So I wrote in 2009 after hearing him speak in a gymnasium packed with 2,500 people.

Best known for assisting 130 terminal patients to end their lives, and actually even killing one who was too weak to do so himself (for which he was imprisoned for eight years), Kevorkian was a fierce opponent of growing government intrusion into our daily lives, including the right to end it.

Suffering from ALS, a progressive, usually fatal, neurodegenerative disease, 52-year-old Thomas Youk expressly permitted Kevorkian to end his life for him in 1998. Though unsuccessfully prosecuted for several assisted suicides (known as iatric euthanasia), his video of the procedure enabled the state to convict him.

What surprised me at that February 2009 speech was his reading of Laurence Britt’s Fourteen Points of Fascism, using contemporary U.S. examples. I had no idea “Dr. Death” held membership in the red pill society.

While in prison, Dr. Kevorkian wrote Amendment IX: Our Cornucopia of Rights, a brief book, only 76 pages, but packed with quotes from our founders to great writers and activists.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. — Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Written in 2005, Cornucopia lays out the history behind the 9th Amendment, and clarifies the dire need to invoke its “seismic powers.” Kevorkian dares us to resist US cacocracy – rule by the absolute worst elements of society:

Exploiting the awesome authority of Amendment IX, We the People can mount that effort and divert America’s morally degraded course now headed toward degeneration, redirecting it instead toward the lofty goal of a truly civilized open society befitting a great nation—one that guarantees absolute human freedom and universal social justice—unencumbered by any kind of secularly nonsensical religious morality.

We the People who care and dare must begin now to set the stage for the realization of America’s reason for existence, before the magnitude of our enslavement renders such a goal hopelessly quixotic. That calls for boldly preemptive action involving considerable risk.

Cornucopia calls for a complete boycott of state and federal elections, massive protest and non-violent civil disobedience demanding that “all our natural rights be proclaimed, untrammeled and respected.” He also warns us to expect a Waco-type reaction from the powers that be.

“In so doing, we must never forget that the nature of the regime we will thereby forcefully ‘petition’ is fascist, but disarmingly subtle and no less determined, confident, and ruthless than others of that ilk.”

Oh, they will and have used violence against protesters and innocents alike. When he warns of secret detentions and murder, we have seen that through the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and the secret state police. We watched Obama admit to murdering – rather than trying in a court of law – Osama bin Laden. (That the claimed murder is a hoax makes this nation’s brazen disregard for the Rule of Law no less horrific.)

After referring to US involvement in stopping the advance of Hitler, he writes:

Now it’s America that scorns and defies the United Nations, international law, the International Court of Justice, and worldwide public opinion in reckless and unprovoked aggression in a monomaniacal ‘crusade’ to proselytize its own political philosophy and, in the process, its way of life. There is no power on earth that can stop it, other than Americans themselves.

He reminds me of those potent 10 two-letter words, “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

Rest assured, Jack Kevorkian, resistance grows daily here and abroad. The impact of your legacy will only grow with time.

I don’t know what age I was when I first heard Scott-Heron wittily and boldly lambaste Nixon and Spearhead Agnew and Ronnie Raygun and Attilla the Haig and Marlin Perkins and Papa Doc Bush — they and their America didn’t mean shit to him (and me and millions of other Americans) and it felt damned good to hear it. One of his favorite targets was Americans’ greatest religious experience: getting something for nothing — specifically, the ripping off of black art, music and culture by (mostly) white capitalists while its creators often died paupers.

He declined the title of “Godfather of Rap” and it was easy to see why. I was blown away by NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” the first couple weeks I listened to it — the anger, the violence, fighting back against racist cops, the clarity about who your enemies are, the cheapness of life worn like a badge. But I found that I couldn’t keep listening to it indefinitely — the music, especially, was both depressing and boring. And that’s what Gil Scott-Heron and his brilliant longtime collaborator Brian Jackson figured out: they created a poetic, free-flowing, typically flute and percussion-driven platform for Scott-Heron’s AK-47 mouth to artistically and scathingly say that America was a racist war-loving hypocritical slag heap, deluded by fake movies, fake history, fake images and fake media. Scott-Heron and the multi-instrumentalist Jackson fused and maxed out beat poetry and music to what they always should have been, with fabulous hypnotic grooves and the occasional tasty solo. Scott-Heron ra-ta-tatted against injustice, but you kept on listening, for decades, because the hooks and creativity are always present whether moving through funk, soul, R & B, free jazz, African or Caribbean beats. Drugs, violence, poverty, inequality, opportunistic “leaders” and sellouts, addiction, defeat and lives that never got off the ground were frequent subjects. But the really unforgivable sin was musical boredom.

In his prime, Scott-Heron shouted that the emperors were not only stark naked but stark raving mad. He had empathy for people struggling against addiction and poverty and whenever you have empathy — artistically, personally, politically — it will lead you to a better place. And this is another difference between Scott-Heron and many of the rappers he is alleged to have inspired. Empathy begat the anger. I dispute that most of the rappers I hear are angry — if they were, they would be totally revulsed by Barack Obama. How empathetic are Americans, in general, when they acquiesce to the nonstop killing of innocents all over the world– they may think they are angry or that their backs are against the wall but these are largely the cries of the alienated, unconnected and passive, satisfied as debt-slaves with iTrinkets and currently presided over by MC Obummer, an astounding master of, as it turns out, killing hope.

I saw Scott-Heron perform two years ago at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia. To see the creator of “Storm Music” and “The Bottle” perform in an intimate club was a thrill. He had a voice and presence that you paid attention to — his baritone was born to deliver Shakespeare, as bassist Ron Carter once said. He and his rockin’ pianist, blistering lefty lead player and the smoking rhythm section were so relentlessly good that I didn’t even miss my favorite song, “Storm Music,” or “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” The new songs, from “I’m New Here,” were instantly embraced. And “The Bottle” swung mightily that night. And he was hilarious, both that night and on his recorded offhand pot shots against the ruling class, something that isn’t often noted when he’s written about.

That Philly show fell in a time period, the fall of 2009, where I also saw James McMurtry and Iris DeMent. Interestingly (maybe) is that Scott-Heron did not perform “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” DeMent did not perform “Wasteland of the Free,” and McMurtry did not play “We Can’t Make It Here,” all absolutely classic songs pointedly critical of America. I’m sure these artists had different reasons for not playing these tunes but I took it as a bad omen. The impression it made on me was that now that the Big Bad Bush was gone it was time to STFU about America. It was time to start feeling good about America because an uncouth goon from Texas was replaced by a smooth-talking intelligent Wall Street stooge. Protest and anger were uncool. Nothing as pseudo-glorious as Reagan’s Morning (Thunder) in America but, rather, some weak-ass liberal Sleepytime tea time in America. Scott-Heron had also spoken favorably about Obama.

So, after two years of Obama, I muse: the working class of America, especially blacks, can get as much action on their concerns by sending a letter to whitey on the moon as they can from having America’s first black president in the White House.

In the jumbled world of confusing musicians with leaders, I thought about how Scott-Heron canceled a planned show in Israel in 2010 (why did he ever schedule it?) — persuaded by activists that it would be similar to playing in apartheid South Africa. One might imagine that Scott-Heron would be helping to lead a BDS movement instead of being confronted by it. But why should we expect musicians and celebrities to be more unaffected by capitalism than 99.9% of the rest of the population? His embrace of Obama perfectly symbolizes the personal and political decline and irrelevance of the left over the last 40 years. We didn’t just come a short way, baby. We went headlong the wrong way. O working class, we have to be constantly moving forward toward the overthrow of capitalism because when we cease to advance we will either die immediately or be lost for decades.

So I’m thinking of Gil Scott-Heron and his commendable activism against the nuclear industry and apartheid South Africa, and the litmus test of one’s humanity and commitment to justice, equality and the rule of law, i.e., supporting the Palestinians against Israel, and how two weeks ago I saw my first keyboard hero, Ray Manzarek (of the Doors), at the Sellersville Theater, pleased with his acid-tested spirituality, telling the crowd that Christians and Muslims and Jews should put away their religious books and just love each other and, by the way, he and Robby Krieger are looking forward to playing as the Doors in Tel Aviv this summer because “the Israelis are so cool.”

(Hey, Ray, how about you and Robby do something that truly breaks on through: be on the next Free Gaza flotilla and play a Gaza concert if and when you “break on through” the illegal Israeli blockade — maybe you can see how “cool” the IDF is. Maybe you can grab Jim Morrison from out of the ether, where you said he resides, and bring your interstellular spirituality down to earth where it might mean something. It says in the Uncool Book that faith without works is dead.) Oh well, as a sometime Zionist, sometime Christian troubadour once admonished us, “Don’t follow leaders and watch the parking meters.” He never explained the parking meter thing though I assumed he was warning us not to take up the drunken dares of friends to vault over the meters after the bars close.

And I give Gil Scott-Heron almost the last word: “It ain’t no new thing — America is always the same old shit.”

Now, are those words from many years ago too negative and cynical, too unhopey and unchangey? Well, decades after Gil Scott-Heron urged people to send their unaffordable, unpaid “doctor bills to whitey on the moon,” he lived to see 45 million Americans without any health insurance and 47 million on food stamps. He railed against ghetto poverty in 1970 and 41 years later lived to see the greatest inequalities in wealth since the Great Depression. And he lived to see the first black POTUS, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner who’s currently slaughtering innocent dark-skinned people in five different countries. America can’t make clothes, shoes, toys, electronics, peace or justice but we make a hell of a lot of irony.

Anyway… Gil Scott-Heron, don’t rest in peace as everyone is advising you to, rage on wherever you are, be witty and scathing, be the fighter you are, be bold when no one else will, whether you’re in heaven or hell, I’m sure that things can be better in both places. Take with you into eternity the fiery ambitious man/child who wrote a well-regarded novel, “The Vulture,” when you were only 19 years old. Fuck crack, fuck Rikers, fuck HIV, fuck the blunting of capitalism on your spirit, it happens, from time to time the darkness comes along to terrorize the weak and challenge the strong, because you were a human being, not a god, the storm is coming, it grows on the waves from Johannesburg to Montego Bay, these were tiny blips on the road to making a beautiful soul, none of us are who capitalism says we are, we have no idea who we are or what we could be, but justice is coming on the wings of a storm and we resist in the present for those yet unborn, what’s that music (storm music) playin’ on the radio, what’s that music (storm music) playin’ everywhere I go, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sweeter feelin’ in the whole wide world than Gil Scott-Heron playing “Storm Music” on the radio…

On December 13, New York Times writer, Robert McFadden, headlined, “Strong American Voice in Diplomacy and Crisis,” saying:

Mr. Holbrooke was hospitalized on (December 10) after becoming ill. (After two major surgeries, he) remained in very critical condition until his death…. A brilliant, sometimes abrasive infighter, he used a formidable arsenal of facts, bluffs, whispers, implied threats and, when necessary, pyrotechnic fits of anger to press his positions.

For good reason, he was nicknamed “The Bulldozer”.

Former CIA officer, turned activist and political critic, Ray McGovern, called him a favorite Democrat party “go-to diplomat for particularly messy conflicts,” like the 1990s Balkans wars and current Afghanistan/Pakistan (Af-Pak) ones “where a strong moral compass was viewed as something of a disqualifier.” (He) was counted on to bulldoze through and over any ethical qualms to achieve what Washington wanted.” He obliged.

Obama called him “a true giant of American foreign policy,” pursuing a belligerent imperial agenda he didn’t mention. Nor did major media reports, presenting their customary sanitized versions of current issues, history, and notable public figures like Holbrooke, misportrayed as heros.

His diplomatic career spanned nearly five decades, first in Vietnam as an Agency for International Development (USAID) representative, then a staff assistant to ambassadors Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge. Re-assigned to the White House, he served Lyndon Johnson in the same capacity. In the late 1960s, he wrote one volume of the Pentagon Papers, and served as special assistant to Under Secretaries of State Nicholas Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson. He also was a member of the US Delegation to the Vietnam Paris Peace Talks.

In the 1970s, he was a fellow at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, a Peace Corp Director in Morocco, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, and National Security Affairs coordinator for the Carter/Mondale presidential campaign.

He then became Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and held other various public and private positions, including as managing director for Lehman Brothers.

Under Clinton, he was Ambassador to Germany, UN Ambassador, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, and chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Accords, ending the early 1990s Balkan wars. More on them below. He then served as Clinton’s Special Envoy to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Cyprus. Most recently, he was Obama’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. More on that as well.

The Holbrooke Legacy Media Reports Won’t Explain

Hailed as the architect of the 1995 Dayton Accords, ending the early 1990s Balkan wars, major media reports didn’t explain how it artificially split the former Yugoslav republic in two, establishing the Federation of Bosnia/Herzegovina (the Muslim/Croat alliance) and the Serb Republic of Bosnia/Herzegovina (Republika Srpska).

Also left out was the West’s economic and social assault on Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic. It precipitated civil war, serving as an imperial scheme to divide, conquer, occupy and control. As a result, millions of people remain impoverished. Bosnia is a Western, largely US colony, under NATO military occupation. Its 1999 war of aggression followed. More on it below.

Diana Johnstone wrote the definitive account of the Balkan wars. Her book, Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions, is essential reading to understand its causes and long-lasting effects. For the West, it was about deterring Milosevic’s “Greater Serbia” quest, a gross mischaracterization of truth about a war Western powers wanted and initiated, notably Washington and Germany. They encouraged cessation, provoking conflict, then taking credit for ending it. In 1995, Holbrooke served as point man for round one, followed by his role again leading up to NATO’s 1999 war of aggression, concluding its unfinished business.

Milosevic, an opportunistic politician, in fact, wanted Yugoslavia’s disintegration prevented. When it happened, he wanted minority Serbs protected, allowed either to stay in Yugoslavia or get autonomy in the newly created rump states. Besides occupation and colonization, Johnstone believes Washington’s aims included:

– preventing a European-backed settlement;

– “assert(ing) its dominance over European allies in the arbitration of European conflicts;” Holbrooke admitted it in his memoirs and played a key role;

– expanding NATO through a new “out of area” humanitarian mission, aka US dominated colonization and military occupation; and,

– “gain(ing) influence in the Muslim world by championing the Bosnian Muslims.”

She also called “government by international bureaucracy (a) new trend in the New World Order.” Since Holbrooke’s negotiated Dayton Accords:

“Bosnia-Herzegovina has been ruled by a similar combination: a complicated set of local authorities under the strict supervision of a ‘High Representative’ (a contemporary Proconsul or Viceroy) who can, and does, annul laws adopted by the local democratic institutions or dismiss democratically chosen officials” — not in tow with America’s imperial aims.

In other words, it’s a dictatorship portrayed as democracy, the kind Washington disdains and won’t tolerate abroad or at home, never in one of its colonies.

In his role as Dayton Accords architect, Holbrooke, in fact, helped establish colonial rule and end Yugoslavia’s market socialism experiment, imposing Western-style “free market” harshness, the same type IMF measures spreading mass impoverishment in Europe and America. At the time, Newsweek called the agreement “less (for) peace….than a declaration of surrender,” giving America and NATO full colonial control. Yet Holbrooke was hailed as a peace architect – ending Yugoslav sovereignty at the point of a gun.

Holbrooke’s Role in NATO’s 1999 Serbia/Kosovo Aggression

In October 1998, a NATO air verification mission was agreed to for Kosovo. In November, Holbrooke brokered a framework for a political settlement with Milosevic. A second Verification Mission was then established to assure compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions 1160 and 1199.

As Special Envoy, Holbrooke worked closely with Christopher Hill, chief negotiator of the Rambouillet Agreement, the proximate cause of the 1999 war. In January that year, senior officials of the six “Contact Group” countries (America, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy) held a London peace conference, threatening war unless Yugoslavia complied with stipulated terms. They were coming, the kind no legitimate leader could accept.

In February, Milosevic got them: the Rambouillet Accord. It was an ultimatum he couldn’t accept, a take-it-or-leave-it demand to surrender Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) sovereignty to a NATO occupation force with unimpeded access to its land, airspace and territorial waters, as well as any area or facility therein. Moreover, it required the FRY to let NATO freely operate outside federal law.

It was an offer designed for rejection, giving a US-led NATO force cause to attack. It followed from March 24-June 10, 1999, pounding the FRY mercilessly. Around 600 aircraft flew about 3,000 sorties, dropping thousands of tons of ordnance as well as hundreds of ground-launched cruise missiles. Up to then, its ferocity was unprecedented.

Nearly everything was struck, causing massive destruction and disruption, including known or suspected military sites and targets; power plants; factories; transportation; telecommunications facilities; vital infrastructure, including roads, bridges and rail lines; fuel depots; schools; a TV station; the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade; hospitals; government offices; churches; historic landmarks; and more in cities and villages throughout the country.

It was a lawless war of aggression portrayed as a humanitarian mission. Holbrooke was instrumental in launching it. It inflicted an estimated $100 billion in damage. A humanitarian disaster resulted. Environmental contamination was extensive. Large numbers were killed, injured or displaced. Two million people lost their livelihoods, many their homes and communities, and for most their futures under continuing military occupation.

Opening an avenue to Eurasia, a permanent US military presence was established, serving America’s broader imperial agenda. Iraq and Afghanistan followed, again bogusly waged on humanitarian grounds.

Holbrooke helped further Washington’s imperial agenda, from Vietnam to the Balkans to Afghanistan and Pakistan, his role as Special Representative from January 26, 2009 until his death.

Publicly his comments were upbeat. Privately, he was frustrated by a corrupt, inept Karzai regime, many US officials, and a conflict no combination of strategy and resources can turn around and win. Before receiving sedation for surgery, family members reportedly said his last words to his surgeon were, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” Perhaps it was his only sensible opinion throughout nearly five decades of public service. Too bad, no one’s listening.

It’s too big even for the major media to ignore; to wit, on May 15, New York Times writer Justin Gillis headlined, “Giant Plumes of Oil Found Forming Under the Gulf of Mexico,” saying:

Alarming reports show “Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery” shows that BP and the Obama administration lied about the incident’s severity, and they’re still lying.

According to University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye, “There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to” what’s visible on the surface, the tip of a big and growing iceberg, this one containing oil. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

Worse still, it’s depleting Gulf oxygen, prompting fears about killing sea life in the effected areas and permanently destroying the livelihood of area fisherman who supply 20% of the nation’s supply.

Already since April 20, oxygen levels are down 30%, a pace that if maintained “could draw (it) down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months. This is alarming.”

Even the Times admits the daily flow may be as high as 80,000 barrels (3.4 million gallons or the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill around every three days). Yet the Obama administration and BP still claim only 5,000 barrels a day, and company officials won’t let scientists use sophisticated instruments to measure the output more accurately on the ocean floor. Clearly they have something to hide, but there’s no way to suppress the growing ecological devastation once clear evidence substantiates it.

The National Institute for Undersea Science head, Ray Highsmith, worries that rapid oxygen depletion may create huge dead zones, especially on the seafloor. He called this:

a new type event, and it’s critically important that we really understand it, because of the incredible number of oil platforms not only in the Gulf of Mexico but all over the world now. We need to know what these events are like, what their outcomes can be, and what can be done to deal with the (inevitable) next one.

Despite industry and administration denials, these type events are foreseeable, often preventable, or at least their severity under proper regulatory scrutiny, what’s not in place nor in prospect with enough teeth to matter. The Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service (MMS) long ago left industry giants free to pollute and spill, at most assessing occasional pocket change fines.

In the weeks preceding the Gulf incident, numerous red flags were apparent but ignored. On May 10, Science Insider writer Richard Kerr headlined, “Gulf Spill: Did Pesky Hydrates Trigger the Blowout? saying:

“Methane-trapping ice of the kind that has frustrated the first attempt to contain (the spill) may have been the root cause of the blowout… according to University of California Berkeley Professor Robert Bea (head of the school’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management), who has extensive access to BP plc documents on the incident. (If so), the US oil and gas industry would have to tread even more lightly” in its offshore search for energy.

With 55 years experience assessing risks, Bea said “there was concern at this location for gas hydrates. We’re out to the (water depth) where it ought to be there.” The deeper the water, the greater the pressure, and according to Bea, gas hydrates likely contaminated the cement encasing the well.

Halliburton knew the risk that let natural gas shoot up a riser pipe and explode, but claimed a new chemical cement would be resistant to methane hydrate-caused damage. Bea, however, believes it was tainted with the same slushy gas hydrate that scuttled BP’s plan to contain the spill with a giant dome and may frustrate other attempted solutions, no matter what company officials claim.

He explained the chemicals used likely emitted enough heat to thaw gases from their methane hydrate form that shot them up the bore and riser. Concrete well plugs should have blocked them, but the final one wasn’t installed.

The explosion followed a seawater geyser shooting 240 feet in the air, then a second eruption of mud, gas and water. Its gas component ignited, and afterwards a firestorm, uncontainable because the blowout preventer failed.

On May 14, John Byrne’s Raw Story article titled, “Oil spill could go on for years, experts say” cites a worst case scenario from two of them. According to Matthew Simmons, retired investment bank Simmons & Company chairman, specializing in “the entire spectrum of the energy industry,” BP and US military engineers have no idea how to stop the flow, calling efforts to plug it a “joke.”

Incoming American Association of Petroleum Geologists head David Resink addressed the enormity of the spill, saying:

“You’re talking about a reservoir that could have tens of millions of barrels in it.” At the current spill rate, it “would take years to deplete,” and already appears ten times or more greater than earlier reports, now compounded by the administration leaving BP in charge of cleanup efforts with no oversight of its work.

Earlier the company was exempted from an environmental impact study and spill contingency plan, both of which contributed to the growing disaster. Now with a real emergency, untested blowout preventers are still used, and no new regulations are expected or enforcement of existing ones, despite hundreds of operating Gulf rigs (some in deeper waters than Deepwater Horizon), any of which might leak, perhaps explode, and release more contamination.

In addition, none have remote-control shut-off switches, an acoustic device that operates automatically to prevent small problems from becoming greater, and the administration keeps granting “categorical exclusions” (27 in total), exempting Big Oil from environmental impact studies.

The Center for Biological Diversity’s Kieran Suckling called it “inconceivable that MMS (regulators, aware of the worst environmental disaster in US history, could) then rubber stamp new BP drilling permits based on (its) patently false statements that an oil spill cannot occur and would not be dangerous if it did.”

On May 15, Skytruth.org reported that the “COSMO-SkyMed radar image taken yesterday is somewhat ominous,” showing a 4,922 square mile slick, much larger than two days earlier, and that’s only what’s visible on the surface. “And we think we’ve discovered an unrelated leak from a nearby platform that was installed back in 1984. A small, dark slick appears next to this platform on radar satellite images from April 26, May 8, and May 13″ plus the latest one. It’s not major but shows a chronic unaddressed problem. In this case, one that needs to be checked to assure it doesn’t worsen.

On May 11, Public Citizen’s Tyson Slocum, Director of its Energy Program, called on Congress to enact reforms, specifically HR 5214: Big Oil Prevention Act of 2010 “To require oil polluters to pay the full cost of oil spills, and for other purposes.” It would increase their liability from a meaningless $75 million to $10 billion, but, in fact, should legislate no limit — in other words, “Your Spill, Your Bill,” the entire cost with no government bailouts.

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R. Alaska), introduced S. 3309, making consumers liable for a like amount through an 8-cent per barrel tax on domestic oil and 9 cents for imported.

New regulations are vitally needed to require tested blowout preventers, shut-off switches, MMS enforcement instead of rubber-stamping industry demands, or perhaps shifting its responsibility to the EPA, OCHA, or a new body, independent of industry officials and their dominance — a tall order, but anything less assures new disasters compounding old ones.

More still in the way of huge fines, denials of new leases, making misconduct this grave a criminal offense, banning new drilling until all new measures are in place and enforced, and prohibiting all new offshore drilling, leasing, and permitting, especially in deep water because of the unacceptable risks, now apparent.

Slocum adds that “we should be aggressively developing forms of renewable energy,” the obvious solution not taken, but it’s “the only way to reduce the chances of a repeat of this nightmarish disaster that gets worse by the day,” with no end of it in sight no matter what BP claims or does. It’s an inveterate liar and can’t be believed.

As for its claiming a successful tube insertion drawing oil to a surface ship, some healthy skepticism is in order. Most likely, it’s a PR stunt, not a solution to halt most oil from spilling, spreading, and contaminating because no one’s sure how to stop it.

Slocum also urges car owners to boycott BP for at least three months.

It says, “Send a clear message to BP by boycotting its gas and retail store products. Don’t spend a cent of your hard-earned money to feed the bottom line of a corporation that has a sordid history of negligence, willfully violates environment regulations, and is spewing thousands and thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico,” that may cause permanent widespread contamination and an end to the way of life for thousands area residents.

Chemical Dispersants: Solving or Compounding the Disaster?

Environment scientists fear using them poses more risks than solutions, and according to the EPA:

Dispersants have not been used extensively in the United States because of possible long term environment effects, difficulties with timely and effective application, disagreement among scientists and research data about their environmental effects, effectiveness, and toxicity concerns.

It’s why Defenders of Wildlife Richard Charter (a marine biology expert) says using them is “a giant experiment (because their) chemical toxicity (in) many ways is worse than oil.”

BP is using two Corexit dispersants, not rated effective or safe for marine life, yet EPA approved them, risking far greater ecological damage.

For competitive reasons, Corexit won’t disclose what’s in them, but a worker safety sheet for one says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses.

Mixtures of solvents, surfactants and other additives, they work by breaking up an oil slick’s surface tension to make it more water soluble, according to the National Academy of Sciences. But once dispersed, they generally sink or stay suspended in deep water, while treated oil can collect on the seafloor where shellfish and other organisms feed, in turn become food for other sea life, then humans.

What fish and animals eat, we do, including all toxins they ingest. It’s why the National Academy of Sciences warns about “insufficient understanding of the fate (and effects) of dispersed oil in aquatic ecosystems,” whatever the benefits like preventing less of it contaminating coastlines.

Because of the spill’s size over a vast area, BP has available around one-third of the world’s dispersant supply, so imagine the amount toxicity to be unleashed, with its clear risks to sea life and humans. Former University of Alaska marine conservation professor Richard Steiner and other experts wonder how much the public is being deceived by coverup and denial. The combination of oil and dispersant toxins will kill millions of organisms they contaminate, what Richard Charter explains saying:

“You are trying to mitigate the volume of the spill with dispersant, but the price you pay is increased toxicity,” or, in fact, making a horrific disaster worse.

Dispersants also endanger coral reefs, several within reach of the spill, including Flower Bank Gardens 75-115 miles off Louisiana and Texas, and Florida Middle Grounds off the Florida panhandle with their rich diversity of marine life.

As for BP and the Obama administration, dispersant use is all gain and little pain, the idea being to break up as much oil as possible, let it sink, be out of sight and declare success, when, in fact, we may end up with a far greater catastrophe that’s our problem, not theirs. That’s how a business-government cabal works, stealing our wealth, civil liberties, and health for profit and dominance while claiming they’re on our side.

A Final Comment

On April 30, Defenders of Wildlife Richard Charter issued the following statement, along with DW’s executive VP Jamie Rappaport Clark, hoping the Gulf disaster is a wake up call to halt dangerous drilling and protect the environment.

“In a catastrophe that imperils the entire Gulf Coast (and perhaps beyond), offshore oil drilling has again proven to be unreliable and unsafe. As officials gamble with untested means to stop the flow, oil continues to gush into the Gulf and move towards our beaches, coastal communities, wildlife habitat and fisheries. Wildlife refuges and estuaries in Louisiana, Mississippi, (Alabama), and possibly the coast of Florida, along with thousands of migrating birds, sea turtles, whales and dolphins, river otters and many other species lie potentially in the path of the spill. The extent of the environmental and economic impacts of the spill have yet to be seen, but clearly raise grave concerns for any expansion of drilling off of our coasts in the future.”

DW also said since 2006, Gulf rigs have experienced 509 fires, including nine major ones that killed at least two people and seriously injured another dozen, according to the Minerals Management Services. With this type record and the current disaster, tolerating operations this hazardous endanger the environment, humanity, and all planetary life. If that’s not reason enough to stop them, what is?

He left school at 15 and did some ordinary jobs. He showed little interest in politics at that time. However, around the age of eighteen he became a reader of Daily Worker. It was the period when Nazism had emerged as the dominant voice of militarism and in many countries in Europe and the United States fascist parties emerged. Their model was the German Nazi party and their hero Adolf Hitler. When the Second World War started the young George was called up in 1939. At that time, he was 20 years old. When he went to fight for his ‘king and country’ his worldly possessions were two suits and a bicycle. He recalls in his Subversive – One Third of the Autobiography of a Communist that for obvious reasons some people had more interest in ‘our country’ than he did!

He was sent to Burma. He experienced there inhumanity of the war and destruction caused by the Japanese. His contact with India and Indians subject to the imperial Raj gave him a broad political insight and awareness of the role of colonialism and imperialism. The Bengal Famine of 1943-44 occurred under the British rule. It is estimated that around 3 million Indians died from starvation and malnutrition. The Bengal government reacted to the disaster with little efficiency, and refused to stop the flow of rice from Bengal. George was an eye-witness to the apathy of the British rulers towards their subjects. There was no shortage of food in the British quarters either. There are still some hard questions about the role and knowledge of the British Prime Minster Winston Churchill into the affair. For instance, when the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, and Lord Wavell requested from him an urgent release of food stocks for India, Churchill responded with a telegram to Wavell asking, if food was so scarce, ‘why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.’

The end of the Second World War saw the defeat of fascism and militarism in Germany and Japan. But no such harm came to the Spanish fascism under Franco. The Soviet Union and its Red Army in the Great Patriotic War had borne the brunt of the war on the Eastern Front. With the Allied victory, the army conscripts returned to their homes. In 1946, George was demobbed, receiving a gratuity of about £100. This sum he used to get further education. First, he matriculated from Regent Street Polytechnic before he went to the London School of Economics where he obtained a B.Sc. Honours degree there. From Birmingham University he gained an M.A. degree by writing ‘Social Conditions in the Black Country’ and then from the same university he earned a PhD degree on his thesis ‘Working Class Movement in the Black Country 1750 to 1868′. His studies and commitment to revolutionary Socialism that wanted to serve the interests of the working class had taken the central stage in his life. He was to struggle for these objectives for the rest of his life.

When he came to Wolverhampton in 1954, he became the secretary of the local Communist Party. This was the period when the Cold war was in full swing and in the United States anti-Communist crusade of McCarthyism had become the new credo of the Cold War allies in the West. In Britain, Communists were looked upon as traitors; they were spied upon and their telephones tapped. Obviously, George like other Communists was also regarded as subversive and he had to confront what came his way.

The range of his social, academic and political activities in the Black Country extends over vast areas. He wrote a number of histories and pamphlets on Socialism, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Housing and the Radicals in the Black Country.

One major area of communal activity was around Bilston College of Further Education. Some teachers of the College and governors realised that many working-class people were excluded from formal institutional education who formed unqualified work force with little basic skills. Among the excluded were a disproportionate number of people from ethnic minority communities, mainly Afro-Caribbean and Asian. George was an active educator and a leading voice in the new approach to uplifting the working class people and providing them with education that met their needs. This progressive approach in a multicultural and multi-ethnic society was to counterbalance the legacy of Enoch Powell and his followers.

When American President George W. Bush and his close ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair, started their genocidal war of aggression against Iraq and the subsequent destruction of Iraq and Iraqis, George steadfastly opposed the imperial war. For him, the Anglo-American war in Iraq was a crime against humanity, a genocide, and its central figures the war criminals who need to be brought to justice. He focused on Bush and Blair and their allies, writing extensively on their policies on his website and informed the populace of the realities of the cover-up of their crimes and their incessant lies.

George Barnsby is survived by his wife Esme and two sons, William and Robert.

In the coming days, many tributes to Stewart will no doubt be written and published about his distinguished service to our nation as the Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and as an environmental lawyer, activist and writer. So there is little need for me to add to these accounts of his public life. Instead, I would like to share some personal reflections.

I first met Stewart some thirty years ago, through the initiative of my mentor, the late Sterling M. McMurrin, a professor of Philosophy and graduate school dean at the University of Utah, and the U.S. Commissioner of Education in the Kennedy Administration. I was, at the time, completing work on my anthology, Responsibilities to Future Generations (Prometheus Books, 1981), and looking for some noteworthy individual to write a Foreword to the book. Sterling immediately suggested his friend, Stewart Udall, who promptly and graciously accepted my invitation.

In that Foreword, Udall wrote:

I recall well the infatuation Americans had with “atomic age” science in the 1960s: we believed implicitly in those days that the energy problem was ‘solved’ (i.e., by nuclear electricity, which would be ‘so cheap it wouldn’t have to be metered’) and had a soaring belief that the kinds of minds that had unlocked the secret of the atom could literally ‘create’ whatever resources we needed from air, sea, water, or common rock….

It goes without saying that this prospect has withered. In the remaining years of this century, we who inhabit this planet will have a preview of the future, as nations are forced to lower their sights and deal with the consequences of resource overutilization.

Stewart’s fascination with the atomic age and its implications prompted him to write his penultimate book, The Myths of August, sub-titled “A personal exploration of our tragic Cold War affair with the atom.” Broad in scope and deeply disturbing in content, Myths is, in my opinion, his most provocative work. Not surprisingly, because of its severe criticism of political and economic establishments and its debunking of “popular wisdom,” the book received meager promotion by the media and has not attracted appreciable public notice. Sadly, then as now, it seemed that the American public “can not handle the truth.”

I was privileged to witness the development of The Myths of August from start to finish, as Stewart honored me with a request that I review and comment on each chapter draft as he wrote them. As many journal editors will testify, as a referee I am not renowned for my tact and gentleness, and thus some authors have taken offense at the candor of my responses to their efforts. Not Stewart. He was unfailingly appreciative of my comments as he treated me, undeservedly to be sure, as an equal.

The Myths of August is a bombshell of a book. In it, Stewart Udall deplores the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pointing out that the Japan was then at the point of military collapse and was actively seeking to negotiate an end of the war. He thus debunks the oft-stated dogma that the atomic bombs saved the lives of a million invading American troops. To this day, Udall’s repudiation of the “official” justification for “the bombs of August” remains a radically heretical idea.

The book continues with Udall’s account of his personal efforts, as an attorney representing Navaho uranium miners, to win compensation for these victims of radiation-induced cancers. He also exposes the government cover-up of the radiological havoc visited upon the Utah and Nevada “downwinder” residents resulting from the atmospheric atomic testing in Nevada. Especially chilling is the account of reassurances by AEC officials of the “safety” of the tests, while at the same time these officials were quietly moving their families out of the affected areas.

Throughout the book, Udall validates President Eisenhower’s warning of the “unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex” as he writes in the Preface of the “abnormal political and cultural changes which were the outgrowths of the Cold War.” He continues:

My experiences and observations told me that the cold warrior’s contempt for restraint had poisoned our politics. In the 1980s, I cringed as Mikhail Gorbachev and Andrei Sakharov emerged as the world’s most effective partisans for peace at the same time that two U.S. presidents, imbued with military machismo, were saddling future generations with trillions of dollars of debt by amassing an unprecedented array of superexpensive weapons of mass destruction. (p. xi)

Unlike George Bush and Dick Cheney, who enthusiastically promoted wars though manifestly unwilling to personally fight them when it was their turn, Stewart was an indefatigable advocate of peace and non-violence who had put his life on the line in defense of his country. As a member of bombing crews in World War II, he flew fifty missions, including the fabled “tree-top” B-24 raid on the Ploiesti oil refinery in Romania, which resulted in the loss of 53 out of 177 aircraft.

Stewart Udall was both a conservative and a liberal. In their original senses, uncontaminated by contemporary media rhetoric, these concepts are complementary rather than contradictory. Janus-like, Stewart looked both backward and forward, cherishing the proven traditions and ideals of the past, and valuing innovative policies for the future. This conservative-liberal dualism is eloquently summarized in the closing pages of The Myths of August:

… Through our media and educational institutions, we must be constantly reminded of just who we are as a people, and what we stand for — that when we are called upon to sacrifice for “national defense,” what we are defending are moral and philosophical traditions that proclaim the dignity of human beings and the inviolability of their rights.

In short, during the sad history of the atomic age and the Cold War, our political institutions have not failed us; our leaders have betrayed those institutions, and thus the American people. The remedy lies, not in a replacement of those political institutions or a reconstruction of our laws, but rather in a re-affirmation of those institutions and a determination to enforce and extend the rule of law.’

And so, paramount among the tenets of this report to future generations, is this: We give to you, in our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other founding documents of our republic, and in the institutions and law which embody them, the supreme expression of political wisdom and morality of our civilization. And in the failures of our own generation, we offer you a lesson and extend a warning: this priceless political legacy is forever vulnerable to subversion by special interests, by inflated fear, by self-serving rhetoric, and by public ignorance and indifference. Jefferson’s maxim is timelessly true: ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’ (p. 358)

There is so much wisdom and insight in this book that it is tempting to go on and on with extended quotations from it. Instead, I can only urge that you purchase and read this valuable work by an author who participated in and favorably affected much of the history about which he wrote. If wiser heads eventually prevail over the current political, economic and military insanity, The Myths of August will be recognized as prophetic.

In the spring of 1993, as the book was nearing completion, I visited Stewart and his incomparable wife Lee, at their canyon home in Santa Fe. Stewart led me on a walking tour of “old Santa Fe,” where he introduced me to his oldest son, Tom, who was then the Attorney General and is now the Senator from the state of New Mexico. Stewart was a font of historical knowledge, as he pointed out old colonial buildings and sites and told of the founding of this city by the Spanish conquistadores. Established in 1609, Santa Fe is the oldest European city west of the Mississippi River.

As I walked through old Santa Fe with the Udalls, I recalled a moment several years earlier when, as a radio talk-show host in Salt Lake City, I received a call from in irate citizen: “Why don’t these Hispanics go back to where they came from?,” he said. That call was immediately followed by another: “Go back where we came from?! I am one of those ‘Hispanics,’ and I grew up on a ranch in New Mexico that was given to my family three hundred and fifty years ago by the King of Spain!” I don’t recall if I told Stewart about that incident. I hope that I did.

A couple of years later, at my suggestion, Stewart was invited to give the commencement address at Northland College in northern Wisconsin. I was, at the time, a member of the Northland faculty. Stewart’s contribution to the region was well-known and much appreciated, for while he was the Secretary of the Interior, he successfully promoted the establishment of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, located in Lake Superior a few miles north of the Northland campus.

Stewart Udall was a consummate gentleman: gracious, generous and soft-spoken. He was genuinely interested in hearing and weighing the opinions of others, which he was pleased to assimilate into his own world view when presented with a compelling argument. The appearance of empathy with one’s constituents is an essential asset for a politician: (“above all, be sincere – if you can fake that, you have it made”). With Stewart, that empathy was 100% authentic. No one, outside his family, knew this better than those of us who worked with him on his writing projects, as he yielded to sound criticisms and, when warranted, gratefully accepted our suggestions.

Immediately after the publication of “Myths,” Stewart commenced work on his final book, The Forgotten Founders (Island Press, 2002). As he told me at the time, his primary objective in writing the book was to debunk the myth, promoted first by “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Zane Grey, and later by Hollywood, that the Old West was settled by “rugged individualists” and dominated by gun-slinging outlaws, occasionally tamed by fearless lawmen. On the contrary, he continued, “the West was won” by community-builders, who labored cooperatively in common purpose at the ageless task of establishing secure homes for themselves, their families, and their neighbors. As he later wrote in The Forgotten Founders:

No aspect of western history has been so inflated and overdramatized as the activities of … legendary figures [such as Billy the Kid]. Those who insist that robbers such as Jesse James were widely admired in some circles as American Robin Hoods too easily ignore the high value attached to law and order in communities where the great bulk of westerners resided. (172)

The Forgotten Founders celebrates community at this moment of our history (hopefully temporary) when libertarian individualism is ascendant. For this reason alone, it is an urgently timely book.

Stewart Udall, like myself, was the descendant of Mormon pioneers who settled Utah and much of Arizona and New Mexico after fleeing persecution in Missouri and Illinois in the mid-nineteenth century. And while, like myself, he found himself unable to accept the theological doctrines of that religion, he cherished his Mormon heritage. And so, in The Forgotten Founders, he draws engaging portraits of his and his wife Lee’s Mormon forbearers – exemplars of the courage, self-sacrifice, and mutual support that were crucial to the settlement of the west.

Two years ago, High Country News published “A Message to Our Grandchildren” signed by Stewart and his late wife, Lee, which I urge you to read. The final paragraphs, which eloquently express Stewart’s abiding optimism and vision even during these bleak times, serve as an fitting epitaph for this great man:

Americans must finally cast aside our notion that we can continue the wasteful consumption patterns of our past. We must promote a consciousness attuned to a frugal, highly efficient mode of living. In closing, I leave you with these thoughts, and hope you will hold to these ideals throughout your lives:

Foster a consciousness that puts a premium on the common good and the protection of the environment. Give your unstinting support to all lasting, fruitful technological innovations. Be steadfast enemies of waste. The lifetime crusade of your days must be to develop a new energy ethic to sustain life on earth.

In the 1960s, when the carbon problem and the exhaustion of the world’s petroleum were still beyond our gaze, I advocated a new ethic to guide our nation’s stewardship of its resources. I realize now this approach was too narrow, too nationalistic. To sustain life on our small planet, we will need a wider, all-encompassing planetary resource ethic based on values implemented by mutual cooperation. This ethic must be rooted in the most intrinsic values of all: Caring, sharing, and mutual efforts that reach beyond all obstacles and boundaries.

Go well, do well, my children. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.

Thus, it is with a heavy heart I write the word “late” before Zinn’s name. He died on January 27 at the age of 87. Perhaps best known for his book, A People’s History of the United States, Zinn spent most of his life defending the underdog while telling the story of the people. Back in the days before we humans became too smart for our own good, someone like Howard Zinn would’ve rightfully been called a “saint.”

Zinn’s legacy can and must live on through us. I suggest you take some time to read his work and explore his life. For now, I offer…

1. “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

2. “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

3. “The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth. Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson—that everything we do matters—is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.”

4. “As dogma disintegrates, hope appears. Because it seems that human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes. And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible.”

5. “The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

You would think that. But you’d be wrong.

For Wall Street’s lobbyists in Washington, it’s business as usual. Since Barack Obama took office, the bankers have succeeded in pushing through bogus “stress tests” of financial institutions’ solvency, escaping tougher government oversight, and steamrolling attempts to give working-class borrowers a break.

Even the much-hyped limits on CEO pay are being rolled back. In mid-June, Barack Obama lifted a five-month-old limit on executive compensation at financial firms that took federal bailout money. Apparently, only $500,000 a year in salaries and other perks was just too much of a sacrifice for the financial system to bear. Instead, Obama has established a “special master of compensation,” who will decide on pay to top executives at banks still reliant on government money.

While having a “special master” oversee pay might sound like a big deal, the banks aren’t sweating it. “Our people kind of thought it was a non-event,” one unnamed executive of a large bank told the Washington Post. “I don’t think there are worries about it on Wall Street.” And, the executive added, “It’s not like the horrible and unethical action from Congress, where they were putting artificial caps on pay or trying to steal back bonuses.”

The sense of entitlement on display in comments like these is staggering — as if the “wizards” of Wall Street deserve the billions in compensation showered upon them in the past decade for producing what has proved to be fictitious wealth, while destabilizing the economy and destroying the lives of people across the U.S.

As for legislation aimed at stemming the kinds of predatory lending practices that helped exacerbate the housing bubble and ultimately triggered the financial crisis, Senate Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd recently said, “We’ve got a lot on our plate. We’ve got other things to do.”

Apparently, however, one of those “other things to do” was not passing “cramdown” legislation — a measure that would have enabled bankruptcy court judges to lower the principal on existing mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure, thereby helping people to keep their homes. In that bill, defeated in early May, the Senate sided with banks over homeowners by a 51-45 margin.

Housing rights activists estimate the legislation could have staved off 1.7 million foreclosures and preserved $300 billion in home equity. Nevertheless, a dozen Democrats in Senate voted against it.

“Instead of defending ordinary Americans, the majority of the senators went with the banks,” said the Center for Responsible Lending in a statement. “Yes, the same banks who have benefited so richly in the [$700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP] bailout.”

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department was celebrating the fact that 10 banks would be paying back TARP funds — insinuating that the financial system is on stable enough ground that the government could begin backing off.

But the same day that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner talked up the TARP repayments, TARP Oversight Panel Chair Elizabeth Warren said the so-called stress tests, conducted to determine whether the big banks were on safe financial footing, should be redone.

“The employment numbers for 2009 have already exceeded the harshest scenario considered so far, suggesting that the stress tests should be repeated,” Warren’s report stated.

There was just one piece of legislation that didn’t go entirely the banks’ way: a bill, signed into law by Obama in May, that put some restraints on the out-of-control credit card industry,

The new law bans increases in annual percentage rate interest charges during the first 12 months after opening up an account. Consumers must get 45 days’ notice of changes in rates or contracts, and 30 days’ notice for account closures. The law also eliminates the notorious practice of “double billing,” in which credit card issuers impose finance charges based on balances already paid.

Yet even here, industry lobbyists were able to block changes sought by industry critics. Crucially, there’s still no cap on the interest rates that credit card companies can charge.

That’s why John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said in a recent interview: “It’s the bottom of the ninth, and it’s bankers 10, consumers zero. It’s like being in a street fight, and you and a few friends just went up against 100 other people, and you’re just picking yourself up off the ground. And you’re just bloodied.”

One reason bank lobbyists have been so successful is that they have convinced Congress to take on financial issues piecemeal, rather than in a single piece of legislation. That way, the lobbyists could focus on one battle at a time.

And on each bill, they made the case that new rules would restrict credit and jack up interest rates, thereby hurting consumers. Overall, the financial industry spent $42 million in lobbying efforts in the first quarter of 2009 — even as many banks were still being bailed out with taxpayer money.

By and large, this tactic has been successful. Scott Talbott, a lobbyist at the Financial Services Roundtable, admitted, “We knew we were going to be up against it. Yeah, we know it was going to be a tough year. And so far, it has not been a tough as expected.”

So despite Wall Street’s greatest crisis since the 1930s, the banking system is still calling the shots in Washington. Indeed, in a rare moment of candor, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said: “And the banks–hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created–are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

What’s more, the same people move seamlessly back and forth between the corridors of power in finance and politics. Consider the case of Michael Paese, an ex-JP Morgan employee who became the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee — which oversees Wall Street. Last September, Paese bolted to become Goldman Sachs’ top lobbyist. There he replaced Mark Patterson, who, in turn, left Goldman Sachs to become chief of staff at the Treasury Department.

Goldman Sachs, remember, is the firm that was run by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson before he went to Washington to work in the Bush administration. And don’t forget that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner himself is a disciple of Ronald Rubin, another former Goldman Sachs executive turned treasury secretary during the Clinton administration.

Given this Wall Street-Washington circuit, it’s little surprise that Barney Frank has written a piece of legislation on lending “reform” that seems tailored to Wall Street.

His proposed measure has nine consumer, housing and civil rights groups up in arms. The National Consumer Law Center, for example, says the proposed legislation would “do more harm than good,” and added in a statement, “The bill is complex, convoluted and simply will not accomplish its main goal–to fundamentally change the way mortgages are made in this country.”

Just in case the Wall Street/Washington revolving door isn’t sufficient to get their way, the finance capitalists spread enormous amounts of money around Congress.

In the 2008 election cycle, securities and investment firms donated a whopping $154.9 million to political campaigns — $57 million more than the 2004 elections, according to OpenSecrets.org. Of that, 57 percent went to Democrats and 43 percent to Republicans. Real estate, which became deeply enmeshed with Wall Street during the housing bubble, donated another $136.7 million. The split was 49 percent Democrats and 51 percent Republicans.

Commercial banks, meanwhile, contributed $37.1 million to politicians–the most ever from that sector–with 48 percent going to Democrats and 52 percent to Republicans. Lastly, hedge funds tossed in another $16.7 million — four times as much as the sector had donated in any other election cycle. Hedge funds favored Democrats by a 65-35 percent margin. Altogether, that comes to $345.4 million.

While the numbers may have been larger than ever, Wall Street has long bought members of Congress in both parties to advance its legislative agenda. And it was a Democrat, President Bill Clinton, who signed into law two key pieces of legislation that set the stage for the current financial crisis.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed by a Republican Congress in 1999, repealed the Depression-era Glass-Steagall laws, which had separated risky investment banking from traditional, deposit-taking commercial banks. A year later, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which kept large parts of commodities trading beyond the reach of regulators — including complex financial instruments that triggered the financial meltdown.

Today, Democrats have total control of the legislative process. But Wall Street is still getting its way, despite the bankers’ shattered credibility for their role in crashing the economy. Real financial reform that provides relief to working people will come only when social movements can put enough pressure on politicians to force them act.

Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color.

– Anonymous

It is perhaps a bit late in the day, nearly two weeks after November 4, to be writing about Barack Obama’s electoral victory. This want of alacrity, however, is intentional.

I thought it would be cruel to write any sooner, when whites and blacks alike were so effusively celebrating Obama’s victory. It would be unseemly to strike a discordant note when a clear majority of Americans was savoring this putative post-racial moment in their history.

Did this victory signal a shift in America’s racial tectonic plates?

Memories are so short. In the weeks following his choice of Sarah Palin on August 29, John McCain began closing the gap behind Obama. The election got closer after Palin electrified the Republican Convention with her line about how “We grow good people in our small towns…” The message to blacks, Hispanics and Asians in America’s cities was clear: they are not “good people.”

In the absence of the financial meltdown that began in early September, the election could have easily gone the other way. Sarah Palin too may have helped Obama a bit when she began displaying the breathless scope of her ignorance.

Who should we thank for Obama’s victory?

The answer is sobering. We can thank the financial meltdown and, in some measure, the threat of an Armageddon – likely to follow Palin’s succession to a geriatric McCain – for Obama’s victory. There was no shifting of tectonic plates on this continent.

If anything, America’s unquestioning identification of Obama as a black’ candidate is deeply problematic. It demonstrates that the United States remains firmly rooted in ideas of race that go back to the era of slavery and Jim Crow Laws.

Obama’s mother was white and, apparently, so were all her forebears; while his father was a black African and, apparently, so were all his forebears. Obama is biracial — half-black and half-white. Why did that, automatically, make him black? If being half-black makes Obama black, by the same logic we could identify him as white.

Why didn’t we?

The answer is rooted in the history of racism in the United States, in the categorical rejection by whites of the mixing of white and black races. A person was ‘black’ if it was known that there was black ancestry, any-where, in her lineage. This was the arithmetic of white racism. White + Black = Black.

The ban on mixed marriages in the US began quite early. It was first introduced in 1691 in slave-holding Virginia, followed a year later by another slave-holding state, Maryland. It soon spread to all the states.

At the height of the Jim Crow Era, starting in 1910, one by one the South-ern states passed the one-drop rule to define race. A person with any known trace of black ancestry was condemned as black.

This arithmetic was the manifestation of white power. Its power to de-fine race and make it stick. This arithmetic ensured that blacks could not escape their low status by marrying into whites. It would discourage whites from marrying blacks because their offspring — and their off-spring — would be born into the low status of blacks.

Another aspect of Obama’s ‘race’ is conveniently forgotten. Obama is black but he is not quite African-American — the way that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were African-American. As a ‘black,’ Obama is not descended from generations of Americans who were victimized as slaves and blacks till 1865, as blacks under Jim Crow Laws till 1964, and as America’s underclass till the present day. Arguably, some whites were more comfortable voting for a black candidate who is not ‘burdened’ with the history of blacks in this country.

Lest we forget this shame, Obama’s candidacy highlighted a new form of racism that has been on the rise since the fall of the Soviet Union, but has become quite respectable since 9-11. Concerted efforts were made by some Republicans to sink his candidacy by accusing him of being a Muslim, of having attended a madrasah.

Obama protested that he is Christian. He did not seek to distance to him-self, however, from the racist premise of this accusation. On the contrary, he took care to stay away from Muslim groups who wished to meet him or host him during his campaign. On one occasion, his staff removed two Muslim women from the background that would be panned by the cam-era during Obama’s speech. They were a risk because they were wearing headscarves. Their presence would taint Obama’s campaign.

Is there no retreat from race in Obama’s victory? Perhaps, there is, but it is mostly symbolic. It is a brilliant victory for one black man, but will his presidency make a difference for the black underclass in this country. Will Obama make amends to the continent of his paternal forefathers by launching a new Marshall Plan for Africa? Can he dare do this?

Gladly, I voted for a Democrat this time, skipping a vote for Ralph Nader. And, when Obama won, I was relieved. We would not be staring over the next four years — with baited breath — at a gun-toting, moose-killing, hate-spewing, race-baiting, war-mongering, Rapture-seeking Sarah Palin just a heart-beat away from the Presidency of this country.

I cannot say that I felt a surge of hope at Obama’s victory. A president is only the visible face of lobbies and corporations who own this country and its ‘elected’ institutions. Unless the people are out in the streets de-manding change, there will be none. Populist election-year slogans are forgotten once they have done their job at the polling stations.

Alas, my relief may be short-lived. The religious right in this country — the strongest constituency in the Republican Party — has been frustrated for now by the financial meltdown. But they are already plotting a comeback — in partnership with their Neocon cousins — riding a wave of fear-mongering and fight-them-there, alien-bashing, racist rhetoric.

The 68-year-old justice fighter had been battling a reoccurrence of lymphoma cancer, and his condition had rapidly deteriorated over the past few days.

Peter was a student leader, civil rights advocate, leader in the socially responsible investment industry with his own investment firm, Progressive Asset Management, Inc., and author of books on investment and history including Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877, The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction, California Under Corporate Rule, and his recent book, The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially.

Peter used his eloquence, sharp wit, and barnstorming bravado to blaze a trail for 21st century third party politics in the US. He was a third party candidate for state and national office, making three gubernatorial runs in California as a Green, including one in the 2002 election when he earned 5.3 percent of the vote. In the 2003 recall election, he debated Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, and in the 2004 Presidential election, he was my running mate on our Independent Ticket.

Among the many causes Peter forcefully championed were a living wage, healthcare for all, and making the US the world leader in renewable energy. He was also a passionate advocate for electoral reform, pressing for proportional representation and internal run-off voting (allows voters to rank their top choices) in an effort to overturn the “200-year-old dysfunctional money-dominated winner take-all system that disrespects the will of the people.”

Peter was a friend, colleague and politically courageous champion of the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western Hemisphere. Everyone who met Peter, talked with Peter, worked with Peter, or argued with Peter, will miss the passing of a great American.

Peter Camejo is survived by his wife Morella, his father Daniel, his daughter Alexandra, his son Victor, three brothers Antonio, Daniel, and Danny, and three grandchildren Andrew, Daniel, and Oliver.

When his autobiography (with the working title Northstar) is published, we will all be able to get a vivid sense of the great measure of Peter Camejo as a sentinel force for civil rights and civil liberties, and expander of democracy. His lifework will inspire the political and economic future for a long time.

PS: As Vijay Prashad notes, Camejo was a member of the 1960 Venezuelan Olympics team for yachting.