Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
THE GATES ARE LOCKED FOR PASSOVER
Sunday, April 01, 2007
As the Jews in Israel and throughout the world celebrate Passover, the Festival of FREEDOM... the very thing that is celebrated is denied to an entire nation. Palesinians will be welcome to stay at home... or wander if they wish... but only within their own villages and only behind the wall that separates them from family and friends.
Christian Palestinians will be able to attend Easter services and visit family members, again creating an apartheid within apartheid by distinguishing between the Christian and Muslim residents.
And yet Israel talks peace.... promises to end closures.... promises to remove roadblocks.... WHEN????
As I said above, Passover is the Festival of Freedom.... to the Palestinians it has become the Festival of Continued Suffering.
Following is a report from Ynet about the closure...
Closure on territories
Full closure imposed on West Bank ahead of Passover. IDF to allow Christians to enter Israel for family visits during Easter holiday
A full closure has been imposed on the West Bank starting Saturday night, and will be in effect for the remainder of Passover. The closure will be lifted following another security assessment after the holiday is over.
Entry into Israel from the West Bank during Passover will only be permitted in humanitarian cases.
International organization workers, lawyers, medical professionals, clergymen, and other populations will also be permitted entry, under the coordination of Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority.
Security forces have also prepared for Easter which overlaps with Passover this year. Thousands of the West Bank’s Christian residents will be permitted entry into Israel to celebrate the Easter holiday with their families.
Israeli citizens will be allowed entry to Jericho, Bethlehem, and the Gaza Strip in order to participate in religious ceremonies and family visits.
In addition, hundreds of Gaza’s Christian resident will be permitted to leave the Strip in order to take part in religious ceremonies taking place in Israel.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Ol’ Smedley Knew a Racket When He Saw (and Slew for) One
March 22, 2007
By Mark Drolette
On a picture-perfect St. Patrick’s Day morning, I heard that strangely seductive lament of bagpipes drifting through the open window of my downtown Sacramento apartment, a second-story unit right across the street from beautiful Capitol Park (an expanse of delightful urban greenery sullied only by the presence of the White Sepulcher of Corruption, otherwise known as the State Capitol, sitting smack dab in its middle).
Curious, I headed outside.
Spotting a sizeable crowd near the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial that sits just inside the park, I moseyed over.
As I neared, even these failing old eyes could make out soon enough it was some sort of support the troops/war/killing-of-swarthy-people rally. There were probably about two hundred folks present. Vets, obviously, but also wives, husbands, moms, dads and youngsters.
Including a few “Young Marines,” proudly decked out in big black boots and camouflage finery, signifying they were, indeed, well on their way to unquestioningly serving the good, ol’ Imperialistic States of America.
The Web site for “Young Marines” says it “is a youth education and service program for boys and girls, ages 8 through completion of high school. The Young Marines promotes the mental, moral, and physical development of its members.”
I don’t know about you, but I find this unsettling. What about all the six and seven year-olds who want to join, too?
Anyway, back at the park, it took but moments to sense a weird vibe.
A man, about sixty, wearing a military-type cap and adorned with a military-type vest with military-type patches on it -- in other words, a military type -- appeared to bark something at a woman near the memorial’s granite pedestal upon which was displayed, under glass, the cold, static names of California’s Vietnam War dead, all 5,622 of them. He then stood in front of it with arms crossed, staring straight ahead as if protecting it.
From whom? The woman? Oh my god, was she a terrorist? I just can’t tell who I’m supposed to be afraid of anymore. (Maybe that’s the point.)
Or maybe she’d violated some lesser-known provision of, say, the Military Commissions Act. You know, the one our freedom-loving Congress passed in October that, along with jettisoning habeas corpus and giving the current King George the power to unilaterally send any of us to the hoosegow forever, perhaps now also makes it a crime to read the names of Americans killed in war.
I just can’t tell what’s illegal anymore. (Maybe that’s also the point.)
Wondering what would happen if I audaciously began perusing the names of the hyper-vigilant vet’s unfortunate brethren who’d been soullessly used as corporate cannon fodder in Southeast Asia, I ambled over to the pedestal and began silently reading. I wasn’t told to move so I guess I’d not yet broken any unknown law, rule, regulation, tradition or superstition.
He was focused elsewhere at the moment anyway, for I soon heard him boom: “Get off my map!!” Within moments, he was striding over to the large bas-relief depiction of South Vietnam laid out at the memorial’s entrance, ready to admonish any hapless passersby who might happen to tread on it.
I was tempted to ask him what made it his map but thought better of it. Perhaps it was also forbidden now in these Orwellian days to walk on public property. More likely, of course, the poor guy had forever left a good part of his psyche fighting a pointless war inside the very country the map represented.
It appeared his body had fared no better, given his stiff gait which looked to belie the existence of an artificial leg inside those crisply-pressed slacks.
He soon returned to reassume his prior somber, cross-armed position.
In the meantime, a couple of other men, big guys who were also presumably veterans, had approached the pedestal from behind and were now leaning against it.
The first made small talk with Map Man and then asked: “So all these people, are they all supporters out here today?”
“Oh, yes,” came the authoritative response, “they’re all supporters.”
“Well,” the first vet rejoined, chuckling, “it’d take an awfully brave person not to be with this crowd.”
Now I’m not a brave person but I play one in my reverie. Besides, I could stay silent no longer.
“I don’t support the war,” I said, looking up.
“D’ya support the troops?” the second man shot back with amazing quickness, his sharp narrowed eyes zeroed in on mine.
With scant hesitation, I responded: “To engage in an illegal activity? No.”
“Well, love you my friend,” he said before immediately walking away.
I think he might have been being sarcastic.
I left soon thereafter because, as noted, I am not a brave person. I also had no great desire to determine if I could trigger a case (or several) of post-traumatic stress disorder all on my own.
I was not happy later with my response, however, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I should’ve asked my knee-jerk inquisitor: “When you say ‘support the troops,’ just what, exactly, do you mean?”
Because, really, what does it mean? We’ve all heard and seen it for years now and yet no one, to my knowledge, has ever defined it. Here was a prime opportunity for me to at last find out for all of us, and I blew it.
Sorry, gang.
For another, I’d prettied up my reply. What I was thinking of saying was: “You mean, support their ongoing murder of innocents and continuing engagement in one colossal war crime? No.”
There. I said it.
As anti-war activist Stephen S. Pearcy stated so well recently in Counterpunch:
[W]e’re all presumed to know the law. If we accept that fundamental legal presumption, then those of us who claim that the war is illegal must also acknowledge that the troops are unexcused aiders and abettors.
Publicly available information about the Iraq invasion has become plentiful over the last several years. Reasonable people contemplating service in the U.S. military should know that people throughout the world regard participation in the occupation as tantamount to aiding and abetting in mass murder, fraud, human rights violations, and international war crimes. By now, all of the troops should recognize this, and ignorance is no excuse.
So, no, I don’t support any aspect of the slaughter of over half a million innocents that the illicit presence and actions of American armed forces in Iraq have clearly precipitated, directly or not (dead is dead). This unquestioned “support for the troops,” regardless the troops’ actions or the reason(s) they’re there, has got to stop.
It’s time to end the slavish glorification of the U.S. military, the sanctity of warriorhood we’ve all been sold from day one in this country, a nonstop snake oil job from the ruling mega-wealthy warmakers who’ve forever wrapped their lust for new markets in the red, white and blue so they could once again scurry atop the resultant carnage to grab every last viscera-drenched dollar possible while making sure to never once personally risk setting foot in the firing line.
In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn reports how a young James Mellon, who had (legally) paid three hundred dollars to avoid fighting in the American Civil War, subsequently received this heartwarming reassurance from his father Thomas, founder of Mellon Bank and patriarch of the filthy rich Mellon clan.
“. . . a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable.”
Yeah. One can only hope it works out quite well for them.
What kills me is how those who have killed, almost been killed and seen plenty of killing can still so vigorously perpetuate the notion that going to war in a U.S. military uniform is all invariably done in the defense of life, liberty and preservatives-laden apple pie. You’d think just about any surviving soldier ill-fated enough to have served in Vietnam would have a leg up (if lucky enough to still have one, that is) on this old load of tripe, especially given the extreme rankness of the travesty in question (not that any war is a “good” war but some are more obviously onerous than others).
Yet, while many do, too many don’t, as verified by my experience in Capitol Park, which, unsurprisingly, included espying a banner sporting this classic hackneyed propaganda tailor-made for a paranoid populace:
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Freedom to what, shop? (Nine days after 9/11, George W. Bush exhorted traumatized Americans to show their patriotic mettle via “continued participation and confidence in the American economy.”)
Steve Vogel and Clarence Williams of The Washington Post, reporting on Washington, D.C., anti-war activities surrounding the Iraq War’s just-passed fourth anniversary, relay the following comments regarding “war protestors past and present” from Vietnam vet and counter-protestor Rod Linkous:
“We defended their right to say whatever they want. They have the freedom of speech. We gave that freedom by fighting and dying for it.”
No, Mr. Linkous, you didn’t. Truly, with all due respect to you and Map Man and all your soldier brothers, you weren’t shipped off half a planet away to kill to protect freedom of speech or even to stop commies from taking over the world. You were sent there to secure the considerable perimeter so American munitions makers could ceaselessly leap for joy and other U.S. corporate interests could do what they do best: steal as many resources as possible while maximizing profits and minimizing losses (your and your buddies’ irrecoverable ones glaringly excepted).
Same as it ever was.
Zinn again:
“Early in 1963, [President John F.] Kennedy’s Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, was speaking before the Economic Club of Detroit:
What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable, and why is it important? First, it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice, rubber, teak, corn, tin, spice, oil, and many others...”
Now, I’m no foreign policy expert, but somehow I’m not thinkin’ this is what the U.S. government meant when it kept intoning all those years about the “domino effect.”
Mind you, it makes complete sense how one who had suffered through the soul-pulverizing madness that was Vietnam (or any war) would be desperately driven to use whatever rationalization it took to somehow “make sense of it all” because the alternative -- that one’s ass was on the line simply to (over)fill some anonymous greedhead’s pocket -- is too horrifying to contemplate.
Yet, for all their ham-fisted attempts at subterfuge, the plain fact is one couldn’t find a crew more obvious about its sick motives than this current crop of arrogant death-dealing fascists composing the Bush administration. From the very get-go, they couldn’t have been more breathtakingly overt about their intentions than if they’d been broadcast live on all seven thousand cable channels unlocking the doors to the U.S. Treasury, marching into an open vault and then cramming giant sacks full of bazillion dollar bills, the whole time evilly smiling (how else would they smile?) and leering straight into the camera, cackling: “Look what we’re doing here: ripping you all off big-time! Here, now we’re doing it again. And now, see? -- again! Hot-damn, here’s some more. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! Suck-ers!”
The only surprise at this point, is that anyone would be surprised at this point.
For what it’s worth (zilch), at least the Democrats’ cover now has been thoroughly pulled (for those who still had doubt as to how shamefully compromised they are). Seems they’ve come up a bit short in stopping the war, since now there are even more troops in Iraq than there were before the Dems curiously “won” both houses in November. And that power of the purse thing? Not only do Democratic “leaders” agree to fully fund Bush’s latest wholesale money-grubbin’ grab for his (and their) weapons industry buds, they want to give him a billion dollars more!
I almost put the following on my sign at the March 18th San Francisco anti-war march: “Good thing the Dems have Congress. Else, we’d be in a real fix.”
What I wrote instead, though, was “Just imagine if America were war-like!” and, on the other side, “War is a racket -- Smedley Butler.”
For some strange reason (hmm, what could it be?), Americans aren’t taught in school about Smedley Butler, an important figure in United States history who spent thirty-three years in the Marine Corps before retiring as a major general in 1931. Widely respected (he’s one of only two Marines to win the Congressional Medal of Honor twice), he was recruited in 1933 by fascism-admiring, über-rich American businessmen to lead a coup against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Imagine their surprise when Butler reported the plan to a congressional committee instead.
Though the committee’s final report corroborated Butler’s testimony, no further action was taken.
Shocking, eh?
Bluntly honest, Butler frequently spoke after his retirement to gatherings sponsored by “veterans, communists, pacifists and church groups” (Wikipedia) in which he made no bones about the masters he truly served during his career. Probably Butler’s best-known quote comes from a 1935 issue of Common Sense, a socialist newspaper:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
Not a whole lot there about defending the Bill of Rights, I see.
In 1935, Butler penned a damning, no-frills booklet, War is a Racket, detailing his dim views on the real motivations behind armed conflict. In his short work, he asserts American military forces should be used only for defensive purposes. This would appear to be a no-brainer, although that’s obviously not quite how the no-brainers driving the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and next, Iran (count on it), see it.
And, hey -- what’s this? Even the Constitution supports Butler on this point, declaring it has been ordained and established to help we the people, among other stuffy stuff, “provide for the common defence….” (Yes, I know the Constitution no longer exists but I like to quote it now and again just for old time’s sake.)
So let’s not pretend “our troops” are innocent bystanders in America’s relentless wars of imperialism and profiteering. Let’s not try to have it both ways by (rightly) asserting how horrified we are by a conflict that is irrefutably illegal while at the same time saying that somehow those who continue the killing and the maiming and the torturing and the razing are blameless or have no choice. Granted, standing up to the mighty ‘merican military machine by refusing to follow illegal orders and risking incarceration for a good long while is an excruciatingly tough row to hoe -- just ask First Lieutenant Ehren Watada -- but so is the alternative: a lifetime of knowing you participated in immorally destroying an entire country just so the animals who sent you there can buy that nice little second yacht they’ve had their beady, greedy little eyes on for some time.
‘Course, there’s another pitiable group: the ones who never can see past the nationalistic catchphrases that were so freely bandied about to cynically insert them and their dead and crippled comrades into an utter hell, the same slogans they continue to swallow whole and unthinkingly repeat as they pass the bloody baton on to, say, Young Marines.
Signed your eight-year-old up yet?
Mark Drolette is a writer from Sacramento, California. His upcoming book Why Costa Rica? Why the hell not? will be available once it’s finished, published and then made available. In the meantime, Mark can be reached at: mdrolette@comcast.net.
By Mark Drolette
On a picture-perfect St. Patrick’s Day morning, I heard that strangely seductive lament of bagpipes drifting through the open window of my downtown Sacramento apartment, a second-story unit right across the street from beautiful Capitol Park (an expanse of delightful urban greenery sullied only by the presence of the White Sepulcher of Corruption, otherwise known as the State Capitol, sitting smack dab in its middle).
Curious, I headed outside.
Spotting a sizeable crowd near the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial that sits just inside the park, I moseyed over.
As I neared, even these failing old eyes could make out soon enough it was some sort of support the troops/war/killing-of-swarthy-people rally. There were probably about two hundred folks present. Vets, obviously, but also wives, husbands, moms, dads and youngsters.
Including a few “Young Marines,” proudly decked out in big black boots and camouflage finery, signifying they were, indeed, well on their way to unquestioningly serving the good, ol’ Imperialistic States of America.
The Web site for “Young Marines” says it “is a youth education and service program for boys and girls, ages 8 through completion of high school. The Young Marines promotes the mental, moral, and physical development of its members.”
I don’t know about you, but I find this unsettling. What about all the six and seven year-olds who want to join, too?
Anyway, back at the park, it took but moments to sense a weird vibe.
A man, about sixty, wearing a military-type cap and adorned with a military-type vest with military-type patches on it -- in other words, a military type -- appeared to bark something at a woman near the memorial’s granite pedestal upon which was displayed, under glass, the cold, static names of California’s Vietnam War dead, all 5,622 of them. He then stood in front of it with arms crossed, staring straight ahead as if protecting it.
From whom? The woman? Oh my god, was she a terrorist? I just can’t tell who I’m supposed to be afraid of anymore. (Maybe that’s the point.)
Or maybe she’d violated some lesser-known provision of, say, the Military Commissions Act. You know, the one our freedom-loving Congress passed in October that, along with jettisoning habeas corpus and giving the current King George the power to unilaterally send any of us to the hoosegow forever, perhaps now also makes it a crime to read the names of Americans killed in war.
I just can’t tell what’s illegal anymore. (Maybe that’s also the point.)
Wondering what would happen if I audaciously began perusing the names of the hyper-vigilant vet’s unfortunate brethren who’d been soullessly used as corporate cannon fodder in Southeast Asia, I ambled over to the pedestal and began silently reading. I wasn’t told to move so I guess I’d not yet broken any unknown law, rule, regulation, tradition or superstition.
He was focused elsewhere at the moment anyway, for I soon heard him boom: “Get off my map!!” Within moments, he was striding over to the large bas-relief depiction of South Vietnam laid out at the memorial’s entrance, ready to admonish any hapless passersby who might happen to tread on it.
I was tempted to ask him what made it his map but thought better of it. Perhaps it was also forbidden now in these Orwellian days to walk on public property. More likely, of course, the poor guy had forever left a good part of his psyche fighting a pointless war inside the very country the map represented.
It appeared his body had fared no better, given his stiff gait which looked to belie the existence of an artificial leg inside those crisply-pressed slacks.
He soon returned to reassume his prior somber, cross-armed position.
In the meantime, a couple of other men, big guys who were also presumably veterans, had approached the pedestal from behind and were now leaning against it.
The first made small talk with Map Man and then asked: “So all these people, are they all supporters out here today?”
“Oh, yes,” came the authoritative response, “they’re all supporters.”
“Well,” the first vet rejoined, chuckling, “it’d take an awfully brave person not to be with this crowd.”
Now I’m not a brave person but I play one in my reverie. Besides, I could stay silent no longer.
“I don’t support the war,” I said, looking up.
“D’ya support the troops?” the second man shot back with amazing quickness, his sharp narrowed eyes zeroed in on mine.
With scant hesitation, I responded: “To engage in an illegal activity? No.”
“Well, love you my friend,” he said before immediately walking away.
I think he might have been being sarcastic.
I left soon thereafter because, as noted, I am not a brave person. I also had no great desire to determine if I could trigger a case (or several) of post-traumatic stress disorder all on my own.
I was not happy later with my response, however, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I should’ve asked my knee-jerk inquisitor: “When you say ‘support the troops,’ just what, exactly, do you mean?”
Because, really, what does it mean? We’ve all heard and seen it for years now and yet no one, to my knowledge, has ever defined it. Here was a prime opportunity for me to at last find out for all of us, and I blew it.
Sorry, gang.
For another, I’d prettied up my reply. What I was thinking of saying was: “You mean, support their ongoing murder of innocents and continuing engagement in one colossal war crime? No.”
There. I said it.
As anti-war activist Stephen S. Pearcy stated so well recently in Counterpunch:
[W]e’re all presumed to know the law. If we accept that fundamental legal presumption, then those of us who claim that the war is illegal must also acknowledge that the troops are unexcused aiders and abettors.
Publicly available information about the Iraq invasion has become plentiful over the last several years. Reasonable people contemplating service in the U.S. military should know that people throughout the world regard participation in the occupation as tantamount to aiding and abetting in mass murder, fraud, human rights violations, and international war crimes. By now, all of the troops should recognize this, and ignorance is no excuse.
So, no, I don’t support any aspect of the slaughter of over half a million innocents that the illicit presence and actions of American armed forces in Iraq have clearly precipitated, directly or not (dead is dead). This unquestioned “support for the troops,” regardless the troops’ actions or the reason(s) they’re there, has got to stop.
It’s time to end the slavish glorification of the U.S. military, the sanctity of warriorhood we’ve all been sold from day one in this country, a nonstop snake oil job from the ruling mega-wealthy warmakers who’ve forever wrapped their lust for new markets in the red, white and blue so they could once again scurry atop the resultant carnage to grab every last viscera-drenched dollar possible while making sure to never once personally risk setting foot in the firing line.
In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn reports how a young James Mellon, who had (legally) paid three hundred dollars to avoid fighting in the American Civil War, subsequently received this heartwarming reassurance from his father Thomas, founder of Mellon Bank and patriarch of the filthy rich Mellon clan.
“. . . a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable.”
Yeah. One can only hope it works out quite well for them.
What kills me is how those who have killed, almost been killed and seen plenty of killing can still so vigorously perpetuate the notion that going to war in a U.S. military uniform is all invariably done in the defense of life, liberty and preservatives-laden apple pie. You’d think just about any surviving soldier ill-fated enough to have served in Vietnam would have a leg up (if lucky enough to still have one, that is) on this old load of tripe, especially given the extreme rankness of the travesty in question (not that any war is a “good” war but some are more obviously onerous than others).
Yet, while many do, too many don’t, as verified by my experience in Capitol Park, which, unsurprisingly, included espying a banner sporting this classic hackneyed propaganda tailor-made for a paranoid populace:
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Freedom to what, shop? (Nine days after 9/11, George W. Bush exhorted traumatized Americans to show their patriotic mettle via “continued participation and confidence in the American economy.”)
Steve Vogel and Clarence Williams of The Washington Post, reporting on Washington, D.C., anti-war activities surrounding the Iraq War’s just-passed fourth anniversary, relay the following comments regarding “war protestors past and present” from Vietnam vet and counter-protestor Rod Linkous:
“We defended their right to say whatever they want. They have the freedom of speech. We gave that freedom by fighting and dying for it.”
No, Mr. Linkous, you didn’t. Truly, with all due respect to you and Map Man and all your soldier brothers, you weren’t shipped off half a planet away to kill to protect freedom of speech or even to stop commies from taking over the world. You were sent there to secure the considerable perimeter so American munitions makers could ceaselessly leap for joy and other U.S. corporate interests could do what they do best: steal as many resources as possible while maximizing profits and minimizing losses (your and your buddies’ irrecoverable ones glaringly excepted).
Same as it ever was.
Zinn again:
“Early in 1963, [President John F.] Kennedy’s Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, was speaking before the Economic Club of Detroit:
What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable, and why is it important? First, it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice, rubber, teak, corn, tin, spice, oil, and many others...”
Now, I’m no foreign policy expert, but somehow I’m not thinkin’ this is what the U.S. government meant when it kept intoning all those years about the “domino effect.”
Mind you, it makes complete sense how one who had suffered through the soul-pulverizing madness that was Vietnam (or any war) would be desperately driven to use whatever rationalization it took to somehow “make sense of it all” because the alternative -- that one’s ass was on the line simply to (over)fill some anonymous greedhead’s pocket -- is too horrifying to contemplate.
Yet, for all their ham-fisted attempts at subterfuge, the plain fact is one couldn’t find a crew more obvious about its sick motives than this current crop of arrogant death-dealing fascists composing the Bush administration. From the very get-go, they couldn’t have been more breathtakingly overt about their intentions than if they’d been broadcast live on all seven thousand cable channels unlocking the doors to the U.S. Treasury, marching into an open vault and then cramming giant sacks full of bazillion dollar bills, the whole time evilly smiling (how else would they smile?) and leering straight into the camera, cackling: “Look what we’re doing here: ripping you all off big-time! Here, now we’re doing it again. And now, see? -- again! Hot-damn, here’s some more. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! Suck-ers!”
The only surprise at this point, is that anyone would be surprised at this point.
For what it’s worth (zilch), at least the Democrats’ cover now has been thoroughly pulled (for those who still had doubt as to how shamefully compromised they are). Seems they’ve come up a bit short in stopping the war, since now there are even more troops in Iraq than there were before the Dems curiously “won” both houses in November. And that power of the purse thing? Not only do Democratic “leaders” agree to fully fund Bush’s latest wholesale money-grubbin’ grab for his (and their) weapons industry buds, they want to give him a billion dollars more!
I almost put the following on my sign at the March 18th San Francisco anti-war march: “Good thing the Dems have Congress. Else, we’d be in a real fix.”
What I wrote instead, though, was “Just imagine if America were war-like!” and, on the other side, “War is a racket -- Smedley Butler.”
For some strange reason (hmm, what could it be?), Americans aren’t taught in school about Smedley Butler, an important figure in United States history who spent thirty-three years in the Marine Corps before retiring as a major general in 1931. Widely respected (he’s one of only two Marines to win the Congressional Medal of Honor twice), he was recruited in 1933 by fascism-admiring, über-rich American businessmen to lead a coup against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Imagine their surprise when Butler reported the plan to a congressional committee instead.
Though the committee’s final report corroborated Butler’s testimony, no further action was taken.
Shocking, eh?
Bluntly honest, Butler frequently spoke after his retirement to gatherings sponsored by “veterans, communists, pacifists and church groups” (Wikipedia) in which he made no bones about the masters he truly served during his career. Probably Butler’s best-known quote comes from a 1935 issue of Common Sense, a socialist newspaper:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
Not a whole lot there about defending the Bill of Rights, I see.
In 1935, Butler penned a damning, no-frills booklet, War is a Racket, detailing his dim views on the real motivations behind armed conflict. In his short work, he asserts American military forces should be used only for defensive purposes. This would appear to be a no-brainer, although that’s obviously not quite how the no-brainers driving the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and next, Iran (count on it), see it.
And, hey -- what’s this? Even the Constitution supports Butler on this point, declaring it has been ordained and established to help we the people, among other stuffy stuff, “provide for the common defence….” (Yes, I know the Constitution no longer exists but I like to quote it now and again just for old time’s sake.)
So let’s not pretend “our troops” are innocent bystanders in America’s relentless wars of imperialism and profiteering. Let’s not try to have it both ways by (rightly) asserting how horrified we are by a conflict that is irrefutably illegal while at the same time saying that somehow those who continue the killing and the maiming and the torturing and the razing are blameless or have no choice. Granted, standing up to the mighty ‘merican military machine by refusing to follow illegal orders and risking incarceration for a good long while is an excruciatingly tough row to hoe -- just ask First Lieutenant Ehren Watada -- but so is the alternative: a lifetime of knowing you participated in immorally destroying an entire country just so the animals who sent you there can buy that nice little second yacht they’ve had their beady, greedy little eyes on for some time.
‘Course, there’s another pitiable group: the ones who never can see past the nationalistic catchphrases that were so freely bandied about to cynically insert them and their dead and crippled comrades into an utter hell, the same slogans they continue to swallow whole and unthinkingly repeat as they pass the bloody baton on to, say, Young Marines.
Signed your eight-year-old up yet?
Mark Drolette is a writer from Sacramento, California. His upcoming book Why Costa Rica? Why the hell not? will be available once it’s finished, published and then made available. In the meantime, Mark can be reached at: mdrolette@comcast.net.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom
Adam Curtis (BBC) - The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007)
A series of films by BAFTA-winning producer Adam Curtis, that tells the story of the rise of today's narrow idea of freedom
Part 1 - F**k You Buddy
stream/download
Part 2 - The Lonely Robot
stream/download
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The long road back to freedom from Zionism
Related
Neocon Imperialism, 9/11, and the Attacks on Afghanistan & Iraq---
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Five countries – the U. S., Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – were forced to bend over and spread ’em as a result of the U. S. forcing its ‘allies’ to conform to Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘war on terror’ in the wake of the September 11 attacks. All five victims of Zionist propaganda had to create horrific Orwellian legislation to oppress Muslims (Muslims are, of course, the direct target of the ‘war on terror’ legislation). Now, Canada is taking the long road back to freedom.
The Canadian legislation contained a ‘sunset’ clause which required Parliament to reconsider the worst parts of the legislation, passed after September 11, 2001, in five years. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion deserves enormous credit for resisting the enormous – and I mean enormous – pressure from the Zionist lobby within his own party, and holding fast to his principles (if you don’t believe me, read how a Zionist puts the issue; Dion’s selection as Liberal leader really was a massive defeat for the Jewish Billionaires Club, who are trying to get their revenge by having their media catamites claim Dion isn’t doing well as Liberal leader). The governing Conservatives, representing the Israel Lobby and the jack-booted thugs distinguished members of the security establishment, desperately wanted to keep the draconian laws in place. The Liberals voted with the other two opposition parties to put an end to the two worst parts of the legislation.
Note in particular ultra-Zionist Irwin Cotler, who takes the position that the oppressive laws should stay as they have never been used. I suppose Cotler, who fancies himself an advocate of human rights (other than for Palestinians, of course), would support the passage of a death-penalty law for jaywalking, as long as the law is never used.
The reason the law was never used is that the authorities relied on provisions of the Immigration Act to detain Muslims. These obviously unconstitutional provisions were struck down by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada last Friday. The problem with having obviously unconstitutional legislation on the books is twofold. First, the mere existence of such laws can be used as a threat against victims of the security establishment. Secondly, the victims of the unconstitutional laws languish in detention for years before the issue reaches the courts (assuming the victims can afford to pay to make it through the legal system).
Once freedom is lost it is very difficult to regain it. The Zionists and the jack-booted thugs distinguished members of the security establishment relied on fear to attempt to keep the legislation. Terrorist hell is supposed to break loose once there is any glimmer of freedom from oppression.
The ‘war on terror’ was created by Netanyahu and the Israeli right for three reasons:
- It was supposed to replace the idea that Israel was the ally of the United States in the Middle East in the battle against the Soviets, by the idea that Israel was the ally of the United States in the Middle East in the battle against fundamentalist Islam (the shift was needed when the Soviet Union no longer existed).
- It was intended to create the idea that Israel’s struggle against the justified reaction by the Palestinians to Israeli war crimes was the same struggle faced by the United States, and the world.
- It has been extended to include the entire gamut of propaganda weapons which we know of as Islamophobia, intended to create a general fear of Islam which is used to make possible various Zionist outrages.
One of the Israeli spies caught while cheering at the collapse of the World Trade center put it clearly (my emphasis in red):
“We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”
Netanyahu himself, on being asked about what the September 11 attacks would mean for US-Israeli relations, said:
“It's very good. Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.”
Make no mistake: the Canadian and similar oppressive laws are the gifts of Zionism to the world. One of the many payments the rest of the world makes for not stopping Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity is having to live under the burden of oppressive Zionist anti-Muslim legislation.
Xympora
Thursday, January 18, 2007
“Freedom”: Democracy's Hangman
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Felicity Arbuthnot, UNObserver
All wars (and invasions) have one image which is forever the blood-soaked whole. The naked child, traumatised to beyond terror, fleeing in Viet Nam; Robert Capa's 1936, “Falling Soldier”, in the Spanish civil war, taken at Cerro Muriano.
Guantanamo Bay's orange jump-suited, shackled victims, will surely be how history depicts U.S. policy and committment to humanity, in the second millenium. The infamous jump suits are, ironically, it seems, made by prisoners at Fort Worth jail, in George W. Bush's Texas. Britain, as ever, has a hand in this obscenity.
Hiatt and Company of Birmingham, in the north of England, has been proudly making shackles, since they made “nigger collars” for the slave trade and now supply the shackles for the lost souls of Guantanamo Bay.
On Wednesday 10th January, the fifth anniversary of the opening of this “gulag of our times”, protests were held across the globe - and outside Hiatt where former detainees of this abomination, relations of those held and campaigners demonstrated - in orange jump suits.
Renowned human rights lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, M.P. Clare Short, Dr. Adnan Siddiqui of “Caged Prisoners” and author and arms activist, Mark Thomas had written in a letter to the (London) Observer (7th January) explaining the forthcoming actions, and concluding: “As the abolitionist William Wilberforce put it: ‘If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.’
To this we will also plead guilty - outside the Hiatt factory.” They also cite a further hundred secret prisons globally and fourteen thousand prisoners unaccounted for. ( http://www.guantanamo.org.uk )
Further, the real fanatics in Guantanamo Bay, it transpires, have been dressing up as priests and “baptizing” Muslim detainees, deprived of all normality - and wrapping them in the Israeli flag.
Iraq's ongoing, “liberated”, blood and gore, continues to flow through the haunting, ancient, spiritual land. Is Iraq under occupation, the image of the tiny blood spattered child in Tel Afar, witness to the massacre of her entire family by America's finest?
Is it the wistful, beautiful face of the five year old Abeer Qassim Al Janabi, raped at fourteen, then burned, with her family, at Mahmudiya in June, by retards in US uniforms? Reportedly the ring leader, Pfc., Steven D. Green had been diagnosed with an “anti-social personality disorder” (you could say that again) but clearly his four colleagues cannot have been too well bolted down on all four corners.
Perhaps U.S. Army recruiting screening needs a bit of an overhaul. Such crazies would surely be on death row, in the “land of the free”.“Any animal in the West lives better than any Iraqi under occupation”, an Iraqi who had fled to Amman told the BBC., on 'Guantanamo Wednesday'.
And American values, from which Iraq, Afghanistan and now Somalia – bombing nomadic herdsmen there seems to have become popular - are spreading rapidly.Within days of the hanging of Iraq's legitimate President, after a trial which made the Spanish Inquisition look benign, eight children across the globe had hung themselves, emulating the grizzly, shameful spectacle, which heralded the New Year.
One was a ten year old in the U.S. oil capitol, Houston, Texas, geographically just up the road from Crawford, home to the President and former State Governor, who invaded Iraq for oil. What an irony.
In Algeria, a group of schoolchildren hung a twelve year old, in a “game”. The US Army is mooting taking on non-nationals, since recruitment is plunging. These kids clearly have attributes which should fit well, in a few years.
A fifteen year old in India, could not eat for two days in her distress at Saddam's hanging, saying she wanted to feel his pain. “We didn't take her Seriously”, said her distraught father, after she did just that.
Her heart- rending empathy is in stark contrast to Britain's dour Prime Minister in waiting, Gordon Brown (forget democracy, voting for a new Prime Minister, even Iraq style, we are to have him and that is that) commented eventually, that the method of the hanging, was “deplorable”. Is such mediaeval barbarism ever other?
Lord Blair of Kut Al Amara - 1917 site of : “the most humiliating defeat in British military history” (they went there to protect the oilfields) as dubbed by the Independent's Robert Fisk, busy in Florida, with his tan, said nothing for some days, finally regretting; “the manner of his execution”, by the US/UK's “coalition” appointed low life thugs in the “New Iraq”.
Apart from the shameful, malevolent savagery itself, it appears Saddam Hussein's throat was cut immediately afterwards, which seems to have passed Blair by. Perhaps when a being has slaughter on such an unimaginable scale on their hands, further horrors fail to register.
President Bush, never a man to be squeamish when it comes to signing a death warrant, said the hanging could have been done, “...in a more dignified way”, but “nevertheless he was given justice”. Texas justice, maybe? There will, he says, be a “full investigation”. A bit late. Oh, and is not the Iraqi government “sovereign” and “independent” of the U.S.?
Now the world is to be treated to another “new strategy” in Iraq, a final “surge” to clear “insurgents”, home by home, street by street, district by district.Baghdad's gracious Haifa Street has become a “hotbed” and is being bombed mercilessly.
It was never a “hotbed”, pre-invasion, when, as in the rest of the great, ancient capitol, visitors and residents drove and walked, at all hours, in this formerly late night city, without a glance over the shoulder. Districts are to be, chillingly: “cleansed”. Bush's “surge” sounds more like: “the final solution”. And again: “We are determined to rid Iraq of foreign fighters”. Duh? And yet again, defeat “is not an option”. Indeed. It is a certainty.
There is a relevant and memorable quote from a Viet Nam veteran. Thomas Hastie: “One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.”
Meanwhile, Tony Blair lectured experienced military and naval experts on H.M.S.Albion, based in Plymouth, from where Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) an early “privateer”, set off to plunder the Andes silver. He got away with that, defeated the Spanish, tried to ferment an uprising in Portugal, failed, was disgraced by a furious Queen and died of yellow fever, in another failed plunder in Panama.
“Albion” was the early name for Britain, ever immortalised by Napoleon Bonarparte's scathing : “Perfide Albion”.(“Perfidious Albion” – “perfidious”: Dict: treacherous or deceitful.) History also records an earlier quote from Bossuet (1627-1704) “L'Angleterre, ah! La perfide Angleterre”.
Symbolism stalks Tony Blair, as delusion, it seems. It was the first in a series of addresses Downing Street call his “big picture”, prior to departure, talks. Given the glazed, slumped demeanor of his distinguished audience, it appeared anything but.
March, the fourth anniversary of the apocalyptic disaster of the illegal invasion of Iraq, heralds the ninetieth anniversary of British General Stanley Maude's “Declaration of Baghdad” (11th March 1917.) “Our armies to not come in to your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.” He lies in Baghdad's North Gate Cemetery, along with his invaders ambitions.
29th April 2007, marks ninety one years since the defeat of the British at Kut.28th April 2007, marks the seventieth birthday of a legal and assassinated elderly Iraqi President, hung in perfidy; he had to be disposed of before the New Year, a clean start, the world was told, in “independent” largely Muslim Iraq. The Islamic New Year is 20th January. Prime Minister Maliki's decision? Never. A puppet on a string, or perhaps, later a noose.
And as President Bush and Anthony Blair QC., seek to walk in sunset, anywhere, as they scuttle from their disgraced tenures, their image will be forever a lynched legitimate leader, at the end of a noose. And for Blair the final confirmation of the utterly delusional: he sees his future as being a global “envoy for peace”. Men in white coats time.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger's award-winning documentary "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq". http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partID=4
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Academic to be Tried for Attending Holocaust Conference
Academic to be Tried for Attending Holocaust Conference
By Ali Ihsan Aydin, Paris
Friday, December 15, 2006
zaman.com
By Ali Ihsan Aydin, Paris
Friday, December 15, 2006
zaman.com
Robert Faurisson, a French academic who attended an Iranian conference questioning the Jewish Holocaust, could face legal punishment.
Robert Faurisson might be brought to court as a result of the comments he made at the "unacceptable" Tehran gathering, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said.
The foreign minister said the French academic was previously taken to court and banned from teaching at universities for his attitude toward the holocaust.
The French academic, who attended the conference titled “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision” held by Iranian Foreign Ministry Foreign Policy Center, was previously convicted for denying the holocaust five times in his country.
The conference was attended by 67 scholars from 30 countries and found “unacceptable” by the European Union and the United States. Tehran was condemned for allowing it to take place.
Professor Faurisson had sparked reactions for his open letter “The Rumor of Auschwitz,” published in Le Monde.
The French academic was given a three month prison term and fined €7,500 for an interview with Iranian TV channel Sahar 1 in October.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
McCain introduces legislation to shut down poitical blogs
From the legislation:
– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also McCainAmazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.
– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also McCainAmazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Lectures tested freedom of speech
GUEST VIEWPOINT
Published: Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Pacifica Forum's affording Valdas Anelauskas a platform for eight lectures on "Zionism and Russia" has renewed ferment in Eugene and on its campus about racism, the "ugly claw of anti-Semitism," "hate," bigotry and freedom of speech. Who is mainly, even solely, responsible for this?
I. In my second childhood at 91, l'enfant terrible, l'ogre, c'est moi.
Why? To test Eugene's commitment to freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech in this town has a checkered past. The nadir probably came in 1917, when Allan Eaton, later a celebrity in art circles, was literally run out of town for questioning the U.S. war against Germany. Another nadir came 10 years ago, when a neo-Nazi was invited to address a forum on racism and members of the audience shouted him down.
The pinnacle of free speech came in 1963, when Arthur Flemming, the president of the University of Oregon and a well-known Republican, facing opposition from a broad spectrum of governmental and civic leaders, provided Gus Hall, head of the Communist Party USA, a platform to address a university convocation.
My personal high came 40 years earlier, on Sept. 26, 1943, when the managing editor of The Register-Guard devoted a full Sunday editorial to a 13-page letter that I had written him in defense of my commitment not to "participate in war or sanction military preparations." The letter did not convert him to pacifism, but he commented on it respectfully and made no effort to have me run out of town. Contrary to a remonstrance from one of his readers, he afforded a pacifist a platform during the height of World War II.
Fast-forward 60 years. I founded Pacifica Forum in the mid-1990s and was its usual chairman and its main program planner. It was a program more than an organization. It was remarkably anarchic. It had no constitution, no bylaws, no membership, no dues, no treasury, no elected or appointed officers.
It had three sponsors, all more or less pacifistic, but it was not intended to convert attendants to pacifism. Its statement of purpose asserted that it would "provide information and points of view" regarding "war and peace, militarism and pacifism, violence and nonviolence."
Its objective was not so much to persuade as to inform. After it encountered efforts in 2003-04 to shut it down, it added, under the sponsorship of the Campus Civil Liberties Circle, another main objective: to exercise and defend freedom of speech.
Fast forward to 2006. At a talk on David Irving's recent imprisonment in Austria, his having been denied a platform in Portland during the 1990s, I met Valdas Anelauskas, a Lithuanian writer who had lived in the Soviet Union. I invited him to speak to Pacifica Forum on "Zionism in Russia." Finding his lectures well enough documented to deserve follow-ups, I invited him, over some resistance, to deliver what would turn out to be eight lectures on his general theme.
Jewish and other monitors attended the lectures and took a dim view of them. Some voiced the view, widespread in Eugene, that certain topics are so reprehensible that they should not be offered a public platform.
That view I cannot accept.
All the while, no Pacifica Forum attendant, including me, seemed to agree totally with Anelauskas, and one regular attendant and I delivered talks expressing points of view contrary to his.
Among attendants, I now encountered more resistance to booking him further.
By now, however, his appearances had become so intertwined with the basic issue of free speech that I decided to put that issue to an acid test: He would be invited to address Pacifica Forum, even though no attendant, particularly me, was likely to agree with everything he said.
The community passed the test: No one, not even the Anti-Hate Task Force, barred Anelauskas from entering the room. No one tried to shout him down. Campus security was not alerted. The campus newspaper carried a report the next day. The UO administration, perhaps remembering its president 43 years earlier, did not intervene.
Unfortunately, Anelauskas talked so long that he could not be questioned on the spot. Pacifica Forum will afford opportunity for questioning him to all who request it, and he can be reached at valdas@efn.org.
The Anelauskas test is hardly comparable with the Gus Hall test. The former was in macrocosm, the latter has been in microcosm.
Both, however, have the same essentials: unfettered opportunity to deliver a message not politically correct in much of the community, or even totally agreeable to the provider of the platform.
Stay tuned. Pacifica Forum will continue to meet on the ground floor in McKenzie Hall at 4 p.m. on Fridays. Members of the Anti-Hate Task Force, particularly, always will be welcome.
Orval Etter of Eugene (orvaletter @netscape.net) is the founder of Pacifica Forum.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Video: Olbermann rips Gingrich's 'sinister vision'
0lberm4nn warns of Gingrich 'sinister vision' for The World
08:23
08:23
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Gingrich: free speech getting old
Gingrich raises alarm at event honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech
By RILEY YATES
Union Leader Staff
12 hours, 42 minutes ago
MANCHESTER – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.
GINGRICH
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.
"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.
Gingrich spoke to about 400 state and local power brokers last night at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people and organizations that stand up for freedom of speech.
Gingrich sharply criticized campaign finance laws he charged were reducing free speech and doing little to fight attack advertising. He also said court rulings over separation of church and state have hurt citizens' ability to express themselves and their faith.
Last night's event, held at the Radisson Hotel-Center of New Hampshire, honored a Lakes Region newspaper and a former speaker of the House for work in favor of free expression.
The Citizen of Laconia was given the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award, which is named after the longtime President and Publisher of the Union Leader Corporation, owner of New Hampshire's statewide newspaper.
The Citizen scrutinized the Newfound Area School Board beginning last year over a series of e-mail discussions held before public meetings. It also used the right-to-know law to uncover costly decisions by the town of Tilton this year.
Executive Editor John Howe said the decision to pursue the stories led to at least one advertiser canceling its business with the paper.
"We try to practice what we preach, even if it costs us business," Howe said. "And it has and it will in the future.
Also honored was Marshall Cobleigh, former House speaker and a longtime aide to former Gov. Meldrim Thomson.
Cobleigh introduced an amendment to the state Constitution defending free speech. He also helped shepherd the state's 1967 right-to-know law through the Legislature.
Gingrich's speech focused on the First Amendment, but in an interview beforehand, he also hit upon wide-ranging topics.
Gingrich said America has "failed" in Iraq over the past three years and urged a new approach to winning the conflict. The U.S. needs to engage Syria and Iran and increase investment to train the Iraqi army and a national police force, he said. "How does a defeat for America make us safer?" Gingrich said. "I would look at an entirely new strategy." He added: "We have clearly failed in the last three years to achieve the kind of outcome we want."
Political parties in Presidential primary states should host events that invite candidates from both parties to discuss issues, said Gingrich, who criticized the sharpness of today's politics.
Gingrich said voters unhappy with the war, the response to Hurricane Katrina and pork barrel spending were the main drive behind the GOP's rejection at the polls. But he argued Republicans would have retained the Senate and just narrowly lost the House if President Bush had announced the departure of embattled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before, instead of after, the election.
Gingrich said he will not decide whether he is running for President until September 2007.
The event last night was sponsored by the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications. The school was founded in 1999 to promote journalism and other forms of communication.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Gingrich+raises+alarm+at+event+honoring+those+who+stand+up+for+freedom+of+speech&articleId=d3f4ee4e-1e90-475a-b1b0-bbcd5baedd78
By RILEY YATES
Union Leader Staff
12 hours, 42 minutes ago
MANCHESTER – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.
GINGRICH
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.
"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.
Gingrich spoke to about 400 state and local power brokers last night at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people and organizations that stand up for freedom of speech.
Gingrich sharply criticized campaign finance laws he charged were reducing free speech and doing little to fight attack advertising. He also said court rulings over separation of church and state have hurt citizens' ability to express themselves and their faith.
Last night's event, held at the Radisson Hotel-Center of New Hampshire, honored a Lakes Region newspaper and a former speaker of the House for work in favor of free expression.
The Citizen of Laconia was given the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award, which is named after the longtime President and Publisher of the Union Leader Corporation, owner of New Hampshire's statewide newspaper.
The Citizen scrutinized the Newfound Area School Board beginning last year over a series of e-mail discussions held before public meetings. It also used the right-to-know law to uncover costly decisions by the town of Tilton this year.
Executive Editor John Howe said the decision to pursue the stories led to at least one advertiser canceling its business with the paper.
"We try to practice what we preach, even if it costs us business," Howe said. "And it has and it will in the future.
Also honored was Marshall Cobleigh, former House speaker and a longtime aide to former Gov. Meldrim Thomson.
Cobleigh introduced an amendment to the state Constitution defending free speech. He also helped shepherd the state's 1967 right-to-know law through the Legislature.
Gingrich's speech focused on the First Amendment, but in an interview beforehand, he also hit upon wide-ranging topics.
Gingrich said America has "failed" in Iraq over the past three years and urged a new approach to winning the conflict. The U.S. needs to engage Syria and Iran and increase investment to train the Iraqi army and a national police force, he said. "How does a defeat for America make us safer?" Gingrich said. "I would look at an entirely new strategy." He added: "We have clearly failed in the last three years to achieve the kind of outcome we want."
Political parties in Presidential primary states should host events that invite candidates from both parties to discuss issues, said Gingrich, who criticized the sharpness of today's politics.
Gingrich said voters unhappy with the war, the response to Hurricane Katrina and pork barrel spending were the main drive behind the GOP's rejection at the polls. But he argued Republicans would have retained the Senate and just narrowly lost the House if President Bush had announced the departure of embattled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before, instead of after, the election.
Gingrich said he will not decide whether he is running for President until September 2007.
The event last night was sponsored by the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications. The school was founded in 1999 to promote journalism and other forms of communication.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Gingrich+raises+alarm+at+event+honoring+those+who+stand+up+for+freedom+of+speech&articleId=d3f4ee4e-1e90-475a-b1b0-bbcd5baedd78
The End of Academic Freedom and the Israel Lobby
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The End of Academic Freedom and the Israel Lobby Terri Ginsberg and Rima Abdelkader survey the wreckage of a once proud tradition of American academic integrity.This is what I wrote last week on the subject:
' Academics at Risk Please Donate to MESA A report on the Iraqi professors' panel at the Middle East Studies Association meeting that just wrapped up in Boston. Their stories of everyday life on Baghdad campuses are heartbreaking.There is also a McCarthyite and frankly racist campaign being waged by far rightwing Zionist groups in the United States to corrupt the academic hiring and tenuring process. Yellowbellied or corrupt academic administrators who bow to it should be thrown out by their outraged faculties.To help the Middle East Studies Association defend academic freedom and keep blogs like this one going, donate to the Committee on Academic Freedom. The cart works in $10 increments, so if you change the "1" in the "quantity" box to "3" (e.g.), you would be donating $30.Pennsylvania's legislature was conned by the Neocon master of Disinformation and the Big Lie, David Horowitz, into wasting taxpayer money to investigate if professors mistreat their students because of the latter's politics. The commission found that such instances are "rare" and that nothing further need be done. D'oh. There is not any way to know how students vote, and why would you bring that in to grading their paper on Moliere's plays? Pennsylvania voters should consider whether Rep. Gibson C. Armstrong, R-Lancaster, deserves to sit in their legislature if he is going to waste their hard-earned money on these silly wild goose chases. Isn't there a Pennsylvania (or better, Lancaster) bloggers' network that can bring Armstrong's record in this regard before the public? [Ooops, see the comments. The good people of Pennsylvania have already dumped him in favor of someone who can think straight!].Mark Lynch discusses issues in academic blogging (the rightwing reaction to which has often threatened academic careers and freedom of speech), in the course of commenting on a blogging panel at the Middle East Studies Association this weekend in Boston. Participants included Lynch, Josh Landis of Syria Comment, and Helena Cobban of Just World News, as well as As'ad AbuKhalil, Leila Hudson (no longer blogging?) and myself.The general tone of the participants' comments suggested that academic blogging has severe drawbacks and, with regard to Middle East bloggers, has not produced a 'second generation' after the crop of 2002. One reason in my view is that academics who blog on the Middle East are relentlessly harassed and cyberstalked by Likudnik crazies and other sorts of wingnut. You have to have very thick skin and, I think, you have to just not care about the career ladder or social climbing of other sorts to risk it. In my case, I think it helped to have been an army brat. You're always being transferred to another base and you can't count on friendships lasting very long, so you just become self-reliant. And, of course, the ethos of the army encourages you to stand up to bullies. But I take Mark Lynch's point that it isn't everyone's cup of tea.There is something wrong with our society if simply sharing one's expertise for free is actually punished. We should do something about that. Please give money to MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom (scroll down). '
posted by Juan @ 11/28/2006 06:12:00 AM
http://www.juancole.com/2006/11/end-of-academic-freedom-and-israel.html
The End of Academic Freedom and the Israel Lobby Terri Ginsberg and Rima Abdelkader survey the wreckage of a once proud tradition of American academic integrity.This is what I wrote last week on the subject:
' Academics at Risk Please Donate to MESA A report on the Iraqi professors' panel at the Middle East Studies Association meeting that just wrapped up in Boston. Their stories of everyday life on Baghdad campuses are heartbreaking.There is also a McCarthyite and frankly racist campaign being waged by far rightwing Zionist groups in the United States to corrupt the academic hiring and tenuring process. Yellowbellied or corrupt academic administrators who bow to it should be thrown out by their outraged faculties.To help the Middle East Studies Association defend academic freedom and keep blogs like this one going, donate to the Committee on Academic Freedom. The cart works in $10 increments, so if you change the "1" in the "quantity" box to "3" (e.g.), you would be donating $30.Pennsylvania's legislature was conned by the Neocon master of Disinformation and the Big Lie, David Horowitz, into wasting taxpayer money to investigate if professors mistreat their students because of the latter's politics. The commission found that such instances are "rare" and that nothing further need be done. D'oh. There is not any way to know how students vote, and why would you bring that in to grading their paper on Moliere's plays? Pennsylvania voters should consider whether Rep. Gibson C. Armstrong, R-Lancaster, deserves to sit in their legislature if he is going to waste their hard-earned money on these silly wild goose chases. Isn't there a Pennsylvania (or better, Lancaster) bloggers' network that can bring Armstrong's record in this regard before the public? [Ooops, see the comments. The good people of Pennsylvania have already dumped him in favor of someone who can think straight!].Mark Lynch discusses issues in academic blogging (the rightwing reaction to which has often threatened academic careers and freedom of speech), in the course of commenting on a blogging panel at the Middle East Studies Association this weekend in Boston. Participants included Lynch, Josh Landis of Syria Comment, and Helena Cobban of Just World News, as well as As'ad AbuKhalil, Leila Hudson (no longer blogging?) and myself.The general tone of the participants' comments suggested that academic blogging has severe drawbacks and, with regard to Middle East bloggers, has not produced a 'second generation' after the crop of 2002. One reason in my view is that academics who blog on the Middle East are relentlessly harassed and cyberstalked by Likudnik crazies and other sorts of wingnut. You have to have very thick skin and, I think, you have to just not care about the career ladder or social climbing of other sorts to risk it. In my case, I think it helped to have been an army brat. You're always being transferred to another base and you can't count on friendships lasting very long, so you just become self-reliant. And, of course, the ethos of the army encourages you to stand up to bullies. But I take Mark Lynch's point that it isn't everyone's cup of tea.There is something wrong with our society if simply sharing one's expertise for free is actually punished. We should do something about that. Please give money to MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom (scroll down). '
posted by Juan @ 11/28/2006 06:12:00 AM
http://www.juancole.com/2006/11/end-of-academic-freedom-and-israel.html
Court Rules Against New York Times
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27, 2006
(CBS/AP) The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing telephone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation concerning a terrorism-funding probe.
The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. The stories revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to track down the reporters' confidential sources for the stories. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment on the Supreme Court's order.
The case marks the second refusal by the court in as many years to sort out a clash between the federal government and the Times over press freedom.
In June 2005, the Supreme Court refused to take up the Times' request to hear an appeal in the CIA leak investigation involving the outing of Valerie Plame. In that case, Miller, who retired from the Times a year ago, spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify before a federal grand jury. Fitzgerald, in a role as a special counsel, conducted that leak investigation as well.
Monday's rejection "is just further indication that we're getting absolutely nowhere with the court when it comes to protecting confidential sources," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The case points out a growing problem of reporters trying to protect their sources in the information age, press advocates say. Rather than threatening reporters with jail if they don't testify, the government can go through the back door to hunt down confidential sources by amassing phone records and credit-card receipts.
"It's impossible to operate on cash only and face-to-face and do your job as journalists," said University of Minnesota media ethics and law professor Jane E. Kirtley.
Dalglish said protection of phone record confidentiality is among the issues that should be addressed in federal shield law legislation she and other media advocates are urging Congress to consider.
In other cases:
The Supreme Court pressed both sides in the opening arguments of a case that businesses of all stripes care deeply about: how hard should it be to get evidence that a company might be violating antitrust laws? The case, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, stems from the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the 1980s and 1990s, with some experts citing it as the most important antitrust case to reach the Supreme Court in 20 years. The case is being closely watched by numerous companies, including airlines, credit-card issuers and trade associations representing the wireless communications and pharmaceutical industries, all of whom have submitted or signed onto friend-of-the-court briefs.
The court decided not to plunge into the issue of school choice, passing up a dispute over a Maine law that bars the use of public funds to send students to private religious schools. A conservative group, the Institute for Justice, had asked the justices to take the case. The group is representing eight Maine families who would receive public tuition funds but for the fact that their children attend religious schools.
The court also let stand a ruling that dismissed a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA, ending a case that became a windfall for the county where it originated but helped feed its reputation as a "judicial hellhole." In its order Monday, the high court upheld without comment last year's Illinois Supreme Court ruling throwing out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris USA, a unit of New York-based Altria Group Inc., in a class-action lawsuit involving "light" cigarettes.
The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming. A dozen states as well as environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate, as a matter of public health, the amount of carbon dioxide that comes from vehicles.
Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for the Times, said the current case is part of a larger dispute over the public's right to information.
"We remain hopeful that in the end, whether in the courts or in Congress, that right will be vindicated," Abrams said.
The current dispute stems from Shenon and Miller calling the two charities for comment after learning of the planned freeze on their assets from confidential sources.
The Justice Department says the reporters' calls tipped off the charities of upcoming government raids. A federal judge who ruled in the Times' favor said there is no evidence in the case even suggesting that the reporters tipped off the charities about the raids or that the reporters even knew the government would raid either charity.
In August, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that federal prosecutors could see the two reporters' phone records.
The government says the fact that the reporters relayed disclosures from a government source to "targets of an imminent law enforcement action substantially weakens any claim of freedom of the press."
At issue are 11 days of phone records the government plans to review from 2001 — for the dates Sept. 27-30, Dec. 1-3 and Dec. 10-13. In a declaration this month, Fitzgerald said the statute of limitations "on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating" will expire on Dec. 3 and Dec. 13 of this year.
The current leak probe is in Fitzgerald's capacity as U.S. Attorney in Chicago. The Libby prosecution is in Fitzgerald's role as a special counsel who was selected by a Justice Department superior to conduct that investigation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/26/supremecourt/main2209121.shtml
(CBS/AP) The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing telephone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation concerning a terrorism-funding probe.
The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. The stories revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to track down the reporters' confidential sources for the stories. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment on the Supreme Court's order.
The case marks the second refusal by the court in as many years to sort out a clash between the federal government and the Times over press freedom.
In June 2005, the Supreme Court refused to take up the Times' request to hear an appeal in the CIA leak investigation involving the outing of Valerie Plame. In that case, Miller, who retired from the Times a year ago, spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify before a federal grand jury. Fitzgerald, in a role as a special counsel, conducted that leak investigation as well.
Monday's rejection "is just further indication that we're getting absolutely nowhere with the court when it comes to protecting confidential sources," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The case points out a growing problem of reporters trying to protect their sources in the information age, press advocates say. Rather than threatening reporters with jail if they don't testify, the government can go through the back door to hunt down confidential sources by amassing phone records and credit-card receipts.
"It's impossible to operate on cash only and face-to-face and do your job as journalists," said University of Minnesota media ethics and law professor Jane E. Kirtley.
Dalglish said protection of phone record confidentiality is among the issues that should be addressed in federal shield law legislation she and other media advocates are urging Congress to consider.
In other cases:
The Supreme Court pressed both sides in the opening arguments of a case that businesses of all stripes care deeply about: how hard should it be to get evidence that a company might be violating antitrust laws? The case, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, stems from the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the 1980s and 1990s, with some experts citing it as the most important antitrust case to reach the Supreme Court in 20 years. The case is being closely watched by numerous companies, including airlines, credit-card issuers and trade associations representing the wireless communications and pharmaceutical industries, all of whom have submitted or signed onto friend-of-the-court briefs.
The court decided not to plunge into the issue of school choice, passing up a dispute over a Maine law that bars the use of public funds to send students to private religious schools. A conservative group, the Institute for Justice, had asked the justices to take the case. The group is representing eight Maine families who would receive public tuition funds but for the fact that their children attend religious schools.
The court also let stand a ruling that dismissed a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA, ending a case that became a windfall for the county where it originated but helped feed its reputation as a "judicial hellhole." In its order Monday, the high court upheld without comment last year's Illinois Supreme Court ruling throwing out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris USA, a unit of New York-based Altria Group Inc., in a class-action lawsuit involving "light" cigarettes.
The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming. A dozen states as well as environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate, as a matter of public health, the amount of carbon dioxide that comes from vehicles.
Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for the Times, said the current case is part of a larger dispute over the public's right to information.
"We remain hopeful that in the end, whether in the courts or in Congress, that right will be vindicated," Abrams said.
The current dispute stems from Shenon and Miller calling the two charities for comment after learning of the planned freeze on their assets from confidential sources.
The Justice Department says the reporters' calls tipped off the charities of upcoming government raids. A federal judge who ruled in the Times' favor said there is no evidence in the case even suggesting that the reporters tipped off the charities about the raids or that the reporters even knew the government would raid either charity.
In August, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that federal prosecutors could see the two reporters' phone records.
The government says the fact that the reporters relayed disclosures from a government source to "targets of an imminent law enforcement action substantially weakens any claim of freedom of the press."
At issue are 11 days of phone records the government plans to review from 2001 — for the dates Sept. 27-30, Dec. 1-3 and Dec. 10-13. In a declaration this month, Fitzgerald said the statute of limitations "on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating" will expire on Dec. 3 and Dec. 13 of this year.
The current leak probe is in Fitzgerald's capacity as U.S. Attorney in Chicago. The Libby prosecution is in Fitzgerald's role as a special counsel who was selected by a Justice Department superior to conduct that investigation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/26/supremecourt/main2209121.shtml
Monday, November 27, 2006
Nazis,er, police want power to crack down on offensive demo chants and slogans
· Present curbs are too light, Met chief to tell Goldsmith
· Rights groups say officers would be 'censors in chief'
Vikram Dodd
Monday November 27, 2006
The Guardian
Police are to demand new powers to arrest protesters for causing offence through the words they chant and the slogans on their placards and even headbands.
The country's biggest force, the Metropolitan police, is to lobby the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, because officers believe that large sections of the population have become increasingly politicised, and there is a growing sense that the current restrictions on demonstrations are too light.
Trouble at recent protests involving Islamic extremists has galvanised the Met's assistant commissioner, Tarique Ghaffur, into planning a crackdown. His proposals are due to be sent to Lord Goldsmith, who is reviewing how effective the current laws are in tackling extremists.
The police want powers to proscribe protest chants and slogans on placards, banners and headbands. Human rights experts say that such powers could also be used against protesters such as animal rights and anti-globalisation activists. The civil rights group Liberty said the powers would make the police "censors in chief".
Mr Ghaffur has previously advocated banning flag burning. But this document would take the police a lot further. Mr Ghaffur says there is a "growing national and international perception" that the police have been too soft on extremist protesters, which has led to rising anger across the country. "The result has been to create an imbalance in public perception that is manifesting itself in passionate responses from elements of the community not traditionally given to publicly protesting. What we are seeing in effect is a rise in the politicisation of middle England and the emergence of a significant challenge for capital city policing."
As well as the absence of a law banning the burning of a flag, there is no law banning the burning of a religious text.
The police want powers to tackle a "grey area" in the array of public order laws. At present, causing offence by itself is not a criminal offence.
"There must be a clear message that we will not allow any extremist group to display banners or make public statements that clearly cause offence within the existing law," the document says.
The document continues: "Is the sand shifting in our collective viewpoint around what constitutes 'causing offence'? Equally, we need to have a clearer determination of current community perceptions around what 'public offence' actually means. We also need to think more laterally around how we police public demonstrations where 'offence' could be caused, while still respecting the British position around freedom of speech."
The document, entitled "The widening agenda of public demonstrations and radicalisation", says Islamic extremists have learned how to cause offence without breaking the law. It also reveals that the government has yet to implement the bill outlawing religious hatred which received royal assent in February. It says that the law may prove useless against extremists: "Virtually all activity by protesters could constitute insulting or abusive language, behaviour or banners towards particular religions, but would fall outside the remit of inciting religious hatred."
The director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said: "[The proposal] misunderstands the nature of law and free expression in a democracy and casts the police as censors in chief. It aims to protect people from 'offence' rather than harm, slates the CPS and muses wildly on 'public perceptions'."
After protests against the Danish cartoons in London, organised by a radical Muslim group, Scotland Yard received 100 complaints demanding action against the protesters.
A solicitor who has defended protesters, Mike Schwarz, said: "Causing offence, if there is no other ingredient, is not against the law." He said such proposed powers would clash with article 10 of the European convention on human rights which protects freedom of expression.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1957831,00.html
Sunday, November 26, 2006
ASSAULT ON PRESS FREEDOM
In a nation that preaches the virtues of democracy, the United States government has consistently eroded the media's ability to report and, by extension, undermines the ideals it professes to uphold
- William Bennett Turner
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Vladimir Posner, the former Soviet journalist, used to claim the press was freer in the Soviet Union than it was in the United States. This was during Glasnost, as the Soviet empire was disintegrating. Posner explained that the government was dysfunctional, so journalists did not have to worry about the official censors, and the media had not been privatized, so journalists were not accountable to commercial sponsors and advertisers. The result was a kind of anarchic freedom. The press was free, but only for a brief window in time.
The window in America once was open wide and, I thought, permanently so. I used to tell my students on the first day of class that we had the freest speech and press in the world. I can't do that anymore.
In recent years American press freedom has eroded. Many other countries are now ranked freer than the United States -- all of the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand and many others. In the most recent survey by Freedom House, an independent American-based organization that assesses liberties around the world, the United States tied for 17th place, with the Bahamas, Estonia, Germany and others.
The international free-press advocates Reporters Without Borders ranked us 53rd, tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. These rankings may not be scientifically valid, for a lot of subjective judgment is involved. But it is sobering to see the consensus that the United States is no longer anywhere near the top.
By virtue of Supreme Court decisions, the U.S. press remains freer than the press elsewhere in a few respects.
First, our law provides significantly greater protection for the press against libel suits, especially by government officials. In many countries, libel is a bullying tool for officials and the powerful to silence dissent. Under the 1964 decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan, insults, parodies and vicious criticism of officials are protected by the First Amendment.
Second, our law protects the press against almost any attempt by government to impose a "prior restraint" on what can be published. That is, the government is not allowed to censor, in advance, information the press may wish to publish. The famous "Pentagon Papers" case in 1971 allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish information about a classified Defense Department study on American involvement in Vietnam, despite the government's contention that publication would impair national security.
Third, perhaps unique in the world, our law protects the advocacy of dangerous, potentially divisive ideas. One can preach overthrow of the government -- domestic "regime change" -- religious hatred, racial discrimination and even criminal activity. Under the Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg vs. Ohio, government may not suppress ideas, however repugnant to most, unless their expression amounts to incitement to imminent unlawful acts.
It also is true that American journalists have not been physically attacked based on what they report, at least at home (although overseas, some have been, and one was beheaded). In some other countries, journalists risk harassment or worse for reporting that offends government officials or powerful figures. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 47 journalists were murdered last year.
But U.S. press freedom has been slipping away since Sept. 11, 2001. Now that we are in a seemingly permanent "war" on terrorism, the government claims wartime powers that result in restricting press freedom.
The Bush administration has multiplied exponentially the number of documents it classifies as secret, shielding them from public view. It has classified literally millions of documents "top secret," according to reports filed with the National Archives; and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney claims to be exempt from reporting even the numbers of records it brands with the "classified" stamp. (The administration has also tried to retrieve antique classified documents from columnist Jack Anderson's estate, contending that only the government may possess such documents, however old.) Within weeks after 9/11, President Bush issued Executive Order 13233, allowing him to veto public release not only of his own presidential papers but those of former President Ronald Reagan, Bush's father and former President Bill Clinton.
The administration also is aggressively pursuing leaks, not with a Nixonian Plumbers unit but by threatening criminal prosecution. Some Republicans in Congress have called for Espionage Act prosecution of the New York Times for publishing revelations about the National Security Agency's monitoring of communications by U.S. citizens and tracking international financial transactions. Bush himself said it was "disgraceful" for the Times to reveal these government activities and publishing the security agency's leak was "helping the enemy."
Pursuing leaks inevitably means pursuing the reporters who received and published the leaks, forcing them to give up confidential sources or telephone records or go to jail. Whatever Judith Miller's motivation and however questionable her arrangement with "Scooter" Libby, she went to jail solely because she refused to reveal communications with her source to the federal grand jury.
Although all states (except Wyoming) legally recognize some sort of privilege for reporters to protect the confidentiality of sources, there is no federal shield law, and the Supreme Court held in 1972 that the First Amendment does not itself serve as one, at least where the information is sought by a federal grand jury investigating a crime.
So reporters who dare to report leaked information that may be classified, or information about testimony before a grand jury -- as Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada did in the BALCO proceeding about steroids in sports -- face subpoenas requiring them to reveal their confidential sources to grand juries or go to jail. And now, Williams and Fainaru-Wada have been ordered to serve as much as 18 months in federal prison, a ruling they have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
So far, the courts have refused to protect subpoenaed reporters no matter how important the information they unearthed or how insignificant the alleged crime. It is true that reporters have never had strong protection against federal subpoenas, but they have hardly ever needed it. Until now.
One of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's first post-Sept. 11 acts was to issue a directive to federal agencies restricting access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act. Ashcroft's directive effectively reversed the presumption of openness and told agencies not to allow inspection of records if there was any arguable basis for withholding the records, assuring officials that Justice Department lawyers would defend them if sued.
Ashcroft's Justice Department also proceeded to round up mostly Muslim immigrants and conduct deportation hearings in secret, not allowing the press or public even to know that any hearing took place, which caused one federal judge to remark that "democracy dies behind closed doors." Ashcroft's moves toward greater secrecy were of a piece with Cheney's refusal when sued under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose even the identity of the corporate executives he met with to determine the administration's energy policy.
Unlike in Sweden, where the right of access to government documents is enshrined in the Constitution, our 1966 information act is solely a legislative creation. Unlike in South Korea, where the Supreme Court decided in 1989 that the right of access to government documents was an integral part of the constitutional freedom of the press, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in a case I lost, Houchins vs. KQED) that there is no such thing as a First Amendment right of access to government information or facilities. Consequently, Americans' right to know what their government is up to is not as well recognized as it is in some other countries.
Nor is government propaganda healthy for a free press or the citizenry. The Bush administration did not advance press freedom by producing and canning favorable "news" stories with fake reporters and peddling them to television stations, or by clandestinely paying friendly columnists for publishing opinions supporting administration policies.
Other recent U.S. government actions also cut into press freedom. The Federal Communications Commission's campaign to stamp out "indecency" and "profanity" in the broadcast media, with congressionally increased fines of $325,000 per violation for allowing a breast to be glimpsed or a dirty word uttered, has intimidated broadcasters.
The campaign may initially have been aimed at Howard Stern, but it puts at risk serious programming like a CBS documentary on 9/11 in which strong language escapes from the lips of firefighters and others in the inferno, "Saving Private Ryan" and even Masterpiece Theater's "Prime Suspect." Other countries like Sweden are bemused by American prissiness about sex and impose no comparable restrictions on their broadcasters.
The press is free in countries that trust the people to make wise decisions when they're fully informed, countries that remain willing to take the risks of dissent, rude discourse, instability and some insecurity, that tolerate eccentricity and unorthodox ideas. The erosion of press freedom in the United States, relative to other nations around the world, is disheartening. We have always had high expectations of freedom, which we now don't live up to.
It is hard to stomach the hypocrisy of claiming to spread democracy abroad while restricting at home the very freedoms that make democracy possible.
William Bennett Turner is a San Francisco lawyer who teaches a course on the First Amendment and the press at UC Berkeley. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
Page E - 1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/26/INGAKMHOCV1.DTL&feed=rss.opinion
- William Bennett Turner
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Vladimir Posner, the former Soviet journalist, used to claim the press was freer in the Soviet Union than it was in the United States. This was during Glasnost, as the Soviet empire was disintegrating. Posner explained that the government was dysfunctional, so journalists did not have to worry about the official censors, and the media had not been privatized, so journalists were not accountable to commercial sponsors and advertisers. The result was a kind of anarchic freedom. The press was free, but only for a brief window in time.
The window in America once was open wide and, I thought, permanently so. I used to tell my students on the first day of class that we had the freest speech and press in the world. I can't do that anymore.
In recent years American press freedom has eroded. Many other countries are now ranked freer than the United States -- all of the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand and many others. In the most recent survey by Freedom House, an independent American-based organization that assesses liberties around the world, the United States tied for 17th place, with the Bahamas, Estonia, Germany and others.
The international free-press advocates Reporters Without Borders ranked us 53rd, tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. These rankings may not be scientifically valid, for a lot of subjective judgment is involved. But it is sobering to see the consensus that the United States is no longer anywhere near the top.
By virtue of Supreme Court decisions, the U.S. press remains freer than the press elsewhere in a few respects.
First, our law provides significantly greater protection for the press against libel suits, especially by government officials. In many countries, libel is a bullying tool for officials and the powerful to silence dissent. Under the 1964 decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan, insults, parodies and vicious criticism of officials are protected by the First Amendment.
Second, our law protects the press against almost any attempt by government to impose a "prior restraint" on what can be published. That is, the government is not allowed to censor, in advance, information the press may wish to publish. The famous "Pentagon Papers" case in 1971 allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish information about a classified Defense Department study on American involvement in Vietnam, despite the government's contention that publication would impair national security.
Third, perhaps unique in the world, our law protects the advocacy of dangerous, potentially divisive ideas. One can preach overthrow of the government -- domestic "regime change" -- religious hatred, racial discrimination and even criminal activity. Under the Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg vs. Ohio, government may not suppress ideas, however repugnant to most, unless their expression amounts to incitement to imminent unlawful acts.
It also is true that American journalists have not been physically attacked based on what they report, at least at home (although overseas, some have been, and one was beheaded). In some other countries, journalists risk harassment or worse for reporting that offends government officials or powerful figures. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 47 journalists were murdered last year.
But U.S. press freedom has been slipping away since Sept. 11, 2001. Now that we are in a seemingly permanent "war" on terrorism, the government claims wartime powers that result in restricting press freedom.
The Bush administration has multiplied exponentially the number of documents it classifies as secret, shielding them from public view. It has classified literally millions of documents "top secret," according to reports filed with the National Archives; and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney claims to be exempt from reporting even the numbers of records it brands with the "classified" stamp. (The administration has also tried to retrieve antique classified documents from columnist Jack Anderson's estate, contending that only the government may possess such documents, however old.) Within weeks after 9/11, President Bush issued Executive Order 13233, allowing him to veto public release not only of his own presidential papers but those of former President Ronald Reagan, Bush's father and former President Bill Clinton.
The administration also is aggressively pursuing leaks, not with a Nixonian Plumbers unit but by threatening criminal prosecution. Some Republicans in Congress have called for Espionage Act prosecution of the New York Times for publishing revelations about the National Security Agency's monitoring of communications by U.S. citizens and tracking international financial transactions. Bush himself said it was "disgraceful" for the Times to reveal these government activities and publishing the security agency's leak was "helping the enemy."
Pursuing leaks inevitably means pursuing the reporters who received and published the leaks, forcing them to give up confidential sources or telephone records or go to jail. Whatever Judith Miller's motivation and however questionable her arrangement with "Scooter" Libby, she went to jail solely because she refused to reveal communications with her source to the federal grand jury.
Although all states (except Wyoming) legally recognize some sort of privilege for reporters to protect the confidentiality of sources, there is no federal shield law, and the Supreme Court held in 1972 that the First Amendment does not itself serve as one, at least where the information is sought by a federal grand jury investigating a crime.
So reporters who dare to report leaked information that may be classified, or information about testimony before a grand jury -- as Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada did in the BALCO proceeding about steroids in sports -- face subpoenas requiring them to reveal their confidential sources to grand juries or go to jail. And now, Williams and Fainaru-Wada have been ordered to serve as much as 18 months in federal prison, a ruling they have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
So far, the courts have refused to protect subpoenaed reporters no matter how important the information they unearthed or how insignificant the alleged crime. It is true that reporters have never had strong protection against federal subpoenas, but they have hardly ever needed it. Until now.
One of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's first post-Sept. 11 acts was to issue a directive to federal agencies restricting access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act. Ashcroft's directive effectively reversed the presumption of openness and told agencies not to allow inspection of records if there was any arguable basis for withholding the records, assuring officials that Justice Department lawyers would defend them if sued.
Ashcroft's Justice Department also proceeded to round up mostly Muslim immigrants and conduct deportation hearings in secret, not allowing the press or public even to know that any hearing took place, which caused one federal judge to remark that "democracy dies behind closed doors." Ashcroft's moves toward greater secrecy were of a piece with Cheney's refusal when sued under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose even the identity of the corporate executives he met with to determine the administration's energy policy.
Unlike in Sweden, where the right of access to government documents is enshrined in the Constitution, our 1966 information act is solely a legislative creation. Unlike in South Korea, where the Supreme Court decided in 1989 that the right of access to government documents was an integral part of the constitutional freedom of the press, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in a case I lost, Houchins vs. KQED) that there is no such thing as a First Amendment right of access to government information or facilities. Consequently, Americans' right to know what their government is up to is not as well recognized as it is in some other countries.
Nor is government propaganda healthy for a free press or the citizenry. The Bush administration did not advance press freedom by producing and canning favorable "news" stories with fake reporters and peddling them to television stations, or by clandestinely paying friendly columnists for publishing opinions supporting administration policies.
Other recent U.S. government actions also cut into press freedom. The Federal Communications Commission's campaign to stamp out "indecency" and "profanity" in the broadcast media, with congressionally increased fines of $325,000 per violation for allowing a breast to be glimpsed or a dirty word uttered, has intimidated broadcasters.
The campaign may initially have been aimed at Howard Stern, but it puts at risk serious programming like a CBS documentary on 9/11 in which strong language escapes from the lips of firefighters and others in the inferno, "Saving Private Ryan" and even Masterpiece Theater's "Prime Suspect." Other countries like Sweden are bemused by American prissiness about sex and impose no comparable restrictions on their broadcasters.
The press is free in countries that trust the people to make wise decisions when they're fully informed, countries that remain willing to take the risks of dissent, rude discourse, instability and some insecurity, that tolerate eccentricity and unorthodox ideas. The erosion of press freedom in the United States, relative to other nations around the world, is disheartening. We have always had high expectations of freedom, which we now don't live up to.
It is hard to stomach the hypocrisy of claiming to spread democracy abroad while restricting at home the very freedoms that make democracy possible.
William Bennett Turner is a San Francisco lawyer who teaches a course on the First Amendment and the press at UC Berkeley. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/26/INGAKMHOCV1.DTL&feed=rss.opinion
Monday, November 20, 2006
CDT Identifies Threats to the Internet and Civil Liberties in the Lame Duck Congress
CDT Releases "Lame Duck" Internet Watch List
CDT on Monday issued a special lame duck edition of its "Internet Watch List," which identifies seven legislative efforts that threaten the Internet and fundamental civil liberties in the waning days of the 109th Congress. Unfortunately bills that would greatly expand the authority to wiretap innocent Americans; stifle socially valuable speech online; and limit access to worthwhile social networking tools remain very much in play despite the short legislative calendar. CDT is urging lawmakers, journalists and activists to remain vigilant to ensure that none of these misguided measures becomes law. November 20, 2006
Internet Watch List - Lame Duck Edition November 20, 2006
Press Release November 20, 2006
http://www.cdt.org/
CDT on Monday issued a special lame duck edition of its "Internet Watch List," which identifies seven legislative efforts that threaten the Internet and fundamental civil liberties in the waning days of the 109th Congress. Unfortunately bills that would greatly expand the authority to wiretap innocent Americans; stifle socially valuable speech online; and limit access to worthwhile social networking tools remain very much in play despite the short legislative calendar. CDT is urging lawmakers, journalists and activists to remain vigilant to ensure that none of these misguided measures becomes law. November 20, 2006
Internet Watch List - Lame Duck Edition November 20, 2006
Press Release November 20, 2006
http://www.cdt.org/
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