The Nation

"I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go," President Bush told Britain's ITV News as he prepared for the arrival of British Prime Minister Tony Blair Friday for weekend meetings at the presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas. Though recent violence on the West Bank and in Israel has shifted the focus of press attention to what Bush and Blair will have to say about that conflict, the president's blunt remark was a reminder that this meeting of allies was originally organized as a forum to explore how Saddam Hussein's Iraq could be made the next target of an expanding "war on terrorism."

Blair reportedly arrived in Crawford with plans to tell Bush that talk of launching a war on Iraq ought to be put on hold at least until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict calms. The question that remains is whether Blair will give Bush an honest report on British sentiments regarding plans for an eventual attack on Iraq by the U.S. and Britain. If the prime minister does that, the summit will not provide Bush with much in the way of encouragement.

It turns out that Blair, who has been the president's most enthusiastic international ally since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been having a very hard time making the case at home for British support of a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.

Indeed, some of the loudest opposition to a Bush-Blair alliance on Iraq is coming from within the prime minister's own Labor party and from the national newspaper that historically has been most supportive of Labor Party initiatives.

Dismissing Blair's sympathy for the American president's military strategies as misguided, the mass-circulation Mirror newspaper has taken to referring to the prime minister as "the president's poodle." "We didn't do so lightly -- but the truth is the prime minister has done nothing but play lapdog to the Washington Red Neck," Mirror editors wrote in an editorial that appeared Friday morning. "Whenever Bush has barked, Mr. Blair has rolled over with his legs in the air. As other European leaders held back from jumping to Bush's demands (on Iraq), Britain under Blair has rushed forward with embarrassing haste."

The Mirror told the poodle to show his teeth in Crawford. "When (Blair) sits down with Bush, he must remember just what sort of man the president is. He's ruthless -- a man who has sent hundreds of convicts to the execution chamber. A president determined to take the war wherever he wants," the newspaper argued. Referring to Bush's enthusiasm for war with Iraq, the newspaper argued, "Mr. Blair must be the voice of reason. He must stand up to Bush and, if needs be, say 'no.'"

Though the U.S. media has given little notice to Blair's homeland insecurities, the story is front-page news in London. "Blair threatened with huge revolt over Iraq stance," read a headline this week in The Independent, a national daily newspaper. "PM faces dissent on Iraq after supportive words for Bush's fighting talk," read a recent headline in The Guardian newspaper. When Dick Cheney arrived in London last month to consult with Blair regarding Iraq, the Mirror headlined its story on the meeting: "An American Warwolf in London."

Polls show that a majority of British voters oppose an attack on Iraq. Anti-war demonstrations have drawn tens of thousands. And British Home Secretary David Blunkett reportedly briefed a meeting of Blair's Cabinet last month on the danger, if the British military joined a U.S. attack on Iraq, that riots could break out in the streets of British cities.

The opposition Conservative Party has generally backed Blair's talk of taking on Iraq, although some Tories wavered when senior British military sources told reporters that, "We are not aware of evidence, intelligence or otherwise, that the Iraqi government or its agencies are passing on weapons of mass destruction to al-Qa'ida. Nor have we seen any credible evidence linking the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks."

Leaders of the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third party -- which has 53 members of parliament, including a former Labor Party member who recently switched because of his opposition to Britain's role in the bombing of Afghanistan -- are openly critical of Blair for following Bush's "Lone Star nation" line too closely.

Some of the toughest criticism of Blair comes from within the Labor Party. More than 120 of the party's members of parliament have signed a House of Commons motion expressing "deep unease" about any British alliance with the U.S. to attack Iraq. Former Labor Party Cabinet minister Tony Benn, a Blair critic, says, "The objections from parliament are very significant because, of course, the parliamentary party is far more supportive of Blair's position than the grassroots of the party."

The Campaign Group, an organization of Labor parliament members that is a British version of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the U.S., is urging Britain's 641 local Labor party organizations to pass resolutions opposing British participation in any new military assault on Iraq. Many Campaign Group members have been loud critics of Saddam Hussein, and remain so. But they are objecting now to expanded British involvement in a war against a country that, to their view, does not pose a significant terrorist threat.

"If Britain is trying to be a global policeman on the U.S. scale, the money is going to come from hospitals, schools, pensions and the other necessities of people's lives," explained Alice Mahon, a Labor Party member of parliament. Critics also warn that a massive strike by the U.S. and Britain against Iraq will, in the words of former British Foreign Office minister Tony Lloyd "further polarize and alienate opinion within the Middle East and broader afield."

"The cause of terrorism is not fanatics, extremists, fundamentalists but instability, disempowerment, marginalization and the anger generated by these combined factors," says Labor Member of Parliament Ian Gibson. "If the United States invades Iraq, it will nourish these sentiments in the Middle East."

Are the Labor Party critics of Blair merely a fringe element? In fact, one of the most outspoken foes of an attack on Iraq is International Development Secretary Clare Short, who told reporters she would quit Blair's Cabinet if Britain joined a U.S. strike on Iraq without United Nations backing. Former Culture Minister Chris Smith has been critical of the rush to war. And Tam Dalyell, the longest serving Labor Party member in the parliament, has been a fierce critic of advisors who have pushed Blair to align with the U.S. rather than follow the direction of the United Nations.

When a Blair foreign policy advisor recently proposed that Britain might join U.S. military interventions as part of "a new kind of imperialism," Dalyell declared, ""The Tsarina of Russia was better advised by Rasputin than the prime minister is by this maniac."

[FOR TWO UPDATES, SCROLL TO THE END.]

Allegations that a past president of Taiwan illegally set up a $100 million secret slush fund to pay for overseas intelligence, propaganda, and influence operations are causing ripples that have reached into the Bush Administration.

At the end of March, Next, a Hong Kong magazine, and the China Times, a daily newspaper in Taiwan, reported that classified documents indicated Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's president in the late 1990s, established a secret account in the National Security Bureau to underwrite various activities, including running spy networks in China and elsewhere. The articles, which noted the NSB had made payments to Japanese officials (including former prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto) and which identified Taiwanese intelligence officials stationed abroad, detonated a scandal in Taiwan.

The government did not challenge the veracity of the reports, and the Taiwanese news media reported Taiwan's security services were recalling personnel from outposts around the world, including those in the United State, Japan, France and China. The Next magazine reporter who broke the story, Hsieh Zhong-liang, was charged with breaching national security and banned from leaving the country; his magazine's office was raided by the police. Hsieh wouldn't reveal the source who provided the documents, but other journalists speculated the information had come from a former National Security Bureau finance officer who is on the run and alleged to have embezzled $5.5 million. The leaks embarrassed the current government, which is controlled by the Democratic Progressive Party, for the DPP is allied with the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a pro-independence party led by ex-President Lee. Amid all the fuss, Lee called off a trip to the United States.

The scandal has tainted two senior Bush appointees in the State Department. Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported that Lee used the secret account--which had not been approved by Parliament--to pay Cassidy and Associates, one of Washington's largest lobbying firms, to work for Taiwan, and the newspaper said the slush fund had covered the costs of trips made to Taiwan by Carl Ford Jr., a Cassidy and Associates consultant. Ford is now assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.

Sing Tao, citing the classified documents, also reported James Kelly, whom Bush last May appointed assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, received money from this fund when he headed the Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based think tank that is an arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is based in Washington, DC. Sing Tao maintained Lee drew $100,000 from the clandestine account in February 1999 to pay the Pacific Forum to support former Japanese Vice-Defense Minister Masahiro Akiyama's study at Harvard University.

Both Ford and Kelly are significant players in crafting Bush Administration policy on Taiwan. Ford is a longtime expert on Chinese affairs. He was a China analyst with the CIA in the 1970s and the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for East Asia in 1985. He has been a Capitol Hill staffer, a Pentagon official, and a prominent advocate of U.S. military assistance to Taiwan. Kelly was director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration. He also served in the Pentagon in the early 1980s.

In 1999 and 2000, Ford was indeed a consultant to Cassidy and Associates, according to Justice Department records and a spokesman for the firm. During this time, Cassidy and Associates was mounting a vigorous campaign on Taiwan's behalf, lobbying Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House and producing pro-Taiwan media materials, including a website, position papers, and a newsletter. (This was a joint effort with its sister company, Powell Tate.) Ford wrote op-eds, letters-to the editor and testified before Congress in support of Taiwan's positions, usually identified as a consultant to the Taiwan Research Institute, a think tank based in that country and associated with Lee's party. In the spring of 2000, as the Clinton administration was pondering whether to sell Aegis destroyers to Taiwan, Ford circulated a memo in Washington arguing that a leaked Pentagon report showed Taiwan needed the "Aegis and other systems to offset Beijing's ballooning arsenal."

A spokesman for Cassidy and Associates says the firm was paid for its pro-Taiwan efforts by the Taiwan Research Institute. Justice Department records show that Cassidy and Associates received $3.2 million from 1997 to 2000 for this work. "It was our understanding that the TRI money came from private sources," says the Cassidy and Associates spokesman. "TRI, to us, was a private, nongovernmental think tank. They engaged us and they paid us."

But perhaps the money was part of an undercover government effort to influence politics and policy in the United States. Which would mean that Cassidy and Associates, whether it realized it or not, was fronting for a secret propaganda operation conducted by a foreign leader. Does it make any difference to Cassidy and Associates that the payments may have come from a slush fund, funneled through a research institute? "That's a metaphysical question," the spokesman replies. "I'm not sure it makes any sense for me to respond." Did Ford take trips to and from Taiwan as part of his work on Cassidy and Associate's Taiwan account? "We really don't get into that sort of information on our contacts with clients," the Cassidy and Associates spokesman says. (If you're wondering why the Cassidy and Associates spokesman is not named here, it's because the person said he would talk only if I agreed not to identify him.)

Jay Farrar, a spokesman for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says his think tank has examined its financial records and found no transactions between any Taiwanese government entity and the Pacific Forum or the CSIS that correspond to the allegations in the Asian media. He asserts there was no evidence "in our records" of any payment made by Pacific Forum or CSIS to Harvard University. CSIS has received general support funding from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office ($250,000 or more in 2001), Farrar says. But he notes this is a governmental office that routinely makes grants overseas. "We don't see any funds from the NSB," he adds. Farrar does note CSIS and Pacific Forum employees are free to do outside consulting: "Jim Kelly had that same opportunity when he was at Pacific Forum; he may have taken advantage of that." But Farrar says that CSIS has no knowledge whether Kelly did and that CSIS has not had any "formal contact" with Kelly regarding the Taiwan allegations. Has CSIS asked the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office if the money it gave CSIS may have come from Lee's secret slush fund? No, says Farrar, remarking, "It's an interesting prospect to go back and ask people who gave you money, is this legal or not?"

Neither Ford nor Kelly will address the media reports from Asia. A woman answering the phone in Ford's office said he has "no comment" and would not take questions on the subject. Kelly's office referred me to a spokesman at the State Department who said, "There will be no response from my office. This has nothing to do with the State Department."

Shouldn't the State Department have some response? To recap: news reports in Taiwan and Hong Kong, citing classified government records, say that as part of ex-President Lee's covert campaign to win friends and influence governments around the world, key members of the pro-Taiwan lobby in the United States received money, wittingly or not, from a slush fund. And two alleged to have done so are currently high-level U.S. government officials.

During the campaign finance scandal of the Clinton administration, there was much huffing--mostly among Republicans--about a supposed Chinese campaign to shape politics in the United States. The more rabid rightwingers accused Bill Clinton of selling out the United States to Beijing. But several of the so-called Chinese connections tracked back to Taiwan, not China, and firm evidence of a Chinese plot never fully materialized. (There were hints.) With the recent media reports out of Taiwan, there is a much stronger case that it was Taiwan that utilized illegal and covert funds to influence U.S. policy--as well as policy in other nations. But there has yet been no outrage here. The U.S. media has not caught on to the story, and Ford, Kelly and the State Department have been able to get away with their no-comments-at-all response.

Perhaps the say-nothing strategy will work. But the story might not be over. Professor Wu Yu-shan of the National Taiwan University tells the BBC that he expects the leaks will "go on and on."

NOW FOR AN UPDATE:

Two days after saying that CSIS had no records of any transactions involving the Pacific Forum, Harvard University and Masahiro Akiyama (the former Japanese defense official), Jay Farrar called to note that a "more fulsome search" found that the Pacific Forum did provide money to Harvard on behalf of Akiyama.

In December 1999, according to a statement produced by Farrar, the Pacific Forum "was asked" to help find Akiyama a fellowship, and the think tank agreed to do so. Subsequently, the Pacific Forum received $50,000 from the Taiwan Transportation Machinery Corporation, via the firm's president R.T. Peng. The forum sent $40,000 to Harvard and kept the remaining $10,000 in its general administration fund.

In June 2000, R.T. Peng and the his company contributed another $50,000 to the Pacific Forum to support its work, according to the CSIS statement. And Peng and the Taiwan Transportation Machinery Corporation made $25,000 donations to the Pacific Forum's general fund in 1998 and 1999.

According to Farrar, CSIS does not know who requested the Pacific Forum assist Akiyama. He says that the CSIS still has not asked Jim Kelly anything about this arrangement. Has CSIS spoken to Peng about the source of the funds used to pay for Akiyama's Harvard fellowship? "No," replies Farrar. Will CSIS be conducting an additional inquiry into the matter? "We don't have any reason to," Farrar says.

The CSIS statement does not note that Peng sits on the board of the Pacific Forum and has been a close adviser to former President Lee, helping him particularly in diplomatic matters concerning Japan. The news accounts out of Taiwan and Hong Kong and CSIS's accounting records raise the possibility a board member of the Pacific Forum served as a conduit for money from a government slush fund used by Lee to do an underhanded favor for a former senior-level Japanese government official. That ought to merit further attention from CSIS. And was Kelly aware he was being used in this fashion? His involvement--and Carl Ford's connection to the scandal--should prompt a State Department inquiry.

AND THE LATEST UPDATE:

On April 5, The Washington Post published a front-page story, "Secret Taiwan Fund Sought Friends, Influence Abroad," that covered most of what The Nation reported above. The piece, by John Pomfret, a Beijing correspondent for the paper, provided additional information. Pomfret, who interviewed past and present officials in Taipei, reported that the secret slush fund was divided into seven components, and one called Mingde ("Clear Virtue," in English) handled projects involving the United States and Japan. One Taiwanese official told Pomfret that Taiwan regularly funded research by U.S. academics on Taiwan, subsidized conferences conducted by U.S. think tanks (such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute), and paid for trips to Taiwan taken by congressional aides. But the story does not indicate if all of this activity was supported by the secret slush fund. This official remarked, "We know there is a revolving door in Washington. So we follow the careers of people and hope we can cooperate."

One success on this front for the Taiwanese involved John Bolton, now undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. During his confirmation hearing last year, Bolton, a hawk who has for years championed Taiwan, said that in the mid-1990s he received $30,000 from the Taiwan government to write three research papers on how Taiwan might win its way back into the United Nations. Bolton defended the payments and said they would not affect his judgment in office. According to the Post, the money for these reports came from the slush fund. During the period he was receiving these payments, Bolton twice testified before Congress in favor of Taiwan's readmission into the U.N.

It's not likely that Bolton pushed ardently pro-Taiwan positions because of the payments. Taiwan was, more probably, rewarding a right-wing ally already on its side. But Bolton should be asked what he understood about the source of the money for these reports, and he ought to be questioned about any other institutional ties he has had with Taiwan. Does it compromise the political system to have foreign policy experts testifying before Congress who have been paid via the slush fund of an overseas government? But Bolton would not talk to the Post.

The Post article noted that the Mingde project targeted other Americans to befriend, including Paul Wolfowitz, now the deputy defense secretary, and Kurt Campbell, a deputy assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration. But there's no evidence slush fund money went to either, and a Wolfowitz spokesman said Wolfowitz did not know of any connection between himself and the Taiwan fund.

Beyond the United States, Lee and his lieutenants spread the secret money to win support. Pomfret reports Panama's government was given $11 million for hosting Lee in 1997, Nicaragua was slipped $10 million to build a palace for its president, and that about $20 million was passed to the African National Congress in South Africa to help it repay campaign debts.

To date, three top Bush appointees in the State Department have been tarred by the scandal. When will these officials and the State Department feel compelled to address the controversy? Were other American hawks on Taiwan's secret payroll, knowingly or not? Will Congress become interested enough to examine Taiwan's extensive covert influence campaign? How far will the slush spread?

President George W. Bush has joined the root-causes-of-terrorism crowd.

It seems this stunning development has escaped the attention of the conservatives and non-cons who have decried the commentators and analysts who dare assert terrorists are assisted by unwise U.S. foreign and economic policies. If one raises the possibility terrorists find support in other lands partly due to antipathy toward American actions (and not only so-called American values), conservatives are lightning-fast to label such talk the muddled-headed thinking of a self-hating, blame-America-firster. If one speaks of the dire economic and political conditions in which many people overseas are forced to live, such sentiment is blasted as evidence one is soft on terrorism and a coddler of evildoers. Yet when Bush spoke at a recent U.N. conference on international development, he explicitly recognized a direct link between poverty and terrorism and he implicitly suggested that the U.S. policies have not sufficiently addressed this matter.

At the confab in Monterrey, Mexico, Bush said the United States would gradually increase its assistance to poor nations by 50 percent--which would mean in several years a $5 billion boost over current levels. "We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror," he declared.

With that sentence, Bush seemingly recognized that terrorism is not irrational behavior unattached from the surroundings in which it arises. And he was acknowledging that "draining the swamp" for terrorists--as Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls the military action in Afghanistan--requires more than armed force. Bush was saying the United States and the other wealthy nations must counter conditions that can cause people to turn to terrorism or to cheer on terrorists.

Such a statement carries serious implications. It does not excuse or justify terrorism. But it does expand the obligations of those who bear the responsibility for protecting the United States from acts of terrorism. If "hope" is indeed one "answer to terror," then the leaders of the United States must work to expand hope in faraway lands--not an easy or cheap mission. Bush has just assumed a greater burden, one that extends beyond trouncing al Qaeda.

Bush's Monterrey speech received less media attention than his troublesome encounter with a pretzel. But it deserves notice as a marker, an IOU (or we-owe-you). There are, no surprise, signs that he may not make good on this. The United States will place conditions on the money, meaning that recipient nations must pass certain tests to qualify for help. The new standards might be legitimate. For example, the United States could require assurances that the money will not be skimmed by corrupt bureaucrats. But these standards could also follow in the tradition of coercive Western demands that impoverished nations privatize and engage in structural adjustments that cause economic dislocation. Secretary Paul O'Neill has been ordered by Bush to help draw up the rules, and he has long been skeptical of international aid.

The manner in which Bush announced the increase in international assistance also offers reason to question the administration's commitment. A week before heading to Monterrey, following a meeting with rock-star/advocate-for-the-global-poor Bono (of U2), Bush announced he was adding a total of $5 billion to the U.S. international assistance budget over three years, starting in 2004. This news came as other nations were preparing to whack the United States at the U.N. conference for being stingy. After all, the United States has been devoting about .11 percent of its gross domestic product to international aid, while the average of most donor nations is .31 percent.

Bush's announcement undercut the criticism heading his way and earned him a cool photo-op with Bono. (The musician had to think long and hard about sharing his glow with Bush at this delicate time. Apparently, he decided that $5 billion in potential funds was enough help to the poor to warrant awarding Bush the Bono-seal-of-approval.) Then, days before Bush was to leave for Monterrey, the White House said there had been a slight mistake in the original announcement. Bush had not upped international aid by $5 billion. Actually, he had ordered a $10 billion hike. That no one in the Bush White House had previously caught this error seemed to indicate the program was not much of a concern within the senior ranks of the White House or a true priority for top officials there. Yet $10 billion in promises is better than $5 billion in promises. After the new numbers came out, the global development community had even less reason to lambaste the United States at the U.N. gathering.

Ten billion dollars--which Congress must approve--is hardly chump change. And it is hard to begrudge Bono for posing with Bush in return for that--assuming the attached strings don't end up strangling prospective recipients. But as the Center for Global Development and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities note in a report, while "President Bush's proposed increase for foreign economic aid would result in the sharpest increase in aid spending in decades,...the resulting level of spending on foreign economic aid would rise to only 0.13 percent of the economy or Gross Domestic Product in 2006, still below -- and compared with most years, well below -- the share of GDP the United States contributed in any year from 1946 to 1995. The United States would continue to contribute a far smaller portion of its economy to aid than nearly every other donor country." As the study reports, "Even though European countries already contribute a much larger share of their economies to aid than the United States does, the European Union also recently pledged to increase aid levels significantly in its countries over the next few years."

In the early 1960s, the United States donated over .5 percent of its GDP to poor nations. Since then, the figure has been on a steady decline. Bush has reversed this ugly trend. Yet it would take tens of billions more for the United States to match the current European level. And U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that in order for the U.N. to realize its goal of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty--1.1 billion individuals now--by 2015, the wealthy nations of the world will have to donate the equivalent of about .7 percent of their economies to international assistance. Bush's foreign aid budget--better than President Clinton's--will be less than one-fourth that level.

The new money will help, if the U.S. program is not suffocated by the to-be-drafted conditions. But the fellow who pushed through a tax cut that showers the wealthiest taxpayers with hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits should reach deeper into America's pocket. (By the way, Bush is asking Congress to spend $27.1 billion next year on military and domestic security needs, in addition to the $40 billion in emergency spending approved late last year in response to 9/11.) Bush has endorsed the view that global poverty is a source of instability and a breeding ground for terrorism. He has indicated he believes the West has a responsibility to redress the deprivations of poorer nations. If attacking global poverty is an essential piece of the war on terrorism--as Bush now says--then in the months and years ahead he ought to be held accountable for how he commands on this crucial front.

Dennis Vegas is an unlikely campaigner against corporate excess.

Even decked out in casual Friday attire, he still looks like what he used to be -- a vice president for marketing of the seventh largest company in the United States.

But here he is in the parking lot of the Texas AFL-CIO headquarters, echoing the call of his new friend Jim Hightower for a grassroots movement to take on the corporate plutocrats.

What gives? Vegas used to work for Enron, the energy trading giant that collapsed in spectacular fashion last fall -- leaving more than 5,000 Texas workers without jobs, health insurance or retirement plans. "I had some time on my hands," says Vegas. "I decided to do something useful with it."

So Vegas took his place Friday beside a giant wood chipper -- billed the "world's largest paper shredder and emblazoned with the words "Enron Democracy Shredder" -- and helped kick off the Rolling Thunder Down-Home Democracy Tour. The tour is the brainchild of Hightower, whose rabblerousing stint as Texas' elected Commissioner of Agriculture in the 1980s identified him in the eyes of many as the nation's most aggressive progressive.

Set to launch Saturday in the Texas populist's hometown of Austin, the Down-Home Democracy Tour is a cross between teach-in and county fair. The point is to rent a big venue and invite everyone in town to hear speechifying by some of the nation's most outspoken agitators -- Austin headliners included filmmaker and author Michael Moore, columnist Molly Ivins and US Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. -- eat lots of good food and enjoymusic from the likes of Michelle Shocked and Marcia Ball.

Organizer Mike Dolan, a veteran of the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle, says the goal is to "put the party back into politics."

At a kickoff rally outside the AFL-CIO headquarters here, Hightower and his crew explained that they will move a traveling roadshow of radicalism from town to town over the coming months, linking national "stars" up with local activists in order to, first, have a good time and, second, start building bigger, better coalitions for change. Ultimately,Hightower, who regularly writes for The Nation about grassroots organizing, hopes to bridge divisions between labor and environmental groups, family farmers and factory workers, aging veterans of the distant political wars and fresh-from-Seattle anti-corporate campaigners into local coalitions that become part of a cohesive quilt of national activism. The point, he says, is to start "taking power back at the grassroots level so that we can take the democracy back from the plutocracy."

With support from more than 40 national groups ranging from the National Council of Churches to the Ruckus Society and including the Service Employees International Union, United Students Against Sweatshops, ACORN and the Organic Consumers Association, as well as prominent figures such as Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's ice cream fame, US Sen. Paul Wellstone, US Rep. Barbara Lee and political thinker and organizer Joel Rogers, the coalition building seems well on its way. In Austin, dozens of local groups have signed on to support the first "real folks, real fun, real change" gathering at the local fairground where thousands were expected to attend Saturday's event.

Chaotic as the task of pulling together so ambitious an endeavor has been -- volunteers were still working late Friday to turn the hogwashing area at the fairgrounds into a backstage for bands -- the Texas organizing has been given focus in part by the collapse of Enron and a growing disgust even in the business-friendly Lone Star State with corporate excess. The Enron collapse hit Texas hard, and Hightower argues that it has changed the way many people think about issues of corporate power and democracy.

Vegas counts himself in that group. He admits that a year ago he wouldn't have been all that enthusiastic about a "down-home democracy tour. I didn't take projects like this very seriously before. Even though I worked for a big corporation, I didn't understand the issues." Pointing to Hightower and other organizers, Vegas explains, "These people were prophetic. I got a personal lesson about just how prophetic they were."

So Vegas is telling not just out-of-work Enron employees but employees of other companies that they had better start taking seriously the threat posed by corporations so powerful and -- thanks to campaign contributions -- so influential that they think they are above the law. Hailing the logic of the Down-Home Democracy Tour's plan to start in Texas and then take the show on the road to Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania and other states, Vegas says, "The situation that took place with Enron is a wakeup call for workers across the country. Don't think there aren't other corporations doing exactly what Enron did. And don't think we don't need to be organized if we are going to stop them from doing what Enron did to thousands of people.