Conservative Revolutionary American Party III

Many of the beliefs held by religious moderates -- smart people who respect science and the separation of church and state -- are as untenable as the dogma of fundamentalists.

In Special Coverage

Belief:
Oscar-Winning Hollywood Big Shot: Why I'm Leaving Scientology
Guy Adams

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Former Wall Street Player Reveals the Inside World Behind Shady Bailouts to Bankers
Joshua Holland, Nomi Prins

DrugReporter:
Pot Is More Mainstream Than Ever, So Why Is Legalization Still Taboo?
Steven Wishnia

Environment:
Putting Farm Animal Protection on the Map, One Step at a Time
Paul Shapiro

Health and Wellness:
There Is a Way to Help Avoid Heart Disease and Diabetes: You Are What You Eat!
Kathy Freston

Immigration:
Boss Tells Latino Workers to Ditch Spanish Names -- in What World Is this Guy Living?
Pilar Marrero

Media and Technology:
Glenn Beck Peddles Populism for Rich Guys
Brad Reed

Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler

Politics:
The Right Isn't Only Trying to Take Down ACORN, It's Got a 25-Year Project to 'Defund' the Left
Muriel Kane

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Is the Catholic Leadership Trying to Silence Nuns?
Maureen Fiedler

Rights and Liberties:
16-Year Old Got Life Without Parole for Killing Her Abusive Pimp -- Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?
Liliana Segura

Sex and Relationships:
6 Marriage Myths Shattered: How Barack and Michelle Shun Fairy Tale Romance
Vanessa Richmond

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Environmental Groups Across California Oppose Legislative Water Package
Dan Bacher

World:
Hey Obama, Your General McChrystal Is Trying to Sucker You on Afghanistan
Scott Ritter

6 Signs That the American Empire Is Coming to an Early End

2009-11-01T08:38:00.000-08:00

By Michael T. Klare, Tomdispatch.com. Posted October 27, 2009.

The day of America's global pre-eminence is over. We must face the new global realities.

In Special Coverage

Belief:
Oscar-Winning Hollywood Big Shot: Why I'm Leaving Scientology
Guy Adams

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Former Wall Street Player Reveals the Inside World Behind Shady Bailouts to Bankers
Joshua Holland, Nomi Prins

DrugReporter:
Pot Is More Mainstream Than Ever, So Why Is Legalization Still Taboo?
Steven Wishnia

Environment:
Putting Farm Animal Protection on the Map, One Step at a Time
Paul Shapiro

Health and Wellness:
There Is a Way to Help Avoid Heart Disease and Diabetes: You Are What You Eat!
Kathy Freston

Immigration:
Boss Tells Latino Workers to Ditch Spanish Names -- in What World Is this Guy Living?
Pilar Marrero

Media and Technology:
Glenn Beck Peddles Populism for Rich Guys
Brad Reed

Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler

Politics:
The Right Isn't Only Trying to Take Down ACORN, It's Got a 25-Year Project to 'Defund' the Left
Muriel Kane

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Is the Catholic Leadership Trying to Silence Nuns?
Maureen Fiedler

Rights and Liberties:
16-Year Old Got Life Without Parole for Killing Her Abusive Pimp -- Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?
Liliana Segura

Sex and Relationships:
6 Marriage Myths Shattered: How Barack and Michelle Shun Fairy Tale Romance
Vanessa Richmond

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Environmental Groups Across California Oppose Legislative Water Package
Dan Bacher

World:
Hey Obama, Your General McChrystal Is Trying to Sucker You on Afghanistan
Scott Ritter

Halloween Humor..........LOL

2009-10-31T12:44:00.000-07:00

Halloween is on the way...

Bob Hill and his new wife Betty were vacationing in Europe... as it happens, near Transylvania. They were driving in a rental car along a rather deserted highway. It was late and raining very hard. Bob could barely see the road in front of the car. Suddenly the car skids out of control! Bob attempts to control the car, but to no avail! The car swerves and smashes into a tree.

Moments later, Bob shakes his head to clear the fog. Dazed, he looks over at the passenger seat and sees his wife unconscious, with her head bleeding! Despite the rain and unfamiliar countryside, Bob knows he has to get her medical assistance.
Bob carefully picks his wife up and begins trudging down the road. After a short while, he sees a light. He heads towards the light, which is coming from a large, old house. He approaches the door and knocks.
A minute passes. A small, hunched man opens the door. Bob immediately blurts, "Hello, my name is Bob Hill, and this is my wife Betty. We've been in a terrible accident, and my wife has been seriously hurt. Can I please use your phone?"

"I'm sorry," replied the hunchback, "but we don't have a phone. My master is a doctor; come in and I will get him!"
Bob brings his wife in.

An older man comes down the stairs. "I'm afraid my assistant may have misled you. I am not a medical doctor; I am a scientist. However, it is many miles to the nearest clinic, and I have had a basic medical training. I will see what I can do. Igor, bring them down to the laboratory."

With that, Igor picks up Betty and carries her downstairs, with Bob following closely. Igor places Betty on a table in the lab. Bob collapses from exhaustion and his own injuries, so Igor places Bob on an adjoining table.

After a brief examination, Igor's master looks worried. "Things are serious, Igor. Prepare a transfusion." Igor and his master work feverishly, but to no avail. Bob and Betty Hill are no more.

The Hills' deaths upset Igor's master greatly. Wearily, he climbs the steps to his conservatory, which houses his grand piano. For it is here that he has always found solace. He begins to play, and a stirring, almost haunting melody fills the house.

Meanwhile, Igor is still in the lab tidying up. His eyes catch movement, and he notices the fingers on Betty's hand twitch, keeping time to the haunting piano music. Stunned, he watches as Bob's arm begins to rise, marking the beat! He is further amazed as Betty and Bob both sit up straight!

Unable to contain himself, he dashes up the stairs to the conservatory.

He bursts in and shouts to his master:

"Master, Master! ..... The Hills are alive with the sound of music!"

(I am soooooo sorry...... But you really should've seen that one coming)

What did you expect...it's free from a demented old friend on the Internet.
.

Scariest Pumpkin Ever‏

2009-10-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

When it comes to spooky, bats and ghosts are kids' stuff. Maybe they're good for a goosebump or two, but what'll really wake you up screaming in the night is...

Being turned down for a pre-existing condition? Terrifying.

Being told your insurance company won't pay for treatment you need? Horrifying.

A 300 percent increase in premiums in just a decade? Spine-tingling.

This Halloween, we at Working America didn't mess around when it came to scary pumpkins. Our trick-or-treaters are going to come face to face with real fear when they see these pumpkins staring out from our porches.

If you haven't already, join thousands of people across the country and demand that big insurance companies stop denying our care and stop using our premiums to lobby against health insurance reform.

October 24: & October 25:

2009-10-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

October 25:

1881 : Pablo Picasso born

Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, is born in Malaga, Spain.

Picasso's father was a professor of drawing, and he bred his son for a career in academic art. Picasso had his first exhibit at age 13 and later quit art school so he could experiment full-time with modern art styles. He went to Paris for the first time in 1900, and in 1901 was given an exhibition at a gallery on Paris' rue Lafitte, a street known for its prestigious art galleries. The precocious 19-year-old Spaniard was at the time a relative unknown outside Barcelona, but he had already produced hundreds of paintings. Winning favorable reviews, he stayed in Paris for the rest of the year and later returned to the city to settle permanently.

The work of Picasso, which comprises more than 50,000 paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, and ceramics produced over 80 years, is described in a series of overlapping periods. His first notable period--the "blue period"--began shortly after his first Paris exhibit. In works such as The Old Guitarist (1903), Picasso painted in blue tones to evoke the melancholy world of the poor. The blue period was followed by the "rose period," in which he often depicted circus scenes, and then by Picasso's early work in sculpture. In 1907, Picasso painted the groundbreaking work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which, with its fragmented and distorted representation of the human form, broke from previous European art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon demonstrated the influence on Picasso of both African mask art and Paul Cezanne and is seen as a forerunner of the Cubist movement, founded by Picasso and the French painter Georges Braque in 1909.

In Cubism, which is divided into two phases, analytical and synthetic, Picasso and Braque established the modern principle that artwork need not represent reality to have artistic value. Major Cubist works by Picasso included his costumes and sets for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1917) and The Three Musicians (1921). Picasso and Braque's Cubist experiments also resulted in the invention of several new artistic techniques, including collage.

After Cubism, Picasso explored classical and Mediterranean themes, and images of violence and anguish increasingly appeared in his work. In 1937, this trend culminated in the masterpiece Guernica, a monumental work that evoked the horror and suffering endured by the Basque town of Guernica when it was destroyed by German war planes during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation but was fervently opposed to fascism and after the war joined the French Communist Party.

Picasso's work after World War II is less studied than his earlier creations, but he continued to work feverishly and enjoyed commercial and critical success. He produced fantastical works, experimented with ceramics, and painted variations on the works of other masters in the history of art. Known for his intense gaze and domineering personality, he had a series of intense and overlapping love affairs in his lifetime. He continued to produce art with undiminished force until his death in 1973 at the age of 91.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

General Interest
1881 : Pablo Picasso born
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihVideoCategory&id=5468
1415 : Battle of Agincourt
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=7061
1854 : Charge of the Light Brigade
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5467
1929 : Cabinet member guilty in Teapot Dome scandal
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5469

American Revolution
1774 : Congress petitions English king to address grievances
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=51327

October 24:

1901 : First barrel ride down Niagara Falls

On this day in 1901, a 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

After her husband died in the Civil War, the New York-born Taylor moved all over the U. S. before settling in Bay City, Michigan, around 1898. In July 1901, while reading an article about the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, she learned of the growing popularity of two enormous waterfalls located on the border of upstate New York and Canada. Strapped for cash and seeking fame, Taylor came up with the perfect attention-getting stunt: She would go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Taylor was not the first person to attempt the plunge over the famous falls. In October 1829, Sam Patch, known as the Yankee Leaper, survived jumping down the 175-foot Horseshoe Falls of the Niagara River, on the Canadian side of the border. More than 70 years later, Taylor chose to take the ride on her birthday, October 24. (She claimed she was in her 40s, but genealogical records later showed she was 63.) With the help of two assistants, Taylor strapped herself into a leather harness inside an old wooden pickle barrel five feet high and three feet in diameter. With cushions lining the barrel to break her fall, Taylor was towed by a small boat into the middle of the fast-flowing Niagara River and cut loose.

Knocked violently from side to side by the rapids and then propelled over the edge of Horseshoe Falls, Taylor reached the shore alive, if a bit battered, around 20 minutes after her journey began. After a brief flurry of photo-ops and speaking engagements, Taylor's fame cooled, and she was unable to make the fortune for which she had hoped. She did, however, inspire a number of copy-cat daredevils. Between 1901 and 1995, 15 people went over the falls; 10 of them survived. Among those who died were Jesse Sharp, who took the plunge in a kayak in 1990, and Robert Overcracker, who used a jet ski in 1995. No matter the method, going over Niagara Falls is illegal, and survivors face charges and stiff fines on either side of the border.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

General Interest
1901 : First barrel ride down Niagara Falls
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihVideoCategory&id=5464
1648 : Thirty Years War ends
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5463
1945 : U.N. formally established
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5465
1969 : Burton buys Liz a diamond
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=7060
2003 : The Concorde makes its final flight
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5466

American Revolution
1775 : British naval fleet attacks Norfolk, Virginia
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=51326

JFK assassination-CIA-and the question about George Joannides‏

2009-10-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

Dick McManus

Comment: Oh, and all day last Saturday we are presented with some BS about the JFK assassination on the Discovery Channel. Now, think about this. Why would the Discovery Channel or the History Channel, (aka propaganda-plus) REPEATEDLY try to sell the American people their crap-o-la to prove Oswald was the lone assassin? Yes, crap-o-la. Anyone with a IQ about a fruit fly, can read the truth about Kennedy's assassination.

Well, you have seen this MO during the AWOL Bush years. That is, repeat repeat repeat the LIES, and soon the American people will fall for their crap-o-la.

The New York Times Shines a Light into the JFK-CIA-Joannides Scandal

Oct 21, 2009 Later, in the 1970s when the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the Kennedy assassination, the CIA called Joannides back from retirement to serve as a liaison between the CIA and the House committee. Ostensibly his job was to facilitate CIA cooperation with the House investigation.

But there was one big problem in all this. No one but Joannides and the CIA knew about Joannides’ prior relationship with the DRE. Not the Warren Commission. Not the House Committee. For some reason known only to the CIA and Joannides, the information was kept secret from the people whose task was to conduct a full and complete investigation into the Kennedy assassination.

Even worse, the CIA had the audacity to select as liaison the person who was the subject of the secret, raising the obvious question: Was Joannides called back from retirement to serve as a barrier rather than a facilitator? Or as the Times put it, “That concealment has fueled suspicion that Mr. Joannides’s real assignment was to limit what the House Committee could learn about C.I.A. activities.”

Discovering Joannides’ role in the documents released in the late 1990s, a relentless journalist named Jefferson Morley, who used to work at the Washington Post, requested the CIA to produce all its files on Joannides, a request the CIA steadfastly refused to grant.

http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:66db98138a7da5d72c8becf3de0e4a31:587483bbe73ec9a101da27938d4ad08b/The-New-York-Times-Shines-a-Light-into-the-JFK-CIA-Joannides-Scandal

George Joannides??

The handgun Sirhan used only had the capacity to fire eight shots.

...witnesses claim that Sirhan was in front of Kennedy. According to a March 27, 2008 ABC report by Pierre Thomas, Joling claims, “It can be established conclusively that Sirhan did not shoot Senator Kennedy. And in fact not only did he not do it, he could not have done it.”

Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi conducted the official autopsy on the body of Robert Francis Kennedy on the morning of June 6, 1968. Noguchi stated that the shot that killed RFK “had entered through the mastoid bone, an inch behind the right ear and had traveled upward to sever the branches of the superior cerebral artery.”

At a conference in Connecticut forensic scientists met to discuss their independent findings. The conference presenters argued that Sirhan Sirhan could not have fired the fatal shot that killed Kennedy. Dr. Robert Joling has studied the Kennedy assassination for nearly 40 years, he concluded that the fatal shot came from behind Kennedy, while Sirhan was four to six feet in front of the senator and never got close enough to shoot him from behind.

Philip Van Praag analyzed the Pruszynski recording (a Canadian journalist’s tape recording) and determined that 13 shots were fired while Kennedy was killed, although Sirhan’s gun only held eight bullets. This suggests that a second shooter was involved in the assassination.

Other questions regarding the assassination of Robert Kennedy have recently been voiced in a new BBC documentary by Shane O’Sullivan, which supports the conclusion that the CIA planned and executed the killing of Robert Kennedy. The result of a three year long investigation includes photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of the murder. These three operatives have been positively identified as David Morales, Gordon Campbell and George Joannides.

The LAPD claimed no bullets were found lodged in the “bullet holes”, and yet the doorframes in which some of the bullets had lodged were burned and two expended bullets, dug out of the wood, were found in the front seat of Sirhan’s car. Then inexplicably, the LAPD destroyed their records of the tests that had been done on the “bullet holes” in the doorframe.

Michael Ruppert, former Los Angeles Police detective, author, journalist and editor of From the Wilderness, has conducted his own investigation of the RFK assassination, using inside contacts deep within the LAPD. His investigation definitively proves that the assassination was a CIA operation, and he names Thane Eugene Cesar, a private security guard just hired out of Lockheed, as the triggerman.
Lillian Castellano and her friend, Floyd Nelson. They had discovered signs of extra bullets in the hotel pantry - more than Sirhan could have shot - and had taken photographs the next day. FBI Agent William Bailey inspected the scene within hours of the shooting and discovered bullet holes in the doorjamb behind us. That doorjamb was removed and destroyed by the Police soon after, among other evidence.

http://rockcreekfreepress.tumblr.com/post/35322426/40-years-since-rfk-assassination-mounting-evidence-of

NOTICE: Material posted to this mailing list is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and/or educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

Reining In Wall Street's Greed‏

2009-10-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Alex Seitz-Wald, and Zaid Jilani

October 23, 2009

ECONOMY

Reining In Wall Street's Greed

In "a sharp departure from the hands-off approach that has dominated regulations for decades," the Obama administration announced new restrictions on executive compensation for financial firms this week. On Wednesday, Special Master on Compensation Kenneth Feinberg said he will order seven companies that received government bailout funds to cut cash salaries by about 90 percent compared with last year. Separately, the Federal Reserve announced its own plan yesterday to review compensation in the banking industry as a whole, with a particular focus on the 28 largest and most complex companies. The announcements could not have come at a better time. Despite the deep financial crisis and the reliance on taxpayer dollars, compensation at financial firms is on pace to be higher than ever. The Wall Street Journal reports that Wall Street firms are "on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year," a record amount. Financial firms and their supporters say they need the hefty payment packages to attract the best people, but as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) noted, if they have "produced so much money for themselves and they're such geniuses, where have they led this country?" Conservatives lawmakers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come to Wall Street's defense, decrying the government's intervention. "I have a visceral reaction against so much government involvement in free enterprise," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R- TN). Wall Street's compensation methods encouraged people to take on excessive risks that put their companies -- and thus the entire economy -- in jeopardy. Moreover, as President Obama said yesterday, "it does offend our values when executives of big financial firms, firms that are struggling, pay themselves huge bonuses even as they continue to rely on taxpayer assistance to stay afloat." But while the moves were welcome announcements, Congress needs "to continue moving forward on financial reform that will help prevent the crisis we saw last fall from happening again."

COMPENSATION FAILURE: In addition to addressing the populist outrage over taxpayer-funded bonuses and benefits, curbing executive compensation is essential to the health of our economy. Wall Street compensation levels played a direct role in causing the financial crisis. As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke explained yesterday, "Compensation practices at some banking organizations have led to misaligned incentives and excessive risk-taking, contributing to bank losses and financial instability." Compensation practices like guaranteed bonuses, which lock-in multi-million dollar bonuses regardless of how the company performs, encourage executives to take huge risks while removing any accountability in case their gambles fail. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote,"They did what their incentive structures were designed to do: focusing on short-term profits and encouraging excessive risk-taking." Wall Street said it would change, but just a year after the depth of the financial crisis, some firms are returning to their old habits. Some banks -- even those ostensibly owned by the federal government -- have again begun offering guaranteed bonuses, while salaries and fringe benefits, like private jet rides, are on the rise. The giant miscalculations that led to the financial crisis prove that, despite what some conservatives say, Wall Street cannot be counted on to regulate itself. Executive compensation needs to be reigned in and restructured so executives are held accountable for taking risk, especially for those companies which are alive today only because of government help.

BUZZ CUT: The cuts announced by Feinberg will affect the 25 most highly paid executives at Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, and the financing arms of the two automakers. All seven firms received billions of dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), giving Treasury the authority to regulate them. The department will also "curtail many corporate perks, including the use of corporate jets for personal travel, chauffeured drivers and country club fee reimbursement." The companies were required to submit compensation requests to Feinberg, and he said he found them "almost without exception to have been not in the public interest. They were both too high and the wrong mix of stock and cash." Feinberg's plan will "change the form of the pay to align the personal interests of the executives with the longer-term financial health of the companies. For instance, the cash portion of the executives' salaries will be slashed on average by 90 percent, and the rest will be replaced by stock that cannot be sold for years." The Fed, meanwhile, will create a two-tier system of supervising pay, in an effort to better tie rewards to long term performance. The 28 largest and most complex firms, such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, will have to present their compensation plans to the Fed, which will then evaluate them to ensure they "properly balance goals of short-term growth and long-term stability." For the other hundreds of banks in the country, the Fed will conduct "regular, risk-focused" reviews of compensation structures in an effort to prevent banks from encouraging "excessive risk-taking beyond the organization's ability to effectively identify and manage risk."

REAL REFORM: The announcements are a welcome step to prevent another financial crisis, but as The New York Times noted, the Fed's principles "are less strict than plans suggested by some European leaders and some members of Congress." The plans are also devoid of specifics, and have no teeth behind them. So long as the banks make an attempt to conform with the principles above, it seems like the Fed will be willing to give them a pass, which is why Obama is pushing for major financial reform that goes beyond compensation. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote a letter to Feinberg endorsing the Treasury's action yesterday, but he underscored that he also wants Feinberg to force the seven TARP companies to "significantly revamp their corporate governance across the board." Schumer has been pushing for the adoption of a Shareholder Bill of Rights, which would give shareholders more say over how executives manage corporations, allowing them to better regulate compensation and excessive risk-taking. Other proposals like "say on pay," which allows shareholders to voice opposition to compensation structures, have worked well abroad. As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner points out, "[say on pay] has already become the norm for several of our major trading partners." In two of those countries -- Great Britain and Australia -- CEO pay "grew 2.4 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively, from 2002 through 2006, while pay in the United States soared 59.9 percent in the same period."

Bill Moyers: How Can the U.S. Be an Empire and a Democracy at the Same Time?

2009-10-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal. Posted October 20, 2009.

An interview with Mark Danner, whose new book, Stripping Bare the Body, explores the strange notion of a democratic empire and the wars it wages.

In Special Coverage

Belief:
An Atheist's Review of the Book of Genesis Illustrated by a Legendary Comics Artist
Greta Christina

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally
Mark Ames

DrugReporter:
President Obama And Gov. Paterson Get Love For Recent Drug Policy Reforms
Tony Newman

Environment:
McKibben Versus Hedges' Clash of Worldviews: How Do We Solve the Environmental Crisis?
Chris Hedges, Bill McKibben

Health and Wellness:
Rape Is a Pre-Existing Condition? The Heartlessness of the Health Insurance Industry Exposed
Danielle Ivory

Immigration:
A Death in Texas Casts Cold Light on America's Privatized Immigration Prisons
Tom Barry

Media and Technology:
8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization
Adele Stan

Movie Mix:
Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie (and So Must You)!
Arianna Huffington

Politics:
Rachel Maddow Mocks the Idea of Bush as a Motivational Speaker

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
A National Treasure -- The Memoirs of Gay Rights Pioneer Martin Duberman
Doug Ireland

Rights and Liberties:
Obama Is Keeping Bush's Worst "War on Terror" Policies Firmly In Place
Julian Sanchez

Sex and Relationships:
How I Realized I'm Bisexual
Rabbit White

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Southeast Water Scarcity Blamed on Overpopulation

World:
Will Anyone Actually Vote in Afghanistan's Much Anticipated Run-Off Election?
Hafizullah Gardesh

Flights of Fashion:

2009-10-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

Gioia Diliberto

Journalist and author of The Collection

Posted: October 23, 2009 08:08 AM

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Flights of Fashion: How Amelia Earhart Became America's First Celebrity Designer (PHOTOS)

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Editor's note: In honor of today's release of Fox Searchlight's "Amelia," we're re-publishing this post. It originally ran on July 20th.

Unlike aviators lost in the sky, fashions always come back. Among the styles recently returned from the dead are micro minis, skinny belts, jumpsuits, platform shoes -- and, now, the Amelia Earhart look.

It's been revived by Jean Paul Gaultier for the fall Hermes ready-to-wear collection soon arriving in stores, and it features shirts with narrow ties, trousers, leather pencil skirts and bomber jackets. At the Hermes show in Paris last March, models wore aviator hats and goggles with the clothes, as the roar of prop-plane engines set up beyond the catwalk filled the air. "I was inspired by a woman, I forgot her name, an American pilot with very short, wavy hair who was wearing an aviator jacket, which I love, and a little scarf that was so Hermes," Gaultier told the Associated Press.

He probably would be surprised to know that old what's her name wasn't just a style icon; she also had her own fashion label. In fact, Amelia Earhart was America's first celebrity designer, and the story of her short-lived Amelia Earhart line is the story of the start of fashion mass marketing.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Amelia Earhart in 1932.

Earhart was an unlikely style star. When she burst onto the world stage in 1928, following her first transatlantic flight (never mind that she was only riding in the plane with two male pilots, she still was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic), Earhart was derided in the press for her gawky, disheveled appearance. Skinny, freckled, short-haired and boyish looking, she bore a strong resemblance to Charles Lindbergh, and "Lindy in drag" was one of the nicer sobriquets given her. She showed no feminine interest in clothes. While flying, she favored old, high-laced shoes, well-worn trousers, an ancient leather coat with deep pockets, a soft leather helmet and goggles. On land, she wore pretty much the same thing, without the headgear.

This was not the look of an American female idol, and Earhart's manager and husband, publisher George Charles Putnam, vowed to glam her up. Earhart was pretty, with a lovely smile, bright blue eyes, wavy blonde hair and a model's tall, willowy figure (marred somewhat by thick lower legs, one reason she didn't like wearing dresses). With the help of a make-up artist, hair stylist and a new wardrobe of well tailored clothes, she morphed into a paragon of androgynous chic -- just like Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich, two other trouser-wearing, gender-bending beauties who also happened to appear on screen as aviators.

After Earhart's solo flight across the Atlantic in May 20-21, 1931, a feat not coincidentally performed on the fourth anniversary of Lindbergh's historic flight, Earhart and Putnam searched for ways to raise money for the aviatrix's next venture while promoting her image as a national heroine.

They focused on fashion. At the time, American designers labored in obscurity in the backrooms of Seventh Avenue, "like the kitchen help," as Bill Blass once noted. While Paris designers were world famous celebrities -- the names of Chanel, Lanvin, Schiaparelli, Patou, and Paquin, heralded from the pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and the women's pages of the nation's newspapers -- labels on even the highest-end American fashion contained only the names of the manufacturers.

Earhart and her husband convinced the U.S. Rubber Company that her name would sell, and Amelia Earhart Fashion, underwritten by the tire enterprise, debuted in 1934. The clothes were offered in special Amelia Earhart shops in a single department store per city (in New York, Macy's and in Chicago, Marshall Field's). The label, sewn into each garment, featured the aviatrix's signature in black with a thin red line streaking through it to a little red plane soaring in the right corner.

In interviews with the press, Earhart said her goal was to bring the beauty she'd found in aviation closer to all women at prices that didn't reach "new altitudes." In the air, she had a touch of recklessness -- it was part of her charm, a sign of her rebellion against a world that wouldn't allow women to be adventurous, and it probably contributed to her presumed death in July, 1937 (she disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean while attempting a circum-navigational flight of the globe). Her clothes, however, were utterly safe and conventional -- basically copies of mainstream sportswear, with some gimmicky, aviation-themed trimmings.

Many of the fashions -- a windbreaker and a leather trench coat, for example -- mimicked Earhart's flying clothes and were made in washable, practical fabrics like Grenfell cotton, a staple of English hunting wear. Other styles included tweed suits and coats in neutral tones and deep pocketed raincoats in "parachute" silk with buttons shaped like propellers. Earhart told one newspaper that she nearly always incorporated in the styles "something characteristic of aviation, a parachute cord or tie or belt, a ball-bearing belt buckle, wing bolts and nuts for buttons."

Reporters made much of the fact that Amelia owned a sewing machine and had made her own clothes as a girl. She suggested colors and fabrics for her fashion line, but it's unlikely she did any actual designing.

Despite a blizzard of publicity, Earhart fashion failed to catch on with the public, and the line disappeared from America's stores even before the aviatrix vanished. One piece of her own clothing, however, turned up a few weeks later. It was a long white and brown scarf that a man named Wilbur Rothar offered to Earhart's husband as proof of her survival. Rothar claimed that Earhart had been captured by a boat running arms near New Guinea, and he demanded $2,000 from Putnam for his wife's return. As it turned out, Rothar was a New York janitor who years earlier, while in a crowd cheering Earhart's arrival from a routine landing at Long Island's Roosevelt Field, had caught the silk garment as the wind blew it from around her neck.

After Rothar's arrest, Putnam reclaimed the scarf, a symbol of Amelia Earhart's glamorously daring spirit -- the spirit Gaultier no doubt tried to capture in this fall's aviatrix inspired clothes.

Nygaard Notes #440‏

2009-10-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

Nygaard Notes
Independent Periodic News and Analysis
Number 440, October 21, 2009

On the Web at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/

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This Week: Iran

1. “Quote” of the Week
2. The Iranian Threat: Thinking Strategically
3. Sources for Information on the Iranian “Threat”

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Greetings,

Besides being an important issue in itself, the current hysteria about Iranian nuclear weapons provides an amazingly-clear opportunity to understand the nature—and power—of the Propaganda system in which we are increasingly enmeshed. For that reason I decided to spend three weeks doing some in-depth research for the purpose of checking all of my own ideas and assumptions about these goings-on. Despite the fact that I think about this stuff all the time, even I was surprised at the depth of deception and distortion on the issue of Iran.

Have we all lost our minds? No, but we have all been conditioned to be afraid—be very afraid!—and to justify our fears in ways that fit with the needs of those who would “protect” us. It’s hardly a new phenomenon, but it’s worth spending some time to understand how this works, as it is this type of manipulation of genuine emotion that leads us into wars over and over again.

So, this week I talk about Iran, then next week I’ll talk about the broader Middle East, and finally I hope to talk about nuclear weapons and Great Power politics around the world. I hope to show that it’s possible for a regular person to break out of the one-dimensional world of Propaganda and begin to see the world as the complex and ever-changing place that it is. My hope is that the journey will lead us away from fear and help us think more clearly about what we can do to change the world in life-enhancing ways. Ambitious? Sure! Let’s get to it.

In solidarity,

Nygaard

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1.
“Quote” of the Week

Here’s scholar Juan Cole in the October 1st Salon called “The Top Ten Things You Didn't Know about Iran.” http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/01/cole/

“Isn't the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutually assured destruction just would not work with them?

“Reality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven't they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The U.S. elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.”

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2.
The Iranian Threat: Thinking Strategically

Sometimes I wish Nygaard Notes were illustrated. I’m wishing it right now, since this issue offers some thoughts about the current hysteria about Iranian nuclear weapons, and the effort to sort through the issue best begins with a look at a map of the region. (For those of you reading Nygaard Notes online, or in email form, here’s a map to look at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/sw_asia_pol96.jpg )

There are eight nations in the world known to possess nuclear weapons. All of them are close to Iran, either literally close or close in the imperial sense. Five of them—China, France, Russia, England, and the United States—are officially a part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, described as “the cornerstone of the global nonproliferation regime.” Three states—India, Israel, and Pakistan—also have nuclear weapons, although none have joined the NPT. Israel “does not admit to or deny having nuclear weapons,” according to the Arms Control Association, but everyone knows they have them. Maybe 200 or 300, no one seems to know for sure.

Iran, The Geography

Now look at, or picture, our map of Iran. Imagine being an Iranian, and looking around to see from which direction a threat to your nation—nuclear or otherwise—might come. What would you see?

Immediately to the east of Iran is Iraq, effectively under U.S. control (this is what I meant when I referred to being close in the imperial sense). U.S. covert activities aimed at destabilizing other countries are often based in U.S. embassies, and the U.S. has built “the biggest, most expensive embassy ever” in Iraq, according to the Christian Science Monitor. The NY Times reported on October 8th that “The Americans hope that by next spring, they will be operating from ... 6 supersize bases and 13 smaller ones” in Iraq.

Immediately to the west of Iran are Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan is a major, if erratic, U.S. ally, and has its own unregulated and unsupervised nuclear arsenal. Afghanistan, like Iraq to the east, is functioning as a staging area for U.S. imperial activities, even if it’s not totally under U.S. control. While the Obama administration officially debates what to do, “The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence ‘surge’ that will make the agency's station there among the largest in CIA history, U.S. officials say.” That’s according to the Los Angeles Times of September 20th.

So “the largest embassy ever” lies immediately to the west of Iran, and one of the largest CIA stations in history lies immediately to the east. So the means are there to back up the repeated U.S. threats against Iran—the U.S. has said repeatedly that “no option is off the table,” the accepted code for a military threat. In addition, the Middle East’s only nuclear state, Israel, is not shy about threatening Iran. A fairly typical headline appeared recently on CBS News, reading “Israel Prodding U.S. To Attack Iran.” And the Associated Press reported on July 5th that “Vice President Joe Biden signaled that the Obama administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.”

Beyond the countries it is occupying, the U.S. maintains additional military facilities all around Iran. Not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Turkey, another country that borders Iran. A number of U.S. military bases (half a dozen, perhaps) are maintained just across the Persian Gulf in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—a distance of 100-200 miles from Iran. Again, refer to our map.

I would be remiss if I did not mention in this context the massive U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, which GlobalSecurity.org’s John Pike refers to as “the single most important military facility [that the U.S. has] got.” The base, used for secret detentions and torture as well as a launching pad for attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, is named “Camp Justice.” Iran is well within range of the U.S. bombers based at “Camp Justice.”

The Upside-Down World

In the world of Empire, illegal detentions and torture are transformed into Justice. But that’s not all that gets inverted in reporting on the maintenance of the U.S. Empire.

On September 28th Iran announced that it had test-fired some missiles, saying that “Iranian missiles are able to target any place that threatens Iran.” The Associated Press report on this event bore the headline, “Iran Tests Advanced Missiles, Raising More Concern.” The “concern” arises in part, according to the AP, from the fact that “U.S. military bases in the Middle East” would now be “within striking distance” of Iranian missiles.

In this Upside-Down World, defense thus becomes offense. Consider: The World’s Only Superpower maintains military bases around the world (more than 700 of them!), including in two countries that it is currently occupying. This Superpower possesses approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, remains the only country that has ever actually used such weapons, and also happens to be the country that overthrew the democratically-elected government of Iran in 1953. The country that lies in between the two U.S.-occupied countries, and which is surrounded by U.S. military bases, is thought to be attempting to acquire the capacity to attack the bases of the Superpower that lie near its borders. Yet the global reach and bloody history of the Superpower in the region is not what “raises concern.” What “raises concern” is the possibility that the weaker state may be developing the capacity to defend itself. Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history.

The pattern repeats itself in the media endlessly. As in a story that ran over the UPI wire service on July 25. The lead paragraph was accurate, saying “Iran would bomb Israel's nuclear facilities if Israel were to attack Iran, the head of the Revolutionary Guard said Saturday.” Sounds like self-defense, right? But here’s the headline: “Iranian General Threatens Israeli Nukes.”

Iran is well aware of the fact that the most recent victim of U.S. military attack and occupation was Iraq, a weak state that seemed to have little capacity to defend itself, while North Korea, which has tested nuclear devices and has weapons-grade materials and has tested its own missiles, was left alone.

Iran Irrational? Maybe Not

Since 1979 Iran has been portrayed in this country as an enemy of the United States, and in recent months the news is filled with talk of the “Iranian threat.” But Iran was a big ally of the U.S. before 1979. According to University of Virginia professor emeritus R.K. Ramazani, “the United States itself actually relied primarily on Iran to perform the role of the ‘policeman’ for the Gulf region” until the Iranian revolution. So we can see that there is nothing inherently “anti-U.S.” about Iran.

If Iran is now a threat to the U.S.—and everything the U.S. government does and says indicates that they consider Iran to be a threat—what is the nature of that threat? Is it really nuclear weapons? I think that’s unlikely, for a number of reasons. Here they are:

Dr. Subhash Kapila, a scholar writing in a 2006 paper for the South Asia Analysis Group, states bluntly that “Iran with or without nuclear weapons can never match American military predominance.” This point is supported by everything I’ve been saying about U.S. military strength in the region.

Kapila adds that “The main strategic impulse that formulates US threat perceptions arising from Iran is the emergence of ‘Iran as a regional power in the Gulf Region’ and its consequent effects on US national interests in the region.”

Congressional foreign policy advisor Gregory Aftandilian stated in October of 2008 a point that is rarely heard in the U.S.: “Iran is not stupid enough to strike Israel…it has a long history, thousands of years, of statecraft…Tehran is not suicidal.”

His point is reinforced by the words of John Negroponte, speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee when he was the Director of National Intelligence back in 2006. He said that “Iranian conventional military power constitutes . . . a challenge to US interests. Iran is enhancing its ability to project its military power in order to threaten to disrupt the operations and reinforcement of US forces based in the region—potentially intimidating regional allies into withholding support for US policy toward Iran—and raising the costs of our regional presence for us and our allies.

“Tehran also continues to support a number of terrorist groups, viewing this capability as a critical regime safeguard by deterring US and Israeli attacks, distracting and weakening Israel, and enhancing Iran’s regional influence through intimidation. Lebanese Hizballah is Iran’s main terrorist ally, which—although focused on its agenda in Lebanon and supporting anti-Israeli Palestinian terrorists—has a worldwide support network and is capable of attacks against US interests if it feels its Iranian patron is threatened.”

Note that the “threat” posed by Iran takes two forms. One is the capacity to challenge “U.S. interests.” The other is the ability to “deter US and Israeli attacks.” That is, to defend itself.

Still another reason that it’s unlikely that U.S. planners are worried about Iranian nukes is that Iranian leaders have spoken of a religious prohibition against nuclear weapons. A statement by the Iranian government to the International Atomic Energy Agency on August 10th 2005 stated this: “The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons.” Everything I’ve read indicates that Khamenei is the real power in Iran, despite the fact that President Ahmedinejad gets all the headlines in this country.

It appears to me that the most rabid disseminators of fear of Iran base their propaganda, in part, on the alleged religious fanaticism of Iran’s leadership. Wouldn’t Khamenei’s fatwa seem convincing proof to such people that Iran is not a threat to use nuclear weapons?

Elsewhere in this issue of the Notes I give sources to back up my main points here, which are:

1. There is no evidence that Iran is actually aiming to produce nuclear weapons;

2. If Iran were aiming to do so, it would not be evidence of irrationality, given the nature of the threats against that country (nuclear weapons themselves are evidence of irrationality, as I’ll discuss next week);

3. If Iran were to actually go ahead and acquire nuclear weapons, the likelihood of them being used in an offensive way is almost zero;

If the above points are true, then all the hysteria about Iran in this country must be motivated by something other than a supposed nuclear threat posed by Iran.

The workings of the U.S. Propaganda system in regard to the volatile region that we call the Middle East works in our minds to create a very bizarre world that is often upside-down and backwards. In the next issue of the Notes I’ll talk about that system and how one state without nuclear weapons can be seen as a “rogue state” while another state that actually has a secret, unregulated nuclear arsenal is not.

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3.
Sources for Information on the Iranian “Threat”

The misinformation and bizarre propaganda about Iran in the media of late has been so mind-bogglingly thorough that it has become quite difficult to think clearly about the issue. Ask yourself: What is the issue with Iran? It’s not what most people think. Here are some of the more interesting information sources I have run across in preparing this issue of the Notes:

A good place to start is “The Top Ten Things You Didn't Know about Iran,” by scholar Juan Cole: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/01/cole/

To help break out of fearful thinking and move toward strategic thinking, I recommend a short (2,000-word) essay from 2006 by Dr. Subhash Kapila called “United States-Iran Confrontation: The Strategic Impulses” It’s on the website of the South Asia Analysis Group, found here: http://www.saag.org/common/uploaded_files/paper1695.html

Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter has three recent comments worth checking out. The first one appeared in the London Guardian. Go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/ and search for “Keeping Iran Honest.” Find an audio interview here: http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/09/30/scott-ritter-9/ Finally, there’s a Ritter video interview; go to http://therealnews.com and search for “Ritter.”

Despite what you have undoubtedly heard, the Iranian president has never said that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” or “wiped out.” The best clarification of this endlessly-repeated falsehood can be found on the site of the Mossadegh Project, in a 2007 article by Arash Norouzi called “‘Wiped Off The Map’ – The Rumor of the Century.” http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/

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Republicans Oppose Franken on Rape Legislation

2009-10-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

Friday 23 October 2009

by: Mary Susan Littlepage, t r u t h o u t | NewsWire

Sen. Al Franken presents his amendment to block funding defense contractors that prevent employees from taking legal action when they are victims of rape to Jamie Leigh Jones. Jones and others have protested being blocked by their companies from lawsuits based on their being raped while on the job. (Photo: Franken.senate.gov)

After Minnesota Sen. Al Franken's amendment to the 2010 defense appropriations bill passed by a 68-30 vote, rape victim Jamie Leigh Jones thanked Franken and said, "It means the world to me." That's because the amendment calls for withholding defense contracts from companies like KBR (a former Halliburton subsidiary) if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.

The amendment earned the support of ten Republican senators, including Sen. George LeMieux.

Discussion about the amendment was sparked by the rape case of Jones, who, in 2005, was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was placed in a shipping container for at least 24 hours and was left without food, water or a bed. In addition, she was told that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

Once she got home, Jones learned that a clause in her contract would not let her bring charges in court against KBR because her work contract stated that sexual assault allegations would be heard in only private negotiations with KBR.

Franken said the Constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law: "Defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court," he said.

Also, he said in a statement that victims of rape and discrimination "deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen."

Critics of Franken's amendment include 30 Republican senators who voted against the amendment. They contend that rape should be overlooked in favor of protecting corporations. Among the 30 senators against the amendment are Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), who called it "a political attack directed at Halliburton." Attempts to get additional comment from Vitter and Sessions were unsuccessful at press time.

However, Franken said that the amendment doesn't single out Halliburton. He said, "Victims of sexual assault deserve their day in court and no corporation should be able to deny them that right." He also said that Jones' telling her story will help women all over the country.

More than 60 women's labor and public interest groups endorsed Franken's amendment. They include the Minnesota Women Lawyers, the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the Sexual Violence Center, Advocates for Human Rights, and others.

Not Dead Yet

2009-10-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

Friday 23 October 2009

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist

(Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

I don't want to go on the cart!
- "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

For the last several weeks, politicians, political action groups and pundits have been declaring the "Public Option" portion of President Obama's health care reform push all but dead. Republicans, with typical shoulder-to-shoulder unanimity, have been shouting it down with bull-throated ferocity. Well-heeled interest groups have been spraying the airways with anti-public-option propaganda.

Democrats, of course, have been going 17 directions at once and, as usual, gotten exactly nowhere; they're for it, against it, sorta-kinda-maybe-yes-no, oh, please, somebody tell me what to think. Even President Obama, who promised a public option approximately 12,000 times in the run-up to this debate, has been sending increasingly conflicted signals on the matter. He wants it, but can live without it, but won't be happy about it, but might be happy about it if he gets a bill to sign.

There's a word for this: bedlam. It's not very conducive to clarity, and is a large part of the reason much of the public has been less than enthusiastic about the entire enterprise. The Democrats control the White House, House and Senate, but haven't been able to get out of their own way, and the GOP has been doing what the GOP does best: throw rocks, muddy the waters and get people all riled up about existential threats to all that is American even though no such threats actually exist.

Quite suddenly, however, a rather large break in the clouds has come on the public option issue, and for the first time since this debate began in earnest, it actually seems possible the option may win its way into a spot on the final legislation. It began early this week with a new Washington Post/ABC News poll that had 57 percent of Americans approving of a public option being included in health care reform. This number is down from 62 percent approval for the public option in June, when the chaos truly began, but is up from 52 percent approval in August.

On the heels of this poll came new health care reform numbers from the Congressional Budget Office that seem to prove the public option will not be the deficit annihilator described by the GOP. "A preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office projects that the House Democrats' health care plan that includes a public option would cost $871 billion over 10 years," reported CNN on Tuesday. "CBO also found that the Democrats' bill reduces the deficit in the first ten years. This new CBO estimate, which aides caution is not final, is significantly less than the original $1.1 trillion price tag of the original House bill that passed out of three committees this summer. More importantly, it comes under the $900 billion cap set by President Obama in his joint address to Congress last month."

Democrats, ever fearless in the face of positive numbers, suddenly exploded into a frenzy of pro-public-option campaigning immediately after those numbers were released. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) leaped at the new CBO estimate to announce that the House will not allow any legislation to become finalized without the inclusion of a "robust public option."

"In recent days," reported Talking Points Memo this week, "Pelosi has insisted that she intends to send House negotiators to a health care conference committee with the maximum possible leverage for the public option. And House health care principals have been working doggedly to keep the price of reform down with the help of the public option - so in a sense, the news of this final push comes as little surprise: Pelosi is, as expected, using the fiscal responsibility of the robust public option to win over enough skeptics in her caucus to pass it. And she is, reportedly, very close to doing that."

Pretty heady stuff, that.

The action has not been confined to the House on this issue. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), who had been deeply hesitant about backing any legislation that included a public option, suddenly boomeranged back toward support for it, albeit a version that includes an "opt-out" provision that allows citizens to exit the program if they don't like it. Even more surprising was the fact that one of the most conservative and anti-public-option Democrats in the Senate, Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), likewise voiced support for a public option with an opt-out provision.

How all this will eventually shake out remains deeply uncertain, but if the public option is to survive and become part of the final legislation, its proponents have picked exactly the right time to begin a full-court press. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this new drive to save the public option came in the guise of Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida), the House member who became an instant folk hero on the left when he described the GOP's idea of health reform as "die quickly." Representative Grayson has launched a web site called namesofthedead.com, which allows citizens to tell their stories of friends and family members who have died due to a lack of health insurance.

"Grayson announced the creation of the site on the House floor Wednesday and displayed a poster with the site's address," reported The Hill on Wednesday. "He said the names of those who die because of a lack of health insurance should be identified. 'I propose that we honor their memory by naming them,' he said, concluding his remarks by stating that with health care reform, 'no one will ever die in America because they can't see a doctor.'"

I feel happy.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

Where Are the Fighting Dems?

2009-10-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

Published on Friday, October 23, 2009 by GRITtv

Where Are the Fighting Dems?

by Laura Flanders

Let's hear it for false fact studies from lobbyists! This one seems to have served as a declaration of war. Last week, America's Health Insurance Plans released a study claiming that healthcare reform would cause Americans' premiums to soar, and hey presto...

Suddenly, the Democrats are acting like they're actually in a fight. Nancy Pelosi has vowed to bring a plan with a robust public option to the House floor, and even Senate leader Harry Reid Twittered his intention to strip insurance companies of their protections from anti-trust laws.

Reid says that the law allows insurers to fix prices and monopolize markets in ways that are illegal and uncompetitive. Surprise surprise, some senior Democrats are starting to back him up. The President even mentioned the exemption in his weekly address.

So are Democrats finally growing spine? Well, not so fast. Obama still won't commit to ending the exemption that allows insurance companies to do with our health what we don't let Microsoft do with computer software. And he hasn't declared a war for Medicare for all. Getting insurers to agree to cover everyone is nice -- but without a public option, it does nothing to drive down price.

With new polls showing that public support for the public option has only increased since August, it's time for Obama to take a stand. Americans didn't elect a president of insurance, they elected a president of the country. It's Obama's job to lead on this issue, to fight for the promises he made on the campaign trail: a public plan to keep insurance companies honest, no individual mandate and no taxes on employer-provided care. It's time for the Democrats to fight for measures that will actually improve care, not just sound nice on CNN. Go for it.

"The F Word" is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which airs weekdays on TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV and cable,) and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.

The Murders at al-Sukariya

2009-10-25T16:08:00.000-07:00

Published on Friday, October 23, 2009 by Vanity Fair

The Murders at al-Sukariya

by Reese Erlich and Peter Coyote

Akram Hamid scrubs the grease off his hands after a day of labor in Abu Kamal, a small Syrian town not far from the Iraqi border. Twenty minutes later, the mechanic rides his motorcycle past the autumn-dry rushes along the west bank of the placid Euphrates River, to al-Sukariya, happy to start fishing. It is dusk on a Sunday in October and the turned earth of the fields is pungent. Scattered farmers amble slowly home. A few late-season frogs pulse beneath the birds, chattering and thrashing in the rushes, as Hamid gets off his bike and scoots down the bank to drop his line.

He feels the rhythmic thwup-thwup in his stomach before he sees the helicopters. He stops to watch. He has seen helicopters, but not like these, and never four so close together. They display no markings of the Syrian Air Force, and they are the wrong color, painted black. He sees a B and a four. And they are flying low. When the door-gunners open fire, Hamid throws himself against the angled bank of the river. The men are shooting everywhere, firing from the air, spraying the ground.

Suddenly, the formation splits apart. Two helicopters hover just above the cinder-block walls that enclose a small farm, 300 feet away. One disappears inside the farm, and the last one lands about halfway between him and the wall. Eight men in uniform leap out and run quickly, crouching low, carrying weapons. They are not Syrians. They take cover farther up along the same bank, several hundred yards away.

Shells from the air are tearing out chunks of concrete, punching holes through the cinder blocks as if it were paper. The noise of the guns and motors is deafening. Hamid pulls himself along the rutted ground, peers fearfully over the edge of the bank, and slithers away, taking advantage of a lone tree for cover. He does not understand what is happening.

Some of the eight soldiers on the ground move forward and take up positions outside the high walls, but they don't seem to notice him. The hovering helicopters continue firing, tearing up the ground between him and the farm. "I thought it was safe because they didn't shoot at me," Hamid says later. After watching for about 15 minutes, he jumps on his bike to escape but, he says, "that's when they shot me." A bullet rips through his right arm, breaking it, mangling the muscles and nerves badly, and knocking him to the ground. Struggling to his feet, he sees the soldiers watching him as they climb into the helicopters and leave. "I was the last one they shot," he recalls. "No one was shooting at the soldiers," Hamid continues with certainty. "No one was shooting back."

Despite his serious wound, Hamid was lucky. U.S. troops—possibly special operations, according to some sources—killed seven people inside the walled farm that day: a father, his four sons, including a teenage boy, the father's visiting friend, and the night watchman. They also severely wounded the night watchman's wife. She and her six-year-old son, along with Hamid, would be the only survivors.

On that day, one year ago, four American helicopter gunships crossed the border from Iraq, flying about five miles into Syrian territory. Anonymous Pentagon sources said at the time that "a senior al-Qaeda terrorist," nicknamed Abu Ghadiya, had been killed in the raid. Ghadiya allegedly played a key role in smuggling men and arms across the Iraqi-Syrian border to attack American troops. According to George W. Bush's doctrines of pre-emptive war, the United States reserved the right to cross borders if the leaders of other countries failed to combat those it had designated as terrorists.

Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. analyst and now a consultant to army special operations, who has spoken to people with knowledge of the raid, says the U.S. was sending a message to the Syrians: "We've told you in the past to stop it. Now we're serious." He calls the raid "a Jim Croce incident," referring to the 1970s singer known for the lyrics "You don't tug on Superman's cape / You don't spit into the wind / You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger / And you don't mess around with Jim."

But Superman's cape looks decidedly different from Syria and the rest of the Middle East. What was a small blip in the American news cycle became front-page headlines across the Arab world. The raid was seen as an act of war.

Serious questions about the raid remain to this day. It appeared curious to some—including former C.I.A. field official Bob Baer—that the United States military would have successfully brought down a major terrorist without issuing a photograph or displaying other proof. The U.S. government made no official announcement about the raid. Certain government officials we spoke to regret that the attack was nothing more than another unsuccessful example of the Bush administration's cowboy tactics.

The Syrian government's reaction was surprisingly mild. Although demonstrations occurred in a town near al-Sukariya, Syria merely filed a complaint with the United Nations Security Council and ordered the closing of a cultural center and a school run by Americans. Did the low-key response reflect a tacit admission by Syria that the U.S. was correct?

The deaths at al-Sukariya never surfaced in the U.S. as a 2008 campaign issue, and the raid—likely because the human toll has been obscured by America's longitudinal two-front war—has been virtually forgotten in this country. However, solving the mystery of what actually happened one year ago, on October 26, 2008, is critical to understanding the reach, repercussions, and possible limits of U.S. military power. It may also provide valuable lessons for the Obama administration.

Was the incident a necessary blow against a shadowy terrorist enemy? Or was it an ill-conceived military adventure that risked alienating a potential ally and enraging the public? As we now see with the United States' cross-border drone attacks in Pakistan, threading that needle may prove to be one of the most vexing problems facing the Obama administration. And the thread begins for us in Syria.

To continue reading the rest of the article, go here.

Freelance foreign correspondent Reese Erlich has covered the Middle East for 23 years and is the author of three books. His fourth, Conversations with Terrorists, will be published in September 2010. Peter Coyote has appeared as an actor in more than 130 films and television programs and is the author of numerous articles and the recently re-issued book Sleeping Where I Fall. He is currently working on a new book, Lies We Like to Believe, and three television pilots.

'Booked on Suspicion'

2009-10-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

Published on Friday, October 23, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

'Booked on Suspicion'

by David Benjamin

In Louis Jordan’s classic song, “Saturday Night Fish Fry,” which recounts a riotous party on Rampart Street eventually raided by the police, the hapless protagonist is nabbed by the cops and “booked on suspicion.”

Anyone who remembers TV cop shows, like “Dragnet” and “Highway Patrol,” recalls dozens of bad guys hauled up “on suspicion” by Sgt. Joe Friday or Chief Dan Matthews. When I was a kid absorbing all this jurisprudence, I had no idea that “suspicion” was not an actual crime that could send you up the river. Even today, I don’t know if “suspicion” was the authentic argot of real cops in those innocent days.

Regardless of the era, if the police say they’re arresting a guy on “suspicion of burglary” or some such pretext, they still have to muster enough evidence for a real arraignment. This rule applied to even pre-Miranda cops like Joe Friday. Without a charge, the suspect, no matter how suspicious he looked, had to be cut loose.

American justice has always been exceptionally clear on this point: Suspicion by the forces of law and order against an individual implies no guilt whatsoever. Official suspicion confers on the State no right to accuse, pursue, arrest, detain or imprison. Anyone. This principle survived two centuries of challenge, ‘til September 11, 2001.

After that day, a pall of fear settled over America, rendering it acceptable for the State to suspect, seize, convict and imprison people for contemplating crimes they never committed, never actually organized and were not — most of the time — remotely capable of committing.

After reading about several such cases, all involving dark-skinned males of Middle Eastern origin, I thought of the O.J. Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue. Now and then, a professional burglar named John Dortmunder would meet in the O.J.’s back room with his confederates — Andy Kelp, Tiny, Murch and Murch’s mother — to plot the capers chronicled in a brilliant series of comic novels by Donald E. Westlake. I thought of the O.J. Bar & Grill because — although Dortmunder’s crew actively conceived crimes, planned them openly and assembled all the equipment necessary to commit the crimes — they remained entirely guiltless of any crime ‘til they actually pulled the job — picked the lock, disabled the alarm, entered the premises, cracked the safe, etc.

At least this was so until September 11, 2001. It was certainly true for Dortmunder, Kelp, Tiny, Murch and Murch’s mom. They didn’t actually need to hunker in the back room at the O.J. Bar & Grill to plan their crime, because planning a crime is no crime. If it were, Donald E. Westlake, author of at least a hundred crime novels, would be guilty of at least a hundred imaginary crimes — as would authors like Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain, and Hollywood crooks like Newman, Redford and Edward G. Robinson.

Imagination — even when devious — is not a crime in America.

Well, WAS not. Now, it is.

In the past eight years, a number of Swarthy-Americans, many as openly hostile to the U.S. government as Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Patriot movement, have been arrested for “material support of terrorism,” or — in Jack Webb’s terms — “booked on suspicion.” But, unlike all those outlaws swept up in “Dragnet,” the Swarthy-Americans jailed after 9/11 were not charged with a more serious, tangible, evidence-associated crime after the 24- or 48-hour “suspicion” pretense had expired.

Indeed, they were kept in jail, without bail. They were indicted, tried, and convicted of “suspicion.” Their juries of non-Swarthy peers had been convinced by the Feds that pondering a break-in, a murder or a bombing is the exact same as carrying it out.

If you thunk it, you done it. And you were, in several of these cases, sentenced to federal prison for the rest of your life.

There have been controversies since 9/11 about some of the extra-legal, dubiously constitutional and Draconian measures imposed on Americans by the so-called Patriot Act. But there’s been nary a squawk, from politicians or even from lawyers normally willing to defend serial murderers and child molesters, about these “material support” convictions — most of which involved no “materials” and boil down to tossing people into the dungeon for Being Brown and Thinking Bad Thoughts.

The Christian foundations for these expanded prosecutorial privileges are myriad and easy to find. Matthew 5:28 and Thomas Aquinas are popular. But I prefer the Baltimore Catechism of my grade-school days, wherein “material support” would be a “sin of intent,” or “a sin committed in wish but not in reality.” For instance, if I — at age 14 — had imagined myself fondling my buxom algebra teacher, but never actually laid a finger on her, nor had even the remotest hope of ever doing so, God was not concerned with practicalities. By thinking about Mrs. Thompson’s boobs, I had sinned against Mrs. Thompson’s boobs. I had to shlep that transgression to the confessional and admit my sin. After that, a handful of Hail Marys and Our Fathers and a sincere Act of Contrition squared me with God and send me back to math class with a clean conscience…

… Until the next time Mrs. Thompson got careless with her top button.

The latest example of an imaginary terrorist lusting in his heart after Mrs. Thompson’s boobs just showed up in court. From 2001 to 2008 — without actually DOING anything — a Swarthy-American named Tarek Mehanna thought about attacking a shopping mall, or else U.S. soldiers overseas, or maybe a politician or two. He wasn’t really sure. He vetted his idea with “terrorist groups abroad.” They laughed in his face. He tried to acquire guns, something almost anybody in America can do. He couldn’t get ‘em. After eight years of thinking — and talking — about a crime, Mehanna owned not one item necessary to attempt any felonious or terrorist act, or even a misdemeanor. He had recruited only two “co-conspirators,” one of whom was a federal informant. Eight years of impure thoughts and the guy was still miles away from Mrs. Thompson, his only pal was a stool pigeon, and he was looking at life in Leavenworth.

Sgt. Friday would be embarrassed to arrest this putz. He couldn’t get a seat in the back room at the O.J. even if he paid the tab. Father, tell him his penance, and let him go.

David Benjamin is a journalist and novelist originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He now divides his time between New York and Paris. His latest book, from Tuttle Publishing in January 2010, is SUMO: A Thinking Fan's Guide to Japan's National Sport.

America's Real Quagmire

2009-10-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Published on Friday, October 23, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

America's Real Quagmire

by Mark Weisbrot

What kind of a public debate can we have on the most vital issues of the day in the United States? A lot depends on the media, which determines how these issues are framed for most people.

Take the war in Afghanistan, which has been subject to major debate here lately, as Barack Obama has to decide whether to take the advice of his commanding officer in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, and send tens of thousands more troops there, or heed public opinion, which actually favours an end to the war.

This month, one of America's most important and most-watched TV news programmes, NBC's Meet the Press, took up the issue. The lineup:

Retired General Barry McCaffrey, former army general and drug tsar (under Bill Clinton) turned defence industry lobbyist. In a news article on McCaffrey titled "One man's military-industrial-media complex", the New York Times reported that McCaffrey had "earned at least $500,000 from his work for Veritas Capital, a private equity firm in New York that has grown into a defence industry powerhouse by buying contractors whose profits soared from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." McCaffrey has appeared on NBC more than 1000 times since 11 September 2001.

Retired General Richard Myers, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under George Bush (2002-2005). He is currently on the board of directors of Northrop Grumman Corporation, one of the largest military contractors in the world, and also of United Technologies Corporation, another large military contractor.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, a pro-war spokesperson that is one of the most regular guests on the Sunday talkshows.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat, was apparently intended to represent the "other side" of the debate. Here is what he said: "Clearly we should keep the number of forces that we have. No one's talking about removing forces."

"No one" in the above sentence refers to the American people, whom Levin understandably sees as nobody in the eyes of the US media and political leaders. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, 32% of those polled wanted US troops out of Afghanistan within one year or right now. That was the largest group. Another 24% wants the troops "removed within one to two years". For comparison, the leadership of the Taliban is willing to grant foreign troops 18 months to get out of their country.

In other words, a majority of 56% of Americans wants US troops out of Afghanistan about as soon as is practically feasible or even sooner. Yet Meet the Press – a mainstream network news talkshow since 1947 – does not see fit to find one person to represent that point of view. The other major TV and radio talkshows that the right also labels "liberal" in the US make similar choices almost every day.

When asked whether the US should set a timeline for withdrawal, Levin answered "no".

I know, if you have enough time you can still find an anti-war, public-interest viewpoint and the facts to support it – on the internet and even among some of the news stories in major media publications. But most Americans have other full-time jobs.

If the media's influence stopped there, the damage would be limited. After all, Americans can often still overcome the tutelage of the media's opinion leaders, as the above poll demonstrates. But the media also defines the debate for politicians. And that is where the life-and-death consequences really kick in.

If you want to know why Obama has not fought for a public option for healthcare reform, why he has caved to Wall Street on financial reform, why he has been Awol on the most important labour law reform legislation in 75 years (despite his campaign promises), just look at the major media. Think for a moment of how they would treat him if he did what his voters wanted him to do. You can be sure that Obama has thought it through very carefully.

Obama's whole political persona is based on media strategy, and on not taking any risk that the major media would turn against him. That is how he got where he is today and how he hopes to be re-elected. Many analysts confuse this with a strategy based on public opinion polling. But as we can see, these are often two different things.

Seventy-five percent of Americans support a public option for healthcare reform. (A majority would support expanding Medicare to cover everyone, but over the years the media, insurance and pharmaceutical companies made sure that this option didn't make it to the current debate.)

Obama has the bully pulpit. He could say to the rightwing Democrats in the Senate: "Look, you can vote against my proposals, but if you do not allow your president to even have a vote on this reform, you are not a Democrat." In other words, you can't join the Republicans in blocking the vote procedurally.

He could probably force Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, to join him in enforcing this minimal party discipline that would come naturally to Republicans, which would allow the healthcare bill to pass the Senate even if conservative Democrats voted against it.

But to do that would risk losing some of Obama's post-partisan, non-ideological aura that guarantees his media support. Of course, the media is not the only influence that hobbles healthcare reform. The insurance, pharmaceutical and other business lobbies obviously have more representation in Congress than does the majority of the electorate. But Obama does not feel this direct corporate pressure nearly as much. After all, he was the first president in recent decades to get 48% of his campaign contributions from donations of less than $200 – a very significant change in American politics, made possible though internet organising.

There are other powerful elite groupings, such as the foreign policy establishment – which is more ideologically driven, like the medieval church, than a collection of lobbying interests – that thwart reform on issues of war and peace. But the major media remain one of the biggest challenges to progressive reform in the 21st century.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, DC

Bush Jokes as Protesters Burn His Effigy in Montreal

2009-10-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

Published on Friday, October 23, 2009 by CTV News Canada

Bush Jokes as Protesters Burn His Effigy in Montreal

MONTREAL — As George W. Bush cracked jokes with a business crowd inside a hotel ballroom Thursday, hundreds of people outside the building cheered while he was being burned in effigy.

Protesters burn an effigy during a demonstration outside the Queen Elizabeth Hotel where former U.S. President George W. Bush was speaking Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009 in Montreal, Canada. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Ryan Remiorz)

Police in riot gear and others on horseback held back a crowd of hundreds, including many people who tossed shoes at Montreal's historic Queen Elizabeth Hotel in a demonstration of disdain for the man speaking inside.

Two protesters who tried forcing their way through the line of shield- and baton-carrying police were wrestled to the ground and arrested.

Montreal police said several officers were hit by flying objects, but none were injured. Five people were arrested for mischief and disturbing the peace.

Ironically, this demonstration took place outside the same hotel where John Lennon's antiwar anthem "Give Peace a Chance" was recorded in 1969.

Chants of "George Bush terrorist" echoed in the street as some of the 300 protesters lashed out at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal for rolling out the red carpet for him.

Many protesters said he should be arrested and charged with war crimes.

Inside the hotel, nearly 1,000 spectators paid as much as $400 to hear Bush speak during the latest stop on his Canadian tour.

He got a standing ovation when he first took the podium to address the eager audience.

"I believe in free speech -- except not today," he quipped, drawing laughs and a huge applause.

Many in the highly supportive crowd guffawed at most of Bush's jokes. The first 10 minutes of his 37-minute speech could have been mistaken for a standup routine.

In his first visit to Montreal, the former U.S. president warmed up his audience by referring to local hockey legends Maurice and Henri Richard.

"I was an avid sports fan (growing up) and I actually knew who the Rocket and the Pocket Rocket were," Bush recalled of his childhood days in the "deserts of west Texas."

Other cracks were more of the self-deprecating kind.

"Look, I hope you can understand me -- I can't understand you," Bush joked through his thick Texas accent.

"As you might remember, during my presidency some of my critics made it clear that English was not my long suit."

He praised the close trade relationship between the U.S. and Canada and thanked Canadian soldiers for their efforts in Afghanistan.

But Bush spent most of his time on stage defending his heavily criticized White House legacy, including how he handled the financial crisis, Iraq and the aftermath of 9-11.

He also brushed off his record-low public approval ratings at the end of his tumultuous presidency.

"If you chase popularity in life, you're often times going to be wrong," he said.

"The only thing that really matters is that when you look in the mirror you'll be proud of what you see."

Outside in the street, activists couldn't imagine why Bush, who spoke in Edmonton and Saskatoon earlier this week, had been invited to the Canadian cities.

"He has nothing to offer," said Helen Hannah, a colourfully dressed member of the Raging Grannies.

"He stands for modes of torture, modes of warfare and modes of lying that don't represent the way most Americans and most Canadians want to face the world -- we don't believe in those things."

Andre Gravel said Bush was a bad president who was incompetent on many levels, including his handling of the environment, the wars in the Middle East and the economy.

The conflicts Bush waged in Afghanistan and Iraq have destabilized world peace, he added.

"I am in favour of (his) right to speak," Gravel said.

"But we have the right to protest against him.

"Everything he did was negative."

Demonstrators blew horns and lobbed footwear at the front entrance of the hotel -- a symbolic act to pay homage to the Iraqi journalist who was jailed for throwing his shoes at Bush.

They also torched a life-sized dummy of the former president.

Following Bush's speech, the former president fielded questions from event moderator John Parisella, the former chief of staff to the late Quebec premier Robert Bourassa.

Parisella asked Bush about his more controversial decisions as president, including the American-led invasion of Iraq.

Bush stood up for the action he took in Iraq, even though the country's former president, Saddam Hussein, never had weapons of mass destruction.

"Had he been in power today, he'd have them," he replied in a defensive tone.

Bush contends he made calls from the Oval Office as best he could with the information he had at the time -- and he has few regrets about them.

"I'm not a hand-wringer, John -- I'm not one of these guys that go: 'Oh man, woe is me,' " he said.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Lennon's recording of "Give Peace a Chance" with wife Yoko Ono during their bed-in for peace at the Queen Elizabeth.

"It's a really sad and tragic irony," said protester Jaggi Singh.

"All we are saying is not just 'give peace a chance' ... we're saying peace comes with justice, peace comes with dignity, peace comes when people struggle for peace and for justice and for dignity."

Judge Refuses to Dismiss War Crimes Case Against Blackwater

2009-10-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

Published on Friday, October 23, 2009 by The Nation

Judge Refuses to Dismiss War Crimes Case Against Blackwater

by Jeremy Scahill

On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a series of arguments by lawyers for the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater seeking to dismiss five high-stakes war crimes cases brought by Iraqi victims against both the company and its owner, Erik Prince. At the same time, Judge TS Ellis III sent the Iraqis' lawyers back to the legal drawing board to amend and refile their cases, saying that the Iraqi plaintiffs need to provide more specific details on the alleged crimes before a final decision can be made on whether or not the lawsuits will proceed.

An Iraqi traffic police officer inspects a car that a Blackwater Worldwide security detail is suspected of destroying as part of unprovoked attack in Nisoor Square in Baghdad. Guards from the private security contractor are charged with killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding 20 others in the 2007 incident. (2007 Photo By Khalid Mohammed -- Associated Press)

"We were very pleased with the ruling," says Susan Burke, the lead attorney for the Iraqis. Burke, who filed the lawsuits in cooperation with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is now preparing to re-file the suits. Blackwater's spokesperson Stacy DeLuke said, "We are confident that [the plaintiffs] will not be able to meet the high standard specified in Judge Ellis' opinion."

Ellis's ruling was not necessarily a response to faulty pleadings by the Iraqis' lawyers, but rather appears to be the result of a Supreme Court decision that came down after the Blackwater cases were originally filed. In a 5-4 ruling in May 2009 in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the court reversed decades of case law and imposed much more stringent standards for plaintiffs' to document facts before going to trial. According to Ellis's ruling, which cites Iqbal, the Iraqis must now file complaints that meet these new standards.

Judge Ellis, a Reagan appointee with a mixed record on national security issues, rejected several of the central arguments Blackwater made in its motion to dismiss, namely the company's contention that it cannot be sued by the Iraqis under US law and that the company should not be subjected to potential punitive damages in the cases. The Iraqi victims brought their suits under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows for litigation in US courts for violations of fundamental human rights committed overseas by individuals or corporations with a US presence. Ellis said that Blackwater's argument that it cannot be sued under the ATS is "unavailing," adding that corporations and individuals can both be held responsible for crimes and torts. He said bluntly that "claims alleging direct corporate liability for war crimes" are legitimate under the statute.

Ellis also rejected Blackwater's argument that "conduct constitutes a war crime only if it is perpetrated in furtherance of a 'military objective' rather than for economic or ideological reasons." Ellis said that under Blackwater's logic "it is arguable that nobody who receives a paycheck would ever be liable for war crimes. Moreover, so narrow is the scope of [Blackwater's] standard that it would exclude murders of civilians committed by soldiers where there was no legitimate 'military objective' for committing the murders."

"What is important here is that the judge is saying that violations of war crimes can be committed by private people or corporations," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He said Ellis's ruling is "an affirmation of the precedent set by CCR thirty years ago" when it brought the first successful Alien Tort suit in 200 years "that those who engage in violations of fundamental human rights abroad can be held liable in the US." Ellis's ruling, he says, "is sympathetic to the idea that the Blackwater case is an appropriate use of the law."

But Ellis also ruled that the Iraqi plaintiffs failed to provide sufficient specific details linking Blackwater's owner Erik Prince to the alleged murders and other crimes in Iraq. In order for the case to proceed against Prince, Ellis wrote, "the complaints must state facts that would allow a trier of fact plausibly to infer that Prince intentionally killed or inflicted serious bodily harm on innocent civilians during an armed conflict and in the context of and in association with that armed conflict." The plaintiffs, Ellis ruled, "have failed to meet this burden."

In a hearing on August 28, Burke said that she has evidence that Prince ordered or directed the killings of innocent Iraqis and at that time asked Judge Ellis permission to later amend her cases if Ellis ruled that, in light of the Iqbal decision, such information was necessary for the cases to proceed. In his ruling, Ellis granted Burke's request in four of the five cases. In one case, involving the alleged murder of a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president by a drunken Blackwater operative, Andrew Moonen, on Christmas Eve 2006 inside the Green Zone, Ellis found that there was insufficient evidence to suggest Prince "intentionally killed" the bodyguard or that his "conduct proximately caused the decedent's death."

In the four other cases, which include 18 Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by Blackwater, Ellis ruled that Burke could refile her claim with more details about Prince's alleged involvement and the role of the Blackwater corporation in the killings. Ellis found that the cases "could be amended to add factual allegations that would permit plausible inferences that Prince and Xe [Blackwater] defendants ordered killings of innocent Iraqi civilians... and that defendants' conduct proximately caused the injuries or deaths to plaintiffs."

Ellis rejected Burke's allegation that Blackwater engaged in summary executions, saying that under the law such classification of killings "require[s] state action, and none is alleged here." Blackwater also made an argument that the cases should have been tried in Iraq--or that the Iraqis' lawyers should have exhausted that possibility before filing their cases in US courts. Ellis shot down that argument and pointed out that Blackwater's own lawyers admitted that under the Paul Bremer-era Order 17 in Iraq, Blackwater would have immunity for its crimes under Iraqi law. Ellis also rejected Blackwater's claim that punitive damages are not allowed in these types of cases. As Ellis wrote, Blackwater's lawyers "offer no support" for this argument "in the case law or from recognized international treatises."

One of the central thrusts of the Iraqis' suits against Blackwater is that Erik Prince is the head of an organized crime syndicate as defined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO is a federal statute permitting private parties to seek redress from criminal enterprises who damage their property. Burke and CCR decided to sue Prince and his companies directly rather than his individual employees because they say Prince "wholly owns and controls this enterprise." They allege that Prince directed murders of Iraqi civilians from Blackwater's headquarters in Virginia and North Carolina. Ellis dismissed the claims that the Iraqis have standing under the RICO Act, but ruled that they can file an amended complaint that "Prince ordered or directed the killings allegedly committed in Iraq from within the United States, and that such conduct proximately caused the damage allegedly suffered by the RICO plaintiffs." In one of the cases, Ellis ruled that the four-year statute of limitations had expired for a RICO claim.

On August 3, lawyers for the Iraqis submitted two sworn declarations from former Blackwater employees alleging that Prince may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. One former employee alleged that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." What role, if any, these allegations will play in the amended complaints is unclear, but Burke insists she has evidence to back up all of her allegations.

Burke's case is also bolstered by the evidence the US government will present in its criminal case against Blackwater forces. On September 7, federal prosecutors in Washington, DC, submitted papers in the criminal case against five Blackwater operatives for their alleged role in the 2007 Nisour Square shooting in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 others. Burke is representing many of these families in her civil case. Blackwater forces "fired at innocent Iraqis not because they actually believed that they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury and actually believed that they had no alternative to the use of deadly force, but rather that they fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their hostility toward Iraqis and their grave indifference to the harm that their actions would cause," the acting US Attorney in DC, Channing Phillips, alleges in court papers submitted by Kenneth C. Kohl, the lead prosecutor on this case. "[T]he defendants specifically intended to kill or seriously injure the Iraqi civilians that they fired upon at [Nisour] Square." The government also alleges that one Blackwater operative "wanted to kill as many Iraqis as he could as 'payback for 9/11,' and he repeatedly boasted about the number of Iraqis he had shot," while "several of the defendants had harbored a deep hostility toward Iraqi civilians which they demonstrated in words and deeds."

In its motion to dismiss, Blackwater also argued that to allow the company to be sued for alleged crimes in a war zone would violate the rights of the president of the United States under the "political question doctrine" to not have a "second-guessing of the battlefield decisions of the U.S. government." Ellis rejected that outright and noted: "The United States has appeared as an interested party and argues that if defendants committed the alleged conduct, they were not acting as employees of the United States when they did so. Moreover, the government states that its contracts with defendants 'provided for multiple layers of [Xe defendants'] management to oversee the day-to-day operations' of its employees and that the employees were under the direct supervision of Xe defendants' management when the alleged conduct occurred."

Judge Ellis's ruling only relates to the charges that Blackwater and Prince violated federal laws and not to the additional allegations that they also violated state laws. Even if Judge Ellis ultimately rejects all of the federal arguments made by Burke and CCR, which is a big if, the cases can still proceed under "common law," as has happened in other torture and war crimes cases. Ellis has not yet ruled on those charges.

3 on water

2009-10-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

Southeast Water Scarcity Blamed on Overpopulation
Environment News Service

The population is still growing with many people

migrating into the region, but little has been done to

increase water storage or reduce consumption. more »

A New Lawsuit May Hold the Key to Keeping

Polluting Animal Waste Out of Waterways
By Yee Huang, Center for Progressive Reform

The implications could be hugely significant, not just for

the Illinois River Basin but for other waterways polluted

by animal waste. more »

Three Solutions to Our Water and Population Problems
By Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute

We must implement all three solutions in the right way

to be effective. more »

Toxic Waters: Regulatory Absence Allows Chemical, Coal and Farm Industries to Pollute US Water Supplies

2009-10-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted October 23, 2009.

No federal regulations specifically govern the disposal of power plant discharges into waterways or landfills.

In Special Coverage

Belief:
An Atheist's Review of the Book of Genesis Illustrated by a Legendary Comics Artist
Greta Christina

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally
Mark Ames

DrugReporter:
President Obama And Gov. Paterson Get Love For Recent Drug Policy Reforms
Tony Newman

Environment:
McKibben Versus Hedges' Clash of Worldviews: How Do We Solve the Environmental Crisis?
Chris Hedges, Bill McKibben

Health and Wellness:
Rape Is a Pre-Existing Condition? The Heartlessness of the Health Insurance Industry Exposed
Danielle Ivory

Immigration:
A Death in Texas Casts Cold Light on America's Privatized Immigration Prisons
Tom Barry

Media and Technology:
8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization
Adele Stan

Movie Mix:
Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie (and So Must You)!
Arianna Huffington

Politics:
Rachel Maddow Mocks the Idea of Bush as a Motivational Speaker

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
A National Treasure -- The Memoirs of Gay Rights Pioneer Martin Duberman
Doug Ireland

Rights and Liberties:
Obama Is Keeping Bush's Worst "War on Terror" Policies Firmly In Place
Julian Sanchez

Sex and Relationships:
How I Realized I'm Bisexual
Rabbit White

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Southeast Water Scarcity Blamed on Overpopulation

World:
Will Anyone Actually Vote in Afghanistan's Much Anticipated Run-Off Election?
Hafizullah Gardesh

Finding Water from Space:

2009-10-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

Finding Water from Space: How One Geologist Is Using Satellite

Technology to Help in Drought-Striken Areas
Miller-McCune.com
A globe-trotting geologist uses satellites and other remote-sensing

platforms to find water under some of the world's thirstiest places.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: The Fight for Better Health Care

2009-10-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

Posted by Sen. Bernie Sanders at 7:00 PM on October 23, 2009.

A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars.

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One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don’t end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to.

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Tagged as: healthcare, single payer, health insurance, bernie sanders, public option