May The Force Be With You

The End of Hope?

Stephen Miller — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:20:41 EST

Winter Solstice, 2009...

It's become hard to avoid the signs- a phony health-insurance 'reform'-a sweetheart deal to the insurers whose stocks jump to 52-week highs. Wall street is paying itself the biggest bonuses ever while millions lose their homes. During his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Obama justifies War. The result of a months-long reexamination of Afghan policy is a Bush Surge. And on it goes...

(watch Bill Moyers with Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner summing up the situation)

Every single republican voted against the health insurance reform, even the pathetic version that emerged from months of 'debate', tea-parties, armed threats and a media-storm of outright lies.
If a large majority of the voters elect a new administration which promises reform, and the defeated minority party then sets out to block every initiative with the stated goal of destroying the administration and the reform effort, what are we talking about here? A conspiracy to thwart the popular will, and in the larger sense, democracy itself. The current GOP, after all, has no leadership and no program. They are nevertheless UNANIMOUS in opposing everything the people wanted. How can this be? Who do they serve?
Ah. There it is- who DO they serve? Apparently they serve those interests fighting the will of the majority, sabotaging democracy, destroying our confidence in our institutions, making our civic and democratic process a farce.
Whose purpose could that serve? The corporate syndicates, that's who. Because the only threat to the corporate pillaging is an awakened public electing representatives who will bring them to heel through legislation. Everything that has happened in the last year serves to diminish that threat. Think about it.

I had a lot of hope for Obama; hope that he could be a game-changer, the way FDR was.
The disappointment has been growing for 10 months; in spite of the evidence, we'd hoped that maybe he knew what he was doing, that he was smarter than the others, that he could use his mojo to pull it off in the end; we knew that discouraging Obama's base was exactly what the GOP nihilists wanted. And so we held back criticism- until now; now it's too obvious to ignore.
Obama had the public support, he had the wind of history at his back, but we have to face the fact that rather than using the power history offered him, he chose to work with the serial abusers- especially the ones who fund the new corporate democratic party.

Big Day and Thanks, Barack

Stephen Miller — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:18:24 EST

It's been so long since Bush was elected. Finally it will be soon over. And it's been a long time since I watched Obama give the keynote at the 2004 Dem Convention, and said, "That's the guy, the only one who can do it, the dragon-slayer".

Thank you Barack Obama for pulling it off, impeccably, graciously, professionally, convincingly. Thank you for fulfilling the promise you first offered the american public at the outset of the campaign.

Beyond the Paralytic Meme of 'Right or Privilege'

Stephen Miller — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:02:29 EDT

You will hear the question of universal health care, something which all other modern industrial states have implemented, broached in the frame: "Health care- right or privilege?".

This is a paralytic meme. By that I mean it works to paralyze debate and effective action. Few would argue that health care should only be a privilege of a monied elite. The proposition is obviously unsupportable on ethical grounds. But arguing that health-care is a "right" sounds, to those who can afford it, like they'll have to pay for those who can't. And so there is resistance there too. The debate is paralyzed.

The same meme is applied to education, pensions, job security, vacation time, even gun ownership.

In fact, single-payer, affordable universal health-care coverage is the smart thing for a nation's people to do for the good of the nation, and in democracies the people act through their chosen representatives, that is, 'the government'. It's a smart investment in the country's future. Overall good health increases well-being and prosperity.

It would also be smart to offer everyone the opportunity to study through college and degree programs; that would be a smart investment in our future.

To rapidly develop and deploy alternative energy sources, the ones based on free, unlimited, and locally harness-able sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal; that would be smart, a smart investment in our future.

And, while we're at it, the elimination of nuclear weapons; that would be smart. This sword of Damocles doesn't have to hang over our heads, it's not smart.

Smart is a way of thinking.

Which is smart.

Stephen Miller, Dvmx
also: Notes Toward an American Renaissance (2006)

Why McCain May Well Win

Stephen Miller — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:59:04 EDT

Robert Parry's excellent article describes what is also my growing fear- that the corporate MainStream Media's shameless distortions, ellipses, chatterboxing and outright censorship will derange the general public enough to bring McCain within striking distance- or should I say caging distance- of victory in Nov.

"To assume that people will somehow see through such distortions has proven to be naïve in the past. More likely, many millions of Americans will head to the polls in November having internalized a hodgepodge of negative themes about Obama. Indeed, a significant number who have absorbed the uglier accusations will have come to hate him."

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/080608Parry.shtml

New Yorker Cover: The Phoenix Gets it Exactly Right

Stephen Miller — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:51:16 EDT

I think this editorial from Philadelphia's Phoenix gets it eactly right. Here it is (link to original below text):

Context is critical: The New Yorker and the Obamas
07/19/2008

A lot of people have been talking about the notorious New Yorker cover caricature of Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim and Michelle Obama dressed as a violent Black Panther-style revolutionary, exchanging so-called "terrorist fist bumps" in an Oval Office with a portrait of Osama Bin Ladin on the wall and the U.S. flag burning in the fireplace.

Anyone who knows anything about The New Yorker knows that it is a magazine with a long history of intellectual irony and sophisticated satire. Inside, the label "The Politics of Fear" shows that rather than implying some hidden agenda of the Democratic presidential candidate, this illustration is meant to depict conservative distrust, rumors and even deliberate fearmongering about Obama.

Immediately on publication, the controversy started. It's been discussed on radio and TV and in print. Many commentators are outraged; others say they love it.

The New Yorker editor's defense of the cover seems to be that critics just don't get it.

That's not the problem. Really. A lot of people do get it.

But that doesn't make it less irresponsible.

If this was just a question of offending people, of going too far to make a humorous point, it would be far less of a big deal. Taste and satire often clash.

But what makes it a problem is that, however ironically it was meant, it is too easy to take seriously. People who walk by a magazine rack may not look at individual titles of publications, but images can flash off the pages and grab their attention, maybe not enough to make them stop and buy it, but enough to stick in their mind.

A lot of people are never going to see the caption inside the magazine. A lot of people are never going to realize the irony of the image. A lot of people are going to misinterpret it, maybe take it for vindication of their suspicions, and pass on that misinterpretation, and some will probably even misuse it in further cases.

Now, it's true that satire often doesn't come with any explanation or warning label attached. Jonathan Swift's classic 1729 essay, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burden to their Parents or the Country" (by fattening, slaughtering and eating them), was actually taken seriously by a number of readers. That essay stirred outrage, controversy and conversation, as it was meant to do. But the difference is that there was never any danger that the people who took it seriously would take action on it by following the "modest proposal."

The people who take The New Yorker's cover seriously will take negative action on it, by letting it influence their decision on who to vote for in November, and by continuing to spread false rumors.

It's not like the cover will spur positive action as a counterbalance, either. The people who do get the satire are inevitably the people who already discounted the rumors. It's not going to lead to minds being changed. The most the cover does is generate more talk about the topic, and there was already quite a lot, for anyone who was paying attention anyway.

If the words "The Politics of Fear" had been printed on the cover, the caricature would clearly be just that, a humorous exaggeration making a point. But lacking any obvious context, it deserves the criticism it is getting.

The New Yorker seems to be saying "Our readers will get it — the right people will get it — and to heck with anyone else, or any damage it may cause."

If so, if the magazine is about arrogance and inside jokes: insularity, not enlightenment.

Does it have the right to take this attitude and publish this cover? Certainly.

Does it deserve any respect for doing so? Certainly not.

(view original)

George Lakoff: The Mind and the Obama Magic

Stephen Miller — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:16:57 EDT

Great article, a must read. Here's an excerpt:

"...There are two major modes of thought in American politics -- conservative and progressive, what I've called "strict" and "nurturant." We all grow up with brains exposed to both and capable of using both, but usually in different areas of life. Some people are conservative on foreign policy and progressive on domestic policy, or conservative on economic issues and progressive on social issues -- or the reverse. There is no left-to-right linear spectrum; all kinds of combinations occur. I've called such folks "biconceptuals." Brainwise, they show a common situation called "mutual inhibition," where two modes of thought are possible but the activation of one inhibits the other. The more you activate a conservative mode of thought, the more you inhibit the progressive mode of thought -- and the more likely it is that the conservative mode of thought will spread to other issues.

Interestingly, many people who call themselves "conservatives" actually think like progressives on a range of issue areas. For example, many "conservatives" love the land as much as any environmentalist; want to live in communities where people care about each other, that is, have social not just individual responsibility; live progressive business principles of honestly, care for their employees, and care for the public; and have progressive religious values: helping the poor, caring for the sick, being good stewards of the God's creation, turning the other cheek. One view of "bipartisanship" for progressives is finding self-described conservatives and independents who have such progressive values and working with them on that basis. That's what Obama did when he went to Rick Warren's megachurch and it is his strategy in Project Joshua. Note that this is the opposite of the form of bipartisanship that involves really adopting right-wing values, or even appearing to. What this bipartisan strategy does, from the brain's viewpoint, is to activate the progressive mode of thought in the brains of conservatives, and thus tends to inhibit conservative thought.

But the form of bipartisanship that involves adopting, or appearing to adopt, right-wing views has the opposite effect. It strengthens conservative thought in the brains on those biconceptuals and weakens progressive thought. In short, it actually helps conservatives. Rather than "taking arguments away from them" it strengthens their basic values and hence all their arguments. It give conservatives more reason, not less, for voting for conservatives..."

(read the article)

NYTimes: Scathing Editorial

Stephen Miller — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:32:23 EDT

In an editorial today titled: "New and Not Improved", The Times rips Obama with a litany of his recent compromises.

"Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush's abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.
Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings...

"We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama's shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

"There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don't want any "redefining" on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in."
____

What's up with that Barack?

Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/opinion/04fri1.html

Change is Coming

Stephen Miller — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:46:26 EDT

Looking over some YouTubes of Obama speeches over the course of the campaign, I was really moved by this phenomenon, by the excitement and the promise. We have done it, wow. Obama will be the next president. WOW.

Change is coming, now for sure, and you can see it in the crowds, you can see it in the Bushman's face.

Now we can begin mobilizing our talents to reform our war-drunk economy and foreign policy, to address the threats of climate change and endangered food supply, secure our middle class, introduce health care for all, and redress the awful image we have given ourselves in the world at large.

A big task, but how rarely do we get a chance to remake the game? Let's begin.

Jon Stewart Sums it Up

Stephen Miller — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:09:34 EDT

Watch his take on the conclusion of the primary here.

Finally!

Stephen Miller — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:31:59 EDT

America is now on the threshold of a new age. Bravo, folks! Bravo, Obama!

Hillary, Are You Finished Yet?

Stephen Miller — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:20:17 EDT

Hillary's supporters in the audience at the DNC meeting last Saturday were, strange to say, bullying- yes, bullying the meeting. A very unpleasant spectacle. Has Hillary inadvertently awakened a monster? The angry white irrational middle-aged women demographic?

Obama Has The Key to Change

Stephen Miller — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:33:07 EDT

A few years back I wrote about the public's and the media's appetite for "attitude" rather than knowledge and judgement (see below the fold).

Seeing the effect of Obama's "race" speech last week, I think he succeeded in taking the steam out of all the attitude mongering, and set people, a little dazed, on a path of knowledge. This is something new for us Americans, and gives us pause, and perhaps the Hope that we might begin to get past the obsession with "attitude" over knowledge and judgement.

I think this speech and it's effect on people is basically what has turned the invisible tide in the last week, resulting in Richardson finally feeling safe enough to come out for Obama.

This ability of Obama to change the consciousness from sheer attitude to compassionate thinking is the real key to bringing about the change we want.

I hope he will give another speech of this importance every month from now until the November election- this would go a long way to preparing fertile ground for the changes we want to see, and would make for an inspiring campaign.

Obama needs to take the bull by the horns

Stephen Miller — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:21:30 EST

Danny Goldberg writes in the TPM Cafe:

March 7, 2008, 5:23PM

"The recent drama about NAFTA demonstrates that Barack Obama cannot effectively run against Hillary Clinton without criticizing the Bill Clinton administration.

At times it has seemed as if Obama wanted to identify with the 1992 version of Bill Clinton who was approximately the same age Obama is now and now was the last Democrat to actually win.

But Obama needs to differentiate himself from Bill Clinton as much as he does from Hillary Clinton. To the extent that voters want a third Clinton term there is no rationale for denying Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination. It is not plausible to depict her as having been a typical First Lady who merely did ceremonial work. She was an integral part of the Clinton administration. That is both her asset and her liaibility. Obama needs to take the bull by the horns and should take another line form John Kennedy's 1960 playbook: ”We can do better.”

The excitement that Obama has created thus far is not because of the ways he resembles Bill Clinton but because of the ways he is different from both Clintons and both Bushes. Part of his traction came from a lack of excitement about Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton.

One subtext of the Clinton campaign is that Obama is not ideologically different from Hillary. That is the supposed “fairy take,” Bill Clinton was talking about. If Obama is the same except for his eloquence, the argument goes, voters should go with the familiar brand name.

While acknowledging that Bill Clinton was most certainly better than either George Bush he must also remind voters that because of a lack of Presidential leadership during Clinton's time in office, Democrats lost both Houses of Congress. Bill Clinton failed to get national health care. He failed to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. Bill Clinton failed to achieve labor law reform such as EFCA to make it easier for unions to organize. He failed to substantially increase the minimum wage. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA. The disparity of wealth between rich and poor grew during Clinton’s administration as well as Bush’s . America can do better.

Bill Clinton's administration introduced the language of “regime change” which set the stage for the disasterous war in Iraq. This is part of the “mind-set” that led to war. Bill Clinton let genocide happen in Rwanda. America can do better.

Bill Clinton reinforced the conservative paradigm when he claimed that the era of big government was over. This helped enable the further deterioration of the Bush years. Obama needs to remind Democrats voters what their real beliefs are-and how both Clintons triangulated away from them. Democrats can do better.

Bill Clinton was a good President but not a great one. He didn’t change the landscape of American politics in the long-term. Such a transformation and not a third Clinton term is what America needs.That’s the case Obama needs to make because if Americans believe that the best they can get out of the federal government is what Bill Clinton had to offer, they might as well go with Hillary Clinton."

The Clintons, Monsanto, and the End of Food As We Know It

Stephen Miller — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:46:07 EST

The following open letter from a classmate of Hillary's reminds me why it is preferable not to have the Clintons back in the White House. It is also a shocking survey of, one has to say, the evil activities of this corporation, along with it's strategic infiltration of the Clinton White House and potentially the Hillary White House too.

Note: GE= genetically engineered; GMO= Genetically modified organism.

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton From a Wellsley College Alumna
Sunday, 03 February 2008
Submitted to Truth To Power by Linn Cohen-Cole

Dear Hillary,
By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.
I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they'd ever experienced
And farmers couldn't collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto "patents" their DNA-altered seeds as "intellectual property." They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. (http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17/). Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.
Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?
You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food- related roles. Your Orwellian-named "Rural Americans for Hillary" was planned with Troutman Sanders, Monsanto's lobbyists.
Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world's largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE's most controversial project (DP&L's - now Monsanto's - terminator genes), the world's largest meat producer (Tyson), the world's largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (WalMart).
The inbred-ness of Rose's legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other's corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, WalMart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.
You didn't just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart's board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000).

Food and friends, in Clinton terms:
Bill's appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson's chicken factory farms. Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, .... Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.
But what Bill did for Monsanto "genetic engineering" goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people's escape from it.
Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from "normal" (even polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora'a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill's put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more ... (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or( http://wwwmonitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html) or (http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm)

2. Bill's FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill's FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even "a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base" had no impact."

4. Bill's FDA wouldn't even label rBGH as "present" in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose, Bill's USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto's counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill's FDA enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill's FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in "organic" standards, "the dirty three": genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. (My emphasis.) The FDA backed down.
Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk ... as "organic." And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.
USDA head Dan Glickman: "This is probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history." In fact the response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

Personally, I resent having spent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public's right to know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto's GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity.

Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). "[E] ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company." The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM traits.

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals - more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill's USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I will say more about disease from industrialized poultry farms waste, at the end of this letter.

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill's USFDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all). (My emphasis.)

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food exports - badly straining trading relations. Monsanto's "good ole boy," he betrayed American families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family's health and their democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American family farmers - backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean farming.

But, HIllary, it is one thing to not label a regular ole food product to sell it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food product (rBGH), but Bill's administration didn't label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow Disease.
Bill's FDA's August, 1997 regulation permitted "known TSE-positive [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed," only requiring the label to read "Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants" in the US.
Monsanto added to the problem. "There is evidence that rbST use [Monsanto's GE bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy cow. ... Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor "hidden" BSE. That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic when sent to slaughter." (My emphasis.) http://www.consumersunion.org/food/bgh-codex.htm
Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and slaughter and genetic engineering corporations whch benefitted?
Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to this?

With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole world, which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

"Even for the biggest "winners," it is like winning at poker on the Titanic." Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right.

Do you hear that?

Bill had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That's "dinky immoral." That's chicken feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.

"Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years...Tens of thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into the Earth's ecosystems...Some of those releases, however, could wreak havoc with the planet's biospheres." Jeremy Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb ass Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys, thinking about as much about the consequences of something this immense and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you, when he was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on the power and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes, developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds from "working" after only one season. Farmers "must" repurchase (patents and suing not certain enough control, it seems). Those "killing" genes pose the apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could fail, too. Nature could fail.
Far-fetched?

GMO fields are already contaminating normal species Berkeley Professor of Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in maize.
And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO seeds break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds.

But Bill's USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the technology to be `widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies.'

"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University.

Hillary, one third of the world's bee colonies have collapsed. Gone. Farmers in India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse, what does these farming catatrophes say about "industrial agriculture"?

Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture. And now ....... transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source of bird flu. ... Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be the problem (just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow Disease), and yet "initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. . http://www.ens- newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp "Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out in commercial poultry operations, not free-ranging flocks."
Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA to force small farmers to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety, Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital library on every move of small farmers's livestock.

But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not supply the feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began) and then sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale, are significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the massive concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers' right to choose what to plant and the public's right exclude GE plants from their communities.

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal seeds, immense pollution from factory farms, deadly-disease-ridden feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water supplies, Superweeds, lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms, and ... India farmers killing themselves in what may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on average ... one farmers' suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu 1.30.08) - that is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural corporations in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law Firm.
Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given what Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose corporate connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah, but "foreign" food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for safe US food. You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane labeling.
I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a media distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and children, are meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those groups profoundly, connections you have never denounced.
Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls, exposing them to a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. But you take donations from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but as the poorest people in this country, they are least able to buy organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods Bill let into our food system. The National Black Farmers Association has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?
So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or Monsanto? Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto? Women exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto? Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering from lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our children who eat candy with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver toxicity, or Monsanto?

Edwards was right about your corporate connections. I just didn't understand until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have been.
I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking us off a cliff.

Linn Cohen-Cole Atlanta

Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely seems to have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and beautiful part of our world and hope, for all our children's sake, we are not too late to pull back.

In The Lead Now...

Stephen Miller — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:50:20 EST

Bravo! Obama has won all states on Saturday Feb 9 primaries and caucuses!

Unfortunately, my own state, New Mexico, is still unable to give the results of the primary last week! How weird is that? The democratic party leaders of New Mexico have taken responsibility for the fiasco- at least verbally- but they have not resigned, which they should do if they really do take responsibility.

Turnout suppression in New Mexico?

Stephen Miller — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:04:00 EST

Tomorrow is the big primary! After the amazing crowd that attended- or in many cases like me tried to attend, the Obama friday night event, we were set for a whopper of a turnout here in Santa Fe for the big primary vote on Tuesday.

But already we are seeing trouble... I learned this morning that state employees will not be given the traditional two hours off to vote; they'll get none in fact. New Mexico has a huge proportion of state workers, so this could seriously suppress turnout.

Add to this the fact that, at least here in Santa Fe, only half the polling places are to be used, so that everyone must find out whether they have been re-assigned, and if so, to where...

And that the polling times, normally 7-7, are tomorrow only 12 noon to 7 pm.

The problem with all this is that the Governor, Bill Richardson, is a Clinton supporter.

More to come...

Dvmx.com Endorsing Obama

Stephen Miller — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:27:55 EST

Dvmx.com is endorsing Barack Obama.

"...with Obama something could happen here that we long for, something that hasn't happened in 40 years in this country. We might find again our better natures, rejoin the community of nations, rejoin the future, and inspire ourselves and the world once again. Everyone can sense it around Obama, a kind of historic magnetism; let the torch pass to a new generation..."

More at Dvmx.com

Obama Slips in New Hampshire

Stephen Miller — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:08:34 EST

Surprisingly, Hillary came from behind (at least according to the pre-vote polls).

Some say her wet-eyed moment rallied women to turn out for her.

I was a bit worried already though, before the vote. Because in Obama's last speech I felt there was too much of a Martin Luther King cadence, which evoked MLK and those times and struggles in a more than subtle way. Now Hillary had suffered in Iowa from too much 90's nostalgia; Obama was the bolt from a fresh future; he has to be careful now, particularly in South Carolina, not to cloak himself in cadences and references to past struggles, past heroes, because they are the past, and people want to see in him a fresh break from the past..

Paul and Huckabee: Abolish the IRS

Stephen Miller — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:42:19 EST

Two Republican candidates, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, have both called for the elimination of the IRS and the income tax. Instead, government revenues would come from a national sales tax, with adjustments so as not to penalize lower income households*.

Abolish the IRS, and put an end to payroll taxes, witholding taxes, income taxes, and capital gains taxes- rewarding earnings, savings and investment, while shifting the tax burden to consumption, which we can all agree we do too much of anyway. It makes great sense. Maybe our citizens would discover the pleasures of saving money, and if they did, they'd be investing it in our future, and earning tax-free profits on our growth. We have the reverse now, where we deepen our debt hole, increasing a negative investment in the future.

Could there not be a huge appeal in this idea? Even beyond the visceral shout of joy we may feel at the idea of ending the IRS and the income tax, surely one of the greatest causes of anxiety and trouble for the citizen, the IRS is also the foundational rationalisation for the government's invasion of personal privacy, which has lately run amok. Certainly for someone like me, an independent contractor, keeping track of myriad small revenue occasions and explaining and framing every detail to a federal agency is a tremendous pain. Abolishing taxes on income and earnings, and making up the revenue with a modified VAT [value-added tax]. It makes a lot of sense in an age of toxic over-consumption, shrinking income in the middle class, and negative savings rates, to tax consumption, not earnings and savings.

I wonder if abolishing the IRS can emerge as a pivotal issue in 2008. For one thing, politicians and talking heads are fundamentally lazy, and this one sounds likeit could be complicated. And there must be tens of millions of people who live off the whole income tax lollapalooza, they'll want to keep this quiet too.

More importantly perhaps, we measure the health of our economy by the growth in consumer spending, regardless of growing debt. You hear the monthly reports, 'Consumer spending, which represents 72 percent of the economy, grew in the last quarter....'

This is a pretty stupid way of measuring the health of the economy-

Changing our measuring along with abolishing the IRS, we might hear instead something along these lines: ' Economists are buoyant on the nation's health- over the last month, earnings increased 5%, individual savings increased 4.8% , and investment increased 4%, while consumption grew at a low 1.1%...'

Unfortunately, this is an idea that is not part of any of the democratic candidates' policy promises.

*In France in the 70's for example, VAT rates were at the maximum on luxury goods, and diminshed to zero on necessities. Huckabee has proposed a 'prebate' of the percent of the individual's income that would be collected in the VAT. (This opens the door to federal inspection of income records, which could snowball into a mini-IRS. The French solution avoids this.)

New Hampshire eve post

Stephen Miller — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:38:20 EST

Well, it has begun. Obama cleared his opponents by a whopping 8% in Iowa. You can feel the swell now, it's exciting. Shades of JFK. The torch is passed...

Edwards edged out Hillary. Hillary let her candidacy be too much about the Clinton years (her 'experience'), about her and Bill, and ultimately about her. ('It's personal for me').

Seems like a lot of people may like her, but want something new, no more Bushes and Clintons, something very different, and they see that in Obama.

I still love Edwards; and am glad he will continue for a while, speaking to the people, telling the truth the media won't countenance.

I'm expecting a solid Obama win in New Hampshire, and a lot of momentum going to Michigan, where he will win again.

As for the Repubs, McCain may finally get his day in New Hampshire, but it won't last, and it may not be as big as he hopes, since many independents who might have voted for him will vote for Obama.

I'm curious to see if the Huckster's geniality and 'populism' can overcome a prejudice against southern baptist creationists in New Hampshire. I'm ready to be surprised, the Huckster has great charm and appeal.

On the eve of Iowa Caucuses

Stephen Miller — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:21:03 EST

My money's on Obama tomorrow to win the Iowa caucuses. To go out on a limb, I'd say by 2 percentage points, with Edwards second and Hilary aclose third.

Obama's been building serious support in a serious way while others dance for the cameras and the polls. Fingers crossed.

On the repub side. I'm guessing Huckabee then Romeny 5 points behind, very close to McCain.

Paul Krugman: Obama Played for a Sucker

Stephen Miller — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 13:41:42 EST

Paul Krugman's Nov. 16 NYT column hits on a critical problem for Obama. In this case it's his recent remarks on Social Security, but I think it applies to all spheres, and explains why Obama has sometimes seemed meek when others are speaking with far stronger voices.
Excerpts:
"I don’t believe Mr. Obama is a closet privatizer. He is, however, someone who keeps insisting that he can transcend the partisanship of our times — and in this case, that turned him into a sucker.
"Mr. Obama wanted a way to distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton — and for Mr. Obama, who has said that the reason “we can’t tackle the big problems that demand solutions” is that “politics has become so bitter and partisan,” joining in the attack on Senator Clinton’s Social Security position must have seemed like a golden opportunity to sound forceful yet bipartisan.??
"But Social Security isn’t a big problem that demands a solution; it’s a small problem, way down the list of major issues facing America, that has nonetheless become an obsession of Beltway insiders. And on Social Security, as on many other issues, what Washington means by bipartisanship is mainly that everyone should come together to give conservatives what they want. ??
"We all wish that American politics weren’t so bitter and partisan. But if you try to find common ground where none exists — which is the case for many issues today — you end up being played for a fool. And that’s what has just happened to Mr. Obama."
-Krugman's column (NYT 11/16/07)

Obama on Meet The Press Nov 11

Stephen Miller — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:59:24 EST

I'm watcning Obama's appearance on MTP. I must say, it's not exactly electrifying. Obama seems so wary of Russert's endless gotcha-baiting that the best he can do is appear impressively sober and thoughtful.He doesn't quite rise to the level of successfully imposing a bigger persepective on the "issues" (gotcha-bait) that Russert throws at him.
In the meantime, Dennis Kucinich has led the charge to stop the expansion of executive powers and block further military adventures. Bravo. Can't help but wonder what it would be like if it was Obama leading this charge.
But Obama's not doing that. Perhaps it's simply caution. Too bad, though, we'll never know. Maybe if he win's the nomination, he'll come out really fighting and we'll see the promised charisma power in action.
Or maybe he will avoid attacking the Reich forces thinking he can broker compromise, a skill he claims as a personal forte. He'd be wrong there, I'd guess.

The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran

Stephen Miller — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:02:16 EDT

Hoping that Obama speaks to this...
Esquire Magazine: The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know
link

Will Obama Pledge to Roll Back the Police State?

Stephen Miller — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:51:42 EDT

Naomi Wolf:(http://www.alternet.org/rights/62407/?page=entire)

"If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

· Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

Telecom Immunity- Where is Barack?

Stephen Miller — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:06:42 EDT

I'm waiting to hear of Barack will support the courageous hold which Chris Dodd put on this latest outrage. Let's not forget that the telecom CEO who refused to collaborate in the illegal enterprise back in Feb 2001 (yes, that's 7 months before 911!) was charged and convicted of insider trading and sent to jail. (Cheney's tracks here- always hit the top guy first- the rest will crumple) He is now appealing, claiming he was punished for refusing to allow Qwest to participate. (Qwest, having gotten the message, later joined in, and is now among those Companies seeking immunty).

So we give the collaborators immunity and prosecute the one guy who stood up to them?

Where is Barack on this?

Wallerstein: Can Barack reverse the decline?

Stephen Miller — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:21:15 EDT

Immanuel Wallerstein writes in AgenceGlobal.com:
"The bubble in U.S. stocks may possibly continue for a little while longer. But in a decade, the United States may be embarrassingly far behind the Japanese (and the South Koreans, and even the French) in informatics, which everyone is always saying is one of the key sectors of today's capitalist economy.

This is the way that hegemonic decline builds on itself. The leading country concentrates on the short-term situation, and overinvests in unfruitful military expenditure. Speculation replaces innovation as the source of profits. And before one knows it, the others (in this case the Japanese, but not they alone) speed ahead controlling the technology of the future. This is what the United States did when it was, oh so long ago, an ascending economic power.

The only way to turn this around, even partially, is a major cultural shift in the United States. George W. Bush is not at all ready even to think about it. Are Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama ready to exert their leadership in this direction? Nothing is less sure."

Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).
http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1384

Follow up thoughts after last Democratic debate

Stephen Miller — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:54:09 EDT

Follow up thoughts after last Democratic debate
Hillary sure showed some mastery; showed she could steer the Russert bull by the horns and end up with an audience laugh.
Someone said on MTP Obama is like a thoroughbred still in the barn, and wondered at what point he'd come out and really run to win. I think there's some truth in that, and I think he's smart. The election is a year away.The nomination, still 5 months of play. For several reasons, he'd prefer Hill to be the assumed front runner in the beginning; maybe he'd rather be the closing consensus than the early consensus, maybe he plans a closing sprint.
Obama, and the others, missed a chance to disable a frequently deployed tactic of divisiveness re immigration- 'are you for sanctuary cities or tough enforcement of the law'. The answer should be 'I want to reform the immigration system so it works better for everyone; we reform it by reforming the laws; and so a prerequisite for reforming the system is enforcing the laws, so that reforms can be effective. Insofar as the system is not working currently, we need to be flexible with some of the ad-hoc developments which have occurred at the local level particularly to address the humanitarian issues involved. In addition we may learn things from these efforts which we'll need to address in the reform'
Re the 'How long will troops be in Iraq if you are president?' question, the answer should be 'Don't be fooled by this kind of question- there are those who want to continue combat operations in Iraq until the last resistance is destroyed; I am not one of them, I believe the nature of the occupation creates resistance, attracts extremists, and endangers the whole region. There are those who want a permanent US military presence in Iraq. I am not one of them, I think that would be unsustainable and a grave mistake. This administration has however left us a terrible mess in the mideast, and I would be rash to make promises at this time concerning this or that tactical timing in pursuit of our goal of ending the occupation and bringing our troops home as soon as possible.'
Re our other candidates: Must say Dodd impresses. He has resonance, he is ripe for the job.
Gotta love that Gravel. He should get a position in the white house- 'crazy truth-teller'.
Kucinich as always excellent. We dems so proud of having a black candidate, a female candidate, but Kucinich is assumed to have no chance because he is... slight in stature? Is that really it? Or is the Complex spreading that meme through the MSM? Ask your friends- who cares if Kuci only weighs 140? How many pound does a president need to weigh?
Love Edwards. Can imagine a happy day with him president.
We have a bunch of great people running, any one of whom I'd like to see president.Too bad we can't elect them all - a board of enlightened directors for the country.
All the Repubs have is fear, greed, and mediocrity; but still I worry they might find a way. We never did bust the swift-boaters, in fact their financier got an ambassador post. So we can expect that, in the very least.

Brzezinski Endorses Obama

Stephen Miller — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:05:34 EDT

Zbig has endorsed Obama. I'm relieved to know Obama has this top-notch anti-neo-con strategist on board. And Zbig's early endoresement, and his reasons given for it, will make it harder to characterize Obama as too inexperienced.
And meanwhile, if you missed it, here is the famous Obama Girl video:

Obama Lines Up Behind Neo-Conservative Campaign Against Iran

Stephen Miller — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:09:00 EDT

From Lobelog.com:
Obama Lines Up Behind Neo-Conservative Campaign Against Iran
"Neo-conservatives, some of whom have claimed to see hopeful glimmers in Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign-policy positions of the kind of interventionism that gets them excited , should be further heartened by the presidential hopeful’s sponsorship of a new bill that, if passed, is certain to increase tensions not only with Iran, but with Washington’s European allies as well.The bill, the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007, would require the federal government to publish a list of U.S. overseas subsidiaries and foreign companies that have invested more than $20 million dollars in Iran’s energy sector. It would also authorize state and local governments to divest the assets of their pension and other funds from any company on that list and protect fund managers who divest from listed companies from lawsuits by investors unhappy with the results."
LobeLog.comLink />Jim Lobe is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration. The Washington Bureau Chief of the international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS), Lobe has also written for Foreign Policy In Focus, Alternet, Tompaine.com, and was featured in BBC and ABC television documentaries about motivations for the US invasion of Iraq.
This is disturbing; and while it is likely that these measures were sold as part of the State Dept's 'diplomatic strategy' package, as an alternative to Cheny's attack-lust, the difference is dubious when viewed from the Iranian perspective- strangle them slowly and if that doesn't work, a military assault 'is still on the table'; or don't waste time strangling, attack now.
We need some bold moves toward peace and cooperation in the Mid-East; these measures simply constitute a somewhat lesser degree of belligerance toward Iran, and serve to continue dangerously narrowing the frame of possible response to Iran's growing presence on the regional stage.
Obama must make it clear that he is not to be an enabler of the warmongering neo-cons; and is ready to lead our foreign policy in a new direction.
S. Miller

Edwards Major Speech at Council on Foreign Relations

Stephen Miller — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:28:29 EDT

Edwards shows he's the real deal here.
What about our man Obama?
"We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes. By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set- that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam."
advance exerpts: Link />transcript: Link

Amnesty: Cowardly Leaders Pushing Fear

Stephen Miller — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:24:59 EDT

From the Amnesty International 2007 Report on Human Rights:
"Today far too many leaders are trampling freedom and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears: fear of being swamped by migrants; fear of "the other" and of losing one's identity; fear of being blown up by terrorists; fear of "rogue states" with weapons of mass destruction.Fear thrives on myopic and cowardly leadership. There are indeed many real causes of fear, but the approach being taken by many world leaders is short-sighted, promulgating policies and strategies that erode the rule of law and human rights, increase inequalities, feed racism and xenophobia, divide and damage communities, and sow the seeds for violence and more conflict."
read it at Link

Selling The Fear

Stephen Miller — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:39:39 EDT

In the recent debate among democratic candidates for the presidency, moderator Brian Williams asked them, 'Who are the three worst enemies of America?"

The truth is, America has no "enemies" but those we make ourselves. A little recent history is in order. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire, it looked like giant ams budgets, nuclear standoffs, and cruel proxy wars would be things of the past. We would now turn to quality of life issues like education, ameliorating poverty, breakthroughs in medicine and health care services, and dealing with pollution and global warming. We had the visions of Hubble and the promise of space exploration, the birth of the Web, and dreams of tele-operation and virtual reality, and a dizzying acceleration in scientific advances bringing us magical gadgets and startling discoveries.

But something happened along the way, and now, after 6 years of Bush and Cheney, we are mired in fearful talk of "enemies" who "want to kill us"; once again we spend half our nation's budget on war preparations, yet this is more than all other countries combined. How could the so powerful be so insecure? What happened to the glorious post-cold-war future we were envisioning? Well for one thing, we have a new model of "enemy" - shadowy networks of stateless plotters and assassins; so now we shall always be insecure no matter how vastly more powerful our military than all others; it is a formula for the permanence of Eisenhower's "military industrial complex".

Remember what Georgi Arbatov, Gorbachev's close aide and top Kremlin 'Americanologist' told the US as the Soviet Union was disintegrating... "We will do a terrible thing to you; we will deprive you of an enemy". That was in March of 1990. By the summer of that year, then-president George Bush Sr had a plan to keep the military industrial complex in profitable business well into the future, in spite of the loss of our enemy. The US would instigate and lead ad-hoc coalitions of friendly states to discipline, punish, and if necessary, destroy dangerous "rogue states". This would be the New World Order. Of course 'rogue states' could mean any state which resisted the "Washington Consensus" and had the audacity to arm itself in defense. But these subtle details were not for the public. For the public, an example was needed, one which could be puffed up into a frightening 'enemy', then dealt with militarily by the righteous fury of a US-led coalition, thus establishing the paradigm for the New World Order, and ensuring decades of further prosperity for the military-industrial complex.

So our old buddy Saddam, fresh from warring on Iran with our help, was lured into an invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Now Saddam was a new Hitler, his armies were ferocious and threatened even our ally and principal oil-source, Saudi Arabia... or so we told them, and we got those bases we wanted there, in the Holy Land of Islam, and we rolled back the dictator with little loss of life or treasure on our side. Success- the New World Order was now clear and confirmed, and along the way, America massively expanded it's military presence in the region. Everyone was happy.

Except Osama bin Laden, who had petitioned the Saudi King to allow him to lead his warriors (fresh from victory over the Soviet Empire in Afghanistan) to drive the godless aggressor Saddam from Kuwait. The King went with the Americans instead. Bin Laden considered the monarchy a colluder from that point on, and the removal of the American military bases in Iraq would later become his principle demand as he turned his guns on America.

And there was a faction of the ruling regime in Washington that was unhappy too. The 'realists' who held sway through Bush the First called them 'the crazies'. These were the men who later in the decade signed on to the "Project for the New American Century", now known as the "neo-cons", who entered en masse the administration of George W. Bush. These men had been discredited in the eighties for hyping an imminent Soviet threat; since the CIA found their allegations doubtful, they ran an alternative "intelligence" assessment called "Plan B" to push their war-mongering fantasies and claims that Gorbachev was tricking us with his end-of-the-cold-war talk, and was actually preparing a surprise attack; this nonsense continued right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The neo-cons did not like the Bush Sr. New World Order. They thought that since America was now unrivaled in it's military might, it should take the opportunity to... well, rule the world. They wanted Bush Sr. to go all the way to Baghdad, depose Saddam, and take over Iraq as an object lesson to anyone who dared oppose us, and as a base from which to better impose our will on the region. During the Clinton interlude, these men plotted in the comfort of various right-wing think-tanks, notably the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute; their mouthpieces in the mainstream press, Safire, Kristol, Perle, Krauthammer, Will, et al, continued to press their talking points, and in 2001 they came to power under Mr. Cheney and the ignorant and pliant Bush Jr.

This background helps us understand why, after the attacks of 911, the Taliban's offer to turn over Bin Laden to a third country for trial was spurned in favor of military action. We didn't ever get Bin Laden of course, but we did get Afghanistan and the oil pipelines from the trans-Caucasus region the neo-cons and their oil-industry allies wanted. And we showed the world; we kicked butt.

It helps explain why, rather than treating Al Quaeda as a criminal enterprise best destroyed by determined intelligence and police work, they declared a 'War". A "War on Terror". It helps explain why, when Saddam gave free rein to the weapons inspectors in 2002, turned over a mountain of documents as demanded, and even offered through a back-channel to retire and go into exile, we insisted on invading Iraq, destroying the Iraqi state, and occupying that country, thus enormously boosting the appeal of Bin Ladenism and anti-American attitudes in general. We had a chance to solve the problem multilaterally and they preferred to wage a war of conquest. We had a chance to play a crucial part in the more gradual emergence of good governance in that already secular state, thus developing a bulwark against the kind of Islamic extremism which underlay Al Queda. But no, they wanted to use the war machine, to have an "enemy", to show the world that messing with America was suicidal. That was more important than being smart about solving whatever problems there were.

In spite of the utter disaster this mindset has wrought in Iraq, their efforts continue in the same vein today- now with Iran. Mr. Cheney et al have been threatening Iran with a nuclear attack for over a year now. We have in fact three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf as i write this, and while massive domestic and international resistance seems to have temporarily postponed an assault, the danger is still very much there. Now we find out that the Iranians had made a concerted effort in 2002 to offer a grand bargain of peaceful resolution of disputes with the US, only to be spurned, once again, by Cheney and his war-mongering cohort.

By now it should be clear that these people have no interest in the peaceful resolution of disputes, but rather look for opportunities to unilaterally exert American military dominance as a matter of principle. It should be clear that they have no interest in participating in an enlightened world community, but rather aspire to rule the world the way the Republicans ruled Congress until this year- by brute force in service of corrupt selfish interest. It should be clear that this mentality is disastrous for our nation and the world. Those who have promoted this pathology and aided and abetted these conspiracies bear much of the blame for the mess that's occurred, and should be outed and discredited, retired from their pulpits in the main stream media, and set out to pasture once and for all.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this essay, with Brian Williams' question to the Democratic candidates. "Who are the three worst enemies of America?" (The rest of his questions, if you read the transcript were just as tendentious.) Williams works for NBC, and NBC is owned by General Electric, a top defense contractor and founding member of the military industrial complex. Yes, the very ones who need "enemies" to prosper.

Brian Williams: "Senator Gravel, same question: Other than Iraq, the three most important enemies to the United States?"

Senator Gravel: "We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals. And we don't do that. We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together. Who are we afraid of? Who are you afraid of, Brian? I'm not. And Iraq has never been a threat to us. We invaded them. I mean, it is unbelievable. The military industrial complex not only controls our government, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture."

Brzezinski Denounces "War on Terror" - Where's Obama on This?

Stephen Miller — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:22:33 EDT

Zbigniew Brzezinski recently attacked the White House's "War on Terror" in an op-ed in the Washington Post. It's worth reprinting the first paragraphs here. The rest of the article is at Link

Terrorized by 'War on Terror'How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America
By Zbigniew BrzezinskiSunday, March 25, 2007; Page B01

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.
The damage these three words have done - a classic self-inflicted wound - is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare - political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants. But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."
To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.
The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own - and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.....
The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

more at Link

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is the author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" (Basic Books).

"Where is the U.S. leader to say 'enough of this hysteria'"? Asks Zbig.

Are we not all hoping that Obama will prove to be that leader?

I am.

Stephen Miller
Dvmx.com

Insane Income Gap

Stephen Miller — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:20:24 EDT

Jonathan Tasini writes today at the Huffington Post on the most recent income gap study:

-quote-

David Cay Johnston's piece today in The New York Times entitled"Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows." Johnston has long been one of the best reporters in the MSM keeping tracking of the on-going class warfare in the country. Here are the killer first grafs:

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans -- those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 -- receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.
The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

So, the bottom line is this: the economy may be growing--that is, a lot of stuff is being made and sold--but the GDP growth is telling us very little about what that means for the average person. Income distribution is a much better barometer--and the facts there are quite astounding. It's pretty clear whyworkers are feeling anxious about the future. They are strapped, while the top one percent are not.

Which brings me to another point I've made: with these figures making clear that the top one percent of income earners are continuing to reap an unconscionable slice of the nation's income, why is the Democratic Party not making the rolling back of the Bush tax cuts a top priority? Yes, Bush will veto any such attempt. But, the public will be with us.

-endquote-

I'm looking forward to Obama tackling this issue head on, and putting an end to the rubbish the RNC spews to delude Americans about where their real interest lies.

AIPAC Success Clears Way for Iran Attack- Russian military sources

Stephen Miller — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:27:11 EDT

According to Russian military sources, a sneak attack on Iran is now set to start at 4 am on April 6. Use of bunker-buster tactical nukes "could not be excluded".
(story-Eng: Link (story- French: Link )
"...Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.
Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.
Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.
"We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: "Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it."

Re: Obama Rebuffs Soros on AIPAC

Stephen Miller — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:14:30 EDT

I read today with chagrin in the New York Sun:

Obama Rebuffs Soros- Billionaire's Comments on AIPAC Are Scored

By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the New York Sun
March 21, 2007
WASHINGTON — Leading Democrats, including Senator Obama of Illinois, are distancing themselves from an essay published this week by one of their party's leading financiers that called for the Democratic Party to "liberate" itself from the influence of the pro-Israel lobby.
The article, by George Soros, published in the New York Review of Books, asserts that America should pressure Israel to negotiate with the Hamas-led unity government in the Palestinian territories regardless of whether Hamas recognizes the right of the Jewish state to exist. Mr. Soros goes on to say that one reason America has not embraced this policy is because of the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Opportunity for Obama- American Freedom Agenda

Stephen Miller — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:50:14 EDT

I'm listening to Bob Barr, Bruse Fein, Richard Viguerie, Ron Paul, and others announce the American Freedom Agenda on C-Span. A unique and new event, conservatives denouncing the imperial presidency and the do-nothing Republican congressional delegation. Principles of constitutional government, checks and balances, etc. Bruce Fein ran down a list of highly impeachable constitutional offenses of the Bush-Cheney regime.
Sounds like something Obama should sign on to- What an opportunity, in fact! An alliance with the real conservatives, which liberals would approve of!

FOX and the Chickenhawks

Stephen Miller — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:26:29 EST

Readers will remember that among the directives for hotels issued by VP Cheney's travel staff was the insistence that a TV be on in every room of the VP suite, and that all be tuned to FOX News. Amidst the disgraceful landscape of American Main Stream Media, FOX is a special case. Owner Rupert Murdoch gave a seat on the board to ex-Pres Aznar of Spain. He has offered the same to Blair, upon retirement from politics. And then there's John Howard in Australia. One better understands Howard's attacking Obama as a Murdoch ploy... spike the race angle from offstage, down-under. Then echo it 'innocently' through the Halls of FOXUSA, to see if it sticks. We might expect that Mr. Howard will be the next recipient of Mr. Murdoch's largesse.
Leaders who took their countries into an illegal war against the popular will, in collusion with FOX/News Corp Media, get a seat on the News Corp board when thrown out. And it's all owned by a reactionary globalist billionaire...
Ring any alarms??
While at Davos this year, Murdoch was asked by Charlie Rose if his News Corp. managed to shape the agenda on the war in Iraq, Murdoch said: "No, I don't think so. We tried." Looks in fact like he succeeded quite well, although the way things turned out, he's not exactly crowing.

Honest democrats should have nothing to do with FOX. Appearing on FOX will only give them credibility. Boycott FOX totally, like the plague that it is.

FOX Attacks

Clemons on Candidates and Middle East

Stephen Miller — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:27:29 EST

Steve Clemons writes in the latest Washington Note:
"America's diminishing prestige, collapsed moral position, and over-stretched military capacity has shown the world our limits. In that environment, enemies have scrambled to move their agendas and U.S. allies are counting on us less. The global equilibrium of interests has been thrown out of whack. Everyone's behavior has changed -- and that has created an enormously dangerous global geostrategic environment.

America's engagement in the Middle East must be redirected if it is to salvage anything from this point forward and if the U.S. is going to start rebuilding its domestic and international standing.

I think that there are a number of candidates on the Democratic side that may move in this direction eventually -- but I'm not convinced that many have really offered more than incrementalist proposals that remain in the same general grooves of Bush's direction in the Middle East. Wes Clark and Joe Biden are exceptions -- and there are others -- but they are not yet setting the political pace of the country.

On the Republican side, Chuck Hagel has the framing right - and it's a narrative I do hope that he brings into the presidential arena. . .soon."

So where's Obama? Time to call in that brain trust...

Obama's Speech To AIPAC

Stephen Miller — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 16:20:26 EST

After Edwards' disturbing remarks to the Herzliya neo-con Likud conference in Israel last month, we were all wondering what Obama would say to AIPAC. What a dem candidate says to Herzliya, or AIPAC is inevitably a kind of gauge of the candidate's connections to the institutional neo-con apparatus, which is closely linked with the Israeli Likud right-wing. It wasn't too bad.
One thing I would note though:
Obama said, "The U.S. and our partners have put before Hamas three very simple conditions to end this isolation: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce the use of violence; and abide by past agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority."
This is the Israeli line which all US politicians are required to repeat at every possible occasion.
To be independent and fair in this, Obama would need to also to demand the same of Israel, namely:
"recognize Palestine's right to exist; renounce the use of violence; and abide by past agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority."
Israel hasn't recognized Palestine's right to exist, won't renounce monopoly on violence, and won't honor previous agreements (see settlements for example). Because of this fact, parroting the israeli formulation without it's symmetrical corollary is nothing less than collusion with dark propaganda.
The Neo-con-Likud rightwingers are not doing Israel any favors. They are making for disaster. Friendship with Israel doesn't mean supporting these mad policies. It's about time an American politician (come on Obama!) got up and said so.

Obama Needs to Develop his Brain Trust

Stephen Miller — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:19:31 EST

A caller named Angela from South Carolina made an interesting point on the Thom Hartmann show today; that Bush and team have relentlessly filled government positions with like-thinking ideologues, and incompetent and corrupt cronies. Since so many public service professionals in every branch of the federal government have retired or quit in disgust over the last 6 years, there were many slots to fill; and what's more, Bush and Co. have had no qualms in forcing out capable professionals to make room for hacks and stooges of the Bush Order. What happened in Iraq, with the CPA putting incompetent young ideologues from the Heritage Foundation in charge of critical aspects of the occupation, has also been going on at home. Whomever the Dems nominate will have to deal with a sabotaged and dysfunctional federal government. The caller felt this meant that the candidate should be the most experienced-in-government candidate; (Al Gore is her choice).

It's a good point, and I think Obama should address it at the propitious moment- in the context of revitalizing government to serve the people etc.

Obama should also be organizing a brain trust which will become eventually more visible to the public, assuring them that although Obama has only two years in the Senate, he acts as a magnet for the highest talent dedicated to making a much smarter government work well.

Britain, US Worst Place for Children in Industrialized World

Stephen Miller — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:02:21 EST

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is the worst country in the industrialized world in which to be a child, closely followed by the United States, the United Nations Children's Fund said on Wednesday. (story)

To Talk, or not to Talk... (Iran,Syria, etc)

Stephen Miller — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:25:47 EST

Obama is of course right about being willing to talk to both Iran and Syria in the process of repairing the Iraq damage.

But the emphasis should not be on who to talk to, but the willingness to talk with others per se.

Because those who are confident of themselves and their strength do not fear sitting down with adversaries. Only the weak fear that.

Why does the Bush administration feel too weak to meet adversaries at the table? Because their imagination is so drastically limited that they have only one scale of response, a straight line running from neglect through coercion to military force. And in the case of Iran and Syria, from that limited perspective, they think they have 'no leverage'.

Pitiful, if it wasn't so frightening. The US is the most powerful, richest, most educated, and most influential country on the planet. We can try to use that for selfish and short-sighted destructive ends, and in the process, lose all our 'leverage', or we can have unlimited leverage when we work for the common good in imaginative ways.

That's the real choice before us. Obama should shift the discussion in this direction asap.

Notes Toward an American Renaissance

Stephen Miller — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:09:14 EST

From: Dvmx.com

Notes Toward an American Renaissance

What passes these days for political discourse in America is in need of re-calibration with the great issues of our time and our human future. The centuries-long enlightenment project itself seems to be stumbling, and our overarching sense of human civilization and it's meaning is waning, leaving the terrain to various anti-rational and fundamentalist movements, just when growing threats to human well-being need to be met with international cooperation, sober realism, and imaginative action.
It will be necessary to have in mind the long term directions we as a society want to be moving in; without these, we will miss the larger context in which shorter term strategies and policy adjustment decisions need to be framed. In some cases we lag behind other nations, whose experience we can draw on. In others we will have to blaze a trail; we may not expect to reach our goals immediately, but we will be moving in the right direction, making the transition as best we can.

Crowded Planet
We will be living on a more and more crowded planet. We will need to dedicate our ingenuity to the goal of living sustainably on it; we will need to make much greater cooperative efforts to preserve and sustain the rich ecology which fosters life on planet Earth. We will need to begin determinedly dis-investing ourselves from the oil economy infrastructure and shifting to alternative energy sources; we can be in the lead in development of the technologies and engineering this historic effort will bring about. We must cooperate with other nations to develop emissions-reduction strategies to avoid disastrous climate instability. We must work together to keep the oceans healthy; we must stop overfishing; we must stop dumping and pollution of the seas. Without healthy oceans, and a life-supporting atmosphere, humanity will die off.

Demilitarization.
There's a saying, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." America's military budget is now larger than that of all other countries on the planet combined. Yet our social discourse is heavily infused with fear and insecurity. Our culture is becoming distorted by a continuous jingoistic mantra confounding patriotism and the military attitude. Our current government sees the world only in terms of threats, enemies, and subservient allies. Mounting a war has become easier than addressing shared human issues constructively. We must be prepared to rejoin the family of nations, leaving our guns at the door, for some serious cooperation to safeguard our human future. Because we have the largest arsenal, we must take the lead in seeking arms reduction worldwide, nuclear arms and other WMD, and also small arms, which kill millions today. We should not seek to militarize space as we are doing, but once again lead the world in peaceful use of space exploration and orbital earth-monitoring, for these are adventures which unite us as a species, and efforts which require our cooperation. We must also examine our proclivity for using our techno-engineering discoveries for new weapons systems, for if we don't, accelerating advances in science and engineering will bring multiplying nightmares. As JFK said, "Mankind must end war, or war will end mankind."
In the last year, the most effective use of the vast American military in terms of building peace and friendship in the world was not the occupation of Iraq, but the comparatively tiny tsunami relief effort carried out be the navy in southeast asia. We should consider progressively transforming the vast logistical powers of our military establishment to the purpose of serving humanity, thus increasing our own real security in the process.

Capitalism and Corporations
We need to examine what we as a species want from capitalism as an organizing principle in society. For example, cowboy capitalism leads to huge concentrations of wealth in a few hands, and this tendency is accelerated by information technology. A certain minimum income is needed to sustain the basic comforts of life, without which a human's growth is stunted. With the minimum, people can be free to develop in the ways they will treasure as they age, and will look upon with satisfaction when they leave this earth. Should we not be seeking a society in which everyone is able to more easily cover basic costs and needs, so they can enrich themselves in non-monetary ways, to their benefit, and to the benefit of society as a whole? Or do we subscribe to powerball capitalism- where the vast majority of people struggle to stay afloat, but a tiny micro-percentage can become fabulously wealthy? Do we have to choose between the one and the other? Does it make sense that a CEO is paid 1000 times what a teacher is paid?
We need to re-examine society's contract with the corporation. If growth and profit for shareholders, and millions for top management, are the only value corporations recognize today, this is not the case for society. From society's point of view, the value of a corporation is to give productive employ to many individuals in an organized manner, such that the individuals' share of value created is greater than he or she could have managed alone. Depending on which view you choose, for example, large-scale outsourcing looks quite different.
There has been a growing movement to privatize what had been essential civic services administered by government in a manner accountable to the people. Corporations who make such essential services their business must bear, as part of the bargain, a responsibility to meet higher standards of transparency and accountability beyond those which govern ordinary corporations in the marketplace. We cannot afford a privatization which would allow corporate secrecy and non-accountability to undermine a century's long work building that degree of confidence and credibility in our social infrastructure which we enjoy today.

Work and Meaning
We need to re-examine the issues of employment and work. There is too much misery involved in work, and too much in the lack of it. The high-consumption economy eats away at the earth and it's life systems at a quickening speed- how much of this production and activity is for the good? How much would be necessary in a different, healthier society? The lifestyle and activities which come along with junior executive-style full-time employment have a far greater impact upon the earth's systems than those of an individual who has 'dropped out' by choice, and lives at minimal cost, on occasional work, growing some of their own food maybe, harvesting electricity from the sun perhaps. If we want to examine ways we can reduce the planet's 'burn rate', shouldn't we consider options which allow and do not penalize low-impact life-styles?
If we believe that an overarching value and meaning in life are to be found in self-development, learning, relationships, spiritual growth, how are these things impacted by the work regime we now take for granted? Would working less hours afford more leisure time for self-improvement, thereby enriching society at large? We know well the value of a loving and supportive family environment to the growth of healthy individuals. Yet we have come to a place where both parents work full time, and the children get day care, and later, XBoxes. Is this what we want in our future? Or can we imagine something different?

Health-Care
While ranking at the bottom of western democracies in most measures, and leaving a large percentage of our population uncovered, our health care 'system' is the most expensive in the world, causing millions of personal and business bankrupcies every year, and tremendous profits to a few corporations.
We must create a rational single payer health-care system for America. It will cost no more in the long run than what we pay now, but can be vastly more productive of good health generally than our current non-system is. We need to do this for our citizen's sake, as well as the sake of our country, for a healthier citizenry will aid us in realizing all our dreams. There are also new dangers to prepare for. The human species has not been kind to animals. What other macro-life forms we don't eat, or keep as neutered pets, we consider pests. This latter category applies even to animals we like, such as the American buffalo, when it wanders from it's quarantine. Many of the few remaining 'wild' animals we still hunt traditionally. Continuing like this we can foresee a world where the only fauna left are ourselves and our feed animals. By then, a vast diversity of microbes will have been gearing up for the assault on the human genome, or that of our livestock, after millennia happily ensconced in now-extinct species. We will be hard-pressed in America to limit outbreaks of newly emerging diseases without an affordable, unified and universal provision of health care. The other industrial democracies do this, by varying formulas which we can study and learn from. We cannot allow entrenched health-care-industry interests to prohibit us from doing this.

Education
Most young Americans today are lacking what could even remotely be described as a 'grasp of history'. Unaware of the recurring themes of the human experience, of the struggles and debates regarding society and culture, the nation and the individual, war and peace, they are prey to all manner of caricatured narratives and attitude-based judgments instead of informed thought. Without a minimal fluency in the history of the human experience, the 'citizen's democracy' will be a sham. "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." And we are.
We are also falling behind other nations in critical future skills such as science and engineering. We must urgently reverse this trend, but we should also remember that the purpose of education is ultimately not to compete with the Chinese for jobs, but to lead to the enrichment of the individual's life experience and therefore also that of society and culture. The quality of education won't improve by extending the school year, or by doubling a child's homework load, but rather with better learning environments, more inspired teachers, and a hefty dose of socratic method.

Governance
We must put an end to 'the revolving door' . We must chase the moneychangers from the temple. We must do away with the jungle of lobbyists and influence peddlers which riddle our processes of governance, have made a mockery of representative democracy, and bring about policies and laws against the best interests of the public and our society. We want to be able to look back on the years of cronyism, incompetence, and partisan gangsterism which marked the early 21st century as a cautionary aberration. These abuses must be investigated and exposed so they will not happen again. We must once again hold our elected officials to the higher standard of public service, excellence in service to the common good.
After a string of dubious election results. we must fix our voting system to restore confidence in the outcome. "Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything."-Joseph Stalin.
If we wish to play a leading role in the world to come, we can no longer afford to see our house of government staffed with anything less than the best and the brightest we as a country can offer. We must lead American discourse away from the spasm of small-town xenophobia which set in after 9/11, toward a respect for other nations, other peoples, and international cooperation, if we want to be a player in the future, and not an obstructive bystander.

Ecumenism
All human cultures have spiritual traditions, saints, and an understanding of The Good. The wisdom which has been discovered through Buddhist practice, in Taoism, in Christianity, in Islam, in the Vedic traditions, is wisdom for us all. These are part of our human heritage. True spirituality cannot be based on denigration of other paths, but rather recognizes that all paths 'lead to God'. Therefore a respect for and interest in other traditions is proper; it is also necessary for a nation which would be a respected leader among the community of nations.

This article has also been published in The Baltimore Chronicle,
an excellent news review worth discovering, if you are not already a reader.
Stephen Miller