Thursday, June 28, 2007

Why the Supreme Court Matters




In case there are those who still ponder the merits of voting, and who sits in the Oval Office, a quick glimpse of recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court might give you some pause for reflection.

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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

More Blacks in College- Less in Military




Why mo' niggaz in the pen than in college?

The above rhetorical question was uttered by Ice Cube (pre-Mack 10/post-NWA) almost two decades ago, when frequent episodes of black-on-black crime fueled speculation that the "race" would "self-destruct." Those fears were probably over sold, though quite understandable during the "crack epidemic" era. And it turns out that while the prison industrial complex is indeed a rapacious devourer of black manhood, and increasingly black womanhood as well, the ratio of black males in prison vis-a-vis college reverse's from Ice Cube's lament when we take college aged youth into account.

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O'Reilly



Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O'Reilly. So when a high school student put Mr. Loofah in his place about an over-hyped story regarding alleged "drug-use" advocacy by the "far-left," the moment was certainly deemed blog-worthy. Click Video to watch Bill get tripped up, and then resort to attacking the kid when exposed. Below is a more indepth story from Newshounds--who watch FOX News so we don't have to. (Yes Virginia, you can pause the page music. The Imeem box is on your lower right).

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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Media News Roundup- Sunday June 17th to Sat June 23rd




Keeping an eye on the failing Fourth Estate and looking for some TRUTH in journalism.

Media under reports CIA release of documents pertaining to illegal operations of the past few decades. News blackout on report by Global Policy Forum highlighting U.S. role in war-torn Iraq. Bright spot of the week: In the midst of simplistic media readings of the issues relating to the recent Palestinian internecine conflict, Adam Entous at Reuters provides some illuminating context.

[T]he CIA is preparing to declassify hundreds of documents that detail some if its most infamous and illegal operations. The records are believed to cover the period from the 1950s to the 1970s. They include details on domestic spying, infiltrating leftist groups, drug tests on US citizens and assassination plots against foreign leaders. In advance of the release, the National Security Archive has published a new set of documents revealing the Ford administration was concerned about the documents’ eventual disclosure. In a memo to Ford, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said a 1974 article by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on the CIA’s infiltration of anti-war groups was “just the tip of the iceberg.” Kissinger also warned that “blood will flow” if several other operations were exposed, including the Kennedy administration’s attempts to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro. Kissinger says former Attorney General Robert Kennedy personally managed the assassination plot. Announcing the release on Thursday, CIA Director Michael Hayden said: “Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA’s history."



News Blackout on Global Policy Forum Report Detailing U.S. Role in Iraq

This past week the independent Global Policy Forum released a 117-page report titled "War and Occupation in Iraq." Executive Director James Paul summed up the purpose of the report:

While most people focus on the sectarian bloodshed, our report highlights the enormous violence of the occupation forces. There is an increasing air war that results in heavy casualties as well as the daily killing of civilians at checkpoints, during house searches, by snipers, and by ground bombardment. Nearly a million Iraqis have died due to the effects of the occupation and 4 million have fled from their homes. A dozen cities have been destroyed by U.S. attacks.
While the report was well received overseas and throughout the blogosphere, it remained almost invisible to the mainstream news media--which seems unwilling to hold the U.S. responsible for its central role in the chaos that is Iraq.

Bright Spot of the Week

Entous of Reuters Provides Context on Palestinian Conflict

In the midst of simplistic media readings of the issues relating to the recent Palestinian internecine conflict, Adam Entous at Reuters provides some illuminating context, most notably the role of the U.S. and Israel, sorely lacking in most depictions.

After Gaza, Some Question Who was Overthrowing Whom

Mon Jun 18, 2007
By Adam Entous

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The U.S. government began to lay the ground for President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the Hamas-led Palestinian government at least a year before the Islamist group's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last week.

Western, Israeli and Palestinian official sources said over the weekend that, far from being an ad hoc response to Hamas's offensive, Abbas's declaration of a state of emergency and his replacement of a Hamas prime minister with Western favourite Salam Fayyad marked the culmination of months of backroom deliberations, planning and U.S. prodding.

In the end, pressure on Abbas to act against Hamas was as great -- if not greater -- from within his own Fatah faction as from Washington, which is seeking to play down its own role.

Only the triggering event, resulting in total Hamas control of the Gaza Strip, can be said to have come as a nasty surprise to the Americans. It left in tatters plans by U.S. and Arab allies to build up Abbas's own forces in Gaza against Hamas.

Many Western officials and analysts see the offensive as a pre-emptive strike by Hamas before Washington could build up Fatah. Hamas says it made its move against a U.S.-backed "coup".

for full article:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUKNOA84074520070618


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Thursday, June 21, 2007

The State of the Black Male in America- A Conference




Black and Male in America: A Three Day National Conference” was held last Friday, from June 15 through Sunday, June 17 in downtown Brooklyn. It was put together by writer and activist Kevin Powell, the culminating result of the much acclaimed "State of Black Men Townhall Meetings and Workshops," a 10-city national tour from 2004. While I supported the conference, and certainly encouraged others to attend, I remained inwardly skeptical. Was this going to be another gathering to preach "moral uplift" for black males while listing off one dysfunction after another? Should I be set to get a lot of "preaching to" about how I wasn't living up to the nostalgic days of my 1960s fore bearers? And worst of all, was I was going to be made to take some kind of pledge? With reluctance I tepidly made my way to the event...

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Media Propaganda & the Palestinian "Civil War"



The recent so-called "Civil War" in Gaza has been widely reported by the mainstream media. However the story that is most often told is blatantly one-sided and lacking in any context. Since Hamas came to power through democratic elections in 2006, the U.S. and Israel have done all they could to, beat, starve and push the more militant Palestinian faction from power, going as far as to cut-off aid and shooting down any proposals for reconciliation with Fatah. The key reason given for this is the refusal of Hamas to disarm and recognize the state of Israel--a crime somehow far greater than Israel's 40-year occupation and establishment of an apartheid system that routinely destroys Palestinian infrastructure, cuts off water and electricity as a tactic of war, carries out extra-judicial assassinations and more...

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Monday, June 18, 2007

Armed Madhouse- Starving Masses




Last week the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released a report on global military spending. In it they found the nations of the world spent a staggering $1.2 TRILLION on wars and weaponry--with none other than the U.S. leading the pack. The figure is staggering even more so, in the small rate of time it took the increase to occur. The report states, "The volume of conventional weapons traded internationally in 2006 was 50 percent higher than that of 2002." What kind of world do we live in where millions go hungry or live in poverty, where our ecosystems and our species face threats like global warming, where diseases like HIV ravage entire societies and treatable maladies like malaria are allowed to fester, and yet these "imagined communities" we call states--to whom we look to in order to protect the public welfare--spend TRILLIONS on varied machines created for the sole purpose of maiming, injuring, terrorizing and taking human life?

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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Media News Roundup- Sunday June 10th to Sat June 16th




Keeping an eye on the failing Fourth Estate and looking for some TRUTH in journalism.

Media plays disingenuous about roots of recent Palestinian conflict between Fatah and Hamas. MSNBC has day long discussion on immigration, featuring only conservatives. Bright spot of the week: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman Talks "Vulture Funds" with BBC Reporter.

During the seven hours of the June 11 edition of MSNBC Live (9 a.m.-4 p.m. ET), 15 segments aired about immigration or the Senate immigration bill, none of which featured a Democratic or progressive commentator. Indeed, in nine of the 15 segments, the anchor interviewed a conservative anti-immigration activist who had opposed the bill -- including six separate solo interviews with MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan. The remaining six segments consisted of two panels with Buchanan and conservative activist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Tamar Jacoby (who, alone among the guests, favored the recent immigration bill), an interview with Congressional Quarterly immigration reporter Michael Sandler, an interview with MSNBC terrorism analyst Joe Cantamessa, and two reports from MSNBC congressional correspondent Mike Viqueira.


With such biased media coverage perhaps it's little wonder then that the entire discussion on immigration has been caught up in nativist rantings and fearmongering, stalling the needed debate as quickly as the doomed bill.

Bright Spot of the Week

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman Talks "Vulture Funds" with BBC Reporter

As with most anything dealing with the negative effects of global financial institutions, trade agreements and neoliberal policies, the mainstream media has neglected a massively important story surrounding the aptly named "vulture funds." Riding the coat-tails of so-called "aid" promised by the G-8, “vulture funds” are companies which buy up third world debt at low prices (like your average collection agency) and then sue those countries for the full value and more. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman has been one of the few reporters to cover this important story, but can do so only through European journalists like the BBC's Greg Palast. Palast exposed the case of one vulture fund, Donegal International owned by US resident Michael Sheehan, which was forcing collection of $40 million from the African country Zambia after buying one of its debts for $4 million. The story was so explosive that when it reached the ears of Congressman John Conyers, Chairman of the US House Judiciary, and Don Payne, head of the Africa Committee, who were listening to Democracy Now on the way to a White House meeting, they immediately pressed the matter with the President. Such incidents beg the question, would our politicians perform better if they were at least better informed by our news media?

For full story:

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman Talks "Vulture Funds" with BBC Reporter

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Friday, June 15, 2007

So Now...It's the Iraqis' Fault ?





It's the Iraqis Fault! That's been the talking point now on both the Democratic and Republican side of the aisle, wrapped up in nice terms like "benchmarks." Vice President Dick Cheney flies off to Iraq to wag his finger scoldingly at the semi-puppet regime in Baghdad. "We've given the Iraqis freedom and what do they do with it?" asks Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) says we have to "hold the Iraqis accountable." The way the story is spun, Iraq was done a tremendous favor by America's illegal invasion to depose Saddam Hussein (one must assume there was also a favor back in the 1980s when the U.S. actively supported Saddam Hussein), and now the ungrateful wretches are bickering amongst themselves and biting the hands of their generous benefactors with a relentless insurgency. The White Man's Burden ain't been heavier...

A few words on benchmarks. This has become the darling term of both Democrats and Republicans—certain achievements placed on the Iraqi government threatening them with an American withdrawal if these goals are not met. Now the Iraqis are the ones who are blamed for the mess in Iraq. They are told to reconcile their differences peacefully, while the U.S. and its so-called “coalition” drop laser-guided bombs and “whiskey pete” to solve their differences. The Iraqis are told to get their government in order and include the Sunnis—when it was the U.S., under its gubernator overlord Paul Bremer, who instituted the inane Baathist purge. The Iraqis have to take back their country from insurgents, when it was the U.S. President who bravely declared from several thousand miles away "bring 'em on," and decided to use their country as a battle ground--"fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." The Iraqis have to train their new army, when it was the U.S. that disbanded the old one—allowing them to take their guns with them. The Iraqis now have to sign away their oil in imbalanced policies to pay for the rebuilding of their country—the one the U.S. destroyed. The emerging “civil war” that now flares up around the country is the fault of the “ungrateful” Iraqis, and somehow those that unleashed those horrendous forces get to escape responsibility and point out that at least they got rid of their one-time ally Saddam Hussein.

Near 3000 Iraqis die a month. Perhaps over 600,000 have died since the war began. Their country is shattered. Their various ethnic groups have been set against each other. Car-bombings—non-existent before—are now everyday occurrences there. And they remain an occupied state in the midst of an endless war zone. Yet they, who are bearing the brunt of the U.S.’s misguided necon policies, are the ones who are being told to "take some responsibility." There’s something inherently wrongheaded about that entire line of thinking. Basically, after an illegal invasion that broke their country and set it into chaos, the United States is now saying—“hey get your act together or we won’t do you any MORE favors!”

Sorry Iraqis, take it from those of us in the know, America ain't big on owning up to its responsibilities much less implementing "reparations." Expect to be left holding the bag while we engage in bouts of selective amnesia into the role we played in bringing the present into being.

Well, it's good to know I wasn't the only one who thought this entire line of reasoning was off-kilter. But I had to go all the way to France to find out--or rather the good people at TRUTHOUT.org went to France for me.


From Now on, According to Americans, Everything "Is the Iraqis' Fault"

By Guillemette Faure
Rue 89

Wednesday 06 June 2007

"The Iraqis did not seize the opportunity they were presented." That's what Hillary Clinton said Sunday night during the Democratic debate. She explained that the American troops had fulfilled their mission. "They've overthrown Saddam and given them elections." And look what the Iraqis did with that ...

This is not the first time that Hillary has made the Iraqis responsible for the debacle in Iraq. Last summer at a conference at the Council of Foreign Relations, she accused the Iraqi government of "holding American credibility hostage." According to her, it was time to explain that, "American forces would not always be there to accommodate their refusal."

Has Hillary got chutzpah? She's not alone. To be able to justify a withdrawal without having to acknowledge an American defeat, Democrats and Republicans are now in agreement to blame the Iraqis. This way, the Republicans emphasize that it's not their policy that's in question; the Democrats avoid bearing the bad news of an American defeat and looking like a party of losers by demanding a departure from Iraq. And for Democrats who - like Senator Clinton - voted in favor of the war, the maneuver allows them not to have to reconsider their vote.

The tendency can be observed across the complete political spectrum from President Bush, who first mentioned that "[his] patience has limits" to Barbara Boxer, the very progressive senator from California who declared in November: "We've given the Iraqis freedom and what do they do with it? They kill each other ..." This type of discourse describes the Iraqis as adapting rather well to the present situation, as when Donald Rumsfeld wrote in a memo to the president before his resignation that a slight American military disengagement would push the Iraqis "to pull their socks up."

In the Senate, when Congress tried to obtain a schedule of withdrawal from Iraq, Democrat Carl Levin explained that it was, "time for Congress to explain to Iraqis that it's their country." A schedule of departure from Iraq would send "a good dose of reality to Iraqi leaders." So on what cloud are they living then, these Iraqis ...

Listen to the discourse of all the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates and you'll hear the same thing: we did what we could in Iraq, but the Iraqis are not good enough. "Enough coddling! Enough vacillating!" even expostulated Barack Obama last year.

It was even, indirectly, the exit strategy proposed by the nonetheless celebrated Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group: to condition American aid on goals the Iraqi government is supposed to reach, which, assuming that the goals would be unattainable, would then allow the Americans to leave with their heads held high. A strategy Zbigniew Bzrezinski has summarized as "blame and leave."

Democrats and Republicans should have read what well-known military analyst Anthony Cordesman explained as early as last November to Time magazine as he felt this tendency rising: "When someone lets an elephant loose in a china shop, you don't blame the china shop for the broken dishes."



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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

President Lieberman ?




Joe Lieberman. From supporting the Iraq War, to restricting abortion rights to helping block legislation calling for a vote of no-confidence for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Senator's name is one now hissed in progressive circles with the venom usually reserved for the likes of George Bush or Dick Cheney. Yet it was only 7 years ago that he was hailed as the last line of defense against those same GOP candidates. Who would have thought that the former running mate of Al Gore in 2000 would today become the walking incarnation of neoconservatism--dressed up in Democrat drag. Robert Scheer at The Nation ponders "President Lieberman" and "provides a cautionary tale for folks who talk of backing 'any Democrat' who can win."

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Sunday, June 10, 2007

Media News Roundup- Sunday May 27th to Sat June 2nd



Keeping an eye on the failing Fourth Estate and looking for some TRUTH in journalism.

Media notes AIDS pledge at G8 but not massive cut of important medicare to those infected. Five stories of actual importance buried by the media's shameful Paris Hilton-mania. Bright spot of the week: Sam Seder show, taking cue from Media Matters report, shows what diversity in news media can look like.

(1) Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces during the first year of the Iraq war, this week derided the idea of a military "victory" and stated that the best outcome America can hope for is to "stave off defeat."

(2) Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for lying to a grand jury and the FBI during the investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson who challenged the White House on claims of Saddam Hussein-WMD ties to Niger during the lead up to the Iraq War.

(3) The Senate Judiciary Committee passed an important bill to restore habeas corpus, the fundamental right to challenge government detention in court. Last year Constitutional rights activists were stunned when the Military Commissions Act, passed by a GOP led Congress, revoked habeas corpus—an act that was widely criticized as unconstitutional and un-American.

(4) In back-to-back rulings, military judges threw out all charges against Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, who are detainees at the now infamous Guantánamo Bay prison. Khadr has been held there since he was 15; Hamdan has been fingered as the alleged chauffeur of Osama bin Laden. In a move that highlights weaknesses in the Bush administration’s unlawful definition of “enemy combatants,” the judges claimed the cases could not go on because the U.S. government had failed to “establish jurisdiction.”

(5) Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in written remarks this past Wednesday, that Vice President Dick Cheney blocked the promotion of a top Justice Department lawyer after the official called into question the legality of the White House's secret domestic spying program. Relatedly, this was the fourth week in which the wire-tapping hospital drama involving Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, White House Chief-of-staff Andrew Card and a gravely ill John Ashcroft went underreported in the mainstream press. As cited previously in this forum, James Comey's May 15 congressional testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the matter was like a bizarre tale out of an Oliver Stone film.


Bright Spot of the Week

Sam Seder Show’s Diverse Political Roundtable

A recent report by Media Matters highlighted the manner in which women and people of color are all but shut out of most political news discussions. So it was a breath of fresh air this past weekend to hear the political roundtable on the Sam Seder Show on Air America Radio. Featured were not only media critics like Glenn Greenwald and a voice for women through FireDogLake blogger Christy Hardin Smith, but also Ron Daniels the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and President for the Institute on the Black World 21st Century. Daniels was not simply invited on to discuss pertinent "African-American" specific issues, but was given the rare opportunity to voice his thoughts on political topics as diverse as the Iraq War, American foreign policy and more. Kudos to Sam Seder for recognizing that people of color have opinions on large topics that are not always bound to topics of race, something of which most mainstream media Sunday shows seem wholly unaware.


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Friday, June 8, 2007

Attack of the Clones: Blackwater, Emergency Powers & the Endangered Republic




We go through episodes too, like Attack of the Clones.--Talib Kweli, "Get By"

In Star Wars lore, the Galactic Republic--in order to put down an insurgent rebellion--engineered a private guard of clone soldiers. Hailed as the protectors and saviors of the Republic, it was unknown that in fact they had truly been created by the Sith--as part of a complex plot to one day take power--and that the insurgency was more fabrication than reality. With the declaration of a grave emergency--the supposed "treason of the Jedi"--this clone army came under the sway of a Chancellor with thinly veiled aspirations of supreme power. In short time the Galactic Republic became an Empire, and the Chancellor its sole leader, with a vast private army answerable only to himself. Thankfully, we haven't gotten the science of cloning down past Dolly the sheep. And Sith Lords are mere fable. However, what the Star Wars mythology does warn, is that when you allow leaders with notions of unlimited power and religious messianic fervor to amass private armies wedded to similar notions, you might be asking for trouble--as a series of recent articles on the private firm Blackwater and White House directives reveal.

Blackwater was founded in 1996 by conservative Christian multimillionaire and ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince--the scion of a wealthy Michigan family whose generous political donations helped fuel the rise of the religious right and the Republican revolution of 1994. At its founding, the company largely consisted of Prince's private fortune and a vast 5,000-acre plot of land located near the Great Dismal Swamp in Moyock, North Carolina....Blackwater currently has 2,300 personnel deployed in nine countries, with 20,000 other contractors at the ready. It has a fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships and a private intelligence division, and it is manufacturing surveillance blimps and target systems.
With the Iraq War, Blackwater became a darling of the Bush Administration and has been making a literal "killing"--receiving lucrative federal contracts. As its founder and CEO Erik Prince told FOX News, "The phone is ringing off the hook now."

Scahill notes:

Its [Blackwater] largest obtainable government contract is with the State Department, for providing security to US diplomats and facilities in Iraq. That contract began in 2003 with the company's $21 million no-bid deal to protect Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer. Blackwater has guarded the two subsequent US ambassadors, John Negroponte and Zalmay Khalilzad, as well as other diplomats and occupation offices. Its forces have protected more than ninety Congressional delegations in Iraq, including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. According to the latest government contract records, since June 2004 Blackwater has been awarded $750 million in State Department contracts alone. It is currently engaged in an intensive lobbying campaign to be sent into Darfur as a privatized peacekeeping force. Last October President Bush lifted some sanctions on Christian southern Sudan, paving the way for a potential Blackwater training mission there. In January the Washington, DC, representative for southern Sudan's regional government said he expected Blackwater to begin training the south's security forces soon.
The accountability of these mercenaries, who are authorized to use deadly force, is non-existent. Twice in the past week, they have been involved in shooting incidents in Baghdad which have sparked anger among Iraqis. In 2004 the death of four Blackwater mercenaries in Fallujah caused a U.S. reprisal which killed hundreds of Iraqis and caused over a 100,000 to flee the city, which was left in ruins--an act that many today cite as a key spark of the insurgency. More disturbing is that Blackwater recruits not only from the U.S., but from the more notorious secret police/paramilitary employment pool in places like Chile--where many once worked under the American installed/backed right-wing dictator Augustus Pinochet. Erik Kongshaug highlights this practice in a May article for Random Lengths News:

The story of Chile's involvement with Blackwater begins in 2003, when Blackwater's neo-con founder, Erik Prince, a former U.S. Navy Seal, was discovered by his Chilean parallel: Jose Miguel Pizarro Ovalle, an avid supporter of then-ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet and an ex-Chilean special forces, himself, of dual U.S.-Chilean citizenship....As a subcontractor for Blackwater, Pizarro began recruiting from the Chilean military and federal police....Pizarro had provided, by his own admission, some 750 Chilean forces to Blackwater and other private military firms operating in Iraq.
Besides Chile, one of the largest other pools of recruitment for Blackwater is none other than South Africa. Bill Berkowitz in his article Mercenaries 'R' Us points out "there are more than 1,500 South Africans in Iraq today, most of whom are former members of the South African Defense Force and South African Police"--that's the pro-white apartheid South African Defense Force and South African Police, in case you might have missed the significance.

As if this shadowy nexus of foreign policy, white supremacy, private armies and modern "gurkhas" wasn't bad enough, there is the fearful prospect of what could happen if any leader--as was done with the Clone Army of the Galactic Republic--decided to turn their hired guards loose on a domestic populace. Seems far-fetched of course, but it's not as if we don't have the mechanisms to take such speculation into reality.

This past May, in a story that was somehow missed by most of the main stream press, the Bush White House released a directive detailing plans for dealing with a "catastrophic emergency" titled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20." Within, "catastrophic emergency" is defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function." This vague definition can fit just about anything--a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, an environmental accident, a computer virus attack, a disease outbreak or otherwise. During this time the document claims that "the continued function of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government," will remain. However, it also states "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government," and goes further to say that any such functioning government would be "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers." If you're not familiar with the term "comity"--it simply means "courtesy;" this means the President would decide the proper role for the other two branches of government, as he feels would be necessary or proper.

In an article this June titled The Unitary King George, president of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohen states:

This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive." A seemingly innocuous phrase, the unitary executive theory actually represents a radical, ultra right-wing interpretation of the powers of the presidency. Championed by the conservative Federalist Society, the unitary executive doctrine gathers all power in the hands of the President and insulates him from any oversight by the congressional or judicial branches. In a November 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, then Judge Samuel Alito said the Constitution "makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing."
Now I'm no conspiracy theorist and neither are any of the people I quote above. Yet is it so hard to imagine a situation where such a directive granting George Bush the Younger emergency power as a "unitary executive" could easily place thousands of Blackwater mercenaries on the streets of U.S. cities? All one would need is the excuse that the present national guard are off fighting for our "freedoms" elsewhere. No? Can't picture it? Well although the emergency power granting directive hasn't been used by this president (yet), the private army of Blackwater has occupied a U.S. city already once before.

As Scahill documents:

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina its forces deployed in New Orleans, where it billed the federal government $950 per man, per day--at one point raking in more than $240,000 a day. At its peak the company had about 600 contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi. Since Katrina, it has aggressively pursued domestic contracting, opening a new domestic operations division. Blackwater is marketing its products and services to the Department of Homeland Security, and its representatives have met with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company has applied for operating licenses in all US coastal states. Blackwater is also expanding its physical presence inside US borders, opening facilities in Illinois and California.
In the case of New Orleans, the disaster was Katrina, or more accurately the horror of the floods and incompetent neglectful relief effort that left tens of thousands of American citizens to face unimaginable conditions. Added to this was an American news media who helped spread wild rumors of "black gangbangers" and "rapists" let loose in a type of dystopian Mad Max meets Birth of a Nation scenario. Today much of these rumors have been proven to be either grossly exaggerated or outright discredited. But at the time, it provided the rationale for sending in private mercenaries like Blackwater. Images of these private soldiers, toting M-16s throughout the devastated city, escaped much of the national news media attention, but was seen around the world as chilling comparisons to Iraq.

Scahill notes:

...the appearance of Blackwater fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, may be a grim taste of the future.
Before I'm accused of being an alarmist, naturally I realize we haven't reached that future--not yet. However neither should we lull ourselves into the belief that it is out of the realm of possibility. There is nothing in the policies of the Bush Administration that has told us otherwise. In fact, all that we have seen should warn us to err on the side of caution. This is a presidency that blatantly attempts to greatly expand not only the power of the executive, but the authority of government to spy on its citizens even before 9/11. This is an administration that hijacked an emergency like 9/11 to pass the troubling Patriot Act and then create a false set of threats to start a disastrous war in Iraq. This is the administration that makes bedfellows not only with the notorious Federalist Society, but pulls key members from the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century which advocates the creation of an imperial global-spanning "Pax-Americana." This is an administration that manipulates fear, announcing incredulous "terror plots" and "terror warnings" to push policy or deflect responsibility. This is a government that sanctions torture, refuses to close Gulag-like facilities such as Guantanamo and has secret prisons around the world, where people are "disappeared" to without warning or legal recourse. And now it finds itself allied with a private mercenary firm, run by a religious Dominionist who--like the Sith Lords of Star Wars lore--has his own rigidly religious beliefs that guide his politics.

Taken all together, to paraphrase a saying, "either you're very concerned--even afraid--or you haven't been paying attention."

The world of a Clone Army and Galactic Republic twisted to empire are the works of fantasy. But it is not without historical inspiration. As award winning journalist Chris Hedges reminds us in What If Our Mercenaries Turn on Us?:

The privatization of war hands an incentive to American corporations, many with tremendous political clout, to keep us mired down in Iraq. But even more disturbing is the steady rise of this modern Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome was a paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse, and eventually plunged the Roman Republic into tyranny and despotism. Despotic movements need paramilitary forces that operate outside the law, forces that sow fear among potential opponents, and are capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors. And in the wrong hands, a Blackwater could well become that force.
Hedges warns further:

If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown that triggers social unrest, or a series of environmental disasters, such paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could ruthlessly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to corporations, and to right-wing interests such as the Christian Right, could become a permanent condition.
Of course we would be remiss if we indulged in amnesiac recollections of the American past, as if this threat to domestic freedom was somehow new. The Republic was born and nurtured in imperfection--where slavery was legal, women were guaranteed little rights and the poor were to remain in their class. The Republic has flexed its Imperial muscles before--sailing warships to force Japan into trade; dethroning indigenous royals in Hawaii; engaging in massacres in the Philippines; initiating a war of aggression with Mexico; establishing the Monroe Doctrine proclaiming its dominance over the hemisphere and more. The notion that the U.S. never practiced colonialism only works if we pretend this continent was not filled with varied indigenous peoples that were conquered, oppressed or outright exterminated in the name of Manifest Destiny. As Founding Father Thomas Jefferson would prophecy of the tragic fate of Native Americans, "In war they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them." This is the Republic that gave us the capitalism worshipping Gilded Age, where scientific racism was normalized, black oppression was codified into law, Japanese-Americans were placed into internment camps and Red Scares dominated public life. This is the Republic that helped initiate wars in Southeast Asia that would kill millions, topple democratically elected governments from the Congo to Iran, prop up dictators like Saddam Hussein, and push a mix of neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative ideologies that have threatened the lives and well being of most of the world's inhabitants. No leader or party of the Republic is without the taint of pretensions to Empire that "American Exceptionalism" breeds.

Yet, as Howard Zinn reminds us, the Republic has also been people and voices struggling against those powerful and destructive forces towards a better ideal. The many accomplishments the Republic often now boasts about--ending slavery, granting women some semblance of equality, human rights, civil rights, labor rights, freedom of speech, social safety nets, liberties and more--would not exist at all if not for those voices who challenged the would-be Empire builders, and reined them in.

Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here envisioned an America that had come under the sway of a fascism, where the would-be Empire builders had won. It was a work of both satire, and warning, as Lewis watched the happenings in Europe and similar themes erupting throughout the U.S. This year Salon columnist Joe Conason released his own take on Lewis's work, and our current society titled It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush. Private mercenary firms like Blackwater are only one part of that peril. But perhaps if signing statements, secret directives, debates on torture and such aren't enough to compete with Paris Hilton's brief jail stint or the latest 50 Cent beef for our collective attention, then maybe the spectre of jack-booted thugs toting automatic weapons, garbed in black uniforms and sporting wraparound sunglasses standing guard at the corner Starbucks or bodega might jolt us into reality--or realities that may yet come.


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Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Juan Cole Talks "Heroes" & American Politics




Nothing goes better together than sci fi and politics. Whether it's the philosophical dystopian Matrix Trilogy, or Marvel's foray into bigotry through the X-Men. So it was a treat to see one of my favorite analysts of Mid East affairs Juan Cole, who blogs at Informed Comment, talk politics about NBC's hit series "Heroes." Looking at the obvious inspirations of the show, namely the obsession with security in post-9/11 America, Cole points out how the worldview of "Heroes" clashes with the Bush White House's "1 percent doctrine" on terrorism.


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