US's attitude towards innocence when he wrote, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

"He got off on a technicality!" is a common complaint when a federal court overturns a conviction, or sets aside a death sentence. To amplify one of Stafford Smith's points, "technicalities" are practically the only thing that the federal courts can examine in habeas corpus: claims that the laws, Constitution or treaties of the United States have been violated. The importance of 'due process' to ensure human and civil rights is all too readily obscured when it is allowed to be framed as a mere technicality. Neither the Constitution nor legislative law explicitly prohibit the taking of an innocent life. Something is deeply wrong when the law's formal self-consistency trumps the taking of an innocent life. Such is life in the Land of the Free . . .

The other day I facetiously asked if any lawmakers would call for the repeal of AEDPA. More seriously, either the Supreme Court or Congress could decide that innocence is a basis for habeas corpus, but they have not done so. In Herrera v. Collins, a majority of the Supreme Court assumed, without deciding, that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" would prohibit the execution of someone who could make a "truly persuasive demonstration of 'actual innocence.'" Such a demonstration "would necessarily be extraordinarily high." But never having seen a case that rises to that level, the Supreme Court has never actually held that the Constitution does prohibit execution of the innocent and it is uncertain whether the Court, as presently seated, would make that finding—thus the significance of Roberts' confirmation hearing tapdance. Even if they find it was prohibited, there would still be no possibility of relief for those sentenced in non-capital cases, even those sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Congress could enact statutes or amend the habeas corpus statute to provide a remedy for the innocent. Given Congress' trend since 1996 (AEDPA) to limit, rather than expand habeas rights, it will take a serious groundswell of public outcry for any such change to happen.

habeas corpus & the death penalty — "how many years did we think the earth was flat?"

Kenny Richey, an ex-Marine, has spent 20 years on death row. Amnesty International has described the case as "one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners have ever seen". Although his conviction was set aside by a Federal Appeals Court, that decision may itself be reversed on 'technical grounds' - created by Congress to 'speed up' the death penalty process & reduce 'frivolous' appeals - that have set up labyrinthine procedural hurdles for defendents in death penalty cases pursuing habeas corpus appeals. While there is no statute of limitations for the state to prosecute a murder, Congress, through the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996, created a situtation where the prosecution will argue, despite evidence of innocence & lack of a fair trial which a panel of Federal judges found compelling, that it is simply 'too late' to examine the evidence & that the defendent's conviction & death sentence must be upheld. This backdoor congressional assault isn't over; just this past December Senator John Kyl tried slipping in some habeas 'reform' measures in a Defense Dept authorization bill (see Habeas Corpus — "the only writ named in the Constitution" — under attack in Congress). We should expect further on-going attempts. Think twice if you expect the Democrats to resist; Bill Clinton signed AEDPA into law.

The Supreme Court reversed Richey's grant of habeas relief by the Sixth Circuit in an extremely brief opinion with no author attributed, and remanded for a narrow ruling by the Sixth (arguments will be heard tomorrow) as to whether the state waived its argument that the new evidence was presented 'too late' (i.e. whether the state waived the claim that Richey essentially waived [technically "defaulted"] his claims).

[1/24 update]: The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out his conviction and death sentence in January 2005.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in November 2005 that the 6th Circuit erred by disregarding the Ohio Supreme Court's interpretation of state law regarding intent to kill. The state court had ruled that as a death penalty specification there is no difference between an intended victim and an unintended victim, such as the little girl who was killed.

The federal high court also said the record was incomplete on whether Richey received effective counsel and whether some evidence was properly admitted, and told the appeals court to hold another hearing. Akron Beacon Journal

The new claims in court apparently are not of 'actual innocence,' but ineffective assistance of counsel because, contrary to commonsense and popular belief, 'innocence' alone is insufficient to get a conviction thrown out by a federal court in a habeas corpus case. That, coupled with AEDPA's arbitrary time limits and procedural restrictions create nearly insurmountable hurdles for the wrongly convicted to present any new evidence.

Richey was 18 when he left his mother's home in Edinburgh to live with his American father in Ohio, where he joined the US Marines. He was planning to return to Scotland in July 1986 when he was arrested for the murder of two-year-old Cynthia Collins, who died in a fire in her mother's apartment in Columbus Grove.

The prosecution claims Richey started the fire because his estranged former girlfriend and her new lover—supposedly the intended targets of the attack—lived in the apartment beneath. It says he poured turpentine on to a carpet, and left a trail of it from the flat to the wooden verandah outside, where he set it alight. No one saw him at the scene and he had no trace of turpentine on his clothing.

Protesting his innocence, Richey refused a plea bargain which would have led to an 11-year sentence for arson and manslaughter. Tried by a court that sat without a jury, he was found guilty and sentenced to death on 27 January 1987. . . .

Fighting a long series of appeals in state and federal courts, his new lawyers, led by Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the British charity Reprieve, have compiled a dossier of evidence that supports his claim of innocence. It includes the fact that after the fire, the local fire brigade chief, who believed it began accidentally, had the carpet thrown on a rubbish dump. Days later it was recovered, but kept outside the sheriff's office next to some petrol pumps. Scientific tests, say Richey's defence, show that the carpet bore traces of petrol not turpentine.

In 2004, the Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals, one tier beneath the Supreme Court, ruled that this evidence, coupled with his trial attorney's failure to adduce it, was enough to quash Richey's conviction, and gave the prosecution 90 days either to appeal or to start proceedings for a re-trial.

'I was packed and ready to go home,' Richey said. 'I'd already sent my CDs, tapes and clothes back to my brother in Scotland by post. The prosecution had indicated there would be no retrial. Then the axe fell. It was devastating in so many ways.'

Richey's fate now turns on highly technical interpretations of procedural law. At this week's hearing, the prosecution will argue that the defence has no right to use the new evidence because it should have argued it earlier. The defence will respond that the prosecution has no right to make this objection, because it in turn should have done so at one of Richey's previous appeals. But if Richey wins this argument, his conviction will be quashed again - though the prosecution would almost certainly go back to the Supreme Court yet again in a further bid to have him killed. Guardian

Despite the popularity of television's CSI shows, the science used in courtrooms has often been questionable, a 'fact' science itself is only slowly catching up to. New Science Challenges Arson Convictions:

It was a textbook case, and Lee was dealt a guilty verdict and a life sentence.

Except the textbooks were wrong. Within a few years of Lee's conviction, scientific studies smashed decades of earlier, widely accepted beliefs about how fires work and the telltale trail they leave behind.

Today, fire investigators are taught that the clues relied upon in the 1989 investigation of the cabin fire do not prove anything more than an accident.

And some of the leading U.S. experts on arson said that Lee, an immigrant who worked six days a week to bring his wife and daughters from South Korea to America, was the victim of a horrible tragedy, not a criminal. There could be hundreds more like him, people wrongfully convicted of arson, these experts said.

Pennsylvania courts have repeatedly rejected the argument that the prosecution's case was built on bad science.
. . .

The same discredited arson science, according to leading fire investigators across the country, may have led to hundreds of mistaken arson prosecutions. So far, 186 men and one woman have been freed because of the new technology.

Yet, critics said, some investigators are resisting the new science and continue to prosecute cases based on repudiated methods.
. . .

It wasn't until 1992, when a guide to fire investigations by the National Fire Protection Association clearly laid out, in a document relied upon by authorities nationwide, that the earlier theories were wrong.

"It's not that they're bad investigators or there's been any conspiracy to promulgate erroneous conclusions. It's just the way it was," said Custer, the former associate director of the national Building and Fire Research Laboratory and one of the principal editors of the 1992 guide.

"How many years did we think the Earth was flat?"

so sorry:

Texas Man Exonerated By DNA Evidence; Court and Prosecutor Apologize

A Dallas man who spent nearly half of his life in prison or on parole for a crime he did not commit was recently exonerated after DNA evidence cleared him of raping a 12-year-old boy in 1982. James Waller is the 12th person since 2001 whose conviction in Dallas County has been overturned as a result of genetic evidence. "Nowhere else in the nation have so many individual wrongful convictions been proven in one county in such a short span," said attorney Barry Scheck. Scheck and his colleagues at the New York-based Innocence Project represented Waller during his most recent efforts to prove his innocence.

The case against Waller was largely based on the testimony of the victim, who mistakenly identified Waller as his assailant. Though Waller did not fit the original description provided to police by the victim, and alibi witnesses said that Waller was home at the time of the crime, he was convicted in 46 minutes and sentenced to 30 years in jail. He won parole in 1993, but had to register as a sex offender. Waller continued to fight to prove his innocence in the years following his release. . . . "It has been a long struggle for me. They look at you like you're an animal," Waller said.

Judge John C. Creuzot of Criminal District Court oversaw Waller's latest hearing and tried to console the exonerated man by stating, "A lot of times we are tested in life, and you certainly had a terrible test. On behalf of any and all public officials at that time, I want to apologize." Craig Watkins, Dallas County's new district attorney, told Waller that he was "sorry" and added, "I can say I'm sorry all day. I know that doesn't mean much to you, but I can guarantee to you in the future when I'm the district attorney we will insist that we will not send anyone who's innocent to prison. The sad thing is the person who actually did this crime is still out there on the streets." Death Penalty Information Center

Kenny Richey's situation isn't unique (neither is the non-capital case of James Waller); it's almost certainly not the most egregious example of AEDPA's procedural hurdles facing habeas petitioners, even those death row inmates who are innocent. Recall Chief Justice John Roberts' tap-dancing sidestep during his confirmation hearings when asked directly if the Constitution prohibits the execution of the innocent. Or Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' pseudo-strict-constructionist assertion last week before the Senate Judiciary committee: "There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There's a prohibition against taking it away. ... the Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas. Doesn't say that." What are the chances that any of those Democrats who so loudly complain today about the stripping of habeas rights in the Military Commisions Act will stand up & call for the repeal of AEDPA?

fat, I know . . .

beware the great have-not

Michael T. Klare:

Unlike Islamo-fascism, Energo-fascism will, in time, affect nearly every person on the planet. Either we will be compelled to participate in or finance foreign wars to secure vital supplies of energy, such as the current conflict in Iraq; or we will be at the mercy of those who control the energy spigot, like the customers of the Russian energy juggernaut Gazprom in Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; or sooner or later we may find ourselves under constant state surveillance, lest we consume more than our allotted share of fuel or engage in illicit energy transactions. This is not simply some future dystopian nightmare, but a potentially all-encompassing reality whose basic features, largely unnoticed, are developing today.

These include:

* The transformation of the U.S. military into a global oil protection service whose primary mission is to defend America's overseas sources of oil and natural gas, while patrolling the world's major pipelines and supply routes.

* The transformation of Russia into an energy superpower with control over Eurasia's largest supplies of oil and natural gas and the resolve to convert these assets into ever increasing political influence over neighboring states.

* A ruthless scramble among the great powers for the remaining oil, natural gas, and uranium reserves of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, accompanied by recurring military interventions, the constant installation and replacement of client regimes, systemic corruption and repression, and the continued impoverishment of the great majority of those who have the misfortune to inhabit such energy-rich regions.

* Increased state intrusion into, and surveillance of, public and private life as reliance on nuclear power grows, bringing with it an increased threat of sabotage, accident, and the diversion of fissionable materials into the hands of illicit nuclear proliferators.

Together, these and related phenomena constitute the basic characteristics of an emerging global Energo-fascism. Disparate as they may seem, they all share a common feature: increasing state involvement in the procurement, transportation, and allocation of energy supplies, accompanied by a greater inclination to employ force against those who resist the state's priorities in these areas. As in classical twentieth century fascism, the state will assume ever greater control over all aspects of public and private life in pursuit of what is said to be an essential national interest: the acquisition of sufficient energy to keep the economy functioning and public services (including the military) running.
. . .

All of these countries [United States, China, Japan, and the European powers] have undertaken major reviews of energy policy in recent years, and all have come to the same conclusion: Market forces alone can no longer be relied upon to satisfy essential national energy requirements, and so the state must assume ever-increasing responsibility for performing this role. This was, for example, the fundamental conclusion of the National Energy Policy adopted by the Bush administration on May 17, 2001 and followed slavishly ever since, just as it is the official stance of China's Communist regime. When resistance to such efforts is encountered, moreover, government officials only wield the power of the state more regularly and with a heavier hand to achieve their objectives, whether through trade sanctions, embargoes, arrests and seizures, or the outright use of force.

. . . Already we have the beginnings of the energy equivalent of a classic arms race, combined with many of the elements of the "Great Game" as once played by colonial powers in some of the same parts of the world. By militarizing the energy policies of consuming nations and enhancing the repressive capacities of client regimes, the foundations are being laid for an Energo-fascist world.
. . .

Of course, senior officials and foreign policy elites are generally loath to acknowledge such crass motivations for the utilization of military force -- they much prefer to talk about spreading democracy and fighting terrorism. Every once in a while, however, a hint of this deep energy-based conviction rises to the surface. Especially revealing is a November 2006 task force report from the Council on Foreign Relations on "National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency." Co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger and former CIA Director John Deutsch, and endorsed by a slew of elite policy wonks from both parties, the report trumpeted the usual to-be-ignored calls for energy efficiency and conservation at home, but then struck just the militaristic note first voiced in the 2000 CSIS report (which Schlesinger also co-chaired): "Several standard operations of U.S. regionally deployed forces [presumably Centcom and Pacom] have made important contributions to improving energy security, and the continuation of such efforts will be necessary in the future. U.S. naval protection of the sea-lanes that transport oil is of paramount importance." The report also called for stepped up U.S. naval engagement in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Nigeria.

When expressing such views, U.S. policymakers often adopt an altruistic stance, claiming that the United States is performing a "social good" by protecting the global oil flow on behalf of the world community.
. . .

The last face of Energo-fascism to be discussed here is the inevitable rise in state surveillance and repression attendant on an expected increase in nuclear power. As oil and natural gas become scarcer, government and industry leaders will undoubtedly push for a greater reliance on nuclear power to provide additional energy. This is a program likely to gain greater momentum from rising concerns over global warming -- largely a result of carbon-dioxide emissions created during the combustion of oil, gas, and coal.
. . .

The only way to increase reliance on nuclear power, therefore, is to federalize the permit process by shunting local agencies aside and giving federal bureaucrats the unfettered power to issue permits for the construction of new reactors.

Unlikely, you say? Well consider this: The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a significant precedent for the federalization of such authority by depriving state and local officials of their power to approve the placement of natural gas "regasification" plants. These are mammoth facilities used to reconvert liquified natural gas, transported by ship from foreign suppliers, into a gas that can then be delivered by pipeline to customers in the United States. Several localities on the East and West coasts had fought the construction of such plants in their harbors for fear that they might explode (not an entirely far-fetched concern) or become targets for terrorists, but they have now lost their legal power to do so. So much for local democracy.

Here's my worry: That some future administration will push through an amendment to the Energy Policy Act giving the federal government the same sort of placement authority for nuclear reactors that it now has for regasification plants. The feds then announce plans to build dozens or even hundreds of new reactors in or near places like Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and so on, claiming an urgent need for additional energy. People protest en masse. Local officials, sympathetic to the protestors, refuse to arrest them in droves. But now we're speaking of defiance of federal, not state or municipal, ordinances. Ergo, the National Guard or the regular Army is called up to quell the protests and protect the reactor sites — Energo-fascism in action.

(from "Is Energo-fascism in Your Future? The Global Energy Race and Its Consequences," Part 1 & Part 2 by Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books

John Bellamy Foster (June 2006):

At present the world is experiencing a new age of imperialism marked by a U.S. grand strategy of global domination. One indication of how things have changed is that the U.S. military is now truly global in its operations with permanent bases on every continent, including Africa, where a new scramble for control is taking place focused on oil.
. . .

For the United States today what is at stake is no longer control of a mere portion of the globe, but a truly global Pax Americana. Although some commentators have seen the latest U.S. imperial thrust as the work of a small cabal of neoconservatives within the Bush administration, the reality is one of broad concurrence within the U.S. power structure on the necessity of expanding the U.S. empire. One recent collection, including contributions by administration critics, is entitled The Obligation of Empire: United States’ Grand Strategy for a New Century.
. . .

Iran’s geopolitical importance, moreover, stretches far beyond the Middle East. It is a key prize (as in the case also of Afghanistan) in the New Great Game for control of all of South-Central Asia, including the Caspian Sea Basin with its enormous fossil fuel reserves. U.S. strategic planners are obsessed with fears of an Asian energy-security grid, in which Russia, China, Iran, and the Central Asian countries (possibly also including Japan) would come together economically and in an energy accord to break the U.S. and Western stranglehold on the world oil and gas market—creating the basis for a general shift of world power to the East. At present China, the world’s fastest growing economy, lacks energy security even as its demand for fossil fuels is rapidly mounting. It is attempting to solve this partly through greater access to the energy resources of Iran and the Central Asian states. Recent U.S. attempts to establish a stronger alliance with India, with Washington bolstering India’s status as a nuclear power, are clearly part of this New Great Game for control of South-Central Asia—reminiscent of the nineteenth-century Great Game between Britain and Russia for control of this part of Asia.

The New Scramble for Africa

If there is a New Great Game afoot in Asia there is also a “New Scramble for Africa” on the part of the great powers. The National Security Strategy of the United States of 2002 declared that “combating global terror” and ensuring U.S. energy security required that the United States increase its commitments to Africa and called upon “coalitions of the willing” to generate regional security arrangements on that continent. Soon after the U.S. European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany—in charge of U.S. military operations in Sub-Saharan Africa—increased its activities in West Africa, centering on those states with substantial oil production and/or reserves in or around the Gulf of Guinea (stretching roughly from the Ivory Coast to Angola). The U.S. military’s European Command now devotes 70 percent of its time to African affairs, up from almost nothing as recently as 2003.
. . .

At present the main, permanent U.S. military base in Africa is the one established in 2002 in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, giving the United States strategic control of the maritime zone through which a quarter of the world’s oil production passes. The Djibouti base is also in close proximity to the Sudanese oil pipeline. (The French military has long had a major presence in Djibouti and also has an air base at Abeche, Chad on the Sudanese border.) The Djibouti base allows the United States to dominate the eastern end of the broad oil swath cutting across Africa that it now considers vital to its strategic interests—a vast strip running southwest from the 994-mile Higleig-Port Sudan oil pipeline in the east to the 640-mile Chad-Cameroon pipeline and the Gulf of Guinea in the West. A new U.S. forward-operating location in Uganda gives the United States the potential of dominating southern Sudan, where most of that country’s oil is to be found.

In West Africa, the U.S. military’s European Command has now established forward-operating locations in Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Gabon—as well as Namibia, bordering Angola on the south—involving the upgrading of airfields, the pre-positioning of critical supplies and fuel, and access agreements for swift deployment of U.S. troops. In 2003 it launched a counterterrorism program in West Africa, and in March 2004 U.S. Special Forces were directly involved in a military operation with Sahel countries against the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat—on Washington’s list of terrorist organizations. The U.S. European Command is developing a coastal security system in the Gulf of Guinea called the Gulf of Guinea Guard. It has also been planning the construction of a U.S. naval base in São Tomé and Principe, which the European Command has intimated could rival the U.S. naval base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Pentagon is thus moving aggressively to establish a military presence in the Gulf of Guinea that will allow it to control the western part of the broad trans-Africa oil strip and the vital oil reserves now being discovered there. Operation Flintlock, a start-up U.S. military exercise in West Africa in 2005, incorporated 1,000 U.S. Special Forces. The U.S. European Command will be conducting exercises for its new rapid-reaction force for the Gulf of Guinea this summer.

Here the flag is following trade: the major U.S. and Western oil corporations are all scrambling for West African oil and demanding security. The U.S. military’s European Command, the Wall Street Journal reported in its April 25th issue, is also working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to expand the role of U.S. corporations in Africa as part of an “integrated U.S. response.” . . .

The U.S. military buildup in Africa is frequently justified as necessary both to fight terrorism and to counter growing instability in the oil region of Sub-Saharan Africa. . . .

Hence there are incessant calls and no lack of seeming justifications for U.S. “humanitarian interventions” in Africa. The Council on Foreign Relations report More than Humanitarianism insists that “the United States and its allies must be ready to take appropriate action” in Darfur in Sudan “including sanctions and, if necessary, military intervention, if the Security Council is blocked from doing so.” Meanwhile the notion that the U.S. military might before long need to intervene in Nigeria is being widely floated among pundits and in policy circles. Atlantic Monthly correspondent Jeffrey Taylor wrote in April 2006 that Nigeria has become “the largest failed state on earth,” and that a further destabilization of that state, or its takeover by radical Islamic forces, would endanger “the abundant oil reserves that America has vowed to protect. Should that day come, it would herald a military intervention far more massive than the Iraqi campaign.”

Still, U.S. grand strategists are clear that the real issues are not the African states themselves and the welfare of their populations but oil and China’s growing presence in Africa. . . .

What is certain is that the U.S empire is being enlarged to encompass parts of Africa in the rapacious search for oil. The results could be devastating for Africa’s peoples. Like the old scramble for Africa this new one is a struggle among great powers for resources and plunder—not for the development of Africa or the welfare of its population.
. . .

U.S. imperial grand strategy is less a product of policies generated in Washington by this or that wing of the ruling class, than an inevitable result of the power position that U.S. capitalism finds itself in at the commencement of the twenty-first century. U.S. economic strength (along with that of its closest allies) has been ebbing fairly steadily. The great powers are not likely to stand in the same relation to each other economically two decades hence. At the same time U.S. world military power has increased relatively with the demise of the Soviet Union. The United States now accounts for about half of all of the world’s military spending—a proportion two or more times its share of world output.

The goal of the new U.S. imperial grand strategy is to use this unprecedented military strength to preempt emerging historical forces by creating a sphere of full-spectrum dominance so vast, now encompassing every continent, that no potential rivals will be able to challenge the United States decades down the line. This is a war against the peoples of the periphery of the capitalist world and for the expansion of world capitalism, particularly U.S. capitalism. But it is also a war to secure a “New American Century” in which third world nations are viewed as “strategic assets” within a larger global geopolitical struggle.

(from ""A Warning to Africa: The New U.S. Imperial Grand Strategy," Monthly Review, June 2006, by John Bellamy Foster, author of Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance)

Nicola Nasser [3 Jan 2007]:

The U.S. foreign policy blundering has created a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the turbulent Horn of Africa by orchestrating the Ethiopian invasion of another Muslim capital of the Arab League, in a clear American message that no Arab or Muslim metropolitan has impunity unless it falls into step with the U.S. vital regional interests.

The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Dec. 28 is closely interlinked in motivation, methods, goals and results to the U.S. bogged down regional blunders in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Sudan as well as in Iran and Afghanistan, but mainly in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Mogadishu is the third Arab metropolitan after Jerusalem and Baghdad to fall to the U.S. imperial drive, either directly or indirectly through Israeli, Ethiopian or other proxies, and the fourth if the temporary Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982 is remembered; the U.S. endeavor to redraw the map of the Middle East is reminiscent of the British-French Sykes-Pico colonial dismembering of the region and is similarly certain to give rise to grassroots Pan-Arab rejection and awaking with the Pan-Islamic unifying force as a major component.

The U.S. blunder in Somalia could not be more humiliating to Somalis: Washington has delegated to its Ethiopian ally, Mogadishu's historical national enemy, the mission of restoring the rule of law and order to the same country Addis Ababa has incessantly sought to dismember and disintegrate and singled Ethiopia out as the only neighboring country to contribute the backbone of the U.S.-suggested and U.N.-adopted multinational foreign force for Somalia after the Ethiopian invasion, thus setting the stage for a wide-spread insurgency and creating a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism.
. . .

Pre-empting intensive Arab, Muslim and European mediation efforts between the UIC and the transitional government, Washington moved quickly to clinch the UN Security Council resolution 1725 on Dec. 6, recognizing the Baidoa government organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies and dominated by the warlords as the legitimate authority in Somalia after sending Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, to Addis Ababa in November for talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on bailing out the besieged transitional government by coordinating an Ethiopian military intervention.

Resolution 1725 also urged that all member states, "in particular those in the region," to refrain from interference in Somalia, but hardly the ink of the resolution dried than Washington was violating it by providing training, intelligence and consultation to at least 8,000 Ethiopian troops who rushed into Baidoa and its vicinity before the major Ethiopian invasion, a fact that was repeatedly denied by both Washington and Addis Ababa but confirmed by independent sources.
. . .

Real Security Concerns of Ethiopia

Regionally, the U.S. pretexts used by Addis Ababa to justify its invasion could thinly veil the land locked Ethiopia's historical and strategic aspiration for an outlet on the Red Sea by using the Somali land as the only available approach to its goal after the independence of Eritrea deprived it of the sea port of Assab.

Agreed upon peaceful arrangements with Somalia and Eritrea is the only other option that would grant Ethiopia access to sea - whether to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Bab el Mandeb or the Arabian Sea, and through these sea lanes to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. This option is pre-empted by the empirical dreams of Greater Ethiopia that tempted the successive regimes of Emperor Hailie Selassie, the military Marxist rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the incumbent U.S.-backed oppressive regime of Meles Zinawi, which were deluded by the military means of the only country with a semblance of a nation state and a military might in a regional neighborhood disintegrated into the poorest communities of the world by tribal strife left over by the British, French and Italian western colonialist powers; hence the Ethiopian wars with Eritrea and Somalia.

The Eritrean fear of an Ethiopian invasion of Assab via Somalia is realistic and legitimate, given the facts that Ethiopia's borders are, like Israel's, still not demarcated, its yearning for an access to sea as a strategic goal is still valid and its military option to achieve this goal is still not dropped because of the virtual state of war that still governs its relations with both Somalia and Eritrea. Hence the reports about the Eritrean intervention in Somalia, denied by Asmara, and the regional and international warnings against the possible development of the Ethiopian invasion into a wider regional conflict that could also involve Djibouti and Kenya.

Internally in Ethiopia, the successive regimes since Hailie Selassie were dealing with the demographic structure of the country as a top state secret and incessantly floating the misleading image of Ethiopia as the Christian nation it has been for hundreds of years, but hardly veiling the independent confirmation that at least half of the population are now Muslims, a fact that is not represented in the structure of the ruling elite but also a fact that explains the oppressive policies of the incumbent U.S.-backed regime.
. . .

Ethiopia's justification of its invasion by Washington's pretexts of the U.S. war on terror is misleading and encouraging Addis Ababa to justify its invasion by the "Islamic threat," leading some UIC leaders to declare "Jihad" against the "Christian invasion" of their country and in doing so contributing to turning an Ethiopian internal and regional miscalculations into seemingly "Muslim-Christian" war, which have more provocateurs in Addis Ababa than in Mogadishu.

The sectarian war among Muslims fomented by the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq within the context of "divide and rule" policy could now be coupled with a "religious war" in the Horn of Africa to protect the U.S. military presence that is "defending" the Arab oil wealth in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq against a threat to its mobility from the south, a war that could drive a new wedge between Arabs and their neighbors, in a replay of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and in tandem with a 60-year old Israeli strategy of sowing divide between them and their Ethiopian, Iranian and Turkish geopolitical strategic depth.

(from "Somali: New Hotbed of Anti-Americanism, The Latest Misadventure" Counterpunch, 3 Jan 2007, by Nicola Nasser, a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories)

Aaron Glantz:

U.S. Air Strikes in Somalia Condemned for Killing Innocent Civilians

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 19 (OneWorld) . . . According to the human rights organization Oxfam, U.S. and Ethiopian air strikes in Somalia last week killed 70 nomadic herdsmen who had no connection to any international terrorist group, including al-Qaeda, which the Pentagon said was the target of its attacks.

"There were no combatants amongst them," Oxfam's Wyger Wentholt said from neighboring Kenya.

"We suppose that it was a mistake and that they were wrongfully targeted," he said. "It could possibly be related to a bonfire that the herdsmen had lit at night, but that's something they normally do to keep animals and mosquitoes away from their herd."

Oxfam received its information from local Somali organizations that have been providing communities in the country's Afmadow district with emergency medical supplies, essential household items, and water chlorination services, as well as distributing food in areas where food is not locally available.

Wenthold said essential water sources were also damaged in the bombing.

The United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, also reported that an estimated 100 people were wounded by U.S. AC-130 gun-ships firing on the Somalia-Kenya border area of Ras Kamboni.

The human rights organization Amnesty International also protested the air strikes, noting that international humanitarian law prohibits direct attacks on civilians as well as attacks that do not distinguish between military targets and civilians, and those that, although aimed at a military target, have a disproportionate impact on civilians or civilian objects.
. . .

"The situation is not yet calming down," cautioned Oxfam's Wentholt. "There are indications that conflict will persist and I think that depends a lot on what comes out of the political developments."

Since late December, Oxfam estimates violence in Somalia has forced an estimated 70,000 people from their homes, and has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation. Last year, Somalia was hit first by severe drought and then the worst flooding in 50 years, leaving some 400,000 people homeless.

U.S. AC-130 'gun-ship'

"a" & "the": fact witnesses and propaganda

Floyd Rudmin, Preparing Us for War with Iran:

American psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus, and her colleagues have shown how rhetorical tricks can make people misconceive reality. In one study by Loftus and Zanni (1975), people were shown a film of a car accident, and then asked questions about what they saw. A random half of the witnesses were asked "Did you see a broken headlight?" and the other half were asked "Did you see the broken headlight?" In the first version, 7% of the people said they saw a broken headlight. In the second version, 17% said they saw the broken headlight. In fact, there was no broken headlight. If someone uses the definite article "the", then listeners and readers tend to presume that what follows actually exists.

In another study by Loftus (1975), people viewed a film and one group answered a questionnaire that included, "Did you see the children getting on the school bus?" and the other group did not get this question. A week later, people filled out a second questionnaire that contained the question, "Did you see a school bus?" Only 6% of the people who had not been exposed the the question a week earlier recalled seeing a school bus, but 26% of those who had been exposed to the the question a week earlier said "yes" they had seen a school bus. In fact, there was no school bus.

Thus, by the simple use of the, just one time, 10% of the people could be made to believe that something was there that was not there. With some additional details that fit, like children getting on school buses, and with the delay of a week to consolidate the false information, 20% of people could be made to believe that something was there that was not there.

Imagine the effectiveness of the, repeated over and over and over and over, for weeks and months, by authorities whom we are trained to trust, providing lots of information that coherently fits with the false claims. For example, the Independent article quoted President Bush using the three times:

"We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

There are in fact attacks on US forces (but done by anti-Iranian Sunni insurgents), and there are in fact networks providing advanced weapons for these attacks (but coming from pre-war Iraqi caches and pilfered from US supplies). Those two true facts serve to add coherence and believability to the unsubstantiated claim about "the flow of support from Iran and Syria" for which there is in fact no evidence. Thus we come to confidently believe something is there that is not there.

The Independent is careful not to serve as a propagandist for governments bent on misleading the public in order to make new wars. When unnamed officials make claims, they are not presented as true, but as alleged, reportedly. And when there is no evidence, the Independent says that there is no evidence:

"Officials have also reportedly claimed that thousands of Shia militia fighters have been trained in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Again, no evidence to support these claims has been made public."

American journalists writing for US media are much less careful, and much more comfortable reinforcing beliefs for which there is no evidence, other than the repeated over and over and over. For example, ABC News headlined a report, "EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Weapons Arm Iraqi Militia". The report quoted unnamed authorities that "smoking-gun evidence" has been found, that "the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias" and that "the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias". But the alleged weapons and other evidence are only hearsay, never made public and not seen by the reporter. The "smoking gun" is actually smoke and mirrors made by repeated use of the definite article the.

The world is again being tricked into war by empty rhetoric and fear, unsupported by facts.

headlines tell all

Hillary opposes Iraq troops 'surge'
Likely Democratic presidential hopeful calls for more resources to be devoted to Afghanistan.

Gates signals Afghan surge

(from the Guardian's world news page)

MLK

"Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

today's listening:

"Reverend King" - John Coltrane, from Cosmic Music, (Impulse 9148, 1966)

"The Dream / It's Time" - Max Roach, from Chatahoochee Red, (Columbia FC 37376, 1981)

Alice Coltrane 27 August, 1937 - 12 January, 2007

Alice Coltrane

LA Times obit

peace

Ram Narayan - the sarangi's "hum and buzz"

d/l Pandit Ram Narayan - Vol. 1
(Ocora 559060)





1. Rag Purya-Kalyan: Alap, Jor, Jhala
2. Rag Purya-Kalyan: Bandish, Drut

Ram Narayan: sarangi
Suresh Talwalkar: tabla

recorded Paris 1978 & Bombay 1979


This has long been one of my favorite Indian recordings. Ram Narayan pioneered the use of the sarangi as a classical solo instrument. Like poetry that would aspire to be 'musical,' the terrain of music that would emulate the human voice is quite rich & this recording occupies it quite comfortably.

from the notes by Christian Ledoux:

1. Rag Purya-Kalyan: Alap, Jor, Jhala

This traditional rag is played in the evening. It is a combination of rag Purya (which belongs to the Marwa family), and of rag Kalyan (which is played at the beginning of the night. It takes the seven notes of the Indian scale SA, RI, GA, MA, PA, DHA, NI, in which the second note RI is flattened (komal), the fourth note MA is sharp (tivra). The tonic SA differs according to the instruments played, but remains stable during the concert.

This noble and sometimes austere rag shows also a feeling of tenderness. It is rendered here in a very classical way, according to the melodic laws ruling it. The third and seventh notes are particularly important. The gentle strokes of Ram Narayan's bow gradually bring out the typical phrases of the rag (rupa), first in the slow and non-rhythmic alap, second, in the jor with the increasing speed of the tempo, third, in the very fast taan-s of the jhala (23'45 onwards).

2. Rag Purya-Kalyan: Bandish (Teental), Drut (Ektal)

A bandish is a composition for singing. This term can be applied to the sarangi as it is so associated with singing. (The gat deals only with instrumental compositions). Ram Narayan plays the theme within a slow 16 beat rhythm cycle (divided 4-4-4-4), several times in succession, while Suresh Tawalkar plays an introduction of rhythmic compositions on the tabla (peshkar). Once the theme has been presented several times, Ram Narayan develops other skillfully improvised melodies supported by the tabla player who plays only the rhythmic cycle (theka), and so on. A series of dazzling taans canbe heard after 10"40'. The drut follows, a fast composition in ektal (12 beats divided 4-4-2-2).

Born in 1927 in Rajasthan's Udaipur, his father was a musician "at the court of the Maharaja of Udaipur" who played the dilruba, described in the notes as "a sort of cross between the sitar with its movable frets and the sarangi with its bow," who "worked out a special and rather unusual fingering technique for his son . . ." to play the sarangi, starting at age 6.

Being associated since the 19th Century with the women-dancers (therefore with the courtesans) the sarangi has not since enjoyed a respectable reputation. Even though it is traditionally played for the accompaniment of classical singing, its status has been confined to a lower rank. Indispensable until a few decades ago for the accompaniment of khyal singing, it tends to be more and more replaced in this function by the harmonium or the violin. Its low status, its hair-striking difficult [sic - "sa difficulté redoubtable"] and the meager renumeration given for the accompaniment provided by the instrument discourage those who want to devote themselves to it. Another cause for its lack of popularity lies in the singers, who confess to being better supported by the harmonium or who accuse the sarangiyas of betraying them by being out of tune or by stealing the show through being better themselves.

During the concert the singer and sarangiya play alternately or in unison for the rendering of the composition (bandish). The sarangiya most often repeats the singer's musical phrases, like an echo. But he can launch himself into an improvised flight if the vocalist allows him to.

Ram Narayan studied as a child under a local sarangyia and also learned to sing dhrupad, "a hieratic and sober genre from which khyal originated," with the famous Dagar brothers (cf. Music of the World CDT-114). "The essential approach of dhrupad stands out in the alap elaboration more particularly." At 16 he was seeking employment at All India Radio in Lahore as a vocalist, "a ploy to increase his chances of employment. The producer he met did not take long to notice the scars on his nails, which he knew at once were the result of intense sarangi practice (from 10 to 16 hours a day)."

By the time he was just 14 years of age, Ramnarayan was a music instructor in a college in Udaipur; and by the time he was barely 16 years of age, he was appointed staff artiste by the All India Radio and posted in Lahore in undivided India. This was in 1943. By 1947, Ramnarayan had accompanied some of the foremost male and female classical singers of the time. His playing was both inspired and inspiring. He was able to spontaneously improvise as well as reproduce tonal nuances of the singers he accompanied. He played in the style of their ‘gharana’and made the sarangi both speak and sing in what we may now call, in retrospect the ‘gayaki ang’. . . .

He decided to become a free-lance sarangi artiste in Bombay where he could make himself financially independent by playing for commercial cinema as well as by cutting discs of his own. He recorded his first 78 r.p.m disc in 1950 with His Master’s Voice (now EMI) in Bombay. It is now a collector’s item with its beautiful rendering of the ragas Lalit and Marwa.

When Ramnarayan arrived with his sarangi in Bombay, film music directors did not know the potential of the sarangi. When he left the commercial film industry a few years later, music directors wondered what they would do without the sarangi of Pandit Ramnarayan. But Ramnarayan’s sight was set on something else that no one at that time thought was possible. His brother, Chaturlal accompanied Ali Akbar Khan on his pioneering visit to the West. Yehudi Menuhin welcomed and introduced them in the historic album “The Music of India”. In 1964, Ramnarayan and Chaturlal toured Europe and created a sensation. (from: A Tribute to Acharya Pandit Ramnarayan)

Sarangi and Ram Narayan are Inseparable:

. . . Initial reception to his solo performances , as expected in a traditionally orthodox environment, was rather lukewarm from all musical quaters. But having once decided to take a a different route, Ram Narayan persevered with an unfailing faith in the enormous potential of the sarangi and a supreme confidence in himself. Along with his brother Pandit Chatur lal (who is a great tabla player), Pandit Ram Narayan experimented with his instruments pursuing his search for the frontiers of expression of Indian Classical Music.

Ram Narayan had already been experimenting with the structure of the Sarangi and the bow, making necessary modifications in them. He also brought about changes in the traditional bowing technique as well as finger technique, all to suit the new role, the novel style of musical expression that he conceived for his musical instrument. By now, many of these changes have become established standards in sarangi playing.

from the cd notes:

At first a rather coarse affair, the sarangi has become through the ages a sophisticated bowed instrument whose imitative capacity to reproduce the sound and texture of the voice is without comparison. Hence its use for accompanying singers, which reminds us of the role played by the medieval fiddle in Europe during the middle ages. Its actual shape and structure probably date back to the 14th Century and it is mentioned in a 16th Century text. Successive improvements came later.

Its technique is unique in the fact that the back of the nails glide along the three gut strings placed 1 centimeter above the neck, which allows all types of phrases characteristic of Hindustani music: meend, which are glissandos prevalent in dhrupad, and gamakas, which are oscillations made around the notes and widely used in khyal. (Talc powder is used in order to ease the gliding of the palm on the side of the neck).

The gliding of the nails on the strings gives in the slow tempi a special flavour and much precision in the production of a continuous sound and it also enables the performer to display great virtuosity in rapid tempi.

The bow is rather broad and tightly held palm upwards, the middle and ring fingers being placed between the hair and the stick. The sarangi is made of a single block of "tun" wood carved out by hand and has a compact and asymetrical shape. The body or resonator is covered with goat skin on which is placed an ivory bridge. The neck, which is a continuation of the body, becomes slightly narrower at the tops and ends with a peg-box.

The perrenial charm of the sarangi lays in its sympathetic strings. Of all the the Indian instruments which have them (like the sitar and the sarod), it is the one that creates a halo of sounds for the most part continuous and integrated in the melodies, this being due to the everlasting vibrations emitted by the friction of the bow. The considerable umber of metallic strings further increases the resounding force (as compared to the 11 or 15 sympathetic strings of the sitar and the sarod). But their role is not confined in enriching the general sound effect: when perfectly tuned, they give a useful harmonic reference in order to reach the right notes as they start vibrating only on the impulse of the notes played on the frequency which correspond to any of them.

(back cover)

wikipedia:

. . . Of all Indian instruments, is said to get closest to the sound of the human voice – able to imitate vocal ornaments such as gamakas (shakes) and meend (sliding movements).

Sarangi music is vocal music. It is quite impossible to find a sarangi player who does not know the words of many classical songs. The words are usually mentally present during performance, and performance almost always adheres to the conventions of vocal performance including the organisational structure, the types of elaboration, the tempo, the relationship between sound and silence, and the presentation of khyal and thumri compositions. The vocal quality of sarangi is in a quite separate category from, for instance, the so-called gayaki-ang of sitar which attempts to imitate the nuances of khyal while overall conforming to the structures and usually keeping to the gat compositions of instrumental music. Most sarangi players learn to sing before they begin to play" . . .

Carved from a single block of wood, the sarangi has a box-like shape, usually around two feet long and around half a foot wide. The lower resonance chamber is hollowed out and covered with parchment and a decorated strip of leather at the waist which supports the elephant-shaped bridge. The bridge in turn supports the huge pressure of approximately 40 strings.

Three of the strings – the comparatively thick, tight and short ones – are bowed with a heavy horsehair bow and "stopped" not with the finger-tips but with the nails, cuticles and surrounding flesh (talcum powder is applied to the fingers as a lubricant). The remaining strings are resonance strings or tarabs (see: sympathetic strings), numbering up to around 35, divided into 4 different "choirs". On the lowest level are a diatonic row of 9 tarabs and a chromatic row of 15 tarabs, each encompassing a full octave plus 1–3 extra notes above or below. Between these lower tarabs and the main playing strings lie two more sets of longer tarabs, which pass over a small flat ivory bridge at the top of the instrument. These are tuned to the important tones (svaras) of the raga. A properly tuned sarangi will hum and buzz like a bee-hive, with tones played on any of the main strings eliciting echo-like resonances.

Divine Strake - "where is our democracy?"

The Pentagon is still determined to carry out the testing, known as Divine Strake, that it wants to conduct in order to unilaterally upgrade its nuclear weapons stockpiles. Although public pressure stopped the testing last summer, it was merely postponed, not cancelled. The Feds are now holding a new sort of public hearing; they talk, the public listens. The next one will be held this Wednesday in Utah.

Public Hearing is a dog-and-pony show

HEAL Utah and downwinders are outraged that the scheduled public hearings for the Divine Strake blast will not seek public input on the test. HEAL Utah and downwinders are calling upon Utah’s Congressional Delegation to demand real hearings that allow citizens to voice their concerns about the simulated nuclear detonation.

The federal government has promised public hearings on Divine Strake in Nevada, Utah and Idaho. Instead, poster sessions been scheduled only in Las Vegas, St. George and Salt Lake City.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration states that next Wednesday’s hearings in St. George and Salt Lake will be an open house format where people can look at informational posters and ask technical questions about the environmental assessment conducted for the test. The public will not, however, be able to voice concerns or offer comments about the decision to conduct the test itself.

A hearing implies that public input will be solicited, but this event is nothing more than a public relations ploy allowing the Pentagon and Department of Energy to shower the public with propaganda. “The public has never had a voice in Divine Strake,” says Salt Lake City downwinder Mary Dickson. “Just like during the 1950s, our government is clearly not listening to the public. Where is our democracy?”

According to Defense Department budget documents, the Divine Strake test is designed to identify the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground targets. Though the Defense Department now claims that there are no nuclear applications for the test, critics maintain tat information from the blast will aid in the design of new nuclear weapons.

The blast, which is predicted to create a 10,000 foot mushroom cloud, could disperse long-lived radionuclides at the Nevada Test Site, putting Utahns and other civilian populations down-wind once again. We fear the test will lead to the development of new nuclear weapons and resumed nuclear testing at the test site.

The blast from this detonation will be 50 times larger than the largest conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and will have a yield of .6 kilotons – corresponding to the lowest yield of the B61 nuclear bomb.

"No more mushroom clouds, nuclear or not,” says Dickson. “We must not allow Divine Strake.

Harry Fonseca: 5 Jan 1946 - 28 Dec 2006 - "the drama just grew and grew"

" . . . I bring 45 years of life to those canvases. I bring a tremendous amount of joy to those canvases, I bring a tremendous amount of freedom to those canvases, I bring a tremendous amount of anger . . . "

"When Coyote Leaves The Reservation (a portrait of the artist as a young Coyote)"

". . . the most profound political statement being made today is by any Native American that is still breathing"

Another great, creative soul has moved on—leaving us with a substantial body of work to contemplate, enjoy, absorb. I heard the news on KPFA; the Sacramento Bee didn't take notice, unlike the Albuquerque Journal. Harry Fonseca was born 60 years ago today in Sacramento, CA of Nisenan Maidu, Hawaiian, and Portuguese heritage & studied at Sac State with noted Native American (Wintun) artist/poet/teacher/dancer Frank LaPena (Tauhindauli), "but was reluctant to become an academic stylist, so he decided not to continue formal art education in order to pursue his own vision . . . In his close to twenty-year career as an exhibiting artist, Harry Fonseca's work has gone through a number of transformations, but the one constant has been his openness to new influences and sources of inspiration. " (see the bio on his webpage)

His work draws on Native American artistic traditions and imagery in dialogue with abstract expressionism, pop art, west coast figurative and abstract landscape painting, as well as other artistic trends from around the globe. I became aware of his painting sometime in the mid-80's, a period when I was reading some Native American mythology and exploring the pictographs & petropglyphs of the west, visiting sites in California, Nevada, Utah, British Columbia, and Baja. Fonseca's paintings struck an immediate chord. Here was someone working with this ancient imagery and mythology, utilizing it in a thoroughly contemporary idiom, and grappling with issues of identity, assimilation, diversity, tradition, and contemporary culture.

"Stone Poem #1" (1989, 60"x 72")

In an interview ten-some years ago with Larry Abbott, he recalls how:

. . . in terms of art education, I started in high school, but probably more important than doing actual painting—I remember painting with oils and how awkward that was, painting sail boats and that kind of thing—was the teacher I had. He would show us slides because he was educated in Italy, so he had tons of slides of the Renaissance. That was a really stimulating time to see all these images, so-called "fine art." Then, by the time I got to college, Abstract Expressionism was still popular, and I remember Robert Motherwell, seeing some of his work. I fell in love with that and started to really move paint around and drip paint and have a great time. But not really with any direction. It was almost art for art's sake.

The paint was just a going and a going. Then, I found out more about my Native American background, and became involved with the dances and the whole traditional base. That really gave me a foundation, not only for me but for my art work as well. It's still here. It's still very, very strong. It has a great deal of meaning to me, even when I am not doing a petroglyph, or a coyote or something, there's still something there.

LA: Some of your early work was based on basketry designs.

HF: I think at that time it wasn't even so much the painting. It was just the whole process of living . . . being involved with the Native American community . . . talking to Henry Azbill . . . talking to Frank Day . . . being taught by Frank LaPena . . . going up to the dances at Grindstone . . . being asked to dance with the Maidu dancers. Being initiated as a dancer was just a knockout! Life just went on . . . pot luck picnics and all of that stuff was involved. It's, I don't know, just very strange. The Santa Fe art scene, I'm not sure what it is. It's strong, but it's not the experience I had in Northern California. Of course, there is a very strong Pueblo connection to the art here. So, I'm in a foreign world in a way, but I like this world, too.

"Maidu Creation Story" (1999)

from the bio:

. . . the creation myth of his people, as recounted by his uncle, Henry Azbill, became the source of a major 1977 work, Creation Story. This piece visually embodies the underpinnings of Maidu culture. . . . This myth continues to inspire Fonseca, as his 1991 The Maidu Creation Story shows. The basic imagery of this painting recalls petroglyphic symbols, and although less figurative than the 1979 work, still seeks to give visual form to myth. Fonseca does not replicate his past imagery but looks for new ways of connecting to tradition. Regarding the 1991 work, Darryl Wilson has pointed out that Fonseca "was particularly struck by ancient rock art from the Coso Range in the high desert country near Owens Lake [north of Ridgecrest, California, 'protected' by the U.S. Navy]. Because of its powerful appeal, he incorporated some of its images into the similarly powerful and appealing creation story Henry Azbill told him."

. . .

Fonseca's continuing interest in rock art led him to develop the Stone Poems, an extensive series of works exploring the imagery of petroglyphs, not only from California but throughout the West and Southwest, especially Utah. The Stone Poems are not meant to be so much an interpretive recording of rock images but a way of self-exploration. The canvases, some as large as 6' by 12', suggest the size and scope of petroglyphic panels in situ.

He returned again to the creation myth in the 1999 painting shown above, and often used Coso imagery in his paintings, prominently here in the anthropomorphs of this painting also from the Stone Poem series:

"Nocturne #12" (1990)

Fonseca is probably best known for his many depictions of Coyote—dancing in traditional regalia or on an opera's proscenium stage, decked out in leathers or as an exotic movie star, hanging out in the painted desert, juggling, skateboarding in SoCal, or shufflin' off to Buffalo in an Uncle Sam suit—a mythologic presence negotiating and slyly confronting American culture.

Another level of transformation is evident in the Coyote series, which Fonseca began in 1979 (and which, after a few years' hiatus, he has started again). The subject of these works is Coyote, the trickster and transformer. Fonseca resituates the culture hero into contemporary settings, such as San Francisco's Mission District. Coyote can become an updated and sneaker-wearing Rousseau, holding his palette on a Parisian quay (Rousseau Revisited, 1986), or headress-clad and sneakered (Coyote in Front of Studio, 1983). Coyote becomes an alembic through which Fonseca filters his vision of the artist, and the Indian, in society. (bio)

Gary Snyder, in the "Forward" to The Maidu Indian Myths and Stories of Hanc'byjim (William Shipley, ed. & trans., Heyday, 1991), notes that after winning a "gamble" with Earthmaker as to whether there should be death or reincarnation ("When anyone is dead, / why should he come to be walking around again?"), it is Coyote in the creation story who "goes on to finish defining the world which is our present reality."

"St Coyote" (1993)

Fonseca, in the interview, talking about his St Coyote painting:

Well, that same coyote image is not a new image; I've done that in the past. What brought this about is, I had heard that the Catholic Church wanted to make Father Serra a saint and I just couldn't believe it. Then, the Native America community got involved in Southern California to protest his canonization. I don't know where it is at this point, but there was a commercial for tuna fish that said, "Sorry, Charlie, only the best tuna will do," or something. So, the original title of this Saint Coyote piece was Sorry, Father Serra, Only the Best Coyotes Will Do. Then, I turned it into Saint Coyote to make it a little cooler. I thought if anybody is going to get to sainthood, it's going to be coyote before Father Serra. It's also a play on the Renaissance with all the angels, and the Baroque period with everything moving around and those checkered floors. It's a fun piece.

from the bio again:

Fonseca's work took a more political turn with the 1992 Discovery of Gold and Souls in California series. Each of these small mixed-media pieces, measuring about 15" x 11", offer subtle variations on the image of a black cross surrounded by gold leaf and partially covered with red oxide. Fonseca has stated that this series "is a direct reference to the physical, emotional and spiritual genocide of the native people of California. With the rise of the mission system, and much later the discovery of gold in California, the native world was fractured, and with it, a way of life and order devastated."

"Discovery of Gold and Souls in California #28" (1992)

An insistent image of the artist's hand overlying the palimpsest of paint, layered history, a present-day echo of the ubiquitous hand-print found at rock art sites around the planet?

from the interview:

Again, I don't know the reason for them coming about, but I know how they came about. I was moving here to New Mexico. I'd put away everything but I wanted to paint, so I had some black paint, red oxide and some gold leaf, artificial gold leaf around, so I started to do the series. I did four of the crosses and then I thought, well, I don't know if I want to continue these because they were so brutal. I did four of them and called them The Discovery of Gold and Souls in California. There was something that intrigued me about the brutality but also the elegance of them, so I ended up doing 160, and I think that they probably are my most pointed political statements. That doesn't mean a great deal to me. I mean, I don't think you have to toss a bomb at something that you dislike to be conscious of political situation. I don't know if I told you this before, but I think the most profound political statement being made today is by any Native American that is still breathing. They don't have to be marching, you know, just breathing—they don't have to be doing anything. That's the perception that I have and so I don't need the drama in some political way. I would rather create drama in other ways.

The gold rush took place in the heart of Nisenan territory, already under siege by anglo settlers. "Between 1846 and 1870 alone, the number of California Indians declined from 150,000 to 30,000, an 80 percent reduction in population. They died from disease, starvation, forced labor, and state-sanctioned murder. Historian James Rawls refers to this event as 'California's Holocaust.'" Fonseca's Portugese heritage is due to the large numbers of immigrants from the Azores to the central valley; his Hawaiian side is the result of John Sutter's having "brought in 1939 10 Native Hawaiians to California, among them Fonseca's ancestors Ioane Ke'a'a'la O Ka'iana and Sam Kapu. Sutter's reliance on these Native Hawaiians and local Nisenan Maidu to build his fort and empire is not to be underestimated." (There's a small State Indian museum today outside the walls of Sutter's Fort State Historic Park; Discovery Park, at the junction of the American River with the Sacramento, sits on what was once a Nisenan village).

Visiting his sister in 1997 at the Shingle Springs Rancheria (160 acres, no mule), in the lower foothills about 10 miles from Coloma, site of another Nisenan village (& another SHP, Marshall Gold Discovery) where the valuable glittery stuff was famously found, Fonseca began a stunning new series, The Discovery of Gold in California, which are more intensely personal, abstract paintings.

"The Discovery of gold in California #35" (1997)

Being in the environment in that country, feeling the energy of the land, gave me a chance to work with the subject matter on a different level than before . . . The upheaval that took place on all levels was the catalyst for this body of work. It started with the land and Native American cultures that were disrupted if not destroyed, and evolved into how the Gold Rush affected everybody. The drama just grew and grew.

A healthy selection from this series (300 in number) can be viewed at the Oakland Museum's on-line gallery: The Discovery of Gold in California, from which the unattributed text & quotes above were taken.

Harry Fonseca: Earth, Wind, and Fire (1996. Essays by Elizabeth Woody, Margaret Archuleta, and Floyd Solomon. Trim size 9 x 9 inches; 40 pages; 10 color and 10 black-and-white illustrations) is out of print, but available as a pdf file.

& don't miss the galleries at The Fonseca Studio (click on "StudioWork")

The connections made in my work are not exclusively cultural. Myth and history comprise the thematic elements of my art. My paintings incorporate simple forms, basic color and design, and abstract landscape. Ancient symbols are rendered as contemporary and relevant without losing the past. In a passionate confrontation with this subject matter, images unfold and hint at the creative process itself. Mythology, transformed into a sense of myth, reveals its drama, its magic, its presence and life.

As an artist with 43 years of work, my art continues to grow and change. This growth and its process reveals the many cultures and the universal artistic exploration of passion, struggle and fight, and its subsequent transformation into art. (Growth and the Creative Process: 43 Years of Work, Harry Fonseca)

Thank you, Harry; your work continues to dance.

Harry Fonseca - three paintings

"Coyote Chief with Cigars"

"Dialogue with a Deer" (1996)

"Winter Solitude #5" (2002)

Fisk & Horton on Saddam Hussein's execution

Flashpoints Radio yesterday interviewed Robert Fisk & Scott Horton (chairman of the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association and adjunct professor of law at Columbia University) on the execution of Saddam Hussein, US/British collusion with his crimes, the burial of history, the Nuremburg trials, and the (il-)legality of this trial. Fisk wonders what it says about us & the world, when a notorious mass murderer appears to be the most dignified person at his own lynching. Listen or download at the link. Highly rec'd!

"in Western terminology . . ."

US reporters might serve the public much better if they were to recall the terminology of "Cold War" to refer to US-Iran relations. To recount some rather quickly forgotten history & view it through that frame. Certain remarks about Iraq being an historical footnote can take on a terrifying dimension.

Mahan Abedin:

Iran and the United States are at loggerheads over all the strategic issues in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world, ranging from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to America's half-hearted attempts at promoting "safe" forms of democracy in the region. Indeed, given the depth and intensity of animosity, the best the two sides can hope for in the foreseeable future is to prevent their "Cold War" from turning into actual military conflict.
. . .

Iranian-US relations since 1979 are truly unprecedented in the history of modern international relations. There are simply no paradigms or comparative frameworks to analyze against. The complete freezing of relations for more than a quarter of a century would not be so strange had there been more symmetry between the two countries. But this asymmetric Cold War pits a global hegemon with seemingly limitless resources against a regional power with modest means.

The confrontation works at historical, ideological and geopolitical levels. While all the levels are mutually reinforcing, usually one or two dominate the hostile dynamics at any given point in time.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 was the starting point of the conflict. The new revolutionary regime's misgivings toward the United States were in essence historical and revolved around America's highly questionable role in modern Iranian politics, ranging from organizing the 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh's nationalist government to buttressing the Pahlavi dictatorship. However, America's refusal fully to acknowledge the new regime (best highlighted by giving sanctuary to the deposed shah) transformed the Iranian revolutionaries' misgivings into downright animosity.

From the revolutionaries' perspective, the United States simply did not respect Iranian sovereignty. . . .

Badly bruised by the Iranian revolution (and the 444-day hostage crisis that soon followed), successive US administrations have nurtured an obsessive hatred toward the Islamic Republic. America's irrational fear of Iran is best understood in the context of geopolitical loss (ie, the downfall of the shah) and the politics of humiliation that followed. After all, the Islamic Republic sponsored the most successful anti-American organizations in the Middle East in the 1980s, not least the nascent Hezbollah, which can claim most of the credit for driving US and other Western forces out of Lebanon in the 1980s.

. . . it is very difficult to see under what circumstances the current US administration would even consider implementing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group that relate to dialogue with Iran. The animosity between Iran and the US is without parallel in the modern world and is also arguably the most dangerous friction point in international relations.

Asia Times also re-prints an interview with Iran's UN Ambassador Javad Zarif, conducted by the rightwing National Interest Online, which lists "Honorary Chairman Henry A. Kissinger," and "Chairman, Advisory Council James R. Schlesinger" on its masthead:

NIO: Do you perceive any change in the US attitude toward Iran since the release of the Baker-Hamilton Commission (Iraq Study Group) report? And how would you identify Iranian goals for Iraq? What can the US offer Iran and ask from it in discussions regarding Iraq, in order to gain Iran's utmost cooperation in attempting to restrain the sectarian fighting?

JZ: Well, Iran has every reason to want stability, national unity and democracy in Iraq with representation of all Iraq's communities in the governing structure. That is our objective and that is what we believe would ensure security for Iraq and stability in the region. We have supported the government of Iraq and we will continue to support the Iraqi government. When the United States goes about arresting Iranian diplomats who are in Iraq on the invitation of the Iraqi government, and are there to help the government with security, that indicates that the US might not share these objectives with Iran.

As far as US polices are concerned and the aftermath of the Baker-Hamilton report, what is needed is a change in the approach of the US towards Iran, towards Iraq, and towards the region. What has brought all these miseries to the region is that the US has dealt with the region based on wrong perceptions and a totally erroneous approach. The US must come to realize that other countries have interests, have concerns, have anxieties. The US must deal with these anxieties, concerns and interests, and not be concerned with only its own. Of course, any country in any situation will try to maximize its national interest. That's a given. But you have to address any situation based on a recognition that the other side also has these similar national interests.

If you deal with the other side as less than a human society, then don't expect to have multiple outcomes. What I'm saying is that in Western terminology, concepts are used that would infuriate the other sides. Even the terminologies used by the United States in the liberal realist tradition - such as "carrot and stick" - are not meant for humans, but rather for donkeys. In studies of Orientalism, the Eastern part of the world is dealt with as an object rather than as serious, real human societies with longer, older civilizations with concerns and needs that have to be dealt with.

Independent:

Iranian diplomats arrested by US forces

By Mariam Karouny in Baghdad, December 2006

The Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, has objected to the arrest by American forces in Iraq of two Iranian diplomats. US officials say that they were seized during raids against Iranians suspected of planning attacks on Iraqi security forces.

Iran said that the diplomats taken by the US military had been invited by the Iraqi government and warned that the move would "provoke unpleasant repercussions".

"The President is unhappy," said Hiwa Othman, Mr Talabani's spokesman. "He is talking to the Americans about it as we speak. The diplomats came to Iraq at the invitation of the President." He said he was not aware if they had met with Mr Talabani.

Mr Talabani, a Kurd, travelled to Iran last month in the latest of a series of high-level contacts between the two neighbours.

The US said that "a small number" of Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids, but that they were turned over to Iraqi authorities and released.Several other Iranians remained in custody.

"Our actions [to release the diplomats] were in no way dictated by pressure from the Iraqi government or any party in the government," it added in the statement.

Good they clarified that decision-making process—wouldn't want anyone to forget who's in charge now . . .