Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Police assault 12-year-old girl after mistaking her for a prostitute
Raw Story
Saturday, Dec 20, 2008
A girl’s family has filed a lawsuit against Galveston police for their assault on their 12-year-old daughter after mistaking her for a prostitute.
As the girl, Dymond Milburn, walked in her front yard, three men jumped out of a van and beat her about the face and throat, one of them telling her, “You’re a prostitute. You’re coming with me.”
Police attacked Milburn despite the fact that she didn’t fit the racial description of their suspects: three white prostitutes and a black drug dealer.
Three weeks after Milburn was hospitalized for her injuries, police went to her school and arrested her for assaulting an officer during the incident.
The incident occurred two years ago, and since then, Milburn has suffered behavioral problems, nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The lawsuit against the officers also alleges that the men thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker because of the “tight shorts” she was wearing. Police have not yet apologized for the incident.
The case has gone to trial, but the judge declared a mistrial the first day and a new trial is set for February.
“I think we’ll be okay,” said Anthony Griffin, Milburn’s attorney. “I don’t think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who’s just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she’s a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She’s scared to death.”
The officers’ lawyer, William Helfand, said Milburn’s father had also been arrested for attacking the officers after his daughter called for him when the police attacked her. Helfand said both would face consequences for their actions.
“It’s unfortunate that sometimes police officers have to use force against people who are using force against them. And the evidence will show that both these folks violated the law and forcefully resisted arrest,” Helfand said.
One blogger defended the story from accusations that it was a hoax because it has not been picked up by the national media and many of the facts come from the Milburn’s attorney.
But the blogger points out that neither the Galveston police department nor the Galveston district attorney’s office have responded to inquiries about the case.
As for the mainstream press, he asks. “Why don’t 90 percent of the abuses of power we look at on this site get covered by the national media?”
Obama & Biden To Protect Bush Administration Criminals
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 22, 2008
It’s par for the course for Obama and Biden, the men who promised “change” but in every step of their preparations for assuming office have pursued nothing but continuity, to acknowledge that they will protect criminals in the Bush administration from prosecution for authorizing torture, a complete violation of both the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions.
When asked by ABC host George Stephanopoulos if top level Bush administration officials would be prosecuted for mandating prisoner abuse, Biden said that he and Obama would be “focusing on the future,” adding “I think we should be looking forward, not backwards.”
Such rhetoric goes to the very heart of the gigantic con job the “Obama change” hoax has wrought upon millions of befuddled Americans who naively presumed that voting for the lesser of two evils would result in anything other than more evil.
Perhaps Göring, Ribbentrop and the rest of the Nazis prosecuted at Nuremberg for their war crimes were following the wrong line of defense when they claimed they were merely “following orders,” they should have just proclaimed that the world should be “looking forward not backwards” and according to the Biden/Obama view of justice, they would have got off scot free.
Likewise, pedophiles and rapists who abuse children and women in ways not far removed from what was approved at Abu Ghraib should merely tell police that since the abuse and rape occurred in the past, everybody should just move on, “looking forwards not backwards”.
Obama and Biden, with their de-facto pardons of the Bush administration torture masters, are ensuring that what happened at places like Abu Ghraib, including beating people to death, raping people with acid covered batons and sexual abuse of children, will continue to happen in future without consequence.
Of course, those that protect war criminals from prosecution should be treated no better than the war criminals themselves, and when real “change” comes to America, Obama and Biden will face the same justice as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Police: Boy Evaluated Before Weekend Detention
By Jodi Brooks
Denver police said a 10-year-old boy with bi-polar disorder was evaluated by a third-party youth services agency last Friday before he was detained over the weekend for allegedly assaulting an officer during a violent outburst.
The independent agency called Paramount Youth Services did an assessment according to police. It consisted of 25 questions.
Officials at Centennial Elementary School called police and emergency medical technicians on Friday when Vinni Barros was disrupting his special needs class.
Barros became violent at school and the chain of events that followed landed him in juvenile detention for three days after being arrested for felony assault of a police officer.
His mother, Shantelle Fry, was stunned.
"He doesn't understand why he was put in that situation," Fry said.
According to a letter written by a teacher's aide, Barros had been running around, screaming and knocking things off the desk.
"He picked up a metal bat, put it on his shoulder and smiled at me," she wrote.
He put the bat down and eventually calmed down.
Fry questions the school's decision not to give the boy his emergency medication.
"He completely calms out on that medication," Fry said. "It's meant to drop his blood pressure low enough that he calms out."
But it may not have been such an easy call. Bi-polar disorder is complicated and school nurses typically don't have the expertise to give out strong behavioral changing medication in the context of an emergency.
"We have to make sure that we have a viable physician's order or primary care provider order, as well as parental consent," said Donna Shocks, Denver Public Schools Manager of Nursing Services.
Faced with a clear safety issue, DPS says its staff followed all of its protocols.
"We had a student that the staff at that particular school needed support. They did call safety and security from the district, we did have a registered nurse on scene as well as a police department EMT that responded to that incident," said Alex Sanchez, DPS Spokesperson.
During the encounter, Barros allegedly kicked and spit at a police officer. That's why he was taken into juvenile detention in handcuffs and charged with a felony.
"That's policy, it's protocol," said police spokesman Sonny Jackson. "If you're going to arrest somebody, you're going to handcuff them.
"Should the child go to jail? Should the child go to the hospital? Should he be released to his parents? That's done by people who are trained professionals that make those decisions."
The district attorney's office says charges against Barros will not be filed.
"We had a Chief Deputy District Attorney look at the case facts, review the investigative file, and she made a decision to decline any formal criminal charge," said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the DA's office.
He will have to show up for his court date Friday when the case is expected to be dismissed.
Fry kept Barros out of school this week. She's not sure what to do next week.
The DA's office said it is unusual to have criminal cases against 10-year-olds. Ten is the minimum age a person has to be in Colorado to face a criminal charge.
(© MMVIII CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
That Was No Small War in Georgia -- It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire
By Mark Ames, Radar. Posted December 13, 2008.
The war in Georgia will be remembered as the place where the American Empire fell on its face.
(This article was published in the final issue of Radar magazine, which was bought out and shuttered just as this issue went to print. This is the first online publication of this article. It has been updated by the author.)
Tskhinvali, South Ossetia -- On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot marks the furthest point of the Georgian army's advance before it was summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. "Twelve Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks, armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters," he says, happily waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us. "You see how well they fought, with all their great American training -- they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled."
Konashenko pulls a green compass out of his shirt pocket and opens it. It's a U.S. military model. "This is a little trophy -- a gift from one of my soldiers," he says. "Everything that the Georgians left behind, I mean everything, was American. All the guns, grenades, uniforms, boots, food rations -- they just left it all. Our boys stuffed themselves on the food," he adds slyly. "It was tasty." The booty, according to Konashenko, also included 65 intact tanks outfitted with the latest NATO and American (as well as Israeli) technology.
Technically, we are standing within the borders of Georgia, which over the last five years has gone from being an ally to the United States to a neocon proxy regime. But there are no Georgians to be seen in this breakaway region -- not unless you count the bloated corpses still lying in the dirt roads. Most of the 70,000 or so people who live in South Ossetia never liked the idea of being part of Georgia. During the violent land scramble that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetians found themselves cut off from their ethnic kin in North Ossetia, which remained part of Russia. The Russians, who've had a small peacekeeping force here since 1992, managed to keep the brewing conflicts on ice for the last 15 years. But in the meantime, the positions of everyone involved hardened. The Georgians weren't happy about the idea of losing a big chunk of territory. The Ossetians, an ethnic Persian tribe, were more adamant than ever about joining Russia, their traditional ally and protector.
The tense but relatively stable situation blew up late in the evening of August 7, when on the order of president Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's army swept into South Ossetia, leveling much of Tskhinvali and surrounding villages and sending some 30,000 refugees fleeing north into Russia. Within hours, Russia's de facto czar Vladimir Putin counterattacked -- some say he'd set a trap -- and by the end of that long weekend the Georgians were in panicked retreat. The Russian army then pushed straight through South Ossetia and deep into Georgia proper, halting less than an hour's drive from Saakashvili's luxurious palace. All around me is evidence of a rout. A Georgian T-72 tank turret is wedged into the side of a local university building, projecting from the concrete like a cookie pressed into ice cream. Fifty yards away you can see the remains of the vehicle that the orphaned turret originally was part of: just a few charred parts around a hole in the street, and a section of tread lying flat on the sidewalk. Russian tanks now patrol the city unopposed, each one as loud as an Einstrzende Neubauten concert, clouding the air with leaded exhaust as they rumble past us.
But listening to Colonel Konashenko, it becomes clear to me that I'm looking at more than just the smoldering remains of battle in an obscure regional war: This spot is ground zero for an epic historical shift. The dead tanks are American-upgraded, as are the spent 40mm grenade shells that one spetznaz soldier shows me. The bloated bodies on the ground are American-trained Georgian soldiers who have been stripped of their American-issue uniforms. And yet, there is no American cavalry on the way. For years now, everyone from Pat Buchanan to hybrid-powered hippies have been warning that America would suddenly find itself on a historical downslope from having been too reckless, too profligate, and too arrogant as an unopposed superpower. Even decent patriotic folk were starting to worry that America was suffering from a classic case of Celebrity Personality Disorder, becoming a nation of Tom Cruise party-dicks dancing in our socks over every corner and every culture in the world, lip-synching about freedom as we plunged headfirst into as much risky business as we could mismanage. And now, bleeding money from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're a sick giant hooked on ever-pricier doses of oil paid for with a currency few people want anymore. In the history books of the future, I would wager that this very spot in Tskhinvali will be remembered as both the geographic highwater mark of the American empire, and the place where it all started to fall apart.
I first visited Georgia in 2002 to cover the arrival of American military advisers. At the time, the American empire was riding high. A decade after the Soviet Union's collapse, Russia seemed to be devolving into an anarchic and corrupt failed state, while the U.S. just kept getting stronger. Within months of President George W. Bush's swearing-in, Time ran a column boasting that America didn't need to accommodate Russia anymore because it had become "the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome." That same year we invaded Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. The New York Times magazine proclaimed: "The American Empire: Get Used to It." A new word, hyperpower, was being used to describe our history-warping supremacy.
The military advisers were dispatched to Georgia ostensibly to train that country's forces to fight local Al Qaeda cells, which everyone knew didn't exist. In reality, we were training them for key imperial outsourcing duties. Georgia would do for the American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost. They became a flagship franchise of America Inc. It made sense for the Georgians, too: Their erratic and occasionally violent neighbor Russia wouldn't fuck with them, because fucking with them would be fucking with us -- and nobody would dare to do that.
The imperial masterminds who fixated on Georgia as an outsourcing project must have figured we'd score a two-fer by simultaneously winning strategic control of the untapped oil in the region and also managing to stick a giant bug up the raw southern rim of our decrepit old rival Russia.
To enact this plan, America deftly organized and orchestrated the so-called Rose Revolution, which I witnessed in Tblisi in 2003. Saakkashvili's predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was judged unreliable, so in a multilayered soft putsch that used every lever of influence at our disposal, the U.S. replaced him with Saakashvili, a Columbia-educated hothead who speaks perfect neocon. In the Western media, the Rose Revolution was portrayed as 1776 redux (starring Saakashvili as George Washington with a permanent five o'clock shadow). A more perfect vassal for George W. Bush's foreign policy could not have been found than "Misha," as he is fondly known. He stacked his cabinet with young right-wing fanatics, and made sure he had a coterie of mountain-biking American advisers with him at all times. This crew included John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, whom Misha paid more than $1 million in lobbying fees.
This project in Georgia was just a high-profile example of a broader Bush strategy. All around Russia's southern border, America laid claim to former Soviet domains. After 9/11, Putin infuriated many of his army commanders and security chiefs by agreeing to let the U.S. set up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the Afghan invasion. Once the Taliban was removed from power, America decided that it felt like staying. After all, who was going stop us? Given the sorry state of their affairs, the Russians certainly weren't. So by 2002, Putin was stuck with American pie dripping down his cadaverous bloodless face. But after years in which Russia rebuilt itself on the back of soaring commodity prices (today it's the world's largest producer of oil), our advantages in global power politics have started to tilt Putin's way. Slowly and quietly he got American forces thrown out of Uzbekistan and all but sidelined in Kyrgyzstan. And then, here in Georgia, he seized the opportunity to really hammer home his point.
During my visit to Georgia in 2003, if someone had told me that in five years American military advisers would be hightailing it from their main base in Vasiani to avoid getting slaughtered by advancing Russian forces, I would have slapped him with a rubber chicken for insulting my intelligence. Yet there they were: gasping for air in the lobby of the Tblisi Sheraton, insisting off the record that the conflict was all the Georgians' fault, not theirs.
Why Misha decided to attack is still a mystery. He claims he was forced to level Tskhinvali to preempt a Russian invasion, but that doesn't make military sense, and has since been debunked by both Georgians and OSCE monitors on the ground; others believe that he struck because, with Bush on his way out, he thought this would be his last chance to regain control of South Ossetia. Another theory popular among journalists and pundits is that the notoriously "hotheaded" (some would say "mentally unstable") Saakashvili was suckered into his doomed invasion by a clever Russian ruse, part of Putin's plan to punish the West for recognizing Kosovo and other crimes of imperial insensitivity. Personally, I'd vote for number two. (Putin has offered an alternative hypothesis: that Misha intentionally sparked a war in order to boost John McCain's prospects in the U.S. election.) Prior to the offensive of August 7, Georgians cut off Russian television and Internet sites in South Ossetia, then rained Grad rockets and artillery on the capital and surrounding villages. The early-hours blitz was, as one Ossetian told me the day before, "shock and awe." At least half the population fled into Russia. People I spoke to in the refugee camps, mostly women, were still in a daze -- they told of fleeing their burning villages under fire, of Georgians raping and murdering, of grenades thrown into civilian bomb shelters, of tanks running over children. (It was impossible to corroborate these individual stories, as is generally the case in trying to sift fact from inflamed rumor in refugee camps.)
Reliable casualty counts for the broader conflict are still all but impossible to get, but as of late August the Russians admit having lost 64 soldiers, and the Georgians a combined 215 soldiers and civilians. In both cases, the real number is probably much higher. On the civilian front, Ossetian sources claim that 1,500 were killed in the Georgian assault -- Putin called it a "genocide" -- but many Westerners dismiss that figure.
Privately, however, American advisers and defeated Georgian commanders admit to "total defeat." Indeed, Arkady Ostrovsky of the Economist, a British reporter who has long been close to Saakashvili, told me that on the day of the cease-fire, the Georgian leader spoke of shooting himself, and was only dissuaded when word came of a supportive statement by Condi Rice. "It was sad to watch," Ostrovsky told me. "I should have been more critical of Saakashvili back when it might have counted. A lot of us should have."
That's exactly the kind of full-spectrum smackdown the Russians were aiming for. And Konashenko wants us all to see it, so he offers to take me and some other reporters to the city of Gori in occupied Georgia. Russia seized control of the city at the end of hostilities, essentially cutting its foe in two and leaving it exposed to Vladimir Putin's whims. "We'll show you Gori -- the city is spotless," Konashenko says cheerfully. "We could have destroyed it, but we didn't. Of course, there's a little bit of damage here and there."
The next morning, I head toward Georgia in the back of a Russian army truck, winding through the countryside of South Ossetia. Many villages have been burned and completely leveled. In the minority ethnic- Georgian communities, the sour odor of death hangs in the air, as those who survived the Ossetians' reprisal attacks had little time to bury their dead friends and relatives.
When we arrive in Gori, the locals seem unnerved by our presence. They shy away as aggressive reporters point cameras and pursue them along the cobblestone streets for a quote. At first, some say that they are grateful that the Russian forces are there to protect them from marauding Ossetian and Chechen irregulars, who had swept through parts of Georgia murdering civilians and looting homes before the Russians arrived. After a half hour, the Georgians we talk with get used to our presence. A few summon the nerve to quietly pull me aside and whisper things like, "Are the Russians ever going to leave?" and "We don't have any information here. Is this going to be Russian territory forever?"
In Gori's vast central square there is shattered glass on the sidewalks, but as Konashenko promised, the city is largely intact. It is also starkly empty, as if a virus or neutron bomb had wiped out the civilian population. Most of the city's inhabitants have long since fled to Tblisi, along with the soldiers.
As we hop out of the army trucks, one of the Russian commanders points to a limp banner flying at half-mast over the polished-granite administration building on the far side of the square, "You see?" he says. "The Georgian flag is still flying. This is Georgian territory -- we're not annexing it like the media says." This kind of boast, conquering a country and then making a big noble show of respecting its sovereignty, was something that had once been reserved for America's forces. How quickly history has turned here.
The other Western journalists fan out for some atrocity hunting, digging for signs that the Russians might have dropped a cluster bomb or massacred civilians. The foreign-desk editors back home have been demanding proof of Russian evil, after largely ignoring Georgia's war crimes in South Ossetia. It's a sordid business, but the reporters are just following orders.
After an hour in the 90-degree heat, I head over to the city's central square, where I stumble across a stunning spectacle: dozens of Russian soldiers doing a funky-chicken victory dance in the Georgian end zone. They're clowning around euphorically, shooting souvenir photos of each other in front of the administration building and the statue of Stalin (Gori's most famous native son) while their commanders lean back and laugh. I approach Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Bobrun, assistant commander of the Russian land forces' North Caucasus Military District -- the roughest neighborhood in Western Eurasia -- and ask him how he feels now, as a victorious military leader in a proxy war with America.
"I have never been so proud of Russia -- magnificent Russia!" Bobrun crows, an AK strapped over his shoulder. "For twenty years we just talked and talked, blabbed and blabbed, complained and complained. But we did nothing, while America ran wild and took everything it could. Twenty years of empty talk. Now Russia is back. And you see how great Russia is. Look around you -- we're not trying to annex this land. What the fuck do I need Georgia for? Russia could keep this, but what for? Hell, we could conquer the whole world if we wanted to. That's a fact. It was Russia that saved Europe from Genghis Khan. Russia could have taken India and the Middle East. We could take anything -- we took Alaska, we took California. There is nothing that Russia could not take, and now the world is being reminded again."
"Why did you give California back?" I asked. It has always baffled me why a country would abandon prime coastal real estate for the frozen swamps of Siberia -- I always assumed it was because the Russians were ashamed when they found themselves holding onto a chunk of this planet as perfect as California: like B-list nerds who successfully crash a Vanity Fair Oscar party, but within minutes of their little triumph, skulk out of the tent out of sheer embarrassment, knowing they never belonged there in the first place.
"We gave it all back because we don't need it," Borisov boasted, puffing out his chest. "Russia has enough land, what the hell do we need more for. But if others want to start something, this is what will happen. Russia is back, and I am so proud."
As the day wore on, the Kremlin press pool organizers finally rounded us up, and we headed back again along the same victory trail. It was on this second visit to ruins of Tskhinvali, as dusk approached and the violence seemed to already acquire a kind of abstract tone, that I started to realize that I was looking at something much bigger than the current debate about Russian aggression or who was more guilty of what -- pulling the camera much farther back on this scene, I understood that I was looking at the first ruins of America's imperial decline. It's not an easy thing to spot. It took years after the real collapse for Russians to finally accept that awful reality, and to adjust accordingly, first by retrenching, not overplaying an empty hand, slowly building up without making any loud noises while America ran wild around the world bankrupting itself and bleeding dry.
And now it's over for us. That's clear on the ground. But it will be years before America's political elite even begins to grasp this fact. In the meantime, Russia is drunk on its victory and the possibilities that it might imply, sending its recently-independent neighbors into a kind of frenzied animal panic. Experience has taught them that it's moments like these when Russia's near abroad becomes, once again, a blood-soaked doormat in the violent epochal shifts -- history never stopped here, it just froze up for a decade or so. And now it's thawing, bringing with it the familiar stench of bloated bodies, burned rubble, and the sour sweat of Russian infantry.
We have entered a dangerous moment in history -- America in decline is reacting hysterically, woofing and screeching and throwing a tantrum, desperate to prove that it still has teeth. Which it does -- but not in the old dominant way that America wants or believes itself to be. History shows that it's at this moment, tipping into decline and humiliation, when the worst decisions are made, so idiotically destructive that they'll make the Iraq campaign look like a mere training exercise fender-bender by comparison.
Russia, meanwhile, is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory. Putting the two together in the same room -- speedballing Russia and violently bad-tripping America -- is a recipe for serious disaster. If we're lucky, we'll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world. But when that awful moment arrives where the cognitive dissonance snaps hard, it will be an epic struggle to come to our senses in time to prevent the William Kristols, Max Boots and Robert Kagans from leading us into a nuclear holocaust which, they will assure us, we can win against Russia, thanks to our technological superiority. If only we have the will, they'll tell us, we can win once and for all.
Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.
© 2008 Radar All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/112457/
Friday, December 19, 2008
WHAT HAPPENED TO FREEDOM?
(Mumia Abu-Jamal's son)
12/08
“Known worldwide as an almost mythical birthplace of liberty, the hope and freedom acted as a kind of psychic magnet, drawing the poor and oppressed from the class-bound aristocracies of Europe in rivers of emigration as well as Black captives escaping from southern bondage and Black freedmen and women fleeing a humiliating and soul-sapping southern apartheid. The Philadelphia that the stalwart Frederick Douglass beheld with snarled contempt would more than double in size in half a century rising from 650,000 people in 1860 to 1.5 million by 1914.”
-“A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. Quoted from “We Want Freedom” by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Firstly, I would like to take this time to request a moment of silence for all of our fallen heroes and sheroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom against the oppression of this wicked injustice system among innocent people.
I humbly would like to thank each and every one of you who came out in support of this year’s Class-War Prisoners event. Your solidarity is greatly respected. I give the greeting in many tongues to everyone in attendance by saying As-Salaam-Alaikum, Hotep, Ona MOVE, and Greetings to the masses who sacrificed their time to attend this important event. You have been chosen to become informed, abreast and intuned with a constant struggle that connects us all. I thank the Partisan Defense Committee for their massive support and love over the years throughout this atrocious ordeal. I stand in total solidarity with the labor force and with all people who take a stand against injustice and oppression.
I want you all to know that I have been constantly pushing for liberation quite vigorously and many of you inspire me to push harder and remember the words of a great freedom fighter Sis. Harriet Tubman who said, “I started with this idea in my head. There’s two things I have a right to: Death or Liberty.” (Quoted from the book “We Want Freedom” by Mumia Abu-Jamal).
From the beginning, as many of you know all too well, we are fighting for Mumia Abu-Jamal to be exonerated to freedom. We the people here today and abroad will not compromise in the liberation and freedom of him from behind enemy lines. The supporters constantly expressed this urgent message: FREEDOM OVER A NEW TRIAL!
So many times we have witnessed the vile injustice orchestrated in those so-called rooms of justice (AKA the courtrooms). Too many have been unjustly persecuted and railroaded either because of the color of their skin, a poor person or even a combination of both. God forbid they publicly oppose this outright oppression! They will be prosecuted, ridiculed and even have their character defamed to a demoralized state by this mendacious legal system.
By you being here today either to support this movement or join it for the first time, you are showing your awareness and solidarity to expose and demolish the unsavory racist courts the police state and racist Death Penalty Act that feeds off the working poor. We must collaborate and fight to achieve the one goal to free Mumia and all of our freedom fighters including myself from behind enemy lines.
The senseless murders at the hands of these racist rogue law enforcement officers nationwide are robbing the lives of our youth, women and men to feed their taste for blood like vampires. We cannot allow these injustices to go unchecked and accept their lies thereby causing their behavior to be justified.
The Courts from the lower level to the Supreme Court wants to act as if they cannot see that Mumia Abu Jamal is innocent. All of the evidence is clear and convincing and it is either overlook or dismissed by these rogue courts. However, when a rogue police officer opens fire on innocent working class people and immigrants, somehow they get swift justice and are freed of all charges.
As a man who didn’t think twice to become the voice of the voiceless, Mumia stepped up to the plate to expose this demonic system. A system that was and still continues to enforce intense oppression on African Americans throughout this nation by murderous police officers who hide their venomous ways behind their shields. It then allows them to freely practice corruption, extortion and murder among other unpleasantries. A prime example of this is what happened on Osage Avenue on May 13th, 1985 where 11 MOVE members were brutally murdered by this murderous government. Another example is the attempted assassination of my dear father Mumia on December 9th, 1981 in downtown Philly when these rogue police officers not only shot him, but beat him even while inside the emergency room of Jefferson University Hospital. WHAT HAPPENED TO FREEDOM?
Comrades, the only way we will get freedom for our political prisoners who are suffering in the prison hells of this country is to come together becoming a solid force for the poor and working class. We must reach one to teach one and educate the masses on the political history of America’s oppression.
Many of you assisted in change history in America by voting for the first African-American President showing the world that anything is possible in America. As that was an accomplishment, so should the goal of galvanizing the people and educate them on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and too many more being railroaded by a mendacious legal system.
Comrades, we all know that these are trying times. We must step up to the plate and push harder until my dear father Mumia is ultimately free! At some point we need to get a grip and demand the freedom of this innocent man.
Lastly, I remind all of you as I remind myself everyday that we must not allow our adversaries to wag the tail of a dog and allow them to spoon-feed us with their deceiving lie that America does not have any political prisoners.
I am before you today in spirit to express to you that the only way Mumia will be free is for all of us to mobilize like never before and demand that freedom he and all of our freedom fighters so rightfully deserve. We must let them know that we will never give up! There is NO compromise!
FREE MUMIA NOW!!!
Jamal has been incarcerated since 1996. Please write to show a brother some love at the following address:
Jamal Hart #50597-066
FCI Loretto
P.O. Box 1000
Loretto, PA 15940-1000
Blame the Takers, Not the Makers
When multiple media outlets put out the same story line, these companies, seemingly separate, establish a media narrative that quickly congeals into an apparent popular opinion -- even when such views actually reflect a narrow slice of elite opinion.
We saw this at work in the now infamous run-up to the Iraq War, when almost all corporate news outlets united to cheerlead the war, based on lies.
More recently we've seen a profound political distaste for the auto companies, with a special vehemence for the United Auto Workers (UAW) who are portrayed as greedy, lazy 'ne'er-do-wells', who are paid far more than they're worth.
Rarely are executive compensations questioned, but men and women on the line are repeatedly pointed to, quite unfairly.
This is the psychological fruit of decades of wars on workers, which really comes from the turn of the last century, when law and corporate opinion criminalized unions as 'syndicalism.'
Through decades of bitter labor struggles, these laws were overturned, but business never really agreed to the core idea of workers' rights, and bided its time until a better season.
That season arrived with the election of Ronald Reagan, who, although he ran on the feel-good nationalism of "Morning in America", waged an old fashioned war against unions by breaking the Air Traffic Controllers -- literally putting them in chains to break their strike in 1981.
No matter which party won an election since then, they placated business and hit labor.
One need look no further than the Democrat, William J. Clinton, who fought for NAFTA, which, because it supported businesses when they went offshore in search of cheap labor, severely weakened union power across the board.
Isn't it ironic that media reflects such an anti-union bent when many corporate (at least newspaper employees) reporters are members of the Newspaper Guild?
But union membership isn't determinative; company ownership is. And media is often a small part of a much larger corporate conglomerate.
When the UAW was strong, it strengthened the hand of labor almost all across the board.
The UAW fought long and hard for the wages they've earned. They shouldn't be dogged for this.
They are the makers, not the takers.
The media narrative should be, why aren't all American workers paid a more decent wage?
That's the story that should be the lead on the front page.
--(c) '08 maj
A Secret Recession?
Now, we know.
Not only has it been officially confirmed that the U.S. economy is in a recession, but the nation has been in recession since December -- 2007!!
Is it just me, or have I seen sitting president, G.W. Bush say, repeatedly, that 'we're not in a recession?'
Is it possible that the man with a master's degree in business administration didn't know what a recession was?
Or is it simply that his aides didn't tell him?
Or is it that he didn't want to acknowledge it, as this would be but another stain on what can only be called his dysfunctional presidency?
With over a million jobs lost since the first three quarters of the year, the nation's biggest banks crumbling in hours, and with two wars being fought on a Chinese credit card, how could we not know? How could he not know?
Did the members of the administration handling finance keep it a secret from the President? Or did the presidency keep it secret from the People?
Now comes the report from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirming what millions knew by just looking out the window, or strolling in a mall.
Now, it's official.
If ever anyone wonders if they can trust their politicians, remember the recent assurances to millions -- "we're not in a recession", we're not in a recession...."
(Do you believe it yet?)
--(c) '08 maj
More Money for 'Masters': None For You
As the nation's economy seesaws between bubble and bust, people are becoming more and more aware of the obscene levels of disproportion between average workers and their CEO's. (Chief Executive Officers)
During congressional hearings where businessmen begged and politicians lectured, much was made of the costs of private jets used to carry them to Washington.
But this was actually a pittance when one considers the rarely discussed issue of executive compensation.
When we look at 12 of the world's most advanced economies, the U.S. is head and shoulders above all others in pay ratios between CEO's and average workers.
In 2006, the average CEO made 364 times more than the average worker. As amazing as this sounds, this was down substantially from 2000, when CEO's made525 times more than the average worker. In 2007, it was 344 times more than the average worker.
As crazy as this sounds it's normal when one considers the bubble that is the nation's boardrooms, where buddies look out for buddies, almost completely divorced from the company's performance.
The other reason such arrangements are rarely successfully challenged is that they are based on contracts signed between corporate boards and CEO's, and are often the terms upon which a CEO joins a firm.
Contracts are the bedrock of American business, and indeed, among the foundations of the U.S. Why so?
Read the Constitution. There it is: Article I; Section 9:
No State shall...pass any laws... impairing the Obligation of
Contracts.....
So what if the contract guarantees the CEO be paid $30 million bucks a year, and the company lost $200 million in revenues? Fire 25,000 workers! A contract is a contract, right?
That's the American way. At least that's the way pushed by big business in the last few decades. In 1980, the average CEO made 42 times more than the average worker. By 1990, it more than doubled to 107 times.
As the economy was falling like dominoes, Wall Street paid out $33 billion in executive bonuses just last year.
It's hard to resist the temptation that business is just a machine -- a money-making machine - to benefit the CEO, the board, their cronies, occasionally shareholders -- and last of all, employees.
It is precisely this machine that built the sub-prime problems, the foreclosure plague, and the present economic repercussions of the latest bursting bubble of wild speculative greed...while paying CEO's fortunes fit for kings.
--(c) '08 maj
[Source: Landy, Heather, "Executive Pay Sparks Outrage", The Washington Post (Nat'l Wkly. Ed.], Nov. 24-30, 2008, pp. 7-8; Maloney, Brenna and Todd Lindeman, "Behind the Big Paydays", The Washington Post, Nov. 24-30, 2008, {Nat'l. Wkly. Ed.} (graphic of pay ratios), p.7.]
False Freedom
There is a certain sense in the minds of millions in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, that we have reached the promised land.
The imagery and oratory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is invoked, to suggest that his Dream, as articulated in his epic "I Have a Dream" speech, has been realized.
There is a deep sense that freedom is here, as we all live in a 'post-racial America'.
Or do we?
To be sure, we are all on the brink of history, for this has never happened before.
But there was a time, quite a while ago, when similar feelings swept the nation, and especially Black hearts, that a new day was breaking, and the old ways had fallen away, when freedom was as real as rain.
I speak of the Reconstruction era, when the nation formally extended civil rights to millions of Black men (not to women, notably) and scores of Black people took office in state and federal legislatures, beginning a wave of progressive legislation to better the abominable living conditions of millions, Black and white alike.
But Reconstruction was short-lived, due to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the betrayal of Black freedmen by the federal government, and the campaign of white terrorists against Black people and Republicans, which converged to reassert white supremacy.
The Supreme Court also played a pivotal role in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), which, despite the clear language of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, supported states rights over federal constitutional rights, and thus signaled to the South that its denial of rights and segregation of Blacks wouldn't offend their reading of the Constitution.
The hopes, dreams and freedoms of millions were dashed for more than a century, so that the lie of white supremacy could prevail.
At the end of the Civil War, when slavery was formally abolished, Black people were so joyous that many changed their names to reflect this new-found freedom to define themselves. They organized their own churches. They opened schools and businesses. They ran for and won local and national offices. They sat on juries. And they married in droves.
Within a generation, all of these freedoms were washed away, by law, custom and a vicious reign of racist terrorism.
What this history revealed is freedom can be ephemeral.
It matters not what is written in constitutions, nor the rhetoric or promises of politicians. It matters what people fight for.
If history teaches us anything, it is that it matters what social movements struggle for.
-- (c) '08 maj
'Penny Wise -- Pound Foolish'
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into financial houses, banks and insurance companies , and the needle on the nation's economy has barely budged from "E".
Now the nation's big three auto companies are at the table in Congress, asking for their share. Not surprisingly, the banks have (despite political claims at the time) tightened, not loosened, credit, a fact that contributes to the once Big Three coming to Congress, for banks have declined to loan money to them!
The auto companies have echoed the banks' arguments, that they too are 'too big to fall', but they are finding a quite different audience than did the financial bigwigs.
That's because they occupy vastly different niches in the nation's political economy, as this new era reflects the transition from manufacturing to financial services as engines of capital production.
While the punditocracy has attacked the automakers for their workers' pay rates, few have been critical of the fees paid to those at the mid-ranks of the financial services industry, only the executives at the top.
That's in part because the political class identifies with, and serves, the financial services sector -- and quite a few come from that world (think of former senator -- and now New Jersey's Governor, John Corzine, for example). That's also because financial services have contributed generally to politicians (Think Enron and the presidential and gubernatorial career of George W. Bush, for example).
And while unions certainly contribute to political campaigns, few have come from the shop floor to the halls of Congress.
That explains the disparity of treatment for the two sectors.
The engines of America's economy aren't Detroit nor Wall Street; they are everyday people, who fuel the economy by their shipping, their use of services, and their wealth of daily business transactions.
Detroit is in trouble today, not because they pay their workers too well, but because their place in the domestic market is slipping annually. Until more people willingly purchase their products, their condition can only worsen.
Before the massive, whirlwind bailouts, the Bush administration tried a modest stimulus package for some Americans, to little effect. That stimulus was too modest, and too limited.
What if 1/2 the money spent on Wall St. went to average Americans?
If they'd spent it, it would've recharged the economy; it they had put it in banks, it would've strengthened bank holdings, making a freeze unlikely.
But the money went to Wall Street, where it sits, as frozen as a Christmas turkey.
The economy moves as a foundation of millions of people; when they can no longer participate it has nowhere to go, but down.
--(c) '08 maj
Somali Woes: The Perils of Intervention
On the coastal outcrops of East Africa, in an area known as 'the horn', Somalia sits like a sentinel jutting into both the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
Although Somalians have recently been in the Western press because of a half-dozen sensational cases of piracy, the nation has a long and distinct history, centuries before the era of European colonialism.
As long ago as the 1400's, Somalis fought border wars with their western neighbor, Ethiopia. But like many African nations, interference by the West has meant disaster for the people.
Somalia was colonized by the French, the Italians and later, the British, who split the country into separate territories. But throughout the colonization era, they kept their language (Somali), their culture, their history and sense of Somali nationhood.
In 2006, as part of the U.S. misguided 'War on Terror', the U.S. supported an Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somali, that transformed a bad situation into a worse one. The occupation stirred up Somali nationalism, which strengthened hard-core Islamist forces, which have spearheaded Somali resistance against the Ethiopians.
Now comes word that the Ethiopians are rushing for the exits. By January, 2009, they should be gone.
In the aftermath of this bloody unpopular occupation has grown a deeply radicalized and militarized generation of youth that has no lived memory of schools, of peace, or of communal well-being; only war and strife.
When the U.S. supports proxy wars against nations it doesn't like, it rarely reaps anything better than bitterness.
For the U.S., as one of the world's richest countries, can often afford such expenses, but it doesn't know the time or form of repayment.
Seven years ago, the U.S. experienced one form of repayment when an offshoot of the mujahadin army which forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan, growing stronger in men, money and material by the day.
If Sept. 11th has taught us anything, it should be that wars abroad can become strikes at home.
We've not heard the last of Somalia.
(c) '08 maj
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
That Was No Small War in Georgia -- It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire
Posted on December 13, 2008, Printed on December 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/112457/
(This article was published in the final issue of Radar magazine, which was bought out and shuttered just as this issue went to print. This is the first online publication of this article. It has been updated by the author.)
Tskhinvali, South Ossetia -- On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot marks the furthest point of the Georgian army's advance before it was summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. "Twelve Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks, armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters," he says, happily waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us. "You see how well they fought, with all their great American training -- they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled."Konashenko pulls a green compass out of his shirt pocket and opens it. It's a U.S. military model. "This is a little trophy -- a gift from one of my soldiers," he says. "Everything that the Georgians left behind, I mean everything, was American. All the guns, grenades, uniforms, boots, food rations -- they just left it all. Our boys stuffed themselves on the food," he adds slyly. "It was tasty." The booty, according to Konashenko, also included 65 intact tanks outfitted with the latest NATO and American (as well as Israeli) technology.
Technically, we are standing within the borders of Georgia, which over the last five years has gone from being an ally to the United States to a neocon proxy regime. But there are no Georgians to be seen in this breakaway region -- not unless you count the bloated corpses still lying in the dirt roads. Most of the 70,000 or so people who live in South Ossetia never liked the idea of being part of Georgia. During the violent land scramble that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South Ossetians found themselves cut off from their ethnic kin in North Ossetia, which remained part of Russia. The Russians, who've had a small peacekeeping force here since 1992, managed to keep the brewing conflicts on ice for the last 15 years. But in the meantime, the positions of everyone involved hardened. The Georgians weren't happy about the idea of losing a big chunk of territory. The Ossetians, an ethnic Persian tribe, were more adamant than ever about joining Russia, their traditional ally and protector.
The tense but relatively stable situation blew up late in the evening of August 7, when on the order of president Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's army swept into South Ossetia, leveling much of Tskhinvali and surrounding villages and sending some 30,000 refugees fleeing north into Russia. Within hours, Russia's de facto czar Vladimir Putin counterattacked -- some say he'd set a trap -- and by the end of that long weekend the Georgians were in panicked retreat. The Russian army then pushed straight through South Ossetia and deep into Georgia proper, halting less than an hour's drive from Saakashvili's luxurious palace. All around me is evidence of a rout. A Georgian T-72 tank turret is wedged into the side of a local university building, projecting from the concrete like a cookie pressed into ice cream. Fifty yards away you can see the remains of the vehicle that the orphaned turret originally was part of: just a few charred parts around a hole in the street, and a section of tread lying flat on the sidewalk. Russian tanks now patrol the city unopposed, each one as loud as an Einstrzende Neubauten concert, clouding the air with leaded exhaust as they rumble past us.
But listening to Colonel Konashenko, it becomes clear to me that I'm looking at more than just the smoldering remains of battle in an obscure regional war: This spot is ground zero for an epic historical shift. The dead tanks are American-upgraded, as are the spent 40mm grenade shells that one spetznaz soldier shows me. The bloated bodies on the ground are American-trained Georgian soldiers who have been stripped of their American-issue uniforms.
And yet, there is no American cavalry on the way. For years now, everyone from Pat Buchanan to hybrid-powered hippies have been warning that America would suddenly find itself on a historical downslope from having been too reckless, too profligate, and too arrogant as an unopposed superpower. Even decent patriotic folk were starting to worry that America was suffering from a classic case of Celebrity Personality Disorder, becoming a nation of Tom Cruise party-dicks dancing in our socks over every corner and every culture in the world, lip-synching about freedom as we plunged headfirst into as much risky business as we could mismanage. And now, bleeding money from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're a sick giant hooked on ever-pricier doses of oil paid for with a currency few people want anymore. In the history books of the future, I would wager that this very spot in Tskhinvali will be remembered as both the geographic highwater mark of the American empire, and the place where it all started to fall apart.
I first visited Georgia in 2002 to cover the arrival of American military advisers. At the time, the American empire was riding high. A decade after the Soviet Union's collapse, Russia seemed to be devolving into an anarchic and corrupt failed state, while the U.S. just kept getting stronger. Within months of President George W. Bush's swearing-in, Time ran a column boasting that America didn't need to accommodate Russia anymore because it had become "the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome." That same year we invaded Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. The New York Times magazine proclaimed: "The American Empire: Get Used to It." A new word, hyperpower, was being used to describe our history-warping supremacy.
The military advisers were dispatched to Georgia ostensibly to train that country's forces to fight local Al Qaeda cells, which everyone knew didn't exist. In reality, we were training them for key imperial outsourcing duties. Georgia would do for the American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost. They became a flagship franchise of America Inc. It made sense for the Georgians, too: Their erratic and occasionally violent neighbor Russia wouldn't fuck with them, because fucking with them would be fucking with us -- and nobody would dare to do that.
The imperial masterminds who fixated on Georgia as an outsourcing project must have figured we'd score a two-fer by simultaneously winning strategic control of the untapped oil in the region and also managing to stick a giant bug up the raw southern rim of our decrepit old rival Russia.
To enact this plan, America deftly organized and orchestrated the so-called Rose Revolution, which I witnessed in Tblisi in 2003. Saakkashvili's predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was judged unreliable, so in a multilayered soft putsch that used every lever of influence at our disposal, the U.S. replaced him with Saakashvili, a Columbia-educated hothead who speaks perfect neocon. In the Western media, the Rose Revolution was portrayed as 1776 redux (starring Saakashvili as George Washington with a permanent five o'clock shadow). A more perfect vassal for George W. Bush's foreign policy could not have been found than "Misha," as he is fondly known. He stacked his cabinet with young right-wing fanatics, and made sure he had a coterie of mountain-biking American advisers with him at all times. This crew included John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, whom Misha paid more than $1 million in lobbying fees.
This project in Georgia was just a high-profile example of a broader Bush strategy. All around Russia's southern border, America laid claim to former Soviet domains. After 9/11, Putin infuriated many of his army commanders and security chiefs by agreeing to let the U.S. set up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the Afghan invasion. Once the Taliban was removed from power, America decided that it felt like staying. After all, who was going stop us? Given the sorry state of their affairs, the Russians certainly weren't. So by 2002, Putin was stuck with American pie dripping down his cadaverous bloodless face. But after years in which Russia rebuilt itself on the back of soaring commodity prices (today it's the world's largest producer of oil), our advantages in global power politics have started to tilt Putin's way. Slowly and quietly he got American forces thrown out of Uzbekistan and all but sidelined in Kyrgyzstan. And then, here in Georgia, he seized the opportunity to really hammer home his point.
During my visit to Georgia in 2003, if someone had told me that in five years American military advisers would be hightailing it from their main base in Vasiani to avoid getting slaughtered by advancing Russian forces, I would have slapped him with a rubber chicken for insulting my intelligence. Yet there they were: gasping for air in the lobby of the Tblisi Sheraton, insisting off the record that the conflict was all the Georgians' fault, not theirs.
Why Misha decided to attack is still a mystery. He claims he was forced to level Tskhinvali to preempt a Russian invasion, but that doesn't make military sense, and has since been debunked by both Georgians and OSCE monitors on the ground; others believe that he struck because, with Bush on his way out, he thought this would be his last chance to regain control of South Ossetia. Another theory popular among journalists and pundits is that the notoriously "hotheaded" (some would say "mentally unstable") Saakashvili was suckered into his doomed invasion by a clever Russian ruse, part of Putin's plan to punish the West for recognizing Kosovo and other crimes of imperial insensitivity. Personally, I'd vote for number two. (Putin has offered an alternative hypothesis: that Misha intentionally sparked a war in order to boost John McCain's prospects in the U.S. election.) Prior to the offensive of August 7, Georgians cut off Russian television and Internet sites in South Ossetia, then rained Grad rockets and artillery on the capital and surrounding villages. The early-hours blitz was, as one Ossetian told me the day before, "shock and awe." At least half the population fled into Russia. People I spoke to in the refugee camps, mostly women, were still in a daze -- they told of fleeing their burning villages under fire, of Georgians raping and murdering, of grenades thrown into civilian bomb shelters, of tanks running over children. (It was impossible to corroborate these individual stories, as is generally the case in trying to sift fact from inflamed rumor in refugee camps.)
Reliable casualty counts for the broader conflict are still all but impossible to get, but as of late August the Russians admit having lost 64 soldiers, and the Georgians a combined 215 soldiers and civilians. In both cases, the real number is probably much higher. On the civilian front, Ossetian sources claim that 1,500 were killed in the Georgian assault -- Putin called it a "genocide" -- but many Westerners dismiss that figure.
Privately, however, American advisers and defeated Georgian commanders admit to "total defeat."
Indeed, Arkady Ostrovsky of the Economist, a British reporter who has long been close to Saakashvili, told me that on the day of the cease-fire, the Georgian leader spoke of shooting himself, and was only dissuaded when word came of a supportive statement by Condi Rice. "It was sad to watch," Ostrovsky told me. "I should have been more critical of Saakashvili back when it might have counted. A lot of us should have."
That's exactly the kind of full-spectrum smackdown the Russians were aiming for. And Konashenko wants us all to see it, so he offers to take me and some other reporters to the city of Gori in occupied Georgia. Russia seized control of the city at the end of hostilities, essentially cutting its foe in two and leaving it exposed to Vladimir Putin's whims. "We'll show you Gori -- the city is spotless," Konashenko says cheerfully. "We could have destroyed it, but we didn't. Of course, there's a little bit of damage here and there".
The next morning, I head toward Georgia in the back of a Russian army truck, winding through the countryside of South Ossetia. Many villages have been burned and completely leveled. In the minority ethnic- Georgian communities, the sour odor of death hangs in the air, as those who survived the Ossetians' reprisal attacks had little time to bury their dead friends and relatives.
When we arrive in Gori, the locals seem unnerved by our presence. They shy away as aggressive reporters point cameras and pursue them along the cobblestone streets for a quote. At first, some say that they are grateful that the Russian forces are there to protect them from marauding Ossetian and Chechen irregulars, who had swept through parts of Georgia murdering civilians and looting homes before the Russians arrived. After a half hour, the Georgians we talk with get used to our presence. A few summon the nerve to quietly pull me aside and whisper things like, "Are the Russians ever going to leave?" and "We don't have any information here. Is this going to be Russian territory forever?"
In Gori's vast central square there is shattered glass on the sidewalks, but as Konashenko promised, the city is largely intact. It is also starkly empty, as if a virus or neutron bomb had wiped out the civilian population. Most of the city's inhabitants have long since fled to Tblisi, along with the soldiers.
As we hop out of the army trucks, one of the Russian commanders points to a limp banner flying at half-mast over the polished-granite administration building on the far side of the square, "You see?" he says. "The Georgian flag is still flying. This is Georgian territory -- we're not annexing it like the media says." This kind of boast, conquering a country and then making a big noble show of respecting its sovereignty, was something that had once been reserved for America's forces. How quickly history has turned here.
The other Western journalists fan out for some atrocity hunting, digging for signs that the Russians might have dropped a cluster bomb or massacred civilians. The foreign-desk editors back home have been demanding proof of Russian evil, after largely ignoring Georgia's war crimes in South Ossetia. It's a sordid business, but the reporters are just following orders.
After an hour in the 90-degree heat, I head over to the city's central square, where I stumble across a stunning spectacle: dozens of Russian soldiers doing a funky-chicken victory dance in the Georgian end zone. They're clowning around euphorically, shooting souvenir photos of each other in front of the administration building and the statue of Stalin (Gori's most famous native son) while their commanders lean back and laugh. I approach Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Bobrun, assistant commander of the Russian land forces' North Caucasus Military District -- the roughest neighborhood in Western Eurasia -- and ask him how he feels now, as a victorious military leader in a proxy war with America.
"I have never been so proud of Russia -- magnificent Russia!" Bobrun crows, an AK strapped over his shoulder. "For twenty years we just talked and talked, blabbed and blabbed, complained and complained. But we did nothing, while America ran wild and took everything it could. Twenty years of empty talk. Now Russia is back. And you see how great Russia is. Look around you -- we're not trying to annex this land. What the fuck do I need Georgia for? Russia could keep this, but what for? Hell, we could conquer the whole world if we wanted to. That's a fact. It was Russia that saved Europe from Genghis Khan. Russia could have taken India and the Middle East. We could take anything -- we took Alaska, we took California. There is nothing that Russia could not take, and now the world is being reminded again."
"Why did you give California back?" I asked. It has always baffled me why a country would abandon prime coastal real estate for the frozen swamps of Siberia -- I always assumed it was because the Russians were ashamed when they found themselves holding onto a chunk of this planet as perfect as California: like B-list nerds who successfully crash a Vanity Fair Oscar party, but within minutes of their little triumph, skulk out of the tent out of sheer embarrassment, knowing they never belonged there in the first place.
"We gave it all back because we don't need it," Borisov boasted, puffing out his chest. "Russia has enough land, what the hell do we need more for. But if others want to start something, this is what will happen. Russia is back, and I am so proud."
As the day wore on, the Kremlin press pool organizers finally rounded us up, and we headed back again along the same victory trail. It was on this second visit to ruins of Tskhinvali, as dusk approached and the violence seemed to already acquire a kind of abstract tone, that I started to realize that I was looking at something much bigger than the current debate about Russian aggression or who was more guilty of what -- pulling the camera much farther back on this scene, I understood that I was looking at the first ruins of America's imperial decline. It's not an easy thing to spot. It took years after the real collapse for Russians to finally accept that awful reality, and to adjust accordingly, first by retrenching, not overplaying an empty hand, slowly building up without making any loud noises while America ran wild around the world bankrupting itself and bleeding dry.
And now it's over for us. That's clear on the ground. But it will be years before America's political elite even begins to grasp this fact. In the meantime, Russia is drunk on its victory and the possibilities that it might imply, sending its recently-independent neighbors into a kind of frenzied animal panic. Experience has taught them that it's moments like these when Russia's near abroad becomes, once again, a blood-soaked doormat in the violent epochal shifts -- history never stopped here, it just froze up for a decade or so. And now it's thawing, bringing with it the familiar stench of bloated bodies, burned rubble, and the sour sweat of Russian infantry.
We have entered a dangerous moment in history -- America in decline is reacting hysterically, woofing and screeching and throwing a tantrum, desperate to prove that it still has teeth. Which it does -- but not in the old dominant way that America wants or believes itself to be. History shows that it's at this moment, tipping into decline and humiliation, when the worst decisions are made, so idiotically destructive that they'll make the Iraq campaign look like a mere training exercise fender-bender by comparison.
Russia, meanwhile, is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory. Putting the two together in the same room -- speedballing Russia and violently bad-tripping America -- is a recipe for serious disaster. If we're lucky, we'll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world. But when that awful moment arrives where the cognitive dissonance snaps hard, it will be an epic struggle to come to our senses in time to prevent the William Kristols, Max Boots and Robert Kagans from leading us into a nuclear holocaust which, they will assure us, we can win against Russia, thanks to our technological superiority. If only we have the will, they'll tell us, we can win once and for all.
Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.
© 2008 Radar All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/112457/
Study: U.S. Media Keep People Uneducated About Health Issues
By Sarah Seltzer , RH Reality Check
Posted on December 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/113065/
"Blaming the media" is a catchphrase that is used in almost cliché-level proportions. But when it comes to health care, a new study indicates it may be appropriate to fault media coverage for a lack of public knowledge about health care policy -- and by extension, the false perception of reproductive rights as ideological "hot rods" rather than women's health concerns.
A recently released Pew Research study conducted with the Kaiser Family Foundation monitored health coverage from January 2007 to June 2008 to determine which subjects got the most coverage, and in which media. The study was designed to be particularly broad-ranging -- rather than, for instance, analyzing how TV news covers breast cancer, the study looked at how television, radio, print, online outlets and other forms of media covered everything heath-related, from specific diseases to health policy and more.
What were the results? According to the report, "News about health occupies a relatively small amount of American news coverage across all platforms: 3.6 percent of news during 2007 and the first half of 2008." In a list of most frequently covered topics, health came in eighth -- far above religion, education and celebrities, but below the economy, crime, foreign affairs and politics.
These results, while hardly thrilling, don't seem abysmal at first. Health gets more coverage than celebrities, after all, which seems like a victory in our current climate. But compounding the small amount of attention devoted to health, the breakdown within existing health coverage shows a tendency to focus on controversial or sensational aspects of health issues, leaving vital policy information behind. One need only to think about the extreme health stories on the nightly news (Are your pills contaminated? Are your children at risk from a rare strain of X?) to understand the crux of the problem. Why focus on the actual public ramifications of various diseases and policies when Jenny McCarthy and Amanda Peet are going at it over autism? Or we can lure people in front of the TV by frightening them?
This is a situation only too familiar to reproductive-health advocates, who often see the public health crises caused by lack of reproductive health care submerged beneath the kind of pitched battles or titillating stories the media loves.
Within the small percentage of health news, outlets focused 41.7 percent on specific diseases, the kind of coverage that spikes somewhat when a celebrity like Elizabeth Edwards, Tony Snow or Tim Russert has cancer or a heart attack. Public health issues made up 30.9 percent of coverage, including stories like the tuberculosis-infected man-on-plane scandal, and reports on gossipy health problems like binge drinking.
Coming in third, actual health policy made up only 24.7 percent of general "health" coverage -- and this includes the political battles during the primaries and the congressional vote on the State Children's Health Insurance Pprogram. Considering that the American health care system is essentially broken, this is a dismal indicator: as the report notes, that means that health policy news made up less than 1 percent of media coverage during the time period. This is not to say that other aspects of health care coverage are unimportant (certainly, diseases and public health issues are probably not covered deeply enough), but instead that sensational and celebrity-oriented slants to health stories often obscure the practical health issues that affect media consumers' lives.
An example of this is the fact that HIV/AIDS stories made up only 2.2 percent of stories related to health, even though misinformation about the (still very much present) disease persists, and dissemination of accurate information is crucial to preventing its transmission.
Newsflash: Reproductive Health Issues Are Health Issues
The lack of coverage when it comes to HIV/AIDS is emblematic of a general failure when it comes to the portrayal of sexual health and reproductive rights in the news media.
In our scandal- and controversy-oriented news culture, reproductive health issues are treated as controversial flashpoints or political footballs rather than genuine public and personal health crises. Many media personalities and reporters caught on to fact that there is a connection between ideology and health during John McCain's infamous placing of "air quotes" around the word "women's health" during a debate -- but there has been little follow up on that connection.
One example of the way the discussion is turned away from health and toward "morality" is the firestorm over the Health and Human Services regulations that would allow providers to opt out of medical procedures they find objectionable.
In focusing on the consciences and internal struggles of health care providers, rather than the difficulty women have accessing proper care, the media does more damage than it possibly can be aware of.
Last month in Slate, Melinda Hennenberger offered an egregious example of this: She spun a piece about the Freedom of Choice Act, legislation that would expand women's access to reproductive care and abortion, into an assault on the moral consciences of Catholics. Presto -- a bill meant to protect women's health becomes an ideological war on the Catholic Church. A juicier story, but a misleading one.
RH Reality Check refuted Hennenberger's factual speculation and even her colleague Dahlia Lithwick reminded readers that women's health hangs in the balance, and often gets lost in the shuffle, when this question is debated.
An example of how to address reproductive health issues in a nonsensational, health-based manner is Rachel Maddow's recent interview with Melissa Harris Lacewell, which was also discussed on this site. The most remarkable thing about the interview was that rather than being framed as a left-right battle royal, the priority of women's health needs was acknowledged by both interviewer and interviewee and was the jumping off point for their discussion rather than the conclusion. They still managed to talk for a long time, and it was even interesting!
There is a market for sensible, factual health coverage because it affects people's lives. It's a wonder that so many arbiters of what's "news" have yet to discover that. Framing reproductive health issues from a public health perspective, and boosting coverage of health care policy, are absolutely crucial to changing the frame on reproductive rights back to what it's really about: women's access to the care they need.
© 2008 RH Reality Check All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/113065/
Proof The Planned Parenthood Is A Racist Organization
WorldNetDaily
Planned Parenthood: Wanting fewer blacks 'understandable'
Abortion provider says 'yes' when 'donor' wants to reduce minorities
By Bob Unruh
A student-run magazine at UCLA has revealed an undercover investigation in which representatives of Planned Parenthood, the nation's abortion industry leader, admitted willingness to accepting a financial donation targeting the destruction of an unborn black baby.
Lila Rose, who edits The Advocate, previously revealed how Planned Parenthood officials expressed a willingness to conceal statutory rape, an investigative piece that earned her an appearance on the Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor."
Now she's told WND she hopes the taped responses of Planned Parenthood officials in seven states reveal to her local UCLA community and the nation the racist leanings of the organization.
WND calls to Planned Parenthood of Idaho, which was featured in The Advocate report, requesting a comment were not returned.
"Students on campus are shocked and saddened that such a huge organization would have racist leanings in the present day," Rose told WND. "They are surprised to hear the truth about [Planned Parenthood founder] Margaret Sanger, and how the African-American community is being hurt by abortion.
"There's a lot of surprise out there. Planned Parenthood does an excellent job of covering up the facts," she said.
Sanger supported eugenics to cull those she considered unfit from the population. In 1921, she said eugenics is "the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems."
At one point, Sanger lamented "the ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all." Another time, Sanger wrote, "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."
According to Bryan Fisher, executive director of Idaho Values Alliance, Planned Parenthood, which gets an estimated $200 million annually from U.S. taxpayers, has located nearly 80 percent of its clinics nationwide in minority neighborhoods, and about one-third of all abortions are performed on blacks, even though they make up only 13 percent of the population.
Some of the information about the investigation was posted on a YouTube video: NOTE: Unfortunately, YouTube has removed the video. I tried to play it but, it was removed because of the normal YouTube "violation". Anyway, I'll look around and see if I can find it so it can be posted. Planned Parenthood was, is and always will be a racist organization dedicated to eugenics and genocide.
Nationwide, almost half of all black pregnancies end in abortion, officials said.
"It turns out that blatant racism is alive and well in Idaho, but it's not coming from the Aryan Nation types – it's coming from way-left organizations like Idaho's own Planned Parenthood," Fischer said. "If Idaho is in fact a haven for white racism, it turns out that Planned Parenthood and not Richard Butler is to blame."
Richard Butler, who died in 2004, was a notorious white supremacist who founded Aryan Nations in northern Idaho. He lost a 20-acre compound in 2000 when a $6.3 million civil judgment against his group led to a bankruptcy.
"Idaho didn't have room for Richard Butler and shouldn't have room for Planned Parenthood," Fischer said.
The Advocate released a transcript of a conversation between an actor presuming to be a racist and wanting to make a donation, and a woman identified as Autumn Kersey, vice president of marketing for Planned Parenthood of Idaho.
Actor: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group, would that be possible?
Planned Parenthood: Absolutely.
Actor: Like the black community for example?
Planned Parenthood: Certainly.
Actor: The abortion – I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?
Planned Parenthood: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.
Actor: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.
Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.
Actor: And we don't, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.
Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable.
Actor: Right. I want to protect my son, so he can get into college.
Planned Parenthood: All right. Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited, and want to make sure I don't leave anything out.
The investigation included calls to Planned Parenthood in Idaho and half a dozen other states
"I think Idahoans are going to be horrified and shocked at the blatant racism and bigotry exhibited by our local Planned Parenthood affiliate," said Fischer. "I just cannot imagine they're going to stand for that."
He said the timing of the release of the information was intriguing, because the Idaho Legislature is scheduled this week to have its first public hearing on a bill written to prevent Idaho women from being forced into having abortions they do not want.
Rose said students at UCLA now have begun a petition to request the school cut its affiliations with Planned Parenthood.
She said the actor specifically asked about lowering "the number of black people," and each PP branch called agreed to process the racially earmarked donation.
"None expressed concern about the racist reasoning for the donation," The Advocate said.
The Advocate said an Ohio representative, identified as Lisa Hutton, listens to the racist reasoning, but confirmed Planned Parenthood "will accept the money for whatever reason."
Rose said her UCLA campaign has been endorsed by Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, who said she supports "the student campaign to get UCLA to cease its programs with Planned Parenthood."
Another Planned Parenthood branch, in Kansas, is facing 107 misdemeanor and felonies charges for allegedly violating Kansas abortion law.
WND reported Rose previously posed as a 15-year-old seeking an abortion at a Planned Parenthood center in Santa Monica, Calif. She was equipped with a hidden camera when she met with an employee to discuss her options.
When Rose revealed she was 15 and her boyfriend was 23, the employee informed her Planned Parenthood was legally required to report the statutory rape, a transcript of the conversation shows.
The Planned Parenthood representative then suggested she could say she was 16 and avoid complications.
"Well, just figure out a birth date that works. And I don't know anything," the rep said.
The Texas-based pro-life group Life Dynamics previously conducted an extensive undercover project in which an adult volunteer posing as a 13-year-old called every Planned Parenthood clinic in the U.S., saying she was pregnant by a 22-year-old boyfriend. Almost without exception, the clinics advised her to obtain an abortion without her parents' knowledge and told her how to protect her boyfriend, who would be guilty in any state of statutory rape.
IMF Chief Warns Of Riots In Response To Economic Crisis
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that advanced nations will be hit by violent civil unrest if the elite continue to restructure the economy around their own interests while looting the taxpayer.
During a speech in Madrid, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that “social unrest may happen in many countries - including advanced economies” if governments failed to adequately respond to the financial crisis.
“He added that violent protests could break out in countries worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to benefit everyone rather than a small elite,” reports the Guardian.
Strauss-Kahn’s comments echo those of others who have cautioned that civil unrest could arise, specifically in the U.S., as a result of the wholesale looting of the taxpayer and the devaluation of the dollar.
Widely respected trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently told Fox News that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.
Back in October, Senator Chris Dodd said that revolution would unfold if banks refused to lend money.
“If it turns out that they are hoarding, you’ll have a revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There will be hell to pay,” Dodd told the New York Times.
Last month, leading economist Nouriel Roubini said that food riots would be the ultimate consequence of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury’s current policies.
Riots and demonstrations have gripped normally sedate Iceland following a financial catastrophe that has wiped out half of the krona’s value and put one third of the population at risk of losing their homes and life savings.
Expectations of violent civil unrest have not gone unnoticed by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute, who recently issued a report warning that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it terms “strategic shock.”
The consequence? The necessity to use “military force against hostile groups inside the United States,” according to the report.
Tens of thousands of active duty military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq are set to conduct “homeland patrols” inside the U.S. and their duties will include tackling “civil unrest and crowd control,” according to a Northcom announcement earlier this year.
DNA “Collection Creep”
Infowars
December 17, 2008
The FBI’s National DNA Index System (CODIS database) was created in 1994 to store the genetic profiles of truly serious violent crimes like rape and murder. But with all things governmental, it expanded to include all convicted felons, then misdemeanants and then those arrested by states. Congress allowed its expansion in 2005 and 2006 under the mistaken impression that DNA collection helps prevent crimes and solves the ones committed. Unlike crime-dramas, in real life DNA is not fool-proof in establishing the identity of the person who committed the crime; it is subject to misuse, abuse and is not always clear-cut.
The Justice Department has published a new rule that will take effect January 9, 2009, that “dramatically expands a federal law enforcement database of genetic identifiers” to include illegal aliens detained and all people arrested for a federal crime.
DNA collection has been widely abused around the US already. Motorists in Colorado were infuriated by requests for DNA samples at a highway checkpoint in 2007. Five separate checkpoints were set up over the weekend, for the purpose of conducting “surveys” regarding drug or alcohol use and DNA collection for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
Some were not aware that the DNA collection was voluntary and one couple, even after declining repeatedly, were offered $100 for their DNA.
In that same year, a plan to require rank-and-file police officers to give DNA samples drew howls of protest. Officers were concerned that their DNA could be abused by an especially crafty criminal collecting a cigarette butt and implicating the officer in a crime.
While the American government continually expands situations in which they take DNA samples, the European Court of Human Rights has just “unanimously ruled that a British policy to collect fingerprints and DNA of all criminal suspects, including those later deemed innocent, violated privacy rights.”
As we reported earlier, on May 2 of this year, the president signed a bill to collect DNA from every newborn. Two of the more disturbing aspects of this law allow the government to establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide, and subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent.
Minnesota’s law allows the collection of newborns at birth. “Children grow up. Eventually, every citizen will have their DNA owned by state government and available for government to engage in genetic research, experimentation, manipulation, and profiling,” said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council on Health Car. “What good is the state genetic privacy law if government warehousing and analysis of every child’s DNA from birth is exempt from its informed consent protections?” If parents don’t request the sample be destroyed, it is kept indefinitely (.pdf).
The U.S. Government has a history of testing bioweapons and other nasty things on unsuspecting civilians, and the “DNA collection creep” is a very unsettling trend. Armed with the DNA of citizens, there is no telling what horrors they will wreak.
Unemployment: Worse Than it Looks
The most publicized measure of U.S. unemployment tells only part of the story
By Moira Herbst
As U.S. jobs disappear at a rapid clip, the official unemployment figure seems understated. While November's 6.7% rate is a full 2% higher than the same time last year, the rate remains well below the 10.8% postwar peak, reached in November 1982. One issue is that the official unemployment number captures only a slice of the total joblessness in the U.S. To be counted as unemployed in this statistic, a worker must not have a job, be currently available for work, and have actively sought employment within the last four weeks. In other words, a lot of the jobless are left out of the government's tally.
Rajeev Dhawan, director of Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business, says the official unemployment rate is "not a good measure of what is happening in the economy. It's drawn from a sample too small and filled with too many assumptions. Absolute job losses and retail sales give a better idea of what's really happening in the economy."
Fortunately, digging deeper into the labyrinth of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Web site can offer a more complete, if imperfect, picture of joblessness. Since 1993, the BLS has tracked a category of unemployed called U-6, which captures the total unemployed, plus what the agency calls "marginally attached" workers and those employed part-time "for economic reasons." For November 2008, that rate was 12.5%, nearly double the official unemployment rate and the highest since the government started tracking this category.
Outside Looking In
Marginally attached workers are those with no job and who aren't hunting for one but who are interested in working—people who have left the workforce because the employment situation seems so bleak that they've stopped trying. This measure covers anyone who has looked for work in the past 12 months, not just the past four weeks. In November, 1.9 million workers were marginally attached, up 637,000 from a month prior. This category includes long-term unemployed, such as factory workers who can't find a job paying close to what they'd been earning before. Unemployment rates in construction and extraction jobs such as mining hit 12.1% in November, followed by 9.4% in production jobs. That means the ranks of the marginally attached will increase.
Those employed part-time for economic reasons, who are counted as employed in the official statistic, want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. As of November, the number of workers in this category rose by 621,000. There are now 7.3 million involuntary part-time workers, up 2.8 million over the past 12 months.
Contract workers, sometimes known as freelancers or independent contractors, face a special set of problems when it comes to being counted by the government. First, employers aren't required to report layoffs of contract workers to the government, so when companies say they're cutting their contractor workforce—as Google (GOOG) did in October—no one knows by how much. These job cuts are also not recorded in the official job-cut statistics tracked by the government. In other words, the 533,000 jobs lost in the November count don't include any of the tens of thousands of contract workers being slashed from company payrolls as the recession deepens.
Falling Between the Cracks
Some self-employed workers are incorporated into other BLS statistics, but not all of them are counted. Those traditionally considered self-employed, such as independent real estate agents or accountants, are included in the government's household survey of the unemployed. But those working as long-term freelancers for one particular company without the benefits of being staff members—often dubbed "permalancers"—are not. That means a good portion of this group, which the Government Accountability Office says makes up 10% of the workforce, isn't properly tracked. "We really don't know what is happening with the [contractor employment] numbers," says Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union, a 93,000-member organization of contract workers. Horowitz says the government should develop better measures of contract workers, perhaps by identifying the number of contractor tax filings with the IRS each year. "An increasing part of the economy is driven by this new workforce, but government agencies haven't updated their methods for counting them," she says.
The BLS does capture other pieces of the unemployment puzzle. It breaks out such demographic categories as education levels. As of November the unemployment rate for college graduates increased less than a percentage point, to 3.1%, while the unemployment rate for high school dropouts rose from 7.6% to 10.5%. The BLS also tracks such categories as age and ethnicity; the unemployment rate in November was 32% for black teenagers, for example. Other data offer state-by-state comparisons of unemployment rates. In the most recent data, which cover the first 10 months of 2008, Rhode Island and Michigan were tied with the highest unemployment rate, at 9.3%, with California next at 8.2%. Though not officially a state, Puerto Rico's rate stands at 12%.
Still, calls for improving the BLS metrics continue. While Horowitz presses for better accounting of contract workers, Georgia State's Dhawan says the surveys need to account for population growth. "Fifty years ago, the [official unemployment] number had some validity," he says. "Now I have little faith in it."
Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York.