Let Afghanistan Grow the World's Opium Supply

By Ethan A. Nadelmann, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2007.

Given that farmers are going to produce opium -- somehow, somewhere -- so long as the global demand for heroin persists, maybe the world is better off, all things considered, with 90 percent of it coming from Afghanistan.

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It's easy to think that eliminating opium production in Afghanistan -- which today accounts for 90 percent of global supply, up from 50 percent a decade ago -- would solve a lot of problems, from heroin abuse in Europe and Asia to the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan. I'm not so sure.

The current dilemma for the U.S., NATO and the Karzai government is clear. The best way to reduce opium production in Afghanistan is with an aggressive campaign of aerial fumigation -- but that would cause massive economic dislocation and even starvation in a country where the opium trade accounts for roughly one-third of GDP. The second best, now under way, is manual eradication, but the result this past year was a net increase in opium production nationwide. Either way, these options play very much into the hands of the Taliban, who gain politically wherever farmers fear or witness the destruction of their livelihoods.

But imagine if the entire crop could be eliminated by a natural disaster such as a drought or blight. The United States, NATO and the Karzai government would be blameless -- although no doubt many Afghans would blame the CIA -- a reasonable suspicion given support in some U.S. circles for researching and employing biological warfare in the form of mycoherbicides. The Taliban would suffer doubly, losing both revenue and political advantage. And the United States and NATO could follow up emergency assistance with investment in alternative agriculture and economic development without having to compete with black market opium. Outside Afghanistan, heroin would become scarcer and more expensive; fewer people would start to use; and more addicts would seek treatment. Seems like an ideal scenario, right?

Think again. Within Afghanistan, the principal beneficiaries would be the warlords and other black market entrepreneurs whose stockpiles of opium would shoot up in value. Millions of Afghan peasants would flock to cities ill prepared for them, with all sorts of attendant social problems. And many would eagerly return to their farms next year to start growing opium again, utilizing guerrilla farming methods to escape intensified eradication efforts. But now they'd be competing with poor farmers elsewhere in the world -- in Central Asia, Latin America or even Africa -- attracted by the temporarily high return on opium. This is, after all, a global commodities market like any other.

And outside Afghanistan? Higher heroin prices typically translate into higher rates of crime by addicts working to support their habits. They also invite more cost-effective but dangerous means of consumption, such as switching from smoking to injecting heroin, which translates into higher rates of HIV. And many drug users will simply switch to pharmaceutical opioids or stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine. All things considered, wiping out opium in Afghanistan would yield far fewer benefits than is commonly assumed.

So what's the solution?

Some have revived an idea first proposed during the 1970s when southeast Asia supplied most of the world's heroin: Just buy up all the opium in Afghanistan -- which would cost a lot less than is now being spent trying to eradicate it. That might provide a one-year jolt, but over time it would simply become a price support system, inviting farmers inside Afghanistan to save a portion for the black market and others outside Afghanistan to start growing opium. Then there's the Senlis Council's "Poppy for Medicine" proposal, which would license Afghan villages to grow opium and convert it into morphine tablets for domestic and international markets. It's been widely criticized as unworkable -- but the same can be said of current policies.

Or, given that farmers are going to produce opium -- somehow, somewhere -- so long as the global demand for heroin persists, maybe the world is better off, all things considered, with 90 percent of it coming from Afghanistan. Think of international drug control as a global vice control challenge, and the opium growing regions of the country as the equivalent of a "red light" zone. The United States, NATO and the Karzai government could then focus on "regulating" the illicit market and manipulating the participants with the objective of advancing broader political and economic objectives. They might even find ways to tax the illicit trade.

This is one of those proposals that sounds unworkable -- until it's compared with all the others. It surely wouldn't be the first time U.S. or other government officials have gotten their hands dirty dealing with criminal entrepreneurs to advance broader political objectives. And if this particular heresy becomes the new gospel, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for pursuing a new policy in Afghanistan that reconciles the interests of the United States, NATO, the Karzai government and millions of Afghan citizens.

See more stories tagged with: narcotrafficking, afghanistan, opium

Ethan Nadelmann is executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance and co-author of Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations.

From Apocalypse to Disaster, America Is Obsessed with the Prospect of Bad News

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2007.

Author of the new book A Culture of Calamity, Ken Rozario explains why we are so fond of a good crisis.

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Given the windfall profits reaped by corporations like Halliburton in the wake of Katrina and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the concept that disasters can benefit some will surprise few close observers.

However, when Kevin Rozario set about researching the dark days of the American experience, he stumbled across something unexpected. Americans, at large, viewed catastrophic earthquakes, fires and hurricanes with surprising optimism. Whether seeing it as a religious opportunity to get back on the straight and narrow, or an economic opportunity to rebuild bigger and better, Americans are uniquely steeped in the potential of crisis.

Rozario's recent book The Culture of Calamity explores the role that massive catastrophe has played in American culture. Why did the stock market radically jump despite the prediction of thousands of jobs lost in Hurricane Katrina? Who benefits from disasters? How did it come to be that, in the wake of 9/11, an average of $2.1 million in tax-free payments were made to the families of those killed in the attacks? Why are mainstream media outlets inundated with images of destruction?

Rozario, having spent years exploring primary documents from fires during the time of the Puritans, overcivilized San Franciscans living through the great earthquake, to the fallout of 9/11, has a unique perspective on America's crisis-oriented imagination. He joined AlterNet in a recent interview to explain how the American economy and self-perception has become dependent upon catastrophe.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri: You write that the United States is particularly crisis-oriented. Why is that?

Kevin Rozario: Going back to the 17th century, religious ideas were important to the formation of thinking about disaster. The Puritans in New England were especially weighted with this Calvinist sense that trial through suffering is the thing that leads you to God. A culture like that is going to be absorbed in catastrophic events because they're always looking for those testing times.

From the very beginning of European settlement in the 17th century, there was intense fascination with hurricanes, fires and earthquakes. The religious dimension imposed a narrative on these moments of destruction, and the narrative is that settlers are sinners, god speaks to them primarily through disasters, and when a disaster happens, that's god telling them how to correct your evil ways and get back on the track of salvation and virtue. These ways of thinking spread more broadly into the population. And it's this way of thinking that led to a perception of calamities as instruments of progress.

OR: What opportunities do disasters provide Americans?

KR: Generally speaking, it tends to be more affluent and powerful Americans who view disasters as opportunities, as blessings, because they're the ones who are able to capitalize on them in order to bring about the kinds of political and economic outcomes that they want.

Take Increase Mather, a Puritan divine in the late 17th century, a very influential figure. For him, a disaster was specifically useful for bringing people back to the path of God. Everyone stopped to listen to him at a time of crisis. It allowed him to pursue his own moral and political agendas. He had a thing about people with long hair and drinking and breaking the Sabbath. He basically said that when a disaster happens, that's God telling us not to do these things. The politics of disaster is one in which people in positions of influence very early on come to realize that disasters can be very useful for capturing hold of the people's attention.

OR: But isn't catastrophe an economic obstacle for those in power?

KR: As early as the 17th century, you see disasters turning out to have economic benefits. For example, in 1676, there's the Boston Fire. It burned down a lot of obsolete and inefficient buildings and enabled the city to step in and rebuild more efficiently laid out roads. The people whose homes and businesses burned down tend not to be quite so excited by a disaster unless they have good insurance, but what does often seem to be the case is that a lot of the disasters, especially in the 19th century, were urban conflagrations, and they tended to hit downtown areas and business districts. They often wiped out decaying and crumbling infrastructure and basically cleared space so that you could build on top of them.

In the New York City fire of 1835 the value of land goes up eight times in the two months between the fire and the aftermath of the fire. The land was worth more cleared of the property than with property. That tells us something very interesting about the way that American capitalism works and the importance of destruction in order to create space for new developments and expansion.

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Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. A former assistant editor for AlterNet.org, she has written for AlterNet, The American Prospect, MotherJones.com, In These Times, Huffington Post, Truthdig, PopMatters, and Women's eNews.

September Showdown or Sellout? The Choice is Ours!

Congress returns on September 4th after a month's vacation. It has been 8 months since this Congress took power with a mandate to end the occupation of Iraq and hold Bush and Cheney to the rule of law. This Congress has funded the occupation, legalized unconstitutional spying, and promised never to impeach. Will this trend continue? Can we afford to allow it to? We have killed over a million people, and the death rate is double this year what it was last year, according to the Associated Press.

There are signs that the tide may be turning. A serious movement in Congress to impeach Gonzales helped lead to his departure. Twenty congress members of conscience have signed onto articles of impeachment for Cheney . Congressman John Conyers says he wants impeachment proponents to come to his office to urge him on ( watch the video ). And 70 congress members have committed to oppose funding the occupation, while funding a withdrawal by January 2009 or sooner.

What can we do to push Congress in the direction of peace and justice?

For starters, urge your Representative to join the 70 House Democrats who will only support Iraq funding for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before Bush leaves office.
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/115

In addition, big marches are planned for the 15th and the 29th in Washington, but the pressure will be all month long. September has something for everyone!

There are local events all over the country on the September calendar:
http://www.democrats.com/event/2007/09/01/month/all/all/1

Here are some of the most exciting national (and international) dates:

Aug. 29 - Sept. 2: International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in New Orleans, La.: http://www.internationaltribunal.org

Aug. 31 - Sept. 1: People's Poll and Peace Rally in Ft. Worth, Texas. This will be a huge protest at the time and place where the Republican Party is planning to have 20,000 delegates from throughout the U.S. and all of the Republican presidential candidates attend their Straw Poll Convention: http://www.texansforpeace.org/peoplespoll/schedule.htm

Sept. 4: Stand watch over Congress! Join us in the gallery and STAND to show we are watching what this Congress does:
http://www.americastandswatch.org

Sept. 6: Call Congress! This one is for everybody. Call your representative and your two senators at 202-224-3121. Tell them: I want you to act now to end the war and occupation of Iraq. The Congress has the Constitutional right and a moral responsibility to use the power of the purse to withdraw all U.S. soldiers and contractors from Iraq on a rapid and binding schedule. Four and a half years of this war is too long - it has to end now!

Sept. 7: Choose Peace Concert! Emma's Revolution, Randi Driscoll, Free Radicalz, and more, in New York City:
http://www.democrats.com/node/14104

Sept. 8-16: Vacation for Peace in Italy!
The people of Vicenza, Italy, have been struggling against the construction of a proposed new U.S. military base in their city. They have organized a week of camping, actions, debates, rallies, concerts and initiatives. Join them: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/26308

Sept. 8: The War and Rural America! Farmers and veterans meet in New York City: http://www.democrats.com/node/14102

Sept. 11: March of the People Arrives in DC just in time for the White House's expected sales pitch for extending the occupation:
http://www.marchofthepeople.org

Sept. 11: Washington, D.C.: 3 PM to 7 AM following day, all night vigil in front of Tower Guard, by the Capitol Building, with the Action Response Team reading 12,000 impeachment cards with messages from people all over the Country to impeach Bush and Cheney! Come join and read some of these incredible hand written messages.
http://arrestcheneyfirst.org

Sept. 12: "Tell the Truth" event outside your local media outlet: http://www.democrats.com/node/14134

Sept. 12: 11 AM, deliver 12,000 impeachment messages to Nancy Pelosi personally. All are welcome to attend and stay for a nice chat with the Democratic Leader!
http://arrestcheneyfirst.org

Sept. 14-21: Days of Decision, nonviolent action at congressional offices to end the occupation of Iraq: http://www.declarationofpeace.org

SEPTEMBER 15:

Thousands of Americans from around the country will join together in Washington, D.C., to demand the impeachment of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and insist on the immediate end to the occupation in Iraq. Please join us: http://www.impeachbush.org

Thousands of Americans from around the country will join together in Washington, D.C., to demand the impeachment of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and insist on the immediate end to the occupation in Iraq. Please join us: http://www.impeachbush.org

Or hold a local event:

Use the occassion of September 15 to hold an impeachment rally in your town. You'll find big marches in Alabama, Kansas, and Florida on the calendar , and several more here . Hold your own. Visit your congress member's offices. Hold a Honk-to-Impeach event. Hold a sit-in. Screen a video. Event resources are here: http://afterdowningstreet.org/eventresources

Sept. 16: Lobby training in Washington, D.C., and organizing meetings, issue briefings, legislative updates, state caucuses. Grassroots America, Iraq Vets Against the War, A.N.S.W.E.R., Veterans for Peace, AfterDowningStreet, and many other organizations have planned a full day of opportunities for networking and advocacy training: http://www.grassrootsamerica4us.org

Sept. 17: Constitution Day, Goodbye Gonzo Day, and National Truth in Recruiting Day: Iraq Veterans Against the War is launching a Truth in Recruiting campaign on September 17, 2007. IVAW chapters around the country, including Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, will be holding local events, but you don’t need an IVAW chapter in your area to participate:
http://www.ivaw.org

Sept. 18: Congressional Challenge Day: If you can be in Washington, D.C., plan to go with us to visit your Congress Member and Senators: http://www.grassrootsamerica4us.org

Sept. 19: Protest Bush at the United Nations: If you can be in New York, plan to join us in protesting Bush at the United Nations:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3371

Sept. 20: Rivers of Blood - A Day of Non-Violent Resistance in DC: There will be a legal and logistical briefing on September 19 at 6:30 p.m. followed by a day of nonviolent action on Capitol Hill:
http://www.democrats.com/node/13713

Sept. 20: Protest Racism in Jena, La. On September 20th, Mychal Bell--the first of the Jena 6 to be convicted--is scheduled for sentencing. If the District Attorney has his way, Mychal will face 22 years in prison. It's a horrifying moment for Mychal, his parents, and the rest of the Jena 6 families. It's also a perfect time for those who can to come to Jena, in person, and stand with them:
http://www.democrats.com/node/14126

Sept. 21: International Day of Peace / Iraq Moratorium Day! On September 21 and on every subsequent Third Friday, millions of Americans will break with their daily routine to take some concrete step to demand an end to the war and the return home of the troops. The hallmark will be the wearing of black ribbons and armbands, in mourning for all of those who have died in this senseless adventure:
http://www.Iraqmoratorium.org
Also in Spanish:
http://moratorioirak.org

http://www.troopsoutnow.org

Sept. 22-29: Stop the War at Home and Abroad! Troops Out Now! Impeach Bush & Cheney for War Crimes! End All Occupations -- from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti to the Philippines!

Sept. 22-29: Encampment in Front of Congress to STOP the War (will include an Impeachment Day)

Parallel Encampment and Demo in Los Angeles

Sept. 25: New York City, NY: 8:30 AM to ALL DAY LONG: George Bush visits the UN General Assembly, we will not allow the time of his visit to go unnoticed! Join in marches around the city, acts of CD, and lots of other events to show the world we want the war criminal out of our City!
http://stopbushsept25.org

Sept. 29: National March on Washington:
http://www.troopsoutnow.org

____________

The Next War

Through it all, we need to keep up the pressure to prevent an attack on Iran. Please sign the petition, read the latest news, and be prepared:

http://www.dontattackiran.org

#####

Forward this message to everyone you know!

To subscribe, create a free Democrats.com account here:
http://www.democrats.com/user/register

Standing Up To Corporations One Town At Time

by Doug Pibel

In 1819, the Supreme Court declared for the first time that corporations are entitled to protection under the Constitution. That case started in New Hampshire. Since then, corporations have been granted virtually all the rights constitutionally guaranteed to human beings. They use those rights to site polluting feedlots, dump toxic sludge, build big-box stores, and take municipal water to sell, all whether citizens want them to or not.

Now, New Hampshire townspeople are fighting to turn that around and put people, not corporations, in charge. What manner of revolutionaries are these? The kind you should expect in the United States: laborers, mothers, farmers, businessmen, and other ordinary citizens. They are people like Gail Darrell, a New Hampshire native who, 25 years ago, moved with her husband to the little town of Barnstead to raise their children in a rural environment. They are people like Barnstead Select Board member Jack O’Neil, a Vietnam veteran and George Bush voter.

What’s These People’s Problem?

Barnstead is located just south of New Hampshire’s lakes region. The Suncook River runs through town, and four lakes are within the town limits. It’s a water-rich community sitting on a big aquifer.

Which puts it in the crosshairs of corporate water miners. As bottled water has become a “must have” commodity generating nearly $10 billion a year in consumer spending, corporations have descended on communities like Barnstead and set up pumping operations. They extract hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day, bottle it, and ship it out for profit. Taking that much water raises the specter of lowered water tables and dry wells, infiltration of pollutants or saltwater, and damage to wetlands. The townspeople lose control of one of the necessities of life.

Barnstead residents watched as nearby Barrington and Nottingham fought to block multinational corporation USA Springs from taking their water. They saw those communities work through the state regulatory system and, after years of labor and hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs, find themselves without a remedy. Corporations, they were told, have constitutional rights that limit what regulators can do with zoning or other land-use controls.

Gail Darrell and Diane St. Germaine, another Barnstead resident, didn’t want their town to face the same expensive battle. They already had experience with the regulatory system, having worked to get the town to ban local dumping of Class A sewage sludge. Once that ban was in place, the corporations shipping the sludge simply got it reclassified as Class B biosolids, and the town was back to square one.

“That was my first introduction to the regulatory process which actually does not allow citizens to say ‘No’ to anything,” Darrell says. “All corporations have to do is change a word and they get their way.”

The Trouble with Site Fights

One-at-a-time regulatory battles over a single project-whether sludge dumping, a Wal-Mart, or a nuclear power plant-are called “site fights.” They are sometimes successful, although only about one time in 10. Even then, defeated corporations are free to try again, as Wal-Mart frequently does when citizens defeat its siting plans.

The problem is that the system isn’t set up to protect the rights or interests of the average human. Rick Smith of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) says that when people realize that corporate rights override community rights it’s “shocking to them.”

That the rights of a legal fiction, the corporation, trump the rights of human beings is the result of years of work by corporations to bend legislation and court rulings in their favor. Since the Supreme Court first cracked the constitutional door in 1819, it has steadily opened it wider, giving corporations virtually every protection in the Bill of Rights.

The Court, for instance, held that corporations have First Amendment rights to free speech and, in a later case, said that free speech includes spending money on political campaigns. Corporations have acquired full due process rights, a right to Fifth Amendment compensation for governmental “takings,” and a right to require search warrants, even for OSHA safety inspections. (See Historical Scorecard)

Those rights come in handy in fighting governmental regulation. As long ago as the 1920s, the Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania could not require coal mines to leave enough coal in the ground to support the earth overhead, even if that meant that people’s houses might be damaged or destroyed. Making corporations sacrifice that coal, the court said, would be an unconstitutional “taking” of property.

If corporations don’t get the results they want in court, they can take the more direct approach of tailoring their own legislation. In a world where politicians depend on money to get elected, having a constitutional right to write big checks gains valuable access. Having a say in federal legislation is particularly useful since the Commerce Clause of the Constitution says that federal law trumps state law on matters of interstate commerce.

Beyond Site Fights

With the deck stacked against local control, what are citizens to do to step outside the regulatory game and take back power? Some bold communities have banned specific corporate operations, not based on regulation, but on a declaration that human beings have the right to control their local resources, and that corporations are not people and not entitled to rights the Constitution grants to humans.That happened first in Pennsylvania when farmers and small-town residents tried to resist the encroachment of corporate feedlots and the dumping of sewage sludge from other states.

Ruth Caplan, of the Alliance for Democracy’s “Defending Water for Life” program, tells how a Pennsylvania coalition including the Sierra Club, the Farm Bureau, unions, and the Democratic governor responded by getting legislation passed limiting pollution from corporate feedlots.

“The farmers in rural Pennsylvania were furious,” about the new law, Caplan says, “because they didn’t want less pollution. They didn’t want those corporate farms in their area. Period.”

Lawyer Thomas Linzey, founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), started getting calls from those outraged farmers. Linzey, Caplan says, had been working within the regulatory system, but he and the Pennsylvania farmers realized that they needed a new strategy. Linzey drafted model ordinances asserting community rights to self-governance and banning corporations from damaging operations in townships. More than 100 Pennsylvania townships have adopted those ordinances.

Linzey and CELDF began offering “Democracy Schools,” intensive weekend programs presenting the history of corporate power in the United States, and the history of successful movements, such as the abolitionists and suffragists, to overturn settled law. Caplan attended one of those schools. It was “a real wake-up call for me,” she says, “because most of the work we’ve done has been through the regulatory system, with some success. But it’s not leading toward a fundamental change between corporations and the rights of people and nature.”

Caplan took her newfound knowledge to a U.S.-Canadian meeting on the problem of bottled water. There she met activists from New Hampshire who subsequently introduced her to Darrell and St. Germaine. Caplan told them of CELDF’s work, and offered to work with them and the people of Barnstead on the water issue.

Darrell and St. Germaine made presentations to the town’s Select Board, which had earlier passed a “Warrant Article” declaring the town’s intention to protect its water. Ultimately, they invited CELDF to make a presentation to the Board. At the end of that presentation, the Board asked Linzey to draft an ordinance similar to the ones in Pennsylvania. Linzey told the group that they needed to understand that they would be taking on settled law, Caplan says.”Well, Mr. Linzey, we understand that, and we’re ready to walk point for you,” Jack O’Neil replied, using a Vietnam-era term for being out front on patrol.

Reclaiming Rights

CELDF’s model ordinances go beyond zoning or other efforts to control corporate behavior. They ban corporations from specific operations altogether, citing the Declaration of Independence, international law, state law conferring rights on citizens, and the general rights of human beings to govern themselves and take care of their own communities.

Darrell says that she and St. Germaine spent the next year educating Barnstead residents about the proposed ordinance. “We talked to people about water rights everywhere we met them-at the dump, in parks. We told them why we needed to have this ordinance be unanimous and in place before corporations came to town.”

People were receptive to the idea but curious why the ordinance needed to cite such a broad range of law. “There was a lot of education about why we needed to deny corporate personhood,” Darrell says, “People don’t understand how we’ve gotten to this point and how corporations have gotten so much power.” Darrell credits CELDF’s Democracy Schools with giving her the information she needed to provide that education.

In March 2006, the ordinance came before the town meeting. After final discussion, Barnstead took its vote: 136-1 in favor. The one “No” vote, Darrell says, was not in general opposition to the measure, but was cast by a person who felt declaring that corporations are not persons went too far.

Now Barnstead is walking point, the first town in the nation to ban corporate water mining within its limits.

One Town at a Time

The fight to take back power from corporations continues. Across the country in Humboldt County, California, the people passed a referendum banning outside corporations from participating in elections and declared that corporations are not recognized as people there. Blaine Township, in southwestern Pennsylvania, outlawed the destructive practice of longwall coal mining. People in Montgomery County in rural Virginia are fighting the taking of farmland to build a giant railway terminal.These are admittedly radical steps, although, as Ruth Caplan points out, they are being carried forward by people who are not radicals. “These are not liberals, not progressives, not activists. But they don’t want corporations to tell them how they should run their community.”

The courts have not yet ruled on these measures. If they are challenged, no one knows what the outcome will be. But these new activists point to the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements. They were radical. They challenged well-settled law. They lost repeatedly, until the public saw the truth of their position, and the law changed.

Darrell and her fellow townsfolk are working on amendments to strengthen their ordinance if a challenge does come. If they’re defeated in court, she will continue to work to make humans more important than corporations. She’s in it, she says, “to have a clear conscience. I did what I could after I got educated. I can tell that to my kids. It’s my duty. I’ll take that charge and do the best I can.”

Doug Pibel is managing editor of YES!

© 2007 YES! Magazine

The Legacy of Katrina

The Events In New Orleans Exposed The Bush administration as Callous and Incompetent. And Neither The City Nor The Administration Have Recovered in The Two Years’ Since.

by Michael Tomasky

Here, on this second anniversary in the US of Hurricane Katrina, it’s worth looking back over the events of that fateful day. Fateful isn’t too strong a word: It was on August 29, 2005, and over the next three or four days, that the presidency of George Bush fell into the toilet from which it has never emerged.If you’re still not sure exactly why, this timeline will help explain things. There are several such timelines online from which this abbreviated one is drawn.

Sunday, August 28, 2005, 9:30am: New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin orders the complete evacuation of the city.

Same day, 11:30am: Bush, vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, gives a speech consisting of exactly 203 words about Katrina, and 819 words congratulating the Iraqis on their new constitution.

Same day, late evening: 30,000 people gather in the Superdome to hunker down for the storm, with 36 hours’ worth of food. The Louisiana National Guard requests 700 buses.

Monday, August 29, 7am: Hurricane Katrina makes landfall.

7:30am: The first levee in New Orleans is breached.

Mid-morning: Bush receives two warnings, from then-FEMA director Mike Brown and from the head of the national hurricane center, that this is “the big one” (Brown’s words).

Around the same time: Bush holds a photo-op with Senator John McCain on an airport tarmac in Arizona, presenting McCain with a birthday cake.

Late morning: The crucial 17th Street levee is breached.

Around the same time: Bush leaves McCain and visits an Arizona resort to participate in a forum with hand-picked senior citizens about his prescription-drug benefit plan.

Same day, 4:40pm: Bush appears at another prescription-drug event, this time in Rancho Cucamonga, California. He briefly addresses Katrina, seemingly unaware of the facts of the situation: “It’s a storm now that is moving through, and now it’s the time for governments to help people get their feet on the ground.”

Same day: Dick Cheney continues on his vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he stayed until early September. Donald Rumsfeld attends a San Diego Padres baseball game.

Tuesday, August 30, early afternoon: Reports of widespread looting and chaos begin to emerge. Homeland security chief Michael Chertoff acknowledges that levees have been breached.

Same day, 2pm: Bush holds a photo-op event at a San Diego naval base with country singer Mark Wills. Wills presents Bush with a guitar, with which Bush poses, smiling broadly and pretending to play.

Same day, shortly thereafter: Bush returns to Crawford to resume vacation.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005, midday: reports emerge of 80,000 people trapped in the city; tens of thousands stranded in the Superdome without adequate facilities and water; 3,000 stranded in the city’s convention hall under similar conditions.

Same day, shortly thereafter: Chertoff says “We are extremely pleased with the response that every element of the federal government, all of our federal partners, have made to this terrible tragedy.”

Same day, that afternoon: Bush flies over the damage in Air Force One but does not touch down.

Same day, 4pm: Bush finally gives first address on Katrina. The New York Times says his demeanor is “casual to the point of carelessness.”

Same day, 7pm: Condoleezza Rice, visiting New York, attends musical Spamalot! Some audience members boo her. Later she would visit the damaged areas in her home state of Alabama, urging patience: “The Lord is going to come on time - if we just wait.”

Thursday, September 1, 2005, 7am: Bush says live on television, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” Subsequent revelations show he was told several times before they did that the levees might break.

Same day, mid-afternoon: Nagin delivers “desperate SOS” to federal government. Reports begin to emerge from New Orleans of rapes, beatings, lootings. Brown finally learns, at least 24 hours after the fact, about the thousands stranded in the convention hall.

Same day, mid-afternoon: Rice, still in New York, buys about $3,000 worth of shoes at Ferragamo.

It goes on in this vein, but you get the idea. The next day, Bush finally visited New Orleans. Several reports at the time indicated that vital services and rescue-workers, including 50 firefighters from Atlanta who’d come to the region to help people, were diverted away from the scene of the flooding to serve as backdrops for presidential photo-ops. Levee repair work was orchestrated for his visit, and then stopped immediately thereafter.

Some months later, a video emerged from August 28 in which Bush was briefed on the growing tragedy - and in which he does not ask one single question as the situation is outlined to him.

That’s this presidency in a nutshell: substantive incompetence and indifference at every turn, yet great care taken with the photo-ops. This was the week that sunk the Bush presidency, and deservedly so. What a tragedy that one of America’s greatest cities had to sink as collateral damage.

Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America.

© 2007 The Guardian

The Legacy of Oppression and The Legitimacy of Resistance

by Dahlia Wasfi

The following remarks by Dr. Wasfi were given at the March and Rally For Peace held in Kennebunkport, Maine on Saturday, August 25th:

I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my mother’s side-Ashkenazi Jews who fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler’s Anschluss. It is for them that we say “Never again.” I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my father’s side who are not living, but dying, under the occupation of this administration’s deadly foray in Iraq. From the lack of security to the lack of basic supplies to the lack of electricity to the lack of potable water to the lack of jobs to the lack of reconstruction to the lack of education to the lack of healthcare to the lack of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they are much worse off now than before we invaded. “Never again” should apply to them, too.

There has been debate recently within the American peace movement on the issue of support for the Iraqi resistance. The argument has been made by some that we don’t support the resistance in Iraq because it’s different than it has been for other countries we’ve invaded. That “what is understood to be ‘the Iraqi resistance’ is a disaggregated and diverse set of largely unconnected factions…There is no unified leadership that can speak for ‘the resistance’…There is no unified program, either of what the fight is against or what it is for…(Bennis, 2007)”

Well - judge not lest we be judged, for this is an offensive display of the arrogance of empire.

We sit here 8000 miles away with our luxuries of electricity and water, while Iraqis suffer in the desert heat with no relief, and we tell them they are disorganized. This is fiddling while Iraq burns. People are dying; the question is moot.

We are not fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq; we are slaughtering people’s children. We went in to liberate Iraqis from a ruthless dictator we imposed upon them who allegedly killed 300,000 during his 30 year reign of terror. We’ve accomplished more than triple that in a fraction of the time.

If ever there were legitimate resistance to illegal occupation, it is in Iraq.

If ever there were a people struggling for democracy and independence, there are Iraqis.

If ever there were a people who have known suffering at the hands of bloodthirsty American imperialism, there are Iraqis.

Through the last 400 years, the European immigrants who landed on these shores have raped and pillaged millions in the name of empire. They followed the call to “Go West, young man,” slaughtering 95% of the indigenous population along the way. In the late 1800’s, sights were set on the Caribbean, and through the last 2 centuries, we have had a hand in creating colonies in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast and Western Asia. After all, what is the Middle East, but the Arab World and America’s colonial outpost Israel, according to their geographic position relative to Western powers?

But now there is a wedge in this imperial path, driving the American neo-conservative empire to a screeching halt. The Iraqi people - who are, in fact, the Iraqi resistance - are succeeding where we could not. What’s not to love?
We cannot start examining history from September 11^th, 2001. Since WWI, Arabs have been lied to, manipulated, and used by the U.S., Great Britain, and other colonial powers. Next year will mark the 60^th year of Al Nakba in Palestine-the Catastrophe. Iraqis have now seen that illegal occupation extended to include the Fertile Crescent, their land between two rivers, their Mesopotamia. Iraqis see the close to 6 million Palestinian refugees, illegally denied their right of return. Iraqis see the U.S. Army building walls to make impoverished ghettos, like the Nazis did, and like the Israelis are doing with their apartheid wall. Iraqis see the open-air prison that is Gaza, strangled and starving as we speak because of our political agenda. The crime of these prisoners? They were born Palestinian. Iraqis are living under occupation tactics such as daily house raids, uprooting of trees, looting of property, psy-ops death squads and the use of depleted uranium - all of which they know too well by watching our joint actions with Israel in Palestine.

And do you know what Iraqis are saying? I don’t speak Arabic, but I can translate for you. They’re saying, “Get out!” They’re saying, “NO way - you’re staying for 60 years.” They’re saying, “Get your oil the old-fashioned way - pay for it!” And why are they saying this? Because they have a dignity and self-respect rooted in 7000 years of civilization.
Iraq is the center of Arab nationalism. Actually, this is what my father says, and I would argue that my father is the center of Arab nationalism. Modern-day Iraqis are the descendents of ancients who devised the first system of writing, the 24-hour day, the bases of mathematics, law, science and medicine. Once corrupt American corporations, the U.S. military, and its death squads, prisons, and bombings are out of the picture, true reconstruction by Iraqis can and will begin.

Perhaps we don’t embrace the Iraqi resistance because its fighters are killing American soldiers. What other choice have we given them? From Vietnam to Lebanon to Somalia to Iraq, we have taught our victims around the world that the only way to effect a change in American foreign policy is to spill American blood.

Thousands died in Chile during the CIA led coup on Sept. 11^th, 1973. But we only remember 3000 Americans who died on the 28^th anniversary of that massacre. Grenadans in 1983 and Panamanians in 1989 were buried in mass graves by the thousands after the U.S. assaults, but the stories of these victims go untold. Between 1,000 and 10,000 Somalis were killed when our humanitarian mission in 1993 turned into military aggression. (We will never know the exact number of our innocent victims, again because of mass graves.) But we left Somalia because 19 Americans fell victim to their system and were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Time and again, it doesn’t matter how many “others” die. The outrage comes when the victims are American.

Martin Luther King Jr. said “silence is betrayal.” In these times, remaining silent on our responsibility to the world and its future is criminal. And in light of our complicity in the supreme crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ongoing violations of the U.N. Charter and international law, how dare any American criticize the actions of legitimate resistance to illegal occupation? How dare we condemn anyone else as “violent” or “disorganized?” Our so-called “enemies” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, our other colonies around the world - and our inner cities here at home-are struggling against the oppressive hand of empire, demanding respect for their humanity. They are labeled “insurgents” or “terrorists” for resisting rape and pillage by the white establishment, but they are our brothers and sisters in the struggle for justice.

Last Sunday, my family’s luck ran out, and one of my cousins in Iraq was killed in the violence we have brought upon Iraqis and their children. He leaves behind a wife; a 2 year old son who keeps asking “Where’s Daddy?”; a heart-broken mother and brother; and an entire family devastated by grief for whom life will never be the same. If there are political differences, then whatever they may be, there’s nothing complicated about fighting for Iraqi women and children, who are the majority of the suffering population. And if we respect their humanity, can we not respect their grief as they lose their brothers, fathers, husbands and sons, the same way we mourn with and share the pain of American military families?

I close with the words of a man of peace, El Hajj Malik Al Shabazz, Malcolm X, vilified and ultimately assassinated because he spoke freely. Though condemned as violent, he lived for peace, and for love and brotherhood. I very humbly offer his wisdom.

We declare our right on this earth to be … a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

***

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. You don’t need anything else...

It’s been an honor to share this time with you.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is a speaker and activist. Born in the United States to an American Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father, she lived in Iraq as a child, returning to the U.S. at age 5. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Biology in 1993 and earned her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Dr. Wasfi has made two trips to Iraq since the 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion to visit her extended family. She returned from a three month stay in Basrah in March 2006. On April 27, 2006, she testified at a Congressional Forum to provide her eyewitness account of life in Iraq. Based on her experiences, Dr. Wasfi is speaking out in support of immediate, unconditional withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and the need to end the occupation “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” Her website is www.liberatethis.com.

Overdosing The Earth

by Elizabeth Sawin

No long ago I lived through a few minutes of very deep fear, thinking it possible that I had accidentally given my six-year-old an overdose of an over-the-counter medication.

I filled the little plastic measuring cup with a teaspoon of the viscous liquid and handed it over to my daughter, who drank it down, if not willingly, then without complaint.

It was only after she had swallowed it all, as I washed the little cup at the sink, that I noticed the confusing labeling - teaspoons and tablespoons jumbled together on the same faint row of measuring guides. Which had I given: one teaspoon as directed, or one tablespoon, a dose for someone three times her weight?

It didn’t take long to figure out that all was well; I’d given the proper dose, but the period of not knowing was more than long enough for a mother’s mind to run through worst case scenarios: stomach pumping, convulsions, unconsciousness, liver damage, brain damage.

We were spared all of that, and my daughter barely registered the depth of my panic during those few moments; certainly she didn’t understand the bottomlessness of my guilt.

Every day since that one, every time I look at her - her dark eyebrows, the small, light hairs on the back of her neck, her sturdy little body - every time I hear her making a joke or whispering to her sister - I am amazed by the power of my love for her. Ten times a day I am left breathless by the hugeness of what could have so easily been lost through my carelessness.

If it weren’t for the self-protective layers that we wrap around ourselves when it comes to climate change, I imagine we’d all be feeling something similar about the melting Arctic, the rising seas, the wreckage of New Orleans, and all the losses to come, the species, the island cultures, the options and possibilities.

What we might feel, if we were able to break out of that cocoon of self-protection, would be an amplified version of what I felt that morning at my kitchen sink, a gut-churning combination of fear, remorse, and panic. Amplified because, in the case of climate change, the overdose isn’t just a possibility or a passing fear. It is an actual overdose; every day we pour twice as much carbon dioxide into the air as the Earth can absorb. And where my story of almost-overdose would have affected just one child, this one affects them all, all that live today and all that are not yet born, human and non-human alike.

This enormity of feeling is not something most of us have been taught we are strong enough to bear, which explains, of course, the protective layers of denial and distraction we wrap around ourselves.

But we must try our best to bear this sorrow and fear. I learned again at my kitchen sink, clutching a little plastic medicine dispenser in my hands, that fear and grief and remorse are the mirror images of love and dedication.

We shy away from our fear and grief about climate change because they are so huge, but that hugeness is also to our advantage, because the hugeness of these ‘dark’ emotions reveals the hugeness of our love for our world and our sense of responsibility for it. This hugeness is the untapped power we have to draw on to complete the work of the Sustainability Revolution.

Obviously there are better ways to come to understand the gift of a child in your life than to almost risk that child’s health in a careless mistake. And there are better, less costly ways to come to know the gift of being a part of the flowering of life on this planet than to push and pound away at that flowering until its beauty and viability are threatened.

But the overdosing of our Earth is not yet irreversible. Scientists tell us that we have a decade or perhaps two to in which to make drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. That we can hardly imagine the magnitude of this change, or the work and creativity and common purpose that will be required to accomplish it, does not change the reality that we still have time to act.

When it comes to climate change we are not going to be as lucky as I was with my daughter’s almost-overdose. We aren’t going to earn the gift of knowing our blessings while having caused no lasting harm, because harm has already been done - harm to communities and ecosystems, harm to the future. But when the scientists tell us that we have time to act before the worse scenarios of climate change become unavoidable, what they are really saying is that we have the opportunity to awaken to our blessings in time to save many of them.

The flip side is also true: the longer we wait to feel the sorrow, and thus know the power of our love, the less of what we love will we be able to save.

Elizabeth R. Sawin is the Director of Sustainability Institute’s Our Climate Ourselves program and is a writer, teacher, and systems analyst who lives with her family as part of an intentional community and organic farm in Hartland, Vermont. For more of her writing visit www.ourclimateourselves.org

Remove Bush Over War Lies

by Jimmy Breslin

There had been the sound of many feet on a Brooklyn street at the first funeral, of firefighter Joseph Graffa-gnino, and at the second funeral, of firefighter Robert Beddia, a fire engine sounded in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. In my office about an hour later, slips of paper came silently out of a machine, the slips coming from the Department of Defense and carrying the names and ages of the 14 soldiers who were killed in Iraq when their helicopter crashed. Four were under 21 and nine 25 or under. Of course the first thought was how the city at this time could handle such calamity if the 14 dead were New York firefighters or police officers. This gives a good view of the catastrophe that happens in Iraq, day after day.

But as the soldiers die at a time of national Alzheimer’s, there was virtually no reaction to the 14.

When anybody you elect tries to end the war, Bush blocks all intentions with a veto or threats of a veto that prevent it. And his Supreme Court is ready to validate whatever he does, this court with its five Catholic justices, and a chief who falls on his face a couple of times that we know of.

Our politicians despair that there can be no way to override Bush and save our young and everybody of any age in Iraq.

Of course there is. By all the energy and dignified disgust of a nation that needs it to keep any semblance of greatness, there is an extraordinary need for an impeachment of this president and his vice president.

You start an impeachment with an investigator who starts to develop a case. That’s what got Nixon out. He had the most expensive, elaborate defense in the world, and when they were pressed his assistants folded and Nixon quit. I wonder whether Bush and his people can do any better when pressed.

I have here in front of me a large number of pages that I keep for their significance. They are from a United States Senate hearing and are titled, “In Re Impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.”

He was only the 42nd person in our nation to make the commitment to “faithfully execute” the Office of the President and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

He was being impeached over lying about girls.

Bush the President is our 43rd. He lied to the nation to get us into a war in Iraq that is without end. Every young person who has died leaves drops of blood on Bush’s hands and those of everyone around him. He lied to the nation and daily he tries every greasy way to undermine the Constitution he is sworn to uphold. Thus making his oath false.

Clinton’s charges seem frivolous. But Bush appears to have committed high crimes and misdemeanors and must be thrown out of office in the disgrace that he is.

Bush, reminiscing the other day over something that further scatters the mind, compared the end of Vietnam with the Iraq war that thrills him so much because it makes him a wartime commander.

I don’t know why Vietnam is on his mind. He skipped the thing to have his teeth fixed in Texas. Showing such utter confusion causes questions of how much evil he carries in his mind and how much of stimulants.

He raises the end of Vietnam. If you want to know what that was like, Bernie Edelman, who went from Flatbush to Chu Lai, yesterday opened the book, “Dear America,” that he compiled with the New York Vietnam Veterans. The pages consist of letters written by veterans of Vietnam.

One is by Air Force Lt. Richard Van de Geer, a helicopter pilot assigned to assist in the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. This letter is on 15 May 1975, the day he was killed.

“The aircraft that landed on the Midway - landed about 50 feet away from mine - and the man who got out of the aircraft had been quoted approximately a week earlier as saying that any South Vietnamese who had left the country was a coward and that everybody should stay in South Vietnam and fight to the bitter end. This very same man was the first man to arrive on the USS Midway and to my knowledge the first to be recovered by the 7th Fleet. The man was Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky, vice president of the Republic of South Vietnam. Now I really don’t have any personal feelings about the war here. I really don’t care one way or the other in regard to who is right and who is wrong because that is a waste of time, a waste of thinking. But I did find myself feeling that I wish he had been shot down.”

Officially, Lt. Van de Geer was the last man to die in the Vietnam War. His name is listed as last on the memorial in Washington. If Bush wonders from his dentist’s chair about the end of Vietnam, Van de Geer gives you a fair idea.

Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.