Friday, July 14, 2006

HONK IF YOU LOVE DEMOCRACY


An Eastpointe, Illinois, man was accosted by police in nearby Ferndale on July 10, and then handcuffed, and thrown into jail. Was he a terrorist? An escaped criminal? A drunk who had barged into church and grabbed the offering?

No. Fifty-five-year-old Victor Kittila was just standing quietly by the side of the road. He even had all his clothes on. He also was holding a sign that read siimply, "Honk if you want Bush Out."

Police say holding the sign was not illegal, but they seized it and charged Kittila with disorderly conduct because "asking people to honk was becoming too noisy in an already busy part of town..."

HAW HAW HAW...Is freedom of speech alive and well in this country, or what?

Why Democrats Don't Count

Greg Palast filed a powerful 15-minute investigative report from Mexico City for Democracy Now! Every American should be required to watch that video (fast-forward to 21:30). Palast also wrote a shorter, but equally as powerful, version on his website today entitled, "Why Democrats Don't Count," which is posted below in its entirety. Read. Learn. Act.

Lessons from the Un-Gore of Mexico
July 14, 2006
By Greg Palast

Exit polls said he won, but the "official" tally took his victory away. His supporters found they were scrubbed off voter rolls. Violence and intimidation kept even more of his voters away from the polls. Hundreds of thousands of ballots supposedly showed no choice for president -- like ballots with hanging chads. And the officials in charge of this suspect election refused to re-count those votes in public. Everyone knew full well a fair count would certainly change the outcome.

You've heard this story before: Gore 2000. Kerry 2004. But Lopez Obrador 2006 is made out of very different stuff than the scarecrow candidates who, oddly, call themselves "Democrats."

For six years now, I've had this crazy fantasy in my head. In it, an election is stolen and the guy who's declared the loser stands up in front of the White House and says three magic words: "Count the votes."

This past Saturday, my dream came true. Unfortunately, it was in Spanish -- but I'll take what I can get. There was Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential challenger, standing in the "Zocalo" -- the square in front of Mexico's White House, telling the ruling clique inside, "Count the votes!" Most important, his simple demand was echoed by half a million pissed-off, activated voters chanting with him, "Vota por vota!" -- vote by vote.

And you know what? I think they are going to have to listen. I suspect that the rulers of Mexico, a vicious, puffed-up, arrogant elite, may well have to count those votes. But, for that to happen, someone had to ask them to do it -- in no uncertain terms. Traveling the USA, I'm asked again and again 'Why don't Democrats stand up when their elections are stolen?' The answer: for the same reason jellyfish don't stand up... they're invertebrates.

I'm beginning to find that answer a bit too glib (though darn funny). Because it's not about electoral cojones; it's about a devotion to democracy deep in the bone. Yet weirdly, candidates that call themselves "Democrats" seem kind of, well, indifferent to democracy. Why? Elections are the radical tool of the working class -- the great leveler of the powerless against the too-powerful. But the candidates themselves, both Republican and Democrat, tend to come from the privileged and pampered class. Votes are just the surfboards on which their ambitions ride.

Right now in Mexico's capitol, nearly a million ballots sit in tied bundles uncounted. That's four times the "official" margin of victory of the ruling party over Lopez Obrador. Supposedly, they're "votos nulos" -- null votes, unreadable. But, not surprisingly, when a few packets were opened, the majority of these supposedly unreadable votes were Lopez Obrador's.

If you think that's a Mexican game, think again. Because that's exactly what happened in Florida and Ohio. In Florida, 179,855 ballots supposedly showed no vote for President. A closer look by the US Civil Rights Commission statisticians showed that 54% of those Florida "votos nulos" were cast by African-Americans.

Did Black folk forget to vote for President, couldn't make up their minds or, as one TV network implied, were too dumb to figure out the ballot? Not at all. Machines can't count some ballots. But people can. For example, several voters wrote in, "Al Gore," which the machines rejected as his name was already printed on the ballot. The write-in could fool a machine but a human has no problem figuring out that voter's intent.

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago reviewed all 179,855 "uncountable" votes and found the majority attempted to choose Gore. And they would have been counted -- but Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered a halt. So Bush was elected not by counting the votes but by preventing their count. And he was reelected the same way in 2004 when a quarter million votes were nullified in Ohio.

But why fixate on Florida and Ohio? Here's a nasty little fact about voting in the Land of the Free not reported in your newspapers: 3,600,380 ballots were cast in the November 2004 presidential election that were never counted. In 2000, the uncounted ballots totaled just under two million. And where were the Democrats? In 2004, behind the huge jump in uncounted votes was a mass challenge campaign aimed at poor, Black and Hispanic voters by the Republican Party -- pushing these voters, mostly Democrats, to "provisional ballots." They could have been counted, if someone had fought for it. Hundreds of lawyers were on stand-by but the head of the biggest legal team told me in confidence -- and in frustration -- that the Kerry campaign told them to stand down.

Recently, Al Gore was asked if the election of 2000 was stolen. "There may come a time when I speak on that, but it's not now," said the beta dog. (I suspect that if Al Gore were found bleeding in an alley, he'd answer the question, Who shot you? with "There may come a time when I speak on that...").

Lopez Obrador is of a different breed. At the rally last Saturday in Mexico City, he played video and audio tapes of the evidence of fraud on a screen eighty feet tall. Imagine if Gore had projected the "scrub sheets" of purged Black voters on a ten-story-high screen in front of the White House.

Lopez Obrador put political force behind his legal demands by calling on voters from every state in Mexico to march to the capital. Two million are expected to arrive this Sunday. The result: the word among the political classes is that the election may be annulled. Even the conservative Financial Times has warned Mexico's elite not to "fool itself" by ignoring the demand for a full vote count.

North-of-the-Border Democrats just don't get it. The Republican Party is pushing "provisional" ballots, pushing voter ID requirements, compiling secret challenge lists, scrubbing voter registries and selling us vote-nullifying ballot boxes: they get it completely. The GOP knows the key to their electoral domination is not in winning over their opponents' votes, but in not counting them.

The un-Gore of Mexico City has a lesson for the Blue-party gringos. Either the Democrats demand that all votes count, or the Democrats will count for nothing.

Friday, July 07, 2006

I Am NOT a Conspiracy Theorist!

Lately, some folks out there have been calling me a conspiracy theorist. Well, that's not me. I keep trying to not connect the dots. I want ya'll to know that I have nothing to do with all those dots dancing around out there. They just keep relentlessly "connecting" on their own in spite of all my efforts to keep them apart.

The incomparable Chris Floyd, whose amazing ability to connect dots makes me weep with envy, once said a conspiracy theorist is just someone who applies a little reason, who uses his intellect, does the math, and takes an honest and thorough look at the facts.

Well, that's easy enough for Floyd to say, but ya'll know that's not me. I'm not interested in "doin' the math." That's why I majored in Journalism and English/Lit -- so I wouldn't be burdened with dealing with math or facts or dots.

Some conspiracy theorists think our power-mad, oil-sucking, blood-thirsty Iran-Contra bunch of thugs actually planned the World Trade Center demolition. Others don't go that far. They say the dots merely show they knew something was coming down, but were thinking more along the lines of a couple of Cessnas, a crop-duster, and a Piper Cub or two, and were blindsided -- or worse, double-crossed. That's not me either.

Actually, if I were in the market for conspiracy theories, I'd buy into the Conspiracy Theory of God's own Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and Oklahoma's own James Inhofe, who insist we were attacked because America got on God's "Shit List" for not being supportive enough of Israel.

Call me a loony conspirator, but visions of God hurling airliners filled with innocents into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because He was riled at our tepid support of Israel makes perfect sense. It must be true, because it makes me quake with fear, and that's what this is all about, isn't it? If you need further proof, what these guys say God plans to do to gays and women and to all things islamist makes me slobber with terror...

If I were open to suggestions of conspiracy, I would acknowledge the dots literally raining down on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I would see a gang of dorky, megalomaniacal jackass freakcases who wouldn't be there if something sinister weren't afoot.

That's not what I see at all. I don't think they're a bit dorky.

I rest my case. As you can see -- it's obvious that I am not a conspiracy theorist...

AMERICA -- THEN AND NOW

Painting by bneal

THE HAUNTED PALACE
By Edgar Allen Poe
(From The Fall of the House of Usher)

In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace --
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion --
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.

Monday, July 03, 2006

SHADOWS ON THE WALL

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." ~~Winston Churchill



And so we sit, shackled by self-imposed chains of fear, captivated by shadowy forms that move discordantly across the walls of our perception. Once again we are eager to accept appearance for reality. The Supreme Court ruling last week rejecting George Bush's military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees casts a huge shadow on the wall. Many are saying it not only curbed Bush and Cheney's unlimited presidential power grab, but absolved us of the responsibility of having to do anything about it.

Everybody's talking about this stunning victory for democracy. That'll show Bush that he doesn't get to decide everything. The New York Times opined the victory would "likely force negotiations over presidential power." In a separate editorial, "A Victory for the Rule of Law," the Times wrote the decision "is far more than a narrow ruling on the missue of military courts. It is an important and welcome reaffirmation that even in times of war, the law is what the Constitution, the statute books and the Geneva Conventions say it is -- not what the president wants it to be."

The Washington Post chimed in with, "For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, he let it...Now the Supreme Court has struck at the core of his presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country."

The Post's David Ignatius writes, "The Hamdan ruling should be a cause for celebration, at home and abroad, because it demonstrates that the self-correcting mechanisms of American democracy remain healthy." Thanks to checks and balances from the courts, Congress and the press, Ignatius believes "this administration's mistakes are being reversed."

And you have to smile at the Post's wonderfully talented Eugene Robinson, whose relief was palatable when he wrote, simply, "Finally. It seemed almost too much to hope for, but the Supreme Court finally called George W. Bush onto the carpet yesterday and asked him the obvious question: What part of 'rule of law' do you not understand?"

Such giddiness -- wishful thinking -- can almost be excused when you consider this is the first time in more than five years Bush has been confronted with a single check or balance. Almost. The media's refusal to delve into the shadows and ferret out the reality behind them is cowardly, dishonorable -- a blot on the Fourth Estate. Anyone who thinks this Straussian pack of jackals whose thirst for power borders on madness will back up and adhere to the rule of law or obey the Geneva Conventions doesn't know Jack about George. Or Alberto. Or Donald.

The Court's ruling offers no relief to the more than 450 prisoners serving life sentences at Guantanamo, nor does it address the hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of those detained without charge in Orwellian Room 101 prisons in other countries. These poor creatures are being held like caged animals in countries infamous for torture without legal consequence. They are of no further use to Bush. They cast no shadow on Congressional or media radar screens.

Guantanamo Bay is but a mere scab on the corrupt boil of secret CIA "rendition" operations. In a revealing Jan. 14, 2005 piece in the UK Guardian, Jonathan Steele writes that one CIA officer told the Washington Post, "The whole idea has ecome a corruption of renditions. It's not rendering to justice. It's kidnapping."

Steele says, "The administration sees the US not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world's prison warder. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives -- a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers." Since then, with The Decider's enthusiastic approval, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and the CIA have done exactly that.

So, what was the Supreme Court really up to in its shadowy 5-3 decision that did not challenge Bush's policy of indefinitely detaining enemy combatants -- the worst of the worst -- forever, if need be, without access to due process? It was simply telling him it was time for him to cover his ass by forcing Congress to make tribunals legal and then he could continue to do whatever the hell he wants. It provided a distraction from the torture, murder and suicides that have become hallmarks of the Guantanamo Bay gulag and of the United States itself. It placated the media, and calmed things down for the upcoming elections. Democracy is alive and well. Why change horses in the middle of the stream in a time of war?

When news of the ruling broke, a tight-lipped Decider stared woodenly into the cameras, saying only that he would look at the findings of the court "very seriously," while working with the Congress to continue the tribunals. Bush watchers, however, know that behind the shadow of this concession lies the stubborn insistence that he is the Commander-in-Chief; a war president who is not just above, but outside the law. Bush is prone to brag that he is the most powerful man in the world and, as such, will accept no limits on his power. Back off? Cut and run? Not likely.

The "Military Order" Bush issued two months after 9-11 concerning detention of non-citizens and their trials, if any, by military tribunals in his war on terror remains in effect. In that order, Bush flatly states that any non-citizen whom he determines from time to time in writing caused -- or even "aims" to cause -- adverse effects on the US will be detained and will "not be privileged to seek any remedy" in any court of the United States or any court of any foreign nation or any international tribunal.

The Congress was dragged reluctantly from the shadows to perform a nonpartisan role foreign to them, that of oversight. The Republicans chose instead to attack the "traitors" on the Supreme Court and the cowardly "cut and run" Democrats who are on the side of the terrorists.

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts,Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and 9-11 Commission cover-up chief, was angry and shouted indignantly at CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "The Supreme Court gave the protection of the Geneva Conventions to people who don't qualify -- the Supreme Court made a pact with Al Qaeda -- it ursurped presidential authority!"

The Democrats scrambled to assert their total alligience, not to the US Constitution and the rule of law, but to The Decider, and promised to give him everything he wants to continue his perpetual war against enemy combatant plotters and planners and killers.

And so it goes. We are oblivious to the reality of impending martial law, strict media censorship, and the vanishing power of any government entity over The Decider and his minions. We are blissfully unaware that we have been transplanted into another realm -- a dark place from which there is no escape -- and nothing to do but sit here and watch the hideous shadows on the wall.