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David Swanson Visits Columbus

7:00 – 9:00 PM Wednesday
Areopagitica Bookstore, 3510 N. High St., Columbus, Ohio
Book signing and talk. “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.”
David Swanson will be in Columbus to discuss his new book to be published soon by Seven Stories Press. David is a co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org – see http://www.afterdowningstreet.org and http://www.davidswanson.org He is also the author of the introduction to “The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush” published by Feral House and available at Amazon.com. His articles appear frequently on http://www.freepress.org

Swanson holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a member of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice, and convener of the accountability and prosecution working group of United for Peace and Justice.

This event is free and open to the public. Swanson’s new book will be available for purchase and signing by the author. This event is sponsored by the Columbus Free Press and the Progressive Peace Coalition. For more information, contact chammon@columbus.rr.com or http://www.davidswanson.org/book

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Democratic Socialists? Democrats Not Half That Good

By Bob Fitrakis
May 25, 2009
Article below.
[display_podcast]

The Republican National Committee recently dropped its resolution to brand the moderate pro-corporate Democratic Party “Socialists.” As the late, great Democratic Socialist leader Michael Harrington liked to tell it when he testified before a dying Senator Hubert Humphrey on the Humphrey-Hawkins Work Bill, that would theoretically guarantee every American a right to a job, Humphrey bluntly asked him “Is my bill socialism?” Harrington replied, “Senator, your bill’s not half that good.”

Here’s why the Democratic Party is also not half that good. Obama’s “Me too” bailout policy to the largest and most irresponsible banks and investment houses has nothing to do with socializing capital. Democratic Socialists believe in democratizing and socializing money matters. They favor credit unions and co-ops with democratically elected boards over large welfare checks to transnational corporations. In fact, there’s little difference between Obama’s approach to the big bankers and George W. Bush’s.

If the Democrats were European Democratic Socialists or Social Democrats, they would have never allowed 20% of all U.S. workers and 47 million people in the U.S. to live without health care. They would have at least called for a general strike to shut down the system until the injustice was stopped.

If you want to look at the history of democratic socialism as a barometer for that esteemed label in American history, let’s start with the legendary Eugene Victor Debs. Unlike the cowardly Democratic Party and its then-leaders – John Kerry and Hillary Clinton who both supported Bush’s illegal imperialist occupation of Iraq to remain politically viable as presidential candidates – Debs went to jail to oppose World War I.

Not only that, he ran as a Socialist Party presidential candidate from jail and received a million votes defending the First Amendment. What was Debs’ great crime? Claiming the rich have always declared war and the poor and working class have always fought and died.

Historically, U.S. Socialist leaders like Debs, Norman Thomas, and Michael Harrington were not cowards hiding behind pragmatism and popularity polls. When virtually no U.S. politicians spoke on behalf of accepting Jewish immigrants from Nazi Germany during the Great Depression, Thomas fought for their admittance.

Martin Luther King, Jr. called Norman Thomas “the bravest man” he ever met. When Thomas gave his nominal blessing for the last remains of the Socialist Party to merge into the Democratic Party in 1960, he did not surrender his conscience. For example, he called John F. Kennedy “all profile and no courage,” particularly in regards to the President’s civil rights actions. In 1965, Thomas spoke at the first major anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington D.C. and announced he had come to “cleanse” the American flag, not to burn it.

Thomas spoke out and wrote a book against the torture of pacifists during World War I, asking the key question, “Is conscience a crime?” He understood that when you strung pacifists up by their thumbs, it was torture. I’m sure if he had ever been briefed on it, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allegedly was, he would have denounced it immediately.

Michael Harrington was the architect of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. His book, “The Other America,” stands as a lasting monument to the principles of Democratic Socialism. When both the Democrat and Republican Parties were ignoring the 22% of U.S. population living in poverty during the Eisenhower years, it was Harrington who documented their desperate plight.

Harrington later went on to champion the rights of the wretched of the Earth in his book “The Vast Majority.” He helped write the policy perspectives that tilted the European Social Democrats toward massive aid to Africa, Asia and South America.

Debs, Thomas and Harrington came to realize that democracy was more important than socialism and that decision-making from the bottom up was the key. To label the timid, triangulating Obama Democratic Party as Democratic Socialists is absurd. Not only is Obama not half as good as Debs, Thomas and Harrington, he’s not yet a pale imitation of FDR. And we can only dream that he would adopt the infrastructure programs and progressive tax policies of President Dwight Eisenhower from the 50s.

Perhaps the best we can do is raise the slogan demanding that Obama “Be like Ike.” America needs a Marshall Plan, that’s something an FDR or Ike would understand. Debs, on the other hand, would be calling for an army of a million men to arrest Bush and Cheney for crimes against humanity. And Debs would be talking about his desire to resurrect from the dead the more than a million dead Iraqis killed in a corporate capitalist war for oil.

That’s the legacy of American Democratic Socialism.

Bob Fitrakis, Ph.D., J.D., is the editor of the freepress.org and author of The Idea of Democratic Socialism in America and the Decline of the Socialist Party which is for sale at the freepress.org online store.

Dr. Robert Fitrakis

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 08/09/2001 Undercover Air

08/09/2001
Undercover Air
Is the CIA back in business at Rickenbacker International?
by Bob Fitrakis

Are we a big ol’ lucky dog of a city, or what? I couldn’t be more excited about Saturday’s Business section front-page story in the Dispatch. The lead told us: “Rickenbacker International Airport will begin receiving cargo shipments from Malaysia as a result of service added by Evergreen International Airlines.”

Thank God we finally got somebody to replace the former Southern Air Transport (SAT) after the company went bankrupt amidst allegations that its pilots and planes were used in CIA drug-running operations.

Evergreen began racing “time-sensitive cargo” from Kuala Lumpur to Rickenbacker on Sunday. They’re aiding some of our best corporate citizens “…such as The Limited and Eddie Bauer,” according to the Dispatch, where no doubt garments are made in state-of-the-art cheery facilities by well-paid Third World employees. I was so excited I took a few minutes to research Evergreen’s history.

Evergreen, originally based in McMinnville, Oregon, expanded from a small helicopter in the 1960s “to a major international airline with secret government contracts” according to the Portland, Oregon Free Press. The Oregonian reported that “Evergreen Airline Company, Evergreen International Airlines, Inc., was built on remnants of two older airlines—one a wholly owned CIA proprietary, or front company, and the other a virtual branch of the U.S. Forest Service that for years secretly had helped the CIA recruit paramilitary personnel.”

In 1975, after a series of embarrassing revelations during Senator Frank Church’s investigation of the CIA, the “company” liquidated Intermountain Aviation Inc. of Marana, Arizona near Tucson. Intermountain’s assets were purchased by two Oregon companies that the CIA selected: Evergreen and Rosenbalm Aviation Inc. But Evergreen was the big winner. One of the CIA’s top aviation officers, the legendary covert ops expert George Doole worked for Evergreen as a director. Prior to this, Doole managed all of the CIA’s proprietary airlines. The CIA selected Evergreen to take over the agency’s airbase at Marana. An investigation by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Oregonian documented that “The CIA offered Intermountain’s substantial Arizona assets only to Evergreen.”

What followed was a decade of privileged treatment and government contracts to the airline. Evergreen purchased the CIA’s Arizona assets at a fraction of their real worth. An Arthur Andersen and Co. financial statement indicates that Evergreen’s assets nearly doubled from $25 million to more than $45 million one year after the deal. Evergreen’s revenues rose from $8-10 million range in 1975 to $77.9 million by 1979, according to U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board documents.

The Washington Post reported on Evergreen’s CIA connection in 1980 after it was chosen to fly the former Shah of Iran from Panama to Cairo.

In 1984, CBS News reported that the CIA was using a “network of private companies” to fly military weapons to Central America to support the Contra rebels trying to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. CBS named both Southern Air and Evergreen Air as involved in the arms shipments. The day after the broadcast, the Washington Post reported that “Private airlines, including Evergreen, were owned by the CIA during the Vietnam War, but the agency has said that the airline has since been sold.”

The New York Times jumped in a day later with the following lead: “The Central Intelligence Agency is using small private airlines to fly guns and other military supplies to United States-backed forces in Central America, and false flight plans are sometimes filed to cover up the shipments….” The Times mentioned Evergreen Air by name.

When Doole died on March 9, 1985, the Times reported that Evergreen International Aviation in Marana placed a bronze plaque on the wall acknowledging Doole’s more than 20-year service with the CIA. Like Rickenbacker, the huge airfield formerly operated by the CIA was now owned by the county government (Pinal County, AZ). The plaque noted that Doole was “founder, chief executive officer & board of directors of Air America, Inc., Air Asia Company Ltd., Civil Air Transport Company Ltd.” Air America’s planes were used, according to U.S. Intelligence documents, to facilitate the transportation of opium from Laos to U.S. military bases in the Philippines and Thailand during the Vietnam War. The airline’s nickname was “Opium Air.”

Following the incident when Sandinistas shot down a Southern Air Transport C-123K cargo plane that led to the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running scandal, the Washington Post reported that SAT President William G. Langton had been previously associated with Evergreen International Airlines. The Oregonian investigative report came out in 1988 revealing how well Evergreen Airlines was doing. But by 1994, the airline had defaulted on $125 million in junk bonds, according to the Portland Free Press.

In 1997, Evergreen was caught up in a huge scandal when scores of former military planes were diverted to covert CIA operations under the guise of “firefighting.” The Free Press reported that Evergreen International Airlines was involved in the covert activities. Gary Eitel, a decorated Vietnam combat pilot and law-enforcement officer, found employment at Evergreen and “observed that card-carrying CIA personnel were on Evergreen property acting as Evergreen employees.”

In last Saturday’s paper, the Dispatch’s last sentence stated that: “Still, Rickenbacker officials are hoping for even more cargo activity, and [Jeff] Clark said Evergreen is in the process of determining whether it will operate additional flights from Columbus to South America.”

Columbia may be a good place to start for those “time-sensitive” deliveries, eh?

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Free Film And Discussion, Today, Cheney’s Law, Bexley, Ohio

Come join us to see the FREE film:
TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2008 – 7:30pm
Cheney’s Law
at the Drexel East Theater, 2254 Main St., Bexley
Discussion to follow screening in the Drexel Radio Cafe next door
253-2571, truth@freepress.org

For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy — without congressional approval or judicial review.

“The vice president believes that Congress has very few powers to actually constrain the president and the executive branch,” said former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman. “He believes the president should have the final word — indeed the only word
— on all matters within the executive branch.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/

Sponsored by the Drexel East Theater, the Free Press, and the Central Ohio Green Education Fund

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Bob and Harvey Show With Cliff Arnebeck, May 26, 2007

Hemp, Stolen elections, nuclear power, Batchelder, Ohio SOS Brunner’s proposals, death penalty, Iraq war…

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On Point, Dr. Fitrakis Live Feb 16th, 2008 Vic’s Cafe

Live audience chat with music from Andrew Davis and Rob Jones.

 

 

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City Of Peace

By Bob Fitrakis

April 3, 2008

The great moral issue of our era is the illegal war in Iraq. Like the issues of slavery, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War in past epochs, silence on this issue equals complicity.

On March 17, the Citizens Grassroots Congress presented a Columbus “City for Peace” resolution to the Columbus City Council. Notably, 283 cities, 10 counties and 17 states across the nation have passed peace resolutions, from Arrowsic, Maine to South Charleston, West Virginia to Missoula, Montana.

Yet, the Columbus Dispatch, in a March 22 editorial, denounced the peace resolution as an “Empty gesture.” They cautioned Council to “focus on city issues,” not the war in Iraq. The Dispatch calls the resolution “symbolic and ineffectual.”

In 1838, when Angelina Grimke became the first woman to address a legislative body in the U.S., her plea for a resolution from the Massachusetts legislature against slavery met with similar scorn from the mainstream media.

The slaves couldn’t speak for themselves, nor can the more than one million Iraqis who have died as a direct result of Bush’s war. The voices of 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been silenced as well.

In addition to these incalculable human costs, we can begin to add up how this war, that was supposed to “pay for itself,” is devastating the economy in Columbus, Ohio.

According to the National Priorities Project, “Taxpayers in Columbus, Ohio will pay $135.1 million for additional proposed Iraq War spending for FY 2008. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
• 47,896 people with health care or
• 151,338 homes with renewable electricity or
• 3,060 public safety officers or
• 2,069 music and arts teachers or
• 15,591 scholarships for university students or
• 12 new elementary schools or
• 1,260 affordable housing units or
• 81,262 children with health care or
• 21,039 Head Start places for children or
• 2,153 elementary school teachers or
• 2,373 port container inspectors”
The cost of the war continues to rise daily. The monthly cost exceeds the monthly cost of the Vietnam War (adjusted for inflation) by half a billion dollars.

And what has the war accomplished? The war has turned Iraq, an anti-Al Qaeda state with no ties to the terrorist organization, into a symbol for “accelerated recruitment” for Al Qaeda, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The country is now “a training and recruitment ground (for terrorists) and an opportunity for terrorists to enhance their technology skills,” according to the U.S. National Intelligence Council.

Mainstream newspapers also warned Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. from speaking out against the Vietnam War. But, on April 4, 1967 he ignored their advice because he believed “Somehow this madness must cease.”

“I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America. To the leaders of our own nation: the great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours,” pronounced King at the Riverside Church in New York City.

The Dispatch says the Council’s work should “all center on making Columbus a better place to live.” The cost of war on our city will leave us both economically and morally bankrupt. The cost of silence is far greater than the price of a principled stand.

This military madness once again afflicts our nation, and our elected officials lack the courage to take a stand for peace. The people overwhelmingly voted for peace in the 2006 election, turning out the party of war. The silence of the City Council, to borrow the words of King, equals betrayal of their constituents and their own conscience.

—
Bob Fitrakis is Editor & Publisher of The Free Press (https://freepress.org), where this article first appeared.

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Free Admission Drexel Presents WAR MADE EASY

The Free Press and the Drexel Gateway Theater present:Normon Solomon’s
WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Narrated by Sean PennThursday, February 28, 2008 at 7pm
Admission is free!
Drexel Gateway screening room
Discussion will followWar Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

Approx. 72 minutes

Drexel Gateway, 1550 N. High St.,

OSU campus, parking in rear in garage off 11th.
253-2571, truth@freepress.org
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org

 

 

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Bob Bytes Back Archives: Ohio Taking To The Streets (School Of Americas)

5/22/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

The action was in the streets, and parks, last weekend. In Westerville, 50 or so activists from the Westerville Social Action group and Amnesty International exercised their First Amendment rights by demonstrating in front of Rep. John Kasich’s house and then marching down Main Street. They want Mr. Budget-Cutter to wield his ax and topple the notorious School of the Americas (SOA)–School of the Assassins. In Franklin Park, the African-American community and guests celebrated the heritage of Malcolm X, and up on campus at 16th and Waldeck–the original site of Community Festival–Anti-Racist Action (ARA) staged a very successful second annual Anti-Fest.
A common theme ran through these three events: the streets and the parks belong to the people, all the people.

Kasich’s house looks like it was built for a Hollywood movie about a wholesome and earnest young politician. That’s probably why the Congressman purchased it. So, imagine his surprise–no, he wasn’t there as usual–when he hears about an actual group of earnest and wholesome young neighbors of his calling his ethics and morality into question.

One notes Johnny has made a career out of trying to balance the U.S. budget, yet he conveniently continues to ignore the School of the Americas located in Ft. Bening, Georgia. The School recently underwent a $30 million renovation at taxpayers’ expense to better house the legions of murderers and assassins it trains. The official purpose of the School is to train Latin American soldiers in combat skills such as counter-insurgency operations, sniper fire, commando tactics and psychological warfare. But, wherever the graduates of the School go, atrocities and torture follow.

General Manuel Noriega is a graduate and so were over 60 Salvadoran officers cited by the 1993 United Nations Truth Commission Report for butchering civilians; two out of three officers cited in the assassination of Archbishop Romero were graduates; three out of five officers cited in the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen were alumni; 10 out of 12 officers cited in the El Mozote massacre of over 800 civilians held diplomas from SOA; and 19 of the 26 officers responsible for the slaughter of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were educated there.

Alas, U.S. tax dollars at work, training between 700-2000 Latin American assassins a year. Most recently, Julio Roberto Alperez, who ordered the killing of U.S. citizen Michael Devine in Guatemala and Efrim Bamaca, husband of U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury, calls SOA his alma mater. Harbury reported the last time she saw her husband, he was being blown up with various gases, his body four times its normal size, as he raved unintelligibly. In a recent Dispatch editorial, the paper rightly criticized Clinton for his failure to bring Alperez and other Guatemalan “allies” to justice. Now, if only they would hold their boy John equally responsible for funding the criminals, or at least cover the event like a normal paper. Westerville Social Action is asking citizens to write or call Rep. Kasich and tell him to support House Resolution 2652, a bill proposed by Rep. Joe Kennedy to close the School of the Americas and demand that we spend “Not a Dime for Death Squads.”

Many of the activists went from death squad protests to dancing in the streets and parks on Saturday. Talk about a “pro-life” celebration; that’s what you got at the Anti-Fest. It was a racist’s nightmare with interracial mingling, cavorting and boogeying in front of various people’s gods. The event started off with a certain amount of apprehension and fears that the Columbus police riot unit might show up uninvited. OSU President Gordon Gee’s office, in his attempt to re-establish in loco parentis (“I’m your daddy”) policy, demanded a meeting with ARA organizers. Jim McNamara, ARA leader and local attorney, declined the invitation. “I told him I’m 46 years old, I’ve got kids who’ve graduated from OSU. Why do I need to meet with the president’s office? This is my neighborhood in the city of Columbus. I’m not a college student,” said McNamara.

At the street fest, inevitably, talk turned to the topic of Campus Partners. Seems my penpals in the Glen Echo South Civic Association are sitting down in a neighborly fashion with the dissident Common Grounds Forum group and appear to be working out their traffic problems. Also, University Area Commissioners report that finally, after a year and a half, Campus Partners staffers are seeking real input from the neighborhood. Some small businesspeople originally opposed to the plan appear willing to compromise in exchange for Pearl Alley becoming a real street and some assistance in redeveloping their businesses there.

On the other hand, the Stache’s/Monkey’s Retreat complex is reportedly scheduled for demolition next year. Yet, if the streets still belong to all the people and the campus community organizes, who knows, pardner?

Bob Fitrakis ran for Congress against John Kasich in 1992.

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Advocates 2004 Vote Want An AG probe

Advocates who say there were serious problems in the 2004 vote want an AG probe

By Bill Cohen – November 20, 2007 Bill Cohen, critics are continuing to claim the election was stolen

Three years after the controversial presidential election in Ohio that put President Bush back into the white house for a second term, critics are continuing to claim the election was stolen. And now, they’re asking Ohio’s top cop to join their crusade. Statehouse correspondent Bill Cohen files this report.
http://tinyurl.com/3ykddya

Original Article:

http://statenews.org/story_page.cfm?ID=10830&year=2007&month=11

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