By any means necessary

Someone might start thinking that the GOP doesn’t believe in democracy:

The state Senate is split 20-20 between Republicans and Democrats. On Monday, while state Sen. Henry Marsh (D) — a 79-year-old civil rights veteran — was reportedly in Washington to attend President Obama’s second inaugural, GOP senators forced through a mid-term redistricting plan that Democrats say will make it easier for Republicans to gain a majority.

With Marsh’s absence, Senate Republicans in Richmond had one more vote than Senate Democrats and could push the measure through. The new redistricting map revises the districts created under the 2011 map and would take effect before the next state Senate elections in Virginia and would redraw district lines to maximize the number of safe GOP seats.

They then, on Martin Luther King Day, adjourned to honor the memory of Stonewall Jackson.

Michael Lind was right in calling conservatives the ideological heirs of Lenin.

In which the Miami Herald endorses communism, fascism, and the Caliphate

Really, the American press continues to discover new levels of stupidity.

You may remember that Republican Congressman David Rivera is under investigation for bribes, false election filings, and other criminal acts. The Miami Herald grudgingly concedes he “carries too much political baggage to be an effective member of Congress.” Yeah, like hopefully a ball and chain in the near future.

But they really don’t want to want to endorse Rivera’s Democratic opponent: “Mr. Garcia, 49, is too much of a verbal bomb thrower, a reflection of his work as a Democratic Party stalwart…. What this district needs most is a consensus-builder”

So, see, criminal or partisan Democrat? The choice is difficult!

What The Herald really wants is a one-party state. They’re the perfect newspaper for Mussolini’s Italy or the USSR. Political officials there worked in perfect harmony!

The operative word is “tyranny”

Elizabeth Drew, New York Review of Books:

Having covered Watergate and the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and more recently written a biography of Nixon, I believe that the wrongdoing we are seeing in this election is more menacing even than what went on then. Watergate was a struggle over the Constitutional powers and accountability of a president, and, alarmingly, the president and his aides attempted to interfere with the nominating process of the opposition party. But the current voting rights issue is even more serious: it’s a coordinated attempt by a political party to fix the result of a presidential election by restricting the opportunities of members of the opposition party’s constituency—most notably blacks—to exercise a Constitutional right.

This is the worst thing that has happened to our democratic election system since the late nineteenth century, when legislatures in southern states systematically negated the voting rights blacks had won in the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Greece and the Underpants Gnomes; Egypt under the pharaohs

Don’t ask me to explain the Greek left. If they had worked together, they would control Greece and could have led it out of the EU currency straitjacket. Instead, left-wing Syriza declined to work with the discredited socialists of PASOK and has ended up with center right discredited New Democracy forming a coalition with discredited PASOK to do the bidding of the EU in a program that will inevitably lead to mass suffering on a scale not seen in many decades in Europe. And according to Syriza, this is great:

SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, 37, made clear his was now the main opposition party, swearing to fight on against the bailout and take power sooner or later.

“Very soon, the Left will be in power,” the former communist and student protest leader told elated supporters in central Athens after conceding defeat. “We begin the fight again tomorrow.”

1) Lose power
2) ??????
3) Victory!!!

Of course, Syriza is not half so crazy as the Austerians.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is claiming a narrow victory over the military-backed candidate in the presidential race. Of course, this means nothing since there’s no constitution, no parliament, and the military has reclaimed absolute power:

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood declared on Monday that its candidate Mohamed Morsy won the country’s first free presidential race, beating Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister and ending six decades of rule by presidents plucked from the military.

But shortly before the final result the generals who have run the country since the overthrow of Mubarak issued new rules that made clear real power remains with the army.
…
The order from Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the chairman to the Supreme Council, indicated that the army, which also controls swathes of Egypt’s economy, has no intention of handing substantial power now to its old adversary the Brotherhood.

“SCAF will carry legislative responsibilities … until a new parliament is elected,” the council’s order said.

In France, the Socialists are now in charge, and have no real power because Europe is in crisis and they’re committed to saving the EU. The only victors in all this seem to be the neo-Nazis. Some people are becoming convinced that none of the moderate parties have any solutions, and are willing to settle for a strongman.

Living while Muslim

From the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

From DemocracyNow :

AWUD WALID: Well, being in Michigan, and our national organization, CAIR—and we have an office in New York—we’ve joined other advocates in calling for [NYC Police Commissioner] Ray Kelly to resign. Ray Kelly, as well as his deputy chief, have completely trampled upon the spirit of the United States Constitution and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars with having agents even overseas, much less going through in Connecticut and New Jersey, spying on where Muslims eat kabob to bean pie. A

…Michigan is a very unique state, because under current law, the U.S. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection has 100-mile jurisdiction from the international border in which they can stop anyone without predication and ask for them to produce proof of citizenship. Because of the Great Lakes being considered international borders, or part of the international border, the entire state of Michigan is within the jurisdiction of U.S. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection. Therefore, we have instances in Southwest Detroit where Latinos, born and raised here in Detroit, have been stopped and been detained for hours and asked to provide citizenship. We have issues of Muslims at the border and re-entering the border, have been stopped by CBP and asked questions, such as, “Do you pray? How many times a day do you pray? Which mosque do you go to? Who is your imam?” even asking theological questions about how they believe or interpret certain verses of the—in our holy text. So we believe that Customs and Border Patrol—I mean, Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol are completely out of order right now, and they are engaged in racial and religious profiling.[emphasis added]

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is one of the most poorly understood bits of the US Constitution. For a discussion, see Cornell Law. Here, the US is clearly acting to inhibit the free exercise of Islam, which falls under strict scrutiny (i.e., the Court is more inclined to hear such cases than, e.g., a case of incidental aid provided to a religious school). The idea that people would be asked theological questions by government agents is mind-boggling. And since they can be stopped anywhere in Michigan by ICE agents, the whole (large) Muslim community in Michigan is subjected to what the rest of us experience in airports. Imagine the firestorm if such things were done to Christians or Jews.

Cointelpro Redux: police infiltration of Occupy/Updated

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, truthout:

As Part II of this discussion will show, infiltration is the norm in political movements in the United States. Occupy has many opponents likely to infiltrate to divide and destroy it beyond the usual law enforcement apparatus. Others include the corporations whose rule Occupy seeks to end, conservative right wing groups allied with corporate interests and other members of the power structure including non-profit organizations allied with either corporate-funded political party, especially the Democratic Party which would like Occupy to be their Tea Party rather than an independent movement critical of both parties.

On the very first day of the Occupation of Wall Street, we saw infiltration by the police. We were leaving Zuccotti Park and were stopped in traffic by the rear of the park. We saw an unmarked van open, in the front seat were two uniformed police and out of the back came two men dressed as occupiers wearing backpacks, sweatshirts, and jeans. They walked into Zuccotti Park and became part of the crowd.

If it were a matter of police undercover agents simply coming to observe public events, that might be tolerable. But they are engaged in provoking criminality, in photographing or creating files on protesters engaged in lawful activity, and misdirecting the movement. The first is itself a crime. The second and third are the tactics of totalitarian regimes. The consequence is that the US is much less free than most industrialized nations in terms of tolerating dissent and protest. The majority of citizens are afraid of engaging in street demonstrations.

This is not healthy. The end result is likely to be an explosion, when things go so wrong that people overcome their fear, as happened in Egypt. The alternative is even worse: decline, with no bottom.
________________
Update: Another Wikileak, not from the Stratfor file, shows that the Department of Homeland Security has opened a file on Occupy. While it’s based on open source reporting, it’s unsettling to have the Feds’ attention on a largely peaceful domestic protest movement. Kevin Gosztola has a summary here.

State Dept: It’s a constitutional succession if the police/military use machine guns/updated with magic asterisk

When in doubt:

The bizarre hypocrisy of the State Department in the Honduras coup, in which the machine gunning of the presidential palace in the early hours of the morning, and the exile of the elected president was deemed not to be a military coup has now been amplified by its strange response to the ouster of Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed.

Nasheed is best known for holding a Cabinet meeting underwater to illustrate the plight of the Maldives, which will be drowned by global warming, with no reprieve possible. Reuters:

Nasheed’s order to the military to arrest a judge, whom he accused of blocking multi-million dollar corruption cases against members of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s government, set off three weeks of opposition protests that peaked with Tuesday’s police revolt.

Opposition parties found common ground against Nasheed amid the constitutional crisis and protests, and had begun adopting hardline rhetoric to criticise his Islamic credentials. The country is wholly Sunni Muslim.

In the end, the military marched him into his own office to order his own resignation, a close aide told Reuters in the first witness account of Nasheed’s exit.

And more Reuters:

Earlier on Thursday, police commissioner Riyaz told reporters that 18 police stations and two courts on other atolls including the second-largest population centre, Addu, had been burned or attacked by Nasheed supporters the day before.

Nasheed called the violence “spontaneous”.
…
The unrest has taken place far from areas frequented by tourists, who usually land at an airport on an island near Male and go directly to the various resorts in the archipelago by speed boat or seaplane.

So, here’s your State Department:

QUESTION: Maldives. Yesterday, you discussed the situation there and appeared to sort of accept the story that the president stood aside and the vice president is taking over and that they’re going to have a government involving the opposition ahead of elections. But now, the former president Nasheed is saying that he was forced out at gunpoint and that it’s making it sound as though it’s essentially a military coup there. I’m wondering if you have any further information on communications with them, what your assessment is of the situation.

(Click for paydirt)

The way we do business: genocidal African leader is a CIA/DIA asset

Bryan Bender, Boston Globe:

When Charles G. Taylor tied bed sheets together to escape from a second-floor window at the Plymouth House of Correction on Sept. 15, 1985, he was more than a fugitive trying to avoid extradition. He was a sought-after source for American intelligence.

After a quarter-century of silence, the US government has confirmed what has long been rumored: Taylor, who would become president of Liberia and the first African leader tried for war crimes, worked with US spy agencies during his rise as one of the world’s most notorious dictators.
…
Former intelligence officials, who agreed to discuss the covert ties only on the condition of anonymity, and specialists including Farah believe Taylor probably was considered useful for gathering intelligence about the activities of Moammar Khadafy.

Bryan Bender, Boston Globe:

Breaking two and a half decades of silence, former Liberian president and accused war criminal Charles G. Taylor said today that his infamous prison break from the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in 1985 was aided by the US government…
…

In the second day of his testimony in his war crimes trial that could settle the long-standing mystery, Taylor said that on the night of Sept. 15, 1985, his maximum-security prison cell was unlocked by a guard and he was escorted to the minimum-security part of the facility.

According to news reports from The Hague, he said he then escaped by tying sheets together and climbing out a window and over a prison fence where he said a car with two men he assumed were agents of the US government drove him to New York, where his wife was waiting with money to get him out of the country.

Robtel Neajai Pailey, AllAfrica:

The bombshell news that he was indeed a CIA informant in the early years of his rise to notoriety calls into question America’s complicity in Taylor’s destruction of Liberia.

America’s facilitation of Taylor’s escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985 – while he was facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly stealing US$1 million from the General Services Agency, which he headed during President Samuel Kanyon Doe’s regime – was always rumored but never corroborated. …
…
The Taylor-CIA connection has re-inscribed for Liberians an age-old dilemma, what to do with our so-called historical relationship with the United States, which has been fraught with betrayal after betrayal. Liberians who have been commenting on various notice boards are justifiably angry, upset and disappointed, but not surprised.
…
It’s no wonder that the U.S. didn’t intervene in the Liberian civil war, though Liberians begged and pleaded for its “father/mother” to stop us from killing each other. One U.S. diplomat at the time even said that “Liberia is of no strategic interest to the United States.” …

This should send a strong signal to Liberians and Liberia once and for all that America cannot be trusted. From Noriega, to Osama, to Saddam, to Samuel Doe, authoritarian leaders who end up in the U.S.’s good graces are never there for long.

Taylor presided over genocide and looting that garnered him hundreds of millions or billions of dollars while costing the lives of 250,000 human beings, including many child soldiers.

1985 would be Reagan. But the “intelligence community” that facilitated Taylor’s release is eternal and non-partisan. The same unelected government which released a man who had robbed the American people of a million dollars so that he could prey on descendants of Americans who chose to return to the country of their ethnic origin very likely participated in the kidnapping of the lawfully elected president of Honduras–indeed, probably presided over a host of criminal actions performed in the name of national security, but ending in innocent blood, public dishonor and the world’s distrust of us.

Apparently it’s just the way we do business.

A new wrinkle on the Egyptian dictatorship’s raid of NGOs

Cam McGrath, IPS News:

“Egypt does not oppose foreign funding of NGOs as long as it complies with Egyptian and international laws. However, the funding must be for development, not political purposes,” Fayza Aboul Naga, minister for planning and international cooperation, said in November.

Aboul Naga, who was appointed by Mubarak and has survived four cabinet changes since his ouster, accused the U.S. government of directly funding 14 American and 12 unlicensed Egyptian NGOs.

Washington has admitted to as much. In June, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson said the United States had spent 40 million dollars in Egypt to promote democracy since the revolution. She said 600 Egyptian NGOs had applied for funding.

El-Borai argues that the military is less concerned about organisations receiving foreign funds than it is about limiting the reach and resources available to NGOs engaged in supporting principles that threaten its rule.

“It’s very clear that this is a campaign against civil society groups calling for democracy, citizenship and a civil state,” he told IPS. “When (security forces) raided offices, it was these groups and not organisations receiving money from the Gulf (Arab states) that got shut down.”

According to Al-Akhbar state newspaper, the Ansar Al-Sunnah Al-Mohamedeya group received over 50 million dollars from Qatari and Kuwaiti institutions since the revolution, making it the biggest recipient of foreign aid in the country. The paper alleged that the donations went to promoting the ultra-conservative Islamic Salafi movement in Egypt.

Al-Akhbar also reported that an institution created in memorial of Mubarak’s deceased grandson received nearly 15 million dollars from the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The opaque charity is believed to be controlled by the “feloul”, that is, the remnants of the old regime.

This is actually pretty interesting. The military (i.e., the Egyptian dictatorship) is arguing that (a) the US is funding non-governmental organizations in violation of Egyptian law, and (b) that other foreign governments such as Qatar,Kuwait, UAR, and Oman (presumably with American acquiescence or connivance) are funding Islamic fundamentalists. It probably also objects to the US funding American NGOs, so an interesting question is whether the NDI, IRI, Freedom House and other USG pawns are licensed to operate in Egypt.

Now, I think it’s highly unlikely that the US would fund Islamists. The US generally either funds the old dictatorship or neo-liberal groups. It’s much more likely that Qatar, Kuwait, UAR, and Oman are doing this on their own. But the US is not putting up a big fuss over it.

Which side is the US on?

Communist resurgence in Russia

An interesting interview with Prof. Stephen Cohen on DemocracyNow that upends the narrative we have been given about events in Russia. He says that:
* The high point of democracy in Russia was actually under Gorbachov, before the fall of Communism
* When Yeltsin stood on a tank in front of Parliament, an event that is treated positively in the West, it reversed the movement toward democracy
* Most of the reporters who have been killed were investigating huge ripoffs of state enterprises by “entrepreneurs”
* The recent elections were the fairest in Russia’s history (still crooked, but less so)
* The rise in the vote for the Communist party is by working-class people who want to throw off the kleptocracy represented by Putin
* The Communist Party represents the Old Guard, not the Gorbachov reform wing. They benefit from having opposed the breakup of the USSR
* If the Communists get the same alliance in the presidential election, Putin will lose

Cohen thinks that things are going well to get an eventual reform. I’m skeptical. Russia needs a genuine independent political force. Communism belongs to the past.