By John Brown
John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer, is a senior fellow at Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and compiles the daily "Public Diplomacy Press Review" for the Universtiy of Southern California.
The Bush administration's confused and confusing foreign policy seems hard to decipher—especially regarding headline-grabbing reports on Abu Ghraib prison and the Guantanamo detainee camp.Some op-eds on the right argue that abuses did not take place there and that, if they did, they were minor and undertaken by isolated individuals, a few rotten apples. Left-leaning pundits blame what they consider horrors on Mr. Bush and the Pentagon.
These interpretations, while on the surface dissimilar, share one central false assumption: that the president and his closest aides are embarrassed by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo—so embarrassed that they don't want information about it to become public.
The fact of the matter, however, is that the administration, in its usual unsubtle way of dealing with foreigners, does want the outside world to be aware of what happens if you're "against us": you end up in prison or a detainee camp. Gruesome disclosures about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo serve a purpose: to create the kind of visceral fear abroad about the United States that the administration can exploit in its global "war on terror."
It is far safer to be feared than loved, wrote Machiavelli, a far cry from the New Testament but what the Bible-reading president—a firm advocate of capital punishment—seems to ardently believe.To be sure, at home the administration has done its utmost to disassociate itself from the nastier sides of its overseas detention centers. It has condemned independent accounts on the mistreatment of detainees, claiming, for example, that the Amnesty International report comparing Guantanamo to the Gulag was based on information obtained from—in Bush's words—"people who hate America."
As for Abu Ghraib, the president and his aides have downplayed the extent of abuse that took place there when propagandizing the American public, saying its high officials shouldn't be held responsible for it.
The subliminal message to domestic audiences is endlessly repeated: we, the Bush administration, didn't do anything wrong, because we are Americans, ipso facto good people who can do no wrong. While the president keeps pounding into Americans about how he and we can do no wrong, his message to overseas audiences is precisely the opposite: that the United States is ready to do anything to prevail in a world it sees as infiltrated by America's mortal enemies.
This was the message behind the bloody invasion of Iraq. It's also the signal underlying the threats of military action against Syria, Iran and North Korea. Years after 9/11, the Bush metaphor for his foreign policy—"us" vs. "them"—is still fully operational. America is in an all-out fight to the finish—against whom precisely has never been made clear—in which hazy ends justify brutal means.All along, an essential tool of Mr. Bush's planetary struggle against a phantom enemy has been instilling fear of the United States among foreign populations—particularly in the Middle East.
"Shock and awe," for example, was the kind of crude and inhumane psychological warfare much favored by the current administration. The military action in Fallujah is a more recent example of using fear to terrorize inhabitants. Displaying what it understands by "soft power," the administration supports an Iraqi state channel, Al-Iraqiya, which airs a violent television program, Terrorism in the Grip of Justice, a gory gallery of "insurgents confessing to a variety of alleged crimes and vices, including pornography and booze" (The Guardian, March 28).
This macabre reality show, a post-Saddam Fear Factor produced to terrify viewers, was the brainchild of the commander of Iraq's anti-insurgent Wolf Brigade, Abul Waleed, who on television announced that "We will cut off the arms" of enemies (The Washington Post , May 24). The program has been criticized for violating the Geneva Conventions.
The caveman logic behind this widespread use of fear abroad by the administration is clear: since we, the United States of America, are the world's number one power, the biggest boy on the block, we don't intend to change our policies or our national character for the sake of those who question them. Dialogue or negotiations are out of the question. So, to neutralize those who inevitably and unjustifiably hate us for what we do or who we are, we must scare them to death, part of the process of eventually liquidating them.How accidental is it, therefore, that horrifying pictures of Abu Ghraib were leaked by U.S. military personnel to the press, for "them" (our enemies) throughout the entire world to see? Or that Newsweek , using a Pentagon source, reported that the Koran was flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo? Or that television images of humiliated, roughed-up detainees at "Gitmo," widely displayed throughout the globe thanks to the Pentagon making the facility in part accessible to the world media, remind those who hate us what happens to them if they do?As to whether the Bush administration's fear-as-foreign-policy has led to a better, safer world—instead of inciting more hate and disdain for the United States—the American soldiers killed in Iraq would give us the obvious answer, if only they were, as we all so dearly wish, still among us.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Monday, June 13, 2005
HATE CRIME GROWS
By William Fisher
Representatives from 55 countries wrapped up a two-day conference on bigotry in Cordoba, Spain, after being warned of the “alarming increase in anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hate crimes” and the “disturbing lack of response to hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender, and disability”, and many of the delegates agreed.
The warnings came from a new report – “Everyday Fears: A Survey of Violent Hate Crimes in Europe and North America” – prepared by Human Rights First (HRF) for the “Conference on Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Intolerance” sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The HRF report said, “Since September 11, 2001, an increasingly strident message of xenophobia has permeated both fringe and mainstream political movements. This new climate has made immigrants and those of immigrant origin particular targets. A result has been heightened anxiety and rising violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities and a new climate of exclusion. In this climate, violence toward those who are deemed outsiders because of their sexual orientation, gender, or disability may be less visible, but it is no less threatening”.
The New York-based advocacy group charged that only 19 of the 55 OSCE member states have enacted legislation expressly to punish crimes motivated by racism.
Mike McClintock of HRW, author of the “Everyday Fears” report, said he was encouraged by the delegates’ reaction. “In the hate crimes area, the OECS has been hampered by “a lack of political will and a deficit in resources and expertise.” He added, “HRW and others are helping in the expertise area, and member states are showing positive signs of responding to the need to treat hate crimes as more serious than ordinary crimes because they affect whole communities.”
He said he was hopeful that by later this year, armed with new mandates, OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights would produce reports on anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hate crimes.
While delegates adopted a declaration vowing to take concrete, legislative action to fight all forms of intolerance, many expressed frustration at rising rates of religious hate crimes across Europe.
"We need to do more to convert these sound words and goodwill to fight anti-Semitism and intolerance into action and it's clear that a number of states have just not taken that step," said New York Governor George Pataki, head of the US delegation. The New York Republican is close to the Bush Administration and is often talked of as a candidate for the presidency in 2008.
And Christian Strohal, who heads the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said that in order to take effective action, governments need to gather more information about religious intolerance in their own countries. He criticized countries for failing to act on this point.
Almost half of the OSCE's 55 members missed commitments to provide data to track hate crimes. Just three countries -- the US, Canada, and Britain -- gave thorough, reliable data, according to an OSCE report.
Of particular concern among the delegates was anti-Muslim discrimination. Delegates said that public outrage at attacks by Islamic militants was being directed against the whole Muslim community, and that the fight against terrorism headed by Western governments was adversely affecting Muslims.
The OSCE explored similar problems at a conference in Berlin last year.
Among the HRF report’s other findings:
Just five national governments within the OSCE — Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom — have legislation to punish crimes motivated by sexual orientation and disability bias.
In the United States, the laws of 29 states and the District of Columbia punish hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation or disability bias.
Only Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, and parts of the United States (26 states and the District of Columbia) have laws that punish hate crimes based on gender.
Only France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have effective specialized anti-discrimination bodies. “When governments create these bodies, data collection improves, criminal investigations are assisted, and minority communities gain confidence in public authorities,” the report concludes.
Ireland, Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands are among the countries that have no laws that provide tougher penalties for violent crimes motivated by racism or other bias.
In the United Kingdom, anti-Semitic violent personal assaults doubled in 2004 over the previous year; and in France, violent anti-Semitic offenses rose 63 percent in 2004, from 2003 levels.
In France violent hate crimes against gay men reportedly more than doubled from 41 in 2002 to 86 in 2003. Legislation was enacted to provide enhanced penalties for hate crimes based on anti-gay bias following the attempted murder of a gay man in January 2004. He nearly died when he was set alight with gasoline.
Even those states that produce accurate statistics fall far short of comprehensive coverage. The United States’ Uniform Crime Reporting system has model guidelines, but almost 90 percent of the 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies participating in its last survey either reported that no hate crimes occurred or opted out of reporting altogether.
Citizens and non-citizens alike who are identified as Muslims have been singled out for particularly virulent attacks. Assailants in many towns and cities in Western Europe attack minority schoolchildren with racist slurs, beatings, or a hail of stones. They force those wearing a Jewish yarmulke, a Sikh turban,
or a Muslim headscarf, or those who look different only because of the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes, to run a gauntlet of menace just to get to school.
Among the report’s recommendations to OSCE member states:
Define hate crimes broadly to include those motivated by race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, mental and physical disabilities, or other similar forms of discrimination. Only five national governments within the OSCE --.Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom -- provide for sexual orientation and disability bias to be considered an aggravating circumstance.
Enact legislation requiring national justice authorities to collect, analyze, and make public data from law enforcement agencies concerning bias crimes or hate crimes.
Strengthen enforcement by enacting legislation that punishes hate crimes by establishing that racist or other similar intent is an aggravating factor in criminal prosecutions.
Facilitate collaboration between law enforcement and community-based organizations concerned with issues of discrimination.
Ensure that law enforcement agents, including police, criminal investigators and prosecutors are properly trained to combat hate crimes most effectively.
The sorry performance of most of these 55 countries illustrates not only their own lack of interest in improving the lives of their citizens, but the world’s preoccupation with the threat of terrorism. But this is an unnecessary choice: Home-grown terrorism is every bit as lethal as foreign terrorism. The two should not be treated as mutually exclusive.
Representatives from 55 countries wrapped up a two-day conference on bigotry in Cordoba, Spain, after being warned of the “alarming increase in anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hate crimes” and the “disturbing lack of response to hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender, and disability”, and many of the delegates agreed.
The warnings came from a new report – “Everyday Fears: A Survey of Violent Hate Crimes in Europe and North America” – prepared by Human Rights First (HRF) for the “Conference on Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Intolerance” sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The HRF report said, “Since September 11, 2001, an increasingly strident message of xenophobia has permeated both fringe and mainstream political movements. This new climate has made immigrants and those of immigrant origin particular targets. A result has been heightened anxiety and rising violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities and a new climate of exclusion. In this climate, violence toward those who are deemed outsiders because of their sexual orientation, gender, or disability may be less visible, but it is no less threatening”.
The New York-based advocacy group charged that only 19 of the 55 OSCE member states have enacted legislation expressly to punish crimes motivated by racism.
Mike McClintock of HRW, author of the “Everyday Fears” report, said he was encouraged by the delegates’ reaction. “In the hate crimes area, the OECS has been hampered by “a lack of political will and a deficit in resources and expertise.” He added, “HRW and others are helping in the expertise area, and member states are showing positive signs of responding to the need to treat hate crimes as more serious than ordinary crimes because they affect whole communities.”
He said he was hopeful that by later this year, armed with new mandates, OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights would produce reports on anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hate crimes.
While delegates adopted a declaration vowing to take concrete, legislative action to fight all forms of intolerance, many expressed frustration at rising rates of religious hate crimes across Europe.
"We need to do more to convert these sound words and goodwill to fight anti-Semitism and intolerance into action and it's clear that a number of states have just not taken that step," said New York Governor George Pataki, head of the US delegation. The New York Republican is close to the Bush Administration and is often talked of as a candidate for the presidency in 2008.
And Christian Strohal, who heads the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said that in order to take effective action, governments need to gather more information about religious intolerance in their own countries. He criticized countries for failing to act on this point.
Almost half of the OSCE's 55 members missed commitments to provide data to track hate crimes. Just three countries -- the US, Canada, and Britain -- gave thorough, reliable data, according to an OSCE report.
Of particular concern among the delegates was anti-Muslim discrimination. Delegates said that public outrage at attacks by Islamic militants was being directed against the whole Muslim community, and that the fight against terrorism headed by Western governments was adversely affecting Muslims.
The OSCE explored similar problems at a conference in Berlin last year.
Among the HRF report’s other findings:
Just five national governments within the OSCE — Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom — have legislation to punish crimes motivated by sexual orientation and disability bias.
In the United States, the laws of 29 states and the District of Columbia punish hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation or disability bias.
Only Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, and parts of the United States (26 states and the District of Columbia) have laws that punish hate crimes based on gender.
Only France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have effective specialized anti-discrimination bodies. “When governments create these bodies, data collection improves, criminal investigations are assisted, and minority communities gain confidence in public authorities,” the report concludes.
Ireland, Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands are among the countries that have no laws that provide tougher penalties for violent crimes motivated by racism or other bias.
In the United Kingdom, anti-Semitic violent personal assaults doubled in 2004 over the previous year; and in France, violent anti-Semitic offenses rose 63 percent in 2004, from 2003 levels.
In France violent hate crimes against gay men reportedly more than doubled from 41 in 2002 to 86 in 2003. Legislation was enacted to provide enhanced penalties for hate crimes based on anti-gay bias following the attempted murder of a gay man in January 2004. He nearly died when he was set alight with gasoline.
Even those states that produce accurate statistics fall far short of comprehensive coverage. The United States’ Uniform Crime Reporting system has model guidelines, but almost 90 percent of the 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies participating in its last survey either reported that no hate crimes occurred or opted out of reporting altogether.
Citizens and non-citizens alike who are identified as Muslims have been singled out for particularly virulent attacks. Assailants in many towns and cities in Western Europe attack minority schoolchildren with racist slurs, beatings, or a hail of stones. They force those wearing a Jewish yarmulke, a Sikh turban,
or a Muslim headscarf, or those who look different only because of the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes, to run a gauntlet of menace just to get to school.
Among the report’s recommendations to OSCE member states:
Define hate crimes broadly to include those motivated by race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, mental and physical disabilities, or other similar forms of discrimination. Only five national governments within the OSCE --.Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom -- provide for sexual orientation and disability bias to be considered an aggravating circumstance.
Enact legislation requiring national justice authorities to collect, analyze, and make public data from law enforcement agencies concerning bias crimes or hate crimes.
Strengthen enforcement by enacting legislation that punishes hate crimes by establishing that racist or other similar intent is an aggravating factor in criminal prosecutions.
Facilitate collaboration between law enforcement and community-based organizations concerned with issues of discrimination.
Ensure that law enforcement agents, including police, criminal investigators and prosecutors are properly trained to combat hate crimes most effectively.
The sorry performance of most of these 55 countries illustrates not only their own lack of interest in improving the lives of their citizens, but the world’s preoccupation with the threat of terrorism. But this is an unnecessary choice: Home-grown terrorism is every bit as lethal as foreign terrorism. The two should not be treated as mutually exclusive.
Be Very Afraid
By Vicki Gray
Be afraid, be very afraid. Freedom of the press and, with it, your right to know is under frontal assault.
I know whereof I speak. I worked for three years in communist Poland with the United States Information Agency and some of my best friends at the time were Polish communist journalists who, despite that second adjective, sought to report truthfully, helpfully to their fellow Poles on what was happening in their country and the world.
Those journalists, struggling to be honest, shared with me their thoughts on dealing with censorship. It was a time – in the mid-1970s – when rules were being “loosened.” Prior to that time, they wrote the truth as they saw it and let the censors do their dirty work. Pieces of the truth would leak out, and they were not responsible. Afterward, however, prior censorship was removed. They were “free” to print what they wanted within the loose guidelines of what was and was not acceptable. If, however, their stories discomfited the government or party, they could be fired or jailed.
Those communist journalists, testing the limits of the system, confided to me that they preferred the old way of doing things. They could test those limits boldly with little fear of retribution. Under the new rules, however, they had to exercise judgment and be prepared to accept the consequences of any misjudgment. They became more timid, more gun shy, pulling their punches in advance.
American journalists, I fear, are now in that same uncomfortable situation and headed rapidly in the opposite direction, not toward greater freedom, but toward a priori enforced censorship. American media, as Bill Moyers said in a courageous speech May 15, is now being cowed into what he called “preventative capitulation.”
What began a couple of years ago as a drip by drip draining of the life blood of our freedom of the press has been transformed almost overnight into a life-threatening hemorrhage.
The American media, especially the broadcast media, are being transformed – before our very eyes – into a sycophantic propaganda arm of our ruling government and party.
Item: The literal drumbeat of cheerleading by the media for the Iraq war, coverage marked by the “political analysis” of colonels, breathless reports from “embedded” “journalists,” flapping American flags in the corners of your TV screens, and freedom of information requests needed to see the American flags on the coffins of our heroes.
Item: The manipulated chicanery last year of Swift Boat Vets, “Rathergate,” and the pre-election stand-down before the gates of Fallujah, giving the insurgents there months to prepare for the assault that began two days after the election.
Item: Planted stories by Armstrong Williams and planted questions by Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert), whose White House pass has gotten a press pass.
Item: Taxpayer funded “infomercials” touting Administration programs circulated as “news” clips to small town TV stations.
Item: The Administration outing of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA wife of an Administration critic, the recipient of the leak, Administration-insider Robert Novak, going untouched, while reporters who didn’t report the story are being threatened with jail time.
Item: Staged “town hall” meetings covered as “news” by Fox and CNN.
Item: The Pentagon Channel, a military propaganda outlet, being piped into American homes by satellite dish providers.
Item: Kenneth Tomlinson, a veteran of Charles Z. Wick’s Voice of America, now dispatched by Karl Rove to whip PBS and, now, NPR, into “preventative capitulation.”
It is against this background that the White House brow-beating of Newsweek over its story about the alleged desecration of the Qu’ran in Guantanamo Bay engenders such fear. Never mind that the story is probably true, having been reported months earlier by released detainees. Never mind that Newsweek had floated the story by the Pentagon without eliciting a denial. Never mind that the Department of State had promised to investigate the allegations. Never mind the still oozing scab of Abu Ghraib.
Violent protests erupted across Afghanistan and the Muslim world – precisely because the story, which is so in line with our already demonstrated behavior, is so believable. But, according to White House spokesman Scott McCllelan, the image of the United States, had been “tarnished” – not by substance of the allegations, but the fact that they were reported. He demanded a retraction by Newsweek. There was Rumsfeld of Abu Ghraib lecturing the American media about their “responsibility” to be “careful” and “cautious.” Never mind addressing the content of the story, attack the messenger! Beat the reporter, the respected Michael Isikoff, and his editors into submission. And so they have, shamelessly.
And, at the end of the day, Newsweek could not take the pressure. Watching Isikoff’s editor, Newsweek Washington bureau chief David Klaidman, playing back Rumsfeld’s words on Charlie Rose, my thoughts drifted back to communist Poland. “You can always be more cautious,” he said, “We will redouble our efforts to be careful.” The way in which he swallowed the lump in his throat, like a chastised child, was as instructive as his words. The chill made its way up my spine. Suddenly I was very afraid.
Be afraid, be very afraid. Freedom of the press and, with it, your right to know is under frontal assault.
I know whereof I speak. I worked for three years in communist Poland with the United States Information Agency and some of my best friends at the time were Polish communist journalists who, despite that second adjective, sought to report truthfully, helpfully to their fellow Poles on what was happening in their country and the world.
Those journalists, struggling to be honest, shared with me their thoughts on dealing with censorship. It was a time – in the mid-1970s – when rules were being “loosened.” Prior to that time, they wrote the truth as they saw it and let the censors do their dirty work. Pieces of the truth would leak out, and they were not responsible. Afterward, however, prior censorship was removed. They were “free” to print what they wanted within the loose guidelines of what was and was not acceptable. If, however, their stories discomfited the government or party, they could be fired or jailed.
Those communist journalists, testing the limits of the system, confided to me that they preferred the old way of doing things. They could test those limits boldly with little fear of retribution. Under the new rules, however, they had to exercise judgment and be prepared to accept the consequences of any misjudgment. They became more timid, more gun shy, pulling their punches in advance.
American journalists, I fear, are now in that same uncomfortable situation and headed rapidly in the opposite direction, not toward greater freedom, but toward a priori enforced censorship. American media, as Bill Moyers said in a courageous speech May 15, is now being cowed into what he called “preventative capitulation.”
What began a couple of years ago as a drip by drip draining of the life blood of our freedom of the press has been transformed almost overnight into a life-threatening hemorrhage.
The American media, especially the broadcast media, are being transformed – before our very eyes – into a sycophantic propaganda arm of our ruling government and party.
Item: The literal drumbeat of cheerleading by the media for the Iraq war, coverage marked by the “political analysis” of colonels, breathless reports from “embedded” “journalists,” flapping American flags in the corners of your TV screens, and freedom of information requests needed to see the American flags on the coffins of our heroes.
Item: The manipulated chicanery last year of Swift Boat Vets, “Rathergate,” and the pre-election stand-down before the gates of Fallujah, giving the insurgents there months to prepare for the assault that began two days after the election.
Item: Planted stories by Armstrong Williams and planted questions by Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert), whose White House pass has gotten a press pass.
Item: Taxpayer funded “infomercials” touting Administration programs circulated as “news” clips to small town TV stations.
Item: The Administration outing of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA wife of an Administration critic, the recipient of the leak, Administration-insider Robert Novak, going untouched, while reporters who didn’t report the story are being threatened with jail time.
Item: Staged “town hall” meetings covered as “news” by Fox and CNN.
Item: The Pentagon Channel, a military propaganda outlet, being piped into American homes by satellite dish providers.
Item: Kenneth Tomlinson, a veteran of Charles Z. Wick’s Voice of America, now dispatched by Karl Rove to whip PBS and, now, NPR, into “preventative capitulation.”
It is against this background that the White House brow-beating of Newsweek over its story about the alleged desecration of the Qu’ran in Guantanamo Bay engenders such fear. Never mind that the story is probably true, having been reported months earlier by released detainees. Never mind that Newsweek had floated the story by the Pentagon without eliciting a denial. Never mind that the Department of State had promised to investigate the allegations. Never mind the still oozing scab of Abu Ghraib.
Violent protests erupted across Afghanistan and the Muslim world – precisely because the story, which is so in line with our already demonstrated behavior, is so believable. But, according to White House spokesman Scott McCllelan, the image of the United States, had been “tarnished” – not by substance of the allegations, but the fact that they were reported. He demanded a retraction by Newsweek. There was Rumsfeld of Abu Ghraib lecturing the American media about their “responsibility” to be “careful” and “cautious.” Never mind addressing the content of the story, attack the messenger! Beat the reporter, the respected Michael Isikoff, and his editors into submission. And so they have, shamelessly.
And, at the end of the day, Newsweek could not take the pressure. Watching Isikoff’s editor, Newsweek Washington bureau chief David Klaidman, playing back Rumsfeld’s words on Charlie Rose, my thoughts drifted back to communist Poland. “You can always be more cautious,” he said, “We will redouble our efforts to be careful.” The way in which he swallowed the lump in his throat, like a chastised child, was as instructive as his words. The chill made its way up my spine. Suddenly I was very afraid.
THE DARKNESS AT ABU GHRAIB
By Vicki Gray
And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
John 3:19-21
I have always been drawn to John’s vision of God as warming, illuminating, loving, life-giving light. It is a theme that runs through Scripture…from the very beginning.
But each time I sought the warmth of that light last week, I found myself sucked into the depressing darkness of evil - the appalling crimes at Abu Ghraib. That depression deepened, as those responsible sought to hide in the darkness “lest [their] deeds should be exposed.”
In the sickeningly pale light of those self-damning photographs from an American torture chamber, I found echoes of other crimes by other people that have rattled around my mind and haunted my conscience for far too long.
In the boarded over windows of the Abu Ghraib cells, I recalled Cell Block 11 at Auschwitz, the basement of which was described as follows by SS Unterscharführer Pery Broad in a Polish book, Auzchwitz In the Eyes of the SS: …one could see in the dim light…that the windows were nearly wholly bricked up, with the exception of a narrow strip not wider than a hand, to get daylight in….Even the cellar windows were heavily barred. Here and there strange looking tin cases were affixed at the level of the cellar windows, and it was hard to guess what purpose they served.
Taking visiting Americans on tours of Auschwitz as American Consul in Krakow 1973-75, I learned that those tin cases were used to pump carbon monoxide from vehicle exhausts into the hermetically-sealed cells where Soviet POWs were killed in early extermination trials.
Later, as consul in Munich 1982-85, I often visited Dachau and came across a book by Wendy von Staden, the wife of the German Ambassador in Washington - a courageous account of growing up near a small concentration camp where prisoners from Dachau were sent to die of starvation and disease. In that book, Darkness Over the Valley, she described in personal terms what Hannah Arendt described as the “banality of evil.” Toward the end, as French troops approached, she and her mother came face-to-face with a work detachment rioting over a kettle of potatoes.
“What kind of people are these anyway?” mother asked [an SS guard], horror-struck. “They’re no longer human beings”….”They are Jews,” replied the guard, “sub-humans. You can see that for yourself.” I was standing next to mother, when suddenly we heard a man’s voice behind us. The voice itself was low and soft, speaking in good clear German, but there was an undertone of almost menacing fury. “It’s you who’ve made us into animals, and you’ll pay for what you’ve done to us.
Later at home Wendy’s mother confronted her father, who had been watching from a window: “Keep out of this,” my father said almost threateningly. “It has nothing to do with us. We can’t do a thing about it.” And then he grabbed his walking stick and went outside. Mother continued to pace, talking as if to herself, “These people are simply starving. That’s it. They’re half-crazed with hunger….That man was right, we’ve made them into beasts, into subhumans. We.”
I remember yet another instance in 1965 of evil in a darkened place – a place called Long Phu. I was a young officer, the junior of two advisors to a Vietnamese unit. The senior advisor, Dale, and I shared a thatched “hootch,” the opposite side of which comprised the “office” of our counterpart, Lieutenant Qui. The wall between was open at the top. One night, as we were dozing off, a dim bulb on the other side clicked on amidst a commotion of shouts and pleas, as a VC prisoner was hauled into the “office.” There were sounds of pistol whippings, the click of an unloaded pistol, and screams of torment. Pushing back the mosquito-netting, I hopped out of bed, and was about to dart around to the other side of the hootch, when Dale barked at me “Go back to sleep. It’s none of our business. That’s the way they do things.” I fell back on the cot in tears and sweat, listening to the screams, watching the shadows on a dimly lit thatched roof…unable to form a prayer.
It was against this flood of awful memories that I tried last week to process the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the murder of a young American, Nicholas Berg. I’m still trying…and still crying…trying to form a prayer for forgiveness. For it is we who have created – in a gulag stretching from Bagram to Guantanamo - new legions of “sub-humans” who will seek to “make us pay.” But we have already paid. For, in staring at those awful pictures, we are staring at our self-made, self-willed hell.
But, are we, like Wendy’s Germans, condemned to live in an unending hell of collective guilt? If, like Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, and O’Reilly, you believe that we have nothing to apologize for or confess to, perhaps. If, like President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, you believe that the ultimate epithet to be tossed at the crimes of Abu Ghraib is “un-American,” perhaps. A people that so believes in its exceptionalism that “God” becomes “America” and “sin” “un-American” deserves a divine slapping around. It is truly surprising that a president who views the world through a neo-Manichean prism of black and white, good and evil, light and darkness, cannot recognize a sin when he sees one.
On the whole, I’m inclined to believe that sin is universal and that we, too, are capable of sinning in the same way and to the same extent as Germans sixty years ago. In this regard, I have learned much from Zygmunt Baumann, a Jewish Polish sociologist who warns, in his Modernity and the Holocaust, against: …focusing on the Germaness of the crime…exonerating everyone else, and particularly everything else. The implication that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were a wound or malady of our civilization – rather than its horrifying, yet legitimate product – results not only in the moral comfort of self-exculpation, but also in the dire threat of moral and political disarmament. It all happened ‘out there’ – in another time, another country. The more ‘they’ are to blame, the more the rest of ‘us’ are safe, and the less we have to do to defend our safety. Once the allocation of guilt is implied to be equivalent to the location of the causes, the innocence and sanity of the way of life we are so proud of need not be cast in doubt.
Well, I’m here to cast doubt on the innocence and sanity of our current American way of life. And, like Hannah Arendt, I agree that it is the individual’s obligation to resist socialization in the face of authority – governmental and/or societal – in which the “social foundations of morality have been cast aside.” I believe, moreover, with Baumann’s hopeful conclusion that: …putting self-preservation above moral duty is in no way pre-determined, inevitable, and inescapable. One can be pressed to do [evil], but one cannot be forced to do it, and thus one cannot really shift the responsibility for doing it on those who exerted the pressure. It does not matter how many people chose moral duty over the rationality of self-preservation – what does matter is that some did. Evil is not all-powerful. It can be resisted. The testimony of the few who did resist shatters the logic of self-preservation. It shows it for what it is in the end – a choice. One wonders how many people must defy that logic for evil to be incapacitated. Is there a magic threshold of defiance beyond which the technology of evil grinds to a halt?
I find hope also in the words of Tahar Ben Jalloun, a Moroccan, who endured horrors similar to those at Abu Ghraib in the darkened underground prisons of King Hassan II. Temporarily blinded, he described his real experience in a searing “novel,” This Blinding Absence of Light. In his “fiction,” he described a light that John would understand:
A sliver of sky must have hovered right above the vent, the indirect opening that let the air in but no light. I sensed the presence of this sky, and filled it with words and images. I shifted the stars around, meddling with them to make room for a little of that light imprisoned in my breast. I felt the radiance. How can one feel light? When an inner brightness caressed my skin and warmed it, I knew that it was visiting me.
The Holy Spirit in a Muslim’s breast…and mine. It warms me too…and gives me hope this spring morning.
And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
John 3:19-21
I have always been drawn to John’s vision of God as warming, illuminating, loving, life-giving light. It is a theme that runs through Scripture…from the very beginning.
But each time I sought the warmth of that light last week, I found myself sucked into the depressing darkness of evil - the appalling crimes at Abu Ghraib. That depression deepened, as those responsible sought to hide in the darkness “lest [their] deeds should be exposed.”
In the sickeningly pale light of those self-damning photographs from an American torture chamber, I found echoes of other crimes by other people that have rattled around my mind and haunted my conscience for far too long.
In the boarded over windows of the Abu Ghraib cells, I recalled Cell Block 11 at Auschwitz, the basement of which was described as follows by SS Unterscharführer Pery Broad in a Polish book, Auzchwitz In the Eyes of the SS: …one could see in the dim light…that the windows were nearly wholly bricked up, with the exception of a narrow strip not wider than a hand, to get daylight in….Even the cellar windows were heavily barred. Here and there strange looking tin cases were affixed at the level of the cellar windows, and it was hard to guess what purpose they served.
Taking visiting Americans on tours of Auschwitz as American Consul in Krakow 1973-75, I learned that those tin cases were used to pump carbon monoxide from vehicle exhausts into the hermetically-sealed cells where Soviet POWs were killed in early extermination trials.
Later, as consul in Munich 1982-85, I often visited Dachau and came across a book by Wendy von Staden, the wife of the German Ambassador in Washington - a courageous account of growing up near a small concentration camp where prisoners from Dachau were sent to die of starvation and disease. In that book, Darkness Over the Valley, she described in personal terms what Hannah Arendt described as the “banality of evil.” Toward the end, as French troops approached, she and her mother came face-to-face with a work detachment rioting over a kettle of potatoes.
“What kind of people are these anyway?” mother asked [an SS guard], horror-struck. “They’re no longer human beings”….”They are Jews,” replied the guard, “sub-humans. You can see that for yourself.” I was standing next to mother, when suddenly we heard a man’s voice behind us. The voice itself was low and soft, speaking in good clear German, but there was an undertone of almost menacing fury. “It’s you who’ve made us into animals, and you’ll pay for what you’ve done to us.
Later at home Wendy’s mother confronted her father, who had been watching from a window: “Keep out of this,” my father said almost threateningly. “It has nothing to do with us. We can’t do a thing about it.” And then he grabbed his walking stick and went outside. Mother continued to pace, talking as if to herself, “These people are simply starving. That’s it. They’re half-crazed with hunger….That man was right, we’ve made them into beasts, into subhumans. We.”
I remember yet another instance in 1965 of evil in a darkened place – a place called Long Phu. I was a young officer, the junior of two advisors to a Vietnamese unit. The senior advisor, Dale, and I shared a thatched “hootch,” the opposite side of which comprised the “office” of our counterpart, Lieutenant Qui. The wall between was open at the top. One night, as we were dozing off, a dim bulb on the other side clicked on amidst a commotion of shouts and pleas, as a VC prisoner was hauled into the “office.” There were sounds of pistol whippings, the click of an unloaded pistol, and screams of torment. Pushing back the mosquito-netting, I hopped out of bed, and was about to dart around to the other side of the hootch, when Dale barked at me “Go back to sleep. It’s none of our business. That’s the way they do things.” I fell back on the cot in tears and sweat, listening to the screams, watching the shadows on a dimly lit thatched roof…unable to form a prayer.
It was against this flood of awful memories that I tried last week to process the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the murder of a young American, Nicholas Berg. I’m still trying…and still crying…trying to form a prayer for forgiveness. For it is we who have created – in a gulag stretching from Bagram to Guantanamo - new legions of “sub-humans” who will seek to “make us pay.” But we have already paid. For, in staring at those awful pictures, we are staring at our self-made, self-willed hell.
But, are we, like Wendy’s Germans, condemned to live in an unending hell of collective guilt? If, like Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, and O’Reilly, you believe that we have nothing to apologize for or confess to, perhaps. If, like President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, you believe that the ultimate epithet to be tossed at the crimes of Abu Ghraib is “un-American,” perhaps. A people that so believes in its exceptionalism that “God” becomes “America” and “sin” “un-American” deserves a divine slapping around. It is truly surprising that a president who views the world through a neo-Manichean prism of black and white, good and evil, light and darkness, cannot recognize a sin when he sees one.
On the whole, I’m inclined to believe that sin is universal and that we, too, are capable of sinning in the same way and to the same extent as Germans sixty years ago. In this regard, I have learned much from Zygmunt Baumann, a Jewish Polish sociologist who warns, in his Modernity and the Holocaust, against: …focusing on the Germaness of the crime…exonerating everyone else, and particularly everything else. The implication that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were a wound or malady of our civilization – rather than its horrifying, yet legitimate product – results not only in the moral comfort of self-exculpation, but also in the dire threat of moral and political disarmament. It all happened ‘out there’ – in another time, another country. The more ‘they’ are to blame, the more the rest of ‘us’ are safe, and the less we have to do to defend our safety. Once the allocation of guilt is implied to be equivalent to the location of the causes, the innocence and sanity of the way of life we are so proud of need not be cast in doubt.
Well, I’m here to cast doubt on the innocence and sanity of our current American way of life. And, like Hannah Arendt, I agree that it is the individual’s obligation to resist socialization in the face of authority – governmental and/or societal – in which the “social foundations of morality have been cast aside.” I believe, moreover, with Baumann’s hopeful conclusion that: …putting self-preservation above moral duty is in no way pre-determined, inevitable, and inescapable. One can be pressed to do [evil], but one cannot be forced to do it, and thus one cannot really shift the responsibility for doing it on those who exerted the pressure. It does not matter how many people chose moral duty over the rationality of self-preservation – what does matter is that some did. Evil is not all-powerful. It can be resisted. The testimony of the few who did resist shatters the logic of self-preservation. It shows it for what it is in the end – a choice. One wonders how many people must defy that logic for evil to be incapacitated. Is there a magic threshold of defiance beyond which the technology of evil grinds to a halt?
I find hope also in the words of Tahar Ben Jalloun, a Moroccan, who endured horrors similar to those at Abu Ghraib in the darkened underground prisons of King Hassan II. Temporarily blinded, he described his real experience in a searing “novel,” This Blinding Absence of Light. In his “fiction,” he described a light that John would understand:
A sliver of sky must have hovered right above the vent, the indirect opening that let the air in but no light. I sensed the presence of this sky, and filled it with words and images. I shifted the stars around, meddling with them to make room for a little of that light imprisoned in my breast. I felt the radiance. How can one feel light? When an inner brightness caressed my skin and warmed it, I knew that it was visiting me.
The Holy Spirit in a Muslim’s breast…and mine. It warms me too…and gives me hope this spring morning.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Sure there’s Censorship of the News in America
By Grace Reid
This morning Sheila, a Corkwoman, asked me why my eyes looked so tired and my face so strained. I explained that I had been staying up all night writing articles about a story that broke in the UK on the 20th of March, but still hadn’t been reported in the US news by the first week in June. “Sure, there’s censorship of the news in America, isn’t there?” she said. “I mean, everybody knows that there are stories about the war in Iraq that you can’t print in America.” This came as the biggest news of the day to me, that censorship of the news is a state policy. “Can’t you get in trouble with the US government for writing stories like this? Will the FBI be paying us a call?” I told her that I was not too concerned, as the stories came from the BBC and that is about as establishment as you get. All I have been doing, I told her, is finding the news from here and delivering it over there.
Having been out of the country for more than a decade, how could I have known that censorship had become a state policy? How could I have known that the government had shackled and gagged the fourth estate? But I learned fast during the Newsweek Debacle. How did that one go again? Newsweek reported the truth, as had the International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty before them. A massive amount of FBI emails released through the FOIA by the ACLU last December told the same story. Yet the US government stepped in and demanded that Newsweek retract, and blamed the press for the ensuing violence for having reported the truth. The Qu’ran was desecrated, but one was not to report it.
The hardest thing to do is to find the truth. And it’s the only worthwhile thing to pursue. During the 2003 State of the Union Address I heard the President of the United States boast that he had summarily executed 3,000 Afghani prisoners. “And let’s put it this way, they will no longer be a problem to us or to our allies.” Then later we learned of the “Convoy of Death.” And how hundreds of these prisoners died in transit in airless containers, and that these containers were shot full of holes, “for the ventilation.” And some of the personnel doing the shooting were American soldiers. And some of the witnesses to these atrocities of war were American soldiers.
Among all the other lies I have heard, that one about allies sticks in my craw as well. I suspect the United States has no allies. A few bought friends. A very few. Looks right now like only one. And all the documents that have been leaked, every single one of them points like a neon arrow back to Washington, back to Crawford. Do you make your friends break the law with you?
There has been a media blackout of the story of the illegal war in Iraq. The truth is coming out against the strongest, and at times, the most peculiar resistance. Now we’ve got minutes, memos transcripts, briefings, and notes. We have briefcases full of doctored “Intelligence that was fixed around the policy” of an illegal war of aggression. A large portion of the informed public has adopted the attitude that this is “old news.” This is, they seem to imply business as usual. Lying to Congress is business as usual. Manipulating the press, manipulating the circumstances to create the conditions for war that was, apparently predetermined in 2001. Manipulating the weapons inspectors, manipulating the Security Council, manipulating the intelligence, manipulating the people. With a rhetoric of God, faith, freedom and democracy for all.
OK, all you “old news” people, would you tell me who is paying for it? Who foot the bill for all the paychecks of all the phony intel, of all the illegal bombings, of all the depleted uranium weapons? Who paid the salaries of the torturers, and the ones who devised the torture policy? Who paid for the illegal CIA ghost flights to secret torture prisons? Who paid the bill to doctor vote tallying software? Who paid for the illegal war that has cost as much as 4 billion US dollars a month? Who is paying the salaries of these thugs? Who is paying for Condoleezza Rice’s SS man’s boots?
And now we’re told to “stay the course”? Now, we accept that the war is illegal, was illegal, but we have to “stay the course?” in a war that is unwinnable. Another war that is unwinnable. Who paid for all this? How can you explain that there are more than 1,600 Americans killed in action of a war that is criminal, except that the one who created and promoted it to the exclusion of all consideration for International Law, that he himself is a criminal. What is the rule in the Military Code of Justice that says you have to obey your commanding officer if that officer is a criminal, and the order violates all known military, international and humanitarian law?
The second most explosive piece of information to come out of the Downing Street Minutes case came from an “unnamed former senior US official” who is quoted as saying the account of the senior British Intelligence officer’s visit to Washington is “an absolutely accurate description of what transpired.” Now there is someone in Washington who is telling the truth. Maybe this will be the beginning of a trend. How long can you carry poisonous lies? It’s enough to make one seriously ill. Or angry enough to tell the truth. To report the truth. That would be a good trend. Then maybe my friend Sheila in Cork will not continue to hold the opinion that censorship is the way the press is operated in America
This morning Sheila, a Corkwoman, asked me why my eyes looked so tired and my face so strained. I explained that I had been staying up all night writing articles about a story that broke in the UK on the 20th of March, but still hadn’t been reported in the US news by the first week in June. “Sure, there’s censorship of the news in America, isn’t there?” she said. “I mean, everybody knows that there are stories about the war in Iraq that you can’t print in America.” This came as the biggest news of the day to me, that censorship of the news is a state policy. “Can’t you get in trouble with the US government for writing stories like this? Will the FBI be paying us a call?” I told her that I was not too concerned, as the stories came from the BBC and that is about as establishment as you get. All I have been doing, I told her, is finding the news from here and delivering it over there.
Having been out of the country for more than a decade, how could I have known that censorship had become a state policy? How could I have known that the government had shackled and gagged the fourth estate? But I learned fast during the Newsweek Debacle. How did that one go again? Newsweek reported the truth, as had the International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty before them. A massive amount of FBI emails released through the FOIA by the ACLU last December told the same story. Yet the US government stepped in and demanded that Newsweek retract, and blamed the press for the ensuing violence for having reported the truth. The Qu’ran was desecrated, but one was not to report it.
The hardest thing to do is to find the truth. And it’s the only worthwhile thing to pursue. During the 2003 State of the Union Address I heard the President of the United States boast that he had summarily executed 3,000 Afghani prisoners. “And let’s put it this way, they will no longer be a problem to us or to our allies.” Then later we learned of the “Convoy of Death.” And how hundreds of these prisoners died in transit in airless containers, and that these containers were shot full of holes, “for the ventilation.” And some of the personnel doing the shooting were American soldiers. And some of the witnesses to these atrocities of war were American soldiers.
Among all the other lies I have heard, that one about allies sticks in my craw as well. I suspect the United States has no allies. A few bought friends. A very few. Looks right now like only one. And all the documents that have been leaked, every single one of them points like a neon arrow back to Washington, back to Crawford. Do you make your friends break the law with you?
There has been a media blackout of the story of the illegal war in Iraq. The truth is coming out against the strongest, and at times, the most peculiar resistance. Now we’ve got minutes, memos transcripts, briefings, and notes. We have briefcases full of doctored “Intelligence that was fixed around the policy” of an illegal war of aggression. A large portion of the informed public has adopted the attitude that this is “old news.” This is, they seem to imply business as usual. Lying to Congress is business as usual. Manipulating the press, manipulating the circumstances to create the conditions for war that was, apparently predetermined in 2001. Manipulating the weapons inspectors, manipulating the Security Council, manipulating the intelligence, manipulating the people. With a rhetoric of God, faith, freedom and democracy for all.
OK, all you “old news” people, would you tell me who is paying for it? Who foot the bill for all the paychecks of all the phony intel, of all the illegal bombings, of all the depleted uranium weapons? Who paid the salaries of the torturers, and the ones who devised the torture policy? Who paid for the illegal CIA ghost flights to secret torture prisons? Who paid the bill to doctor vote tallying software? Who paid for the illegal war that has cost as much as 4 billion US dollars a month? Who is paying the salaries of these thugs? Who is paying for Condoleezza Rice’s SS man’s boots?
And now we’re told to “stay the course”? Now, we accept that the war is illegal, was illegal, but we have to “stay the course?” in a war that is unwinnable. Another war that is unwinnable. Who paid for all this? How can you explain that there are more than 1,600 Americans killed in action of a war that is criminal, except that the one who created and promoted it to the exclusion of all consideration for International Law, that he himself is a criminal. What is the rule in the Military Code of Justice that says you have to obey your commanding officer if that officer is a criminal, and the order violates all known military, international and humanitarian law?
The second most explosive piece of information to come out of the Downing Street Minutes case came from an “unnamed former senior US official” who is quoted as saying the account of the senior British Intelligence officer’s visit to Washington is “an absolutely accurate description of what transpired.” Now there is someone in Washington who is telling the truth. Maybe this will be the beginning of a trend. How long can you carry poisonous lies? It’s enough to make one seriously ill. Or angry enough to tell the truth. To report the truth. That would be a good trend. Then maybe my friend Sheila in Cork will not continue to hold the opinion that censorship is the way the press is operated in America
BLOODY SUNDAY AND BEYOND
By William Fisher
The summer of 1965 found the United States in turmoil.
President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who had taken office in 1963 following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was already stepping up troop deployments to Vietnam, and an embryonic anti-war movement was beginning to gain the traction that would ultimately cause Johnson to decline to run for reelection in 1968.
Elsewhere in the nation, however, millions of Americans were not yet focused on Vietnam. Their struggle – begun soon after the Civil War in the 1860s – continued to be to secure equality and justice for African Americans.
The effects of the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision barring school segregation, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing racial discrimination in restaurants, hotels and other public facilities, had yet to be fully felt. And a key factor in the fight for racial equality had yet to be addressed.
Throughout the southern states and in many in the north, African Americans were effectively denied the right to vote. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted almost a century earlier, guaranteed every (male) citizen the right to vote. But the amendment was being routinely circumvented by state-imposed poll taxes, literacy tests, gerrymandering and ‘grandfathering’ – allowing the vote only to persons who had voted earlier, whether or not they were literate, and thus excluding black citizens.
African Americans also risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register or vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered voters, and have virtually no political power, either locally or nationally.
In the sleepy town of Selma, Alabama, the right to vote had led to frequent and often bloody demonstrations. There were angry confrontations between civil rights supporters and the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, usually supported by the police.
Black citizens there were outraged by the killing of a demonstrator by a state trooper in nearby Marion, Alabama, and scheduled a march from Selma to
Montgomery, the state capital, to appeal directly to Governor George C. Wallace to stop police brutality and call attention to their struggle for suffrage.
But when the marchers reached the city line, they found a posse of state troopers waiting for them. As the demonstrators crossed the bridge leading out of Selma, they were ordered to disperse, but the troopers did not wait for their warning to be heeded.
They immediately attacked the crowd of people who had bowed their heads in prayer. Using tear gas and batons, the troopers chased the demonstrators to a black housing project, where they continued to beat the demonstrators as well as residents of the project who had not been at the march.
One of the organizers of the Selma-Montgomery march was John Lewis, who had been a voting rights registration organizer, and one of the young men beaten on the Selma Bridge that Sunday. He currently serves as a U.S. Congressman for the State of Georgia.
The day came to be known as “Bloody Sunday”. Numerous marches were organized in response, and Rev. Martin Luther King led a second march to the Selma Bridge the following Tuesday, during which one protestor was killed.
But it was the death of a white man that gave President Johnson the political juice to call for an end to the violence. On the evening of Bloody Sunday, a group of Selma whites killed a northern white minister who had joined the demonstrations.
In contrast to the killing of a black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, a few weeks earlier, Reverend James Reeb's death led to a national outcry. The combination of public revulsion to the violence and Johnson's political skills stimulated Congress to act.
As a result of Bloody Sunday, Johnson gave a passionate speech to congress demanding suffrage for black citizens. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act “to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” the same year. The act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, 95 years after the 15th Amendment was ratified. It outlawed discriminatory voting practices including poll taxes and literacy tests as prerequisites to voting.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had an almost immediate impact by greatly increasing the number of southern blacks able to register to vote. According to a report of the Bureau of the Census from 1982, in 1960 there were 22,000 African-Americans registered to vote in Mississippi, but in 1966 the number had risen to 175,000. Alabama went from 66,000 African-American registered voters in 1960 to 250,000 in 1966. South Carolina's African-American registered voters went from 58,000 to 191,000 in the same period.
By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one-third by Federal examiners. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the 13 southern states had fewer than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982.
The Voting Rights Act was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the Federal and state governments in the area of
voting since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. So it was not surprising that it was immediately challenged in the courts. Between 1965 and 1969, the Supreme Court issued several key decisions upholding its constitutionality.
But injustices against African Americans have not gone away. The U.S. Senate is currently considering a resolution apologizing for the epidemic of lynching that terrorized black Americans up to the mid-20th century, but Congress has never passed an anti-lynching law, though it is clear it had the necessary votes.
And it has resisted attempts to expand hate crimes statutes. Civil rights commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote recently, “The Congressional inaction on an expanded hate crimes law reinforces the public perception that terrorism comes only in the form of Al-Qaeda attacks, and presumes that sexually and racially motivated violence are isolated acts committed by a handful of quacks and unreconstructed bigots, and that state authorities vigorously report and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. This is a myth.”
.
The summer of 1965 found the United States in turmoil.
President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who had taken office in 1963 following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was already stepping up troop deployments to Vietnam, and an embryonic anti-war movement was beginning to gain the traction that would ultimately cause Johnson to decline to run for reelection in 1968.
Elsewhere in the nation, however, millions of Americans were not yet focused on Vietnam. Their struggle – begun soon after the Civil War in the 1860s – continued to be to secure equality and justice for African Americans.
The effects of the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision barring school segregation, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing racial discrimination in restaurants, hotels and other public facilities, had yet to be fully felt. And a key factor in the fight for racial equality had yet to be addressed.
Throughout the southern states and in many in the north, African Americans were effectively denied the right to vote. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted almost a century earlier, guaranteed every (male) citizen the right to vote. But the amendment was being routinely circumvented by state-imposed poll taxes, literacy tests, gerrymandering and ‘grandfathering’ – allowing the vote only to persons who had voted earlier, whether or not they were literate, and thus excluding black citizens.
African Americans also risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register or vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered voters, and have virtually no political power, either locally or nationally.
In the sleepy town of Selma, Alabama, the right to vote had led to frequent and often bloody demonstrations. There were angry confrontations between civil rights supporters and the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, usually supported by the police.
Black citizens there were outraged by the killing of a demonstrator by a state trooper in nearby Marion, Alabama, and scheduled a march from Selma to
Montgomery, the state capital, to appeal directly to Governor George C. Wallace to stop police brutality and call attention to their struggle for suffrage.
But when the marchers reached the city line, they found a posse of state troopers waiting for them. As the demonstrators crossed the bridge leading out of Selma, they were ordered to disperse, but the troopers did not wait for their warning to be heeded.
They immediately attacked the crowd of people who had bowed their heads in prayer. Using tear gas and batons, the troopers chased the demonstrators to a black housing project, where they continued to beat the demonstrators as well as residents of the project who had not been at the march.
One of the organizers of the Selma-Montgomery march was John Lewis, who had been a voting rights registration organizer, and one of the young men beaten on the Selma Bridge that Sunday. He currently serves as a U.S. Congressman for the State of Georgia.
The day came to be known as “Bloody Sunday”. Numerous marches were organized in response, and Rev. Martin Luther King led a second march to the Selma Bridge the following Tuesday, during which one protestor was killed.
But it was the death of a white man that gave President Johnson the political juice to call for an end to the violence. On the evening of Bloody Sunday, a group of Selma whites killed a northern white minister who had joined the demonstrations.
In contrast to the killing of a black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, a few weeks earlier, Reverend James Reeb's death led to a national outcry. The combination of public revulsion to the violence and Johnson's political skills stimulated Congress to act.
As a result of Bloody Sunday, Johnson gave a passionate speech to congress demanding suffrage for black citizens. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act “to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” the same year. The act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, 95 years after the 15th Amendment was ratified. It outlawed discriminatory voting practices including poll taxes and literacy tests as prerequisites to voting.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had an almost immediate impact by greatly increasing the number of southern blacks able to register to vote. According to a report of the Bureau of the Census from 1982, in 1960 there were 22,000 African-Americans registered to vote in Mississippi, but in 1966 the number had risen to 175,000. Alabama went from 66,000 African-American registered voters in 1960 to 250,000 in 1966. South Carolina's African-American registered voters went from 58,000 to 191,000 in the same period.
By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one-third by Federal examiners. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the 13 southern states had fewer than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982.
The Voting Rights Act was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the Federal and state governments in the area of
voting since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. So it was not surprising that it was immediately challenged in the courts. Between 1965 and 1969, the Supreme Court issued several key decisions upholding its constitutionality.
But injustices against African Americans have not gone away. The U.S. Senate is currently considering a resolution apologizing for the epidemic of lynching that terrorized black Americans up to the mid-20th century, but Congress has never passed an anti-lynching law, though it is clear it had the necessary votes.
And it has resisted attempts to expand hate crimes statutes. Civil rights commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote recently, “The Congressional inaction on an expanded hate crimes law reinforces the public perception that terrorism comes only in the form of Al-Qaeda attacks, and presumes that sexually and racially motivated violence are isolated acts committed by a handful of quacks and unreconstructed bigots, and that state authorities vigorously report and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. This is a myth.”
.
Tyrant Be Thy Name, Senator
By Jason Miller
Thankfully, it appears that Bush’s reign will end in just three years, unless he succeeds in shredding the Constitution and becoming America’s first true dictator. Fortunately for the Oligarchy which rules America behind the veil of our severely weakened republic, they have a leader waiting in the wings with more cunning and ruthlessness than "W". Sam Brownback is yearning for his shot at the Oval Office. Living in Kansas, I know the futility of attempting to reason with Senator Sam Brownback. As his constituent, I have corresponded with him on a wide range of issues. His canned responses reflect his close alignment with the Religious Right and the Neocon plutocrats who have a stranglehold on power in America.
Yes, Brownback has set his sights on the White House. On 4/16/05 he officially kicked off his presidential bid by speaking to 150 members of the New Hampshire Cornerstone Research group. He regaled them with discourse on his beliefs concerning the definition of life, marriage, and the church and state relationship. Cornerstone represents Brownback's "base". To get a sense of the nature of his anti-gay, anti-choice base, consider the position of Karen Testerman, the executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research.
In 2003, Testerman told the Associated Press that “gays and lesbians” were comparable to “shoplifters and drug addicts”. In the same year, she told the Concord Monitor of her support for "abstinence only" education. She elaborated by stating that "holding hands is the first step", and "you're not even supposed to do that if you can avoid it."
Portrait of a radical
As one examines various facets of Sam Brownback, one formulates a profile of an individual who is dangerously radical. As I write this article, he is pandering to the Religious Right, his extremist base. Brownback is threatening to filibuster the Senate bill that would relax restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research. This legislation would enable the US to begin catching up with nations like South Korea. Yes, you read that correctly. America's cutting edge scientific community has fallen behind South Korea in a critical area of medical research.
According to the Kansas City Star, as he discussed the stem cell bill, Brownback alluded to the Democrats’ use of the filibuster on judicial nominations as he said, "I've learned how to delay and stop things." This bill he is so eager to “delay and stop” has already passed the House. It would give researchers access to more than 400,000 frozen embryos that fertility clinics will discard anyway. Federal funding for research on these embryos holds very strong promise for developing therapies and cures for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Rather than enhancing the human capacity to cure serious illness, Brownback would rather see the embryos thrown out like garbage. If Brownback is successful with his filibuster, while he gains political traction with the pro-life crowd, 400,000 embryos will be wasted and real human beings will continue to suffer needlessly.
Despite support of the bill from fellow Republicans Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch, who has long been ardently pro-life, Brownback believes the research is "wrong" and used this twisted analogy in a quote to the Kansas City Star:
Why not use death row inmates in some sort of positive way? They are going to be killed. Why not take their body parts, their heart and lungs and eyes, and yet as I say that, doesn't that sound ghoulish? Human life is sacred."
In a further display of his distorted worldview, Brownback had this to say about American voters aged 18 to 25:
"They were born", he said, "when abortion rates were highest, so many of them feel they're the survivors of a holocaust: one in four of their compatriots are not here.''
The cognitive disconnect in that analogy is astounding. Yet at the same time, one can marvel at the propagandistic genius of mobilizing his minions amongst the “pro-life” faithful by equating the “crime of abortion” with the systematic murder of six million innocents.
Need more evidence of his fanaticism?
You remain skeptical that Brownback is closely aligned with the Religious Right, and is a dangerous extremist? Reflect on Brownback crediting Pat Robertson for his election to the Senate in 1996. Contemplate Robertson's recent endorsement of Brownback as a presidential candidate for 2008 on ABC's This Week. This means that one of Brownback’s most prominent supporters for his nascent presidential bid is a pivotal leader of the Religious Right movement. To affirm his radical mindset, Robertson once said:
“I am bound by the laws of the United States and all 50 states...(but) I am not bound by any case or any court to which I myself am not a party....I don’t think the Congress of the United States is subservient to the courts...They can ignore a Supreme Court ruling if they so choose...”
Still not convinced? Contemplate Brownback's membership in Opus Dei. While they are a Catholic organization, Opus Dei promotes many of the socially conservative values of the Protestant Religious Right. There is also speculation that this highly secretive cult has links to fascist corporations. Opus Dei has a history of supporting fascists. Members of this sect were involved with Franco’s government in Spain. Although Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, was canonized by the Catholic Church, he was a controversial figure. His biographers have characterized him as devious and manipulative. Escriva created Opus Dei on principles of secrecy, power, and an emphasis on finding holiness in one’s work. Opus Dei and Sam Brownback are not the elixirs America’s ruptured ailing needs to nurse it back to health.
Apparently Brownback has an affinity for surreptitious religious organizations. He maintains a residence in Washington DC in a house owned by C Street Center, a sister organization to a loose coalition of Christian government and business leaders known as the Fellowship. The Fellowship is so secretive that many of its members deny its existence. What is known about Brownback's affiliation with this group is that he pays a heavily subsidized rent of $600.00 per month to live in the Fellowship's house, and that he holds weekly religious meetings with the other five Congressmen who share his quarters. Despite its innocuous appearance, there are dark motives beneath the surface of the Fellowship, sometimes known as the Family. Founder Abraham Vereide's held many fascist viewpoints, and infected many of our nation's leaders with his ideologies as the Fellowship grew in popularity over the years.
Here is an excerpt from an Alternet article (http://www.alternet.org/story/16167) about the Family:
In 1935, Abraham Vereide starts it. By the 1940s he has about a third of Congress attending a weekly prayer meeting. In the mid-50s, he gets Eisenhower's support.
[According to a 2002 Los Angeles Times article, during the 1950's Vereide played a major role in the U.S. government's anti-communist activities: "Pentagon officials secretly met at the group's Washington Fellowship House in 1955 to plan a worldwide anti-communism propaganda campaign endorsed by the CIA, documents from the Fellowship archives and the Eisenhower Presidential Library show. Then known as International Christian Leadership, the group financed a film called 'Militant Liberty' that was used by the Pentagon abroad." Showing Faith in Discretion, Lisa Getter, The Los Angeles Times, Sep 27, 2002]
I highly recommend reading the complete article on Alternet, and Jeff Sharlet's Harper's Magazine article at http://www.harpers.org/JesusPlusNothing.html?pg=1. Senator Brownback has aligned himself with a very unsavory organization.
How can we restore something that was never lost?
Perhaps most telling is Senator Brownback's ardent support of the Constitutional Restoration Act of 2004 (which failed) and now its revival in 2005. Were this to become law, the effects on the tattered republic in America would be devastating. This bill represents a culmination of the plan Pat Robertson began outlining on the 700 Club in 1985. Robertson’s vision is for Christian conservatives to secure control of the government. One of his principle strategies to ascend to power is to curtail the powers of the judiciary. In light of the true agenda behind it, a more appropriate name for this legislation would be the Constitutional Reconstruction Act.
At (http://www.prayeralert.org/alertarchives/alert-040204.html) Urgent Prayer Alert high-lights some key components of this frightening piece of legislation:
This CRA (S. 2082 & H.R. 3799) could end 40+ years of religious judicial tyranny (see http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_bills&docid=f:s2082is.txt.pdf).
Empowered by Article 3, section 2 of the Constitution this Act will remove from federal court jurisdiction all matters pertaining to the acknowledgement of God, neutralizing the radical agenda to expunge God from American public life.
CRA’s teeth are a provision for the impeachment of judges who overstep their bounds.
CRA reminds the federal courts their jurisdiction is constitutionally limited as is Congress’ jurisdiction. Neither has authority to govern religious expression. The Founders were careful to leave such matters entirely to the states and to the people.
CRA affirms the right of government officials to "acknowledge God as the source of law, liberty and government." It prohibits federal judges from using foreign laws and judgments as the basis for rulings.
His record speaks for itself
Evaluations of Sam Brownback’s voting record in the Senate provide tangible evidence that he is unfit to succeed Bush as a president who would restore a semblance of social justice and civil liberties to America. NARAL, a pro-choice group, rated him at 0%, which of course translates to 100% pro-life voting. The ACLU gave him an abysmal 20% rating on concerning civil liberties. His 27% rating from the NEA indicates that he usually votes against public education. Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants gave Brownback a 25% rating, meaning he rarely votes for criminal rehabilitation. Brownback is ardently pro-military, as evidenced by his 0% rating by SANE. The AFL-CIO gave him an "F" (0%) for his lack of support for labor unions. ALPHA took exception to his consistent disregard for public health and gave him a 0%. The League of Conservation Voters expressed their disenchantment with Brownback's lack of support for the environment by giving him another "F".
Who gave Brownback their seal of approval? For his faithful devotion to business and “family values” (as defined by the Religious Right) both the US Chamber of Commerce and the Christian Coalition gave him 100% ratings. Brownback embodies the social conservative movement’s cruel Social Darwinism. In his priority system the success of corporations and abstract “family values” supersede the spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being of flesh and blood human beings.
Selective compassion
Despite his professed deep concern for the plight of the genocide victims in Darfur, Sudan, Brownback has virtually ignored people experiencing similar fates in other nations. It is no coincidence that Brownback focuses his concern on the Sudanese genocide. In Darfur, Muslims are killing Christians. Non-Christians who suffer are apparently not worthy of the Senator’s attention. Like Bush, Brownback believes in the false construct of the "good Christians" versus the "evil Muslims". Obviously, his compassion is reserved for "true believers".
Where is Brownback’s holy devotion to acts of compassion when in comes to homosexuals in America? Gays are the one minority in America who receive no federal protection of their civil rights, and he aims to keep things that way. He has vigorously supported a federal ban on gay marriage and has voted against including sexual orientation to the federal definition of hate crimes. While voting against legislation that would help protect gays from battery or murder, Brownback expressed grave concerns (http://www.cogforlife.org/schiavobrownback.htm) about Terry Schiavo and others like her. Brownback’s concern for human life is both inconsistent and selective.
Wolf in sheep’s clothing
Low key and laid back, Sam Brownback likes to portray himself as a down to earth, small town “family values” man who can relate to the "average American". While he does hail from the tiny hamlet of Parker, Kansas, he can hardly relate to the plight of the average American. He is married to Mary Stauffer, an heiress to a fortune built on a Topeka-based media fortune. His membership in Opus Dei, a secretive, elitist organization with fewer than 90,000 members further distances him from relating to the "average American".
Mr. Brownback exhibited anti-Semitic tendencies and a propensity to use dirty politics in his 1996 campaign for the Senate. In What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank wrote:
"Consider the enlightened Sam Brownback. He may be against slavery--and what a bold stand that is 140 years after the Civil War!--but when faced with a tough challenge in 1996 from Democrat Jill Docking of Wichita, his campaign inundated the state with TV commercials that sought to tarnish her by pointing out that she was raised in the now-hated state of Massachusetts and that before she was married her name wasn't Docking at all (the Dockings are now a famous Kansas family) but Sadowsky. Get it? As though to drive this point home, voters across the state received mysterious phone calls in the week before the Election Day reminding them that 'Docking is a Jew.'"
After defeating his opponent by attacking her state of origin and religious affiliation, Brownback has proceeded to implement his perverse, extreme, and hypocritical agenda through the course of his tenure as US Senator. In 2004, to maintain his position in the Senate, he even accepted $17,000.00 from corporations and individuals profiting from the porn industry (per Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington). He took this money despite having called pornography "the crack cocaine of sexual addiction" and having called pornographers’ products “damaging to our culture, our families, and our nation."
Sam Brownback already wields too much power for a man with such radical views. Within the Senate he serves on the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on the Judiciary, the Joint Economic Committee, and is chairman of both the Helsinki Commission and the Constitution subcommittee. As his constituent, I feel appalled that he represents me in Washington.
As the latest opinion polls show, Americans are slowly awakening to the damage rendered by the Bush administration. More Americans are realizing their perceived walk in the park is actually a slow and steady march toward tyranny and theocracy. While many of the changes they have instituted are still abstract to many Americans (i.e. the Patriot Act), the Plutocrats, Oligarchs, and Theocrats are on the verge of extinguishing our republic. They have already installed the mechanisms to forge a fascist state. Historically, fascism has included the use of propaganda and censorship, strong nationalism, fusion of religion and state, and corporatism. As a Senator, Sam Brownback has worked diligently to implement each of these components in some fashion. Beware, America. If the right to vote in America still exists in 2008, a Brownback victory could signal a comeback for the Brown Shirts.
Thankfully, it appears that Bush’s reign will end in just three years, unless he succeeds in shredding the Constitution and becoming America’s first true dictator. Fortunately for the Oligarchy which rules America behind the veil of our severely weakened republic, they have a leader waiting in the wings with more cunning and ruthlessness than "W". Sam Brownback is yearning for his shot at the Oval Office. Living in Kansas, I know the futility of attempting to reason with Senator Sam Brownback. As his constituent, I have corresponded with him on a wide range of issues. His canned responses reflect his close alignment with the Religious Right and the Neocon plutocrats who have a stranglehold on power in America.
Yes, Brownback has set his sights on the White House. On 4/16/05 he officially kicked off his presidential bid by speaking to 150 members of the New Hampshire Cornerstone Research group. He regaled them with discourse on his beliefs concerning the definition of life, marriage, and the church and state relationship. Cornerstone represents Brownback's "base". To get a sense of the nature of his anti-gay, anti-choice base, consider the position of Karen Testerman, the executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research.
In 2003, Testerman told the Associated Press that “gays and lesbians” were comparable to “shoplifters and drug addicts”. In the same year, she told the Concord Monitor of her support for "abstinence only" education. She elaborated by stating that "holding hands is the first step", and "you're not even supposed to do that if you can avoid it."
Portrait of a radical
As one examines various facets of Sam Brownback, one formulates a profile of an individual who is dangerously radical. As I write this article, he is pandering to the Religious Right, his extremist base. Brownback is threatening to filibuster the Senate bill that would relax restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research. This legislation would enable the US to begin catching up with nations like South Korea. Yes, you read that correctly. America's cutting edge scientific community has fallen behind South Korea in a critical area of medical research.
According to the Kansas City Star, as he discussed the stem cell bill, Brownback alluded to the Democrats’ use of the filibuster on judicial nominations as he said, "I've learned how to delay and stop things." This bill he is so eager to “delay and stop” has already passed the House. It would give researchers access to more than 400,000 frozen embryos that fertility clinics will discard anyway. Federal funding for research on these embryos holds very strong promise for developing therapies and cures for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Rather than enhancing the human capacity to cure serious illness, Brownback would rather see the embryos thrown out like garbage. If Brownback is successful with his filibuster, while he gains political traction with the pro-life crowd, 400,000 embryos will be wasted and real human beings will continue to suffer needlessly.
Despite support of the bill from fellow Republicans Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch, who has long been ardently pro-life, Brownback believes the research is "wrong" and used this twisted analogy in a quote to the Kansas City Star:
Why not use death row inmates in some sort of positive way? They are going to be killed. Why not take their body parts, their heart and lungs and eyes, and yet as I say that, doesn't that sound ghoulish? Human life is sacred."
In a further display of his distorted worldview, Brownback had this to say about American voters aged 18 to 25:
"They were born", he said, "when abortion rates were highest, so many of them feel they're the survivors of a holocaust: one in four of their compatriots are not here.''
The cognitive disconnect in that analogy is astounding. Yet at the same time, one can marvel at the propagandistic genius of mobilizing his minions amongst the “pro-life” faithful by equating the “crime of abortion” with the systematic murder of six million innocents.
Need more evidence of his fanaticism?
You remain skeptical that Brownback is closely aligned with the Religious Right, and is a dangerous extremist? Reflect on Brownback crediting Pat Robertson for his election to the Senate in 1996. Contemplate Robertson's recent endorsement of Brownback as a presidential candidate for 2008 on ABC's This Week. This means that one of Brownback’s most prominent supporters for his nascent presidential bid is a pivotal leader of the Religious Right movement. To affirm his radical mindset, Robertson once said:
“I am bound by the laws of the United States and all 50 states...(but) I am not bound by any case or any court to which I myself am not a party....I don’t think the Congress of the United States is subservient to the courts...They can ignore a Supreme Court ruling if they so choose...”
Still not convinced? Contemplate Brownback's membership in Opus Dei. While they are a Catholic organization, Opus Dei promotes many of the socially conservative values of the Protestant Religious Right. There is also speculation that this highly secretive cult has links to fascist corporations. Opus Dei has a history of supporting fascists. Members of this sect were involved with Franco’s government in Spain. Although Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, was canonized by the Catholic Church, he was a controversial figure. His biographers have characterized him as devious and manipulative. Escriva created Opus Dei on principles of secrecy, power, and an emphasis on finding holiness in one’s work. Opus Dei and Sam Brownback are not the elixirs America’s ruptured ailing needs to nurse it back to health.
Apparently Brownback has an affinity for surreptitious religious organizations. He maintains a residence in Washington DC in a house owned by C Street Center, a sister organization to a loose coalition of Christian government and business leaders known as the Fellowship. The Fellowship is so secretive that many of its members deny its existence. What is known about Brownback's affiliation with this group is that he pays a heavily subsidized rent of $600.00 per month to live in the Fellowship's house, and that he holds weekly religious meetings with the other five Congressmen who share his quarters. Despite its innocuous appearance, there are dark motives beneath the surface of the Fellowship, sometimes known as the Family. Founder Abraham Vereide's held many fascist viewpoints, and infected many of our nation's leaders with his ideologies as the Fellowship grew in popularity over the years.
Here is an excerpt from an Alternet article (http://www.alternet.org/story/16167) about the Family:
In 1935, Abraham Vereide starts it. By the 1940s he has about a third of Congress attending a weekly prayer meeting. In the mid-50s, he gets Eisenhower's support.
[According to a 2002 Los Angeles Times article, during the 1950's Vereide played a major role in the U.S. government's anti-communist activities: "Pentagon officials secretly met at the group's Washington Fellowship House in 1955 to plan a worldwide anti-communism propaganda campaign endorsed by the CIA, documents from the Fellowship archives and the Eisenhower Presidential Library show. Then known as International Christian Leadership, the group financed a film called 'Militant Liberty' that was used by the Pentagon abroad." Showing Faith in Discretion, Lisa Getter, The Los Angeles Times, Sep 27, 2002]
I highly recommend reading the complete article on Alternet, and Jeff Sharlet's Harper's Magazine article at http://www.harpers.org/JesusPlusNothing.html?pg=1. Senator Brownback has aligned himself with a very unsavory organization.
How can we restore something that was never lost?
Perhaps most telling is Senator Brownback's ardent support of the Constitutional Restoration Act of 2004 (which failed) and now its revival in 2005. Were this to become law, the effects on the tattered republic in America would be devastating. This bill represents a culmination of the plan Pat Robertson began outlining on the 700 Club in 1985. Robertson’s vision is for Christian conservatives to secure control of the government. One of his principle strategies to ascend to power is to curtail the powers of the judiciary. In light of the true agenda behind it, a more appropriate name for this legislation would be the Constitutional Reconstruction Act.
At (http://www.prayeralert.org/alertarchives/alert-040204.html) Urgent Prayer Alert high-lights some key components of this frightening piece of legislation:
This CRA (S. 2082 & H.R. 3799) could end 40+ years of religious judicial tyranny (see http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_bills&docid=f:s2082is.txt.pdf).
Empowered by Article 3, section 2 of the Constitution this Act will remove from federal court jurisdiction all matters pertaining to the acknowledgement of God, neutralizing the radical agenda to expunge God from American public life.
CRA’s teeth are a provision for the impeachment of judges who overstep their bounds.
CRA reminds the federal courts their jurisdiction is constitutionally limited as is Congress’ jurisdiction. Neither has authority to govern religious expression. The Founders were careful to leave such matters entirely to the states and to the people.
CRA affirms the right of government officials to "acknowledge God as the source of law, liberty and government." It prohibits federal judges from using foreign laws and judgments as the basis for rulings.
His record speaks for itself
Evaluations of Sam Brownback’s voting record in the Senate provide tangible evidence that he is unfit to succeed Bush as a president who would restore a semblance of social justice and civil liberties to America. NARAL, a pro-choice group, rated him at 0%, which of course translates to 100% pro-life voting. The ACLU gave him an abysmal 20% rating on concerning civil liberties. His 27% rating from the NEA indicates that he usually votes against public education. Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants gave Brownback a 25% rating, meaning he rarely votes for criminal rehabilitation. Brownback is ardently pro-military, as evidenced by his 0% rating by SANE. The AFL-CIO gave him an "F" (0%) for his lack of support for labor unions. ALPHA took exception to his consistent disregard for public health and gave him a 0%. The League of Conservation Voters expressed their disenchantment with Brownback's lack of support for the environment by giving him another "F".
Who gave Brownback their seal of approval? For his faithful devotion to business and “family values” (as defined by the Religious Right) both the US Chamber of Commerce and the Christian Coalition gave him 100% ratings. Brownback embodies the social conservative movement’s cruel Social Darwinism. In his priority system the success of corporations and abstract “family values” supersede the spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being of flesh and blood human beings.
Selective compassion
Despite his professed deep concern for the plight of the genocide victims in Darfur, Sudan, Brownback has virtually ignored people experiencing similar fates in other nations. It is no coincidence that Brownback focuses his concern on the Sudanese genocide. In Darfur, Muslims are killing Christians. Non-Christians who suffer are apparently not worthy of the Senator’s attention. Like Bush, Brownback believes in the false construct of the "good Christians" versus the "evil Muslims". Obviously, his compassion is reserved for "true believers".
Where is Brownback’s holy devotion to acts of compassion when in comes to homosexuals in America? Gays are the one minority in America who receive no federal protection of their civil rights, and he aims to keep things that way. He has vigorously supported a federal ban on gay marriage and has voted against including sexual orientation to the federal definition of hate crimes. While voting against legislation that would help protect gays from battery or murder, Brownback expressed grave concerns (http://www.cogforlife.org/schiavobrownback.htm) about Terry Schiavo and others like her. Brownback’s concern for human life is both inconsistent and selective.
Wolf in sheep’s clothing
Low key and laid back, Sam Brownback likes to portray himself as a down to earth, small town “family values” man who can relate to the "average American". While he does hail from the tiny hamlet of Parker, Kansas, he can hardly relate to the plight of the average American. He is married to Mary Stauffer, an heiress to a fortune built on a Topeka-based media fortune. His membership in Opus Dei, a secretive, elitist organization with fewer than 90,000 members further distances him from relating to the "average American".
Mr. Brownback exhibited anti-Semitic tendencies and a propensity to use dirty politics in his 1996 campaign for the Senate. In What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank wrote:
"Consider the enlightened Sam Brownback. He may be against slavery--and what a bold stand that is 140 years after the Civil War!--but when faced with a tough challenge in 1996 from Democrat Jill Docking of Wichita, his campaign inundated the state with TV commercials that sought to tarnish her by pointing out that she was raised in the now-hated state of Massachusetts and that before she was married her name wasn't Docking at all (the Dockings are now a famous Kansas family) but Sadowsky. Get it? As though to drive this point home, voters across the state received mysterious phone calls in the week before the Election Day reminding them that 'Docking is a Jew.'"
After defeating his opponent by attacking her state of origin and religious affiliation, Brownback has proceeded to implement his perverse, extreme, and hypocritical agenda through the course of his tenure as US Senator. In 2004, to maintain his position in the Senate, he even accepted $17,000.00 from corporations and individuals profiting from the porn industry (per Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington). He took this money despite having called pornography "the crack cocaine of sexual addiction" and having called pornographers’ products “damaging to our culture, our families, and our nation."
Sam Brownback already wields too much power for a man with such radical views. Within the Senate he serves on the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on the Judiciary, the Joint Economic Committee, and is chairman of both the Helsinki Commission and the Constitution subcommittee. As his constituent, I feel appalled that he represents me in Washington.
As the latest opinion polls show, Americans are slowly awakening to the damage rendered by the Bush administration. More Americans are realizing their perceived walk in the park is actually a slow and steady march toward tyranny and theocracy. While many of the changes they have instituted are still abstract to many Americans (i.e. the Patriot Act), the Plutocrats, Oligarchs, and Theocrats are on the verge of extinguishing our republic. They have already installed the mechanisms to forge a fascist state. Historically, fascism has included the use of propaganda and censorship, strong nationalism, fusion of religion and state, and corporatism. As a Senator, Sam Brownback has worked diligently to implement each of these components in some fashion. Beware, America. If the right to vote in America still exists in 2008, a Brownback victory could signal a comeback for the Brown Shirts.
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