Labor Justice : 'Last Vestige of Slavery and Segregation'

“Brothers of the Sun” by Luana Boutilier / Farmworker Movement

...two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law's protections -- farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.

By Dick Meister / May 28, 2009

It's been three-quarters of a century since enactment of the National Labor Relations Act that grants U.S. workers the basic legal right of unionization -- the right to bargain with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.

But for all that time, two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law's protections -- farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.

Congress should remedy the situation by amending the law to include the excluded workers. Which is the goal of a campaign - "Labor Justice" -- that's been launched by two veterans of United Farm Worker union campaigns, longtime UFW activist LeRoy Chatfield and former UFW attorney Jerry Cohen. They've already won the backing of labor, political, civil rights, academic, religious and community leaders and organizations in more than 30 states.

Chatfield and Cohen played key roles in passing the 1975 law that granted union rights to California's farm workers. There have been drives to enact similar laws in other states, but none have even come close to passing. Neither have drives for state laws to grant union rights to domestic workers.

The need to extend the legal protections is obvious. Most farm workers' pay is at or near the poverty level. They typically have few fringe benefits and very little legal protection from employer mistreatment.

Domestic workers, some of them self-employed, some of them employees of companies that hire them out, also generally earn little more than poverty-level pay and have few benefits. Most are women, who often are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Some have formed union-like organizations to seek better treatment, but need the force of law behind them.

The "Labor Justice" campaign leaders call the exclusion of farm workers and domestics from the protections of the Labor Relations Act "one of our nation's last vestiges of slavery and segregation."

Certainly the exclusion is at the least racist, since the vast majority of U.S. farm and domestic workers are Latino immigrants. In a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis urging the Obama administration to back the proposed expansion of the law, Cohen compared the exclusion of farm workers and domestics to the situation in racist South Africa under Apartheid. "Blacks," Cohen noted, were specifically excluded from the protections of South Africa's equivalent of the National Labor Relations Act.

It was racism, in fact, that kept farm workers and domestics from being granted the protection of the U,S. law originally, although it was a more subtle racism - a "sleight of hand," as Cohen said.

At the time of the law's introduction in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, most farm workers and domestics were African-American. The segregationist Southern Democrats in Congress, an important part of FDR's political base, absolutely refused to vote for a law that would grant African-American workers the same rights as white workers.

So, as presented to Congress by Roosevelt and as passed, the Labor Relations Act, the basic labor law of the land, specifically excluded from its legal protections "agricultural laborers" and anyone "in the domestic service of any family or person."

But now, 74 years later, we finally have the opportunity to correct that shameful exclusion. Finally, we have the chance to provide every worker - every one of them - the vital right of unionization.

[Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a print, broadcast and online reporter, editor and commentator. Contact him through his website.]

Source / Portside

Also see Key Leaders Endorse National Labor Justice Campaign by Randy Shaw / Beyond Chron / LA Progressive / April 14, 2009

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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Harvey Wasserman : Big Troubles for Big Nuke

Nuclear reactor fiasco in Oikiluoto, Finland. Four years under construction; defects multiply and price tag keeps climbing. Photo by Henna Aaltonen / The International Herald Tribune.
The New York Times finally reports the economic disaster of new nukes

Despite the torrent of bad economic indicators, Republicans like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) continue to demand massive government funding for new reactor construction.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / May 29, 2009

In a devastating pair of financial reports that might be called "The Emperor Has No Pressure Vessel," the New York Times has blazed new light on the catastrophic economics of atomic power.

The two Business Section specials cover the fiasco of new French construction at Okiluoto, Finland, and the virtual collapse of Atomic Energy of Canada. In a sane world they could comprise an epitaph for the "Peaceful Atom." But they come simultaneous with Republican demands for up to $700 billion or more in new reactor construction.

The Times's "In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble" by James Kanter is a "cautionary tale" about the "most powerful reactor ever built" whose modular design "was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build" as well as safer to operate.

But four years into a construction process that was scheduled to end about now, the plant's $4.2 billion price tag has soared by 50% or more. Areva, the French government's front group, won't predict when the reactor will open. Finnish utilities have stopped trying to guess.

Finnish inspectors say Areva allowed "inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor." The Finns have also cited Areva for "the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons."

Areva hopes to build similar reactors in the U.S. Its boosters have promised cheaper, cleaner, faster nuke construction with standardized designs like the one at Okiluoto. But "early experience suggests these new reactors will be no easier or cheaper to build than the ones a generation ago" whose price tags soared by 700% and more, and whose completion schedules ran into the decades.

Areva's second "new generation" project at Flamanville, France, is also over budget and behind schedule. Cracks have turned up in critical steel and concrete components, along with revelations that critical work has been done by unqualified welders.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not approved the Areva design in use at Okiluoto and Flamanville. Four other designs under consideration are also mired in process. Some are still being altered. A post 9/11 issue is their ability to withstand a jet crash, which the 104 US reactors currently licensed to operate were not forced to consider.

The fiascos in Finland and Flamanville have thrown Areva into economic chaos now being mirrored at the Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited. Once touted as a global flagship, AECL sucked up 1.74 billion Canadian dollars in subsidies last year and has been a long-term money loser which the government has now announced it wants to sell.

AECL's natural uranium/heavy water design has flopped in the world market. "Design issues" with its installed plants require heavy maintenance. AECL's Chalk River research facility, which suffered a major accident in 1952 (in which former President Jimmy Carter served as a "jumper") needs 7 billion Canadian dollars for clean-up work. Its 51-year-old medical isotope facility recently popped a major leak that may close it forever.

The Paris-based energy expert Mycle Schneider reports that of 45 reactors being built worldwide, 22 are behind schedule and nine have no official ignition schedules.

Despite the torrent of bad economic indicators, Republicans like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) continue to demand massive government funding for new reactor construction. Alexander says he wants the US to build as many as 100 new reactors here, even though the private sector won't finance or insure them. The media is citing the idea as a $700 billion package, but in fact the project price of building new reactors is on the rise, and by some estimates has already exceeded $10 billion each. The Department of Energy has cited four finalists for $18.5 billion in loan guarantees voted in with the 2005 Bush Energy Plan. Florida and Georgia have raised rates to pre-pay proposed new reactors.

But Missouri has turned down a proposed rate hike for a new Areva project. And green activists have three times beaten proposed $50 billion federal loan guarantee packages to fund "new generation" construction. Grassroots battles are now raging to prevent the re-licensing of aging reactors like Vermont Yankee and New York's Indian Point.

As Congress deals with a wide range of energy-related legislation, the nuclear industry is desperately grabbing for any federal money it can get. One bill after another has been floated with nuclear hand-outs hidden in various nooks and crannies.

As the comparative price of efficiency and renewables plummets, the window may be closing fast on the possibility of building new nukes in the US, raising the industry's desparation level.

This battle will certainly rage for years to come. But the appearance of such brutally bad news from Finland and Canada in the Business Section of the New York Times bodes ill for an industry that, after fifty years, cannot get private funding or liability insurance, cannot deal with its wastes, and now cannot demonstrate the ability to produce new product anywhere near on time or budget.

At very least, Paul Joskow of MIT tells the Times, the rollout of new nukes may be "a good deal slower than a lot of people were assuming."

[Harvey Wasserman is an author, a journalist, an educator, an activist, and a utopian thinker. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is available at solartopia.org. This article was also published by The Free Press.]

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Health Care Reform : Our Last Stand

Health Care for America Now

This effort, in my opinion, represents our last stand to effectively combat the forces that would deny Americans decent health care merely to increase the profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical cartels.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / May 28, 2009

As I watch the proposals for a national health program, and the well financed opposition in Congress, I am reminded of a warning sounded by Eric Hoffer in 1951. Hoffer wrote, and this surely applies to the increasing roar of the opposition, that

"Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts. No solid, tangible advantage can hold a following and make it zealous and loyal unto death. The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist."

The two most recent organizations created by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries -- which they hope the American public will accept as bona fide entitles -- are Patients United Now and Americans For Prosperity. These creations exemplify charlatanism at its finest; their appeal is to the naive and ill-informed. The really dirty stuff is just beginning.

I attended a local meeting of Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and would strongly suggest that all readers of The Rag Blog take advantage of the organization’s web site. This effort, in my opinion, represents our last stand to effectively combat the forces that would deny Americans decent health care merely to increase the profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical cartels. I entered this contest as a strong backer of single payer/universal health care as outlined by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP); however, as a pragmatist one must make concessions, as I did to Dr. Marc Stier, the energetic, intelligent, and dedicated leader of the Pennsylvania chapter of HCAN.

I continue to feel that single payer is the program of choice; however, the realities that we face in the United States Senate (we can almost visualize the wire transfers to Switzerland and Liechtenstein while we watch the Finance Committee prostrate itself before the insurance and pharmaceutical giants) alone illustrates the seeming futility of facing any significant legislation. The Lehigh Valley News has a thoughtful discussion of why single payer is in trouble in an article titled "Why Is Single Payer Care Off the Table" by Rev. Sandra L. Strauss, who is director of public advocacy for the Pennsylvania Council of Churches.

The HCAN meeting I attended convened with an eight person panel, including Dr. Stier. Brief -- but the statements given by representatives of the two U.S. Senators, and our local Congress-lady rang hollow. There is, however, some encouraging news regarding Sen. Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania. According to an article from The Hill, distributed by truthout, Sen. Casey, a member of the Senate Health care Committee, will follow Sen. Edward’s Kennedy's lead. It also appears that Senators Durbin, Gillibrand, Harkin, Inouye, Kaufman, Levin, Merkley, Reed, Rockefeller, Schumer, Stabenow, Whitehouse, Webb, and Sanders are on board as well.

I would guess that there were 50-60 individuals present at the gathering. Some, including Dr. Stier, speaking to a generally well-informed audience, clarified the plans and intents of HCAN. There were several handouts; one was titled "A public Health Insurance Plan Option -- What Is It?" This was concise and to the point; however, one clause gave me pause: "May hire insurance companies, where efficient and appropriate, to handle administrative functions such as paying claims.” Shades of "Medicare Advantage,” the Bush administration’s attempt, still ongoing, to privatize Medicare.

It was noted that HCAN is planning a march on Washington in June, and is hoping for 20-30,000 participants. This calls to mind a "march" some years ago, the "one million man march" which was organized, in essence, to prove the participants’ masculinity. This brings to mind a thought that occurred to me during the meeting: "Where ARE the uninsured; where are the folks that we are representing?" Will any of these people come to the June gathering in Washington? Which brings to mind more words of Eric Hoffer from The True Believer>:

"The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for ‘an inspiring super-individual goal which would give meaning and dignity to their lives?’ They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement."

I would suggest that all progressives, at this time of feelings of ambivalence regarding President Obama, review Hoffer's thinking. To me he is more relevant than he was in 1951.

President Obama, speaking on C-SPAN on May 24, reportedly vowed that his health care plan will provide "basic coverage" to all Americans. He gave no specifics but repeated the mantra that his plan "will invest more in prevention and wellness programs" as including as a move to increase electronic data-keeping. Once again, a cop-out! The anxious mother with a feverish child wants a physician at the bedside and does not give a hoot about wellness programs. The husband, sitting in an intensive care unit with his wife in a diabetic coma, wants a competent endocrinologist in charge and does not give a tinker’s damn about electronic data keeping. "Basic coverage?”

Are we discussing something akin to Medicaid ? Medicaid, a half-way measure in the search of health car?. A fraud in many instances which provides "care" on paper but in the real world provides nothing in the way of first class medical attention.

To make the situation even more frightening, an AP story carried in the Erie Times News reports that “a major health insurer says that the government can save more than $500 billion in Medicare spending by sending patients to less expensive, more efficient doctors, reducing hospital visits by the elderly, and cutting down on unnecessary care.” The 'health insurer' consulted by some idiot in Washington is the United Health Group, the largest participant in the Bush administration’s "Medicare Advantage,” a company that pays its CEO some $30-plus million per year. Nowhere does the “consultant” suggest doing away with Medicare Advantage plans, which are draining the Medicare trust fund by billions of dollars per year. One wonders who the demented individual in Washington was that provoked this "consultation" which is rather akin to asking the Godfather to review the business practices of the family industries to which the Mafia sells protection. Not really a fair comparison since the Costa Nostra never had it as good as the United health Group.

The other concern regarding "basic coverage" is that it will require, by law (probably unconstitutional) that everyone purchase private insurance. Of course, the policies of the less fortunate will have something like a $5,000 yearly deductible, high co-insurance payments, and numerous exclusions. For instance, they will state that they will pay for "management of diabetes,” but in the very, very small print will exclude payment for "diabetic complications.” This all dovetails nicely with a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer that says that the cost of insurance from Independence Blue Cross, for a family of four, non-group subscribers, would rise from $1,069.15 per month to $1,634, a 52.8% increase. Of course, there are cheaper plans, but here again we find the large deductibles, the co-insurance, and the exclusions.

And as far as Blue Cross is concerned, these folks are politically active, as Paul Krugman points out in the May 22 New York Times ("The Blue Double Cross"). On the Monday following the White House photo-op, The Washington Post reported that Blue Cross of North Carolina was preparing a series of ads attacking a public option insurance. The insurance industry will not be satisfied with merely doing away with single payer/universal care, but will stoop to all manner of deceit to persuade the gullible public that a public option plan is not in its interest. Not only will our elected representatives receive baksheesh, but we will see contrived ads about how bad health care is in other countries, how freedom of choice will be disallowed by a public plan, and we will be told that the “government will choose your doctor” and that there will be waiting periods of weeks to obtain care, etc. All hogwash, lies, and misrepresentations.

Two final thoughts:

We who support health care for all must, as well, support The Employee Free choice Act. These programs, in my opinion, are joined at the hip. And, we must support the American College of Physicians PAC in its efforts 1) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable care; 2) to pilot test new Medicare payment models that realign incentives to support effective, efficient, patient-centered, coordinated care; 3) to improve Medicare fee for service payments to make primary care competitive with other specialties; and 4) to establish a national workforce policy to ensure sufficient numbers of primary care and other physicians.

Since we are writing from Erie, Pa., the site of ex-President Bush's “coming-out” speech on June 17, we will try to keep you informed of an occasion that The Erie Times News, a good companion newspaper to the Washington Times or Greensburg Tribune, will turn into a memorable, earth shattering, event.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, lives in Erie, PA. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform. His previous articles on The Rag Blog can be found here.]

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New Abu Ghraib Photos Said to Depict Graphic Rape Scenes

Previously released photo from Abu Ghraib prison. The new photos, many reportedly depicting sexual abuse, are said to be much worse. Photo from Telegraph, U.K.
Photographs which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

By Duncan Gardham and Paul Cruickshank / May 28, 2009

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Source / Telegraph, U.K.

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Steve Russell, Indian : Advice to Myself at 14

I seldom got caught skipping school because the last place they would look for a truant was the public library. I read books by the shelf rather than by author or topic. It was a small library.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / May 28, 2009

My usual contributions to Rag Blog are about foreign policy or economic policy, much like my contributions to The Rag were. I am a paid columnist for Indian Country Today, but my subjects there seldom cross paths with my subjects here even though my copyright agreement allows me to republish my columns if I choose.

This column is different from my usual ICT fare and I got so many emails from concerned parents and kids that I have become convinced it may resonate outside of Indian Country. In response to a question I've gotten here more than once: I've been an Indian all my life, born and raised in Indian Country, and I've never heard an Indian say "Native American" without smirking.

I usually write this column primarily for people who care about tribal government. This one is different. If you are currently an important person by conventional standards, you may want to skip this because I’m speaking to myself at age... oh, 14 or so, upward.

I know you because I was you, raised on Indian land currently occupied by white people. Raised by extended family rather than a mother and a father and not knowing anybody who finished high school.

Honestly, I had few encounters with white people who flat out did not like Indians. However, being known as who I was meant that I was destined to work with my hands, unless I could be an artist of some kind. The people who assumed that did not mean me any harm, but directing me to classes and activities for which I had no talent was not helpful.

I’ve heard people say they didn’t know they were poor. That’s the case unless somebody tells you, and plenty of people let me know. It did not take me long to figure out that most of the other kids did not have commodities and they lived in houses with light switches on the wall rather than a bulb dangling in the center of the room and several cords running away from that one connection so the wires were often hot to the touch.

There’s never any shortage of adults who want to tell you what to do, right? Do they still show you Indians in the textbooks that were either savage or stupid? I hope not. If so, I hope your folks give you stuff like the book I had about Will Rogers, an Indian who was smart and funny. They tell you your life is over if you can’t finish school, even though school is one teenage horror after another.

You might live with grandparents who have nothing except Social Security and a VA pension. You need to work. You are ashamed of being a burden. You see what you need to do. What could I possibly tell you?

Well kid, I’m about to retire from my second career as a university professor. My first one was state court judge. Since I got my school loans paid off, I’ve had a middle class life, the kind of life I used to think of as “rich.” My kids never missed a meal and never took charity. I drive a truck that starts, every time. My light switches are on the walls.

What they say about finishing school -- that your life will be over if you drop out -- is nonsense. I quit in the ninth grade and my only regret is that I didn’t quit sooner, but it is true that you must have an education, unless you are just incredibly talented. That is, the great Indian artist. If you are that, you probably know it by now.

It will probably be easier for you if you stay in school, but if you do, you need to know that your grades matter. If I had stayed in high school long enough to get a transcript, I probably would not have been able to talk my way into the University of Texas, because my grades were horrible.

If you are smart, you are interested in how the world works, and if the school won’t teach you the things you need you will have to teach yourself. Whether your schools work for you is something you probably understand better than the adults in your life. Since you are me, the schools are not working for you, so I have one word that will save your life: read.

I seldom got caught skipping school because the last place they would look for a truant was the public library. I read books by the shelf rather than by author or topic. It was a small library.

I delivered the Oklahoma City Oklahoman and Times and the Tulsa World and Tribune and I read every one of those suckers front to back every day. I did not understand at the time how awful they were because I had nothing to compare them with, but reading crap is better than not reading. Speaking of reading crap, my grandparents had a trunk full of old Reader’s Digests. I read them all, including the “condensed books” which are to books as condensed soup is to soup.

Starting then and continuing to this day, whenever I run across a word I don’t know, I either dog ear the page or make a note on a piece of paper I use for a book mark if I don’t own the book. Then I go back and look up all the words that I had not recognized.

When I got to the university, I knew more words than the high school graduates, although I often did not pronounce them correctly. While I thought Camus was pronounced “K-Moose” and Goethe was pronounced “Goth” and that embarrassed me, being familiar with their ideas was more important. Besides, looking back on it, being made fun of was a handy reminder not to forget my origins.

Read everything. Even stuff you do not yet understand. If you manage that, other survival skills will come to you. Some that came to me were looking up the publications of professors, going to the bookstore to see the assigned books in advance and trying to get more than one class with the same books (that had to do with money, but it turned out to be a useful learning tool as well), knowing when to drop a class and when to bear down.

I also used stuff I already knew: stuffing newspapers in shoes with holes, pocketing untouched dinner rolls off the rich kids’ plates in the cafeteria, using an older edition out of the library when I could not afford textbooks.

You may need to quit school to work. That does not mean you have to give up your education. Lots of folks still think Indians and people from the boondocks are stupid. You and I know better. Don’t listen to them. The future is waiting for you. Go grab it by the scruff of the neck.

[Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana University. He is a columnist for Indian Country Today, where an earlier version of this article appeared. Steve wrote for Austin’s The Rag in the Sixties and seventies and is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. He lives in Bloomington and can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu.]

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Mancow on Waterboarding : 'I Would Have Said Anything to Make it Stop'

Mancow on Olbermann. Below, waterboard denier Sean Hannity. Photo by Douglas C. Pizac / AP.
Mancow: Hannity called me after I was waterboarded and said, ‘It’s still not Torture’

By Satyam Khanna / May 27, 2009

With Keith Olbermann Video.

Last month, Fox News’s Sean Hannity claimed he would agree to be waterboarded “for charity…for the troops’s families.” Since then, multiple pundits have challenged Hannity to undergo the torture tactic, yet he has been unusually silent on the subject of waterboarding since.

Last week, right-wing radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller stepped up to the plate and had himself waterboarded to prove that it isn’t torture. Immediately afterwards, Mancow admitted that it was “absolutely torture” and was “way worse” than he expected.

Yesterday, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann interviewed Mancow about his experience under the bucket. “I would have said anything to make it stop,” Mancow said, further confirming that torture does not produce reliable intelligence. “I don’t think drowning is harsh enough. … This is worse. This isn’t gulping for air. This is your brain is shut off.” Mancow said that despite the “horrific” event, Hannity called him afterwards to insist that waterboarding still isn’t torture:

MANCOW: First of all, Sean Hannity called me and said, “It’s still not torture.” I said, “Sean” — he is a friend of mine — “it is torture.” All right. But, look, you are giving 10,000 dollars to the Veterans of Valor.org. So I think you are stand-up guy for doing that.

“I felt the effects for two days. I had chest pains. I told my wife — I have two little kids. We prayed. I said, dear God, help me. I had chest pains. I was so stressed out by this,” Mancow said. Watch it:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Time and again, those who have dared to undergo waterboarding have said it is torture. Mancow, who initially scoffed at the tactic, explained to Olbermann: “Look, I see the video…the sprinkling of the water, big deal. … I was laughing at it. I was willing to prove and ready to prove that this was a joke. And I was wrong.”

Mancow laughed at waterboarding until he tried it himself. Hannity’s fact-free claim that waterboarding is “not torture” might carry more weight if he displayed the courage of Mancow.

Source / Think Progress

Also see Talk Show Host Waterboarded : 'It Was Instantaneous... Absolutely Torture' by John Byrne / The Rag Blog / May 22, 2009

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Great Britain : Extensive Camera Network Ups Police State Ante

Photo from Getty Images.

The BBC says the massive tracking database will be up and fully functional in a matter of months.

By Stephen C. Webster / May 25, 2009

See BBC Video, Below.

The British government will soon have a fully-operational network of cameras fitted with license plate recognition software, according to a published report.

In a major first for any Western government's police enforcement apparatus, the new system will allow any vehicle in the United Kingdom to be tracked to its precise location.

Excerpts from the BBC:

A number of local councils are signing up their Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems to the ANPR network. As long as the cameras are technically good enough, they can be adapted to take the software.

[....]

John Dean, who is co-ordinating the ANPR network for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "It's the finest intelligence-led policing tool we've got.

"It covers so many different areas from crime reduction, crime detection to road safety and everything in between."

The British news service also details the case of John Catt, who's already had a rather unpleasant run-in with Britain's Big Brother.

John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.

It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a "marker" on his car. That meant he was added to a "hotlist"."

This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.

'I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?'

Quite an apt question, wouldn't you say? The BBC says the massive tracking database will be up and fully functional in a matter of months.

Do not be surprised when this software makes its way to the United States. It's only a matter of time.

Source / The Raw Story

BBC: Camera grid to log license plates



Thanks to Richard Bowden / The Rag Blog

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Harvey Wasserman : The Eight Green Steps to Solartopia

Pete Seeger sings Solartopia. Download here.

Solartopia is diverse, sustainable, and socially just, the necessary, possible vision of a civilization in which we can all survive and thrive.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

Includes Video of 'From Ecotopia to Solartopia -- A Visionary Conversation' with Ernest Callenbach.

The noble vision of a Solartopian green-powered Earth is at last upon us.

Our eco-future is defined by the four Great Green Truths: we have a global crisis, it has a solution, the solution is winnable, and winning requires a "middle path" of action that is both non-violent and non-stop.

There are technological solutions to the crisis, but they demand political action. Together they comprise the Eight Green Steps to a sustainable world:

1. Ban waste and war: Nothing may be produced that cannot be fully recycled or that will not completely bio-degrade. This includes weapons whose sole purpose is death and destruction, and whose manufacture and use must be ended by a global community that knows war to be the ultimate act of ecological suicide.

2. Maximize efficiency and conservation: From energy to building materials, food to fiber, water to paper, our resources must be preserved. Our unsustainable consumption and wasteful industries must be made appropriate and efficient, starting with a reborn mass transit system and complete preservation of all remaining virgin land and waters.

3. Transcend fossil/nuke: King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas) must take its place in the compost heap of history. Our addiction to filthy, finite fossil/nuclear fuels has led us to the brink of economic and ecological collapse. In the new green millennium, we either kick the habit, or it kills us.

4. Convert to renewables: Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, wave, current, sustainable bio-fuels and their green siblings are proven, profitable and have time on their side. Each has its imperfections, and no single source will dominate. But union-made renewables sing in economic and ecological harmony, and are the ultimate job-creators.

5. Go organic: Factory farming, genetically modified crops and chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are unsustainable. Diverse, community-scaled, reliably organic agriculture is the key to a future fed by food that's fit to eat.

6. Transform the corporation: Our most powerful -- and destructive -- institution claims human rights without human responsibilities. Corporate charters must require social service, ecological accountability and establish a barrier between capitalism and cannibalism. "Green" corporations whose legal mandate still remains limited to accumulating profits will make a mess of the planet as surely as all those that have come before.

7. Assure social democracy: Universal hand-counted (recycled) paper ballots and curbs on the power of money to sway elections are the essence of global democracy, as is the demand for social justice. Until all humans are assured the basics of life -- food, shelter, clothing, health care, education -- democracy and freedom are shallow illusions.

8. Empower women/control population: Where enfranchised, educated, fairly paid and in control of their own bodies, the natural union of women with Mother Earth brings us the children She wishes to support. On a healthy planet, birth rates find their natural level when all children are loved and wanted, which is where Solartopia starts.

This list follows the form of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths and Eight-Fold Path to Enlightenment. But all religions at their core call for universal harmony between people and the planet.

Solartopia is diverse, sustainable, and socially just, the necessary, possible vision of a civilization in which we can all survive and thrive.

See you there!

[Harvey Wasserman is an author, a journalist, an educator, an activist, and a utopian thinker. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is available at solartopia.org.]

From Ecotopia to Solartopia -- A Visionary Conversation

Ernest Callenbach (Ecotopia, 1975) and Harvey Wasserman (Solartopia, 2007) discuss the role of the visionary novelist in opening public discourse to "outside the box" possibiltiies. They look at the many elements of Callenbach's Ecotopian vision that have actually come into being (and some that haven't yet) and explore the catalytic power of realistic hope to shape the present and the future. They agree the time has come to democratically enlarge our vision of sustainable society from local, national and regional spheres to the planetary context. For more info about Ernest Callenbach, go here.

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California Supremes on Prop. 8 : The Return of Separate But Equal

Demonstrators placed signs on a statue of Lincoln in front of San Francisco City Hall on May 26, 2009, after the California Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8. Photo by Paul Sakuma.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination.

By Jeff Jones / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yesterday's California Supreme Court decision to uphold Proposition 8 created a bizarre post-modern version of "separate but equal" with three separate water fountains to drink from.

First, the court ruled that California's Constitution officially reserves the designation of the term “marriage” for opposite-sex couples. Second, the court ruled that despite restricting the word “marriage" to opposite-sex couples, the 18,000 same-sex couples who got married before the passage of Proposition 8 remain officially "married" and their marriages are legally recognized by the state.

Finally, the Court claimed that same-sex couples have the same rights as opposite sex couples: supposedly, we have the right to "choose one's life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship (translation: civil union) that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage."

At the center of this controversy is the first paragraph of California's State Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal rights. So let me state the obvious by paraphrasing Gertrude Stein: equality is equality is equality is equality.

In yesterday’s bizarre ruling, the California Supreme Court codified three different sets of rules for three different types of supposedly "equal" citizens: all non-LGBT people have the right to get married; some LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) individuals have this right; most do not. Chief Justice Ronald M. George said the measure "carves out a narrow and limited exception” to the citizens’ constitutional rights but leaves undisturbed "all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple's (rights).”

But how can this ruling meet the constitutional guarantee of equality if some queers can be legally married while the rest are legally prohibited from doing the very same thing? In essence, the ruling implies that words have no meaning; ”marriage,” apparently, is essentially symbolic.

But such thinking is patently absurd: as any LGBT individual knows, the state and federal governments use legal definitions of marriage to determine eligibility for numerous rights and benefits including sick leave, tax breaks, prison visitation rights, property, health benefits, adoption, social security benefits etc. As an article in today’s New York Times pointed out, the Supreme Court’s tortured logic is like telling black people that sitting in the back of the bus is not important, as long as the front and the back of the bus arrive at its destination at the same time.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination. As the lone dissenter -- Justice Carlos Moreno -- wrote: “Proposition 8 strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution and “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities.”

Also see The Laudable Dissenting Opinion in Today's California Court Decision by Rieux / Daily Kos / May 26, 2009

And read Justice Moreno's dissent here.

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Lisa Sánchez González on the Sotomayor Nomination : Fighting my Inner Cynic

Barack Obama introduces his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a Boricua from the South Bronx. Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP.
Obama nominates a Boricua from the South Bronx:
A tease or a real slice of hope?

By Lisa Sánchez González / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

When news broke last month that a Boricua from the South Bronx, a woman, was being considered for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, I bet a Native American co-worker a box of pencils that she'd never get the seat.

Then yesterday, President Obama announced that 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor had, in fact, received the nomination.

After I fainted, picked myself up off the floor, and brushed myself off, I began to ponder what had fed my inner cynic (which I generally keep under lock and key) so much defeatism that the very idea of a Boricua woman becoming a Supreme Court justice sounded to me like, well, the sci-fi version of a Horatio Alger novel (emphasis on the sci-fi). Why did it seem so wildly surreal -- even extraterrestrial -- to me that, through dint of hard work, talent, her family's support, sacrifice (and a little luck), a woman like Sotomayor, no matter how qualified, could ever be nominated by a President to serve on something as sacrosanct as the Supreme Court?

Maybe it's because I'm so used to hearing people in decision -making or -influencing positions dismiss the credentials of highly qualified Latinas just because they can (and because so few protest when they do), that I doubted there was any hope that, even if God were to descend to announce His support for a puertorriqueña Supreme Court Justice, she'd have any better than a 50/50 chance of getting considered on her own merit. That is, of course, presuming that she's a moderate conservative, a centrist, a liberal, or (eek!) an actually existing leftist. We all know that, at least for the past decade or so, the political fast-track to celebrity for an ultra-conservative Latina with more ambition than intellect (or any other qualification) is a yellow brick road paved by the Heritage Foundation (am I the only blogger old enough to remember Linda Chaves?).

My inner cynic has been well fed for weeks now too in the blogosphere, which has been littered with sensationalist commentaries, slathered in both overt and thinly veiled bigotry, about Sonia Sotomayor: "She's a bully!" "She's not really that smart!" and other drivel that suggests it might be ok, in public evaluation of a potential Supreme Court Justice (who, mind you, currently holds a seat on a Circuit Court, i.e. belongs to the nation's second-highest judicial echelon), to revert to the name-calling used on elementary school playgrounds. Did the criticism of any of the others on the widely publicized short list take on such a condescending and infantilizing tone? (If it did, I didn't see it.)

My inner cynic got enough sustenance that it escaped its shackles and started running loose as a snarky post-atomic Gila monster. Now it is nibbling on the mainstream media, especially their inability to make sense of why this nomination is so historic. The coverage -- which is so far all about reading Sotomayor's nomination as a leftist coup, and which is equally disinterested in what President Obama himself described as her "sterling" qualifications -- completely ignores, for example, what this nomination means in the historical context of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico, or the long history of violent and peaceful struggle against that colonial relationship, or the mass migration of Sotomayor's parents' generation to the states that was engineered by U.S. maldevelopment policies, or the history of the South Bronx as a Boricua ghetto, not to mention the enormous odds (plug in any quality of life stat) that her success story means she overcame.

Obviously, we don't expect anything but shoddy faux journalism from the far right. But will Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann -- the supposed rugged left of the lefty prime time media -- care enough to do their homework and get it right?

Probably not, which is a shame. Or maybe that's the Gila monster talking.

The sad thing is, my many years of striving in another sacrosanct American institution -- academia -- have often fueled my cynicism. I'm a Boricua scholar whose parents were born and raised in the South Bronx. They worked heroically, like Celina Sotomayor (Sonia's mom), to give their children a better start in life than they had had. Yet too often I've found that, in my career, the proverbial glass ceiling looks more like a steel door viewed from a vipers' pit (with walls paved in wet limestone).

But now, thanks to President Obama, I have to rethink all this; I need to come to terms with the fact that I've been force-fed a big dose of hope.

I have to admit, it tastes good. Obviously, I'm not re-caging the Gila until the confirmation hearing is over in the Senate, and I'll be keeping close watch on the coverage until then. But -- dare I say it aloud? -- I really really hope I owe someone a box of pencils come fall semester.

Lisa Sánchez González is the author of Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. Read her blog here: http://holamisu.blogspot.com/.

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Medical Referrals: Another Part of the Problem with the American Health Care System

Mark Allen Miller.
Referral System Turns Patients Into Commodities
By Sandeep Jauhar, M.D. / May 25, 2009

I was chatting recently with a doctor friend who was depressed because he thought he had lost a referral source.

“This internist was sending me patients,” he told me, as I recall. “Then last month he sent me only one patient. And this month only one patient.”

I nodded hesitantly, unsure what he was driving at.

“So I understand something must have happened,” he said.

“Like what?” I asked.

He threw up his hands, exasperated by my obliviousness. “He met someone else! He developed a relationship with another cardiologist.”

I smiled at the overwrought response, with its connotations of a romantic breakup. But to my friend, this was no joke. Like most specialists, his livelihood depends on referrals. And like most, he will go to great lengths to preserve his referral sources.

Physician-to-physician referrals are the currency of day-to-day transactions in medicine, but as with any currency, they can be manipulated.

Logic says that a referral should depend only on a patient’s needs and the reputation and skill of the physician to which the patient is referred. But medicine is a business too, so that isn’t how it always works in practice.

The talk springs up in every doctors’ lounge: “Dr. X is opening shop — let’s give him some business.” When my wife told me she wanted to start an endocrinology practice, I reassured her that I would send patients to her, and that so would my brother, also a doctor, and his friends. As far as I can tell, there are no restrictions on such a practice.

Studies suggest that physicians receive up to 45 percent of new patients by referral, usually from other physicians. Referral rates to specialists in the United States are estimated to be at least twice as high as in Great Britain.

The rates reflect several aspects of American medicine: increasing specialization, the lack of time for any doctor to give to complex cases, and fear of lawsuits over not consulting an expert. At the same time, referrals are a way for cash-strapped doctors to generate business.

When I was in training, simple referrals from internists, like patients with only mild hypertension, bothered me as a waste of time. Now that I am in practice, I welcome them. I haven’t changed my mind that these referrals are probably unnecessary, and there is plenty of evidence that wasteful expert consultation is adding to health costs and creating redundant care. But as a full-fledged doctor, I appreciate the business. It is hard not to view a referral as an overture from another physician, and it is equally hard not to return the favor.

A sort of paradox is at work. Specialists are better paid than primary care physicians, but they are also less autonomous because, unlike primary care physicians, they depend on other doctors for referrals. There is pressure on specialists to keep referral sources happy, especially in doctor-saturated metropolitan areas like New York City.

There are limits, of course, on the autonomy of referring physicians, too. For instance, by federal law a doctor cannot refer patients to himself or to a business in which he has a significant financial stake, like a laboratory or imaging center, and he cannot be paid for a referral. The reasoning is that such behavior can interfere with clinical judgment, decrease quality and increase costs.

In 2006, Tenet Healthcare Corp., based in Dallas, agreed to pay $21 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit asserting that a hospital it owned in San Diego had paid kickbacks to physicians for referrals. (Tenet did not admit wrongdoing.) That same year, a New Jersey teaching hospital was investigated for giving sham salaries to community doctors in a reported attempt to increase the number of referrals to its cardiac surgery program. Two cardiologists pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.

But there are gray areas in practice. The Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Health and Human Services has investigated office space rentals, for example. Across the country, mobile medical imaging companies have made arrangements with internists to perform, in their offices, cardiac ultrasounds, which the companies send to cardiologists for interpretation. Insurance companies that cover the imaging pay the companies, and the companies pay rent to the internists. By law, these rent payments must reflect fair market value and be unrelated to the volume of patients referred by the internists for imaging. But according to doctors familiar with these agreements, that isn’t always the case.

“Obviously you get more rent if you provide 50 patients than if you provide 5,” an internist on Long Island, who did not want his name used, told me.

When I asked whether it wasn’t just a form of a kickback, he shrugged.

“When the companies take more time, they have to pay more rent,” he said. “You don’t say it is per patient; you say per hour. But patients equal time.”

Though he no longer participates in these contracts, he was open about the payments — about $100 per patient — and he saw nothing wrong with them. “As internists, we don’t bill for procedures, so we have to figure out another way to make money,” he said. “Every little bit helps.”

Whether the rent payments amount to indirect kickbacks is an open question still being investigated by the inspector general. The real issue, I think, is not the rentals but a referral system that is too easily corrupted. There is so much pressure to generate referrals that lines become crossed.

Our health care system needs a different approach, one in which patients are not treated as commodities.

One possibility is what Gail Wilensky, a health policy expert, argued for this year in The New England Journal of Medicine: a single payment that would cover all physician services and hospital care for any one patient. A major driver of referral proliferation is that doctors are paid piecework. There is less of an incentive to increase volume if payments are bundled rather than discrete for every service.

A bundled-payments system is already in place for hospitals, dialysis centers and nursing homes. Extending such a strategy to individual doctors’ payments seems to be the logical next step.

[Sandeep Jauhar is a cardiologist on Long Island and the author of the recent memoir “Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation.”]

Source / New York Times

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Life During Wartime : What Obama Isn't Telling Us!

Political cartoon by Joshua Brown / Historians Against the War / The Rag Blog
Thanks to Dr. S.R. Keister /The Rag Blog

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Anti-War Memorial Day at Texas' Fort Hood

Memorial Day at Under the Hood. GI's gather at coffee house before marching for peace. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

War may seem to be a million miles away to much of the population, but it is never more than a deployment order away from the minds of these young soldiers.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

See 'Anti-war protesters exercise freedom to march' by Rebecca LaFlure, Below.

Killeen, Texas is nestled up to Fort Hood, the largest military base in North America, where soldiers are on a rapid deployment schedule to Afghanistan. On Memorial Day, I joined about 70 people at Under the Hood Café on College Street in Killeen for a peace march led by active duty soldiers.

An antiwar presence is surprising enough in a military town, but I must say that the reaction of people who drove by with thumbs up signs and honks of support was even more surprising. We marched in the blazing Texas sun for more than a mile to a point across from the East Gate before returning to the shelter of Under the Hood. Two of the soldiers who led the march have recently made their resistance known, issuing statements on why they won’t go to Afghanistan. See related Rag Blog stories [links below].

Killeen is a tired military town, full of tattoo parlors and other businesses catering to GIs. In contrast, the suburbs of Copperas Cove and Harker Heights seem to be full of new and shiny franchises.

Under the Hood has been open since February 1, gradually becoming known as a “free speech zone” for GIs –- a place where soldiers can gather, throw darts, play guitar, surf the internet, and occasionally get treated to Manager Cindy Thomas’ Spanish rice. The Memorial Day fare also included barbeque, beans, and home-made cookies. War may seem to be a million miles away to much of the population, but it is never more than a deployment order away from the minds of these young soldiers.

Anti-war protesters exercise freedom to march

By Rebecca LaFlure / May 26, 2009

"Get up. Get down. There's an anti-war movement in this town."

A group of active-duty Fort Hood soldiers and nearly 70 other anti-war protesters took to the streets of Killeen Monday afternoon in the city's first peace march since the Vietnam War.

Toting picket signs that read, "War is not the answer," and "Blessed are the peacemakers," the demonstrators gathered for one common purpose –- to call for an end to the wars in the Middle East.

The action, held on Memorial Day, was organized to honor the nation's fallen soldiers, and help prevent the further loss of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We're paying homage to the ones we've lost. We don't want to lose anymore," said Chris Saylor, an Iraq War veteran who traveled from Detroit to participate.

The protest was organized by Under the Hood Cafe –- a local outreach center for soldiers. Members from peace organizations across Texas as well as college students, active-duty soldiers and veterans came out to show their support.

The march began at the cafe house at 17 College St. and continued down Veteran's Memorial Boulevard to Fort Hood Street and then up to Fort Hood's East Gate.

The demonstrators waved colorful flags decorated with peace symbols and chanted slogans like, "They're our brothers, they're our sisters. We support war resistors," and "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!"

Many people honked their car horns as they drove by. Not all the responses were positive, however. One man shouted, "You don't have the right to do this!" as he drove by.

Ben Fugate, an Army specialist who returned from Iraq two months ago, was one of several Fort Hood soldiers who came to the event. Wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan, "Got rights?" Fugate called the Iraq war "unjustified" and recently decided to speak out against it.

"They say they're there to build up Iraq, but all you see is destruction of Iraq," he said. "There are thousands of guys who are not coming home to their mom and dad. I lost three buddies in my platoon in Iraq and for what? Why lose more when we don't have to?"

Cindy Thomas, manager of Under the Hood Cafe and the protest's organizer, said she hopes the day's action will influence other military community members to speak out.

"We want to let the soldiers out there know that we're here. They have somewhere to come to," she said. "A lot of them don't know that they actually have rights. You're allowed to speak out. You're allowed to march."

Source / Killeen Daily Herald

Please see GI Coffehouse: Checking 'Under the Hood' in Killeen, Texas by Susan Van Haitsma / March 4, 2009

Other related material from The Rag Blog:

• Ft. Hood GI Travis Bishop : Why I Won't Go by Travis Bishop / The Rag Blog / May 21, 2009
• GI Victor Agosto: 'There is No Way I Will Deploy to Afghanistan' by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / May 7, 2009
• Austin: Eyewitness Accounts from Winter Soldiers for Peace by Greg Moses / March 14, 2009
• Winter Soldier: GI's Against the War Tell Their Stories by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / Feb. 25, 2009

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James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI's Runaway Informants

The Texas 2: David McKay and Bradley Crowder.
The Texas 2: Intrigue, Provocation, and Betrayal

The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul.

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

The steel door of the United States federal criminal justice system has slammed shut on the cases of the so-called Texas 2. Amidst courtroom drama replete with extraordinary plot twists, the linked stories of Austin activist pals Bradley Neal Crowder and David Guy McKay interweave tumultuous boy-to-manhood coming-of-age themes with the bitter taste of betrayal. Far more disquieting, looming above the northland Minnesota stage, larger, darker questions emerge concerning the role of informers and agents provocateur within activist movements.

On Thursday, May 21, David McKay, a 22-year-old Austin resident accused of making and possessing Molotov cocktails at last year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, was sentenced to four years in federal prison. One week earlier his friend and co-defendant, Brad Crowder, 23 and also from Austin, was sentenced to 24 months on firebomb possession charges.

Crowder and McKay were charged Sept. 3, 2008, after federal authorities, acting on information provided by Brandon Darby, a paid informer who had been highly visible in Austin progressive circles for several years, found eight Molotov cocktails hidden in the basement of a St. Paul apartment building where the two were staying during the convention.

From the outset, the cases against Crowder and McKay were clouded by Darby’s brazen revelation that he was on the FBI payroll. Given his history of bizarre and provocative behavior in Austin and New Orleans, many local activists immediately suspected Darby of manipulating the younger men into a criminal adventure and then busting them.

Indeed, when McKay’s case went to trial in late January, his attorney, Jeff DeGree, staged an aggressive defense around the entrapment argument. Darby’s past statements, such as his stated advocacy of using firebombs to “fight against gentrification,” provided DeGree with a provocateur “quote fest,” and as many as six jurors found Darby’s actions to be over the line. The trial ended in a hung jury.


McKay’s courtroom success was to be short-lived. From the outset, the McKay and Crowder defense teams had no unity of purpose and common courtroom strategy. The government exploited the disunity between the two friends and fellow defendants with great success.

While McKay’s lawyer was planning an aggressive case to put Darby and his FBI handlers on trial, Crowder’s attorney, federal public defender Andrew Mohring -- with what appears to be considerable support from Crowder’s family -- persuaded the young Austinite to accept a plea bargain on a single charge of possession.

Crowder’s deal was signed in early January, several weeks before McKay was scheduled to go on trial. The government, however, delayed Crowder’s sentencing until after the McKay case was resolved. Though prosecutors did not call Crowder to testify in the McKay trial, they still held his admission of guilt as a trump card that ultimately would become the key factor in McKay’s eventual decision to change his plea to guilty.

Earlier this month, as McKay’s second trial date approached, federal prosecutors announced that this time they would put Crowder on the stand to testify against his friend. They also told Crowder that if he did not co-operate, they would tack two years onto his sentence.

Crowder’s public defender argued that because Crowder had not yet been sentenced, he could not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony. The government countered by filing a request to grant Crowder immunity, thus compelling his testimony.

In his plea bargain, Crowder had stipulated that, though Darby had become “very influential” in his life and that he looked up to him, the FBI informant had not participated in the firebomb plan “in a direct way.” On the other hand, McKay’s defense had claimed that Darby’s prints were all over the alleged plot. "Brandon Darby created the idea that we, as an affinity group, create multiple Molotov cocktails," McKay stated on the witness stand in his own defense.

The contradiction between the two defendants’ statements would continue to be a factor as McKay attempted to negotiate a plea bargain earlier this month. District Judge Michael Davis, the same judge who presided over the Crowder case and would pass sentence on both defendants, at first refused to accept McKay’s guilty plea because McKay, in his statement to the judge, did not withdraw his entrapment allegations by repudiating his earlier insistence that Darby unduly influenced his decision to make bombs. With a panel of prospective jurors waiting outside the courtroom, Judge Davis told McKay to think about it and come back the next day.

Among the things McKay and his attorney had to think about was the problem of withdrawing the entrapment argument without exposing McKay to new charges -- perjury -- for his court testimony.

McKay returned to court the next day and told Judge Davis that he may have misremembered who first brought up the idea of making and using Molotov cocktails. Satisfied that the entrapment defense had been taken off the table voluntarily by McKay, the judge accepted the guilty plea.

Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

But there is a far-more-important backstory at play, and that is the question of the scope and credibility of the government’s massive infiltration of peace and environmental activist groups and the incredibility of the Justice Department’s use of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws against American political dissidents.

The government likes its moles to burrow in deep and avoid the light. Darby turned out to be more moth than mole -- he has a penchant for gravitating toward the spotlight. Another key RNC informant, Andrew (Panda) Darst, also wandered too close to the flame.

In a case unrelated to the Texas 2, 23-year-old Matthew Bradley DePalma of Flint, MI, in early March quietly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 42 months in prison on the charge of possessing Molotov cocktails. The case against DePalma began at a CrimeThinc Convergence in Wisconsin in July 2008 when an FBI informant first met DePalma and reported that DePalma had talked about traveling to the RNC to “make some bombs” and “blow shit up.”

The informant met up with DePalma in Minneapolis in mid-August and helped him procure bomb-making materials and how-to manuals, let him use his residence to manufacture as many as five firebombs, and even drove DePalma to a remote location to test the devices. That FBI informant was Andy Panda Darst.

In addition, Darst is a key government witness in the high-profile case of the RNC 8, Minneapolis area members of the RNC Welcoming Committee who in early September 2008 were indicted on four felony conspiracy and terrorism charges under the Minnesota PATRIOT Act.

Just two weeks before the McKay trial, Darst seriously damaged his value as a creditable witness when he broke down a door and assaulted several people in a house where his wife had sought refuge after a domestic dispute. He was arrested and charged with burglary and assault. Later he was found guilty of felony burglary and assault and on May 18 was sentenced to 180 days in the workhouse with 160 days set aside.

Panda was on the government’s witness list for the McKay trial, but the prosecution did not put him on the stand. The damage to Darst’s credibility as a witness is also believed to have influenced county prosecutor (and Minnesota Democrat gubernatorial candidate) Susan Gaertner’s decision to drop the two terrorism charges against the eight Minneapolis activists -- conspiracy to commit riot in furtherance of terrorism and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property in furtherance of terrorism. All eight still face felony charges of conspiracy to commit riot and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property.

Seven of the RNC 8 marched behind a banner reading "Our Common Treasury. Dig It!" at the Minneapolis May Day parade.
The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul. Gone are the secret COINTELPRO operatives lurking in the shadows in the years before the Church Committee’s voluminous 1975-76 exposé of illegal domestic spying conducted by the FBI, CIA, NSA, Department of Defense, and intelligence services within the military against American citizens. Since the fear-mongered passage of the USA-PATRIOT Act in 2001 and the Bush-Cheney program to extend executive privilege beyond any and all constraints inconveniently imposed by rule of law, domestic spying is no longer illegal. No need to hide in the dark.

The Church Committee’s findings did not simply linger on the extent of the spying -- for example, 215,000 pieces of mail secretly opened by the FBI and CIA before 1973 -- or the hundreds of thousands of Americans on various “watch lists.” Far more revealing -- and appalling -- were the excesses. Near the top of that list stands the 1969 murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in his bed after he had been drugged by a police informant. Though years later details of a conspiracy to assassinate the charismatic young Panther implicated the FBI, the Illinois State's Attorney's Office tactical unit, and the Chicago Police, no one has been brought to justice.

Two recent studies -- the Center for Democracy and Technology’s 2002 Analysis of New FBI Guidelines and a 2005 Justice Department Inspector General Report -- suggest that relaxed investigative ground rules and failure to properly oversee the activities of confidential informants once again may be leading to investigative excesses and dismantling of the Bill of Rights.

Eric Lichtblau reported in the May 6, 2009, New York Times that the FBI presently maintains a consolidated watch list of 400,000 “terrorism suspects.” According to Lichtblau, the DOJ inspector general discovered in a recent statistical sampling study that at least 24,000 people were incorrectly kept on the terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated and sometimes irrelevant information. Because of the limited scope of the study, this is likely the tip of the iceberg. Lichtblau continues:

People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to be removed from the list, and civil liberties advocates charge that antiwar protesters, Muslim activists and others have been listed for political reasons.

The CDT study of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s 2002 revision of FBI investigative guidelines reached the following conclusions:

• The changes mean that the FBI, which has failed to manage the ocean of information it already collects, will be gathering yet more information in situations completely unconnected to any suspicion of criminal conduct, and will be continuing for longer periods of time investigations that are producing nothing.


• The expanded surveillance and use of data mining could be written off as just a waste of money, but for two paramount problems: the changes are likely to make the FBI less efficient in preventing terrorism, by diverting resources down rat-holes of fruitless investigations; and the DOJ has proven its determination since September 11 to arrest people based on the kinds of innocent coincidences that data mining may flag and hold them in jail even after concluding that they were unrelated to any terrorism and in some cases (the material witnesses) had committed no legal violation at all.


• The FBI was never prohibited from surfing the Internet or using commercial data mining services -- the FBI has long been a major customer of many private information systems. But in the past, searches of databases had to be related to some investigation. The threshold was very low -- under the old guidelines, the FBI could maintain a preliminary inquiry for 90 days using data mining, undercover operations, photo surveillance, informants, etc, whenever it had "information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny." In fact, the FBI could open preliminary inquiries solely for the purpose of data mining. But it had to be looking for some criminal conduct. The new changes allow the data mining technique -- who has changed apartments three times in the past two years? who has been making a lot of international phone calls? -- as the basis for generating the suspicion of criminal conduct in the first place.


• The FBI was never prohibited in the past from going to mosques, political rallies and other “public” places, to observe and record what was said, but, again, in the past it had to be guided by the criminal nexus -- in deciding what mosques to go to and what political meetings to record, it had to have some reason to believe that terrorism might be discussed. Under the new guidelines, even before opening a preliminary inquiry, the FBI can go to mosques and political meetings. How will it decide which ones to go to? -- we fear it will be on the basis of politics.


• The DOJ is using the terrorism crisis as a cover for a range of changes, some of which have nothing to do with terrorism.


The online surfing provisions, for example, relate not only to terrorism cases, but to all other investigations -- drugs, white collar crime, public corruption, and copyright infringement. Other changes affect how the FBI conducts investigations under RICO, the racketeering and organized crime law, allowing the FBI to use the heavy weaponry of RICO (forfeiture, enhanced penalties) against crimes that are not committed for monetary gain.

Regarding the FBI’s handling of its confidential informants, the DOJ inspector general found that in nearly nine out every 10 cases reviewed, bureau guidelines were violated in ways that risked compromising investigations.

While the guidelines sometimes permit informants such as drug dealers or gang members to commit crimes in order to further an investigation, the review found that F.B.I. agents allowed criminal informants to engage in criminal activities without getting needed approval from supervisors or lawyers for such operations, failed to report unauthorized illegal activity, or approved such illegal activity only retroactively.

Beyond the problems in managing confidential informants, the inspector general's review looked at the effect of a number of changes ordered by Mr. Ashcroft in his 2002 revamping of the bureau's investigative guidelines. According to The New York Times, “The new guidelines relaxed restrictions put in place in the 1970s as a result of F.B.I. abuses in the monitoring of political dissidents.”

Critics charged last year that the F.B.I. had abused its expanded powers by monitoring, interviewing and sometimes subpoenaing antiwar protesters and political protesters in advance of the political conventions last summer. The inspector general's office disclosed in its report Monday that it was conducting a separate investigation to determine whether the F.B.I. interrogations of protesters were in fact improper.

The 1990 Judi Bari-Darryl Cherney case may have been an early warning signal that the FBI had found an opportunity to recommission its Vietnam-era bag of dirty tricks. After she almost died when a motion-triggered pipe bomb wrapped with nails exploded under her car seat, Earth First activist Bari and her companion Darryl Cherney were charged by the FBI with knowingly transporting the bomb as part of an eco-terrorism plot.

Before Bari’s death in 1997, Bari and Cherney launched an aggressive lawsuit against the bureau and local police and uncovered evidence of collusion between the FBI and the lumber industry to blame the victims and cover up investigative leads that might have linked the bomber to an FBI bomb school run by the agency’s top expert -- the very “expert” who insisted that forensic evidence proved that the environmental activists had placed the device behind the drivers seat to transport it to their intended target.

"Anna" -- aka: Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani.
The plot thickened in 2007 when the FBI persuaded a 17-year-old Florida college student identified as “Anna” in court documents (also known in activist circles as Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani) to spend four years undercover -- apparently often literally so -- building a case against Earth Liberation Front member Eric McDavid on charges of conspiring to damage and destroy property, including government facilities, by means of fire and explosives.

The subsequent trial produced a sordid tale of sexual manipulation and obsession as “Anna” provided McDavid and the two other members of the group with money to buy materials, transportation, and a remote cabin -- fully equipped with audio and video surveillance equipment -- in which to work. According to McDavid’s attorney, Mark Reichel, Anna was always pushing McDavid and the two other members of the group to do something criminal, taught them how to make the bombs, supervised their activities, and repeatedly threatened to leave them if they didn't start doing "something." Friends of the ELF activist say that “Anna” used the promise of sex to manipulate and eventually snare McDavid into a bomb plot concocted and financed by her handlers at the Department of Justice.

After the two co-defendants were pressured into testifying against McDavid, he was found guilty and sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.

In the past few days news channels have been abuzz with the story of the Bronx terrorist bomb plot, four dead-enders with histories of drug addiction, mental illness, and a petty crime (such as purse-snatching) as well as big plans to blow up a New York City synagogue and shoot down military aircraft with Stinger missiles.

Noted the Los Angeles Times: “Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11. ‘It's hard to envision a more chilling plot,’ Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as ‘eager to bring death to Jews.’"

To which Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation on May 23, retorts:
“Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for.”

Lurking in the shadows of this sensationalized story is another FBI confidential informant, a man arrested for identity theft in 2002 and given five years probation on the condition that he become an FBI informer.

According to Michael Wilson’s May 21 report in the New York Times, the mole began to show up at a mosque in Newburgh, NY, in 2007, telling prospective targets that he was a recruiter for Jaish-e-Mohammed (the Army of Mohammed), an Islamic mujahadeen organization based in Pakistan. The iman of the Newburgh mosque said that one of his congregants was offered a substantial amount of money to join the informant’s terrorist “team.”

As Dreyfuss emphatically notes:

So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Preying on these losers, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.

The informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course. …

The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.

Is the Bill of Rights under attack? It would seem so in Minnesota where 34 RNC protest cases have come to trial with one conviction.

Correction: zero convictions.

On May 19 a street medic was convicted of public assembly without a permit, but the trial judge himself, in an extraordinary move, overturned the verdict, and the prosecutor has declined to retry the case.

Therefore the murky firebomb conspiracy pleas of DePalma, Crowder, and McKay are the only prosecutorial “successes” to date. Indeed, after the McKay sentence was handed down, the feds must have heaved a collective sigh of relief. Their improperly supervised, out-of-control informants provided just enough to intimidate three young men, two of whom were represented by public defenders, into copping pleas and saving the Justice Department from the sorry spectacle of more public trials -- and more revelations about how FBI snitches play fast and loose with the rule of law.

Also see Brandon Darby in New Orleans : FBI Informant Was Egotistical Sexist by Victoria Welle / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

Previous Rag Blog articles on Brandon Darby and the Texas 2:

• Cop Nation : Snitch Brandon Darby, and Riot Police With the 'Kent State' Gene by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / Jan. 8, 2009
• Mariann Wizard on Brandon Darby : 'To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest' by Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog / Jan. 7, 2008
• Brandon Darby : FBI Informant is Provocateur, Not a Hero by Austin Informant Working Group / The Rag Blog / Jan. 6, 2009
• Brandon Darby: Austin Activist Outed as FBI Spy / The Rag Blog / Jan. 2, 2009

Also go to the Support the Texas 2 website.

And listen to “Turncoat,” a story about Brandon Darby on Chicago Public Radio’s "This American Life.” [The Darby segment starts 13 minutes in.]

Also, read this remarkable piece of reporting: The Informant: Revolutionary to rat: The uneasy journey of Brandon Darby by Diana Welch / Austin Chronicle / Jan. 23, 2009

For more background on the history of informants in Texas, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

And see the entire "Hamilton Files" of former UT-Austin police chief Allen Hamilton that served as documentation for Dreyer's story, here.

The Rag Blog

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