YOU ARE PAYING TO SLAUGHTER THE WILDLIFE IN AMERICA

If you are a taxpayer the USA, you are paying to destroy 4 million wild animals annually in this 
country.  Geese, coyotes, 
racoons, wild dogs, foxes, blue herons, wolves, beavers, starlings..the list goes on.
  
Hopefully that makes you 
angry.  What are you going 
to do about it?  




This bit of lousy news comes 
from The Olympian, a regular old 
newspaper in the state of Washington.


Taxpayers subsidizing wild life extermination program, probe shows



The trucks pulled up at dawn. PollyAnna, a year-old disabled goose whose wing feathers were growing back, was asleep when the trappers approached.

Not long after, Debbie Dangerfield, a real estate agent and 16-year resident of River's Edge, a sprawling residential complex in Charleston, S.C., was leaving her condo to check on PollyAnna when she noticed she was missing. Also gone were a dozen or so geese parents and their young.

The crippled geese also seemed to have vanished: Nibbles, a young gander with a damaged wing; Limp, so-named because of an upper-leg injury, and VeeVee, the victim of fishing-line entrapment.

As Dangerfield approached the entrance to the complex, she noticed two USDA trucks pulling away from the guard house and broke into a dead run, reaching the vehicles as they slowed to accommodate speed bumps. She begged the drivers to pull over, peering inside one of the trucks as they did.

There she saw PollyAnna crammed into a crate with half a dozen other geese.

"The geese were frantic," Dangerfield recalls. "They had been shoved into crates, stacked like pancakes, defecating on each other. I was begging and pleading for them to at least let me have the few crippled geese we had rescued."

Eventually the police came and the River's Edge management agreed to let her keep one bird.

"They were just trying to appease me," she says, "to keep me quiet so other residents wouldn't hear the commotion and decide to investigate." PollyAnna now shares the backyard of a rehabilitation center with a crippled goose named Angel, occasionally serving as a good-will ambassador for her species.

The story is one of many. In Delafield, Wis., lifelong resident Jim Pfeil tried to keep the feds from gassing an aging crippled goose named Stumpy this summer, offering to match the $6,500 slaughter fee if city officials would allow an animal protection group to manage the geese instead.

A few years ago, Pfeil rushed Stumpy to a wildlife center where veterinarians removed a bullet through the neck. Recently, he watched in tears as workers crowded Stumpy into a crate with her mate and four or five other geese. "I almost wish I hadn't seen it, it was so awful," he says. "But I feel compelled to tell her story." He says the roundup lasted four hours, from 8 a.m. to noon, and that some of the geese seemed already dead by the time they were trucked to an undisclosed location. Mayor Ed McAleer declined to discuss the event but says the meat was sent to a food pantry.

And in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, residents set up a vigilante-style "goose watch" to protect a trio of newborns dubbed "the miracle birds," hatched when volunteers treating eggs (a form of birth control), missed a nest.

Wildlife Services is the little-known branch of the USDA deemed largely responsible for geese slaughters coast to coast. Buried under several layers of bureaucracy, Wildlife Services prefers to stay under the radar.

However, a copy of a 2010 report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicates that U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing a $126.5 million program that exterminates more than 4 million wild animals annually, including thousands of geese.

The agency also has come under fire for its use of sodium cyanide, a poison placed in devices called M-44's, which its literature says is used to control coyotes, wild dogs and foxes preying on livestock.

"Many animals killed by M-44's are non-targeted species such as raccoons, bears and household pets," says Brooks Fahy of Predator Defense, a national conservation group, who condemned the agency's use of poisons on a CNN HLN Jane Velez-Mitchell show in March.

"There are years of outmoded thinking," he says, "and leaders from an old regime that can't seem to transition to newer, more humane ways of managing wildlife."

Carol Bannerman, a Wildlife Services media specialist, declined to respond.

Wildlife Services is charged with overseeing the nation's wildlife conflicts involving agricultural and property damage, and human health and safety. Geese are blamed for creating a "nuisance" by defecating on municipal lawns and golf courses.

"We understand the need to manage geese populations," says John Hadidian, suburban wildlife director of The Humane Society of the United States, the nation's largest animal protection group. "It's the approach that is controversial. Capturing geese in a way that is deemed terrorizing is very disturbing to people."

Geese are rounded up and gassed during the summer molt, from late June through early August - unable to escape as new flight feathers replace worn.

According to its literature, however, the agency's mission "is to resolve conflicts in a manner that allows people and wildlife to coexist peacefully."

Dangerfield, remembering PollyAnna's narrow escape, would like to know how that works. So might those who witnessed the deaths of long-time community geese in lethal roundups that left residents in tears. "The human distress was almost equal to that of the geese," remembers Hadidian, of a slaughter in Olney, Md.

In its literature, Wildlife Services tells the public that it euthanizes geese humanely, following guidelines of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

However, videos, photos and eye-witness accounts tell a different story.

Videos show trappers grabbing geese by the throats, handling them roughly, throwing them into crates, parents trampling their young in the process.

"They jam them into those gas chambers until they can't get another feather inside," says Betty Butler, a researcher from Monmouth, N.J. "You can hear the geese thrashing and thumping trying to escape."

Wildlife Services has police cordon off areas where the geese will be executed, she adds, to keep the public from interfering.

Such actions have prompted a growing divide over how geese populations should be managed.

Increasingly, communities are advocating a humane approach. Some communities want to keep their geese but curb population growth by (humanely) treating nest eggs with corn oil. Others hire companies to clean up after the geese if feces is an issue, or as in Ballwin, Mo. or Helena, Ala., incorporate its removal into daily park maintenance. Others want the geese gone but without harming them.

Several communities have organized grassroots efforts to keep the feds at bay.

-In Jackson, Miss., 200 geese were scheduled for removal at the nearby 33,000-acre Ross Barnett Reservoir, when Justin Fritscher, a reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, decided to find out where the geese were being shipped. "The local governing body of the reservoir discussed having them removed at one of its meetings," he said. "I took that to mean moved somewhere else ..." However, when he called the USDA, he learned that the geese weren't being trucked to a paradise in the wilds of central Mississippi, they were being gassed. When the story broke, residents voiced such outrage that the proposed kill and another planned in a nearby suburb of Brandon were both canceled.

-In Bergen County, N.J., Freeholders, the legislative body that advises the county executive, passed a resolution banning slaughters at county parks after a protest. "When residents brought the actions to our attention," says Freeholders chairperson Jim Carroll, "we told the parks department to 'cease and desist'"

-In Brooklyn, N.Y., residents formed a task force, For the Love of Geese in Prospect Park, to protect new geese that began arriving after Wildlife Services killed some 350 geese and goslings. "Parishioners in my neighborhood were visibly upset," recalls Monsignor Keirnan Harrington of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. "We were stunned," says Mary Beth Artz of Brooklyn, one of the group's organizers. "We're a tight-knit community and the geese were part of that." The feds had initially slaughtered geese at locations within a seven-mile kill zone of JFK and LaGuardia airports in response to the USAir-geese collision the year before. "But Prospect Park falls outside the kill zone," recalls Artz. "So we thought our geese were safe."

-In Bend, Ore., where 109 geese were slain last summer, gift shop owner Forest Fell organized a successful grassroots effort to prevent future slaughters at Drake Park. "We don't want to be known as a community that kills its wildlife," he says.

-In Mount Laurel, N.J., an informal group was organized after Wildlife Services slaughtered geese at Laurel Acres Park. "There was no reason to kill them," says Sharon Pawlak of Medford. "Now the town has hired a border collie company but 133 geese are dead."

Wildlife Services, however, doesn't act alone.

"Someone has to request assistance," says media specialist Gail Keirn from its Colorado office. "We just don't go in and start killing on our own."

Slaughters are usually initiated by public officials or others in authority, says Pawlak, who has negotiated geese conflicts in New Jersey.

Then comes the uproar, she adds.

"Officials are embarrassed when residents want to know what happened to their geese," she says. "It didn't dawn on them when they contracted with the USDA that it might be controversial."

River's Edge, the setting for PollyAnna's ordeal, is an example of how slaughters come to be.

In mid-week, the management of the residential complex posted a notice for an emergency meeting to discuss the geese. The complex has almost 500 registered owners.

"I knew they meant business," Dangerfield recalls. "But there were so few people at the meeting it couldn't be construed as representative of all of the tenants."

Participants voted to kill the geese, 14 to 7. Two days later, the feds came.

The River's Edge management declined to discuss the slaughter.

However, Carol Bannerman of Wildlife Services' national office emailed that "the manager had not given permission for release (of the crippled birds) on the property."

Wildlife rehabilitator Beth Mowder insists that she informed the management several times that she would remove the crippled geese if there was ever a problem.

"These were geese that posed no harm to anyone but needed a quiet environment where they could live out their lives," she says.

In its literature, Wildlife Services recommends an integrated approach to managing geese, citing "community involvement as an important part of a decision (to euthanize)."

However, officials in some communities say they don't recall non-lethal measures having been an option.

-In Jackson, Miss., John Sigman, executive director of the Pearl River Water Supply District, says he was misled from the start. "When we first talked to the USDA, we didn't fully understand the direction they were taking us," he says. "I assumed, wrongfully, that the geese were being relocated." However, Patrick Smith, a supervisor in its Stoneville office, says he "never used any term other than euthanasia in addressing reservoir officials." When Sigman found out that the geese were being gassed, he says, he asked if they could be relocated instead. "They agreed," he says, "telling us we would have to pay mileage and other fees to which we agreed." A few days later, he says, the feds reneged on that agreement. Smith says the reservoir has since rebuffed efforts to introduce humane efforts. Asked why those efforts weren't initially offered, he was silent.

-In Delavan Lake, Wis., township manager Dorothy Burwell says she authorized the slaughter of 100 geese after a Wildlife Services presentation convinced her that "killing was the way to go." Now she has teamed up with the Lakeland Animal Shelter to humanely oversee the new geese that have since arrived. "The problems don't seem insurmountable," says shelter executive director Kristen Perry, who organized a volunteer corps that will clean up after the geese through Labor Day.

-At Lake Harbison, S.C., near Columbia, humane measures were never brought up, says Sid Crumpton of the Harbison Community Association. As a result, some 200 geese were killed in one of the state's most controversial slaughters. Today a humane program is in place to oversee 75 new geese. "We're trying to do the right thing," he says.

A follow-up of communities where geese were killed also suggests that such actions are ineffective.

"Slaughters don't work because geese pond-hop," says Denise Savageau, town conservation director in Greenwich, Conn. "As soon as a location becomes vacant, new geese move in."

In Sayreville, N.J., however, borough council member Lisa Eicher wasn't able to convince other officials to vote against gassing geese.

"We've spent about $60,000 in the last five years," she says, "and still the geese keep coming. Isn't it time we tried something else?"

Wildlife Services also says in its literature, that geese pose "a serious health threat." However, geese present no more of a health risk than any other species, including cats and dogs, says Dr. Julia Murphy, public health veterinarian for the Virginia Department of Health.

"Certainly there's a possibility of pathogens (disease-causing bacteria) in fecal material but as a particular risk factor in and of itself, there simply is no direct link," says Murphy.

You would have to ingest droppings to experience discomfort (such as mild gastro-intestinal cramps or upset stomach), she adds, recommending routine hygiene washing hands or keeping close tabs on youngsters too young to tell feces from dirt as protective measures.

Waterfowl specialist Tim Ford, vice president of research at The University of New England, says he knows of no studies linking Canada geese to human health problems.

"The science just isn't there to support that reasoning," he says.

Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request also indicate that the agency profits from its outside contracts.

In 2010, the agency earned almost $70 million almost 60 percent of its overall budget in part from contracts such as those at Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

(Its reports show that Wildlife Services also kills millions of coyotes, blue herons, wolves, beavers, starlings, and other species through trapping, poison and aerial gunning.)

The agency denied a Freedom of Information request to disclose the amount of revenue from gassing geese last year, saying it does not keep such records.

However a review of 15 locations indicates that geese slaughters range from $6,500 in Delafield to $347,000 for a three-year geese management contract in Union County, N.J.

Nor would the agency disclose the amount of its 2010 joint contract with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the city of New York for removal of hundreds of city geese, including those at Prospect Park. However a Freedom of Information request indicates that Wildlife Services was paid $100,000.

Slaughters are also quick and easy; humane programs take longer.

However, participants stand by the results.

Jan Herbert, who runs a geese management program for the parks department in Rockford, Ill., estimates that she and her staff have oiled about 18,000 nest eggs along a seven-mile stretch of the Rock River, reducing the overall geese population to fewer than 300, down from some 1,200 geese.

Similar successes have been achieved in Seattle, Detroit and St. Louis, where volunteers are now oiling thousands of eggs every spring.

In Seattle, for example, where thousands of geese were executed a decade ago, slaughters are now almost non-existent.

"Wildlife Services is still lurking in the background," says Hadidian, "but generally the geese in Seattle are safe."

The Obama administration is proposing a $10 million budget cut for the USDA's Wildlife Services. Critics, including Camilla H. Fox, wildlife consultant of the Animal Welfare Institute, say reductions should be deeper, and funding for gassing geese and its use of poisons cut altogether.

"The program fosters a dependence on taxpayer-funded assistance instead of promoting effective long-term solutions," says Fox.

Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the HSUS, says he would like to see Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack turn Wildlife Services into a humane agency.

"We need a federal agency to help resolve wildlife conflicts humanely," he says. "Not an agency that is basically a contract killer for the states ..."

William Clay, who runs Wildlife Services, did not respond to requests to discuss the agency's direction.

Meanwhile, a growing number of communities continue to leave the feds out of the equation, following principles of the HSUS and GeesePeace, the nation's leaders in implementing humane measures at little or no cost.

GeesePeace director David Feld is currently working with the entire state of Rhode Island.

"Not everyone will participate," he says, "but we'll make our mark."

And Hot Springs Village, Ark., near Little Rock, the nation's largest gated community, remains a honkers' paradise.

"Word got out in the spring that we had discussed killing some 600 geese and there was total uproar," says Steve White, director of planning, who is now partnering with the HSUS.

"What is needed is a new paradigm ..." says wildlife consultant Fox. "If the money and efforts used to kill ... were redirected toward cost-effective, non-lethal methods, such as public education and better landscape development, conflicts would be significantly reduced."

This report was made possible by a grant from The Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington, D.C.

Wildlife Services web site: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife-damage/index.shtml

Read more: http://www.theolympian.com/2011/08/18/1764631/taxpayers-subsidizing-wild-life.html#ixzz1Vz8Yi0X9

VIETNAM: MEKONG RISING

You know those of us on the left have all these debates about this best ways to bring Capital to its knees and all that.  Are you familiar with any that would leave you to believe this can be done anytime soon?  That's the rub.  Capital is destroying the Earth much faster than anyone is destroying Capital.  Time is running out as we dither.  I don't have an answer.  I'm just sayin' WAKE UP out there.  Me, I'll be passing on in twenty years or so no matter what happens, but that is far from true for most of the planets inhabitants.  We've wasted too much time, I fear.  Hopefully, I am wrong.

There used to be this commercial for light bulbs back when eastern Europe was coming out from its People's Republic days.  I remember somehow and for some reason the commercial was concentrating on Hungary.  Suddenly, a light bulb comes on, there is dancing, and the voice over says, "Everything is Changing."  Well, I don't know how the change worked out for whoemever the commercial was making money.  Many of us like to think of change as good, though that obviously is dependent on what is changing and why.  

The new Vietnam War

In any event, change is not so much happy news when it comes to the Earth...as the people of Vietnam are learning today about a war they cannot win alone.

The following is from Seed Daily.

Mekong's rice production at risk

by Staff Writers

Hanoi, Vietnam (UPI) Aug 23, 2011

Vietnam's Mekong Delta is at risk from rising sea levels due to climate change, experts warn.

Known as the Rice Bowl of Vietnam, the 15,000-square-mile region produces half the country's rice output of 49 million tons a year, with 80 percent of its population engaged in rice cultivation.

"Rising sea waters will cause inundations to the Mekong and will require drastic changes in lifestyles," said Dao Xuan Lai, head of sustainable development at the U.N. Development Program in Vietnam, The Guardian newspaper reports.

People will be forced to switch crops and innovate, he said. Those close to river banks and river mouths have already had to find different ways to make a living in fresh water.

Even if all emissions worldwide were stopped now, the water would still rise about 8-12 inches in the next few decades, Lai said.

"People in this region are still very poor and will need help from the international community to survive this," he said.

The World Bank considers Vietnam among the countries most threatened by rising waters brought about by higher global temperatures.

Basing its research on warnings from international organizations that sea levels will increase by 11.8 inches in 2050 and 3.28 feet by 2100, a study by the Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment says that with a 3.28-foot rise, up to one-third of the Mekong Delta and a quarter of Ho Chi Minh City would be permanently submerged.

Rising seawater is also turning the rivers of the Delta salty, with saltwater at four parts per thousand already reaching 35 miles inland, causing significant damage to crops and livestock, particularly affecting rice production.

Rice cannot be grown in saline conditions. Other typically strong crops, including oranges, lemons and coconuts, cannot be grown in higher concentrations of salt.

"I have to travel five hours upstream by boat to fetch water for drinking, washing and cooking," Vo Thi Than, a 60-year-old woman who lives beside a dock and operates a small restaurant on the small delta island of Cu Lao Oc, told The Guardian.

"A long time ago, there was no salty season at all. Now, five months a year the water is salty," she says.

To address the problem, Vietnam's Southern Irrigation Planning Institute has devised a six-point irrigation plan that includes upgrading of canal networks that lead water from rivers to cultivation areas in the delta but work isn't expected to be completed until at least 2030.

KILLING WOLVES FOR FUN, LIES, MYTHS, VOTES AND TO SAVE CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT

Try putting a pretty face on this

Wyoming has decided to do what it always does and kill wolves.  When they aren't killing wolves, they are killing coyotes.  When they aren't killing coyotes, well, they just get damned bored and have to find something else to kill.  Despite all the data, all the science, all the obvious facts, Wyoming, like lots of other states "up there" always bow down to the phony claims of ranchers that wolves and coyotes are going to kill all their "commodities", er, sheep, cattle etc. and they would rather do that themselves.  The canine predators do kill livestock sometimes.  However, virtually always it is livestock (and "game" animals that great white hunters want to kill themselves for "sport") which are sick, injured, or dying.  It is called culling and it is natural and beneficial.  Hunting canine predators to extinction is not natural and it is not beneficial.  It is just what civilized men do.


The following piece comes from New West Politics, not exactly a radical rag.


Wyoming Declares War on Wolves
The state opts to treat wolves mostly as predators, not trophy animals, but implementation will take time.

By Brodie Farquhar, 8-09-11

	Cowboys capture a gray wolf in Wyoming, 1887. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, John C.H. Grabill Collection, [LC-DIG-ppmsc-02636].

An agreement reached last week between Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Director Dan Ashe, and the State of Wyoming will allow treatment of the wolf as a predator that can be shot, trapped, or run over at any time throughout most of the state.

Interior has agreed to remove Wyoming wolves from the threatened and endangered species list, and give the state authority to manage wolves under a unique and widely criticized dual management plan.

Wolves would be safe from hunters in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and managed as trophy animals in the surrounding national forests, subject to regulated hunts. Beyond the trophy area, however, anything goes in killing wolves.

Immediately, the air was filled with salvos on both sides of the debate.

“Wyoming has once again succeeded in strong-arming the FWS into submission, giving tentative approval to an approach to wolves that harkens back to years gone by, when wolves were virtually exterminated in the western United States,” attorney Doug Honnold declared for Earthjustice. “After all the efforts to promote wolf recovery in the Yellowstone area, this is a major step backward.”

Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife, also blasted the plan.

“Sanctioning aerial gunning and the killing of pregnant females and newborn pups is not only a clear violation of fair-chase hunting ethics, but also a drastic and unwarranted step that could seriously harm the long-term viability of the population.” she said.

Stone said she was appalled that the Obama administration had done something that she would have expected from the Bush administration.

The Interior press release that announced the agreement avoided the word “predator,” ignoring the reality of what predator status means in Wyoming, which is the only state in the Lower 48 that does not treat the wolf as a trophy animal by establishing regulated hunts. 

A release from Wyoming Governor Matt Mead did mention the wolf’s predator status, but said nothing about killing wolves, only wolf management. Mead obliquely referred to sacrifices by cattle and sheep growers and the loss of “significant numbers of elk and moose.”

Mead’s statement, but not Salazar’s, referred to the seasonal flexibility of expanding the state’s Trophy Game Management Area about 50 miles to the south from its current location near the Wyoming/Idaho border. The expansion area would be managed as a Trophy Game Management Area from October 15 to the end of February, when wolves disperse into new areas. 

Any wolves that attempt to establish a pack south of the flex line can be shot on sight again as soon as denning season starts in the spring.

Inside the trophy zone, the agreement allows livestock owners to kill wolves attacking their sheep or cattle. It also allows Wyoming Game and Fish to use aerial gunning to: control livestock depredations; achieve ungulate management objectives if wolves are determined to be a significant cause for not meeting those objectives; or address human safety issues.

Gray Wolf. Photo by Gary Kramer, USFWS.

Interior and USFWS have long maintained that Wyoming wolves should be managed as trophy animals, meaning hunters would have defined seasons and would have to purchase hunting permits. Federal officials, even in the Bush administration, regarded Wyoming’s predator status for wolves as problematic.

But Wyoming’s legislature and the successive administrations of Democratic Governor Dave Freudenthal and Republican Governor Matt Mead refused to drop the dual classification of wolves.

Wyoming retains management of wolves as long as wolf numbers do not fall below 150, including animals in the national parks of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Stone noted that with a current population of 246 wolves outside the park, that means almost 150 wolves—nearly 60 percent—could be eliminated.

Based on the latest population estimates, there are 97 wolves within the boundaries of Yellowstone that will remain protected while they are in the park.

The flexible expansion area is supposed to allow Wyoming and Idaho wolves to expand into each other’s state, presumably increasing genetic diversity in both states. Stone said no biologist she knows believes the Interior/Wyoming plan will benefit wolves or wolf genetic diversity.

“A lot of wolves are going to die in our national forests,” she said.

The last time USFWS was politically pushed to approve Wyoming’s dual predator status for wolves, the animals were immediately attacked, she said. She recounted one instance in which a snowmobiler chased a wolf for 30 miles before killing it.

Just a few months ago, in an unprecedented move by Congress, an estimated 1,000 wolves in Idaho and 566 in Montana were “delisted” or removed from Endangered Species Act protections, along with wolves in Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

Meanwhile, Wyoming’s Senator John Barrasso had put a hold on Ashe’s nomination as director of USFWS, a hold that was lifted a few weeks ago after Salazar and Ashe visited Barrasso with assurances that a solution in Wyoming would be aggressively pursued.

The agreement is the first step in a process that could take up to a year to finalize.

On Sept. 7-8, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is slated to vote on changing state regulations to conform with the agreement. That has to happen before USFWS can publish a preliminary rule in the Federal Register to delist Wyoming wolves.

Mead and Salazar have jointly set Oct. 1 as the deadline for the preliminary rule. A year-long federal approval process would then begin, including public comment.

The Wyoming legislature will have to approve the new management plan worked out last week, which it presumably will consider in the next session. 

Meanwhile, the Wyoming congressional delegation intends to pursue legislation that would prevent conservation groups or federal judges from getting involved. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-WY, recently inserted a no-litigation rider into a 2012 appropriations bill.

Brodie Farquhar, who has covered the West for decades as a specialist in resource journalism, lives in Casper, Wyoming. 

THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING AND THAT'S JUST WHAT THEY'LL DO...WALK ALL OVER YOU

  In the days to come it will become remarkably clear to anyone who bothers to look what the "Libyan Revolution" means to the Empire, and most especially to the USA.  Just a few minutes ago I heard Fareed Zakaria on CNN say that the main task of the "Transition Council" will be to maintain order (and, in fact, it is true, that they have long indicated that they will not dismantle the state, they will keep on the police, the civil service, etc. etc. etc).  A true revolution, however, should SMASH the state entirely and create something new.  However, that is the last thing the NATO "allies" want to happen.  They are happy to get rid of the nut who has been running the place since he has always been a bit of a problem for them.  What they want is a more compliant, happy "province."

NEW BOOTS...SAME OLD SONG AND DANCE

 So it cannot come as a surprise to hear from Dr. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, spilling the beans just a little bit?


The following is again from Lenin's Tomb.














Libya is free - it must be occupied 

The task is daunting but not hopeless. So far the rebels have done fairly well in policing the cities they have taken over. The fact they participated in the liberation of their country may have helped as there appears to be a sense of responsibility and ownership, 

something sorely absent in Iraq.

In the days ahead, looting – which so tainted the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 – must be prevented. Diehard supporters of the regime will have to be disarmed or defeated.

Tribal war must be averted. Justice and not revenge need to be the order of the day if Libya is not to come to resemble the civil war of post-Saddam Iraq in the first instance, or the chaos and terrorism of Somalia and Yemen. 

...

Most former supporters of the regime should be integrated into the new Libya. Doing so would send a powerful signal to the country and the world that post-Gaddafi Libya will be governed by law and not revenge or whim.

All this poses serious challenges to the outside world. The 7,000 sorties flown by Nato aircraft played a central role in the rebel victory. 

The “humanitarian” intervention introduced to save lives believed to be threatened was, in fact, a political intervention introduced to bring about regime change. Now Nato has to deal with its own success.

International assistance, probably including an international force, is likely to be needed for some time to help restore and maintain order. 

The size and composition of the force will depend on what is requested and welcomed by the Libyan National Transitional Council and what is required by the situation on the ground.

President Barack Obama may need to reconsider his assertion that there would not be any American boots on the ground; leadership is hard to assert without a presence.

GEORGE JACKSON SCARED THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THEM AND WE LOVE HIM FOR IT

It's been forty years.


From the San Francisco Bay View.


George Jackson: Forty years ago they shot him down


by Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali

George Jackson

The 21st of August marks the 40th anniversary of the execution of George Lester Jackson. The Chicago-born Jackson would have celebrated his 70th birthday on Sept. 23.

Many of the strategies and tactics that he and his fellow comrades employed in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s were used by prisoners at Pelican Bay, Corcoran and other California prisons in the recent hunger strike.

Jackson was a prisoner who became a Marxist, an author, a member of the Black Panther Party and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family prison organization. He achieved global fame as one of the Soledad Brothers before being executed by prison guards in San Quentin Prison.

George and his younger brother, Jonathan Jackson, and Khatari Gaulden are central to understanding Black August. Jackson was an African born in America who became a field marshal of the Black Panther Party while in prison, where he spent the last 12 years of his life. His book of published letters, “Soledad Brother,” became an instant classic.

Gaulden became the leader inside San Quentin after George Jackson was killed on Aug. 21, 1971. The Little Rock, Arkansas-born Gaulden was himself assassinated in 1978. The hit on Gaulden was the spark that led to the Black August prairie fire.

On Aug. 7, 1970, George’s 17-year-old brother Jonathan burst into a Marin County courtroom with automatic weapons, freed three San Quentin prisoners and took Judge Harold Haley as a hostage to demand freedom for the three “Soledad Brothers.” However, Haley, prisoners William Christmas and James McClain, and Jonathan Jackson were killed as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse.

The case made international headlines. The state claimed that Judge Haley was hit by fire discharged from a shotgun inside the vehicle during the incident, since he was being covered by a shotgun attached by wiring, tape, and/or a strap of some sort, and/or held beneath his chin. The shotgun was traced back to Angela Davis.

The murder charge was thrown out early on in the pretrial hearings because Haley was killed in the hail of bullets from the San Quentin prison guards. These bullets killed Christmas, McClain and Jonathan Jackson and wounded Gary Thomas. Another prisoner, Ruchell Cinque Magee, was charged with two counts of kidnapping. He was acquitted of the more serious (kidnap for ransom) charge and convicted of the simple kidnap. The acquittal was in dispute although the jury foreman declared he was acquitted and signed an affidavit to that effect. Magee fought for decades to right this wrong to no avail. Now 71 years old, he still languishes in prison to this day.

Eight thousand people came to George Jackson’s funeral on Aug. 28, 1971. Held in St. Augustine’s church in Oakland, which held only 200 mourners, the rest waited outside. Billy X Jennings, Black Panther Party historian and one of the pallbearers that day, recalls: “We rose to pick up George’s body, and everyone raised their fists in the air as we filed past them. When the doors opened, and we stepped outside with the body, I saw that the crowd had grown tremendously. There were people on rooftops, hanging from telephone poles and filling the streets. Everyone raised their fists in the air and chanted, ‘Long live George Jackson.’ It was a sight that could set a fire in your heart.” - Photo: Stephen Shames

One year later in August 1971, three days before he was to go on trial, George was gunned down in the prison yard at San Quentin in what officials described as an escape attempt. When Jackson was murdered 40 years ago at San Quentin prison, Aug. 21, 1971, this writer saw grown, macho men break down and cry tears bigger than cantaloupes. Jackson influenced a larger number of Africans-in-America and progressive thinking whites than can be imagined.

The murder of Jackson sent Archie Shepp, Bob Dylan and Steel Pulse into the studio to record tributes to him. Jackson was eulogized in the jazz, pop and reggae idioms. “Jazz” man Shepp released “Blues for Brother George Jackson” on his “Attica Blues” album. Dylan did a single, “George Jackson,” and the British reggae band Steel Pulse, who would later be invited to perform at President William Jefferson Clinton’s first inauguration in 1993, recorded two songs, “George Jackson,” a cover of Dylan’s song, and “Uncle George,” on their 1977 album “Tribute to the Martyrs.” The group actually re-recorded “George Jackson” and “Uncle George” on the 2004 album “African Holocaust.”

Jackson’s impact was so great that Warner Bros. attempted to cash in on his image by producing a film, “Brothers,” starring Bernie Casey and Vonetta McGee. The soundtrack was performed by Taj Mahal. I saw the film in Memphis, Tennessee. There was only an elderly Euro-American couple and myself in the theater that day. When I saw the film, I was slippin’ into darkness (I was underground).

Who was George Jackson and why eulogize a “convict”? When Jackson was 18, he was sentenced from one year to life for stealing $70 from a gas station. He spent the next eleven years in prison, eight and a half of them in solitary confinement.

When he was 28 years old, he was charged with the murder of a guard in Soledad prison. Shortly after his indictment for this murder, his first book, “Soledad Brother,” a book of his letters, was published in England, Germany, Italy and Sweden. He was acclaimed throughout the world as the most powerful and eloquent Black writer to emerge in years. He became a symbol for the struggle of all oppressed people.

Commenting on Jackson’s writing, C.L.R. James pointed out, “The letters are in my opinion the most remarkable political documents that have appeared inside or outside the United States since the death of (Vladimir Ilyich) Lenin.” The late Walter Rodney used to talk about how it was amazing that Jackson could develop an international consciousness from a prison cell. Rupert Lewis, who wrote the book, “Walter Rodney’s Intellectual and Political Thought,” found an essay that Rodney had written about Jackson while he lived in Tanzania.

George Jackson continued to make news even after his death. When Stanley Tookie Williams was executed on Dec. 13, 2005, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger evoked his name as one of the reasons that the co- founder of the Crips should meet his maker. Gov. Schwarzenegger pointed out, “The dedication of Williams’ book ‘Life in Prison’ casts significant doubt on his personal redemption.

“This book was published in 1998, several years after Williams’ claimed redemptive experience. Specifically, the book is dedicated to ‘Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars.’ The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders, including the killing of law enforcement.”

Jackson’s second book, “Blood in My Eye,” was completed only days before he was killed in an alleged escape attempt from San Quentin. “Blood in My Eye” clearly showed Jackson’s global outlook. He wrote, “The commitment to total revolution must involve an analysis of both the economic motives and the psychosocial motives which perpetuate the oppressive contract. For the black partisan, national structures are quite simply nonexistent. A people without a collective consciousness that transcends national boundaries – freaks, Afro-Amerikkkans, Negroes, even Amerikkkans, without the sense of a larger community than their own group – can have no effect on history. Ultimately they will simply be eliminated from the scene.”

Kumasi and Shaka At-Thinnin of Los Angeles and Oakland, respectively, recently appeared on Saturday Morning Live in Toronto. Both knew George and served time in California dungeons. They represent the Black August Organizing Committee, whose mission it is to attempt to help prisoners such as Hugo “Yogi” Pennell, Ruchell Magee and countless others still languishing behind California and other prison walls in the United States. For more information on this organization, contact http://www.dragonspeaks.org.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has written and recorded several outstanding commentaries about Black August. To listen to these thought provoking messages, go to http://www.prisonradio.org.

Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali can be reached at Norman.o.richmon@gmail.com.

Editor’s note: Listen to Kiilu Nyasha’s “Black August,” a historic four-hour special broadcast on KPFA, initially produced in 1993 and reproduced in 2006, at http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/22401. “For those of you who haven’t heard the voices of George Jackson, Ruchell Magee, John Clutchette, Hugo Pinell et al. and/or haven’t learned the history of our Black August martyrs, here’s pretty much the whole story. Please feel free to use clips of this program to educate to liberate,” writes Nyasha, revolutionary journalist and Black Panther veteran. These four hours are life-changing, by far the best record of the great George Jackson and the profound impact of Black August in our opinion.

I WON'T MISS QADHAFI AND I WON'T WELCOME NATO

Who do you think wins in Libya.  I have to say international capital will be the big winner along with their main State representative the US of A, and the always happy multinational forces of that alliance known as NATO.  I mean, lets face it, what do we know about these rebels other than they enjoy lynching black Africans when the get the change and they fire weapons in the air a whole lot.  


I know who isn't likely to be a big winner and that would, of course, be the ordinary people of Libya.  


I keep waiting for the next phase of all these so called revolutions, every now and then a glimmer of hope arises, and then...poof, nothing changes all that much.  The Empire is happy and isn't that what it's all about.


The following is from Lenin's Tomb.

No tears for Qadhafi; no cheers for NATO 
posted by lenin

Qadhafi is finished, as I rashly predicted he would be.  It looks like his personal bodyguards have surrendered, and rebels are marching through the centre of Tripoli.  Moussa Ibrahim, performing this tragicomical Ali role, reportedly claims that the masses are on their way to Tripoli to protect the regime.  Since he doesn't really believe this, no one else has to either.  I have no doubt that there will be riotous celebrations in Benghazi, Tripoli, Zawiya and elsewhere tonight.  The decomposition of the regime, just months after it seemed to have retaken control, will be what people are cheering for.  And only a churl or a regime loyalist would begrudge it. 

But mark the sequel.  The rebel army is commanded by someone who is most likely a CIA agent.  As far as I know, it has around 1,000 trained soldiers, within a total force of about 30-40,000 people (and within a population of 6.5m people).  It is directed on the ground by intelligence and special forces.  It isn't well armed, and it will probably now be either rapidly disarmed, or integrated into the post-Qadhafi state.  There may be a small number of jihadis among them, but these will either adapt, integrate, or be hunted down and killed on the basis of the new Libya's remit of fighting 'Al Qaeda'.  (Recall, preventing an 'Al Qaeda' takeover was one of the major justifications for intervention when the think-tanks started thinking tanks).  There is as yet no political force through which the masses could act independently of the new government, were they even of a mind to do so.  The rebels will be disarmed, and the initiative will rest with pro-US politicians and other ruling class spokespeople. 

As a result, I would strongly caution against getting carried away with the prospect of permanent revolution here.  I think the US and its allies will very quickly stabilise this situation.  There will be no analogue to 'de-Baathification'.  The old state structures will be preserved and adapted, and the new government will enjoy considerable legitimacy provided it delivers on a basic menu of elections and political rights.  Moreover, the parties that win those elections will likely be the more pro-capitalist elements allied to the ruling class factions in the leadership of the transitional council.  The government that now follows will be less oppressive and more democratic than the one it ousted, and it will probably be less sectional than the Qadhafi regime. 

It would be hard for the coming government to do worse than Qadhafi.  In one respect, however, they may do just that.  EU powers will certainly demand that the new regime hold to their promise to continue Qadhafi's policy of containing immigration from Africa to the EU.  Given the way that some elements in this rebellion have treated black and migrant workers - you know, lynchings and that - the EU can probably have full confidence in the new regime's handling of this remit.  It always made sense, of course, for the bourgeois elements of the rebellion to scapegoat black workers as the 'alien' elements, the fifth column depended on by Qadhafi.  In government, the temptation to resort to racist hysteria in order to frustrate and divide potential opposition will be magnified many times over.

So, I'm just saying, I don't think we're witnessing a revolutionary process here.  I think that's been halted a long time ago.  And it will take time and organisation before it resumes, if it does.

ISRAEL AND PALESTINE: YOU JUST WANT TO CRY

Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel as far as the Israelies and Palestinians go.  It never ceases to amaze me that every time anything the least bit hopeful happens, somebody does something to destroy it.  No, I won't give up, but come on...


Uri Avenery comments on recent events at Counterpunch.

Netanyahu  and  the  Border  Incident

The Return of the Generals

Uri Avenery

SINCE THE beginning of the conflict, the extremists of both sides have always played into each other’s hands. The cooperation between them was always much more effective than the ties between the corresponding peace activists. “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” asked the prophet Amos (3:3). Well, seems they can. This was proved again this week. * * * AT THE beginning of the week, Binyamin Netanyahu was desperately looking for a way out of an escalating internal crisis. The social protest movement was gathering momentum and posing a growing danger to his government. The struggle was going on, but the protest had already made a huge difference. The whole content of the public discourse had changed beyond recognition. Social ideas were taking over, pushing aside the hackneyed talk about “security”. TV talk show panels, previously full of used generals, were now packed with social workers and professors of economics. One of the consequences was that women were also much more prominent. And then it happened. A small extremist Islamist group in the Gaza Strip sent a detachment into the Egyptian Sinai desert, from where it easily crossed the undefended Israeli border and created havoc. Several fighters (or terrorists, depends who is talking) succeeded in killing eight Israeli soldiers and civilians, before some of them were killed. Another four of their comrades were killed on the Egyptian side of the border. The aim seems to have been to capture another Israeli soldier, to strengthen the case for a prisoner exchange on their terms. In a jiffy, the economics professors vanished from the TV screens, and their place was taken by the old gang of exes – ex-generals, ex-secret-service chiefs, ex-policemen, all male, of course, accompanied by their entourage of obsequious military correspondents and far-right politicians. With a sigh of relief, Netanyahu returned to his usual stance. Here he was, surrounded by generals, the he-man, the resolute fighter, the Defender of Israel. * * * IT WAS, for him and his government, an incredible stroke of luck. It can be compared to what happened in 1982. Ariel Sharon, then Minister of Defense, had decided to attack the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, He flew to Washington to obtain the necessary American agreement. Alexander Haig told him that the US could not agree, unless there was a “credible provocation”. A few days later, the most extreme Palestinian group, led by Abu Nidal, Yasser Arafat’s mortal enemy, made an attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in London, paralyzing him irreversibly. That was certainly a “credible provocation”. Lebanon War I was on its way. This week’s attack was also an answer to a prayer. Seems that God loves Netanyahu and the military establishment. The incident not only wiped the protest off the screen, it also put an end to any serious chance of taking billions off the huge military budget in order to strengthen the social services. On the contrary, the event proved that we need a sophisticated electronic fence along the 150 miles of our desert border with Sinai. More, not less, billions for the military. * * * BEFORE THIS miracle occurred, it looked as if the protest movement was unstoppable. Whatever Netanyahu did was too little, too late, and just wrong. In the first days, Netanyahu treated the whole thing as a childish prank, unworthy of the attention of responsible adults. When he realized that this movement was serious, he mumbled some vague proposals for lowering the price of apartments, but by then the protest had already moved far beyond the original demand for “affordable housing”. The slogan was now “The People Want Social Justice”  After the huge 250,000-strong demonstration in Tel Aviv, the protest leaders were facing a dilemma: how to proceed? Yet another mass protest in Tel Aviv might mean falling attendance. The solution was sheer genius: not another big demonstration in Tel Aviv, but smaller demonstrations all over the country. This disarmed the reproach that the protesters are spoiled Tel Aviv brats, “sushi eaters and water-pipe smokers” as one minister put it. It also brought the protest to the masses of disadvantaged Oriental Jewish inhabitants of the “periphery”, from Afula in the North to Beer Sheva in the South, most of them the traditional voters of Likud. It became a love-fest of fraternization.     So what does a run-of-the-mill politician do in such a situation? Well, of course, he appoints a committee. So Netanyahu told a respectable professor with a good reputation to set up a committee which would, in cooperation with nine ministers, no less, come up with a set of solutions. He even told him that he was ready to completely change his own convictions. (He did already change one of his convictions when he announced in 2009 that he now advocates the Two-State Solution. But after that momentous about-face, absolutely nothing changed on the ground.) The youngsters in the tents joked that “Bibi” could not change his opinions, because he has none. But that is a mistake – he does indeed have very definite opinions on both the national and the social levels: “the whole of Eretz Israel” on the one, and Reagan-Thatcher economic orthodoxy on the other. The young tent leaders countered the appointment of the establishment committee with an unexpected move: they appointed a 60-strong advisory council of their own, composed of some of the most prominent university professors, including an Arab female professor and a moderate rabbi, and headed by a former deputy governor of the Bank of Israel. The government committee has already made it clear that it will not deal with middle class problems but concentrate on those of the lowest socio-economic groups. Netanyahu has added that he will not automatically adopt their (future) recommendations, but weight them against the economic possibilities. In other words, he does not trust his own nominees to understand the economic facts of life. * * * AT THAT point, Netanyahu and his aides pinned their hopes on two dates: September and November 2011.  In November, the rainy season usually sets in. No drop of rain before that. But when it starts to rain cats and dogs, it was hoped in Netanyahu’s office, the spoiled Tel Aviv kids will run for shelter. End of the Rothschild tent city. Well, I remember spending some miserable weeks in the winter of the 1948 war in worse tents, in the midst of a sea of mud and water. I don’t think that the rain will make the tent-dwellers give up their struggle, even if Netanyahu’s religious partners send the most fervent Jewish prayers for rain to the high heavens. But before that, in September, just a few weeks away, the Palestinians – it was hoped - would start a crisis that will divert attention. This week they already submitted to the UN General Assembly a request to recognize the State of Palestine. The Assembly will most probably accede. Avigdor Lieberman has already enthusiastically assured us that the Palestinians are planning a “bloodbath” at that time. Young Israelis will have to exchange their tents in Tel Aviv for the tents in the West Bank army camps. It’s a nice dream (for the Liebermans), but Palestinians had so far showed no inclination to violence. All that changed this week. * * * FROM  NOW on, Netanyahu and his colleagues can direct events as they wish. They have already “liquidated” the chiefs of the group which carried out the attack, called “the Popular Resistance Committees”. This happened while the fire-fight along the border was still going on. The army had been forewarned and was ready. The fact that the attackers succeeded nevertheless in crossing the border and shooting at vehicles was ascribed to an operational failure. What now? The group in Gaza will fire rockets in retaliation. Netanyahu can – if he so wishes – kill more Palestinian leaders, military and civilian. This can easily set off a vicious circle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, leading to a full-scale Molten Lead-style war. Thousands of rockets on Israel, thousands of bombs on the Gaza Strip. One ex-military fool already argued that the entire Gaza Strip will have to be re-occupied. In other words, Netanyahu has his hand on the tap of violence, and he can raise or lower the flames at will. His desire to put an end to the social protest movement may well play a role in his decisions. * * * THIS BRINGS us back to the big question of the protest movement: can one bring about real change, as distinct from forcing some grudging concessions from the government, without becoming a political force? Can this movement succeed as long as there is a government which has the power to start - or deepen - a “security crisis” at any time? And the related question: can one talk about social justice without talking about peace? A few days ago, while strolling among the tents on Rothschild Boulevard, I was asked by an internal radio station to give an interview and address the tent-dwellers. I said: “You don’t want to talk about peace, because you want to avoid being branded as ‘leftists”. I respect that. But social justice and peace are two sides of the same coin, they cannot be separated. Not only because they are based on the same moral principles, but also because in practice they depend on each other.”  When I said that, I could not have imagined how clearly this would be demonstrated only two days later. * * * REAL CHANGE means replacing this government with a new and very different political set up. Here and there people in the tents are already talking about a new party. But elections are two years away, and for the time being there is no sign of a real crack in the right-wing coalition that might bring the elections closer. Will the protest be able to keep up its momentum for two whole years? Israeli governments have yielded in the past to mass demonstrations and public uprisings. The formidable Golda Meir resigned in the face of mass demonstrations blaming her for the omissions that led to the fiasco at the start of the Yom Kippur War. The government coalitions of both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak in the 1990s broke under the pressure of an indignant public opinion.   Can this happen now? In view of the military flare-up this week, it does not look likely. But stranger things have happened between heaven and earth, especially in Israel, the land of limited impossibilities. Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.