John Conyers Is Not an Icon, He Was a Congressman

John Conyers left Congress in disgrace in Dec. 2017, utterly
self-absorbed and convinced of his moral superiority

What is it that possesses some people after assuming an office?

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., (D-Michigan), resigned this week, facing multiple sexual harassment complaints coming out of his office fiefdom built over decades.

Icon, legend? Conyers is accused of the same offenses leading Clarence Thomas to be branded a monster.

No, Conyers is not an icon. He's a civil rights worker along with 10,000,000s of Americans whose names will not grace the history books. Any grounded, reflective man would know this.

Not Conyers.

Listening to Conyers' statement on the Mildred Gaddis Show, (WPZR-FM, Detroit), (via cable news), is to listen to a self-absorbed, pathetically deluded man so convinced of his own righteousness that it's not surprising any empathy with his victims is absent.

Said Conyers on the Gaddis show:

My legacy can’t be compromised or diminished in any way by what we’re going through now. This too shall pass. ... My legacy will continue through my children. I am retiring today and I want everyone to know how much I appreciate the ... incredible, undiminished support I've received across the years from my supporters not only from my district but across the country as well.

My, my, I, I, I.

Conyers is not an icon, a mythic, supernatural figure or a legend.

He's just a selfish guy who has been in Congress too long, creating a fiefdom that dehumanized and betrayed the very movement that he so fervently claims as his own.

Club for Growth Is Malignant Bacteria in the Body Politic

Club for Is a Malignant Growth

Brendan Fischer has a nice wrap-up on David Koch, Americans for Prosperity, Republican Governors Association, Wisconsin Club for Growth, Eric O’Keefe et al in the latest probe into a probe looking into possible criminal corruption supervised by  retired Appeals Court Judge Gregory Peterson.

Nothing to see here is the GOP line, for now, though Wisconsin Club for Growth's Eric O’Keefe frack you to Judge Peterson and his subpoena are going to change that pretty soon.

John Doe proceedings are subject to a secrecy order, one presumes a subpoena serviced to O’Keefe is no exception. [O'Keffe, should check out the Hurley, Burish and Stanton, S.C. site at which they cite the secrecy of John Doe probe as an effort to "prevent testimony that may be mistaken or untrue or irrelevant from becoming public." It won't cost O'Keffe any money.]

But there is quite much to see here.

The Capital Times offers a summary of recent development of the man who would be governor, president or felon.

Time Magazine, writer Zeke J. Miller and Scott Walker teamed up for yet another puff piece about Walker's possible run for president [he's not going to run, we contended for years.]From the Cap Times:

Dark Money Funds Underground Movements Fronted by GOP

BloggingBlue's Zach Wisniewski calls Scott Walker a liar, pointing to an interview he did with reporters last week explaining why he dropped out of college. He claimed he did so because he needed to get a job to take care of his children. Problem is, Wisniewski points out, Walker dropped out of Marquette in 1990. His first child was born in 1994.

Blogger James Rowen also points to the same set of facts after reading Walker making the same claims in Time magazine. He posts an editorial that appeared in the student paper, the Marquette Tribune, over the future governor's illegal campaigning for student body president.

Speaking of the governor, Bruce Murphy's Urban Milwaukee column insists that the latest John Doe investigation spells real trouble for Scott Walker. Murphy presents a detailed analysis of Walker's staff's previous campaign violations while county executive and how it all plays into his gubernatorial election financing.

MacIver Institute Predictions Proven Wrong

The MacIver Institute is a Wisconsin-based propaganda outfit, funded by rightwing money, staffed by rightwing Republicans, and emitting rightwing propaganda.

If you want credible, unbiased information from MacIver, you would have better luck getting a disquisition on string theory from Sarah Palin.

The MacIver Institute—like the GOP—spent the last several months asserting massive fraud of recall signatures, massive voter impersonation fraud, massive fraud of anything critical of the Republican Party.

Turn outs the MacIver Institute, like the GOP are wrong.

But don't look for a retraction from MacIver Institute President Brett Healy for his defamation of the Wisconsin people. Healy is a hack; and accurate, credible information is not his business.

By Will Dooling at the Center for Media and Democracy's PRWatch

Upon receiving the signatures, the GAB worked hard to scan them and post them online so that all parties could examine them. In a February 6 interview on the Mike Gousha Show, the most respected TV news show in Wisconsin, MacIver Institute President Brett Healy declared that he had personally reviewed the thousands of pages of petitions, and by his estimate almost one third of the signatures would be invalidated, and only 650,000 signatures would be found valid.

Yet in the end, the final count released by the GAB on March 29 found an error rate of only about 3.2 percent -- about a tenth of Healy's initial prediction of 33 1/3 percent. This is no surprise to the 30,000 volunteers of the grassroots group United Wisconsin, who collected and submitted signatures and established a multi-stage review process to make sure that every signature was clear and complete, and made their best effort to eliminate duplicates.

While only 931,000 signatures were submitted, slightly short of the one million claimed, the GAB disqualified only 30,000 from the Walker recall, and about 34,000 from the Kleefisch recall. The three percent error rate is significantly below the 15 percent rate predicted by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It was also dramatically below the 30 percent rejection rate for the one million signatures collected for the referendum to reverse SB-5, the Ohio collective bargaining measure, in 2011.

The Wisconsin GAB has recently released a statement giving comparably low error rates on the petitions to recall state senators Fitzgerald, Wanggaard, Moulton, and Galloway. ...

Dire predictions of 'rampant signature fraud' and 'floods' of phony signatures have been proven false. We hope that MacIver, 'True the Vote,' and other groups that alleged fraud will promptly and professionally apologize to United Wisconsin, the grassroots group that gathered the signatures. But we will not hold our breath.

Bo Morrison Was Murdered, Empowered by NRA-Corporate-backed Front Group

Sign From the 2011 Wisconsin Protests

Adam Kind is the killer of Bo Morrision of Slinger, Wisconsin.

Kind and other killers like George Zimmerman are legally empowered by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Castle Doctrine Act model legislation that has been enacted across the nation.

In Florida, the Stand Your Ground law uses the same language as the Castle Doctrine Act, and both are pushed by ALEC, as reported in the Center for Media and Democracy.

ALEC is a front group run by several corperations, the Koch brothers and the NRA.

Sure, ALEC alum Scott Walker signed the Wisconsin ALEC Castle Doctrine bill into law, but he did so with a lot of Democratic support.

As reported by SourceWatch:

ALEC’s agenda extends into almost all areas of law. Its bills undermine environmental regulations and deny climate change; support school privatization; undercut health care reform; defund unions and limit their political influence; restrain legislatures’ abilities to raise revenue through taxes; mandate strict election laws that disenfranchise voters; increase incarceration to benefit the private prison industry, among many other issues. 

ALEC legislation is running wild in the states. Let's hope Democrats challenge this threat to democracy and life before someone else gets killed.

As Paul Krugman writes:

[L]anguage virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy. ...

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law. ...

Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

Reuters: Execution by Secret White House Committee

Anwar al-Awlaki, the White House and President Barack Obama.
 - Image: Muhammad ud-Deen/iStockphoto: P_Wei/AP -

Would you trust a country and political culture that imprisons the largest proportion of its citizens, will not renounce torture, and aids and abets the terror state of Israel to make a prudent, secret call on political assassinations of American citizens? Democratic Party Loyalists say: Trust us.

The Obama administration's refusal to hold the Bush-Cheney regime accountable for myriad crimes looks less like a political calculation and more like a policy agreement, to state what should be obvious now with this latest revelation.

By Glenn Greenwald

Here is what the Democratic President has created and implemented, and what many party loyalists explicitly endorse (when there’s a Democrat in the White House) — from Reuters:

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions . . . . There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council . . . . Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate. . . . The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process. . . .

Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing. The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president” . . . .Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described. They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval . . . But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.

So a panel operating out of the White House — that meets in total secrecy, with no known law or rules governing what it can do or how it operates — is empowered to place American citizens on a list to be killed by the CIA, which (by some process nobody knows) eventually makes its way to the President, who is the final Decider. It is difficult to describe the level of warped authoritarianism necessary to cause someone to lend their support to a twisted Star Chamber like that; I genuinely wonder whether the Good Democrats doing so actually first convince themselves that if this were the Bush White House’s hit list, or if it becomes Rick Perry’s, they would be supportive just the same. Seriously: if you’re willing to endorse having White House functionaries meet in secret — with no known guidelines, no oversight, no transparency — and compile lists of American citizens to be killed by the CIA without due process, what aren’t you willing to support?

Of all the things I’ve seen over the past several years, easily one of the most repellent has been the number of people — especially journalists — who are running around definitively asserting that Awlaki had an “operational role” in Terrorist plots and had “taken up arms” against the U.S. even though they have no idea whether that’s actually true (Politico‘s Roger Simon: “U.S. citizen living overseas and plotting the death of American citizens from, let’s say, Yemen, you can say hello to our little friends, the 100-lb. Hellfires”; Josh Marshall: Awlaki was “a key leader of an international terrorist group, organizing and inspiring terrorist attacks within the US” ). Just consider how even the anonymous government officials who spoke to Reuters in order to defend the Awlaki killing characterize the “evidence” they have to support that claim:

The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning terrorist attacks.

But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki’s hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.

For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. . . . But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.

Someone spoke to someone on “a phone known to have been used by Awlaki”: maybe it was Abdulmutallab, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was Awlaki, maybe it wasn’t. Who knows? Who cares? Some officials “believed” it may have involved those two, so it’s time to kill Awlaki. Remember, Good Democrats hate the death penalty because they think it’s so terribly barbaric to execute people whose guilt is in doubt (even if, unlike Awlaki, they’ve enjoyed an indictment and full jury trial, lawyers, the right to examine evidence and to confront witnesses, multiple appeals, and habeas petitions). There’s also this:

Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-mails retrieved by authorities from the employee’s computer showed what an investigator described as ” operational contact” between Britain and Yemen.

Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was at the brother’s side when the messages were dispatched.

There was a “strong suspicion” — not that Awlaki participated in this email plotting, but that he was “at the side” of someone who did. Who needs “beyond a reasonable doubt’? That is so pre-9/11. ”A strong suspicion” that he may have been next to someone plotting an attack: that’s the McCarthyite standard Democratic Party loyalists are holding up to justify the due-process-free execution of their fellow citizen by a secret, lawless White House “panel.”

What’s crucial to keep in mind is that nobody can see this “evidence” which these anonymous government officials are claiming exists. It’s in their exclusive possession. As a result, they’re able to characterize it however they want, to present it in the best possible light to support their pro-assassination position, and to prevent any detection of its flaws. As any lawyer will tell you, anyone can make a case for anything when they’re in exclusive possession of all the relevant evidence and are the only side from whom one is hearing; all evidence becomes less compelling when it’s subjected to adversarial scrutiny. Yet even given all those highly favorable pro-government conditions here, it’s obvious — even these officials admit — that the evidence is “partial,” “patchy,” based on “suspicions” rather than knowledge.

But no matter. Officials in the Obama White House and then the President decreed in secret that Awlaki should die. So the U.S. Government killed him. Republicans who always cheer acts of violence against Muslims are joined by Democrats who reflexively cheer what this Democratic President does, and now this death panel for U.S. citizens — operating with no known rules, transparency, or oversight — is entrenched as bipartisan consensus and a permanent fixture of American political life. I’m sure this will never be abused: unrestrained power exercised in secret has a very noble history in the U.S. (Reuters says that the only American they could confirm on the hit list is Awlaki, though Dana Priest reported last year that either three or four Americans were on a hit list).

Anyway, look over there: wasn’t it outrageous how George Bush imprisoned people without any due process and tried to seize unrestrained power, and isn’t it horrifying what a barbaric death cult Republicans are for favoring executions even when there’s doubt about guilt? Even for those deeply cynical about American political culture: wouldn’t you have thought a few years ago that having the President create a White House panel to place Americans on a CIA hit list — in secret, without a shred of due process — would be a bridge too far?

UPDATE: I don’t think it’s dispositive of the question here — because the U.S. Government isn’t permitted to murder fugitives who aren’t violently resisting apprehension and, in any event, Awlaki was never a fugitive since he was never indicted by the U.S. for anything — but Robert Farley persuasively highlights the baselessness of the excuse that Awlaki could not have been apprehended (and he also documents how dubious, uncertain and filled with doubt is the case against Awlaki generally).

Obama Denounces New GOP Voting Laws, Says DoJ Is Investigating

Big government is pretty big when it halts your right to even vote.

By Ari Berman

In an interview with Philadelphia radio host Michael Smerconish last week, President Obama for the first time denounced the wave of new laws passed by Republicans designed to restrict the right to vote for millions of Americans.

Said the president:

I will say that my big priority is making sure that as many people are participating in our democracy as possible. Some of these moves in some of the other states that we’ve seen try to make it tougher to vote, restricting ballot access, making it hard on seniors, making it hard on young people.

I think that’s a big mistake, and I have made sure that our Justice Department is taking a look at what’s being done across the country to ensure that people aren’t being denied access to the franchise.

The fact that Obama invoked the Justice Department is very important, since the department has the authority under the Voting Rights Act to approve, deny or modify these laws. “The Justice Department should be much more aggressive in areas covered by the Voting Rights Act,” Congressman John Lewis told me recently.

There are signs that is starting to happen. The Justice Department recently sent pointed letters to Texas and South Carolina, two states that have strict new photo ID requirements, asking for more information on what kind of impact the laws will have on minority voters. And last month, the department found that Texas’s new redistricting maps for the state house and US House of Representatives violated the Voting Rights Act by shortchanging Hispanic residents. (A three-panel federal district court in Washington, which also has authority under the VRA, is now reviewing the Texas maps.)

Career lawyers in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, who were frequently sidelined and overruled during the Bush Administration, are reasserting their authority and independence under Obama. They may be the only ones who can halt the GOP’s war on voting.

Santorum: Gay Soldiers Will Cause Many to Leave U.S. Mil

Active-service troop, Stephen Hill, booed by GOP audience

GOP tests the bottom in striking anti-American display of fanaticism and hate

By Igor Volsky

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) doubled down on his commitment to reinstating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell during an appearance on Fox & Friends this morning, telling co-host Gretchen Carlson that the nation hasn’t “even begun seeing the consequences” of repeal.



Perhaps projecting his own feelings towards LGBT people, the former Pennsylvania senator said he worried that soldiers will feel “uncomfortable” and “odd” around openly gay servicemembers:

The night Republicans booed a deployed, U.S. soldier

SANTORUM: The man and women who sign up for the military are now going to be placed in very difficult and uncomfortable personal situations, very close quarter situations…We got to recruit people who would want to do this and now you’re going to put them in a very odd and uncomfortable environment. A lot of people, I believe are going to leave a lot of people aren’t going to join who otherwise would have joined, and that’s going to hurt our ratings, it’s going to hurt our ability to defend this country, and we shouldn’t be playing social experimentation….There is no role for playing sexual experimentation games in the United States military.

During last night’s GOP presidential debate in Orlando, Florida, Santorum told Stephen Hill — a gay soldier who served in Iraq — that “any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military,” as the audience booed Hill’s service. Santorum wasn’t asked about and didn’t address the reaction.

Wisconsin GOP Targets Madison City Police, Citizens

GOP's nightmare

Wisconsin's counter-offensive against GOP-Tea Party attacks on the working class has provoked the Wisconsin Republican Party to declare political war against anyone, including now the city of Madison police who remain committed to the First Amendment and Article 1 rights of Wisconsinites protesting the Koch brothers and the GOP

The echos of the pioneering civil rights activist and Madison Police Chief David Couper [Marine, Chief of Police in Madison from 1972-1993] live on in current Madison Police Chief Noble Wray to the consternation of the GOP.

The GOP cannot stand any challenge to what it views as its authority over the public. No protests. Close the capitol. Police must enforce the will of the Party.

People assemble and make their voices known. Nein, nein, nein!

To understand the GOP mind, consider the reaction to Wisconsinites gathering together to express their discontent with the Scott Walker regime this year:

GOP Locks Capitol Down, U.S. Rep Obey (1969-2011) denied entry into capitol



Contra the Madison police and Dane County Sheriff's office who refused to be Walker's palace guard, Wisconsin capitol police chief, Charles Tubbs, dishonored his office, catering to the Department of Administration Walker lackeys in closing the capitol on orders form the Party.

After Scott Walker "dropped the bomb" on Wisconsin citizens, a stark image from March is of a Wisconsin legislator [Nick Milroy (D-South Grange)] being tackled to the ground for trying to get to his office as Walker unlawfully closed down the capitol.



Republicans are so hostile to the idea of a democratic republic that a judge had to order the Wisconsin capitol open to the public in early March.

Other examples of GOP hostility to democracy abound today.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s office threatened constituents with arrest and investigation.

Now, Wisconsin Republicans are declaring open war on Madison police leadership with a racial slap at Police Chief Noble Wray.

Chief Noble Wray told a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter that questions about his department's conduct during the protests constitute "almost a slap in the face."

As John Peterson writes, "The myth of violence, vandalism and thuggery during the protests is the lie their pushing, repeating and burning into the mind of Wisconsinites who weren’t there. It’s like George W. Bush said, 'catapulting the propaganda.'"

There is a clear choice, and the fight against anti-democratic forces is worth joining.

Rick Perry Bashes President Obama in Israeli Newspaper

Jews as seen by the religious right

Rick Perry is bidding for the political support of rightwing American Jewry by publishing an anti-Obama screed in the Jerusalem Post, attempting as well to fracture the Democratic Party coalition in which some 80 percent of Jews vote Democratic.

Attacking a sitting American president vis a vis Israel in this manner is an un-American pursuit no matter, as John Aravosis writes, it's simply Perry playing for votes:

Actually, Perry is trying to tick off American Jews and turn them against Obama. Of course, Republican religious zealots like Perry are only bff with Israel because they need Israel (to burn, actually) in order for the Second Coming of Christ to happen. Yeah, the far right running the Republican party don't often mention that fact - that Israel needs to exist so 2/3 of all Jews worldwide can die a horrible death in order to welcome Jesus back - when they're touting their support for Israel's right to exist.

If Perry is such a supporter of Israel, ask him if Jews are going to hell.

Perry doesn't care about Jews one way or another beyond the fact that the right is looking to chip away at President Obama's political support.

But the half-baked maneuver won't play out any better than Sarah Palin's wearing a Star of David pin suddenly convinced a multitude of Jews to get behind her campaign-like thing.

Republican strategists are hot on the topic for now, in their ignorance not realizing that progressive American Jews subscribe to ethical principles and not mythical notions of raciology or Old Testament metaphysics.

In Jonathan S. Tobin piece in Commentary published on 9/11, Tobin signaled Perry's move writing:

Though the Democrats are still in a relatively strong position vis-à-vis Jews, they know Obama is a weak incumbent who has already lost the trust of this community. Their only hope to extend their winning streak among Jews is to demonize their Republican foes.

How do you demonize a bunch of religious fanatics who think Jews are consigned to "rivers of blood"?

Tobin and Perry don't address the question.

Neither are serious writers on the topic, merely representative of the American rightwing.

Let's hope the question of Rick Perry, a presidential candidate, making common cause with those attacking a sitting American president in a foreign newspaper is addressed.

In the mean time it bears noting that Obama’s policy toward Israel is disappointing in that Israeli human rights violations have continued; an American citizen was murdered by Israel in international waters and Obama has not been sufficiently humanistic in challenging the Likud [and neo-fascist] parties' militarism, bigotry and massacres in the occupied territories

Rick Perry's Execution of the Innocent Is a Moral Disqualification

Rick Perry - so tough he killed an innocent man

Update: BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court Grants Stay of Execution to Duane Edward Buck
The personal inadequacies of Rick Perry that drove him to preside over the killing of an innocent man, launching a cover up in 2008 by firing members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission in possession of and about to make public evidence demonstrating that there is no scientific basis for claiming the executed man committed a crime [the evidence in fact exonerated the execution victim, Cameron Todd Willingham] provoked a significant reaction in Rick Perry: Kill more people.

Message: I am so tough.

"At the end of the day I am always going to be erring on the side of life," said Perry in defence of his impenetrable position on another issue, mandatory HPV vaccinations.

Why?

But for the innocent man Cameron Todd Willingham, Perry did not err on the side of life; he knowingly presided over the execution, and fired the government officials who would scientifically establish Rick Perry as what he is: Co-conspirator in the state murder of Cameron Todd Willingham.

In most countries this would be a disqualification for high elected office.

In Texas capital punishment of the innocent or guilty is practically a prerequisite for elected high office as in the case of Rick Perry's 234 executions committed during his tenure, pandering to the crude bloodlust of many Americans and what Amanda Marcotte calls the "mean-spirited ignorance that rules Texas politics."

Erwin Knoll, the former editor of The Progressive Magazine, wrote once in calling for non-violence from the African National Congress (with whom Knoll made common cause as the ANC fought US-Israeli-supported Apartheid in South Africa) that violence deafens the ears and blinds the eyes to the suffering of others.

Yes, violence does accomplish sensory, cognitive and human dullness.

But don't look for network and cable infotainment shows to carry screaming headlines on why Rick Perry is stonewalling the American people on killing an innocent man. There is no popular demand.

And there are few in American government as Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan who in an inspiring moral stand "in January of 2000, after 13 people sentenced to death row were found to have been wrongfully convicted ... took the unprecedented step of declaring a moratorium on executions. ... Gov. Ryan said, 'Until I can be sure, with moral certainty, that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate.'" [Stop Capital Punishment Now]

No such human mettle exists in Rick Perry, who parades his piety and religiosity hand-in-hand with his corruption and unrepentant killing of an innocent.
---
By Amanda Marcotte

When Rick Perry threw his hat into the ring for the Republican presidential nomination, it set off such a collective cringe among liberal Texans that it likely scored on the Richter scale. Being a native Texan with basic respect for modern civilisation means living in a constant state of low-grade humiliation, as the state's size provides an uninterrupted stream of news stories highlighting the cranks and Bible-thumpers who win state and local offices – but a presidential campaign means exponentially expanding the amount of national and international attention paid to the streak of mean-spirited ignorance that rules Texas politics. With Rick Perry, this means a whole lot more coverage of the fact that Texas is the "killingest" state in the entire union, having executed more than four times as many prisoners as the next contender in this gruesome contest.

Of course, we of the non-barbaric sort do hope that all this attention paid to Rick Perry's willingness to execute anyone on death row – no matter how obviously screwed over by an imperfect and often unjust judicial system – could somehow provoke enough national shame that we actually do away with the death penalty. Which we really need to do, not because we have any great love for vicious murderers, but because the death penalty is a known destroyer of a fair and sober-minded justice system.

Once you have the right to kill people, the voters start expecting semi-regular bloodshed as proof that you're doing your job, creating incentives for prosecutors and politicians to cut corners to get those voter-pleasing cadaver numbers up. Each new generation of prosecutors and politicians feels pressure to "best" their predecessor in the number of executions carried out, lest they face accusations of being soft on crime. Which explains why they soon find themselves where Rick Perry stands, having executed 234 people, many of whom had highly corrupt trials and at least one of whom is most likely innocent.

For those who haven't read the tale of Cameron Todd Willingham, I implore you to read the New Yorker article recounting the case of a man executed for killing his three children based on shoddy evidence and prosecutorial willingness to introduce Willingham's love of Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin as evidence in order to stoke the prejudices of a Bible Belt jury that was high on fundamentalist tall tales about the Satanic influence of rock music. When presented with an opportunity to spare Willingham's life, Perry declined, and in 2004, Willingham was executed by lethal injection. His case has come to symbolise the circus atmosphere around capital murder cases, and the way that the eagerness to see someone pay the ultimate price for the loss of innocent human life causes law enforcement and politicians to make a mockery out of the idea of justice.

Since Rick Perry, by his own admission, has never lost sleep over the execution of a likely innocent man, you can bet justice doesn't stand a chance when it comes to cases where the fact of homicide is indisputable. The public's desire to get blood for blood – especially if they can view the accused as an outsider – turns concerns about due process to dust for anyone whose job depends on a high conviction rate. Subsequently, death penalty cases where the prosecution won a clean conviction without relying on shoddy evidence or a jury's unfair prejudices are the rare gems in a sea of corruption. The case of Duane Buck, scheduled to be executed this week, demonstrates how the death penalty is more about hustling prisoners to the execution chamber to score points with the public than it is securing just and safe outcomes.

Even hyper-conservative Senator John Cornyn, once Texas's attorney general, wanted Buck's case reviewed, due to a prosecutorial witness's claim that Buck was more likely to be violent in the future because he's black. That someone's race was overtly invoked as a reason to kill him during trial should be indicator enough that the death penalty has meaning for the public beyond alleviating concerns about violent crime. But evidence of racism invoked during the trial probably won't bother Perry: if he had a conscience about signing off on overtly unfair executions, it probably stopped bothering him somewhere much earlier in his run of 234 executions as Texas governor.

The death penalty is wrong not because murderers deserve better, but because the death penalty appeals to the worst instincts of humanity. We see innocent people die, and our lizard brains want to believe that it won't be right until someone pays for blood with blood. That desire starts to overrule all other priorities. Our desire for a fair trial system and our desire to treat people equally despite racial differences are the first to go. But given enough time, we're even willing to send a man to the death chambers for what appears to have been an accident. Three small children are dead, and we want someone to pay, no matter the innocence of the someone we select.

Perry's willingness to execute a man who was almost certainly innocent comes uncomfortably close to regressing to the days of human sacrifice. Sacrificing an innocent man won't prevent other houses from accidentally catching fire and killing the innocent people inside, but it's clear that Perry will not hesitate to pander to voters who cling to hopes that periodic blood-letting will somehow save us all.

- Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on Signing the Social Security Act

Paul Ryan, Rick Perry and the GOP possess a shameful incapacity to appreciate that seniors see Social Security as benefits accrued over a lifetime of working. And that seniors' work, their labor, is honorable and sacred.

By President Franklin Roosevelt

Statement on Signing the Social Security Act on August 14 , 1935

Today a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.

I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts in behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.

If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.

President Obama: "Let's Put this Country Back to Work"

President Barack Obama joined by Vice President Joe Biden
delivers a statement on the American Jobs Act
in the Rose Garden of the White House, Sept. 12, 2011.
(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Even the most ideological, rigid Republicans and Tea Partiers surly know jobs, consumer demand and disposable income are critical to priming the domestic economy. A healthy economy is the mission, objective, and aim for all policymakers, correct? Wrong. The GOP-Tea Baggers want to scrap the crash jobs project that would save millions of families and burn down the house in the hope of putting Rick Perry in the oval office to consolidate and codify the radical, GOP vision that labor, a hard day's work, is no longer sacred.
Will the adult Republicans, Rep. Tom Petri (Fond du Lac) for example, [I can't think of another one off hand] defend the United States of America against his own political party?

From the White House

This morning, President Obama was joined by Vice President Biden as well as teachers, veterans, small business owners, construction workers and first responders, as he called on Congress to pass the American Jobs Act right away:

On Thursday, I told Congress that I’ll be sending them a bill called the American Jobs Act. Well, here it is. This is a bill that will put people back to work all across the country. This is the bill that will help our economy in a moment of national crisis. This is a bill that is based on ideas from both Democrats and Republicans. And this is the bill that Congress needs to pass. No games. No politics. No delays. I’m sending this bill to Congress today, and they ought to pass it immediately.

The jobs bill President Obama is sending to Congress will help put teachers back into the class room, construction workers back on the job and provide a tax credit for companies that hire anybody who spent more than six months looking for a job. And for middle-class families, the American Jobs Act will prevent taxes from going up, giving the typical working family a $1,500 tax cut. It is also paid for in full and would not add to the debt.

As the President said, getting the American Jobs Act passed and putting Americans back to work is in our hands:

You hear a lot of folks talking about uncertainty in the economy. This is a bit of uncertainty that we could avoid by going ahead and taking action to make sure that we’re helping the American people.

So if you agree with me, if you want Congress to take action, then I’m going to need everybody here and everybody watching -- you’ve got to make sure that your voices are heard. Help make the case. There's no reason not to pass this bill. Its ideas are bipartisan. Its ideas are common sense. It will make a difference. That’s not just my opinion; independent economists and validators have said this could add a significant amount to our Gross Domestic Product, and could put people back to work all across the country. So the only thing that’s stopping it is politics. And we can’t afford these same political games. Not now.

So I want you to pick up the phone. I want you to send an email. Use one of those airplane skywriters. Dust off the fax machine. Or you can just, like, write a letter. So long as you get the message to Congress: Send me the American Jobs Act so I can sign it into law. Let’s get something done. Let’s put this country back to work.

Paul Ryan Has Senior Arrested and Jokes about Blood Pressure Meds; Video - Updated

Paul Ryan mocks seniors,
seeks to take away Social Security and Medicare

If it's me and senior speaks at a public forum, I shut up and listen. It's about respect and maybe learning something.

Updated II: Paul Ryan flees constituents as his palace guard smiles. I have had numerous talks with 100s of politicians, aides, operatives, strategists, flacks of all parties; but never have I witnessed the contempt that Paul Ryan, Scott Walker and today's brand of Republicans have for the people they are supposed to serve.

Interview with 71-year-old who had the temerity ask Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) a question by Noise of Rain at Kos:

UPDATE: Phone Interview with Tom Nielsen:
9:35 pm CST, September 9

I just conducted a phone interview with Tom Nielsen, the [arrested] man mentioned [below].

Describe what happened to you?

I had a ticket for the event, so it is not trespassing. I no more than voiced my opinion. I'm 6'4, 235 pounds but recently had a car accident and a broken clavicle. I told the policemen that. They were not too impressed. One policeman had my head down on the ground, and was six inches from my face, growling and snarling at me. I was worried about my shoulder, and said please don't hurt me. I said it five times. It fell to deaf ears. I was not a danger to anybody. Why throw me on the ground and cuff me with plastic handcuffs and cut my circulation? I have big hands, you don't have to put them on that tight. Shanon, one of the other people arrested, had bruises on her arms and wrists. They were obviously hired for crowd control. I don't think Rotary did that, I think that there was anticipation on Paul Ryan's part. There were two paddy wagons on deck … this shows that they anticipated something. We were not trying to do this, and they manipulated it to become about arrests.

How do you respond to people who were frustrated with the noisy protestors?

I'd say, "You are mad at me because you came to listen to him present all these falsehoods and sit there like you accept them and believe in them? Are you American, or what are you? You can't believe that these so called "entitlements" are ruining the economy!" I paid into Social Security for 52 tears and am now collecting some of what I paid. My wife passed away recently. She'll never collect what she paid into. Can you imagine your retirement money if it is all up to the stock market? I think Paul Ryan has been mislead by the Koch Bros. He ain't got enough guts to stand up to them. He used to be an Oscar Meyer Wiener salesman. Now he is a big shot in charge of all this whole government finances. How can he get such authority in only ten years? He spews this and tells us he gets all this encouragement from supporters so that he knows he is moving this country in the right direction. Of course he has to say something, but it is a fiasco.

Are you thinking of legal action?

You don't have to plea until the last minute. We are here for jobs. He is ignoring us totally. Listen to us! What he is saying and what we need done are two things traveling in different directions!

Why did you go to the event in the first place?

I wanted to hear what my Representative had to say. When I got there, I didn't want to get into any discussion with the Tea Baggers protesting outside. I didn't want to resist any police. I went inside to listen to what he had to say. He came in and was talking and making big jokes. I'm just a citizen, and heard the stuff about social security and health insurance, and when he called it "entitlement" I wanted to correct him. That was it for me. We were willing to leave when we were asked to. I was probably talking so loud that I didn't hear anyone ask me to leave. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor!

What was your response to Ryan's joke about you?

I am in perfect health.. everything. Back, heart, prostate, lungs: everything! Maybe he should check his own blood pressure rather than worrying about mine. I take care of my own self. If anyone has a stressful job, he certainly has, trying to do what the big machine wants him to do. His health must be suffering. How can it not suffer when he is causing so much suffering to so many people?

Will any Republican challenge this despicable show of disrespect for this man? Will any Republican stand up for democracy. Seems unlikley as Republicans are locking down Town public events to stifle critics, the people.

By Marie Diamond
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House GOP plan to phase out Medicare, does not like it when constituents publicly challenge him. In fact, people who disagree with Ryan have a habit of getting arrested for it. A few weeks ago, several of Ryan’s unemployed constituents staged a peaceful sit-in at his Kenosha, Wisconsin office to protest his unpopular decision not to hold any free public town halls during the August recess.

These constituents didn’t think they should have to pay to ask their elected representative a question. Instead of meeting with them, Ryan’s staff called the police.

So it should come as no surprise that this week, three people who paid to see Ryan speak were arrested and charged with trespassing for protesting the event. One constituent, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was handcuffed and pushed to the ground by security:

Video footage taken by an attendee at the event shows that one of them, Tom Nielsen, received particularly harsh treatment — he was pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Nielsen received an additional charge of resisting arrest.

Ryan was speaking Tuesday afternoon at the Whitnall Park Rotary Club. Protesters gathered both outside his event and inside, standing up and disrupting the congressman’s remarks.

According to Oak Creek Patch, as many as a dozen protesters were escorted out of the event. Another dozen or so left willingly.

Ryan seemed supremely undisturbed that a senior citizen worried about receiving the Medicare he’s paid into his whole life was treated so brutally. Indeed, Ryan made light of the arrest and quipped to the audience, “I hope he’s taking his blood pressure medication.”

Watch it, courtesy of Wisconsin Jobs Now:



Another woman was shown the door when she challenged Ryan’s claim that the jobs crisis is directly related to the debt crisis. “Our debt is out of control because of the tax cuts you’re giving,” she said. “Our unemployment in 2003 was 6.2% before the tax cuts went through. Now our unemployment rate is 9.1%. What are you doing to create jobs, Congressman?”

Another woman was escorted out when she stood up while Ryan was speaking and said, “You won’t talk to us. How can we give our opinions when you refuse to talk to us?” Ryan has consistently faced angry constituents at his events since his Medicare-killing budget became a top GOP priority. Tired of being publicly embarrassed by constituents who voice their disagreement and say his policies are hurting them, Ryan has resorted to increasingly harsh responses to deal with people who have the audacity to speak up at his events.

Congress Protects Insider Trading for: Congress

by Peter Gorenstein in TechTicker:

Even a cynic can find Washington's hypocrisy shocking at times. The Wall Street Journal reports [yesterday] a House bill that would force lawmakers to make greater disclosures on financial transactions and disallow them from trading on nonpublic information is going nowhere fast.
That's right. Members of Congress are currently allowed to profit on insider trading!

The bill, which has been languishing in the House for four years, would require elected officials "to make their financial transactions public within 90 days of a purchase or sale" and "prohibit lawmakers from trading in financial markets based on nonpublic information they learn on the job," the WSJ reports.

It seems they're above the transparency they've been calling for on Wall Street.

This comes a day after the same newspaper reported several lawmakers profited by betting against the housing and stock market in 2008. And some did it using derivatives they've recently been railing against.

As our colleague Henry Blodget wrote Tuesday, "If you're going to complain about how awful short-selling is and how evil and venal people are for doing it, you should probably abstain from the practice yourself."

Chomsky: A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)

Peace will have to forced on to the region through some combination of divestment, international pressure and who knows what else. But the United States remains as much of the problem as Israel, and Noam Chomsky is not optimistic about the prospect for peace though this is what the overwhelming number of citizens of the world wish for. [Editor's Note: Noam Chomky's new book, Hopes and Prospects, can be ordered via Chomsky's site.]

Via TomGram:

A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)
In Washington-Speak, “Palestinian State” Means “Fried Chicken”
By Noam Chomsky

The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders -- with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.

The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar.

There was one important and revealing break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. After the failed Camp David agreements in 2000, President Clinton recognized that the terms he and Israel had proposed were unacceptable to any Palestinians. That December, he proposed his “parameters”: imprecise, but more forthcoming. He then stated that both sides had accepted the parameters, while expressing reservations.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001 to resolve the differences and were making considerable progress. In their final press conference, they reported that, with a little more time, they could probably have reached full agreement. Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, however, and official progress then terminated, though informal discussions at a high level continued leading to the Geneva Accord, rejected by Israel and ignored by the U.S.



A good deal has happened since, but a settlement along those lines is still not out of reach -- if, of course, Washington is once again willing to accept it. Unfortunately, there is little sign of that.

Substantial mythology has been created about the entire record, but the basic facts are clear enough and quite well documented.

The U.S. and Israel have been acting in tandem to extend and deepen the occupation. In 2005, recognizing that it was pointless to subsidize a few thousand Israeli settlers in Gaza, who were appropriating substantial resources and protected by a large part of the Israeli army, the government of Ariel Sharon decided to move them to the much more valuable West Bank and Golan Heights.

Instead of carrying out the operation straightforwardly, as would have been easy enough, the government decided to stage a “national trauma,” which virtually duplicated the farce accompanying the withdrawal from the Sinai desert after the Camp David agreements of 1978-79. In each case, the withdrawal permitted the cry of “Never Again,” which meant in practice: we cannot abandon an inch of the Palestinian territories that we want to take in violation of international law. This farce played very well in the West, though it was ridiculed by more astute Israeli commentators, among them that country’s prominent sociologist the late Baruch Kimmerling.

After its formal withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Israel never actually relinquished its total control over the territory, often described realistically as “the world’s largest prison.” In January 2006, a few months after the withdrawal, Palestine had an election that was recognized as free and fair by international observers. Palestinians, however, voted “the wrong way,” electing Hamas. Instantly, the U.S. and Israel intensified their assault against Gazans as punishment for this misdeed. The facts and the reasoning were not concealed; rather, they were openly published alongside reverential commentary on Washington’s sincere dedication to democracy. The U.S.-backed Israeli assault against the Gazans has only been intensified since, thanks to violence and economic strangulation, increasingly savage.

Meanwhile in the West Bank, always with firm U.S. backing, Israel has been carrying forward longstanding programs to take the valuable land and resources of the Palestinians and leave them in unviable cantons, mostly out of sight. Israeli commentators frankly refer to these goals as “neocolonial.” Ariel Sharon, the main architect of the settlement programs, called these cantons “Bantustans,” though the term is misleading: South Africa needed the majority black work force, while Israel would be happy if the Palestinians disappeared, and its policies are directed to that end.

Blockading Gaza by Land and Sea

One step towards cantonization and the undermining of hopes for Palestinian national survival is the separation of Gaza from the West Bank. These hopes have been almost entirely consigned to oblivion, an atrocity to which we should not contribute by tacit consent. Israeli journalist Amira Hass, one of the leading specialists on Gaza, writes that

“the restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967. Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country -- to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole.… The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel’s military superiority.…

“Since January 1991, Israel has bureaucratically and logistically merely perfected the split and the separation: not only between Palestinians in the occupied territories and their brothers in Israel, but also between the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and those in the rest of the territories and between Gazans and West Bankers/Jerusalemites. Jews live in this same piece of land within a superior and separate system of privileges, laws, services, physical infrastructure and freedom of movement.”

The leading academic specialist on Gaza, Harvard scholar Sara Roy, adds:

“Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution, its once productive population transformed into one of aid-dependent paupers.… Gaza’s subjection began long before Israel’s recent war against it [December 2008]. The Israeli occupation — now largely forgotten or denied by the international community — has devastated Gaza’s economy and people, especially since 2006…. After Israel’s December [2008] assault, Gaza’s already compromised conditions have become virtually unlivable. Livelihoods, homes, and public infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed on a scale that even the Israel Defense Forces admitted was indefensible.

“In Gaza today, there is no private sector to speak of and no industry. 80 percent of Gaza’s agricultural crops were destroyed and Israel continues to snipe at farmers attempting to plant and tend fields near the well-fenced and patrolled border. Most productive activity has been extinguished.… Today, 96 percent of Gaza’s population of 1.4 million is dependent on humanitarian aid for basic needs. According to the World Food Programme, the Gaza Strip requires a minimum of 400 trucks of food every day just to meet the basic nutritional needs of the population. Yet, despite a March [22, 2009] decision by the Israeli cabinet to lift all restrictions on foodstuffs entering Gaza, only 653 trucks of food and other supplies were allowed entry during the week of May 10, at best meeting 23 percent of required need. Israel now allows only 30 to 40 commercial items to enter Gaza compared to 4,000 approved products prior to June 2006.”

It cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for its 2008–9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally using U.S. weapons. Near-universal opinion asserts the contrary, claiming that Israel was acting in self-defense. That is utterly unsustainable, in light of Israel’s flat rejection of peaceful means that were readily available, as Israel and its U.S. partner in crime knew very well. That aside, Israel’s siege of Gaza is itself an act of war, as Israel of all countries certainly recognizes, having repeatedly justified launching major wars on grounds of partial restrictions on its access to the outside world, though nothing remotely like what it has long imposed on Gaza.

One crucial element of Israel’s criminal siege, little reported, is the naval blockade. Peter Beaumont reports from Gaza that, “on its coastal littoral, Gaza’s limitations are marked by a different fence where the bars are Israeli gunboats with their huge wakes, scurrying beyond the Palestinian fishing boats and preventing them from going outside a zone imposed by the warships.” According to reports from the scene, the naval siege has been tightened steadily since 2000. Fishing boats have been driven steadily out of Gaza’s territorial waters and toward the shore by Israeli gunboats, often violently without warning and with many casualties. As a result of these naval actions, Gaza’s fishing industry has virtually collapsed; fishing is impossible near shore because of the contamination caused by Israel’s regular attacks, including the destruction of power plants and sewage facilities.

These Israeli naval attacks began shortly after the discovery by the BG (British Gas) Group of what appear to be quite sizeable natural gas fields in Gaza’s territorial waters. Industry journals report that Israel is already appropriating these Gazan resources for its own use, part of its commitment to shift its economy to natural gas. The standard industry source reports:

“Israel’s finance ministry has given the Israel Electric Corp. (IEC) approval to purchase larger quantities of natural gas from BG than originally agreed upon, according to Israeli government sources [which] said the state-owned utility would be able to negotiate for as much as 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Marine field located off the Mediterranean coast of the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip.

“Last year the Israeli government approved the purchase of 800 million cubic meters of gas from the field by the IEC…. Recently the Israeli government changed its policy and decided the state-owned utility could buy the entire quantity of gas from the Gaza Marine field. Previously the government had said the IEC could buy half the total amount and the remainder would be bought by private power producers.”

The pillage of what could become a major source of income for Gaza is surely known to U.S. authorities. It is only reasonable to suppose that the intention to appropriate these limited resources, either by Israel alone or together with the collaborationist Palestinian Authority, is the motive for preventing Gazan fishing boats from entering Gaza’s territorial waters.

There are some instructive precedents. In 1989, Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans signed a treaty with his Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas granting Australia rights to the substantial oil reserves in “the Indonesian Province of East Timor.” The Indonesia-Australia Timor Gap Treaty, which offered not a crumb to the people whose oil was being stolen, “is the only legal agreement anywhere in the world that effectively recognises Indonesia’s right to rule East Timor,” the Australian press reported.

Asked about his willingness to recognize the Indonesian conquest and to rob the sole resource of the conquered territory, which had been subjected to near-genocidal slaughter by the Indonesian invader with the strong support of Australia (along with the U.S., the U.K., and some others), Evans explained that “there is no binding legal obligation not to recognise the acquisition of territory that was acquired by force,” adding that “the world is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of acquisition by force.”

It should, then, be unproblematic for Israel to follow suit in Gaza.

A few years later, Evans became the leading figure in the campaign to introduce the concept “responsibility to protect” -- known as R2P -- into international law. R2P is intended to establish an international obligation to protect populations from grave crimes. Evans is the author of a major book on the subject and was co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which issued what is considered the basic document on R2P.

In an article devoted to this “idealistic effort to establish a new humanitarian principle,” the London Economistfeatured Evans and his “bold but passionate claim on behalf of a three-word expression which (in quite large part thanks to his efforts) now belongs to the language of diplomacy: the ‘responsibility to protect.’” The article is accompanied by a picture of Evans with the caption “Evans: a lifelong passion to protect.” His hand is pressed to his forehead in despair over the difficulties faced by his idealistic effort. The journal chose not to run a different photo that circulates in Australia, depicting Evans and Alatas exuberantly clasping their hands together as they toast the Timor Gap Treaty that they had just signed.

Though a “protected population” under international law, Gazans do not fall under the jurisdiction of the “responsibility to protect,” joining other unfortunates, in accord with the maxim of Thucydides -- that the strong do as they wish, and the weak suffer as they must -- which holds with its customary precision.

Obama and the Settlements

The kinds of restrictions on movement used to destroy Gaza have long been in force in the West Bank as well, less cruelly but with grim effects on life and the economy. The World Bank reports that Israel has established “a complex closure regime that restricts Palestinian access to large areas of the West Bank… The Palestinian economy has remained stagnant, largely because of the sharp downturn in Gaza and Israel’s continued restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement in the West Bank.”

The World Bank “cited Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints hindering trade and travel, as well as restrictions on Palestinian building in the West Bank, where the Western-backed government of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas holds sway.” Israel does permit -- indeed encourage -- a privileged existence for elites in Ramallah and sometimes elsewhere, largely relying on European funding, a traditional feature of colonial and neocolonial practice.

All of this constitutes what Israeli activist Jeff Halper calls a “matrix of control” to subdue the colonized population. These systematic programs over more than 40 years aim to establish Defense Minister Moshe Dayan’s recommendation to his colleagues shortly after Israel’s 1967 conquests that we must tell the Palestinians in the territories: “We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.”

Turning to the second bone of contention, settlements, there is indeed a confrontation, but it is rather less dramatic than portrayed. Washington’s position was presented most strongly in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s much-quoted statement rejecting “natural growth exceptions” to the policy opposing new settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with President Shimon Peres and, in fact, virtually the whole Israeli political spectrum, insists on permitting “natural growth” within the areas that Israel intends to annex, complaining that the United States is backing down on George W. Bush’s authorization of such expansion within his “vision” of a Palestinian state.

Senior Netanyahu cabinet members have gone further. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz announced that “the current Israeli government will not accept in any way the freezing of legal settlement activity in Judea and Samaria.” The term “legal” in U.S.-Israeli parlance means “illegal, but authorized by the government of Israel with a wink from Washington.” In this usage, unauthorized outposts are termed “illegal,” though apart from the dictates of the powerful, they are no more illegal than the settlements granted to Israel under Bush’s “vision” and Obama’s scrupulous omission.

The Obama-Clinton “hardball” formulation is not new. It repeats the wording of the Bush administration draft of the 2003 Road Map, which stipulates that in Phase I, “Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).” All sides formally accept the Road Map (modified to drop the phrase “natural growth”) -- consistently overlooking the fact that Israel, with U.S. support, at once added 14 “reservations” that render it inoperable.

If Obama were at all serious about opposing settlement expansion, he could easily proceed with concrete measures by, for example, reducing U.S. aid by the amount devoted to this purpose. That would hardly be a radical or courageous move. The Bush I administration did so (reducing loan guarantees), but after the Oslo accord in 1993, President Clinton left calculations to the government of Israel. Unsurprisingly, there was “no change in the expenditures flowing to the settlements,” the Israeli press reported. “[Prime Minister] Rabin will continue not to dry out the settlements,” the report concludes. “And the Americans? They will understand.”

Obama administration officials informed the press that the Bush I measures are “not under discussion,” and that pressures will be “largely symbolic.” In short, Obama understands, just as Clinton and Bush II did.

American Visionaries

At best, settlement expansion is a side issue, rather like the issue of “illegal outposts” -- namely those that the government of Israel has not authorized. Concentration on these issues diverts attention from the fact that there are no “legal outposts” and that it is the existing settlements that are the primary problem to be faced.

The U.S. press reports that “a partial freeze has been in place for several years, but settlers have found ways around the strictures… [C]onstruction in the settlements has slowed but never stopped, continuing at an annual rate of about 1,500 to 2,000 units over the past three years. If building continues at the 2008 rate, the 46,500 units already approved will be completed in about 20 years.… If Israel built all the housing units already approved in the nation’s overall master plan for settlements, it would almost double the number of settler homes in the West Bank.” Peace Now, which monitors settlement activities, estimates further that the two largest settlements would double in size: Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim, built mainly during the Oslo years in the salients that subdivide the West Bank into cantons.

“Natural population growth” is largely a myth, Israel’s leading diplomatic correspondent, Akiva Eldar, points out, citing demographic studies by Colonel (res.) Shaul Arieli, deputy military secretary to former prime minister and incumbent defense minister Ehud Barak. Settlement growth consists largely of Israeli immigrants in violation of the Geneva Conventions, assisted with generous subsidies. Much of it is in direct violation of formal government decisions, but carried out with the authorization of the government, specifically Barak, considered a dove in the Israeli spectrum.

Correspondent Jackson Diehl derides the “long-dormant Palestinian fantasy,” revived by President Abbas, “that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees.” He does not explain why refusal to participate in Israel’s illegal expansion -- which, if serious, would “force Israel to make critical concessions” -- would be improper interference in Israel’s democracy.

Returning to reality, all of these discussions about settlement expansion evade the most crucial issue about settlements: what the United States and Israel have already established in the West Bank. The evasion tacitly concedes that the illegal settlement programs already in place are somehow acceptable (putting aside the Golan Heights, annexed in violation of Security Council orders) -- though the Bush “vision,” apparently accepted by Obama, moves from tacit to explicit support for these violations of law. What is in place already suffices to ensure that there can be no viable Palestinian self-determination. Hence, there is every indication that even on the unlikely assumption that “natural growth” will be ended, U.S.-Israeli rejectionism will persist, blocking the international consensus as before.

Subsequently, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared a 10-month suspension of new construction, with many exemptions, and entirely excluding Greater Jerusalem, where expropriation in Arab areas and construction for Jewish settlers continues at a rapid pace. Hillary Clinton praised these “unprecedented” concessions on (illegal) construction, eliciting anger and ridicule in much of the world.

It might be different if a legitimate “land swap” were under consideration, a solution approached at Taba and spelled out more fully in the Geneva Accord reached in informal high-level Israel-Palestine negotiations. The accord was presented in Geneva in October 2003, welcomed by much of the world, rejected by Israel, and ignored by the United States.

Washington’s “Evenhandedness”

Barack Obama’s June 4, 2009, Cairo address to the Muslim world kept pretty much to his well-honed “blank slate” style -- with little of substance, but presented in a personable manner that allows listeners to write on the slate what they want to hear. CNN captured its spirit in headlining a report “Obama Looks to Reach the Soul of the Muslim World.” Obama had announced the goals of his address in an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “‘We have a joke around the White House,’ the president said. ‘We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working and nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.’” The White House commitment is most welcome, but it is useful to see how it translates into practice.

Obama admonished his audience that it is easy to “point fingers… but if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.”

Turning from Obama-Friedman Truth to truth, there is a third side, with a decisive role throughout: the United States. But that participant in the conflict Obama omitted. The omission is understood to be normal and appropriate, hence unmentioned: Friedman’s column is headlined “Obama Speech Aimed at Both Arabs and Israelis.” The front-page Wall Street Journal report on Obama’s speech appears under the heading “Obama Chides Israel, Arabs in His Overture to Muslims.” Other reports are the same.

The convention is understandable on the doctrinal principle that though the U.S. government sometimes makes mistakes, its intentions are by definition benign, even noble. In the world of attractive imagery, Washington has always sought desperately to be an honest broker, yearning to advance peace and justice. The doctrine trumps truth, of which there is little hint in the speech or the mainstream coverage of it.

Obama once again echoed Bush’s “vision” of two states, without saying what he meant by the phrase “Palestinian state.” His intentions were clarified not only by the crucial omissions already discussed, but also by his one explicit criticism of Israel: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” That is, Israel should live up to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, rejected at once by Israel with tacit U.S. support, as noted -- though the truth is that Obama has ruled out even steps of the Bush I variety to withdraw from participation in these crimes.

The operative words are “legitimacy” and “continued.” By omission, Obama indicates that he accepts Bush’s vision: the vast existing settlement and infrastructure projects are “legitimate,” thus ensuring that the phrase “Palestinian state” means “fried chicken.”

Always even-handed, Obama also had an admonition for the Arab states: they “must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.” Plainly, however, it cannot be a meaningful “beginning” if Obama continues to reject its core principles: implementation of the international consensus. To do so, however, is evidently not Washington’s “responsibility” in Obama’s vision; no explanation given, no notice taken.

On democracy, Obama said that “we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election” -- as in January 2006, when Washington picked the outcome with a vengeance, turning at once to severe punishment of the Palestinians because it did not like the outcome of a peaceful election, all with Obama’s apparent approval judging by his words before, and actions since, taking office.

Obama politely refrained from comment about his host, President Mubarak, one of the most brutal dictators in the region, though he has had some illuminating words about him. As he was about to board a plane to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the two “moderate” Arab states, “Mr. Obama signaled that while he would mention American concerns about human rights in Egypt, he would not challenge Mr. Mubarak too sharply, because he is a ‘force for stability and good’ in the Middle East… Mr. Obama said he did not regard Mr. Mubarak as an authoritarian leader. ‘No, I tend not to use labels for folks,’ Mr. Obama said. The president noted that there had been criticism ‘of the manner in which politics operates in Egypt,’ but he also said that Mr. Mubarak had been ‘a stalwart ally, in many respects, to the United States.’”

When a politician uses the word “folks,” we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming. Outside of this context, there are “people,” or often “villains,” and using labels for them is highly meritorious. Obama is right, however, not to have used the word “authoritarian,” which is far too mild a label for his friend.

Just as in the past, support for democracy, and for human rights as well, keeps to the pattern that scholarship has repeatedly discovered, correlating closely with strategic and economic objectives. There should be little difficulty in understanding why those whose eyes are not closed tight shut by rigid doctrine dismiss Obama’s yearning for human rights and democracy as a joke in bad taste.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of numerous books, including the New York Times bestsellers Hegemony or Survival and Failed States. His newest book, Hopes and Prospects, is out this week from Haymarket Books.

[Note: All material in this piece is sourced and footnoted in Noam Chomsky’s new book Hopes and Prospects.]

Copyright 2010 Noam Chomsky