The results of the cultural indoctrination stakes are not yet in but there is a definite trend - triviality leads, followed closely by superficiality and mindless distraction. Vanity looks great while profundity is bringing up the rear. Pettiness is powering ahead, along with passivity and indifference. Curiosity lost interest, wisdom was scratched and critical thought had to be put down. Ego is running wild. Attention span continues to shorten and no-one is betting on survival.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Half a century ago, humanistic thinkers were heralding a great awakening that would usher in a golden age of enlightened living. People like Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and Viktor Frankl were laying the groundwork for a new social order distinguished by raised consciousness, depth of purpose and ethical refinement. This tantalizing vision was the antithesis of our society of blinkered narcissists and hypnogogic materialists. Dumbness was not our destiny. Planetary annihilation was not the plan. By the 21st century, we were supposed to be the rarefied ‘people of tomorrow’, inhabiting a sagacious and wholesome world.

Erich Fromm’s 1955 tome, The Sane Society, signalled the début of the one-dimensional ‘marketing character’ - a robotic, all-consuming creature, ‘well-fed, well-entertained… passive, unalive and lacking in feeling’. But Fromm was also confident that we would avoid further descent into the fatuous. He forecast a utopian society based on ‘humanistic communitarianism’ that would nurture our higher ‘existential needs’.

In his 1961 book, On Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers wrote: ‘When I look at the world I am pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.’ While acknowledging consumer culture’s seductive dreamland of trinkets and desire, he believed that we - those ‘people of tomorrow’ - would minister over a growth-oriented society, with ‘growth’ defined as the full and positive unfolding of human potential.

We would be upwardly driven toward authenticity, social equality and the welfare of coming generations. We would revere nature, realize the unimportance of material things and hold a healthy scepticism about technology and science. An anti-institutional vision would enable us to fend off dehumanizing bureaucratic and corporate authority as we united to meet our ‘higher needs’.

One of the most famous concepts in the history of psychology is Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, often illustrated by a pyramid. Once widely accepted, it was also inspired by a faith in innate positive human potential. Maslow claimed that human beings naturally switch attention to higher-level needs (intellectual, spiritual, social, existential) once they have met lower-level material ones. In moving up the pyramid and ‘becoming’, we channel ourselves toward wisdom, beauty, truth, love, gratitude and respect for life. Instead of a society that catered to and maintained the lowest common denominator, Maslow imagined one that prospered in the course of promoting mature ‘self-actualized’ individuals.

But something happened along the way. The pyramid collapsed. Human potential took a back seat to economic potential while self-actualization gave way to self-absorption on a spectacular scale. A pulp culture flourished as the masses were successfully duped into making a home amidst an ever-changing smorgasbord of false material needs.

Operating on the principle that triviality is more profitable than substance and dedicating itself to unceasing material overkill, consumer culture has become a fine-tuned instrument for keeping people incomplete, shallow and dehumanized. Materialism continues to gain ground, even in the face of an impending eco-apocalypse.

Pulp culture is a feast of tinsel and veneer. The ideal citizen is an empty tract through which gadgets can pass quickly, largely undigested, so there is always space for more. Reality races by as a blur of consumer choices that never feel quite real. We know it as the fast lane and whip ourselves to keep apace.

Rollo May described it accurately in his 1953 book, Man’s Search for Himself:

‘It’s an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.’ So it’s largely business-as-usual even as the sky is falling.

Some critics did predict the triumph of the trivial. In his 1957 essay, ‘A Theory of Mass Culture’, Dwight MacDonald foresaw our ‘debased trivial culture that voids both the deep realities and also the simple spontaneous pleasures’, adding that ‘the masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial cultural products’.

Today, the demand for triviality has never been higher and our tolerance for seriousness has never been lower.

In this dense fog the meaningful and meaningless can easily get reversed. Losers look like winners and the lofty and ludicrous get confused. The caption under a recent ad for men’s underwear read: ‘I’ve got something that’s good for your body, mind and soul.’ Fashion statements become a form of literacy; brand names father pride and celebrity drivel becomes compelling.

Not even God has been spared. Once a potent commander of attention and allegiance, God has been gelded into a sort of celestial lapdog who fetches our wishes for this-world success. Nothing is so great that it can’t be reconceived or rephrased in order to render it insubstantial, non-threatening or - best of all - entertaining.

The age of trivialization has left its mark on marriage, family and love. In a recent AC Nielsen survey, when asked to choose between spending time with their fathers and watching television, 54 per cent of American 4-6 year-olds chose television. The same study reported that American parents spend an average of 3.5 minutes per week in ‘meaningful conversation’ with their children, while the children themselves watch 28 hours of television a week. To which we can add cellphones, computer games and other techno-toys that are inducing a state of digital autism in our young people.

Out of this cock-up comes the most pressing question of our age. Can a highly trivialized culture, marooned between fact and fiction, dizzy with distraction and denial, elevate its values and priorities to respond effectively to the multiple planetary emergencies looming? Empty talk and token gestures aside, it doesn’t appear to be happening.

Some of the great humanists felt that there are limits to a culture’s ability to suppress our higher needs. They assumed that we are ethical creatures by nature and that we’ll do the right thing when necessary - we will transcend materialism given the freedom to do so. That seems far-fetched given the ethical coma in which we now find ourselves. Yet the ultimate test is whether or not we can do the right thing by the planet and for future generations.

Ethics and politics have never sat well together. When ‘citizens’ changed into ‘consumers’, political life became an exercise in keeping the customer happy. The imperfect democracies we have today have never been tested with planetary issues like global warming and climate change, which demand radical and unsettling solutions. In the race against the clock, politicians appear almost comical as they try not to disturb the trivial pursuits propping up our dangerously obsolete socio-economic system.

Global calamity is forcing us into a post-political era in which ethically driven individuals and groups race ahead of the political class. Soon centre-stage will belong to culture-change strategists who are able to inspire leaps of consciousness independently of hapless follow-the-leader politics. One such person is Jan Lundberg (http://www.culturechange.org/). Lundberg is an environmental activist and a long-standing voice for pre-emptive culture change. He understands that hyper-consumerism trivializes reality and numbs people, even to prospects of their own destruction. In his essay ‘Interconnections of All in the Universe’, he writes: ‘Unless we broaden and deepen our perception of both the universe and our fellow members of society, we all may perish in persisting to manipulate each other and our ecosystem with materialism and exploitation.’

Culture-change strategists all agree about the urgent need to promote ‘global consciousness’ or ‘cosmic consciousness’ - a broad worldview with a high awareness of the inter-relatedness and sacredness of all living things. It is thought that such a universality of mind leads not only to intellectual illumination, but also to heightened moral sensibilities, compassion and greater community responsibility.

Behind the scenes some noteworthy organizations are working toward the goal of global consciousness, including the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality (http://www.globalspirit.org/), whose members include Nobel laureates, culture theorists, futurists and spiritual leaders like the Dalai Lama. The group points out the huge backlog of positive human potential that is ready to unleash itself once we assume control and carve healthier cultural pathways for people’s energies. According to their mission statement, the fate of humankind and the ecosystem lies in our ability over the next couple of decades actively to revise our cultural blueprints in order to foster global consciousness and create new, more ‘mindful’ political and economic models.

Even in the formal education system, a small but growing number of teachers are incorporating a ‘global awareness’ perspective into the curriculum, aimed at dissolving cultural barriers and building a sense of global community (http://www.globalawareness.com/). Some are even encouraging a ‘global grammar’ that links students both to other human beings and to the entire planet.

In the war against trivialization some groups speak of ‘planetization’ - an expansive worldview that can slow our cultural death march. It was the French philosopher, palaeontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who coined this term in calling for a global mind that fused our ecological, spiritual and political energies, and thereby paved the way for harmonious living and lasting peace. The organization Planetization Rising (http://www.planetization.com/) sees this next phase as the only means by which we can ascend to a higher knowledge and thereby find a life-sustaining path for ourselves and the Earth: ‘It’s the next watershed mark in our evolutionary journey which alone can provide us with the empowerment and insight needed to overcome the gathering forces of ecological devastation, greed and war which now threaten our survival.’

The cultural indoctrination race is not over. The losers are still winning and the odds for a revolution in consciousness are no more than even. But is there an alternative - other than to drown in our own shallowness?

John F Schumaker is a US-born clinical psychologist living in Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa. His latest book is In search of happiness: understanding an endangered state of mind (Penguin, 2006).

Reprinted from New Internationalist (NI)

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.

By Andres Kargar

I don’t know if you have seen Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie The Last Emperor. I saw it a long time ago and, by now have forgotten most details of the story, but there is one scene that never leaves my mind. I think the scene has stayed with me because politics in the United States quite often remind me of that scene which continues to spook me out to this day.

Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China is being held prisoner as a traitor and a war criminal in the People’s Republic of China. While in detention, he encounters a peasant one day who recognizes him. Instead of assailing the Emperor, which would have been the natural reaction of an oppressed subject to the encounter with the parasitic dictator-turned-Japanese- collaborator, the peasant kneels down to tie the Emperor’s shoes.

How many times have we seen this scene repeated in American politics? Didn’t we vote for Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to deliver our antiwar message to Congress only to be stabbed in the back by them? And what about when we told Congressman John Conyers and others that the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney should be on the table? Do we have any idea why, despite our protests and manifestations, both the Democrats and Republicans plan to continue squandering our much needed tax dollars by dragging on the Iraq War and perhaps even expanding it to Iran, Syria, or Lebanon? Why don’t we, the informed citizens hold our “representatives” accountable for their actions?

Would this be the residue of a culture of slavery which continues to linger on in America? After all, of the tens of thousands of southerners who fought with the Confederate army and gave their lives to preserve slavery, only a small handful was actual slave-owners. The majority were poor, ordinary citizens conscripted or brainwashed to consider it an honor and a duty to fight for and sustain the southern plantation way of life.

I think, however, the problem goes beyond that. The tragedy of many American liberals and some in the left, in my opinion, is their persistent denial of the existence of classes in the society and the role of class war which continues to dominate and shape the American politics as in any other society.

A natural outcome of such a denial is that the crimes and acts of hostility of the owning classes towards the people are then often taken as “misinformed”, “misguided”, or “mistaken”. That’s when you hear silly comments such as: “I can’t understand why despite our economic woes, President Bush insists on tax breaks for the rich” or “I am so shocked to find out that Nancy Pelosi had been aware of the practice of torture against Guantanamo detainees.”

“We just don’t understand why Democrats don’t stop the government’s spying on US citizens”, and a million dead Iraqis later, Bush is still not a mass murderer who is acting on behalf of America’s corporate interests but a confused and incompetent president who “mistakenly” believes that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and of course, Adolf Hitler was just some mad man …

Today, America is left with an economy in shambles. The neoconservatives (who by the way, did not just fall from the sky) have greatly eroded our personal liberties and made a mockery of the Constitution and the concept of separation of the branches of the government. Our educational infrastructure is in dire condition. The country’s healthcare system is near collapse and quite unaffordable to millions of Americans. Thanks to the neoconservatives, America is now viewed and hated as a symbol of torture, arrogance, and thievery around the world, and on and on, and yet there are those in our progressive midst who naively believe that Hillary or Obama are going to bring about significant changes. Imagine President Obama or Clinton carrying on the legacy of the Bush signing statements or initiating the bombing of Iran to appease Israel.

Can a system that does not even allow a presidential candidate to say that the people are “frustrated and bitter”, which is quite an understatement, in any way reflect the aspirations of the majority of the American people?

Don’t get me wrong. I myself have often voted for many of these Democrats, in hopes of creating some breathing space for the common people and as a tactic for bringing about divisions among the owning classes, and I do believe that there are genuine differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, but looking at the picture from the perspective of “us versus them”, I view the Democrats, just like the Republicans, as true representatives of the corporate and the owning minority and therefore not friends of the American people. They might utilize different methods than the Republicans, but when it comes down to class interests, they sell us out without hesitation as they always have in the past. To paraphrase this, in a good cop, bad cop performance, the Democrats have generally played the role of the good COP.

How meager are our aspirations for the future of our country! Would we be content with someone who can perhaps close down one or two of the many torture chambers for which the US is now infamous, bring back a portion of our troops from Iraq, or maybe sink us even deeper in the Middle East, and continue snooping through our phone calls and email messages while increasing the dictatorial powers of the government in the name of “war on terror” and “national security”?

Today’s world is facing some unprecedented and life-threatening challenges: the crisis with fossil fuels, the global warming disaster, the resulting poverty, disease epidemics, and the imminent decline of an empire. The Republican and Democratic response to these challenges is international belligerence theorized under the so-called “War on Terror” and tightening the screws inside the United States: increased spying activities against US citizens, eroding personal liberties, internment camps, and drastic cuts in public spending. Needless to say, such policies can only increase the gap between the rich and the poor, augment social tensions, and bring about further worldwide insecurity. The only ones benefiting from such policies are a handful of corporations that control the media and other pillars of power, the likes of Halliburtons, KBR, Blackwater . . . . The people in their millions, on the other hand, will be condemned to a life of increasing austerity and misery.

When the citizens of France sent Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to the guillotine in 1793, theirs was not an act of savagery but one of culture and resistance, for you either witness the majority of the masses at the bottom get crushed while the society sinks into a culture of corruption and despair, or you help crush the few at the top and hand power to the people. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the French were able to rise up to the occasion.

More than two centuries later, here in America, the people are in the grips of yet another despot, much more brutal, corrupt, and destructive than King Louis XVI: American corporatism. This one is bent on destroying, not only America but the environment and the world with it. Just like King Louis, the corporate rule has to be dealt with to save the humanity.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in November 1787. Six years later, the rising masses in France took up similar slogans when they rebelled against the tyranny of the King.

This is by no means an invitation to violence of any kind, for I am a man of peace, but it is the people’s inalienable right to decide the type of society they would like to live in, its economic infrastructure, and the culture and democratic institutions that go with it. I realize this is easier said than done, especially since the “when” and the “how” is not so clear and still needs to be worked out, but as long as our focus is the farcical electoral process, we will never be able to strategize any meaningful and far-reaching changes.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with going to the polls and voting for your favorite candidate - the one that you think can do the least amount of harm, but as Noam Chomsky put it in one of his interviews, “the election is a marginal affair, it should not distract us from the serious work of changing the society and the culture and the institutions, creating a democratic culture.”

Unfortunately, America has sustained enormous damage during the years of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations. With the merger of corporatism and the government, we are well on our way down the slippery slope of dictatorship and fascism, American-style, as much as many of us hate to admit. It is only in this light that the actions of the US intelligence agencies in spying on Americans, the suspension of personal liberties, and the establishment of internment camps (under the pretense of apprehending “illegal aliens”) can be viewed and understood. We should not accept such a dismal future for our children. We cannot swallow the big lie and remain silent. With every passing day we are losing our ability to reverse the mishap more and more.

Andres Kargar can be reached at: galileo19@hotmail.com

This article was originally posted on Dissident Voice.

“The frequency and the shape of the pulses generated by stun guns are designed to incapacitate the target by electrically overwhelming his or her control of these muscles,” state Dr. K. Nanthakumar and colleagues. “In principle, these pulses are designed to act only on skeletal muscles and to not affect internal organs such as the heart.” The evidence that stun guns do not stimulate the heart is based on “…theoretical studies [that] suggest that stun guns cannot deliver the amount of energy required to stimulate the heart or cause ventricular fibrillation.”

Dr. Nanthakumar and collegues point out that most theoretical and some experimental studies reveal that cardiac stimulation does not occur with stun gun discharges. However, experimental studies on pigs by 3 independent groups of investigators found that “a stun gun discharge can stimulate the heart” depending on the location of the stun gun barbs. Barbs that are located such that they form a vector across the heart have greater effect than those focused on the abdomen. In one study, swine blood pressure was abruptly lost after discharge of a stun gun, and another study “reported the deaths of 2 animals caused by ventricular fibrillation immediately after the stun gun discharge….This suggests that sufficient current density was produced by the stun gun to stimulate the heart, which according to theory should not and could not occur.”

The researchers caution against applying data from pigs to humans, although “most of the basic mechanistic concepts in cardiac fibrillation and defibrillation are derived from animal studies, not humans.”

Recently, there have been several deaths after the use of stun guns, including Robert Dziekanski in Richmond, British Columbia, a Montréal, Quebec man and 24 year-old Chicago, Illionois resident, Kevin Piskura. More than 300 deaths following stun gun use have been documented, 20 of them in Canada.

Regarding arrhythmias long after the discharge of the stun gun, Dr. Nanthakumar, Dr. Paul Dorian and colleagues conclude “…there is no conclusive evidence to show whether stun gun stimulation (under certain electrophysical conditions) can result in cardiac arrhythmias late after stun gun discharge. With regards to deleterious effects on the heart during the discharge they state “In our view, it is inappropriate to conclude that stun gun discharges cannot lead to adverse cardiac consequences in all real world settings.”

Reprinted from the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In May 2005, FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism John Lewis told a Senate panel that ecoterrorism is “one of today’s most serious domestic terrorism threats.” Then the FBI’s James Jarboe estimated that two organizations (the Earth Liberation Front - ELF and Animal Liberation Front - ALF) committed over 600 criminal acts since 1996, causing over $43 million in damage. For his part, Lewis said both groups committed more than 1100 such acts since 1976, “conservatively” resulting in around $110 million in damages.

What’s going on, and is there anything to these charges? Coming from FBI sources makes them highly suspect, especially when there are two types of documented cases:

– people guilty of non-violent offenses called “terrorism” and given excessively harsh sentences; and most disturbing

– innocent people targeted, accused, convicted and sentenced to hard time for environmental activism or supporting animal rights; and that’s on top of hundreds of other political persecutions and many thousands of innocent people (or petty criminals) in US prisons.

This behavior isn’t new in America, but things heated up after 9/11 with the administration wasting no time getting going. That evening, George Bush addressed the nation and declared a “war against terrorism,” asked for world support, and began the government’s “emergency (preventive war strategy) response plans.” It was planned and ready before 9/11 as a “war of terrorism” to defile the law, wage aggressive wars, usurp unprecedented powers, destroy our civil liberties, and convince the public to sacrifice freedom for the security they never got. In addition, the October 2001 USA Patriot Act (written well before 9/11) created the federal crime of “domestic terrorism” that broadened the definition and applied it to US citizens as well as aliens.

When John Lewis addressed another Senate panel in May 2004, he stated that “the FBI divides the terrorist threat facing (the country) into two broad categories, international and domestic….and during the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of the domestic terrorist threat.” For a while “right-wing extremism” (loosely defined as the militia movement) overtook left-wing terrorism (but in) the past several years….special interest extremism (from groups like) the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and related extremists, has emerged as a serious domestic terrorist threat.” That view is amplified on the FBI’s web site that states the Bureau “is part of a vast national and international campaign dedicated to defeating terrorism” with ecoterrorism a key part of it.

The FBI defined it in 2002 to mean: “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.”

Activists refer to a tactic called “monkeywrenching” from the 1985 Dave Foreman/Bill Haywood-edited book “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching.” It describes it as:

– “nonviolent resistance to the destruction of natural diversity and wilderness (and) never directed against human beings or other forms of life;

– strategic….thoughtful (and) deliberate in order to succeed;

– individual or very small (group actions) of people who have known each other for years (and have) trust and a good working relationship;

– targeted (because) mindless, erratic vandalism is counterproductive as well as unethical;

– timely (and) not….when there is a nonviolent civil disobedience action;

– dispersed (to) hasten overall industrial retreat from wild areas;

– fun (even though it’s) serious and potentially dangerous;

– not revolutionary….to overthrow any social, political, or economic system;

– simple (with) elaborate commando operations generally avoided; and

– deliberate and ethical (by being) the most moral of all actions: protecting life, defending Earth.”

The Earth First Journal defines the practice as: “Ecotage (environmentally-motivated sabotage), ecodefense, billboard bandit(ry by sawing offensive ones down), road reclamation (to remediate environmental damage), tree spiking (with nails to discourage destructive logging), even fire.” These are unlawful sabotage acts “of industrial extraction and development equipment, as a means of striking at the Earth’s destroyers where they commit their crimes and hitting them where they feel it most - in their profit margins.” It goes “beyond civil disobedience. It is nonviolent, aimed only at inanimate objects. It is one of the last steps in defense of the wild….by an Earth defender when almost all other measures have failed.”

In May 2004, Republican George Nethercutt targeted them by introducing the Ecoterrorism Prevention Act of 2004, but it didn’t pass. If it had, it would have made a federal crime: “certain violent, threatening, obstructive, and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with plant and animal enterprises, and for other purposes.”

Republicans tried again in July with the Terrorism Against Animal-Use Entities Prohibition Improvement Act that would have amended the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act and made it harsher. It also failed to pass, but defeat was only temporary.

On November 27, 2006, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) amended the 1992 act and became law with very harsh provisions. It’s language is broad and vague, but it criminalizes First Amendment activities that advocate for animal rights like peaceful protests, leafleting, undercover investigations, whistleblowing and boycotts.

The new law updates the earlier act with penalties far exceeding comparable offenses under other laws. It also goes much further. It allows expanded surveillance of animal rights organizations, including criminal wiretapping, and makes it easier for a court to find probable cause for the vague crime of economic damage or disruption than for one requiring hard evidence a person or group plans to commit these acts.

The bill exempts “lawful public, governmental or business reaction to the disclosure of information about an animal enterprise,” but that only applies to economic disruption claims, not damage, and makes it hard to distinguish between the two. It also:

– expands the kinds of facilities covered by adding ones that use or sell animals and animal products;

– covers any person, entity or organization connected to an animal enterprise;

– applies to any form of advocacy;

– criminalizes threatening conduct and protected speech as well as communication with anyone engaging in these practices;

– protects corporate animal abusers with a vested interest in silencing dissent; and

– targets any form of civil disobedience or protest activity and designates animal advocates as terrorists even when they cause no physical harm; in addition, the bill’s language is so broad and vague (by design), it’s hard to know the difference between legal and illegal behavior; it’s an act of green scare state terrorism that, in fact, can be used against anyone.

Green Scare - A Definition

Activists equate it to earlier Red Scare periods after WW I and II when the government used various schemes to incite fear, sanction witch hunt prosecutions, and win widespread public approval for them. The term may first have been used in 2002 and refers to legal and extralegal government actions against animal liberation and environmental activists. The Spirit of Freedom prisoner support network defines it as “tactics the government and (their enforcement agencies use) to attack the ELF/ALF (Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front) and specifically those who publicly support them.”

The term also refers to the 2005 arrests, indictments and convictions from the FBI’s Operation Backfire against alleged ELF/ALF activists. It charged them with damaging property, conspiracy, arson and using destructive devices.

The Operation was the FBI’s code name for its ten year domestic “war on terrorism” that’s, in fact, a war on dissent. It resulted in 17 Pacific Northwest arson indictments with evidence that was very suspect. It came from a heroin-addicted self-professed serial arsonist whose former girl friend mentioned him in a grand jury proceeding. On December 7, 2005, it culminated when federal and local law enforcement agents began the largest ever roundup of alleged environmental and animal liberation activists. Seven arrests were made in four states, others got grand jury subpoenas, and people seized were charged with various acts of destroying property as part of ELF and ALF efforts.

Those arrested faced potential unprecendented sentences for non-violent acts from which no one was harmed. In some cases, they could be mandatory 30 year periods and in others life if found guilty on all counts. That compares to a median sentence of five years for arson.

With that as a threat, all but four defendants testified against the others in return for leniency. The remaining four struck plea bargains to admit responsibility but incriminate no one else. At sentencing in June 2007, the presiding judge was harsh. He included Terrorism Enhancements (TE) that are used when the justice department decides a crime aimed to influence or coerce government policy. It means sentences may be longer, and the Bureau of Prisons gets greater latitude in assigning prisoners that may be to “supermax” facilities for the most violent offenders.

In this case, sentences ranged from three years, one month to 13 years with most defendants getting added TEs. In addition, on October 26, 2007, FBI informant and serial arsonist Jacob Ferguson pleaded guilty to one count of arson and an additional count of attempted arson. According to his plea bargain, he won’t be charged for his other offenses. Further, he’s required to make no restitution, his formal sentencing keeps being postponed, it may come up ahead, but prosecutors recommend he spend no time in prison, receive no fines, and be able to keep the $50,000 or more he was paid for cooperating.

That’s the state of things today where anything goes in the “war on terrorism” and publicizing arrests and convictions takes precedence over justice. Unless stopped, things will only get worse.

ELF and ALF - A Brief Description

On its web site, ELF describes itself as “an underground movement with no leadership, membership or official spokesperson” and uses its site “to inform and chronicle issues related to ELF.” It further states:

– “Any individuals who committed arson or any other illegal acts under the ELF name….choose to do so….and do so only driven by their personal conscience;

– These choices are not endorsed, encouraged, or approved of by this web site’s management, webmasters, affiliates, or other participants;

– The intention of this web site is journalistic in intent only to inform and chronicle issues related to ELF;

– The owners, management, webmasters, affiliates, or other participants of this website are not spokespersons, members, or affiliates of The Earth Liberation Front in any way; nor do the opinions of anyone acting in the name of The Earth Liberation Front or ELF, represent the opinions of” those affiliated with this site.

Others refer to the ELF as a collective of autonomous individuals or cells that use “economic sabotage and guerrilla war to stop the exploitation and destruction of the natural environment.” The organization was founded in Brighton, England in 1992, spread across Europe by 1994, and is now an international movement in over a dozen countries. The FBI designated ELF its top domestic terror threat in March 2001 and called the group “ecoterrorists.”

The ALF is an international animal liberation organization with roots in the 19th century and with no formal membership or leadership. Its web site defines “animal rights” as “the philosophy of allowing nonhuman animals to have the basic rights that all sentient beings desire; freedom to live a natural life, free from human exploitation, unnecessary pain and suffering, and premature death.” It believes animals aren’t property any more than humans are and asks if animal rights will become the “next great social justice movement.” It cites President of the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) David Weisbrot saying treating animals is increasingly becoming a social and legal issue as well as an important economic one.

Its members engage in direct action on behalf of animals, including removing them from laboratories and fur farms (they call liberation, not theft) and sabotaging animal testing and industry animal-based facilities. Its statements affirm it supports any acts that further animal liberation where reasonable precautions are taken not to endanger life. Its covert cells operate in dozens of countries clandestinely and independently of each other. In January 2005, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated ALF a domestic terrorist threat.

Examples of Witch Hunt Convictions

Many can be cited, but Jeff Luers’ case is typical. In June 2001, he was sentenced to 22 years, eight months for burning three SUVs to raise awareness of global warming and how these gas-guzzlers contribute to it. No one was hurt, $40,000 in damages resulted, and the vehicles were refurbished and subsequently sold. Jeff is a political prisoner, and his sentence exceeds that for murder, kidnapping and rape under Oregon law where he resides. He appealed in January 2002, the hearing was held in November 2005, and on February 14, 2007 the Appeals Court remanded his case to the Circuit Court for resentencing. The case was heard on February 28, 2008 after which his sentence was reduced to 10 years.

Josh Harper is another political prisoner who committed no crime. He’s an activist believer in animal liberation, preserving the wilderness, and participated in human freedom projects for over 10 years. In 1997, he co-created Breaking Free Video magazine and went on speaking tours in 1999. He also sabotaged a whale hunt, defied grand juries, and contributed to confrontational protest campaigns. It made him a target and got him indicted for violating the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA).

Evidence at his trial was mostly from two of his speeches in 2001 and 2002. He spoke about already committed political sabotage acts as well as European anti-vivisection campaigns he supported. He also ended one speech by demonstrating how to participate in a form of electronic civil disobedience called “black faxing” that involves sending multiple black paper sheets through an opponent’s fax machine. It got him arrested, charged and convicted.

He was one of six animal rights activists in the so-called SHAC 7 (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) case. Charges against one of the original 7 were dropped. SHAC is an international animal rights campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) - one of the world’s largest contract research organizations, UK based, and operating on three continents. It’s also Europe’s largest contract animal-testing laboratory and uses around 75,000 animals each year in its operations.

UK-based activists established SHAC in 1999 and successfully closed down two animal-testing operations in their country. It’s now a worldwide campaign, the first of its kind, and it operates in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy as well as many other countries. It calls its campaign “innovative” and states it doesn’t “encourage or incite illegal activity.”

On March 2, 2006, Harper and his co-defendants were charged and convicted of conspiracy to violate AETA (and several other charges) and got sentences of from four to six years. The case was an appalling miscarriage of justice for violating the defendants’ First Amendment rights that AETA repealed for these activists. The defendants weren’t charged with violent or threatening acts. Instead, the case was based on the notion that animal rights organizers are responsible for actions others take that the prosecution equated to a global conspiracy.

Briana Waters is another example of gross injustice. She’s an innocent woman charged and convicted. On March 30, 2006, she was arrested and accused of being a lookout in connection with an alleged 2001 arson at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. Waters is a California resident, violin teacher and mother of a young child. She was indicted, then reindicted with other defendants on May 10 on charges that included using a destructive device that carries a mandatory 30 year sentence.

On December 26, 2007, her lawyers filed a motion accusing the Justice Department of concealing vital exculpatory information as well as producing a fraudulent FBI report. The agency is infamous for creating “evidence” out of whole cloth and getting manipulated informants to state it. Nonetheless, a hostile federal judge denied defense’s motion and went further as well. He ruled against allowing a defense expert to rebut government “evidence” that a delayed incendiary device was a bomb.

One of Waters’ attorneys expressed outrage over a common federal practice of “The government hand-picking (the) judge (and) manipulating court procedures. This is a classic case of a corrupt prosecution, and a judge who apparently chooses to look the other way.” It’s no surprise at a time two-thirds of all federal judges are from or affiliated with the extremist Federalist Society. It advocates rolling back civil liberties; ending New Deal social policies; opposing reproductive choice, government regulations, labor rights and environmental protections; and subverting justice in defense of privilege.

Waters was up against this when her trial began on February 11, 2008. She was further disadvantaged by the government’s case being based on two informants who struck a plea bargain by pleading guilty to conspiracy, arson and destructive devices in return for leniency. On March 6, Waters was convicted on two arson counts, but the jury deadlocked on the more serious charges of a destructive device and conspiracy. Despite prosecution claims, no devices were found nor was there evidence of conspiracy. That raises serious questions of the government’s falsifying evidence and lying to the jury about it. Again, no surprise under witch hunt justice with innocent people like Briana being harmed.

Her case also featured circumstantial evidence, including a folder containing radical pamphlets with a note on the cover from Waters to one of the informants. She testified that she didn’t write them or subscribe to their views. The prosecution claimed otherwise. Her defense also argued that Waters knew nothing about the materials, they were substituted for ones she put in the folder, and her fingerprints weren’t on the ones in it for proof.

Civil rights attorney Ben Rosenfeld said the “government’s case was primarily based on character assassination and guilt by association (and that) evidence of other people’s writings should never have been allowed to be used against her.” He also denounced former Attorney General Gonzales for proclaiming Waters guilty in the media after she was indicted. He harmed her chances at the outset and showed convictions count more than justice, especially when charges of terrorism are raised. Waters strongly defends her innocence and will likely appeal the verdict. Sentencing is on May 30.

A Look Ahead

Post-9/11, future prospects look grim with fear prevailing over reason, a bipartisan effort exploiting it, and convictions more important than justice. If friends of the earth and animal rights champions are targeted, so can anyone. Governments today won’t protect us and neither do courts that defer to their lawlessness. As a result, expect lots more innocent people hurt because those in power want unlimited amounts of it and won’t let anyone stop them from getting it. It means hard times ahead when the law won’t protect us, dissent is a crime, and the greater good is sacrificed to benefit the privileged.

What to do? Get active, organize, speak out, resist, and use the law for whatever justice is still under it. Things are very dire, change isn’t coming next year, and, more than ever, apathy isn’t an option. In America’s “war on terrorism,” we’re all potential targets.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization based in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8806

© Copyright Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2008

What was the greatest failure of 2007? President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq? The decline in the value of the US dollar? Subprime mortgages? No. The greatest failure of 2007 was the newly sworn in Democratic Congress.

The American people’s attempt in November 2006 to rein in a rogue government, which has committed the US to costly military adventures while running roughshod over the US Constitution, failed. Replacing Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate has made no difference.

The assault on the US Constitution by the Democratic Party is as determined as the assault by the Republicans. On October 23, 2007, the House passed a bill sponsored by California Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman, chairwoman of a Homeland Security subcommittee, that overturns the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, association, and assembly.

The bill passed the House on a vote of 404-6. In the Senate the bill is sponsored by Maine Republican Susan Collins and apparently faces no meaningful opposition.

Harman’s bill is called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. When HR 1955 becomes law, it will create a commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas. The commission will hold hearings around the country, taking testimony and compiling a list of dangerous people and beliefs. The bill will, in short, create massive terrorism in the United States. But the perpetrators of terrorism will not be Muslim terrorists; they will be government agents and fellow citizens.

We are beginning to see who will be the inmates of the detention centers being built in the US by Halliburton under government contract.

Who will be on the “extremist beliefs” list? The answer is: civil libertarians, critics of Israel, 9/11 skeptics, critics of the administration’s wars and foreign policies, critics of the administration’s use of kidnapping, rendition, torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions, and critics of the administration’s spying on Americans. Anyone in the way of a powerful interest group–such as environmentalists opposing politically connected developers–is also a candidate for the list.

The “Extremist Beliefs Commission” is the mechanism for identifying Americans who pose “a threat to domestic security” and a threat of “homegrown terrorism” that “cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts.”

This bill is a boon for nasty people. That SOB who stole your girlfriend, that hussy who stole your boyfriend, the gun owner next door–just report them to Homeland Security as holders of extreme beliefs. Homeland Security needs suspects, so they are not going to check. Under the new regime, accusation is evidence. Moreover, “our” elected representatives will never admit that they voted for a bill and created an “Extremist Belief Commission” for which there is neither need nor constitutional basis.

That boss who harasses you for coming late to work–he’s a good candidate to be reported; so is that minority employee that you can’t fire for any normal reason. So is the husband of that good-looking woman you have been unable to seduce. Every kind of quarrel and jealousy can now be settled with a phone call to Homeland Security.

Soon Halliburton will be building more detention centers.

Americans are so far removed from the roots of their liberty that they just don’t get it. Most Americans don’t know what habeas corpus is or why it is important to them. But they know what they want, and Jane Harman has given them a new way to settle scores and to advance their own interests.

Even educated liberals believe that the US Constitution is a “living document” that can be changed to mean whatever it needs to mean in order to accommodate some new important cause, such as abortion and legal privileges for minorities and the handicapped. Today it is the “war on terror” that the Constitution must accommodate. Tomorrow it can be the war on whomever or whatever.

Think about it. More than six years ago the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. The US government blamed it on al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission Report has been subjected to criticism by a large number of qualified people–including the commission’s chairman and co-chairman.

Since 9/11 there have been no terrorist attacks in the US. The FBI has tried to orchestrate a few, but the “terrorist plots” never got beyond talk organized and led by FBI agents. There are no visible extremist groups other than the neoconservatives that control the government in Washington. But somehow the House of Representatives overwhelmingly sees a need to create a commission to take testimony and search out extremist views (outside of Washington, of course).

This search for extremist views comes after President Bush and the Justice (sic) Department declared that the President can ignore habeas corpus, ignore the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence, hold them indefinitely without presenting charges, torture them until they confess to some made up crime, and take over the government by declaring an emergency. Of course, none of these “patriotic” views are extremist.

The search for extremist views follows also the granting of contracts to Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. No member of Congress or the executive branch ever explained the need for the detention centers or who the detainees would be. Of course, there is nothing extremist about building detention centers in the US for undisclosed inmates.

Clearly the detention centers are not meant to just stand there empty. Thanks to 2007’s greatest failure–the Democratic Congress–there is to be an “Extremist Beliefs Commission” to secure inmates for Bush’s detention centers.

President Bush promises us that the wars he has launched will cause the “untamed fire of freedom” to “reach the darkest corners of our world.” Meanwhile in America the fire of freedom has not only been tamed but also is being extinguished.

The light of liberty has gone out in the United States.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/076152553X/counterpunchmaga

The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Reprinted from Natural News.

Zeitgeist, produced by Peter Joseph, was created as a nonprofit expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on their site lists the basic sources used / referenced and the developing Interactive Transcript includes exact source references and further information. A Q & A page is also being developed.

Now, it’s important to point out that there is a tendency to simply disbelieve things that are counter to our understanding, without the necessary research performed.  For example, some information contained in Part 1 and Part 3, specifically, is not obtained by simple keyword searches on the Internet. You have to dig deeper. For instance, very often people who look up “Horus” or “The Federal Reserve” on the Internet draw their conclusions from very general or biased sources. Online encyclopedias or text book Encyclopedias often do not contain the information contained in Zeitgeist. However, if one takes the time to read the sources provided, they will find that what is being presented is based on documented evidence. Non-Profit DVDs / Free Video Downloads are available through the Downloads page.

Furthermore, in October 2008 the sequel to Zeitgeist will be presented for free online.  This feature length work will address the solutions to the problems presented in the original work. This work is entitled: “Zeitgeist - Addendum”

That being said, It is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the truth, but find out for themselves, for truth is not told, it is realized.

Reprinted from Zeitgeist: The Movie.

To learn more about this movie and the controversy surrounding it go here.

Determined to find the law that requires American citizens to pay income tax, producer Aaron Russo (”The Rose,” “Trading Places”) set out on a journey to find the evidence.

This film which is neither left, nor right-wing is a startling examination of government. It exposes the systematic erosion of civil liberties in America since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was fraudulently created.

Through interviews with U.S. Congressmen, a former IRS Commissioner, former IRS and FBI agents and tax attorneys and authors, Russo connects the dots between money creation, federal income tax, and the national identity card which becomes law in May 2008. This ID card will use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips which are essentially homing devices used to track people. This film shows in great detail and undeniable facts that America is moving headlong into a fascist police state. Wake up!

To learn more about this issue and film go here.

By Howard Zinn

With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.

However the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the “Good War,” even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American “Empire.”

I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called “The Age of Imperialism.” It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire — or period — of “imperialism.”

I recall the classroom map (labeled “Western Expansion”) which presented the march across the continent as a natural, almost biological phenomenon. That huge acquisition of land called “The Louisiana Purchase” hinted at nothing but vacant land acquired. There was no sense that this territory had been occupied by hundreds of Indian tribes which would have to be annihilated or forced from their homes — what we now call “ethnic cleansing” — so that whites could settle the land, and later railroads could crisscross it, presaging “civilization” and its brutal discontents.

Neither the discussions of “Jacksonian democracy” in history courses, nor the popular book by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson, told me about the “Trail of Tears,” the deadly forced march of “the five civilized tribes” westward from Georgia and Alabama across the Mississippi, leaving 4,000 dead in their wake. No treatment of the Civil War mentioned the Sand Creek massacre of hundreds of Indian villagers in Colorado just as “emancipation” was proclaimed for black people by Lincoln’s administration.

That classroom map also had a section to the south and west labeled “Mexican Cession.” This was a handy euphemism for the aggressive war against Mexico in 1846 in which the United States seized half of that country’s land, giving us California and the great Southwest. The term “Manifest Destiny,” used at that time, soon of course became more universal. On the eve of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Washington Post saw beyond Cuba: “We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle.”

The violent march across the continent, and even the invasion of Cuba, appeared to be within a natural sphere of U.S. interest. After all, hadn’t the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared the Western Hemisphere to be under our protection? But with hardly a pause after Cuba came the invasion of the Philippines, halfway around the world. The word “imperialism” now seemed a fitting one for U.S. actions. Indeed, that long, cruel war — treated quickly and superficially in the history books — gave rise to an Anti-Imperialist League, in which William James and Mark Twain were leading figures. But this was not something I learned in university either.

The “Sole Superpower” Comes into View

Reading outside the classroom, however, I began to fit the pieces of history into a larger mosaic. What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: “I was an errand boy for Wall Street.”

At the very time I was learning this history — the years after World War II — the United States was becoming not just another imperial power, but the world’s leading superpower. Determined to maintain and expand its monopoly on nuclear weapons, it was taking over remote islands in the Pacific, forcing the inhabitants to leave, and turning the islands into deadly playgrounds for more atomic tests.

In his memoir, No Place to Hide, Dr. David Bradley, who monitored radiation in those tests, described what was left behind as the testing teams went home: “[R]adioactivity, contamination, the wrecked island of Bikini and its sad-eyed patient exiles.” The tests in the Pacific were followed, over the years, by more tests in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, more than a thousand tests in all.

When the war in Korea began in 1950, I was still studying history as a graduate student at Columbia University. Nothing in my classes prepared me to understand American policy in Asia. But I was reading I. F. Stone’s Weekly. Stone was among the very few journalists who questioned the official justification for sending an army to Korea. It seemed clear to me then that it was not the invasion of South Korea by the North that prompted U.S. intervention, but the desire of the United States to have a firm foothold on the continent of Asia, especially now that the Communists were in power in China.

Years later, as the covert intervention in Vietnam grew into a massive and brutal military operation, the imperial designs of the United States became yet clearer to me. In 1967, I wrote a little book called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. By that time I was heavily involved in the movement against the war.

When I read the hundreds of pages of the Pentagon Papers entrusted to me by Daniel Ellsberg, what jumped out at me were the secret memos from the National Security Council. Explaining the U.S. interest in Southeast Asia, they spoke bluntly of the country’s motives as a quest for “tin, rubber, oil.”

Neither the desertions of soldiers in the Mexican War, nor the draft riots of the Civil War, not the anti-imperialist groups at the turn of the century, nor the strong opposition to World War I — indeed no antiwar movement in the history of the nation reached the scale of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. At least part of that opposition rested on an understanding that more than Vietnam was at stake, that the brutal war in that tiny country was part of a grander imperial design.

Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower — even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union — to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein’s seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA’s overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.

Justifying Empire

The ruthless attacks of September 11th (as the official 9/11 Commission acknowledged) derived from fierce hatred of U.S. expansion in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even before that event, the Defense Department acknowledged, according to Chalmers Johnson’s book The Sorrows of Empire, the existence of more than 700 American military bases outside of the United States.

Since that date, with the initiation of a “war on terrorism,” many more bases have been established or expanded: in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, the desert of Qatar, the Gulf of Oman, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else a compliant nation could be bribed or coerced.

When I was bombing cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and France in the Second World War, the moral justification was so simple and clear as to be beyond discussion: We were saving the world from the evil of fascism. I was therefore startled to hear from a gunner on another crew — what we had in common was that we both read books — that he considered this “an imperialist war.” Both sides, he said, were motivated by ambitions of control and conquest. We argued without resolving the issue. Ironically, tragically, not long after our discussion, this fellow was shot down and killed on a mission.

In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive, like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.

The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of “The American Century.” The time had arrived, he said, for the United States “to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit.”

We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this “influence” is benign, that the “purposes” — whether in Luce’s formulation or more recent ones — are noble, that this is an “imperialism lite.” As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: “Spreading liberty around the world… is the calling of our time.” The New York Times called that speech “striking for its idealism.”

The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project — Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used “her navy and her army… as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression.” And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: “The values you learned here… will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world.”

For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes — in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.

Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense — that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization — begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?

Howard Zinn is the author of A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States, now being filmed for a major television documentary. His newest book is A People’s History of American Empire, the story of America in the world, told in comics form, with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle in the American Empire Project book series.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Dr. James Hansen is widely regarded as the leading climate change scientist in the country. It was his testimony to a Senate committee in 1988 that first brought the threat of global warming to the world’s attention. For the past quarter of a century he has headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA’s premiere climate research center.

Just over a year ago, Dr. Hansen went public with a charge that made headlines around the world, that the Bush administration had been trying to silence his warnings about the urgent need to address climate change.

Censoring Science-Inside the Political Attack on Hansen p.1

Censoring Science-Inside the Political Attack on Hansen p.2

 Censoring Science-Inside the Political Attack on Hansen p.3

 Censoring Science-Inside the Political Attack on Hansen p.4

 Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: You may have heard Dr. James Hansen mentioned before on Democracy Now! His name has been cited by many guests on the show.

JOHN PASSACANTANDO: This government, at the behest of its oil company contributors, has been told not to put out information about global warming, not to allow the scientists to talk about their expertise with the press, about the connection between global warming and hurricanes. That happened at NOAA. There’s been pressure on Dr. James Hansen at NASA.

PAUL EHRLICH: I think it’s true that attitudes have changed slightly in the White House, because they now see a political issue, but they have worked very, very hard to suppress the science on global warming. For instance, they sent some junior jerk to try and keep Jim Hansen, who’s one of our very top climate scientists, from saying what he thought.

CHRIS MOONEY: Apparently, a NASA aide was instructed to interfere with Hansen’s ability to do press interviews. Actually, this completely backfired, because Hansen is not someone to be told to be quiet. And so, he just went to the media anyway, and it ended up exploding.

TIM FLANNERY: Can you imagine what it would be like for one of the world’s leading scientists, who is revered by everyone, to have this pipsqueak who lied about his credentials controlling what he tells the public? Just appalling. And, you know, the countries around the world would — I don’t know what they’d pay to have the advice of a Jim Hansen. It’s the sort of stuff we all desperately need. And here, in a country that actually pays him a salary and allows him to do his work, he is silenced. I mean, I honestly cannot see the sense of that. I can’t see who benefits.

AMY GOODMAN: That last speaker was acclaimed Australian scientist and writer Tim Flannery. Well, today, Dr. James Hansen himself joins us in our firehouse studio. His story of how the Bush administration tried to silence his warnings on climate change is detailed in a new book. It’s called Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. It’s written by author Mark Bowen. He joins us from a studio in Watertown, Massachusetts.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Dr. Hansen, 1988, talk about the significance of that time.

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, I think it had become clear that the climate was changing and that human-made greenhouse gases were a reason for the long-term trend in the climate. And I just wanted to draw that to the attention of the public, because we really need to do something before the climate change becomes large, just because of the inertia of the system. If we wait until the climate change is large, then it’s too late to stop it from happening.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what did you do twenty years ago?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, I just reported that the world at that time was getting warmer, and I expected 1988 to be the warmest year in the period of instrumental record, which it did turn out to be, and that humans were primarily the reason for this long-term warming trend.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, that was twenty years ago, and while the Bush administration has gotten a lot of attention for its failure to heed any kinds of warnings, there was another administration before that, the Clinton administration, as well. And I think Bowen talks in the book about some problems that you had with Al Gore and — could you talk about how the Clinton administration reacted to some of the warnings you raised?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, my concern is general with both Republican and Democratic administrations. They both feel that they can control what scientists say to the public. So their offices of public affairs in the science agencies are headed, in general, by political appointees, and they review the press releases before they go out. So, it doesn’t really make sense in a democracy. The public should be honestly informed. And then, of course, the publications are allowed to make the decisions, and they don’t have to follow exactly what the science says. There are other considerations that they have. But they shouldn’t influence what is presented, the scientific evidence. And I object to that, regardless of which administration is in power.

AMY GOODMAN: So, before we go on to the Bush administration, where you did have the most trouble, can you talk about what happened during the Clinton years and how you were able to express or not your research?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, the one particular event that stands out in my mind is when I wrote a paper called “Global Warming in the 21st Century: An Alternative Scenario,” in which I emphasized that it’s not only carbon dioxide, but other climate forcings — methane and black soot — and we need to address those also. And for some reason, the people in the White House didn’t like emphasis on the non-CO2 parts of the story, and I just — the press release just kept coming back, and I would try to change it, they would change it, and finally I gave up. I just couldn’t get a press release through the way I wanted it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: So, in essence, in these kinds of press releases, there’s a back-and-forth, as the White House or the environmental people at the White House –

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: — edit your press releases?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. And that’s another strange thing, because they don’t even admit that it’s going to the White House. You know, it goes to NASA headquarters, and then it sort of disappears for a couple weeks. And where is it? Well, it’s very often at the White House, and I mentioned that. And now, they tried not to make that known, you know? And that’s, again, something that’s very inappropriate, in my opinion. And again, it’s happened in both administrations.

AMY GOODMAN: So let’s talk about what happened when the Bush administration came in. You were continuing to do your research. First of all, explain your place of work and the significance of NASA Goddard.

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, NASA is important, I think, because of the global observations that we make from satellites. We see what’s happening, for example, on Greenland and then West Antarctica. My laboratory is also involved in the global models that try to interpret what’s happening. And we’re also located at Columbia University, where we have the opportunity to work with people who have the data from the history of the earth over thousands and millions of years. You put together these different things — the satellite information, the information on how the earth responded in the past when greenhouse gases changed and other things changed, and the models — and then you get a picture of how the system works.

And that’s what really concerns me, because it’s the inertia of the system which tells us we’re already pushing it, so that it’s going to respond more over the next several decades. There’s a lot more climate response which is already in the pipeline, that we haven’t seen it yet, and that’s why we have to have an understanding of what’s happening, so we can take the actions now before it’s too late.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Of course, the speech of yours that got even more attention was then in December of ‘97 — was it? — when you also then raised again the sense that you were — not only that the planet was reaching the tipping level in terms of the dangers of greenhouse emissions, but also, shortly afterwards, you started getting the articles appearing in the New York Times and other places about the direct attempts by the government to silence you.

DR. JAMES HANSEN: 1997 — I think you mean –

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’m sorry, 2007.

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, 2006, I believe. I gave a speech in December of 2005 at the American Geophysical Union meeting, in which I tried to connect the dots. And the dots extend all the way to the role of special interests in confusing the public, you know, in not allowing straight scientific discussion of what’s happening and what’s causing it.

And, of course, the main problem is fossil fuel use. And the truth is, we cannot put all of the fossil fuel — the carbon dioxide from all the fossil fuels back into the atmosphere without creating a completely different planet. The last time that carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere, there was no ice on the planet. It was a completely different planet. And we have to realize we either are going to have to leave a lot of the fossil fuels in the ground, or else we’re going to have to capture the carbon dioxide when the fossil fuels are burned. And that just is not well understood, and the fossil fuel companies would rather that you didn’t understand that.

AMY GOODMAN: Who are those special interests, those fossil fuel companies that you’re talking about?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, it’s –

AMY GOODMAN: How do they stop the conversation?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, it’s the coal industry, and it’s also the oil industry. And they — you know, they put out disinformation, they fund a small number of scientists, and they expect the media to give you a balanced story. And by “balanced,” they mean that the scientists are saying that something’s happening, it would have to balanced by someone saying, “Oh, this is just natural.” You know, and even though the story has become very clear — you know, it’s 99.99 percent certain that humans are influencing the climate — but still, they make the story appear much less certain than it is, and therefore, why should we take actions as long as it’s uncertain?

AMY GOODMAN: Mark, well, thank you very much for joining us from Massachusetts. Why did you choose to take this on as the topic of your book?

MARK BOWEN: Well, actually, I was going to write a — I was hoping to write a book about Jim, anyway, back in 2005, back in the fall of 2005. I was actually talking to an editor about doing that, and — because he’s been the person who has explained why the climate is changing now for about thirty years. He played a big role in the first book I wrote called Thin Ice. And so, I was just kind of amazed when all of a sudden he made the headlines there in the New York Times at the end of January 2006. And I actually waited about a month because of a funny kind of arrangement I had with my editor where he was supposed to contact Jim first, but then, at the end of February, I called Jim and sent him an email, and he responded within, it turns out, about twenty minutes and said, “Sure, let’s do it.” And so, I’ve been trying to keep up with him basically now for about two years, as I tried to write this book, as he continued to just move along at this breakneck pace you see.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in your book, you talk quite a bit about what was going on in the Bush administration in reaction to Dr. Hansen’s statements and viewpoints. In some of the clips that we ran, people kept referring to this young “pipsqueak” or this political appointee. Talk about Michael Deutsch [sic], the young man right out of college, and his efforts to muzzle Dr. Hansen.

MARK BOWEN: OK, his name is George Deutsch.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’m sorry. George Deutsch, yes.

MARK BOWEN: He was a twenty-four-year-old political appointee. He was in an unusually senior position for a person of his experience or lack of experience. He had come straight from the Bush-Cheney war room for the reelection campaign. As it turned out, he had neglected to graduate from college, although he had put that on his resume. And according to the person who hired him for this post, he told her also that he had graduated from college, point blank.

But it’s not really true to say that he was the person who squelched Jim Hansen. He was acting clearly on orders from the top two or at least the second-in-command of public affairs at NASA at the time, a fellow named Dean Acosta, who is the assistant — I don’t know, they have complicated names — assistant — deputy assistant administrator for public affairs. And Mr. Deutsch — Mr. Acosta was working in concert with people from the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the White House.

The way that it played out, because they were so cunning about doing it, was that all the standard media outlets could pin it on was this young man. The New York Times, for instance, left it at that. And so, in my book, I go into fairly complete detail about exactly what was going on, because they were very consciously not leaving a paper trail, telling people not to send emails on this issue, and trying to keep it all — they would often — they would hold meetings where there would be generally two senior political appointees and one career NASA person, so there would be no witnesses at the NASA person’s level. And then that person would be told not to put anything in writing and not to send emails about it, only to communicate by telephone and voice or in meetings. But this George Deutsch, unfortunately, he was kind of young and inexperienced, and he did leave an email trail, and that was part of the reason that the New York Times even printed the story, was because there was at least some evidence of a documentary sort. It’s not true that it was just George Deutsch doing it.

AMY GOODMAN: So here was this young man, George Deutsch, who you had to go through, you had to get approval for to do your interviews with the public, with reporters; is that right, Dr. Hansen?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah, after my talk at AGU, I was told that I had to have prior approval to speak to the media. And for a few days, I followed that procedure, and they did disallow me to speak to National Public Radio, for example, and they sent a substitute instead of me. And then NPR decided they didn’t want to do the interview. And there were a couple of other cases like that. But then I decided I wasn’t going to let this continue in the long run, and so that was when I contacted other media and Andy Revkin wrote an article for the New York Times.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Dr. Hansen, last year you testified at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Also called to testify was James Connaughton, the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. This is some of what Connaughton had to say.

JAMES CONNAUGHTON: Well, I want to start, as I indicated, of having the highest personal regard and professional regard for Dr. Hansen and his work. My son and I were just watching him on TV last night on the History Channel.

Congressmen, senior administration officials, highly accomplished senior scientists, we all chafe at having to talk to our public affairs people, but the public affairs people are there for a reason. They’re there to organize and be sure that what we are saying is official government policy, is understood, and that the people who might have to then respond to those statements can effectively do so. I mean, this is a process that’s been with us for a long, long time, and it works well. Now, we all chafe from it. I can understand Dr. Hansen especially chafing if it comes from someone relatively young and inexperienced. But the policy of public affairs is a very important one.

Now, I would note that I am not aware of any instance where any scientist in pursuing their science, of any scientist in seeking peer review of their science, was in any way controlled, handled or otherwise managed in their scientific work. I mean, from what I see all over the world and with people coming to me, scientists come and speak their mind to me, they come and speak their mind to you. What we’re talking about is a science policy interface, and that has significant implications that require some level of management.

AMY GOODMAN: Prior to his confirmation as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Connaughton worked as a lobbyist for the mining, chemical and utilities industries. Dr. James Hansen, respond to what he has to say.

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, the point is that scientists should be able to give the results of their science. And this — both in the case of testimony to Congress and in science that is presented to the public through the media, it makes no sense that it should be censored by the White House before the scientist is able to speak. I mean, what is the rationale by which the White House can review and change testimony to Congress before it’s given? I mean, that’s — there’s no rationale. And our democracy assumes that the public and Congress is well informed.

The story that I was told when I was asked, why do I have to have my testimony reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget in the White House before it’s given to Congress, and they said, “Well, your testimony needs to be consistent with the President’s budget.” I mean, it doesn’t make sense.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mark Bowen, I’d like to ask you, in that clip we had of James Connaughton, he was also — the White House Council on Environmental Quality, his staff particularly, were the ones who also edited immediately after the 9/11 attacks the press releases from the EPA about the health and safety situation that the public was exposed to, and an IG report later made clear that the White House had downplayed inappropriately the health risks that people faced. In your research on Dr. Hansen, to what degree is this a widespread practice throughout the Bush administration, in terms of how they deal with science and the putting out of science information to the public?

MARK BOWEN: It’s everywhere. It’s all over the place. Right after Jim went public there in late January, there was a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, and the Union of Concerned Scientists organized a little side meeting, which was completely filled, just overflowing with scientists from all over the government, telling similar incidents.

And at that meeting, David Baltimore, who was the — well, he was president-elect of the association at the time, he said that he wasn’t surprised. Every time he heard a new incident, he wasn’t surprised to hear it. He said it was the result of a theory of government, and he was talking, of course, about this kind of imperial presidency, the unitary executive, that sort of thing. And I have — there’s a chapter of the book entitled “A Theory of Government that We Must Vociferously Oppose.” That’s a quote from David Baltimore’s speech.

We don’t — it would be boring to go into the litany of public agencies, everything from the Fish and Wildlife Service to the EPA to the FDA, that have experienced similar control of scientific information.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Philip Cooney, the former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He also testified at that House hearing last year. He was questioned by Representative Henry Waxman, the chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Mr. Cooney, you had a senior position at the White House, but there were officials in the White House who were more senior to you. Your immediate boss was James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Was Mr. Connaughton aware of your role in proposed edits for climate change reports?

PHILIP COONEY: He knew that we were reviewing reports as they came in ordinarily from OMB for review.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Did he personally review your edits?

PHILIP COONEY: No, not most –

UNIDENTIFIED: Mr. Chairman.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Did you discuss –

UNIDENTIFIED: Mr. Chairman, his boss is behind him and is available.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Yeah, excuse me, but I have the time. I didn’t interrupt you. I waited ’til you were finished, then I interrupted you. Did you discuss the edits with him?

PHILIP COONEY: No, not ordinarily.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Did he give you any instructions about how any of these three documents should be edited?

PHILIP COONEY: No. He understood that my objective was to align these communications with the administration’s stated policy.

AMY GOODMAN: Philip Cooney had come from the American Petroleum Institute, worked at the White House until 2005, and then left to return to a familiar haunt, taking a job as a corporate issues manager with Exxon Mobil.

Mark Bowen, talk about the email trail and the documentation you have of Philip Cooney, of James Connaughton, of how the White House censored the reports.

MARK BOWEN: Well, first of all, it’s very clear that James Connaughton was playing a very definite role in editing those reports. His name is all over it. Even Karl Rove is involved at one point.

AMY GOODMAN: How?

MARK BOWEN: Not so much in the report, but in — actually it was in — early on, I think it was — well, when Christie Whitman was still the administrator of EPA, she was very embattled, because she was actually in favor of doing something about global warming. It became known — and this is what caused Philip Cooney to lose his job — it became known that the CEQ, Council on Environmental Quality, was editing a climate subsection of a report on the environment by EPA. When that went public, a disgruntled EPA employee brought it public, there was, of course, a major response by the White House. It was at that time that Karl Rove became involved, actually, and encouraged and helped Philip Cooney figure out how to respond to the media.

But, yeah, the email trail is quite clear that not only was Philip Cooney, James Connaughton — there was a fellow named William O’Donovan [Kevin O’Donovan], I think he was. He was a special assistant to the Vice President on domestic policy, who also left the government to go work for Shell shortly thereafter, who was involved. And they were exchanging emails on a regular basis with people from Exxon Mobil, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and so on and so forth, in which they were — you know, they were kind of these funny, joking emails in which they were poking fun, calling people names, including calling Jim Hansen names, and figuring out responses to these discomfiting things that were coming up in the media. But the whole policy was very clearly worked out by this kind of gang of people.

And I think this — in that same hearing in which Philip Cooney was being — was testifying with Jim — by the way, there’s an amazing picture that I’ve received from the New York Times with Jim Hansen holding his hand up, with George Deutsch on one side of him and Philip Cooney on the other. That was how Jim testified at that hearing.

There was a Democratic congressman from Kentucky named Yarmuth, who revealed that the staff members from Waxman’s committee had gotten access to a whole bunch of communications between the Council on Environmental Quality, Philip Cooney and the Vice President’s office. And he read from one of them. It became clear that there was a lot of communication going on on a regular basis with the Vice President’s office. And what this prompted was a lawyer from CEQ to stand up, and basically there was about a fifteen-minute discussion. James Connaughton also stood up — this is while Philip Cooney was testifying — and made it clear that the committee was not allowed to use that information because they were invoking executive privilege to keep any communications with the Vice President off the record. But there’s a lot of evidence somewhere, and Mr. Yarmuth very slyly managed to get it into the record. What he did was he read from a hand transcription of an email that one of his staffers had been allowed to look at but not use as part of the record and hearing.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, James Hansen, when all of this was going on — you’re a career scientist — what your fellow scientists in NASA and other parts of the government, what was their reaction to — one, to the advisability of you standing up and how they felt about it, as well as to how they acted when this kind of censorship or muzzling of their viewpoints was occurring?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, I think a discouraging thing is that people have come to accept this, to expect it, you know, and I think we have to strongly object to this. It’s interesting that — the thing you just showed, where Philip Cooney said, “Well, I was just aligning the science to fit the policy.” Well, that’s — that’s just nonsense, I mean, if they can make their policy decisions without following exactly what the science — where it might make you go because the executives have other sources of information and various things they’re trying to do. But they shouldn’t change the science itself. But they’re doing that on a widespread basis, and we have to object to that. But, of course, scientists are, you know, concerned about our job and do not easily object to it, but I think that we have to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: You met with Vice President Dick Cheney?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Yes, I spoke with the six cabinet members on the Climate and Energy Task Force that the vice chairman — the Vice President was the chair of in 2001.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you tell him?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, at that time, we made clear that the climate was changing because of human-made changes in atmospheric composition and that carbon dioxide was the primary cause of that, but there were other gases also that affect it. And we tried to give an indication of the kind of scenario for the future that we’re going to need to follow if we’re going to avoid disastrous climate effects over the next several decades.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was the response?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, the response, frankly, was the withdrawal of the US from any agreements for addressing the global climate change problem. And we’ve –

AMY GOODMAN: You mean pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Yes, for example, and not — and again going more after more fossil fuels, rather than alternatives such as improved energy efficiency for future energy needs.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of some of your analysis about the road ahead out of this growing crisis, the both immediate and long term, what do you see as some of the key things that our government, as well as other governments around the world, need to do?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, the most important thing is — if you just look at how much carbon dioxide there is in the different fossil fuels, coal is the really big issue. The important step is to have a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture the carbon dioxide and sequester it. And if we would do that, that’s a good fraction of the solution. But we’re also going to have to use the other fossil fuels more conservatively. We’re going to need to emphasize energy efficiency. And eventually we have to find sources of energy that don’t produce greenhouse gases.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m just looking at a piece in the New York Times from a few days ago by Andrew Revkin that said, “Dr. Hansen “and eight co-authors have drafted a fresh paper arguing that the world has already shot past a safe eventual atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which they say would be around 350 parts per million, a level passed 20 years ago,” Andrew Revkin writes. This is controversial. “Some longtime champions of Dr. Hansen, including the Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm, see some significant gaps in the paper” — still in draft form — “and part ways with Dr. Hansen over whether such a goal is remotely feasible.”

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah. Unfortunately, Joe feels that we have to talk about what’s practical. I think we have to look at the science and tell us exactly what it — and tell the people exactly what it is pointing to. And the history of the earth tells us that even 385 parts per million is too much. And we can still go backwards. The ocean does take up carbon dioxide. If we would phase out the use of coal, except to recapture the CO2, then it is feasible to get back below 350 parts per million. But we’re going to have to put a stop on new coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture the CO2.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see that happening with any of the candidates right now, what they’re proposing?

DR. JAMES HANSEN: I think it could happen. I think — I haven’t seen either — any of the candidates say we’re going to have a moratorium on coal-fired power plants. But they’re beginning to say things to recognize the problem. So I think it’s possible, but no one has exactly stated that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I mean, it seems that in terms of the reaction of many of the candidates to the increasing crisis in terms of supply of oil is that they’re looking at either — at nuclear energy or increased coal use to sort of deal with trying to get the country more energy independent, rather than the long-term prospects of actually having more efficient use of energy and reductions in terms of our society adjusting d