BUSH WATCH...Doug Ireland

posted November 20, 2005

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act  has yet to pass the House, which will take it up this fall, although -- since the Republicans have an arm-lock on the lower chamber and the GOP leadership is making this bill's passage a priority to insure the NRA's full-throated support for Republican Congressional candidates in November -- its passage is hardly in doubt,. But it's still worthwhiile to register your opposition to this dreadful bill, H.R. 800, and doing so is as easy as a couple of mouse clicks: the Stop the NRA website has an easy form for you to e-mail your Member of Congress with a message of opposition to the bill, which you can access by clicking here.

August 22, 2005

BUSH CAVES IN TO ISLAMIST CONSTITUTION FOR IRAQ -- AND THE U.S. PRESS BLOWS THE STORY

If the Bush administration brokered a deal in Occupied Iraq to enshrine Islamic law as the guiding principle of the new Iraqi Constitution, you'd think it would be headline news in the U.S. media, wouldn't you? Well, that's what has happened -- yet you can  search the Sunday papers in vain to find this sell-out to the Islamists clearly portrayed -- or, in some cases, even mentioned.

In a dispatch that Reuters moved at 1:33 P.M. on Saturday (August 20), the headline reads, "U.S. concedes ground to Islamists on Iraqi law."  "U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq,  negotiators said on Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to draft a constitution under intense U.S. pressure," Reuters reported. "Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.

"But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam 'the,' not 'a,'main source of law -- changing current wording -- and subjecting all legislation to a religious test. 'We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want.'"

Under the soporific headline,  "Iraqi Talks Move Ahead on Some Issues," The Sunday New York Times did report, under an August 20 Baghdad deadline, that "Under a deal brokered Friday by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad (right), Islam was to be named "a primary source of legislation" in the new Iraqi constitution, with the proviso that no legislation be permitted that conflicted with the 'universal principles' of the religion. The latter phrase raised concerns that Iraqi judges would have wide latitude to strike down laws now on the books, as well as future legislation. At the same time, according to a Kurdish leader involved in the talks, Mr. Khalilzad had backed language that would have given clerics sole authority in settling marriage and family disputes. That gave rise to concerns that women's rights, as they are enunciated in Iraq's existing laws, could be curtailed. Finally, according to the person close to the negotiations, Mr. Khalilzad had been backing an arrangement that could have allowed clerics to have a hand in interpreting the constitution." But because of the way the Times presented the story, it's doubtful that anyone bothered to pay attention to it or wade into the body of the story to find this revealing detail.

The Washington Post also put a snooze of a headline on its Sunday story: "Kurds Fault U.S. on Iraqi Charter," said the Post header -- but it's not until the story's fifth paragraph that one gets to the meat, when the paper reports that, "The working draft of the constitution stipulates that no law can contradict Islamic principles. In talks with Shiite religious parties, Kurdish negotiators said they have pressed unsuccessfully to limit the definition of Islamic law to principles agreed upon by all groups. The Kurds said current language in the draft would subject Iraqis to extreme interpretations of Islamic law. Kurds also contend that provisions in the draft would allow Islamic clerics to serve on the high court, which would interpret the constitution. That would potentially subject marriage, divorce, inheritance and other civil matters to religious law and could harm women's rights, according to the Kurdish negotiators and some women's groups."

Moreover, the Post devalued the impact of this information by relying solely on Kurdish sources. But the Reuters dispatch also cited one of the main Sunni negotiators on the Constitution confirming the U.S. sell-out to the Islamists: "Sunni Arab negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak also said a deal was struck which would mean parliament could pass no legislation that 'contradicted Islamic principles. A constitutional court would rule on any dispute on that, the Shi'ite official said," Reuters reported, further quoting the Sunni's Mutlak as saying "The Americans agreed...."

Given the way the two national U.S. dailies -- which set the TV news agenda -- played this story, it's hardly surprising that shallow little George Stephanopoulos (right), on  this morning's ABC political chat show "This Week," didn't even bother to raise the question of the U.S. cave-in to an Islamic Constitution, neither when quizzing several U.S. Senators (Republicans Allen and Hagel) and Gov. Bill Richardson on Iraq, nor in the round-table discussion with journalists which followed. And on NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning, David Gregory (subbing for Tim Russert) also failed to bring up the U.S. sell-out to an Islamist Constitution in long discussions of Iraq with Sens. Russ Feingold and Trent Lott (Feingold should have mentioned it--but didn't), although Gregory did bring it up in a roundtable at the very end of the show (by which time a lot of people had probably switched to watching "Sports Wives" -- why didn't Gregory talk about this important news at the top of the hour, particularly when questioning Lott, who kept insisting "we're making progress" in Iraq?)

The Reuters dispatch also contained this useful and highly relevant reminder, absent from both the Times and Post reports: that Bush's ambassador to Iraq, Khalilzad,  "helped draft a constitution in his native Afghanistan that declared it an 'Islamic Republic' in which no law could contradict Islam." And the Post story, way down, quoted the Sunni's Mutlak as saying of Khalilzad, "'His main interest is to push the constitution on time, no matter what the constitution has in it,'' said Salih Mutlak, a Sunni delegate who has been outspoken against some compromise proposals. 'No country in the world can draft their constitution in three months. They themselves took 10 years,' Mutlak said, referring to the United States. 'Why do they wish to impose a silly constitution on us?'" Meanwhile, the AP reports this morning that the Sunnis say they've been left out of the negotiations over the Constitution.-- a sure prescription for more violence in Iraq.

Why is the Bush administration strong-arming the Iraqis into rushing through a new Constitution with so little time to craft it? Two reasons: Bush desperately wants to score a p.r. victory in "the war on terror," in which his administration continues to insist that Iraq is the main front (even though it is the U.S. occupation of Iraq that is now  the main motivator for  terrorist-style violence); and because failure to achieve a new Constitution on time would undoubtedly cause new elections in Iraq -- and the Bushies are terribly afraid of the Iraqi voters, fearing that discontent in the country with the U.S. occupation and its failure to bring either security from violence or to deliver basics -- like water and electric power-- would lead to the election of a government less maleable by Washington, thus creating further U.S. domestic backlash against the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq.  That short-sighted desire for achieving something that could be sold by Bush's spinmeisters to the American people as 'progress" in Iraq is what's driven Bush's man to break arms on behalf of an Islamist Constitution for Iraq.

The Reuters report cited above is reinforced by the coverage in the daily Al-Hayat, cited by Middle East expert Prof. Juan Cole this morning on his excellent blog, Informed Content. Cole (left) writes: "In one of the major disputes outstanding between the Kurds and the Shiites, on whether Islamic law will be the fundamental source or only one of the sources of Iraqi law, the Shiite religious parties appear to have won out. AFP reports that the reason for this is that the United States has swung around and begun to support the primacy of Islamic canon law.

"Al-Hayat writes, 'Also, an agreement was reached that Islam is the religion of state, and that no law shall be enacted that contradicts the agreed-upon essential verities of Islam. Likewise, the inviolability of the highest [Shiite] religious authorities in the land is safeguarded, without any allusion to a detailed description. The paragraph governing these matters will specify that Islam is 'the fundamental basis' for legislation, though there will be an allusion to the protection of democratic values, human rights, and social and national values. A Higher Council will be formed to review new legislation to ensure it does not contravene the essential verities of the Islamic religion.' Personal status law, concerning marriage, divorce, alimony, inheritance, and so forth, will be adjudicated by religious courts in accordance with the religion or sect to which the individual belongs." 

And, of course, nobody mentioned it in all these cited reports, but gays and lesbians in particular also have huge reason to be afraid of an Islamic Constitution in Iraq. But Prof. Cole also extensively quotes the text of the Islamic Constitution which U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad godfathered in Afghanistan. It makes for chilling reading, especially as an omen of what Khalilzad is cooking up in Iraq, and you can read it by clicking here.

August 18, 2005

NEW STUDY SHREDS THE MYTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY BRINGING DEMOCRACY

It's a finger in the eye for the likes of the Times' Tom Friedman and other prophets of the beneficial effects of globalization: a new study  of 150 countries, to appear in the September-October issue of the archi-establishment journal Foreign Affairs (published by the Council on Foreign Relations), demonstrating how the conventional wisdom which says that free market economies inevitably bring democracy in their wake is a myth.

Today's International Herald-Tribune has a preview of the Foreign Affairs inquest in an article, "An Open Economy, a Closed Society," by the authors of the study: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (chair of the Department of Politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution) and George W. Downs (professor of politics and dean of social sciences at New York University).

Bueno de Mesquita and Downs shred the prevailing notion in U.S. political discourse from both wings of the bi-partisan duopoly: namely, "that market liberalization is the most reliable path to democracy. Economic openness, it was reasoned, leads to the emergence of an educated and entrepreneurial middle class that over time, will start to demand more and more control over its own fate. But something went wrong in China, Russia and other states where authoritarian regimes loosened the economic reins. Economic growth arrived but liberal democracy is still nowhere is sight. The reason is simple but disturbing: A new and more sophisticated breed of autocrat has discovered a strategy that permits them to enjoy the benefits of economic growth while postponing - often for decades - the emergence of authentic competitive democracy.

"To understand how this strategy works, it helps first to understand how political competition emerges in the first place. To effectively pursue political power, citizens have to engage in "strategic coordination": activities such as disseminating information, recruiting and organizing party members, selecting leaders, raising funds and holding meetings and demonstrations. Economic growth has traditionally been thought to promote democratization by making strategic coordination easier, as communications technology improves, news media become more diverse and the citizenry more educated.

"But in recent years some savvy regimes have learned how to cut the cord between growth and strategic coordination, allowing the former without having to worry about the latter. Their trick is to ration carefully the subset of public goods that facilitate political coordination, while investing in others that are essential to economic growth. The "coordination goods" that they need to worry about consist of things such as political and civil rights, press freedom and access to higher education. "Standard public goods" include public transportation, primary and secondary education, and public health; all of which contribute to economic growth and pose relatively little threat to the regime.

"Examples abound of how autocrats limit coordination goods. Consider China's long history of restricting access to the Internet and other media. Or Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has placed all national television networks under strict state control and eliminated elections for regional leaders. Or Venezuela, where last year President Hugo Chávez pushed through a law allowing him to ban news reports of violent protests and to suspend the broadcasting licenses of media outlets that violate any of a long list of broadly phrased regulations.

"How well does this coordination suppression strategy work? We recently examined the provision of both coordination goods and standard public goods in about 150 countries from 1970 to 1999. Several findings are particularly noteworthy. First, the suppression of coordination goods keeps autocrats in power. An autocrat who both permits freedom of the press and civil liberties reduces the chances that he will survive for another year by about 15 to 20 percent. Second, today's autocrats tend to suppress coordination goods much more consistently than they do other public goods. Some old-fashioned tyrants, especially in Africa, still suppress all public goods. But a growing proportion of the world's authoritarian regimes have adopted a more sophisticated brand of oppression. Third, the greater the suppression of coordination goods in a given country, the greater the lag between the onset of economic growth and the emergence of liberal democracy...."

You can read the entire article by clicking here.  The notion that the free market brings democracy with it is dear not only to George Bush and the Republicans, it is a staple of Democratic politicians' rhetoric as well -- it is the U.S. version of the pensée unique, and holds that the only possible economic model compatible with human freedom is the American one. To have this arrogant and falacious proposition left in tatters by such a prestigious publication as Foreign Affairs provides new ammunition for a radical, systemic critique of both U.S. foreign policy and Washington's attempt to dictate global economic hegemony on behalf of the multinationals. The appetizer of this new study in today's Herald-Trib leaves me eager for F.A.'s September issue.

August 12, 2005

ANTI-GAY HATE CAMPAIGN TARGETS STARBUCKS

I've written before about the potent anti-gay boycott and pressure campaigns by the Christian right and the "family values" industry targeting Corporate America (see my L.A. Weekly article, "The New Blacklist: Corporate America Caves In to the Christers.").Well, the Christers now have a new target for their hate-spewing: Starbucks.

• The Concerned Women of America -- an outfit run by Beverly LaHaye (right), the wife of fundamentalist preacher Rev. Tim Lahaye, a Christian broadcaster with her own nationally syndicated radio show, and a skilled Christer propagandist who's written eight books and sits on the board of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University -- has now targeted the latte-purveying company for promoting homosexual values. "Starbucks Funds and Promotes Homosexual Activism,:" shrieks Mrs. LaHaye's website.

Starbucks' crime? The company  is corrupting our youth on its coffee cups. On the back of certain Starbucks cups, as part of their "The Way I See It" series, is a quote from openly gay writer Armistead Maupin --- author of the "Tales of the City" series of six books that also became a TV series on PBS and Showtime, with Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney among its stars. Armistead's oh-so-dangerous words on the Starbucks cup read:

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

That unimpeachable statement by our friend Armistead Maupin (right) is, when it appears on Starbucks' coffee cups, apparently a violation of the "Biblical values for women and families" which Mrs. LaHaye proclaims she founded Concerned Women of America to promote (the group had a $12 million budget in 2003, the last year for which figures are publicly available).

Another Starbucks crime, in the eyes of LaHaye and the Christers, is to have provided a bit of funding for San Diego's Gay Pride celebrations.

An interesting note about Christer hypocrisy: BlogActive reports that Lee LeHaye -- son of Beverly and the Rev. Tim -- who is the Concerned Women of America's CFO -- is openly gay.

As my survey of the anti-gay Christer boycotts of Corporate America shows, many of the largest companies have been knuckling other to the censorious demands of the religious primitives. That's why you can, and should, take some concrete action. Contact Starbucks and tell them not to cave in to Beverly LaHayes'  campaign of hate and fear-mongering -- you can express your opinion to Starbucks by clicking here.

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posted July 17, 2005

ROVE'S LATEST SMEAR STRATEGY: GOP TARGETS MOVEON AS WEDGE ISSUE TO BAIT DEMS

In a hydra-headed propaganda attack, reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's wild charges in the 1950s that the Democrats were responsible for "twenty years of treason," Karl Rove and the Republican Party are engaged in a widespread smear campaign against MoveOn as "unpatriotic," hoping to hang the successful e-fundraising operation around the necks of Democratic candidates all across the country like a terror-tinged albatross.

In a recent edition of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, an article, "GOP Sees MoveOn as Wedge" (available online by subscription only), lays out the Rove-inspired propaganda blitz:

"From top White House operative Karl Rove (LEFT) to two of the party campaign committees, Republicans have launched a full-scale attack on MoveOn.org, questioning the liberal group's patriotism and worldview. These attacks appear to have two purposes: One is to put the group and its Democratic allies on the defensive over support for the war on terror. And the second is to drive a wedge between Democratic candidates and the millions of dollars that MoveOn's supporters have pumped into their campaigns. With MoveOn fast becoming one of the Democratic Party's most important fundraising sources, the second goal may end up being the more important one."

Take the case of GOP Senator Rick Santorum (LEFT), darling of the Christer right. The almost-certain Democratic nominee against Santorum next year is Bob Casey Jr., (RIGHT) the Pennsylvania State Treasurer, son of a former Democratic governor, and a noted social conservative who opposes abortion. Despite   Casey's conservative views, MoveOn sent out a major e-mailing soliciting funds for Casey's campaign as a way of defeating Santorum -- and with great success, raising over $150,000 for Casey in the first 24 hours after the fundraising appeal.

"But," reports Roll Call,  "the National Republican Senatorial Committee immediately went on the offensive with a release titled, 'Casey Moves In With MoveOn,' alleging that the group's e-mail on behalf of Casey shows how closely he is aligned with the 'ultra-liberal left.' John Brabender, Santorum's media consultant, predicted that if Casey continues to accept MoveOn money, he will have to answer for the group's controversial policies, which include opposing military intervention in Afghanistan. 'You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep,' Brabender said. A group like MoveOn 'will have a lot of trouble in Pennsylvania, particularly in the middle part of the state. The group will be hung around Bobby Casey's neck.'  The rhetoric from Brabender and the NRSC is aimed at forcing Casey into a no-win choice: He could pass up a generous source of campaign cash, or he could accept MoveOn's ample resources, yet face an assault over the group's issue stances."

MoveOn underscored its financial power when, in just 48 hours, it raised some $800,000 for West Virgina Sen. Robert Byrd, (LEFT) a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq war. This prompted a raising of the rhetorical level by Rove & Company. As Roll Call notes, "The campaign against MoveOn moved to a new level with Rove's June 22 speech in midtown Manhattan, not far from the site of the World Trade Center attacks. Rove accused MoveOn and other liberals of wanting to 'offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.' Democrats pounced on the remarks and demanded an apology from Rove, noting that Durbin just the previous day had apologized for likening treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to those in Nazi Germany or in Soviet gulags. But rather than issuing an emotional apology - as Durbin did - the White House and Republicans went into full attack mode on MoveOn and other liberals,  including Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. The Republican National Committee issued reams and reams of documentation on the positions of MoveOn and Dean regarding the war in Afghanistan. The White House refused to offer even a hint of an apology. And the NRSC sent out a fundraising e-mail lambasting MoveOn, beginning with: 'Karl Rove was right.' And a few days later, when MoveOn's pitch went out on Casey's behalf, the NRSC again pounced on the group and attacked the centrist-leaning candidate for allying himself with a liberal group - a line of attack that the committee has used mercilessly against Byrd ever since the late March fundraising pitch on his behalf."

Just as the American people are turning against Bush's war on Iraq, with a majority favoring withdrawal, the Rove Republicans are going to use scare tactics and the Big Lie technique so often brandished in past GOP campaigns to use guilt-by-association with MoveOn to try to brand Democrats as "soft on terror" -- even when, as in the cases of conservative Democrat Casey Jr. and the octogenarian Senator Byrd, the charges are ludicrous. Make no mistake -- the Big Lie can work. Just ask Max Cleland (RIGHT), the quadriplegic Vietnam War veteran, who lost his Senate seat in 2002 after a similar smear campaign. His GOP opponent ran an ad which It opened with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, then attacked Cleland for voting against President Bush's Homeland Security bill. It didn't mention that Cleland supported a Democratic bill that wasn't radically different. Cleland lost -- even though he had voted in favor of Bush's invasion of Iraq.

The gullibility of the American electorate is notorious when it comes to phony appeals to patriotism -- and the London bombings will only heighten the national mood of security hysteria. In fact, the horrific London attacks (LEFT) on the underground and the double-decker bus, resulting in 50 dead, were a gift from the terrorists to Bush and Blair, both discredited for their lies that took us into a war that did not need to be waged -- the Anglo-American duo will be strengthened now by those bombings, which is what the terrorists want. It's much easier for them to recruit when the world's only hyperpower and its Britannic helpmate are led by two mendacious figures with blood on their hands like Tony and Dubya.

So, with the attacks on Move-On and its use against Democrats like Casey and Byrd, the shape of next year's Congressional by-election is now clear. And remember, as the poet said, when the flag is unfurled, all reason is in the trumpet.

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July 15, 2005

THE "PALESTINIAN GANDHIS" OF BILIN

The small Palestinian village of Bilin is just one of many communities being rent asunder by Israel's Wall of Shame, the 650 kilometer apartheid barrier meant to separate Palestinians from Israel, and which slices through many communities and completely encircles others. But Bilin is remarkable for the creative non-violence with which its residents have carried out demonstrations against the destruction of their community and the confiscation of their lands to build it. They have conducted demonstrations while placing themselves in handcuffs, as the Lebanon Star reported -- so it could not be said they were throwing stones at the Israeli occupying army. They have sent their minor children to demonstrate in front of the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem -- since their mothers and fathers were not allowed to enter Israel. They have chained themselves to trees about to be uprooted to make way for the Wall. Demonstrators have sealed themselves in large metal water barrels placed in the way of the construction crews erecting the Wall of Shame. They have held mock funerals of white-draped coffins, each inscribed with the name of human values that should be respected -- Justice, Fairness, Humanity, Courtesy, and the like. They have created a mock security fence (LEFT), placed themselves under it, and handed out leaflets in Hebrew to the Israeli soldiers begging them not to destroy their village and answer non-violence with violence. Israeli peace activists from groups like Gush Shalom (the Israeli Peace Bloc) have flocked to Bilin to join in these peaceful, nonviolent protests. The response to this nonviolence by the Israeli army has been disproportionately violent -- tear gas, rubber bullets, live bullets, night-time raids of homes in Bilin. When attacked in this way, the Bilin protesters have responded with balloons filled with chicken dung -- an insulting, but hardly lethal response. Children have been killed -- just last week, a 16-year-old from Bilin, Muheeb Assi, was shot to death by the Israeli army occupiers.

Today, in an op-ed for the International Herald-Tribune, "Help Us Stop Israel's Wall Peacefully,"  Mohammed Khatib -- secretary of the Bilin Village Council and a leading member of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall -- tells the story of the "Palestinian Gandhis" of Bilin:

"...Bilin is being strangled by Israel's wall. Though our village sits two and a half miles east of the Green Line, Israel is taking roughly 60 percent of our 1,000 acres of land in order to annex the six settlements and build the wall around them. This land is also money to us - we work it. Bilin's 1,600 residents depend on farming and harvesting our olives for our livelihood. The wall will turn Bilin into an open-air prison, like Gaza.  After Israeli courts refused our appeals to prevent wall construction, we, along with Israelis and people from  around the world, began peacefully protesting the confiscation of our land. We chose to resist non-violently because we are peace-loving people who are victims of occupation. We have opened our homes to the Israelis who have joined us. They have become our partners in struggle. Together we send a strong message - that we can coexist in peace and security. We welcome anyone who comes to us as a guest and who works for peace and justice for both peoples, but we will resist anyone who comes as an occupier.

"We have held more than 50 peaceful demonstrations since February. We learned from the experience and advice of villages like Budrus and Biddu, which resisted the wall nonviolently. Palestinians from other areas now call people from Bilin "Palestinian Gandhis."  Our demonstrations aim to stop the bulldozers destroying our land, and to send a message about the wall's impact. We've chained ourselves to olive trees that were being bulldozed for the wall to show that taking trees' lives takes the village's life. We've distributed letters asking the soldiers to think before they shoot at us, explaining that we are not against the Israeli people, but against the building of the wall on our l and. We refuse to be strangled by the wall in silence..."

Prof. Marcy Newman, an American who teaches English at Boise State University and is one of the International Solidarity Movement activists who've joined the nonviolent Bilin demonstrations, wrote a moving diary of the July 9 demonstration in which a teenager was killed by the Israeli forces: "I saw Muheeb Ahmad Assi, and in fact filmed him as he was wounded and taken away in the ambulance. His funeral is in a half hour. For the first time I witnessed with my own eyes the aggressiveness of the Israeli military Occupying a land that they have no legal right to be on."

Last Wednesday, Ariel Sharon's government adopted a policy to speed up construction of the Wall of Shame -- one year almost to the day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague declared the Wall to be illegal and ordered it torn down in terms that brook no finagling:

"Israel is under an obligation to terminate its breaches of international law," said the ICJ. "it is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the Wall being built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated, and to repeal or render ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto.” In Jerusalem alone, the Wall of Shame will cut off 55,000 Palestinians from the rest of the city, the New York Times reports.

And yet, even as it steps up building the Wall of Shame (now scheduled to be completed by the first week in September), the hypocritical Sharon government has the chutzpah to ask this week for an additional $2.2 Billion in aid from the U.S. for "disengagement" -- money that will simply go to reinforce the Israeli military,already armed to the teeth by Washington's subsidies and arms sales.

There is no "disengagement" for those in Bilin whose lands and livelihood are being expropriated by force. Where is the vast outcry of support for the nonviolent Palestinian Gandhis of Bilin from the U.S. anti-war movement?

RELATED READING: Check out the article in the new online English edition of Le Monde Diplomatique on "Palestine: The Economy of Despair"

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ED KLEIN'S NEW HILLARY BOOK

I wrote the following for the June 23 issue of the L.A. Weekly:

Edward Klein’s new book on Hillary Clinton, published recently, bears the portentous title The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go To Become President. It has been the object of carefully nurtured buzz: Matt Drudge touted it as a book that could “destroy” Hillary’s presidential ambitions, and mega-right Web sites like NewsMax have gushed similar hype. Vanity Fair, for which Klein scribbles with some regularity, ran an excerpt with extravagant fanfare. And the book is already #2 on Amazon's best-seller list, thanks largely to conservative promotions. Alas, this rather slim, air-filled volume — many chapters are only three pages long — is a very wet firecracker indeed.

Up until now, the single best book on the Clintons and their gaping ethical lapses remains Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America by former National Security Council staffer Roger Morris, which unfortunately ends after only a year and a half of the Clintons’ co-presidency (and from which Klein borrows copiously, as his footnotes indicate). A serious, full-scale political biography of Hillary that would include the rest of the Clinton White House years and her Senate service is certainly overdue. But Klein’s book — a snarling, rabidly sensationalist pamphlet with precious little of substance that is new — is not it.

The book’s subtitle refers to Bill Clinton’s sexual adventures (already finely dissected in Christopher Hitchens’ infinitely better No One Left To Lie To — a book curiously omitted from Klein’s “selected bibliography”). Klein, a former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine, devotes a huge chunk of his book to disproving Hillary’s assertions of what she knew about Bill’s affairs over the years and when she knew about Monica Lewinsky, his “little humidor,” as Jay Leno once dubbed the onetime White House intern. Here’s how Klein puts it:

. . . Hillary decided to spin an implausible tale . . . In her memoir Living History . . . she wrote that on the morning of August 15 [1998], her husband woke her up and “told me for the first time that there had been an inappropriate intimacy” with Monica Lewinsky. “I could hardly breathe,” she wrote. “Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him.” But her version of events was not credible. Months before, Hillary had taken charge of the White House’s damage-control operations. She ran the meetings that prepped Bill Clinton for his grand jury testimony. She asked Robert Shrum, the highly regarded Democratic wordsmith, to write a mea culpa speech for the President to deliver on national television. She then vetoed Shrum’s speech, because she found it too conciliatory, and instead urged her husband to “come out and hammer Ken Starr.” She saw the headline in The New York Times of August 13 — two days before her husband’s alleged bedside confession to her about Monica — that said: PRESIDENT WEIGHS ADMITTING HE HAD SEXUAL CONTACTS. The fact of the matter was, Hillary knew everything — and she knew of it before anybody else.

Well, of course. But this is hardly a shocking revelation. That Hillary had long been in charge of tracking Bill’s extramarital sexual affairs has been known ever since Roger Morris detailed how she put Bill’s former gubernatorial chief of staff, Betsy Wright, in charge of what was called the “Bimbo Patrol” to compile dossiers on Bill’s girlfriends and pressure them into keeping quiet. The role of Hillary confidante Evelyn Lieberman — nicknamed “Mother Superior” when she was installed by Hillary as Bill’s deputy chief of staff to monitor his contacts with women, and who was the person responsible for reassigning Monica from the White House to the Pentagon to get her away from Bill’s cigar wielding — was endlessly chronicled during the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment proceedings. Klein is correct to say that “Hillary knew everything” — but again, it’s nothing new. Instead of frothing like a 19th-century Comstockian prude at anyone in the book with an active sex life, Klein would have performed a valuable service had he dynamited the myth, perpetuated by the Clintons’ defenders, that the president’s private conduct had nothing to do with his governance. Quite the reverse was true.

As Clinton prepared to run for his second term several years in advance, it was Hillary who brought back to Bill’s inner circle Dick Morris, an ambulant cancer on the body politic and the turncoat Democratic strategist who had crossed the street to ply his trade for Trent Lott and the right-wing Republicans. Together, the prostitute-frequenting political consultant who had fathered a child out of wedlock and the serial-philandering president and his cynical wife made the full-blown “family values” presidency the overarching theme for securing a second Clinton term.

The charade was on: Clinton decided not to implement the lifesaving recommendations even of George H.W. Bush’s AIDS Commission, let alone his own. He made permanent the ban on immigration by HIV-ers; capitulated to the religious right on explicit sex education and condoms in the schools, while his administration — and Hillary in particular — preached the failed fantasy of “abstinence”; threatened prosecution of doctors who prescribed medical marijuana for people with AIDS and other patients to restore their appetites; sided with the know-nothing obscurantists on the issue of clean needles against the unanimous advice of the medical and AIDS-prevention experts; signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law — and then campaigned on it in 1996 with stealth radio ads targeting the Bible Belt so they’d be under the radar for gay voters on the two coasts. And this is only a partial list of the concrete consequences of Bill and Hillary’s hypocrisy. In an apposite irony, Bill’s televised lies about his sex life with Monica, scripted with Hillary’s help, were beamed to the grand jury from the White House Map Room, site of those infamous fat-cat coffees where Clinton sold his soul to corporate America to get the money for the Clinton-Morris “family values” ad campaign. Thus did the twin hypocrisies meet: Clinton-policy Tartufferies were just as much a sham as “Putting People First,” which translated into putting the bond market first. Yet Klein is either too ignorant about policy, or too eager to pander to the conservative audience that is already making this book a best-seller, to delve into these substantive matters and connect them to Hillary’s active collaboration in the charade.

The author’s conservative bias shows throughout the book. For example, in a vain attempt to demonstrate that Hillary was, in her youth, “The Radical” (as one of his chapter headings has it), he makes much of Hillary’s readership of the now-defunct Methodist magazine motive. In Klein’s telling, he labels two who wrote for motive — the anti-war Catholic priest and advocate of nonviolence Daniel Berrigan and the noted civil-libertarian writer Nat Hentoff — both “Marxists,” which will be news to them. Klein hollers about Hillary’s supposed “fiery radicalism” while she was at Yale Law School — although he is able to produce no evidence of it, other than a couple of articles defending the Black Panthers, written by others, which were published in a law journal Hillary co-edited. Klein also devotes pages to implying (without ever coming right out and saying so) that Hillary is, or was, a lesbian. Thus, he writes of Hillary’s years as first lady of Arkansas: “To Arkansans, she walked like a lesbian, talked like a lesbian, and looked like a lesbian.” In fact, Klein sees lesbians everywhere; Hillary’s White House chief of staff Melanie Verveer is “mannish-looking”; another associate is “a Marlboro-Man-in-drag.”

Personally, I have little use for Hillary Clinton, and I’m appalled that the Democratic base has been taken in by her and thinks she’s a “liberal.” When the imprint she’s left on public life is carefully examined, it is that of an unprincipled opportunist who will say or do anything to achieve and hang on to power. Klein makes the latter judgment, but at the same time he pretends to find in Hillary a closet left-liberal who will swing the White House wildly to the left if she’s elected president. And he does so by ignoring much already on the public record, and with such exaggerated rhetoric, as to make this book quite useless to anyone who is not a right-wing Hillary hater.

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TONY BLAIR'S SON TO INTERN WITH CLOSET-CASE DAVID DREIER

The Daily Telegraph reports today that Tony Blair's 21-year-old son, Euan (below, with his mother), has snared a prestigious internship in Washington working under Republican Congressman David Dreier, the powerful conservative chairman of the House Rules Committee (and a hypocritical gay closet case who supports the Republicans' homophobic political agenda). And Democrats aren't happy about the internship, engineered by Daddy Blair, calling Dreier an "extremely surprising choice" to train Euan in the intricacies of American politics.

The Telegraph, which says that Euan will be "mentored" by Dreier (at right), notes: "Committee officials say the decision to offer the sought-after position to the Prime Minister's son was taken at a senior level - not by staff ordinarily responsible for sifting internship applications. The offer followed a telephone interview with the committee's staff director. British diplomats in Washington also played a part in the process. A Downing Street spokesman said: 'Given the obvious sensitivities, the Prime Minister asked the British embassy to get involved in the process.'

"...Despite his father's close relationship with President George W Bush, the news that Euan is to work for the Republican-led committee has stunned Democrats in Washington. Eric Burns, the communications director for Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, the leading Democrat on the committee, said: 'Working on the Rules Committee will be quite a learning process as it has always been one of the most partisan in the House. It is extremely surprising that the son of a Labour prime minister would intern with the Republican majority staff on the committee.'"

Well, what's so surprising? Tony Blair began his reign by imitating the sell-out triangulations of Bill Clinton and has moved steadily to the right of traditional Labour policies ever since--not just on foreign policuy but on economic issues and civil liberties. By getting the British Embassy to snaggle a job with Dreier for his son, it looks like the prime minister wants to make sure young Euan doesn't stray to far from the family right-wing line. In an editorial just before the Brits' recent elections, The Independent growled that Tony Blair "is essentially a con man." So is the two-faced Dreier, who keeps his male lover on the Congressional payroll at a salary higher than Karl Rove's, but continues to step on the rights of gays to full equality before the law.

There's a solid, detailed analysis of Blair's New Labour and its turn to the right in the current issue of the New Left Review. Susan Watkins' carefully footnoted article, "A WEIGHTLESS HEGEMONY--New Labour’s Role in the Neoliberal Order," among other things points out how Blair's policies have widened the yawning gap betwen the haves and the have-nots in Britain: "Gross transfers to the rich from the poor have continued under New Labour. Indirect taxes, though they have fallen slightly following the mass protests against fuel prices in 2000, are still higher than in Thatcher’s day. Brown ’s tax credits for low-paid parents and pensioners—garnering much praise from left-liberal commentators for giving the poorest decile an extra £15 a week—have been offset by larger changes in underlying income distribution...Wage differentials and the gender pay gap have widened during Labour’s second term."

Watkins, after dissecting Blair's neo-Thatcherian policies on economics, foreign policy, civil liberties, and the rest concludes her lengthy analysis with a judgement from which there is no appeal: "There is no reason for any greater sentimentality towards Labourism than Blair himself has shown. The Economist’s judgement that he is the best right-wing prime minister Britain could have is perfectly accurate. For the left, the logic should be clear: any other would be preferable. It is an anachronism to think that the performance of rival parties competing within the field of neoliberal politics can be distinguished, once in office, by their ideological pedigrees or electoral bases. The policies they adopt correspond to the balance of forces within that society—typically, the legacy of antecedent regimes—and of the world outside it. Just as Clinton was far to the right domestically of Nixon, so Blair has been of Heath; let alone Eden or Macmillan. Today, the uk’s main opposition parties, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, are attacking the government from the left on student fees and pensions, attracting the disapproval of the financial press. Judged against its immediate predecessors, an objective audit can only conclude that New Labour has scattered a few crumbs to the poor, while otherwise consolidating and extending Thatcher’s programme; externally, it has a far more bloodstained record...." Read this definitive NLR article in its entirety by clicking here. --posted 06.28.05

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JUDICIARY FACES NEW G.O.P REIGN OF TERROR

The Republican Congress is launching a new campaign to intimidate and castrate the federal judiciary that amounts to nothing less than a reign of terror and a Constitution-shredding destruction of the seperation of powers. That's the meaning of a frightening report in today's Washington Post on a proposal by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wisc.) to create an Inspector General for the judiciary.

Not content with stacking the federal courts with racist, reactionary, homophobic corporate lackeys by eliminating the Senate minority's right to filibuster judicial nominations, the Republicans -- under the command of Tom Delay, the most corrupt politician in Washington -- are planning to set up this Inspector General's office to be under the thumb of Congress, to which it will have to render report cards on judicial behavior, with budgetary and disciplinary threats in its arsenal to force judge to toe the Republican line on everything from the right to die with dignity to affirmative action to abortion to gay civil rights. This is tantamount to putting the Christian right in charge of policing our courts.

Not only that, there's also a Republican plan to split up the federal 9th Circuit -- based in San Francisco, it's the most liberal federal bench in the country -- by slicing it into three parts, taking Oregon, Washington, four mountain states and Alaska out of the liberal judges' jurisdiction.

The chances of defeating these measures are slim indeed. When the Republican "nuclear option" of eliminating the filibuster goes through, Senate Democrats will be unable to block this legislation, which will without doubt pass the House (watch for anywhere from 40-80 House Democrats to go over the side and join the ironclad Republican majority to pass these measures. And the Republicans are determined to pass all this stuff this year.

Next year's mid-term Congressional elections offer little hope of any change in control of Capitol Hill, which means that what will be done this year cannot be undone in a new Congress. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has already said in public that it would take a "miracle" for the Democrats to win back the Senate next year. And, given that almost every incumbent in the House was re-elected last year with around 60% of the vote -- thanks to gerrymandering by both parties -- the GOP control of that chamber next year is also not in doubt.

The founding fathers are turning over in their grave. But the progressive forces are outgunned and outnumbered by the well-financed shock troops of the Christian right, and not only the remaining handful of so-called "moderate" Senate Republicans but many Senate Democrats are increasingly pandering to the Christers. There won't be enough of either to stop this punitive Congressional control of the judiciary from becoming law. The last shreds of meaningful democracy in this country are being dismantled before our eyes, one by one. --posted 05.16.05

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A McGREEVEY COMEBACK?

This morning's Newark Star-Ledger reports on a new Zogby poll the paper headlines as a "shock": it shows that nearly half the residents of the Garden State would consider voting again for former N.J. Gov. Jim McGreevey for some other office, like Congress or the legislature (and 30% of those saying so were Republicans).

Just 6% said they would never vote for McGreevey because he is gay, while 43% said they would never vote for McGreevey, but for reasons other than his sexuality. The poll was conducted for New Jersey's gay rights lobby, Garden State Equality, which wanted to get a read on support for legalizing same-sex marriage (55% of Jerseyans are in favor). But the McGreevey question was tacked on (I'm told by a reliable source) not only to measure acceptance of an openly gay candidate -- the ostensible reason -- but also as a favor to McGreevey, who is considering another run for office.

It's encouraging that there is such apparent openness toward an openly gay candidate for public office in New Jersey. But I devoutly hope the gay community does not embrace the disgraced ex-governor as its poster boy. I spelled out the reasons why at the time of McGreevey's resignation last year in "McGreevey's Closet," a piece for the L.A. Weekly in which I explained how the governor's tortured double life led to him to the multiple misjudgments that made him the emblem of corruption and boodling in the Soprano State. It's worth remembering that McGreevey didn’t come out of his own volition — he was dragged out of the closet by a jilted extortionist who embodied the corruption scandals and ethical abuses that swirled around McGreevey’s tenure as governor.

When McGreevey gave his then-boyfriend, Golan Cipel, multiple jobs on the state payroll (and got him several other no-show jobs sweetly provided by McGreevey campaign contributors seeking favors), this was scandalously immoral — not because of the “consensual sexual relationship,” but because the governor stuck his hand in New Jersey taxpayers’ pockets to put his boyfriend on the public tit, betraying the fiduciary responsibilities that came with his oath of office. (You can read the background on McGreevey's multiple corruptions -- and the role his closet syndrome played in them -- by clicking here.)

After McGreevey's resignation, too many institutional gay leaders (like NGLTF's Matt Foreman) rushed to praise McGreevey for his "courage" and hail him as a gay hero. That's patent nonsense. A poll at the time showed the only 8% of New Jerseyans thought the guv's gay affair was the real reason for his resignation -- and they were right. If gay leaders give their imprimatur to a McGreevey political comeback, they'll be putting their stamp of approval on the ethical sewer that was the governor's political life. This will smack of elitism, and the right wing -- not just in Jersey but nationally --will have a field day painting gay Americans as willing to excuse corruption if it's done by "one of their own."

I wish McGreevey well in his personal life, but I hope he stays a thousand miles away from politics -- and that the gay movement keeps double that distance from a lousy governor whose conduct in office was a shameful example of deliberate ethical blindness on many fronts. --posted 05.06.05

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April 20, 2005

THE NEW EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION--SHOULD AMERICANS CARE?

The number one topic of political conversation in Europe for weeks has been the possibility that the French electorate may reject the new European Constitution, in a referendum on it to be held at the end of May. The reason: a month ago, the first poll showing the "No" winning in France appeared. This was a shock in every European capital, since France has been considered the most pro-European country on the Continent, its succesive governments having long played a seminal role in building common European political and economic institutions, since the 1950s.

A French "No" vote would effectively kill the new Constitution. And, since the first French public opinion poll showing a win for the "No," 14 consecutive polls have showed the French rejecting the new Constitution for Europe -- the latest, published Thursday by one of the better-known French polling institutes, CSA, gave the "No" a solid 55%, against just 45% for the "Yes." And the "No" vote appears to have doubled its margin of victory in just two short weeks -- despite an extraordinary mobilization of the French and European political and media establishments in support of a "Yes" vote.

Why, you may ask, should Americans care?

I have long been in favor of a strong, federal Europe -- and not simply because I developed great affinities for Europe during the decade I spent living in France. As the political center of gravity in the U.S. has ever more markedly shifted to the right over the last two and a half decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, it has simultaneously become increasingly clear that the arguments in favor of an ever-stronger Europe advanced by the Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz have been prophetic. The former chief economist of the World Bank, Stiglitz became one of the most forceful critics of the Bank and of the International Monetary Fund, the twin global enforcers for multinational capitalism. Long before George Bush's war in Iraq, Stiglitz argued -- in a series of books and articles -- that only a European Union that was both economically and politically puissant and coherent could provide a counter-weight to the U.S.-led drive toward the economic globalization that gives the behemoth multinational corporations free and untrammeled reign over our destinies, and offer some hope of resistance to the U.S. military adventures from which those multinationals profit so handsomely.

The war in Iraq, of course -- opposition to which was led by France, Germany, and other nations of "Old Europe" (to borrow Rumsfeld's famous epithet), and which was intensely unpopular even in countries (like Italy and Spain) whose governments, at the time of the invasion, supported the war -- underscored the added importance of a strong Europe as a brake on U.S. imperial adventures. And Bush's aggressive proclamation of an American first-strike doctrine -- which insists on Washington's right to make war or take military action against whomever it likes whenever it likes -- ought to have convinced the sceptical that a strong Europe was necessary to have any hope of preserving the world's fragile peace, since the Bush first-strike doctrine appalled most Europeans, whether of the left or of the right.

Moreover, the parliamentary elections in Spain in the Spring of 2004 -- as I wrote at the time -- "dramatically shifted the balance of power within the European Union against the Atlanticist alliance that sundered the authority of the United Nations by invading Iraq." Last year's eviction of Spain's pro-war Aznar government, and the concommitant election of the anti-war, moderate Socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez  Zapatero, has presaged the probable outcome of next year's parliamentary elections in Italy. The regional elections in Italy two weeks ago were a crushing defeat for Bush's last important Continental ally on Iraq: Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his hard-right governing coalition (and which includes the cosmetically air-brushed neo-fascists led by Vice-Premier Gianfranco Fini) were dramatically slapped down by an electorate with whom the Iraq war and occupation are enormously unpopular -- upwards of 70% of Italians in the public opinion polls oppose Italy's support for the U.S. Iraq policy. As even the conservative editorial writers of The Economist acknowledged in their election analysis, the defeat of Bush's ally in those regional elections means that there is, at the very minimum, "a strong chance that Mr. Berlusconi's lot will lose" next year. And I'd say that's a considerable understatement.

With Aznar gone and Silvio tottering, even Bush's partner-in-lies Tony Blair is in serious trouble heading into the U.K.'s May 5 parliamentary elections -- his arrogant mendacity on Iraq about WMD and the "imminent" threat posed by the odious Saddam Hussein seriously undermined his credibility (and his center-right domestic policies have further alienated his base). Blair's New Labor is now down to just 33%--that's only a slim, six-point lead over the Tories in the latest poll released yesterday, with the anti-war Liberal Democrats siphoning off many Labor voters for a healthy 21%. Blair's support for the Iraq war has already atrophied his influence over the Continental European powers. And even Poland -- part of Bush's Eastern European "coalition of the bought" -- announced two days ago that it is going to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Significantly moreso than at the time of the Iraq invasion, a strong Europe would be antagonistic to the American imperium.

But, contrary to the claims of its supporters, the new European Constitution is not a step toward a stronger Europe, but will actually lessen European influence on the world stage. And that's but one of the reasons why American progressives should be hoping French voters reject it next month. Let me explain why:

[to be continued...]

HOW BOLTON GAY-BAITED A WHISTLEBLOWER

One aspect of wacko John Bolton -- Bush's nominee for UN ambassador -- that hasn't received enough attention is how he gay-baited a Texas businesswoman, Melody Townsel, in Moscow when Townsel got on Bolton's shit list. Her crime was blowing the whistle on the failures and substandard performance of a U.S. A.I.D. subcontractor whom Bolton, then in private practice, represented.

From Howie Kurtz's WashPost column of April 22, on "Bolton Bashing Bonanza": "USA Today meanwhile, caught up with businesswoman Melody Townsel, who says Bolton once threw a file folder and a tape dispenser at an American businesswoman in Moscow, disparaged her weight and alleged she was gay in an attempt to get her to withdraw criticism of a foreign-aid project." "When Townsel got into a dispute with a company represented by Bolton in 1994 and would not withdraw her complaint, she says, Bolton spread rumors that she had stolen money and also referred disparagingly to her weight and hinted that she was a lesbian. . . . Kirby Jones, a Washington consultant, said Townsel told him of Bolton's behavior at the time. "

You can read the entire USA Today story on Townsel by clicking here. And Daily Kos has the complete text of a letter Townsel wrote to Senators recounting Bolton's deranged persecutions of her. Townsel wrote:

"As a maligned whistleblower, I've learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goal he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there.

"John Bolton put me through hell -- and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological...."

Joe Biden and Chris Dodd raised the Townsel matter in the last hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that postponed a vote on Bolton's nomination -- but didn't mention the gay-baiting. It will be interesting to see if it comes up when the panel comes back from its recess hiatus.... --posted 04.24.05

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.

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THEOCRACY WATCH: Nader Joins Chriscons

by Doug Ireland

Ralph Nader today has joined the Christers in opposing the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube--and has linked up with a right-winger with unsavory connections to do it.

You may recall Ralph's unprincipled hooking up with the cult-racket formerly known as the New Alliance Party to help get him on the ballot for his '04 presidential campaign. Well, now he's up to his old tricks of making an unholy alliance, this time with the conservatives.

Nader's intervention in the Schiavo case came in a joint statement with one Wesley J. Smith. And who, you may well ask, is Mr. Smith? A conservative bio-ethicist who contributes to the Weekly Standard and the National Review, Smith is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute--one of whose co-founders and prime movers is the ultra-conservative economics writer George Gilder, famous for his anti-feminist and anti-homosexual ravings (Gilder is also noted for such statements as "A successful economy depends on the proliferation of the rich," and "Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind.") Smith's official bio also lists him as a "special consultant" to another right-wing think-tank called the Center for Bioethics and Culture, peopled by Southern Baptists and other Christers, and whose national director, Jennifer Lahl, is an associate of born-again convicted Watergate criminal Charles "Chuck" Colson, and an adjunct fellow of Colson's Wilberforce Forum.

Now what does Ralph say in his joint statement with the dubious Mr. Smith? Among other things: "A profound injustice is being inflicted on Terri Schiavo," Nader and Smith asserted today. "Worse, this slow death by dehydration is being imposed upon her under the color of law, in proceedings in which every benefit of the doubt-and there are many doubts in this case-has been given to her death, rather than her continued life."

Benefit of the doubt, says Ralph? Why, before the Bush-Rove-DeLay intervention by ukase in the Schiavo case, in the eight years that Terri's husband has been seeking to legally fulfill her wishes not to live as a vegetable, the case was before 19 different courts. Seven different neurologists appointed by those courts found that Schiavo is, in essence, already dead in everything but name. The cortex of Schiavo's brain, they all affirmed, was completely "liquefied, and she can neither feel, sense, nor think," as the Washington Post wrote in summarizing their findings. Since the Washington Republicans' attempt to interfere with the intimate, private decision made by Schiavo and her husband, the Schiavo case has been before half a dozen more courts--including the U.S. Supreme Court, which found no reason to review the findings of the lower courts, thereby effectively affirming them. Schiavo has already had many, many more hearings than your average prisoner on death row (not that I'd begrudge them a single one).

But Ralph and his new right-wing buddy insist that, "This outrageous order proves that the courts are not merely permitting medical treatment to be withheld, it has ordered her to be made dead." No, Ralph, the courts have ordered that Schiavo be treated in the manner she wished, and in the merciful manner that her own doctors have recommended for eight long years--that she cease to kept artificially in a simulacrum of life because doing so makes the religious nuts, including her parents, feel better. The courts have ruled that her doctors be allowed to let her escape from the lifeless prison of her body.

Nader and Smith's press release asserts that, to know "whether Terri can be improved with therapy....there is only one way to know for sure- permit the therapy." But, in the first seven of Schiavo's 15 years as a vegetable, she had that therapy, extensively. As ABC News reported in its profile of Schiavo's husband: "When doctors determined that Terri had entered a persistent vegetative state, Michael flew Terri to California for experimental surgical treatments, sleeping on a cot in her hospital room.

"Even after doctors in California determined surgery would do nothing to help Terri, Michael continued to seek help. He admitted Terri to a Florida brain-injury center and hired an aide to take her out to parks and museums, in the hope it might stimulate her reawakening. It didn't." Fortunately, it now appears that science and reason have triumphed over religious superstition and anti-rational knownothingism, and that Terri Schiavo's 15-year long Calvary --which encompasses the trauma inflicted as well on her loyal, loving husband and her daughter -- will soon be over. Ralph will do almost anything these days, and ally himself with almost anyone, to get attention. Nader's stomach-turning intervention on the side of the irrational in the Schiavo case is just one more piece of evidence of the path to kook-dom on which he has placed himself. I deeply regret having endorsed him for president twice. --posted 03.29.05

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.

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THEOCRACY WATCH #1: Evolution Censored--But Americans Don't Believe In It Anyway

by Doug Ireland

The I-Max chain has canceled screenings of science films in a dozen of its movie theaters because test screenings showed a majority of viewers judged their portraits of evolution "blasphemous" because they contradicted the Biblical portrayal of Genesis, the New York Times and the BBC report.

According to the BBC, "Religious controversy has reportedly affected the distribution of educational films such as Cosmic Voyage, Galapagos and Volcanoes of the Deep Sea to Imax cinemas, some based within science museums.  While relatively few cinemas were involved, it was feared it could have a profound knock-on effect across the world because of the high cost of producing Imax films."

At the same time, a new poll on religion and American life out today from NBC shows that a significant majority of our fellow citizens -- 57% -- believe in the literal truth of the Biblical explanation for the origin of human life, while only 33% believe in evolution (another 10%, who must have been living in a bubble, said they "didn't know.")

Among the other disturbing findings of the poll: a whopping 50% believe that the influence of religion is "losing its influence" on American life. Such is the paranoid worldview, propagated by the churches and the Dobson-led religious right, of a concerted satanic assault on their beliefs--their propaganda has persuaded a majority that they're losing--when, in fact, by every measure, government and private institutions have both been increasingly bending to religious-inspired censorship, particularly since the advent of The Twit as president. Separation of Church and State is on the run--as DIRELAND has been pointing out for some time now.

More from the NBC poll: 59% say religion plays some role in how they make decisions at election-time; 65% say religion plays some role in their interactions with their co-workers; 61% say religion plays some role in major health care decisions (ah, yes, poor Terri Schiavo, trapped by god-botherers in her non-functioning body against her will)  and 67% say religion plays some role in what they watch on television.

That last number no doubt is reflected in another new poll out today, from TIME magazine, showing that Americans want more censorship of TV. The TIME survey says that 68% of Americans believe  the entertainment industry has lost touch with viewers' "moral standards," 53% want stricter F.C.C. censorship of sex and violence on TV, and 49% want to extend F.C.C. "indecency" regs to cover basic cable, including MTV and the E! channel on most cable systems (just as powerful Republican Senator Ted Stevens is proposing, as DIRELAND reported last week).

After the last 72 hours in the Schiavo affair--which saw Congress subpoena a human vegetable, both Senate and House vote to shred the Constitutional separation of powers, and The Twit flying back from Crawford to make sure Schiavo wouldn't be liberated from her suffering (although he's too busy to visit legless Iraq vets in their hospitals) --well, one can be forgiven if, at times, one wonders if we're not living in a better-furnished, fast-food version of Iran.....

Meanwhile, In Michigan, the legislature is set to vote soon on a bill approving the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings--and the Democratic Governor, Jennifer Granholm--once known as a progressive, but who has been increasingly loud of late in her demands her party take a centrist course--says she has no problem with the bill....And today's New York Daily News reports that the Empire State's two U.S. Senators, Hillary and Chuck Schumer--principled public servants that they are--ducked the Schiavo vote in the Senate. In fact, not a single Democratic Senator objected to the Schiavo vote in the upper chamber, which could have blocked it. (Thankfully, Barney Frank, John Lewis, and a handful of other Democrats in Congress from safe seats put up a good, if symbolic, fight against the Bush-Rove-DeLay Republicans' totalitarian interference in the medical decision in the Schiavo case; the L.A. Times story on all this picked up on Barney's quote during the House debate: "The caption tonight ought to be: 'We're not doctors, we just play them on C-SPAN.'" But 47 House Democrats voted for the DeLay-sponsored Schiavo resolution--nearly as many as the 53 Dems who voted against it). Of course, as the Christian Science Monitor reports today, for the Republicans their Schiavo maneuver reflects "a desire to advance a 'culture of life' agenda that they think will be important in the 2006 elections and beyond.". Let's hope Hill, Chuckie, and the other cowardly Dems take note of the one bit of good news: the ABC poll out today showing Americans favor removal of Schiavo's feeding tube by 63% to 28%--while by a 25-point margin they opposed Congressional action in the Schiavo case....However, when it comes to fighting for the maintenance of the secular Republic which our Founding Fathers left to us, don't count on there being an opposition party in this country to stand up for rational thought and for keeping Church and State separate.....Stay tuned for more from DIRELAND's Theocracy Watch in the future.

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.

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War By Proxy

by Doug Ireland

The Times of London carries the first confirmation from a major news source that--just as the Bush administration's neo-cons had expected and plotted for--Israel is secretly preparing an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. You will recall that, on February 18, DIRELAND brought you reports from the European press of a Bush speech -- virtually ignored here in the U.S. -- in which The Twit gave his green light to an Israeli attack on Iran and said he'd support it.

That attack is no longer theoretical but in an advanced stage of planning. "The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave 'initial authorisation' for an attack at a private meeting last month on his ranch in the Negev desert," the London Times reports today.

"Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Irans Natanz uranium enrichment plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include raids by Israels elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs to penetrate underground facilities. The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to have indicated provisionally that they would not stand in Israels way if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed...."

This news comes just one day after the Financial Times reported -- to the indifference of the U.S. media -- that Iran was "offering to halt development of most of its nuclear fuel cycle facilities while retaining the ability to enrich small amounts of uranium." This back-channel compromise offer from the Iranians went unreported in the Stateside press. The Iranians have known an attack on their nuke-development centers was in the works ever since last Fall, when the story about the AIPAC spy ring at the Pentagon broke: the principle task of the spies was securing --for Israel -- classified U.S. intelligence on Iran in furtherance of plans for an attack. Which is why neo-cons in the administration -- who have an ideological commitment to a military strike against Iran -- lent themselves to this espionage and provided the documents to Israel.

The imminent threat of Israeli bombing is obviously what is driving the compromise offer reported by the F.T., which could jump-start a new round of diplomatic negotiations to avoid war -- but the respected financial daily also reported that the U.S. was unlikely to accept the offer of a near-total climbdown from Iran.

The drive toward war-by-proxy with Iran is thus in high gear, with disastrous consequences not only for the Iranian people, but for the region and the world: a proliferating nuclear arms race motored by countries Washington doesn't like, who see a nuclear shield as the only protection against Bush's announced first-strike doctrine; and a new mega-motivation for those whom the Islamist mullahs are trying to recruit to respond to the call for more terrorist jihad. Not to mention the distinct possibility of radioactive clouds wafting contaminated desert sands throughout the region, empoisoning food, livestock, and innocent human beings, even among U.S. allies. If The Twit and his new Secretary of State -- a rather literal-minded woman not known in diplomatic circles as the brightest bulb in the chandelier either -- reject the chance to avoid war embodied in the compromise Iranian offer, the Times of London's report today strongly suggests the bombs may begin falling soon. --posted 03.14.05

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.

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March 07, 2005

N.Y. TIMES HAS REALLY BAD DAY ON TORTURE, THE CONSTITUTION, & PENTAGON MENDACITY

Sunday's New York Times lead front-page story out of Washington is headlined "Rule Change Lets CIA Freely Send Suspects Abroad." It's nice to see the Times finally catching up to the story that the Bush administration has been routinely sending people accused of terrorism to despotic allies of Washington, countries in which physical torture is commonplace and will be visited on those suspected terrorists (although the word "torture" only made it into the subhead in the Times story, not the main headline.) A significant number of other major news outlets -- from the WashPost to the Guardian, not to mention the major European dailies and the BBC -- have been reporting this story for months. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about it a year ago. So did my friend Tom Engelhardt, in a particularly tough and prescient piece. However, better late than never, I suppose, where the arteriosclerotic Times is concerned.

But the Times and its reporters, Doug Jehl and David Johnston, missed a hugely significant aspect of this story that strikes at the very heart of our democracy--a story which luckily can be found on the front page of the Sunday Baltimore Sun. Says the Sun, "The Bush administration is aggressively wielding a rarely used executive power known as the state-secrets privilege in an attempt to squash hard-hitting court challenges to its anti-terrorism campaign....

"The government is invoking the privilege in an attempt to wipe out the heart of a lawsuit that seeks to examine rendition, the secretive and controversial practice of sending terrorism suspects to foreign countries where they might be tortured....

"Use of the secrets privilege could also eliminate a suit by a former FBI contract linguist who charges that the bureau bungled translations of terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11 attacks....

"The secrets privilege is an especially powerful weapon because federal judges, reluctant to challenge the executive branch on national security, almost never refuse the government's claim to confidentiality.

"That is true even though a growing body of declassified documents suggests that in the past, at least, the privilege has been used to protect presidential power, not national secrets, according to Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which works to expand public access to government documents....." There's a lot more to this enormously significant story, and you should read all of it by clicking here.

What this story in the Sun means is that, in yet another Constitution-shredding assault on the separation of powers enshrined in that document, the imperial Bush administration is attempting to castrate the third branch of the federal government, the judiciary, by deploying this national security ukase. With the judiciary increasingly stacked with conservatives, and with even so-called liberals on the courts largely cowed whenever the bloody flag of the national security state's "war" on terrorism is waved, asserting this secret privilege steals from the citizenry of our Republic, and even from the Supreme Court, the right to challenge both liberticide administration projects, and the White House's violations of international law in delivering women and men who've never been convicted of anything to the torture cells of countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and even to, of all places, Syria.

But here's what makes the Times' having missed this mammoth Bush mugging of our Constitution utterly inexcusable: the Baltimore Sun picked up its front-pager today from the Chicago Tribune, where the excellent Andrew Zajac's report was published three days ago!

Not only that, the Times served as an uncritical transmission belt for the Pentagon's laughable excuse for its rendition policy -- that it was too expensive to send prisoners to, and hold them in, Guantanamo (even though the Bush administration, at great cost, had constructed the prison for precisely that purpose), the paper failing to provide the slightest context for, or qualification of, the Pentagon's absurd claim.

Another major story today's Times also missed: how Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist wounded and nearly killed by U.S. troops in Iraq after she was liberated by her Islamo-fascist kidnappers, had basically said the Pentagon's version of how and why U.S. bullets needlessly riddled the car she was riding in was a bald-faced lie.

There's little excuse for the Times having missed this story, either. The story broke in European media and on European wire services like Italy's Ansa at mid-day Saturday, Eastern Standard Time. It was the lead story on most European nightly TV newscasts, which--like that of  France2, the largest froggie public television network--air at 2:00 PM E.S.T. (I caught the international francophone channel TV5's presentation of the Fr2 Sgrena segment in a newsflash a few minutes later). If the linguistically challenged inhabitants of the Times' 42nd St. headquarters couldn't read French or Italian, they could have read this story on DIRELAND, where I posted translations of the principal elements of this story yesterday at 2:45 PM E.S.T. Bloomberg News had part of Sgrena's statements up on its website a little after noon yesterday as well. Thus, the information of Sgrena's challenge to the Pentagon's mendacity was widely available well before the Times' deadline for its Sunday print edition (moreover, at 9:00 AM this Sunday morning, you still can't find a reference to Sgrena's statements even on the Times' website). CBS, incidentally, didn't do any better: the first two lead segments on Saturday's CBS Evening News were on Sgrena, but her account of her shooting didn't get so much as a mention. It would seem that TV's capacity for instant response is exaggerated, as CBS had six hours to take note of and mention Sgrena's rejoinder to the Pentagon.

Just to make it perfectly clear that the Good Gray Lady's editors shouldn't have any credible deadline excuses for missing this blockbuster rebuttal of Rummy and Company's Big Lie, the Los Angeles Times--which has a much earlier West Coast deadline than their New York homonym--managed to get an original story (by its Rome staffer Tracy Wilkinson) into its Sunday edition, by that time providing new quotes from Sgrena that had been broadcast last night in an interview with her on Italian television. Today's Washington Post also has a story on Sgrena's Pentagon-contradicting revelations.

In Sunday's Il Manifesto, Sgrena writes an account of her capture, liberation, and wounding by U.S. soldiers that provides more details which suggest even more strongly that the shooting might well not have been accidental: she writes that her chauffeur "had communicated twice -- one to the embassy, once to Italy -- that we were en route to the airport." Given the assiduity with which the Italian government had been working on freeing Sgrena--Italian papers are reporting that a large ransome was paid for her, as it was in the previous case of two kidnapped Italian humanitarian-aid workers-- it is really inconceivable that Rome and its Iraqi reps would not have instantly notified the U.S. authorities that she was to travel the dangerous road to the Baghdad airport so as to assure her safe passage. Moreover, Sgrena writes that she is sure she was deliberately attacked. (Sgrena's article is available on the Il Manifesto website today only in PDF form to those with a subscription--but two lengthy resumes of the article appear today in French and have been posted on the Nouvel Observateur's website.)

Perhaps the establishment-think editors at the Times didn't find Sgrena credible, since she's a proud left-winger and works for the daily Il Manifesto, which is on the left of the left. Ah, but that excuse won't wash either, since Sgrena's version recounting the unnecessary and inexcusable nature of the shooting was confirmed by one of the agents of ultraconservative Bush buddy Silvio Berlusconi's own secret services, which have long had an incestuous relationship with the U..S. intelligence community ever since the days of the super-secret Operation Gladio at the height of the Cold War, and aren't therefore suspect as hotbeds of anti-Americanism.

(An aside: Gladio, as I wrote some eight years ago, was a "CIA-NATO operation...which used neo-fascist elements of the military and intelligence communities in Italy and a dozen other Western European countries to undermine the left." I also wrote a series of columns over a decade ago for the Village Voice on Gladio--about revelations which the Times then, too, refused to cover; these columns are not available online, unfortunately. This little-known chapter in Cold War history, whose effects lasted well into the '70s and beyond, was finally recounted in detail in Nato's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, by Daniele Ganser, published in 2001 and based on extensive research conducted by the Center for Security Studies at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology. But I digress....)

In any case, what isn't in today's Times says a lot about what a sluggish, bureaucratic entity that newspaper has become, how much it rather consistently misses stories that need to be brought to light for the health of our democracy, and how little its coddling attitudes toward the centers of power in Washington have changed since Noam Chomsky began referring to the Times a number of years ago as part of the "business press" -- indeed, it appears that, since 9/11, they've actually gotten worse on national security issues.

I'd like to think there'd be a few red faces and a little embarrassment at the Times for having missed these two major stories that were easily available, and that perhaps there might even some soul-searching on 42nd St. as to why it happened twice in the same day. But I won't hold my breath....

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.

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BUSH' LETS CAT OUT OF BAG: WILL BACK ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN

By Doug Ireland

George Bush has made a slip of the lip: departing from his cue cards, the president greenlighted an attack by Israel on Iran, saying the U.S. would back the attack. As the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph reports today under the headline "America would back Israel attack on Iran":

"Asked whether he would back Israel if it raided Teheran's nuclear facilities, Mr Bush first expressed cautious solidarity with European efforts, led by Britain, France and Germany, to negotiate with Iran.

"But he quickly qualified himself, adding that all nations should be concerned about whether Iran could make nuclear weapons. 'Clearly, if I was the leader of Israel and I'd listened to some of the statements by the Iranian ayatollahs that regarded the security of my country, I'd be concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon as well. And in that Israel is our ally, and in that we've made a very strong commitment to support Israel, we will support Israel if her security is threatened.'

"His comments appeared to be a departure from the administration's line that there are no plans to attack at present and that Washington backs European diplomatic efforts. The remarks may have reflected Mr Bush's personal thinking on an issue causing deep concern in Washington. "Moments later, Mr Bush was asked another question on Iran and appeared to return to his script - this time emphasizing the need for a diplomatic effort...."

This revelatory statement by Bush signals the triumph of the neo-cons--now that the principal roadblock to their designs, Colin Powell, has left office--in the internal administration debate over what to do about Iran. As DIRELAND noted last September, the plan for an Israeli attack on Iran was behind the AIPAC spy ring's espionage which obtained classified U.S. memos on Iran:

"Some of the neo-cons were, like Sharon and Mossad, so ideologically obsessed with an attack on Iran that they were willing to go to any lengths, including espionage, to help Israel get it done. But with the Bush first-strike doctrine having been so bellicosely reiterated at the Republicans' Convention--by everyone from the president to Gen. Tommy Franks' Rove-vetted speech--if, as now seems likely, Bush wins and no longer has to face the voters again, the Target: Iran policy may move to an aggressive new level. And the Likud government is the tail wagging the dog."

The perhaps unintentional Bush revelation shows how Iran is at the top of his limited brain-pan--no doubt because his erstwhile friend, Vladimir Putin, has just made clear Russia's inalterable decision to help Iran with its nuclear program, as the Washington Post reports. With Bush and Putin scheduled to meet within days, it appears Bush--having this agenda at the top of his limited brain-pan--has given his handlers heartburn by revealing he's decided to play the Israeli card in part as an attempt to intimidate the Russians into abandoning their help-Iran-with-nukes plan. (Remember when Bush told us he'd "looked into Putin's soul" and found him to be a democrat and man of peace? Wrong on both counts, our soul-envisioning president, wasn't he?)

In any case, in European capitals Bush's specific targeting of Iran in his State of the Union speech was interpreted as a pounding of the war drums. Despite Bush's praise for the diplomatic efforts of Germany, France, and other EU countries to negotiate a solution to the Iran nuclear proliferation problem, the power of neo-con ideology and the imperial will of a president with a militaro-missionary attitude toward international affairs (as he made clear in his famous interview with Bob Woodward, recounted in Woodward's book Plan of Attack) appear to have triumphed over European insistence that the world must find a political sortie to the problem posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Bush's State of the Union speech, of course, played right into the hands of Iran's hardliners, and undermined the attempts of reformist Iranian civil society to foster a less paranoid world-view than that of the ayatollahs. A U.S.-backed attack by Israel on Iran will have seismic consequents outside the confines of the old Persian nation, further spurring the Islamist fundamentalists' ability to recruit. Moreover, with the Iranian-backed Shiites and their allies in Iraq now having won an absolute majority in the elections there, such an attack would inevitably push the new highly-religious political leadership--and volatile Iraqi public opinion, already overwhelmingly opposed to the bloody U.S. occupation--toward establishment of a hard-line, Islamic state.Dark days appear to be ahead. --posted 02.20.05

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.

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Jeff Gannon, Male Prostitute?

By Doug Ireland

The scandal over "Jeff Gannon"-- the alias of the so-called reporter for the so-called Talon News Service (a hard-right propaganda outfit financed by a prominent GOP contributor) who was seeded among the bona fide White House correspondents to serve up Nerf-ball questions to George Bush and his press secretary, Scott McClellan -- has taken a fascinating new turn.

It now appears that "Gannon," a.k.a. James Guckert, was a male prostitute who extensively advertised his wares, for sale to gay men, on the 'net. John Aravosis' Americablog has all the details, with photo captures of "Gannon"/Guckert's various websites that include pictures of the phony journalist in the buff displaying his erect equipment.

Raw Story raises questions about whether "Gannon"/Guckert got his credentials to participate in White House press conferences thanks to some sort of gay relationship with McClellan, the Bush press secretary whose closet homosexuality has been long rumored. --posted 02.16.05

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this excerpt first appeared.

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REPUBLICANS, RELIGIOUS RIGHT INVADE CANADA!

By Doug Ireland

Not content with their victories in a baker's dozen of anti-gay marriage referenda in the States, the U.S. religious right and a hit-squad of Republican consultants have invaded Canada to fight the impending full legalization set to be passed by parliament with the support of Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberal Party government, the Canadian Broadcasting Company and other Canadian media are reporting. A vote on the bill extending marriage equality--currently legal by court decision in two provinces--to the entire country is expected this spring.

"Focus on the Family has reportedly sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to its Canadian affiliate to wage an anti-gay campaign and the Roman Catholic Knights Of Columbus in the US recently spent nearly $100,000 to print two million postcards now being distributed in Catholic churches across Canada for people to send to Members of Parliament," reports 365gay.com.'s Ottawa bureau.

"American Christian broadcasters have also been targeting Canadians. Two weeks ago 365Gay.com reported that James Dobson, chairman of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, in a broadcast heard on 130 radio stations across Canada denounced the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin which brought in the same-sex marriage bill.

The Winnipeg Sun reported that one targeted MP said one U.S. Christian right group "had identified several Canadian ridings, including his, where they would send 'SWAT teams' at election time to descend on voters and lobby them to oppose same-sex marriage."

The federal revenue service is investigating this spending, and Canada's attorney general says he'll examine legislative ways to make this sort of political invasion illegal.

In addition, the opposition Conservative Party has been getting help from Republicans. Several GOP advisers have been working with the Conservatives to formulate attacks on the legislation and use it as a wedge issue in the next Canadian election." --posted 02.10.05

Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs DIRELAND, where this article first appeared.

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If it's Dean, Now What?

By Doug Ireland

It looks like Howard Dean has wrapped up a victory in the race for DNC chair. When the members of the Association of State Democratic Chairs voted today, Dean won an overwhelming majority of their votes, as the AP reported this afternoon: the former Vermont governor got 56 votes to 21 for Donnie Fowler, with the party establishment's preferred candidate, ex-Congressman Marty Frost of Texas, trailing badly with just five votes. Former Denver mayor Wellington Webb has just dropped out to endorse Dean, and other candidates may well drop out well before the formal February 12 DNC vote.

Dean's victory is one in the eye for the party elite and its fat-cats--Dean can't be controlled by them, and they're frightened by the way in which his presidential campaign went around the traditional party fundraising fat-cat base to raise $50 million-plus, the lion's share of it from the grassroots and smaller donors by internet.

Will Dean make much of a difference as DNC chair? The way he squandered all that money he raised, only to win his home state, isn't encouraging in management terms. Worse, the scuttlebutt in Washington among those who've talked to Dean and his people is that he intends to keep on the DNC staff assembled by Terry "the bagman" McAuliffe, the outgoing DNC chair. That's deplored by party technicians who don't consider the McAuliffe staff up to snuff.

In any case, it will take more than a technical fix to right what's wrong with the national Democrats. A recent poll showed a 12-point drop in the party's favorability rating among Democrats since the election--reflecting the disillusionment of the party base with the party elites' centrist drift. In their weekly conference call, the mayvens who run the Democratic 527 extra-party groups are--our spies tell us--talking about planning for taking back state legislatures so they, and not the Republicans, will control the gerrymandering after the next census. There's little of "the vision thing' in such technocratic strategizing. Will Dean, who has ever proclaimed himself a "centrist" with a "healthy distrust' of the left as well as the right, be the man to steer the party to a new, moblizing course and message? I'm not holding my breath. --posted 01.31.05

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The Black Political Crisis

By Doug Ireland

In December Newsday had a salutary wake-up call to the black community by Norman Kelley, who is currently producing a documentary film based on his book, "The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics" (NationBooks).

Denouncing the black community's "bankrupt" political leadership, Kelley writes:

"The last four decades of American politics have witnessed the rise of conservative politics and the decline of the alliance that staged the March on Washington: 'Negroes, trade unionists, liberals, and religious groups.' Except for Brown v. the Board of Education and the two landmark pieces of civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, almost every policy - affirmative action, welfare, minority set-asides, etc. - that has come into existence via the federal government to assist blacks has been attacked, chipped away and de-legitimized by the conservative movement.

"African-American leadership, ignoring the possibility of a return to a post-civil rights era of hostility to black advancement, never sat down and tried to strategize ideas and policies that would deal with the poor and economics. Today, a swath of the black population is still enmeshed in a web of social dysfunction, which W.E.B. DuBois outlined roughly a hundred years ago. The numbers have gone down since the civil rights era, but as Bill Cosby put it: 'The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.' But the leadership class hasn't held up 'their end in this deal,' either.

"Jesse Jackson's two campaigns have to be viewed as pseudo political mobilization, insofar that they aroused voters but led to no discernible policy changes and no significant grassroots infrastructure building. The Million Man March has shown nothing in 10 years. Today, no better example of a black political collapse is the rise of the Rev. Al Sharpton as a spokesman for blacks and/or the Democratic Party, despite his years of corruption and cronyism - as well as dalliances with the Republican Party. Despite the Village Voice and the New York Times reporting that Sharpton was playing footsie with the GOP, the black political elite said nothing. Despite his meager showing, lack of ideas and vote-getting in the primaries, he was rewarded by the party for one thing and one thing only at the Democratic National Convention: being an entertaining, boisterous court jester...."

I may not agree with every single formulation of Kelley's important book, but he has accurately diagnosed the stasis at the heart of black political leadership. Like the Jewish, Irish, and Italian left-outs and shut-outs before them--who saw their leaders, once in power, sink into self-satisfied contentment with a place at the table and large helpings on their personal plates--the African-American community is no longer adequately represented, nor do its elected political and institutional organizational classes really try to mobilize its disadvantaged majority in ways that count. Take the Congressional Black Caucus, most of whose members are on the take from Big Tobacco and other special interests inimical to the well-being of blacks. Even a supposedly feisty progressive like Rep. Maxine Waters was caught by the L.A. Times last month in a smelly scandal in which her "family members have made more than $1 million in the last eight years by doing business with companies, candidates and causes that the influential congresswoman has helped."

Without a more progressive, militant, mobilized black community, with a social and political agenda that challenges the power arrangements of today's society, fights the demonization of that agenda by the conservative national consensus, and asserts a more independent role in the political process, it will be even more difficult to re-build an American left worthy of the name. Kelly was even more specific in an L.A. Weekly piece last summer during the presidential campaign. Read both these articles of his as appetizers--and then get yourself his book. --posted 01,25.05

THE CELL PHONE DANGER WATCH: If you want to keep up with the latest on the dangers of cellphones--which have been shown in a number of studies to cause cancer and DNA changes harmful to one's health--the indefatigable journalist-scientist Louis Slesin has just started a blog, "From the Field," for his Microwave News, the leading organ on health hazards from electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

In a blog post, Slesin--who's been researching and writing about these matters for a quarter of a century-- highlites an interview with Sir William Stewart, the chairman of the British Health Protection Agency and the National Radiological Protection Board, warning against letting kids use cell phones. Check out Slesin's eye-opening blog by clicking here.....

AND ELSEWHERE...: Reuters is reporting has reported that there may be an FCC investigation into whether Armstrong Williams broke the law by promoting Bush's education plan on television and radio--including on the show he owned and hosted--without disclosing that he'd received $240,000 in taxpayer dollars as a payoff from the Bushies to do so...And P.R. Watch has posted "The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal," a lengthy documented account, by Bob Burton, of how Williams used his syndicated radio show as a propaganda megaphone for the tobacco industry....

Daily Kos and MyDD, two very popular bloggers, both took $3000 a month from the Howard Dean presidential campaign for four months to promote Dean, the Wall Street Journal reports --citing as one source this post from Zonkette (a.k.a. Zephyr Teachout, former Internet outreach director for the Dean campaign). The WSJ compares this to the Armstrong Williams pay-for-propaganda scandal. I don't believe in bloggers taking payoffs of this kind--so I've removed Daily Kos from my recommended blogs list.

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The views expressed are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch.

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