Canadian Op-ed on the dangerous lunacy of an Iraq war

This is from a long-term, friendly ally. And not unlike what much of Europe is saying.  Y’know, it occurs to me, Dubya has become so dangerously belligerent and irrational that - maybe he’s fallen off the wagon and is drinking again?

A war only the White House wants, Eric Margolis

The White House is hoping its threats of war will provoke a coup against Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Army. But if one does not come, the George Bush administration shows every sign of plunging into an unprovoked war that the rest of the world will view as blatant aggression.

Bush’s accelerating campaign to invade Iraq and turn it into another U.S. oil protectorate is also provoking a storm of outrage across Europe, the Mideast and Asia, where people believe pollution and climate change are far bigger and more urgent threats than the bogeyman of Baghdad.

There are two important exceptions. First, Israel. Last week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, sounding like he was giving orders to a subordinate, demanded Bush speed up plans to attack Iraq. Right on cue, American supporters of Sharon’s far-right Likud party, led by the Bush administration’s Rasputin, Richard Perle, intensified their clamour to send American GIs to fight Iraq.

These bloodthirsty “neo-conservatives” - most of whom evaded military service in their own country - dominate the Pentagon and exercise a virtual monopoly on U.S. media commentary on the Mideast. They are ardently backed by loony Armageddon-seekers of the Christian far right.

George Bush, who takes pride in not reading books, and calls Greeks “Grecians,” is charging like a Texas bull into the trap set for him by both bin Laden and Gen. Sharon.

Israel has been trying for 20 years to get the U.S. to go to war against the Arabs and Iran, knowing this will permanently enlist America’s vast wealth and power in its cause, and permanently alienate the U.S. from the Islamic world.

If ever the United States needed real friends, it is now. And real friends like Canada, Germany and France are trying to deter the empty, misguided George Bush and his hijacked cabinet from committing an outright aggression that risks plunging the Mideast into chaos, or even nuclear war.

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Real Hip Hop

MINISTER PAUL SCOTT, DAVEY D’S NEWSLETTER

Unfortunately, despite all our hip talk and politikin’, to borrow from the Last Poets, “Nigga’s Are Still Scared of Revolution” in 2002.  This is especially evident in the world of Hip Hop, where the self proclaimed “Thug Niggas’” despite all of their screaming and shoutin’ over a hot track about how bad they are, never use that anger to fight against the oppression of Afrikan people.

Even when they do address issues pertinent to the state of Black America, their rhetoric is markedly different than when they are getting’ at a brotha for dissin’ them on a CD.  While they may scream and shout at the top of their lungs about their beef with another brotha, when facing “the man” they can only whisper a prepared statement that has been proofread and approved by their record label’s public relations department . . .

Although, they appear to be on opposite ends of the spectrum, the white power structure and the Thugs actually have a love/hate relationship and while on the surface they appear to be in opposition, they are really interdependent.  The white power structure needs the Thugs to use as poster children for the justification of things like the prison industrial complex , discrimination and police brutality and the Thugs need the white power structure to supply them with the cash to get their Bentley’s detailed.

Contrary to popular belief, white America’s biggest fear is not a gangsta, but an educated Black man with his priorities in order . . .

The problem that we are facing today is that everyone is waiting for something .  The church folks are waiting to die and go to heaven, the conscious brotha’s and sista’s are waiting on the revolution and the Hip Hop heads are waiting for the second coming of Biggie.  So many of us spend our lives in a conscious coma, fully aware of what is going on but powerless to lift a finger to stop it.  via ProRev

HIP HOP REFORMATION CAMPAIGN
operationmedia@yahoo.com

DAVEY D’S NEWSLETTER
http://www.daveyd.com

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California prisons

The California Three Strikes and You’re Out law is one of the harshest, if not the harshest, in the nation.  Under Three Strikes, a third felony conviction can, and often does, mean life without parole no time off for good behavior.  Great idea you say, lock up violent career criminals and throw away the key.  Hold on.  Many of those doing life on Three Strikes are there for non-violent crimes.  Some unforunates are doing life for three non-violent felonies.  Sometimes those felonies could have been classified as misdemeanors but weren’t.

There are people doing life on a third strike for stealing $20 worth of video tapes.  A crime that could easily have been filed as a misdeamor.  This isn’t justice, this has nothing to do with justice.  So, what does it have to do with?

Gray Davis, Governor of California, for one.  One of his largest campaign contributors is the prison guard union.  They’ve given him hundreds of thousands of dollars.  In return, Gray builds more prisons, and keeps those guards employed.  And, of course, the prisons must be kept full.

Other politicians also get great mileage by foaming at the mouth about gitting tough on street crime.  It gets them elected.  If some spend their lives rotting in prison for minor crimes, oh well too bad.

Life in California prison can be something out of Kafka.  A guard can put an inmate into permanent isolation for ”associating” with gang members.  This “associating” can be as simple as talking to them in the yard.  There is no appeal, if the guard says it’s so, off you go. 

Then you get put in a cell 23 hours a day, no human contact allowed - no speaking or talking to anyone.  You either stay there until your sentence is done or you rat out someone.  If an inmate is released back into general population it is assumed he informed on someone.  Stalin would be proud.

My opinion?  No human contact for years on end is by definition “cruel and unusual punishment” and should be banned.  So should Three Strikes.  There are very few countries with prisons and sentences as harsh as the US.  Most of the rest of the world views our prisons as something out of the Dark Ages.  Especially the death penalty.  Most especially the death penalty for those under eighteen.  And really especially the death penalty for those under eighteen who are mentally retarded.  We are one of the very very few countries on the planet who execute mentally retarded children.

Contacts: 
FACTS (Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes). 
CJC (Criminal Justice Consortium)

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Cellblocks or Classrooms?

The Funding of Higher Education and Corrections and its Impact on African American Men

Part of a summary from JusticePolicy.org. Spending on prisons is increasing fast while spending on education is declining fast.

Background

During a time in which 41 states face budget shortfalls, many state legislatures are cutting spending on colleges and universities and raising tuition. The way state spending has evolved throughout much of the country, the costs of maintaining prisons and universities have collided in the same part of a states’ discretionary funding envelope. Throughout the1980s and 1990s, states have chosen to pay for an ever increasing and costly corrections system. At the same time, the progress made in improving African American access to college has been eclipsed by the growth of the African American male incarcerated population.

In Cellbocks or Classrooms? the Justice Policy Institute provides both a fiscal analysis of state spending on colleges and corrections from 1985 to 2000, and illustrates the impact of state and federal spending decisions on African American male representation in education systems versus prisons and jails.

Key Findings

1. The Share of Total State and Local Government Spending on Higher Education has Declined as Spending on Prisons has Increased.

Between 1980 and 2000, the American prison and jail population quadrupled from 500,000 to 2 million prisoners, and the cost of the expanding corrections system came to occupy a much larger share of state and local spending. During the last two decades of the millennium, corrections’ share of all state and local spending grew by 104%, while higher education’s share of all state and local spending dropped by 21%.

2. Between 1985 and 2000, State Corrections Spending Grew at 6 Times the Rate of Higher Education.

In constant dollars, the increase in state spending on corrections was nearly double that of the increase to higher education ($20 billion on corrections, $10.7 billion on higher education). The total change in spending on higher education by states was 24%, compared with a 166% increase for corrections.

3. As Corrections Consumed a Larger Share of State Spending, College Costs have Also Risen, and the Burden for Paying for College has Shifted to Students.

From 1980 to 1998, student tuition and fees support for higher education has risen at 8 times the rate of state support. For a low-income family (the lowest income quintile) the cost of paying the tuition at a four-year public institution increased from 13% of their income in 1980 to 25% in 2000.

4. More African American Men are in Prison and Jail than in Higher Education.

In 1999/2000, there were more African American men in prison and jail (791,600) than were in higher education (603,000).

Between 1980 and 2000, JPI estimates that 3 times as many African American men were added to the prison systems than were added to the nation’s colleges and universities.

Choosing to Cut Correctly?

If fiscal year 2003 is, as predicted, as difficult on the states as the previous year, recent history suggests that states will make up some of their shortfalls by constricting spending on education and social services, including higher education. If spending on higher education is limited or cut, these decisions would compound declining state investment in higher education over the fifteen-year period, as the growing corrections system crowds out colleges and universities

Via PrisonSucks.com

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George Bush, enemy of capitalism

Why Bush Doesn’t Support Free Markets.

The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki says “there are reasons to doubt” whether the Bush Administration really believes in free markets. He notes that although much was made of the corporate credentials of President Bush’s cabinet when they took office, it’s now clear that most of the former CEO’s Bush tapped were not entrepreneurs and “have more in common with crony capitalism, in which whom you know is more important than what you do and how… [Taegan Goddard's Political Wire]

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Bush abdicates America’s global leadership role

From the International Herald Tribune.  Strong words, from a world class newspaper, and indicative of how Europe views the neanderthals of the Bush Administration.  The US is losing support and credibility worldwide.  Strong allies?  Even Britain is twitchy about what the overgrown boys in DC, long on macho talk, short on results, are trying to do. 

Hmmm, if Nader did get Bush elected, then long-term, this may have been the best possible outcome, as the extreme Right in the US, having finally seized power, is blowing it big time.  Pendulums do swing back, y’know.  And this particular pendulum is swinging leftwards now.

At present, there is much talk about the unparalleled strength of the United States on the world stage. Yet at this very moment the most powerful country in the world stands to forfeit much political capital, moral authority and international goodwill by dragging its feet on the next great global issue: the environment.

Before long, the Bush administration’s apparent unwillingness to take a leadership role - or, at the very least, to stop acting as a brake - in fighting global environmental degradation will threaten the very basis of the American supremacy that many now seem to assume will last forever.

American authority is already in some danger as a result of America’s relative absence from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg - “relative,” that is, to its share of both the world economy and global pollution. The absence of President George W. Bush from Johannesburg symbolizes this decline in authority.

But when a country that emits 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases acts as an uninterested, sometimes hostile bystander in the environmental debate, it looks like unbearable arrogance to many people abroad.

It is high time for the United States, metaphorically speaking, to get out of its oversized, gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle and join the rest of the world in doing more to combat global warming and protecting the planet.

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