Facebook Note - June 16, 2010

As early as 1978, William Colby, then head of the CIA, stated, “In the long run, Mexico is a bigger threat to the U.S. than the Soviet Union.” Colby was concerned about population growth and illegal immigration; however, in 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden ranked Mexico as the greatest threat to the security of the United States, after Al Qaeda. Immigration is no longer the reason, and causes of the crisis flow from the north to the south.

Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1911, observed, ¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos! (Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!)

Implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 did in fact result in an increase in trade to and from Mexico by the U.S.; however, the 150% increase in exports from the U.S. to Mexico included the massive importation of cheap USDA-subsidized corn, which virtually destroyed Mexico’s corn production. Prior to NAFTA, Mexican farmers used half of Mexico’s farm land to produce corn, a staple of life in Mexico, for domestic consumption.

By 1996, Mexico was importing more than $1 billion in corn each year, and millions of indigenous rural workers were thrown out of work and reduced to wage slavery in the cities. Some migrated, illegally, to the U.S. looking for work, but many turned to the more lucrative illegal drug trade.

The former U.S. drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, says the Mexican government "is fighting for its survival against narco-terrorism" and could lose effective control over the areas of Mexico near the U.S. border.

Fed by enormous profits of up to $25 billion each year flowing from the U.S., along with a seemingly unlimited supply of military weaponry, the powerful drug cartels are armed with sophisticated weapons, many of which are smuggled over the border from the United States. It is with this array of superior weapons that drug cartels are threatening the very stability of their own country.

Upon taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderón unleashed the military in his declaration of war on the drug cartels. Since then, more than 23,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence, including hundreds in just the past five days.

President Calderón does not equivocate about the blame: “The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug consumption in the world. It is as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world.”

Combined with an armed uprising of the indigenous people, who are being thrown off their constitutionally mandated ejidos by the neo-liberal polices of the Mexican government, the well-armed and powerful drug cartels pose a clear and present danger to the Mexican government and to the United States.

Mexican has a history of revolutions separated by a century: 1811 and 1911. With the 100th anniversary of the last one approaching next year, perhaps the United States should surrender in its own “War on Drugs,” legalize personal use and possession, and avoid the most dangerous threat to its own national security.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist who is currently writing a fact-based fictional political philosophy. His promotion of a peaceful political evolution is based at VotersEvolt.com, and he can be contacted at u2cox@msn.com.

Photo Credit: http://www.newcriminologist.com

Global Research - May 16, 2010

The industrial revolution has been driven for the past two centuries by the burning of hydrocarbons, first by coal in the Age of Steam, and then by oil and natural gas in the Age of Petroleum; however, as the flow of these fossil fuels slows down as demand goes up, ever-more-intrusive and massive extraction efforts increasingly threaten the progress of industrialization and the civilization it has produced.

The catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest and largest of hundreds of such ocean spills, and the recent methane gas explosion in Massey’s Montcoal mine was just another of the many disasters, worldwide, which have snuffed out the lives of workers who labor in dangerous conditions to feed our fossil-fuel addiction.

All around the planet we live upon, the quest for hydrocarbons is threatening the ability of humans to survive in the degrading environment and to govern their own corporate-dominated societies.

It is not just the environmental destruction caused by the extraction of coal-bed methane in Wyoming and Montana, the “fracking” of deep shale-gas formations and the consequential contamination of fresh water aquifers and rivers in the northeastern United States, or the blasting away of mountain tops in Appalachia; it is the fact that these extreme efforts are facilitated by a concert of corporate and governmental corruption that erodes freedom and democracy in the United States and threatens human civilization around the world.

There is no hope for the recovery of earth’s environment and the survival of human civilization as long as extraction decisions are governed by corporate greed. Public energy policy must be based on what is good for the people who vote for representatives, not on what produces profits for the corporations who buy the votes of the people’s representatives.

It may already be too late. The environmental destruction caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels may have already set in motion irreversible events which will ultimately spell the extinction of humanity. But, not to worry.

Our loving and forgiving Mother Earth will survive. It may take eons for her oceans, winds, and rains to wipe clean the crap we have produced, but someday, never fear, another of Gaia’s children will learn to fly and will study the artifacts of our existence and will wonder of we and why?

There may be, however, a more sensible and realistic alternative which will preserve the environment and human civilization, and which offers a more exciting and rewarding future for our children, as they learn to fly throughout the universe and to explore its adjacent dimensions.

So, let’s expand our vision and imagine for a moment how life could be after just a decade or two of innovation in the public interest.

Online Journal - May 1, 2010

Who cares that millions of children are suffering and dying around the world, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Gaza, Sudan, the Congo, Colombia, and Mexico, and in the United States?

Why are American voters only given the choice of voting for members of the political, social and economic elite to be their president, rather than for leaders who care for and identify with the needs of ordinary people?

Do presidential candidates supplant their empathy with loyalty to the ruling elites, or do the elites only select pliable candidates with an absence of empathy?

Webster’s defines elites as “a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence.”

Elitism was exemplified by the royals of Europe who sat on the thrones of England, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Russia and other countries. They intermarried and for hundreds of years controlled the lives of their subjects, while occasionally sending them to die in family squabbles with their cousins.

The royal’s concern for those they ruled was famously illustrated by Queen Marie Antoinette who, when told that the peasants had no bread, exclaimed, “Then, let them eat cake!” The hoi polloi returned the favor during the French Revolution by cutting off her head, along with that of her husband, King Louis XVI.

Global Research - October 11, 2008

" -That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,… organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." ~The Declaration of Independence

How many more lies must we listen to and how many more political scandals must we endure before we become sick enough to demand effective changes in our government? Have we suffered enough to force us through a political "evolution" to safeguard our freedoms in this country and to avoid committing war crimes against others?

In Washington's Crossing, an excellent history of the near failure of the American Revolution in the winter of 1776, David Hackett Fischer concluded that it was not Washington's leadership or the victories at Trenton and Princeton that saved the revolution following his resounding defeat in New York City. Rather, the victories resulted from the revival of spirit that arose among the ordinary people in the Delaware Valley as they began to read Thomas Paine's American Crisis.

According to Fischer, "This great revival grew from defeat, not from victory. The awakening was a response to a disaster. Doctor Benjamin Rush, who had a major role in the event, believed that this was the way a free public would always work, and the American republic in particular. He thought it was a national habit of the American people (maybe all free people) not to deal with a difficult problem until it was nearly impossible."

Although we are calculating the cost in thousands of lives and billions of dollars, we cannot imagine the full extent of damage that will flow from President Bush's having misled the American people into an illegal war with Iraq and our innocent troops into the commission of war crimes. We must pay attention to the threats and fear the U.S. will launch another "preemptive" war, dropping nuclear "bunker busters" on Iran.

Increasingly, we can perceive the extent of devastation to our economy, as President Bush throws away our hard-earned money, eliminates taxes for his wealthy friends, runs up debts for our children and grandchildren to pay in the future, tries to destroy our Social Security, encourages the shipment of American jobs out of the country, and allows the international value of our currency to depreciate.

All of us, liberals, independents, and conservatives, are going to be increasingly harmed by the failures of our government and those we've allegedly elected to run it. We must anticipate there are more lies on their lips waiting to be told, even more ugly secrets waiting to be uncovered and even worse scandals yet to unfold.

Consortium News - April 22, 2010

Editor's Note: America's right-wing Tea Party movement harkens back to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 when angry citizens protested a British tax by throwing crates of tea into Boston Harbor. But the irrationality and inconsistency of today's Tea Partiers invite a more literary comparison: the tea party of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Today's Tea Partiers - by rejecting democratic institutions in the name of "liberty," by complaining about their loss of gun rights while brandishing firearms at government parks, by shouting wild claims about socialism" and "fascism," and by making the crypto-racist demand to "get our country back" - show all the sense of the Mad Hatter without the amusing charm, as author William John Cox and artist Helen Werner Cox note in this guest presentation:

There may be good reasons why the Tea Partiers are mad; but their solutions are equally mad.

The movement has rallied a mixed group of Americans who have come to believe their government has failed them and that the political process is doing nothing to solve the nation's problems.

While there may be truth in this complaint, the larger truth is that all of us are being manipulated by the big corporations and the wealthy elites, who have used the corporate-owned media to mislead many Americans, including the Tea Partiers, into acting against their own interests.

For millions of Americans, lies have become truth, such as during the health-care debate when modest reforms were distorted into "death panels" and "socialized medicine," or when some protesters demanded that the federal government keep its hands off Medicare, apparently not knowing that the health-insurance program for seniors was government-run.

But the sophistry that has infused the Tea Party protests would not have troubled the Mad Hatter or other characters in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

When the March Hare tells Alice during a tea party in Wonderland that she should "say what you mean," she replied: "I do, at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing you know."

To which the Hatter replied: "Not the same thing a bit! Why, you might as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see!'"

The March Hare added, "You might as well just say that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like!'"

The Dormouse piped up, "You might just as well say, that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe!" The Hatter concluded, "it is the same thing with you."

And so it has been for many American workers, the middle class and small business owners who have been deceived by oft-repeated lies and clever propaganda.

Indeed, one could argue that the Republicans used distortions - and the U.S. news media's obsession with the relatively small Tea Party protests - to trick the Democrats into passing a Republican health-care law, one that primarily benefits the insurance industry and other parts of the medical-industrial complex. The insurers stand to get 31 million new customers who will have no option to buy into a public plan.

The losers, again, will be the American people who already suffer from the most expensive and most inequitable health-care system of any industrialized nation. Yet, because of political/media pressures, the proposals that might have reined in costs and guaranteed meaningful access to doctors - a single-payer system or at least a robust public option - were discarded.

The next targets of this anti-government crowd are Social Security and other social welfare programs, including unemployment insurance and public education. With the wealthiest Americans paying historically low marginal income-tax rates, the burden for these programs has already been shifted to workers, the middle class and small business owners.

Now, the American people are being told that they cannot afford the very programs that most benefit them.

While presenting themselves as a kind of vanguard for rank-and-file Americans, the Tea Partiers are instead advocating more tax cuts for the well-to-do and fewer government services (and protections) for everyone. That will only give the corporations and the elites greater dominance over American life.

The future of democracy - and the survival of the last few constraints on unbridled corporate power - hang in the balance.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book, You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency is reviewed at YoureNotStupid.com.

The drawing of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party is by Helen Werner Cox, who was trained as a classical painter at Boston University. She is nearing retirement as a nationally-certified library media teacher, who has made extensive use of art in her literacy programs.

More than a thousand people, including hundreds of young people, marched on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles this afternoon to protest the illegal wars of aggression being fought by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Obama has become a target of the protest by his failure to end the war in Iraq and because of his escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Many of the protest signs demonstrated the people’s concern about jobs, education and health care and the wasteful expenditures of the illegal wars.

Voters Evolt! focused its cameras on the young people in the march and prepared a video slideshow set to Edwin Starr's anti-war classic, War. Click here.

Media Monitors Network - March 24, 2010

The latest flap over Israeli housing construction in East Jerusalem has caused me to reflect upon the very deep and complicated feelings I have about the city.

I first passed through Jerusalem in December 1979 in an attempt to sneak into Tehran shortly after the American embassy hostages were taken. I returned two years later following the favorable verdict in the Holocaust Denial case and shared morning tea with Prime Minister Begin. In 1992, I testified in a trial there about the publication of the suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls and refused to identify my secret client. My last visit was in 2000 when my wife and I were married at Christ Church in the Old City on Valentine's Day.

The most pressing political issue is not who has the greatest international property rights in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nor, is it that the Palestinian people are more genetically related to the ancient Israelites who occupied Jerusalem at the time of Jesus than the Ashkenazi Jews who now control the Israeli government and who exercise great influence over U.S. policy.

The critical question is: "what can be done to peacefully resolve the dispute in a way that protects the political rights and ensures the operational and economic security of the Israeli and Palestinian people and which removes the United States as a target for terrorists?"

Rather than answering with a complicated policy paper, let me share a simple vision I have experienced over the years.

First, accept that the nation of Israel is politically, economically, and militarily capable of defending its own interests on the world stage and that it has the right to be free of internal terrorists attacks.

Second, imagine that the United Nations imposes a 50-year protectorate over the land of Palestine, including Gaza, as it existed prior to the 1967 war and declared the area to be a duty-free economic zone, with security and freedom of access guaranteed by the UN.

This is the vision:

Instead of the existing concrete wall, I imagine a modern freeway extending from Gaza through Hebron, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, Jericho and north along the 1967 West Bank border through the Golan Heights to the Syrian and Lebanese borders and terminating at the Mediterranean Sea.

Like all freeways, I imagine that the highway (border) is fenced and that it is patrolled and controlled by three-person motorized teams consisting of a non-Arab UN police supervisor, an Israeli police officer and a Palestinian police officer.

I imagine that the protectorate police force is only armed with non-military weapons, that all members are highly trained professionals, and that the protectorate provides economic and physical security to all of its inhabitants, both Palestinians and Jews, from its administrative headquarters in East Jerusalem.

I imagine that after living in peace for 50 years, the right of Israel to exist will be accepted by all nations in the Middle East, that the United States and the United Nations are perceived to have acted even-handedly in the matter, and that the "War on Terrorism" will have become a footnote in history.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book, "You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency" is reviewed at YoureNotStupid.com, and he is currently working on a fact-based fictional political philosophy.

Online Journal - January 29, 2010

¿Plata o plomo? Colombian and Mexican drug gangs ask government officials, judges and police officers which they prefer, “silver or lead,” when offering bribes and threatening violence.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision granting corporations the same free speech rights as natural persons allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and public affairs.

Corporations, foreign and domestic, can now force politicians to choose silver or lead when supporting or opposing corporate and foreign power interests.

Any politician who places the well-being of the public over corporate demands can count on well-financed negative publicity at the next election.

Moreover, corporations will be able to directly influence the election of state judges and the confirmation of federal judges.

With the Congress, White House and Supreme Court now up for sale to the highest bidder, we, the people of the United States of America, must exercise our fading power before it is lost forever.

The 11^th and 12^th Amendments clearly establish that the Constitution exists to protect the rights and powers of the people, not corporations.

It is our Constitution! We must amend it to ensure it protects us against corporations.

Section 1

Only natural persons shall be protected by this Constitution and entitled to the rights and freedoms it guarantees.

Section 2

Nothing contained in this article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press for non-person entities engaged in the gathering and reporting of fact, analysis, and opinion. In all other respects, Congress and the States shall regulate and tax non-person entities as necessary for the public good.

Section 3

This article shall become operative once it has been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three-fourths of the States thereof.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book, "You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency" is reviewed at YoureNotStupid.com.

The drawing of the NASCAR politician is by Helen Werner Cox, who was trained as a classical painter at Boston University. She is nearing retirement as a nationally-certified library media teacher, who has made extensive use of art in her literacy programs.

The Public Record - December 12, 2009

The burden of taxation in the United States has been shifted from those who most benefit from our government to those who work the hardest and earn the least. This shrugging of responsibility is not only unfair, it fails to accomplish public policy goals required to move the economy out of recession and the environment out of crisis.

Uncorrected, the heavy burden of taxation borne by workers and small businesses today for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy elite will certainly lead to chaos and violence tomorrow.

It is time to discard our stupid and complex system of taxation and replace it with a smart and simple tax that balances the burden of taxation with the benefits of government.

Commencing in 1817, Congress eliminated all internal taxes and funded the government by tariffs on imported goods. Tariffs increased the cost of goods imported from outside the country, and were primarily paid by the wealthy and larger businesses. Laborers, farmers, and small business owners paid little or no taxes because the goods they consumed were primarily manufactured in the U.S.

Enforced by a new Internal Revenue Service, Congress passed an income tax during the Civil War along with sales, excise and inheritance taxes. The income tax was progressive in that those who earned less than $10,000 only paid 3%, while those who earned more were taxed at a higher rate.

Congress eliminated the income tax in 1868, and although it later flirted with taxing income, the government mainly relied on tariffs and an internal tax on tobacco and liquor for support. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1896 that taxes on income violated the Constitution, since they were not apportioned among the states.

The Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 allowed Congress to tax the incomes of both individuals and corporations. Taxes continued to increase over the years, and with the introduction of payroll withholding in 1943, most Americans were forced to pay a tax on their incomes.

Initially, the wealthy and corporations were taxed more heavily than individuals. When Eisenhower was president, corporations paid approximately a quarter of all federal taxes, the maximum tax rate on top earners was 92%, excise taxes brought in 19% of tax revenue, and most workers paid minimum Social Security payroll taxes.

Today, corporations pay about 12% of income taxes, the maximum rate is only 35% for all those who earn more than $372,950, even those who receive millions or billions each year, and excise taxes have dropped to 3% of revenue.

It gets even worse!

Government Accountability Office reported that two-thirds of all U.S. corporations and 78% of foreign companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, even though they booked trillions of dollars in receipts.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States was almost $14.2 trillion in 2008. The government took in $1.2 trillion in estimated receipts and sustained an estimated deficit of $390 billion. Approximately 45% of the revenues came from individual income taxes, 36% from Social Security and other payroll taxes, 12% from corporate income taxes, 3% from excise taxes, 1.2% from estate and gift taxes, 1.3% from customs duties, and 1.5% from other sources.

The Tax Policy Center calculates that individual income taxes and payroll taxes now account for four out of every five federal revenue dollars.

November 13, 2009

A shocking and deeply disturbing YouTube video was posted by TheParadigmShift on October 22, 2009.

Portions of the video are narrated by Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi physician, whose website is located at http://www.liberatethis.com.

Warning: The video contains heart-wrenching scenes of infants and children who have been born horribly deformed or injured by the U.S. wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is difficult to believe that any fair-minded person could continue to support the U.S. War on Terror and the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan once they have viewed this video.

Please circulate the following link to all correspondents and ask them to take a few minutes to see the effects of the wars being fought in their name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsrMzfhdmkU

At noon on June 25, 2009, as part of Torture Accountability Action Day, a group protesting against Justice Jay Bybee gathered at the Federal Court of Appeals, 9^th Circuit, in Pasadena, California.

Prior to his appointment in 2003 by President Bush, Bybee authored several memorandums authorizing torture in Bush’s War on Terror.

Following the protest, a petition was filed with the clerk of the court calling for Justice Bybee to resign, be disbarred or to be impeached.

Voters Evolt! photographed the event and prepared a slide show set to Frank Zappa’s The Torture Never Stops.

Dandelion Salad - June 15, 2009

What does a shootout at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the confessions of a Khmer Rouge jailer and the murder of a Kansas medical doctor have in common? The answer is "children," and how they suffer from being targeted and used by extremists to advance their own hateful agendas.

In 1981, acting as a public interest lawyer, I represented a Holocaust survivor who had been a 17-year-old boy when his entire family was murdered in Nazi concentration camps. We sued a group of radical right-wing organizations that denied the Holocaust and, as a publicity ploy, had offered a reward for proof it had occurred.

During the hearing in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, I asked, "If the Holocaust is a hoax, then where are all the children?" The answer was that the death camps were primarily industrial operations that worked prisoners to death, and children were quickly murdered because they were too young to contribute either their labor or body fat to the enterprise.

The presiding judge wisely disposed of the primary issue by simply taking "judicial notice" of the "historical fact" that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

As I was reading in Mother Jones about the murder of a guard at the Holocaust Museum last week, I was not surprised to learn that James von Brunn, the shooter, had left a note saying "the Holocaust is a lie," and that he was associated with the very same organizations we had defeated almost 30 years ago.

In the past, von Brunn expressed his admiration of Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby as an umbrella organization for other extremist groups, including the National Alliance organized by William Pierce, whose hatred had focused on African Americans.

Carto also established the Institute for Historical Review to promulgate anti-Semitic propaganda on college campuses, including the reward offer. And, he used the Noontide Press to publish a wide range of hate materials, including at least one book by von Brunn in which he claimed there was a Jewish conspiracy to "destroy the white gene pool."

In our lawsuit, we established that these organizations were essentially moneymaking operations that profited by tailoring and peddling hate materials to the various prejudices and hatreds of their customers.

Ultimately, the defendants paid a $90,000 judgment and issued an apology "to Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz for the pain, anguish and suffering he and all other Auschwitz survivors have sustained relating to the $50,000 reward offer for proof that 'Jews were gassed in gas chambers at Auschwitz.'"

Last week, after being painfully reminded about the murdered children of the Holocaust, both Jews and Gypsies, another horrible story about murdered children came across my desktop.

Reuters reported that the chief jailer of the Khmer Rouge confessed at his trial in Phnom Penh that Pol Pot had specifically ordered the murder of the children among the 1.7 million Cambodians who were slaughtered, because "we were afraid those children would take revenge."

The Cambodian children were not murdered in gas chambers. They were taken into the "Killing Fields" and clubbed to death.

Finally, as I later read about the murder of Doctor George Tiller by a "staunch opponent of abortion," yet another, more complex, image of suffering children came to mind.

Dr. Tiller's clinic had been bombed in 1985, and he was shot in both arms in 1993 by an anti-abortionist; however, his murder reveals another way how children suffer as a result of extremist hatred.

He was one of the few doctors who had the courage to help women cope with impossible late-term pregnancies that threatened either their own lives, or which would deliver a child incapable of leading anything other than a life of misery, one whose quality of "living" would be so poor as to not even qualify as "life."

Dr. Tiller did not "murder babies." He was a healer who helped women abort late-term pregnancies under conditions where the fetus would die shortly after birth from conditions, such as an exposed brain or Down Syndrome with severe congenital heart defects, or where one twin had died in the womb and toxins were killing the other twin and the mother.

Many of his patients desperately wanted children, and Dr. Tiller saved their lives and preserved their health so they had the chance to bear healthy babies and build strong families.

While many extremists are the first to say they act on behalf of children, they are often the last to lift a finger to help poor mothers raise, educate or provide health care for disabled children.

"Pro-life" extremists are quite willing to condemn these children, and their families, to a lifetime of suffering to promote their own intolerant religious beliefs. As was Scott Roeder, the murderer of Dr. Tiller, who subscribed to hate literature advocating that the killing of an abortionist should be legally justifiable homicide.

Axis of Logic - May 15, 2009

Fear resides in all living creatures. It's what keeps us alive down at the watering hole or out on the street.

The fear of crime strikes all who live with its dread, as well as those who are personally victimized. Fear keeps us from doing what we want to do; it causes us to distrust friends and to view strangers with prejudice; and it can trick us into trading freedom for a false sense of security.

Many of us have grown up with an expectation that we have the right to a comfortable existence and that with education and hard work we can achieve a better than average life. Such naivetè has been mostly dispelled. Familiar patterns have been disrupted-perhaps forever.

Billions are owed on student loans by graduates who can't find a job. Millions of hard-working people are suddenly out of work and unable to sustain their dreams. They are saddled with massive credit card debts and unpayable mortgages, and they find little relief in new bankruptcy laws that deny them the chance to obtain a fresh start.

More than six million workers have lost their jobs in the last year and the "real" unemployment rate that includes "marginally attached" workers is 15.8 percent. The actual unemployment rate that includes those no longer looking for work is far higher, up to 25 percent. Unemployment benefits have been extended several times, most recently under the federal economic stimulus program, but the time will come when even this benefit will expire for millions of working families.

Tent cities are springing up around the country as the mass of homeless, hopeless and helpless people continues to swell. Evictions are skyrocketing, as even formerly middle-class people including professionals, small business owners and skilled workers can't pay their rents.

Food banks are overwhelmed, welfare safety nets are being shredded, and the tax revenues of municipal, county and state governments are plummeting, just when they are needed the most.

It is likely that the number of all children who live in poverty will exceed 27 percent next year, including 50 percent of all African American children.

As we worry about losing our jobs, paying our bills, feeding our children, and obtaining health care, must we also fear becoming a victim of crime?

Counterpunch - January 13, 2009

Among the wars currently being fought by the American government is one in which there can be no winners. Our prior law enforcement experiences warn us that the “war on terrorism” has spawned an internal “war on dissent” in which everyone loses.

Author William John Cox’s law enforcement career spanned 40 years, the early part of which was spent as a Los Angeles police officer and which included policing of both the riots and terrorist incidents in that city in the late 60’s to early 70’s. One of the first assignments given to author Coleen Rowley as a new FBI agent was to help in the processing and releasing of the numerous files improperly gathered by J. Edgar Hoover after the National Lawyer’s Guild won its FOIA lawsuits against the FBI in the early 1980’s.

The Church Committee unearthed evidence in 1976 that the Viet Nam War had provided cover for the domestic infiltration and wiretapping of civil rights and anti-war groups and resulted in legislation and regulations against the worst abuses. However, the history of government repression and spying on those who dissent against its policies and practices seems to be repeating itself.

Following 9-11, the Bush Administration erased or circumvented many of these hard-won legal restraints. Warrantless searches under the PATRIOT Act and illegal electronic surveillance swept up more than terrorist threats as the government increasingly confused dissent, which builds up a free and democratic society, with terrorism, which seeks to tear it down.

The law enforcement response has become increasingly harsh and heavy-handed since the anti-globalization protests in 1999 in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. In November 2003, as many as 40 different law enforcement agencies invaded Miami during meetings relating to the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Protest groups were infiltrated by the police, the corporate media was “embedded” with law enforcement, and the independent media was suppressed.

The New York City Police Department used “Miami” tactics in 2004 at the Republican National Convention (RNC) during which hundreds of peaceful demonstrators and innocent bystanders were illegally arrested, fingerprinted, photographed, and subjected to prolonged detention in wire cages before being released without prosecution. Repressive tactics were also used the same year as a counter-terrorism measure at the Democratic National Convention, where Boston police established a designated fenced enclosure topped by razor wire as the “free speech zone.”

Despite this recent history, the militarized crackdown and persecution of protest at the RNC in September took many by surprise especially in an otherwise progressive city like St. Paul (which pioneered the concept of “community policing”). It was a terrible shock to see the riot-clad Robo-cops lined up two and three rows deep, helmet visors down, their police identification gone or not visible, and their tasers and chemical weapon guns pointed at the various members of the Twin Cities Peacemakers and other social justice groups who marched on the first day of the RNC.

More than 800 citizens were arrested (including 40 journalists, one of whom was “Democracy Now!” radio host Amy Goodman) and hundreds of peaceful protesters were pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise brutalized.

Thousands more who conscientiously wished to demonstrate opposition to government policies and the illegal war, were too scared to leave their homes. Not only were they intimidated from marching, but they were prevented from participating in other totally peaceful artistic and music events scheduled in the Twin Cities during the week of the RNC.

More evidence for historians that the “war on terror” has morphed into a “war on dissent” can be found in the recently leaked reports establishing that both the Pentagon's Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency participated in planning RNC convention security and were possibly involved in crowd control strategies.

At the very least, the intimidating presence of armor-clad police officers at political demonstrations is a visible manifestation of the fascist threat. More pernicious would be any unwarranted, secret collection of information on the various social justice, peace, independent media, musical performance, artistic and legal groups in the lead-up to the RNC. We are currently in the process of determining, through freedom of information type requests, if this in fact, occurred here.

Recent revelations of how the Maryland State Police infiltrated nonviolent groups and falsely labeled dozens of pacifists, environmentalists and Catholic Nuns as terrorists highlights the risks of using undercover law enforcement officers and paid informants to spy on domestic groups. Pressure to produce arrests and convictions justifying the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars in precious tax revenues can result in the elevation of rhetoric into threats and dissent into terrorism.

The mind-numbing repetition of the term “anarchists” in recent newspaper coverage of the $300,000, year-long infiltration of protest groups prior to the convention fails to obscure the great lengths to which law enforcement officials went to prevent “street blockades” and other disruptions in St. Paul. Before the RNC even started, authorities executed pre-emptive raids and “preventive detentions”—controversial concepts originally concocted for the “war on terror” that have no place in our Constitution’s criminal justice system.

Thanks to Minnesota’s version of the PATRIOT Act, the local “war on dissent” has elevated boastful threats to “swarm” the Republican convention and to “shut it down” into charges of conspiracy to riot “in furtherance of Terrorism.” However, there is no evidence that any of the so-charged “RNC Eight” ever personally committed acts of violence or damaged property.

If they were really ready to “destroy” the City of Saint Paul as alleged, why did they operate so openly? Why was their rhetoric, albeit taunting, for the entire world to see on their website?

Real terrorists are usually much more secretive. Think back to the most significant recent cases of actual domestic terrorism in the United States: Oklahoma Federal Building bomber Timothy McVeigh; Olympic Park and abortion clinic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph; Unabomber (for 18 years) Ted Kaczynski; Ft. Detrick military scientist-anthrax killer Bruce Ivins; and the DC sniper terrorist duo. Most of these and other American terrorists operated alone or with one main accomplice. That's because secrecy is critical to the success of an actual terrorist act. That means, also, that it's different from protest and even civil disobedience where mass numbers of participants (instead of secrecy) is the key.

The prosecution of the "RNC eight" flies in the face of what Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore recently urged (to heavy applause)—for young people to engage in “civil disobedience” (he was talking about stopping the construction of coal plants). And only a few days ago, Thomas Friedman bemoaned in his New York Times column (with respect to the national economy) that “Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today.” (Emphasis added).

Global Research - December 1, 2008

When the Big Three CEOs recently descended on Washington in their fancy corporate jets with inflated egos and high hopes for a juicy piece of the government’s $8.6 trillion corporate welfare pie, they were sent home hungry to do their homework and to write an essay about how they plan to spend bailout funds.

Undoubtedly, the executives will travel business class when they come back this week; they will each have a business plan in hand, and Congress will give them $25 billion of taxpayer funds to gamble with. Equally without doubt, the money will be wasted, they will not learn from their mistakes, and they will be back again, and again, and again.

The Big Three have a track record of making really stupid decisions. Manufacturers have recklessly spent thousands of dollars per vehicle on advertising to convince drivers that they really want big gas-guzzling cars and trucks instead of the smaller fuel-efficient vehicles they really need.

The car companies have foolishly peddled financing and leasing deals far beyond the financial means of their buyers, and they have vigorously opposed realistic fuel economy standards.

Overall, new car sales are down 32% this year and October was the worst sales month since World WarII. Ford lost $3.3 billion and General Motors lost $4.2 billion in the third quarter, and they are quickly burning through their cash reserves. Chrysler has not reported its most recent losses, but its sales are down 31% and its estimated losses were $1.28 billion in the first half of 2008.

With sales grinding to a halt and their credit ratings plummeting, the Big Three cannot borrow sufficient funds in the credit markets to survive. Like drunks on a freeway, they are racing down the fast lane without a seat belt, holding a whiskey bottle in one hand and flipping off the public with the other, daring everyone else to stop them before they crash.

The auto companies have corporate partners, manufacturing facilities and distributors in all other developed nations. Their business dealings are so entangled with foreign economies that their failure would have worldwide repercussions.

Bankruptcy would likely force a liquidation of assets rather than a judicially-supervised reorganization and would, at best, result in the destruction of the automobile unions and employees’ retirement and healthcare benefit plans. However, every American worker and taxpayer would pay the price.

Elimination of the American automobile industry would send shock waves through the economy, causing the failure of thousands of automobile parts suppliers and car dealerships. Auto parts supply companies are among the top industrial employers in 19 states, and one out of every ten jobs in America is supported, in one way or another, by the automobile industry. It is estimated that the failure of General Motors alone could result in the loss of more than 15 million jobs.

Failure of the Big Three would only benefit foreign corporations who would swoop in to buy up the surplus manufacturing capacity, such as computerized robots, at bargain basement prices, and the balance of payments deficit would soar beyond calculation in the absence of domestic competition.

President-elect Obama opposes a “blank check” for the industry and says that “we should help the auto industry, but what we should expect is that ... any help that we provide is designed to assure a long-term, sustainable auto industry and not just kicking the can down the road.”

The Democratic majority in Congress appears ready to provide a $25 billion Emergency Bridge Loan to the auto makers by either tapping into the Wall Street Bailout funds or by redirecting money already approved for retooling old factories to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Companies receiving loans would have to give an equity stake to the government and would be charged 5% interest for the first five years and 9% thereafter. Companies could not pay dividends to common stockholders and would have to agree to a $250,000 annual pay cap for executives.

If the Emergency Bridge Loan is the best Congress can come up, the can will just be “kicked down the road” – but not very far. General Motors burned $6.9 billion, Ford burned $7.7 billion, and Chrysler burned $3 billion in just the third quarter of 2008. Simple arithmetic tells us that $25 billion will not even get them as far as July 2009 before the Big Three CEOs will return with their extortionary threats against the economy and still without a clue.

The American automobile industry can be saved; however salvation requires America’s elected representatives, including its new president, to get off their knees and to begin to think outside of the box. The industry has to be forced to make smarter cars instead of stupid decisions for its own good and for the benefit of everyone.