Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 11.05.05

[David Shove (shove001]

           P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R     11.05.05

                       VOTE TUESDAY NOVEMBER 8

1. Iraqi civilian deaths 11.07 12:15pm

2. CCHT building dreams  11.08 7:30am
3. Refugees/asylum/US    11.08 12:15pm
4. Get real films        11.08 2:30pm
5. Cops/juveniles        11.08 3:30pm
6. Arab film fest party  11.08 5pm
7. Clean energy forum    11.08 7pm Morris MN
8. Holocaust resistence  11.08 7pm LaCrosse WI
9. KFAI election returns 11.08 8pm
10. GP election party    11.08 8:30pm

11. David Benjamin  - Orwell's Oceania and Bush's America: coming together
12. Mike Whitney    - Drifting towards a police state
13. Jack Random     - The activist court & the neoconservative agenda
14. William Greider - All the king's media
15. Jeffrey StClair - Oil's victory in Alaska, with a Dem assist
16. David Lindorff  - A majority now favors impeachment
17. Patrick Kanouse - The tyrant spider (poem)

--------1 of 17--------

Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 18:31:51 -0600
Subject: Iraqi civilian deaths 11.07 12:15pm

Civilian Mortality Rate in Iraq: Discussion of the Lancet Report Monday,
November 7, 12:15pm 50 Willey Hall, 225 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis.

Les Roberts, of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins
University, will discuss his study in the Lancet medical journal on the
number of Iraqi civilians killed in the Iraq war. He'll also discuss the
response from similar studies in the Republic of Congo. FFI: Call
612-624-5818 or visit <www.pop.umn.edu>.


--------2 of 17--------

From: Philip Schaffner <PSchaffner [at] ccht.org>
Subject: CCHT building dreams 11.08 7:30am

Learn how Central Community Housing Trust is responding to the affordable
housing shortage in the Twin Cities. Please join us for a 1-hour Building
Dreams presentation.

	Minneapolis Sessions:
	Nov 8 at 7:30a * Dec 13 at 7:30a

	St. Paul Sessions:
	Nov 16 at 8:00a * Dec 7 at 4:30p

We are also happy to present Building Dreams at your organization, place
of worship, or business. Space is limited, please register online at:
www.ccht.org/bd or call Philip Schaffner at 612-341-3148 x237
(pschaffner [at] ccht.org)


--------3 of 17--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Refugees/asylum/US 11.08 12:15pm

David Johnson speak on Searching for Home: Refugees and Asylum Seekers in
the U.S. on Tuesday, November 8 (12:15-1:15pm) University of Minnesota Law
School, Room N202. Flyer is attached.


--------4 of 17--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Get real films 11.08 2:30pm

Get Real!: City Pages Documentary Film Festival
Landmark's Lagoon Cinema, on Lagoon Ave. off Hennepin Ave.S, uptown
Minneapolis
www.citypages.com/getreal

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8

2:30pm: North Star: Minnesota's Black Pioneers--Making a Home
(FREE admission) TC African-American film-maker TPT denizen DANIEL BERGEN
creates a series of portraists of Black Minnesotansa,revealing history
history you've never heard. HEAR interview w/ Daniel Bergen on Tues.Nov.8,
11am,CATALYST on KFAI Radio,90.3fm/1067.fm www.kfai.org

(Afternoon happy hour at Bryant Lake Bowl!  Enjoy reduced rates on
cocktails, wine, beer and select appetizers following the afternoon
screenings.)

5:30pm: The Phantom of the Operator
Facinating use of 100 20th century industrial films from the telephone
industry offer a mirror of our 21st "service economy". It's insidiously
wonderful viewing that asks questions about labor,technology and
communication.

7:30pm: Two By MARTIN SCORSESE (Italianamerican & American Boy) One of
American cinema;s geniouses did NOT just strat making documentaries with
his recent BOB DYLAN film. These two 1970s docuemntaries
(ITALIANAMERICAN:a portrait of his parents in 1974 and AMERICAN BOY:a
portrait of a bit-actor in Scorceses's TAXI DRIVER) are facinating and
give interesting insights into the director's body of work.

9:45pm: The Outsider
A film about movie-making: looks at 12 day film-makig frenzy of James
Tobak shooting a thriller. Zany fun.


--------5 of 17--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Cops/juveniles 11.08 3:30pm

November 8 - "Police Interrogation of Juveniles: An Empirical Study of
Policy and Practice".  Time: 3:30pm.  Cost: Free.

Professor Barry C. Feld, the first Centennial Professor of Law and one of
the nation's leading scholars of juvenile justice. He will give a speak on
Police interrogation of Juveniles: An Empirical Study of Policy and
Practice.

A reception will follow the lecture in the Dean's Conference Room. Please
RSVP to 612-625-4544 or lawevent [at] umn.edu Location: Lockhart Hall


--------6 of 17--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Arab film fest party 11.08 5pm

Mizna's Arab Film Festival is Here! Join us at the pre-film fest party and
fundraiser. Our film festival schedule is now on-line!  Plan your viewing
strategy.

Film Festival Kick-off Party and Fundraiser
Tuesday, November 8; 5-9 pm
Babalu
800 Washington Avenue N., Minneapolis

Join us for an exciting preview of what is to come at the Arab film
festival! There will be free appetizers, and all night drawings for film
festival passes, as well as gift certificates from local businesses.  Get
your very own film fest tshirt designed by Ricardo Levins Morales.  Party
with us to the live music of our very own local Arab band Tourag!  No
cover charge. Donations taken at the door. Don't miss this exciting event!

Third Annual Minneapolis Arab Film Festival November 11-17 Heights Theater
3951 Central Avenue NE Minneapolis, Minnesota


--------7 of 17--------

From: Elizabeth Dickinson <eadickinson [at] mindspring.com>
From: "Michael Noble" <noble [at] me3.org>
Subject: Clean energy forum 11.08 7pm Morris MN

The next two clean energy forums are scheduled for Morris, Minnesota on
11/8 (next Tuesday) and Preston, Minnesota on 11/14 (a week from Monday).

The Morris forum will be held at the West Central Research & Outreach
Center 46352 State Hwy 329, in Morris, MN, and driving instructions are
attached.

The Preston forum will be held at the F&M Community Bank basement
conference room 100 Saint Anthony St N, Preston, MN.

Both forums will be from 7-8:30pm.  I'll be giving presenting for about 35
to 40 minutes, then will devote the balance of the time to Q&A from the
audience.  Call or email with any questions!  Mike

Mike Bull, Assistant Commissioner Renewable Energy and Advanced
Technologies Minnesota Department of Commerce 85 7th Place East, Suite 500
St. Paul, MN 55101-2198 Ph 651-282-5011/Fax 651-297-7891


--------8 of 17--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Holocaust resistence 11.08 7pm LaCrosse WI

November 8 - Mireille Rostad: Holocaust Resistance Member. 7pm.  Cost:
Free and open to the public. Seating is limited; please plan to come early

Lecture series on "Perspectives of the Holocaust" at Viterbo University in
LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

Mireille Rostad was sixteen years old when the Nazis invaded her hometown
of Brussels, Belgium. Using a false ID and a relying on a system of
underground networks established by the resistance, she walked to France
where she served as a medic and distributed clandestine newspapers. She
served in the resistance for the remainder of the war using the code name
"Squirrel."

After the war she worked in counterintelligence in General Dwight D.
Eisenhower's Frankfurt headquarters. She is the recipient of the Ellis
Island Medal of Honor.

For more information contact Richard Kyte at (608) 796-3704 or email
ethics [at] viterbo.edu.

Location: FAC Main Theatre, Viterbo University, LaCrosse, Wisconsin


--------9 of 17--------

From: Ann Alquist <aalquist [at] kfai.org>
Subject: KFAI election returns 11.08 8pm

KFAI News goes live November 8 at 8pm with our cracker jack panel of
analysts to cover the Minneapolis and Saint Paul races ( every single last
one of them, all the way down to the bottom of the ballot ).

Ann Alquist News Director KFAI Fresh Air Community Radio 90.3 FM
Minneapolis / 106.7 FM Saint Paul The KFAI Evening News broadcasts Monday
through Thursday at 6pm. www.kfai.org


--------10 of 17--------

From: Stephen Eisenmenger <Stephen [at] MNGreens.org>
Subject: GP election party 11.08 8:30pm

Minneapolis Election Night Green Party Party
Master of Ceremony: Becki Smith
Tuesday, November 8, 8:30pm to Midnight

Spot Art Gallery, 1828 Marshall St NE, Minneapolis www.spotart.org

BYOB & Potluck.  Candidates available for media interviews. Candidate
speeches throughout the night.  Acoustic musical stylings. Weather
permitting: bonfire on the banks of the Mississippi River.

CONTACT: Stephen Eisenmenger, 612-747-2854


--------11 of 17--------

Orwell's Oceania and Bush's America: Coming Together
by David Benjamin
Published on Friday, November 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Paris - Lately, I'm re-reading many of the books I read when I was in
high school. Predictably, it's a checkered experience. Some of these
cherished works recall, revive and even expand the literary pleasures I
enjoyed some 40 years ago; other beloved books betray flaws I overlooked
when I was 16. And some of these books reveal insights that were
inconceivable back then.

Among my more revelatory experiences has been re-visiting George Orwell's
dystopian classic, "1984." Although Orwell failed to anticipate Western
cultural and political reality in the year of his prophecy - when Reagan
and Thatcher ruled real-life Oceania - he eerily foresaw both the
corruption of language and the erosion of civil liberties that marks the
second Bush administration, some 20 years beyond 1984 (the year, not the
book).

In rereading Orwell, I didn't plan to draw parallels between Big Brother
and Boy George. They just kept popping up. I recorded 11 instances in
which Orwell somehow anticipated White House jive in the first decade of
the 21st century.

For instance, like Orwell's Oceania, Bush's America relies on a constant
state of war to instill fear and passion in the masses, and - in both
regimes - the enemy's identity is an afterthought. Big Brother shifted
his enmity from Eurasia to Eastasia and back again. Bush began his
bellicose ascendancy by targeting Al Qaeda, then switching to Saddam's
Iraq, and now he's screen-testing among Syria, Iran and Al Qaeda (again)
for the role of supervillain. The key, said Orwell is this: "The enemy of
the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past
or future agreement with him was impossible."

Note Orwell's stipulation that the purity of the enemy's evil requires
that "past" agreements, if they ever existed, must be either forgotten or
expunged. Consider, for example, Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad during
the Reagan era, when he was filmed hugging Saddam Hussein. But that never
happened, right? We always hated Saddam, and we never sent him vast
stockpiles of weapons to help him fight America's previous "enemy of the
moment," Iran.

"History has stopped," explained Orwell. "Nothing exists except an endless
present in which the Party is always right."

Indeed, this White House, as a matter of ideology, loathes even the
suggestion that it ever erred. George Bush is pathologically reluctant to
admit even the tiniest goof because, as Orwell says, "... by far the more
important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard
the infallibility of the Party. It is not merely that speeches, statistics
and records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order
to show that the predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is
also that no change of doctrine or in political alignment can ever be
admitted. For to change one's mind, or even one's policy, is a confession
of weakness."

When you think about it, Orwell wrote the monograph for almost every
utterance in the oratorical career of President Bush: "It's a beautiful
thing, the destruction of words."

There is hardly a better thumbnail of the preparations - by Presidential
impresario Karl Rove - for dog-wagging events such as the "Mission
Accomplished" declaration of victory in Iraq on 1 May 2003, or the Grand
Ole Opry 9/11 anniversary spectacle in 2005, or Bush's klieg-lit cameo in
Jackson Square, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, than this passage
from Orwell: "Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork
displays, film shows, telescreen programs all had to be organized; stands
had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumors
circulated, photographs faked..."

The Bush regime, as a matter of public relations technique, has made into
an art form "cognitive dissonance," the ability to sincerely profess two
opposite propositions at the same time. Orwell had a simpler term for this
skill: "doublethink." It's instructive to recall the definition of
"doublethink" while reviewing, for example, Bush's insistence that Saddam
Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, followed by Bush's later
admission that there was no such link, followed by his recent revival of
the Saddam-9/11 conspiracy. Orwell: "To tell deliberate lies while
genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become
inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back
from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of
objective reality and all the while take account of the reality which one
denies..."

Set this sentence against the remarks of a "senior official" of the Bush
White House, as quoted by Bob Woodward: "We're an empire now, and when we
act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -
judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities,
which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're
history's actors."

This is the voice of raw power and sheer arrogance - which is largely
what "1984" was all about. Perhaps the point at which Orwell's Oceania and
Bush's America converge are in each regime's attitude toward human
cruelty. Orwell gave us the cynically named Ministry of Love and Room 101.
Bush has given us Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and "extraordinary rendition"
while declaring his personal exemption from the rules of basic human
decency embodied in the Geneva Conventions. Power makes its own rules -
and its own reality.

Orwell wrote about this, too: "... But always - do not forget this,
Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly
increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there
will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who
is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping
on a human face - forever..."

David Benjamin, novelist and journalist, lives and works partly in Paris
and partly in Madison, Wisconsin. His latest book is The Life and Times of
the Last Kid Picked.

[1984 is one of my favorite books - ed]


--------12 of 17------

Drifting Towards a Police State
by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 3, 2005

 "Those who scare peace loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my
message is this: Your tactics only aid the terrorists for they erode our
national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's
enemies and pause to America's friends."
  -- Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft

Did you know that under the terms of the new Patriot Act prosecutors will
be able to seek the death penalty in cases where "defendants gave
financial support to umbrella organizations without realizing that some of
its adherents might eventually commit violence"? (NY Times editorial,
October 30, 2005) So, if someone unknowingly gave money to a charity that
was connected to a terrorist group, he/she could be executed.

Or, that the Senate Intelligence Committee is fine-tuning the details of a
bill that will allow the FBI to secretly procure any of your personal
records without "probable cause" or a court order giving them "unchecked
authority to pry into personal and business matters"? ("Republicans Seek
to Widen FBI Powers," New York Times, October 19, 2005)

Or, that on June 29, President Bush put "a broad swath of the FBI" under
his direct control by creating the National Security Service (a.k.a. the
"New SS")? This is the first time we've had a "secret police" in our
200-year history. It will be run exclusively by the president and beyond
the range of congressional oversight.

Or, that on October 27, 2005 president Bush created the National
Clandestine Service, which will be headed by CIA Director Porter Goss and
will "expand reporting of information and intelligence value from state,
local and tribal law enforcement entities and private sector
stakeholders"? This executive order gives the CIA the power to carry out
covert operations, spying, propaganda, and "dirty tricks" within the
United States and on the American public. ("The New National Intelligence
Strategy of the US" by Larry Chin, Global Research)

Or, that Pentagon intelligence operatives are now permitted to collect
information from US citizens without revealing their status as government
spies? (Greg Miller, "Bill would give Cover to Pentagon Spies," Los
Angeles Times, October 1, 2005)

Or, that within two years every American license and passport will be made
according to federal uniform standards including microchips (with
biometric information) that will allow the government to trace every
movement of its citizens?

Or, that recent rulings, the DC District Court unanimously decided in two
different cases that foreign prisoners have no rights under international
law to challenge their indefinite imprisonment by the United States and,
(in Rumsfeld vs. Padilla) that the president can lock up an American
citizen "without charges" if he believes he may be an "enemy combatant"?
Both verdicts overturn the fundamental principles of "inalienable rights",
habeas corpus, and the presumption of innocence, replacing them with the
arbitrary authority of the executive.

The American people have no idea of the amount of energy that has been
devoted to stripping them of their constitutional protections and how
stealthily that plan has been carried out. It has required the concerted
efforts of the political establishment, the corporate elite, and the
collaborative media. For all practical purposes, the government is no
longer constrained in its conduct towards its citizens; it can do as it
pleases.

The campaign to dismantle the Bill of Rights has focused primarily on the
key Amendments, the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 14th. These are the
cornerstones of American liberty and they encompass everything from due
process to equal protection to free speech to a ban on the "cruel and
unusual" treatment of prisoners. Freedom has little tangible meaning apart
from the safety provided by these amendments.

At present, there"s no reason for the administration to assert its new
powers. That would only dispel the widely held illusion of personal
freedom. But, the existing climate of "well being" will not last forever.
The poisonous effects of war, tax cuts, burgeoning budget deficits, and
inflation indicate that darker days lie ahead. The middle class is
stretched paper-thin and disaster could be as close as a hike in interest
rates.

The new repressive legislation anticipates the massive political unrest
that naturally follows a tenuous and volatile economic situation.

Is this why Congress has rubber-stamped so many of the administration's
autocratic laws, or does Bush simply "hate our freedoms"?

The members of America's ruling elite carefully follow the shifting of
policy in Washington. They have the power to access the mainstream media
and dispute the changes in the law that they oppose. Regrettably, there's
been no sign of protest from the bastions of the corporate, financial and
political oligarchy, just an ominous silence.

Does this mean that American Brahmins have abandoned their support for
personal liberty and the rights of man?

America is undergoing its greatest metamorphosis. It has been severed from
its constitutional moorings and is drifting towards a police state. If
Samuel Alito is appointed to the Supreme Court then Bush will be able to
solidify his "unchecked" power as executive and 50 years of progressive
legislation will be up for review. Everything from abortion to Miranda
will be reconsidered through the hard-right lens of the new majority.

Americans still seem blissfully unaware of the fundamental changes to the
political system. The cloak of disinformation and diversion has
successfully obscured the perils of our present course. Freedom is no
longer guaranteed in Bush's America nor is liberty everyman's birthright.
The rickety scaffolding that supports the rule of law has been replaced
with the unbridled authority of the supreme presidency. The country is
slipping inexorably towards the Orwellian nightmare - the National
Security State.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, and can be reached at:
fergiewhitney [at] msn.com.


--------13 of 17--------

The Activist Court & the Neoconservative Agenda
by Jack Random
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 3, 2005

The remaking of the United States Supreme Court has been framed by the
most extreme ideologues in modern political history as a battle between
strict constructionists in white hats and their counterparts in moral
darkness: the judicial activists.

In keeping with the Orwellian nature of the neoconservative culture, whose
programmed indifference is delivered in the name of compassion, whose
evisceration of individual rights is coaxed in the name of justice, and
whose wars are prosecuted in the name of peace, the real judicial
activists are the very same champions of neoconservative federalism.

It is ludicrous to suggest that either John Roberts or Samuel Alito do not
have an agenda. For all of their professional lives, they have been
devoted to a rightwing cause of judicial activism.  That their cause is
regressive hardly negates its blatant activism.  Far from ruling passively
on the merits of the law in a given case, both men have pressed the cause
of federalism to the detriment of individual rights.

Federalism, with its roots extending backwards to the anti-democratic,
pro-aristocracy sector of our founders, is yet another Orwellian term for
it is dedicated to undermining, limiting and ultimately reducing federal
authority to a military function.  The federalists elevate states rights
to the detriment of federal authority because it is only the federal
authority that can protect civil rights, women's rights, voting rights,
worker rights, the right to privacy and the right to dissent.

In the federalist stratosphere of elites, corporate rights reign supreme
and the states form a barrier to federal interference.  Far from
ideological intransigence, when states step out of line (as Florida did in
the 2000 election), the federalists close ranks and conspire to restrict
them. The true goal of the Federalist Society is the creation of a
permanent ruling class with an unfettered corporate elite to sponsor it in
perpetuity.

At its very core, the federalists equate democracy with mob rule and
anarchy. They will go to the ends of the earth and beyond to prevent the
manifestation of a free and democratic society.

It is encouraging that a significant number of Democrats are rising to
their obligation as a party of opposition, finally questioning the war and
raising serious objections to the nomination of Judge Alito.  On the
matter of the Supreme Court, however, as they are well aware, the battle
is lost.  Whether it is Alito or some subsequent nomination that prevails,
the federalists will rule the court of John Roberts and, unless time works
its wonders of transformation (as it has before in judicial history), Lady
Liberty will rue the day for years and generations to come.

That we have lost the court, however, does not mean that we must surrender
the war. Rather, we must find new battlegrounds on which to press our own
cause: the cause of individual freedom and democracy.

First, we must exploit the battleground our enemies have exploited so
well: statewide referendum. Since we can no longer rely on federal
authority to secure our rights and liberties, we must do so on a
state-by-state basis. Given a lengthy history of deference to state
authority, the Roberts court will be reluctant to abandon precedent. When
we attack the excesses of corporate power, however, they will quickly shed
their reluctance and stand exposed as the judicial activists they are and
have always been.

Second, we must begin the long and difficult process of amending a
constitution that falls short of its greater purpose: the establishment of
an enlightened democracy.

1. The Right to Vote. The inherent right of all citizens to vote in free
and fair elections shall not be infringed by any act of government or its
authorized agents.

In the aftermath of the last two presidential elections, it came as a
shock to many of us that the citizens of this nation do not possess a
constitutional right to vote. It is past time that deficiency was
corrected.

2. The Right to Privacy. The right to privacy in one's person, thoughts
and possessions shall not be infringed without compelling interests
established in due process of law.

It has become something of a judicial conundrum that the right of privacy
is only implied in the constitution. Let us make it explicit.

3. Military Conscription. No citizen shall be compelled to military
service against his or her expressed will.

There is general if not bipartisan consensus that military conscription is
a crime against humanity.  Let us lead all nations in banning forever this
barbaric remnant of despotic rule.  If there are not sufficient soldiers
to fight a war of their own free will, that war should not be fought.

4. Equal Rights Amendment. Men and women shall have equal rights
throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.

This common sense amendment, authored by Alice Paul in 1923, in its
revised version of 1972, was ratified by thirty-five of the required
thirty-eight states. It is time it had a second run.

These four amendments are only a beginning to the process of achieving
enlightened democracy. Others include securing an independent media,
distinguishing individual rights from the presumed rights of corporations,
and the right of labor to organize on the principle of majority rule.

All is predicated on a favorable outcome in congressional elections.

As Tom Paine said in the first American Crisis, "Tyranny, like hell, is
not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the
harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

It will not be easy.

The battle lines have been drawn. We have witnessed an American
insurgency, a revolution, a takeover of all three branches of government
by the most repressive elements in our society.  We have seen what they
have wrought and we have glimpsed the darkness they have promised.  We
have never had greater reason to fight.

The counter-revolution begins next November.

Jack Random is the author of Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press)
the Jazzman Chronicles, Volumes I and II (City Lights Books). The
Chronicles have been published by CounterPunch, the Albion Monitor,
Buzzle, Dissident Voice and others. Visit his website: Random Jack.

[No, the counter-revolution had better begin NOW. -ed]


--------14 of 17--------

All the King's Media
by WILLIAM GREIDER
[from the November 21, 2005 issue]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051121/greider

Amid the smoke and stench of burning careers, Washington feels a bit like
the last days of the ancien rgime. As the world's finest democracy, we do
not do guillotines. But there are other less bloody rituals of
humiliation, designed to reassure the populace that order is restored, the
Republic cleansed. Let the perp walks begin. Whether the public feels
reassured is another matter.

George W. Bush's plight leads me to thoughts of Louis XV and his royal
court in the eighteenth century. Politics may not have changed as much as
modern pretensions assume. Like Bush, the French king was quite popular
until he was scorned, stubbornly self-certain in his exercise of power yet
strangely submissive to manipulation by his courtiers. Like Louis Quinze,
our American magistrate (whose own position was secured through court
intrigues, not elections) has lost the "royal touch." Certain influential
cliques openly jeer the leader they not so long ago extolled; others
gossip about royal tantrums and other symptoms of lost direction. The
accusations stalking his important counselors and assembly leaders might
even send some of them to jail. These political upsets might matter less
if the government were not so inept at fulfilling its routine obligations,
like storm relief. The king's sorry war drags on without resolution, with
people still arguing over why exactly he started it. The staff of life -
oil, not bread - has become punishingly expensive. The government is
broke, borrowing formidable sums from rival nations. The king pretends
nothing has changed.

The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the
governing classes. The public's darkest suspicions seem confirmed.
Flagrant money corruption, deceitful communication of public plans and
purposes, shocking incompetence - take your pick, all are involved. None
are new to American politics, but they are potently fused in the present
circumstances. A recent survey in Wisconsin found that only 6 percent of
citizens believe their elected representatives serve the public interest.
If they think that of state and local officials, what must they think of
Washington?

We are witnessing, I suspect, something more momentous than the disgrace
of another American President. Watergate was red hot, but always about
Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon. This convergence of scandal and failure
seems more systemic, less personal. The new political force for change is
not the squeamish opposition party called the Democrats but a common
disgust and anger at the sordidness embedded in our dysfunctional
democracy. The wake from that disgust may prove broader than Watergate's
(when democracy was supposedly restored by Nixon's exit), because the
anger is also splashing over once-trusted elements of the establishment.

Heroic truth-tellers in the Watergate saga, the established media are now
in disrepute, scandalized by unreliable "news" and over-intimate
attachments to powerful court insiders. The major media stood too close to
the throne, deferred too eagerly to the king's twisted version of reality
and his lust for war. The institutions of "news" failed democracy on
monumental matters. In fact, the contemporary system looks a lot more like
the ancien rgime than its practitioners realize. Control is top-down and
centralized. Information is shaped (and tainted) by the proximity of
leading news-gatherers to the royal court and by their great distance from
people and ordinary experience.

People do find ways to inform themselves, as best they can, when the
regular "news" is not reliable. In prerevolutionary France, independent
newspapers were illegal - forbidden by the king - and books and pamphlets,
rigorously censored by the government. Yet people developed a complex
shadow system by which they learned what was really going on - the news
that did not appear in official court pronouncements and privileged
publications. Cultural historian Robert Darnton, in brilliantly original
works like The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, has mapped the
informal but politically potent news system by which Parisians of high and
low status circulated court secrets or consumed the scandalous books known
as libelles, along with subversive songs, poems and gossip, often leaked
from within the king's own circle. News traveled in widening circles.
Parisians gathered in favored cafes, designated park benches or exclusive
salons, where the forbidden information was read aloud and copied by
others to pass along. Parisians could choose for themselves which reality
they believed. The power of the French throne was effectively finished,
one might say, once the king lost control of the news. (It was his
successor, Louis XVI, who lost his head.)

Something similar, as Darnton noted, is occurring now in American society.
The centralized institutions of press and broadcasting are being
challenged and steadily eroded by widening circles of unlicensed "news"
agents - from talk-radio hosts to Internet bloggers and others - who
compete with the official press to be believed. These interlopers speak in
a different language and from many different angles of vision. Less
authoritative, but more democratic. The upheaval has only just begun, but
already even the best newspapers are hemorrhaging circulation. Dan
Gillmor, an influential pioneer and author of We the Media, thinks
tomorrow's news, the reporting and production, will be "more of a
conversation, or a seminar" - less top-down, and closer to how people
really speak about their lives.

Which brings us to the sappy operetta of the reporter and her influential
source: Scooter Libby, the Vice President's now-indicted war wonk, and
Judith Miller, the New York Times's intrepid reporter and First Amendment
martyr. What seems most shocking about their relationship is the intimacy.
"Come back to work - and life," Scooter pleaded in a letter to Judy, doing
her eighty-five days in jail. "Out west, where you vacation, the aspens
will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots
connect them." Miller responded in her bizarre first-person Times account
by telling a cherished memory of Scooter. Out West, she said, a man in
sunglasses, dressed like a cowboy, approached and spoke to her: "Judy,
it's Scooter Libby."

Are Washington reporters really that close to their sources? For her part,
Miller has a "tropism toward powerful men," as Times columnist Maureen
Dowd delicately put it. This is well-known gossip in court circles, but
let's not go there. Boy reporters also suck up to powerful men with
shameful deference, wanting to be loved by the insiders so they can be
inside too (shades of the French courtiers). The price of intimacy is
collected in various coins, but older hands in the news business
understand what is being sold. The media, Christopher Dickey of Newsweek
observed in a web essay, "long ago concluded having access to power is
more important than speaking truth to it."

The elite press, like any narcissistic politician, tells a heart-warming
myth about itself. Reporters, it is said, dig out the hard facts to share
with the people by locating anonymous truth-tellers inside government.
They then protect these sources from retaliation by refusing to name them,
even at the cost of going to prison. That story line was utterly smashed
by this scandal. Reporters were prepared to go to jail to protect sources
who were not exactly whistleblowers cowering in anonymity. They were Libby
and Karl Rove - the king's own counselors at the pinnacle of government.
They were the same guys who collaborated on the bloodiest political
deception of the Bush presidency: the lies that took the country into war.
So, in a sense, the press was also protecting itself from further
embarrassment. The major media, including the best newspapers, all got the
war wrong, and for roughly the same reason - their compliant proximity to
power. With a few honorable exceptions, they bought into the lies and led
cheers for war. They ignored or downplayed the dissent from some military
leaders and declined to explore tough questions posed by anyone outside
the charmed circle. The nation may not soon forget this abuse of
privileged status, nor should it.

Leaks and whispers are a daily routine of news-gathering in Washington.
The sweet irony of President Bush's predicament is that it was partly
self-induced. His White House deputies enforced discipline on reporters
and insiders, essentially shutting down the stream of nonofficial
communications and closing the informal portals for dissent and dispute
within government. This was new in the Bush era, and it's ultimately been
debilitating. It has made reporters still more dependent on the official
spin, as the Administration wanted, but it has also sealed off the king
from the flow of high-level leaks and informative background noises that
help vet developing policies and steer reporters to the deeper news.

The paradox of our predicament is that, unlike the ancien rgime, US
citizens do enjoy free speech, free press and other rights to disturb the
powerful. In this country you can say aloud or publish just about anything
you like. But will anyone hear you? The audible range of diverse and
rebellious voices has been visibly shrunk in the last generation. The
corporate concentration of media ownership has put a deadening blanket
over the usual cacophony of democracy, with dissenting voices screened for
acceptability by young and often witless TV producers. Corporate owners
have a strong stake in what gets said on their stations. Why piss off the
President when you will need his good regard for so many things? Viewers
have a zillion things to watch, but if you jump around the dial, with luck
you will always be watching a General Electric channel.

How did it happen that the multiplication of outlets made possible by
technology led to a concentration of views and opinions - ones usually
anchored by the conventional wisdom of center-right sensibilities? Where
did the "freedom" go? Where are the people's ideas and observations? Al
Gore, who found his voice after he lost the presidency, recently expressed
his sense of alarm: "I believe that American democracy is in grave danger.
It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public
discourse." The bread-and-circuses format that monopolizes the public's
airwaves is driven by a condescending commercial calculation that
Americans are too stupid to want anything more. But that assumption
becomes fragile as other voices find other venues for expression. This is
an industry crisis that will be very healthy for the society, a political
opening to rearrange access and licensing for democratic purposes.

For the faltering press, the bloggers will keep sharpening their swords,
slicing away at the established order. This is good, but the pressure will
lead to meaningful change only if the Internet artisans innovate further,
organizing new formats and techniques for networking among more diverse
people and interests. The daily feed of facts and bile from bloggers has
been wondrously effective in unmasking the pretensions of the big boys,
but the broader society needs more - something closer to the democratic
"conversations and seminars" that Gillmor envisions, and less dependent on
partisan fury and accusation.

As an ex-Luddite, I came to the web with the skepticism of an old print
guy. Against expectations, I am experiencing sustained exchanges with many
far-flung people I've never met - dialogues that inform both of us and are
utterly voluntary experiences. This is a promising new form of consent.
Democracy, I once wrote, begins not at election time but in human
conversation. [Yes - ed]

Establishment newspapers like the New York Times face a special dilemma,
one they may not easily resolve. Under assault, do editors and reporters
align still more closely with the establishment interests to maintain an
air of "authority," or do they get down with folks and dish it out to the
powerful? Scandal and crisis compelled the Times to lower its veil of
authority a bit and acknowledge error (a shocking development itself). But
while the Times is in my view the best, most interesting newspaper, it
always will be establishment. For instance, it could be more honest about
its longstanding newsroom tensions between "liberals" and "neocons." What
the editors might re-examine is their own defensive concept of what's
authoritative. It is not just Bush's war that blinded sober judgment and
led to narrow coverage. In many other important areas - political decay
and global economics, among others - the Times (like other elite papers)
seems afraid to acknowledge that wider, more fundamental debate exists. It
chooses to report only one side - the side of received elite opinion.

Readers do understand - surprise! - that the Times is not infallible. A
newspaper comes out every day and gets something wrong. Tomorrow, it comes
out again and can try to get it right. In essence, that is what people and
critics already know. They are more likely to be forgiving if the
newspaper loosens up a bit and makes room for more divergent
understandings of what's happening. But as more irreverent voices elbow
their way into the "news" system, the big media are likely to lose still
more audience if they cannot get more distance from throne and power.

What will come of all this? Possibly, not much. The cluster of scandals
and breakdown may simply feed the people's alienation and resignation. The
governing elites, including major media, are in denial, unwilling to speak
honestly about the perilous economic circumstances ahead, the burgeoning
debt from global trade, the sinking of the working class and other
threatening conditions. When those realities surface, many American lives
will be upended with no available recourse and no one in authority they
can trust, since the denial and evasion are bipartisan. That's a very
dangerous situation for a society - an invitation to irrational angers and
scapegoating. It will require a new, more encompassing politics to avert
an ugly political contagion. We need more reliable "news" to recover
democracy.


--------15 of 17--------

Oil's Victory in Alaska, with a Dem Assist
Blood on the Tundra, Betrayal in the Rotunda
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch
November 4, 2005

For the past quarter century, there's been an annual ritual on Capital
Hill. Each spring, with the regularity of migrating warblers, the oil
lobby bursts into the halls of congress with a scheme to open to drilling
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, perched on the northern rim of Alaska
on the ice-bound Beaufort Sea. This seasonal onslaught prompts the big eco
groups to frenzied action, unleashing a blizzard of emergency fundraising
appeals adorned with shots of caribou and polar bears, pleading with their
members to send money immediately in order to "save the refuge". Year
after year, the face off has ended in a stalemate, with the politicians
pocketing cash from both sides.

Now this dance is over. After emerging from their closed door session on
the fabricated intelligence used to sell the Iraq war (supposedly evidence
of spinal-column regeneration by Democrats), the Senate proceed to once
again doom the nation's most treasured wildlife refuge. With a 51-48
pro-drilling vote yesterday on a deviously-crafted line item in the U.S.
Senate's budget bill, the oil industry has seized its most prized trophy:
access to reservoirs of crude beneath the 1.5 million-acre wildlife refuge
on the Arctic plain.

ANWR used to be an icon of the power of the environmental movement. Now it
stands as a symbol of its impotence. With ANWR, the most sacrosanct
stretch of land in North America, now pried open to the drillers,
everywhere else, from the Rocky Mountain Front to the coasts of Florida,
Oregon and California, is fair game.

It didn't come easy and in the end it took a feat of procedural
prestidigitation and the participation of a few well-placed Democrats to
seal ANWR's fate.

Over the last decade, as the Republicans' grip on Congress has tightened,
the fate of ANWR has depended on the judicious invocation of the
filibuster by anti-drilling forces in the senate. Even as the drilling
block gained a majority, they were never able to muster the 60 votes
needed for cloture, and the measure was repeatedly abandoned in the
doldrums of limitless senate debate.

In the past, ANWR measures have originated in the appropriations and
energy committees. But this time, the drilling scheme was secreted inside
the rules for the 2006 congressional budget resolution, which protected
the proposal from blockage by a filibuster.

This bit of legislative trickery was devised by Senator Ted Stevens. On
the eve of the senate vote, Stevens told his hometown paper, the Anchorage
Daily News, that he had been suffering from "clinical depression" for the
past three years over his inability to nail ANWR. "I'm really depressed,
as a matter of fact, I'm seriously - I'm seriously depressed," Stevens
told the News. "Unfortunately, clinically depressed. I've been told that,
because I've just been at this too long, 24 years arguing to get Congress
to keep its word. I'm really getting to the point where I'm taking on
people even in my own party that do things that I don't think is fair. You
get to that point where you're challenging your colleagues - that's not
exactly good. I really am very, very disturbed."

You can see why Stevens got a little sweaty. As the crucial vote neared,
he witnessed the defection of seven Republican senators: John McCain,
Gordon Smith, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chafee, Mike DeWine
and Norm Coleman.

The architect of Alaskan statehood and chief facilitator of the transfer
of the state's public resources to corporations bristled at critiques from
some in his own party that he had used sleazy tactics to secure victory.
"The only reason we're doing it [in the budget] is they filibustered for
24 years," Stevens, dressed for battle in his "Incredible Hulk" tie,
shouted on the floor of the senate, pounding his fist on the podium.
"Twenty-four years!"

If there's any good news to come out of this, it's that Stevens, one of
the most flagrantly corrupt members of congress, vows he'll retire once
ANWR is opened. Of course, with at least a decade's worth of lawsuits in
the works, he'll be mouldering in his grave long before a gallon of ANWR
crude ever sluices down the pipeline to Valdez.

The razor-thin victory in the senate hinged on the votes of three key
Democrats: the Hawai'ians Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka and Mary Landrieu
from the Cajun oil patch.

The Alaska and Hawaii delegations cruise through the congress like
synchronized swimmers, voting harmoniously when it comes to matters
involving the wishes of either state. They entered the union together, and
they will leave it in ruins together. Inouye calls Stevens his "brother".
Akaka, who fashions himself as the senate's most vocal defender of native
rights, said piously he was "saddened" that his vote trampled the concerns
of the G'wichin tribe, who live near the refuge and are subsistence
hunters of the Porcupine caribou herd, which is threatened by drilling.

When it comes to oil policy, Louisiana can be counted on to make it a
threesome. So it was no surprise to see Democrat Mary Landrieu offer her
vote to the oil cartel. She was simply following the path blazed years
before by her Democratic Party predecessors Bennett Johnston and John
Breaux.

A share of the blame for the loss of ANWR must fall at the feet of Bill
Clinton, Bruce Babbitt, and the claque of environmentalists who winked at
the Clinton administration's incursions into the Arctic for eight years.
When Clinton opened to drilling the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska,
only 90 miles to the west of ANWR and a landscape of almost identical
ecological features, Babbitt vowed that the oil could be extracted without
leaving anything more than a toeprint on the tundra. Bush and Stevens used
almost identical language to describe their plans for ANWR. So the
Clintonoids set the precedent for "environmentally-benign" oil drilling in
fragile ecosystems; they opened the gates to drilling ANWR.

In pushing for ANWR drilling, Bush emphasized the role Alaska oil would
play in boosting domestic supplies. But no one is really sure if there's
much oil under the tundra at all, and even the rosiest scenarios proffered
by the oil lobby suggest a big strike would only sate the nation's oil
thirst for something in the order of six months. In fact, the oil
companies, which have poked and prodded the edges of the Refuge for years
with exploratory wells, are all that excted about ANWR. They don't believe
there's that much oil in the Refuge and they know it's going to be a very
expensive and protracted ordeal to extract the crude and transport it down
the trans-Alaska pipeline to those supertankers in Valdez.

Another villain in this saga has been the Teamsters Union, under the
leadership of James Hoffa Jr. Hoffa has worked hand-in-hand with the
union-busting Ted Stevens on ANWR drilling measures over the past five
years. Hoffa hailed Stevens' arm-twisting tactics and praised the vote as
a victory for the union. "For the Teamsters, the primary motive for our
support of this effort has been constant and singular - job creation,"
Hoffa gloated. "The Teamsters will continue to fight to open ANWR until we
have succeeded. We look forward to putting this prolonged national debate
behind us and getting to work at developing the resources of ANWR."

The losing bid to keep the drillers out of ANWR was led by two Democrats
who have yet to relinquish designs on the White House: John Kerry and Joe
Lieberman. This humiliating defeat should send them both packing through
the exit along with Ted Stevens. But they will cling on, deploying the
same worn tactics that led to the corporate routs on the bankruptcy and
class action lawsuit bills.

ANWR has always been more about power politics than energy policy. Over
the past two-decades the Democrats and the greens establishment had been
able to stalement the Republicans. But now, even with a terminally
weakened Bush, that balance of power has shifted.

At this rate, only the Republicans will be able to save Social Security or
anything else.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green
to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon, new from Common
Courage Press.


--------16 of 17--------

If He Lied, He Must be Tried
A Majority Now Favors Impeachment
By DAVID LINDORFF
CounterPunch
November 4, 2005

Impeachment of the president has gone mainstream.

An astonishing 53 percent of Americans in a new poll released today by
Zogby International now support impeachment of President George W. Bush if
it can be shown that he lied to get the US into a war with Iraq.

Equally stunning, the poll, which was commissioned by the organization
After Downing Street, shows that even among so-called independents,
support for impeachment is 50 percent, and among Republicans, it has
reached 29 percent or more than one in four.

The poll, which surveyed 1200 people across the country during the Oct.
29-November 2 period, shows a marked rise in support for impeachment in
recent months.

In late June, Zogby, a non-partisan survey organization, polled using the
same question, and found 42 percent of the public in favor of impeachment
of the president.

Less than a month ago, Ipsos Public Affairs also polled on impeachment and
found 50 percent in favor.

John Zogby confesses to having been "surprised" at the latest result,
calling the 19 percent shift in favor of impeachment over four months'
time "remarkable" and "much higher than I expected."

The numbers have to be worrisome to an increasingly embattled White House.
After all, it suggests that a higher proportion of the American public now
favors impeachment than voted for him, even using the official vote totals
from the scandal-plagued 2004 election.

The numbers will give new urgency and energy to several grass-roots
organizations, including Democrats.com, Democracy Rising, and Not In Our
Name, which are all pressing for impeachment to be an issue in the 2006
congressional campaign.

In fact, Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, in announcing the latest
Zogby results, also announced formation of an impeachment campaign fund,
Impeach PAC, which he said hopes will quickly raise $100,000 via the
Internet to be parceled out to those congressional candidates who promise
to support an immediate simultaneous impeachment of President Bush and
vice President Dick Cheney for lying in the runup to the Iraq War.

The latest Zogby poll shows support for impeachment being the majority
position in all parts of the US except for the South and in all age groups
except for those 65 and older, only 42 percent of whom supported having
Congress oust the president.

Clearly, the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the mounting US death
toll in Iraq which has now passed the 2000 mark, and a string of
corruption scandals and poor decisions (notably the Katrina response) has
Americans ready to contemplate forcibly ousting the president from office
before his term is up.

So far, not one Democratic member of Congress has announced plans to enter
a bill of impeachment in the House.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns
titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at
www.thiscantbehappening.net.

He can be reached at: dlindorff [at] yahoo.com


--------17 of 17--------

 The Tyrant Spider
 A poem by Patrick Kanouse

 In corners, between tree limbs, through the night,
 The spider builds its web with single purpose.

 Like a dictator, it conjures a trap,
 Claims its victim bound its own self there.

 The victim's legs strive and struggle to free.
 This night the wind graces terror with calm.

 We can believe the victim watches
 The moon brighter than the city's lights

 Sweep faithfully from horizon to horizon,
 Lost like the pulse of love, the arc of faith.

 As the spider tenses its web, the victim
 Resigns resistance, banishes its future.

 The dictator shapes a river, drowns a town,
 While the poet drowns, drunk, in the midnight moon.


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