When it rains, it pours

The conflict between Russia and Georgia -- besides killing a good number of innocent people and possibly enabling a new fraudulent "cold war", to the delight of defense contractors everywhere -- provoked a stunning amount of hypocrisy from U.S. officials. Consider Condoleeza Rice, speaking to to reporters on Monday:

"Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power," Rice told reporters en route to an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers set for Tuesday. "That's not the way to deal in the 21st century."

This from a woman who sold a war on an impoverished country on the other side of the globe on the basis that maybe -- contrary to evidence available at the time -- Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program and was preparing to maybe, just maybe, nuke an American city? Hypocrisy truly knows no bounds among those in the upper echelons of power. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald writes: 

Whatever one's views are on the justifiability of each isolated instance, it's simply a fact that the U.S. invades, bombs, occupies, and interferes in the internal affairs of other countries far more than any other country on the planet. It's not even a close competition.

Just during the time Rice has served in the Bush administration, we bombed, invaded and occupied Afghanistan; did the same to Iraq; repeatedly bombed Somalia, killing all sorts of civilians; fed bombs to Israel as they invaded and bombed Lebanon; top political officials (led by John McCain and Joe Lieberman) have repeatedly threatened, and advocated, that the same be done to a whole host of other countries, including Iran and Syria. That's to say nothing of the virtually countless interventions and bombings in the pre-Bush, "peacetime" years -- from the Balkans and Panama to Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and on and on and on.

But, as Greenwald notes, war isn't loved just by those in the White House, but by the elite media as well:

The most enduring and predominant rule of American politics is that every national politician must demonstrate their willingness, even eagerness, to start wars. On the day in 1989 that the first George Bush ordered the deadly U.S. invasion of Panama, The New York Times' R.W. Apple approvingly wrote on the front page that starting wars like that was "a Presidential initiation rite," and that "most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood to protect or advance what they construe as the national interest." Thus, proclaimed Apple, Bush's attack on Panama was an example of his "showing his steel" and "has shown him as a man capable of bold action."

Read the rest.

Kang and Kodos explain politics

If you like your humor black, this past week has been hilarious, as U.S. officials and politicians have all solemnly declared their moral outrage at Russia for violating the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation, something U.S. leaders would never -- never -- think of doing.

Then again, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad alluded to earlier this week, it's not military invasions per se that offend U.S. leaders (obviously), but invasions launched by other countries without the U.S.'s blessing -- especially ones that lead to images of scared white people showing up on CNN.

“The days of overthrowing leaders by military means in Europe — those days are gone," Khalilzad sternly declared with a straight face -- and without the help of a laugh track.

That said, since it's Friday -- and I'm fleeing D.C. to head to the beach -- I'll spare you the long-winded analysis of U.S. hypocrisy and leave you with this clip from the Simpsons, which helps explain the utterly silly and patently unserious nature of the American political system more succinctly than I ever could.

"Today, we are all Georgians"

Campaigning in my home state of Pennsylvania today, Republican presidential candidate John McCain told attendees of a rally that he had assured Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili that he had the support of all Americans:

"I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians."

Of course, whitewashed from McCain's account of the poor, defenseless Georgia besieged by the evil Ruskies is the inconvenient fact that, well, the Georgian government itself invaded the separatist, pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, but I digress.

I will say that it is darkly humorous to hear U.S. politicians -- apparently with no sense of irony -- wax eloquent about the sanctity of "international law" five years after the leaders of the both major political parties endorsed a criminal, illegal act of aggression against Iraq that has left hundreds of thousands of dead.

That said, there's no doubt that there has been plenty of crimes perpetrated by both sides in the Georgian-Russian conflict. Important from a U.S. perspective, however, is that one side -- Georgia -- has been armed with the finest in American military equipment as payback for its own participation in the occupation of Iraq.

That, of course, is why McCain claims to speak for all Americans in expressing solidarity for the corrupt thug Saakashvilli (the fact that his chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann was a lobbyist for Georgia until earlier this year doesn't hurt either), for the Georgian government, like its benefactors in the U.S. government, has no qualms about using violence to achieve its ends -- including against its own people, as evidenced in this video of Georgian police brutally suppressing an opposition rally:

(via Liberty & Power)

For more on the hypocrisy of the U.S. government's stance on the Russian-Georgian conflict, check out Chris Floyd's insightful take on recent events.

Interview with Mike Gravel

Last Friday, I spoke with former Senator Mike Gravel at an event here in Washington aimed at drawing attention to the case of Sami al-Arian. While some comments that Gravel made at the event seem to have attracted some of the wrong kind of attention, I thought I'd share the transcript of a brief interview  I had with Gravel following Friday's event at Busboys and Poets about al-Arian's case and the upcoming presidential election:

DAVIS: I was just wondering how you got involved in this case?

GRAVEL: It started at the beginning of the year, I was in New York and I met Leila [al-Arian]. I was on TV being interviewed and she was being interviewed also and I listened to the case and I couldn’t believe it. And so I got more involved, and then so I cut a couple spots… and then I got more and more involved, so now I’m absolutely outraged over the injustice. Outraged, I think you can tell.

DAVIS: I talked to Senator Leahy’s office earlier this week, and the person I was speaking with on the phone was immediately familiar with the case, but they wouldn’t say anything about what Senator Leahy was doing…

GRAVEL: So they are familiar with the case?

DAVIS: They are very familiar -- they said they’re still getting calls on it. But what do you make of the fact that they haven’t really done anything about it?

GRAVEL: Gutless. This is a great injustice. This a great, great injustice. And they’re afraid to get tagged with respect to the jewish community, AIPAC, you know. This all stems from AIPAC. This guy is just speaking out very effectively for the Palestinian cause, that’s what’s the root of this. And they’re trying to stifle that.

DAVIS: You know, coming in here you see people with Obama shirts out front and they’re selling Obama merchandise, and I’m sure a lot of people here think that if there’s a President Obama that injustices like this may not happen, or that he’ll fix them. Are you as confident as some people?

GRAVEL: No, no. There’ll be some improvement. I don’t think the Justice Department will as bad as it is right now, but don’t hold your breath for big change.

DAVIS: And just unrelated, who are you voting for?

GRAVEL: Well first off, not McCain, he’s a nutcase... It’s very difficult, very difficult.

DAVIS: What do you make of Bob Barr? I know you were running for the Libertarian nomination…

GRAVEL: Don’t ask me about that (laughing).

Gravel off to Gitmo?

Self-proclaimed terrorism expert Steve Emerson -- a well noted plagiarist, fear monger, and Islamophobe -- is fulfilling his latest desperate attempt for media attention by claiming that former Senator Mike Gravel advocated "stalking" Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg at a recent event that I covered for Inter Press Service.

Here is what Gravel said at the event -- which was aimed at raising awareness of the case of imprisoned Palestinian activist Sami al-Arian -- that has so angered Emerson, as dutifully noted by Fox News:

“Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is, picket him all the time,” Gravel said, in an audio tape obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism and provided to FOX News.

“Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time.”

---------

“How do you deal with this kind of an injustice? I wouldn’t protest. I don’t believe in protesting. I think it demonstrates the failure of representative government. My answer to that problem is, I want to empower you as a lawmaker. … Don’t rely on your elected officials,” the former senator said.

Oh no! An elderly former lawmaker is urging people to protest the very government officials whose salaries they pay. And he's not all that sold on representative democracy -- get this man to the loony bin!

As I heard it, Gravel was calling people to picket a public official who -- albeit in his characteristically blunt manner. It also happened to be not so great advice, and not something I'd recommend people follow if they're really concerned about al-Arian's case (at least stick to picketing at the guy's workplace). That said, laughable is the notion that a 78 year old former senator would somehow be able to convince a bunch of generally well dressed middle-aged activists and writers such as Naomi Klein, assembled at a restaurant/bookshop in an increasingly yuppified part of Washington, to rise up and -- what? Yell mean things at a federal prosecutor?

Emerson, as usual, sees a threat:

“The question is whether he crossed the line in saying ‘find out where his kids go to school,’” said counter-terrorism expert Steve Emerson. “That to my mind and to government officials including those in the FBI crosses the line into a direct veiled threat."

As for inciting violence -- isn't that what Emerson's career has been all about? This, after all, is a man who has never found a crime he couldn't somehow blame on "radical Islamists" -- including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings.

But the next quote is the real whopper:

[Emerson] said the evidence at the Al-Arian trial “overwhelming showed and incontrovertibly demonstrated that he was head of the Islamic Jihad network in the United States.”

Not to be pedantic, but the definition I get for "incontrovertible" is "not open to question -- indisputable", and well, a Florida jury plainly disagreed with Emerson's assesment. In fact, even after former attorney general John Ashcroft declared that al-Arian was one of the most evil, dangerous terrorists living among us -- just over a month before the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq -- a Florida jury in 2005 failed to convict to convict the outspoken Palestinian activist of a single crime, acquitting him of eight charges and deadlocking on another nine (with 9 to 10 jurors voting to acquit on every charge).

But I suspect that Emerson probably agrees with what one of the jurors who did not vote to acquit on all charges told Meg Laughlin of the St. Petersburg Times:

"Like another person on the jury, I was convinced Mr. Al-Arian was still working with the [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] after it was illegal. He was a very smart man and knew how not to be obvious. For me, the absence of evidence didn't mean there was no evidence."

But hey, who can blame Emerson for always trying to scare people? After all, professional fear merchants like him have made a killing by finding terror under every pillow, especially since 9/11. And unfortunately, tabloid outlets like Fox News and CNN will always be eager to bring people like him on TV to discuss how your dark-skinned neighbor just may be trying to kill you.

Just remember: be afraid!

"When You Have To Leave America To Be Free"

On Friday, I attended an event here in Washington aimed at raising awareness of the case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist and former college professor who the Bush administration has accused of raising funds for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Attending the event was Al-Arian's wife and children, as well as former Senator Mike Gravel.

Today, Inter Press Service published my account of the event and the Bush administration's continued imprisonment of Al-Arian. Here's an excerpt:

WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (IPS) - Nearly three years after the U.S. government failed to convict Palestinian activist and former college professor Sami Al-Arian of any charges in one of the most high-profile terrorism trials following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he continues to be held in federal prison -- where, if convicted in an upcoming trial on criminal contempt charges, he faces the prospect of remaining for decades.

Al-Arian has been imprisoned since Feb. 20, 2003, after then-attorney general John Ashcroft declared in a press conference that he and four others were in league with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, "one of the most violent terrorist organisations in the world."

According to the U.S. government, Al-Arian operated several front groups for the Damascus-based terrorist group during the 1990s, raising money to finance suicide bombings that killed more than 100 Israelis. At his trial, prosecutors played graphic videos of suicide bombings and invited Israeli citizens to testify about their experiences surviving terrorist attacks -- attacks the government suggested were the end result of Al-Arian’s actions.

Prosecutors also showed jurors a 1991 video of a rally where Al-Arian can be seen shouting, "death to Israel and victory to Islam" in Arabic. Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida, maintains that he has never condoned violence against civilians, but that he does support the right to resist a "brutal military occupation" of Palestinian lands.

Indeed, even the prosecution conceded that -- after more than 10 years of tapping the phone conversations of Al-Arian and his family -- there was no evidence directly tying him to a single terrorist attack. As a result, in 2005 a Florida jury acquitted Al-Arian of eight charges and remained deadlocked on another nine, with two-thirds of the jury voting for acquittal on all charges.

Yet despite the lack of a single conviction, Al-Arian remains in prison -- where supporters say he has often been held in solitary confinement and denied access to his family and legal counsel -- for refusing to testify in a trial against a northern Virginia Islamic think tank.

"We don’t even know one day where he’ll be the next, and we don’t know how we’ll be able to visit him," said Al-Arian’s son, Abdullah, at a recent event here in Washington aimed at raising awareness of the case. "We just want this ordeal to be over."

Read the rest here. I'll post the transcript of my interview with Gravel later this week.

Give that man a medal!

The Associated Press reports:

LIMA, OH (AP) -- A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.

The all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty on misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault. He had faced up to eight months in jail if convicted of both counts.

Chavalia shot and killed Tarika Wilson and injured her year-old son who she was holding while SWAT officers stormed her house in January looking for her boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer.

-------

Prosecutors said Chavalia, walking up a stairway in the house, recklessly fired into a bedroom where Wilson was with her six children. Her son, Sincere Wilson, was hit in the shoulder and hand. One of the boy's fingers was later amputated.

He fired three times at her even though he could not clearly see her or whether she had a weapon, said Prosecutor Jeffrey Strausbaugh.

-------

Defense attorney Bill Kluge told jurors Monday that Chavalia should not be judged on what wasn't known until after shooting, including the fact that Wilson did not have a gun or pose a threat.

"It's Monday morning quarterbacking," he told jurors. "Put yourself in Joe's shoes that night."

The jury's decision, he said in closing statements, will affect officers across Ohio.

"What kind of world would it be if we didn't have police officers," Kluge said. "Joe was doing his duty."

Right. Pointing out that a woman who posed no threat was senselessly murdered is "Monday morning quarterbacking." I can't help but think of the line from Monty Python's Holy Grail, after John Cleese's character has killed dozens of people for no apparent reason: "let's not argue and bicker over who killed who..."

As for what would a world without police officers like Joe Chavalia would be like? I'm not sure -- but at least a 26 year old mother would be alive to see it.

How the system works

This week's installment of "how having a shiny badge elevates you above the mere peons who pay your salary" is brought to you courtesy of the Minneapolis police department:

A Minneapolis family is outraged that members of the SWAT team that mistakenly raided their house and fired upon them last December have been awarded medals for their bravery under fire.

Vang Khang and his family had the fright of a lifetime when they believed their home was being invaded by burglars, or worse. It was actually a SWAT team, conducting a high-risk search warrant -- on the wrong house.

Acting on tips from a gang informant, police forced their way into the North Minneapolis home in the early morning of December 16 and traded fire with a terrified Khang, police said.
----

On Monday, Police chief Tim Dolan awarded all eight SWAT team members medals for "bravery in action under fire," police spokesman Sgt. Jesse Garcia told ABCNews.com.

Based on information given from the unnamed former gang member, police had successfully raided three other houses earlier that evening, resulting in multiple arrests of gang members and the discovery of illegal drugs and weapons, Garcia said.

According to Garcia, the informant claimed to have lived in the final residence, Khang's home, with many high-level gang members.

"We had the right house and right address -- according to what the informant told us -- but it's unclear why she gave that address, since the family had no ties whatsoever to the gang," Garcia explained.

According to Heffelfinger, the Laotian family has owned and lived in the house for four years and had no knowledge of the female police informant. "Ironically, the house is located across the street from a police precinct," Heffelfinger said, "so, if [the SWAT team] had simply asked the precinct, they would have learned the family was not gang bangers."

"They were acting in good faith on a warrant that was properly drawn up, based off of what appeared to be good information," Garcia said. "Their bravery under fire should not be negated [because of the misinformation]."

Terrorize an innocent family? Here's a medal! Call it the U.S. government's way of covering up incompetence by simply calling it valor.

Case in point: President Bush awarding former CIA director George Tenet a "Presidential Medal of Freedom" for his part in selling an illegal war of aggression to the American public.

At least in the case of the Minnesota family, no one died as a result of the police's actions. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Bush or Tenet.

Militarism you can believe in

President George W. Bush, speaking in Germany this week, defended continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, stating:

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Iraq, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Iraq. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that . . . [the mission] is a success. For the people of Iraq, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Iraqi people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the [insurgency] and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

Bush also criticized "the all too common" belief in Europe that the United States is anything but an unmitigated force for good in the world:

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

Whoops. If you've been paying close enough attention, you might realize that both quotes were not from the much reviled "Decider", but rather the messianic Barack Obama, the Democratic savior of the United States -- nay, the world. As Obama makes clear, American forces in Germany "still help to defend the security" of Europe (really?), and the United States sacrifices ever so much to uplift the world's downtrodden. Disagree? Why, you're just like those right-wing francophobes on talk radio, sayeth the would-be lecturer-in-chief.

[Note: in the first excerpt above, one must substitute "Afghanistan" (The Good War) for "Iraq" (The Bad War), which, clearly, makes everything sound so much more logical and, frankly, courageous.]

Naturally, Obama's call for a troop escalation in order to fight another failing Middle East war -- since it's coming from a Democrat -- is likely to be greeted with hosannas by his partisan followers, where the "anti-war" candidate's every utterance is met with faints and praise (not be confused with feint praise, as you will find here). Never mind the fact that U.S. casualties in Afghanistan are outpacing those in Iraq this year, and that civilian deaths in Afghanistan are up 62% -- at this point, it has become liberal conventional wisdom that Iraq was merely a "diversion" from the right and just killing of Afghan newlyweds.

But, as I'm fond of saying whenever a politician reveals that they are just that -- a politician -- this should come as no surprise. After all, the anti-war Obama has explicity endorsed expanding the military by 100,000 men and women. And as Madeleine Albright -- just one of many near-dead war criminals advising the would-be emperor -- once said to Colin Powell, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?”

Obama has always been a follower unwilling to challenge conventional wisdom. Since entering Congress he repeatedly voted to fund the war he claimed to oppose (when he was safely outside of Congress representing a liberal district in Chicago), and like nearly every other member of the world's greatest deliberative body, he endorsed Israel's inhumane carpet bombing of Lebanon in 2006. Even Obama's much-ballyhooed calls for talks with Iran reflect the general consensus of the Washington establishment -- as does his repeated statement that "no options are off the table" when dealing with that country.

And as McClatchy Newspapers notes, Obama has adopted an even "more militaristic tone" since he locked up the Democratic nomination. More militaristic -- from a man who during the primary raised the idea of unilaterally attacking the tribal regions in Pakistan, and ruled out the possibility of pledging to remove all troops from Iraq by the end of his first term. So please don't feign surprise when the Great Democratic Hope orders some impoverished country to be bombed during his first year in office just to show that he has no qualms about flexing America's military muscle (and killing a few innocents here and there), New Yorker cover be damned.

But at least under a President Obama wars will be fought for humanitarian reasons:

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

If by "we" Obama means the U.S. government -- and if Iraq has taught "us" anything -- the answer should be an unequivocal "no".

Groups like Amnesty International and other non-governmental human rights organizations do a much better job at raising awareness of victims of state oppression -- with much more credibility than the U.S. State Department -- all, somehow, without having to resort to murder (or "tactical air strikes"). And there exists countless groups dedicated to helping suffering people the world over that find no need to employ the types of brutal trade embargoes loved by all the good humanitarians in Congress.

In contrast, whenever the U.S. government discusses "human rights", it usually means some poor people in a far off land better start running for the bomb shelters.

"9/11 truthers": a persecuted minority?

In response to my post about this past weekend's Ron Paul rally in DC, commenter David Stratton accuses me of engaging in the same sort of bigotry toward so-called "9/11 truthers" -- those who believe the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were an "inside job" perpetrated by the U.S. government -- that I criticized when directed toward illegal immigrants:

Kurt Vonnegut might say "so it goes...", but I doubt he would use words like "lunacy" "kookery" and the like to denounce people without exploring their side of the issue whatsoever. If you want to sit and cast stones at the guy who was being a bigot and using hateful language towards Mexican illegals, perhaps you ought not to build yourself a glass house in which to live by turning right around and casting your *own* hateful propaganda at your *own* group of hated persons.

I'm actually glad this came up, because I am typically hesitant to denounce anyone as a "kook" or a "lunatic". If you check out my posts over the years, you'll find a good deal of them are spent defending people who have been denounced by all Right Thinking people as crazed lunatics (see Jeremiah Wright). As for 9/11 truthers? I referred to them in my last post as kooky lunatics because, in my experience, the vast majority are kooky lunatics.

I have watched the exceedingly silly Loose Change -- God's word to truthers, set to a hip-hop soundtrack -- and witnessed the tinfoil hat-wearing creators make fools of themselves on national television. Consider this exchange, where Loose Change creator Dylan Avery attempts to cite some former Underwriters Laboratories employee to back his assertion that there was just no way for the steel in the World Trade Center to collapse due to burning jet fuel:

DYLAN AVERY: Well, real quick, I just want to jump in and say, Kevin Ryan has been open about his statement. He has always been public about the fact that he worked for the—I don’t remember the exact name, but it was a subdivision of Underwriters Laboratories, which did water testing. But it was the fact that he got the higher-up from—he got the word from his higher-ups that they actually had certified the steel and, I mean, his science still adds up.

DAVID DUNBAR: In fact, Underwriter Laboratories does not certify structural steel.

DYLAN AVERY: Oh, okay.

It pretty much goes on like that from there. Now, I'm not looking to conduct an exhaustive debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories (others with much more will power than me have already done that), but let me throw one question out there for any conspiracists looking to bombard my comments with "gatekeeper!": if the Bush administration was so damn good at pulling off a massive "inside job" on 9/11 in order to justify the war in Iraq, then how come they couldn't even plant a few WMDs? As Alexander Cockburn suggested in a 2006 debunking of 9/11 conspiracies, wouldn't planting a few boxes saying "Weaponized Anthrax, Destination: Middle America" be much easier to pull off than a controlled demolition of WTC 7?

But I digress.

Whether 9/11 conspiracies are true or not (they're not), they serve as a massive distraction from much more worthy causes. In fact, if one were a government agent bent on discrediting anti-establishment movements, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a better marginalizing tool than the truthers (how's that for a conspiracy?). At nearly every anti-war rally I've been to there have been people holding "9/11 was an inside job" signs; I saw the same the same thing when I covered an ACLU-sponsored rally last year in support of habeas corpus (yes, in these here United States people have to protest for rights King John recognized in the 13th century).

And what have 9/11 truthers gained? Why, they've done their damndest to discredit a whole bunch of movements that have much, much more popular support then their -- yes -- kooky theories. Hell, they even did their best to ensure that Ron Paul's chances of securing the Republican presidential nomination went from "slim" to "non-existent" by trying to make his campaign not about opposition to militarism and the burgeoning police state, but about WTC 7 (which, naturally, the hacks at Fox News were more than willing to exploit).

So again I ask, what have 9/11 truthers done for America lately -- convinced a few naive high schoolers to download Loose Change?

That said, here's my message to David Stratton and any other truthers lurking out there: thanks for nothing.

Ron Paul Rally in DC

Yesterday I headed down to the U.S. Capitol to check out a rally for former presidential candidate and current Texas Republican congressman, Ron Paul. Having interviewed Mr. Paul several times during the course of his campaign, I was interested in checking out just what kind of crowd he could attract on a 90-degree July day in Washington.

In many ways, the crowd seemed a lot like the recent antiwar rallies I have attended -- largely consisting of "average" folks, with a visible 10 percent of the crowd consisting of what can only fairly be described as the "lunatic fringe" (more on that later). Otherwise, everyone from hippie-types shouting "free the weed" to right-wing Christians concerned about a "North American Union" were in attendance (in addition to a good deal of regular-looking, "normal" folks), highlighting the politically transcendent appeal of Paul's radical anti-war, anti-corporatist message.

Particularly surprising to me was the speech by Naomi Wolf, a prominent feminist and one-time adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, on the 10 signs that a country is drifting toward fascism (video shot by yours truly below):

A few years ago I would have expected Wolf to be just another Democratic partisan willing to write-off Ron Paul as a kooky "right-wing extremist." But many of Paul's positions on the most pressing issues of the day -- opposition to empire, torture, and the national security state -- are what would usually be characterized by the establishment media as "far left", and appeal to many people who are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party's embrace of corporatism and illegal, aggressive warfare.

As Wolf noted in her speech, for far too long those who agree with Paul's stances on those issues would allow themselves to be divided by a range of red herring wedge issues that are largely meaningless when a country is engaged in illegal foreign occupations and indefinitely detaining suspected "terrorists". When it comes down to it, those who agree on the immorality of preemptive war, warrantless spying, and torture should not be divided by their differing views on the estate tax -- priorities, people.

Yet for decades both the Democratic and Republican parties have been busy scaring their respective bases with the horrifying prospect of the other party taking power, obfuscating the fact that, for all practical purposes, there is no real disagreement between the parties on the worthiness of an imperialistic foreign policy.

That said, there were several speakers at the rally who, if the goal is to appeal to as broad an audience as possible by focusing on a message of peace and freedom, were . . . questionable choices, to put it mildly. In fact, one man who followed Wolf -- a retired Arizona police officer by the name of Jack McLamb -- rambled on with crackpot conspiracies about the "New World Order" so ridiculous it was if they were intentionally designed to marginalize the entire event.

In addition to your garden-variety "9/11 truth" kookery (cheered on by a not insignificant Alex Jones-worshipping segment of the crowd), McLamb went off about how government agents are,  apparently, affixing color-coded stickers to the mailboxes of would-be troublemakers. The purpose? Well, you see, a red sticker on your mailbox signals to "foreign troops" that one should be taken out to a field and shot. A blue sticker, in contrast, merely means that these undefined foreign soldiers should take you to a Halliburton-constructed concentration camp.

As one Ron Paul supporter standing next to me astutely observed, "so how does that work with apartment complexes?"

With such a range of fairly respected speakers -- Wolf, former CIA agent Michael Scheuer, talk show host Charles Goyette -- it boggles the mind as to why rally organizers would allow someone suffering from bizarre paranoid delusions to address the crowd.  If supporters of Ron Paul are looking to shake off the "fringe" label, inviting a guy who makes the "9/11 was an inside job" crowd uncomfortable doesn't appear to me to be the most effective strategy. 

In fact, due to the quality of some of the speakers -- another man who later took the stage went beyond mere "secure the borders" rhetoric to a full-on, xenophobic rant about how there were too many "illegals" committing crimes in the U.S. (undocumented workers actually commit less crime, but hey, they tend to have darker complexions so what do the facts matter?) and that, h'yuck, we ain't learnin' no Spanish -- I ended up leaving before Ron Paul actually spoke. 

Judging by the near-total lack of applause the speaker received, I'm guessing I wasn't the only one perplexed as to why a rally in favor of a guy who made opposition to war and the police state the focus of his campaign (and who, even with his anti-illegal immigration rhetoric, has said he finds the concept of a border fence "rather offensive" and that "I think we could be much more generous with our immigration") would allow a speaker to engage in such rank bigotry and fear-mongering about "illegals".

Such is the downside to creating a political coalition that includes everyone from Green Party supporters to the close-the-borders crowd. On the one hand, Ron Paul's message, by transcending the obsolete constraints of "left" and "right", is able to attract a large, diverse following that shows the potential mass appeal of a simple "bring the troops home and follow the Constitution" message. However, that larger following often brings a whole range of crazies with their own pet issues who are not so much concerned with ending the American empire as they are with demanding that people buy into the lunacy that WTC 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition, god damn it (as I witnessed one man try to convince a group of perplexed Chinese tourists who were walking by).

As the late Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes...

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(Also see The American Conservative's Kelley Vlahos and Daniel McCarthy for their takes on the rally.)

And since this is a post about Ron Paul, what better time then to hawk one of my interviews with him? This one, from January 2007, I believe was the first interview with Paul about a potentially launching a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination:

The covert war on Iran

In my last post regarding allegations of U.S. support for the anti-Iranian terrorist group, Jundullah, I noted that since the likes of Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) were unable to -- or more likely, unwilling to -- investigate the charges, it would probably be best to rely on The New Yorker's Sy Hersh for information on what's really going on. As it would happen, Hersh has a new article out today that finds:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations.

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The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace—it’s been coöpted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”

When I asked Senator Rockefeller about these allegations last year, he responded that, gosh darn it, he just couldn't do anything about it. Of course, if Hersh's reporting is right, then Rockefeller has not only failed to adequately exercise his oversight responsibilities -- you know, basic things like actually issuing a subpoena over credible allegations of U.S.-backed terrorism -- but has been actively complicit in the ongoing covert war on Iran.

But should anyone be surprised? If the United States or Israel attacks Iran, it will be because there is broad, bipartisan support in Washington for such an attack. While Democratic partisans can go ahead and try to convince themselves that an attack on Iran will be the fault of all those dastardly neocons in the White House, it's increasingly obvious that the Democratic Party -- which took control of Congress based on broad antiwar sentiment in 2006 -- fully embraces the same imperial foreign policy objectives of the Bush administration. It was, after all, Democrat Harry Truman who dropped two nukes on Japan, fought a war in Korea without congressional approval, and ushered in the Cold War (and the accompanying military-industrial complex), so it's not as if Republicans have a monopoly on militarism and the willingness to commit war crimes.

A wide number of Democrats are also backing a resolution that calls for a de facto war on Iran -- a complete naval embargo and prohibition on the movement of Iranian officials -- for its "pursuit of nuclear weapons", despite the fact that the IAEA and all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have come to the conclusion that Iran is, in fact, not pursuing nuclear weapons. But in Washington, people don't let little things like the "facts" get in the way of  America's implacable demand for foreign enemies.

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For those interested, Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio fame aired a portion of my exchange with Senator Rockefeller during a recent interview of former CIA intelligence analyst Melvin Goodman. Go here to listen -- the discussion of Rockefeller begins around the 16:30 mark.

Straight talk from Down Under

On Monday, I attended a small briefing for the press held at the Washington office of the United Steelworkers Union to discuss organized labor's view of policies to address climate change. At the briefing was Paul Howes, head of the Australian Worker's Union, who was in the country to lobby for the U.S. government to take the lead on reaching an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

When I asked Howes why he felt only the United States had the influence to push for a global climate deal, he responded in a fashion that I'm sure would offend all Good, Respectable critics of the Iraq war (those who initially supported the invasion but now say it was "mismanaged" -- in other words, the war critics you see on television):

When the United States shows leadership the rest of the world will follow . . . I mean, look, half the world got involved in an illegal, immoral war just simply because a request was put out – this is what happens.

Earlier in the briefing, Howes also described the global scope of U.S. power in a way that serves as a useful reminder that Washington, DC, is not merely the capital of the United States, but the capital of a world empire:

The ever-looming presence of the United States is felt throughout every corner of the world, and on other issues the U .S. government is never afraid to use whatever force necessary to get its agenda through on issues that it sees of being importance to it.

I should also note that at 26, Howes is just a few years older than me yet is married, has two children, and heads a 135,000 member union. In contrast, I have a blog read primarily by people mistakenly arriving here after Googling for celebrity upskirt pics (there -- I just doubled my traffic!).

That certainly puts things in perspective...

Kill your television

The New York Times reports:

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”

If you haven't already done so, disconnect your cable or satellite feed and save yourself from exposure to the criminally asinine celebrity gossip coverage that passes for television "news". Granted, you may not be as up to date on Britney Spears' most recent meltdown or Jessica Simpson's latest hookup as your friends, but you just might gain back your sanity.

As CBS correspondent Lara Logan is quoted as saying in the NYT article: “If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts.”

Instead of absorbing corporate media disinformation, support actual journalism -- links are conveniently provided to your right.

You have nothing to lose but your chains.

U.S. support for Jundullah in the news

The Washington Post reports (via Scott Horton):

TEHRAN, June 20 -- An armed Sunni group said Friday that it had executed two Iranian policemen, and it threatened to kill 14 others abducted a week ago in an area near the border with Pakistan.

Iranian authorities did not immediately react to a videotape purporting to show the killings, part of which was aired Friday by the al-Arabiya satellite channel, based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Iran has accused the United States of assisting the group, known as Jundallah, or God's Brigade.

In 2007, ABC News quoted U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that Jundallah members have been "encouraged and advised" by American officials since 2005. A CIA spokesman told ABC that the United States provides no funding to Jundallah.

Alleged U.S. support for Jundullah is something that I noted in April 2007, when the story from ABC News supporting charges that the Bush administration was backing anti-Iranian terrorist groups was met with a collective yawn by the rest of the mainstream media. As I wrote at the time:

Outside of ABC News, it’s a struggle to find any discussion of U.S. support for anti-Iranian extremist groups in the major media outlets. While the New York Times was quick to speak about the Imus affair in an April 11th editorial, there has been not so much as a mention of the Jundullah story in their paper, much less a critical look at how the story undermines the White House’s moral authority to criticize Iran for its supposed "meddling" in Iraq. The same goes for the Washington Post, where a search for "Jundullah" reveals only two wire articles on the subject. One finds no editorials questioning the policy, no reaction from lawmakers, no introspective takes on the morality of such a policy – one finds next to nothing.

I was led to write an article on alleged U.S. support for Jundullah after engaging in a revealing interview with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) that Jonathan Schwarz described as "an amazing statement of congressional impotence". Here's an excerpt of the interview, which took place as Rockefeller was walking out of the Senate chamber (click here to listen to an mp3 of the exchange):

DAVIS: I wonder if you've heard some of these news reports that the Bush administration is backing extremist groups in Pakistan to launch attacks against Iran? Are you familiar with those news reports?

ROCKEFELLER: I've seen no intelligence that would verify that.

DAVIS: Reports quote administration officials as saying this is going on and it's being done in a way to avoid oversight of the Intelligence Committee. Is there any way—

ROCKEFELLER: They'll go to any lengths to do that, as we've seen in the last two days [during hearings on FISA].

DAVIS: Is there anything you could do in your position as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee to find answers about this, if it is in fact going on?

ROCKEFELLER: Don't you understand the way Intelligence works? Do you think that because I'm Chairman of the Intelligence Committee that I just say I want it, and they give it to me? They control it. All of it. All of it. All the time. I only get, and my committee only gets, what they want to give me.

DAVIS: Is there any way someone, maybe not you, they can somehow press the administration to find something—if they're doing something that may be illegal—

ROCKEFELLER: I don't know that. I don't know that. I deal with Intelligence. That's it. They tend to avoid us.

DAVIS: Well, what do you think about these allegations?

ROCKEFELLER: I'm not—I don't comment on allegations. I can't. I can't afford to.

If anyone believes that Democrats in Congress are going to investigate credible allegations that the U.S. is supporting terrorism, think again. If one of the most powerful -- and one of the richest -- senators is too timid to so much as issue a subpoena on the topic, then it's probably best to rely on the likes of Seymour Hersh for evidence of what's really going on.

The week in review

On Friday, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives capitulated to White House demands and passed a bill that essentially legalizes -- retroactively -- the Bush administration's covert spying program on Americans (see Salon's Glenn Greenwald on the many ways in which the bill violates the rule of law. I wrote about Bush's illegal "warrantless wiretapping" back in 2006.)

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Kit Bond displayed the modern GOP's view of the appropriate relationship between a citizen and the State in explaining why telecommunications companies that colluded with the illegal spying program were in the right:

"I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do."

Also this week, the House Democratic leadership brought to the floor a $162 billion bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that -- surprise! -- contained not even the weakest language regarding a timeline for withdrawal (not even the non-binding "targets" they initially included in 2007's war supplemental).

Here is Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who in a stunning act of political courage voted against the war funding bill she chose to bring to the floor (fully aware that it would pass and continue the Iraq occupation well into the next administration), explaining why opponents of aggressive warfare should not believe their own eyes:

"I don't consider it a failure," Pelosi told reporters Thursday. "We never sent them a bill that did not have deadlines, conditions and the rest." She blamed Republicans in the Senate. "They are complicit with the president to make sure he never has to get a bill on his desk with a timeline, because the American people want a timeline," she said.

Just a small note of clarification: in the bolded section above, Pelosi is talking about Republicans who are complicit in funding an illegal war of aggression -- not Democrats like herself. Hope that helps.

On the campaign trail: Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama released a list of his foreign policy advisors that consists almost entirely of near-dead warmongers and Clinton-era imperialists. Of course, most people won't pay attention to these types of things, but Obama's point is merely to signal to the ruling elites that he has no plans to threaten the status quo in any way.

More and more, Obama's lukewarm opposition to the Iraq war (he has voted to fund it while in the Senate and has no plans to withdraw all U.S. troops before 2013) is looking as if it were a fluke based not on any principled opposition to empire or aggressive warfare, but solely on consideration of U.S. strategic interests; that is, I think it's fair to say Obama would have supported invading Iraq had he been convinced the United States could have done so under the auspices of the United Nations and with more international allies -- murder being more respectable if you bring more friends along, of course.

If one needs any further proof of Obama's establishment-bonafides, consider the fact that one of his chief foreign policy advisers, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, was primarily responsible for perpetuating a low-grade war on Iraq, in the form of economic sanctions and continual aerial bombing, that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. and engendered much of the hatred toward the United States that is prevalent in the Middle East today.

Albright, it should be remembered, also dismissed the deaths of Iraqi's as a price that was "worth it", despite the fact that the sanctions neither resulted in Saddam Hussein's overthrow nor prevented a war. And as the Institute for Public Accuracy recounts in an overview of Obama's newly minted group of advisers:

When Lesley Stahl asked "We have heard that a half million children have died [in Iraq from the sanctions]. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." (CBS News, May 12, 1996).

Finally, Obama's audacious list of establishment foreign policy advisers leads the The American Conservative's Kelley Vlahos to write:

'“Anti-war” candidate Barack Obama came out with a list of national security advisors mostly resembling the moldy contents of a closet in Georgetown. At this rate, the potentially painful lessons of Iraq will have been anesthetized by Election Day, moving artfully into another foreign policy chapter and potentially leaving another festering human disaster behind.'

George Orwell on Power

One of the subjects I come back to again and again on this blog is the doctrine of "American exceptionalism"; the idea that the United States -- and only the United States -- can preemptively invade any country on Earth in the name of fighting terrorism, promoting democracy, or securing "national interests". This perverse view, held by the vast majority of lawmakers in both major political parties, can more appropriately be described as the barbaric philosophy of "might makes right", but can more often be found cloaked in the rhetoric of "freedom" and "liberation" by good, respectable men and women at institutions such as the Brookings Institute and the New York Times.

It should come as no surprise that this almost religious belief in the goodness of American military power is merely a rehashing of age-old rationalizations for militarism and empire, but I was nonetheless surprised to find that George Orwell not only nailed down this prevailing imperial mindset in 1939, but that he did so in a review of the book by Bertrand Russell that I just mentioned the other day.

An excerpt:

If there are certain pages of Mr. Bertrand Russell's book, Power, which seem rather empty, that is merely to say that we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere. Probably that has always been the case. Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truism as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger, and that in effect is what Mr. Russell is saying, have turned into heresies which is it actually becoming dangerous to utter.

As a senior in high school in late 2001, I remember wearing a shirt to school that pointed out, without further comment, that more civilians had died from the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan than had died in the 9/11 attacks. My purpose was not to diminish the tragedy of 9/11, but merely to note that the pain and anguish most Americans felt from those terrorist attacks was also being felt by Afghan mothers who may have lost a husband or child (or family) from a U.S. bomb dropped by a "good" American soldier in the name of a "good" cause.

As a result of wearing the shirt, I remember one girl at my school, who I had never talked to before, coming up to me and declaring, "you're not an American for wearing that shirt" -- the idea being that caring for the dead of non-Americans was, well, patently un-American. Now, that wasn't the most popular response by any means ("oh well" was), but I raise it because the incident made me truly aware of the degree to which militarism had become prevalent in the United States, even among typically non-political high schoolers. That became even more evident to me when a friend, who but two years earlier had joined me in denouncing the Clinton administration's aerial bombardment of Serbia (yes, I was one of those outspoken do-gooders, or at least I tried to be), now felt it necessary to heap vitriol on the French for their opposition to the Iraq war. So it goes.

One would hope that outlook has changed in the years since 9/11 , but it seems more likely that those considered "anti-war" now -- especially so-called "anti-war" politicians -- are merely reacting to the results of the Iraq invasion and occupation rather than having come to any epiphany about the nature of the U.S. war machine and the justness of maintaining a world empire. I'll be convinced otherwise when the anti-war movement (I use the term loosely) denounces President Obama for keeping tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for "peacekeeping" and for bombing Sudan to "liberate" Darfur -- but I'm not holding my breath.

(Thanks to Tom Stanley at the Bertrand Russell Society Library for sending me the Orwell review.)

Bertrand Russell on politics and power

A few weeks ago I was browsing the selection at the local library when I picked up a little book called Power by philosopher and noted anti-imperialist, Bertrand Russell. Though written in 1938, much of what Russell wrote remains timely today. Of particular note are his observations on the grandiose illusions of those who rule us, who in a just world would be considered just as insane as a crazy man on a street corner warning of the end of the world:

Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one main will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach. The success of insanity, in literature, in philosophy, and in politics, is one of the peculiarities of our age. And the successful form of insanity proceeds almost entirely from the impulses towards power.

Russell also has some sage advice for those who have been seduced by a certain politician's message of "hope" and "change":

[E]loquence is inversely proportional to solid reason. To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

I guess this explains U.S. elections...

H.L. Mencken once remarked that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. That statement might be considered a bit harsh, but a press release I received in my inbox the other day has me thinking that maybe Mencken wasn't harsh enough.

As more people have become concerned about the potential negative impacts of climate change, interest in things such as hybrid cars and energy efficiency has grown accordingly. However, if a set of efficiency tips I received from the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers is any indication, getting the majority of Americans to use energy more efficiently in their daily lives may be an insurmountable task.

The Association's press release begins by noting that "Replacing an eight year old refrigerator, dishwasher and clothes washer with new appliances of average efficiency will save consumers about $95.00 per year in energy bills." Fair enough. But then, perhaps with Mencken's quote in mind, the release notes:

If you are replacing your refrigerator, do not use the old refrigerator as a second refrigerator. This will not yield energy savings.

Lord. Have. Mercy. If people really need to be told that running two refrigerators will use more energy than running just one, then you might as well say good bye to the polar bear now and stock up on that beach front property in Ohio while prices are still reasonable.

Dogs more valued than Iraqis

The Associated Press reports today:

The Marine Corps said Wednesday it was expelling one Marine and disciplining another for their roles in a video showing a Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq.

The 17-second video posted on YouTube drew sharp condemnation from animal rights groups when it came to light in March.

The clip shows two Marines joking before one hurls the puppy into a rocky gully. A yelping sound is heard as it flips through the air.

Now, contrast :

LOS ANGELES, June 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. Marine officer was acquitted by a military jury on Wednesday on charges he tried to cover up the shooting deaths of two dozen unarmed Iraqi men, women and children at Haditha in 2005.

In the first court-martial verdict from the high-profile case, Lt. Andrew Grayson was cleared at Camp Pendleton, California, after a five-day trial and less than half a day of deliberations by the jury.

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Iraqi witnesses said angry Marines massacred unarmed civilians after a popular comrade, Lance Cpl. Miguel "TJ" Terrazas, was killed by a roadside bomb.

Defense attorneys said the civilians were killed during a pitched battle with insurgents in and around Haditha that followed the death of Terrazas.

Of the eight Marines originally charged by military authorities in December 2006, five have seen their cases dropped.

Good thing that puppy didn't get labeled a "suspected insurgent", otherwise it could have been slaughtered with impunity -- you know, like Iraqi men, women, and children.