Drones, Decency and Constitutional Rights

[Added link to Repulsive Progressive Hypocrisy, by Glenn Greenwald, with quote, 2/10/12]

Back on January 23rd, 2012, a Herald editorial made what I could only take as a snide and senseless remark about bloggers. The editorial thought that the rhetoric against the SOPA and PIPA internet censorship acts included both "slight exaggerations" and "hysterical claims." They went on to set up a hypothetical example, an example that is unhinged from the realities of the the two bills, between two bloggers expressing their opinions. They conclude with a dig at bloggers by incorrectly suggesting they would still be able to post their "opinion, ad nauseum" (sic), and suggesting that the opinions posted by bloggers everywhere which opposed SOPA and PIPA were "Conspiracy theories." I guess we can be glad that we still live in a country where small newspapers too, can issue their deriding, error prone editorials, ad nauseam.

Oh damn, here I go again with another blogger "ad nauseam" post questioning the behavior of our President and Congress when they violate our basic Constitutional rights. Thankfully the somnolent, apathetic and hypocritical herd can choose instead to read the fluff in the local papers about the Cattlemen's Association, the Super Bowl, or the "Art of the Spud."

Back in 2011, in one of those moments of ad nauseam conspiracy ferver, I had mentioned that killing American citizens by drone strike without formal charge and trial was a grave violation of our Constitutional protections and our long held right of Habeas Corpus and Due Process in courts of law as stated in the Bill of Rights, I.E. the Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.

See for example:

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2011
al-Awlaki Assassination Dramatically Steepened the Slippery Slope Leading to the Loss of Everyone's Constitutional Rights


THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011
It Must Be Presidential Campaign Season: Obama Produces "Terror" Plot By Iran

TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2010
The "Hope" & the Reality: Obama--talking head pimp (or is that whore?) for corporate America

Now we have leaders from both political parties questioning the Obama administration's authority to order killings of American citizens without due process and asking for the Obama administration's secret interpretations of law that support these killings.

Here are a few recent signs of resistance:

McManus: Who reviews the U.S. 'kill list'?
Op-Ed
There has been remarkably little public debate in the U.S. about drone strikes, which have killed at least 1,300 people in Pakistan alone since President Obama came to office.
February 05, 2012|Doyle McManus

When it comes to national security, Michael V. Hayden is no shrinking violet. As CIA director, he ran the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretaps against suspected terrorists.

But the retired air force general admits to being a little squeamish about the Obama administration's expanding use of pilotless drones to kill suspected terrorists around the world — including, occasionally, U.S. citizens.

"Right now, there isn't a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel," Hayden told me recently.

As an example of the problem, he cites the example of Anwar Awlaki, the New Mexico-born member of Al Qaeda who was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen last September. "We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him," Hayden notes, "but we didn't need a court order to kill him. Isn't that something?"

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Former CIA Director Hayden Against Drone Strikes


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Press Release of Senator Wyden
Wyden Continues to Press Justice Department to Explain the Extent of its Authority to Kill Americans

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Washington, D.C. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden called the Administration’s refusal to share legal opinions pertaining to the executive branch’s understanding of its authority to kill Americans “an indefensible assertion of executive authority.” Wyden has been pressing the Justice Department and other administration officials to share its legal interpretations of the government’s authority in this area for more than a year but, as the Senator writes, “it is increasingly clear that [the Justice Department] has no intention of doing so.”

“To be clear, I am not suggesting that the President has no authority to act in this area. If American citizens choose to take up arms against the United States during times of war, there can undoubtedly be some circumstances under which the President has the authority to use lethal force against those Americans,” wrote Wyden. “However, when the United States is engaged in a military conflict with a terrorist group, whose members do not wear uniforms but instead attempt to blend in with civilian populations in a variety of countries around the world, questions about when the President may use lethal force against Americans whom he believes are part of this enemy force become significantly more complicated.

“Members of Congress need to understand how (or whether) the executive branch has attempted to answer these questions so that they can decide for themselves whether this authority has been properly defined. But it is impossible for elected legislators to understand how the executive branch interprets its own authority if the secret legal opinions that outline the Justice Department’s understanding of this authority are withheld from Congress by the Administration.”

Wyden has long asserted that it is inappropriate for the Administration to rely on what he refers to as “secret law” or classified legal interpretations that grant the government authorities without the knowledge and consent of the American people.

“I understand that government officials who choose to rely on secret law almost invariably believe that their decision to do so is justified, and that their secret interpretations of the law would stand up to public scrutiny. But the only way to find out whether this is true is to ensure that this public scrutiny actually takes place,” wrote Wyden, “Intelligence agencies may sometimes need to conduct secret operations, but they should never be in the position of relying on secret law.”

The full text of the Senator’s letter is available below, for more information on Senator Wyden’s efforts to declassify other secret laws http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/issue/?id=1f333bb6-d57f-473b-b98c-04d186d8b48b. [Download letter here.]
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And on Drone Strikes Generally:

From The Bureau of Investigative Journalism:
Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals

February 4th, 2012 | by Chris Woods and Christina Lamb

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of  civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.

The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’

Speaking publicly for the first time on the controversial CIA drone strikes, Obama claimed last week they are used strictly to target terrorists, rejecting what he called ‘this perception we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly’.
‘Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties’, he told a questioner at an on-line forum. ‘This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists trying to go in and harm Americans’.

But research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children.  A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama.

There have been 260 attacks by unmanned Predators or Reapers in Pakistan by Obama’s administration – averaging one every four days. Because the attacks are carried out by the CIA, no information is given on the numbers killed.
. . . .
The legal view
Naz Modirzadeh, Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) at Harvard University, said killing people at a rescue site may have no legal justification.

‘Not to mince words here, if it is not in a situation of armed conflict, unless it falls into the very narrow area of imminent threat then it is an extra-judicial execution’, she said. ‘We don’t even need to get to the nuance of who’s who, and are people there for rescue or not. Because each death is illegal. Each death is a murder in that case.’

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See also:

Repulsive Progressive Hypocrisy

By Glenn Greenwald
February 09, 2012 "Salon"

During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the “assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution”: so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices — rather than a big, bad, scary Republican — all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates:

The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party. . . . .

Repulsive liberal hypocrisy extends far beyond the issue of Guantanamo. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther than mere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process.
. . . .

Top official: drone critics are Al Qaeda enablers
BY GLENN GREENWALD, MONDAY, FEB 6, 2012

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U.S. Accused of Using Drones to Target Rescue Workers and Funerals in Pakistan
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The Complex, Yet Simple Truths, of Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges "Brace Yourself! The American Empire Is Over & The Descent Is Going To Be Horrifying!"

A Day To Remember Martin Luther King Jr.

It was preordained that the mass media, including National Public Radio, would focus on a few of the dreams that MLK had wished for, while ignoring a major and most important portion of his dream--the end to militarism and empire--not to mention the fact that since his assassination, even though we have a black man serving as our president, the classism that afflicts all races, is still rampant within our society.

Today, given our current endless "war on terror," it is enough to focus on his wish to end militarism and empire-I have not heard such truth from anyone since receiving his words in the following speech:

From Information Clearinghouse
A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King

By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

Part 1


Part 2


Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:


End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

War on WikiLeaks Continued: Assange Interview

[Edited 12/22/10]
War on WikiLeaks Continued: Assange Interview—You be the Judge

The merciless assault on Julian Assange has continued, and although he has not been charged with any crime, he has been granted “bail” to live in an ankle bracelet in-house arrest arrangement on the British estate of a friend, while the British government either arranges to turn him over the U.S. for some sort of Kangaroo Court, or gives him up to the subservient nation of Sweden, who would likely do the same.

There are at least two motives that I can discern for the way his case has been handled by the “authorities.”

The first of course, is that the embarrassed Western industrialized countries, AKA, the “international community,” are/is engaged in a smear campaign to destroy him personally for his having revealed the scandalous information, i.e., leaks, that had been given to him by others to publish. The anti-democratic and in some cases, illegal, activities of the world’s governments that are revealed in the leaked documents, seem to have brought out the worst authoritarian tendencies from some American leaders, up to and including calls for Assange's assassination. (He is not a U.S. citizen, and therefore, as far as I know, not subject to U.S. laws in regard to revealing “secret” information.) An example must be made of those who dare resist and defy imperial power. Nothing different about what he has done really, except in the magnitude of the world corruption that his leaks reveal, than the leaks that the mainstream media (MSM) regularly publish when they see it in their interest to occasionally tell people the truth. The MSM have in fact been eager to publish the information he forwarded to them, even though they have also been happy to downplay the value of the information, or spin it in a way that destroys its effectiveness, all the while participating in the campaign to annihilate WikiLeaks.

The second motivation seems to be to divert attention from the embarrassing nature of the information WikiLeaks has provided, and to instead put the focus on Julian Assange’s character—to portray him as a lawless terrorist and serial rapist (kill the messenger). Nothing there that should have been unexpected, and it wasn’t. This is the way Western governments operate. They have become accustomed to putting out the most outrageous, irrational, and unbelievable lies, (Iraq MWD and etc.) and having the mainstream press repeat them incessantly (before "trial" and in this case, even before official charges), until they convince the public to believe the claims are true (Hitler’s Big Lie).

Below is an interview by the BBC’s John Humphrys, a media shark, intent on furthering the character assassination of Julian Assange. Problem is, Assange’s calm, gentlemanly, rational demeanor and forthright responses to Humphrys’ apparent viciousness, disarm, for the most part, Humphrys’ arrogant and aggressive attempt.

You be the Judge by reading or listening to the interview below, but here are
Humphreys’ last three questions with the answers from Assange. Much is lost without listening to Assange in the interview, where he answers some questions about the circumstances behind his detention, but these last three answers tell you something about him.:

Q: Just a final thought. Do you see yourself… as some sort of messianic figure?

JA: Everyone would like to be a messianic figure without dying. We are bringing some important change about what is perceived to be the rights of people who expose abuses by powerful corporations and then to resist censorship attacks after the event. We are also changing the perception of the west.

Q: I'm talking about you personally.

JA: I'm always so focussed on my work, I don't have time to think about how I perceive myself… I had time to perceive myself a bit more in solitary confinement. I was perfectly happy with myself. I wondered what that process would do. Would I think "my goodness, how have I got into this mess, is it all just too hard?"

The world is a very ungrateful place, why should I continue to suffer simply to try and do some good in the world. If the world is so viciously against it ,why don't I just go off and do some mathematics or write some books? But no, actually, I felt quite at peace.

Q: You want to change the world?

JA: Absolutely. The world has a lot of problems and they need to be reformed. And we only live once. Every person who has some ability to do something about it, if they are a person of good character, has the duty to try and fix the problems in the environment which they're in.

That is a value, that, yes, comes partly from my temperament. There is also a value that comes from my father, which is that capable, generous men don't create victims, they try and save people from becoming victims. That is what they are tasked to do. If they do not do that they are not worthy of respect or they are not capable.

Read or listen to the interview:
Transcript And Audio: The Assange BBC interview (via Information Clearing House)

Cole Case: Justice Delayed IS Justice Denied: Reynolds Dismisses Sex Abuse Charges Against Cole.

[Edited 10/23/11]

As the case of the influential, middle aged consultant and the poor school girl seemed to come to an end this morning, several of the Goddesses of Justice, including Justitia, Dike, and Maat, let out a collective cry of sadness and rage, followed by grief-filled moans and uncontrollable sobbing. Most could not hear them. Their discomfort came from the fact that Judge Garry Reynolds did exactly what some thought he would do: He dismissed all four counts of sex abuse against Brian Cole without giving due consideration to the motion or the evidence that had been collected in the case.

A relieved looking Brian Cole, right, and a more somber J. Robert Moon, prepare to leave the Circuit Court after Moon successfully defended the now 48 year old Cole against four counts of sex abuse involving a 17 year old high school girl.

The beginning of the hearing had sort of a slapstick quality, with the Special Prosecutor Riddell dialing the wrong number for the tele-conference, and the Judge stating that he had not read and was unaware of the Civil Compromise Agreement that he was supposed to rule on. After finding a copy so he could "read" it, and hearing pleas to Dismiss as a Civil Compromise from Attorney Moon and the victim's La Grande Attorney Brent Smith, a brief rebuttal from Chief Criminal Counsel Sean Riddell, and another short appeal from Moon, Judge Reynolds reversed ground and his previous practice of sitting on an opinion for almost a month or even more, by summarily dismissing the sex abuse charges.The whole discussion on the Civil Compromise motion probably didn't last longer than 15 to 20 minutes, and Judge Reynolds did not seriously address the objections of Riddell. Reynolds did not however dismiss the two charges of Providing Liquor to a person under 21, and those charges will be tried in Circuit Court at the County Court House on November 29th.

Ridell cited the following case:

"To be entitled to civil compromise, defendant’s misdemeanor must affect only person or persons with civil remedy: acts criminalized to protect public at large are not covered by this section; overruling State v. Phon Yos, 71 Or App 57, 691 P2d 508 (1984). State v. Dugger, 73 Or App 109, 698 P2d 491 (1985)"

Again, Judge Reynolds did not seriously address this issue in today's hearing. I believe that Riddell's point was that sexual abuse by 47 year olds of 17 year olds is an issue that affects the public at large, and those cases are not protected by "Civil Compromise" with the victim when the public is possibly endangered by 47 year-olds who would engage in sexual acts with 17 year olds in the community.

Beyond That:

Given the long periods of time that Judge Reynolds has taken to decide the other motions offered by Moon in this case, which helped to prolong the case past the time the victim turned 18, and which provided the opportunity for the defense to cut the victim's parents out of a position of authority in the case, so as to deal directly with the victim, it is a bit surprising that he made a snap judgement on this particular motion, one that he only first read a few minutes earlier. In my mind, his actions in this case, from strangely suppressing the incriminating text messages from the day prior to the Halloween incident, to his long delays in issuing opinions, to his snap judgement on a motion he had no time to reflect on, raise many questions.

While the Grand Jury heard the evidence in secret, there are many public documents that have been made available in this case. In the interest of an informed public, the judgement of history, and in my opinion, in the interest of justice, I will be making some of those available in the near future.

More Later. . . .
For other background on this case, see:

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2010
Cole Case: Is Justice Delayed, Justice Denied?

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2009
Halloween Happenings: Brian Cole Cited for Furnishing Alcohol to a Minor

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2010
Odds & Ends: Brian Cole Case and Environmental Issues

TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010
Hells Canyon Early Spring Wildflowers (also, Brian Cole Case)

THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2010
Cole Case & Baker County Birds
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Supreme Court Hands American "Democracy" over to the Corporations

[Edited 1/23/09]
When I was young, I remember having to appear in court for some fairly innocuous charge or another. I remember walking up the steps of the "super sized," Intimidating edifice of the courthouse, with its huge marble columns, to enter the courtroom of monstrous oak facades above the seat of the "Judge." I trembled some with fear at the power of "justice." Although the fear was well founded, it was only decades later that I came to realize that what I was seeing was just that, a facade. The legal system in the "Land of the Free" is not a scale that weighs the justice or appropriateness of an action according to what is 'right" or "wrong" from the perspective of all the people subject to the whims of life, circumstance, and the laws that they would themselves choose, or even always on established law--it was and is a scale that weighs justice according to the needs of the wealthy and the politically powerful. The scale of justice is, when all is said and done--weighed down with human politics on one side or the other. (OK,nothing new to you, but it needs to be expressed.)

Baker County Circuit Court

If one looks only at the Supreme Court of the United States of America the situation becomes quite clear. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was accused of using his power to "pack" the Supreme Court with "Liberal" judges of his liking, and indeed, he had the opportunity to do so. During his terms in office, he was able to appoint eight Justices to the court, a number of appointments surpassed only by George Washington. Those Justices, using their political perspectives, were in part responsible for turning our country, despite the Republican protests, into one of the the most egalitarian and economically successful nations on earth. In recent years, the Republican Presidencies of Reagan and the the Bush "dynasty" have been able to appoint the majority of the current Justices, to peck away at the freedoms and security the people had gained, and the current court reflects the reactionary, pro corporation agenda that those presidents stood for.

The recent opinion on campaign financing handed down by the Republican court majority, has completed what appears to be the ultimate right-wing, some may call it Fascist, goal (coup?) of turning the country, our beloved United States of America, over to the corporations.

I leave it to others more informed and articulate than myself to describe and explain the final nail that has been driven into the coffin of American democracy.
__________

Corporate Personhood Should Be Banned, Once and For All

Time to Reign in Out-of-Control Corporate Influences on Our Democracy

Ralph Nader

http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2168-Time-to-Reign-in-Out-of-Control-Corporate-Influences-on-Our-Democracy.html#extended

Yesterday's 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already attempt to influence or bribe our political candidates through their political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations.

With this decision, corporations can now directly pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars. Without approval from their shareholders, corporations can reward or intimidate people running for office at the local, state, and national levels.

Much of this 183 page opinion requires readers to enter into a fantasy world and accept the twisted logic of Justice Kennedy, who delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas. Imagine the majority saying the “Government may not suppress political speech based on the speaker’s corporate identity.”

Perhaps Justice Kennedy didn’t hear that the financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial collapse, according to a 231-page report titled: “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America” (See: http://wallstreetwatch.org/).

The Center for Responsive Politics reported that last year the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $144 million to influence Congress and state legislatures.

The Center also reported big lobbying expenditures by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) which spent $26 million in 2009. Drug companies like Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly also poured tens of millions of dollars into federal lobbying in 2009. The health insurance industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) also spent several million lobbying Congress. No wonder Single Payer Health insurance – supported by the majority of people, doctors, and nurses – isn’t moving in Congress.

Energy companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron are also big spenders. No wonder we have a national energy policy that is pro-fossil fuel and that does little to advance renewable energy (See: http://www.opensecrets.org/).

No wonder we have the best Congress money can buy.

I suppose Justice Kennedy thinks corporations that overwhelm members of Congress with campaign contributions need to have still more influence in the electoral arena. Spending millions to lobby Congress and making substantial PAC contributions just isn’t enough for a majority of the Supreme Court. The dictate by the five activist Justices was too much for even Republican Senator John McCain, who commented that he was troubled by their “extreme naivete.”

There is a glimmer of hope and a touch of reality in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision. Unfortunately it is the powerful 90 page dissent in this case by Justice Stevens joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Justice Stevens recognizes the power corporations wield in our political economy. Justice Stevens finds it “absurd to think that the First Amendment prohibits legislatures from taking into account the corporate identity of a sponsor of electoral advocacy.” He flatly declares that, “The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation.”

He notes that the, Framers of our Constitution “had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.” Right he is, for the words “corporation” or “company” do not exist in our Constitution.

Justice Stevens concludes his dissent as follows:

At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Indeed, this corporatist, anti-voter majority decision is so extreme that it should galvanize a grassroots effort to enact a simple Constitutional amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. It is time to prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the voices and values of citizens and voters. It is way overdue to overthrow "King Corporation" and restore the sovereignty of "We the People"! Remember that corporations, chartered by the state, are our servants, not our masters.

Legislation sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Representative John Larson (D-CT) would encourage unlimited small-dollar donations from individuals and provide candidates with public funding in exchange for refusing corporate contributions or private contributions of more than $100.

It is also time for shareholder resolutions, company by company, directing the corporate boards of directors to pledge not to use company money to directly favor or oppose candidates for public office.

If you want to join the efforts to rollback the corporate privileges the Supreme Court made yesterday, visit citizen.org (http://www.citizen.org/) and freespeechforpeople.org (http://freespeechforpeople.org/).
__________

In Landmark Campaign Finance Ruling, Supreme Court Removes Limits on Corporate Campaign Spending



Transcript below:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/22/in_landmark_campaign_finance_ruling_supreme

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court rules corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect and defeat candidates. One lawmaker describes it as the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case justifying slavery. We speak with constitutional law professor, Jamin Raskin. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Jamin Raskin, Professor of Constitutional Law at American University and a Maryland State Senator. He is the author of several books, including Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. The American People.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin our show today looking at yesterday’s landmark Supreme Court ruling that will allow corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to elect and defeat candidates.

In a five-to-four decision, the Court overturned century-old restrictions on corporations, unions and other interest groups from using their vast treasuries to advocate for a specific candidate. The conservative members of the Court ruled corporations have First Amendment rights and that the government cannot impose restrictions on their political speech.

Writing the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy described existing campaign finance laws as a form of censorship that have had a, quote, “substantial, nationwide chilling effect” on political speech.

In the dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens described the decision as a radical departure in the law. Stevens wrote, quote, “The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation.” Stevens went on to write, quote, “It will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the States to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process.”

To talk more about this ruling, we’re joined by Jamin Raskin. He’s a professor of constitutional law at American University and a Maryland state senator. He is the author of several books, including Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. The American People.

Professor Raskin, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the significance of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

JAMIN RASKIN: Good morning, Amy.

Well, we’ve had some terrible Supreme Court interventions against political democracy: Shaw v. Reno, striking down majority African American and Hispanic congressional districts; Bush v. Gore, intervening to stop the counting of ballots in Florida. But I would have to say that all of them pale compared to what we just saw yesterday, where the Supreme Court has overturned decades of Supreme Court precedent to declare that private, for-profit corporations have First Amendment rights of political expression, meaning that they can spend up to the heavens in order to have their way in politics. And this will open floodgates of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal, state and local elections, as Halliburton and Enron and Blackwater and Bank of America and Goldman Sachs can take money directly out of corporate treasuries and put them into our politics.

And I looked at just one corporation, Exxon Mobil, which is the biggest corporation in America. In 2008, they posted profits of $85 billion. And so, if they decided to spend, say, a modest ten percent of their profits in one year, $8.5 billion, that would be three times more than the Obama campaign, the McCain campaign and every candidate for House and Senate in the country spent in 2008. That’s one corporation. So think about the Fortune 500. They’re threatening a fundamental change in the character of American political democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about President Obama’s response? He was extremely critical, to say the least. He said, “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics…a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.” Yet a number of especially conservatives are pointing out that there was—that President Obama spent more money for his presidential election than anyone in US history.

JAMIN RASKIN: OK, well, that’s a red herring in this discussion. The question here is the corporation, OK? And there’s an unbroken line of precedent, beginning with Chief Justice Marshall in the Dartmouth College case in the 1800s, all the way through Justice Rehnquist, even, in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, saying that a corporation is an artificial creation of the state. It’s an instrumentality that the state legislatures charter in order to achieve economic purposes. And as Justice White put it, the state does not have to permit its own creature to consume it, to devour it.

And that’s precisely what the Supreme Court has done, suddenly declaring that a corporation is essentially a citizen, armed with all the political rights that we have, at the same time that the corporation has all kinds of economic perks and privileges like limited liability and perpetual life and bankruptcy protection and so on, that mean that we’re basically subsidizing these entities, and sometimes directly, as we saw with the Wall Street bailout, but then they’re allowed to turn around and spend money to determine our political future, our political destiny. So it’s a very dangerous moment for American political democracy.

And in other times, citizens have gotten together to challenge corporate power. The passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 is a good example, where corporations were basically buying senators, going into state legislatures and paying off senator—paying off legislators to buy US senators, and the populist movement said we need direct popular election of senators. And that’s how we got it, basically, in a movement against corporate power.

Well, we need a movement for a constitutional amendment to declare that corporations are not persons entitled to the rights of political expression. And that’s what the President should be calling for at this point, because no legislation is really going to do the trick.
Now, one thing Congress can do is to say, if you do business with the federal government, you are not permitted to spend any money in federal election contests. That’s something that Congress should work on and get out next week. I mean, that seems very clear. No pay to play, in terms of US Congress.

And I think that citizens, consumers, shareholders across the country, should start a mass movement to demand that corporations commit not to get involved in politics and not to spend their money in that way, but should be involved in the economy and, you know, economic production and livelihood, rather than trying to determine what happens in our elections.

AMY GOODMAN: This is considered a conservative court, Jamin Raskin, but isn’t this a very activist stance of the Supreme Court justices?

JAMIN RASKIN: Indeed. The Supreme Court has reached out to strike down a law that has been on the books for several decades. And moreover, it reached out when the parties to the case didn’t even ask them to decide it. The Citizens United group, the anti-Hillary Clinton group, did not even ask them to wipe out decades of Supreme Court case law on the rights of corporations in the First Amendment. The Court, in fact, raised the question, made the parties go back and brief this case, and then came up with the answer to the question that the Court itself, or the five right-wing justices themselves, posed here.
There would have been lots of other ways for those conservative justices to find that Citizens United’s anti-Hillary Clinton movie was protected speech, the simplest being saying, “Look, this was pay-per-view; it wasn’t a TV commercial. So it’s not covered by McCain-Feingold.” But the Court, or the five justices on the Court, were hell-bent on overthrowing McCain-Feingold and the electioneering communication rules and reversing decades of precedent.

And so, now the people are confronted with a very serious question: Will we have the political power and vision to mobilize, to demand a constitutional amendment to say that it is “we, the people,” not “we, the corporations”?

AMY GOODMAN: Jamin Raskin, we want to thank you very much for being with us, professor of constitutional law at American University’s School of Law and a Maryland state senator.
__________

Supreme Court Decision Creates Political Crisis

http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4741359

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision today that will enhance the ability of the deepest-pocketed special interests to influence elections and the U.S. Congress, said a pair of leading national campaign finance reform organizations, Common Cause and Public Campaign. The decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, which overturned the ban on independent expenditures by corporations, paves the way for unlimited corporate and union spending in elections.

"The Roberts Court today made a bad situation worse," said Common Cause President Bob Edgar. "This decision allows Wall Street to tap its vast corporate profits to drown out the voice of the public in our democracy. "The path from here is clear: Congress must free itself from Wall Street's grip so Main Street can finally get a fair shake," Edgar continued. "We need to change the way America pays for elections. Passing the Fair Elections Now Act would give us the best Congress money can't buy."

"This decision means more business as usual in Washington, stomping on voters’ hope for change,” said Nick Nyhart, president and CEO of Public Campaign. “Congress must take on the insider Washington money culture if it wants to make the changes voters are demanding. The way to do that is by passing the Fair Elections Now Act.”

The Fair Elections Now Act (S.752 and H.R. 1826) was introduced by Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-Conn.). In the House, the bipartisan bill has attracted 124 additional cosponsors. Both bills blend small donor fundraising with public funding to reduce the pressure of fundraising from big contributors.
###

Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to restoring the core values of American democracy, reinventing an open, honest, and accountable government that works for the public interest, and empowering ordinary people to make their voices heard.
__________

See Also: http://campaign.constantcontact.com/render?v=0019K7_GMZJyC8C2CTx1vcuikqpma3r7_-1Dz4dGosjV9r0s0O64gWNjtDm1yOVrkXr3HrS981mejyS7NSqn1CzlQh9D8G0M-lfhvB_QLXnuQtdoToeLN99uA%3D%3D
__________

Read the Entire Decision Here:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

Law, Order, and Perhaps a Little Justice?

In his Edition:

- Ron Calder Update

- Brian Cole Update

- Jeremy Thamert Cat Shooting Incident

[Updated and edited on 1/12/09]
_________

Ron Calder Update:


Ron on the Right Of Way in Front of His House. There used to be a 100 year old house where the new homes are in the background.

On the positive side, the word is that the charges against Ron Calder, which were affirmed by the City Council, may soon be dismissed by the Baker County Circuit Court. My information indicates that the sometime City Attorney, Dan Van Thiel, has asked Ron's "Pro Bono" attorney, Robert Whitnah, to "prepare an Order of Dismissal" in the case.

The downside is that the City Attorney and the Baker City Police Department have decided to go after Mr. Calder again using their new tightened up and oppressive Property Maintenance Ordinance #3292 (http://www.bakercity.com/documents/ord3292.pdf)

For Background, please see:

SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009
Property Maintenance Jihad Targets Disabled Life-long Baker City Resident

And:

FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 2009
Democracy In Baker City, Plus Calder Update (YouTube)
http://bakercountyblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/democracy-in-baker-city-plus-calder.html

Defense attorney Bob Whitnah has a practice here in Baker City. You can find him at:

1920 1st Street
Baker City, OR 97814-3309
(541) 523-1633

Defense attorney Whitnah took on this case for free because of his principles and because he is willing to defend those among us of poor circumstance, or otherwise, who find themselves entangled in a legal system they do not understand.
__________

Brian Cole Update:

Brian Cole's pretrial hearing was scheduled for January 8th, 2010 at 8:30 AM. I, and a few others, appeared at that time, only to find that the hearing had been postponed the previous afternoon and that no new date had been set. I was also informed that the hearing would be private, in the Judge's chambers in any event, so there was little a person could learn from showing up on the pretrial date. As of today, 1/11/10, no new hearing date had been set.

So what do we know?

Background:

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2009
Halloween Happenings: Brian Cole Cited for Furnishing Alcohol to a Minor
http://bakercountyblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/halloween-happenings-brian-cole-cited.html

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2009
Brian Cole Update, 11/04/09
1:53 PM
Brian Cole "will not be announcing at this point in time."
Also of interest:
Baker City Church of the Nazarene
Sunday School
Sunday School is offered at 9:30 a.m. every Sunday, from age 3 through 103.
If you see a need for a new Sunday School class, contact Pastor Jon.

Teens' Classes
Youth Sunday School Director: Matt Wilson

Class
9th & 10th grades Brian and Suzi Cole
[The class is now taught by Aaron and Lisa Chong.]
http://www.bakercitynaz.com/SundaySchool.html
http://bakercountyblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/brian-cole-update-110409.html

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2009
Cole Update: Revisiting a Rumor
(Edited 11/6/09)
When is a Rumor Much More than Just a Rumor?
http://bakercountyblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/cole-update-revisiting-rumor.html


OK. Brian Cole, a 47 year old male, has been charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor (a person under 21 years of age), a 17 year old woman, in an out of the way place out on Pocahontas. Do I know the family of the victim? Yes I do. Do many, many, people here in Baker County and elsewhere know Brian Cole? Yes, they do. How could anyone here in Baker County, who is paying attention, not know who Brian Cole is?

So what is happening legally?

After I attempted to attend the pretrial hearing, I collected some information about the case from the Oregon Circuit Court.

What little information is available indicates the following:

The count of furnishing was filed on November 10, 2009.

On about 11/25/09, Judge Baxter recused himself, and Judge Gary L. Reynolds from Hermiston took the case. No reason was given for Judge Baxter's recusal.

On December 17, 2009, a motion was made by Sean Riddell, from the Attorney General’s office, to continue the Grand Jury term, because he felt, apparently from investigations of the homes of the parties, that there were "potentially additional charges."

The Grand Jury term was extended for six months by Garry L. Reynolds on or about December 24, 2009.

When I arrived at the Circuit Court on January 8, 2010, I was informed that the hearing had been postponed because a day or two prior, a good deal of "discovery" information had been produced which would require some time for all parties to digest. This discovery information, I believe, had to do with computer files and correspondence that was gleaned from earlier searches of both Brian Cole's, and the victim's computers and phone files.

I was surprised to learn yesterday that Grand Juries are secret bodies. When I went to the District Attorney's office and asked Rebeca Piedra for the names of the people on the Grand Jury, she informed me that the names are not public information. The reason I wanted to know is that, due to Mr. Cole's extensive contacts in Baker City, it seems entirely possible that his friends may end up on the Grand Jury, which could affect the outcome of any investigation. The other side of the story is that some defense attorneys find the Grand Jury rigged in favor of the prosecution and the people they are defending, because Grand Juries have a heavy dependence on evidence provided and influenced by the district attorney or state prosecutor. Given though that the proceedings are secret, unavailable to inquiring minds or anything approaching scientific scrutiny, who knows how the mix of prosecutorial superiority and potential good-old-boy relationships actually plays out.

While the names may not be public at this time, there appears to be precedent for releasing them at a later date. There are also several proposed reforms for Grand Juries, including some that would reduce Grand Jury secrecy.

Additional information will be posted as it becomes available.
____________

Jeremy Thamert Cat Shooting Incident

Jeremy Thamert, owner of Oregon Power Solutions in Baker City, and who is listed as President of Historic Baker City, was charged in the later part of 2009 with Animal Abuse in the Second Degree for shooting a neighbor's cat with a Beeman pellet rifle. On December 7, 2009, his case was dismissed by Circuit Judge Gregory L. Baxter because he and the owner of the injured cat, Tena McKim, who is also the secretary for Historic Baker City, had signed an "Acknowledgement of Satisfaction," indicating that Mr. Thamert had satisfied any claim of "injury and damage" from the "alleged act." Thamert also turned over the bail money of $2,500 to his attorney.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT? Justice Oregon Style

OTHER TOPICS IN THIS ISSUE:

- GARRETT HARDIN ON FREEDOM AND POPULATION
- ROBERT KUTTNER ON DEREGULATION AND INEQUALITY
- MEDIA NEEDS TO TAKE MORE RESPONSIBILITY
- DEFLATING HOUSING BUBBLE AND LATEST BANK BAILOUT
- RALPH NADER ON THE SILENT VIOLENCE OF GAZA'S SUFFERING
- The War and the Recession
- IRAN: 'FOX' FALLON FIRED--AND WE'RE F*CKED...
- JOHN PILGER VIDEO DOCUMENTARY

JUSTICE AMERICAN STYLE (HOMO HYPOCRITICUS)

Not too long ago, the Herald ran an op-ed from the Sacramento Bee, questioning why the Congress was holding very public hearings about steroid use by famous ball players. My thought at the time was why is Congress holding hearings on steroid use when they can’t find the courage to end the illegal and immoral war or impeach known war criminals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?

A few more questions: Why are we this week witnessing the targeting, ruination, and humiliation of a New York Governor, who has a record of going after Wall Street scamsters and holding them responsible, just because he consorted with prostitutes, when we have a President on the loose who has lied repeatedly to the American people and who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of young Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis? Why aren’t the bankers, Wall Street cons and realtors in the dock for deceptively promoting speculative and inflated home sales to an American public eager for home ownership and a way to survive? Why does our City Council develop a plan to buy an over-priced building for the police department largely in secret before springing it on the citizens. Why are our water and sewer rates expanding so rapidly, if not to accommodate the new and future development that should be paying system development charges now to cover their new demands on the system? Why does Oregon spend more of its general fund on imprisoning people than it spends on higher education? Why is our expanding police bureaucracy parading their drug dog around at local sporting events? The answers vary, but are related to the need to distract us from our real problems, the tendency of bureaucracies to always expand their wealth and power, and the tendency of some politicians to serve their own interests instead of those of the community or country they represent. At its roots, it is about money and the powerful advancing their own interests. It is about elite politics—the privileged feathering their own nest at the expense of ordinary people.

A few pertinent quotes about the situation from a recent Information Clearing House newsletter (see links list for ICH):

"Politics is a means of preventing people from taking part in what properly concerns them." Paul Valery (1871-1945)

=
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56-c.115)

=
"The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be." -- Lao-tzu, The Tao Te Ching

=
"Overload the police with victimless crimes and other minutiae, and eventually only creeps and bullies remain cops." -- Rick Gaber

=
"The State is the coldest of all cold monsters, and coldly it tells lies, and this lie drones on from its mouth: 'I, the State, am the people'." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra, 1883

=
"Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible." -- Robert LeFevre, in his essay, Aggression is Wrong

Which reminds me of Baker City citizen Vickie Valenzuela's trouble in complaining to the city about the lack of public process in the police building purchase. In tonight's Herald article about her interaction with the city (Baker City woman files complaint against city manager, by Jayson Jaycoby), the article states that "in a Feb. 29 e-mail to Valenzuela which he wrote after their meeting, Brocato suggested: "If you have issues with this process, city staff, or the city manager, you may approach the council at any meeting." Taking Brocato at his word, Ms. Valenzuela did exactly that. After admonishing her for not following their arcane procedural rules the first time she tried to speak during discussion of the police building purchase, Brocato and vice mayor Andrew Bryan had her "'refrain from personal comments' until citizens participation." Then later, according to the article, when addressing her concerns about her "insulting" treatment by Brocato and the shabby "public process," mayor Petry 'told Valenzuela he would not allow her to recite a litany of accusations against Brocato.' 'This isn't a forum for accusations or hearsay,' Petry said. '(Brocato) has no chance to defend himself.'" [Wasn't he right there responding to her earlier?]

Ah, yes, the proverbial, mind-numbing, catch-22. Broacato tells her to approach the council with her complaints and the council tells her that isn't allowed. This is how some on the council treat the citizens of Baker City. Adverse comments about the city manager aren't allowed in public meetings. Better kept under control and cover--like many other aspects of the "public process" here. Just another reason why people don't go to council meetings, why the "good old boys" remain in control, and why "democracy" remains the domain of economic and social elites.

But I digress. I wonder if George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama would have been able to run for President if they had encountered a drug sniffing dog in their youth. George would have probably been OK, given his family’s wealth and power, but poor boy Bill, and half white Barack, would likely have acquired a ruinous record. Better to use alcohol or nicotine, some of the most destructive, but legal, drugs available, than get caught experimenting with the rather more innocuous marijuana, which results in around a million arrests a year. (I don’t use illegal drugs—I have enough problems with the legal ones.) This, even though alcohol users are far more likely to be involved in assault, theft, burglary, robbery, or driving under the influence. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/factsht/crime/index.html

Baker School District, 5J buys alcohol for a staff get together with school funds, a violation of district policy with no apparent legal sanction, but God help the errant young person who plays around with marijuana, or who wears a headband in violation of school policy. Label and humiliate the latter, ignore the indiscretions of powerful local public officials. Mixed messages and dual standards--That’s “justice.”

On March 6th, The Record Courier’s Brian Addison mentioned in an editorial that the Baker City police canine drug enforcement unit was parading their drug sniffing dog through our school gym that at the time was loaded with locals and out of town visitors. It was suggested that it could be a violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which is intended to protect privacy and outlaw warrant-less or otherwise unreasonable searches and seizures. Debby Schoeningh made clear in today’s Courier that, “The Department was acting well within the scope of the law.” It’s still an interesting question, one that is often settled on a case by case basis, a process which, as Brian noted, has, in recent decades, seemingly resulted in an erosion of our rights under the 4th Amendment. Those trying to justify and expand the practice of using drug sniffing dogs, including the courts, seem to have engaged in some legal sophistry by saying that having a dog sniff you or your vehicle is not really a search—its just a dog sniffing and alerting police officers of the presence of an odor that the policeman can’t smell. In doing so, the dog’s reaction gives the officer “reasonable grounds” or “probable cause” to suspect a crime has occurred and to make a search of the person or vehicle. As long as the ensuing search is limited to areas where the dog indicates the presence of drugs, the search is judged reasonable.

Interestingly, the US Supreme Court has ruled in KYLLO v. UNITED STATES (99-8508) 190 F.3d 1041 June 11, 2001, that the use of infrared imaging scanners by police to detect suspicious activity, in this case the use of heat lamps to grow marijuana in a home, is unconstitutional without a warrant. In the majority opinion, Justice Scalia (who was joined by some liberals) wrote "The question we confront today is what limits there are upon this power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy. To withdraw protection of this minimum expectation would be to permit police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment." The majority opinion also offered a standard for determining weather detection technology is constitutional:

“We think that obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical ‘intrusion into a constitutionally protected area’, (Silverman, 365 U.S., at 512), constitutes a search-at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use.”

Why then, should the police be able to use a sense-enhancing drug dog to scan people and vehicles for evidence of drug crimes? Both infrared technology and dogs are methods that go beyond ordinary human powers to search for evidence of a possible crime in order to provide probable cause for a more intrusive search. Both are used to search for information that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical "intrusion into a constitutionally protected area.” Both “shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy.” That looks like an erosion of the rights guaranteed by the 4th Amendment. That’s “justice.”

Oregon culture, especially conservative Republican oriented culture, is infatuated with authoritarianism and punishment, especially punishment of the wayward poor. B.F, Skinner explained decades ago (see "About Behaviorism") that punishment results in many more dysfunctional behaviors than positive ones for the punished, and otherwise may not be effective, but we persist in the practice. In Oregon we currently spend $28,389.70 annually per inmate, not including debt service or the cost of new construction (ODOC personal communication). Would not the money be better spent on these young people before they get in trouble?

According to an April 22, 2007 article in the Oregonian, experts, like the “Vera Institute of Justice in New York said in a recent report: ‘Analysts are nearly unanimous in their conclusion that continued growth in incarceration will prevent considerably fewer, if any, crimes -- and at substantially greater cost to taxpayers.’
Such findings have spurred states such as Washington to study alternatives to building more prisons. In a report last year commissioned by the Legislature, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy concluded that expansion of proven treatment and prevention programs would reduce the need for new prison beds. Steve Aos, associate director of the institute, estimates such programs would save taxpayers as much as $2.6 billion in prison construction and operations between now and 2030.”
See http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/

But arresting illegal drug users is big business. The prison industrial complex is one of the few booming sectors of the economy. Many leaders in small communities, like Baker City, see prisons as an economic boon, pumping money into the local economy with the “multiplier effect” and more housing sales for the realtor class. Following that logic, we need to expand the number of crimes and the length of prison sentences, which is what Kevin Mannix, the Republican candidate for Governor wants to do with his new ballot measure, Initiative 40 (noteworthy for not offering any minimum sentences for white-collar crimes), a follow-up to Measure 11 that apparently didn’t raise mandatory minimums enough. Never mind that the cost of all our new prisons is driving taxpayer costs through the roof. That doesn’t count the expanding probation and social service sector, which is tasked with tracking, judging, and supposedly improving the lives of these violators. If it was about helping people before they find trouble, they wouldn’t need to be spending so much money on them when they get in trouble later—but it is not—its about things like finding jobs for rural economies and the luckier than though, police, probation, and prison punishment bureaucracies. Isn’t it time we looked to a more humane and caring model—putting money, where it belongs, into financial support, early intervention and training for families? (Not to mention unlimited access to birth control.)
See: http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2007/04/or_prison_costs.html

Garrison Keeler’s view in 2005:

“a marijuana
 grower can land in prison for life without parole while
 a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational 
person can defend this; it is a Dostoevskian nightmare
 and it exists only because politicians fled in the face
of danger. That includes Bill Clinton, under whose 
administration the prosecution of Americans for 
marijuana went up hugely, so that now there are more
 folks in prison for marijuana than for violent crimes. 
More than for manslaughter or rape. This only makes 
sense in the fantasy world of Washington, where 
perception counts for more than reality. To an old 
Democrat, who takes a ground view of politics˜What is
 the actual effect of this action on the lives of real
 people?˜it is a foul tragedy that makes you feel guilty
 about enjoying your freedom. . . . .
People who 
chose marijuana, a more benign drug than alcohol, and
 got caught in the religious war that we Democrats in a 
weak moment signed onto. God help us if we form alliance
 with such bullies as would destroy a kid's life for
 raising cannabis plants.”
See: http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/inprisonformarijuana

See Also: One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=35912
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf

“For the first time in history more than one in every 100 adults in America are in jail or prison—a fact that significantly impacts state budgets without delivering a clear return on public safety. According to a new report released today by the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project, at the start of 2008, 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails, or one in every 99.1 men and women, according to the study. During 2007, the prison population rose by more than 25,000 inmates. In addition to detailing state and regional prison growth rates, Pew’s report, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008, identifies how corrections spending compares to other state investments, why it has increased, and what some states are doing to limit growth in both prison populations and costs while maintaining public safety. As prison populations expand, costs to states are on the rise. Last year alone, states spent more than $49 billion on corrections, up from $11 billion 20 years before. However, the national recidivism rate remains virtually unchanged, with about half of released inmates returning to jail or prison within three years. And while violent criminals and other serious offenders account for some of the growth, many inmates are low-level offenders or people who have violated the terms of their probation or parole. . . . . As a result, states’ corrections costs have risen substantially. Twenty years ago, the states collectively spent $10.6 billion of their general funds—their primary discretionary dollars—on corrections. Last year, they spent more than $44 billion in general funds, a 315 percent jump, and more than $49 billion in total funds from all sources. Coupled with tightening state budgets, the greater prison expenditures may force states to make tough choices about where to spend their money. For example, Pew found that over the same 20-year period, inflation-adjusted general fund spending on corrections rose 127 percent while higher education expenditures rose just 21 percent.”

And See: Burgeoning prison populations strain state budgets:

"The United States now holds the distinction of imprisoning more of its own citizens, both in total number and share of the adult population, than any other country in the world. In 2007, the United States had a record-breaking one out of every 100 adults in prison. Policy changes in sentencing and parole revocation, rather than increases in crime, have largely driven the increase in incarceration rates. 

States shoulder the vast majority of the costs associated with these policies. While states struggle with gaping budget shortfalls (see the recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), incarceration rates and costs continue to escalate, consuming growing portions of state general funds. As corrections costs increase, states are forced to make cuts in other programs, such as transportation and education. In the past 20 years, total state spending on higher education has increased 21% (from $60.3 billion to $72.9 billion, in 2007 dollars), while corrections spending has more than doubled, increasing 127% (from $19.4 billion to $44.1 billion). Since 1997, however, the growth in corrections spending has outpaced higher education by only 18 percentage points, compared with the previous gap of 66 percentage points."
More at http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20080312

MORE INTERESTING LINKS:

GARRETT HARDIN ON FREEDOM AND POPULATION
FROM “Extension of The Tragedy of the Commons”

“Individualism is cherished because it produces freedom, but the gift is conditional: The more the population exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, the more freedoms must be given up. As cities grow, the freedom to park is restricted by the number of parking meters or fee-charging garages. Traffic is rigidly controlled. On the global scale, nations are abandoning not only the freedom of the seas, but the freedom of the atmosphere, which acts as a common sink for aerial garbage. Yet to come are many other restrictions as the world's population continues to grow.
The reality that underlies all the necessary curtailments is always the same--population growth. Yet the slightest attempt to limit this freedom is promptly denounced with cries of Elitism! Big-Brotherism! Despotism! Fascism! and the like. We are slow to mend our ways because ethicists and philosophers of the past generally did not see that numbers matter. In the language of 20th-century commentators, traditional thinking was magnificently verbal and deplorably non-numerate.”

HTTP://WWW.GARRETTHARDINSOCIETY.ORG/ARTICLES/ART_EXTENSION_TRAGEDY_COMMONS.HTML

ROBERT KUTTNER ON DEREGULATION AND INEQUALITY

“Why does an unregulated market economy produce extremes? For one thing, its most successful winners can abuse their power. The usual story is that the big winners ‘must have’ made enormous contributions to the economy and therefore have earned their rewards. But in reality, many big winnings are the result of insiders taking advantage of privileged positions to reap excessive gains. Today’s CEOs earn astronomical pay packages not because they suddenly became ten times more productive but because crony boards of directors enable them to cash in. Today’s investment bankers and hedge fund operators make so much money because the rules have been changed to encourage more purely financial engineering and manipulation of paper. Many other big winnings are the result of abuses of monopoly positions. The drug companies and their executives would not be cashing in so exorbitantly at public expense if their lobbyists and allies in Congress hadn’t rewritten the patent laws to discourage the use of cheaper generic drugs.
From “The Squandering of America: how the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity” by Robert Kuttner, Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2007

MEDIA NEEDS TO TAKE MORE RESPONSIBILITY WITH REGARD TO FALSE INFORMATION

March 12, 2008, AlterNet 

"A free press is supposed to function as our democracy's immune system against... gross errors of fact and understanding," wrote Al Gore in his book, The Assault on Reason. But it doesn't - as Gore explains - and that is what makes the mass media one of the most important obstacles to social and economic progress in the 21st century.
How the media treats repeated falsehoods is a key issue. For example, when the New York Times reports on the allegation – spread by his enemies – that presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, there is a sentence that follows immediately: "In fact, he is a Christian. . ."
The media didn't do this kind of "immune system" work when it reported on the run-up to the Iraq war. As a result, more than 70 percent of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein was involved in the massacre of September 11. More than 4,000 Americans and over one million Iraqis have been killed in the violence that perhaps could have been averted with better journalism.
A 2008 study by the Center for Public Integrity, "The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War," documents 935 false statements by President Bush and seven top officials of his administration. The report notes that "much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq."
Filmmaker Michael Moore told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We're in the 5th year of this war because you, and CNN... didn't do your jobs back then and now here we are in this mess."
The mass media fails us on many issues other than war and peace. Most Americans under 50 think they are never going to see their Social Security benefits. In fact, the probability that they won't get their Social Security benefits is about the same as the chance that there won't be a U.S. government when they retire – pretty close to zero. The media could correct this widespread false belief by merely inserting a few undisputed facts about Social Security when reporting false statements from politicians and interest groups. For example: "Social Security is more financially sound than it has been throughout most of its 71-year history"; or "Social Security's projected shortfall over the next 75 years is less (as a percent of national income) than what was fixed in each of the following decades: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s."
See:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-columns/op-eds-columns/media-needs-to-take-more-responsibility-with-regard-to-false-information/

LATEST BANK BAILOUT:

“While it is too early to assess the effectiveness of the Fed's latest bailout efforts, the basic intent should be clear. It allows banks in financial trouble more time to try to find less informed investors who will buy their devalued assets. This benefits the banks' managers and stockholders; it is less clear how it benefits the economy as a whole.”
From “Ratio of Home Equity to Value Plunges to Record Low”
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/data-bytes/housing-bytes/ratio-of-home-equity-to-value-plunges-to-record-low/

I might add, that the lowered interest rates that the Fed has given banks, etc., have not been passed on to buyers or mortgage holders. Easy to see where this helps banks, hard to figure how it helps the average buyer or innocent bystander. -Chris

"it all depends on whether rates go down and whether that will rev-up the moribund housing market again. Of course, that is predicated on the false assumption that consumers are too stupid to know that housing is in its biggest decline since the Great Depression. This is just another slight miscalculation by the blinkered Fed. Housing will not be resuscitated anytime in the near future, no matter what the conditions; and you can bet on that. The last time Bernanke cut interest rates by 75 basis points mortgage rates on the 30-year fixed actually went up a full percentage point. This had a negative affect on refinancing as well as new home purchases. The cuts were a total bust in terms of home sales."

See:
A Vicious Circle Ending In A Systemic Financial Meltdown
By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19531.htm
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THE SILENT VIOLENCE OF GAZA'S SUFFERING THAT CANDIDATES AND CONGRESS IGNORE
By RALPH NADER

“The world’s largest prison—Gaza prison with 1.5 million inmates, many of them starving, sick and penniless—is receiving more sympathy and protest by Israeli citizens, of widely impressive backgrounds, than is reported in the U.S. press.
In contrast, the humanitarian crisis brought about by Israeli government blockades that prevent food, medicine, fuel and other necessities from coming into this tiny enclave through international relief organizations is received with predictable silence or callousness by members of Congress, including John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The contrast invites more public attention and discussion.
Israel has militarily occupied Gaza for forty years. It pulled out its colonials in 2005 but maintained an iron grip on the area controlling all access, including its airspace and territorial waters. Its F-16s and helicopter gunships regularly shred more and more of the areas—public works, its neighborhoods and inflict collective punishment on civilians in violation of Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. As the International Red Cross declares, citing treaties establishing international humanitarian law, “Neither the civilian population as a whole nor individual civilians may be attacked.”
According to The Nation magazine, the great Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, reports that the primitive rockets from Gaza, have taken thirteen Israeli lives in the past four years, while Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the occupied territories in the past two years alone. Almost half of them were civilians, including some 200 children.
The Israeli government is barring most of the trucks from entering Gaza to feed the nearly one million Palestinians depending on international relief, from groups such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The loss of life from crumbling health care facilities, disastrous electricity cutoffs, gross malnutrition and contaminated drinking water from broken public water systems does not get totaled. These are the children and their civilian adult relatives who expire in a silent violence of suffering that 98 percent of Congress avoids mentioning while extending billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel annually. UNRWA says “we are seeing evidence of the stunting of children, their growth is slowing.” Cancer patients are deprived of their chemotherapy, kidney patients are cut off from dialysis treatments and premature babies cannot receive blood-clotting medications.
The misery, mortality and morbidity worsens day by day.”

Rest of article: http://www.counterpunch.org/nader03082008.html
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The War and the Recession
by Dean Baker

“With the release of the February jobs numbers, everyone except for the economists now acknowledges we are in a recession. The economy is shedding jobs at a rapid pace and it is only a matter of time until we see the unemployment rate rising. In addition to greater difficulty finding jobs, workers can look forward to falling wages and reduced access to health care insurance and pension coverage.
Naturally, people are looking for an explanation for the cause of the recession, and many have turned to the Iraq War. This view is wrong. The war is a drain on the economy, but it is not the cause of the recession. The recession is due to the collapse of the $8 trillion ($110,000 per homeowner) housing bubble.
It is understandable people would look to the war as the villain in this story. After all, the war is costing around $180 billion a year (at 1.2 percent of GDP). This is a substantial drain on the federal budget and the economy. This money could have gone to productive uses that would have benefited people and made the economy stronger.
For example, the proposed expansion of the state children’s health insurance program (SCHIP) would have cost $7 billion a year, an amount equal to what we spend on the war in two weeks. A proposed $2 billion a year increase in childcare subsidies is equal to four days of spending on the war. The hundreds of millions of dollars each year the federal government devotes to energy conservation amounts to less than a day’s spending on the war.
In short, there is a nearly endless list of areas that can be identified in which the money spent on the war could have been spent in ways that would have made the economy stronger. Since the money was diverted from better uses, the war spending has hurt the economy.
There is another way in which war spending hurts the economy: We have to pay for the war. We could have paid for the war with tax increases, but instead, President Bush chose to pay for it by borrowing, making the deficit considerably larger than it would otherwise be. This additional borrowing makes interest rates somewhat higher than they would be otherwise. Higher interest rates can raise the value of the dollar, which makes the trade deficit larger. (A high dollar makes US-made goods relatively more expensive both here and abroad.) Higher interest rates can also reduce investment and homebuilding.
However, the increase in borrowing associated with the war is actually not very large relative to the size of the economy. It can be expected to have a negative effect, but it is relatively modest and only begins to be felt over time. Last year, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned Global Insight, one of the country’s leading economic forecasting firms, to project the impact of the war on the economy.
Their model projected the impact would be initially positive (war spending generates demand), but eventually the effect of higher interest rates imposes a drag on growth. By the sixth year, the effect is negative; and by the tenth year, the economy was projected to have lost about half a million jobs, mostly in manufacturing and construction.
This is bad news, but it is not the recession that we are seeing now. This recession has a different group of villains. First and foremost on this list is Alan Greenspan, who at least ignored the housing bubble, if he didn’t actively promote it. The list also includes regulators at both the state and federal level who tolerated abuses in the mortgage industry that were completely visible at the time they took place. And there is a long list of politicians and community leaders who encouraged low- and moderate-income families to buy homes in the middle of a housing bubble. And, of course, there are the incompetent economic forecasters (is that redundant?), who could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble in front of their face.
These are the people who deserve the blame for what is likely to be the most severe recession in the post-war period. The public’s wrath should be focused on the Fed, the regulators, the Wall Street crooks, and the others responsible for letting a housing bubble wreck havoc on the economy.”
More: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/11/7603/
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IRAN: 'Fox' Fallon Fired--And we're f*cked...

By Justin Raimondo

"Do I really need to draw you a picture to get you to imagine what's coming next? This is as clear a signal as any that the Bush administration intends to go out with a bang - one that will shake not only the Middle East but this country to its very foundations."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19517.htm
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John Pilger Video Documentary

"The film tells a universal story," says Pilger, "analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called war on terror".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18236.htm

I WRITE A BLOG. SO WHAT?

Most people don’t even know my blog exists. Many are happy about that. Three rather prominent Baker City citizens have told me not to communicate with them after labeling my views and my sometimes rather direct behavior disgusting. The pattern for some old-timers here is to disagree with and insult someone (like me, in response to my pointing out some facts or putting forth a strongly worded opinion) and then immediately cut off any dialogue with me. It’s the sort of behavior reminiscent of intellectual cowards. Such cowardice is like a destructive socially transmitted disease that is not easily cured, being supported as it is by their narrowness of vision and defensive self-interest.

I don’t even have time to work on my blog, as I am spending all my spare time on an environmental issue that I’m not really at liberty to write much about. Given my current situation, the blog is reduced to hurried comments on a few issues that fly by as our depressing history proceeds. So it is tonight, but I persist.