After months of stalemate, painstaking negotiations, and political poker play, the US and Iraq have finally agreed on a definite date - to end the US-led occupation of Iraq by 2011. Iraqi negotiators consider the firm withdrawal date a victory after the outgoing Bush administration had long insisted it would rely on conditions on the ground rather than be tied down to a timetable. Senior US military officials, on the other hand, have been quoted as privately criticising US President George Bush for giving Iraq more control over American military operations for the next three years than it had contemplated. Some critics say Bush gave in to Iraqi demands to avoid leaving the decisions to his successor, President-elect Barack Obama However, the security agreement approved by the Iraqi Cabinet by a resounding majority last week could still be derailed by the Iraqi parliament. But with talks of conspiracy theories and secret deals circulating in Baghdad, critics believe Iraq's Parliament will be split further, making it even more difficult for the new security pact to be passed. Our guests this week are Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, plus the leader of Iraq's National Dialogue Front Saleh Al-Mutlaq and Asma Al-Musawi from the Sadrist Movement.
After months of stalemate, painstaking negotiations, and political poker play, the US and Iraq have finally agreed on a definite date - to end the US-led occupation of Iraq by 2011. Iraqi negotiators consider the firm withdrawal date a victory after the outgoing Bush administration had long insisted it would rely on conditions on the ground rather than be tied down to a timetable. Senior US military officials, on the other hand, have been quoted as privately criticising US President George Bush for giving Iraq more control over American military operations for the next three years than it had contemplated. Some critics say Bush gave in to Iraqi demands to avoid leaving the decisions to his successor, President-elect Barack Obama However, the security agreement approved by the Iraqi Cabinet by a resounding majority last week could still be derailed by the Iraqi parliament. But with talks of conspiracy theories and secret deals circulating in Baghdad, critics believe Iraq's Parliament will be split further, making it even more difficult for the new security pact to be passed. Our guests this week are Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, plus the leader of Iraq's National Dialogue Front Saleh Al-Mutlaq and Asma Al-Musawi from the Sadrist Movement.
Over at the "Nation" web site, one of America's top writers critiques America's President-elect -- not on his policies, but on his prose. Check out Toni Morrison's remarks on Barack Obama's writing style.
Let the Unions Run the Big Three: Fire the Execs and Sell Their Private Jets
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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT by Meg White
It's got to be tough to be a Democrat in Congress at this moment. Though they have a majority coming in January, they can't seem to get Republican support for the bailout of the Big Three automakers, GM, Ford and Chrysler. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had to give up his idea to hold a vote on the matter Wednesday, as it became clear the bailout wouldn't pass.
But, it's tough to get sympathy for the devil when he arrives in his own personal jet. Each CEO fueled up his own plane to make it to the hearing, and that fact was not lost on the assembled lawmakers.
Barbaras Daily BuzzFlash Minute for November 21, 2008
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BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE
Joe, Joe, Joe, the more we get to know you the more we don't like you! An award that Joe the Judas really deserves -- "GOP HYPOCRITE," and that's being courteous! Polite conversation limits the use of the number of four letter words I could use to describe Joe Lieberman! He is indeed an "opportunist," strictly out for himself, we will never forget what he's done while pretending to be the voice of conscience!!!! He is indeed a charlatan and a fraud, a scoundrel and a cad! Joe Lieberman is the ultimate example of a Washington, D.C. politician!
For more details, please click on the link to read the article. Read more..
The "Northern Corridor Transport System": Kenya and Rwanda join hands
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For more details, please click on the link to read the article. Read more..
Media Disinformation regarding Iran's Nuclear Program: Tehran rejects NY Times atom bomb story
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For more details, please click on the link to read the article. Read more..
Russia banks to be barred from state rescue package for loan abuse
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For more details, please click on the link to read the article. Read more..
Obama Promises "New Chapter" in Climate Leadership
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Obama made big promises to the international community, despite turning down an invite to attend the next meeting in Poland. Read more..
Inside Story - Arab league anti-piracy meeting - Nov 20 -Pt1
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Members of Arab league countries bordering the Red Sea are meeting in Cairo to find a way to solve the piracy problem in the Horn of Africa. What can they do to address this escalating problem when some of the mightiest naval forces in the world have failed? How is it that gangs of men in small boats can hold a whole industry to ransom? Presenter Sohail Rahman is joined by Richard Spector, an international and shipping law specialist with ELS; Jan Fritz Hansen, the executive vice-president of the Danish Shipowners' Association; and Mark Calter, a maritime security analyst at Olton Solutions.
Inside Story - Arab league anti-piracy meeting - Nov 20 -Pt2
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Members of Arab league countries bordering the Red Sea are meeting in Cairo to find a way to solve the piracy problem in the Horn of Africa. What can they do to address this escalating problem when some of the mightiest naval forces in the world have failed? How is it that gangs of men in small boats can hold a whole industry to ransom? Presenter Sohail Rahman is joined by Richard Spector, an international and shipping law specialist with ELS; Jan Fritz Hansen, the executive vice-president of the Danish Shipowners' Association; and Mark Calter, a maritime security analyst at Olton Solutions.
More at http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=100 Jim Stanford and Justin Fox debate the pros and cons of allowing the auto industry to go bankrupt Pt1/3
More at http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=100 Eric Margolis: The US and NATO must cease military operations and negotiate with Taliban pt4/4
⦠One Heterosexual Nation, under God, with Liberty & Justice for Straight People
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The other day I found myself at a Veteranâs Day observance that included the Pledge of Allegiance. I stood up, put my hand over my heart and recited the oath.
I have to admit that it had been awhile. At first, I didnât think I would remember the all the words; but I made it through.
Unfortunately, while saying the pledge, I had a troubling revelation.
The pledge was an empty promise. It spoke of ideals and rights that America doesnât represent. It affirmed lofty notions and high principles that we donât even try to live up to.
The original Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. A Baptist minister and Christian Socialist, Bellamy had originally considered using the words âequalityâ and âfraternityâ in the salute, but deemed them too controversial because so many factions in our âindivisibleâ nation opposed equal rights for women and African-Americans. And, though Bellamy was a minister, the early versions of the pledge were secular and did not include the words âunder God.â The phrase mandating that we prostrate ourselves and our nation before a Judeo-Christian deity wasnât introduced until June 14, 1954.
In its current form, the Pledge of Allegiance has been amended four times. It was originally composed with prevailing winds in mind and similarly revised along the way. As I recited the pledge on Veteranâs Day, it occurred to me that itâs time for another revision.
For starters, we donât constitute one nation united under God any more than we comprise one nation united under a red, white and blue barber pole. Beyond that, the term âdivisibleâ far more accurately describes us than its exalted counterpart âindivisible.â And all the âliberty and justice for allâ malarkeyâwe shouldnât even go there.
Saying the Pledge of Allegiance always sounds nice, but reality doesnât rest in a cadence. It exists in our efforts to fulfill the ideals that the pledge affirms. If weâre not working towards the fruition of those noble goals, the pledge is meaningless. And if any of us are disqualified or denied his or her right to pursue those ideals, our meritorious oath is hollow.
Here in Texas, the ignoble 2005 âMarriage Amendmentâ to the state constitution, which forbade the recognition of same-sex couples and prohibited any branch of government from offering them relationship-based benefits, denied a viable, productive segment of our community the application to and enjoyment of some very basic tenets of âlibertyâ and âjustice.â And the recent repeal of Proposition 8 in California was another glaring travesty. To grant our friends and neighbors a right and then take it away via mob rule clearly evidences the fact that we are perpetually âdivisible,â especially in regards to sexual orientation.
Ultimately, our so-called ideals of âlibertyâ and âjusticeâ and âindivisibilityâ are simply PR myths we like to trumpet and parade around about for the sake of appearances. When it comes to truly establishing and maintaining such aims, we fall woefully short.
But we could fix a lot of this mess by revising the last line of the pledge. If it read âone heterosexual nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all straight people,â it would obviously allow us to seem less counterfeit.
A gay family friend of mine serves in the U.S. Military. I often wonder how he feels risking his life, serving his country, knowing that his neighbors back home shun him–but doing his duty anyway.
Could there be any better way to demonstrate our appreciation for his service than granting him the same rights and privileges that all Americans are supposed to enjoy? Why should he be asked to fight for ideals that donât apply to him? Why does he put his life on the line for a bunch of hypocrites?
The U.S. Militaryâs current policy on homosexuality is âDonât ask, donât tell.â If it isnât brought up, the brass doesnât have to address it.
Perhaps the same principle should be exercised regarding the pledge. It we donât recite this flawed oath, then we donât have to delude ourselves or lie to the victims of our charade.
The middle-of-the-night eviction last week of an elderly Palestinian couple from their home in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers is a demonstration of Israeli intent towards a future peace deal with the Palestinians.
Mohammed and Fawziya Khurd are now on the street, living in a tent, after Israeli police enforced a court order issued in July to expel them.
The couple have been living in the same property in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood since the mid-1950s, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. The United Nations allotted them the land after they were expelled from their homes in territory that was seized by Israel during the 1948 war.
Since East Jerusalemâs occupation by Israel in 1967, however, Jewish settler groups have been waging a relentless battle for the Khurdsâ home, claiming that the land originally belonged to Jews.
In 1999, the settlers occupied a wing of the house belonging to the coupleâs son, Raed, though the courts subsequently ruled in favour of the family. The eviction order against the settlers, unlike that against the Khurds, was never enforced.
The takeover of the Khurdsâ house is far from an isolated incident. Settlers are quietly grabbing homes from Palestinians in key neighbourhoods around the Old City of Jerusalem in an attempt to pre-empt any future peace deal with the Palestinians.
What makes the case of the Khurd family exceptional is that it has attracted the attention of western consulates, particularly those of Israelâs important allies, that is, the United States and Britain. They have appealed without success to the Israeli government to intercede.
In particular, the diplomats are concerned that the takeover of the Khurdsâ home will set a dangerous precedent, freeing settler groups to wrest control of most of Sheikh Jarrah. The settlers plan to oust more than 500 Palestinians from the neighbourhood and build 200 apartments for Jewish families.
If the settlers can take control of other areas, such as Silwan, Ras al-Amud and the Mount of Olives, the Old City and its holy sites would be as good as sealed off not only to Palestinians in the West Bank â as is the case already â but also to nearly 250,000 Palestinians in the outlying suburbs of East Jerusalem.
Because the Palestinians expect East Jerusalem and its holy places to be the core of their state, the Sheikh Jarrah judgment effectively offers the settlers a blocking veto on any future negotiations.
That may be one reason why the Israeli government has shown little inclination to intervene in cases like that of the Khurds. In Israeli law, all of Jerusalem, including the eastern half of the city, is the âindivisibleâ capital of the Jewish state.
The eviction order also worries western diplomats because it opens up a Pandoraâs box of competing land claims that will make it impossible for Palestinian negotiators to sign up to a deal on the division of Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Authority has already pointed out to the consulates that nearly two-thirds of West Jerusalemâs land was owned by Palestinians before the creation of Israel. Fawziya Khurd, for example, lived in Talbieh, in what is now the cityâs western half, before 1948.
If the settlers can make property claims in East Jerusalem based on title deeds that pre-exist 1948, why cannot Palestinians make similar claims in West Jerusalem?
The US involvement in the Khurd case demonstrates its desire to mark its red lines in East Jerusalem. The concern is that Israeli actions on the ground are seeking to unravel the outlines of an agreement being promoted by Washington to create some kind of circumscribed Palestinian state.
In the US view, the basis of such a deal is an exchange of letters between George W Bush and Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, in spring 2004 in which the US president affirmed that Israel would not be expected to return to the armistice lines of 1949. Instead, he declared that Israel would be able to hold on to its âpopulation centresâ in the West Bank â code for the established settlement blocs.
As a result, the current US administration has turned a blind eye to continuing construction in the main settlements, home to most of the West Bankâs 250,000 settlers. The unstated agreement between Tel Aviv and Washington is that these areas will be annexed to Israel in a future peace deal.
In an indication of Israelâs confidence about the West Bank settlements, the Israeli media reported at the weekend that Ehud Barak, the defence minister and the leader of the Labor Party, had personally approved hundreds of new apartments for the settlers in the past few months.
The separation wall is being crafted to include these blocs, eating into one tenth of the West Bank and leaving only a few tens of thousands of settlers on the âwrong sideâ.
For the time being, the US is showing indecision only about two settlement-cities, Ariel and Maâale Adumim. If the wall encompasses them, it will effectively sever the West Bank into three parts.
In relation to East Jerusalem, the White House has so far appeared to favour maintaining the status quo. That would entail the eastern half of the city being carved up into a series of complex zones, or âbubblesâ as they have been described in the Israeli media.
Another 250,000 Jewish settlers live in East Jerusalem, though almost all of them reside in their own discreet colonies implanted between Palestinian neighbourhoods. These settlements are considered so established by Israelis that most of their inhabitants do not regard themselves as settlers.
However, the more ideological settlers of the kind taking over homes in Sheikh Jarrah refuse to accept partition of the city on any terms. They are trying to erode the Palestiniansâ chances of ever controlling their own neighbourhoods in the eastern half of the city.
Backed by powerful allies in the courts, government and municipality, the settlers look set to continue expanding in East Jerusalem.
Nir Barkat, the millionaire businessman who was elected mayor of Jerusalem last week, forged close ties with some of the most extreme figures in the cityâs settlement movement during his campaign.
Like his chief rival for the mayoralty, he has promised to build a new Jewish neighbourhood, called Eastern Gate, that will be home to at least 10,000 settlers on land next to the Palestinian neighbourhood of Anata.
The move, much like the eviction of the Khurds, has been greeted with silence from the government. Both developments are a sign of Washingtonâs powerlessness to force even the limited concessions it expects from Israel in East Jerusalem.
The Entitlement of Wealth and the Ecological Consequences
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Wealth always confers a sense of entitlement; that is what wealth is. There is the implicit and explicit assumption that one is entitled to what one holds in a protected state and to any future goods and services that one’s holdings can be traded for. Wealth creates a demand for future goods and services. If the wealth of a nation is estimated at 12 trillion dollars, then it is assumed that the world can and will produce 12 trillion dollars worth of things and tradable behaviors. To use a simpler model, if I have a thousand dollars, it is not wealth unless I can get a thousand dollars worth of stuff or tradable behavior for it (this needs, of course, to be based against some standard). The notion that wealth creation is not bounded by any natural restraint is belied by this simple fact.
The productive capacity of the planet, available for human use, is the limit of wealth. And this is dependent on a variety of factors that give practical limits well below theoretical limits. First and foremost, the productive capacity available to humans must consider in its calculation the capacity required to maintain environmental stability and to sustainably provide ecological “free services.” This does not mean that humans can pick and choose among the world’s ecosystems those that we really need and trash the rest. That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of biophysical reality; and the way we have been doing business for more than 5 thousand years. We are at present, by the most conservative estimates, using the earth’s productive capacity at about 50% above a sustainable level, i.e., to maintain our present use rate would require about 1.5 earths. To remove the most dramatic poverty, experienced by almost 1/2 the earth’s people, would require at least 2 earths if there was no major wealth redistribution and using present economic models. The average life style in the USA requires about 5 earths, in Europe about 3 earths.
A more realistic accounting would suggest that we are using the earth well beyond these levels. The Ecological Footprint model developed by Mathis Wackernagel et al. had to be very conservative to be listened to and respected at all. We are in an economic and political frame that trivializes environmental science and especially “tree hugging” ecologists. Partly as a result of this the Footprint model does not calculate nearly enough capacity for maintaining biospheric integrity. Further more, the Ecological Footprint calculations are not considering the future demand of arbitrary wealth creation and the effect of expectation on human actions in the environment. If “we” have accumulated 100 trillion dollars worth of abstract value, “we” will be dissatisfied with a planet that can only return 10 trillion in goods and services. A likely result would be an “every man for themselves” scramble to get as much as possible as fast as possible: actually what we are doing now. (Pricing “mechanisms” and inflation would ‘adjust’ the values, but if a consistent standard is applied the difficulty remains clear rather than obscured.)
Economists have wanted to be physicists of ‘value mechanics’ when they should be aspiring to be ecologists of human/environment energy exchange. Everything is connected to everything else; if you tweak here, there can be a ripple or an explosion there. The “law of unintended consequences” is misnamed. It is really the Law of Consequences: actions beget a spreading web of consequences only one (or a few) of which we perform the action to attain in the first place. Organic systems modify their relationships to bring all elements into dynamic balance or the system disappears and is replaced in its region or function by other systems that meet that goal.
Biological systems are homeostatic.1 Human systems are biological systems. When human systems were primarily mediated by genetic and protein based action, the homeostatic regulatory mechanisms were already in place through the arbitration of the living state. As Consciousness Order designs began to replace Living Order structures the direct connections to the homeostatic designs weakened. This should not be taken to mean that the regulatory homeostatic systems were no longer important, just that the Consciousness Order found ways to defeat them for short-term advantage. A simple example: naked humans would have patterns of movement in the environment that support maintaining body temperature. The whole ecosystem will have accommodated the human pattern. When humans are able, using the tools of the consciousness adaptation, to kill a bear and wear its fur, new patterns begin to occur in such rapid succession that the ecosystem can ‘never’ catch up and humans are “free” of the immediate consequences, until the ecology reacts with massive effects.
As long as humans were not especially abundant the disruptions to ecosystems were local, but now that we are global all of our activities must be calculated into our relationship with the biosphere. And the accumulation of arbitrary wealth and the expectation that the earth will deliver on that “promise” has become the greatest danger that we face as a species since we will apparently use all of our technological tools to attempt to enforce that promise.
Homeostasis delayed is not homeostasis denied: ecological systems will come into balance. Humans have defeated these Living Order and Physical Order based systems with our rapid footwork up to now — at terrible cost to the many local ecologies and increasingly to the biosphere — but ultimately homeostatic mechanisms of the interrelating species will have to harmonize. The final “adaptive” response is to go extinct and thus deny service to the ecology resulting in a cascade of extinctions that produce a much simpler, balanced ecology, but one that very likely will not provide the same “free services” to humans.
Our financial world seems almost completely disconnected from the biophysical world. We almost never put the two in the same news report. We don’t speak of them with the same language. The digestion of a wood rat has no clear connection to the job loss at a General Motors plant; an upside down mortgage doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the migration of monarch butterflies. But that is not because they aren’t related. It is just that it is not in our habit to understand and recognize the relationships. More is the pity.
The production of greenhouse gases is a contributing factor to climate change. The American southwest is warming and drying. A wood bore beetle is encouraged by the warm and the dry and whole forests of piñon trees have been killed. Piñon nuts in the millions of tons are missing from the food web of the woodlands. Wood rats are starving as GM fails because of overproduction of low MPG cars and trucks. Even if you don’t care about this, it is none-the-less a real relationship among millions of others, all of which will eventually find their way into our digestion.
The human Consciousness System of Order adaptation allowed the accumulation of excess in our dealings with environmental energy exchange. That excess has been stored as wealth. Wealth creates entitlement. Stored wealth appears to grow without limit, and thus entitlement becomes apparently unlimited in a limited world. This is the absolute opposite of the homeostatic limiting that is the very basis of living things.
What is completely clear is that humans are but one of 10 million or so species integrated into the biospheric order, one species that is acting out a new and powerful adaptation, and with not a clue as to that adaptation’s power, properties and dangers. It is completely clear that the adaptive interactive structures of the Living Order will absorb the human growth bubble into a re-integrated biophysical order. What is not clear is whether the consciousness order will remain or what form it will take if it does remain. It is not clear whether the consciousness order can be marshaled by our species and made to apply its great powers realistically to our dilemmas and not just offer the ancient palliatives of mysticism. And it is not clear just when the cascade of massive ecological events will begin in earnest, but they have certainly begun.
The present troubles in the financial system are ultimately sourced in these larger troubles. They will only be delayed and exacerbated by restoring the growth habits to which we have become accustom. The sooner our academic elites understand the ecological realities of our economics, the sooner that political decisions are made about which we value more, life or abstract accumulations of wealth, then the sooner we can get on with taking the actions we will need to take to adapt back into the biophysical order that we have been fighting to dominate and exceed beyond for much too long.
Homeostasis: We all know this word. But the concept is deep to the very center of life and life’s functioning in the biosphere. Living things require constancy in literally thousands of reactions and chemical concentrations, but chemical reactions tend to begin and go to completion, like setting a sheet of paper on fire. Homeostasis is a way of remaining “constant” by regulating reactions: when going too slow a secondary reaction is triggered that speeds things up, when going too fast a different secondary reaction is triggered that slows things down. The result is that vital physiological processes function within the ranges that allow life to continue. This is a model that we might attempt to more generally apply to our relationships, including especially our financial behavior, in the living space of the biosphere. The model of a fire, finally, has a quite draconian result.
Fate of Lakotahs Highlights Americaâs Failed Native American Policies
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On November 6, South Dakota’s governor Michael Rounds declared a state of emergency as heavy snow blanketed the state and threatened all parts of it — including Native American reservations.
They, however, were excluded from his declaration. They’ll get no badly needed help, and it’s an all too familiar story for our nation’s original inhabitants. They’ve been abused and slaughtered for over 500 years. At Mabila, Acoma Mesa, Conestoga, the Trail of Tears, Pamunkey, Mystic River, Yellow Creek, Sand Creek, Gnadenhutten, and Wooded Knee. At far too many other places as well at a cost of many millions of lives, now forgotten and erased from memory.
Worst still, our Native people continue to be systematically repressed and mistreated. They live in poverty and despair. They’re mocked and demonized in films and society as drunks, beasts, primitives, savages, and people to be Americanized or warehoused on reservations and forgotten.
Their cultures are willfully denigrated. Their legacy is one of millions slaughtered, betrayal, treaties made and broken, stolen lands, rights denied, and welfare criminally ignored to this day.
The Lakotahs are one of many examples, and the Republic of Lakotah web site highlights their plight. It welcomes “all self-sufficient People who come with an open Heart, a Passion for Freedom and a Love for Grand Mother Earth.”
In a commentary titled “Broken Promises & Laws,” it describes a Broken People whose lands were stolen, buffalo massacred, people slaughtered, and who were herded onto reservations in violation of Treaties successive US governments signed and then abrogated.
The Treaty of 1851, for example, in which the government requested a right-of-way for a road through Lakotah lands to the newly-discovered Montana gold fields. It became known as the Bozeman Trail to be used only until all gold was removed. By the Civil War it was gone and the government reneged. Forts were erected on its right of way. Lakotahs demanded they be removed. The US refused, war ensued, and it ended with the Treaty of 1868.
It stated, “The government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is hereby pledged to keep it.” It also re-affirmed all rights the Indians were granted under the 1851 Treaty. Those rights and all others were abrogated and denied.
Western North and South Dakota Lakotahs are one of seven Sioux tribes comprising the Great Sioux Nation and are best known by their redoubtable leaders — Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud and Black Elk, among others. Names even young school children know but not their heroic feats and the great price they and their people paid.
Before the 1770s, Sioux held territories from Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains and from the Yellowstone to the Platte Rivers. Until the Treaty of 1868, they were the richest Native American nation of the northwestern plains, but years earlier their lives were irrevocably changed. Treaties were made and broken. Settlers, railroads, and mining interests took their lands and resources.
In 1874, General George Custer invaded the most sacred Lakotah territory, the Black Hills (Paha Sapa), and with him came gold seekers. An illegal occupation followed along with billions of dollars of stolen resources and great numbers of lives lost. All in the name of progress to colonize the continent’s West. All at the expense of our Native peoples who lost everything as a result.
The earlier 1787 Northwest Ordinance was deceptive on its face. Supposedly to afford Indians “justice (and) humanity,” it, in fact, expanded the nation to admit new states on stolen Native American lands. Wars followed. Broken promises and treaties as well in violation of Article 6 of the Constitution that states:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land” — binding without qualification on the executive, legislature and judiciary.
The Sioux acted in good faith to avoid confrontation, but in vain. The executive, Congress, and judiciary denied them their lands, vital resources, and basic rights through a succession of repressive laws:
* Homestead Acts — for settlers only that gave them title to 160 acres of “underdeveloped” land outside the original 13 colonies; 1.6 million in all got around 270 million acres, or 10% of all US land between 1862-1886;
* Allotment Acts __ various “act(s) to provide for the allotment of land in severalty to Indians on the various reservations and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States over the Indians, and for other purposes;” for example, the 1887 Dawes Act that distributed mostly unwanted and unviable land in Oklahoma; it was done by dividing reservations into privately-owned parcels to destroy Native cultures, impose western values, and achieve forced assimilation;
* the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 to force citizenship on all Native Americans; the words of one spoke for many: “United States citizenship was just another way of absorbing us and destroying our customs and government; how could these Europeans come over and tell us we were citizens in our country; we had our citizenship;” it’s “in our nations;” forcing their citizenship on us “was a violation of our sovereignty;”
* the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (aka the Wheeler-Howard Act or the Indian New Deal); it reversed Dawes provisions and created what Native Americans call the first Apartheid Act that still applies; the 1964 Bantu Development Act copied this law and institutionalized black and white separation in South Africa; the same practice exists now in Occupied Palestine, in US inner cities, and wherever else white supremacists want unwanted people kept out of their restricted spaces;
* forced relocations continued during the 1950s and 1960s;
* Supreme Court rulings against Native American religious practices; in City of Boerne v. Flores (June 1997), the Court ruled against the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act that prohibited the government from “substantially burdening” a believer’s religious practices; the Court held that this act attempted to overturn its own First Amendment interpretation; in Employment Division v. Smith (April 1990), the Court ruled that Oregon could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote, even for a religious ritual; in other words, this and similar practices aren’t protected under the First Amendment freedom of religion provision; and
* Native Americans on reservations aren’t entitled to the same constitutional rights (like free speech, religion, assembly, and due process, etc.) as other Americans even though they’re legal citizens; non-Indian people when on reservations (so-called “tribal trust status lands”) also relinquish these rights while there; in addition, “tribal sovereignty” benefits leaders alone, not their people, and tribal chiefs get their authority from the Interior Secretary and US-run Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
“Tribal sovereignty” is a profound misnomer. It belies any sense that Indians on reservations are self-governing. They are not. There are no checks and balances, no separation of powers, no constitutional protections, and the US government owns the lands as federal territories under “plenary power” in trust status. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that Indian tribal chiefs and councils (not US law) have full authority over their people, and these “governments” are empowered by Washington.
Indian tribes are beholden to the government for help and need permission for most everything they do. Their people on reservations remain warehoused, abused and forgotten. The notion of “sovereignty” is another indignity, a charade, and silent outrage against our proud original inhabitants. Out of sight and mind in tribal “homelands,” no different than South Africa’s former bantustans and equally oppressive.
The Republic of Lakotah Today: A Broken People the Result of Broken Promises and Broken Laws
To this day, Native Americans and the Lakotah people are victims of what Ward Churchill calls “A Little Matter of Genocide” that he explained in his book by that title. It’s from American Indian Movement founder, Russell Means, who spoke of “a little matter of genocide right here at home” by which he meant a process still ongoing.
In 1944, jurist Raphael Lemkin first defined the term to mean:
the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group” that corresponds to other terms like “tyrannicide, homocide, infanticide, etc.” Genocide “does not necessarily mean the… destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings…. It is intended… to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy) the essential foundations of the life of national groups” with intent to eradicate or substantially weaken or harm them. “Genocidal plans involve the disintegration….of political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion… economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and” human lives.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (adopted December 1948 and took effect in January 1951) defines genocide in legal terms as follows:
“any (acts like those Lemkin cited) committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the national, ethnical, racial or religious group (by) killing (its) members; causing (them) serious bodily or mental harm; (or) deliberately inflicting (on them) conditions” that may destroy them in whole or in part.
Destroying peoples’ cultures, preventing them from practicing their religion, speaking their language, and/or passing on their traditions to new generations are acts of genocide.
Nowhere does the Constitution let government abuse its people or deny them their rights. Nowhere does it authorize genocide, either in or outside the country, or permit the theft and occupation of their lands or any others.
Nowhere does it say “We the People” are the chosen few or that the minimum function of government is less than to insure the “general welfare” as stated in the Preamble and Article I, Section 8 as follows:
“The Congress shall have power to… provide for… (the) general welfare of the United States” — the so-called welfare clause for all its citizens.
Nowhere does it sanction rampant crime, unequal justice, political or corporate corruption, dishonest officials, raging social problems, the right to ignore the law, or to be able to slaughter and abuse its Native people. Nonetheless, it happens. Most egregiously to native Indians for over 500 years and counting.
Before early Europeans arrived, the Americas (North and South by expert estimates) were home to over 100 million indigenous peoples. From 1492 to 1892, US Census Bureau figures showed less than 250,000 survived. Or put another way — white Europeans committed the greatest ever genocide that was rivaled only, but not equaled, by the one against black Africans who were stolen into slavery for the “new world.” Millions of them died during capture and the Middle Passage.
Our Native peoples in even greater numbers — victimized by ritual slaughter. By being hacked apart, buried alive, trampled under horses, hunted as game and fed to dogs, shot, beaten, stabbed, and even scalped for bounty or as trophies. They were also hung on meathooks like beef, thrown into the sea from ships (the way blacks were), worked to death as slaves, starved, frozen to death during forced marches and internments, and infected with deadly diseases. Our disturbing “civilization” that’s untaught in American schools, and when it is Indians are the villains and the settlers their victims. History on its head the way Hollywood portrays it and still does.
Ward Churchill recounts otherwise about what he calls “the American holocaust” and compares it to the Jewish one under the Nazis. He explains that:
“Distinctions… between right, center, left and extreme left in the US are quite literally nonexistent on the question of genocide of indigenous peoples. From all four vantage points, the historical reality is simultaneously denied, justified, and in most cases celebrated (or just forgotten. But preposterous as these arguments are, all of them are) outstripped by a substantial component of zionism which contends not only that the American holocaust never happened, but that no ‘true’ genocide has ever occurred, other than the Holocaust suffered by the Jews” in Nazi Germany.
It’s an all too familiar pattern of historical revisionism or denial to view one people’s ordeal as important, preeminent or unique and another’s as non-existent — depending, of course, on who suffered and who caused it. After WW II, Zionist Jews copyrighted Hitler’s genocide, rebranded it “The Holocaust,” framed it as a one-off event, and created the myth of unique Jewish suffering.
The Plight of the Lakotah People
The Republic of Lakotah web site recounts it from the first official political and diplomatic contacts “between Lakotah and the (US) government began in earnest after the United States (completed) the (so-called) Louisiana Purchase in 1803.”
It refers to “fantasy” US history about the purported French sale of 530 million acres for a mere $15 million — part of which belonged to Lakotahs who weren’t consulted or consented to the transaction. The first “peace and friendship” treaty followed in 1805. Like others later on, it was systematically ignored and violated as settlers invaded, encroached, and occupied Lakotah lands.
Throughout the 19th century, the US government “engaged in multiple military, legal and political strategies… to deny Lakotah our right to freedom and self-determination.” Even after the Supreme Court’s 1883 Ex Parte Crow Dog decision, it persisted. The Court recognized Lakotah freedom and independence in ruling that tribes held exclusive jurisdiction over their internal affairs. It didn’t matter as in 1885 Congress passed the Major Crimes Act to extend US jurisdiction into Lakotah territory, and more egregious actions followed.
One was the 1903 Supreme Court Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock decision that recognized near absolute plenary congressional power over Indian affairs, virtually exempt from judicial oversight. It was an outrageous ruling to let the government freely expropriate tribal lands and resources on the pretext of fulfilling its federal trust responsibilities. Quite simply, it empowered Washington and rendered Indians impotent over their own internal affairs, with no rights of any kind without Washington’s permission.
This ruling was then used to violate hundreds of treaties between the government and indigenous peoples, including Lakotahs. As a result, the sacred Black Hills were stolen along with billions of dollars of resources from them. America was on the move. Lakotahs were in the way, so they were shoved aside through all the various ways described above.
Today, the Republic of Lakotah explains the “Genocidal Results of the Failed American Indian Policies of the United States” under the following headings:
Mortality
Lahotah men have the world’s lowest life expectancy at 44 years;
the Lakotah death rate is the highest in America;
the Lakotah infant mortality rate is three time the US average;
one-fourth of Lakotah children are fostered or adopted by non-Indian households — a willful Americanization policy to destroy their culture and existence;
Lakotahs have epidemic levels of disease and illness; and
teenage Lakotah suicide is 150% higher than the US national average.
Poverty
median income is a shocking $2600-$3500 a year;
97% of Lakotahs live below the poverty line — unmatched anywhere in the world except by other indigenous peoples; and
most families can’t afford heating oil, wood, propane or any way to heat homes.
Unemployment
it’s at 80% or higher; and
government funding for job creation is lost through cronyism and corruption.
Housing
it’s so inadequate that many elderly die each winter from hypothermia (freezing to death);
one-third of homes lack clean water and sewage;
40% have no electricity;
60% no telephone;
60% are infected with potentially fatal black molds; and
an estimated 17 people on average live in each family home — many with only two or three rooms; some homes built for six to eight people have up to 30 living in them.
Drugs and Alcohol
drug addiction afflicts over half of Lakotah adults; two known meth-amphetamine labs are allowed to operate; and
alcoholism affects 90% of families.
Disease
the tuberculosis rate for Lakotahs is about 800% higher than the US national average;
cervical cancer is 500% higher;
diabetes 800% higher; and
the Federal Commodity Food Program provides sugar-rich foods that cause high rates of diabetes, heart disease, and other preventable illnesses and diseases.
Incarceration
the rate for Indian children is 40% higher than for whites;
Indians have the second largest state prison incarceration rate in the nation after blacks; and
most Indians live on reservations that are supposed to be self-governing - in principle, that is; around 2% of Indians live under state jurisdiction.
Threatened Culture
only 14% of Lakotahs speak their native language;
it’s not being taught inter-generationally; the average age of fluent Lakotah speakers is 65; thus the language is endangered and on the verge of extinction; and
the Lakotah language is forbidden to be taught in US government schools — a further indignity inflicted on the people.
A Final Comment
In September 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It passed 143-4 with only Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US voting “no.” Eleven nations abstained.
This document enumerates the “collective rights of the world’s 370 million native peoples, calls for the maintenance and strengthening of their cultural identities, and emphasizes their right to pursue development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations.”
The Declaration affirms the right of native peoples “to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties concluded with States or their successors. It also prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them.”
This document concluded 25 years of “contentious negotiations over the rights of native people to protect their lands and resources, and to maintain their unique cultures and traditions.” In that and the above stated respects, it’s historic and important.
Nonetheless, America has its own “traditions” over and above those of others it disdains and abuses - the poor, non-whites, the disadvantaged, labor, non-Jews and Christians, virtually everyone outside its white supremacists elites, and clearly its Native peoples from the earliest settlers to the present day.
Nothing’s changed from then to now — Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Treaties, and Broken Hope for a Broken People suffering hugely in the United States of America — out of sight and mind and not an issue for the dominant news media. Very much one for people who care.
Obama will represent only a minor change in American political affairs, even compared to G.W. Bush, because the same capitalist interests still hold all the power and will continue to arrange government policy to suit their interests.
My negative expectations were confirmed with the news that Obama has ruled out any prosecution of Bush Administration officials for violations of federal and international laws, that is to say for war crimes. This is a matter of policy, which extends far beyond government, and can be called “management insurance.”
Managers insure each other of immunity from responsibility, and safeguard their futures to act with impunity, by never acting in any way to bring another manager to accounts for violations committed against their employees and the general population. A manager only contributes to the prosecution of another manager when it is a matter of personal career survival, or revenge promising career advancement. (For you lawyer-types, I mean “prosecute” in the general sense of both legal and administrative proceedings, and “violations” as both statutory and policy violations).
A particularly egregious example of management insurance is described in a riveting article in the Nation magazine by Nick Turse, A My Lai A Month. Turse describes the case of Maj. Gen. Julian Ewell, commander of the US Army’s Ninth Infantry Division in Vietnam (from February 1968 to April 1969) and his deputy, Col. Ira “Jim” Hunt, who served as a brigade commander and as Ewell’s chief of staff. These officers implemented Operation Speedy Express in the Mekong Delta, whose purpose was
to pacify huge swaths of the Delta and bring the population under the control of the South Vietnamese government in Saigon. To this end, from December 1968 through May 1969, a large-scale operation was carried out by the Ninth Infantry Division, with support from nondivision assets ranging from helicopter gunships to B-52 bombers. The offensive…claimed an enemy body count of 10,899 at a cost of only 267 American lives. Although guerrillas were known to be well armed, the division captured only 748 weapons.
This was equivalent to a My Lai massacre a month for over a year.
Ewell and Hunt were obsessive about achieving high “body counts,” and directed their troops to essentially kill any living being, human or animal, that could be detected; and every such kill, including babies and water buffalos, was logged as a “Vietcong”. These officers saw high body counts as their avenue to promotions. The sheer horror of this policy and its careerist motivation was noted and even opposed by others in the Army, but none of these critics went outside of their management structure with their concerns, as a matter of career survival.
The results:
– The Army quashed its own investigation, burying the story from public and even Congressional view;
– “Ewell retired from the Army in 1973 as a lieutenant general…Ira Hunt retired from active duty in 1978 as a major general…Army records indicate that no Ninth Infantry Division troops, let alone commanders, were ever court-martialed for killing civilians during the operation.”
Pretty nice insurance for mere army generals; and some of you actually believed a new US president would support war crimes trials of a previous US president and his cabinet?! War crimes tribunals are always victor’s justice, they are imposed by the superior force of a successful invader or a successful revolution. It requires a “hostile takeover” to dump the previous management. US elections are not hostile takeovers.
Why was My Lai exposed and some limited justice dispensed? Because Ron Ridenhour (1946-1998), a soldier on active duty in Vietnam, heard about the massacre and gathered eyewitness information, and on returning to the United States sent thirty letters detailing his investigation to members of Congress and to Pentagon officials. This drew Seymour Hersh to investigate. Ridenhour had ensured the My Lai story was public, his great contribution. Operation Speedy Express had no Ron Ridenhour.
Needless to say, Ridenhour did not have a long Army career, nor achieve high rank nor gain a rich pension. But, was not his national service of far greater value? Yes, but he had punctured rather than maintained the US military’s and the Nixon Administration’s management insurance. Such maintenance is what high pay is awarded for.
You may think management insurance is corruption, and ask “why is our political class corrupt?” Why aren’t people like Ridenhour the rule rather than the exception? I think George Carlin gave the clearest (and most unsparing) answer, in 1996:
If you have selfish ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish ignorant leaders…Maybe it’s not the politicians who suck, maybe something else sucks around here, like the public…There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: The public sucks, fuck hope.
Carlin was a comic genius, but let me state his conclusion in a different way.
In 1846 a wagon train of emigrants from the Eastern U.S., the Donner Party, traveled to California but became trapped high in the Sierra Nevada mountains by deep snows (22 ft, 6.7 m) for four months, and suffered heavy losses due to starvation despite resorting to cannibalism. The members of the Donner Party were “pioneers”, “rugged individuals” intent to make their fortunes, whose only social tie was family, and for whom American Indians were obstacles (shooting Indians was not murder), and nature was for exploitation. The sad accounts of their family feuds, bickering, abandonments, thefts and murders could be taken as extreme examples of similar behaviors, and certainly similar anti-socialist attitudes we might witness among Americans in coming years as we descend deeper and deeper in the possible (probable?, inevitable?) economic depression awaiting us.
I just don’t see Americans pulling together indiscriminately during a real crisis of survival. Again, maybe I’m off, but I think our basic problem is a profound lack of character, which our political class honestly reflects; rather than that we are generally a virtuous population betrayed by a corrupt political class. It’s not “them”, it’s “us.”
The “people are good” viewpoint is orthodox leftism, as I was scolded once by an orthodox leftist who said the “people are bad” bias was a fascist tendency (the hint was clear). Obviously, from the point of view of organizing (e.g., a union) it is much easier to sell the idea and also be motivated by it, if your bias is that most people are “good”. My attitude reflects what I’ve learned from Buddhism, which is that most people are “unenlightened”, simply ignorant. Buddhism counsels compassion. It is the insistence on staying ignorant that I lose all patience with.
So, yes, it is maddening that Bush et al. will never get impeached (there is still time), tried by the Senate, or prosecuted for war crimes by the Obama Administration, or before any international tribunal. But, is this primarily a failure of Obama’s, or ours? Who elects these criminals and allows them to smirk their way through years of carnage and to reap very rich rewards? Who pays their management insurance policy? We have no innocence, and our stubborn ignorance is a worthless substitute for it. The rot comes straight out of us. Gandhi had a compassionate way of phrasing this: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
The leftist hope, and one I share illogically, is that it is physically possible for most people to become that desirable change — and call it what it is, socialism. Amazingly, it only requires a change of mind.
I’ve fallen through the cracks
and landed on my back.
I need a helping hand to continue.
I’ve encountered some bad luck,
and I’m not asking much,
just a touch of the goodness that’s in you.
I’ve worked throughout my life.
I’ve got kids and a wife
whose fate I’m now so desperately in fear of.
For sometimes factories close,
while that stack of bills just grows,
and there’s nothing you can do for God or dear love.
The mortgage payment’s short,
and my credit card report
discloses that I’ve reached a state of crisis.
We’ve got a little socked away,
but it grows smaller every day,
and I’m haunted by demands of heating prices.
There are beggars on the street
that I never thought I’d meet,
and get to know as brethren in our sorrow.
But the beads of sweat congeal
as I face the facts and feel
that that’s where we may find ourselves tomorrow.
How all this came to pass
is a question we must ask
and find an answer soon, to gain salvation.
Unless we set things right
we’ll just wander through a night
culminating in the doom of our dear nation.
Video: Turkeys sacrificed as Palin conducts interview
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Nov. 20: After pardoning a turkey, Gov. Sarah Palin had a media interview in the worst possible spot. She was unaware of what was happening behind her as she answered a reporter's questions. (Countdown)
More at http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=100 In the renewed battle for Muslim hearts and minds, al-Qaeda's number 2 launches a pre-emptive strike
The US-backed Iraqi parliament has set a date to vote on a security agreement that would keep US troops in Iraq through 2011. The decision could anger many US politicians since it will be deliberated without consent from the US congress. Al Jazeera's Owen Fay reports from Baghdad where thousands of supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a senior Iraqi leader opposed to US-led authorities, are also protesting the bill.
I have a horrible "down" feeling. I was so happy that Obama won, and now, the elation is gone. I don't like the looks of things at all. They just keep looking worse. I thought, well, VP, hmm, okay, not my pick, but okay, then, Emanuel, hmmmmmm, well maybe needed. Now ... humph, what the hell is going on?
As information about prospective Obama administration appointments dribbles out, has the thrill of the campaign been replaced by the fear of dashed hopes? Obama and his transition team may need to revive a Sixties slogan quickly -- "Keep the Faith, Baby" -- and bolster morale among his many waiting supporters before he starts losing them. Two and a half weeks out from election day, news junkies and political addicts are getting impatient and reverting to their worst fears.
David Sirota: Why Obama Shouldn't Listen to the Media Noise Machine
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The media are telling Obama to ditch the agenda he won on and appease electorally humiliated Republicans. This is the last thing he should do. Read more..
If you were Gov. Napolitano, how would you put your stamp on the Department of Homeland Security?
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It's as official as it can be at this point that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano will be the new Director of Homeland Security. Napolitano is well-suited and well-qualified for the post. And it didn't hurt that she was an early supporter of Barack Obama.
And Napolitano can't run for re-election in 2010, so she would need a job. There has been a lot of talk about her running for John McCain's Senate seat in 2010, and she still might do so. But since McCain has announced that he is running again, she might be reassessing her chances.
The immediate drawback to the news is that her replacement in Arizona will be a Republican. Arizona does not have a lieutenant governor, and Secretary of State Jan Brewer will jump up to the top spot. But whomever was going to run for governor from the Democratic Party in 2010 knew the position would be open for some time.
Afghanistan's struggle to tap wind energy - 21 Nov 08
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It was in the Panjshir Valley that both the Soviets and the Taliban were repeatedly repulsed by Shah Massoud. Now, as Al Jazeera's David Chater reports, the lair of the Lion of Panjshir is the site of the country's first ever wind farm.
