Dave Chandler's Earthside.com

Thank Dimocrats for 21st Century McCarthyism

Earthside Comments: That the Dimocrats are fully engaged with the Bush method of fearmongering as political tool is fully evidenced by the article, analysis, links and information below. We are just a Senate vote away from what amounts to the formation of the 21st century's Un-American Activities Committee -- 'The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act' -- introduced by a Dimocrat and supported by almost every single Dimocrat in the U.S. House. Of course, instead of communism as the bugaboo, the menace is 'terrorism'.

As Senator Joe McCarthy would say if he were serving today: "Are you now or have you ever been a progressive? A Muslim? A non-Christian? A vegetarian? A peace activist?"

But, that's not all. In the last Congress all the Dimocrats and radical Republicans decided that if you use the power of persuasion to promote vegetarianism at any perceived cost to a meat producer ... then you could be a terrorist. That is the law, right now under the 'Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act'.

This puts the Naomi Klein article that we begin with in a very serious light ... yes, "you shouldn't be sure you'll never end up in a damp, tiny cell in Guantanamo Bay."

And you can thank the elite governing class: Bush/Cheney, radical Republicans AND Dimocrats.

Link: Klein: In War on Terror, Are You Next? | Washington Square News (New York)/CommonDreams.org

You shouldn’t be sure you’ll never end up in a damp, tiny cell in Guantanamo Bay, said best-selling author Naomi Klein to the NYU students and faculty gathered last night in Hemmerdinger Hall.

“We think we don’t fit the profile,” she said. “If we feel safe, we are banking on the racism of our government.”

Klein, author of current New York Times bestseller “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” visited the Silver Center last night to participate in the panel “Torture and Democracy,” along with Lisa Hajjar, chair of the law and society program at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of “Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza.”

“We’re here to talk about the relationship between torture and democracy,” Klein said. “The thesis of the book is that the central claim of our time that the free market and democracy go hand in hand is a fairy tale.”

Klein made it clear that her definition of democracy is not a country that holds elections, but a nation that values human rights and civil liberties that are being stripped away by the use of torture as a “crude tool of coercion.” She finds that shock coupled with torture is being used to scare both individuals, largely in Guantanamo, and mass publics into submission.

“Torture is always public,” she said. “In order for you to be scared, you have to know it’s going on.”

Hajjar spoke of the relationship between torture and law, and agreed with Klein that the government’s acceptance of torture can break down entire nations.

“Torture produces false information, breaks a society and leads to mass imprisonment,” she said. “You torture people, they confess and you can say you caught a terrorist. Torture doesn’t produce truth; the ticking time bomb notion is ridiculous - ‘24′ notwithstanding.”

Though the common consensus across the panel was that the current situation in the United States is bleak, Klein offered some positive advice for improvement.

“Just like torture sends individuals into shock, events like Sept. 11 send whole societies into shock,” she said. “They lose their narrative. We need to start telling stories of why terror is happening.”

Link: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act | Philip Giraldi/Huffington Post

There has been a long tradition of fear-mongering legislation in the United States directed against groups and individuals believed to threaten the established order. The first such measures were the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress in 1798 during the administration of the second president of the United States John Adams. The Acts, consisting of four separate laws, made it more difficult to become a citizen, sought to control real or imagined foreign agents operating in the United States, and also gave the government broad powers to control "sedition." Sedition was defined as "resisting any law of the United States or any act of the President" punishable by a prison sentence of up to two years. It also made illegal "false, scandalous or malicious writing" directed against either the government or government officials. The next President, Thomas Jefferson declared that three out of the four laws were unconstitutional and pardoned everyone who had been convicted under them.

Early in the last century, hysterical fear of anarchists resulted in the conviction and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti 1927 despite clear evidence that the two men were innocent. A few years later, in 1934, a Special Committee on Un-American Activities was set up by Congress to monitor the activities of fascists in the United States. Ironically, the two congressmen who were most instrumental in the establishment of the committee, Samuel Dickstein of New York and Martin Dies of Texas, both Democrats, were themselves tainted by activities that might reasonably be described as Un-American. Dickstein was himself a paid agent of the Soviet NKVD intelligence agency and Dies regularly spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies. After the Second World War, the committee was renamed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and focused almost exclusively on communists, continuing to do so until it was incorporated into the House Judiciary Committee in 1974. Concurrent with HUAC on the Senate side, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, a Republican, became the public face of anti-communism in the early 1950s, with his frequent claims that communists had infiltrated the US government at various levels. Few of the claims could be substantiated, however, and McCarthy eventually fell out of favor and was censured by the Senate.

More recently, there has been the post 9/11 creation of a virtual avalanche of legislation and commissions designed to protect the country at the expense of the Bill of Rights. The two Patriot Acts of 2001 and 2006 and the Military Commission Act or 2006 have collectively limited constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of association, freedom from illegal search, the right to habeas corpus, prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and freedom from the illegal seizure of private property. The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments in the Bill of Rights have all been disregarded in the rush to make it easier to investigate people, put them in jail, and torture them if necessary. A recent executive order of July 17th, 2007 goes even farther, authorizing the President to seize the property of anyone who "Threatens Stabilization Efforts in Iraq." The government's own Justice Department decides what constitutes "threatening stabilization efforts" and the order does not permit a challenge to the information that the seizure is based on.

One would have thought that the systematic dismantling of the Constitution of the United States would have been enough to satisfy even the most Jacobin neoconservative, but there is more on the horizon, and it is coming from people who call themselves Democrats. The mainstream media has made no effort to inform the public of the impending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. The Act, which was sponsored by Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, was passed in the House by an overwhelming 405 to 6 vote on October 24th and is now awaiting approval by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which is headed by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. It is believed that approval by the committee will take place shortly, to be followed by passage by the entire Senate.

Harman's bill contends that the United States will soon have to deal with home grown terrorists and that something must be done to anticipate and neutralize the problem. The act deals with the issue through the creation of a congressional commission that will be empowered to hold hearings, conduct investigations, and designate various groups as "homegrown terrorists." The commission will be tasked to propose new legislation that will enable the government to take punitive action against both the groups and the individuals who are affiliated with them. Like Joe McCarthy and HUAC in the past, the commission will travel around the United States and hold hearings to find the terrorists and root them out. Unlike inquiries in the past where the activity was carried out collectively, the act establishing the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Commission will empower all the members on the commission to arrange hearings, obtain testimony, and even to administer oaths to witnesses, meaning that multiple hearings could be running simultaneously in various parts of the country. The ten commission members will be selected for their "expertise," though most will be appointed by Congress itself and will reflect the usual political interests. They will be paid for their duties at the senior executive pay scale level and will have staffs and consultants to assist them. Harman's bill does not spell out terrorist behavior and leaves it up to the Commission itself to identify what is terrorism and what isn't. Language inserted in the act does partially define "homegrown terrorism" as "planning" or "threatening" to use force to promote a political objective, meaning that just thinking about doing something could be enough to merit the terrorist label. The act also describes "violent radicalization" as the promotion of an "extremist belief system" without attempting to define "extremist."

As currently envisioned, the Commission will not operate in perpetuity. After the group has done its work, in eighteen months' time, a Center of Excellence for the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism will be established to study the lessons learned. The center will operate either out of the Department of Homeland Security or out of an appropriate academic institution and will be tasked with continuing to monitor the homegrown terrorism problem and proposing legislation and other measures to counter it.

As should be clear from the vagueness of the definitions, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act could easily be abused to define any group that is pressuring the political system as "terrorist," ranging from polygamists, to second amendment rights supporters, anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, and peace demonstrators. In reality, of course, it will be primarily directed against Muslims and Muslim organizations. Given that, there is the question of who will select which groups will be investigated by the roving commissions. There is no evidence to suggest that there will be any transparent or objective screening process. Through their proven access both to the media and to Congress, the agenda will undoubtedly be shaped by the usual players including David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, and Frank Gaffney who see a terrorist hiding under every rock, particularly if the rock is concealing a Muslim. They and their associates will undoubtedly find plenty of terrorists and radical groups to investigate. Many of the suspects will inevitably be "anti-American" professors at various universities and also groups of Palestinians organized against the Israeli occupation, but it will be easily to use the commission formula to sweep them all in for examination.

The view that 9/11 has "changed everything" is unfortunately all too true. It has unleashed American paranoia, institutionalized mistrust of foreigners, and created a fantasy universe in which a US beset by enemies must do anything and everything to counter the alien threat. If it were a sane world, it would be difficult to imagine why anyone would believe that a Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act is even necessary. The United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars in strengthening law enforcement and intelligence capabilities against terrorists and has every tool imaginable to investigate and make arrests. It has created a whole new bloated and dysfunctional branch of government in the Department of Homeland Security. What is not needed is groups of congressionally empowered vigilantes roaming the country at will looking for "homegrown terrorism."

Link: Analysis of Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act | will Potter/Green Is The New Red.com

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act pushed by animal industry groups, corporations, and the politicians that represent them ostensibly targets underground, illegal actions committed in the name of animal rights. It’s been in the works, in various forms, since the passage of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act in 1992: proponents say AEPA didn’t go far enough, and they need this sweeping legislation to crack down on illegal actions by underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front.

But underground activists won’t lose much sleep over this legislation. Their actions are already illegal (and they know it). The government has already labeled them the “number one domestic terrorist threat.” And yet they continue to demonstrate that heavy-handed police tactics will not deter them.

Legal, aboveground activists have been the ones most concerned about this vague and overly broad legislation. And as we’ll see, it’s not just animal rights activists that should worry.

You can download the final version of AETA that the president signed on November 13th, 2006, and the AEPA, and follow along with me as we see exactly how this “Green Scare” legislation operates.

WHAT WOULD QUALIFY AS “TERRORISM”?

Let’s start at the very top, with the offense section of the legislation, and take it apart in chunks.

(a) OFFENSE.—Whoever travels in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses or causes to be used the mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce—
(1) for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise; and

Hold up, we already have a problem. AEPA, as amended in 2002, said you must have the “purpose of causing physical disruption to the functioning of an animal enterprise.”

It’s a minor tweak. Blink and you might miss it. But there’s arguably a significant difference between “physical disruption to the functioning” of a corporation, which implies rattling a business to its core, to a looser standard of “damaging or interfering” with its operations. The change subtly widens AETA’s potential scope. ... MORE

Link: Legislation of the 109th Congress | Bill of Right Defense Committee

Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Bill Number: H.R. 4239 S. 3880 Status in the House: Passed/agreed to in House by voice vote. Status in the Senate: Unanimously passed with an amendment on 9/30/2006. House Sponsor: Rep. Thomas E. Petri (R-WI), with 44 co-sponsors. Senate Sponsor: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), with 10 co-sponsors.

On October 30, 2006, the National Lawyers Guild released a statement strongly opposing the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, saying that "if enacted into law, the Act could define as a terrorist act any activity causing a business classified as an "animal enterprise" to suffer a profit loss-even if such financial decline is caused by peaceful protests, boycotts, media campaigns or leafleting." Guild President, Marjorie Cohn said, "The AETA could lead to the prosecution of undercover investigators, whistle-blowers and other activists as 'terrorists.'"

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was the sole voice opposing the legislation when it passed by voice vote on November 13, 2006. He warned that passage of S 3880 would endanger First Amendment protections, "I am not for anyone abusing their rights by damaging another person's property or person, but I am for protecting the first amendment and not creating a special class of violations for a specific type of protest."

Graphic from Propaganda Remix Project

The Shock Doctrine

Bushism and Repression

 Earthside Comments: Last week saw another legal rejection of the Bush regime's court prosecutions in the "war on terror" in the United States. What Chris Hedges has written at Truthdig sadly shows that 'justice' no longer has meaning in this Republic ... the persecution will continue and, as the news report further down indicates, the central government will seek yet another trial for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. Most disturbing is that many Americans will accept the Bushites fascistic 'guilt by asociation' accusations, their smears and lies, and their constant fearmongering -- Bush/Cheney love terror, it is their primary political tactic. The consequences of Bushism is a virtual police state. This is what six years of '9/11' has brought us. The nation's founders would be appalled. Link: Mistrial for Muslim Charity Leaders Facing Terror Charges | CNN.com Link: The American Police State | Chris Hedges/Truthdig.com

A Dallas jury, a week ago, caused a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy. If we lived in a state where due process and the rule of law could curb the despotism of the Bush administration, this mistrial might be counted a victory. But we do not. The jury may have rejected the federal government’s claim that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development funneled millions of dollars to Middle Eastern terrorists. It may have acquitted Mohammad el-Mezain, the former chairman of the foundation, of virtually all criminal charges related to funding terrorism (the jury deadlocked on one of the 32 charges against el-Mezain), and it may have deadlocked on the charges that had been lodged against four other former leaders of the charity, but don’t be fooled. This mistrial will do nothing to impede the administration’s ongoing contempt for the rule of law. It will do nothing to stop the curtailment of our civil liberties and rights. The grim march toward a police state continues. Constitutional rights are minor inconveniences, noisome chatter, flies to be batted away on the steady road to despotism. And no one, not the courts, not the press, not the gutless Democratic opposition, not a compliant and passive citizenry hypnotized by tawdry television spectacles and celebrity gossip, seems capable of stopping the process. Those in power know this. We, too, might as well know it. The Bush administration, which froze the foundation’s finances three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and indicted its officials three years later on charges that they provided funds for the militant group Hamas, has ensured that the foundation and all other Palestinian charities will never reopen in the United States. Any organized support for Palestinians from within the U.S. has been rendered impossible. The goal of the Israeli government and the Bush administration—despite the charade of peace negotiations to be held at Annapolis—is to grind defiant Palestinians into the dirt. Israel, which has plunged the Gaza Strip into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, has now begun to ban fuel supplies and sever electrical service. The severe deprivation, the Israelis hope, will see the overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza and the reinstatement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has become the Marshal Pétain of the Palestinian people. The Dallas trial—like all of the major terrorism trials conducted by this administration, from the Florida case against the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami al-Arian, which also ended in a mistrial, to the recent decision by a jury in Chicago to acquit two men of charges of financing Hamas—has been a judicial failure. William Neal, a juror in the Dallas trial, told the Associated Press that the case “was strung together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence.” Such trials, however, have been politically expedient. The accusations, true or untrue, serve the aims of the administration. A jury in Tampa, Chicago or Dallas can dismiss the government’s assaults on individual rights, but the draconian restrictions put in place because of the mendacious charges remain firmly implanted within the system. It is the charges, not the facts, which matter. Dr. al-Arian, who was supposed to have been released and deported in April, is still in a Virginia prison because he will not testify in a separate case before a grand jury. The professor, broken by the long ordeal of his trial and unable to raise another million dollars in legal fees for a retrial, pleaded guilty to a minor charge in the hopes that his persecution would end. It has not. Or take the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who in 2002 was spirited away by Homeland Security from JFK Airport to Syria, where he spent 10 months being tortured in a coffin-like cell. He was, upon his release, exonerated of terrorism. Arar testified before a House panel this month about how he was abducted by the U.S. and interrogated, stripped of his legal rights and tortured. But he couldn’t testify in person. He spoke to the House members on a video link from Canada. He is forbidden by Homeland Security to enter the United States because he allegedly poses a threat to national security. Those accused of being involved in conspiracies and terrorism plots, as in all police states, become nonpersons. There is no rehabilitation. There is no justice. "He was never given a hearing nor did the Canadian consulate, his lawyer, or his family know of his fate,” Amnesty International wrote of Arar. “Expulsion in such circumstances, without a fair hearing, and to a country known for regularly torturing their prisoners, violates the U.S. Government’s obligations under international law, specifically the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.” You can almost hear Dick Cheney yawn. The Bush administration shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development six years ago and froze its assets. There was no hearing or trial. It became a crime for anyone to engage in transactions with the foundation. The administration never produced evidence to support the charges. It did not have any. In the “war on terror,” evidence is unnecessary. An executive order is enough. The foundation sued the government in a federal court in the District of Columbia. Behind closed doors, the government presented secret evidence that the charity had no opportunity to see or rebut. The charity’s case was dismissed. The government has closed seven Muslim charities in the United States and frozen their assets. Not one of them, or any person associated with them, has been found guilty of financing terrorism. They will remain shut. George W. Bush can tar any organization or individual, here or abroad, as being part of a terrorist conspiracy and by fiat render them powerless. He does not need to make formal charges. He does not need to wait for a trial verdict. Secret evidence, which these court cases have exposed as a sham, is enough. The juries in Tampa, Chicago and Dallas did their duty. They spoke for the rights of citizens. They spoke for the protection of due process and the rule of law. They threw small hurdles in front of the emergent police state. But the abuse rolls on. I fear terrorism. I know it is real. I am sure terrorists will strike again on American soil. But while terrorists can wound and disrupt our democracy, only we can kill it.

Link: Gov't Likely to Retry Muslim Charity | Associated Press

Prosecutors will likely retry the former leaders of a Muslim charity, as well as the organization itself, after the government's biggest terror-financing case since Sept. 11 ended in a mistrial. Not one of the leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was convicted Monday, and many acquittals were thrown out after three jurors took the rare step of disputing the verdict. Juror William Neal told The Associated Press that the panel found little evidence against three of the defendants and was evenly split on charges against Shukri Abu Baker and former Holy Land chairman Ghassan Elashi, who were seen as the principal leaders of the charity. "I thought they were not guilty across the board," said Neal, a 33-year-old art director from Dallas. The case "was strung together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence." Some jurors were dead-set for convictions even before they began deliberating, Neal said. "They brought up stuff that wasn't even in the case," he said. "They brought up 9-11." ... ... Prosecutor James Jacks said the government would probably try the case again. "This is a stunning setback for the government," said a former U.S. attorney, Matthew Orwig. "There is absolutely nothing positive in that verdict today for the government."

Bush Coup d'Etat

Link: Is a Presidential Coup Under Way? | Jim Hightower/Hightower Lowdown/AlterNet.org

The Constitution is being trampled and nothing less than American democracy itself is endangered -- a presidential coup is taking place. Where is Congress?

What We Have Become

Earthside Comments: George W. Bush has brought more shame upon this nation than any other president in our history.

The greater tragedy, of course, is that he and Cheney are allowed to stay in power -- the Dimocrats and radical Republicans ... and WE will not confront what we have become ... we are not seeking penance for our moral lapse by demanding justice for the perpetrators who call themselves our leaders.

Frank Rich writes a very articulate article explaining this shame. Click on the link to the Times to get all the hot linked references in this fine analysis.

Link: The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us | Frank Rich/New York Times

“Bush lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.

Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.

There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.

As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.

The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of “Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its current form.

We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.

I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.

We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are kept off the books.

It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.

Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.

We ignored the contractor scandal to our own peril. Ever since Falluja this auxiliary army has been a leading indicator of every element of the war’s failure: not only our inadequate troop strength but also our alienation of Iraqi hearts and minds and our rampant outsourcing to contractors rife with Bush-Cheney cronies and campaign contributors. Contractors remain a bellwether of the war’s progress today. When Blackwater was briefly suspended after the Nisour Square catastrophe, American diplomats were flatly forbidden from leaving the fortified Green Zone. So much for the surge’s great “success” in bringing security to Baghdad.

Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”

This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan.

Similarly, it took until December 2005, two and a half years after “Mission Accomplished,” for Mr. Bush to feel sufficient public pressure to acknowledge the large number of Iraqi casualties in the war. Even now, despite his repeated declaration that “America will not abandon the Iraqi people,” he has yet to address or intervene decisively in the tragedy of four million-plus Iraqi refugees, a disproportionate number of them children. He feels no pressure from the American public to do so, but hey, he pays lip service to Darfur.

Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

In America?

Earthside Comments: Read the news story here ... it is unbelievable that something like this happens in the United States of America.

But then, this is the country whose governmental ethical tone is set by Bush/Cheney -- torture, lies, militarism and irrationality -- maybe we shouldn't be surprised.

Link: Police Investigate Arrest Gone Wrong | Portsmouth Daily News - Ohio

The three Beaver police officers involved in what has been described as an arrest attempt gone wrong Saturday night have been suspended.Pike County Sheriff Larry Travis said the three, Beaver Police Chief Danny Seal and officers Brady Ratzlaff and Shawn Mathers, all have been placed on administrative leave.

“It was a nightmare,” said Josh Adams, who said he, his wife, Kristy, and three children were in the process of going to bed when incident occurred.

“The police came to the door. They didn't even identify themselves as police officers, and said my wife had been out on the porch firing a gun. At that time, people were setting off fireworks, like M-80s, and they asked her if she had been shooting a gun. She told him she didn't want to talk to him, and turned from the door,” he said.

What happened next is at best a confusing set of events.

“He (a Beaver police officer) came through the door, tackled my wife and slammed her to the floor. She began to scream for me, and I ran into the room, where I saw him (the Beaver police officer) on top of my wife and two others standing there,” Adams said. “Then I got hit in the head with a Maglite, and here I was bleeding, and then we all got maced, including our 2-year-old son who sleeps in a crib by our bed.”

He said the boy was throwing up from what he determined was reaction to the mace.

“And they wouldn't let my wife go in and get him, and they wouldn't go get him either,” Adams said.

Pike County Sheriff Larry Travis said he understood the police were responding to “gunshots coming from the general vicinity or firecrackers.”

Travis said two of the officers involved were certified, and the other was an officer in training.

All of the alleged victims were transported to Pike Community Hospital where they were treated and released, he said.

Adams gave the same information.

“I got stitched up, they X-rayed my wife to make sure there was nothing wrong with her, and all three kids, ages 10, 6 and 2, were checked out because of the mace.”

The Adamses live at 35 Western Ave., and Josh Adams' brother, Steve Adams, and his wife, Connie, live next door at 33 Western Ave., and responded to the house where they said they found Josh and Kristy Adams being taken into custody and a house full of mace.

Steve Adams said Josh Adams ran back to his house and called 911, telling them, “We need sheriff's deputies out here, the Beaver cops are beating my son.”

Eventually, 911 was called again, requesting an ambulance, and a call was made to Beaver Mayor Rocky Brown. Brown was said to have arrived along with Pike County deputies, and according to an e-mail from Steve Adams, fired the three officers on the spot, and the deputies released the Adamses.

Josh Adams said he would be meeting with his attorney today in Columbus about a possible lawsuit.

“There's blood at my house and still signs of what happened. I haven't changed anything,” he said.

Travis said he would have no more information on the case for another week.

“Right now, we're investigating the incident,” he said.

Whatever Bush Wants

Earthside Comments: When Bush cheated his way into a second term by disenfranchising thousands and thousands of voters in Ohio (and undoubtedly other states, too), Earthside proclaimed the end of the Republic. It was a declaration meant to be rhetorical and provocative. We didn't imagine just how correct we would end up being ... more than extravagant language, we were prescient. In a genuine Republic, as envisioned by our founders, the will of the people prevails through the actions of elected officials and representatives. In the United States, since Bush's installation in office in 2001, and especially since the election of 2006, we are witness to a one-party ideological control of the central government. Despite strong evidence of the citizens' wanting an end to the occupation of Iraq, an end to immoral government behavior, an end to even more warmongering, an end to a reckless spending, and an end to corporate lobbying and law-making -- we have only seen an executive branch act more authoritarian, radical Republicans being more fanatical, and a so-called second party in the "two party system" (the Dimocrats) operating like junior neocons and corporatists. Indeed, the Republic is dead. Link: Democrats Seem Ready to Extend Wiretap Powers | New York Times

Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency. Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval. As the debate over the eavesdropping powers of the National Security Agency begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats. Although willing to oppose the White House on the Iraq war, they remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence. A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.

Link: Unrepentant, Bush Denies Torture | Marjorie Cohn

The April 2004 publication of grotesque photographs of naked Iraqis piled on top of each other, forced to masturbate, and led around on leashes like dogs, sent shock waves around the world. George W. Bush declared, “I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.” Yet less than a year later, his Justice Department issued a secret opinion endorsing the harshest techniques the CIA has ever used, according to an October 4, 2007 report in the New York Times. These include head slapping, frigid temperatures, and water boarding, in which the subject is made to feel he is drowning. Water boarding is widely considered a torture technique. Once again, Bush is compelled to issue a denial. He insists, “This government does not torture people." This was not the first time the Bush administration had officially endorsed torture, however. John Yoo, writing for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, penned an August 2002 memorandum that rewrote the legal definition of torture to require the equivalent of organ failure. This memo violated the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty the United States ratified, and therefore part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. In December 2002, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved interrogation methods that included the use of dogs, hooding, stress positions, isolation for up to 30 days, 20-hour interrogations, deprivation of light and sound, and water boarding. U.S. Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora told William Haynes, the Pentagon’s general counsel, that Rumsfeld’s “authorized interrogation techniques could rise to the level of torture.” As a result, Rumsfeld rescinded some methods but reserved the right to approve others, including water boarding, on a case-by-case basis. When Bush maintained earlier this week that his government doesn’t torture prisoners, he stressed the need for interrogation to “protect the American people.” Notwithstanding the myth perpetuated by shows like “24,” however, torture doesn’t work. Experts agree that people who are tortured will say anything to make the torture stop. One of the first victims of the Bush administration’s 2002 torture policy was Abu Zubaydah, whom they called “chief of operations” for al Qaeda and bin Laden’s “number three man.” He was repeatedly tortured at the secret CIA “black sites.” They water boarded him, withheld his medication, threatened him with impending death, and bombarded him with continuous deafening noise and harsh lights. But Zubaydah wasn’t a top al Qaeda leader. Dan Coleman, one of the FBI's leading experts on al Qaeda, said of Zubaydah, "He knew very little about real operations, or strategy … He was expendable, you know, the greeter . . . Joe Louis in the lobby of Caeser's Palace, shaking hands." Moreover, Zubaydah was schizophrenic; according to Coleman, “This guy is insane, certifiable split personality.” Coleman's views were echoed at the top levels of the CIA and were communicated to Bush and Cheney. But Bush scolded CIA director George Tenet, saying, "I said [Zubaydah] was important. You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" Zubaydah's minor role in al Qaeda and his apparent insanity were kept secret. In response to the torture, Zubaydah told his interrogators about myriad terrorist targets al Qaeda had in its sights: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statute of Liberty, shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, and apartment buildings. Al Qaeda was close to building a crude nuclear bomb, Zubaydah reported. None of this was corroborated but the Bush gang reacted to each report zealously. Likewise, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, was tortured so severely – including by water boarding – that the information he provided is virtually worthless. A potentially rich source of intelligence was lost as a result of the torture. Bush’s insistence that his administration doesn't torture rings hollow. He lied about weapons of mass destruction and a Saddam-al Qaeda connection in Iraq. He lied when he assured us his officials would not wiretap without warrants. As evidence of secret memos detailing harsh interrogation policies continues to emerge, we can't believe Bush's denials about torture. Democrats in Congress have demanded they be allowed to see the memos, but Bush said the interrogation methods have been "fully disclosed to appropriate members of Congress." Senator John D. Rockefeller IV was unmoved. "I'm tired of these games," he said. "They can't say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program." It is incumbent upon the Senate Judiciary Committee to vigorously interrogate Michael Mukasey during his attorney general confirmation hearing. As AG, Mukasey would oversee the department that writes interrogation policy. Mukasey should know the Convention Against Torture prohibits torture in all circumstances, even in times of war. Torture is a war crime. Those who commit or order torture can be convicted under the U.S. War Crimes Statute. Techniques that don't rise to the level of torture but constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment also violate U.S. law. Congress should provide for the appointment of a special independent counsel to fully investigate and prosecute all who are complicit in the torture and mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.

The following report is important not because of the death penalty aspect, but because it demonstrates Bush's authoritarian behavior and his agenda to build a transnational corporate power structure supplanting our Republic. Link: Bush Tries to Halt Execution of Convicted Killer in Texas | The Guardian

President George Bush, who signed the death warrant for 152 prisoners as governor of Texas, this week faces a rare challenge from his home state against his efforts to block the execution of a convicted killer from Mexico. The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, to go before the supreme court on Wednesday, examines whether the president has the power to set aside a state law that conflicts with an international treaty. It puts Mr Bush in the unusual position of arguing against the death penalty and against the very same Texans who helped put him in the White House. Even more unusually, it puts Mr Bush on the same side of the dispute as the International Court of Justice in The Hague. But the confrontation is more likely to turn on the dividing line between state and presidential powers than on the legitimacy of the death penalty. The supreme court is to deal more directly with the death penalty next January when it hears arguments against the use of lethal injection, the main method of execution in the US. Wednesday's case began with a death row appeal from Medellin, a gang member from Houston who was just 18 when he raped and strangled to death two teenage girls in 1993. After a decade on death row, in 2004 the Mexican government obtained a ruling from the International Court of Justice on Mr Medellin's behalf that state police had violated his right to access to consular officials from Mexico. Mr Medellin, who was born in Mexico, has lived in the US since he was nine years old, although he was never a legal resident. The judgment found that the Texas authorities failed to tell Mr Medellin and 50 other death row inmates from Mexico of their rights under the Vienna Convention to seek advice from the Mexican consulate, or to inform consular officials about their cases. Mr Bush issued a memorandum two months later that the US courts would implement the ICJ ruling. The Bush administration is expected to argue that the president's executive power over treaty provisions outranks state laws. Although the administration notes that it does not agree with the ICJ's interpretation of the Vienna Convention, it says it will abide by the court's decision for the sake of protecting US interests abroad. However, Texas argues that Mr Bush's memo on the death penalty case would set a dangerous precedent for presidential power. The state argues that Mr Bush's action disregards earlier verdicts by an appeals court and the supreme court that Mr Medellin was not entitled to invoke his rights as a Mexican citizen because he had not raised the issue at his original trial. In a speech to a conservative legal group in Washington, Ted Cruz, the state's solicitor general and a key adviser on Mr Bush's 2000 election campaign, accused the president of overstepping his authority. "This president's exercise of this power is egregiously beyond the bounds of presidential authority," he said.

Will We Rollback Bush Fascism?

Link: Pro-Democracy Means Anti-Fascism | Cindy Sheehan/CommonDreams.org

“The world is watching the people of Burma take to the streets to demand their freedom, and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals,” - George W. Bush

Watching the pro-democracy marches in Burma both inspires and sickens me. I am inspired by seeing thousands of red-robed monks leading the demonstrations and sickened by the violence they are being met with by the military.

Seeing the images of the monks and others being beaten reminds me of the Democratic Convention in 1968 where Chicago police beat the living daylights out of demonstrators who were there to try and force the party to come closer to the budding anti-war movement. It didn’t work. Instead of wonderful pro-peace candidate, Eugene McCarthy, the party nominated Johnson’s VP, Hubert Humphrey. We know what happened next: Nixon. After last night’s Democratic “debate” I am terrified and assured that the Democrats will have another pro-war nominee.

The other event in my memory that the pro-democracy movement in Burma reminds me of is Kent State, Ohio in May, 1970. Four students were killed and nine were wounded marching against escalation of the Vietnam debacle.. I have heard from many people who were of age to protest the Vietnam war at that time that the killings had the affect of frightening them into not protesting, or scaling their protests back.

Of course the present state of our nation is not as overtly oppressive as the government of Myanmar (Burma), presently where a Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi has been under house arrest there for years, but we who have been paying attention to events can see that America is on the precipice of serious fascism and only the brave actions of Americans committed to freedom, democracy and peace will help stem the tide of this rising neo-fascism that doesn’t march through our streets in goose-step and swastikas, but is creeping into our lives like cat’s paws.

According to Chris Rowthorn, in his brilliant article, When America Went Fascist, we went fascist on December 11, 2000 when the Supreme Court appointed George as our unelected, un-democratic and illegal President. Although it is easy and tempting to blame everything on BushCo, this is about the only assertion that I disagree with in his article.

What about during the Clinton regime? Does anyone remember Elian Gonzales or The Branch Davidians in Waco? Let’s go back further. What about when Truman dropped to WMD on hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Japan? What about Korea? Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex? What about the Gulf of Tonkin? What about Watergate? What about Panama? Kosovo? Nicaragua? Free trade agreements that hurt workers in all countries that are involved in them and what about the abuse of language in this country: Patriot Act; Homeland Security; Clear Water and Clean Skies—and the No Child Left Behind Act that leaves every child behind and is just a funnel to the recruiter’s office?

There are just a few measures that we can use to stop this slide and Rowthorn articulates what has become an important part of my platform. Only vote for candidates that promise the following things…for president, or any other federal elective offices:

* Repeal the Patriot Act
* Repeal No Child Left Behind
* Scale down the Department of Homeland Security and rename it so it loses its Nazi
tone and is brought under civilian control.
* Restore habeas corpus and close all torture camps by repealing the Military Commissions’ Act.
* Repeal all contracts with paid mercenary killer companies.
* Restore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
* Repeal all BushCo-Presidential directives (especially Directive 51) and review all laws that contain signing statements.
* Restore the 4th Amendment by enforcing warrants for spying on Americans.
* Impeach Bush and Cheney-post presidency so they can’t receive federal benefits.
* Bring all troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and review military needs for other bases around the world.
* Repeal all free trade agreements.
* Kick AIPAC and other lobbyists out of the halls of Congress where they have no business.

One of the most profound ways we can stop this descent into fascism is by impeaching, removing from office and incarcerating George Bush and Dick Cheney, et al. I am very skeptical of a complicit Congress, Inc doing anything about them in this term. I am also very skeptical of a “professional” and fascist military leadership taking their oath of service seriously and above their corporate-military allegiance to the Executive Branch recently and so tellingly revealed by General Betray-Us, so a military coup is out of the question and has the tricky element of becoming a military dictatorship.

I was supposed to be in court today in Washington, DC for my last arrest. I didn’t go because I am not under allegiance and repudiate the fascists that run our government and the enforcers who are doing their best Nazi-job of “following orders” in oppressing our rights as Americans.

Why are they beating up a Reverend who served in the Air Force, and honorably left after the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, for wanting to attend a hearing in Congress?

Why are they arresting a Gold Star Mother for exercising the very freedoms for which George Bush freakishly says her son died?

Why are my daughter and assistant under indictment for Contempt of Congress when BushCo have steadily refused to testify before committees under oath, or any other way? As a matter of fact, Betray-Us wasn’t even put under oath that day in the House.

Why are college students being tasered for asking the same questions that we all want answered from John Kerry who threw our Representative Republic in the garbage along with the 2004 election?

Why are nooses being hung in the South?

Why do any of us pay our Federal Taxes to a government that we abhor and which we adamantly disagree with? Why do we allow our hard earned money to be used for murder and oppression?

Why is Congress giving BushCo more authority to begin a New World War?

Where are religious leaders to lead us in pro-democracy demonstrations? Most of our mainstream religions suffer from the same neo-fascism that our governmental leaders suffer from.

Why do we march in DC on Saturdays and get arrested just to get arrested? It’s time to descend on DC on a weekday and make commitments to our world and our posterity to over throw this fascism right now?

When can we have a country-wide massive general strike?

Recent reports show that Saddam made overtures to America through the UAE and Spain to go into exile weeks before the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq. Of course, the overtures were rejected because George’s small mind was already made up to invade Iraq before he became president in some sick way to either show up or gain approval from a dysfunctional family. What if Spain’s former President Aznar had spoken up then? What if Colin Powell, George Tenet, or any of the criminal neocons had spoken up to prevent this horrible loss of life and pain before it even started?

I wouldn’t be under a bench warrant right now. Rev wouldn’t be recovering from a badly sprained ankle. Casey would be alive and hundreds of thousands of others would be alive.

We can’t count on anyone but ourselves. It’s now up to we the people to follow the example of our brothers and sisters in Burma to courageously confront the anti-democracy/pro-fascist elements of our society.

Contact Cindy at: Cindy@CindyforCongress.org

The National Nightmare Continues

UPDATE!
We watched President Ahmadinejad address Columbia University this morning and ... you could certainly disagree with everything that the guy said ... but at the same time you have to chuckle at the fact that our so-called 'leader' would never have put himself in a similar situation.

Ahmadinejad sat calmly and listened to Columbia president Lee Bollinger introduce him with a long-winded harangue that included almost every validated and unconfirmed negative allegation against Iran. Then after the speech, Ahmadinejad took questions from the audience ... unscripted, challenging questions.

What an irony, we witnessed a foreign leader from a theocratic nation come to our country and face a hostile audience with calm and aplomb -- but as we all know, George W. Bush would NEVER do such a thing here ... in his own country: "the land of the free, and the home of the brave."

Nevertheless, despite of what and/or how Ahmadinejad presented himself, the rightwing warmongers are pumping up the visit as an excuse to promote hatred and fear towards Iran ... just as we predicted.

Link: Fox Bangs Iran War Drums | ThinkProgress.org

Fox bangs Iran war drums.

In an interview with Newt Gingrich today on Fox News, The Big Story With John Gibson moved away from the shot of Gingrich and the interviewer to display a screenshot stating, “Is war the only way to stop Mahmoud?”:

---

Earthside Comments: For a brief few months, in the aftermath of the 2006 elections, there was a flicker of hope that with a new majority in Congress a change in direction and attitude might take hold in the United States.

The faint hope died this past May when the Dimocrats in the House and Senate completely buckled to Bush and appropriated all the money he wanted for the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

The resumption, indeed deeping of our post-9/11 national nightmare, is now in the forefront of our consciousness. The drums of war are being pounded and pounded and pounded. The warmongers grasped upon the MoveOn.org newspaper advertisement to smear, intimidate and scare potential critics (it worked). Now, they have latched upon the visit of the president of Iran to the United Nations General Assembly meeting to demonize a perceived opponent -- and frighten the American people, again.

Nuclear weapons, fear, an evil leader, be afraid, terrorism, disloyal Americans, 9/11 ... the nightmare language of Bush's wartime America.

Make no mistake, what we are witnessing today is the propaganda prelude to a Bush-ordered bombing of Iran. The corporate news media is already being whipped into a war frenzy ... the establishment Dimocrats are on board for war.

The following articles, reports and links make the case very clear -- the Bushites, radical Republicans, neocons and enabler Dimocrats are setting the stage for more war.

Link: Your Main Enemy is at Home | Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood/CounterPunch.org

The voice of evil is coming to Columbia.

That's what you've heard if you read a newspaper or turned on the television in the last five days. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a fanatic whose extreme beliefs and quest for a nuclear arsenal are the main threat to world peace today. His very presence, some say, constitutes hate speech. Politicians from both parties have lined up to condemn the event.

On the surface, the demonization of Ahmadinejad may seem like a natural reaction to his political statements and repressive policies. But the media campaign should be taken with a grain of salt. The U.S. needs a new bogeyman. The war in Iraq is a dismal failure for Washington, and now Iran is now an even bigger obstacle to American domination of the Middle East. The U.S. is laying the groundwork for a possible attack on Iran which would be even worse than the nightmare that they have inflicted on Iraq. In this context, Americans are not helping the people of the Middle East by protesting Ahmadinejad.

Why has the president of Iran become a cartoon villain in American politics? He's a repressive ruler who holds reactionary views, but the same is true of many dictators and monarchs that the United States has supported, such as the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and the House of Saud. The U.S. is not a principled opponent of repressive governments. The real origins of the recent saber-rattling lie in Iraq.

The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 expecting to take over quickly, without complications. The new Iraq would serve as a loyal client state, a massive source of oil, and a permanent base for controlling the rest of the Middle East. Four years later, the American military is still struggling to secure anything outside of its Blackwater-fortified Green Zone. The number of attacks against U.S. soldiers keeps rising. Iraqis widely support the resistance. The Americans can't even control their puppets. The situation looks so bad for the U.S. that they rely on ethnic militias whose loyalty is tentative at best.

This failure has magnified the threat that Iran poses to American interests in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic is the only major oil-producing country in the area not under U.S. control, and it has benefited from the quagmire next door. The U.S. could never have formed a government in Shiite-majority Iraq without Iran-friendly parties like SCIRI and the Islamic Dawa Party.

The U.S. undeniably has an interest in regime change in Iran. It's become fashionable among presidential candidates -- Republicans and Democrats -- to say that "no option is off the table," but in reality the costs of an invasion are extraordinarily high and there is still no consensus in Washington about how to deal with Ahmadinejad's regime. On the other hand, it's never too early to start spreading lies and misinformation. In late August, Bush accused Iran of trying to destabilize Iraq and of posing a threat to the entire region. This takes a lot of nerve coming from the man who invaded the country and overthrew its government. The glaring reality is that the largest group of foreign fighters in Iraq is the 130,000 American troops.

Bush goes on to claim that Iran is the main threat to peace in the Middle East. The main thing destabilizing the Middle East is the U.S. interference. They have created a refugee crisis of Iraqis on par with the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Millions of people have been driven from Iraq and now struggle to survive in neighboring countries such as Syria, Jordan, and Iran. In addition, the U.S. gives 6 billion dollars a year to Israel, a country which has regularly and recently attacked its neighbors.

The claims against Iran echo the lies that Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq. In the lead-up to the war, we were told that the Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he threatened his neighbors, and had links to terrorists. Today we are hearing that Ahmadinejad has weapons of mass destruction, he threatens his neighbors, and has links to terrorists.

We are constantly reminded that Iran's president is a fundamentalist tyrant. He is a right-wing politician with backward ideas, but the portrayal of Ahmadinejad as a lunatic terrorist falls back on racist stereotypes of Muslims. This clash of civilizations argument serves as a justification for endless war on the world and fuels attacks on Arabs and Muslims at home.

As long as the U.S. is in the Middle East, Ahmadinejad's hand is strengthened against his political opponents within Iran. An invasion would be even worse, causing repercussions that could make the Iraq war look like a minor skirmish in comparison. Protesting Ahmadinejad in New York during his visit to the U.N. will only push us closer to such an outcome. If you care about human rights in the Middle East, your main enemy is at home.

Link: Iran Smuggling Missiles into Iraq: US Military | AFP/Yahoo! News

Iran is smuggling advanced weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, into Iraq to be used by extremists against American troops, the US military charged on Sunday.

US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told reporters in Baghdad that Iran was shifting sophisticated arms such as "RPG-29s, explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs), 240 mm rockets and Misagh-1 surface-to-air missiles" across its borders into Iraq.

An EFP is a feared roadside bomb which when it explodes emits a white-hot slug of molten copper that can cut through the armoured skins of US military vehicles.

Fox reiterated that Iranian national Mahmudi Farhadi, detained on Thursday in the northern province of Sulaimaniyah, is one of the kingpins in the bomb smuggling operations.

"He is a member of the Ramazan Corps, the Quds Force department responsible for all operations in Iraq," Fox said.

"We are fulfilling our professional responsibility to detain those individuals who are smuggling these illegal weapons into Iraq," he added.

Iran insists that Farhadi is a civilian official on a visit to Iraq as part of a trade delegation.

On Saturday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who says Farhadi is a known businessman and not a bomb smuggler, wrote a stern letter to top US officials in Iraq to demand that he be released.

US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson told AFP on Sunday that Farhadi was still being interrogated.

Link: Turning Ahmadinejad Into Public Enemy No. 1 | Juan Cole/Salon.com/CommonDreams.org

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly has become a media circus. But the controversy does not stem from the reasons usually cited.

The media has focused on debating whether he should be allowed to speak at Columbia University on Monday, or whether his request to visit Ground Zero, the site of the Sept. 11 attack in lower Manhattan, should have been honored. His request was rejected, even though Iran expressed sympathy with the United States in the aftermath of those attacks and Iranians held candlelight vigils for the victims. Iran felt that it and other Shiite populations had also suffered at the hands of al-Qaida, and that there might now be an opportunity for a new opening to the United States.

Instead, the U.S. State Department denounced Ahmadinejad as himself little more than a terrorist. Critics have also cited his statements about the Holocaust or his hopes that the Israeli state will collapse. He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jews, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an anti-Semite, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed, and allows Iran’s 20,000 Jews to have representation in Parliament.

There is, in fact, remarkably little substance to the debates now raging in the United States about Ahmadinejad. His quirky personality, penchant for outrageous one-liners, and combative populism are hardly serious concerns for foreign policy. Taking potshots at a bantam cock of a populist like Ahmadinejad is actually a way of expressing another, deeper anxiety: fear of Iran’s rising position as a regional power and its challenge to the American and Israeli status quo. The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state.

The neoconservatives are even claiming that the United States has been at war with Iran since 1979. As Glenn Greenwald points out, this assertion is absurd. In the ’80s, the Reagan administration sold substantial numbers of arms to Iran. Some of those beating the war drums most loudly now, like think-tank rat Michael Ledeen, were middlemen in the Reagan administration’s unconstitutional weapons sales to Tehran. The sales would have been a form of treason if in fact the United States had been at war with Iran at that time, so Ledeen is apparently accusing himself of treason.

But the right has decided it is at war with Iran, so a routine visit by Iran’s ceremonial president to the U.N. General Assembly has generated sparks. The foremost cheerleader for such a view in Congress is Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., who recently pressed Gen. David Petraeus on the desirability of bombing Iran in order to forestall weapons smuggling into Iraq from that country (thus cleverly using one war of choice to foment another).

American hawks are beating the war drums loudly because they are increasingly frustrated with the course of events. They are unsatisfied with the lack of enthusiasm among the Europeans and at the United Nations for impeding Tehran’s nuclear energy research program. While the Bush administration insists that the program aims at producing a bomb, the Iranian state maintains that it is for peaceful energy purposes. Washington wants tighter sanctions on Iran at the United Nations but is unlikely to get them in the short term because of Russian and Chinese reluctance. The Bush administration may attempt to create a “coalition of the willing” of Iran boycotters outside the U.N. framework.

Washington is also unhappy with Mohammad ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has been unable to find credible evidence that Iran has a weapons program, and he told Italian television this week, “Iran does not constitute a certain and immediate threat for the international community.” He stressed that no evidence had been found for underground production sites or hidden radioactive substances, and he urged a three-month waiting period before the U.N. Security Council drew negative conclusions.

ElBaradei intervened to call for calm after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said last week that if the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear research program were unsuccessful, it could lead to war. Kouchner later clarified that he was not calling for an attack on Iran, but his remarks appear to have been taken seriously in Tehran.

Kouchner made the remarks after there had already been substantial speculation in the U.S. press that impatient hawks around U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney were seeking a pretext for a U.S. attack on Iran. Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation probably correctly concluded in Salon last week that President Bush himself has for now decided against launching a war on Iran. But Clemons worries that Cheney and the neoconservatives, with their Israeli allies, are perfectly capable of setting up a provocation that would lead willy-nilly to war.

David Wurmser, until recently a key Cheney advisor on Middle East affairs and the coauthor of the infamous 1996 white paper that urged an Iraq war, revealed to his circle that Cheney had contemplated having Israel strike at Iranian nuclear research facilities and then using the Iranian reaction as a pretext for a U.S. war on that country. Prominent and well-connected Afghanistan specialist Barnett Rubin also revealed that he was told by an administration insider that there would be an “Iran war rollout” by the Cheneyites this fall.

It should also be stressed that some elements in the U.S. officer corps and the Defense Intelligence Agency are clearly spoiling for a fight with Iran because the Iranian-supported Shiite nationalists in Iraq are a major obstacle to U.S. dominance in Iraq. Although very few U.S. troops in Iraq are killed by Shiites, military spokesmen have been attempting to give the impression that Tehran is ordering hits on U.S. troops, a clear casus belli. Disinformation campaigns that accuse Iran of trying to destabilize the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government — a government Iran actually supports — could lay the groundwork for a war. Likewise, with the U.S. military now beginning patrols on the Iran-Iraq border, the possibility is enhanced of a hostile incident spinning out of control.

The Iranians have responded to all this bellicosity with some chest-thumping of their own, right up to the final hours before Ahmadinejad’s American visit. The Iranian government declared “National Defense Week” on Saturday, kicking it off with a big military parade that showed off Iran’s new Qadr-1 missiles, with a range of 1,100 miles. Before he left Iran for New York on Sunday morning, Ahmadinejad inspected three types of Iranian-manufactured jet fighters, noting that it was the anniversary of Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 (which the Iranian press attributed to American urging, though that is unlikely).

The display of this military equipment was accompanied by a raft of assurances on the part of the Iranian ayatollahs, politicians and generals that they were entirely prepared to deploy the missiles and planes if they were attacked. A top military advisor to Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei told the Mehr News Agency on Saturday, “Today, the United States must know that their 200,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are within the reach of Iran’s fire. When the Americans were beyond our shores, they were not within our reach, but today it is very easy for us to deal them blows.” Khamenei, the actual commander in chief of the armed forces, weighed in as well, reiterating that Iran would never attack first but pledging: “Those who make threats should know that attack on Iran in the form of hit and run will not be possible, and if any country invades Iran it will face its very serious consequences.”

The threat to target U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the unveiling of the Qadr-1 were not aggressive in intent, but designed to make the point that Iran could also play by Richard M. Nixon’s “madman” strategy, whereby you act so wildly as to convince your enemy you are capable of anything. Ordinarily a poor non-nuclear third-world country might be expected to be supine before an attack by a superpower. But as Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the Iranian deputy speaker of Parliament, warned: “Any military attack against Iran will send the region up in flames.”

In the end, this is hardly the kind of conflagration the United States should be enabling. If a spark catches, it will not advance any of America’s four interests in the Middle East: petroleum, markets, Israel and hegemony.

The Middle East has two-thirds of the world’s proven petroleum reserves and nearly half its natural gas, and its fields are much deeper than elsewhere in the world, so that its importance will grow for the United States and its allies. Petro-dollars and other wealth make the region an important market for U.S. industry, especially the arms industry. Israel is important both for reasons of domestic politics and because it is a proxy for U.S. power in the region. By “hegemony,” I mean the desire of Washington to dominate political and economic outcomes in the region and to forestall rivals such as China from making it their sphere of influence.

The Iranian government (in which Ahmadinejad has a weak role, analogous to that of U.S. vice presidents before Dick Cheney) poses a challenge to the U.S. program in the Middle East. Iran is, unlike most Middle Eastern countries, large. It is geographically four times the size of France, and it has a population of 70 million (more than France or the United Kingdom). As an oil state, it has done very well from the high petroleum prices of recent years. It has been negotiating long-term energy deals with China and India, much to the dismay of Washington. It provides financial support to the Palestinians and to the Lebanese Shiites who vote for the Hezbollah Party in Lebanon. By overthrowing the Afghanistan and Iraq governments and throwing both countries into chaos, the United States has inadvertently enabled Iran to emerge as a potential regional power, which could challenge Israel and Saudi Arabia and project both soft and hard power in the strategic Persian Gulf and the Levant.

And now the American war party, undeterred by the quagmire in Iraq, convinced that their model of New Empire is working, is eager to go on the offensive again. They may yet find a pretext to plunge the United States into another war. Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York this year will not include his visit to Ground Zero, because that is hallowed ground for American patriotism and he is being depicted as not just a critic of the United States but as the leader of an enemy state. His visit may, however, be ground zero for the next big military struggle of the United States in the Middle East, one that really will make Iraq look like a cakewalk.

Ubquitous Tyranny

Earthside Comments: First, read the news report that summarizes this story. But then make sure and read Michael Righi's own account of what happened to him.

This episode is yet another example of how a creeping corporate and political tyranny is taking over life in the United States. It is an example of how an infringement on liberty and individual dignity -- taken in isolation -- may seem reasonable, but when put together with the many erosions of our civil rights has led us into tyranny. These days violations of our personal liberties are everywhere, they are ubquitous ... and we have become accustomed to going along because we are told that it is necessary in a "post 9/11" world.

But the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written to protect us no matter what the particular exigencies of the times; our individual liberties are guaranteed as the very foundation of the Republic. No central government and no control-obsessed corporation is supposed to be allowed in the United States to transgress upon basic freedoms.

The cynical in Bush's America may say that Michael Righi is making much ado about a minor injustice. But it is important to recollect what the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, said:

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

What might seem trivial ... might also be the place where freedom is renewed. After all it was just a simple, tired woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus ... who ignited the civil rights movement in the 1950s.

It is time to take our country and our liberties back from the corporate and government totalitarians.

Link: Circuit City Shopper Cuffed for Refusing to Show Receipt | Switched.com

If you shop with any frequency at giant chain stores such as Circuit City, Best Buy, Home Depot or even Bed, Bath & Beyond, you've probably grown accustomed to showing a security person your receipt and allowing him to inspect the contents of your bag as you leave the store.

For most of us, this inspection is routine and nothing more than a nuisance. But, have you ever stopped to wonder if this is even legal, or that this search of your bags is essentially an accusation of theft? Well, this past weekend, an Ohio man decided to refuse the search of his bag at an area Circuit City and soon found himself behind bars.

Though he tells the story in much more detail on his own blog, here's a synopsis of what happened to Michael Righi of Brooklyn, Ohio. This past Saturday afternoon, he dropped into Circuit City and bought a surge protector and a copy of Disney's 'Cars' video game for the Ninetendo Wii. When Righi was told by the door person that his bag needed to be inspected and compared to his receipt, Righi refused with a polite "No thank you" and kept walking outside, where his father was waiting behind the driver's seat of his car. The security person and manager ran out of the store and blocked the car's exit from the parking lot. When neither could tell Righi which U.S. law gave them the right to search his bag, Righi asked to be let go or he would call the police himself. They refused and Righi called the police. When the officer showed up, he inspected the bag and saw nothing had been stolen. He also asked Righi for his driver's license. Since Righi was not driving his father's car, he refused to give up his driver's license, but was happy to give his name and address at the officer's request. Not amused, the officer arrested Righi and booked him for 'Obstructing Official Business.'

Righi is now fighting the charges. He plans to involve the ACLU and is even taking donations on his site to help fund his defense. You need to read Righi's full account of the events before you come to any conclusions, but we think it's fair to say that he definitely stirred the pot. Sure, this bag search is definitely an invasion of privacy, and now that we think about it, it really is kind of like accusing us loyal customers of theft. The police officer may or may not have had the right to request Righi's license, but once you refuse an order from a police officer you kind of have to expect you'll end up in the clink – right or wrong. It'll be interesting to see what comes of this case.

Link: Papers Please: Arrested At Circuit City | Michael Righi.com

... I understand that my day would have gone a lot smoother if I had agreed to let loss prevention inspect my bag. I understand that my day would have gone a lot smoother if I had agreed to hand over my driver’s license when asked by Officer Arroyo. However, I am not interested in living my life smoothly. I am interested in living my life on strong principles and standing up for my rights as a consumer, a U.S. citizen and a human being. Allowing stores to inspect our bags at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates an atmosphere of obedience which is a dangerous thing. Allowing police officers to see our papers at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates a fear-of-authority atmosphere which can be all too easily abused. ... Read the Whole Story