The Rise of Pessimism

Adam Cohen writes in the NYT:

...The gap between predictions and reality has left Americans deeply discouraged. So has much of what has happened, or not happened, at the same time. Those who believed New Orleans would rebound quickly after Hurricane Katrina have seen their hopes dashed. Those counting on solutions to health care, energy dependence or global warming have seen no progress. It is no wonder the nation is in a gloomy mood; 71 percent of respondents in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll said the country is on the wrong track.

...Part of Bush’s legacy may well be that he robbed America of its optimism — a force that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other presidents, like Ronald Reagan, used to rally the country when it was deeply challenged. The next generation of leaders will have to resell discouraged Americans on the very idea of optimism, and convince them again that their goal should not be to live with their ailments, but to cure them.

A Sick Fixation With Secrecy

from the NYT:

In 1971, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird punctuated his plea to Congress for more cold war appropriations with a graphic display of information that revealed the nation on guard with 54 Titan and 1,000 Minuteman nuclear missiles, plus 30 strategic bomber squadrons. In making his case, Mr. Laird exemplified the idea that a little transparency is no drawback in a democracy.

Thirty-five years later, the Bush administration, which has consistently demonstrated an extraordinary mania for secrecy, is blacking that public information out of history. That’s right: it has reclassified the number of missiles and bombers from the Nixon era as some fresh national security secret, even though historians and officials in the old Soviet Union long have had it available on their research shelves.

What strange compulsion drives such “silly secrecy,” as it is aptly described by officials of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library at George Washington University? The archive published a report on how retroactive the administration has become in its obsession with creating secrets out of interesting information. The blacked-out missile and defense policy information dates to the 1960’s. Soviet numbers are left untouched on the open record, while the old American armada is freshly cloaked. What’s next? Classifying Civil War ironclads and cannons?

The missile blackout is the latest symptom of a deepening government illness. National security has become the excuse for efforts to crack down on whistle-blowers and journalists dealing in such vital disclosures as the illicit eavesdropping on Americans. Last spring the director of the National Archives objected to a reclassifying initiative undertaken by intelligence officials that caused 55,000 decades-old pages to vanish from the public record. The process itself was labeled an official secret.

Public recourse has become more difficult: enforcement of the Freedom of Information Act has become slower and more burdensome. The one thing the administration has made no secret is its antipathy to government transparency. The secrecy fixation is a threat to democracy and an insult to honest history.

Welcome to Neo-Fascism 101

from Smirking Chimp, who got this from a VirtualCitizens page.
by Andrew Bosworth

Neo-Fascism in America

Neo-conservatives decided that World War III is to be waged against “Islamic-Fascists” or “Islamo-Fascism.”

Who is reading from the new script? William Kristol, Bill O’Reilly, Christopher Hitchens, Michelle Mankin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Nick Cohen, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Daniel Pipes, Glenn Beck, Oliver North - even George W. Bush, prompting legitimate complaints from Muslim-Americans.

Middle Eastern powers include pan-Arab socialist dictatorships (Syria), monarchies (Saudi Arabia), constitutional theocracies (Iran), and assorted fundamentalist movements. None are “fascist.” For three decades of political scientists, “fascism” is a phenomenon of industrialized societies and exhibits features alien to the Middle East.

Classical fascism was evident in inter-war Italy, Germany and Japan, and full-blown fascism exhibits three dimensions: economic, political and cultural.

1. Economic fascism is based a merger of big business and big government. Sometimes, a formal corporatism emerges; other times, the private sector (monopolies and oligopolies) simply pass over into the public sector (as in the US), capturing the state and using it to wage that most profitable of activities: war. This later scenario is what happened in the United States, and the incestuous relationship between Big Business and Big Government ushered in a new Gilded Age of cronyism and corruption. Benito Mussolini was clear: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.”

For the Middle East, the preconditions of mature capitalism (and thus fascism) simply do not exist.

2. Political fascism normally includes, as it did for Italy and Germany, a retreat from already-existing democratic practices - an erosion of democracy. The political class begins to express a disdain for human rights and international treaties, lashing out at pillars of civilization like France. Power is increasingly centered on the executive branch, and elections become less transparent, even fraudulent. Civil liberties are restricted, and constitutions are ground under the hobnailed boot.

Political fascism always depicts dissent as treason, and there is an obsession with scapegoats and plots. There are frequent mixed messages about the enemy: the enemy is strong, then weak; the enemy is important; then irrelevant. Today, the Party depicts Hezbollah as having unlimited funds from Iran and, simultaneously, selling pirated DVDs and fake Viagra in your town.

Political fascism is based on militant nationalism, pseudo-populism and an adoration of military power. As Huey Long said, former Governor of Louisiana: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.” For different reasons, these values tend to resonate among economic elites at the top and the lower middle class at the bottom. In the United States, however, it appears that the lower and working classes are now questioning their leadership - or losing themselves in End of Empire entertainment: pan y circo (bread and circus).

In its advanced stages, political fascism depends upon mass surveillance and, more crucially, eternal war. Italy’s mad adventures in Ethiopia and Germany’s insane and unwinnable two-front war were nursed by the ideology of eternal war.

The only ingredient of classical political fascism missing in the United States is a charismatic leader - but not for lack of trying. In Red States, billboards of George W. “Our Leader” arose, and fundamentalists synchronized Morning Prayer to those of the White House.

Middle East powers - particularly the movements neo-cons describe as “Islamofascist” - are emerging in non-democratic systems. They are also pushing for more, not less, political democracy because the popular classes will catapult them to power and keep them there.

Hamas, for example, won in an election. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood would very much like to go to the polls in more transparent elections. Shia Muslims in Iraq are also keen on voting. Iran’s president won an election handily. And when the dust settles in Lebanon, the next sure winner at the ballot box will be Hezbollah, when Lebanese Christians, Sunnis and Druze will surely wait in lines for hours to endorse this radical Shia group. Democracy, it seems, is about to flourish in the Middle East - it’s just not yielding the puppet regimes hoped for in Washington, London (Airstrip One) or Tel Aviv. Tony Snow claims “they hate democracy.” Don’t be snowed.

Islamic fundamentalist groups compete at the national level, but Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism.

3. Cultural fascism is based on a reaction against science, modernity, the arts and intellectualism. It distorts science to accomplish political aims. Cultural fascism always includes strong doses of homophobia.

In the US, for every person with legitimate objections to immigration (objections based on public policy), there must be three people objecting to it based on race, and for them “illegal” becomes a euphemism for “Mexican.” Xenophobia is basic to cultural fascism.

Cultural fascism, in the West, tends towards anti-Semitism. For now, American anti-Semitism has an anti-Arab face. In linguistics and ethnology, the term “Semitic” includes “Arabic” and “Arabs.” A Marriam-Webster definition of “Semite” is clear: “A member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs.”

Thus, when neo-con pundits, politicians and even the President employ the term “Islamo-Fascist” they are being anti-Semitic.

Middle Eastern and Islamic movements can be reactionary, but these are reactions to external powers and not to the core dimensions of their own societies, which remain traditional.

So the economic, political and cultural prerequisites of fascism do not exist in the Middle East - but they do exist in the United States. Our post-WWII, Information Age neo-fascism is much like the inter-war classical fascism but softer, lighter, friendlier. Today, instead of marching, we ritually demonstrate our political will on touch-screen pads, a ceremony organized by Party-backed corporations with secret software on private servers.

It’s a race: Will the future look like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where a “dictatorship without tears” is founded upon psychotropic drugs, false religion and biological-sexual engineering? Or will it be a world of brute force like George Orwell’s 1984? “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” It will be both: A Brave New World for those who conform and 1984 for those who don’t. American fascism will both smile and grimace.

Neo-con pundits follow a clever strategy of deflection. They employ the term “Islamo-Fascism” when “theocracy” or “dictatorship” or “fundamentalist movement” would be more historically accurate. Why do they do this? Their political epithets are inspired by a subtle conditioning campaign.

Perhaps it’s subconscious projection. “Projection,” of course, is a defense mechanism that kicks when someone is threatened by, or afraid of, their own impulse. So they attribute these impulses to someone else. Do not be neo-conned. How can you help?

First, always replace the term “neo-conservatism” with “neo-fascism.”

Second, always charge those who use the term “Islamo-fascism” with anti-Semitism (because Arabs - most of whom are Muslims - are technically “Semitic,” too).

Third, remind people who use the term “Islamo-Fascism” that the term is historically inaccurate and that the main ingredients of classical fascism - 1) monopoly capitalism; 2) erosion of democracy; and 3) militant nationalism - are coming together in the United States like a Perfect Storm.

It’s not fair to perform a vivisection of the Bush regime without pointing to what a healthier body politic might look like - a “post-crisis” body politic.

1) The restoration of the checks and balances, and limited government, of a democratic republic. This includes voter protections and a pencil-paper-box voting system.

2) The restoration of foreign relations to open diplomacy (as envisioned by the Founders) - to the power of persuasion - unless attacked, upon which military force will be restricted to the forces demonstrably responsible. This means no foreign aid, no weapons sales, no forward bases, and no committing political adultery by dividing loyalties between the people of the United States and any foreign power. The American people can express their solidarity with people around the world with short-term disaster relief.

3) Challenging both Israel and Arab powers to follow the letter of international law. Compliance means full participation in an international economy and community (the carrot); and resistance invites the atrophy of embargoes, travel restrictions, and blockages (the stick). Under UN Resolution 181, Israel secures its right to exist according to the 1948 borders, with protection from the United Nations. Simultaneously, Israel withdraws all of its settler colonies from the West Bank, illegal under Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” And Jerusalem becomes the international city as intended in 1948.

4) Challenging the world’s people and states with a transformative proposal: universal nuclear disarmament. If states do not disarm, take the proposal to their peoples. Inspired, motivated and determined, masses of people will quickly sideline both foot-dragging politicians and terrorists. The best weapon against terror is not the US Army; it is civilized men and women everywhere. The world is ready to make nuclear weapons - and then war - extinct.

Thomas Paine: “We have it in our power to make the world new again.”

Democracy in Crisis

from truthout:

Democracy in Crisis - Interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

BRAD BLOG: In your book, “Crimes Against Nature,” you said that Bush won the 2004 election because of an information deficit caused by a breakdown in our national media. You go on to say that “Bush was re-elected because of the negligence of-and deliberate deception by-the American press.” Your recent article in “Rolling Stone” seems to suggest that your opinion has changed, focusing more on the fraud and deception in Ohio with the computerized voting machines. What was the most important thing that made you suspect fraud and decide to investigate the 2004 election?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Well, my opinion hasn’t changed, that the press has been negligent, and that the large amount of support for the President, and for the people that did vote for the President, that large numbers of them would not have done so, had they known the truth about his policies, and his record. You say my opinion changed, but it hasn’t changed.

You know I’ve known this for many years, because of my anecdotal experience. I give about 40 speeches a year, in red states to Republican audiences, and I get the same enthusiastic responses from those audiences as I get from Liberal college audiences. The only difference is, is that the Republicans often say to me, “How come we’ve never heard this before?” I made the conclusion many years ago that there’s not a huge values difference between Red State Republicans and Blue State Democrats. The distinction is really informational. 80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on. And my anecdotal conclusion was confirmed by a survey done immediately after the 2004 election called the PIPA [7] report, which tested Bush supporters and Kerry supporters based upon their knowledge of current events. It found that among Bush supporters, they were widespread in its interpretations, or there were factual errors in the way that they viewed Bush’s major public policy initiatives.

For example, 75% of the Republican respondents believed that Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center, and 72% believed that WMD had been found in Iraq. And most of them believed that the war in Iraq had strong support among Iraq’s Muslim neighbors and our traditional allies in Europe, which of course is wrong. The Democrats as a whole had a much more accurate view of those events. And then PIPA [8] went back twice to these same people. The first time it went back to the people that had these misinterpretations, and asked them where they were getting their news, and invariably they said talk radio and FOX news. And PIPA went back a third time, and made inquiries about their fundamental values, and it did start with a string of hypotheticals:

“What if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with bombing the World Trade Center? What if the U.S. Invasion of Iraq had little support among Iraq’s Muslim neighbors and was largely opposed by Iraq’s Muslim neighbors, and by our troops and allies in Europe? Should we have still gone in?” And roughly 80% of Dem and 80% of Rep said the same thing, “We should not.” And so the values were the same. It was the facts, the information, it was the access to information that was different.

BB: Are you then adding a layer of suspicion about the direct manipulation and fraudulent counting through computerized voting?

RFK JR.: That also happened, that was another factor. Our democracy is broken. Our democracy is broken because of our campaign finance system, which is just a system of legalized bribery, which has allowed corporations and the very wealthy to control the electoral results. Let me go back and say our electoral system is broken for three reasons, in three large respects: The first is our campaign finance system, which is a system of legalized bribery, and which has allowed corporations and the very rich to control the results of our electoral process. Number two is the failure of the American press and that is also a function and result of corporate control, as I showed in my book. Number three is the election system itself, which is broken. We’ve privatized it and allowed four large corporations to count our votes on machines that don’t work.

But also the Republican party has inculcated a culture of corruption. The Republican party has adopted a strategy of denying votes to blacks and other minorities, and to other people more traditionally Democratic, suppressing Democratic vote and fraudulently expanding Republican vote. And this is happening all over the country. I would urge you to read Greg Palast’s latest book, Armed Madhouse [9]. He does for the national elections what I did for the Ohio election, which is to synthesize the information that’s out there into a readable document, in which he shows exactly how this election was stolen-not just in Ohio but in many other states as well.

BB: Have any of your expert witnesses or anyone referred to some of the stringent requirements in the gaming industry which uses computerized slot machines, poker machines and so forth involving the levels of certification and disclosure of the security requirements of its vendors?

RFK JR.: Well, you see this was just another corporate boondoggle that gave the most venal mendacious corporations charge of our most sacred public trust, which is the right to vote. These corporations were making hundreds of millions of dollars. The machines, as it turns out, were manufactured by wireless companies and were just a cheap piece of junk that cost less than $100 to manufacture, and they were selling them for $2400 apiece. And they were using Jack Abramoff and other corrupt lobbyists to persuade federal officials to pass the federal act to appropriate the money and then to persuade state and local officials to purchase the defective machines.

BB: Jack Abramoff was involved in this?

RFK JR.: Oh yes. Jack Abramoff, and Bob Ney [10](R-Oh), the principle figure in the Abramoff scandal and he’s the author of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). And Diebold contributed millions of dollars to these guys, including hundreds of thousands of dollars to Abramoff to lobby on behalf of HAVA, and to lobby states like New York and the other states, to adopt the Diebold machines.

BB: So HAVA was “created specifically to disenfranchise voters and verfication”?

RFK JR.: HAVA was written specifically to require the states to buy Diebold machines. I mean one company basically had control of the whole legislative process. That’s why HAVA has a provision in it that discourages vote verification by paper ballots. Both Republicans and Democrats tried to reform the HAVA, saying of course we should have paper verification of the vote. Paper verification would allow you to go in, make your vote on the electronic machine, and you get a receipt that is a copy of who you voted for and you are allowed to examine that receipt. You deposit it in a locked box in the voting area. That way, if there’s ever any question, if you need to count, you can count the papers, and see if it compares to what the machine says.

But Bob Ney fought tooth and nail against that provision because Diebold made a machine that does not provide a paper ballot. And he went so far, because Diebold contributed a million dollars to an organization that purportedly protects the rights of blind people. And in exchange for that, that organization got one of its officers to testify on Capitol Hill at the HAVA hearings, that blind people in America did not want paper ballots - voter verified ballots - because it would deprive someone of the right to vote secretly. Now the other organizations that support handicapped rights and rights of the blind, do not take that position. This was a position that that organization adopted after accepting a million dollars from Diebold. The whole operation was corrupt and now Bob Ney is going to jail for it.

BB: Also, speaking of those guys, election officials in several states, most notably Ken Blackwell in Ohio and Bruce McPherson here in the state of California, appear to be be deliberately flaunting established law and procedures as well as direct court orders, and they seem to be just “getting away with it”. How can that be?

RFK JR.: Well, again, it’s because of the failure of the American press. This is the most important issue in American Democracy and the press isn’t covering it. So the politicians who want to fix the elections, and who want these fraudulent machines, can get away with it, don’t take a position because it gets no traction in the press.

BB: But then why didn’t people like Kerry want to contest the results?

RFK JR.: You’d have to ask Kerry.

BB: Why hasn’t the DNC done anything about this?

RFK JR.: You’d have to ask the DNC.

BB: We watched Howard Dean on television having a hack demonstrated to him by Bev Harris [11], and he doesn’t seem to say anything… I guess we’ll have to ask them! But there seems to have been a pattern here in the leadership of the Democratic Party....What I was getting to in those questions was not for you to interpret the actions of the those in the DNC and so forth, but there seems to be a pattern in the leadership of the Dem Party that shies away from direct conflict in this....

RFK JR.: The Democratic leadership on this issue has been abysmal. And particularly since this is a civil rights issue and it’s a racial issue. The machines themselves are kind of a distraction because the machines are recent innovations. The Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, has been using, old-fashioned, Jim Crow, apartheid-type maneuvers to steal the last two national elections.

BB: Like in Georgia, who were trying to establish the Poll Tax again…

RFK JR.: And this has been happening all over the country. If you look at who’s being denied the right to vote, on absentee ballots, on provisional ballots, it’s Hispanics, it’s Blacks and it’s Native Americans, and the Democratic Party ought to be touting this as the biggest civil rights issue of our time. But they are ignoring it, and that really is shocking. It’s shocking that the Republicans are not up in arms about this too, because this should not be a partisan issue. This is a fundamental basis of our American value system, which is representative Democracy. For a party that claims to speak for “American Values” to ignore the fact that other members of the party, that the leadership of the party is involved in an active national campaign to stop black people from voting, and to steal elections, shows the moral bankruptcy of everybody in that party!

Why aren’t Republicans standing up and speaking on this issue? Why isn’t Republican leadership standing up and speaking on this issue?

BB: California just recently went to Diebold machines, all over the state. If California “goes” Republican, do you think we will be able to say, ok, there’s no doubt anymore?

RFK JR.: Listen: all I can say is that the Diebold machines are among the worst. They break down, they are easily hacked, Diebold uses fraudulent misrepresentations to sell the machines, and they should not be part of our voting system.

BB: Are there any plans on a national or state level to contest suspicious results this time around?

RFK JR.: They make it very difficult to contest crooked elections. Nebraska is one of several states that have now passed laws, and I believe Florida is one of those states, that prohibit counting paper ballots in votes that were originally counted by machines. The only way that you can count votes is the original way in which they were counted. And so, of course, that makes it easy to fix any election and make sure that nobody has the right to challenge it.

Many other states, including Ohio, have made it impossible for anybody to challenge an election, even if it was obviously fixed. And these kinds of initiatives are happening all over the country. Why would any state legislature vote for such a rule unless they were Republicans who felt that elections would be fixed in their favor? Why would any American vote for such a rule? It is completely anti-American and un-American. We should be encouraging Americans to vote and encouraging EVERY American to cast a vote and to make sure that every vote is counted. And both parties should be working toward that.

But instead you have a Republican party that is trying to suppress votes and trying to defraud the public. And you have a Democratic party that is like the deer in headlights. And the Democrats are never going to win another election if they don’t fix this issue because they are starting out every election with a 3 million vote deficit, and those are mainly the black voters in this country and who no longer have their votes counted.

And you know, this may sound shrill, but look at the facts. And I challenge anyone who says that this is shrill and inaccurate to read Greg Palast’s book, to read my article, to look at the facts, because the facts are infallible.

BB: Do you think we are going to need a reaction like they are having currently in Mexico?

RFK JR.: Well, I wish the Democratic Party had the cojones that the Mexican opposition party has! They’re saying “We’re not gonna stand for our elections being stolen anymore!” It’s great for these (our) political leaders to stand up and say “I will gracefully concede” but what does that mean for the rest of us? We are getting stuck with these governments that are absolutely running our country into the ground.

BB: You said in your recent interview with Charlie Rose, that this is the worst Presidency we’ve ever had, and they’ve ruined our reputation in the world. So if you had your ideal President, what kind of things would he or she need to do to restore our credibility?

RFK JR.: Well the first thing we need to do is to restore American Democracy.

Number One: Fix the campaign finance system to get corporate money out of the electoral process. Corporations are a great thing for our country. They drive our economy but they should NOT be running our government because they don’t want the same thing for America that Americans want. Corporations don’t want democracy, they want free markets, they want profits, and oftentimes the easiest path to profits is to use the campaign finance system to get their hooks into a public official and to use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them monopoly control and a competitive edge and to privatize the commons-to steal our air, our water, or our public treasury, and liquidate it for private profits.

Number Two: We have to fix the press: restore journalistic ethics in this country, and that is by bringing back the fairness doctrine and strengthening the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was abolished by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and it recognized that the airwaves belong to the public; that the broadcasters can be licensed to use them to make a profit, but they use them with the proviso that their primary obligation is to advance democracy and promote the public interest. They have to inform the public because a democracy cannot survive an uninformed public. As Thomas Jefferson said, “An uninformed public will trade a hundred years of hard-fought civil rights for a half an hour of welfare.” And they will follow the first demagogue or religious fanatic that comes along and offers them a $300 tax break.

Number Three: We have to fix our electoral system so that every vote is counted. Those are the first three things that any President should do, Republican or Democrat, to restore American Democracy.

BB: Now all these state laws that are being put in place could be trumped by Congress…

RFK JR.: Of course, we should have a federal law that creates federal standards for elections. All federal elections have to be verified by paper ballots. Election officials, whose job is to ensure the integrity of federal elections, cannot simultaneously serve as campaign managers or candidates who are participating in that contest. Many states already have that rule, but Florida and Ohio do not. It’s a formula for corruption!

BB: In summary, how optimistic or pessimistic are you about our ability to get our country back?

RFK JR.: Well, you know, my attitude is that I don’t try to predict the future, I can only say that those of us who care about this country have to keep fighting, and whether you think you’re gonna win or lose, you gotta just keep slugging and you gotta be ready to die with your boots on, because that’s what our forefathers did, they started a revolution, and they put their fortunes and their lives at stake. And we need to summon the same kind of courage from our generation, and demand that kind of courage from our leadership.

BB: And we have to get that message out to the Democratic leadership as well.

RFK JR.: And that’s what you guys are doing....

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Article printed from The BRAD BLOG: http://www.bradblog.com

URL to article: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3079

URLs in this post:
[1] The BRAD BLOG: http://www.BradBlog.com
[2] Joy: http://fancypantselitist.blogspot.com
[3] bio: http://www.waterkeeper.org/mainpresident.aspx
[4] Was the 2004 Election Stolen: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
[5] Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking our Democracy:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060746874/airamericarad-20/104-4412599-7091110
[6] lawsuit: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3065
[7] PIPA: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf
[8] PIPA: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf
[9] Armed Madhouse: http://www.gregpalast.com/
[11] Jack Abramoff, and Bob Ney : http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2262
[11] Howard Dean on television having a hack demonstrated to him by Bev Harris: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=911

Triumph of the Authoritarians

from the Boston Globe via truthout:

By John W. Dean

Contemporary conservatism and its influence on the Republican Party was, until recently, a mystery to me. The practitioners’ bludgeoning style of politics, their self-serving manipulation of the political processes, and their policies that focus narrowly on perceived self-interest - none of this struck me as based on anything related to traditional conservatism. Rather, truth be told, today’s so-called conservatives are quite radical.

For more than 40 years I have considered myself a “Goldwater conservative,” and am thoroughly familiar with the movement’s canon. But I can find nothing conservative about the Bush/Cheney White House, which has created a Nixon “imperial presidency” on steroids, while acting as if being tutored by the best and brightest of the Cosa Nostra.

What true conservative calls for packing the courts to politicize the federal judiciary to the degree that it is now possible to determine the outcome of cases by looking at the prior politics of judges? Where is the conservative precedent for the monocratic leadership style that conservative Republicans imposed on the US House when they took control in 1994, a style that seeks primarily to perfect fund-raising skills while outsourcing the writing of legislation to special interests and freezing Democrats out of the legislative process?

How can those who claim themselves conservatives seek to destroy the deliberative nature of the US Senate by eliminating its extended-debate tradition, which has been the institution’s distinctive contribution to our democracy? Yet that is precisely what Republican Senate leaders want to do by eliminating the filibuster when dealing with executive business (namely judicial appointments).

Today’s Republican policies are antithetical to bedrock conservative fundamentals. There is nothing conservative about preemptive wars or disregarding international law by condoning torture. Abandoning fiscal responsibility is now standard operating procedure. Bible-thumping, finger-pointing, tongue-lashing attacks on homosexuals are not found in Russell Krik’s classic conservative canons, nor in James Burham’s guides to conservative governing. Conservatives in the tradition of former senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan believed in “conserving” this planet, not relaxing environmental laws to make life easier for big business. And neither man would have considered employing Christian evangelical criteria in federal programs, ranging from restricting stem cell research to fighting AIDs through abstinence.

Candid and knowledgeable Republicans on the far right concede - usually only when not speaking for attribution - that they are not truly conservative. They do not like to talk about why they behave as they do, or even to reflect on it. Nonetheless, their leaders admit they like being in charge, and their followers grant they find comfort in strong leaders who make them feel safe. This is what I gleaned from discussions with countless conservative leaders and followers, over a decade of questioning.

I started my inquiry in the mid-1990s, after a series of conversations with Goldwater, whom I had known for more than 40 years. Goldwater was also mystified (when not miffed) by the direction of today’s professed conservatives - their growing incivility, pugnacious attitudes, and arrogant and antagonistic style, along with a narrow outlook intolerant of those who challenge their thinking. He worried that the Republican Party had sold its soul to Christian fundamentalists, whose divisive social values would polarize the nation. From those conversations, Goldwater and I planned to study why these people behave as they do, and to author a book laying out what we found. Sadly, the senator’s declining health soon precluded his continuing on the project, so I put it on the shelf. But I kept digging until I found some answers, and here are my thoughts.

For almost half a century, social scientists have been exploring authoritarianism. We do not typically associate authoritarianism with our democracy, but as I discovered while examining decades of empirical research, we ignore some findings at our risk. Unfortunately, the social scientists who have studied these issues report their findings in monographs and professional journals written for their peers, not for general readers. With the help of a leading researcher and others, I waded into this massive body of work.

What I found provided a personal epiphany. Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, “enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral.” And that’s not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.

Authoritarianism’s impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers. It is long past time to bring the telling results of their empirical work into the public square and to the attention of American voters. No less than the health of our democracy may depend on this being done. We need to stop thinking we are dealing with traditional conservatives on the modern stage, and instead recognize that they’ve often been supplanted by authoritarians.

John W. Dean, former Nixon White House counsel, just published his seventh nonfiction book, Conservatives Without Conscience.

Legislating Under the Influence

from In These Times:

By David Sirota

When I was hired to work on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee in 2001, I was told by many in Washington that the panel was one of last remaining places in Congress where things actually get done. By the time I left Capitol Hill some two and a half years later, I had learned what all Americans are now realizing: The panel certainly does get things done, but not for the people who elected its members. It gets things done almost exclusively for those lobbyists and corporate interests that buy influence through campaign contributions. The committee has become, in short, the breeding ground of congressional corruption.

Over the last year, the public has learned exactly how lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee have abused the incredible power granted to them as overseers of how the federal government spends tens of billions of dollars.

And the power is incredible. As chief spokesman for Democrats on this committee, I had a firsthand view of how this panel has been abused by the Republicans. Tens of millions of dollars move from one district to another for purely political reasons—all with the quick stroke of a pen behind closed doors. One line anonymously inserted in a thousand-page bill can mean the difference between the creation or elimination of national consumer regulations bought and paid for by industry campaign donors. The loudest protests from the most passionate members of both parties can be silenced on the floor of the House with a mere scowl from one of the Appropriations subcommittee chairmen. At a moment’s notice these “cardinals,” as they are known, will remove the protester’s pet projects unless they stop criticizing whatever heinous provisions were attached to the spending bill being debated.

Such power was bound to be abused in the current Congress, where the concepts of restraint or law-abiding behavior are treated as punchlines. First, in March, came the conviction of senior appropriator Duke Cunningham. The California Republican steered millions of dollars of federal contracts to the same company that paid him more than $2 million in bribes.

When Cunningham was forced to resign, Congress replaced him with Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Already under indictment for money laundering, DeLay is also at the center of the pay-to-play scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff—the convicted Republican lobbyist who tried to buy off members of the Appropriations Committee on behalf of his clients. DeLay, who had previously served on the Appropriations Committee before stepping down to become Majority Leader, was a close associate of Abramoff’s. He took lavish trips paid for by lobbyists with interests before the committee and pocketed campaign cash from Abramoff and his associates.

But DeLay is not alone. Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), has received tens of thousands of dollars from Abramoff and his clients, while using Abramoff’s D.C. restaurant as a venue for fundraising parties. Additionally, Doolittle is among three members of the committee who accepted a combined $200,000 from the defense contractor, MZM, the corporation at the center of the Cunningham bribery conviction.

And consider committee chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.). The Washington Post reported in May that he is now officially a target of a federal law enforcement investigation. He steered “hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects for clients of one of his closest friends, lobbyist and former state Congressman Bill Lowery,” according to the San Diego Union Tribune. In exchange, “Lowery, the partners at his firm and their clients have donated 37 percent of the $1.3 million that Lewis’ political action committee received in the past six years.”

Lewis is not the only lawmaker whose behavior on the committee has caught the attention of federal investigators. Joining the chairman is Democratic appropriator Alan Mollohan (W.V.). The Washington Post reports that he “used his seat on the House Appropriations Committee to secure more than $150 million for five nonprofit groups”—groups associated with the West Virginia congressman’s own business partners. During the very same time, Mollohan became a multi-millionaire.

This pay-to-play corruption on the appropriations committee extends to national security. Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who heads the homeland security appropriations subcommittee, has diverted funds for making tamper-proof identification cards to “companies that are donors to his political causes,” according to the New York Times. Rogers has taken 11 trips paid for by an organization to which the congressman helped steer a no-bid contract, and even moved funds to a company that employs his son. The result of Rogers’ shenanigans has been a more than two-year delay in the production of the ID cards.

These examples are disturbing. But as I also learned in my time working for the Appropriations Committee, the most corrupt behaviors are often perfectly legal. As the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics notes, “The committee does not just provide funding for lucrative government contracts, but is also famous for inserting last-minute industry-backed provisions blocking regulatory actions.”

Appropriators, knowing the spending bills they write must pass in order to keep the government operating, slip provisions into these bills that prevent the government from enforcing already-passed laws. This corrupt practice is so well-honed, industry-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have issued detailed reports instructing lawmakers on where they can most effectively use riders to do corporate favors. These riders are perfectly legal and profoundly damaging.

Consider what happened in the wake of Mad Cow scares, when Congress passed a law mandating country-of-origin labeling of meat. When it came time to implement the law, Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) used his chairmanship of the agriculture appropriations subcommittee to insert language into a spending bill to postpone the law indefinitely. He was rewarded for his efforts by tens of thousands of dollars of campaign cash from the food processing industry. Especially grateful was Tyson Foods, which in 2004 gave Bonilla its private jet so that he could fly to fundraisers all over the country.

Stemming the corruption emanating from the Appropriations Committee is no small task. Some have suggested prohibiting appropriators from earmarking federal money for specific projects. But that would merely move spending decisions out of Congress and into the executive branch, and not solve the problem. Unelected bureaucrats, not elected officials, would get to decide how money is spent—a clear affront to Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and no guarantee that corporate interests would not simply shift their influence-buying operations to the White House.

Sunlight laws are a better first step. The root of the problem lies not in appropriators’ power, but in the use of secrecy to exercise that power. Right now, appropriators can slip earmarks or destructive regulatory riders into giant spending bills anonymously, meaning no threat of public embarrassment for those trying to abuse their power. Worse, the bills carrying these provisions—often thousands of pages long—can be brought to vote just hours after they are written, ensuring there is no time for scrutiny.

I remember late nights gulping down coffee, frantically leafing through finalized spending bills trying to answer lawmakers’ questions about what they would be voting on. The appropriations process, I learned, is purposely rigged. To remedy the situation, Congress must pass a new law that forces appropriators to put their names next to the provisions they sponsor and forces the Appropriations Committee to provide ample time for their bills to be scrutinized before they are passed into law.

The next logical step is for Congress to embrace a public financing system of elections—a concept being aggressively pushed by Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the House Democrats’ senior appropriator. America currently relies on a system of legalized bribery to elect our Congress. Lawmakers’ campaigns are funded by the corporate contributors, who then demand favors such as wasteful federal contracts in return. A public financing system of elections, such as the ones adopted by Arizona or Connecticut, would allow candidates to run for office without having to participate in this corrupt cycle, and without feeling the need to use their positions to reward campaign donors.

The House Appropriations Committee may seem like just another congressional panel, but it is not. It is the place that distinguishes America’s system of government from most others, because it is where democracy—not a sole executive or dictator—exerts control over the nation’s treasury. But like a disease afflicting a vital organ, corruption is eating away at this committee. Already, that corruption has destroyed the bipartisanship that used to ensure that the panel’s important work was handled seriously. And now, as that corruption spreads from the committee into the Congress as a whole, our entire system of democracy is under threat from a money-dominated political process gone mad. Unless Congress reforms the way this committee works, America can never hope to take back our government from the corporate interests that own our political process.

Fear as a Weapon

from Mother Jones:

Fear as a Weapon
How the Bush administration got away with its abuses of power

Glenn Greenwald

[The following essay is exerpted from How Would a Patriot Act? by Glenn Greenwald (Working Assets Publishing).]

In one sense, it is difficult to understand how the Bush administration has been able to embrace such radical theories of executive power, and to engage in such recognizably un-American conduct—first in the shadows and now quite openly—without prompting a far more intense backlash from the country than we have seen. It is true that the president’s approval ratings have sunk to new lows in 2004 and 2005. The broad and bipartisan support he commanded for the two years after the 9/11 attacks has vanished almost completely. And yet, despite all of the public opinion trends and the president’s steadily declining popularity, there has been no resounding public rejection of the administration’s claim to virtually limitless executive power and its systematic violations of the nation’s laws.

That is because the Bush administration has in its arsenal one very potent weapon—and one weapon only—which it has repeatedly used: fear. Ever since September 11, 2001, Americans have been bombarded with warnings, with color-coded “alerts,” with talk of mushroom clouds and nefarious plots to blow up bridges and tall buildings, with villains assigned cartoon names such as “dirty bomber,” “Dr.Germ,” and so on. And there has been a constant barrage from the White House of impending threats that generate fear—fear of terrorism, fear of more 9/11–style attacks, fear of nuclear annihilation, fear of our ports being attacked, fear of our water systems being poisoned—and, of course, fear of excessive civil liberties or cumbersome laws jeopardizing our “homeland security.”

Our very survival is at risk, we are told. We face an enemy unlike any we have seen before, more powerful than anything we have previously encountered. President Bush is devoted to protecting us from the terrorists. We have to invade and occupy Iraq because the terrorists will kill us all if we do not. We must allow the president to incarcerate American citizens without due process, employ torture as a state-sanctioned weapon, eavesdrop on our private conversations, and even violate the law, because the terrorists are so evil and so dangerous that we cannot have any limits on the power of the president if we want him to protect us from the dangers in the world.

That terrorism is a real and serious threat cannot be denied. But America has never been a nation characterized by fear. Yet, for the last five years, we have had a government that has worked overtime to keep fear levels high because doing so served its interests. More than four years after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration continues to keep up the relentless drumbeat of fear. Here is Dick Cheney in early January 2006, proudly defending the administration’s illegal eavesdropping program by invoking the specter of terrorism fears:

As we get farther away from September 11th, some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country, and to back away from the business at hand.... The enemy that struck on 9/11 is weakened and fractured, yet it is still lethal and trying to hit us again. Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not. And as long as George W. Bush is President of the United States, we are serious—and we will not let down our guard.

Cheney never once addresses the fact that the administration had full leeway to eavesdrop on terrorists without breaking the law. He ignores that fact because he is not making a rational argument. He is attempting to play on the fears of Americans to justify their violations of law.

President Bush has also been fueling the fires offear in almost every speech he has given since September 11, 2001. Here he is in a typical speech, delivered on October 6, 2005, transparently attempting to whip up as much fear as possible in order to try to prop up Americans’ diminishing support for the country’s ongoing occupation of Iraq:

The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.

Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, “We will either achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life.” And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.... With the rise of a deadly enemy and the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history will be remembered for new challenges and unprecedented dangers.

Islamic terrorists, here as always,are depicted as omnipotent villains with quite attainable dreams of world domination, genocide, and the obliteration of the United States. They are trying to take over the world and murder us all. And this is not merely a threat we face. It is much more than that.It is the predominant issue facing the United States—more important than all others. Everything pales in comparison to fighting off this danger. We face not merely a danger, but “unprecedented dangers.”

For four years, this is what Americans have heard over and over and over from our government—that we face a mortal and incomparably powerful enemy, and only the most extreme measures taken by our government can save us. We are a nation engaged in a War of Civilizations, a nation whose very existence is in peril. All of our plans for the future, dreams for our children, career aspirations, life goals—these are all subordinate, all for naught, unless, first and foremost, we stand loyally behind George Bush as he takes the extreme and unprecedented measures necessary to protect us from these extreme and unprecedented threats.

It is that deeply irrational, fear-driven view of the world that has been used to convince Americans to acquiesce to the administration’s excesses and abuses of power. And it is not difficult to understand why it works. After all, if it really were the case that terrorism constituted the sort of imminent, civilization-ending threat the administration has spent the last four years drumming into everyone’s head, then it might be extremely difficult to gin up much outrage over an eavesdropping program—war- rants or not—or over a few American citizens being rounded up and put in military prisons without any charges. When our very survival is in imminent danger, all else pales in importance, and we may feel extreme gratitude toward those who seek to save us, even if hey break a few laws to do it.

In fact, it has become unacceptable in polite company to even raise the prospect that the threat of terrorism may be exaggerated. During the 2004 election, John Kerry stumbled in his clumsy way towards challenging this fear-mongering when he was quoted in The New York Times Magazine as saying, “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance.” This provoked the predictable outrage from the Bush camp that Kerry, along with Bush’s other opponents, was not serious about fighting terrorists and was too weak to protect our children from this unparalleled menace, and the issue was never spoken of again.

It has become an inviolable piety that there is no such thing as over- stating the terrorism risk. One is compelled to genuflect to, and tremble before, the supremacy of this ultimate threat, upon pain of being cast aside as some sort of anti-American, terrorist-loving radical.

That we are a strong enough nation to defeat terrorism without fundamentally changing our nation is a message that Americans are clearly ready to hear. We are more than four years away from September 11, 2001, and despite the dire warnings of the Bush administration, people in rural Kansas and suburban Georgia and everywhere else are beginning to realize that on the list of problems and threats that endanger their children and impede their dreams, the potential of a terrorist attack does not predominate. In a rational world, risk is equal to impact multiplied by probability. As the Linguasphere Dictionary puts it: “In professional risk assessment, risk combines the probability of a negative event occurring with how harmful that event would be.” But the administration has spent four years urging Americans to ignore that way of thinking and instead assent to any government measure,no matter the costs of comparative harms, as long as it is pursued in the name of fighting this ultimate evil.

But one can protect against the threat of terrorism with courage, calm, and resolve—the attributes that have always defined our nation as it has confronted other threats, including many at least as significant. Hys- teria and fear-mongering are the opposite of strength. The strong remain rational and unafraid.

Most people know individuals in their lives who live in this type of irrational, all-consuming fear—people who are scared, pathologically risk-averse, always hiding and exerting excess caution lest something go wrong. In its more extreme version, that sort of fear manifests as a life- destroying mental disorder. It is a pitiful image, and such people typically achieve very little. They cannot, because their fear is paralyzing. The Bush administration has been trying for four years to reduce this country to a collective version of that affliction. And it is hard to imagine what a nation fueled by such fear can accomplish.

The administration has managed to get away with the Orwellian idea that fear is the hallmark of courage, and a rational and calm approach is a mark of cowardice. They have been aided in this effort by a frightened national media and political elite that lives in Washington and New York—two “target-rich” cities—and that has been so petrified of further attacks that they were easily pushed into a state of passive, uncritical compliance in exchange for promises of protection. But we now have some emotional distance from the shock of September 11, and the power of that fear weapon is diminishing.

We must now see that fear is a by-product of weakness and cowardice. A strong nation does not give up its freedoms or sacrifice its national character in the face of manufactured fear and panic. But that is what George Bush has spent the last four years urging the country to do, and it is what he is counting on—that this NSA lawbreaking scandal will soon join the litany of other scandals that have inconsequentially receded in the public consciousness.

WWJD?

from HuffPo:

Reporters invited to Guantanamo, then sent home by Rumsfeld

from MoJo:

The admiral in charge of the prison at Guantanamo Bay invited the news media to come to the base on Saturday to cover the suicides of three of the prisoners. Reporters responded, but on Tuesday night, the Pentagon sent an email citing a directive from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

Media currently on the island will depart on Wednesday, 14 June 2006 at 10:00 a.m. Please be prepared to depart the CBQ [quarters] at 8:00 a.m.

A flight had already been arranged to expedite the reporters’ exit from the base, and though they protested the change of plans, they had to leave.

Editors of the Miami Herald and the Charlotte Observer said called the reversal “bad public policy” and “a panicked move.”

A Pentagon spokesman, J.D. Gordon, said that the reporters were sent home because other media outlets were threatening to sue to get equal access.

In the meantime, George W. Bush as stated that he would like to close the Guantanamo Bay facility as soon as he has a plan to deal with the “darn dangerous” prisoners there.

And the Oscar Goes To …

from truthout:

By William Fisher

You can only be bemused by the title of the lady at the US State Department who called the suicides of three prisoners a “good PR move to draw attention.”

Her name is Colleen Graffy, and her title is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. That’s Public Diplomacy.

Her official State Department bio says Ms. Graffy “coordinates efforts with Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes.”

One has to wonder if she coordinated her suicide remarks with Ms. Hughes, the longtime Bush spinmeister whose job it is to “win hearts and minds” for America throughout the world, and especially in the Muslim world.

My brain tells me she didn’t consult Ms. Hughes, but my gut tells me it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. That’s because since President Bush asked Ms. Hughes to take on this impossible job, she has also suffered from foot-in-mouth disease.

Like telling upper-class Saudi women that they ought to be able to drive cars, only to hear that, thank you very much, they’d much rather use their drivers.

But the Graffy gaffe takes the foot-in-mouth malady to a whole new level. In fact, if there were an Oscar for the dumbest remark made since 9/11, this lady’s words would rank right up there with “bring it on” and “Mission Accomplished.”

And even if she doesn’t go home with the award, I predict her words will become as iconic as Rummy’s comments that “stuff happens,” “you go to war with the army you have,” and all the people at GITMO are “the worst of the worst.”

But wait - there’s more. Apparently not content with one foot in her mouth, Ms. Graffy stuck the other one in as well. She told the BBC the suicides were part of a strategy and “a tactic to further the jihadi cause,” but taking their own lives was unnecessary. The three men did not value their lives or the lives of those around them, she said.

Then she went on to explain that the three detainees had access to lawyers, received mail and had the ability to write to families, and so had other means of making protests. She said it was hard to see why the men had not protested about their situation.

Evidently she hadn’t heard about the hunger strikes and the many previous suicide attempts.

We don’t know a lot about these three men. They may indeed have been among the “worst of the worst.� One, we have since learned, was scheduled to be released but hadn’t yet been told. And none of them were among the ten - out of close to 500 prisoners - who have ever been charged with a crime or had a trial.

Along with 460 others, they were in a legal black hole, charged with nothing but facing indefinite imprisonment. So exactly who would they protest to?

But wait - we’re in luck! Guantanamo’s commander, Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., mercifully brings a bit of clarity to the confusion. He explains that the suicides were “not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

Asymmetrical warfare. Got it now?

Drug Warriors Push Eye-Eating Fungus

from In These Times:

By Jeremy Bigwood

On April 16, the New York Times ran a full-page ad from contact lens producer Bausch and Lomb, announcing the recall of its “ReNu with MoistureLoc” rewetting solution, and warning the 30 million American wearers of soft contact lenses about Fusarium keratitis. This infection, first detected in Asia, has rapidly spread across the United States. It is caused by a mold-like fungus that can penetrate the cornea of soft contact lens wearers, causing redness and pain that can lead to blindness—requiring a corneal replacement.

That same week, the House of Representatives passed a provision to a bill requiring that the very same fungus be sprayed in “a major drug-producing country,” such as Colombia. The bill’s sponsor was Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and its most vocal supporter was his colleague Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has been promoting the fungus for almost a decade as key to winning the drug war.

The Colombian government has come out against it. And those entities of the U.S. government that have studied the use of Fusarium for more than 30 years don’t recommend it either: The Office of National Drug Control Policy, also known as the Drug Czar’s office, CIA, DEA, the State Department and the USDA have all concluded that the fungus is unsafe for humans and the environment.

“Fusarium species are capable of evolving rapidly. … Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide,” wrote David Struhs, then secretary of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, in a 1999 letter rejecting the use of the fungus against Florida’s outdoor marijuana crop. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species.”

Mutation of the fungus allows it to attack other “hosts.” The eye-eating Fusarium seems to be a result of such a mutation. After all, the soft-contact lenses that it grows behind are a recent development—having only been commercially available since 1971.

The DEA stopped funding Fusarium research in the United States during the early ’90s after it learned that Fusarium infections can be deadly in “immunocompromised” people—not only AIDS patients and those with other illnesses, but also those who are severely malnourished. The University of the Andes in Bogot� has recently reported that 12 percent of Colombian children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Spraying this fungus on a vulnerable population could be perceived as using a biological weapon.

The CIA has been against the use of Fusarium to kill drug crops since at least 2000. At that time, one official told the Times, “I don’t support using a product on a bunch of Colombian peasants that you wouldn’t use against a bunch of rednecks growing marijuana in Kentucky.”

A top scientist from the USDA, which has studied the fungus the longest, said that his agency “cannot support” its use. And the State Department, whose Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement carries out drug crop eradication all over the world, does not support it, either.

In 2000, when Congress first passed “Plan Colombia,” the Colombian aid package that ordered the use of the fungus in Colombia, President Clinton waived the part of the bill that dealt with the fungus because he thought its use would be perceived as biological warfare. At the same time, the Andean Community of Nations, an organization comprising Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, banned it within their territories.

So, who does support the spraying of the eye-eating fungus over other countries? Only a few adamant drug war jihadists in the House, led by Burton, who are frustrated by the lack of progress in the drug war.

The fungus provision has already passed the House, but the Senate version of the bill contains no similar language. Responsibility for a final decision rests on the conference committee where the House and Senate bills will be reconciled—scheduled to happen before this summer.

Reward for the Hereditary Elite

from WaPo:

By Sebastian Mallaby

It doesn’t matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax.

The federal government faces a future of expanding deficits. Thanks to the baby bust and medical inflation, spending is projected to rise by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2030, a growth equivalent to the doubling of today’s Medicare program. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take a source of revenue and abolish it outright.

The nation faces rising inequality. Since 1980 the gap between the earnings of the top fifth and the bottom fifth has jumped by almost 50 percent. The United States is by some measures the most unequal society in the rich world and the most unequal that it’s been since the 1920s. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Identify the most progressive federal tax and repeal it.

The nation faces the prospect that inequality will damage meritocracy. When the distance between top and bottom widens, it becomes harder to traverse the gap; people of low birth are stuck at the bottom, and human talent is wasted. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take the tax that limits what the super-rich pass on to their children and get rid of it. Send a message to hereditary elites: Go ahead, entrench yourselves!

For most of the past century, the case for the estate tax was regarded as self-evident. People understood that government has to be paid for, and that it makes sense to raise part of the money from a tax on “fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits,” as Theodore Roosevelt put it. The United States is supposed to be a country that values individuals for their inherent worth, not for their inherited worth. The estate tax, like a cigarette tax or a carbon tax, is a tool for reducing a socially damaging phenomenon - the emergence of a hereditary upper class - as well as a way of raising money.

But now the House has voted to repeal the estate tax, and the Senate may do the same this week. Republicans ?re picking up support from renegade Democrats, such as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Max Baucus of Montana. Several more may go over to the dark side if a “compromise” bill, which would achieve nearly everything that abolitionists dream of, is introduced in the Senate. President Bush, who has already muscled a temporary repeal of the estate tax into law, would be delighted to sign a bill making abolition permanent.

If the abolitionists succeed, some other tax will eventually be raised to make up for the lost revenue. So which tax does Congress favor? The income tax, which discourages work? A consumption tax, which hits the poor hardest? The payroll tax, which is both anti-work and anti-poor? Really, which other tax out there is better?

The abolitionists don’t respond to this question because there is no convincing answer. Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has written that “we would be hard-pressed to find evidence that, compared with the alternatives, a reasonable estate tax significantly discourages work or innovation or savings.” In other words, killing the estate tax and raising some other tax instead would damage the economy. And that’s before you take into account the positive distortions introduced by the estate tax, such as more social mobility and higher charitable giving. Charitable bequests will fall by at least a fifth if the estate tax is repealed permanently.

People often remark on the perversity of popular support for estate-tax repeal. A majority wants to abolish the tax, even though only the richest 2 percent of households have ever had to pay it. Yet this shoot-your-own-foot weirdness is easily explained: Most people just don’t know that, under the law’s current provisions, a couple can bequeath $4 million without paying a penny to the government.

But I’m fascinated by the spectacle of elite support for this policy. How can the president and the abolitionists in Congress, who understand the tax and its details, possibly want to kill it? They all say they accept the principle that the tax system should be fair - Bush officials are constantly claiming that their tax cuts are progressive. They all accept the principle that free trade and competition get the best out of American firms, so what about subjecting rich heirs to competition from ordinary Americans?

Repealing the estate tax is like erecting protectionist barriers around the hereditary elite. It is anti-meritocratic and unfair—and antithetical to this nation’s best traditions.

When AWOL Is the Only Way Out

from AlterNet:

By Peter Laufer

The following text is an excerpt from Peter Laufer’s new book, “Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq” (Chelsea Green, 2006).

“We was going along the Euphrates River,” says Joshua Key, a 27-year-old former U.S. soldier from Oklahoma, detailing a recurring nightmare—a scene he stumbled on shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. “It’s a road right in the city of Ramadi. We turned a real sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over here and U.S. troops in between them. I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, what in the hell happened here? What’s caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?’ We get out and somebody was screaming, ‘We fucking lost it here!’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh, yes, somebody definitely lost it here.’”

Joshua says he was ordered to look around for evidence of a firefight, for something to rationalize the beheaded Iraqis. “I look around just for a few seconds and I don’t see anything.” But then he noticed the sight that now triggers his nightmares. “I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like a soccer ball. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and it was like, I can’t be no part of this. This is crazy. I came here to fight and be prepared for war but this is outrageous. Why did it happen? That’s just my question: Why did that happen?”

He’s convinced there was no firefight that led to the beheading orgy—there were no spent shells to indicate a battle. “A lot of my friends stayed on the ground, looking to see if there was any shells. There was never no shells, except for what we shot. I’m thinking, Okay, so they just did that because they wanted to do it. They got trigger happy and they did it. That’s what made me mad in Iraq. You can take human lives at a fast rate and all you have to say is, say, ‘Oh, I thought they threw a grenade. I thought I seen this, I thought I seen that.’ You could mow down 20 people each time and nobody’s going to ask you, ‘Are you sure?’ They’re going to give you a high five and tell you that you was doing a good job.”

He still cannot get the scene out of his head. “You just see heads everywhere,” he says. “You wake up, you’ll just be sitting there, like you’re in a foxhole. I can still see Iraq just as clearly as it was the day I was there. You’ll just be on the side of a little river running through the city, trash piled up, filled with dead. Heads and stuff like that. I don’t sleep that much, you might say. I don’t sleep that much.”

His wife, Brandi, nods in agreement and says he cries in his sleep.

We’re sitting in the waning summer light on the back porch of the Toronto house where Joshua and his wife and their four little children have been living in exile since Joshua deserted to Canada. They’ve settled in a rent-free basement apartment, courtesy of a landlord sympathetic to their plight. Joshua smokes cigarettes and drinks coffee while we talk. He’s wearing a T-shirt promoting a 2002 peace rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. There̵