Toonville in the Caucuses

August 14th, 2008

When a country declares independence, everyone on this side of the pond cheers! We understand that “breaking from the mother-country” stuff … we’re children of revolution.

So when a small country votes to break from its mentor, and subsequently gets its ass kicked, we should be cheering that a bigger entity comes along to flex muscles and fight back.

Not if it’s the Ruskie’s, I guess. And not if we’ve given Georgia arms, trained its army, established it as a pro-Western ally and have plans for it … and lets never, for one second, forget the oil! Fuck a democratic vote and the will of the people, under those circumstances; screw independence, unless it profits us in some manner. And a little pro-security dust up at the moment serves the “bring it on” Republican’s Just Fine!

The Pub’s have taken on a Cartoon Network feel — not only is their rhetoric hypocritically repugnant, but they’re actually beginning to look like ‘toons to me. Elmer McFudd had this absurdity to say, John Wayne style, yesterday: ‘In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.’ He left out pesky wabbit. He also left out any sense of irony or reality; we all noticed.

In a move his war-loving admirer’s will applaud, he’s sending his “foreign affairs team” to Georgia to represent his interests [no doubt with a handwritten note of affection from his adviser and former Georgia-lobbyiest, Randy Scheunemann] — note that this is one of those moments of pre-presidential presumption he accuses Obama of.

That team would be side-kicks and [whisper in my ear at press conferences] fact-correctors, Joe Droopy Dog Lieberman and Lindsey Chip or Dale — take yer pick Graham. Meanwhile, Dubby is sending Tweety Bird … errrr, Condi to assess the situation.

McFudd has to get his licks in now — turns out the Iraqi’s are moments away from signing on to a deal to start removing troops in the summer and have a complete withdrawal within three years; Johnny Mac will have to find him another war to “win.” Probably Iran, for starters, but who knows — he seems to have a lot of war plans.

At the moment there is a VERY loose and ill-fitting cease fire between Georgia and Russia, brokered by the French — by the time the ‘toons get there, it will probably still be hot.

The two bonus reads today can be defined by another non-human entity, Yoda:

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

… or maybe that defines every post and every news story in the world today. Ya think?

Jude

Resistance Heroes in Tbilisi - In Baghdad, only Terrorists
Laura Flanders, The Nation
08/13/2008

The New York Times ran a feature August 12, on Georgian civilians who’ve joined the fight against the Russian invasion of that former Soviet republic. The story, by Nicholas Kulish and Michael Schwirtz is full of empathy and heart.

Nika Kharadze and Giorgi Monasalidze went to war last week, the Times report begins… “even though they were not warriors.”

It goes on to describe how the men’s parents have been searching for them ever since. They’ve gone from hospital to hospital, to the local and International Red Cross. Mom and dad even asked the cellphone company to trace the last known location of their son’s phone. No luck.

And then there’s this line: as parts of the country fell before the Russian invaders, the Times writes, “it was not only the army that rose in its defense but also regular citizens.” Resistance, we learn, was part of a tradition, inscribed in local history and culture going back to “medieval times.”

To make the point, the writers describe a government employee, standing under a statue of Stalin in the city’s main square with a rifle slung over his civilian clothes. The man is part of a group of a dozen locals who tell the reporter they’re there to defend their town.

The story also describes displacement caused by bombing. “The planes came in and they started to bomb. The ground was covered with dead people, and there was nowhere to go,” says Goderzi Zenashvili, 48. “The people that died, they died from their houses falling in on them, from the shrapnel and from concussions.”

So now we know! The New York Times can do it when they want to. They can paint a picture of war that’s hard to shake: heroic, hapless young men who take up arms to defend their homelands; moms and dads and lovers worried sick. The Times can explain how invading armies provoke righteous resistance. When they want to.

But they didn’t – not when it was Baghdad instead of Tbilisi, and the statue Saddam’s, not Stalin’s. Then, local people in resistance were called dead enders, killers, terrorists. Because of course — here’s the difference: then the resisters were the enemy and the invaders were – are – us. ++

Putin’s war enablers: Bush and Cheney
Russia’s escalating war on Georgia reveals the consequences of the Bush administration’s long assault on the international rule of law.
Juan Cole, Salon
Aug. 14, 2008

The run-up to the current chaos in the Caucasus should look quite familiar: Russia acted unilaterally rather than going through the U.N. Security Council. It used massive force against a small, weak adversary. It called for regime change in a country that had defied Moscow. It championed a separatist movement as a way of asserting dominance in a region it coveted.

Indeed, despite George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s howls of outrage at Russian aggression in Georgia and the disputed province of South Ossetia, the Bush administration set a deep precedent for Moscow’s actions — with its own systematic assault on international law over the past seven years. Now, the administration’s condemnations of Russia ring hollow.

Bush said on Monday, responding to reports that Russia might attack the Georgian capital, “It now appears that an effort may be under way to depose [Georgia's] duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.” By Wednesday, with more Russian troops on the move and a negotiated cease-fire quickly unraveling, Bush stepped up the rhetoric, announcing a sizable humanitarian-aid mission to Georgia and dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.

While U.S. leaders have tended to back Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, there are two sides to every dispute, and in the ethnically diverse Caucasus it may be more like a hundred sides. Abkhazia and Ossetia are claimed by Georgia, but they have their own distinctive languages, cultures and national aspirations. Both fought for independence in the early 1990s, without success, though neither was Georgia able to assert its full sovereignty over them, accepting Russian mediation and peacekeeping troops.

The separatist leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia now speak of Saakashvili in terms reminiscent of the way separatists in Darfur speak of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Sergei Bagapsh of Abkhazia and Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia have come out against conducting any further talks with Georgia, calling instead for Saakashvili to be tried for war crimes. Kokoity told Interfax, “There can be no talks with the organizers of genocide.” The Russian press is full of talk of putting Saakashvili on trial for ordering attacks on Ossetian civilians.

All sides have committed massacres and behaved abominably. There are no clean hands involved, notwithstanding the strong support for Georgia visible in the press of most NATO member countries. (Georgia has been jockeying to join NATO, something Moscow stridently opposes.) Still, not everyone in NATO agrees that Saakashvili is a hero. While traveling with the negotiating team of President Nicolas Sarkozy, one French official observed that “Saakashvili was crazy enough to go in the middle of the night and bomb a city” in South Ossetia. The consequence of Russia’s riposte, he said, is “a Georgia attacked, pulverized, through its own fault.”

An emboldened Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sarcastically likened Russia’s actions to Bush’s foreign policy. Pointing to the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Putin said, “Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages … And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed 10 Ossetian villages at once, who ran over elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilians alive in their sheds — these leaders must be taken under protection.”

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush officials repeated ad nauseam the mantra that Saddam Hussein had killed his own people. Thus, they helped create a case for unilateral “humanitarian intervention” of the sort Putin says Russia is now pursuing.

Washington had failed to get a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a war on Iraq, and Iraq had not attacked the United States, so no principle of self-defense was at stake. But since all governments (even the United States under Abraham Lincoln) repress separatist movements, often ruthlessly, Bush was turning actions such as Saakashvili’s attack on South Ossetia into a more legitimate cause for an outside power (especially one bordering it) to wage war against Georgia.

Indeed, Putin’s invoking Bush’s Iraq adventure points directly to the way in which Bush has enabled other world powers to act impulsively. With his doctrine of preemptive warfare, Bush single-handedly tore down the architecture of post-World War II international law erected by the founders of the United Nations to ensure that rogue states did not go about launching wars of aggression the way Hitler had. While safeguarding minorities at risk is a praiseworthy goal, the U.N. Charter states that the Security Council must approve a war launched for this purpose or any other, excepting self-defense. No individual nation is authorized to wage aggressive war on a vigilante basis, as Bush did in Iraq or Russia is now doing in the Caucasus.

Eight years ago, the United States would have been in a position to condemn Russia for its unilateral war without necessarily seeming hypocritical. After all, even the Korean War had been sanctioned by the United Nations, and President Dwight Eisenhower had condemned the 1956 tripartite attack on Egypt by Britain, France and Israel for violating the U.N. Charter.

Bush’s recent argument, that a democratically elected government should not be overthrown (no matter what its behavior, apparently), was intended to sidestep comparisons between his own unilateral wars of aggression and ones such as the current Russian intervention. He was implying that his invasion of Iraq toppled a government that lacked the legitimacy enjoyed by Saakashvili’s.

In fact, Bush’s foreign policy includes a long list of actions intended to undermine elected governments.

Whether the United States was actively involved in the attempted coup in 2002 against Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela, or merely cheered it on, it is clear that Venezuelan popular sovereignty meant nothing to Bush if it resulted in a government unfriendly to and critical of Washington.

An even more egregious example came with the destabilization and overthrow of the Hamas government, which won control of the Palestine Authority in January 2006. Bush insisted on allowing the participation in elections of Hamas, a fundamentalist party with a covert paramilitary that has struck at Israeli targets, including civilians. When the party unexpectedly won, however, Bush refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new government, denying it funds and sympathizing with the Israeli attempt to overthrow it. Israeli security forces kidnapped elected Hamas representatives and cabinet ministers, and harmed civilians by blocking medical aid and food that might go to people via the Hamas government.

In 2007, Bush and the Israelis supported a takeover in the West Bank by forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization, lead by Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Similar attempts were made in Gaza, but they failed, leaving the elected Hamas government in charge of the small territory. Palestinian popular sovereignty, and Hamas’ victory in what were widely judged to have been relatively free and fair elections, were disregarded by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Bush.

Bush and Cheney also repeatedly sided with military dictator Pervez Musharraf against elected civilian politicians in Pakistan. Even when the Pakistani Parliament, elected in open polls last February, initiated impeachment proceedings against Musharraf earlier this week, the Bush administration came out against the idea of Musharraf’s going into exile if convicted, urging that he be allowed to stay “honorably” in Pakistan if he stepped down.

Bush’s exceptionalism, whereby he implicitly maintained that no international laws or institutions would be allowed to constrain U.S. actions taken in the name of national security, grew out of the sole superpower status of the United States after fall of the Soviet Union. A unipolar world is, however, an exceedingly rare circumstance in modern world history, and it was unlikely to last very long. China may soon have the economic and technological clout to go toe to toe with the United States; and Russia, fueled by the energy boom, is recovering from its economic disaster of the 1990s.

The collapse of the Soviet economy produced tremendous misery and downward mobility. Uncertainty made couples unwilling to risk having children. In one of the great demographic reversals in history, the Russian Federation’s population fell by 10 million in the years after 1991. Russian need for U.S. foreign aid and goodwill led Moscow to acquiesce for a time in the expansion of U.S. influence into Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Russia is now reemerging and flexing its muscles. The run-up in the price of oil and gas has filled Moscow’s coffers, since it is one of the great producers of natural gas in the world (prices of natural gas tend to track with those of petroleum).

Russia has reasserted its influence in countries such as Uzbekistan, which had briefly licensed a base to U.S. forces but then kicked them out, and in Turkmenistan, which recently agreed to pipe its natural gas through Moscow.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are increasingly acting like Gulf emirs, flush with petrodollars and assured of political leverage because of their control over energy resources.

In a unipolar world, the Bush doctrine of preemptive war allowed Washington to assert itself without fear of contradiction. The Bush doctrine, however, was never meant to be emulated by others and was therefore implicitly predicated on the notion that all challengers would be weaker than the United States throughout the 21st century. Bush and Cheney are now getting a glimpse of a multipolar world in which other powers can adopt their modus operandi with impunity. Bush’s rhetoric may have sounded like that of President Woodrow Wilson, but his policy has often been to support the overthrow or hobbling of elected governments that he does not like — and that has not gone unnoticed by countries that also count themselves great powers and would not mind following suit.

The problem with international law for a superpower is that it is a constraint on overweening ambition. Its virtue is that it constrains the aggressive ambitions of others. Bush gutted it because he thought the United States would not need it anytime soon. But Russia is now demonstrating that the Bush doctrine can just as easily be the Putin doctrine. And that leaves America less secure in a world of vigilante powers that spout rhetoric about high ideals to justify their unchecked military interventions. It is the world that Bush has helped build. ++

Russia Capitalizes on New World Disorder
Gerhard Spörl, Der Spiegel

The war in the Caucasus is a truly global crisis. Russia’s action against the western-looking Georgia testifies to an extreme craving for recognition and is reminiscent of the Cold War. It reveals the reality of the chaotic new world order — a result of the failures of President Bush’s foreign policy.

Ossetian soldiers on top of a tank enter Tskhinvali next to a giant portrait of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.When the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier describes the overall situation in the world, he likes to refer to what he calls a “new complexity” of circumstances. Yet things were already complex before the war in the Caucasus region, which has its roots in the 19th century more than in the 21st, but now we have been deprived of one small piece of ignorance. Who would have even bothered to try and pinpoint South Ossetia on the map or to carefully differentiate it from North Ossetia before the conflict? And this is supposed to be a world crisis?

But it is one indeed, because the crisis has given oil and gas producer Russia an alibi for cleaning up along its borders in places like Georgia, where the United States and NATO were beginning to exert their influence. It is a world crisis, because this wounded ex-superpower decided, some time ago, that it was going to put an end to a phase of humiliation and losses, of NATO and American expansion.

People took to the streets in the Baltic states, and the Polish president traveled to Georgia to participate in a show of solidarity among the weak, among countries with a long historical memory of what Russia can do to the weak. It is no coincidence that Eastern Europeans suspect that the West is hedging its bets, as it did in 1938, 1956, 1961 and 1968, in loud silence and inactive appeasement. Their illusions are suddenly dropping away like autumn leaves.

Part of the truth is that the United States had rather relished treating Russia and its then president, Vladimir Putin, as yesterday’s superpower and leader. US President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and invented a missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland. The revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, reverberations of the revolutionary fall of 1989, were made possible by the gracious assistance and coaching of American foundations and think tanks. There was nothing wrong with this approach, but America, the overwhelmingly superior superpower, was petty enough to gloat over its achievements.

A Touch of the Old Cold War

John McCain, who hopes to become the 44th US president, has come up with the spectacular idea of establishing a league of democracies that would address the world’s problems whenever the United Nations is gridlocked, in other words, whenever there is an important issue on the table. If this league existed today, would intervention forces already have been deployed to the Caucasus? And now McCain has come up with the no less original idea of excluding Russia from the golden circle of G8 nations. Does anyone have any other bright ideas on how to punish the miscreant?

The new complexity consists of the fact that a few opportunities were missed after 1989, such as the chance to develop a resilient relationship among the European Union, NATO and Russia. Before long, our only concern will be over whether we should in fact entrust the Russia, as uninterested in democracy as they are, with our energy security.

It is true that there is a touch of the old Cold War to August 2008. And yet it is also true that the month’s events constitute only a subcategory of the larger complexity in which the world finds itself today. The United States is the common denominator. On the one hand, it had no qualms about tormenting Russia, and yet it is incapable of coming to Georgia’s aid. It was also apparently unable to dissuade the Georgian president from embarking on his adventure. CNN is so enamored of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili that he is constantly asked to appear on the news network for interviews, so that he can instill his view of things — of Georgia on the road to democracy, and of Russia succumbing to revanchism — in Americans, to the delight of the White House.

A Lopsided Multipolarity

The world ceased to be a unipolar place when the Iraq war began. When the neocons used the word unipolarity, they were referring to the idea that the world’s sole superpower, thanks to its military superiority, could assume that it was entitled to the role of global cop, and that the world must bend to its will, whether it wanted to or not.

Now a new technical term has come into circulation: multipolarity. It means that a number of powers can do as they please, without punishment, and no one can do much about it. China can do as it pleases with Tibet, the Uyghurs and its dissidents, and it can buy its energy where it pleases. India can sign a nuclear treaty with the United States, and can then vacillate between choosing to ditch the agreement and keep it in place. Iran can decide to become a nuclear power and then wait to see what happens, to see whether Israel and the United States, for example, will issue empty threats of air strikes while Russia and China obstruct the superpower in the UN Security Council whenever it calls for effective resolutions.

But the new multipolarity is lopsided. America is still the power without which nothing works — whether it be sensible or senseless. China is moving in its own orbit and is unlikely to move forward as quickly as it had hoped until recently. It’s easier to win gold medals than establish a stable world power by combining capitalism with communism. India is drifting along behind China, struggling with its own domestic problems and unable to decide whether it should throw in its lot with China or the United States.

And Russia? It has a tremendous craving for recognition and a ludicrous amount of money. That money could be put to great use, to develop a nation, for example. That would be a goal that made sense. In the long run, Putin will have to stop playing the bare-chested macho man, the great loner who couldn’t care less about alliances and world opinion.

And so the world finds itself in a state of new complexity. It’s a nice, inoffensive term, one difficult to criticize. Things are already tremendously in flux. But aren’t things always in flux, sometimes more, sometimes less? In 1957, the new British Prime Harold McMillan was asked what would determine the course of his government. “Events, my good man, events,” he replied. Yesterday there was Iraq, today there is the Caucasus, and the Palestinian problem never seems to go away. What happens tomorrow? ++

McCain sends pals to war
Mike Madden, Salon
Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008

Russia has decided not to withdraw from Georgia after all; its foreign minister says to “forget about any talk about Georgia’s territorial integrity,” and NATO powers are scrambling to figure out how to end the war.

But don’t worry, because John McCain has a plan: Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are on their way.

McCain and Barack Obama have been waging a low-level battle of their own ever since Russian troops moved into the neighboring former Soviet republic on Aug. 8. While Obama initially called for restraint on both sides, before gradually ratcheting up demands that Russia back off, McCain immediately blasted the Russians for the invasion. When it became clear that McCain was taking a harder line than the White House was, Obama’s aides started pushing the idea that McCain’s ties to lobbyists for Georgia were the reason.

What, exactly, McCain hopes to accomplish by packing his two closest Senate pals off to a war zone isn’t entirely clear. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is also on her way to Tbilisi, with the ability to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government (instead of just the McCain campaign). Graham and Lieberman are, like McCain, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee; they frequently accompany him on trips to the Middle East and joined him on a mission to Colombia and Mexico earlier this summer.

But considering that one of the main lines of attack Republicans are pushing against Obama these days is that he’s presumptuously declared himself president before Election Day, it’s a little curious that the GOP nominee thinks sending campaign surrogates to visit the war is a good idea.

Then again, as Marc Ambinder points out, officials in Tbilisi aren’t too impressed with McCain’s passionate “Today, we are all Georgians” rhetoric. “Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told CNN on Wednesday. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

Maybe this is just McCain’s way of telling Saakashvili, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter.” After all, if dispatching Lieberman and Graham doesn’t count as an immensely powerful deed, what does? ++

Obama’s Giving McCain Enough Rope to Hang Himself With Russia Georgia Reaction
Rob Kall, HuffPo
August 14, 2008

Folks are saying McCain has the advantage with the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

It seems that Obama is holding back, letting McCain hang himself and McCain is doing a great job.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Georgia, a US ally, had been strongly advised not to react confrontively with Russia. They didn’t listen and Russia came back hard.

McCain makes like Billy Goat Gruff and threatens, huffing and puffing.

It is remarkable that CNN, at least, keeps putting on partisan political experts, not real experts on the region. So it is not surprising that the commentary they get is incredibly dumb. Richard Bennett suggests that the US might deliver stinger missiles to the Georgians. Simply brilliant! That would pretty much be the same as declaring war on Russia. Do we really want to do that?

McCain is talking tough with Russia. Problem is, he’s a gnat on a lions ass and he doesn’t realize it. McCain is having a flashback to 1969. Back then, in THAT cold war, the US was a superpower and Russia was a hollow chimera. We know that now. But now, we also know that Russia is up to its eyeballs in oil money. The Russia of today is far more powerful and capable, massively more so than was true in ‘68.

McCain talks about putting pressure on Russia. Right. So does Bush. Problem is, they are impotent. The Viagra they’ve been delivering to their white male supporters who get their sense of masculinity by supporting war doesn’t work in the real world. The real world says the US is helpless and all the nations of the world know it. McCain has multiple phone conversations with Saakashvilli and then Saackashvilli used it on national TV. Didn’t McCain talk about Obama being manipulated by Ahmadinejead? But it’s okay to meddle with the workings of real diplomatic efforts. …Well, as real as you’re going to get with Condi Rice, the worst Secretary of State n the history of the US.

Gee whiz, Condi speaks Russian. That means she can say things like, “Huh,” and “what” and “didn’t know that,” and “Nobody told me that.”

McCain and his team seem to be set on demonstrating that he can be a tough, bellicose commander-in-chief. What he’s showing is total lack of nuance. He’s showing that his experience during the war was as a prisoner, not a leader. His willingness to jump into confrontation so fast when the stakes are so high, is astounding. Who knows what Russia is willing to do in response? Well, they have demonstrated what they were willing to do in response to Georgia’s affront to their expectations.

Meanwhile, Obama just holds his own, keeping his powder dry, letting McCain run his mouth and fully show what kind of leader he really is and is not. I don’t think today’s Americans are in the same throes of anti-communism, or fears of the “red menace.” I don’t think Americans like to see McCain talking so tough, putting the US at risk of a big war we managed to avoid going nuclear in for nigh on 40 years.

Ironically, McCain plays games with politics, even though his surrogates accuse him of stealing the stage with his Commander-in-Chief Demonstration. But McCain and his surrogates are milking this tragedy to the mad.

We’ll see where the coming poll meanderings lead us. Meanwhile, Israel must be watching this with great interest.

The Russian incursion into Georgia sets the precedent. They get away with it, so, does that mean Israel does too, when it goes after Iran?

Some say we’re re-entering the cold war. Seems pretty hot to me. ++

bonus

Ark. Dems’ party chairman shot dead
Suspect killed after chase; cops say he had been fired by store earlier in day
The Associated Press
Wed., Aug. 13, 2008

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A man recently fired from a Target store barged into the Arkansas Democratic headquarters Wednesday and fatally shot the state party chairman before speeding off in his pickup. Police later shot and killed the suspect after a 30-mile chase.

Police identified the suspect as 50-year-old Timothy Dale Johnson of Searcy, a town about 50 miles northeast of Little Rock. They said that moments after the shooting, Johnson pointed a handgun at a worker at the nearby Arkansas Baptist headquarters. An official there said he told the worker, “I lost my job.”

Chairman Bill Gwatney died four hours after the shooting. The 48-year-old former state senator had been planning to travel to the Democratic National Convention later this month as a superdelegate. He had backed Hillary Rodham Clinton but endorsed Barack Obama after she dropped out of the race.

Clinton and her husband, former President and former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, issued a statement saying Gwatney was “not only a strong chairman of Arkansas’ Democratic Party, but … also a cherished friend and confidant.”

Conway police said a Target store 30 miles north of Little Rock had fired Johnson earlier Wednesday because he had written graffiti on a store wall. The age and address provided by Conway officers matched those provided by Little Rock police for its suspect.

Witnesses said the gunman entered the party offices shortly before noon and said he wanted to see Gwatney.

“He said he was interested in volunteering, but that was obviously a lie,” said 17-year-old party volunteer Sam Higginbotham. He said that when the suspect was refused a meeting with Gwatney, he pushed past employees to reach the chairman’s office.

Suspect led police on chase

Little Rock police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said the suspect and Gwatney introduced themselves to one another, at which time the suspect “pulled out a handgun and shot Gwatney several times.” Hastings didn’t say what the two discussed, but said their discussion was not a heated one.

Police said after leaving the office, the suspect pointed a gun at a worker at the Baptist headquarters seven blocks away. When asked what was wrong, the man said “I lost my job” said Dan Jordan, the group’s business manager.

After the suspect avoided spike strips and a roadblock along U.S. 167 near Sheridan, police rammed his car, spinning it, said Grant County Sheriff Lance Huey. He got out of his truck and began shooting, and state police and sheriff’s deputies fired back, striking him several times, he said.

Hastings said investigators found at least two handguns in the suspect’s truck.

There was a busy signal Wednesday night at a phone number listed under Johnson’s name. Little Rock police said they could find no criminal record for him.

According to Conway police spokeswoman Sharen Carter, Target fired Johnson before 8 a.m. Wednesday because he had written on a wall. Other store employees said Johnson’s body shook as he turned in his ID badge. A Target manager had called police because of the incident but the wall had already been cleaned.

The state Capitol was locked down for about an hour until police got word the gunman had been captured, said Arkansas State Capitol police Sgt. Charlie Brice.

‘Shocking and senseless attack’

Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat who served with Gwatney in the state Senate, had been on a flight to Springdale in northwestern Arkansas. He returned to Little Rock and joined an impromptu vigil at University Hospital after what he called a “shocking and senseless attack.”

Gwatney had been Beebe’s finance chairman during the governor’s 2006 campaign.

“Arkansas has lost a great son, and I have lost a great friend. There is deep pain in Arkansas tonight because of the sheer number of people who knew, respected and loved Bill Gwatney,” Beebe said.

Karen Ray, executive director of the Republican Party of Arkansas, sent her workers home early “out of an abundance of caution.”

“Our hearts go out to everyone at the Democratic headquarters. What a tragedy,” Ray said. “This is just a very upsetting, troubling and scary thing for our staff as well.”

Sarah Lee, a sales clerk at a flower shop across street from the party headquarters, said that around noon Gwatney’s secretary ran into the shop and asked someone to call 911.

Lee said the secretary told her the man had come into the party’s office and asked to speak with Gwatney. When the secretary said she wouldn’t allow him to meet with Gwatney, the man went into his office and shot him, Lee said.

Last November, a distraught man wearing what appeared to be a bomb walked into a Clinton campaign office in New Hampshire and demanded to speak to the candidate about access to mental health care. A hostage drama dragged on for nearly six hours until he peacefully surrendered.

The confrontation brought Clinton’s campaign to a standstill just five weeks before the New Hampshire primary. Security for her was increased as a precaution. She said she did not know the suspect. ++

The rise in social intolerance
JOSE DE LA ISLA, Capital Hill Blue
August 14, 2008

The hate-crime and incident blotter is filling so fast now, it suggests the mean side of our national character is rising. To look away from what is happening could mean something equally telling — a failure to face a problem needing national attention.

The latest entry, on July 19, found two white teenagers in Shenandoah, Pa., charged with homicide and ethnic intimidation in the beating death of a 25-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico. Those charged are just 16 and 17. A third youth is charged with aggravated assault.

In Nashville, Tenn., a pregnant Mexican woman stopped on a traffic violation July 3 and found to have a pending immigration-violation charge was held in handcuffs and shackles by the sheriff’s department as she was in labor prior to giving birth.

In North Carolina, Hispanic leaders received death threats for supporting a bill that would allow some undocumented immigrants the right to attend state colleges. Two of the U.S.-born leaders reported receiving profanity-laced messages and were told to “go back where you came from.” Other demeaning remarks included — you guessed it — their Hispanic ethnicity.

In Phoenix, five individuals and Somos America, a Latino community-based coalition, have sued Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his department and the county government, in U.S. district court for unlawfully stopping and mistreating Latinos in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth and 14th Amendments, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Arizona Constitution.

Plaintiff Manuel Nieto, Jr., a U.S. citizen, claims he was detained in front of his family’s auto-repair shop after police heard him listening to music in Spanish. The two Democratic Party contenders for county attorney, seeking to oppose incumbent Republican Andrew Thomas in November, say some undocumented immigrants were singled out at the expense of overall prosecution of crimes.

Many, many more infamous incidents have received media attention — in Farmers Branch, Texas, in Hazleton, Pa., in Long Island, N.Y., in Pottsville, Iowa. They have played out in virtually every state.

If left uncorrected, this social intolerance will become a part of our national character, just as segregation became part of it.

It gives license to discriminate. And all the while, nice people look on.

The numbers — especially the smaller-scale prejudicial infractions — are corroborated in a 2007 Pew Research Center. Astoundingly, the report found a majority of Hispanics stating that discrimination is a major problem for them.

Nothing like the current dimension has occurred in our country since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 when racists threw Chinese workers out of Western towns, driving many to seek refuge in Mexico.

During the 1930s’ Depression years, more than half a million “Mexicans,” thousands of them with legal papers and thousands more born here, were uprooted and shipped to Mexico like cattle, in trains and trucks.

An unthinking rationalization says it’s their fault. They have it coming. They probably entered our country without permission.

Did the 75 undocumented immigrant employees working in the Twin Towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, have it coming when they perished along with 2,700 others? Did they deserve to die?

The need today is to reconcile and account, admit and acknowledge what happened and what’s driving it. One step in that direction would be to call on all those running for a federal office to commit to conducting a national reconciliation inquiry that identifies what was responsible for the irrational overreaction to the immigration issue. Who are the opportunists and provocateurs?

Church leaders and human rights institutions should form part of the inquiry to hear from victims of abuse living among us. And we ought to invite those in neighboring countries to come forward with their perspectives. We shouldn’t listen only to ourselves anymore.

Voters in November should demand not just a commitment to logical immigration reform but to a national strategy to eliminate policies that encourage predatory practices against our national scapegoats, the most vulnerable among us. We can air out this pestilence with truth. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves