'Though the Heavens May Fall' and 'Bury the Chains': Freed

Chad Roberts

By MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Published: January 9, 2005

Ed Lam

he air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe in.'' This phrase, with slight variations, recurs through long years in the rhetoric of movements to abolish first African slavery within England, then the Atlantic traffic in African people that England dominated for more than a century and then the institution of slavery in the British Empire, whose populations included hundreds of thousands of slaves. It is an axiom traditionally believed to have been invoked in 1772, in principle if not verbatim, by Lord Mansfield, the judge in Somerset v. Steuart, which Steven M. Wise in ''Though the Heavens May Fall'' calls the ''trial that led to the end of human slavery.'' Somerset was an African who accompanied Steuart, his owner, to England. He escaped, was recaptured and sued successfully for his freedom.

Both Wise and Adam Hochschild celebrate this trial and the events and personalities that brought it about. No doubt they should. It is a melancholy fact, however, that the phenomenon of African slavery loomed as it did over the Atlantic world because, from the reign of Elizabeth I to the reign of George III, England assumed that the air of its colonies, or of any other colony ready to buy, was impure enough to accommodate slavery very nicely.

Wise, the president of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, traces with reverent care how the question of the legality of slavery developed within England, culminating in this famous trial. The hero of his narrative is Granville Sharp, a minor government clerk who educated himself in the law in the course of defending the rights of Africans brought into England as slaves. He devoted himself and his slender resources to this work over decades with the object of finally putting an end to slavery itself. The trial, which is said to have abolished slavery within England by legal precedent, was centered on the question of Steuart's right to sell Somerset into the West Indies. Lord Mansfield ruled in favor of Somerset on the grounds that slavery ''is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law.'' There being no such law in England, ''the black must be discharged.'' This decision freed an estimated 15,000 Africans then held as slaves in England.

Wise follows Sharp and the lawyers sympathetic to him through a series of trials in which they attempt to obtain rulings to vindicate the argument that English law does not countenance slavery. He has an eye for evocative detail and an interest in the trappings and procedures of an 18th-century courtroom that do as much to engage the reader as the drama of the trials themselves. And he has a good lawyer's love of those moments in which the true poetry of humane justice finds its voice. More insight into the actual operations of the law would have been useful -- some discussion, for example, of the yawning gulf between the principle of the right to trial and the fact that in early-19th-century England, an average felony trial lasted less than nine minutes, sometimes ending so quickly that the accused did not know he had been tried. In practice, common law seems only a little too supple to be called a rope of sand. Yet Wise assumes, more or less, that by means of it England pulled itself out of the abyss of slavery and pulled America and the world after it.

In this instance, though the purport of the Mansfield judgment was taken to be that ''as soon as any slave sets foot on English ground, he becomes free,'' the emancipated black population fell into a wretchedness so extreme as to justify their expulsion to -- such paradoxes are endless -- the region of Sierra Leone that was also the center of the British slave trade and from which Africans were shipped into the West Indies. Their destitution was exploited and exacerbated by none other than Granville Sharp, who ''distributed handbills asking London's gentlemen to cease dispensing charity to poor blacks in order to nudge them toward Africa.'' This coercion was apparently not at odds with the high view of English liberty with which he had swayed public and judicial opinion. Sharp, Wise says, ''believed wild tales of how mild and fertile'' Sierra Leone was -- surely a remarkable feat of credulity, given England's long experience with the place. In any case, in 1787 several hundred former slaves sailed to Sierra Leone ''with dozens of white prostitutes whom the English authorities, anxious to rid themselves of as many undesirables as possible, black and white, had married to the settlers while the women were drunk'' -- if true, a further light on English liberty. The population of the colony promptly fell by two-thirds largely because of famine and disease.

This is not to give away the end of the story, which for Wise is in fact the triumph of law and the beginning of the abolition of human slavery. He acknowledges anomalies like this one in a late chapter but, he concludes, ''Somerset's chief legacy'' was that human slavery ''was so odious the common law would never support it.'' And he continues: ''Mansfield's proved just the opening salvo in a legal barrage that, within a century, splintered all of human slavery's bulwarks.'' That century brought the world to 1872, when colonialism was at its height and its depredations were only accelerating. Colonialism disrupted and destroyed far more African lives than did slavery. Indeed, the distinction between the two seems no more than convenient.

Yet the Atlantic slave trade was an enormity stunning in its scale and its duration. In ''Bury the Chains,'' Adam Hochschild says: ''So rapidly were slaves worked to death, above all on the brutal sugar plantations of the Caribbean, that between 1660 and 1807, ships brought well over three times as many Africans across the ocean to British colonies as they did Europeans. And, of course, it was not just to British territories that slaves were sent. From Senegal to Virginia, Sierra Leone to Charleston, the Niger delta to Cuba, Angola to Brazil, and on dozens upon dozens of crisscrossing paths taken by thousands of vessels, the Atlantic was a vast conveyor belt to early death in the fields of an immense swath of plantations that stretched from Baltimore to Rio de Janeiro and beyond.'' The subject of this interesting and valuable book is the tiny cadre of reformers that undertook to arouse public feeling against this great abuse. Hochschild says: ''For 50 years, activists in England worked to end slavery in the British Empire. None of them gained a penny by doing so, and their eventual success meant a huge loss to the imperial economy.'' Vast, entrenched and profitable as the slave trade was, how did they manage to bring it to an end?

That they did end it is assumed by Hochschild rather than proved by him. It seems a little odd in a historian to use the improbability of a movement's success as grounds for heightened admiration, rather than for heightened attention to other contributing factors. Given that the whole infernal enterprise was sustained by the immense wealth it generated, one might, without cynicism, look to the economic considerations in play. When the British outlawed the exportation of Africans to the colonies for sale in 1807, they had had almost 20 years' notice that the Americans intended to ban the importation of Africans in 1808. And it was just about this time that Napoleon, cut off by the British Navy from French colonies in the Caribbean, began looking into the domestic cultivation of the sugar beet.

And there were the rebellions in the West Indies, particularly the Haitian rebellion. The sections of the book that deal with them bring to light an astounding, and forgotten, episode in Western history. Since Haiti alone produced as much foreign trade at that time as the whole of the 13 colonies of North America, it was potentially a great loss. It belonged to France, but Britain supplied it with slaves, a valuable trade since the slaves were intentionally worked to death -- it was cheaper to replace them than to sustain them -- so the market for Africans was very brisk. Uprisings had long been frequent in the West Indies, but at long last rage in Haiti converged with the tactical brilliance of Toussaint L'Ouverture and others and the slaves seized the island. This part of the story is familiar. But there is more.

First the British and then the French under Napoleon sent huge forces against the Haitians. The British sent a larger army against Haiti than it had dispatched to fight in the American Revolution. And it buried 60 percent of those soldiers in Haiti. The two greatest powers on earth went up against a population of half-starved, desperate people and were utterly defeated. It is no surprise that these two abysmal wars of empire have fallen out of history. One cannot read about them without concluding that the Haitian Africans contributed mightily to making the Caribbean slave system untenable. All in all, in 1807 the prospects of the traffic in human beings were not good. It is perhaps coincidental that in adopting the abolitionist stance Britain was able to seize the moral high ground and attempt (together with the United States) to suppress the slave trade among its economic rivals. Certainly this posture was gallant enough to make a great part of the world forget that Britain was for so long pre-eminent among the despoilers of Africa.

Hochschild has written eloquently about the importance of this kind of historical forgetting in ''King Leopold's Ghost,'' his account of the policies of the Belgian King Leopold II in the Congo in the early 20th century, which are estimated to have taken 10 million lives. There he writes, ''The world we live in -- its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence -- is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget.'' How consistently and with what lethal effect we choose not to be aware.

Nevertheless, Hochschild interprets the success of the British abolitionist movement as a triumph of empathy, a humane response to horrors of which the public only gradually became conscious. His heroes are Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp and the former slave Olaudah Equiano, among others. These men did indeed work patiently and passionately for emancipation. Certainly it is uplifting to find empathy and law together championing justice, as they do in the narratives of both Hochschild and Wise. The intention of the writers is clearly the honorable one of finding an instance in history in which justice has prevailed and the world has been changed, and of finding as well a model of the kinds of activism by which present enormities are, or might be, addressed. Yet, again to the credit of both writers, these narratives include elements incompatible with this kind of interpretation, indeed consistent with the opposite and very bleak conclusion that movements based on empathy and law, when proceeding from exalted tributes to the essential decency of a population, can flatter indifference or complicity.

In fact, the slave trade was at home in a world where the appropriation of lives and the extortion of labor were astonishingly commonplace. Hochschild describes the virtual abductions by which slave ships were manned, and tells how these sailors were subject to flogging and starving, and died in numbers as great as did the abducted Africans they helped to transport. And the British Navy was manned in the same way. None of this was at all exceptional, as it would have to have been if there were indeed a presumption of freedom embedded in English culture, as both books assert. No consensus in support of freedom can be demonstrated. The industrialist Robert Owen, writing in 1813, years after the Mansfield decision, describes the transfer to factories of the children of British paupers by the hundreds, 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds who worked 13 hours a day through seven-year apprenticeships. These little workers died quickly and were replaced by other pauper children. They were not slaves in the strictest sense. The system did resemble Caribbean slavery, however, in that it set a negative value on their well-being.

The literature on such practices is immense because they were pervasive and long lived and of interest to many generations of activists. Indeed, if there were not economic motives behind British abolition, then the speed with which that reform came about is miraculous compared with the laggardly pace of reforms affecting the laboring classes who were the great majority of the British population. Owen asks, ''Shall the well-being of the poor, half-naked, half-famished, untaught and untrained . . . not call forth one petition, one delegate, one rational effective legislative measure?'' Just at the time of the emancipation of the British West Indies, a reform bill passed by Parliament created the ''Poor Law Bastilles,'' a system of punitive incarceration for the indigent. Hochschild describes how the Parliament paid the West Indian slaveholders extravagant sums for their emancipated slaves, who then became their oppressed and wretchedly paid employees, driven to frequent rebellion just as the slaves had been. If Britain taught the world by ending actual slavery, it gave the world a second lesson in establishing virtual slavery. As Hochschild remarks in ''King Leopold's Ghost,'' empathy is fickle.

The primacy of England in these narratives slights the fact that a consensus against slavery had been building for a generation in New England, and longer in Quaker Philadelphia. The role of England in sustaining slavery in its colonies is demonstrated in the abolition of slavery immediately after the American Revolution, in Vermont in 1777 and in Massachusetts in 1780. The institution of human bondage became truly peculiar to the South only after the Revolution, because it was legal everywhere in the colonies while they were under British law. And years after the emancipation of slaves in the empire, Britain came near intervening in the American Civil War on the side of the slave states. The arguments in Somerset v. Steuart treat the laws of the colonies as alien to England, though members of the royal family were major stockholders in the slave trade, and what is more English than the Church of England, which was a great slaveholder in Jamaica? While every good effect of an important precedent must be welcomed, the fact remains that the claim to an exclusive English purity that is the basis for the legal arguments associated with Steuart v. Somerset was and is a denial of history, a part of the great forgetting.

Marilynne Robinson teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her most recent novel is ''Gilead.''

The Value of Self-Denial

Self-denial does not deprive us of anything good, but rather, it frees us to receive God’s best.

By: Dwight Baltzell

As the coming of the Lord draws nearer and the world gets increasingly wicked, principles stated in God’s Word sound more and more foreign. In time, they can even begin to sound foreign to a Christian! That is particularly true of the topic of self-denial.

When we hear words like “consecration” and “willingness,” it may be easy to apply them to someone with a particular call to the mission field, or some other form of ministry. Certainly people called to these areas should consecrate and be willing. But is consecration and willingness, or practicing self-denial, only for them?

In Mark 8:34-35 we read, “And when he [Jesus] had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Notice that Jesus’ admonition regarding self-denial was addressed to everyone present, not just the disciples. Then He continued, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”

The world does not question the need for self-denial in some areas. Excelling at a sport and making it into the Hall of Fame takes self-denial, and the world admires that. They respect the determination and the sacrifice it took. Achieving good grades in school and making the honor roll generally takes self-denial. Choices have to be made regarding how time is spent and what to make a priority—that is just the way it is. If self-denial is expected and even respected in the pursuit of secular goals, should it be viewed as unnecessary when it comes to spiritual goals? Of course not!

Verse 36 of Mark 8 tells us: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” There is no greater goal than making Heaven. Sometimes when a person states what he wants to attain in life, he may be told, “It is going to require this and that to achieve your goal. Are you ready to do that?” But the enemy of our souls tells us that it is unreasonable for God to expect any kind of self-denial from us in our pursuit of our spiritual goal.

In Hebrews 11, we read the names of those we sometimes call the “heroes of faith.” We admire their record and, as Christians, we desire to be like them. But if we think it is unreasonable for God to require anything of us that might mean some self-denial, we will not measure up. A lack of self-denial produces mediocrity. How can it do anything else?

It is easy to look at the benefits of Christianity—joy and peace—and desire those benefits in our lives. However, it is not reasonable to think that they should be ours with no expectations or requirements on our part. In Romans 12:1,2, Paul wrote to some early believers, encouraging them to present their bodies a living sacrifice to God. He went on to say that this was just a “reasonable service.”

Can we tell God that His requirements are too hard when we see Jesus’ self-denial? He denied Himself over and over. He would not stand up for Himself when He was falsely accused. He denied Himself all the way to the cross, where He gave His life. Truly, He was the epitome of self-denial. When we think of His sacrifice, could we ever say, “I think that this or that little thing is too hard?” God has done the unreasonable, the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, by giving His Son to restore mankind. Under those circumstances, is anything too much to offer Him? Yet, the devil would like us to think that any self-denial on our part would be an unreasonable requirement.

The very word “self-denial” is actually a reflection of how the world sees the sacrifices that need to be made. What we call self-denial is actually exchanging one thing for something better. Is that really a sacrifice? To a Christian, it may not even register as self-denial at all. When the action or consecration comes from the heart, it means joy and blessing. It is simply being where God can bless us.

At times, we may form an opinion about whether or not self-denial is called for in a situation without searching our hearts in prayer. Before saying, “That doesn’t sound necessary,” or, “I can’t imagine that God would require that,” we had better bring it to God in prayer. See if it fits in anywhere with, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross.” What is the “cross”? It is whatever we need to deny in order to put God first.

Self-denial is a basic principle of maintaining our Christianity. When we buy a new car, something is required from us if we want that car to be maintained in good condition. Certain basic things must be attended to on a regular basis to keep the car running well. The same is true of our Christian lives, and self-denial is one of those basic principles of spiritual maintenance. Hopefully it is in our hearts to say, “Lord, whatever You are talking about, from the smallest of things to much larger, let it be in my heart to say yes to You.”

If spiritual maintenance does not happen, down the road we will end up with things in our lives that we do not want. We may even wonder, How did I ever get here? This was not what I intended. The principle of self-denial must be in our heart—something that says, “Lord, I will do whatever is necessary for my own good. If self-denial is the word used, then Amen. It is only joy to me because it will bring Your blessing upon my life, and that is what I want.”

In Matthew 19, we find the story of a rich young ruler who came running to the Lord. He asked what he needed to do in order to have eternal life, and the Lord began to tell him some of the Commandments. He responded that he had kept them from his youth. But what was the real issue here? On the surface, it might seem to be the young man’s riches. However, they were really only a symptom. The real problem was a lack of self-denial. The rich young ruler was not willing to take up his cross. Common thinking may be that Christianity is not supposed to cost anything—that it is not supposed to “hurt” but just make you feel good. However, that is man’s thinking, not God’s. He says that if we do not deny ourselves and take up our cross, we cannot be His disciples.

How easy it is to move into doing things our way. Because there is a tempter, if we are not careful we can find ourselves saying, “I feel like going there today. I feel like doing that. I feel like talking this way. I feel like dressing as I please.” If self-denial doesn’t come in on issues like these, where does it come in? If you are not careful to exercise self-denial, when necessary, regarding what you do, where you go, who you go around with, what you watch, what you say, and what you wear, what will you be careful about? It is just a matter of feeling, Lord, I love You more than my own way, or my own thoughts. That is self-denial.

You might say, “Well, I told the Lord I wanted to deny myself, and He didn’t say anything about going to China.” Maybe not. Maybe self-denial is something to do with today, a decision that will come your way, a little laying down of your own way in everyday life.
We may circle all around self-denial and say it is not necessary, when all the time it may be the very place where total spiritual victory lies! We may debate it, avoid it, or challenge it, and then wonder why we do not have the victory we desire in our Christian lives. We want to blame it on something else, but many times, all we need to do is to stop and check our self-denial. Those pricks that we feel are because our own will is asserting itself. The Lord is saying, “Deny yourself.” If we can just get hold of that concept, how beautiful it is!

If we see self-denial as anything other than absolute blessedness, then we need God to help us see it from a different angle. It may be called self-denial, but really, it is a delight. David said, “I delight to do thy will, O God.” The more we grasp how God blesses us when we put this principle into effect, the stronger our Christian life and testimony will be. When we give Him a little something—perhaps it doesn’t really amount to anything, but we say, “Lord, I will do that”—we find that He pours out such a blessing that we want to look around and see what else we can give Him! That is the graciousness of God.
Have you seen self-denial in that light? The Lord has great things in store for everyone who will truly deny himself and take up his cross. Will you?

Dwight Baltzell is a Director of Foreign Work for the Apostolic Faith organization, and a minister at the headquarters church in Portland, Oregon.

Stop the Confirmation of Alberto Gonzales!
http://www.PeopleJudgeBush.org

Alberto Gonzales'  record as White House Counsel, as Texas
Chief Legal Counsel, and as Texas Supreme Court Justice
demonstrate an absolute contempt for basic human rights
and international law.

George W. Bush has nominated Alberto Gonzales for the
position of Attorney General, and his confirmation
hearings have already begun.  Gonzales is currently
appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Contact the Senate Judiciary Committee to Voice Your
Opposition to the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as
Attorney General:

United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary

Phone: (202) 224-5225
Fax: (202) 224-9102


Arlen Specter - chair
Tel: 202-224-4254
Fax: 202-228-1229
mailto:arlen_specter@specter.senate.gov

*the contact information for other members of the Senate
Judiciary Committee is included at the bottom of this
email.


Alberto Gonzales:  A record of injustice, corruption, and
violations of International Law.



Gonzales called International Law "quaint" and "obsolete.

According to a January 2002 memo to George Bush, Gonzales
claimed that the U.S. is not bound by the Geneva
Conventions.  He told Bush in writing that the Geneva
Conventions are "quaint" and "obsolete," and that certain
detainees exempt from the Geneva Conventions' provisions
on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners.  He said,
"the war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this
new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations
on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some
of its provisions."

Gonzales approved memo authorizing torture.

Gonzales approved a Justice Department document which
redefined the meaning of the word torture.  The August
2002 Justice Department memo included the opinion that
laws prohibiting torture do "not apply to the President's
detention and interrogation of enemy combatants." Further,
the memo puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an
interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ
failure, or serious impairment of body functions—in order
to constitute torture."
According to Newsweek, the memo "was drafted after White
House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel,
Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general
counsel William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David
Addington."

Gonzales demonstrated contempt for basic legal rights.

Gonzales defended the ability of President George W. Bush
to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely as
prisoners with access to lawyers or even a criminal
charge, in violation of Amendments 4-8 of the Bill of
Rights.  He also helped to write the infamous Patriot Act
and has defended the Act in despite its violation of basic
freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

As Texas Chief Legal Counsel Gonzales told then Governor
Bush that he could ignore International Law.

In 1997, Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo for then Gov. Bush
to justify non-compliance with the Vienna Convention. The
Vienna Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1969, was
"designed to ensure that foreign nationals accused of a
crime are given access to legal counsel by a
representative from their home country." Gonzales said
that the treaty didn't apply to the State of Texas, as
Texas was not a signatory to the Vienna Convention. Two
days later, Bush executed Mexican citizen Irineo Tristan
Montoya, despite Mexico's protestations that Texas had
violated Tristan's rights under the Vienna Convention by
failing to inform the Mexican consulate at the time of his
arrest.

As Texas Chief Legal Counsel Gonzales assisted Bush in the
execution of 152 people, including mentally disabled
defendants.

As chief legal counsel for then Governor Bush, Gonzales
was responsible for writing a memo on the facts of each
death penalty case – Bush decided whether a defendant
should be executed based on these memos. According to the
Atlantic Monthly [July/August, 2003], "Gonzales repeatedly
failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the
cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest,
mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence."
As a result, Bush frequently approved executions based on
"only the most cursory briefings on the issues in
dispute." Rather than informing the governor of the
conflicting circumstances in a case, "The memoranda seem
attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush
from the earliest days of his administration—one in which
he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral
responsibility for executions."  For example, in his memo
on Terry Washington – a mentally disabled 33-year-old man
with the communication skills of a seven-year-old –
Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report
to the gruesome details of the crime, but referred "only
fleetingly to the central issue in Washington's clemency
appeal—his limited mental capacity, which was never
disputed by the State of Texas—and present[ed] it as part
of a discussion of 'conflicting information' about the
condemned man's childhood."  Gonzales "failed to mention
that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he
and his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips,
water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts,
were never made known to the jury, although both the
district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of
this potentially mitigating evidence." Nor did he mention
that Washington's lawyer had "failed to enlist a
mental-health expert" to testify on Washington's behalf,
even though "ineffective counsel and mental retardation
were in fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page
clemency petition" it was Gonzales's job to review. This
all came at a time when "demand was growing nationwide to
ban executions of the retarded."

Gonzales does the bidding of Enron and other Big Energy
Companies.

Enron and Enron's law firm were Gonzales's biggest
campaign contributors, while Gonzales was a member of the
Texas Supreme Court, contributing $35,450 in 2000.
Overall, Gonzales raked in $100,000 from the energy
industry. This was money that was well spent --according
to the New York Daily News, in May 2000, "Gonzales was
author of a state Supreme Court opinion that handed the
energy industry one of its biggest Texas legal victories
in recent history." Since he was appointed White House
Legal Counsel, Gonzales has hard to keep secret the
details of meetings of Dick Cheney's National Energy
Policy Development Group, where he was meeting with
officials from Enron and other Big Oil companies and
studying petro maps of Iraq.


Help Stop the Confirmation of Alberto Gonzales!

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(listed below)

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Contacts:

United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Phone: (202) 224-5225
Fax: (202) 224-9102

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Arlen Specter - chair
202-224-4254
Fax: 202-228-1229
mailto:arlen_specter@specter.senate.gov

Patrick J. Leahy
202-234-4242
mailto:senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

Charles E. Grassley
202.224.3744
Fax: 515-288-5097
http://www.grassley.senate.gov/webform.htm

Edward M. Kennedy
202-224-4543
http://www.kennedy.senate.gov/contact.html

Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
202-224-5042
mailto:senator@biden.senate.gov

Jon Kyl
202-224-4521
http://www.kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Herbert Kohl
202-224-5653
http://www.kohl.senate.gov/gen_contact.html

Mike DeWine
202-224-2315
http://www.dewine.senate.gov

Dianne Feinstein
202-224-3841
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/email.html

Jeff Sessions
202-224-4124
http://www.sessions.senate.gov/contact.htm#form

Russell D. Feingold
202-224-5323
mailto:russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov

Lindsey Graham
202-224-5972
http://www.lgraham.senate.gov/index.cfm?mode=contact

Charles E. Schumer
202-224-6542
http://www.schumer.senate.gov/webform.html

Larry Craig
202- 224-2752
http://www.craig.senate.gov/webform.html

Richard J. Durbin
202-224-2152
http://www.durbin.senate.gov/sitepages/contact.htm

Saxby Chambliss
202-224-3521
http://www.chambliss.senate.gov/Contact/default.cfm?pagemode=1

John Cornyn
202-224-2934
http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/contact/index.html




http://www.PeopleJudgeBush.org



March 19
Troops Out Now!
March on Central Park in NYC!
Regional Demonstrations Across the U.S. & Worldwide


The International Action Center
http://www.iacenter.org
mail to:iacenter@iacenter.org

LONDON (AFP) - Plans to broadcast a London musical that features a nappy-wearing Jesus who admits he is "a bit gay", have sparked a record 5,500 complaints, a television watchdog said.

The BBC nevertheless vowed to go ahead with its plan to show "Jerry Springer The Opera", based on the controversial US talk show and which is still playing to packed houses in the West End of London.

The opera contains a total of 3,168 "f"-words and 297 "c"-words. The expletive-laden songs include Pregnant By A Transsexual and Here Come The Hookers.

British media regulator Ofcom said it had received 5,500 complaints about the plan to broadcast the show, which is due to be screened on Saturday as the centrepiece of Jerry Springer Night on BBC2.

That figure is three times as many as the previous record holder, Martin Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ," which sparked 1,554 complaints when it was shown on television here in 1995, it said.

The BBC added that it has received more than 15,000 calls from viewers concerned about the programme.

But the National Secular Society urged the national broadcaster to stand firm against "religious bullies".

"This organised attack is the latest of a series of attempts by religious interests to control what we can see or say in this country," said the group's vice-president Terry Sanderson.

The furore follows a Sikh protest in Birmingham over the staging of a controversial play "Behzti" (Dishonour), which depicts murder and rape in a fictional Sikh temple.

Violent protests led the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to cancel the production.

A Touch of Crude

American bankers handled his loot. Oil companies play by his rules. The Bush administration woos him. How the pursuit of oil is propping up the West African dictatorship of Teodoro Obiang.

By Peter Maass
Illustration By: Jeffrey Decoster
Map by Baker Vail

January/February 2005 Issue

The red dirt of the jungle meets a paved road on the outskirts of Ebebiyin, where a national celebration is about to begin. Women are singing and swaying in an African rhythm that is hard to resist, even though their lyrics are not of a can’t-stop-dancing variety: “We await you, Mr. President,” they sing in Fang, the main language in Equatorial Guinea. “We are happy to see you; you are the people’s president.” In the distance, a cloud of Martian dust heralds the arrival of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The president is accompanied by 40 vehicles and enough firepower to start a small war. In the lead are army-green trucks, with soldiers clad in black ninja outfits. Because the president doesn’t entirely trust his military, the jeeps in front of his Lexus SUV bear his Moroccan security guards, many of them perched on the running boards, clutching Heckler & Koch assault rifles as they scan the horizon.

The motorcade halts at the edge of the town and its chickens-in-the-road squalor. Obiang strolls up the street, shaking hands with people who line the uneven sidewalks, many clad in T-shirts and dresses bearing his image. His bearing is regal. If he has any anxiety because of a recent coup attempt, which involved a gang of couldn’t-shoot-straight mercenaries from South Africa and Britain (allegedly financed by the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), he does not betray it. And if his mind is troubled by a recent U.S. Senate investigation detailing how he siphoned millions from his country’s treasury with the help of Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., and how he and members of his inner circle extracted large and unorthodox payments from American oil companies, that, too, does not show.

Obiang has traveled to Equatorial Guinea’s mainland from his palace on the island capital of Malabo to celebrate the 36th anniversary of independence from Spain. The three-day gala is replete with references to the 1979 overthrow of Francisco Macias Nguema, the nation’s first dictator. Macias, who once tortured and killed political opponents in a soccer stadium, drowning out their screams by playing “Those Were the Days” on the loudspeakers, was ousted and executed in a coup led by a senior military aide who was also his nephew -- Teodoro Obiang.

For “El Libertador,” as Obiang allows himself to be called, the highlight of the October celebration is a parade down Ebebiyin’s finest stretch of asphalt. About a hundred goose-stepping soldiers lead the way, and through bouts of equatorial heat and showers, delegations from seemingly every town and organization in the nation march by with banners saluting the president and ruling party.

The heat, the soldiers, the jungle, the out-of-tune band -- I was starting to feel I had fallen into a tin-pot time warp. Then I noticed the American flags. These were carried by a delegation from Mobil Equatorial Guinea, Inc., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. They also carried white Exxon flags and placards bearing ExxonMobil’s name. Behind them came delegations with signs announcing Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, Marathon Oil.

In the past few years, Equatorial Guinea, population 500,000, has become the third-largest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria and Angola. Per capita, it is one of the richest countries on the continent; rated by how much money ends up in the pockets of people not related to the president, it remains one of the poorest. Oil is the reason the desperate-looking cafés and shops in Ebebiyin use ExxonMobil signs as decorations. It is why, although his regime once sent death threats to the U.S. ambassador, Obiang now meets with senior administration officials and even with President Bush. And it’s why no one spoke out as Obiang treated his nation’s treasury as his own private bank account.

Equatorial Guinea sometimes seems a parody of an oil kleptocracy -- a Blazing Saddles of the world of petroleum. Yet it has emerged as an all-too-real example of how a dictator, awash in petrodollars, enriches himself and his family while starving his people. His conduct has been aided by American companies: As detailed in Senate and Treasury Department documents, Riggs Bank helped Obiang shuttle millions into offshore accounts. Oil companies, meanwhile, made payments to his regime that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now scrutinizing under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

If America’s interest in foreign countries were predicated on human rights, Equatorial Guinea would have seized our attention long before its 1995 oil boom. Francisco Macias Nguema, whose self-bestowed titles included “Leader of Steel,” “The Sole Miracle of Equatorial Guinea,” and, of course, “President for Life,” was a morph of Idi Amin and Pol Pot. He killed or forced into exile nearly a third of the population, decimating in particular the small educated class. Some of his victims were crucified on the road leading to the airport. It was one of the 20th century’s most brutal genocides, but no foreign power except for Equatorial Guinea’s former colonial ruler paid attention to it, and the fascist regime of Spain’s Francisco Franco was not overly troubled by human rights abuses. Obiang’s coup was a welcome event, and his rule has not been nearly as ruthless as his uncle’s. Of course,that’s not much of an achievement.

Recent State Department reports define Equatorial Guinea as a nominal democracy but note that “in practice power is exercised by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.” In the latest election, Obiang was reelected with 97 percent of the vote in an election “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation.” “Corruption among officials is widespread,” one report adds; the distribution of oil revenues, meanwhile, has “lacked transparency despite repeated calls from international financial institutions and citizens for greater financial openness.” And finally, “There is little evidence that the country’s oil wealth is being devoted to the public good.”

Human rights abuses continue unchecked. An oil company employee was recently beaten unconscious by gendarmes when he refused to pay a bribe. In 2002, more than a dozen security officials at the airport in Bata, the country’s commercial center, were arrested after they allowed an opposition leader to board a plane for Gabon. If you happen to be a member of the opposition, or even a suspected member of the opposition, you live precariously.

For an intimate portrait of what “torture” and “abuse” mean in the context of Equatorial Guinea, I consulted Tropical Gangsters by Robert Klitgaard, an economist who worked in Malabo during the late 1980s. The book ends with Klitgaard protesting the torture of a local colleague who was taken to the presidential compound above Malabo’s harbor, blindfolded, and had his hands tied behind his back. He was then hung by his ankles -- as Klitgaard writes, “like a marlin at the weight scale” -- and lowered into a barrel of soapy water and kept there until he choked. He was pulled out, questioned, and submerged again. This went on for several hours. Later, electric shocks were administered to his genitals. He was eventually released.

Even foreign officials have not been excluded from thuggery. John Bennett was the U.S. envoy to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, and his outspokenness about such abuses angered Obiang. One evening he received a death threat at the U.S. Embassy. When I talked with Bennett recently, he recalled meeting the country’s president after the incident. “Obiang said he couldn’t believe anyone would threaten the American ambassador,” Bennett said drolly. “It was pretty low comedy.” Soon after, in 1995, the embassy was closed because of concerns over corruption and human rights.

The country might have disappeared from our geopolitical radar had Mobil not struck oil in the waters off Malabo later that year. It quickly became clear that the Zafiro oil field was world-class. After a decade of development, oil production in Equatorial Guinea stands at more than 300,000 barrels a day, which at current prices translates to nearly $5.5 billion a year. A gas field owned by Marathon Oil has also become a major producer, and the ocean beds off Equatorial Guinea are being combed for additional deposits. Energy companies have invested several billion dollars in Equatorial Guinea, and Marathon is building a major liquefied natural gas facility. It is now possible to fly nonstop from Malabo to Texas on a weekly flight known as the “Houston Express.”

Equatorial Guinea is not the only country in the region to have emerged as a major oil supplier for the United States. West Africa is central to America’s effort to reduce dependency on Middle East oil. The region currently supplies 15 percent of America’s energy, and that figure is expected to rise to 25 percent within a few years. A report prepared by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG), a panel of U.S. government and energy industry officials brought together by the Jerusalem-based neoconservative Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, proposed that the Gulf of Guinea be declared a “vital interest” in U.S. national security policy. The report, unveiled at a press conference in 2002 by several congressmen, proposed that the U.S. military presence be enhanced to include a unified military command for Africa and a home port in São Tomé, an island state in this gulf. Three months later, President Bush convened a meeting with Obiang and nine other Central African leaders at the United Nations to discuss military and energy security. And in a sign of Equatorial Guinea’s new strategic role, a lieutenant colonel in the Special Forces -- the U.S. military attaché from neighboring Cameroon -- represented the Pentagon in the grandstand at the independence parade in Ebebiyin.

U.S. corporations are now investing more in Equatorial Guinea than in any other African country except for Nigeria and South Africa. In 2003, the Bush administration reopened the embassy, a move sharply criticized by human rights groups as a favor to the oil companies and to Obiang. Frank Ruddy, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, decries current U.S. policy, saying that Bush administration officials are “big cheerleaders for the government -- and it’s an awful government.”

Obiang has few friends. He has alienated the Spanish -- and through them the entire European Union -- by accusing Madrid of involvement in the March 2004 coup attempt. Aside from the Chinese, only the Bush administration seems to like Obiang. No senior administration official has issued a public word of criticism against his regime. Instead, in June 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham each met privately with Obiang in Washington. When I interviewed Gabriel Nguema Lima, Obiang’s son, he warmly saluted the Bush administration: “The United States, like China, is careful not to get into internal issues.”

Equatorial Guinea exemplifies what is known as the “resource curse,” the paradox by which countries rich in oil, gas, or minerals tend to suffer rather than benefit, because the abundance of “easy money” undermines healthy economic and political development. In Nigeria -- to cite a classic example -- total oil revenues have topped hundreds of billions of dollars, but poverty is worse than it was before the oil rush began more than 20 years ago; corruption is a national sport, and the country is fissuring along ethnic lines.

In Equatorial Guinea, nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. Even major cities lack clean water and basic sanitation. A health consultant who recently visited Equatorial Guinea for the first time since 1993 wrote with dismay in the International Herald Tribune: “Despite the oil boom, I was unable to see any improvements in the living standards of ordinary people.” (Obiang is not among the ordinary: In 1999 he paid $2.6 million -- cash -- for a mansion outside Washington, D.C. One of his wives had a $10,000 daily limit on her Riggs Bank debit card.)

On my way to Ebebiyin, I was stopped several times by underpaid or rarely paid soldiers who demanded bribes -- in their parlance cerveza, or beer money. In the town itself, the main hospital is a place for dying, not healing. The wards are dingy rooms with soiled mattresses and no medical equipment except for a couple of IV drips. By contrast, the town’s sparkling conference hall is air-conditioned and had, during a reception for Obiang’s cabinet the evening before the parade, a 25-foot table stocked with bottles of Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, and Spanish wine. Apart from such showcase buildings, even government facilities can be decrepit. When I interviewed the minister of education in his office, only one of the two light fixtures had a bulb and I could not tell whether it worked because the power was out.

Yet to Western oil companies, Equatorial Guinea is an ideal partner. Nearly all of its oil and gas reserves are offshore, which means securing the fields is relatively easy. ExxonMobil and Marathon workers live in gated compounds that operate their own electrical, water, and communication systems. Unlike in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia, foreign workers do not face major security threats, and the government’s brutish security apparatus has kept the violent-crime rate low. Expats freely cruise the rutted streets of Malabo in their pickup trucks and hang out at the most popular bars, like La Bamba and Shangri-La, among an abundance of professional women, known as “night fighters” because they bicker over prospective clients.

Most important for oil companies, Equatorial Guinea is a profitable place to do business. According to a 1999 report by the International Monetary Fund, oil companies received “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” The state received only 15 to 40 percent of the revenues from its oil fields, while the norm in sub-Saharan Africa was 45 to 90 percent.

Even so, the government is expected to reap $1.5 billion in oil revenues this year, or about $3,000 per capita. But that figure is deeply misleading; for the average Equatoguinean, scraping by on roughly $2 a day, $3,000 is an unimaginable fortune. So where does the money go?

Saskatchewan Commissioners Resigning or Refusing to "Marry" Homosexuals

REGINA, January 5, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Eight Saskatchewan marriage commissioners have resigned because of new laws requiring them to "marry" same-sex couples, according to Justice Minister Frank Quennell. Three others said they would go to court if they were fired for refusing to "marry" same-sex couples, according to Saskatoon Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott.

If same-sex couples are refused "marriage" by a commissioner, the complaint will be reviewed by the Justice Department, Quennell said Tuesday, as reported by the Saskatchewan News Network.

"We'd have to investigate the circumstances and potentially remove their power to perform civil marriages because they weren't willing to administer the law as it stands," he said.

Vellacott said the government should be willing to accommodate the religious convictions of its marriage commissioners, as prescribed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code. "You've got specifically the conscience right and religion right that are very explicit (in the charter)," Vellacott said.

Regina marriage commissioner Orville Nichols said he would sue the government rather than resign if challenged for refusing to officiate at a same-sex "marriage."

"I will definitely not resign," Nichols said. "If something like this happens, I'm prepared to go to court . . . We got a letter from them saying that we must do it and if we don't, we're breaking the law and we could lose our commission appointment."

"My definition of marriage is opposite -- male and female -- not two males and two females," Nichols emphasized. "That's why I oppose it."

Hollywood reject breaks US film record
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
(Filed: 04/01/2005)

It was rejected by Hollywood and has only ever played in one cinema. But Uncle Nino, a low-budget, feel-good comedy about the importance of family, is quietly emerging as one of 2004's most enduring films.

The gentle tale of an eccentric Italian relative whose visit helps heal a fractured American family has beaten Superman II and even The Passion of the Christ to become last year's longest playing release.

	Uncle Nino cost less than £1.54 million and was shot in 25 days

What was supposed to be a brief trial showing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, turned into a year-long run after Uncle Nino proved an enormous hit with local cinema-goers. The test screening turned into the longest in history -currently in its 55th week.

Now the rest of the US will discover what the fuss is about after a distributor secured a deal to show it across America from February. It is also hoping to take the film to an international audience later in the year.

The independent production, which cost less than £1.54 million and was shot in 25 days, is the work of Robert Shallcross, a Chicago director who wrote the 1994 film Little Giants and has spent years directing television adverts.

He was inspired by his hectic lifestyle which left him too little time for his four children.

"I wanted to tell a story about an American family that was missing out on some of the simple, important pleasures in life."

Shallcross took the finished film to Hollywood, but all the major studios turned it down. Eventually a friend persuaded the president of Celebration Cinema, a regional, family-owned cinema in Michigan, to show it in Grand Rapids for two weeks in December 2003.

"We didn't think it would survive Christmas," said Ron Van Timmeren, an executive vice president for Celebration Cinema. "But it opened well and then went up.

"I think the film's wholesomeness appeals to an older generation without cutting out the younger audience."

Uncle Nino stars Joe Mantegna and Anne Archer as disconnected suburban parents and Pierrino Mascarino as the Italian uncle.

Mascarino has made numerous trips to Michigan, appearing at screenings unannounced and in character and hugging audience members as they leave

Georgia Sheriff Fires Workers, but Then a Judge Intervenes

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 5, 2005

JONESBORO, Ga., Jan. 4 (AP) - On his first day at work, the new sheriff of Clayton County called 27 employees into his office on Monday, fired them and had snipers stand guard on the roof as they were escorted out the door.

A judge on Tuesday ordered him to rehire the employees.

The sheriff, Victor Hill, 39, defended the firings and said he had the right to shake up the department in whatever way he felt necessary.

Sheriff Hill also said it was necessary to fire the workers the way he did, including taking some deputies home in vans normally used to transport prisoners because the deputies were barred from using county cars.

Sheriff Hill was among a spate of black candidates elected last year in the county, which was once dominated by rural whites. The fired employees included four of the highest-ranking officers, all of them white. Sheriff Hill told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that their replacements would be black.

Sheriff Hill's move provoked an angry reaction from the newly elected chairman of the county commission, Eldrin Bell, who is black. He called the move illegal and filed for the restraining order granted by the judge, Stephen Boswell.

Judge Boswell granted a 30-day restraining order, halting the firings, and wrote that it appeared that "employees of the sheriff were terminated without cause" and in violation of the county's civil service rules.

Sheriff Hill disagreed.

"A lot of people are under the impression that the sheriff's office is under civil service laws," he said. "But my research shows the employees work at the pleasure of the sheriff."

Sheriff Hill said one of the reasons for the security accompanying the firings was the assassination of Sheriff Derwin Brown in neighboring DeKalb County in 2000. Sheriff Brown was gunned down in the driveway of his home three days before he was to be sworn in. The former sheriff, Sidney Dorsey, was found guilty of plotting to kill him and sentenced to life in prison.

"Derwin Brown sent out letters to 25 to 30 people letting them know they would not be reappointed when he took office," Sheriff Hill said.

The Clayton County Sheriff's Department employs 345 people.