My political rupture with AIPAC occurred over a vote for military aid to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. This legislative package of aid was put together by the White House primarily to shore up support for Sadat in the Middle East. AIPAC opposed the package and hoped to muster enough congressional opposition to pressure the White House to stop the military aid package to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

But on this occasion, Sadat’s overture to Israel was too significant a factor. This was a rare instance in which AIPAC didn’t “win” on an issue. Interestingly, my vote was the same as those of Sens. Jacob Javits (New York) and Abraham Ribicoff (Connecticut), two Jewish leaders at that time in Congress and the nation. They also recognized the importance of supporting Sadat and were not intimidated by pressure from AIPAC.

This event underscores the nature of the Israel lobby in Washington. Political positions and decisions within AIPAC were and continue to be profoundly influenced by the Israeli government.

The tragedy is that much of the nation’s progressive Jewish community defers to Likud-like organizations, and too many Jewish donors — as with Christian Zionists — buy into fear-mongering and rationalizations for anti-Palestinian discrimination transmitted from abroad. A Jewish community once at the forefront of pushing for civil rights and equality in our own country too often today supports organizations and candidates upholding Israeli discrimination in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and, increasingly, within Israel itself.

The minute I saw the magnitude of the Japanese quake last week — 8.9 — I was struck motionless in my seat. That number — 8.9 — isn’t just the seismic intensity of the earth shake that may end up causing the world’s largest nuclear disaster, it’s also the date that we dropped the A-bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.
But both these numerological nuclear realities — each heralding death, chaos and misery for the Japanese people — are only significant numbers when taken together and after the fact. As sentient beings we will never be able to foresee natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis based on numerology because nature has to cooperate. That’s not the same for man-made disasters — or man-made disasters exacerbated by natural disasters like Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi complex — because if we were smart we’d take advantage of knowledge gained from past experience as well as known scientific data and avoid compounding natural calamity.

Let me explain. According to The Australian: “A Japanese expert on nuclear safety warned more than three years ago that the policy of building large numbers of reactors in the middle of a volatile earthquake zone could lead to catastrophe.” The article goes on to say that a number of top-ranking Japanese scientists resigned from working in the nuclear industry to protest unsafe practices, but still the energy companies continued making nuclear power along Japan’s fault lines.

And here’s where numbers play an important role. Fifty-five Japanese nuclear power reactors are in danger of not withstanding a major earthquake. In fact, Ishibashi Katsuhiko, a professor at Kobe University and the expert cited above, said in 2006 that guidelines used to protect against disaster were “seriously flawed.”  Well, time has proved Dr. Katsuhiko right and proved that this current disaster was not only predictable but also predicted.

CHARLESTON, WV: Mountain Party candidate Jesse Johnson, who is running to fill Robert C. Byrd’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, has won endorsements from historical heavyweights Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) and Congressman Ken Hechler (D-WV). In West Virginia, the Mountain Party is the affiliate of the Green Party of the United States.

As U.S. Senator, Mike Gravel earned his reputation as a maverick for having the courage to read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, a major turning point in America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Senator Gravel was also responsible for authoring and/or sponsoring virtually every major piece of environmental legislation during his tenure.

Says Gravel, “Jesse is not beholden to the special interests that are doing the exploitation in West Virginia. You want to vote for Jesse Johnson, because when he’s there, he will represent your interests, day in and day out, and he’s got the courage to do it.”

Congressman Ken Hechler was also regarded as a maverick. In 1965, he was the only member of Congress to march with Dr. Martin Luther King at Selma, Alabama. Hechler authored the landmark Coal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1969, credited for saving the lives of countless WV coal miners. Venerated as the elder statesman of the anti-surface mining movement since the 1960’s, Hechler has participated in numerous protests near mountaintop removal mining sites in the West Virginia coalfields.

Putting aside partisan politics, Hechler, a Democrat, praised Johnson for his “moral compass” and stated that he was the ultimate solution for West Virginians.

Additionally, Jesse Johnson has received an endorsement from Charlotte Pritt, who made history as the first woman ever from a major party in West Virginia to win a gubernatorial nomination.

The Sierra Club of WV has also endorsed Johnson.

A link to Senator Gravel’s endorsement video can be found at http://vimeo.com/16367048.

As Senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful but unsuccessful attempts to end the draft during the Vietnam War and for having put the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971 despite risk to himself. He conducted an unusual campaign for the Democratic nomination for Vice President of the United States in 1972, and then played a crucial role in getting Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973.

More recently, he has been making videos at Barely Political. Here are the recent ones:

General David Petraeus, through his own self promotion and a meager field of viable candidates, has been touted by certain Republican interests as a potential candidate for president in 2012. President Obama may feel he scotched that possibly by demoting Petraeus to commander of the Afghan War. “Obama’s War” has become “Petraeus and Obama’s War.” The President must be gloating over what he thinks is a deft political move.

However, he shouldn’t gloat too much. In fact, he may have sowed the seeds of his own destruction. Obama should be parsing Petraeus’ recent media-blitz statements very carefully. The General is raising doubts about the efficacy of a draw down next August, a position the President is politically committed to. The General is also touting modest progress in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Making the draw down an issue in 2011 is an ideal opportunity for Petraeus to dislodge himself from owning the Afghan War and at the same time to thrust himself into the fray as a Republican Party candidate.

Press TV:To discuss this further, we are being joined by former US senator Mike Gravel. Many thanks for joining us here on Press TV, Sir. Many American voters have come out and criticized lawmakers for not being able to get along long enough to actually fix a problem during great economic uncertainty. Do you think this is the cause of the dissatisfaction or is there a more fundamental underlying cause?

Gravel:It’s more fundamental than that. What you’re seeing is the frustration with both parties who really cannot perform. It’s really a disease of mature democracies. Because both parties are captive to special interests: corporate America, the military industrial complex, the insurance industry. All of that, so when you had the meltdown where Wall Street went amok, with the support of the political parties both “Democrat and Republican” then what happened after that is that the people who were designed with the task of correcting the problem were the people who caused the problem. That’s the reason why we have high unemployment and we have a continued recession that is affecting primarily the middle class and the lower class.

Press TV: We have seen eight years of the republicans rule under Bush and now dissatisfied with the Republicans, Democrats were preferred with Obama’s elections. The cycle seems to be continuing with these mid-term elections. What does this say for the US Democratic system as a whole?

Gravel: It calls into question and I personally feel that the representative government is broken. There is no way it’s going to be fixed within the context of representative government. That’s the reason why I’ve spent most of my recent life working for direct democracy so that the people can become lawmakers and set their own policies. And they won’t be bothered about my “special interests,” believe me.

Press TV: So much dissatisfaction with the two major political parties, why don’t we see voters in the US vote and support independent alternatives in greater numbers?

Gravel:Because both parties monopolize the field. They are supported by tax dollars, they are supported by laws, and so a third party finds it very difficult to get a foothold. So it’s a continuation. And yet if any 3rd party rose to the level of a democrat or republican party, they would be equally corrupted.

This is not George Clooney’s big screen production, but Alexandria’s truly bi-partisan Port City Playhouse’s stage production of Farragut North by Beau Willimon Directed by former Fairfax County RNC Chair Eddie Page.Set in the days leading up to a Democratic caucus battle in Iowa, Farragut North centers on Stephen Bellamy, a smart young press secretary for a presidential candidate, whose internal conflict between ambition and loyalty has serious consequences. The Port City Playhouse production marks the Washington area premiere of Beau Willimon’s intense drama about high-pressure political campaigns and their effects on the people involved.

Featured VIP’s to cameo in the role of bar tender include:

9/17 (OPENING NIGHT): Former Congressman Tom Davis
9/18: Former U.S. Senator from Alaska Mike Gravel (2008 Candidate for U.S. President)
9/24: Alexandria City Councilman Frank Fannon
9/25: Lonnie Rich (Local Politician and Clinton Fundraiser)
10/1: City of Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille

Press TV: Russia as we just mentioned, says it wants Hamas to play a role in these Middle East peace efforts, do you agree with that?

Mike Gravel: That’s so important and I really want to applaud President Medvedev for what he is doing; because, this is the first semblance of somebody acting as an honest broker, which, of course, the United States is not able to do because of the Jewish influence within the country.

The States declared Hamas a terrorist group, the same thing with Hezbollah. These are not terrorist groups. They fight for their rights which is what they are entitled to, but clearly with respect to Hamas, which has been sabotaged by the Israeli government and the American government for that fact.

Now, I just think it is very significant that Russia is stepping forward in trying to involve Hamas into the only thing that will bring about a possible peace. You cannot exclude Hamas and any designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization, should be removed and not honored in the global community.

Press TV: The parties will counter a settlement without Hamas, if so, can any settlement actually be implemented without Hamas’ involvement?

Mike Gravel: No, it can’t. Hamas is more popular within the Palestinian community than Fatah and so it just can’t and this of course is part of the Israeli tactic, to go ahead and get Hamas isolated, knowing that there will never be any peace unless you include Hamas.

Keep in mind, Hamas, was a dually elected party and it has the support of the Palestinian people. To say that whoever the Palestinians choose, that can’t be negotiated with because you don’t agree with them; well, that is certainly no scenario to bring about peace and that’s an easy scenario, that the United States and Israel have been playing out, for 5 decades or so.

Press TV: Let’s talk about these peace talks. The Palestinian party, as you well know, has started indirect talks with Israel. Where do you see those talks headed?

Mike Gravel: I don’t see them headed any place constructive, until you bring Hamas to the table. The indirect peace talks… why can’t they talk directly? Why does it have to be indirect?

These charades that people play, to make it look like they’re seriously, trying to bring about something, well it’s not a serious undertaking, and the Russian move at this point ,with President Medvedev, is a serious move forward, that could realize peace, but of course the Netanyahu government is not on their agenda.

Gravel was a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination in 2008. He was eliminated in the 4th Round of balloting at the Libertarian Party National Convention.

At the conclusion of the interview, Gravel and the host talked very candidly about smoking marijuana.  Gravel said that he used to do it but never got a high, although he did once have “laced” brownies and he enjoyed them.

Hi, my name is Mike Gravel and I’m a former US Senator from the state of Alaska.  I’m standing in front of the Iwo Jima Memorial, and I’m blessed to live a block away, in fact, from my balcony I can look down at the Iwo Jima Memorial.

What this memorial represents is a sacrifice our young men have given for the safety of this country.  Today we are visited with threats to our safety, but they’re of a different kind.  They’re not of the kind of the Second World War, nor are they of the kind of the Cold War.  What we have today is global terrorism.

Terrorism is not addressed with large armies, large military expenditures.  It is addressed with a global intelligence effort where countries share their knowledge of the terrorists regardless of where they are.  And then, with that kind of arrangement, we can prosecute and bring to justice these terrorists after they’ve committed a crime, and even before, when they’re plotting to commit a crime.

Now, that’s what we need more of, not what we presently have, which of course, is expenditures for jet fighters, for all kinds of hardware that was relevant in the Cold War, but is not relevant today.  We spend more on defense, or war-making capability, than the rest of the world put together.  And we now involve ourselves with two wars.  One in Iraq, which was a fraudulent undertaking, and one in Afghanistan that need not be persued.  We’re fighting for a country that is rampant with corruption.

And the same thing in Iraq:  rampant with corruption.  But they’ve taken our precious tax dollars and put it out in these countries so that these warlords, so that these people can be bribed and go out to the Arabian Peninsula and buy expensive homes and live off of the tax dollars that Americans have put forth.  This is not a foreign policy that will lead to success.  It will lead to the bankruptcy of the American people.

Now, keep in mind what we have is a situation where we spend more on defense than all the rest of the world put together.  And the American people don’t even act as if they care.  Now, that is a reflection, not only on the brainwashing that’s taken place, but it’s a reflection on the perceptions that Americans have about their role in the world.

That’s something that must change, and it can only change if we can bring about direct democracy – the enactment of the National Initiative – where people can make laws…The only force that can stop the military industrial complex is going to be the American people voting to stop this foolishness, this useless expenditure that goes for war-making capability when we need it for peace-making capability here at home, for the success of our economy.

Thank you.

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

Currently he backs the National Initiative for Democracy, a legislative package that aims to give individual citizens the ability to play a direct role in the process of making and altering laws on the federal level through a ballot process.

Mike Gravel will speak on the National Initiative at Ball State University’s Pruis Hall in Muncie, IN on Monday, February 15th. Doors open at 6PM and the lecture begins at 6:30. This event is free and open to the public.

After the lecture, Senator Gravel will be at Doc’s Music Hall in downtown Muncie to be the guest on that week’s episode of FM Music Live, which broadcasts every Monday night on 93.5 / 96.7 FM and on FMMusicLive.com.

For more information about the event, contact Graham Watson at gtwatson@bsu.edu or (765) 285-3399.

For more information about Mike Gravel or the National Initiative, visit www.mikegravel.us

In Kotlikoff’s scenario, banks would be shorn of their risk-taking functions. A deposit would be pooled with other deposits in a new kind of mutual fund, equivalent to a stock mutual fund but with all the money held in plain old cash so there’s no chance of not getting it back (though it could still lose value to inflation). That eliminates any reason for a panicky bank run. Mutual funds would supply loans, too. Already, companies raise money by issuing bonds, which are bought by fixed- income mutual funds on behalf of investors. Kotlikoff says loans could work the same way: Mutual funds would pool investors’ money and use it to make loans to vetted borrowers. That would cut banks out of the picture, except as go-betweens. The advantage is that if certain borrowers didn’t repay, there would be no systemic, global-economy-threatening crisis, like the ones that can occur when one bank goes down and drags others with it. Instead, the worst that could happen is that investors who funded a particular loan would lose part or all of their investment. Insurers couldn’t go bust, either, because they would no longer be on the hook for paying claims. People who wanted insurance would simply pool their money for a certain period, and those with verified claims would divvy up whatever was in the pot at the period’s end.

One side benefit: Kotlikoff says 100-plus regulatory agencies could be disbanded because financial firms would no longer have other people’s money to play with. They would be replaced with a single Federal Financial Authority whose main job would be to verify data supplied by would-be borrowers, such as income statements and the value of collateral.

At this point in history, it is being described as an unlikely scenario.  But there is hope for Kotlikoff’s vision.

Bank lobbyists, meanwhile, don’t even want to entertain the idea. The American Bankers Assn. declined multiple requests for interviews on the Kotlikoff plan. No member of Congress has taken up limited-purpose banking as a personal crusade.

Still, seemingly impossible schemes have become reality before. MIT’s Johnson likens now to around 1900, when the smart money said John D. Rockefeller’s immense Standard Oil trust was impregnable. Then came trust-busting President Theodore Roosevelt and muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell. By 1911 the Supreme Court had broken Standard Oil into 34 companies. Predicts Johnson, who has his own book on financial reform coming out soon: “The same thing is going to happen with regard to massive, too-big-to-fail banks.”

Like most Greens the onetime antiwar activist and campaigner for Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential run would like to wean the country off of its Middle Eastern-oil addiction in favor of more mass transit and alternative energy sources like wind and solar power, and has no use for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While he sees the danger of groups like Al Qaeda, Reichel says he and many other Greens look at the “War on Terrorism” as a law-enforcement problem rather than a military exercise.

“Our focus should be on the borders. The 9-11 attackers all managed to get through our borders. Why don’t we focus instead on clamping down on those borders?,” he said.

And while he wishes Barack Obama had emulated FDR’s ambitious Depression-era public-works programs, Reichel said he and many other Greens can be fiscal conservatives when necessary.

“I think they should have let the big banks fail. There’s no such thing as a bank too big to fail,” said Reichel, who has been endorsed by former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska.

Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), the leading proponent of a national initiative process, wrote recently to supporters about his new enterprise: a TV show called “I Like Mike” in which Gravel is president. From Gravel’s missive:

“Earlier this fall Eliot Fisher, a creative young writer from New Mexico,
asked if I was interested in doing a TV comedy series, a sharp satire on
the political establishment, via the fantasy of a Mike Gravel
presidential administration, a cross between the political drama of The
West Wing (in fact we will be using all of the West Wing sets) and the
melancholy comic realism of The Office (with an occasional hint of the
absurdity of Dr. Strangelove and Bulworth). The documentary style of the
show (see The Office) is achieved by embedding as part of the show
itself a French Canadian documentary film crew.

“I Like Mike, the title of the show, will appear initially in a weekly
half-hour format distributed by cable or standard network and digitally
via CDNs (content delivery networks) on the Internet, e.g. via Hulu,
YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, and video podcasts from our own website. I
will play myself and act no differently than I did during the
presidential debates. My presidential staff (chief-of-staff, press
secretary, etc.), permanent characters on the show, will be improv
comedy actors who will play off of and react to my positions and antics
on the issues.”

Description on the youtube page: On Sat., Dec. 12, 2009, Ralph Nader, a political gadfly par excellence, a distinguished and best selling author and a persistent Third Party presidential candidate, was one of the featured speakers at the emergency End-the-U.S.-Wars rally. See, for background: http://www.enduswars.org/ The spirited event was held in Lafayette Park, opposite the White House. For a short bio on Mr. Nader go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader This video contains excerpts from his remarks.

Bonus video:

4 presidential candidates join Afghan war protest

Following Obama Nobel speech, Nader, Kucinich, Gravel and McKinney speak out against the war.

Cynthia McKinney was the Green Party presidential candidate in 2008; see her remarks here. Nader was the Green Party presidential candidate in 2000 and an independent candidate for the same office in 2008 and 2004. Mike Gravel ran for both the Libertarian and Democratic Party presidential nominations in 2008; his speech can be seen here. Kucinich ran for the Democratic Party nomination in 2008 with a good deal of his support coming from alternative voters and independent progressives (that is, those who don’t always support the Democratic Party nominee in the general election, sometimes opting for more radical alternatives).

Barack Obama, who is as mesmerized by the red, white and blue bunting draped around our vast killing machine as the press, the two main political parties and our entertainment industry, will not halt our doomed imperial projects or renege on the $1 trillion in defense-related spending that is hollowing out the country from the inside. A plague of unchecked militarism has seeped outward from the Pentagon since the end of World War II and is now sucking our marrow dry. It is a familiar disease in imperial empires. We are in the terminal stage. We spend more on our military—half of all discretionary spending—than all of the other countries on Earth combined, although we face no explicit threat.

Mike Gravel, the former two-term senator from Alaska and 2008 presidential candidate, sat Saturday on a park bench in Lafayette Park facing the White House. Gravel and I were in the park, along with Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and other anti-war activists, to denounce the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at a sparsely attended rally. Few voices in American politics have been as consistent, as reasoned and as moral as his, which is why Gravel, on a chilly December morning, is in front of the White House, not inside it.

“I suspect that from the get-go he had an inferiority complex with respect to the military,” Gravel, who was a first lieutenant in the Army, said of the president. “It is the same problem [Bill] Clinton had by not serving in the military, by not having an actual experience. You don’t have to go into combat, you just have to get into the military and recognize at the lower reaches how incompetent the military can be. So not having that experience, and only dealing with generals, who of course learn to be charming—it’s the sergeants who inflict the pain—he has this aura about the military. We have acculturated the nation to a military culture. This is the sadness of it all because that sustains the military-industrial complex.”

Transcript:
This is Mike Gravel, the chairman of The Democracy Foundation. On November 10th, we are going to be organizing a money bomb to try and raise money à la Ron Paul. We’re not deluding ourselves that we’re raising the millions, but we need to raise enough money to pay some videographers to be able to do a documentary on the National Initiative and how it will empower the American people to be able to vote on the policy issues that affect their lives, once it’s in place.

The National Initiative is very different from the initiative process that we have in the twenty four states around the country. Those states – you just qualify, everybody throws money at it, and the people vote. That is not a good way to make law. Law requires a deliberative process where you have hearings, markups, proper communications, and the like. And in that way, the people can make laws and properly deliberate the policy issues that affect their lives. And that’s what the National Initiative will be – it’s a meta-tool which we put in the hands of the people, so they will be able to then have an affect on how they are governed. It will be the first time that people will have a government “by the people,” because the people will become lawmakers.

The definition of freedom is the participation in power. Power in representative government is lawmaking. If you don’t make the laws, all you can do is obey the law or go to jail. And so if you really want to have freedom, what we have to do is to make ourselves lawmakers. And the only tool available to do that is the National Initiative. And this is a tool that will not be enacted by representative government, because it dilutes their power and they’re not about to empower the people.

And that’s the reason why we have been struggling with an organization called The National Initiative for Democracy, sponsored by The Democracy Foundation. And so that’s the reason why we’re making an appeal now for your help, to donate whatever you can afford so that we can pay for this documentary and then use this documentary as a device to inform people so that they’ll be aware of the potential of the National Initiative as a tool to empower them to have a more meaningful role in the governing of their lives.

I hope that you will be generous and give whatever you can. Thank you – thank you very, very much.

(Full disclosure:  I, Ross Levin, helped Mike Gravel record this and post it to Youtube.  I am also helping with the production of the documentary and the promotion of the money bomb.)

• #4 in Philosophy > Politics
• #5 in Politics > U.S.
• #1 in Law > Taxation
• #1 in Law > Business
• #24 in Politics

Here are current Amazon sales rankings for books written by past LP presidential nominees and would-be nominees:

• 109. End The Fed by Ron Paul (Sep 2009)
• 415. Conscience of a Libertarian by Wayne Root (Jul 2009)
• 1305. Revolution (paperback) by Ron Paul (Sep 2009)
• 3282. Revolution (hardcover) by Ron Paul (Apr 2008)
• 14127. A Foreign Policy of Freedom by Ron Paul (Jun 2007)
• 325957. Libertarianism In One Lesson by David Bergland (2005 ed.)
• 434649. Healing Our World by Mary Ruwart (Jan 2003)
• 570640. Good To Be King by Michael Badnarik (Sep 2004)
• 570671. Libertarianism by John Hospers (2007 ed.)
• 773113. The Great Libertarian Offer by Harry Browne (Jul 2000)
• 1004883. Citizen Power by Mike Gravel (Jan 2008)
• 1539627. The Politics of Consciousness by Steve Kubby (Nov 1995)

This list does not include the sales rank of Stand Up For Liberty by George Phillies, as it is written for a specialty audience of libertarian activists.

Root’s book climbed from 426 to 415 in the course of writing this article.  See here for previous IPR coverage of Root’s book.