We Can Afford Reform, We Can’t Afford the Status Quo
Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist for the Vice President and Executive Director of the Middle Class Task Force, debunks the myth that we can’t afford health insurance reform. To the contrary, not only has the President demanded that reform not add to the deficit in the short term, but reform is the only way to get skyrocketing health care costs under control that will be devastating not for families , businesses, and for government deficits in the long term under the status quo.
Watch the Video
Earlier today, it was announced that President Obama will address a joint session of Congress on the issue of health insurance reform next Wednesday, September 9th. CNN reported:
It will be Obama's second speech to the full legislature since he took office in January, and the setting and rarity of such an event highlighted the importance the president places on his top domestic priority: overhauling the nation's ailing health care system.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid formally invited Obama to make the address, as required, in a letter issued Wednesday after news broke of the planned speech.
We'll have more information on this important speech in the days to come.
www.whitehouse.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/NewBeginning/
In Germany today, the President visited Dresden castle, held meetings and a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and toured the Church of Our Lady. The event of greatest significance, however, was a visit with Chancellor Merkel and Elie Wiesel to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, where they were joined Bertrand Herz, a survivor of the camp.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Buchenwald/
Hello - As a Senior Advisor to the President, I'm here in Cairo, Egypt where I watched President Obama deliver an unprecedented speech calling for a new beginning for the United States and Muslim communities around the world. We all know that there has been tension between the United States and some Muslim communities. But, as the President said this morning, if all sides face the sources of tension squarely and focus on mutual interests, we can find a new way forward. The President outlined some big goals for this new beginning in his speech -- including disrupting, dismantling, and defeating violent extremism. It was a historic speech, and since many Americans were asleep at the time it was given we wanted to make sure you had a chance to see it:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/NewBeginning/Majority-Muslim countries around the world are filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives, just as in America. Indeed, part of what makes America great is having nearly seven million Muslim Americans living here today and enriching our culture and communities. We can extend that kind of relationship abroad. It won't always be easy, but if we make an effort to bridge our differences rather than resigning ourselves to animosity, we can move toward a more peaceful world over time. Thank you, David Axelrod Senior Advisor to the President
A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River.
The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval.
Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC.
It may have been a large storm, but evidence is increasingly pointing to a rare Atlantic Ocean tsunami.(...)"
Tara says:
"this isn't a *new* reassortant virus, but is closely related to one that had already been identified in swine--and that had already caused an outbreak in humans right here in the US. " fib
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Category: General Epidemiology • General biology • Infectious disease • Influenza • Outbreak • Public health • Various virusesPosted on: April 28, 2009 11:35 PM, by Tara C. Smith
Back in 2007, I wrote about an outbreak of swine influenza from an Ohio county fair. The peer-reviewed paper analyzing the swine influenza isolated from that outbreak has just recently come out. From the abstract:
The swine isolate, A/SW/OH/511445/2007 (OH07), was evaluated in an experimental challenge and transmission study reported here. Our results indicate that the OH07 virus was pathogenic in pigs, was transmissible among pigs, and failed to cross-react with many swine H1 anti-sera. Naturally exposed pigs shed virus as early as 3 days and as long as 7 days after contact with experimentally infected pigs. This suggests there was opportunity for exposure of people handling the pigs at the fair. The molecular analysis of the OH07 isolates demonstrated that the eight gene segments were similar to those of currently circulating triple reassortant swine influenza viruses. However, numerous nucleotide changes leading to amino acid changes were demonstrated in the HA gene and throughout the genome as compared to contemporary swine viruses in the same genetic cluster. It remains unknown if any of the amino acid changes were related to the ability of this virus to infect people. The characteristics of the OH07 virus in our pig experimental model as well as the documented human transmission warrant close monitoring of the spread of this virus in pig and human populations.
Meanwhile, I mentioned yesterday that gene sequences from the new H1N1 virus had been released. Sandy has taken a look at some of these, and compared them with H1N1 and H1N2 viruses from humans and pigs.
Yes, there is a point to the juxtaposition of these two points, and it's big--after the jump...
According to her analyses, the Ohio pig isolates are the most closely related to the new Texas and California human isolates.
Does this mean the virus came from these Ohio pigs? *Well, no, not necessarily*. First, we're missing a lot of data. The sequences from any patients from Mexico still aren't up (as of this posting), and we don't have sequence information from Mexican pigs. Ideally, it would be very helpful to have not only data from pigs in the outbreak areas of Mexico, but multiple sequences over time, to see if this isolate was circulating there, had been recently introduced, had showed up in people, etc. However, that's a lot of wishful thinking--more on this tomorrow. For now, this is a pretty big find.
I also assume this is where the human-avian-swine reassortant claim came from. The authors note that:
The H1N1 viruses contain the HA and NA from the classical swine virus and the internal genes from the triple reassortant H3N2 viruses (rH1N1); the H1N2 viruses contain the HA from the classical swine virus and the NA and internal genes from the triple reassortant H3N2 viruses (Karasin et al., 2002; Webby et al., 2004). Contemporary triple reassortant viruses were demonstrated to have acquired a PB1 gene of human virus origin; PA and PB2 genes of avian virus origin; and the remaining internal genes, M, NS, and NP, of swine virus origin, thus giving rise to the triple reassortant designation (Zhou et al., 1999).
So what it looks like to me is that this isn't a *new* reassortant virus, but is closely related to one that had already been identified in swine--and that had already caused an outbreak in humans right here in the US.
I'll have more about this tomorrow...this is pretty huge and I'm still digesting it all.
Carla Marinucci,Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Political Writers
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
(04-28) 19:11 PDT -- In his first 100 days as president, Barack Obama has marshaled a potent array of political weapons to keep himself at the top of public opinion polls - a blend of skillful communication and messaging, unprecedented voter outreach and the creative use of technical, youth-oriented organizing tools never before seen in American presidential politics.
If that arsenal sounds familiar, it's no surprise: President Obama and his team are reaching for the same weapons that propelled candidate Obama's successful run to the White House, and they've gotten quicker on the draw.
Take the e-mail sent today to millions of Obama supporters from the president's political strategist David Plouffe, who noted that "a lot of attention will be given to this largely symbolic day."
But "the truth is that what we do every day after it will be just as important - if not more ... you built the movement that made this possible," Plouffe told them, "and it's up to you to show Americans that real change can happen when ordinary citizens work together."
Organizing for America, the next-generation political arm of the Obama presidential campaign, is also keeping up the heat by holding "listening tour" events across America this week to bring supporters together - and prepare for the next campaign.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele can complain all he wants about "teleprompter" politics - and the "permanent campaign" of the Democratic president - but in his short time in office, the 44th president has used more than a teleprompter to keep his poll numbers high and his public image burnished.
Obama has managed to effectively communicate his message to Americans with a string of prime-time news conferences, an unprecedented appearance on the "Tonight" show, a surprise stop to visit U.S. troops in Iraq, town hall meetings, cavorting with the family dog and escorting his elegant wife across Europe.
Clearly, there's been a payoff.
A new CNN poll released this week finds Obama to be even more popular than his politics: A whopping 63 percent of American voters approve of the way he is handling his job - and 75 percent, a number rarely heard in presidential politics, believe he has the personality and leadership qualities for the job.
Yet, far fewer - 57 percent - say they agree with the president on the issues that matter most to them, the CNN poll found.
Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, co-authors of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics," say Obama's buoyant numbers are pegged in large part to a demographic marker - his continued appeal to millions of so-called "millennial" voters.
"They think he's honest, straightforward and transparent. ... They have not lost any of their enthusiasm for him - and they drove the election in 2008," said Hais, who notes that the millennials "accounted for about 80 percent of the (Obama) margin over John McCain," and voted for Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio.
These younger voters represent the largest and most diverse generation in American history and are still the focus of intense political outreach by Team Obama, the authors say.
Yet Obama's success in maintaining his popularity and polls in the critical first benchmark isn't limited to the 20- and 30-somethings alone, veteran political insiders say.
"America likes him," said former California Gov. Gray Davis, watching the president's uncanny ability to walk the political tightrope in tough times at home and abroad. "We're in a deep hole here, and they recognize we need someone with near-heroic qualities."
Davis notes that Obama hasn't failed to include million of older Americans - like Davis - who receive communications "on an almost daily basis on his agenda (regarding) the need to rally people around issues."
That's a real departure from traditional politics, Davis said, where "most times, after your candidate is sworn in, you don't hear too much from him" until he or she needs money the next time.
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown adds that a critical key to Obama's popularity and public image has been his leading partner in the White House - first lady Michelle Obama, who has melded family matters and an engaging public persona in a groundbreaking way.
"She's speaking at UC Merced's graduation," Brown said, referring to the newest of the University of California campuses, which is located in the Central Valley, "not at Brandeis or Wellesley or Smith," the traditional East Coast venues. "She's given this first lady thing a whole new activist tone."
Jean Harris, a professor of political science at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, agrees that Michelle Obama has "put it all together ... she's been very astute ... in balancing work and family and community ... while making it clear that his agenda is her agenda."
Still, some critics suggest that in the first 100 days Obama has been too much in an ongoing campaign mode.
"Clearly, there has been an absence of the way Reagan established priorities" during his first 100 days in office, said Al Felzenberg, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game."
"One day he's talking about the banking crisis, the next day it's the car bailout, the next day it's the stimulus, the next day it's green energy, then next day it's education. I can't keep up. In some ways, it shows a Clintonesque lack of discipline. You have to set priorities. Set some dates."
But Larry Berman, a professor of political science at UC Davis who teaches a course on Obama's first 100 days in office, said the president has managed a messaging miracle as he's "tried to change the image of Americans" abroad that were formed during the Bush administration.
The groundbreaking factor remains how Obama can do it in more venues - the Internet, social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter - than any past president ever had at his fingertips, Winograd says.
"We're not talking about an age in which you go on the radio and 60 percent of the nation hears you," he said. "And it's all instilling confidence. It's a steady incremental pace. And when you build something like that, it has a much more long-lasting effect."
E-mail the writers at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com and jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/28/MN1417AH6M.DTL
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_____________________________________________________
For Immediate Release April 27, 2009
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ANNUAL MEETING
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, D.C.
9:12 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you so much for the wonderful welcome. To President Cicerone, thank you very much for your leadership and for hosting us today. To John Holdren, thanks, John, for the outstanding work that you are doing. I was just informed backstage that Ralph and John both are 1965 graduates of MIT -- same class. And so I'm not sure this is the perfectly prescribed scientific method, but they're sort of a control group -- (laughter) -- who ages faster: The President's Science Advisor or the President of the Academy? (Laughter.) And we'll check in in a couple of years. But it is wonderful to see them. To all of you, to my Cabinet Secretaries and team who are here, thank you. It is a great privilege to address the distinguished members of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the leaders of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine who've gathered here this morning. And I'd like to begin today with a story of a previous visitor who also addressed this august body. In April of 1921, Albert Einstein visited the United States for the first time. And his international credibility was growing as scientists around the world began to understand and accept the vast implications of his theories of special and general relativity. And he attended this annual meeting, and after sitting through a series of long speeches by others, he reportedly said, "I have just got a new theory of eternity." (Laughter.) So I will do my best to heed this cautionary tale. (Laughter.) The very founding of this institution stands as a testament to the restless curiosity, the boundless hope so essential not just to the scientific enterprise, but to this experiment we call America. A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won, before Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences -- in the midst of civil war. Lincoln refused to accept that our nation's sole purpose was mere survival. He created this academy, founded the land grant colleges, and began the work of the transcontinental railroad, believing that we must add -- and I quote -- "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery... of new and useful things." This is America's story. Even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we've never given in to pessimism; we've never surrendered our fates to chance; we have endured; we have worked hard; we sought out new frontiers. Today, of course, we face more complex challenges than we have ever faced before: a medical system that holds the promise of unlocking new cures and treatments -- attached to a health care system that holds the potential for bankruptcy to families and businesses; a system of energy that powers our economy, but simultaneously endangers our planet; threats to our security that seek to exploit the very interconnectedness and openness so essential to our prosperity; and challenges in a global marketplace which links the derivative trader on Wall Street to the homeowner on Main Street, the office worker in America to the factory worker in China -- a marketplace in which we all share in opportunity, but also in crisis. At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before. (Applause.) And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today. We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. And this is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it's not a cause for alarm. The Department of Health and Human Services has declared a public health emergency as a precautionary tool to ensure that we have the resources we need at our disposal to respond quickly and effectively. And I'm getting regular updates on the situation from the responsible agencies. And the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the Centers for Disease Control will be offering regular updates to the American people. And Secretary Napolitano will be offering regular updates to the American people, as well, so that they know what steps are being taken and what steps they may need to take. But one thing is clear -- our capacity to deal with a public health challenge of this sort rests heavily on the work of our scientific and medical community. And this is one more example of why we can't allow our nation to fall behind. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's happened. Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century. Time and again we've allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse. Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some cases, developing countries. Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others. Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world. And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas. We know that our country is better than this. A half century ago, this nation made a commitment to lead the world in scientific and technological innovation; to invest in education, in research, in engineering; to set a goal of reaching space and engaging every citizen in that historic mission. That was the high water mark of America's investment in research and development. And since then our investments have steadily declined as a share of our national income. As a result, other countries are now beginning to pull ahead in the pursuit of this generation's great discoveries. I believe it is not in our character, the American character, to follow. It's our character to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again. So I'm here today to set this goal: We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development. We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science. (Applause.) This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history. Just think what this will allow us to accomplish: solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again; an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us. We can do this. The pursuit of discovery half a century ago fueled our prosperity and our success as a nation in the half century that followed. The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years. That's how we will ensure that our children and their children will look back on this generation's work as that which defined the progress and delivered the prosperity of the 21st century. This work begins with a historic commitment to basic science and applied research, from the labs of renowned universities to the proving grounds of innovative companies. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and with the support of Congress, my administration is already providing the largest single boost to investment in basic research in American history. That's already happened. This is important right now, as public and private colleges and universities across the country reckon with shrinking endowments and tightening budgets. But this is also incredibly important for our future. As Vannevar Bush, who served as scientific advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, famously said: "Basic scientific research is scientific capital." The fact is an investigation into a particular physical, chemical, or biological process might not pay off for a year, or a decade, or at all. And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not. And that's why the private sector generally under-invests in basic science, and why the public sector must invest in this kind of research -- because while the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society. No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research: new treatments in our hospitals, or new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and to drought. It was basic research in the photoelectric field -- in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today's GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago. In addition to the investments in the Recovery Act, the budget I've proposed -- and versions have now passed both the House and the Senate -- builds on the historic investments in research contained in the recovery plan. So we double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from -- from testing "smart grid" designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes. And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials -- because we know that a nation's potential for scientific discovery is defined by the tools that it makes available to its researchers. But the renewed commitment of our nation will not be driven by government investment alone. It's a commitment that extends from the laboratory to the marketplace. And that's why my budget makes the research and experimentation tax credit permanent. This is a tax credit that returns two dollars to the economy for every dollar we spend, by helping companies afford the often high costs of developing new ideas, new technologies, and new products. Yet at times we've allowed it to lapse or only renewed it year to year. I've heard this time and again from entrepreneurs across this country: By making this credit permanent we make it possible for businesses to plan the kinds of projects that create jobs and economic growth. Second, in no area will innovation be more important than in the development of new technologies to produce, use, and save energy -- which is why my administration has made an unprecedented commitment to developing a 21st century clean energy economy, and why we put a scientist in charge of the Department of Energy. (Applause.) Our future on this planet depends on our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution. And our future as a nation depends upon our willingness to embrace this challenge as an opportunity to lead the world in pursuit of new discovery. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik a little more than a half century ago, Americans were stunned. The Russians had beaten us to space. And we had to make a choice: We could accept defeat or we could accept the challenge. And as always, we chose to accept the challenge. President Eisenhower signed legislation to create NASA and to invest in science and math education, from grade school to graduate school. And just a few years later, a month after his address to the 1961 Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, President Kennedy boldly declared before a joint session of Congress that the United States would send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth. The scientific community rallied behind this goal and set about achieving it. And it would not only lead to those first steps on the moon; it would lead to giant leaps in our understanding here at home. That Apollo program produced technologies that have improved kidney dialysis and water purification systems; sensors to test for hazardous gasses; energy-saving building materials; fire-resistant fabrics used by firefighters and soldiers. More broadly, the enormous investment in that era –- in science and technology, in education and research funding –- produced a great outpouring of curiosity and creativity, the benefits of which have been incalculable. There are those of you in this audience who became scientists because of that commitment. We have to replicate that. There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation's challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels. In many ways, this makes the challenge even tougher to solve –- and makes it all the more important to keep our eyes fixed on the work ahead. But energy is our great project, this generation's great project. And that's why I've set a goal for our nation that we will reduce our carbon pollution by more than 80 percent by 2050. And that is why -- (applause) -- and that is why I'm pursuing, in concert with Congress, the policies that will help meet us -- help us meet this goal. My recovery plan provides the incentives to double our nation's capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years -- extending the production tax credit, providing loan guarantees and offering grants to spur investment. Just take one example: Federally funded research and development has dropped the cost of solar panels by tenfold over the last three decades. Our renewed efforts will ensure that solar and other clean energy technologies will be competitive. My budget includes $150 billion over 10 years to invest in sources of renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. It supports efforts at NASA, recommended as a priority by the National Research Council, to develop new space-based capabilities to help us better understand our changing climate. And today, I'm also announcing that for the first time, we are funding an initiative -- recommended by this organization -- called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E. (Applause.) This is based, not surprisingly, on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created during the Eisenhower administration in response to Sputnik. It has been charged throughout its history with conducting high-risk, high-reward research. And the precursor to the Internet, known as ARPANET, stealth technology, the Global Positioning System all owe a debt to the work of DARPA. So ARPA-E seeks to do the same kind of high-risk, high-reward research. My administration will pursue, as well, comprehensive legislation to place a market-based cap on carbon emissions. We will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. We will put in place the resources so that scientists can focus on this critical area. And I am confident that we will find a wellspring of creativity just waiting to be tapped by researchers in this room and entrepreneurs across our country. We can solve this problem. (Applause.) Now, the nation that leads the world in 21st century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st century global economy. I believe America can and must be that nation. But in order to lead in the global economy and to ensure that our businesses can grow and innovate, and our families can thrive, we're also going to have to address the shortcomings of our health care system. The Recovery Act will support the long overdue step of computerizing America's medical records, to reduce the duplication, waste and errors that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives. But it's important to note, these records also hold the potential of offering patients the chance to be more active participants in the prevention and treatment of their diseases. We must maintain patient control over these records and respect their privacy. At the same time, we have the opportunity to offer billions and billions of anonymous data points to medical researchers who may find in this information evidence that can help us better understand disease. History also teaches us the greatest advances in medicine have come from scientific breakthroughs, whether the discovery of antibiotics, or improved public health practices, vaccines for smallpox and polio and many other infectious diseases, antiretroviral drugs that can return AIDS patients to productive lives, pills that can control certain types of blood cancers, so many others. Because of recent progress –- not just in biology, genetics and medicine, but also in physics, chemistry, computer science, and engineering –- we have the potential to make enormous progress against diseases in the coming decades. And that's why my administration is committed to increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health, including $6 billion to support cancer research -- part of a sustained, multi-year plan to double cancer research in our country. (Applause.) Next, we are restoring science to its rightful place. On March 9th, I signed an executive memorandum with a clear message: Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. (Applause.) Our progress as a nation –- and our values as a nation –- are rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life. (Applause.) That's why I've charged John Holdren and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that federal policies are based on the best and most unbiased scientific information. I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions -- and not the other way around. (Laughter.) As part of this effort, we've already launched a web site that allows individuals to not only make recommendations to achieve this goal, but to collaborate on those recommendations. It's a small step, but one that's creating a more transparent, participatory and democratic government. We also need to engage the scientific community directly in the work of public policy. And that's why, today, I am announcing the appointment -- we are filling out the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, known as PCAST, and I intend to work with them closely. Our co-chairs have already been introduced -- Dr. Varmus and Dr. Lander along with John. And this council represents leaders from many scientific disciplines who will bring a diversity of experiences and views. And I will charge PCAST with advising me about national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation. In addition to John -- sorry, the -- I just noticed that I jumped the gun here -- go ahead and move it up. (Laughter.) I'd already -- I'd already introduced all you guys. In biomedicine, just to give you an example of what PCAST can do, we can harness the historic convergence between life sciences and physical sciences that's underway today; undertaking public projects -- in the spirit of the Human Genome Project -- to create data and capabilities that fuel discoveries in tens of thousands of laboratories; and identifying and overcoming scientific and bureaucratic barriers to rapidly translating scientific breakthroughs into diagnostics and therapeutics that serve patients. In environmental science, it will require strengthening our weather forecasting, our Earth observation from space, the management of our nation's land, water and forests, and the stewardship of our coastal zones and ocean fisheries. We also need to work with our friends around the world. Science, technology and innovation proceed more rapidly and more cost-effectively when insights, costs and risks are shared; and so many of the challenges that science and technology will help us meet are global in character. This is true of our dependence on oil, the consequences of climate change, the threat of epidemic disease, and the spread of nuclear weapons. And that's why my administration is ramping up participation in -- and our commitment to -- international science and technology cooperation across the many areas where it is clearly in our interest to do so. In fact, this week, my administration is gathering the leaders of the world's major economies to begin the work of addressing our common energy challenges together. Fifth, since we know that the progress and prosperity of future generations will depend on what we do now to educate the next generation, today I'm announcing a renewed commitment to education in mathematics and science. (Applause.) This is something I care deeply about. Through this commitment, American students will move from the middle of the top -- from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math over the next decade -- for we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow. And I don't intend to have us out-educated. We can't start soon enough. We know that the quality of math and science teachers is the most influential single factor in determining whether a student will succeed or fail in these subjects. Yet in high school more than 20 percent of students in math and more than 60 percent of students in chemistry and physics are taught by teachers without expertise in these fields. And this problem is only going to get worse. There is a projected shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers across the country by 2015. And that's why I'm announcing today that states making strong commitments and progress in math and science education will be eligible to compete later this fall for additional funds under the Secretary of Education's $5 billion Race to the Top program. And I'm challenging states to dramatically improve achievement in math and science by raising standards, modernizing science labs, upgrading curriculum, and forging partnerships to improve the use of science and technology in our classrooms. (Applause.) I'm challenging states, as well, to enhance teacher preparation and training, and to attract new and qualified math and science teachers to better engage students and reinvigorate those subjects in our schools. And in this endeavor, we will work to support inventive approaches. Let's create systems that retain and reward effective teachers, and let's create new pathways for experienced professionals to go into the classroom. There are, right now, chemists who could teach chemistry, physicists who could teach physics, statisticians who could teach mathematics. But we need to create a way to bring the expertise and the enthusiasm of these folks –- folks like you –- into the classroom. There are states, for example, doing innovative work. I'm pleased to announce that Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania will lead an effort with the National Governors Association to increase the number of states that are making science, technology, engineering and mathematics education a top priority. Six states are currently participating in the initiative, including Pennsylvania, which has launched an effective program to ensure that the state has the skilled workforce in place to draw the jobs of the 21st century. And I want every state, all 50 states, to participate. But as you know, our work does not end with a high school diploma. For decades, we led the world in educational attainment, and as a consequence we led the world in economic growth. The G.I. Bill, for example, helps send a generation to college. But in this new economy, we've come to trail other nations in graduation rates, in educational achievement, and in the production of scientists and engineers. That's why my administration has set a goal that will greatly enhance our ability to compete for the high-wage, high-tech jobs of the future –- and to foster the next generation of scientists and engineers. In the next decade –- by 2020 –- America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal that we are going to set. And we've provided tax credits and grants to make a college education more affordable. My budget also triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships. (Applause.) This program was created as part of the space race five decades ago. In the decades since, it's remained largely the same size –- even as the numbers of students who seek these fellowships has skyrocketed. We ought to be supporting these young people who are pursuing scientific careers, not putting obstacles in their path. So this is how we will lead the world in new discoveries in this new century. But I think all of you understand it will take far more than the work of government. It will take all of us. It will take all of you. And so today I want to challenge you to use your love and knowledge of science to spark the same sense of wonder and excitement in a new generation. America's young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity –- if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves. We've got evidence. You know, the average age in NASA's mission control during the Apollo 17 mission was just 26. I know that young people today are just as ready to tackle the grand challenges of this century. So I want to persuade you to spend time in the classroom, talking and showing young people what it is that your work can mean, and what it means to you. I want to encourage you to participate in programs to allow students to get a degree in science fields and a teaching certificate at the same time. I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it's science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent -- to be makers of things, not just consumers of things. I want you to know that I'm going to be working alongside you. I'm going to participate in a public awareness and outreach campaign to encourage students to consider careers in science and mathematics and engineering -- because our future depends on it. And the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will be launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue these very same careers, particularly in clean energy. It will support an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge, and will create research opportunities for undergraduates and educational opportunities for women and minorities who too often have been underrepresented in scientific and technological fields, but are no less capable of inventing the solutions that will help us grow our economy and save our planet. (Applause.) And it will support fellowships and interdisciplinary graduate programs and partnerships between academic institutions and innovative companies to prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge. For we must always remember that somewhere in America there's an entrepreneur seeking a loan to start a business that could transform an industry -- but she hasn't secured it yet. There's a researcher with an idea for an experiment that might offer a new cancer treatment -– but he hasn't found the funding yet. There's a child with an inquisitive mind staring up at the night sky. And maybe she has the potential to change our world –- but she doesn't know it yet. As you know, scientific discovery takes far more than the occasional flash of brilliance –- as important as that can be. Usually, it takes time and hard work and patience; it takes training; it requires the support of a nation. But it holds a promise like no other area of human endeavor. In 1968, a year defined by loss and conflict and tumult, Apollo 8 carried into space the first human beings ever to slip beyond Earth's gravity, and the ship would circle the moon 10 times before returning home. But on its fourth orbit, the capsule rotated and for the first time Earth became visible through the windows. Bill Anders, one of the astronauts aboard Apollo 8, scrambled for a camera, and he took a photo that showed the Earth coming up over the moon's horizon. It was the first ever taken from so distant a vantage point, and it soon became known as "Earthrise." Anders would say that the moment forever changed him, to see our world -- this pale blue sphere -- without borders, without divisions, at once so tranquil and beautiful and alone. "We came all this way to explore the moon," he said, "and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." Yes, scientific innovation offers us a chance to achieve prosperity. It has offered us benefits that have improved our health and our lives -- improvements we take too easily for granted. But it gives us something more. At root, science forces us to reckon with the truth as best as we can ascertain it. And some truths fill us with awe. Others force us to question long-held views. Science can't answer every question, and indeed, it seems at times the more we plumb the mysteries of the physical world, the more humble we must be. Science cannot supplant our ethics or our values, our principles or our faith. But science can inform those things and help put those values -- these moral sentiments, that faith -- can put those things to work -- to feed a child, or to heal the sick, to be good stewards of this Earth. We are reminded that with each new discovery and the new power it brings comes new responsibility; that the fragility, the sheer specialness of life requires us to move past our differences and to address our common problems, to endure and continue humanity's strivings for a better world. As President Kennedy said when he addressed the National Academy of Sciences more than 45 years ago: "The challenge, in short, may be our salvation." Thank you all for all your past, present, and future discoveries. (Applause.) May God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.) END 9:52 A.M. EDT
The deadly H1N1 influenza virus that’s fueling fears of a global pandemic appears to be a hybrid of two common pig flu strains, scientists who have studied the disease told Wired.com Tuesday. Earlier reports called it a combination of pig, human and avian influenza strains.
The findings may resolve some uncertainty about the nature of the virus, but much is still unknown about its origins and effects.
“This is what we call a reassortment between two currently circulating pig flu viruses,” said Andrew Rambaut, a University of Edinborough viral geneticist. “Why it’s emerged in humans is anyone’s guess. It hasn’t been seen before in pigs as far as I know.”
Rambaut analyzed the gene sequences of viral samples taken from two infected California children. The samples were collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and made available to researchers through an international database of flu genomes.
His conclusions were echoed by Eddie Holmes, a virus evolution specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Steven Salzberg, a University of Maryland bioinformaticist. Both have looked at the CDC-provided sequences. The CDC could not be reached for comment, but a document released to scientists and obtained by Wired.com affirms their analysis.
Researchers believe the samples from California represent the same viral strain as one that is believed to have killed as many as 150 of an estimated 1,600 hospitalized Mexicans, and caused hundreds more infections worldwide, including at least 64 in the United States. However, as samples from Mexico have not yet been sequenced, the similarity is not conclusive.
The two strains whose genes are found in the California samples belong to influenza families known generally as North American and Eurasian pig flu. The former was first described in the 1930s, and the latter in 1979. The Eurasian strain is generally found in Europe and Asia, rather than North America.
Neither of the strains have ever proven contagious in humans. One of the genes inherited from the Eurasian strain has reportedly never been seen in humans. It codes for the neuraminidase enzyme — the N1 in H1N1 — which controls the expansion of the virus from infected cells.
“The new neuraminidase gene that came in from Eurasian swine is one we’ve never before seen circulating in humans,” said Rambaut. “That’s one of the reasons it’s spreading rapidly. Very few people will have any immunity to this particular combination, which is what gives the concern that this will be a pandemic rather than just a normal seasonal flu outbreak. It remains to be seen how much and to what extent there is existing immunity.” In medical terms, the genetic origins of the virus may not matter. Whether it come solely from pigs rather than a mix of pigs, birds and humans doesn’t change its immunological novelty.
However, understanding the origins could eventually help scientists determine how the virus evolved and where it originally emerged.
The earliest cases occurred in the town of La Gloria in the Mexican state of Veracruz, not far from a large and notoriously unsanitary hog farm operated by Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of giant American food company Smithfield Foods.
Vercruz residents and some journalists have alleged that the virus could have evolved in the farm’s pigs, then passed into humans through water or insects tainted by infected waste. Many researchers, including the authors of a report issued last year by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, have warned that unsanitary conditions at industrial hog farms could prove a breeding ground for new forms of influenza.
The World Health Organization has sent inspectors to the Granjas Carroll farm. The results of the investigation have not been announced. Smithfield issued a press release on Saturday stating that “it has found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in the company’s swine herd or its employees at its joint ventures in Mexico.” The company declined further comment, though CEO Larry Pope told USA Today that “(The term) swine flu is a misnomer.”
Rambaut, Holmes and Salzberg declined to speculate on whether the new H1N1 virus evolved on a hog farm or specifically in the Granjas Carroll facility.
However, it seems likely that pigs were the original host.
“That’s a logical conclusion,” said Salzberger. “It was probably two different pigs, or one who got co-infected from others. The two strains mixed, and now you have a brand-new strain.”
“Presumably somewhere there was a pig infected with both forms. We don’t know where or when. It could have been circulating in this form for a while,” said Rambaut.
What comes next is anyone’s guess.
“Influenza virus mutates remarkably rapidly so there is no doubt that the virus will mutate and evolve in humans,” said Holmes. “Quite what this evolution will result in is difficult to tell.”
See Also:
The international community is better prepared than ever to deal with the threatened spread of a new swine flu virus, a top UN health chief has said.
Dr Keiji Fukuda said years of preparing for bird flu had led to improved stocks of anti-virals worldwide.
The World Health Organization says the outbreak may become a pandemic.
Canada has become the latest country to confirm cases of the virus in humans after as many as 81 deaths in Mexico and 20 non-lethal cases in the US.
The cases were recorded at opposite ends of the country: two in British Columbia in the west, and four in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.
In the US, eight cases were confirmed among New York students, seven in California, two in Texas, two in Kansas and one in Ohio.
"There is no need for Americans to panic," the White House said.
Several countries in Asia and Latin America have begun screening airport passengers for symptoms.
There is currently no vaccine for the new strain of flu but severe cases can be treated with antiviral medication.
Symptom puzzle
Speaking in Geneva, a WHO expert said the swine flu virus could be capable of mutating into a more dangerous strain but that more information was needed before raising the WHO's pandemic alert phase.
Only a handful of the Mexican cases have so far been laboratory-confirmed as swine flu, while in the US confirmed cases had only mild symptoms.
Health experts want to know why some people become so seriously ill, while others just get a bit of a cold, the BBC's Imogen Foulkes reports from Switzerland.
The WHO added that there was no evidence to suggest the outbreak was a bio-terrorist attack.
It is advising all countries to be vigilant for seasonally unusual flu or pneumonia-like symptoms among their populations - particularly among young healthy adults, a characteristic of past pandemics.
Officials said most of those killed so far in Mexico were young adults - rather than more vulnerable children and the elderly.
It is unclear how effective currently available flu vaccines would be at offering protection against the new strain, as it is genetically distinct from other flu strains.
Sick travellers
H1N1 is the same strain that causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans but the newly detected version contains genetic material from versions of flu which usually affect pigs and birds.
It is spread mainly through coughs and sneezes.
Suspected cases have been detected beyond Mexico, the US and Canada
Mexican shutdown
Officials in Mexico confirmed that 20 people had died from the virus while another 61 deaths were suspected cases of swine flu.
With Mexico City apparently the centre of infection, many people are choosing to leave the city, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs reports.
Schools, universities and even most bars and restaurants will remain closed for several days and though Sunday church services are going ahead, priests have been asked to give Communion in the hand rather than on the tongue.
There are those that are beginning to worry about the effects swine flu is having on their livelihoods and the Mexican economy in general, our correspondent says.
Fear of the virus is expected to persuade many tourists to cancel their holidays and Mexican exports are already beginning to be affected.
Russia has banned imports of raw pork and pork products from Mexico and the US states of California, Texas and Kansas until further notice as a precaution.
More than 1,300 people have been admitted to hospital with suspected symptoms since 13 April.
Emergency measures in place allow individuals suspected of having the virus to be isolated without fear of legal repercussions.
Are you in Mexico or the US? Do you know someone who has been affected by the outbreak? Tell us your experiences by filling in the form below.
A selection of your comments may be published, displaying your name and location unless you state otherwise in the box below.
For my Friend, CR. fib
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Earth Day was first observed on April 22, 1970, when an estimated 20 million people nationwide attended the inaugural event. Senator Gaylord Nelson promoted Earth Day, calling upon students to fight for environmental causes and oppose environmental degradation with the same energy that they displayed in opposing the Vietnam War.
In July 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in response to the growing public demand for cleaner water, air, and land—its mission to protect the environment and public health. Earth Day also was the precursor of the largest grassroots environmental movement in U.S. history and the impetus for national legislation such as the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. By the twentieth anniversary of that event, more than 200 million people in 141 countries had participated in Earth Day celebrations.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the EPA was announcing new requirements for improving air quality in national parks and wilderness areas and establishing regulations requiring more than 90 percent cleaner heavy-duty highway diesel engines and fuel.
See the special presentation Chronology of Selected Events in the Development of the American Conservation Movement in the collection The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 to learn about milestones in U.S. efforts to preserve and protect the Earth. These efforts include the designation of some of America's most majestic national parks such as Mt. Rainier, Yosemite, Acadia, and the Grand Canyon.
John Burroughs, John Muir, and Luis Agassiz Fuertes (at the outset of his career as the nation's most notable ornithological painter since Audubon) were among the scientists, naturalists, and artists who produced an album documenting the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition. As such, they can be considered political and cultural progenitors of Earth Day. See also the Albert K. Fisher Papers—Fisher was a member of the Harriman Expedition from Meeting of Frontiers, a bilingual, multimedia English-Russian digital library that tells the story of the American exploration and settlement of the West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
Bird Painting, Louis Agazzis Fuertes, artist, July 22, 1899,
The Harriman Alaska Expedition: Chronicles and Souvenirs (page 190), May to August 1899. The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920
UPDATED ON: Sunday, April 19, 2009 12:26 Mecca time, 09:26 GMT
By Alan Fisher
The conference is meant to assess progress made against racism in recent years [REUTERS]
They will be balancing them for meaning, intention and implication as they search for a means to label their anti-racism conference, which convenes in the Swiss city on Monday, as a huge success.
As always with events of this kind, officials work for months behind the scenes, preparing the wording for the final document - the communique which will be issued at the end of the meeting, agreed by all participants.
However, the words have already caused problems for a number of countries. The US does not like the way things are shaping up, and has decided it will not be sending a delegation to Geneva.
It is not the first country to withdraw from the conference, but it is the biggest and most diplomatically significant.
Australia, Sweden, Italy, Israel and Canada are also boycotting the meetings and other countries may join this list before the first session is brought to order on Monday morning.
Durban dispute
"[The conference]singles out one particular conflict and prejudges key issues that can only be resolved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians"
US state department spokesman
It is in Durban where the roots of the contention began.
There, discussions became heated and angry over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the legacy of slavery.
As events came to a climax, Israeli and US delegations walked out. They said they found the draft document, which equated Zionism with racism, unacceptable.
'Islamophobia' Many Muslim nations see the Geneva conference as an opportunity to highlight what they see as Islamophobic tendencies in the west.
They point to the row over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, first published in 2006, and a number of controversial films produced in Europe since as clear examples of growing Islamophobia.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which represents 56 countries, would like to see "defamation of religion" defined as racist behaviour. There had been high hopes that the US would have a delegation sitting at the table on Monday morning, given a change in administration in Washington and the new world view of Barack Obama, the US president.
But over the weekend, the US delegation pulled out saying that despite significant changes in the draft document - many of which they specifically requested - there remained many things they deem unacceptable.
For example, they believe defining defamation of religion as racism impacts significantly on the freedom of speech.
A spokesman for the US State Department said the proposed final document "singles out one particular conflict and prejudges key issues that can only be resolved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians".
"The United States also has serious concerns with relatively new additions to the text regarding 'incitement', that run counter to the US commitment to unfettered free speech," he said.
The US decision has been welcomed by pro-Israel groups who thought the conference was simply an excuse for "Jew-bashing" but some senior politicians, including Obama's leading allies, say the decision goes against the new administration's policy of engaging with those they agree and disagree with.
Words are important, but it is the actions of the US and others which are proving significant at the moment.
Jeremiah Wright in the Propaganda System
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
Beginning in March 2008 and extending through the last Democratic primaries of early June, the United States witnessed the most brazen demonization in its history of a person based on his race, his creed, and his ties to a presidential candidate. One major purpose behind these attacks was to use the demonized figure to discredit the politician. But participation in the attacks also fed the voracious, twenty-four-hour-a-day media appetite, and quickly took on a life of its own. When we look back at the ugly spectacle then taking place, the evidence suggests that, despite much optimism about narrowing racial divides and an emerging “post-racial” consciousness, something much closer to the opposite had gripped America.
Of course, we are referring to the U.S. political class and establishment media’s treatment of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his relationship with Barack Obama. Contrasted with their handling of the Reverends John Hagee, Rod Parsley, and Pat Robertson and their links to John McCain, this episode provides an outstanding illustration of this country’s racism, chauvinism, and political biases.
Now retired from the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago — the “‘best representation’ of black liberation theology,” as James Cone told the New Yorker1 — where he served as pastor for thirty-six years, Wright had known Obama for close to twenty of those years. Because of Obama’s membership in Wright’s congregation, Obama’s two coming-of-age books and numerous testaments about his relationship with Wright, and Wright’s early role in Obama’s presidential campaign, where until March 14, he was chairperson of its African-American Leadership Committee, both men had long anticipated the day when someone would use the big-city black preacher against the black candidate.2 “They’re going to associate your name with mine, and that could be detrimental,” Wright recounted in a PBS interview shortly after Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007. “[C]onservative bloggers and pundits have begun raising concerns about Wright’s Africentric theology and his liberal, some say radical, politics,” PBS added.3*
ABC’s Good Morning America first triggered the avalanche of Wright coverage on March 13, when it played four short video-clips of “controversial statements,” and framed them with the leading question: “Could the reverend become a liability?”4 The next day, without referring to a single word from Wright, Obama issued a blanket condemnation: “I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.”5 The following Tuesday (March 18) in Philadelphia, Obama delivered his “A More Perfect Union” speech on race in America.6 “[T]he discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn,” he said, adding that he had “already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements...that have caused such controversy.” Obama even noted that Wright had a “profoundly distorted view of this country,” bending over backwards to repudiate anything that anybody finds offensive, no matter what Wright might have uttered, no matter how incisive. Noting that “This year, at least so far, the newsmaker from nowhere is Chicago minister Jeremiah Wright,” the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) likened Wright’s emergence “from obscurity to become a household word and an integral part of the media narrative” to the cases of Willie Horton (1988), Gennifer Flowers (1992), and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (2004).7 Although the PEJ failed to discuss what might link Wright to these three other cases, the “newsmaker from nowhere” had in fact become front-page news.
In one obvious sense, the transformation of Wright into an object of mass ridicule, and this object’s use, in turn, as an emotional “issue” to try to scare white Democratic primary voters away from Obama, into the arms of his rival, Hillary Clinton, belongs to a recurring strategy in U.S. presidential politics. As Kevin Phillips, a key adviser to Nixon’s successful 1968 campaign, explained the “Southern Strategy,” the more the “national Democratic Party [became] the Negro party throughout most of the South,” the more this fact “push[ed] whites into the alternative major party structure — that of the GOP.” Beginning with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision against “separate but equal” in Brown v. Board of Education, and carried across the South by the civil rights movement, the federal government’s pressures to desegregate southern schools, and culminating in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of 1964–65 under Lyndon Johnson, Republican campaigns seized upon these institutional changes to reap the political backlash among white, traditionally Democratic voters, whose defections to Republican candidates would prove decisive in several elections going forward. The “Democratic identification with the Negro social and economic revolution precipitated [the Republican] party’s best gains,” Phillips explained. “Negro-Democratic mutual identification was a major source of Democratic loss...in many sections of the nation.”8
But the Wright case is also reminiscent of how the media have swarmed around other Democratic hopefuls the past three decades, when the scent of vulnerability hung in the air. These include Jesse Jackson Sr. in early 1984 over his use of the pejorative “Hymietown” for New York City; Gary Hart in May 1987 over an extramarital relation; Michael Dukakis in 1988 over Willie Horton, a black felon in the state of Massachusetts who, during a weekend furlough while Dukakis was governor, escaped to Maryland where he attacked a white couple in their home; Bill Clinton in 1992 (and throughout his entire presidency) over his extramarital relations; Al Gore in 1999–2000 over his alleged claim to have “invented the Internet”; Howard Dean in January 2004 over the fallout from what became labeled the “scream” speech following his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses forcing him out of the primaries; and, last but not least, the success enjoyed in 2004 by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group in sowing lies about John Kerry’s Vietnam War service record.9
Yet, the same media that leapt at the chance to repeat these stories paid very little attention to George Bush’s evasion of the Vietnam War draft and his preferential treatment and failure to meet his legal obligations while a member of the Texas Air National Guard.10 Meanwhile, in 2007–08, Obama has placated establishment critics on virtually every policy front imaginable, the candidate of “change we can believe in” has visited interest group after interest group to promise them that they needn’t fear any change in the way they’re familiar with doing business.11 Nevertheless, Obama’s race, his background, his enthusiastic, youthful, and less predictable constituency, and the occasional slivers of populism that creep into his campaign, make the establishment nervous, whereas Hillary Clinton and John McCain clearly posed no such threats. And like George Bush, John McCain is portrayed as an earthy, chummy, straightforward kind of guy — indeed, as a “maverick” whose associations with lobbyists, the military-industrial complex, and some of the genuinely reactionary forces of U.S. society do not elicit the kind of focused attention directed at Obama and most everything he touches or that touches him.12
Constructing the Black Preacher
By now, the sermons, lectures, and commentaries of Jeremiah Wright quoted, reproduced, and discussed by other sources, ranging from broadcast and cable television and radio, to print and, of course, weblogs and the Internet-based audio- and video-hosting platforms such as YouTube, have been so numerous that sheer scale alone makes it impossible to define where his allegedly “controversial” and “offensive” statements begin, and where they end. But the relative intensity of coverage tells part of the story. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, for the first 125 days of 2008 (January 1–May 4), the Wright-Obama relationship was the most frequently reported news item, receiving roughly 3.8-times more attention than did the second most frequently reported item, how the “superdelegates” were aligning in the primary process; it was covered 4.9-times as heavily as John McCain’s ties to lobbyists.13 Wright and his views also towered over the meager attention given to the views of Hagee, Parsley, and Robertson, and to their relationships with McCain. Media Matters for America reports that between February 27 and April 30 — the 27th having been the date on which Hagee endorsed McCain in San Antonio while McCain was campaigning with Parsley in Ohio — the New York Times and Washington Post “published more than 12 times as many articles” mentioning Wright and Obama as they did mentioning Hagee and McCain. In terms of editorials and op-eds, the ratio was even greater — more than 15 to 1.14
Similar patterns were true across the board. For the ninety-six-day period from February 27 through June 1, mentions of Wright’s name in conjunction with Obama’s outnumbered mentions of Hagee’s with McCain’s 10.5 times to 1; they also outnumbered mentions of Parsley’s with McCain’s 40.2 times to 1. (See table 1.) Remarkably, even the Reverend Louis Farrakhan’s name turned up in conjunction with Obama’s more frequently than did McCain’s with Hagee’s or Parsley’s — although Obama has had no connection with Farrakhan whatsoever. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that at the apex of its coverage (April 28–May 4), the Wright-Obama relationship “accounted for 42% of that week’s campaign stories,” while at its apex (May 19–25), the Hagee-McCain relationship “accounted for only 8%.”15 The next week (May 26–June 1), when Obama resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ after a video was circulated of the Catholic priest, Michael Pfleger, mocking Hillary Clinton during a guest sermon at the church, coverage of this “accounted for 13% of all the campaign stories.”16 Indeed, so obsessive and so recurring was the media’s focus on Jeremiah Wright, on Wright’s Trinity United, and on any person or topic that could be squeezed into this frame of reference and used to generate negative reporting and commentary about the black preacher and his ties to the black candidate, that even when the McCain campaign officially rejected the endorsements it had previously sought from Hagee and Parsley, nearly one-half as many more articles mentioned Obama-Wright than mentioned McCain together with Hagee or Parsley. (See table 2.) This reveals a deep bias of remarkable consistency.
*Ninety-six-day period from Wednesday, February 27, through Sunday, June 1. Factiva database searches carried out under the “All Sources” category on June 2. Actual parameters were: [first name w/2 last name] AND [first name w/2 last name].
Another part of the story is the hostility expressed towards, and the derogatory language used in reference to, Wright — language seldom used for Hagee, Parsley, and Robertson (et al.). Wright “rants” and “raves,” and is “crazy” and “divisive” (etc.). “Wright’s ranting is going to hit white Americans with particular force,” Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten observed. Wright’s sermons “mix left-wing conspiracy theories, phony Afro-centricism, remnant black power rhetoric and a rag bag of vulgar Third World sympathies in an angry, frequently race-baiting social gospel. Preached in a style that leaves little room for understatement, it’s alarming stuff when you hear it for the first time.”17
*Twelve-week period from Monday, March 10 through Sunday, June 1. Factiva database searches carried out under the “All Sources” category on June 2. Actual parameters were: (A) Barack w/2 Obama AND Jeremiah w/2 Wright; and (B) John w/2 McCain AND [John w/2 Hagee or Rod w/2 Parsley].
†“Ratio” expresses the ratio between the numbers listed in each weekly column for Obama-Wright to Mc-Cain and Hagee or Parsley.
Aside from his quite accurate prediction about how white Americans would respond to Wright, what makes Wright’s sermons qualify as “ranting,” “conspiracy theories,” “phony,” “remnant,” “rag bag,” “vulgar,” “angry,” “alarming,” and the like, Rutten didn’t explain, nor did he feel any need to — he knew his readers would simply “get it.” Yet, in the same article, Rutten referred merely to Hagee’s “inconvenient views” about the Catholic Church being the “Great Whore of Babylon,” and to Clinton campaign adviser Geraldine Ferraro’s statement that “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” without any negative qualifier at all. As with close to 100 percent of his colleagues’ work during this period, whenever the media’s attention turned to Wright, the use of dismissive, highly insulting language came automatically to commentators, while an examination of the truth or falsity of what Wright actually said was regarded as unnecessary.
From the jingoistic right the denunciations were unrestrained: “anti-American, racist rantings” (National Review); “venomous and paranoid” (Ron Kessler); “grievance-mongering preacher animated by the voracity of hate” (Michelle Malkin); “hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism” (Shelby Steele); “black hate speech” and “racist rants” (Charles Krauthammer), “anti-American black supremacist” (London Times), “fatuous clerical rantings,” “black chauvinist rhetoric,” “foaming pastor,” “conceited old fanatic” (Christopher Hitchens); “stuck in a late-Sixties time warp” (Stanley Kurtz); among countless others like them.
But these were often matched and sometimes surpassed by the language of liberals: “histrionics of a loony preacher from the South Side of Chicago” (Bob Herbert); “ranting” and “fire-breathing pastor” (Frank Rich); “race-baiting diatribe” (Cynthia Tucker); a “self-centered jerk” who believes “It’s all about me” and whose “self-indulgent antics” belong on the American Idol television show (Rosa Brooks); the “jibberjabber from the crazy ex-minister” (Patricia Williams); “bigoted and paranoid rantings” (New York Times); “weirdness, wrath, insult, blowhardiness, vanity, paranoia, divisiveness and trouble” (Katha Pollitt). Last but not least, Barack Obama himself referred to Wright’s “ridiculous propositions,” “outrageous comments,” “very different vision of America,” as “divisive and destructive,” “something that not only makes me angry but also saddens me.”18
There were no comparable levels of anger and denunciation by the establishment media, or even by the liberals and left, over Parsley, Hagee, or Robertson, despite their prolific records of atrocious statements, their years of right-wing activism on behalf of the Republican Party, and the fact that McCain actively sought Hagee’s endorsement and referred to Parsley while campaigning with him in Ohio as “one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide.”19 (Obama did not seek Wright’s endorsement or declare him a moral compass and guide.) Thus for the same ninety-six-day period beginning February 27, snippets from Wright were characterized negatively as “ranting,” “raving,” or “crazy” (and the like) dozens of times as frequently as statements by Hagee and Robertson, and literally hundreds of times more often than those by Parsley. (See tables 3-A and 3-B.)
*We used the database operator * to include all variations of these words.
†Ninety-six-day period from Wednesday, February 27, through Sunday, June 1. NewsBank database searches carried out under the “All Papers” category on June 2. Actual parameters were: (first name ADJ2 last name) AND (rant* or rav* or craz*) NOT (last name).
†Ninety-six-day period from Wednesday, February 27, through Sunday, June 1. Factiva database searches carried out under the “Newspapers: All” category on June 2. -- Actual parameters were: [rst=TNWP] AND [first name w/2 last name] AND [rant*** or rav*** or crazy] NOT [last name].
Another word used in this set of controversies, but almost exclusively in reference to Wright, Obama, and company is “divisiveness.” To be divisive means not simply to divide and separate, but to act out-of-order, to overstep proper bounds, to engage in unacceptable behavior, and above all to upset the wrong people. When Obama announced on April 29 that his break with Wright was final and complete, he said he found Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club “divisive and destructive,” and added “people are hungry to get out of the old divisive politics of the past.” Similarly, at the end of May, the Obama campaign issued a terse statement rejecting Pfleger’s “divisive, backward-looking rhetoric”; and in the letter sent to Trinity United, informing the new pastor that his family was leaving the church, Obama explained, “Our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive statements of Reverend Wright.”20 Throughout the period February 27–June 1, the U.S. political class and the establishment media used the words “divisive” and “divisiveness” almost exclusively to characterize preachers associated with Barack Obama and/or Trinity United (but especially Wright and Pfleger), virtually never using these words for preachers associated with McCain (Parsley, Hagee, or Robertson) and Republican politics more generally. (See tables 4-A and 4-B.) Only Jeremiah Wright upsets the people who really matter.
†Ninety-six-day period from Wednesday, February 27, through Sunday, June 1. NewsBank database searches carried out under the “All Papers” category on June 2. Actual parameters were: (divisive*) AND (first name ADJ2 last name) NOT (last name).
†Ninety-six-day period from Wednesday, February 27, through Sunday, June 1. Factiva database searches carried out under the “Newspapers: All” category on June 2. Actual parameters were: [rst=TNWP] AND [first name w/2 last name] AND [divisive****] NOT [last name].
What the Preachers Said
What, then, has Wright said that brought this storm of attention, anger, and ridicule down upon him? What is it about his words that make them uniquely “divisive”? And what have Parsley, Hagee, and Robertson said that could be criticized, but failed to generate comparable outrage or claims of divisiveness?
Wright indeed has made statements that strike us as false and not all of them trivial in their implications. One important case occurred during his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS in late April.21 Wright noted that Iraqi deaths from the U.S. war totaled some “100,000 [or] 200,000, depending on which count” — numbers that likely understate Iraqi deaths by factors anywhere from six to twelve times.22 But as this error minimizes the scale of U.S. government responsibility, and stays safely within a widely promulgated range that even George Bush might be able to swallow, nobody called Wright a “whackadoodle” for making it, nor used it to challenge Wright’s membership within the reality-based community. Despite the gravity of the topic, and what it means to Iraqis, Wright is as free as the rest of his fellow Americans to make mistakes of this kind. In fact, we have not seen evidence that any of his bitterest critics even noticed.
Not so with other kinds of errors, however. One in particular has circulated widely, and been treated with ridicule. This was when Wright asserted that the U.S. government “invented” or was responsible for the origin of HIV “as a means of genocide against people of color.”23 We do not know how long Wright has believed this, or how many times he has expressed something like it. We do know that Wright has long been an outspoken critic of the stigma associated with AIDS, in particular the belief that “AIDS is God’s curse upon the homosexual.”24 We also know that at this stage in the epidemic’s history, HIV/AIDS impacts black Americans more than any other U.S. ethnic or racial group, with blacks accounting for half of the AIDS cases diagnosed in 2006, nine-times the rate for white Americans, and more than half of AIDS-related deaths, even though blacks comprise only 12 percent of the national population.25 And we know that when a question about the origins of AIDS was put to Wright at the National Press Club — “Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?” — he replied (in part): “Based on the Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.”26 Wright thus offers up the HIV claim while cataloging the oppression of black people in this country, including what has been called the “archetype of unethical research and racism in medicine,” the U.S. Public Health Service’s forty-year experiment with 600 black men in Macon County, Alabama (1932–72), 399 of whom suffered from syphilis but were left untreated, the officials following the disease’s progress in these men all the way to their deaths and autopsies.27
Yet, we are confident that Wright’s HIV error is not central to the attacks he has suffered. What is central are Wright’s extensive and effective broadsides against U.S. and Western (or white European) policies and pretensions, including his criticisms of the United States as an imperial superpower that rules the world by force, and robs from lesser powers in order to maintain its great wealth, without concern for the people it damages. Equally important is his view that the United States remains a racist society, its beneficiaries unwilling to surrender the material legacies of slavery, much less to make reparations for them.
Thus in stark contrast with Obama’s “post-racial” rhetoric, all of Wright’s “greatest hits” that have circulated over YouTube and similar platforms in 2008,28 and wound up reiterated ad infinitum, should be seen in light of Wright’s political critique of “500 years of colonialism, racism, and slavery” — themes painfully familiar to untold numbers of people, taken up and contested by liberation movements and by great literature throughout the ages. This encompasses Wright’s sermon in the aftermath of 9/11 that warned of the dangers inherent in seeking vengeance, and argued that 9/11 can only be understood as “America’s chickens coming home to roost”;29 his assertion that the United States is “the No. 1 killer in the world,” and that when Americans kill, “nobody bats an eye”; his “God damn America...for killing innocent people [and] for treating her citizens as less than human”; and his assertions that the U.S. government “lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” and “lied about a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein”; that it supports Israel “shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who [speaks] out against it as being anti-Semitic”; that this country “believe[s] in white supremacy and black inferiority”; and that we ought to call this country the “United States of White America.”
Following Wright’s National Press Club performance, Alexander Cockburn noted that “95 percent of it makes total sense and is a breath of fresh air, as Wright ushers the Real America onto the stage, as opposed to the candidates’ flattering fictions.”30 But as these are precisely the fictions that powerful Americans cling to most dearly, Wright’s harsh criticisms of them place him beyond the pale for the establishment U.S. media and politicians vetted in the money primary.
Were the media concerned about prominent religious leaders who are politically active, whose ministries reach a lot of people, and who take outlandish stands on important issues, surely somebody would have connected the dots between the Republican Party’s years of disservice to the AIDS cause, and John Hagee’s assertion that AIDS is an “incurable plague” and “God’s curse against a disobedient nation.” Neither would anyone have forgotten the late Jerry Falwell’s gem, “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” Nor that former Republican presidential candidate — and current McCain supporter — Pat Robertson campaigned in 1988 on a platform that included “some sort of quarantine of AIDS victims similar to those applied in the past in typhoid fever and hepatitis [cases].”31 And if the media were determined to uproot fanaticism wherever it is found, they would have noted that while only 15.2 percent of black Americans told researchers in 2005 that they believed “AIDS is a form of genocide against blacks,” as recently as 2007, 38 percent of white evangelical Protestants — the largest religious affiliation in the United States — affirmed that “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior.”32 Not content to blame HIV on a bio-weapons lab, this troubling percentage of Americans still saw AIDS as a form of pestilence — Hagee’s “curse of the plagues” — afflicting not just individuals, but whole countries that have fallen away from God.
In short, the charges levied by Wright against the United States are of a kind that nobody is free to express within the circles of American Power. If one wants to move within these circles, and to climb the many ladders to power and privilege they offer, one must remain silent about its flattering fictions or watch these ladders pulled away. A perfectly accurate assessment of 9/11, Wright’s “chickens coming home to roost” is received as an inestimably greater offense than are the “at least 935 false statements” by George Bush and seven of his regime’s top officials “in the two years following September 11, 2001,” as part of their “concerted effort” militarily to seize Iraq, and to replace the former regime with one of their own making — despite the devastating consequences of these lies.33 The same is true of the wild-eyed remarks by two of the GOP’s favorite preachers about the heavenly origins of 9/11:
Jerry Falwell: [T]he Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years…[But] what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact — if, in fact — God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve… The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this...throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.” Pat Robertson: I totally concur. And the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.34
Jerry Falwell: [T]he Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years…[But] what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact — if, in fact — God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve… The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this...throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”
Pat Robertson: I totally concur. And the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we’re responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.34
Nor did the media highlight the equally wild-eyed statements by other GOP preachers about Hurricane Katrina as the “judgment of God” against New Orleans for a “homosexual parade”; the need for a “military preemptive strike to take out the nuclear capability of Iran for the salvation of Western civilization” (Hagee); the description of Islam as an “anti-Christ religion that intends, through violence, to conquer the world” (Parsley). Still less did it question the related claim that the United States was “founded, in part” — deriving its “divine purpose,” no less — from God’s “intention of seeing this false religion [i.e., Islam] destroyed” (Parsley).35
Because the men who preach these political sermons align closely with the institutions, policies, and party that Wright lambastes, their colossal gaffes and extremist prejudices, and the eventual outing in late May of Hagee and Parsley, proved nothing more than a minor bump along John McCain’s road, while Obama’s “pastor problem” is the kind that keeps on giving his enemies ammunition with which to attack.
Wright’s message being unacceptable in mainstream politics, not only was Wright vilified, but Obama himself was attacked for this association and felt immediate political pressure quickly and thoroughly to dissociate himself from the beyond-the-pale critic. It took a long time for McCain to do the same with his collection of religious extremist supporters, and interestingly his campaign only took this step after the disclosure one week before of an audio-clip in which Hagee preached that “what Hitler did in the Holocaust” was God’s plan to drive Europe’s Jews “back to the land of Israel.”36 Without this awkward disclosure, McCain might have remained silent, his religious team not having done anything truly beyond the pale like assailing U.S. racism, militarism, or empire building.37
We also believe that another reason liberals were harsh on Wright, beyond the fact that quite a few of them can’t stomach powerful criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and domestic inequalities and racism, is their fear that positions and rhetoric like Wright’s could jeopardize Obama’s chances in the 2008 election. Calling Wright a “distraction on the campaign trail,” Democratic Party strategist Donna Brazile lauded Obama’s Philadelphia speech, explaining that Obama “had to rebuke and distance himself from those comments.” Wright’s “Malcolm X-ism,” Maureen Dowd warned, has “dragged Obama into the ’60s maelstrom that [Obama] had pledged to be an antidote to.” In an interview with The Guardian titled “Do the right thing and shut up,” filmmaker Spike Lee complained that “The more [Wright] opens his mouth, the more damage he does.” Lee continued: “It makes me question his motives for talking. I’m starting to wonder whether somebody has been contributing to the building funds of his church. Seriously.” Similar expressions of anger were common in liberal quarters. Wright was egocentric, narcissistic, divisive, indeed, crazy — all-for-Jeremiah and nothing-for-Barack. As Arianna Huffington complained to Charlie Rose, “I think Jeremiah Wright obviously has a tremendous responsibility for derailing this campaign.”38
Southern Strategies
On June 11, 1963, George Wallace, Alabama’s newly elected governor, stood in the doorway to Foster Auditorium on the Tuscaloosa campus of the University of Alabama, where registration for summer classes was being held. A federal court had ordered the desegregation of the university; Wallace swore that he’d never let it happen. Even though Wallace backed down that day, and Vivian Hood and Jimmy Malone became the university’s first black students, the episode “transformed [Wallace] into a major player in American politics,” Dan Carter writes. Within one week, “more than 100,000 congratulatory telegrams and letters flooded the office of the Alabama governor.” Purportedly more than “half came from outside the South, and 95 percent supported” his stand. It was a “moment of epiphany” for Wallace. He “had looked out upon those white Americans north of Alabama and suddenly been awakened by a blinding vision: ‘They all hate black people, all of them. They’re all afraid, all of them. Great God! That’s it! They’re all Southern. The whole United States is Southern.’”39
Forty-five years later, race continues to impact the United States in powerful, though often less overt ways. By early June, the percentage of Americans dissatisfied with the “way things are going” reached 76 percent — a “record high,” Pew reported.40 One Wall Street Journal–NBC News poll found that by a margin of 51 percent to 35 percent, voters preferred the Democrats to win the White House in November rather than the Republicans.41 Gallup reported that 37 percent of voters identified themselves as Democrats, compared to 28 percent Republicans (with 34 percent independents/others).42 Such findings prompted the Journal (and many Republicans) to wonder whether U.S. politics was facing fundamental realignment “toward prolonged Democratic control”?43
And yet, according to Gallup’s daily tracking polls, John McCain and Barack Obama had been neck-and-neck from early March through the last week of July, both scoring in the low-to-mid 40-point range, with a narrow spread moving up and down between them, and the only departures from this pattern tied to specific but fleeting events, such as when Hillary Clinton withdrew from the Democratic primary in early June, and when Obama returned to the States after his grand tour of Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by stops in Israel, Jordan, Germany, France, and Britain.44
McCain’s relatively strong showing thus stood in sharp contrast with his party’s decline in popularity and its looming loss of congressional seats this fall, despite the fact that “On the issues, he is at odds with many voters.” But pollsters understood the reason: “More voters said they could identify with Sen. McCain’s ‘background’ and ‘values’ than with [Obama’s]… It underscores the extent to which his personality and image, rather than issues such as the war and the economy, could shape this presidential election.”45
Emphasizing this “campaign’s unusual dynamic,” a subsequent Wall Street Journal–NBC News poll deepened these findings. When asked whether each candidate “has a background and set of values that you can identify with,” 58 percent of voters said they could identify with McCain, while 47 percent said the same for Obama. Even more revealing, when asked “who do you think would be the riskier choice for president,” 55 percent said Obama, only 35 percent McCain. “One of [the McCain campaign’s] overriding themes is that [Obama’s] election would represent too big a risk for voters to take,” the Journal explained by way of a gloss on its finding.46 As summed-up by the Pew survey mentioned above: While “McCain’s negatives [were] mostly political, Obama’s [were] more personal.”
Managers of the two U.S. political parties are perfectly aware that both parties stand further to the right (i.e., are more elite-oriented) than does the general public on every issue of major import.47 This is why the parties find it necessary to resort to so many phony issues, and why their candidates run instead on the intangibles of character, values, patriotism, and the like: “Issues” such as these are readily fabricated, fuzzy, manageable, even adjustable from day to day, and each party knows well that its candidate would lose, were he to run on the basis of policies that cause serious harm to the majority of voters, but which each party is sure to implement.
For the first five months of 2008, the U.S. media devoted no more than 7 percent of its campaign coverage to “policy,” that is, to real issue-related stories, but a huge 78 percent to stories that focused on “horse race”-related affairs — strategy, who won and who lost, who lost whose temper, and what campaign tactics, ads, and gaffes the candidates may have committed.48 As Sheldon Wolin might say, the 2008 primaries were a “tribute,” not to the “vibrancy” of American democracy, but to “artifacts manufactured by money, organization, and the media,” and to their “utility in supporting a myth that legitimates the very formations of power which have enfeebled [American democracy].”49
During the Democratic primaries, the Clinton campaign failed to pry enough racially resentful white voters away from Obama to overcome his lead in delegates, which had already assumed what turned out to be its final shape during the middle weeks of February. But this was not because it did not try — much less because the “Southern Strategy” no longer works. Rather, it was because the Clinton campaign waited too long to employ its version of the strategy, as it was only from late February on that it began making the case to uncommitted “superdelegates” in particular that the Black Candidate could not prevail in the general election, so that it would be too risky for the Democratic Party to permit him to become its nominee.50 Although “electability,” the need to win in “swing” or “purple” states such as Florida and Ohio, and to find some way to collect the “magical 270” electoral college minimum was the rhetoric then in use, we cannot help but be struck by the implicit defense of the color line that lurked beneath all of this.
At the same time, by stirring up so many prejudices and fears around the Black Preacher, and by keeping his relationship with the Black Candidate at or near the top of the media’s campaign coverage for the last twelve weeks of the primaries, the Black Candidate’s standing was diminished among Hillary Clinton supporters, independents, and, in terms of presidential elections, that most important demographic of all, given their sheer numbers — white racists and white social reactionaries. Come November, this is bound to cause lingering effects, and threatens to play a self-fulfilling role in the outcome.
Before Barack Obama clinched his party’s nomination in the first half of 2008, a whole series of demands was made of him, quite unlike any other national candidate in memory. Louis Farrakhan had been the recipient of the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Trumpeter Award at Trinity United Church. This became “Obama’s Farrakhan Test,” about which the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen wrote that, “given who the parishioner is, the obligation to speak out is all the greater.” That very day, Obama issued a terse statement “decry[ing] racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn[ing] the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan.”51 Then up popped Obama’s Wright Test — without question, his most arduous through the primaries. “Why did he stay a member of the congregation?” Clinton operative Lanny Davis demanded. “Why didn’t he speak up earlier? And why did he reward Rev. Wright with a campaign position even after knowing of his comments?”52 It took Obama at least four and maybe five acts of public expiation before he purged his old pastor, the last not completed until Obama’s Pfleger Test came at the end of May, when he finally left Trinity United for good.53
Notions of “tests,” of casting out, and of making amends, take us to the heart of socially sanctioned group behavior.
Because Obama had ties to people who, like Wright and Pfleger, are “divisive,” who traffic in dangerous ideas, and who do not know their proper places, Obama was compelled to sever those ties and promise never to associate with their kind again. Through the Democratic primaries, he did this unfailingly.
The fact that Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination is welcome evidence that the United States has traveled some distance since George Wallace’s “epiphany.” But we must not forget that the “racial divide” not only persists in this country, it is also strong and arguably “without peer,” revealing “two utterly dissimilar publics,” as Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders write in a major study of the “differences in opinion between blacks and whites.” “[T]he most arresting feature of public opinion on race,” they believe, “remains how emphatically black and white Americans disagree with each other.” So fundamental is this divide, it expresses a “deep and perhaps deepening racial alienation.” In a careful study of the 1988 presidential campaign by the first George Bush, and the ways in which it used the image of Willie Horton to “blow up” the Michael Dukakis campaign (Republican strategist Lee Atwater’s phrase), they show that the “racial resentments” of white voters proved decisive in the defeat of Dukakis, and in their words “offered near-perfect illustration of the electoral temptations of race.”54
Modern Dixiecrats
A Dixiecrat meeting is the strangest type of political gathering of our time… States Rights is the issue only insofar as it concerns the right of States to solve — or refuse to solve — their race problems. The real issue is one word, and that word is never spoken. It is one thought, and that thought is never expressed… On the platform, Mr. Thurmond and his fellow travelers shout of Americanism, our way of life, the right to choose one’s associates, Communism, Reds. But they mean Nigger. — John Ed Pearce, 1948 55
A Dixiecrat meeting is the strangest type of political gathering of our time…
States Rights is the issue only insofar as it concerns the right of States to solve — or refuse to solve — their race problems. The real issue is one word, and that word is never spoken. It is one thought, and that thought is never expressed…
On the platform, Mr. Thurmond and his fellow travelers shout of Americanism, our way of life, the right to choose one’s associates, Communism, Reds. But they mean Nigger. — John Ed Pearce, 1948 55
Now that the Democratic nomination is set and the general election draws near, it is the Republican attack machine’s turn. That machine, already large and impressively powerful twenty years ago, has grown in size, sophistication, and power, spreading as far as the explosive growth in new media will enable it. Nor can its effectiveness be doubted, as we saw just four years ago in the remarkable success of the Swift Boat Veterans at denigrating the naval record of Vietnam War veteran John Kerry when he ran for the presidency; and has been seen twice (2000 and then again in 2004) in the machine’s ability to help keep George Bush’s record of draft evasion and his going AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard out of the public arena.56
As we noted at the outset, a “Southern Strategy” in U.S. presidential politics is any attempt to persuade or entice or frighten racially bigoted, fearful, and resentful white voters — “Negrophobe whites,” in Kevin Phillips’ classic formulation — to flee the Democratic Party by identifying it with black minority causes (public school desegregation, say, and civil rights more generally). For more than forty years, this has meant the conscious marketing of the Republican Party (which still retains the image of the party of Lincoln) as the bastion of white majority interests. Southern strategies can be blatant, as when the “Dixiecrats” rose up in several Southern states in 1948, and defected from the Democratic Party to protest a civil rights program announced early that year by President Harry Truman as a way of countering Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace’s more comprehensive proposal.57 “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race [and] the constitutional right to choose one’s associates,” the Dixiecrats’ own platform countered. “We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, [and] the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program.”58 But a Southern Strategy can also be more refined — removed by varying degrees of separation between the rhetoric and imagery that it adopts and its white racist roots. Indeed, since the 1960s, this has been its most familiar form. Even when George Wallace made his stand in the schoolhouse door, the “proclamation” that he read from the podium that day made no mention of upholding the color line; instead, Wallace spoke of the need to protect “states’ rights,” and denounced “this illegal and unwarranted action by the Central Government” in Washington.59
The same was true for Barry Goldwater in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, who, as Dan Carter recalls, “showed that he could use [racially] coded language with the best of them, lambasting welfare queens, busing, and affirmative action as the need arose.”60 Reagan’s first campaign stop after winning the 1980 Republican nomination was the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the city where Freedom Summer activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman had been “slain with the complicity of local police officials in 1964,” the press reported at the time. “Just as Goldwater had drawn virtually all-white audiences in the Deep South in 1964, so Reagan was greeted by a ‘crowd almost entirely made up of whites.’ He did not let them down. ‘I believe in states’ rights’, Reagan said… As [the Washington Post’s Lou] Cannon observed, ‘The visual statement of television the next day was a sea of white faces at the Neshoba Fair with Reagan’s words floating about them.’ The Mississippi event powerfully communicated Reagan’s sympathies and electoral targets in the rural Deep South.”61
Whenever candidates, parties, or media draw from the deep well of white racial solidarity and reaction to gains by black Americans, this is the kind of strategy they are executing — whether they are conscious of their true motives (as was Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, and are the myriad of Swift Boat-like, negative attack Web sites that have sprung-up in 2008, warning against the “dark forces” taking over the Democratic Party, and pledging their support for anybody but the Black Candidate62) or not conscious of them in the least. From preserving racial segregation in the South sixty years ago, to maintaining the Republican hold on the White House in 1988 and 2008, the essential strategy remains constant. Even if it is not the whole United States that is “Southern,” in Wallace’s sense, what once worked so well across the Deep South has long since gone national, following extant racial cleavages and spread by old and new media alike.63
In the words of one cynic, the Black Preacher “has become the honorary chairman of McCain’s get-out-the-vote efforts… Wright will loom larger in the general election.”64 Of this we have no doubt. The savage dragging of Jeremiah Wright through the propaganda system in March, April, and May of this year shows how well-primed is a substantial percentage of the U.S. political class and media to carry out racial scapegoating and to pile on a collectively demonized figure. It also points ominously to much uglier tactics scheduled for the rest of the campaign.65
Only this time things are different. The emotionally potent caricatures of undeserving blacks to whom New Deal and Great Society Democrats have doled out big-government largesse at the expense of white, hardworking taxpayers, and the insidious, coded language and imagery behind which this mentality hides its true face when in public, no longer need to be bundled together and turned into “issues” about “state’s rights,” “welfare queens,” “quotas,” “free rides,” “affirmative action,” “special favors,” “grievances,” “pathologies,” “crime,” “drugs,” “gangs,” “public safety,” “personal responsibility,” and dozens of others:66 Barack Obama’s blackness takes care of everything.
Because Barack Obama is running for the presidency of a country built upon black slavery, white supremacy, ubiquitous color lines, and deeply-rooted race prejudices, the Republican attack machine has its easiest target to date. And this remains true no matter how obsequiously Obama’s campaign managers work to portray him. Or how much “unity” the stalwarts of today’s Democratic Party swear up and down behind him.
Anti-black racism was not created in 2008; and though it can be activated from above, it need not be imposed. Instead, its presence is always felt, echoing up and down U.S. history like the residue of the Big Bang that radio astronomers detect wherever they turn their antennae — only much louder. Before November 4 arrives, we still anticipate this election to turn into nothing less than a national referendum on whether the 66 percent of the U.S. population that is white (or the 88 percent that isn’t black) is willing to permit a Black Candidate to enter the White House.
Meanwhile, out of the image-dominated world of the American elite comes the marketing of Barack Obama, the candidate of “change.” But presidential elections afford scant prospects for real change in the United States, and certainly none in the fundamental structure of its society. No matter which party’s candidate wins at the polls, it is the vast majority of the U.S. and indeed global population that will continue to lose.
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September 2008
The U.S. Media Reform Movement: Going Forward Robert W. McChesney
All social scholarship ultimately is about understanding the world to change it, even if the change we want is to preserve that which we most treasure in the status quo. This is especially and immediately true for political economy of media as a field of study, where research has a direct and important relationship with policies and structures that shape media and communication and influence the course of society. Because of this, too, the political economy of communication has had a direct relationship with policy makers and citizens outside the academy. The work, more than most other areas, cannot survive if it is “academic.” That is why the burgeoning media reform movement in the United States is so important for the field. This is a movement, astonishingly, based almost directly upon core political economic research.
REVIEW OF THE MONTH The Escalating War Against Corporate Media ROBERT W. McCHESNEY
A recurring issue for the left historically has been how to address the capitalist media. In recent years the problem has grown ever more severe, and no small amount of attention has been given to examining the problems of the commercial media and how closely they reinforce and accentuate problems within the broader social order. The logic of this criticism has become clear: progressives need to work on challenging the corporate domination of media as part of the broader struggle for social justice. If changing media is left until “after the revolution,” there will be no revolution, not to mention fewer chances for social reform. But politicizing control over media has proven to be extraordinarily difficult for activists. That is why the massive and largely unanticipated 2003 campaign in the United States to stop further media concentration, which almost overnight reached a scale not seen in media reform struggles since the 1930s, is so important and instructive. This article chronicles that revolt.
March 2004
REVIEW OF THE MONTH The Commercial Tidal Wave ROBERT W. McCHESNEY and JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER
For a long time now it has been widely understood within economics that under the capitalism of giant firms, corporations no longer compete primarily through price competition. They engage instead in what economists call "monopolistic competition." This consists chiefly of attempts to create monopoly positions for a particular brand, making it possible for corporations to charge more for the branded product while also expanding their market share. Competition is most intense in what Thorstein Veblen called the "production of salable appearances," involving advertising, frequent model changes, branding of products, and the like. Once this logic takes over in twentieth and now twenty-first century capitalism it is seemingly unstoppable. All human needs, relationships and fears, the deepest recesses of the human psyche, become mere means for the expansion of the commodity universe under the force of modern marketing. With the rise to prominence of modern marketing, commercialism-the translation of human relations into commodity relations-although a phenomenon intrinsic to capitalism, has expanded exponentially.
March 2003
REVIEW OF THE MONTH Upton Sinclair and the Contradictions of Capitalist Journalism ROBERT W. McCHESNEY and BEN SCOTT
Beginning in the 1980s, there was a significant increase in awareness of the deep flaws of mainstream journalism among those on the U.S. left. Writers such as Todd Gitlin, Herbert Schiller, Gaye Tuchman, Ben Bagdikian, and Michael Parenti, each in his or her own way, drew attention to the incompatibility between a corporate run news media and an ostensibly democratic society. The work of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, in particular, introduced an entire generation of progressives to a critical position regarding mainstream journalism. As the title of their masterful Manufacturing Consent indicated, the capitalist news media are far more about generating support for elite policies than they are about empowering people to make informed political decisions.
May 2002
REVIEW OF THE MONTH Global Media, Neoliberalism, and Imperialism ROBERT W. McCHESNEY
In conventional parlance, the current era in history is generally characterized as one of globalization, technological revolution, and democratization. In all three of these areas media and communication play a central, perhaps even a defining, role. Economic and cultural globalization arguably would be impossible without a global commercial media system to promote global markets and to encourage consumer values. The very essence of the technological revolution is the radical development in digital communication and computing. The argument that the bad old days of police states and authoritarian regimes are unlikely to return is premised on the claims that new communication technologies along with global markets undermine, even eliminate, the capacity for “maximum leaders” to rule with impunity.
March 2001
Journalism, Democracy, … and Class Struggle ROBERT W. McCHESNEY
Socialists since the time of Marx have been proponents of democracy, but they have argued that democracy in capitalist societies is fundamentally flawed. In capitalist societies, the wealthy have tremendous social and economic advantages over the working class that undermine political equality, a presupposition for viable democracy. In addition, under capitalism the most important economic issues—investment and control over production—are not the province of democratic politics but, rather, the domain of a small number of wealthy firms and individuals seeking to maximize their profit in competition with each other. This means that political affairs can only indirectly influence economics, and that any party or individual in power has to be careful not to antagonize wealthy investors so as to instigate an investment strike and an economic collapse that would generally mean political disaster.
November 2000
More Form than Substance: Press Coverage of the WTO Protests in Seattle WILLIAM S. SOLOMON
The mainstream U.S. news media have been shifting rightward for at least two decades, as their corporate owners enforce tighter ideological conformity. Oliver North and Pat Buchanan, for example, are now regular commentators on television talk shows. And all of the media now refer to people as "consumers," cogs in a capitalist machine. But still, news is less than half as profitable as entertainment, and media firms are intensifying pressures on their "news properties" for higher profits, which means the pursuit of upscale demographics. Owners are removing journalism's much-vaunted separation of newsroom practices and business decisions, blurring the line between news and entertainment, and forming partnerships with one another to offer online news services. As William Glaberson said in the New York Times in July 1995, "It is now common for publishing executives to press journalists to cooperate with their newspapers' `business side,' breaching separations that were said in the past to be essential for journalistic integrity."
May 2000
The U.S. Left and Media Politics ROBERT W. McCHESNEY
American democracy is in deep trouble. Cynicism and distrust of the political system, fueled at least in part by imposed ignorance, have grown steadily in recent years. There are several reasons for this, but few as important as the condition of our media. Many Americans, especially those on the left, know that after a generation of rampant consolidation and conglomeration, the American media are dominated by less than twenty firms—and that a half-dozen or so corporate giants hold the commanding positions. These firms use their market power to advance their own and other companies' corporate agendas. And they increasingly commercialize every aspect of our culture. By any known theory of political democracy, this tightly-held media system, accountable only to Wall Street and Madison Avenue, is a poisonous proposition.
February 1999
The New Theology of the First Amendment ROBERT W. McCHESNEY
The First Amendment stands as the crown jewel of the U.S. Constitution. Although it often has been ignored and violated throughout U.S. history, the First Amendment is the republic's shining commitment to individual freedom of expression and to the protection of this institutional requirements for an informed electorate and a participatory democracy. Yet what exactly the First Amendment signifies and does has been the subject of considerable debate over the years. Currently or in the near future, any number of cases are and will be working their way through the court system that would seek to prohibit any government regulation of political campaign spending, broadcasting, and commercial speech (e.g. advertising or food labeling) on the grounds that such regulation would violate citizens' and corporations' First Amendment rights to free speech or free press. Each case raises quite distinct constitutional issues concerning the First Amendment, but they share the common effect of protecting the ability of the wealthy and powerful few to act in their self-interest without fear of public examination, debate and action.
March 1998
All material © copyright 2009by Monthly Review
At the Summit of Americas Hugo Chavez came with a gift for President Obama: The Spanish original signed by himself of this book:
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ISBN: 0-85345-991-6 $18.00 paper ISBN: 0-85345-990-8 $34.00 cloth 360 pp.
also by Eduardo Galeano: DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano Translated by Cedric Belfrage New Introduction by Isabel Allende
“A superbly written, excellently translated, and powerfully persuasive expose which all students of Latin American and U.S. history must read.” —CHOICE, American Library Association
“I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Galeano’s vision is unswerving, surgical and yet immensely generous and humane. This book, written more than thirty years ago, contains profound lessons for contemporary [? Americas]. Eduardo Galeano ought to be a household name in this country.” —Arundhati Roy
Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.
Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.
Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.
This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende's inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.
About the Author EDUARDO GALEANO is the author of Days and Nights of Love and War (winner of the 1978 Casa de las Americas Prize), The Book of Embraces, and the highly acclaimed Memory of Fire trilogy. ISABEL ALLENDE is the author of several bestselling titles including In the House of the Spirits; The Infinite Plan, and Paula.
If you have any technical comments or suggestions, about this web site, please send e-mail to Our Webmaster.
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Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Galeano
some quotes from Galeano:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eduardo_Galeano
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"(...)
Freeman's comments on Israel were a key issue, but the business ties also raised serious conflict-of-interest concerns in Congress for an official whose influential estimates cover the globe's hot spots, the source said.
Freeman's problems were magnified by Obama's earlier difficulties with political appointees, he said.
The council that Freeman had been picked to head prepares the National Intelligence Estimates that are heavily relied on by Congress and administration policy makers.
Its work has come under intense scrutiny since it produced a controversial, and inaccurate, assessment in 2002 that Iraq was continuing its weapons of mass destruction programs. Former President George W. Bush's main justification for the U.S.-led war he launched in 2003 was the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
A 2007 estimate that Iran had suspended its work on nuclear weapon design also met criticism, this time from conservatives who said it undermined a hardline U.S. policy toward Tehran.
The National Intelligence Council position does not require Senate confirmation.
Cable news and right wing blogs are swarming with the revisionist history on the New Deal. Arm yourself against lies, spin and propaganda by reading info from a number of sources.
Here down a article about this topic. [Media Matters is a progressive media watchdog and fact checking organization which has received accolades from numerous sources (except the right wing media which often gets debunked by Media Matters).]
The link to digg it and for article: Conservatives Cherry-Pick 1930s Unemployment Figures
Summary: Columnists Mona Charen and George Will continued a trend among conservative media of responding to comparisons between the current economic situation and that of the 1930s and between Barack Obama and FDR by attacking the New Deal. In separate columns, both Charen and Will cherry-picked unemployment figures to assert that the New Deal did not reduce unemployment. But historians and progressive economists have noted that unemployment fell every year of the New Deal except during the 1937-38 recession; further, Nobel-laureate Paul Krugman has said it was a reversal of New Deal policies, not a continuance of them, that contributed to rising unemployment in 1937 and 1938.
Yes we can! Best wishes, Steffen
http://changeforbetterworld.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-way-to-say-goodbye-to-neocons-bush.html
Formal Petition to Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.
You can Digg it: My_way to say GOODBYE to neocons, Bush and Cheney!
A picture from me to say goodbye from most bad president of US and all neocons.We can only hope many people will long enough remember. Bush had a lot bad gifts for the change! Let's take care the poor and normal people will not have to pay now too much after the rich made profit in good time!And what's with impeachment now?! What's with hidden knowledge of Sept. 11 2001?[ Maybe an explanation of picture: it's made like an "egg laying wool milk sow" a metaphorical-idiomatic term in Germany]
Yeah, and here you can see something new about neocons were bringing to us - for me to say: don't forgive Bush and neocons and there is still a lot to work of. We will and can do this too - Yes we can!I got now message too like "If anybody can clean up the mess bush left, it's President Obama." - Yes and Obama likes people helping still to do the work - help him! We were a big and strong movement and so people got knowledge back how strong people can be together! Whistleblower: Bush's NSA spied on EVERYONE (already 4255 Diggs) The NSA had access to ALL YOUR COMMUNICATIONS, regardless of who you were or whether or not you were communicating internationally.
Barack's Inaugural Speech was both sobering and inspirational ....
Its urgent that we participate in offering both solutions and support for our new government.
Its time to dream again .... Big Dreams .... not of what is .... but a bright new future for America and the world.
Carpe Diem !
-Vince ;-}
"This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in."
-Theodore Roosevelt
This article below is from the Israeli Coalition Against Housing Demoitions. The Director, Jeff Halper, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize two years ago. He's an Israeli working on behalf of justice in the Occupied Territories. He's an academic as well as an activist and to me. He is an Israeli who is critical of Israel and calls it to account. Below is his organization's perspective on Gaza. This stuff does not make the Western News.
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:33:02 +0200Subject: Analysis ISRAEL IN GAZA: A CRITICAL REFRAMINGFrom: info@icahd.orgTo: friends@icahd.org
ISRAEL IN GAZA: A CRITICAL REFRAMING
Israel's core messages, listed below, argue for the justice of its invasion of Gaza in late December, 2008, cast Israel as the victim and endeavor that its "war on Hamas" not be seen against the background of prolonged occupation, closure and sanctions, but of the broader Western "War on Terror." The alternative view presented below argues otherwise. As Israelis committed to human rights, international law and a just peace as the only way out of our interminable and bloody conflict with the Palestinians, we contend that security cannot be achieved unilaterally, especially as Israel shows no signs of fully relinquishing its 41 year Occupation so that a truly sovereign and viable Palestinian may emerge. In that context, Israel's attack on Gaza can be considered merely another attempt to render its Occupation permanent by destroying any source of effective resistance. The immediate pretext of Israel's attack, rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, does not explain the disproportionality of its attack, especially given the unrelenting sanctions, attacks and assassinations carried out by Israel throughout the cease-fire. Indeed, we argue that Israel could have avoided all attacks upon it over the last twenty years, as well as the rise of Hamas to power, if it had accepted the PLO's offer of a two-state solution proffered already in 1988 and has entered into negotiations in good faith. Instead, Israel, the strong party in the conflict and the sole Occupying Power, chose to dramatically increase its settler population, construct a permanent infrastructure of separation and control, remove "Greater Jerusalem" from Palestine and encircle the West Bank with its expanded borders: that of the Separation Barrier incorporating Israel's major settlement blocs and the "security border" of the Jordan River. Israel is not a victim; it is the active perpetrator of a permanent apartheid regime over all of Israel/Palestine. It is toward that goal that Gaza is being violently pacified today, Israel's killing with impunity scores of Palestinian civilians constituting nothing less than State Terrorism.
The following pages present the essential elements of the Israeli government's framing of its assault on Gaza, followed by a critical re-framing that introduces context, policies and aims which the government's version purposely omits.
· Israeli PR: Like all countries, it has a right and duty to defend its citizens.
An alternative framing: To pursue offensive policies of prolonged occupation as well as sanctions, boycotts and closures which rob another people of its rights, aspirations and very livelihood, and to then refuse to truly engage with that people's elected leaders (a policy preceding Hamas's rise to power), is what puts your own people at risk. To expect your citizens to live in security while a million and a half subjugated people just a few kilometers away live in misery is both unrealistic and presumptive. Israel will only be able to defend its citizens – which is indeed its duty – if it addresses the causes of their insecurity, which is a 41 year-old occupation which the oppressed will resist, by "legitimate" means or not.
· Israeli PR: Israel had no choice but to attack in response to the barrage of 8,500 Hamas rockets fired from Gaza into Israel over the past eight years that have killed 20 Israeli civilians.
An alternative framing: Israel had a choice. In the past three years alone Israel – together with the US, Europe and Japan – imposed an inhumane siege of Gaza while conducting a campaign of targeted assassinations and attacks throughout the cease-fire that left 1,700 Palestinians dead. This war is no "response:" it is merely a more deadly round of the tit-for-tat arising out of a political vacuum. Hamas firings on Israel were for the most part, if not exclusively, responses to Israeli actions either not reported in the press or discounted as legitimate unilateral action – such as assassinating leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations, often with a high toll in civilian casualties. To present the "barrage" as an independent variable disassociated from wider Israeli policies that led to them is disingenuous. Indeed, had there been a genuine political process which offered the Palestinians hope for self-determination, the rocket firings could have been avoided altogether.
· Israeli PR: Hamas is a terrorist organization that refuses to recognize Israel or enter into a political process.
An alternative framing: "Terrorist" is a problematic term. States always use it to delegitimize and demonize non-state actors who resist their oppressive policies, as apartheid South Africa did, for example, with the ANC. The term assumes that states, bad as they may be, have the right to employ military force as they see fit. If, however, we take "terrorism" to mean the killing, harming or intimidation of non-combatant civilian populations, then states are far more terroristic, kill far more innocent civilians, than do non-state groups. In the eight years since the second Intifada broke out (September 2000), almost 500 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians while almost 5000 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israelis. All attacks on civilians are unacceptable, no matter how just the cause. Yet it is only the Palestinians to whom the term "terrorist" is applied.
An alternative framing: Presenting Hamas as merely a "terrorist organization" removes the political element from their struggle and presents them as a criminal organization. This not only distorts reality in a fundamental way but, by preventing negotiations, it ensures the perpetuation of mutual suffering. Hamas has its military wing – though nothing compared to the Israeli army – but it is essentially a grassroots religious-political movement that democratically won the Palestinian elections in 2006 and earned the right to establish a government – which was denied it by Israel, the US…and the Fatah part of the Palestinian Authority. It does deny Israel's legitimacy, as any colonized people would, and there is no reason why it should accept the loss of 78% (or more) of its historic homeland. But Hamas has agreed, as a signatory to the "Prisoners' Document" and in repeated public pronouncements, to respect the outcome of negotiations of other Palestinian parties (like Fatah) with Israel, if they result in a complete withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. So despite its militant and scary image, despite the fact that it will not legitimize what it considers another people's colonization of its homeland, Hamas does accept, as a practical political matter, a two-state solution. Given the fact that negotiations with Israel since the Madrid Conference of 1991 have yielded nothing – indeed, Israel's massive settlement enterprise has perhaps eliminated the possibility of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel – Hamas's resort to armed resistance is understandable. All attacks on civilians are prohibited in international law. In this regard both Hamas and Israel engage in terrorism, with the later taking by far the greatest of civilian dead, injured and traumatized.
· Israeli PR: There is no occupation – in general, but specifically in Gaza. Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005 with the "disengagement." Gaza could have flourished as the basis of a Palestinian state, but its inhabitants chose conflict.
An alternative framing: Israel claims there has never been an occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza; instead, these are "disputed" territories with no clear claimant – and certainly not the Palestinians who, in Israel's view, do not constitute a people with rights of self-determination in the Land of Israel and who never exercised sovereignty over any part of Palestine. This position is rejected utterly by the international community. Indeed, the Road Map initiative uses the term "occupation" explicitly. Neither does it accept Israel's claim that the occupation of Gaza really ended with "disengagement" in 2005, since occupation is defined in international law as exercising effective control of a foreign territory, which Israel obviously does over Gaza. To then argue that Gaza could have developed under these conditions is unfair and unreasonable. Neither Israeli control exerted over Gaza since 1967 nor the economic closure imposed upon it in 1989 ever ceased, even if Israel removed its settlers and army. Gazans were never allowed to open their sea or air ports, nor were any conditions conducive to economic development allowed to develop. And then, in early 2006, less than six months after "disengagement," Gaza was sanctioned and hermetically isolated by Israel and the international community as punishment for voting the wrong way. John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, wrote that this was the first time in history the oppressed was sanctioned and the Occupying Power freed of any responsibility. Economic development, not to mention a political process which might have prevented the violence on both sides, was actively prevented by both Israel and its international supporters, which share responsibility for the present tragedy in Gaza.
Let us also remember Israel's special responsibility towards the people of Gaza. These "civilians" are, for the most part, refugees driven from their homes in Israel in 1948 and their descendants, people dying and suffering at the hands of Israel for the past 41, if not 60, years. This adds a particular poignancy to the assault – yet another assault.
· Israeli PR: Only Hamas violated the cease-fire, and thus it carries full responsibility.
An alternative framing: Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce (through Egypt) by which Israel would allow the opening of the Gazan border crossings (at least partially) in return for a end to rocket fire on Israel. Hamas largely, though not entirely, kept its part of the bargain; Israel almost never did. Killings of Palestinians from the air continued, and on the American election day in early November it attacked the tunnels (which functioned as alternative means of supplying Gaza in the absence of open borders, which would have allowed control over the movement of arms), killing a number of Hamas people. In response Hamas launched rockets and….the truce began breaking down.
· Israeli PR: There is no humanitarian crisis; Israel is only attacking the "infrastructure of terror."
Alternative View: Being the elected government, all the infrastructure, from traffic cops (non-combatants under international law) to schools to military installations, "belong" to Hamas. It is clear that Israeli attacks go beyond "the infrastructure of terror." Gazan sources claim that some 5000 homes have been demolished and the Islamic University has been severely damaged. According to the UN OCHA report of January. 5, the tenth day of the war:
ü "More than a million Gazans still have no electricity or water, and thousands of people have fled their homes for safe shelter;.
ü Gaza's water and sewage system is on the verge of collapse, 75% of Gaza's electricity has been cut off;
ü The sewage situation is highly dangerous, posing serious risks of the spread of water-borne disease;
ü Hospitals are unable to provide adequate intensive care to the high number of casualties. There is also an urgent need for more neuro-, vascular-, orthopedic- and open heart surgeons.
· Israeli PR: Israel only targets Hamas fighters.
An alternative framing: Who's a "Hamas fighter?" The graduating class of traffic cops that was slaughtered in the first aerial attack on Gaza? Professors and students who attend the "Hamas" Islamic University? Family members of Hamas military figures? People who voted for Hamas? Attacking a grassroots political-religious-social movement engaged in military resistance to occupation in densely crowded urban settings makes it either impossible or inconvenient for an invading army to distinguish between civilians and fighters.
· Israeli PR: Civilians may die, but it's because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons factories among ordinary people.
An alternative framing: Gaza being such a barren, exposed and tiny area (360 sq.km./223 sq. miles, half the size of London), separating civilian from military areas, though desirable, is impossible, especially since, in concept, Hamas is a people's militia. It's worth noting, however, that Israel's military headquarters are located in the center of Tel Aviv, the military headquarters over the West Bank are in the densely populated Neveh Ya'akov neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israel's center for biological and chemical warfare is located in the town of Ness Tziona, close to Tel Aviv, its main weapons development centers or in Haifa, and most settlements in the West Bank have military camps embedded within them – or vice versa.
Hamas, of course, as both a government and a military organization, carries responsibility for protecting the civilian population and keeping the fighting away from them. In a situation where this is impossible, as in Gaza, an invading force like Israel should avoid engagement, or engage only when legitimate military and political aims (such as defense) are genuinely endangered – which is not the case here. Israel has political and negotiating options that can end both the immediate threat of rockets and the longer-term conflict, but it chooses not to use them.
A terrifying development: According to the Israeli press, Israel has decided to ignore the distinction between civilians and combatants which lies at the root of international laws of warfare. Citing what the IDF calls the "Georgia rules," the two military correspondents of Ha'aretz (Jan. 6 and 7) explain:
[IDF Chief of Staff Gabi] Ashkenazi had said in earlier discussions that use of major fire power would be inevitable even in the most densely populated areas. The Israeli solution was thus to be very aggressive to protect the lives of the soldiers as much as possible. These are 'Georgia rules,' which are not so far from the methods Russia used in its conflict last summer. The result is the killing of dozens of non-combatant Palestinians. The Gaza medical teams might not have reached all of them yet. When an Israeli force gets into an entanglement, as in Sajaiyeh last night, massive fire into built-up areas is initiated to cover the extraction. In other cases, a chain of explosions is initiated from a distance to set off Hamas booby-traps. It is a method that leaves a swath of destruction taking in entire streets, and does not distinguish military targets from the homes of civilians….
The incident in which some 40 Palestinian civilians were killed when Israel Defense Forces mortar shells hit an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp Tuesday surprised no one who has been following events in Gaza in recent days. Senior officers admit that the IDF has been using enormous firepower. "For us, being cautious means being aggressive," explained one. "From the minute we entered, we've acted like we're at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground ... I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock. Maybe someone there will sober up before it continues." What the officer did not say explicitly was that this is deliberate policy. Following the trauma of the war in Lebanon in 2006, the army realized that heavy IDF casualties would erode public (and especially political) support for the war and limit its ability to achieve its goals. Therefore, it is using aggressive tactics to save soldiers' lives. And the cabinet took this into account when it approved the ground operation last Friday, so it has no reason to change its mind now. Nor is it likely that Tuesday's incident, with its large number of civilian deaths, will result in an immediate cease-fire…. Until Tuesday's incident, the world appeared relatively indifferent to Palestinian civilian casualties. On Monday, 31 members of the Samouny family were killed when a shell hit their house in Gaza City; that same day, 13 members of the Al-Daiya family where killed by another Israeli bomb. Yet international media coverage of these incidents was comparatively restrained.
This is an absolutely unacceptable development in modern warfare – particularly urban warfare which involves and entraps large populations of civilians – and must be condemned and rejected by the international community. If the Israeli-Georgian "rules" become a de facto norm of warfare, the entire edifice of human rights and international which has been constructed over the past 60 years will collapse and we will enter into a new age of barbarism. Again, All attacks on civilians must be opposed, whether sanctioned or not by military doctrine.
· Israeli PR: Hamas is a global problem, part of Islamist fundamentalism together with Iran and Hezbollah.
An alternative framing: Hamas was allowed by Israel to develop as a political force in Occupied Palestine in the late 1980s in order to counterbalance the secular PLO, which Israel regarded then as its real enemy but today considers a "moderate" force which should be supported in order to counterbalance Hamas(!). It has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, but is a particularly Palestinian phenomenon that arose in response to increasing Israeli repression, the loss of Palestinian land, rights and honor, and the corruption and high-handedness of the ruling Fatah party. It cannot be conflated with the Shi'ite Hizbollah (which emerged in Lebanon only in the wake of threw 1982 war), al-Qaida (which has a completely different global agenda and ideology) or Iran (in which the theocrats were an organized but quite small political force until the U.S. overthrew Iran's democracy in 1954 and installed the repressive regime of the Shah – for whom Israel trained his dreaded SAVAK security police, noted for their widespread torture of "dissidents"). Painting Hamas as part of a global conspiracy when it's a product of the Occupation itself is disingenuous and a gross distortion of history. Indeed, as the history of Hamas, Hizbollah and the Iranian clerics shows, Israel itself had played a significant role in the rise of political Islam.
An alternative framing: have to get beyond such simplistic and self-serving terms as "terrorists" and "terrorism" – especially since the Western politicians that use them refuse to apply them to themselves, as in the case of Israel in Gaza. It will do no good to dismiss Hamas as a "terrorist organization." The issues, grievances and demands upon which it arose must be addressed. From the point of view of its voters, who include many who do not share Hamas's religious or political agenda, Hamas is a quintessential liberation movement, a Palestinian liberation movement. Attempts by Israel to delegitimize Hamas and disassociate it from the Palestinian people, even to have the gall to suggest that the carnage created by Israel in Gaza will benefit the people by "releasing them from Hamas's grip," only serve – as they are intended to do – to neutralize Hamas as an effective source of resistance to Israel's Occupation.
· Israeli PR: In attacking Hamas in Gaza, Israel is only doing its part in the West's War on Terror.
An alternative framing: This brings us to why Israel actually attacked Gaza and why the slaughter has gone on far beyond Israel's declared goal of ending the rocket fire through negotiations. Immediate causes played their role, to be sure. Public pressure to end the rocket fire, especially in an election period, could not be ignored, nor the need to assert national pride. But this does not explain the immense scale of the operation; the rocket firings were the immediate trigger (and Hamas may have erred in its brinksmanship), but not the true reasons, which were several.
First, the invasion of Gaza was an exercise in pacification. On one level, it is an attempt to destroy Hamas as a political force, the only effective Palestinian resistance to Israel's ability, through the Annapolis Process, of imposing an apartheid regime on Palestine. On another level it seeks to pacify the Palestinian people by delivering "a message:" If you keep resisting, this is what is waiting for you. You have no hope to force Israel to withdraw from its settlements and expanded borders. Second, it is an attempt to resuscitate Israel's image as an effective ally in the War on Terror after the humiliation of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. This is crucial for Israel's security politics, especially vis-à-vis the US, and the Palestinians are paying the price for Hizbollah's success. Third, it is an exercise in urban warfare, an opportunity to field-test new weaponry and tactics of counterinsurgency in dense urban environments that can be exported – both as part of Israel's security politics (earning its place with the Big Boys at the table of the War Against Terror) and as part of its economic export strategy (60% of Israeli export firms deal in security). "Tested in Gaza" (or Nablus or Fluja) is one of Israel's most effective marketing pitches.
Gaza demonstrates in microcosm the shift in Israeli priorities and policies as its long-standing commitment to hold onto the Occupied Territories for both nationalist and security reasons comes into conflict with its broader regional and global agendas, centered today around its campaign to neutralize Iran's nuclear potential. The Saudi Initiative, endorsed by the Arab League, holds out the tantalizing offer of Israeli integration into the Middle East – meaning that Israel, whose foreign policy interests match those of the "moderate" Arab states, could assume a regional role. But because of public opinion in the Arab and Muslims worlds, this offer is good only if Israel relinquishes enough of the Occupied Territories that the Palestinian leadership could sign off on an agreement. Hence Israel's courting of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Mubarak and even Assad of Syria and the Saudis. And hence Israel's readiness to offer Abbas yet another "generous offer – short, however, of dismantling its major settlement blocs, relinquishing control over "greater" Jerusalem or giving up control of the border with Jordan, for which no Israeli government has a mandate. Caught between the necessity of maintaining its settlements – a position Netanyahu still endorses – and its desire to assume a role as one of regional hegemons, Israel is trying to find a way to finesse its way through. This explains Olmert's sudden readiness to change direction and talk of the necessity for a two-state solution, as well as the hasty Annapolis Process. Hence Abbas and Mubarak's support for Israel's action in Gaza (with mild, perfunctory criticism of its excesses). Their virtual collaboration with Israel raises even further in the eyes by many Palestinians and other Arabs the standing of Hamas as the only genuine source of resistance.
So there are high stakes involved in the Israeli-Hamas war, which diminish the seemingly decisive role the firing of rockets into Israel had. We do not believe that Israel can either impose an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people nor sustain its Occupation. If anything, as is becoming obvious, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, emblematic as it is throughout the entire Muslim world and beyond (among, for example, progressives civil society on every continent), will impact negatively on European and especially American efforts to stabilize the global system, and in particular the volatile Middle East where the US remains bogged down. It is our role as proponents of human rights, international law, decolonization, the integrity of cultures and a just peace in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere to highlight the injustice and unsustainability of Israel's Occupation both on the ground and globally, the quicker to bring it to an end. May the suffering of the both peoples in this war on Gaza, one oppressed and the other held hostage to an image of the Palestinians as "permanent enemies," be the last straw. A just peace in Palestine will relieve a major obstacle towards global justice.
· Israeli PR: Israel, acting as any life-loving nation would, has a right to be a normal country living in peace and security.
An alternative framing: By now you should be empowered to provide a critical response of your own.
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is based in Jerusalem and has chapters in the United Kingdom and the United States.Please visit our websites:www.icahd.orgwww.icahduk.orgwww.icahdusa.org
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