Media: Boy Oh Boy, Barrack, We Couldn’t Wait!

In a rural Iowa campaign stop for John Edwards, a genuine or planted audience question finally let the proverbial “Black cat” out of the bag. And believe me, the press has been salivating for the event. Some doddering old bigot in the crowd asked in a seemingly oblique and confused manner how Edwards and the Democrats would deal with the “OJ Simpson” issue. At first, Edwards scratched his head and wondered what in the hell the guy was talking about. In follow up, the audience member pointed out his belief that the jury in the OJ Simpson criminal trial found the Black American defendant innocent as “payback” for the mistreatment of Black Americans in society. In a continued confused ramble, the audience member speculated that if Barrack Obama were elected President, it follows that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Oprah Winfrey would demand recompense for Black Americans because of such maltreatment through Obama.

Well the press rushed to blow up what typically would have been viewed as a crackpot incident at a campaign stump. Instead of giving the incident the lack of attention it deserved, it became a major media event upon which various pundits have speculated that the incident shows that Iowans are basically racists, even if they are hiding that racism in the closet. Others have suggested that the racial issue is a subtext in the Presidential election that will undoubtedly provide grist for the media mill in weeks to come. How this old coot became "representative"of anyone, including Iowans is a confounding question.

It would seem beyond obvious that all Black folks do not think alike or happen to be close allies as the bigoted kook’s question would suggest. No two people's views could be farther apart than the views espoused by Obama and Secretary of State Rice, both of whom happen to be politicians of color. Even if Obama, Jackson, Sharpton and Winfrey held the same view about the OJ Simpson , an assumption that is extremely doubtful - if any of them even give a rat’s patoot about the subject any more, the notion that such commonality would have any relevance to an Obama presidency is totally absurd.

As Edwards pointed out, there are many current and real issues that face the American public, and Black Americans seem to be disproportionately bereft of health care, educational opportunities and health care. Rather than focusing on an irrelevant topic of the OJ trial, we ought to be focused on what can be done now and in the future to address these disparities so that America can perhaps become a land of truly equal opportunity. That was a relatively nice save by Edwards in an embarrassingly difficult situation.

Perhaps the most we can profitably draw from the event is that there still lurk among the voting public a significant number of racist and bigoted political Neanderthals who are opposed to the idea of a Black President [and seem seriously frightened by their ignorance]. Secondly, a fourth estate devoid of scruples and judgment lies in wait for such a salacious and unworthy topic to be raised so that it can be exploited. The media have been feasting on the notion that many similarly retrograde voters are fearful of having a woman in the White House. But these same media representatives have been fearful of bringing up the “N” word. They needed the help of some crackpot bigot in rural Iowa to raise the issue so that they could exploit it.

Hopefully, the event will die a well deserved prompt death and the media can focus on some of the real issues that seriously threaten to undermine our democracy. Cutting off health care and educational funding while demanding billions of dollars for Iraq is a greater concern regarding where government largesse should go than whether Obama is concerned about OJ Simpson. We now know, for example, that various boondoggles like the base in Iraq for which the American public has paid over $31 billion dollars and was never built are all too common. Whether the next President is Black, White, man, woman or frog, we should be asking what the candidates will do to put a stop to such corruption and hemorrhaging of the public treasury. The real issue, as usual, is not Black of White, but a green one.

Altered States

Various factions of philosophers, mathematicians and science fiction writers have toyed with the notion that there may be multiple “realities” that co-exist, and that have authenticity for those persons who inhabit each separate reality. Whether labeled as a “parallel universe” or “altered state” each alternative reality has its own set of intrinsic rules and system integrity. The theoretical problems arise when these alternative realities intersect. These theoretical intersections result in substantial harm to one of the worlds or both. The damage would arise because the physical nature of the different “beings” in one reality is anathema or toxic to beings in the other, or because the norms, values and rules of behavior in one system of reality seriously conflicts with those of the other.

Politics is frequently viewed as a world of “unreality” where fiction is a stock in trade and facts are "optional.” But recent Bush Administration activities call into question whether these officials are indeed operating in some kind of parallel reality that not only fails to recognize facts we view as proven, but operates under a different set of rules and values that are dangerous and destructive to our known existence.

Consider three different reports recently announced that are intertwined. The first is a report based upon a consensus of oil industry and global market experts indicating that a number of current major oil exporting nations may become net importers of petroleum within the next decade or two. This trend and shift is a result of increasing domestic demand for oil and petroleum products and rapid growth and development within these oil producing nations. One country included in the list of countries likely to significantly reduce its export of oil and potentially become a net importer is Iran.

The second report is the most recent National Intelligence Assessment that advises that Iran abandoned its program for development of nuclear weapons more than four years ago. The timing and impact of this report is significant in the face of the persistent Bush Administration drumbeat over the past year or more calling for aggressive confrontation and making overt threats of military attacks against Iran to force that country to halt its nuclear weapons program. [A program Iran had previously abandoned]

The third report comes in the past week, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited the Middle East and made bellicose pronouncements urging the Gulf States to join with the US in pressuring Iran to abandon its drive to obtain nuclear weapons. The Gulf States rejected the Gates proposal and chided the US for its hypocrisy and diplomatic ineptitude. The Gulf Cooperation Council pointed out that the confirmed intelligence report by US experts indicates that Iran dropped its nuclear weapons program years ago. Thus, Gates was at best seriously overstating the “threat” from Iran to the stability of the region. In addition, they pointed out the hypocrisy in the US refusal to acknowledge that Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons was an equal or greater threat to regional stability.

While it may be impossible to state with certainty what the Iranian government “thinks” or harbors in its heart of hearts, there is an established value and principle of American democracy that one should not be punished for his thoughts, only for his actions. The notion that the US or any other country has a right to demand that Iran explain its future intentions regarding the possible development of a weapons program or risk threatened unilateral military attack by the US is not only senseless but antithetical to the norms and values upon which our known existence operates. Under no set of circumstances would the US government accede to such a demand. Such arrogance is not only politically unwise, but risks provoking a military conflagration that could precipitate World War III.

A reasonable person would question whether it is unreasonable policy for Iran to take current steps to enrich uranium for domestic energy production in the face of increasing internal demand for oil. Some might even suggest that such moves to produce nuclear energy would be wise domestic policy. That policy could actually be more beneficial to the US than threatening. After all, the US consumes 25% of the world’s current oil production and shows no signs of curbing its appetite in any significant way. Indeed, the Bush Administration and the GOP faithful have resisted all meaningful attempts to force a reduction in US oil consumption through new laws or genuine enforcement of existing regulations. The less oil that Iran consumes domestically, the less it will be required to reduce its level of oil exports.

Why then would the Bush Administration ignore obvious facts, reject logic that most of us would consider inescapable, and instead choose to provoke a confrontation that could result in a global war? May we not at least consider that George W. Bush is operating in an alternative or parallel universe in which his rules, norms and values are distinctly and dangerously at odds with those that we consider to be bedrock? As we look backward, the evidence is manifest. Bush supported torture when the entire civilized international community rejects it. The Bush Administration used chemical weapons against civilians in Fallujah when international human rights principles condemn the practice. The Bush Administration vetoed legislation to provide medical coverage to the poorest children in the US because he deemed %35 Billion over seven years to be too expensive. At the same time, his Administration demands the funding, without limits, to expend more than $8 Billion each month to continue the US occupation in Iraq. The list goes on and on, but the evidence of a fundamental difference in values and concept of reality is all but overwhelming.

Our failure to acknowledge this dysfunction and the dangers involved may be like a person refusing to see a doctor despite all the symptoms of a very serious illness. The risk is that the internal damage from the ravages of the deleterious infection may become so serious and irreversible that the “patient” [the world as we know it] may never be able to recover.

Dare We Look in the Mirror?

The United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case involving the irrepressibly vexing issue of whether the United States Government can legitimately run a concentration camp in Cuba [Guantanamo Bay or “GITMO”] that denies detainees the right to question whether they are being held without justification. The US Congress sought to override prior rulings by the Highest Court in the Rasual and Hamdan cases that prison facilities operated by the US Government were bound to apply the Constitutional principles of habeas corpus to detainees. The Military Commissions Act has been a political football in which inflamed passions about protecting the country against insidious enemy “terrorists” have been pitted against equally impassioned critics who contend that if we permit the underlying principles of justice to be discarded for the convenience of what appear to be exigent circumstances, we destroy the foundation and the very system we are supposedly fighting to protect.

There is no question that US citizens are entitled under our Constitution and system of justice to a due process procedure, called “habeas corpus,” to challenge the government’s basis for their imprisonment. This age old judicial principle derives from the Magna Carta or before and speaks to the limits of absolute power of the sovereign to imprison those designated by the sovereign as undesirable. Without habeas corpus, the sovereign [who could do no wrong] could simply round up and imprison anyone he or she chose without reason or justification. The Bush Administration argues that these detainees are not US citizens and are not "persons" to who we should extend protections of the Constitutions. Setting aside the fact that international law also engenders principles of habeas corpus, we must also remember that this country has traveled down this road before is the case of slavery. By denying human beings the designation of being "persons" it was contrived that they should be denied basic human rights. The Bush government can accept the fundamental principle that "all men are created equal" as long as they get to decide who are "men" and who are not.

The principle of habeas corpus does not seek to determine the ultimate guilt or innocence of the prisoner. It simply seeks to challenge and require the government to show that there is at least an arguably legitimate basis for holding the person captive. History has shown us that there are ample and relatively simple reasons why a person may be wrongfully held.

In the first instance, a simple error in identification could result in the wrong person being arrested and held captive. Habeas corpus would enable the detainee to show that he or she is not the person that the authorities intended to capture. Yet prisoners have been held in GITMO for years without this basis safety mechanism. The Bush government apparently contends that it would be a "threat to national security" to allow a wrongfully detained person to prove that the government made even a simple administrative error.

A related problem has arisen when vengeful neighbors have falsely “informed” on others upon various ulterior motives and caused the wrongful arrest and detention of prisoners. In one example, an informer owed a substantial amount of money. To avoid the debt, he “informed” on the person he owed money to and falsely claimed that the merchant had terrorist affiliations. The merchant was arrested and held without any right to challenge his accuser or the basis for the charges. Obviously, the debtor “informer” successfully avoided paying a just debt by abusing the system. Sometimes the false informant has wrongfully accused a neighbor simply because "reward" money was offered and his family was in dire economic straits.

On the other hand, the government has undoubtedly rounded up and detained some individuals who have been involved in activities that could threaten the safety of US citizens and possibly have plotted or conspired with others to conduct acts of terrorism. Our system of justice has survived for hundreds of years, albeit with imperfections, and justifiably detained malefactors intent upon crime and disrupting the public safety. The system has been corrupted most egregiously when attempts have been made to use shortcuts and to dispense with the founding and guiding principles of our system of jurisprudence.

What harm is there in requiring the government to put forward evidence to show that they have detained the person they sought to imprison? Would it imperil our country to require the government to show that there is credible and corroborated evidence to support a finding of probable cause? Is it too much to ask that the government put forward some credible basis for the accusation that the person has committed or was in the process of planning the commission of a serious crime? These steps are done hundreds of thousands of times across our country each day and the country has survived. Why is the Bush government afraid of practicing the principles of justice that he contends that we are fighting the “terrorists” to protect?

In World War II, the US government rounded up people of Asian ancestry and held them in prison camps based upon hysteria and bigoted assumptions having nothing to do with evidence of culpability for crimes or actual threats to the public safety of American people. Decades later, we are still trying to live down the shame associated with that blight on the American character.

During the “McCarthy” era, people were accused of communist conspiracy and their lives were destroyed on the basis of coercion, hysteria and the abandonment of the fundamental principles of justice that our system is based upon. People still refer to that period and that process with a sense of scorn and shame as one of the lowest points in American history.

Another aspect that bears consideration is the fallacy in the Bush Administration argument for detention of “enemy combatants.” In situations where such concerns are properly applied, there is a defined conflict and a defined enemy. The dispute is typically of some determinate period and when it is resolved the combatants reach an armistice and the “enemy combatants” are released to return to their lives. In the present scenario, the purported “enemy” is terrorism and there is no way to determine when the conflict is over and no opponent or enemy with who to negotiate an armistice or peace treaty. Thus, the concept of “enemy combatant” is being distorted and abused for political purposes. The victims of this fraud are the detainees and the system of justice itself.

Will the “GITMO” era be likewise judged in our history as another nadir in the cycle of American jurisprudence? Will we look back at this as a period of insanity and yet another example of when the country lost its way? Will we wonder how we managed to lose or abandon our moral compass and trash the very principles upon which we have claimed that the strength of our system of government and justice is founded? At bottom, the right of habeas corpus is not about granting rights or privileges to the purported “enemy” or to the detainees. The procedure is a tool for self examination, a self-diagnostic to determine whether our system is functioning in accordance with the basic principles of freedom and democracy. Unless we can summon the courage and strength to look in the mirror without blinking, then the entire exercise of the “American Experiment” is pointless. There is no rule of law, there is no principle of justice and there is no democracy. We simply have a system of convenience to be exploited by any demagogue and blown in any direction that the prevailing wind happens to choose for the moment. Is that what we wish to see when we look in the mirror? In light of the current situation and the Supreme Court currently packed with possible political sycophants instead of principled legal scholars, dare we look in the mirror?

A Question In Need Of Asking ... Are You Nuts?

The question for the day is…exactly how out of touch with reality and just plain nuts does one have to be before a genuine examination of one’s mental state is warranted? The question has come up in several contexts where the failure to intervene has yielded disastrous results.

In West Virginia, a young man with deadly weapons at his disposal was recognized as having a history of irrational and bizarre behavior. He took those weapons and walked on campus and killed several people. In retrospect, the officials questioned whether earlier and more responsible intervention as to his mental state would have prevented the disaster.

In New Hampshire, a man that had a history of mental issues walked into the Clinton campaign Headquarters and held several people hostage before finally surrendering to police. He not only had access to weapons, but rigged a fake bomb to his chest. The event ended peacefully, but not without serious psychological trauma to those held against their wills.

Yesterday, President George W. Bush stood before press representatives and TV cameras to announce that, in his mind, a National Intelligence Assessment report that confirms that Iran had halted its program for the development of nuclear weapons back in 2003 represents a warning sign that Iran is a present nuclear threat.

The report is based upon thorough analysis by the entire intelligence expert community. It states that even if Iran decided to restart a nuclear weapons program, it would take a minimum of two years for the country to produce enough weapons grade nuclear fuel to create a nuclear weapon. In addition, such a timetable would have to assume that Iran could proceed without any significant technical problems or interruptions. In addition, the country would have to divert its current resources and expert personnel devoted to producing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes [a substantial current investment] to a weapons program. The clear consensus of the experts based upon all available tangible evidence is that such an event is very unlikely.

The assessment reportedly was issued and made public directly to prevent an end run or manipulation by the White House. As we now know the White House twisted and misrepresented the conclusions of a prior National Intelligence Assessment in order to dupe Congress into authorizing a military invasion of Iraq. That concern and distrust is valid in light of the repeated calls from Vice President Cheney for a military strike against Iran. The purpose of such a unilateral attack would be to shut down a nuclear weapons program that the NIA report states has been defunct for over 4 years.

It is very difficult to comprehend how any rational person with a stable mind and emotional balance could read the National Intelligence Assessment and interpret the report as evidence of an immediate threat from an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Undoubtedly, Iran, Japan, Panama, Sweden or any country could theoretically or hypothetically decide to start a nuclear weapons program and develop such capacity to threaten the United States years from now. However, to suggest that Iran or any other such hypothetical future nuclear power presents an actual current and serious threat is nothing but the raving of a paranoid and perhaps delusional person. However, when that paranoid person has the deadly arsenal of United States at his disposal, someone should be asking the question…..

And if someone someone should summon the courage to exercise that ounce of prevention, to intervene early, think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that could be saved. How many American soldiers, Iraqi civilians and others have been killed, maimed or had their lives destroyed because of the failure to intervene and examine the mental balance of George W. Bush prior to the Iraq invasion. An attack on Iran would be far more destructive and far more costly in terms of human lives. Please call the men in the white coats before it is too late.