On March 3, a clinic that provides abortions in Montana was so severely vandalized that it has been forced to close down indefinitely. This took place against a backdrop of the most relentless escalation of abortion restrictions and clinic closures since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion 41 years ago. Across the country, this right hangs by a thread. Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper (revcom.us) and initiator of End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women (StopPatriarchy.org), spoke with Susan Cahill, the owner and advanced-level clinician who provided abortions and other services at the family clinic.

Cahill provides the larger picture of what it means to take on the responsibility of providing women with abortions: the threats, violence, legal attacks, gratitude and support; she reveals the depth of her own commitment to women and what it would mean if abortion was no longer available.

This interview first appeared in Revolution Newspaper, and the views expressed by Cahill are her own.

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ST: When I first heard about the vandalism that happened at your clinic I was incensed. I’m outraged about this and a lot of people are, but a lot of people actually have no idea what happened at all. And even those who have heard about it, the headline said that your clinic was “vandalized” and that can conjure up the image of some kids playing a prank. 

SC: Yes, and I’m actually going to go back just a little bit. All Families Healthcare is my business which I started at a different location 6½ years ago and I was very happy there. But I was renting and [not long ago] my landlord at the time said that he was running into some financial problems and he was going to sell the business. He asked me if I wanted to buy the building but it was an older home, which was great because I liked the cozy atmosphere of it, but I didn’t really want to take on that big a project at this time in my life as far as the building and it needed a lot of work so I said no. You know, I may be retiring in a couple of years. So I didn’t think it would sell right away because of all that and because of what he was asking for it, but it did. And when it did, I turned to my secretary/receptionist and said, “An anti-choice person bought this building, I bet you anything.” So I asked my landlord if I could stay there and they said no they were going to use the building and I had to get out.

So I had to turn inward and decide whether or not I was going to try to find another place ’cause it’s not easy for me, because I do abortions, to find a place to rent. But I did. So I got out of there and in minus 15 degrees with a huge amount of help from very dear friends who moved my office to this new location.

And after spending a lot of money and time fixing it up, new paint, cabinets, lots of stuff… I moved in on the weekend before the 11th of February, started seeing patients on the 11th of February.

There’s a lot of things to do when you move a medical office. Lots. So just getting everything organized, remembering where you put new stuff after 6½ years of being in a different place. We were just starting to feel like we were getting settled. It looked really nice. The sun was coming out again and it wasn’t minus 15 anymore and I had almost finished the security system. I had cameras in but this was a new system that was wireless and the person on Monday the 3rd of March said to me, “Tomorrow, I will finish it.” I said “great,” because the next day the 40 Days for Life [40 days of protest and prayers outside the doors of abortion clinics across the country] was going to start and I wanted it up for that.

So that was what happened on Monday. I remember actually walking around after everybody had left thinking, “We did a really good job with this new place.” I was really happy with it. The next morning I was getting ready to go to work and my secretary/receptionist comes in before me and she went in to go to the back door and saw that the glass had been broken and it was obviously broken into. She smartly did not walk in. She walked to where the landlord was, who’s a lawyer and said, “We’ve been broken into, we need to call the police.” Then she called me and by the time I got there the police would not allow us to go in. The FBI was there and actually—this was a Tuesday—we didn’t get to see the damage until Wednesday afternoon.

During that time they spent all day and all night there as well, and the police kept telling me, “This is really very destroyed. I need you to get prepared for this.” They asked me if I wanted to watch the videos of it first before we walked in, but that whole thing made me so anxious. I said, “No, I just want to get in there.”

So, by Wednesday afternoon they finally let me in after doing all their investigation and… it’s really hard to… in fact… every time I think about it I start crying because it’s really, it’s really very difficult to understand the devastation that was there. And everything kept running through my mind, I mean it was only three weeks ago that all of my dearest friends and colleagues helped me create this space and now it was completely vanda… completely destroyed.

And the energy of hate in that place was palpable because not only did this person take meticulous care to damage every possible [medical and structural thing] you can imagine, but on top of that broke… I mean, you know I have prints and paintings and things through the years that represent important things for me that I put up… They were totally destroyed. As well as my, you know, pictures of my family… where holes [were stabbed] in their faces… Everything.

And then every piece of medical equipment was destroyed in some manner or the other. He had put iodine and sprayed it all over everything… He took the fire extinguisher and sprayed the dust… I mean we’re still dealing with this in the little room that we have now, trying to get our charts in order, every time you pull a chart, you know [the] smell comes again… I go to sleep with that in my nose.

So it was complete devastation… They pulled my plants from their roots and besides that he went downstairs in the basement and completely destroyed the heating and plumbing as well. So it was not mere vandalism and it certainly wasn’t [random]. It was an attack on me, there was absolutely no doubt about that.

ST: I’m glad that you went back and told the story from earlier because that is more than I had realized. I read a quote I was going to ask you about later, but it just comes right to the fore of my mind as I’m hearing you describe this. In a letter that you sent to a newspaper, you said this is an attack on you but it is an attack on all women. I wonder if you could explain why you said that and how you mean that.

SC: Well, let me just connect another dot here before I respond to that. So, I wanted to find out who bought the building I was in for 6½ years and my landlord would not tell me. Finally, a lawyer found out from the county and it was a man and wife. The woman is the ex-director for a crisis pregnancy center, Hope Pregnancy Ministries. So they bought the building purely to get me out of business, knowing that it would be hard for me to find another place.

At the time, it was claimed that they were going to use the building. Well, the building is up for lease now. No one’s in it. Then because that didn’t work [to put me out of business] and I found another place, the son of the woman who started Hope Pregnancy Ministries is the one who completely destroyed my clinic and the painful thing for me is that the physician for this Hope Pregnancy Ministries… where you can get, you know, free ultrasounds from a place called Clear Choice which has “Pregnant Scared?” on their billboards… but over the course of the time Clear Choice has referred patients to me, women who—against all of the harassment trying to convince them otherwise—have said, “No I need to terminate this pregnancy.” And I’ve even heard a few patients say, “They said, ‘You will get good care with Susan.'”

So I have felt that we have had some understanding. You know, its respect for differences and hopefully respect for women’s choices. So that was my made-up belief system, apparently. And the physician who was connected to [Hope Pregnancy Ministries] over the course of the years has been very considerate of me. We exchange patients. When I had hip surgery, he came in to see how I was doing. So I felt like this is the belief system that I hold dear, which is that we respect each other’s differences in life. So when this happened, not only did I take it so personally because it was, but I looked at all the women in my community who we both had taken care of, and this was such an attack on them because, it’s like, “We’re telling you what you’re going to do. You are no longer an individual who needs and has to make choices in their life sometimes that are different from the ones that I think you should make… We are going to stop you from being able to do that. We don’t respect your decisions making.”

And this is not just women. It’s families. It’s people. I mean, life is hard. People need choices. 
I have to say, I was thinking about your organization name, Stop Patriarchy, and I thought, you know, I think it’s “stop misogyny” because, the women… it was the mother… it was the son of a mother who did this… and it was the woman whose executive director who got stuck… and they are also misogynistic. They have bought into this belief that women can’t make… that women are less than and are just whatever vessels or whatever… or when did it become that an embryo was more important than a breathing human being, you know?

ST: I really agree with you. Patriarchy encompasses an ideology as well as the structures… and I agree that women can enforce that, they can take up the ideology of male supremacy and misogyny, just as much as men can. On Democracy Now! you said a lot of people, because abortion is legal, they don’t understand that we are actively losing this right. Also, that you remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade. Could you talk some about that?

SC: You know, I was born in 1950, so I grew up when it was illegal. Interestingly, I actually was born on International Women’s Day, March 8, and I was delivered by an 82-year-old female physician who, in 1950 was a rarity to say the least! She was on a program a couple days after delivering me and it was entitled, “Life begins at 80,” so I think the stars were aligned in some respect, you know, for better or worse. 
But, just with this shadow of understanding that the rarity of having a female physician in the first place, and then growing up and my own sensitivities around the fact that I remember having male doctors. You know, I was hippie generation, so when I wanted to get birth control there was one physician at the university who would do that and he was a dirty old man.

I remember that when I got examined, quote unquote, so that I could get birth control pills, he asked me about how I liked sex. I remember this and it just stuck in my mind as I grew and had a broader understanding of what all this meant. So I went through that… and I went through the time when we believed and understood that we were sexual human beings… understanding the philosophy of that and understanding the responsibility. As I grew older and got interested in medicine and what that meant in order for us to feel that way, we needed to also take care of our reproduction in a healthy way.

So I went through all that and I remember when Roe was passed—because that was in ’73 and I went to PA [physician assistant] school in ’74 and from ’74 to ’76—the universities and the hospitals were teaching medical people how to do abortions, which doesn’t even happen anymore. You have to ask now, and it’s hard to find a place that will teach you. So I remember this whole time and to me it was an absolute given. I mean, it was like, “Of course we need this, there is no doubt.” But now, these generations have passed and it is legal… but there’s something missing in our brains around how important this is to stay safe and legal… and I think it’s like the old, “You have to remember your history otherwise you’ll repeat it,” and I think that’s what’s happening here.

ST: Several generations now have never heard anybody speak positively about abortion. Last summer, when we did the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride, we travelled the entire country and we had these bright bright beautiful orange signs that you cannot miss that say, “Abortion on demand and without apology.” And over and over again, some people were confused, “Wait a second, are you for it or against it?” I mean, the sign could not be more clear. But people have never heard the word “abortion” without it being condemned. They’ve heard “choice.” They’ve heard “privacy.” They’ve heard “safe, legal, rare.” But they’ve never heard somebody say look this is a very positive and liberating thing for women to be able to make conscious decisions about when and whether they will have children. So it underscored to me how much there has been a far too one-sided battle in the last 40 years against women’s right to abortion, legally, extra-legally, as well as in the in the realm of culture and morality. So, this is something that I think, in addition to people taking it for granted as something legal, there’s also a lot of defensiveness and shame that is misplaced around abortion. 

SC: I totally agree with you about that. And I confront that every day when women call up and, because I’m a family practice office… That’s my way of saying this is just another medical procedure. I take care of sore throats, I take care of babies, I take care of the elderly, I take care of women’s reproductive needs, including when they get pregnant and find that they can’t keep the pregnancy, or if they get pregnant and want to keep the pregnancy. Then I am joyful for them, refer them because I don’t do obstetrics because I don’t have privileges at the hospital because I am a physician’s assistant.

To me, you fit this in. You know when I was working with Dr. Armstrong [the doctor who Susan Cahill worked with for many years at a family practice that provided abortions], you fit this in. You have vasectomies, you have whatever. I mean, it is part of life. I think marginalizing the whole abortion thing was the biggest mistake after it became legal… putting it in clinics where that’s all they did. I think that was mistake number one and if I was queen for a day I would, and I said this in my letter, I would have particularly physicians and other medical people whose concentration is on women’s health to learn first trimester abortions.

We have made it so safe since ’73 when it was legalized. And I’ve gone through that whole thing, so I know from the hard time to the easy time, it’s a five-minute procedure. It’s a very simple procedure. A shot of penicillin or a tonsillectomy is a heck of a lot more dangerous. And yet, because it’s been stigmatized, OBGYN doctors don’t want to have anything to do with [abortions]. 
I think women should go [to their physicians] and say, “How come you don’t you do this? What kind of a women’s doctor are you?” You know?

And, women should be able to say “abortion.” But, women will call up to me and they’ll say, “Um, um, um, well I want to make an appointment.” And I’d say, “OK, what kind of an appointment do you want?” “Well, um… um…” Well, we all know. They can’t say it so often. So, I say it. It’s like with anything, we can’t say “penis,” we can’t say “vagina.” I had a patient whose mother called me up when her daughter was 10 saying something was the matter with her “toe-toe,” which I knew right away. So she comes in and my medical assistant gets her ready by taking her shoes off and I went back to her and I said, “Why’s her shoes off?” She goes, “Because she said there’s something the matter with her toe.” I said, “No, there’s something the matter with her ‘toe-toe.'” And then, I said, “First of all, we’re going to talk about what this word really is.” So it is a problem, you’re right. And, I don’t know exactly what the answer is, except I do think part of the problem was marginalizing this whole thing in the beginning and if we could in anyway [reverse that]… And now there’s medication abortion, so it’s even easier if you wanted that…

Oh, I was going to tell you a story, which was… I had thought you were going to say that you met women who talked about their experiences having an abortion and that it was not all great. I also believe most of the time in my office, certainly sometimes this is a crisis for a woman, but sometimes it’s easier for them to decide. Sometimes it’s personally harder, but I try to make it not… I don’t want to make it a big ordeal because I believe that it’s disrespectful. I mean, I certainly do everything. I do the counseling. I have a master’s in social work on purpose. But, besides that I’m not going to question women a million times for her decision. I have too much respect for the fact they know what they’re doing. So that also has got to stop, frankly.

I mean, I think we’ve got to make it a little bit simpler for women to go in and say, “I’m pregnant and I don’t want to be.” You know? You certainly want to know, make sure they’re not being forced into something they don’t want to do, that’s very important, but it doesn’t take too long to figure that one out, frankly. You just do it and you say, “I’ll see ya in two weeks to make sure you’re OK,” you know, whatever.

So, this young woman came in. She’s 16 at the time and we had a parental notice hanging around which I think we’ve gotten rid of now… it said “15 and under” but she thought she needed her mother to come in, so her mother came in. Her mother was obviously chemically dependent and was screaming and cursing at the time. This young woman was much more mature than her mother and was very clear about her decision. Really, she allowed her mother to be who she was but after her mother left, she apologized for her mother.

We thought from the date that she was farther along than she actually was, and by the time I got dealt with her mother and her mother left and then I took care of the other patients it was after five… So, I said, “You’re not as far along and if you’re OK with just the two of us doing this now we will.” She said, “I would like that,” so we did it and then I took her home.

And I remember a couple of things about it because she was trying to get her GED. She was working. Her mother was down in the basement of this house, the boyfriend’s mother was in the center of the house and she and the boyfriend were living in the upstairs attic. That’s how it was and she had this little sweatshirt and it was pretty cold out and I had just got a new car with heated seats, which I never had before. I started the car before she got in because I noticed she didn’t have much on. And she’s sitting there yacking away at me and then she stops and she goes, “Oh, heated seats!” You know, it was so sweet. So I drove her home and she’s talking and she stops and she starts to open the door and she turns to me and she says, “Can I give you a hug? You did a really great thing for me today.” That’s the stuff that makes me, first of all it breaks my heart, but also it makes me proud. But it also makes me know how important this is. That’s what I was going to tell you, and for her this was a very good experience, and the right thing.

ST: You spoke before about reducing women to vessels and breeders. I think a lot of people don’t understand that when women don’t have access to abortion when they need it, their lives are foreclosed. That’s it for them, you’re 16, you end up with a kid, that’s your entire life. It has been forcibly changed in a way that is just unconscionable, and it’s society imposing that. And what you do, what the providers do across this country, is enable women to have their lives back. But also, reducing women to vessels is actually the aim[both laugh in recognition], that’s actually their aim, of this movement. It’s never been about babies, it’s never been about life, it’s always been about control over women, it’s pretty clear because they don’t support birth control either.

That was a great story. And I agree with you that other physicians should provide this service, but I also think that everybody in this country right now needs to get off the sidelines and be part of fighting to defend abortion rights and to defeat the war on women. So I think it’s important for people to understand the full dimension. This recent destruction of your clinic is not the first targeting, extreme violence that you’ve experienced. Your clinic was firebombed in the ’90s and you also experienced legal attacks. And, while there is a distinction between that kind of extra-legal attack and legal attacks, it’s not necessarily the most important distinction because both are completely illegitimate in terms of what they mean for women. So, I wonder if you could just paint a little bit of a picture of what it’s been like to be providing abortions in this climate for the last two decades.

SC: Well, after the legal attack was settled and the anti-choice group, you know, they’re always needling, needling… so they went to county trying to arrest Dr. Armstrong for doing second trimesters in the clinic, and me for doing first trimesters at all. And just, to go back again, when I went to school and I was looking to come to Montana, I was in New York, and I wrote, and I was looking for my final elective in Montana because I wanted to come here for romance reasons…

I didn’t know where Montana was on the map actually, but [laughs] Dr. Armstrong, who was also originally from New York, had vowed that when it became legal, if it became legal, that he would incorporate [abortions] into his family practice, because he saw women die every day in New York City of illegal abortions.

And so, by the time I wrote to see if I could come out there and I described all the things that I had learned, one of which was abortion, he grabbed me because he had so many requests for abortions that he didn’t have enough time for his regular family practice. He needed help, so I did my final elective with him and that’s how that started. So, I was doing them all that time and then physician assistants were just, you know, getting more and more known [in medicine in general] and there was a medical practice act that said that physicians could delegate authority to any professional they feel has been trained adequately to do that.

So, that’s how I was working doing first trimester abortions. Then, when I became licensed in ’83, I had worked already six or seven years doing abortions, and he told this moving story at the board of medical examiners, to make sure that they were ok with me doing them and it was passed without any question.

The anti-choice people then started looking at the fact that there was the Roe v. Wade thing, which says only physicians can do abortions. That was said because, first of all there were no advanced level clinicians doing anything in ’73, they were just staring to come out, nobody knew anything about them, so they weren’t going to say “medical professionals,” because they didn’t know anything other than physicians that could do physician-type of work, so that’s why Roe v. Wade was stated that way. But they, the anti-choice people, took that and said, “She’s not a physician, she can’t be doing them, so arrest her.” And the same goes with… there was a law in the books about physicians doing second trimesters in the hospital.

So we got legal advice and it turned into a two-year legal battle. And it would get… they would say I couldn’t do them and then I could do them and then I couldn’t do them and then I could do them, back and forth for two years, and finally won, I think it was in ’97 that I won. And then the Montana Supreme Court just basically said that medical professionals who are well trained can do this. It was a big deal. At one point patients would come and say, “But I want you to do it,” and I would have to say to them, “I can’t, I can’t do it.”

I went through the whole counseling, I explained the procedure, but Dr. Armstrong would have to come in and do it, you know, so that went back and forth for two years. So there was that, and of course, stuff in the paper, and you know, it was another one of those things that you just kind of slog through.

ST: You become medical professional because you want to serve your patients, and here you have to go through years of legal battle just to do your job. It’s a huge cost to pay, not everybody would persevere and fight that through.

SC: Right. Dr. Armstrong was the one who was instrumental in helping me do that. He was determined. He was a very determined person and very clear. And he’s another one of those people who knows exactly what it would mean if this wasn’t legal, because he’s seen it. You know, and that’s why I said the people who know about what it would be, what it was like when it was illegal, are disappearing, they’re dying, they’re retiring and they’re dying.

It’s a concern, and I feel right at the precipice of that right now, you know.

ST: And then your clinic was also, or I guess Dr. Armstrong’s clinic, you two were working together.

SC: Firebombed. It took us five months to rebuild. Well, that was early in the morning, three o’clock in the morning, you know, and interestingly, the man who lives next to me is the fire chief. I even heard his car leave, but that was not uncommon. They got there right away, but it destroyed the front office and it took us five months to rebuild and then we had to find another place and that was the first scary thing. Again, we persevered and we talked about the same things that I’m talking about now. The same things, and that’s very painful to me. We started something called the Safe Place Project and the community was behind it, about, “This can not happen in our community.”

And it didn’t for twenty years. Now it’s back again. It’s just non-stop and quite honestly it’s very shocking to me that we’re still fighting this. From my perspective growing up and seeing and saying, “Yes of course, of course we need this right.” I mean, yes, of course. And, “Oh we got it, oh good, that battle’s won.” You know? No. It hasn’t been won and it’s going backwards, it’s absolutely going backwards. You know, Texas has all these awful laws passed that were passed even against popular opinion.

ST: This is not acceptable this situation. We are, like you said, on a precipice, not just you personally at a precipice, but in this country access is being closed down, women’s lives right now are being foreclosed. There are women undergoing dangerous self-… attempts to self-induce abortion is very widespread, much more than people understand. People are going to have fight this. Go out on the streets and speak out about this, raise their voices, resist, and refuse to allow this to happen, really refuse to allow for this happen. And change the atmosphere and the climate, and that is something I feel very strongly is not, it is not the responsibility of those who already put their lives on the line for decades to do that alone. It’s unacceptable that people like yourself are—I know you described everybody who helped you open the new clinic, you mentioned that young woman who gave you a hug, I’m sure that is manifold—but it’s too much that providers are left by themselves to face the real consequences of this, it’s going to take the toll on all women if there’s not a change very soon. I want to ask you… Go ahead.

SC: I think the other thing that needs to change is that, and I don’t know how we’re going to do this, but the rhetoric of “murderer,” that an abortion provider is a “murderer” has absolutely got to not be allowed, because for me, the difference between the firebombing in the ’90s and now is that then the guy was from some other state and he did that to three abortion clinics before he was caught and in jail for seven years. But today, this was a fellow in my own community. And, done by people in my own community is scarier to me. And he had a semi-automatic rifle in his car. He was armed at the time. And I thought this morning just, the unfortunate part… it might not have been so unfortunate that my alarm system wasn’t totally set up because it’s possible that if he could not commit to destroying my clinic, that he would have then decided to destroy me. And that’s a scary, scary thought for me.

ST: Yeah, that’s a horrible thought, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thought. And I am reminded of something I read about the rise of the Nazis. How a lot of people were very alarmed by Kristallnacht and all the thuggish violence against Jews, but then when anti-Jewish laws were passed and S.S. were posted outside Jewish businesses, for example, and people accepted that more easily because it had the veneer of legality and so-called “legitimacy” in that sense. But, in reality, the anti-Jewish laws turned out to be much, much more deadly. And I think there’s an analogy with to abortion today, “Sure, there’s legal restrictions, but there’s not the same level of violence as say in the ’90s.” But, they… first of all, they don’t understand the level of violence that’s going still going on, and secondly, those restrictions are having a much greater effect shutting down abortion—and in a much more lasting, much harder-to-reverse kind of way. Plus, and this relates to your point on rhetoric, there’s a connection between the atmosphere that allows those legal restrictions… with major officials in the country talking about abortion as “murder,” as a “holocaust,” as blood on the providers’ hands, and you have Fox News, when they used to talk about “Dr. Tiller the Baby Killer”… all of this creates an atmosphere where unstable people or fanatical people, indoctrinated people feel that they’re justified in quote, unquote, “taking God’s work into their own hands,” or acting “on behalf of the unborn,” or however they understand it. You can’t separate the motivation of individuals to carry out this kind of violence from the overall atmosphere and legal framework that’s being hammered into place. And both are harmful, I realize that’s not really a question [both laugh], but I wanted to appreciate and kind of build on your point about the rhetoric, it’s very deadly.

SC: It’s extremely deadly… There is a woman who did a documentary on the Holocaust… She also was the woman who interviewed me because I got an award on Lifetime TV for being a “risk-taker”… and that thick glass award on my desk was also totally destroyed… But, this woman did a documentary talking about the Hungarians and it was so moving about how they kept watching the Nazis and doing all these little things, and saying, “Oh well, it’s just this isolated thing… Oh well, it’s not going to happen to us… Oh well… Oh well…” Until it did. And it’s just the palpable understanding of the deeper thing, how the people who want to do the destruction do it in a very systematic way that makes people have amnesia around what’s happening… or just not take it seriously. Not thinking it’s that important. And it is. All of these things. So, I don’t know what is going to happen in my community right now. It’s going to be an interesting thing. I just talked with a man yesterday who said, “Whatever you need, I will be there for you, I will protect you, I know martial arts… and, I don’t agree with what you are doing, but I know who you are and this is wrong, and it is wrong in our community and we can’t have it.” And a lot of people are saying that, so, we’ll see what happens.

I have a certain amount of faith, maybe it will happen here. Interestingly, the physician for the Crisis Pregnancy Center, I wrote him a letter and he called me last night. My letter basically said, I identified that your executive director bought my old clinic to get me out of work and when that didn’t work the woman who started that, her son totally destroyed my clinic and my livelihood and everything I have ever worked for. And you have irreparably damaged our relationship and blah, blah, blah… and on your website you have, “In the spirit of Jesus,” and I said, “This is not the spirit of Jesus.” I said, “I am a victim, but so is Zachary, because Zachary was born in innocence and love and he was taught to hate.” [Zachary is the son of the founder of Hope Pregnancy Ministries. He has been arrested and charged for vandalizing Susan Cahill’s clinic.] And I said, “This is not the spirit of Jesus, this is the spirit Jesus was preaching against.” He called me up and he said, “You’re right. I want you to be OK with me talking to my colleagues…” So, I don’t know what is going to happen with that. But part of me hopes something out of this will be good.

ST: Let me as you a final question, and then invite you for any final reflections you want to add. Can you talk about what now, the phones are operating at your office, but what are women in your region of Montana facing if they do need abortion care?

SC: For people in Kalispell, the closest place is Missoula, which is a two-and-a-half hour drive. Great clinic, but they right now are going to be inundated with women because there was a clinic in Livingston that was closed also, so they were already getting those women and now they will get my patients. They are a bigger clinic. They also cost more because they are a bigger clinic because they have to pay for all that. That’s another thing, with my office, I had me and two employees and I tried to keep things reasonable because I also think abortion needs to be reasonable financially for women. So, they are going to cost more, they have to go farther. They only do them a couple days a week. The other thing that I always offered intermixed with my other patients.

But besides all that, we also have the Blackfeet Reservation. These people don’t have a lot of money, very often. They had to drive an hour and a half to me. I often give them… they often come without gas money by the time they make it here, without gas money, without food money. So, I have donations that I give them. Now, these people are going to have to go to Missoula…. It’s pathetic! Frankly, it’s more than pathetic, but that is one of the things it is. It’s a disgrace! Just that alone, women should say, WHAT? WHAT!? Men can go anywhere he wants to get whatever the frick he wants, you know? [Both laugh.]

I want people to be angry, but I want their anger to come out in constructive ways. And I think it’s going to take a lot of different ways in order to do that. I’ve had this fund set up for me, which is fabulous, and the money has gotten much more than was originally asked for. And thinking about what I want to do with part of that money in the most constructive way I can to help the movement… I need to talk to the groups that are all working towards better access and think about where we can work most constructively with that. And I don’t know what that is yet. But I will continue to talk and think and work at it. And I think all of us who have come together thinking about it, we need to talk about what we can do here…

And one of the things we can do is get access to reproductive health in the schools again. This whole abstinence-only thing… is so ludicrous! No! No! Because we know, in all the other western countries that have comprehensive reproductive healthcare, they’re abortions and need for abortions are a lot less. We know that. I mean, that’s one way. But, these battles…

I really think that the younger generation, we need their help. We need their help.

***

Tune in for:

National Webcast: “Abortion Rights Emergency!”

Friday, April 11th 7pm, Eastern Daylight Time at StopPatriarchy.org.

Featured speakers include: Dr. Willie Parker (doctor at last abortion clinic in Mississippi), Rev. Donna Schaper (of Judson Memorial Church), Merle Hoffman (CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center which has provided abortions for 42 years), Sunsara Taylor (writer for Revolution and initiator of StopPatriarchy.org), a video message from Marge Piercy (novelist, poet, activist), and more.

Learn about Emergency Protests to Stop the War On Women taking place nation-wide on April 12th at StopPatriarchy.org.

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1. “Crisis pregnancy centers” are fake clinics run by people who are anti-abortion. They lure unsuspecting women in by providing pregnancy tests and in the guise of giving “medical advice,” they actually give women wrong and distorted information to scare or shame them into not having abortions. – ST [back]

2. November 9-10, 1938, Nazis led mobs to attack Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and synagogues throughout Germany and parts of Austria. Close to 100 Jews were killed that night, which came to be known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, because of the shards of broken glass all over the streets in its aftermath. [back]

With the controversy surrounding the recent Ukrainian coup and Crimean incursion, the wheels of war are turning once again, churning up an old foe. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the Red Menace prop being roused from the warmonger’s hall of archives, dusted off and wheeled down the plush carpet of the military-media complex.

The reanimation of the Cold War has been unleashed before our eyes, drenched in a gluttonous flurry of flashbulbs. The words of so-called “representatives” like Mike Rogers and Lindsay Graham are reproduced on corporate media to promote the pitch, hiding their defense and intelligence connections behind suits, ties and office titles, unable to contain their glee of resurrecting the Kremlin threat. Putin now represents the villain, because the brown-skinned Muslim boogie man has run its course. For months, the shiny new evil archetype has been playing out on your LCD flat-screen, feeding you the one tireless commodity impervious to the myth of scarcity: fear.

Will this media blitz trigger a Cold War redux?

An ominous storm of hegemonic forces has settled over the geopolitical landscape of Europe once again. We are living in deeply troubling times, according to the corporate media. Nevermind the fact that establishment media toes the line of its paymasters, which handsomely benefit from a state of perpetual war. Indeed, the same news networks decrying Russia’s occupation of Crimea were once rallying behind the US when it came to the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. The few who didn’t fall in line with the pro-war narrative got fired, as Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC) can attest.

Nowadays dissent in the media is rare amid the strata of complicity and doublespeak, manufacturing daisy-chains of tepid consent. Yet one silver-lining of objection which has stood strong between the sales pitch of a renewed Cold War and reasonable criticism is RT’s Abby Martin. Recently on her show Breaking The Set, Martin chose to go against the editorial line of RT, denouncing Russia’s military action in Crimea. As Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept said, the day after the show:

“Abby Martin, remarkably demonstrated last night what “journalistic independence” means by ending her Breaking the Set program with a clear and unapologetic denunciation of the Russian action in Ukraine.”

This stance against militarism is nothing new. Abby Martin has been consistent in her dissent against military intervention overall, where since the inception of her show, back in Sept. 12th 2012, she has repeatedly taken on the US and its empire-building schemes. While most of the corporate media has failed to understand Martin’s sustained critique in light of her stance against the Russian occupation, her show’s video vault bears witness to a moral consistency against war.

Martin dissented from the official story that drone strikes are precise and humanitarian, citing a NYU study which found this narrative to be patently false. She underscored how US drones have a shockingly low success rate of only 2% and have even stooped to the level of targeting funerals – an act of state-sponsored terrorism itself. Martin dissented from the official story of Obama’s “hope and change” image waived around triumphantly by his naive supporters. She interviewed US historian Peter Kuznick and muckraker filmmaker Oliver Stone to talk in detail about how Obama has essentially codified the Bush regime’s most aggressive policies, in that Obama has eroded civil liberties like due process via the NDAA under the dubious pretext of the War on Terror.

But most importantly, Martin dissented from the usual glossing of various think tanks like The Council of Foreign Relations and their powerful influence on foreign policy, where most of these organizations comprise a nexus of former corporate media moguls like Tom Brokaw and Fareed Zakaria, along with former White House cabinet officials like Colin Powell and Madelaine Albright. Another example Martin points out is the Atlantic Council, whose membership includes top executives at defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Martin asks the question “why are the top defensive corporations in the world advising our lawmakers on foreign policy?”

The revolving door between public and private entities is bad enough, but when it comes to questions of foreign policy, media and war, it is downright nefarious, as Martin testifies. With Chevron’s recent multibillion dollar trade agreement to mine the Olesky deposit in Western Ukraine, which Kiev estimates can hold close to 3 trillion cubic meters of gas, we need to be vigilant in understanding that the corporate media is in the profit-making, not truth-telling business.

These are but a few examples of Abby Martin’s criticism against the military machine.  With the recent denouncing of Russian militarism, we can say with confidence that Martin’s critique of war transcends nation-lines, standing as a tried and true principle beholden to neither nation nor government but rather to the people and their right to know the truth. Conscious dissent ought to be held in the highest regard. As the late political dissident Howard Zinn once said:

“Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

Just look at what obedient Washington correspondents did in republishing government press releases and drumming up support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The corporate media was nothing more than lapdog stenographers for wars of aggression which have been responsible for over a million deaths and tens of millions more displaced from their homes.

In between the warmongering, the corporate media shamelessly pumps out distractions, like the alarming amount of cuss words in Justin Bieber’s police transcript, or whether or not Malaysian Air fell into a black hole a la the TV series Lost (more solid analysis by Don Lemon over at CNN). If and when something of substance comes to light – like Crimea – the large majority of media will spin it in order to sell war. And either you toe the line, or you meet the same fate as Donahue.

The Dissenter’s Kevin Gosztola raises some important questions regarding Abby’s having to report from outside the US media apparatus in order to speak out against military action, American or otherwise:

“Why does someone have to work for RT in order to host a daily news program, where she is free to question military interventions by any country that violates the sovereignty of another country? Why couldn’t she work for CNN or MSNBC? Or a network where she would not have to constantly defend herself as being independent and not a Putin apparatchik?”

Questioning the official narrative of the government isn’t just an attribute of the media, it is the very essence of it. As Ben Franklin said, “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

But Martin’s message goes beyond simply speaking against the editorial line of her employer. Reflecting back on this event, we need to understand that such a bold stance demonstrates one of the highest forms of journalism, in that it denounces military aggression without resorting to the usual fearmongering of corporate media outlets.  As Martin says, what Russia did in Crimea was wrong, but that critique can hold substantive value without resorting to vilifying an entire nation through fear; because when an entire nation is vilified, space is created to unload horrendous policies like the Iraqi economic sanctions, which were responsible for over half a million deaths of children under the age of five.

Martin’s overall message is, essentially, a clear-headed call to action for diplomacy and peace unequivocally striking at the root of the problem, which is war and the profits behind it. As cultural critic, poet and visionary Henry David Thoreau said:

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

Abby Martin is that one striking at the root amid a chorus of hacks. I think it’s time we, the people, put aside the hacks, sharpen our minds and take dead aim. But to strike the root of injustice, we must first detract from the usual paradigms and engage in any and all forms of creative civil disobedience. Dissidence is its highest form – of not just American patriotism but egalitarian justice for all, no matter creed nor nationality. To go against the editorial line of one’s media outlet is the hallmark of a true independent journalist; to go against the elitist line of a war economy is the hallmark of a morally rich person. Let’s speak truth to power.

Written by Mike David Micklow

Photo by Flickr User Jayel Aheram

Failed ideas, infighting, and glimmers of hope.

I found myself watching CNBC’s Squawk Box the other morning and an Ohio Republican named Ron Portman was on. He was being beamed in from the Russell Rotunda in Washington, with its columned grandeur and air of gravitas. What a lovely backdrop for the savaging of America. Portman is the Republican prototype. Innocent eyes. Puritan earnestness. Flour white face. Bland coat and tie. As part of that long-running hit, the GOP Weekly Address, Portman announced a seven-point plan to create American jobs. He said his program would spark an economic recovery, a whip that political hacks never tire of using to flog the presses. Here are his seven sterling steps to the next big boom:

1. Adopt “Common Sense” Healthcare Solutions

Portman didn’t go into much depth on this one, but a majority of Americans would agree. Although Portman and the people might fall into a bit of a quibble over what exactly “common sense” meant. For Portman and his colleagues, common sense healthcare means leaving it to the market, where the all-important profit margin invariably dictates stingy coverage and unaffordable premiums. For many Americans, health is a sacred human right that ought not to be subjected to human greed. But more to come on that front…

2. Power America’s Economy

Note the pun in this one? Clever. This is mostly about fracking, faster permitting, and exporting liquid natural gas (LNG). None of which are the slightest bit helpful from a climate change standpoint (See Gasland and this fast-track special for more on that). As the powers that become ever more enthralled by “energy independence” and the wondrous profits it promises our billion-dollar petro giants, the work of committed anti-frackers may be increasingly marginalized by the enormous financial incentives to fracture the bedrock of the earth, no matter how many poisoned aquifers result.

3. Begin Living Within Our Means

This is more fearmongering around the Koch brothers’ deficit reduction campaign, a bipartisan con if there ever was one. Without mentioning the elephants in the room—the military budget and the periodic trillion-dollar bailouts of corrupt mega-banks—Portman wants to slash the deficit in other ways. Gee, I wonder where those cuts will come from? Perhaps “reform to entitlement programs”? Republicans like nothing more than anything that will “encourage personal responsibility,” a perpetual refrain of Senatorial millionaires. Perhaps Goldman Sachs’ Jamie Dimon can be brought in to help make this case to Main Street.

4. Reform Tax Code to Spur Economic Growth

This is especially farcical coming right after the harangue about cutting debt. It must be acknowledged that cutting taxes cuts government revenue, which pays for programs that must otherwise be sustained with loans or—as the GOP prefers—not sustained at all, but rather demolished altogether. Yet “reform tax code” is itself code for lowering taxes on corporations and individuals, with particular callouts for cutting taxes on the rich. It’s not as though taxes are already pretty low by historical standards, and when you begin factoring in deductions, you soon arrive at globally competitive corporate rates, and occasionally discover that your multinational owes no tax at all. In any case, this concept is based on the fallacy of trickle down economics, that the more money you put into the pockets of rich people, the more they will spend creating jobs for poor people.

Perhaps Portman and his rabid neoclassical colleagues have been napping since 2008 and missed the mortgage meltdown, the too-big-to-fail bailouts, and the aftermath, when banks sat on more than a trillion dollars in government money since they had what is sometimes referred to as a “liquidity preference.” As political economist Alan Nasser has noted, nobody likes to invest in a crappy economy. Hence the need for Keynesian stimulus. But that would require government intervention, a terrifying scourge at which we’ll soon arrive. Even Obama seems to believe jobs can only come from the private sector, as he famously touted in 2009. But set reality aside, and let’s embrace failed economic theories in the hopes that uneducated workers will fall for the ruse of tax cuts one more time. Viva a falsidade!

5. Unburden the Economy from DC Regulations

This is perhaps the most comical point, especially when Portman tosses around terms like, “regulatory relief” as though American business is simply hamstrung by the myopic interference of our frothing socialist government. It’s not as though the lack of regulation, happy encouraged all through the Clinton years, led directly to the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent horror show, thanks to savings and investment bank mergers, lax lending standards, unregulated derivatives and commodities markets, and toothless criminal regulation of premeditated mortgage fraud, pension theft, and so on. And it’s not as though the history of British, American, and German, not to mention Korean, Japanese, and Chinese industrialization was dependent precisely on regulation in the form of protectionist measures such as import tariffs and currency and price controls.

6. Create Competitive Workforce

This is another laugher. As if Barack Obama isn’t already fast-tracking America labor toward Third World status. Have any Republicans been paying attention to the jobs being produced by the Obama-conomy? Part-time, low-wage, low-skill, high-turnover, nontradeable service positions. In other words, bartenders, wait staff, and bedpan emptiers. Or, to put it another way, we’re only creating jobs that can’t be exported. A Chinese laborer in Shanghai can’t bring a beer to your table in Des Moines, no matter how cheaply he can be had.

Of course, Portman’s bullet points on the workforce ignores the need to generate good jobs, and instead offers a fog of rhetoric about consolidating job training programs, consolidation being a synonym for cutting programs, as is the call to defer decisions on how to allocate training monies to states, where Republicans control the majority of legislatures. There is some logic to this: why train people for nonexistent jobs? Portman’s colleagues also smuggled education beneath the banner of a competitive workforce—another strange inclusion. Why waste money educating the population? But the purpose of mentioning education is, as always, the desire to enervate the Department of Education and empower the privatization of education, primarily by creating more charter schools.

7. Increase Exports to Create More American Jobs

Perhaps the only way to do this on a mass scale would be to drive wages down far enough for America to be competitive with Bangladesh and other nations were factories routinely collapse on top of their employees. Of course, ten buildings have collapsed in Harlem in just the last five years, so perhaps the analogy isn’t so apt. If this is indeed the goal—and the president does frequently harp on exports—this may be as much of an admission as point six that the bipartisan objective of our government is to pauperize America. Then feudal conditions can be implemented. Fiefdoms overseen by CEOs instead of Lords. We vassals can trade our labor for subsistence, never wondering where the surplus goes (who reads Marx anymore?). And perhaps then we will proudly become the world’s sweatshop, filling shipping containers with the plastics craved by Indian parvenus and Chinese arrivistes. It has been suggested that in a few years a Detroit autoworker will be competitive with his Chinese cohort. Should we rue the day, or accept our reduced privileges, even as our corporate moguls, untethered from their employees by labor arbitrage, soar above us in private sky fleets, while their state minions monitor our hoods from hovering drone helicopters, awaiting the advent of a tepid protest?

Hope Springs Infernal

But then you see Senator Dianne Feinstein making a speech before Congress that accuses the CIA of spying on the Senate. This is mighty surprising coming from one of Edward Snowden’s biggest haters on Capitol Hill. I suppose so long as the spying is done on low-wage, low-profile Americans, it’s fine. But once the surveillance community turns its wanton eye to Congress and its bevy of millionaire influence peddlers, the ethics take a sharp U-turn. Feinstein was plenty irate at the thought of Obama’s paramilitary “agency” impeding her committee’s investigation into its torture habits after 9/11. Anxious to further impair its public reputation, the CIA has accused the Senate of criminal activity and asked the DOJ to investigate. Nothing like getting out in front of a scandal, right?

But there’s always a harsh rebuke in store for a freethinker. This one comes in the form of CIA Director James Brennan, who openly scoffs at Feinstein’s accusations. A bemused Brennan claimed that illegal, clandestine activity is far below the ethical code of the CI—but wait, isn’t illegal, clandestine activity the heart of the CIA’s mission statement? You hear him tell a CSPAN staffer that Congress ought to be careful not to inflate its description of what the CIA has done. Yes, Mr. Brennan, because prudence has long been the byword of the Central Intelligence Agency. We all remember how careful it was in assessing the threat of Iraqi WMDs—it’s not as if it played fast and loose with the facts in the lead up to the Second Iraq Oil War.

What is occasionally mind-boggling is just how close these federal agencies actually come to seeing the truth—and even stating it. The Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, released last week, provided a summary of international threats. The authors were remarkably clear-eyed in noting that Al-Qaeda has vastly expanded its influence across the Middle East. Then, in a staggering admission, they conceded that destabilizing events in the region, such as wars in Syria and Iraq, were the leading causes of Al-Qaeda’s resurgence. It’s only the smallest of leaps from here to the question, “Why is the Middle East unstable?” Answering this question would lead our brave military leaders to the nearest mirror. But the leap is never made, the question left unasked, and the dark visage never glimpsed. This habitual lack of self-incrimination is increasingly a device employed by the White House.

Few presidents have spoken the truth with more regularity than Barack Obama. He has talked about the uninsured, income inequality, the trouble with surveillance, the need to reboot American manufacturing, and on and on. It’s clear, in some compartment of his brain, he knows what’s wrong with America, but is incapable of acting to fix it. It’s as though, in his incrementalist philosophy of political change, merely stating the truth is an innovation worthy of the name ‘progress.’ He might feel differently if his most secret conversations were being openly compiled by the dismissive Mr. Brennan.

The Subversive Breakout Session

Thankfully, there are pockets of sunlight, blades of brightness that slice through the dark cloud of ignorance that darkens the beltway day. A couple weeks ago, the irrepressible Senator Bernie Sanders hosted a hearing on healthcare, an event expressly designed to cast scorn on Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Sanders assembled a Benetton ad of healthcare experts from around the world—Taiwan, Canada, Denmark, Australia, and one dismayed and defensive defender of the ACA. This paladin of corporate interest increasingly retreated to some fortuitous study on infant mortality, only to see it quickly discredited by a bored academic seated along that dire row of socialists.

One after another, goaded by Sanders, the guests dispassionately extolled the virtues of free publicly funded healthcare—taking time, as one Canadian did, to disparage elements of their system (prescription drugs) foolishly left to the private sector. From lower costs to higher outcomes, the case was made. Eventually, the sole guest defender of the ACA and a couple of Republican Congressmen—condescendingly bemused by this minor specter of socialized medicine—argued that all of these Benetton nations were simply benefiting from America’s prodigious research budgets and thus able to offer free care. The implication being that only private industry was driving the medical innovation that saved lives. Nobody bothered to mention that vast funding for R&D comes from the government itself via taxpayer dollars. In any event, Sanders soon closed the proceedings and the foreign guests were sent packing, while the transcript of the festivities were hurled down Orwell’s memory hole. But trust me, this actually happened.

The Continental Divide

While there’s plenty of media coverage now—thanks to Occupy—about the gross inequalities of American incomes, very little coverage is given to another gap: the democracy gap. Or, to frame it otherwise, the gap between what Americans say they want and what American politicians give them. An abyss has opened between our desires and our policies. A majority want universal health care. We get the ACA. A majority want us out of other countries. We get clandestine coups. A majority want more spending on education. We get bigger Pentagon budgets. If polls like those of Pew or Gallup are to be believed, Americans generally don’t get what they want. Examining some of the debates underway in the beltway bubble is enough to illuminate you to this fact—you needn’t poll anyone. The story of our anti-democratic drift also occasionally surfaces, like a bubble from a gaseous swamp, amid the general miasma of mainstream media. The stray left-wing blogger. A labor union old-timer scribbling in a socialist rag. The curious senator with a bottomless ire for injustice. If only there were some force multiplier by which we could clone and amplify their voices. But then, something like that would have to be called democracy.

Jason Hirthler is a veteran of the communications industry. He lives and works in New York City and can be reached at [email protected].

Photo by Flickr User Rob Chandanais

On March 20, the world celebrated International Day of Happiness, a day initiated by the Kingdom of Bhutan at the United Nations in 2012. The small Himalayan country of about 730,000 people became famous for introducing to the world Gross National Happiness (GNH), a holistic development index that goes beyond the solely economic focus of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to measure the emotional and spiritual well being of Bhutan’s people. It was a revolutionary idea by the fourth Dragon King Jigme Singye Wangchuck that continues to resonate in the West.

March 24 is the United Nations International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. This day honors the important work of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who was assassinated on March 24, 1980 after years of denouncing violations of human rights in El Salvador. More broadly, the purpose of the day is “to promote the importance of the right to truth and justice” for victims of gross and systematic human rights violations.

I live in the contradiction between these two United Nations observances. I am a victim of gross human rights violations and I am from Bhutan, land of Gross National Happiness.

It may be the West’s long-standing tendency to romanticize the East as Shangri-La, the cloud-shrouded utopic counterpart to its own well-lit capitalistic world, that has made it so easy for otherwise critically-minded skeptics to accept Bhutan’s GNH campaign without much question. However, behind this government-proclaimed happiness lurks a reality of ethnic purging, property confiscation and redistribution, and a systematic erasing of history, all in the name of the government’s “One Nation, One People” policy. In fact, the last three decades have brought little happiness to my Nepali-speaking people, known as Lhotsampas, who have inhabited Bhutan’s southern foothills since the times of British India.

Beginning in the late eighties, the Bhutanese government’s “One Nation, One People” campaign led to a violent ethnic cleansing of its southern population. According to the Global Post:

“By the end of 1990, the ‘Bhutanization’ campaign had escalated to harassment, arrests and the burning of ethnic Nepali homes. Many fled, but the army also expelled tens of thousands, forcing them to sign forms renouncing any claims to their homes and homeland.”

All of this happened to my people. My 60-year-old father and several brothers were beaten publicly, one imprisoned and tortured for five years. In total, the Royal Government’s harsh campaign created an estimated 108,000 Lhotsampa refugees, evicting a staggering one-sixth of Bhutan’s total population. Lhotsampas who remain in Bhutan today continue to endure treatment as second-class citizens, while their history is being erased before their eyes. For example, after the redistribution and resettlement of northern Bhutanese in the lands of Bhutanese refugees, the names of the villages, towns and landmarks are changed. Thus, my little village known as “Surey” since the first settlement of Lhotsampas is now rechristened as “Jigmecholing” like thousands of others.

While many, like myself, have found refuge in other countries, thousands more still languish in refugee camps, and none have been allowed to return to their homes. Even those who have settled into new lives in the United States and elsewhere are rankled by what they perceive as the government’s concerted effort to erase the facts from the world’s collective memory and to rewrite history in such a way as to frame Lhotsampas as recent immigrants to a country that had been their homeland for generations.

The other tactic used by the government to discredit Lhotsampas is to frame them all as terrorists. Indeed, in response to the government’s brutal and relentless policies of ethnic purging, groups associated with Lhotsampas youths have carried out violent activities along Bhutan’s border with India. Extremists have staged protests, burnt the national dress, tried to destroy bridges, and have even killed people. However, the overwhelming majority of Lhotsampas, who hold up Gandhi as a hero of nonviolence, condemn these activities. Such violent behavior does not represent the Southern Bhutanese community, and the government has a duty to decipher right from wrong. Instead, it branded all of its southern citizens as anti-nationals, distributing images of violence carried out by fringe groups to foreign visitors in order to portray a democratic uprising as a terrorist movement. But where are the pictures of the police killing Lhotsampas on the streets?

We are calling for the international community to urge a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in order to reveal the human rights abuses of the Bhutanese government against the Lhotsampa people. The world has a right to know our stories as Bhutan refugees and to keep our true history in Bhutan even if they cast a shadow on Bhutan’s well-loved policy of “Gross National Happiness.”

Sign the petition for a Congressional Hearing about Bhutan: Ethnic Cleansing vs Gross National Happiness.

Written by Dick Chhetri, who can be reached at [email protected]

Photo by Flickr User Anja Disseldorp

There are few things more harmful to the public discourse than the cloak of false respectability – especially on a nationally or globally disseminated news network. When corporate media broadcasts propaganda, a benighted public is duped into believing the twaddle of stark raving mad political ideologues as though they were the very words of Socrates by satellite. The mainstream’s reach and influence is staggering, and when unchallenged, fatal. Take, for instance, the estimable Republican Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan. Let’s consider for a moment the aura of respectability that enveloped, like a hot towel on a transatlantic flight, the mindless bluster Rogers so thoughtfully aired for the nation last month on The Charlie Rose Show.

PBS’ Charlie Rose commands a high station in the china shop of American respectability, somewhere above the delicate porcelain of Frontline and slightly beneath the glittering chandelier of The New York Times. Rose has an impressive array of interviewees on his lengthy resume, which doubtless adds to the gravitas of the man, as he peers across an oaken table at his terrified guest, his long and rugged face and watery eyes outlined against a pitiless backdrop of black.

Beyond the matchless imprimatur of Charlie Rose, Rogers is preceded by his own titles, which unfurl like royal insignia across the screen: Rep. [R] Mich. Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee. Most of us haven’t the slightest notion of the “Permanent Select Committee” is, or what is does. Nor does anyone on air explain its significance. We know only that it has the ring of authority to it (it is in fact a committee tasked with providing oversight of the intelligence community).

Next is Rogers’ personal demeanor, which itself suggests everything fine and decent about the state of Michigan. He is white, middle-aged, modestly overfed. His hair pleases with its bland and faded side parting, and he assumes a look of kindly and good-humored politesse.

Rogers is beamed in from the beltway, where all things of significance occur. He is said to be in the “Russell Rotunda”. He stands or sits, flanked by a few impressive Dorian columns, which signify decorum and justice and tradition, of which, presumably, Rogers humbly partakes. On the other side of the camera sits Rose, his left hand, like a satyr’s mangled claw, carving new grooves into his line-saturated brow. Charlie is distraught over something. What might it be? After expressing his consternation visually, Rose stammers himself toward a coherent question: What do you make of this deal with Iran?

Cut to Rogers, his manly, Midwestern, and homely smile, for a moment untroubled, suddenly drops off his face as the most fearsome four letters in the idiom surge through his earpiece. Inside Washington, the phrase, “Iran” serves like a Pavlovian on-switch for beltway fearmongerers. Rogers begins to drone through his talking points: Iran has gotten everything it wanted from this deal, namely the ability to continue enriching uranium; America did not get what it wanted, namely the eternal cessation of all Iranian nuclear activities; Rogers himself is “worried” and “concerned” and clearly afraid for the fine people of Michigan that Iran will continue its “nuclear weapons program”.

Rose, picking up that Rogers is more or less savaging the Obama administration in his drubbing of the temporary pact with Iran, breaks in and forces Rogers to admit that the cessation of fuel-related work at the Arak facility is a good thing, since it will prevent Iran from pursuing a bomb via plutonium, as against its supposed present pursuit via uranium. Briefly derailed, Rogers recovers and paints a few more worrisome images for the edification of the trusting viewer, namely an “arms race in the Middle East”. In this he parrots Shimon Peres, who touts the idea that Iran achieving a nuclear bomb would cause all other Middle Eastern countries to crave one. Rose, his visage now curdling into a painful clutch of arched wrinkles, attempts to interrupt, but Rogers cuts him off three times (with all the forcefulness of Peter denying Christ). Finally, with the utmost decorum and courtesy, Rose bids Rogers adieu, thanking him for gracing the American public with his matchless sagacity.

Rose then breaks for commercial, presumably a horrifically tepid message from Arthur Daniels Midland Company, one of the world’s leading food monopolies, much to the chagrin of numberless third world subsistence farmers; or perhaps a thoughtful piece of mendacity from BP, one of the world’s leading thieves of Iraqi oil, much to the bootless anxiety of the Iraqi people.

Sins of Omission

Millions of viewers were exposed to this dialogue, and millions more will see it in syndication. As they watch, few will be aware of some damning omissions.

First, Iran is fully within its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its agreements with the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA). It has the right, as do all signatories, to develop peaceful nuclear energy (as contrasted with non-peaceful nuclear energy of the kind being perpetually pursued by the United States).

Second, there isn’t a shred of evidence that suggests Iran is trying to develop a nuclear warhead. Not if you believe successive National Intelligence Estimates of the United States. Perhaps Rogers has overlooked these fine reports. After all, he repeatedly misrepresents Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program, calling it a “nuclear weapons program”. He would deserve censure for this, were not his voice drowned in the din of his Republican and Democratic colleagues rehearsing the same lie.

Third, Iran made concessions in this agreement. It agreed to limit its uranium enrichment to five percent, a level from which, perhaps, a dirty bomb might be cobbled together, were Iranian leadership of a mind to pursue collective suicide by building and using one. It also agreed to halt fuel production at the Arak site. An additional facility would likely have to be built there to reprocess spent fuel into plutonium, like enriched uranium a fissile material usable in a nuclear weapon. It also agreed to convert all its existing 20 percent enriched uranium into unusable formulae. Lastly, it agreed to grant the IAEA regular access to its enrichment facilities. For this, a mere four billion of its rightful monies was unfrozen by the U.S. and its allies. The remaining tens of billions in sanctions on the Iranian economy and money tied up in foreign banks have been left in place, frozen, and untouched. No matter that these sanctions have had devastating effects on the Iranian economy and society.

Fourth, the United States’ attempt to sharply curtail Iran’s nuclear program is hypocritical, to put it mildly. Not only did the U.S. support civilian nuclear energy in Iran during the Shah’s reign decades ago, but America can hardly be regarded seriously when it suggests that other nations don’t have the right to pursue nuclear weapons. The United States possesses thousands of nuclear weapons, and its viciously aggressive and perennially aggrieved Middle Eastern proxy Israel has an additional 80 nuclear weapons—and a total monopoly of weaponized uranium in the Middle East. Rogers seems to think Iran has an interest in not only pursuing a weapon, but in launching a pointless and suicidal arms race against the two most powerful nuclear states in the world. Not to mention his conjuring of a certifiable former Israeli prime minister whose own histrionic notions—that Iran would instantly bomb Israel if only it could—has been contradicted by saner members of the Israeli military who have admitted that Iran poses no “existential threat” to its statehood, including former defense minister Ehud Barak.

Thanks to Charlie Rose, Rogers’ ceaseless fatuities have been aired and absorbed by countless Americans, while none of his lies have been challenged, countered, or discredited. We only got to witness Rose and Rogers exchanging pleasantries at the conclusion of the dialogue, as though they had just finished a highly erudite tete a tete on the Higgs Boson particle.

Now, when the viewer turns to CNN or FOX News, he or she will sooner or later be served images of some Arab Imam (perhaps Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah) frothing with fury, his trembling turbaned head and well-fingered beard striking fear into the heart of clean-shaven, well-meaning Americans, who prefer the easy decorum of the Rose-Rogers dialogue to the visceral anger of an aggrieved party. What they won’t see or hear is what Nasrallah may be saying, possibly condemning American interference in Syria—not an unreasonable critique.

Having heard gentlemanly Mike Rogers, and having seen Nasrallah, they might readily conclude that one is sane and reasonable and the other a madman of historic proportions. This invidious conclusion, equal parts ignorance, misinformation, and xenophobia, is what you get when you treat the unreasonable as respectable and the unfamiliar as threatening. On its face, the mainstream media seems rather inconsequential, with its grim-faced interlocutors soft-peddling questions to tendentious Congressional lightweights. But as Hannah Arendt once said, even evil can be banal.

Jason Hirthler can be reached at [email protected]

Photo by David Shankbone, Free Grunge Textures