A more recent book is her 2006-published “Challenging Authority” and subject of this review. It’s about how social movements can be pivotal forces for change because ordinary people in enough numbers have enormous political clout. Abolitionists, labor movements and civil rights activists proved it. Piven examines their collective actions plus one other in the four examples she chose - the American Revolution.

Piven’s book is succinct and masterful. Howard Zinn calls it a “brilliant analysis of the interplay between popular protest and electoral politics.” Canadian Professor Leo Panitch says the book is “theoretically profound, yet immensely readable,” and sociologist and social movements expert Susan Eckstein describes the book as “quintessentially Piven-esque.” It “eloquently (shows) how ordinary people….have taken it upon themselves to correct injustices.”

Piven’s theme is powerfully relevant at a perilous time in our history. The nation is at war on two fronts, a third one looms, constitutional protections have eroded, social services erased, the country is militarized, dissent repressed, and the government is empowered to crush freedom and defend privilege at the expense of beneficial social change it won’t tolerate.

Introduction

In light of the current situation, Piven’s introductory Thomas Jefferson quote is relevant. It was his response to the repressive 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. He wrote: “A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.” Disruptive social actions have done it in the past, and Piven puts it this way: “ordinary people (have) power….when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules….disrupt (state) institutions….propel new issues to the center of political debate….(and force) political leaders (to) stem voter defections by proferring reforms. These are the conditions that produce (America’s) democratic moments.”

Electoral participation alone won’t do it. “In the real American political world, numerous obstacles” remain - structural, legal and practical. Despite liberalization of the process through the years, “large numbers of ostensibly eligible voters” are effectively disenfranchised. Former restrictive laws are gone, but new schemes replaced them - intimidation, misinformation, electoral fraud, and the corrupting power of money in a nation beholden to capital at the expense of the greater good.

Piven cites more as well:

– the power of incumbency,

– the two-party system that shuts out independent and minority interests,

– the construct of the law that empowers the powerful,

– the revolving door between business and government,

– the corrupted dominant media,

– the lack of accountability to voters,

– arbitrary redistricting for political advantage,

– believing markets work best so let them,

– disdaining the harm they cause,

– feeling interfering with market excess is “moral trespass,”

– sacrificing democracy in the pursuit of profit,

– and it all turning the public away from a process they no longer trust.

It shows in declining voter turnout with half or less of the electorate showing up at the polls and many without conviction.

Post-WW II, “most political scientists viewed American democracy with a self-satisfied complacency.” It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best possible at the time. Two decades later, system imperfections were more apparent, and more recently political science professor Robert Dahl said our system is “among the most opaque, complex, confusing, and difficult to understand” to show how badly we fare compared to other democracies.

Inequalities are extreme and growing, and Piven calls it “pernicious.” It breeds “patterns of domination and subservience (and) undermines democratic capabilities.” She quotes political analyst Kevin Phillips saying Washington is “the leading interest-group bazaar of the Western World,” and economist Paul Krugman calling our political system “utterly and perhaps irrevocably corrupted.”

Bad as it now is, Piven says democracy “never worked well in the United States.” Citing the 19th century, she notes how it “was stamped and molded by intense religious and ethnic allegiances (that in turn created a culture of) political parties (at all levels) steeped in patronage.” It was at a time corporate power grew and began to gain advantages that are now commonplace and harmful to the public interest.

Nonetheless, egalitarian reform is possible, and Piven recounts four crucial times when it showed up. Each time, protest movements achieved it by influencing American politics, “if only temporarily.” It’s no surprise that power “flows to those who have more of the things and attributes valued in social life.” But times emerge when “workers or peasants or rioters exercise power,” it’s “distinctive….disruptive or interdependent,” and it happens when conditions are right for it to be actualized.

Piven states the “central question” of her book: “given the power inequalities (in America)” and how it corrupts the political process, “how does egalitarian reform ever occur” at all? It’s only been at times of “disruptive protest movements” with their “distinctive kind of power” Piven calls “disruptive power.”

The Nature of Disruptive Power

First a definition of power in the abstract. Piven notes the “widely held thesis that (it’s) based on control of wealth and force” - big landowners over peasants, rich over poor, armies over civilians, and so forth. However, it’s not always the case, and “history is dotted” with examples of “people without wealth or coercive resources….exercis(ing) power, at least for a time.”

She notes how societies organize through cooperation and interdependence, but disparate interests at times conflict. While workers depend on management for jobs, managers, in turn, need a work force to produce. If labor is withheld, production halts. Both sides have leverage. Either one can activate it. Piven calls the “activation of interdependent power ‘disruption.’ ” It’s a power strategy based on “withdrawing cooperation in social relations.” Protest movements “mobilize disruptive power.” They achieve leverage by breaking down “institutionally regulated cooperation” as in strikes, boycotts or riots.

At these times, ordinary people (potentially) have enormous power - “their ability to disrupt institutionalized cooperation that depends on their continuing contributions.” Key is that great reforms in history have been “responses to the threatened (or use of) disruptive power.” In the US, it achieved representative government, ending slavery, the right to organize, social welfare and civil rights. Grassroots bottom-up “disruptive power” produced them.

But it takes more than marches, rallies, slogans, shouting or even violence. It’s also too simplistic to think power from below is there for the taking. Actualizing power depends on the ability to withhold cooperation. But it’s not “actionable” until certain problems are solved:

– recognizing interdependence and the potential power from below such as workers withholding their labor or wives their domestic services;

– the necessity of people breaking rules; rules are power strategies; they allow some people to dominate others, establish property rights, become law, and so forth;

– individuals must coordinate their disruptive power for strategic advantage;

– they must overcome constraints of an entire matrix of social relations; examples are the influence of family ties or the threat of religious excommunication;

– disruptive power must be sustained, cooperation withheld, and be able to withstand whatever reprisals occur; and

– the determination to stay the course in the wake of threats and uncertainty - employers who may hire scabs or relocate their plants and facilities.

New strategies aren’t invented for each challenge. They’re “embedded in memory or culture, in a language of resistance (and) become a ‘repertoire’ (of a) specific constellation of strategies to actualize interdependent power.” New repertoires from below are developed in response to social and economic change. They become “forged in a political process of action and reaction.” Popular struggles change over time, so, for example, food riots became rare and strike actions typical. However, they’re now threatened with weakened labor protections, the growth of temporary workers, and the ability of employers to operate anywhere in the world under WTO rules.

Slowly over time, new repertoires emerge to respond to conditions of the times. Lessons are learned from defeat, anger and defiance builds, and creative imagination invents new solutions to old problems.

The Mob and the State - Disruptive Power and the Construction of American Electoral-Representative Arrangements

Disorderly and defiant crowds or mobs figure prominently in the history of disruptive movements. They played an important role in the Revolutionary War period and years leading up to it. American elites allied with mobs because they grew uneasy about British rule and developed radical ideas about the right of the colonies to self-government. Without mob support, the war with England couldn’t have been won. They provided the troops who fought it.

Most colonists were from England, and by the mid-1700s numbered around 1.6 million. Most had egalitarian ideas and were ordinary people - artisans, apprentices, sailors, laborers, urban poor, farmers, bonded servants, and so forth. They also relied on mob action for results.

In the pre-revolutionary period, “riots and tumults” were commonplace. Bacon’s 1676 Rebellion of discontented frontiersmen and slaves was the first one of note. In the next 100 years, another 18 uprisings erupted (according to Howard Zinn) against colonial governments along with six black rebellions and 40 riots.

Tensions grew as the years passed. They challenged Britain and colonial elites. Inequalities also increased, and they spawned protests against them. One study cited 150 riots in cities and rural areas between 1765 and 1769. In addition, merchants and landowners grew angry with the Crown. In 1763, it sent a standing army to the colonies, introduced new taxes, made demands to billet British troops and to curb colonial assemblies’ power. It introduced the Sugar Act, Tea Act and a new Stamp Act. Colonists resisted and mob action was crucial.

They made Stamp Act enforcement impossible and dumped tea into more than one harbor to prove it, besides the notable December 16, 1773 Boston action. Historian Edward Countryman called it the “final rupture” leading up to war. Those who took up arms wanted popular democracy, and it affected the post-revolutionary drafting of state constitutions. They reflected “egalitarian and libertarian ideas that were spreading up and down the eastern seaboard.” They wanted popular liberty and drafted laws that limited executive powers, established unicameral legislatures or at least powerful lower houses, short terms of office to force elected officials to face voters more often, and essentially make government accountable to the people.

It alarmed the nation’s elites who, in turn, precipitated efforts to reform the new state constitutions and reign in their democratic excesses. Defeating England unleashed electorate demands, and they showed up in popular rebellions. They were fueled by postwar depression, debt, and legislative imposition of poll and property taxes on farmers. They petitioned for relief, got none, so armed mobs closed the courts to stop debtor suits and stave off foreclosure on their farms. Rebellions spread across New England with Daniel Shays leading the most famous one in 1786 and 1787. The rebels were dispersed, but they got amnesty, tax relief, and most imprisoned debtors were released.

Elites were alarmed, excess democracy had to be curbed, and the 1787 Constitutional Convention became the way to do it. There were other problems as well. The Articles of Confederation were unwieldy, had to be replaced, and a new document was needed that would last into “remote futurity” to serve the interests of “the (only) people” who mattered. They were established white male property owning delegates and members of state conventions who rammed the ratification process through in the face of a largely indifferent and uncomprehending populace left out entirely.

The challenge was to offer democratic concessions, create an appearance of democracy, but frame a document for rich property owners in charge of the process for their own self-interest. Only the privileged could vote. Women, blacks, Indians and children couldn’t and most who qualified didn’t bother. The process, and what it produced, showed operatively democracy is little more than fantasy, but it wasn’t designed to appear that way.

The “people” got to elect lower house members, who, in turn, elected senators to the upper chamber. The system stayed that way until the 17th Amendment (ratified in 1913) allowed voters in each state to elect representatives to both Houses of Congress.

Also proposed was a chief executive, a national judiciary with a Supreme Court, and provisions for admitting new states with republican governments. In addition, the Constitution had procedures for amendments and much more, including terms of office and staggered elections to prevent too many officials being unseated at the same time. In the end, the final product was a bundle of compromises, yielded little of substance to “the people,” and assured power was left to the powerful.

The Constitution’s opening words were “We the people,” but, in fact, they were nowhere in sight. The framers “engineered a conservative counter-revolution….whose purpose….was to thwart the will of the people in whose will they acted.” Government under the new document was created to fill the vacuum created by the defeat of Great Britain. It restored the essential British commercial and financial system and put it under new management. Monarchal wrappings were removed, everything changed, and yet everything, in fact, stayed the same. Rarely, if ever, was there so much rebellion with so little cause, and with so little to show for it.

Consider the Constitution’s crowing achievement, at least so we’re told - the Bill of Rights. Adopting them made the difference to get 13 states to ratify the document and make it law. Their protections weren’t for “the people.” They were for the privileged who wanted:

– prohibitions against quartering troops in their property;

– unreasonable searches and seizures there as well;

– the right to have state militias protect them;

– the right to bear arms, but not the way the Second Amendment is today interpreted;

– - the rights of free speech, the press, religion, assembly and petition - largely for the monied and propertied interests;

– due process of law with speedy public trials; and

– various other provisions worked out through compromise; two additional amendments were proposed but rejected; Jefferson and Madison wanted them; Adams and Hamilton were opposed; they would have banned monopolies and standing armies; in the end, the first 10 alone were adopted; we never saw what difference the other two might have made.

Piven’s main point isn’t that “constitution-making” limited “popular power.” It’s that “disruptive power challenges (of the time) could not be (entirely) ignored….” The founders established a republican government, popular liberties (to a degree) were conceded, and the idea (if not the reality) of the “consent of the governed” became a fundamental principle of political thought.

Further, in subsequent decades, suffrage expanded, taxpaying requirements replaced property ones, and these, too, were gradually eliminated. By the 1830s, most white men had the right to vote. It’s unlikely these changes would have happened under British rule. So while was no disagreement on how government was to be run, (in John Adams’ words, by “the rich, the well born, and the able,”) the mob, according to Piven, “played a large if convoluted role in the construction of a new state with at least some of the elemental features of democracy.”

Dissensus Politics, or the Interaction of Disruptive Challenges with Electoral Politics - The Case of the Abolitionist Movement

Piven defines “dissensus” as a tug of war between the need for political leaders to “mobilize majorities” and “disruptive challengers work(ing) to fragment them.” She also calls this “the key to understanding” disruptive protest power over public policy decisions. Political coalitions are at times fragile and vulnerable. When opposition to consensus surfaces and builds, it can be fractious, disruptive, and an “opening (to get) policy concessions on the (breakaway) movement’s issues.”

Case in point - “Abolitionism.” By one estimate, free blacks numbered around 59,000 in 1790. By the start of the Civil War, the total had increased eightfold to about 488,000. In the run-up the the Revolutionary War, slavery issues were contentious with hints early on about what later might develop.

In spite of owning slaves himself, Jefferson’s first Declaration of Independence draft included grievances against the Crown’s involvement in trafficking. Southern representatives took issue, the clause was dropped, and to build postwar consensus the South had to be reassured that their slave system would remain intact.

It led to Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution saying that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of allocating congressional representation. According to historian Gary Wills: For southern states, this issue was “a nonnegotiable condition for their joining the Union” and with it they got “a large and domineering representation in Congress.”

Consider some other relevant facts:

– large slave owners had disproportionate power; they controlled state legislatures and selected senators;

– most American presidents until the Civil War were southerners and slaveholders (including Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Jackson);

– the first US 1790 census reported 757,000 blacks or nearly one-fifth of the total four million population;

– in 1807, Congress outlawed the importation of African slaves after 1808, yet trafficking illegally brought in another 250,000 until 1860;

– enacted slavery provisions were for the North as well as the South; only Pennsylvania and the New England states outlawed the practice; in 1787, most states were slave states, and the new Constitution protected their holdings;

– intersectional planter, commercial, banking and manufacturing interests tied the North and South together; slavery and cotton enriched the South, production boomed, and northern manufacturing also benefitted;

– the human bondage system affected radical abolitionists; they knew that ending slavery meant “overturning” the Constitution;

– to accommodate consensus politics, compromise was preferable to conflict; to protect the South from the majority nonslave North, “balanced” admission of new slave and free states was agreed on as well as a similar arrangement for presidential and vice-presidential tickets;

– nonetheless, compromises were fragile and sectional conflicts arose; one instance was over the Mexican War, annexation of Texas, and disposition of 650,000 square miles of new territory; neither side was satisfied even though compromise was achievable on matters of tariffs, centralized banking, internal improvements, and free western land.

Given the enormous costs of dissolution, why weren’t both sides committed to preventing it? Piven cites “the strident and disruptive abolitionist campaign with its demands for immediate emancipation. Abolitionism fractured….the sectional accord” that held disparate elements together - until 1860.

Who were the abolitionists? According to Howard Zinn, they were “editors, orators, run-away slaves, free Negro militants, and gun-toting preachers.” Together they “shaped….the movement and contributed to its disruptive power.” Its effects fractured intersectional parties, divided the nation, and led to the Civil War and legal emancipation.

“Evangelical revivalists” were committed to reform. They believed slavery was sinful, and would accept nothing less than ending it. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator. It became the voice of militant abolitionism. “Garrison was no gradualist.” He refused compromise and demanded “immediate and unconditional emancipation.”

Others were equally committed. They formed antislavery associations, edited papers, spoke publicly, and by 1841 claimed 200,000 members. Religious passion and enlightenment fervor spread throughout the North. In the South, it was opposed by “Southern rights” societies that used the Bible to claim “slavery fulfilled God’s purposes.” It produced schisms and strife, got Garrison paraded through Boston with a rope around his neck, and vigilante welcoming committees awaited northern abolitionists coming south.

Nonetheless, abolitionism grew, congressional antislavery petitions mounted, Congress claimed no authority to act, and thousands of slaves took matters into their own hands. They resisted by “evasion, sabotage, suicide, or running away.” There were also slave revolts - in 1800 in a march on Richmond; 1811 on a plantation near New Orleans; 1817 and 1818 in Florida; and Nat Turner and 70 other slaves in Virginia “kill(ing) all whites” and sparing no one.

Most disruptive was the Underground Railway with whites and free blacks involved. It defied federal antifugitive laws and freed tens of thousands of southern slaves. Abolitionist disruptions “inevitably penetrated electoral politics.” It fragmented both parties, made compromise impossible, and led to the emergence of the Republican Party. It opposed expanding slavery as new states entered the union, and in 1860 got Abraham Lincoln elected president. His platform - containing slavery and condemning threats of disunion as treason.

The South responded. Seven states seceded, Fort Sumpter was attacked, the Civil War began, four more slave states joined the others, and Lincoln committed to war to restore the union. As conflict wore on, its horrific toll drove him toward emancipation. Piven notes that the “insurrectionary role of the slaves….was probably critical to his decision.” During the war, hundreds of thousands of them refused to work, deserted plantations, and crippled the Confederacy’s ability to feed itself. In addition, around 200,000 slaves fought with the North, and their numbers were significant in achieving victory.

Abolitionism grew, southern secession spurred it, and in January 1865 Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery. Nominally, former slaves got more rights from the Fourteenth (due process and equal protection) and Fifteenth (forbidding racial discrimination in voting) Amendments as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

“Abolitionists had triumphed,” they did it through electoral politics by splitting the parties, yet their victory was limited. Post-emancipation, the movement “melted into the Republican Party,” southern and northern leaders became accommodative, and elites in the South “moved rapidly to restore their control over blacks.” Nonetheless, an impressive victory was won even if only marginally, and it would take another century before blacks got any of their constitutional rights.

Movements and Reform in the American Twentieth Century

Throughout American history, disruptive protests were common, yet rarely did any have a “big bang” effect. Decades elapsed between successful abolitionism and New Deal reforms. In the 20th century, Piven notes that almost all important labor, civil rights and social welfare legislation got passed in just two six-year periods - 1933 - 1938 and 1963 - 1968. There was one exception - the 1972 Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the elderly poor and people with disabilities.

Great Depression hard times spurred important reforms to provide emergency relief:

– the Civil Works Administration (CWA) for work relief; it reached 28 million people (22.2% of the population);

– overall social spending rose from 1.34% of GDP in 1932 to 5% by 1934 and showed that government works for the people when it wants to;

– the 1935 Social Security Act established the framework for all future income support programs - retirement benefits, unemployment, supplemental income, subsidized housing, and all categories of “welfare;”

– most entitlements expanded in the 1960s - old age pensions; unemployment insurance; quadrupling the numbers of women and children receiving Aid to Dependent Children; Medicare; Medicaid; new nutritional programs, including food stamps and school lunches; federal aid to education; and inner-city development through the Model Cities Act of 1966.

Overall in the 1960s, social spending rose from $37 billion to $140 billion in the post-1965 decade. By the mid-1970s, poverty levels were down from 20% in 1965 to 11%.

Each period also saw political rights expand. Mass strikes of the early 1930s produced the landmark 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). For the first time, it gave labor the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management and provided legal protections to strike actions. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act established national minimum wages and maximum hours. These laws advanced worker rights over the next three decades.

In 1964, civil rights actions got the Twenty-Fourth Amendment passed. It prohibited poll taxes in federal elections, and along with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act overrode state and local franchise restrictions that were in place in the South since Reconstruction. As Piven put it: The 1960s civil rights movement “finally won, a century later, the reforms first announced (but never gotten) in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.” In addition, the 1964 Equal Opportunity Act (antipoverty program) provided federal funds for poor communities.

Why these “big bangs” then and not at other times? It’s because they were gotten during periods of “mass disruption” that mobilized “interdependent power from below….” Veterans marched on Washington, rent strikes spread, people commandeered food, labor walkouts occurred, demonstrations demanded relief, so Roosevelt had to act. It wasn’t out of benevolence, and his 1932 platform showed it. It contained the same old 1920s planks that kept Republicans in power throughout the decade. Conditions now changed, disruptive protests demanded help, echoes of the 1917 Russian Revolution were still audible, so Roosevelt acted to save capitalism. He gave a little to save a lot for the privileged who understood the fragility of their position.

The 1960s saw other disruptive protests - this time by a massive black insurgency on one side against white southern “resistance” on the other. It came to a head in the mid-1960s in the form of civil disobedience. It began in the South, spread across the country, resulted in harsh police crackdowns, greater disruptive riots, and they forced the federal government to intervene. Turbulence, social unrest, and a climate of general crisis produced reforms to diffuse the disorder of the times.

Electoral forces also played a role the way Piven explains. She calls the “interplay between electoral shifts and political leaders….the most influential explanation of twentieth-century policy change.” Big bangs were “big electoral” ones. Two credible hypotheses explain how they occur:

– the “mobilization” thesis (during hard times) raising the level of voter turnout; new voters are key; they provide impetus for realignment under this theory; and

– the “conversion” thesis (also during hard times) detaching voters from their traditional Republican Party affiliation; here shifting loyalties explain it.

Either way, political leaders respond, strive to win and/or hold their support, and they enacted social relief measures in the 1930s and 1960s.

More is in play as well as voters by themselves have little influence over policy. In addition, politicians need broad majorities, and building them takes avoiding conflict, building consensus and striking familiar appeals for prosperity, God, country and family. As a result, electoral shifts alone don’t automatically produce bold new initiatives. In fact, they rarely do unless special times produce extraordinary responses. In the 1930s and 1960s, disruptive protests and potential institutional disorder got Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson to act quite differently than they would have had conditions been normal.

Under the right circumstances, protest movements are powerful and provide the impetus for social reform. “The urgency, solidarity, and militancy that conflict generates lends movements distinctive capacities as political communicators.” At least for a brief time, “marches, rallies, strikes and shutdowns can break the monopoly on political discourse otherwise held by politicians and the mass media.” They can bring vital issues to the fore and get politicians (out of fear) to address them. Potential or actual “voter dissensus is the main source of movement influence on public policy.” It was true in the 1930s, again in the 1960s, and the latter victories inspired other movements for women’s rights, the disabled, gays, lesbians, and so forth.

The Times-In-Between

Unfortunately, disruptive movements are short-lived. After a few years they pass as politicians mount rollback initiatives when the pressure is off and they’re able to do it. New state constitutions stripped away hard-won abolitionist reforms. Labor rights underwent a gradual erosion after peaking in the 1930s. Union membership declined from a post-war 34.7% high. It was 16.8% after the Reagan era and is currently around 12% overall today but only 7.4% in the private sector.

Social gains have also eroded, and now have Democrats as much against them as Republicans. Why so is the question? It’s because protest movements lose their energy when the reasons causing them subside. Further, it’s because internal movement dynamics are hard to sustain. They wane from exhaustion. Exhilaration can’t last forever. In addition, defiance entails costs and sacrifice. Strikers lose wages. Workers get fired. Plants relocate, and governments support business and sometimes with force.

Protests also fade when gains are won. They always fall short and yet fail to embolden more action. Movement leaders also get co-opted, become more conciliatory to management, get more enmeshed in party politics, and sometimes run for office at federal, state or local levels. Dissensus has its limits. Inevitably, gains come at the expense of concessions, the movement runs out of energy, disruption ebbs, and hard-won reforms get rolled back. Nonetheless, these are glorious times in our history, momentous advances get achieved, and the lesson is that at other times for other reasons it can happen again.

People in large numbers and with enough will have enormous power provided they use it. Nonetheless, it’s disconcerting that the Constitution was designed as a conservative document to protect what Michael Parenti calls “a rising bourgeoisie(’s)” freedom to “invest, speculate, trade, and accumulate,” and to assure that (as John Jay believed) “The people who own the country (ought) to run it.”

After Reconstruction, Abolitionists lost out as well. Southern states regrouped, enacted new laws, and curbed the rights of newly freed blacks. The old planter class was gone but not its mentality. A new capitalist planter class replaced it, many from the North, and it proved easy for them to devise new ways to exploit cheap, vulnerable black labor.

The Supreme Court went along much the way it does today. In a number of decisions, it rolled back civil rights gains, including enough of the Fourteenth Amendment to restore near-total white supremacy in the South. Its 1896 “separate but equal” Plessy ruling added insult to its 1857 Dred Scott support for slavery.

Post-war, blacks were nominally free but light years from equality, and southern states intended to keep it that way. Property tests, poll taxes and literacy qualifications were imposed to enforce disenfranchisement. Jim Crow laws multiplied and lynchings became a way of life. Washington was dismissive.

Labor also lost out in the post-New Deal years. What the NLRA gave, Taft-Hartley and other regressive laws took back. Labor got progressively weaker, its leadership became part of the problem, while business ascended to omnipotence with plenty of friendly governments on its side. Early on, workers hoped the Democrat Party would represent them. How could it in the conservative (anti-labor) South and, in the North, where big city bosses ran things. Over time, business took over and effectively created a one-party state with “two right wings,” as Gore Vidal explains.

Post-WW II, Piven notes that America’s economic dominance was unchallenged for 25 years, so business opposition to New Deal gains was largely muted. But once Europe and Japan recovered, they became formidable competitors, profit margins got squeezed, and a conservative counterassault gained momentum to roll back earlier social gains. Piven cites four ways:

– a “war of ideas” beginning in the early 1970s with the formation of a right wing “message machine” - corporate-funded think tanks like Cato, Hoover, Heritage and AEI; they preached cutting social programs, weakening unions, ending costly regulations, military spending, tough law enforcement, privatizing everything, and using the dominant media for propaganda;

– building up a business lobbying capacity; “K Street” became a household term, and so is the “revolving door” arrangement between business and government;

– the growth of right wing populism, “rooted in fundamentalist churches” as part of the powerful Christian Right; also pro-life, defense-of-marriage and gun groups, along with others opposed to progressive ideas, racial and sexual liberalism, and the notion that public welfare is a good thing and government ought to provide it; in their best of all possible worlds, markets work best so let them, and democracy is only for the priviliged; and

– the effective merging of Republicans and Democrats into one pro-business party with each pretty much vying to outdo or outfox the other; it took Democrat Bill Clinton to “end welfare as we know it,” continue shifting more of the tax burden from the rich to workers, enact tough law enforcement measures, offer big giveaways to business, cut social benefits as much as Republicans, and pretty much make the 1990s a new golden age for Wall Street and the privileged. James Petras calls the decade “the golden age of pillage.”

George Bush then took over and went Clinton whole new measures better - declaring open warfare on workers, waging real wars on the world, enacting repressive police state laws, surrendering unconditionally to business, smashing every social service in sight, desecrating the environment, pretty much acting as despotic and vicious as the worst third world dictators, and getting away with it.

Since the early 1970s, and especially since Ronald Reagan, most notable in Piven’s mind is “the striking rise in wealth and income inequality” that economist Paul Krugman calls “unprecedented.” Moreover, “as wealth concentration grows, so does the arrogance and power that it yields to the wealth-holders to continue to bend government policies to their own interests.”

With business so omnipotent, government as its handmaiden, the scale of corruption extreme, the electoral process so flawed, it makes the task of redressing social gains lost formidable but not impossible.

Epilogue

Given the state of things, Piven poses the essential question - is another “popular upheaval” possible? She calls this “the big question for our time.” Nothing is certain or simple, but historically “hardship propels people to collective defiance,” especially in times of extreme inequalities of wealth. The current American era is the most extreme ever, so how long will people tolerate the decline in their standard of living as the rich grow richer and multi-billions go wars without end.

How does the Bush administration respond - with a dominant media “message machine” touting an “ownership society,” scaring people to accept the outlandish and fraudulent “war on terror,” blaming victims for their own misfortune, letting (Christian) faith-based groups take over welfare, preaching God and markets solve everything, and calling a lack of patriotism the equivalent of treason.

Piven, nonetheless, is hopeful. Independent polls show Bush’s approval at record lows as well as a large majority opposing the Iraq war. In addition, she sees “an intimate connection between what people think is possible in politics and what they think is right.” Popular aspirations tend to rise for what people believe is “evident” and “reach(able).”

So she asks: “What, then, are the prospects for the emergence of new social movements that mobilize disruptive power?” Global justice demonstrations in Seattle and around the world aren’t enough. Much more is needed. Labor must become resurgent, but it’s no simple matter doing it and without committed leadership impossible.

Yet it happened in the 1930s at a time of great need, and Piven suggests that “Maybe workers need to see the possibility of worker power again.” Activists and organizers must concentrate on “developing and demonstrating power strategies” for a “new economy” that’s increasingly service-based, high-tech and global.

Millions still live here, their standard of living is declining, business pretty much has it all, and it’s high time that changed. People have power but only if they use it. New times need “new forms of political action, new ‘repertoires’ that extend across borders and tap the chokepoints of new systems of production (and governance)” where they’re most vulnerable to mass disruption.

Piven closes by saying that history shows that “collective defiance” and its subsequent “disruption” have “always been essential to the preservation of democracy.” It’s no different today than it’s ever been, and that’s an idea to build on.

If al-Qahtani’s case had gone forward, the U.S. government would have been forced to reveal its own violations of the Geneva Convention, anti-torture statutes and the laws of war, according to lawyers representing al-Qahtani.

“All of the [incriminating] statements Mohammad al-Qahtani made or is alleged to have made were the result of torture or made under the threat of torture and that is in my view why the government decided to dismiss his case at this point,” said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York.

CCR has been representing Mohammed al-Qahtani since 2005 and has led the legal battle for the human rights of detainees incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the last six years.

The harsh treatment of al-Qahtani was catalogued in an 84-page log of his interrogation that was leaked in 2006. The so-called “torture log” shows that beginning in November 2002 and continuing well into January 2003, al-Qahtani was subjected to sleep deprivation, interrogated in 20-hour stretches, poked with IV’s, and left to urinate on himself.

On Dec. 11, 2002, interrogators began to apply what they called the “pride and ego down approach,” subjecting him to religious and sexual humiliation, making him bark like a dog, and calling him “a pig” as he was made to pick up piles of trash with his hands cuffed.

According to one entry for Dec. 13, 2002, the interrogators sought to “escalate the detainee’s emotions.”

“A mask was made from an MRE [meals ready to eat] box with a smiley face on it and placed on the detainee’s head for a few moments. A latex glove was inflated and labeled the ‘sissy slap’ glove. This glove was touched to the detainee’s face periodically after explaining the terminology to him.

“The mask was placed back on the detainee’s head. While wearing the mask, the team began dance instruction with the detainee. The detainee became agitated and began shouting. The mask was removed and detainee was allowed to sit. Detainee shouted and addressed lead [interrogator] as ‘the oldest Christian here’ and wanted to know why lead allowed the detainee to be treated this way.”

The log contains numerous entries describing al-Qahtani’s reaction to the interrogations, as he cried, shook, moaned, yelled, prayed, cried out for Allah, trembled uncontrollably and asserted his innocence.

Psychological Trauma

According to a report by CCR attorneys, “on one occasion described in the interrogation log, Mr. al-Qahtani was rushed to a military base hospital when his heart rate fell dangerously low during a period of extreme sleep deprivation, physical stress and psychological trauma.

“The military flew in a radiologist from the U.S. Naval Station in Puerto Rico to evaluate the computed tomography (‘CT’ or ‘CAT’) scan. After being permitted to sleep a full night, medical personnel cleared Mr. al-Qahtani for further interrogation the next day. During his transportation from the hospital, Mr. al-Qahtani was interrogated in the ambulance.”

Legal experts, who have followed the al-Qahtani case since his capture in December 2001, say a core problem for the Pentagon was that the evidence against al-Qahtani was derived substantially from admissions that he made while under harsh interrogation.

There was also circumstantial evidence related to al-Qahtani’s attempt to enter the United States before the 9/11 attacks. An immigration official turned him back and U.S. government officials claim that action forced the 9/11 hijackers to proceed with only 19 participants.

Last February, the Pentagon announced its intention to pursue the death penalty against al-Qahtani and five other men for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

But on May 9, the Pentagon dismissed the case against al-Qahtani without explanation – and without prejudice, meaning that the charges could be reinstated at a later date. Though the charges were dropped, he will remain detained indefinitely at Guantanamo.

Al-Qahtani is believed to be one of the first detainees subjected to harsh questioning after the Justice Department issued a legal opinion in August 2002 permitting U.S. government interrogators to sidestep the Geneva Convention and use cruel and humiliating techniques, from forced nudity to stress positions to waterboarding, to extract information.

The Geneva Convention bars abusive or demeaning treatment of captives. However, John Yoo, then a senior lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that the Geneva Convention did not apply to alleged members of al-Qaeda.

As reported previously, specific interrogation methods used against al-Qahtani were approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a December 2002 action memorandum.

Months of Torture

Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, an attorney with CCR and the lead attorney defending al-Qahtani, said in a sworn declaration that his client, imprisoned at Guantanamo, was subjected to months of torture based on verbal and written authorizations from Rumsfeld.

“Mr. al-Qahtani was subjected to a regime of aggressive interrogation techniques, known as the ‘First Special Interrogation Plan,’” Gutierrez said. “Those techniques were implemented under the supervision and guidance of Secretary Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller.

“These methods included, but were not limited to, 48 days of severe sleep deprivation and 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory over-stimulation, and threats with military dogs.”

Gutierrez’s claims about the type of interrogation al-Qahtani endured have since been borne out by the release of hundreds of pages of internal Pentagon documents, which described interrogation methods at Guantanamo, as well as by the findings of two independent reports on prisoner abuse.

Rumsfeld’s action memo was criticized by Alberto Mora, the former general counsel of the Navy.

“The interrogation techniques approved by the Secretary [of Defense] should not have been authorized because some (but not all) of them, whether applied singly or in combination, could produce effects reaching the level of torture, a degree of mistreatment not otherwise proscribed by the memo because it did not articulate any bright-line standard for prohibited detainee treatment, a necessary element in any such document,” Mora wrote in a 14-page letter to the Navy’s inspector general.

Additionally, a Dec. 20, 2005, Army Inspector General Report relating to the capture and interrogation of al-Qahtani included a sworn statement by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, who said Secretary Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the interrogation of al-Qahtani and spoke “weekly” with Maj. Gen. Miller about the status of the interrogations between late 2002 and early 2003.

Last February, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) confirmed that it had launched a formal investigation to determine, among other issues, whether department attorneys provided the White House with poor legal advice when it said interrogators could use harsh interrogation methods against detainees.

CCR’s Warren said a trial of al-Qahtani would have forced the government to disclose how it obtained information from the defendant about alleged terrorist plans and the inner workings of al-Qaeda.

“We were pursuing the case that the government got evidence through torture,” Warren said. “The government would have to talk about how the information was obtained. That would never be able to survive in court because the torture log is clear that Mr. al-Qahtani provided information because he was being tortured.”

Warren said he wants the Pentagon to release al-Qahtani and have him sent to Saudi Arabia “where they have a system in place to maintain custody of any former Guantanamo detainee who presents a danger, as well as a strong rehabilitation program supervising those that are released.”

“It’s unlikely he would face torture or abuse on the magnitude Mr. al-Qahtani faced at Gitmo,” Warren said.

But Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann left open the possibility that he could step aside if questions about his neutrality bog down other cases.

“I am the legal adviser today. We take it one day at a time,” Hartmann said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Last week, a military judge barred Hartmann from participating in the case against Salim Hamdan - the Guantanamo inmate expected to be the first to go to trial - because he aligned himself too closely with prosecutors. Hartmann said he will abide by the judge’s ruling and noted that he did not testify in the Hamdan case.

Defense lawyers have signaled they will allege improper influence in other cases as well, meaning there could be a spate of setbacks for the already delayed war crimes tribunals.

Nonetheless, Hartmann said he remains focused on making progress in moving the tribunals forward, pointing to formal charges announced this week against confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators. Their arraignment has been scheduled for June 5 at the U.S. naval base in southeast Cuba.

“The focus should not go away from the fact that these five cases are going ahead jointly,” he said.

Hartmann supervises the chief prosecutor at Guantanamo and has extensive powers over the tribunal system in his role as adviser.

At an April 28 hearing at Guantanamo, former chief prosecutor Air Force Col. Morris Davis testified that Hartmann meddled in his office and pushed for certain cases to be pursued over others based on political considerations. Davis resigned in October.

But Hartmann said in the interview that he operated within his mandate by ensuring that prosecutors were properly trained and motivated in an office “that was not functioning at its peak.”

The U.S. says it plans to prosecute about 80 of the roughly 270 men held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to terrorism, al-Qaida or the Taliban.

VOA News

The official Xinhua news agency says troops have been sent to repair cracks in the Zipingpu Dam in Sichuan.  China’s water minister says there are major safety issues with dams, reservoirs, and hydropower stations in the earthquake zone.

More than three days have passed since the 7.9 earthquake struck and authorities admit that hope is beginning to fade for those still buried.  

Xinhua says 44 counties and districts in Sichuan were severely hit and the strains from tens of thousands left homeless are growing. Some homeless residents are now beginning to complain about the government’s response time and lack of emergency supplies.

The government has sent some 130,000 troops to Sichuan and deployed 101 more helicopters to airlift victims and drop emergency supplies to quake survivors. 

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies have issued an emergency appeal for medical help, food, water and tents. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the institution was ready to help the Chinese government with recovery and reconstruction.

Landslides that once blocked access to the hard-hit areas of Wenchuan and Beichuan County have now been cleared, allowing hundreds of workers to finally reach the areas.

The Chinese government has made a rare public appeal for donations of equipment to help with the rescue effort, such as hammers and shovels. Some rescuers have been digging through mountains of rubble with nothing but their hands.

Thursday, a professional emergency relief team from Japan left for China’s earthquake-hit areas. The 30 member team will arrive in Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu, Friday and appears to be the first foreign rescue team to be allowed to help out on the ground.

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,’’ Mr. McCain said at the Columbus Convention Center. “The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.’’

The United States, Mr. McCain added, “maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.’’

During his primary battle, Mr. McCain frequently accused Mitt Romney of setting a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, a charge Mr. Romney denied.

In comments to reporters after his speech, Mr. McCain insisted that his speech should not be interpreted as setting a date for withdrawal, and that he was simply projecting victory in Iraq. He took issue with a reporter who characterized his speech as a “magic carpet ride,’’ saying: “I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy, I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving.’’

In his speech, Mr. McCain also projected that “concerted action’’ by the world’s democracies will have persuaded Russia and China to cooperate in persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and North Korea to discontinue its own.

In Afghanistan, he said, an increase in actionable intelligence will have led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and “there is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven.’’ He added: “There still has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001.’’

On domestic policy, Mr. McCain projected that the United States will have experienced several years of “robust economic growth;’’ a reduction in the corporate tax rate; and the beginning of a phase out of the alternative minimum tax.

Mr. McCain also pledged to appoint Democrats to his administration, hold weekly press conferences and take questions in Congress, much as the prime minister of Great Britain does in Parliament.

In a clear criticism of President Bush, Mr. McCain also said that “when we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them.’’

The Democrats responded that Mr. McCain was living in a dream world.

“The reality behind Senator McCain’s new rhetoric is that his plans either ignore the problems he identifies or actually makes them worse,’’ Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement shortly before Mr. McCain began his speech.

Elisabeth Bumiller

By Mick Meaney - RINF | Speaking at a news conference, European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, raised concerns over the European DNA Database, criticising its lack of safeguards to protect tourists and the public travelling around the EU.

“In some cases it will be a nightmare not only for citizens but also law enforcement authorities. What might have been done responsibly has not been done well,” said Mr Hustinx.

“Tourists could find themselves suspects in a cross-border criminal investigation merely for having had a drink at a motorway service station,” he said.

He criticised Germany saying: “I’m afraid we can’t do much to repair the problem. I found it regrettable that the Germany Presidency used the dynamics of the presidency to get something adopted that should not have been adopted in this way. The safeguards are not clear, harmonised or even available.”

Germany held the rotating EU presidency at the time, which meant the rules were adopted in just four months, making the European Union rush through the procedure at the expense of safety.

The rules, as agreed by interior ministers in 2007, allow police to identify a suspect from hair, fingernails or sperm and will be able to check DNA data gathered in other EU member states.

Commenting on Mr Hustinx’s statement, a German official said: “The data protection safeguards were based on a model used by seven countries - Germany, Austria, the Benelux countries, France and Spain - in a pilot of the DNA-sharing scheme, and they were regarded as adequate.”

According to Mr Hustinx the model “did not address differences in various EU national legislations was too complex to function efficiently.”

By Praful Bidwai |

Sen, national vice president and Chhattisgarh general secretary of the well-known People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), was arrested under allegations of helping left-wing extremists, known in this country as Naxalites.

The charges shocked human rights organisations and citizens’ groups, which on independent investigation, have found them totally fictitious. They believe that the Chhattisgarh government filed them to harass Sen and set a horribly negative example for all civil liberties activists and intimidate them.

Sen is probably India’s first human rights defender to have faced such prolonged detention.

Sen’s detention raises serious questions about the content and quality of democracy in India, and the state’s failure to respect liberties and fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It also points to links between human rights violations and the government’s social and economic policies.

The protestors are demanding Sen’s unconditional release, repeal of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005, (PSA), and the disbanding of a state-sponsored right-wing militia called Salwa Judum, which has been rampaging through the state killing and maiming people in the guise of fighting Naxalites.

On Sunday, when Sen’s detention completed one full year, poets, artists, musicians, theatre personalities, social scientists and writers, including the award-winning novelist Arundhati Roy, joined hands with social activists in 15 Indian cities, including Raipur, Sen’s hometown and Chhattisgarh’s capital.

As many as 48 international organisations such as Amnesty International and citizens’ groups based in the West also organised demonstrations or vigils in nine cities in the United States, including New York, Washington, San Francisco and Boston, and in London, Paris and Stockholm

Meanwhile, 22 Nobel laureates from the world over have called for Sen’s release so that he can receive in person the prestigious Jonathan Mann award for health and human rights, an “international honour that will be bestowed for the first time on a citizen of India”.

The award is due to be presented in two weeks by the Global Health Council (GHC), an alliance of medical organisations and professionals, in Washington, DC.

In a letter to India’s President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, the Nobel Prize winners have expressed “grave concern that Dr Sen appears to be incarcerated solely for peacefully exercising his fundamental right, in contravention of Articles 19 (freedom of opinion and ex-pression) and 22 (freedom of association) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”, which India has signed.

The letter also says that the two internal security laws under which Sen was charged, the PSA and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 2004, “do not comport with international human rights standards”.

The PSA criminalises even peaceful activity and protest, by declaring it “a danger or menace to public order, peace and tranquillity”, because it might interfere with or “tends to interfere with the maintenance of public order… the administration of law or its… institutions”, and encourages or preaches “disobedience to established law and its institutions.”

Under these laws, Sen can be awarded the death penalty or life imprisonment. Among the charges he faces are being a member of a terrorist gang or organisation, knowingly holding the proceeds of terrorism, sedition, abetting unlawful activity, undermining public safety, and conspiracy to wage war against the state.

These charges hinge on one allegation by the police: namely, that Sen visited a detained and ailing Naxalite leader, Narayan Sanyal, in Raipur prison 33 times, and allegedly passed notes from him to his collaborators outside jail through a Kolkata-based businessman, Piyush Guha.

But Guha has denied that he received any letter from Sanyal, and said and that he signed a false confession under duress. During the trial, which began after long delays on April 30, key witnesses failed to corroborate the police version or turned hostile.

“As for the numerous visits to meet Sanyal, that cannot be a charge at all,” says Prashant Bhushan, a public interest lawyer based in Delhi. “It was entirely in Sen’s line of work both as a civil rights defender and a physician. Besides, the visits were not surreptitious or illegal. They took place with the permission of and under the supervision of the jail authorities”.

During a visit paid to Sen last September in the same prison IPS found it impossible — given the small size of the room and the eagle eyes of the officials — to smuggle out a piece of paper. All conversation is audible to the wardens.

Kavita Srivastava, Jaipur-based national general secretary of PUCL, holds that Sen was singled out by the Chhattisgarh government partly because he was trying to expose the brutality and outright criminality of the vigilante Salwa Judum group, armed and trained by the state.

Salwa Judum has perpetrated gruesome atrocities against ordinary citizens, besides Naxalites and their suspected sympathisers. It has burned down entire villages in Chhattisgarh’s dirt-poor southern districts, populated by acutely disadvantaged Adivasis or indigenous tribals.

The militia’s campaign of violence has turned nearly 100,000 people into refugees. But both the Chhattisgarh the central government continue to shield, support, finance and encourage it.

They recently told India’s Supreme Court that Salwa Judum is the only means available to them to counter Naxalite violence. The court has not yet pronounced judgement on a public interest petition filed by reputed academics demanding the disbanding of the militia.

Recently, Manmohan Singh described left-wing extremism as “the greatest internal security threat” facing India and promised to crush it. He said his government would not rest until the virus of Naxalism is eliminated.

His government pledged to spend over 750 million US dollars on fighting it. But its efforts have failed to contain the movement. Over the past two years, more people have been killed in Naxalite-related violence, including police counter-violence, than in Kashmir or India’s turbulent Northeast.

Chhattisgarh is the worst example of the failure of the state’s strategy of combating left-extremism exclusively by unleashing state repression against unarmed civilians.

Sen was trained as a paediatrician at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, and has devoted most of adult life to improving the health and living conditions of the very poor in the Adivasi districts of Chhattisgarh, besides defending the civil liberties of wretchedly poor and exploited people.

Sen’s organisation, ‘Rupantar’, has run a clinic for 10 years in Dhamtari district. He has done exemplary voluntary work in the Gandhian mould in providing primary and preventive healthcare to people long deprived of access to any health facilities, especially from the state.

There are no medical personnel in the area, often not even a chemist within a 30-kilometre distance. Even in emergencies, the public is forced to depend on quacks, and corrupt, apathetic, incompetent, and usually missing, government employees.

Rupantar’s clinic offers a range of services at nominal cost, including rapid testing for the deadly Falciparum strain of the malaria parasite, which has saved scores of lives. These services are provided through local “barefoot doctors”, who give the public invaluable advice on nutrition and preventive medicine.

Sen appears to have been victimised precisely because he formed a bridge between the human rights movement and other civil society organisations, and created a forum of empowerment for Chhattisgarh’s disadvantaged people.

The state government, whose very existence is premised upon the rapacious exploitation of the indigenous Adivasis and the staggering natural wealth of Chhattisgarh –and whose primary function is to subserve big business, forest contractors and traders — is loath to tolerate such individuals.

Chhattisgarh has an egregious recent history of repression. One of India’s most creative trade unionists, Shankar Guha Niyogi, who ignited a mass awakening on social, cultural and economic issues, was assassinated at the behest of the state’s powerful and politically well-connected industrialists in 1991. They still roam free.

Chhattisgarh has among India’s worst indices of wealth maldistribution and income inequality. Some of its rural regions present a dismal picture of malnutrition, starvation deaths, illiteracy, and severe scarcity of safe drinking water. Some have suffered a rise in infant mortality.

The literacy rate among tribals here is less than one-third the national average –just 30 percent for men and 13 percent for women. Of the 1,220 villages of one district (Dantewada), 214 have no primary school..

But the state’s cities are booming with ostentatious affluence, spanking new hotels and glittering shopping malls.

The difference in life-expectancy between an advanced state like Kerala and tribal Chhattisgarh is a shocking 18 years. The two regions could well belong to different continents like Europe and Africa.

Chhattisgarh is extraordinarily rich in forests and in mineral wealth, including high-quality iron ore, bauxite, dolomite, quartzite, granite, corundum, precious stones, gold, diamonds and tin ore, besides limestone and coal.

This wealth has been voraciously extracted. But it has produced virtually no gains for the local population.

“Naxalism has thrived in Chhattisgarh as a response, albeit an irrational and violent one, to this obnoxious system of exploitation, dispossession and outright loot,” says Rajiv Bharagava, a political scientist at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. “In Chhattisgarh, the state has collapsed as a provider of public services and a relatively impartial guardian of the law. The Naxalites flourish because the state has failed.”

“This is a terrible comment on India’s democracy,” adds Bhargava. ”Democracy isn’t only about elections. Unless it has accountable institutions and a system of rights, it loses much of its meaning.”

I had repeated my question as she walked away from the podium, “Did the White House know about the program?” And on her way out of the room, Perino answered, “I just said: no.”

(I just rechecked my own tape recording of the briefing, and that is what she said. I apologize profusely for leaving this crucial detail out of my earlier article.)

Of course, in her earlier answer, she really hadn’t just said no—she’d said only, “I didn’t know.” But her denial of White House knowledge during that parting shot is very interesting, for reasons that Greenwald points out in the same post I linked to above: Glenn publishes emails from Pentagon officials dealing with the military analyst program that refer to weekly meetings with “karl,” to having the analysts briefed by Bush’s National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and even to getting the analysts “in with potus” himself (that’s POTUS, or the President of the United States). As Glenn sums up, rather understatedly I believe:

So in the process of discussing how to keep “their” TV military analysts “on message” regarding claims about the Iraq war, they talked about efforts to have both Stephen Hadley and Bush himself speak with the analysts — proposals that had been discussed with “karl” (which, clearly, in this case, means Rove). That means Perino’s denial was false and that the White House had at least some knowledge of and involvement in this propaganda program.

Uh oh. Dana has denied something that is clearly true. And it’s looking more and more as if the legal opinion that she expressed about the Pentagon’s propaganda program, “I don’t think that that should be against the law,” is just whistling in the dark.

The preceding article was a White House report from Eric Brewer, who will periodically attend White House press briefings for Raw Story. Brewer is also a contributor at BTC News. He was the first person to ask about the Downing Street memo at a White House briefing.

On April 9, 2008, ABC News reported that Bush’s National Security Council Principals Committee had dozens of top-secret talks and meetings at the White House to review interrogation procedures to be used by the CIA on al-Qaida suspects. Condoleezza Rice chaired the committee, which included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Collin Powell, George Tenet and John Aschroft. According to ABC, the principals discussed and approved specific details of “enhanced interrogation techniques” — “CIA-Speak” and “Pentagonese” for torture, including face slapping, pushing, sleep deprivation and the simulated drowning technique known as “waterboarding.”

According to a recent article by Dan Eggen of the Washington Post, Bush publicly defended the principals’ torture policies and decisions saying, “Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people. And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue, and I approved.” As previously noted, Condoleezza Rice chaired the Principals Committee and played a key role in development of policies that cleared the way for U.S. torture practices. In 2004, the CIA sought additional assurance by the administration for use of torture on “high value” CIA captured suspects. In addressing this episode, ABC News reported about Rice: “Despite growing policy concerns — shared by Powell — that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, … (she) did not back down, telling the CIA: ‘This is your baby; Go do it.’”

When stories regarding detainees at the Abu Grahib prison in Iraq became public, blame for the illegal crimes was placed on “a few rotten apples in the barrel,” low-ranking U.S. soldiers, some of whom are now serving jail sentences. It is now very clear that there were also “bad apples” in barrels at the White House, the Pentagon and in Langley, Va., at CIA headquarters. Much of the torture that has occured is the result of orders fully approved by the White House. Thus, the neo-conservative Bush administration, which purportedly invaded and occupied Iraq to free its people of Saddam’s heinous atrocities, is now guilty of its own, including the killing of innumerable Iraqi citizens via aerial bombardment and house-to-house invasions.

In addressing the torture policies of the National Security Council Principals Committee, University of Illinois Professor Francis A. Boyle, one of the world’s foremost authorities on international humanitarian law, said, “Clearly this was criminal activity at the time they committed it. At the very least, it violated the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, The War Crimes Act, and the federal anti-torture statutes. Clearly these are impeachable offenses.”

Given the “high crimes” committed by top administration officials in violation of the U.S. Constitution, what is to be done? >From the first revelations of the Bush/Cheney war crimes, many writers, including Professor Boyle and I, have strongly called for impeachment of the president. Thus far, Nancy Pelosi and other key members of Congress have failed to live up to their oath of office by failing to defend the Supreme Law of the Land. On June 10, 2008, Missourian writer David Rosman wrote a very informative piece citing many reasons to avoid the impeachment process. However, I continue to disagree with Rosman’s position that somehow health care, deficit spending, education, trade, the war and so on take precedence over concern for criminal violations of the basic provisions of the U.S. Constitution, including Article VI section 2 of that revered document. In terms of war, there would have been no war had Bush fulfilled his obligation to defend the Constitution. And the impeachment process, even without conviction of the president and vice-president, would offer a warning to future U.S. leaders that they must obey the laws of war.

Having said this, I certainly do agree with Rosman’s view that “when Bush and Cheney are once again civilians, then file criminal charges against the former holders of the executive office for treason and high crimes against the people. Jail time sounds so much better.” I favor impeachment and jail time for Bush and Cheney and the filing of criminal charges against all of the top officials involved in the planning and approval of prisoner interrogation crimes.

Bill Wickersham is an Adjunct Professor of Peace Studies at MU, a member of Veterans for Peace and a member of the national steering committee of Global Action to Prevent War.

Columbia Missourian, MO

Press TV

“George is actually a very funny, charming man with a quirky sense of humor,” said the autobiography which is being serialized in The Times of London newspaper.

“The reason he gets a bad press, he says, is ‘because I talk Texan’,” added Blair who described the US first lady, Laura, as ‘a very warm, genuine person’.

Tony Blair faced widespread criticism inside and outside of Britain because of his relationship with Bush, namely over his government’s support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Following the decision, critics called the British prime minister ‘Bush’s poodle’ as he suffered a nosedive in his popularity ratings.