>From personal to political, and vice-versa, focus to wide angle, and some of the why's. -Ed
----- Original Message ----- From: "mike davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 12:13 AM Subject: the destruction of another heretic Steven Yagman, the most fiery legal opponent of the LAPD, is being publically lynched by the IRS and FBI, encouraged by a howling mob of rabid bloggers and Bratton supporters. Convicted of tax evasion in federal court, he now faces up to 15 years in prison. I don't have any opinion about the charges against him, but I have seen him in the courtroom (1992) fighting the cops with great bravery and eloquence. Admiration for Yagman was supposedly one of the charges against Erwin Chereminsky in the recent debacle at UCI's proposed law school. It would be very sad indeed if LA progressives overlooked this latest auto de fe; especially as all police critics and homeless defenders now seem to be fair game (look at the attack on Gary Blasi in last Sunday's opinion section of the LAT). (Here in San Diego, the GOP establishment, led by the Union-Tribune and Mayor Sanders, are mounting a massive attack on our crusading if not always likeable City Attorney Mike Aguirre who has hammered away with unique diligence at the local power structure.) Halliburton, Blackwater, Enron, the killers at Haditha, etc. all walk away from their crimes, but the Justice Department continues its systematic and relentless prosecutions of Democratic officials (many, no doubt, with a hand in the till), unpopular crusading lawyers (like Yagman and Lynne Stewart in New York), and poor saps stupid enough to be entrapped in FBI-designed 'terrorist plots.' We don't have to like the victims or even forgive them their trepasses (in the cases where they are genuinely guilty) to be alarmed about the pattern of political repression and demonization. Welcome your thoughts. mike *** From: All the News That Doesn't Fit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [NYTr] US Empire in Decline: Hedges Philadelphia Inquirer - Nov 18, 2007 http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20071118_U_S__IN_THE_TIME_OF_EMPIRE_.html U.S. IN THE TIME OF EMPIRE? By Chris Hedges All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible. Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it. The most damning indicators of national decline are upon us. We have watched an oligarchy rise to take economic and political power. The top 1 percent of the population has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, creating economic disparities unseen since the Depression. If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president, we will see the presidency controlled by two families for the last 24 years. Massive debt, much of it in the hands of the Chinese, keeps piling up as we fund absurd imperial projects and useless foreign wars. Democratic freedoms are diminished in the name of national security. And the erosion of basic services, from education to health care to public housing, has left tens of millions of citizens in despair. The displacement of genuine debate and civil and political discourse with the noise and glitter of public spectacle and entertainment has left us ignorant of the outside world, and blind to how it perceives us. We are fed trivia and celebrity gossip in place of news. An increasing number of voices, especially within the military, are speaking to this stark deterioration. They describe a political class that no longer knows how to separate personal gain from the common good, a class driving the nation into the ground. "There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders," retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of forces in Iraq, recently told the New York Times, adding that civilian officials have been "derelict in their duties" and guilty of a "lust for power." The American working class, once the most prosperous on Earth, has been politically disempowered, impoverished and abandoned. Manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. State and federal assistance programs have been slashed. The corporations, those that orchestrated the flight of jobs and the abolishment of workers' rights, control every federal agency in Washington, including the Department of Labor. They have dismantled the regulations that had made the country's managed capitalism a success for ordinary men and women. The Democratic and Republican Parties now take corporate money and do the bidding of corporate interests. Philadelphia is a textbook example. The city has seen a precipitous decline in manufacturing jobs, jobs that allowed households to live comfortably on one salary. The city had 35 percent of its workforce employed in the manufacturing sector in 1950, perhaps the zenith of the American empire. Thirty years later, this had fallen to 20 percent. Today it is 8.8 percent. Commensurate jobs, jobs that offer benefits, health care and most important enough money to provide hope for the future, no longer exist. The former manufacturing centers from Flint, Mich., to Youngstown, Ohio, are open sores, testaments to a growing internal collapse. The United States has gone from being the world's largest creditor to its largest debtor. As of September 2006, the country was, for the first time in a century, paying out more than it received in investments. Trillions of dollars go into defense while the nation's infrastructure, from levees in New Orleans to highway bridges in Minnesota, collapses. We spend almost as much on military power as the rest of the world combined, while Social Security and Medicare entitlements are jeopardized because of huge deficits. Money is available for war, but not for the simple necessities of daily life. Nothing makes these diseased priorities more starkly clear than what the White House did last week. On the same day, Tuesday, President Bush vetoed a domestic spending bill for education, job training and health programs, yet signed another bill giving the Pentagon about $471 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. All this in the shadow of a Joint Economic Committee report suggesting that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been twice as expensive than previously imagined, almost $1.5 trillion. The decision to measure the strength of the state in military terms is fatal. It leads to a growing cynicism among a disenchanted citizenry and a Hobbesian ethic of individual gain at the expense of everyone else. Few want to fight and die for a Halliburton or an Exxon. This is why we do not have a draft. It is why taxes have not been raised and we borrow to fund the war. It is why the state has organized, and spends billions to maintain, a mercenary army in Iraq. We leave the fighting and dying mostly to our poor and hired killers. No nationwide sacrifices are required. We will worry about it later. It all amounts to a tacit complicity on the part of a passive population. This permits the oligarchy to squander capital and lives. It creates a world where we speak exclusively in the language of violence. It has plunged us into an endless cycle of war and conflict that is draining away the vitality, resources and promise of the nation. It signals the twilight of our empire. [Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." Hedges is preparing a forthcoming book titled "I Don't Believe in Atheists."] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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