Toward Democracy

Single Payer is Coming....

Single Payer is coming....

by Mary Zepernick

As songwriter Leonard Cohen sings in his ironic rumbling voice, “Democracy is coming, to the U.S.A.!.” 

Indeed, people from California to Maine and in between, weary of  waiting for gifts bestowed from on high, are increasingly claiming their right to make decisions about what does and does not go on in their communities - from stopping harms to creating new institutions. And what these activists, many of them speaking up and stepping out for the first time, are most dramatically encountering is the power of government and corporate complicity - giving rich political meaning to the term codependency.

A case in point is health care. As Nobel economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times, January 29, 2009:  “The whole world is in recession.  But the United States is the only wealthy country in which the economic catastrophe will also be a health care catastrophe - in which millions of people will lose their health insurance along with their jobs, and therefore lose access to essential care.”

Also in January, Jessica Yarbrough distributed the results of the  California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee research. “Establishing a national single-payer style healthcare reform system would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs, and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study released today.”

Earlier this spring it took a firestorm of protest for the administration to include at the last minute three single payer advocates (including Congressman John Conyers, lead sponsor of HR 676, a single payer bill) in a large forum on health care reform. As Krugman asked in his January 29 column: “Why has the Obama administration been silent at least so far, about one of President Obama's key promises during last year's campaign - the promise of guaranteed access to health care for all Americans?”

On May 5, advocates of a national single-payer system confronted the Senate Finance Committee roundtable on health reform. Ralph Nader reported that the insurance industry was at the table, along with the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Heritage Foundation, and the AARP. “But not one person who stood for what the majority of Americans, doctors, nurses, and health care economists want  -  single payer - was at the table.”

In fact “eight doctors, lawyers and other activists stood up to Senator Max Baucus and the private health insurance industry. And the corporate liberals in Congress.”  Nader wrote that the Baucus Eight “directly and respectfully confronted a room full of corporate lobbyists.  and corporate controlled Senators.”  And were arrested for their efforts!

Most emblematic, however, of the primary obstacle to national health care, as well as most remedies in most areas of our common life, is the following passage from a New York Times article of  May 10 titled “Industry Pledges to Control Health Care Costs Voluntarily.”

...[A] dministration officials said, they do not have a way to enforce the commitment, other than by publicizing the performance of health care providers to hold them accountable.

By offering to hold down costs voluntarily, providers said, they hope to stave off new government price constraints that might be imposed by Congress or a National Health Board of the kind favored by many Democrats.

In remarks prepared for delivery to health care providers on Monday, Mr. Obama says: “These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment. Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the growth rate of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year - an amount that's equal to over $2 trillion.”

Despite corporate maneuvering, however,, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen, single payer is coming to the U.S.A. But like other areas of social, ecological and economic policy, corporate control of the electoral and legislative processes will oppose anything that threatens their power and profits.

Asserting our promised democratic rights - whatever the issue at hand and whether in the local, state or national arena - requires organizing and demands in numbers like those that forced the inclusion of at least a few single payer advocates in the administration's forum. It's equally important to act boldly, like the Baucus Eight whose arrest for simply wanting a seat at the table exposed more widely the fact that the fix is in.

Yet another approach is to create alternative policies and institutions. For example, it's clear to most people that national health care won't be achieved until there are models “on the ground.”  Currently, the most advanced such plan is in a place that may seem unlikely: Cape Cod.

The Cape Care Community Trust Bill, filed in the current Massachusetts legislative session, is the result of a grassroots effort to create a single payer, community owned health care plan for all Barnstable County residents. Its seeds were planted over five years ago at a citizen-organized forum on health care. The outcry for a single payer system led two panelists, a family physician and the county human services director to assemble health care, political, business, and social agency leaders who met for a year to achieve consensus on a set of values and principles that would underlie such a plan.

Enter the activists! Cape Codders for Peace & Justice and Cape Cod WILPF learned about this effort and created a campaign to use the 2006 town meetings to get word out and build support. A non binding resolution was drafted in support of creating a single payer health care plan; town teams were created; and signatures gathered to put the question on the warrants of 14 of Barnstable County's 15 towns. Following a vigorous campaign that included media, presentations to community groups and public officials, and countless phone calls, the resolution passed in ten towns and the Barnstable Town Council -  and the Cape Coalition was launched, now including a 16-member Steering Committee, with Candace Perry, a WILPF member, the coordinator and four other branch members on the committee. We established a Model Plan Development group, and have an Advisory group of community leaders and a mailing list of some 300 Cape Codders. And in classic campaign fashion, the Cape Care Coalition has a brochure, buttons and t-shirt, and soon will have caps to keep the sun out of beachgoers' eyes.

The next phase was plan development, a rigorous project of actually creating the details of Cape Care. This was accompanied by continuing speaking and media work, numerous community forums, and the collection of endorsements from individuals and organizations for the mission statement:  To create a regional, community-owned health care system to provide all Barnstable County residents comprehensive and affordable health care, delivered through the current and expanded network of providers.

In 2008, as the Model Plan was being fashioned into legislation, Cape Care joined the statewide single payer coalition Mass-Care, of which we're a member, to organize on short notice a policy question on the November ballot: Shall the representative from this district be instructed (1) to support legislation that would establish health care as a human right regardless of age, state of health or employment status, by creating a single payer health insurance system that is comprehensive, cost effective, and publicly provided to all residents of Massachusetts, and (2) to oppose any laws penalizing the uninsured for failing to obtain health insurance. In the ten districts that had the question on their ballot, three of them on Cape Cod, it passed by an astounding average of 71%. 

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The lies of Hiroshima

The lies of Hiroshima are the lies of today, 6 Aug 2008

In an article for the Guardian on the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, John Pilger describes the 'progression of lies' from the dust of that detonated city, to the wars of today - and the threatened attack on Iran.

A human shadow was imprinted on the steps at the entrance to the Sumitomo Bank at Kamiya-cho, 250 meters from the hypocenter. This person must have been sitting on the step, looking toward the hypocenter and died on the place after being completely burned. The place where the person had been sitting remained dark, while the surrounding surface of the stone steps turned white due to the heat rays.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb. (U.S. Army photo on right.)

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".

Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus "war on terror", the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current "threat". But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.

The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America's Defence Intelligence Estimate says "with high confidence" that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media "fact" that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.

This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.

In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country's political and military establishment, threatened "an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland". This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.

The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that "we did not know"? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence"? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.

With thanks to William Blum

 

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Seven Words You Can Never Say....

"It's a big club, and you ain't in it."

In the July 14 issue of The Nation magazine, John Nichols recalled George Carlin’s 1972 performance that landed him in a Milwaukee jail for reciting ‘the seven words you can never say on television.

As Nichols put it, he “understood that words could never be so obscene as wars, poverty and injustice. To the end Carlin, who died June 22 at 71, challenged a corrupt status quo and its perversions of language.  Countering George Bush’s claim that his ‘war on terror’ was a battle for freedom, Carlin asked, ‘Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?’ “

In one of his rants, Carlin said, “The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions....The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.  You have no choice.  You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls.”

In a fitting eulogy for the irrepressible and irreplaceable George Carlin, Nichols ends with the following:

“The pundits say there is no audience for the old school populism of William Jennings Bryan or even a Franklin Roosevelt.  Carlin proved them wrong, preaching American radicalism with punch lines every night before crowds that cheered (and laughed) as he struck mighty blows against the empire.”

But George Carlin deserves the last word: “They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

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The Anger, the Longing, the Hope

Uri Avnery is a well-known Israeli journalist.

The Anger, the Longing, the Hope
Uri Avnery, 09.16.08           

One of the wisest pronouncements I have heard in my life was that of an Egyptian general, a few days after Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem.  We were the first Israelis to come to Cairo, and one of the things we were very curious about was: how did you manage to surprise us at the beginning of the October 1973 war.

"Instead of reading the intelligence reports, you should have read our poets."

The general answered: "Instead of reading the intelligence reports, you should have read our poets."  I reflected on these words last Wednesday, at the funeral of Mahmoud Darwish.

During the funeral ceremony in Ramallah he was referred to again and again as "the Palestinian National Poet". But he was much more than that. He was the embodiment of the Palestinian destiny. His personal fate coincided with the fate of his people.

He was born in al-Birwa, a village on the Acre-Safad road. As early as 900 years ago, a Persian traveler reported that he had visited this village and prostrated himself on the graves of "Esau and Simeon, may they rest in peace". In 1931, ten years before the birth of Mahmoud, the population of the village numbered 996, of whom 92 were Christians and the rest Sunni Muslims.

On June 11, 1948, the village was captured by the Jewish forces. Its 224 houses were eradicated soon after the war, together with those of 650 other Palestinian villages. Only some cactus plants and a few ruins still testify to their past existence. The Darwish family fled just before the arrival of the troops, taking 7-year old Mahmoud with them.

Somehow, the family made their way back into what was by then Israeli territory. They were accorded the status of "present absentees" - a cunning Israeli invention. It meant that they were legal residents of Israel, but their lands were taken from them under a law that dispossessed every Arab who was not physically present in his village when it was occupied. On their land the kibbutz Yasur (belonging to the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair movement) and the cooperative village Ahihud were set up.

Mahmoud's father settled in the next Arab village, Jadeidi, from where he could view his land from afar. That's where Mahmoud grew up and where his family lives to this day.

During the first 15 years of the State of Israel, Arab citizens were subject to a "military regime" - a system of severe repression that controlled every aspect of their lives, including all their movements. An Arab was forbidden to leave his village without a special permit. Young Mahmoud Darwish violated this order several times, and whenever he was caught he went to prison. When he started to write poems, he was accused of incitement and put in "administrative detention" without trial.

At that time he wrote one of his best known poems, "Identity Card", a poem expressing the anger of a youngster growing up under these humiliating conditions. It opens with the thunderous words: "Record: I am an Arab!"

It was during this period that I met him for the first time. He came to me with another young village man with a strong national commitment, the poet Rashid Hussein. I remember a sentence of his: "The Germans killed six million Jews, and barely six years later you made peace with them. But with us, the Jews refuse to make peace."

He joined the Communist party, then the only party where a nationalist Arab could be active. He edited their newspapers. The party sent him to Moscow for studies, but expelled him when he decided not to come back to Israel. Instead he joined the PLO and went to Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Beirut.

IT WAS there that I met him again, in one of the most exciting episodes of my life, when I crossed the lines in July 1982, at the height of the siege of Beirut, and met with Arafat. The Palestinian leader insisted that Mahmoud Darwish be present at this symbolic event, his first ever meeting with an Israeli. He sent somebody to call him.

His description of the siege of Beirut is one of Darwish's most impressive works. These were the days when he became the national poet. He accompanied the Palestinian struggle, and at the sessions of the Palestinian National Council, the institution that united all parts of the Palestinian people, he electrified the hall with readings of his stirring poems.

During those years he was very close to Arafat. While Arafat was the political leader of the Palestinian national movement, Darwish was its spiritual leader. It was he who wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the 1988 session of the National Council on the initiative of Arafat. It is very similar to the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which Darwish had learned at school.

He clearly understood its significance: by adopting this document the Palestinian parliament-in-exile accepted in practice the idea of establishing a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel, in only a part of the homeland, as proposed by Arafat.

The alliance between the two broke down when the Oslo agreement was signed. Arafat saw it as "the best agreement in the worst situation". Darwish believed that Arafat had conceded too much. The national heart confronted the national mind. (That historical debate has still not been concluded today, after both of them have died.)

Since then Darwish lived in Paris, Amman and Ramallah - the Wandering Palestinian, who has replaced the Wandering Jew.

HE DID not want to be the National Poet. He did not want to be a political poet at all, but a lyrical one, a poet of love. But whenever he turned in this direction, the long arm of Palestinian fate dragged him back.

I am not qualified to judge his poems or to assess his greatness as a poet. Leading experts on the Arabic language are still bitterly quarreling among themselves about the meaning of his poems, their nuances and layers, images and allusions. He was a master of classical Arabic, and equally at home with Western and Israeli poetry. Many believe that he was the greatest Arab poet, and one of the greatest poets of our time.

His poetry enabled him to do what no one had succeeded in doing by other means: to unite all the parts of the fractured and fragmented Palestinian people - in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, in Israel, in the refugee camps and throughout the Diaspora. He belonged to all of them. The refugees could identify with him because he was a refugee, Israel's Palestinian citizens could identify with him because he was one of them, and so could the inhabitants of the occupied Palestinian territories, because he was a fighter against the occupation.

This week some people of the Palestinian Authority tried to exploit him for their struggle with Hamas. I don't think that he would have agreed. In spite of the fact that he was a totally secular Palestinian and very far from the religious world of Hamas, he expressed the feelings of all Palestinians. His poems also resonate with the soul of a member of Hamas in Gaza.

He was the poet of anger, of longing, of hope and of peace. These were the strings of his violin.

Anger about the injustice done to the Palestinian people and every Palestinian individual. Longing for "my mother's coffee", for his village's olive tree, for the land of his forefathers. Hope that the conflict would come to an end. Support for peace between the two peoples, based on justice and mutual respect. In the documentary by the Israeli-French film-maker Simone Bitton, he pointed at the donkey as a symbol of the Palestinian people - a wise, patient animal that manages to survive.

He understood the nature of the conflict better than most Israelis and Palestinians. He called it "a struggle between two memories". The Palestinian historical memory clashes with the Jewish historical memory. Peace can come about only when each side understands the memories of the other - their myths, their secret longings, their hopes and fears.

That is the meaning of the Egyptian general's saying: poetry expresses the most profound feelings of a people. And only the understanding of these feelings can open the way for a real peace. A peace between politicians is not worth very much without a peace between the poets and the public they express. That's why Oslo failed, and why the present so-called negotiation for a "shelf agreement" is so worthless. It has no basis in the feelings of the two peoples.

Eight years ago, then Minister of Education Yossi Sarid tried to include two poems of Darwish in the Israeli school curriculum. This caused a furor, and the Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, decided that "the Israeli public is not ready for this". This meant, in reality, that "the Israeli public is not ready for peace."

This may still be true. Real peace, peace between the peoples, peace between the children born this week, on the day of the funeral, in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, will only come about when Arab pupils learn the immortal poem of Chaim Nachman Bialik "The Valley of Death", about the Kishinev pogrom, and when Israeli pupils learn the poems of Darwish about the Naqba. Yes, also the poems of anger, including the line "Go away, and take your dead with you."

Without understanding and courageously facing the flaming anger about the Naqba and its consequences, we shall not understand the roots of the conflict and shall not be able to solve it. And as another great Palestinian man of letters, Edward Said, said: without understanding the impact of the Holocaust upon the Israeli soul, the Palestinians will not be able to deal with the Israelis.

The Poets are the marshals of the struggle between the memories, between the myths, between the traumas. We shall need them on the road to peace between the two peoples, between the two states, for building a common future.

I was not present at the state funeral arranged by the Palestinian Authority in the Mukata, so orderly, so orchestrated. I was there, two hours later, when his body was buried on a beautiful hill, overlooking the surroundings.

I was deeply impressed by the public, which gathered under the blazing sun around the wreath-covered grave and listened to the recorded voice of Mahmoud reading his poems. Those present, people of the elite and simple villagers, connected with the man in silence, in a very private communion. Despite the crowding, they opened a way for us, the Israelis, who came to pay our respects at the grave.

We bade our silent farewell to a great Palestinian, a great poet, a great human being.

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Our Patriotic DUTY TO DISSENT

Our Patriotic DUTY TO DISSENT
Basic freedoms and the corresponding responsibilities - USDoD

This is the title of a brochure I picked up at a recent conference in Iowa.  It was published in 1965 by the Defense Department “regarding basic freedoms and the corresponding responsibilities.” In the interest of space, I’ll include only the ones currently most relevant, with the freedoms and responsibilities separated by a semicolon.

•  Freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly;  Responsibility for tolerance of the beliefs of others.

•  Freedom of movement at home and abroad;  Responsibility to respect the rights and customs of others.

•  Freedom for educational, social, political and economic opportunity with equal protection under the law;  Responsibility to assure equal opportunities and to further individual and national well-being.

•  Freedom to choose one’s own occupation and to bargain with employers and employees;  Responsibility to contribute useful production and to resolve differences on a fair and just basis.

•  Freedom from arbitrary government regulation and control;  Responsibility to guard against the granting of arbitrary  powers to government.

•  Freedom from arbitrary search, seizure or detention of person or property and the right to a speedy public trial by an impartial jury;  Responsibility of all citizens to assist, uphold and insure justice, law and order.

•  Freedom from torture, cruel, unusual or degrading punishment or treatment;  Responsibility to maintain vigilance against illegal, unfair or injurious practices.

******************
The front of the brochure features a statement made in 1899 by Carl Schurz (on right), the first immigrant member of the U.S. Cabinet: 

“Our country, right or wrong.  When right, to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.”

Keep in mind the 1960s DOD guidelines and the advice of Carl Schurz as you celebrate the Fourth of July.

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Manchurian Candidate USA

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

A scant two days before the USA's annual celebration of independence, the New York Times had the poor taste to rain on our patriotic parade. An article by reporter Scott Shane revealed that in December 2002, military trainers at Guantanamo Bay used a chart in the training of interrogators showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged restraint,” and “exposure.”


"Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military." - Scott ShaneSo what’s new, you say? Serves the #&%#@’s right,?  But wait. 

“What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them  false, from American prisoners.”

Who knew?

Seeing the light of day at a June 17 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, the 1957 article from whence the chart came was titled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War.”

Guess we learned something from the Communists after all.

The New York Times report can be seen here.

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NEVER TOO LATE TO REMEMBER

The following list was compiled by Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.

The U.S. is not only the largest and most expensive military on the planet but it is also the most active. Since World War II, the U.S. has used U.S. military force in the following countries:

1947-1949 Greece. Over 500 U.S. armed forces military advisers were sent into Greece to administer hundreds of millions of dollars in their civil war.

1947-1949 Turkey. Over 400 U.S. armed forces military advisers sent into Turkey,

1950-1953 Korea. In the Korean War and other global conflicts 54,246 U.S. service members died.

1957-1975 Vietnam. Over 58,219 U.S. killed.

1958-1984 Lebanon. Sixth Fleet amphibious Marines and U.S. Army troops landed in Beirut during their civil war. Over 3000 U.S. military participated. 268 U.S. military killed in bombing.

1959 Haiti. U.S. troops, Marines and Navy, land in Haiti and joined in support of military dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier against rebels.

1962 Cuba. Naval and Marine forces blockade island.

1964 Panama. U.S. troops stationed there since 1903. U.S. troops used gunfire and tear gas to clear US Canal Zone.

1965-1966 Dominican Republic. U.S. troops land in Dominican Republic during their civil war - eventually 23,000 were stationed in their country.

1969-1975 Cambodia. U.S. and South Vietnam jets dropped more than 539,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia - three times the number dropped on Japan during WWII.

1964-1973 Laos. U.S. flew 580,000 bombing runs over country - more than 2 million tons of bombs dropped - double the amount dropped on Nazi Germany. US dropped more than 80 million cluster bombs on Laos - 10 to 30% did not explode leaving 8 to 24 million scattered across the country. Since the war stopped, two or three Laotians are killed every month by leftover bombs - over 5700 killed since bombing stopped.

1980 Iran. Operation Desert One, 8 U.S. troops die in rescue effort.

1981 Libya. U.S. planes aboard the Nimitz shot down 2 Libyan jets over Gulf of Sidra.

1983 Grenada. U.S. Army and Marines invade, 19 U.S. killed.

1983 Lebanon. Over 1200 Marines deployed into country during their civil war. 241 U.S. service members killed in bombing.

1983-1991 El Salvador. Over 150 US soldiers participate in their civil war as military advisers.

1983 Honduras. Over 1000 troops and National Guard members deployed into Honduras to help the contra fight against Nicaragua.

1986 Libya. U.S. Naval air strikes hit hundreds of targets - airfields, barracks, and defense networks.

1986 Bolivia. U.S. Army troops assist in anti-drug raids on cocaine growers.

1987 Iran. Operation Nimble Archer. U.S. warships shelled two Iranian oil platforms during Iran-Iraq war.

1988 Iran. US naval warship Vincennes in Persian Gulf shoots down Iranian passenger airliner, Airbus A300, killing all 290 people on board. US said it thought it was Iranian military jet.

1989 Libya. U.S. Naval jets shoot down 2 Libyan jets over Mediterranean

1989-1990 Panama. U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy forces invade Panama to arrest President Manuel Noriega on drug charges. U.N. puts civilian death toll at 500.

1989 Philippines. U.S. jets provide air cover to Philippine troops during their civil war.

1991 Gulf War. Over 500,000 U.S. military involved. 700 plus U.S. died.

1992-93 Somalia. Operation Provide Relief, Operation Restore Hope, and Operation Continue Hope. Over 1300 U.S. Marines and Army Special Forces landed in 1992. A force of over 10,000 US was ultimately involved. Over 40 U.S. soldiers killed.

1992-96 Yugoslavia. U.S. Navy joins in naval blockade of Yugoslavia in Adriatic waters.

1993 Bosnia. Operation Deny Flight. U.S. jets patrol no-fly zone, naval ships launch cruise missiles, attack Bosnian Serbs.

1994 Haiti. Operation Uphold Democracy. U.S. led force of 20,000 troops invade to restore president.

1995 Saudi Arabia. U.S. soldier killed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia outside US training facility.

1996 Saudi Arabia. Nineteen U.S. service personnel die in blast at Saudi Air Base.

1998 Sudan. Operation Infinite Reach. U.S. cruise missiles fired at pharmaceutical plant thought to be terrorist center.

1998 Afghanistan. Operation Infinite Reach. U.S. fires 75 cruise missiles on four training camps.

1998 Iraq. Operation Desert Fox. U.S. Naval bombing Iraq from striker jets and cruise missiles after weapons inspectors report Iraqi obstructions.

1999 Yugoslavia. U.S. participates in months of air bombing and cruise missile strikes in Kosovo war.

2000 Yemen. 17 U.S. sailors killed aboard US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Cole docked in Aden, Yemen.

2001 Macedonia. U.S. military lands troops during their civil war.

2001 to present Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) includes Pakistan and Uzbekistan with Afghanistan. 432 U.S. killed in those countries. Another 64 killed in other locations of OEF - Guantanamo Bay, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen. US military does not count deaths of non- US civilians, but estimates of over 8000 Afghan troops killed, over 3500 Afghan civilians killed.

2002 Yemen. U.S. predator drone missile attack on Al Qaeda.

2002 Philippines. U.S. sends over 1800 troops and Special Forces in mission with local military.

2003-2004 Colombia. U.S. sends in 800 military to back up Columbian military troops in their civil war.

2003 to present Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom. 4082 U.S. military killed. British medical journal Lancet estimates over 90,000 civilian deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates over 84,000 civilians killed.

2005 Haiti. U.S. troops land in Haiti after elected president forced to leave.

2005 Pakistan. U.S. air strikes inside Pakistan against suspected Al Qaeda, killing mostly civilians.

2007 Somalia. U.S. Air Force gunship attacked suspected Al Qaeda members, U.S. Navy joins in blockade against Islamic rebels.

The U.S. has the most powerful and expensive military force in the world. The U.S. is the biggest arms merchant. And the U.S. has been the most aggressive in world-wide interventions. If Memorial Day in the U.S. is supposed to be about praying for peace, the U.S. has a lot of praying (and changing) to do.

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NEW GOVERNMENT? ONE CAN ONLY HOPE

    My stepdaughter Evie recently spent a month in Australia, and sent me an article from the Byron Shire Echo, serving an area on the east coast of the continent.  Ttled “Long overdue but heartfelt apology.” it was issued by newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

    “We apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

    “We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their communities and their countries.  For the pain and suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

    “To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers nd the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

    “And for the indignity and degradation on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”

    The article goes on to say that “With these simple words Prime Minister Kevin Rudd altered the psyche of a nation and set hands clapping with a deafening roar across Australia.

    “For many Austrailians it was an emotional and historic moment but for Aboriginal Australians particularly it signalled the acknowledgement of ‘the stain’ across white Australia’s history and a hopeful new wave of reconciliation.”

    New government, overdue acknowledgement. One can only hope.

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CREATURES OF NATURE

Michael Vick's dogs 

I was profoundly moved by the following article, being all too aware of gratuitous violence in the human part of the animal kingdom – in large part because our species has long separated ourselves from nature and its creatures and systematically exercised power over them and one another. Until we wrap our hearts, minds and will around the question of “who we are as human beings,” quarrels and blaming over culture or country, religion or political philosophy (and who did what to whom) are just so much fiddling while we make our planet inhabitable for ourselves and the other species we use and abuse.

A brief sojourn at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary several years ago was an enormously pleasurable and hopeful experience.  If you are moved to contribute to Best Friends, which spares no effort or expense in caring for each creature that comes into their care, the address is 5001 Angel Canyon Rd., Kanab UT 84741-5000.  And contact them for a spectacular vacation volunteering.

Given Reprieve, N.F.L. Star's Dogs Find Kindness
By JULIET MACUR, New York Times, 2-2-08
The Best Friends Animal Society sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, is a new home for 22 of Michael Vick's former dogs.

KANAB, Utah — A quick survey of Georgia, a caramel-colored pit bull mix with cropped ears and soulful brown eyes, offers a road map to a difficult life. Her tongue juts from the left side of her mouth because her jaw, once broken, healed at an awkward angle. Her tail zigzags.

Scars from puncture wounds on her face, legs and torso reveal that she was a fighter. Her misshapen, dangling teats show that she might have been such a successful, vicious competitor that she was forcibly bred, her new handlers suspect, again and again.

But there is one haunting sign that Georgia might have endured the most abuse of any of the 47 surviving pit bulls seized last April from the property of the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in connection with an illegal dogfighting ring...

Read the NY Times story here.

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Whadda Way to Run a World

21st Anniversary of that previous Iran fiasco

Greetings on the 21st anniversary of the public revelations that became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Reading the New York Times' original article this morning (excerpt below, with URL to full coverage). I wondered how many US citizens who are being treated to threats to invade Iran know the checkered history of the two countries over the past half century.

In 1953 the democratically elected socialist Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, was overthrown in a coup enabled by the CIA and the its British counterpart. Think oil, which Mossadegh was moving to nationalize.  Imagine the cheek:  Iranian resources controlled by Iranians!  Reza II was brought back from exile and reinstalled on the Peacock Throne.  He ruled with the help of Savak, the notorious secret police, until the Islamic Revolution in 1979 ousted his government and seized the US hostages. They were released the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1980, presumably because his campaign operatives struck a better bargain than did President Carter’s negotiators.

This is the kind of realpolitik that propels most international relations today –  including of course the imminent Annapolis talks on Israel-Palestine.  If there is a point to the story below, it’s that, in the words of philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember [or do not know] their past are condemned to repeat it.”

(In the interest of full disclosure, I had a part-time job with the Shah’s administration in the mid-1970s.)
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Iran Payment Found Diverted To Contras; Reagan Security Adviser And Aide Are Out; Disarray Deepens; Was Not 'Fully Informed' About Secret Moves, President Asserts Iran Payment Is Found Diverted to the Contras; Two Reagan Men Are Out

By BERNARD WEINRAUB  Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

Washington, Nov. 25, 1986--President Reagan said today that he had not been in full control of his Administration's Iran policy, and the White House said that as a consequence up to $30 million intended to pay for American arms had been secretly diverted to rebel forces in Nicaragua.

At the same time, the President announced that two men he held responsible--Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, the national security adviser, and Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, a member of the admiral's staff--had left their posts.

With the Administration already in turmoil over the earlier disclosure of clandestine arms shipments to Iran, and with speculation rampant about a major overhaul of the White House staff, the President's statement seemed to deepen a sense of disarray. By all accounts, Mr. Reagan now faces the most serious crisis in his six-year Presidency... NY Times. 

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