September 2011 Archives
Well, Earl, we might have to go toe to toe on this one. Sure, I agree that this should not be about Michael Jackson's peculiarities and eccentricities. There is no relevance to his past charges and acquittals on child molestation. His sexuality and peccadilloes should be off limits. But his celebrity has to count.
All of us who live in the real world--or in Southern California's version of the "reel" world--know that celebrities are different. They are different in what they are permitted, in how they are treated in restaurants, in clubs, on the street, by our courts and by the medical establishment. Celebrity sometimes works against them. They are under scrutiny and judgment that would wither most normal citizens. They are hounded by the paparazzi, stalked by the crazy and bothered by ordinary fans who want to touch them.
On the other hand, they sometimes literally get away with murder. Fear of litigation prevents me from naming the usual suspects, but you all know them. Celebrity justice is an oxymoron. They can afford a level of lawyer out of reach of most of us. They can assemble dream teams to create reasonable doubt--or get leniency for actions that would put most of us behind bars. Jane Doe does way more time, and far earlier, than Lindsay Lohan. Robert Downey got many more chances than a poor person of color would have. And maybe he proved that treatment is in fact a better model than incarceration. But, my point is that it wasn't equal justice before the law.
Yes, Earl, Dr. Murray is on trial, but the defense, and it is a proper defense, will be that he was treating an addict--and not only an addict but someone who had built whole systems that enabled his drug use. The prosecution playing the tape of Jackson's slurred speech to establish that Murray ought to have known Jackson had a "drug problem," will ultimately help the defense. The defense, whether truthfully or not I cannot say, will hold that Murray knew Jackson was addicted and was trying to wean him off.
The foundation of the prosecution's argument is that Diprivan/Propofol should never be given in a non-hospital environment will prove to be untrue. First of all, there are many "boutique" medical practices--where "important (rich) people get out-patient treatment that most of us would have to go to a hospital to receive. They get plastic surgery (with full anesthesia), they get lipo-suction and other procedures without having to be registered in a hospital. They are also often released not to licensed medical facilities or rehab facilities, but sometimes to hotels and, when there is enough money, even home.
Jackson had Dipravan/Propofol in non-medical surroundings more than a decade before Dr. Murray came into his orbit. Should the world be like this? Probably not. But it is.
I have no idea if Dr. Murray is a good guy or bad--a competent physician or a money-grasping monster. I don't know if he was trying to hide drugs in order to protect himself or Jackson's legacy. However, Jackson's celebrity, history of addiction and system of being enabled will be relevant in seeking justice and determining the truth of the matter.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Dr. Conrad Murray's defense, his only real defense against the charge of involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson, is a simple one. He says that Jackson in effect killed himself. That he was so hopelessly drug addicted that he pumped himself up with the fatal drug or combination of drugs that killed him. The unstated is that given Jackson's world renowned aloofness and eccentricities his self-destruction was all but foreordained. With anyone else and in any other circumstances, this would be a laughable defense. The indisputable fact is that Murray is a trained physician. He was hired by Jackson specifically to administer and supervise his medications and medical care. He did not say no to Jackson's continual use of the potentially lethal drug. He did not summon medics immediately when Jackson went into his fatal coma. No matter how self-destructive and on the edge one may want to believe that Jackson was, and that he did have a long history of drug use, it's the wildest stretch to hold a patient responsible for his own death with his doctor literally in the next room.
But Jackson is not just any patient. Since the day he was hauled into court in 2005 on child molestation charges and the day months later he was acquitted on all counts in the case, Jackson's name has been synonymous with controversy. The acquittal in the child molestation charge meant nothing to millions. Many still quietly whispered and many others openly slurred him as a child molester. His deep withdrawal from public view after the trial did not stop the endless swirl of malicious questions about his actions, motives, and alleged perversion.
His death didn't change things either. Millions of Jackson fans mourned, agonized, and were infuriated by his death. Countless others dredged up, and hurled the same old, vicious accusations at Jackson as a freak, kook, and, of course, child molester.
President Obama walked a fine and circumspect line in reacting to Jackson's death. He sent the ritual condolences to Jackson's family. But he also made veiled references to Jackson as a controversial figure when he noted that there were aspects of his life that were sad and tragic. The White House did not issue any formal statement on his death and when then White House press secretary Robert Gibbs asked if one would be forthcoming he testily replied "Because I just said it." That officially ended the Jackson matter for the White House. Other politicians had no such reservations. They openly pilloried Jackson even slandering him as a "pervert" who did not deserve any public acclamation, but disgust.
Jackson's name, fame, and controversy are plastered all over what goes on in and outside the courtroom in the Murray trial. There are the tearful and heartfelt reminiscences and reminders from fans and court observers about Jackson's towering importance to the music and creative artistry world, and his continuing rapturous influence on millions. The legal experts meanwhile endlessly speculate on the evidence in the case and whether it measures up to the high bar of criminal culpability.
Ultimately, Murray's legal fate and Jackson's celebrity name will rest in the hands of the jurors. Both are connected because not one of the jurors selected dared plead ignorance of not having heard of Jackson. The prosecutors and defense attorneys didn't go there and try to determine the depth of the juror's pro or anti Jackson bias. Some of the jurors made it clear that they were Jackson fans, or that they thought he was a great entertainer. None expressed any misgivings about Jackson. The only misgivings were whether the criminal justice treated the rich and famous with kid gloves. More than one thought this is the case. Whether this means that the jury is so pro Jackson that Murray doesn't stand much chance of acquittal is another matter.
Indeed it should not matter. The jurors are charged with one thing, and one thing only, and that's to strictly weigh the physical evidence and testimony and determine whether Murray did what the prosecution says that he did and that's cause Jackson's death. That's the sole standard that any jury should be charged with in determining guilt or innocence in any criminal case. However, it would be the pinnacle of naivety to think that facts alone determine trial outcomes in celebrated trials. Countless studies and surveys of criminal cases involving celebrities show that money and fame do play huge role in these cases. Money allows celebrities not only to hire the best and brightest of attorneys, but to tweak and massage the message of innocence of their celebrity client outside the courtroom. Murray used his celebrity name by dint of his association with Jackson's death to get a crack legal team, and insure that they spin away his innocence outside the courtroom. A big part of that is their hit on Jackson that he killed himself. By any standard this shouldn't fly. But given the always lurking undercurrent of controversy and doubt about Jackson from so many, they're banking that they can put Jackson not Murray on trial. And this definitely shouldn't fly.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
I write a column (Out of My MInd) for a newspaper in Fullerton, The Fullerton Observer. For those of us who live in, work in or just love Fullerton, it has been a shock to see ourselves in the news--and not simply our local news stations but CNN and not simply our own papers but even the New York Times! We have become famous, really infamous, for all the wrong reasons. It has not been our sports teams, our state college or university, our fine dining or excellent theatre.
Our notoriety comes from the beating death of Kelly Thomas. This has raised both locally and wider the issue of police brutality and the plight of the homeless--particularly the mentally ill homeless.
At the start of this story there was very little transparency from the police and little evident desire from the city solons to open things up. Then, as videos started leaking onto the Net, voices grew first louder and then angrier. We started yelling at each other, then charging and defending our positions. All of which was understandable. However, there was very little listening.
Now the Faith Community Forum, a special taskforce from the Fullerton Interfaith Ministers Association, has met three times to find an open-hearted and compassionate way of responding to the many real, and sometimes tragic, issues. They want to hear from everyone and get a better sense of how to treat the problems and see each other, not as different sides but as different viewpoints. They want to listen to parents, to the homeless, to the police and to regular Fullertonians.
To that end, the Faith Community Forum has partnered with the City Taskforce on Homelessness and will be sponsoring/hosting three "Listening Conferences," where people will be invited to come and respond to a series of questions concerning the issues. The hope is that this will increase listening and understanding and give us all a chance to work together to prevent this kind of tragedy from recurring.
The answers are not easy and obvious. Homelessness from poverty is a growing problem in our nation and in our city. People on the streets because of various addictions--often resulting from self-medicating underlying problems--is also a growing problem. Dealing with mentally ill street people is the most difficult challenge of all.
When we see this story, our story, the Kelly Thomas story covered by the media, we often see Kelly's picture from his childhood, then his teen years. We see the clear-eyed young man with the big smile greeting a seemingly limitless horizon. Then, sometimes, the media will show his deterioration. We see him starting to look unkempt, then grizzled and finally, at 37, he looks like he's 70 and has been on the street forever.
It's difficult to remember when encountering someone who acts different, thinks different and often smells different that this is a person who did not choose this life. We want to turn away and not see a full human being. We want them to make good choices--or at least better choices--with their lives. It's hard to remember that they didn't wish to be like this. This wasn't their parent's dream for them or their dream for themselves.
Their lives are not about choice but disease and chemistry. They can't just snap out of it. But they can be helped. For most of us it takes an act of will to look into their eyes and respond to them compassionately. And there is no certainty that this will help. But it could make some difference.
When I was doing my internship at Napa State Hospital, my old clinical supervisor told me, after I had spent a seemingly useless hour with a patient, that just being there and giving time and respect could, but not necessarily would, make a big difference. There's little downside to treating people with respect and no upside to treating people without respect. This applies to the homeless, the clueless, the public, politicians and police.
We have a lot of work to do, and we will make mistakes. I know this because I was a part of the problem. I did my training in the 60s, in the time of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. We tended to romanticize mental illness. We sometimes wondered who was really the sane and who the crazy. We often worked to make it difficult to hold people against their will and set a high standard for hospitalization and treatment. We made it almost impossible to get people to take meds against their will. This was, at least partially, motivated by the fear that we would do what they had done in both Fascist Germany and the Soviet Union and take any controversial people and declare them insane in order to hold them forever and medicate them into zombies.
Others defunded the mental health system, while still others didn't want halfway homes in their neighborhoods. I don't blame anyone for any of these positions. They are all serious issues. But we have to begin this process by admitting that what we have, what we're doing and not doing, isn't working--not for our downtown streets, not for loving parents whose hearts break at the sight of their children on the streets, not for our police who cannot expect the mentally ill to respond to commands in "normal" ways. And this is certainly not working for our mentally ill homeless.
We in Fullerton are going to try to do something creative. We are going to stop shouting and start listening. Who knows? This could be a model for other communities.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Being conflicted and wanting to separate actions from outcomes is the human condition and not the exclusive dysfunction of one political party. We all want to eat steak and ice cream and lose weight. We want to get fit without exercise and be informed without studying.
Government is to many conservatives what the police are to many liberals. We hate them until we need them. So, given an earthquake, hurricane or flood, please help, the conservatives cry. But, please remember, I don't want to pay taxes to pay for this help. We should have a strong military and be able to fight wars on at least two fronts, but under Republican presidents, we'll carry the wars off the books with special appropriations. We'd really like the tax code to incentivize industry and help support prices for milk, wheat, corn and oil explorations. However, tax code incentives or subsidies for solar energy, infrastructure repair, or keeping jobs from being shipped off shore are job-killing governmental interference and a giant leap towards socialism.
Conservatives are consistently for state's rights, unless they're not. Arizona should be able to have its own immigration policies, but California shouldn't be able to make marijuana legal. States should be able to promulgate their own environmental regulations--as well as health and safety--but abortion and gay marriage should be federal. The Constitution was given by God to our Founders; it is holy writ but we really need, they believe, a bunch of Constitutional amendments. Many conservatives find no particular contradiction or irony in being against federally mandated health care and telling the government to leave Medicare alone.
Liberals too pursue whole bunches of contradictory policies, where goals and methods cannot possibly be reconciled. We want jobs, good jobs, but will fight like hell to prevent anyone from building a factory anywhere near where we live. We want to be energy independent but with no drilling for oil and no building of nuclear power plants here. We want energy but not coal which is dirty to burn and dangerous (not to mention ugly) to mine. We also don't want to dam any rivers in order to produce clean energy. Wind farms, too, are out of the question. If I can see them, they're ugly. And, naturally, if I can see them, I can also hear them, and they're noisy. As good environmentalists we also know that their blades are really giant Cuisinearts chopping, dicing and puréeing Bald Eagles, endangered Condors, Spotted Owls or any other rara avis we could possibly imagine.
Politically we can all agree that we want a president who is firm in his (and some day, her) convictions but flexible enough to govern. We want an idealistic pragmatist who is a gifted communicator but not glib, religious but not fanatical, pro-America but not chauvinistic, generous and frugal, compassionate but not sentimental, smart but not too intellectual. We want an every man who is exceptional. No wonder we live in a state of constant conflict and disappointment.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
There should be no confusion between Citizen Cain and Citizen Kane. One is a man born in low estate who fought his way to the top of his industry. He became enamored of himself and began to lust for recognition and power. He became arrogant and looked down on the class from which he came. His ambition was such that after rising to the top of his industry, he sought the larger platform of the media and finally reached for the brass ring of politics.
Yes, one was a man of humble beginnings who soared high enough to look down on others, a once humble man who became a megalomaniac. One is a man, the other a character in a movie.
Herman Cain does have a few things going for him--particularly in straw polls. First he is not Mitt Romney, whom true conservatives distrust at best and usually simply despise. Second, he does (fairly or unfairly) help inoculate them from the suspicion that they themselves may harbor, that there is a certain amount of racism in their anti-Obama obsession. (Just as some Democrats voted for Obama in order to feel good about themselves.) Third, he is entertaining and can speak his mind since he has little, if anything, to lose. He will not be the nominee either for president or vice president. Fourth, he is very entertaining and his passion, energy, humor and charisma come through. The lens likes him as much as it dislikes John Huntsman. Bob Dole complained to Bill Clinton that charisma is unfair. True. Finally, for those folks in Florida, particularly my people (old Jews) who mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan in 2000, he has two names and both are plausibly Jewish: Herman and Cain. Let's hear it for the new Cainanites!
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's wipe out of the GOP presidential field in the Florida straw poll got much attention partly because he was so far behind presumptive GOP Presidential front runners Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. But it also got attention because it seemed to refute the relentless charge that the GOP is racist. Cain is black, grew up poor, and did not shy away from talking about black issues during his stint as a radio broadcaster. Despite his unabashed, spout of ultra conservative views, he doesn't shirk away from his blackness. His win in Florida, not a Northern state, among virtually a lily white slate of voters does seem to make a case that the knock of racism against the GOP is overblown.
It doesn't. True, at times, straw polls provide some gauge of the support a presidential contender has among the general party electorate. Reagan in 1979, George H.W. Bush in 1987 and Bob Dole in 1995 won the Florida straw poll and went on to win the GOP presidential nomination. But they were seasoned, name recognizable, GOP stalwarts, and the clear front runners for the nomination. Cain could hardly be considered any of those things. And the slightly more than 2,500 voters that bothered to cast a ballot in the straw poll could hardly be considered a representative sample of the GOP electorate.
In any case straw poll votes are pure symbolism. More times than not the front running, that is electable, candidates, either spend little time, energy and resources bothering to court those likely to participate in a straw tally. Romney spent minimal time in the state, and Perry took it seriously only because as the new kid on the presidential block, and with dismal showings so far in the GOP presidential debates and mounting questions about his conservatism, Florida was his chance to get momentum going again in his campaign. That's why Cain sneaked to the top. It was more a message to Perry that there are a lot of conservatives who have serious doubts about him and his candidacy. Cain was the perfect foil to register that doubt. The real name of the game is the primaries where GOP voters will turn out en masse and determine who will be their standard bearer.
Cain's candidacy, race and win in Florida meant little because likely will not be around for the long gruel of the primaries or if he is will be a minor footnote on the ballot when the serious business of courting voters, state officials, and party leaders begins in Florida and the other key primary states. But let's say that he's still a viable candidate during the primary run, and has a real shot at being the GOP presidential choice, the evidence is strong that Cain wouldn't get very far and the issue then would be his race.
In a 2006 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, a Yale political economist found that white Republicans were 25 percentage points more likely to cross over and vote for a Democratic senatorial candidate against a black Republican foe. The study also found that in the near twenty year stretch from 1982 to 2000, when the GOP candidate was black, the greater majority of white independent voters backed the white candidate. In the November 2010 mid-term elections more than 30 black GOP candidates ran in congressional primaries. The majority of voters or a significant percent of the voters in these districts were white. The black GOP candidates all went down to crushing defeat with two exceptions.
The exceptions were congressional candidates Allen West in Florida and Tim Scott in South Carolina. Both got a majority of white votes and easily beat their Democratic opponents. But West and Scott won in lockdown GOP districts, and against weak, underfunded, Democratic opponents. Their wins were regional wins with absolutely no national implications.
Former three-term New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, one time chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush and previously chair of New Hampshire's GOP has his finger firmly on the inner pulse of the GOP conservative and mainstream. In an interview after hearing the candidate's views in appearances earlier this year in the state told what Cain's likely fate would be among conservatives if he ever managed to get out the GOP presidential contender box. He said he was willing to listen to Cain but said that his pick for the GOP 2012 presidential contender would have to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan as well as a politician with experience.
There's much hyperbole in the Reagan analogy. None of the current crop of GOP contenders will ever be mistaken for Reagan in style, charisma, appeal, and virtual party deification. But there's truth to the Reagan analogy when it's remembered that a big part of Reagan's appeal was his racially coded pandering on states' rights and his veiled anti-civil rights appeals. A black GOP candidate no matter how rabidly conservative would be unable to totally overcome let alone allay the racial antipathies and fears that always lurk among a large segment of conservative white voters, when the White House is at stake.
No matter how many meaningless straw polls Cain wins, he won't be the GOP candidate to change that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Ten of the Arab protestors who disrupted a speech by the Israeli Ambassador were convicted. There was very little either logic or justice to charging the Irvine 11 with criminal misdemeanor for disrupting the Israeli Ambassador. The first logical problem is trivial and that is there are only ten people in the Irvine 11. One pled before the trial.
Now, let's agree that it is rude to disrupt people. It is selfish to prevent those who wanted to listen from hearing. I'm willing to stipulate that it is even wrong. I don't have any problem in charging people for disruptive behavior, but going to the expense of a trial for a misdemeanor on disruption and conspiracy to disrupt is a waste of time and money. Clearly, they disrupted, and clearly they planned. Hence the guilty verdict is technically correct.
The Irvine 11 were a part of a toxic culture on the Irvine campus, a culture that harassed Jewish students and pro-Israeli opinion. Obviously I do not endorse rude and thuggish actions. As a Jew I am offended and concerned. However, I think this is a matter for the school and not the law. The university should be involved in making sure the campus does not become a hostile environment for any religion, ethnicity or political view.
As a survivor of Berkeley in the 60s and a participant in some number of actions that involved civil disobedience--that were not always civil--I have a certain tolerance for bad behavior. With many of my youthful certainties now subject to review, I am willing to give greater latitude to protestors--even when I passionately disagree with their point of view.
I still have strong political convictions, but, despite occasional arrests and harassment by the police, I don't have any criminal convictions. I hope they receive suspended sentences and that the university tries to bring the sides together--not in search of agreement but for exercises in Compassionate Listening. Rage is easy. Listening is difficult.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
The Troy Davis case is all that's wrong with the death penalty. Many are erroneously killed while being innocent. While I am in favor of the death penalty, there has to be proof positive that the conviction has to be rock solid. While it is true that most people would proclaim their innocence, like convicted murderess Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy, there are those who are really guilty, like convicted murderess Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy. I'm not so sure that Davis was one of them.
While few doubt that uber racist Al Sharpton et al would have uttered a cry had Davis been white, Hispanic, Asian or Indian, the preponderance of blacks being executed does give one pause. If a death row inmate really is guilty, then I don't feel like being the one paying for his room and board, weight room privileges and cable TV. And had I been the friend or loved one of one who was slain, then I certainly would vote in favor of the grand old send off into the next world.
But not interfering in the powers of state aside, there is no reason why Obama should have spoken out in the Troy Davis case unless he wants to speak out for others as well.
Whether one supports the death penalty as justice or rejects it as barbaric, Troy Davis' execution embodies everything that is wrong with it as we, uh, execute it here. Putting someone to death takes too long to be a specific deterrent. When decades go by before a condemned (usually) man is finally executed, there is no real justice. As the saying goes, "Justice deferred is justice denied."
It costs too much in special housing and legal appeals. In California alone it costs over $137 million dollars per year to maintain our condemned. If all currently on our death rows were re-sentenced to life without parole the cost would drop to $11 million per year. We can't afford schools or trauma centers, we're letting police go but are ineffectually spending a fortune trying to kill our bad guys. If ever there were a government program that liberals and conservatives should be able to agree is inefficient, it would be how we try to put people to death. Strangely, it is far easier to kill someone by denying them medical care on the outside than killing them or even letting them die while in prison. They get healthcare!
It promises closure to the families of victims, but 20 to 30 years of waiting is only agony for them--as the family of the murdered cop that Davis was convicted of killing asserted. Last minute, or last second, stays also torture the condemned and their families. It is cruel to all and puts the innocent as well as the guilty on a horrifying emotional rollercoaster.
Many do not understand that our appeals system centers on issues of legal process and not fact. The original jury is the trier of fact and appeals examine how the trial was conducted. Being factually innocent may not count if the trial is deemed fair.
We have had far too many people on death row exonerated by evidence that came in late because of scientific advances. Yes, you can understand that two ways. If we were to execute quickly, we would make errors. If we hold off for a long time, it costs too much and denies the exemplary and deterrent effects.
Finally, Troy Davis is dead but Casey Anthony is free. We execute proportionally far too many men and minorities to credibly claim that our justice is truly blind. The wealthy also escape the ultimate price. Until we do some affirmative action and execute a lot of wealthy white women, we will not have established sufficient fairness to be trusted with the ultimate sanction.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
The instant the Georgia Pardons and Paroles Board turned thumbs down on clemency for Troy Davis the quiet murmurs grew to a crescendo in some quarters that President Obama should speak out on the pending Davis execution. Filmmaker Michael Moore went even further and mused that Obama should make like President Eisenhower and take federal action to stop the execution. Moore was referring to Ike's sending in the troops to quell racial rioting and enforce the federal court order ordering desegregation of Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. Ike, of course, had the federal power and authority to take action precisely because it was a federal court order.
The Davis horror was a state matter, prosecuted by a local District Attorney, tried in state courts, and grotesquely settled by the state pardons and parole board. Obama had absolutely no legal power to intervene in the Davis case.
But that only quashes the misunderstanding of the law about Obama's powers. It doesn't answer the question whether Obama as former President Jimmy Carter did, had the moral obligation to have expressed doubt or misgiving about the pending execution. The heartbreaking and painful answer is no. As much as we would have cheered the president if he had broken political protocol and weighed in on the Davis execution, it wasn't going to happen.
Obama as all sitting presidents don't take positions on controversial state issues, and that's the key. They are state issues, and to interfere is to step into a political minefield that would do far more harm than good. It would violate the rigid separation of federal and state powers. It would open the floodgate for any and every individual and group that has a legal wrong, grievance, or injustice to expect, even demand, that the president speak out on their cause. While there were tens of thousands nationally and globally that rallied behind Davis, there were millions more that quietly and openly rallied behind the Georgia prosecutors, and back capital punishment. Polls show that a narrow majority still back the death penalty and judging from the lusty and embarrassing cheers GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry got at the recent GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire for virtually boasting about Texas's obscene record of trying and killing em' relatively quickly. The death penalty is an issue that any sitting president faced with a tough reelection fought would avoid like the plague.
Presidential statements on a controversial issue will polarize, and fuel political backlash. Sadly, this would have certainly been the case if Obama had uttered a word about Davis. The Davis case was a near textbook example of the fury and passion that racial leaden cases and issues always stir. Davis is African-American, and his alleged victim was white. Obama is African-American and there's rarely been a moment during his tenure in the White House that he hasn't been relentlessly reminded of that. The one time that he did gingerly venture into the minefield of a racially charged local issue was his mild rebuke of the white officer that cuffed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in 2009. The reaction was instant and furious. Polls after his mild rebuke showed that a majority of whites condemned Obama for backing Gates and, even more ominously, expressed big doubts about his policies.
The president relearned a bitter lesson. If you speak out on an issue that involves race, police authority, and local law and local matters you will pay a heavy political price for it. Some say but presidents have routinely spoken out on the deaths of police officers, political initiatives in states, and other local issues. That's true. But there is no implication or inference of political partisanship or interference in a state matter. Speaking out on a controversial racial issue, as the Davis was, would have a direct political inference, namely that the president was taking sides. President Obama has voiced support for reforms in the criminal justice system, especially in the area of sentencing, and has even expressed his personal qualms about some aspects of the death penalty. During the presidential campaign, he was clear "I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes."
Now in the wake of the Davis atrocity with the horrific glare on the gaping racial and legal disparities and flaws in the death penalty and its application, the far better thing that Obama can do is to push ahead within federal law for reform and hold that up as a model for states to follow to reform their death penalty procedures or ideally do as many states have done abolish the death penalty. That's a reasonable expectation of the man that sits in the White House. To break silence on Davis as brutal and barbaric as the sentence and execution was, was not realistic.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
How can Israel be losing the public relations war with the Palestinians? How can Israel, the only democracy in the region, be the bad guy? How can Israel, the only nation that has any religious pluralism or tolerance, be charged with being the apartheid state? For a bunch of allegedly smart folks who also allegedly control the media, we are not doing much of a job in telling our story.
Those who know me and read me know that I am neither anti-Arab nor anti-Islam. Having lived in Arab Muslim Tunisia for two years I experienced great hospitality, generosity and that led to hope. I want peace, and I want it in the form of a two-state solution.
While, as a political liberal, I am not a natural follower of Netanyahu, and I'm willing to criticize him and fault some of his policies. I try to analyze the situation as objectively as possible--which, I know, is not perfectly objective-- but the deal breakers seem to be coming from the Palestinians and enabled by the greater Arab World.
Both sides have, in principle, been negotiating towards a two-state solution for a decade. Theoretically this was to create a Palestine that was contiguous and independent and an Israel that could live peacefully and securely with its Palestinian neighbors. Imagine my surprise to have read a year ago that our good friend, the now deposed and despised president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, held that Israel could exist and be secure but it just could not be a Jewish state! Huh? This is now the position of the supposedly moderate leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. He insists that to have a Jewish state would be racist and unacceptable. Further, he insists that everyone who can trace his or her ancestry to the land must have the right of return.
This to me is proof of both bad faith and bait and switch. With 22 nations that are constitutionally Muslim, his charge that the existence of one Jewish state would be a racist outrage, is itself an outrage. This is not simply a negotiating position on the part of the Arab World, but a deeply held belief--a belief for which there is no accommodation. Their position is essentially this: We want peace and will talk to you about granting us our state on the condition and understanding that you give up your identity, viability and, eventually, your existence. They are demanding that Israel not simply negotiate its surrender but its own demise.
There is nothing that Ehud Barak, the liberal who put half of Jerusalem on the table along with 90% of the West Bank, or Netanyahu could give other than Israel's existence that could satisfy the clinically crazy demands of the Palestinian Authority--never mind Hamas.
The Palestinians have legitimate claims, grievances and issues but they will continue to have them unfulfilled because of their leadership that has never been able to say Yes to any offer, leadership that has consistently denied Israel's right to exist, fought wars, initiated terror and then demanded the status quo anti-bellum. They could not accept Israel at creation but then wanted the original borders when they lost the first war. They would not accept half of Jerusalem and all of the West Bank when they controlled them for 20 years, but now they act as if only they could have them back there might be peace. They have revealed the terrible truth that nothing Israel could offer or give will create acceptance for the Jewish State.
They have had the constant position that Israel is an extension of colonialism and a foreign invader lodged like a cancer in the body of the Arab World. It is hard to imagine how this gets peacefully settled. Israel will certainly become more isolated, but what is their choice? This is all too much like the scene in the movie Goldfinger when Goldfinger is running a laser beam up between James Bond's legs and Bond asks him, "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond," Goldfinger replied, "I expect you to die."
As a liberal I'm willing to be accommodating, but this goes way past any limit. My great question, given the blatant attempts first to delegitimize Israel and then destroy it, is how my side could possibly be losing the public relations war? We will certainly not lose the military war, but neither will anyone truly win.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
As of today, I take back most of the rotten things I've said (and thought) about President Obama. In my darker moments when I've run out of hot cocoa and gasoline and when I thought that the lady at the gold exchange had cheated me over some chains, I thought that our president was going to do an old about face and agree that the Palestinians should have a state.
The Palestinians for whom launching rockets at the Israelis has become a past time when they are not helping to increase the world's population. The Palestinians who turned synagogues into tire shops and launching pads on land that was returned in exchange for peace, and who hide behind their own women and children then claim that the Israelis intentionally killed them. That bunch.
If their Arab brethren are so eager to help them out, let them do so with open arms, hearts and Swiss bank accounts. Many may live in squalor but they are the most well funded place to do so. According to the Washington Times, the US gave 400 million dollars in aid to the Palestinians in 2010, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where that money went.
There is an expression that the helping hand is at the end of your arm. Too bad they use theirs to throw things.
We have two fringe parties--the Tea Party and the Chablis Party. While the Tea Party folks at the debates applaud Rick Perry for what we in Hollywood would call "Green-lighting" 234 executions and murmur some approval for letting the uninsured depend on the kindness of strangers, my people on the left fringe can also do great silliness.
My very own Nancy Pelosi-loving San Francisco liberals can wander into the wilderness where common sense is the one endangered species apparently not worth fighting to preserve. The Chablis Party has been busy trying to save shark fins and foreskins. An interesting combination to find in either your market or legislative basket. With unemployment near a record high, with two wars, if not exactly raging but still costing blood and treasure, with energy prices climbing again and teachers being pink-slipped, movements originating in the Bay Area are trying to outlaw eating shark fins and snipping the apparently endangered foreskins of my fellow Californian males. (Female genital mutilation is already illegal)
I do understand outlawing finning. Hauling in sharks just to cut off their fins and then tossing them back to die is cruel and wasteful. Hardly the green thing to do. But to outlaw the eating of only the fin and not the rest of the shark seems just weird. I can catch a shark. I can eat a shark. But I have to throw away the fin? Hardly the green thing to do either. This makes sense only in a state where I can shoot ducks or geese and eat them, but foie gras is a banned substance. Effective July 2012, I can eat the wing, the leg, the thigh and the breast but not the liver--at least not if it is too fatty. Strangely this is not to protect me from cholesterol but the ducks and geese from over-eating.
Such is the brouhaha coming out of San Francisco that our good solons in Sacramento have had to take their valuable time to pass legislation on these subjects. One bill outlaws possessing shark fins and the other bans cities from legislating against male circumcision. I can hear inmates in San Quentin:
"What are you in for?"
"Shark fins. Possession for sale, and aggravated foie gras consumption"
"How 'bout you?"
"I cut someone. A kid."
"Are you some kind of monster?
"No, a Mohel."
I would really like both the Tea Party and Chablis Party to, well, focus on improving our lives. Both need to find more compassion for human beings and address the truly critical challenges of our perilous times and not just the popular distractions.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
If we don't look, maybe poverty will cease to exist. If we pass the homeless on the street and just assume that they are mentally disordered drug addicts then they are not like us, and we don't have to treat them like human beings. If we meet them and serve them in various shelters, however, we meet some folks from whom we cannot separate ourselves so completely. We meet people upside-down in mortgages who lost their homes and now don't have a deposit for an apartment. We meet families who are camping out or sleeping in their cars because a good job went away, and their previous life was not sustainable at minimum wage.
When we think of poverty, which we do only rarely, we think of urban areas. This is, of course, code for ghettos and barrios. We picture minorities--people again, not like us. While statistics show an overwhelmingly disproportionate percentage of minorities in poverty, in absolute numbers, rural whites outnumber urban blacks and Hispanics.
But we can close our eyes to all of them by looking at how they live, here in the greatest nation on earth. Why, how can they complain when most people below the poverty line have indoor plumbing? Most have refrigerators, microwaves and TVs. They must not really be poor then, right?
Wrong! Poverty can be defined away with numbers, statistics or blindness, but it is none-the-less real. When I lived in North Africa, I did not have a car, a TV, a phone, air-conditioning or central heating. But then neither did my friends and neighbors. I could live like that there. Here, under the same conditions, I would be a revolutionary.
When I showed pictures of Watts to my Arab friends, they saw freestanding homes with TV antennas and usually a car in the driveway. If only they could have that they thought, their world would be perfect. Watts was their fantasy of Beverly Hills.
Does anyone believe that the people in Watts were not poor, deprived of services, respect and quality education? Do we think they had equal opportunity for advancement? Sure some came out and succeeded, but the poor, all poor, start with a handicap that most cannot make up.
Closing our eyes to poverty, as some do, or denying it based on a few possessions as others do, does not ameliorate the situation. We need to stop closing our eyes and start opening up our hearts.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
There are two new rituals about the yearly census reports on poverty in America. One is that the census figures show more Americans continue to sink into poverty. The poverty rate this year jumped to the highest level in nearly two decades. Those hardest hit remain the same. Blacks and Hispanic were nearly twice as likely as whites to be poor. But racial distinctions aside, the census figures showed that there were a lot of poor whites too, and what's become an increasingly even more common trend many of those who tumbled into the poverty column are those who at one time were by all measures considered middle class.
The other ritual is that the news of rising poverty makes headlines one day. And the next it is forgotten. This year is no different. Not one of the GOP presidential candidates made mention of the poverty rate jump. The White House was equally mum on the report. Poverty remains the taboo word on the campaign stump, among lawmakers, the media, and the general public. It remains even a taboo word among many of the poor.
Political and public references to poverty virtually disappeared from the nation's vocabulary by the end of the 1960s. The continued existence of so many poor people after a decade of civil rights gains, the rash of initiatives and programs to end poverty, and massive government spending on the poverty programs by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, was ultimate proof to many that tossing money and programs at ending poverty was flawed, failed, and wasteful. It seemed to fly squarely in the face of the embedded laissez faire notion that the poor in America aren't poor because of any failing of the system, but because of their personal failings. This is not just the hard bitten attitude of GOP free market conservatives. It is the attitude of the majority of Americans, including many of those who were poor. When poverty started to inch up in 2001, National Public Radio (NPR), the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University's Kennedy School, conducted a national poll to find out just what Americans attributed poverty in the nation too. The terms that were bandied about by many of the respondents no matter their background was that the poor were "unmotivated," "lacked aspirations to get ahead," and "didn't work hard enough." A majority believed America was a place where with hard work and determination anyone could succeed. In other words, the loud message was that if you're poor, it's your fault, don't blame society, and especially don't look to government to be the cure.
Democratic presidents and presidential contenders took this message to heart. Still reeling from the fierce conservative backlash to the perceived failure of Johnson's war on poverty, they gingerly moved around making any public pronouncements about massive government spending hikes on welfare, income supplement, and health care programs for the next two decades. The Democrats trembled that such talk would only stir up white anger by reinforcing the old perception that Democrats tilt toward minorities, and especially blacks.
But the poor stubbornly refused to go away. There was some hope during the 2008 presidential campaign that Democrats might lift the taboo about talking about the plight of the poor. Democratic presidential contender John Edwards fueled that hope when he openly talked about poverty, and that he would the issue one of the centerpieces of his campaign. In a well publicized appearance, Edwards launched his presidential campaign in the front yard of a mangled brick house in New Orleans's mostly black, Katrina and poverty devastated Upper Ninth Ward. He talked boldly about the need to crusade against poverty. Democratic presidential rivals Obama, and Hillary Clinton, not to be outdone, also gave speeches challenging the nation to do more to alleviate poverty. The talk didn't last. With the exception of Edwards, whose candidacy quickly disintegrated after public revelations about his love tryst, the candidates didn't utter another word about poverty during the rest of the campaign. The GOP presidential contender, John McCain, as expected, made no mention of poverty as a policy issue either.
The mantra for the GOP and many Democrats are deficit reduction, tax cuts, and measured, and narrow spending on infrastructure projects to jump start the economy. The widespread view that government should play a minimal role in assisting the poor has crept through in President Obama's speeches and talks in which he touts personal responsibility as the key to uplift. It would be the height of political and fiscal incorrectness, even heresy, to expect that to change in Obama's drive to keep and the GOP's drive snatch back the White House.
The ritual census figures that show that the number of poor continue to grow with little end in sight to the rise hasn't budged the nation to do anything about their plight. Poverty is the forbidden word that sadly is doomed for now to remain America's taboo word.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
According to the Census Bureau, approximately one in six Americans live below the poverty line. That means that sixteen out of every one hundred adults has food insecurity and doesn't have enough to eat, and sixteen out of every one hundred cannot afford the fuel to keep themselves warm in the winter.
That's the highest of any industrialized nation. The number of those who do not have health insurance has soared from 26.6 million to 49.9 million since George W. Bush took office in 2000.
Children fared worse in the report. According to statistics released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a little over one out of five, or 21.6 percent, of all children live below the poverty level. Turkey with 24 percent and Mexico with 23.5 percent were the only nations with higher childhood poverty rates. Denmark had 3.3 percent, Finland 5 percent and Hungary has 7.2 percent, to name a few.
Yet, before we go one iota further and start calling and emailing Washington, as I nearly did, let's look at the other side of the moon here.
According to the Heritage Foundation, some people defined as poor, not only had the basic amenities like indoor plumbing, but 80 percent of our nation's poor also have air-conditioning, compared to 36 percent in 1970.
92 percent have a microwave, and nearly 75 percent have a mode of transportation other than a donkey, a mule or a bus pass, and 31 percent have more than one truck and car, which is more than I can say about myself.
Although the OECD reported that over one-fifth of all children live in poverty, the Heritage Foundation indicated that 96 percent of poor parents stated that neither they nor their children were hungry during any time that year and that 83 percent of poor families said they had enough to eat.
While it would have been better had those numbers been 100 percent free and clear, the disparity in stats does lead to some wonderment. Has the marker of poverty been raised or is some fancy-footed two-step shuffling being done by some politicians eager to make other politicians look bad? With a national unemployment rate hovering at around 9 percent, only time will reveal the true meaning the less than holy motives of many in Washington.
As we marked the ten-year commemoration of 9-11, I was struck by what has changed for the better and what for the worse. At an interfaith service at Temple Judea in Encino, there were singers, musicians and attendees of all faiths. Yes, including Muslims. A talented Muezzin (roughly equivalent to a canter in the Jewish tradition) blended his voice nicely with a Canter and a Christian clergyman. This was a moment not simply of hope but of accomplishment and a model for what we must all work for.
Ten years ago most Jews and Christians in America wouldn't have known the word Muezzin, no less the function--chief of which is to call the people to prayer. Ten years ago most would not have known a Sunni from a Shiite or understood that that the Arabic word for God, Allah, is related to the Hebrew word for God, Eloah, (singular form of Elohim).
Some say that Americans learn geography from war--and this is probably true. Many far away places with strange sounding names come into our consciousness when we send troops. Tragically we may learn or miss-learn about Islam from this conflict we call The War on Terror, that far too many believe is a struggle between the good guys of the west--Christians and Jews--and all those bad Muslims. This is a fundamental misunderstanding.
Ten years ago most of us were ignorant concerning Islam, but too often we have replaced ignorance with misunderstanding. We look at the terrorists, and they are Muslim. We look at the angry faces and violence-promising signs and see Muslims. This much is true. Our eyes are not deceiving us, but our logic is imperfect. The majority of terrorism directed against us and Western Europe is coming from Muslims, but this is different from saying it is coming from Islam or labeling and libeling all Islam with the actions of a very few, who, while certainly violent, do not pose a significant threat outside of the various theaters of war. Worldwide, Islamic terrorists kill around 400 people per year. This is, of course, too many and a tragedy for the victims. Actuarially, however, it is very little compared with over 30,000 gun deaths in the United States and the even greater number of car deaths.
Yet we will allow ourselves to be strip-searched at airports, have our emails read and our phones tapped, but registering guns or lowering the speed limit is out of the question.
What frustrates me personally, as a professor of Comparative Religion with a specialty in Islam and as a Jew, who has lived in the Arab World, is our failure to understand the same nuances we have so clearly understood with other groups.
When we fought WWII, yes there was considerable anti-German sentiment, but we never acted as if all Germans were monsters or that the twisted cross of the swastika represented German Protestantism. We mostly understood we were fighting a nation not a religion or people. When England had to endure the violence and bombing from the IRA, they never marketed the struggle as a global war with all Irish or Roman Catholics. Yet, we tend to see Muslims, as a whole, as violent terrorists. We see Al Qaeda as representatives of the Sunni World and Hezbollah as representing the Shiites in general and Iran in particular. This is wrong.
We are involved in a political struggle with Iran and they are Shiites--but this is like most of Germany being Protestant. It is factually true but such a distortion as to be wrong. We are involved in a violent war with Al Qaeda, but this is a tiny minority of Sunni Islam. We have real conflicts with nations and sects of Islam, but we mix the political and the religious too facilely.
Even in terms of Israel, we too easily accept the religious template instead of the political or tribal paradigm. We forget that although the struggle has become increasingly seen as religious, much of the PLO, and early terrorist leadership, was Christian.
The dangers are real. The violence is terrible, and the solutions seem to evade us, but some clarity and knowledge can be helpful. We can't remediate what we don't understand or worse what we get fundamentally wrong.
Nor will simplistic sentimentality help us. To call Islam a religion of peace is as helpful, or irrelevant, as calling Judaism and Christianity religions of peace. We all have violent and intolerant passages in our holy books. We also have peaceful and hopeful passages. We human beings have natures with both violence and peace and we have the freedom and the responsibility to make choices that honor our finest values.
Sunday night on 9-11 the peacemakers mourned the past and celebrated the possible; we spoke and sang our different songs with pride and in harmony.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
There are two things that have distinguished the tea party. With the help of an awestruck, fawning media, it has been able to harness public disaffection with Washington beltway politicians and a large segment of white conservative anger and loath of President Obama's policies. The second thing is it has been able to con the same media and much of the public into thinking that it that had all the makings of a majority party that would permanently rearrange the political landscape. This was never the case. The August Gallup poll and other surveys that show that the tea party engenders far more negative feelings among Americans than positive feelings again confirm that. The tea party's prime constituents have always been mostly Deep South, and Heartland, white middle to lower income voters. But this should never have surprised. The tea party demographic mimicked the GOP's prime voter demographic in every election since 1980 that helped assure victory for Reagan, Bush Sr. and George W. Bush. Before that they were the anchor of Nixon's Southern Strategy.
The tea party proved useful shock troops for mainstream GOP leaders after Obama's smash win in 2008 to reenergize their traditional supporters and refocus the national debate on the GOP's stock themes, fiscal austerity, damp down of government spending, and the continued rhetorical assault on the "liberal agenda." The tea party did one more thing that GOP mainstream leaders could not do. And that was to inflame many whites with borderline and even open racial pitches, appeals, and code words. Obama's race and perceived liberal to moderate pronouncements made him the perfect foil to be racially mocked, demeaned, ridiculed, and baited. The Gallup poll reconfirmed that blacks were far more hostile to the tea party than whites. But now that has changed with tea party support dipping to its all time low among all groups, again with the sole exception of the white South.
The soaring disaffection with the tea party among former sympathizers is a textbook case of a group badly overplaying an advantage. Polls repeatedly show that the majority of Americans want Congress and the Obama administration to work in tandem to solve the big ticket problems of the economy, joblessness, and debt reduction. But they want them to do it in a responsible way without the relentless carping, sniping, bickering, finger pointing and political gamesmanship that have been the trademark of the GOP egged on by the tea party. The same polls show that the majority of voters want the GOP and Obama to cooperate and hammer out an agreement on all or part of Obama's jobs plan that will jumpstart a tattered economy.
The budget and deficit ceiling fight that fractured Congress for months, and the relentless threat to decimate legions of education, health, social service and law enforcement programs locally and nationally was the final straw that turned numbers of tea party sympathizers into opponents. Tea Party darlings Michelle Bachman and Texas Governor Rick Perry's perceived threat to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has struck deep fear into millions who depend on and even cherish these programs. The low opinion they have of that was glaringly evident when Perry branded Social Security "a ponzi scheme." The reaction was swift and angry. In a poll by the on line investment newsletter The Street the overwhelming majority of respondents flatly denounced the notion that Social Security was a rip-off. Perry and Bachman and tea party leader's shouts about knocking down big government all of a sudden take on a different sound when it comes to these programs.
Even some tea party leaders realize they walk a fine and dangerous political line by continuing to over reach. Matt Kibbe, President of Freedom Works, on the eve of the joint CNN and Tea Party Express sponsored GOP presidential candidates debate in New Hampshire flatly warned that a hard line dig the heels in the sand position on political ideals could be the tea party's "Achilles heel" in the presidential election. This would totally alienate moderate to conservative independents that they got back in the GOP fold in the November midterm elections, and need to keep in the fold to have a fair chance at beating Obama in 2012.
It's to soon to write an epitaph for the tea party. There are still millions that despite the consequences of line in the sand the tea party has drawn, still think the idea of smaller government, caps on spending, and debt reduction are noble goals that they'll go to the barricades to fight for. Many others simply cannot under any circumstances stomach another four years of an Obama administration. But the polls are a telling warning that the days of being the centerpiece of the nation's political party for the tea party are fast coming to a close.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
In some ways the local lesson of 9-11 is that everything is local. We, on the left coast, are not a separate nation. 9-11 taught all of us that our seas no longer protect us from the world and while our arms might deter a national enemy, they won't deter terrorists who are willing, even eager, to die.
Los Angeles remains as vulnerable today as we were ten years ago. Like all generals planning for the previous war, our counter-terrorism experts have worked assiduously to prevent a replica of 9-11. In this they have been, and are likely to continue to be, successful. What they haven't done, and cannot do, is make us safe. We can surrender to every indignity, have physicals at airports beyond what our HMOs would authorize, have our emails read and our wires tapped, but this is all the illusion of security.
We, in Los Angeles/Hollywood, have built iconic structures, hold important events and project our image as the representative of American culture all over the world. We have, in other words, made ourselves as great a target as New York or Washington DC.
For years I have taught a terrorism course at American Jewish University. This, naturally, is not a how-to course. I pointed out, long before the FBI's warning last week, that private aviation makes us extremely vulnerable. Terrorists don't have to hijack 747s. A small executive jet out of Van Nuys, or even a two-passenger plane out of Whitman or Fullerton, would be only minutes from the Rose Bowl or Coliseum on a game day, or Disneyland any time. Iconic landmarks can create mass terror on the cheap. If you want greater protection put soldiers with SAMs (Surface to air missiles) on the roof of the Kodak Theater, the top of the Rose Bowl and at Disney Land.
No, we are not safe, but who is? We have not learned the real lesson of 9-11, the lesson that the English learned from Hitler, the IRA and Al Qaeda: Life is dangerous and let's just keep living as aware but unafraid as possible.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
We Americans can be so insular. Unlike Europe which is a hodgepodge of languages and nationalities a stone's throw apart, we have basically been isolated and on our own, a leader and a superpower among nations. That's why the average American born and raised here only knows one language. That's all we needed and wanted to know, perhaps until recently. In Europe where those with different mother tongues share borders, it is nearly impossible to get by with only one language.
It's our geography and history, our place in the world that made us so certain and so insular, and that's why we were broad sided by 911. We didn't think if could happen here because things like that only happen over there. In Israel, bombings happen on a daily basis. The same thing recently happened in New Delhi, Mumbai, in Stockholm and in a train station in London and Madrid. All over there, yet brought on by the same people the world has made rich because of their natural resource of oil. Yet our response has been to look the other way because it was always over there. But now we (sort of) know that you can't look the other way because they can fly planes and will eventually come over here.
When I went to work that day in ten years ago, all eyes were on the TV and of the footage of the twin towers collapsing in a plume of smoke like a fallen ballerina. It happened there, not here, yet TV's were turned on all day and my coworkers never stopped talking about it. Maybe it shows that with all our diverse cultures, languages, creeds and races that we really are all quite similar underneath.
I've long suspected that the Huffington Post has a lot of people with metal plates in their heads. Now I am near certain.
Although they frequently try to pass off divorce columns as news (or is that AOL that made a deal with them doing that?) the fairly straightforward article entitled "Turkey: Israel Possibly Target of More Sanctions" is one of their few news-like pieces written in Standard American English.
The gist of the whole piece was how Israel and Turkey's once friendly diplomatic relations have now thawed because the Israeli Navy had the utter gall and chutzpah to defend Israelis by setting up a blockade of a Turkish ship containing terrorists that was tying to maneuver through the waters of Gaza.
In reality, the ship didn't exactly contain Turkish coffee. More to the point, it contained materials to make rockets and bombs. The Israeli Navy boarded the ship and found some terrorists on board. Now the terrorists, generally not known for their charm school demeanor, attacked the Israelis who in turn fought back and wiped out nine of them. (Adios.)
The UN said that the blockade of the cargo--bound ship was a "legitimate, security measure" but that the raid on the flotilla was "excessive and unreasonable." I don't know about anyone else, but if someone started hitting me with metal objects, I'd assume that said person didn't have my best interests at heart, and I would do what I could to clobber him back.
Maybe those camping out on the message boards are from the same training compound that the pro-convicted murderess Amanda Knox commentators are from.
One guy wrote that he wanted to donate money to the Palestinians. Why he would want to do that is anyone's guess because they certainly haven't used the 85 billion dollars per year they get from the United States very constructively.
Another opined: Following is a quote from Original Sins (Olive Branch Press 1992, a book by an Israeli professor, Beit Hallahami, which be forced reading for every militant Israeli (Really, is there any other kind in his mind?)
One guy in a turban, so we can pretty much guess his politics, wrote "So does being Israel mean never having to say you're sorry...no matter what you do?"
Just as I was beginning to think that there was some kind of a blog roll for these kinds of commentators, a lone voice of reason appeared with: "Seems I recall far more apologies from Israel for their mistakes than from Arabs and Palestinians for theirs."
This one must have slipped in under the ropes.
My second thought after the collective "oh my God" gasp uttered by millions around the globe at the sight of the collapsing World Trade Center Towers was that that's New York, not Los Angeles. Nothing like that could happen in Los Angeles, right? The best that can be said to that is that it didn't happen here. But Los Angeles has not been spared the decade of angst, fear, and vigilance that Americans, all Americans, have experienced since the 9/11 terror attacks.
The carnage didn't just alter the way much of the world thinks about terrorism and its ever present threat. It altered our thinking in Los Angeles too. A loose package left under a seat on a Blue or Green Line train car, our nervously eyeballing of a group of passengers getting on a bus, train, and especially airplane that we're getting on with dark skins, wearing turbans, loose fitting shirts, or long print dresses, and the ever present security checks and labyrinth security rite of passage screening and pat downs at LAX and Hollywood-Burbank airports, and, of course, our reflexive assumption that any shooting, explosion, or crash could be the handiwork of terrorists come our way, has been the price we pay and still pay for 9/11.
But the greatest and most lethal consequence of 9/11 is that it shattered forever our sense that living in Los Angeles half a world away and seemingly so impervious to the tensions, perils, and conflicts of the Middle East that spawned Al Qaeda and the legion of assorted kooks and crazies in that world that hate America, we were snug, safe and secure from that danger. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is again a reminder to L.A. that the world is indeed at times a sinister, menacing and dangerous place, and that we are not exempt from that world.
It was primal. Our hearts first screamed and then they broke. We were stunned and wanted to be in denial. We'd seen the movie so often that it couldn't be real. We wept and then we raged. All the primal emotions.
There was also something elemental in it. The ancient Greek philosopher, Thales, believed that all existence was made up of four elements: Earth Air Fire and Water. All of these were a part of that terrible day. The fires burned and the air was filled with smoke, as life, death, steel and ashes flew into the skies and fell back to the earth. Water was poured on the fires and our salty tears mingled with the dust.
In some ways, this our darkest day was also our finest hour. During the attack Americans were at our best. People helped people down stairs and out of burning buildings--without regard to race, religion or citizenship. All of us were ash-covered gray--whether with real ashes or simply ashen from the horror. Against all our normal instincts, some raced up the stairs to put out the fires and save others. We have come to conflate heroes and victims in this decade, but on 9-11, the police, the firefighters and EMTs were true heroes.
In the shock--physical and psychic--that followed, our tears mixed with ashes and caked on us, body and soul; while smoke and the memory of fire choked us, grabbing us by the throat.
Ten years later our tears have mostly dried. Still, there is the salty remnant, the constant reminder of that terrible day that changed our lives, our laws, our society and our sense of our selves.
We will never forget where we were when the towers came down. We will never forget the pain and rage we felt at being attacked so devastatingly in the twin hearts, cultural and governing, of our nation. We still wonder at the hideous irony that those twin towers, symbols of American aspirations and achievement were brought down by a ragtag band of misfits with box-cutters. This was not a high-tech attack but a primitive sucker-punch.
In the immediate aftermath, we acted pretty well, not perfectly but without mass rioting or pogroms against people we perceived as Arab or Muslim. Our ignorance was pretty massive, but still, with the exception of a few but never-the-less tragic incidents of violence, We the People acted commendably.
The same cannot be said for some people at the very top level. Too many Muslims were rounded up on suspicion of, well, being Muslims. Too many were kept in detention without warrants, charges or rights.
Our leaders were frightened--and they had reason to be. Over the past decade we have foiled plots against our homeland, while Al Qaeda has succeeded elsewhere--in Madrid and London in particular. We have also submitted ourselves to inconveniences and indignities that would have been unimaginable in an otherwise free society ten years ago.
Have we learned anything as our tears have slowly dried? Have fear and rage turned towards wisdom? I hope so. We have, I pray, learned that there is no perfect security. People who are willing, or worse eager, to die in order to kill us will sometimes succeed--no matter either the firmness of our resolve or our willingness to submit to the appearance of security we increasingly encounter.
We will never forget that terrible day when earth, air, fire and water became one in a horrifying caldron, melting steel, snuffing out life, bringing down buildings and sending fire into the sky. We must also remember that in our pain and rage, our fear and confusion, there was bravery beyond measure, along with dignity and restraint. We lost lives but we did not lose our selves.
After a decade the great shock of our vulnerability should have passed, and we now know that we are not isolated from the world between our two shining seas. Our salty tears mingle with the great salt sea of the world--the one sea that connects us all.
©2011 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
A Decade Later 9/11 Zany Conspiracy Theories Still Alive and Well
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The decade since the hijacked 747s rammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon hasn't changed one thing. Millions of Americans still fervently believe that the 9/11 terror attacks were part of a well conceived, well-planned diabolical staged act. A poll commissioned by the BBC found that one in seven Americans still think that 9/11 was a staged act. And even worrisome, one in four 16 to 24 year old thinks it was a plot. The disbelieve that 9/11 was the ghoulish handiwork of anti-American hate filled foreign terrorists has been fed by a loud and pesky pack of professional conspiracy theorists who perennially see a sinister government hand behind any and every assassination, terror attack, and even natural disaster.
The 9/11 attack, though, is the jewel in the crown for the conspiracy nuts. They've managed to convince the skeptics that the carnage was part of a Machiavellian plot by a parade of the usual suspects, George W. Bush, the GOP, the CIA, FBI and Justice Department to wipe out civil liberties protections, impose a national security state, create a pretext for the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorize the American people, and strengthen the hand of the pro Israeli lobby in U.S. politics. Some of the more wacked out theorists with an anti-Semitic bent even claim that the terror attack was part of a decades old web of intrigue woven by international Jewish groups to dominate global politics.
Conspiracy theorists allege that explosives were planted at the WTC, Jewish and Israeli Tower workers and occupants were warned the day before supposedly by Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) to stay away, a missile slammed into the Pentagon, the government hid the wreckage of the United Airlines plane that terrorists crashed in Pennsylvania. Every one of these theories has been debunked.
Yet as evidence by the BBC poll millions of Americans aren't convinced. And that's easy to understand. The American woods swarm with groups that fervently believe that government, corporate, or international Zionist groups busily hatch secret plots, and concoct hidden plans to wreak havoc on their lives. The Manchurian Candidate syndrome popularized in books and countless movies and TV shows has firmly implanted the notion that shadowy, government groups routinely topple foreign governments, assassinate government leaders, and brainwash operatives to do dirty deeds.
9/11 conspiracy theories have so easily infected the popular imagination for two other undeniable reasons. Government agencies, such as the FBI, CIA, Army intelligence, with the connivance of presidents, have often played fast and loose with the law and the rules of democracy. They have spied on, harassed, and jailed thousands of Americans from Communists to anti-war activists. The biggest, juiciest and most relentless target for government spymasters during the past decades has been African-American political groups from the moderate NAACP to the radical Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam. A few years ago a fresh batch of publicly disclosed FBI documents showed that the agency waged a kinder, gentler, but no less illegal, spy campaign against Coretta Scott King. The sordid, relentless, and lethal campaign the FBI waged against her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is well documented.
The other reason for the paranoia about 9/11 was the fury that many Americans had, and still have, toward Bush. Many Americans are still convinced the GOP hijacked the White House by rigging the votes in Florida in 2000, and repeated the ploy in Ohio in 2004. This makes it easy to believe that the government agencies will say and do anything to cover up, and shield wrongdoing, and misdirect Americans.
Bush, as other presidents that have got in hot water with the American people with their domestic and foreign policy fumbling, were hardly averse to beating the war drums and fanning national security jitters to boost their poll ratings, secure public allegiance, and increase their party's political standing. Bush at times did that with his well-timed, staged, and ultimately groundless incessant color-coded terror alerts. But bottom of the barrel poll ratings at the end of his term, the wholesale back turn millions of voters did on the GOP in the 2008 presidential election, the polls that show that a majority of Americans want out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and are squeamish over further erosion of civil liberties protections, are resounding proof that staging 9/11 to clamp a vise grip on power by Bush didn't work.
But, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 the conspiracy theorists will again busily spin their well-worn 9/11 conspiracy myths. They will fall on fertile ground again because of the government official's long and at times disgraceful penchant for covering up and flat out lying to the public about their misdeeds, conduct and spying. This is enough to insure that 9/11 conspiracy fantasies remain alive and well today, and likely will remain alive for years to come.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
... is here @ wordpress. I ask you, Friendly Reader, will the scams never stop?
Faithfully Yours,
G. Tz.
Gosh, guys, could it be that the Republicans (and some Democrats) don't like Obama because his policies aren't working? Here we are, almost four years after he took office, and we are in worse shape than when he began. He's added four trillion dollars to the debt, which is the highest increase under any president, all 44 of them, and let's not forget the unemployment figures, which stand at around 9% nationwide.
Alas, it is not the president's fault, or so he thinks. He blames it on:
Two wars, one of which we are still in, though we still have troops in Iraq.
A prescription drug program for seniors, though seniors only make up 12% of the population. Even if half of them are on a daily medical cocktail, they do need them and shouldn't be deprived.
And Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the rich, though Obama left them open when he could have closed them and added to our paltry coffers. Maybe he had to do get anywhere with the enfant terribles in Congress, but the fact remains that he did, and it could be one of the things killing the economy.
I know that the Republicans don't like him. Even a moose running through the forest knows that by now, and that is part of it. I don't think it's solely because of his race and creed. And it is not only because they act like a bunch of irascible kindergartners that is every teacher's nightmare, but it could also be because of the mess we are in and because they resent his smug, I got game even though I am a neophyte attitude. The proof is in the pudding, and this batch is not what we thought we were buying. The question now is who can the GOP put up that going to become the punchline to every joke on Jay Leno?
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