Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Black GOP Official Resigns, Citing Arizona Tea Party Threats

First Posted: 01/12/11 03:59 PM Updated: 01/12/11 06:37 PM

Updated: The sole black Republican Party district chairman in Arizona resigned from his post in the wake of Saturday's shooting, citing threats from the Tea Party faction and concerns for his family's safety, The Arizona Republic first reported.

Republican District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller was not the only party official to resign following the shooting that killed six and wounded 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and a federal judge. But Miller had been an especially dedicated campaigner for the GOP, and said he only stepped down in the face of "constant verbal attacks" and other forms of intimidation.

"I wasn't going to resign but decided to quit after what happened Saturday," he said. "I love the Republican Party but I don't want to take a bullet for anyone."

Miller, 43, told HuffPost he decided to resign after his wife expressed concern for their safety. Miller had been the target of heavy criticism from Arizona tea partiers, in part because he worked on Sen. John McCain's campaign last fall. (The tea partiers favored McCain's opponent, J.D. Hayworth.) Miller added that he is generally more trustful of government officials than tea partiers in his district, who favor more anti-establishment candidates.

But the attacks also took on a racial hue. One critic referred to him derogatorily as "McCain's boy," Miller said. Other language was even less ambiguous. At an event in Havasu, Ariz., Miller said, someone called out, "There's Anthony, get a rope."

Yet Miller balks at crying racism.

"To say that anyone has been racially motivated, I can't really draw a conclusion," he said. "But a lot of people told me 'You're not a conservative, you're a RINO.' In my mind, that's just as bad as being called a n-----, honestly. When you call someone a n-----, it's saying they're less than, and RINO is the same thing."

Newly-elected district Secretary Sophia Johnson, First Vice Chairman Roger Dickinson, and former district spokesman Jeff Kolb are also stepping down, according to the Republic, although Dickinson contested the claim that they are all going willingly.

"I did not resign from my position," Dickinson told HuffPost in an interview Wednesday afternoon. "The articles in the paper are incorrect ... Sophia Johnson did resign, but not for the reason that's quoted in The Arizona Republic."

Dickinson, whose move last year made him ineligible to retain his leadership post, said he will continue to serve the Arizona Republican Party in the voluntary position of precinct committee person.

Kolb told HuffPost he was, in fact, resigning, but that it wasn't out of fear -- he was following Miller's lead. "For me personally, it's not a fear for my personal safety, it just had to do with the tone and tenor within the organization," said Kolb, who was appointed to the volunteer position by Miller a year ago.

The party became fractured between Miller supporters and a "small but vocal group" of detractors who frequently targeted Miller in emails, Kolb said.

Tension between the two factions had been growing since early December, but Kolb said he and other Miller appointees made the final decision to resign this weekend. When Miller decided to step down, Kolb said, he knew he would be removed from the post if he did not step down himself. He officially resigned on Monday.

"I've never understood why they had this hatred for him," Kolb said of Miller's opponents. "I guess there were some people who thought that since he'd worked for McCain he wasn't conservative enough. But if your goal is to get Republicans elected, then being bogged down in a bunch of fighting about who is conservative enough is not an effective way to do that."

Miller signaled Wednesday he feared the political polarization could go beyond incendiary rhetoric.

"We don't have to agree but we have to respect each other," said Miller of his fellow Republicans. "I just saw that respect chipping away, and when you lose that respect, that's where violence occurs."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/anthony-miller-resigns-giffords-threats_n_808116.html

Fearing tea party violence, four Arizona Republicans resign

By David Edwards
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 -- 10:45 am

District Republican chairman: 'I don't want to take a bullet for anyone'


Fearing violence from tea party activists, Arizona Legislative District 20 Republican Chairman Anthony Miller and several others tendered their resignation this week following mass shootings that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in critical condition.


Miller, a 43-year-old former campaign worker for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), said that verbal attacks and blog posts from members of the tea party had him fearing for the safety of his family, according to a report in The Arizona Republic.


"Today my wife of 20 yrs ask (sic) me do I think that my PCs (Precinct Committee members) will shoot at our home?" he wrote in an e-mail following the shootings. "So with this being said I am stepping down from LD20GOP Chairman...I will make a full statement on Monday."


Tea party members supporting J.D. Hayworth for senator in the midterm elections accused Miller, an African American, of being a "McCain's boy." One detractor had even made his hand into the shape of a gun and pointed it at Miller.


"I wasn't going to resign but decided to quit after what happened Saturday," Miller said. "I love the Republican Party but I don't want to take a bullet for anyone."


District 20 Republican Secretary Sophia Johnson, first vice chairman Roger Dickinson, former district spokesman Jeff Kolb also followed Miller's lead and quit.


"This singular focus on 'getting' Anthony (Miller) was one of the main reasons I chose to resign," Kolb reportedly wrote to another party activist.


Arizona state Sen. John McComish, who had supported Miller as chairman, told the paper that this battle for local party leadership is more extreme than others he'd seen.


"It's too bad," McComish said. "He didn't deserve to be hounded out of office."


Kolb explained that Miller had been elected chairman even after Sheriff Joe Arpaio made a personal appearance for tea party candidate Thomas Morrissey.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/fearing-tea-party-violence-arizona-republicans-resign/

Healing the Wounds: Transforming Our Culture of Violence

by Randall Amster
Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Whatever your political leanings, you’d have to be incredibly hardhearted not to be moved by the shooting in Tucson that claimed the lives of a federal judge and a nine year old girl, among others, and critically wounded Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Some will attempt to politicize this episode as emblematic of the poverty of the “other side,” whereas others will seek to depoliticize it as the work of a deranged “lone gunman.” Meanwhile, moderate voices will be raised aghast at the violence in our midst, both of the rhetorical and spectacular varieties, and many will attempt to draw a direct link between the two. And still, in all likelihood, all of this will soon fade into the collective rear-view mirror and slide down the news queue, as the “normal” state of business as usual adjusts to a new equilibrium that encourages a reestablished complacency.

The inherent cynicism in this narrative is bolstered by its likely occurrence, given America’s reaction to previous calamities. Yet this episode seems different, more personal in its up-close intentions, and jarring in its depiction of innocent people gunned down at a neighborhood supermarket while practicing the elusive virtues of representative democracy in a way that will be largely unavailable going forward. For along with the victims on that Arizona tarmac lies our own innocence as well, replaced by the carefully avoided specter of our collective contributions to what Hannah Arendt once referred to as the “banality of evil.”

In this sense, we must acknowledge the blood on all of our hands. We blithely exist in a culture of violence at almost every level, from our food and entertainment to the economy and what passes for politics. The better part of our creative and pecuniary energies alike are expended on the ceaseless operations of a military machine that we service as human cogs rendered before an insatiable Moloch. As much as we are able, the cultural violence that we proliferate is exported, outsourced, externalized, and rationalized in the name of progress and exceptionalism. Within this rubric, few among us are truly evil, but are merely living our lives along predetermined lines of common virtue. There is nothing shocking or extraordinary about this; it is, after all, quite acceptably mundane.

Yet now, in this brief moment of engaged horror and empathy, it seems as if the consequences of our actions (and inactions) have “come home to roost,” so to speak. We can blame this solely on right-wing fanaticism and the irresponsible rhetoric that fans the flames of violence. We can attribute it to the overall climate that has taken hold in places like Arizona, that trial balloon of reactionary political hijacking that could portend the opening salvo in a new civil war. We can point fingers at everyone from Beck and Bush to Obama and O’Reilly, and even reserve special mention for Palin as a paragon of pusillanimous politicking. We can deliver recriminations upon the gun dealers, dope peddlers, media moguls, hate groups, and more. And we most likely will, in our search for sense where none seems to exist.

We will, in short, place blame on everyone but ourselves — even as we watch the programs and punch the ballots, buy the products and consume the cuisine, tell the jokes and repeat the slurs, drive the cars and close the gates. Moderates will call for peace and civility, and we will nod in thankful agreement. Moments of silence and memorial remembrances will bring a lump to our throats and a tear to our eyes, even as the flag of national expediency slowly subsumes the genuine emotions of compassion and fear. Most of us will say and do all the right things, except the one thing that most needs doing: healing the wounds, not merely by dressing them, but also by undoing the capacity and desire to inflict them again.

This is not a call for restoring the tepid peace of complicity. Nor is it a wishful longing that people will suddenly become nice and pathologies instantly cured. We are not going to dismantle all the weapons of war and melt down the multitudes of guns any time soon. Conflicts of all sorts will be with us as long as we draw breath, both individually and civilizationally speaking. No, this is not a plea for moderation and placidity — in fact, precisely the opposite.

What I am suggesting here is a sober assessment of the task and an honest appraisal of our shared wounds. The starting point must be a deep recognition that it is us — and not just “them” — who kill people, including ourselves, as surely as if we had pulled the trigger in a crowded public place. We do it silently, remorselessly, and without expectation of punishment (indeed, the better we are at it, the more likely we are to be rewarded). The cultural ethos of competition, domination, consumption, and disposability pits us not only against one another, but against the life-giving properties of the habitat itself. As such, our wounds of trauma and tribulation are largely self-inflicted, not the products of the deranged among us but rather those of the perfectly sane.

Thomas Merton reflected on this theme in the context of warfare, concluding that it is actually an overabundance of rationality more so than its lack that makes violence possible. When we suborn violence, either tacitly or overtly, as a mechanism for accomplishing everything from a good dinner to global dominion, we merely sanction its use by others as a tool for achieving whatever aim they may deem desirable. When we allow the structural violence of gross inequity and caste-based marginalization to pervade unchallenged, we thereby encourage others to divide and conquer as well. Rational beings will take heed as aggression is rewarded and cooperation denigrated, and duly note that success is measured by how much one possesses vis-a-vis others in the relentless zero-sum contest of modern life.
Despite this accumulated cultural baggage, we can and must heal the wounds of this violence in our midst — not by burying it or displacing it, but by owning it and learning to live with it. Just as the hardware of destruction will not be abolished in any short-term reality, nor will the software of hatred, fear, aggression, and despair suddenly vanish. The question is whether we can acknowledge these capacities without exacerbating them, and likewise whether we will be able to accept the challenge of keeping the literal and metaphorical weapons of violence with us always as reminders of that which we have consciously decided to reject. This, then, is the imminent and paradoxical task before us: to retain our inherent ability to inflict harm on ourselves, others, and the world, and yet in the process create a culture that renders anathema the utility and desirability of doing so.

Others before us have faced similar dilemmas. Now, with the virtue of clarity inspired by tragedy, we have a unique opportunity to embrace another vision. We can and must make this a great turning, away from a culture forever reacting to self-inflicted wounds and toward one that grows stronger and more mature with each passing challenge. It will be the greatest test ever faced by humankind, and it is entirely necessitated by the staggering power we have attained to undermine our very existence. Still as yet unrealized is an equally vast capacity to promote well-being at all levels through our compassion, innovation, and recognition of the other in ourselves.

Which path will we choose? Herein lies the cultural crucible broached by the Arizona shootings, namely the shared opportunity to avoid self-destruction and instead embrace mutually-assured survival. Our collective healing hangs precariously in the balance, and awaits our overdue engagement with its transformative potential.

Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College, and is the Executive Director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is Lost In Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness (LFB Scholarly 2008).

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/12-2

On Right-wing Political Violence

09 January 2011
Posted by shadowfax at 12:04 PM

I am sick at heart over what happened in Arizona. It's an appalling act, and while I am not one to pray I will be praying for the recovery of Congresswoman Giffords, and for the family of US District Judge Roll, who lost his life, for the family of the nine-year-old child who lost hers, and all the others affected by this tragedy.
But I cannot help myself from saying, in grief and anger, this was not a random tragedy.
The gunman was mentally unstable, to be sure, and his schizophrenia or whatever thought disorder he suffers from clearly was the proximate cause of today's terrible event. But the proximate cause was not the sole cause, not by any means.
Our political discourse is broken, badly broken.  The rhetoric, largely but not entirely from the right side of the political spectrum, has become dangerously unhinged. While threats of violence are nowhere to be found in the direct words of the right wing politicians and influential leaders of the movement, the language of violence is pervasive. Nowhere will you find a conservative directly inciting people to commit acts of violence against their political enemies, but the vocabulary used is that of war, in which no compromise is possible, in which the opposition is evil incarnate. For the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn't a big-government liberal—he's a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.

Consider:

  • Congresswoman Bachmann: "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back," said Bachmann. "Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing. And the people - we the people - are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country," and, "Where tyranny is enforced upon the people, as Barack Obama is doing, the people suffer and mourn."
  • Sarah Palin famously tweeted, "Don't Retreat, RELOAD!"
  • Sharron Angle, Tea Party candidate in Nevada, famously suggested on more than one occasion that violent revolution was an option if the GOP did not win at the ballot box: "the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry ... the Founding Fathers intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical... I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problem." And also, in the same context, referred to "taking out" Harry Reid."
  • ''Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms.'' Tea Party-backed Texas GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden
  • Radio host Michael Savage compared Obama to Pol Pot, adding, "Only vigilance and resistance to this baby dictator, Barack Hussein Obama, can prevent the Khmer Rouge from appearing in this country."
  • Glenn Beck -- well, it's hard to pick a single example of overheated rhetoric from this paranoic demagogue, since pretty much it's all the time, but he has said "Obama is trying to destroy the country and is pushing America toward civil war," or similar thoughts multiple times, and has had many many references to Obama and progressives as Satan, Hilter, Stalin, and has called for or warned of "revolution" multiple times. Also, ''I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out.'' 
  • ''My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.'' Ann Coulter
  • ''He has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity,'' - Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), on President Obama's decision to fund international family planning organizations that support legal abortion.
  • Rush Limbaugh almost comes across as the reasonable elder statesman, opining that Obama is a socialist and that Limbaugh is rooting for him, "to fail."
  • Erik Erickson, of CNN and Redstate.com, asked what is in hindsight a particularly sickening question: "At what point do the people ... march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp?"   
  • And, as is now well-known, Palin's PAC featured gunsight logos, crosshairs, over the district of Rep Giffords and 19 others. Her opponent in the election held an event "Get on Target for Victory; Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office; shoot a fully automatic M16."  Rep Giffords, presciently, warned that symbolism like that "will have consequences." Tragically, she was right. 
  • And the popular movement of the Tea Party, while well-behaved and nonviolent in its rallies, also has a pervasive element of the threat of violence in many of its popular slogans; the quote "The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots." was popular on signs at many of the rallies, as well as the not-very understated threat in the movement to bring guns to rallies.

I am not aware of similar rhetoric coming from the left. If there is, from an elected official, candidate for office, or major media personality, please cite it in the comments and I will add it to the list. I will stipulate in advance that Alan Grayson was way over the line numerous times, and that Olbermann many times excessively demonizes his opponents. Still, the implicit threat of violence is as far as I know unheard of in the liberal public discourse.

Rhetoric Translating into Violence
The reason I am so worried and upset about this recent shooting is that while it appears to be the isolated act of a lone gunman, it is one of a series of events which have become increasingly common since Obama became president -- incidents which have been politically motivated or influenced and have caused multiple deaths, most commonly deaths of our public servants in law enforcement. I also remember a much-criticized Homeland Security report issued just after Barack Obama took office, which quite accurately warned of rising right-wing violence. It was decried by conservatives at the time and withdrawn. Consider, though, this sad litany of deaths and injuries caused by armed nuts inspired by the hyperbolic rhetoric from the right, just within the last two years:

These are the recent episodes that have actually progressed to true violence. One should not forget, not too long ago, there were the famous right-wing attacks on America in Oklahoma city, and the Ruby Ridge siege and the milita movement during the Clinton adminstration.  There have also been many less serious cases of right-wing violence, which were aborted by law enforcement in the pre-attack stages, as well as serious threats and near misses:

This is to say nothing of the innumerable kooks who have been arrested (or simply investigated) for sending threatening emails or leaving death threats. This is to say nothing of the routine vandalism of congressional offices during the health care debate. The fact that Judge Roll received "hundreds" of death threats after certifying a civil rights/immigration case to proceed is a sad example of how the hyper-intensity of the debate has consequences. Death threats against public officials have become routine, unfortunately. Normally, they are not serious, but unfortunately in some cases, the mentally unstable decide to follow through on the threats.
Again, for those who bring up the false equivalency of "both sides do it," I should point out that there was as far as I am aware not a single example of left-wing politically-inspired violence in the last ten years. And I'm not talking about scuffles at rallies, I'm talking about people with guns trying to kill other people for politically-inspired reasons.

Apologists for the right
Many reasonable and thoughtful conservatives who themselves would never use such loaded or vitriolic verbiage seem to feel compelled to defend Palin et al. "Palin never called for violence." They demur: rhetoric is just joking, just banter. These are just figures of speech, and are never meant to be taken seriously. They argue that there is no direct incitement to violence. They object that the link between the incitement by public figures and the actual violence is too tenuous.

To a very limited degree, they are right. Palin, I am quite sure, never actually wanted violence, and certainly never explicitly called for it. The responsibility for the violence lies with the gunmen. But is it false and dishonest to claim that the words, the language, the environment created by the political figures who deliberately cultivate for political gain an absolutist struggle of good versus evil have no relationship to the acts of the deranged who listen them and take what seems to be the next logical step.

Others object that this or that violent gunman may not have been actually motivated out of politics, or that they were actually liberals or democrats, or that their mental illness makes this all impossible to understand.  We don't know why the Arizona killer did what he did. If he is as delusional as his internet trail suggests, we'll never understand. But we know that it has been a time of extreme, implicitly violent political rhetoric and imagery: It is legitimate to discuss whether there is a connection between that tone and actual outbursts of violence, whatever the motivations of this killer turn out to be. This is not "Politicizing a tragedy," as apologists for the right are already complaining. The attempted assassination of an elected official is inherently political and it is completely germane to discuss the political environment that led to it. When MLK was gunned down, there was no controversy about discussing the role racism played in his murder; similarly, when right-leaning psychopaths are repeatedly taking up arms against the government, it is appropriate and necessary to examine the forces which are driving that sort of behavior.

Put more simply:  The point I am trying to make is that Republicans need to stop whipping up crazy people with violent political rhetoric. This is really not a hard concept to follow. There are a lot of nuts out there with access to weapons. Stop egging them on.

Solutions?
To be clear: I support the first amendment and I do not propose any sort of censorship or restrictions on political speech. I do not think that there is any individual on the right who should share legal culpability for the acts of madmen. I do think, however, it is incumbent on citizens of all political leanings to call out and reject overheated, absolutist, demonizing, or violent speech, wherever it may come from. And I wish we could make it clear to the professional rabble-rousers whose careers depend on generating fear and hysteria, that they are poisoning the public discourse.

And we should remember the remarks President Bill Clinton made on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing about the use of political rhetoric.

"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should hold less passion for the positions we hold, but that our words really do matter. There is this vast echo chamber, and the words fall on the serious and delirious alike. Have at it. Go fight. Do whatever you want. You don't have to be nice. But be careful with what you say and do not advocate violence." 

Update:

As promised, a couple of examples of left wing violence: the guy who planned to bomb the RNC convention in 2004 is a legit counter example, and the ELF/ALF are also examples of leftist groups who employ political violence. I have no trouble denouncing them.



http://allbleedingstops.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-right-wing-political-violence.html

Cartoon: Rhetoric

Rhetoric

http://www.truth-out.org/rhetoric66730

Connecting the Crazy Dots: Assange, Recruiting Kids, the Tucson Massacre and General American Bloodthirstiness

Tuesday 11 January 2011

by: Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening | Op-Ed

There is, it cannot be denied, a tendency on the part of many Americans to grab for their guns, if not actually, then figuratively.

And let’s face it, we also have an awful lot of guns to reach for. The FBI estimates that it’s 200 million, not counting the guns owned by the military, and the National Rifle Assn. says that’s a number that rises by close to five million a year.

And we sure do use ‘em. NY Times columnist Bob Herbert reports that 150,000 people have been killed by guns in the US just in the first decade of this new century. Clearly it’s not just Tucson, capital of the Arizona county that also includes the gunslinger town of Tombstone, that is the Wild West. This whole country is gun-crazy.

Back in the 1970s, when I was a journalist in Los Angeles, I witnessed police officers there drawing their guns on people being arrested for jaywalking. One poor guy was shot dead by accident because a cop who had made a traffic stop had his gun out and tripped as he approached the driver’s window. Honest. I reported on a case where a young man, Ron Burkholder, apparently burned badly while making some PCP in his basement so that he had torn off his clothes and run out onto the street naked, was shot dead by a cop. The thing was, Burkholder was a small skinny guy, and he was naked and clearly in pain. The cop, an experienced sergeant, well over six feet tall and powerfully built, blew Burkholder away with, if I remember right, five shots from his service revolver. Not one. Five.

His excuse: He “felt threatened” by the naked, and clearly unarmed, Burkholder.

No charges were filed.

When Julian Assange’s Wikileaks, in conjunction with several large media organizations including the New York Times, the UK Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel, released leaked cables that embarrassingly exposed both the pettiness and the bullying of the US State Department, there were immediate howls from members of Congress and from the right-wing talk radio and TV crowd for his summary execution. The more sedate called for his arrest, trial and then his execution. Now his lawyer in the UK has quite properly made the argument, at a hearing on a Swedish government extradition request on possible sex offense charges, that Assange faces the very real possibility of execution if extradited to Sweden because he could end up being snatched from that country by the US, and brought back to face a death penalty for his exposés, which the US would like to call “espionage.”

None of this bothers a lot of Americans, who seem to think summary execution without even a trial for just about anything is quite okay. Many Americans even say they think the death penalty is not only a good thing, but that we should be executing more people, and doing it faster. This despite recent solid evidence from Texas that innocent people have been executed, and despite fact that some 140 people have, thanks to DNA tests, been absolved of capital crimes for which they spent years on death row, sometimes coming within hours of execution.

That may explain why so many politicians these days, and self-proclaimed pundits like the corpulent druggie Rush Limbaugh and the Vicks addict Glenn Beck, call for the killing of those whose politics they don’t agree with.

It also, sadly, explains why so many young people respond positively to the lures of military recruiters, like the young friend I wrote about in this space just recently.

It was simply shocking for me to hear a 17-year-old kid from a family of two professionals, neither of whom has any military background, talking excitedly about wanting to be a machine gunner in a Marine helicopter, and anxious to be sent to fight in Afghanistan. What kind of attraction can there be to firing waves of 30mm rounds at people down on the ground who have never done anything to you, who pose no threat to your family or your country, and who may not even be fighters at all?

It’s as bizarre and alien to me as the people who thrill at the idea of shooting wild wolves from the air--a popular sport in Alaska fondly characterized as wholesome entertainment by America’s rabid sweetheart, Sarah Palin.

I brought my son and a friend last year to the notorious Army Experience Center, a multi-million state-of-the-art virtual war recruiting wonderland located in a mall in working-class Northeast Philadelphia. Filled with an array of very fast computers and video screens on which kids as young as 14 could blast away in realistic war scenarios, and featuring two darkened rooms that had the real bodies of an armored Humvee and a Blackhawk helicopter where kids could man the guns and operate in a 3-D video environment with surround sound so that you felt like you were moving through hostile territory and had to “take out” the “bad guys” while quickly identifying innocent civilians and avoiding shooting them. My son, his friend and I tried the Humvee out, and at the end of our “mission,” the recruiter, an Iraq vet, congratulated us, saying we were “the best gunners all day!” and that our error rate had been “only 30%.”

I asked him what “error rate” meant, and he said, “Collateral damage--civilians killed.”

“Thirty percent of the peope we just killed were civilians?” I asked, aghast.

“Oh yeah,” he said matter-of-factly. “Don’t feel bad. That’s not a bad percentage.” Indeed, in real war American style these days, it’s a lot higher. Depending on whom you ask, the US in Iraq killed between 150,000 and 1.1 million Iraqis, and according the the Pentagon only 20,000 of them at most were enemy fighters. That means our “heroes” in Iraq killed civilians at a ratio of between 13 % and 98% of the time! That explains the latest news that American troops have over the last 10 years been expending 250,000 to 300,000 rounds of ammunition to kill each enemy fighter in Iraq and Afghanistan--a rate so prodigious that the domestic armaments industry can’t supply enough shells, forcing the US to buy half its bullets from an Israeli manufacturer. Just imagine where most of those missed shots went. A lot clearly hit the wrong people, including many very little ones.

And yet at every indignity, every international disagreement, every terror act by some foreign nutcase or angry jihadi, Americans are quick to call for massive military retaliation. “Bomb them back into the stone age!” is a common refrain, even when nobody knows who “them” is (or, given the general geographic illiteracy of most Americans, even where "them" is). “Kill them all and let God sort them out!” is a popular line, too. In other words, many Americans don't care at all that their favored military response will kill countless innocent civilians. "Collateral damage" is as irrelevant to them as it ws to Jarod Lee Loughner.

No wonder a certifiable whackjob like Loughner, when his twisted and fevered mind got angry at whatever demons were tormenting him, turned to a gun and headed out to kill him a congresswoman, and then just blast away emptying his magazine at old people, women and even a nine-year-old girl, shot square in the chest. He may have been nuts, but he was acting out a very popular American fantasy, at the very least: Kill the bastards and let God sort 'em out!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not for banning guns. I had a gun when I was 12, and I loved shooting it. If I hadn’t sold it when we were low on money shortly after I got married, I’d still have the thing.

But nobody needs an assault weapon. And nobody should be able to carry a concealed weapon around town, crazy or not.

More importantly, though, this obsession with killing and war has to stop.

We need to recognize that the people who call for ever higher military budgets, who justify blasting the shit out of a poor country like Afghanistan, the people who argue for bombing Iran, and the police departments that send cops to demonstrations armed with assault weapons, as well as the politicians and the fascist radio and TV pundits who call for killing political opponents, are all every bit as sick and twisted as a lone gunman who goes to a Safeway parking lot and shoots a Congresswoman in the head.

http://www.truth-out.org/dave-lindorff-connecting-crazy-dots-assange-recruiting-kids-tucson-massacre-and-general-american-blo

Partial Timeline of Recent Domestic Terrorism

– July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America,” walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.

– October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.

– December 2008: A pair of “Patriot” movement radicals — the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted “to attack the political infrastructure” — threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.

– December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear “dirty bomb” in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.

– January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.

– February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.

– April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.

– April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama’s purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.

– May 2009: A “sovereign citizen” named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

– June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

– February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one “domestic terrorism” too.)

– March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.

– March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.

– May 2010: A “sovereign citizen” from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.

– May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.

– May 2010: Two “sovereign citizens” named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.

– July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.

– September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year–old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the “Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.

Shooting opens divide on inflamed rhetoric

Mon, Jan 10 2011

By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a town where politics never rests, the shooting of U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords quickly opened a sharp divide on the role of inflamed rhetoric in the assault and on the proper response to its growth.

The Arizona attack ignited a flood of finger-pointing and pontificating on the sometimes overheated state of U.S. political discourse, even as politicians largely vowed at least a temporary halt to the battle of words in Washington.

The motives of suspect Jared Lee Loughner, 22, remain unclear in Saturday's shooting, which killed six people and left Giffords in critical condition. Those who knew him said he was troubled and had a history of disruptive behavior.

Some liberal commentators and bloggers questioned whether last year's election rhetoric from conservative Republicans like Sarah Palin and Tea Party candidates created a climate that bred violence.

Palin, the 2008 vice presidential candidate and a potential White House contender, urged conservatives to "reload," not retreat, after a fierce debate over President Obama's plans to overhaul the hugely expensive healthcare system.

She posted a map with gunsight cross-hairs on the districts of 20 Democrats -- including Giffords -- to be targeted in November's elections.

"It is legitimate to discuss whether there is a connection between that tone and actual outbursts of violence, whatever the motivations of this killer turn out to be," said James Fallows in the Atlantic.

Conservatives said the left was trying to gain a political edge from the tragedy and limit the gains of newly ascendant Republicans and the conservative Tea Party movement.

The left is "accusing people who had nothing whatsoever to do with this sordid, unfortunate event," right-wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said on Monday. "What this is all about is shutting down any and all political opposition and eventually criminalizing it."

GUN IMAGERY COMMON

The use of violent and gun-related imagery is common in politics in the United States, where gun control is frequently the subject of heated debate and gun violence is not unusual. It became even more prominent in last year's contentious congressional elections.

Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, a Nevada Republican Senate candidate, threatened "Second Amendment remedies" against Congress if it did not change its ways -- a reference to the constitutional amendment on the right to bear arms.

"We talk about the air war, the bombshells, targeting politicians, knocking them off ... so we shouldn't be shocked when politicians do the same thing," said Howard Kurtz of the online publication, The Daily Beast.

"But it's a long stretch from such excessive language and symbols to holding a public official accountable for a murderer who opens fire on a political gathering."

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Arizona's Pima County, where the assault occurred, opened the debate just hours after Saturday's shooting when he condemned the growing vitriol in U.S. politics and declared free speech is "not without consequences."

Republican Representative Trent Franks of Arizona said the sheriff's comments were politically motivated in a border district where illegal immigration has been a heated issue.

Arizona earned the spotlight in the national debate on immigration when it enacted a law last year cracking down on illegal immigrants.

"He has been heavily involved in the whole debate around the immigration issue," Franks said of Dupnik. "I think he's sort of carrying on that debate in this tragic moment and it's probably inappropriate."

Some liberal commentators said the Arizona shooting incident was the culmination of a rise in political hatred that started during Obama's 2008 campaign that made him the first black U.S. president.

"There has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials," said Paul Krugman in the New York Times. "One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has."

But any move to inhibit the most inflamed political speech would draw opposition from both sides of the ideological spectrum.

Jack Shafer, a media critic at online magazine Slate, said "any call to cool 'inflammatory' speech is a call to police all speech, and I can't think of anybody in government, politics, business or the press that I would trust with that power."

(Editing by David Storey)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7095H120110110?pageNumber=2

Economists foretell of U.S. decline, China's ascension

Sun, Jan 9 2011

By Mark Felsenthal

DENVER (Reuters) - To hear a number of prominent economists tell it, it doesn't look good for the U.S. economy, not this year, not in 10 years.

Leading thinkers in the dismal science speaking at an annual convention offered varying visions of U.S. economic decline, in the short, medium and long term. This year, the recovery may bog down as government stimulus measures dry up.

In the long run, the United States must face up to inevitably being overtaken by China as the world's largest economy. And it may have missed a chance to rein in its largest financial institutions, many of whom remain too big to fail and are getting bigger.

On the one hand, Harvard's Martin Feldstein said he believes the outlook for U.S. economic growth in 2011 is less sanguine than many believe.

First, the boost to growth from government spending will be drying up this year, he said. Renewal of expiring tax cuts is no more than a decision not to raise taxes, and the impact of one-year payroll tax cut is likely modest, he said.

"There's really not much help coming from fiscal policy in the year ahead," he said. Woes from the dire situations of state and local governments may actually be a drag on growth, he said.

Growth got a lift from a lower saving rate in 2010, but that probably will not last this year as households worried about an uncertain future return to paring back debt and socking more away, Feldstein added. Discouraging declines in home values mean there is less to save from, he said.

"People are worried, so there's a strong reason for precautionary saving," he said.

THE RACE IS ON

On the other hand, there is the race with China and the dynamic Asian economies, including India. Most estimates put the size of the Chinese economy on par with the United States by the early 2020s, said Dale Jorgenson, also of Harvard.

Jorgenson sees Asian emerging markets as the most dynamic in the world, eclipsing other emerging market contenders such as Brazil and Russia with steady growth over the next decade.

"The rise of developing Asia is going to accompany slower world economic growth," he said.

The United States will need to come to terms with the fact that its prevalence in the world is fated to come to an end, Jorgenson said. This will be difficult for many Americans to swallow and the United States should brace for social unrest amid blame over who was responsible for squandering global primacy, he said.

MIT's Simon Johnson put it more bluntly, saying the damage from the financial crisis and its aftermath have dealt U.S. prominence a permanent blow.

"The age of American predominance is over," he told a panel. "The (Chinese) Yuan will be the world's reserve currency within two decades."

Johnson said he believes the United States has failed to learn its lesson from the financial crisis and continues to implicitly back its largest financial institutions.

"I'm concerned about the excessive power of the largest global banks," he said. "Who are the government-sponsored enterprises now? It's the six biggest bank holding companies."

To be sure, Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF chief economist now with the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, could still envision an ongoing U.S. leadership role.

Nothing proceeds in a straight line, he said, and there are many pitfalls along the way even for dynamic Asian economies.

"I would say the age of American dominance may be nearing an end. But America as the biggest mover will be in place for a long time," he said.

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7082BL20110109?pageNumber=2