In the American Bunker [A Must Must Read]

• In the American Bunker
  
  
• David Michael Green,
• CommonDreams.org
• Posted 2005-06-17 12:37:00.0
• http://tinyurl.com/adlae
  
• I saw a movie last night that was excellent. It was also awful.The film was "The Downfall", the reputedly historically accurate depiction of the end of the Third Reich, showing Hitler and his crew holed up in their Berlin bunker, awaiting their appointment with the Russian Army.It was excellent in that it portrayed this scene so vividly, and it was awful because of the scene it so vividly portrayed.In the film, we see what happened when Germany allowed an emotionally ravenous psychopath to sate the voracious demands of his personal insecurities upon the world's stage. Fifty million deaths later, here is this frustrated painter, delusional and embittered, putting the final touches on his masterpiece with a revolver and cyanide.The German people, including the children now sent out to defend the Reich literally down to the last block, are worthy only of the contempt of Hitler and the equally sick Goebbels, at his side till the end. Since they did not bring him victory and thus glory, these expendable cannon fodder who followed him into Hell, after first themselves creating it, are transformed into cowards and traitors in the warped visage of the physically and mentally deteriorating Fuhrer.The most chilling portrayal within the film is that of a handful of Kool-Aid besotted true believers, exemplified by Mrs. Goebbels, who can neither imagine nor bear the concept of life without Hitler and national socialism. She falls to her knees at Hitler's feet, sobs, and begs him not to take his own life. Not much later, of course, she murders her six children before committing suicide with her husband, so traumatized is she at the thought of a world without Nazism.As I returned from the theater I was thinking, as I often do, about what it is that inspires such mindless suspension of critical faculties, of logic and empirical analysis, and ultimately of the very self, which is entailed in nationalist fervor. What is it that compels people, by the millions, to doggedly follow those often shallowest and neediest of humans who don the mantle of leadership and take them over the cliffs of hatred and militarism, crashing into great piles of mass carnage on the beach below?In my studies of this topic, the most compelling answer I've found is that nationalism addresses a profound existential fear that many people seem to feel in the face of the seemingly meaningless and insignificant lives they lead within a vast and indifferent universe. Like religion, though less challenged during the period of modernity by contradictory scientific findings, nationalism allows its subscribers to feel that they are part of a larger and more significant story, one with a grand historical arc leading to a rendezvous with destiny, and one which brings to their lives otherwise absent meaning and purpose.All this, of course, inevitably had me thinking of America in 2005. Comparisons to Hitler and the Third Reich are nearly always - almost by definition - hyperbolic. With the partial exception of some of the exploits of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Nixon, nothing since 1945 has even come close. Such comparisons are - also, therefore, by definition - overused, as a hysterical Rick Santorum most recently demonstrated by equating Democratic attempts to retain judicial filibuster rights to Hitler's occupation of Paris.For precisely these reasons, I have resisted the use of the f-word these last years, despite believing that America has crept far more precipitously close to the edge of fascism under George Bush than the vast bulk of Americans realize. We forget that Hitler was originally brought to power by means of democratic institutions, before he then proceeded to dismantle them. We assume that a bid for fascism in American, should it come, would be delivered in one large, recognizable package, which we could all rise up to collectively defeat, rather than an incessant series of a thousand cuts, most justified by the threat of internal and external enemies and a permanent 'war on terrorism'. But the parallels are powerful, and they became all the more compelling returning from "The Downfall" to find a reprint of an amazing article (which somehow escaped me and most of the rest of America in the original) posted on the AfterDowningStreet.org website. As the Downing Street Memo's evidence of wholesale lies finally starts gaining traction in an America finally beginning to sour on the Iraq war, another piece of the puzzle is (re-)fitted into place with Russ Baker's jaw-dropping account of conversations journalist Mickey Herskowitz had with candidate Bush in 1999.I have felt from the beginnings of the Bush administration that his presidency is best understood at the level of psychology, not policy or ideology, and that the insecurities of the president himself (and, I think, to a large degree his supporters) were as palpable as they are crucial to animating his policy choices, his public persona, and his demeanor.Of course, Bush's life story gives us the initial clues and probable cause for assessing his psyche and behavior. The grandson of a US senator, the son of one of the most accomplished (to the extent cumulated titles count, at least) figures in post-war American political history, he is himself a screw-up underachiever, who drifts from clown, to cheerleader, to drunkard, to business failure, to Rove-the-ventriloquist's dummy-politician. It would be harder to imagine that young Bush would not be massively insecure under these conditions than that he would, particularly with a younger brother long seen as the rising star, and George the Bush clan failure.But you could also see it in his presidency, in some of the characteristics and occasional revealing insights unintentionally glimpsed within this tightest and most successful propaganda machine in American history. Bush's deep insecurities are there in the swagger and the macho language. They're there in the choice of sycophant advisors, in the off-message information never allowed to reach the president (he doesn't read newspapers, and he only allows pre-screened supporters at public appearances), and in the rigid, Manichean definitions of a world in which there exists only black and white, good and evil. And these insecurities are there in the language used, particularly Bush's preference for the self-reaffirming "I" he favors instead of "we", or "my administration" instead of "this administration". This represents a substantial deviation from the more humble style employed by every president in my lifetime.Another revealing example of such unintended linguistic insights can be found in the self-centered construction Bush uses to announce the invasion of Afghanistan: "Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." Then the same again, when he launches the Iraq war: "On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war."But my personal favorite among unwitting revelations of the president's powerful insecurities was always this snippet from Bob Woodward's Bush At War: "I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." To my mind, this one small and inadvertent window on Bush's psyche speaks volumes as to his precarious self-esteem, and requires little further elaboration.On top of these insights, plus those from the Paul O'Neill (Suskind) and Richard Clarke books, and from the Downing Street Memo, now comes the startling (re)revelations Herskowitz captures from his interviews for the book which would become (but only after Herskowitz, a Bush family friend before and after, was replaced by Karen Hughes because his drafts weren't flattering enough) Bush's silly and inflated autobiography, "A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House".The Baker article confirms the inferiority complex which drives this president's policies: In it, Bush admits to Herskowitz that he never fulfilled his National Guard duties during the Vietnam era, and that his business ventures were "floundering". More importantly, "Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow".It confirms that Bush had planned to invade Iraq well before 9/11, and indeed before his presidency even began: "'He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,' said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. 'It was on his mind. He said to me: "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief." And he said, "My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it." He said, "If I have a chance to invade..if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."'"This is, in retrospect, horrific stuff. But then it gets worse. Herskowitz tells Baker "Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars."According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House - ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. 'Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.'"Bush's circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: 'They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches.'"Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter's political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush's father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents - Grenada and Panama - and gained politically."Oh, and one other thing we might note. "He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake," Herskowitz said. "That was one of the keys to being a leader." At the end of "The Downfall", the real-life, now-elderly Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary upon whose recollections the film is based, talks of her horror at learning after the war about the Holocaust and Germany's other crimes, and concludes that 'We [the German people] could have known about these things and stopped them, but we didn't'.What of Americans? Are we to be the Nazis of the 21st century? The imperialist power which invades Iraq - instead of Poland - on flimsy pretexts? The purveyors of "the gulag of our time"? Or have we learned about these things and stopped them, as Junge wishes she had in her day?There are reasons for both hope and despair. Hope, because 'only' two some years into Bush's Iraq adventure, the American public is now showing clear signs of disdain for both the war and its architects. This despite the absence of a draft, war taxes, civil unrest at home, or serious coverage of the war bringing even a hint of its real human consequences into people's living rooms. And this before the Downing Street Memo and like revelations have begun to gain traction in America's political discourse about the war, showing the lies behind it.But despair, also, because this is a war which transparently should never have occurred. Hitler said "What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think". Americans, despite believing they long ago understood the dangers of totalitarianism, and despite the more recent scar of Vietnam to remind them of the consequences of leaders lying them into war, still have taken far too long to get to where they now barely are in opposing the war. And, what is worse, it seems clear that any real mass public distaste for the war reflects neither morality nor concern for others. Indeed, had the war been the cakewalk the White House evidently expected, Bush would likely be a hero amongst Americans today, emboldened to launch another 'small war', not the bum to which he is instead coming to be seen.Despair, also, because we have so little excuse, in a historically relative sense. At least Germans were hurting bad at the time of Hitler's rise to power, and can legitimately account for some of their monumental folly by reference to the desperation of their times, driven by the toxic cocktail of WWI humiliation, onerous war reparations, political chaos under the stability-averse Weimar Republic, and crushing economic depression. We Americans? We're the richest country in the world, the unchallenged superpower, and - 9/11 notwithstanding - highly secure from any real military threat on our shores. How will we answer history when it asks what was our excuse?In his New York Times review of "The Downfall", A.O. Scott writes "But of course, millions of Germans - most of them ordinary and, in their own minds, decent people - loved Hitler, and it is that fact that most urgently needs to be understood, and that most challenges our own complacency."Indeed it does. I have been shocked and awed in recent years by the desperate rigidity of many of the president's supporters in clinging to their conclusions about national and international affairs, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. I have had multiple conversations with such individuals which were abruptly truncated when solid evidence was placed on the table, as if they were simply psychologically unprepared to go where such facts inevitably led.In my judgment, these Americans have entered into a post-empirical era of policy 'analysis' and political 'discussion', a time in which politics has become for them a faith-based enterprise. They believe what they believe, and there is neither need, nor desire, nor tolerance of dissenting information or opinion.Polling data suggests to me that there is a very large core of perhaps 40 percent of the American public who fall into this category, including - most surprisingly - people like those described in Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?", for whom Bush's economic policies are particularly and personally ruinous. Whatever antidote it will take to shake this very large contingent of Americans from their Bush-induced and Limbaugh-nourished hallucinations has evidently not yet been discovered. v And, at the end of the day, there may be no such item or even catalog of items, just as there was not for Magda Goebbels. So far, at least, neither the pre-9/11 security failures of the Bush administration, the tragedy of the Iraq quagmire, the drunken-sailor spending binge of the national treasury, the wholesale exportation of jobs, the thrashing of international law, alliances, treaties and morality, nor the disgust and anger of the rest of the world at American behavior abroad appears to be sufficient.Rather, put more accurately, it is likely that the awareness of the very existence of such maladies is only dimly perceived by the bulk of these Americans. For the Bush team has well understood the central lesson of Magda's husband, the 20th century's master propagandist: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."But there is more to the story than the diabolically clever and largely successful efforts of the Bush team, and the movement of regressive politics they lead, to stifle, intimidate, ignore, end-run and replace a free press, as well as the constitutionally guaranteed rights to meaningful free assembly or redress of government.We must ask what, at a psychological level, drives the nationalist and religious imperatives - both needs, along with a passion to be led, requited in spades by the Bush presidency - haunting so much of middle America in a time of general peace and prosperity.I don't pretend to have the answer to this question. Indeed, I would be skeptical that there even exists a single answer to the question.But if I had to hazard a guess, my intuition suggests to me that we may now be paying the price for the human commodification and atomization that has been a product of the hyper-capitalism which has proliferated here in recent decades.During this period, the incredibly rich have gotten incredibly richer, while the basic web of economic security which once provided a safety net to middle-class Americans is being systematically dismantled from every angle, whether that takes the form of good jobs being automated or leaving the country, college tuition becoming prohibitive in cost, private healthcare and pension plans retracting or disappearing, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs under assault and retrenching, tightening of the bankruptcy noose, the decaying of organized labor's bargaining power, and/or stagnant wages matched by rising costs and skyrocketing personal debt.Anyway you slice it, the message of the cosmos is quite clear to those spiritually underprivileged bipeds inhabiting this bit of planet Earth at the rise of the third millennium: "You're on your own, pal!". If there's a better recipe for existential angst, I'm hard pressed to imagine it. And if there's a better way to drive people, during a time of relative peace and prosperity, into a feverishly-maintained, logically-unsustainable, but nevertheless emotionally-satisfying politics, I can't think of that either.Is this too simple a solution to the puzzle of what lurks in the American heart, circa 2005? Probably.But this much I think we can say, for sure. Progressivism will never again succeed in America until we begin to understand Americans at the level of their psychological functions, and start addressing not just their rational, material and moral needs, but their deeper emotional requisites, as well.Bush, and his movement of the American bunker, understand this well. Indeed, they must, for they cannot deliver at any other level, and they can only pretend to even deliver at the emotional level by creating conditions of heightened fear and focused rage which barely cover their myriad policy failures. Troubled by your slipping standard of living? Forget that. Homosexuals now want to legally marry each other! But Bush is more than a successful politician able to be skillfully marketed, like so many detergent flakes, by the evil Dr. Rove. He is certainly all that, but he is also, regrettably, a mirror reflecting the troubled psyche of the American superpower, and a window into its anxious, selfish and fearful soul. Progressives must find ways to speak this same language of emotion and soul, but not falsely, and not for ill, but instead to better our country and our world. It can be done.Finally, a program note.Somewhere in America, on the highest perches of a tall mountain, a small rock has begun its descent, bringing others down with it. This rock was loosed by the release of a secret memo far across the Atlantic, but its path has been prepared by years of political deceit, arrogance, and aggression at home and abroad. The avalanche it has precipitated is at this moment gaining mass and velocity at a fast-growing rate. Its ultimate destination is Pennsylvania Avenue, in the American capital, though it remains unclear whether it possesses sufficient energy to carry that far.While the vast bulk of Americans haven't yet a clue of what lurks on the horizon (because their media persists in not telling them), there is in fact more than a whiff of regime change in the air as a potential Washington Spring of our time gains momentum.Consider. On Memorial Day, a major metropolitan newspaper called the US president a liar who has abused his most sacred trust as commander in chief. No, it wasn't Le Monde or The Guardian. It was the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, crying out from the American Heartland. Then, yesterday, from next door in Wisconsin, came passage of a resolution at the state Democratic Party convention, calling on Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against America's president, vice-president and secretary of defense. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of major newspapers across the country are editorializing angrily on the Downing Street Memo, even while their front pages so far remain bizarrely and unaccountably (in both senses of the word) silent.Before the war, Bush once dropped in on Condoleezza Rice's office and said to three startled senators visiting there, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out." But it now appears at least as likely that the opposite will be true. Saddam may well be returning the favor. It is no longer inconceivable or even broadly improbable that the Bush junta will fall, and that America and the world will breathe free once again. This may be particularly likely after a new Congress is seated in January 2007, with quite possibly a substantially different complexion from the current one, and also quite possibly Nancy Pelosi, rather than Dennis Hastert, as third in line of presidential succession.All of which makes the hearts of progressives leap with a joy they've not felt for a very long time. But, given what has been discussed above, we would do well to also consider the dangers inherent in our looming possible success. If nothing else, the last decade has taught us that the regressive right will do anything to obtain and retain power, whether that means stealing elections, judicial coups, impeachment for minor personal offenses, rewriting centuries-old Senate rules, or smearing war heroes like Max Cleland or the Johns, Kerry and McCain.Given such a pattern, this also makes it not unlikely that a congressionally unseated Bush and Cheney might simply decide not to go, plunging the republic into the second worst constitutional crisis in its history. Meanwhile, egged on by the Fox/Limbaugh/et al. propaganda circuit, the forty percent of Americans described above might line-up behind the president-cum-dictator accordingly, no doubt convinced that impeachment was illegitimate partisan revenge for Clinton.Now is not yet the moment to get too explicitly engrossed in the details of what may yet turn out to be a far-flung and wildly improbable scenario. And yet, which part of the formulation so far seems patently ridiculous? The chicken-hawk Bush (so anxious to send, so careful not to be sent) is caught lying to the American public about the bloodbath into which he's plunged the country's youth, and they therefore angrily demand his scalp? Especially after Congress changes hands because of a landslide anti-Republican vote in 2006?Or an entrenched, power-obsessed administration, backed by the rude screeches of right-wing media and the enraged forty percent of the American public they've mobilized, refusing to yield the keys to the government?So, what then? While I wouldn't bet on this scenario (yet), neither does it strike me as wildly improbable. It is therefore not too early to consider how such a political drama might then play out, and what assets each side might bring to the conflict.Generally, which way the military goes is determinative in civil contests of this sort. And, generally, the American military is certainly not known for its progressive political tendencies. However, the leadership may decide that duty, honor and country require that they place the Constitution over and above ideological commitments. Or, given what we now know about the Air Force Academy, they may not. On the other hand, we may also entertain the hope that increasing numbers of military personnel will recognize that the Vietnam War-avoider Bush has been a complete disaster for America's over-strained volunteer military.We must, in short, think strategically and long-term if we are to have a hope of rescuing this country from its present peril. At a minimum, it would be wise for progressives to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam-era protest in attacking the soldiers who are sometimes every bit as much the victims of this war as are Iraqi civilians. More broadly, if we are to avoid a complete constitutional meltdown, we progressives may wish to start building bridges today to key constituencies which will prove crucial in eventualities like those described above.Conditions look better in America today than they have for a long and dark time now. Still, there is much work to be done to survive the disaster of the radical right's capture of American government. Not only the nightmare of these last years, but also its unraveling, will prove to be very dangerous waters to navigate.
• David Michael Green (pscdmg@hofstra.edu) is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.

In these times, do as ancient Romans did -- and survive. Negotiate with foes, slash commitments

• In these times, do as ancient Romans did -- and survive Negotiate with foes, slash commitments
• John Arquilla
• Sunday, June 12, 2005
  
• http://tinyurl.com/8n48p
• It isn't easy being great. Just look at ancient Rome, the most successful empire the world has ever seen, thanks to its superb military.
  But the idea of an orderly Pax Romana is an historical fiction. For at the height of its power, Rome still engaged in almost constant warfare. Even the peace-loving philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius spent most of his time fighting against tribal raiders and outbreaks of terror on the frontiers. His "Meditations'' were almost all written in camp.
  Sound a bit like our own situation?
  Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has been the world's sole superpower, a military colossus whose capabilities far outmatch those of any other nation. Yet our dominant sense is one of siege rather than celebration, as a seemingly endless stream of enemies has emerged to imperil American security and prosperity.
  Perceived threats haven't come just from terrorists. Even during the decade before Sept. 11, 2001, what might be called our "national security holiday," we saw reason to fight in Iraq and Somalia, occupied Haiti, and sought to bomb the Serbs into submission on two separate occasions.
  The attacks on America in 2001 simply drove the point home that a new era of perpetual warfare was now underway. So, like the ancient Romans before us, we feel compelled to man the ramparts all over our vast sphere of influence in an effort to keep the barbarians outside the gates.
  Today, our latter-day legions fight terrorists across a broad swath of the Muslim world, from remote sites in the Sahara to the Horn of Africa, on through Iraq and Afghanistan, then to Southeast Asia. Our legions also shore up the security of Taiwan and South Korea, and must always be ready for other contingencies that may arise abruptly at any time or place.
  In particular, our military prepares for the possibility that force may have to be used against any country that tries to build nuclear weapons -- handy for threatening neighbors or sending along to terrorists.
  Our vigilance is very costly. The tab for our intervention in Iraq has already hit $300 billion, and rises about an additional $1 billion each week. Our overall military spending exceeds $1.25 billion per day. And it's likely that costs will continue to soar. Even an aggressive base closure policy at home will result in only minuscule savings as a percentage of the total budget.
  In the meantime, what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls our "forward leaning" strategic policy -- putting constant, increasing pressure on America's adversaries -- appears to be driving others into more stubborn opposition to us.
  Neither North Korea nor Iran seems to have been "scared straight." Indeed, each probably sees acquisition of a small nuclear arsenal as the only way to withstand America's coercive diplomacy, now and in the future.
  With 17 brigades tied down in Iraq, on top of our other commitments, we are in a sea of troubles. If war erupted on the Korean peninsula as a result of the nuclear brinkmanship crisis, it would be very hard for the U.S. military to send reinforcements anytime soon. Senior Pentagon officials confirmed this recently, in their own elliptical Newspeak, noting that if another war broke out now we could only count on "winning less quickly."
  Take matters a few steps further: Add a military crisis with China over the fate of Taiwan. Or factor in the return of Russia as an enemy, perhaps in opposition to the expansion of American influence among the former Soviet republics that lie in an arc around mother Russia from Eastern Europe to central Asia.
  We are completely over-stretched right now just trying to cope with minor powers. If the major players ever get back into the "great game," we shall quickly see that our global pre-eminence was a will-o'-the-wisp.
  What is to be done?
  President Bush has opted, like a good Texan, to keep moving forward. In his second inaugural address, he articulated what amounts to a kinder, gentler version of regime change: spreading democracy all over the globe. And by keeping Rumsfeld at Defense he signaled his support for the true transformation of the U.S. military into a nimbler force capable of dealing with all contingencies in much more focused ways.
  But it is hard to be consistent about which countries must become democratic, as many of our key economic and military allies are authoritarians whom we nevertheless want to keep in power. Especially in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. As to the other dictators among the world's 103 countries that are either not free or only partially free, we can count on Bush's policy to make new enemies of many of them.
  With regard to transforming the military, we are now in the fourth year after Sept. 11 and our armed services still look much as they did before the terror war began. How different this is from four years after Pearl Harbor in 1941. By the end of World War II in 1945, our military had been completely transformed and had vanquished all enemies.
  The major difference now is that the U.S. military is the world's largest bureaucracy, and has proven highly resistant to change. So as we create more enemies, the military is unlikely to save us. Pentagon leadership has both the political clout and the sheer inertia to remain in stasis for years to come.
  We'd better come up with some other strategic options. In doing so, it may prove useful to recall how Rome, the greatest power of the past, coped with major threats.
  Our own situation looks much like Rome's when the Empire was at its zenith in the second century. Rome then had no major enemies, but was beset by constant threats and warfare on the edges of its vast imperium.
  At the political level, Rome sought not to alienate but to attract. It cultivated allies to share burdens, negotiated with enemies, and embraced their cultures. The 18th century historian Edward Gibbon slyly noted the Romans' intellectual suppleness in assessing all religions to be "equally true, equally false, equally useful."
  Militarily, Rome's strategy was to cap the empire's commitments. With an ocean to the west, trackless deserts on the south and wide mountain ranges on the east, only the north was wide open. But instead of trying to keep on conquering in that direction, the Romans simply walled off Scotland, then drew lines at the Danube and Rhine rivers and secured the banks with forts and patrol flotillas. The system worked for centuries.
  When Rome finally fell in 476, it was due to the failure to transform the legions from infantry to mounted forces capable of countering the nomadic horse archers who eventually brought down the Western Empire.
  In the eastern half, though, the Byzantines did rebuild their military with heavy cavalry, and Constantinople outlived Rome by a thousand years. Not a bad payoff.
  Can we now do as the Romans did? Of course we can, but we'll have to start by behaving as pragmatically as the Romans did. If we muffled our rhetoric about spreading democracy, the world would breathe a huge sigh of relief. If we focused on diplomacy and deterrence in dealing with Iran and North Korea, we could avoid war with them. Our willingness to withdraw from Iraq would be a powerful signal to the Muslim world that we do not seek a clash of civilizations.
  There's no way to avoid all military commitments. The demilitarized zone between the two Koreas is the modern counterpart to Hadrian's Wall. Our navy must secure the Taiwan Strait and other critical sea passages, much as Roman flotillas once patrolled the Rhine, the Danube and the Mediterranean Sea. Even our continuing hunt for terrorists carries echoes of the occasional Roman forays outside the empire to root out bandit havens.
  These are all clear-cut tasks that can be undertaken at reasonable cost. If we limit ourselves to them, rather than try to manage an essentially ungovernable world, we may be able to enjoy a Pax Americana even longer than ancient Rome's peace. If we keep pushing aggressively forward, however, we are bound to fail at ruinous cost. The choice is ours.
  
• John Arquilla is professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. His views do not represent official Department of Defense policy.
• Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
  
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Sacrificing Herself for Her Cause

"The Lady"

• "SUPPORTING THOSE WHO SEEK 'FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY' THROUGH PEACEFUL METHODS, BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, and NOT BOMBS, WILL BRING FREEDOM TO THE OPPRESSED!![JS]"
• Sacrificing Herself for Her Cause
  
• Myanmar's freedom fighter lives in forced isolation, refusing to yield. Her nation, ruled by a junta, suffers nearly the same fate.
• By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer
• http://tinyurl.com/868jr

• YANGON, Myanmar — She is known simply as The Lady. She lives in isolation in her old family home on a quiet lake in the northern part of the city. Armed guards make sure she doesn't leave. Her only known visitor is the doctor who checks on her monthly. She is said to spend her time meditating and reading.The world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi has spent nearly 10 of the last 16 years under house arrest or behind bars. There is no sign that Myanmar's brutal military regime plans to free her any time soon.
  Sunday, the devout Buddhist, who received the prize in 1991 for her nonviolent struggle for democracy in Myanmar, will turn 60. Supporters around the globe will hold protests and concerts in more than a dozen cities, but no public celebration is planned here for fear of government retribution.Myanmar, formerly called Burma, has been under military rule since a coup d'etat in 1962. In 1988, amid violent protests, the army massacred thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in the capital Rangoon, now called Yangon, and other cities, leading to another coup.The new military leaders held national assembly elections in 1990 in which the National League for Democracy, which Suu Kyi helped found, won 82% of the seats. But the junta refused to hand over power. A committee of generals has run the country ever since.The United States and other nations imposed economic and political sanctions aimed at securing Suu Kyi's freedom. But they have helped cripple the economy, and the dictatorship headed by Sr. Gen. Than Shwe remains firmly in command. Once one of the wealthiest nations in Southeast Asia, Myanmar is now one of the poorest.The country is mostly isolated from the outside world. There are none of the McDonald's, Starbucks or KFC outlets here that have become ubiquitous in Southeast Asian cities. Instead, workers crowd into dilapidated buses carrying shiny, metal cylinder lunch boxes with separate trays for their rice, curry and vegetables. Women commonly walk down the streets of central Yangon carrying goods on their heads.Secret police and a network of informers watch over the populace. Listening to overseas radio broadcasts or watching foreign shows on satellite television can result in seven years in prison. Foreign journalists are rarely allowed to visit. Dissidents are arrested in the middle of the night and vanish into the prison system. There are more than 1,300 political detainees, rights groups say, including other leaders of Suu Kyi's party. Members of the public interviewed for this article asked not to be identified out of fear for their safety.Around the world, Suu Kyi (pronounced Sue Chee) is celebrated for her advocacy of nonviolence to achieve democracy. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday that instead of being under house arrest, she should be "out amongst the people and her supporters, pushing for stability and … democratization of her society."Rock musicians, including Paul McCartney, U2 and Pearl Jam, have dedicated songs to her. In a concert Sunday in Ireland, REM plans to perform a song for her that will be beamed into Myanmar by satellite even though it will be illegal to watch it. On Friday, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo) tried to deliver 6,000 birthday cards for Suu Kyi at the Myanmar Embassy in Washington. No one accepted them. Those who know Suu Kyi describe her as charming, brilliant and idealistic. Slender and graceful, she dresses in traditional Burmese attire and often wears a flower in her hair. The daughter of beloved independence leader Aung San, she is widely admired for her principled stand and self-sacrifice. Suu Kyi believes the military should honor the results of the 1990 election and transfer power to the National League for Democracy, which she heads as general secretary. She has repeatedly demanded the release of political prisoners, including leaders of her party.Although she projects a sense of calm, she can be exacting and formidable. "This is a very tough lady," said a Western diplomat who has met with her numerous times. "She is very focused. She is willing to put up with a lot to defend the principles that she sees as important. Compromise is not necessarily a term she is comfortable with."Some diplomats in Yangon suggest she might have done more when she was free to bring about dialogue with the regime and work out a power-sharing agreement, as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa."The moral high ground is the place where she feels most comfortable," another diplomat said. "She has an idealistic view of the world. I don't think she has been prepared to make some slightly dirty compromises to move the situation forward."Yet it's unclear whether anyone inside the country could persuade the regime to make compromises.In October, Than Shwe ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Gen. Khin Nyunt, who had proposed a "road map" to democracy. The general, who ranked third in the ruling committee and served as chief of military intelligence, was charged with corruption. His two sons, 38 of his subordinates and his fortuneteller have been sent to prison.Earlier, Than Shwe imprisoned the family of former ruler Ne Win for allegedly plotting a coup. Sanda Win, the late general's influential daughter, is under house arrest across the lake from Suu Kyi. Human rights groups cite a long list of the regime's alleged abuses: killing some political opponents and imprisoning and torturing others without trial, raping and killing women in conflict zones, enslaving people and forcing them to build roads and work in the fields. The army has conscripted 70,000 child soldiers, more than any other nation, critics say, and grows the most opium after Afghanistan.In 2003, during her last period of freedom, Suu Kyi traveled in northern Myanmar, where large numbers of people gathered to see her. At one stop, she climbed atop a firetruck to face down police and firefighters who planned to turn water hoses on the crowd.Later, government-backed thugs armed with clubs and sharpened bamboo sticks attacked her motorcade outside the village of Dipeyin. Some believe the assault was an assassination attempt.Suu Kyi's bodyguards and supporters fended off the attackers and saved her by shielding her with their bodies. The government says four people died in the attack; the opposition says the toll may have reached 200. Suu Kyi suffered minor injuries. Soon after, the regime arrested the charismatic leader for the third time, saying it was for her own protection.While Suu Kyi has gained global fame, the dictatorship that locked her up remains something of a mystery. Than Shwe, 74, who assumed power at the head of a military committee in 1992, prefers to rule from behind the scenes. The junta, previously called the State Law and Order Restoration Council, is now known by the equally Orwellian State Peace and Development Committee.The general rose to power through the army psychological warfare unit and is reported to love Chinese kung fu movies. He is said to believe in numerology, popular in Myanmar, and rely on his fortuneteller for advice. The regime promotes the concept of "disciplined democracy," in which the army safeguards the rights of the people and is entitled to a prominent role in government. The regime says it cannot hand power to a civilian administration until it completes its new constitution, now 14 years in the making.In a country where women are subordinate and respect for elders is paramount, the generals find it especially irritating to be told what to do by the likes of Suu Kyi, diplomats say. "The officials say she is conceited and condescending because she is so principled and outspoken," said a Western diplomat. "She will say things that senior generals in Burma usually don't hear. There is a fair amount of personal animosity towards her on the part of some of the generals."Suu Kyi herself is a general's daughter. Her father was assassinated in 1947 at the age of 32. Suu Kyi was 2.Even as a child, Suu Kyi displayed remarkable determination. She overcame her fear of the dark, she once said, by forcing herself to walk around in the middle of the night.Her mother, Khin Kyi, was appointed ambassador to India and Suu Kyi attended Catholic high school and college in New Delhi. There she was greatly influenced by the nonviolent philosophy of independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi.She went on to Oxford University in Britain, where she met and later married Michael Aris, an expert on Tibet. They had two sons and lived a life far removed from the repression of her homeland. She returned to Myanmar in 1988 to nurse her ailing mother and found herself in the midst of an upheaval. With the economy in a shambles, longtime ruler Ne Win stepped down and demonstrators took to the streets demanding democracy.In August, troops opened fire on demonstrators in cities across the country. Many of the bodies were dumped in rivers or disappeared. No one knows how many protesters were killed but some estimate at least 3,000. The massacre is remembered by its date: 8/8/88.Eighteen days later, Suu Kyi spoke at the golden Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon's most important landmark; 100,000 people came to hear Aung San's daughter. She called the fight for democracy the second struggle for national independence, and her speech propelled her to the forefront of the movement. The military regime placed her under house arrest in 1989 without charges or trial. Even so, her party swept the elections the following year, stunning the generals, who had expected pro-military parties to win.Suu Kyi was freed in 1995 and invited to leave the country, but she refused, knowing she would not be allowed to return. She understood she was being forced to choose between her family and her country. A longtime friend says she told her husband, "Consider me dead."She last saw Aris in 1996, when he was allowed to visit. As he was dying of cancer in 1999, the regime refused to let him enter the country in the hope that she would leave to see him. The U.S. imposed sanctions on Myanmar in 1991, but China, India, Thailand and Singapore continue to do business here.Teachers are paid the equivalent of $8 a month. Doctors are paid $15."It's not changing the regime," a Yangon intellectual said. "It's just making life difficult for people."Officially, one in three children suffers from malnutrition; the real number may be much higher, putting the country on par with some of the most destitute nations in Africa. HIV is rampant."It's a desperate situation, and people are dying," said one international aid official who questions whether sanctions are doing any good. "The people are beautiful and kind. It's heartbreaking to see them suffer the way they do, especially the children."Myanmar's isolation from the West has kept the country in a kind of time warp where many traditions remain intact. Most men wear a longyi, a sarong-like garment that reaches nearly to the ankles. Women and children wear a striking yellow sunscreen that is made from the bark of the thanaka tree. Women spread thanaka on their cheeks in circles, rectangles or swirls, sometimes to stunning effect.In central Yangon, life spills onto the streets. Families set up little kitchens in the roadway. Women sit in busy avenues selling vegetables. On the sidewalks, craftsmen make signs and mend clothes or umbrellas. Some shopkeepers run generators on the sidewalk to cope with power outages. Others set up small tables with telephones, charging 10 cents a call. Children claiming to be orphans beg for money.Corruption has reportedly invaded nearly every aspect of commerce.At the post office, people mailing a letter tip the clerk so she will mark the stamp instead of peeling it off and selling it. At hospitals, patients pay orderlies so they can see a doctor. "Even if blood is pumping from your artery, unless you tip the gurney operator, you will die on the stretcher," a diplomat said. More overtly, the regime maintains control through countless restrictions. Anyone who allows guests to stay overnight must report their names to the police.Access to Internet sites is limited and e-mail is delayed so government minders have time to read it. There are few cellphones, and foreign publications are censored.Some people get around it, including Internet users who have become expert at accessing restricted websites. Others listen to the BBC and Voice of America on radio despite the ban. Illegal satellite dishes have sprouted from rooftops, allowing millions to watch overseas broadcasts.Security in Yangon has been tighter than ever since May 7, when bombs exploded minutes apart at two shopping malls and a trade show. By official count, 23 people were killed and more than 160 were injured. The government has blamed the blasts on pro-democracy activists, the CIA and the Thai government. No suspects have been arrested.Perhaps because of the Buddhist tradition of patience, or perhaps because resistance seems futile, the people of Myanmar wait quietly, work to feed their families and wish for the regime to collapse. Some hope reincarnation will free them from their hardships. "In my next life," said a 47-year-old worker, "I want to come back in another country." After Suu Kyi's arrest in 2003, there was talk of a compromise that might lead to her release. But since the arrest of Khin Nyunt, the most Westernized of the generals, there has been no negotiation. The last time a United Nations envoy visited Suu Kyi was 15 months ago. The leaders of her political party, many of them retired generals from her father's era, plan to mark her 60th birthday by making large donations of food to Buddhist monasteries.If Suu Kyi sticks to her regimen, she will rise early on her birthday to meditate. She might spend time with the two maids who live in the house and look after her. She is unlikely to have any chocolate, which she loves, or play the piano, which is said to be broken. As always, anyone who approaches Suu Kyi's house will be stopped at police checkpoints, and army photographers will take their pictures before sending them away or arresting them.But if her experience in detention is any guide, Suu Kyi will spend the day with the sense of celebration that comes from standing up for what she believes is right."You know, I always felt free," she said in a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times after her first six years in detention."I felt free when I was under house arrest because it was my choice. I chose to do what I'm doing and because of that I found peace within myself. And I suppose that is what freedom is all about."
• "THE ARMY THAT CAN DEFEAT TERRORISM doesn't wear uniforms, or drive Humvees, or call in airstrikes. It doesn't have a high command, or high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts sweatshops and special interests. Where people feel powerless, it helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it reminds them of their responsibility."Author Unknown

June 16th Rally Statements, After 'Downing Street' Congressional Hearing

• June 16 Rally Statement by Mike Ferner
  
• Member Veterans For Peace
  
• Working as a Navy Corpsman during the Vietnam War, I took care of hundreds of young men who came home minus their arms and legs and sight and sanity. Unlike the fortunate sons who became today’s powerful elite, working class kids of that generation were not able to claim “other priorities” to keep them out of the meat grinder. Many learned too late how to quit being good soldiers. So if my words today, spoken as young men and women die again for empire, sound a little sharp, I hope you will understand. Not long after the last election, you may recall a reporter asking quintessential fortunate son, George W. Bush, about accountability for the disaster in Iraq. The presidential reply, in that smarmy, lipless smirk was, “We just had an accountability moment. It was called the election.” In a growing number of cities across the nation, Veterans For Peace chapters are creating and displaying mini Arlington Cemeteries – neat rows of white crosses or tombstones – one for each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. Together with our local peace group, my wife and I worked on “Arlington at Toledo,” painting about 300 tombstones in our kitchen. A few Saturdays ago, we started putting labels on them with the name, rank, and age of each G.I. killed. As we sat on our living room floor, surrounded by stacks of tombstones representing so many young men and women, we listened to an old Dire Straits album. The track titled, “Brothers in Arms” came on with these telling lines: “Every man has to die/But it’s written in the starlight/And in every line on your palm/We’re fools to make war on our brothers in arms.”Sue looked at the tombstone she was labeling with a 19 year-old’s Private’s name and dissolved into sobs crying, “He was someone’s baby…”We are here today to lift up the work of the congressional patriots who participated in Congressman Conyers’ hearing on the Downing Street minutes. We are here to congratulate and expand the work of the AfterDowningStreet.org Coalition as it publicizes the truth about this administration’s invasion of Iraq. We are here today to tell George W. Bush and his gang of criminals that their day of accountability for slaughtering someone’s baby – Iraqi or American – is yet to come!Veterans For Peace is part of the AfterDowningStreet.org Coalition because we agree that the truth must be exposed and publicized. We agree that the logical next step is for the House of Representatives to consider a Resolution of Inquiry into possible impeachable offenses. We believe that these are important steps; important but only preliminary. That’s why, on the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Veterans For Peace sent a letter to every member of the U.S. House and Senate demanding that George W. Bush be impeached!VFP is calling for Bush’s impeachment because – and this is important to understand – Article VI, par. 2 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that when the Senate adopts an international treaty it becomes part of the supreme law of the land, the same as an Act of Congress. This means that as Bush daily violates treaties and international laws he simultaneously violates federal law.We are calling for George Bush’s impeachment for violating treaties such as the Nuremberg Principles, thereby committing what are clearly defined as “crimes against peace…crimes against humanity…and war crimes.”…for initiating and continuing to this day what the U.N. Charter – also legally binding on the U.S. – defines as a war of aggression……for clearly and specifically violating the Geneva Conventions – also legally binding on the U.S. regardless of what Mr. Bush says about them – by torturing and killing prisoners, purposely targeting civilians, preventing delivery of medical relief…ALL of which are violations of the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996.Veterans For Peace is calling for impeachment because it our responsibility as citizens to do so. The words of a village sheik I spoke with in Iraq last year haunt me every day. Even as he assured me that he recognized the difference between the government and the people of the United States, he asked, “But you say you live in a democracy. How can this be happening to us?”It is not only our responsibility as citizens, but as a Veterans For Peace member put it, it is our sworn duty to uphold the Constitution and impeach this criminal president. As citizens of this nation, every one of us is complicit in Bush’s crimes. By virtue of that complicity, we are compelled by law, by morality, by history to do everything in our power to stop this war of aggression and these crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Tribunals following World War II did not look favorably upon the first nation the world determined had waged a war of aggression, nor its “good citizens” who obeyed their government. And bear in mind, the U.S. judge who presided over those tribunals made unmistakably clear that its decisions applied not just to Nazi Germany, but to every nation on Earth from that point on. If we refuse to be silenced and frightened by the high-class thugs across Pennsylvania Avenue; if we stop being stereotypically good soldiers and “good Americans;” if we do what history demands in this critical hour, we can get our troops home now. We can put an end to the suffering and the war crimes. We can begin to absolve our complicity. And we can give George Bush an “accountability moment” that he will never forget!
  
• June 16 Rally Statement by Stephen Cleghorn
  
• Member Military Families Speak Out
  
• Before this war began, with John Bonifaz as our able attorney, I was proud to join with four soldiers, other parents of soldiers, Congressman Conyers and other Congresspersons in a law suit against the President. We tried to void the blank check for war that the majority of Congress had shamefully given President Bush in October, 2002. We knew at the time that the evidence was being fixed, and we hoped that forcing the issue back to Congress for a declaration of war – as called for in our Constitution – would allow the facts to emerge that Iraq was no threat to our nation’s security. Sadly that was not meant to be as the courts, the press and Congress failed us in a time of national fear. Military Families Speak Out is comprised of over 2,200 military families in every state who have loved ones on active duty with the United States Armed Forces. Many have been to Iraq, some for more than one tour. Sixty of our member families have suffered the wrenching agony of losing their loved one to this damnable war based on lies. We are not anti-military. We get up every day and think about what we can do to support our loved ones, support our troops. Every day the answer is the same: “Bring them home now!” End this damnable war. My stepson John is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army. He was awarded the Bronze Star for exemplary service during the 15 months he spent in Kuwait and Iraq. Thankfully he is home, for now, and safe. Because he is a career military officer, he did his duty in a war to which the Commander in Chief ordered him, even though he believed the cause of war had not been established. Once he was there, he worked tirelessly to protect his soldiers. I honor him for that. As much as we hate this war, we love our soldiers. I am the son of a career military officer. My dad also detests this war, yet he and my stepson share a love for the men and women with whom they have served in the Army. Our soldiers dedicate themselves to protecting our country on the trust that they will be led by just and responsible leaders. Our soldiers are willing to go into harm’s way, if necessary, but instead they have been thrust into an unnecessary war in Iraq and turned into harm’s ministers. The President abused my son’s dedication to protecting his country. He abused John’s military service by thrusting him into a war of choice, not necessity, that we know was planned by “fixing” the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to make the President’s grudge match with Saddam Hussein possible and to prepare Iraq for American oil extraction. We are now into the third year of a war that has killed 1,709 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians; and a war that has included – among others – the shameful war crimes of Abu Ghraib and the killing of innocent civilians in their homes in Fallujah.There is nothing more serious than sending men and women to kill and to die on a pack of lies. Fabricating the case for war is a “high crime” far more serious than having sex with an intern or even abusing government institutions to cover up your tracks as Nixon did after the Watergate break-in.Let me end by saying that today is a hard day in a long line of hard days. Imagine being a military family and wanting nothing more than to have a good reason for your loved one’s sacrifice, only to find that there was no just cause of war. How hard would it be to take in that information? Or imagine being one of our mothers who discovers that her son was killed while searching for weapons of mass destruction, and coming to know that the President who sent him on that search knew damn well there were no such weapons to be found. We understand why so many of our military families must for the life of them cling to some hope that this war was just, yet we know just as surely that it is not. So please be kind to our military families who say they support this war that killed their loved one. All we can do then is wake up every day and do what we can to end this tragedy. So I am proud to speak for military families and to stand once again with Congressman Conyers and his colleagues to deliver this letter to the White House with one-half million people seeking the truth. We honor those who have died and we honor the Constitution they swore to defend by appealing to the public and press to demand a full accounting of why we are in Iraq, and we support our troops by saying – bring them home now!
  
• June 16 Rally Statement
• by Kevin Zeese
  
• He told Americans there were unmanned Iraqi aircraft that could drop bombs over our cities. His own intelligence agencies told him this was inaccurate. He tied Saddam to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden – there was no evidence of that. He talked about Saddam being able to launch a strike on the United States in 45 minutes – there was no evidence for this. He talked about the potential of a mushroom cloud over the United States – a nuclear attack by Saddam – there was no evidence for this. He used fear mongering tactics to scare people into supporting an unnecessary war. President Bush did not lie to us once, he did not lie to us twice – he lied, and lied, and lied and lied – for month after month. Because he and his minions repeated the lies so often many in the Congress and the media were fooled by their drumbeat of war lies and as a result the American people were fooled – thousands of Americans were led to death or serious injury and more than 100,000 Iraqis were killed.The Downing Street Memos talk about the Administration “fixing the intelligence.” In fact, not only were they fixing the intelligence – they were manipulating it, misusing it, making statements that contradicted it. Lying about it.The truth was that as bad a dictator as Saddam was – and he was bad – he was no threat to anyone in the United States or any of the countries that surround Iraq. We had daily aircraft surveillance over most of Iraq. We were able to bomb at will. Iraq was weakened by economic sanctions. UN inspectors were searching the country even presidential palaces. Iraq had a dilapidated army. Saddam was an unpopular leader who controlled by fear – his country would not fight for him.All this was obvious and true before we invaded Iraq. But Bush's lies hid the truth – clouded U.S. thinking – and led us into an illegal, unjustified war that has turned into a worsening quagmire that makes the United States less safe, less secure and less respected around the world.What are we going to do about it?We are going to hold the president accountable. We are going to get the truth out. He cannot be allowed to lie repeatedly to the American people and send more than 1,700 soldiers to death, 20,000 with life changing serious injuries, kill more than 100,000 Iraqis and destroy many cities and towns in Iraq leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. The President is not above the law. He is subject to the law like any other American. His manipulation of intelligence and lies to go to war are obvious impeachable offenses. We need Congress to take action. We need the opposition party to truly oppose the President and introduce a Resolution of Inquiry – demand that the first step toward impeachment be taken. The truth cannot speak for itself. It needs a spokesperson – a messenger. You, all here today, the bloggers and webmasters who write about this and the hundreds of thousands who signed Congressman Conyers petition are the messengers of truth. If we all speak the truth it will be heard. It is being heard despite a corporate news blackout. If we demand that our elected officials speak the truth – is that too much to ask – if we demand they speak the truth, the truth will be heard. That is our task – it sounds simple enough – make sure the truth is heard so the big ball of lies can be untangled.The truth will come out. And as it does the president's credibility will diminish. The anchor of his lies to go to war will pull him down. It will pull down support for this war. When he speaks people will wonder – is he lying to us again? He will be diminished and the war – already unpopular with nearly 60% of Americans saying it is time for US troops to come home – will become less popular. And, the war will end – our troops will come home.Already – not just a majority but a landslide majority is opposing this war. It cuts across political party lines – Greens have been advocating against the war and for impeachment, as have Libertarians, Democrats and now some Republicans. This is an unpopular war and this will become an unpopular president.Already Republicans are calling for an end to the war and realize they were misled – Rep. Walter Jones – known for renaming the Congresses French Fries “Freedom Fries” – has called for withdrawal and acknowledged he was misled on the House Floor. More and more Republicans will face the truth as more information comes out. Then they will have to make a choice – do they cover-up for a lame duck president who deceived them and the American people on the most important issue faced by a president – sending troops to war – or do they side with the truth and join us as messengers for truth.And the evidence will compound. What will intelligence officials, Colin Powell and others in the administration or formerly in the administration say under oath? What kind of email, memorandums and other documents will come out when they are subpoenaed? The truth is there – it just needs to be set free. Just as lies led us into this war – the uncovering of lies and speaking the truth will get us out of this war.
• These Statements Can Be Found At: www.afterdowningstreet.org

A WebSite With A Call For 'Help' For Many Of Our Military Personal

Justice For All

• People Rights Organization of America
• http://tinyurl.com/akjyz

• People Rights Organization of America
  
  
• Justice for ALL...
  
• We believe that rights in America should not be selective. There is at least one subset of Americans who have much less access to civil rights than the rest of us... the American soldier. Our purpose is to call attention to soldiers and others who need help to exercise those rights. In one case, a daughter was forced to fight in the Iraq war even though she had re-developed severe scoliosis that had been corrected when she was a child, and was pronounced "undeployable" by two Army doctors before deployment. In another, a fiancé was forced back into service after eight years of being out of the reserves. He was sent to Iraq even though he has high blood pressure. In yet another case, a veteran of 25 years was sent to Iraq too soon after a hysterectomy. After a few weeks, she had to be flown out on an emergency basis, and ended up in Walter Reed hospital. Now she has more physical problems since she was not initally allowed to heal properly.
  It has come to our attention that these cases are by no means isolated. Many commanders are pressured to put "boots on the ground", it does not matter very much what condition the soldier in those boots are in.
  Several soldiers and their family members have contacted us. The number is growing, but very few wish to speak publicly because of fear of retaliation. CAN YOU BLAME THEM? It is up to us to call attention to this problem, and to speak for them here.
  Many American citizens are very happy to sweep this problem under the rug. Some are verbally abusive over it. We will not deal with them on this site. Our purpose is not to fight with them, our purpose is to call attention to the plight of our soldiers and many others.
• http://tinyurl.com/akjyz

Nail It To The White House Door

Nail It to the White House Door

• By William Rivers Pitt
• t r u t h o u t Perspective
• http://tinyurl.com/by6hy
  
• Wednesday 15 June 2005
  
• Almost five hundred years ago, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, initiating a sequence of events which forever altered the geometry of global religion, politics and power. Luther's Theses began with the words, "Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg."
  Another document is going to be nailed to another door on Thursday, June 16th. This door opens not to a church, but to the White House. This document is freighted with hard truths, stern demands and nearly a million names. This document, once nailed up, likewise carries with it all the possibilities of change.
  Very slowly, and after an embarrassing gap of silence from the news media, the American people have come to hear about the Downing Street Minutes. This document, once confidential but leaked by a British version of Deep Throat, describes in plain language the manner in which the Bush and Blair administrations planned to manipulate their way into an invasion of Iraq. The Minutes describe how intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of invasion, and that a pretense for war had to be manufactured in order to paint a veneer of legitimacy over what everyone involved knew was a patently illegal military action.
  Subsequent secret documents have followed the release of the Downing Street Minutes, further exposing the lies, distortions and moral convolutions put forth by the offices of Bush and Blair in their rush to war. According to these documents, which have been verified as genuine by the British government, the decision to invade Iraq was made as early as April 2002, months before anyone in America or Britain became aware that such an act was even being considered.
  This April 2002 decision was made between Bush and Blair at a summit in Crawford, Texas. The fact that the decision to invade had been made so early shatters all the mealy-mouthed protestations of Bush and his people, who spent those months before the attack preaching peace and international cooperation while sharpening their knives behind closed doors.
  One document, a briefing paper partnered with the Downing Street Minutes, states bluntly that British officials knew an invasion would be illegal, but had no choice but to figure out a way to frame it as legal, because Bush was going into Iraq no matter what and would use British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia to do so. This would make Britain complicit in the invasion even if they decided not to send troops, and so it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal.
  How does one go about creating the conditions for legality? By framing facts and intelligence around the policy, of course. The word "Lie" does not appear in any of the released documents, but the need to lie, the decision to lie, in order to justify war permeates every word.
  This document also exposes the Bush administration's rhetorical nonsense about "supporting the troops" by describing how their war plans did anything but. In a section of this briefing paper titled "Benefits/Risks," the authors wrote, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks. A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point."
  Virtually silent. 1,706 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq thanks to the virtual silence of the Bush administration, for a total of 1,891 "Coalition" soldiers dead. Multiply that number by at least ten to count the wounded and maimed. Twenty-five American soldiers have been killed in the last week alone. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and wounded, and the car bombs continue to explode on a daily basis.
  The decision to make war at all costs, the decision to lie about the reasons for going to war, the massive trans-Atlantic effort to make an illegal act appear legal, and the astounding fact that more effort went into manufacturing a political pretext for invasion than went into planning for the invasion and aftermath, all of this led us into the horror-show that is this occupation.
  The American military has all but conceded the fact that this war is lost. "I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, chief American military spokesman in Iraq, said last week. "It's going to be settled in the political process." There are no more viable military options. The war is lost. It is going to be settled in the political process.
  So be it.
  On Thursday, June 16th, Rep. John Conyers will hold a hearing to investigate and expose the facts revealed by the release of the Downing Street Minutes and the other documents. A variety of witnesses will be called to describe the contents of these documents, and to describe what has been done to Iraq, and to us all, by this administration. Lurking in the corners of the hearing will be a phrase - "High Crime" - that aptly describes what has taken place.
  The Conyers hearing will be held on Thursday at 2:30pm EST in room HC-9 in the Capitol Building in Washington DC. This is a small room, so any overflow of public viewers will be directed to the Wasserman Room in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.
  At 5:00pm EST, a rally will take place in Lafayette Park, at the gates of the White House. Rep. Conyers will speak, along with Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in Iraq in May 2003, as Bush was unfurling his "Mission Accomplished" banner. The hearing and rally have been organized by the After Downing Street coalition, a collection of more than 120 organizations and news outlets that came together for the purpose of nailing the facts of the Downing Street Minutes to the White House door.
  That, just before the opening of the rally on Thursday, is exactly what will happen. Several weeks ago, Rep. Conyers published a letter demanding answers from the Bush administration regarding the Minutes. That letter has been signed by more than one hundred Congresspeople, and by nearly a million American citizens. Rep. Conyers will personally deliver this letter and all those signatures to the White House on Thursday.
  Jawaharlal Nehru, who with Mahatma Gandhi successfully freed India from British colonial rule, once said, "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."
  Thursday, June 16th, may see such a moment come to pass. It has been a long time coming, and so much remains to be done if the terrible damage of these last years is to be repaired. But a moment is before us. Let us see where this moment takes us.
  
• William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

Independent World Television

• IWTnews Website Launch: June 15, 2005
  
• http://www.iwtnews.com/
  
  
• Help build Independent World Television!
  
• The Problem
  
• Serious news and full-spectrum debate—on which democracy depends—are disappearing from television. Across the globe, news media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few entertainment conglomerates whose interests determine news coverage. They promote superficial "infotainment" over tough investigation, context and holding authority accountable. Public broadcasters face shrinking budgets and growing political and commercial pressures.
  
• The Solution
• We must change the economics of journalism.
  We need a news and current affairs network which defends the public interest and the highest standards of journalism. Independent World Television will be such a network -- a non-profit broadcast service financed by its viewers across the globe, independent of corporate or government funding and commercial advertising.
  Why Hasn't This Happened Before?There were no means to directly engage people around the world to raise the funds. Now, the Internet allows millions to band together and raise capital to compete with corporate media outlets. Think of the 15 million people worldwide who demonstrated against war in Iraq on one day in 2003. Think of the Internet fundraising successes of MoveOn.org and the Howard Dean presidential campaign (senior Dean fundraisers are organizing IWTnews' fundraising campaign).
  Launch PlanThe network is raising a $7 million start-up budget from individual donors and foundations. MacArthur, Ford and Haas foundations have contributed to a planning study. In its next phase, IWTnews will launch its web site and build the online community necessary for the international mass fundraising campaign launching in early 2006. The campaign will use concerts and media events headlined by socially-conscious celebrities to drive the Internet fundraising. If half a million people in the entire world contribute just $50, IWTnews will secure the $25 million it needs to fund its first year of broadcasting, in 2007.
  ProgrammingTo be seen on its own digital television channel and the web, IWTnews is also negotiating alliances with public and nonprofit channels to carry its programming. IWTnews will cover the big issues - war and peace, political campaigns, environment, global economy, civil rights, labor issues and social policy. IWTnews will hire journalists for their experience, political acumen and understanding of history. Complex issues will be addressed with energy, bite and wit. Citizen journalism will bring insight from people around the world. Informed by a commitment to social justice and respecting diversity of opinion, IWTnews will focus on news other media ignore or suppress and on individuals and groups who are transforming the world.
  
• Founding Advisory Committee
  
• Paul Jay (Canada), founding Chair of IWTnews. He was Executive Producer of CBC Newsworld's debate program counterSpin. He is an award winning documentary filmmaker and founding Chair of Hot Docs!, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival. www.jfilm.org
  Odelia Bay (Canada), a freelance journalist, radio broadcaster and CBC television news producer.
  
• Tony Benn (UK), for fifty years a Labour MP, served as Cabinet Minister and Chairman of the Labour Party. Benn is Chair of the UK anti-war coalition and spoke at the massive London rally against war in Iraq. www.tonybenn.com
  
• Phyllis Bennis (USA), author and fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. www.ips-dc.org
  
• Charles Benton (USA), Chair of the Benton Foundation. A former Chair of the National Commission on Libraries and Information and the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. www.benton.org
  
• George Biggar (Canada), Vice President of Policy, Planning and External Relations for Legal Aid Ontario.
  
• Larry Birns (USA), Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a research group that has monitored U.S.-Latin American relations, since 1975. He is a former defence researcher and member of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and public affairs officer for the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America. www.coha.org
  
• Robert Blair (Canada), President of Photon Control Inc., he is past Chair of Nova Corporation, Husky Petroleum and Foothills Pipeline and was appointed as an Officer (1990), and subsequently Companion (1995), of the Order of Canada.
  
• Val Blokowski (Canada), former CBC Newsworld's Business Manager, Executive Director of the Education Network of Ontario and IWTnews planning study consultant on Business Models.
  
• Jack Blum (USA), lawyer, as Senate attorney investigated BCCI and Lockheed Aircraft's overseas bribes. He is a consultant to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations and the UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention.
  
• Salih Booker (USA), Executive Director of Africa Action, he directed the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies Program, served on staff at the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the US Congress, and was an Associate Director for the Catholic Relief Services' Southern Africa Office. www.africaaction.org
  
• Tanja Bosch (South Africa), station manager of Bush Radio in Cape Town, Africa’s oldest community radio station. She completed her PhD in Mass Communication as a Fulbright Scholar at Ohio University with a dissertation on community radio and community identity in South Africa.
  
• Ben Cashdan (South Africa), author, lecturer, documentary filmmaker, was an economic advisor in the office of President Nelson Mandela. He produces films for SABC, BBC and Channel Four.
  
• John Cherian (India), journalist and Deputy Editor of Frontline, India's largest English language national magazine. www.flonnet.com
  
• Jeff Chester (USA), Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington DC. Chester created Ralph Nader's Teledemocracy Project on cable TV reform, and co-founded the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression as well as the Center for Media Education. www.democraticmedia.org
  
• Afsan Chowdhury (Bangladesh), Director of Advocacy and Human Rights at BRAC in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Development work and journalism with UNICEF, BBC, CNN, and Deutsche Welle. He studied the impact of satellite TV with the Media South Asia Project.
  
• Jeff Cohen (USA), founder of FAIR, the New York-based media watch organization. He has been a commentator on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and senior producer on MSNBC's "Donahue." He is an IWTnews consultant on developing its carriage campaign.
  
• Paul Copeland (Canada), lawyer, is a Bencher (director) of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 1990, is currently a director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted, a member of Law Union of Ontario, and has been a member of the International Commission of Jurists.
  
• Mary Cornish (Canada), senior partner in a leading Canadian public interest law firm. As an international consultant, she has advised the World Bank, European Economic Community and Swedish and New Zealand governments.
  
• John Duncan (Canada), lawyer, represents domestic and foreign television and film producers in all aspects of development, production and exploitation, with particular expertise in the areas of international co-production, production financing and rights acquisition.
  
• David Fenton (USA), founder and Chair of Fenton Communications, developing public relations campaigns for public interest groups. Formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine, he was named “one of the 100 most influential P.R. people of the 20th Century” by PR Week.
  
• Laura Flanders (USA), Air America radio host and journalist. She is the author of Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting. Flanders was the Founding Director of the Women's Desk at the media-watch group FAIR. www.lauraflanders.com
  
• Bill Fletcher Jr. (USA), President and Chief Executive Officer of TransAfrica Forum. Bill was formally the Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the George Meany Center / National Labor College of the AFL-CIO. www.transafricaforum.org
  
• Linda Foley (USA), President of The Newspaper Guild, Vice President of the Communications Workers of America, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO's Department for Professional Employees and Vice President of the International Federation of Journalists.
  
• Janeane Garofalo (USA), Air America radio host, comedian, actress, activist and political commentator. Film credits include Reality Bites, The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Larger Than Life and Mystery Men. She is a member of Win Without War, MoveOn.org, and the Policy Think Tank 18to25.com. www.airamericaradio.com/
  
• Amy Goodman (USA), host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now!, a TV and radio show she helped launch in 1996. She began her career in community radio at Pacifica’s WBAI in New York and produced their Evening News for ten years. www.democracynow.org
  
• Ferial Hafferjee (South Africa), editor, Mail & Guardian Newspaper, and a leading political commentator.
  
• Ron Haggart (Canada), was Co-Executive Producer on Face Off and counterSpin for CBC Newsworld. He worked as a Vancouver Sun reporter, columnist with The Globe and Mail, and Executive Producer of Local Informational Programming for CityTV and Senior Producer of the fifth estate on CBC.
  
• Adrian Harewood (Canada), a Toronto based writer and broadcaster. He hosts the television programs The Directors, Literati and The Actors and was a host of CBC Newsworld's counterSpin.
  
• Buzz Hargrove (Canada), National President of the Canadian Auto Workers Union. He is also Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress executive committee and co-author of Labour of Love: The Fight to Create a More Humane Canada.
  
• Sheri Herndon (USA), served as News Director at KCMU Public Radio in Seattle, and is co-founder of the Independent Media Center in Seattle. There she developed the Indymedia network's communications and governance structures and managed internal policy development, legal, and network collaboration projects.
  
• Roger Hickey (USA), co-director of the Campaign for America's Future. One of the founders of the Economic Policy Institute, and the San Francisco Public Media Center. Former media director for the National Center for Economic Alternatives.
  
• Jesse Hirsch (Canada), founder of the Media Collective, TAO (tao.ca), and director of Openflows.org, a professional services firm specializing in free software for open source intelligence.
  
• Tom Hurwitz (USA), documentary director of photography. Films he has shot have won four Academy Awards, over a dozen Emmy Awards, and the Camera D'Or at Cannes. His credits include Harlan County USA.
  
• Zane Ibrahim (South Africa), Managing Director of Bush Radio, “mother” of community radio in South Africa.
  
• Janine Jackson (USA), Program Director of the national media watch-group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and co-hosts and produces FAIR's syndicated radio show, CounterSpin. www.fair.org/counterspin
  
• Peter Jenner ( UK ), President of Sincere Management and Secretary General of the International Music Managers' Forum. After lecturing at the London School of Economics, he managed many music acts including Pink Floyd and Billy Bragg.
  
• Naomi Klein (Canada), journalist and author of the best-seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies and Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. She writes syndicated columns for The Globe and Mail, The Guardian and The Nation magazine. www.nologo.org
  
• Dr. Tawana Kupe (South Africa), Head of Media Studies at the Wits University's School of Literature and Language Studies. Taught Media and Communication Studies since 1993 at the University of Zimbabwe, University of Oslo, in Norway and at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, in South Africa.
  
• Lewis Lapham (USA), editor of Harper's Magazine, has several books of essays to his credit including Money and Class in America, Hotel America and Waiting for the Barbarians. www.harpers.org
  
• Avi Lewis (Canada), broadcast journalist, documentary filmmaker (The Take), host and producer of counterSpin on CBC Newsworld, where he presided over more than 500 televised debates.
  
• Stephen Lewis (Canada), the United Nations' Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. From 1984 to 1988 he served as Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, and he is the former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. He heads The Stephen Lewis Foundation, dedicated to easing the pain of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
  
• Joanne St. Lewis (Canada), assistant law professor at the University of Ottawa and founding Director of the Law Faculty's Education Equity Program. A Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada and was co-chair of the Canadian Bar Association Working Group on Racial Equality.
  
• Mark Lloyd (USA), Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and teaches communications policy at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. A communications attorney and former broadcast producer at NBC and CNN, he co-founded the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy.
  
• Hanadi Loubani (Canada), a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at York University, Toronto. Her creative and critical essays are published in Fuse Magazine, Anthology of the Poetry of Arab Women in North America, and the Women and War Journal.
  
• Paul Maslin (USA), pollster and strategist for “Dean for America”, internet-based fundraising consultant and pollster for IWTnews’s planning study.
  
• Robert McChesney (USA), founder and President of Free Press, an American non-profit, media reform organization. He is a Professor at the University of Illinois and the author or editor of eight books on the media and democracy. www.robertmcchesney.com
  
• Judith McCormack (Canada), adjunct law professor and Executive Director of Downtown Legal Services, a clinical education program at the University of Toronto. She is a former Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Recipient of the Ontario Law Society Medal for outstanding service in the highest ideals of the profession.
  
• Nicco Mele (USA), Howard Dean's campaign webmaster and internet strategist. Was webmaster at Common Cause and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Named one of America 's "best and brightest" by Esquire magazine in December 2003.
  
• Jyoti Mistry (South Africa), filmmaker and senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and Head of Television at the Wits School of Arts.
  
• Mishuk Munier (Bangladesh/Canada), filmed throughout South East Asia as a news and documentary cameraman for BBC World Service, ARD1, and Fox/StarTV. Head of News Operations for the first private terrestrial network in Bangladesh, Ekushey TV (ETV) and taught broadcast journalism at the University of Dhaka.
  
• David Newman (Israel), professor of Political Geography and a Senior Research fellow at Ben Gurion University in Israel, where he founded the department of Politics and Government. Editor of the International Journal, Geopolitics, and former columnist for the Jerusalem Post.
  
• Debbie Nightingale (Canada), runs a Toronto production company. She was Assistant Programmer at C Channel, Canada’s first cultural pay television station. She was also Special Projects and Development Officer at the Ontario Film Development Corporation and founding Executive Director of the Hot Docs! documentary festival.
  
• Maureen O'Donnell (Canada), was Director of Communications for the Toronto International Film Festival and Director of Television Publicity for the CBC and is an expert in strategic communications planning and marketing.
  
• David Ostriker (Canada), was Head of Business Affairs for counterSpin, on CBC Newsworld. Ostriker served on the executive committee of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and is a past Chair of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus.
  
• Greg Palast (USA), author and investigative journalist (New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) and broadcast journalist with BBC's Newsnight. www.gregpalast.com
  
• Leo Panitch (Canada), Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. Author of Global Capitalism and American Empire.
  
• Robert Parry (USA), a renowned investigative reporter who exposed the Iran-Contra scandal while working at Associated Press, founder of the Internet's first investigative Zine, Consortiumnews.com, and author of four books, including Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.
  
• Francine Pelletier (Canada), independent documentary filmmaker and screenwriter, former host of CBC's flagship current affairs show, the fifth estate.
  
• Sharmini Peries (Canada/Venezuela), foreign policy advisor to the President of Venezuela, former Director of Justice International, Managing Director of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Network and covered economic and political issues for Frontline India.
  
• Greg Philo (UK), professor of communications and Research Director of the Glasgow University Media Group. Co-author of the books Bad News, More Bad News, Really Bad News on media issues such as television coverage of the developing world and audience reception of television news.
  
• Anne Pick (Canada), independent producer, director, was with CBC, was a founding member of Hot Docs! and spent ten years on the executive board of the Documentary Organization of Canada.
  
• Michael Ratner (USA), President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York. Taught at Yale Law School, lectured at Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. www.ccr-ny.org
  
• Elliot Richmond (Canada), Chartered Accountant, leading the entertainment practice at Horwath Orenstein in Toronto, where he is a partner.
  
• Bill Roberts (Canada), President and CEO of VisionTV. Previously was Secretary General of the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), Senior Director-General of International Affairs of TVOntario and managed the secretariat of the World Broadcasting Unions.
  
• Kenneth Roth (USA), Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, a post he has held since 1993. The largest U.S.-based international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch investigates reports on, and seeks to curb human rights abuses in some 70 countries. www.hrw.org
  
• Michael Saykaly (Canada), President and Research Director of Optima Research, served as Vice President of CROP, Le Centre de recherches sur l'opinion publique, and is the author of The Guide To Public Opinion Research and is advising IWTnews on its Planning Study.
  
• Dimape Serenyane (South Africa), a principle in Herdbuoys McCann-Erickson, one of the most dynamic forces in the local advertising industry.
  
• Danny Schechter (USA), Founder and Executive Editor of MediaChannel and founder and Vice President/Executive Producer of Globalvision, Inc. A journalist on CNN and ABC, is the author of The More You Watch, The Less You Know, and Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception (book and film). www.mediachannel.org
  
• Jonathan Schell (USA), writer and journalist, Peace and Disarmament Correspondent for The Nation magazine, a fellow at the Nation Institute, visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School, was a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine from 1967 to 1987, author of The Fate of the Earth, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
  
• Stephanie Schriock (USA), National Finance Director for the Howard Dean Presidential Campaign, and previously served at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as Director of Campaign Assistance. She is lead consultant for IWTnews on fundraising issues.
  
• Andrew Jay Schwartzman (USA), President and CEO of the Media Access Project, a public interest telecommunications law firm that promotes the public's First Amendment right to hear and be heard on electronic media. www.mediaaccess.org
  
• Peter Scowen (Canada), Ideas editor, Toronto Star, was Editor-in-Chief of two weekly alternative newspapers (Hour and The Mirror, both in Montreal), and covered Quebec's National Assembly for CBC Radio. Author of Rogue Nation: The America the Rest of the World Knows.
  
• Monique Simard (Canada), heads Productions Virage, Vice-President of Cinémathèque Québécoise 's Board of Directors, and President of the board of directors for Alternatives, an international action and solidarity organization.
  
• Norman Solomon (USA), author and syndicated columnist, including Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You. He is Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts in the US, and an associate of the media watch group FAIR.
  
• Jim Stanford (Canada), economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, author of Paper Boom: Why Real Prosperity Requires a New Approach to Canada's Economy and regular columnist with the Globe and Mail.
  
• David J. Theroux (USA), founder and President of the Independent Institute in Oakland, and publisher of The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy.
  
• Jenny Toomey (USA), Executive Director of the Future of Music Coalition, activist, musician. Co-ran Simple Machines independent record label. Former writer for The Washington Post, Village Voice and CNET.
  Siddharth Varadarajan (India), journalist and commentator and Deputy Editor of The Hindu, was columnist with The Times of India. After studying economics at the London School of Economics and Columbia University, he taught at New York University for several years before joining The Times of India as an editorial writer in 1995.
  
• Gore Vidal (USA), author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays and short stories, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. In 1993, a collection of his criticism, United States: Essays 1952-1992, won the National Book Award. He has written many films including the classics Ben-Hur (1959) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). He received an award from the Cannes Film Festival for best screenplay for The Best Man.
  
• Kenneth Walker (South Africa/USA), owner of Lion House Productions. Previously the Africa Bureau Chief for National Public Radio. Covered the White House for the Washington Star and ABC News and anchored USA Today: The Television Show.
  
• Patrick Watson (Canada), a writer, director, actor, TV host and interviewer, was co-producer of the CBC series Close-up and produced and hosted CBC's flagship show This Hour Has Seven Days. Watson is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a former Chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
  
• Celia Wexler (USA), Vice President for Advocacy for Common Cause. A former journalist, Wexler has played a key role in developing Common Cause's lobbying and grassroots strategies on media reform.
  
• Howard Zinn (USA), professor emeritus at Boston University, historian, author of numerous books including the classic A People's History of the United States and The Zinn Reader.
  
• (Note: organizations listed are for identification purposes only)
  
• ©2005 Independent World Television