Obviously,  these are only very rough indicators and due diligence is also needed. But off the top of my head here are some things that will help you figure out whether  a writer is reliable or not.

1. Look at the writer’s track-record. With so much writing now on the web, it’s easy to research a writer and find out where they were standing on issues years ago. How does their performance stack up? You don’t need Nostradamus, but the conclusions of a  good writer/researcher will tend to be borne out most of the time.  If someone had told you in 2003 that  the Iraq war was going to be a cake-walk, had told you in 2006  to buy a bigger house for less money down,  and encouraged you to sell gold short in 2009, you might be forgiven if, in 2010, you’d come to suspect his intelligence or motives…or both.

2.  Look for details that you know about and see if the writer is accurate. If  she isn’t and there is no good reason, then be wary. What’s a good reason? Well, if a Scottish writer isn’t a Sinologist and doesn’t pretend to be one, a mistake about Chinese history can be put down to error. If he is a Sinologist, then he should know better.  If it is a one time mistake or a very minor one, put it down to sloppiness or human error. If it’s big and repeated, it’s not an error. It’s a sign of incompetence or disinformation.

3. Suspect cuing and stage whispers. When everyone in the blogosphere points you to certain sources over and over, be cautious. Sometimes it’s only a well-meaning attempt to help the public.  Mostly, however, it’s a way to control the debate. New and interesting research/analysis pops up all the time, from all sorts of people. Even alternative voices shouldn’t be set up as final authorities. I am especially suspicious when mainstream sources like the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post point to certain bloggers as more reliable.  These are efforts to co-opt or channel genuinely free, popular debates.

4.  Follow writers for a while, before you make up your mind. Making up your mind about the reliability of a source from one article is not only silly, it’s impossible.  You need to read  writers consistently for a long time on many different issues before you can assess their reliability. You should read as much as you can by a writer before coming to a judgment. Even then, it’s always wise to hold off dismissing someone entirely or buying into them completely.

5.  Realize that there are constraints on everyone who writes publicly. There is no such thing as perfectly open or transparent writing.  Sometimes writers don’t touch on certain topics because they might distract, not because they are “covering up.” Or they might fear libel suits. Or they might feel they don’t know enough to comment. Or they might think they aren’t the right people to comment.   An immigrant might feel diffident about discussing questions about national security. A heterosexual male might not want to corner a debate on female experiences of rape. Some writers won’t touch material that is controversial not because they are careerists, but because they have family members who might be vulnerable to harassment. Give people a break. Put yourself in their shoes – how much would you write if someone was threatening you or blackmailing you or warning you you’d lose your job?

6. Pay attention to style and tone. Credible sources rely on logic, reason, facts and evidence. They are likely to be cautious in interpreting events until they have researched them personally. If they are passionate, it is genuine emotion, not cheap rhetoric, personal attacks and vulgarities. When confronted with a mistake, they are reasonable enough to acknowledge it and make corrections or retractions.  They compare and evaluate their sources and admit when they don’t know something. They apologize, if necessary. They tend to be  personally polite, even if they are critical or sharp in their general tone. Denunciation of  monetary policy is not the same thing as calling someone a buffoon and a liar because he disagrees with your way of thinking.

7. Study the main logical fallacies (red herrings, straw men, hasty generalizations – you know, all the stuff in English 101) and check whether a writer is prone to making  them or not.  Repeated use of ad hominem is one of the surest signs of a propagandist. However,  make sure you know the difference between ad hominem and criticism that is warranted and related to the target’s professional conduct.  If you don’t know the difference,  study and find out.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned anything about credentials, prizes, fame, peer recognition, or publishing record. This isn’t because I think those things are irrelevant. But I don’t any more think they are good guides to a source’s reliability. There are well-credentialed people who are reliable and there are people who have no recognizable credentials who are. There are prize-winning highly-paid journalists who are great. And there are unpaid bloggers who are too.

As for peer review, some of the best information comes to writers in the form of anonymous links and tips. Or on forums that the mainstream won’t touch with a barge-pole. Or from insiders who don’t want their names in the press.  Even scholars work in herds.

8. Check your gut reaction. Truth-telling on controversial matters  is usually a lonely business or done with only the company of other loners. Once the crowd gets in on the act, even the best popular movements go awry.  The reason is most people automatically tailor their thoughts to please others. It’s part of man’s inherently social nature. White lies are natural to even the best of us.  And when we’re not lying to others, we’re busy soothing our egos with more lies.

And that’s why the most important tip I can give you is one that doesn’t even have to do with other people. It’s to do with yourself.

It is simple. Look inside and do some truth-telling there as well.

The more honest and truthful you are, the more you will recognize it in others.

Thus say both Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. And the public believes them. How come?

It all began in March. In the first televised interview by any sitting Fed chairman in 20 years,¹ Bernanke used the term, “green shoots” for the first time. He pointed out that the Dow Jones index had recovered from 12 year lows in 2008 and the banking system had stabilized. No more big banks would fail, he predicted.²

Two months later, His Timness echoed Big Ben. Geithner cited reduced spreads on corporate and muni bonds, the reduction in costs in credit protection at the big banks, and smaller risk premiums in the interbank market. He too said the economy was recovering.³

In June, World Bank President Robert Zoellick joined the ‘shooters.’

Zoellick is a former US trade representative notorious for forcing US government subsidies and trade policies inimical to small farmers onto emerging markets. Zoellick noted “signs of global recovery,” but cautioned that they might be killed off if protectionism were adopted.⁴

Translation: foreigners had better not object to US government-managed trade policies…or the global recovery will fold.

Put out… or look out.

Zoellick added his own revealing metaphor to the shooter lexicon: “Right now there is a low-grade fever; it isn’t full influenza, but we need to keep a close watch…” [my emphasis]

Oddly, Zoellick’s own employees at the World Bank contradicted their boss’s assessment in a report only a couple of weeks later. (See “World Bank Global Economic Outlook” below.)

By then billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros was also seeing green. And in July, chief wonk of the Obama economic team Lawrence Summers detected greenery in remarks to the Peterson Insitute for International Economics.

Green shoots were now being sighted by everyone:

• In July the International Monetary Fund published its World economic outlook update. The Fund revised expected global growth in 2010 upward to 2.5%. The main source of the improvement, it claimed, was a brightening outlook for Asia.
• Simon Johnson, IMF economist–turned-Peterson-Institute-spokesman-turned green-shooting-star even went on PBS to announce, “we are turning some sort of corner.” (August 20, 2009)
• Surveys of economists and business leaders in the summer showed that, in contrast to only a few months earlier, slightly more than half thought that the economy had bottomed.

Question: How can a depression heralded as equal to or worse than the Great Depression, a depression described as a ‘reckoning’ for over a quarter of a century of economic misdeeds, correct itself in less than a year?

Answer: It can’t.

Yet, by mid-year, that’s exactly what pundits were telling the public. And that’s exactly what the public was beginning to believe. Not surprisingly, by mid-year, stock markets the world over had rebounded sharply.

White Hats and White Lies

But the economy hadn’t really turned any corners. What was unfolding was a giant sleight-of-hand. The “good guys” of the liberal corporate-state were pulling a fast one, doing two contradictory things at the same time.

On one hand, Team Obama had to admit the enormity of the crisis, in order to justify the size of its own rescue efforts. Thus Tim Geithner in his statement to the banking committee in May took care to note the following:

1. The economy had lost 2.1 million jobs from December to February ’09, the largest three-month decline since 1945. (the second-largest three-month decline in 1975 was only half as big).

2. GDP fell at an average annual rate of 5.9 percent in Quarter 4 ’08 and Quarter 1 ’09 — the fastest six-month rate of decline since 1958.

3. Even before policy changes, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting a budget deficit for 2009 well in excess of a trillion dollars because of the weak economy.

4. The US faced economic problems of such a “unique character” that Congress had had to adopt the largest fiscal stimulus package in the nation’s history, at 5% of GDP.

On the other hand, Team O also had to pretend that the rescue had improved things dramatically or people would ask what the point of it was.

The Obamites managed to pull this off with a slew of white lies.

Some of the biggest ones:

Fudge One: Goldman Sachs had a great quarter, making a profit of $3.5 billion and the government made $1.4 billion on its investment in Goldman Sachs. The government also got a 15% return on its investment in the eight biggest banks.

Truth: Goldman had a great quarter only because it moved its reporting calendar to cut out December 2008, when it had a loss. And the goverment only made a profit on the TARP money it gave to Goldman because

• It funnelled more money via the bail-out of insurance giant AIG to AIGs counterparties, including Goldman (which took in $13 billion of the AIG money).
• Warren Buffett made a pre-TARP financial investment in Goldman.
• Goldman got the benefit of exceptionally low interest rates from the government at the expense of savers and to the benefit of borrowers.
• Goldman was issued FDIC-guaranteed bonds.

Without that extra welfare thrown at it, Goldman would actually be broke, not showing a profit. Ditto for the other banks.

Fudge Two: The labor market is getting better because jobs are growing. The unemployment rate fell from 9.5% in June to 9.4% in July.

Truth: That number only shows a slowing in the growth of unemployment. And even that small improvement has been offset by other aspects of the labor market that are worsening quite sharply:

• The duration of uemployment is increasing.
• Temporary jobs are declining.
• The percentage of the eligible population receiving unemployment insurance has increased (0.1 percentage point to 4.7%. by September).
• The four-week moving average of initial claims has moved to its highest level in a month⁵

Even when jobs have been added, they’ve been created by government spending and they’ve been in areas like education, health, and government. In the purely private economy, in manufacturing, construction and retail, job losses have been huge.”⁶

Note: Recent improvement in the ISM (Institute of Supply Management) Index that signals expansion of production (and thus hiring) also needs to be discounted against the huge price inflation an increasingly pressured dollar will entail. That’s beside the effects of a hike in the Federal Funds rate that’s bound to follow a dollar crashing scenario.

Note also: The ISM is a leading indicator of executive expectations for future productions, orders, inventories hiring, and deliveries.

Fudge Three: Increases in real personal income in April and May will increase consumer spending.

Truth: The increases were caused by tax-rebates and unemployment benefits kicking in, and most of it was saved, not spent (80 cents on the dollars). There was a temporary lift in consumer spending, but it petered out quickly. And as unemployment rises, benefits decline, and credit tightens in the future, consumption will decline even further

Fudge Four: The bank stress tests came out better than expected.

The bank stress tests led Ben Bernanke to conclude that nearly all of the banks had enough capital to absorb higher losses should the economy worsen, and that the Treasury stood ready to provide more.⁷

Truth: The bank stress tests used an unemployment figure of 10.3% (the most adverse case). But unemployment is likely to be 11% and above by next year. If you take into account discouraged and partially employed workers, some economists suggest the figure is more likely to be 16%.

Another point. The stress tests overlooked all the other ways in which the government was paying for the banks, through FDIC guarantees and cheaper loans, for instance.

Fudge Five: The housing market is improving.

In July, the Pending Home Sales Index was up 3.2%.

Another improvement was in the value of U.S. homes. In the second quarter that number fell year-on-year (the 10th consecutive quarterly decline), but it fell by a smaller amount than in the previous quarter, for the first time since 2007.

Truth: The improvement in home sales has been mostly in the lower end of the market and it largely reflects foreclosure sales and government credit, not real improvement in the market.

The slow-down in price decline has been offset by negatives in other areas:

• 23% of all homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.
• 22% of all home sales nationwide in June were foreclosure resales.
• 29.2 percent of all homes sold in June were sold for less than the owners originally paid.⁸

Loan problems aren’t confined to subprime. Prime mortgages are going underwater too.

Meanwhile, the market also has to deal with the decline in commercial real estate, which is undergoing one of the greatest contractions in retail in decades. Rents, even in the best urban shopping districts, have been declining.⁹

Beyond commercial real estate, there are also all the other plagues about to visit us, when personal loans, auto loans, and student loans tighten over the coming years.

Bottom line? There is no real basis for sustained optimism about the economy yet. Simon Johnson’s relatively upbeat assessment reflects only temporary inputs:

• the government’s reflation effort (that created cheaper credit)
• business write-downs (that created better balance-sheets)
• the business cycle (that leads to restocking and inventories rising)

Johnson cites low inflation as another positive factor. However, with all the money pumped into the economy (including the latest cash-for-clunkers scheme), that’s also unlikely to be anything more than temporary.

This harsh reality is reflected in the World Bank Global Outlook Report of June 22, 2009. It notes the following for 2009:

• Global growth is set to fall by 2.9%
• World trade is likely to shrink by nearly 10%
• Industrial production in rich countries will drop by 15% from August 2008
• Developed economies will contract by 4.5% in 2009 and grow only in 2010 and 2011
• The US economy will decline by 3%
• Private capital flows to developing countries are likely to be halved, from $US 707 billion (2008) to $US363 billion (2009)
• Industrial production in developing countries, excluding China, is set to fall by 10%
• GDP growth in developing countries will fall from 5.9% (2008) to 1.2%.

A Verbal Pandemic Infects the Economy

Given this underlying reality, the media’s success in manipulating market sentiment has been nothing short of astounding.

And all it seems to have taken was the viral proliferation of a single meme. Call it a verbal pandemic.

Go back to March, when there was a second rescue of AIG and Citi in the offing, the Madoff investigation was expanding, and the US had a face-off with China.¹⁰ Fear was widespread and consumer and business confidence were at multidecade lows.

To take one indicator, Google searches for “economic depression” were four times what they were before the crisis broke in 2008.

Then Bernanke came out with the phrase, “green shoots.” After he introduced it, it showed up 3,123 times in news articles that month. Compare that to 436 in February (according to Nomura Holdings Inc. research).

Bulls and bears both used it. It was applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the Iranian demonstrations.

In four months, ‘green shoots’ had grown seven-fold. Today, a Google search for the meme fetches 3.31 million hits.

As the phrase spread across the media, Bloomberg noted that business and consumer confidence spread with it. Sentiment changed. People stopped panicking and started talking about buying opportunities. It was that change in mood that let administration economists build their flimsy case for economic recovery.

Take a look at Summers’ list of improving indicators in his speech at the Peterson Institute on July 17. You’ll see the proof. At least five of the metrics Summers cites relate to sentiment. I’ve highlighted the relevant words.

• Most businesses are now expecting better times, not worse, as they’d expected 6 mths earlier.
• Consumer sentiment is improving.
• Options are showing a less than one percent chance of the Dow falling below 5000 in 2009 (they were once showing a better than 15% chance).
• Private forecasters are expecting positive growth at the end of 2009.
• Google searches for economic depression are back to normal. (Yes, that’s on Summers’ list).

Let me repeat this.

It took two simple syllables, neither beyond the reading ability of a pre-schooler, for people to discount the hard evidence of the numbers and the harder evidence on the streets in favor of a sales pitch by the government.

We might even go a bit further. The stimulus by itself can have done no more than buy time for the banks and take the pressure of the interbank market. It’s taken sustained propaganda for banks and businesses to regain enough confidence to operate.

And they’ve regained confidence not in the economy, but in the government.

In brief, a story-line two words long shows up rational man of for a fiction and a fraud. Economic man, the maximiser of his self-interest, turns out not to exist.

Of course, outside economic text books, he had never existed. Man, as we find him in the world, adds up numbers as an afterthought to his feelings. When he feels good, he massages his numbers upward. When he feels bad, the numbers are downcast with him.

Economists who have caught on to this know that what they practice is no science of enlightenment. It is a black art. The knowledge keeps them humble.They stick to describing things the way things actually work. They look just ahead of their noses and count themselves lucky if they can balance their check books at the end of the day.

But government economists labor under the delusion of omnipotence. To a man, they believe they can make bull frogs sing in tune and bats bathe in the sunshine. It isn’t enough that their theories blew up the market. For that alone, lesser men would have cut open their veins or thrown themselves under a passing tram.

Now the delusion is they can fix it. And that is where the meme of ‘green shoots’ figures. It’s task was not so much to boost confidence in the markets as it was to boost confidence in the ability of government experts to fix markets.

For that, visible success.. or even marginal competence.. is no longer needed. The old rain-men had to make rain or they were fed to the lions. The rain-men of today can produce drought… or famine, or even plague and they become lions.

The more they fail, the more they are believed. When they have been completely refuted, they become Nobel laureates. They may not know what ails the market, but they know for certain it takes a village of economists to fix it.

Or, as economist Robert Samuelson put it in a sharp criticism of Summers’ speech at the Peterson Institute: “If the president and his allies claim often enough that their policies have succeeded, most Americans may believe them.”¹¹

1. CBS, 60 Minutes
2. AFP, March 15, 2009.
3. Tim Geithner, Statement before the Senate Banking Committee, May 20, 2009.
4. Reuters, June 8, 2009.
5. Thomson Reuters, September 3, 2009.
6. Brown manure not green shoots,” Nouriel Roubini, Forbes, July 9, 2009.
7. AFP, “Hope is alive for ‘green shoots’ as stress tests trigger optimism,” May 11, 2009.
8. Portfolio.com August 11, 2009.
9. Colliers International Spring 2009 Retail Report, May 14 2009.
10. “Nightmare on Wall Street,” Lew Rockwell, April 1, 2009.
11. “Summer’s Spin: We Did It,” Newsweek, July 17, 2009.

That’s what he told a Thomson Reuters Newsmaker ahead of the G20 meeting in London on April 1. According to Bobby Z, the global economy is going to contract by 1.7 percent this year, compared to growing by 1.9 percent last year.

He didn’t define growth.

He’s not suggesting that a decline in the velocity of derivative hot-potato is a decline in growth, is he?
I hope not.

But he did define poverty.
A buck twenty-five a day, he says.

Well, here’s what. A buck twenty-five in India is about sixty rupees. Which will buy you enough to eat for a day in India.
Which is all that matters to a poor Indian.

That makes a poor Indian better off than a derivative big-shot in Manhattan, at the end of the day.
He won’t be broke….. with other people’ money.
Or, in the red…. up to infinity

And that’s where you, me, and Bobby Z are now, after several trillion bucks.

I’ll take a buck-fifty in an Indian village, any day.

Maybe we need a new definition of poverty.
Or, we need a new president of the World Bank.

Not yet another axe-man
from the Sachs men.

Especially one who’s gone in and out of Treasury, the Department of State, and practically every US trade delegation in the last twenty years like a cheap suit through a Chinese laundromat and was — get this — an executive vice-president at none other than Fannie Mae.

That would be just around the time (1993-1997) they were shoving every one with a pulse (and many without) into subsidized housing.

Who else would we want cleaning up the nuclear fall-out from the housing bubble, if not one of the leading bubble-heads around, right?

Besides advising Enron on finance and screaming for war in Iraq, I don’t know if you could come up with a more radioactive resume than that.

Oh, that’s right, Zoellick’s got those two wrapped up, as well.

(Wiki: Zoellick signed the January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton from PNAC that advocated war against Iraq. During 1999, Zoellick served on a panel that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues.)

What a busy fellow. Quite the boy wonder.

And oh — look. He’s into fancy innovations too.
He’s the guy who’s been shoving genetically-modified food down European gullets, like it or not.

(The”Big Five” biotech companies–Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Dow Chemical, and Aventis–control 937 out of 1085 biotech patents).

And he’s shown he can shove it down Asian gullets too.

He’ll do anything to get rid of poverty, will our Bobby, even if it means getting rid of the poor. From high-tech food to high-tech finance, Zoellick’s a big believer in force-feeding.

Now he wants the G-20 to endorse a new $50 billion Global Trade Liquidity Programme (translated from the Higher Financialeze that reads Got To Love These Pigs), which combines a billion from the World Bank with “financing from governments and regional development banks,” which gets “leveraged by a risk-sharing arrangement with major private sector partners.”

We hate to bring cold logic into such a touchy-feely, lovey-dovey arrangement, but does “risk-sharing” mean the private-sector partners could go broke too?

Or, at least, get a fatal SIV? Because that’s what sharing risk usually means.
(Maybe we need a needle-exchange program for credit-heads, but that’s another story).

And all of this risk-sharing is just to help the poor in Asia out?
It brings a tear to our cynical eye, Bobby.

Such sharing. Why, it’s chummier than anything since David and Jonathan, this private-public partnership.

Oh, that’s right. Tim Geithner came up with that brainwave recently too.
(I guess that’s what being a Goldman alum does for you. It gives you the same sort of brainwaves).

And who would they be, these generous Fezziwigs of Finance, these Monetary Mother Theresas?

Standard Chartered, Standard Bank, and Rabobank, we hear.
Rabobank?
We feel a brainwave coming on ourselves.
Wasn’t Rabobank one of AIG’s needle-sharers…er…counterparties?

And doesn’t that mean that, one way or other, the Fed has already done one of their hot little private-public lapdances with Rabobank?

I mean, how many private-public partnerships do you get to go through before people start calling you…

you know….

a two-bit bore.

I can smell it. The nation’s preachers are out in full force. First, there was President Obama telling us we needed to have a great race healing. Now, Attorney-General Eric Holder comes out to tell us we’re still segregated. We work together, but then we live and play by ourselves in segregated groups. We’re all cowards when it comes to race, says Holder.

Holder might have had a point and so might Obama had they spoken at any other time…and in any other way. But frankly the only segregation that really matters now is the segregation of the political class and its clients from the rest of us. It doesn’t matter which neighborhood you live in, black, white, brown or parti-colored – they all spell b-r-o-k-e the same way.

Barack Obama is a likeable guy. Not for one minute do I believe that he ‘s doing anything but the best he can. He’s sincere.

That may just be the trouble. It seems to be the delusion of societies to think they lack precisely what they have too much of. C.S. Lewis said as much. Cultures awash with hedonism believe themselves puritanically repressed; societies long lost to any orthodoxy fear religious dogma; and now with race at the center of talk shows and college seminars, of gym etiquette and prison protocol, we’re told that more race-talk is what we need.

Is it?

Do we really need to spend more time spewing what we think of each other like inbred cousins on a Jerry Springer show? Jerry used to be my vacuum time, so I actually know how those things ended – in a scrum of tattoos and ripped shirts, fake hair and flying cusses.

If that’s togetherness, a bit of segregation might be more civil.

And a bit of proportion might be more sensible.

We can call it segregation today, but I wonder what people segregated a century ago would think about that. Students clustered in groups of their own choosing are not terrified men and women fleeing dogs and police batons.

Actually, you don’t need to go back a century. You can find the same thing today in prisons, at non-violent demonstrations, wherever people are rounded up and snatched out of their houses. The victims are black, brown and white. And they’re not where they are because we don’t talk enough about race in this country. They’re there because we don’t talk enough about the state.

I’m almost afraid to write this way because any criticism of the current shibboleths about race is apt to get you into trouble. Many people, for instance, think we should hear out any African-American voice on race, without dissent. It seems like the decent thing to do after their history of oppression in this country. So African-Americans get race and soul, much as Indians get non-violence and yoga, Native Americans get medicine-men and beads, the Chinese get martial arts and acupuncture…and the Irish get shamrocks, booze and dreadful childhoods.

This we call authentic. Lived experience makes for credibility, we tell ourselves.

Maybe so.

But from another perspective it looks a lot like segregation too. Intellectual segregation. If African Americans get to talk to us about race, and only race, then we don’t really have to listen to them on anything else. Conversation becomes a fairly predictable thing with each party trotting out the lines allowed to them…and the rest of us compelled to sit through it because we’ve learned that to question might taint us as bigots, haters, mean-spirited, bitter, resentful, and any of the carefully chosen buzz words that police the boundaries of polite discourse.

Mr. Holder worries about college students picking whom they want to sit next to at lunch. He wonders why we should be integrated at our workplaces but set apart in our play-time and in our living.

But that’s no mystery.

It’s precisely when we’re focused on things outside our group identities that those identities recede into the background. When someone’s throwing me a rope to get me out of a burning house, neither of us has much time for thinking about skin colors or nose shapes. We’re more interested in making sure we escape without being scorched to a crisp. Should we survive, we’ll feel kindly to each other. Our differences might even become a plus. If anything goes wrong, we might blame it on those differences. But at least, we’ll still focus on what we accomplished or didn’t accomplish as human beings.

What I mean is this: at work, in school, on a team, race recedes quite naturally into the background. If you doubt it, ask why integration took place first on the battle-field and on the sports-field.

It’s in our off-time, with no task at hand, that race begins to loom as a problem. And not only race. Gender, age, occupation, class, religion – any of these can become trouble. It usually takes some strong belief to paper over the trouble.

Now, in America religious beliefs are – at least, theoretically – banished from the public sphere. The rationale is that they’re too different to live together peaceably. And among political beliefs, the most American of them – the belief in individuals and free markets – is, at least theoretically, at odds with a strong notion of the public sphere. That tends to leave us more fragmented than smaller, more cohesive societies. That’s the way it is with multi-ethnic, multi-cultural empires

With common purpose absent, all that’s left to us is affirmation of process. Which is why constitutionality becomes paramount in America.

But even constitutionality can’t be unhinged entirely from common purpose or common meaning. Because, if there’s no point to a process, all things become equally point-less.

Or, to put it another way, equally point-ed; they are meant only to score points.

That is to say, a process devoid of an underlying common meaning tends to become purely and entirely political; it’s only rationale is to produce whatever results we want at the moment.

So, when we get rid of purpose, in sneaks production. Not production driven from the bottom by demand. This production is driven from the top, by planning.

And so you get the commissar. And the clients of the commissar.

You get the corporate-state.

In the corporate-state, getting what you want is all that matters, and the words by which you get what you want, the words by which you score points and keep score, are not conversations among citizens. They’re slogans intended to scatter the herd hither and thither or drive it from this point to that.

Words in the corporate-state become forms of coercion. We’re fed language whose purpose is less to bind us together in common humanity as it is to drive us where we cannot truthfully be led.

It is a language of fraud. It is propaganda.

It is the language of empire.

An empire that has to keep its white, black and brown citizens, its Christians, Jews and Muslims, its men and women, its poor, middling and rich, constantly focused on the most divisive things about them, in order to keep them from focusing on what might actually bring them together – the task at hand.

We may or may not be cowards about race, Mr. Holder. But we’re far bigger cowards about facing up to the way race is used in politics in this country today:

   as a red herring – to distract

   as a red rag – to goad

   as a red light – commanding us to stop and go no further.

No amount of preacher talk can hide that. No amount of cant about race should stop us from talking about the one thing we do need to talk more about: the nature and goal of the state power under which we live today.

None of this should really be surprising. During his time at Goldman Sachs, Paulson made millions of dollars for his firm in China, with commensurate rewards for himself.

In 2006, Goldman Sachs bought into China’s largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for $2.58, one of a number of such deals cut with Chinese state entities, as neoconservative hawks were quick to note. According to knowledgeable people, its profit of $3.9 billion was the biggest ever for the firm since its founding in 1869.

Goldman also bought a stake in Tokyo’s Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, the third largest financial group in Japan in 2003 ($1.26 billion), in return for which, Sumitomo Mitsui loaned billions to Goldman Sachs for its investment-grade clients. Both that and the ICBC deal were financed with Goldman’s own money and with investments by its partners, institutions and wealthy clients.

What’s more, Goldman earned more fees than any other of its global competitors in China, being the only foreign securities firm allowed to both trade stocks for brokerage clients and arrange share sales for companies. (Wonder why Paulson acts so high-handedly? Goldman is notorious for such conflicts.)

Knowing that Goldman is the source of a bunch of the credit default swaps now clogging up global finances, we can safely surmise that its Asian clients are now suffering the same toxic shock afflicting its American and European clients.

A Wall Street legend for paranoia and secrecy, The Firm didn’t let on for a while how badly it too had been hit. That front fell apart this fall when its stock price swooned, along with those of other financial firms. Recently, the New York Times reported exactly how much Goldman stood to lose from contracts with insurance giant, AIG. If AIG had gone under, Goldman would have lost $20 billion.

The Times also reported, apparently as revelation, that Lloyd Blankfein, current CEO of Goldman, attended weekend meetings with AIG, Paulson, and others before the AIG rescue was put through. (Amazing. Powerful corrupt financiers cut backroom deals with each other and twist arms in powerful corrupt DC. Who would have thought? Of course, in the alternative press we were aware of Goldman’s less than Boy Scout past much before the Times lost its innocence, but better late than never.)

Now we can guess why it was necessary to convert Goldman so quickly into a commercial bank. With access to customer deposits, the bank would be able to replenish its capital in short order.
Does Paulson profit personally? Reportedly, he sold his own shares in Goldman before being sworn in as Treasury Secretary in June 2006. Still, the meetings between Blankfein, AIG, Treasury, and the Federal Reserve sound like the worst kind of cronyism, given AIG’s subsequent rescue. And they’re not the only problem.

1) The amendment of reserve requirements (in Section 128, in both the original and amended versions of the Paulson plan) is another:

Section 203 of the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006 (12 U.S.C. 461 note) is amended by striking ‘October 1, 2011’ and inserting ‘October 1, 2008.’

As Pam Martens points out, this amendment would allow banks to hold zero reserves for transactions, a very enticing prospect for an investment bank in such dire need of capital it had to reinvent itself as a deposit-taking retail bank. And this would go through before the election, before the political scene was altered drastically.

2) The bailout of the financial sector, especially Goldman Sachs, is now a matter of keen interest to a large number of wealthy and influential foreigners — both individuals and private and state-run banks. Paulson’s long-standing ties with these foreign entities, as well as with leading financial entities all over the world, in and of itself constitutes a powerful conflict-of-interest and opens up the question of foreign influence on one of the most powerful offices in our government. (For instance, since June 2006, more than 100 ICBC executives have attended courses at Goldman’s New York training center, where tutors include Gerald Corrigan, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who teaches a course on risk management (of all things). ICBC’s board includes Christopher Cole, Goldman’s chairman of investment banking. One of its directors is former Goldman President John Thornton.)

When the American state has interests it declares at odds with those of the Chinese state in a number of areas, for example in Africa (where Goldman has a 20% stake in Africa’s largest bank, Standard Bank); when servicemen and women are fighting and dying, ostensibly to protect those interests; when we are threatening other countries with bombing in defense of those interests; shouldn’t the appearance of foreign entities influencing the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve policy be treated seriously and transparently?

3) If Goldman went down, ICBC would be severely hit. And so would ICBC’s clients and other investors in ICBC. But it looks like Mr. Paulson would take a big loss too. According to press reports, Mr. Paulson netted a stake reported to be $25 million in the ICBC deal, a stake he and Goldman, as well as investors in Goldman’s private equity funds, are prohibited from selling for three years. A hit to Goldman would hit ICBC (and who knows what else). And a hit to ICBC would hit Paulson’s pocket.

Did Mr. Paulson sell this ICBC stake before he took office or didn’t he? It would be in the national interest to require him to make a public disclosure before this bill is passed.

And then he should resign.

But since the bill was defeated on Monday, Gingrich has been talking as though tweaking the Paulson plan on a couple of things would be enough to get it through next time. One tweak, he suggests, would be to have the government insure the bad loans on the books of financial institutions. This is somehow supposed to be an improvement on the plan that would make it acceptable to Republicans (along with the removal of mark-to-market accounting).

Well, insurance is actually already a part of the bill that was just defeated (Section 102). Section 102 would guarantee bad loans (sorry, troubled assets) by creating risk-based premiums to cover anticipated claims.

So, rather than buying bad loans, which at least has the remote chance that the government would get the price increase if they ever recovered their value, the government is proposing to guarantee them. That means if these troubled assets got less troubled, even positively robust, the banks — not the government — would get the price increase. But if they don’t get better, who picks up the tab? The government.

An insurance fund offers the prospect of all kinds of interesting shenanigans. Banks could claim to make losses, while actually taking in profits. They could keep doing that for another whole cycle. The possibilities are endless for savvy professionals with degrees in math and sophisticated risk-models.

Why would I suspect these respectable institutions of doing any such thing? Because that’s just what they’ve been doing for a long time — as the ongoing FBI investigations into over two dozen of the firms involved in the bail- outs is showing.

So when I read that Barack Obama also wants to ‘do something’ about insurance, I have to wonder at this bi-partisan interest. Especially when I know that the Treasury Secretary’s former bank, Goldman Sachs, made huge profits from derivative trading and created the complex structures that have got the banks into such a mess. Goldman has behaved almost like a hedge fund over the last two decades, setting up some of the most questionable financial structures for clients that range from media moghul Robert Maxwell (who swindled pensioners), to Enron (we know how that went), to Fannie and Freddie (ditto), Ghana’s Ashanti Gold (which was ruined by the disastrous hedge portfolio Goldman created) and AIG ( now under FBI investigation).

My suspicions mount when I find that Goldman has turned itself into a commercial bank that can take in deposits; that it was showing signs of having taken a hit before it did so; that Warren Buffett is so certain about Goldman’s future growth he’s taken a multibillion dollar stake in it; that Buffett’s firm General Re was involved in fraud with AIG; that Goldman was the counterparty in a lot of AIG’s credit default contracts; that AIG continues to be under investigation for insurance fraud dating back to the 1990s; that Goldman is also a large government contractor and has been involved in fraud there too, including on sales of bonds to municipalities.

And now Obama wants to raise the amount of money that government insurance on deposits in banks would back, from $100,000 to $250,000. Who could be against that, right?

Actually, they could. Raising the amount of money insured certainly is good for the banks. It encourages depositors to keep money in them, which helps keep capital in the system and lets the banks keep lending and making money.

It also seems to be good for depositors. Their money now has the full faith and credit of the US government behind it. If the banks lose the money, the government fund (FDIC) pays.

The only problem in this is that FDIC is tax-payer money, so ultimately it’s the tax-payer who foots the bill. By spreading risk, insurance can actually create a moral hazard problem, encouraging the very practices it is supposedly insuring against. That is, the fact that the deposits are insured, makes the banks much more willing to make risky investments with your money. You go along because you’re getting higher interest rates. In the competition for getting higher and higher interest rates, the banks do riskier things and they get right back into the mess they’re in now.

But it gets worse. The deposit insurance fund is already nearly depleted from repeated bail-outs of failed banks. So where does the money to replenish it come from, right now, should there be claims? (You know there will be claims… and lots of them coming. And insurance will encourage even more).

Put another way: who will insure the insurers?

Actually, his statement was not anywhere as clear as that. In the second half, the CNN report said Tancredo would bomb in retaliation for a terrorist attack on the homeland

(Bushspeak for America); in the second, that it would preemptively bomb to deter such an attack.

Then again, linguistic precision hasn’t been a noted attribute of this administration, which for the last half a decade has pretended that preemption is no more than deterrence and prevention.

Take President Bush:

“If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack, when the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize.”

In this piece, even before attacks materialize — whose time and place are uncertain — Bush urges self-defense, by which, naturally, he means attack. And what would we be attack-er-defending against?

Oh, that would be potential. As in potential terrorism.

Attack in self-defense to deter the potential of an uncertain terrorist attack.

You get it.

Or perhaps the point is you don’t.

Of course, “potential” also remains in the eye of the beholder.

Tancredo doesn’t see much potential for terrorism, for instance, in repressive, nuke-wielding crony-capitalist gambling den, China. Oh no. The Chinese only sit on a large chunk of US treasuries and their every financial flutter turns Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve a sicklier shade of yellow as the global credit binge turns into a global hangover. But not to worry.

No, as a social conservative and Christian Right activist from a district largely constituted of middle-class and affluent Caucasian voters, Tancredo’s position on immigration and the Middle East is lit by the eerie flames of civilizational war, a la Samuel Huntington. So, naturally, he finds terrorist potential solely in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, which (whatever we might think of the objects of its financial patronage) at last count, was still an ally.

Perhaps Tancredo, recognizing the potential for Allies to turn into Axis (Of Evil), is only deterring that potential. Or preventing it. Or pre-empting it. Or perhaps he recognizes the potential a run on the Bank of Mecca would have to destroy the last shred of credit America has and turn the Iraq war into an outright Crusade against a billion Muslims.

Some people think that’s already what’s going on.

Bay (Pat, without the winsome charm) Buchanan, chief Tancredo Wazir, reassures us, nonetheless, that the man is “open-minded and willing to embrace other options.”

Could that mean he will be content to take out only the Ka’aba in a surgical strike and leave the rest of Mecca alone, thus reassuring Muslims the world over about the precise precision both of US weaponry and US language? Or does it mean he will just content himself with a border war with Mexican immigrants in the south?

At this point, it’s hard to figure out.

Just as hard as figuring out why the State Department is throwing a hissy fit over this anyway. (Tom Casey, a deputy spokesman for the State Department, told CNN’s Elise Labott that the congressman’s comments were “reprehensible” and “absolutely crazy” etc.)

After all, Tancredo said about the same thing in 2005.

“If this [a nuclear attack] happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites,” he said on July 15, 2005. And he had plenty of company among people who aren’t Christian conservatives.

One right wing journal claimed that the “nuke Mecca” threat was the only reason America had remained free of terrorist attack post 9-11.“¹

Meanwhile, Robert Spencer, scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of the Jihad Watch thought it was a bad idea only because it might not have worked out:

“It is likely that a destruction of the Ka’aba or the Al-Aqsa Mosque would have the same effect: it would become [a] source of spirit, not of dispirit. The jihadists would have yet another injury to add to their litany of grievances,” he wrote in FrontPage Magazine on July 28, 2005, almost wistfully.

In fact, nuking Mecca is as popular a meme in Washington as a Paris Hilton video on YouTube.

On February 6, 2007, Don Imus said on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning – “It might be [a] good start with somebody who’s willing to take three big ones and drop one on Mecca, one on Jeddah, and one on Saudi — one on Riyadh.”

On March 2002, The National Review’s senior editor, Rich Lowry, suggested in an online forum that there was “…lots of sentiment for nuking Mecca… Mecca seems extreme, of course, but then again few people would die and it would send a signal.”

(In 2004 the city had 1,294,167 residents, according to Wiki, so it’s hard to figure out what Mr. Lowry could have been thinking when he referred to “few people.” On the other hand, in the context of the ground swell of hype from the nuclear industry in recent years about “resource wars” supposedly driven by burgeoning populations east of the Suez, a million may indeed be few.)

Such are the cultural and racial anxieties that Tancredo’s rhetoric plays on. Whatever the merits of his position on immigration in other respects. And it does have some.

And those resource wars were probably what the Pentagon had in mind, when three years after Lowry made his remark, it revised its 1995 nuclear strike doctrine to include enemies who were using “or intending to use WMD” against the U.S. or its allies, their forces and their civilian populations.

Imminent intentions at Mecca or elsewhere would thus be preemptively deterred or defended by nuclear attack.

But besides metaphysical provocation from the swarthy and fecund, another potential provocation for a nuclear preemptive strike by the Pentagon was laid out decades earlier, in January 1975 in Commentary magazine. That was just after the Saudis had embargoed oil and sent prices soaring in the west. In response, Robert Tucker promoted the radical notion of invading Arab oil fields in a piece with the snappy title, “Oil: The Issue of American Intervention.”

Fast forward a quarter of a century, post 9-11 and get to Rand Corp. analyst Laurent Murawiec’s notorious power-point presentation on July 10, 2002, to the Defense Policy Board, an influential committee of ex and current defense officials chaired by Richard Perle, Iraq-war hawk nonpareil.

After accusing the Saudis of “supporting our enemies and attacking our allies,” Murawiec advised US officials to target Saudi Arabia’s economic assets should their rulers disobey US ultimatums that included a ban on Islamic charities and “anti-Israeli” writings.

Love us or we’ll bomb you.

Murawiecz, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and Rand, adviser to the French Ministry of Defense, some time writer for Lyndon LaRouche, and founder and managing director of an obscure and dubious consulting firm, GeoPol Corp. in Geneva (with close ties to questionable arms dealers), laces his work with references to Saudi reproduction and fecundity (see the November 17, 2005 discussion at the Hudson Institute of his book “Princes of Darkness: The Saudi Assault on the West”).

In his sensational 2002 presentation, he urged the confiscation of both oil fields in Arabia as well as Saudi assets in the US, as a first step. And as a second step, he urged that the Saudis be informed that their holy places were targets and that “alternatives are being canvassed”. His recommendation was that Muslim pilgrims just take their Hajj elsewhere and stop ruining all that oil for the civilized world, i.e. us.

A year after, Congress released its 9-11 report, with its heavily censored pages under the impressively sinister title, “Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.” Naturally, that was leaked. Naturally it became unofficially known (but never officially charged) that Saudi nationals with known contacts to two of the 9-11 hijackers also received money and had contact with Saudi officials, and that the Saudis have willfully provided al-Qaeda with assistance through Muslim charities. What didn’t become unofficially known was the official view by “a host of senior intelligence and law enforcement officials”² that “there is a lot of information in there that’s inflammatory but not accurate, or inferential or open to interpretation. Some of it is based on information that is partial, fragmentary and wrong. It is certainly not conclusive.”

Despite seeing through the Bush line on immigration, Christian cultural warrior Tancredo is still a big fan of the Bush administration’s global war on terror, and especially of its Middle Eastern front on the Tigris. An ardent supporter of the defense industry in general, Tancredo, it seems, is also a convert to the Tucker-Murawiec vision of a de-Saudified Middle East.

He is also given to that favorite leisure sport of under worked DC lawmakers — regime change in Iran. There, Tancredo, a conservative Christian, supports the ultra left-wing People’s Freedom Fighters (MEK), which has been identified as a terrorist organization by the State Department and is led by the charismatic Marxist feminist, Miriam Rajavi

Tancredo, a co-chair of the House Iran caucus, offered support to a pro-MEK rally in Washington on January 19, 2006 and wrote to the organizers, the Council for Democratic Change in Iran, “We believe a possible alternative to the current government can be achieved through supporting the people of Iran and the Iranian resistance.”

That means that Tancredo, the conservative, is allied with the most radical faction in the ongoing debate about how the U.S. effects Iranian regime change. (Note: No party to that debate suggests that perhaps Iranian regime change might not be the business of the US government). On the surface it’s an odd place for a self-described cultural conservative.

Since it is coincidentally also the vision of neo-conservative theorist, democratic revolutionary, connoisseur of fascist belles-lettres, and Iran Contra go-between, Michael Ledeen..

You remember him.

He’s the guy who was selling weapons in the 1980s to the mullahs he’s busy denouncing now. And he’s the guy who was promoting the Afghan mujahadeen — including Osama Bin Laden — back then as our chief allies against communist totalitarianism. He was also involved with the neo-fascist Masonic lodge P2 (Propaganda Due) and a network of Italian secret service agents associated with the CIA-coordinated “stay-behind” strategy. As part of its Cold War vision, “stay-behind” members attempted to “destabilize” the Italian government in the 1980s through terrorist attacks and false flag operations blamed on socialists.

Ledeen, an avid admirer of Machiavelli, has argued that the US must be “imperious, ruthless, and relentless” against the Muslim world until there has been “total surrender.”

And more:

“We will not be sated until we have had the blood of every miserable little tyrant in the Middle East, until every leader of every cell of the terror network is dead or locked securely away, and every last drooling anti-Semitic and anti-American mullah, imam, sheikh, and ayatollah is either singing the praises of the United States of America, or pumping gasoline, for a dime a gallon, on an American military base near the Arctic Circle.”³

Iraq just isn’t enough for Ledeen.

“We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.”⁴.

Ledeen, in this perhaps unlike Tancredo, is not a useful tool.

Keep those in mind and consider that just yesterday, August 5, only a week after the Tancredo eruption, U.S. troops claim to have killed the al-Qaida mastermind (al Badri) behind the bombing of the golden dome of al Askariya shrine in Samarra, one of the most sacred of Shiite holy places. It was the act that set off waves of sectarian killing last year.

Actually, the mosque itself was then guarded by local police, presumably under US authority. Some describe Shia having taunted the police with slogans prior to the bombing which might have provoked the Sunni response. Or not. There’s no way of knowing now, except that now, Tancredo gets a lucky break.

The take out of al-Badri should set Muslim hearts at rest, if they don’t actually flutter for Uncle Sam again. Tancredo can stop explaining himself to CAIR and go back to his work — for regime change in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

And Laurent Murawiec, polyglot scholar of cultural identity who likes to analyze how pigs are perceived among Muslims and Christians, and has proclaimed publicly that the global war on terror is not a war on terror really, but “a war on jihad and an Islam that has, for all practical purposes, throw its lot with the jihadis,” can get back to his.

And what is his work? Closely connected to the RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs), it turns out.

In case you didn’t know, the RMA is Donald Rumsfeld’s pet project and makes Information War (IW), including netcentric war, its center piece. Imagery is its principle language. Murawiec even has a book on the subject called “Greek Rhetoric Meets Cyberspace: Toward a Theory of Information Warfare.”

This is how he describes IW in an article for the Hudson Institute:

For instance, a pig may mean something different to a Muslim and a Christian. A Muslim might see an impure and accursed animal, whereas a Christian might see ham on legs or one of Walt Disney’s Three Little Pigs. Effective use of visual images across cultures requires great knowledge and sophistication.

In all these cases, IW involves creating phantom cyber-images, which can include phantasms of nonexistent trains, airplanes, stock market orders, and bank transfers; false impressions of the enemy’s troop strength and one’s own, of supplies and movements, of fake attacks and all-too-real defenses; and phantom images of the enemy’s leaders doing evil things on screen because one has video-morphed images of them doing them so.

Information warfare is not about machines or even electrons. It is about people’s minds, society’s functions, and armies’ strategies. Cyberspace endows us — and our enemies — with new and extraordinary means with which to achieve our respective aims. “We have only begun to cyber-fight.

Indeed.

⁵

1. Intelligence expert says nuke option is reason bin Laden has been quiet,” WorldNet, January 1 2005.
2. “Saudis on the Defensive,” Gary Leupp, Counterpunch, August 8, 2003
3. National Review, 12/7/2001, republished in the Jewish World Review, 12/11/2001.
4. Wall Street Journal, 9/4/2002
5. “Military Action in Cyberspace,” December 15, 2003.

Taguba was no hero to them. He was the guy who ratted out the military. That’s why — as Hersh’s interview confirms — they sent him to a dead-end job that ended his career.

It was only the threat of exposure, by Hersh’s New Yorker story and a CBS broadcast at the end of April 2004, that forced their hands. Even then, Rumsfeld and his partners in crime — especially, General Richard Myers and Undersecretary of Defense, Stephen Cambone — shucked off responsibility, insisting that they’d been informed only in the vaguest terms.

Taguba’s revelation calls their bluff. It puts the gold seal of credibility on what’s easily proved from the record: Rumsfeld, Myers and Cambone engaged in a cover-up.

Look at the conflicting testimony at the two hearings held on May 7 and May 11, 2004. Look at the previous reports to the Department of Defense about abuse — not just the report submitted by Taguba, and not just at Abu Ghraib but reports going back to 2002 that describe abuse all over Iraq and in Afghanistan. Reports from the International Red Cross, from Human Rights Watch, from other human rights groups, from journalists, from American officials, from Iraqis: all clear, well documented, consistent. All immensely credible.

Even without Taguba’s definitive statements, does anyone really believe that the bosses didn’t know what was going on?

Here’s a timeline of the complaints compiled from a Human Rights Watch timeline and from other reports (it’s by no means exhaustive):

December 27, 2002-June, 2003

Human Rights Watch asks President Bush to investigate a Washington Post story about abuse in Afghanistan. Directors of several human rights groups write to Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, to publicly condemn the use of torture. Human rights groups also write to President Bush to provide guidelines for interrogations. They meet with White House Counsel Haynes to get those guidelines. Various US officials admit that torture and rendition are being practiced and there are oral and written complaints about it by the International Red Cross. Senator Leahy writes to National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice about the allegations and again urges clearer rules about interrogations. Human rights groups also write to Rice.

August-December 2003: An International Red Cross complaint is made to the “highest level of the Coalition forces,” which would be then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Paul Bremer, who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense, i.e. to Rumsfeld. Cases of abuse at Umm Qasr (Iraq) and Camp Bucca (Iraq) are investigated and reservists are charged

November 12, 2003: An International Red Cross report is issued describing torture in Iraq.

November- December 2003 – Human rights groups write to Haynes again, while the deputy general counsel of the DOD reaffirms that earlier DOD statements about torture are binding to the whole executive branch. Brigadier-General Karpinski (in charge of Abu Ghraib) replies to the November International Red Cross Report. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch writes to President Bush again.

January, 2004: Three reservists are discharged for abuse and human rights groups write to Rumsfeld.

January 13-19, 2004: Sergeant Joseph M. Darby of the US Army’s 372nd Military Police Company downloads pictures from a computer that turn out to be photographs of graphic abuse at Abu Ghraib. He turns them in to his superiors. Details of the abuse (including forced nudity, sex torture, and torture of women and children, deemed too sensitive for public display) are emailed to senior Pentagon officials, including General Craddock and Vice-Admiral Keating, director of the Joint Staff of the JCS. DOD brief numbered 04-01-43 (only 4 lines in length) from Baghdad states that an investigation has been initiated into “reported incidents of abuse at a Coalition Forces detention facility.” The release of more detail is not possible, it says, because that could hamper (note this phrase, please) an ongoing investigation which was in its initial stages The 320th Military Police (MP) and Brigadier General Karpinski (a one-star general) are suspended.

Late January, 2004: General Abizaid (head of Central Command) tasks Lieutenant General Sanchez (a three-star general, army commander in Iraq and Taguba’s boss) to investigate further. Rumsfeld claims he alerted President and senior officials. Major-General Taguba (a two-star general) begins investigation

February 6, 2004: Taguba submits his report

February, 2004: Human Rights Watch and several rights groups write to Rumsfeld about the abuse and ask how many detainees are being held. Two more investigations begin, into the training of reservists and into detention practices elsewhere in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another International Red Cross report on abuse is delivered to the CPA.

March 8, 2004: A Human Rights Watch report on abuse in Afghanistan comes out

March 9, 2004: Taguba presents his report to his commanders and criticizes Major-General Miller for advocating the use of Military Intelligence (MI) in interrogations (this is the Gitmoization strategy).

March-April 2004: Major-General Kimmitt tells reporters that 6 military personnel have been charged with criminal offenses. Miller (commander of Guantanamo) is now brought from Guantanamo to head Abu Ghraib. Investigation number five (into the gathering of military intelligence) begins

April 28, 2004: Rumsfeld and Myers brief 35-40 senators on Iraq in classified session, hours before CBS 60 Minutes II expose, without mentioning Abu Ghraib. Myers claims he did not know about the photos until just before the CBS expose of Abu Ghraib, late that evening.

May 1, 2004: Taguba’s report is approved by DOD.

May 3, 2004: Human Rights Watch and other groups write to Rice that abuse is widespread, systemic and illegal, according to the army’s own investigation.

May 4, 2004: The Senate Armed Services Committee receives Taguba report.

May 6, 2004: Taguba meets Rumsfeld, who denies having received his report.

May 7, 2004: The Armed Services Committee Hearings are held. Rumsfeld claims this is the first time he’s seen the photos.

May 10, 2004: The President is shown a representative sample of photos, supposedly for the first time. The ASC receives classified annexes of Taguba report.

May 11, 2004: ASC Hearings are held again. Taguba testifies about his report.

Here’s the interesting bit at the hearings. Originally slated to speak in the morning panel on May 11, Taguba was later pushed into the afternoon panel, with Undersecretary of Defense Cambone speaking in the morning, instead. Cambone’s testimony set a framework that entirely undercuts Taguba’s.

Accidental — or deliberate?

While Taguba’s report showed that it was Miller’s Gitmoization policy that laid the groundwork for the torture, Cambone’s testimony tried to erect a wall between Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

What for? Because Cambone didn’t want people to figure that the Bush administration’s loosening of standards on torture had set off the abuse at AG. Gitmo prisoners were treated as terrorists and the administration’s fingerprints were all over interrogations there, as the ACLU files on Gitmo show. AG had to be kept apart from Gitmo.

So, Cambone argued that Miller might have been transferred from Gitmo to shake up intelligence gathering in Iraq, but he didn’t call the shots there. Oh no. He just made suggestions. It was Karpinski’s fault, not Miller’s.

And Cambone also did his best to keep the focus off the single most dangerous aspect of Abu Ghraib — the involvement of the CIA, intelligence contractors and special forces.

Why? To protect Rumsfeld and himself. Because central to Rumsfeld’s New Model Army is the outsourcing (privatization) of intelligence, so that it’s no longer under congressional supervision. And part of that process is the extensive use of special ops, special forces and private contractors. The very people up to their necks in abuse in Iraq.

Special forces are all over the place: there’s the appointment of Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker, a member of Delta Forces, the first time a special forces commander has been allowed to control the military; the appointment of Civilian Assistant Secretary for Special Operations, Thomas O’Connell, late of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam; there’s the involvement of Cambone himself, a ballistic missile hawk and of “Jerry” Boykin, the special ops loose canon whose idea it was to Gitmoize in the first place.

That’s why when Taguba turned in his report, Rumsfeld and Cambone could only see it as the old style military turning on the new model army.

So we know why he’s no hero to them.

But here’s what the Donald and his merry men still have to explain:

Question One:

Taguba says he submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through “several channels” at the Pentagon and to Central Command at Tampa, Florida. He also “spent weeks” briefing senior military officials on the report. Not one of them, except General Schoomaker (who complimented him), seems to have read it. Some said they didn’t, so as to avoid getting involved. Now, this is the report of a general who was tasked by no less than CENTCOM chief General Abizaid to write a report, but no one read the thing?

According to Taguba, Rumsfeld’s words to him on May 6 were: “Here I am, just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this.”

OK. Let’s say all dozen or more copies got lost somehow wending their way up through that perilous chain of command. Let’s say Taguba is too low down the pole for the mighty defense secretary to pay attention to.

What about the general in charge of Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez? Mightn’t he at least reside close enough to the rarefied air of Mount Pentagonus to warrant attention? Apparently not.

Sanchez was cc’d on January 20, 2004, that the allegations of torture were true and that there were more than a hundred photos to back them up. But, nonetheless, Rumsfeld says Sanchez didn’t breathe a word about all this to him.

My, my. What Victorian reticence they practice in the halls of power.

But, get this, Rumsfeld also admitted in the May 7 hearings that he spoke “everyday” to Sanchez. And Sanchez, we know, received a Red Cross report on prisoner abuse as far back as August 2003. Specific abuses at AG were known to his underling Karpinksi by December 2003. That’s the same Karpinksi who was directly under Sanchez and who was fired by Sanchez in January. For what, if not for the torture scandal?

Repeat: Rumsfeld and Sanchez spoke every day. Rumsfeld, Myers, Abizaid and Sanchez spoke to each other every day, according to Rumsfeld, several times. Rumsfeld briefed the President with Myers present every other day. And somewhere in late January or early February at a meeting at which General Pace, Myers’ deputy, was sitting in for him, the President was also informed.

But none of them heard anything about Abu Ghraib. Not a whisper. How credible is that? If they didn’t, what would that make them?

Incompetent or liars.

Which is it, Mr. Rumsfeld?

“The President didn’t know, and you [representatives] didn’t know, and I didn’t know,” claims Rumsfeld, who says he didn’t want to interfere with the report working its way up the chain of command.

Oh – so, are we to believe that between the heads up to the President in late January and the April 28 CBS story, the President was not told anything more?

Yet, Myers admitted to the Senate hearing on May 7 that people “inside our building” knew about the photos. Then how could the President not know? And if Myers himself hadn’t seen the photos, how come he squashed their publication until Hersh’s story forced them into the open? How did he know they might be too explosive for CBS?

Telepathy?

Question Two:

Said Rumsfeld on May 7, the problem was only “one dimensional”; he couldn’t foresee the kind of damage that “hundreds or however many of these things there are” would do.

On May 11, Cambone added: “Until the pictures began appearing in the press, Sir, I had not sense of that scope and scale.”

But here are some of the details Taguba says were sent to the military high command in January — “descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees,” “of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts,” and of “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee” – only a few of many (about 300) images, some still held in secrecy

Rape, sodomy, child abuse. Captured on CD’s and audio-tapes. Short of performance art, how much more multi-dimensional would things have needed to get, Secretary, for you and your colleagues to have figured out that what was going on was in violation of US and international law?

Question Three:

Miller’s the guy whose Gitmoization strategy at AG in the fall of 2003 led to the torture, according to Taguba’s own investigation. What’s he doing being put in charge of the business just after Taguba’s report comes out? Rumsfeld can’t pretend he didn’t know about Miller’s transfer. Because Miller met with him just before going to Iraq.

And why was Taguba carted off to a dead-end job if the army liked what he did?

Wasn’t that a direct contradiction of the findings of the report? Wasn’t it a way of giving the finger to Taguba and every human rights group and critic of the torture policy?

Question Four:

At the May 7 hearings, General Myers suggested that the military had from the start briefed the press in detail (Rumsfeld said it “told the whole world”). The record shows that that’s a fib. The wording of the brief in January is noticeably terse and lacking in detail, especially in the context of two years of mounting abuses.

Looks more like the army brass were trying their best to keep the scandal under wraps till it blew up in their faces. If they were happy with Taguba’s report, why did they approve it only on May 1, when it was completed on February 6 — a whole three months earlier?

What took so long?

Especially when no one now will admit to having read it in the first place.

Unlike Dick Cheney, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, Paul served in Vietnam for duty… not booty. He knows the costs: when they’re worth paying and when they’re not. That makes him a credible candidate to put an end to the war in Iraq.

“As an Air Force officer serving from 1963-1968, I heard the same agonizing pleas from the American people. These pleas were met with the same excuses about why we could not change a deeply flawed policy and rethink the war in Vietnam. That bloody conflict, also undeclared and unconstitutional, seems to have taught us little despite the horrific costs.”

— “We Just Marched In (So We Can Just March Out),” April 17, 2007

“Why is it that those who never wore a uniform and are confident that they won’t have to personally fight this war are more anxious for this war than our generals?”

– “Questions That Won’t Be Asked About Iraq,” September 10, 2002

19. HAS FOUGHT FOR SOMETHING

– for human life. As a medical doctor, he can actually do something besides shuffle paper and grease palms, which makes him an all but extinct species in the Beltway jungle. And while his training puts him squarely in the science-based community, he’s also a genuinely religious man who has the trust of social conservatives. People deserve hard science from principled people like Paul, not soft twaddle from front men for vested interests. Both a strong libertarian and a social conservative, he just might have the credibility to shape the issues in a way that’s rational and sensitive to rights.

“The bottom line is that mental health issues are a matter for parents, children, and their doctors, not government… It is important to understand that powerful interests, namely federal bureaucrats and pharmaceutical lobbies, are behind the push for mental health screening in schools. There is no end to the bureaucratic appetite to run our lives, and the pharmaceutical industry is eager to sell psychotropic drugs to millions of new customers in American schools. Only tremendous public opposition will suffice to overcome the lobbying and bureaucratic power behind the president’s New Freedom Commission.”

– “Don’t Let Congress Fund Orwellian Psychiatric Screening of Kids,” January 31, 2005.

18. KNOWS OPEN BORDERS DON’T MIX WITH WARFARE-WELFARE

“We’re often told that immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do, and sometimes this is true. But in many instances illegal immigrants simply increase the supply of labor in a community, which lowers wages.”

“The Immigration Question,” April 4, 2006.

“… immigration may be the sleeper issue that decides the 2008 presidential election.”

“More importantly, we should expect immigrants to learn about and respect our political and legal traditions, which are rooted in liberty and constitutionally limited government.

Our most important task is to focus on effectively patrolling our borders. With our virtually unguarded borders, almost any determined individual – including a potential terrorist – can enter the United States. Unfortunately, the federal government seems more intent upon guarding the borders of other nations than our own. We are still patrolling Korea’s border after some 50 years, yet ours are more porous than ever.”

– “Immigration and the Welfare Stare,” August 9, 2005.

This is not xenophobic; it’s common sense in most countries in the world.

17. UNDERSTANDS THE NEED TO REIGN IN THE EXECUTIVE.

Paul is very clear on the importance of the separation of powers and the need for checks and balances in the government and he’s spoken out time and again for strengthening the power of Congress.

“…why not try something novel, like having Congress act as an independent and equal branch of government? Restore the principle of the separation of powers, so that we can perform our duty to provide checks and balances on an executive branch (and an accommodating judiciary) that spies on Americans, glorifies the welfare state, fights undeclared wars, and enormously increases the national debt. Congress was not meant to be a rubber stamp. It’s time for a new direction.”

– “Searching For a New Direction,” January 19, 2006.

He’s also stood up against corrupt federal programs like the “war on drugs”:

“We have promoted a foolish and very expensive domestic war on drugs for more than 30 years. It has done no good whatsoever. I doubt our Republic can survive a 30-year period of trying to figure out how to win this guerrilla war against terrorism.”

“The drug war encourages violence. Government violence against nonviolent users is notorious and has led to the unnecessary prison overpopulation. Innocent taxpayers are forced to pay for all this so-called justice. Our eradication project through spraying around the world, from Colombia to Afghanistan, breeds resentment because normal crops and good land can be severely damaged. Local populations perceive that the efforts and the profiteering remain somehow beneficial to our own agenda in these various countries.”

— “War on Terror? It’s as Bad as the War on Drugs,” October 30, 2001.

16. GETS VOLUNTARY SELF DEFENSE

– not only in the constitution but in Anglo-American political history. Ron Paul really understands what some don’t: how central the second amendment is to the notion of a self -reliant, vigilant population. Especially now, the right to arms may be the only safeguard for citizens who don’t trust the police to protect them. That includes minorities who’ve been on the receiving end of police brutality.

“Gun control historically serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government.”

– “The D.C. Gun Ban,” March 12, 2007.

In the same spirit Paul also opposes the draft, which allows the privileged and powerful to forcibly deploy less privileged young men as cannon fodder.

“I believe wholeheartedly that an all-volunteer military is not only sufficient for national defense, but also preferable. It is time to abolish the Selective Service System and resign military conscription to the dustbin of American history. Five hundred million dollars have been wasted on Selective Service since 1979, money that could have been returned to taxpayers or spent to improve the lives of our nation’s veterans.”

– “Rethinking the Draft,” November 28, 2006.

15. SUPPORTS DECENTRALIZATION CONSISTENTLY

– by supporting national sovereignty against transnational organizations manipulated by global elites. With the same consistency, Paul supports the states against the Fed and turns power back to local communities and people, instead of bureaucrats.

“The superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically connected interests.”

“This will require coordinated federal and state eminent domain actions on an unprecedented scale, as literally millions of people and businesses could be displaced. The loss of whole communities is almost certain, as planners cannot wind the highway around every quaint town, historic building, or senior citizen apartment for thousands of miles.”

“The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union — complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether …”

– “The NAFTA Superhighway,” October 30, 2006.

“All federal aid for Katrina should have been distributed as directly as possible to local communities, rather than through wasteful middlemen like FEMA and Homeland Security.”

– “Katrina Relief Six Months Later,” February 21, 2006.

That’s also why Paul is against a national ID:

“This legislation imposes federal standards in a federal bill, and it creates a federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is still stamped with the name of your state. It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane. Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free republics.”

– “The Worst Way to Fight Terror,” October 9, 2004.

Increased decentralization is the only way to allow polarizing social issues that are less central to take a back seat to the cardinal issues we face today — of war and economic recession. Contrary to its depiction by a biased media, Paul’s pro-life position is only opposed to Federal funding of abortions and stem-cell research. Nothing stops the states or private entities from funding them – a constitutionally sound position that allows diverse lifestyles and views to flourish without allowing them to tyrannize others.

14. KNOWS THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM IS BROKEN

and supports opening up the electoral process to more candidates from the grass roots:

“The two items I will be introducing on Tuesday embrace rather than disgrace the first amendment. The first is called the Voter Freedom Act of 1997. It will prohibit states from erecting excessive ballot access barriers to candidates for federal office. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to control federal elections, and I firmly believe that the more voices participating, the more likely it is that the entrenched, out-of-touch, Washington establishment will be swept to the side.”

“Another part of this vital process is opening the debates. So the second piece of legislation I am putting forward is the Debate Freedom Act of 1997… My legislation simply requires that if a candidate accepts the federal funding for his or her election, then that candidate can only participate in debates to which all candidates who qualify for federal funding — whether they take it or not — are invited to participate.”

– “If someone accepts federal cash, then they must follow rules taxpayers set and deserve,” September 15, 1997.

13. WILL DECREASE TAXES

and eliminate the bureaucracy strangling small businesses that create jobs and wealth. Fortunately, in Paul’s lexicon, wealth doesn’t mean the paper-jive of money-sharpers on Wall Street. It’s hard work, innovation and savings. That’s why Paul is also appropriately wary of the IRS’s strong-arm tactics with citizens — and elected representatives — for political reasons.

“Imagine that you have taken a position contrary to the official dictates of the government in your nation. Instead of simply facing criticism from opposing political sides, you find your life turned upside-down; every aspect of your life is closely scrutinized. Without warning, your life savings are seized, your personal, private records divulged far and wide.
Suddenly, how willing are you to continue holding your views?”

“The answer is not to simply revise the code, or to make the IRS more independent, or to have an added layer of judicial review, the answer is to fundamentally change the way we collect taxes in this nation. The nonsensical body of law which governs the IRS is too far removed from sanity to be saved. And the graduated income tax system is neither fair, economically sound, moral nor useful.

“In my mind, the jury is still out on whether a flat tax or a national sales tax is the absolute best way to go (my main goal is for lower taxes, across-the-board), but both will go a long way toward eliminating the politically powerful weapon known as the IRS.”

– “Fear of IRS misplaced, the real problem is the system,” April 20, 1997.

12. BACKS SOUND MONEY

and opposes taxation by inflation. Paul’s been speaking out for years against the destruction of the dollar. He’s one of the few who sees that cheap credit is destroying savings and retirement money, pushing up the cost of living and devastating US standing in the international economy.

“But as a physician I know that I must diagnose an illness before I can treat a patient. In the current instance the diagnoses indicates that the squeeze of the middle class is caused not by low wages, but rather by increased costs resulting from central planning. And the key pillars of our current central-planning regime can be found in tax and monetary policies.

The fact that government creates money out of thin air must be addressed, because it is the entire reason why costs of living increase and standards of living decline… Again, there is only one reason why prices are rising instead of falling. Because the government, through its credit-creation mechanism, is engaged in a sort of price controls, it is in fact following a policy that eventuates in price inflation as well as recession. Plus, this credit creation is at the heart of recent instability in the markets, thus threatening retirement security.”

– “Answering the Middle Class Squeeze,” March 27, 2000

“The biggest rip-off of all — the paper money system that is morally and economically equivalent to counterfeiting — is never questioned. It is the deceptive tool for transferring billions from the unsuspecting poor and middle-class to the special interest rich. And in the process, the deficit-propelled budget process supports the spending demands of all the special interests – left and right, welfare and warfare – while delaying payment to another day and sometimes even to another generation.”

11 UNDERSTANDS THE REAL REASON WHY THE POOR ARE BEING SQUEEZED.

Paul understands the real reason low-wage earners are taking it in the neck. Instead of pandering like the populists with misplaced price and wage controls, he strikes at the root:

“Our tax burden is at its highest peacetime levels. This means wage earners are being squeezed by the cost of government as well as the cost of living. Had Congress not stopped the Clinton-Gore tax on BTUs, (which they called an economic stimulus package), fuel prices would be significantly higher than they are right now. This points to why government is not the answer.

Increases in costs of living are a real problem, especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale. Those costs will continue to rise if we allow central planning to continue, but the solution to central planning is freedom, not grant further control over wages to government.”

– “Answering the Middle Class Squeeze,” March 27, 2000.

10. STANDS UP FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND PRIVACY

Paul has consistently fought the kind of federal power grab represented by the creation of a national ID as another expensive, corrupt, abusive government boondoggle.

“The Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act also contains a blanket prohibition on the use of identifiers to “investigate, monitor, oversee, or otherwise regulate” American citizens. Mr. Chairman, prohibiting the Federal Government from using standard identifiers will ensure that American liberty is protected from the “surveillance state.” Allowing the federal government to use standard identifiers to oversee private transactions present tremendous potential for abuse of civil liberties by unscrupulous government officials.

I am sure I need not remind the members of this Committee of the sad history of government officials of both parties using personal information contained in IRS or FBI files against their political enemies. Imagine the potential for abuse if an unscrupulous government official is able to access one’s complete medical, credit, and employment history by simply typing the citizens’ “uniform identifier” into a database.”

– “Statement of Ron Paul on the Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act (HR 220),” May 18, 2000.

“This legislation gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand required information on driver’s licenses, potentially including such biometric information as retina scans, finger prints, DNA information, and even Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) radio tracking technology. Including such technology as RFID would mean that the federal government, as well as the governments of Canada and Mexico, would know where Americans are at all time of the day and night.

There are no limits on what happens to the database of sensitive information on Americans once it leaves the United States for Canada and Mexico – or perhaps other countries. Who is to stop a corrupt foreign government official from selling or giving this information to human traffickers or even terrorists? Will this uncertainty make us feel safer?”

– “HR 418- A National ID Bill Masquerading as Immigration Reform,” February 9, 2005

9. KNOWS CURRENT ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS ARE BANKRUPT

“Those future obligations (of entitlements) put our real debt figure at roughly fifty trillion dollars- a staggering sum that is about as large as the total household net worth of the entire United States. Your share of this fifty trillion amounts to about $175,000.

… If present trends continue, by 2040 the entire federal budget will be consumed by Social Security and Medicare alone. The only options for balancing the budget would be cutting total federal spending by about 60%, or doubling federal taxes. To close the long-term entitlement gap, the U.S. economy would have to grow by double digits every year for the next 75 years.”

– “The Coming Entitlement Meltdown,” March 5, 2007.

8. HAS THE TECHNICAL SAVVY

to deal with healthcare, where government interference has already created a disaster.

“The problems with our health-care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market.”

“As a greater amount of government and corporate money has been used to pay medical bills, costs have risen artificially out of the range of most individuals. Only true competition assures that the consumer gets the best deal at the best price possible by putting pressure on the providers. Patients are better served by having options and choices, not new federal bureaucracies and limitations on legal remedies.”

– “Diagnosing Our Health Care Woes,” September 25, 2006.

8. OPPOSES CORPORATE SUBSIDIES

that distort the market and burden tax payers, like the bailout of international speculators with tax payer money in the Mexican and Asian crises in the 1990s.

“But many investors today are eager to embrace the philosophy of free-market economics when it comes to making money and keeping their profits, but at the first sign of those investments going sour, they want the government to socialize their losses at the expense of the taxpayers.

And since these investors have also heavily “invested” in American politics, it is easy for the politicians to use your money to help them out. After all, it is very easy to be generous with other people’s money.”

“President opts to use taxpayer fund to bail out wealthy investors,” December 29, 1997.

“For a long time I have advocated getting rid of the Export-Import Bank. It is unconstitutional for the federal government, using your money, to be subsidizing the risky business ventures of corporations. And often, these ventures involve giving large sums of money and aid to oppressive foreign governments, like China… Subsidizing big corporations is unconstitutional and violative of the laws of free-market economics, no matter what Congress calls the mechanism. Those who are addicted to corporate welfare have no need to worry; USEX will be doing the same thing as Ex-Im.”

– “US shouldn’t cast stones with Religious Persecution,” October 6, 1997.

7. OPPOSES THE NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIST AGENDA

and the charade of aid that funds foreign dictators. He also understands the dangers of national armies in the service of global international bodies, a position firmly rooted in the ideas of Madison and Jefferson. And firmly opposed to the deluded “liberventionism” of today’s Trotskyites and humanitarian bombers who fancy themselves as global Supermen

“Neither, of course, does the Constitution allow us to subsidize foreign governments through such taxpayer-supported entities as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, OPIC, Ex-Im/USEX or any number of other vehicles through which the U.S. Congress sends foreign aid to a large number of countries (including those who engage in religious persecution). It is time we stopped both policing the world, and funding the totalitarian thugs of planet.”

” It is ironic that the same federal government which killed innocent children at Waco for their parents “odd” religious beliefs, now proclaims itself ready to judge the world’s nations on their religious tolerance.”

– “US shouldn’t cast stones with religious persecution,” October 6, 1997.

6. WILLING TO LOOK FOR OIL IN OTHER PLACES

besides the Middle East; Paul isn’t piped at the umbilicus to energy companies or in bed with oil executives, unlike our current crop of carbon-dating fossils.

“Yes, we need Middle Eastern oil, but we can reduce our need by exploring domestic sources. We should rid ourselves of the notion that we are at the mercy of the oil-producing countries- as the world’s largest oil consumer, their wealth depends on our business.”

– “Our Incoherent Foreign Policy Fuels Middle East Turmoil,” December 3, 2002.

5. BELIEVES THE US GOVERNMENT SHOULD GOVERN THE US

– not the World. Wow! What a revolutionary idea.

“We should stop the endless game of playing faction against faction, and recognize that buying allies doesn’t work. We should curtail the heavy militarization of the area by ending our disastrous foreign aid payments. We should stop propping up dictators and putting band-aids on festering problems. We should understand that our political and military involvement in the region creates far more problems that it solves. All Americans will benefit, both in terms of their safety and their pocketbooks, if we pursue a coherent, neutral foreign policy of non-interventionism, free trade, and self-determination in the Middle East.”

– “Our Incoherent Foreign Policy Fuels Middle East Turmoil,” December 3, 2002.

“The best reason to oppose interventionism is that people die, needlessly, on both sides. We have suffered over 20,000 American casualties in Iraq already, and Iraq civilian deaths probably number over 100,000 by all reasonable accounts. The next best reason is that the rule of law is undermined, especially when military interventions are carried out without a declaration of war. Whenever a war is ongoing, civil liberties are under attack at home. The current war in Iraq and the misnamed war on terror have created an environment here at home that affords little constitutional protection of our citizen’s rights. Extreme nationalism is common during wars. Signs of this are now apparent.”

– “Iran: The Next Neo-Con Target,” April 5, 2006.

4. STANDS UP TO BIG BROTHER

Paul opposes unconstitutional legislation like the Hate Crimes Bill, not because he doesn’t understand the fears of the vulnerable, but because he’s long-sighted enough to know that the danger of creating a category of thought-crimes outweighs them. Eventually, hate crime laws always end up making political protest or the expression of religious conscience difficult or impossible.

“It’s also disconcerting to hear the subtle or not-so-subtle threats against free speech. Since the FCC regulates airwaves and grants broadcast licenses, we’re told it’s proper for government to forbid certain kinds of insulting or offensive speech in the name of racial and social tolerance. Never mind the 1st Amendment, which states unequivocally that, “Congress shall make NO law.”

– “Government and Racism,” April 16, 2007.

Paul’s made it clear that he’s against regulation of the Internet, one of the last remaining forums for free speech, especially on political matters, and one of the few places you can get independent news. Think what would happen if that freedom disappeared too.

“I trust the Internet a lot more, and I trust the freedom of expression. And that’s why we should never interfere with the Internet. That’s why I’ve never voted to regulate the Internet.”

– “California Republican debate transcript,” May 7, 2007.

3. IS RIGHT ABOUT TERRORISM

Unlike most of our representatives, Paul looks like he actually reads what US intelligence (and just about every other intelligence service in the world) has been saying about terrorism for years:

“Consider Saudi Arabia, the native home of most of the September 11th hijackers. The Saudis, unlike the Iraqis, have proven connections to al Qaeda. Saudi charities have funneled money to Islamic terrorist groups. Yet the administration insists on calling Saudi Arabia a “good partner in the war on terror.” Why? Because the U.S. has a long standing relationship with the Saudi royal family, and a long history of commercial interests relating to Saudi oil. So successive administrations continue to treat the Saudis as something they are not: a reliable and honest friend in the Middle East.

The same is true of Pakistan, where General Musharaf seized power by force in a 1999 coup. The Clinton administration quickly accepted his new leadership as legitimate, to the dismay of India and many Muslim Pakistanis. Since 9/11, we have showered Pakistan with millions in foreign aid, ostensibly in exchange for Musharaf’s allegiance against al Qaeda. Yet has our new ally rewarded our support? Hardly. The Pakistanis almost certainly have harbored bin Laden in their remote mountains, and show little interest in pursuing him or allowing anyone else to pursue him. Pakistan has signed peace agreements with Taliban leaders, and by some accounts bin Laden is a folk hero to many Pakistanis.”

– “Hypocrisy in the Middle East,” Feb 26, 2007.

2. IS RIGHT ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR

Horses go before carts, says Ron Paul in his revolutionary way.

“What is the moral argument for attacking a nation that has not initiated aggression against us, and could not if it wanted?”

“Why are we taking precious military and intelligence resources away from tracking down those who did attack the United States — and who may again attack the United States — and using them to invade countries that have not attacked the United States?”

“Was former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro wrong when he recently said there is no confirmed evidence of Iraq’s links to terrorism?”

“Is it not true that the CIA has concluded there is no evidence that a Prague meeting between 9/11 hijacker Atta and Iraqi intelligence took place?”

“Where does the Constitution grant us permission to wage war for any reason other than self-defense?”

” Is it not true that a war against Iraq rejects the sentiments of the time-honored Treaty of Westphalia, nearly 400 years ago, that countries should never go into another for the purpose of regime change?”

” Is it not true that the more civilized a society is, the less likely disagreements will be settled by war?”

” Is it not true that since World War II Congress has not declared war and- not coincidentally- we have not since then had a clear-cut victory?”

– “Questions That Won’t Be Asked About Iraq,” September 10, 2002.

1. IS RIGHT ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Ron Paul’s America is the old Constitutional Republic not the new-fangled Empire. He’s consistently stood up for the Bill of Rights against an arrogant executive and supine Congress who’ve sold them out to jack up their own power at home and abroad:

“It is with the complicity of Congress that we have become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrolled spying on the American people. Fighting over there has nothing to do with preserving freedoms here at home.”

– “Getting Iraq War Funding Wrong Again,” May 1, 2007.

“It is clear, however, that the Patriot Act expands the government’s ability to monitor us. The Act eases federal rules for search warrants in some cases; allows expanded wiretaps and Internet monitoring; allows secret “sneak and peek” searches; and even permits federal agents to examine library and bookstore records. On these grounds alone it should be soundly rejected.”

– “Trust Us, We’re the Government,” August 26, 2003.

“We should remember that Iran, like Iraq, is a third-world nation without a significant military. Nothing in history hints that she is likely to invade a neighboring country, let alone do anything to America or Israel. I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.”

– “The Irrelevance of Military Victory,” January 16, 2007.

Disclosure: Since publication of this article, it appears likely that Ron Paul will supply a blurb for my upcoming book.

“For American readers who value and feel protected by the First Amendment (right to free speech), it may seem strange that a country would enshrine in law the opposite condition; but Hate Crime legislation in this country is widely supported. Canada is an ethnically and politically diverse country, consisting of minority populations from the world over, and it was deemed fair-minded to ensure all are protected from the “tyranny of the majority.” But it’s a double-edged sword, making possible an abuse of the statutes, allowing an equally odious tyranny, the stifling of dissent and criticism by a dedicated minority.”

Cook’s problem is that one edge of this sword just fell on a web-site he edits, the Peace, Earth and Justice News, “a non-profit, all-volunteer, non-hierarchical media organization” based in Victoria whose mission (as described in its Constitution) is to report on “climate change and other environmental issues, war and peace in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and human rights and other matters of social justice.”

PEJ has been operating since 1996 and is owned by the small (annual budget of a few hundred dollars and all volunteer staff), non-profit Prometheus Institute, British Columbia, where Cook was a senior editor until February this year.

On May 17 PEJ publisher Alan Rycroft received a letter from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, signed by the deputy secretary general Richard Tardiff, claiming that PEJ had violated Canadian law by posting anti-Semitic material, according to a complaint filed with its legal department by Harry Abrams, a Victoria businessman and British Columbia representative for the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith, Canada, which joins him in the complaint.

PEJ publishes materials from activists around the world, including some who have published on American websites like Counterpunch and Dissident Voice. It is an alternative paper that by definition carries news not covered in the mainstream press and those stories are naturally controversial, often criticizing the actions of powerful entities, including governments. Naturally, that includes the Canadian government. And naturally, also, the Israeli government.

As soon as PEJ received the letter, it removed from its web-site the eighteen articles that Harry Abrams alleges were anti-Semitic.

PEJ did this as a matter of courtesy to Abrams and to show goodwill, according to Joan Russow, one of the directors, pending the outcome of an inquiry by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. In any case, PEJ does not endorse articles or comments published on it, to begin with. But, PEJ is, in addition, expressly non-discriminatory. As Dr. Russow, said in a letter to Mr. Abrams on December 31, 2006:

“Anti-Semitism and other prejudicial materials are not allowed on our site — after all PEJ News exists to promote equality and freedom for all — we are the Peace, Earth and Justice News. To the best of our knowledge no anti-Semitic or hate material is on PEJ.org.”

Indeed, it was she who invited Mr. Abrams (in December 2006) to inspect the articles on the site and see if anything was anti-Semitic, including comments from the public.

The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), whose “General Expectations of Canada” (as posted on the web, “CJC Brief to DFAIT on UN Human Rights Commission,” Feb 19, 2004 ) are not nearly as objective or non-discriminatory.

The CJC tells Canada’s Jewish citizens to take “constructive interventions against resolutions or motions” made in Canada that:

1.blame only Israel and its policies for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
2. indict Israel’s legitimate counter-terrorism measures with no reference to or condemnation of Palestinian terrorism.
3. deny or undermine Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East (my emphasis).
4. employ existentially threatening language such as referring to Israel as a “racist” or “apartheid” state and apply terms such as ["genocide"(?)], or “ethnic cleansing” to the conflict.
5. are based upon inaccurate media information or Palestinian Authority propaganda.
6. predetermine the outcome of direct, bilateral negotiations in keeping with UN Resolution 242 and 338 or circumvent such a process.

At the same time, Canada’s delegates must support and encourage efforts at the UNCHR that:

1. will ensure a comprehensive accounting of international human rights situations such that grievous international human rights issues are not ignored or soft-pedalled [sic] as a result of a politicized, anti-Israel agenda.
2. highlight the crippling impact of continuing Palestinian terrorism — which has been explicitly legitimized in the CHR resolutions — on the peace process and on attempts to establish a true human rights regime in the Middle East.
3. draw attention to the deficiencies within the Palestinian Authority regarding human rights and the building of a viable civil society for the Palestinian people.”

And B’nai Brith’s positions are even more partisan than this. Thus it is that Anita Bromberg, in-house legal counsel for B’nai Brith, Canada, has joined Mr. Abrams in the complaint against PEJ’s peace activism, because, she says, the articles “are virulently anti-Israel to the point that they meet the criteria of crossing the line of legitimate criticism of the state straight into anti-Semitism.”

What, according to the complaint, is anti-Semitic?

“The idea that Israel has no right to exist or that Israel is an apartheid state,” says Mr. Abrams. Also, any comparison of Zionists to Nazis.

Were there such articles?

In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Lebanon, several pieces did compare Israeli policy with Nazi persecution of Jews and question the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. One, by Chris Cook, “We Should Nuke Israel,” for instance, was a parody of a column in The Toronto Sun proposing a tactical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Cook simply replaced the word “Iran” with “Israel,” “Ahmadinejad” with “Olmert,” “Muslim” with “Jew” and tagged the following paragraph at the end, ironically recommending that the article be acted upon by the Human Rights Commission:

“This amazingly ignorant, hateful, and frankly criminal article has been redacted. ‘Israel’ appears where the murderous and racist author, Michael Coren originally wrote ‘Iran.’ Likewise other slight alterations have been performed. There is, in what remains of this country Canada, hate crime legislation. Unlike Mr. Coren’s, and his Toronto Sun publisher’s heroes in the United States, Canadian media is expected to live up to certain standards. Promoting hatred and proposing the destruction of human life fail miserably to live up to the expected, and legislated, mandates for publishers. I recommend those offended by Mr. Coren’s modest proposal write the Sun, Coren, and the CRTC. Mr. Coren can be reached here.”

This is strong language, yes. But why, we wonder, does the Canadian Human Rights Commission not also write a letter to the columnist in The Toronto Sun, who proposed a real nuclear hit on Iran with a straight face. Why instead attack a column written in transparent satire in response to the former? Are the human rights of Iranians — or of Palestinians — less worthy of attention than the human rights of Israelis?

By the way, in the US, words such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” have been applied to the torture at Abu Ghraib in academic and law journals, such as Gonzaga University 10 Gonz. J. Int’l L. 370 (2007). If torture of prisoners in Iraq can be described in this way without American human rights activists objecting, it’s hard to see why the killing and dispossession of the civilian population in Palestine shouldn’t be called ethnic cleansing or genocide.

And, would the CHRC also rush so zealously to investigate on behalf of an organization that claimed Canada — or the U.S. — was a Christian country?

After the letter was received at PEJ and the offending articles removed, Ingmar Lee, one of PEJ’s editors, posted a piece by university professor Shahid Alam, one that just appeared in Dissident Voice, and makes a scholarly criticism of Jewish exceptionalism as “inseparable from Israeli exceptionalism and Israeli history” (“Chosenness and Israeli Exceptionalism“) in a manner no different from — and more measured than — any number of dissections of American exceptionalism (and some forms of Christian fundamentalism), which PEJ has also published.

The fact that it has shows clearly that PEJ was, in this instance, simply following its mission of attacking injustice wherever it finds it and defending human rights, no matter whose. Its criticism of Israel as a race-based state was simply part of its universal secular defense of human rights.

But defending universal secular human rights which, by the way, is stated policy in the State Department turns out now to be the promotion of “ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel.” Indeed, Harry Abrams and B’nai Brith state that Abrams has “reasonable grounds for believing that I have been discriminated against.”

The only trouble with that is that the criticism in the articles is directed at the policies of the state of Israel, not at Mr. Abrams personally.

Should we conclude that Mr. Abrams sees himself as indistinguishable from the Israeli government? Or that B’nai Brith’s interest in human rights is indistinguishable from the vested interests of the Israeli government?

So far, Canada’s Globe and Mail, which published the story on May 24, has also published PEJ’s vigorous characterization of the charges as “calumnies.” But for how long?

The same day, Ingmar Lee was forced to resign as editor of PEJ for the bad judgment of publishing Alam’s article after the complaint was received, because the article is “slanderous to all Jews,” uses the word Zionist as a “slander” like Nazi, and may be a “hate crime” under Canadian law (in the words of PEJ publisher, Rycroft).

A semantic question: Is it also a slander to refer to Nazis as “Nazis”?

I will distress some people and say that there were several things I liked and respected in Dr. Falwell. He built schools and homes for single mothers; he helped alcoholics, the homeless and AIDS victims. He sent money to help the poor and sick in Africa. He built up a large university.

I hope that he will be remembered for these things at least as much as for the pain his harsh pronouncements over the years caused homosexuals, pagans, witches, abortionists (in his words), blacks and many other groups of varying ontological status.

Mind you, I say that as a childless divorcee, skeptical occultist, ethical pagan, and heterodox Christian whom Dr. Falwell would no doubt have consigned to the flames of hell.

Like most people today my primary difficulty is not with believing, but with not believing. Believing comes altogether too easy. The world – whether seen through the lens of science or through our own eyes – is so complex, variegated, fluctuating, and contradictory that we are ever more disposed to grope for certainty in areas where it may most be an illusion.

Some would say that Falwell’s fundamentalism was of that nature.

But there are other credulities besides religious ones.

How much easier and more comforting to our perpetually aggrieved sense of fairness, for instance, to believe that all beliefs – if held with sufficient good will – are the same, all convictions equally plausible, all systems of economics – if only tried with good faith – equally productive.

How easy and – often – how wrong.

Jerry Falwell, for all his flaws – and they were clear enough – was not flawed in that way.

His beliefs were narrow. But by his lights and the lights of many who are fundamentalists it was the narrowness of the way to eternal life preached in the gospels.

Progressives, who like to sample only what they find most palatable in Jesus’ teachings — like walnuts in an unfamiliar salad — have a tendency to ignore his words as they have actually come down to us. And no wonder. Taken literally (and that, I suppose, is why they are rarely taken literally), they would stick in our craws.

This is the Jesus who once said the gospel was for “the children” of the house (Israelites) and not for the “dogs.” (Samaritans). He may have stopped the adulteress being stoned, but he didn’t deny she was an adulteress. As for the Pharisees, the liberal, well-educated elite of his day, he routinely called them a nest of vipers for the hundred sophistries and metaphors with which they got around tedious religious rules. Jesus often seemed tiresomely literal to them, as well.

And he seems to have lived in expectation of an apocalypse too, even if he also died without seeing it.

But of course, you will say, that was Jesus. This is Falwell.

And you would have made your point. Jesus was often deliberately opaque, ironic; he iced the sting of reproof with parables, poured compassion over the wounds his words inflicted and made his point as often with artistic silence – at crucial moments.

Falwell was rarely silent, and even more rarely artistic.

But among the many offensive quotes I see attributed to him, I have so far seen nothing that was much more than a blunt, unlovely articulation of some text of Christian or Jewish scripture.

If that is hate speech and potentially discriminatory under the law, as his many detractors claim, then we must outlaw substantial portions of the major religions.

Certainly, those portions of the Old and New Testaments, which classify homosexuality among abominations, advocate killing diviners and witches, and celebrate crushing your enemies’ babies on rocks; which relegate women to subordination even in matters of conscience, and – like Falwell – attribute natural calamities and plagues to the wrath of a touchy deity. As a Christian, I speak of the Bible, but I’ll warrant that there are few scriptures that are entirely innocent in these matters.

Words, whether we think they come only from Jerry or directly from Jahweh, can offend.

They can cause immense pain. Ironically, Falwell himself suffered that pain once, very publicly. Pornographer Larry Flynt published a revoltingly nasty parody of a liquor ad, which had Falwell describing his “first time” with his mother in an outhouse. In 1988, in a seminal decision (Hustler Magazine Inc. Vs. Falwell), the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s decision to award the preacher damages for emotional pain, strengthening even further the protection of free speech about public figures. It was satire, said the justices, and satire has a venerable history, especially in America politics. To limit it would cast a pall over public debate.

Many applaud that decision unhesitatingly. It goes without saying, in our secular world, that pornographic imagery of that sort (I refuse to give it the great, good name of sex) – however maliciously intended – is never harmful in any ‘real’ way, and we are nothing if not realists…..or so we think.

Oddly, the also realistic CIA – whom no one could accuse of swooning sensitivity in these matters – thinks differently. By the 1960s, it had come to regard “no touch” torture – among which sexual humiliation occupies a prominent place – as more damaging than conventional physical torture in the long run. It “leaves deep, searing psychological scars on both victims and — something seldom noted — their interrogators,” writes Alfred McCoy, (The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America’s Road to Abu Ghraib, 2004).

Falwell was not directly injured in the same way, it goes without saying. But it seems at least odd, if not downright confused, to argue that the very malicious public humiliation of a religious figure respected by a large segment of the population is not

a real injury to him and his followers, while the strong but not vicious articulation of hoary religious doctrines about pagans and witches, for instance, is a real injury to those groups – one that borders on discrimination so powerful that it needs to be outlawed as hate speech, as some have suggested.

That’s to say, a woman like me – qua witch – is supposed to be devastatingly injured if a Jerry Falwell tells her she can’t get to heaven while reading astrology charts. (His heaven, by the way, is presumably something she either doesn’t believe in, to begin with, or if she does believe in, thinks has different entrance requirements).

Yet, the same woman – qua woman – is supposed to be serenely untouched, if not actually enthused, when a Larry Flynt concocts imagery depicting her violently humiliated in pornographic terms. And this schizophrenia is usually to be found in the same progressives for whom sexuality and gender is supposedly a much more serious business than theological doctrine.

There’s no denying that religion has often had a history of subordinating some people to others nor that we are right to regard religious dogma with suspicion when it imposes itself on non-believers through the mechanism of the state. But there are other dogmas besides religious ones. And, allied to the power of the state, they can become quite as oppressive. It was not overtly in the name of Christianity, after all, but in the name of secular, universal values that the American government bombed Orthodox Christians and Muslims in their own countries in recent years.

It may be time to recognize that some dogmas, whether religious or secular, might be mutually exclusive and it is our refusal to recognize and respect that exclusivity that has led to the current sorry state of political debate. Yet, respect we must. For, while it is impossible to meld irreconcilable beliefs without changing their natures, what is not impossible is to co-exist peacefully as people, while admitting that our beliefs are irreconcilable.

For that to happen, precisely defining religious belief or artistic expression or political speech is less important than cultivating a will to extend generosity to even our most fervent opponents. Style is more essential here than substance.

Jerry Falwell, after all, did disavow hatred for any group, even while he characterized them in accordance with his religious beliefs. And, to all appearances, those beliefs were sincerely held.

It is double-think of the worst kind, then, to label this express disavowal of hate as “hate,” unless you have proof of some kind of disingenuousness. And if you misused language in that way, what right would you have to feel injured if you heard the same Orwellism issue from the mouth of some right-wing talk show host who characterized your own viewpoint about gender or economic policy as “man-hating” or “class warfare”?

None at all.

Here is a modus vivendi easily available for anyone willing to try some agon-istic respect. Left-wing critics of Falwell could simply look at what the preacher said as a form of art. Perhaps a subsidy from the government would even be forthcoming. And fundamentalists could simply think of sexual liberalism as a distinct dogma and let it enjoy the protected status of a minor church. They might then be able to argue against a religious establishment in the public sphere with better success than they have until now.

Some of Falwell’s critics would do well to take a leaf out of his book and profess to love fundamentalists no matter how much they hate fundamentalism.

“Agenda” is about right. How does 33 dead over a two and half spree on a campus crawling with cops count as “very effective” and “very successful”?

About the same way as V-Tech is now apparently about “breaking down bureaucratic barriers among the courts, the school and the state as it relates to mental health information.”

More federal undermining of privacy laws, in fact. Just what we need from an administration already up to its intrusive eye-balls in domestic surveillance.

Massengill, by the way, is the man who led the Virginia State Police in the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon, and his fellow panel members are Tom Ridge, the first U.S. secretary of homeland security, a top policy maker in state higher education, an administrator of the FBI’s center for the analysis of violent crime and two medical experts.

According to Massengill, the police gave him a timeline that “helped convince him that they responded as quickly as they could after the two people had been shot in West Ambler Johnston Hall.”

Since the timeline is the lynch-pin of the panel’s bizarre conclusion, it warrants more examination than the media has given it so far.

That timeline first entered the public debate on April 26, 2007 in this report from AP: “5 Minute Delay Crucial in Tech Shooting.”

The article reported what is now regarded as the official version of the killings at Virginia Tech on 4/16:

Cho got to Ambler Johnston Hall a bit before 7 am; he killed his first 2 victims with a Glock 9 mm (a fairly ordinary handgun) with two rounds; his second bout of killing (30 people) was at Norris Hall and it took 9 minutes. Police supposedly took 3 minutes to get to Norris and 5 minutes to get into the building, where several entrances had been chained shut from inside.

Witness accounts are often contradictory or mistaken and a crisis, in recollection, can seem to have taken much longer than it actually did, but still, think about what’s supposed to have happened in 9 minutes:

Cho walked up and down the halls (2-3 minutes, at least); he poked his head into a few classrooms a couple of times and left without doing anything; he fired steadily but with pauses in between, methodically breaking through doors that had been barricaded (that should have taken a minute at least), shot, left and returned to at least two classrooms (another minute or so each); stood over and shot students and fired individually at each (a minute?) in at least two classrooms. Although the students were trapped inside, they were barricading doors, running away, throwing themselves over each other, or jumping through windows, so they were moving targets that required him to aim and move too. And reload.

And then he shot himself. His last victim, wounded and on the floor, said he watched the gunman’s legs move to the front of the classroom, then heard a pause, then shots. No one actually saw the suicide, so what happened must remain somewhat tentative.

Why Nine Minutes?

If Cho fired 170 rounds (or 255, in at least one account) in Norris Hall, as reported, he fired almost 18 rounds per minute or a round roughly every 3 seconds. I’m not a marksman, so I don’t know if that’s likely or not. If you also take into account that he was reloading and pausing, he must have been firing an even higher number of rounds per minute than that most of the time. And, if we go by the multiple wounds in each body (3-4), he must have made about 110-120 hits (out of 170 rounds). Even more, if we include the wounded. So far as we know, he was an amateur with, at most, a few weeks of practice. I am not sure if that scenario is plausible or not. And again, I’m not trying to refute the timeline so much as evaluating it. But I do wonder how officials can be so sure of it. And why.

This was a time line posted on Wiki (it’s since been deleted, but you can find it, with the original footnotes, on my blog, which has collected material relevant to the case):

* 9:42 a.m.: Students in the engineering building, Norris Hall, make a 9-1-1 emergency call to alert police that more shots have been fired.

*9:45 a.m.: Police arrived three minutes later and found that Cho had chained all three entrances shut.

* Between 9:30 and 9:50 am: Using the .22 caliber Walther P22 and 9 millimeter Glock 19 handgun with 17 magazines of ammunition, Cho shoots 60 people, killing 30 of them. Cho’s rampage lasts for approximately nine minutes. A student in Room 205 noticed the time remaining in class shortly before the start of the shootings.

* Around 9:40 a.m.: Students in Norris 205, while attending Haiyan Cheng’s issues in scientific computing class, hear Cho’s gunshots. The students, including Zach Petkewicz, barricade the door and prevent Cho’s entry.

* 9:50 a.m.: After arriving at Norris Hall, police took 5 minutes to assemble the proper team, clear the area and then break through the doors. They use a shotgun to break through the chained entry doors. Investigators believe that the shotgun blast alerted the gunman to the arrival of the police. The police hear gunshots as they enter the building. They follow the sounds to the second floor.

* 9:51 a.m.: As the police reached the second floor, the gunshots stopped. Cho’s shooting spree in Norris Hall lasted 9 minutes. Police officers discovered that after his second round of shooting the occupants of room 211 Norris, the gunman fatally shot himself in the temple.

From this Wiki account (which is quite conservative and can be verified from other published time-lines), the shooting really could have taken place any time between at least 9:30 and 9:50 — a space of 20, not 9 minutes.

But even on its own terms, the official time line seems a little odd. If students heard gun shots (which could only have been at the very latest at 9:40), and if police reached the second floor at 9:51, that still makes 11 minutes, not 9.

Why, you might ask, am I quibbling about a few minutes? After all, no one could really have been sure of anything in all the confusion. True. But that’s all the more reason why insisting on those 9 minutes seems peculiar. Especially since we also have at least one account that the police got there later than this account suggests.

Confusion again? What about the video footage and reports
of the police hiding around the building? Or coming out of nowhere (BBC, April 17)? That doesn’t square with the official story saying they rushed straight from that 9-1-1 call to Norris. More confusion? Possibly. But each additional contradiction becomes that much less plausible as simple error.

But the insistence on 9 minutes does make sense if you think about the bigger picture.

If the gunman only took 9 minutes, then the onus on the police to explain their behavior becomes much less. It’s then no longer a question of what they were doing for the half hour or so in which Cho was rampaging through Norris Hall (not to mention the two hours before) but only what made them delay after they got to Norris at 9:45 (3 minutes after the call).

And that’s simple; the doors were chained shut. Ergo, they had to wait 5 minutes, while — by this reckoning — Cho finished off his 9 minute spree.

That this is the significance of having a 9 minute time line is pretty clear, since the police officers quoted in the article direct their criticism specifically at the 5 minute delay. The critics say it was those few minutes that most significantly increased the number of victims. Meanwhile, for some reason, they’re silent about what the police were doing for the two hours before.

Bringing in the Military

Then, tacked on to the criticism of the 5 minute delay is a discussion (for the first time in the media) of what is known as the “active shooter” paradigm in police operations. The critics say the 5 minute delay wouldn’t have happened if V-Tech had been treated from the start as an “active shooter” situation.

What is an “active shooter” situation? It’s a sniper or shooter crisis where swifter and more aggressive police tactics are required, because the perp is careless about his own life and, therefore, more likely to take as many down with him as he can. Those aggressive tactics, called “Immediate Action Rapid Deployment,” were developed in the nineties, but really came into prominence only after the Columbine school shootings in 1999. But they still aren’t operational everywhere, supposedly because of lack of funds and training.

But notice that “active shooter” is being referenced in the 4/26 article only in terms of the 5 minute delay. Why? Maybe because it’s a strategy with several advantages:

1. It lets the police take some blame, but not so much that the massacre looks like a case of negligence. That’s a move that makes it possible to take the focus off police failure and put it on policy changes requiring more laws, more force, and ultimately more federalization

2. It dampens public outrage at the individuals who really are culpable. A 5 minute delay simply isn’t going to work anyone up the way a 2 hour delay would.

3. It lets officials introduce the “Immediate Action Rapid Deployment” (IARD) paradigm into campus policing without undercutting the decisions taken by the administration or the police.

Now, IARD is a distinct step in militarizing police response and is very much a part of the trend to systematically erase the boundaries between wartime military actions and domestic policing. Domestic crises are more and more described and tackled in military terms, just as foreign military actions are being palmed off as policing operations.

Which is why the article goes on, ”This is a seminal moment for law enforcement as far as I’m concerned because it proves that minutes are critical”

Yes, it’s seminal. V-Tech is going to help put military responses squarely on campus.

What I’m suggesting is that the more officials can take the blame off V-Tech, the more they can push for additional federal policies and laws.

So, if my thesis holds good, officials should also be taking that 2 hour gap between Ambler Johnston and Norris off the table as fast as possible, because that’s where the administration’s culpability is most obvious. Are they?

Indeed they are. In the AP account, the V-Tech review panel states flatly that shutting down the campus couldn’t possibly have done any good because the shooter could always have gone back into his dorm and shot the 900 or so people who lived there. I quote,

On Thursday, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said that the massacre may not have been averted if the Virginia Tech campus had been locked down after the two shooting deaths at the dorm. ‘’Well, if the campus had been locked down — because the shooter lived on campus — I mean he could have gone into his dorm with 900 people instead of going into a classroom (and) he could have shot people there,’ Kaine said in his monthly listener-question program on WRVA-AM and the Virginia News Network.

Well, surely this is a straw-man. Locking down the campus was not the only option. V-Tech could also have made an announcement on its PA system for students to lock themselves into their rooms or stay off campus. A siren could have gone off to alert people, instead of an email notice. Police could have been rushed in to guard buildings (they should have been doing that anyway, since there had been a couple of bomb threats in the weeks preceding). How did they manage to shut down the campus so efficiently in August 2006, when survivalist and killer, William Morva, was on the loose?

Kaine’s tendentious announcement also overlooks another bunch of really serious failures on the part of V-Tech. How was it that on a campus where the student population had been disarmed by policy, there were no monitoring cameras nor armed security guards near the dorms, who could have stopped the shooter in the first place? Even measly little schools have them; why not this lush, plush campus with its own golf course, power station and airport and what the BBC calls “meticulously manicured” lawns?

How could V- Tech promise its students that the campus was gun-free, if they had no metal detectors or security checks to ensure it? How did Cho leave campus to post his video and re-enter loaded with ammo and guns and not set some detector or alarm off? How could he have even entered a dorm without a security card in the first place? And why were students entering and leaving Ambler Johnston until 10 AM (according to student reports) after the shooting at 7:15?

Is none of that worth noting? Would a little vigilance in any of those things not have helped at all? Does it really just boil down to those 5 minutes?.

Or is the media trying to frame what’s at stake? Seems like it, especially if we look at what else is going on.

Framing A Story

Quite early on, Time magazine had an opinion piece, “(Va. Tech’s President Should Resign,” John Cloud, 4/19) which — with little serious argument — explicitly directed the public’s attention away from the delay between the two shootings and toward the danger signals Cho was sending up for two year before the shootings.

Now, those two years are problematic, of course. But the useful thing about focusing on the two years is that the failure to follow up on Cho’s problematic behavior — unlike the two hour delay — can always be blamed on policies.

And in fact, people are doing just that. In time, we’ll find they’ve reached the conclusion that, mirabile dictu, none of this was V-Tech’s fault at all. It was the fault of laws, policies, programs, etc. etc…

Notice, for instance, this 4/25 report from MSNBC describing students standing firmly behind the V-Tech president and administration. It makes a striking contrast with earlier reports in which students repeatedly and loudly criticized the administration.

Looks a bit as if this show of student confidence developed later. But who’s pushing for the vote of confidence for the people at the top? Let’s see.

“Johnson plans to present the university Board of Visitors on Thursday with an online petition with thousands of signatures of support for Steger and Flinchum. Steger also received an endorsement from the governor.

“Charlie has been acting as a very, very good president,” Gov. Tim Kaine said. “This kind of event could happen anywhere on any campus, and there has been an innocence taken away from the students. But the positive values, and academic tradition of this university will help the community stay strong, and keep this university attracting students.”

I’ve written about this kind of media framing before. First, the media sensationalizes. This is the pulp drama of personal narratives, human interest stories, emotion, drama, color, personalities… Then, when we get to the heart of the matter, the focus quickly shies away to broad questions of law and policy. No one’s ever at fault now. It’s always a failure to communicate, bad laws, not enough funding — anything that lets the bosses off the hook.

That was the MO of the media during the torture debate. Questions about what actually happened were quickly framed out and the debate focused on creating better policies rather than on punishing the people who created the bad ones. It was ultimately only the alternative press which pushed the discussion back to where it belonged.

At V-Tech too, the mainstream public debate has been relentlessly about more federal laws of all kinds — more gun control… or federalizing the mental health data base… or militarizing security… or imposing speech codes.

Which fits in perfectly with where this government wants to go, as a recent piece by James Bovard, “Working for the Clampdown,” in The American Conservative Magazine (April 27, 2007) indicates. Bovard describes how the Defense Authorization Act of September 30, 2006 makes it easy for the president to impose martial law in the event of what he calls public disorder, which might just be something like an antiwar protest on campus (not for nothing was it the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that held a hearing on college campus security on 4/23 and on 4/26).

Meanwhile, Congressman Ron Paul’s Texas newsletter, “Straight Talk,” describes the dangers of an impending and unconstitutional ‘hate crimes’ bill (HR 1592) that has every potential to create a category of “thought crimes.”

With that in mind, you begin to see that despite the overwhelming focus on them, V- Tech is fundamentally not about these things:

It’s Not About More Gun Laws. The gun control argument runs: Were guns not growing on Virginian trees, this would never have happened. We need new laws: No guns for nut jobs.

But the trouble with this line of reasoning is that Virginia Tech is already a gun-free zone. Theoretically at least. The university beat back an attempt in just 2006 by the state of Virginia to allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus. Virginia’s gun laws already do prohibit deranged people from purchasing firearms. When Cho bought his two handguns, he was already committing a felony.

It’s Not About More Mental Health Reporting

OK, you ask, then how come Cho’s record of derangement didn’t stop him from buying two guns?

Well, that’s because he had no record. Forget the Feds. He didn’t have one with the state. No one gave him one.

But doesn’t that make the case for more laws regulating the mentally deranged? Not really. The real problem was that the laws already in place weren’t followed.

First, let’s be precise here; no psychiatrist ever saw Cho. A licensed social worker recommended sending him to a treatment facility (and got a special judge to do it), and then a PhD psychologist reckoned he was a threat only to himself (and had the same special judge release him) — all in about 24 hours flat. Some evaluation. It was not only shoddy on its face but in flat violation of state law, which requires an MD to do the job. (“Cho Seung Hui’s Commitment Papers,” Bonnie Goldstein, Slate, April 24, 2007). That’s strike two just there.

And now, strike three. Although Cho was ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, it turns out that no one kept track of whether he did or didn’t. Or kept records of any kind, apparently, all of which is a violation of existing state law.

More details have emerged about what happened at the three state institutions through which Cho passed (“Cho Didn’t Get Court-Ordered Treatment,” Brigid Schulte and Chris L. Jenkins, Washington Post, May 7, 2007).

These were V. Tech’s Cook Counseling Center, Blacksburg’s New River Valley community services board, and nearby Christiansburg’s Carilion St. Alban’s Clinic, which is where Cho ended up staying overnight. Each now says it had no reason, jurisdiction, or wherewithal to follow up. They all saw no evil, heard no evil… and did nothing at all.

Says Mike Wade, the Blacksburg board’s community liaison, “Since we weren’t named the provider of that outpatient treatment, we weren’t involved in the case.”

Says Terry Teel, Cho’s court appointed lawyer, of the court’s role in overseeing the treatment, “We have no authority.”

Says Christopher Flynn, director of V-Tech’s Cook Counseling center, “I’ve never seen someone delivered to me with an order that says, ‘This person has been discharged; he’s now your responsibility.’ That doesn’t happen.”

Really? What’s on paper contradicts all of them.

Re Virginia Tech, there are VA state guidelines with which state universities have to comply (Act H 3064 approved by the Governor on March 21, 2007, not even a month before V Tech):

The governing boards of each public institution of higher education shall develop and implement policies that advise students, faculty, and staff, including residence hall staff, of the proper procedures for identifying and addressing the needs of students exhibiting suicidal tendencies or behavior… Nothing in this section shall preclude any public institution of higher education from establishing policies and procedures for appropriately dealing with students who are a danger to themselves, or to others, and whose behavior is disruptive to the academic community.

Re New River: Virginia state law says that community service boards “shall recommend a specific course of treatment and programs” for people such as Cho who are ordered to receive outpatient treatment. The law also says these boards “shall monitor the person’s compliance.” (Wade claims that’s “news to him.”)

Re St. Alban’s, Virginia law says that if a dangerously mentally ill person ordered into treatment doesn’t go, he can be brought back before the special judge, and if necessary, in a crisis, be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 6 months.

Let’s put it this way: If Virginia state guidelines for universities had been followed, Cho’s history would have been on record and campus police would have had an eye on him already. And if he had been properly evaluated and monitored according to state mental health requirements, he would have been labeled a danger to society and the state police would have stopped him buying a gun.

So tell me, why do we need more laws when people aren’t following the ones already on the books?

It’s Not About More Funding

Was it because there weren’t enough funds, as some argue? Community service boards apparently handled 115,000 mentally ill people in Virginia in 2005 at a cost of $127 million. That works out — very roughly — to about a thousand bucks per person. I don’t know if that’s shabby or not. But it doesn’t really seem relevant here. What could it have possibly cost in additional time or money to call up and find out if Cho had gone into treatment? Ten minutes and the cost of a local phone call.

The whole business is that amazing. No one seems to have known anything or done much of anything. No one seems to have followed up or even thought they had to. For instance, reports say the Cho’s family didn’t seek treatment for him because they didn’t have enough money, yet the family lives in an affluent Virginia neighborhood, sent their children to elite private schools, and gave Cho enough spare change for videos, a car, a cell phone, an escort service (at least once), firearms, an ungodly amount of ammo and training at a firing range.

Isn’t it much more likely that if Cho’s family didn’t get help for him, it was because of the stigma attached to mental illness, which is much greater among Asian families? And would more money really have made that better?

Let states spend as much as they want on community mental health. But don’t tell me Virginia Tech happened because of lack of money.

It’s Not About More Federal Data Bases

Some argue that reporting to the Feds has to be tightened because under federal law, Cho’s voluntary confinement would have automatically prevented him from buying a gun. (Richard Bonnie, chairman of the Virginia Supreme Court’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform).

Well, in the first place, as we’ve seen, if he’d been properly evaluated, state laws themselves would have stopped Cho. If people don’t comply with state laws, why are they any more likely to comply with federal laws?

According to the FBI, Virginia is already the leading state in reporting mental health dis-qualifications to the Feds. But, the problems is that Virginia state law is a tad different from the federal law. It lists only two categories that would warrant notifying the state police — “involuntary commitment” or a ruling of “mental “incapacitation” — neither of which applied to Cho, who was confined “voluntarily” and wasn’t ruled incapacitated.

Immediately after V-Tech, Governor Tim Kaine (a Democrat) eliminated this distinction. He also said he thought V-Tech would help push through legislation he supports that would also subject firearms sales at gun shows to instant background checks (legislation introduced annually in Virginia that dies before a floor vote in the General Assembly).

(Interestingly, a move to expand Virginia’s mental health laws was already in the works in October 2006. It’s goal was to “modify the criteria for placing people in emergency care by eliminating a requirement that they pose an “imminent” danger to themselves or others,” precisely what’s now being demanded as a result of the V-Tech shootings).

But will making every state law automatically comply with federal law on this make things better or worse? I’m not sure. If people know that their mental health evaluations automatically go into a federal data base, will that make them even more reluctant to seek help they might need? Is it a provision that might be misused by vengeful spouses? And what if, in the present political climate, expression of certain beliefs — say, conspiracy theories about the government — were classified as signs of mental derangement? And suppose you could be forced into psychiatric evaluation for that? What if the hate crimes bill on the table now makes even thinking or speaking a certain way a sign not only of derangement but of criminal intent toward society. I’m afraid that the unintended bad of more federalization might come to outweigh the hoped-for good of standardization.

In any case, to my mind, the real problem lies with the special justice who released Cho and then decided he had to attend outpatient, not inpatient, treatment. Whether Cho was sent to V-Tech’s Cook Center or not (Cook’s not returning calls), mental health advocates and state officials call it pretty unusual to order outpatient treatment for someone labeled a imminent danger to himself. Usually, it’s an inpatient order, says Mary Zdanowicz, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. And, a 1994 survey of special justices found that outpatient treatment was ordered in just 8 percent of the commitment hearings, among other things, because they’re hard to monitor (Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission).

In short, measured just by current laws and care standards, Cho’s evaluation seems to have been shoddy and the special justice’s remedy poorly conceived.

And I don’t see why more laws would change that.

In fact, part of the problem looks like too much regulatory apparatus and too many state bodies with orbits designed to mesh that ended up clashing, on one hand, and too little common sense and care, on the other.

The three agencies involved at V-Tech shared responsibility like the three crones in the myth shared one eye — they fumbled so much as they passed it around that they dropped it.

In short, what we have here is a full-throttle display of the Diminishing Utility of More Bureaucrats and Laws (DUMBEL), whereby what was everyone’s responsibility became no one’s job.

Meanwhile, the policies that should be discussed are not.

We still have no account of what medication Cho was taking, although his room mates have told us they saw him taking a pill regularly in the mornings.

And we have even less discussion about a matter of crucial importance now:

How to hold the state accountable for laws it expects us to follow but doesn’t follow itself.

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (“Lawyer Says Virginia Tech’s Immunity to Lawsuits Over Shooting Is Not Absolute,” April 24) describes the potential for litigation at V-Tech and quotes lawyers who suggest that the university showed ‘gross negligence.’ But of course, the panel’s swift and well publicized exoneration easily trumps that in the public debate.

Meanwhile, the media, which rushed to shove microphones and cameras in the faces of grieving friends and family, hasn’t shown much interest in reporting on what victims are up against if they do try to press their claims: The doctrine of sovereign immunity.

A relic of common law, it’s designed to protect a state university like Virginia Tech from litigation by the public. States have relaxed the doctrine to allow state hospitals, for example, to be sued for malpractice; still, any plaintiff at V-Tech, I am reliably told, would have to establish a case of gross negligence and would have only 6 months to press claims. That means any stalling by the university helps it avert a lawsuit by reducing the amount of time victims have to collect information and prepare a case. It’s very likely that the victims don’t even know about the doctrine.

And, by the way, the doctrine of sovereign immunity holds that a state can do no wrong because the state creates the law and thus cannot be subject to it. On that count at least, it looks like the State of Virginia is already perfectly in synch with the Federal government these days.

If you thought that was V-Tech officials getting the perpetrator of reportedly the biggest campus massacre in the US, Cho Seung Hui, out of the classroom, you thought wrong.

Probably nothing says more about the priorities of the political culture nowadays than the firing last week of Nicholas Winsett, a teacher at Boston’s Emmanuel College.

On Wednesday, two days after the Virginia massacre, Winsett enacted a little skit in his classroom.

During the skit, Winsett used a marker to pretend to shoot at a student who had previously been prepped to simulate firing back. He was illustrating his argument that the massacre could have been prevented had university policy allowed guns on campus. That may be debatable.

But, of course, debating things is precisely what professors do.

To my mind, he made some thoughtful points:

He asked students what the impact of this tragedy on the stock market was (nil) to show that a sensational tragedy does not equate to something that has a deep social impact.

He also argued that the incidence of such killings is miniscule. You are more likely to be shot in a convenience store or struck by lightning than killed in a mass shooting.

His interpretation is open to question, of course. For one thing, I think he overlooks the importance of the twin issues of psychiatric drug use and the increase in police-state laws. But I doubt he is much off the mark on the statistics.

Here is a video of his argument on YouTube.

Emmanuel College claims he was making light of the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

He is said to have made derogatory references to “rich, white kids.” The college is within its rights to maintain its standards — which may well have been violated by what he said. But in this case they seem to have been quick
enough to act… even without much investigation.

Meanwhile, the President of Virginia Tech has yet to step down for the university’s role in witlessly enabling school shooter, Cho Seung Hui. Indeed, if we are to believe Steger, officials did all that could humanly have been done. But a Time article calls him on that.

A glance at Dr. Steger’s professional record shows it to be an impressive one, which makes this turn in his career all the more tragic.

But this paragraph in his CV struck me as not tragic… but ironic:

“Most recently, he has been asked by the Swiss Ambassador to the United States and The World Bank to serve on a committee to establish a foundation in the United States to conduct research on mitigating global natural
disasters.”

Indeed.

Still, even if he resigned from V-Tech, Steger’s path is unlikely to be downward.

Right now, that’s not the case with Nicholas Winsett.