"Brutal Ethnic Cleansing", Not Surge, Brought So-Called "Success" In Iraq

One of John McCain's strategies to win the election has been to play up the so-called "success" of the Surge, and Obama's opposition to it. In doing so, he has had to confirm that one of his many "gaffes" on Iraq was no mistake:

In a conference call Wednesday, McCain foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann told reporters that the Arizona senator had not misspoken — that he had intended to tell Katie Couric that the troop surge, which began in 2007, had enabled the success of the “Anbar awakening” of major Sunni sheikhs against Al Qaeda, which began in 2006.

Juan Cole's powerful article reveals that the Myth of the Successful Surge is only that, a myth, subscribed to, logic and reason be damned, by John McCain in his bid to seal the neocon-numbed protoplasm imagined to be the "Republican electorate" and that all important fantasy "swing vote" (the "naaa, I dunno" crowd?). First off, is it really "success"?

"Most American commentators are so focused on the relative fall in casualties that they do not stop to consider how high the rates of violence remain."

Secondly, what is the real reason for the decrease in violence? Brutal ethnic cleansing, a Sunni-Shi'a civil war.

Although the "Sunni Awakening" has been rightly credited by Obama and others for helping reduce the "surge" in violence before the actual troop surge occurred, McCain's advisors and supporters, among others, are claiming that the surge provided on-the-ground support for that "Awakening" as well as implied "moral support", knowing that the U.S. would "be there" for them... But Juan Cole has another crucial point on this voodoo logic:

Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra U.S. troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the troop escalation that began in the winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.

And we have another issue:

For the first six months of the troop escalation, high rates of violence continued unabated. That is suspicious. What exactly were U.S. troops doing differently from September than they were doing in May, such that there was such a big change? The answer to that question is simply not clear. Note that the troop escalation only brought U.S. force strength up to what it had been in late 2005. In a country of 27 million, 30,000 extra U.S. troops are highly unlikely to have had a really major impact, when they had not before.

What the "Surge" really did was give the civil war away to the Shi'a. I'm sure Iran is shedding no tears over that, although I doubt anyone but the most callous would condone the way it went down.

As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65 percent Shiite to at least 75 percent Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the United States inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.

CNN's Michael Ware seems to side with this view.

The sectarian cleansing of Baghdad has been — albeit tragic — one of the key elements to the drop in sectarian violence in the capital. […] It’s a very simple concept: Baghdad has been divided; segregated into Sunni and Shia enclaves. The days of mixed neighborhoods are gone. […] If anyone is telling you that the cleansing of Baghdad has not contributed to the fall in violence, then they either simply do not understand Baghdad or they are lying to you.

Does this contribute to Iraq's stability, one measure of real success?

The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.

As usual, non-military means could have been more effective had they been used earlier, more evidence that the "Surge" is and was not the path to success:

In al-Anbar Province, among the more violent in Iraq in earlier years, the bribing of former Sunni guerrillas to join U.S.-sponsored Awakening Councils had a big calming effect. This technique could have been used much earlier than 2006; indeed, it could have been deployed from 2003 and might have forestalled large numbers of deaths.

Other factors also contributed to the reduction in violence:

The Mahdi Army militia of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr concluded a cease-fire with U.S. and Iraqi troops in September 2007. Since the United States had inadvertently enabled the transformation of Baghdad into a largely Shiite city, a prime aim of the Mahdi Army, they could afford to stand down.

This was a huge element in the "success" story. Not to mention economic factors unrelated to the surge.

The vast increase in Iraqi oil revenues in recent years, and the cancellation of much foreign debt, has made the central government more powerful vis-a-vis the society. Al-Maliki can afford to pay, train and equip many more police and soldiers. An Iraq with an unencumbered $75 billion in oil income begins to look more like Kuwait, and to be able to afford to buy off various constituencies. It is a different game than an Iraq with $33 billion in revenues, much of it precommitted to debt servicing.

And by what measure does McCain or anyone else claim that violence is now at "acceptable" levels, enough to be called "success"?

I'd suggest some comparisons. The Sri Lankan civil war between Sinhalese and Tamils has killed an average of 233 persons a month since 1983 and is considered one of the world's major ongoing trouble spots. That is half the average monthly casualties in Iraq recently. In 2007, the conflict in Afghanistan killed an average of 550 persons a month. That is about the rate recently, according to official statistics, for Iraq. The death rate in 2006-2007 in Somalia was probably about 300 a month, or about half this year's average monthly rate in Iraq. Does anybody think Afghanistan or Somalia is calm?

The talk about the Surge is more propaganda exploiting the civil war that the U.S. helped inspire and prosecute, wittingly or unwittingly, than it is anything else, much less a "Success Story". The story of Iraq is a tragedy, and McCain doesn't even get it.

"Preparing for Democracy": Mubarak Thugs Arrest, Torture Egyptian Facebook Activist

If you want to find an example of how "our allies in the Mideast" administer their autocratic thuggery, look no further than here - a horrendous episode courtesy of Our Man Hosny, whose "dreaded SSI" could have just left off the "I" to wake the sleepers.

When Egypt’s secular opposition groups called for a nationwide strike to support disgruntled factory workers last April, Ahmed Maher wanted to help. So he did what many middle-class 20-somethings here do: He logged onto Facebook.

Two weeks before the strike, he and a friend, Esraa Abdel Fattah, started a group on the popular social-networking site to support the walkout and invited friends to join. But soon they realized they had much more than just a new Facebook group on their hands.

In Egypt, a country still under the iron-fisted rule of President Hosni Mubarak, even something as seemingly innocuous as Facebook can run afoul of the red lines around unacceptable political activity.

And as the popularity of the page grew, Egyptian authorities took notice.

From 150 friends each to 3,000 to over 60,000 supporters by the time of the strike, the Facebook method was wildly successful in recruiting activists. But the strike never took place, nor did a second. At first, according to this report, he was defiant, “If we allow ourselves to fear them, we won’t do anything,” he told the BBC. “Then I would consider myself a partner in the crimes taking place in Egypt.”
But later under fear of SSI reprisal, Maher went into hiding until the SSI finally arrested him and subjected him to torture:

Even though the second nationwide strike never got off the ground, Maher was arrested in early May, just two days after he had returned home, by four carloads of plainclothes police.

In an interview, Maher says he was shackled, blindfolded, and stripped. He says the police dragged him across the floor and beat him for almost 12 hours. They demanded to know the password to his Facebook account and asked for information about the 60,000 people in the group, then threatened to rape him if he would not comply, he says.

The above picture of Ahmed Maher's back after the beatings was posted by award-winning blogger Wael Abbas and posted here.

This seems to be the MO for the Egyptian SS(I) and other Mubarak operatives, who famously intimidated female journalists in one protest awhile back by raping and threatening to rape or sexually humiliating them. Just Friends...???

After his 12-hour ordeal, Maher was put in a small cell where officers treated his bruises and tried to explain themselves. “They came to me and tried to apologize,” says Maher. “They kept saying ‘Oh, the men who beat you were just a few bad guys. We love Egypt, too. We love this country as much as you do, but Egyptians aren’t ready for democracy. Just look at what happened in Iraq.”

This is almost word-for-word what Prime Minister Ahmad Nazeef said a few years ago in an interview with Charlie Rose: "The Egyptian people are not ready for democracy." Seems to be a policy: impose an abusive autocratic police state enforced by draconian human rights abuse - all to "prepare" the "not-yet-ready" people for, eventually, "democracy". Is this the same kind of "preparation" we're offering the rest of the Middle East? Those guys at Gitmo just weren't "ready" for democracy yet! So we've got to "prepare" them. In fact, it seems most of the world isn't really "ready" just yet.

Meanwhile, some people insist on being "self-taught" when it comes to democracy, I guess.

Maher says that he still receives harassing phone calls and threats of rape from the Egyptian authorities, but remains intent on transforming his Facebook group, which is still online, into a real political organization. He recently met with opposition leaders to brainstorm ideas for a movement called “Facebook Youth.”

Although many say these grassroots efforts won't come to anything, I personally hope they do. Nothing is less effective than sitting back being intimidated. Many in Egypt agree. As long as the U.S. doesn't shore him up, Mubarak's days are numbered.

Obama's Got Math: Media, Face It...

This post from Jack & Jill Politics is so good, I'll just redirect you to it from the title.

Inspiration, Moving Mountains, & Barack Obama in Berlin

This is one of those moments that should lift the spirit. Not everyone is ready, or in the mood. But consider this: what US Presidential candidate in the last 40 years has inspired people, I mean inspired people around the world? What is more important, the ability to impress military commanders and people who fear foreigners or the ability to inspire cooperation and a sense of hope? Especially after being raked by fear and run by a gang that invades sovereign nations, tortures, and builds a gulag of prisons, secret and public. Here is more hope than "the man from Hope" ever brought.

While Americans Starve, Burn Furniture, the Pentagon Trashes the Treasury

This incredible article by Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone exposes what's really happened to the economy: the fallout of Republicanomics, of robbing the poor to feed the rich and their military-expansionist fantasies.

It started with a stark description of individuals' lives as described by Middle Class Vermonters to their Senator Bernie Sanders who asked his constituents how the economic "downturn" was affecting them. Expecting a few letters, he was swamped with over 700, telling of such harrowing experiences as burning furniture to stay warm and property taxes (thanks to RepubliBush Federal Tax Cuts to the Rich) are eating into their food money, not to mention education. Health care and dental care, of course, already are out of question. Welcome to Third World America.

Sanders got letters from working people who have been reduced to eating "cereal and toast" for dinner, from a 71-year-old man who has been forced to go back to work to pay for heating oil and property taxes, from a worker in an oncology department of a hospital who reports that clinically ill patients are foregoing cancer treatments because the cost of gas makes it too expensive to reach the hospital. The recurring theme is that employment, even dual employment, is no longer any kind of barrier against poverty. Not economic discomfort, mind you, but actual poverty. Meaning, having less than you need to eat and live in heated shelter -- forgetting entirely about health care and dentistry, which has long ceased to be considered an automatic component of American middle-class life.

Don't ask me, though, ask a U.S. Senator.

"The middle class is disappearing," says Sanders. "In real ways we're becoming more like a third-world country."

Wow! the Republicans' drained our Treasury, from which they removed their largest contributor, the Superrich, by the most profligate adventurism imaginable in Iraq. Funding for the Pentagon has gutted the American people's public fund into which their lifeblood has been drained via IRS-enforced taxes.

We've all seen the stats -- median income has declined by almost $2,500 over the past seven years, we have a zero personal savings rate in America for the first time since the Great Depression, and 5 million people have slipped below the poverty level since the beginning of the decade.

We have a government that is spending two and a half billion dollars a day in Iraq, essentially subsidizing new swimming pools for the contracting class in northern Virginia, at a time when heating oil and personal transportation are about to join health insurance on the list of middle-class luxuries. Home heating and car ownership are slipping away from the middle class thanks to exploding energy prices -- the hidden cost of the national borrowing policy we call dependency on foreign oil, "foreign" representing those nations, Arab and Chinese, that lend us the money to pay for our wars.

Oh, so now we're a debtor nation. Some "Superpower". We're throwing away democracy and prosperity at home so we can "export democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan. What a great way to take revenge against the terrorists who caused 9/11! Kill off the American Middle Class! Send their sons to war to get killed or, more likely, maimed for life, and ruin their livelihood and starve their parents! That'll serve those terrorists! And set up a military dictatorship that looks for all the world like a democracy, except that it really isn't!

Security.

And while we've all heard stories about how much waste and inefficiency there is in our military spending, this is always portrayed as either "corruption" or simple inefficiency, and not what it really is -- a profound expression of our national priorities, a means of taking money from ordinary, struggling people and redistributing it not downward but upward, to connected insiders, who turn your tax money into pure profit.

Ooops! I mean, the "Security Industry." Take a look:

You want an example? Sanders has a great one for you. The Senator claims that he has been trying for years to increase funding for the Federally Qualified Health Care (FQHC) program, which finances community health centers across the country that give primary health care access to about 16 million Americans a year. He's seeking an additional $798 million for the program this year, which would bring the total appropriation to $2.9 billion, or about what we spend every two days in Iraq.

"But for five billion a year," Sanders insists, "we could provide basic primary health care for every American. That?s how much it would cost, five billion."

As it is, though, Sanders has struggled to get any additional funding. He managed to get $250 million added to the program in last year's Labor, Health and Human Services bill, but Bush vetoed the legislation, "and we ended up getting a lot less."

Okay, now, hold that thought. While we're unable to find $5 billion for this simple program, and Sanders had to fight and claw to get even $250 million that was eventually slashed, here's something else that's going on. According to a recent report by the GAO, the Department of Defense has already "marked for disposal" hundreds of millions of dollars worth of spare parts -- and not old spare parts, but new ones that are still on order! In fact, the GAO report claims that over half of the spare parts currently on order for the Air Force -- some $235 million worth, or about the same amount Sanders unsuccessfully tried to get for the community health care program last year -- are already marked for disposal! Our government is buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Defense Department crap just to throw it away!

Yes, that's where all those IRS payments are going, and aren't you feeling more and more secure??

We are in the midst of a political movement to concentrate private wealth into fewer and fewer hands while at the same time placing more and more of the burden for public expenditures on working people. If that sounds like half-baked Marxian analysis... well, shit, what can I say? That's what's happening. Repealing the estate tax (the proposal to phase it out by the year 2010 would save the Walton family alone $30 billion) and targeting "entitlement" programs for cuts while continually funneling an ever-expanding treasure trove of military appropriations down the befouled anus of pointless war profiteering, government waste and North Virginia McMansions -- this is all part of a conversation we should be having about who gets what share of the national pie. But we're not going to have that conversation, because we're going to spend this fall mesmerized by the typical media-generated distractions, yammering about whether or not Michelle Obama's voice is too annoying, about flag lapel pins, about Jeremiah Wright and other such idiotic bullshit.

So, let's see, our journalists are whores for the status quo, our people are going belly-up, our businesses and banks are clenching their fiscal teeth, and the war is going to keep going, according to Mr. In-Touch John McCain, for another 100 years.

Right. Democracy. Let's just solve it all and wave some flags, kids! And wave some guns, too - for security, kids, for security. So you can starve securely in a depleted uranium planet.

Woman Gives Birth Under Torture: Homeland Security Hell

Is Naomi Wolf's predicted "fascist shift" accelerating, using the anti-migrant controversy as another "facilitating issue"?

As The NYT reported Sunday, a simple traffic stop of Juana Villegas, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was nine months pregnant, turned into another case of Homeland Security Hell, of criminalizing poverty or the "crime" of not having "proper paperwork", in this case by torture.

But this was first reported at Political Salsa on June 13th by Tim Chavez, who heard her and described the torture, reminding him of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It seems the war supposedly started to combat terrorism has now come home to torment anyone without the right paperwork: without papers, they're demons...
But is this even more sinister??

And so that - or what? - justifies this:

* A woman, three days before delivery of her fourth AMERICAN child, was wrongly arrested and incarcerated.

* Her water broke while she was in jail; she was transported to Metro General Hospital.

* When the nurse asked her to undress to get into hospital clothes, the sheriff's guard was asked to leave for the moment. He -- yes, he -- refused. So she had to undress in front of him. I don't know about your culture, but in the Mexican culture and Mexican-American culture, that is a highly offensive affront to our women, no to mention our mothers.

* Then, while in labor, she was handcuffed by her wrist and ankle to the bed. I've seen women in labor, and they constantly are shifting positions to try and get some sense of relief, if that is even possible. Now consider the pain if handcuffs prevented your movement.

* Thankfully, the handcuffs were taken off two hours before she delivered. But then she was restrained again in bed a day later. And every trip to the bathroom required leg shackles. When the nurse strongly objected, the sherrif's department stayed absolute. The nurse said the new mother would not be able to clean herself properly with shackles. The sheriff's guard said it didn't matter; he was doing his job.

Didn't we hear that excuse before at Nuremberg? Never forget; we still hardly remember. Our Jewish brothers and sisters deserve better from us.

* It also didn't matter if the baby received the critical mother's milk in its first days of life. The child was removed from its mother, and Ms. DeLaPaz was returned to jail.

* The final injury inflicted upon this CIVIL/MISDEMEANOR offender was the denial of her use of a breast pump to express her milk for the baby and her own comfort. The nurse again strongly objected, but the sheriff's department again played law enforcer, physician and God.

* Ms. DeLaPaz returned to her jail cell in great pain from her swollen breasts. She could not sleep due to the agony.

* Meanwhile, her infant son was taken to a pediatrican. There he was tested and found to have a blood level containing a high measurement of a dangerous chemical that produces jaundice, a yellowing of the skin. My father had jaundice before he died of cancer, so the condition denotes the medical seriousness of the moment.

The child's condition was due to a lack of mother's milk.

When the government can keep a mother from her newborn infant and prevent the baby from being breastfed because of some law, the law itself creates a crime. When being or appearing to be Hispanic leads to criminal investigation after a traffic stop, something is racist and wrong. When xenophobia creates anti-migration laws so draconian they criminalize what was once a civil matter, we end up with Homeland Security Hell.

"Illegal immigration" is violation of paperwork, not an act against another person. It was always civil, until manic Republicans criminalized it. And so human beings are fodder for someone's paranoid insanity-created law. The law itself becomes a source for inhumanity and crime.

Welcome to Homeland Security Hell.

The NYT sees it as a problem created locally by cooperation between local and federal authorities, and didn't specifically call it "torture":

Mrs. Villegas’s arrest has focused new attention on a cooperation agreement signed in April 2007 between federal immigration authorities and Davidson County, which shares a consolidated government with Nashville, that gave immigration enforcement powers to county officers. It is one of 57 agreements, known formally as 287G, that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has signed in the last two years with county and local police departments across the country under a rapidly expanding program.

“Had it not been for the 287G program, she would not have been taken down to jail,” said A. Gregory Ramos, a lawyer who is a former president of the Nashville Bar Association. “It was sold as something to make the community safer by taking dangerous criminals off the streets. But it has been operated so broadly that we are getting pregnant women arrested for simple driving offenses, and we’re not getting rid of the robbers and gang members.”

But in fact it goes much deeper. ICE is the enforcement arm of the DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security). Under the anti-terrorist federal overhaul and the creation of the DHS, there is a mandate to "bring people in" in order to stay funded. This started with Gitmo and renditions and has, as Naomi Wolf predicted, come home to a town hear you. It's the ideology where We Americans are the Good Guys that need to Lock Up the Other Non-Americans, the Bad Guys. It starts with terror suspects, expands into immigrants, and catches stray "liberals" and other "dangerous" types. Soon, as Tim Chavez pointed out,

But beware, if your wife unknowingly is driving through a part of Berry Hill. And with her dark hair and new tan she got at Destin, she may look Hispanic from a distance.

Just pray that she isn't pregnant and about to deliver. Don't let her drive in Nashville after the fifth month of pregnancy just to be on the safe side. For sure, keep her out of south Nashville and ultimately out of the hands of Sheriff Daron Hall's department.

Viewed in light of Naomi Wolf's "Fascist America in Ten Easy Steps", the incident is even more ominous. Carolyn Baker, in her review of Wolf's book The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot discusses this aspect of the overall change in law enforcement techniques, which seems not to be limited to only "287G", as the NYT would like us to believe:

Some of my students who are criminal justice majors tell me that the latest strategies now being taught to police officers are "shock doctrine" techniques which terrorize and intimidate civilians in order to control them. Law enforcement officers are no longer encouraged to "keep a cool head" but to "follow their own instincts" (which usually means their own internal, adrenaline-charged state of terror) and react with full force because it's easier to apologize (or encounter a lawsuit) than to ask permission or risk being killed. Terrified people should not be wearing a badge and carrying a gun, and when they are, a fully terrorized society is guaranteed.

It could be ... Los Angeles? New Jersey? Miami? Omaha? Why not? Every town now has a Joint Terrorist Task Force and an ICE team, looking for some suspects to round up. The rules that apply here are "protect Us." And "lock up Them."

And who are "them"?
Them "R" Us.

New Video of Omar Khadr Interrogation

This is my first uploaded video clip! And it's a blockbuster. According to the Guardian:

At the time the video was produced, February 2003, Khadr was 16. He had been subjected to what guards called the "frequent flyer" programme, in which detainees are deprived of sleep.
In Khadr's case, he was prevented from sleeping for more than three hours at a time for 21 days.
In the footage broadcast yesterday, Khadr's despair at his indefinite confinement is palpable. He strips his orange prison uniform over his head, rocks and holds his face in his hands, weeping and begging for help. "You don't care about me," he tells interrogators.
Commentators described his indistinct moans as Khadr saying: "help me", "kill me", or even calling for his mother in Arabic.
The video, which the Canadian government handed over to Khadr's lawyers on the orders of Canada's supreme court, was the first sight of some seven hours of footage of his interrogation by Canadian agents. The images were recorded by a camera hidden in an air shaft as Khadr was questioned over four days.

Of course, many right-wingers will look for "clues" to "lack of abuse." Followed by doubletalk. But see for yourself.

Is the Anti-Immigration Movement Really a New Racist Movement?? Looks like a Resounding "YES"

This incident says it all: A Minuteman on the front lines of the anti-immigration movement, a republican phenom, saying "Fuck You, Brown Boy!"...

As Kyle de Beausset said in his report on the crowd outside where Obama was giving a speech in San Diego at the annual National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference where the incident took place (from one of the San Diego Minutemen, an anti-immigration group),

Just as I was about to turn away from filming a man holding a sign of a boy urinating on the phrase "La Raza", I heard him begin to chant, "Fuck You Brown Boy. Fuck You Brown Boy. Fuck You Brown Boy." The San Diego Minuteman supporter was walking up a ramp to the convention center and was speaking to another full-grown man that looked to be of latino descent to me.

They were supposedly "protesting" La Raza's "racism" using racist epithets...!?!

Some will see the above incident as the fault of a fringe lunatic, who supports a fringe organization, but as anyone who blogs about migration can attest, hateful rhetoric like this has poisoned almost every online forum that takes up the subject. Any newspaper article that dares even suggest that unauthorized migrants are human quickly fills up with hate like this in the comment section. Even the mainstream progressive blogosphere is filled with hate like this. Look no further than Alternet's special immigration section for evidence of that.

This hate is degrading the U.S.'s democracy, and preventing the U.S. from arriving at a meaningful solution to the issues associated with migration. I live and breathe the U.S. migration debate. And even for someone like myself, who is very familiar with the U.S.'s history oppression, I find myself living in disbelief over the suffering of that millions of authorized and unauthorized migrants have to live through every day in the United States.

And as we all know from even W.'s attempt at Immigration reform, the racism and fear provides a lot of right-wing steam attacking this amorphous non-WASP "threat" that is undermining their livelihood and that of Lou Dobbs, who has solved all the economic problems facing the nation with the simple, symbolic concept of building a huge, impenetrable Wall against the Other.

Problems begin when that very wall and all it symbolizes undermines what America has always symbolized: democracy, freedom, and compassion. So much for those dreams - hate is much more compelling for an apparently vocal, mostly Republican, "interest group".

Look Again: Obama Still on Higher Plane than We've Seen in a Long Time

Some excerpts from Obama's speech to the NAACP found on this great blog showcase Obama's eloquence, and his commitment to things that are normally not so high on the political/corporate agenda:

What Dr. King and Roy Wilkins understood is that it matters little if you have the right to sit at the front of the bus if you can’t afford the bus fare; it matters little if you have the right to sit at the lunch counter if you can’t afford the lunch. What they understood is that so long as Americans are denied the decent wages, and good benefits, and fair treatment they deserve, the dream for which so many gave so much will remain out of reach; that to live up to our founding promise of equality for all, we have to make sure that opportunity is open to all Americans.

That is what I’ve been fighting to do throughout my over 20 years in public service. That’s why I’ve fought in the Senate to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create good jobs here in America. That’s why I brought Democrats and Republicans together in Illinois to put $100 million in tax cuts into the pockets of hardworking families, to expand health care to 150,000 children and parents, and to end the outrage of black women making just 62 cents for every dollar that many of their male coworkers make.

And here’s what else we’ll do - we’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. Now, I understand that Senator McCain is going to be coming here in a couple of days and talking about education, and I’m glad to hear it. But the fact is, what he’s offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. Well, I believe we need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform.

That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new qualified teachers to our communities - and to pay them more and give them more support. And we’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom.

Let's hope he remains committed, let's hope he achieves the Presidency and then is enabled to work on the issues he's claimed like health care and education, and taking money out of wars and into rebuilding the civilian structure so essential to life, and hope that his foreign policies will not be so militaristic and heavy-handed. Surely McCain has assured us he will provide typical Republican military-first, civilians-second leadership, and continue adventurism until we go bankrupt.

New Blockbuster Book: Bushco Violated Constitution, Committed War Crimes

(check review here)
Yes we all know it, don't we? But the evidence outside our own minds, actual legal evidence, is mounting, evidence that can be used in a court of law. And Jane Mayer's about-to-be-published (target date: July 15th) book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, is, according to its publisher:

a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world-- decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author, Jane Mayer, relates the impact of these decisions—U.S.-held prisoners, some of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.

THE DARK SIDE will chronicle real, specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of what was happening in Washington, looking at the intelligence gained—or not—and the price paid. In some instances, torture worked. In many more, it led to false information, sometimes with devastating results. For instance, there is the stunning admission of one of the detainees, Sheikh Ibn al-Libi, that the confession he gave under duress—which provided a key piece of evidence buttressing congressional support of going to war against Iraq--was in fact fabricated, to make the torture stop.

In all cases, whatever the short term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself. THE DARK SIDE chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.

And in a related video to be released for home viewing in September, called "Taxi to the Dark Side", it shows

According to the documentary, even the Pentagon has concluded that more than 35 detainees have died as a result of homicide while under American custody -- and they were killed by torture techniques authorized directly by the White House under the direction of Cheney, with the knowledge of Bush. Rumsfeld set the tone in the Pentagon for the torture to be undertaken as a routine procedure.

The CIA esitmated that a 1/3 of the "terrorist detainees" were not really terrorists; and other estimates place the innocent figure as high as 50%.

So why, may I ask, is impeachment off the table??????

Israel Antoinette Always Gets the Cake, So Why Does She Use Thug Tactics?

Dahr Jamail tells of this harrowing experience suffered by Muhammad Omer, a Palestinian journalist who, along with Dahr Jamail, received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in London on 16 June (1).

On his return home, Omer was badly beaten up and physically and psychologically abused by Israel's security forces, Shin Bet. At the Allenby Bridge crossing, from Jordan to the West Bank, he was met by the Dutch official who was to ferry him back into Gaza. The official waited outside as Omer entered the Israeli building. Omer was told to turn off his mobile phone and remove the battery. When he asked if he could call his embassy escort, he was told sternly he was not allowed. A Shin Bet officer searched his luggage and rifled through his documents. "Where's the money?" he asked Omer. "Where are the English pounds you have?" They wanted to confiscate his prize money, which Omer was wise enough not to carry on his person.

Omer was surrounded by eight armed Shin Bet officers. This is how he described what happened next. "A man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: `Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.' He said: `This is nothing compared with what you will see now.' He took his gun out, pressing it to my head, and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said:
`Why are you bringing perfumes?' I replied: `They are gifts for the people I love.' He said: `Oh, do you have love in your culture?'

"I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours and, having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing it into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."

Now you may think this can't be a pattern of behavior, it may be, as reported back in 2000 by the Guardian, typical of the era from '88-'92, the Intifada, and things have since been rectified. And such practices of physical coercion were banned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999. Since then it's documented that only "moderate physical pressure" can be exerted against terrorist or other suspects. What that means may be open to interpretation. Perhaps humiliation, sexual degradation, and physical deprivation are "moderate" to Shin Bet.

Or maybe the right-wing in Israel considers all of that irrelevant: declare a self-defense and its battles, and impose a humanitarian disaster on an entire population of men, women and children. Which, of course, means Gaza. As stated here:

The humanitarian condition of the one and a half million men, women and children illegally incarcerated in Gaza is now at its worst point in the last 40 years of Israeli occupation.

Israel’s pitiable attempts to achieve absolute security through absolute domination have only led us all into disaster. The rocket attacks by militants in Gaza against Israeli civilians are as deplorable as they are predictable – given the suffering caused by this blockade – but these attacks are also irrelevant to the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s siege. The one does not justify the other. The one cannot justify the other.

Self-defense to Israel also can mean, say, decimating the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon - like the country's one major airport - in response to the kidnapping by one group of two Israeli soldiers. This is certainly not covered by "torture" statutes. It's war, and all's fair...

Meanwhile, what's wrong with a little incarceration? What's wrong with incarcerating the entire population of Gaza because of the rocket attacks on Israel? What's wrong with incarcerating Palestinian journalists? What's wrong with slanting the news? What's wrong with violating human rights? What's wrong with a little "pressure" now and then? What's wrong with a few lies? What's wrong with being heavy-handed? What's wrong with Israel holding more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them without charges, detention being renewable every 6 months??? Israel cannot be held accountable for any of its actions. Israel is above reproach. Israel has not been fully born yet, apparently. Israel considers itself forever under siege, extremely delicate, more so than Marie Antoinette, a virtual fetus trapped in a virtual womb, waiting to be born. Born, presumably, by C-section, judging by the heavy use of the virtual, or actual, sword, or its more explosive surrogates.

As the very astute Seth Freedman of the Guardian said in reporting about Israeli Jews with a totally different attitude towards Palestinians:

Despite the general perception that Israeli Jews are under constant threat of attack when they venture into the Wild West Bank, a group of dedicated volunteers from the Villages Group put paid to that myth on their regular solidarity visits to local Palestinian farmers. "Perhaps we cannot bring about a general peace," reads their website, "but we can perform deeds of peace."

In fact, Mr. Freedman titles his article "Ehud, Noam and Elad disprove the myth that Jews who venture into the West Bank are putting their lives in danger", referring to members of the Villages Group who are dedicated, along with other humanitarian groups, to creating a bridge between Israeli and Palestinian people in spite of all efforts of the Israeli government to keep the two neighbors in a constant state of war, fear, and conflict.

But for every small step forward Ehud and his colleagues make in terms of bridge building, the Israeli government and the IDF make ten massive leaps back. We visited the cave village of Mukfara, whose recently-built, minuscule mosque has just been issued with a demolition order by the army. "Settlers build illegally day after day," said Mahmud Hammada, the muchtar of the hamlet, "whilst we are on our recognised land yet still cannot even build a mosque in which to pray."

As Dahr Jamail pointed out:

The fourth Geneva Convention (GC) (1949) states: (1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

B'tselem documents so much Israeli violation of the Geneva Conventions - to this very day and hour - that it's obvious Israel joins Dick Cheney & George W. Bush et. al. in their disregard for human rights when it comes to human rights-abusers' favorite Reason for All Abuses: security. They seek absolute security. Absolute control. In the case of Israel, absolute authority of Jews over and to the exclusion of all other nationalities. And this is unconscionable. It corrupts absolutely. Let the guilty take responsibility.

The Israeli military regularly bombs and uses snipers to attack Palestinian ambulances. Article 20 of the 1949 GC states: "Persons regularly and solely engaged in the operation and administration of civilian hospitals, including the personnel engaged in the search for, removal and transporting of and caring for wounded and sick civilians, the infirm and maternity cases shall be respected and protected."

Is it not ethnic cleansing? And why torment journalists for telling the truth? What is Israel trying to hide, if "security" truly justifies all?

Israel has blockaded Gaza, isolating and starving the 1.5 million Palestinians who live there. In 2006 Dov Weisglass, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet,
but not to make them die of hunger."

He's so out of touch with compassion, he makes a joke out of it.

Article 23 of the 1949 GC states: "Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under 15, expectant mothers and maternity cases."

The Israeli government has threatened to close orphanages for Palestinian children in Hebron, which would be another violation of international law, for article 24 of the Geneva Convention states clearly: "The Parties to the conflict shall take the necessary measures to ensure that children under fifteen, who are orphaned or are separated from their families as a result of the war, are not left to their own resources, and that their maintenance, the exercise of their religion and their education are facilitated in all circumstances. Their education shall, as far as possible, be entrusted to persons of a similar cultural tradition."

Obviously, GC principles were also violated in Omer's treatment by the Shin Bet.
The Israeli government sees itself as above the Geneva Convention, in much the same way the Bush-Cheney administration sees itself as above the GC, and for the same reason: Security.

Security is the reasons all human rights abusers use to justify their abuse. All dictators use security to justify their abuse of power. And it's the number one reason they "suppress the press." Strongarming journalists is normally the tactic of totalitarians, governments who don't want the people to know what's going on. Is that the case with Israel, or what????

Attacking journalists is not new. On 16 April Fadel Shanaa, a Palestinian
cameraman working for the news agency Reuters, was killed by a rocket fired
during an Israeli military incursion into the Gaza Strip. His assistant, Wafa Barbakh, was seriously injured. Both were in vehicle clearly marked "Press". This appears to be part of systematic targeting of journalists by the Israeli military. Since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, the Israeli military has killed at least nine journalists, including an Italian and a Briton. At least 170 other journalists have been wounded by the Israeli military during this period.

Former Dutch ambassador Jan Wijenberg said of what happened to Omer: "This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life... I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future. . . [Omer] is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel."
Janet McMahon, managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs, for which Omer writes, says he is still in hospital. "He may go home,
or have an operation. He's still in a lot of pain, and it's hard for him to
swallow, or to breathe deeply. He's being fed intravenously."

Obviously, to the Israeli government, Omer is merely a security risk, not a human being, much less a journalist with certain rights. They don't bother to see if he really poses a threat, but bulldoze him like so much Palestinian ... paraphernalia? what's the term that combines "homes" with "trash"? ... like the unwanted Palestinian presence bulldozed for the ethnically pure settlers whose rights are inalienable, unlike the rights of Palestinians. Is this not racist?? Well, honestly, is not Israeli policy both racist - OPENLY racist! - and at the same time smacks of totalitarianism, if you happen to be born on the wrong side of the DNA tracks.

Israel's "gross imbalance of power" is funded by none other than Uncle Superpower. It's absolutely cool on all sides of the U.S. political spectrum to sing the praises of Israel and vow to defend it tooth and nail, even if it means violating a Geneva Convention clause or two. Who gives a damn about the Geneva Conventions anyway? We want power, security, not "human rights". Damn those "human rights activists", always getting in the way.

That's why "absolute power corrupts absolutely." Human rights are the basis for most moral codes, and abandoning those, even partly, means one has become corrupt.

According to Defence for Children International, Israel has "engaged in gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law". Between 1967 and 2003, Israel destroyed over 10,000 Palestinian homes, and that continues.

So how can they claim to be any better than Bush, Cheney, or any of a number of dictatorships in Africa, Asia, or elsewhere that we will not name, and whom we dare condemn? How in good conscience can America give a carte blanche to this flagrant affront to justice and goodwill in the name of security? Easy. Do it all the time. In the Middle East, America makes sure Israel Antoinette always gets the cake. And America makes sure she defends it, too. By all means, by all means...

Kucinich Defends Constitution with New Articles of Impeachment

Dare we believe? Check this out:

On the House floor this afternoon, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced an article of impeachment against President Bush “for high crimes and misdemeanors” and “deceiving Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq WMDs to fraudulently obtain support for an authorization of the use of military force against Iraq.”

Yes, it's true!

While the House tabled previous articles of impeachment against Bush offered by Kucinich, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) suggested this morning that the Judiciary Committee may “have some hearings” on Kucinich’s new impeachment resolution.

Transcript:

SPEAKER: For what purpose does the gentleman from Ohio rise?

KUCINICH: Thank you, madam speaker. Pursuant to clause 2, rule 9, I here by give notice of my intention to raise a question of the privileges of the House. The form of the resolution is as follows. An article of impeachment of President George W. Bush. Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that the final article of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate.

An article of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and the people of the United States of America in maintenance and support of its impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article one: Deceiving Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq WMDs to fraudulently obtain support for an authorization of the use of military force against Iraq.

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article 2, Section 3 of the constitution, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, deceived Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq weapons of mass destruction to fraudulently obtain support for and authorization of the use of force against Iraq and used that fraudulently obtained authorization then acting in his capacity under Article 2, Section 2 of the constitution as commander-in-chief to commit U.S. troops to combat in Iraq.

Let's hope this true Patriot is successful this time around!

Where are the guts? Where are the brave ones in Congress? Only Dennis Kucinich??

FBI's profiling of "Muslims" Is Racist, Oppressive, and Counterproductive

The FBI plans to "ethnically profile" Muslims in terror probes, an unconstitutional and dangerous Big Brother-style course. Why do neocons insist the only road to security is that taken by totalitarian dictatorships? Are they our new example of How to Run a Country and Secure Its Citizens? Don't they see they will become the problem, not solve it?
This article in Salon discusses the issue where the inimitable Juan Cole shows how this policy both violates the U.S. Constitution and at the same time does not help in the fight against terrorism.

The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.

Wait a minute! Is this the United States of America? What happened to the Bill of Rights here? Does it again apply to some and not to others? Many "conservatives" in days gone by, not so far gone in fact, thought blacks to be a "threat" to "security". Were not lynch mobs created ad hoc in order to "enforce" "security"? Security being in the mind of the enforcer, not the accused, of course.

Where did due process go? Shall we hold a funeral? Congress, I'm sure, is almost ready for that. Hopefully, Barack Obama is not.

The new guidelines would lead to many bogus prosecutions, but they would also prove counterproductive in the effort to disrupt real terror plots. And then there's Attorney General Michael Mukasey's rationale for revising the rules in the first place. "It's necessary," he explained in a June news conference, "to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it is transforming itself into an intelligence-gathering organization." When did Congress, or we as a nation, have a debate about whether we want to authorize the establishment of a domestic intelligence agency?

And this "technique" - ah, the all-forgiving word "technique! - is also against the law.

using race and ethnicity as the -- or even a -- primary factor in deciding whom to stop and search, despite being widespread among police forces, is illegal.

And ineffective, possibly even worse than ineffective:

If the aim is to identify al-Qaida operatives or close sympathizers in the United States, racial profiling is counterproductive. Such tiny, cultlike terror organizations are multinational. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is a Briton whose father hailed from Jamaica, and no racial profile of him would have predicted his al-Qaida ties. Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesman, is from a mixed Jewish and Christian heritage and hails from suburban Orange County, Calif. When I broached the topic of FBI profiling to some Muslim American friends on Facebook, a scientist in San Francisco replied, "Profiling Muslims or Arabs will just make al-Qaida look outside Islam for its bombers. There are many other disgruntled groups aside from those that worship Allah."

So we end up spreading the "message" of al-Qaeda as a means to fight oppression rather outside the Muslim world, as if they really needed another incentive to violence. Great! Now we give a carte blanche to the neocons who promote Islam-bashing and Islamophobia, while at the same time increasing the power and breadth of terrorist groups. Not to mention alienating moderate and progressive Muslims whose willingness to assimilate culturally with America without losing its soul would be dealt a severe body blow. Chalk one up to extremists.

Oppression creates more oppression, much in the way pedophiles sometimes create more pedophiles out of their victims, or victims of abuse becomes themselves abusers. Healing and conciliation, reaching out and diplomacy may not be the macho choice in this world of Supermacho choices (al-Qaeda itself appealing to the Supermacho thing, as well as the neocon knee-jerk "bomb 'em" response - 2 sides of the very same coin whose currency is worthless and economy-wrecking). Racists raise up more racists. Dialog and government-enforced civil rights legislation was the only help. The marketplace does not eliminate oppression, unless moved to do so by government. The right is wrong on this.

It is a mystery why the Department of Justice has not learned the lesson that terrorists are best tracked down through good police work brought to bear on specific illegal acts, rather than by vast fishing expeditions. After Sept. 11, the DOJ called thousands of Muslim men in the United States for what it termed voluntary interviews. Not a single terrorist was identified in this manner, though a handful of the interviewees ended up being deported for minor visa offenses. Once it became clear that the interviews might eventuate in arbitrary actions against them, the willingness of American Muslims to cooperate declined rapidly, and so the whole operation badly backfired.

I believe the mystery can be solved if one looks to the neocon influence and islamophobia. It's motivated by the same thing that motivates racists - fear, and the easy path of choosing to label large groups of people for blame and self-promotion. It's based on the notion that "we" are somehow superior to "them", those nasty "Muslims". It's based on seeing the flag as a symbol of superiority rather than a symbol of democracy and human inalienable rights. The neocons were pushing us into a near-totalitarian, racist direction - are we not ready to give that up to keep the real reason for our country's previously good reputation? And change the world opinion that we are just another huge, overblown, conceited, rich, unweildy, powerful oppressor nation.

Israeli Soldiers Stand Guard as Settlers Tie Palestinian Farmer to Pole, Beat Him

Alerted by Heathlander at this post, you can also see the original article in Ha'aretz, with videos on both sites.

A group of West Bank settlers on Saturday beat a 31-year-old Palestinian man in the southern Hebron Hills, after having tied him to a telephone pole. Left-wing activists later videoed a settler kicking Madahat Abu-Kirash, the victim, as he remained tied up and was surrounded by Israeli security forces. The soldiers subsequently removed the settler from the scene. Hebron police opened an investigation into the incident after Abu-Kirash submitted a complaint, claiming that he had been beaten all over his body.

According to the left-wing organization Ta'ayush, whose members were close to the scene of the assault and witnessed part of it, the incident began when residents of the settlement of Asael accused Abu-Kirash of setting a field alight a few hundred meters away from their homes. Abu-Kirash, a teacher, told the settlers in response that he had come to perform agricultural work on land he owns. He denied any connection to the fire. Ta'ayush members said that the Palestinian's explanation was of no avail, and the settlers proceeded to forcibly take him to the bounds of the settlement, where they tied him up and beat him.

IDF troops who were called to the area gave him medical treatment on the spot, after which a Red Crescent ambulance took him to a hospital. Abu-Kirash later returned to his home from the hospital. "When we arrived at the scene there were already lots of the army's troops. I saw a settler approach him and kick him, as he was tied to the pole... [Abu-Kirash's] whole body was bound up, I saw they bandaged a head wound and he was half unconscious," said a Ta'ayush activist who was present during the incident. The chairperson of the South Hebron hills regional council, Zviki Bar-Hai told Haaretz that those responsible for starting the fire and setting the nearby fields ablaze were not from the area, rather they were either Palestinians or extreme left-wing activists.

A month ago, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem released a video which it said showed the start of an assault on Palestinian farmers by masked, stick-wielding Israeli settlers.

Will this too be sanitized before people can see it?

The 'Mortgage Meltdown' Was No Accident

You gotta read this!
Subtitle: How the mortgage industry stole black America's hard-won wealth.

Small excerpt:

But the disaster is depressingly man-made. And this neighborhood reveals a deeply troubling dimension of it, one that will echo long past the recovery everyone hopes will soon come: for black America, the "mortgage meltdown" looks less like a market hiccup than a massive strip mining of hard-won wealth, a devastating loss that will betray the promise of class mobility for tens of thousands of black families.

And get this:

First-time homebuyers have originated less than a tenth of all subprime loans since 1998, according to a 2007 Center for Responsible Lending analysis. As recently as 2006, just over half of all subprime loans were refinances of existing home loans. The expected foreclosure toll from these loans will outpace the ownership gains by nearly a million families, the center estimates.

That's particularly true in established black neighborhoods like Westwood, where banks and brokers targeted vulnerable longtime homeowners and lured them into needless and rapidly recurring mortgages they clearly couldn't afford and from which they never stood to gain. More than half of all refinance loans made to African-Americans in 2006 were subprime, according to an analysis by the advocacy group ACORN. That's nearly twice the rate among white borrowers. Among low-income black borrowers, 62 percent of refinance loans were subprime, more than twice the rate among low-income whites.

And it gets worse:

It's a loss black America can scarcely afford, because black wealth has long been enormously dependent on home equity. In 1967, the year before the Mitchells bought their house, homes accounted for 67 percent of black wealth, compared with 40 percent of white wealth. The disparity has only grown, pushed by the turn-of-the-millennium stock market boom. Without counting home equity, black net worth in 2004 was just 1 percent of that for whites, according to research by New York University economics professor Edward Wolff.

Now with the current tragic situation, the all-important home base for many families, people who lived in these homes for years, is being taken from them by predatory lenders. One might argue that this is not racist, that they are just victims of a housing/lending crisis that hit all lower-income people. But a look at the history of home ownership and lending in America tells us that's letting them off the hook.

The nation's first homeownership boom came after World War II, when the government used the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) mortgage insurance to lower the cost of buying. Banks extended credit lines to middle-class borrowers in ways that encouraged long-term ownership -- thirty-year mortgages covering 80 percent to 90 percent of the buyer's costs with interest rates of about 6 percent. By 1960, the American homeownership rate had shot up from less than half before the war to nearly 65 percent, where it remained until the modern housing market took off.

Black communities were excluded from this rising tide. The FHA's underwriting manual guaranteed insurance for segregated white neighborhoods only, until a series of court cases between 1948 and 1953 struck down the rule. Even then, the policy changed in word alone: 98 percent of the 10 million homes federal money had backed by 1965 went to whites, and banks' redlining of black neighborhoods went on for years thereafter. As a result, the black-white disparity in homeownership hasn't dropped below 20 percentage points since 1940; it was at 25 percentage points in 2007.

Read more to see exactly how predatory, and I mean predatory, those lenders became after lifting the usury laws so they could open up their shady business to everyone and even force loans on people who didn't understand what they were doing.