Constellations

Henry Grimes & Roscoe Mitchell - more photos

2010-10-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some more shots from the duets in Berkeley on the 15th. Craig M. at Memory Select: Avant-jazz radio has a nice write-up. Mitchell performed on alto, bass & soprano saxophones; Grimes on double bass & violin.

Henry Grimes & Roscoe Mitchell - Berkeley Oct 15, 2010

2010-10-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

Henry Grimes made a very special appearance at UC Berkeley's CNMAT (which used to be the home of Tom Buckner's 1750 Arch St), performing two sets of free improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell to an audience overflowing the small room. Two Masters at work - all ears on high alert. Here are a few photos from that evening:

2009-09-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

1992, fr. Cueva Alto Mono

Sierra de San Francisco, Baja CA

Aimé Césaire

2008-04-18T01:26:00.000-07:00

And always this misdeal to negotiate step by step
stuck as I am with inventing each waterhole.

from "Banal," Noria, 1976, in Collected Poetry (Cal, 1983)

1913-2008 (obit)

One of the 20th Century's major voices died yesterday (bio). Co-founder of the Negritude movement, Césaire's was an anti-colonial voice that insisted on its own particular terms of articulation, its own resistant syntax, rhythms, namings.

Hear the white world
horribly weary from its immense efforts
its stiff joints crack under the hard stars
hear its blue steel rigidity pierce the mystic flesh
its deceptive victories tout its defeats
hear the grandiose alibis of its pitiful stumblings

Pity for our omniscient and naive conquerors!

(from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, 1947, trans by Clayton Eshleman & Annette Smith)

Lenin, a few years ago, typed up a great snippet (he posted more) from the booklength Discourse on Colonialism (1955):

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a centre of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and "interrogated", all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely the continent proceeds toward savagery.

From "A Salute to the Third World / For Léopold Sedar Senghor", Ferraments (CP):

. . .
our Africa is a hand free of the cestus,
it is a right hand, palm forward,
the fingers held tight;

it is a swollen hand,
a-wounded-open-hand,
extended to
all hands, brown, yellow,
white, to all the wounded hands
in the world.

Dell's history of prison labor - the stain remains

2008-03-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

A Public Relations spokesoid from Dell stopped by Constellations today to leave a response to Monday's the dollars in the bars - "we're offering you competitive prison labor" post. The note is a friendly little example of the mix of corporate marketing/branding/propaganda that infests US social discourse today:

BryantatDell said...

Hi - I work at Dell on corporate responsibility issues and noticed your post today - a good topic to be raised indeed.

One note - in the highlight Dell is among the companies listed. It's important to note that Dell absolutely prohibits the use of prison labor -- either directly or through our suppliers -- globally.

In fact, among the other companies listed in that higlight I'm sure our competitors HP and IBM have similar prohibitions. Dell, HP and IBM were among the founders of the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (www.eicc.info ) which prohibits use of indentured labor in the industry's supply chain.

Mr. Hilton I presume?

Mr. Hilton is probably aware (which I wasn't when originally posting) that Vicky Pelaez' article is from 2005 and covers the growing prison labor industries of the previous quarter-century. He also knows very well that Dell had a contract with Unicor during that period, operating an e-waste recycling program at the Atwater, CA prison (see prison labor & e-waste—smashing a computer to pieces) before it received national publicity unfavorably comparing its recycling practices to those of HP.

Surely he recalls, after that outpouring of negative publicity, the 7-4-03 NYT article by LAURIE J. FLYNN headlined:

Dell to Stop Using Prison Workers:

Responding to concerns from both customers and environmental advocates, Dell Computer announced yesterday that it would no longer rely on prisons to supply workers for its computer recycling program.

Dell, the world's largest seller of PC's, said it had canceled its contract with Unicor, a branch of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that employs prisoners for electronics recycling and other industries.

. . .

Last week, an environmental group in California released a report criticizing Dell's reliance on prison labor.

The group, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, said in its report that inmates who work at the prison recycling operation were not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act and were paid from 20 cents to $1.26 an hour.

The report also criticized Unicor for not properly disposing of toxic waste.

. . .

Bryant Hilton, a spokesman for Dell, said that the decision to replace Unicor with other recycling contractors was a business decision, based in part on the fact that many other vendors are now more competitively priced.

But he conceded that the company had heard from some customers complaining about the prison program.

"We did not make a decision based on special interest groups," Mr. Hilton said.

& from a related article:

Dell Computer disputed the accusations in the report, saying that the recycling operations met environmental standards and that the prison population benefited from them. "Our goal is keeping all of our recycling offers as low cost as possible," a spokesman, Bryant Hilton, said. "Unicor is part of the answer."

He added that the work program was voluntary, not forced, and that inmates who took part in it had a 24 percent lower recidivism rate than the rest of the prison population.

Dell officials also disputed the contention that the prison labor recycling effort undercut the formation of an American recycling industry. "There is currently not enough capacity for electronics recycling in the United States," Mr. Hilton said. "Unicor is not driving anyone out of business."

I'd assume Dell was included in Vicky Pelaez' article because it employed prison labor during the historical period she covers. It's certainly not inaccurate as BryantatDell's note implies.

Saying that the "Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (www.eicc.info ) . . . prohibits use of indentured labor" is not the same as saying that it prohibits the use of prison labor, which, as the company spokesperson points out in the NYT article, is entirely voluntary.

There is nothing in the EEIC (which, it should be noted wasn't developed 'til 2004, & is dated 10/14/2005) that I can find which would preclude participation in prison work programs, nor from paying less than minimum wage when the law allows it:

The labor standards are:

1) Freely Chosen Employment

Forced, bonded or indentured labor or involuntary prison labor is not to be used. All work will be voluntary, and workers should be free to leave upon reasonable notice. Workers shall not be required to hand over government-issued identification, passports or work permits as a condition of employment.

. . .

4) Wages and Benefits

Compensation paid to workers shall comply with all applicable wage laws, including those relating to minimum wages, overtime hours and legally mandated benefits. In compliance with local laws, workers shall be compensated for overtime at pay rates greater than regular hourly rates. Deductions from wages as a disciplinary measure shall not be permitted. The basis on which workers are being paid is to be provided in a timely manner via pay stub or similar documentation.

Let's recall the conditions at Unicor's Atwater operation that Dell contracted for and that Mr. Hilton has publicly praised to be a "part of the answer":

UNICOR’s operation is organized primarily to maintain a maximum-security facility, rather than to maximize the efficiency with which e-waste is sorted and disassembled. Its prison warehouse is organizationally and technologically backward. Cheap labor, paid .20 to $1.26 per hour at Atwater, offers little incentive to invest in worker productivity. In addition, prison workers have few rights and little ability to improve health and safety conditions. Inmates toil outside the protection of state and local environmental and labor regulations that private sector recyclers must follow. Prison laborers are not considered employees and are not protected against retaliatory acts by their employer (UNICOR) under the Fair Labor Standard Act. Inmates are not allowed to unionize or to serve on the prison health and safety committees.

All 'voluntary.'

Dell is certainly to be commended for halting its exploitative use of prison laborers working for pennies under highly toxic, under-regulated conditions. (Unicor however continues its Atwater & other prison e-waste operations.)
It's also "important" for everyone to understand that discontinuing the Unicor contract was merely "a business decision" on Dell's part, and that even then, the company was vigorously affirming the general practice of prison labor & Unicor's business specifically - "a good topic to be raised indeed."

From what I understand of Dell's current recycling program, the company has taken a positive step in the right direction on that issue, regardless of whether it was a business decision, a public relations decision, or a "corporate responsibility" decision.

I'm curious, given the misleading response, if Dell can unequivocally declare that it & its subcontractors have "absolutely" forsworn any further use of prison labor in all aspects of its operations?

While Dell no doubt would like to erase its part in the history of this ugly exploitation, the stain remains.

dollars in the bars - "we're offering you competitive prison labor"

2008-03-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Capital demands growth.

Vicky Pelaez, from "The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?"

HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES

Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of "hiring out prisoners" was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else's land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery - which were almost never proven - and were then "hired out" for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of "hired-out" miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.

. . . "Today, a new set of markedly racist laws is imposing slave labor and sweatshops on the criminal justice system, now known as the prison industry complex," comments the Left Business Observer.

Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that "there won't be any transportation costs; we're offering you competitive prison labor (here)."

PRIVATE PRISONS

The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton's program for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Departments contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.

Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, "the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners." The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, they get 30 days added - which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING INMATES

Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state's governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.

After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 - ending court supervision and decisions - caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering "rent-a-cell" services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner.

quick! before a Democrat's in the White House . . .

2008-03-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

NEW DELHI, Feb 22 (IPS) - With the presidential race gathering momentum in the United States, a last ditch effort is being mounted to push through the controversial U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal, before the window of political opportunity slams shut in Washington.

The latest impetus for this comes through a meeting that three top-level visiting U.S. senators, led by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, had with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Feb. 20, during which they warned that time is running out for Indian leaders to complete the necessary steps before the agreement can be ratified by Congress.

Biden said he told Singh that "it was critical if India wanted that deal, that they move on it relatively soon, within a matter of weeks. You cannot run the clock out and expect us to be able to get it done’’.

The senators said that unless India sends the deal back to Washington, preferably by early May, and latest by early June, it would be practically impossible for U.S. Congress to ratify it: "If it is not ratified by Congress by July-end (when Senate goes into recess), there is no prospect" of it being ratified during the tenure of the Bush administration.

Biden was accompanied by John Kerry, Massachusetts senator and the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and Chuck Hagel, a leading Republican, from Nebraska.

Biden also warned: "If we do not have the deal now, it is highly unlikely that the next president will present the same deal to India.’’ link

NEW DELHI, Mar 6 (IPS) - Is the Indian government heading for a showdown with the domestic opposition on the controversial issue of the nuclear cooperation deal with the United States before the presidential election timetable closes that opportunity?

Going by the recent pronouncements of U.S. officials urging a May deadline to complete the deal, by statements by leaders of India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, and by the Left parties’ latest reactions to them, that would indeed seem to be the case.

As the government seemingly ups the ante, the Left is reportedly considering issuing it an end-March ultimatum to decide on the deal, or face withdrawal of its crucial support, which would put the ruling coalition into a parliamentary minority.

The general secretary of the Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M), the Left’s leading party, has written a letter to Mukherjee demanding a meeting of the special joint committee of the UPA and the Left on the deal by Mar.15.

Besides feverish U.S. lobbying, the impression that a final confrontation on the deal may be around the corner is strengthened by media reports which suggest that a section of the UPA wants to bow to U.S. pressure and seize the chance to complete negotiations on the deal so that it can be ratified by the Senate by the end of July.

. . .

"Within the past 10 days, both domestic and external factors which favour the deal have got strengthened," says a political source close to senior leaders of the Congress party, which leads the UPA, who insisted on anonymity.

"But on balance," says the source, "it is still not clear if the Congress’s top brass will want to sever the UPA’s relationship with the Left parties whose support it needs for a parliamentary majority."

. . . visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher tried to allay fears about a domestic U.S. law passed by Congress in 2006, called the Hyde Act, which enables the deal on certain conditions. The Act is a subject of much controversy in India, and mandates the U.S. government to cease nuclear cooperation with India, if India conducts a nuclear test.

India's opposition maintains that the Act trumps the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement signed last July between India and the U.S., called the "123 agreement" because it pertains to section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act. Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice affirmed the supremacy of the Hyde Act and said the U.S. government would work within its bounds.

But Boucher backed the Indian government’s view that "we can move forward" with both the Act and the 123 agreement "in a consistent manner"; the Act is nothing to worry about.

. . .

"U.S. officials have conveyed two clear messages to India," says M.V. Ramana, a nuclear analyst based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Environment and Development in Bangalore. "First, there is only a small window of opportunity for the deal if it is to be passed by Congress while President Bush is in power. So India must make up its mind very quickly."

The second message, adds Ramana, "is that the Bush administration has done its very best to facilitate the deal in the U.S. India should expect nothing more. Equally, India must be clear that the first commercial contracts from the deal should go to U.S. companies."

That explains part of the hurry to push the deal through. . . .

"This won't be an easy choice to make," argues Achin Vanaik. "A majority of parties in Parliament are opposed to the deal. This will compromise its legitimacy. If the Left withdraws support, the UPA will have to call an early election. But there is no guarantee that the UPA will not need the Left’s support yet again." link

& from an article last September:

The sequencing and timing of the process is being largely determined by the domestic political calculations of the Bush administration, which is heavily invested in the deal. The administration would like to present the agreement for the Congress’s ratification soon after its winter break.

"This only leaves a narrow window of opportunity for pushing the deal quickly through Congress," says M.V. Ramana, an independent nuclear affairs analyst at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore. "Clearly, the Bush administration feels that it can use the deal before the next Presidential election in favour of the Republican Party by touting it as a major foreign policy achievement -- in contrast to Iraq and Afghanistan. That's why it seems to be in a hurry to speed up the negotiations process." link

Ecuador, hostages & Columbian bodysnatchers

2008-03-06T13:43:00.000-08:00

a collection of news & commentary links, but first a reminder from James Petras, writing in 2005 after Venezuela confronted Columbia over its covert recruitment of Venezuelan military figures in the kidnapping of a Columbian leftist leader:

Once direct Colombian involvement was established . . . [the] Colombian regime took the offensive, launching an aggressive defense of its involvement in the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and, beyond that, seeking to establish in advance, under the rationale of "national security" the legitimacy of future acts of aggression. . . . In response the US Government gave unconditional support to Colombian violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and urged the Uribe regime to push the conflict further. What began as a diplomatic conflict over a specific incident has turned into a major, defining crises in US and Latin American political relations with potentially explosive military, economic and political consequences for the entire region.

In justifying the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda, the Colombian leftist leader, the Uribe regime has promulgated a new foreign policy doctrine which echoes that of the Bush Administration: the right of unilateral intervention in any country in which the Colombian government perceives or claims is harboring or providing refuge to political adversaries (which the regime labels as "terrorists") which might threaten the security of the state.

. . .

Uribe's offensive military doctrine involves several major policy propositions:

1.) The right to violate any country's sovereignty, including the use of force and violence, directly or in cooperation with local mercenaries.

2.) The right to recruit and subvert military and security officials to serve the interests of the Colombian state.

3.) The right to allocate funds to bounty hunters or "third parties" to engage in illegal violent acts within a target country.

4.) The assertion of the supremacy of Colombian laws, decrees and policies over and against the sovereign laws of the intervened country.

The Uribe doctrine clearly echoes Washington's global pronouncements. While the immediate point of aggression involves Colombia's relations to Venezuela, the Uribe doctrine lays the basis for unilateral military intervention anywhere in the hemisphere. Uribe's doctrine is a threat to sovereignty of any country in the hemisphere: its intervention in Venezuela and the justification provides a precedent for future aggression. link

Prescient, eh? Meanwhile,

BOGOTA, Mar 3 (IPS) - European envoys met over the weekend with members of the FARC rebel group’s central leadership to discuss how to move ahead in the efforts to negotiate a humanitarian exchange aimed at securing the release of Ingrid Betancourt and the rest of the hostages held in the jungle by the guerrillas.

"The negotiations are alive. Nothing has changed. Or everything has changed, except the negotiations," a European source told IPS, on condition of anonymity. link

Heinz Dieterich, a Mexico-based German sociologist and economist "who coined the phrase 21st century socialism":

I believe Bogotá and its ally, Washington, made a serious political mistake and underestimated the cost of this action. They did not take into consideration the media reaction, the position that Chávez would take, and the firm stance that Correa would assume in Quito.

I would say that this mistake will benefit the South American integration aims of progressive countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela.

IPS: What can be expected now from the sectors that are calling for a negotiated solution to Colombia’s armed conflict?

HD: In general terms, the situation strengthens the forces that want a negotiated solution, in Europe, Latin America and Colombia itself. We must not forget that Reyes was the middleman through whom France was negotiating in its attempt to secure the release by the FARC of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt (the highest profile hostage held by the guerrillas).

They killed the French government’s contact, and this has clearly led the countries of Latin America and many European nations to believe that this question can no longer be left solely in the hands of Uribe and Washington, whose war strategy has become a potential threat to regional peace and stability. link

"war strategy?" Plan Columbia.

Colombian officials later told reporters that U.S.-provided spying equipment and intelligence assistance had helped them track Reyes and guide them to the site, although officials here declined to comment on those reports.

U.S. diplomats "know they have very little credibility as a broker in this situation," said Michael Shifter, an Andes expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a prominent think tank here.

"The U.S. is completely aligned with Colombia, and it's pretty widely believed that it helped with intelligence and provided technical support to help pinpoint the target, although I don't think there is any evidence that (the raid itself) was a U.S. decision." link

[As if there were any question that this operation, likely involving NSA assistance, was approved by Washington.]

According to the Colombian TV newscast Noticias Uno, Reyes had already been designated as the target of a military operation back in December.

His satellite phone was located "in late 2007." Although he almost always kept it turned off, every time he switched it on, even briefly, its coordinates were detected via satellite.

On Feb. 21, Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos and armed forces chief General Freddy Padilla reported that the government had located the site where the four hostages to be released were being held.

Both Santos and Padilla said one of the hostages, Jorge Eduardo Gechem, was seriously ill and offered safety guarantees for the FARC to hand him over immediately.

According to Noticias Uno, which based its report on official sources, the report was a ploy to force Reyes to use his satellite phone again, which he did, enabling the Colombian military to pinpoint his location. [Robert Knight mentioned last night, on Flashpoints Radio (Wed 3/5/08) that gps tracking devices in newer cellophones continue to work & be accessible to law enforcement, even though the user thinks it is disabled.]

Another phone call made by Reyes indicated that he would be at a specific spot on Feb. 29, Noticias Uno reported. The government added that it also obtained information from two individuals, in exchange for large rewards. link

In other words, the US signed off on & assisted a plan to sabotage hostage negotiations (involving our allies) by assassinating the rebels' most prominent contact with the outside world as a pre-emptive propaganda ploy.

Last night, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that if Farc released Betancourt, feared to be gravely ill after six years as a hostage, some countries could be persuaded to stop designating the group as terrorists.

"If they let Ingrid Betancourt die, of course, there will be no discussion about that," Sarkozy told Colombia's RCN television. "If they free Ingrid Betancourt, maybe some place in the world will see them a little differently." link

No. Bring on the bombs.

Obama Statement on Recent Events near Colombia’s Borders - March 03, 2008

“The Colombian people have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of a brutal terrorist insurgency, and the Colombian government has every right to defend itself against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The recent targeted killing of a senior FARC leader must not be used as a pretense to ratchet up tensions or to threaten the stability of the region. The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have a responsibility to ensure that events not spiral out of control, and to peacefully address any disputes through active diplomacy with the help of international actors.”

Statement from Hillary Clinton - 3/3/2008

“Hugo Chavez’s order yesterday to send ten battalions to the Colombian border is unwarranted and dangerous. The Colombian state has every right to defend itself against drug trafficking terrorist organizations that have kidnapped innocent civilians, including American citizens. By praising and supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Chavez is openly siding with terrorists that threaten Colombian democracy and the peace and security of the region. Rather than criticizing Colombia’s actions in combating terrorist groups in the border regions, Venezuela and Ecuador should work with their neighbor to ensure that their territories no longer serve as safe havens for terrorist groups. After reviewing this situation, I am hopeful that the government of Ecuador will determine that its interests lie in closer cooperation with Colombia on this issue. Hugo Chavez must call a halt to this provocative action. As president, I will work with our partners in the region and the OAS to support democracy, promote an end to conflict, and to press Chavez to change course.” link

Violation of sovereignty? Policy of assassination across borders? Bombing one's neighbors? Gruesome public exhibition of the bodies? Not a word of complaint. Just a tired old phrase.

. . . every right to defend itself

Heard that somewhere before.

Claims by the Colombian government to have acted in self-defense have been refuted by survivor testimonies and Ecuadorian government investigations which reveal evidence that it was a pre-planned "massacre" of a sleeping encampment.

On top of that, reports that U.S. Admiral Joseph Nimmich met with Colombian military leaders in Bogotá two days before Saturday`s attacks with the stated purpose of "sharing vital information in the fight against terrorism" have fueled suspicions of direct U.S. involvement in invasion.

Along the same vein, the international Spanish language news agency EFE and The Guardian report the use of cluster bombs in Saturday`s attacks, weapons which have been denounced by human rights organizations. link

Not something likely to be read in a US newspaper.

While some press in the United States question whether Chavez is using this situation as an opportunity to distract Venezuelans from their social problems, this excessive focus on him is in fact distracting people in the US from having a much needed dialogue on their own governments' role in fomenting this so-called "Andean Crisis". As a result, the tough realities and repercussions from the US government's support for a military solution in Colombia are being overlooked.

Emboldened and armed with the multibillion dollar support of Plan Colombia, the Uribe government has decided to violate international law rather than attempting mediated discussions with the FARC.. link

Why now? Peace, stability & regional unity outside US control are perceived to be a threat to its "interests." Senator Cristovam Buarque, a member of Brazil's Senate Foreign Relations Committee, believes that:

An armed conflict, even one of limited scope "lasting a single day and with as few as two soldiers killed, would leave a permanent blot" on South American relations, and would completely undermine the regional integration process . . . link

Further regionalizing Columbia's conflict looks like a desperate attempt to slow or derail current efforts under way both within and outside of Columbia that have been gathering steam. Commentators James J. Brittain and R. James Sacouman write that:

A few weeks after the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan state called on the Colombian government to respect the need for peace and negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP), the administration of Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010) supported an extensive armed air and land assault against the insurgency movement--not within Colombia's borders but rather on the sovereign territory of Ecuadorian soil.

. . .

The actions of Saturday 1 March took place days before a major international demonstration scheduled for 6 March, 2008. Promoted by The National Movement of Victims of State-Sponsored Crimes (MOVICE), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and countless social justice-based organizations, March 6th has been set as an international day of protest against those tortured, murdered, and disappeared by the Colombian state, their allies within the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) and the newly reformed Black Eagles. Recently, President Uribe's top political adviser, José Obdulio Gaviria, proclaimed that the protest and protesters should be criminalized. In addition, paramilitaries in the southwestern department of Nariño (not far from where the illegal incursions were carried out in Ecuador), have threatened to attack any organization or person associated with the activities scheduled for Thursday.

It is believed that the Uribe and Santos administration is utilizing the slaughter of Comandante Raúl Reyes and others as a method to deter activists and socially conscious peoples within and outside Colombia from participating in the March 6th events. Numerous state-controlled or connected media outlets, such as El Tiempo (which has long-standing ties to the Santos family), have been parading photographs of the bullet ridden and mutilated corpse of Raúl Reyes throughout the country's communications mediums. Such propaganda is clearly a tool to psychologically intimidate those preparing to demonstrate against the atrocities perpetrated by the state over the past seven years.

Over the past two months, numerous researchers, scholars, and lawyers have supported the call to declare the FARC-EP a legitimate force fighting against the corrupt Colombian state. In January 2008, Ecuador's Foreign Minister Maria Isabel Salvador argued that the FARC-EP should no longer be depicted as a terrorist organization. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez too announced that the FARC-EP are far from a terrorist force but are rather a real army, which occupies Colombian territory and shares in a Bolivarian vision for a new Latin America. Mexican deputy Ricardo Cantu Garza also has promoted the recognition of the FARC-EP as a belligerent force legitimately fighting against a corrupt and unequal sociopolitical system.

. . .

From Copenhagen to Caracas, numerous state officials have denounced the description of the FARC-EP as a terrorist organization. Progressive officials and administrations in Mexico, Ecuador, and Venezuela have rather opted for the status of belligerent or irregular forces to more accurately depict the FARC-EP domestic and geo-political stance. Disturbingly, in the face of this evidence and the FARC-EP's consistent promotion for a humanitarian prisoner exchange and peace negotiations with the state in a demilitarized zone in southwestern Colombia, the Uribe and Santos administration has moved ever farther away from supporting an end to the civil war within Colombia by opting for systemic violence.

Brazil can help itself here as it is taking a prominent role at the OAS discussions to de-escalate the situation. Clifton Ross, in an article last September, focuses on Ecuador's ties to Brazil and its role in the greater region. Napoleon Saltos Galazara, a writer/activist/politician from Ecuador's indigenous social movements, mentions that:

"[President Correa] says, 'we're going to confront imperialism and the oligarchy; we're going to take on the right wing, down with partyocracy!' And he won the election. However, even though Correa confronts this sector, he's allied with the second axis, the Manta-Manaus axis, or the China-Brazil, East-West axis."

Ross talks about the on-going complex jockeying for position in Latin America which is largely invisible to the US public:

This division between Brazil and Venezuela was best symbolized by the brand of energy each country promotes, ethanol and petroleum, respectively, but there is much more to the story than what goes into the gas tank of a car. And Ecuador may be the key chess piece in the regional Great Game. Among others, Ecuadoran writer Kintto Lucas in his book on recent Ecuadoran history, "Un pais entrampado," sees Ecuador as an integral part of Brazil's aspiration to carve a path to the Pacific, using what is called the "Manaos-Manta multi-modal corridor."
. . .
The U.S., in its National Security Strategy of September 17, 2002, proposed to prevent any possible players from challenging its supremacy, stating that "America (sic) will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed." On the American continent it hoped to contain such "emerging threats" as Brazil by means of walling it in along the Pacific by means of "free trade" agreements with Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. The 2006 election of Correa to the Presidency of Ecuador just as the nation considered such a treaty changed all that. Since that time, Ecuador has effectively broken the US-imposed barrier to the Pacific and now clears the way for the Brazilian dreams of empire, or at the very least, the further strengthening of a great regional power.

Nevertheless, the struggle to contain Brazil continues to be part of the greater problem of constructing a regional unity that will enable the southern nations to contend with their more immediate concern, and that is the still-present threat of the U.S. empire. Ecuador's current strategy seems to be to build alliances with Venezuela, Brazil and whatever other potential allies may offer to consolidate a block of power against U.S. hegemony.

Tomás Peribonio, ex-Minister of Foreign Trade under President Alfred Palacio, is now working as a contractor for the current Correa government designing the Manaos-Manta multi-modal corridor. . . . he emphasizes that "the most important thing is regional unity." The construction of this multi-modal corridor, he describes as a "mega-project" that would be constructed "over the course of years and perhaps even decades." The aim, he says, is to unite "Pacific Asia, which, from my point of view, is the area of major world commerce, managing about fifty percent of world trade" with the Atlantic, specifically Brazil, which is increasing its cultivation of soy and other grains with an eye on exports.

For Peribonio regional integration begins at home, with Ecuador, a country that commonly characterizes itself as the "nation of four regions," which are the Amazon, the mountains, the plains and coast, and the Galapagos. These regions have experienced strong tensions and this fact has often been posed as a primary problem confronting national leaders as they attempted to unite the country. This multi-modal corridor, Peribonio hopes, will serve to first unite the country and then go on to unite Ecuador with Peru and Brazil, since the corridor would also go through Peru. Finally, says Peribonio, the corridor would integrate Ecuador more firmly into the world economy.

"there would have to be consequences" - ready, set . . .

2007-03-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

Guardian:

Tony Blair is pushing the United Nations to declare a no-fly zone over Darfur, enforced if necessary by the bombing of Sudanese military airfields used for raids on the province, the Guardian has learned.

The controversial initiative comes as a classified new report by a UN panel of experts alleges Sudan has violated UN resolutions by moving arms into Darfur, conducting overflights and disguising its military planes as UN humanitarian aircraft.
. . .

According to Downing Street, he is pushing for a no-fly zone to be passed at the same time as the new sanctions package, in the form of a 'Chapter 7' security council resolution, allowing the use of force.

"The prime minister believes we can do them together," said a Downing Street source. "There could be an agreement in the security council that there could be a no-fly zone. If the Sudanese government broke that agreement there would have to be consequences."

The imposition of a no-fly zone, of the kind employed over Iraq before the invasion, has been widely dismissed by military experts as impractical over an area as large as Darfur, which is the size of France. But the Guardian has learned that US and British officials are considering a cheaper alternative: punitive air strikes against Sudanese air force bases if Khartoum violated the no-fly zone.

The example being considered is the Ivory Coast, where the French wiped out much of the Ivorian air force while its planes and helicopters were sitting on the tarmac, in November 2004. The air strikes were in reprisal for the deaths of nine French peacekeepers in an Ivorian raid on rebel-held areas in the north.

& Tony Blair on the captured British sailors:

"I hope we manage to get them to realize they have to release them," Blair said in an interview with GMTV. If not, then this will move into a different phase."

the Guardian again:

. . . the U.S. Navy staged its largest show of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, launching a mammoth exercise meant as a message to the Iranians.

The maneuvers with 15 warships and more than 100 aircraft were sure to heighten tensions with Iran . . .

F/A-18 fighter jets roared off the Stennis' flight deck all day, mounting a dozen rapid-fire training sorties against imaginary enemy ships and aircraft. A second task force with the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower also took part in the drills.

"These maneuvers demonstrate our flexibility and capability to respond to threats to maritime security," said Navy Lt. John Perkins, 32, of Louisville, Ky., as the Stennis cruised about 80 miles off the United Arab Emirates after entering the Persian Gulf overnight.

"They're showing we can keep the maritime environment safe and the vital link to the global economy open."
. . .

None of America's naval coalition partners in the region joined the maneuvers.

. . . Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said . . . "The exercise should reassure our friends and allies of our commitment to security and stability in the region," Whitman said. "We are not interested in confrontation in the Gulf."

The war games involve more than 10,000 U.S. personnel mounting simulated attacks on enemy aircraft and ships, while hunting submarines and looking for mines.

"What it should be seen as by Iran or anyone else is that it's for regional stability and security," Aandahl said. "These ships are just another demonstration of that. If there's a destabilizing effect, it's Iran's behavior."

The U.S. drills were the latest in a series of competing American and Iranian war games. Iran conducted naval maneuvers in November and April, while in October the Navy led a training exercise aimed at blocking nuclear smuggling.
. . .

In February, the 5th Fleet's then-commander, Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, said he had assured Arab allies that Washington was trying to avoid "a mistake that boils over into war" with Iran.

Can it get any thicker? Can smoke be any more transparent?

meanwhile, from Afghanistan comes this report of NATO's segregated toilets:

Under a bizarre policy that echoes the days of segregation in the United States, Afghans who work at the NATO base at Kandahar Airfield must use separate toilets marked "local nationals only." Several Afghans told The Globe and Mail the practice is insulting, but they are dependent on NATO for their livelihoods and reluctant to speak out.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Blevins, the U.S. officer in charge of administrative contracts, said the segregated toilet policy exists because the bathroom habits of the Afghans are different from those of the North Americans and Europeans who work at the base.

"We’ve always had this policy," Lt.-Col. Blevins said. "It’s not based on a racial thing; it’s just how they use the toilets. They’re not used to toilets. They use squats, or holes in the ground."

One Afghan, who has worked at the base for five years as an interpreter, laughed at this suggestion.
. . .

He said that foreign soldiers told him they wouldn’t use the same toilets as Afghans because they are afraid of catching something contagious.
. . .

Lt.-Col. Blevins said he thinks of the policy as a cultural accommodation, and it makes life easier for the cleaners.
. . .

A few Afghan employees have the privilege of being able to use either set of toilets because they have worked with the coalition long enough to be considered trusted agents.
. . .

More than 1,200 local people come through the gates of Kandahar Airfield most days, according to the Canadian guards who operate the main entrance.

They work in a variety of jobs, from manual labor to translation. They are the Afghans who, in a conflict increasingly characterized as a battle for hearts and minds, have the most direct contact with coalition forces.

ahem . . .

Ruby Rodriguez - another transgender murder

2007-03-24T12:58:00.000-07:00

from the mailbox;

A Nicaraguan transgender woman, Ruby Rodriguez, 24 years old, was murdered on Friday, March 16, 2007. Her body was found on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Indiana Streets in the Mission District of San Francisco. The murder is currently under investigation by the San Francisco Police Department. Community United Against Violence (CUAV), EL-LA, San Francisco LGBT Community Center, TRANS Project, allies, and community members [held] a community vigil in her honor on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 6:00PM, on the corner of 24th Street and Mission Street in the Mission District.

. . . She was an exceptional woman who was intent on improving her life. Ruby participated in various support groups and language classes, and idolized Chicana singer Selena.

This murder comes at the heels of at least two other violent deaths of transgender women of color in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past six months. Transgender people, particularly low-income transgender women of color, are disproportionately poor, homeless, criminalized and imprisoned as a result of systemic discrimination in our daily attempts to access safe housing, healthcare, employment, and education.

Unfortunately, Ruby's murder is not an exception, but an everyday fear for many transgender people who are targeted and brutalized by institutions and society at large. Our communities mourn Ruby's death and ask for a renewed commitment to real safety for transgender communities. It is vital that the Mayor's Office, the San Francisco Police Department, and the District Attorney's Office work to end the cycles of criminalization, poverty, and violence in transgender communities and communities of color.

After the 2002 murder of Hayward transgender teen Gwen Araujo, a jury found her killers (some of whom had sex with Gwen) guilty of second degree murder, but declined to return a conviction on a hate crime charge. Still, as the Transgender law Center pointed out:

. . . the Alameda County District Attorney’s office has set a new standard for prosecuting transgender murder cases. You don’t have to look any further than Fresno County to see what the standard still is in many DA’s offices. Last month, a Fresno County DA accepted a four year plea bargain for a person who confessed to stabbing and killing a transgender person. In stark contrast, the Alameda DA’s office devoted their office’s full resources to this case not once, but twice. Along the way, they faced and beat down some of the most egregious uses of transgender panic tactics that many of us hope to ever see in a courtroom.

This year, we also saw media coverage that had once been sensationalistic and oftentimes disrespectful of Gwen’s identity evolve into coverage that correctly identified the defendant’s as the people on trial (not Gwen) and their actions as the thing being judged (not Gwen’s identity). This evolution is not limited to Bay Area print, broadcast, and internet journalists. I’ve spoken with journalists from around the U.S. who have said that the coverage of this case has sparked dialogues and changes in their newsrooms as well.

Gwen's murder & the consquent trial resulted in CA Governor Schwarzenegger signing the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act (AB 1160), which "puts California firmly on record as opposing a defendant’s use of societal bias against their victim in order to decrease their own culpability for a crime."

"Panic strategies are a cynical way for homicide defendants whose victims are members of a disfavored group to appeal to a jury’s worst impulses,” said Transgender Law Center Director Christopher Daley. “The Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act is a significant step towards preventing the same societal bias that killed Gwen and Joel from affecting a jury’s deliberations. It’s signage into law also advances California’s status as the most protective state in the nation for transgender people.”

Joanne Kyger - "The Insurgents" - "belligerent naked Indy stalks"

2007-03-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

The Insurgents

Surging in       like sea waves do
                Not a revolution     not belligerency

But an uprising   rising up
                            Of focused nameless opposition

                                                   Keeps you very busy
                      Farewell, I must leave, bye-bye

“The insurgency is sophisticated
              and stronger than anticipated…”

                           “My name is Isis” says a small child
                                             “and that means Egyptian Goddess”

“No it means    stupid dirty    little girl”
     says the California Secretary of Education

           Constantly create the enemy
                     Constantly create the war
                          “I’m a war president, I’m a war president”

Belligerent naked Indy stalks
   Completely without leaves

                   On a cliff above the high tide surging
                            In a huge gathering flow

                                  Can you beat THIS into submission?

                                                                                         July 20, 2004

by Joanne Kyger, first published in Night Palace as issue #96 of Sylvester Pollett's Backwoods Broadsides series. Eco-buddhist poet writing from the magical hamlet of Bolinas, CA on the southern tip of the Point Reyes peninsula, slowly slipping against the grain of the continental plate, on a long geological slide to Mexico, Joanne's poetry offers a whimsical yet unflinching take on the world. Attentive mind.

Don't miss the 10 poems from 2003 posted by Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek which are quite topical. Linda Russo edited a Kyger feature for Jacket 11; check out the interviews and Russo's intro placing Joanne in the gender poetry politics of '50s San Francisco, as well as the articles by Anne Waldman, Andrew Schelling, Jonathan Skinner & others.

Author of over 20 books, As Ever: Selected Poems (Penguin, 2002) is readily available.

COPA falls in court — "impermissibly vague and overbroad"

2007-03-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. in Philadelphia has found the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) unconstitutional on its face, with a ruling that puts the responsibility for keeping porn away from kids back where it belongs—on the parents:

"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection," Reed wrote in his 84-page opinion in ACLU v. Gonzales [pdf].

The crux of Reed’s reasoning in striking down the law was that there are less-restrictive means available for protecting children than a criminal statute that will have a chilling effect. Parents, Reed said, can protect their children through software filters and other means that do not limit the rights of others to free speech.

The law would have criminalized Web sites that allow children to access material deemed “harmful to minors” by “contemporary community standards.” The sites would have been expected to require a credit card number or other proof of age. Penalties included a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison.

Sexual health sites, the online magazine Salon.com and other Web sites backed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 upheld a temporary injunction Reed had issued early in the case that blocked the law from ever taking effect. [twice: Ashcroft v. ACLU and 2004 ruling Ashcroft v. ACLU, II.]

Reed didn't have to tackle the sticky question of how to apply "contemporary community standards" to the internet, so that the values of a conservative community in Somewheresville can't be used to prosecute someone living anywhere else in the country. NY photographer Barbara Nitke tried to raise this issue in court, but was required to offer near impossible levels of evidence of conflciting standards actually inhibiting speech, even though the trial court agreed that her artistic depictions of sexually marginalized communities put her at risk of prosecution under Miller definitions—which could be unknowingly violated at any time.

The COPA case did briefly flash across the public radar recently, when

[d]iscovery in the case sparked a legal firestorm last year when Google challenged a Justice Department subpoena over what information people seek online. Justice lawyers had asked Google to turn over 1 million random Web addresses and a week’s worth of Google search queries.

A judge sharply limited the scope of the subpoena, which Google had fought on trade secret, not privacy, grounds.

To defend the nine-year-old COPA, government lawyers attacked software filters as burdensome and less effective, even though they have previously defended their use in public schools and libraries.

Great uproar over the privacy invasion & rightly so. What should have also drawn broad condemnation from soi-disant liberals was that the language of the statute would clearly apply to a wide range of speech which the more liberal anti-porn crusaders (call 'em the Tipper crowd) would not have intended to restrict, such as sex education sites. With war the favored paradigm, and a fear of porn that runs deep through America's political fabric—shame shame shame cries the chorus—thankfully there are still a few judges left on the bench who won't pander to it:

. . . Reed disagreed, saying that argument [the credit card requirement] revealed the government’s “fundamental misunderstanding of the reach of COPA: COPA does not apply merely to commercial pornographers but to a wide range of speakers on the Web.”

Due to the broad wording of the statute, Reed said, the law “clearly covers far more speakers on the Web than those who might be defined as commercial pornographers.”

Specifically, Reed found that the law’s use of the terms “commercial purposes” and “engaged in the business” would allow for COPA to be applied to “an inordinate amount of Internet speech.”

As a result, Reed concluded that COPA “facially violates the First and Fifth amendments” because it is “impermissibly vague and overbroad” and was not “narrowly tailored to Congress’ compelling interest,” and the government failed to prove that the statute is the “least restrictive, most effective alternative” in achieving the compelling interest of protecting minors.

COPA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1998 without Al Gore uttering a peep of disapproval; it has only taken eight plus years to excise this attaack on free speech. Don't be surprised if the government appeals this decision.

looters - creating poverty . . . & obscene wealth

2007-03-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

James Petras, Meet the Global Ruling Class:

. . . the Market, or better still, the US-IMF-World Bank orchestrated Washington Consensus was the driving force behind the rise of the Latin American billionaires. The two countries with the greatest concentration of wealth and the greatest number of billionaires in Latin America are Mexico and Brazil (77 per cent), which are the two countries, which privatized the most lucrative, efficient and largest public monopolies. Of the total $157.2 billion owned by the 38 Latin American billionaires, 30 are Brazilians or Mexicans with $120.3 billion . The wealth of 38 families and individuals exceeds that of 250 million Latin Americans; 0.000001 per cent of the population exceeds that of the lowest 50 per cent. In Mexico, the income of 0.000001 per cent of the population exceeds the combined income of 40 million Mexicans. The rise of Latin American billionaires coincides with the real fall in minimum wages, public expenditures in social services, labor legislation and a rise in state repression, weakening labor and peasant organization and collective bargaining. The implementation of regressive taxes burdening the workers and peasants and tax exemptions and subsidies for the agro-mineral exporters contributed to the making of the billionaires. The result has been downward mobility for public employees and workers, the displacement of urban labor into the informal sector, the massive bankruptcy of small farmers, peasants and rural labor and the out-migration from the countryside to the urban slums and emigration abroad.

The principal cause of poverty in Latin American is the very conditions that facilitate the growth of billionaires. In the case of Mexico, the privatization of the telecommunication sector at rock bottom prices, resulted in the quadrupling of wealth for Carlos Slim Helu, the third richest man in the world (just behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) with a net worth of $49 billion . Two fellow Mexican billionaires, Alfredo Harp Helu and Roberto Hernandez Ramirez benefited from the privatization of banks and their subsequent de-nationalization, selling Banamex to Citicorp.

Privatization, financial de-regulation and de-nationalization were the key operating principles of US foreign economic policies implemented in Latin America by the IMF and the World Bank. These principles dictated the fundamental conditions shaping any loans or debt re-negotiations in Latin America.

. . . Half of Mexican billionaires inherited their original multi-million dollar fortunes on their way up to the top. The other half benefited from political ties and the subsequent big payola from buying public enterprises cheap and then selling them off to US multi-nationals at great profit. The great bulk of the 12 million Mexican immigrants who crossed the border into the US have fled from the onerous conditions, which allowed Mexico's traditional and nouveaux riche millionaires to join the global billionaires' club.

Brazil has the largest number of billionaires (20) of any country in Latin America with a net worth of $46.2 billion , which is greater than the new worth of 80 million urban and rural impoverished Brazilians. Approximately 40 per cent of Brazilian billionaires started with great fortunes and simply added on through acquisitions and mergers. The so-called 'self-made' billionaires benefited from the privatization of the lucrative financial sector (the Safra family with $8.9 billion ) and the iron and steel complexes.

. . . What is repeatedly demonstrated in both Russia and Latin America is that the key factor leading to the quantum leap in wealth from millionaires to billionaires was the vast privatization and subsequent de-nationalization of lucrative public enterprises.

If we add to the concentration of $157 billion in the hands of an infinitesimal fraction of the elite, the $990 billion taken out by the foreign banks in debt payments and the $1 trillion (one thousand billion) taken out by way of profits, royalties, rents and laundered money over the past decade and a half, we have an adequate framework for understanding why Latin America continues to have over two-thirds of its population with inadequate living standards and stagnant economies.

The responsibility of the US for the growth of Latin American billionaires and mass poverty is several-fold and involves a wide gamut of political institutions, business elites, and academic and media moguls. First and foremost the US backed the military dictators and neo-liberal politicians who set up the billionaire-oriented economic models. It was ex-President Clinton, the CIA and his economic advisers, in alliance with the Russian oligarchs, who provided the political intelligence and material support to put Yeltsin in power and back his destruction of the Russian Parliament (Duma) in 1993 and the rigged elections of 1996. And it was Washington, which allowed hundreds of billions of dollars to be laundered in US banks throughout the 1990's as the US Congressional Sub-Committee on Banking (1998) revealed.

It was Nixon, Kissinger and later Carter and Brzezinski, Reagan and Bush, Clinton and Albright who backed the privatizations pushed by Latin American military dictators and civilian reactionaries in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's . Their instructions to the US representatives in the IMF and the World Bank were writ large: Privatize, de-regulate and de-nationalize (PDD) before any loans should be negotiated.

It was US academics and ideologues working hand in glove with the so-called multi-lateral agencies, as contracted economic consultants, who trained, designed and pushed the PDD agenda among their former Ivy League students-turned-economic and finance ministers and Central Bankers in Latin America and Russia.

It was US and EU multi-national corporations and banks which bought out or went into joint ventures with the emerging Latin American billionaires and who reaped the trillion dollar payouts on the debts incurred by the corrupt military and civilian regimes. The billionaires are as much a product and/or by-product of US anti-nationalist, anti-communist policies as they are a product of their own grandiose theft of public enterprises.

Sanjay Suri, Free Trade Enslaving Poor Countries:

The new free trade agreements being signed up between rich and poor countries are proving far more damaging to the poor than anything envisaged within WTO talks, Oxfam said in a report Tuesday.

Poor countries are being forced into very deep tariff cuts," Emily Jones, author of the Oxfam report 'Signing Away the Future' told IPS. "These are often being reduced to zero under reciprocal so-called free trade agreements they are being forced to sign with rich countries."

That means poor countries are having to open up their markets to subsidized agricultural products from places like the EU, she said.
. . .

The agreements undermine moves to development, the report says.

"In an increasingly globalized world, these agreements seek to benefit rich-country exporters and firms at the expense of poor farmers and workers, with grave implications for the environment and development," it says.

The United States and the EU are pushing through rules on intellectual property that reduce poor people's access to life-saving medicines, increase the prices of seeds and other farming inputs beyond the reach of small farmers, and make it harder for developing-country firms to access new technology, the report says.
. . .

"Some developing countries find themselves between a rock and a hard place," said Jones. "Many are signing up to these so-called economic partnership agreements for fear of losing preferences," Jones said. Many of these countries have been offered export preferences in return for dropping tariffs against imports from developed countries.

The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has brought 1.3 million job losses in Mexico in ten years, Jones said. Increased exports to the United States have failed to generate growth, and some studies show that the real wages in 2004 were less than in 1994, Jones said.
. . .

"When Mexico liberalized financial services in 1993 in preparation for NAFTA, foreign ownership of the banking system increased to 85 percent in seven years, but lending to Mexican businesses dropped from 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 0.3 per cent, depriving poor people living in rural areas of vital sources of credit."

Governments in developing countries usually come under strong political pressure to sign up to such deals, Simon Ticehurst from Oxfam in Bolivia told IPS. "But a lot depends also on the type of development models that governments present to their people," he said.

"Colombia and Peru have been signing up to these agreements. Others are more reluctant. "You now have a small country like Bolivia and many new governments across Latin America beginning to challenge the logic of free trade agreements."

media & the courts

2007-03-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

First Amendment Center:

. . . consider the raft of instances lately in which judges or prosecutors have decided to step into newsrooms in one manner or another in pursuit of notes, interviews, videotapes or telephone conversations, or have attempted to prevent publication or broadcast of information to readers and viewers.

According to Associated Press reports, in just the past few weeks:

In Missouri, a state judge ordered two newspapers not to publish material they had received about public utilities and air pollution, but the order was lifted after a state appeals court stepped in.

In California, federal officials investigating steroid use by famous athletes discontinued efforts to force two San Francisco reporters to disclose their sources, after a lawyer pleaded guilty to being the source. But a freelance videographer, Joshua Wolf, remains in jail in San Francisco for refusing to turn over to a grand jury his videotape of a protest event.

In Kansas, a newspaper and television station were ordered to turn over reporters' notes taken during interviews with a man who faces a capital murder charge in the death of a 14-year-old girl.

In Tennessee, a federal judge is considering whether to enforce a 1974 agreement that would close arrest information to reporters unless and until there’s a conviction based on the arrest.

In Florida, a state judge reversed his original order that Orlando’s WKMG-TV could not air investigative reports about a political consultant based on 84 boxes of documents it obtained at an auction.

In Massachusetts, a judge ruled that the news media could not reproduce the particularly graphic photos and videos from a murder trial that ended last year.

In Texas, a state judge resisted a request by prosecutors for an order telling Houston's KPRC-TV to turn over unaired footage of some interviews. An assistant district attorney had told the court the prosecution subpoenaed the video to help with investigations and possibly trial preparations.
Clearly, this is more than a tempest in an inkpot. Somewhere, somehow, for some reason a long-standing ethic that the news media are not just another investigative tool for police, nor subject to “editors of the court,” has broken down.

Cynthia McKinney - "we must resist"

2007-03-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

Cynthia McKinney speaking at a March 2 fundraiser for Pacifica Radio station KPFK, in LA:

. . . in order to solve the massive problems this country now has, it can no longer be business as usual for a critical mass of us.

Whether it's the thawing tundra in Siberia or the melting glaciers in Greenland, our contribution to global warming is something that must be dealt with.

Whether it's the massive amounts of money we spend on the war machine or the fact that we still don't know what happened on September 11th, the values and priorities of the American people must be reflected in the public policy we pursue. I do not believe that is the case today and there are specific reasons why.

Just voting isn't enough. Voting is necessary, but it isn't enough to get the kind of change we must now demand. We have to change the structure within which we cast our vote.

We must have a different kind of leadership than is possible now without the kind of change I'm talking about.

This is revolutionary in its impact.

And so, I will be fought even more fiercely than I've already been fought, and all I wanted to do was improve the lot of people of color in the U.S. and around the world; institute the kind of respect for human rights at home and abroad that would change the policies of our government toward the global community, including the American people; and make the U.S. government accountable to the taxpayers for the way it spends their dollars. Now, that's all I wanted to do. And you see what's happened to me!
. . .

Now, it would be nice if we could count on someone else to do it for us. And we would all join that person and make it happen. But, I reluctantly say that if no one else will do it, then I guess I'll have to do that, too!

The world's most marginalized and dispossessed are already ahead of us in taking their countries back! Of course, starting in 1959 with Cuba, but then Venezuela, Cote d'Ivoire, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, India, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, and Nicaragua all have stood up to imperial domination - and won!

In the meantime, we have to demand more from our representatives. How can you be against war if you finance war? And how can you be against George Bush if you won't impeach him?

"We will build a broad-based, rainbow movement for justice and peace."

The American people are being fed madness as sanity. But, this is not Oz, Wonderland, the Twilight Zone, and it's not 1984!

With every fiber in our being we must resist. Resist like Mario Savio told us to resist: with our entire bodies against the gears and the wheels and the levers of the machine.

We must resist because we claim no partnership in war crimes, genocide, torture, or crimes against humanity. We claim no complicity in crimes against the American people.

We will build a broad-based, rainbow movement for justice and peace. And we will win.

Greg Palast on American Blackout:

American Blackout, directed by Guerrilla News Network’s Ian Inaba uses a stunning mix of never before seen archive and firsthand interviews. Inaba knows how to make otherwise dull C-Span clips look like something completely new and interesting. He does this by split-screen and zooming so you know who you’re supposed to be looking at — Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, ChoicePoint representatives. You see them lying to a Civil Rights panel, you see them sweat when questioned by Congresswoman McKinney. All I can say is that I am stunned that I’ve never seen this technique used before — it keeps you interested, on your toes and wanting for more. . . .

The story of Cynthia McKinney that sews the running thread through the film, is uglier than even I knew. Many only familiar with the Congresswoman’s press coverage will be aghast at just how distorted a picture the media has fed us.

It literally defies belief.

Here we see her cross-examining Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with such surgical precision and grasp of her brief that Rumsfeld is left stammering and ashen-faced. It makes us wonder what kind of country we might have right now if more had put this administration under such factual scrutiny. American Blackout lays out exactly why she has been so relentlessly hounded. Every one of her speeches brings to mind the hoarse pleas of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a force to be reckoned with.

Ali Abunimah:

Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice. His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channeled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.)

If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.

US Social Forum - Atlanta, GA, June 27 - July 1, 2007

2007-03-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Hope for the future, I'm convinced, lies in this sort of local, grassroots internationalist organizing:

The US Social Forum is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression. The USSF will provide space to build relationships, learn from each other's experiences, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, and bring renewed insight and inspiration. It will help develop leadership and develop consciousness, vision, and strategy needed to realize another world.

The USSF sends a message to other people’s movements around the world that there is an active movement in the US opposing US Policies at home and abroad.

We must declare what we want our world to look like and begin planning the path to get there. A global movement is rising. The USSF is our opportunity to demonstrate to the world

Another World is Possible!

Ted Glick:

How will we bring about significant change in the USA? There are a number of things that need to happen, but one bottom-line, essential requirement is the coming together of a critical mass of organizers and activists into a grassroots-based, politically independent, popular and progressive network, alliance and/or party. Given what we are up against here in the belly of empire, it's hard to see how we have any hope of change absent such a development.
. . .

. . . there is an important initiative underway that has the potential to advance a different kind of unity- and alliance-building process across lines of race, culture, issue and geographic region - a process that we desperately need: the United States Social Forum, happening in Atlanta, Georgia, June 27th to July 1st.

Organizing toward this event was initiated by Grassroots Global Justice, an alliance of over 50 grassroots organizations representing people of color and low-income communities in the US. Over the last couple of years, it has been putting the pieces in place to make this major event possible.

World Social Forum Origins

It is significant that the US Social Forum is emerging out of many years of World Social Forums that have been happening in countries of the Global South. Originally begun in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, the first World Social Forum (WSF) was organized as an alternative to the world ruling elite's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The second and third WSFs were held in Porto Alegre; the fourth one in Mumbai, India, and the fifth one back in Porto Alegre. Beginning with 12,000 people in 2001, it grew to 155,000 registered participants in 2005.

The sixth World Social Forum was "polycentric," held in January 2006 in Caracas, Venezuela, and Bamako, Mali, and in March 2006 in Karachi, Pakistan. The forum in Pakistan was delayed till March because of the Kashmir earthquake that had recently occurred in the area.

Earlier this year, in late January, the seventh WSF was held in Nairobi, Kenya, attended by 60,000 people.

There have also been regional and national social forums in Europe, Asia, the Mediterranean, Italy, and in the USA in Boston, the Southeast, the Midwest, the Southwest and just recently in Washington, DC.

This first national social forum in the US is coming at a particularly auspicious time. Bush, Cheney and the Republicans are on the defensive, struggling to maintain support for their agenda of wars and occupations for oil and empire abroad and, at home, the destruction of basic constitutional rights and cutbacks to education, health care, Social Security and other human needs. Yet there is also widespread, popular dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and with corporate, big-money domination of both major political parties.

Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman, leaders of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, a key group within the leadership of the US Social Forum process, recently summarized its importance in this way:

"The social forum process was initiated by social movements of oppressed and exploited peoples in the Global South; and no one group in the US 'owns it.' Second, the social forum is being brought home to the US by grassroots organizations - with people of color and low-income-led organizations in the leadership. Third, the social forum is a convergence process of all our fronts of struggle; it is multi-issue and multi-sector, and inclusive of all who are struggling for justice, equality and peace. Fourth, the social forum is a space where a broad range of political analysis is welcomed - from progressive to revolutionary.

"This is why the US Social Forum is the place to be this summer if you are a movement builder, if you have a vision of another world, if you want to make it happen!"

Let's make it happen. See you in Atlanta!

from the Preface to How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet by Hervé Kempf:

. . . we cannot understand the concomitance of the ecological and social crises if we don't analyze them as the two sides of the same disaster. And that disaster derives from a system piloted by a dominant social stratum that today has no drive other than greed, no ideal other than conservatism, no dream other than technology.

This predatory oligarchy is the main agent of the global crisis - directly, by the decisions it makes. Those decisions aim to maintain the order that has been established to its advantage and favor the objective of material growth: the only method, according to the oligarchy, of making the subordinate classes accept the injustice of the social situation. But material growth intensifies environmental degradation.

The oligarchy also exercises a powerful indirect influence as a result of the cultural attraction its consumption habits exercise on society as a whole, and especially on the middle classes. In the best-provided-for countries, as in developing countries, a large share of consumption answers a desire for ostentation and distinction. People aspire to lift themselves up the social ladder, which happens through imitation of the superior class's consumption habits. Thus, the oligarchy diffuses its ideology of waste throughout the whole society.

It's not the oligarchy's behavior alone that leads to deepening of the crises. Faced with opposition to its privileges, with environmental anxiety, with criticism of economic neoliberalism, it weakens public freedoms and the spirit of democracy.

A drift towards semi-authoritarian regimes may be observed almost everywhere in the world. The oligarchy that reigns in the United States is its engine, as it uses the terror that the September 11th, 2001, attacks elicited in American society.

In this situation, which could lead to either social chaos or dictatorship, it is important to know what it is right to maintain for ourselves and for future generations: not "the Earth," but "the possibilities of human life on the planet," as philosopher Hans Jonas calls them; that is, humanism, the values of mutual respect and tolerance, a restrained and rich relationship with nature, and cooperation among human beings.

To achieve those goals, it is not enough for society to become aware of the urgency of the ecological crisis - and of the difficult choices its prevention imposes, notably in terms of material consumption. It will further be necessary that ecological concerns articulate themselves as a radical political analysis of current relationships of domination. We will not be able to decrease global material consumption if the powerful are not brought down and if inequality is not combated. To the ecological principle that was so useful at the time we first became aware - "Think globally; act locally," - we must add the principle that the present situation imposes: "Consume less; share better."

Truthout's Leslie Thatcher summarizes:

However difficult the political decision to "accept humanity's self-moderation" may appear to be, Kempf maintains his optimism in that possibility. He urges us to get rid of several received ideas:

—belief in growth as the solution to social problems

— belief in technology as the solution to ecological problems

— the inevitability of unemployment ("a construct whereby capitalism keeps workers docile and salaries down")

— the necessary alliance of Europe, which embodies a universal ideal and the demonstrated ability to unite diverse states, and North America, "the obese power"

He encourages us to build on existing strengths:

— the public freedoms and concern for the public good that still characterize the system itself

— a mass media which may have "treacherously" supported the oligarchy in the recent past up until now, but which is capable of being once again a vehicle of real information and empowerment.

— the "Left" — which could be reborn by joining the causes of inequality and ecology

— nascent global solidarity movements.

1966 - Levertov & Ochs - "a dreadful future for America"

2007-03-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

Change a few proper nouns in these pieces, and they could just as easily be speaking to the Situation today, 40 years later—sobering testimony to our failures. Their future is our present. The children of the children of 1966 are being sent to slaughter & be slaughtered once again, in a war that shows no signs of slowing down despite lots of hot air in Washington, one that holds the potential to spiral out of control into a much larger conflagration.

Denise Levertov:

I am absolutely opposed to the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. Not only is it an unjustifiable interference hypocritically carried on in the name of "freedom" while in fact its purpose is to further the strategic ends of a government whose enormous power has destroyed the morality of its members; but it is being waged by means of atrocities. This is a war in which more children are being killed and maimed than fighting men. Napalm, white phosphorus, fragmentation bombs, all used deliberately on a civilian population; poisoning of crops, defoliation of forests; not to speak of the horrendous blight of disease and famine that follows, the corruption, prostitution, and every kind of physical and moral suffering—nothing whatsoever could possibly justify these crimes.

Violence always breeds more violence and is never a solution even when it temporarily seems to be. Violence of this magnitude, even if the ultimate holocaust it is swiftly leading to is averted—i.e., if we at least stop in time to avoid a still larger war—promises a dreadful future for America, full of people tortured and distorted with the knowledge (conscious or unconscious) of what we have done. One does not need to be a bomber pilot to feel this; one need only be an American who did nothing to stop the war, or not enough; one has only to be a human being. It is hard to be an artist in this time because it is hard to be human: in the dull ever-accumulating horror of the war news, it is more difficult each day to keep remembering the creative and joyful potential of human beings, and to fulfill that potential in one's own life, as testimony. Shame, despair, disgust, these are the reverberations that threaten to silence poets thousands of miles away from where the bombs are falling. The struggles of all artists and all pacifists is to overcome their nausea and actively hold on to what their work has caused them to know—the possibility of beautiful life.

I believe that cessation of all violence and withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam is the only right action for the U.S. I would like to see this withdrawal followed by the penitent presentation to the people of Vietnam by the U.S. of huge quantities of food and supplies—such quantities that people here would actually feel a pinch, actually sacrifice something, not merely donate a surplus. I would like to see this given absolutely outright, and unaccompanied by U.S. "advisors," though large numbers of doctors, nurses, and other people who might really be of use in reconstructing the ravaged country might humbly offer their services to work under Vietnamese supervision. Such acts of penitence, distinct from the guilt that stews in its own juice, would do something to make the future more livable for our children.

from Writers Take Sides on Vietnam (New York, 1967), reprinted in the poet in the world (New Directions, 1973)

Phil Ochs:

Cops of the World

Come, get out of the way, boys
Quick, get out of the way
You'd better watch what you say, boys
Better watch what you say
We've rammed in your harbor and tied to your port
And our pistols are hungry and our tempers are short
So bring your daughters around to the port
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World

We pick and choose as we please, boys
Pick and choose as we please
You'd best get down on your knees, boys
Best get down on your knees
We're hairy and horny and ready to shack
We don't care if you're yellow or black
Just take off your clothes and lie down on your back
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World

Our boots are needing a shine, boys
Boots are needing a shine
But our Coca-cola is fine, boys
Coca-cola is fine
We've got to protect all our citizens fair
So we'll send a battalion for everyone there
And maybe we'll leave in a couple of years
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World

Dump the reds in a pile, boys
Dump the reds in a pile
You'd better wipe of that smile, boys
Better wipe off that smile
We'll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck
We'll find you a leader that you can elect
Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World

Clean the johns with a rag, boys
Clean the johns with a rag
If you like you can use your flag, boys
If you like you can use your flag
We've got too much money we're looking for toys
And guns will be guns and boys will be boys
But we'll gladly pay for all we destroy
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World

Please stay off of the grass, boys
Please stay off of the grass
Here's a kick in the ass, boys
Here's a kick in the ass
We'll smash down your doors, we don't bother to knock
We've done it before, so why all the shock?
We're the biggest and toughest kids on the block
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World

When we've butchered your sons, boys
When we've butchered your sons
Have a stick of our gum, boys
Have a stick of our bubble-gum
We own half the world, oh say can you see
The name for our profits is democracy
So, like it or not, you will have to be free
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World
from The War is Over (Barricade Music, 1968)

info wars - free, the press

2007-03-10T14:53:00.000-08:00

Independent Reporting Drew Army Coverup, Secrecy, Delays

Officials in the US military, from the Pentagon on down, tried to thwart reporters for the LA Times who uncovered deaths and possible torture of detainees in Afghanistan.

Last year, the Los Angeles Times decided to undertake something quite unusual: The newspaper would conduct a parallel investigation to the one being undertaken by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID) into how a small U.S. Special Forces detachment in Afghanistan could be tied to two detainee deaths and two apparent cover-ups in less than two weeks.

The Army’s investigations had been launched initially in September 2004 after the Times and the Crimes of War Project, a Washington-based nonprofit educational organization, had revealed that a young Afghan soldier had died in the custody of the Special Forces team after allegations that he had been tortured. The Pentagon said it had no record of the death.

The Times’s disclosures remain one of the rare instances since American troops went to Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 in which independent reporting has uncovered potential war crimes by U.S. servicemen that had apparently been covered up, not only from the public, but from the military itself. The Times’s 2004 story was published just two months after the Army’s inspector general had issued a detailed report on detainee abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its conclusion: that it had found “no incidents of abuse that had not been reported through command channels.”

And while the Times’s story led to the Army launching two criminal probes, human rights organizations at the same time were raising questions about the relatively low number of successful military prosecutions in criminal homicide and prisoner abuse cases and whether the military is capable of policing itself in times of war.
. . .

When we went through official channels, the United States Army and all of its relevant subordinate commands declined requests for comment. But their posture was not always passive. The U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC), a part of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), sent out hundreds of e-mails instructing its members to refer any inquiries that might come from us to their public affairs office and to alert their chain of command of the contacts.
. . .

Donald H. Rumsfeld labored six years as defense secretary to build a lighter, faster military for high tech warfare. What he left behind is a public affairs apparatus-at the Pentagon level and at military bases and headquarters-that refuses to shed its siege mentality. Part of the problem is that the people who work in these positions don’t regard their job as responding to journalists’ questions. Their work is “to transmit the policy and message of the United States,” as a sign in the Public Affairs Office at Camp Eggers, Kabul, reminds its staff. Journalists often are perceived to have their own agendas.
. . .

In Afghanistan, among Special Forces who are in the field, "media engagement training" can be pretty basic. After Green Berets confiscated some videotape from CBS News in December 2002, the top Special Forces commander issued a directive to his men saying that they did not have authorization to kill journalists "for the sole purpose of recovering film or videotape" unless it was in self-defense.

Back at the Pentagon, one might expect a bit more of a sophisticated understanding of how press and public affairs operations interact. Near the tail end of our investigation, I contacted the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology to ask about the procedures used by Special Forces to report a detainee death at one of their bases. My questions could have been cleared by Army brass within 24 to 48 hours and answered definitively in 20 minutes without violating Department of Defense guidelines or weakening our national defense. Instead it took more than two months of e-mails and telephone calls for the Army's medical branch to give us an incomplete reply. Some of the information they did dispense was inaccurate.

AP:

A freelance photographer working for The Associated Press and a cameraman working for AP Television News said a U.S. soldier deleted their photos and video showing a four-wheel drive vehicle in which three people were shot to death about 100 yards from the suicide bombing. The AP plans to lodge a protest with the American military.

The photographer, Rahmat Gul, said witnesses at the scene told him the three had been shot to death by U.S. forces fleeing the attack. The two AP freelancers arrived at the site about a half hour after the suicide bombing, Gul said.

"When I went near the four-wheel drive, I saw the Americans taking pictures of the same car, so I started taking pictures," Gul said. "Two soldiers with a translator came and said, 'Why are you taking pictures? You don't have permission.'"

It wasn't clear why the accredited journalists would need permission to take photos of a civilian car on a public highway.

Gul said the U.S. troops took his camera, deleted his photos and returned it to him. The journalists came across another American, showed their identification cards, and he agreed that they could take pictures.

A Western military official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information said the troops were Marine Special Operations Forces, the Marine Corps component created in February 2006 of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

"The same soldier who took my camera came again and deleted my photos," Gul said. "The soldier was very angry ... I told him, 'They gave us permission,' but he didn't listen."

Gul's new photos were also deleted, and the American, speaking through a translator, warned him that he did not want to see any AP photos published anywhere. The American also raised his fist in anger as if he were going to hit him, but he did not strike, Gul said.
. . .

Khanwali Kamran, a reporter for the Afghan channel Ariana Television, was in a small group of journalists working alongside Gul. Kamran said the American soldiers also deleted his footage.

"They warned me that if it is aired ... then, 'You will face problems,'" Kamran said. Taqiullah Taqi, a reporter for Afghanistan's largest television station, Tolo TV, said Americans were using abusive language. "According to the translator, they said, 'Delete them, or we will delete you,'" Taqi said.

A freelance cameraman for AP Television News said that about 100 yards from the bomb site, a U.S. officer told him that he could not go any closer to the scene but that he could shoot footage. The cameraman asked not to be named for his own safety.

"Then I started filming the suicide attack site, where there was a body and U.S. soldiers, and farther away, there was a four-wheel drive vehicle in which three people were shot to death," he said.

As he was filming, he said, a U.S. soldier and translator "ordered us not to move." The cameraman said they were very angry and deleted any footage that included the Americans, as well as part of an interview from a demonstration. Hundreds of Afghans had gathered to protest the violence.

Guardian:

The US opened military hearings at Guantánamo Bay . . . into the 14 suspects described as "high value", allegedly the most dangerous of all the inmates with direct links to al-Qaida.

Journalists were barred from the hearings for the first time since detainees began arriving at the US base in Cuba in 2001.

The Pentagon says the reporting ban is because of the potentially sensitive nature of the evidence. But human rights activists say the real reason is the Pentagon does not want to be embarrassed by revelations of the secret CIA prisons and torture suspects were subjected to.

A Pentagon spokesman said today that transcripts of the evidence would be made available to the press but probably not until the end of next week because of the time involved in translation and typing.

The Pentagon will edit the transcripts to remove anything it regards as damaging.

Attytood on Josh Wolf (h/t to Madman at Liberal Street Fighter):

And so am I actually saying that I think that 24-year-old Josh Wolf is more of a journalist than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Judy Miller?

Yes, I am.

Josh Wolf may hold some extreme views, but given the choices, I'd rather see a lot more journalists willing to speak truth to power (and willing to go to jail to protect that right) than journalists who not only are cowed by those in power, but bend over backwards to defend them.

reaping Atoms for Peace

2007-03-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

Guardian:

The head of the Democratic Republic of Congo's dilapidated and poorly guarded nuclear reactor plant has been arrested on suspicion of illegally selling enriched uranium, following the disappearance of large quantities of the material.
. . .

Le Phare newspaper reported that about 100 bars of uranium had disappeared from the small experimental reactor, the oldest nuclear facility in Africa. The uranium produced by the reactor in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, is enriched but not to weapons grade, although it could be used in a "dirty bomb" to spread radiation.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and foreign governments have expressed concern about lax security at the plant, which the US has tried to get closed for a number of years. Two years ago the Congolese government denied reports that uranium was shipped to Iran.
. . .

The IAEA has criticised standards at the site, which is often left unguarded and is protected only by a low fence and rickety gate. Although the reactor has been on standby for nine years, there are 98 bars of enriched uranium stored at the site, submerged in a pool underneath a padlocked metal grate or in the reactor.

Two uranium rods disappeared from the facility in the late 1970s, one of which is believed to have been found in 1998 on its way to the Middle East via the mafia. The other was never recovered.

The nuclear facility was founded in 1958 with help from the US because the then Belgian Congo provided the uranium used in the atom bombs dropped on Japan. It also handles uranium mined in the south of the country for export. In the chaos of the past decade of foreign invasion and civil war in Congo, illegal mining has boomed with thousands of Congolese make a living from using shovels and their bare hands to hack it from the earth.

Short term pragmatism strikes again.

Arundhati Roy

2007-03-10T10:50:00.000-08:00

. . . is writing a new novel. Yay! Her take on what's happening in India is one seen taking place across the globe:

"Here you see what’s happening. People are driven out of villages, driven out of the cities, there’s a kind of insanity in the air and all of it held down by our mesmeric, pelvic-thrusting Bollywood movies. The Indian middle class has just embarked on this orgy of consumerism."

But she admits that the kinds of non-violent protests she has taken part in for a decade have failed in India, a republic founded on the Gandhi-ite principles of peaceful resistance. "I am not such an uninhibited fan of Gandhi. After all, Gandhi was a superstar. When he went on a hunger strike he was a superstar on a hunger strike. But I don’t believe in superstar politics. If people in a slum are on a hunger strike, no one gives a shit."

Roy says activists have been “exhausted” by their attempts to influence the courts and the press and now says she does not “condemn people taking up arms” in the face of state repression.

"It would be immoral for me to preach violence unless I were prepared to resort to it myself. But equally, it is immoral for me to advocate feelgood marches and hunger strikes when I’m not bearing the brunt of unspeakable violence. I certainly do not volunteer to tell Iraqis or Kashmiris or Palestinians that if they went on a mass hunger strike they would get rid of the military occupation. Civil disobedience doesn’t seem to be paying dividends."

Instead of the Indian state caving in to the moral righteousness of the numerous causes Roy supports, she says it merely moved to co-opt its adversaries. The power of argument, even in the world’s biggest democracy, has been shrunk by the argument of power.

Roy says she was aghast to learn that a fellow Indian environmental campaigner accepted a million-dollar award from the transnational metals firm Alcan, which has been accused of grabbing tribal land in eastern India. The tentacles of big business have learned to embrace non-government organisations. The result, she claims, is that the charitable trusts of Tata, India’s largest private company, fund "half the activists in the country".

negotiation & hostages

2007-03-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

Kaveh L Afrasiabi:

High on Tehran's agenda [at the upcoming Baghdad meeting] is the issue of five Iranian diplomats kidnapped by the US in Kurdistan. [Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas] Araghchi stated that they are "in Baghdad, held by the Americans, and the Red Cross has assured us of their physical health". As a sign of US goodwill, one of those hostages has been allowed to contact his family and report about their good health, according to the latest reports by the Iranian news agencies.

According to Araghchi, "We will know at this meeting if the US is after resolving the Iraq crisis or adventurism."

100 children stranded - "a widespread humanitarian crisis"

2007-03-08T18:10:00.000-08:00

AP:

About 100 children were left stranded at schools and day care centres after their parents were rounded up by federal authorities in a raid on a factory where hundreds of illegal immigrants worked to produce supplies for the US military.

About two-thirds of the 500 employees working at leather maker Michael Bianco Inc in New Bedford, Massachusetts, were detained on Tuesday by immigration officials for possible deportation as illegal immigrants. Most of the employees were women and, as a result, many of their children were not picked up from school or day care that day.

Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Centre of Southeastern Massachusetts, estimated about 100 children were left with babysitters or caretakers.

"We're continuing to get stories today about infants that were left behind," she said yesterday. "It's been a widespread humanitarian crisis here in New Bedford."

words are failing . . .

border deaths - by the numbers

2007-03-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

Guardian:

Around half of crossers who die are never identified.

. . .

Pina County, the region in which Ms Cano died, used to see a handful of deaths each year, an average of 14 in the 1990s. The average for 2000 to 2005 was 166. Along the whole border, there were 472 deaths in 2005 and preliminary data for last year suggest 500 to 600, and a quarter are children. In the last decade, the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border has proved over 10 times more deadly than the Berlin wall, and the figures are almost certainly gross underestimates.

brought to you by the Clinton/Gore & Bush/Cheney regimes

river of omission - Rove's bud, Griffen for US Att'y

2007-03-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

Congress on a roll again! rollin’, that is, down the River of Omission

Greg Palast:

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn’t bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. . . . Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

With the scandals of political pressure being exterted on US Attorneys conducting corruption investigations, and with a Congressional home call seeking info on a sealed indictment, it's easy to overlook reports that Arizona US Attorney Paul Charlton was dismissed for insisting on reviewing potential death penalty charges on a case-by-case. His apparent sin was to stand up to the Bush adminsitration and say 'No, that's wrong, I won't do it.' On 10 Feb., the Arizona Republic reported that:

. . . two sources said a main disagreement between Charlton and officials in Washington centered on when to seek the death penalty in federal murder cases.

As a U.S attorney, Charlton has pursed the death penalty in some cases. But his insistence on determining whether to push for capital punishment on a case-by-case basis clashed on at least two instances with a Justice Department effort to centralize decisions nationally and to seek the death penalty in a uniform way.

. . . he was among the prosecutors who received a telephone call on Dec. 7 from Michael Battle, director of the Justice Department's executive office for U.S. attorneys, asking him to resign.

"I certainly was given no indication there were performance concerns," Charlton said.
. . .

Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona, said there has been only one person sentenced under the Federal Death Penalty Act in Arizona. Lezmond Charles Mitchell, 25, is being held at the Special Confinement Unit in Terre Haute, Ind., one of 44 inmates there facing execution.

..... Mitchell is reportedly the first and only Native American facing federal execution. The Navajo Nation has criticized his sentence, which is scheduled for appeal Thursday in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Hornbuckle said federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Jose Rios Rico, who faces trial for murder during a drug-trafficking crime, as well as numerous other felony offenses related to meth deals.

In one case, four members of the New Mexican Mafia, or New Eme, faced execution for murder and other crimes. The defendants, including brothers Luis and Felipe Cisneros, accepted last-minute plea bargains. Three received life sentences; the fourth got 16 years.

Larry Hammond, a Phoenix attorney who represented Felipe Cisneros, said Charlton was an "honest broker" in the case, deciding to give up capital punishment because the government would have faced an expensive six-month trial with severe effect on victims and an unknown verdict.

"It was true that, for a long time, main Justice was not prepared to go along" with the plea deal, Hammond said, adding that authorities in Washington, D.C., finally relented.

Under Charlton's administration, several other death-penalty actions were initiated but later dropped.

. . . Charlton's office [also] handled preliminary investigations into Republican Reps. Jim Kolbe and Rick Renzi before the November election.

Ecuador to US: Out Now!

2007-03-06T18:14:00.000-08:00

Roger Burbach:

"Ecuador is a sovereign nation; we do not need any foreign troops in our country," Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s foreign minister announced in a meeting with the Foreign Press Association. The treaty for the base expires in 2009 and will not be renewed.

The largest U.S. base on South America's Pacific coast, the Manta installation was ostensibly set up to monitor narco-trafficking over the ocean and in the nearby Amazon basin. But it has become a major operations center for U.S. intelligence-gathering and coordinating counterinsurgency efforts against the leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia.

The base's $80-million runway, can accommodate the largest and most sophisticated U.S. spy aircraft. Manta is also used as a port for U.S. naval operations in the Pacific. Upwards of 475 American military personal are rotated between Manta and the U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Florida.

Popular sentiment in Ecuador overwhelmingly supports the closure of the Manta base. Since the base was set up in 1999 the civil war in Colombia has spread to Ecuador, bringing refugees, violence and social conflict, particularly in the Amazon region. Aerial spraying of herbicides by planes originating in Colombia eradicates food crops and has deleterious health effects on Ecuadorian children and adults.
. . .

[Vice-President Lenin] Moreno caused an uproar when, commenting on the upcoming trip in March of President Bush to Latin America that excludes Ecuador, he stated: "Every time Bush comes to visit our region we worry because we don't know what proposals he comes to impart and what sorts of statements he will make."
. . .

The Correa government is also moving against the neo-liberal trade and commercial policies that have been imposed on Ecuador by Washington and international lending agencies. In line with his campaign platform, [President Rafael] Correa made it clear he would never sign the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which was being discussed with previous Ecuadorian governments.

At the same time, Ecuador is negotiating special bilateral trade and economic agreements with Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Venezuela has agreed to refine Ecuadorian oil and provide financial assistance for social programs, while the Bolivian government has concluded an agreement to import food commodities from small and medium producers in Ecuador.

. . . Economics Minister Ricardo Patino [announced] that Ecuador would make a scheduled debt payment of $135 million to foreign bondholders after all. Known for his long-held belief that paying off the foreign debt undercuts critical social spending programs and keeps Ecuador in a state of perpetual poverty, Patino's decision came just two days after he had announced that Ecuador would not make the payment.

Informed sources close to the government say that after high-level discussions, Correa opted to pay the bondholders, preferring to focus on the coming negotiations with international lenders over a reduction in the schedule of debt payments and the annulment of part of the debt that was the result of corrupt practices by prior Ecuadorian governments and foreign creditors.

As Baez says, "the Correa government decided to be selective in the battles it is taking on for the moment. A default now would have caused an international reaction and possibly provoked a domestic financial crisis, just as the government is trying to get its legs under it."

notes from the resistance - "here I stand"

2007-03-06T13:11:00.000-08:00

Agustín Aguayo, from the Guardian:

A U.S. Army medic who jumped out a window of his base housing and fled to California to avoid a redeployment to Iraq was convicted of desertion Tuesday at a court-martial. He could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

Spc. Agustin Aguayo, 35, who refused to return to Iraq because he believes war is immoral, admitted the less serious charge of being absent without leave but was unsuccessful in contesting the more serious desertion charge.
. . .

"I respect everyone's views and your decision, I understand that people don't understand me," he testified before the judge, Col. R. Peter Masterton. "I tried my best, but I couldn't bear weapons and I could never point weapons at someone."

Aguayo added: "The words of Martin Luther come to mind, 'Here I stand, I can do no more'."

from an interview with Agustin's wife:

GILLIAN RUSSOM: Is it true that he saw the movie Sir! No Sir! shortly before he refused to deploy?

HELGA AGUAYO: Yes. One of the workers at the GI Rights Hotline in Germany gave my husband a copy of Sir! No Sir! He was hypnotized by it. When he was watching it, it just revved him up for what he knew he might have to face.

He had already made the decision when he was in Iraq. But seeing other soldiers come out and seeing this movie about soldiers who actually stopped the war gave him the knowledge to stand by his decision.
. . . Activists can absolutely help. Courage to Resist started this campaign "Free Agustín Aguayo" up in Seattle, and we loved it. In Germany, the German peace activists went out to the base on his birthday and demanded his freedom.

The more people who stand up and say, "We stand by him," it sends a clear message. Not only to the military, but to soldiers who want to do the same thing, and to kids who are thinking about enlisting. They need to know the realities of what war does to families and communities. And if people want to help us on a personal level, we need fundraisers.

GILLIAN RUSSOM: Why do you think that Agustín and the other military resisters are important for the antiwar movement?

HELGA AGUAYO: They're important because they're taking a stand that all the Americans who are against the war can't really take. They're making it difficult for the Army to continue their mission.

My husband's a paramedic, and medics are needed desperately in Iraq. I think that these soldiers who stand up and say, "I won't do it," are frustrating the plans of these particular units.

It's important for the antiwar movement to adopt these soldiers and say that this guy has taken a remarkable step. We need to support him because he's doing what we would do if we were in his position.
. . . more information on the Agustin Aguay case

War Protesters Arrested at Washington Port:

Police arrested three people early Monday during a protest of Iraq-bound Army vehicles at a Washington state port.

Several dozen people showed up at the Port of Tacoma to protest the shipment of Stryker vehicles and other equipment from Fort Lewis. Caitlin Esworthy, Walter Cuddeford and Jeffery Berryhill were arrested for investigation of assault.

Zoltan Grossman, a geography professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia who was observing the protest, said he didn't know what prompted the arrests.

Esworthy is an Evergreen State student, and Cuddeford is a Navy veteran, he said.

"There were no rocks, no weapons. People were not carrying anything but signs," Grossman said. "We were on public space, on gravel, and there was a white line that police had told us not to cross. I didn't see any of the protesters cross that line."

Last May, hundreds of protesters objected to similar shipments at the Port of Olympia. Police pepper-sprayed some protesters who pulled down a port gate, and about three dozen people were arrested over several days.

Occupying America - one Congressional office at a time:

SACRAMENTO – With giant puppets of mourning women looming behind them and displays of American and Iraqi casualties nearby, speakers will address how the horror of the Iraq war impacts the people of Iraq and their loved ones Tuesday, March 6. . . at the Federal Building

meanwhile, inside the Federal Building:

SACRAMENTO – A "Peace-In" enters its 9th straight week Monday at Rep. Doris Matsui's office here – the longest-such anti-war action in the country – and those participating say that more Americans are being killed and maimed every day while Rep. Matsui cannot seem to make her mind why she says she's opposed to the war, but will vote to continue to fund it.

The "Peace-In" began Jan. 8 and members of the Sacramento Coalition to End the War – a broad based and growing coalition of religious, veteran and peace groups – have occupied Matsui's office every business day from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

"In the last week, another 15 U.S. soldiers have died," said Karen Bernal, Sacramento mother of a seven year old. "Last week we gave Rep. Matsui a list of questions, including how voting for more funding is going to protect the troops. We are looking forward to receiving those answers today. Every day this war continues, is another day that a loved one is killed, another life that can never be brought back," she added.

One day Matsui says she cannot vote against the funding because she wants to protect the troops, and the next day she says we can't leave because we have a responsibility to the Iraqi people, noted another mother, Patricia Daugherty, whose son is 23.
. . .

Today, there are also actions planned at neighboring Rep. Mike Thompson's offices (Woodland, Napa, Ft. Bragg and Eureka) aimed at getting Thompson to also commit to voting against more funding for the war. Thompson's constituents are expressing dissatisfaction with the bill he has introduced, HR 787, that Matsui has signed on to.

"HR 787 gives control over ending the occupation to President Bush," said Davis resident Mikos Fabersunne, father of two teenagers. "Given that Bush wants to keep troops in Iraq, I don't see how HR 787 would end the occupation. It also leaves an unspecified number of troops in Iraq indefinitely."

& in Napa, CA, from Crosses4Peace:

Live Highway Blogging combines 2 new 21st century ideas to improve upon an idea older than America itself – protest. Memorials similar to the Crosses of Lafayette are being erected all over the country, but they often encounter problems with local municipalities because of ordinances limiting the size of signs or public displays. Freeway bloggers, on the other hand, typically hang large banners from overpasses or billboards near freeways with fairly concise political messages like, "Impeach" or "We’re all wearing the blue dress now." This is usually a misdemeanor, and the signs are typically removed within 24 hours – fewer in Napa.

Summer Mondeau of Crosses4Peace.org explained, "From necessity and the first amendment came invention. By standing at the memorials with our signs, our crosses and our American flag at half staff on public property, we are a peaceable assembly petitioning our government for redress. That’s VERY legal." Their right to assemble on Cal Trans’ right-of-way was challenged by American Canyon City Councilman Ed West, whose son was killed in Iraq ; but CHP has twice confirmed that the memorial event IS legal so long as the display is on a highway, not a freeway.

Zarsanga - Songs of the Pashtu

2007-03-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

"Music is the healing force of the universe" - Albert Ayler

download Zarsanga - Songs Of The Pashtu (mp3 - 76 mb)

The Durand Line, drawn in 1893 to buffer British colonial interests in India from Russia, arbitrarily divided historic Pashtun lands along the modern Afghanistan-Pakistan border, in the process dividing families & continuing today to be a source of conflict, tension, and suffering. Echoing the US' strategy of dealing with the problems of an unjust artificial border, Pakistan's President Musharraf has proposed building a "fence" as the euphemism goes. As the US plans to ratchet up operations on either side of the 'border,' more civilians are effectively condemned to die.

Here, then, are some traditional Pashtu songs, arranged by the singer Zarsanga, "the Voice of the Pashtun," except for #'s 3, 6, & 9, which are arranged by Sultan Muhammad; it was recorded in Paris.

Zarsanga: vocals
Sultan Muhammad: rabâb
Shâh Wali: dholak
Sabz Ali: tablâ
1. Ro Ro Keda

2. Gula Sta de Kilie

3. Naghma Giit

4. Mata de Khaiber Lara
("'Why do you take me so very far? Do you want to lose me in the mountaintops of the Khaybar pass? You realize, don't you, that I know the way as well as you do . . . Why are you wearing me out with all of these detours' says the young girl to her lover. This song evokes the famous mountain passes between Peshâwar and Kâbul. Exceptionally, Zarsanga's vocals are accompanied by a kamâicâ, a Rajasthani stringed instrument, played by Chanan Khan.")

5. Bane Mé Dargué Dargué

6. Awami Giit

7. Tappa
("Tappa is one of the oldest poetic and sung styles in the Pashtu culture. A mixture between a singing duet and a poetic jousting match, Tappa is often a cappella and simulates a man and a woman's love words. The two people involved may also be children imitating declarations of love.")

8. Ze Darna Dubaï la Zama
("A man on the verge of emigrating speaks to his wife: "I will send you to your father's home while I'm gone working in Dubaï. Then I can bring you back more gold and jewelry!")

9. Alap Rag Behro

10. Zamung Watan Ké Baharuna
("All over the four corners of my country, springtime will not stop. Why have you gone, come back quickly, it's so beautiful!")

from the notes:

Zarasanga

Serene, with an almost modest softness, Zarsanga is the singer of the Pasthu people. She is the voice of a people spread from the northwest of Pakistan to the southeast of Afghanistan.

The Pashtu or Pathan are an exemplary mountain people. Their territory stretches to the banks of the Indus. Before the arrival of the British, in the 18th century, there were a large number of Pahstu kingdoms and principalities that lived off the troubles between the Persian Sultans and the mongol Emperors of India.

At the foot of the mountains is Peshâwar which today has become the symbolic capitol of 15 million Pashtus, whose geographic center is between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the region called Pachûnistân or Pathânistân. Pashtu cultural influence is spread across Afghanistan and the Pashtu language, which is of Iranian origin, is spoken by more than half of the Afghani population.

Zarsanga was born 42 years ago in the mountainous village of Khause in the Bannu district. A member of the Awan clan, she was raised by her paternal aunt. Just like in the fables common to traditional music, as a young shepherdess she learned to sing and later play the tambourine while looking after her charges among the rocky cliffs. Her husband claims that he carried her off one stormy night and married her against the wishes of her parents. Mother of six children, she sings love poems in which the woman does not hesitate to express herself, rejoicing or lamenting the presence or absence of her beloved. Using modes or raga often quite similar to those of India or Rajasthan, the refrains (âstâ'i) in bass tones are interspaced with the song verses which are higher in tone (antara). Most notable, she works with the sung and poetic forms, namka'i or tappa.

She has retained the ability to retreat into the inner world from which she seems to draw her inspiration, though in 1965 she began to reach an audience much wider than that of her village. The fact that she was able to sing as a professional on the Peshâwar radio without pretention led her to be known as The Voice of the Pashtun.

Sultan Muhammad

Sultan Muhammad was born 50 years ago in Pishin, Balouchistan. He belongs to the Durrânîs, a Pashtu ethnic group which created its own dynasty in Afghanistan in 1747. His own father was a rabâb player, but he was initiated to the art at the age of 16 by Muhammad Din Salahi.

The Afghan and Pashtu rabâb is a short-necked waisted lute. The rabâb, regarded as the national instrument of Afghanistan is made in many sizes, the smaller ones being used for pashtun music.

The body and the neck are carved from a single block of mulberry wood. The lower chamber has a goatskin belly and the upper a wooden lid which extends to the fingerboard of the short, hollow neck. The curved pegbox is joined to the neck. The modern Afghani rabâb has three principal strings of nylon (formerly three double courses) usually tuned in fourths. Three or four metal drone strings and 15 sympathetic strings are tuned to the scale of the mode being played.

The art of rabâb playing rests in the stroking of the cords according to a large number of rhythmic patterns. These musical forms highlight the almost metallic brilliance of the instrument. Sultan Muhammad is accompanied by the dholak, the double-headed drum of Northwestern India and Pakistan and the tablâ of Northern India, which has just recently appeared in Pashtu music.

& from "Zarsanga - Melody Queen of Pashto," by Khaled Kheshgi:

The pencil thin, wheatish and illiterate Zarsanga is so proud of her euphonic and bewitching voice that even in her mid-fifties she challenges the young vocalists to match her in rhythmic frequency.

Belonging to a gypsy family of Tank, Zarsanga, also known as the desert queen of Pashto music, has performed in the USA, UK, Paris, Germany, Belgium, UAE, Iraq and many more countries; but still prefers to live in a tented-house, while at present she is living in a clay-made house in the suburbs of Peshawar. “I love my soil and culture as it gives the fragrance of fraternity, freedom and vanity, the 55-year old Zarsanga, wearing traditional dopata, said.

Born in a nomadic Pakhtoon family at Tank, Zalubai (jalibi in Urdu), commonly known as Zarsanga, inherited singing from her family who was wooed and taken to altar by her clan fellow Mula Jan of Serai Naurang, Bannu, in 1965. Mula Jan used to play tabla with Zarsanga’s father Tekidar. But many say that Mula Jan had eloped her, also loved by her singing partner Khan Tehsil. “Ours was a love marriage,” both admitted while sitting in the Radio Pakistan Peshawar station making rehearsal for Independence programs for Radio Pakistan.

“A person named Mustafa had heard me at a wedding ceremony in Lakki Marwat and later on introduced me to Rashid Ali Dehqan, producer in Radio Pakistan Peshawar. In the very first appearance, I won the hearts and appreciation of producers and public as well,” Zarsanga recalled. At that time Radio Station was located near Peshawar Central Jail and when she was giving audition, her reverberating voice even agitated the inmates of the nearby prison who demanded for more, an aged radio employee confirmed her claim.

From that day Zarsanga sang thousands of songs for Radio and TV and performed on stage hundreds of times.

Besides winning appreciation from public, she got many awards including Pride of Performance and Presidential Award from for her contributions. She has also been honoured abroad for her performance. “Once I was singing in an Arab country and some Arab women started dancing on my song without knowing the meaning,” she said with a slight smile and vanity.

“She is Rishama of Pashtu music,” said Laiqzadha Laiq, Radio Producer, adding that once a French woman Mrs Kia who was doing research on Pashtu language and literature here, when heard Zarsanga, was so impressed by her rumbling voice that she . . . arranged a concert of Zarsanga in Paris where she performed without musical instruments and microphone.

The Pashtu melody queen Zarsanga is known for her folk songs, desert arias, and mountainous gharhi (a type of Pashtu tapi) and has many popular songs to her credit. “Being illiterate I can not sing ghazals and thus concentrate on gharhi and folk songs which are popular among Pakhtoons that even some solemn and pious women told me that they only listen her songs publicly at their old age," Zarsanga said proudly.

Puffing a low-priced cigarette in front of her husband, Zarsanga said that once she won two packs of cigarettes by winning an informal high-pitched competition at Peshawar PTV center. She had also won an international voice competition in Germany organised by Dr Kabir Stori of Pakhtoon Social Democratic Party. Her 25-year old son Shehzada has adopted the singing profession and besides singing at hujra and stage level, has also performed on TV and radio.

Zarsanga has six sons and four daughters, two of them married. Zarsanga’s father was proud of her daughter’s singing profession but his daughter says, “my daughters have been blessed with melodious voices but I am against their singing in public." When asked why she pointed towards her husband that he also did not like it. It is against our family traditions, was the simple answer of Mula Jan.

Though not a slight change has occurred in her voice till date but the desert queen considers her this blessing as mirage in a desert, an echo in mountains and a wave in the river, saying that being a mortal-being one day she would lose this asset which is the only source of her income, therefore, she sought restoration of culture scholarship, being stopped to her [sic] like dozens of artists for the last one year by the provincial culture department.

beware the "Iraq Syndrome"

2007-03-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

Hear those BI-PARTISAN calls to get the troops back to Afghanistan & the ‘real war on terra'?

Ira Chernus:

Remember the “Vietnam syndrome”, which made its appearance soon after the actual war ended in defeat. It did restrain the US appetite for military interventions overseas - but only briefly. By the late 1970s, it had already begun to boomerang. Conservatives denounced the syndrome as evidence of a paralyzing, Vietnam-induced surrender to national weakness. Their cries of alarm stimulated broad public support for an endless military buildup and, of course, yet more imperial interventions.

The very idea of such a “syndrome” implied that what the Vietnam War had devastated was not so much the Vietnamese or their ruined land as the traumatized American psyche. As a concept, it served to mask, if not obliterate, many of the realities of the actual war. It also suggested that there was something pathological in a postwar fear of taking US arms and aims abroad, that the US had indeed become (in the late president Richard Nixon’s famous phrase) a “pitiful, helpless giant”, a basket case.

Ronald Reagan played all these notes skillfully enough to become president of the US. The desire to “cure” the Vietnam syndrome became a springboard to unabashed, militant nationalism and a broad rightward turn in the life of the United States.

Iraq - both the war and the “syndrome” to come - could easily evoke a similar set of urges: to evade a painful reality and ignore the lessons it should teach the US. The thought that Americans are simply a collective neurotic head-case when it comes to the use of force could help sow similar seeds of insecurity that might - after a pause - again push US politics and culture back to a glorification of military power and imperial intervention as instruments of choice for seeking “security”.

Now a micro-historical examle of how that dynamic plays out, by Jeffrey St. Clair (from “Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite”):

Soon after his arrival in Congress, Gore formed the Vietnam Veterans Caucus with John Murtaugh, Jim Jones and Les Aspin. For Gore the caucus opened up a useful avenue into hawkish Democratic circles, where men like Aspin and Sam Nunn were doing the Pentagon’s work, proclaiming that “Vietnam Syndrome” was sabotaging the nation’s vital sinews. Gore picked up the lingo quickly enough: “I think it is important to realize that we do have interests in the world that are important enough to defend, to stand up for. And we should not be so burned by the tragedy of Vietnam that we fail to recognize an interest that requires the assertion of force.”

With such language, Gore established himself early on as “safe” from the point of view of the Pentagon and the national security complex. Safety meant never straying off the reservation on such issues as America’s right to intervene anywhere it chooses. Gore backed Reagan’s disastrous deployment of the US Marines in Lebanon in 1983. He supported the invasion of that puissant Caribbean threat to the United States (population 240 million) by Grenada (population 80,000). He later chided his 1988 Democratic opponents for their failure to embrace this noble enterprise. At a time when many Democrats wanted to restrict the CIA’s ability to undertake covert actions, Gore said he wouldn’t “hesitate to overthrow a government with covert actions”, a posture he ratified with his approval of the CIA’s secret war in Afghanistan. This, the largest covert operation in the Agency’s history . . .

[update 04 March]

Just to belabor the point, from Jim Lobe on Condi's appointment of Eliot A. Cohen, author of Supreme Command and a "prominent neo-conservative hawk and leading champion of the Iraq war," to be her State Department Counselor:

. . . while admitting in a Vanity Fair interview late last year that U.S. choices in Iraq range between "bad and awful," Cohen has called for perseverance and played a key role in selling AEI-hatched plan to add some 30,000 troops to the 140,000 soldiers in Iraq to Bush with whom he met personally as part of a small group of "surge"-boosters at the White House in mid-December.

If the surge should fail, however, Cohen's preferred and "most plausible" option, which he laid out in an October 2006 Journal column titled 'Plan B', would be a coup d'etat ("which we quietly endorse") that would bring to power a "junta of military modernizers", a development which, as he noted himself, would call into question the administration's and Rice's avowed goal of democratisation.

In any event, he argued in the same column, "American prestige has taken a hard knock (in Iraq); it will probably take a harder knock, and in ways that will not be restored without a considerable and successful use of American military power down the road."

"The tides of Sunni salafism and Iran's distinct combination of messianism and power politics have not crested, and will not crest without much greater violence in which we too will be engaged," he asserted.

In a Vanity Fair interview last fall, Cohen said, "I'm pretty grim. I think we're heading for a very dark world, because the long-term consequences of this are very large, not just for Iraq, not just for the region, but globally -- for our reputation, for what the Iranians do, all kinds of stuff."

If Rice's intent was to reassure Cheney and the neo-conservatives that she is not a captive of the ISG and the "Washington establishment", that passage alone should do the trick.

Rest assured, there will be a proliferation of bi-partisan variations on this theme.

american gulag - "weapon of mass social destruction"

2007-03-01T17:30:00.000-08:00

(San Quentin & Mt. Tamalpais

home to CA's death row)

Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford:

By 2011, the U.S. prison and jail population will have added nearly 200,000 inmates - a 13 percent overall increase and a 16 percent jump for women, according to a 50-state study by the Pew Charitable Trusts. About half these new inmates will be Blacks, whose mass confinement is the imperative that fuels the relentless growth of the largest and most pervasive Gulag in the history of mankind. . . .

The 200,000 new inmates projected for 2011 understates the huge presence of the Gulag in American society, especially African American life. The anticipated increase is for inmates serving sentences, currently about 1.5 million. The actual total currently behind prison and jail bars is about 2.2 million - again, half Black. This number would rise to just under 2.5 million in five years. However, more than seven million men and women are today under criminal justice system supervision, either prison, jail, parole or probation - a mass of humanity that would swell to nearly eight million by 2011, based on the Pew projections. That's roughly the population of New York City, or the combined populations of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. The number of new justice system-supervised persons, alone, will exceed the population of Detroit.
. . .

As Paul Street reports in this issue of BAR, "one in three black males will be sent to state or federal prison at some point in their lives compared to one in six Latino males and one in seventeen white males."
. . .

The poisons of the Gulag have leached into the very fabric of Black society, obliterating "prospects for progress in every arena of African American life," as stated in an "Urgent Petition to the Congressional Black Caucus" now circulating on the Internet.

Only a purposeful, conscious, unrelenting, systematically executed national public policy of Black mass incarceration in the United States - all 50 of them, and the federal government - can explain the Gulag's exponential growth over the last three and a half decades. The genesis of this public policy - which is arguably genocidal in its nature, dimensions, and impact - is equally clear: Mass Black incarceration is America's answer to the Black Freedom Movement of the Sixties and early Seventies.
. . .

Prison populations have ballooned eight-fold since 1970, and more than quadrupled since 1980. Tim Wise, the anti-racist activist and author, notes that:

"In 1964, 65% of all prison admits were white, while only 35% were people of color. By 1991, these figures had reversed. Did whites decide collectively to stop committing crimes in the intervening years, while Black and brown folks went nuts? Or was something else at work? According to FBI data, the percentage of crimes committed by African Americans has remained steady over the past 18 years, while the number of Blacks in prison has tripled and their rates of incarceration have skyrocketed."
. . .the case [of the SF or Panther 8 - see Legacy of Torture & the San Francisco 8] is one among many indications that the American state is gearing up to launch a new level of repression - that the mass Black incarceration policy of the previous three and a half decades, although hugely successful in both mutilating the social fabric of Black America and acclimating white America to a pervasive prison and police surveillance apparatus, is nevertheless insufficient to the new tasks envisioned.

Yes, Cointelpro is back (as if it ever really left), but with a much more ambitious mission: to more firmly establish in law and practice the foundations for a centralized police-state regime that can respond quickly and massively to the domestic turmoil that must inevitably accompany a New International Order that George Bush had expected would be nearly achieved by now, if the first stage, the conquest of Iraq, had been successful. In this context, the arrest of the Panther Eight is just the closing of a 36-year-old loop, a connecting and bringing forward of older repressions - and ancient white hysterias - to buttress a New Domestic Order justified by the fictitious War on Terror. The Panther Eight are the specter of a permanent source of terror for white America: angry Black men.
. . .

Point One of the Black Agenda Report/Congressional Black Caucus Monitor petition now in circulation demands that the CBC, "individually and collectively, take immediate action to:

DISMANTLE RACIALLY SELECTIVE MASS INCARCERATION, beginning with action to sunset or repeal all mandatory sentencing legislation, eliminate the differential in penalties for crack and powdered cocaine, and halt privatization of prisons and prison health services. America's prison population has multiplied eightfold since 1970. African Americans are one-eighth of this nation, but fully half of her prisons and jails. Mass Black incarceration is a national public policy that destroys the prospects for progress in every arena of African American life. With projections that the prison and jail population will increase by nearly 200,000 in the next four years, the CBC should demand an immediate cap on federal and state prison growth, the latter on penalty of loss of federal criminal justice funding to those states not in compliance."

For two generations, virtually every Black family has heard the tolling of the prison bell. In truth, it is tolling for the Constitution, as well. Black America can no longer bear the weight of mass incarceration, but the larger society - and those African Americans who mistakenly believe they have somehow sidestepped the juggernaut - must also recognize that the Gulag infrastructure is a Weapon of Mass Social Destruction. Defuse it, or perish.

Need it be added this isn't merely a "Black" issue? It cuts to the core of the nation.

the new/old slave labor: prisoners in Colorado to replace migrant workers

2007-03-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

the Guardian:

A decline in the number of immigrant labourers willing to work in Colorado following the introduction of stringent new laws has led authorities to explore an untapped labour pool: prison inmates.

Under a pilot programme to be launched in the early summer in Colorado's Pueblo county, farmers hope to pay inmates 60c a day to gather the watermelons, pumpkins and onions grown on the region's farmland.

But the plan has stirred up controversy on both sides of the immigration debate. "If they can't get slaves from Mexico, they want them from the jails," Mark Krikorian, of the Centre for Immigration Studies, told the Los Angeles Times.
. . .

The new law was introduced to crack down on undocumented migrants receiving state benefits they were not entitled to by making it harder to get a driving licence. But the effect has been to scare away both documented and undocumented migrants.

Few cases of undocumented migrants receiving state aid have been uncovered since the legislation came in to force.
. . .

"They've just given up and gone to other states that don't have these new laws," one farmer, Joe Pisciotta, said. "They just don't want to deal with it."
. . .

The farmers will pay the minimum wage plus any transport costs, although the inmates will only receive the standard prison wage. It is thought to be the first time that inmates will leave prison to work in private industry.

The state's prison authorities hope that the experiment will help to reduce recidivism. "We think that we can provide an opportunity for employment for people in the prison system, and help them to develop some work skills," said representative Dorothy Butcher, who initiated the plan.

The article doesn't mention who pockets the difference between the minimum wage & the $0.60/day. Nor should it be giving the last word to the plan's author, with the old baloney about reducing recidivism and developing "work skills" through picking "watermelons, pumpkins and onions."

war & death: remembering Manny Babbitt - "we disown them"

2007-02-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

Now's a good time to take a look at some sobering facts about homeless and incarcerated veterans in America, and to revisit the story of Manny Babbitt, while Dana Priest's article has the overwhelmed VA & the care returning veterans require on everyone's minds. Manny, the son of Cape Verdean immigrants, was a black Vietnam vet with a Purple Heart who was executed by the State of California in 1999.

First, from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans:

The U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says the nation's homeless veterans are mostly males (4 % are females). The vast majority are single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45% suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Forty-seven percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. More than 67% served our country for at least three years and 33% were stationed in a war zone.

How many homeless veterans are there?

Although accurate numbers are impossible to come by -- no one keeps national records on homeless veterans -- the VA estimates that nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. And nearly 400,000 experience homelessness over the course of a year. Conservatively, one out of every three homeless men who is sleeping in a doorway, alley or box in our cities and rural communities has put on a uniform and served this country. According to the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Urban Institute, 1999), veterans account for 23% of all homeless people in America.
. . .

In January 2000, The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a special report on incarcerated veterans. Following are highlights of the report: "Veterans in Prison or Jail."

Over 225,000 veterans [were] held in [the] Nation’s prisons or jails in 1998.

Among adult males in 1998, there were 937 incarcerated veterans per 100,000 veteran residents.

1 in every 6 incarcerated veterans was not honorably discharged from the military. [i.e. 5 of every 6 were honorably discharged]

About 20% of veterans in prison reported seeing combat duty during their military service.

In 1998, an estimated 56,500 Vietnam War-era veterans and 18,500 Persian Gulf War veterans were held in State and Federal prisons.

Nearly 60% of incarcerated veterans had served in the Army.

Among state prisoners, over half (53%) of veterans were white non-hispanics, compared to nearly a third (31%) of non-veterans; Among Federal prisoners, the percentage of veterans who were white (50%) was nearly double that of non-veterans (26%).

Among State prisoners, the median age of veterans was 10 years older than other prison and jail inmates.

Among State prisoners, veterans (32%) were about 3 times more likely than non-veterans (11%) to have attended college.

Veterans are more likely than others to be in prison for a violent offense but less likely to be serving a sentence for drugs.

About 35% of veterans in State prison, compared to 20% of non-veterans, were convicted of homicide or sexual assault.

Veterans (30%) were more likely than other State prisoners (23%) to be first-time offenders.

Among violent State prisoners, the average sentence of veterans was 50 months longer than the average of non-veterans.

At year-end 1997, sex offenders accounted for 1 in 3 prisoners held in military correctional facilities.

Combat veterans were no more likely to be violent offenders than other veterans.

Veterans in State prison reported higher levels of alcohol abuse, lower levels of drug abuse, than other prisoners.

Veterans in State prison were less likely (26%) than other State prisoners (34%) to report having used drugs at the time of their offense.

Nearly 60% of veterans in State prison had driven drunk in the past, compared to 45% of other inmates.

About 70% of veterans, compared to 54% of other State prisoners, had been working full-time before arrest.
[thanks to liberal catnip for the pointer]

Those figures don't even try to delve into the realm of veterans returning with PTSD. All indications seem to indicate that the domestic incoming from the current war are going to make those statistics look trivial. The life of Manny Babbitt was one of institutional failure at every turn, leaving numerous victims in its wake. It still fills me with sorrow and rage.

Manny Babbitt

Manny Babbitt was executed in California on 4 May 1999. He was a 51-year-old decorated Vietnam veteran whose capital crime appears to have been linked to combat-induced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Manny Babbitt's first taste of active service after joining the US Marines in 1967 was the siege of Khe Sanh, the longest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam war. On his return to the USA, he experienced severe difficulties adjusting to civilian life and slid into serious alcohol and drug problems. He spent eight months in a mental hospital where conditions at the time were described by a federal judge as "shocking" and "unconstitutional." His declining mental health was diagnosed, but never treated. A leading expert on Vietnam combat-related PTSD concluded that Babbitt was suffering from a combat-related flashback, aggravated by hallucinogenic drugs, when he killed Leah Schendel in 1980, and hid and tagged her body as soldiers had hidden and tagged their fallen comrades in Vietnam. Many Vietnam veterans campaigned to save Manny Babbitt from execution, including one ex-Marine who identified him as the soldier who had saved his life at the siege of Khe Sanh. link

How many people have, continue to, and will in the future fall through the proverbial "cracks" in the system?

Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, he lived with his brother, Bill, and Bill's wife in Sacramento, Calif. One day in 1980, Bill came across evidence that Manny had perpetrated a break-in robbery and beaten an elderly woman, who died of a heart attack afterward. Bill made the agonizing decision to turn his brother in to the police, so that he couldn't harm others. The police assured him he had done the right thing, that his brother would be given treatment for his problems in prison and would not be subject to the death penalty.

The authorities lied, Bill Babbitt said. They arrested Manny, who confessed. Manny later told Bill, "What they said I did, I must have done it." He was tried, convicted and given the death penalty. His first lawyer took Bill's money and dropped the case. His second, a court-appointed lawyer, refused to allow blacks on the jury, drank heavily and was later disbarred and sued for racism. Manny's military heroism and mental problems were not disclosed during his trial.

Bill Babbit, who once supported the death penalty, tried to work within the system to save Manny's life, until "everybody -- the DA, the police -- didn't want to deal with me anymore," he said. The system didn't bend. link

PTSD was a controversial theory in those days; while it's legitimacy as a condition goes unchallenged today, one does hear about the VA disputing individual diagnoses, sometimes going so far as to accuse vets of faking & malingering, all in order to reduce their benefits & costs of treatment.

Babbitt's childhood was traumatic and impoverished. At an early age he was sent out to do back-breaking work. He left school at 17 unable to read. His alcoholic father beat and brutalized both him and his mentally ill mother. Babbitt and his other siblings were ridiculed daily with racist taunts from members of their community. Babbitt's father died a slow death from cancer, forcing extra responsibility on Babbitt, who became a surrogate parent to his siblings. Psychiatric and neurological disorders ran rampant in the family.

In June 1967, Babbitt joined the US Marines. He initially failed the screening exam, but with 'help' from the recruiter he passed on the second attempt. Upon arriving in Vietnam in December 1967 he went straight into active service in the siege of Khe Sanh, the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. On 17 March 1968 Babbitt was wounded in action but returned to his unit almost immediately because the policy at the time was to keep returning men to the field until they had been wounded three times. Promoted to Corporal, Babbitt was awarded the Cross of Gallantry, the Purple Heart and other decorations. He returned to the USA in August 1969, remained in the Marines but had severe difficulties adjusting to life outside combat. After taking unauthorized leave he was finally discharged after being deemed 'unsuitable'.

Babbitt has a severe, chronic case of combat-induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ('PTSD'). A leading expert on Vietnam combat related PTSD concluded 'to a reasonable medical certainty that [Babbitt] was suffering from severe chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, aggravated by alcohol and drug abuse, resulting in his experiencing... a dissociative state at the time of the offense.' PTSD, a now- recognized debilitating disorder, was neither understood nor officially recognized until the end of the 1970s. The symptoms of PTSD include dissociative states during which the individual relives the original traumatic event. For those trained in combat, re-experiencing the event may cause unpredictable explosions of aggressive behaviour. From 1974 Manny Babbitt suffered from increasing periods of mental instability, spending eight months in a mental hospital and attempting suicide. A psychiatrist diagnosed Babbitt as suffering from 'schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type, who shows tendencies toward self-destruction'. A federal magistrate described the conditions in the mental hospital that treated Babbitt as 'shocking' and 'unconstitutional' one month after Babbitt was released from it.

Before he was sent to Vietnam, Babbitt had no history of serious criminal or violent behaviour, but from 1973 onwards he was increasingly involved in crime. His declining mental health was diagnosed but never treated. After taking hallucinogenic drugs, Babbitt is said to have experienced a combat-related flashback which lasted for two days and resulted in amnesia. During that time he killed Leah Schendel and tried to rape another woman, Mavis Wilson. The body of Schendel was hidden and tagged as soldiers hid and tagged their fallen comrades in Vietnam.
. . .

In a comment to the press, the prosecuting authorities showed no understanding or sympathy for suffers of PTSD. A deputy district attorney was recently quoted as stating: 'It's spin that's put on the case to take advantage of the national sense of guilt over Vietnam. The event [the murder] occurred 12 years after Khe Sanh and 10 years after he was discharged.' link

from War and the death penalty, by Russell Neufeld:

The death penalty is something we impose on the people we send off to war, who get terribly messed up and then come home and do terrible things.

War traumatizes the people in it. Soldiers are trained to kill. They kill others and see their own comrades killed and wounded. They may narrowly miss death themselves. They come home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)--known in earlier wars as "shell shock" or "combat fatigue." They use drugs and alcohol to self-medicate--to deaden the awful feelings and thoughts. The Vietnam War was a major cause of the drug plague that swept this country during the 1970s and 1980s.
. . .

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are producing a whole new generation of traumatized GIs, returning home with many of the same problems as their predecessors. The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported on a study of U.S. forces in Iraq. One in six self-report being traumatized. It is believed that self-reporting results in some underreporting, and that the true figure is closer to one in four.
And many of these young people go from being cannon fodder to grist for the capital punishment mill. In 2002, three Special Forces soldiers who had fought in Afghanistan returned home, and within six weeks, each killed their wives.
. . .

There is a biblical admonition that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. The story of one of my capital clients is a good example. His father went to Vietnam; another young, Black man, and, just like Manny Babbitt, he was at Khe Sanh. Assigned to an artillery unit, he saw his best friend get blown up, standing right next to him. He returned with PTSD. He took to drinking and drugs and violent fights with his wife, which my client witnessed.

When my client was nine years old, his father would take him with him to buy drugs. When my client was 13, his older sister started dating a drug dealer. This man appeared to my client as everything his father wasn't: successful and together. He looked up to him and soon started helping deal drugs. A few years later, they were both charged with capital murder for drug-related homicides.

So we send young people to war—to its horrors. It messes them up terribly, and when they do terribly messed up things—beat or kill their wives, steal to support their drug habit, and then kill someone in the course of a robbery—we disown them. We deny our own culpability as a society.

War is the great creator of the "other." War creates a moral numbness, allowing us to kill totally innocent human beings. War, therefore, not only creates killers who face the death penalty, it also creates the moral climate that allows jurors to think it's okay for the state to kill the killers.

left behind

2007-02-22T10:22:00.000-08:00

Caitlin G. Johnson:

UNICEF is best known for its work on behalf of children in the developing world, but its latest report turns an eye to the well-being of children in 21 wealthy nations including the United States, which ranks second to the bottom overall.

The UNICEF Innocenti Research Center Report Card, "Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries," looks at six dimensions of child well-being: material well-being, health and safety, educational well-being, family and peer relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own perceptions of their well-being.

"[Child well-being] is a bell weather for where we'll end up in the global market 20 years from now--more than, say, how we're spending our money in other areas, and what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It impacts our global security," says Laura Beavers, research associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which sponsors the Kids Count project to track child well-being in each U.S. state.

. . . the United States fared particularly poorly. It ranked last in health and safety, primarily because of high rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, and deaths from accidents and injuries. The United States also showed significantly higher rates of obesity and overweight teenagers, and even the teen birth rate--which has declined dramatically in the past decade--remains higher than in other rich countries.
. . .

America's childhood obesity epidemic, increasing child poverty rates, and an average on-time high school graduation rate of only 70 percent (and as low as 50 percent in at least 11 urban areas) continue to drive down overall child well-being.

"If we had our resources directed in the right way, we wouldn't be where we are. We have the resources to do it, but we haven't had the political will to do it, especially over the last five years," says the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Laura Beavers.
. . .

The United States is one of two countries that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international treaty that protects children's rights and access to services and under whose mandate the new study was produced. Somalia is the other country that has not ratified the treaty.

Largest most expensive military on the planet. Period.

Steve Lendman: UN peacekeeping paramilitarism

2007-02-18T14:49:00.000-08:00

Don't miss it!

The world community calls them "Blue Helmets" or "peacekeepers," and the UN defines their mission as "a way to help countries torn by conflict create conditions for sustainable peace" by implementing and monitoring post-conflict peace processes former combatants have agreed to under provisions of the UN Charter. The Charter empowers the Security Council to take collective action to maintain international peace and security that includes authorizing peacekeeping operations provided a host country agrees to have them under Rules of Engagement developed and approved by all parties. At that point, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations enlists member nations to provide force contingents to be deployed once the Security Council gives final approval.

Once in place, Blue Helmets are supposed to help in various ways including monitoring the withdrawal of combatants, building confidence, enforcing power-sharing agreements, providing electoral support, aiding reconstruction, upholding the rule of law, maintaining order, and helping efforts toward economic and social development. Above all, "peacekeeping" missions are supposed to be benevolent interventions. They're sent to conflict areas to restore order, maintain peace and security and provide for the needs of people during a transitional period until a local government takes over on its own.

Far too often, however, things don't turn out that way, and Blue Helmets end up either creating more conflict than its resolution or being counterproductive or ineffective. In the first instance, peacekeepers become paramilitary enforcers for an outside authority. In the second, they do more harm than good because they've done nothing to ameliorate conditions or improve the situation on the ground and end up more a hindrance than a help. This article focuses mostly on the former using Haiti as the primary case study example after reviewing peacekeeping operations briefly in six other countries. In each case, the examples chosen show people on the ground as helpless victims of imperial exploitation (usually US-directed) with UN Blue Helmets used by outside powers for social control and domination, not keeping the peace. more

check mark, please [torture files]

2007-02-18T14:33:00.000-08:00

. . . He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:

“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic.

“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the second.

In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.

“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows?

Who knows indeed?

Legacy of Torture & the San Francisco 8

2007-02-17T18:30:00.000-08:00

Forcing the men to strip down to their underwear, police placed plastic bags tightly over the men's heads and beat them with an enhanced form of a blackjack known as a slapjack. Electrical cattle prods were used on the men's genitals, anuses, and necks. One of the interviewees can barely hold back tears as he recalls the details of his torture.

Eventually, wanting to end the torture, the three men agreed to confess to the police murders, even though they continue to insist to this day that they were innocent.

An old tale that could come from almost anywhere. Iraq? Afghanistan? Syria or Iran? No: NO (New Orleans, 1973). As America continues its obscene discourse on the acceptable use, suitability, and bounds of torture, a common refrain is how torture goes against the nation's core values (one of our many core beliefs founded on profound amnesia). Alfred McCoy's work documenting the history of the CIA's torture programs, & the protests against the teaching of torture techniques by the US at the School of Americas have received some attention; stories of the domestic practice of torture even less so and they are all too quickly forgotten.

Any hint of a dark side at the core of our society gets swept away to burgeoning trash heaps of 'a few bad apples.' Bad apples have cores too. This nation's moral righteousness that so readily demonizes others when convenient, whether the topic be torture, terror, or aggression, is rooted in and can only be sustained by exceptional denial in the face of factual event, a necessary facade to feel good about ourselves. We generally prefer to imagine ourselves as incapable of brutality and injustice, although tales of police brutality are commonplace and well-known. So, of course it's a given that we don't torture people in America.

American poet Ammiel Alcalay, in the forward to the world's embrace: selected poems by Abdellatif Laâbi (a Morroccan poet who was himself tortured in prison), sketches the past half century of America's cultural landscape, noting that:

. . . [f]rom our present perspective, as the media bombards us with an insidiously violent form of ignorance and misinformation and the United States government continues to reapportion the boundaries of the Middle East, it is almost inconceivable to think about the cultural space occupied from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s by texts sympathetic to and emerging from the cauldron of decolonization . . . [which] were readily available and formed a critical mass of resources related to a contentious political reality that could be neither ignored nor theorized out of existence.

Some of our last stabs at radical internationalism may have been the efforts of the Black Panther Party, following in the footsteps of Malcolm X after his pilgrimage to Mecca, to establish diplomatic and cultural ties with newly independent states in Africa. It is tremendously ironic that, while the FBI's COINTELPRO program worked tirelessly to place an irreconcilable wedge between Jews and black Americans in the United States, the Moroccan Jewish theorist and future political prisoner Abraham Serfaty delivered a "salute to the African-Americans" at the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algeria, a festival that Archie Shepp played at along with Tuareg musicians, long before the marketing strategies of World Music. But by this point, American soldiers were fighting amongst themselves almost as fiercely as they fought the enemy in Vietnam. Alliances splintered as the country divided itself bitterly over the ever more pointless last years of the war. Many veterans would return home to the charred ruins of deindustrialized cities and towns, drifting into drugs, drink, and homelessness. United States policy shifted completely toward Israel following the June war of 1967—from that point on, almost everything coming into the United States from the Middle East would be viewed through the filter of the Zionist narrative. Identity politics and nationalisms of all stripes came to dominate North American discourse, eventually settling into a version of autistic multi-culturalism effectively cut off from access to useful forms of democratic power at the national level. The covert wars of the 1980s gave way to the first made for televison, fought at prime time bonanza, the Gulf War. From 1990 until 9/11 and the assault on Afghanistan, Islam was reshaped to fit the mold of a ubiquitous and unyielding enemy. The new crusades were upon us.

. . . we remain incalculably impoverished because of the lingering and deep-seated effects of the Cold War's highly successful recategorization of knowledge arranged according to the priorities of the military-industrial complex and the needs of American exceptionalism.

[A more amplified version of Ammiel's observations can be found within another piece that's been posted on-line, No Return, which is well worth taking the time to read.]

There's little doubt that the Black Panthers were sucessfully marginalized & demonized in the popular imagination. One result is that although we know about some of the brutal and illegal things that were done at the time, as a nation we've buried and never really come to terms with the means by which power is willing to protect and maintain itself. What happened in the past is all too easily imagined to be something we're past, irrelevant to the present.

The subsequent rendering from any relation to the body politic of those "last stabs at radical internationalism" has largely prevented an articulated awareness of the connections between war & repression abroad and the "wars" on poverty, drugs, crime, and illegal immigration at home. Martin Luther King's surety shortly before his death "that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes" seems woefully unsupported almost 40 years later. Most, it would appear, rest quite content indeed.

Ron Jacobs:

In today's world, the US government's use of torture and complicity in its clients' use of it is part of the headlines on a regular basis. Yet very few US citizens believe that methods like waterboarding, beating, and electrical shocks could be—and have been—used on US citizens. Indeed, revelations concerning US agents' treatment of Jose Padilla as a so-called enemy combatant barely made the news.

Legacy of Torture, recently released on DVD by the Freedom Archives of Oakland, California, should shake Americans out of complacency. The film vividly describes government criminality and three men who refuse to give in. It is a brief report on the case of three of the fifteen Black Panther Party members who were arrested in an FBI dragnet in 1973: John Bowman, Ruben Scott, and Harold Taylor in New Orleans. The arrests were supposedly in connection with the shooting deaths of two San Francisco police officers in 1971. Two officers flown in from the San Francisco Police Department, Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz who were working with the FBI, would ask Bowman, Scott, and Taylor intimidating questions, hoping to get confessions. When the three men refused to go along, McCoy and Erdelatz would leave the room. The men were then tortured by New Orleans officers. This went on for days.

In 1975, only after a federal court found in 1974 that both San Francisco and New Orleans police had engaged in torture to extract a "coerced" confession, a San Francisco judge dismissed the charges against the three men.

Jacobs again:

It's a little hard to believe, but in 2003 the two SFPD investigators in the original case, McCoy and Erdelatz, were deputized by the federal government and began investigating the 1971 killings along with the FBI. They were also investigating the Panthers' linkages with the Weather Underground. This time around, they were working as part of a grand jury investigation. When that grand jury ran its course, the State of California opened another one. Five former Panthers were called before the panel. All five refused to testify. Consequently, they were sent to jail until the grand jury investigation ended. They were released on October 31, 2005. This film is an introduction to their story and a call to support these men and other activists currently being investigated in what can only be described as fishing expeditions. FBIWitchHunt.com, set up to provide information and garner support for the folks who have become the victims of the expeditions, lists four ongoing grand juries focusing on issues related to animal liberation, medical marijuana, protests against the G8 in San Francisco, and the so-called Green Scare investigations having to do with alleged Earth Liberation Front activities.

On January 23, 2007, 8 men were arrested for the 1971 cop slaying, prompting the Center for Constitutional Rights to issue this press release:

Authorities in San Francisco announced the arrests and indictments of former Black Panthers in the 1971 killing of police officer Sgt. John V. Young despite the use of torture to obtain confessions. Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) compared the documented torture by law enforcement of Black Panthers arrested in New Orleans in 1973 to the documented torture the U.S. government has practiced recently at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman said, "The case against these men was built on torture and serves to remind us that the U.S. government, which recently has engaged in such horrific forms of torture and abuse at places like Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, has a history of torture and abuse in this country as well, particularly against African Americans."

CCR Attorney Kamau Franklin said, "These indictments are an attempt to rewrite history – the history of the Black Panthers, the history of COINTELPRO, and the history of the Civil Rights Movement."

In 1973, New Orleans police employed torture over the course of several days to obtain information from members of the Black Panthers who were stripped naked, beaten, blindfolded, covered in blankets soaked with boiling water, and had electric probes placed on their genitals, among other methods.

In 2005 it was revealed that in Illinois:

. . . for nearly two decades beginning in 1971, [what was known as "Area 2"] was the epicenter for what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of African-American males by Chicago police officers. In total, more than 135 people say they were subjected to abuse including having guns forced into their mouths, bags places over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. Four men have been released from death row after government investigators concluded torture led to their wrongful convictions.
. . .

. . . over 60 cases of torture, and when I say “torture,” I mean electric shock, I mean suffocation with bags, I mean mock executions, I mean racial attacks, that kind of thing. And they were all coming out of the same station, and they were all headed up by this man, Jon Burge, who came out of Vietnam, started out as a detective and quickly rose in the ranks through sergeant, lieutenant and commander. This went on -- the actual documentation now shows that this went on for over 20 years, from 1972 to 1992, when in fact Burge was finally, after community outrage, suspended and fired from his job.

. . . the torture has never been resolved. No one has ever owned up to the torture. So we have hundreds of individuals who have psychologically been warped, been destroyed. There's never been any clinical resolution to the torture. No one has owned up to it. Democracy Now!

Not one person has ever been prosecuted for these acts committed in the Homeland. The San Francisco cops who were involved are not only still on the job, they're still on the case!

Would prosecutors ever try to bring charges based on a coerced confession?

FBI agents ultimately obtained confessions from Bimenyimana, Karake and Nyaminani, who were brought to the United States and indicted in 2003.

The men, who initially denied killing the Americans, later claimed they were tortured by Rwandan officials until they confessed. Last year, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle listened to five weeks of testimony before deciding in August to throw out the confessions because they were obtained by torture.

Prosecutors at first appealed but then reversed course. news link, here's the opinion

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! spoke with the attorney (who "also worked for 25 years on the case of Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt") for one of the men, Herman Bell, arrested last month in the SF shooting:

Stuart Hanlon, I wanted to ask you about court papers filed in the case that were released Thursday, indicating a fingerprint on a cigarette lighter, shotgun shells, an informant helped to lead to the arrests this week. An affidavit filed with the court said in 2004 an FBI investigator matched five of the fifteen shotgun cells recovered from the crime scene to spent shells recovered from a shotgun found at Herman Bell’s New Orleans home in ’73. But police are now saying they have since lost the shotgun allegedly found at Bell's house. Your response?

STUART HANLON: It’s fabricated evidence. What they're really saying is, “We found a gun in Herman Bell's house, and we took it to New Orleans, and we test fired it, and we sent the shells to San Francisco 30 years ago, and all of a sudden we found out they match. But you can't test it -- you can't test the truth of our allegations, because we lost the gun, we lost the paperwork, we lost the proof of where we got it, we lost everything but the result. And just trust us that we're not biased, that we're fair, that we're going to produce real evidence in court. Trust us.” And it's a joke. It really was for the media and the public, and not for court, because --

AMY GOODMAN: The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that ex-Black Panther, Ruben Scott, is expected to testify against the arrested men. He was arrested with Harold Taylor and John Bowman in ’73 in New Orleans. In the mid-’70s, Scott said he only agreed to speak to the police after he was repeatedly tortured. Can you talk more about Scott and his expected testimony?

STUART HANLON: Yeah. Ruben Scott was tortured in the same way Bowman and Taylor were. They tortured him and broke him. He wouldn't testify at first, and then they went and got him again and threatened him on a case in New York. And he agreed finally, as a broken man and a tortured soul, who had been the victim of torture, to testify. We have statements from him that media took and he gave to lawyers, where he contradicted everything he was going to say in court, where he said he said it because he was tortured. And in the document you talked about, they admit he was tortured, so I don't think we're ready in San Francisco to convict somebody or a group of people, where there are political motivations for the case on a witness who’s been the victim of torture . . .

Democracy Now! also played an excerpt of the documentary Ron Jacobs mentioned above, Legacy of Torture: The War Against the Black Liberation Movement:

AMY GOODMAN: The documentary includes interviews with Harold Taylor and John Bowman, about being tortured by police in New Orleans, as well as dramatized scenes depicting the abuse they suffered. Taylor was arrested Tuesday for the killing of the San Francisco police officer. Police allege the late Bowman was also involved in the killing. He died in December. This excerpt begins with Harold Taylor.

HAROLD TAYLOR: I was in there for maybe five minutes, when the door opened. Three police officers of New Orleans came in, dragging me out by my heels, took me to a chair, where they handcuffed me to the chair and handcuffed my ankles, my feet, to the bottom part of the chair. Without asking any questions, they commenced beating me. They beat me, they punched me, they kicked me, they spit on me. They called me a lot of vile names. And then they told me that they was going to kill me if I didn't cooperate with them.

JOHN BOWMAN: The New Orleans Police Department would come into the room. A hot blanket would be taken from the bucket, dripping, hot and wet, placed over my head, held there for -- I can't say whether it was minutes or seconds. It felt like forever.

HAROLD TAYLOR: They came out with a plastic bag, put it over my head, and they started beating me with the bag over my head. About the time I was about to lose consciousness, about to pass out, they would snatch the bag off, and while I’m trying to catch my breath, they would start beating me again. So I asked them, I said, “Well, what do you want?” You know, they just continued to go on whipping. They didn't ask me any more questions. They didn’t ask any questions, really.

Then, they came out with this cattle prod. I knew what it was, because being off of a farm when I was a kid. My family used to go to Louisiana every year to work on the family farm, and my uncles, they had a couple -- we had some cows, and they used cattle prods to move those cows up chutes and stuff like that. So I’d seen that, and I knew what it was.

JOHN BOWMAN: The cattle prod was placed on my genitals, placed in my [expletive]hole, placed under my feet, placed under my arms.

HAROLD TAYLOR: Down on my private parts, under my neck, behind my ears, down my back. I think I passed out one time, and they woke me back up, and they had taken me to another room. Two detectives had me by one arm -- by each arm, and a detective came out of nowhere and he just cold-cocked me and knocked -- I mean, he knocked me straight out. I was unconscious.

JOHN BOWMAN: Another instrument that was used during the questioning was a ledger law book, and this ledger law book was used to hit me upside my head at times when I was not giving the right answers that was script for me.

HAROLD TAYLOR: They took me to a holding cell. They threw water on me. I was soaking wet. It was cold. Pulled me out of there, maybe by 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning, and told me they had somebody they wanted me to talk to and I better cooperate, and if I didn’t, I was going to get more of the same. So they put me in there. There was two detectives from San Francisco. I later found out it was McCoy and Erdelatz. They started asking me questions. They told me they had a script. I’m sure I saw a recorder there, too. And they was reading to me about what they said took place in San Francisco. I told them I had no knowledge of it.

It was back again with the plastic bag. This time they had a blanket. I don't know what they soaked it in, but it was really, really hot, and they just covered me with that blanket and put that plastic bag over my head. And I couldn't scream, I couldn't holler. I couldn’t get my hands up to poke a hole in the bag, because I was handcuffed to the chair and my legs were tied to the chair. And they kicked the chair over and let me just suffocate. I was just about to pass out. They would snatch it off, spit in my face, and they left me sitting there for a little while.

McCoy and Erdelatz, they started asking me questions. I had no knowledge of the things they were asking me, so I couldn't answer them, you know. So they said, “Well, we’ll” -- they turned off the recorder or whatever they had and said, “We'll tell you what happened. And then after we tell you, this is what we want you to say.”

JOHN BOWMAN: So I did make statements. I did waive my rights to an attorney, which means I waived my Miranda rights. I did all of this because of the physical aggression and the brutality that was being put upon my body.

HAROLD TAYLOR: One got behind me, and he took his hands and he slapped them like that over my ears. I couldn't hear nothing. My ears were just ringing so bad. I could feel fluid running down the side of my face. And they were talking to me, but I couldn’t hear them. All I could hear was the ringing. Whenever they stood me up to make me walk, I couldn't walk. They had to just kind of just carry me back into the other room. And when they’d get me back in there, they would start again. And they beat, and they beat, and they beat. Then Erdelatz and McCoy would come back in, and they would kind of grin and laugh. They were all laughing. They thought it was a lot of fun. I was a big joke. They started asking me questions, so I started talking to them, telling them just like they -- I followed their whole script. Everything they told me to say, I said it just like -- whatever Ruben told them, I repeated what Ruben said.

Watch Legacy of Torture on an Internet stream in RealMedia format from DishTV

Upcoming screenings of Legacy of Torture, including:

Free Speech (satellite) TV, Tuesday February 20
(times are PST) 3:29 a.m. 6:29 a.m. 10:29 a.m. 5:29 p.m. 10:29 p.m. Additional dates to be announced. Daily schedule for February 20.

Berkeley, CA, Sunday February 25
6:00 PM - 10:00 p.m. at The Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave, (at Woolsey St.), $5-up sliding scale (no one turned away). A screening of Legacy of Torture will be followed by the classic Battle of Algiers. People will be on hand to answer questions on the SF 8, as well as offer an update Eric McDavid. All proceeds will be split between the SF 8 & Eric McDavid.

Santa Barbara, February -date and time to be announced.

Monterey March 13 evening (to be confirmed)
The Monterey Peace & Justice Center will show the film at the California State University Monterey Bay as part of their New Directions Film Series. Mel Mason, former member of the Black Panther Party, will speak.

Info on how to support the SF 8 at the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights

private prison bulls

2007-02-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in dollars in the bars, capital demands growth and 'get tough' immigration policy is currently serving the private prison industry and its investors very well. Business is booming again. By the numbers:

Corrections Corp. of America [CCA], which operates prisons and detention facilities [& whose documented infractions include "routine abuse of basic prisoner rights, mental and physical abuse, denial of health care and medical treatment, prison overcrowding, and a lack of working showers, and toilets" -A], said Thursday its fourth-quarter profit climbed 37 percent, as inmate populations rose and new contracts went into effect.

Quarterly earnings rose to $32.2 million, or 52 cents per share, from $23.4 million, or 39 cents per share, during the same period last year.

Results beat Wall Street's expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial forecast a profit of 44 cents per share.

Revenue increased 10 percent to $349.6 million from $317.2 million in the year-ago quarter.
. . .

The company said results were driven by strong demand from both federal and state prisons.

Revenue from managing federal facilities grew 13 percent to $141 million, helped by new contracts at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas and Eloy Detention center in Arizona, which experienced increased detainee populations from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Northeast Ohio facility also experienced increased inmate populations from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

At the state level, revenue increased 9 percent to $168.5 million in the quarter, as inmate populations rose in Colorado, Minnesota, Hawaii, Wyoming and Washington.

Overall, occupancy in prisons increased to nearly 97 percent in the quarter, from 93 percent in the year-ago period.

For the full fiscal year, Corrections Corp.'s profit more than doubled to $105.2 million, or $1.71 per share, from $50.1 million, or 83 cents per share in 2005.

Revenue rose 12 percent to $1.33 billion from $1.19 billion in the prior year. link

A 97% per bed occupancy rate (the hotel industry must be jealous). A 4 percent increase that translates into a doubling of profits. A numbers game with human pawns.

gay Latino accuses Fresno cops of sexual assault

2007-02-16T10:48:00.000-08:00

A 30-something Fresno [CA] gay man has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer and four unidentified officers who allegedly handcuffed him, bent “him double” and then penetrated his anus with a foreign object—a thumb or finger.

According to the civil complaint, four Fresno police officers showed up at Cain Gonzalez’s home in a Southeast Fresno gated community on November 7, 2005 where they detained and handcuffed him. The officers claimed he had drugs in his possession.

Gonzalez’s attorney, Bruce Nickerson, says the accusation was false and no charges were ever filed against Gonzalez in the incident.

The complaint then alleges that one of the officers “perceived that” Gonzalez “was gay and said: ‘I know where you faggots keep your shit’.” That officer “then and there” shoved a finger into Gonzalez’s anus, searching for drugs. According to Nickerson, “the invasive act ruptured the lining of” Gonzalez’s “rectum causing him excruciating pain.”

When Gonzalez’ mother Soila attempted to come to his aid, Nickerson says the officers ordered her into her house.

Nickerson says Gonzalez then began bleeding “profusely” from his rectum. He said officers later took Gonzalez to a local hospital for treatment.

Nickerson says that the officers made comments to Gonzalez that leads Nickerson to believe Fresno police “have a policy and practice of assaulting gay Hispanic men.”
. . .

In the Gonzalez case, Nickerson says Gonzalez missed a court appearance on an unrelated drug charge in Madera because he was being held in the Fresno County Jail. When he failed to appear, a Madera judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest on November 15th.

When Gonzalez was released without any charges from the Fresno County Jail during the third week in November, he was then arrested on the Madera County warrant and transferred to the Madera county jail where he was initially placed in protective custody because of his sexual orientation.

Nickerson alleges in the lawsuit that four days after arriving at the Madera jail, Gonzalez was moved into the “open prison population and was immediately assaulted by gang members, who slashed his ear and broke his eardrum.” The lawsuit claims Gonzalez was placed in ‘general population’ in order to intimidate him so that he would not file a complaint against Fresno police. The suit names Madera County sheriff John Anderson and the County as defendants.

Gonzalez seeks unspecified damages, a judgment that the practices described in the suit violate the U.S. Constitution and an injunction stopping police from “targeting, harassing and/or arresting” Latinos “who are minding their own business.”

According to Nickerson, Fresno police refuse to identify the four officers who allegedly assaulted and arrested Gonzalez. He said that Fresno police will not release any reports. link

illegal US covert ops in Somalia prepared Ethiopia's invasion

2007-02-14T12:10:00.000-08:00

Looking for something else in old notes, I came across this item from the Observer from last fall. Note the prominent role of private mercenaries ("firms") providing, one supposes, an added layer of deniable distancing while reporting to CIA. The invasion by Ethiopian troops can now be understood as their attempt to prevent "a replay of Dien Bien Phu."

All obscured by screaming al Qaeda as the gunships let loose last month.

US accused of covert operations in Somalia

Emails suggest that the CIA knew of plans by private military companies to breach UN rules

September 10, 2006, The Observer

Dramatic evidence that America is involved in illegal mercenary operations in east Africa has emerged in a string of confidential emails seen by The Observer. The leaked communications between US private military companies suggest the CIA had knowledge of the plans to run covert military operations inside Somalia - against UN rulings - and they hint at involvement of British security firms.

The emails, dated June this year, reveal how US firms have been planning undercover missions in support of President Abdullahi Yusuf's transitional federal government - founded with UN backing in 2004 - against the Supreme Islamic Courts Council - a radical Muslim militia which took control of Mogadishu, the country's capital, also in June promising national unity under Sharia law.

Evidence of foreign involvement in the conflict would not only breach the UN arms embargo but could destabilise the entire region.

One email dated Friday, 16 June, is from Michele Ballarin, chief executive of Select Armor - a US military firm based in Virginia. Ballarin's email was sent to a number of individuals including Chris Farina of the Florida-based military company ATS Worldwide.

Ballarin said: 'Boys: Successful meeting with President Abdullay Yussef [sic] and his chief staff personnel in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday ... where he invited us to his private hotel suite flacked by security detail ... He has appointed is chief of presidential protocol as our go to during this phase.'

She refers to one 'closed-door meeting' with a senior UN figure and mentions there are 'a number of Brit security firms' also looking to get involved.

Ballarin claimed she has been given 'carte blanche' to use three bases in Somalia 'and the air access to reach them'.

She then suggests that the CIA have been kept informed of the plans. Ballarin states: 'My contact whom we discussed from the agency side requested an in-person meeting with me. I arrived in New York at 2340 last night and was driven to Virginia - arriving at 0200 today.'

According to the highly respected newsletter, Africa Confidential, which originally published extracts of the emails last week, Select Armor started its operation planning in Kampala, Uganda. The emails suggest that the Ugandan government were willing to help secure arms supplies for any operation although this is denied by security officials in Kampala.

In one reply to Ballarin, Farina said: 'A forced entry operation [into Mogadishu] at this point without the addition of follow-on forces who can capitalise on the momentum/initiative of the initial op will result in a replay of Dien Bien Phu'. This is a reference to the defeat of French colonial forces in Indochina in 1953.

The website of Farina's company ATS boasts it 'can execute operations in support of host national indigenous forces'. ATS claims it uses former US and British special operations personnel.

One email discussing funding of any operation sent from Farina to Ballarin states: 'We may have to re-focus our efforts in the US among the DOS [State Department] and DOD [Defence Department] to bring any forward movement to this effort.'

recruiting canon fodder - "not putting a hammer in their hands"

2007-02-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Over 10% of last year's recruits had felony records.

NYT:

The number of waivers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show.

During that time, the Army has employed a variety of tactics to expand its diminishing pool of recruits. It has offered larger enlistment cash bonuses, allowed more high school dropouts and applicants with low scores on its aptitude test to join, and loosened weight and age restrictions.

It has also increased the number of so-called "moral waivers" to recruits with criminal pasts, even as the total number of recruits dropped slightly. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army's moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.

The number of waivers for felony convictions also increased, to 11 percent of the 8,129 moral waivers granted in 2006, from 8 percent. . . .

The Army enlisted 69,395 men and women last year.

That's over 800 felons recruited into the armed services in one year.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Michael D. Palm Center, a research institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, that focuses on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuality, obtained the most recent data from the Department of Defense. . . .

Since more than 125,000 service members with criminal histories have joined the military in the last three years, Mr. Belkin said, "you have a sizeable population that has been incarcerated and is not used to the same cultural norms as everybody else."

"The chance that one of those individuals is going to commit an atrocity or disobey an order is higher," he said. "Many of those individuals can be good soldiers, but in some cases they have special needs. The military should address those needs rather than pretending they don't exist."

Of course there's no "moral waiver" for the guy who tells 'em he likes to suck cock. That's simply unacceptable.

John D. Hutson, dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire and former judge advocate general of the Navy, said the military must tread carefully in deciding which criminals to accept. There is a reason, he said, why allowing people with criminal histories into the military has long been the exception rather than the rule.

"If you are recruiting somebody who has demonstrated some sort of antisocial behavior and then you are a putting a gun in their hands, you have to be awfully careful about what you are doing," Mr. Hutson said. "You are not putting a hammer in their hands, or asking them to sell used cars. You are potentially asking them to kill people."

And of course there's no 'moral waiver' available to any ex-felon who might want to vote.

Josh Wolf — live from federal prison, Dublin, CA

2007-02-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

broadcast 12 jan 2007 on Democracy Now!:

JOSH WOLF: . . . my fear is that instead of having the effect of making people wake up and realize that we need to do something about the impending police state that we're living in that will send a journalist to jail for six months, who was accused of doing nothing wrong, that instead of causing people to stand up, that it's scaring people into not speaking out at all, and that's a very frightening concept that reminds me of what happened during World War II or the lead-up to World War II in Germany, in that all these people saw what was coming their way and could have decided to react, to resist, but were too afraid. And I’m worried that America is too afraid, and even though maybe my situation has helped them realize what's coming down the pike, that instead of jolting them out of bed, it's just lulled them deeper into sleep and helped them pull the covers over their head in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, if they don't see it, it will all go away.
. . .

AMY GOODMAN: Do you plan to continue to be a journalist, Josh Wolf, once you are freed?

JOSH WOLF: Absolutely. This has just made me more determined to get the stories that are not being covered out than ever before, because someone needs to cover this. There's a lot of people that are, but we need more. Every single person that can stand up and document injustices they see around them is one more person that will help lead towards an understanding and enlightenment of our society about what's really going on.

AMY GOODMAN: If people want to reach you, where can they write? Can they email you? Can they write you letters?

JOSH WOLF: If they visit my website [. . .] my blog that they can read about what's going on, there's a resource page that explains the situation a little better. And at the bottom, it says, “mail me.” Right there is my address. And if you don't want to send snail mail, you can just click the email button and send an email to freejosh(at)joshwolf.net, and those will get printed and sent to me. But please do include your snail mail address, because I can't email you back.
. . .

AMY GOODMAN: When we interviewed you for the brief respite that you got out of jail in September, live in studio at the Link TV studios in San Francisco, we also talked to the San Francisco Chronicle reporter—two reporters there also face imprisonment for not revealing sources in exposing the steroid Barry Bonds case, what you were talking about, but they have not gone to jail. What's the difference?

JOSH WOLF: The legal difference is not much. It clearly shows how the government's deciding to deal with corporate media versus an independent journalist, is that they've said, well, we're not going to make you go to jail until the Ninth District rules one way or the other, and then the Ninth District's hearings have been pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. Mine, on the other hand—I was escorted into custody from the courtroom the day I was ruled in contempt. The Ninth Circuit ruled, while I was in custody—or actually the Ninth Circuit spent a month waiting to determine whether or not to grant me bail -- granted me bail, passed it on to the next panel. That panel ruled, and then immediately they said I needed to go back into custody while we still had another level of Ninth Circuit appeals pending. So it's definitely a divergence between how the government’s handled my situation as an independent journalist and how they've dealt with the corporate media, who has also been found in civil contempt.
. . .

Look around you. If they're sending me to jail for essentially no charges, what's next? We need to wake up. We need to come to terms with the government we have right now and demand a change, demand a free media that's not encumbered by interference, that doesn't force journalists to act as agents of the state, that truly is free, both in terms of corporate control and government control, and hopefully if we demand it, we'll have it.
. . .

MARTIN GARBUS (Wolf's attorney): I think that what he said, namely, that they're investigating what may have been an attempt -- may have been an attempt to set fire to a police car, you don't set up grand juries in order to see whether or not there was a crime or not. You have a grand jury to investigate something that is a crime. I think the significant thing here is that the grand jury subpoena has been issued by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, so I think that you should put the Josh Wolf stuff aside, in a way, namely whatever happened at that particular demonstration, I think it's an attempt to get at people who were critical of the Bush administration. There is no crime—there is no grand jury sitting right now in the state court. There is no crime being considered in the state court. The whole question of whatever happened to a policeman is a state court problem. You could not issue a subpoena out of the federal court to investigate what is a state court problem. There is no investigation of any kind going on, so far as we know, in the federal court. So there's no reason to hold him, and we have made this argument, and the argument has been rejected.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is going on?

MARTIN GARBUS: I think basically it's an attempt by the government—the Joint Terrorism Task Force is controlled out of Washington. I think it's an attempt, as Josh said, to learn the identity of people who are hostile to this administration. And the people who were at the demonstration, in addition to demonstrating about the subject of the demonstration, also had anti-Bush signs, also had anti-Iraq signs. Now, this subpoena was issued, as we know, early last year. I think that what you see is an attempt by the Bush administration to crack down on its critics.

2 by Lorine Niedecker - "the recommended melon"

2007-02-11T17:52:00.001-08:00

The radio talk this morning
was of obliterating
the world

I notice fruit flies rise
from the rind
of the recommended
melon

J.F.Kennedy after
the Bay of Pigs

To stand up—

black-marked tulip
not snapped by the storm

'I've been duped by the experts'

—and walk
the South Lawn

(1963, Lorine Niedecker)

the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - is the world order becoming irreversibly multipolar?

2007-02-11T13:04:00.000-08:00

M K Bhadrakumar:

Russia is not in competition with Iran in tapping the South Asian market for gas. It is expedient for Russia if Iran gets deeply engaged in the Asian market (which includes two energy guzzlers - China and India) and, that, too, with Russian equity participation in the actual construction of Iran's pipeline to South Asia. That could lead to Gazprom's participation in the highly lucrative distribution and retailing of Iranian gas in Pakistan, India and China.

In geopolitical terms, what merits attention will be the prospects of an "energy club" taking shape within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) framework. Significantly, the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China are to meet in New Delhi in a trilateral format this month. Meanwhile, the Indian foreign minister has just concluded a visit to Iran, setting the requisite political climate for accelerated energy cooperation.

Russia sees advantages in developing an "energy club" within the SCO. Putin proposed such an idea at the SCO summit last June. The Russian objective is to bring together major energy producers and key consumers within the ambit of SCO, which would not only lead to coordination of efforts in joint energy production and transportation projects but also strengthen regional security on the whole, apart from reinforcing the multipolarity of the world order. The SCO consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran has observer status.

Alarm bells must be ringing in Washington. Has the clock begun ticking for a SCO "energy club"? Is the world order becoming irreversibly multipolar? To be sure, the tensions around the Iran nuclear issue that Washington has ratcheted up are proving counterproductive. They have prompted Tehran to draw close to Moscow and, arguably, to expedite the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.
. . .

The specter of a nuclear arms race being forced on Russia haunts the Kremlin. Nothing brings this home more than the Russian proposal to Washington to conclude a non-aggression pact ("legally binding agreements guaranteeing that their military potentials will not be targeted against each other"). Russia-Iran cooperation seems to gather pace almost in direct proportion to the deterioration of Russian-US relations. Moscow's post-haste delivery of Tor-M1 air-defense systems to Iran in December was extraordinary.

Former Russian prime minister Yevgeni Primakov last week summed up the calculus: "Russia is on the way to becoming one of the pillars, if you like, one of the centers, of the multipolar world and one should reckon with Russia ... The Americans will have to retreat, they are at a dead end, and they don't know how to back out of it. They understand it and they are now turning to the United Nations ... Our task is, together with Europe, together with China, together with India, to make sure that a world order that emerges is based on stability."

Primakov added, "You see, we want the American hegemonistic aggressiveness to be blunted. Objectively, things will be moving in this direction because giants such as China and India are rising. By the way, the combined GDP [gross domestic product] of China and India is exceeding that of the United States and they are growing 2.5 times faster than the United States."

Significantly, the adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader on international affairs and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati arrived in Moscow on Thursday for follow-up consultations over Ivanov's talks in Tehran. Velayati played a key role, along with then-Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, in laying the foundation for Iran-Russia strategic cooperation in the mid-1990s.

dollars in the bars - the private prison industry - "the war on drugs has . . . become a war on immigrants"

2007-02-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

Deepa Fernandes, "This Alien Life: Privatized Prisons for Immigrants":

As the government invokes national security to sweep up and jail an unprecedented number of immigrants, the private-prison industry is booming. In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on New York, immigrants have become the fastest growing segment of the prison population in the U.S. today. In fiscal year 2005, more than 350,000 immigrants went through the courts. "A growing share of them committed no crimes while in the United States - 53 percent this year, up from 37 percent in 2001 - even though Bush administration officials repeatedly have said their priority is deporting criminals," the Denver Post reported.

The Clinton-era ushered in a private prison boom. Catherine Austin Fitts, in “Dillon Read & Co. Inc. & the Aristocracy of Prison Profits,” explains:

Paradigms of Republican vs. Democrat or Conservative vs. Progressive have been designed for obfuscation and entertainment. An endless number of philosophies and strains of religious and “holier than thou” moralism are really put on and taken off like fresh make-up in the effort to hide from view a deeper, uglier face. One person who may have described it more frankly during the Clinton years was the former Director of the CIA, William Colby, who writing for an investment newsletter in 1995 said:
“The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It’s possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government.”
The Clinton Administration took the groundwork laid by Nixon, Reagan and Bush and embraced and blossomed the expansion and promotion of federal support for police, enforcement and the War on Drugs with a passion that was hard to understand unless and until you realized that the American financial system was deeply dependent on attracting an estimated $500 billion-$1 trillion of annual money laundering. Globalizing corporations and deepening deficits and housing bubbles required attracting vast amounts of capital.

Attracting capital also required making the world safe for the reinvestment of the profits of organized crime and the war machine. Without growing organized crime and military activities through government budgets and contracts, the economy would stop centralizing. The Clinton Administration was to govern a doubling of the federal prison population [See page 72, Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor, edited by Tara Herivel and Paul Wright.].

The boom of course was bound to bust; it didn't last long. Fernandes continues:

In 2000, the industry was carrying more than $1 billion in debt and was violating its existing credit agreements. CCA [Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, one of the nation's biggest prison companies] saw its stock plummet 93 percent and Business Week noted that the correction “industry’s heyday may already be history.”

At the time, the American Prospect, a national magazine, explained the decline:

“The private-prison industry is in trouble. For close to a decade, its business boomed and its stock prices soared because state legislators across the country thought they could look both tough on crime and fiscally conservative if they contracted with private companies to handle the growing multitudes being sent to prison under the new, more severe sentencing laws. But then reality set in: accumulating press reports about gross deficiencies and abuses at private prisons; lawsuits; million-dollar fines. By last year, not a single state was soliciting new private-prison contracts. Many existing contracts were rolled back or even rescinded. The companies’ stock prices went through the floor.”
Then came the the September 11th attacks on New York in 2001. The government began to target non-citizens with mass arrests during sweeps through immigrant communities, increased prosecutions of undocumented border crossers, and the use of immigration law to hold people while looking for criminal or terrorist charges against them. The INS was subsumed into a new agency named the Department of Homeland Security.
. . .

The DHS-run Special Processing Center is a massive one-stop-shop, where immigrants can be jailed, tried in an immigration court, appealed before an immigration judge, and ordered deported—all without leaving the self-contained complex. While DHS does not refer to its facilities as jails, the Special Processing Center in Florence [AZ] is ringed by concertina wire, surrounded by chain-link fences, with inmates locked into cells. They face zealous prosecution and in many cases are left to languish for weeks and months without trial or sentencing.

The complex in Florence is part of a 300-facility-strong network of immigrant incarceration facilities. The average time an immigrant is detained is 42.5 days from arrest to deportation. At $85 a day per detainee, that adds up to $3,612.50 per person. In 2003, DHS was holding 231,500 detainees, and the budget to cover this was $1.3 billion. Since 2001, the DHS budget for detention bed space has increased each fiscal year as has the number of beds. In 2003 there was more than $50 million slated for the construction of immigrant jails.

Corrections Corporation of America

A 2003 report by the DHS Inspector General forcefully condemned the treatment of immigrants inside various jails in it report, “The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks.” Infractions included routine abuse of basic prisoner rights, mental and physical abuse, denial of health care and medical treatment, prison overcrowding, and a lack of working showers, and toilets.

Despite a long record of problems, CCA continues to promote privatization and win contracts. "The private prison industry, to increase the demand for its services, exerts whatever pressure it can to encourage state legislators to privatize state prisons," wrote Sharon Dolovich in the Duke University Law Journal. "[T]he industry is adept at lobbying legislators and targeting campaign contributions to promote its privatization agenda."

Indeed, some critics charge that the company's success is related to its deep rooted ties to elected officials. In addition to CCA's record of campaign contributions to the Republican Party since 1997, there are significant connections between executives and government officials. J. Michael Quinlan, former head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, has been an executive at CCA for the past decade. CCA’s chief lobbyist in the state of Tennessee is married to the speaker of the house. And CCA is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that writes and pushes bills on policy such as sentencing guidelines.

For the second quarter of 2005, CCA announced that its revenue had increased three percent over last year, for a total of almost $300 million. CCA calculates that it expenditure of $28.89 per inmate, per day allows it to make a daily profit of $50.26 per inmate. Meanwhile, on July 1, 2005, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded CCA contracts to continue running the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey and the 1,216-bed San Diego Correctional Facility. Both of these contracts are for three years with five three-year renewal options. In 2005 CCA also secured new prison contracts with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the state of Kansas, and the Florida Department of Management Services.

Business is good for CCA and the more people it stuffs into its prisons the better it becomes. "As you know, the first 100 inmates into a facility, we lose money, and the last 100 inmates into a facility we make a lot of money " CCA Chief Financial Officer Irving Lingo said on a 2006 company conference call.
[Fitts:
On February 4, 1994, U.S. Vice President Al Gore announced Operation Safe Home, a new enforcement program at HUD. Gore was a former Senator from Tennessee. His hometown of Nashville was home of the largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). . . . Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton in the New York Times in November 1995 describe the political appointees in the Clinton Administration who were successful at overcoming the natural intelligence of the career civil service at DOJ:
“In the middle of last year, the White House sent its proposal to privatize prisons to the Justice Department, where it was greeted with a frosty response, according to officials involved in the discussions.

“To help overcome the resistance of senior officials at the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons, the plan’s architect at the White House, Christopher Edley Jr., asked Mr. Gore’s office to turn up the heat.
Mr. Edley, an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, enlisted the aid of Ms. Kamarck, Mr. Gore’s senior policy adviser overseeing his government review. She then called her friend, Ms. Gorelick, the Deputy Attorney General, who oversees the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department.

“I convinced Jamie to do more of it,” Ms. Kamarck recalled.”
. . . Thanks to the successful efforts of the Clinton Administration to pass new crime legislation and ensure DOJ bureaucracy support for outsourcing contracts to run federal prisons to private prison companies—including a gush of contracts to Cornell from the fall of 1995 to the spring of 1996—Dillon Read’s Cornell stock purchased at an average price between $2-3 per share, was now worth $12 a share, a 400-600 percent increase. . . . In nine months, the Clinton Administration’s increase in contracts and acquisition of entities with contracts supporting 1,726 prisoners had literally made the company [Cornell]. The IPO reflected a stock market valuation of $24,241 per prisoner. What that means is that every time HUD’s Operation Safe Home dropped swat teams into a community and rounded up 100 teenagers for arrest, the potential value to the stockholders of the prison companies that managed the juvenile facilities and prisons was $2.4 million.]

Wackenhut

Florida-based Wackenhut, a major private security company, has also received a great boost in the years since the September 11th attacks on New York. Its poor record has not undermined its ability to reap lucrative government contracts. Before 2001, Wackenhut, like CCA, had been at the center of all manner of inmate-abuse scandals: Guards were caught having sex with underage inmates, there were routine reports of extreme mistreatment of inmates, and there was even a disproportionately high level of deaths in their facilities.

Wackenhut CEO George Zoley has been flippant about the cases of abuse. After a CBS Television report exposed the repeated rape of a 14-year-old girl at a Wackenhut juvenile jail and two guards were found guilty, Zoley said, “It’s a tough business. The people in prison are not Sunday-school children.” Still more worrying was Wackenhut’s record with inmate-on-inmate killings, which, contrary to public perception, are not very common in America’s prisons. In 1998–99 alone, Wackenhut’s New Mexico facilities had a death rate of one murder for every 400 prisoners. For the same period in all U.S. prisons, the rate was about one in 22,000.

Wackenhut's most visible response was to change its name. Now as the GEO Group, it is still headed by George Zoley, and it continues to run the Wackenhut facilities and get new contracts. In 2005 the State of California Department of Corrections gave GEO the contract for the housing of minimum security adult male inmates at the 224-bed McFarland Community Correctional Facility estimated to generate $4.1 million in annual revenues. On August 8, 2002, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded GEO a contract for the company's Broward Transitional Center in Miami. The contract has been extended through September 2008.

Under a 2005 ICE contract GEO also manages the Queens Private Correctional Facility, where it expects to reap $10.5 million in annual revenues. The Mississippi Department of Corrections also renewed GEO's contract for the continued management and operation of the 1,000-bed Marshall County Correctional Facility. Meanwhile, also in 2005, GEO announced a merger with Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) that will add approximately $100 million in revenue to GEO’s coffers. GEO is especially excited about the earning potential from CSC’s 1,000-bed expansion of its State Prison in Florence, Arizona.

GEO executives are overjoyed about the boom in business. In 1999, the feds farmed out less than 3 percent of beds; but seven years later, the number had reached almost one in five. "That's a remarkable turnaround," GEO Group CEO George Zoley told his fellow executives."And it's continuing to lead in that direction, that for minimum-security beds by the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) to house criminal aliens and illegal aliens by either the U.S. Marshal Service or the BOP or immigration service, they are turning to private companies.”

“I think we're in a new era that I could never predicted, really, this scale of acceptance by the federal government. We talked about it for many, many years, but we're finally on the verge of it... ." added Zoley.

Fitts describes how as the 1994Omnibus Crime Bill (which "implemented mandatory sentencing, authorized $10.5 billion to fund prison construction that mandatory sentencing would help require, loosened the rules on allowing federal asset forfeiture teams to keep and spend the money their operations made from seizing assets, and provided federal monies for local police") was pending, some investors realized that:

[t]he potential impact on the private prison industry was significant. With the bill only through the house, former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti joined the board of Wackenhut Corrections, which went public in July 1994 with an initial public offering of 2.2 million shares. By the end of 1998, Wackenhut’s stock market value had increased almost ten times. When I visited their website at that time it offered a feature that flashed the number of beds they owned and managed. The number increased as I was watching it -- the prison business was growing that fast.
. . .

If you want to see a bi-partisan system at work, follow the money. In the middle of a Presidential election, a Democratic administration engineered significant equity value into a Republican firm’s back pocket. If you step back and take the longer view, however, what you realize is that many of the players involved appear to have connections to Iran Contra and money laundering networks. A surprising number of them went to Harvard and other universities whose endowments are significant players in the investment world. And as it turned out, while the U.S. prison population was soaring from 1 million to 2 million people and US government and consumer debt was skyrocketing, Harvard Endowment was also growing --from $4 billion to $19 billion during the Clinton Administration. Harvard and Harvard graduates seemed to be in the thick of many things profitable.

Fernandes:

Prison companies . . . are able to save large amounts of money on labor practices that would illegal under any other circumstances. Inmate jobs in all prisons pay a pittance, but immigrant prisons are even worse. Because DHS guidelines mandate that non-citizen prisoners cannot earn more than $1 per day, the company gets janitors, maintenance workers, cleaners, launderers, kitchen staff, sewers and grounds keepers at almost no cost.

With the increase in prison beds for immigrants comes the pressure to fill them-- a scenario that has immigrant advocates extremely worried. Isabel García, attorney and human rights activist in Tucson, sees the drive to jail immigrants as fueling the same prison-industrial complex that first flourished with the war on drugs.

“The war on drugs has conveniently become a war on immigrants,” says García, “and there is a lot of money to be made in detaining immigrants.” The growing industry of incarcerating immigrants is facilitated by the tight connections between the private-prison industry and the federal government and the extent of the industry's powerful and well-funded lobby. García worries that the profit motive behind detaining immigrants will promote the criminalization of immigrants.

"Will" really should read has. Always has been. And of course, capital demands growth. Fitts:

Cornell Corrections [based in Houston] was created to take advantage of plans to privatize the government’s prison operations. The War on Drugs and its related mandatory sentencing were fueling an explosion in the U.S. prison population. The construction and management of new prison facilities was potentially big business for the construction industry -- firms like Brown & Root [now Halliburton's notorious subsidiary KBR, who constructed the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, prisoner of war camps in Iraq and has received contracts to build immigration detention facilities for DHS] who Cornell used to build their first detention center—and those who financed them -- like Dillon Read.
. . .

Prison stocks also are valued on a “per bed” basis—which is based on the number of beds provided and the profit per bed. “Per bed” is really a euphemism for people who are sentenced to be housed in their prison.

. . . for every contract Cornell got to house one prisoner, at that time, their stock went up in value by an average of $24,261. According to prevailing business school philosophy, this is the stock market’s current present value of the future flow of profit flows generated through the management of each prisoner. This, for example, is why longer mandatory sentences are worth so much to private prison stocks. A prisoner in jail for twenty years has a twenty-year cash flow associated with his incarceration, as opposed to one with a shorter sentence or one eligible for an early parole. This means that we have created a significant number of private interests—investment firms, banks, attorneys, auditors, architects, construction firms, real estate developers, bankers, academics, investors among them -- who have a vested interest in increasing the prison population and keeping people behind bars as long as possible.

It's a numbers game. So what's the projected worth of a war on immigrants?

'dad's gonna kill me now

2007-02-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

Legendary British singer-songwriter & folk guitarist extraordinaire Richard Thompson performing September, 2006, at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. He played a new anti-war anthem, introducing it with something to the effect of:

'The soldiers in Vietnam shortened the name to 'Nam — this one's for the soldiers in Baghdad':

'Dad's Gonna Kill Me Now

[I first posted this picture last November. Via Counterpunch, I see that not only has Richard now recorded the song, but that it is available on-line to listen or download. Click on the song title above. The festival took place during 'Fleet Week.' Earlier in the day as Elvis Costello & T-Bone Burnett took the stage in a reprise of The Coward Brothers (joined at one point by "honorary brother" Emmylou Harris , the crowd was subjected to the roar of the Navy's Blue Angels' aerial acrobatics overhead - a vivid reminder of the thoroughly embedded military bent of this nation. What fear had those sounds, that sight, roused in how many civilians across the globe this year? How many had see or heard the bombs dropped? Or fast asleep never knew they were coming?]

Josh Wolf's history mark

2007-02-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

"Much is made of China imprisoning bloggers, yet we have a very similar situation here in the US." Simon Barrett, bloggernews.net

Julian Davis:

Today Josh Wolf becomes the longest incarcerated journalist for contempt in U.S. history. He is exemplary of a new class of independent free-lance journalists who are changing the landscape of journalism with new media and new modes of communication. Wolf and those like him are no less deserving of protection that the mainstream media. With other reporters, such a Lance Williams, Mark Fainaru-Wada and until very recently Sarah Olson under threat of jail time, the importance of passing an inclusive and robust federal shield law has never been more apparent.

Representatives of the Free Josh Wolf Coalition were in Washington D.C. last week lobbying members of Congress to call for Wolf's release. Their plea follows on the heels of recent requests by Speaker Pelosi, Senators Boxer and Feinstein, and Representatives Conyers and Davis that Attorney General Gonzales rescind subpoenas of San Francisco Chronicle writers Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. Their success or failure to conjure action from Congress on Wolf's behalf will be a telling comment on the state of Democracy in America. Within days the Hearst Corporation was able rally at least five Representatives and Senators to the defense of the embattled Chronicle reporters.

Josh Wolf does not have a powerful media giant to pay his legal bills or exert influence in Congress but he does have the support of a formidable and ever-growing list of professional journalist organizations and first ammendment advocates including The National Press Club, The Society of Professional Journalists, the American Civil Liberties Union, Reporters Without Borders, the Newspaper Guild, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Center for Media and Democracy, the National Writers Union, and the First Amendment Project. If Congress will react to the Hearst Corporation and not this impressive coalition professionals and advocates, the thesis that our great American experiment in Democracy has devolved into little more than a thinly veiled Corporate Oligarchy will never have been so well supported.

Huffington managed to run a decent piece (& great improvement over one they ran last fall); otherwise the 'great liberal progrsessive netroots' aren't concerning themselves much with a first amendment issue that has imprisoned a young man. Even yesterday's NY Times article didn't seem to spark much interest. Google reveals the story is all over the place today. Let's hope people wake up & start paying attention.

Here’s the letter to DC-critters from Josh’s mother posted on his blog last week:

I am Liz Wolf-Spada, the mother of imprisoned journalist, Josh Wolf. I am so sorry I cannot be there today in person. I want to thank Lucie Morillon and Reporters Without Borders for their diligence and faithfulness in following the story of my son’s ordeal and imprisonment since the beginning. As a public school teacher, I have very limited time I can manage to be gone and I had planned to be there on the 8th and 9th of February, hoping to speak with both members of the press and congressional delegates.

Ironically, as my son faces his 160th day of imprisonment as a journalist who is not cooperating with a federal grand jury investigation, I am teaching the California social studies curriculum to my third grade class. We are learning about the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This is a FAST FACT quote from our textbook.

“Freedom of the press is the right of United States citizens to write, read and speak freely. Today, the press includes not only newspapers and magazines, but films, television and the internet.” How difficult it is for me to teach my class to believe that we have a free press, when I see that we do not. From Judith Miller to Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wadu to my son, Josh Wolf, the federal government no longer seems to recognize the rights of us, the citizens, to benefit from your open, unbiased and unhindered reporting.When independent journalists such as my son, are imprisoned for refusing to turn over unpublished material and testify about people exercising free speech rights at an anti-war, anti-G8 summit protest in San Francisco, it certainly has a chilling effect on what may or may not be filmed and reported to the public. Who wants to report controversial news knowing that their reporting could lead to months of imprisonment for standing by journalistic principles?

Josh is one of many young journalists who use words and video to tell the story of what they see happening in the world around them. For most of them, the internet is the chosen vehicle to publish this information. For many people today, young and old, it is also a major source of news. Recently, I attended the Free Press, Reform the Media Conference in Memphis. I was there to speak about Josh’s case. There were 3500 people there, people who care about protecting the rights of you, the press, so that you can protect our rights to be informed citizens. Josh is on the crest of the wave of a media revolution and he is in prison. What does that say about our country’s commitment to a free press?

“We need those who provoke us so that we may be warned of the fate that our prejudices or ignorance or wishful thinking may hold in store for us.”

—William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1962

previously:
Josh Wolf: patriot
free press? why Josh Wolf sitting in prison matters

campaign season super bowl lines overheard & imagined in a time of War

2007-02-04T18:02:00.000-08:00

football's america's game now—bet on it!

selective listening for an amusing guide to electoral politics, USA style:

that was a tough run up the middle

you've got to get meaner & nastier

build your team around a strong defense

best defense is an aggressive offense

can he unite this team w/ his leadership & lead them to victory?

go team!
rah! rah! rah!

he never saw it coming

"I've got a confession for you
I ain't no fool!" —Prince

they're not having any success on the ground

"let's get aggressive again"

sooner or later you've got say "we're tired of this" and come with the blitz

their game plan is to get it done through the air

that was a legal hit

they can't just drive through the red zone

the inside players are taking care of it

those numbers just aren't very good

they're playing it safe

you change how they play you—make 'em react to you

it's time for a change-up—what you're doing isn't working

so agonizingly close

it's a little right to left but most of the time it's straight up the middle

they've had trouble following through

you've got to play it safe—can't let them run right by you

no one's ever come back from that kind of deficit

he's looking left & going right

Josh Wolf: patriot

2007-02-04T11:20:00.000-08:00

"We need those who provoke us so that we may be warned of the fate that our prejudices or ignorance or wishful thinking may hold in store for us."

William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1962

At a hearing last week a federal judge refused to release Josh Wolf from prison. His lawyer argued "that imprisonment would never have its intended effect of coercing him into relinquishing the tape and that it had crossed the line into criminal punishment. He also noted that authorities dropped charges this month against the only suspect in the police car vandalism."

The judge, however, denied his release Tuesday, citing a prosecutor's statement that Wolf's lawyer, Martin Garbus, had offered to turn over the tape in exchange for a promise that Wolf would not have to identify anyone who appeared on it.

"This reveals a realistic possibility that Mr. Wolf's confinement may be having its coercive effect," [U.S. District Judge William ] Alsup said.

But Garbus said in a court filing Tuesday that prosecutors misrepresented his proposal, which was only made to gauge their interest in such a deal. Garbus said that Wolf never agreed to it and that Wolf has remained unwilling to testify or release the tape.

This means that on Tuesday, Feb. 6, the 24 year old video journalist/blogger will have been imprisoned longer than any other journalist in US history for his failure to comply with a subpoena. The grand jury doesn't expire until July, and could be extended another 6 months. More details about his case at: free press? why Josh Wolf sitting in prison matters.

prison labor & e-waste—smashing a computer to pieces

2007-02-02T16:03:00.000-08:00

"Imagine wondering if your nagging cough, cuts that won’t heal, and strange rashes have something to do with the work you are forced to do in a federal prison. Everyday US prison inmates smash apart computer monitors without adequate protection from the glass or a respirator to keep the toxic dust from their lungs." Captive Prison Labor

& from America’s Slave Labor by Christopher Moraff:

Inmates are being forced to work in toxic ‘e-waste’ sweatshops

U.S. prisoners working for a computer-recycling operation run by Federal Prison Industries (FPI) are being exposed to a toxic cocktail of hazardous chemicals through their prison jobs while efforts by some prison officials to protect them have been met with stonewalling and subterfuge.

[The Bureau of Prison's website brags that "minority groups that are at the greatest risk for recidivism benefitted more from industrial work participation and vocational training than their non-minority counterparts" and that its "principal customer is the Department of Defense, from which FPI derives approximately 60 percent of its sales."]
Since 1994, FPI has used inmates to disassemble electronic waste (e-waste)—the detritus of obsolete computers, televisions and related electronics goods—for recycling. According to a new report, “Toxic Sweatshops” (pdf)—published jointly by the the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Center for Environmental Health, California-based Computer TakeBack Campaign and the Prison Activist Resource Center—the waste contains high levels of arsenic, selenium, mercury, lead, dioxins and beryllium—all considered dangerous by the Environmental Protection Agency.
. . .

FPI, which operates as a unit of the semi-autonomous, government-run corporation UNICOR, opened its first electronics recycling business at a federal prison in Marianna, Florida, in 1994. Since then, the company’s electronics recycling program has spread to six other federal prisons across the country. Inmates working for UNICOR are paid between 23 cents and $1.15 per hour. In 2005 the company recorded $64.5 million in profits.

The problems outlined in “Toxic Sweatshops” first came to light in 2002, when UNICOR opened a recycling shop in Atwater Federal Prison, a maximum-security facility in Merced, California. Among their duties, prisoners at the facility were charged with separating glass cathode ray tubes (CRT) from computer monitors. Sometimes they were given hammers; other times, they were forced to improvise.

“When the operation began, most glass room workers would heft the CRT to head height and slam the CRT down on the metal table and keep slamming it on the table until the glass broke away from whatever they were trying to remove,” said one prisoner quoted in the report. “We were getting showers of glass and chemicals out of the tube.”

A single computer contains hundreds of chemicals—including up to 8 pounds of lead—that are known to cause cancer, respiratory illness and reproductive problems, says the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Prisoners interviewed for the report cite health issues, including slow-healing wounds, sinus problems, headaches, fatigue, and burning skin, eyes, noses and throats. Since no one on the recycling floor was issued proper protective gear, the guards and other personnel who supervised the inmates fared little better.

Leroy Smith, a health and safety manager at the facility, became concerned when air quality tests that he initiated showed elevated levels of toxins in the recycling center, which sat just feet from a food-processing area. After each test, Smith said, he would suspend operations and request further safety measures, only to be overridden by Atwater Federal Prison officials and UNICOR supervisors who insisted there was no safety threat.
. . .

[Smith’s attorney] Dryovage joined the case in March 2005 and filed a whistleblower protection suit with OSC on Smith’s behalf. Throughout the case, she says, UNICOR remained hidden behind a cloak of immunity, with prison authorities taking the blows. When Atwater’s warden, Paul M. Schultz, finally decided to cooperate with Smith’s case in 2005, Schultz was relieved of his position and transferred across the country to New Jersey.

“[UNICOR] basically has a sweetheart deal that nobody can look into or go about challenging,” Dryovage says. “It’s sort of like dealing with the Mafia. They have ways of getting you to back off.”

Proponents of the company say UNICOR reduces inmate recidivism by offering essential on-the-job training. Dryovage laughs that off: “Tell me, what kind of job training does an inmate get smashing a computer to pieces with a hammer?”

[links added]

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition notes that"

Under federal law, prisoners are not considered employees, and have no right to organize and no right to participate in decisions that effect their health and safety. Unlike any private company in the U.S., UNICOR facilities can bar unannounced inspections by regulators like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). This gives UNICOR time to clean up its abuses and escape detection and fines.

Unlike Chinese laogai, "reform through labor," theoretically subject to (so far ineffective) complaints & rejection by consumers, FPI's DoD/government agency market base won't overly concern itself with the exploitation of inmate workers exposed to toxics in near indentured servitude conditions by a "government corporation."

C.S. Soong, radio host of Against the Grain recently interviewed "Toxic Sweatshops" report authors Gopal Dayaneni and Aaron Shuman, as well "former prison staffer Freda Cobb [who] "witnessed and has apparently been affected by UNICOR's operations." The program can be heard here.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition also reminds that:

Many Local Recyclers Secretly Send Your E-Waste to
UNICOR

Many well meaning consumers might be surprised to learn that some of your “recycled” e-waste gets actually gets sent to prisons. UNICOR doesn’t say who uses their services, some local recycling collectors do not disclose that they use UNICOR, and some local collection programs may be using UNICOR labor without knowing it! Click Here to Find a responsible recycler in your area.

In the interlocking cogs of global injustice, US federal prison labor is but a small part of the toxic e-waste cheap-solution-shortcuts picture. The Guardian's Sept 2004 "Poisonous detritus of the electronic revolution" reveals that the previous year, "23,000 tonnes of IT and other electronic equipment was shipped out illegally, mostly to China, west Africa, Pakistan and India" from England alone.

The scale of the trade and the damage it is doing is becoming clear. A major investigation by an international coalition of environmental groups this year found huge quantities of e-waste being exported to China, Pakistan and India, where it was being reprocessed in operations extremely harmful to both human health and the environment.
The groups, including Basel Action Network (Ban), Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Toxics Link India and Greenpeace, found e-waste mixed with scrap metal from Japan, South Korea, the US and the EU, and identified a town called Guiyu, some 200 miles north-east of Hong Kong in the coastal province of Guangdong, where up to 100,000 migrant labourers break up and reprocess obsolete computers from around the world.The work involves men, women and children unaware of the health and environmental hazards of dismantling such goods - processes that include the open burning of plastics and wires, the use of acid to extract gold, the melting and burning of toxic soldered circuit boards and the cracking and dumping of toxic lead-laden cathode ray tubes.
Already Guiyu has become so polluted that well water is undrinkable and water has to be trucked in for the entire population, the report said. "We found a cyber-age nightmare," said Jim Puckett of Ban. "They call this recycling, but it's really dumping by another name. Yet to our horror, we discovered that rather than banning it, governments are actually encouraging this ugly trade in order to avoid finding real solutions to the massive tide of obsolete computer waste generated."

Women picking through wires torn out of computers. The wires are sorted by day and burned by night in this village. The families live right in the burnyards. Cancer causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins will result from burning wires made from PVC and brominated flame retardants. Guiyu, China. December 2001. © Basel Action Network

The Basel Action Network (BAN) jhas a photo gallery that gives a vivid look at the reality behind the words in Guiyu, China and Lagos, Nigeria. The Independent's Sept 2006 "Toxic shock: How Western rubbish is destroying Africa" notes that:

. . . the UN drew up plans to regulate the trade in hazardous waste through the Basel Convention. By 1998, the European Union had agreed to implement the ban, which prohibited the export of hazardous wastes from developed countries to the developing world, but the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand refused to sign up; global waterways are still filled with ships looking to unload their toxic waste.

And now, there is a new threat - the dumping of electronic waste, or e-waste: unwanted mobile phones, computers and printers, which contain cadmium, lead, mercury and other poisons. More than 20 million computers become obsolete in America alone each year.

. . . Disposing of this in America and Europe costs money, so many companies sell it to middle merchants, who promise the computers can be reused in Africa, China and India. Each month about 500 container loads, containing about 400,000 unwanted computers, arrive in Nigeria to be processed. But 75 per cent of units shipped to Nigeria cannot be resold. So they sit on landfills, and children scrabble barefoot, looking for scraps of copper wire or nails. And every so often, the plastics are burnt, sending fumes up into the air.

"There is a tradition of burning rubbish all over Africa, but this new burning of electronic equipment is incredibly dangerous," said Sarah Westervelt of the Basel Action Network, a pressure group that monitors the trade in hazardous waste. In China, workers burn PVC-coated wires to get at the copper, and swirl acids in buckets to extract scraps of gold.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that worldwide, 20 million to 50 million tons of electronics are discarded each year. Less than 10 per cent gets recycled and half or more ends up overseas. As Western technology becomes cheaper and the latest machine comes to be regarded as a disposable fashion statement, this dumping will only intensify.

Just some of the many labels found on computers and monitors which indicated to investigators where each load of computers originated. Guiyu, China. December 2001. © Basel Action Network

With Microsoft releasing its latest operating system, Vista, the Basel Action Network (BAN) is warning of a "tsunami" of e-waste exports as corporations & consumers dump their old hardware:

A study by the Softchoice Corporation estimated that about half of the average business PCs in North America do not meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, and 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium -- the enhanced business version. While some of this obsolescence can be solved with RAM upgrades, it is likely that many businesses will not bother with such labor intensive servicing but will simply discard their existing computers.

According to BAN, more than 50% of these computers globally, are exported to developing countries either whole or dissassembled, where they are processed and disposed of in a manner that causes serious damage to workers and local environments. The result of this is that the gains of the electronics industry translate into serious environmental costs externalized to the poor. BAN earlier documented the cyber-age nightmares in such countries as China, India or Nigeria where women and children 'cook' lead-tin soldered circuit boards over small fires, soak chips in dangerous acid baths along river ways, smash lead and phosphor laden cathode ray tubes, and burn wires and plastic housings in open dumps.
Further, BAN notes that every time software makes hardware obsolete, the digital divide is actually perpetuated, because the divide is not defined by the gap between those with computers and those without, but by those with the latest innovations and those without. And when exported obsolete computers are handed down to developing country consumers for re-use, a toxic timebomb is created there due to the fact that the electronics industry has made no effort to ensure that infrastructure is in put in place to properly collect and manage their products at end-of-life.

"Most developing countries have no infrastructure whatsoever to collect and recycle computers, so when they die they are simply dumped and burned," [BAN coordinator] Puckett said. "A truly responsible industry will take steps to ensure that innovation does not automatically equate to obsolescence, toxic waste and a growing population of hardware have-nots," he said.

Need it be said that an incarcerated minority population working for pennies on the hour beyond OSHA oversight is an unacceptable solution, no matter how 'partial,' to industry claims that the ‘waste markets’ cannot afford the labor cost involved to deal responsibly with this toxic waste? That out of sight, out of mind has a human cost that matters?

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

2007-01-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

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"

2007-01-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

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?"

2007-01-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-19T12:06:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-15T14:54:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-01-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

Alice Coltrane

LA Times obit

peace

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

2007-01-14T08:53:00.000-08:00

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?"

2007-01-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

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"

2007-01-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

" . . . 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

2007-01-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

"Coyote Chief with Cigars"

"Dialogue with a Deer" (1996)

"Winter Solitude #5" (2002)

Fisk & Horton on Saddam Hussein's execution

2007-01-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

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 . . ."

2007-01-02T16:35:00.000-08:00

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 . . .