It's News To M_A - 3/18/08

cross-posted from The Wild Wild Left
Stories of note from the WTF news desk....






Late-Night Wins for Pro-Choice Americans

It was a late night for the U.S. Senate. In the past, when anti-choice politicians controlled the process, that would have meant something dreadful would have happened to women's freedom and privacy.

Previous Congresses were famous for votes at 3 a.m., hoping their shenanigans would go unreported and slip under the public's radar screen.

But, pro-choice Americans, I am pleased to report different news: The Senate rejected two anti-choice amendments, but the razor-thin margin by which we won these votes is a reminder of why elections matters.

NRCC Says Ex-Treasurer Diverted Up to $1 Million

The former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars -- and possibly as much as $1 million -- of the organization's funds into his personal accounts, GOP officials said yesterday, describing an alleged scheme that could become one of the largest political frauds in recent history.

For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, allegedly used wire transfers to funnel money out of NRCC coffers and into other political committee accounts he controlled as treasurer, NRCC leaders and lawyers said in their first public statement since they turned the matter over to the FBI six weeks ago.

"The evidence we have today indicated we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the NRCC chairman.

Border Patrol checkpoints near Yuma nab hordes of pot users headed back from the beach

The small sedan slowed as it approached the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on a deserted section of Interstate 8 east of Yuma. The car contained three middle-age women on their way back to the Valley after a planning retreat in San Diego.

The past three days had been idyllic and productive as the women lounged on the beach, making art and chatting over ideas for the future of their ceramics business. The self-described hippies had taken marijuana to the beach and were returning with some of it in the car. The women were asked to step out and stand a few feet away as the dog trounced through the car.

A moment later, one of the agents confronted the group.

These days, the checkpoints on eastbound Interstate 8 and northbound Arizona 95 near Yuma (a passageway to the I-10 and I-40 corridors linking Arizona and California) are open 24 hours a day. And with the addition of seven times more K9 dogs, they have become the biggest weed traps in the country.

Our Roller Coaster Ride To Hell

What we are seeing in the American political process is a one sided game in which the people supported by huge multi-national corporations will ultimately be the victors. This isn't just my opinion; it is a stubborn fact of life.

All who ride the "wave" of change that Senator Obama speaks of will get no change at all, maybe a kinder, gentler version of corporatism and war, but corporatism and war is what we will get. He has already stated that he will enter a sovereign nation to act on "actionable" intelligence on an enemy that doesn't really exist.

I don't believe for one minute that the American people are satisfied with the political slate that has been given to us by the mainstream media that has hypes Clinton and Obama since the beginning of this fiasco.

Truthfully I would rather see Mike Gravel or Ralph Nader in the White House, but that doesn't look too promising, yet something may happen that could make it feasible, never say never, at least with a straight face.

Remebering What Nixon Learned

A half century ago, Richard Nixon spearheaded his party's national congressional campaign in the face of a recession like we face today. Then Dwight Eisenhower's vice president, he decided the GOP would champion anti-worker laws pioneered in the segregationist south as a way to defeat Democrats. Specifically, he rolled out "right to work" ballot initiatives to weaken the labor movement. These measures ban contracts that compel employees benefiting from union representation to contribute union dues.

When the 1958 election came, Nixon's blame-workers-first initiatives bombed, and Republicans lost 48 congressional seats, handing the party "its worst year ever," as historian Rick Perlstein recounts in his brilliant new book, "Nixonland."

"Right-to-work wasn't popular with a general public that understood how a strong labor movement had rocketed millions of voters into the middle class," Perlstein writes.

Fifty years later, conservatives are ignoring history's teachings and resurrecting Nixon's failed strategy in a place that could decide a close presidential election.

Reviving Vietnam War Tactics

The top counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq advocates practicing a "global Phoenix Program," alluding to the notorious Vietnam-era CIA operation that provoked a worldwide uproar because of the detention, torture and execution of thousands of Vietnamese.

The mainstream media has never reported on the use of the "global Phoenix program" in Iraq, perhaps because the explosive terminology has largely disappeared from the writings and r?sum? of Lt. Col. David Kilcullen after he first being referred to it in a forty-eight-page strategy paper, "Countering Global Insurgency" published in the obscure Small Wars Journal in September-November 2004.

Kilcullen, an Australian PhD who served for twenty-one years in the Australian army, was the "chief adviser on counterinsurgency operations" to Petraeus in planning the 2007 US troop surge. He also served as chief strategist in the State Department's counterterrorism office in 2005 and 2006, and has been employed in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.

Video break

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It's Still the Economy, Stupid

"It's the economy, stupid" was the one memorable slogan to have emerged out of Bill Clinton's successful first run at the presidency in 1992, and it became the overarching theme of his eight years in office. As the U.S. economy has continued to spiral downward in the first months of 2008, the economy is again emerging as the single most important question of the presidential campaign, even eclipsing the Iraq war as a concern among voters.

What do Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain have to say about our current reality of financial crisis and recession, and the generation-long stagnation in average living standards that has preceded the crisis of the moment? There aren't significant distinctions between Obama and Clinton in terms of their campaign platforms, while both Democratic contenders share huge differences with McCain. But the most important question is not where these candidates stand during the campaign; it's what they would actually do while in office. And this is more a matter of political power-which social groups can exert pressure within a new administration-than of economic philosophy.

This point was highlighted in dramatic fashion near the end of the March 4 primary campaigns in Ohio and Texas when Austan Goolsbe a professor at the University of Chicago and Obama's chief economic advisor, was reported to have told Canadian diplomats that Obama was far more sympathetic to free trade measures such as NAFTA than he was letting on in his campaign speeches. Goolsbe denied saying this. But the fact is, we can't know what Obama will really do on NAFTA and related measures until he becomes president, facing a whole range of pressures. These will include big business continuing to seek free access to Mexico's vast pool of low-wage workers.

Rules of Citizenship

Rule No. 1 is that people given power will tend to abuse it. This applies to everyone from local government to national government. It applies to Democrats and to Republicans. The reason it is so universal is because it originates in human nature, which is the same today as it was 10,000 years ago.

Rule No. 2 is that politicians have an inclination to lie. The Bush administration lied us into a war. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The regime of Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or with the attack on the U.S. It is also a lie that "everyone believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." The U.N. weapons inspectors had never said, after 1995, there were weapons. They said there was a paper discrepancy. One part of the government said x amount had been destroyed; another branch said it was y amount. You will find paper discrepancies in practically every government in the world. Witness, for example, the numerous weapons and large amounts of money our own government cannot account for in Iraq.

Rule No. 3 is to always oppose excessive government secrecy. Common sense tells us that government is entitled to some secrecy, primarily military in time of war. Recent governments, however, have gone overboard and promiscuously classify practically any piece of paper that comes across their desk. Usually the only thing they are protecting is our own government from embarrassment or possibly criminal prosecution.

White House Faith-Based Director Says Time to Raise Church-State Concerns has Elapsed

Director of the White House Faith-Based Initiatives Office, Jay Hein, says he's heard just about enough from us rabble-rousers complaining that the government has failed to adequately safeguard....let's see, what was it again?...oh right, the First Amendment! Who knew that the question time on those pesky religious freedom rights had an expiration date? Hein certainly seems to think so, telling the Washington Times "that the time for second-guessing the program has passed and that critics who say it blurs the separation of church and state are 'alarmist...'"

On the question of church and state separation, [Rev. Barry] Lynn said "It is becoming clearer and clearer that the basic idea of this program, that you can just give money to pervasively religious groups and then expect them to spend it on secular items, is just impossible to achieve." Mr. Hein said this critique is "alarmist" and "not an educated point of view."

He said that FBCI counsels religious groups away from seeking federal funds if their spiritual mission is too closely intertwined with their service activities, and the White House conducts training sessions on how to discern what is too much religion and what is not.

Mr. Hein said that the church and state discussion is "a distraction."

A distraction?!?

Atheist urges logic, evidence for truth

Richard Dawkins, world-renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist, repeatedly urged University of Wisconsin students and community members to think critically about the universe during his lecture at Memorial Union Theater Tuesday night.

Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and author of international bestseller "The God Delusion," spoke to the full-capacity theater about the importance of evidence and logic in seeking truth, which he said faith cannot provide.

"In science, we believe things because we've looked at the evidence," Dawkins said. "[T]he consolation value of a belief does not have anything to do with truth. It cannot give human comfort."

Dawkins, who is on a March tour of six universities across the country, feels that students need to think for themselves when it comes to religion and science.

The Day After the Bombing of Iran

Imagine yourself sitting down transfixed and watching video footage of U.S. bombs hitting Iran. You see children ripped limb from limb, mothers screaming and wailing, people panicked, tortured, traumatized, and killed. Imagine asking yourself at that point: What was I doing these past many months that I thought was more important than preventing this?

Now ask yourself today: What am I doing that is more important than ending the ongoing hell of the U.S. occupation of Iraq?

Are you struggling to support your family? So are many, many other people who still find hours and days to commit. While congress members and senators have the gall to tell constituents that opposing Pelosi or Reid and cutting off the funding lies outside their "comfort zone," citizens are going without sleep, ruining marriages and friendships, losing money, fasting, and risking serious jail time for nonviolent protests. Are those children hit by the bombs living within a "comfort zone"?

The Gathering Storm at Justice

I don't in the ordinary course review and recommend law review articles, but I've just come across one that is close to indispensable for public affairs junkies. On December 7, 2006-the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor-at least eight U.S. attorneys received phone calls from Michael Battle, the executive director of the Office of U.S. Attorneys at the Justice Department. Each was essentially ordered to submit his or her resignation.

The Administration attempted to sell the event as a routine personnel turn-over. But Congress and the public weren't buying. After a series of hearings at which senior members of the Administration committed acts of perjury, there was a public uproar. In its wake the entire senior echelon of political appointees at the Justice Department were forced to leave office under a cloud and subject to an investigation into potentially criminal misconduct, as were a number of senior White House figures, most prominently including Bush's senior political advisor, Karl Rove.

The storm has died down a bit now as the Justice Department completes its own internal investigation of what happened. This has been led by Inspector General Glenn Fine and by the Office of Professional Responsibility. I understand that this investigation is approaching its conclusion now, and that a report is likely in the course of the spring. The report will almost certainly be explosive.

And finally...

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Let's talk about what's news to you.

M_A

Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=21258

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The Speech

Barack Obama had only words today, but it would take a heart of stone and a closed mind to deny their power at this moment in American history. You can read them now or watch to make up your own mind about the kind of President he would be, but to ignore his vision would be to leave America's future to the inane sound bites that have brought us to where we are today at home and around the world.

There can and should be debate over what he said and didn't say, and it should start now on the level to which he has raised this campaign. Anything less would be a shame.



Read The Full Article:
http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2008/03/speech.html

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Recession Depression Shocking Gallup
Poll…

According to a Gallup Poll released this morning, over 75% of Americans believe the country is currently in a recession, and nearly 60% believe the economy could slip into a depression in the next few years. Thanks again, GOP.

Read The Full Article:
http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/03/18/recession-depression-shocking-gallup-poll/

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Tuesday Late Nite: Justice for the Angola 3

Color of Change needs our help to right a long-time wrong in Louisiana. On a week when race is in the forefront of the American political dialogue, please take a moment to take action on behalf of men brutalized in Angola, the Louisiana State[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2008/03/18/justice-for-the-angola-three/

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Socialism for me, but not for thee

Universal Health Care is socialism! Somewhere a white guy is complaining about welfare queens, and our $12 billion a month occupation is a battle against a foe so dangerous they always lose, yet are never defeated. Because freedom rocks, and[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2008/03/18/socialism-for-me-but-not-for-thee/

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Obama delivers sweeping speech on race in America

Senator Barack Obama renewed his objection to the controversial statements delivered by the longtime pastor of his church, but declared that it was time to ?move beyond some of our old racial wounds.?read more | digg story

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/uncomfortablyNumb/~3/253746259/obama-delivers-swee
ping-speech-on-race.html

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Damage Control

Damage Control "No, no, no not God Bless America, God damn America." - Rev. Jeremiah Wright Obama’s candidacy lies in the balance of what he says today. Not necessarily just[...]

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http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=27250

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More Interrogation Tapes Still To Be Found

By Cernig

Senator Ted Kennedy wrote to SecDef Bob Gates on the 14th asking him for details of all interrogation tapes in their possession - and details of any and all tapes destroyed. His letter says, in part:

recently learned that the Department of Defense has been conducting a review of the videotaping of interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, and the Department reportedly has identified some 50 tapes. I?m disappointed, however, to learn that the Defense Intelligence Agency claims to have routinely destroyed tapes of interrogations conducted in the past seven years.

A recent study, "Captured on Tape: Interrogation and Videotaping of Detainees in Guantánamo," by Professor Mark Denbeaux and his colleagues, used publicly available documents to show that more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantánamo since 2002 and that every one of these interrogations was videotaped by the government. Meticulous logs were kept of information related to interrogations at Guantánamo, so it should be possible to identify how many videotapes still exist and how many have been destroyed.

I hope you agree that no further tapes should be destroyed, and I request that you take appropriate steps to guarantee the preservation of all interrogation tapes in the Department?s effective control, as well as any transcripts or documents related to the interrogations that may exist. These tapes and documents will likely be relevant both to the adjudication of the status of detainees and to congressional oversight of the treatment of detainees.

I ask that you inform me of the number of tapes in the possession of the Department of Defense and your plans for preserving them. I also ask that you preserve any transcripts of interrogations and any records relevant to tapes that may have been destroyed. Please inform me of the existence of such transcripts and records and of the specific steps you will take to preserve them. I also ask that you provide a report on all interrogation tapes the Department is aware of that have been destroyed or are no longer accessible.

I?m sure you recognize the special importance of the questions raised by the interrogation videotapes and the need for Congress to obtain complete information, so that it can perform its constitutional oversight and legislative responsibilities.

It's nice to see someone on the Hill is keeping an eye on this issue, especially when there's been a great deal of official evasion on the issue and a massive disconnect between public statements by DoD officials and military officers on how many tapes were made. The Surgeon General has stated in an official report that "all interrogations are videotaped" while the Pentagon press secretary has told journalists that "this is not a widespread practice? and that it was up to individual commanders whether to tape interrogations. Recently, the DoD "found" fifty interrogation tapes it seemingly didn't know it had but Seton Hall Law experts estimate that at least 24,000 tapes were made in total.

But one of the authors of the Seton Hall report tells me that another official source points positively to far more widespread taping than evasive stetements recently have suggested. Asked for comment, Michael Ricciardelli writes that "As I understand it, all fifty tapes the Pentagon has admitted to having found come from the brig in Charleston. The data indicates that an inventory of other military installations would prove fruitful."

there is another high level Governmental report which confirms the use of video recording of interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because our report focuses rather exclusively upon video recordings in Guantanamo, and we found this other report very late in the process, the information appears only as a footnote therein used to support the use of video recording of interrogations as an overall Govermental Policy.

On July 21, 2004 the Inspector General of The Army issued a wide ranging report on Detainee Operations titled "Detainee Operations Inspection."

Regarding interrogation in Afghanistan and Iraq the Inspector General of the Army stated the following in Chapter 4, "Interrogation Operations," Finding 6, (P.35-36 of Report; Adobe pagination of the document as found on the Pentagon web site, P.48-49.)

"The DAIG Team [Department of the Army Inspector General] observed 2 detainee facilities using digital recording devices, 1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq. Because interrogations are confrontational, a monitored video recording of the process can be an effective check against breaches of the laws of land warfare and Army policy. It further protects the interrogator against allegations of mistreatment by detainees and provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection. All facilities conducting interrogations would benefit from routine use of video recording equipment."

I would submit that the above Finding of the Department of the Army Inspector General substantiates two important points: 1) It expressly states that in Iraq and Afghanistan, as of July 21, 2004, video recording of interrogations occurred in at least "2 detainee facilities," "1 in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq;" and 2) After July 21, 2004, interrogations which were not videotaped, were not videotaped contrary to the express and offical recommendation of the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army who expressly approved such findings.

Importantly, as the Inspector General found, video recording of Interrogations "provides a permanent record of the encounter that can be reviewed to improve the accuracy of intelligence collection." [Emphasis mine - C]

Perhaps Senator Kennedy could call Gates, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morell and senior officers before an investigative hearing and ask them why exactly their statements show that the Inspector General of the Army and the Secretary of the Army's advice was ignored, if indeed it was, and more importantly....who had the authority to order that their advice be ignored?

Read The Full Article:
http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-interrogation-tapes-still-to-be.h
tml

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A Different Paradigm for Political Organizing

"The adversaries we face are extremely vulnerable because they are all-around bankrupt. They have no leg to stand on - no facts, no logic, and no moral reason to safeguard them from the people's righteous wrath.

Let future generations not ask what we were thinking, why we looked the other way, how we could have failed so ignominiously to act, when actions were desperately called for.

Let the winds blow. Let the waters rush forward. Let justice, so long delayed, be done."

See the rest of my article at OpEd News here.

Read The Full Article:
http://dennisloo.blogspot.com/2008/03/different-paradigm-for-political.html

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The Truth Is Far Worse than Any Conspiracy

Yesterday, I posted a brief entry in the nature of introductory comments about the many issues raised by the Obama-Wright controversy. In many ways, what is much more significant -- and much more revealing -- than any of Wright's comments themselves, is the manner in which those comments have been processed through the distorted and distorting prisms of American media and of most of those who have written about this episode. Later today or tomorrow, I'll have much more on this complicated subject, including some thoughts about Obama's speech. For the moment, I will remind you of what should be the most obvious point of all: Obama is a politician. And he is not just any politician: he wants to hold the most powerful office in the history of the world. Anyone who wishes to hold the office of president of the United States -- anyone who actively wants to hold that kind of life and death power over many millions of people, not just in the United States but around the world -- is never going to tell you the full truth, or anything close to it. If you're looking for truth, I suggest you read more. You will need to choose what you read with considerable care. You will not find any approximation of the truth in the political sphere, especially in the corrupt and corrupting politics practiced today and for many decades past in this country.

Here, I want to offer some observations about one particular comment of Wright's, a comment that everyone has denounced and that everyone has been at pains to condemn as particularly outrageous. I am referring to Wright's remark that the U.S. government "lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." I have read many commentaries about the Wright affair, and I have yet to come across anyone who dares to challenge the prevailing reaction to this particular remark. Everyone agrees that this view is absolutely insane, that it is not an opinion that could be offered by any "decent" person, and that it should be unequivocally condemned.

You're all wrong. This is not to say that I share Wright's view on this subject, which I do not as explained more fully below. But you are wrong if you condemn it in the manner everyone does.

In many essays here, I have lamented the ignorance of almost all Americans, including our entire political class and almost all of our media voices, about every relevant aspect of history, political theory, the development and evolution of political systems over time, and all other subjects that make possible an understanding of how we arrived at the present moment, and of how we might attempt to extricate ourselves from the mounting catastrophes that surround us. Almost a year ago, in "Songs of Death," I offered some relevant observations on this point. I noted a passage from a major foreign policy address given by Obama:

I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.

I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so. This President may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it?s time to fill that role once more.

About this, I wrote:

The ahistorical arrogance of this is breathtaking (or nauseating, take your pick). Obama's hegemonic ambitions are noteworthy in their scale: "the American moment" is to extend for "this new century." This is the undiluted embrace of "American exceptionalism," which I have discussed in detail: see my first Iran/foreign policy series, in particular "Messianic Zealotry as Foreign Policy" and the discussion there of the "Idea of Progress"; and the new "Dominion" series too, especially this installment and this one. Those essays discuss some of the internal inconsistencies and contradictions of the "exceptionalist" doctrine, one for which no one has ever been able to provide a convincing proof. Such a failure is unavoidable, since no such proof exists or is possible.

Let me very briefly mention another insurmountable problem in this view, and that is its assumption of omniscience. Note the famous formulation, which almost every politician robotically repeats: "the last, best hope of Earth." Well, "last" and "best" until another candidate appears better able to fill the generally accepted requirements for world leadership. Consider one instance of what I mean: if we continue on our present path, it is more than likely that "this new century" will see a significant economic weakening in the U.S., perhaps even a financial collapse. It is further likely that at some point in the next 50 or 100 years, our currently unparalleled military strength will be surpassed by China, for example. If China has undergone some not unimportant transformations of its own by that time (which is also far from unimaginable), China might then be able to make claims like Obama's with much more truth and conviction than the United States.

This point is in addition to the fact that every great civilization of the past has, in some form, made claims like those made by "American exceptionalism." Their time came and went, as will ours. But as I recently observed [in "The United States as Cho Seung-Hui: How the State Sanctifies Murder"], our ignorance is close to perfect: we have rendered ourselves incapable of grasping the past, the present or the future. Understanding developments over broad historic periods is a task for which we are singularly unsuited, and our sole concern remains today and tomorrow, and at most the next election. In addition, to talk accurately and sensibly about such matters flatters the vanity of neither the political class nor Americans more generally. Even though it is the truth, no one wants to hear: "The United States represented a revolutionary and glorious political development at its founding. But the original principles upon which this nation rested began to be seriously eroded only one hundred years later, and today they are all but vanished. Unless we again radically alter our path, we are headed to the trash heap of history, like every nation of once great achievement before us." Such views need not apply: they will not garner large campaign contributions, they will not lead to speaking engagements, and they will certainly not get you to the White House.

To return to Wright's now infamous and impermissible comment about the HIV virus, the following is why you should set aside your knee-jerk outrage and your real (or feigned) astonishment. This is the history you should remember, or learn for the first time. And please note: this is not distant history. In historic terms, this happened only yesterday.

Remember, and try to understand:

For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for "bad blood,"1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis -- which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. "As I see it," one of the doctors involved explained, "we have no further interest in these patients until they die."

The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to ensure their cooperation. The sharecroppers' grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical care?almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before?these unsophisticated and trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as "the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history."

The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed to whites?the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis whereas blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage. How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain. Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that "nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States." When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972, news anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that "used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone."

By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How had these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science? To persuade the community to support the experiment, one of the original doctors admitted it "was necessary to carry on this study under the guise of a demonstration and provide treatment." At first, the men were prescribed the syphilis remedies of the day?bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury?but in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement. These token doses of medicine were good public relations and did not interfere with the true aims of the study. Eventually, all syphilis treatment was replaced with ?pink medicine??aspirin. To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: "Last Chance for Special Free Treatment." The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed. As a doctor explained, "If the colored population becomes aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every darky will leave Macon County..." Even the Surgeon General of the United States participated in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them certificates of appreciation after 25 years in the study.

...

One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receiving treatment. When several nationwide campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating. Even when penicillin was discovered in the 1940s?the first real cure for syphilis?the Tuskegee men were deliberately denied the medication. During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS exempt them. Pleased at their success, the PHS representative announced: "So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment." The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public health law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that "informed consent" was needed for experiment involving human beings.

...

The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the appalling experiments performed by Nazi doctors on their Jewish victims during World War II. Yet in addition to the medical and racist parallels, the PHS offered the same morally bankrupt defense offered at the Nuremberg trials: they claimed they were just carrying out orders, mere cogs in the wheel of the PHS bureaucracy, exempt from personal responsibility.

The study's other justification -- for the greater good of science -- is equally spurious. Scientific protocol had been shoddy from the start. Since the men had in fact received some medication for syphilis in the beginning of the study, however inadequate, it thereby corrupted the outcome of a study of "untreated syphilis."

In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched. Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill-conceived experiment? In light of this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans' widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general should not be a surprise to anyone.

That last paragraph states the point very well. If you know and understand this awful, horrifying history -- and this is only one of innumerable and terrible injustices visited on black Americans by the U.S. government -- you will not be so quick to condemn Wright, if you condemn him at all.

As I indicated above, I do not agree with Wright. But I do not for the general reason that I reject all conspiracies of this kind: I apply Occam's Razor. Where factors already exist of which we are aware and which fully explain the phenomenon in question, it is unnecessary and unjustified to reach for explanations for which scant or no evidence exists. We need not invent conspiracies, when facts readily available make horrors like the Tuskegee "experiment" completely understandable.

A viciously ignorant and murderous racism lies at the core of American history. This racism is built into our major institutions in complex ways; it was obviously a foundation of the U.S. Public Health Service before, during and after this vile episode. This racism is deeply embedded in and carried throughout such bureaucracies: ignorance and prejudice determine which actions are taken, which are not, how decisions are made and implemented, and many other aspects of the functioning of these government agencies. In the same way, the U.S. government was criminally slow in responding to the growing HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s. It was not that anyone deliberately set out to kill large numbers of black Americans, or gay Americans. Such a calculated decision to murder was entirely unnecessary: the populations that suffered the most from this particular constellation of health problems were those that were already disfavored. Black Americans weren't "real" Americans in the ways that whites are; gay Americans were (and are) Freaks. Who cared if large numbers of them died, even when many of those deaths might have been avoided? After all, it's not as if people personally known to those in powerful positions were suffering and dying. No one who "mattered" was living -- and dying -- in agony. Besides, it was a sexually transmitted disease in significant part. Anyone who got sick that way was an animal. Why should the government go out of its way to help animals like that? Many Americans still believe that today. To all such people, I respond as I did at the conclusion of "We Are Not Freaks," in a manner not unfamiliar to Jeremiah Wright: God damn you to hell.

Study history, remember Tuskegee and the many other instances of unforgivable barbarity inflicted on black Americans. Think very, very carefully before you offer your easy condemnations. Then think again. The fact that most others will join you in those condemnations does not make any of you right. It is entirely possible that all of you are grievously, terribly wrong.

For the reasons noted above, you are.

Read The Full Article:
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/03/truth-is-far-worse-than-any-conspira
cy.html

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