Pacific Free Press

Opinion

Written by Mickey Z

The U.S. government hates democracy (lessons from Italy)

by Mickey Z

As far as I'm concerned, we can't put forward enough reminders of how the U.S. government and the corporations that own it do business. Platitudes about peace, freedom, justice, etc. aside, the land of the free is not even remotely interested in spreading democracy. There is an abundance of evidence to back up this assertion. For now, I offer the example of post-World War II Italy. Mussolini was gone but the U.S. elites had no intention of letting Italy slip through the cracks.

When the war-weary Italian people went to the polls in 1946, the Italian Communist Party and the Socialist Party combined to gain more votes and more seats in the Constituent Assembly election than the U.S.-favored Christian Democrats. This was not surprising, considering that a worker- and peasant-based movement fought off six German divisions during the liberation of northern Italy...with the invaluable aid of the Communist party. As a 1948 election loomed on the horizon, however, the U.S. realized that certain perceptions of reality needed to be seriously altered. "It was at this point that the U.S. began to train its big economic and political guns upon the Italian people," William Blum explains in Killing Hope. "All the good ol' Yankee know-how, all the Madison Avenue savvy in the art of swaying public opinion, all the Hollywood razzmatazz would be brought to bear on the 'target market'." Add a comment

Written by Stephen Soldz

The systematic destruction of Jose Padilla

by Stephen Soldz

The New York Times today gives a glimpse of the systematic destruction of a human being as they describe the routine treatment of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, held for years without charges as an â€œenemy combatantâ€ until the government, on the eve of a crucial court hearing challenging their ability to hold him without charges, decided to charge him after all.

The Times article describes the total isolation he was held in for three and a half years, before being charged:

One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C. Add a comment

Written by Winter Patriot

Rockford, Illinois: Terrorist Plot Foiled? Or Just Another Knucklehead Stung?

Surely the Washington Post had fun trying to keep the word "entrapment" out of this story:

An Illinois man has been charged with two terrorism-related charges after allegedly planning to set off hand grenades in garbage cans at a mall in Rockford, about 90 miles west of Chicago, federal officials announced today.

Derrick Shareef, 22, of Rockford was arrested Wednesday after meeting with an undercover federal agent at a store parking lot to trade a set of stereo speakers for four hand grenades and a handgun, according to the FBI and U.S. Attorney's offices in Chicago.

In a complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Chicago, Shareef was charged with attempting to damage or destroy a building by fire or explosion and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Apparently a hand grenade is now a weapon of mass destruction. Well, what do you know?

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Written by Tom Chartier

I Smell A Rat!

by Tom Chartier

" I died for freedom, this I know,
For those who bade me fight have told me so." -
- Lines from a poem published in England during the early months of WW1.

Can you smell it too? For a moment I thought it was the mangrove swamp.

Time to find out whatâ€™s polluting the shades of America. Itâ€™s been stinking up the U.Sâ€¦. and the worldâ€¦ for six years now. How could anybody miss it? Itâ€™s reeking to high Heaven. Behold: a monstrous Rodentia Giganticus that chews glass and eats its young.

Folks, what we have here is a massive scam thatâ€™s just like all the others our government has been pulling on the taxpayers sinceâ€¦ well, letâ€™s just go back as far as 2000 when our Dear Leader, Bush 43 (George W. Bush), was handed the presidency by Bush 41â€™s (that would be Bush The First, George H.W.) supreme court.

We have been â€” and are still being â€” scammed.
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Written by Dave Lindorff

A Congress of Whores and Pipsqueaks

by Dave Lindorff

How pathetic can it get?

140,000 American troops are stuck in the mess that a lying and endlessly deceitful president has made in Iraq, over half a million innocent Iraqis have been killed since the politically-motivated 2003 US invasion, a group of very Establishment, middle-of-the-road politicians of both parties has declared the war an unmitigated disaster and called for a pullout of troops, the president has nixed their call for withdrawal and regional negotiations, and what is Congress doing about it?

The House just voted by an overwhelming 368-31 (thatâ€™s only 36 abstentions), not to impeach the president, not to cut off funding for the war, not even to endorse the findings of the Iraq Study Group, butâ€¦to condemn the naming of a street in France after Pennsylvania death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal!

This craven rush to line up and be counted in the condemnation of a man who has never had a fair trial to establish his guilt in the 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was joined in even by most liberal Democrats in the House. It was primarily only black members of Congress who had the courage to vote no on the resolution that was submitted by Michael Fitzpatrick, a lame-duck Republican congressman from the Philadelphia area (Fitzpatrick was defeated by Democrat Patrick Murphy).

Ironically, as this group of political hucksters and moral cowards were casting their votes of allegedly righteous condemnation at the naming of a minor street in France, Abu-Jamalâ€™s case was heading for a dramatic hearing in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, where judges with a better understanding of law and constitution had recently agreed to hear three separate arguments by Abu-Jamal on claims that his 1982 trial had been unconstitutionally compromised--among them that the prosecutor told jurors they didnâ€™t need to worry about proof of guilt being "beyond a reasonable doubt" because there would be "appeal after appeal," that the same prosecutor deliberately removed 11 qualified black jurors from the jury pool because of their race despite their having confirmed they could vote for a death penalty, and that the trial judge had been overheard, on the first day of the trial, telling his clerk that he would "help them fry the nigger."
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Written by Stephen Lendman

The Spirit of Democracy in Venezuela

by Stephen Lendman

"Today we gave another lesson in dignity to the imperialists, it is another defeat for the empire of Mr. Danger....another defeat for the devil. We will never be a colony of the US again....Long live the socialist revolution....Destiny has been written....Socialism is human. Socialism is love."

This is how Hugo Chavez Frias characterized his smashing electoral victory on December 3 when he appeared on the balcony of the Palacio de Miraflores (the official presidential palace residence) and addressed a huge gathering of his followers below that evening telling them of his victory for the people and that he now has an even stronger mandate to pursue his Bolivarian Project to do more for them ahead than he's already accomplished so far which is considerable.

He told his loyal, cheering supporters his impressive landslide electoral victory is one more blow to George Bush, and it follows on the others won by populist candidates in the region in the past six weeks by Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil on October 29, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua on November 7, and Rafael Correa in Equador on November 26. Chavez will serve for another six year term that will run until December, 2012.

Earlier in the day, Hugo Chavez showed he's indeed a man of the people by casting his own vote the same way ordinary people do. Unlike George Bush who goes everywhere in an entourage of limousine, helicopter, or Air Force One luxury accompanied by a phalanx of security needed to protect him from the people he was elected to serve, Chavez drove himself in his aging red-colored Volkswagon to his assigned polling station accompanied by his young grandson in the back seat, voted, and then left the same unaccompanied way he came. That's how a man of the people does it - no bells, whistles or extravagant trappings of power that's a hallmark of how things are done to excess in the US calling itself a model democracy but one only for the few with wealth and power and that behaves like a rogue state that's only a model for despots and tyrants.
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Written by David Swanson

The Best Reasons Not to Impeach, And Why They're Wrong

By David Swanson

Political questions are tricky and complicated. Sometimes causes that are just and good must take a backseat to other priorities or long-term strategies. Setting all such perfectly reasonable considerations aside for a moment, I'd like you to ask yourself a simple yes or no question: Do you think President Bush has committed one or more impeachable offenses?

If you said no, I want to talk to you for a second. If you said yes, let's talk in just a minute â€“ but stick around for this first, you'll enjoy it.

"Bush has not committed perjury."

Among those who believe Bush has not committed any impeachable offenses, the most common reason is that he has not lied under oath. But impeachment is a political, not a legal, process â€“ Congress is not obliged to let Bush off on any such technicality. And, in any case, it's a technicality that makes no sense, because perjury is one crime among many. Impeachment is the penalty for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The Constitution says nothing about perjury as a ground for impeachment. And it is a crime to mislead or to defraud Congress, whether or not you do so under oath. When Diane Sawyer asked Bush on television why he had made the claims he had about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, he replied:

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Written by Larry C. Johnson

A Soldier's Story - MAJOR BILL EDMONDS

by MAJOR BILL EDMONDS

[Note from Larry Johnson: A CIA buddy forwarded this article. It is a must read. It is consistent with what I saw on the ground in Iraq when I was there in June. I discovered that the our focus on counter terrorism--i.e. kicking in doors and killing suspected terrorists--was counterproductive and not diminishing the violence in Iraq. Sometimes we were right but sometimes we were wrong. When we were wrong we ended up creating new enemies. John McCain's mantra about more troops is off base. We don't just need more troops, we need more of the right kind of troops. We need more special forces troops like Bill Edmonds. Unfortunately, we call them "Special Forces" for a reason. Not everyone can do the job and it takes years to train these men and women. Without the right kind of forces we are just digging a deeper hole.]

For just a minute or two, step into my life. I am an American soldier in the Army Special Forces. I have just returned from a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, where I lived, shared meals, slept and fought beside my Iraqi counterpart as we battled insurgents in the center of a thousand-year-old city. I am a conflicted man, and I want you to read the story of that experience as I lived it. In the interest of security, I have omitted some identifying details, but every word is true.

Routine and Ritual

I wake in the cold and dark of each morning to the sound of a hundred different muezzins calling Muslim men and women to prayer. These calls reverberate five times per day throughout a city the size of San Francisco. Above this sound I also hear two American helicopters making their steady patrol over the rooftops of the city and the blaring horns of armored vehicles as they swerve through dense city traffic. As a combat adviser and interrogator, I find these contrasts very appropriate for the life that I now lead.

This morning, on the Iraqi base in which I live, I walk 100 feet from my bedroom to work and back again. These are the same 100 feet I will travel month after month for one year. During every trip I smile, put a hand to my heart, sometimes a hand to my head, and say to every passing Iraqi the religious and cultural words that are expected from a fellow human being. In Iraq, one cannot separate Islamic culture from the individual. They are intrinsically woven into the fabric of daily life, but for most Westerners, they seem abnormal. I sit in smoke-filled rooms and drink sugar-laden tea in small crystal glasses. I spray tobacco-scented air freshener, kiss cheeks three times or more, allow the Iraqi on the right to pass through the doorway first. I know never to inquire on the health of a wife or elder daughter.

I even hold hands with other men.
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Written by Faisal Kutty

A Western Construct?

by Faisal Kutty

Fifty-eight years after the universal declaration of human rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, the debate continues as to whether the document is truly universal.

Upon its adoption on Dec. 10, 1948, former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the commission on human rights, expressed her hope it would become "the Magna Carta of all mankind." Ironically, as was the fate with the "great charter" of 1215, the declaration has not fully lived up to its name.

The declaration was challenged from its very inception. The commission's first draft attracted 168 amendments from various countries. However, the final document was almost unchanged from the initial draft tabled by the commission. Forty-eight countries voted in favour, while eight countries â€” Poland, Byelorussia, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union â€” abstained and expressed reservations.

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Meese of Arabia and the Baker Group's Grab for Black Gold

by Chris Floyd

The reaction from actual Iraqis on the just-released report by the "Iraq Study Group"? They don't like it; it won't work; it's largely a tissue of fantasies and shows no grasp of the true situation in Iraq; it has nothing to do with solving Iraq's problems but everything to do with the American Establishment's desperate attempt to save face, no matter how many people must be slaughtered in the process.

But why should we listen to these wretched malcontents in Iraq? How the hell could they know more about the reality of their lives than Jim "Bagman" Baker and Lee "Whitewash for Hire" Hamilton and Harriet "Here's the PB&J, George" Miers and Ed "Porn Man" Meese? I mean, come on: who on God's green earth knows more about the political, social, ethnic, historical, religious and military complexities of Iraq than Ed Meese? The Heritage Foundation's Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy? Man, he's the go-to guy for all things Iraqi! There's no freaking, frigging way that any Hakim or Abdul or Nouri or Motqada or Mahmoud is gonna have any greater insight on Iraq than Ed Meese. Are you kidding me?

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Written by Paul J. Balles

Delusional Fabrication

by Paul Balles

Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.

--James Bryant Conant

The sly and deceitful way that propagandists distort facts, events and history never ceases to amaze me.

That kind of disingenuous propaganda came recently from both Israeli leaders and American Zionists. The latest was the attempt to gloss over criticism of the Israeli murder and destruction in Lebanon by claiming that the Hezbollah militia used civilians as human shields.

That's one way to attempt to divert attention from the thousands of bombs the Israelis dropped on hundreds of civilian targets all over Lebanon. A typical evasion, the Israeli claim has been coyly used to purge attention from the reality: Israel had no business invading Lebanon in the first place!
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Written by Andrew Bard Schmookler

The Good News Implied in Feingoldâ€™s Decision Not to Run

by Andrew Bard Schmookler

Earlier this year, when courage and clarity seemed dangerously rare among our politicians, many of us were heartened when Senator Russ Feingold stood up for the rule of law, proposing a motion to censure President Bush for his flagrant violation of both statutory law and the Constitution. Feingold quickly became a champion for many who hungered for someone in high places to speak the truth about the reckless criminality of this regime. We began to hear talk of a possible Feingold run for the presidency in 2008. And the idea had appeal to many, including me.

Recently, of course, Senator Feingold has taken himself explicitly out of the running. The reason he gave was that he intended to focus on his work as a Senator.

In such matters, itâ€™s never entirely clear what is going on. How often have we heard that someone, stepping down from high office or choosing not to run, has based his decision on some overwhelming desire to â€œspend more time with my family,â€ when other less flattering reasons are visible? Add a comment

The Republicâ€™s Barn is full of Broken Pottery.

by Art James

The geese heard the barbarians scaling the gate-wall while the guard-dogs slept.
â€¦it offended his conscience to make a little money by sending to the slaughter-house an ox which had long been in his service.

-Plutarch, Life of Cato.

(This is a reluctant continuation from my last Studebaker classified post. An anonymous phone caller requested my address)*

To be the recipient of an insult is disgraceful; to return one is honorable. The contempt, cruelties, and prevarication of our dayâ€”rival any argument I know. There are many reproachable traits we observe in wartime which is abominable. Once, for instance, in our more innocent daily land-lover affairs, we may have been kicked black, red, and blue by a beast mule. That kind of assault is accepted without feeling serious insult. If we consider the source of the brunt-kick; healing will come with time. Avenging insult of certain kinds, itâ€™s wise to ignore. When human-tyrants use base and beastly powers to butcher, destroy cities where innocent citizens dwell, and defile written words, such as: democracy, freedom, and justiceâ€¦to horde capital, itâ€™s best to Address it.
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Written by Winter Patriot

Happy 65th Birthday -- Now Will You Please Retire?

Sixty-five years ago today, on December 7th, 1941, Japanese pilots bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

World War II had started more than two years earlier. But -- prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor -- America was having none of it. Remembering World War I, most Americans were anxious to avoid a repeat performance.

Having cracked the Japanese codes, American "leaders" knew the attack was coming, but they had no interest in preventing it.

Instead they moved all their carriers out to sea, left a few rusty old battleships in port, and manned those ships with thousands of sailors -- whose lives would be sacrificed for policy considerations. The aim was to produce a catalyzing event, after which it would be easy to lead the American people into another foreign war.

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Written by Mike Whitney

The Rumsfeld Memo: â€œI was just about to change everythingâ€¦.Really!?!â€

by Mike Whitney

By now, everyone has heard about Rumsfeldâ€™s memo. It was leaked to the New York Times supposedly without Rumsfeldâ€™s knowledge. It makes the case that Rumsfeld was just about to make major changes in Iraq because he could see that the strategy wasfailing and hadcreateda disaster.

Everything about the memo reeks of deception. In fact, the Times even admits that, â€œRumsfeld may have been trying to shape the coming discussion and present himself as open to â€˜changeâ€™â€.

Why?

Because, according to the article, â€œPresident Bush interviewed Texas A&M University President Robert Gates as a potential successor to Rumsfeld a day before the midterm elections.â€
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Voices Carry: Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder

by Chris Floyd

Below is a reprise from June 2003, which appeared on CounterPunch and in my Moscow Times column, a piece that was not included in the Empire Burlesque book. It is a general argument that tries, briefly, to get at some of the deeper issues underlying the bedevilments of the age, which, as noted below, are by no means exclusive to our modern times.

We meant no offense to any Christian readers with our recent blast at the crude fundamentalism no

w riding herd on the American government and large swathes of American society as well ("De vil's Advocate," Counterpunch, May 31, 2003). We realize that it is not the fault of Jesus Christ or even the Apostle Paul â€“ that seminal master of marketing who repackaged Jesus' harsh and quirky parochial ascetism into a handy one-size-fits-all panacea for existential ills â€“ that fanatics like Bush and Company believe there is only one immutable Truth about reality, which they just happen to possess.

It is, of course, the fault of Plato, whose poetic fantasy of a changeless Perfection behind the messiness of physical existence infected the Western mind with the germ of ideological intolerance. For if Perfect Truth exists, then it can be known, and once known, it must necessarily be acknowledged as the sole measure, explanation and arbiter of "all of life and all of history," as Mr. Bush likes to say.

With Plato begins the slow death of the old gods: those powerful evocations who in their conflicts and contradictions, their lusts and doubts, their recklessness, sorrows, tempers â€“ and manifold imperfections â€“ surely embodied the seething chaos of human reality far better than the degraded Platonic idealism adopted by the Pauline Christians. We leave aside here Jesus' ethical teachings, which despite millennia of lip service have never been adopted or even taken seriously by any society throughout history â€“ although a few of Paul's more cranky notions about sex and obedience (especially his ever-popular injunction, "Slaves, obey your masters!") have been enthusiastically embraced by Western rulers since the days of the murderous Constantine the Great down to our present age, presided over by the warmongering Christian Coalition of Bush and Blair. Add a comment

Written by Dave Lindorff

Abu-Jamal Case at Third Circuit, Prosecutor Admits He Had No "True Defense"

by Dave Lindorff

It's been 25 years now since Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot dead in a Center City, Philadelphia red-light district. Since then, Faulkner has become a rallying point for the nation's death penalty advocates. It's been 25 years, too, since the man convicted of killing Faulkner, Philadelphia radio journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, was arrested for the crime at the scene. Since July 1982, Abu-Jamal has been in solitary confinement on Philadelphia's death row, from hich lonely spot he has become a world-famous prison journalist, and a rallying point for those opposed to capital punishment.

The debates over Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence have raged now for an astonishing quarter of a century, through the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Battles have raged, too, within the loose-knit group of people who have backed Abu-Jamal, between those who argue that he is an innocent man, a political prisoner condemned for his politics, and those who simply argue that he never received a fair trial. Politicians at the local, state and even federal level, many without any real knowledge about this complex case, have prostituted themselves by pressing for Abu-Jamal's execution, while others, sometimes equally ignorant of the facts, have lionized him and honored him with honorary citizenships and street names.

Whatever one's views on this case, however, the reality is that it for the first time in 25 years, Abu-Jamal is finally going to get a chance in the second highest court in the land to make the case that his 1982 trial was fatally tainted by unconstitutional error, judicial bias, race-based jury selection and prosecutorial misconduct. The reality also is that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which will be hearing arguments on Abu-Jamal's appeal early next year (barring any unanticipated delays), could conceivably end up ordering a new trial for Abu-Jamal--a trial that, because of better defense counsel, a changed political climate, shifting demographics, the deaths of some witnesses, and the likelihood of new defense witnesses, would most likely end up setting him free, or having him released for time served. At the same time, the same three-judge panel hearing this appeal will also be considering a counter appeal by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office, which seeks to overturn a lower Federal District Court decision which five years ago tossed out Abu-Jamal's death sentence. So at the same time that the Third Circuit could end up giving Abu-Jamal a new chance to prove his innocence, or at least to leave prison a free man, it could ironically also end up sending him back onto death row and to a date with the needle.
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Routine and Ritual

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