Sept 11 – America Reaps What It Sows!

Posted on September 11, 2009 by NMT

A post-911 perspective by Black Liberation Army prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim.

U.S. International Warfare Initiates World War III Human Rights During Wartime
By Jalil A. Muntaqim

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism. Similarly, it was witnessed how the people of Iraq rallied in support of their President, Saddam Hussein, after the U.S. bombed to death 250,000 Iraqis, and continued devastation of that country with collateral damage of 1 million dead women and children. Hence, people rallying in support of their government and representatives is a common phenomenon when a country is attacked by an outsider. The U.S. has been foremost in the world extending foreign policy of free-market economy, to the extent of undermining other countries cultures and ideologies expressed as their way of life. Such conflicts inevitably positions the U.S. as the centerpiece, the bulls-eye for international political dissent, as indicated by demonstrations against the U.S. controlled IMF, WTO and World Bank conferences. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum. The people that carried out the attacks were not blind followers or robots with an irrational hatred of the U.S. peoples. Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam.

There are essentially three primary world ideologies or world views: the capitalist free-market economy/democracy; the socialist production economy; and Islamic theocratic government, of which has been in competition for many decades. However, in the last 20 years the socialist economies has been severely subverted and co-opted by free-market economies, the ideals of American style democracy. This isolated, for the most part, Islamic theocratic ideology and system of government as the principle target of the U.S. in its quest for world hegemony. This reality of competing world views and economies is further complicated due to religious underpinning of beliefs that motivates actions, especially as they are expressed by U.S. and Western European christianity and Israel zionist judaism in opposition to Islam. From the struggles of the Crusades to the present confrontation, the struggle for ideological supremacy reigns, as the faithful continue to proselytize in the name of the Supreme Being.

When geopolitics are combined with religious fervor in the character of nationalist identity and patriotism, rational and logical thinking is shoved aside as matters of the moment takes historical precedents. It has often been said that “Truth Crush to the Earth Will Rise Again”. Since truth is relative to ones belief, can it be safely said that America has reaped what it has sowed? The American truth of capitalist christian democracy and its imperialist hegemonic aspirations has crushed both socialist and Islamic world views. It has extended its avaricious tentacles as the world police and economic harbinger of all that is beneficent, in stark denial of its history as a purveyor of genocides, slavery and colonial violence.

The U.S. was the first to use biological-germ warfare on people when it distributed blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans; it has refused to apologize for Afrikan slavery acknowledging it engaged in a crime against humanity requiring reparations; it is the first and only country to use the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intern thousands of Japanese and Italians in this country; it used carpet bombing and defoliates against the peoples of Vietnam; it has initiated embargoes, coup d’etats and assassinations against those it opposes, while propping-up right-wing military dictators; as well as continued military bombing of Vieques. In essence, the U.S. governments hegemonic goals has created the ire of millions of people throughout the world. While domestically, racial profiling, police killing and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has eroded patriotic sentiments in opposition to white supremacy.

As America weeps and laments its loss, the public find itself joining the torn ranks of those whose heartaches beat opposing U.S. greed and international profiteering. The American public acquiesce to U.S. international folly has cause them to feel the economic pains of those who live daily in poverty. Indeed, Americans should brace for years of economic uncertainty, where the American ideal of freedom and liberty will resemble plight of those who live under the right-wing dictatorships the U.S. has supported. The tyranny suffered by others in the world as a result of U.S. imperialism, has come full circle to visit this country with the wrath of the U.S. own mechanization. Since the U.S. taught and trained right-wing military dictators in the School of the Americas, including the CIA training of Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan proxy war against the Russians, it will be this same kind of terrorist activist that will be unleashed on American soil, as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz stated after the assassination of John Kennedy, a matter of the chicken coming home to roost. Therefore, American civil liberties and human rights are being garrotted by the yoke of the right-wing in the name of national security. The legalization of U.S. fascism was initiated with the war against political dissent (Cointelpro); the war against organized crime (RICO laws); the war against illegal drugs (plethora of drug laws) and now culminating in the war against terrorism with the American Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce and Office of Home Security, further extending police, FBI and CIA powers to undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently stated that the U.S. need to create a new language in defining how to combat terrorism. This Orwellian propaganda in the media espouses the U.S. is venturing in a new type of warfare to defend the American way of life. However, what this double-speak propagates as a long-term and sustained initiative against terrorism is essentially a way of embellishing and enlarging U.S. counter-insurgency activity it has been engaged in since the advent of the Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and Navy Seals. The U.S. has been involved in counter-insurgency activity in Afrika, Latin America and Asia for decades. But due to the September 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil, the government has seized the opportunity to offensively pursue left-wing revolutionaries and Muslim insurgents throughout the world. This U.S. military action extends and substantiates its position as the international police.

Since the establishment of the Trilateral Commission that initiated the process for the development of one world government, the U.S. has broaden its capacity to impose and enforce its will on oppressed peoples globally. The FBI and CIA has been operating in Europe, Afrika, Asia and Latin America establishing the long arm of U.S. law and order. Its bases of operations have conducted surveillance, investigations to arrest, prosecute or neutralize left-wing revolutionaries or Muslim insurgents. As the U.S. consolidates its political and economic influence throughout the world, it will seek to protect its overall hegemonic imperialist goals. After the Gulf War, and the air (bombing) campaign in Yugoslavia, the U.S. has employed its military might to ensure its foreign policy are achieved.

Because NATO has evolved into a European military entity that Russia is seeking to join, today, the U.S. has positioned itself beyond the mission of NATO. The U.S. now concentrates its military might in opposing Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.) and those the U.S. deem as rogue nations (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). The new military initiatives will be directed to towards Southeast Asia as the secondary target, as it continues to direct the Middle East conflict to preserve its oil investments and zionist interest. As the U.S. expand its imperialist military mission, as seen with committing military troops in Uzbekistan to also protect oil interest in the Caspian Sea, it has sought to redefine itself by targeting what it identify as the terrorist thereat wherever in the world it might exist. Hence, with the employment of conventional warfare combined with counter-insurgency tactical activities, the U.S. has pronounced itself as the military guardian of the world.

Although, the U.S. states its actions are in its self-interest, in terms of what is euphemistically defined as defending the free world, the truth of the matter is this action is a prelude to evolving one world government with the U.S. as its governing authority. Once the Peoples Republic of China becomes a full member of the WTO, and North Korea and Vietnam has been compromised, with Russia becoming an ally of NATO, the U.S. political-military influence in the world will be consolidated. The U.S. geopolitical strategy is not confined to the present crisis in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and targeting Osama bin Laden as the world’s nemesis. Rather, the U.S. strategy is to preserve its capacity to establish one world government as originally envisioned by the Trilateral Commission.

Nonetheless, there are some serious obstacles to this hegemonic goal, of which the world of fundamentalist Islam has become the principle target. Here, it should be noted that Islam condemns suicide or the mass killings of women, children and non-combatant males. Yet, the U.S., Israel, western Europe, Russia, India and China all view Islam as the enemy. Although, there are over 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, the current alliance of economic interest headed by the U.S., are united to vanquish what they consider the growing menace of fundamentalist Islam. It is with this understanding of U.S. geopolitics one is able to comprehend why the U.S. has redefine its military mission, as opposition to globalization and U.S. imperialism metamorph into a political struggle without borders or territorial imperatives.

The ideological struggle between capitalist free-market economy and Islamic theocratic determinates has exploded into an international conflagration of insurgency with the potential of initiating World War III. The Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the world has the potential to test the U.S. military, political and economic resolve as the world’s leader and authority of an one world government. With over 1.2 billion adherents, Islam has become a formidable foe to contend with for ideological supremacy in the world’s geopolitics. Even without discussing the religious (moral and ethics) aspects that motivates the geopolitics of Islam in opposition to U.S. imperialist hegemony, the call for Jihad/Holy War against the U.S. presents a serious threat that could precipitate WW-III. Therefore, the U.S. find it necessary to redefine its military mission, develop new language to codify warfare and legitimize its international political and economic purpose. Yet, many of the world’s oppressed peoples’ have already experienced U.S. military counter-insurgency tactics (Ethiopia, Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, etc.), including parts of the Islamic world. No matter how or why the U.S. attempts to persuade Americans that it is entering a new type of warfare, in reality it is more of the same, only extending the military arena to further protect its authority to establish one world government.

However, the U.S. is not the homogeneous country that people are deluded into believing exist. Rather, the U.S. has been held together due its ability to exploit the world’s resources and distribute (unequally) the profits amongst its citizens with its culture of conspicuous consumption. But, the recent attack on the U.S., and its aftermath may very well lead to the untangling and unraveling of the U.S. fabric as has been witnessed with the USSR and Yugoslavia. In understanding this true history of U.S. imperialism, outside and within its borders, essentially tells a story of why U.S. imperialism has been and will continue to be attacked.

Ultimately, the U.S. will eventually find itself at war with itself, as the ideology of a free democratic society will be found to be a big lie. This is especially disconcerting as greater restrictions on civil and human rights are made into law eroding the First and Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As during the Vietnam conflict, internal contradictions of racism, poverty and inequality will be exacerbated as a result of the U.S. military campaign and domestic undermining of civil and human rights. It is expected that strife in America will eventually become violent dissolving any semblance of the illusion of America the Beautiful. In anticipation of U.S. progressive activist opposing this claimed war against terrorism, the federal government will pass new laws to severely restrict protest, demonstrations and dissent. In the ’60s, U.S. progressive activists evolved the slogan “Bring the War Home!” – the question is what will be the slogan this time, now that the war has been brought home?

Free the Land!!

Rock Creek Free Press available in COS

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The Rock Creek Free Press is available online, but if you want it in print, the DC monthly is available in Colorado Springs at the Bookman, 3163 W. Colorado. The September issue features a speech given by legendary Australian journalist John Pilger on July 4th in San Francisco.

Here’s the RCFP transcript:

Two years ago I spoke at “Socialism in Chicago” about an invisible government which is a term used by Edward Bernays, one the founders of modern propaganda. It was Bernays, who in the 1920s invented public relations as a euphemism for propaganda. And it was Bernays, deploying the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud, who campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry for women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation calling cigarettes “tortures of freedom”. At the same time he was involved in the disinformation which was critical in overthrowing the Arbenz government in Guatemala. So you have the association of cigarettes and regime change. The invisible government that Bernays had in mind brought together all media: PR, the press, broadcasting, advertising and their power of branding and image making. In other words, disinformation.

And I suppose I would like to talk today about this invisible government’s most recent achievement, the rise of Barrack Obama and the silencing of much of the left. But all of this has a history, of course and I’d like to go back, take you back some forty years to a sultry and, for me, very memorable day in Viet Nam.

I was a young war correspondent who had just arrived in a village in the Central Highlands called Tuylon. My assignment was to write about a unit of US Marines who had been sent to the village to win hearts and minds. “My orders,” said the Marine Sergeant, “are to sell the American way of liberty, as stated in the Pacification Handbook, this is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks as stated on page 86.” Now, page 86 was headed in capital letters: WHAM (winning hearts and minds). The Marine Unit was a combined action company which explained the Sergeant, meant, “We attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays.” He was joking, of course, but not quite.

The Sergeant, who didn’t speak Vietnamese, had arrived in the village, stood up on a Jeep and said through a bullhorn: “Come on out everybody we’ve got rice and candies and toothbrushes to give you.” This was greeted by silence. “Now listen, either you gooks come on out or we’re going to come right in there and get you!” Now the people of Tuylon finally came out and they stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben’s Miracle Rice, Hershey Bars, party balloons, and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery operated, yellow, flush lavatories were held back for the arrival of the colonel.

And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned and the yellow, flush lavatories unveiled. The colonel cleared his throat and took out a handwritten speech,

“Mr. District Chief and all you nice people,” said the colonel, “what these gifts represent is more than the sum of their parts, they carry the spirit of America. Ladies and gentlemen there’s no place on Earth like America, it’s the land where miracles happen, it’s a guiding light for me and for you. In America, you see, we count ourselves as real lucky as having the greatest democracy the world has ever known and we want you nice people to share in our good fortune.”

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, even John Winthrope sitting upon a hill got a mention. All that was missing was the Star Bangled Banner playing softly in the background. Of course the villagers had no idea what the colonel was talking about, but when the Marines clapped, they clapped. And when the colonel waved, the children waved. And when he departed the colonel shook the Sergeant’s hand and said: “We’ve got plenty of hearts and minds here, carry on Sergeant.” “Yes Sir.” In Viet Nam I witnessed many scenes like that.

I’d grown up in faraway Australia on a cinematic diet of John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Walt Disney, and Ronald Reagan. The American way of liberty they portrayed might well have been lifted from the WHAM handbook. I’d learned that the United States had won World War II on its own and now led the free world as the chosen society. It was only later when I read Walter Lippmann’s book, Public Opinion, a manual of the invisible government, that I began to understand the power of emotions attached to false ideas and bad histories on a grand scale.

Now, historians call this exceptionalism, the notion that the United States has a divine right to bring what it calls “liberty” to the rest of humanity. Of course this is a very old refrain. The French and British created and celebrated their own civilizing missions while imposing colonial regimes that denied basic civil liberties. However, the power of the American message was, and remains, different. Whereas the Europeans were proud imperialists, Americans are trained to deny their imperialism. As Mexico was conquered and the Marines sent to Nicaragua, American textbooks referred to an Age of Innocence. American motives were always well meaning, moral, exceptional, as the colonel said, “There was no ideology” and that’s still the case.

Americanism is an ideology that is unique because its main feature is its denial that it is an ideology. It’s both conservative and it’s liberal. And it’s right and it’s left. And Barack Obama is its embodiment. Since Obama was elected leading liberals have talked about America returning to its true status as, “a nation of moral ideals”. Those are the words of Paul Krugman, the liberal columnist of The New York Times. In the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Mark Morford wrote,

“Spiritually advanced people regard the new president as a light worker who can help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”

Tell that to an Afghan child whose family has been blown away by Obama’s bombs. Or a Pakistani child whose house has been visited by one of Obama’s drones. Or a Palestinian child surveying the carnage in Gaza caused by American “smart” weapons, which, disclosed Seymour Hersh, were re-supplied to Israel for use in the slaughter, and I quote; “Only after the Obama team let if be known, it would not object.” The man who stayed silent on Gaza is the man who now condemns Iran.

In a sense, Obama is the myth that is America’s last taboo. His most consistent theme was never “change”, it was power. “The United States,” he said, “leads the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people.” And there is this remarkable statement, “At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world; that we stood and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders.” Words like these remind me of the colonel in the village in Viet Nam, as he spun much the same nonsense.

Since 1945, by deed and by example, to use Obama’s words, America has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, and crushed some 30 liberation movements and bombed countless men, women, and children to death. I’m grateful to Bill Blum for his cataloging of that. And yet, here is the 45th (sic) president of the United States having stacked his government with war mongers and corporate fraudsters and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, promising, not only more of the same, but a whole new war in Pakistan. Justified by the murderous clichés of Hilary Clinton, clichés like, “high value targets”. Within three days of his inauguration, Obama was ordering the death of people in faraway countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. And yet, the peace movement, it seems, is prepared to look the other way and believe that the cool Obama will restore, as Krugman wrote, “the nation of moral ideals.”

Not long ago, I visited the American Museum of History in the celebrated Smithsonian Institute in Washington. One of the most popular exhibitions was called “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War”. It was holiday time and lines of happy people, including many children, shuffled through a Santa’s grotto of war and conquest. When messages about their nation’s great mission were lit up; these included tributes to the; “…exceptional Americans who saved a million lives…” in Viet Nam; where they were, “…determined to stop Communist expansion.” In Iraq other brave Americans, “employed air-strikes of unprecedented precision.” What was shocking was not so much the revisionism of two of the epic crimes of modern times, but the shear scale of omission.

Like all US presidents, Bush and Obama have very much in common. The wars of both presidents and the wars of Clinton and Reagan, Carter and Ford, Nixon and Kennedy are justified by the enduring myth of exceptional America. A myth the late Harold Pinter described as, “a brilliant, witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist; partly because it is indeed extraordinary to see an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century and race together with gender, and even class, can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what is so often overlooked and what matters, I believe above all, is the class one serves. George Bush’s inner circle from the State Department to the Supreme Court was perhaps the most multi-racial in presidential history. It was PC par excellence. Think Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. It was also the most reactionary. Obama’s very presence in the White House appears to reaffirm the moral nation. He’s a marketing dream. But like Calvin Klein or Benetton, he’s a brand that promises something special, something exciting, almost risqué. As if he might be radical. As if he might enact change. He makes people feel good; he’s a post-modern man with no political baggage. And all that’s fake.

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia in 1983; he describes his employer as, “…a consulting house to multi-national corporations.” For some reason he doesn’t say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation; which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action and infiltrating unions from the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia. Obama doesn’t say what he did at Business International and they may be absolutely nothing sinister. But it seems worthy of inquiry, and debate, as a clue to, perhaps, who the man is.

During his brief period in the senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority, but instead he has excused torture, reinstated military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact, and opposed habeas corpus.

Daniel Ellsberg, the great whistleblower, was right, I believe, when he said, that under Bush a military coup had taken place in the United States giving the Pentagon unprecedented powers. These powers have been reinforced by the presence of Robert Gates – a Bush family crony and George W. Bush’s powerful Secretary of Defense. And by all the Bush Pentagon officials and generals who have kept their jobs under Obama.

In the middle of a recession, with millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes, Obama has increased the military budget. In Colombia he is planning to spend 46 million dollars on a new military base that will support a regime backed by death squads and further the tragic history of Washington’s intervention in that region.

In a pseudo-event in Prague, Obama promised a world without nuclear weapons to a global audience, mostly unaware that America is building new tactical nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. Like George Bush, he used the absurdity of Europe threatened by Iran to justify building a missile system aimed at Russia and China. In another pseudo-event, at the Annapolis Naval Academy, decked with flags and uniforms, Obama lied that America had gone to Iraq to bring freedom to that country. He announced that the troops were coming home. This was another deception. The head of the army, General George Casey says, with some authority, that America will be in Iraq for up to a decade. Other generals say fifteen years.

Chris Hedges, the very fine author of Empire of Illusion, puts it very well; “President Obama,” he wrote, “does one thing and brand Obama gets you to believe another.” This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they make you feel. And so you are kept in a perpetual state of childishness. He calls this “junk politics”.

But I think the real tragedy is that Obama, the brand, appears to have crippled or absorbed much of the anti-war movement – the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress; 30, just 30, are willing to stand up against Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s war party. On June the 16th they voted for 106 billion dollars for more war.

The “Out of Iraq” caucus is out of action. Its member can’t even come up with a form of words of why they are silent. On March the 21st, a demonstration at the Pentagon by the once mighty United for Peace and Justice drew only a few thousand. The out-going president of UFPJ, Lesley Kagen, says her people aren’t turning up because, “It’s enough for many of them that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction.” And where is the mighty Move On, these days? Where is its campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what, exactly, was said when Move On’s executive director, Jason Ruben, met Barack Obama at the White House in February?

Yes, a lot of good people mobilized for Obama. But what did they demand of him? Working to elect the Democratic presidential candidate may seem like activism, but it isn’t. Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope. Woody Allen once said, “I felt a lot better when I gave up hope.” Real activism has little time for identity politics which like exceptionalism, can be fake. These are distractions that confuse and sucker good people. And not only in the United States, I can assure you.

I write for the Italian socialist newspaper, Il Manifesto, or rather I used to write for it. In February I sent the editor an article which raised questions about Obama as a progressive force. The article was rejected. Why, I asked? “For the moment,” wrote the editor, “we prefer to maintain a more positive approach to the novelty presented by Obama. We will take on specific issues, but we would not like to say that he will make no difference.” In other words, an American president drafted to promote the most rapacious system in history, is ordained and depoliticized by important sections of the left. It’s a remarkable situation. Remarkable, because those on the, so called, Radical Left have never been more aware, more conscious of the inequities of power. The Green Movement, for example, has raised the consciousness of millions, so that almost every child knows something about global warming. And yet, there seems to be a resistance, within the Green Movement, to the notion of power as a military force, a military project. And perhaps similar observations can also be made about sections of the Feminist Movement and the Gay Movement and certainly the Union Movement.

One of my favorite quotations is from Milan Kundera,

“The struggle of people against power is [the] struggle of memory against forgetting.”

We should never forget that the primary goal of great power is to distract and limit our natural desire for social justice and equity and real democracy.

Long ago Edward Bernays’ invisible government of propaganda elevated big business from its unpopular status as a kind of mafia to that of a patriotic driving force. The “American way of life” began as an advertising slogan. The modern image of Santa Claus was an invention of Coca Cola.

Today we are presented with an extraordinary opportunity. Thanks to the crash of Wall Street and the revelation, for many ordinary people, that the free market has nothing to do with freedom. The opportunity, within our grasp, is to recognize that something is stirring in America that is unfamiliar, perhaps, to many of us on the left, but is related to a great popular movement that’s growing all over the world. Look down at Latin America, less than twenty years ago there was the usual despair, the usual divisions of poverty and freedom, the usual thugs in uniforms running unspeakable regimes. Today for the first time perhaps in 500 years there’s a people’s movement based on the revival of indigenous cultures and language, a genuine populism. The recent amazing achievements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay represent a struggle for community and political rights that is truly historic, with implications for all of us. The successes in Latin America are expressed perversely in the recent overthrow of the government of Honduras, because the smaller the country, the greater is the threat of a good example that the disease of emancipation will spread.

Indeed, right across the world social movements and grass roots organization have emerged to fight free market dogma. They’ve educated governments in the south that food for export is a problem, rather than a solution to global poverty. They’ve politicized ordinary people to stand up for their rights, as in the Philippines and South Africa. Look at the remarkable boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign, BDS, for short, aimed at Israel that’s sweeping the world. Israeli ships have been turned away from South Africa and Western Australia. A French company has been forced to abandon plans to build a railway connecting Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli sporting bodies find themselves isolated. Universities in the United Kingdom have begun to sever ties with Israel. This is how apartheid South Africa was defeated. And this is how the great wind of the 1960s began to blow. And this is how every gain has been won: the end of slavery, universal suffrage, workers rights, civil rights, environmental protection, the list goes on and on.

And that brings us back, here, to the United States, because I believe something is stirring in this country. Are we aware, that in the last eight months millions of angry e-mails, sent by ordinary Americans, have flooded Washington. And I mean millions. People are outright outraged that their lives are attacked; they bear no resemblance to the passive mass presented by the media. Look at the polls; more than 2/3 of Americans say the government should care for those who cannot care for themselves, sixty-four percent would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone, sixty percent are favorable towards Unions, seventy percent want nuclear disarmament, seventy-two percent want the US completely out of Iraq and so on and so on. But where is much of the left? Where is the social justice movement? Where is the peace movement? Where is the civil rights movement? Ordinary Americans, for too long, have been misrepresented by stereotypes that are contemptuous. James Madison referred to his compatriots in the public as ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. And this contempt is probably as strong today, among the elite, as it was back then. That’s why the progressive attitudes of the public are seldom reported in the media, because they’re not ignorant, they’re subversive, they’re informed and they’re even anti-American. I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian, Martha Gellhorn, to explain the term “anti-American” to me. “I’ll tell you what anti-American is,” she said in her forceful way, “its what governments and their vested interests call those who honor America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity. There are millions of these anti-Americans in the United States, they are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms though they would call it common decency. They are not vain; they are the people with a waitful conscience, the best of America’s citizens. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional.” Truly exceptional, I like that.

My own guess is that a populism is growing, once again in America evoking a powerful force beneath the surface which has a proud history. From such authentic grass roots Americanism came women suffrage, the eight hour day, graduated income tax, public ownership of railways and communications, the breaking of the power of corporate lobbyists and much more. In other words, real democracy. The American populists were far from perfect, but they often spoke for ordinary people and they were betrayed by leaders who urged them to compromise and merge with the Democratic Party. That was long ago, but how familiar it sounds. My guess is that something is coming again. The signs are there. Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, “Mere sparks can ignite a popular movement that may seem dormant.” No one predicted 1968, no one predicted the fall of apartheid, or the Berlin Wall, or the civil rights movement, or the great Latino rising of a few years ago.

I suggest that we take Woody Allen’s advice and give up on hope and listen, instead, to voices from below. What Obama and the bankers and the generals and the IMF and the CIA and CNN and BBC fear, is ordinary people coming together and acting together. It’s a fear as old as democracy, a fear that suddenly people convert their anger to action as they’ve done so often throughout history.

“At a time of universal deceit,” wrote George Orwell, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Thank you.

Pam “Heil Hitler” Pilger gets it all wrong

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Much is being made of the irony that the anti-health teabagger who shouted “HEIL HITLER” at a Jewish man who spoke in favor of universal health care, was herself wearing an ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES t-shirt.

Irony? I think the association originates from more than “irony.”

Thanks to having been interviewed earlier in the evening by a local TV reporter, the nutjob has been identified as Pamela Pilger of Las Vegas, Nevada. Online sleuths record that she and her husband are Sarah Palin supporters, etc, oink oink. Her telephone and address are available online, and I’m not terribly conflicted about disseminating that info. *

From Mrs. Pilger’s interview we learn she is a conservative, who believes in Christian values, excepting charity obviously.

Pilger is likely a Christian Zionist, explained by her cross earings and IDF t-shirt. How could a politically charged t-shirt worn to a political event, be but chosen on purpose? And a Christian Zionist who mocks Jews, really no surprise there.

What interests me about Mrs. Pilger and the t-shirt which seems at odds with her dimly-improvised retorts, is how she represents the American idiot: completely wrong. Pilger doesn’t know enough to keep from making contradictory outbursts, but she does know: health care NO, Israel PRO.

How is it that opponents of health care reform, for example, are wrong-headed about every issue on the table? Environment, war, labor, human rights, civil liberties, immigration, etc; and in Pilger’s case, anti-health care and pro-Israel. These are not uniformly “conservative” values. They do not comprise an idiot’s manifesto.

Yet in practice, these disparate dictum flock inseparably.

How can idiots be so consistent? If their antics reflected real grass roots idiocy, they’d be all over the board. What does an American idiot know of the Middle East, pro-Palestinian or con?

Wouldn’t an idiot xenophobe bigot most likely be anti-Semitic? Aka Pam Pilger? Whose idea, the IDF allegiance? Whose very consistent guidance are the idiots following? There’s nothing idiotic about the neoliberal, exploitive agenda behind the ideological idiots. Are they such idiots that they cannot see that?

Wingbat Pilger’s t-shirt and her opposition to health care reform –in spite of confessing that her husband lacks insurance– betrays that her idiotic fervor is not even her own.

* (Even as idiot pawns, shouldn’t they take responsibility for the Astroturf populist propaganda they are helping to lay? I hope an archive is being kept of their profoundly insensitive rantings. In the future, when these crackers Google themselves, the first thing they should see is their 15-minutes of infamy, yelling about how they don’t want illegal immigrants stealing their tax-dollars, etc. Hold the bastards accountable for reflecting so poorly the average American.

The idiots may never come around, but maybe their neighbors or associates will better be able to size them up. One day, perhaps their grandchild, improved by a marriage outside the family, will see the footage and marvel- Oh my goodness, my Grandma was not a very kind lady.

More practically, imagine trying to eulogize Pamela Pilger one day, with her video performance for all to see!)

Was Aught Eight an inauspicious omen?

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I remember the discussion in the nineties of what to name the coming decade. In a previous century yrs 1900-09 were aught years, but “the aughts” is an archaic term. Aught means: no thing; not anything: nil, nothing, null, zero, nix, zilch.

In bookkeeping terms, as with data processing, an aught with its diagonal slash helps the accountant differentiate a zero from an O.

I’m amused obviously, that O stands for Obama, optimism and Oprah; and figuratively it represents a zero. With a slash, we can make the distinction, and association, more pointed.

Admittedly, the 00 decade was defined by George W. Bush, and zero fits, doesn’t it, to describe his gas gauge, if not obviously his mileage? In 2008 Barack Obama promised a return from the brink of meaninglessness, this decade, not later, but how far has he got? His followers hold still plenty of hope, things being complicated in Washington and what not, but Obama is looking more like Bush’s fall guy than his arresting officer.

With his legislative majority, George Bush proved you can take a world to war, dismantle regulatory protections, rape the environment, eliminate rights, screw every last living earthly being, and raid the treasury for the bankers, each act performed faster than a Sotomayor confirmation.

With majorities everywhere, even with public opinion on his side, Obama can’t reform health care. And he didn’t have a stolen election behind him.

We’re fast approaching the anniversary of September 11, an impressive benchmark if you will, for George Bush’s first term. I’d be surprised if Obama could put a Cessna into the Hudson by then.

Of course I recognize that Obama is up against more than the Republicans. He faces the powers that be, the corporations, financiers and oligarchs, the “deciders” whose deciding Bush pretended to do by himself. But if the President of the United States is not the Leader of the Free World, is not the most powerful figure on Earth, as his office is held to be, what is he? Are we prepared to accept that our democratic election accounts for naught?

Obama was elected in aught-eight. Judging by the job he’s doing, the superlatives flying from the corporate media about how he’s turned world public opinion, brought change, ended racism, and pretends to be drawing down bad things, Obama will be a shoe-in incumbent. Come next election, we’ll still need someone to offer us hope for mini-versal health care. So from ’08 we have eight years of aught.

Life, Love, Liberty and Lunch

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I thought the advent of Youtube would finally lead me to the script for a TV special of the late 70s called Life, Love, Liberty and Lunch. I can find only scant trace of it online. And so I will post sans link.

L4 was a TV special which incorporated four scenes by leading playwrights Neil Simon, Tom Stoppard, Eric von Italie and one more. It might have been Peter Ustinov, and his is the only one I remember. The rest of the program played like Love American Style I think, or Short Cuts. I’m thinking the Liberty segment had to do with the 1976 bicentennial. But the last segment was like I’m Not Rappaport with a big smile.

In the last scene, two elderly gentlemen meet in Central Park, as they do every day, to play not chess, but a game of verbal oneupmanship. Today their contest is to paint the perfect lunch, and they describe every successive course with the zeal of famished itinerants actually pouncing on it. As dessert nears, each is determined to add the last touch. Peter Ustinov played one of the gentlemen and he asked his rival if after reaching cheese, dessert, sherry, and coffee, he could think of nothing else. No, said his opponent, already confident of triumph. Nothing else, baited Ustinov?

You forgot, said the great actor to his old friend…. A CIGAR! No truly great meal could go without, the other concedes, and the two walk of together, to part until the next time.

So many years later, mere mention of cigars still conjures that scene for me. It’s still hard for me to imagine that it could even be true, that cigars improve a post-meal glow, but I’ll take a distinguished elder’s word for it. LUNCH was about anticipating that others, especially others with seniority, can always have something up their sleeve to teach you.

A crook named Richard Scott

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Tony Logan

dick scott fraud BACKGROUND- Maggie Mahar at the Century Foundation’s Health Beat blog reports that Richard Scott previously started the for-profit hospital chain in 1987 that later became the $23 billion Columbia/HCA. He was ousted from this post in 1997 after an FBI investigation of Columbia/HCA that led to 14 felony convictions and $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud.

This information taken from SourceWatch about the Boss Man behind the Right Wing front group called Conservatives for Patients Rights which is attempting to destroy all notions that the US Health System needs to be reformed. This man should be in jail and not allowed to be any player in the debate about how to give Americans decent health care. It was pure corruption that allowed the guy to walk in the first place.

The Spirit of Revolt

Posted on August 5, 2009 by NMT

There are periods in the life of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life. These ideas are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice and traditions. The accepted ideas of the constitution of the state, of the laws of social equilibrium, of the political and economic interrelations of citizens, can hold out no longer against the implacable criticism which is daily undermining them?…?Political, economic and social institutions are crumbling. The social structure, having become uninhabitable, is hindering, even preventing, the development of seeds which are being propagated within its damaged walls and being brought forth around them.

The need for a new life becomes apparent. The code of established morality, that which governs the greater number of people in their daily life, no longer seems sufficient. What formerly seems just is now felt to be a crying injustice. The morality of yesterday is today recognized as revolting immorality. The conflict between new ideas and old traditions flames up in every class of society?…?the popular conscience rises up against the scandals which breed amidst the privileged and leisured, against the crimes committed in the name of “the law of the stronger,” or in order to maintain these privileges. Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian and regenerating ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted. They perceive the necessity of a revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts with its breath and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial and heroism, without which society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration.

In periods of frenzied haste toward wealth, of feverish speculation and of crisis, of the sudden downfall of great industries and the ephemeral expansion of other branches of production, of scandalous fortunes amassed in a few years and dissipated as quickly, it becomes evident that the economic institutions which control production and exchange are far from giving to society the prosperity which they are supposed to guarantee. They produce precisely the opposite result. Instead of order they bring forth chaos; instead of prosperity, poverty and insecurity; instead of reconciled interests, war – a perpetual war of the exploiter against the worker, of exploiters and of workers among themselves. Human society is seen to be splitting more and more into two hostile camps, and at the same time to be subdividing into thousands of small groups waging merciless war against each other. Weary of these wars, weary of the miseries which they cause, society rushes to seek a new organization. It clamors loudly for a complete remodeling of the system of property ownership, of production, of exchange all economic relations which spring from it.

The machinery of government, entrusted with the maintenance of the existing order, continues to function, but at every turn of its deteriorated gears, it slips and stops. Its working becomes more and more difficult, and the dissatisfaction caused by its defects grows continuously. Every day gives rise to a new demand. “Reform this,” “Reform that,” is heard from all sides. “War, finance, taxes, courts, police, everything would have to be remodeled, reorganized, established on a new basis,” say the reformers. And yet all know that it is impossible to make things over, to remodel anything at all because everything is interrelated; everything would have to be remade at once. And how can society be remodeled when it is divided into two openly hostile camps? To satisfy the discontented would be only to create new malcontents.

Incapable of undertaking reforms, since this would mean paving the way for revolution, and at the same time too impotent to be frankly reactionary, the governing bodies apply themselves to half-measures which can satisfy nobody, and only cause new dissatisfaction. The mediocrities who, in such transition periods, undertake to steer the ship of state, think of but one thing: to enrich themselves against the coming debacle. Attacked from all sides they defend themselves awkwardly, they evade, they commit blunder upon blunder and they soon succeed in cutting the last rope of salvation. They drown the prestige of the government in ridicule, caused by their own incapacity.

Such periods demand revolution. It becomes a social necessity; the situation itself is revolutionary.

When we study in the works of our greatest historians the genesis and development of vast revolutionary convulsions, we generally find under the heading “The Cause of the Revolution” a gripping picture of the situation on the eve of events. The misery of the people, the general insecurity, the vexatious measures of the government, the odious scandals laying bare the immense vices of society, the new ideas struggling to come to the surface and repulsed by the incapacity of the supporters of the former regime – nothing is omitted. Examining this picture, one arrives at the conviction that the revolution was indeed inevitable, and that there was no other way out than by the road of insurrection?…?But, between this pacific arguing and insurrection or revolt, there is a wide abyss – that abyss which, for the greatest part of humanity, lies between reasoning and action, thought and the will to act. How has this abyss been bridged??…?How was it that words, so often spoken and lost in the air like the empty chiming of bells, were changed in actions?

The answer is easy. Action. The continuous action, ceaselessly renewed, of minorities brings about this transformation. Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, are as contagious as cowardice, submission and panic.

What forms will this action take? All forms – indeed, the most varied forms, dictated by circumstances, temperament and the means at disposal. Sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, but always daring; sometimes collective, sometimes purely individual, this policy of action will neglect none of the means at hand, no event of public life, in order to keep the spirit alive, to propagate and find expression for dissatisfaction, to excite hatred against exploiters, to ridicule the government and expose its weakness and above all and always, by actual example, to awaken courage and fan the spirit of revolt.

When a revolutionary situation arises in a country, before the spirit of revolt is sufficiently awakened in the masses to express itself in violent demonstrations in the streets or by rebellions and uprisings, it is through action that minorities succeed in awakening that feeling of independence and that spirit of audacity without which no revolution can come to a head.

Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action – men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles, intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed – these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights?…?Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come.

Nevertheless the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage and they find imitators?…?Acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply.

Indifference from this point on is impossible?…?By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people’s minds and wins converts?…?Above all, it awakens the spirit of the revolt: it breeds daring?…?The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought; they begin dimly to perceive that a few energetic efforts will be sufficient to throw it down. Hope is born in their hearts, and let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope – the hope of victory – which makes revolutions.

The government resists; it is savage in its repressions. But, though formerly persecution killed the energy of the oppressed, now, in periods of excitement, it produces the opposite result. It provokes new acts of revolt, individual and collective. It drives the rebels to heroism, and in rapid succession these acts spread, become general, develop. The revolutionary party is strengthened by elements, which up to this time were hostile or indifferent to it. The general disintegration penetrates into the government, the ruling classes, the privileged. Some of them advocate resistance to the limit; others are in favor of concessions; others, again, go so far as to declare themselves ready to renounce their privileges for the moment, in order to appease the spirit of revolt, hoping to dominate again later on. The unity of the government and the privileged class is broken.

The ruling class may also try to find safety in savage reaction. But it is now too late; the battle only becomes more bitter, more terrible, and the revolution which is looming will only be more bloody. On the other hand, the smallest concession of the governing classes, since it comes too late, since it has been snatched in struggle, only awakes the revolutionary spirit still more. The common people, who formerly would have been satisfied with the smallest concession, observe now that the enemy is wavering. They foresee victory, they feel their courage growing, and the same men who were formerly crushed by misery and were content to sigh in secret, now lift their heads and march proudly to the conquest of a better future.

Finally, the revolution breaks out, the more terrible as the preceding struggles were bitter.

The Spirit of Revolt, Pyotr Kropotkin, 1880.

Gates v. Crowley Case is black and white

Posted on July 25, 2009 by Eric Verlo

While pundits pit Professor Gates against Police Sergeant Crowley, I recommend a white man’s refresher course in Black v. Cop. The above photograph depicts the officers of the law who came from all over Alabama in 1965 to prevent the SNCC civil rights marchers from leaving Selma. Most of the images we recognize from this day were taken seconds after this one, as the southern gentlemen eagerly bludgeoned the kneeling marchers. It took the interference of the President of the United States to send Federal troops to defend the peaceful protesters from the police. Have things changed?

Now they use tasers?

If you are not African-American, ask an African-American.

President Obama’s interference, tiptoeing with niceties for the boys in blue, couching his criticism as if his words carried no more authority than Uncle Tom, falls well short of representing the complaints about still overwhelming racism which black Americans face from law enforcement. Still Obama’s opinion has not been welcomed by the police department which arrested Professor Gates for being uncooperative in his own home.

Policeman Crowley and his superior and his buddies on the force and police unions across the country are telling the president he should not butt in? And they’re assuring us that they’re not racist? Let’s poll the LAPD on the matter, or any of the squads who’ve been caught on video tape beating their charges, (double-entendre intended) usually black.

We need to give equal time to the majority of our prison population. Or the people of New Orleans.

Sergeant Crowly et al are positive they are not racist. They’ve taken the courses, they’ve given the cross-racial CPR. They do not believe they are racist, and I believe them. I don’t believe I am racist either, although clearly I am. I am uncomfortable about being racist, and I’m not sure what to think about the degree of comfort I take as well.

And now the insolent bastards are second guessing the president for second guessing them.

This is that what comes of the post-9/11 theme of deifying First Responders. They’re big galoots –brave, no question– who rush up high-rise stairwells with no premonition the steel structure would be coming down, and next thing patriots are hawking chatchkes of firemen and policemen raising the Stars and Stripes over the rubble, as if they’re under fire in Iwo Jima. So now they’re qualified to tell the president he’s unqualified to make a judgment?

I can criticize the president because he’s not delivering what he promised. What basis do his employees have for grievance?

Crowley and ilk are none too bright, obviously, and they’re racist. They offer their own proof. What would a dutiful policeman’s reaction have been when a white president deigned to weigh in on a matter. I’m guessing deference. To the Commander in Chief.

I did my duty as I knew best, I am open to criticism, and welcome certainly anything the highest executive office holder might offer by way of suggestion, I am most humbled that he might have granted his attention to my personal case, which to guess from the offense people have taken was evidently a lapse in judgment on my part.

Deference. And that’s not what’s being shown their Boy in the White House.

Tea-Baggers plan another silly-ass costume party for 9/11

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Actually that’s their staging date. The heavily funded by un-named Corporate Big-Pig sources, so-called “Grass-roots” movement against the Corporate Big-Pigs finally being forced to pay the bills they ran up over the past 2 centuries but ESPECIALLY the past 30 years, are once again going to be prancing around in their Capri pants, silk stockings and buckle shoes and try to look Macho while doing it. Good Luck on that. But it’s set for Sept 12 in Washing Tundy Sea. Not like I have much cause to sympathize with the Right Wing Dumbasses but…
WARNING, though, DANGER!

You Fascists disguised as “patriots” ought to remember something Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly and Rush and Michelle Malkin have been saying on their Crap Shows and websites.

That “America needs to have Another 9/11 in order to” and here I’ll paraphrase, Allow The Dictatorial Regime to once again spend Our Blood, (not those of the Tea-Baggers, you’re a bunch of ChickenHawks anyway) Our Money and Our Rights to use actual quote “as much violence as necessary” back to paraphrasing to subjugate all those naughty people in the world who don’t Obey The Mighty Lord Darth Cheney (or his Surrogates like Sarah Palin) and his commandments.

All in the name of “Freedom”.

That’s right, Right Winger Freaks, YOUR prophets have been calling for Americans to die in coordinated Terrorist Attacks to fulfill the political ambitions of their Masters.

What would be more appropriate to their desires than if they CREATE a couple thousand or so Martyrs from the slain bodies of you Modern Day Horst Wessels?

And even though YOU nor your leaders would give me the title of “American” I’ll be better and nobler than them.
not that it’s damnably difficult to do that…

Think your “leaders” give a Damn about you? They don’t even care about people who were brave enough to actually enlist in the Army, the coward punk ChickenHawk Regime has had more than 5000 American SOLDIERS murdered in order to achieve their goal of World Domination.

They still haven’t achieved their goals. So, do you REALLY think, after that, they would so much as blink at the thought of killing a few thousand of YOU worthless chickenshit bums?

No, no, Seriously, do you actually believe in the “good intentions” of (for want of a more apt description) “people” like Cheney and Rove and Wolfowicz and The Former Commander In CHIMP?

Maybe you stupid bastards ought to look at that Highly Symbolic Date again.

Workers create wealth, they have rights

Posted on July 22, 2009 by NMT

immigrant rights poster

Cheney ordered CIA to conceal operation from Congress.

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Not from the People, that part would be a “gimme”, but from the People’s Representation. Now the Right Wing is trying to spin it that the operations in question were “The (miserably FAILED) Hunt for Osama bin Hidin’ ” and thus it’s not Patriotic to call it into question.
HOWEVER, the investigation that uncovered it was one probing the Spying on Americans programs. That they would feel the need to LIE about even that much shows a distinct pattern of Domestic State-sponsored Terrorism in action.

Add in that the Bu’ush Regime hired people specifically for their ability to Lie effectively.

Then there’s the revelation that some top CIA officials threatened to quit over the scope and nature of the operation.
These guys aren’t exactly Freedom Mongers of any stripe, don’t give three shits about the Constitution or Rights or anything like that.

If it was bad enough to make THOSE pigs rebel it must be something truly horrendous.

Why does this sound familiar?

Posted on July 10, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Village President John Deschane, 60, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, said many people in town believe it’s disrespectful to fly the flag upside down.

“If he wants to protest, let him protest but find a different way to do it,” Deschane said

Translation from Right Wing Bullshit to Real English:
“You have the right to free speech unless we dislike what you say or how you say it”
“We’re Fighting For Your Freedom, How DARE you go ahead and actually use that Freedom?”

Dispute over flag protest erupts in Wisc. village
AP

By ROBERT IMRIE, Associated Press Writer Robert Imrie, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 10, 2:44 pm ET

WAUSAU, Wis. – An American flag flown upside down as a protest in a northern Wisconsin village was seized by police before a Fourth of July parade and the businessman who flew it — an Iraq war veteran — claims the officers trespassed and stole his property.

A day after the parade, police returned the flag and the man’s protest — over a liquor license — continued.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin is considering legal action against the village of Crivitz for violating Vito Congine Jr.’s’ First Amendment rights, Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said.

“It is not often that you see something this blatant,” Ahmuty said.

In mid-June, Congine, 46, began flying the flag upside down — an accepted way to signal distress — outside the restaurant he wants to open in Crivitz, a village of about 1,000 people some 65 miles north of Green Bay.

He said his distress is likely bankruptcy because the village board refused to grant him a liquor license after he spent nearly $200,000 to buy and remodel a downtown building for an Italian supper club.

Congine’s upside-down-flag represents distress to him; to others in town, it represents disrespect of the flag.

Hours before a Fourth of July parade, four police officers went to Congine’s property and removed the flag under the advice of Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey.

Neighbor Steven Klein watched in disbelief.

“I said, ‘What are you doing?’ Klein said. “They said, ‘It is none of your business.'”

The next day, police returned the flag.

Brey declined comment Friday.

Marinette County Sheriff Jim Kanikula said it was not illegal to fly the flag upside down but people were upset and it was the Fourth of July.

“It is illegal to cause a disruption,” he said.

The parade went on without any problems, Kanikula said.

Village President John Deschane, 60, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, said many people in town believe it’s disrespectful to fly the flag upside down.

“If he wants to protest, let him protest but find a different way to do it,” Deschane said.

Congine, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq in 2004, said he intends to keep flying the flag upside down.

“It is pretty bad when I go and fight a tyrannical government somewhere else,” Congine said, “and then I come home to find it right here at my front door.”

At least they didn’t beat up any elderly and disabled people…

This time…

Judge Larry Naves mocks justice in Ward Churchill ruling

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Marie Walden

Judge Larry Naves Ward Churchill ruling Yesterday Judge Larry Naves vacated the jury verdict in the Ward Churchill trial and refused to compel CU to reinstate Churchill saying that to do so would send a message to students that the University of Colorado “tolerates academic misconduct.” This, despite the fact that the jury found that charges of academic misconduct were made in order to silence Churchill without appearing to violate his free speech rights and wrongly fired him based on the trumped up charges.

The judge also failed to award any damages to Churchill, nor did he rule that CU must pay his legal fees. Further, Judge Naves’ 42-page ruling indicated that CU was a quasi-governmental body and, as such, should have been shielded from litigation to begin with.

Of course, Churchill attorney David Lane will appeal the ruling to a higher court, hopefully one that has more respect for the judicial system and the Constitution. This isn’t over, but how unfortunate that the bastard Judge Naves has prolonged the charade.

Two Right Wing Talking Points from Shooter von Brunn

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Straight from the horses ass, Rush Limbaugh (and Mark Levin) and straight into the obligatory Shooter’s Manifesto. This makes three that failed in their attempts to suicide themselves to Right-Wing-Glory, worshipped by the American Taliban as fallen martyrs… but in the case of Adkinsson, Church Shooter who was aiming to shoot the children on stage when the gun was finally wrestled away from him, and von Brunn, and not a coincidence The Same Shit KVOR talk radio puts out, President Obamas birth certificate and George Bitch’s non-existent service record. First up, Contestant George B.

Seems the Right Wing Cult have been instructed by their High Priests to mock any attempts to prove that George coWard Bush didn’t finish out his Service Obligation. it was in both shooters manifestos.

Trouble is, the disputed discharge papers, “proven” false by none other than George Bush Sr’s Counterfeit Experts, who got their expertise by forging documents for anti-Nazi and anti-Communist groups…

Were the ONLY papers that actually demonstrate George Bush Jr actually serving. At All.

A convenient fire at the National Archives is to blame for that. Or so the Right Wing say.

President Obamas Birth Certificate, an issue pushed by Neo-Nazi group StormFront and their willing mouthpieces Levin, Limbaugh and Jerome Corsi, centers on a document thoroughly investigated by the FBI, DHS, DoJ,I.C.E., CIA and DoD, (Pentagon) amongst other Groovie Initials.

All of whom were under the direct command of “the decider” George Bitch.

None of them found any fault with the documentation.

So that leaves a couple of explanations, three in fact, all of them unpalatable to the Right Wing Para-Religious Cult.
The government investigative teams the Right Wing Cult keeps saying are “keeping us safe” at the expense of a few rights and freedoms that nobody important was using anyway are suddenly incompetent to detect a forged birth document, thus the billions upon billions of dollars spent on them were wasted.

These same government teams were part of a vast Commie Liberal plot to put a Sleeper Agent in power, in which case the same scenario about their usefulness at the expense of Public Funds and those rights which nobody important was using anyway.

More likely

The Birth Certificate is in fact valid and the only possible use the Right Wing Cult has for keeping the shit stirred is to wire up lunatics to attack other Americans

They’ve done a spectacular job of Domestic Terrorism so far.

More Class War, and as usual, the guns are pointed away from the upper class

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Brother Jonah

The Colorado Springs Gestapo Department released an Internal Affairs investigation results Friday, and once again, the PIGS came up “innocent”. Surprise Surprise Surprise. Seems the only property rights (or any other rights) they enforce or give a shit about are those of people who have a couple million in the bank and own real estate. All others need not apply.

Are YOU really surprised that a group of cops who are given immunity from prosecution unless their fellow PIGS find them guilty first, got away with their Hate Crimes once again? No, really, is anybody actually surprised that the Internal Affairs did what they alway do and let their fellow PIGS off the hook once more?

I wonder how Mayor Rivera would feel if armed THUGS burst into his home and kicked him out the door, threw away all his belongings (unless something he has is worth stealing) and if he resists being dispossessed, they throw him into the El Paso County Torture Dungeon and taser him for “being uncooperative”.

All because the Rich Bitches who run this little corner of Outer Redneckistan don’t want their piglets to see that poor people actually exist, (Like Prince Siddharta’s parents) and ask ugly questions about the Family Fortune that keeps them clothed and overfed and overprivileged being made on the backs of the Dispossessed. They want their little bastard get to believe that Nobody is harmed in any way by their family accumulations of wealth.

Here’s a theory: you remember the fire on the incline a couple of years ago, started in a homeless camp? The Pig-Os never did find out who started it, but AssMunches like Heimlicher and Rivera were quick to blame the Homeless…

Instead of the Rich Kids who habitually raid the camps of the homeless PEOPLE (but only when the PEOPLE aren’t in the camps) raiding that particular camp and perhaps setting it on fire?

Heimlicher and Rivera and Sheriff Ima Pigg Maketa don’t care about that, encourage that sort of behavior with their constant Dehumanizing of their Victims… and if the “just kids having a little fun” gets out of hand and starts a fire, that can subsequently be blamed on the homeless PEOPLE, all the better for them.

Teach your little Piglets to despise anybody who, unlike them, wasn’t born to Wealth and Privilege.

“Sovereignty”— But only for Amerika…

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Brother Jonah

As reported in Talking Points Memo:

Congressional Sovereignty Caucus Launching Next Week
By Eric Kleefeld – June 19, 2009, 5:40PM

A new group is set to launch in the House of Representatives, made up of conservatives set on defending American POWER and interests against encroachment from international institutions: The Congressional Sovereignty Caucus.

Their kickoff meeting will be this coming Wednesday, featuring co-founders Reps. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), plus Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) — and special guests Oliver North, Frank Gaffney and Doug Feith.
Rep. Lamborn declined to comment, but his office did point us to an opinion column he wrote last week, mainly targeted at the nomination of Harold Koh to be the legal counsel to the State Department, in which he explained the importance of American sovereignty.

“Sovereignty is vital for America because we are an exceptional nation,” wrote Lamborn, “one uniquely blessed with a vibrant Judeo-Christian heritage, as demonstrated both through its founding documents and by the witness of history. For any nation, and I believe especially for America, to give up any degree of control of its destiny to transnational bodies is irresponsible and wrong.”

Their first meeting sure will have an interesting line-up. North, for example, covertly sold weapons to the Khomeini regime in Iran and then wore his Marine uniform at a Congressional hearing in order to justify himself. And Gaffney has written opinion columns in which he’s raised suspicions that President Obama might not be a natural-born citizen, or could be a secret Muslim.

Seems some members of the RepubliKlan party can’t be bothered to learn the difference between “Nationalism” which by default would grant EVERY nation equal rights, and “Cold-blooded Imperialism”, such as practiced by North, Gaffney and Feith.

Also the “Founding Documents” which they insist gives Amerika exclusively to Christians.. oops “Judeo-Christians”.

My advice to Jewish Americans, who were deliberately excluded in the “Founding Documents” they mention: Stay clear of these freaks.

The only reason they include Judeo is the same reason as George Bush trying to say how much he really loves Mexican American Culture, and showing off how much Spanish he really doesn’t speak. Political Schmoozing, in other words.

For those unfamiliar with Yiddish, Schmooz is “con job” as practiced by a “Schmiel” (thief) in order to defraud a “Schmozl” who is somebody dumb enough to be Schmoozed.

Those documents also referred to Native Americans as “Savages” and to Black AMERICANS as only being worth 2/3 of a “real” person apiece.
(but of course they weren’t Racists, no sir!)
Ollie North and friends say that Amerika is also destined to rule the world.

Fat chance on that Ollie, and on behalf of the Marines you had MURDERED for political gain during the Beirut Peacekeeping mission, the ones whose killers received cash and weapons from you and your Coward Treasonous Comrades, before and after the murders took place, yeah, THOSE Marines, Ollie… I’ll once again say those same three words, Ollie “Semper Fi… BITCH!”

That goes for local supporters of the Imperialist Terror Regime Ollie and his comrades represent too.

No. 1 domestic terrorist Daniel McGowan

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The Huffington Post published a letter by ELF/ALF political prisoner Daniel McGowan, who is allowed to send one letter per week from CMU36, the controversial “Communication Management Unit” whose cover-name is USP Marion. According to McGowan, prison guards call it the “I Unit,” which probably does not stand for illegal.

As of May 2009, I have been at USP Marion’s “Communication Management Unit,” or CMU, for roughly nine months and now is a good time to address the misconceptions (and the silence) regarding this unit. I want to offer a snapshot of my day-to-day life here as well as some analysis of what the existence of CMUs in the federal prison system implies. It is my hope that this article will partially fill the void of information that exists concerning the CMU, will help dispel rumors, and will inspire you to support those of us on the inside fighting the existence of these isolation units — in the courts and in the realm of public opinion.

It is best to start from the beginning — or at least where my story and the CMU meet. My transfer here is no different from that of many of the men here who were living at Federal Correctional Institutions (normal prisons) prior to the genesis of the CMUs. On May 12, 2008, on my way back from a decent lunch, I was told to report to “R&D” (receiving and discharge). I was given two boxes and half an hour to pack up my meager possessions. After complying I was placed in the SHU (secure housing unit or “hole”) and put on a bus the next day. There was no hearing and no information given to me or my attorneys — only after a day was I told I was on my way to Marion, Illinois’ CMU.

Hearing the term “CMU” made my knees buckle as it drummed up some memory I had of the infamous “control units” at Marion (closed in 1995 and replaced by Florence ADX: the lone Federal “Supermax” prison). Then it hit me. The lawyers, in challenging the application of the terrorist enhancement in my case, made the prescient argument that if I receive the enhancement, the Bureau of Prisons (BoP) would use that to place me in the CMU at FCI Terre Haute, Indiana (at the time just 5 months old). In fact, on the way to FCI Sandstone in August 2007, I not only saw the CMU but met one of its residents while in transit. Let me back up and offer a brief history of the Communication Management Units.

The CMU I reside in, at USP Marion, received its first prisoner in May 2008 and when I arrived, held about 17 men, the majority of whom were Muslim. Currently, the unit has 25, with a capacity of 52 cells. In April 2009, we received seven new people, all of whom were from the CMU at FCI Terre Haute. The unit is overwhelmingly Muslim with 18 men identifying as such. Most, but not all of the prison, have so-called terrorism cases. According to a BoP spokesperson, the unit “will not be limited to inmates convicted of terrorism-related cases through all of the prisoners fit that description.” Others have prison disciplinary violation or allegations related to communication and the misuse of telephones etc. Here, almost everyone has a terrorism related case — whether it is like my case (destruction of property characterized as “domestic terrorism”) or conspiracy and “providing material aid” cases.

Before the Marion CMU opened, there was the original CMU, opened in December 2006 at the former death row at FCI Terre Haute. According to early articles, the unit was intended for “second tier terrorism inmates, most of them Arab Muslims and a less restrictive version of the Supermax in Florence, Colorado.”

Additionally, BoP Director Harley Lappin, in a July 2008 hearing on the 2009 BoP budget request, said of the CMUs, “A lot of the more serious offenders, terrorists, were housed at ADX Florence. So, we are ramping up two communications management units that are less restrictive but will ensure that all mail and phone calls of the offenders are monitored on a daily basis.”

Terre Haute’s CMU has 36 men (27 of whom are Muslim) and is roughly comparable to Marion’s CMU. The rest of this place focuses on the latter, in which I have resided and of which I have seen firsthand.

You may be curious about just what a CMU actually is. From my correspondence, I can tell that many correspondents do not know much about what goes on here. I hope this can clear up any misperceptions. According to the BoP,

The CMU is [sic] established to house inmates who, due to their current offense of conviction, offense conduct or other verified information, require increased monitoring of communication between inmates and persons in the community in order to protect the safety, security, and orderly operations of Bureau facilities and protect the public…The CMU is a self-contained general population housing unit.

There are, of course, alternate views to the above definition including the belief that the CMUs are Muslim units, a political prisoner unit (similar to the HSU operated by the BoP in the 80’s, and a punishment unit.

The CMUs have an extremely high Muslim population; here at Marion, it is 65-75%. An overrepresentation of any one demographic in a prison raises constitutional issues of equal protection as well as safety issues. Nowhere in the BoP will you find any group represented in such extreme disproportion. To counter these claims, the BoP brought in a small number of non-Muslims to be used as proof that the units are not strictly Muslim (an interesting note is that some of the Muslim men here have cases unrelated to terrorism). Does the inclusion of six people that are non-Muslim really negate the claim of segregation though? What are the criteria for determining who comes to the CMU? The BoP claims there are 211 international terrorists (and 1000 domestic terrorists) in their system. Yet, the CMUs have no more than 60 men at the present time. Where are the rest of these people? How does the BOP determine who of those 1200 are sent to a CMU and who to normal prisons? These are questions that need to be asked — in court and in the media.

Many of the men here (both Muslim and non) are considered political prisoners in their respective movements and have been engaged in social justice, religious organizations, charities and humanitarian efforts. Another conception of the CMU is that it is a location designed to isolate us from our movements and to act as a deterrent for others from those movements (as in “step outside the line and you too will end up there”). The intended effect of long-term housing of this kind is a profound sense of dislocation and alienation. With your mail, email, phones, and visits monitored and no human touch allowed at the visits, it is difficult to feel a connection to “the streets.” There is historical evidence of the BoP utilizing political prisons — despite the fact that the Department of Justice refuses to acknowledge the concept of political prisoners in US prisons, choosing to call us “criminal” instead.

The Lexington High Security Unit (HSU) was one such example. Having opened its 16-bed facilities in 1988 and housing a number of female political prisoners, the HSU functioned as an isolation unit — underground, bathed in fluorescence, and limited interaction with staff. In the opinion of Dr. Richard Korn, speaking on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, the unit’s goal was “…to reduce prisoners to a state of submission essential for their ideological conversion. That failing, the next objective is to reduce them as efficient, self-directing antagonists. That failing, the only alternative is to destroy them by making them destroy themselves.”

After an arduous campaign by human rights advocates and supporters, the BoP capitulated, stating it would close its facility (when it did not, it was sued). The judge ruled that the plaintiffs were illegally designated based on their past political affiliations, statements and political beliefs. The unit was closed and the women were transferred to other prisons.

The correlations between the HSU and CMU are many and seem to have some of the same goals as well as methods used to designate us here. Knowing they are dealing with people committed to ideals and the movements they are a part of, we were placed here in order to weaken those connections and harm our relationships. An example is the horrendous strain that the CMU puts on our familial relations — especially our marriages. It was certainly considered by the architects of the CMU that preventing visits that allow human touch for long-term prisoners would have a disastrous impact on our relationships and would lead to weaker inmates.

Finally, the CMU can be viewed as “the stick” — a punitive unit for those who don’t play ball or who continue to express political beliefs anathema to the BoP or the US government. Although I am not aware of the BoP’s criteria for sending people here (due to their refusal to release specific CMU information), it is curious who is and who is not here. Out of roughly 18 codefendants in my criminal case, I am the only one at a CMU (the remainder of them are at low and medium security prisons). The same goes for a member of the SHAC7 campaign, Andrew Stepanian, one of 6 defendants in his case who was sent here for the last 6 months of his sentence. Other men here have codefendants at the Terre Haute CMU while others have codefendants at normal federal prisons. Despite numerous Freedom of Information Requests, the BoP refuses to grant the documents that specify the rules governing transfer to the CMU. Remember, hardly any of the men here have received any disciplinary violations and some have been in general population over 15 years! How can someone be okay in general population for that long and then one day be seen as a communication threat?

So, I have hypothesized about the goals of the CMU. Let me discuss the many problems and injustices associated with the existence of the CMUs.

Due process
More appropriately, a lack thereof. A term I never thought much about before my imprisonment, due process is:

…the conduct of legal proceedings according to established rules and principles for the protection and enforcement of private rights, including notice and the right to hearing before a tribunal [my emphasis] with the power to decide the case.

I was moved from FCI Sandstone, against my will and at a moment’s notice, with no hearing and thus no chance to contest the reason for my transfer. A FOIA request recently received states I was redesignated May 6th, my transfer was signed the next day and I was moved on May 13th with the reason given as “program participation”. Since I got here, I have not had a hearing to contest the claims made in the “Notice to Inmate of Transfer to CMU, ” some of which were woefully inaccurate. Instead, I was told I can utilize the administrative remedy process (which I have done to no avail) and request a transfer after 18 months of “clear conduct”.

The irony is that all prisoners who violate prison rules are subject to a series of disciplinary hearings in which they could offer their defense. For legal units such as Florence ADX (Supermax) or the control unit program, there exists a codified set of rules and hearings for transfer to these locations. The BoP has deliberately ignored this process and has instead transferred us to this special, brand-new CMU without due process. My notice of transfer was given to me 12 days after I arrived!

Similar to the callous disregard for due process (and the US Constitution), there is no “step down” process for the CMU. Unlike the ones that exist at Florence ADX, control units or even the gang units, the CMU has no stages, no requisite amount of time we are to spend here before being sent back to a normal prison.

Because these preceding programs are specifically for prison misbehavior, there is a logical and orderly way to finish the program and eventually transfer. For us, the BoP has set up a paradox — if we are here for our offense conduct, which we cannot ever change, how can we reasonably leave the unit? In its “Admissions and Orientation” guide for Marion’s CMU, here is what they say:

Every new commitment to the CMU will be evaluated by his unit team regarding his suitability for incarceration in this institution. If, for some reason, the inmate is deemed not acceptable for confinement in this unit, he will be processed as expeditiously as possible…

[I am still roughly 10 months from my 18-month period in which I must wait before requesting a transfer. Considering the fact that all my remedies have been denied, I am not hopeful about this.]

CMU as Secret
In addition to the due process and transfer issues, there is the secretive and illegal manner that the CMU was created (Note: for historical perspectives, it needs to be stated that the CMU was established roughly halfway through the second term of George W. Bush and his Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.)

In April 2006, the BoP proposed a “Limited Communication for Terrorist Inmates” policy, which suggested new restrictions for “terrorists” and “terrorism related inmates” such as:

1) One 6-page letter per week.

2) One 15-minute phone call a month.

3) One 1-hour visit a month.

A coalition of civil rights organizations signed a letter of protest criticizing the proposed rules and raising numerous constitutional, practical and ethical objectives. The outcry appears to have caused the BoP to reconsider it and just 6 months later, open the CMU at FCI Terre Haute quietly. Since the BoP never sought public comment on the new CMU, it certainly appears to be a violation of the Administrative Procedural Act (APA), an argument a federal judge in Miami raised in response to a prisoner’s legal challenge to transfer to the CMU.

The unit is functionally an open secret. While the BoP circumvented the standard public comment (and feedback process), it has sought to get around this by describing the CMU as a “self-contained general population unit,” implying that the unit is legally and penally no different than a normal unit at an FCI. There is no mention of the CMU on the BoP’s website (ww.bop.gov) or USP Marion’s subpage on the same site. You will not find extensive Congressional hearings on the subject — other than a July 2008 subcommittee hearing in which it appears that the BoP director was not fully forthcoming on the CMU36. Letters here are stamped “USP Marion,” not CMU, and the unit is called “I Unit” by staff. (An interesting anecdote: while on transit in Winter 2009, I met men from the FCI here and asked them what they knew about I Unit. Without hesitation, they said, “That’s where the terrorists are.” They informed me this is what BoP Staff routinely told them.)

Media queries are met with silence or vague information. Requests by the media to interview me by coming to Marion have been denied — due to it “being detrimental to the safety, security and good order of the institution.” There still is no Program Statement on the CMU — a legal requirement, outlining the specific rules of the CMU and its designation criteria.

Because of this, and the general refusal of the BoP to hand over relevant documents through FOIA, it is impossible to determine the specific reasons why one is sent here — and thus, how to contest this process. In effect, the CMU was created on the fly, with no eye toward legality; they are free to operate it in whatever manner they choose.

Communication Management (The Promotion of Isolation and Alienation)
The most painful aspect of this unit, to me, is how the CMU restricts my contact with the world beyond these walls. It is difficult for those who have not known prison to understand what a lifeline contact with our family and friends is to us. It is our link to the world — and our future (for those of us who are fortunate enough to have release dates). Prison authorities and architects are well aware that those with strong family ties and in good communication with their loved ones are well behaved and have significantly lower rates of recidivism. The BoP, in theory, recognizes this by claiming they try to situate us within 500 miles of our homes. Mostly, this is a cruel farce for many prisoners — I have not been within 1000 miles of my family in 2 years.

The most Orwellian aspects of the CMU are in how they manage our communications:

A) Telephones- at my previous prison, I was able to use the phones for 300 minutes a month — days, nights, weekends and holidays — basically at any point I was not in my housing unit (6am-10pm). Here, we receive one 15-minute phone call a week. The call can only take place between 8am and 2:30pm, never on weekends or holidays and must be scheduled one and a half weeks in advance (we can choose a back-up number to call but if neither picks up, we don’t get a call). The call is live-monitored and recorded. Not only do we receive one fifth of the minutes granted to other federal prisoners but the call is also very trying for our families — all of whom have day jobs and many of whom have children in school. The CMU requires calls be made in English only — a difficult demand considering over half of the men here speak English as a second language (this restriction is not present at other federal prisons).

B) Visits- At FCI Sandstone, I received up to eight visiting days a month (56 hours) — contact visits in which I could embrace my wife, play cards with my nieces and share vending machine food with my visitors. These visits were my lifeline. I got about twelve of them in eight months and it aided in my adjustment to prison.

The CMU restricts our visits to one four-hour non-contract visit a month. One short visit through two inches of plate glass with cameras hanging overhead and my visitors stuffed in a four-and-a-half by three-and-a-half-foot stuffy booth — a tight squeeze for two. The visits can only take place on weekdays from 8am-2pm — no more Christmas or Thanksgiving visits — and worse, no physical contact (Consider what it would be like to have no contact with your loved ones. What if you couldn’t hug or kiss your lover, partner, wife, husband? What would that do to you?) I find myself riddled with guilt when I ask friends to spend $500 to fly across the country, drive three hours (and repeat) for a four-hour non-contact visit. I’m lucky though, having people who will do this. Many of the men here can’t afford it or don’t want to subject their children to this reality.

C) Mail- We can only send out mail once a day and we cannot visit the mail room to send out packages. We are one-hundred-percent reliant on the one staff person who deals with our mail to do so and sending a box home is a laborious procedure. We must leave our envelopes unsealed so that staff can read, copy, scan and send to whatever other agency studies our correspondence. A letter to NYC takes roughly seven to nine days (which should take five). Letters sent abroad, especially those not written in English, could take a month or more — a common complaint of some of my fellow prisoners.

Staff here has an interesting reading of the rules governing legal mail leading to the charge that they open our legal mail (this is the subject of an administrative remedy I filed with the BoP Central Office in Washington DC). The rule states that the lawyer’s name must be clearly identified and that the envelope must say “Special Mail- Open only in the presence of inmates” and yet staff has opened my legal mail that said “Law Offices of Jane Doe” stating that it should have said, “Jane Doe, Attorney at Law”! The staff looks for any reason to disqualify our legal mail as protected and gather intelligence this way. In doing so, they violate the sanctity of the attorney-client confidentiality principle.

Most of my violations have been petty — a package has more than twenty pieces of paper or a friend kindly enclosed stamps. A few instances though amount to censorship and a limiting of political expression and dialogue. See Appendix B for a detailed discussion of these instances.

D) Media Contact- Although requests have been made to interview people in the CMU, none have been granted to date. This is a violation of the spirit of the BoP’s own media policy. There is an imperative on the Bureau’s part to control and ultimately suppress information on the CMU from making it to a mass audience.

Daily Life at the CMU
Neither one of the two CMUs were built for long-term habitation. The Marion CMU was the site of the Secure Housing Unit (SHU), the USP that closed here in 2005. Terre Haute’s CMU is in “D-wing” — the site of the former federal death row.

The CMU was seemingly converted to its current use with the addition of televisions, steel tables, and new wiring and yet it is not suitable for long-term use due to its “open cell” design (i.e. with bars). With 25 prisoners, our movements are restricted to two housing ranges (hallways about 100 by 12 feet); a recreation range where we also eat (consisting of seven cells with a computer, typewriter, barber shop, religious library, social library, art room and recreational equipment); and a small rec yard (all concrete, a lap equals one-eighteenth of a mile, four cages with two basketball hoops, one handball court, a weather awning with tables and some sit-up benches). We are lucky to be visited daily by a resident bird population of doves and blackbirds, and overhead, the occasional hawk or falcon (ironically, as I write this, I overhear warnings from staff that if we continue to feed the birds, we will receive violations). The appearance of the yard with its cages, concrete, and excessive barbed wire has earned it nickname “Little Guantanamo” (of course a punitive unit with seventy-five percent Muslims also contributes to the name as well).

The conditions here are not dire — in fact, the horror stories I have heard over the last two years have convinced me it is far worse at many prisons and yet, I believe it is important to be descriptive and accurate — to dispel fears (about violence, for instance) but also to demonstrate just how different life is for us at the CMU.

There are many things we lack here that other prisons in the federal system have to offer:

1- A residential drug/alcohol program- despite at least one person here having completion of it ordered by the court.

2- Enough jobs for the prisoners here- There is not nearly enough jobs for all the men here and most are extremely low paying.

3- UNICOR- This is Federal Prison Industries which has shops at many federal prisons (including this one outside the CMU). These jobs pay much more, allow men to pay their court fees, restitution and child support and, as the BoP brags, teaches people job skills.

4- Adequate educational opportunities- Until recently, we did not have GED or vocational programs. Due to inmate pressure and persistence, we now have both of those as well as a few prisoner-taught classes but no college courses at all.

5- Access to staff on a daily basis- At other federal prisons, you are able to approach staff members at lunch every day, including the Warden. Here, we get (at most) two quick walk-throughs a week, usually taking place early in the morning. You are often left waiting days to resolve a simple question.

6- Law library access- We have a very small law library here with only twenty-five percent of the books required by law. We can only request books twice weekly and those are only delivered if the other nine hundred prisoners at the adjacent Medium are not using them. We lack Federal Court and Supreme Court reports as well as books on Immigration Law (fifty percent or more of the men here face deportation). This lack of access makes for an arduous and ineffective research path.

7- Computers- We have four computers for our email system (two for reading, one for printing and one that we were told would be for legal but it still isn’t working). Unlike my previous prison, where we had forty computers with a robust computer-class program, or like other prisons that teach a vocational computer course, we have no such thing.

8- Access to general population- Being in an isolation unit makes for a situation in which we cannot have organized sports leagues and tournaments due to not having enough people at all. This may not seem crucial but sports are a very useful diversion from the stress of prison life and separation.

After reading the preceding sections, perhaps like me you are wondering what really is the purpose of the CMU. In short, the SMU is Florence ADX-LITE for those men whose security points are low and present no real problems to staff. From my interactions with the men here, I can say with certainty, that people here are remarkably well-behaved and calm — many without any disciplinary violations. If these men, like myself, don’t get in trouble, and have been in the system for some time, why are we here? Consider my case.

My short time in prison prior to coming to the CMU consisted of two months at MDC Brooklyn and eight months at FCI Sandstone. I had never gotten in trouble and spent my days as a clerk in psychology, working toward a Master’s degree, reading, writing and exercising. My goal was to get closer to home and my loved ones. In April 2008, I filed a “hardship transfer” request due to my mother’s illness and her inability to travel to Minnesota to visit me. I had my team meeting, and my security points were lowered. Weeks later, I was moved to the CMU.

The irony is that I was moved to the CMU to have my communication managed, but what changed in that one year to justify this move? If I was a danger, then why did the BoP house me in a low-security prison? The same applies to many of the men here– some have been in general population for twenty years and then suddenly a need to manage their communication is conjured up. During my pre-CMU time, I had used 3500 phone minutes and sent hundreds of letters. If there was a problem with my communication, shouldn’t the BoP have raised this with me? My notice stating their rationale for placing me here attributed it to me “being a member and leader in the ELF and ALF” and “communicating in code.” But if this is true, then shouldn’t I have been sent to the CMU as soon as I self-reported to prison in July 2007?

The CMUs were crafted and opened under the Bush administration as some misguided attempt to be tough on the “war on terror.” This unit contains many prisoners from cases prosecuted during the hyper-paranoid and over-the-top period after 9/11 and the passage of the USA Patriot Act.44 The number of prosecutions categorized as terrorism-related more than doubled to reach 1,200 in 2002. It seemed that every other week, there was some plot uncovered by overzealous FBI agents — in Lackawanna, NY, Miami, FL, Portland, OR, and Virginia and elsewhere (never mind the illegal wiretaps and unscrupulous people used in these cases). These cases may not be headlines anymore but these men did not go away — they were sent to prison and, when it was politically advantageous for Bush, transferred to the CMUs. The non-Muslim populations of these units (although definitely picked judiciously) were sent there to dispel charges that the CMUs were exclusively Muslim units.

The codified rationale for all prisoners being transferred here are “contact with persons in community require heightened control and reviews” and “your transfer to this facility for greater communication management is necessary to the safe, secure, and orderly function of Bureau institutions…” Should an increase in monitoring of communication mean a decrease in privileges? If the goal is to manage our contact with the outside world, shouldn’t the BoP hire enough staff so that we can maintain the same rights and privileges as other prisoners (since the party line is that we are not here for punishment)? The reality is the conditions, segregation, lack of due process and such are punishment regardless of whether the BoP admits it or not.

Forward!
Where to from here, then? Does the new President and his Attorney General take issue with segregation? Will Obama view the CMU, as he did with Guantanamo Bay, as a horrible legacy of his predecessor and close it? Many people are hopeful for an outcome like that. On April 7th, 2009, Mr. Obama, while in Turkey, said, “The United States will not make war on Islam,” and that he wanted to “extend the hand of friendship to the Muslim world.” While that sounds wonderful, what does that look like in concrete terms? Will he actualize that opinion by closing the CMU? Or will he marry the policy of Bush and condone a secret illegal set of political units for Muslims and activists? What of the men here? Will he transfer us back to normal prisons and review the outrageous prosecutions of many of the CMU detainees? If it can be done with (former) Senator Ted Steven’s case, it can be done here.

While lawsuits have been filed in both Illinois and Indiana federal courts, what is needed urgently is for these units to be dragged out into the open. I am asking for your help and advocacy in dealing with this injustice and the mindset that allows a CMU to exist. Please pursue the resource section at the end of this article and consider doing something. I apologize for the length of this piece — it was suggested to me (by people way smarter than myself) that it would be best to start from the beginning and offer as many details as possible. I hope I gave you a clearer idea of what’s going on here. Thank you for all your support and love — your letters are a bright candle in a sea of darkness.

Border agents taser a smart alec

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Eric Verlo

You’ve probably seen enough cop taser videos –have you seen one videotaped by the tasee? A troublemaking Baptist Pastor named Steve Anderson got himself ordered from his car where he had been refusing to consent to a warrant-less search by Homeland Security border agents. They told him he was under arrest, but wouldn’t say for what, they said that a K-9 team had given them probable cause, but wouldn’t bring the dog back to confirm it, and the officers wouldn’t respect Anderson’s fourth or fifth amendment rights, but that’s not the worst of it.

If others can kill, Israel wants permit too

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

June 6th is the 42nd anniversary of Israel’s seizure of Gaza. At right is a UK newspaper ad placed by the Anti-Defamation League, one of Israel’s myriad damage control engines, when UK students were calling to boycott Israel over its attacks in Gaza. 400,000 killed in Sudan, so Israel should get a pass on its 1,300 victims in Gaza? It sounds like the IDF expects allowances to be made for its periodic ethnic cleansing, permits maybe, like polluters trade carbon credits. The US Humane Society euthanizes 5.4 million dogs every year, no doubt it’s just a double standard to demonize Israel for bagging their 1,300 in Gaza.

Where there are fingers pointing at Sudan, there are Zionists diverting attention from their final Palestinian solution. No one’s crying GENOCIDE in Darfur, calling for military intervention against the Muslim regime but Israel, the US and George Clooney.

I just read an eyewitness recollection of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, published on this 20th anniversary, by a reporter who went on to fault China less for its human rights transgressions than for Chinese investments in Sudan and Iran. Sudan? IRAN? What was an evocative historical account began to smell of Zionist agitation… Of course the WSJ columnist turned out to be a “conservative” who also labels those who stand up for Palestinian rights as anti-Semites.

State sponsored Terrorism wins again…

Posted on May 20, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Gestapo Chief Robert Mueller said “Terrorists who can’t be convicted could be set free under the plan” which the House and Senate have now nixed to close the Torture Center.

Aside from laying aside the basics of Human Rights and the Rule of law he said that the non-convicted (and therefore Not Guilty) Terrorists live in a comfortable environment that’s better than some U.S. prisons.

Nice of him to admit that the AmeriKlan prison system tortures American citizens as well.

The pricks who insist that this is all somehow protecting Freedom are the Same Ones who say that we can’t call George Bush and his lackeys (like the Congress) the War Criminals they truly are, because they haven’t been convicted.

Like the coward murdering Scum of Blackwater.

Or the Police and other Pigs when they, for instance, shoot a little old lady through her door (Etta Collins, Dallas Texas) or shoot a man who’s climbing a fence to get away and claim that he’s trying to throw a rock at them (Border Patrol, Arizona, 1985) or the IDF and Similar Terrorist organizations.

Innocent until proven guilty, They SAY.

Unless it’s somebody who isn’t a Right Wing Gestapo Torture Freak who’s accused.

The ones who practice that double-standard are purely and simply COWARDS.

I know we’ll hear from some who say I don’t have the Right to say that because they “fought for my right to say that”.

A Terrorist Ploy used often here in Colorado Springs.

The rest of our formerly Great Nation too.

They’ve caved in and aquiesced to the Terrorists.

High Country Earth First Denver Meeting

Posted on May 20, 2009 by NMT

High Country Earth First is hosting the EF! ROADSHOW, in DENVER, May 25-26: Monday 2pm in Cheesman Park, and Tuesday 6pm at the Gypsy House.

Four ongoing EF! projects in Colorado: DENVER: Stop I-70 Expansion through North Denver; SAN LUIS VALLEY: Halt gas drilling in Baca National Wildlife Refuge: and WESTERN SLOPE: Red Cliff mine campaign and Feral Futures (May 24 – June 7).

From “Rockslide,” High Country Earth First!

The need for resistance in solidarity with the wild has never been louder or clearer than it is today; the EF! roadshow is a great tool for growing that resistance. There are countless examples to draw from in the story of radical movements before us: militant labor organizing tours, anti-fascist resistance recruitment and international speaking tours to build cross-border solidarity. The origin of Earth First! itself is credited to a few roadshows that kicked it all off in the early 1980s. We are building on this tradition; akin to a fellowship crossing Middle Earth to amass insurgents to face Mordor head-on.

List-serves and websites aren’t enough
This Roadshow’s primary intention is to strengthen our radical grassroots ecological network. For almost 30 years, we have been an organized voice bridging conservation biology with grassroots community organizing, road blockading and eco-sabotage. In the past 5 years we have seen numbers and experience-level in the EF! movement decline drastically. Yet, our place has never been more urgent. New groups are popping up across the country, but they are detached from many of the groups, history, and skills that came before them. We can’t afford to stumble and make the same mistakes over again.

We are at the tail end of a decade where corporate globalization rooted itself in the US and spread across the planet like a plague. And now that the reality of climate change is finally sinking into the mainstream consciousness, the same superpowers that pushed so-called ‘free trade’ policies to exploit wild nature more efficiently are promoting carbon trading in attempt to make a profitable industry out of the disasters they’ve created. The spineless Big Green environmental NGOs are scrambling for crumbs and cutting deals with the industry for shallow public relations victories. Earth First! must rise and recognize that it’s presence is a strong component of making the broader environmental movement truly effective. We are its spine, or as an EF! co-founder, Howie Wolke, has put it, we are the lions of a movement ‘ecosystem’. Our niche is critical, and its presence (or absence) is felt deeply by our surroundings.

We need to reconnect the multi-generational aspect of Earth First! that has fallen by the wayside in recent years. We need to broaden our network’s base—from radical rural grandparents to revolutionary urban youth. We need re-establish lost relationships with scholars and scientists who resonate with us. We need to re-inspire musicians and artists to contribute their passion to our battles.

When it comes down to it, solid movements are based on strong personal relationships; and real relationships don’t go very far over the internet. We need face-to-face interaction to build trust with—and support for—each other.

From EF! Here is a glimpse of ongoing local and national campaigns and projects related to EF!. They could all use your support in a variety of ways—from fundraising to showing up in person. Please contact the organizing groups directly to find out what they need most:

Northern California Redwood Defense
Since the fall of Maxxam/Pacific Lumber, forest defenders in the Redwoods have been directing attention on another logging empire: Green Diamond Resource Company (formerly Simpson). In the last 10 years they have clear-cut 52,000 acres of Northern California forests. They are killing off endangered Spotted Owls and have aspirations to sell off thousands of acres in Humboldt County for Salmon killing suburban development. We have set up multiple treesit villages to oppose the destruction, and we need your help TODAY.
www.efhumboldt.org

Appalachian Anti-Mountain Top Removal
The presence of coal plants are threats to the lives within both the human community and the mountain ecosystem. One of the most biologically flourishing areas of the world is being environmentally and socially impoverished by companies practicing mountain top removal. Mountain top removal clogs streams, destroys forests, threatens biodiversity and forces coalfield residents into the unjust choice between income and well-being.
www.blueridgeef.com

Stop I-69 in Indiana
I-69 is a NAFTA superhighway, already constructed from Canada to Indianapolis and projected to extend down into Mexico. This highway is intended for the mass transportation of goods and resources, to further exploit workers and the land, and to lessen companies’ accountability in terms of human and environmental rights. In 2008, they began construction of this road through southwestern Indiana, which will evict hundreds of rural families, destroy hundreds of acres of land, and devastate the habitats of countless species of animals, including the endangered Indiana Bat. www.stopi69.wordpress.com

Fight Development in the North Woods of Maine
The largest piece of undeveloped land east of the Mississippi is under attack. Plum Creek, the nation’s largest corporate landowner, is in the process of rezoning 20,000 acres of the Moosehead Lake region in Maine for luxury house and resorts, while trying to balance it off with a fraudulent conservation easement plan. This plan would still allow timber harvesting, commercial water extraction and the building of new infrastructure, among many other ecologically devastating practices. www.maineearthfirst.wordpress.com

Defend the Last Free-Roaming Wild Buffalo in Montana
The Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) is the only group working in the field, everyday, to stop the slaughter and harassment of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo. Volunteers from around the world defend buffalo on their traditional winter habitat and advocate for their protection. Our daily patrols stand with the buffalo on the ground they choose to be on, and document every move made against them. Tactics range from video documentation to nonviolent civil disobedience. www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

Fight new Copper Mines and Roads in the Deserts of Arizona
Chuk’shon Earth First! is fighting the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, which is greenwashing itself by claiming a need for increased copper extraction for the solar panel industry. The group is also opposing the expansion of I-10, part of the Department of Transportation’s “Corridors of the Future” program to increase capacity of global industrial commerce. The proposed I-10 Bypass would bisect wild/rural lands and facilitate more sprawl between Tucson and Phoenix. www.chukshonef.wordpress.com

Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project in eastern Oregon
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project (BMBP) formed in 1991 to increase regional and national awareness of the Blue Mountains ecosystems, to ensure the protection for and reintroduction of diverse native wildlife species, to promote ecologically sound restoration and address the root causes of ecological and community instability. They have trained countless EF!ers is forest monitoring. They are one of the country’s premier grassroots ‘paper-wrenchers’, filing legal challenges that help make our blockades successful. They can be reached at 541-385-9167

Stop Florida Power & Light from trashing the Everglades
Everglades Earth First! (EEF!) have been battling FPL’s plans to build the country’s largest fossil fuel power plant in the Loxahatchee Basin; a headwaters to the remaining Everglades ecosystem. EEF! Is also challenging over 500 miles of new gas pipelines and 2 new Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facilities. Get more details: www.evergladesearthfirst.org

Stop Gas Drilling in Western New York
There is a proposal on the table to begin one of the largest fossil fuel exploration projects in the country. This project would result hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 emissions, along with the impacts of pipelines, power plants, and new LNG storage facilities. Get in touch with Shale Shock: www.shaleshock.org

Bank of America, Stop Funding Coal!
A national campaign is well underway to stop Bank of America (BoA), who is the largest investor to Mountain Top Removal coal mining. The company recently offered lip-service to address their support for the coal industry, but have made no real steps towards cutting ties with King Coal. With BoA locations in cities across the U.S., this campaign can easily be supported in a decentralized fashion. Give ‘em hell! For more info: www.ran.org

No 2010 Olympics
The Native Youth Movement and other First Nations groups in occupied Canada have called for full-scale resistance to the Winter Olympics proposed in British Colombia. The Olympics proposal includes a mess of development, ski-resorts and infrastructure on indigenous land. Learn more at: www.no2010.com

Root Force
This project is a research database and strategic think tank for direct action intended to target corporate/colonial infrastructure, such as: roads, dams, power plants, and mines. Their website offers background information on transnational companies, government agencies and their local affiliations across the United States. www.rootforce.org

Free those illegally imprisoned at Gitmo

Posted on May 20, 2009 by Eric Verlo

When human rights organizations have called for CLOSING GUANTANAMO, they don’t mean AND CARRY ON ELSEWHERE. “Gitmo” is about the illegal detention and torture of human beings. What kind of rubes are we dealing with?

Guantanamo is an illegal entity. It’s location outside US dominion, and outside Cuba’s border, on technicalities, has been used to pretend there’s a gray area outside the rule of international law. What’s being done inside Guantanamo, holding people indefinitely without bringing charges against them, torture, military commissions, is expressly illegal. Calls to shut Guantanamo down are calls to end the charade of a legal loophole, but they are primarily demands that the immoral behavior be stopped.

We don’t shut down brothels while arranging for their captives to work elsewhere. Polluters aren’t expected merely to shift their poison pipelines into other streams. We don’t make arrangements for drug dealers to relocate before we close a crack house or meth lab.

US gov finally murders ‘ghost detainee’ (POW) tortured by CIA for 7 1/2 years

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Tony Logan

al Fakhiri, Ali Mohamed Abdul Aziz al Zarani Libya reports prison suicide of top Qaeda man this week. Translated form CIA Arabic speak, that means he was murdered. Sure… so much has changed with Obama in office! I’m being facetious here. This man was murdered simply because he knew too much about how the Bush Administration tortured POWs in order to try to get them to fabricate ‘evidence’ about a Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda connection to justify their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

A hit by the Libyans for Barack to help put a lid on this scandal? Well you speculate some… (Oh, Tony! Barack is not like that at all!) Sure he is. Certainly the government he heads is! I don’t doubt it for a second.

This reminds me of the President of Guatemala who has been just accused by an assassinated dead man of having murdered him. Luckily, unlike this victim of the CIA and Obama, he taped his accusation on youtube and it begins…

‘if you are hearing this, then I am already dead.’ And he is! See the video The Unspeakable Murder of Rodrigo Rosenberg (English subtitles) and the second part The Unspeakable Murder of Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano (English sub.) part 2/2

A side note to this report about the CIA murder of this tortured American-held POW, is the last words this man made to Human Rights Watch which were…

“Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?”

Good question, Fakhiri. I went to the Human Rights Watch website again and it is amazing how this group never sees wars of aggression as being human rights violations. There’s nothing about US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan there! Seems to simply have escaped their interest or concern! They, at best, have been like a gnat to the US government at times, but in the meantime, they usually are absolutely MIA. Fakhiri’s murder case is case in point.

Those poor banks! Those poor grocery store chains!

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Tony Logan

The banks have ‘failed their stress tests’ and now need at least $75 BILLION dollars from taxpayers! See Ten US banks fail ‘stress tests’ …Doesn’t your heart just bleed for them? And not to be outdone the grocery store chains, led by Kroger (KING STUPID), Safeway, and Albertsons are out there trying to convince the general public that they are being beat up bad by union workers, most of who make less than $15 per hour. They just can’t take it anymore! So their solution?

It looks like it might be to lock out the workers and use the government’s police to try to force these people into unemployment lines! Destroy their pension plans. Work them to death and then discard them! This all is on hold for now, but the companies may begin this assault within days?

DON’T SCAB if they do lock out the grocery workers. Support union labor and they will support you! Workers have Rights, but only if you solidly back them up with Your Solidarity instead of giving in to these crappy food grocery chains by vacantly walking past union picket lines if they are forced to go up.

Eat right! Do right! Don’t cross picket lines. Write Management a note and tell them how you feel! And tell the workers you support them, too.

Darfur, the Israeli lobby & US Democrats

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Tony Logan

What does it mean for Africa when right wing end-of-the- world-is-near evangelical Christians join forces with the Robert F. Kennedy Center For Human Rights? What does it mean for African Americans when Bush, Obama, and nearly all last year’s presidential candidates from both parties encourage the continuation of an African civil war rather than a political settlement between the parties? What does it mean when 21st century PR firms employ FaceBook, slick viral marketing and millions of dollars to create a simple, satisfying, feel-good excuse for military intervention on the African continent? –from Is There a Save Darfur Industrial Complex?

But Save Darfur has gotten into hot water with aid groups helping the refugees of the conflict.

In February it began a high-profile advertising campaign that included full-page newspaper ads, television spots and billboards calling for more aggressive action in Darfur, including the imposition of a no-flight zone over the region.

Aid groups and even some activists say banning flights could do more harm than good, because it could stop aid flights. Many aid groups fly white airplanes and helicopters that may look similar to those used by the Sudanese government, putting their workers at risk in a no-flight zone.

Sam Worthington, the president and chief executive of InterAction, a coalition of aid groups, complained to Mr. Rubenstein by e-mail that Save Darfur’s advertising was confusing the public and damaging the relief effort.

“I am deeply concerned by the inability of Save Darfur to be informed by the realities on the ground and to understand the consequences of your proposed actions,” Mr. Worthington wrote.

He noted that contrary to assertions in its initial ads, Save Darfur did not represent any of the organizations working in Darfur, and he accused it of “misstating facts.” He said its endorsement of plans that included a no-flight zone and the use of multilateral forces “could easily result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Another aid group, Action Against Hunger, said in a statement last week that a forced intervention by United Nations troops without the approval of the Sudanese government “could have disastrous consequences that risk triggering a further escalation of violence while jeopardizing the provision of vital humanitarian assistance to millions of people.”

Aid groups also complain that Save Darfur, whose budget last year was $15 million, does not spend that money on aid for the long-suffering citizens of the region.

from the New York Times June 2, 2007 Darfur Advocacy Group Undergoes a Shake-Up

‘The “Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country – the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum…

‘The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year…

from The Washington Post at http://www.overbrook.org/newsletter/06_07/pdfs/AJWS_Washington_Post.pdf

Hillary Clinton on Darfur as she calls for more Pentagon intervention and wars abroad. This is a woman that has no problem with genocide when committed by the US and/ or Israel.

Biden calls for military force in Darfur speaks for itself as he directly calls for a US military assault on Sudan See Joe Biden: Darfur as he calls for US troops to attack Sudan

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