or how you hoodwink and bamboozle the stupid, bellicose, and bored to support unprincipled and unsupportable political agendas like the phenomenally wasteful and unsuccessful occupation of Iraq. After you've tricked the rubes, you can depend upon the inertia of their hubris to prevent these victims of the grand hornswaggle from recanting their earlier blunders...., matter of fact, they'll prolifically concoct post hoc rationalizations to account for their earlier hysterical suggestibility.
It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"
The Man Who Sold the War - Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war
The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.
On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.
Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.
It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.
The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.
Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.
"They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor of the industry trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."
Although Rendon denies any direct involvement with al-Haideri, the defector was the latest salvo in a secret media war set in motion by Rendon. In an operation directed by Ahmad Chalabi -- the man Rendon helped install as leader of the INC -- the defector had been brought to Thailand, where he huddled in a hotel room for days with the group's spokesman, Zaab Sethna. The INC routinely coached defectors on their stories, prepping them for polygraph exams, and Sethna was certainly up to the task -- he got his training in the art of propaganda on the payroll of the Rendon Group. According to Francis Brooke, the INC's man in Washington and himself a former Rendon employee, the goal of the al-Haideri operation was simple: pressure the United States to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.
As the CIA official flew back to Washington with failed lie-detector charts in his briefcase, Chalabi and Sethna didn't hesitate. They picked up the phone, called two journalists who had a long history of helping the INC promote its cause and offered them an exclusive on Saddam's terrifying cache of WMDs.
For the worldwide broadcast rights, Sethna contacted Paul Moran, an Australian freelancer who frequently worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "I think I've got something that you would be interested in," he told Moran, who was living in Bahrain. Sethna knew he could count on the trim, thirty-eight-year-old journalist: A former INC employee in the Middle East, Moran had also been on Rendon's payroll for years in "information operations," working with Sethna at the company's London office on Catherine Place, near Buckingham Palace.
"We were trying to help the Kurds and the Iraqis opposed to Saddam set up a television station," Sethna recalled in a rare interview broadcast on Australian television. "The Rendon Group came to us and said, 'We have a contract to kind of do anti-Saddam propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi opposition.' What we didn't know -- what the Rendon Group didn't tell us -- was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work."
The INC's choice for the worldwide print exclusive was equally easy: Chalabi contacted Judith Miller of The New York Times. Miller, who was close to I. Lewis Libby and other neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years. Not long after the CIA polygraph expert slipped the straps and electrodes off al-Haideri and declared him a liar, Miller flew to Bangkok to interview him under the watchful supervision of his INC handlers. Miller later made perfunctory calls to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, but despite her vaunted intelligence sources, she claimed not to know about the results of al-Haideri's lie-detector test. Instead, she reported that unnamed "government experts" called his information "reliable and significant" -- thus adding a veneer of truth to the lies.
Her front-page story, which hit the stands on December 20th, 2001, was exactly the kind of exposure Rendon had been hired to provide. AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES, declared the headline. "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer," Miller wrote, "said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." If verified, she noted, "his allegations would provide ammunition to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr. Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to stop making weapons of mass destruction, despite his pledges to do so."
For months, hawks inside and outside the administration had been pressing for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Now, thanks to Miller's story, they could point to "proof" of Saddam's "nuclear threat." The story, reinforced by Moran's on-camera interview with al-Haideri on the giant Australian Broadcasting Corp., was soon being trumpeted by the White House and repeated by newspapers and television networks around the world. It was the first in a long line of hyped and fraudulent stories that would eventually propel the U.S. into a war with Iraq -- the first war based almost entirely on a covert propaganda campaign targeting the media.
By law, the Bush administration is expressly prohibited from disseminating government propaganda at home. But in an age of global communications, there is nothing to stop it from planting a phony pro-war story overseas -- knowing with certainty that it will reach American citizens almost instantly. A recent congressional report suggests that the Pentagon may be relying on "covert psychological operations affecting audiences within friendly nations." In a "secret amendment" to Pentagon policy, the report warns, "psyops funds might be used to publish stories favorable to American policies, or hire outside contractors without obvious ties to the Pentagon to organize rallies in support of administration policies." The report also concludes that military planners are shifting away from the Cold War view that power comes from superior weapons systems. Instead, the Pentagon now believes that "combat power can be enhanced by communications networks and technologies that control access to, and directly manipulate, information. As a result, information itself is now both a tool and a target of warfare."
It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"
John Walter Rendon Jr. rises at 3 a.m. each morning after six hours of sleep, turns on his Apple computer and begins ingesting information -- overnight news reports, e-mail messages, foreign and domestic newspapers, and an assortment of government documents, many of them available only to those with the highest security clearance. According to Pentagon documents obtained by Rolling Stone, the Rendon Group is authorized "to research and analyze information classified up to Top Secret/SCI/SI/TK/G/HCS" -- an extraordinarily high level of clearance granted to only a handful of defense contractors. "SCI" stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information, data classified higher than Top Secret. "SI" is Special Intelligence, very secret communications intercepted by the National Security Agency. "TK" refers to Talent/Keyhole, code names for imagery from reconnaissance aircraft and spy satellites. "G" stands for Gamma (communications intercepts from extremely sensitive sources) and "HCS" means Humint Control System (information from a very sensitive human source). Taken together, the acronyms indicate that Rendon enjoys access to the most secret information from all three forms of intelligence collection: eavesdropping, imaging satellites and human spies.
Rendon lives in a multimillion-dollar home in Washington's exclusive Kalorama neighborhood. A few doors down from Rendon is the home of former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara; just around the corner lives current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. At fifty-six, Rendon wears owlish glasses and combs his thick mane of silver-gray hair to the side, Kennedy-style. He heads to work each morning clad in a custom-made shirt with his monogram on the right cuff and a sharply tailored blue blazer that hangs loose around his bulky frame. By the time he pulls up to the Rendon Group's headquarters near Dupont Circle, he has already racked up a handsome fee for the morning's work: According to federal records, Rendon charges the CIA and the Pentagon $311.26 an hour for his services.
Rendon is one of the most influential of the private contractors in Washington who are increasingly taking over jobs long reserved for highly trained CIA employees. In recent years, spies-for-hire have begun to replace regional desk officers, who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the agency's twenty-four-hour crisis center; analysts, who sift through reams of intelligence data; and even counterintelligence officers in the field, who oversee meetings between agents and their recruited spies. According to one senior administration official involved in intelligence-budget decisions, half of the CIA's work is now performed by private contractors -- people completely unaccountable to Congress. Another senior budget official acknowledges privately that lawmakers have no idea how many rent-a-spies the CIA currently employs -- or how much unchecked power they enjoy.
Unlike many newcomers to the field, however, Rendon is a battle-tested veteran who has been secretly involved in nearly every American shooting conflict in the past two decades. In the first interview he has granted in decades, Rendon offered a peek through the keyhole of this seldom-seen world of corporate spooks -- a rarefied but growing profession. Over a dinner of lamb chops and a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape at a private Washington club, Rendon was guarded about the details of his clandestine work -- but he boasted openly of the sweep and importance of his firm's efforts as a for-profit spy. "We've worked in ninety-one countries," he said. "Going all the way back to Panama, we've been involved in every war, with the exception of Somalia."
It is an unusual career twist for someone who entered politics as an opponent of the Vietnam War. The son of a stockbroker, Rendon grew up in New Jersey and stumped for McGovern before graduating from Northeastern University. "I was the youngest state coordinator," he recalls. "I had Maine. They told me that I understood politics -- which was a stretch, being so young." Rendon, who went on to serve as executive director of the Democratic National Committee, quickly mastered the combination of political skulduggery and media manipulation that would become his hallmark. In 1980, as the manager of Jimmy Carter's troops at the national convention in New York, he was sitting alone in the bleachers at Madison Square Garden when a reporter for ABC News approached him. "They actually did a little piece about the man behind the curtain," Rendon says. "A Wizard of Oz thing." It was a role he would end up playing for the rest of his life.
After Carter lost the election and the hard-right Reagan revolutionaries came to power in 1981, Rendon went into business with his younger brother Rick. "Everybody started consulting," he recalls. "We started consulting." They helped elect John Kerry to the Senate in 1984 and worked for the AFL-CIO to mobilize the union vote for Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. Among the items Rendon produced was a training manual for union organizers to operate as political activists on behalf of Mondale. To keep the operation quiet, Rendon stamped CONFIDENTIAL on the cover of each of the blue plastic notebooks. It was a penchant for secrecy that would soon pervade all of his consulting deals.
To a large degree, the Rendon Group is a family affair. Rendon's wife, Sandra Libby, handles the books as chief financial officer and "senior communications strategist." Rendon's brother Rick serves as senior partner and runs the company's Boston office, producing public-service announcements for the Whale Conservation Institute and coordinating Empower Peace, a campaign that brings young people in the Middle East in contact with American kids through video-conferencing technology. But the bulk of the company's business is decidedly less liberal and peace oriented. Rendon's first experience in the intelligence world, in fact, came courtesy of the Republicans. "Panama," he says, "brought us into the national-security environment."
In 1989, shortly after his election, President George H.W. Bush signed a highly secret "finding" authorizing the CIA to funnel $10 million to opposition forces in Panama to overthrow Gen. Manuel Noriega. Reluctant to involve agency personnel directly, the CIA turned to the Rendon Group. Rendon's job was to work behind the scenes, using a variety of campaign and psychological techniques to put the CIA's choice, Guillermo Endara, into the presidential palace. Cash from the agency, laundered through various bank accounts and front organizations, would end up in Endara's hands, who would then pay Rendon.
A heavyset, fifty-three-year-old corporate attorney with little political experience, Endara was running against Noriega's handpicked choice, Carlos Duque. With Rendon's help, Endara beat Duque decisively at the polls -- but Noriega simply named himself "Maximum Leader" and declared the election null and void. The Bush administration then decided to remove Noriega by force -- and Rendon's job shifted from generating local support for a national election to building international support for regime change. Within days he had found the ultimate propaganda tool.
At the end of a rally in support of Endara, a band of Noriega's Dignity Battalion -- nicknamed "Dig Bats" and called "Doberman thugs" by Bush -- attacked the crowd with wooden planks, metal pipes and guns. Gang members grabbed the bodyguard of Guillermo Ford, one of Endara's vice-presidential candidates, pushed him against a car, shoved a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. With cameras snapping, the Dig Bats turned on Ford, batting his head with a spike-tipped metal rod and pounding him with heavy clubs, turning his white guayabera bright red with blood -- his own, and that of his dead bodyguard.
Within hours, Rendon made sure the photos reached every newsroom in the world. The next week an image of the violence made the cover of Time magazine with the caption POLITICS PANAMA STYLE: NORIEGA BLUDGEONS HIS OPPOSITION, AND THE U.S. TURNS UP THE HEAT. To further boost international support for Endara, Rendon escorted Ford on a tour of Europe to meet British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Italian prime minister and even the pope. In December 1989, when Bush decided to invade Panama, Rendon and several of his employees were on one of the first military jets headed to Panama City.
"I arrived fifteen minutes before it started," Rendon recalls. "My first impression is having the pilot in the plane turn around and say, 'Excuse me, sir, but if you look off to the left you'll see the attack aircraft circling before they land.' Then I remember this major saying, 'Excuse me, sir, but do you know what the air-defense capability of Panama is at the moment?' I leaned into the cockpit and said, 'Look, major, I hope by now that's no longer an issue.'"
Moments later, Rendon's plane landed at Howard Air Force Base in Panama. "I needed to get to Fort Clayton, which was where the president was," he says. "I was choppered over -- and we took some rounds on the way." There, on a U.S. military base surrounded by 24,000 U.S. troops, heavy tanks and Combat Talon AC-130 gunships, Rendon's client, Endara, was at last sworn in as president of Panama.
Rendon's involvement in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein began seven months later, in July 1990. Rendon had taken time out for a vacation -- a long train ride across Scotland -- when he received an urgent call. "Soldiers are massing at the border outside of Kuwait," he was told. At the airport, he watched the beginning of the Iraqi invasion on television. Winging toward Washington in the first-class cabin of a Pan Am 747, Rendon spent the entire flight scratching an outline of his ideas in longhand on a yellow legal pad.
"I wrote a memo about what the Kuwaitis were going to face, and I based it on our experience in Panama and the experience of the Free French operation in World War II," Rendon says. "This was something that they needed to see and hear, and that was my whole intent. Go over, tell the Kuwaitis, 'Here's what you've got -- here's some observations, here's some recommendations, live long and prosper.'"
Back in Washington, Rendon immediately called Hamilton Jordan, the former chief of staff to President Carter and an old friend from his Democratic Party days. "He put me in touch with the Saudis, the Saudis put me in touch with the Kuwaitis and then I went over and had a meeting with the Kuwaitis," Rendon recalls. "And by the time I landed back in the United States, I got a phone call saying, 'Can you come back? We want you to do what's in the memo.'"
What the Kuwaitis wanted was help in selling a war of liberation to the American government -- and the American public. Rendon proposed a massive "perception management" campaign designed to convince the world of the need to join forces to rescue Kuwait. Working through an organization called Citizens for a Free Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government in exile agreed to pay Rendon $100,000 a month for his assistance.
To coordinate the operation, Rendon opened an office in London. Once the Gulf War began, he remained extremely busy trying to prevent the American press from reporting on the dark side of the Kuwaiti government, an autocratic oil-tocracy ruled by a family of wealthy sheiks. When newspapers began reporting that many Kuwaitis were actually living it up in nightclubs in Cairo as Americans were dying in the Kuwaiti sand, the Rendon Group quickly counterattacked. Almost instantly, a wave of articles began appearing telling the story of grateful Kuwaitis mailing 20,000 personally signed valentines to American troops on the front lines, all arranged by Rendon.
Rendon also set up an elaborate television and radio network, and developed programming that was beamed into Kuwait from Taif, Saudi Arabia. "It was important that the Kuwaitis in occupied Kuwait understood that the rest of the world was doing something," he says. Each night, Rendon's troops in London produced a script and sent it via microwave to Taif, ensuring that the "news" beamed into Kuwait reflected a sufficiently pro-American line.
When it comes to staging a war, few things are left to chance. After Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it was Rendon's responsibility to make the victory march look like the flag-waving liberation of France after World War II. "Did you ever stop to wonder," he later remarked, "how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American -- and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?" After a pause, he added, "Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then."
Although his work is highly secret, Rendon insists he deals only in "timely, truthful and accurate information." His job, he says, is to counter false perceptions that the news media perpetuate because they consider it "more important to be first than to be right." In modern warfare, he believes, the outcome depends largely on the public's perception of the war -- whether it is winnable, whether it is worth the cost. "We are being haunted and stalked by the difference between perception and reality," he says. "Because the lines are divergent, this difference between perception and reality is one of the greatest strategic communications challenges of war."
By the time the Gulf War came to a close in 1991, the Rendon Group was firmly established as Washington's leading salesman for regime change. But Rendon's new assignment went beyond simply manipulating the media. After the war ended, the Top Secret order signed by President Bush to oust Hussein included a rare "lethal finding" -- meaning deadly action could be taken if necessary. Under contract to the CIA, Rendon was charged with helping to create a dissident force with the avowed purpose of violently overthrowing the entire Iraqi government. It is an undertaking that Rendon still considers too classified to discuss. "That's where we're wandering into places I'm not going to talk about," he says. "If you take an oath, it should mean something."
Thomas Twetten, the CIA's former deputy of operations, credits Rendon with virtually creating the INC. "The INC was clueless," he once observed. "They needed a lot of help and didn't know where to start. That is why Rendon was brought in." Acting as the group's senior adviser and aided by truckloads of CIA dollars, Rendon pulled together a wide spectrum of Iraqi dissidents and sponsored a conference in Vienna to organize them into an umbrella organization, which he dubbed the Iraqi National Congress. Then, as in Panama, his assignment was to help oust a brutal dictator and replace him with someone chosen by the CIA. "The reason they got the contract was because of what they had done in Panama -- so they were known," recalls Whitley Bruner, former chief of the CIA's station in Baghdad. This time the target was Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the agency's successor of choice was Ahmad Chalabi, a crafty, avuncular Iraqi exile beloved by Washington's neoconservatives.
Chalabi was a curious choice to lead a rebellion. In 1992, he was convicted in Jordan of making false statements and embezzling $230 million from his own bank, for which he was sentenced in absentia to twenty-two years of hard labor. But the only credential that mattered was his politics. "From day one," Rendon says, "Chalabi was very clear that his biggest interest was to rid Iraq of Saddam." Bruner, who dealt with Chalabi and Rendon in London in 1991, puts it even more bluntly. "Chalabi's primary focus," he said later, "was to drag us into a war."
The key element of Rendon's INC operation was a worldwide media blitz designed to turn Hussein, a once dangerous but now contained regional leader, into the greatest threat to world peace. Each month, $326,000 was passed from the CIA to the Rendon Group and the INC via various front organizations. Rendon profited handsomely, receiving a "management fee" of ten percent above what it spent on the project. According to some reports, the company made nearly $100 million on the contract during the five years following the Gulf War.
Rendon made considerable headway with the INC, but following the group's failed coup attempt against Saddam in 1996, the CIA lost confidence in Chalabi and cut off his monthly paycheck. But Chalabi and Rendon simply switched sides, moving over to the Pentagon, and the money continued to flow. "The Rendon Group is not in great odor in Langley these days," notes Bruner. "Their contracts are much more with the Defense Department."
Rendon's influence rose considerably in Washington after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. In a single stroke, Osama bin Laden altered the world's perception of reality -- and in an age of nonstop information, whoever controls perception wins. What Bush needed to fight the War on Terror was a skilled information warrior -- and Rendon was widely acknowledged as the best. "The events of 11 September 2001 changed everything, not least of which was the administration's outlook concerning strategic influence," notes one Army report. "Faced with direct evidence that many people around the world actively hated the United States, Bush began taking action to more effectively explain U.S. policy overseas. Initially the White House and DoD turned to the Rendon Group."
Three weeks after the September 11th attacks, according to documents obtained from defense sources, the Pentagon awarded a large contract to the Rendon Group. Around the same time, Pentagon officials also set up a highly secret organization called the Office of Strategic Influence. Part of the OSI's mission was to conduct covert disinformation and deception operations -- planting false news items in the media and hiding their origins. "It's sometimes valuable from a military standpoint to be able to engage in deception with respect to future anticipated plans," Vice President Dick Cheney said in explaining the operation. Even the military's top brass found the clandestine unit unnerving. "When I get their briefings, it's scary," a senior official said at the time.
In February 2002, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had hired Rendon "to help the new office," a charge Rendon denies. "We had nothing to do with that," he says. "We were not in their reporting chain. We were reporting directly to the J-3" -- the head of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Following the leak, Rumsfeld was forced to shut down the organization. But much of the office's operations were apparently shifted to another unit, deeper in the Pentagon's bureaucracy, called the Information Operations Task Force, and Rendon was closely connected to this group. "Greg Newbold was the J-3 at the time, and we reported to him through the IOTF," Rendon says.
According to the Pentagon documents, the Rendon Group played a major role in the IOTF. The company was charged with creating an "Information War Room" to monitor worldwide news reports at lightning speed and respond almost instantly with counterpropaganda. A key weapon, according to the documents, was Rendon's "proprietary state-of-the-art news-wire collection system called 'Livewire,' which takes real-time news-wire reports, as they are filed, before they are on the Internet, before CNN can read them on the air and twenty-four hours before they appear in the morning newspapers, and sorts them by keyword. The system provides the most current real-time access to news and information available to private or public organizations."
The top target that the pentagon assigned to Rendon was the Al-Jazeera television network. The contract called for the Rendon Group to undertake a massive "media mapping" campaign against the news organization, which the Pentagon considered "critical to U.S. objectives in the War on Terrorism." According to the contract, Rendon would provide a "detailed content analysis of the station's daily broadcast . . . [and] identify the biases of specific journalists and potentially obtain an understanding of their allegiances, including the possibility of specific relationships and sponsorships."
The secret targeting of foreign journalists may have had a sinister purpose. Among the missions proposed for the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence was one to "coerce" foreign journalists and plant false information overseas. Secret briefing papers also said the office should find ways to "punish" those who convey the "wrong message." One senior officer told CNN that the plan would "formalize government deception, dishonesty and misinformation."
According to the Pentagon documents, Rendon would use his media analysis to conduct a worldwide propaganda campaign, deploying teams of information warriors to allied nations to assist them "in developing and delivering specific messages to the local population, combatants, front-line states, the media and the international community." Among the places Rendon's info-war teams would be sent were Jakarta, Indonesia; Islamabad, Pakistan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Cairo; Ankara, Turkey; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The teams would produce and script television news segments "built around themes and story lines supportive of U.S. policy objectives."
Rendon was also charged with engaging in "military deception" online -- an activity once assigned to the OSI. The company was contracted to monitor Internet chat rooms in both English and Arabic -- and "participate in these chat rooms when/if tasked." Rendon would also create a Web site "with regular news summaries and feature articles. Targeted at the global public, in English and at least four (4) additional languages, this activity also will include an extensive e-mail push operation." These techniques are commonly used to plant a variety of propaganda, including false information.
Still another newly formed propaganda operation in which Rendon played a major part was the Office of Global Communications, which operated out of the White House and was charged with spreading the administration's message on the War in Iraq. Every morning at 9:30, Rendon took part in the White House OGC conference call, where officials would discuss the theme of the day and who would deliver it. The office also worked closely with the White House Iraq Group, whose high-level members, including recently indicted Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby, were responsible for selling the war to the American public.
Never before in history had such an extensive secret network been established to shape the entire world's perception of a war. "It was not just bad intelligence -- it was an orchestrated effort," says Sam Gardner, a retired Air Force colonel who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College. "It began before the war, was a major effort during the war and continues as post-conflict distortions."
In the first weeks following the September 11th attacks, Rendon operated at a frantic pitch. "In the early stages it was fielding every ground ball that was coming, because nobody was sure if we were ever going to be attacked again," he says. "It was 'What do you know about this, what do you know about that, what else can you get, can you talk to somebody over here?' We functioned twenty-four hours a day. We maintained situational awareness, in military terms, on all things related to terrorism. We were doing 195 newspapers and 43 countries in fourteen or fifteen languages. If you do this correctly, I can tell you what's on the evening news tonight in a country before it happens. I can give you, as a policymaker, a six-hour break on how you can affect what's going to be on the news. They'll take that in a heartbeat."
The Bush administration took everything Rendon had to offer. Between 2000 and 2004, Pentagon documents show, the Rendon Group received at least thirty-five contracts with the Defense Department, worth a total of $50 million to $100 million.
The mourners genuflected, made the sign of the cross and took their seats along the hard, shiny pews of Our Lady of Victories Catholic Church. It was April 2nd, 2003 -- the start of fall in the small Australian town of Glenelg, an aging beach resort of white Victorian homes and soft, blond sand on Holdback Bay. Rendon had flown halfway around the world to join nearly 600 friends and family who were gathered to say farewell to a local son and amateur football champ, Paul Moran. Three days into the invasion of Iraq, the freelance journalist and Rendon employee had become the first member of the media to be killed in the war -- a war he had covertly helped to start.
Moran had lived a double life, filing reports for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and other news organizations, while at other times operating as a clandestine agent for Rendon, enjoying what his family calls his "James Bond lifestyle." Moran had trained Iraqi opposition forces in photographic espionage, showing them how to covertly document Iraqi military activities, and had produced pro-war announcements for the Pentagon. "He worked for the Rendon Group in London," says his mother, Kathleen. "They just send people all over the world -- where there are wars."
Moran was covering the Iraq invasion for ABC, filming at a Kurdish-controlled checkpoint in the city of Sulaymaniyah, when a car driven by a suicide bomber blew up next to him. "I saw the car in a kind of slow-motion disintegrate," recalls Eric Campbell, a correspondent who was filming with Moran. "A soldier handed me a passport, which was charred. That's when I knew Paul was dead."
As the Mass ended and Moran's Australian-flag-draped coffin passed by the mourners, Rendon lifted his right arm and saluted. He refused to discuss Moran's role in the company, saying only that "Paul worked for us on a number of projects." But on the long flight back to Washington, across more than a dozen time zones, Rendon outlined his feelings in an e-mail: "The day did begin with dark and ominous clouds much befitting the emotions we all felt -- sadness and anger at the senseless violence that claimed our comrade Paul Moran ten short days ago and many decades of emotion ago."
The Rendon Group also organized a memorial service in London, where Moran first went to work for the company in 1990. Held at Home House, a private club in Portman Square where Moran often stayed while visiting the city, the event was set among photographs of Moran in various locations around the Middle East. Zaab Sethna, who organized the al-Haideri media exclusive in Thailand for Moran and Judith Miller, gave a touching tribute to his former colleague. "I think that on both a personal and professional level Paul was deeply admired and loved by the people at the Rendon Group," Sethna later said.
Although Moran was gone, the falsified story about weapons of mass destruction that he and Sethna had broadcast around the world lived on. Seven months earlier, as President Bush was about to argue his case for war before the U.N., the White House had given prominent billing to al-Haideri's fabricated charges. In a report ironically titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception," the administration referred to al-Haideri by name and detailed his allegations -- even though the CIA had already determined them to be lies. The report was placed on the White House Web site on September 12th, 2002, and remains there today. One version of the report even credits Miller's article for the information.
Miller also continued to promote al-Haideri's tale of Saddam's villainy. In January 2003, more than a year after her first article appeared, Miller again reported that Pentagon "intelligence officials" were telling her that "some of the most valuable information has come from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri." His interviews with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Miller added, "ultimately resulted in dozens of highly credible reports on Iraqi weapons-related activity and purchases, officials said."
Finally, in early 2004, more than two years after he made the dramatic allegations to Miller and Moran about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, al-Haideri was taken back to Iraq by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. On a wide-ranging trip through Baghdad and other key locations, al-Haideri was given the opportunity to point out exactly where Saddam's stockpiles were hidden, confirming the charges that had helped to start a war.
In the end, he could not identify a single site where illegal weapons were buried.
As the war in Iraq has spiraled out of control, the Bush administration's covert propaganda campaign has intensified. According to a secret Pentagon report personally approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003 and obtained by Rolling Stone, the Strategic Command is authorized to engage in "military deception" -- defined as "presenting false information, images or statements." The seventy-four-page document, titled "Information Operations Roadmap," also calls for psychological operations to be launched over radio, television, cell phones and "emerging technologies" such as the Internet. In addition to being classified secret, the road map is also stamped noforn, meaning it cannot be shared even with our allies.
As the acknowledged general of such propaganda warfare, Rendon insists that the work he does is for the good of all Americans. "For us, it's a question of patriotism," he says. "It's not a question of politics, and that's an important distinction. I feel very strongly about that personally. If brave men and women are going to be put in harm's way, they deserve support." But in Iraq, American troops and Iraqi civilians were put in harm's way, in large part, by the false information spread by Rendon and the men he trained in information warfare. And given the rapid growth of what is known as the "security-intelligence complex" in Washington, covert perception managers are likely to play an increasingly influential role in the wars of the future.
Indeed, Rendon is already thinking ahead. Last year, he attended a conference on information operations in London, where he offered an assessment on the Pentagon's efforts to manipulate the media. According to those present, Rendon applauded the practice of embedding journalists with American forces. "He said the embedded idea was great," says an Air Force colonel who attended the talk. "It worked as they had found in the test. It was the war version of reality television, and for the most part they did not lose control of the story." But Rendon also cautioned that individual news organizations were often able to "take control of the story," shaping the news before the Pentagon asserted its spin on the day's events.
"We lost control of the context," Rendon warned. "That has to be fixed for the next war."
James Bamford is the best-selling author of "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies" (2004) and "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" (2001). This is his first article for Rolling Stone.
P6 is throwing down on the false hype of "acting white".
He quotes someone else:
Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.
Ya'll go visit now. Ya here?
I don't like doing this, but:
in·fer·ence
1 a the act of passing from one proposition, statement, or judgment
considered as true to another whose truth is believed to follow from
that of the former
im·ply
2 : to involve or indicate by inference, association, or necessary
consequence rather than by direct statement
When I heard Bill Bennet's comments, I heard them in full context.
My take on the matter was to think that if all Black babies were
aborted, some fraction of those Black babies would turn to crime. I
never assumed the statement meant ALL Black babies would become
criminals. And, statistically speaking, I'm right. In fact, most won't be criminals. But for those that would turn to crime, since they wouldn't be around, the crime rate would have to go down.
The same applies if Bennett used whites instead of Blacks or if he said male babies only or if he said if we somehow removed all males between the age of 15-30.
In looking at the responses to Bennett's remarks, there seems to be a
strong thought that states Bennett meant all Black babies aborted
would have been criminals. No where do I see that in Bennett's remarks.
However, going further, it seems to me that Bennett's comments are not what's making the racists feel comfort, it's the replies that confirm the idea that most Blacks are criminals.
Maybe I've missed it, but the fact that most Blacks are NOT criminals, is being lost, to me, with the knee jerk reactions.
That's what is giving comfort to the racists.
I'm working on an experimental project involving black attitudes towards HIV/AIDS. OF course a significant part of the project deals with black attitudes towards "down-low" behavior. While putting the finishing touches on the proposal I come across this article. I am not familiar with NYC suburbs at all...but I assume that if the interviewees were black, the journalist would've said so.
So we're talking about suburban men, often married, cruising playground parking lots for quick sex.
With men.
I'm still in the process of reading, but I see no catchy label (no "down-low") to describe the process. Once the entire "down-low" meme caught fire, folks in the know argued that it was never just a 'black' thing. But I'm thinking a google search will report very differently.
While waiting for the rest of the family to start the day's tasks, I was reading the opinion pages of the Washington Post when I saw this article by Donna Brazile.
In it, she states that she stands with President Bush ready to rebuild New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf area hit by Katrina.
On Thursday night President Bush spoke to the nation from my city. I am not a Republican. I did not vote for George W. Bush -- in fact, I worked pretty hard against him in 2000 and 2004. But on Thursday night, after watching him speak from the heart, I could not have been prouder of the president and the plan he outlined to empower those who lost everything and to rebuild the Gulf Coast.
...
Bush talked about how we bury our family and friends. We grieve and mourn. We march to a solemn song and then we rejoice and step out and form the second line. That line is now open to every American to join us in rebuilding a great region of this country. New Orleans will rise again. My hometown is down but not out, and with the help of every American, it will be back on its feet, bigger and brighter than ever.
Mr. President, I am ready for duty. I am ready to stir those old pots again. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.
I wrote earlier that I thought it would be hard for Black Democrats to not back what was being said.
Yeah.
I told you so.
I think the opinion expressed in this piece, says it all.
It ought to be OK for conservatives to say that. But the conservative movement's principles have given way to partisanship. The words "conservative" and "Republican" are now interchangeable, and it's more important to protect the party than to hew to core values.
Or course, when Clinton was in office, the same could be said of liberal groups. For a great example, look at the response of NOW to Clinton's Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The Watts Riots, Burned Into Memory
By Roger Wilkins
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; A15
John McWhorter is right to say that we ought to pause and remember the Watts riots of 40 years ago and ponder their implication for America's present and future ["Burned, Baby, Burned: Watts and the Tragedy of Black America," Outlook, Aug. 14]. I take strong issue, however, with the conclusions he draws from his review of the events in Watts and South Central Los Angeles in 1965.
I think the difference between McWhorter and me arises in large measure from our profoundly different perspectives on the event. He writes that he was born two months after the riots occurred and that his conclusions are based on his research on the subject. Mine are based largely on what I learned when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent me to Watts 40 years ago this month as a part of two federal teams -- one headed by former Florida governor LeRoy Collins and the next by then-deputy attorney general Ramsey Clark -- both charged with helping to end the violence and figuring out what had caused it.
McWhorter dismisses the conventional wisdom that the riots occurred because of the miserable conditions in the bleakest ghettos of what was then America's most glamorous city, and he notes that "the National Urban League had rated Los Angeles the best city in the nation for blacks to live in." That might have been true of Crenshaw or other upscale black neighborhoods, but not of South Central and Watts. In one community meeting I arranged for Collins and two others I set up for Clark, the bitterness and anguish laced through the testimony of poor neighborhood residents were heart-rending and, when they spoke of the city's neglect, just cause for indignation.
----
More at the link provided.
Colbert King in the Washington Post gets around to talking about what conservative talk show hosts were pushing for as long as three years ago..., designation of a black enemy within
Once upon a time the nation felt threatened. Fear of civil disturbances and unlawfulness by domestic groups reached the White House and Justice Department. In the name of protecting the nation, the FBI was mandated to "expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize" groups that posed a danger to national security. They called it COINTELPRO.To make the program work within the African American community, the FBI created a "ghetto informant program" and recruited thousands of people to watch suspected militants in the black community. The FBI monitored bank accounts and trips, examined income tax returns and launched dirty operations to besmirch and "neutralize" so-called "Key Black Extremists." And it didn't take much to get labeled and investigated by the government.
Shortly after the London bombings, it became fashionable for some American commentators to cite the alienation of British Muslims as an example of a massive failure of assimilation -- a state of affairs, they asserted, that is inconceivable in the United States.
Americanization, went their argument, has virtually eliminated teeming groups of disaffected Islamic immigrants within our shores.
Well, that may be true but it's not the whole truth concerning American Muslims.
Islam in the United States is not solely the province of immigrants from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The largest and fastest-growing ethnic group of American Muslims is African Americans, whose estimated numbers range between 1.3 million and 2 million. Most, by the way, are Sunni Muslims and not followers of Minister Louis Farrakhan's racially exclusive Nation of Islam.
What's more, the group within the African American Muslim community that is experiencing the most explosive growth is probably the least assimilated: black inmates. Good statistics are hard to come by, but one estimate places the number of Muslim converts in prison above 250,000. What brings them to Islam? Survival? Acceptance? Rejection of Christianity? Spiritual transformation?
One thing for sure: It's not Americanization.
Which gets us to the FBI, converts to Islam and a possible terrorist plot in California.
When FBI director Robert S. Mueller III joined us at The Post for lunch in June 2002, Muslim converts in prison seemed to be the last folks on his mind. At the time, Mueller was preoccupied with discussing the bureau's new post-9/11 mandate to detect and foil terrorist actions against American targets before they happened.
Not so today.
Mueller recently told Congress that one area of the war on terrorism that causes him great concern is the potential for extremist groups such as al Qaeda to recruit radicalized American Muslim converts. Mueller drew a bead on the American prison system, which he described in written testimony as "fertile ground for extremists who exploit both a prisoner's conversion to Islam while still in prison, as well as their socioeconomic status and placement in the community upon their release."
That concern is no longer theoretical.
This week brought news that three California men are currently being investigated as part of a possible plot to launch assaults against National Guard facilities this Sept. 11 and against Jewish targets on Yom Kippur.
One of them, 25-year-old Levar Haney Washington, had served time at the California State Prison in Folsom and, during his incarceration, converted to a radical Islamic group known as Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh. Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21, arrested with Washington on unrelated robbery charges, recently converted to Islam. The third man in custody, Hammad Riaz Samana, 21, is a Los Angeles resident. Washington and Patterson are African American; Samana is a Pakistani national.
Authorities, according to news reports out of California, are trying to link the three men to Peter Martinez, 36, and Kevin Lamar James, 29, two state prison inmates and members of the same radical Islamic group. Martinez and James reportedly had recruited other inmates to join in a "jihad against the United States."
There's talk that this case could represent a new U.S. front in the war against terrorism: homegrown terrorists among prisoners and former inmates with ties to Islamic extremists. They cite the case of Jose Padilla, the ex-gang member from Chicago now held without charges as a suspected terrorist. He converted to Islam while in jail. Could those in California be the latest incarnation?
In the fullness of time, maybe we'll know more.
Yesterday the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Southern California issued a statement urging the public "not to use this case to generalize and incriminate all Muslim inmates." It's a thought worth holding.
First, let's lay down a marker: Protecting the nation from terrorism must remain one of the government's highest priorities. Finding those who would aid or carry out attacks should top the list. And the effort must necessarily be intelligence-driven and proactive. Waiting until the bomb explodes is stupid. It's the government's duty to secure Americans at home and bring enemies to justice.
But we can't mangle the Constitution in the process.
Mueller, to his credit, assured us at lunch that his use of new investigative powers would remain behind, and not get ahead of, the law. That's also worth keeping in mind even as his agents work with law enforcement and corrections officials to defeat what he has termed "the recruitment and radicalization of prison inmates."
Thousands of inmates have converted to Islam; thousands more convert each year. Questions worth asking: How will authorities go about monitoring prison proselytizing? Who gets to decide when an American Muslim inmate is "radicalized"? How will the FBI staunch "recruitment"?
Recent American history justifies those questions and more.
Once upon a time the nation felt threatened. Fear of civil disturbances and unlawfulness by domestic groups reached the White House and Justice Department. In the name of protecting the nation, the FBI was mandated to "expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize" groups that posed a danger to national security. They called it COINTELPRO.
To make the program work within the African American community, the FBI created a "ghetto informant program" and recruited thousands of people to watch suspected militants in the black community. The FBI monitored bank accounts and trips, examined income tax returns and launched dirty operations to besmirch and "neutralize" so-called "Key Black Extremists." And it didn't take much to get labeled and investigated by the government.
Such tactics were unworthy of America then. They still are today. Even in a war against radical extremists -- in and out of jail -- to whom our Constitution means nothing.
Just saw Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr., PhD, Professor Evolutionary Biology/Life Sciences, Arizona State University West, Phoenix, AZ on Tony Brown's Journal. I'm simultaneously saddened and gladdened by the Work of this distinguished researcher and scholar. On the one hand, it's heartening to see someone cooly and authoritatively demolish racist psychopathology across multiple sectors of its expression. On the other, it's just plain sad that a brother even has to bother wasting so many of his valuable and irreplaceable cycles on the uniquely American mental illness and moral plague.
Racism is not a necessary feature of human society though but coalitional allegiances might be ingrained. They have been and are a feature of present American society. People ask, 'Professor Graves, you say biological races are not real?' I say, 'Yes. Biological races are not real, but socialized races are real as a heart attack, and do not confuse those two.' There are no genetic barriers to dismantling racist ideology; it is a question of whether we want to.
A comprehensive discussion and presentation by Dr. Graves on the Myth of Race.
Drive by: First read this on Booker Rising.
Went to this blog to read his take on it.
Then went to the article, for which you must register.
Study counters beliefs about illegal immigrants
By Jessie Mangaliman
Mercury News
One quarter of the country's 10.3 million illegal immigrants have some college education and live with families, shattering a stereotype that this sector of the population is made up of poorly educated single men who work menial jobs, according to a national report released Tuesday.
...
Passel's report dismantled another widely held assumption: Only 3 percent of the undocumented immigrants work in agriculture. The greatest numbers, 33 percent, work in the service industry.
So much for the "Blacks won't work" bull.
Hat tip: Booker Rising
Playing the Race Card in the post-Willie Horton Era: The Impact of Racialized Codewords on support for punitive crime policy
Abstract: To date, little is known about the precise impact of racially coded words and phrases. Instead, most of what we know about racialized messages comes from studies that focus on pictorial racial cues (for example, the infamous "Willie Horton" ad) or on messages with an extensive textual narrative that is laced with implicit racial cues. Because in a "post-Horton" era strategic use of racially coded words will often be far more subtle than those explored in past studies, we investigate the power of a single phrase believed by many to carry strong racial connotations: "inner city." We do so by embedding an experiment in a national survey of whites, where a random half of respondents was asked whether they support spending money for prisons (versus antipoverty programs) to lock up "violent criminals," while the other half was asked about "violent inner city criminals." Consistent with the literature on issue framing, we find that whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded, "inner city" question. Our results demonstrate how easy it is to continue "playing the race card" in the post-Willie Horton era, as well as some of the limits of such framing effects among whites with more positive racial attitudes.
Within my circle, most of us are doing well, with 2 families suffering the affects of being laid off due to a weak telecommunications sector and health issues.
Blacks' economic optimism overtaken by pessimism
Six and a half years ago, the African-Americans in Maryland who thought the economy was improving outnumbered by 5 to 1 those who said the economy was worsening.
Today, the numbers are almost reversed, with blacks who are pessimistic outnumbering optimistic ones more than 3 to 1.
Experts say the shift in The Sun Poll of Maryland voters might have relatively little to do with the state's economic health - possibly relating more to state and national politics and whether African-Americans who tend to vote Democratic have confidence in a Republican-dominated government.
From 1998 through 2003, African-Americans in Maryland have been generally more optimistic than whites about the health of the state's economy. But for the past two years, blacks have been more likely to say the economy is getting worse, a recent Sun poll found.
The current survey, conducted April 11-13 among 1,000 likely voters in the 2006 Maryland gubernatorial election, revealed 42 percent of blacks said the economy is worsening, while 12 percent of blacks say it's getting better. The margin of error is 3.2 percent, though it is slightly larger for individual demographic groups.
There's no simple answer to explain the grim economic outlook held by Maryland's African-American population.
Theories range from disparities in educational attainment - which can result in blacks earning less, on average, than whites - to black unemployment figures, which have been consistently higher than the Maryland average.
In 2003, Maryland's average black unemployment rate was 6.7 percent, nearly twice the whites' 3.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"I guess as long as you have a job, you're doing OK, but if you don't have a job, it's not good," said Michael Small, 44, a Maryland Transit Administration bus driver from Baltimore, who added that he thinks the economy could be doing better.
But some economists suggest attitudes have more to do with politics than economic indicators such as unemployment and job growth.
"In 1998, we had a Democratic governor and a Democratic president, and today we have neither," said Anirban Basu, chief executive officer of Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore economic and policy consulting firm.
The general thrust of this piece is what I've been writing for years in the ether that is the internet.
It appears that if we hear something negative about ourselves we are quick to take ownership. “Black people are drugs addicts and drug dealers,” and our response? “Yep, that’s us.” “Most Black folks are lazy and on welfare,” and our response? “Yep, that’s us.” It seems that we don’t challenge, we won’t question and we do ourselves a great disservice.
...
...
If we are so ready to condemn, then why are we not equally ready to commend? Where was the “well done” for our young black sisters when the press release from the National Center for Health Statistics (dated December 17, 2003) stated that teenage pregnancy had gone down by 30 percent in the past decade and that the sharpest drop of any group was African-American teenage girls – 40% in the last decade and 50% since 1991? Where was the collective “bravo” for our young people when the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of the Census acknowledged that the African-American dropout rate (as of 2001) was at 10.9% - the lowest it’s ever been? Also, it was almost identical to the national average (meaning all students) of 10.7%. Most of us appear to be unaware of this information – so it appears that our youth aren’t the only ones who need to study more. Yes, I’d love to see the dropout rate down to 0%; but that shouldn’t preclude us from celebrating what we have achieved. I think it would be wonderful if none of our young women became pregnant in their teenage years, but I am proud of what they have done. The high-profile prophets of black negativity, who are so geared up to impugn our youth, could not be found to herald their triumphs just as enthusiastically.
When social security reform is mentioned, I keep asking about survivor benefits and disability benefits.
I love the idea about having money in private accounts. But, that doesn't mean the plans shouldn't be investigated.
From Salon:
To begin with, there is no evidence that blacks, as a group, are cheated by Social Security. Yes, whites do live longer than blacks, which means that the average white woman will collect more benefit checks than the average black man. But, Baker points out, blacks also generally make less money than whites, which means that they get a higher rate of return on their contributions to the system. And because African-Americans suffer higher rates of disability than whites, they draw more from Social Security's disability benefits than whites. Meanwhile, spouses and minor children of African-Americans heavily depend on the system's survivor benefits. When economists have studied all that blacks put into the system compared with all they get out of it, Baker says, blacks, as a group, aren't being treated unfairly -- and they may even be doing better than whites.
I will have to look at the numbers to make a conclusion, although something tells me all of the numbers are cooked.
In a Social Security briefing paper, Shelton declares that "almost 80 percent of African Americans over age 65 depend on Social Security for more than half of their income, and more than half rely on it for 90 percent or more of their income." Basically, she writes, "without the guaranteed Social Security benefits they receive today, the poverty rate among older African Americans would more than double, pushing most African American seniors into squalor and poverty during their most vulnerable years."
OK, the Republicans pulled the race card and now the opposition is pulling out their own race cards.
Ummmm....
I'm lazy.
Can someone point out the details of the study concerning Blacks belief about AIDS?
I was just told that the study was not a country-wide, but a study of opinions done in one city.
Armstrong Williams has lost media outlets. What about the others?
Armstrong Williams needs to disclose the names of other people who he knows also accepts money. Or, he needs to say that he will give those people X days to disclose themselves or he will do it.
Publicly, this will give the public an idea of what is going on with media pundits, whether they are partisans, idealists, or hired guns.
This is smelling on two levels. The first, it seems as though Armstrong Williams is being treated more harshly than others. Second, I wonder more how much this really goes on.
In fact, what the pundits call “black paranoia” is really what the Black Consensus looks like from inside the bubble of white American racism. Metaphors are dangerous, but bubbles are usually delicate and fragile things. An immense weight of lies and denial are already pressing down on the bubble of white racism and the load is about to get heavier. While African Americans and the rest of humanity outside the bubble are always hoping, praying and working for its collapse, we know not to count on it any time soon. And we know that even paranoiacs have some real enemies.
A superb think piece courtesy Bruce Dixon of The Black Commentator. All the links to the original story and mountain of evidence available in all its infernal glory thanks to BC. Savory seasonings to accompany and accentuate today's banquet of Alberto "Torturegate" Gonzalez having his day in the Senate.
George Will wrote a piece about welfare reform.
A small piece of it...
After the liberalization of welfare in the mid-1960s, the percentage of black children born to unmarried mothers reached 50 by 1976 (it is almost 70 today), and within a generation the welfare rolls quadrupled. But DeParle says people mistakenly thought people like Jobe were organizing their lives around having babies to get a check. Actually, he says, their lives were too disorganized for that.
P6 responds in a manner that's appropriate, I think. So, here's a quote from him:
You cannot read this paragraph without coming away feeling Mr. Will is implying the entire quadrupling of welfare rolls was due to the increase in Black children born out of wedlock. If asked was this his intent I'm sure he would say no. And yet you cannot read this paragraph without coming away feeling Mr. Will is implying the entire quadrupling of welfare rolls was due to the increase in Black children born out of wedlock.
After 9/11, there was a poll done that "showed" that Blacks favored profiling of "Arabs".
PROFILING OF ARABS
Polls say blacks tend to favor checks
By Ann Scales, Globe Staff, 9/30/2001WASHINGTON - African-Americans, whose treatment by the criminal
justice system gave rise to the phrase ''racial profiling,'' are more
likely than other racial groups to favor profiling and stringent
airport security checks for Arabs and Arab-Americans in the wake of
this month's terrorist attacks, two separate polls indicate.
The findings by the Gallup Organization and Zogby International were
met with varying degrees of disappointment and disbelief by black
activists and intellectuals, who struggled with explanations.
Roger Wilkins, a historian at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and the author of a new book on black patriotism, said he was
surprised and disappointed. ''I do not think that you beat people who
are trying to tear America down by turning your back on one of
America's core principles - the presumption of innocence,'' Wilkins
said.Arab-American leaders said the poll results may reflect the nation's
need to find a scapegoat, and said they didn't blame blacks for
harboring attitudes that are part of the fabric of this nation.
''I don't think it's in any way hostility'' by blacks, said John
Zogby, an Arab-American who conducted the Zogby poll. ''I think what
they are saying is, `We get profiled all the time and we survived.
Maybe they ought to, too.'''
Around Thanksgiving, I saw the Larry Elder Show where he referenced these numbers. Then, I shook my head and said to myself that I bet he knows the numbers don't add up.
How did I know the numbers didn't add up?
After reading that article in September, I decided to contact Zogby and Gallup to determine the internals of the poll: when it was taken, how many people were sampled, where the samples were taken, what were the questions, etc.
Zogby never returned my request for information, but I did get a response from the Gallup Organization.
Here are the numbers:
| Gallup Polling Data | |
| Number of people polled: | 1032 |
| Number of Blacks in the poll: | 71 |
| Percentage of Blacks in the poll: | 6.88% |
| Percentage of Blacks in the U.S. population: | 13% |
Because I this while Googling the USENET archives.
All changes to social security means that current and "near retirees" are probably in good shape. Other people are screwed.
Taxes will go up, most likely by ending the income level cap. Benefits will be "revised", probably by means testing.
I'm writing to the congress-criters who "represent" me. No matter what change, I want all caps on 401(K)s, 403(B)s, IRAs, SEP-IRAs, etc, lifted. AND I want a percentage of the money I've already paid in social security taxes, returned to me. I want all of it returned, but I'll "settle" for 10-20%.
Let me say from the start, I don't agree with saying someone who is Black, isn't "really Black" for some silly reason or another. That really makes no sense to me. But it also is asinine to say Blacks are prone to "group think." The fact is, if you take any amount of time to provide some thought to the idea, you realize "group think" is the standard of every society that is not in anarchy.
Think about the phrase "community standards". The people within the community, in some way, work to maintain the standard. When people step outside of those standards, the community works in some way to bring them back in, denounce them, or shun them. That's what the "not Black" charge is about.
When people use "group think" and apply it towards the Black community ( is it ever not applied to the Black community? ), it is always given a negative context. Then any "debate" from that point on is defending against "the negative" which is always harder.
Let's flip things just a little bit.
When J.C. Watts refused to back the anti-affirmative action package being developed in The House of Representatives, Wes Pruden, an editor at The Washington Times, wrote a column which stated, literally, that J.C. Watts knows why the Republicans need him to head the effort. Thus, he should get in line. When Watts refused to "get in line," Ken Hamblin used a segment of his radio talk show to denounce J.C. Watts.
As a side note: Did anyone else notice that for a short time, there were references to J.C. Watts being a pastor?
Then there is the saga concerning friends Shelby Steele and Glenn Loury. Those two, along with others, formed the now defunct Center for New Black Leadership. But guess what happened when there was a disagreement over Prop. 209:
http://phuakl.tripod.com/eTHOUGHT/Loury.html
A few days later, Steele phoned him. ''Where do you stand on race?'' Loury says Steele asked him. ''It's as if you're a racial loyalist here. I thought we all agreed.''''No, Shelby and I didn't agree,'' Loury says now. ''I was always aware that, whatever I thought about race, I'm still black. Shelby's position. . . . '' Loury starts to laugh. ''I was about to say, Shelby's position was that we had to completely transcend race, though I can imagine saying those words, too. But my heart wasn't in them, whereas he really meant it. How could it have been otherwise? His mother was a white woman. His wife is a white woman. When he looked at his own children's racial identity and wondered about an oppressive world that would say to those children, 'Choose sides' -- a dilemma I'd never faced -- Shelby's angle of vision was really quite different from my own. So in all honesty, it was I who betrayed him, not he who betrayed me.'' The two men have not spoken since that conversation.
What about the recent events of the current political season? Alan Keyes has mentioned his support for reparations for Blacks. After that, there was a mini-firestorm of opposition to Keyes for supporting such an idea.
"How dare he support reparations! He's gone off of the deep end!"
And then there is Clarence Thomas, who is known to surround himself with people who are similar in views to his.
Does it matter that the examples I used all involved Black people? Does it matter that the examples I used all involved "conservative Black" people?
I say it doesn't.
Let's be real!
The whining about "group think" isn't that people are thinking similarly, it's really about people thinking AGAINST what you are thinking and you don't like it.
The "group think" charge nothing more than a means of harassing people into thinking along your line of thinking, or at least not vocalizing opposition to your line of thinking.
And isn't that the complaint about "group think"?
I'll post more about this in a broader context. For now, I have real life concerns to take care of.
Collective thought, aka group think.
What a concept.
At a GOP convention, Colin Powell said he supported affirmative action and he was booed. No group think there.
Better yet, let a white person agree with Blacks on issues and sooner or later, someone will accuse that white person of being a "guilty white liberal."
So tell me why those who call people "guilty white liberals" are NOT taking part in group think. Aren't they assuming that all whites should think alike?
And if conservatives believe that Blacks don't need Black leaders, why are conservatives trying to pass off people like Jesse Lee Peterson as a Black leader?
Identifying as a "Black conservative". That's not "group think"?
Isn't it interesting that "Black conservatives" seem to have a scream of "victimology" when stating certain things? What's not "group thinking" on the misuse of such a silly phrase?
OK, so now this article has set off a round of posts by people. I'll say it's about damn time.
I've been arguing for some time now, that based on some readings I've made, the "acting white" charge may be over blown. Note, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. And, to be sure, one charge is one charge too much. But from my experience, when it happened to me, it came from someone who was not performing well. I saw it as an obvious case of envy. That's a lot different from it being a "Black culture thang."
LaShawn, Booker Rising, LKSpence, and Ambra make comments on this report about "Acting White". Not that anyone cares, but I've been talking about this for a bit. I've done it on email lists and on USENET.
Here's a sample of my USENET efforts. I'm quoting a study:
Most important, the study found that black students who belonged in academic honor societies were more likely than other black students to perceive themselves as "popular." At predominantly black schools, students in honor societies were more popular than students who had not been so honored. Cook and Ludwig conclude that the evidence "is not compelling" that nationwide black students who aspire to educational pursuits are ridiculed by their peers.
If there are stronger antiacademic norms among black adults, black parents would be expected to have reduced involvement with their children's schools relative to white parents. Our analysis of the NELS data finds that, on average, African American parents are at least as involved in their children's educations as white parents of similar means.The NELS 10th graders reported the frequency of different interactions
between their parents and school. As seen in Table 5, African American
parents are more likely to telephone their child's teacher, a
difference that increases once family socioeconomic status is
controlled. A greater propensity for African American parents to
contact school staff by telephone would, of course, be of limited
vallue if phone calls were a substitute for, rather than a complements
to, other forms of involvement in their child's schooling. But
analysis of the NELS datasuggests that African American parents are at
least as involved as white parents in other ways, as well. The results
shown in Talbe 5 indicated that almost 65 percent of African American
parents were reported by their children as having attended at least
one schoo meeting in the 1990 fall semester, vs about 56 percent for
white parents. Once family SES is controlled, this difference
increases to almost 14 percentage-point advantage in favor of African
American parents. Similar results are found in Table 5 for aprental
attendance at school events.
Again, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I am saying that before people jump on the bash Black culture band wagon, get an idea of what you're speaking about. Is it "culture" or one on one envy?
And why doesn't the "sterotype threat" idea get more examination? After all, people swooned when George W. Bush used "bigotry of low expectations" and it's the same thing under a different name.
This appeared in The Washington Post. It's a story about a Black farmer who is part of the FDA discrimination case.
This story has a lot woven into it. It's a good read.
It has what, I think, most Blacks know about and do every day: persevere. Here's a man, facing some serious odds and family troubles, but still he keeps going.
At first, I thought he just over extended himself. And, in fact, he did. But he kept on going. His drive is what is familiar to me.
Some may say, "This is an example of not letting discrimination stand in your way." To that I say, most Blacks do that and by saying what you did, you demonstrate how LITTLE you think of Blacks, in general.
One of the most censored stories of 2003 points out the local lie to the phrase "Fair and Balanced" as applies to Fox News, and other media outlets. How exactly is the market supposed to work if we can't get correct information?
Gallup's recent polls have been a bit off compared to others, noting a ten percentage point gap at least between Bush and Kerry, whereas others have found the race to be closer. Given the volatility of this season's polls in general what I'm noting may be old news, but it appears that one possible reason for the difference is because of Gallup's assumptions. In as much as polls can drive behavior and attitudes, this is a significant issue.
The next large document in this series begins with the following executive summary:
Download file
There are major differences in the perceptions of blacks and whites about the status of race relations in this country today. Whites are more positive than blacks on a variety of perceptual measures of how well blacks are faring in our society, and how they are treated in the local community. These gaps are in some instances smaller than they were in the 1960s, but have not narrowed in recent years.Whites also tend to view themselves as having very little personal prejudice against blacks, but perceive that other whites in their area have much higher levels of prejudice against blacks. Blacks also ascribe to whites significantly higher levels of racial prejudice than whites give themselves. Blacks claim that they have little prejudice against whites.
Whites express tolerant racial views across a variety of measures, and a majority of whites indicate a preference for living, working and sending their children to school in a mixed racial environment. A majority of whites say they would not object if blacks in great numbers moved into their neighborhood, or if their child went to a school which was majority black. Almost no whites would object to voting for a black for President, and six out of ten now approve of interracial marriage. The over time changes in a number of these attitudes have been profound. There has thus been a significant decline in the past several decades in the number of whites who express overtly prejudicial sentiments.
Whites and blacks have distinctly different views on the role of the government perhaps building off of their differential perceptions of the status of race relations in the U.S. today. Whites want the number of affirmative action programs to decrease or at the least stay the same, and feel that blacks should help themselves rather than relying on the government. Blacks hold the contrary views.
The average white American tends to live, work and send their child to school in environments which are mostly or all white. Blacks, on the other hand, have relatively high degrees of contact in these everyday settings with whites. Less than a majority of blacks live in mostly or all black neighborhoods, and only a fourth send their children to schools that are mostly or all black. Both blacks and whites, however, are very highly likely to worship only with members of their race.
Blacks remain less satisfied than whites with major aspects of their lives, but the satisfaction gap between the races on most of these measures has been closing significantly over time. On some measures of personal satisfaction, there are no differences at all between comparably matched groups of highly educated, higher income blacks and whites.
Only a minority of blacks three out of ten or less say that they have felt unfairly treated because of their race over the last 30 days in each of a series of everyday life settings. Retail shopping is the setting in which the highest number of blacks perceive discrimination within the last 30 days. Young black males are particularly likely to say they have felt discrimination while shopping, and in terms of contact with the police. A little less than half of all blacks say that they have been unfairly treated in the last 30 days in at least one of the settings used in the research.
So, here is a quote that I hear a lot:
The war on poverty has failed. We have spent a lot of money on it, and the poverty rate is virtually unchanged.
[ On edit ] Well, that's an interesting comment.
But for the war on poverty to be declared a failure, it would have to be demonstrated that the poverty rate would have been lower without it. But, no one can demonstrate that it would have been lower.
Conversely, no one can demonstrate that without the war on poverty, the poverty rate would have been higher.
Subtitle: Checkin' a Fool IV...
Ehrlich stated that Blacks expecting Blacks to vote a certain way is racist.
Let's look at Ehrlich's and Steele's support for Maryland's MBE program. They revamped the program to get more participation of minority business in Maryland government contracts. Before they were in office, minority businesses received 1 or 2% of Maryland government contracts. They have set a goal of 20%, and the numbers of Blacks getting Maryland government contracts has already risen.
Wait....
MBE stands for Minority Business Enterprise.
Oh....
Wait...
A GOAL of 20%?
Don't your GOP peers call that quotas? Don't your GOP peers say that by supporting "quotas," you are "telling Blacks that they are not capable of meeting normal standards"?
Wait.... Don't your GOP peers call that RACIST?!?!?!?!?!?
You've been checked fool!!!!!!
WHAT!!!!!!
P. S. I voted for Ehrlich.
Why is the use of "guilty white liberal" not the same as the use of "Uncle Tom"?
I like Tavis Smiley's NPR show. He generally has guests to represent "both sides" of the issue.
On The Tom Joyner Morning Show, he's more himself, which means he's more of a Democrat supporter. As such, he seems to give them a pass. Although sometimes he will make comments that lets the audience know he's not happy.
When Clinton was in office, Tavis was very easy on the administration. When Gore ran for the election, he was harder on Gore. This was especially the case when Gore's "short list" didn't include any Blacks.
His commentary on the matter was biting. During the same race, he did a commentary piece that caused the CBC and the DNC to fear that the Black vote may stay home. At the end of the election cycle, he said that he thought it was time that Blacks access their support of Democrats. But nothing really came out of that commentary.
A few weeks ago, Tavis commented on Blacks supporting Democrats but getting nothing in return. He made it a 2 part commentary. And the end of the first part, I thought he would announce that Blacks should sit this election out, or that Blacks should register as independents or as Republicans, en masse. But it didn't go that way. Instead he said that Blacks should register and vote in this election.
After he came back from vacation, he "came up with an idea" to canvas "Blacks" to see what was of high interest to Blacks. He decided to do this so that a "contract with Black America" could be developed. His aim is to get any politico who wants the Black vote to sign this contract. If they don't sign it, they shouldn't get the support of Blacks.
Fundamentally, I like the idea of not giving your vote to politicians who don't support you or stand for what you believe. So in one respect this is a good thing. But suppose a Democrat signs and a Republican signs. Then what?
And suppose the contract contains things that Republicans say they are against, so the Republican politican doesn't sign it and the Democrat does signs it. But then once in office, nothing happens?
Then what?
Suppose vouchers are one of the things that the contract says politicians should support? Do you think a Democrat will support it?
The ideas of what should be in the contract will come from people who email Tavis and those who take the time to join in on a webchat.
The Black America Web website has details.
Since this is the internet, suppose the email and webchat gets "hi-jacked" by Republicans?
It will be interesting to see what comes out of it. I dont' think much will come out of it.
What's in a name? To me, other than the means to address a person, not much.
If parents decide to attribute more to the means of addressing their child, that's fine.
This piece by The Black Informant provides his insight into giving Black children a "Black sounding name".
In the end, since all names are made up, all names are legitimate, even if they do seem silly.
Booker Rising gets right to the point. One that seems to be untouchable.
The NAACP is not getting the younger Blacks to join their organization. That's the reason why they chose Ben Chavis to head their organization. He was said to have the ability to cross the generational divide. He couldn't do it, plus he drove the NAACP further into the red.
Skip to today and the NAACP still has the same problem. This, along with some of their own actions, is causing the NAACP membership to fall.
So I still wonder why "Black conservatives" feel the need to target the organization as the enemy. Let the "natural order of events" do them in.
Or is it something else that is feared?
Let's assume you have 100 of gidgets. Of those 100, 5 are purple. The rest of them are brown. For some reason, the brown gidgets start to turn purple.
At t0, there are 5 that are purple. At t1, there are 10 that are purple. That's a change of 100%.
At t2, there are 15 that are purple. That's a change of 50% over t1.
At t3, there are 20 that are purple. That's a change of 33 1/3% over t2.
Even though there is a constant increase of 5 units per unit of time, the percentage of change falls.
Remember that the next time someone says:
In fact, the growth of the black middle class was more rapid before affirmative action programs were put in place.
Ask more questions to determine how this is measured and what is meant.
"Black conservatives" say they are shunned and called names from other Blacks.
Let's address the latter, first. Rush Limbaugh frequently states that conservatives, in general, are blasted and called names. His term is racistbigotedsexisthomophobes. So why do "Black conservatives" and white conservatives point out the "special case" of Black conservatives being called names?
I've been in a circle of "Black conservatives" and have been called names for disagreeing with them. All the while, I was respectful. By the end, however, most of them started giving me respect because, I think, I was able to present my thoughts in a logical manner.
Now, let's address the former.
To do that, I like to use This example of Glenn Loury's treatment from the LEFT and the RIGHT.
Some choice bits:
He befriended William Bennett and William Kristol, his colleague at the Kennedy School. He sat at President Reagan's table at a White House dinner, and he socialized with Clarence Thomas. (Although the two no longer speak, Loury still keeps a picture in his office of himself with Thomas.)
In 1995, he founded the Center for New Black Leadership with a group of conservative black intellectuals that included his friend Shelby Steele, the essayist.
He was horrified by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's 1994 book, ''The Bell Curve,'' a social Darwinist tract arguing that black poverty was rooted in inferior intelligence. He was even more appalled by ''The End of Racism,'' the lurid assault on ''black failure'' written by Dinesh D'Souza when he was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Not only did his conservative friends not share his rage; they were taken aback by it and tried, he says, to muzzle him. Commentary, which had welcomed Loury's writing in the past, refused to publish his critique of ''The Bell Curve.'' And though The Weekly Standard ran Loury's caustic review of D'Souza's book, it also published a lengthy response from the author. In 1995, Loury resigned from the American Enterprise Institute over its support of D'Souza.
Finally, this point:
A few days later, Steele phoned him. ''Where do you stand on race?'' Loury says Steele asked him. ''It's as if you're a racial loyalist here. I thought we all agreed.''
''No, Shelby and I didn't agree,'' Loury says now. ''I was always aware that, whatever I thought about race, I'm still black. Shelby's position. . . . '' Loury starts to laugh. ''I was about to say, Shelby's position was that we had to completely transcend race, though I can imagine saying those words, too. But my heart wasn't in them, whereas he really meant it. How could it have been otherwise? His mother was a white woman. His wife is a white woman. When he looked at his own children's racial identity and wondered about an oppressive world that would say to those children, 'Choose sides' -- a dilemma I'd never faced -- Shelby's angle of vision was really quite different from my own. So in all honesty, it was I who betrayed him, not he who betrayed me.'' The two men have not spoken since that conversation.
Is that enough to show that "both sides" do it?
So what if some Blacks refer to themselves as African-Americans?
It's nothing. It doesn't mean they think they are not American.
There are Blacks in the military who use that term. Are you going to say they are not thinking of themselves as Americans?
How about Condi Rice and Colin Powell, who have used the term as well?
I use Black because it's easier to say and write. Remember, short and to the point.
Besides, African-American says nothing about the region of Africa my ancestors came from. In short, it's not definitive enough to suit me. But if you call me by that term, I don't sweat it.
Consider this...
A pre-teen/teen has heard many unkind remarks about person A. At some point, that pre-teen/teen meets person A at a celebration of achievements of the peers of that pre-teen/teen. Person A offers personal words of encouragement to the pre-teen/teen. When addressing the group, person A gives words of encouragement and provides information to help keep them on the right path.
A pre-teen/teen has heard many unkind remarks about person B. At some point, the pre-teen/teen is on a class trip when person B comes out of his office, and motions the group to come into his office. Person B then offers encouraging words to the group of which the pre-teen/teen is a member.
In both cases, what do you think the pre-teen/teen will think of the people who offerred encouragement? What do you think they will think of the people who offered the unkind remarks?
Suppose I told you that both instances happen to be true?
Suppose I told you that person A is Jesse Jackson/Q. Mfume/Elijah Cummings?
Suppose I told you that person B is Clarence Thomas?
I watched today's 9/11 Commission hearings with interest because Dr. Rice was on the mic. It should be readily apparent to all that I don't like Rice's politics, I don't like her boss' politics, and I think they should both be booted for massive incompetence, and for their marked indifference to principles of reason. But while I was watching her take on the commission, I began to have a significant amount of sympathy towards her. I thought she was being badgered unnecessarily, and that she did an excellent job of dealing with her critics.
But listening to her on the radio was another story entirely. I found myself siding with the commission--my default position--and railing against Dr. Rice's stalling tactics. Why the difference? The pattern of questioning didn't change...nor did Dr. Rice's responses? The only thing I can figure is that when I was watching her being spoken down to....literally....there was an implicit racial dynamic at work which had an impact on my assessment.
I didn't watch the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings. Nor did I watch much of the OJ trial. I'm wondering if the same dynamics were at work. I'm going to send a set of random trackbacks to other black bloggers predisposed to think like me in the hopes that I can get some traction on this dynamic. I know about the research, but I'd like to know whether in this specific case, it was me or if there was something else going on.
George? Prometheus? Ward? Mike? Lynne Luvah's around here somewhere but I can't find her at the moment.
So I'm teaching my public opinion class today and the subject is sophistication and ideology. In the public opinion literature, "sophistication" is associated with increased political participation, higher interest, and a host of other things.
It is also associated with basing candidate evaluations on policy, as opposed to personna.
So it is possible the reason that Sharpton doesn't have policy proposals is because he assumed that black people would make their voting decisions based on personna. Whether he "spoke truth to power." Whether he "stood up for black folks." This makes a great deal of sense to me. I still disagree with it. I assume a great degree of sophistication among the black electorate, far more sophistication than that possessed by their white counterparts. I wonder why Sharpton doesn't assume more?
A quote from Att. Gen. Aschcroft:
"Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions," he said.
This sounds like bad science fiction. Well...perhaps "bad" is the wrong word. "Pulp" is probably a better term. I can easily recall lines like this delivered by Commander Cody or Flash Gordon watching their reruns in the seventies. One argument could be that these folks mean well, and are excellent at what they do. Except for speaking. Kind of like what I was talking about yesterday when I said that I thought Bush was smart...just not "smart like THAT."
But it worries me that we don't have more "smart like that" folks in office (not just in the White House).
Presidential campaigns are usually driven by soundbites. Bush says for example that he wants to only appoint "strict constructionist judges". There's a whole lot of information hiddeb behind that icon if you just click on it. For both liberals and conservatives, we take that term to mean that he's going to appoint people who will take an aggressive stance against abortion and a host of other issues.
Taking Michael Jackson seriously is the last thing I want to do, but we have something serious going on here.
Here is the latest scoop that I have heard from Najee Ali, director of LA based Project Islamic Hope. Ali is the man who helped get legislation passed in the California and Nevada pursuant to the failure to prosecute negligent witness David Cash in the murder of seven year old Sherrice Iverson. He is the leader of an organization which has its rhetorical foot deep into R Kelly's butt. So here is a man with no problems defending children. He believes Jackson to be innocent.
Not being a legal type myself, I don't know what the reasons are that the district attorneys' office would bypass the grand jury process to persue a felony conviction. What I do know is, that according to Ali, Jacko's bail is set to 3 million dollars for child abuse, whereas Robert Blake, accused of murder, had his bail set at 1 million, as did Phil Spector, similarly charged with murder. Depending on your suseptibility to outrage at the criminal justice system, this can be merely curious or a complete outrage. Ali leans towards the latter.
Jackson is a good guy who has donated many millions to black charities over the years, quietly and consistently. So there are a number of good reasons for him to have black political support. But even if he didn't do any of that, I have learned something about Jackson today that makes me respect him a great deal - for which if he did nothing else in his entire life this would be good enough. We are mostly aware that Jackson owns most of the Beatles' songs. What I didn't know was that he owns most of Elvis' recordings too. Most symbolic of all, he purchased the rights to Little Richard's music. He gave that all back to Little Richard, so now he won't die broke. Whether that is materially too little too late or not, it is a trenchant symbol of respect for black culture we probably didn't know Jacko had. That may count for a great deal from where I stand, but it doesn't mean squat in a court of law.
If people on the Kwaku Network are right, or close to being right, we should be prepared for another round of black vs white in the court of public opinion. MJ as OJ is just a verdict away. Najee Ali, who is a defender of Jacko's choice in the Fruit of Islam security detail (brother Jermaine is a member of the Nation) and who supports the notion that white jurors in Santa Barbara county will not give Jacko a fair trial will nonetheless present a complicated picture to a media eager to spin the divide. For he has said that if Jackson does get a fair trial and is found guilty, he will be the first to pour dirt on Michael Jackson's grave. Ali has no patience whatsoever for child abusers. So if Ali becomes spun as a racial defender of child abusers if the child is not black (I don't know anything about Jackson's current alleged victim and neither should you), remember that you heard it here first that this is a lie.
There is a kind of self-fullfilling prophesy in the matter of black and white opinion being divided on Jackson's innocence or guilt. What matters is how smartly the press plays that angle. Good thing we have blogs.
I know, according to the History album that somebody was 'a cold man'. Now I know that somebody was Tom Sneddon. He's the man determined to bring the King of Pop to the jailhouse. He's also the man who famously couldn't do it 10 years ago. So it's personal. Why there shouldn't be some kind of recusal in this matter is certainly a legal question I assume has been previously decided, but we should all wake up and smell the vendetta.
The Jackson defense is under a gag order, but Sneddon and the gang behind the allegations are having a publicity field day. This is why Ali has taken to the streets in defense of Jackson. If there are battles to be won in the court of public opinion Najee Ali is taking sides with no compunction. With allies like the NOI and the Gloved One himself, its going to be tough sledding for Najee Ali and the Jackson defense team. Nevertheless Ali presents a convincing case that if Michael Jackson is consistent about anything, it's that he loves children. What a cruel irony if it is a child that Snedden uses to destroy Jackson.
I don't believe that nobody knows or nobody can know whether Jackson has 'a history' or is a pedophile. But he has been exonerated by an investigation sponsored by the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, and surely his legal team knows whether or not Jackson merits special consideration or needs to be kept away from little kids. I think much of the public opinion will fall to a question of Jackson's sexuality and brains. A hard sell for a pseudo-black manchild.
I do beleive that Michael is smart enough to know better than to do something stupid but that his handlers know but never tell. Let's see if they are compelled to testify against him based on the new Iverson law which was established by Najee Ali.
This semester I'm teaching a senior seminar in African American Studies and a class on Public Opinion and American Democracy. I'm particularly looking forward to this latter class. The first time I taught it was the semester of the attacks. I'd originally planned a normal (boring) series of readings on public opinion, and exams. In the wake of the attacks I decided to make a radical change. I threw the syllabus out and with the permission of the students spent the majority of the time having them conduct innovative research projects around the attacks. If I was a BIT more nimble I would've created a website to document the students' output....
I expect then to spend a bit more time this semester at least on public opinion issues.
I was watching C-Span and see that the Army Times conducted a survey on the enlisted. I don't think the editor was gaming the audience on C-Span at all...but I do think there are some important caveats to the survey that the editor didn't reveal until prodded.
The first deals with representativeness. Surveys are supposed to (in theory) present a snapshot of a given population. So the findings of this survey are SUPPOSED to represent the thoughts of enlisted brothers and sisters as a whole. But check out the fine print. Of those enlisted, the officer corps was significantly over-represented. Rather than thinking (and reporting) about this survey as an Army survey it is probably more accurate to think of it as an Army OFFICER survey. A survey of elites rather than of the rank and file.
The second deals with question wording. Take the question about support for Bush. What the hell does "support" mean in this circumstance? Agree with everything he does? Does it refer to the degree to which the respondent wants the President to do well in general? To do well in Iraq? It's hard to tell. A much better set of questions would refer to specific government actions.
The third problem deals with the nature of the military. The military isn't the most democratic of institutions. Who the hell wants to determine troop movements by votes? In order to insulate the military from politics, a culture of don't ask don't tell has developed. Don't ask about my politics, and I won't tell you about them. This problem exists in the general population too, particularly around sensitive issues (like race and racism). Just like white Democrats in Chicago were likely to SAY they were voting for Harold Washington (African American) when he ran for mayor in Chicago and then vote another way once they got in the booth, I would argue that this survey significantly over estimates pro-government military public opinion.
Reading the survey as an underestimation of military sentiment, I think there is serious cause for concern.