Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Thanksgiving and what to be thankful for

Presidential Material

Illustration: We keep hearing that Kucinich does not have a chance, even though he ranked 4th recently in a New Hampshire poll. What we need to do is compare him with some of our past Presidents. Believe it or not, all of the above were past Presidents. I'm not even sure about the accomplishments of some of them, but I'll take a stab at a few. Harding was know for corruption and a big scandal. Fillmore was the best of the lot. He did nothing whatsoever except have indoor plumbing installed at the White House. We all know about Herbert Hoover. He is the Republican who promised a "chicken in every pot." He is also known for the Great Depression. None of them are ever quoted (I think they were all Republican, but I may be wrong" except Nixon, know for "I am not a crook."

Considering recent Presidents along with this crowd, the conventional wisdom seems correct. Kucinich will never be elected President.

Our first article gives a stellar example of this. We hear a great deal of talk about how to defend our country against terrorism and how we do not use torture. So, enclosed is an article by Robert Fisk about a Canadian citizen and what happened to him.

*ZNet | Repression*

*Rendition*

*by Robert Fisk; The Independent

; November

06, 2007*

At university, we male students used to say that it was

impossible to take a beautiful young woman to the cinema and

concentrate on the film. But in Canada, I've at last proved this

to be untrue. Familiar with the Middle East and its abuses - and

with the vicious policies of George Bush - we both sat absorbed

by Rendition, Gavin Hood's powerful, appalling testimony of the

torture of a "terrorist suspect" in an unidentified Arab capital

after he was shipped there by CIA thugs in Washington.

Why did an Arab "terrorist" telephone an Egyptian chemical

engineer - holder of a green card and living in Chicago with a

pregnant American wife while he was attending an international

conference in Johannesburg? Did he have knowledge of how to make

bombs? (Unfortunately, yes - he was a chemical engineer - but

the phone calls were mistakenly made to his number.)

He steps off his plane at Dulles International Airport and is

immediately shipped off on a CIA jet to what looks suspiciously

like Morocco - where, of course, the local cops don't pussyfoot

about Queensberry rules during interrogation. A CIA operative

from the local US embassy - played by a nervous Jake Gyllenhaal

- has to witness the captive's torture while his wife pleads

with congressmen in Washington to find him.

The Arab interrogator - who starts with muttered questions to

the naked Egyptian in an underground prison - works his way up

from beatings to a "black hole", to the notorious

"waterboarding" and then to electricity charges through the

captive's body. The senior Muhabarat questioner is, in fact,

played by an Israeli and was so good that when he demanded to

know how the al-Jazeera channel got exclusive footage of a

suicide bombing before his own cops, my companion and I burst

into laughter.

Well, suffice it to say that the CIA guy turns soft, rightly

believes the Egyptian is innocent, forces his release by the

local minister of interior, while the senior interrogator loses

his daughter in the suicide bombing - there is a mind-numbing

reversal of time sequences so that the bomb explodes both at the

start and at the end of the film - while Meryl Streep as the

catty, uncaring CIA boss is exposed for her wrong-doing. Not

very realistic?

Well, think again. For in Canada lives Maher Arar, a totally

harmless software engineer - originally from Damascus - who was

picked up at JFK airport in New York and underwent an almost

identical "rendition" to the fictional Egyptian in the movie.

Suspected of being a member of al-Qa'ida - the Canadian Mounties

had a hand in passing on this nonsense to the FBI - he was put

on a CIA plane to Syria where he was held in an underground

prison and tortured. The Canadian government later awarded Arar

$10m in compensation and he received a public apology from Prime

Minister Stephen Harper.

But Bush's thugs didn't get fazed like Streep's CIA boss. They

still claim that Arar is a "terrorist suspect"; which is why,

when he testified to a special US congressional meeting on 18

October, he had to appear on a giant video screen in Washington.

He's still, you see, not allowed to enter the US. Personally,

I'd stay in Canada - in case the FBI decided to ship him back to

Syria for another round of torture. But save for the US

congressmen - "let me personally give you what our government

has not: an apology," Democratic congressman Bill Delahunt said

humbly - there hasn't been a whimper from the Bush administration.

Even worse, it refused to reveal the "secret evidence" which it

claimed it had on Arar - until the Canadian press got its claws

on these "secret" papers and discovered they were hearsay

evidence of an Arar visit to Afghanistan from an Arab prisoner

in Minneapolis, Mohamed Elzahabi, whose brother, according to

Arar, once repaired Arar's car in Montreal.

There was a lovely quote from America's Homeland Security

secretary Michael Chertoff and Alberto Gonzales, the US attorney

general at the time, that the evidence again Arar was "supported

by information developed by US law enforcement agencies". Don't

you just love that word "developed"? Doesn't it smell rotten?

Doesn't it mean "fabricated"?

And what, one wonders, were Bush's toughs doing sending Arar off

to Syria, a country that they themselves claim to be a

"terrorist" state which supports "terrorist" organisations like

Hizbollah. President Bush, it seems, wants to threaten Damascus,

but is happy to rely on his brutal Syrian chums if they'll be

obliging enough to plug in the electricity and attach the wires

in an underground prison on Washington's behalf.

But then again, what can you expect of a president whose nominee

for Alberto Gonzales's old job of attorney general, Michael

Mukasey, tells senators that he doesn't "know what is involved"

in the near-drowning "waterboarding" torture used by US forces

during interrogations. "If waterboarding is torture, torture is

not constitutional," the luckless Mukasey bleated.

Yes, and I suppose if electric shocks to the body constitute

torture - if, mind you - that would be unconstitutional. Right?

The New York Times readers at least spotted the immorality of

Mukasey's remarks. A former US assistant attorney asked "how the

United States could hope to regain its position as a respected

world leader on the great issues of human rights if its chief

law enforcement officer cannot even bring himself to acknowledge

the undeniable verity that waterboarding constitutes

torture...". As another reader pointed out, "Like pornography,

torture doesn't require a definition."

Yet all is not lost for the torture lovers in America. Here's

what Republican senator Arlen Spector - a firm friend of Israel

- had to say about Mukasey's shameful remarks: "We're glad to

see somebody who is strong, with a strong record, take over this

department."

So is truth stranger than fiction? Or is Hollywood waking up -

after Syriana and Munich - to the gross injustices of the Middle

East and the shameless and illegal policies of the US in the

region? Go and see Rendition - it will make you angry - and

remember Arar. And you can take a beautiful woman along to share

your fury.

Yes, good ol' protection.

Do you feel safer now? Well, then, we should remember that it is our troops that need to be supported. The following is an outline of some of the housing benefits these brave young men and women received as a result of their service. You can not say that Bush fails to meet the standards of some of our past Presidents pictured above:

*ZNet | Race*

*Back From the War... and Into Homelessness*

*by Bill Fletcher; The Black commentator,

;

November 16, 2007*

The report this past week confirmed what veterans' advocates

have been saying for some time: one quarter of the homeless are

veterans! While this came as a shock to many people, anyone of

age at the time of the Vietnam War would not have been surprised

at all. In the 1960s and 1970s we saw returning veterans

discarded by the government that had placed them in harm's way.

Many returned strung out on heroin and were completely unable to

adjust to life at home. As homelessness became a national

phenomenon in the 1980s, we often saw the face of the Vietnam

War veteran staring back at us on the streets of the USA.

Yet few of us stop and realize that the mistreatment of veterans

is not just peculiar to Iraq or Vietnam. After each major

military conflict, with the possible exception of World War II,

soldiers who were drafted or enlisted in the context of a

patriotic fervor, returned home to a society that rarely knew

what to do with them and, sometimes depending on the nature of

the conflict, found them to be an embarrassment. The years

following World War I are an example of this. Veterans,

including a great uncle of mine, returned from the war scarred

for life physically and/or psychologically, yet the government

was unwilling to step forward and assist them in achieving any

degree of normalcy.

This recurring situation is what infuriated me in the lead up to

the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq. At the same time

that the Bush administration was fanning the flames of war

hysteria with misinformation, half-truths, fear and calls to

patriotism, it was simultaneously cutting back on funds for the

Department of Veterans Affairs. At a moment when soldiers

needed assurance of US government support, should they return

injured or otherwise facing adjustment issues (including needing

assistance in finding housing, jobs and psychological/emotional

counseling), the Bush administration was quietly cutting back;

some would say, cutting the soon- to-be veterans adrift.

I have found myself wondering each time the US - and especially

the Bush administration - beats the drums of war, why and how we

so easily forget this history, and particularly the

disposability of the citizen soldiers after they have served the

objectives of whomever happened to have been in power.

Given the racist reality of the USA, it should come as no

surprise that the crisis of the veteran becomes the catastrophe

for Black and Latino veterans. I saw this after Vietnam and I

am seeing it again with Iraq. But even in Black America, there

are few voices speaking up for the veteran. Perhaps we simply

think that the issues they face are just another variant of

those which we all suffer. While there is a truth to this, such

a view is nevertheless unacceptable. Particularly in an

environment of dramatic Black opposition to the US aggression

against Iraq, we have to make sure that we do not transfer our

hostility to the war to hostility toward the veteran.

This totality necessitates a Black veterans' movement that

reaches out to other Black veterans, provides a leading voice

against the war and all future plans of aggression and also

becomes a means to help our community focus our collective

opposition to the war. It necessitates as well as advances the

demand that the government take care of those it was willing to

sacrifice for a lie.

Let's hear the voice of the Black veteran!

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr.

is a labor and international writer and activist, a Senior

Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate

past president of TransAfrica Forum.]

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