How deep we have sunk. How backward we have regressed. All the way down, all the way back to the black abyss of Orwell's 1984.
You can now be fired from your job for speaking the truth, in private, to your colleagues at work.
Vivian Schiller was forced out Wednesday as CEO of National Public Radio -- one of the last bastions of occasional truth in American media today -- because some slimeball wing nut came up with another entrapment video.
This one captured Ron Schiller -- an NPR executive who is not related to Vivian Schiller -- describing the so-called Tea Party movement as "racist" and "xenophobic." Anyone who is not utterly deluded by Frank Luntz-Heritage Foundation bovine excrement knows that these terms are perfectly apt descriptors.
The chairman of the board that fired Vivian Schiller said, "I recognize the magnitude of this news."
"News?"
What's "news" is that a Big Brother network now operates in this country with absolute impunity to constitutional protections of privacy.
Watch what you say around the water cooler. The Juvenile Spy Klan is everywhere.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
How Blatant Lies Become "Fact" in These United States
A cartoon in today's local newspaper represents the outright lies a gullible electorate believes, partly because the mainstream media repeat them as fact without bothering to do basic journalism checking them out.
It depicts a thuggish, bloated figure labeled "unions" riding the back of a small, overburdened figure labeled "taxpayers."
Its creator accepted as fact the blatant lies that have been repeated countless times in print, on the radio and on television, especially since the Wisconsin public employe protests began.
The media have parroted without challenge Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's wildly untrue statements in support of his so-called "budget repair bill," a thinly-disguised attempt to destroy unionism in one of the states where it began.
Here is David Cay Johnson, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, best-selling author, distinguished university lecturer (and registered Republican):
"(Walker) says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.
Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.
Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so, a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.
Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin."
There are foolproof and longstanding laws of economic cause and effect that make this arrangement beneficial to both sides.
Understanding them requires a bit more time, study and effort than simply repeating what politicians like Walker say, as too many journalists today are wont to do. But here, from the economist Dean Baker, is an easy-to-grasp explanation:
"At the center of the right's story is the view that governments are somehow being reckless or irresponsible when they provide guaranteed pensions for their workers. They tell us that these guaranteed benefits will bankrupt state and local governments, imposing impossible burdens on future taxpayers.
This story can be easily shown to be untrue. While the right has been scaring the public with talk of a trillion dollars in unfunded liability in state pensions, this sum can also be expressed as about 0.2 percent of state income over the time-frame in which the liabilities will have to be paid.
In other words, if states raise 20 cents in taxes or cut 20 cents in other spending for every hundred dollars of future income, they will be able to meet their current pension obligations. This is not a trivial sum, but it doesn't seem likely to bankrupt our youth either.
Furthermore, the vast majority of this shortfall was due to the plunge in the stock market that followed the collapse of the housing bubble. Overly generous pensions were not the problem. The problem here were the greedy Wall Street types who profited from the housing bubble and the incompetent economists who did not see it. Of course the market has recovered much of its losses, so future years' pension reports are likely to show that most of shortfall has already been eliminated.
But it is important to understand the basic logic of defined benefit pensions, since many are trying to eliminate them altogether. Defined benefit pensions are in effect a form of insurance. They guarantee workers a level of retirement income based on the years that they work.
This guarantee of future income is more valuable to workers than getting the same amount of money in salary since it would be very expensive for workers to buy the same insurance from the financial industry. From the standpoint of the government, the insurance is virtually costless.
State and local governments will survive into the indefinite future. If the stock market is down any given year or set of years there is little consequence for a government offering a pension fund. Of course, a down market would be devastating for an individual worker if it happens at the point where he/she retires.
This simple logic means that governments can give workers something that is of great value - a guaranteed retirement income -- at very little cost. (Research shows that even after adding in pensions, health care and other benefits, public sector workers are paid slightly less than their private-sector counterparts. This means that because governments offer defined benefit pensions they can either attract better workers at the same pay, or the same quality workers at lower pay, than if they did not offer pensions. This is as basic as economics gets."
Facts, basic economics, logic, legal precedent, even the Constitution -- -- none of these seem to modify in anyway the bullying anti-intellecutal nonsense of the prevailing Tea Pot element of the Republican party. And far too many members of the voting public believe their lies.
It depicts a thuggish, bloated figure labeled "unions" riding the back of a small, overburdened figure labeled "taxpayers."
Its creator accepted as fact the blatant lies that have been repeated countless times in print, on the radio and on television, especially since the Wisconsin public employe protests began.
The media have parroted without challenge Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's wildly untrue statements in support of his so-called "budget repair bill," a thinly-disguised attempt to destroy unionism in one of the states where it began.
Here is David Cay Johnson, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, best-selling author, distinguished university lecturer (and registered Republican):
"(Walker) says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.
Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.
Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so, a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.
Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin."
There are foolproof and longstanding laws of economic cause and effect that make this arrangement beneficial to both sides.
Understanding them requires a bit more time, study and effort than simply repeating what politicians like Walker say, as too many journalists today are wont to do. But here, from the economist Dean Baker, is an easy-to-grasp explanation:
"At the center of the right's story is the view that governments are somehow being reckless or irresponsible when they provide guaranteed pensions for their workers. They tell us that these guaranteed benefits will bankrupt state and local governments, imposing impossible burdens on future taxpayers.
This story can be easily shown to be untrue. While the right has been scaring the public with talk of a trillion dollars in unfunded liability in state pensions, this sum can also be expressed as about 0.2 percent of state income over the time-frame in which the liabilities will have to be paid.
In other words, if states raise 20 cents in taxes or cut 20 cents in other spending for every hundred dollars of future income, they will be able to meet their current pension obligations. This is not a trivial sum, but it doesn't seem likely to bankrupt our youth either.
Furthermore, the vast majority of this shortfall was due to the plunge in the stock market that followed the collapse of the housing bubble. Overly generous pensions were not the problem. The problem here were the greedy Wall Street types who profited from the housing bubble and the incompetent economists who did not see it. Of course the market has recovered much of its losses, so future years' pension reports are likely to show that most of shortfall has already been eliminated.
But it is important to understand the basic logic of defined benefit pensions, since many are trying to eliminate them altogether. Defined benefit pensions are in effect a form of insurance. They guarantee workers a level of retirement income based on the years that they work.
This guarantee of future income is more valuable to workers than getting the same amount of money in salary since it would be very expensive for workers to buy the same insurance from the financial industry. From the standpoint of the government, the insurance is virtually costless.
State and local governments will survive into the indefinite future. If the stock market is down any given year or set of years there is little consequence for a government offering a pension fund. Of course, a down market would be devastating for an individual worker if it happens at the point where he/she retires.
This simple logic means that governments can give workers something that is of great value - a guaranteed retirement income -- at very little cost. (Research shows that even after adding in pensions, health care and other benefits, public sector workers are paid slightly less than their private-sector counterparts. This means that because governments offer defined benefit pensions they can either attract better workers at the same pay, or the same quality workers at lower pay, than if they did not offer pensions. This is as basic as economics gets."
Facts, basic economics, logic, legal precedent, even the Constitution -- -- none of these seem to modify in anyway the bullying anti-intellecutal nonsense of the prevailing Tea Pot element of the Republican party. And far too many members of the voting public believe their lies.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The United States of Hypocrisy
A conservative friend, in a recent e-mail, deplored certain politicians of his own persuasion who preach "family values" but practice them only at home, while keeping a tootsie on the side in a hot pillow joint.
Hypocrisy indeed is rife in our public affairs and is not limited to sexual peccadillos, hetero- or homo-.
Can anything be more hypocritical than the words of the Nobel Laureate in the White House and his Secretary of State, demanding that other countries improve their "record" on human rights?
This government's treatment of a young citizen, Bradley Manning, is not merely criminal. It is not merely inhumane. It is not merely contrary to the Geneva Conventions. It is not merely torture. It is beneath contempt. It is barbaric. It demeans every United States citizen who does not cry out against it.
Barack Obama knows this is happening. If he did not explicitly authorize it, his silence gives tacit consent.
Hillary Clinton knows this is happening. Yet she dared to give a speech about human rights and remain silent when a 73-year-old man was physically abused by federal thugs for silently protesting her hypocrisy by standing and turning his back to her.
When both of them were contending for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, they decried the Bush administration's use of torture on so-called "enemy combatants" who were in fact political prisoners. Yet they allow the torture of an innocent citizen soldier-- innocent under the law because he has yet to be tried on any charge -- under the vile and transparent subterfuge that his captors are protecting him from self-harm. When Manning himself sarcastically pointed out this hypocrisy, the military authorities simply heaped more cruelties on him.
United States Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle know this is happening. Their silence on the matter is deafening; they're too busy tilting at windmills like the Deficit Bogeyman to fret over the loss of human rights here at home.
This is a sick country. Neither political party has produced anyone remotely resembling the sort of leader who can make it well again -- financially, morally, politically or ethically.
If such a someone were to emerge from the background, he'd get my vote even if he had half a dozen tootsies on the side.
Hypocrisy indeed is rife in our public affairs and is not limited to sexual peccadillos, hetero- or homo-.
Can anything be more hypocritical than the words of the Nobel Laureate in the White House and his Secretary of State, demanding that other countries improve their "record" on human rights?
This government's treatment of a young citizen, Bradley Manning, is not merely criminal. It is not merely inhumane. It is not merely contrary to the Geneva Conventions. It is not merely torture. It is beneath contempt. It is barbaric. It demeans every United States citizen who does not cry out against it.
Barack Obama knows this is happening. If he did not explicitly authorize it, his silence gives tacit consent.
Hillary Clinton knows this is happening. Yet she dared to give a speech about human rights and remain silent when a 73-year-old man was physically abused by federal thugs for silently protesting her hypocrisy by standing and turning his back to her.
When both of them were contending for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, they decried the Bush administration's use of torture on so-called "enemy combatants" who were in fact political prisoners. Yet they allow the torture of an innocent citizen soldier-- innocent under the law because he has yet to be tried on any charge -- under the vile and transparent subterfuge that his captors are protecting him from self-harm. When Manning himself sarcastically pointed out this hypocrisy, the military authorities simply heaped more cruelties on him.
United States Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle know this is happening. Their silence on the matter is deafening; they're too busy tilting at windmills like the Deficit Bogeyman to fret over the loss of human rights here at home.
This is a sick country. Neither political party has produced anyone remotely resembling the sort of leader who can make it well again -- financially, morally, politically or ethically.
If such a someone were to emerge from the background, he'd get my vote even if he had half a dozen tootsies on the side.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
To Those Who Rally for The American Dream
To my fellow patriots, who are rallying today in state capitals and major cities around the country in support of the government workers of Wisconsin:
I deeply regret that we were unable to make the long journey to Santa Fe to join you today. We support you from afar, as we have supported from afar the beloved granddaughter who is at this very moment with the freedom fighters in Madison, as she has been from the outset.
Like those throughout the Arab world fighting nonviolently for freedom, you are predominantly young, seeking to restore the democracy we older Americans let slip away. Why did we allow giant corporations, plutocrats, oligarchs, to capture our democracy? Avarice. Ignorance. Distraction. Moral sloth. Ethical indifference. Self-deceit. Deafness to uncomfortable truth. History, I fear, will judge us harshly as it will the leaders we allowed to be "elected."
We have placed a terrible burden on your shoulders. We gave away our moral standing when we allowed our leaders to lie us into a degrading, illicit war, which is continuing endlessly, draining our resources and plunging us ever deeper into debt. We forfeited our most precious rights, enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, when we failed to rebel against the so-called PATRIOT Act. Party labels aside, we have persisted in electing a kakistocracy to public office, ignorant or cowardly or amoral individuals eager to trade the public good for private profit.
In the outcome of your struggle lies the fate of the nation. The power of organized workers is the last remaining counter-force in these United States to the corporate takeover of everything. Only you stand between the hope for a rebirth of freedom, and a dictatorship of the obscenely rich.
The odds are against you, as they are against the masses of the common people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and the other Arab countries where, by some miracle of the human intellect and spirit, a vast clamoring for human rights has spontaneously erupted. They are seeking what my generation had, and squandered.
It remains for you, the young and idealistic, to fight to regain them. We have handed to you, patriots in the capitol squares of America, what our greatest president called a "great unfinished task." You must see to it that government of the people, by the people and for the people does not perish from the earth.
You are the last, the best, the only hope. May you find the strength, the courage, the resolve to win this great battle on behalf of all The People.
I deeply regret that we were unable to make the long journey to Santa Fe to join you today. We support you from afar, as we have supported from afar the beloved granddaughter who is at this very moment with the freedom fighters in Madison, as she has been from the outset.
Like those throughout the Arab world fighting nonviolently for freedom, you are predominantly young, seeking to restore the democracy we older Americans let slip away. Why did we allow giant corporations, plutocrats, oligarchs, to capture our democracy? Avarice. Ignorance. Distraction. Moral sloth. Ethical indifference. Self-deceit. Deafness to uncomfortable truth. History, I fear, will judge us harshly as it will the leaders we allowed to be "elected."
We have placed a terrible burden on your shoulders. We gave away our moral standing when we allowed our leaders to lie us into a degrading, illicit war, which is continuing endlessly, draining our resources and plunging us ever deeper into debt. We forfeited our most precious rights, enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, when we failed to rebel against the so-called PATRIOT Act. Party labels aside, we have persisted in electing a kakistocracy to public office, ignorant or cowardly or amoral individuals eager to trade the public good for private profit.
In the outcome of your struggle lies the fate of the nation. The power of organized workers is the last remaining counter-force in these United States to the corporate takeover of everything. Only you stand between the hope for a rebirth of freedom, and a dictatorship of the obscenely rich.
The odds are against you, as they are against the masses of the common people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and the other Arab countries where, by some miracle of the human intellect and spirit, a vast clamoring for human rights has spontaneously erupted. They are seeking what my generation had, and squandered.
It remains for you, the young and idealistic, to fight to regain them. We have handed to you, patriots in the capitol squares of America, what our greatest president called a "great unfinished task." You must see to it that government of the people, by the people and for the people does not perish from the earth.
You are the last, the best, the only hope. May you find the strength, the courage, the resolve to win this great battle on behalf of all The People.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
On Wisconsin, FDR and a Coward Named Cox
Andrew Sullivan and Clive Crook have brought Franklin D. Roosevelt into the Wisconsin governor's battle with the state's government employees.
FDR is perhaps the most venerated saint in the labor movement's heaven. Surely, then, the far right will try to make capital of his 1937 letter, cited on the Sullivan blog, to Luther C. Steward, president of the National Federation of Federal employees, particularly these passages:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.
Blest though he may be, FDR's private opinions of 74 years ago are utterly irrelevant to what's happening in Wisconsin and spreading to other states with Tea Pot governors. Introducing his Steward letter to the Wisconsin debate would be comparable to introducing into the 1964 Civil Rights deliberations the words Lincoln spoke at Charleston, IL, in the debate with Douglas:
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
Such beliefs, held by most white people at the time, did not diminish Lincoln's hatred of the institution of slavery, nor his determination that it must face "ultimate extinction" in this country.
FDR's remarks about federal government employees, set in the context of 1937, were tempered by a preface:
The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical.
It would be decades before both federal and state governments began to acknowledge that if public workers' "desire" is basically no different from that of employees in private industry, then their rights under the laws governing labor relations should be no different, either.
The historical context of FDR's letter is important. It was written just weeks after American labor had been revolutionized by the auto industry's acceptance of the UAW as bargaining agent for its workers. It was written just months after passage of the National Labor Relations Act (the so-called Wagner Act) paved the way for not just auto workers, but millions of other American wage-earners to lift themselves up by the bootstraps into lives of dignity, able ultimately to afford better health care, pensions and win government oversight of workplace safety. New and radical stuff! It came even as the richest Americans, the barons of business and finance, were villifying "that man" in the White House for the communist folly called Social Security. FDR's personal view about public employees was shaped by that political climate, by the times in which he governed, just as Lincoln's personal views on race were shaped by the times in which he operated.
America's labor laws are a swiss cheese of often discordant federal and state laws, so that what's legal in the 22 right to work states, for example, doesn't apply in states like Wisconsin that have for half a century recognized public employees' right to collective bargaining. That is a right democratically won under rules virtually identical to those spelled out in the NLRA, and thus, I contend, absolutely irrevocable by unilateral action of either signatory. It would be for the Wisconsin courts to decide, but I submit that neither the legislature nor the governor can repeal that right without the consent of the unions and their members.
I will not even attempt to conceal my contempt for Wisconsin's governor and Republican legislators, for the rapacious Koch brothers who put them in office, or for their supporters in other states seeking to solve budget problems by breaking the backs of labor and cutting taxes on corporations.
I hold in particular contempt such supporters as Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox of Indiana, who twittered recently that Wisconsin officials should "use live ammunition" against the Madison protesters. Asked if he meant that literally, he replied, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force."
Mr. Cox, my granddaughter, Brittany, is one of those protesters and has been from the outset. She's a social worker, who worked three jobs to get through college and earn her master's degree. She works countless unpaid hours and often spends her own limited resources to provide her clients with things they need. Her program has reduced Wisconsin's infant mortality rate among racial minorities from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the nation.
Mr. Cox, you scum, you are unworthy to lick the dirt off Brittany's shoe soles. I invite you, you miserable coward, to come to New Mexico and tell me to my face that you want to "use live ammunition" against Brittany.
FDR is perhaps the most venerated saint in the labor movement's heaven. Surely, then, the far right will try to make capital of his 1937 letter, cited on the Sullivan blog, to Luther C. Steward, president of the National Federation of Federal employees, particularly these passages:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.
Blest though he may be, FDR's private opinions of 74 years ago are utterly irrelevant to what's happening in Wisconsin and spreading to other states with Tea Pot governors. Introducing his Steward letter to the Wisconsin debate would be comparable to introducing into the 1964 Civil Rights deliberations the words Lincoln spoke at Charleston, IL, in the debate with Douglas:
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
Such beliefs, held by most white people at the time, did not diminish Lincoln's hatred of the institution of slavery, nor his determination that it must face "ultimate extinction" in this country.
FDR's remarks about federal government employees, set in the context of 1937, were tempered by a preface:
The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical.
It would be decades before both federal and state governments began to acknowledge that if public workers' "desire" is basically no different from that of employees in private industry, then their rights under the laws governing labor relations should be no different, either.
The historical context of FDR's letter is important. It was written just weeks after American labor had been revolutionized by the auto industry's acceptance of the UAW as bargaining agent for its workers. It was written just months after passage of the National Labor Relations Act (the so-called Wagner Act) paved the way for not just auto workers, but millions of other American wage-earners to lift themselves up by the bootstraps into lives of dignity, able ultimately to afford better health care, pensions and win government oversight of workplace safety. New and radical stuff! It came even as the richest Americans, the barons of business and finance, were villifying "that man" in the White House for the communist folly called Social Security. FDR's personal view about public employees was shaped by that political climate, by the times in which he governed, just as Lincoln's personal views on race were shaped by the times in which he operated.
America's labor laws are a swiss cheese of often discordant federal and state laws, so that what's legal in the 22 right to work states, for example, doesn't apply in states like Wisconsin that have for half a century recognized public employees' right to collective bargaining. That is a right democratically won under rules virtually identical to those spelled out in the NLRA, and thus, I contend, absolutely irrevocable by unilateral action of either signatory. It would be for the Wisconsin courts to decide, but I submit that neither the legislature nor the governor can repeal that right without the consent of the unions and their members.
I will not even attempt to conceal my contempt for Wisconsin's governor and Republican legislators, for the rapacious Koch brothers who put them in office, or for their supporters in other states seeking to solve budget problems by breaking the backs of labor and cutting taxes on corporations.I hold in particular contempt such supporters as Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox of Indiana, who twittered recently that Wisconsin officials should "use live ammunition" against the Madison protesters. Asked if he meant that literally, he replied, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force."
Mr. Cox, my granddaughter, Brittany, is one of those protesters and has been from the outset. She's a social worker, who worked three jobs to get through college and earn her master's degree. She works countless unpaid hours and often spends her own limited resources to provide her clients with things they need. Her program has reduced Wisconsin's infant mortality rate among racial minorities from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the nation.
Mr. Cox, you scum, you are unworthy to lick the dirt off Brittany's shoe soles. I invite you, you miserable coward, to come to New Mexico and tell me to my face that you want to "use live ammunition" against Brittany.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Greatest Baseball Player of All Time
Ronald Reagan tops a list of the nation's greatest presidents, ahead of Abraham Lincoln, according to a new Gallup survey. -- News item.
* * *
As spring training for another baseball season swings into high gear, it is time to discuss the Greatest Baseball Player of All Time.
Eddie Miller did things shortstops just don't do today. He cut a hole in the sweet spot of his fielder's mitt! "Gives me a better feel, especially on double plays started by Frey." That would be Lonnie Frey, his second baseman with the great Cincinnati Reds teams of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Together they turned 112 double plays in the 1943 season. Cubs fans may sing the praises of Tinker to Evers to Chance, but in Cincy, Miller to Frey to McCormick spells G-R-E-A-T-N-E-S-S.
Eddie (The Ripper) Miller broke into the major leagues in 1936 at the age of 19. Already he was demonstrating the fielding prowess that would make him a seven-time All-Star. In 1937, the 20-year-old shortstop wasn't charged with a single error.
Eddie could do it all, however. Swing the bat, run the bases . . . he stole 11 bases in 1942 at the ripe old age of 25. It's true that other shortstops like Luke Appling or Hughie Jennings compiled higher lifetime batting averages than Eddie's .238, but Miller could take two and hit to right like nobody before or after him.
And in 1947, he not only hit .268, but also belted a career high 19 home runs. Miller actually led the National League in homers for most of the first month of the season.
Sure, you had your Ty Cobbs, your Babe Ruths, your Honus Wagners, your Ted Williamses and a whole batch of terrific pitchers.
But among everyday position players, there was only one Eddie Miller. (The other Eddie Miller who played big-league baseball was a pitcher.)
To this day, kids on the sandlots of Cincinnati are inspired to go out and win one for The Ripper.
* * *
As spring training for another baseball season swings into high gear, it is time to discuss the Greatest Baseball Player of All Time.
Eddie Miller did things shortstops just don't do today. He cut a hole in the sweet spot of his fielder's mitt! "Gives me a better feel, especially on double plays started by Frey." That would be Lonnie Frey, his second baseman with the great Cincinnati Reds teams of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Together they turned 112 double plays in the 1943 season. Cubs fans may sing the praises of Tinker to Evers to Chance, but in Cincy, Miller to Frey to McCormick spells G-R-E-A-T-N-E-S-S.
Eddie (The Ripper) Miller broke into the major leagues in 1936 at the age of 19. Already he was demonstrating the fielding prowess that would make him a seven-time All-Star. In 1937, the 20-year-old shortstop wasn't charged with a single error.
Eddie could do it all, however. Swing the bat, run the bases . . . he stole 11 bases in 1942 at the ripe old age of 25. It's true that other shortstops like Luke Appling or Hughie Jennings compiled higher lifetime batting averages than Eddie's .238, but Miller could take two and hit to right like nobody before or after him.
And in 1947, he not only hit .268, but also belted a career high 19 home runs. Miller actually led the National League in homers for most of the first month of the season.
Sure, you had your Ty Cobbs, your Babe Ruths, your Honus Wagners, your Ted Williamses and a whole batch of terrific pitchers.
But among everyday position players, there was only one Eddie Miller. (The other Eddie Miller who played big-league baseball was a pitcher.)
To this day, kids on the sandlots of Cincinnati are inspired to go out and win one for The Ripper.
Friday, February 18, 2011
And Crown They Good, With Brotherhood . . . .
In the Arab world, common people by the thousands are taking to the streets and public squares to demand basic human rights and participation in their own government.
In Madison, WI, American workers by the thousands are taking to the public square and Capitol rotunda to preserve basic human rights democratically won half a century ago when The People still had a voice in their own government.
Police and military thugs for the king stormed Pearl square in the capital of Bahrain, killing five of the protesters and putting Manama under army control.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Teabagger, threatens to call in the National Guard to sweep Madison clean of protesters.
Ah, America, Land of the Free.
Ray McGovern, 71, had a distinguished career in United States government as an intelligence analyst. From retirement, he spotted the falsehoods in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and warned the people about them. He has continued to speak out bravely against not just the lies and injustices of our government, but against the abuses and cover-ups of the clergy's abuses in the Roman Catholic Church to which he belongs. He fears no power, neither Papacy nor White House. He is a brave and honest man.
McGovern was in the audience at George Washington University the other day when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived to give a speech about . . . free speech. The audience, including McGovern, stood as she entered. When she prepared to speak everyone sat down, except McGovern. "It was my symbolic way of saying not everybody agrees with her. When she came in I not only remained standing but I turned my back to her." He was seized by government thugs, assaulted, dragged from the room and double handcuffed with metal cuffs causing profuse bleeding.
Ah, America, land of free speech.
In South Dakota a Republican state legislator named Phil Jensen has introduced a bill that would make it "justifiable homicide" to murder any person attempting to "harm an unborn child" -- such as doctors who perform legal abortions.
Ah, America ! God Shed His Grace on Thee
The ruthless king who ordered the shock troops into Pearl Square on the island nation of Bahrain is a real pal of the American government because he lets us park our Fifth Fleet there. Here are some of our other pals in that region:
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch says his regime "systematically suppresses or fails to protect the rights of nine million Saudi women and girls . . . and some two million Shia citizens. Each year thousands of people receive unfair trials . . . arbitrary detention . . . curbs on freedom."
King Abdullah II of Jordan. Human Rights Watch: "Torture (is) routine and widespread, in particular at police stations." Free speech is prohibited.
President Gurbanguly Berdmukhamedov of Turkmenistan. One of the most repressive regimes in the world, a favorite of General David Petraeus in particular. Makes arbitrary arrests, detains prisoners incommunicado, tortures, abuses women. No freedom of religion, speech or press. Has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Routinely elected with 90 or more percent of the vote, Kamirov endorses torture of dissenters; two were boiled to death in 2003. The government rounds up children to do the cotton harvest every year. U.S. props him up with aid to his spy agency and police. He provides U.S. with supply routes for our forces in Afghanistan.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Commands large offshore oil reserves. Good pal of Condi Rice. Human Rights Watch: "Mired in corruption, poverty and repression." Posed for Photo Op with his buddy, Barry Obama, at Metropolitan Museum of New York in 2009.
Ah, America, Beacon of Liberty to the World.
In Madison, WI, American workers by the thousands are taking to the public square and Capitol rotunda to preserve basic human rights democratically won half a century ago when The People still had a voice in their own government.
Police and military thugs for the king stormed Pearl square in the capital of Bahrain, killing five of the protesters and putting Manama under army control.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Teabagger, threatens to call in the National Guard to sweep Madison clean of protesters.
Ah, America, Land of the Free.
Ray McGovern, 71, had a distinguished career in United States government as an intelligence analyst. From retirement, he spotted the falsehoods in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and warned the people about them. He has continued to speak out bravely against not just the lies and injustices of our government, but against the abuses and cover-ups of the clergy's abuses in the Roman Catholic Church to which he belongs. He fears no power, neither Papacy nor White House. He is a brave and honest man.
McGovern was in the audience at George Washington University the other day when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived to give a speech about . . . free speech. The audience, including McGovern, stood as she entered. When she prepared to speak everyone sat down, except McGovern. "It was my symbolic way of saying not everybody agrees with her. When she came in I not only remained standing but I turned my back to her." He was seized by government thugs, assaulted, dragged from the room and double handcuffed with metal cuffs causing profuse bleeding.
Ah, America, land of free speech.
In South Dakota a Republican state legislator named Phil Jensen has introduced a bill that would make it "justifiable homicide" to murder any person attempting to "harm an unborn child" -- such as doctors who perform legal abortions.
Ah, America ! God Shed His Grace on Thee
The ruthless king who ordered the shock troops into Pearl Square on the island nation of Bahrain is a real pal of the American government because he lets us park our Fifth Fleet there. Here are some of our other pals in that region:
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch says his regime "systematically suppresses or fails to protect the rights of nine million Saudi women and girls . . . and some two million Shia citizens. Each year thousands of people receive unfair trials . . . arbitrary detention . . . curbs on freedom."
King Abdullah II of Jordan. Human Rights Watch: "Torture (is) routine and widespread, in particular at police stations." Free speech is prohibited.
President Gurbanguly Berdmukhamedov of Turkmenistan. One of the most repressive regimes in the world, a favorite of General David Petraeus in particular. Makes arbitrary arrests, detains prisoners incommunicado, tortures, abuses women. No freedom of religion, speech or press. Has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Routinely elected with 90 or more percent of the vote, Kamirov endorses torture of dissenters; two were boiled to death in 2003. The government rounds up children to do the cotton harvest every year. U.S. props him up with aid to his spy agency and police. He provides U.S. with supply routes for our forces in Afghanistan.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Commands large offshore oil reserves. Good pal of Condi Rice. Human Rights Watch: "Mired in corruption, poverty and repression." Posed for Photo Op with his buddy, Barry Obama, at Metropolitan Museum of New York in 2009.
Ah, America, Beacon of Liberty to the World.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
How Our Corporatocracy Works
The tragic human cost of living in a corporatocracy is becoming ever more clear to anyone who takes the blinders off and thinks for a while.
Our corporatocracy has been ratified by the Supreme Court, has intimidated our president and bought our Congress. Tea Party Congresswomen to the contrary notwithstanding, that's all three branches of government. Total control.
The budget submitted by Dr. Kidglove, created under the specter of the deficit bogeyman, proposes to make the poor, the old, the sick and the uneducated pay for the economic crimes of filthy rich bankers and financiers.
While the filthy rich count their profits and chuckle like Scrooge, millions of Americans remain jobless. For the most recent quarter, the country has created barely one-fifth of the number of new jobs needed just to accommodate new workers entering the job market. So the net number of unemployed Americans continues to grow.
Meanwhile, corporate America is sitting on a cash horde of well over two trillion dollars. Their Republican puppets in Congress, willy-nilly cutting "job-killing entitlements," talk about the need for jobs even while opposing the very public policies that would create them. The United States Chamber of Commerce prattles about the need for jobs even while plotting possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against those who support proposals to create them.
Dr. Kidglove, eying the corporate stash of cash, went to the US C of C, hat in hand, and begged them to please, sir, spend some of that money putting Americans back to work. They listened grumpily, but have absolutely no intention of spending a dime of the cash horde to hire American workers. The business plans of corporate America have committed all of that cash to huge stock buyback programs and increased dividends to enrich big investors and senior managers. They did this in 2002-2006 with nearly three trillion in hoarded profits, which they dispensed just in time for filthy rich investors and managers to benefit from George Bush's first big round of tax cuts for the richest two percent of us. The new round of payouts comes just in time for the filthy rich to benefit from the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Responding to the Big Bust of 2008, the Bush-Obama strategy was to bail out out the too-big-to-fail financial institutions that caused it. Obama's rationale was that the bailed-out banks and investors would eventually create jobs, lower mortgage rates and adjust terms to save homeowners and boost tax revenues of the cash-starved states. None of it happened.
Now the corporations and their lackeys in Congress have coerced Dr. Kidglove into a policy of cutting the social services that poor, old, jobless and sick Americans depend upon for their very lives. The cuts he offers won't satisfy them. They'll cut more.
Meanwhile, there's no talk whatsoever about cutting the defense budget or ending the immoral wars that drove us into this deficit. There's no talk of cutting the lavish subsidies to big oil and gas companies, to drug manufacturers, to health insurance companies, to the huge Agribusiness conglomerates. These suckers at the teats of tax revenue are part of the corporatocracy that owns us; of course their subsidies won't be touched.
Meanwhile, a new tip of the corporate iceberg is peeking out above the waves. It is the virtual merging of the government's massive spying on citizenry with corporate skullduggery against citizens who speak the truth to power.
The U.S. Chamber, through its rich and powerful Washington law firm, has conspired with government spy technology contractors to engage in possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against supporters of WikiLeaks and other progressive information outlets. It has targeted online journalists and others for "disruption."
And just today, the New York Times and the economist Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated how financial institutions manipulate their Congressional puppets and the public to avoid any real regulation of the sort of crimes that caused the 2008 Bust. They disclosed the utter fallacy of a major report commissioned by the "Derivative End Users Coalition" -- formed by the big banks to prevent implementation of the financial controls in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. It was prepared by a consulting firm called Keybridge Research, which falsified data and lied about its affiliations with responsible academics.
Confronted with the Stiglitz findings by a Times reporter, the president of Keybridge replied that "the client had asked us" to create the report, which was "a hypothetical study."
Another term for it is lying, but it will serve as a rationale for the puppets of Congress to do the bidding of their corporate masters. The rich will get richer and the poor will pay.
Let them eat cake.
Our corporatocracy has been ratified by the Supreme Court, has intimidated our president and bought our Congress. Tea Party Congresswomen to the contrary notwithstanding, that's all three branches of government. Total control.
The budget submitted by Dr. Kidglove, created under the specter of the deficit bogeyman, proposes to make the poor, the old, the sick and the uneducated pay for the economic crimes of filthy rich bankers and financiers.
While the filthy rich count their profits and chuckle like Scrooge, millions of Americans remain jobless. For the most recent quarter, the country has created barely one-fifth of the number of new jobs needed just to accommodate new workers entering the job market. So the net number of unemployed Americans continues to grow.
Meanwhile, corporate America is sitting on a cash horde of well over two trillion dollars. Their Republican puppets in Congress, willy-nilly cutting "job-killing entitlements," talk about the need for jobs even while opposing the very public policies that would create them. The United States Chamber of Commerce prattles about the need for jobs even while plotting possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against those who support proposals to create them.
Dr. Kidglove, eying the corporate stash of cash, went to the US C of C, hat in hand, and begged them to please, sir, spend some of that money putting Americans back to work. They listened grumpily, but have absolutely no intention of spending a dime of the cash horde to hire American workers. The business plans of corporate America have committed all of that cash to huge stock buyback programs and increased dividends to enrich big investors and senior managers. They did this in 2002-2006 with nearly three trillion in hoarded profits, which they dispensed just in time for filthy rich investors and managers to benefit from George Bush's first big round of tax cuts for the richest two percent of us. The new round of payouts comes just in time for the filthy rich to benefit from the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Responding to the Big Bust of 2008, the Bush-Obama strategy was to bail out out the too-big-to-fail financial institutions that caused it. Obama's rationale was that the bailed-out banks and investors would eventually create jobs, lower mortgage rates and adjust terms to save homeowners and boost tax revenues of the cash-starved states. None of it happened.
Now the corporations and their lackeys in Congress have coerced Dr. Kidglove into a policy of cutting the social services that poor, old, jobless and sick Americans depend upon for their very lives. The cuts he offers won't satisfy them. They'll cut more.
Meanwhile, there's no talk whatsoever about cutting the defense budget or ending the immoral wars that drove us into this deficit. There's no talk of cutting the lavish subsidies to big oil and gas companies, to drug manufacturers, to health insurance companies, to the huge Agribusiness conglomerates. These suckers at the teats of tax revenue are part of the corporatocracy that owns us; of course their subsidies won't be touched.
Meanwhile, a new tip of the corporate iceberg is peeking out above the waves. It is the virtual merging of the government's massive spying on citizenry with corporate skullduggery against citizens who speak the truth to power.
The U.S. Chamber, through its rich and powerful Washington law firm, has conspired with government spy technology contractors to engage in possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against supporters of WikiLeaks and other progressive information outlets. It has targeted online journalists and others for "disruption."
And just today, the New York Times and the economist Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated how financial institutions manipulate their Congressional puppets and the public to avoid any real regulation of the sort of crimes that caused the 2008 Bust. They disclosed the utter fallacy of a major report commissioned by the "Derivative End Users Coalition" -- formed by the big banks to prevent implementation of the financial controls in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. It was prepared by a consulting firm called Keybridge Research, which falsified data and lied about its affiliations with responsible academics.
Confronted with the Stiglitz findings by a Times reporter, the president of Keybridge replied that "the client had asked us" to create the report, which was "a hypothetical study."
Another term for it is lying, but it will serve as a rationale for the puppets of Congress to do the bidding of their corporate masters. The rich will get richer and the poor will pay.
Let them eat cake.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Message from Liberation Square
Two protesters in Cairo have posted an open letter to the rest of the world that raises an interesting question in the United States.
Mahmoud Salem and Gihan Ibrahim, 20-ish activists and bloggers who have been in Tahir Square since Jan. 25, had this to say:
People here are tired. We’ve been beaten, shot at, tear-gassed, rained on,
denied medical access, and have lived in a public square for more than two
weeks. Mercenary thugs on horses have attacked us with whips, swords,
and knives. Hundreds of people have lost their lives and thousands are
hurt or missing.
The revolutionary feeling here is incredible. Every day this square is full of
peasants, workers, students and professionals, engineers, teachers, singers,
writers and celebrities, Muslims, Christians, young, old, rich and poor.
We are demanding things which everyone can agree on: an end to
corruption, dictatorship and oppression; the ability to vote in free, fair and
democratic elections; freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens.
The "interesting question" is this.
When, if ever, will masses of Americans bestir themselves to demand the same things here?
Mahmoud Salem and Gihan Ibrahim, 20-ish activists and bloggers who have been in Tahir Square since Jan. 25, had this to say:
People here are tired. We’ve been beaten, shot at, tear-gassed, rained on,
denied medical access, and have lived in a public square for more than two
weeks. Mercenary thugs on horses have attacked us with whips, swords,
and knives. Hundreds of people have lost their lives and thousands are
hurt or missing.
The revolutionary feeling here is incredible. Every day this square is full of
peasants, workers, students and professionals, engineers, teachers, singers,
writers and celebrities, Muslims, Christians, young, old, rich and poor.
We are demanding things which everyone can agree on: an end to
corruption, dictatorship and oppression; the ability to vote in free, fair and
democratic elections; freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens.
The "interesting question" is this.
When, if ever, will masses of Americans bestir themselves to demand the same things here?
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Chile to Egypt: A Broad, Blood-Red Line
Little noticed in the focus on Egypt's popular uprising, Chile at almost the same moment began a government investigation into the death of Salvador Allende. The timing is ironic. It calls attention to the continuum, under presidents of both parties, of American support for "friendly" dictators, never mind the poverty and misery of the people under their thumb.
The investigation announced Jan. 26 comes 38 years after Allende, the first democratically elected Socialist head of state in the Americas, died during a military coup d'etat engineered by the CIA . The police declared his death a suicide -- the same police who celebrated it with 24 documented cases of kidnaping, torture and murder in the immediate aftermath of the military takeover.
U.S.-backed Augusto Pinochet became Chile's dictator, lavishly supported by American taxpayer funds. This, according to the Human Rights Foundation, is what he accomplished: "He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,200 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them) ... Pinochet’s name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex."
And so as Chile seeks the truth about a savage dictator installed by the United States -- the long-held suspicion is that Allende was slain on the CIA's orders by Pinochet's troops -- Egypt seethes with popular revolt against another. It is four decades in time but only a moment of truth in ideology between Pinochet and Mubarak.
Washington's view is, and for too long has been, that bad guys are just fine as long as they're our bad guys. Let us never forget that before he was reviled, Saddam Hussein was our friend. Or that Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagen, those great leaders of the free world, pointed with pride to the Chilean economic miracle while Pinochet was torturing and killing the people of Chile, while the underclass grew in number and diminished in its share of that economy, while oligarchs and military thugs and friends of the CIA -- and American corporations -- prospered.
Now the successors to Maggie and Ron wring their hands over the situation in Egypt, piously proclaiming their support for "democracy" yet fretting about "stability." These are code words. "Support for democracy" means the western powers don't want to reveal their hypocrisy by endorsing a ruthless military suppression of the popular uprising. Let the blood flow in prisons and torture chambers, but not on TV. "Stability" means retaining a pro-Israel government in a populous Arab country that controls an absolutely vital strategic venue in the Middle East, the Suez Canal. The people be damned; Washington must remain the off-stage power in the region; its warships must retain free access and egress on the Suez.
Searching for soothing classical music yesterday, the "seek" function on my car radio paused briefly on one of the stations that blares those insufferably stupid right wing talk shows. Sotto voce: "Well, yes Mubarak is a dictator," host and guest agreed. Energico: "But the great danger is that they'll replace him with something worse."
No, no you fools! Here is the "great danger:"
Our government's domestic policies are moving uncomfortably parallel to our failed foreign policy. Abroad, we prop up regimes that enrich corporations, oligarchs and despots while the mass of common people suffer, starve and die. At home we are ruled by a shadow government of corporations and oligarchs who find plenty of money for weapons but none for health care or social security. People don't count, democracy is just a word, what's good for business is good for America whose business is war.
Pinochet kept his grip in Chile firm by creating a Death Squad of several Army officers and two infantrymen which traveled from prison to prison in a U.S.-supplied Puma helicopter, picking out those detainees -- all of them held incognito and without charge -- considered most dangerous to the state, murdering them and burying them in unmarked mass graves.
Legislation passed in the Bush Administration, and policies continuing under Obama, could over time lead to that very thing happening here.
Look what's happening -- legally -- to a kid named Bradley Manning.
The investigation announced Jan. 26 comes 38 years after Allende, the first democratically elected Socialist head of state in the Americas, died during a military coup d'etat engineered by the CIA . The police declared his death a suicide -- the same police who celebrated it with 24 documented cases of kidnaping, torture and murder in the immediate aftermath of the military takeover.
U.S.-backed Augusto Pinochet became Chile's dictator, lavishly supported by American taxpayer funds. This, according to the Human Rights Foundation, is what he accomplished: "He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,200 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them) ... Pinochet’s name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex."
And so as Chile seeks the truth about a savage dictator installed by the United States -- the long-held suspicion is that Allende was slain on the CIA's orders by Pinochet's troops -- Egypt seethes with popular revolt against another. It is four decades in time but only a moment of truth in ideology between Pinochet and Mubarak.
Washington's view is, and for too long has been, that bad guys are just fine as long as they're our bad guys. Let us never forget that before he was reviled, Saddam Hussein was our friend. Or that Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagen, those great leaders of the free world, pointed with pride to the Chilean economic miracle while Pinochet was torturing and killing the people of Chile, while the underclass grew in number and diminished in its share of that economy, while oligarchs and military thugs and friends of the CIA -- and American corporations -- prospered.
Now the successors to Maggie and Ron wring their hands over the situation in Egypt, piously proclaiming their support for "democracy" yet fretting about "stability." These are code words. "Support for democracy" means the western powers don't want to reveal their hypocrisy by endorsing a ruthless military suppression of the popular uprising. Let the blood flow in prisons and torture chambers, but not on TV. "Stability" means retaining a pro-Israel government in a populous Arab country that controls an absolutely vital strategic venue in the Middle East, the Suez Canal. The people be damned; Washington must remain the off-stage power in the region; its warships must retain free access and egress on the Suez.
Searching for soothing classical music yesterday, the "seek" function on my car radio paused briefly on one of the stations that blares those insufferably stupid right wing talk shows. Sotto voce: "Well, yes Mubarak is a dictator," host and guest agreed. Energico: "But the great danger is that they'll replace him with something worse."
No, no you fools! Here is the "great danger:"
Our government's domestic policies are moving uncomfortably parallel to our failed foreign policy. Abroad, we prop up regimes that enrich corporations, oligarchs and despots while the mass of common people suffer, starve and die. At home we are ruled by a shadow government of corporations and oligarchs who find plenty of money for weapons but none for health care or social security. People don't count, democracy is just a word, what's good for business is good for America whose business is war.
Pinochet kept his grip in Chile firm by creating a Death Squad of several Army officers and two infantrymen which traveled from prison to prison in a U.S.-supplied Puma helicopter, picking out those detainees -- all of them held incognito and without charge -- considered most dangerous to the state, murdering them and burying them in unmarked mass graves.
Legislation passed in the Bush Administration, and policies continuing under Obama, could over time lead to that very thing happening here.
Look what's happening -- legally -- to a kid named Bradley Manning.
Monday, January 31, 2011
We Cannot Hear the Chains Break and Fall
Current events limn with absolute clarity the reasons why the American public is the worst-informed citizenry in the civilized world.
Most Americans get most of their "news" from television. The revolution in Egypt makes for great television because it offers so many startling images -- protesters scrambling aboard the tanks sent to suppress them, Molotov cocktails exploding against vehicles, dead bodies, bloodied faces, dramatic clouds of tear gas, evil muslims doing their nasty stuff on prayer rugs, military jets flying menacingly over Cairo. . . the producers must be wetting themselves with joy. Meanwhile, the talking heads and the analysts they bring in to answer their feeble questions, manage to get the story totally wrong even as the images flicker and fascinate in the background.
To correct just a few of their falsehoods: This is not an Islamic uprising. The protesters are from every walk of Egyptian life and every political and religious persuasion except blind support of the U.S. puppet dictator Mubarak. The Muslim Brotherhood is a small but extremely outspoken Islamist sect that has a stake, but not a controlling one, in the revolution. It is not the next al Qaeda, plotting to overthrow the United States by remote control from Cairo. The Egyptian revolution is spontaneous and grassroots; it is a not a creation of 'outside interests" funded by Hamas and Iran. The looters are not part of the revolution; when the police withdrew from public view they turned loose thugs and thieves to loot and plunder as a "lesson" about "anarchy" in the streets. The government did not shut down the internet and create a communications blackout, silencing cell phones and social media. The corporations that provide these services, such as Vodaphone, voluntarily shut them down at the behest of the Mubarak thuggery.
Corporations have an enormous stake in the Egyptian regime and are scrambling to cover their filthy rich asses against its now likely collapse. Boeing, via its Narus subsidiary in Sunnyvale, CA, equipped the dictatorship police with "Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)" hardware used by the regime to target and track dissenting communications over the Internet and mobile phones. The revolution spread far faster than the government's ability to track down and punish opposition figures, so the next step was to silence everything. The corporatocracy that rules America has its fingerprints all over the Mubarak dictatorship: one of its principal lobbyists in Washington is the Podesta group, consultant to giant corporations founded a quarter of a century ago by John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, and his brother, Tony; BAE Systems, General Dynamics, General Electric, Raytheon and Lockeed Martin prominently have sucked up billions of our tax dollars filtered through the Mubarak government to buy weapons and services to keep the despot in power.
You won't learn these things from Fox, CNN or network "news." You've got to monitor Al Jazeera and the BBC, and read the Guardian U.K. For a partial list of other sources worth consulting: http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2011/01/egypt-people-who-might-actually-know-what-theyre-talking-about.html.
* * *
The first producer of "60 Minutes" on CBS, Don Hewitt, and all of his reporters, were acolytes of Edward R. Murrow, the finest broadcast journalist ever to serve this country.
The "60 Minutes" broadcast last night, a hatchet job on Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, was a tragic disgrace to their legacy. Carefully editing more than six hours of interviews to reflect badly on Assange, it was a flagrant example of propaganda as journalism. A single scene serves as an indictment of the entire spectacle: the producers showed a snippet of the infamous "collateral murder" video -- but cut out the footage showing the murder of innocent people in a van.
The New York Observer's headline tells it best: "Who Put the 'BS' in CBS?"
* * *
Another example of the kind of journalism you don't get in this country, either on TV or in print, is the Guardian's clear, concise, brief analysis of our government's dilemma in Egypt, entitled, "White House Wobbles on Egyptian Tightrope."
"In the final analysis," it says, "The U.S. needs a friendly government in Cairo more than it needs a democratic one."
Throughout the Arab world, in response to events in Tunisia and Egypt, views of the common man expose the hypocrisy of that policy.
From Jordan comes the voice of Laith Shbillat:
"People want their freedom, people want their bread, people want to stop these lousy dictators from looting their countries. I'd follow anybody, I 'd follow Vladimir Lenin if he came and led me."
He quotes an Arab poet:
If one day a people desires to live,
Then Fate will answer their call.
And their night will then begin to fade,
And their chains break and fall."
Most Americans get most of their "news" from television. The revolution in Egypt makes for great television because it offers so many startling images -- protesters scrambling aboard the tanks sent to suppress them, Molotov cocktails exploding against vehicles, dead bodies, bloodied faces, dramatic clouds of tear gas, evil muslims doing their nasty stuff on prayer rugs, military jets flying menacingly over Cairo. . . the producers must be wetting themselves with joy. Meanwhile, the talking heads and the analysts they bring in to answer their feeble questions, manage to get the story totally wrong even as the images flicker and fascinate in the background.
To correct just a few of their falsehoods: This is not an Islamic uprising. The protesters are from every walk of Egyptian life and every political and religious persuasion except blind support of the U.S. puppet dictator Mubarak. The Muslim Brotherhood is a small but extremely outspoken Islamist sect that has a stake, but not a controlling one, in the revolution. It is not the next al Qaeda, plotting to overthrow the United States by remote control from Cairo. The Egyptian revolution is spontaneous and grassroots; it is a not a creation of 'outside interests" funded by Hamas and Iran. The looters are not part of the revolution; when the police withdrew from public view they turned loose thugs and thieves to loot and plunder as a "lesson" about "anarchy" in the streets. The government did not shut down the internet and create a communications blackout, silencing cell phones and social media. The corporations that provide these services, such as Vodaphone, voluntarily shut them down at the behest of the Mubarak thuggery.
Corporations have an enormous stake in the Egyptian regime and are scrambling to cover their filthy rich asses against its now likely collapse. Boeing, via its Narus subsidiary in Sunnyvale, CA, equipped the dictatorship police with "Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)" hardware used by the regime to target and track dissenting communications over the Internet and mobile phones. The revolution spread far faster than the government's ability to track down and punish opposition figures, so the next step was to silence everything. The corporatocracy that rules America has its fingerprints all over the Mubarak dictatorship: one of its principal lobbyists in Washington is the Podesta group, consultant to giant corporations founded a quarter of a century ago by John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, and his brother, Tony; BAE Systems, General Dynamics, General Electric, Raytheon and Lockeed Martin prominently have sucked up billions of our tax dollars filtered through the Mubarak government to buy weapons and services to keep the despot in power.
You won't learn these things from Fox, CNN or network "news." You've got to monitor Al Jazeera and the BBC, and read the Guardian U.K. For a partial list of other sources worth consulting: http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2011/01/egypt-people-who-might-actually-know-what-theyre-talking-about.html.
* * *
The first producer of "60 Minutes" on CBS, Don Hewitt, and all of his reporters, were acolytes of Edward R. Murrow, the finest broadcast journalist ever to serve this country.
The "60 Minutes" broadcast last night, a hatchet job on Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, was a tragic disgrace to their legacy. Carefully editing more than six hours of interviews to reflect badly on Assange, it was a flagrant example of propaganda as journalism. A single scene serves as an indictment of the entire spectacle: the producers showed a snippet of the infamous "collateral murder" video -- but cut out the footage showing the murder of innocent people in a van.
The New York Observer's headline tells it best: "Who Put the 'BS' in CBS?"
* * *
Another example of the kind of journalism you don't get in this country, either on TV or in print, is the Guardian's clear, concise, brief analysis of our government's dilemma in Egypt, entitled, "White House Wobbles on Egyptian Tightrope."
"In the final analysis," it says, "The U.S. needs a friendly government in Cairo more than it needs a democratic one."
Throughout the Arab world, in response to events in Tunisia and Egypt, views of the common man expose the hypocrisy of that policy.
From Jordan comes the voice of Laith Shbillat:
"People want their freedom, people want their bread, people want to stop these lousy dictators from looting their countries. I'd follow anybody, I 'd follow Vladimir Lenin if he came and led me."
He quotes an Arab poet:
If one day a people desires to live,
Then Fate will answer their call.
And their night will then begin to fade,
And their chains break and fall."
Saturday, January 29, 2011
'The Long Night of Misery Is Just Beginning'
The Jasmine Revolution has delivered yet another smack in the face to the myth of American moral leadership in the so-called Free World.
The common people of Egypt have taken to the streets to try to bring down the U.S.puppet government of Hosni Mubarak, whose increasingly cruel 30-year rule has been sustained by American dollars, weapons and corporations.
Egypt's massive protests were fueled by the successful revolution in Tunisia which ended the 23-year dictatorship of the American-backed tyrant, President Ben Ali. They come amid similar, if as yet smaller, protests against the repressive U.S.- backed regimes in Jordan, Algeria and Yemen.
When the truncheons, riot shields and tear gas of his corrupt police failed to contain the uprising in Cairo and other cities, Mubarak called in the army whose weaponry he received from his United States benefactors.
[UPDATE: The following is from an AP report Saturday:
His grip on power was further challenged Saturday as the military that he had
deployed to take back control of the streets showed few signs of suppressing
the unrest, and in several cases the army took the side of the protesters in the
capital and the northern port city of Alexandria.
In the most striking instance, members of the army joined with a crowd of
thousands of protesters in a pitched battle against Egyptian security police
officers defending the Interior Ministry on Saturday afternoon.
Protesters crouched behind armored trucks as they advanced on the ministry
building, hurling rocks and a few Molotov cocktails and setting abandoned cars
on fire. But the soldiers providing cover for the advancing protesters refused their
pleas to open fire on the security police, while the police defending the ministry
battered the protesters with tear gas, buckshot and rubber bullets. There were
pools of blood in the streets as protesters carried a number of wounded back out
of their ranks]
Our London correspondent, a former Woodrow Wilson fellow and an award-winning contemporary historian, notes:
"The Arab 'street' is at last rebelling against repressive, tyrannical regimes put in place and kept in place by the U.S. They must be shitting themselves at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. How to 'we' prop up these dictators while maintaining the pretense of supporting freedom, democracy, self-determination etc? And how to 'we' do so without making the mass of the Arab world hate us even more?
"One has to laugh or cry."
Indeed, the Oz world inside the Beltway reverberates these days with those very questions as insiders across the political spectrum offer their solutions -- be more like Bush, be less like Bush, send more aid, cut off aid, teach 'them' more about Democracy. . . .They treat these events, as usual, like moves on a great global chess board for which the U.S. Empire makes the rules and decides who wins and who loses. Nowhere in any of these solutions does any expert exhibit the slightest concern about the people under the heel of these regimes, the people in the streets.
An opposition leader, Mohammed El Baradei, flew in from exile to join them. "Egypt," he said, "is one big prison."
A victim of that prison, who had been raped and tortured by Mubarak's corrupt police, was in the streets, too. "I hope Mubarak dies tonight," he shouted.
Mubarak dismissed his cabinet but vowed to stay on himself as president and to appoint a new government today (Saturday). "My government is stepping down," a protester said, "but I am not. The long night of misery is just beginning."
Some see El Baradei as a potential savior of Egypt. He is a former UN official and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. But on the street his Peace Prize isn't worth a lot. "He should go and share a room with that asshole Ben Ali in his Jidah hotel," a protester said. El Baradei is thought of -- if he is thought of at all -- as a mere political opportunist by the people in the streets.
For three decades he has neither seen nor experienced their abject poverty. Eighty million people in Egypt are hopelessly poor, starving poor. Half the population lives on $2 a day or less. Ghada Shabander, a human rights activist, put it this way: "Egyptians are sick and tired of being corrupted, living on $51 a month. You have two choices: you either become a beggar or a thief. We are not beggars. And we do not want to become thieves." And someone who can afford a newspaper reads to them from a Cairo daily a report that one of Mubarak's top aides has fled the country with 97 suitcases stuffed with cash.
And America? America is the source of the tear gas canisters the police hurl into the protesting mobs. On the street, an Arab man with bruised face and bloody arms holds up a spent canister so that a western reporter can read its markings: "Made in the USA by Combined Tactical Systems, Jamestown, PA." Also made in the USA: the war gear of the troops surging today into Cairo, Suez, Alexandria, Luxor, Mahla and Manoura to put an end to the rising of the people.
Moral leadership, indeed.
The common people of Egypt have taken to the streets to try to bring down the U.S.puppet government of Hosni Mubarak, whose increasingly cruel 30-year rule has been sustained by American dollars, weapons and corporations.
Egypt's massive protests were fueled by the successful revolution in Tunisia which ended the 23-year dictatorship of the American-backed tyrant, President Ben Ali. They come amid similar, if as yet smaller, protests against the repressive U.S.- backed regimes in Jordan, Algeria and Yemen.
When the truncheons, riot shields and tear gas of his corrupt police failed to contain the uprising in Cairo and other cities, Mubarak called in the army whose weaponry he received from his United States benefactors.
[UPDATE: The following is from an AP report Saturday:
His grip on power was further challenged Saturday as the military that he had
deployed to take back control of the streets showed few signs of suppressing
the unrest, and in several cases the army took the side of the protesters in the
capital and the northern port city of Alexandria.
In the most striking instance, members of the army joined with a crowd of
thousands of protesters in a pitched battle against Egyptian security police
officers defending the Interior Ministry on Saturday afternoon.
Protesters crouched behind armored trucks as they advanced on the ministry
building, hurling rocks and a few Molotov cocktails and setting abandoned cars
on fire. But the soldiers providing cover for the advancing protesters refused their
pleas to open fire on the security police, while the police defending the ministry
battered the protesters with tear gas, buckshot and rubber bullets. There were
pools of blood in the streets as protesters carried a number of wounded back out
of their ranks]
Our London correspondent, a former Woodrow Wilson fellow and an award-winning contemporary historian, notes:
"The Arab 'street' is at last rebelling against repressive, tyrannical regimes put in place and kept in place by the U.S. They must be shitting themselves at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. How to 'we' prop up these dictators while maintaining the pretense of supporting freedom, democracy, self-determination etc? And how to 'we' do so without making the mass of the Arab world hate us even more?
"One has to laugh or cry."
Indeed, the Oz world inside the Beltway reverberates these days with those very questions as insiders across the political spectrum offer their solutions -- be more like Bush, be less like Bush, send more aid, cut off aid, teach 'them' more about Democracy. . . .They treat these events, as usual, like moves on a great global chess board for which the U.S. Empire makes the rules and decides who wins and who loses. Nowhere in any of these solutions does any expert exhibit the slightest concern about the people under the heel of these regimes, the people in the streets.
An opposition leader, Mohammed El Baradei, flew in from exile to join them. "Egypt," he said, "is one big prison."
A victim of that prison, who had been raped and tortured by Mubarak's corrupt police, was in the streets, too. "I hope Mubarak dies tonight," he shouted.
Mubarak dismissed his cabinet but vowed to stay on himself as president and to appoint a new government today (Saturday). "My government is stepping down," a protester said, "but I am not. The long night of misery is just beginning."
Some see El Baradei as a potential savior of Egypt. He is a former UN official and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. But on the street his Peace Prize isn't worth a lot. "He should go and share a room with that asshole Ben Ali in his Jidah hotel," a protester said. El Baradei is thought of -- if he is thought of at all -- as a mere political opportunist by the people in the streets.
For three decades he has neither seen nor experienced their abject poverty. Eighty million people in Egypt are hopelessly poor, starving poor. Half the population lives on $2 a day or less. Ghada Shabander, a human rights activist, put it this way: "Egyptians are sick and tired of being corrupted, living on $51 a month. You have two choices: you either become a beggar or a thief. We are not beggars. And we do not want to become thieves." And someone who can afford a newspaper reads to them from a Cairo daily a report that one of Mubarak's top aides has fled the country with 97 suitcases stuffed with cash.
And America? America is the source of the tear gas canisters the police hurl into the protesting mobs. On the street, an Arab man with bruised face and bloody arms holds up a spent canister so that a western reporter can read its markings: "Made in the USA by Combined Tactical Systems, Jamestown, PA." Also made in the USA: the war gear of the troops surging today into Cairo, Suez, Alexandria, Luxor, Mahla and Manoura to put an end to the rising of the people.
Moral leadership, indeed.
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