My day

The US Mission in Afghanistan is...?

For centuries, the people of Afghanistan have eked out a living from their land’s harsh topography and drought-prone climate by farming, trading, and raiding. Starting before the birth of Christ and ending only in the nineteenth century when steamships replaced caravans, Afghans made a living off traders plying the Silk Route from China and India to Egypt, Italy, and Greece.

Today, Afghanistan is again seen as a viable trade route for commerce. Not for silks and satins, spices, fine china, jewels, and even slaves, but for fossil fuels, the riches of our modern age. Although very few deposits of oil or gas can be found within its borders, there are huge untapped reservoirs that have been located to its west in the Caspian Sea Basin that is surrounded by the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and tiny Georgia.

Since these countries are all landlocked, the energy conglomerates, whose executives are bidding for extraction rights, need pipelines to transport the oil and gas to seaports for shipping to markets further to the east.

The following chronology shows the events that brought the Taliban to power, their ouster by the US, and efforts to achieve the objective noted above:

1978 — April 27th - a small Communist clique, not backed by the Soviet Union, grabs power in Kabul.

1979 — July - President Carter signs a secret directive ordering the CIA to work with its opponents — mainly warlords who object to the group’s policies of education for girls and for land reform — in hopes that the Soviets would be drawn into the conflict. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s Foreign Policy Advisor, acknowledged to a French newspaper in 1998 that the US objective in 1979 had been “to give the Soviets their Vietnam.” [Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998.]

1979 — December 12th – The Soviets intervene at the request of the Afghan government. In the past, skirmishes between tribes were carried on with rifles and on horseback, but over the next decade the US spends billions supplying tribal chiefs with weaponry including pricey stingers, as well as bundles of cash, Toyota pick-up trucks, and access to the international opium market. A number unite under the banner of the Mujahideen to fend off the Russians.

1989 — February 15th – Last Soviet troops leave. The Soviets tried for ten years to bring the country under the control of the Kabul government. (They must be enjoying a last laugh since our troops have now been there for eight years, going on nine, giving us our second “Vietnam.”)

1996 — September – Taliban emerge as dominant force when various factions of Afghan population began fighting among themselves after the Soviets left.

1997 — December 17th – A UK newspaper reports that Taliban representatives were in Texas hoping to sign an agreement with UNOCAL, an oil consortium based in California, for construction of an oil pipeline across Afghanistan, which would then head south to a port on the Indian Ocean.  [CounterPunch, January 10, 2002]

1998 — February 12th - John Maresca, a UNOCAL executive, clarified the situation when he told the House Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific, “construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.” In other words, a stable government, uniting all of Afghanistan, was seen as crucial to protecting their investments.

[ http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.htm ]

1998 — August 20th – President Clinton sends cruise missiles to strike NATO-built Taliban camps in Afghanistan and to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, in retaliation for embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for which bin Laden and Al Qaeda were held responsible.

2001 — January – July - Secret negotiations go on between the Bush administration and the Taliban throughout the first seven months of Bush’s presidency.

2001 — Mid-July - US warns Taliban that if they do not hand over Osama bin Laden, who was there as a “guest” after being told to leave Sudan, the US will retaliate by bombing the country and instituting sanctions.

Both Presidents Clinton and Bush wanted to grab Osama bin Laden. Clinton planned a secret operation with the head of Pakistan to capture him, but it had to be canceled when that government changed hands. However, Bush added to this objective a demand that the Taliban sign an agreement furthering the oil interests of US corporations in Central Asia.

2001 — August 2nd – At a multi-government confab in Berlin, US breaks off talks with Taliban when they fail to agree to US conditions set forth in the agreement. [Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie – November 2001.]

2001 — August 6th – Foreign Policy Advisor Condoleeza Rice relays memo to Bush warning that planes may be used to attack the US.

2001 — September 11th – Pilots of hijacked commercial planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Nearly 3000 people died. Regardless of the answer to the question of who it was that pulled off this attack, it proved to be a useful propaganda tool for the US.

In his speech to the nation that night, Bush states, “I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.”

But that effort, deemed appropriate by international law experts, was rapidly transformed into a military campaign.

2001 — October 7th - President Bush makes the following announcement shortly after the noon hour: “Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. More than two weeks ago, I gave Taliban leaders a series of clear and specific demands: Close terrorist training camps; hand over leaders of the al Qaeda network; and return all foreign nationals, including American citizens, unjustly detained in your country. None of these demands were met. And now the Taliban will pay a price."

Bush does not mention that his ultimatums to the Taliban before 9/11 may have provoked the WTC attack. Nor is anything said about his willingness to overlook terrorism in exchange for the “oil” agreement.

2001 — December 22nd – After the Taliban were pushed out of Kabul by US forces, Bush persuades political leaders at a meeting in Bonn, Germany, to appoint Hamid Karzai, a CIA operative during the decade-long fight against the Soviets, as head of Afghanistan’s interim government. (The claim by a number of sources that Karzai worked for UNOCAL appears to be an urban legend.)

2001 — December 31st - Bush appoints Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad as US Special Envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad did indeed work for UNOCAL as a consultant in the nineties. He has since served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations. He also served under Brzezinski in Afghanistan during the Soviets’ attempt to pacify the country. He presently heads Khalilzad Associates.

The American people have never been told that the US objective in Afghanistan is to install a government that is recognized as legitimate by all Afghans, but one that will comply with US demands and be able to guarantee security for the pipelines. Instead, a pretense is being maintained that it is the security of America for which US troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

While the operation in Afghanistan should be shut down because it is in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions, it should also be shut down because no outsiders or insiders have ever been able to unite the country under a single government. Just as travelers once did along the Silk Route, governments of various stripes have only been able to rule a tiny portion of Afghanistan by paying tribute to warlords from the mountainous rural areas to forestall their raiding parties. Even now, reporters in the country’s capital refer to Karzai, the winner of the 2004 presidential election, as “the mayor of Kabul.”

But there’s another even more urgent reason. The corporate world whose policies and practices have brought us to an unprecedented global crisis want to continue to enrich themselves by selling fossil fuels to developing economies in the Far East.

This ongoing use of fossil fuel products is just one indication that corporate leaders put profits over any agreements to work collectively to halt an ever-deepening worldwide climate crisis.

If life on earth is to continue, they must be stopped.

180 comments »

Is our democracy in its final days?

The twilight of the New Deal

By the time I joined the Democratic Party in the early nineteen eighties, the long-term New Deal consensus, in spite of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiatives, was badly frayed.

The conservative and racist ideology that had led white southerners to oppose Roosevelt's programs lived on in enough of their political descendants to help Republicans pass Reagan's agenda, turning Johnson's War on Poverty into a War on the Poor. In the twenty-four years from 1968 to 1992, the Democrats suffered defeat after defeat, the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a conservative, southern Democrat, the only interlude. When the Democratic Leadership Council, the corporate wing of the Party, rose to dominance, it sponsored Bill Clinton, who became the DLC's first president.

The most important election statistics, of course, are the ones that tell us who won, but looking at how many people actually voted also reveals vital information. In 1960, 63.1% of voting-age Americans participated in the election that put Kennedy in the Oval Office. By 1984, the turnout was down to 53.1%. The fact that 46.9% of the voting-age population didn't go to the polls meant that Reagan had actually been re-elected by less than a third of the adult population. Drop-off continued. In 1996, it fell to 49%. In 2000, the figures edged up over the fifty percent mark to 51% and to 55.3% in 2004. The 56.8% that was regarded as a stunning figure in the 2008 election looks rather anemic beside the 1960 figure.

In Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam, a public policy expert, takes stock of a decline not only in civic participation but also in social activities as well. He writes, "For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago - silently, without warning - that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century."

How did this "rip current" affect political activity? Putnam answers, "On the positive side of the ledger, Americans today score about as well on a civics test as our parents and grandparents did, though our self-congratulation should be restrained, since we have on average four more years of formal schooling than they had. Moreover, at election time we are no less likely than they were to talk politics or express interest in the campaign. On the other hand, since the mid-1960s, the weight of the evidence suggests that we Americans, despite the rapid rise in levels of education, have become perhaps 10-15 percent less likely to voice our views publicly by running for office or writing Congress or the local newspaper, 15-20 percent less interested in politics and public affairs, roughly 25 percent less likely to vote, roughly 35 percent less likely to attend public meetings, both partisan and nonpartisan, and roughly 40 percent less engaged in party politics and indeed in political and civic organizations of all sorts. We remain, in short, reasonably well-informed spectators of public affairs (italics mine), but many fewer of us actually partake in the game."

Putnam concluded, "The rise of electronic communications and entertainment is one of the most powerful social trends of the twentieth century. In important respects this revolution has lightened our souls and enlightened our minds, but it has also rendered our leisure more private and passive."

He goes on, "The apotheosis of these trends can be found, most improbably, at the Holiday Bowling Lanes in New London, Connecticut. Mounted above each lane is a giant television screen displaying the evening's TV fare. Even on a full night of league play team members are no longer in lively conversation with one another about the day's events, public and private. Instead each stares silently at the screen while awaiting his or her turn. Even while bowling together, they are watching alone."

A sociological theory more fully explains the political malaise that Putnam uncovered. A phenomenon called "the iron law of oligarchy" fosters a divide that comes about between a political party's leaders and its adherents. According to this law, "once parties move beyond the fluid participatory structures that often accompany their formation, they inevitably become more bureaucratic and more centrally controlled, falling under the domination of a professional leadership. In this process the original goals . . . may also be replaced by more narrowly instrumental goals, including a concern for the maintenance of the organization."

It is not hard to make the case that the Democratic Party has fallen victim to the problems described above. Here in Massachusetts, the chairs of local committees are routinely told that their only task is to elect Democrats. Although delegates to both state and national conventions endorse platforms, the real agenda is fashioned in private between legislative leaders and the well-heeled lobbyists of the corporate elite.

Robert Michels, the German sociologist who developed this theory in the early 1900s, named three factors as key to what he believed was an inevitable development for political parties. One is the organization's "need to maintain an effective fighting machine," which eventually "develops its own vested interests and is able to control agenda and communications, manage internal opposition, etc."

He pointed out that a second factor, the characteristics of leaders, played a part, too. "They may be gifted orators, relish the psychic rewards of leadership, come to share the motivations and interests of a wider political elite, and thus tend to cling to power at all costs."

But the third component, the psychological transformation of the core constituency, is the most devastating to democracy: "the rank and file members of political organizations tend to be apathetic, are willing to be led, are readily swayed by mass oratory, and venerate the leadership."

Political parties are not the only groups that succumb to the iron law of oligarchy. As Michels pointed out, unions, too, fall under its sway. Many of us can also see that social movements tend to follow this pattern as well as civic organizations. Over time, the core constituencies in union locals, grassroots groups, and membership organizations become rubber stamps rather than forces that drive the action at the top.

In 1989, looking back over the nineteen eighties, William Winpisinger, retired president of the International Association of Machinists, wrote, "At the top, the Democrats demonstrated how far they had moved to the right by their determination to compete for the same 26 percent of the electorate that the Republicans represent." Winpisinger added, "Someone must speak for the other 74 percent." Clinton signaled whom it was he spoke for when he pushed NAFTA through Congress in 1993.

Now the Party, bankrolled even more by corporate interests, has increasingly ceased to work to fulfill the needs of grassroots America. Led by Barack Obama, Congress bailed out corporate America but left average Americans on their own when it came to dealing with dire financial problems created by Wall Street.

Politics is not a spectator sport. It is not, of course, a sport at all - or a pastime - or a hobby. It is a civic obligation, a responsibility of every citizen in a democracy. In fact, democracy is exercised through politics.

Alienation from the larger world is a dagger straight to the heart of a democratic society. Only a consciousness among all of us that the struggle for power is ongoing can prevent democracy from being stifled and gradually forgotten.

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Who's Watching Out for Us?

When John Kerry voted on October 10, 2002, to authorize the use of force against Iraq and Ted Kennedy did not, many Massachusetts voters may have wondered if there were other issues where the two held differing views.

A look at their voting records yields some surprises. Some Kerry votes are truly quixotic for a senator from liberal Massachusetts, but, like the Iraq war vote, perhaps understandable  in light of Kerry's presidential aspirations.

Discerning these differences is not always easy because Kerry is fond of coming out for both the "pro" and "con" positions. Three Boston Globe reporters write in their bio of Kerry that within days of the vote on Iraq Kerry, who faced re-election that November with little opposition, was "suggesting that it was a vote for peace, not war."

His actions toward the odious "Partial Birth" Abortion Ban yielded another surprise. Although absent for a March 2003 vote, Kerry took pains to announce he was against an amendment that would have tempered the harshness of the ban by allowing the procedure if two doctors agreed that continuing the pregnancy would present a "risk of grievous injury" to the woman's life or health. When the bill came up for a final vote in November with the proviso that the procedure would be allowed if it were needed to save the life of the mother, he voted NO along with Kennedy. Did he vote NO because of the proviso? Or had he decided that the ban was wrong altogether? Or was he trying to cover a certain part of his anatomy?

There is a history to Kerry's wanting to have it both ways. In 1991, a Newton constituent contacted the Boston Globe to relate that he had received two letters from Senator Kerry in response to his January 9^th letter that had asked Kerry to support President George H.W. Bush's request for approval to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.  Kerry's first letter, dated January 22^nd, erroneously stated the constituent's position as one that opposed the war and stated Kerry's agreement with it and why he had voted on January 11^th to oppose it, which he had. Then a second letter arrived, dated January 31^st, erroneously stating that Kerry had "strongly and unequivocally supported the President's response to the crisis."

A vote that Kerry may have regretted was made in March '01 against an amendment that would have required broadcasting stations to give equal time at no charge to candidates for federal office who were attacked or opposed in political advertisements by independent groups. Three years later, Kerry's war record in Vietnam was attacked by Swift Boaters during his presidential campaign. Robert Shrum wrote in his book, "No Excuses," that the decision to not respond to these attacks was a mistake and "was forced, in part, by the campaign's need to conserve money for the fall."

In 2001 Kerry supported an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that was proposed by Jesse Helms, the arch conservative from North Carolina. The amendment prohibited ANY cooperation by the US with the International Criminal Court except for assistance to defend US or allied citizens. It also prohibited transfer of intelligence or law enforcement information to the Court or to any government that is a party to the Court. Clinton had signed the agreement to establish the Court but did not send it to the Senate for ratification because it was flawed: US military personnel could be brought before the Court on charges of war crimes.

In the present debate about health care Kerry does not support single payer, a plan that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Does the fact that Senator Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry have holdings worth at least $5.2 million in companies such as Merck and Eli Lilly influence his decision-making on this issue?

Kerry has proposed a ten-year delay in implementation of the "public option" that would give people the opportunity to buy into Medicare, a government-run plan. Kerry wants to give the parasites, euphemistically known as private health insurance companies, a chance to show how well they can do in covering all Americans with quality health care plans.

If you support a single-payer plan, go to http://kerry.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm and let him know.

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How would Single Payer work for you?

What it is, and what it will do

Single payer refers to a health care program that would be regulated and funded by the federal government. Insurance companies would be out of the health care business with the exception of a few services like cosmetic surgery that would not be covered by the government-run plan.

                 President Obama on Health Care

If House Resolution 676 were passed, you, as a resident of the United States or one of its territories, would sign up for coverage by stopping off at your doctor’s office or a clinic, or HMO and filling out a short form.

You would then receive in the mail a United States National Health Insurance Card (USNHI) imprinted with a unique number. In the same way you use a credit card, you would present this card at the end of your visit to the doctor or any one else authorized to provide services. The doctor would submit a bill to a regional director via a written form or via computer.

What would you be entitled to?
Under this Act your card would entitle you to the following:

1. Primary care 
2. Preventive care
3. Inpatient care such as a hospital stay
4. Outpatient care that is administered at a clinic or doctor’s office
5. Emergency care
6. Prescription drugs
7. Durable medical equipment
8. Long-term care that you might need at home or in a nursing facility
9. Palliative care
10. Mental health services
11. Dental services (not cosmetic dentistry)
12. Substance abuse treatment services
13. Chiropractic services
14. Basic vision care and vision correction
15. Hearing services, including hearing aids
16. Podiatric care

You would be entitled to these services whether you are employed, unemployed or self-employed, homeless or housed, young or old, chronically ill or mentally ill, moving from job to job or from town to town or from state to state.

Payment for monthly premiums would be a thing of the past. There would be no deductibles, co-payments, co-insurance, or other cost-sharing with respect to these benefits.

You would CHOOSE YOUR OWN DOCTOR. This same choice applies to hospitals.

Who would provide these services?
Private physicians, private clinics and private health care providers could continue to operate as private entities but could not be investor-owned. No institution could participate unless it was a public or not-for-profit institution. If owners of for-profit providers wanted to achieve non-profit status, they would be compensated for any reasonable financial losses they incurred in the conversion process.
Physicians, dentists, etc., would be compensated in one of three ways: through a fee established for the particular service that they provided, through their salary as an employee in an institution such as a hospital, or through a salaried position within a group practice or HMO.

Using current fees as the basis, fees would be negotiated with physicians and other clinicians after consultation with a National Board of Universal Quality and Access and with regional and state directors. Other safeguards for medical standards would also be put in place. 

How would these benefits be paid for?
The tax money that is now expended for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program would be folded into a USNHC Trust Fund. An increase in personal income taxes for those earning in the top 5% bracket would go into the fund along with a progressive but modest excise tax on payroll and self-employment income (currently at a flat rate of 2.9%) as well as a small tax on stock and bond transfers.

How would these funds be allocated?
Under this Act, an operating budget and a capital expenditures budget would be set up along with the fee schedules for providers and a health professional education budget including continued funding for resident physician training programs (medical schools). The USNHC Director would allocate these funds to regional offices.

Hospitals and some HMOs would receive global or lump sum allocations — money given ahead of time to take care of their expenses since they would not operate on a billing system.

Would savings be realized in changing from the present system?
Big savings would come from reducing paper work. More would come from the government’s bulk buying of medications from pharmaceuticals. Improved access to doctors rather than relying on emergency room treatment would be another saver. The biggest savings would go to consumers by taking profit-making by insurance companies out of health care. 

Cities and towns would no longer have the burden of health care costs. The same would go for businesses. More people would start their own businesses if health care were guaranteed for them and their families. This would be good for the economy because small businesses generate the most jobs.

Those workers laid off by insurance companies would be given priority in the hiring for the new jobs generated by this change-over.

Because of the huge campaign contributions that the president and many members of Congress have received, they refuse to consider this single payer bill. Call, email or visit them during August when they are in their districts and tell them that you want the same kind of health care they have!     

81 comments »

WHO’S THE BOSS?

A postscript to Crowley vs. Gates

February 1956: Martin Luther King, then a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, sits for a police mugshot after his arrest for directing a boycott of segregated buses.

August, 2009: Henry Lewis Gates, then a professor at Harvard University, sits mugshot after being arrested in his own home in Cambridge.

It was supposed to be “a teachable moment,” an opportunity for blacks and whites to come to a better understanding on how to improve race relations in our country. It remains unclear as to who was supposed to do the teaching and who would be willing to be taught. Certainly the media with its atrocious mishmash of facts, hearsay, misstatements, and dearth of useful information has shown that it is not capable of assisting in this task.

We whites tend to view incidents like this one between Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department as an event to be judged without awareness of the way whites in this country have treated blacks for some three hundred years. The result is a plethora of blog comments from whites deriding Gates for not behaving respectfully toward an officer of the law and concluding, as did Sgt. Crowley, himself, that Gates deserved to be handcuffed and arrested. End of story.

The story begins

The story begins with a 911 call early in the afternoon of July 21, 2009, when Lucia Whalen, a white woman who works at the Harvard alumni magazine just up the street from the Gates residence was stopped by an elderly person who drew her attention to two men, who turned out to be Gates and his driver from a private cab service, pushing hard at a front door that had become sticky no doubt from the humid weather. Whalen could not identify them as “white, black or Hispanic” when asked by the dispatcher. She reported that the men had gotten into the house and that she had seen two suitcases on the porch that indicated to her that they might live there. The dispatcher asked her to remain on the scene.

After Whalen’s call and before Crowley arrived, the driver carried Gates’s luggage into the house since Gates has to use a cane, then came out and drove off. Gates immediately got on his cell phone to let Harvard know that the door needed repairs.

Now this is where things begin to get a little weird. A Boston Globe article (7/25/09) details an interview with several Cambridge police officers who believe that any situation can become treacherous when an officer is not prepared for the worst or the unexpected.

Crowley writes in his report that he talked with Whelan and she told him “she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch” and “that her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry.” (Whelan through her attorney denies that she used “black” in describing the two men. This seems accurate since she could not categorize them in her 911 call. Perhaps it was what Crowley wanted to hear).

Why didn’t Crowley draw his weapon in going up onto the porch if a burglary was in process? Does he already know from what Whelan tells him, but doesn’t put in his report, that one man is already out of the picture?

He seemed confident that he just needed to finish checking out the 911 call to make sure who had the right to be on the property.

Gates, identified in the police report as weighing 150 pounds and standing at 5 feet seven, answered the door with cell phone in hand. He knows nothing about the call to report a burglary and is disconcerted to find a police officer at his door, asking for ID that shows this is his residence.

[First note: It is perfectly legal for a person in this country who is standing in his or her own home to refuse to produce an ID unless a warrant is attached. Gates refuses. He wants to see Crowley’s ID.]

Now, several years ago, an article appeared in my local paper, written by an ex-trooper, who wanted readers to understand that in interacting with police such as being pulled over by highway patrol they are dealing with two powerful emotions on the part of the officer: fear and ego.

It seems logical, then, that when Gates refuses Crowley’s request, Crowley gets his back up. With white/black interactions, there is a superiority/inferiority phenomenon at work in the white consciousness — the legacy of slavery that dictates that blacks, being inferior by way of having been slaves (!), must comply with white demands.

All whites who grow up in this country are racists to a greater or lesser degree. As Tim Wise, a well-known anti-racist activist and educator, recently pointed out on cable TV, we have to learn to check out our attitudes and perceptions about race when they pop into our consciousness. He cited a personal example that occurred when he had boarded an airplane and while waiting for take-off saw two uniformed black men head into the cockpit. His immediate reaction was, “Oh! My God! Can they really fly this plane?” For obvious reasons, he had to recognize that his reaction was racist garbage.

For Gates, he may have already had one or two encounters THAT DAY with racism in America. Returning from China where he had been filming a documentary, had he been delayed, for instance, in getting through customs because officials searched his luggage just as they routinely did whenever he returned from abroad?

Crowley teaches racial profiling at the police academy. In my town, as in too many other places, local officers routinely stop black men for the “crime” of DWB (Driving While Black). Some officers even follow these drivers to their homes.

The code in the black community warns that it is dangerous to be other than excessively polite and to use “sir” frequently when stopped by police. In other words, one must re-enforce the superiority/inferiority relationship. Because if you don’t, you may be arrested. Or end up dead. Black people do not survive in this society behaving in the same way that we whites do. The person on “shoplifting” duty at Stop & Shop does not target us, for instance, the minute we step into the store. Our integrity as to who we are and what we are doing is not being constantly questioned

Another officer, Carlos Figueroa, arrives right on Crowley’s heels. He writes in his police report, “When I arrived, I stepped into the residence and Sgt. Crowley had already entered and was speaking to a black man.”

[Second note: Unless Gates had given permission for Crowley to enter the premises, it was unlawful for him to do so.]

Figueroa continues, “As I stepped in, I heard Sgt. Crowley ask for the gentleman’s information which he stated “NO I WILL NOT!” The gentleman was shouting out to the Sgt., that the Sgt. was a racist and yelled that “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO BLACK MEN IN AMERICA!” As the Sgt. was trying to calm the gentleman, the gentleman shouted, “You don’t know who your messing with!” He writes that he went back out to gather information from Ms Whalen and notes that there were seven people gathered outside the residence.

[Third note: It is not unlawful to be disrespectful to, or to berate, a police officer even though it may violate the norms of civil behavior.]

In regard to Crowley’s claim that Gates was shouting, Gates says that he was physically unable to do so because he had contracted a bronchial infection in China and had been treated there for it.

Crowley writes in his report, “I asked Gates to provide me with photo identification so that I could verify that he resided at 17 Ware Street and so I could radio my findings to ECC. Gates initially refused, demanding that I show him identification . . .”

[Fourth note: Must Crowley comply? Yes. It is the law that an officer must show his identification card when asked for it, but Crowley doesn’t.]

Crowley goes on “ . . . but then [Gates}did supply me with a Harvard University identification card. Upon learning that Gates was affiliated with Harvard, I radioed and requested the presence of the Harvard University police. With the Harvard University identification in hand, I radioed my findings to ECC on Channel Two and prepared to leave.”

At this point, Crowley should have left, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tells Gates that he will speak with him outside in response to Gates repeatedly demanding his identification. Once outside, Crowley arrests him for Disorderly Conduct, an arrest that he could not make while inside the house because disorderly conduct has to take place in public although a front porch hardly qualifies as a public place.

Crowley writes in his police report that Gates’s actions “served no legitimate purpose and caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed.” While this language adheres to the wording of the statute, according to the Explainer, who answered questions on the Slate web site (7/22/09), “the courts have ruled that disorderly conduct means fighting or tumultuous behavior or creating a hazardous or physically offensive condition that would cause public annoyance or alarm.”

Who was being alarmed? The “several Cambridge and Harvard University police” that Crowley noted were “assembled on the sidewalk in front of the residence”?? With so many police present, did the seven citizens still feel threatened by this slender black man who needed a cane to get around??

From the very beginning of his arrest, the charges against Gates were slated to be dropped because prosecuting attorneys know they have no chance of a successful outcome.

The upshot is that a white cop arrested a black man on a trumped up charge of disorderly conduct, handcuffed him, ran him into the station to be fingerprinted, stand for a mug shot, and sit in a cell for four hours just to show him who was boss.

97 comments »