Annenberg papers scandal blows wide open: Steve Diamond reports

If you're new to this fast-moving story reference Dr Steve Diamond's post yesterday evening, Obama/Ayers Update: Chicago Annenberg Challenge Donor Revealed:

[...] the University of Illinois at Chicago denied Stanley Kurtz of National Review access to the official records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the six year long $160 million education reform project led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.

The denial of access to the archives of the CAC was unusual and possibly illegal. It was done after the University, again without any legal justification that I am aware of, contacted someone they said was the "donor" of the records. That "donor" wanted to examine the records prior to their release to the public.

[...]
Thanks to the diligent efforts of a 3d year law student in Chicago who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with UIC, Global Labor can reveal tonight that the alleged "donor" who was contacted by UIC and who tried to block Dr. Kurtz' acces to the CAC records was Ken Rolling, former Executive Director of the CAC and a former staff member of the Woods Fund in the 1980s when the Woods Fund provided financial support to the Developing Communities Project which was then headed up by Barack Obama. [...]

The news media have done a lot of fancy footwork to keep the truth about Barack Obama's relationship with William Ayers out of the public eye, but the scandal about the Annenberg papers has so many legs that I don't see how they can suppress it.

Just so you're clear on the stakes, you might want to read Diamond's The Radical Authoritarians: Barack Obama, Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Whether or not you agree with his alternative proposals to the public education ideas of Ayers et al., no one is better equipped than Diamond to reveal the truth about how Ayers wants to use the U.S. public education system.

Indeed, from all I've learned over the past several months from Diamond's revelations, I ask whether "totalitarian" wouldn't be a better description than "radical authoritarian."

All right; here, from Diamond's Global Labor blog, is the latest installment on the scandal:

Annenberg-Gate: University Tipped Off Ayers/Obama Ally on Records Release"


The President of the University of Illinois, B. Joseph White, and the University Counsel of the University of Illinois, Thomas Bearrows, contacted Kenneth C. Rolling, the former Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and a professional colleague of Barack Obama for many years, prior to the release of CAC records to the public late last month and offered Rolling an opportunity to recommend to the University which records of the CAC held at the University's Chicago campus (UIC) should be restricted from public access.

In response to Rollings' detailed request to prevent public access to certain CAC records Bearrows replied "as promised, we will carefully consider the concerns that you identify..."

The request is described in documents released by the University last week pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by a third year law student in Chicago. The law student who initiated the FOIA request provided Global Labor with the documents.

An email dated August 23, 2008 sent by Rolling to Mr. Bearrows, states:

“I’m writing to follow up on part of the discussion held yesterday re: my concern for protecting confidential information that may be in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archive/files located at the library at the UIC. (The conversation included President White, Tom Hardy [Hardy is the University's Executive Director for University Relations], you and myself.)…I’m following up on the offer from Pres. White and you made during our discussion yesterday, for me to recommend pieces of information in the files that should be considered confidential and restricted for access by the public.”

Rolling describes himself in that email and a follow up email as the “donor” of the CAC records. However, there is no indication of any legal support for that description. The CAC ceased operations in late 2001. Its successor organization is the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF), set up by the CAC and granted the CAC’s remaining assets according to CAC records. Mr. Rolling is a member of the Leadership Council of the CPEF, as are several other individuals who had a role in the CAC. The documents released by the University make no mention of the CPEF. A former president of the University of Illinois, Stanley Ikenberry, also served as a director of the CAC.

The University has previously indicated that it obtained the CAC records in 2002 from the CAC when the CAC ceased operations. A letter from Rolling to the University dated October 24, 2001 indicates the interest of the CAC in depositing the records there. A university would normally negotiate the transfer of legal rights to the documents including the preparation of a "deed of gift" to be executed by the donor and the University that fully and finally defines the terms of the gift.

The completion of a deed of gift ordinarily enables the University to process the records, including the preparation of a finding aid, and make them available to researchers without concern about future claims to the materials. Thus it is highly unusual for a university to expend the time and resources processing the materials much less take the risk of agreeing to allow a researcher access to the material prior to the negotiation of a deed of gift.

University Closes Its Doors in Face of Conservative Researcher

Such a finding aid was made available last month to Stanley Kurtz of the National Review Online after Kurtz asked for and was granted permission to review the 947 folders of CAC documents. However, the University then abruptly reversed themselves and denied Kurtz, a Harvard-trained social anthropologist, access just as he was leaving his home in Washington, D.C. for Chicago. The University then issued public statements indicating that although the CAC records had been fully processed for access by researchers and a finding aid had been prepared and made available, that the University lacked a “formal ownership agreement” from the donor.

It was after Kurtz was prevented from reviewing the records in mid-August and before the University finally released at least some of the CAC records to the public on August 26 that President White and Bearrows were in contact with Rolling.

One key element of a gift is the intent of the donor. Records of the CAC indicate an interest among board members with preserving the "institutional memory" of the CAC, for example. Thus, a typical goal of such a gift of records would be to enable researchers to review the records to better understand the history and impact of the Challenge.

It is, however, highly unusual to allow someone who once worked for a donor to change the terms of the gift such that the records originally deposited with the University for public review are no longer available. That amounts to a revocation of the original gift and re-gifting the now restricted set of documents to the University. However, for such an action to be valid the individual engaging in the revocation would need both the authority of the donor organization and the donee University. That would not have been possible with respect to the CAC because it had ceased operations and dissolved.

Obama/Ayers Ties to CAC

Because the former terrorist William Ayers founded the CAC and Senator Barack Obama was its first board chairman, the records held at UIC were expected to shed more light on the long-standing relationship between Obama and Ayers. Obama has explained that Ayers is “just a guy from the neighborhood” on Chicago’s South Side, where Ayers and Obama both live. Obama lived there from 1985 to 1988 and then again from 1991 until the present. Ayers, who grew up in suburban Chicago as the son of a prominent Chicago corporate executive, Thomas Ayers, moved to that area again in 1987 and has lived there since.

Prior to public revelations about the joint role of Ayers and Obama on the CAC, it was widely thought that the two first met in late 1995 during a “meet and greet” session held at the home of Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, in Hyde Park when Obama launched his first political campaign for a seat in the Illinois state senate. Unnamed Obama aides told the New York Times that was when the Senator first met Ayers. However, Obama joined the board of the CAC in the spring of 1995.

The documents released by the University do not shed any light on the possible role of Ayers in the records flap. It would not have been unusual for a library to consult with an academic like Ayers who had such an intimate role in the life of the entity whose documents are being prepared for public review.

The CAC was originally housed in the same building as the department where Ayers taught, as was the Small Schools Workshop founded by Ayers and headed by Ayers long-time comrade from his days in the anti-war group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), out of which emerged the more violent entity, Weather Underground. Klonsky did not join the Weather Underground but instead founded a maoist sect. The Workshop was among the first grant recipients of the CAC, awarded $175,000 in 1995.

However, after the initial processing of the documents was complete and a finding aid prepared, further contact with anyone associated with the donor is highly unusual.

Thus, among the questions that remains to be answered are whether any library or University official notified Ayers of the interest of Kurtz in the CAC documents, whether Ayers asked the University to block Kurtz' access to the documents, whether Ayers advised University officials including President White on the issue and whether Ayers was in contact with Rolling during the discussions about which records should be changed from available for public review to restricted from public view.

Rolling emails indicate opportunity to limit records access

The two emails authored by Rolling and released by the University make no mention of the absence of a deed of gift. Instead, Rolling only indicates that he hopes the University will allow him physical access to the records prior to their release to the public and “recommends” that certain records that he describes be kept confidential. There is no indication whether his request was agreed to by the University.

Presumably if Rolling had any valid reason for the exercise of residual legal control over the CAC records and thus a right of prior restraint over public access he would have explained that to the University. It is difficult to imagine a situation, however, in which a public university would have agreed to such a grant of authority to the former executive of an organization that had closed its doors several years earlier.

The only indication that an agent representing the CAC might have some residual legal interest in the documents is the letter that was released by the University from Rolling dated October 24, 2001, while Rolling was still the CAC's Executive Director. It is addressed to Gretchen Lagana, Special Collections Librarian at UIC and appears to be the initial offer by the CAC to donate its records to UIC.

The Lagana letter notes the interest of the CAC in maintaining confidentiality and that restricting public access for a period of time was a “major concern” of the CAC. There is no record of a response from UIC. Ordinarily such a letter would be followed by negotiations over the terms of the gift. No record of those negotiations was released.

It is likely that the CAC, including its board and officers, would have had a legal obligation to insure that such a deed of gift was negotiated and executed prior to the delivery of the CAC records to the University.

Which Records Did Rolling Want Restricted?

Kurtz wrote in the National Review Online that according to the detailed 60 page "finding aid" provided to him by the University four files containing auditors' reports out of 947 listed on the aid "are marked, in bold type 'THESE FILES ARE RESTRICTED VIA ANNENBERG CHALLENGE until further notice." A fifth folder, containing records of eight CAC Board of Directors meeting in 1995, when CAC was first set up, had a notation nearby with the word, 'Consent'."

Ordinarily financial statements and board minutes of non-profit corporations are available to the public for review. In fact, I was provided two audit reports of the CAC by Brown University as well as minutes of the board of directors, although not the minutes from 1995. However, the fact that the finding aid indicates that some of the CAC records were designated "restricted" indicates that the terms and conditions related to the gift were, in fact, agreed to prior to the acceptance of the records by the University.

However, Rolling wrote in his email to Bearrows that he was concerned that additional records should now be restricted from public access. He wrote:

"After reviewing what I believe to be the catalogue/listing of Chicago Annenberg Challenge files, I make the following recommendations. I make these recommendations without being allowed to see the actual contents of the folds. Folder #848 -- titled "Executive Director Search Committee" -- there may be items relating to personnel, possible personnel to be hired, etc. that should be held confidential, and restricted for public access.

"The contents of Folders 876-884 that relate to the research of the Consortium on Chicago School Research should be reviewed at least by UIC Professor Mark Smylie (who was the PI -- Principal Investigator -- of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project), to make sure no materials there violate the confidentiality agreement on research subjects, etc. that was signed by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Consortium on Chicago School Research. We followed strict confidentiality agreements established by the universities involved in carrying out the research project. I don't know if there are memos, documents, etc. in those folders that break the confidentiality agreements related to university research. Those folders should be scrutinized by people who know the confidentiality agreements.

"Folders 909-912 that are highlighted on my copy of the listing as '...Are Restricted via Annenberg Challenge...' could be re-considered for those restrictions when I can review them. I'm not sure what the contents of those folders really are and whether they need to remain restricted. But I need to review them before making that determination. I'm not able to recommend contents of all the grant files for restriction without reviewing them."

The ambit of confidentiality of records of a non profit corporation is quite narrow. Ordinarily the entire record of the activity of a non profit entity is made available for public review. While there may be confidential information collected in a research project such as the one the Professor Smylie directed, that information would be held by Smylie not by the CAC. Thus, the Rolling request appears to provide the University with an argument for engaging in a longer review of the documents in question which would delay their availability to the public but which would not likely turn up any private data or information.

Thus, it appears that in the wake of learning about the interest of Kurtz, a well-known conservative author, in the CAC records from University officials, President White and University Counsel Bearrows contacted Rolling unilaterally, made him aware of Kurtz’ interest in the materials and offered him the opportunity to recommend to the University not only which of the records it would make public but to expand the number of restricted files originally given to the University.

President White Contacted Annenberg Foundation in Advance of Public Access

President White appears to have made a similar offer to the Annenberg Foundation located in Radnor, Pennsylvania. A faxed cover letter from, and a letter on Annenberg Foundation letterhead signed by, Gail Levin, Executive Director of the Foundation indicate the Foundation was asked by President White if the Foundation objected to the release of the CAC records to the public and whether or not the Foundation was the “donor” “blocking access to these documents.” Levin said the Foundation had no objections and that it was not that “donor.”

It is not clear why President White contacted the Annenberg Foundation because the Foundation was not the donor of the documents to the University.

The CAC was founded in 1995 as part of a $500 million national effort funded by the late Walter Annenberg to provide funds to groups interested in reforming public schools. Ayers, a controversial political figure with a long background in violent and authoritarian political activities, conceived the original idea for the CAC and led the effort to prepare the grant application in 1993 and 1994.

The national Annenberg Foundation formally announced that the Ayers grant proposal was successful in January 1995, awarding the Ayers-led group $49.2 million to be matched two to one over a five-year period. Over time the CAC succeeded in raising an additional $110 million, according to annual reports and tax records filed by the CAC.

Ayers and Obama Role in CAC

Ayers became co-chair of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which evolved out of the working group formed by Ayers to prepare the grant application, recruited a board of directors for the CAC and then became its operational arm. Ayers served in that role for the entire seven-year life of the Challenge. The Collaborative helped the board and the CAC staff design the request for proposals for potential grantees, reviewed and made recommendations to the board on grant applications and advised the board and successful grant applicants on the development and implementation of grant programs.

Obama served as CAC board chair until late 1999 and then stepped down as chairman but remained a board member until the CAC ceased operations at the end of 2001. The CAC was initially housed, rent free, at the UIC in the same building that housed its Department of Education, in which Ayers taught.

A review of CAC records, including board minutes, financial statements, and annual reports, made available by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute, which supervised the national Annenberg Challenge, indicate that Obama worked closely with the Collaborative headed by Ayers, particularly on a controversial $2 million Leadership Development Initiative. The Initiative was designed by the Collaborative and proposed to recruit and train candidates for election to Local School Councils (LSC’s) in the Chicago Public School (CPS) system. Support for the LSC’s was a central theme of the CAC’s work according to these same records.

The LSC’s were a controversial and, according to Ayers, “radical” watchdog group set up to monitor the performance of teachers and principals in Chicago schools in the wake of an unpopular teachers’ strike in 1987. Both Obama, then Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), and Ayers, then a junior professor at UIC and an organizer of the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs), were supporters of the 1988 legislation that authorized the creation of the LSC’s. The DCP was a member of the ABCs. The DCP, which Obama joined in 1985, was funded, in part, by grants provided by the Woods Fund while Rolling was on the staff of the Fund. Both Ayers and Obama later joined the board of directors of the Woods Fund and Ayers, for a time, was chairman of its board.

CAC Financial Support of School Councils a “political threat”?

Arnold Weber, former President of Northwestern University, and a CAC board member, raised a concern that the money spent by the CAC on the LSC’s could be viewed as a “political threat” to school principals. The 1988 legislation stripped school principals of tenure and turned them into contractual employees of the CPS. The LSC’s were handed the power to terminate principals when their four-year contracts expired and to hire new principals. During the first few years of the LSC reform hundreds of principals resigned or were fired.

Chicago’s new Mayor, Richard Daley, Jr., attempted to curb the power of the LSC’s and thus was concerned about the activities of the CAC as well. Rolling recalled later in an interview:

"There were two or three attempts from them [Chicago city officials] to just ‘get the money.’ Even the mayor got into at one point. The mayor asked the ambassador [Annenberg] to come into Chicago and he wanted to tell him, ‘You are wasting your money. You should give it to me.’ The ambassador never responded to him and never agreed to a meeting. But [new School system CEO Paul] Vallas tried it, his staff worked on how to wrest that money away from us."

Ayers Maintains Ties to Authoritarian Movements

Ayers is currently a Distinguished Professor of Education at UIC. Ayers helped found the terrorist group Weather Underground, which was responsible for a series of destructive and deadly explosions during the 1970’s. Ayers has never apologized or expressed regret for his violent tactics. He continues to advocate authoritarian views including support for the regime of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. On a late 2006 trip to Venezuela, Ayers delivered a speech to a conference on education while Chavez was present and expressed support for the Chavez-led “Bolivarian revolution.”

Although Ayers has indicated that he participated in the violent actions of the Underground group, he was not prosecuted. His wife, Bernardine Dohrn, was a fellow Underground member who was sentenced to probation for her activities during the same period and served six months in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury in connection with an investigation into a bank robbery carried out in 1981 by black nationalists and some former comrades of Dohrn and Ayers in the Weather Underground.

Dohrn is a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University. She was a law clerk, but not a lawyer, in both the New York and Chicago offices of the large Chicago-based law firm then known as Sidley and Austin, now called SidleyAustin. Howard Trienens, a senior partner of the firm, told the New York Times that Dohrn was hired as a favor to her father-in-law, Thomas Ayers. Dohrn graduated from the University of Chicago law school in 1967 but was refused admission to the New York bar because of her criminal record.

There is no evidence in the few documents that were released by the University that Ayers was involved in the discussions that took place between the University executives and Rolling about the CAC records.

The FOIA Request

The text of the Freedom of Information Act request filed with the University read as follows:

I request that a copy of all public records, as defined in 5 ILCS 140/2(c), containing the following information be provided to me in the form in which they are ordinarily kept:

1. The ownership status of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents that are or were stored in the Special Collections section of the Richard J. Daley Library ("CAC Documents"), including but not limited to communications between the University and the donor of the CAC Documents regarding the initial placement of the documents with the University and materials containing opinions concerning the rights of the state, the public, a subdivision of state or a local government, or of any private persons with respect to the CAC Documents.

2. The discussions, deliberations, and other communications related to Stanley Kurtz's request to view the CAC Documents and the subsequent decision to bar Mr. Kurtz's access to the CAC Documents.

3. Any discussions, deliberations, or other communications regarding the possible return of the CAC Documents to the donors and/or owners.

4. Any discussions, deliberations, or other communications regarding the removal of information, including but not limited to possible redactions or removal of entire documents, from the CAC Documents.

Lies, damned lies, and the Obama way of explaining things

The Real Barack Obama (RBO) has a new look but the same great researcher, who puts the U.S. news media to shame when it comes to filling in the many lapses in Barack Obama's memory and the numerous gaps in record keeping associated with his political career.

Here RBO analyzes the Friends of Barack Obama online campaign reports posted by the Illinois State Board of Election and notes:

Unfortunately, as with all of Sen. Obama’s paper trails, these records are likewise incomplete.

RBO's patient sifting of dry dollar figures brings into sharp relief that it was not only the recently convicted criminal Tony Rezko's contribution that launched Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate:

It was Rezko and [Al] Johnson together. Coincidentally (or not), this is the same Rezko and Johnson who, a few years later, wanted to open a casino in Rosemont, near the airport, and allow casinos on riverboats docked strategically near Chicago’s downtown. [...]

In two subsequent posts RBO fills in more of the blanks about the contributions and the people who made them:

Friends of Obama–1995 and Friends of Obama - 1996.

Steve Diamond's "Obama/Ayers Update: Chicago Annenberg Challenge Donor Revealed"

12:45 AM UpdateDiamond has another installment on the scandal.
*********************************
Law professor and political scientist Steve Diamond has the latest at his Global Labor blog, republished here:


As Global Labor readers are well aware the University of Illinois at Chicago denied Stanley Kurtz of National Review access to the official records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the six year long $160 million education reform project led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.

The denial of access to the archives of the CAC was unusual and possibly illegal. It was done after the University, again without any legal justification that I am aware of, contacted someone they said was the "donor" of the records. That "donor" wanted to examine the records prior to their release to the public.

This is highly unusual in light of the fact that the records had been deposited with UIC in 2002 and had been processed by UIC librarians and made ready for access by researchers. Only when Mr. Kurtz, a conservative, requested that he be allowed to see them was the "donor" contacted.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of a 3d year law student in Chicago who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with UIC, Global Labor can reveal tonight that the alleged "donor" who was contacted by UIC and who tried to block Dr. Kurtz' access to the CAC records was Ken Rolling, former Executive Director of the CAC and a former staff member of the Woods Fund in the 1980s when the Woods Fund provided financial support to the Developing Communities Project which was then headed up by Barack Obama.

Thus, someone with a 20 year history with Senator Obama was tipped off in advance and in secret by a public University about the interest of a political opponent of the Senator in these public records. The CAC was a non profit corporation organized under the laws of the state of Illinois to serve the interests of the people of Illinois. Of course, Ken Rolling now has no legally cognizable interest that I am aware of in the long defunct CAC. Legally, the successor organization to the CAC is the Chicago Public Education Fund, on whose board sits Obama Campaign Finance Chair Penny Pritzker and Obama supporter Susan Crown.

I am reviewing now the documents that were produced as a result of this FOIA request. As soon as I complete my review and assessment I will post the documents here as well as my conclusions.

Buddy, can you spare a billion dollars?

The Jerusalem Post reported on August 10th We cut arms sales to Georgia months ago

[...] "Several months ago, we carried out an evaluation of the situation in Georgia and realized that Georgia and Russia were on a collision course. We have good relations with both, and don't want to back either in this conflict," the official said. "We therefore made a decision to drastically minimize sales of weapons to Georgia.

Frantic requests from Georgia to Israel for military hardware leading up to the current conflict with Russia set off alarm bells at the Ministry of Defense.

"We saw that there was a surge in requests for weapons, and we therefore decided to, in effect, minimize the entire issue. After our decision, we sold only defensive weapons in small quantities to Georgia," he said.[...]

Say, if Israel -- a close U.S. ally -- noticed big trouble brewing, there was no way a gathering storm of that size escaped the notice of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of State, the White House, and Congress.

So what was the U.S. military doing in Georgia in July conducting war games right under the noses of the Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia? There were more U.S. troops -- 1,000 -- than Georgian ones in those war exercises, And there were 1,500 CIA operatives and God Knows how many American mercenaries bopping around the country.

Ah well, let us not stoop to ponder the workings of the parakeet brain. To return to slightly more fathomable matters, I suppose that upgrading jets doesn't actually mean selling them, so there might be no conflict between the Jerusalem Post report and this one:

One of the targets of Russian bombs near Tbilisi was, according to IsraelNN.com, “a Georgian military plant in which Israeli experts are upgrading jet fighters for the Georgian military . . . Russian fighter jets bombed runways inside the plant, located near Tbilisi, where Israeli security firm Elbit is in charge of upgrading Georgian SU-25 jets."

That tidbit from F. William Engdahl, who is a pretty good researcher although I find his conclusions somewhat ornate.

However, the information he provides about Miles and Soros and the NGOs is solid as far as it goes. And it is well documented that Saakashvili is a thug, although of course speculations about his connection to several murders and suspicious natural deaths in Georgia are just that.

And while Israel is very interested in using Georgia as a staging area for flights over Iran (which Engdahl does not mention) and a BTC pipeline branch from Georgia, I was unaware until this report that Saakashvili may have closer ties to Israel than was generally known.

Happily, from Engdahl's report and others I've come across, it seems that Olmert's advisors have suddenly realized that Putin is a much more important friend to Israel than Saakashvili. This is cause for celebration.

Now if there was only some way for the American taxpayers to demand that our government take back their promise to fork over a billion greenbacks to a sniveling thug.

The puppet masters behind Georgia President Saakashvili
By F. William Engdahl
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 29, 2008

The controversy over the Georgian surprise military attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia on 8.8.08 makes a closer look at the controversial Georgian President and his puppet masters important. An examination shows 41-year-old Mikheil Saakashvili to be a ruthless and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence establishment.

The famous ‘Rose Revolution of November 2003 that forced the ageing Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the then 36-year-old US university graduate into power was run and financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence community.

Mikheil Saakashvili was deliberately placed in power in one of the most sophisticated US regime change operations, using ostensibly private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to create an atmosphere of popular protest against the existing regime of former Soviet Foreign Minister Edouard Shevardnadze, who was no longer useful to Washington when he began to make a deal with Moscow over energy pipelines and privatizations.

Saakashvili was brought to power in a US-engineered coup run on the ground by US-funded NGOs, in an application of a new method of US destabilization of regimes it considered hostile to its foreign policy agenda. The November 24, 2003, Wall Street Journal explicitly credited the toppling of Shevardnadze’s regime to the operations of “a raft of non-governmental organizations . . . supported by American and other Western foundations.” These NGOs, said the Journal, had “spawned a class of young, English-speaking intellectuals hungry for pro-Western reforms” who were instrumental laying the groundwork for a bloodless coup.

Coup by NGO

But there is more. The NGOs were coordinated by the US Ambassador to Georgia, Richard Miles, who had just arrived in Tbilisi fresh from success in orchestrating the CIA-backed toppling of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, using the same NGOs. Miles, who is believed to be an undercover intelligence specialist, supervised the Saakashvili coup.

It involved US billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Georgia Foundation. It involved the Washington-based Freedom House whose chairman was former CIA chief James Woolsey. It involved generous financing from the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to “do privately what the CIA used to do,” namely coups against regimes the US government finds unfriendly.

George Soros’ foundations have been forced to leave numerous eastern European countries, including Russia, as well as China after the 1989 student Tiananmen Square uprising. Soros is also the financier together with the US State Department of Human Rights Watch, a US-based and run propaganda arm of the entire NGO apparatus of regime coups such as Georgia and Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. Some analysts believe Soros is a high-level operative of the US State Department or intelligence services using his private foundations as cover.

The US State Department funded the Georgia Liberty Institute headed by Saakashvili, the US approved candidate to succeed the no-longer cooperative Shevardnadze. The Liberty Institute in turn created “Kmara!” which translates to “Enough!” According to a BBC report at the time, Kmara! was organized in the spring of 2003, when Saakashvili along with hand-picked Georgia student activists were paid by the Soros Foundation to go to Belgrade to learn from the US-financed Otpor activists that toppled Milosevic. They were trained in Gene Sharp’s “non-violence as a method of warfare” by the Belgrade Center for Nonviolent Resistance.

Saakashvili as mafioso president

Once he was in place in January 2004 as Georgia’s new president, Saakashvili proceeded to pack the regime with his cronies and kinsmen. The death of Zurab Zhvania, his prime minister, in February 2005 remains a mystery. The official version -- poisoning by a faulty gas heater -- was adopted by American FBI investigators within two weeks of the Zhvania’s death. That has never seemed credible to those familiar with Georgia’s gangland slayings, crime, and other manifestations of social decay. Zhvania’s death was followed closely by a functionary of the premier’s apparat, Georgi Khelashvili, who allegedly shot himself the day after his chief’s demise. The head of Zhvania’s research staff was later found dead as well.

Figures allied with Saakashvili reportedly had a hand in the premier’s death. Russian journalist Marina Perevozkina quoted Gia Khurashvili, a Georgian economist. Prior to the fatal incident, Mr. Khurashvili had published an article in Resonans newspaper opposing the privatization and sale of Georgia’s main gas pipeline. Ten days before the prime minister’s body was found, Khurashvili was attacked and his editor-in-chief -- citing pressure from ‘security service’ figures he refused to name -- issued him a warning.

The late premier’s position on the pipeline issue was believed the direct reason for the murder of Zhvania. Zhvania’s brother, Georgi, also told Perevozkina that not long before Zhvania’s death he received a warning that someone was preparing to kill his brother. Saakashvili was reportedly livid when the US State Department invited Zhvania to Washington to win a Freedom Medal from the US Government’s National Democratic Institute. Saakashvili tolerates no rivals for power it seems.

Saakashvili, who cleverly marketed himself as “anti-corruption,” appointed several of his family members to lucrative posts in government, giving one of his brothers a position as chief adviser on domestic issues to the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline project, backed by British Petroleum and other oil multinationals.

Since coming to power in 2004 with US aid, Saakashvili has led a policy of large-scale arrests, imprisonment, torture and deepened corruption. Saakashvili has presided over the creation of a de facto one-party state, with a dummy opposition occupying a tiny portion of seats in the parliament, and this public servant is building a Ceaucescu-style palace for himself on the outskirts of Tbilisi. According to the magazine, Civil Georgia (Mar. 22, 2004), until 2005, the salaries of Saakashvili and many of his ministers were reportedly paid by the NGO network of New York-based currency speculator Soros -- along with the United Nations Development Program.

Israeli and US military train Georgian military

The current military assault on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in violation of Saakashvili’s pledge to seek a diplomatic not military solution to the territorial disputes, is backed by US and Israeli military “advisers.” Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that on August 10 Georgian Minister of Reintegration Temur Yakobshvili “praised the Israel Defense Forces for its role in training Georgian troops and said Israel should be proud of its military might, in an interview with Army Radio. ‘Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers,’ Yakobashvili told Army Radio in Hebrew, referring to a private Israeli group Georgia had hired.’”

One of the targets of Russian bombs near Tbilisi was, according to IsraelNN.com, “a Georgian military plant in which Israeli experts are upgrading jet fighters for the Georgian military . . . Russian fighter jets bombed runways inside the plant, located near Tbilisi, where Israeli security firm Elbit is in charge of upgrading Georgian SU-25 jets."

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, also a candidate to succeed ousted Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, proclaimed on August 10 that “Israel recognizes Georgia’s territorial integrity,” code for saying it backs Georgia’s attempt to take South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The reported 1,000 Israeli military advisers in Georgia were not alone. On July 15, Reuters news wire carried the following report: “VAZIANI, Georgia -- One thousand U.S. troops began a military training exercise called ‘Immediate Response 2008,’ in Georgia on Tuesday against a backdrop of growing friction between Georgia and neighboring Russia. The two-week exercise was taking place at the Vaziani military base near the capital, Tbilisi, which was a Russian air force base until Russian forces withdrew at the start of this decade under a European arms reduction agreement . . . Georgia has a 2,000-strong contingent supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and Washington provides training and equipment to the Georgian military. The United States is an ally of Georgia and has irritated Russia by backing Tbilisi’s bid to join the NATO military alliance . . . ‘The main purpose of these exercises is to increase the cooperation and partnership between U.S. and Georgian forces,’ Brig. Gen. William B. Garrett, commander of the U.S. military’s Southern European Task Force, told reporters.”

With Russia openly backing and training the indigenous military in South Ossetia and Abkhazia to maintain Russian presence in the region, especially since the US-backed pro-NATO Saakashvili regime took power in 2004, the Caucasus is rapidly coming to resemble Spain in the Civil War from 1936-1939, where the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and others poured money and weapons and volunteers into Spain in a devastating war that was a precursor to the Second World War.

In a curious footnote to the actual launch of military fighting on the opening day of the Olympics when Putin, George W. Bush and many world leaders were far away in Beijing, is a report in IsraelNN.com by Gl Ronen, stating that “The Georgian move against South Ossetia was motivated by political considerations having to do with Israel and Iran, according to Nfc. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili decided to assert control over the breakaway region in order to force Israel to reconsider its decision to cut back its support for Georgia’s military.”

Ronen added, “Russian and Georgian media reported several days ago that Israel decided to stop its support for Georgia after Moscow made it clear to Jerusalem and Washington that Russia would respond to continued aid for Georgia by selling advanced anti-aircraft systems to Syria and Iran.” Israel plans to get oil and gas from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the Caspian.

Although as of this writing Russian President Medvedev has announced Russia is halting its military response against Georgian targets, the situation is anything but stable. The insistence of Washington in bringing Georgia into its geopolitical sphere and backing an unstable regime around Mikheil Saakashvili may well have been the straw which broke the Russian camel’s patience if not his back.

Whether oil pipeline disputes or Russian challenges to Israel are the proximate trigger for Saakashvili’s dangerous game, it is clear that the volatile Georgian and his puppet masters may have entered a game where no one will be able to control the outcome.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). This essay is adapted from a book he has just completed, titled Full Spectrum Dominance: The Geopolitical Agenda Behind Washington’s Global Military Buildup (release date estimated Autumn 2008). He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Twice-timed Idiots Alert beep beep! Twice-time Idiots Alert beep beep!

Hey, isn't this amazing? More than one country can mess around in another country's sphere of influence! Well if that don't beat all. Who woulda guessed?

Oh but I forgot! The U.S. has no sphere of interest in Latin America beyond Mexico and Colombia on account of spending so many years messing around in Russia's sphere of interest that State had a hard time finding Bolivia on a map. Until someone ran into Foggy Bottom with a newspaper yelling, 'Guess What! Latin America has turned left again!'

Ah well, maybe we can get some help from our buddies in the European Union. After all the help we gave them screwing Russia, you'd think....lemmee dial a few numbers.

I'll start by ringing up our very best friend across the Pond -- well, our very best friend before they betrayed us in Iraq and Afghanistan. But then what's a little betrayal costing the lives of God Knows how many U.S. troops?

THIS IS A RECORDING: THIS PHONE NUMBER IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE. PLEASE CHECK WITH YOUR OPERATOR.

Hello, hello?

September 3
Asia Times
Iran and the left in Latin America
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Bolivian President Evo Morales is in Tehran this week, ushering in a new chapter in his country's economic and strategic cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has promised a hefty investment in Bolivia's energy sector and other joint ventures, some involving other Latin and Central American countries, such as Venezuela and Nicaragua, not to overlook Cuba.

In a joint communique, Morales and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad have signed off on the need for "concrete political steps against every type of imperialism", while also condemning the intervention of the United Nations Security Council in Iran's nuclear program as "lacking any legal or technical justification".

Bolivia may be a poor country, but it is strategically located and represents an important ally for Iran that can act as a catalyst in enhancing Iran's growing cooperation with other Latin nations, especially those considered leftist or populist.

In his visit to Bolivia last year, Ahmadinejad promised that Iran would make a US$1 billion investment in Bolivia's underdeveloped oil and gas sector and the two sides are now much closer in turning this into reality. Certainly, Morales' decision to set aside any hesitation and fully support Iran's position in the current nuclear standoff goes a long way in cementing Iran-Bolivia friendship.

From Tehran's vantage point, an indirect benefit of Morales' visit is that it impresses on Moscow the services that Tehran can render in strengthening Moscow's anti-unipolarism credo, which was spelled out by President Dmitry Medvedev in his major foreign policy speech last week. Tapping into Cold War lexicon, Medvedev openly mentioned Russia's intention to pursue a "sphere of influence" in politics and made a point of mentioning "not only with neighbors".

As various Russian experts, including at the Russian Center for Strategic Studies, have pointed out, Russia in the aftermath of the Georgia crisis is now inclined to strengthen its ties with countries such as Iran and Venezuela.

In light of the Georgia visit this week by US Vice President Dick Cheney, reviled by Premier Vladimir Putin as directly responsible for triggering the Georgia crisis for election purposes, the growing rift between the US and Russia simultaneously represents an opportunity for Tehran both to neutralize UN Security Council efforts to impose tighter sanctions on Iran over the nuclear program and explore further, and more meaningful, strategic cooperation with Russia and the Latin left vis-a-vis the common threat of US unipolarism. [...]

"The Feds are everywhere" and a return to The Deuce

Louisiana government emergency website

August 31, 10:02 AM ET
"J --

Many residents didn't need to be ordered, with an estimated 1 million people fleeing the Gulf Coast on Saturday by bus, train, plane and car. They clogged roadways, emptied gas stations of fuel and jammed phone circuits.

No gas means stranded - amazing the gas stations didn't plan for this.
Pundita"

August 31, 10:04 AM ET

"All in order. The Feds are everywhere.
J"

*********************************
September 1, 3:30 AM
As of this time New Orleans will avoid a direct hit. And Gustav has been moving so fast that it can't pick up enough energy from warm waters to build to a Category 5 storm. As things stand now it will make landfall as a Cat 3 -- bad enough, and the winds can still build to Cat 5 strength, as they did with Katrina. But right now there is hope that the USA dodged the worst that Gustav might have brought.

I learned a great deal as yesterday progressed about the efforts across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to protect lives against Gustav's onslaught.

This is a war that government agencies at the federal, state and local levels and the National Guard, U.S. military, and countless charities are determined to win.

The first phase of the war, evacuation, has gone well. (Ret.) Lt. General Russell Honore, who led the Joint Task Force (U.S. Army-FEMA) rescue efforts during Katrina's aftermath, told CNN yesterday afternoon that "it's the second and third order of the storm's effects" that are the greatest challenge. But he said that great teams are in place with better coordination and communication than three years ago.

A nod of respect to Ray Nagin. In 2005 I did my share of yelling at Nagin on this blog, and I snapped at him as recently as two days ago to hurry up and announce a mandatory evacuation.

Yet despite his failings at disaster/evacuation planning and management the last time around, he showed accountability and physical courage under dire circumstances by refusing to leave Nola and his post as mayor.

Nagin emerged from the Katrina debacle with a great deal to prove. By all accounts he's come through in the face of Gustav's onslaught, as have all those under his command.

Thanks also to our neighbor Canada, which has pitched in to help.

And I should remember to give thanks to the many reporters, news producers, weather trackers and citizen journalists who are working round the clock to keep the public informed on all matters related to Gustav.

There is always room for improvement, of course, in any vastly complex humanitarian effort. But I can now catch some sleep with the knowledge that many thousands of Americans are working with efficiency and complete dedication to avert the worst effects of a killer storm.

*********************************
7:30 AM
All this reminds me of the 2005 Pundita post in which I linked to the first-person account of an American who struck out to make himself useful in the wake of Katrina, and which I titled The Deuce.

His account is one part adventure story, one part primer on the volunteer spirit that has galvanized countless millions of Americans over the course of our history to help complete strangers.

I know from learning the hard way that if you're going to get directly involved in a humanitarian crisis, it's generally best to join with a volunteer organization that has experience working under severe pressures. Yet The Deuce is a reminder that you don't have to be a joiner to be a volunteer.

Katrina struck when oil was considerably cheaper; the way things stand now, we are between the devil and the deep sea: if Gustav spares Nola, he can decide to turn his wrath on 4,000 oil rigs along the Gulf Coast and lay devastation to the Gulf coastline communities.

And there may be no respite once Gustav has done his worst. Waiting in the wings are hurricanes Hannah and Ike.

All this is by way of saying that these months running up to the presidential election could be a bad time for Americans, one that stretches our volunteer efforts to the limit.

So this is not the time for recriminations. This is the time to find some way to pitch in. If we can do nothing else, we can pray and thank the efforts of those who are working directly to save others. If you need a little jump-starting, here are the opening passages from The Deuce:

Background:
My name is John and I live in Central Texas. I have served in three different military components totaling 25 years of service and I am recording this story for posterity. All opinions are the author's and if you disagree with them, that's really too bad.

Katrina Day 1: Monday, 29 August 2005
Watching the news today was horrific. Hurricane Katrina has devastated an area larger than the United Kingdom. When I heard that Biloxi was savaged, I immediately thought about my best friend Tracy. Tracy was a Master Sergeant with me in the US Air Force and we were stationed together for several years. Friendships formed in the military are far stronger than anything a civilian can experience. They usually last until the grave. I won't go into the psychology of it, it is just so. You usually bond to one particular individual, and Tracy was it. He was my Best Buddy, and that is spelt with two capital B's. I know this man well enough to know that he was not going to evacuate, he would tough it out. Now I was worried sick about Tracy and his family. I tried calling him for several hours but gave up realizing that communication would be non-existent.

Katrina Day 2: Tuesday, 30 August 2005
Spent several more hours trying to contact Tracy, to no avail. It just was not going to happen. The body count is increasing. The question now is: what can I do?

I am sitting at home in air-conditioned comfort, watching a disaster of biblical proportions unfold on the idiot box in the corner. I am a man of action, not talk - always have been and always will be. What action could I take? How could I personally make a difference to what was going on? Even inaction is a form of action, but it has never been my choice. Now the news is telling me that getting food and water to the survivors is the number one priority. I rarely agree with television talking heads, mainly because they are so liberal and also so ignorant about the world around them. I had to concede that, for once, they were right.

What do I do? A plan. A plan is a good thing and helps you anticipate difficulties before they become disasters. I would need transport. I personally own an ex-army vehicle called an M35A2, better known as a deuce and a half. It is 30 years old, has ten driven wheels and is still camouflaged in its original paint scheme. All 3 axles are driven and it is one of the best all-wheel drive off road vehicles in existence. It also has a large cargo bed, with a 5 ton load carrying capacity. Perfect for getting large quantities of food and water into remote areas with difficult terrain.

I also realized that there would be many roadblocks manned by civilian law enforcement and by military personnel. How would I get past them? Would they think of me as a fruitcake? Would they turn me back? Would they think I was selling water for ten bucks a bottle? Would they shoot me?

I dusted off my old camouflage uniform. A bit tight around the middle, but acceptable. This should get me through roadblocks. My next fear was that the news was reporting widespread looting and general mayhem. I did not want my truck, food or water hijacked, so what to do? I loaded my .45 caliber H&K semi-automatic pistol, some extra magazines of ammunition, and buckled on a shoulder holster in plain sight. I did not plan on shooting people. I planned on staying alive. I am a firm believer in the old adage that it is better to be judged by twelve people than to be carried by six.

The next several hours were taken up by servicing the truck. You do not just jump in a 30 year old truck and high tail it a couple of thousand miles, you'll never get there. [...]

And with that, John set off on his odyssey.

http://lonestar-mvpa.org/events/2005/05_Katrina.htm

Canada Supports U.S. Evacuation Efforts in Preparation for Gustav

"Canada stands ready to help"

Thank you very much to the Canadian people for the assistance:

August 31 - 4:39 PM via Market Watch [...] At the request of the United States government, a Canadian Forces CC-177 aircraft left Canada earlier today for the southern U.S. Gulf Coast. The Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, indicated that he had spoken with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to offer further assistance.

"Canada and the United States have a long history of helping each other in times of need," said Minister Emerson. "We were pleased that we could provide this support so quickly." The multipurpose CC-177 departed from CFB Trenton shortly after midday. Purchased by the Government of Canada in 2006 to assist with a host of operations, including humanitarian emergencies, the CC-177 continues to be an invaluable asset to Canada.

"Our highly trained medical team and this specially outfitted CC-177 have the ability to quickly and efficiently move those in need of medical assistance," said Minister MacKay. "Our military support of civil emergency operations helps to save lives, prevent human suffering and mitigate damage to property."

Canada is providing the medical fixed-wing aircraft, with medical personnel on board to assist with any health issues, to conduct an evacuation from potentially affected areas. The exact location of the mission and its duration will depend on the storm's track and needs on the ground.

The Canada-U.S. Civil Assistance Plan provides the framework for the execution of this mission. The Civil Assistance Plan, which was announced in February, enhances the ability of the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

"I spoke with Secretary Chertoff this morning to discuss the situation," said Minister Day. "Secretary Chertoff expressed gratitude on behalf of the U.S. government for Canada's help. I offered any additional assistance they may require on the ground now or after Gustav hits the Gulf states, including help from a Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team. Canada stands ready to help." [...]

Note

Important update to my post today on Steve Diamond's latest report.

"The storm of the century: this is the real deal, not a test" - Ray Nagin

"Jindal said the state planned to begin "contraflow" procedures, opening both sides of interstates to outgoing traffic only, at 4 a.m. Sunday."

Staring down the barrel of a cataclysmic event that has clearly been building since Friday, it is not clear to me when the official mandatory evacuation order was given for Louisiana.

Some articles seem to indicate that the mandatory evacuation order is scheduled to go into effect today at 8:00 AM, but again, that's unclear to me. There are quite a number of statements relating to evacuation orders in this CNN report.

It seems that Governor Jindal has still not ordered a statewide mandatory evacuation, although he's told all those in the path of the storm to evacuate. But again, I am just not clear on the evacuation orders, which also seem to vary from parish to parish.

This AP report indicates that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin showed belated sense and issued what seems to be mandatory evacuation order for Nola residents sometime on Saturday night.

But frankly I don't see how a complete evacuation of Nola can be carried out in the time left. There have already been several mix-ups and delays.

I have the bad feeling that the evacuation should have been high gear by Friday night, not Sunday morning.

We'll see. And hope and pray.

See Drudge's site for the latest breaking news, weather maps, satellite images, etc.

Barack Obama Sahib launches CYA on his relationship with William Ayers Sahib (UPDATED)

9:15 AM ET Update
The Real Barack Obama consistently does such great research and analysis on the complex web of Obama's "Chicago Way" associations that it's easy to take the blog for granted. But this morning they've batted one out of the park by digging into Linda Lenz's background in order to provide key background for Steve Diamond's post, below:

What Diamond did not mention is that not only is Lenz seemingly commencing damage control for the Obama campaign, but there are also a number of ties connecting Lenz with the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama, and Ayers. Lenz is a former Chicago media insider.[...]

Go to RBO to get the background before starting on Diamond's post.

************************************************

On Saturday a headline in the Chicago Sun Times proclaimed: Annenberg Challenge a radical enclave? Gimme a break! There is nothing to condemn about Ayers’ leadership over the past 20 years.

Ah, but Steve Diamond spots the sleight of hand! He notes at his Global Labor blog: Obama Campaign Uses Sun Times to Begin Retreat on Ayers Issue:

Perhaps realizing that there is no hope on the Ayers issue, the Obama campaign began its strategic retreat [Saturday]. They trotted out a local ally in the Chicago school wars, Linda Lenz, to begin the effort. Her job: admit finally that, in fact, there was some kind of relationship between Ayers and Obama after all but "it ain't no big thang."

We'll see if this helps or only fans the flames.

I posted a reply on the Sun Times website:

"Perhaps the editors of the Sun Times should feel "a little silly" about inviting Ms. Lenz to pen an editorial defending a former terrorist without identifying her fully.

Ms. Lenz is associated with the Alliance for Excellent Education on whose board sits Obama education advisor Linda Darling-Hammond. And on Ms. Lenz' board of directors at the Community Renewal Society is Warren Chapman, one of the founders of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and a former staff member of the Joyce Foundation on whose board served Barack Obama.

While Ms. Lenz brushes over the self-proclaimed "radical" nature of school reform in Chicago she also ignores the fact that a central goal of the Annenberg Challenge led by Ayers and Obama was to bolster flagging Local School Councils, a new power center in the schools set up in the wake of a teachers strike to watchdog teachers and principals.

And although in a recent talk she gave she lauds the research conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research of the University of Chicago, she ignores their studied conclusion that the Annenberg Challenge was a failure. $160,000,000 down the drain and no improvement in student outcomes.

No wonder the Mayor pushed against Ayers and Obama to re-centralize power over the schools, although that was no comfort to the teachers union.

Oh, at least Ms. Lenz gets one thing right: Ayers was indeed not "just some guy in the neighborhood" as Senator Obama attempted to mislead the American people into thinking. Given the failure of the Annenberg Challenge and the authoritarian outlook that a former terrorist brought to the reform effort, no wonder he made the attempt."

Hurricane Gustav and Dr Diamond intervene

The post I had planned for today is bumped until tomorrow. Today's posts are an utterly useless warning to Ray Nagin, Diamond's newest, and my stab at orienting readers who are completely new to Diamond's writings on the education issue.

Introduction to the importance of Steve Diamond's writings on the William Ayers-Barack Obama relationship and the authoritarian left

I'll begin by observing that it's misinformed to characterize Ayers as a "radical chic" educator. Ayers has found the radical chic crowd -- the well-meaning liberals Tom Wolfe sent up in Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers and the limousine leftists -- to be useful idiots.

In this, he is working from the Maoist playbook, where you "swim like fish" among the sea of the masses, until you're ready to destroy anyone who disagrees with your real agenda.

So I don't know who is more frightening: William Ayers or the Republican operatives chasing red herring in their attempt to frame Ayers in terms of his bomb-making past. It's his present that's most important to know. That is, if you don't like the idea of U.S. taxpayer money used to indoctrinate U.S. public school children to the idea that America is an evil place.

Understand that Diamond is an American leftist -- the old school, American labor-union left. When you see someone like that sounding the alarm about Ayers's influence in American public education, it's wise to take careful notice.

As to why you haven't heard the truth about Ayers's influence in education from others in the media, all you have to do is listen to Sean Hannity's verbal attacks on Ayers to understand that "liberal" media bias is the least of the problem.

Hannity and other conservative pundits in the media have hammered at Ayers's time as a member of the WeatherMan/Underground, but have not explained Ayers's education theories to the American public and how they're playing out in the public education field.

So where are these media mavens' researchers? Attending comic book conventions, I guess. An alternative explanation is that the Fox producers have done the research and said, 'We don't dare open this can of worms so close to the election.'

It's a big can. To embark on a national discussion on Ayers's activist education theories is to infuriate the voting bloc of teachers's unions and indeed the entire U.S. education field. They fear, and not without justification, that educators could be tarred with one brush.

Yet even many educators don't know what Ayers is all about, despite his growing influence in education. And it seems that many who do know prefer studious silence to speaking out. Why? 'Keep it in the family,' that's why.

Again, they're afraid that if American parents learn what's going on, the blowback will have serious consequences. And such a discussion could derail Obama's plans to greatly expand federal government funding for public education if he becomes President.

So it works out to this: The only knowledgeable American other than Diamond to go directly to the general public to raise the alarm is Sol Stern -- an ex-leftist. David Horowitz -- another ex-leftist -- gave Stern a platform at Front Page Magazine to explain the truth about Ayers's social justice teachings. Yet still the information has not broken through to the wider media.

Notice the pattern. It's the Americans who know the left inside-out who are sounding the alarm. They fully understand that Ayers and his crowd are not dreamy-eyed utopians. Ayers's theories long ago left the classroom and worked their way into politics, using scared white politicians and furious black activists as dupes.

Diamond has been shouting the truth from his Global Labor and Politics blog since April, and the only person in the major media who listened was John Batchelor -- until last week when Steve got a few minutes to speak on Milt Rosenberg's radio show in Chicago.

It's possible that the flap about Stanley Kurtz's difficulty, in his quest to get hold of Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents, will eventually bring Ayers's education theories into the mainstream media. But it's a little late in the day, isn't it?

Barack Obama's chief education advisor, Linda Darling-Hammond, is a disciple of Ayers's education ideas, even though she has tried to distance herself from Ayers's more explicit statements about what he wants for America's schoolchildren.

If you want to get the whole story, it's going to take plowing through several essays. Happily, Stern and Diamond are writing for the general public and they write clearly. So it's not as if you'd have to read academic papers. Yet I suggest that everyone who is new to the isssue start reading the essays.

If you want to get in the ballpark quickly, my May 20 tabloid headline effort to wake up the blogosphere, The William Ayers plan to turn America's schoolchildren into Maoists and how Barack Obama helped him, connects the dots between Stern's warnings and Diamond's.

(Scroll to the end of the post for links to Stern's published writings on the topic.)

The Real Barack Obama also provides a handy linked list of important source material. (Scroll down past the main article.)

I also recommend that you study the warnings given by history professor KC Johnson, which Zenpundit Mark Safranski alerted me to. You can start with his piece for Inside Higher Education on dispositions that teachers must increasingly endure.

(If a disposition sounds like something the Grand Inquisitor might have dreamed up, you'd not be too far from the truth.)

Once you read Johnson's warning, you'll realize that Ayers's "social justice" program for schools is marching forward, no matter which political party is in power at the federal, state, and local levels.

But with all this information under your belt, you still can't grasp the full scope of the situation with regard to Obama's involvement, unless you go into the archives at Diamond's blog and start reading forward from April 22.

I wish there was an easier way to bring the public up to speed but there isn't. And that points to the biggest problem: the issues do not lend themselves to sound bites and sixty-second political attack ads.

Yet a bonus for plowing through all of Diamond's writings on Ayers is to fully understand why Obama has moved heaven and earth in the attempt to downplay his association with Ayers.

He knows that the biggest scandal is not Ayers's terrorist acts decades ago. It has to do with his current role in education and Obama's close association with it.

Obama also knows that simply throwing Linda Darling-Hammond under the bus isn't the fix, given his long association with Ayers and his cadre, which includes work for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

"The Authoritarian Radicals: Barack Obama, Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge"

"... the CAC effort raises the question of the fundamental world view of Barack Obama. It would appear to have a lot more in common with the perspective of Bill Ayers, a perspective that dates back 40 years because of its roots in the New Left, but continues today as Ayers pushes for his racially divisive authoritarian agenda in American schools."
-- Steve Diamond

Hot off the presses, here's the latest from Steve Diamond. For readers who are new to the topic, see my Introduction to the importance of Steve Diamond's writings on the William Ayers-Barack Obama relationship and the authoritarian left.

The Authoritarian Radicals: Barack Obama, Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge

INTRODUCTION

As the records of the $160 million dollar six-year long Chicago Annenberg Challenge project are liberated and analyzed in coming weeks, it makes sense to ask just what was the Challenge, or CAC, all about.

(Prior to the release of the official records of the CAC I was able to analyze board minutes, financial records and annual reports of the CAC provided to me by Brown University. I have posted them here for others to review.)

After all, the CAC was the first chance for Barack Obama to take on a serious executive role in a controversial political environment. And the Challenge failed, badly.

Most of the criticism of the longstanding relationship between Bill Ayers, who founded the CAC, and Barack Obama is, unfortunately, coming from the conservative side of the political spectrum. That is natural enough – they want their candidate, John McCain, to win and they know that any association between Ayers and Obama is toxic because of Ayers background as a terrorist.

But silence on this issue from the left is rather puzzling – well, not exactly silence. Critics of the Ayers-Obama alliance whether on the right or, like me, on the left, are actually subject to loud and constant attack.

Of course, those on the attack whether high brows like E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, or Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic, or the mobs mobilized a la the Sandinistas or Hugo Chavez by the Obama campaign to attack a Chicago radio talk show host and guest, ignore the facts. So as far as advancing the debate is concerned they might as well be silent.

The left, however, should be particularly concerned about what it is that brought Obama and Ayers together in the same movement some 20 years ago, because there is very little about that movement that can be called progressive or democratic. In fact, it was a bureaucratic and potentially authoritarian movement to control the public school system in the city of Chicago against the Chicago Teachers’ Union, the Chicago School Board and the Mayor’s office, in particular, Mayor Daley, in the mid-1990s.

WHERE DID IT ALL BEGIN?

The starting point was a 1987 strike by the Chicago Teachers’ Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and AFL-CIO. Teachers’ strikes are always very controversial as teachers perform a vital public service. In Chicago, unfortunately, there was a very frayed relationship at the time between the teachers and the city. There were deep fiscal problems as well as the city was transitioning away from a manufacturing center to a services dominated urban environment.

In the wake of that strike, a coalition of business, community and education reformers emerged to form a group called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, ABCs.

According to Columbia University education scholar Dorothy Shipps, the strike "enrag[ed] parents and provid[ed] the catalyst for a coalition between community groups and Chicago United [the business lobby] that was forged in the ensuing year."

Bill Ayers was a leading activist in ABCs and later became its head. His brother John was also active in the reform campaign as was the business group founded by Bill's prominent father Tom, Chicago United. (That's Tom next to Barack and Bill above.)

ABCs came up with a proposal that was then lobbied for in the state legislature to establish a new governance structure in the schools. Power over individual schools would be de-centralized and placed in the hands of new Local School Councils, or LSC's, which would be comprised of elected representatives of six parents, two community members, two teachers, the principal, and, in high schools, a student. They would be able to hire and fire, unilaterally, principals of their respective schools, who were now stripped of tenure and placed on four year contracts. The principals, in turn, could recruit teachers to particular schools, thus undermining union seniority protections.

The proposal struck a popular chord among some community groups, particularly the Hispanic United Neighborhood Organization, a strong force in certain city neighborhoods modeled on Saul Alinsky’s controversial and troubling, in my view, organizing principles.

But the idea was decidedly less welcome to black organization like Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH. Why? Because becoming a teacher in Chicago or a public school administrator or staff member was one of the few routes in 1970s and 1980s Chicago for a black person to establish a secure middle class existence.

The idea of imposing a new power center through the LSC’s on top of teachers and schools, and outside of the collective bargaining process, was viewed as a threat to the gains that black teachers had fought long and hard to achieve.

In fact, one of the few, if only, black community groups to support the LSC’s was the Developing Communities Project (DCP), whose Executive Director at the time was Barack Obama. The DCP was very vocal and up front about pushing for school reform, according to press reports.

So the LSC reform was pushed by Hispanic community activists angered by a recent strike, Barack Obama’s DCP, elite business groups looking to solve the school system’s fiscal crisis, and Bill Ayers who saw the LSC’s as the fulfillment of a dream for radical school restructuring.

The LSC’s were put into place in 1988 and conducted elections every two years thereafter. Hundreds of principals were duly fired or resigned but student achievement languished. Naturally, apathy began to set in. Moves were afoot to gut the LSC’s and re-centralize power in the hands of the Mayor’s office. The business sector support for the LSC’s was waning.

SOME IMPORTANT HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

It should have been no surprise that the LSC’s were both controversial and problematic. They actually had been tried once before and the result was a disaster.

The setting that time was 1968 New York and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district in Brooklyn. There a similar local control effort ended up in a divisive clash with the teachers’ union headed up by Sandra Feldman and Albert Shanker. Then, sadly, there were few, if any, black teachers and the black power movement was on the ascendancy. As was the New Left, that would soon give birth to the authoritarians Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

A new school board fired teachers, in violation of due process rights according to the union, and a strike ensued. According to a thoughtful study by Peter B. Levy of the New Left and the labor movement, the conflict led to the New Left siding with the community control activists against the union:

Local black community activists and their new left supporters claimed that the union’s actions demonstrated its traditional autocracy. One black activists [sic] declared: “The current issue…with the union is clearly one of old time boss politics. Mr. Albert Shanker has handled himself in a manner reminiscent of the traditional UNION BOSS.” His were the callous actions of a power broker who would “do everything possible to prevent us from really ever controlling the education of our children.”

The UFT [the American Federation of Teachers NYC affiliate] countered that it was a young progressive union that had historically fought for the rights of all workers and that it too had only just won basic rights. [In fact, as the author points out elsewhere the UFT had supported and participate in the Mississippi Freedom Rides, the Congress on Racial Equality and the 1963 March on Washington]. Most important, the teacher’ union reiterated that due process, the essence of democracy, was their main concern. Or as Shanker proclaimed: “The issue is…will we have a school system in which justice, due process and dignity for teachers is possible, or will we have a system in which any group of vigilantes can enter a school and take it over with intimidation and threats of violence.”

Among the supporters of the UFT defense of due process rights were A. Philip Randolph and Negro Trade Union League. Randolph had been the organizer of the black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters’ union and a close ally of Martin Luther King.

DEMOCRACY OR ANOTHER LAYER OF BUREAUCRACY?

As Dorothy Shipps has pointed out local control efforts like that tried in New York and later Chicago profess to be democratic but are, in fact, something else altogether.

Shipps argues in her study of what was called at the time the Chicago “school wars” that the local control movement in Chicago, though backed by “radicals” like Ayers, gave "business the clearest voice in systemwide reform."

She argued that a district level democracy effort such as an "Education Assembly" is required rather than the parochial local control approach:

"A large districtwide elected group intended to serve as a legislative body, such an assembly would have both the staff and structure of one. This alternative vision of democracy rests on citizenship and stewardship even as it builds on the private interests and knowledge of concerned parents and neighbors. As an example of a different form of democratic governance, [the assembly idea] serves to remind ordinary Chicagoans that they now have no systemwide forum through which to debate broad issues of equity, standards, and accountability."

What Shipps is proposing, of course, is a vibrant representative democracy as opposed to the various notions of "participatory" democracy favored by the New Left and its progeny. The advantage of the former is that it serves as a constraint on the emergence of charismatic hero-leaders who can run roughshod over an atomized mass in the membership. Local councils cannot overcome that problem without electing representatives to a district wide body, a notion clearly absent in Chicago.

While I do not know of any incidents that rose to the level of vigilantism by LSC’s, as in New York in 1968, one can readily see why the now black dominated Chicago Teachers Union would be particularly concerned about the creation of this new watchdog group.

It is interesting to point out as well, as Levy notes, that when the NYC UFT went out on strike, white members of the New Left volunteered to teach, serving then as strike breakers against the union. This was another sad chapter in the inability of young white student radicals to comprehend the nature and significance of the labor movement.

Some in the New Left set out to set up new power centers in poor communities through community organizing precisely because they did not want to compete inside the labor movement with the already democratically elected leadership. That was a leadership and movement that they could not mold to their authoritarian models.

As a veteran labor and student activist of the period later wrote about the SDS and the trade union movement:

"The problem was that these middle class students thought of themselves as leaders. Without thinking about it - because they didn't think about it explicitly - they rejected the trade union movement because it was already organized, it already had a leadership. There was no room at the top for them there. At least not in any reasonably near future. The "poor," on the other hand, were not organized and had no leadership."

(One could easily see a young Barack Obama making the same calculation - how to get to the top in a city like Chicago which already had an established political leadership in the Democratic party and the Chicago Federation of Labor. Well, how about the community organizations, and who better to ally oneself with than Bill Ayers, a 20 year veteran of this milieu.)

Instead of supporting activists inside a democratic labor movement to consider new approaches to education that were genuinely responsive to community concerns, Levy notes the New Left adopted a “romantic view of Black Power”:

“…white radicals tended to believe the rhetoric of the Panthers and other black militants. They found in it proof that a revolution was imminent and thus a rationale for their own militancy.”

That “militancy” in 1968 would soon turn into sectarianism, violence, terrorism, authoritarianism and Maoism among a segment of the New Left. That segment would be the home of Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Ayers’ education reform ally Mike Klonsky (the fortunate recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CAC for his Small Schools Workshop).

In fact, Ayers and Dohrn would take their initial interest in the Black Power movement to an extreme arguing then, as they do now, that "white supremacy" and "white skin privilege" are the central sins of American life. Thus, Ayers has endorsed a proposal made by Linda Darling-Hammond, an education advisor to Barack Obama, to repay something she calls "education debt" that has, she argues, accumulated over centuries to people of color.

The idea was initiated by a colleague of Darling-Hammond's and Ayers', Gloria Ladson-Billings, who roots her proposal in the argument among some in the black community, like the Trinity church that the Obama family belongs to, that whites owe blacks reparations for slavery.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

So just as the Ayers/Obama community organizer dream of a new power center in Chicago schools was flailing, along came Walter Annenberg with his $500 million national grant to school reform in 1993. Bill Ayers saw an opportunity to rescue the failing dream.

According to Shipps:

"The Challenge sought to build on the momentum of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act which had radically decentralized governance of the Chicago Public Schools.”

As Ayers himself would explain in his proposal to receive $49.2 million from Annenberg:

“Chicago is six years into the most radical systemwide urban school reform effort in the country. The Annenberg Challenge provides an unprecedented opportunity to concentrate the energy of this reform into an educational renaissance in the classroom.”

And:

“We envision a process to unleash at the school site the initiative and courage of LSC’s….” Later, it states “[t]he Local Schools Councils…are important both for guiding educational improvement and as a means of strengthening America’s democratic traditions.”

With the initial grant secured Ayers formed the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which he co-chaired, as the operational arm of the CAC. The Collaborative, in turn, recruited a new board of directors including Barack Obama who was selected its Chairman in the spring of 1995.

Over the next six years the CAC would match the initial grant with $110 million of matching grants for a total of $160 million to be invested to meet their goals. At the heart of the effort was a proposal to recruit and train new leaders for membership on the Local School Councils.

According to Ken Rolling, the executive director of the CAC, who had been recruited to the CAC from the Woods Fund where he had earlier funded efforts to create the LSC’s in the late 1980s, its aim was:

“…to make clear the connection between organizing a base of supporters for school reform with local schools, and a training program on educational issues to assist parents and community members participate in their schools”

That proposal from the Ayers-led Collaborative was questioned by board members and specifically by business sector board member Arnold Weber as a potential “political threat “to the power of school principals. It was Barack Obama who volunteered to help shepherd the proposal through the board after consultation with the Ayers-led Collaborative. More than $2 million was spent to shore up the failing Councils.

And all of this was done in direct confrontation with the Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley.

After seven years of the LSC reform the schools were not raising test scores and Daley pushed successfully to recentralize power in his hands over school governance at the end of 1995. The LSC’s were not eliminated only handcuffed, yet the CAC persisted. At one point according to a report to the Ford Foundation, Daley even attempted to wrest the Annenberg money away from Ayers and Obama.

According to Ken Rolling:

"There were two or three attempts from them [Chicago city officials] to just “get the money.” Even the mayor got into at one point. The mayor asked the ambassador [Annenberg] to come into Chicago and he wanted to tell him, “You are wasting your money. You should give it to me.” The ambassador never responded to him and never agreed to a meeting. But [new School system CEO Paul] Vallas tried it, his staff worked on how to wrest that money away from us."

THE END RESULT

What was the result of the battle led arm in arm by Barack Obama and Bill Ayers against Mayor Daley? Was this reincarnation of the New Left’s authoritarian dream of a radical upheaval of American education effective in helping actual students?

Obama partisans and veterans of the Chicago school wars natually take the side of the CAC yet ignore the reality. Thus, in the Chicago Sun Times Linda Lenz, affiliated with Obama education advisor Linda Darling-Hammond, and who edits a journal whose board of directors includes Warren Chapman, a co-founder of the CAC, writes that there is much to "applaud" and "admire" in the work of Ayers and Obama on the CAC. Hmm, little wonder. At least she corrects the disinformation campaign of the Obama camp about the Ayers/Obama alliance.

But what really happened with that $160 million? Did it really create an "educational renaissance" as promised by Ayers?

It turns out, thankfully, that the CAC also funded a third arm, the Consortium of Chicago School Research (CCSR), in parallel with the two operational arms, the Board and the Collaborative. This arm was to conduct research on the impact of the CAC’s funding.

In 2003 the final technical report of the CCSR on the CAC was published. The results were not pretty.

The “bottom line” according to the report was that the CAC did not achieve its goal of improvement in student academic achievement and nonacademic outcomes. While student test scores improved in the so-called Annenberg Schools that received some of the $150 million disbursed in the six years from 1995 to 2001,

“This was similar to improvement across the system….There were no statistically significant differences in student achievement between Annenberg schools and demographically similar non-Annenberg schools. This indicates that there was no Annenberg effect on achievement.”

The report identified the political conflict between the Local School Council promotion efforts of the CAC – such as the $2 million Leadership Development Initiative - as a possible factor hindering a positive impact on student achievement.

The Challenge allowed Barack Obama and Bill Ayers to work together, no doubt closely, in the heat of political battle to help disburse $160 million to allies, particularly in the LSC’s, in the Chicago School system.

Under the circumstances, it seems more than a bit disingenuous of Senator Obama to dismiss Bill Ayers as “some guy who lives in my neighborhood.”

On a more serious level, of course, the CAC effort raises the question of the fundamental world view of Barack Obama. It would appear to have a lot more in common with the perspective of Bill Ayers, a perspective that dates back 40 years because of its roots in the New Left, but continues today as Ayers pushes for his racially divisive authoritarian agenda in American schools.

Issue the mandatory evacuation order now, Mayor Nagin. Don't wait for Governor Jindal.

Saturday, August 20, 3:30 PM EDT (Reuters): [New Orleans] City Mayor Ray Nagin said if Gustav -- now a dangerous Category 4 storm with 145 mph (230 kph) winds -- holds to its current course, a mandatory city evacuation could start early on Sunday.

August 30,(AP via ABC News: [...] By early Sunday, Nagin said officials would look at the potential for a mandatory evacuation. ... Critics said New Orleans was waiting too long.

Bob Wheelersburg, a former Army Reserve major and liaison officer for emergency preparedness, said National Guard units are suffering from equipment and manpower shortages.

"If I was the governor of Louisiana, I'd give the evacuation order as soon as possible," Wheelersburg said. "I think it's going to be a huge disaster."

But authorities have emphasized that New Orleans can't just up and leave — there is a phased order to evacuations, and coastal communities or those outside of levee protections get first crack and moving residents out.[...]

Yes. Exactly. And because the evacuations have to be phased, the mandatory order to evacuate New Orleans should have been issued on Friday afternoon at latest.

Just for the record, I'll start by reviewing two obvious points:

1. Anyone who can read a weather map, and who knows the temperature of the waters that Gustav is passing over, knows that there is nothing to prevent Gustav from morphing into a Category 5 hurricane.

2. New Orleans is a bowl set below sea level. That means if it's hit by a worst-case version of a Cat 5, everyone remaining in that bowl dies. No such thing as high ground in that situation. And forget the levees.

Mr Nagin, you've had three years to consider the worst case scenario. So issue that evacuation order now. No one with a conscience will curse you if turns out you were wrong.

I don't want to hear about Governor Jindal; clearly he has fallen down. So call him and say, "Mandatory evacuation now on in Nola," then hang up.

"Strongly urging" Nola residents to evacuate, as you've been doing, doesn't cut it. Here's what else doesn't cut it:

Those among New Orleans' estimated 310,000 to 340,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," the city's emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, has warned.

If you start the mandatory evacuation now, and if your path is littered with miracles, there is a chance that you can get everyone out of Nola by the time of Gustav's landfall on the U.S. coast.

There must be ways to expedite the evacuation. There should not be any tourists left in the hotels. So maybe one strategy is for the National Guard to evacuate residents from their homes and transport them to the hotels, which can act as a staging area for the evacuation buses.

Whatever you do, don't stand around shifting blame and complaining that many people won't leave. I understand that you're basically a businessman, not a triage expert. But you should have thought of that before you signed on to be a mayor of below-sea level city in hurricane alley.

This said, if you take your advice from seasoned military commanders, not politicians, you'll do okay this time.

If you don't follow that route, and if the worst happens, the only upside is that you won't have to face the music. You'll be drowned.

More from the ABC/AP report:

Police with bullhorns plan to go street to street this weekend with a tough message about getting out ahead of Hurricane Gustav: This time there will be no shelter of last resort. The doors to the Superdome will be locked. Those who stay will be on their own. ...

In New Orleans, the locations of the evacuation buses were not made public because people who need a ride are supposed to go to designated pickup points, not to the staging area.

But that approach worried some residents. Elouise Williams, 68, said she called the city's 311 hot line Thursday until she was "blue in the face."

She was concerned about getting a ride to the pickup point and about what would happen to those who left. As of late Friday afternoon, she planned to remain in the Algiers neighborhood and look in on any other residents who stayed behind.

*****************************
6:30 PM ET Update
From ABC website, 4:08 PM ET:

ABC News' Karen Travers reports: In an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace that will air Sunday morning, Sen. John McCain indicated that the GOP convention could be suspended because of Hurricane Gustav.

"It wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster," McCain told Wallace.

McCain said that he has been in touch with the governors of the Gulf Coast states—where Gustav is expected to make landfall—and that his campaign would continue to monitor the now-Category 4 storm.

"I'm afraid, Chris, that we may have to look at that situation and we'll try and monitor it. I've been talking to Governors Jindal [La.], Barbour [Miss.], Riley [Ala.], Crist [Fla.], I've been talking to all of them," McCain told Wallace. "So we're monitoring it from day to day and I'm saying a few prayers too."

A Republican convention official tells ABC News, however, that at this point, there are no plans to cancel the convention but there are several contingency plans that are being looked at in terms of delegation travel and the program of speakers. Both Crist and Jindal are scheduled to speak at the convention this week, but no decisions have been made yet on their plans to come to Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

This official says the Republican National Convention Committee is "still moving forward with opening the convention on Monday" as planned and notes that there is official business that has to happen at the convention, like the actual nomination of John McCain and the platform ratification.

The RNCC has issued the following statement from 2008 Republican National Convention President and CEO Maria Cino:

"Like all Americans, our prayers are with those who will be affected by Hurricane Gustav. We continue to closely monitor the movement of the storm and are considering necessary contingencies. We are in communication with the Gulf state governors to make sure the convention is taking all the appropriate steps as the hurricane progresses. The safety of our affected delegations is our first priority and preparing for Gustav comes before anything else."

What part of "Stand down" don't you understand?

KR: Re your chortles about Putin's accusations: There is still lot of fog about the Russo-Georgia war. We don't know what kind of evidence the Russians have collected. But Putin might be working up to something.

This said, I'll grant that he got carried away with his theories. Whatever machinations were going on from the US side surely had nothing to do with helping McCain get into office.

Things seem to have revolved around ratcheting up the argument for Georgia's fast entry into NATO's Membership Action Plan before a new U.S. president was installed. I assume that would be on the theory that if Obama got into office there was no guarantee he'd push for the MAP for Georgia and Ukraine with the same vigor as Bush.

In any case there is enough evidence to suggest that neither side has clean hands in this matter. Saakashvili was the trigger man but the U.S. military and/or the CIA put the gun in his hand then said, 'Now be sure not to shoot while we turn our back on you for a few minutes.'

Yet they knew he was trigger happy, and they did everything to egg him into a confrontation with Russia.

Keep in mind that the Israelis spilled the beans.The Jerusalem Post reported on August 10th with an update on the 11thWe cut arms sales to Georgia months ago

[...] "Several months ago, we carried out an evaluation of the situation in Georgia and realized that Georgia and Russia were on a collision course. We have good relations with both, and don't want to back either in this conflict," the official said. "We therefore made a decision to drastically minimize sales of weapons to Georgia.

Frantic requests from Georgia to Israel for military hardware leading up to the current conflict with Russia set off alarm bells at the Ministry of Defense.

"We saw that there was a surge in requests for weapons, and we therefore decided to, in effect, minimize the entire issue. After our decision, we sold only defensive weapons in small quantities to Georgia," he said.[...]

The key point is that if Israel -- a close U.S. ally -- noticed big trouble brewing, there was no way a gathering storm of that size escaped the notice of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of State, the White House and Congress.

Meanwhile, Georgia had been transformed into an arms depot, with French and U.S. leading the pack of arms merchants. During his August 14 conversation with CNN's Larry King, Mikhail Gorbachev observed (through a translator)

[...] Had Georgia not been armed to the teeth, it wouldn't have done what it has done. A small state has a $1 billion military budget. All kinds of countries participated, but particularly the United States armed Georgia with sophisticated weapons -- aircraft, land weapons. Mountains of weapons were supplied to Georgia. [...]

So why did the U.S. stage war games with Georgia's military in July, which Russia would surely interpret as a rehearsal for attacks on Georgia's autonomous regions?

Of course there's the other side of the story, which is that the Russian military was instigating in the same regions and doing everything they could to provoke Saakashvili, even though they also knew he was trigger happy.

But the refrain that Russia was staging provocations would be nowhere near the two major points for the U.S.

The first point is that when our government wants to use the military to yank another country's chain, the Congress has to inform the people they represent.

The second point is that the United States of America is a member of NATO and should act as such while on the continent.

If it had been NATO troops giving training to Georgia's military and staging military exercises, then any blowback would have been directed at NATO. Instead, and once again, the USA is left holding the bag. And once again the Europeans retain deniability.

Regarding your concerns about the petroruble, the SCO, and Russia weapons sales to Syria -- all right, tomorrow I'll go down the list and we'll see where we end up.

I will close by noting that Dr Stephen F. Cohen's Russia report on the 24th to John Batchelor is vitally important. Here is the link to the podcast. See the first hour.

How Michelle Obama Sahiba undercut healthcare for the poorest in Chicago's black community

Law professor and political scientist Dr Steve Diamond writes on the sahiba's cynical strategy:

This in depth investigation by the Washington Post of what Michelle Obama does to earn more than $300,000 working for the non-profit University of Chicago medical center deserves close attention.

It suggests that the concern the Obama campaign professes for the problems that continue to plague many in the black community rings false. In short, a central achievement of Ms. Obama over the last few years has been to run interference for the world class medical facility at the University's Hyde Park campus against the hundreds of thousands of poor black Chicagoans who surround the University's white enclave.

That people who have supported Barack Obama in the past, like lifelong civil rights activist, anti-war activist and single payer health care advocate Dr. Quentin Young (alleged by some to have been a friend of Obama mentor and former Chicagoan, Frank Marshall Davis) openly attack Ms. Obama for her role in this effort adds a level of credibility and should sound an alarm among all progressives. Young was one of those who attended the famous "meet and greet" debut of state senate candidate Barack Obama at the home of fellow Hyde Park residents Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in late 1995.

Young called the Michelle Obama-led initiative at UC "shameful" and said that the level of charitable spending by the medical center is "ludicrous."

"They are arguably, if not defrauding, then at least taking advantage of a public subsidy. We would like to see them give more than the minimum. The need is there."

That the campaign had the nerve to celebrate Ms. Obama's work on "community health" during the Denver DNC suggest how deeply cynicism runs inside the Obama camp.

Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that Ms. Obama hired David Axelrod, the campaign manager for Senator Obama, to help her re-brand the University's program to steer blacks away from emergency room services at their medical center.

What a team.

Obama Camp Has Many Ties to Wife's Employer - washingtonpost.com

The rather odd BTC pipeline, Saakashvili's rather odd reversal on Georgia's opium trafficking, and Karzai's rather understandable position on poppies

"Pundita, dear, are you hinting at a mystery with your mention of death warrants for Russia and Karzai?

I don't think I'm up to another mystery investigation. If I remember it was six weeks of tracking clues about sick pigs and Chinese villagers before your readers landed in Shenzhen exclaiming "Elementary!"
Boris in Jackson Heights"

Dear Boris:
You mean what was left of my readership. By the fourth week on the topic of mystery pig illness, readers were dropping like flies. Yes indeed; loyal Pundita readers are a hardy breed. But look on the bright side. Our efforts helped stamp out what was threatening to become a global panic and escalation of Sino-US tensions.

In the present case I don't know whether there is a mystery. I have questions that I've not been able to answer to my satisfaction. It all started one dark and stormy night -- just checking to see if you're paying attention, Boris.

It all started when I read the Wikipedia article on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC). That was on August 11 after John McCain said in a speech:

[...] We have other important strategic interests at stake in Georgia, especially the continued flow of oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline [...]

I thought that was an odd remark because from what I'd heard about the BTC, the oil it carried was primarily intended for Europe.

The pipeline is owned by a consortium of energy companies led by BP (formerly British Petroleum), the operator of the pipeline. Here's the list of shareholders:

BP (United Kingdom): 30.1%
State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) (Azerbaijan): 25.00%
Chevron (USA): 8.90%
StatoilHydro (Norway): 8.71%
Türkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortaklığı (TPAO) (Turkey): 6.53%
Eni/Agip (Italy): 5.00%
Total (France): 5.0%
Itochu (Japan): 3.4%
Inpex (Japan): 2.50%
ConocoPhillips (USA): 2.50%
Hess Corporation (USA) 2.36%

So what we see is that U.S. companies together hold less than a 14% share in the BTC consortium and that Britain's BP, which is the world's third largest global energy company, holds the lion's share.

However, I haven't heard of any British troops in Georgia. Have you?

For that matter, I haven't heard that Japanese, Norwegian, Turkish, French, Italian or Azerbaijani troops are in the country; just U.S. Marines, about 1,000 them. This is not counting the 1,500 CIA operatives hanging out in Georgia.

There's some question about whether those Marines were still in country when the fighting broke out. They were probably involved in the war games in Georgia that started in July.

Yet I couldn't recall any other country having troops in Georgia since the pipeline project began; just American troops, over the years.

The pipeline doesn't seem to carry enough oil, little more than 1% of the world's supply, to make it an effective hedge against Iran blocking oil shipments or Russia turning off the oil spigot.

Even so, that would be all the more reason for European countries to be involved in training Georgian troops and putting in a military presence there. Yet it was only the USA in Georgia -- despite the USA holding only a minority shareholder interest in the BTC.

An explanation could be that the USA is just using the pipeline as an excuse to hang out in Georgia and provoke Russia. That would be par for the course.

Yet I kept returning to the words I blurted when I first read the Wikipedia article: "This is an oil pipeline version of the East India Company."

I couldn't figure out what caused me to say that. There are elements of the pipeline project that one might argue are neocolonialist. But the East India Company was a straight-out colonialist enterprise. The British Raj was raised up on the foundation of the British East India Company.

So finally I went back to the Wiki article and closely re-read it, then I started plowing through the footnoted articles that were available in English.

The more I read about the project and recalled the era in which it arose, the more it didn't stack for me.

I'll continue this in the next post. But just so you don't lose sleep worrying about Karzai, he may have bought himself more time if this report by Ramtanu Maitra is correct. He claims that Karzai strongly supports the Afghan-based poppy field anti-eradication lobby.

Maitra also has much to say about the Senlis Council and George Soros' great interest in legalizing opium, which I knew nothing about.

The biggest surprise for me was Maitra's mention of a report from a Soros-funded foundation that Eduard Shevardnadze "initiated harsh legal measures and public campaigns against drug users in the 1970s" and that:

[...] there were promising changes under President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has "announced the possibility of shifting the focus of drug policy away from the predominantly law enforcement orientation." [...]

That would be quite a shift. In 2002, Saakashvili sounded like a law-and-order kinda guy about narcotics trafficking:

LEADING REFORMER CONCERNED ABOUT DRUG TRAFFICKING MENACE IN GEORGIA
A Q&A with Mikhail [sic] Saakashvili: 1/7/02

Mikhail Saakashvili has emerged as a leading reformer in Georgia. In September 2001, Saakashvili resigned as justice minister in protest of the reluctance of President Eduard Shevardnadze's administration to implement anti-corruption measures. In October, he won a seat in the Georgian parliament in a special by-election, and since then has sought to strengthen his power base. Some observers now consider him a possible candidate to succeed Shevardnadze as Georgia's president. Saakashvili recently discussed Georgian politics with Jeffry K. Silverman, a Tbilisi-based journalist. Saakashvili expressed concern that narcotics trafficking in Georgia was developing into a serious problem. His comments follow:

[...]

Soon there will have to be some pressure applied from the West for Georgia to follow the correct path: the level of organized crime in the country is increasing with money laundering and a booming drug trade. There is a chance that the West might not react soon enough in addressing this problem. Something needs to be done before it gets out of hand.

[...]

Silverman: Can you comment on Georgia's role in drug trafficking?


Saakashvili: The source of the drugs starts out in Afghanistan, mostly in the region that the Northern Alliance controlled prior to the war with the Taliban. The US and their allies may not want to hear this, but we expect this business to increase in Georgia with the defeat of the Taliban forces. It was the Uzbeks and Tajiks that had the export business under control with their connections with transit points such as Tashkent [Uzbekistan], Osh [Kyrgyzstan] and other Central Asian routes. Also, many of those responsible for enforcing the laws and international agreements to combat the drug trade are directly involved in making substantial money from keeping things as they were.

The current political and economic situation in Georgia is perfect for the drug business to develop without barriers. We have created an ideal situation for drug dealing in terms of territories that are out of control, and our strategically important location. We have immediate access to seaports and thus the shortest routes to the West. Right now the West is more involved with larger issues and drugs appears to be secondary. This is a mistake.

Silverman: Where do you get information about drug dealing? What are your sources? Can you back up your claims with sources?

Saakashvili: I have many sources but I can't name any of them directly. Human life means almost nothing in Georgia and especially in the Pankisi Gorge. If I would name a concrete person, then this person would be immediately be killed or, even worse, members of his family [would also be targeted]. [...]