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.

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.

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.

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!     

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.

By Mary Wentworth

Just past midnight on Saturday, July 19, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his black Oldsmobile sedan off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard, just off Cape Cod. The Senator escaped a watery death, but a passenger in his car, twenty-eight-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, below on right, did not.

Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were preparing to be the first human beings to walk on the moon. The Black Panthers were holding a national convention in Oakland, California, while the Vietnam War troubled the consciences of millions of Americans. What brought Kennedy to Chappaquiddick, however, was the Edgartown Sailing Regatta, an event in which the Kennedys had participated for many years.

A police diver examines the inside of the Kennedy car in the water aside the Dyke Bridge in Chappaquiddick.

The accident at Chappaquiddick has cast a long shadow over Kennedy's political life, crippling his quest, for example, for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980.

At the time, and since then, nearly all newspaper and magazine articles, and even books, have concentrated on discrediting Kennedy's account of his actions both before and after the incident.

Nation didn't believe his story

According to a Time-Harris poll (Time 8/6/69), the account offered by Kennedy over nationwide television on the Friday following the accident was not accepted by a majority of the American people. Fifty-one percent felt that it was an inadequate explanation of what he was doing at the post-regatta party and of what he was doing with Kopechne, on right. The responses questioned his honesty. Even for that minority who believed him, the event raised questions about his ability to handle a crisis.

Many questions about this case have never been satisfactorily resolved. At what time did Kennedy actually leave the party? Was his turn on to Dyke Road a mistake as he claimed in his statement to the police and in his television address to the nation? Or was it intentional? After the accident, why didn't he seek help from people in nearby cottages? If he had been, in fact, too traumatized to ask for assistance as he claimed in his television talk, why didn't his friends immediately contact authorities when they were told of the accident?

The lack of credible explanations to these questions touched off speculation that the truth about Mary Jo's death was more shocking than Kennedy's statements about it. Teddy Bare, published by the John Birch Society in 1971, disparages the handling of the case by judges and prosecutors and ridicules the testimony of Kennedy's friends and associates, leaving the reader to believe that Kennedy was guilty of criminal negligence.

A plausible explanation 40 years later

Now, as the fortieth anniversary approaches, it is high time to present a plausible explanation of what actually happened that fateful night. The following reconstruction, developed from general descriptions of the scene, numerous eyewitness interviews, investigative reports, and Kennedy's statements that have been published in newspapers and magazines, explains why events unfolded as they did.

Below is the New York Times story on 7/24/69.

This approach demonstrates conclusively that the only hypothesis that fits the overall picture is that there were three people in the car. This theory has been mentioned in the media from time to time. For instance, Herb Caen, a well-known columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted in his column of July 9, 1981, that locals have come to believe that this was the case. In a step-by-step process, however, this reconstruction shows for the first time exactly how such a theory is the only credible explanation.

Kennedy's version is built around the premise that he knew that Kopechne was in his automobile when he only knew that in retrospect - after her body was discovered to be there by a scuba diver.

At a party hosted by Kennedy, attendees included Esther Newberg, an Urban Institute employee, Rosemary Keough, a secretary on Kennedy's staff, Maryellen Lyons, an assistant to Massachusetts Senator Beryl Cohen, Ann Lyons, Maryellen's sister and a Kennedy staffer, Susan Tannenbaum, an aide to Congressman Allard Lowenstein, and Mary Jo Kopechne, an employee of Matt Reese Associates, a campaign consulting firm. All six had worked in what we today would call "the war room" of Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign that ended tragically with his assassination in June of 1968. These young, unmarried women had been looking forward to this weekend reunion (NYT 7/24/1969).

In addition to Kennedy, the other men who attended the party were Charles Tretter, a lawyer who had been on Robert Kennedy's staff, Ray LaRosa, a civil defense official, who along with Tretter, was often a sailing companion of the Senator's, John Crimmins, a Kennedy employee and chauffeur, Paul Markham, an Assistant District Attorney for Massachusetts, and Joseph Gargan, a Kennedy cousin. All but one were married (NYT 7/24/1969).

Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena took photos...

of the car recovery.

Kennedy's police statement. A full size version is below.

After an afternoon of watching races from a Kennedy yacht, the party got under way about eight Friday evening with cocktails and barbecued steaks at a rented cottage.

Newspaper reports described Mary Jo as being dedicated to politics, particularly where the Kennedys were concerned. Not a "swinger" by any means, she was relatively quiet, perhaps naive, and noted for her "thoroughness, industriousness, and discretion" (Time 8/1/69). The summer sun and ocean breezes combined with the day's activities, one or two drinks, and a full meal could easily have motivated her to look for a peaceful place to nap before the others were ready to call it a night and head back to Edgartown. Since the cottage was a small ranch-style with only three rooms, the darkened and quiet inside of the Olds with its commodious rear seat must have looked inviting.

Kennedy maintained in his statement to the police (NYT 7/26/69) as well as in his address to the nation (NYT 7/26/69) that he and Kopechne left the party at 11:15 p.m. to catch the ferry to Edgartown before its last scheduled crossing at midnight. This claim is not plausible for several reasons. If Mary Jo had decided to return to her motel in Edgartown she did so without bothering to retrieve her purse from the cottage or ask her roommate for the keys to their room. When she stretched out on the back seat of the Olds, however, she had no need for these items because she was not going anywhere. Or so she thought (DHG 4/14/1980).

Judge Boyle doubts story

No less a person then Judge James Boyle, who presided over the inquest, wrote in his report that if Kennedy's destination had, in fact, been Edgartown he would have asked his chauffeur to take him there so that the car could be driven back to Chappaquiddick to provide transportation for the ten remaining guests. They would have only the Valiant, a compact car rented for the occasion by Gargan, to get them back to Edgartown (NYT 4/30/79).

A witness further undermines the Senator's story. Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look got off duty at the Edgartown Yacht Club at midnight, crossed the channel to Chappaquiddick in the club's launch, got into his waiting car, and drove up the Main Road toward his summer home. His claim that he saw the Kennedy Oldsmobile at the intersection of this road and Dyke Road at about 12:45 a.m. has been regarded as reliable.

The Deputy Sheriff got a good look at the car because it crossed the path of his headlights at the sharp curve where the Main Road goes to the right. Entry into Dyke Road for someone coming in the opposite direction also requires a right. The driver was unable to negotiate this very tight turn and ended up on Cemetery Road, a narrow dirt lane that runs perpendicular to Dyke Road. Look continued around the curve at the intersection and braked his car on the shoulder. He got out and started back toward the other car, thinking that the driver must be lost. As he called out, the car backed up with the rear lights revealing the license plate and then completed the turn, proceeding down the unpaved, bumpy Dyke Road.

Look stated that his first impression of the car was that there was something or someone in the rear seat - an article of clothing, a large handbag, or possibly a person. Perhaps Look caught sight of Kopechne's white blouse. Look thought there were two people in the front seat (NYT 7/22/69).

The Dyke Bridge goes off at a left angle as it crosses Poucha Pond. Since it is narrow, hump-backed, and roughly constructed, it is normally traversed on foot or in a jeep or beach buggy. At its end are dunes and a beach. Several members of the party, including Kennedy, had been driven to the beach that day to go swimming (DHG 4/14/1980). The marks on the bridge indicated that the car was driven straight off it with the undercarriage scraping the four-inch high planks along the sides as the right front wheel went over. The car turned, hitting the water on its right side, denting the doors and blowing out the windows. It landed in about seven feet of tidal water, resting on its hood ornament and brow of the windshield so that the rear of the car was slightly more elevated than the front (BG 7/20/69).

Kennedy said he didn't know how he got out

Kennedy maintains that he does not know how he got out but a possible exit for him and his companion, most likely Rosemary Keough since it was her purse that was later found in the car, would have been the almost completely withdrawn window on the driver's side. Then, too, a door could have been pushed open when enough water had gushed into the car to match the inside pressure with the outside (NYT 7/26/79).

The walk to the cottage from Poucha Pond, a distance of one and a quarter miles, would have taken about twenty-five or thirty minutes. This would have brought the twosome, dripping wet if they were fully clothed, back to the cottage shortly before one-thirty. Foster Silva, the neighbor whose cottage was nearest the party house, reported that the rather noisy gathering that had disturbed his family abruptly quieted down at just about that time (NYT 7/24/69).

It is not hard to imagine that Kennedy, consulting with the two people at the party who were closest to him, Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham, decided that it would be imperative for him to get off the island as quickly as possible in order that he suffer no damaging political repercussions in connection with his presence at the party and with what appeared to be an accident involving only his car.

The night was clear and warm with the moon shining brightly. Since it was Regatta weekend, there was much activity around the Edgartown harbor. People were strolling about, fishing from the pier, or visiting back and forth amongst the boats moored there. Two hotel employees on the Edgartown pier saw the lights of a car being driven onto the Chappaquiddick landing around one or one-thirty, they thought (LAT 7/29/69).

Car lights are a signal to Jared Grant, operator of the ferry, that someone needs to make a crossing. But these lights were quickly turned off. Since the plan was to give the impression that the Senator had spent the night in Edgartown, Markham and Gargan, after driving Kennedy to the landing in the rented Valiant, would not have wanted to reveal the Senator's presence on Chappaquiddick by calling out the ferry at that hour.

But there remained the problem of the Senator finding another means to cross the five-hundred-foot wide channel. He later claimed that after making valiant efforts to save Mary Jo he was in such a state of shock that he impulsively plunged in and swam the distance (NYT 7/26/69). However, it is not at all unusual - in fact, it is customary - for a person in need of getting to Edgartown to borrow a dinghy if it is promptly returned (NYT 7/24/69). In a Jack Anderson column that appeared a couple of weeks after the accident, confirmation of such a crossing came from a group on a yacht who identified Kennedy as one of three men on a boat docking at the Edgartown pier about this time.
The Senator then appeared, dry and calm, before the co-owner of the Shiretown Inn where he was staying, ostensibly to complain about a noisy party, but really to ask the time, establishing his presence in Edgartown at 2:25 a.m. (NYT 7/27/69). Markham and Gargan recrossed the channel in the borrowed dinghy and drove back to the cottage. Esther Newberg confirmed that the two men had left the party at some point but was not sure about the exact time or how long they were gone (NYT 7/24/69).

Was Mary Jo Kopechne unconscious?

What about Mary Jo Kopechne? Did she wake up at any point during the short trip from the cottage to the bridge, but decide not to make her presence known? When the car went into the water, was she momentarily knocked unconscious, only coming to as the others were escaping?

At any point did Mary Jo's friends begin to wonder where she was? Given the atmosphere of the party, its setting, and the activities of party goers, reminiscing, singing, dancing, going in and out of the cottage, and taking walks there was probably no time when someone specifically thought to ask about her whereabouts. There was no way for someone who was inclined to check with the motel to see if she had quietly returned to Edgartown to do so since there was no telephone in the cottage (NYT 7/24/69),

As the night wore on, the accident went unreported. The plan obviously called for someone other than Kennedy to claim responsibility for the car's being in Poucha Pond. It would be better, too--it must have been argued--for that person to wait until morning and face charges of leaving the scene of an accident than to report it promptly, submit to a Breathalyzer test, and risk a drunk driving charge.

The two-car "On Time" ferry began daily operations at 7:30 a.m. Several members of the party, Markham and Gargan and two of the women, Tannenbaum and Keough, made an early crossing that would have taken less than four minutes (NYT 7/24/69). It is likely that the women were driven to The Dunes, their motel, which was not in the center of town, to shower and change before eating breakfast. In the process, it would have been discovered that Mary Jo had not returned there the previous night.

This sobering and unsettling fact was the first indication that something may have happened that was more serious than a car submerged in Poucha Pond.

No doubt alarmed by this news about Mary Jo, Markham and Gargan found Kennedy chatting with Ross Richards, a Regatta winner and old friend, on the inn's deck about eight o'clock. The three immediately went to Kennedy's room for a conference to try to figure out where Mary Jo might be since her body had not yet been discovered in the Oldsmobile.

The game plan changes

The game plan might have to be changed. At one point, Kennedy came to the front desk, ordered newspapers, and borrowed a dime from the clerk to make a phone call, which he was unable to complete, to Burke Marshall, his lawyer and longtime friend of the family (NYT 7/14/74). Surely, they were all hoping that Mary Jo, wherever she was, was safe and sound.

At just about this time, two young men knocked on the door of Mrs. Pierre Malm's cottage near Dyke Bridge to tell her that they could see the wheels of a car submerged in Poucha Pond. Later, she would tell reporters that she read past one o'clock the night before but that no one came to her house seeking help (NYT 7/27/69).

Edgartown Police Chief Dominick J. Arena was notified and left Edgartown at 8:20 a.m. to cross to Chappaquiddick to the scene of the accident. Putting on trunks, borrowed at the scene, he dove into the water, which was less than six feet deep by this time, but the strong current prevented him from getting deep enough to determine if anyone were in the car. He then called John N. Farrar, a scuba diver with the Edgartown Rescue Squad, to come help out (BG 7/22/69).

Even if events had taken place in the manner in which Kennedy depicted them, the nine-hour delay in reporting the accident would have given them more than enough time to come up with a better story than the one that Kennedy and Markham concocted on the spot at the police station, and which was later revised for national television.

Putting on his equipment on the way to the scene, Farrar quickly entered the water and saw Mary Jo Kopechne's feet through the rear window of the overturned automobile. He swam around to the right side window and found her with her head cocked back and pressed up into the foot well with her hands gripping the edge of the rear seat. He thought that the position of her body indicated that she had found an air bubble in her struggle to stay alive. Even though the car was upside down with the open windows allowing the seawater to rush through, it was possible, he thought, for an air lock to form. Air bubbles that emanated from the car when it was hauled out and the lack of water in the trunk were further indications of an air lock. Farrar felt that it would have been extremely difficult for Mary Jo to extricate herself from this situation without help (NYT 7/22/69, USN & WR 11/3/69).

If Mary Jo had been one of the two people that Deputy Sheriff Look saw in the front seat, how would she have gotten to the rear of the overturned car? Even in its quest to disprove Kennedy's rendition of the accident the press did not expend ink on examining this mystery. Given the manner in which the car had overturned, it is unlikely that someone would have been thrown from the front to the rear. It is even more unlikely that a passenger could have crawled from the front to the rear once the car was submerged. Mary Jo's body was found in the car's rear section because that is where she was when the accident happened.

By now, the area was buzzing with news of the car accident and the commotion that it had caused. A wrecker had been contacted to come pull the Oldsmobile out of the water. Assistant Medical Examiner Donald Mills had been called to the scene to determine the cause of death and a local undertaker had also made the trip over. It would take almost half an hour to remove the body from the car.

While these activities were taking place, Kennedy, Markham, and Gargan caught the ferry to Chappaquiddick. Kennedy claimed at the inquest, probably truthfully, that he returned to Chappaquiddick in order to have more privacy in calling Burke Marshall (NYT 5/1/70). Then, too, they may also have been intent on locating Mary Jo.

After waiting around for twenty minutes, hoping maybe that his phone call would be returned, Kennedy and his entourage left the shelter of the landing house on the Chappaquiddick side just about nine o'clock. When a ferry operator asked them if they knew about the accident, one of them replied that they had just learned of it. Upon getting back to Edgartown, Kennedy, accompanied by Markham, went directly to the police station (LAT 7/22/69).

It is not clear exactly when the three learned that Mary Jo's body was in the car. It might well have been that Kennedy and Markham had it confirmed for them at the police station. In any case, Gargan, after leaving the landing house, got into his Valiant and driving up Main Road found Newberg and the Lyons sisters heading for the ferry landing. He drove them back to the cottage, where he told them, "We can't find Mary Jo." Perhaps he did not want to be the person to break the news of Mary Jo's death to her friends at that time or perhaps he really didn't know that she was dead. Later, after depositing them at their motel, he telephoned to tell all five that Mary Jo had drowned in the car and that Senator Kennedy had tried to save her (NYT 7/24/69). At least one of the group would have known that this last bit of information was not true.

The car had been quickly identified as belonging to the Senator. Look, who was at the scene, recognized two "L"s and a "7" as being on the plate of the car he had seen hours earlier at the intersection. After Farrar's discovery, Arena called the police station to ask that Kennedy be contacted although he did not know then that Kennedy had been the driver. He immediately left the accident scene when he was told that the Senator was at the station and wished to see him. Since Arena assumed that the purse that had been found in the car after it was pulled from the pond belonged to the dead woman, when he arrived at the station he asked Kennedy if Rosemary Keough's relatives had been notified of her death (DHG 4/18/80).

The discovery that Mary Jo Kopechne had drowned in his Oldsmobile changed everything. Kennedy now had to acknowledge responsibility for the accident since it was out of the question for someone else--that someone else most likely would have been his cousin, Joseph Gargan--to claim to be the driver.

The effort that had been made to show that Kennedy had been in Edgartown for the night--his conversation with the motel owner at 2:25 a.m.--now became a major sticking point in preparing a new version of events. How could it be explained that Kennedy was in Edgartown at that hour when a young woman had met her death in a car he acknowledged he had been driving in an accident that he had not reported?

Kennedy and Markham sat in the Edgartown police station, cobbling together a story that would incorporate an improbable answer to this question, generate some amount of sympathy for the Senator, and provide him with a defense--"I don't remember" and "I can't explain this"--in the event that criminal charges were brought against him.

Later, an added feature of his television statement was its attempt to cast him in a hero's role through his valiant but imaginary efforts to rescue this young woman.

Kennedy also claimed in his television address that he had alerted Gargan and Markham concerning the accident and they, too, had tried to rescue Mary Jo. This may have been an effort to explain their absence from the party. But the claim that they undertook rescue efforts are just as ludicrous as Kennedy's, since none of them knew at that time that Kopechne was in the car.

Even if they had known that Kopechne was in the car and Kennedy had been incapacitated as he claimed, it is inconceivable that one of them would not have alerted the authorities. After all, the firehouse with its alarm was across the street from the cottage. Clearer heads than Kennedy's would have understood that, come morning, the body would not have disappeared from the car.

Even if events had taken place in the manner in which Kennedy depicted them--that he and Mary Jo had been on their way to the ferry, he had taken a wrong turn, he, and then Markham and Gargan, had tried to save her and had failed--the nine-hour delay in reporting the accident would have given them more than enough time to come up with a better story than the one that Kennedy and Markham concocted on the spot at the police station, and which was later revised for national television.

Within five days of the accident, his lawyers arranged for him to be charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving personal injury. He pleaded guilty, thus avoiding any possibility of a cross-examination, received a two-month suspended sentence, was placed on probation for one year, and had his driver's license temporarily revoked. An inquest was held the following winter, as well as a grand jury investigation in the spring, but no further charges were brought against him.

Why didn't Kennedy simply tell the truth in his statement to the police? In doing that, he would have had to admit that he and a young woman, not his wife, were going to the beach for a midnight swim (that they were both under the influence of alcohol could not have been proven), that he did not have his automobile under control, and that because he, along with everybody else at the party, did not know that Kopechne was in the car no attempt was made to save her, and that since he did not know this, he planned to foist responsibility for the accident on to someone else.

Could the truth have been worse than being stuck with the image of being a cold-hearted monster as well as a liar that many people have retained of him to this day? Like many politicians before and since, he did not want to 'fess up to anything that made him look other than honorable and upright. But like many before and since, he came off looking worse than if he had come clean.

In general, people find it easier to forgive the truth-teller than the liar. By telling the truth early on he might have won his bid for the presidency in the 1980 campaign. By telling it now, he can remove a stain from his own legacy as well as from his family's.

This originally appeared as an Op Ed for capecodtoday.com. Notes: NYT - New York Times, BG - Boston Globe, LAT - Los Angeles Times, USN & WR - U.S. News & World Report, and DHG - Daily Hampshire Gazette.

In April 2002, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, was kidnapped from the presidential palace and in due course flown to Orchid Island, off the coast of Venezuela. An announcement was made that he had resigned. Within days those who had engineered this US-backed coup were forced by huge demonstrations and by divisions in the military to restore him to office.

In February 2004, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, president of Haiti, was kidnapped, forced onto a plane and flown to Africa. It was announced to the media that he had resigned. Unfortunately, the people of Haiti have not been able to undo this US coup against their national sovereignty.

In June 2009, Mel Zelaya, above on right, president of Honduras, was kidnapped from the presidential residence in Tegucigalpa and flown to Costa Rica. An announcement has been made that he signed a letter of resignation. It remains to be seen whether international condemnation and internal protests will be enough to restore him to his post as the rightful president of his country.

Where "the rich don't sleep
and the poor don't eat."

Why Honduras? Why now?

In 1983 I was part of a Fellowship for Reconciliation delegation that had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Nicaragua and Honduras to ascertain what was going on in these two countries and to report back to the American people.

After flying into Tegucigalpa from Nicaragua one morning, our trip from the airport to our hotel convinced us that Honduras was, indeed, one of those countries where “the rich don’t sleep and the poor don’t eat.”

A monster pickup truck, outfitted as a police/military vehicle, had followed us from the airport, staying three or four cars behind us. Once in the city, a voice over a loudspeaker commanded the driver to stop. Several officers came forward to inspect us, our driver’s papers, and give us a warning.

As we continued on our way, we observed men in camouflage, carrying machine guns, at every major intersection. They stood ready to block off the street at a moment’s notice. Nearer our hotel I caught a glimpse of a man being arrested at rifle point on a crowded street.

We discovered that there was a police station catty-corner from our hotel. Men went in and out or stood around on the street with their guns. In Nicaragua we had seen men with guns, guarding official buildings or waiting for transportation to the border to fight the “contras,” Reagan’s mercenaries that were out to topple the Nicaraguan government. They mingled casually with the general population, chatting with adults or playing with the children. We had talked with several one day in a café where we were having lunch. But here in Honduras, we noticed that people who came along the sidewalk toward the police immediately crossed to the other side to avoid walking past them.

Viewing this armed camp, it was hard to believe that President Reagan had had the gall to hold up Honduras as a model of democracy.

Our first appointment for the day was at the US Embassy. We had considered ourselves fortunate that rather than Ambassador John Negroponte we would be meeting with Chris Arcos, the American Consul for Public Affairs for Honduras. He was a Chicano from Texas, a former campus radical married to a Honduran citizen. Rumor had it that he, a holdover from the Carter administration, would be a straight shooter.

Ambassador Negroponte, always willing to serve wherever the US Empire has problems, had flown over to Guatemala to attend to any fallout from a coup d’etat that had brought in an army general to replace the Guatemalan president, a born-again Christian who took his orders from God rather than the CIA. Negroponte had cut his diplomatic teeth in Vietnam alongside Richard Holbrooke, who is now US Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both men have successfully worked their way up the foreign policy food chain.

Arcos began by explaining that Honduras by virtue of its geographical location had become the focal point for US operations in Central America. With Nicaragua along its southern border, Guatemala sprawled across its long northern one, tiny El Salvador nestled alongside both in the west, Arcos’s description of Honduras as “the ham in the sandwich” was apt.

To our consternation, Arcos suddenly switched gears, proceeding to detail the usual false claims.

To our consternation, Arcos suddenly switched gears, proceeding to detail the usual false claims: Nicaragua was shipping arms to the rebels in El Salvador, Nicaragua was the aggressor in the conflict with Honduras (Reagan employed the old bugaboo that with help from the Soviets, we Americans were about to be attacked by Nicaraguan tanks rolling into Harlingen, Texas), and that Cuba was training Hondurans to launch an internal revolt. 

Reagan’s policy, Arcos explained, was aimed at helping the Hondurans consolidate their new democracy by providing them with the minimum security that they needed to protect and develop their economy, referred to as a “dessert economy” because it was based on coffee, bananas and sugar. Four of the five largest corporations in the country were American-owned — Texaco, Amex, Standard Brands, and United Fruit.

Testimony to the reality that few Hondurans benefited from these export crops is the following: In 1983, the 4.1 million people of Honduras had a life expectancy of fifty-seven years, forty three percent were illiterate, ninety percent of the children under five were malnourished, and eighty-three percent of the homes had no electricity.

At the end of the session we followed Arcos out into the hall and demanded to know why he had given us such a bunch of baloney. Away from his colleagues, he replied that two men had come into the room and, standing at the back, had monitored our questions of him and his answers. One had been sent from the White House, he said, just to keep an eye on him. 

That evening in an unscheduled activity, we climbed a dark staircase to enter a dimly-lit daycare center where three women waited to speak to us. It had all the elements of a clandestine meeting — which it was. The women were relatives of a young man who had been arrested and detained by the police. As a member of the United Federation of Students, he had been teaching peasants (small farmers) to read and write under an extracurricular program funded by the US Agency for International Development. Now they knew that he was one of the desaparacidos, the disappeared, because they could not find him among the living or among the dead.

Two of the women in tears, we realized how dangerous it was for them to meet with us.

At the end, two of the women in tears, we realized how dangerous it was for them to meet with us and offered to destroy our tapes and notes, but they insisted that we not do so. “Please tell Reagan of our situation. You must get him to do something.” We promised that we would try.

We knew that the CIA had built a huge listening post/communications center in the country, had improved its seaport to accommodate larger vessels, and had constructed a 60-bed military hospital as well as new roads. It mattered not a whit that the new Constitution forbid foreign troops on Honduran soil.

There is little reason to believe that the plight of the people of Honduras has improved. Their chance to be in charge of their destiny, to reap the benefits of their natural resources and of their own labor appears now to have been taken from them with yet another coup d’etat.

It seems pertinent to ask whether this ham-handed interference in Honduran affairs is a sign that the US is gearing up to roll back the progress made by the people of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, El Salvador (and perhaps even Peru and Chile) in throwing off the yoke of Yankee imperialism and becoming free and independent states?

They are found floating in the Pacific Ocean in a mass of other non-biodegradable debris that is twice the size of Texas and is known as the Garbage Patch.

    • It’s a rip-off — big time.
        Coca-Cola was forced to admit in 2004 that Dasani is just tap water. Nestle’s has had to add “Public Water Source” to the label of their Pure Life brand.
        The upshot is that you pay multiple times more for a product that is available to you at minimal cost from the faucet in your kitchen.

    • Tap water is regulated, but bottlers face few regulations and plants are rarely inspected.

    • Bottled water is an environmental disaster.
          While these bottles can be recycled, eighty percent end up in landfills where they take a long time to degrade. They are found floating in the Pacific Ocean in a mass of other non-biodegradable debris that is twice the size of Texas and is known as the Garbage Patch.
        Since three times more water is used to produce the bottle than the amount of water it will contain, it is a process that wastes a life-giving resource.
        Bottled water also consumes significant amounts of non-renewable fossil fuels in extracting and transporting it to plants and then to distribution points. The entire process adversely impacts air quality and adds to climate change.

Nantucket Bottled Waters uses a public source while Chilmark Spring Water Co. uses water on family-owned property.

    • If you buy bottled water believing it tastes better than tap water, maybe you are buying the “hype”?
        For example, when ABC’s Good Morning America blind-tested its studio audience by asking them to taste samples of New York City’s tap water, Poland Spring, Evian and oxygenated 02, the Big Apple won hands down.

    • What is the likely long-term impact on a community’s water supply?
        Closer to home, Nantucket Bottled Waters, Inc. uses a public source for its operations while Chilmark Spring Water Company uses water on family-owned property. The thing is that underground water sources are not easy to map and any of them may well be part of a large network that supplies more than one community.

Like oil, we are beginning to realize that our supply of water is not inexhaustible.

Unlike oil, however, there is NO substitute.