By William Fisher
President Bush’s speechwriters have just about worn out their lexicon of scary words and phrases to regale us with tales of all the terrorist plots he has disrupted since 9/11. But one word has apparently been expunged from the White House dictionary: Anthrax.
It has been four years since letters laced with the deadly white powder were mailed to the offices of then-Senate Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, as well as to media companies in Florida and New York. The letters included denunciations of Israel and America and were written in childish capitals.
Two D.C. postal workers, a Florida journalist, a New York hospital worker, and an elderly Connecticut woman died. Seventeen others were sickened and the House, Senate, Supreme Court buildings, and numerous postal facilities were contaminated and shut down. The mailings led the nation to the brink of mass hysteria. The Washington Post reports that, including cleanup costs, the damage was more than a billion dollars.
The Post’s Alan Lengel reports that the search for the anthrax-mailer led to “one of the most exhaustive investigations in FBI history.” But, after some 8,000 interviews and 5,000 subpoenas in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa, he writes, the investigation “has yielded no arrests and is showing signs of growing cold as officials have sharply reduced the number of agents on the case.”
With a $2.5 million reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, the
FBI says it is still working hard with forensics experts and scientific
researchers from law enforcement agencies, the intelligence community,
university laboratories and private corporations, to find the culprit.
“The prevailing theory,” Lengel writes, is that “The culprit is a U.S. scientist who had access to the high-grade anthrax and the knowledge of how to physically manipulate it and use it as a weapon.”
That theory has been around virtually since the beginning of the investigation, when authorities narrowed down the type of anthrax to a strain called Ames. But they have been unable to identify the lab of origin. After ruling out a possible al-Qaida link, the FBI focused on domestic “home-grown” terrorists.
The FBI initially suspected the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, housed at Fort Detrick in the Frederick, Maryland, area. Two years ago, the FBI spent about $250,000 and three weeks draining a pond in Frederick, acting on a theory that someone might have discarded materials there. But that exercise yielded nothing.
Yet is was that same theory that prompted the Justice Department and then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in 2002 to publicly name “a person of interest” -- Steven J. Hatfill, a physician and bioterrorism expert who worked at Fort Detrick from 1997 to 1999.
But four years after he was “outed,” Hatfill has not been charged with any crime, has denied any involvement, has lost his job, and has issued legal writs against the government and media organizations.
Hatfill’s designation as a “person of interest” should call our attention once again to one of the Justice Department’s most pernicious practices. It is no less shameful than law enforcement’s penchant to capture headlines by calling high-profile press conferences to publicly trumpet someone’s arrest before he or she is charged with an offense based on a judicial finding of probable cause.
Rewind to 1996, when the FBI identified as a “person of interest” a security guard named Richard Jewel, who alerted authorities to the presence of a suspicious package at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, where a bomb exploded shortly afterwards, killing a bystander and causing a fatal heart attack to a foreign journalist. Instead of being hailed as a hero whose action saved many lives, the hapless Jewel was universally condemned and relentlessly harassed by the media, which painted him as a gung-ho cop wannabee. The FBI finally fessed up to his innocence – but never apologized. Oh well, another day at the office, and another life ruined.
But back to the President’s dictionary.
We have no way to verify the President’s claims of success in thwarting terrorist plots through the secret “alternative methods” of interrogation used by the Central Intelligence Agency – precisely because they are secret. The alleged terrorists have been held incommunicado in secret prisons whose existence Mr. Bush finally conceded after months of denials and “no comments.” Nor has anyone told us what these CIA “alternative methods” involve; we hear only that waterboarding and hypothermia are prominent in the interrogation repertoire, though the President continues to insist that “The United States doesn’t torture.”
(Which makes it even more bizarre that he now insists on amending Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.)
Absent the decision of the Supreme Court, few of us would have the foggiest idea what Common Article Three is. The Court said, in essence, that there are some things that The Decider simply cannot decide. One of them is how to treat people suspected of committing terrorist acts. The other is how to bring them to justice.
Cutting through the legalese, the President’s response to both is still “trust me.” But Mr. Bush has lost that battle. He has squandered the virtually universal trust the world had in him following 9/11. In so doing, he has dealt a deadly blow to America’s reputation in the world. And, arguably, he has made it more, not less, difficult for our country to win a war of ideologies against those who would attack and kill us.
So “trust me” is just not working anymore. Which is why we’re not likely to hear the president talking about Anthrax any time soon.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
A MURROW MOMENT
By William Fisher
People who are too young to remember the 1930s, 40s, and 50s may not know that the airwaves were filled with hysterical, fear-mongering voices long before we ever heard of Bill O’Reilly.
Back then, the airwaves were radio waves. Nightly, millions of families gathered before their Radiolas and Emersons to listen to the news. There were such “commentators” as Lowell Thomas, Gabriel Heater and H.V. Kaltenborn, whose notion of news consisted largely of reading press releases from the Republican National Committee. On Sunday evenings, there was Walter Winchell, a gossip columnist turned world affairs authority, who always began his program with the greeting, “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.” Winchell’s rabid anti-Roosevelt and anti-New Deal views were barely concealed in his staccato delivery.
Then there was Boake Carter, a certifiable wing-nut who was for a time the country’s preeminent news commentator. The British-accented Carter had higher ratings than any of the other radio voices. His enemy was anything liberal. He was an apoplectic isolationist who belonged to an Anti-Semitic organization. One of Carter’s claims was that the sinking of an American gunboat by the Japanese on a river in China was part of a secret plot by President Roosevelt to plunge the country into a war in Asia. As Carter became increasingly irrational, pressure on CBS and his sponsor, General Foods, grew and CBS canceled his newscast. He later got a three-times-a-week commentary program on the Mutual Network, but was soon moved out of prime time. His rise was meteoric, but his fall was even faster.
But even in these dark days of no-nothing journalism, there were bright spots. One of the brightest was Edward R. Murrow, who set the standard for television journalism. His calm and courageous reporting captured our nation's and the world's attention during the German Blitz of Great Britain in 1940 and 1941. Millions of Americans sat by their radios to hear Murrow’s deep, sonorous voice begin, as he began all of his wartime broadcasts, “This is London.”
In 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era paranoia, Murrow produced the program that, more than any other single broadcast, has come to define him: A televised critique of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy.
There’s a reason I cite all this old radio days history. Then, as now, there was little and largely ineffective public push-back against right-wing radio “news.” Then, as now, networks controlled the airwaves, and sponsors controlled the networks. Today, we have television as well as radio. And today, both are still controlled by large corporate interests – owners and sponsors.
The impact of today’s TV and radio “news” has been well-documented. The nightly news programs of the major broadcast networks are caricatures of the cult of “objectivity,” in which anchors feel obliged to present the views of “both sides” of an issue, even when they know one side is peddling falsehoods. In both broadcast and cable outlets, the line between news, commentary and entertainment is no longer decipherable. Which gives us faux history disguised as “docudramas” like ABC’s “The Road to 9/11.” And since a majority of Americans still get most of their “news” from the “fair, balanced and unafraid” Fox Network, there is no mystery about why a large minority of us still thinks Saddam Hussein was responsible for the terrorist attacks depicted in that deeply flawed production.
All of which makes Keith Olbermann an even more remarkable phenomenon. Most remarkable is that Olby is still on the air, because for the past few years he has made a target of Bill O’Reilly, whose reactionary and often incoherent rants have made him not just a broadcaster but a powerful industry.
Well, there are no more Ed Murrows around. Or Walter Cronkites either. Keith Olbermann is virtually the only progressive voice available to us on either broadcast or cable.
And never was that truth more apparent than in his blistering critique of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent American Legion speech, in which Rumsfeld drew a parallel between those who disagree with the Bush Administration and those who appeased Hitler in the 1930s.
So unusual in our time is Olbermann’s commentary on Rumsfeld that it is worth repeating here in full. This is what he said:
Feeling Morally, Intellectually Confused?
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.
In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.
It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.
It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.
The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.
Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.
That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.
History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office cannot only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.
Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.
Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.
His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.
But back to today’s Omniscient ones.
That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.
And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.
Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.
But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.
Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.
And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?
In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?
The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.
But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.
The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.
And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”
As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.
This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.
But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”
Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”
And so good night, and good luck.
Murrow’s McCarthy broadcast did not bring an end to McCarthy or McCarthyism, but it brought the nation’s attention to this blot on our history and traditions. McCarthy’s political demise followed not long afterwards.
We should all devoutly pray that Olbermann’s words have a similar effect on Mr. Rumsfeld and his boss.
And on their on-air megaphones, starting with Bill O’Reilly.
People who are too young to remember the 1930s, 40s, and 50s may not know that the airwaves were filled with hysterical, fear-mongering voices long before we ever heard of Bill O’Reilly.
Back then, the airwaves were radio waves. Nightly, millions of families gathered before their Radiolas and Emersons to listen to the news. There were such “commentators” as Lowell Thomas, Gabriel Heater and H.V. Kaltenborn, whose notion of news consisted largely of reading press releases from the Republican National Committee. On Sunday evenings, there was Walter Winchell, a gossip columnist turned world affairs authority, who always began his program with the greeting, “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.” Winchell’s rabid anti-Roosevelt and anti-New Deal views were barely concealed in his staccato delivery.
Then there was Boake Carter, a certifiable wing-nut who was for a time the country’s preeminent news commentator. The British-accented Carter had higher ratings than any of the other radio voices. His enemy was anything liberal. He was an apoplectic isolationist who belonged to an Anti-Semitic organization. One of Carter’s claims was that the sinking of an American gunboat by the Japanese on a river in China was part of a secret plot by President Roosevelt to plunge the country into a war in Asia. As Carter became increasingly irrational, pressure on CBS and his sponsor, General Foods, grew and CBS canceled his newscast. He later got a three-times-a-week commentary program on the Mutual Network, but was soon moved out of prime time. His rise was meteoric, but his fall was even faster.
But even in these dark days of no-nothing journalism, there were bright spots. One of the brightest was Edward R. Murrow, who set the standard for television journalism. His calm and courageous reporting captured our nation's and the world's attention during the German Blitz of Great Britain in 1940 and 1941. Millions of Americans sat by their radios to hear Murrow’s deep, sonorous voice begin, as he began all of his wartime broadcasts, “This is London.”
In 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era paranoia, Murrow produced the program that, more than any other single broadcast, has come to define him: A televised critique of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy.
There’s a reason I cite all this old radio days history. Then, as now, there was little and largely ineffective public push-back against right-wing radio “news.” Then, as now, networks controlled the airwaves, and sponsors controlled the networks. Today, we have television as well as radio. And today, both are still controlled by large corporate interests – owners and sponsors.
The impact of today’s TV and radio “news” has been well-documented. The nightly news programs of the major broadcast networks are caricatures of the cult of “objectivity,” in which anchors feel obliged to present the views of “both sides” of an issue, even when they know one side is peddling falsehoods. In both broadcast and cable outlets, the line between news, commentary and entertainment is no longer decipherable. Which gives us faux history disguised as “docudramas” like ABC’s “The Road to 9/11.” And since a majority of Americans still get most of their “news” from the “fair, balanced and unafraid” Fox Network, there is no mystery about why a large minority of us still thinks Saddam Hussein was responsible for the terrorist attacks depicted in that deeply flawed production.
All of which makes Keith Olbermann an even more remarkable phenomenon. Most remarkable is that Olby is still on the air, because for the past few years he has made a target of Bill O’Reilly, whose reactionary and often incoherent rants have made him not just a broadcaster but a powerful industry.
Well, there are no more Ed Murrows around. Or Walter Cronkites either. Keith Olbermann is virtually the only progressive voice available to us on either broadcast or cable.
And never was that truth more apparent than in his blistering critique of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent American Legion speech, in which Rumsfeld drew a parallel between those who disagree with the Bush Administration and those who appeased Hitler in the 1930s.
So unusual in our time is Olbermann’s commentary on Rumsfeld that it is worth repeating here in full. This is what he said:
Feeling Morally, Intellectually Confused?
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.
In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.
It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.
It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.
It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.
The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.
Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.
That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.
History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office cannot only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.
Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.
Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.
His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.
But back to today’s Omniscient ones.
That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.
And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.
Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.
But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.
Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.
And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?
In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?
The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.
But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.
The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.
And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”
As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.
This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.
But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”
Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”
And so good night, and good luck.
Murrow’s McCarthy broadcast did not bring an end to McCarthy or McCarthyism, but it brought the nation’s attention to this blot on our history and traditions. McCarthy’s political demise followed not long afterwards.
We should all devoutly pray that Olbermann’s words have a similar effect on Mr. Rumsfeld and his boss.
And on their on-air megaphones, starting with Bill O’Reilly.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
WHAT SHOULD WE KNOW AND WHEN SHOULD WE KNOW IT?
By William Fisher
Here, dear readers, is a snap quiz:
What do all of the following have in common?
A young man is one of several people arrested for assaulting others in New York City’s Central Park after the city’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade in
2000. Police released the man soon after his arrest upon concluding that a victim had been mistaken in identifying him as one of the wrongdoers? But, meanwhile, police reveal his name and address.
In Texas, police report that a woman is accusing a star wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys of raping her, only to declare the allegations discredited two weeks later and charge the accuser herself with the crime of making a false complaint? Meantime, the football player is publicly named.
The U.S. Department of Justice names two men as “persons of interest” – Richard Jewel, who was suspected in the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996, and Steven Hatfill, a scientist suspected of stealing anthrax from a government lab in 2001, and sending it to prominent politicians and others. The Department of Justice invites journalists to witness their search of Hatfill’s home. Neither was ever charged with a crime.
Two Arab-Americans, Sobhi Abulhassan and Ali Houssaiky are arrested and charged in Marietta, Ohio, with soliciting or providing for an act of terrorism and with money laundering – they bought 600 cell phones – but a county prosecutor says there is not enough evidence to go forward with those charges. Meantime, he announces their names to the public and the media.
Three Texans -- Adham Othman, Louai Othman, and Awad Muhareb -- are stopped by police with about 1,000 cell phones in their van and local prosecutors charge them with collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes – blowing up the bridge that links Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. But in short order, both Michigan state police and the FBI say they are tourists rather than terrorists when they photograph the Mackinac Bridge. But the men are named and kept in custody.
What these situations have in common is that the names of these people were released to the public and the media by government officials, and before there was any judicial finding of probable cause. The result was that their privacy was invaded, they were stigmatized, and their reputations were severely damaged.
The question raised by these and many other similar cases is why a person accused or suspected of a crime has no right to prevent disclosure of that fact at least before some threshold point such as a judicial finding of probable cause?
This question is being raised by a prominent legal expert, Prof. Sadiq Reza of the New York Law School, who is proposing legislation to protect the privacy rights of the accused.
He asks, “Why should police routinely name arrestees and suspects, before charges have been reviewed by a judge or magistrate, when the allegations might be unfounded or the case dismissed, but an accusee’s reputation can be permanently damaged, his name forever tarnished by the accusation, and a cloud of suspicion left to loom over his personal and professional life? Why is the naming decision, and the power to trigger its harmful consequences, left to the discretion of law enforcement officials, rather than regulated by statute or judicial authority?”
The disclosure of suspects’ identities is standard operating procedure among justice and law enforcement authorities throughout the United States. Attorneys General, US attorneys, and police authorities, regularly call high-profile press conferences to announce the names of people who have been arrested or are under suspicion – though the charges against these people are often later dropped or substantially reduced, in which case the authorities customarily remain silent.
Is this necessary ? Is premature disclosure of a suspect’s name part of the public’s right to know? Whose interest does it serve? What would the public have lost if it didn’t know the names of the alleged bombers of the Mackinac Bridge? Other than titillating tabloid readers and viewers of cable television?
Does it have to be this way? If these events took place in Britain, for example, the media and its audiences would be told something like, “A person is in custody and is assisting the police with their inquiries.”
The reason for the difference is that Britain, having no Constitution, has no Bill of Rights and ergo no first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. The US Constitution is committed to the people’s right to know.
But this right is not absolute. Our Constitution also contains other rights that have been interpreted as competing with the right to know. One of these competing rights is the right to privacy.
Prof. Reza thinks that by focusing exclusively on the people’s right to know, we are ignoring the right to privacy. And he is proposing that we re-balance these competing rights.
He says, “Criminal accusation stigmatizes. Merely having been accused of a
crime lasts in the public eye, damaging one’s reputation and threatening current and future employment, relationships, social status, and more. But vast numbers of criminal cases are dismissed soon after arrest, and countless accusations are unfounded or unprovable.”
“Nevertheless, police officers and prosecutors routinely name criminal accusees to the public upon arrest or suspicion, with no obligation to publicize a defendant’s exoneration, or the dismissal of his case, or a decision not to file charges against him at all.”
He adds that other individuals caught up in the criminal process enjoy protections against the public disclosure of their identities -- sexual assault complainants, juvenile offenders, grand jury targets, and others. Professor Reza argues that the same privacy right should attach to arrestees and suspects, and government
actors should be required to withhold the identities of arrestees and suspects until a judge or a grand jury has found probable cause of guilt, unless an arrestee or suspect requests otherwise.
Professor Reza says that, ironically, the right to privacy was one of the arguments the Department of Justice put forward to justify withholding the names of hundreds of individuals arrested and detained on immigration charges following the attacks of September 11, 2001. “Every so often a government official invokes this interest in not naming an accusee of some kind; but the interest apparently arises only when officials decide it should,” he adds.
Professor Reza believes the right to privacy should not be left to the discretion of law enforcement officials but should be a matter of law. He proposes that the privacy interests of arrestees and suspects be recognized and protected by legislation that forbids the public naming of arrestees and suspects by government officials until there is a judicial finding of probable cause of guilt, unless an arrestee or suspect requests publicity -- in which case disclosure should be required.
He offers a model statute to ensure the right to privacy. Such legislation “would forbid government officers and employees to identify publicly arrestees or suspects until a judge, magistrate, or grand jury finds probable cause of guilt, unless an arrestee or suspect requests otherwise; declare ‘non-public’ those portions of government records that identify arrestees or suspects until such a
probable cause finding or request is made; require public officials to notify arrestees and suspects of their right to anonymity or publicity; and require public officials to identify any detained arrestee who so requests, absent a countervailing law enforcement interest.”
The added provision requiring the government to name arrestees upon their request completes the privacy protection by fully vesting the choice between privacy and publicity in the hands of the interested individuals, in keeping with the core purpose of informational privacy; it also provides a protection against “secret” arrests. The legislation terminates the privacy protection at a point that is well-established as a threshold for the deprivation of other rights in the criminal
process: a judicial finding of probable cause.
In the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Department of Justice rounded up as suspected terrorists hundreds of Arabs and other Muslims, as well as many South Asians who “looked Middle Eastern” to the DOJ. The DOJ Inspector General found that many were held in solitary confinement in prison-like conditions, were denied access to lawyers, and some were physically abused.
Given the post-9/11 mindset, it is doubtful that the Ashcroft Justice Department would have revealed the names of those detained, even if there had been a law placing that decision in the hands of those in jail. But at least there would have been a legal framework that might have provided the detainees with a court remedy for false arrest.
As those cases turned out, there was not a single prosecution for any terror-related offense. Many of the detainees were deported for relatively minor visa offenses. And it took the American Civil Liberties Union years and a suit under the Freedom of Information Act to discover the identities of those who were imprisoned. The same is true of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“Privacy is all the rage,” Prof. Reza says. “Hardly a day passes without some public hand-wringing over a hot issue of privacy. Meanwhile, new legislation
to protect ‘private’ information proliferates.” But “Much of the agitation stems from the extraordinary capabilities and perceived dangers of the computer age. And the attacks of September 11, 2001 have only fed the frenzy, with fresh concerns about government surveillance and the privacy of personal information of various kinds.”
No doubt, if the U.S. media – in particular our so-called cable news channels and our hysterical tabloids– has been reading this piece, they will by now be frothing at the mouth, on the brink of apoplexy, and noisily rattling their First Amendment sabers.
But Prof. Reza’s proposal, he says, “does not run afoul of the First Amendment because it applies only to government actors…and it commands only what the Supreme Court has repeatedly advised states to do to protect the privacy of individuals named in government proceedings and records: withhold the information from the public.”
Because Prof. Reza’s proposal would apply only to public authorities, it would leave the press and public free to name arrestees and suspects. But they’ll have to obtain the names themselves from the detainees’ lawyers or from leakers. If they achieve that, it will be up to their journalistic ethics and professionalism to decide to publish or not.
Which means Prof. Reza’s proposed law would not completely solve the problem, but it would sure be a step in the right direction.
Here, dear readers, is a snap quiz:
What do all of the following have in common?
A young man is one of several people arrested for assaulting others in New York City’s Central Park after the city’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade in
2000. Police released the man soon after his arrest upon concluding that a victim had been mistaken in identifying him as one of the wrongdoers? But, meanwhile, police reveal his name and address.
In Texas, police report that a woman is accusing a star wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys of raping her, only to declare the allegations discredited two weeks later and charge the accuser herself with the crime of making a false complaint? Meantime, the football player is publicly named.
The U.S. Department of Justice names two men as “persons of interest” – Richard Jewel, who was suspected in the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996, and Steven Hatfill, a scientist suspected of stealing anthrax from a government lab in 2001, and sending it to prominent politicians and others. The Department of Justice invites journalists to witness their search of Hatfill’s home. Neither was ever charged with a crime.
Two Arab-Americans, Sobhi Abulhassan and Ali Houssaiky are arrested and charged in Marietta, Ohio, with soliciting or providing for an act of terrorism and with money laundering – they bought 600 cell phones – but a county prosecutor says there is not enough evidence to go forward with those charges. Meantime, he announces their names to the public and the media.
Three Texans -- Adham Othman, Louai Othman, and Awad Muhareb -- are stopped by police with about 1,000 cell phones in their van and local prosecutors charge them with collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes – blowing up the bridge that links Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. But in short order, both Michigan state police and the FBI say they are tourists rather than terrorists when they photograph the Mackinac Bridge. But the men are named and kept in custody.
What these situations have in common is that the names of these people were released to the public and the media by government officials, and before there was any judicial finding of probable cause. The result was that their privacy was invaded, they were stigmatized, and their reputations were severely damaged.
The question raised by these and many other similar cases is why a person accused or suspected of a crime has no right to prevent disclosure of that fact at least before some threshold point such as a judicial finding of probable cause?
This question is being raised by a prominent legal expert, Prof. Sadiq Reza of the New York Law School, who is proposing legislation to protect the privacy rights of the accused.
He asks, “Why should police routinely name arrestees and suspects, before charges have been reviewed by a judge or magistrate, when the allegations might be unfounded or the case dismissed, but an accusee’s reputation can be permanently damaged, his name forever tarnished by the accusation, and a cloud of suspicion left to loom over his personal and professional life? Why is the naming decision, and the power to trigger its harmful consequences, left to the discretion of law enforcement officials, rather than regulated by statute or judicial authority?”
The disclosure of suspects’ identities is standard operating procedure among justice and law enforcement authorities throughout the United States. Attorneys General, US attorneys, and police authorities, regularly call high-profile press conferences to announce the names of people who have been arrested or are under suspicion – though the charges against these people are often later dropped or substantially reduced, in which case the authorities customarily remain silent.
Is this necessary ? Is premature disclosure of a suspect’s name part of the public’s right to know? Whose interest does it serve? What would the public have lost if it didn’t know the names of the alleged bombers of the Mackinac Bridge? Other than titillating tabloid readers and viewers of cable television?
Does it have to be this way? If these events took place in Britain, for example, the media and its audiences would be told something like, “A person is in custody and is assisting the police with their inquiries.”
The reason for the difference is that Britain, having no Constitution, has no Bill of Rights and ergo no first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. The US Constitution is committed to the people’s right to know.
But this right is not absolute. Our Constitution also contains other rights that have been interpreted as competing with the right to know. One of these competing rights is the right to privacy.
Prof. Reza thinks that by focusing exclusively on the people’s right to know, we are ignoring the right to privacy. And he is proposing that we re-balance these competing rights.
He says, “Criminal accusation stigmatizes. Merely having been accused of a
crime lasts in the public eye, damaging one’s reputation and threatening current and future employment, relationships, social status, and more. But vast numbers of criminal cases are dismissed soon after arrest, and countless accusations are unfounded or unprovable.”
“Nevertheless, police officers and prosecutors routinely name criminal accusees to the public upon arrest or suspicion, with no obligation to publicize a defendant’s exoneration, or the dismissal of his case, or a decision not to file charges against him at all.”
He adds that other individuals caught up in the criminal process enjoy protections against the public disclosure of their identities -- sexual assault complainants, juvenile offenders, grand jury targets, and others. Professor Reza argues that the same privacy right should attach to arrestees and suspects, and government
actors should be required to withhold the identities of arrestees and suspects until a judge or a grand jury has found probable cause of guilt, unless an arrestee or suspect requests otherwise.
Professor Reza says that, ironically, the right to privacy was one of the arguments the Department of Justice put forward to justify withholding the names of hundreds of individuals arrested and detained on immigration charges following the attacks of September 11, 2001. “Every so often a government official invokes this interest in not naming an accusee of some kind; but the interest apparently arises only when officials decide it should,” he adds.
Professor Reza believes the right to privacy should not be left to the discretion of law enforcement officials but should be a matter of law. He proposes that the privacy interests of arrestees and suspects be recognized and protected by legislation that forbids the public naming of arrestees and suspects by government officials until there is a judicial finding of probable cause of guilt, unless an arrestee or suspect requests publicity -- in which case disclosure should be required.
He offers a model statute to ensure the right to privacy. Such legislation “would forbid government officers and employees to identify publicly arrestees or suspects until a judge, magistrate, or grand jury finds probable cause of guilt, unless an arrestee or suspect requests otherwise; declare ‘non-public’ those portions of government records that identify arrestees or suspects until such a
probable cause finding or request is made; require public officials to notify arrestees and suspects of their right to anonymity or publicity; and require public officials to identify any detained arrestee who so requests, absent a countervailing law enforcement interest.”
The added provision requiring the government to name arrestees upon their request completes the privacy protection by fully vesting the choice between privacy and publicity in the hands of the interested individuals, in keeping with the core purpose of informational privacy; it also provides a protection against “secret” arrests. The legislation terminates the privacy protection at a point that is well-established as a threshold for the deprivation of other rights in the criminal
process: a judicial finding of probable cause.
In the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Department of Justice rounded up as suspected terrorists hundreds of Arabs and other Muslims, as well as many South Asians who “looked Middle Eastern” to the DOJ. The DOJ Inspector General found that many were held in solitary confinement in prison-like conditions, were denied access to lawyers, and some were physically abused.
Given the post-9/11 mindset, it is doubtful that the Ashcroft Justice Department would have revealed the names of those detained, even if there had been a law placing that decision in the hands of those in jail. But at least there would have been a legal framework that might have provided the detainees with a court remedy for false arrest.
As those cases turned out, there was not a single prosecution for any terror-related offense. Many of the detainees were deported for relatively minor visa offenses. And it took the American Civil Liberties Union years and a suit under the Freedom of Information Act to discover the identities of those who were imprisoned. The same is true of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“Privacy is all the rage,” Prof. Reza says. “Hardly a day passes without some public hand-wringing over a hot issue of privacy. Meanwhile, new legislation
to protect ‘private’ information proliferates.” But “Much of the agitation stems from the extraordinary capabilities and perceived dangers of the computer age. And the attacks of September 11, 2001 have only fed the frenzy, with fresh concerns about government surveillance and the privacy of personal information of various kinds.”
No doubt, if the U.S. media – in particular our so-called cable news channels and our hysterical tabloids– has been reading this piece, they will by now be frothing at the mouth, on the brink of apoplexy, and noisily rattling their First Amendment sabers.
But Prof. Reza’s proposal, he says, “does not run afoul of the First Amendment because it applies only to government actors…and it commands only what the Supreme Court has repeatedly advised states to do to protect the privacy of individuals named in government proceedings and records: withhold the information from the public.”
Because Prof. Reza’s proposal would apply only to public authorities, it would leave the press and public free to name arrestees and suspects. But they’ll have to obtain the names themselves from the detainees’ lawyers or from leakers. If they achieve that, it will be up to their journalistic ethics and professionalism to decide to publish or not.
Which means Prof. Reza’s proposed law would not completely solve the problem, but it would sure be a step in the right direction.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
NO PLANET LEFT BEHIND - - WELL, MAYBE ONE
By William Fisher
I was serving in the Kennedy Administration on May 25, 1961, when, just like millions of other Americans, I heard JFK tell the world, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
And, like most of those who heard the president’s words that day, I felt proud to be an American. After all, we Americans have always been optimists and risk-takers.
There were many skeptics who believed that JFK’s vision was not doable. But it became a reality on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong took his “one small step for man and a giant step for mankind.” Sadly, he did not live to see his dream come true.
Why, then, did I find myself feeling so skeptical when the Bush Administration announced last week that it was awarding a multibillion-dollar contract to Lockheed Martin Corporation to build a new manned lunar spaceship at a cost estimated at $7.5 billion?
Well, I’m not usually given to conspiracy theories, but I recall that it was January 2004 – that’s two-thousand and four -- when President Bush first announced his plan to build a new generation of manned spacecraft to go to the moon and perhaps to Mars. So I had to wonder why his plan fell off the radar for so long and whether the timing of this latest announcement might just have something to do with the upcoming mid-term elections.
Or, in true, conspiratorial fashion, I pondered whether this announcement had anything to do with NASA’s quiet change of its mission statement.
That statement has always contained the words "to understand and protect our home planet." But these words were recently quietly removed from the agency’s responsibilities. And coming on the heels of attempts to silence NASA scientists who went public with remarks about climate change, that action caused me to wonder whether the Bush Administration was yet again trying to minimize global warming by changing the subject to the new Moon-Mars mission.
So I was heartened to discover I wasn’t alone. The deletion of the reference to “our home planet” also apparently occurred to Senators. Susan Collins and Joseph Lieberman – two folks not usually associated with conspiracy theorists -- who wrote NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, saying, "At a time in which evidence grows on an almost daily basis of the potentially severe impacts of climate change, we find it inexplicable that NASA apparently no longer views protecting and understanding our home planet as a priority.” Taking Earth away from NASA will result in a $3.1 billion budget cut over the next five years.
Now, don’t misunderstand. I am all for exploring the moon or Mars or even poor little disenfranchised Pluto. I just question whether we ought to be spending $7.5 billion – and that’s without the virtually inevitable cost over-runs – at this particular time.
Consider that our 2007 budget deficit is projected to be, at a minimum, $286 billion in fiscal 2007, up from this year's projected deficit of $260 billion -- excluding most of the DOD spending for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Consider also that the $2.77 trillion 2007 budget President Bush sent to Congress contains $3 billion in cuts for education, with no new funding for the $12.7 billion Title I program for low-income students; that it sharply decreases funding for supporting the arts, vocational education, parent resource centers and drug-free schools; that it reduces spending for Medicare by $35.9 billion over five years, including cuts in funding for hospitals, nursing homes, home health care providers and hospices; that it eliminates research and development funding for geothermal and hydropower, cuts $930,000 from wind power R&D, and two-thirds of the $23 million designated for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs in the 2002 Farm Bill; that it cuts a number of important environmental programs including several initiatives that actually save taxpayers money; that it decreases by $78 million (13 percent) funding for federal energy efficiency programs to reduce pollution; and that it actually decreases the funds available for Homeland Security.
Defense spending will, of course, increase. Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans will remain in place, while a 10-year-overdue increase in the minimum wage is ignored. And a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau tells us that millions of working Americans are living below the poverty line and without health insurance, and that the gulf between the haves and the have-nots has become a chasm – and a dangerous threat to the fabric of our society.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. The President’s budget reflects the priorities he has had since his first day in office.
Except the new trip to the moon and beyond. But, then again, this is an election year!
I was serving in the Kennedy Administration on May 25, 1961, when, just like millions of other Americans, I heard JFK tell the world, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
And, like most of those who heard the president’s words that day, I felt proud to be an American. After all, we Americans have always been optimists and risk-takers.
There were many skeptics who believed that JFK’s vision was not doable. But it became a reality on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong took his “one small step for man and a giant step for mankind.” Sadly, he did not live to see his dream come true.
Why, then, did I find myself feeling so skeptical when the Bush Administration announced last week that it was awarding a multibillion-dollar contract to Lockheed Martin Corporation to build a new manned lunar spaceship at a cost estimated at $7.5 billion?
Well, I’m not usually given to conspiracy theories, but I recall that it was January 2004 – that’s two-thousand and four -- when President Bush first announced his plan to build a new generation of manned spacecraft to go to the moon and perhaps to Mars. So I had to wonder why his plan fell off the radar for so long and whether the timing of this latest announcement might just have something to do with the upcoming mid-term elections.
Or, in true, conspiratorial fashion, I pondered whether this announcement had anything to do with NASA’s quiet change of its mission statement.
That statement has always contained the words "to understand and protect our home planet." But these words were recently quietly removed from the agency’s responsibilities. And coming on the heels of attempts to silence NASA scientists who went public with remarks about climate change, that action caused me to wonder whether the Bush Administration was yet again trying to minimize global warming by changing the subject to the new Moon-Mars mission.
So I was heartened to discover I wasn’t alone. The deletion of the reference to “our home planet” also apparently occurred to Senators. Susan Collins and Joseph Lieberman – two folks not usually associated with conspiracy theorists -- who wrote NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, saying, "At a time in which evidence grows on an almost daily basis of the potentially severe impacts of climate change, we find it inexplicable that NASA apparently no longer views protecting and understanding our home planet as a priority.” Taking Earth away from NASA will result in a $3.1 billion budget cut over the next five years.
Now, don’t misunderstand. I am all for exploring the moon or Mars or even poor little disenfranchised Pluto. I just question whether we ought to be spending $7.5 billion – and that’s without the virtually inevitable cost over-runs – at this particular time.
Consider that our 2007 budget deficit is projected to be, at a minimum, $286 billion in fiscal 2007, up from this year's projected deficit of $260 billion -- excluding most of the DOD spending for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Consider also that the $2.77 trillion 2007 budget President Bush sent to Congress contains $3 billion in cuts for education, with no new funding for the $12.7 billion Title I program for low-income students; that it sharply decreases funding for supporting the arts, vocational education, parent resource centers and drug-free schools; that it reduces spending for Medicare by $35.9 billion over five years, including cuts in funding for hospitals, nursing homes, home health care providers and hospices; that it eliminates research and development funding for geothermal and hydropower, cuts $930,000 from wind power R&D, and two-thirds of the $23 million designated for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs in the 2002 Farm Bill; that it cuts a number of important environmental programs including several initiatives that actually save taxpayers money; that it decreases by $78 million (13 percent) funding for federal energy efficiency programs to reduce pollution; and that it actually decreases the funds available for Homeland Security.
Defense spending will, of course, increase. Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans will remain in place, while a 10-year-overdue increase in the minimum wage is ignored. And a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau tells us that millions of working Americans are living below the poverty line and without health insurance, and that the gulf between the haves and the have-nots has become a chasm – and a dangerous threat to the fabric of our society.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. The President’s budget reflects the priorities he has had since his first day in office.
Except the new trip to the moon and beyond. But, then again, this is an election year!
Thursday, August 31, 2006
A PERFECT NEW COVER FOR AL QAEDA
By William Fisher
If past is prologue, it won’t be long before the chattering class in Washington, D.C. identifies a young man named Junaid Ahmad as the poster child for a clever new “cover” for Al Qaeda “sleepers” in America.
Mr. Ahmad is 24 years old. And he is among a rapidly increasing number of first generation Muslim-Americans who have decided to pursue careers in the law.
Ahmad, who was born in Chicago, Illinois, after his parents emigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan in 1973, is a second-year student at William and Mary law school in Williamsburg, Virginia. He told me he chose the law over more traditional first-generation Americans’ choices – medicine, science and engineering – because he cares deeply about human rights and civil liberties.
When he graduates from law school in 2008, he says he hopes to join the legal staff of an international human rights organization, and also do some teaching.
Ahmad says he is “worried about the politics of fear” that the Administration of President George W. Bush has encouraged since the terrorists attacks of September 11th 2001. He adds that “Many Muslims in America are being routinely harassed and stereotyped and “might feel more comfortable with lawyers who understood their language, culture and customs.”
He says his personal experience is that, despite denials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, these agencies “are practicing ethnic profiling on a routine basis.” He recalls returning to the U.S. from Pakistan several weeks ago, just after the alleged airliner-bombing plot was announced in London.
“Individuals and families with small children who seemed to look South Asian or Middle Eastern were routinely taken out of the usual waiting lines and questioned for hours” by agents of the Transportation Safety Administration, the DHS agency in charge of airline security. “And they were the only ones questioned,” he claims.
Active in human rights issues ranging from the crackdown on civil and political liberties worldwide to global economic justice during his undergraduate study at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Ahmad currently serves as pro-bono director of communications for the National Muslim Law Students’ Association, formed in 2002, as well as an Executive Board Member of the Domestic Violence Resource Project, based in Washington, DC.
Another organization, The National Association of Muslim Lawyers, was launched in California in 1996 with 24 members, and now has 500. It actively partners with the NMLSA. And half the 100 members of the Bay Area (California) Association of Muslim Lawyers are law students, a further sign of the substantial increase.
A spokesperson for the NMLSA, Ms. Rufiath Yousuff, told me that firm numbers of Muslim law students are hard to come by because law schools and law firms do not ask an applicant’s religion. But there are currently Muslim law student organizations at approximately 30 U.S. law schools from Berkeley to Yale.
Ms. Yousuff says her organization currently has 249 subscribers, “with at least 50 joining last year alone.” Members include law graduates, law students and college students interested in law.
She told me, “After 9/11 there came a shocking realization that there were not enough Muslims in the profession to protect the rights of Muslims both within the U.S. and also the international community. And, that those who did not profess the Muslim faith may not understand the subtle dimensions and intentions of those who practiced their faith or culture in a manner that peripherally seemed un-American, when in reality no treason was intended.”
She cites the Muslim obligation to give to charity, one of the five pillars of Islam. “A Muslim may send money to another country or organization and be arrested for allegedly materially aiding a terrorist country. In such a situation, a Muslim lawyer could identify their intent in such an act, while being aware of the legal mechanisms to secure their release.”
Ms. Yousuff told me, “9/11 certainly impacted upon the career choice of many Muslim students. Moreover, there is an acknowledgment amongst the American Muslim legal community, particularly those working in the civil rights areas, that they are in essence amongst the first generation of the current Muslim civil rights movement. Like Brown v. Board of Education, some of the precedents that will be set in relation to Muslims and their plight will be set by those who struggle in this cause today.”
However, she adds, “Not all Muslim Americans entering law now are intending to join in the cause. Many will be doing it for exactly the same reason as any other American student; namely, fame, fortune, a comfortable lifestyle or an interest in a particular legal area. And in reality it would be foolish if Muslims limited themselves to one field alone. Times will inevitably change, or at least this is my hope, and when it does, I, with many others in the Muslim community, hope that Muslims will contribute to society via expertise in various areas of law.”
This view is supported by Samer Shehata, Assistant Professor of Arab Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He told me, “I do not doubt that harassment experienced in the period since 9/11 has increased Muslim-Americans’ interests in issues such as discrimination, civil rights, and the law. But it is also the case that as the children of immigrants grow up (and as their parents become more settled and established), they increasingly attend colleges and universities.”
But the motivations of NMLSA members appear to lean heavily toward the civil liberties area.
Typical is Omar Khawaja, a J.D. Candidate at Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. He says, “After 9/11 and the ensuing debate over whether it was possible to be a practicing Muslim and patriotic American, it was clear to me that policy makers in Washington D.C. needed greater input from Muslim Americans. While working on Capitol Hill, I decided that law school would help me become a better advocate for Muslim and Muslim American causes. Despite the circumstances, I'm grateful at having the opportunity to work in the legal field and make a positive contribution to society as a Muslim American.”
This attitude is being expressed in a variety of ways. For example, lawyers and law students are going into the community to teach Muslims about civil rights. In Santa Clara, California, a legal clinic at a local mosque offers free community consultations. And Muslim lawyers are taking on cases such as the Muslim woman who says she is on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list in error, and another who says she lost her job because she wore a hijab, or head-scarf.
No doubt the conspiracists in our midst will soon be asking who could be more effective in subverting our anti-terror laws than attorneys who are smack in the middle of the criminal justice system? We can expect Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh to embrace this notion with their usual intellectual sleight of hand. And Ann Coulter to demand their immediate disbarment.
Don’t be surprised. Its great stuff for cable ratings and book-peddling!
And for filling us with the fear with which the Bush Administration hopes to persuade us to send their minions back to Congress in November.
If past is prologue, it won’t be long before the chattering class in Washington, D.C. identifies a young man named Junaid Ahmad as the poster child for a clever new “cover” for Al Qaeda “sleepers” in America.
Mr. Ahmad is 24 years old. And he is among a rapidly increasing number of first generation Muslim-Americans who have decided to pursue careers in the law.
Ahmad, who was born in Chicago, Illinois, after his parents emigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan in 1973, is a second-year student at William and Mary law school in Williamsburg, Virginia. He told me he chose the law over more traditional first-generation Americans’ choices – medicine, science and engineering – because he cares deeply about human rights and civil liberties.
When he graduates from law school in 2008, he says he hopes to join the legal staff of an international human rights organization, and also do some teaching.
Ahmad says he is “worried about the politics of fear” that the Administration of President George W. Bush has encouraged since the terrorists attacks of September 11th 2001. He adds that “Many Muslims in America are being routinely harassed and stereotyped and “might feel more comfortable with lawyers who understood their language, culture and customs.”
He says his personal experience is that, despite denials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, these agencies “are practicing ethnic profiling on a routine basis.” He recalls returning to the U.S. from Pakistan several weeks ago, just after the alleged airliner-bombing plot was announced in London.
“Individuals and families with small children who seemed to look South Asian or Middle Eastern were routinely taken out of the usual waiting lines and questioned for hours” by agents of the Transportation Safety Administration, the DHS agency in charge of airline security. “And they were the only ones questioned,” he claims.
Active in human rights issues ranging from the crackdown on civil and political liberties worldwide to global economic justice during his undergraduate study at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Ahmad currently serves as pro-bono director of communications for the National Muslim Law Students’ Association, formed in 2002, as well as an Executive Board Member of the Domestic Violence Resource Project, based in Washington, DC.
Another organization, The National Association of Muslim Lawyers, was launched in California in 1996 with 24 members, and now has 500. It actively partners with the NMLSA. And half the 100 members of the Bay Area (California) Association of Muslim Lawyers are law students, a further sign of the substantial increase.
A spokesperson for the NMLSA, Ms. Rufiath Yousuff, told me that firm numbers of Muslim law students are hard to come by because law schools and law firms do not ask an applicant’s religion. But there are currently Muslim law student organizations at approximately 30 U.S. law schools from Berkeley to Yale.
Ms. Yousuff says her organization currently has 249 subscribers, “with at least 50 joining last year alone.” Members include law graduates, law students and college students interested in law.
She told me, “After 9/11 there came a shocking realization that there were not enough Muslims in the profession to protect the rights of Muslims both within the U.S. and also the international community. And, that those who did not profess the Muslim faith may not understand the subtle dimensions and intentions of those who practiced their faith or culture in a manner that peripherally seemed un-American, when in reality no treason was intended.”
She cites the Muslim obligation to give to charity, one of the five pillars of Islam. “A Muslim may send money to another country or organization and be arrested for allegedly materially aiding a terrorist country. In such a situation, a Muslim lawyer could identify their intent in such an act, while being aware of the legal mechanisms to secure their release.”
Ms. Yousuff told me, “9/11 certainly impacted upon the career choice of many Muslim students. Moreover, there is an acknowledgment amongst the American Muslim legal community, particularly those working in the civil rights areas, that they are in essence amongst the first generation of the current Muslim civil rights movement. Like Brown v. Board of Education, some of the precedents that will be set in relation to Muslims and their plight will be set by those who struggle in this cause today.”
However, she adds, “Not all Muslim Americans entering law now are intending to join in the cause. Many will be doing it for exactly the same reason as any other American student; namely, fame, fortune, a comfortable lifestyle or an interest in a particular legal area. And in reality it would be foolish if Muslims limited themselves to one field alone. Times will inevitably change, or at least this is my hope, and when it does, I, with many others in the Muslim community, hope that Muslims will contribute to society via expertise in various areas of law.”
This view is supported by Samer Shehata, Assistant Professor of Arab Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He told me, “I do not doubt that harassment experienced in the period since 9/11 has increased Muslim-Americans’ interests in issues such as discrimination, civil rights, and the law. But it is also the case that as the children of immigrants grow up (and as their parents become more settled and established), they increasingly attend colleges and universities.”
But the motivations of NMLSA members appear to lean heavily toward the civil liberties area.
Typical is Omar Khawaja, a J.D. Candidate at Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. He says, “After 9/11 and the ensuing debate over whether it was possible to be a practicing Muslim and patriotic American, it was clear to me that policy makers in Washington D.C. needed greater input from Muslim Americans. While working on Capitol Hill, I decided that law school would help me become a better advocate for Muslim and Muslim American causes. Despite the circumstances, I'm grateful at having the opportunity to work in the legal field and make a positive contribution to society as a Muslim American.”
This attitude is being expressed in a variety of ways. For example, lawyers and law students are going into the community to teach Muslims about civil rights. In Santa Clara, California, a legal clinic at a local mosque offers free community consultations. And Muslim lawyers are taking on cases such as the Muslim woman who says she is on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list in error, and another who says she lost her job because she wore a hijab, or head-scarf.
No doubt the conspiracists in our midst will soon be asking who could be more effective in subverting our anti-terror laws than attorneys who are smack in the middle of the criminal justice system? We can expect Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh to embrace this notion with their usual intellectual sleight of hand. And Ann Coulter to demand their immediate disbarment.
Don’t be surprised. Its great stuff for cable ratings and book-peddling!
And for filling us with the fear with which the Bush Administration hopes to persuade us to send their minions back to Congress in November.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Ruthless Exploiters, Inc.
A Little Poverty Never Hurt Anybody
By Jason Miller
"It is like paradise and hell. They throw our petitions in the dustbin. They have everything. We have nothing… If we protest, they send soldiers. They sign agreements with us and then ignore us. We have graduates going hungry, without jobs. And they bring people from Lagos to work here.”
Eghare W.O. Ojhogar, chief of the Ugborodo community in Delta State (of Nigeria)
In describing the situation in Nigeria, Eghare presents us with a microcosm of a modern Inferno, Purgatorio, e Paradiso (about which there is little divine or comic). In the timeless struggle between the “haves and “have nots”, alarming numbers of “useless eaters” (“have nots”) are sliding from Purgatorio into the abyss of abject poverty’s Inferno.
And what heinous transgression did they commit that necessitated their banishment into the Inferno? They were born, of course. Most of those experiencing the misery of indigence had the misfortune to enter this world bearing a losing lottery ticket.
From their birth, the psyches of the poor and homeless in the “developed” nations and those of the impoverished in the “developing” nations are battered with the hopelessness and despair of their harsh realities. (Realities carefully created and perpetuated in a variety of ways by their “betters”).
After spending their formative years pitted against nearly overwhelming economic and social forces, the message many of them internalize probably reads something like this:
Sorry, washout. You are the wrong color, ethnicity, caste, social class, or nationality. Surviving to age 40 will be no small task for you. And if you manage to do so, your chances of significantly bettering your situation are quite slim. After all, the lottery winners invest a great deal in maintaining structural barriers to hold you down. But the good news is that you can add meaning to your miserable existence by working for slave wages( or simply withering and dying) to ensure that the tiny percentage of humanity enjoying economic Paradiso continues to do so and that the shrinking number of fortunates in Purgatorio experience a degree of comfort and security.
To gain some perspective on the extent of human suffering, avarice, and depravity associated with the gross imbalance in wealth and power, weigh these facts:
1. More than half of the 6.5 billion human souls populating Earth subsist on less than $2 per day. 790 million of the deeply impoverished suffer from chronic malnutrition (while 65% of US Americans are overweight).
2. 20% of the human race does not have access to clean water and 31% of the world’s population has no electricity.
3. Combining the gross domestic products of the 48 poorest nations (representing 25% of global population) yields a figure that is less than the wealth of the three richest people in the world.
4. “Developed nations” account for 80% of the world’s consumption and 20% of the world’s population.
5. The wealth gap between the richest and poorest countries went from 3 to 1 in 1820 to 72 to 1 in 1992.
6. Corporations account for over half of the 100 wealthiest entities in the world.
7. And most tragically:
“According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year.”
(Thanks to Global Issues.org for the above information)
Earth’s ruling oligarchs and plutocrats have created and perpetuated a socioeconomic dynamic in which the destitute have little or no access to education, basic healthcare, decent employment, or even basic necessities. From the United States to sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, those isolated in despairing communities with crumbling or non-existent infrastructures find themselves mired in impoverished breeding grounds for crime, high birth rates, substance abuse, and AIDS.
Perhaps an apt message for those impoverished children arriving in this world with three strikes against them would be:
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate”, which is most commonly translated as “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
How humane and politically correct those monopolizing Earth’s bounty have become. Monarchy has essentially been relegated to the dustbin of history. Empire building through brute force is becoming an increasingly rare event. Certainly the ruling elite maintain potent militaries to exercise their right to “defend themselves” (as they are doing in Iraq and Lebanon). But more often then not, the masters of the human race have learned to wield their economic power like a heavy cudgel, capable of battering their foes into submission with a few swift strokes.
New age dawning?
As humanity basks in the nurturing rays of a long-awaited sunrise marking the dawn of a glorious new paradigm, a determined privileged class is determined to make utopia a reality for themselves. Ushering in a veritable paradise of free trade, “robust economies”, “ownership societies”, “freedom and liberty”, and unprecedented profits generated by massive companies unfettered by frivolous government regulation, predatory human beings now issue their edicts from corporate skyscrapers rather than moated castles.
Wage slaves and sweat shop laborers have supplanted serfs and chattel slaves. Five major corporations comprise 90% of the mass media in the United States. What are their specialties? Shaping public opinion to maintain the illusion that one of the world’s most rapacious and bellicose nations is a “benevolent superpower” and enticing those who fall prey to their charms to experience a virtually insatiable desire to acquire more material possessions. A brain-washed complacent citizenry perpetually ready to go on a buying binge is a wet dream for the ruling elite.
For many, the survival of their families depends upon the meager pay they receive from corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart. More fortunate wage slaves earn enough to cover the cost of necessities and to attain the goods the corporate media push like Ecstasy. Shopping….what a rush!
Between the US Americans who have high discretionary income and the easy credit issued to those who don’t, demand for consumer goods is nearly infinite. With grossly unfair laws (protecting consumers, the environment, and workers) squeezing their profits, those ingenious devils amongst the ruling elite concluded they would locate in "developing" countries where they could truly rape, pillage and plunder. Hence the worsening plight of those beholden to their corporate masters both in the United States and abroad.
Where is the wealth?
And just how heavily are the world’s assets concentrated into the hands of the elite? While the United States is by no means home to the entire world’s de facto aristocracy, it is the “leader of the obscenely rich world” and by default is the “leader of the (ostensibly) free world”.
For example, Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz wrote in 2001:
“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top 1 percent of households have 44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”
And thanks to the Bush administration, that 10% is maintaining a firm grasp on what they own.
Pernicious and Enduring Lies
The predator class pacifies its subservient underclass with the myth that in the United States and the satellite “free market economies” it has established (at gun-point or through the subversive activities of the CIA), everyone can become a successful entrepreneur by starting their own business. Yet like the lie that all impoverished individuals except widows, orphans, and the infirm are responsible for their own circumstances, this malicious fairy tale ignores several realities. Like the fiction about the impoverished, it assumes that all people are on a level playing field. However, that notion is far removed from reality. Some people have a higher quality education than others. Individuals receiving a high degree of support from friends and family are much more likely to succeed than those who have little or no support. While some starting a business have financial resources behind them, others have virtually nothing but their drive and ideas. Market forces, weather patterns, competition, health, and many other variables can serve to make or break a “budding capitalist”. And no two people are alike or face the same conditions.
Approximately 150 million of those young and healthy enough to work in the United States earn a wage or salary. (Versus a relatively paltry figure of 20 million who are self-employed). 85% of small businesses fail within 5 years. Corporate leviathans like Wal-Mart and Microsoft have defied anti-trust laws to crush myriad competitors, including many small entrepreneurs. Horatio Alger success stories are none too plentiful in the “land of opportunity”. And the grim reality is that the Goliath corporate giants usually prevail against the David small businesses.
In 2003, the average worker in the United States was netting $517.00 per week. How much were CEO’s taking home at that time? A mere $155,000. 52 times per year. That is a staggering 301 to 1 differential. In 1982 the ratio of CEO to average worker pay was “a mere” 42 to 1. From 1990 to 2003 US corporate profits rose 128%.
To further appreciate the obscene avarice of the world’s plutocracy, consider that the average garment worker in Bangladesh earned 13 cents per hour in 2004. The “10% of the people who own the United States” and their counter-parts in nations around the globe are doing very well thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears of the remaining 6 billion or so human beings on the planet.
Incorporating their Avarice
Corporations are the Holy Grail for the rich and powerful. They provide moneyed individuals investment vehicles which afford them extremely limited personal liability, financially and criminally. By the late 19th Century in the United States, corporations had acquired many of the legal rights of a human being. Despite their roots in British colonialism and the deep apprehensions of founders like Thomas Jefferson, corporations have come to dominate the United States and much of the world culturally, politically, and economically.
Jefferson’s expression of concern to George Logan in 1816 was well-founded:
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Not only was the aristocracy of moneyed corporations born. Its power has grown to such monstrous proportions that it has virtually crushed the life from a still relatively nascent social experiment based on democratic ideals and Constitutional law.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the pharmaceutical industry alone has spent $675 million lobbying the government to shape public policy over the last seven years. The insurance industry spent even more if one includes campaign donations. Through their corporate proxies, the moneyed elite invest a great deal in the United States’ political system. They expect and receive a great deal in return.
"Defending" the predator class is an expensive proposition
Spending at a clip of $600 billion per year (including Iraqi Occupation costs), the United States accounts for 50% of the world’s military spending. As George Bush (the current public face of the world’s plutocracy) so sagely reminded us, “Free nations are peaceful nations.” To manufacture the many instruments of peace which prove how free we are, the United States relies on 737 defense contractors, sometimes known as the military-industrial complex. Of those 737 contractors, a mere five have received government contracts totaling $284 billion over the last six years. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics do quite well at the public trough. Halliburton has also fared nicely since former CEO Dick Cheney took office and helped lie the United States into the Iraqi Occupation. Facilitating killing is their business, and business is good.
Sedating the masses with consumerism, spin, fear-mongering and historical revisions; lobbying heavily; donating huge sums to political campaigns; and maintaining the military industrial complex are powerful means of securing the seats of power in DC and Tel Aviv. However, the predator class has yet another weapon at its disposal: the revolving door between government and major corporations. Men like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are but two stalwarts of the privileged class who have traversed back and forth from roles of great influence in major corporations to positions of power within the government. But they are not pioneers. Theirs is a path blazed by many before them and almost certain to be followed by many after them.
A glimpse of the ugly reality of pathological avarice in action...
To move beyond an abstract analysis of the machinations of the oppression and exploitation of most of the human race by a select and privileged few, consider one of many specific examples. For years, British and US oil interests have enjoyed the complicity of the criminal ruling elite in Nigeria in plundering an incredibly valuable natural resource. In return a majority of the indigenous people have received land too polluted to farm, brutal attacks by government forces, and extreme poverty.
According to an article written for Amnesty International:
“It's 10 years since the Nigerian Government executed the well-known Ogoni writer and human rights campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa. But little has changed for the people of the Niger Delta, reports Seth Jordan….
…Oil was discovered in the Ogoni region in the late 1950s by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group….by the 1990s an estimated US $30 billion worth of oil had already been extracted, and oil revenues accounted for over 98 per cent of Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings; the 550,000 local farmers and fishermen who inhabited the coastal land had received little except a ravaged environment. Once fertile farmland had been destroyed by uncontrolled pollution, and virtually all fish and wildlife had vanished. Only a handful of local people were employed by the oil companies or benefited economically in any way….
“On 4 February 2005, soldiers from Nigeria's Joint Task Force fired on protesters from the Ugborodo community at the Escravos oil terminal run by Chevron Nigeria. One man was shot and later died from his injuries. Thirty other demonstrators were injured by blows from rifle butts and other weapons. Neither the government nor the oil company provided adequate medical care or helped to transport the injured.”
Nigeria provides a potent example of the blatant abuses of the impoverished masses by the privileged few. But sadly, it is but one of many such cases.
While the rapacious individuals who wield the power in this world have stacked the deck heavily in their favor, there are glimmers of hope. The United States and Israel are both failing in their wars of aggression in the Middle East. A wave of democratic socialism is beginning to sweep South America. A populist leader may still win the presidency in Mexico. Joe Lieberman was ejected. And checks and balances were at least temporarily restored in the United States when a federal judge ordered George Bush to obey the Constitution.
A collective populist movement is slowly evolving. It is only a matter of time before humanity’s oppressed put aside their religious, racial, and nationalist differences to unite against their common enemy. When six billion people act in unison against a few million, there will indeed be a new world order.
Jason Miller describes himself a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically and his essays have appeared widely on the Internet. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
By Jason Miller
"It is like paradise and hell. They throw our petitions in the dustbin. They have everything. We have nothing… If we protest, they send soldiers. They sign agreements with us and then ignore us. We have graduates going hungry, without jobs. And they bring people from Lagos to work here.”
Eghare W.O. Ojhogar, chief of the Ugborodo community in Delta State (of Nigeria)
In describing the situation in Nigeria, Eghare presents us with a microcosm of a modern Inferno, Purgatorio, e Paradiso (about which there is little divine or comic). In the timeless struggle between the “haves and “have nots”, alarming numbers of “useless eaters” (“have nots”) are sliding from Purgatorio into the abyss of abject poverty’s Inferno.
And what heinous transgression did they commit that necessitated their banishment into the Inferno? They were born, of course. Most of those experiencing the misery of indigence had the misfortune to enter this world bearing a losing lottery ticket.
From their birth, the psyches of the poor and homeless in the “developed” nations and those of the impoverished in the “developing” nations are battered with the hopelessness and despair of their harsh realities. (Realities carefully created and perpetuated in a variety of ways by their “betters”).
After spending their formative years pitted against nearly overwhelming economic and social forces, the message many of them internalize probably reads something like this:
Sorry, washout. You are the wrong color, ethnicity, caste, social class, or nationality. Surviving to age 40 will be no small task for you. And if you manage to do so, your chances of significantly bettering your situation are quite slim. After all, the lottery winners invest a great deal in maintaining structural barriers to hold you down. But the good news is that you can add meaning to your miserable existence by working for slave wages( or simply withering and dying) to ensure that the tiny percentage of humanity enjoying economic Paradiso continues to do so and that the shrinking number of fortunates in Purgatorio experience a degree of comfort and security.
To gain some perspective on the extent of human suffering, avarice, and depravity associated with the gross imbalance in wealth and power, weigh these facts:
1. More than half of the 6.5 billion human souls populating Earth subsist on less than $2 per day. 790 million of the deeply impoverished suffer from chronic malnutrition (while 65% of US Americans are overweight).
2. 20% of the human race does not have access to clean water and 31% of the world’s population has no electricity.
3. Combining the gross domestic products of the 48 poorest nations (representing 25% of global population) yields a figure that is less than the wealth of the three richest people in the world.
4. “Developed nations” account for 80% of the world’s consumption and 20% of the world’s population.
5. The wealth gap between the richest and poorest countries went from 3 to 1 in 1820 to 72 to 1 in 1992.
6. Corporations account for over half of the 100 wealthiest entities in the world.
7. And most tragically:
“According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year.”
(Thanks to Global Issues.org for the above information)
Earth’s ruling oligarchs and plutocrats have created and perpetuated a socioeconomic dynamic in which the destitute have little or no access to education, basic healthcare, decent employment, or even basic necessities. From the United States to sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, those isolated in despairing communities with crumbling or non-existent infrastructures find themselves mired in impoverished breeding grounds for crime, high birth rates, substance abuse, and AIDS.
Perhaps an apt message for those impoverished children arriving in this world with three strikes against them would be:
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate”, which is most commonly translated as “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
How humane and politically correct those monopolizing Earth’s bounty have become. Monarchy has essentially been relegated to the dustbin of history. Empire building through brute force is becoming an increasingly rare event. Certainly the ruling elite maintain potent militaries to exercise their right to “defend themselves” (as they are doing in Iraq and Lebanon). But more often then not, the masters of the human race have learned to wield their economic power like a heavy cudgel, capable of battering their foes into submission with a few swift strokes.
New age dawning?
As humanity basks in the nurturing rays of a long-awaited sunrise marking the dawn of a glorious new paradigm, a determined privileged class is determined to make utopia a reality for themselves. Ushering in a veritable paradise of free trade, “robust economies”, “ownership societies”, “freedom and liberty”, and unprecedented profits generated by massive companies unfettered by frivolous government regulation, predatory human beings now issue their edicts from corporate skyscrapers rather than moated castles.
Wage slaves and sweat shop laborers have supplanted serfs and chattel slaves. Five major corporations comprise 90% of the mass media in the United States. What are their specialties? Shaping public opinion to maintain the illusion that one of the world’s most rapacious and bellicose nations is a “benevolent superpower” and enticing those who fall prey to their charms to experience a virtually insatiable desire to acquire more material possessions. A brain-washed complacent citizenry perpetually ready to go on a buying binge is a wet dream for the ruling elite.
For many, the survival of their families depends upon the meager pay they receive from corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart. More fortunate wage slaves earn enough to cover the cost of necessities and to attain the goods the corporate media push like Ecstasy. Shopping….what a rush!
Between the US Americans who have high discretionary income and the easy credit issued to those who don’t, demand for consumer goods is nearly infinite. With grossly unfair laws (protecting consumers, the environment, and workers) squeezing their profits, those ingenious devils amongst the ruling elite concluded they would locate in "developing" countries where they could truly rape, pillage and plunder. Hence the worsening plight of those beholden to their corporate masters both in the United States and abroad.
Where is the wealth?
And just how heavily are the world’s assets concentrated into the hands of the elite? While the United States is by no means home to the entire world’s de facto aristocracy, it is the “leader of the obscenely rich world” and by default is the “leader of the (ostensibly) free world”.
For example, Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz wrote in 2001:
“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top 1 percent of households have 44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”
And thanks to the Bush administration, that 10% is maintaining a firm grasp on what they own.
Pernicious and Enduring Lies
The predator class pacifies its subservient underclass with the myth that in the United States and the satellite “free market economies” it has established (at gun-point or through the subversive activities of the CIA), everyone can become a successful entrepreneur by starting their own business. Yet like the lie that all impoverished individuals except widows, orphans, and the infirm are responsible for their own circumstances, this malicious fairy tale ignores several realities. Like the fiction about the impoverished, it assumes that all people are on a level playing field. However, that notion is far removed from reality. Some people have a higher quality education than others. Individuals receiving a high degree of support from friends and family are much more likely to succeed than those who have little or no support. While some starting a business have financial resources behind them, others have virtually nothing but their drive and ideas. Market forces, weather patterns, competition, health, and many other variables can serve to make or break a “budding capitalist”. And no two people are alike or face the same conditions.
Approximately 150 million of those young and healthy enough to work in the United States earn a wage or salary. (Versus a relatively paltry figure of 20 million who are self-employed). 85% of small businesses fail within 5 years. Corporate leviathans like Wal-Mart and Microsoft have defied anti-trust laws to crush myriad competitors, including many small entrepreneurs. Horatio Alger success stories are none too plentiful in the “land of opportunity”. And the grim reality is that the Goliath corporate giants usually prevail against the David small businesses.
In 2003, the average worker in the United States was netting $517.00 per week. How much were CEO’s taking home at that time? A mere $155,000. 52 times per year. That is a staggering 301 to 1 differential. In 1982 the ratio of CEO to average worker pay was “a mere” 42 to 1. From 1990 to 2003 US corporate profits rose 128%.
To further appreciate the obscene avarice of the world’s plutocracy, consider that the average garment worker in Bangladesh earned 13 cents per hour in 2004. The “10% of the people who own the United States” and their counter-parts in nations around the globe are doing very well thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears of the remaining 6 billion or so human beings on the planet.
Incorporating their Avarice
Corporations are the Holy Grail for the rich and powerful. They provide moneyed individuals investment vehicles which afford them extremely limited personal liability, financially and criminally. By the late 19th Century in the United States, corporations had acquired many of the legal rights of a human being. Despite their roots in British colonialism and the deep apprehensions of founders like Thomas Jefferson, corporations have come to dominate the United States and much of the world culturally, politically, and economically.
Jefferson’s expression of concern to George Logan in 1816 was well-founded:
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Not only was the aristocracy of moneyed corporations born. Its power has grown to such monstrous proportions that it has virtually crushed the life from a still relatively nascent social experiment based on democratic ideals and Constitutional law.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the pharmaceutical industry alone has spent $675 million lobbying the government to shape public policy over the last seven years. The insurance industry spent even more if one includes campaign donations. Through their corporate proxies, the moneyed elite invest a great deal in the United States’ political system. They expect and receive a great deal in return.
"Defending" the predator class is an expensive proposition
Spending at a clip of $600 billion per year (including Iraqi Occupation costs), the United States accounts for 50% of the world’s military spending. As George Bush (the current public face of the world’s plutocracy) so sagely reminded us, “Free nations are peaceful nations.” To manufacture the many instruments of peace which prove how free we are, the United States relies on 737 defense contractors, sometimes known as the military-industrial complex. Of those 737 contractors, a mere five have received government contracts totaling $284 billion over the last six years. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics do quite well at the public trough. Halliburton has also fared nicely since former CEO Dick Cheney took office and helped lie the United States into the Iraqi Occupation. Facilitating killing is their business, and business is good.
Sedating the masses with consumerism, spin, fear-mongering and historical revisions; lobbying heavily; donating huge sums to political campaigns; and maintaining the military industrial complex are powerful means of securing the seats of power in DC and Tel Aviv. However, the predator class has yet another weapon at its disposal: the revolving door between government and major corporations. Men like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are but two stalwarts of the privileged class who have traversed back and forth from roles of great influence in major corporations to positions of power within the government. But they are not pioneers. Theirs is a path blazed by many before them and almost certain to be followed by many after them.
A glimpse of the ugly reality of pathological avarice in action...
To move beyond an abstract analysis of the machinations of the oppression and exploitation of most of the human race by a select and privileged few, consider one of many specific examples. For years, British and US oil interests have enjoyed the complicity of the criminal ruling elite in Nigeria in plundering an incredibly valuable natural resource. In return a majority of the indigenous people have received land too polluted to farm, brutal attacks by government forces, and extreme poverty.
According to an article written for Amnesty International:
“It's 10 years since the Nigerian Government executed the well-known Ogoni writer and human rights campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa. But little has changed for the people of the Niger Delta, reports Seth Jordan….
…Oil was discovered in the Ogoni region in the late 1950s by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group….by the 1990s an estimated US $30 billion worth of oil had already been extracted, and oil revenues accounted for over 98 per cent of Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings; the 550,000 local farmers and fishermen who inhabited the coastal land had received little except a ravaged environment. Once fertile farmland had been destroyed by uncontrolled pollution, and virtually all fish and wildlife had vanished. Only a handful of local people were employed by the oil companies or benefited economically in any way….
“On 4 February 2005, soldiers from Nigeria's Joint Task Force fired on protesters from the Ugborodo community at the Escravos oil terminal run by Chevron Nigeria. One man was shot and later died from his injuries. Thirty other demonstrators were injured by blows from rifle butts and other weapons. Neither the government nor the oil company provided adequate medical care or helped to transport the injured.”
Nigeria provides a potent example of the blatant abuses of the impoverished masses by the privileged few. But sadly, it is but one of many such cases.
While the rapacious individuals who wield the power in this world have stacked the deck heavily in their favor, there are glimmers of hope. The United States and Israel are both failing in their wars of aggression in the Middle East. A wave of democratic socialism is beginning to sweep South America. A populist leader may still win the presidency in Mexico. Joe Lieberman was ejected. And checks and balances were at least temporarily restored in the United States when a federal judge ordered George Bush to obey the Constitution.
A collective populist movement is slowly evolving. It is only a matter of time before humanity’s oppressed put aside their religious, racial, and nationalist differences to unite against their common enemy. When six billion people act in unison against a few million, there will indeed be a new world order.
Jason Miller describes himself a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically and his essays have appeared widely on the Internet. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
Monday, August 21, 2006
NO A.D.D. HERE
By William Fisher
I can’t tell you how comforting it is to know that at least a few folks manage to keep their focus regardless of what’s going on around them. No Attention Deficit Disorder here!
Take August 16, for example. In Iraq, there were the usual multiple car bombs and IED deaths. In Afghanistan, the resurgent Taliban continued to conduct lethal raids on Afghanis and Coalition troops. In Lebanon, a thousand people died and a million found themselves displaced by Israeli bombs. In Northern Israel, terrified families poked their heads out of bomb shelters, waiting for more sirens and more Hezbullah rockets. In Darfur, the genocide persisted unabated, while diplomats diddled. In Britain, the cops discovered an alleged plot to blow up UK-US flights. Here at home, poor people went on getting poorer, kids got sicker because they had no health care, and Katrina victims were still waiting for FEMA trailers.
But August 16 was the day I realized that, despite all these cataclysmic events, some people were still keeping their eye on the ball. Because August 16 was the day I got an email from none other than Dr. James Dobson.
The chairman of Focus on the Family Action needed my help. He asked me to write to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California “to take a stand against a pair of pro-gay bills that could become law in the Golden State.”
Specifically, he wanted me to “tell” the Governor to veto one bill, and “tell” state Assembly members to vote against another.
Dr. Dobson piqued my curiosity. Grassroots democracy in action!
The good Dr. Dobson explained that the first bill “would forbid recipients of California government funding from portraying homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality in a negative light.”
If passed, the other bill, he told me, “would force all public school teachers to present a one-sided message about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender issues to students as young as five years old.”
To compound this bias, the bill calls for all facets of education to be stripped of any negative messages on homosexuality.
My First Amendment rights under attack?
This bill “seemingly came out of nowhere,” Dr. Dobson informed me, “with little fanfare. Both pieces of legislation are sponsored by openly gay state Sen. Sheila Kuehl,” Democrat of Los Angeles.
"The people of California have slept through this thing — at least some of them have — and they've got to wake up, because our kids, our churches, our schools are all at stake," Dobson said.
Typical of those laid-back Californians!
Then Dr. Dobson brought in a few allies to close the sale. The article on his website reported that Assemblyman Doug La Malfa, a Republican from Redding, California, had “pointed out that even the perception of homosexuality is protected, and Kuehl's bill does not provide for exemptions of any kind — not even a conscience clause.”
The legislation, LaMalfa went on, “would require faith-based organizations, in order to remain eligible for certain funds, to violate their heart-felt beliefs in order to comply with this."
Trying to separate church and state, eh?
And Barbara McPherson, legislative coordinator for the California Family Council in Sacramento, said, “In fact, anyone who does business with the state and adheres to Christian principles when it comes to homosexuality would be at risk if the bill becomes law. “
"Christian businesses who do any type of contract work with the state — let's say a Christian vendor who sells water — could conceivably lose their contract," she explained.
She must mean Holy Water!
Then came Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family Action, who called the measure a "straightjacket."
"I don't know but that a liberal court in California will say, 'Well, if you can call a policeman, you're getting benefits from the state,' so you now have to abide by this horribly strict anti-discrimination law," he said.
Those activist judges again! Upholding anti-discrimination laws!
Then came the coup de grace. The Focus on the family Action article reported that Gary Bauer, the high profile chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based group American Values, said, “homosexual activists have been pushing for decades to normalize homosexuality in the public mind.”
"We've allowed homosexuality out of the closet, and with legislation like this, men and women who believe in Judeo-Christian values are being told to get into the closet and be quiet," Bauer said.
Gary Bauer in the closet? Clearly no laughing matter!
Well, as you can imagine, I mouse-clicked furiously to the “write” page of AOL to compose my letter to the Governator. There was no time to waste!
But then it dawned on me that, since I don’t live anywhere near California, the Governor and the legislature would have little reason to pay attention to a non-voter.
Still, my hat’s off to these folks who refuse to be diverted by the sorry state of the world.
So let’s hear it for James Dobson, Gary Bauer, et al, and their Focus-on-Fear Action!
I can’t tell you how comforting it is to know that at least a few folks manage to keep their focus regardless of what’s going on around them. No Attention Deficit Disorder here!
Take August 16, for example. In Iraq, there were the usual multiple car bombs and IED deaths. In Afghanistan, the resurgent Taliban continued to conduct lethal raids on Afghanis and Coalition troops. In Lebanon, a thousand people died and a million found themselves displaced by Israeli bombs. In Northern Israel, terrified families poked their heads out of bomb shelters, waiting for more sirens and more Hezbullah rockets. In Darfur, the genocide persisted unabated, while diplomats diddled. In Britain, the cops discovered an alleged plot to blow up UK-US flights. Here at home, poor people went on getting poorer, kids got sicker because they had no health care, and Katrina victims were still waiting for FEMA trailers.
But August 16 was the day I realized that, despite all these cataclysmic events, some people were still keeping their eye on the ball. Because August 16 was the day I got an email from none other than Dr. James Dobson.
The chairman of Focus on the Family Action needed my help. He asked me to write to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California “to take a stand against a pair of pro-gay bills that could become law in the Golden State.”
Specifically, he wanted me to “tell” the Governor to veto one bill, and “tell” state Assembly members to vote against another.
Dr. Dobson piqued my curiosity. Grassroots democracy in action!
The good Dr. Dobson explained that the first bill “would forbid recipients of California government funding from portraying homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality in a negative light.”
If passed, the other bill, he told me, “would force all public school teachers to present a one-sided message about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender issues to students as young as five years old.”
To compound this bias, the bill calls for all facets of education to be stripped of any negative messages on homosexuality.
My First Amendment rights under attack?
This bill “seemingly came out of nowhere,” Dr. Dobson informed me, “with little fanfare. Both pieces of legislation are sponsored by openly gay state Sen. Sheila Kuehl,” Democrat of Los Angeles.
"The people of California have slept through this thing — at least some of them have — and they've got to wake up, because our kids, our churches, our schools are all at stake," Dobson said.
Typical of those laid-back Californians!
Then Dr. Dobson brought in a few allies to close the sale. The article on his website reported that Assemblyman Doug La Malfa, a Republican from Redding, California, had “pointed out that even the perception of homosexuality is protected, and Kuehl's bill does not provide for exemptions of any kind — not even a conscience clause.”
The legislation, LaMalfa went on, “would require faith-based organizations, in order to remain eligible for certain funds, to violate their heart-felt beliefs in order to comply with this."
Trying to separate church and state, eh?
And Barbara McPherson, legislative coordinator for the California Family Council in Sacramento, said, “In fact, anyone who does business with the state and adheres to Christian principles when it comes to homosexuality would be at risk if the bill becomes law. “
"Christian businesses who do any type of contract work with the state — let's say a Christian vendor who sells water — could conceivably lose their contract," she explained.
She must mean Holy Water!
Then came Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family Action, who called the measure a "straightjacket."
"I don't know but that a liberal court in California will say, 'Well, if you can call a policeman, you're getting benefits from the state,' so you now have to abide by this horribly strict anti-discrimination law," he said.
Those activist judges again! Upholding anti-discrimination laws!
Then came the coup de grace. The Focus on the family Action article reported that Gary Bauer, the high profile chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based group American Values, said, “homosexual activists have been pushing for decades to normalize homosexuality in the public mind.”
"We've allowed homosexuality out of the closet, and with legislation like this, men and women who believe in Judeo-Christian values are being told to get into the closet and be quiet," Bauer said.
Gary Bauer in the closet? Clearly no laughing matter!
Well, as you can imagine, I mouse-clicked furiously to the “write” page of AOL to compose my letter to the Governator. There was no time to waste!
But then it dawned on me that, since I don’t live anywhere near California, the Governor and the legislature would have little reason to pay attention to a non-voter.
Still, my hat’s off to these folks who refuse to be diverted by the sorry state of the world.
So let’s hear it for James Dobson, Gary Bauer, et al, and their Focus-on-Fear Action!
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