Religious Hucksterism in our time

A superb article by Frank Rich of the New York Times.


The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay
by FRANK RICH
Published: March 27, 2005
Frank Rich

AS Congress and the president scurried to play God in the lives of Terri Schiavo and her family last weekend, ABC kicked off Holy Week with its perennial ritual: a rebroadcast of the 1956 Hollywood blockbuster, "The Ten Commandments."

Cecil B. DeMille's epic is known for the parting of its Technicolor Red Sea, for the religiosity of its dialogue (Anne Baxter's Nefretiri to Charlton Heston's Moses: "You can worship any God you like as long as I can worship you.") and for a Golden Calf scene that DeMille himself described as "an orgy Sunday-school children can watch." But this year the lovable old war horse has a relevance that transcends camp. At a time when government, culture, science, medicine and the rule of law are all under threat from an emboldened religious minority out to remake America according to its dogma, the half-forgotten show business history of "The Ten Commandments" provides a telling back story.

As DeMille readied his costly Paramount production for release a half-century ago, he seized on an ingenious publicity scheme. In partnership with the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a nationwide association of civic-minded clubs founded by theater owners, he sponsored the construction of several thousand Ten Commandments monuments throughout the country to hype his product. The Pharaoh himself - that would be Yul Brynner - participated in the gala unveiling of the Milwaukee slab. Heston did the same in North Dakota. Bizarrely enough, all these years later, it is another of these DeMille-inspired granite monuments, on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin, that is a focus of the Ten Commandments case that the United States Supreme Court heard this month.

We must wait for the court's ruling on whether the relics of a Hollywood relic breach the separation of church and state. Either way, it's clear that one principle, so firmly upheld by DeMille, has remained inviolate no matter what the courts have to say: American moguls, snake-oil salesmen and politicians looking to score riches or power will stop at little if they feel it is in their interests to exploit God to achieve those ends. While sometimes God racketeers are guilty of the relatively minor sin of bad taste - witness the crucifixion-nail jewelry licensed by Mel Gibson - sometimes we get the demagoguery of Father Coughlin or the big-time cons of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.

The religio-hucksterism surrounding the Schiavo case makes DeMille's Hollywood crusades look like amateur night. This circus is the latest and most egregious in a series of cultural shocks that have followed Election Day 2004, when a fateful exit poll question on "moral values" ignited a take-no-prisoners political grab by moral zealots. During the commercial interruptions on "The Ten Commandments" last weekend, viewers could surf over to the cable news networks and find a Bible-thumping show as only Washington could conceive it. Congress was floating such scenarios as staging a meeting in Ms. Schiavo's hospital room or, alternatively, subpoenaing her, her husband and her doctors to a hearing in Washington. All in the name of faith.

Like many Americans, I suspect, I tried to picture how I would have reacted if a bunch of smarmy, camera-seeking politicians came anywhere near a hospital room where my own relative was hooked up to life support. I imagined summoning the Clint Eastwood of "Dirty Harry," not "Million Dollar Baby." But before my fantasy could get very far, star politicians with the most to gain from playing the God card started hatching stunts whose extravagant shamelessness could upstage any humble reverie of my own.

Senator Bill Frist, the Harvard-educated heart surgeon with presidential aspirations, announced that watching videos of Ms. Schiavo had persuaded him that her doctors in Florida were mistaken about her vegetative state - a remarkable diagnosis given that he had not only failed to examine the patient ostensibly under his care but has no expertise in the medical specialty, neurology, relevant to her case. No less audacious was Tom DeLay, last seen on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago deflecting Lesley Stahl's questions about his proximity to allegedly criminal fund-raising by saying he would talk only about children stranded by the tsunami. Those kids were quickly forgotten as he hitched his own political rehabilitation to a brain-damaged patient's feeding tube. Adopting a prayerful tone, the former exterminator from Sugar Land, Tex., took it upon himself to instruct "millions of people praying around the world this Palm Sunday weekend" to "not be afraid."

The president was not about to be outpreached by these saps. The same Mr. Bush who couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation during the darkening summer of 2001, not even when he received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," flew from his Crawford ranch to Washington to sign Congress's Schiavo bill into law. The bill could have been flown to him in Texas, but his ceremonial arrival and departure by helicopter on the White House lawn allowed him to showboat as if he had just landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Within hours he turned Ms. Schiavo into a slick applause line at a Social Security rally. "It is wise to always err on the side of life," he said, wisdom that apparently had not occurred to him in 1999, when he mocked the failed pleas for clemency of Karla Faye Tucker, the born-again Texas death-row inmate, in a magazine interview with Tucker Carlson.

The president was not about to be outpreached by these saps. The same Mr. Bush who couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation during the darkening summer of 2001, not even when he received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," flew from his Crawford ranch to Washington to sign Congress's Schiavo bill into law. The bill could have been flown to him in Texas, but his ceremonial arrival and departure by helicopter on the White House lawn allowed him to showboat as if he had just landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Within hours he turned Ms. Schiavo into a slick applause line at a Social Security rally. "It is wise to always err on the side of life," he said, wisdom that apparently had not occurred to him in 1999, when he mocked the failed pleas for clemency of Karla Faye Tucker, the born-again Texas death-row inmate, in a magazine interview with Tucker Carlson.

These theatrics were foretold. Culture is often a more reliable prophecy than religion of where the country is going, and our culture has been screaming its theocratic inclinations for months now. The anti-indecency campaign, already a roaring success, has just yielded a new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin J. Martin, who had been endorsed by the Parents Television Council and other avatars of the religious right. The push for the sanctity of marriage (or all marriages except Terri and Michael Schiavo's) has led to the banishment of lesbian moms on public television. The Armageddon-fueled worldview of the "Left Behind" books extends its spell by the day, soon to surface in a new NBC prime-time mini-series, "Revelations," being sold with the slogan "The End is Near."

All this is happening while polls consistently show that at most a fifth of the country subscribes to the religious views of those in the Republican base whom even George Will, speaking last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," acknowledged may be considered "extremists." In that famous Election Day exit poll, "moral values" voters amounted to only 22 percent. Similarly, an ABC News survey last weekend found that only 27 percent of Americans thought it was "appropriate" for Congress to "get involved" in the Schiavo case and only 16 percent said it would want to be kept alive in her condition. But a majority of American colonists didn't believe in witches during the Salem trials either - any more than the Taliban reflected the views of a majority of Afghans. At a certain point - and we seem to be at that point - fear takes over, allowing a mob to bully the majority over the short term. (Of course, if you believe the end is near, there is no long term.)

That bullying, stoked by politicians in power, has become omnipresent, leading television stations to practice self-censorship and high school teachers to avoid mentioning "the E word," evolution, in their classrooms, lest they arouse fundamentalist rancor. The president is on record as saying that the jury is still out on evolution, so perhaps it's no surprise that The Los Angeles Times has uncovered a three-year-old "religious rights" unit in the Justice Department that investigated a biology professor at Texas Tech because he refused to write letters of recommendation for students who do not accept evolution as "the central, unifying principle of biology." Cornelia Dean of The New York Times broke the story last weekend that some Imax theaters, even those in science centers, are now refusing to show documentaries like "Galápagos" or "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" because their references to Darwin and the Big Bang theory might antagonize some audiences. Soon such films will disappear along with biology textbooks that don't give equal time to creationism.

James Cameron, producer of "Volcanoes" (and, more famously, the director of "Titanic"), called this development "obviously symptomatic of our shift away from empiricism in science to faith-based science." Faith-based science has in turn begat faith-based medicine that impedes stem-cell research, not to mention faith-based abstinence-only health policy that impedes the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and diseases like AIDS.

Faith-based news is not far behind. Ashley Smith, the 26-year-old woman who was held hostage by Brian Nichols, the accused Atlanta courthouse killer, has been canonized by virtually every American news organization as God's messenger because she inspired Mr. Nichols to surrender by talking about her faith and reading him a chapter from Rick Warren's best seller, "The Purpose-Driven Life." But if she's speaking for God, what does that make Dennis Rader, the church council president arrested in Wichita's B.T.K. serial killer case? Was God instructing Terry Ratzmann, the devoted member of the Living Church of God who this month murdered his pastor, an elderly man, two teenagers and two others before killing himself at a weekly church service in Wisconsin? The religious elements of these stories, including the role played by the end-of-times fatalism of Mr. Ratzmann's church, are left largely unexamined by the same news outlets that serve up Ashley Smith's tale as an inspirational parable for profit.

Next to what's happening now, official displays of DeMille's old Ten Commandments monuments seem an innocuous encroachment of religion into public life. It is a full-scale jihad that our government signed onto last weekend, and what's most scary about it is how little was heard from the political opposition. The Harvard Law School constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe pointed out this week that even Joe McCarthy did not go so far as this Congress and president did in conspiring to "try to undo the processes of a state court." But faced with McCarthyism in God's name, most Democratic leaders went into hiding and stayed silent. Prayers are no more likely to revive their spines than poor Terri Schiavo's brain.

Et tu, David Brooks!

An unbelievable op-ed piece by David Brooks, about Republican sleaze. It's not even ideology, it's business.


From the NY Times:

Masters of Sleaze
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: March 22, 2005

Down in the depths of the netherworld, where Tammany Hall grafters and Chicago ward heelers gather amid spittoons and brass railings, a reverential silence now spreads across the communion. The sleazemasters of old look back into the land of the mortals and they see greatness in the form of Jack Abramoff.

Only a genius like Abramoff could make money lobbying against an Indian tribe's casino and then turn around and make money defending that tribe against himself. Only a giant like Abramoff would have the guts to use one tribe's casino money to finance a Focus on the Family crusade against gambling in order to shut down a rival tribe's casino.

Only an artist like Abramoff could suggest to a tribe that it pay him by taking out life insurance policies on its eldest members. Then when the elders dropped off they could funnel the insurance money through a private school and into his pockets.

This is sleaze of a high order. And yet according to reports in The Washington Post and elsewhere, Abramoff accomplished it all.

Yet it's important to remember this: A genius like Abramoff doesn't spring fully formed on his own. Just as Michelangelo emerged in the ferment of Renaissance Italy, so did Abramoff emerge from his own circle of creativity and encouragement.

Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!

Before long, ringleader Grover Norquist and his buddies were signing lobbying deals with the Seychelles and the Northern Mariana Islands and talking up their interests at weekly conservative strategy sessions - what could be more vital to the future of freedom than the commercial interests of these two fine locales?

Before long, folks like Norquist and Abramoff were talking up the virtues of international sons of liberty like Angola's Jonas Savimbi and Congo's dictator Mobutu Sese Seko - all while receiving compensation from these upstanding gentlemen, according to The Legal Times. Only a reactionary could have been so discomfited by Savimbi's little cannibalism problem as to think this was not a daring contribution to the cause of Reaganism.

Soon the creative revolutionaries were blending the high-toned forms of the think tank with the low-toned scams of the buckraker. Ed Buckham, Tom DeLay's former chief of staff, helped run the U.S. Family Network, which supported the American family by accepting large donations and leasing skyboxes at the MCI Center, according to Roll Call. Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former spokesman, organized a think tank called the American International Center, located in a house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., which was occupied, according to Andrew Ferguson's devastating compendium in The Weekly Standard, by a former "lifeguard of the year" and a former yoga instructor.

Ralph Reed, meanwhile, smashed the tired old categories that used to separate social conservatives from corporate consultants. Reed signed on with Channel One, Verizon, Enron and Microsoft to shore up the moral foundations of our great nation. Reed so strongly opposes gambling as a matter of principle that he bravely accepted $4 million through Abramoff from casino-rich Indian tribes to gin up a grass-roots campaign.

As time went by, the spectacular devolution of morals accelerated. Many of the young innovators were behaving like people who, having read Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative," embraced the conservative part while discarding the conscience part.

Abramoff's and Scanlon's Indian-gaming scandal will go down as the movement's crowning achievement, more shameless than anything the others would do, but still the culmination of the trends building since 1995. It perfectly embodied their creed and philosophy: "I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!" as Abramoff wrote to Reed.

They made at least $66 million.

This is a major accomplishment. And remember: Abramoff didn't do it on his own.

It took a village. The sleazo-cons thought they could take over K Street to advance their agenda. As it transpired, K Street took over them.

The Legacy of George F. Kennan

The architect of the 'containment' theory died last week at the age of 101. This article examines his life and the inherent tragedy of a man whose ideas shaped the world, but who came to regret them deeply.

From COUNTERPUNCH.COM:

March 21, 2005

The Architect of the Cold War
The Legacy of George F. Kennan, 1904-2005
By WERTHER

George Orwell once wrote that every man's life viewed from the inside is a failure. We are tempted to believe that George Kennan, who has died at 101, may have rendered a similar judgment on himself when he left this conscious life. The architect of America's cold war doctrine of containment came long ago to repudiate the poisoned fruits of his inspiration a divided world, a militarized and cheapened culture, and $12 trillion flushed down the drain. [1]

Quite apart from recoiling at the consequences of his broad geopolitical conception, he came to regret the concrete outcomes of specific initiatives he once championed. Political warfare against the Soviet Union through covert operations was no brain wave of the plodding Truman, nor of flunkies like Clark Clifford; it was Kennan who proposed "the inauguration of political warfare" against the Soviet Union in a 1948 memorandum that remained top secret for almost five decades. "The time is now fully ripe for the creation of a covert political warfare operations directorate within the government," he concluded.

This conception of Kennan's left a slug-like residue through the decades of the cold war: Mossadegh, Arbenz, Lumumba, Diem, Allende. Some are convinced its backwash encompassed Dallas and Watergate. The most profound moment of the hearings of the Select Committee on Assassinations in 1975 was not Nelson Rockefeller's theatrical brandishing of the James Bond-like poison dart gun, but rather Kennan's melancholy admission that his political warfare idea was "the greatest mistake I ever made." [2]

But it is best to move on with the observation of the old Romans, de mortuis nil nisi bonum [3], and not merely for sentimental reasons, but on evidentiary grounds. As a sensitive and reflective man, he was capable of learning. Although he was the archetypal cold warrior at the beginning, very early on he saw that intervention in Indochina was a losing proposition. By the early 1950s, he surmised that the French mission civilisatrice in Vietnam was failing; if the United States intervened, it would be defeated in turn. His memoranda were disregarded by John Foster Dulles and the rest of the American Century crowd. [4]

Above all, Kennan was a realist and a cultural pessimist, a combination absent from the cloud-cuckooland that is present day Washington. Oddly for the architect of the cold war, "USA Number One" was not in his vocabulary: in 1999, he concluded that "this whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable." The Washington Post's obituary asserts that he deplored the automobile, computers, commercialism, environmental degradation, and other manifestations of modern life, and that "[h]e loathed popular American culture."

Was Kennan's dyspeptic Weltanschauung appropriate? He made his mark in public life when America's position in the world was so far above that of other nations as to be unchallengeable. The rest of the world had nothing remotely like the Willow Run plant or Henry Kaiser's shipyards. America's moral prestige, from 1945 through the joyous mob scene of President Kennedy's Berlin speech, was like the Second Coming. [5]

But he saw, as the censorious guardian of an older tradition, that the nascent empire was antithetical to the old republic. A conservative of a type rarely seen these days, he believed in stewardship of the earth, and believed the country was "exhausting and depleting the very sources of its own abundance."

As the United States stands at the brink of the Peak Oil phenomenon, that observation begins to sound like wisdom. The country is now Number One only in military spending, debt, and cultural frivolity. China and India each graduate three times the number of engineers Americans do. The United States now ranks 28 out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy. [6] China sits atop $610 billion dollars of U.S. debt. [7]

Most intellectuals are fated to molder away in cow state colleges, second hand book shops, and third rate think tanks. Like Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and a handful of other bona fide thinkers, George Kennan made an outsized imprint on the world. His tragedy was that he came to regret his handiwork.

* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.


[1] The cost of military spending in the cold war in constant 2005 dollars; calculated from figures in Historical Tables, Office of Management and Budget.

[2] "George F. Kennan Dies at 101; Leading Strategist of the Cold War," The New York Times, 18 March 2005.

[3] "Speak no ill of the dead."

[4] The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam, 1973.

[5] Within a week of "the end of major combat" in the European Theater in 1945, a delegation of U.S. Senators rode through the rubble of German towns in open phaetons with no obvious security; a similar scene in 2005 in Fallujah or Ramadi, two full years after the putative conquest of Iraq, is unthinkable. One may also contrast President Kennedy in Berlin in 1963 with President Bush in the deserted and locked-down Mainz of 2005. Why have all the foreigners grown so threatening?

[6] "U.S. Students Fare Badly in International Survey of Math Skills," The New York Times, 7 December 2004.

[7] "Coming to Terms with China," by Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson,

Wolfowitz as World Bank ChiefThe Way the World Works

Read this brilliantly simple explanation of what's going on, not only with the World Bank appointment of Paul Wolfowitz, but in the world at large. It is gratifying to see this by Jude Wanniski, whose book, "How the World Works" was an unabashed paean of worship to Supply Side Economics and the Reagan Doctrine.

Article by Wanniski, reproduced from countercurrents.org and wanniski.com.

Bush's Hitman At The World Bank


By Jude Wanniski

17 March, 2005
Wanniski.com

If you really don’t know what the “World Bank” is all about, you would think that President Bush was joking in nominating Paul Wolfowitz to be the new president of the Bank, replacing Jim Wolfensohn. One of the chief architects of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is a political theorist, a 61-year-old man who spent most of his adult life at blackboards and lecterns teaching students about international politics. He may know how to operate an Automatic Teller Machine when in need of ready cash, but he knows absolutely nothing about banking. Wolfensohn, who was a New York investment banker before President Clinton named him to the post a decade ago, at least knows something about banking. His partner in New York, to which I suppose he will return, is Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, our nation’s central bank. Wolfie the Warrior, by contrast, is the lifetime sidekick, even protégé, of Richard Perle, probably the most important intellectual in the service of the military-industrial complex. If you want to know how Professor Wolfowitz got the job, follow the money.

That’s what the World Bank is all about. It was created as an adjunct of the United Nations at the end of World War II, along with its brother institution, the International Monetary Fund. On paper, its function was to lend money to developing countries to help them grow. Its real job has been to serve the interests of the major money-center banks and the multinational corporations who make the big bucks in World Bank development projects. The Bank, which is really a “fund,” persuades a poor country like Ghana, for example, to build a new industrial complex in order make stuff for export. It will lend the money to Ghana -- which it gets from global taxpayers including you and me -- and arrange for the complex to be built by one of the favored corporations in the military-industrial complex. The list always includes Bechtel Corporation, Halliburton, and Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton. These outfits go in and build the projects because the locals have no expertise.

In my January 23 memo in this space, ”Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” , I remarked on the recent book by John Perkins, who explains in some detail the mechanics of this gigantic money machine. It not only promotes unnecessary industrial complexes in Ghana, which rust away in bankruptcy when they prove to be uneconomic. The aim of the military-industrial complex is not only “industrial,” but also military. The name most closely associated with Halliburton, of course, is Vice President Cheney, who was Defense Secretary in the first Gulf War, with Paul Wolfowitz even then at his side (urging all-out war with Iraq even after Saddam put up the white flag and retreated to Baghdad before the war began!!) Rats.

The name most associated with Bechtel is George P. Shultz, once its top dog, now a mere director. Shultz was Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon (helping talk him into floating the U.S. dollar), Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, and currently a member of the Defense Policy Board, which until last year Richard Perle chaired.

Shultz also introduced Governor George W. Bush to Condoleezza Rice, who in turn introduced Paul Wolfowitz to Governor Bush back in 1999. Shultz of course knew at the time that Wolfie and Perle and their neo-con Cabal were planning a war in Iraq, and we know nice, little “doable” wars (Wolfie’s word), are meat and potatoes for the military-industrial complex. Instead of squeezing nickels and dimes out of the taxpayers to persuade Ghana to build a steel mill it doesn’t need and can’t run, even little wars run into the billions. And everyone gets into the act. The arms makers who produce airplanes, tanks, guns, jeeps and humvees get to blow up a country (like Iraq) and Bechtel and Halliburton come in right behind to rebuild it. In announcing the Wolfowitz appointment today, President Bush said the World Bank is a big organization and Wolfowitz has experience running a big organization, the Pentagon!! As far as the military-industrial complex is concerned, Wolfowitz did a FANTASTIC job. He was only expected to plan for a $30 billion war and he screwed up so badly that it is now a $200 billion war, and counting. Anyone who can screw up that badly deserves a promotion, to the World Bank.

So you see it doesn’t really matter that Wolfowitz doesn’t know the first thing about banking or the economics of development projects. He will sit behind the biggest desk at the Bank and take the telephone calls from the Big Banks and the Multinationals, telling him what to do, and providing him with experts like John Perkins, who did the actual dirty work as an economic hit man, and now writes his confessions. When the White House needs a big favor for one of its big hitters, it need only put in a call to Wolfie, who will throw the right switch. That’s exactly the way it worked with Jim Wolfensohn these past ten years, and if you don’t believe me, look around and you will note how many poor countries got poorer during his reign, and how many big bucks were made at Bechtel and Halliburton.

There will of course be complaints from various global diplomats about the obvious incompetence of Wolfowitz, just as there were puzzled head-scratchings around the world about the incompetence of Condi Rice as Secretary of State or John Bolton as UN Ambassador. But money talks in all the places where the directors of the World Bank live, and they will be advised to clam up by the local military-industrial money machines. Perle will also have his pals at The Weekly Standard and Fox News speculate that when Condi is President, Wolfie will be her veep (which is how it happened we've seen talk of Condi for President in 2008). Nor can we expect any complaints from Congress, because in one way or another there is too much money at stake, too many reputations looking toward bigtime lobbying jobs when its time to give up a seat in Congress.

If this seems harsh, as if I’m writing about something new under the rocks on which our Uncle Sam perches, I suggest you read my 1978 book, “The Way the World Works,” which describes how the British Empire worked in exactly this fashion. My best example was the first multinational corporations, the British railroad builders. Once they ran out of places to build rail lines in the U.K., they persuaded Parliament to promote railroads in the colonies, and were enormously successful in talking the Raj into criss-crossing India with railroads in the mid-19th century. It was one thing in England, where the companies could only build where there was a clear sign the line would be profitable, because it was their own money at risk. In India, the locals borrowed the money from the Bank of England and hired the builders to put in rail lines that couldn’t possibly be profitable. India was burdened with debts from these schemes well into the 20th century.

Even after it gained independence in 1948, India was persuaded by British and American economists to keep tax rates high and to devalue the rupee, to keep them poor and unable to compete with the big guys. Who did the British and American economists work for? Why the World Bank, of course, and also the IMF, whose job is to go into the poor countries when they can’t pay back their loans, and lend them the money to do so -- as long as they agree to raise taxes again, devalue their currency, and build new industrial complexes that are constructed by Bechtel and Halliburton.

So you see why it makes perfect sense to have Wolfowitz at the World Bank. He’s terrific at doing wars, and wars are much more profitable than nickel-and-dime industrial projects. That’s the way the world works. Always has been.

Nero's Guests - An Evening with P. Sainath

P. Sainath, the well-known Indian journalist and writer, gave a two-hour talk at


Washington State University in Vancouver on Feb 27. My impressions: http://www.countercurrents.org/gl-ramakrishnan070305.htm

I came away with a sense of awe for Sainath's knowledge, depth of understanding, and hard work. Catch his talk if you can during his current tour of the US.


(Or see http://www.indogram.com/index.html?centerpiece=__mag/oped/njn_mar0505.html)

Sen. Byrd speaks in Washington

Byrd delivered another memorable speech on the Republicans' plans to exercise the 'nuclear option', a way to outlaw the right to filibuster. That right is an age-old tradition of the Senate, used for good and bad (including a 24 hour speech by Sen. Strom Thurmond in 1957 against some Civil Rights legislation!). Bush and Co. are afraid their more smelly judicial nominations will be blocked by Senate Democrats (here they give more credit to the cretins than they ought -- after all, they didn't filibuster Gonzales or Rice, more deserving of the provision than perhaps anyone else).

Anyway, Byrd was roundly criticized by some Jewish groups for making references to the Hitler's tactics to silence minorities. What is so wrong about that? Are words like Nazi, Hitler, Holocaust etc. under some kind of copyright that they cannot be used without permission from these self-appointed ayatollahs?

Byrd was magnificent, as he often is.

Read the speech in its entirety below:

Senator Byrd delivered the remarks below warning the Senate and the American people about a procedural effort being considered by some Senators to shut off debate and shut down minority voices and opinions. Byrd believes that such an effort strikes at the very heart of the Senate -- the freedom of speech and debate.

In 1939, one of the most famous American movies of all time, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” hit the box office. Initially received with a combination of lavish raise and angry blasts, the film went on to win numerous awards, and to inspire millions around the globe. The director, the legendary Frank Capra, in his autobiography “Frank Capra: The Name Above the Title,” cites this moving review of the film, appearing in “The Hollywood Reporter,” November 4, 1942:

Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” chosen by French Theaters as the final English language film to be shown before the recent Nazi-ordered countrywide ban on American and British films went into effect, was roundly cheered... Storms of spontaneous applause broke out at the sequence when, under the Abraham Lincoln monument in the Capital, the word, “Liberty,” appeared on the screen and the Stars and Stripes began fluttering over the head of the great Emancipator in the cause of liberty. Similarly cheers and acclamation punctuated the famous speech of the young senator on man’s rights and dignity. ‘It was... as though the joys, suffering, love and hatred, the hopes and wishes of an entire people who value freedom above everything, found expression for the last time....

For those who may not have seen it, “Mr. Smith” is the fictional story of one young Senator’s crusade against forces of corruption, and his lengthy filibuster for the values he holds dear. My, how times have changed. These days Smith would be called “an obstructionist.” Rumor has it that there is a plot afoot in the Senate to curtail the right of extended debate in this hallowed chamber, not in accordance with its rules, mind you, but by fiat from the Chair.

The so-called “nuclear option” purports to be directed solely at the Senate’s advice and consent prerogatives regarding federal judges. But, the claim that no right exists to filibuster judges aims an arrow straight at the heart of the Senate’s long tradition of unlimited debate.

The Framers of the Constitution envisioned the Senate as a kind of executive council; a small body of legislators, featuring longer terms, designed to insulate members from the passions of the day. The Senate was to serve as a “check” on the Executive Branch, particularly in the areas of appointments and treaties, where, under the Constitution, the Senate passes judgement absent the House of Representatives. James Madison wanted to grant the Senate the power to select judicial appointees with the Executive relegated to the sidelines. But a compromise brought the present arrangement; appointees selected by the Executive, with the advice and consent of the Senate. Note that nowhere in the Constitution is a vote on appointments mandated. When it comes to the Senate, numbers can deceive. The Senate was never intended to be a majoritarian body. That was the role of the House of Representatives, with its membership based on the populations of states. The Great Compromise of July 16, 1787, satisfied the need for smaller states to have equal status in one House of Congress: the Senate.

The Senate, with its two members per state, regardless of population is, then, the forum of the states. Indeed, in the last Congress, 52 members, a majority, representing the 26 smallest states accounted for just 17.06% of the U.S. population. In other words, a majority in the Senate does not necessarily represent a majority of the population. The Senate is intended for deliberation not point scoring. It is a place designed from its inception, as expressive of minority views. Even 60 Senators, the number required for cloture, would represent just 24% of the population, if they happened to all hail from the 30 smallest states. Unfettered debate, the right to be heard at length, is the means by which we perpetuate the equality of the states.

In fact, it was 1917, before any curtailing of debate was attempted, which means that from 1806 to 1917, some 111 years, the Senate rejected any limits to debate.

Democracy flourished along with the filibuster. The first actual cloture rule in 1917, was enacted in response to a filibuster by those who opposed U.S. intervention in World War I.

But, even after its enactment, the Senate was slow to embrace cloture, understanding the pitfalls of muzzling debate. In 1949, the 1917 cloture rule was modified to make cloture more difficult to invoke, not less, mandating that the number needed to stop debate would be not two-thirds of those present and voting, but two-thirds of all Senators.

Indeed, from 1919 to 1962, the Senate voted on cloture petitions only 27 times and invoked cloture just four times over those 43 years. On January 4, 1957, Senator William Ezra Jenner of Indiana spoke in opposition to invoking cloture by majority vote. He stated with conviction: We may have a duty to legislate, but we also have a duty to inform and deliberate. In the past quarter century we have seen a phenomenal growth in the power of the executive branch. If this continues at such a fast pace, our system of checks and balances will be destroyed. One of the main bulwarks against this growing power is free debate in the Senate . . . So long as there is free debate, men of courage and understanding will rise to defend against potential dictators. . .The Senate today is one place where, no matter what else may exist, there is still a chance to be heard, an opportunity to speak, the duty to examine, and the obligation to protect. It is one of the few refuges of democracy. Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death.

Jesus Christ was killed by a majority; Columbus was smeared; and Christians have been tortured. Had the United States Senate existed during those trying times, I am sure these people would have found an advocate. Nowhere else can any political, social, or religious group, finding itself under sustained attack, receive a better refuge. Senator Jenner was right. The Senate was deliberately conceived to be what he called a “better refuge,” meaning one styled as guardian of the rights of the minority.

The Senate is the “watchdog” because majorities can be wrong, and filibusters can highlight injustices. History is full of examples.

In March 1911, Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma filibustered the New Mexico
statehood bill, arguing that Arizona should also be allowed to become a state. President Taft opposed the inclusion of Arizona’s statehood in the bill because Arizona’s state constitution allowed the recall of judges. Arizona attained statehood a year later, at least in part because Senator Owen and the minority took time to make their point the year before.

In 1914, a Republican minority led a 10-day filibuster of a bill that would have appropriated more than $50,000,000 for rivers and harbors. On an issue near and dear to the hearts of our current majority, Republican opponents spoke until members of the Commerce Committee agreed to cut the appropriations by more
than half.

Perhaps more directly relevant to our discussion of the “nuclear option” are the seven days in 1937, from July 6 to 13 of that year, when the Senate blocked Franklin Roosevelt’s Supreme Court-packing plan.

Earlier that year, in February 1937, FDR sent the Congress a bill drastically reorganizing the judiciary. The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill, calling it “ an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country” and finding it “essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy that the judiciary be completely independent of both the executive and legislative branches of the Government.”

The committee recommended the rejection of the court-packing bill, calling it “a needless, futile, and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle. . . without precedent and without justification.”

What followed was an extended debate on the Senate Floor lasting for seven days until the Majority Leader, Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, a supporter of the plan, suffered a heart attack and died on July 14. Eight days later, by a vote of 70 to 20, the Senate sent the judicial reform bill back to committee, where FDR’s controversial, court-packing language was finally stripped. A determined, vocal group of Senators properly prevented a powerful President from corrupting our nation’s judiciary.

Free and open debate on the Senate floor ensures citizens a say in their government. The American people are heard, through their Senator, before their money is spent, before their civil liberties are curtailed, or before a judicial nominee is confirmed for a lifetime appointment. We are the guardians, the stewards, the protectors of our people. Our voices are their voices. If we restrain debate on judges today, what will be next: the rights of the elderly to receive social security; the rights of the handicapped to be treated fairly; the rights of the poor to obtain a decent education?

Will all debate soon fall before majority rule?

Will the majority someday trample on the rights of lumber companies to harvest timber, or the rights of mining companies to mine silver, coal, or iron ore? What about the rights of energy companies to drill for new sources of oil and gas? How will the insurance, banking, and securities industries fare when a majority can move against their interests and prevail by a simple majority vote? What about farmers who can be forced to lose their subsidies, or Western Senators who will no longer be able to stop a majority determined to wrest control of ranchers’ precious water or grazing rights? With no right of debate, what will forestall plain muscle and mob rule?

Many times in our history we have taken up arms to protect a minority against the tyrannical majority in other lands. We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men.

But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that “Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.” And he succeeded.

Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution.

Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do to Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate. It seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissible the rule. Employing the “nuclear option”, engaging a pernicious, procedural maneuver to serve immediate partisan goals, risks violating our nation’s core democratic values and poisoning the Senate's deliberative process.

For the temporary gain of a hand-full of “out of the mainstream” judges, some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate each Senator’s right of extended
debate. Note that I said each Senator. For the damage will devastate not just the minority party. It will cripple the ability of each member to do what each was sent here to do – – represent the people of his or her state. Without the filibuster or the threat of extended debate, there exists no leverage with which to bargain for the offering of an amendment.

All force to effect compromise between the two political parties is lost.

Demands for hearings can languish. The President can simply rule, almost by Executive Order if his party controls both houses of Congress, and Majority Rule reins supreme. In such a world, the Minority is crushed; the power of dissenting views diminished; and freedom of speech attenuated.

The uniquely American concept of the independent individual, asserting his or her own views, proclaiming personal dignity through the courage of free speech will, forever, have been blighted. And the American spirit, that stubborn, feisty, contrarian, and glorious urge to loudly disagree, and proclaim, despite all opposition, what is honest and true, will be sorely manacled.

Yes, we believe in Majority rule, but we thrive because the minority can challenge, agitate, and question. We must never become a nation cowed by fear, sheeplike in our submission to the power of any majority demanding absolute control.

Generations of men and women have lived, fought and died for the right to map their own destiny, think their own thoughts, and speak their minds. If we start, here, in this Senate, to chip away at that essential mark of freedom – – here of all places, in a body designed to guarantee the power of even a single individual through the device of extended debate – – we are on the road to refuting the Preamble to our own Constitution and the very principles upon which it rests.

In the eloquent, homespun words of that illustrious, obstructionist, Senator Smith, “ Liberty is too precious to get buried in books. Men ought to hold it up in front of them every day of their lives, and say, ‘I am free – – to think – – to speak. My ancestors couldn’t. I can. My children will.”

Fat Cats for Africa

I've always been leery of Davos, an recent annual ritual which is rather like Mother's Day or Father's Day in America -- a largely hypocritical commemoration to forget -- or make people forget -- the wrongs inflicted the rest of the year. But here's an article which says it much better.

Taki Theodrocopolous, Editor of the American Conservative, has this in the latest issue of the magazine. Reproduced here for wider dissemination only.

Fat Cats for Africa
by Taki
[from the American Conservative, Feb 28, 2005 Issue]

The place is always described as exclusive, but that’s one thing it is not. Davos is a Swiss ski resort for hoi polloi, an Atlantic City with snow, although it’s far prettier than Donald Trump’s Jersey playground. Last time I was here was about ten years ago on the frozen lake for a car race that ended up in a humongous spin that lasted for more than a minute.

Davos only becomes exclusive during the annual gathering of fat cats—the World Economic Forum, as it prefers to call itself. GFC (Gathering of Fat Cats), however, is a far more appropriate name. There is something ludicrous in watching world political and financial leaders jostling to rub elbows with brain-dead celebrities, but such are the joys of the modern world. Pretending to care for the poor is the order of the day, both for the suits as well as for the celebrated, and if one were a ten-year old who happened to be particularly innocent, he might believe this year’s Davos message: the end of poverty is near. Davos Man returned home from the GFC last week full of dinner-party stories—how Bill Gates and Bill Clinton stood beside Tony Blair and Bono and Angelina Jolie and Sharon Stone and pledged to turn Africa into Palm Beach in the near future (by the year 2025, according to the economist Jeffrey Sachs; 3025 according to the economist Taki).

Mind you, everyone meant well. First and foremost among the assembled was the desire to publicize themselves and the companies they represented. The second priority was to network. Last but not least came the plan to end poverty, as noble a cause as there is, but for one problem. Nobody mentioned the c-word. Corruption—as in African leaders’ corruption.

Bill Gates might have the cash and commercial credibility, Bill Clinton the soaring rhetoric, and Bono the blarney and celebrity, but if these cats manage to eliminate hunger from even one tiny African village, I will gift my beautiful sailing yacht to Monica Lewinsky. Call me cynical, but when economists, civil servants, politicians, and company suits start naming countries such as the United States, Japan, and Germany as the top sinners in the not-giving-aid-to-poor-countries category, it’s time for the sick bag—especially when in the presence of mega-crooks like the president of Nigeria, top Saudi oil ministers, and—by satellite—Jacques Chirac, a man who is trying to pass a special law making him senator for life in order to avoid jail the minute his presidential term is over. (Chirac wants to introduce global taxes on air and sea travel and financial speculation to help Africa.)

Well-intentioned crusades against poverty in developing countries are good for publicity but little else. Accusing rich nations of not doing enough is just another way of ingratiating oneself with celebrities and the chattering classes. But the reason so many thousands of lives are lost daily in sub-Saharan Africa is not lack of aid but because too much money goes into fighting wars, leaving nothing for hospitals and schools.

Sudan, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are three glaring examples of this. Ethiopia has spent huge sums fighting Eritrea over a disputed border. Over 65 million Ethiopians can now hardly feed themselves, while the government spends billions on arms. Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, is an impoverished nation because of Robert Mugabe’s greed and disasterous anti-white policies. The psychopathic Liberian murderer Charles Taylor is living in Nigeria with the hundreds of millions he stole from the nation’s coffers, and his protector, Olusegun Obasanjo, presents himself in Davos and lectures us on the need to help Africa. Ditto Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa and the prime mover behind the theory that AIDS does not exist but is an American plot to weaken Africans.

Hand-wringing by corrupt African leaders is nothing new. Africa is suicidal, and its problems are man-made. They began when the British hastily granted African nations independence. Ensuing tribal warfare in Angola, Uganda, Liberia, Eritrea, and the Sudan robbed their citizens of health care and education. The rest was predictable. Africa’s epidemics—malaria, cholera, typhoid, and AIDS—will not be beaten by grand gestures from the West. The problems lie in African attitudes. One dinner in Davos for a fat cat costs more than the annual income of most African families, and I do not condemn his appetite—but I do condemn his rhetoric. How dare the Saudi oil minister open his mouth in Davos, when fat Fahd spends $200 million dollars in his three-week annual holiday in Marbella?

It may not be politically correct, but the only way to save Africa from itself is to recolonize it. The only solution is good governance, an impartial judiciary, secure borders, internal peace, modern medical practices, and an end to kleptocracy. But I won’t hold my breath till it happens. Nor will I ever set foot in Davos again. Despite the altitude, too much hot air.

Arthur Miller -- A Tribute by Bob Herbert

Here's a beautiful tribute to Arthur Miller, and what he means for our times. Reproduced in full for broader dissemination only.

The Public Thinker
By BOB HERBERT
Published: New York Times, February 14, 2005

Arthur Miller, in his autobiography, "Timebends," quoted the great physicist Hans Bethe as saying, "Well, I come down in the morning and I take up a pencil and I try to think. ..."

It's a notion that appears to have gone the way of the rotary phone. Americans not only seem to be doing less serious thinking lately, they seem to have less and less tolerance for those who spend their time wrestling with important and complex matters.

Mr. Miller's death meant more than the loss of an outstanding playwright. It was the loss of a great public thinker ... Mr. Miller knew what ignorance and fear and the madness of crowds, especially when exploited by sinister leadership, could do to [the promise of America].

If you can't say it in 30 seconds, you have to move on. God made man and the godless evolutionists are on the run. Donald Trump ("You're fired!") and Paris Hilton ("That's hot!") are cultural icons. Ignorance is in. The nation is at war and its appetite for torture may be undermining the very essence of the American character, but the public at large seems much more interested in what Martha will do when she gets out of prison and what Jacko will do if he has to go in.

Mr. Miller's death last week meant more than the loss of an outstanding playwright. It was the loss of a great public thinker who believed strongly, as Archibald MacLeish had written, that the essence of America - its greatness - was in its promises. Mr. Miller knew what ignorance and fear and the madness of crowds, especially when exploited by sinister leadership, could do to those promises.

His greatest concerns, as Charles Isherwood wrote in Saturday's Times, "were with the moral corruption brought on by bending one's ideals to society's dictates, buying into the values of a group when they conflict with the voice of personal conscience."

The individual, in Mr. Miller's view, had an abiding moral responsibility for his or her own behavior, and for the behavior of society as a whole. He said that while writing "The Crucible," "The longer I worked the more
certain I felt that as improbable as it might seem, there were moments when an individual conscience was all that could keep a world from falling."

For the United States, which launched a misguided, pre-emptive war in Iraq, is shipping prisoners off to foreign countries to be tortured and has pressed the rewind button on matters of social progress, this may be one of those moments.

Reading Miller again, and looking back on his life, it's interesting to see some of the differences he has spotlighted in two sharply defined eras: the Depression-wracked 1930's and the prosperous, postwar 1950's. "It was not that people were more altruistic," he wrote in "Timebends," "but that a point arrived - perhaps around 1936 - when for the first time unpolitical people began thinking of common action as a way out of
their impossible conditions. Out of dire necessity came the surge of mass trade unionism and the federal government's first systematic relief programs, the resurgent farm cooperative movement, the TVA and other public projects that put people to work and brought electricity to vast new areas, repaired and built new bridges and aqueducts, carried out vast reforestation projects, funded student loans and research into the country's folk history - its songs and tales collected and published for the first time - and this burst of imaginative action created the sense of a government that for all its blunders and waste was on the side of the people."

By the early 50's the agony of the Depression was gone. McCarthyism was in flower and the dean of Mr. Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan, was complaining that his students' highest goal was to fit in with corporate America rather than separating truth from falsehood.

The dean, Erich Walter, said, "They become experts at grade-getting, but there's less hanging round the lamppost now, no more chewing the fat," or, as Mr. Miller put it, "speculating about the wrongs of the world and ideal solutions, something no employer was interested in, and might even suspect."

Mr. Miller understood early that keeping the population entertained was becoming the paramount imperative of the U.S. We're now all but buried in entertainment and the republic is running amok. Mr. Miller is gone, and if we're not wise enough to pay attention, his uncomfortable truths will die with him. (He felt, among other things, that most men and women knew "little or nothing" about the forces manipulating their lives.)

Anyway, the Grammys were last night and Michael Jackson's trial resumes today.

Arthur Miller? Broadway dimmed its lights Friday night. His country may decide that's enough of a tribute and it's time to move on.

Reading Khomeini in Colorado

Colorado university professor Ward Churchill wrote an article on 9-11 some years ago. Suddenly it has been dredged out and a witch-hunt begun. This article provides a view beyond a mere First Amendment argument, and wonders if there is a great opportunity for George Bush here.

Click here to read "Reading Khomeini in Colorado" by Niranjan Ramakrishnan.

White House Briefing Room Scam

A fake journalist, a former shill for the Texas GOP, was issued a White House press clearance irecord time (5 days, according to one report). He would be called upon at presidential press conferencs, and Scott McClellan's briefings also, whereupon he would lob some diversionary questions to extricate the briefer from his predicament. This guy was called Gannon, but his real name, it turns out, is Guckert.

Read about it, and his alleged connections to the Valerie Plame case, on Yahoo.

Why did this even happen? Normally such an imposter would have been found out by his colleagues in a matter of minutes. Because, veteran report Dave Lindorff says, they are most of them incompetent anyway (The Perfect Plant - He Fit Right In).

Twenty Questions on the contemporary social scene - A Brilliant Factsheet

Try to answer these 20 questions -- the answers will surprise you

http://www.counterpunch.com/quigley02112005.html

Torture, American Style

Another poignant column by Bob Herbert, reproduced in full here for wider dissemination.
An excellent situation to ask a variant of Bush's question, "Are you for it, or against it?" If you are against it, do something. Write to your Congressman or Senator, and definitely to the White House.

Torture, American Style
By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 11, 2005


Maher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was in the process of changing planes.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane Mayer tells us in a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, he "was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet."

In an instant, Mr. Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare, courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with him from Kennedy "flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan."

Any rights Mr. Arar might have thought he had, either as a Canadian citizen or a human being, had been left behind. At times during the trip, Mr. Arar heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of the Special Removal Unit." He was being taken, on the orders of the U.S. government, to Syria, where he would be tortured.

The title of Ms. Mayer's article is "Outsourcing Torture." It's detailed account of the frightening and extremely secretive U.S. program known as "extraordinary rendition."

This is one of the great euphemisms of our time. Extraordinary rendition is the name that's been given to the policy of seizing individuals without even the semblance of due process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to practice torture. In terms of bad behavior, it stands side by side with contract killings.

Our henchmen in places like Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Jordan are torturing terror suspects at the behest of a nation - the United States - that just went through a national election in which the issue of moral values was supposed to have been decisive. How in the world did we become a country in which gays' getting married is considered an abomination, but torture is O.K.?

As Ms. Mayer pointed out:
"Terrorism suspects in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East have often been abducted by hooded or masked American agents, then forced onto a Gulfstream V jet, like the one described by Arar. ... Upon arriving in foreign countries, rendered suspects often vanish. Detainees are not provided with lawyers, and many families are not informed of their whereabouts."

Mr. Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist.

"Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say," Ms. Mayer wrote.

The confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported back to the United States that they could find no links between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being charged and is now back in Canada.

Barbara Olshansky is the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Mr. Arar in a lawsuit against the U.S. I asked her to describe Mr. Arar's
physical and emotional state following his release from custody.

She sounded shaken by the memory. "He's not a big guy," she said. "He had lost more than 40 pounds. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes were sunken. He looked like someone who was kind of dead inside."

Any government that commits, condones, promotes or fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to raise their voices against something as clearly evil as torture are enablers, if not collaborators.

There is a widespread but mistaken notion in the U.S. that everybody seized by the government in its so-called war on terror is in fact somehow connected to terrorist activity. That is just wildly wrong.

Tony Blair knows a little about that sort of thing. Just two days ago the British prime minister formally apologized to 11 people who were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for bombings in England by the Irish Republican Army three decades ago.

Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It's wrong. And nothing good can come from it.

What jobs? Outsourcing, debt, dropping dollar

The pir's and baba's of the subcontinent have nothing on the spinmeisters of Washington DC, who will demonstrate to a gullible public that up is down, black is white, and, that economic ruin is progress. A useful temperature reading by a well-known economist, reproduced from today's Counterpunch.com.

Bush's Jobless Economy
More Bad News on the Jobs Front
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The January jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues the bad news of the past four years. During President Bush's first term, the US economy had a net loss of three-quarters of a million private sector jobs. Despite three years of economic recovery, fewer Americans are employed in the private sector today than when Bush was first inaugurated four years ago.

The slight decline in the unemployment rate reported for January is not the result of new jobs; it is the result of large numbers of discouraged people, many with niversity degrees, dropping out of the work force. They cannot find employment and have given up looking.

During Bush's first term, the once fabled US economy has been unable to create jobs in export sectors or in import-competitive sectors. January's 134,000 new private sector jobs are in domestic services that cannot be outsourced: couriers and messengers, food services and drinking places, health care and social assistance, educational services, temporary help, retail, and credit intermediation.

US imports are now 50 percent greater than US exports, putting tremendous pressure on the US dollar. US dependence on imported manufactured goods has resulted in exploding trade deficits, which are growing more than five times faster than the US economy. The explosive growth of the US trade deficit since 1990 has turned $3.3 trillion of US assets over to foreigners. Flooded with US dollars, foreigners perceive their dollar holdings to be rapidly depreciating. The dollar has fallen dramatically against the Euro, gold, and the British pound.

At an international economic meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 26, the director of a Chinese National Economic Research Institute announced that China has lost faith in the stability of the US dollar. "Now people understand the US dollar will not stop devaluating," said Fan Gang.

One likely result of this realization is that foreigners will cease to use their trade surpluses to mop up American red ink. It makes no sense to purchase dollar assets such as Treasury bonds when they are falling in value. As foreigners continue to move out of dollars, US interest rates will rise, terminating the housing boom and wrecking family finances.

America's growing dependence on imports reflects the outsourcing of
manufacturing jobs and knowledge services. Every time a US firm outsources goods
or services, it turns domestic production into imports. Half of the US trade deficit with China represents US offshore production for US markets.

Interest groups that benefit from outsourcing and their spokespersons who cloak themselves in free-trade rhetoric maintain that there is nothing to worry about. Outsourcing, they claim, strengthens the US economy and creates jobs. If that were true, wouldn't economic strength translate into dollar strength? If outsourcing creates US jobs, wouldn't some of those jobs be in the export sector?

Average weekly pay in the US is declining in real terms. Obviously, if outsourcing is creating jobs, they are less good jobs than the ones being outsourced. Trading better jobs for worse ones is the road to poverty, not the road to wealth.

The dismal US performance in job and pay growth is despite the most stimulative monetary and fiscal policy in my lifetime. If the lowest US interest rates in memory, tax cuts and the biggest budget deficits in US history cannot create jobs and boost pay, what can?

Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services notes that normally a 38-month old economic recovery would have raised hours paid by 11% to 14%. The 38-month old Bush recovery has raised hours paid by less than one percent!

The clowns in Washington DC imagine that they sit astride a Superpower. Absorbed in fantasies of invading countries and remaking the world in America's image, little do our deluded leaders realize that America is in the hands of our Chinese and Japanese creditors. Should either of these Asian powerhouses decide to stop mopping up America's red ink, the dollar would collapse to such an extent that it would lose its reserve currency status.

When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, America will cease to be a superpower.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal
editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: pcroberts@postmark.net

Iraq Elections

The best summing-up of the Iraq elections was made by Bob Herbert in the New York Times:

Acts of Bravery
By BOB HERBERT Published: January 31, 2005

You'd have to be pretty hardhearted not to be moved by the courage of the millions of Iraqis who insisted on turning out to vote yesterday despite the very real threat that they would be walking into mayhem and violent death at the polls.

At polling stations across the country there were women in veils holding the hands of children, and men on crutches, and people who had been maimed during the terrible years of Saddam, and old people. Among those lined up to vote in Baghdad was Samir Hassan, a 32-year-old man who lost a leg in the blast of a car bomb last year. He told a reporter, "I would have crawled here if I had to."

In a war with very few feel-good moments, yesterday's election would qualify as one. But as with any positive development in Iraq, this one was riddled with caveats. For one thing, dozens of people were, in fact, killed in election day attacks. And shortly after the polls closed, a
British military transport plane crashed northwest of Baghdad.

So there was no respite from the carnage.

And we should keep in mind that despite the feelings of pride and accomplishment experienced by so many of the voters, yesterday's election was hardly a textbook example of democracy in action. A real democracy requires an informed electorate. What we saw yesterday was an uncommonly brave electorate. But it was woefully uninformed.

Much of the electorate was voting blind. Half or more of those who went to the polls believed they were voting for a president. They weren't. They were electing a transitional national assembly that will have as its primary task the drafting of a constitution. The Washington Post noted that because of the extreme violence that preceded the election "almost none of the 7,700 candidates for the National Assembly campaigned publicly or even announced their names."

As John F. Burns put it in The Times yesterday:
"Half a dozen candidates have been assassinated. As a result, the names of all others have not been made public; they were available in the last days of the campaign on Web sites inaccessible to most Iraqis, few of whom own computers."

"Democracy," according to "The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World," "refers to a form of government in which, in contradistinction to monarchies and aristocracies, the people rule."

That is not the case in Iraq and is not likely to be the case soon. In much of Iraq the people exist in a kind of hell on earth, at the mercy of American forces on the one hand and a variety of enraged insurgents on the other. Despite the pretty words coming out of the Bush administration, the goals of the U.S. and the goals of most ordinary Iraqis are not, by a long stretch, the same.

The desire of the U.S., as embodied by the Bush administration, is to exercise as much control as possible over the Middle East and its crucial oil reserves. There is very little concern here about the plight of ordinary Iraqis, which is why the horrendous casualties being suffered by Iraqi civilians, including women and children, get so little attention.

What most ordinary Iraqis have been expressing, not surprisingly, is a desire for a reasonably decent quality of life. They are a long way from that.

In large swaths of the country, death at the hands of insurgents seems always just moments away. It's also extremely easy for innocent Iraqis to get blown away by Americans. That can occur if drivers get too close - or try to pass - an American military convoy. Or if confusion arising from language barriers, or ignorance of the rules, or just plain nervousness results in an unfortunate move by a vehicle at a checkpoint. Or if someone objects too vociferously to degrading treatment by U.S. forces. Or if someone is simply suspected, wrongly, of being an insurgent.

Crime in many areas is completely out of control. Kidnapping for ransom, including the kidnapping of children, is ubiquitous. Carjackings are commonplace. Rape and murder are widespread. In a country with the second-largest oil reserves in the world, drivers have to wait in line for hours at a time for gasoline. Electric power is available just a handful of hours a day. Unemployment rates are sky high. With many women destitute, prostitution is a growth industry.

Iraqis may have voted yesterday. But they live in occupied territory, and the occupiers have other things on their minds than the basic wishes of the Iraqi people. That's not democracy. That's a recipe for more war.

The Timid Two

See Article in Counterpunch.

Amidst the shambles of the 2004 elections, there were two bright spots for the Senate Democrats -- the seats they had wrested in Illinois and Colorado.

At first blush, it would appear that both blossoms have flattered to deceive.

Both Barack Obama (D-Ill) and Ken Salazar (D-Co) had excellent opportunities recently to strike a blow for America. They appear to have, instead, limiting themselves to a narrow view of their roles. Both failed to stand up and be counted -- one sparklingly, and the other bumbling.

The lone black member of the current senate could not bring himself to vote against Condi Rice. Obama, who elegantly took apart Condi Rice's high rhetoric conflating tyranny and terror, refrained from ascribing mendacity, and even if he thought voicing it was discourteous, ended up voting for her confirmation anyway. But any fellow-feeling evidently stops at the limits of political risk. After all, we didn't see Obama stand with Barbara Boxer to challenge the Ohio vote and a decry an election where thousands of black people were effectively denied the vote.

As to the ponderous Salazar, who reminds one of nothing so much as Phil Gramm, he discovered himself more Hispanic than Democratic, and felt obligated to chaperone Alberto "Torture Away" Gonzales to the latter's Senate hearing. But Salazar showed that his obsequious behavior is not based on anyone's racial origins. All the President's men (and women), regardless of ineptitude and wilful deception, can expect to receive the same elaborate courtesy from this "can't we all just get along" Senator, whose feared propensity to become the next Nighthorse-Campbell assumed greater momentum the moment he opened his mouth during the Condi Rice Confirmation debate on the Senate floor today. He intoned the usual platitudes, "Highly qualified, inspiring life-story, long experience, high intelligence...".

C'mon, amigo...

How 'bout "...lied to the Senate', cheated the American people, took us to an needless war, failed to defend us on 9-11". How about a fuller picture?

Is it not insulting, as Barbara Boxer said, that someone should not be held to full account because s/he happens to be from a minority? Is the Senate a rubberstamp? Someone should tell these guys that they are expected to take a stand against executive railroading.

But you can hardly blame the newest Democratic senators, when their seniors hardly inspire. Lieberman already said he was going to support Rice. As soon as Gonzales was announced, Patrick Leahy gave a tentative nod (yes, Leahy!). And what about people like Biden, Dodd -- Sarbanes (et tu, Paul?) who supported Rice's confirmation?

So there you have it, openly lying to the American people is no a bar to being promoted to Secretary of State, a charge held up in cold print by Barbara Boxer. Failing in your job as National Security Adviser and permitting the larges terrorist act on American soil is no impediment. Nor is the shying away from every opportunity to disavow torture.

We have fallen far.

A good article in the Denver Post a few days ago, after the Gonzales hearing. Wonder what Diane will say after today's debate.


From Diane Carman in the Denver Post:

“E-mails have been pouring into Ken Salazar's old digs at the Colorado Attorney General's Office. Many are from supporters sending congratulations and good wishes.

“But others express dismay.

“The writers are wondering what on earth the Democratic senator is doing buddying up to the likes of Alberto Gonzales. Is this the first sign of a Ben Nighthorse Campbell-style defection to the Republican ranks after using the Democratic Party to get elected?

“After all, when Salazar introduced President Bush's nominee for U.S. attorney general - a guy opposed by retired generals, veterans groups, civil rights organizations, even the Mexican American Political Association - it was one of his very first official acts as a senator.

“And given that Gonzales' confirmation is virtually guaranteed by the Republican majority in the Senate, Salazar's support was wildly unnecessary.

“Sure, Gonzales would be the first Latino to head Justice. But this guy brings plenty of smelly baggage to the job.

“Among other things, he was a partner in the Texas law firm that represented Enron and Halliburton, both under federal investigation. He said he "spent hours grilling" Bernard Kerik and recommended him for secretary of homeland security. And Kerik is the guy who had to withdraw from consideration after his nanny problems, his girlfriend problems and his relationship with a guy indicted for mob activities were revealed.

“Even more disturbing, Gonzales advised the president that the Geneva Convention outlawing the torture of prisoners of war was "quaint" and "obsolete," and signed off on a memo that defined torture as "injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions," a definition narrow enough to authorize most of the abuses at Abu Ghraib or even those inflicted by the Viet Cong at the infamous Hanoi Hilton.

“So what does Salazar see in this guy?

"I'm particularly moved by his historical upbringing," the senator said, "the fact that he came from a place with 11 in his family all cramped into two rooms, his father with only a second-grade education." He went on to graduate from Harvard Law School, to become a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, to advise the president. Salazar said he was impressed with "the fact he's overcome those kinds of very significant obstacles to become a successful lawyer."

“The lessons from a hardscrabble childhood are invaluable, Salazar said. "And his real-life experience will inform him in his role as attorney general," he said.

“But a whole lot of his real-life experience has been as a loyal adviser to the president, one whose opinions often have provided legal cover - if only temporarily until the Supreme Court overruled them - for an administration bent on ignoring international law.

“The concerns that Gonzales has appeared to authorize torture "are very serious questions that need to be asked," Salazar said. "And they are being asked in these confirmation hearings. He needs to explain his role."

“There's a chance that information will emerge from the hearings that will persuade him to vote against Gonzales' confirmation.

“"That's a distinct possibility," Salazar said. "But I'm hopeful that will not be the case."

“Nativo Vigil Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association, told the Los Angeles Times that the nomination of Gonzales is a cynical ploy to exploit the Latino community.

“"There is no doubt in my mind that the ethnic card is being played here, and actually to the detriment, in my mind, of the Latino community," he said.

“But Salazar stands firm, saying there's a big difference between being counsel to the president and U.S. attorney general. "My hope is that he will exercise that kind of independence," Salazar said.

“In the senator's mind, supporting Gonzales is clearly an act of independence and political courage.

“But it will take real guts to withdraw that support now if Gonzales doesn't deserve it.”

Animal Farm for the New Century

This appeared in Counterpunch today:

Day of the Rats

"My next door neighbor is a fascinating man. He woke up one morning a few years ago, shortly after he had moved into his home, and discovered that rats had wreaked havoc on his living and family rooms. They had chewed up the carpet in one room and gnawed away a couple of valuable chairs in another. This was sensational for many reasons -- the audacity of the rats, the horror of the incident, and the fact that he lived in the swankiest home in the neighborhood, where such things were unthought-of. "

Rest of the Article...

Sab Chalta Hai

Bush relected.

Fantasy and reality have merged indistinguishably. The message from the American public is
loud and clear.

It doesn't matter if you didn't protect our country after being warned about planes being hijacked and federal buildings being attacked (Aug 6, 2001 memo)?. So what if you were out clearing brush in Crawford all summer as terrorists assembled and architected an attack of such audacity that they themselves couldn't believe the extent of their success? Doesn't matter if you wouldn't even examine how this came to pass, and resisted efforts to put together an inquiry for two long years. We admire how beautifully you convinced us that, though it was Saudi Arabia which provided the hijackers, our biggest enemy was Iraq!

And when your claims of imminent danger from weapons of mass destruction proved so utterly false, how well you kept a straight face, and indeed, took the battle to the enemy (no, no, not Iraq, Kerry!), launching a series of Swift Boat lies! What grit. What fortitude. We salute you.

We all of us, even your Democratic opponents, agree that your administration holds the prize for the most bold-faced mendacity, yet, we are happy to vote for someone like your new nominee for Secretary of State, a proven falsifier and open slighter of Congressional privilege. They are unable to conduct a simple dialogue, which would go like this:

Senator X (D): Ms. Rice, for the record. Were you the National Security Adviser to the President during the year 2001?

Rice: It depends, Senator...

Senator X(D): Let us say, specifically, September 2001.

Rice: Yes, I was.

Senator X(D): Was the security of the country under your purview?

Rice: (After some usual dissembling) Yes.

Senator X(D): Could you please describe what happened in our country on September 11, 2001?

Rice: Terrorists with links with Iraq attacked our buildings in New York and Washington, killing 3000 people.

Senator X(D): Would you describe it as a failure to protect the country?

Rice: I guess some people could look at it that way. I don't. Mistakes happen.

Senator X(D): Yes, and when they do, those responsible pay a price. I am shocked that you did not tender your resignation first thing September 12. It would have been the honorable course. But perhaps that is too 20th century. Anyhow, nothing personal, Ms. Rice, but I somehow don't see myself supporting your nomination for Secretary of State. I wish you well.

Such a dialogue, which should have been the sole line of questioning of every Democrat -- and Republican with any shred of self-respect -- would have at least restored some dignity to the Senate.

But everything passes. As they say in Hindi, Sab Chalta Hai (anything goes).

Don't forget tomorrow (Jan 20) -- Not ONE DAMN DIME Day

Someone sent this to me a few days back, it is one of the most telling and innovative actions proposed by anyone in a long time.

On Wednesday, January 12, 2005, the White House officially announced that after an extensive investigation, there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime Day" in America. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending. During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don't spend money. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases. Not one damn dime for anything for 24 hours.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day," please boycott Walmart, KMart and Target. Please don't go to the mall or the local convenience store. Please don't buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter). For 24 hours, please do what you can to shut the retail economy down. The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops. The politicians put the troops in harm's way. Now 1,200+ brave young Americans and (some estimated) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a plan -- a way to come home.

There's no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing agenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by doing nothing. You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed. For 24 hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind our religious leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war in Iraq and give America back to the people.

Sent by an anonymous contributor, this has been attributed to Bill Moyers

The Rice Hearings

The New York Times editorial this morning, A Diplomatic Hearing, called the Rice hearings 'political theater'. "Ms. Rice acted as if things were going according to plan in Iraq and everywhere else, and the senators acted as if she were not part of the serial disasters of the administration's foreign policy".

Senator Barbara Boxer stood out in her forthright and bold questioning. Instead of going with the Other-than-that,-Mrs. Lincoln,-how-was-your-evening? tone of the proceedings, she refused to flinch from calling Condolezza Rice, and through her the administration, a liar (not the exact term she used, but the facts Boxer laid out made this clear). Here's Boxer's opening statement:

"It is my hope that today, we will have a candid discussion, Dr. Rice, because I believe it is crucial that a Secretary of State speak openly and honestly with the American people and with Congress. Frankly, this issue of candor is where my concern lies.

"Since 9/11, we have been engaged in a just fight against terrorism. I voted to use force against Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Afghanistan, and I assumed that we would focus on that challenge, not stopping until we got bin Laden, dead or alive, and broke the back of al Qaeda.

"However, instead, with you in a lead role Dr. Rice, we went into Iraq. I want to read you one paragraph that best expresses my views, and the views of millions of Californians, on the impact of the Iraqi war on the war against terrorism. It was written by one of the world’s experts on terrorism and foreign policy, Peter Bergen, five months ago.

"He wrote:

"What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams: We invaded an oil-rich Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East, the very type of imperial adventure that bin Laden has long predicted was the United States' long-term goal in the region. We deposed the secular socialist Saddam, whom bin Laden has long despised, ignited Sunni and Shia fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, and have now provoked a “defensive” jihad that has galvanized jihad-minded Muslims around the world. It's hard to imagine a set of policies better designed to sabotage the war on terrorism.

"This conclusion was reiterated last Thursday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA Director’s think tank, which released a report saying that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists. NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said that Iraq is “a magnet for international terrorist activity.”These quotations are significant to this hearing, Dr. Rice, because as a major proponent and spokesperson for the war in Iraq, and as someone who was asked by the President to make the case for this war to the American people, and as the person in charge of the reconstruction effort– you have many questions to answer to the American people.

"This war was sold to the American people– as Chief of Staff to President Bush, Andy Card said– like a “new product.” You rolled out the idea and then you had to convince the people, and as you made your case, I personally believe that your loyalty to the mission you were given overwhelmed your respect for the truth.

"That was a great disservice to the American people. But worse than that, our young men and women are dying. So far, 1,366 American troops have been killed in Iraq. More than 25 percent of those troops were from California. More than 10,372 have been wounded.

"I don’t want their families to think for a minute that their lives and bodies were given in vain. Because when your commander in chief asks you to sacrifice yourself for your country, it is noble to answer the call. I am giving their families all the support that they want and need, but I will also not shrink from questioning a war that was not built on the truth.

"Perhaps the most well known statement you have made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America, with the image of a “mushroom cloud.” That image had to frighten every American into believing that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of annihilating them if he was not stopped."

The Old Merchant and the Tsunami

Article in Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.com/ramakrishnan01072005.html.

What happened in the Elections?

A sober discussion of why the Democrats lost.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6635544

A Middle East Democracy Survey

Brian Cloughley writes about all of Mr. Bush's allies in the mission of democracy for Iraq. Hilarious.

http://www.counterpunch.com/cloughley12042004.html

Factual and sardonic.

The Motorcycle Diaries

I haven't seen the movie yet, but after a season of lies, crassness and deceit, the notion of idealism and the willingness to put one's life on the line comes as an exhilarating breeze. Read this brief writeup on Che Guevara by Saul Landau.

The Election

Several views have been advanced for the defeat, and the extent of the devastation. They range all the way from, "We got beaten by a genius" to "Here there be fraud". Here are a few links:

The November Surprise by Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Bush didn't Win, Kerry Lost by Arianna Huffington
Who to blame now? by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair