Date: August 7, 2008

FIRST ARTICLE:

Dems meeting in Pittsburgh to approve platform
James O'Toole, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The Democratic Party's Platform Committee meets at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center this Saturday to approve the traditional statement of party principles that will be voted on at the presidential nominating convention in Denver. . . .

. . . . activists unaffiliated with the DNC panel hope to use its meeting to focus attention on one controversial issue -- an effort to halt deployments of National Guard members to Iraq. State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, will join the anti-war protesters and discuss his support for legislation that would weaken federal control of the state's Guard detachments. The legislation, similar to measures proposed in a variety of other states, would limit the use of the Guard to service within Pennsylvania unless there is federal legislative action such as a declaration of war."

To read the full article, click here.

SECOND ARTICLE:

Iraq War: Ferlo hopes to stop National Guard deployments
Melissa Meinzer, Pittsburgh City Paper

A statewide effort at reducing troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan officially kicks off at a press conference in Pittsburgh Aug. 9, coinciding with a national Democratic Party platform event taking place here.

State Sen. Jim Ferlo will hold a press conference at 4 p.m. Aug. 9 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center during the national Democratic Party event, officially starting a grassroots effort to start getting the word out about the legislation.

"We're having the great benefit of the national Democratic committee platform meeting here on August 9th. We hope to encourage [delegates] in their consideration to [take the idea] back home," Ferlo says.

A bill will be introduced into the state Senate when it reconvenes for the fall which would attempt to halt Pennsylvania National Guard troops from being deployed overseas.

Pennsylvania has deployed more National Guard troops to the Middle East than any other state in the nation -- since 2001, more than 17,000 have been deployed, according to a report by Veterans for America, a DC-based advocacy group looking out for soldier welfare. Of the 19,000 National Guard troops in Pennsylvania, only about 1,000 are deployed currently, according to Lt. Col. Chris Cleaver, public affairs officer for the Pennsylvania National Guard. But 6,000 more troops are scheduled for deployment in February 2009 -- the largest deployment since the conflict began.

The measure would return control of the troops to Gov. Ed Rendell. Normally, control of Guard deployments belongs to governors and the president simultaneously -- and National Guard troops generally stay on U.S. soil, unless a dire threat to American citizens is identified. But a 2002 act of Congress, the Authorization of Military Force, gave President George W. Bush discretion to deploy troops in Iraq. That 2002 law is what proponents of the state bill hope to reverse.

"We need to take a state-by-state approach," says the bill's local sponsor, Lawrenceville Democrat Ferlo, because of the "lack of leadership on the part of Congress. This is yet another organizational tool -- Congress seems to have its ears closed." Noting that the 2002 resolution cited the presence of weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda cells in Iraq, Ferlo says, "Even the original so-called legitimacy has been disproved."

Prospects for the measure seem uncertain at best. Cleaver stresses that the Guard takes no position on the proposed bill but says he "would characterize it as something that's unlikely." And in 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court shot down a similar effort by the governor of Minnesota, who sought to withhold Guard troops from his state from a federal mission in Central America. Rendell's office could not be reached for a response by deadline for this story, and Ferlo himself concedes "I'm not sure where the governor stands on this."

But antiwar activists aren't giving up. "We feel that the National Guard is not to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan," says Francine Porter, coordinator of CodePink Pittsburgh. "I think we have a really good shot at crafting legislation that will get past the House and the Senate."

The idea for the bill was originated by Philadelphia state Sen. Tony Payton. Local antiwar groups such as the Thomas Merton Center's Anti-War Committee and CodePink, a women's resistance group, are spreading the word, getting signatures on petitions and helping draft the bill. Other states, including Vermont, Maryland, Oregon and New Jersey have similar legislation pending.

"[New Orleans Hurricane] Katrina was a drastic example of what happens when the Guard is not available," Ferlo says. "There are any number of reasons why the Guard is needed -- flooding in Allegheny County, Millvale."

Cleaver says that "national leaders have looked to ensure that if there was some large-scale [domestic] disaster, there would be enough troops available." He also adds that federal funding relating to the war effort pays for millions of dollars of Pennsylvania's Guard equipment, an expense the state couldn't shoulder alone.

"When you look at the dynamics of calling up the National Guard for conflict, it shouldn't be an easy event to occur," Cleaver says. And it's not, he adds. "But it's also critically important that the guard be available to federal needs."

Of course, Pennsylvania's Guard makes up only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands troops currently serving in Iraq. And if the bill were to succeed, it's possible troops would have to be assigned from somewhere else instead. But backers say every reduction in deployment is a victory.

"We want this war to end," says Ferlo. "It was built on a pretext of lies and falsehoods. Every other attempt to bring some rational discourse to Congress has been the epitome of failure. It's another opportunity to bring troops home."

To read the full article, click here.

Date: July 23rd, 2008

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES


WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders urged swift and aggressive court action to ensure fair elections and enforcement of legal campaign practices in the wake of election scandals in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Green Party, which nominated Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente for President and Vice President during the 2008 Green National Convention in Chicago on July 12, has a special interest in the integrity of the US election system.  Greens are currently working to get the nominees on as many state ballots as possible, an effort rendered difficult by grossly biased and unfair ballot access rules designed by Democrats and Republicans to hinder other parties' candidates and independents in many states.

• In the Pennsylvania scandal, twelve Democratic officials have been indicted for paying staffers big taxpayer-funded bonuses for their efforts to keep 2004 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and 2006 Green candidate Carl Romanelli, who ran for the US Senate, off the Pennsylvania ballot. The twelve charged with misusing $4 million for partisan campaign work include the former Pennsylvania House Majority Whip, the current House Majority Whip, and the Chief of Staff of the House Majority Leader.

Mr. Romanelli's lawyers are asking for a new hearing regarding the appeal of the $80,000 in legal costs that were assessed against him after Democratic Party lawyers succeeded in persuading a court to remove him from the 2006 ballot.  Democrats have claimed that the Nader and Romanelli campaigns falsified signatures on their ballot petitions.

Mr. Romanelli was blocked from defending the validity of the signatures in 2006.  Nader attorney Oliver Hall noted that "only a tiny number of signatures on the Nader petitions -- 687 or 1.3 percent of the total -- were counted as 'forgeries' by their signers, and in the words of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas Saylor, there is 'no evidence' to support Democrats' claims that the Nader campaign was even aware of such signatures.  Furthermore, no allegation of fraud was ever raised against Romanelli's petitions.  There is, however, evidence that the Nader petitions were the target of widespread and deliberate sabotage: specifically, petition circulators discovered and removed about 7,000 obviously fake signatures prior to submitting the petitions."  (Philadelphia Inquirer, July 17, http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080717_Letters__One_Reader_s_View.html)

"We support Carl Romanelli's request for the court to drop the $80,000 legal fee costs that were imposed on him.  The assessment of these costs is unprecedented and meant to intimidate non-Democrat and non-Republican candidates from running for office," said Holly Hart, secretary of the Green Party of the United States.

• The Ohio case involves the possible theft of the 2004 presidential election.  Widespread evidence first collected by Greens showed that thousands of Ohio voters, especially African Americans and students, were either locked from voting or their votes were uncounted or miscounted.

David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 presidential nominee, joined with Libertarian nominee Michael Badnarik to investigate the complaints and demand a recount, after John Kerry quickly conceded the race to George W. Bush and his fellow Democrats took no action on the emerging scandal.  Greens raised most of the money for legal and other fees for the Ohio recount.  A commission called by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) later collected and published evidence of massive irregularities in the Ohio election and attempts to thwart the recount, much of it based on evidence collected by Mr. Cobb and Mr. Badnarik.  In January, 2007, two Cuyahoga County election officials were convicted of manipulating the recount.

Green Party leaders called for an expanded investigation of the 2004 Ohio election fraud, expressing support for attorneys in the King Lincoln Bronzsville v. Blackwell case who have filed a motion to "lift the stay in the case [and] proceed with targeted discovery in order to help protect the intenrity of the 2008 election."

Greens said that the investigation should especially target evidence that GOP operatives tampered with computer voting machines and the roles of White House advisor Karl Rove and former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in the alleged vote theft.

The Green Party endorses voter-verified paper ballots to provide an auditable record of votes cast on computer voting machines, as well as voting machine source codes that are designed to allow public inspection.

"Voters deserve to see the candidates they support on the ballot, and deserve to know that the votes they cast will be counted.  Unless the full weight of the law comes down on those who try to manipulate elections, and until we repeal ballot access rules designed to rig the vote in favor or one or two political parties, we're in danger of seeing more damaged and stolen elections," said David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 candidate for President of the United States.

More info:
Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell 202-904-7614, clarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

Green Party of the United States
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
• Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information: http:=/www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections

Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for the White House http://www.runcynthiarun.org

2008 Green National Convention, July 10-13 in Chicago, Illinois http://=ww.greenparty2008.org

"Ohio Attorney Files to Lift Stay on '04 Election Case, Cites Allegations=2C Evidence of Massive Fraud by a Number of GOP Operatives"
Brad Blog, July 17, 2008
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6189#more-618

Date: August 5th, 2008

Photo: Ben Manski and his wife, Sarah, pose Monday outside the Statehouse in Montpelier. The couple, partly through Liberty Tree magazine, and in Vermont through state Rep. Michael Fisher, are organizing a national effort to have states boycott sending National Guard Troops to Iraq.

Times Argus Newspaper
By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER – A bill barring the Vermont National Guard from being sent to Iraq may not have gotten far in the Legislature, but it seems to have spawned a national movement.

More than a half-dozen state legislatures will consider similar bills over the coming months, said Ben Manski, a Wisconsin man who was in Montpelier on Monday as part of his work supporting such initiatives.

The Vermont bill was introduced in January by Rep. Michael Fisher, D-Lincoln, who said that the legal authorization for the use of National Guard troops in Iraq had expired. The conditions that were the basis for the war – including United Nations' resolutions and the ousting of Saddam Hussein – no longer exist, Fisher said. Another authorization allowing the overseas use of National Guard troops is needed, or they should return home, supporters of the bill argue.

That bill did not advance in the Vermont Legislature. However, it led state lawmakers from New Jersey to Oregon to introduce or begin considering their own legislation, said Manski, a Madison, Wisc., attorney and director of Liberty Tree Foundation, which supports such legislation.

"The legislators in other states have been quite willing to step forward and follow in Michael Fisher's footsteps," Manski said.

In fact, the bills being considered in some states go further than Fisher's resolution, which asked that National Guard troops from Vermont not be sent to Iraq. The proposed legislation in Oregon, for instance, also talks about National Guard use in Afghanistan under a different federal authorization to use military force, and would, if passed, make changes in the state's statutes governing the use of the Guard.

Such bills may not have become law in Vermont or elsewhere, but they have given a mechanism for anti-war activists to look for changes, Manski said.

"Until Vermont, they did not have model legislation," he said.

Ben Scotch, an attorney and former head of the American Civil Liberties Union in Vermont who has been active in the anti-war movement in the state, said the actions in other states could help Vermont lawmakers, as well.

"It may have started here but it matured outside the state," said Scotch, who met with Manski on Monday.

As for Vermont, Fisher said he expects to re-introduce a version of the bill in its home state if voters return him to Montpelier after this fall's election.

The fact that there will be a new president when the Legislature returns does not mean the questions raised by the bill do not need to be answered, Fisher said.

"They lead to questions that are a lot bigger than the Iraq War," he said. "Whoever wins the presidential election, these issues are going to stay with us."

During a public hearing convened by Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, R-Essex/Orleans, on the issue in February, Harvard law professor David Barron said that congressional spending bills to support the war amount to continued federal authorization of the war.

But Fisher argued that is not enough.

"In a constitutional democracy and in a question as big as whether we go to war, a de facto authorization is not enough," Fisher said. "I continue to bump into Guard families and Guard members who are shaking their heads about how they find themselves in this situation" of extended deployments.

Still, Fisher is not under any illusion about the likelihood of the measure succeeding.

"It will be a challenge to pass the bill, but we will work hard to bring the arguments forward," he said.

More info:
View the original article at: Times Argus

Date: June 9th, 2008

By Pamela M. Prah, Stateline.org Staff Writer
 
First it was the presidential primary calendar that state legislatures across the country upended to give their voters a greater say this year in choosing candidates. Now a few states are orchestrating an overhaul of the way voters select the U.S. president.

Voters this fall will still use the Electoral College to determine the next occupant of the White House, but a movement is bubbling at the state level to bypass the process and instead ensure future presidents are the candidates who get the most votes nationwide — an outcome not always guaranteed under the current system.
 
Maryland last year became the first state to approve a “national popular vote” compact that would allocate all of its 10 electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide, rather than to the candidate who garners the most votes in the state, as is the case under the Electoral College.
 
New Jersey, Hawaii and Illinois have since followed suit and passed laws that would allot their collective 40 electoral votes the same way. Identical bills are moving in Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island, which have a total of 62 electoral votes.
 
These bills do nothing on their own and would take effect only when states that collectively have at least 270 electoral votes pass identical measures, since a candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
 
Those who remembers their history classes knows that American voters don’t directly elect a president — states do through “electors” who typically vote for the candidate who drew the most votes in their state.
 
“Why are all the other elections in this country based on the popular vote except for the most important one, the presidency?” asks Barry F. Fadem, president of the National Popular Vote, a group based in California that aims to persuade state legislatures to implement a nationwide popular election of the president. He called today’s system “flat-out, wrong” and expressed optimism that enough states will pass the legislation in time for the 2012 presidential election.
 
National Popular Vote was launched in 2006 and is largely founded by its chairman, John R. Koza, a scientist best known for inventing the rub-off instant lottery ticket used by state lotteries and his work in genetic programming at Stanford University. In the 1980s, he and Fadem, an attorney, were active in promoting adoption of lotteries in the states.
 
Fadem and his supporters say that such a system would make every vote matter, not just those in “battleground states,” while critics argue that the approach is an end-run around the U.S. Constitution and wouldn’t necessarily be more fair than today’s arrangement.
 
John Samples, director of Cato’s Center for Representative Government in Washington, D.C., called the National Popular Vote campaign a “novel gimmick” that he said is “asking for a mess” if enacted.
 
Calls to reform or abolish the Electoral College were common after the 2000 presidential election, when former Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote, but didn't have enough votes in the right states to carry the electoral vote over Republican George W. Bush. While Bush won the popular vote in 2004, he could have lost the election if John Kerry (D) had won Ohio.
 
Despite the hand-wringing over what many call an obsolete election system, little has happened, largely because dumping the Electoral College means changing the U.S. Constitution, an arduous task that requires two-thirds approval of Congress and three-fourths of the states. The National Popular Vote would keep the Electoral College, but change the way electoral votes are awarded.
 
The way Fadem sees it, a national popular vote would generate the same kind of excitement and enthusiasm seen in the recent primaries because all states — and their voters — would matter.
 
Under the current system, candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, or pay attention to the concerns of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind, Fadem said. For example, presidential nominees have long ignored California because the state is considered a solid “blue” state that will award its 55 electoral votes to the Democratic candidate.
 
Gary Gregg II, director of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and a fan of the Electoral College, agrees that the National Popular Vote would change the way candidates campaign, but not in a good way. Candidates would go where most of the votes are, namely cities. “Rural areas would never see a presidential candidate. Small states would never see a presidential candidate,” he said.
 
Gregg also predicted chaos if there were a close election and candidates challenged the vote count. “You would have the [2000] Florida recount replayed across the country … It would be a very ugly situation.”
 
Even some supporters of using the popular vote to elect the president have problems with the National Popular Vote’s campaign. “They are trying to circumvent the U.S. Constitution,” said Burdett Loomis, a professor of the political science at the University of Kansas, who advocates changing the system but by having Congress and the states debate the issue and amend the U.S. Constitution.
 
Fadem says his group is not thumbing its nose at the Constitution since states still would have their right to decide how to allocate their electoral votes.
 
Supporters also reject critics’ characterization that backers of the National Popular Vote are Democrats who are bitter about the 2000 elections.
 
“It’s not a partisan issue. This isn’t about electing a Democrat president, but electing a president democratically,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic state senator in Maryland, reiterating what he said when he introduced the National Popular Vote plan that was signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley last April. Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University in Washington, D.C, spoke to Stateline.org from Massachusetts, where he was discussing the measure with state lawmakers there.
 
But two Republican governors vetoed the bill when it landed on their desks. In his veto message, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “It disregards the will of a majority of Californians," pointing out that the state's electoral votes under the new system could be awarded to a candidate most Californians didn't vote for. Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle voiced the same concern when she vetoed the bill twice, but this year, lawmakers overrode her objection.
 
Cato’s Samples said he wonders if voters who support the concept of a popular vote really understand how it would operate. “Do people in Maryland know under the National Popular Voter system, that their vote may go to someone who didn’t win their state?”
 
Still, despite the concerns of the National Popular Vote approach, even their critics give the group kudos for bringing the issue to the attention of voters and elected officials. “They are doing a service … We ought to be talking about this,” said Loomis of the University of Kansas.

Date: July 16th, 2008

by, Tom Hayden

Barack Obama has restated his phased withdrawal plan for Iraq in response to public questioning, but committed himself to expanding the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Any proposal to transfer American troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan is sure to cause debate and questions among peace activists and rank-and-file Democrats. The proposal potentially represents a wider quagmire for the US government and military.

On Iraq, Obama said nothing especially new in his July 14 New York Times op-ed piece and his foreign policy speech in Washington today. In both, he forcefully restated his commitment to combat troop withdrawals after his recent statements suggesting that he would "refine" his views when he consults military commanders on the ground. He neglected to address how many American "residual forces" he would leave behind in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda and "protect American service members," though he made additional US trainers conditional on the Iraqis making "political progress." It is a proposal that seems to promise a phased diminishing of the American military presence, not a complete withdrawal.

Many independent analysts question the wisdom of leaving some 50,000 American troops as advisers, trainers and counter-terrorism units in Iraq after the withdrawal of 140,000 by 2010. Those forces would be protecting a sectarian political regime that is linked to death squads, militias and a detention system now holding 50,000 Iraqis in violation of human rights standards.

It is quite possible that Obama's regional diplomacy, including hard bargaining with Iran, could facilitate a decent interval for American troop withdrawals and a more stabilized Iraq, as suggested by former CIA director John M. Deutch.

Obama smartly exploited the recent call by Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki for a US withdrawal deadline, although al-Maliki's timeline was twice as long as Obama's. In this face-saving scenario, the Pentagon would follow "the Philippine option," in which the client government formally requested that the United States close its bases. This option was advocated openly by the Marines' commander in Iraq in 2004. The United States withdrew only obsolete naval forces from the Philippines, however; today we spend hundreds of millions on a secret war against Islamic forces in the southern Philippines. Obama might do the same.

These public policy ambiguities are not simply Obama's problem; they are caused by a mainstream media that stubbornly refuses to ask any questions about those "residual forces." For example, how will "residual forces," tied to the regime the Americans put in power, be more successful on the battlefield than the departing 170,000 combat troops?

But Obama's proposals for Afghanistan and Pakistan are far more problematic. They can be described in everyday language as either out of the frying pan and into the fire or attacking needles by burning down haystacks.

The Pentagon paradigm is to defeat Al Qaeda militarily while refusing to address, and thereby worsening, the dire conditions that gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in the first place. In careful prose based on reputable sources, Ahmed Rashid's new Descent into Chaos (Viking, 2008) provides a horrific portrait of Afghanistan:

It is estimated by RAND that $100 per capita is the minimum required to stabilize a country evolving out of war. Bosnia received $679 per capita, Kosovo $526, while Afghanistan received $57 per capita in the key years, 2001-2003.

When the United States installed the Hamid Karzai government, Afghanistan ranked 172nd out of 178 nations on the United Nation's Human Development Index. It has the highest rate of infant mortality in the world, a life expectancy rate of 44-45 years, and the youngest population of any country. In 2005, 95 percent of Kabul's residents were living without electrical power.

Seven hundred civilians were killed in the first five months of 2008 alone, according to the United Nations.
Despite some gains in media and currency reform, plus a modest increase in the number of children in school, this was the path of least reconstruction. And despite images of Afghan democracy that made loya jirga tribal gatherings appear to be the birth of participatory democracy, a warlord state was entrenched by the CIA.

There are some 36,000 US troops stretched across Afghanistan, another 17,500 under NATO command, and 18,000 in counterinsurgency and training roles. They are so aggressively combat-oriented that the Afghan government itself continually objects to the rate of civilian casualties. It costs the Pentagon $2 billion per month to support 30,000 American troops. According to Rashid, "Afghanistan is not going to be able to pay for its own army for many years to come-perhaps never."

As of 2006, Afghanistan's economy still rested on producing 90 percent of the world's opium, an eerie narco-state parallel with the US counterinsurgency in Colombia, where most of America's supply of cocaine originates.

Afghanistan is an unstable police state. By 2005, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission cited 800 cases of detainee abuse at some thirty US firebases. "The CIA operates its own secret detention centers, which were off limits to the US military." Ghost prisoners, known as Persons Under Control are held permanently without any public records of their existence. Warlords operate their own prisons with "unprecedented abuse, torture, and death of Taliban prisoners." And as the US lowered the number of prisoners at Guantnamo, it increased the numbers held at Bagram, near Kabul. As of January, 2008, there were 630 incarcerated at Bagram, "including some who had been there for five years and whom the ICRC had still not been given access to." After weeks of hunger strikes about detention conditions, the Taliban recently orchestrated a jailbreak of hundreds of Afghanis from the Kandahar prison, an inside job.

As in Iraq, the US contracted for police training in Afghanistan with DynCorp International. Between 2003 and 2005, the US spent $860 million to train 40,000 Afghan police, "but the results were totally useless," according to Rashid. Even Richard Holbrooke described the DynCorp training program as "an appalling jokea complete shambles."

When the Taliban government was overthrown, the US installed a Westernized Pashtun, Hamid Karzai, a former lobbyist for Unocal, who had been out of the country during the jihad against the Soviet Union. But for the first time in 300 years, the Pashtun tribes themselves were violently displaced from power. At 42 percent of the population, they remain by far the largest Afghan minority, heavily concentrated in Kandahar and the southern provinces and across the federally administered tribal areas in western Pakistan. These are the areas that the Pentagon, the New York Times and Barack Obama (like John Kerry before him) designate as the central battlefront of the war on terrorism.

The question is not simply a moral one. Is an expanded war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, fueled by troop transfers from Iraq, winnable? In what sense?

Transferring 10,000 American troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, which Obama proposes, is symbolic, a potential down payment on the treadmill of further escalation. (In his statement, Obama supports "at least" two additional brigades for Afghanistan.) The future of the Pentagon's "rear" in Iraq will be questionable if fifteen combat brigades are withdrawn under Obama's plan, while the Pentagon's new "front" line cannot be secured with two brigades sent to southern and eastern Afghanistan. At best these might be holding actions until the next administration makes a decision about its ultimate strategy. Obama may be proposing an escalation simply in order not to lose, a pattern well-documented in Daniel Ellsberg's history of the Vietnam War.

But the US escalation policy already is deepening, with bipartisan support-or silence-so far. In keeping with counterinsurgency strategies going back to America's long wars against native tribes, the Pentagon has fostered the ascension of a new Pakistani general, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, whose background includes training at Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth. An unnamed US military official praises Kayani "for embracing new counterinsurgency training and tactics that could be more effective in countering militants in the country's tribal areas. Over $400 million is being spent to recruit a "frontier corps" of to "turn local tribes against militants." CIA and Special Forces operatives already have invaded Pakistan to set up a secret base from which to hunt Osama bin Laden-before Mr. Bush leaves office-as well as fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the ground and from pilotless Predator drones.

All this constitutes yet another preventive war by the United States, this one in violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and against the stated policies of the newly elected Pakistani government, not to mention the overwhelming sentiment among Pakistan's people. On the Afghan front, the Taliban will be able to retreat in the face of greater US firepower, or attack like Lilliputians from multiple sides if the US concentrates its forces around the Pakistan border. Further violence and tides of anti-American sentiment could sweep across the region into Pakistan with unpredictable results.

Michael Scheuer, the former CIA official once charged with tracking down Osama bin Laden, suggests that the American delusion is that "by establishing a minority- dominated semi-secular, pro-Indian government [in Kabul], we would neither threaten the identity nor raise the ire of the Pashtun tribes nor endanger Pakistan's national security." In his recent book, Marching Towards Hell, Scheuer wrote that "for the United States, the war in Afghanistan has been lost. By failing to recognize that the only achievable US mission in Afghanistan was to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda and their leaders and get out, Washington is faced with fighting a protracted and growing insurgency. The only upside of this coming defeat is that it is a debacle of our own making. We are not being defeated by our enemies; we are in the midst of defeating ourselves."

The beginning of an alternative may require unfreezing American diplomacy towards Iran and considering a "grand bargain" instead. Teheran is the single power, according to CIA director Deutch, that could destabilize the US withdrawal from Iraq. It happens that they were America's ally against Afghanistan not so long ago. The Iranians have lost thousands of police and soldiers themselves in a border war against Afghan drug lords. As William Polk wrote in Violent Politics, "ironically, the only effective deterrent to the trade is Iran." In exchange for security guarantees against a US-directed regime change, Iran may be willing to discuss cooperation with the "Great Satan" to stabilize its borders with Iraq and Afghanistan. Improbable? That depends on whether one thinks the alternative is unthinkable.

Only a short time ago, the United States was supporting the jihadists in the same tribal areas as they ventured to destroy the Soviet occupation. In the same years, the United States was hosting the Taliban for talks on a possible oil pipeline across Afghanistan. Since twists and turns seem to be the only pattern in divide-and-conquer strategies, it is possible that Obama thinks being tough towards Afghanistan and Pakistan is a defensive cover for withdrawing from Iraq, and he later will follow up with unspecified diplomacy after he takes office. But history shows that creeping escalations create a momentum and constituency of their own. Obama might get lucky, lower the level of the visible wars and embrace a diplomatic offensive. But North and South Waziristan could be his Bay of Pigs.

To borrow a popular phrase of the season, ending one war Iraq to start two more in Afghanistan and Pakistan seems to be a dumb idea.

More info:
View the original article on Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/story/91645/

Date: July 8th, 2008


On July 7, 2008, the Ecuador Constitutional Assembly – composed of one hundred and thirty (130) delegates elected countrywide to rewrite the country’s Constitution – voted to approve articles for the new constitution recognizing rights for nature and ecosystems.

“If adopted in the final constitution by the people, Ecuador would become the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights,” stated Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

“Ecuador is now leading the way for countries around the world to make this necessary and fundamental change in how we protect nature,” added Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Legal Defense Fund.

Over the past year, the Legal Defense Fund has been invited to assist Delegates to the Ecuador Constitutional Assembly to re-write that country’s constitution.  Delegates requested that the Legal Defense Fund draft proposed Rights of Nature language for the constitution based on ordinances developed and adopted by municipalities in the United States.

The Legal Defense Fund has now assisted communities in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Virginia to draft and adopt new laws that change the status of natural communities and ecosystems from being regarded as property under the law to being recognized as rights-bearing entities.

Those local laws recognize that natural communities and ecosystems possess an inalienable and fundamental right to exist and flourish, and that residents of those communities possess the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf of those ecosystems.  In addition, these laws require the local governments to remedy violations of those ecosystem rights.

In essence, these laws represent changes to the status of property law, eliminating the authority of a property owner to interfere with the functioning of ecosystems and natural communities that exist and depend upon that property for their existence and flourishing. The local laws allow certain types of development that do not interfere with the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish.

Background

The Legal Defense Fund, created in 1995 as a public interest law firm, works with communities that recognize that environmental protection cannot be attained under a structure of law that treats natural communities and ecosystems as mere property.

By most every measure, the environment today is in worse shape than when the major U.S. environmental laws were adopted over thirty years ago.  Since then, countries around the world have sought to replicate these laws.  Yet, species decline worldwide is increasing exponentially, global warming is far more accelerated than previously believed, deforestation continues unabated around the world, and overfishing in the world’s oceans is pushing many fisheries to collapse.

These laws – including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and similar state laws – legalize environmental harms by regulating how much pollution or destruction of nature can occur under law.  Rather than preventing pollution and environmental destruction, these laws instead codify it.  In addition, under commonly understood terms of preemption, once these activities are legalized by federal or state governments, local governments are prohibited from banning them.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is the only public interest law firm in the U.S. that specializes in building a body of law focused on establishing rights for nature. In pursuit of that goal, the Legal Defense Fund has served as special legal counsel to over one hundred municipal governments across the U.S., and serves as a legal advisor to organizations and governments in other countries, including Ecuador, who are focused on driving similar laws into their governing frameworks.
 

More info:
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Main Office:  675 Mower Road, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 17202
West Coast Office:  126 NE Mason Street, Portland, OR  97211

CONTACT:  Mari Margil, Associate Director
(503) 284-2814, mmargil@celdf.org

Date: 10 July 2008

By Bill Fletcher, Blackcommentator.com Executive Editor

I asked a good friend what I should write about for BlackCommentator.com this week. Without missing a beat she said: “Write about what I am working on!” I looked at her and asked what that was. Her response: “Voter protection.”

Elections in the USA have rarely been clean. Electoral theft is not new. Infamous big city machines were known for throwing elections one way or the other. The 1960 Presidential election has always been shrouded in some degree of mystery, particularly with regard to the voting results from Illinois. African Americans, Chicanos and Asians have had plenty of experience with electoral fraud, having been effectively denied the right to vote for most of the period since the end of Reconstruction (1877).

 

Yet, in the period particularly since the passage of the Voting Rights Act (1965) and the Watergate infamy (1973-74), an assumption emerged in Mainstream America that elections were, for the most part, honest and on the up and up.

Then came the November 2000 elections.

There were several things that were striking about the November 2000 elections. One was the audacity on the part of the Bush forces, dramatized in the recent HBO film, Recount. Their arrogance and boldness completely took the Gore campaign, as well as many pro-democracy groups, entirely off guard. While the Bush campaign was prepared to agitate, including through demonstrations, on behalf of their candidate, the Gore forces were paralyzed. Staff and volunteers linked to organized labor mobilized to go to Florida, but found themselves doing little more than taking affidavits from individuals who alleged that they had been deprived of their democratic rights.

The tactics that were used in both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections by Bush-aligned forces were quite amazing. Black voters, for instance, found themselves eliminated from the voting rolls. As reported by the journalist Greg Palast, letters were sent to the home addresses of Black active duty military service personnel who, if they did not respond, had their votes challenged. This last point is remarkable since it was the votes of those who were literally in the line of fire who were being denied their right to have their votes counted.

Added to this has been the introduction of computer screen voting. Described as making the system more efficient, the lack of hardcopy proof of voting along with numerous examples of computer glitches (and possible computer tampering) raises further questions as to whether the right to vote is being eroded.

Thus, the irony is that we have witnessed a Presidential administration that has heralded the right to democratic elections overseas (even if all they have been concerned with is that there is more than one party in the race rather than whether there has been genuine democracy), yet tactics have been implemented which they have not challenged (if not outright encouraged), that deprive entire sections of the US population of their right to vote.

The awareness of the shenanigans of the 2000 and 2004 elections has led to a very broad-based mobilization around what is being called “Voter Protection.” Unions, community-based organizations, and other non-profits have enlisted in this battle, one which starts with increasing public awareness of the dangers of voter disenfranchisement. Further involvement in this work is of great importance, and is often missed when the focus of our electoral discussions are on the candidates alone. The political Right, fearing a loss by McCain, will do all that it can to suppress the Black vote, the Latino vote (except among Cuban Americans), older citizen vote and the youth vote. It will more than likely do this through a shrewd combination of propaganda aimed at defaming Senator Obama and encouraging fear as to who he actually is (i.e., the false allegations that he is a Muslim; does not do the Pledge of Allegiance; is actually not a US citizen), as well as through the tried and true tactics of the 2000 and 2004 elections. With regard to outright voter suppression, for example, volunteers will be needed at all poll sites to ensure that there is no voter intimidation or misinformation. This is a lot more than traditional voter registration/education and Get Out The Vote (GOTV). It is really a democracy mobilization.

In November 2000 I was deployed by the AFL-CIO to Florida for several days following the election. I watched and listened as reports came in regarding spontaneous demonstrations taking place in various parts of the state by disenfranchised voters; voters who WANTED their votes counted. I watched and listened as affidavits were completed. I watched and listened as the Bush forces made it appear that they were the righteous and that Gore was the spoiler. I watched and listened as the Gore campaign and its allies completely caved in.

I am not going through that again. We must provide the support for voters to ensure that their votes are counted, but if there is further theft it is not permissible to accept that the election was stolen fair and square. The tables will need to be turned.

 

Date: 28 June 2008

A little-noticed federal appeals court ruling this week could lead to the disenfrachisement of thousands of Floridians at the ballot box this November. Sound familiar?

 

Florida's 2008 Elections Landscape Looking More Like 2000

More info:

You can access the article online here.