Defending the Indefensible: Billions in Subsidies

I don't know about you, but I wanna throw up all over these smug, arrogant fuckers.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Stephen Simon (Exxon Mobil), John Hofmeister (Shell), Peter Robertson (Chevron), John
Lowe (Conoco Phillips) and Robert Malone (BP America) face congress April 1 2008.

BIG OIL - 4,000 Americans Died For Them
By Frank Gormlie / April 3, 2008

Top Oil Execs to Congress on Their Record $123 Billion Profits: ‘We feel your pain, but don’t blame us!’

Ten days after US military deaths in Iraq reached 4,000, the top executives of the five largest oil and gas companies appeared before Congress. It was Tuesday, April 1st - April Fools’ Day - and they were there to address the record profits their companies were bringing in and why the companies should continue to receive billions in government subsidies by way of tax breaks. The top honchos were from Exxon, Shell, BP America Inc., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, and were appearing before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. The execs told Congress that they know record fuel prices are hurting the American people, and claimed it’s not their fault and said their huge profits are in line with other industries.

Combined, the oil companies made $123 billion last year. This is at a time when US motorists are paying record prices at the pump - now averaging $3.29 a gallon amid talk of $4 a gallon this summer. The price of oil has settled at just over $100 a barrel on the New York exchange. And one out of 8 Americans are on food stamps. Then there’s the mortgage crisis, the housing crisis, … not to mention the Constitutional crisis. And recent economic experts have tied the huge costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to bringing down the American economy, and there’s even talk that we’re heading into not just a recession but a massive depression …. we could go on.

Record profits by the oil companies. Even Alan Greenspan had to admit that the reason we’re in Iraq is because of the oil.

4,000 US Deaths to Secure Iraq Oil Fields for Oil Companies

So, let me get this straight. Our economy is going down the toilet while the hike in gas prices drives all our consumer goods - like food - up. The Iraq war is taking away our financial resources while we’re in Iraq to secure the oil fields for the oil companies. And the oil companies are making record profits off of us. My god, no wonder we elected Bush twice! We’re dumber than a bag of hammers.

But wait - our countrywomen and men are dying to secure those oil fields! Our people! 4,000 and counting. They died for the oil executives who testified in front of our Congress and said, hey, we feel your pain, but don’t blame us, we’re just making money like everybody else. That’s what they said.

Oil Company Profits Higher Than Other Industries

The Associated Press reported that the execs said their earnings are typical and in line with the average of other major US industries. AP outlined the combined 2007 earnings and revenues of five top companies in some major industries:

The oil and gas industry earned $123.29 billion on revenue of $1,460.20 billion. Companies included are Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell, BP PLC, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips.

The pharmaceutical industry earned $48.24 billion on revenue of $230.64 billion. Companies included are Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer Inc., GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Sanofi-Aventis SA and Novartis AG.

The defense industry earned $15.5 billion on revenue of $229.59 billion. Companies included are Boeing Co., United Technologies Corp., Lockheed Martin Co., Honeywell International Inc. and Northrop Grumman Corp.

Read all of it here.

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A Case of Great Respect for Privacy Rights

Notice the lawyer's name -- could he be related to our own Red-Headed Stranger??

Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog


Search and Seizure: Vermont Supreme Court Throws Out Marijuana Conviction Based on Warrantless Aerial Surveillance
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #530 / April 4, 2008

In a decision handed down last Friday, the Vermont Supreme Court threw out the felony marijuana cultivation conviction of a man caught growing marijuana following a warrantless flyover of his rural property by a military helicopter. Vermont residents have a broad privacy right "that ascends into the airspace above their homes and property," the court held in State v. Bryant.

The case began in 2003, when Stephen Bryant, who owned a remote Addison County home, told a local official he didn't want trespassers. That unnamed official "found defendant's insistence on privacy to be 'paranoid,'" the opinion noted, and suggested that a Vermont State Police team do a flyover to look for marijuana. Under the rules of the state's Marijuana Eradication Team, which uses Vermont Army National Guard helicopters and pilots, flights are supposed to stay 500 feet above the ground. But an August 7, 2003 surveillance flight dipped down to 100 feet and hovered above Bryant's property for half an hour.

Troopers in the chopper saw marijuana plants, then used that information to obtain a search warrant. Bryant was arrested and charged with marijuana possession and cultivation. At trial, he argued that he used marijuana for medicinal purposes to treat an old work injury. Jurors acquitted him of possession, but convicted him of cultivation. In June, 2005, he was sentenced to 45 days. His appeal followed.

The Vermont constitution protects the privacy rights of residents even if it means some pot plants may go unseized, the court held in an opinion written by Associate Justice Marilyn Skoglund for the 4-1 majority.

"We protect defendant's marijuana plots against such surveillance so that law-abiding citizens may relax in their backyards, enjoying a sense of security that they are free from unreasonable surveillance. Vermonters expect -- at least at a private, rural residence on posted land -- that they will be free from intrusions that interrupt their use of their property, expose their intimate activities, or create undue noise, wind, or dust," wrote Skoglund.

"With technological advances in surveillance techniques, the privacy-protection question is no longer whether police have physically invaded a constitutionally protected area. Rather, the inquiry is whether the surveillance invaded a constitutionally protected legitimate expectation of privacy," she added.

"The decision is a boon to all Vermonters," said Middlebury attorney William Nelson, who represented Bryant at the Supreme Court. "It protects our privacy when we are out of doors, on our own property, and in our own yards," he told the Burlington Free Press after the decision.

The opinion serves as further evidence that the state constitution gives Vermonters greater privacy protection than federal laws do, Vermont law school professor Cheryl Hanna told the Free Press. "A lot of people feel the federal government doesn't respect privacy rights after Sept. 11," said Hanna. "Vermonters, at least at the state level, have that additional check on what the government can do."

Source

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Never Did the Possibility of Disappointment Offer So Much Hope

Would you like change with that?

Super Tuesday II, as Fox dubbed it, took some steam out of the Obama bandwagon, but he’s still the likely Democratic nominee, and therefore the likely president-to-be. Which is remarkable, really—a nonparticipant can only stand slackjawed in awe of Obamamania. Previously rational people whom LBO admires, like Barbara Ehrenreich and Christopher Hayes, have fallen in love with the Senator’s brand of change we can believe in, a slogan that has to be one of the emptiest since Sandburg’s “The people, yes!,” that the New Party used in New York in the early 1990s. Obama has become the Tokio Hotel of politics.

On what is this mania based? Obama is inspiring the young, lifting the alienated off their couches, and catalyzing a new movement for…change, presumably one we can believe in. The content of this change is hard to specify. Some serious leftists we know and love point to Obama’s roots as a community organizer in Chicago, though many people in a position to know say he didn’t rock many boats in those days. He was embraced by foundation liberals, however, who greased his way into the Harvard Law School via a lakefront condo.

All of which doesn’t make Obama uniquely bad: he’s just another mainstream Democrat with a sleazy real estate guy in his past. Though he’s being touted as an early opponent of the Iraq war, he told the Chicago Tribune in 2004: “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position….” He voted to renew the PATRIOT Act, campaigned for happy warrior Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont in 2006, and wants to increase the size of the U.S. military. He supports Israel’s continuing torture of the Palestinians penned into the Gaza Strip. A Congressional Quarterly study found his Senate voting record was virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton’s; the only major difference in their votes is a surprising one: a move to limit class actions suits against corporations, which Clinton voted against, and Obama for. Obama’s vote was against the preferences of a Dem financial base, trial lawyers, but pleasing to the Fortune 500 and Wall Street.

In this binary world, when you criticize Obama, people immediately include you’re a Hillary Clinton fan. Uh, no. Her politics are bellicose and neoliberal. Her “experience” consists largely of having watched her husband be president for eight years, though it’s likely they were sleeping in separate bedrooms for much of the time. A plague on all their houses.

Agendas

Some more thoughtful victims of Obama Disease point to detailed position papers on the candidate’s website. These must always be taken with a grain of salt, especially during primary season. Candidate Bill Clinton promised to “invest in people” and ended up being the president of “a bunch of fucking bond traders,” as Hillary’s husband memorably put it. LBJ campaigned as the peace candidate in 1964, and ended up killing a million Indochinese.

Obamians also point to his rejection of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC); they put him on their list of rising stars, and he asked to be removed. Encouraging—except for the fact that his chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, the fellow who told the Canadians not to take the anti-NAFTA rhetoric seriously, is the DLC’s chief economist. Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures. That hire is more significant than asking to be struck from a list.

Big capital would have no problem with an Obama presidency. Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, “The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,” one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they’re socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he’s the man to do their work. They’re also confident he wouldn’t undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth. You could say the same about Clinton—but you know those hedge fund guys. They like a contrary bet. A share of Obama stock on the Iowa Electronic Market was 30 on May 19, 2007, the day of Jones’s Obama bash; it peaked at 86 on March 1, a gain of 187% (in a year where triple digits are rare). It’s since settled back into the low 70s, which is still quite a gain.

Read all of it here.

From Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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On the Road with the Beats

On Display Through August at The University of Texas at Austin.

Now on display at The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin is Jack Kerouac's scroll manuscript of On the Road, included for a limited time with the exhibition On the Road with the Beats. Travel with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and their friends across America and the globe in this exhibition. Manuscripts, books, photographs, and visual art from the Ransom Center's collections tell the story of the Beat Generation and the literary and social revolution they inspired. The scroll will be on view through June 1, with the entire exhibition running through August 3. Located at 21st and Guadalupe Streets, the Ransom Center is free and open to the public. More information at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/.

Look for more about this exhibit on The Rag Blog.

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An Outrageous Miscarriage of Justice

Lynne Stewart arrives at court Oct. 16, 2006. Photo: AP

Targeting Defense Lawyers: Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice
By Stephan Lendman / April 3, 2008

On April 9, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft made a symbolic visit to "Ground Zero." While in New York, he held a well-publicized press conference at the US Attorney's Office and used the occasion for an indictment. Four individuals were named on charges of conspiracy and materially aiding a terrorist organization. One of them was long-time civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart. On the same day, FBI agents arrested her at her home and illegally seized documents there and from her office that are protected by attorney-client privilege.

In July 2003, Federal District Court Judge John Koeltl (a 1994 Clinton appointee) dismissed the original charges for being "unconstitutionally void for vagueness" and because they "revealed a lack of prosecutorial standards." Nonetheless, Stewart was symbolically reindicted on November 22, 2003 (the 40th year anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination) on five counts of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act. Specific charges included:

* "conspiring to defraud the United States;

* conspiring to provide and conceal material support to terrorist activity;

* providing and concealing material support to terrorist activity; and

* two counts of making false statements."

Stewart was also accused of violating US Bureau of Prisons-imposed Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) that included a gag order on her client, Sheik Abdel Rahman. These measures are imposed on some prisoners to forbid discussion (even with an attorney) of topics DOJ claims are outside the scope of their "legal representation." It's all very vague, does more to harass and obstruct justice than protect state secrets, yet Stewart was forced to accept them to gain access to her client.

In her case, police state-type attorney-client monitored conversations provided the basis for her indictment. However, engaging in this practice stretches the limit of the law, gives DOJ sole authority to decide how far and for what purpose, and in this instance egregiously overstepped it by charging defense counsel with aiding and abetting terrorism for representing her client as required.

At former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark's request, Stewart agreed to join him as a member of Rahman's court-appointed defense team. He was convicted in his 1995 show trial and is now serving a life sentence for "seditious conspiracy" in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center Center bombing despite evidence proving his innocence.

However, in what's now common practice, the government's case related more to his affiliations and anti-western views than specific evidence presented. Rahman was connected to the Egyptian-based Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group) - a 1997 State Department-designated "Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Ironically in the 1980s, he was handled much differently as a "valuable (CIA) asset" for his influential role in recruiting Mujahadeen fighters against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was no accident that he got a US visa, green card and State Department-CIA protection for as long as he was valued. When he wasn't, he became a target along with Lynne Stewart who represented him at trial.

Stewart's charges were trumped up, outrageous, and likely first time ever instance of a defense attorney in a terrorism case facing terrorism-related counts - for doing her job as the law requires and that renders attorney-client confidentiality sacrosanct under our criminal justice system. No matter, if convicted, she faced a possible 30 year sentence.

In America's "war on terrorism," her precedent-setting case is chilling, and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, explained it: Its "purpose....was to send a message to lawyers who represent alleged terrorists that it's dangerous to do so." It's also an effort to exploit the current atmosphere, incite fear and suspicions, stifle dissent, and make it just as risky for anyone with openly critical views of government policies. In Police State America, we're all Lynne Stewarts.

At the time of her indictment, her attorney, Michael Tigar, explained what was at stake:

"This case (still ongoing) is an attack on a gallant, charismatic and effective fighter for justice (and has) at least three fundamental faults: (it) attack(s) the First Amendment right of free speech, free press and petition; (it) attack(s)....the right to effective assistance of counsel ....chills the defense....(and) the 'evidence' in this case was gathered by wholesale invasion of private conversations, private attorney-client meetings, faxes, letters and e-mails. I have never seen such an abuse of government power." In America's "war on terrorism," many other defense attorneys can cite similar instances of lawlessness and injustice today.

However, in targeting Stewart, DOJ may have gotten more than it bargained for. Whatever the outcome, her case shamed the government, gave her worldwide recognition, made her a powerful symbolic figure, and elevated her to iconic stature. For her honor, devotion to principles, and lifetime of service to society's most abused, she deserves it and more.

Throughout her 30 year career, she never shunned controversy or her choice of or duty to clients. She represented the poor, the underprivileged and society's underdogs and unwanted who never get due process unless they're lucky enough to have an advocate like her. She knew the risks and understood the state uses every underhanded trick possible to convict these type defendants and overwhelm, outspend and/or discredit their counsel doing it.

Nonetheless, she did what the American Bar Association's Model Rules state all lawyers are obligated to do: "devote professional time and resources and use civic influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel."

Read all of it here.
counterpunch / The Rag Blog

Lynne Stewart Sentencing Begins; Chaos Ensues

Chaos erupted on the twelfth floor of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in lower Manhattan this morning when Lynne Stewart, the left-wing criminal-defense lawyer convicted of materially aiding terrorism last year, appeared for sentencing before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl a bit after nine.

"Free Lynne! Free Lynne!" shouted at least 100 of her supporters massed outside the courtroom, some of them raising their fists in a Black Power salute, others singing from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." They had gathered earlier for a rally in Foley Square to support Stewart's efforts to be spared prison, perhaps with a sentence of home confinement. She has undergone radiation therapy for breast cancer.

Read it here.

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The Surge Is Prolonging Instability

General William Odom Tells Senate: Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution

TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret. / April 2, 2008

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.

I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.

Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant inseveral other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.

More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.

No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.

Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.

Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.

Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.

Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government’s troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.

Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.

This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.

I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of
feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.

How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.

To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.

The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran’s policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.

No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.

Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.

A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make
sense.

First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.

Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.

Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies’ interest.

I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.

Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.

Source

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Col. Ted Westhusing : A Death Reconsidered

Gen. Petraeus and a High-Level Suicide in Iraq
By Greg Mitchell / April 1, 2008

The scourge of suicides among American troops in Iraq is a serious and seriously underreported problem. One of the few high-profile cases involves a much-admired Army colonel named Ted Westhusing -- who, in his 2005 suicide note, pointed a finger at a then little-known U.S. general named David Petraeus. Westhusing's widow, asked by a friend what killed this West Point scholar, had replied simply: "Iraq."

Now there is a disturbing update on this case.

Before putting a bullet through his head, Westhusing had been deeply disturbed by abuses carried out by American contractors in Iraq, including allegations that they had witnessed or even participated in the murder of Iraqis. His suicide note included claims that his two commanders tolerated a mission based on "corruption, human right abuses and liars." One of those commanders: the future leader of the "surge" campaign in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus.

Westhusing, 44, had been found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport in June 2005, a single gunshot wound to the head. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq. The Army concluded that he committed suicide with his service pistol. Westhusing was an unusual case: "one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor," as Christian Miller explained in a major Los Angeles Times piece.

"In e-mails to his family," Miller wrote, "Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military." His death followed quickly. "He was sick of money-grubbing contractors," one official recounted.

Westhusing said that "he had not come over to Iraq for this."

After a three-month inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing's death a suicide. Last March, The Texas Observer published a cover story by contributor Robert Bryce titled "I Am Sullied No More." It is featured in a chapter in my new book on Iraq and the media.

Bryce covered much of the same ground paved by Miller but added details on the Petraeus angle. Now, in the past few weeks, Bryce has added more in an update -- which explores whether Westhusing was murdered.

"When he was in Iraq, Westhusing worked for one of the most famous generals in the U.S. military, David Petraeus," Bryce observed last year. "As the head of counterterrorism and special operations under Petraeus, Westhusing oversaw the single most important task facing the U.S. military in Iraq then and now: training the Iraqi security forces."Bryce referred to a "two-inch stack of documents, obtained over the past 15 months under the Freedom of Information Act, that provides many details of Westhusing's suicide....The documents echo the story told by Westhusing's friends. 'Something he saw [in Iraq] drove him to this,' one Army officer who was close to Westhusing said in an interview. 'The sum of what he saw going on drove him' to take his own life. 'It's because he believed in duty, honor, country that he's dead.'"In Iraq, Westhusing worked under two generals: Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, and Petraeus, then a lieutenant general. But Bryce continued: "By late May, Westhusing was becoming despondent over what he was seeing." When his body was found on June, a note was found nearby addressed to Petraeus and Fil. According to Bryce it read:

"Thanks for telling me it was a good day until I briefed you. [Redacted name]--You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff--no msn [mission] support and you don't care. I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human right abuses and liars. I am sullied--no more. I didn't volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. I trust no Iraqi. I cannot live this way. All my love to my family, my wife and my precious children. I love you and trust you only. Death before being dishonored any more.

"Trust is essential--I don't know who trust anymore. Why serve when you cannot accomplish the mission, when you no longer believe in the cause, when your every effort and breath to succeed meets with lies, lack of support, and selfishness? No more. Reevaluate yourselves, cdrs [commanders]. You are not what you think you are and I know it."

Twelve days after Westhusing's body was found, Army investigators talked with his widow, who told them: "I think Ted gave his life to let everyone know what was going on. They need to get to the bottom of it, and hope all these bad things get cleaned up."

Bryce concluded: "In September 2005, the Army's inspector general concluded an investigation into allegations raised in the anonymous letter to Westhusing shortly before his death. It found no basis for any of the issues raised. Although the report is redacted in places, it is clear that the investigation was aimed at determining whether Fil or Petraeus had ignored the corruption and human rights abuses allegedly occurring within the training program for Iraqi security personnel." Since then, the corruption and failed training angles have drawn wide attention although the Petraeus's role, good or bad, has not.

The writer returned to the case this past February with another Texas Observer article. I've run out of space here so I will merely quote its opening and link to it:

Since last March, when I wrote a story about the apparent suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing in Iraq, I had believed there was nothing else to write about his tragic death.

But in December, I talked to a source in the Department of Defense who met Westhusing in Iraq about three months before his death. The source, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, was investigating claims of wrongdoing against military contractors working in Iraq.

After a short introduction, I asked him what he thought had happened toWesthusing. 'I think he was killed. I honestly do. I think he was murdered,' the source told me. 'Maybe DOD didn't have enough evidence to call it murder, so they called it suicide.'"

Bryce doesn't yet back the "murder" claim but notes that Rep. Henry Waxman is now looking into the Westhusing case.

[Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits and the President Failed on Iraq. It features a foreword by Joe Galloway and a preface by Bruce Springsteen, and has been hailed by Arianna Huffington, Bill Moyers, Glenn Greenwald and others.]

Source. The Huffington Post.
Thanks to Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog

Also read A Death Reconsidered By Robert Bryce / Texas Observer / Feb. 19 / 2008.

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We Need to Demand a Less Bloated Budget

When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense Budget
By WINSLOW T. WHEELER

The Pentagon's budget is now bigger than at any point since World War II as measured in constant 2008 dollars.

Nonetheless, some want more stuffing. They want the money not for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the so-called baseline, non-war budget.

Some adopt arguments that destroy their own case. Examining them explains how the Pentagon fails to give us a war-winning, combat--ready military. James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued Feb. 21 in the Washington Times, "In Defense of Defense Spending," that "Comparing the cost of today's military to what America spent to equip and deploy GIs against the Nazis is like comparing today's home entertainment center - plasma-screen, surround-sound HDTV with PlayStation 3 and Wii - to Harry Truman's Philco Radio. Sure, today's system costs a lot more. But look what you're getting." A typical example is the F-22 fighter. It may cost more, but it is also a superb fighter, the argument goes.

According to Wikipedia, Harry Truman's Philco radio console "ran into the $500-$800 range." Today, at Circuit City, a top-of-the-line HDTV runs about $3,800; a good surround-sound, about $1,800. The PlayStation 3 and Wii are $400 and $250 respectively.

Add a DVD player and a year of broadband TV service for $200 and $600, respectively.

That makes $7,050 for the "lot more" cost of the superb, modern home theater compared with Harry Truman's dowdy Philco console.

According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to compensate for the change in the value of the dollar from 1945 to today, the 1945 price should be multiplied by 11.9. That "$500-$800 range" for Harry Truman's Philco calculates to $6,000-$9,500 today.

In other words, if we adjust for inflation, weapons today should cost - very roughly - what they cost in 1945, at most 30 percent more. Of course, the advance in technology should bring a vast im-provement in performance.

Now, let's run the price comparison for fighter aircraft. The newest thing in 1945 was the Lockheed P-80 jet, the most expensive fighter Harry Truman could buy. In 1945, the P-80 cost $110,000. Using the OMB index to convert the dollars, we get $1,309,000.

Today's F-22 is a little pricier.

The 184 F-22s the Air Force is now buying will cost $65.3 billion in contemporary dollars. That's $355 million per copy. That's not exactly in the price neighborhood of the inflation-adjusted P-80. In fact, it's in a whole different universe. It's a multiple of 273.

Read the rest of it here.

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Urban Crisis : Gentrification Endangered

Incoming aristocrats are easily spotted by their distinctive dress and taste for chamber music.

Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization

Washington —According to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, the recent influx of exceedingly affluent powder-wigged aristocrats into the nation's gentrified urban areas is pushing out young white professionals, some of whom have lived in these neighborhoods for as many as seven years.

Multibillion-dollar castles like this one have been popping up all over Brooklyn.

Maureen Kennedy, a housing policy expert and lead author of the report, said that the enormous treasure-based wealth of the aristocracy makes it impossible for those living on modest trust funds to hold onto their co-ops and converted factory loft spaces.

"When you have a bejeweled, buckle-shoed duke willing to pay 11 or 12 times the asking price for a block of renovated brownstones—and usually up front with satchels of solid gold guineas—hardworking white-collar people who only make a few hundred thousand dollars a year simply cannot compete," Kennedy said. "If this trend continues, these exclusive, vibrant communities with their sidewalk cafés and faux dive bars will soon be a thing of the past."

According to Kennedy, one of the most pressing concerns associated with rapid aristocratization is the drastic transformation of the metropolitan landscape in a way that fails to maximize livable space.

"A three-block section of [Chicago neighborhood] Wicker Park that once accommodated eight families, two vintage clothing stores, a French cleaners, and a gourmet bakery has been completely razed to make way for a private livery stable and carriage house," Kennedy said.

"The space is now entirely unusable for affordable upper-income condominium housing. No one can live there except for the odd stable boy or footman who gets permission to sleep in the hayloft."

Many of those affected by the ostentatious reshaping of their once purely upmarket neighborhoods said that they often wish for a return back to the privileged communities they helped to overdevelop just a few years ago. Among the first to feel the effects of the encroaching aristocracy have been local business owners like Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident Neil Getz.

"Around here, you used to be able to get a Fair-Trade latte and a chocolate-chip croissant for only eight bucks," said Getz, who is planning to move back in with his parents after being forced out of the lease on his organic grocery store by a harpsichord purveyor. "Now it's all tearooms and private salon gatherings catered with champagne and suckling pig. Who can afford that?"

Incoming aristocrats are easily spotted by their distinctive dress and taste for chamber music.

"It's just a terrible shame," Getz continued. "There was this great little shop right across the street from my duplex apartment where I bought my baby daughter a Ramones onesie a couple of years ago, just after she was born. That whole block is an opera house now."

The aristocracy has adamantly dismissed claims that the sweeping changes are detrimental to the merely wealthy who have been displaced, and many persons of noble blood have pointed to aristocratization's benefits. These include lower crime rates attributed to new punishments, such as public floggings and the pillory, which are primarily meted out for maintaining direct eye contact with members of the highest class.

"These accusations are pure, slanderous rubbish," said Lord Nathan Dunkirk III, the owner of a prodigious manor house that, along with its steeplechase course and topiary garden, sits on what was once the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. "If anything, the layabouts and wastrels have been afforded a veritable glut of new and felicitous opportunities as bootblacks and scullery maids."

Other aristocrats have echoed Dunkirk and have additionally deflected blame onto regification, a process by which they say they were priced out of their vast rural holdings by kings who wished to consolidate property and develop monumental palatial estates.

The Onion / March 31, 2008 / The Rag Blog
Source.

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Freaky Fanged Fish Found in Pond

More than 4,000 fish dead of unknown causes
Brigham City, Utah -- It looks like something from the swamps of a science fiction movie, not from Pioneer Park.

The remains of an unidentified aquatic species that appears to have been carnivorous were found near the shoreline of the Pioneer Park Pond in Brigham City.

The fish was found along with the remains of more than 4,000 other fish that died from unknown causes.

Bernie Develin, of Ogden, found the fish March 19 and reported it to the Division of Wildlife Resources.

DWR biologists are stumped as to what kind of fish it is and are seeking outside help to identify it.

Aquatics biologist Matt McKell sent photos of the fish to other biologists.

"It's different than anything any of us have seen. It's definitely not native," he said. "Nobody that's seen the photos can identify the fish, either."

The approximately 21-inch-long fish sports sharp teeth, but is missing its fins and tail, making it difficult to identify.

The fish carcass was in bad shape when McKell recovered it, and he believes it may have been run over by a car.

The reason for the deaths of the other fish in the pond is also still unknown.

McKell said one possibility is that someone may have dumped something in the pond. However, results from a water analysis revealed no chemicals.

Drew Cushing, warmwater sport fish and community fisheries coordinator, believes that the kill was caused by thick ice blocking light to the vegetation in the pond, causing aquatic plants to decay.

As the plants decay, they absorb oxygen, leaving nothing for the fish to breathe, and they suffocate under the ice.

"Those fish looked like they've been dead for a long time," he said. "Our thought is that it's a winter kill."

The carcasses of 2,500 rainbow trout, 1,300 catfish, 400 crappie, 92 bluegill, 40 yellow perch, 30 carp, two bass, one goldfish and the unidentified fish were found on the shore of the reservoir.

Cushing also saw the unknown fish.

"It sure looked like a fish that could eat a lot of fish," he said. "It probably was eating a lot of fish that we were stocking."

Of the species found, only the trout, catfish, bluegill and largemouth bass were placed there by the DWR.

Cushing said there may be some benefit to the fish die-off because nonnative and unproductive species are now cleared from the pond.

He said the unknown fish may have been an aquarium pet placed in the pond when it was smaller, and it just grew over time.

This is a problem that continues regardless of attempts to educate the public about the dangers of introducing nonnative fish into local waters, he said.

The angler who found the fish doesn't believe the fish die-off theory. The 62-year-old has been fishing in Utah his whole life and has seen the effects of many winter kills.

"It doesn't make sense to me that the winter kill killed off every fish in the water," Develin said.

"That kill was not from a lack of oxygen. I could not believe how many dead fish there were and how many species."

Develin believes some sort of parasite may have been in the water. He's concerned that children who wade there could be in danger.

He also believes the unknown species may have left the water on its own.

"I believe that he actually worked his way up on the bank.

"This thing looks like something you would see in a prehistoric scary movie."

Source.

April 3, 2008 / The Rag Blog

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Tibetan Protest in NYC

At a protest in Washington, DC, Dechea Dolma, a Tibetan from New York City, responds with tears to deaths in Lhasa under Chinese troops' crackdown. Protests around the world coincided with the Olympic torch relay begun in Olympia, Greece. Photo by Melina Mara / TWP.

truthout / April 2, 2008 / The Rag Blog

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The Fork in the Road...

old stork’s a good friend
bringing me my next of kin
girl boy scale of ten
joy hope win win

where goeth cousin toad
hopping round its damp abode
disappearing by the load
croaking as its sky erodes

every mile that we go
takes us with it in its flow
to the fork in the road
to the stork or the toad

old stork’s soaring high
with driven gleam in its eye
slinging gifts across the sky
like Santa on a contact high

hear toad croaking loud
a mating call to do it proud
used to be it drew a crowd
silent now its head is bowed

every night and every day
we are pulled along the way
to the fork in the road
to the stork or the toad

as stork takes the well-loved path
we all add up we are the math
floating in placenta bath
borne by flying psychopath

toad takes a different road
passing lawns too green and mowed
passing fields of poisons sowed
with its cracked genetic code

every mile we begin
takes us only further in
toward the fork in the road
to the stork or the toad

stork stork who art thou
come on out and take a bow
come on out and tell us how
you become a sacred cow

listen toad and you will hear
how all of life is held so dear
just procreate and have no fear
ignore the chance your time is near

as we sit and breathe in traffic
could it really be more graphic
at the fork in the road
to the stork or the toad

life is strong it will survive
says the stork in overdrive
never mind the empty hive
mutations will keep us alive

ribbit ribbit gasp and choke
is that some kind of killing joke
laugh it up you can have my toke
I’ll be in my toxic soak

as our world tumbles around
can you almost hear the sound
from the fork in the road
to the stork or the toad

old stork’s not to blame
works hard for its good name
just bringing life though all the same
a vacation wouldn’t be a shame

old toad’s breathing hard
drying up in your back yard
frying in the sun like lard
flattened like a playing card

every day and every night
we are nearer to the sight
of the fork in the road
to the stork or the toad

can’t we all just get along
honk the storks in surround song
life is good it can't be wrong
and you know we all belong

tell that to toad I’d say
as it whiles its time away
as the time becomes the day
when toad becomes a memoray

as we come to the fork
to the toad or the stork
do we pause at our choice
do we ever give it voice
do we use our mental torque
or stand there like a dork

have we wondered at our plight
can we flee is there flight
do we plea or do we fight
at the fork in the road
for the stork and for the toad

our choice is more than either or
if a window shuts bust out the door
go around and break some glass
go through the roof
break through the floor
get off your ass get off your ass


By Larry Piltz, 2007, In the Year of our Toad
Indian Cove / Austin, Texas

Posted April 3, 2008 / The Rag Blog

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They're Going to Pay the Price

Mukasey Knew About 9/11 Before It Happened Keith Olbermann


Mukasey Hints US Had Attack Warning Before 9/11
By David Edwards and Muriel Kane

02/04/08 "Raw Story" -- - When Attorney General Mukasey delivered a speech last week demanding that Congress grant the president warrantless eavesdropping powers and telecom immunity, the question and answer session afterwards included one extraordinary but little-noticed claim.

Mukasey argued that officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."

Blogger Glenn Greenwald picked up on Mukasey's statement, suggesting, "If what Muskasey said this week is true -- and that's a big 'if' -- his revelation about this Afghan call that the administration knew about but didn't intercept really amounts to one of the most potent indictments yet about the Bush administration's failure to detect the plot in action. Contrary to his false claims, FISA -- for multiple reasons -- did not prevent eavesdropping on that call."

Keith Olbermann has now featured the story on MSNBC's Countdown. "What?" Olbermann asked incredulously after quoting Mukasey. "The government knew about some phone call from a safe house in Afghanistan into the U.S. about 9/11? Before 9/11? ... You didn't do anything about it?"

"Either the attorney general just admitted that the government for which he works is guilty of malfeasant complicity in the 9/11 attacks," Olbermann commented, "or he's lying."

"I'm betting on lying," concluded Olbermann. "If not, somebody in Congress better put that man under oath right quick."

After September 11, 2001, it was revealed that the CIA and FBI had intercepted a variety of messages including phrases such as "There is a big thing coming," "They're going to pay the price" and "We're ready to go." None of these messages gave specific details and none reached intelligence analysts until after the destruction of the World Trade Center.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Mukasey did not specify the call to which he referred. He also did not explain why the government, if it knew of telephone calls from suspected foreign terrorists, hadn't sought a wiretapping warrant from a court established by Congress to authorize terrorist surveillance, or hadn't monitored all such calls without a warrant for 72 hours as allowed by law. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for more information."

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, broadcast March 31, 2008.

Source

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Activism in April

Progressive activists on the march, in April.
By Thomas Good / April 2, 2008

March was a very busy month for activists around the country, and April appears to be continuing this trend. Here is a preview of some upcoming events.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — SDS to protest Rhode Island Governor Carcieri’s Anti-Immigrant Policies.
From Brown SDS: Join Providence community organizations for an action against Carcieri’s anti-immigrant executive order. On Thursday, April 3, 2008, meet at Brown University’s Faunce Arch at 3 p.m. For more information on the Governor’s policies see the article in the: Providence Journal

NEW YORK — Impeachment Action at Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s office.
On Thursday, April 3, from Noon to 1 p.m. local impeachment activists will be visiting the Manhattan office (201 Varick St.) of Congressman Jerrold Nadler. Congressman Nadler is Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. It is there that H. Res. 333/799 (the bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney) now sits and Congressman Nadler has so far not signed on to it.

NEW YORK — Anti-war rally at Staten Island Baptist Church - April 5, Noon - 2 p.m.
Peace Action of Staten Island, Military Families Speak Out, First Central Baptist Church, Unitarian Church of Staten Island, Pax Christi, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Movement for a Democratic Society, the College of Staten Island Peace Club and other community groups and residents from neighborhoods all over Staten Island will rally to demand an end to the Iraq war and occupation. Individuals and groups will converge in the parking area of First Central Baptist Church at Wright Street and Van Duzer Street in Stapleton. Rev. Demetrius Carolina and Congressional Candidate Stephen Harrison will be among the speakers to address the rally. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra and the First Central Baptist Children’s Choir will provide music.

From the Staten Island Advance: In the five years since the war in Iraq began, groups of Staten Islanders have staged numerous protests to voice their frustration over what they see as a tragic foreign policy decision by the government.

To mark the fifth anniversary of what is increasingly an unpopular war, Peace Action of Staten Island will join with more than a dozen groups Saturday at First Central Baptist Church in Stapleton. {1}

DENTON, Texas — Student walkout at University of North Texas:
Monday, April 7, 9:11 a.m. - University of North Texas Student Walkout Against War & Campus Military Recruitment.Meet in Front of University Union BuildingStudents & Activists throughout the U.S Welcome! For more info: http://www.antiauthoritarian.net/NLN/www.myspace.com/unitedaid Andrew Teeter: bigteets44@hotmail 817.455.3787 Aron Duhon: Adduhon@live.com or beatnikk24@hotmail.com 409.828.0393

[ NOTE: this announcement follows an article in the Marine Corps Times which states that, “The Defense Department has announced a new get-tough policy with colleges and universities that interfere with the work of military recruiters and Reserve Officer Training Corps programs.” {2} ]

NEW YORK — Columbia 1968 - 2008, a 40th Anniversary Event.
From the website: Columbia 1968 and the World, A 40th Anniversary Event - April 24 - 27, 2008. This spring marks the 40th anniversary of the 1968 student protests at Columbia University. A group of alumni participants, working with faculty and students, has developed a program for a three-day conference to reexamine those events from a wide range of viewpoints and in the context of what was happening in 1968 in the country and the world. The conference will provide a chance for people who lived through that period to reconnect, reconcile, and reflect. And it will engage current students in a discussion about issues of war, race, and the role of the university—issues that are still with us 40 years later. What follows is a preliminary schedule of events showing confirmed speakers. Unless otherwise noted, all sessions will be held at the Columbia Journalism School, 116th Street and Broadway. {3}

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — “Red Ink: Celebrating the Radical Tradition in Literature with Julia Wright” event at Robin’s Bookstore: Sunday, April 27, 2 p.m.
From the website: Julia Wright, as Keynote Speaker, will be discussing Richard Wright and his work. Also featuring Tom Good, Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History; Theodore Harris, Our Flesh of Flames; Ewuare X. Osayande, Misogyny & the Emcee: Sex, Race & Hip Hop; John Potash, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders; Fred Stanton, musician; Lamont Steptoe, Oracular Rumblings and Stiltwalking; and an open reading of other area writers who want to continue the Wright tradition of politically inspired writing. {4}

For more April Actions check out the NLN Event Calendar.

Next Left Notes / The Rag Blog

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Depleted Uranium Violates US & International Law

UN Humanitarian Lawyer, Karen Parker, On the Violation of Human Rights in California
By Cathy Garger, Mar 18, 2008, 08:00

A raging human rights battle brewing between the federal Department of Energy and the people of California will soon be coming to a head. Citizen activists and environmental rights groups are up in arms over the right of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) - previously called the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory, and before that, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory - to explode toxic and radioactive materials into California’s air. Ever since this news story broke outside San Francisco in December, 2006, local citizens have opposed the Laboratory’s standard practice of exploding 1,000 lbs. of toxic and radioactive materials annually at its Site 300 location.

The origin of the face off between citizens and the federal government began a month earlier. On November 13, 2006, LLNL had received permission from the local San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (SJVAPCD) to allow explosions up to 350 lbs. per detonation. The decision to allow larger explosions was appealed and LLNL has since submitted another application for a new permit.

Desiring more “bang” for the taxpayer’s buck, Livermore Laboratory’s most recent April 24, 2007 filing of a permit application with SJVAPCD asked for permission to increase the detonations of sixty (60) dangerous materials - including Depleted Uranium - by 800 (eight hundred) percent.

In recent correspondence with Jim Swaney, Permit Services Manager for SJVAPCD, the permit is still on hold. The snag in the approval process involves the transition of management of the federal facility that develops and “tests” bombs. In October, 2007, the management of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was privatized. As Swaney explained, the new managing firm, Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC informed SJVAPCD “they needed time to finalize their contract procedures and budget the money” necessary for SJVAPCD to hire a contractor(s) to perform an environmental assessment, as required by the California Environmental Quality Act.

Although a permit has been filed for permission to increase the quantity of materials by eight-fold, outdoor explosions of radioactive Depleted Uranium and Tritium is a time-honored tradition at the outdoor Site 300 explosion area. The 7,000 acre site opened for nuclear detonation “experimentation” in 1955 and radioactive explosions have been performed with regularity outside in the greater San Francisco Bay area for over five decades. As stated on the Laboratory's website, its "explosions, known as shots, result from destructive tests of high explosives… 100 to 200 of them a year in the last 10 years.”

The Livermore Laboratory is seeking to increase these frequent San Francisco Bay area “blasts” from the current 1,000 lbs. to 8,000 lbs. annually. The new permit states that up to 350 lbs. of materials may be detonated per explosion, “with no more than one detonation occurring in any given hour.” Under current provisions, up to 100 lbs. of materials per explosion are allowed.

Among the five dozen substances listed in the permit, public opposition centers around the most hotly contested nuclear weapons material called "Depleted" Uranium. A product of nuclear processing, Depleted Uranium is used in munitions which, when fired or exploded, produce up to 80 percent ceramic Uranium Oxide aerosols. This hazardous material is used in combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq - and presumably in Somalia as well.

The use of Depleted Uranium in combat has been declared illegal under the UN Sub Commission of Human Rights. Its use is also a violation of various treaties, conventions, and international laws.

In order to determine the legality of Depleted Uranium use inside the United States via federal “experimentation” and “testing,” I spoke with Karen Parker, JD, founder of the Association Humanitarian Lawyers. The long term proponent of international human rights specializes in humanitarian law and provides expert testimony and legal counsel for the United Nations. In spring, 1996, Parker made a presentation on Depleted Uranium to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

On the matter of the extent that Depleted Uranium causes harm, Ms. Parker has written, “DU weapons 'kill' in inhumane ways, causing cancers, kidney problems, eye problems, lung diseases, and according to the medical researchers who have investigated it, many other serious conditions. Additionally, DU weapons cause disabilities in the children of those exposed – cranial-facial anomalies, missing limbs, grossly deformed and non-viable infants and the like – so in this sense are teratogenic."

“As these conditions can occur to non-combatants or may arise long after military operations have concluded, DU weapons are necessarily inhumane. The teratogenic nature of DU weapons raises the possibility of a genocidal effect. Finally, DU weapons unduly contaminate the natural environment, including water and agricultural land necessary for the subsistence of the civilian population for beyond the lifetime of that population.”

The United Nations Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights passed a resolution in 1996 finding the use DU weapons "incompatible" with existing humanitarian law. This resolution began a series of initiatives by the Sub-Commission on DU weapons and several other weapons of concern, including fuel-air bombs, cluster bombs and "bunker busters."

Read the entire interview with Karen Parker, and more, here (includes links).

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Border Fence Will Skirt Environmental Laws

A zigzagging second fence runs along side the original border fence, far right, along the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. Photo by Denis Poroy / AP.
Homeland Security announces that it will waive regulations in order to complete the fence by the end of this year.
By Nicole Gaouette / Los Angeles Times / April 1, 2008

Washington -- In an aggressive move to finish building 670 miles of border fence by the end of this year, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it will waive federal environmental laws to meet that goal.

The two waivers, which will allow the department to slash through a thicket of environmental and cultural laws, would be the most expansive to date, encompassing land in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas that stretches about 470 miles.

The waivers are highly controversial with environmentalists and border communities, which see them as a federal imposition that could damage the land and disrupt wildlife.

But they are praised by conservatives who championed the 2006 Secure Fence Act, despite the reluctance of President Bush, who has said a broader approach is needed to deal with illegal immigration.

Republicans greeted the news with satisfaction.

"It's great. This is the priority area where most of the illegal activity is going on and where most of the deaths are occurring," said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-Solana Beach), chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus. "The quicker we can get the physical fence up, the sooner we'll avoid situations like the deaths of agents. And it's still a national security issue. You just have to stop this kind of open traffic along the border."

Wildlife groups reacted with dismay.

Brian Segee, an attorney with Defenders of Wildlife, said, "It's dangerous, it's arrogant, it's going to have pronounced environmental impacts and it won't do a thing to address the problems of undocumented immigrants or address border security problems. It's an incredibly simplistic and ineffective approach to complex problems."

The waivers are intended to clear the way for fencing to block pedestrians and cars, as well as extra camera, towers and roads near the border. A special waiver was issued for a project in Hidalgo County, Texas, that would combine levees and a barrier.

Congress gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff the power to waive federal law in order to build the fence quickly. Since construction began, the department has faced fierce opposition from local communities and has had to go to court against more than 50 property owners simply to survey land to determine whether it is suitable for a fence.

The department has so far built 309 miles of fence.

Some of the resistance comes from landowners who protest that the path of the fence might block their access to the Rio Grande; other opponents are concerned that it could increase the danger of extinction for endangered animals, such as the ocelot, a wild cat whose mating habits may be affected.

Chertoff has called the waivers a last resort, and department officials say the agency is committed to minimizing the impacts to the environment and wildlife.

Homeland Security officials said many of the 470 miles have already undergone environmental review and that the agency is committed to environmental responsibility.

"If that was true, the waivers wouldn't be necessary," Segee countered.

Homeland Security has previously issued three waivers.

One, on September 2005, was to complete roughly 14 miles near San Diego; another in January 2007 was used to build infrastructure near the Barry M. Goldwater military range in southern Arizona. A third waiver was issued in October 2007 near the San Pedro National Riparian Conservation Area, also in southern Arizona.

Source.

Environmentalists have complained about the fence because they say it puts already endangered species such as two types of wild cats — the ocelot and the jaguarundi — in even more danger of extinction. They say the fence would prevent them from swimming across the Rio Grande to mate.

"Unwilling to consult with local communities or to follow long-standing laws, Secretary Chertoff chose to bypass stakeholders and push through this unpopular project on April Fool's Day," Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said in a statement. "We don't think the destruction of the borderlands region is a laughing matter."

Chertoff has said the fence is good for the environment because immigrants degrade the land with trash and human waste when they sneak illegally into the country. -- AP.

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Inoculating Corporate America Against Criminal Complicity with BushCo

Telecom Immunity: Playing the 9/11 Card … Again
by Tom Burghardt / April 1st, 2008

The Bush administration, never known for its veracity on any issue, once again is playing the “9/11 card” in an desperate attempt to continue violating the Fourth Amendment rights of the American people.

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, a darling of Senate Democrats prior to his confirmation as Bush’s top lawyer, said in speech on Thursday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that the September 11, 2001 attacks could have been prevented, “if the government had been able to monitor an overseas phone call to the United States,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mukasey went on to claim that “we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went. You’ve got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn’t come home, to show for that.”

Correctly calling Mukasey on his mendacious pronouncements, Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko writes:

Mukasey did not specify the call to which he referred. He also did not explain why the government, if it knew of telephone calls from suspected foreign terrorists, hadn’t sought a wiretapping warrant from a court established by Congress to authorize terrorist surveillance, or hadn’t monitored all such calls without a warrant for 72 hours as allowed by law. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for more information.

A congressional investigation found in 2003 that the National Security Agency had intercepted messages between one of the Sept. 11 hijackers and an al Qaeda safe house in the Middle East as early as 1999, but had not shared the information with other agencies. (Bob Egelko, “Mukasey Backs Bush Efforts on Wiretapping,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 28, 2008, Page B-1)

That we are supposedly to believe that the National Security Agency, the largest and most secretive outfit in the US intelligence “toolbox,” was somehow “blinded” by “unreasonable” civil liberties concerns, and were “following the letter of the law” regarding warrantless wiretapping of foreign terrorist organizations, beggars belief.

In fact, prior to, and even after 9/11, the United States and their favorite clique of murderous intelligence assets, the Afghan-Arab database known as al-Qaeda, were preoccupied with a series of destabilization operations that stretched from Central Asia to the Balkans.

From Chechnya to Kosovo, al-Qaeda operatives and their BND-CIA-MI6 handlers were subverting Russian and Yugoslavian national sovereignty and fomenting rebellion alongside dodgy Saudi and Gulf “charities” that served as a cats-paw for Western imperialist interests.

As with all strategic intelligence operations undertaken by the United States and their “friends,” the Saudis were playing a double-game: seemingly advancing the regional interests of their US partners in crime, al-Qaeda-linked Saudi “charities” were simultaneously wedded to a game plan they hoped would lead to the creation of a reactionary, far-right Islamist beachhead in the heart of Central Europe. That they did so with US-NATO collusion is beyond question.

Read all of it here.

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April Fool's Anniversary : Death of Death Rock Innovator

Rozz Williams on a Christian Death poster (Image: Wikipedia)
April Fool’s Day is the date of death of one Rozz Williams, born Roger Alan Painter, regarded by many as the inventor of death rock. In his most (in)famous band/incarnation, “Christian Death”, Rozz pioneered the art form that would become home to Marilyn Manson (aka Brian Warner). Both Williams and Manson continue to inspire many who believe that conformity is NOT the sincerest form of democracy. If you are interested in the roots of death rock/goth, check out “Only Theatre Of Pain“, “Catastrophe Ballet” or “Ashes” by the innovative and provocative Christian Death.

Williams, who battled manic depression and drug addiction, was greatly influenced by surrealism and dadaism. In “The Fleeing Somnambulist” - the closing track on the very influential “Catastrophe Ballet” recording - a gentle lullaby is trampled by marching jackboots. Elsewhere in the piece, Williams intones, “There was a man in a huge, white goats head sweeping through the German landscapes…”

Williams’ lyrics are infused with anti-fascist and anti-racist sentiment but perhaps the best characterization of his core message comes from the man himself. In 1994, he told an interviewer: “But as far as a message, just trying to have people keep their minds open. You know, THINK! It seems like a lot of people in the world today don’t spend much time doing that.” {1} Williams died ten years ago today — on April 1, 1998. His death was ruled a suicide.

Thomas Good / Next Left Notes / April 1, 2008 / The Rag Blog

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Rev. Wright in a Different Light

I have watched Rev. Wright in utter awe.
By William A. Von Hoene Jr. / Chicago Tribune / March 26, 2008

During the last two weeks, excerpts from sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., pastor for more than 35 years at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side, have flooded the airwaves and dominated our discourse about the presidential campaign and race. Wright has been depicted as a racial extremist, or just a plain racist. A number of political figures and news commentators have attempted to use Sen. Barack Obama's association with him to call into question Obama's judgment and the sincerity of his commitment to unity.

I have been a member of Trinity, a church with an almost entirely African-American congregation, for more than 25 years. I am, however, a white male. From a decidedly different perspective than most Trinitarians, I have heard Wright preach about racial inequality many times, in unvarnished and passionate terms.

In Obama's recent speech in Philadelphia on racial issues confronting our nation, the senator eloquently observed that Rev. Wright's sermons reflect the difficult experiences and frustrations of a generation.

It is important that we understand the dynamic Obama spoke about.

It also is important that we not let media coverage and political gamesmanship isolate selected remarks by Wright to the exclusion of anything else that might define him more accurately and completely.

I find it very troubling that we have distilled Wright's 35-year ministry to a few phrases; no context whatsoever has been offered or explored.

I do have a bit of personal context. About 26 years ago, I became engaged to my wife, an African-American. She was at that time and remains a member of Trinity. Somewhere between the ring and the altar, my wife had second thoughts and broke off the engagement. Her decision was grounded in race: So committed to black causes, the daughter of parents subjected to unthinkable prejudice over the years, an "up-and-coming" leader in the young black community, how could she marry a white man?

Rev. Wright, whom I had met only in passing at the time and who was equally if not more outspoken about "black" issues than he is today, somehow found out about my wife's decision. He called and asked her to "drop everything" and meet with him at Trinity. He spent four hours explaining his reaction to her decision. Racial divisions were unacceptable, he said, no matter how great or prolonged the pain that caused them. God would not want us to assess or make decisions about people based on race. The world could make progress on issues of race only if people were prepared to break down barriers that were much easier to let stand.

Rev. Wright was pretty persuasive; he presided over our wedding a few months later. In the years since, I have watched in utter awe as Wright has overseen and constructed a support system for thousands in need on the South Side that is far more impressive and effective than any governmental program possibly could approach. And never in my life have I been welcomed more warmly and sincerely than at Trinity. Never.

I hope that as a nation, we take advantage of the opportunity the recent focus on Rev. Wright presents—to advance our dialogue on race in a meaningful and unprecedented way. To do so, however, we need to appreciate that passion born of difficulty does not always manifest itself in the kind of words with which we are most comfortable. We also need to recognize that the basic goodness of people like Jeremiah Wright is not always packaged conventionally.

The problems of race confronting us are immense. But if we sensationalize isolated words for political advantage, casting aside the depth of feeling, circumstances and context which inform them, those problems not only will remain immense, they will be insoluble.

William A. Von Hoene Jr. of Chicago is a member of Trinity United Church of Christ.

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

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From Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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Peace in Palestine

Graphic by Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff.Source.

An Israel-Palestine Peace Plan - A Rag Blog Discussion

David Hamilton posted a draft of a proposed Israel-Palestine Peace Plan on The Rag Blog, March 29, 2008, as a means of initiating a positive dialogue on the subject. The discussion has been joined by Rag bloggers Steve Russell, Paul Spencer, Alan Pogue and Jim Retherford. The discussion has been last updated on April 3 with a comment from Mishal Al-Johar of the Palestine Solidarity Committee.

For the entire thread as it currently exists, go here.

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Politics Schmalitics : Play Ball!

Abner Doubleday: "Baseball? What's that?"

America and Baseball

By George Will / March 30, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Washington's first major league baseball team, the Senators, was owned by Clark Griffith, who, in the democratic, give-the-people-what-they-want spirit of the city, said: "Fans like home runs -- and we have assembled a pitching staff to please our fans." Today, Washington's third team, the Nationals, opens a new ballpark near the Capitol, an appropriate setting for the national pastime. Remember, Lincoln's last words, whispered to Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday, were: "Don't ... let ... baseball ... die."

Or so said a solemn Bill Stern to a radio audience of millions. Stern, who died in 1971, was a famous sportscaster whose commitment to fact was episodic. A wit responded that if Lincoln had said that to Doubleday (who was not there), Doubleday might have replied, "What's baseball?"

Baseball's creation myth is that young Doubleday invented the sport one summer day in 1839 in farmer Phinney's pasture near Cooperstown. Actually, Doubleday spent that summer at West Point. The only thing he ever started, sort of, was the Civil War: He was an artillery captain at Fort Sumter. When he died in 1893, his New York Times obituary did not mention baseball.

Today, baseball arrives in the nick of time to serve an urgent national need. It gives Americans something to think about other than superdelegates. Think instead about:

1. Who are the four players with 10 or more letters in their last names who hit 40 home runs in a season?
2. Who are the 11 players who have four or fewer letters in their last names and hit 40 home runs in a season?
3. Which two players who hit back-to-back home runs have the most combined letters in their last names?

For you who wasted the winter by not studying such stuff, the answers are below. The rest of you probably are SABRmetricians. Tim Kurkjian of ESPN (do you know that more than 10 American children have been named Espn?) recalls a convention of the Society for American Baseball Research:

"'Who from SABR might know where I can find the all-time list of pinch-hit, extra-inning grand slams?' I asked the very first man I saw at the convention. The man smiled and -- I am not making this up -- pulled the list from his breast pocket. 'I have it right here,' he said."

Would that today's subprime wizards of Wall Street had comparable mastery of the numbers important to their business. What Edmund Burke said of the study of law -- that it sharpens the mind by narrowing it -- might be true of baseball, too, but baseball people at least know what they are supposed to know. Long after he retired, Ted Williams ran into a former pitcher who said he once struck out Williams. "Slider low and away," said Williams. "Old men forget," said Shakespeare's Henry V at Agincourt. Old baseball men don't.

Washington was the setting for "Damn Yankees," the most stirring drama since Shakespeare, who didn't do musicals. Opening in 1955, it concerned a Senators' fan who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for one terrific season as a Senators' outfielder. This is supposedly a Faustian bargain, but such bargains are presumed to be bad. What is a mere soul when weighed against such a season?

Of course, there might be a gender difference here. As the philosopher Dave Barry has noted, "If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base."

Bill Veeck, who did more for America in one night than most of us do in a lifetime (the night in September 1937 he planted the ivy along Wrigley Field's outfield walls), said that the great thing about baseball -- aside from the fact that you do not need to be 7 feet wide or 7 feet tall in order to play it -- is: Three strikes and you're out, and the best lawyer can't help you. Baseball, which provides satisfying finality and then does it again the next day, is a severe meritocracy that illustrates the axiom that there is very little difference between men but that difference makes a big difference.

Even if you are not big. Asked in 1971 how it felt to be the shortest player in the major leagues, the Royals' Freddie Patek, a 5-foot-4 infielder, said, "A heckuva lot better than being the shortest player in the minor leagues."

Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers GroupPage

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Whoa doggies!

Gas prices in Death Valley this week.

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Thanks to Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog

Some thought the above picture, posted earlier today (April 1, 2008), was an April Fools joke. Well, if it is, the joke's on all of us. Below, from a different source, is another station, this one at Furnace Creek in Death Valley. Clearly a cut rate operation.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog

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