How finds the jury? Irie or Not Irie?

photo by Eric Jackson

The Rastafarian jury finds...

Surely Sis Jahmanna and the rest of the Veracruz reggae band Livity would be found irie by any jury of respectable and conscientious Rastas.

The people who swiped 35 tons worth of bronze statues from the First Lady's Office storehouse in Parque Omar? Not irie.

And the president's economic brain trust? That's a closer question, but I would suspect that in Rastafarian circles they would be taken for a collection of crazy baldheads.

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The US presidential slates of Obama and Biden on the one side and McCain and Palin on the other probably aren't worrying too much about the small Rasta vote in the USA. They've got a lot larger "jury" to convince.

The conventional wisdom is that the Republicans are desperate and are lashing out with attacks because the things they say they want to do --- cut taxes, especially for the very rich; reduce regulations that limit the things that corporations can do; fight on in Iraq until some unclearly defined victory is won; and so on --- are not all that attractive to this year's electorate.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against negative campaigning per se. Saying an unflattering thing about an opponent's proposals, philosophy or record in office is an exercise in free speech and such comparisons are far more enlightening than the usual mindless slogans.

("Yes we can?" Yes we can do what? Waste a trillion dollars? Go to a war for a lie, commit war crimes and end up losing the war? Put all the nation's most pathetic junkies in prison and all of its most desirable white collar criminals in high public offices? Or maybe balance the budget and lead the country out of difficult times into a golden age of peace and prosperity?)

The attack ads are despicable when they're anonymous and false, like the billionaire far-right publisher Mr. Scaife's Swiftboat campaign against John Kerry or all those "Hillary and the Black Panthers" or "Obama is a Muslim educated in a school run by jihadi fanatics" emails.

Then there are the shots that are based on grains of truth and forthrightly attributed to the candidates or campaigns. If people find these things to be fair (even if they're not) they can be quite effective, but if the public impression is of a cheap shot, these hurt the attacker.

Associating Barack Obama with the views of the minister of the church that he used to attend? It does obliquely speak to Obama's philosophy, but very imperfectly so because Obama and Reverend Wright disagree about a number of things and because Wright's views have been grossly misrepresented by tearing a few statements out of their contexts. And if those attacks are permissible, shouldn't we talk about the religious fanatics at the church that Sarah Palin used to attend and the downright bizarre ceremony wherein the governor received "protection" against witchcraft?

These are historically not the stuff of which American campaigns are made. The founders of the republic frowned upon that sort of thing. Most frequently cited and argued about are the Jeffersonian provisions that Congress shall pass no law establishing an official religion or prohibiting the free exercise of another faith. However, a far more "establishment" view of that time is found in article VI: "no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." The whole notion that the United States is a Christian nation --- what's "Christian" usually being rather narrowly defined by a few politically conservative denominations --- is not a Washingtonian idea, it's a Jim and Tammy idea.

And what about Palin associating Barack Obama with Bill Ayers?

Actually, Billy Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn and I have crossed paths in our lives. I was a 16-year-old Weatherman. They convinced me to interrupt my education and join the revolution.

Ayers and Dohrn are from very wealthy families. They grew up with all the privileges of the Chicago elite and were very well educated. They were idealistic youngsters who immersed themselves in the civil rights movement. The police and Ku Klux Klan violence against the Freedom Riders deeply affected them, and when the blacks asked the whites to leave the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee because the former found the latter bossy, unreliable and interested in different things, that also had a profound effect that they took with them into Students for a Democratic Society. When Lyndon Johnson campaigned as the peace candidate and then escalated the Vietnam War that radicalized a whole generation they found themselves in the thick of it, and in particular, the targets of constant threats and attacks by the Chicago cops under Mayor Daley (the elder).

Billy and Bernardine were not the most astute and effective of Chicago pols. It wasn't just a matter of them not buying into the political patronage system like Vito Marzullo and Fast Eddie Vrdolyak. Compared to other leaders of that era's revolutionary movement, folks like Stew Albert, Nancy Kurshan and a host of others, they were kind of inept at inspiring, organizing and maintaining the support of a lot of people. Billy and Bernardine convinced a lot of people to quit school or leave their families and held out this apocalyptic vision of revolution, but at the end of the day they panicked when Chicago cops and federal agents burst into the home of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and killed him in his sleep. They drove away most of the people they recruited, went into hiding with a tiny rump of the organization they had built and started to set off bombs here and there. That underground organization promptly got into a process of further splits, purges and desertions.

Billy and Bernardine were not like Hamas or al Qaeda, however. They took great pains to avoid killing people. Call them terrorists if you will, but the adjective "bloodthirsty" doesn't apply. These two may have done some obnoxious things in their time, but they are not amoral. They have a highly developed sense of what's right and what's wrong, even though a lot of people may disagree with it.

Eventually the political moment changed. The old Mayor Daley (Richard J.) died. The Democratic machine he ran was defeated first by Jane Byrne's insurgency from within and then by Harold Washington's external assault. After Washington died, Richard M. Daley rebuilt a Chicago Democratic organization that had room for Fred Hampton's successor as Chicago Black Panther leader, Bobby Rush, as a Democratic congressman from Illinois. It also had room for such other of his late father's foes as Billy Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

The latter had left the underground existence behind and dealt with their legal problems, things that their families' wealth and power allowed them to do when other Weatherpeople didn't have those options. They briefly went around the country seeking to rebuild what they had destroyed a few years before, but those whom they had driven off and who had remained politically active had done things on their own and were not particularly disposed to treat Billy and Bernardine as their leaders again. Or should I say "our" leaders again, because I was one of those castoffs who had moved on with my life.

Bernardine and Billy carried on with their lives, she with a project to combat domestic violence, he as an outstanding education professor and advocate of school reform. They fit in well as respected members of Chicago society under Mayor Daley the younger, lent their voices to this or that cause, and eventually crossed paths with the young Barack Obama as he was starting out in state politics.

Obama was a little kid growing up in Hawaii when Billy and Bernardine were doing the things for which the Republicans and many others --- but no court of law --- condemns them. As an adult, the Democratic nominee has known them as peripheral members of the Chicago establishment whose past is just that. They are not his mentors, close friends or co-religionists.

So do the Republicans feel the need to dig up 35- to 40-year-old mud about someone else to sling it at their opponent? That's desperate.

Especially so, when John McCain was on the board of directors, along with a bunch of neo-Nazis, of General Singlaub's Latin American death squad support group. Especially so, when Sarah Palin is married to a guy who was a member of an organization advocating Alaska's secession from the United States. Especially so, given John McCain's friendship with and improper favors for a Mr. Keating, a situation that got McCain reprimanded by his colleagues in the US Senate.

So is Obama a jerk for talking about the Keating Five affair of the 1980s?

One might legitimately see it as Chicago-style tit for tat political slugging and apply your attitude about that sort of thing to the situation.

To me, however, the Keating Five scandal is relevant because it was about a time when the government cut back on regulations of a class of financial institutions and a host of slick operators --- including President George W. Bush's brother --- took advantage, took huge profits for themselves and left US taxpayers holding the bag when everything fell apart. Charles Keating was one of these and McCain, along with several Democrats, intervened with federal authorities in an attempt to get his friend and campaign contributor some special treatment.

Now we are in another financial crisis, this time with global implications, because another group of slick operators took advantage of another set of GOP deregulation moves to build vast financial empires based on inflated real estate values and that bubble has now burst. And what's the gist of McCain's economic policy? More deregulation, and tax breaks for those guys who jumped out of the corporations they trashed with multi-million-dollar golden parachutes.

So I think that the Keating Five affair is absolutely germane to America's quadrennial campaign discourse.

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But who am I? Just one more guy with an opinion, and seeing from this issue's letters to the editor, there are a bunch of people who read The Panama News and who have diametrically opposed views on this presidential choice.

Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Vegetarian, Communist or Monarchist --- or even if you're one of those much-wooed independents --- if you're an adult US citizen now is the time to do one or two important things. First and foremost, obtain and cast your absentee ballot now. And if you want to make your last argument to convince people that McCain or Obama or Barr or Nader or Donald Duck deserves their vote, now is the time to email your letter to the editor and get it into the next issue of The Panama News.

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How far do your interests range? This issue takes you to the moon in the search for water, to the streets of Casco Viejo with Jose Ponce's camera, across a little cove to one of Panama's new upscale neighborhoods, and around Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the latter travels, we see how Hugo Chávez threw a delegation from Human Rights Watch out of Venezuela for an unflattering report they were about to present.

Whether that report is fair or unfair, the Venezuelan president blundered most terribly by declaring the HRW delegation persona non grata. He could have called them to meet him at the presidential palace to hear his private complaints about what was written about his government. He could have gone on his radio show and disputed the report point by point. He could have hired some comedy writers to lampoon the document. But in his anger and haste the freely elected Chávez helped the cause of those who want to portray him as an illegitimate dictator.

But this sort of temperamental blunder is, well, Hugo Chávez. He's a politician who occasionally puts his foot in his mouth, sometimes does unbelievably dumb things, sometimes reaches for more power than his country's voters are willing to give him, but who nevertheless is fairly popular at home and is generally not perceived in Latin America as the threatening character that Washington politicians see.

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The Panama Historical Society is back in action. John Carlson was its guiding spirit and central organizer from shortly after its inception, but now that he's gone it passes into competent hands for the time being and the group will take its time to figure out what new directions it will take.

Also in this issue, I get back to reviewing dining establishments. If the truth is to be told, I pigged out on chicken pies and escapist novels. It's an experience I would recommend.

Enjoy.

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