Counterinsurgency and Political Prisoners in the United States

Keeping it Real
By Larry Pinkney
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

“You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution.”

-Fred Hampton

Many years ago I was working at a local Irish Pub, Kennedy's when one of our Irish customers gave unto me a bullet. "You can kill the revolutionary," says he, "but you can nae kill the revolution." I suspect variants of theses sentiments have been around for a LONG time.

“History is important. If you don’t know history it’s as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything and you have no way of checking up on it.”

-Howard Zinn

One of the most insidious historical myths perpetuated by so-called ‘educational’ institutions and the corporate-stream media is that the United States was founded upon the holistic principles of ‘democracy’ and ‘justice for all.’ Since when has ‘democracy’ and ‘justice for all’ meant the genocide of the Indigenous Native peoples, the enslavement of Black people, and the systemic disenfranchisement of women and the poor?!

There are those who will smugly argue that these above-mentioned realities were all ‘in the past,’ despite the fact that the past continues to be the very foundation for the present; especially since the realities of that past are wrapped in historical mythology, glorification, glossed over and/or outright ignored. Until that “past” is honestly and forthrightly addressed, this nation continues to be the world’s most insipid hypocrite both at home and abroad.

The daily experiences of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the United States attest to the hypocrisy of this society and nation. We are enslaved by, and labor under, what the noted author, revolutionary, and psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, referred to as “cognitive dissonance.” In this context, the mere color or gender of those in power is absolutely irrelevant, and the systemic horror and hypocrisy continues unabated.

The notion, for example, that there are no political prisoners in the United States is inaccurate and absurd. There are numerous political prisoners and/or prisoners of conscience held in the sadistic and brutal 21st century U.S. prison gulag system. Many of them have been imprisoned for decades as a direct result of the U.S. Government’s war of counterinsurgency against its own citizens. Even as the corporate elite of this nation have overwhelmingly gutted the economic-industrial base in the United States, the prison industry (and it is an industry) has grown, and is growing, by leaps and bounds. Many millions of economically poor people in this nation are incarcerated, even as the avaricious and criminal corporate elite bask in trillions of stolen dollars, given to them by their surrogate, corporate controlled, U.S. Government. In many ways, the counterinsurgency by the U.S. corporate-government against the people of this nation has actually been tweaked and intensified. For example, many components of the U.S. Government’s outrageous, and then illegal and devastating program (known by its acronym COINTELPRO - the Counter Intelligence Program) to “frame, neutralize, imprison, and/or murder” political activists (and their families and friends) have now been codified into law, as embodied in what is now known as the so-called “Patriot Act.”

The American Heritage college dictionary defines the word counterinsurgency as a: “Political and military strategy or action intended to oppose or forcefully suppress insurgency.” The word insurgency is defined by the afore-mentioned dictionary as: “The quality or circumstance of being rebellious.” Thus, COINTELPRO and the Patriot Act have, in effect, criminalized rebelliousness. Our alleged U.S. Constitutional rights be damned.

This is not a new phenomenon, as all who know of the government’s COINTELPRO program are aware. However, it is in this 21st century a most dangerous and treacherous development with everyday people in this nation as the unsuspecting targets. To better understand the U.S. governments’ history of suppressing rebellion, right up to the present, I strongly recommend that every reader of this column (and beyond) obtain and view the documentary film titled, COINTELPRO 101.

The perpetual wars (and military forays) abroad being waged by the U.S. Empire and its ‘allies,’ the increasing economic austerity at home, and the de facto gutting of the U.S. Constitution do not make the people of this nation or of Mother Earth as a whole any safer. To the contrary, accepting these things is an unfolding and sure recipe for disaster.

It is our human duty to rebel against systemic injustices at home and abroad, even as we educate ourselves and one another, about and in, this ongoing everyday people’s struggle. In the words of Frederick Douglass, “There is no progress without struggle.”

To be sure, serious political struggle has its risks, but shirking said struggle guarantees the tightening of our mental and political chains. The words of Joe Hill still ring true, loud and clear: “Don’t mourn. Oraganize!” Moreover, Fred Hampton was correct when he said, “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution.”

Onward then my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

Homophobe Tim Hardaway’s Change of Words Inclusion By The Reverend Irene Monroe BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

In the African American community, we desperately need public role models denouncing anti-homophobic bullying, vitriol, and discrimination. Since too few role models come from the Black Church, many of us lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) brothers and sisters of African descent look to black role models, especially males, in the areas of entertainment and sports.

But sadly, that list too is short.

Tim Hardaway, a retired NBA All-Star player has recently stepped forward.

“It’s not right to not let the gays and lesbians have equal rights here,” Hardaway told the crowd at a press conference organized by the “No Recall” group, an El Paso group opposing a recall of El Paso Mayor John Cook and two city representatives for their support to re-establish domestic partner benefits for gay and unmarried partners of city employees.

Hardaway, however, is the last person one would expect to speak out on behalf of a LGBTQ social justice issue.

In a 2007 interview on Miami’s sports radio station, “790 The Ticket,” Hardaway was asked how he would interact with a gay teammate. The topic came up because of fellow former NBAer John Amaechi’s announcement, in his book, Man in the Middle, that he is gay.

“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people,” Hardaway said. “I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.”

His vitriol, sadly, hurt more than just his post-career endorsements. It hurt the hundreds of young LGBTQ sports enthusiasts and athletes that revered him.

For many of us in the African-American LGBTQ community, however, we were saddened by Hardaway’s remarks, but certainly not surprised. The former CEO of the National Black Justice Coalition, H. Alexander Robinson, commented on Hardaway’s vitriol stating, “His callous disregard for the dignity of the lives of gay Americans brings dishonor to himself and the many thousands who look upon him as a role model for young black men and women, many of whom are undoubtedly gay or lesbian.”

I do believe, with the right intervention and rehabilitation that vile-spewing homophobes can change. But when their crossover appeal and multi-million careers can or comes to an abrupt halt, their mea culpas appear disingenuous, and their zealous LGBTQ advocacy appears suspect.

For example, Tracy Morgan, comedian and actor on NBC’s “30 Rock,” is a recent example of the malady. During a standup performance in June at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, Morgan’s “intended” jokes about LGBTQ people were instead insulting jabs. My son [had] “better talk to me like a man and not in a gay voice or I’ll pull out a knife and stab that little n-gger to death,” Morgan told his audience.

Like Hardaway, Morgan has publicly expressed his mea culpas. Morgan’s was to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the nation’s LGBTQ media advocacy and anti-defamation organization - as part and parcel of his forgiveness tour - speaking out in support of LGBTQ equality.

Back in the day, racism was addressed through sports, as when Jackie Robinson became the first black Major League Baseball player in 1947.

Today’s society awards celebrity status to professional athletes of all races, and the popularity of African-American athletes has reached unprecedented levels; their influences go far beyond the court and field.

So, do these athletes like Hardaway have a responsibility to their fans, especially black ones, and society?

Hardaway’s homophobia is shaped by a particular type of black masculinity that no longer has to break through this country’s color barrier to represent the race and prove athletic prowess or manhood in sports.

The aggressive posturing and repudiation of LGBTQ people allows athletes like Hardaway to feel safe in the locker room by maintaining the myth that all the guys gathered on their team are heterosexual, and sexual attraction among them just does not exist.

“I don’t think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room,” Hardaway said during that Miami interview. “If you have 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that’s upset and can’t concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, it’s going to be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate.”

This myth allows homophobic men like Hardaway to enjoy the homo-social setting of the male locker room that creates male-bonding - and the physical and emotional intimacy that goes on among them displayed as slaps on the buttocks, hugging, and kissing on the cheeks in a homoerotic context - while such behavior outside the locker would easily be labeled as gay.

In his book, Amaechi states, “The NBA locker room was the most flamboyant place I’ve ever been. Guys flaunted their perfect bodies. They bragged about sexual exploits. They primped in front of the mirror, applying cologne and hair gel by the bucketful. They tried on each other’s $10,000 suits, admired each other’s rings and necklaces. It was an intense camaraderie that felt completely natural to them.”

In August, Sports Illustrated writer Dave Zirin caught up with Amaechi to get his take on Hardaway’s turn around.

“I was in contact with the people he did his ‘emergency rehab’ with after his ‘I hate gay people rant.’ They were underwhelmed to say the least. Back then his contrition seemed more to do with the financial and reputation hit he had taken in the aftermath. However, it seems to me that this is a far more genuine piece of outreach ... I hope this is a story of true redemption rather than a savvy p.r. ploy. Either way, he is at least saying the right words, and that will make a positive difference.,” Amaechi told Zirin.

But as we know, a change of words does not necessary bring about a change of heart.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.

Obama as a One Term President: Implications for the Progressive Movement By Dr. Ron Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator

Note: This commentary is the first part in a 4 part series titled: Beyond Obama and the Democrats and was written prior to Obama’s speech to the congress the president put forth his proposal for the American Jobs Act.

Congresswoman Michele Bachman, the Tea Party firebrand from Minnesota, has declared her candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President. She stole the show at CNN’s first Republican Primary Debate in New Hampshire by emphatically declaring: “President Obama is a one term President.” Unquestionably this has been the goal of the Grand Obstructionist Party (GOP) from the very first day of the Obama presidency. At every turn, the Republican Party, which is now tantamount to the Conservative Party, has blocked, obstructed and otherwise sought to ensure that President Obama would fail. Rabid radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said as much. And, to galvanize Conservative opposition to the President’s health care reform bill, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint openly urged his colleagues to make this issue Obama’s “Waterloo.”

Frankly, the tea leaves are not forecasting a favorable future for President Obama. After inching downward, unemployment has crept up to over 9% . The housing market is stalled, crippled by millions of foreclosures and the refusal of banks to aggressively work with homeowners to modify mortgages. The Federal Reserve has lowered its projections for GNP to a snail’s pace recovery. While millions of Americans languish in unemployment and joblessness, some for months if not years, the public discourse in Washington is being dominated by the Conservative’s demand for massive cuts in spending to reduce the national deficit and debt. Meanwhile 16 million children now live in poverty in the “richest nation in the world.” Consumer confidence is sagging and polls indicate that a sizeable segment of the electorate believes the country is heading in the wrong direction. After a bump in the polls following the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, President Obama’s approval rating has dipped below 50% again. Having been administered a “shellacking” by the electorate in the 2010 mid-term elections, there are ominous signs of an even more disastrous outcome for President Obama and the Democrats in 2012.

The question is can this political catastrophe be averted? If we take the measure of President Obama’s performance thus far, the indicators are not encouraging. A major problem is that Obama, who was an inspirational candidate, has proven to be a timid, largely uninspiring President. The “Audacity of Hope” has not translated into a demonstrated capacity to govern as a bold, visionary leader. To be sure, Obama was dealt a hand of crises unlike any since the Great Depression, a fact that did not deter the GOP from plotting his demise despite the scourge of maladies passed on by Bush-Cheney. But, under circumstances that demanded uplifting, bold/decisive leadership, Obama played into the hands of the Conservatives with his penchant for pragmatism and obsessive yearning for “bi-partisanship.” As a consequence he prematurely compromised on the Stimulus Package, settling for a dollar amount far short of what leading progressive economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich suggested was necessary to really generate a sustained economic recovery. He repeated this mistake with health care reform, not only refusing to stand up for Single Payer but sacrificing the concept of a public option without a fight. In the battle over the Budget, the President caved on his pledge not to renew the Bush tax cuts, giving the Conservative deficit/debt reduction hawks another victory despite the fact that his concession will actually add to the deficit/debt over the next 10 years. The President has drawn a” line in the sand” by pledging to prevent the privatization of Medicare and Social Security but there is concern that if the Conservatives play hard ball (as most assuredly they will), once again President Obama will yield rather than take a principled stand.

Nothing more than Obama’s lackluster performance on jobs illustrates his vulnerability to being defeated in 2012. Creating or fighting for jobs for the millions of unemployed should be the number one priority for the President entering a difficult election year. Indeed, this should long have been the focus for Obama. And, while no reasonable economist or political leader can dispute that the mushrooming national deficit and debt pose a serious long term threat to the health of the nation, the short term imperative is to put people back to work! There are numerous economists who contend that expending additional federal funds to create jobs will actually cut into the deficit and debt. This does not mean the long term deficit and debt can be ignored, it means an additional stimulus package can be funded without doing damage to the economy.

Rather than responding to the misery of the millions of unemployed by articulating the rationale for additional stimulus, Obama and the Democrats have cowered in the face of the Conservative’s demand for draconian cuts in government spending. Obama is blithely touring the country visiting businesses he believes illustrate how jobs will be generated in a retooled economy in the future. He seems oblivious to the economic and political reality that for the millions of unemployed, the future is now! If President Obama was the audacious leader many of us had hoped for, he would boldly put forth and fight for another stimulus package and the allocation of federal funds to support a million short term “public sector” jobs and defy the Conservatives to reject it. He might lose the battle in Congress but he would win the strategic struggle for the hearts and minds of the army of unemployed who would see the President resolutely fighting on their behalf. Obama should take the fight to the “obstructionists” and make them pay the price in 2012 as callous and cold hearted Conservatives, more concerned with protecting the interests of Wall Street than Main Street!

But of course this is wishful thinking. And, here-in is the challenge for the re-election of Obama. In composite the flaws and lapses of leadership cited have demoralized the Democratic base and alienated significant numbers of new voters who marched on ballot boxes in record numbers for “change we could believe in.” Liberal-left- progressives are particularly disenchanted. Obama will certainly win the majority of the Democratic base, but the danger is the intensity will not be there to mobilize the margins needed to carry states like Virginia, North Carolina and Florida that provided a cushion in the Electoral College in 2008. Obama’s magnificent campaign oratory will ring hollow in the face of the reality of his record of timid leadership. The election will boil down to bruising, nail biting contests in traditional “battleground states” like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri. On this playing field, Obama faces a decidedly uphill struggle. But, it is a struggle which must be won!

Some within the progressive movement will view this as a stunning conclusion. But in my judgment, for all of the disappointment and disaffection with Obama and the Democrats, it is not in the bset interest of the progressive movement to cede the election to the Conservatives. Obama’s health care reform bill fell far short of what I would have preferred, but millions of Americans who would have received nothing if the obstructionist had prevailed, at least have access to health care. Obama’s agenda on energy, greening the economy, the Consumer Protection Agency, Medicare and Social Security are much better than the policies being advanced by the obstructionists. Obama has appointed two moderates to the Supreme Court and workers will fare better because of the appointment of fair minded individuals to the National Labor Relations Board. At its core, much of the Obama agenda is decent, it’s just that too often he refuses to fight for what he believes -- hence, the anger, frustration and disillusionment on the left.

However, in the broad sweep of history, election in 2012 is bigger than Obama. A conservative victory would pave the way for the consolidation of the “electoral coup” of 2000 which ushered in the Bush-Cheney era with all of its radical rightwing ideological underpinnings. With a Conservative President and perhaps control of the House and Senate, the fate of Medicare, Social Security will be sealed. Moreover, the “bully pulpit’ of the presidency will be used as a bludgeon to batter labor in an all out effort to undermine the right of workers to organize and maintain unions. And, we are only one Justice away from the solidification of the Supreme Court as an impregnable citadel of conservative ideology. It will be a “Plessy v. Ferguson moment,” where the highest Court in the land will sanction the reactionary agenda of the Conservatives.

The consequences of defeat of President Obama are not pretty. We will be forced into a life and death struggle against an even more ferocious assault on the culture of rights that generations fought, bled and died to bring into being. Therefore, progressives must be sober, clear and mature in devising a strategy for election 2012, one which mobilizes voters around an agenda far more transformative than that of Obama and the Democrats and puts pressure on them to move to the left. Our strategy must look beyond Obama, even as we tactically support his re-election to achieve our broader objectives.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator Dr. Ron Daniels, PhD is President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and Distinguished Lecturer at York College City University of New York. His articles and essays also appear on the IBW website www.ibw21.org and www.northstarnews.com. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

947 Cover Story Obama Job Plan: the Promise and the Drawbacks Left Margin By Carl Bloice BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

More than once in the morning after the President’s jobs speech, I had the same conversation: “it’s more than I expected.” “It’s a far cry from enough.” “It doesn’t really matter because the Republicans will kill it.”

Therein lay the quandary for progressives. Should we rally around a program that is deficient, or continue to press for more effective measures? My answer has been: both.

Unquestionably, passage of the American Jobs Act would be a good thing. As the President outlined it, the proposal aims to “to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working,” and “create more jobs for construction workers, more jobs for teachers, more jobs for veterans, and more jobs for long-term unemployed.” To say that it doesn’t matter is to turn our backs on the millions of people out there struggling to maintain themselves and their families amid a faltering economy. “It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world,” wrote economist Paul Krugman. “But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.”

Will the jobs plan “provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and if they hire, there will be customers for their products and services”? Well, it’s hard to say. Every day, the economic crisis appears to get worse. The President says the economy has stalled. Some economists suggest it has stalled like an airplane that has lost engine power and is poised to begin another descent. Combine what is happening here at home with developments in Europe and you have the makings of this current crisis of capitalism turning really ugly.

At the moment, it seems to me, we should endeavor to put aside our policy wonk hats and concentrate on the politics of the situation. The battle lines are pretty clear: It’s the White House proposal, or doing nothing. There’s nothing else on the table. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka holds out hope that the pot will be sweetened. “The plan announced by the president is only the opening bid,” he said. “We expect to see more proposals in the next weeks and months to put America back to work.”

We shall see.

The danger remains that those in the Administration’s camp who are never anything but political operatives will prevail, opportunity will give way to political expediency and fall prey to the notion that the 2012 election trumps all. That camp argues that all that matters is the vote of ill-defined “independents” and everything must be “bi-partisan” That notion should have been put to rest by the most recent Republican Presidential candidates debate. The GOP has no plan for job creation. The candidates presented a united front: the issue in the next election is “Obama.” They seem to have figured out that the public is more concerned with unemployment than deficit reduction, and if the jobs crisis is to be pinned on the President then surely nothing should be done to alleviate it over the next 13 months.

“Helping the country is unlikely to be enough of an incentive for Republicans to pass a bill, any bill, that Obama supports, even a bill, like this one, that is assembled mostly from refurbished spare parts collected from their own ideological warehouse,” wrote Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker blog. “No doubt many of them sincerely believe that the end (upping the chances of defeating Obama and his nefarious agenda of turning America into a socialist hellhole like Western Europe) justifies the means (deepening the extent of mass unemployment, human suffering, and ancillary damage to the economy and to society).”

The Republican approach to tackling unemployment was well summed up by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who said the party was hoping the President would roll back regulations, take up entitlement reform, facilitate the production of more energy, and spur free-trade agreements.

Obama has already done too much regulation reform with his relaxation of air quality standards. Of course, the GOP wants to take a hatchet to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. More energy means mountain top strip mining, and dangerous shale oil pipelines, courtesy of the big oil companies. As far as trade pacts are concerned, Corker evidently wasn’t listening when Obama said, “ Now it’s time to clear the way for a series of trade agreements that would make it easier for American companies to sell their products in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea – while also helping the workers whose jobs have been affected by global competition. If Americans can buy Kias and Hyundais, I want to see folks in South Korea driving Fords and Chevys and Chryslers. I want to see more products sold around the world stamped with three proud words: ‘Made in America.’”

That’s another question. In the real world, such agreements are not the panacea they are touted to be; sometimes they have devastating effects on working people at both ends of the pacts.

Then, there was the out-to-lunch John Podhoretz writing in the New York Post that the President “did propose incentives to private-sector employers, but those incentives do not involve much in the way of lessening their regulatory or tax burden. Obama mentioned he had initiated a review of onerous federal regulations but had so far identified only 500 he could do away with.”

Only 500? (I cringe to think what they might be).

“And he spoke once again of making the wealthy pay more in taxes, which directly affects the ability of small-business owners to employ more people,” Podhoretz went on. Actually the two things have very little to do with each other. The Administration’s proposed hiring-tax incentives are intended for small business.

“The President has delivered a good start for putting Americans back to work that includes elements we as progressives have been calling for,” read a joint statement from Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Reps. Raul M. Grijalva and Keith Ellison following the president’s speech. “Our country will finally make essential repairs to America’s roads and bridges. Wall Street and multi-millionaires will start to pay their fair share and support the country that has helped them prosper. The long-term unemployed, who have been hit hardest by the recession, will have the support they need while they find jobs.”

“For eight months, the Republicans have successfully paralyzed the national conversation by holding the people’s business hostage. They have shown no interest in putting the livelihoods of millions of working families ahead of their own narrow political goals. They have refused to take job creation seriously. As a result, we have seen record numbers of laid-off teachers, returning veterans struggling to find work, and firefighters and first responders hurting for funding.”

“The crisis is so severe that we must do more than the president has proposed,” the Caucus leaders said September 9. “That’s why next week the Congressional Progressive Caucus will unveil our Framework to Rebuild the American Dream. It offers a bold, comprehensive progressive vision for America based on what we can do, not the Tea Party vision of what America can’t do. As we showed with the People’s Budget, we can create millions of jobs and eliminate the deficit within ten years if we choose the right priorities and make good decisions.”

“We join the President in calling on Congressional Republicans to put the national interest ahead of partisan stonewalling. We stand ready to move forward and put American families back to work.”

Back to the quandary.

A reoccurring theme in much of the media commentary on the Obama proposals has been futility, summed up by a Washington Post columnist’s declaration that “long before the speech, both sides had concluded it didn’t much matter: Obama has become too weak to enact anything big enough to do much good.”

“I thought it was a great speech,” the columnist quoted Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) as saying. “But the odds of Obama getting his plan through Congress are probably as good as the Nationals winning the league this year.”

Liberal columnist, Harold Meyerson, called the President’s speech: “Good plan, good vision, good politics - That was an enlivened President Obama we saw earlier this evening - impassioned, indignant, non-professorial,” he wrote in the Washington Post. “And enlivened he should have been, because the American economy trembles on the brink of a double-dip recession, and the Republican opposition has been seized by an ideology that would erode what remains of the once-great American middle class. Not to mention, Obama’s own political future and that of his party are on the line as well.”

“The size and the substance of this new stimulus give Obama and his party the ability not only to rally many of his disenchanted core supporters but to reach out to voters in the middle of the political spectrum,” wrote Meyerson. “That’s partly because more than half the package - roughly $240 billion - takes the form of a one-year payroll tax reduction for employees and employers that will be difficult for Republicans to oppose. The tax credits for employees who hire veterans are also a political winner, though the tax credit for companies that hire the long-term unemployed (which in Republican-speak will mean minorities, whose votes they’re not going to get anyway) is one that the GOP is almost sure to resist. Also likely to meet a Republican rejection are Obama’s proposals to build roads and schools, and to fund the retention and rehiring of tens of thousands of teachers.”

Perhaps the most overused word this year has been “compromise” and we’re going to hear it a lot more over coming weeks. The danger here is that if the compromisers in the Administration – the ones too often anxious to split the difference with the opposition - hold sway, the Republicans and their “blue dog Democratic allies will get what their corporate backers want (the tax cut part) while the long-term jobless, the teachers, students and poor people are left out in the cold.

But wait. It gets worse. Those who want to take a knife to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are still lurking out there. And the President isn’t helping matters with his repeated ambiguous statements about “reforming” Medicare. He says this is necessary because of “an aging population and rising health care costs” Why not tackle the latter instead of taking from the elderly? Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America’s Future noted “the president went out of his way once more to put Medicare and Medicaid on the table for a grand bargain with Republicans for dramatic deficit reduction over the next decade. He promised to detail this in another presentation next week, threatening to once more deflate the debate we need over jobs with a return to a debate that is utterly divisive over deficit reduction.”

Then, there is another problem with the President’s plan. “Putting Americans back to work is also critical to keeping Social Security and Medicare strong,” says Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “However, this proposal to extend and expand the payroll tax cut threatens Social Security’s independence by forcing the program to compete for limited federal dollars from general revenues, and by breaking the link between contributions and benefits. As we predicted back in December, ‘There’s no such thing as a temporary tax cut.’ Just months after being reassured that diverting contributions from Social Security would last for just one year, Congress is now being asked to extend and even increase this diversion of payroll taxes for another year. Doubling-down by also cutting employer contributions greatly worsens the situation, and makes it even harder to restore the Social Security system to self-financing. If this extension passes, there is no guarantee that Congress won’t be asked to extend it yet again, for a 3rd or even a 4th year or longer, and expand it even more, making it a de facto permanent part of the tax code. This is death by a thousand cuts.

“Social Security is paid for, earned by, and promised to American workers. We call on the President and the Congress to reaffirm the fact that Social Security has been, is, and will continue to be, a self-financed insurance program; and that this temporary payroll tax cut does not constitute a precedent that would undermine this principle.”

Ari Berman wisely asked in The Nation, “Could Obama’s to-be-determined deficit speech undermine the momentum from his jobs speech? Perhaps,” he continued, “The president left open the possibility for significant changes to Medicare and Medicaid, which won’t be popular with many Americans. The super-committee still has the power in Washington. Once its deadline nears, the conversation may once again revolve around deficits instead of jobs, especially since there’s no built-in incentive forcing the committee to focus on jobs, as compared to the triggered spending cuts.”

Labor leader Trumka Richard L. Trumka clearly senses the danger here. In the P.S. to his statement welcoming the President’s speech, he said. “Some politicians claim cuts to our social safety net, deregulation and lower taxes for the rich will fix our problems. But they’re flat wrong. If we continue down this road, it only will destroy more jobs and send us into a vicious downward spiral. Our country is too good and too rich to weaken our commitment to safety net protections such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.

“We don’t have time to waste on the same old failed policies that drove our economy off a cliff in the first place. Tell Congress: Working families will judge our elected leaders by whether they act with integrity and energy to create good jobs now.”

“Progressives are demanding action on jobs,” wrote Borosage. “An inspired president on the stump is vital to making that case. His agenda is a first step, designed to attract bipartisan support. If Republicans oppose this, they will be turning their backs on working people, either out of misguided ideological extremism, or for partisan political advantage. The president is right. It is time to act.

“President Obama has taken a step in the right direction with his speech and jobs plan. It was a small step - but it has to be to present Republicans with the choice to cooperate or get pushed out of the way,” said Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America’s future. “If this passes it is a win for jobs and the economy - and therefore the President’s re-election. If Republicans block it, the President wins because voters will push Republicans out and the country will be able to get moving again. But it all depends on follow-through. The President has to keep out there, pounding on this, and only this, every single day until there is a vote. Every. Single. Day. That is the key.”

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

946 Putting Indigenous Knowledge on Trial A Modern Day Auto de Fe in Arizona by ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ

September 20, 2011

Justice. That’s a word not normally associated with Arizona. With Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his military tank still on the loose, this will not be changing anytime soon. In Arizona, Arpaio is colorful, but he is actually the least of them.

Just recently, Sen. John McCain decided to blame “illegal aliens” for the state’s forest fire outbreaks. Aided and abetted by the media, the senator’s irresponsible accusations, after touring the 500,000-acre Wallow fire, set off a contagion of wind-aided hate and fear. This month, two cousins were arrested for setting that fire. They were not aliens of any kind. The senator has issued no retractions.

This is the climate we live in. But it is actually worse. The borderlands are killing fields. That is not accidental or hyperbole, but U.S. policy since the 1990s. It is a policy that has resulted in thousands of deaths; migrants are intentionally funneled to the most dangerous deserts, mountains and rivers. Not just in Arizona, but the full expanse of the border.

So too brutality against detained migrants. It is widespread and not an aberration. The human rights organization, No More Deaths, is releasing a shocking study that won’t so much surprise, but simply confirm these widespread practices [thousands of abuses] at the hands of immigration agents. Here, the “migra” act as hunter battalions, always chasing down people the color of the earth.

The government refers to the funneling as policies of deterrence. Politicians in Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico and Washington have advocated even more direct forms of deterrence: shooting migrants or blowing them up as they cross the border.

Operation Streamline is also one of these deterrence policies. Every day, seventy brown men (and a few women) are herded into the 2nd floor of the federal court building in Tucson. They are all shackled to their wrists, waists and ankles, charged with illegal entry. If the judge spends more than a minute on each detainee, that might be an overestimation as the entire operation generally lasts but an hour. By the time this kangaroo court is done with, the judge will have criminalized them and ritualistically sentenced these men and women to private profit-making detention centers (Corrections Corporation of America).

What else can you call them but human sacrifices. The operation is designed not to mete out justice, but to enrich and to send a message (propaganda]. Prior to 9-11-2001, no one would have associated such an operation with the United States. Perhaps apartheid South Africa, but not the U.S.A. It is fitting that it operates in Arizona. It is also no coincidence that several of the governor’s closest advisors are implicated in this profit-making scheme.

The same day I go to witness this operation, I watch a movie, The Postville Raid: I shake my head. This can’t be happening in the land of freedom. The movie is about the infamous Postville, Iowa immigration raid of 2008. It is about the herding of 389 men women and children – mostly from Guatemala – into a cattle facility where they are processed, deported or forced to wear dehumanizing electronic ankle monitors. For 3 days, it’s their version of Operation Streamline. For us in Arizona, it’s 24/7/365.25.

The next day, a friend is visiting and wants to go to the border. As we cross from Nogales, Arizona into Nogales Mexico, we come upon a man from Central America. His eyes reveal not post-traumatic stress disorder, but rather, eyes of terror. He has been out in the summer desert, unsuccessfully trying to cross for a week.

Every time I am anywhere near the militarized border, my stomach turns. There is no justice there. Just scars, like the unnatural wall separating the two Nogaleses. It is the most visible sign of dehumanization.

Amidst all this, state senate president, Russell Pearce, who associates with known racial supremacists and who has been recalled and is facing election in November, is convinced that he can legislate the state back into the 19th century.

But none of this could have prepared anyone for the Tucson Unified School District’s appeal hearing in Phoenix. Despite the independently commissioned Cambium Study, which gave two thumbs up to the district’s Mexican American Studies program, State Schools’ superintendent John Huppenthal still found the district out of compliance with HB 2281 – the state’s anti-Ethnic Studies law. The district is appealing his ruling and the hearings are reminiscent of the 1500s-era Inquisition. At this surreal hearing, it is knowledge, a discipline and [brown] people that are on trial. Not surprisingly, even the student organization MEChA or Movimiento Estudiantli Chicana/Chicano de Aztlan is also under attack.

This six-year war against MAS is about what is permissible knowledge vs. banned knowledge. It is about banned books and about banned curriculums. In this instance, it is a war against Indigenous Knowledge, this in a state that is also engaged in Ethnic Cleansing.

The supposition here is that individualism is next to godliness… that to teach [Indigenous] culture is to somehow not to treat students as individuals and that do so is to be both, anti-American and anti-Western Civilization (Great Zeus!)

Today, this hearing is about Mexican American Studies and its maiz-based curriculum. But the state law itself actually covers all of Ethnic Studies. And yet, a closer inspection reveals that it is a war over education itself. The state here wants to make Swiss cheese out of what can be taught/learned, wants to be able to censor, and still be able to call it education. Short and simple, this is not simply a war against ethnic studies, but a civilizational war on the very idea of education.

What is bothersome is not so much the Inquisitorial questions or answers, but by the very fact that this hearing (a modern day Auto de Fe) is taking place at all. I check the calendar; it is 2011, not 1511. I check the map… and not so sure where Arizona belongs. The last hearting is scheduled for Oct 17, though we are not sure what the point of the charades is because as Huppenthal has already shown, regardless of the evidence, he does whatever he feels like.

By the way, the tremendous anti-Mexican rhetoric that has resulted from this conflict has also produced death threats against the students – threats that law enforcement has deemed “a joke.” Not coincidentally, I too have received a series of death threats. Normally, death threats seem to be ignored, but in this case, the person issuing the threats against me will be arraigned at the end of September. Stay tuned.

Roberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com

945 Working in a Weapons Plant The Maker or the Tool? by STEPHEN SOLDZ

September 20, 201

Did you ever demand any answers?
The who, the what or the reason why?
Did you ever question the setup?
Did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best?
Did you let them skim the cream off and then give to you the rest?
Did you settle for the shoddy?
Did you think it right
To let them rob you right and left and never make a fight,
never make a fight, never make a fight?

–From Ballad of Accounting, words and music by Ewan MacColl

Suddenly jobs are on the political agenda. Politicians from the President on down state that creating jobs for American workers is their top priority. Often any jobs, as with the low-wage jobs that Texas Governor Rick Perry brags he “created.” Sometimes they want to create “good paying” jobs. But in this discourse having a job is everything, because it allows one to pay the bills and avoid poverty.

Those who worked with Jean Alonso making missiles in a Massachusetts defense plant – referred to as American Missile and Communications Corporation but sounding suspiciously like Massachusetts-based Raytheon – knew how important it was to have a job in this society. But they also recognized that ”good jobs” should mean far more than good-paying ones. And they knew, from their own bitter experience, that many jobs can be toxic, destroying the mind and soul, and sometimes the body as well of those who work them.

Alonso’s book The Patriots: An Inside Look at Life in a Defense Plant begins as the missiles fly at the start of the first Gulf War. The fragile community in the plant is strained by tensions between the patriotic workers and Alonso with her antiwar views and activities. Alonso copes with her own anguish by conducting an informal survey of how her coworkers feel about their work. She learns that these coworkers are filled with a profound sense of hopelessness and despair:

“I feel like a zero.”

“Inferior.”

“Empty.”

“Helpless.”

“I’m very depressed and anxious.”

“I’m so unhappy here I get aches and pains from it.”

“Apathetic. I can’t do anything at home anymore but watch TV.”

“I was a musician, you know, so I still need to write everyday – if you don’t you have no soul. But I go home and I’m too tired.”

“I feel like there’s something crushed inside – I feel really defeated. It’s like giving up on your whole self in order to make a living – you can’t figure a way out.” (pp. 10-11).

These responses, expressing feelings that had never been spoken among these workers, start Alonso and a small group of coworkers on a journey to make sense of what was happening to them at work and why. Through monthly meetings buttressed by Alonso’s library research, they explore the deadening effects of repetitive work accompanied by social powerlessness in the workplace. They try to understand Alonso’s realization that “something in this work is changing us, as if we were living by Love Canal” (p. 37).

Over the next couple of years this group of defense plant workers examine their dashed hopes and dreams as well as an extensive body of social science literature, in an attempt to figure out just how the work was changing them. They confessed to each other that their ability to reason had diminished after years in the plant. The lack of mental stimulation was reducing their very intelligence. And, indeed, as Alonso learned from her reading, a German researcher had found that IQ declines following years of unskilled labor. This cognitive decline didn’t seem so surprising to the workers when one of them recalled being told by a supervisor, “You don’t get paid to think.” These workers discovered through their own experience that mindless work induces mindlessness.

Alonso later realized that the experience of the American Missile workers wouldn’t have seemed strange to Adam Smith, who in 1776 wrote of the mind-destroying effects of unskilled work as an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of the then new industrial system:

The understanding of the greater part of men is necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man’s whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations and he naturally loses, therefore, the habit [of solving problems] and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become… But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the laboring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall (p. 180).

In addition to cognitive problems, the plant workers confronted elevated depression, anxiety, and apathy. Alonso’s research convinced her that these symptoms were similar to those experienced by victims of what psychologist Judith Herman called “complex chronic post-traumatic stress syndrome” or CCPTSD. She quotes Herman as saying that those suffering from CCPTSD “have a history of subjection to totalitarian control over a prolonged period of time” (p. 125).

The shop floor environment that Alonso and her fellow workers experienced daily was, indeed, totalitarian. Every motion was monitored. Bathroom breaks were strictly regulated. Supervisors yelled at workers as if they were disobedient children. Conversations were monitored and often forbidden. Escape, while not impossible, became ever more difficult as years in the plant went by and economic chains bound the workers.

In her efforts to better understand the totalitarian aspects of her work environment, Alonso studied military culture and found many similarities to the culture at American Missile. The similarities were not accidental. She realized that the company deliberately sought out supervisors with military backgrounds. The fact that the company was part of the military-industrial complex, producing missiles for US wars, probably made military culture especially desirable to management.

At the time that Alonso writes about, relations between workers in the plant were especially stressed as many of the workers sought a sense of meaning and community through patriotic identification with the company’s missile-producing mission and with the war in progress and became less tolerant of those questioning the war. Pressure to not rock the boat increased as demand for the missiles rose.

Like many manufacturing companies, American Missile had a union. Unfortunately, this was as much a part of the problem as part of the solution. Union officials refused to pursue cases of sexual abuse, wouldn’t recognize the women’s committee founded by Alonso and others, and systematically harassed militants. Thus, much of the energy to improve the workplace was channeled into often futile attempts at union reform.

Throughout The Patriots: An Inside Look at Life in a Defense Plant Alonso weaves her personal account of nearly two decades in the factory with an account of the research into the effects of the work environment on workers. The result is one of the most thought provoking books you will find to read this year. As the politicians talk endlessly about “jobs” while providing few, Alonso reminds us that a good society will provide not just jobs, or even well-paying jobs, but jobs that enhance the spirit and development of those who work them.

Surely today, 235 years after Adam Smith described the mind-destroying nature of unskilled work, an “improved and civilized society,” – as Smith described the new industrial capitalism – should be one that proves him wrong. Such a society would be one in which all who work find that their jobs enhance their thinking, spirit, and sense of humanity. Such a society would be one in which workers are not merely the tools of the already wealthy and powerful, but makers of a more decent world for themselves, their fellow workers, and the rest of society. While the politicians beholden to the powerful are not likely to be concerned with this goal, surely the vast majority of us ought to be.

What did you learn in the morning?
How much did you know in the afternoon?
Were you content in the evening?
Did they teach you how to question when you were at the school?
Did the factory help you grow, were you the maker or the tool?
Did the place where you were living
Enrich your life and then
Did you reach some understanding of all your fellow men,
all your fellow men, all your fellow men?

[From Ballad of Accounting, words and music by Ewan MacColl]

Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. Soldz is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations; he served as a psychological consultant on several Gutanamo trials. Currently Soldz is President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR].

944 Thanatos Insurance Death’s Cheerleaders by KATHLEEN PEINE

September 20, 2011

He’s just a commodity anyway!

I find it grimly amusing that so many people were stunned by the Republican debate crowd who happily cheered on the demise of the 30 year old who wouldn’t pay his insurance tolls. By my way of thinking, at least the sociopathy is clearly in the open now. It’s obvious what creatures are out there, lurking in our midst, and what they truly want. For those innocents who were startled by the behavior…..where did they think those who would burn witches at the stake went? They didn’t disappear over the ages. We haven’t evolved past that. Those types just lie in wait, hoping for a chance to spread sanctimonious death. They hold a bible in one hand and their dick in the other, as they grimly masturbate to the death spectacle of the day.

Thanatos, or the death drive seems to infect these types-certain people are certainly drawn to darkness and death, and not in a fun Halloween, short-story manner. It looks to be an effort to avoid looking at their own mortality as they look to impose a demise on others, well before their time. They can’t just come out and say they enjoy causing death so it gets wrapped in a shroud of “personal responsibility” and rough justice. Have you ever noticed those who proclaim the loudest that life is “nasty, brutish and short” put the most effort into ensuring that it is just that? It’s a way to assume god-like power in a delicious, low calorie manner.

I am sure these types have been with us through the ages. I also suspect that many a jackass with these traits was taken on a ruse mastodon hunting trip, to never come back. “Sorry, had an accident in the wilds…. Bryce met with an untimely demise while we were out (I don’t know why, I just think Bryce is a good hunter-gatherer name).” And those in the tribe would shrug. “Oh well, he was kind of an asshole, anyway. But where’s the mastodon meat? You didn’t bring anything back! ” Perhaps the evidence of egalitarianism in archeological sites stem from these mastodon hunt, sociopath cullings. Well, that’s my theory, anyway. We’ve had a lot of years for these types to reproduce and flourish. We ran out of mastodons before we ran out of sociopaths.

But short of fake mastodon hunting trips, I’m at a loss how to control the death dealers and seekers of our time. Sadly they have used their superpower of non-empathy to achieve great heights of power. And our society has sleepwalked into allowing just that.

The idiots at the debate probably aren’t individuals with any true power, unless you count lording over grass length regulations at homeowner’s associations. But they are more than willing to carry the water for the corporate powers, even going so far as helping to allow the pollution of the water they are carrying.

These free market dunderheads do the heavy lifting as far as convincing those near them that humans only have value as a market cog. It’s not a far reach to decide that the “non-productive” are simply not needed in society, and it’s no mystery where that line of thinking ends up. Usually with a whole lot of innocent dead people, and a societal hangover with accompanying crisis of identity. Can’t we simply skip that middle part? It’s like we are becoming Sparta, but without the nicely sculpted bodies.

Libertarianism is a word that has been so magnificently co-opted that it holds little meaning. If you are someone who just wants legal pot and no seatbelts….well, I’d pick up a new term because the company you are keeping is vile.

Who are these people who cheer for the death of 30 year olds?

I had a conversation with an acquaintance after she went on a trip through British Columbia. I had hoped to hear about the scenery, maybe get told something new about the wildlife there. Sadly, I only got to hear about how the hamburgers at McDonalds were something like eight bucks (to pay for the socialized health care, she said). I happily suggested that she should have had some kind of a procedure done while there, if nothing else, to defray the cost of the burgers.

She shook her head at me, informing that there is something like a 5 year waiting list for everyone who wants a procedure.

I said that she should have stayed for 5 years, all the while, eating those burgers….. then she would surely need a bypass or something. You gotta make it work for you.

“You’re exasperating.” she said.

“I know this, but even with insurance in the states, I can’t afford an Exasperectomy-even if they do it laparoscopically.”

“I’d sneak into Canada to have it done, but I hear there’s a 5 year wait.”

If only we could arrange some mastodon hunts.

Kathleen Peine can be reached at kathypeine@gmail.com

943 Ralph Nader Cornel West Unveil Proposal to Challenge Obama in Primaries

September 19, 2011

Filed under: News — russell @ 3:48 pm

Progressive leaders led by Ralph Nader and Cornel West unveiled a proposal today to challenge President Obama in the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries in 2012.

The proposal, which has been endorsed by over 45 distinguished leaders, seeks to have a slate of six candidates run against President Obama, each representing a field in which Obama has never clearly staked a progressive claim or where he has drifted toward the corporatist right.

“Without debates by challengers inside the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries, the liberal/majoritarian agenda will be muted and ignored,” said Ralph Nader.

“The one-man Democratic primaries will be dull, repetitive, and draining of both voter enthusiasm and real bright lines between the two parties that excite voters,” Nader said.

A letter is being sent to a list of distinguished elected officials, civic leaders, prominent members of academia and the NGO community who represent the fields of labor, poverty, military and foreign policy, health insurance and care, the environment, financial regulation, consumer protection, and civil, political and human rights/empowerment.

The list of potential candidates also includes progressive democrats who have held national and state office and have fought for progressive reforms.

“We need to put strong democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people” said Cornel West, author and Professor at Princeton University. “His administration has tilted too much toward Wall Street, we need policies that empower Main Street.”

The letter pronounces that without primary challengers, President Obama will never have to seriously articulate and defend his beliefs to his own party. Given the dangers our nation faces, that option is unacceptable.

“It’s time for the White House to get into the trench with organized labor and lend a hand. We know what we need, and we don’t need another campaign speech,” said Chris Townsend Political Action Director, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. “The absence of discussion or debate about the failed strategies of this administration only emboldens the corporate onslaught.”

The letter points to numerous decisions that have drawn criticism from Obama’s own Democratic Party including his decision to bail out Wall Street’s most profitable firms while failing to push for effective prosecution of the criminal behavior that triggered the recession, escalating the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan while simultaneously engaging in a unilateral war in Libya, his decision to extend the Bush era tax cuts, and his acquiescence to Republican extortion during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.

“Robust debate on the crucial issues facing our nation, including global environmental devastation, should characterize all races for national public office and the Democratic presidential primaries are no exception,” said Brent Blackwelder, President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth. “The public needs to hear whether a second term Obama will be like the first term Obama, or perhaps more like the 2008 presidential candidate Obama or something else altogether.”

The list of prominent leaders receiving the letter is being kept private as a courtesy.

Here’s a partial list of endorsees:

James Abourezk
Former U.S. Senator, South Dakota

Gar Alperovitz, Professor University of Maryland, Co-Founder Democracy Collaborative

Norman Birnbaum
Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center

Dr. Brent Blackwelder
President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth

Ellen H. Brown
Lawyer and Author of Web of Debt

Edgar Stuart Cahn
Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia
Co-founder Legal Services for the Poor

Pat Choate
1996 Reform Party Vice President Candidate

Charles Cray
Director of the Center for Corporate Policy

Peter Coyote
Actor, Author and Director

Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director, Organic Consumers Association

Charles Derber, Professor, Boston College

Ronnie Dugger
Founder, Alliance for Democracy

John Fullerton
President, Capital Institute

Rebecca and James Goodman, Northwood Farm

Randy Hayes
Director, Foundation Earth
Rainforest Action Network Founder

Chris Hedges
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist of the New York Times and Author

Hazel Henderson,
Author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy
President, Ethical Markets Media, LLC.

Jean Houston
Psychologist, Anthropologist and Author of The Possible Human and The
Possible Society

Nicholas Johnson
Former Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission
Former Administrator, Federal Maritime Commission

Alan F. Kay
Author of Spot the Spin and Locating Consensus for Democracy

Harry Kelber
The Labor Educator

Andrew Kimbrell
Executive Director, Center for Food Safety&
International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA)

Jonathan Kozol
Educator, Author of Savage Inequalities

Lewis Lapham
Former Editor, Harper’s Magazine

Leland Lehrman, Partner, Fund Balance

Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun Magazine
Chair, Network of Spiritual Progressives

Dr. Richard Lippin, MD
Physician Forecaster, Board Certified in Preventive Medicine and
Advocate for both Individual and Institutional Prevention

Robert D. Manning
Founder and CEO, Responsible Debt Relief Institute
Author of Credit Card Nation

Dr. Samuel Metz, MD
Mad As Hell Doctors, founding member
Physicians for a National Health Plan, member of Portland chapter

Carol Miller, Community Activist, New Mexico

E. Ethelbert Miller, Board Chair Institute for Policy Studies

Ralph Nader
Citizen Advocate

Michael Parenti
Author

John Passacantando
Former Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

Erich Pica
President of Friends of the Earth

Vijay Prashad
Author and Professor, Trinity College

Nomi Prins
Author and former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Marcus Raskin
Author of The Common Good and former White House Advisor

Andy Shallal
“Democracy’s Restauranteur” and Owner of Bus Boys& Poets

Michelle Shocked
Musician

David Swanson
Author, War is a Lie

Chris Townsend
Political Action Director, United Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers of America (UE)

Gore Vidal
Author and Political Activist

Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Chair, The Shalom Center

Harvey Wasserman
Author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth

Cornel West
Professor and Author of Race Matters

Quentin D. Young MD
National Coordinator, Physicians for a National Health Program

942 Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally Moral standards have been replaced by feelings.

September 20, 2011 12:00 A.M.

Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally
Moral standards have been replaced by feelings.

I just KNOW I will have a problem with this article. "Young Americans" as in ALL "young Americans?" or, far the more likely, as in "Some young Americans."

Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”:

Lord help us all if we have to get our analysis of allegedly scientific studies from BOBO - BOOBOO - BOOHOO Brooksie, the twink, the intellectual light weight.

● “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.”

It will be very interesting to discover just exactly WHAT was asked, by whom, unto whom, where the questions were asked, etc, etc, but, this is the New York Times, and their reporters, expecially their "A list" virtually never even think to ask such questions.

● “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all.”

Well, PERHAPS, some of them have been brought up well enough to know HOW TO AVOID confronting a moral dilemma. And perhaps those responses which were not, for whatever reason, deemed to be moral dilemmas (by the powers that be of the study), that does not of necessity make them NOT moral dilemmas. The fighter pilot who bombs civilian populations tends NOT to have a moral dilemma in dropping the bombs; after all, he was only following orders (this defense was deemed not sufficient at the Nurenberg Trials).

● “Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner.”

With each and every one of those interviewed? With a majority? If so, how much of a majority? Were the students polled from junior colleges in typically depressed economic areas, or did they tend to come from more elite colleges and universities?

● “The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste.”

Given the a-morality they have been exposed to in video games, TV, etc, this would not seem to be a particularly surprising answer. Recently, President Cheney expressed his dismay at Patrick Fitzgerald's "hounding" of Scooter Libby. Why should a U.S. attorney get all wound up over a government official (probably acting on orders from his superior(s)) to out an NCO CIA agent. Obviously, for Cheney, Fitzgerald lacks the morality. For Fitzgeral, it was Scooter Libby.

● “As one put it, ‘I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.’”

Basically, it sounds as if they are rejecting a "universal morality," and rightly so, for standards of morality have differed at all times, and in all places.

● “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.” (Emphases mine.)

As in back in the day when the pilot of the Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima - and would do it again today, in a heart beat.

As in, back in the day, when Saint Joe McCarthy was permitted by first democratic and subsequently republican administrations to LIE while making his outlandish charges about communists in hollywood, in the U.S. government, in the U.S. military

As in, back in the day, when Richard M. Nixon ordered the Christmas bombings of North Vietnam to try to get their representatives to bend to Nixon's proposals - the art of negotiation by bombing tonnage.

As in, more recently, when DefSec Donald Dumbsfeld told us that Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" lie somewhere to the North, the East, the South, the West, the Northwest, etc of Bahgdad.

As in more recently, in the Supreme Court decision which gave corporations the right to lie to their customers about the safety of their products, or, for that matter, anything else.

As in a mere 10 years ago, the elevation of the Enron Corporation to the status of "best run company in the U.S." for several years in succession, all the while the company was cooking its books to show paper profits, and hiding real $ losses.

Ever since I attended college I have been convinced that “studies” either confirm what common sense suggests or they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.

This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left only believe this when an “eminent sociologist” is cited by a writer at a major liberal newspaper.

Or going back a few hundred years to our founding fathers, George Washington's firm moral position on the necessity of killing Native Americans; or the plantation owner's moral certitude as to the correctness of slavery - or the making illegal the teaching of reading and writing to slaves - or of raping female slaves

What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism.

FUCKIHNG SEUCLARISM? GOOD GOD IN HEAVEN ABOVE - another fucking ism for us to fear, right along side communism, Islamofascism, etc. Shit for brains, total shit for brains, wether or not he believes one single word her farts .... er types.

The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

Yes, that is why we have so many television shows about SECULARISM - NCISecularism, The Mentalis(ecularism)t, The David Letterman S(ecularism)how, etc, etc, etc

One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”

The classic straw thing argument. He just breathed life into two quite artificial constructs, mere words - without real meaning - used as short hand to help us map our way through a confusing, harsh world ... SECULARISM is a concept, and as such it can no more do ANYTHING than rot the minds of those who take such words seriously. "MORAL STANDARDS," are another ethereal construct ... there are few (don't shit where you eat, don't get caught stealing; don't get caught lying; don't tax the rich for to do so is to engage in class war upon them - and it is only fair and just that the rich wage class war on us, and that we not even fight them back.

With the death of Judeo-Christian God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with “How do you feel about it?” as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide. And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.

The death of Judeo-Christian standards? Did I miss a recent headline:

And what does the Lord ask of you, oh man, but that you
Do justice, Love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, and
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as they self.

Such standards are to be seen billions of times daily - just go to the grocery store and see people holding doors open for those with heavy loads, strangers smiling to strangers, old friends talking to each other radiating love of the other, and love of the tradition.

STOP JACKING OFF up there in your high tower or academic haughtiness, and whatever university you went too, have your attorney commence the proceeding to sue them for non-performance in educating you, and malfeasance in fully indoctrinating you.

Forty years ago, I began writing and lecturing about this problem. It was then that I began asking students if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority always voted against the stranger — because, they explained, they loved their dog and they didn’t love the stranger.

They followed their feelings.

So, you gave them a perfectly bogus moral construct, and from THAT your beliefs and opinions are informed? If the fucking dog was drowning, so would be its owner! (Dogs swim pretty damn good too, you fucking retard!)

Without God and Judeo-Christian religions, what else is there?

Just a bunch of poor people trying to make ends meet, sharing their love and warmth with kindred spirits and family, building up communities, giving unto the poor, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the prisoner, caring for the widows and orphans. Just that; only that and nothing more.

— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com.

941 Just keep playing video games, son, PULL EASE!!!

Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

By AFP | Plugged In 

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where -- exceptionally in scientific publishing -- both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.

Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that "unfolds" the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.

This is where Foldit comes in.

Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.

To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.

Cracking the enzyme "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs," says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release. "The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

One of Foldit's creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.

"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said.
"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."

940 Preview: Fraud, Waste, and Standard Operating Procedure 20 Sep. 2011 By Jeff Huber

Sunday, September 18, 2011



I’m not sure what made me think that taking time off to work on Sandbox Generals, my next novel about the age of the New American Centurions (and the stunning sequel to Bathtub Admirals) would get me away from commenting on current headlines. Last Saturday the thousands of days late and billions of dollars short New York Times editorial board ran an editorial excoriating “Runaway Spending on War Contractors.”


...and I owe it all to
Michael R. Gordon and
Judith Miller of the
New York Times.

“Tales of waste, fraud and mayhem by private contractors have been commonplace during 10 years of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the editorial they tell us. “Now a Congressional study commission has put a ‘conservative’ estimate on waste of between $31 billion and $60 billion in the $206 billion paid to contractors since the start of the two wars.” The regal-rag-of-record’s editors also note that according to the study, “Excessive reliance on badly supervised private contractors indulging ‘vast amounts of spending for no benefit’ is the heart of the problem.”

Psst. New York Times. The real heart of the problem is that Saddam Hussein wasn't trying to get yellowcake from Niger like you said he was back in 2002. Are we supposed to get all het up by your editorial about all the contractors making big war bucks thanks to the propaganda you fed the country?

Lamentably, we’ve been in a wartime economy since the Second World War on Evil, and even though that book-of-matches approach to fiscal policy has finally begun to turn our fingers into Chicken McNuggets, there’s no alternative strategy that anyone is likely to implement. Redirect all that defense spending into domestic infrastructure project jobs that can’t be sent offshore because the workers have to be here to work on the infrastructure? What for? We’re still making money pig knuckle over ham hock on war. Retooling an industry to make a new product when the old product is still profitable is a bad business decision. Heck, why do you think we’re still consuming oil and tobacco?

Jesus, Mary and Shemp. Here’s a sneak preview from this week’s labors on Generals, a bit of an Orwellian screed on how things got the way they are. Be warned, this is a rough draft.

The WWEIII (The Third World War on Evil, aka the Cold War on Evil aka the CWoE) everybody agreed to plan for but never have after everybody agreed not to blow up the world with nukes first centered on a WWEI style trench war with tanks in the middle of Europe. But the action in the center ring was actually just a sideshow to justify the air and naval hootenannies that would break out like herpes everywhere else in the world.

That was the war the Navy and the Air Force would fight, a peripheral war that actually had little to do with the stated Evil Empire objective of expanding its client state buffer to include Western Europe so as to ensure no more Hitlers or Napoleons would come along and destroy their armies and countries in a vain attempt to capture Moscow again. Jack supposed that made the objective of us Americans and our little NATO (“Not A True Organization,” according to Jack) buddies was to ensure that another Hitler or Napoleon did come along and try to wreck the world in an attempt to capture Moscow. That didn’t make any sense, Jack ceded, until you considered that the objective of global thermo nuclear-war between the ESSR (Empire of Semi-Socialist Republics) countries and the loose league of American customer states was to destroy the world before the other guys did.
While the high-tech conventional war was peripheral to the opposing physical objectives of expanding or limiting Russia’s European real estate holdings, the war’s overall strategic objective quickly evolved into an economic one, a contest to which of the two diametrically smoke-and-mirror economic systems could outlast the other. So seeing which economic system could develop and field and maintain the most outlandishly exorbitant air and sea weapon systems that would never actually be used for their designed purpose became the modus of combat in what Jack came to know of as “play war.”

Both sides of the CWoE justified lavishing precious national wealth on extravagant weaponry by using it in the dirty little third world proxy wars they suckered each other into from time to time, in Korea and Vietnam and Bananastan and elsewhere, but pricey mayhem machines had little affect on the outcomes of these teakettle conflicts. Third world wars were dumb soldier intensive affairs that mainly required low-dollar carbon-based air-breathing weapon systems largely procured from the lower and middle classes by means of conscription or the lure of stable employment with benefits.

A key factor of top-drawer air and naval gizmology was not merely that it was expensive to produce, although it most certainly was. The beauty part, the piece of resistance of all this, was that however much any given piece of this high-tech crap cost to make, it was boatloads more expensive to maintain, and the older it got, the more it cost to keep in operation. Better yet was that the more a given gizmo cost to make and maintain, the longer it was expected to last, which made it even magnitudes more to make and oodles more to keep operating. So if a flying submarine cost a butt-zillion Houdinis to make, it cost ten butt-zillion Houdinis to keep flying and diving for the thirty years it was supposed to last, at which time it would become eligible for a life extension overhaul that would screw it up so bad it would need two or three follow-on overhauls to fix the first one. By the time the damn thing was finally turned into a museum in some coastal Podunk that needed a tourist attraction, the flying sub will have cost an amount roughly equivalent to what the Gross National Product was in the year it was built.
The Evil Empiricals followed the same general force strategy vector but in a somewhat different manner. Their working class enlisted stiffs who maintained their gear weren’t nearly as well educated as our working class enlisted stiffs, so they built stuff three or four times as solid as it needed to be, realizing that when it broke it was broke-dick and nobody was going to fix it. Hence, rather than spend more Carnacs trying to fix broke-dick stuff they just made new stuff.

A by-product of that practice was that our intelligence weenies could say with a fair amount of accuracy (for a change) that they had a lot more stuff than we had, and we could turn that information around to justify building more expensive stuff to give ourselves the so called “technology edge” to bridge the “numerical superiority gap,” two buzz phrases that Flip often wished he’d been old enough to have originally stolen them from whoever their real originator had stolen them from. It didn’t matter that their numerical superiority gap was a de facto hoax since more than 99 percent of their gear was rusting on the flight line, sinking at the pier, or burning in Chechnya.

That’s not to say that our gear was all immaculate and purring like a fat tomcat getting its dick scratched. Throughout our careers, when Jack and I went on play war deployments overseas, we were lucky if half of the jets in our air wing were fully mission capable (aka FMC)—i.e., they flew and all their radars and weapons and so on worked like they were supposed to—at any given time. Squadron skippers typically reported a 75 percent FMC rate because reporting anything lower was like sinking the teeth of their careers into the chewy end of a shotgun barrel. Maintenance supervisors knew this and ensured that by the end of any given day the paperwork would reflect a 75 percent FMC rate, even if the spare parts that would make a given aircraft FMC weren’t onboard the ship and wouldn’t arrive for weeks if ever.

It must have been some time around the VWoE (Vietnam War on Evil) that air wing maintenance officers and ship supply corps gonifs cut the dope deal where as long as a part was on order everyone would pretend like it was on hand whether it was or not, thus making both the maintenance and supply pukes look good without actually having to do their jobs. Squadron skippers looked the other way because phantom parting made them look good, and air wing commanders looked the other way because it made them look good too, and the same thing held true all the way up the chain of command. And there was little fear that anyone would ever blow the whistle because everybody was in on the scam…

Postscript: Monday morning the PPPP (Pentarchy’s Primary Propaganda Platform) trotted out the crown jewel to preserve the defense budget in the face of the frenzy to give the Tea Baggers a draconian deficit reduction package. “Retiree Benefits for the Military Could Face Cuts” reads the headline of a Times story that says if the Pentagon has to face fiscal reductions, the burden will have to fall on retirees, whose benefits the bull feather merchant marine is now calling a “social program.”

The vector of the overall information op supporting the budget is that we can keep our present and future wars going with “support the troops” brainwash while we cut back on the support we promised the troops of our past wars. And oh yeah, we actually cut back on the support of the troops fighting our current and future wars as well. That won’t hurt recruiting as long as the economy makes joining the military our nation’s most attractive career option. If irony were alive and with us it would smirk at the fact that the head sex fiends who cook up this scare tactic strategy will all themselves get screwed if retiree benefit cuts come to pass.


Mind you now, if we cut retiree benefits we’ll still have flying submarines and stealth airplanes that are too expensive to actually use in wartime because they’ll get shot down over enemy territory by mechanical failures due to design flaws, and multi-billion dollar drones that fly halfway across the world from mega-billion dollar aircraft carriers that are already halfway across the world.

JLH

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now.

at 10:32 PM
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2 comments:

charlie ehlen said...

Nice to have you back from your vacation.

Good start to the new book.

As to the cutting of benefits to military retirees, all one can say is WHAT? As in WTF!!!!!????? Just how is that bullshit "supporting the troops"?

What is the new slogan then? Come fight our damn fool wars of choice so we can CUT your retirement pay? The only way they will get new recruits with that "strategy" is if the military is the only place that is hiring.

Well, they are all set to cut Social Security and Medicare so why not cut military benefits. What is next, a pay cut for active duty military? Now THAT would really show how much (little) these damn jack asses who populate our congress care about "supporting the troops".
America, what a country.

semper fi........yeah sure thing.
10:10 AM

Jeff Huber said...
The infuriating part is that Uncle Bob and Moon Mullen have been actively participating in this black propaganda campaign from the get go, and nobody is calling them on it.
12:47 PM

939 Cheney says aide 'did not deserve' Fitzgerald prosecution By Rick Pearson Clout Street 4:37 PM CDT, September 19, 2011 - For once, I am forced to agree with former President Cheney

www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-cheney-says-aide-did-not-deserve-fitzgerald-prosecution-20110919,0,181674.story

chicagotribune.com

Cheney says aide 'did not deserve' Fitzgerald prosecution

No, he did not DESERVE the prosecution, he fucking EARNED it!

By Rick Pearson

Clout Street

4:37 PM CDT, September 19, 2011

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Speaking a few paces from Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's offices, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney said today that his former chief of staff did not deserve prosecution by the federal prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case.

“Well, I obviously had some fundamental disagreements with him at one point in the past,” Cheney told a luncheon audience of more than 400 people at the Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd., when asked if he had anything to say to Fitzgerald.

“My friend ‘Scooter’ Libby is a very good man. He gave up a very successful private life in order to serve the nation on two separate occasions. For his trouble, he ended up a target of that particular prosecution. I will always think that he did not deserve that,” Cheney said.

Fitzgerald, acting as a special prosecutor, indicted Libby as part of the investigation into who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the late columnist Robert Novak. Indicted in October 2005 on charges of perjury, obstruction and making false statements, Libby was convicted at trial and sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In July 2007, then-President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence to 30 months behind bars, but rejected Cheney’s request for the president to grant a pardon.

Cheney acknowledged that he also had “disagreements” with others in the Bush administration over the investigation and has criticized then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and Powell’s deputy, Richard Armitage, for not coming forward about the leak. During Libby’s trial, it emerged that Armitage was a source of Plame’s identity.

When the event's moderator noted Fitzgerald’s office was literally across the street from where Cheney was speaking, the former vice president responded, “Is he looking for me?”

Unlike Cheney’s measured criticism, his daughter, Liz, told the crowd that Libby’s prosecution “was a tremendous miscarriage of justice.”

“I think that Patrick Fitzgerald knew when he came in as a special prosecutor that Rich Armitage was the leaker and yet that investigation continued,” she said. “And it got to the point where somebody had to be indicted for something. And an innocent man was indicted wrongly and I think it’s a shameful disgrace.”

The appearance by the Cheneys was part of a book tour for “In My Time,” a biography of the former vice president that the two co-wrote. In the book, Dick Cheney is critical of Powell and Armitage for not revealing the source of the leak to the president.

Fitzgerald, in his 10th year as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, has been a leading figure in the prosecution of political corruption cases, including gaining convictions against former Govs. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, and George Ryan, a Republican.

Fitzgerald declined comment through a spokesman.

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