text
stringlengths 2.57k
160k
| hyperpartisan
bool 2
classes | bias
int64 0
4
| cleaned_text
stringlengths 1.79k
91.8k
| word_count
int64 512
12.5k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
<p>JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.—After a tumultuous few months that saw numerous lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct, a majority of state legislatures across the country are considering strengthening sexual harassment policies that have gone unheeded or unchanged for years.</p>
<p>A 50-state review by The Associated Press found that almost all legislative chambers now have at least some type of written sexual harassment policy, though they vary widely, and many are placing a greater emphasis on preventing and punishing sexual misconduct as they convene for their 2018 sessions.</p>
<p>This week alone, lawmakers in Arizona, Idaho and Rhode Island underwent detailed training about sexual harassment, some for the first time.</p>
<p>Yet about a third of all legislative chambers do not require lawmakers to receive training about what constitutes sexual harassment, how to report it and what consequences it carries, the AP’s review found.</p>
<p />
<p>The AP also found that only a minority of legislative bodies conduct external investigations into complaints, with most others entrusting lawmakers or staff to look into allegations against colleagues. That has contributed to a culture in some capitols in which the targets of sexual harassment have been reluctant to come forward with complaints — until recently.</p>
<p>Lawmakers around the country have said it’s now time to take concrete steps to change that culture.</p>
<p>“Let’s treat all women — regardless of their background, their age, their political affiliation, their role in the process — as ladies, as we would like anybody to treat our wives, our daughters, mothers, sisters,” said J.D. Mesnard, the Republican who heads the Arizona state House, where lawmakers took part in mandated sexual harassment training this week.</p>
<p>A wave of sexual misconduct claims against prominent figures in entertainment, media and politics gained momentum last fall after a multitude of women made allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.</p>
<p>In the past year, at least 14 legislators in 10 states have resigned from office following accusations of sexual harassment or misconduct, according to the AP’s review. At least 16 others in more than a dozen states have faced other repercussions, such as the voluntary or forced removal from legislative leadership positions. Some others remain defiant in the face of ongoing investigations into sexual harassment complaints.</p>
<p>The AP found that about three-fourths of the states have at least one legislative chamber that has updated its sexual harassment policy during the past several months, developed specific proposals to do so or undertaken a review of whether changes are needed.</p>
<p>The Arizona House had no written sexual harassment policy until November, when Mesnard issued one after a female lawmaker accused a male colleague of sexually harassing her. In the weeks that followed, several other women came forward with stories of crude behavior by state Rep. Don Shooter.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, at the start of mandatory sexual harassment training, Shooter stood before colleagues and apologized for conduct he called “jarring, insensitive and demeaning.” But he denied the most serious complaint — that he tried to pressure Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita into a sexual relationship.</p>
<p>Ugenti-Rita was sitting just three rows in front of Shooter and appeared shaken at times as he spoke.</p>
<p>Shooter, a Republican, has been removed as head of the appropriations committee as an investigation into his conduct continues.</p>
<p>In Kentucky, the acting House speaker has appointed a committee to devise a formal system to address workplace complaints. That comes after former Speaker Jeff Hoover resigned his leadership post following revelations that he had paid to keep a sexual harassment settlement secret. Three other lawmakers who signed the secret settlement were removed as chairmen of various committees.</p>
<p>“If people felt like they had to be accountable and responsible for their behavior and there were strict guidelines for what they had to follow, sometimes that’s all people need is a list of duties or a list of dos and don’ts,” said Kentucky Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, who has been pushing for a formal House policy.</p>
<p>Legislative chambers in Alaska, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada and Ohio are among the states considering improved policies on sexual harassment — in each case after sexual harassment claims were brought to light.</p>
<p>In Washington state, more than 40 lawmakers joined scores of other women in a letter last November calling for a change in the capitol culture. They wrote it has “too often functioned to serve and support harassers’ power and privilege over protection of those who work for them.”</p>
<p>A Senate panel subsequently approved annual training for senators and staff.</p>
<p>Among states that require sexual harassment training for lawmakers, the frequency varies greatly. Some offer it annually or every other year, while others require it only once, when a lawmaker is first elected.</p>
<p>The New Mexico House and Senate last provided sexual harassment training to lawmakers in 2004, but will hold mandatory training next week.</p>
<p>Experts say more frequent training is best, but they emphasize that its effectiveness also depends on how it is conducted.</p>
<p>Providing only generic definitions of sexual harassment or relying solely on online and video training can be unproductive, said Jennifer Drobac, a law professor at Indiana University who focuses on sexual harassment law. A better approach uses in-person training with real-life scenarios about what constitutes harassment and what to do about it, she said.</p>
<p>Debbie S. Dougherty, a communications professor at the University of Missouri who researches sexual harassment policies, recommends that such policies include more emotional language — referring to harassers as predators, for example — to emphasize the seriousness of the issue. They also should be tailored to the unique work culture of a legislature, where the people with the most influence are elected rather than hired.</p>
<p>Experts say external investigations also are important for people to feel comfortable in reporting sexual harassment allegations. Yet the AP’s review found that only about a dozen House chambers and slightly more Senate chambers conduct external investigations, with several additional chambers offering it as an option.</p>
<p>Among those is the Texas House, which until December had a written policy encouraging accusers who wanted to pursue an external complaint to call a phone number that didn’t work at a state commission that was defunct. The revised House policy explains the internal complaint process in greater detail, offers an external review on a situational basis and gives accusers options for filing complaints through an external agency.</p>
<p>The Missouri House updated its policies after former Speaker John Diehl Jr. resigned in 2015 while admitting to sending sexually suggestive text messages to a House intern. Among other things, the new policy requires a private attorney to be hired to investigate any sexual harassment allegations involving lawmakers.</p>
<p>House Speaker Todd Richardson said the chamber continues to review its procedures.</p>
<p>“As I said from the day we implemented that policy, it was going to be an ongoing effort to make sure that we got it right,” he said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press data editor Meghan Hoyer in Washington, D.C., and AP writers Adam Beam in Frankfort, Kentucky, and Bob Christie in Phoenix contributed to this report.</p> | true | 4 | jefferson city moafter tumultuous months saw numerous lawmakers accused sexual misconduct majority state legislatures across country considering strengthening sexual harassment policies gone unheeded unchanged years 50state review associated press found almost legislative chambers least type written sexual harassment policy though vary widely many placing greater emphasis preventing punishing sexual misconduct convene 2018 sessions week alone lawmakers arizona idaho rhode island underwent detailed training sexual harassment first time yet third legislative chambers require lawmakers receive training constitutes sexual harassment report consequences carries aps review found ap also found minority legislative bodies conduct external investigations complaints others entrusting lawmakers staff look allegations colleagues contributed culture capitols targets sexual harassment reluctant come forward complaints recently lawmakers around country said time take concrete steps change culture lets treat women regardless background age political affiliation role process ladies would like anybody treat wives daughters mothers sisters said jd mesnard republican heads arizona state house lawmakers took part mandated sexual harassment training week wave sexual misconduct claims prominent figures entertainment media politics gained momentum last fall multitude women made allegations movie producer harvey weinstein past year least 14 legislators 10 states resigned office following accusations sexual harassment misconduct according aps review least 16 others dozen states faced repercussions voluntary forced removal legislative leadership positions others remain defiant face ongoing investigations sexual harassment complaints ap found threefourths states least one legislative chamber updated sexual harassment policy past several months developed specific proposals undertaken review whether changes needed arizona house written sexual harassment policy november mesnard issued one female lawmaker accused male colleague sexually harassing weeks followed several women came forward stories crude behavior state rep shooter tuesday start mandatory sexual harassment training shooter stood colleagues apologized conduct called jarring insensitive demeaning denied serious complaint tried pressure rep michelle ugentirita sexual relationship ugentirita sitting three rows front shooter appeared shaken times spoke shooter republican removed head appropriations committee investigation conduct continues kentucky acting house speaker appointed committee devise formal system address workplace complaints comes former speaker jeff hoover resigned leadership post following revelations paid keep sexual harassment settlement secret three lawmakers signed secret settlement removed chairmen various committees people felt like accountable responsible behavior strict guidelines follow sometimes thats people need list duties list dos donts said kentucky rep mary lou marzian pushing formal house policy legislative chambers alaska california colorado minnesota nevada ohio among states considering improved policies sexual harassment case sexual harassment claims brought light washington state 40 lawmakers joined scores women letter last november calling change capitol culture wrote often functioned serve support harassers power privilege protection work senate panel subsequently approved annual training senators staff among states require sexual harassment training lawmakers frequency varies greatly offer annually every year others require lawmaker first elected new mexico house senate last provided sexual harassment training lawmakers 2004 hold mandatory training next week experts say frequent training best emphasize effectiveness also depends conducted providing generic definitions sexual harassment relying solely online video training unproductive said jennifer drobac law professor indiana university focuses sexual harassment law better approach uses inperson training reallife scenarios constitutes harassment said debbie dougherty communications professor university missouri researches sexual harassment policies recommends policies include emotional language referring harassers predators example emphasize seriousness issue also tailored unique work culture legislature people influence elected rather hired experts say external investigations also important people feel comfortable reporting sexual harassment allegations yet aps review found dozen house chambers slightly senate chambers conduct external investigations several additional chambers offering option among texas house december written policy encouraging accusers wanted pursue external complaint call phone number didnt work state commission defunct revised house policy explains internal complaint process greater detail offers external review situational basis gives accusers options filing complaints external agency missouri house updated policies former speaker john diehl jr resigned 2015 admitting sending sexually suggestive text messages house intern among things new policy requires private attorney hired investigate sexual harassment allegations involving lawmakers house speaker todd richardson said chamber continues review procedures said day implemented policy going ongoing effort make sure got right said ___ associated press data editor meghan hoyer washington dc ap writers adam beam frankfort kentucky bob christie phoenix contributed report | 687 |
<p>It’s actually rare that someone I personally know who supports Donald Trump&#160;confronts me about something political, especially considering most of <a href="" type="internal">my Trump-backing friends</a> know exactly how I feel about him and the Republican party.</p>
<p>Yet for some inexplicable reason on Thursday I received a message from one of these Trumpster friends of mine who felt the need to let me know that they weren’t overly happy with <a href="" type="internal">some of the things I’ve said</a> about Trump or those who defend him:</p>
<p>You are so arrogant. You only see your side. No one else’s!</p>
<p>This was in response to me mocking a comment from a different Trump-backing friend of mine (though I didn’t single them out by name, just described them as a “Trump supporter” like I’m doing here) that I guess sent this particular friend over the edge.</p>
<p>Let’s just say, this was not the day for someone to call me out about Trump. Here was my response:</p>
<p>I’m arrogant? Why, because I know and believe in facts? Unlike political radicals, which most Trump supporters most definitely are, I’m not in this to “be right.” I care about facts, truth, science, history, and what’s real — not what I want to be real because I ignore all of those things. I don’t just make comments for the sake of saying something. Every single day I deal with political radicals, both liberal and conservative, probably around 70 hours a week. While I’m not going to pretend like I know everything, I damn sure know a lot more than many and I’m not going to say anything unless I’ve put some time, thought, and research into it.</p>
<p>I’ve communicated with thousands of Trump supporters since he launched his campaign and almost none of them every know anything factual — including you. I see the nonsense you post, but I don’t comment on it because I know there’s no point. Any source I use to debunk something you think is real you’ll call “fake news,” ignore completely, or make an excuse for Trump because facts don’t matter to Trump supporters. I mean real facts don’t — you all love “alternative facts.”</p>
<p>For a prime example of what I mean, look at this health care bullshit. For years Republicans said they would “repeal and replace Obamacare.” SEVEN YEARS! Now they have all the power they need to do exactly what they promised their voters they would do —&#160; yet they haven’t. Why? Because in all of those years promising a “better health care plan,” they clearly never came up with a damn thing. They had to call off their first vote because in the&#160;Republican-controlled House of Representatives they couldn’t get “Trumpcare” passed.</p>
<p>This is the party that shut down the government trying to get rid of Obamacare — that never had a plan to replace it with had they been successful. They just said and did all of that to manipulate and fear-monger because as long as President Obama was in office they knew they would never have to actually back up their bold, yet ultimately empty, promises. However, they could manipulate people using that anti-Obamacare propaganda to work them up enough into an irrational frenzy that any and all common sense would fly right out of the window.</p>
<p>Same thing with that stupid damn wall. Mexico will never pay for it, and Trump knew that from the very beginning. But he kept pushing that idiocy because he knew his supporters were dumb enough to believe him. See, you call people like myself “arrogant,” while ignoring the glaring fact that the guy who you voted for last November blatantly treats the people who supported him like mindless sheep who’ll believe anything he says. And I don’t blame him, because that’s a fairly accurate assessment for most.</p>
<p>Oh, and remember when he was going to prosecute Hillary Clinton? Funny, practically right after he was declared the “winner” he said he wasn’t going to. Even though he knew all those times he said she belonged in jail, and if elected he would be about “law and order” by appointing a special prosecutor to go after her, much like his promise to make Mexico pay for his wall, he knew all he had to do was mention her name and like a shepherd leading his flock of sheep — they’d respond exactly how he wanted.</p>
<p>Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her.. oh, never mind.</p>
<p>Question: What happened to bashing Clinton because he claimed she was a shill for Wall Street because she gave a couple of paid speeches for Goldman Sachs? You remember that? I certainly know I do.</p>
<p>Fun Fact: He has seven members of his administration who have ties to Goldman Sachs. The <a href="" type="internal">top two people</a> at the U.S. Department of the Treasury are former Goldman Sachs executives. And those are just the people from Goldman Sachs, not the rest of the <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-trump-cabinet-billionaires-wall-street-20161201-story.html" type="external">millionaires and billionaires</a> he brought on board. If Clinton was unethical and a Wall Street sellout as Trump claimed she was for giving a couple of paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, then what do you call the person who stacks his cabinet with several individuals who’ve worked for Goldman Sachs?</p>
<p>His tax returns? Not only did he criticize Mitt Romney for being rather shady about releasing his in 2012, he spent months promising to release his — yet never will. Though it’s not just that he’s clearly never going to release his tax returns, but that he’s continually lied about why he won’t.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Trump supporters like yourself would be losing your damn minds if Clinton had been elected without releasing hers. Though you all will gladly make excuses for him, even though the IRS has said there’s no reason he couldn’t release his returns even while being audited because, well, TRUMP!</p>
<p>Then there was all those times he called the monthly jobs reports “fake” and the unemployment rate “phony.” Funny, for two-straight months now, his administration has bragged about those numbers — even though his policies have had absolutely nothing to do with them. It’s interesting how suddenly they’re not so fake and phony, isn’t it? Yeah, you might actually chuckle at that, but he was dead serious when he called these numbers under Obama “fake.” It’s like I say, you can tell how much respect someone has for you by how often they lie and how blatant those lies are.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago he literally <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/trump-health-care-complicated/" type="external">said</a>, “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” Are you kidding me? Every Democrat and rational person in this country knew how difficult fixing our health care system would be. They knew how complicated it was and how full of crap his and the rest of the GOP’s promises were for a “law that provides cheaper, better coverage.”</p>
<p>Another question, whatever happened to that whole “millions of people who voted illegally” nonsense? Here we are, months later, yet he still hasn’t provided a shred of proof that the biggest voting scandal in our nation’s history took place. Isn’t it odd for a president, especially one who declared himself a man of “law and order,” to claim there was unprecedented voter fraud in the country of which he’s the leader, yet he doesn’t seem too concerned about investigating it? One would think that the president, and congressional Republicans who’ve spent years saying voter ID laws are crucial to address the “problem of voter fraud,” would want to know how millions of people voted illegally and just how many currently “elected” officials “won” because of what would be one of the biggest scandals in American political history. Wouldn’t you think? You know, if it were true?</p>
<p>I’m sorry, are my facts, direct quotes from Trump, and simple common sense being a little “too arrogant”? Maybe I should just brag about how everything I do is the best, how nobody will ever be as good for (fill in the group/demographic) as I will be, never take the blame for anything wrong I do, and personally attack others who criticize me. Would that make me more humble?</p>
<p>Within about a minute the icon on the messenger indicated that they had read my response — so I waited.</p>
<p>After everything I had just said, this was the only response I received:</p>
<p>I’m not responding to that because you choose not to listen to anyone, your mind is made up.</p>
<p>That was it. I asked them what, exactly, did I say that was wrong, but they never responded.</p>
<p>Was I too harsh? Maybe. Feel free to <a href="https://www.twitter.com/allen_clifton" type="external">hit me up on Twitter</a> or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/allencliftonroc" type="external">Facebook</a> and let me know what you think.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">The 5 Traits I've Noticed Nearly All Donald Trump Supporters Have in Common</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">The 5 Simple Questions That Caused My Trump-Supporting Friend to Block Me</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Newsweek Exposes Trump Either Committed Perjury or Lied About Trying to Bribe Jeb Bush</a></p>
<p>1070 Facebook comments</p> | true | 4 | actually rare someone personally know supports donald trump160confronts something political especially considering trumpbacking friends know exactly feel republican party yet inexplicable reason thursday received message one trumpster friends mine felt need let know werent overly happy things ive said trump defend arrogant see side one elses response mocking comment different trumpbacking friend mine though didnt single name described trump supporter like im guess sent particular friend edge lets say day someone call trump response im arrogant know believe facts unlike political radicals trump supporters definitely im right care facts truth science history whats real want real ignore things dont make comments sake saying something every single day deal political radicals liberal conservative probably around 70 hours week im going pretend like know everything damn sure know lot many im going say anything unless ive put time thought research ive communicated thousands trump supporters since launched campaign almost none every know anything factual including see nonsense post dont comment know theres point source use debunk something think real youll call fake news ignore completely make excuse trump facts dont matter trump supporters mean real facts dont love alternative facts prime example mean look health care bullshit years republicans said would repeal replace obamacare seven years power need exactly promised voters would 160 yet havent years promising better health care plan clearly never came damn thing call first vote the160republicancontrolled house representatives couldnt get trumpcare passed party shut government trying get rid obamacare never plan replace successful said manipulate fearmonger long president obama office knew would never actually back bold yet ultimately empty promises however could manipulate people using antiobamacare propaganda work enough irrational frenzy common sense would fly right window thing stupid damn wall mexico never pay trump knew beginning kept pushing idiocy knew supporters dumb enough believe see call people like arrogant ignoring glaring fact guy voted last november blatantly treats people supported like mindless sheep wholl believe anything says dont blame thats fairly accurate assessment oh remember going prosecute hillary clinton funny practically right declared winner said wasnt going even though knew times said belonged jail elected would law order appointing special prosecutor go much like promise make mexico pay wall knew mention name like shepherd leading flock sheep theyd respond exactly wanted lock lock lock oh never mind question happened bashing clinton claimed shill wall street gave couple paid speeches goldman sachs remember certainly know fun fact seven members administration ties goldman sachs top two people us department treasury former goldman sachs executives people goldman sachs rest millionaires billionaires brought board clinton unethical wall street sellout trump claimed giving couple paid speeches goldman sachs call person stacks cabinet several individuals whove worked goldman sachs tax returns criticize mitt romney rather shady releasing 2012 spent months promising release yet never though hes clearly never going release tax returns hes continually lied wont meanwhile trump supporters like would losing damn minds clinton elected without releasing though gladly make excuses even though irs said theres reason couldnt release returns even audited well trump times called monthly jobs reports fake unemployment rate phony funny twostraight months administration bragged numbers even though policies absolutely nothing interesting suddenly theyre fake phony isnt yeah might actually chuckle dead serious called numbers obama fake like say tell much respect someone often lie blatant lies weeks ago literally said nobody knew health care could complicated kidding every democrat rational person country knew difficult fixing health care system would knew complicated full crap rest gops promises law provides cheaper better coverage another question whatever happened whole millions people voted illegally nonsense months later yet still hasnt provided shred proof biggest voting scandal nations history took place isnt odd president especially one declared man law order claim unprecedented voter fraud country hes leader yet doesnt seem concerned investigating one would think president congressional republicans whove spent years saying voter id laws crucial address problem voter fraud would want know millions people voted illegally many currently elected officials would one biggest scandals american political history wouldnt think know true im sorry facts direct quotes trump simple common sense little arrogant maybe brag everything best nobody ever good fill groupdemographic never take blame anything wrong personally attack others criticize would make humble within minute icon messenger indicated read response waited everything said response received im responding choose listen anyone mind made asked exactly say wrong never responded harsh maybe feel free hit twitter facebook let know think 5 traits ive noticed nearly donald trump supporters common 5 simple questions caused trumpsupporting friend block newsweek exposes trump either committed perjury lied trying bribe jeb bush 1070 facebook comments | 766 |
<p>A bu Musab Al Zarqawi is dead. The Jordanian-born Zarqawi was in a meeting with associates at a “safe house” just north of Baghdad last Wednesday (June 7) when he was killed in a joint operation with Iraq carried out by U.S. air forces. Zarqawi has been called the head of “the Sunni insurgency” and the leader of “al-Qaeda in Iraq.” On June 8, the Washington Post characterized him as “the mastermind behind hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq.”</p>
<p>However, in April the Washington Post revealed that military documents showed Zarqawi was not as important as was widely believed. The documents showed that the U.S. intentionally magnified Zarqawi’s importance both in Iraq and in the U.S. in order to direct violence against Zarqawi from other Iraqis.</p>
<p>Additionally, Greg Palast has made a compelling case that Zarqawi’s insurgency was the result of the U.S. policy to sell off Iraqi assets to big business rather than allowing elections to go forward.</p>
<p>More complicating factors in Zarqawi’s death: there have been recent unconfirmed reports of a possible rift between Zarqawi and al Qaeda that may have resulted in his demotion or in him being “cut loose,” and only minutes after his death was announced, the long-unfilled seats of Iraqi interior minister, defense minister, and national security adviser were quickly filled “in a giddy session of parliament.”</p>
<p>The coincidence between these events and Zarqawi’s death seems too great to be ignored.</p>
<p>The Creation of Zarqawi</p>
<p>The “Zarqawi PSYOP Program,” as it was called in one internal military briefing, was apparently seen as “the most successful information campaign to date.” Another briefing defined the purpose of the program as being to “Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response.” The program used three methods: media operations, special (covert) operations, and PSYOP.</p>
<p>PSYOP is the military term for military actions designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups, and foreign governments. PSYOP is short for “psychological operations.”</p>
<p>One document reveals that Col. Derek Harvey, who was a military intelligence officer in Iraq and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, considered that “The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends.”</p>
<p>Another briefing, possibly quoting Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military’s chief spokesman in 2004, said: “Through aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/Denial of Iraqi Aspirations.”</p>
<p>Was Zarqawi made into a terrorist by “aggressive strategic communications” of the U.S. military? Perhaps the Pentagon is taking more credit than is due it, but if Palast is correct, the actions and policies of Paul Bremer in Iraq contributed to Zarqawi’s rise.</p>
<p>Bremer’s policies, according to Palast, caused the insurgency. Bremer “instituted democracy Bush style: he canceled elections and appointed the entire government himself.” Two months later, Bremer “ordered a halt to all municipal elections including the crucial vote to Shia seeking to select a mayor in the city of Najaf.” Then Bremer issued “”Order Number One: De-Ba’athification.” Palast says that “In effect, this became ‘De-Sunni-fication.'”</p>
<p>According to Palast, “The Plan” ­ “101-page document to guide the long-term future of the land we’d just conquered” ­ was to sell off Iraqi assets and create a corporate-owned Iraq. Bremer began to bust Iraqi collaborators ­ those who had secretly collaborated with the U.S. invasion. According to one collaborator, this action was “a gift” to foreign insurgents who, in Palast’s words, “now gained experienced military commanders, Sunnis, who now had no choice but to fight the US-installed regime or face arrest, ruin or death.” These insurgents soon linked up with Zarqawi, “who was committed to destroying ‘Shia snakes.'”</p>
<p>Legitimate Target?</p>
<p>If it is true that Zarqawi was not as significant a threat as portrayed, that “aggressive strategic communications” made him seem more than he really was, or, in any case, that Bremer’s policies “created” Zarqawi, can he still be a legitimate target?</p>
<p>An alleged propaganda video of the “terror mastermind” obtained by the Pentagon shows him as an incompetent leader, confused about how to operate an automatic weapon. Michel Chossudovsky notes that Zarqawi’s supposed incompetence “seems at odds with previous media reports” and with Colin Powell’s historic presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003 in which “Zarqawi is upheld as a casus belli” ­ cause of war.</p>
<p>“Meanwhile,” says Chossudovsky, “the US has set up an elaborate military command structure . . . to protect the homeland against Zarqawi . . . ”</p>
<p>Was Zarqawi a Pentagon or Bremer creation? Was he simply incompetent? Or was he an enemy combatant? Or was he all of the above . . . or something else altogether (a terrorist criminal)? If he was a Pentagon/Bremer creation, was his killing an assassination rather than a lawful targeted wartime killing? If he was a criminal (terrorist), shouldn’t he have been captured (arrested) and charges have been brought against him?</p>
<p>The April Post story suggests that even if Zarqawi was a legitimate military target during wartime, the Pentagon may have decided to take him down when it was no longer a political advantage to use him.</p>
<p>Under the international laws of war, the legitimacy or illegitimacy of an armed conflict has no effect on whether the conduct of the military during that conflict is proper or not. Thus, even if the “Iraq War” is not considered legitimate under international law ­ such as, say, because it was a war of aggression rather than defense ­ Zarqawi may still be a lawful military target during that conflict.</p>
<p>Further, even if Zarqawi was a Pentagon or Bremer creation, unless all the public information we have about him is incorrect, he may still be considered a legitimate military target. Assuming that the Zarqawi videos and his bombings and beheadings were real, he would be a legitimate target as long — as there is still an international armed conflict.</p>
<p>Was Zarqawi killed during an international armed conflict? Despite all the U.S. rhetoric about the ongoing “war on terror,” probably not. He was killed either during an occupation or during internal civil war. (We discuss occupation in more detail below.) In either case, the killing of Zarqawi would have been unjustified (although it is not clear whether there would be a remedy for it). Instead, Zarqawi should have been captured and brought to trial. Proportionality &amp; Necessity</p>
<p>The killing of Zarqawi raises numerous other questions under international law. Let us assume for a moment that the U.S. is right, that Zarqawi was legitimately killed in the war on terror ­ in other words, that the killing took place during an international armed conflict. Was the bombing proper? Under international law, an attack must be proportional and “justified by military necessity and must not be carried out unlawfully or wantonly.”</p>
<p>Was the manner in which Zarqawi killed “proportional” to the military end desired? The neighborhood in which the attack took place is a civilian neighborhood with no military targets and the house could readily have been surrounded and taken by troops. Yet the U.S. apparently made no attempt to capture Zarqawi and rather than using troops, the U.S. bombed the house, killing not only Zarqawi and his associates but also a woman and a child inside, as well as damaging other houses and injuring more than a dozen others outside the safe house.</p>
<p>Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, an International Human Rights Lawyer who practices in the Middle East, says that “the assassination of al-Zarqawi was a disproportionate use of force use to achieve a military advantage that could easily have been achieved with less loss of innocent civilian life.”</p>
<p>Others disagree, saying a raid was as likely to have the same level of damage as a bombing. Ewen Allison, a Washington, D.C. attorney specializing in international humanitarian law, writes: “Between a) bombing Zarqawi’s safe house and b) on-the-ground attack or siege, I think the probabilities of a better outcome for civilians are in equipoise . . . . Offhand, I’d say that 16 casualties is in the range of what we’d expect from a firefight, particularly one with a leader who has a significant number of well-armed followers.”</p>
<p>Charles Gittings, an independent researcher who founded the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions (PEGC),says:</p>
<p>&lt;blockindent&gt; Personally, I think resorting to an air strike in that situation was inexcusable. They claim they didn’t have any troops available, but I think that’s got to be [untrue] because I think it’s inconceivable they couldn’t have deployed an adequate force of airmobile troops on short notice. This is what, 30 miles from Baghdad? The house was 3000 yards from the nearest neighbor and could easily have been cordoned off, and this is technically a law enforcement situation, in my opinion. The Iraqi police were on the scene fairly quick, and we had somebody there shortly after — soon enough that Zarqawi was still alive.&lt;/blockindent&gt;</p>
<p>Considering the violence attributed to Zarqawi, his capture or killing would seem necessary to the public safety, but the method may not have been ­ and the bombing in fact may have been disproportionate to the military end and the killing may have been unjustified, as we discuss below.</p>
<p>Occupation Law</p>
<p>Can an Occupying Power (OP) engage in military actions against the inhabitants of the occupied country? The United States was both the invading and the occupying power in Iraq. Would it still be considered the OP?</p>
<p>The Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War (GC IV) requires that an OP protect the population. Protected persons include any person who finds himself in the hands of the OP. “Such duty is essentially similar to that of a police force. A police force cannot simply go and extra-judicially kill people. It must make bona fide attempts to detain people suspected of endangering public order,” says Elias Davidson of Iceland, an independent researcher who has published in international law journals on these issues. It is a grave breach of GC IV to willfully kill a protected person and persons suspected of crimes must be prosecuted under the laws of the occupied territory.</p>
<p>But there are questions whether the conflict has ended and whether the U.S. has relinquished its responsibilities as an occupying power. Allison notes that the answer depends on several factors, among them, “whether the Iraqi government really is independent and in power.” But also, “there’s a rule that occupation continues as long as there’s an active enemy armed force in the field,” says Allison.</p>
<p>Article 42 of the Hague Regulations of 1907,which is still considered customary international law, states that “Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps the central question,” says Allison, “is whether some kernel of Iraqi resistance remained cohesive enough to survive from the start of the invasion to this day and still count as an armed force in the field.”</p>
<p>Davidson feels that “the situation in Iraq (like in Palestine) is that of belligerent occupation and the full responsibility for the situation in Iraq is borne by the US, as the Occupying Power, flanked by the UK.”</p>
<p>Where’s the Battlefield?</p>
<p>Whether or not the invasion of Iraq is considered legitimate or the ongoing conflict is viewed as an international armed conflict (and assuming Zarqawi a legitimate military target), there is still the question: where is the field of battle? A legitimate military target may not be killed away from the battlefield. Clearly, in Iraq, everywhere is the battlefield, but can this be correct under the laws of war?</p>
<p>Gittings says “What I’d question the most is the idea that the entire country is a battlefield. A battlefield is the site of a battle, which is an engagement between hostile forces within a *theater* of operations.”</p>
<p>Yet, in World War II, all of Europe was the battlefield.</p>
<p>Zarqawi Beaten by American Soldiers?</p>
<p>Newsday reported on Saturday, June 10, three days after the killing and press statements by the U.S., that an Iraqi man claimed that Zarqawi survived the bombing, but American soldiers “beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha,” ­ a traditional Arab robe ­ and “stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died.”</p>
<p>This raises questions of either criminal violations of domestic Iraqi law (or of occupation laws) or of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW III) or of GC IV, which applies to treatment of civilians during wartime. In any of these scenarios, the alleged beatings would be prosecutable as crimes.</p>
<p>In any event, the killing of Zarqawi is far from being as simple as the media is portraying it. While everything we think we know about Zarqawi shows that he was a violent terrorist, it is not so clear that a military solution was the internationally legal one, or that the killing was justifiable under either international or domestic laws.</p>
<p>JENNIFER VAN BERGEN, a journalist with a law degree, is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512925/counterpunchmaga" type="external">THE TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE BUSH PLAN FOR AMERICA</a> (Common Courage Press, 2004). She writes frequently on civil liberties, human rights, and international law. Her book, ARCHETYPES FOR WRITERS, about the characterization method she developed and taught at the New School University, will be out in 2006. She can be reached at <a href="mailto:jvbxyz@earthlink.net" type="external">jvbxyz@earthlink.net</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | bu musab al zarqawi dead jordanianborn zarqawi meeting associates safe house north baghdad last wednesday june 7 killed joint operation iraq carried us air forces zarqawi called head sunni insurgency leader alqaeda iraq june 8 washington post characterized mastermind behind hundreds bombings kidnappings beheadings iraq however april washington post revealed military documents showed zarqawi important widely believed documents showed us intentionally magnified zarqawis importance iraq us order direct violence zarqawi iraqis additionally greg palast made compelling case zarqawis insurgency result us policy sell iraqi assets big business rather allowing elections go forward complicating factors zarqawis death recent unconfirmed reports possible rift zarqawi al qaeda may resulted demotion cut loose minutes death announced longunfilled seats iraqi interior minister defense minister national security adviser quickly filled giddy session parliament coincidence events zarqawis death seems great ignored creation zarqawi zarqawi psyop program called one internal military briefing apparently seen successful information campaign date another briefing defined purpose program villainize zarqawileverage xenophobia response program used three methods media operations special covert operations psyop psyop military term military actions designed influence perceptions attitudes individuals groups foreign governments psyop short psychological operations one document reveals col derek harvey military intelligence officer iraq joint chiefs staff considered longterm threat zarqawi religious extremists former regime types friends another briefing possibly quoting brig gen mark kimmitt militarys chief spokesman 2004 said aggressive strategic communications abu musab alzarqawi represents terrorism iraqforeign fighters iraqsuffering iraqi people infrastructure attacksdenial iraqi aspirations zarqawi made terrorist aggressive strategic communications us military perhaps pentagon taking credit due palast correct actions policies paul bremer iraq contributed zarqawis rise bremers policies according palast caused insurgency bremer instituted democracy bush style canceled elections appointed entire government two months later bremer ordered halt municipal elections including crucial vote shia seeking select mayor city najaf bremer issued order number one debaathification palast says effect became desunnification according palast plan 101page document guide longterm future land wed conquered sell iraqi assets create corporateowned iraq bremer began bust iraqi collaborators secretly collaborated us invasion according one collaborator action gift foreign insurgents palasts words gained experienced military commanders sunnis choice fight usinstalled regime face arrest ruin death insurgents soon linked zarqawi committed destroying shia snakes legitimate target true zarqawi significant threat portrayed aggressive strategic communications made seem really case bremers policies created zarqawi still legitimate target alleged propaganda video terror mastermind obtained pentagon shows incompetent leader confused operate automatic weapon michel chossudovsky notes zarqawis supposed incompetence seems odds previous media reports colin powells historic presentation un security council february 5 2003 zarqawi upheld casus belli cause war meanwhile says chossudovsky us set elaborate military command structure protect homeland zarqawi zarqawi pentagon bremer creation simply incompetent enemy combatant something else altogether terrorist criminal pentagonbremer creation killing assassination rather lawful targeted wartime killing criminal terrorist shouldnt captured arrested charges brought april post story suggests even zarqawi legitimate military target wartime pentagon may decided take longer political advantage use international laws war legitimacy illegitimacy armed conflict effect whether conduct military conflict proper thus even iraq war considered legitimate international law say war aggression rather defense zarqawi may still lawful military target conflict even zarqawi pentagon bremer creation unless public information incorrect may still considered legitimate military target assuming zarqawi videos bombings beheadings real would legitimate target long still international armed conflict zarqawi killed international armed conflict despite us rhetoric ongoing war terror probably killed either occupation internal civil war discuss occupation detail either case killing zarqawi would unjustified although clear whether would remedy instead zarqawi captured brought trial proportionality amp necessity killing zarqawi raises numerous questions international law let us assume moment us right zarqawi legitimately killed war terror words killing took place international armed conflict bombing proper international law attack must proportional justified military necessity must carried unlawfully wantonly manner zarqawi killed proportional military end desired neighborhood attack took place civilian neighborhood military targets house could readily surrounded taken troops yet us apparently made attempt capture zarqawi rather using troops us bombed house killing zarqawi associates also woman child inside well damaging houses injuring dozen others outside safe house dr curtis fj doebbler international human rights lawyer practices middle east says assassination alzarqawi disproportionate use force use achieve military advantage could easily achieved less loss innocent civilian life others disagree saying raid likely level damage bombing ewen allison washington dc attorney specializing international humanitarian law writes bombing zarqawis safe house b ontheground attack siege think probabilities better outcome civilians equipoise offhand id say 16 casualties range wed expect firefight particularly one leader significant number wellarmed followers charles gittings independent researcher founded project enforce geneva conventions pegcsays ltblockindentgt personally think resorting air strike situation inexcusable claim didnt troops available think thats got untrue think inconceivable couldnt deployed adequate force airmobile troops short notice 30 miles baghdad house 3000 yards nearest neighbor could easily cordoned technically law enforcement situation opinion iraqi police scene fairly quick somebody shortly soon enough zarqawi still aliveltblockindentgt considering violence attributed zarqawi capture killing would seem necessary public safety method may bombing fact may disproportionate military end killing may unjustified discuss occupation law occupying power op engage military actions inhabitants occupied country united states invading occupying power iraq would still considered op fourth geneva convention relative protection civilians time war gc iv requires op protect population protected persons include person finds hands op duty essentially similar police force police force simply go extrajudicially kill people must make bona fide attempts detain people suspected endangering public order says elias davidson iceland independent researcher published international law journals issues grave breach gc iv willfully kill protected person persons suspected crimes must prosecuted laws occupied territory questions whether conflict ended whether us relinquished responsibilities occupying power allison notes answer depends several factors among whether iraqi government really independent power also theres rule occupation continues long theres active enemy armed force field says allison article 42 hague regulations 1907which still considered customary international law states territory considered occupied actually placed authority hostile army occupation extends territory authority established exercised perhaps central question says allison whether kernel iraqi resistance remained cohesive enough survive start invasion day still count armed force field davidson feels situation iraq like palestine belligerent occupation full responsibility situation iraq borne us occupying power flanked uk wheres battlefield whether invasion iraq considered legitimate ongoing conflict viewed international armed conflict assuming zarqawi legitimate military target still question field battle legitimate military target may killed away battlefield clearly iraq everywhere battlefield correct laws war gittings says id question idea entire country battlefield battlefield site battle engagement hostile forces within theater operations yet world war ii europe battlefield zarqawi beaten american soldiers newsday reported saturday june 10 three days killing press statements us iraqi man claimed zarqawi survived bombing american soldiers beat stomach wrapped head dishdasha traditional arab robe stomped stomach chest died raises questions either criminal violations domestic iraqi law occupation laws grave breaches geneva conventions treatment prisoners war gpw iii gc iv applies treatment civilians wartime scenarios alleged beatings would prosecutable crimes event killing zarqawi far simple media portraying everything think know zarqawi shows violent terrorist clear military solution internationally legal one killing justifiable either international domestic laws jennifer van bergen journalist law degree author twilight democracy bush plan america common courage press 2004 writes frequently civil liberties human rights international law book archetypes writers characterization method developed taught new school university 2006 reached jvbxyzearthlinknet 160 160 | 1,221 |
<p />
<p>One of the things that concerns a lot of Americans lately is the increase in plain old nastiness in our political discussion. It comes from a number of sources, but Rush Limbaugh is a major carrier.</p>
<p>I should explain that I am not without bias in this matter. I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.</p>
<p>I have a correspondent named Irwin Wingo in Weatherford, Texas. Irwin and some of the leading men of the town are in the habit of meeting about 10 every morning at the Chat’n’Chew Cafe to drink coffee and discuss the state of the world. One of their number is a dittohead, a Limbaugh listener. He came in one day, plopped himself down, and said, “I think Rush is right: Racism in this country is dead. I don’t know what the niggers will find to gripe about now.”</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that dittoheads, as a group, lack the ability to reason. It’s just that whenever I run across one, he seems to be at a low ebb in reasoning skills. Poor ol’ Bill Sarpalius, one of our dimmer Panhandle congressmen, was once trying to explain to a town hall meeting of his constituents that Limbaugh was wrong when he convinced his listeners that Bill Clinton’s tax package contained a tax increase on the middle class. (It increased taxes only on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.) A dittohead in the crowd rose to protest: “We don’t send you to Washington to make responsible decisions. We send you there to represent us.”</p>
<p>The kind of humor Limbaugh uses troubles me deeply, because I have spent much of my professional life making fun of politicians. I believe it is a great American tradition and should be encouraged. We should all laugh more at our elected officials—it’s good for us and good for them. So what right do I have to object because Limbaugh makes fun of different pols than I do?</p>
<p>I object because he consistently targets dead people, little girls, and the homeless—none of whom are in a particularly good position to answer back. Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel. It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.</p>
<p>On his TV show, early in the Clinton administration, Limbaugh put up a picture of Socks, the White House cat, and asked, “Did you know there’s a White House dog?” Then he put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, who was 13 years old at the time and as far as I know had never done any harm to anyone.</p>
<p>When viewers objected, he claimed, in typical Limbaugh fashion, that the gag was an accident and that without his permission some technician had put up the picture of Chelsea—which I found as disgusting as his original attempt at humor.</p>
<p>On another occasion, Limbaugh put up a picture of Labor Secretary Robert Reich that showed him from the forehead up, as though that were all the camera could get. Reich is indeed a very short man as a result of a bone disease he had as a child. Somehow the effect of bone disease in children has never struck me as an appropriate topic for humor.</p>
<p>The reason I take Rush Limbaugh seriously is not because he’s offensive or right-wing, but because he is one of the few people addressing a large group of disaffected people in this country. And despite his frequent denials, Limbaugh does indeed have a somewhat cultlike effect on his dittoheads. They can listen to him for three and a half hours a day, five days a week, on radio and television. I can assure you that David Koresh did not harangue the Branch Davidians so long nor so often. But that is precisely what most cult leaders do—talk to their followers hour after hour after hour.</p>
<p>A large segment of Limbaugh’s audience consists of white males, 18 to 34 years old, without college education. Basically, a guy I know and grew up with named Bubba.</p>
<p>Bubba listens to Limbaugh because Limbaugh gives him someone to blame for the fact that Bubba is getting screwed. He’s working harder, getting paid less in constant dollars and falling further and further behind. Not only is Bubba never gonna be able to buy a house, he can barely afford a trailer. Hell, he can barely afford the payments on the pickup.</p>
<p>And because Bubba understands he’s being shafted, even if he doesn’t know why or how or by whom, he listens to Limbaugh. Limbaugh offers him scapegoats. It’s the “feminazis.” It’s the minorities. It’s the limousine liberals. It’s all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims. Bubba feels like a victim himself—and he is—but he never got any sympathy from liberals.</p>
<p>Psychologists often tell us there is a great deal of displaced anger in our emotional lives—your dad wallops you, but he’s too big to hit back, so you go clobber your little brother. Displaced anger is also common in our political life. We see it in this generation of young white men without much education and very little future. This economy no longer has a place for them. The corporations have moved their jobs to Singapore. Unfortunately, it is Limbaugh and the Republicans who are addressing the resentments of these folks, and aiming their anger in the wrong direction.</p>
<p>In my state, I have not seen so much hatred in politics since the heyday of the John Birch Society in the early 1960s. Used to be you couldn’t talk politics with a conservative without his getting all red in the face, arteries standing out in his neck, wattles aquiver with indignation—just like a pissed-off turkey gobbler. And now we’re seeing the same kind of anger again.</p>
<p>Fairness &amp; Accuracy in Reporting, the organization that provided the absurd Limbaughisms that you see to the right, has a sweet, gentle faith that truth will triumph in the end, and thinks it is sufficient to point out that Limbaugh is wrong. I say it’s important to point out that he’s not just wrong but that he’s ridiculous, one of the silliest people in America. Sure, it takes your breath away when he spreads some false and vicious rumor, such as the story that Vincent Foster’s body was actually discovered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton. Or when he destroys an important lobby-control bill by falsely claiming that it would make the average citizen subject to lobbying laws. Yes, that’s sick and perverse.</p>
<p>But it’s important to show people that there is much more wrong with Limbaugh’s thinking than just his facts. Limbaugh specializes in ad hominem arguments, which are themselves ridiculously easy to expose. Ted Kennedy says, “America needs health care reform.” Limbaugh replies, “Ted Kennedy is fat.”</p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh’s pathetic abuse of logic, his absurd pomposity, his relentless self-promotion, his ridiculous ego—now those, friends, are appropriate targets for satire.</p>
<p>Molly Ivins is a contributing writer to Mother Jones.</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | one things concerns lot americans lately increase plain old nastiness political discussion comes number sources rush limbaugh major carrier explain without bias matter attacked rush limbaugh air experience somewhat akin gummed newt doesnt actually hurt leaves slimy stuff ankle correspondent named irwin wingo weatherford texas irwin leading men town habit meeting 10 every morning chatnchew cafe drink coffee discuss state world one number dittohead limbaugh listener came one day plopped said think rush right racism country dead dont know niggers find gripe wouldnt say dittoheads group lack ability reason whenever run across one seems low ebb reasoning skills poor ol bill sarpalius one dimmer panhandle congressmen trying explain town hall meeting constituents limbaugh wrong convinced listeners bill clintons tax package contained tax increase middle class increased taxes wealthiest 2 percent americans dittohead crowd rose protest dont send washington make responsible decisions send represent us kind humor limbaugh uses troubles deeply spent much professional life making fun politicians believe great american tradition encouraged laugh elected officialsits good us good right object limbaugh makes fun different pols object consistently targets dead people little girls homelessnone particularly good position answer back satire weapon quite cruel historically weapon powerless people aimed powerful use satire powerless people limbaugh cruel profoundly vulgar like kicking cripple tv show early clinton administration limbaugh put picture socks white house cat asked know theres white house dog put picture chelsea clinton 13 years old time far know never done harm anyone viewers objected claimed typical limbaugh fashion gag accident without permission technician put picture chelseawhich found disgusting original attempt humor another occasion limbaugh put picture labor secretary robert reich showed forehead though camera could get reich indeed short man result bone disease child somehow effect bone disease children never struck appropriate topic humor reason take rush limbaugh seriously hes offensive rightwing one people addressing large group disaffected people country despite frequent denials limbaugh indeed somewhat cultlike effect dittoheads listen three half hours day five days week radio television assure david koresh harangue branch davidians long often precisely cult leaders dotalk followers hour hour hour large segment limbaughs audience consists white males 18 34 years old without college education basically guy know grew named bubba bubba listens limbaugh limbaugh gives someone blame fact bubba getting screwed hes working harder getting paid less constant dollars falling behind bubba never gon na able buy house barely afford trailer hell barely afford payments pickup bubba understands hes shafted even doesnt know listens limbaugh limbaugh offers scapegoats feminazis minorities limousine liberals people wacky social programs help silly selfproclaimed bunch victims bubba feels like victim himselfand isbut never got sympathy liberals psychologists often tell us great deal displaced anger emotional livesyour dad wallops hes big hit back go clobber little brother displaced anger also common political life see generation young white men without much education little future economy longer place corporations moved jobs singapore unfortunately limbaugh republicans addressing resentments folks aiming anger wrong direction state seen much hatred politics since heyday john birch society early 1960s used couldnt talk politics conservative without getting red face arteries standing neck wattles aquiver indignationjust like pissedoff turkey gobbler seeing kind anger fairness amp accuracy reporting organization provided absurd limbaughisms see right sweet gentle faith truth triumph end thinks sufficient point limbaugh wrong say important point hes wrong hes ridiculous one silliest people america sure takes breath away spreads false vicious rumor story vincent fosters body actually discovered apartment owned hillary clinton destroys important lobbycontrol bill falsely claiming would make average citizen subject lobbying laws yes thats sick perverse important show people much wrong limbaughs thinking facts limbaugh specializes ad hominem arguments ridiculously easy expose ted kennedy says america needs health care reform limbaugh replies ted kennedy fat rush limbaughs pathetic abuse logic absurd pomposity relentless selfpromotion ridiculous egonow friends appropriate targets satire molly ivins contributing writer mother jones | 639 |
<p>your email</p>
<p>your name</p>
<p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p>
<p />
<p>message</p>
<p>captcha</p>
<p />
<p>(AA jet photo via <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-98603273/stock-photo-new-york-march-boeing-american-airline-approaching-jfk-in-new-york-usa-on-march.html" type="external">Shutterstock</a>) &#160;</p>
<p>TWU appears most likely union to reach deal prior to judge's ruling</p>
<p>Four months after filing for bankruptcy, last week American Airlines’ parent company AMR petitioned a judge to override its union contracts. In a letter to employees, American CEO Thomas Horton said that “with losses mounting and oil prices rising, there is growing urgency to move more quickly.” Horton wrote that “consensually negotiated contracts…will remain the ultimate objective” in union negotiations.&#160; But he warned that “failure to make the right changes is failure and that puts all jobs at American at risk.”</p>
<p>“Everything we have…they want to put a blow torch to it…” says AMR employee Tom Hoban, communications chairman of the Allied Pilots Association (APA).&#160; “They’re going for the jugular.”</p>
<p>As I’ve <a href="" type="internal">previously reported</a>, AMR filed for bankruptcy November 29, despite $4 billion in cash and the reported objections of then-CEO Gerard Arpey, whose resignation was announced the same day. The announcement came eight years after its three unions narrowly agreed to tremendous concessions to forestall bankruptcy, and weeks after tentative agreements were reached on new contracts—with more concessions—for some employees. Union leaders have condemned the bankruptcy filing as a gambit to extract even deeper concessions from workers.</p>
<p>AMR’s "1113 motion" (so-named for a section of the bankruptcy code) drew criticism from its three unions: the 18,000-member Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the 10,000-member APA, and the Transport Workers Union, which represents 26,000 technicians, mechanics and fleet service workers at American and sibling airline American Eagle.</p>
<p>In an e-mailed statement, APFA President Laura Glading said the filing came as no surprise, and blamed Horton for “outright refusal to consider” the union’s employee buy-out proposal. &#160;Glading said that the company's motion would succeed “only if it convinces the judge that contract changes it seeks are necessary, fair and equitable.&#160; In reality, its draconian demands are none of those things.”</p>
<p>AMR made its bankruptcy proposal, designed to cut labor costs by 20 percent, on February 1. As Mike Elk <a href="" type="internal">reported</a>, TWU has warned that AMR’s planned elimination of 13,000 jobs could threaten safety by shifting maintenance to countries with less regulation. &#160;</p>
<p>But as David Moberg <a href="" type="internal">reported</a>&#160;for In These Times, following pressure from unions and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, AMR agreed to freeze workers’ pensions rather than liquidating them (TWU President Jim Little <a href="" type="internal">told me</a> in an earlier interview that such pensions are unlikely to ever be unfrozen).&#160; Still, no contracts were reached, and AMR filed its 1113 motion last Tuesday.</p>
<p>In a statement that day, an American Airlines spokesperson said that while the company still seeks negotiated contracts, "Today's competitive marketplace gives no credit for sacrifices made in years gone by. The facts are American's labor agreements currently burden it with operations it cannot afford and restrictions that place it at a competitive disadvantage."</p>
<p>On Friday, AMR <a href="http://restructuringamr.com/the-process-negotiations-updates.asp" type="external">posted</a> a "Negotiations Update" online that referenced ongoing discussions with all three unions and said, "We continue to make progress with the TWU and have narrowed many of the issues." &#160;AMR said that it had made "important moves toward the union, including outsourcing fewer TWU jobs," and would present TWU with "a comprehensive proposal...by early next week." In a statement released the same day, TWU President Little said, "Even as we prepare to vigorously defend our contracts in court, we will stay in communication with the company and we're ready to meet for as long as necessary."</p>
<p>Asked last month whether AMR was attempting to reach a deal with one of the three unions so that a judge would be more sympathetic to AMR's case against the other two, TWU President Little&#160; <a href="" type="internal">said</a>, "I hope so. &#160;I would hope it would be us."&#160; Granted anonymity to speak candidly this morning, a source close to negotiations said AMR was expected to offer to reduce its 9,000 proposed layoffs of TWU members by "a couple thousand." &#160;</p>
<p>Little will hold a conference call with union members tomorrow night. Movement on layoffs could increase AMR's chances of appearing before the judge with a deal with its largest union already in place.&#160;</p>
<p>But Hoban, of APA, says AMR has shown no interest in a negotiatiated deal with his union. &#160;“What they’ve essentially done,” he charges, “is postured for the last month or so...they moved a few insignificant items around” as part of “a kabuki dance designed to provide that little piece of theater to the court and then say, ‘Hey, we’re ready to file.’”</p>
<p>Hoban says American’s losses over the past decade result from management strategy —failure to keep up on fuel efficiency, customer service issues, and “this mantra that we’re going to shrink ourselves to profitability”—not labor costs.&#160; “We gave them what amounted to a near-bankruptcy contract” in 2003, says Hoban. “They had a significant cost advantage, but the other issues with regard to fuel and revenue disadvantages are something that labor can’t solve for them.”</p>
<p>Hoban faults AMR for rejecting APA’s proposal for binding arbitration, which he says would have resulted in concessions similar to those made during other airlines’ bankruptcies.&#160; Instead, he says AMR has insisted on terms that could never be approved by members: “It’s going to be an operational disaster…Do you really want to alienate everybody from the pilots all the way down?”</p>
<p>Pointing to precedent, APA's Hoban says AMR’s motion is likely to prevail with or without any negotiated deals already in hand. “The judge always rules in favor management. That’s just the way it is. That’s why they filed in the second circuit.” &#160;A hearing has not yet been scheduled; the judge has up to 21 days from the motion's filing to schedule a hearing, and 30 days afterwards to rule.</p>
<p>Section 1113 directs the court to approve management's motion if it meets three standards.&#160; First, the company must have “made a proposal,” based on full and current information, whose terms are “necessary to permit the reorganizations” and under which “all of the affected parties are treated fairly and equitably.” Second, the union must have “refused to accept such proposal without good cause.” Third, the “balance of the equities” must favor overriding contracts.</p>
<p>The second circuit has <a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/22/37/579418/" type="external">ruled</a> that while this includes a requirement that the company negotiate in good faith with the union over its proposal, it is not unreasonable to file a 1113 motion within as few as four days after making a proposal. It has also <a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/816/82/137513/" type="external">ruled</a>&#160;that “fair and equitable” does not require that managers have their compensation cut “to the same degree” as union members, and that for labor to show “good cause” for rejection, “that refusal must be based on objective evidence that the proposal is not necessary to a successful reorganization.” &#160;</p>
<p>The second circuit has specified that “balance of equities” includes considering the relative risks of liquidation, loss to creditors, strikes, and breach of contract lawsuits, as well as parties’ different abilities to absorb costs and the extent to which they’ve acted in good faith.</p>
<p>In its legal filing, AMR says that American needs to cut labor costs by $1.25 billion per year in order to succeed. “Simply stated,” says the filing, “if the Court does not grant the relief sought here, American will have no viable business enterprise.”&#160; In arguing its case on “balance of equities,” AMR’s legal case specifically cites the legal limits on its workers’ right to strike. Unlike most American workers, AMR employees aren’t covered by the National Labor Relations Act, but instead by the Railway Labor Act.&#160;</p>
<p>As AMR notes, the RLA puts a series of hurdles in front of workers seeking to strike, including the requirement of release by the National Mediation Board.&#160; “Really the only thing that would compel management to bargain is a threat to strike,” says Hoban. &#160;Because the risk of a strike is a potential factor for a judge to weigh against allowing contracts to be overriden, the same legal restriction that reduces workers’ bargaining power also helps management’s legal case for overriding their bargaining rights.</p>
<p>APA has filed a lawsuit attempting to bring the National Mediation Board, which oversees normal contract negotiations under the RLA, into the process.</p>
<p>When the Associated Press <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/amr-wants-emerge-bankruptcy-quickly-193929975.html" type="external">asked</a>&#160;AMR CEO Horton about workers’ pickets in a March 25 interview, he replied, “I don’t pay attention to it. I don’t know how many people have been out picketing. It must not be very big because I haven’t seen it, but I’ve talked to thousands of people, real people doing real work…what I see is people doing a real good job and wanting to get behind our company and excited about the future.”</p>
<p>Asked whether AMR’s filing will spur closer coordination between its three unions, APA's Hoban says it’s unlikely. “We all have different institutional issues…everybody’s got a different agenda in this process.”</p> | true | 4 | email name recipients email comma separated message captcha aa jet photo via shutterstock 160 twu appears likely union reach deal prior judges ruling four months filing bankruptcy last week american airlines parent company amr petitioned judge override union contracts letter employees american ceo thomas horton said losses mounting oil prices rising growing urgency move quickly horton wrote consensually negotiated contractswill remain ultimate objective union negotiations160 warned failure make right changes failure puts jobs american risk everything havethey want put blow torch says amr employee tom hoban communications chairman allied pilots association apa160 theyre going jugular ive previously reported amr filed bankruptcy november 29 despite 4 billion cash reported objections thenceo gerard arpey whose resignation announced day announcement came eight years three unions narrowly agreed tremendous concessions forestall bankruptcy weeks tentative agreements reached new contractswith concessionsfor employees union leaders condemned bankruptcy filing gambit extract even deeper concessions workers amrs 1113 motion sonamed section bankruptcy code drew criticism three unions 18000member association professional flight attendants 10000member apa transport workers union represents 26000 technicians mechanics fleet service workers american sibling airline american eagle emailed statement apfa president laura glading said filing came surprise blamed horton outright refusal consider unions employee buyout proposal 160glading said companys motion would succeed convinces judge contract changes seeks necessary fair equitable160 reality draconian demands none things amr made bankruptcy proposal designed cut labor costs 20 percent february 1 mike elk reported twu warned amrs planned elimination 13000 jobs could threaten safety shifting maintenance countries less regulation 160 david moberg reported160for times following pressure unions pension benefit guarantee corporation amr agreed freeze workers pensions rather liquidating twu president jim little told earlier interview pensions unlikely ever unfrozen160 still contracts reached amr filed 1113 motion last tuesday statement day american airlines spokesperson said company still seeks negotiated contracts todays competitive marketplace gives credit sacrifices made years gone facts americans labor agreements currently burden operations afford restrictions place competitive disadvantage friday amr posted negotiations update online referenced ongoing discussions three unions said continue make progress twu narrowed many issues 160amr said made important moves toward union including outsourcing fewer twu jobs would present twu comprehensive proposalby early next week statement released day twu president little said even prepare vigorously defend contracts court stay communication company ready meet long necessary asked last month whether amr attempting reach deal one three unions judge would sympathetic amrs case two twu president little160 said hope 160i would hope would us160 granted anonymity speak candidly morning source close negotiations said amr expected offer reduce 9000 proposed layoffs twu members couple thousand 160 little hold conference call union members tomorrow night movement layoffs could increase amrs chances appearing judge deal largest union already place160 hoban apa says amr shown interest negotiatiated deal union 160what theyve essentially done charges postured last month sothey moved insignificant items around part kabuki dance designed provide little piece theater court say hey ready file hoban says americans losses past decade result management strategy failure keep fuel efficiency customer service issues mantra going shrink profitabilitynot labor costs160 gave amounted nearbankruptcy contract 2003 says hoban significant cost advantage issues regard fuel revenue disadvantages something labor cant solve hoban faults amr rejecting apas proposal binding arbitration says would resulted concessions similar made airlines bankruptcies160 instead says amr insisted terms could never approved members going operational disasterdo really want alienate everybody pilots way pointing precedent apas hoban says amrs motion likely prevail without negotiated deals already hand judge always rules favor management thats way thats filed second circuit 160a hearing yet scheduled judge 21 days motions filing schedule hearing 30 days afterwards rule section 1113 directs court approve managements motion meets three standards160 first company must made proposal based full current information whose terms necessary permit reorganizations affected parties treated fairly equitably second union must refused accept proposal without good cause third balance equities must favor overriding contracts second circuit ruled includes requirement company negotiate good faith union proposal unreasonable file 1113 motion within four days making proposal also ruled160that fair equitable require managers compensation cut degree union members labor show good cause rejection refusal must based objective evidence proposal necessary successful reorganization 160 second circuit specified balance equities includes considering relative risks liquidation loss creditors strikes breach contract lawsuits well parties different abilities absorb costs extent theyve acted good faith legal filing amr says american needs cut labor costs 125 billion per year order succeed simply stated says filing court grant relief sought american viable business enterprise160 arguing case balance equities amrs legal case specifically cites legal limits workers right strike unlike american workers amr employees arent covered national labor relations act instead railway labor act160 amr notes rla puts series hurdles front workers seeking strike including requirement release national mediation board160 really thing would compel management bargain threat strike says hoban 160because risk strike potential factor judge weigh allowing contracts overriden legal restriction reduces workers bargaining power also helps managements legal case overriding bargaining rights apa filed lawsuit attempting bring national mediation board oversees normal contract negotiations rla process associated press asked160amr ceo horton workers pickets march 25 interview replied dont pay attention dont know many people picketing must big havent seen ive talked thousands people real people real workwhat see people real good job wanting get behind company excited future asked whether amrs filing spur closer coordination three unions apas hoban says unlikely different institutional issueseverybodys got different agenda process | 897 |
<p>I first heard of Bernie Madoff at some point in approximately the early 1990s. I think it must have been sometime around 1992 or 1993 because one of the points that made a big impression when I heard of him was that the SEC had investigated and had publicly said it found nothing wrong with what Madoff was doing.</p>
<p>The way that had happened was that two Florida accountants, Bienes and Avellino, had for three decades collected hundreds of millions of dollars from clients and others and invested it with Madoff. The returns on the money were of the medium but steady type for which Madoff has become publicly infamous since December 11th of 2008. The SEC had heard of the arrangement and investigated to see if the deal was a fraud of some type.</p>
<p>At the conclusion of the investigation, the SEC said that Bienes and Avellino, who had been collecting the money on the promise of a return of about 15 percent or so, had thereby been selling unregistered securities. But the SEC found that the invested money was still there — it had not been dissipated or blown — and it publicly and explicitly said that it found nothing wrong with Madoff. This was of enormous importance to many who invested after 1992, as I did, and who knew that the SEC had said it found nothing wrong with Madoff. How could there be anything more important than to know the relevant government agency had investigated a deal and found no wrong on the part of the money manager?</p>
<p>The exact words of the SEC official quoted by the Wall Street Journal on December 1, 1992 were, “Right now, there’s nothing to indicate fraud.” In the next 16 years, although it received many complaints about Madoff and apparently investigated him eight times, the SEC never warned us of possible fraud, never retracted its initial statement, never warned us that things conceivably could have changed since it said that “Right now, there’s nothing to indicate fraud,” and consequently never gave people a chance to “defend themselves” by withdrawing investments or not making new ones.</p>
<p>The money invested with Bienes and Avellino was given back to the investors. But, the way I heard it, a number of them were intensely (and understandably) disappointed because they had been making consistent decent returns, and they understandably asked Madoff if he would continue to invest for them. Madoff, as I heard it, agreed to continue investing for family and friends as an accommodation to them, doing so, it was said, because he was a good guy — which sounds absurd to say after December 11, 2008, but was in full accord with his decades-long reputation at the time and for sixteen years afterward — until December 11, 2008.</p>
<p>What is more, from the day I first heard of Madoff until December 11th, I never heard even a whisper that Madoff was not investing only for a small number of people — in accord with a claimed initial decision to keep the number small and merely accommodate family and friends — but rather was seeking investors widely, was investing for huge numbers of people, was getting billions from hedge funds, banks and other institutions. In hindsight call me stupid, but the press wasn’t following what Madoff was doing, I only knew a few people who invested with Madoff and years later heard of one other, I have never lived in circles where lots of people invested with him, and I thought Madoff’s investing was a small operation in an otherwise large broker-dealer.</p>
<p>The period of the 1990s was one in which massive returns were often being sought and obtained by investors and mutual fund managers. Mutual funds were sometimes reaping annual returns of 25, 30, 40 percent and more on their money. To invest with Madoff was, as odd as it may sound today, a conservative type of investment in which one deliberately forsook efforts to make the huge gains often being obtained by lots of mutual funds, and instead accepted smaller but steady gains. Additionally, one accepted that the gains, whether left invested with Madoff or taken out, would be taxed at a much higher rate than was generally true of much of the gains from mutual funds, stocks and other investments. For the gains with Madoff were ordinary income or short term capital gains rather than long term capital gains, and were therefore taxed at the rate on ordinary income, not the farlower rate applicable to long term capital gains. So investors with Madoff were both taking a lower rate of return and paying much higher income taxes than the capital gains taxes whose attainment was all the vogue then. This is deeply inconsistent with a greedy grab for every nickel one could get, as the media has often portrayed it.</p>
<p>Thus it is that I said then and say now that investments in Madoff were thought a conservative investment, not the greed which has so readily been bruited in the media by reporters who do not know, or at least do not write about, the facts. That they were conservative investments, and did not make as much as hedge funds have held out in their marketing materials, is precisely the point recently made by the first rate financial writer James Stewart. And they were, as said, investments in a system and with a guy in whom the SEC expressly had found no fault — who was, to boot, a leading and highly respected figure on Wall Street. He had been, among other things the Chairman of NASDAQ for three years and a member of the Board of Governors of the NASD. (For those who know financial history, he might in retrospect be thought the Richard Whitney of today.)</p>
<p>In 1995, this writer, who had been hearing about Madoff for a few years, sought to find out whether Madoff would accept an investment from me. At that time — and until December 11th struck — I continued to think that Madoff was running only a relatively small overall total amount of money for family and friends. Because I was, defacto, a virtual family member of one of his investors, Madoff accepted my investment. That, at least, is what I thought then. I never knew, until after the scandal broke, that at some point — whether it was before or after 1995 I do not know — Madoff began seeking huge amounts of money, began using feeder funds, including feeder hedge funds, was running billions upon billions of dollars, etc. Nor did I know, until December 11th, that there were three parts to Madoff’s business, i.e., that there was a third, investment adviser segment. I had signed a broker/dealer agreement, and thought he was investing my money in that capacity.</p>
<p>So an awful lot was news to me when the scandal broke. But things that were news to me were things that one would have been likely to learn before making investments if the SEC had done its job in 1992: if it had made Madoff explain and prove how he was making money when it investigated the deal in 1992, or if it had made him register as an investment adviser in 1992, or if it had put a stop to the whole business if it already was a Ponzi scheme at that time.</p>
<p>Before I made the final decision to invest, I did the due diligence of which I felt capable and which occurred to me. In particular, I met at Madoff’s offices on April 3, 1995 with the fellow I have always been told and always believed was his number two man, Frank DiPascali, to have him explain precisely what was the investing strategy that was being followed. DiPascali explained that Madoff was engaging in what I now know to be called the “split-strike conversion” strategy. Under this strategy, Madoff bought for one’s account a “basket” of stocks that were in the S&amp;P 100. To guard against losses, he simultaneously bought options, called “puts,” that allowed him to sell the stocks — to “put” them to someone, if they went down instead of up. To pay the cost of the puts that he purchased, Madoff sold other options, named “calls,” that allowed the buyer of the option to “call” the shares from Madoff after small gains.</p>
<p>By guarding against losses via “puts” while offsetting the price of the “puts” by selling “calls” that limited the gains from each set of transactions, and by highly active trading that repeated the process time and again during the course of a year, Madoff could make small profits on each of numerous trades when the shares rose in value rather than dropped (Madoff was swinging for singles, not homers, said DiPascali), while he guarded against big losses from downturns.</p>
<p>Over the course of a year, the small profits (the singles) on numerous trades of stocks that rose in value, would mount up. This was not a strategy for big hits, but for a small profit here, a small profit there; if shares rose, say, ten percent, the strategy might garner one or one and a half percent (because the calls would require the stocks to be sold). Over the course of a year, the small profits would add up (and would exceed any small losses when stocks went down and would be “put” to buyers).</p>
<p>That the foregoing description of the investment strategy was what was told me is evidenced by contemporaneous notes — which I still have — of the meeting with DiPascali on April 3, 1995 — the meeting with the number two man to a highly respected Wall Street figure. The notes of the meeting say:</p>
<p>The program will work as follows: I will be long 30 to 40 S&amp;P 100 securities. The portfolio is configured so there is a perfect correlation with the S&amp;P 100 index. It is hedged using index options. So if market goes up and you are in a short position on options, it causes the long assets you own to go up.</p>
<p>So you are long a basket of securities — our core assets — you have hedges. In a volatile market, you’ll do very well. In an even market or a down market, you’ll do okay.</p>
<p>Your long position is protected against going down by being long on puts on the index. Flip side is you have short calls so there will not be unending appreciation.</p>
<p>They are looking to hit lots of singles. It’s a leveraging type of game. If net goes up 10% you make 1 or 1.5%, while you are protected against losses on downside.</p>
<p>Results vary from month to month — some months you make zero, some 2%. The goal is to do twice the long term Treasury bill rate. So the goal now is about 15%. Last year just made it. Other years exceeded it. Doesn’t feel will exceed it now because more people (competitors) are doing it and this limits what you can squeeze out.</p>
<p>So the split-strike conversion strategy was what was described to me as the Madoff investment strategy, was a system that made a lot of sense to me, was what I invested in, and was all I intended to invest in.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part Two of Investing with Madoff.</a></p>
<p>Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam</a> and <a href="" type="internal">An Enemy of the People.</a> He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:Velvel@VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com" type="external">Velvel@VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | first heard bernie madoff point approximately early 1990s think must sometime around 1992 1993 one points made big impression heard sec investigated publicly said found nothing wrong madoff way happened two florida accountants bienes avellino three decades collected hundreds millions dollars clients others invested madoff returns money medium steady type madoff become publicly infamous since december 11th 2008 sec heard arrangement investigated see deal fraud type conclusion investigation sec said bienes avellino collecting money promise return 15 percent thereby selling unregistered securities sec found invested money still dissipated blown publicly explicitly said found nothing wrong madoff enormous importance many invested 1992 knew sec said found nothing wrong madoff could anything important know relevant government agency investigated deal found wrong part money manager exact words sec official quoted wall street journal december 1 1992 right theres nothing indicate fraud next 16 years although received many complaints madoff apparently investigated eight times sec never warned us possible fraud never retracted initial statement never warned us things conceivably could changed since said right theres nothing indicate fraud consequently never gave people chance defend withdrawing investments making new ones money invested bienes avellino given back investors way heard number intensely understandably disappointed making consistent decent returns understandably asked madoff would continue invest madoff heard agreed continue investing family friends accommodation said good guy sounds absurd say december 11 2008 full accord decadeslong reputation time sixteen years afterward december 11 2008 day first heard madoff december 11th never heard even whisper madoff investing small number people accord claimed initial decision keep number small merely accommodate family friends rather seeking investors widely investing huge numbers people getting billions hedge funds banks institutions hindsight call stupid press wasnt following madoff knew people invested madoff years later heard one never lived circles lots people invested thought madoffs investing small operation otherwise large brokerdealer period 1990s one massive returns often sought obtained investors mutual fund managers mutual funds sometimes reaping annual returns 25 30 40 percent money invest madoff odd may sound today conservative type investment one deliberately forsook efforts make huge gains often obtained lots mutual funds instead accepted smaller steady gains additionally one accepted gains whether left invested madoff taken would taxed much higher rate generally true much gains mutual funds stocks investments gains madoff ordinary income short term capital gains rather long term capital gains therefore taxed rate ordinary income farlower rate applicable long term capital gains investors madoff taking lower rate return paying much higher income taxes capital gains taxes whose attainment vogue deeply inconsistent greedy grab every nickel one could get media often portrayed thus said say investments madoff thought conservative investment greed readily bruited media reporters know least write facts conservative investments make much hedge funds held marketing materials precisely point recently made first rate financial writer james stewart said investments system guy sec expressly found fault boot leading highly respected figure wall street among things chairman nasdaq three years member board governors nasd know financial history might retrospect thought richard whitney today 1995 writer hearing madoff years sought find whether madoff would accept investment time december 11th struck continued think madoff running relatively small overall total amount money family friends defacto virtual family member one investors madoff accepted investment least thought never knew scandal broke point whether 1995 know madoff began seeking huge amounts money began using feeder funds including feeder hedge funds running billions upon billions dollars etc know december 11th three parts madoffs business ie third investment adviser segment signed brokerdealer agreement thought investing money capacity awful lot news scandal broke things news things one would likely learn making investments sec done job 1992 made madoff explain prove making money investigated deal 1992 made register investment adviser 1992 put stop whole business already ponzi scheme time made final decision invest due diligence felt capable occurred particular met madoffs offices april 3 1995 fellow always told always believed number two man frank dipascali explain precisely investing strategy followed dipascali explained madoff engaging know called splitstrike conversion strategy strategy madoff bought ones account basket stocks sampp 100 guard losses simultaneously bought options called puts allowed sell stocks put someone went instead pay cost puts purchased madoff sold options named calls allowed buyer option call shares madoff small gains guarding losses via puts offsetting price puts selling calls limited gains set transactions highly active trading repeated process time course year madoff could make small profits numerous trades shares rose value rather dropped madoff swinging singles homers said dipascali guarded big losses downturns course year small profits singles numerous trades stocks rose value would mount strategy big hits small profit small profit shares rose say ten percent strategy might garner one one half percent calls would require stocks sold course year small profits would add would exceed small losses stocks went would put buyers foregoing description investment strategy told evidenced contemporaneous notes still meeting dipascali april 3 1995 meeting number two man highly respected wall street figure notes meeting say program work follows long 30 40 sampp 100 securities portfolio configured perfect correlation sampp 100 index hedged using index options market goes short position options causes long assets go long basket securities core assets hedges volatile market youll well even market market youll okay long position protected going long puts index flip side short calls unending appreciation looking hit lots singles leveraging type game net goes 10 make 1 15 protected losses downside results vary month month months make zero 2 goal twice long term treasury bill rate goal 15 last year made years exceeded doesnt feel exceed people competitors limits squeeze splitstrike conversion strategy described madoff investment strategy system made lot sense invested intended invest click read part two investing madoff lawrence velvel dean massachusetts school law author thine alabaster cities gleam enemy people reached velvelvelvelonnationalaffairscom 160 160 160 | 966 |
<p>Jerusalem</p>
<p>No one would have been more surprised than Fawziya Khurd by the recent pronouncement of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, that Israel operates an “open city” policy in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Mr Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem following the 1967 war — what he called the city’s “unification” — meant that all residents, Jews and Palestinians alike, could buy property wherever they chose.</p>
<p>“Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city,” he said. “There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city’s east.”</p>
<p>Mr Netanyahu was trying to justify recent construction in East Jerusalem by settler organizations in defiance of demands from the US that Israel halt all such work. In particular, US officials are objecting to the recent takeover of property by settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, where Mrs Khurd used to live, as well as the Old City, Silwan and Ras al-Amud.</p>
<p>According to experts, however, the reality is that in both a practical and legal sense Mr Netanyahu’s “open city” is a fiction, extended only to the settlers and not to Mrs Khurd or to the 250,000 other Palestinians of East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Mrs Khurd, for example, has been forced to live in a tent after settlers ousted her from her East Jerusalem home of five decades in November. She also has no hope of moving back to the house taken from her family in Talbiyeh, now in West Jerusalem, during the 1948 war that established Israel.</p>
<p>In addition, movement restrictions mean that almost all of the nearly four million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are banned from entering the city or visiting its holy sites.</p>
<p>Inside Jerusalem, as in the West Bank, Israel enforces a strict programme of segregation to disadvantage the Palestinians, says Jeff Halper, of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.</p>
<p>Israeli Jews have the freedom to live in both parts of the city, with 270,000 in West Jerusalem and a further 200,000 living in East Jerusalem in rapidly expanding settlements heavily subsidized by the state.</p>
<p>Palestinians, meanwhile, are denied the right to live both in West Jerusalem and in many residential areas of East Jerusalem. Even in their tightly controlled neighborhoods in the city’s east, at least 20,000 of their homes are subject to demolition orders, according to Mr Halper.</p>
<p>Daniel Seidemann, a Jerualem lawyer, says that in his 20 years of handling residency rights cases for Palestinians he has never heard of a Palestinian with a Jerusalem ID living in West Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The reason, he points out, was that almost all land inside Israel’s 1948 borders, including West Jerusalem, has been registered as “state land” managed by a body known as the Israel Lands Authority.</p>
<p>The authority allows neither Palestinians nor Israelis to buy property on state land. Instead long-term renewable leases are available to Israeli citizens and anyone eligible to immigrate to Israel under the country’s Law of Return — meaning Jews.</p>
<p>The settlements in East Jerusalem — now covering 35 per cent of the eastern city, according to Mr Seidemann — are also built on land declared as “state land”, in violation of international law. Again this means that only Israelis and Jewish foreign nationals are entitled to lease land there.</p>
<p>Because they do not hold Israeli citizenship, the Palestinians of East Jerusalem are disqualified from acquiring property either in West Jerusalem or in the settlements of East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>“The extraordinary situation is that a Palestinian who had his land expropriated to build the settlement of Har Homa [on the outskirts of East Jerusalem] cannot lease land there, whereas a Jew from Paris or London who is not even an Israeli citizen can.”</p>
<p>Mr Seidemann also pointed out that the country’s Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that a Palestinian family forced out of what became the Jewish quarter of the Old City in 1967 had no right to return to their property.</p>
<p>The court justified its decision on the grounds that each religious community should have its own quarter. “However, that ruling has not stopped the Israeli government from helping Jewish settlers to encroach on the Muslim and Christian quarters.”</p>
<p>This week, the Israeli media reported, several families from a settler organisation, Ateret Cohanim, had moved into a building in the heart of the Muslim quarter. The property was bought by Ariel Sharon in the 1980s to assert Jewish sovereignty over all of the Old City, although he never moved in.</p>
<p>Mr Halper says that in addition Jerusalem’s Palestinians, unlike its Jews, face municipal policies designed to make life as unbearable as possible. Demolitions of Palestinian property are widespread. Police, for example, have torn down Mrs Khurd’s tent on six occasions since November and she faces a series of fines.</p>
<p>“Even according to Israeli figures, East Jerusalem lacks 25,000 housing units to cope with the Palestinians’ minimal needs,” said Mr Halper. “The land is available, it’s just that Israel wants to induce a severe housing shortage for Palestinians.”</p>
<p>The hope is that they would move to the West Bank, he said.</p>
<p>Mr Seidemann said a handful of Palestinian families — faced with this housing shortage — had managed to rent homes short term from Israeli owners in East Jerusalem’s larger settlements, such as French Hill and Pisgat Zeev. This marginal phenomenon, he said, had been misleadingly trumpeted as proof of the “egalitarian&#160; nature” of Israel’s property laws.</p>
<p>According to the Israeli media, Mr Netanyahu’s remark may have been intended to throw mud in the eyes of the US Administration as it steps up pressure on Israel to halt settlement building in East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Mr Seidemann said: “The [US] State Department understands these issues better than Mr Netanyahu. There is zero possibility that his comments will be treated as credible by any of their negotiators.”</p>
<p>JONATHAN COOK is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “ <a href="" type="internal">Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”</a> (Pluto Press) and “ <a href="" type="internal">Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair</a>” (Zed Books). His website is <a href="http://www.jkcook.net" type="external">www.jkcook.net</a>.</p>
<p>A version of this article originally appeared in The National ( <a href="http://www.thenational.ae" type="external">www.thenational.ae</a>), published in Abu Dhabi.</p> | true | 4 | jerusalem one would surprised fawziya khurd recent pronouncement benjamin netanyahu israeli prime minister israel operates open city policy jerusalem mr netanyahu told cabinet sunday israels annexation east jerusalem following 1967 war called citys unification meant residents jews palestinians alike could buy property wherever chose policy jerusalem residents purchase apartments anywhere city said ban arabs buying apartments west city ban jews building buying citys east mr netanyahu trying justify recent construction east jerusalem settler organizations defiance demands us israel halt work particular us officials objecting recent takeover property settlers sheikh jarrah neighbourhood mrs khurd used live well old city silwan ras alamud according experts however reality practical legal sense mr netanyahus open city fiction extended settlers mrs khurd 250000 palestinians east jerusalem mrs khurd example forced live tent settlers ousted east jerusalem home five decades november also hope moving back house taken family talbiyeh west jerusalem 1948 war established israel addition movement restrictions mean almost nearly four million palestinians west bank gaza banned entering city visiting holy sites inside jerusalem west bank israel enforces strict programme segregation disadvantage palestinians says jeff halper israeli committee house demolitions israeli jews freedom live parts city 270000 west jerusalem 200000 living east jerusalem rapidly expanding settlements heavily subsidized state palestinians meanwhile denied right live west jerusalem many residential areas east jerusalem even tightly controlled neighborhoods citys east least 20000 homes subject demolition orders according mr halper daniel seidemann jerualem lawyer says 20 years handling residency rights cases palestinians never heard palestinian jerusalem id living west jerusalem reason points almost land inside israels 1948 borders including west jerusalem registered state land managed body known israel lands authority authority allows neither palestinians israelis buy property state land instead longterm renewable leases available israeli citizens anyone eligible immigrate israel countrys law return meaning jews settlements east jerusalem covering 35 per cent eastern city according mr seidemann also built land declared state land violation international law means israelis jewish foreign nationals entitled lease land hold israeli citizenship palestinians east jerusalem disqualified acquiring property either west jerusalem settlements east jerusalem extraordinary situation palestinian land expropriated build settlement har homa outskirts east jerusalem lease land whereas jew paris london even israeli citizen mr seidemann also pointed countrys supreme court ruled 1978 palestinian family forced became jewish quarter old city 1967 right return property court justified decision grounds religious community quarter however ruling stopped israeli government helping jewish settlers encroach muslim christian quarters week israeli media reported several families settler organisation ateret cohanim moved building heart muslim quarter property bought ariel sharon 1980s assert jewish sovereignty old city although never moved mr halper says addition jerusalems palestinians unlike jews face municipal policies designed make life unbearable possible demolitions palestinian property widespread police example torn mrs khurds tent six occasions since november faces series fines even according israeli figures east jerusalem lacks 25000 housing units cope palestinians minimal needs said mr halper land available israel wants induce severe housing shortage palestinians hope would move west bank said mr seidemann said handful palestinian families faced housing shortage managed rent homes short term israeli owners east jerusalems larger settlements french hill pisgat zeev marginal phenomenon said misleadingly trumpeted proof egalitarian160 nature israels property laws according israeli media mr netanyahus remark may intended throw mud eyes us administration steps pressure israel halt settlement building east jerusalem mr seidemann said us state department understands issues better mr netanyahu zero possibility comments treated credible negotiators jonathan cook writer journalist based nazareth israel latest books israel clash civilisations iraq iran plan remake middle east pluto press disappearing palestine israels experiments human despair zed books website wwwjkcooknet version article originally appeared national wwwthenationalae published abu dhabi | 606 |
<p>Photo by airpix | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Sovereign-debt" type="external">Sovereign debt</a>&#160;has been a crucial factor in&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Sovereign-Debt-Repudiations" type="external">a series of major historical events</a>. From the early 19th&#160;century, in Latin American countries such as&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/How-Debt-and-Free-Trade" type="external">Colombia, Mexico and Argentina, struggling for independence</a>,as well as Greece when seeking funds for its war of independence, these nascent countries borrowed from London bankers under leonine conditions which finally subjugated them into a new cycle of subordination.</p>
<p>Other states lost their sovereignty quite officially. Tunisia enjoyed some amount of autonomy in the Ottoman Empire, but was indebted to Parisian bankers. France used the ruse of debt to justify&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Debt-how-France-appropriated" type="external">its tutelage over Tunisia and its colonization</a>. Ten years later, in 1882,&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Debt-as-an-instrument-of-the" type="external">Egypt similarly lost its independence</a>. In the pursuit of recovering debts owed to the English banks, Great Britain launched a military occupation of the country and then colonized it ( <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Debt-as-an-instrument-of-the" type="external">http://www.cadtm.org/Debt-as-an-ins…</a>&#160;).</p>
<p>Debt “assures” the domination of one country over another</p>
<p>The Great Powers were quick to realise that the&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Interest" type="external">interest</a>&#160;from a country’s external debt would be massive enough to justify a military intervention and a tutelage, at a time when it was considered acceptable to wage wars for debt recovery.</p>
<p>The 19th&#160;century Greek debt crisis resembles the current crisis</p>
<p>The problems flaring up in London in December 1825, ensued from the first major international banking crisis. When banks feel threatened, they no longer want to lend, as could be seen after the Lehman Brothers crisis in 2008. Emerging states, such as Greece, had borrowed under such obnoxious conditions, and the sum in hand was so little compared to the actual loan, that fresh borrowing became necessary to repay their existing debt. When the banks stopped lending, Greece was no longer able to refinance its debt and so suspended repayments in 1827.</p>
<p>This is where the “debt system” is similar to the present scenario: the French and British monarchies, and the Russian Tsar – the “ <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Troika,766" type="external">Troika</a>” of the time –&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Newly-Independent-Greece-had-an" type="external">approved of a loan to Greece and its emergence as an independent state in order to destabilize the Ottoman Empire</a>. In exchange, in 1832, they signed a “Treaty on the sovereignty of Greece”, which I bring to light in my book. It established a monarchy, while the independentists wished for a Republic. Otto I, the chosen regent, was a 15 years-old Bavarian prince, who had no knowledge of Greece or its language. The document stipulated that the monarchy’s budget should have a provision giving priority to the repayment of the debts to the three powers. The repayment would be routed through the&#160;Rothschild Bank&#160;of Paris through which the London bankers would be paid. Greece must also reimburse the Troika’s expenses for installing this monarchy and for recruiting 3,500 Bavarian mercenaries to wage a war of “independence”.</p>
<p>I have also shown that in the early 19th&#160;century, only 20% of Greece’s loans actually arrived in Greece. The rest was diverted to paying Rothschild’s commissions, the fees of the mercenaries, their travel expenses to Greece and other expenses incurred in creating the monarchy.</p>
<p>Since then, Greece has been living in a situation of permanent subordination, which has been even more manifest since 2010. Once again, public authorities joined hands to raise funds to pay private creditors: this time, the French, German, Belgian and Dutch banks.</p>
<p>History also points to a complicity between the ruling classes of the indebted countries and the creditor states</p>
<p>To understand the history of the debt system, the role of the local ruling class has to be kept in mind. It always urges the authorities to borrow internally and externally, these funds permit the bourgeoisie to avoid being heavily taxed. This class also lives on the income from the government bonds issued by its own country.</p>
<p>When Benito Juárez, the Mexican Liberal Democrat,&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Mexico-proved-that-debt-can-be" type="external">partly repudiated the debts previously contracted by the conservatives</a>, some of the bourgeoisie requested French naturalization hoping that France would use the pretext of reimbursing its nationals to try to overthrow the regime with a military intervention. The same holds true today. At the end of 2001, when Argentina suspended debt repayment, the country’s bourgeoisie was offended, because the Argentine capitalists held a large part of the debt that had been issued on Wall Street.</p>
<p>The concept of “odious” debt that was developed in the 1920s was produced neither by the left nor by “alterglobalists”</p>
<p>During the 19th&#160;century, there was a series of debt repudiations, especially in the United States. In 1830, social upheavals led to the overthrow of corrupt governments in four of the states. These states also repudiated their debt to crooked bankers. Infrastructure projects planned with this debt had never materialised due to corruption.</p>
<p>In 1865, when the “North” won against the “South”, it was decreed that the latter should abrogate their debts to banks for financing the war (this is the 14th&#160;Amendment to the Constitution of the United States). A debt was considered “odious” because it was contracted to defend slavery.</p>
<p>At the end of the 19th&#160;century, the United States also refused to allow Cuba, which had gained independence with the help of US military intervention, to repay Spain’s debt incurred in Paris on behalf of its colony. The United States considered it “odious” because it financed the domination of Cuba and the wars that Spain waged elsewhere.</p>
<p>In 1919, Costa Rica repudiated a debt contracted, for his family, by the former dictator Tinoco. The arbitrator who intervened and ratified the repudiation happened to be a former US president. The reason: the loan was intended for personal purposes.</p>
<p>Alexander Sack, a Russian legal theorist, who was exiled in Paris after the Bolshevik revolution,&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Demystifying-Alexander-Nahum-Sack" type="external">formulated a legal doctrine</a>&#160;based on all these jurisprudence cases. He stated that the debts contracted by a previous regime are binding on the nation, but there is an exception: if the debt was contracted against the interests of the people and the creditors were aware or could have been aware of it, the debt can be decreed odious and be cancelled.</p>
<p>Sack was a conservative professor, seeking to defend creditors’ interests, and preach them caution about to whom they are lending and the purpose. His statement shows that it is possible for nations to repudiate a debt, should it be odious.</p>
<p>The Greek debt is “odious”</p>
<p>Since 2010, the Troika has been asking Greece to repay loans that have clearly been granted against the interest of the Greek people. Their fundamental rights have been throttled and their living conditions have deteriorated under such impositions. There is evidence that the money lent returned immediately to the foreign or Greek banks responsible for the crisis. It can also be proved that the Troika governments were perfectly aware and responsible for this because it was they who dictated the contents of the memorandum.</p>
<p>This conclusion is also valid for France</p>
<p>A bevy of audits, submitted in April 2014,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">identified 59% of the French debt as illegitimate</a>. It did not serve the interests of the French people. It benefited a minority that enjoyed tax cuts, and banks charging high&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Interest-rates" type="external">interest rates</a>.</p>
<p>After a repudiation, will the States be able to find banks willing to lend again?</p>
<p>There is certainly an apprehension regarding creditors, but the widespread idea that a state is less likely to get fresh loans once it repudiates a debt is quite false. For example, Mexico repudiated its debt in 1861, 1867, 1883, and 1913, but found new lenders each time. This is because some bankers do not hesitate to lend when they see that a country has regained good financial health after suspending its&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Debt-service" type="external">debt service</a>&#160;or repudiating its debt.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Portugal-s-Debt-Repudiation-in" type="external">After repudiating its debt in 1837</a>, Portugal went on to contract 14 successive loans with French bankers. In February 1918,&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Centenary-of-the-Russian" type="external">the Soviets repudiated the debts contracted by the Tsar</a>. A blockade was enforced, but it was lifted after 1922, when the British decided to lend to the Russians, so that they could buy British equipment. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Belgium followed suit. Even France renounced the blockade, even though 1.6 million French had bought Russian securities, through&#160;Crédit Lyonnais, that were repudiated after the revolution. It was the major French metallurgical producers that pressed for French loans to the Soviets, because they could sense orders at their doorsteps.</p>
<p>Another example: in 2003, ten days after invading Iraq,&#160; <a href="http://www.cadtm.org/The-Odious-Iraqi-Debt" type="external">the US Treasury Secretary called upon his G7 colleagues to cancel Saddam Hussein’s debts</a>, arguing that they were odious. The United States, however, had lent a great deal to Iraq in the late 1970s and in the 1980s to wage war against Iran. In October 2004, 80% of Iraq’s debt was cancelled.</p>
<p>Debt is also a stranglehold that prevents any alternative</p>
<p>Illegitimate debt needs to be cancelled before resources can be freed and a policy for ecological transition can be implemented, but this step alone is insufficient! Repudiating debts without implementing other policies concerning banks, money, taxation, the focal points of investments and democracy… would entail a rerun of the debt cycle. Repudiation must be part of an overall plan.</p>
<p>This article originally appeared as an interview that Eric Toussaint granted to Erwan Manac’h from the French weekly&#160;Politis.</p> | true | 4 | photo airpix cc 20 sovereign debt160has crucial factor in160 series major historical events early 19th160century latin american countries as160 colombia mexico argentina struggling independenceas well greece seeking funds war independence nascent countries borrowed london bankers leonine conditions finally subjugated new cycle subordination states lost sovereignty quite officially tunisia enjoyed amount autonomy ottoman empire indebted parisian bankers france used ruse debt justify160 tutelage tunisia colonization ten years later 1882160 egypt similarly lost independence pursuit recovering debts owed english banks great britain launched military occupation country colonized httpwwwcadtmorgdebtasanins160 debt assures domination one country another great powers quick realise the160 interest160from countrys external debt would massive enough justify military intervention tutelage time considered acceptable wage wars debt recovery 19th160century greek debt crisis resembles current crisis problems flaring london december 1825 ensued first major international banking crisis banks feel threatened longer want lend could seen lehman brothers crisis 2008 emerging states greece borrowed obnoxious conditions sum hand little compared actual loan fresh borrowing became necessary repay existing debt banks stopped lending greece longer able refinance debt suspended repayments 1827 debt system similar present scenario french british monarchies russian tsar troika time 160 approved loan greece emergence independent state order destabilize ottoman empire exchange 1832 signed treaty sovereignty greece bring light book established monarchy independentists wished republic otto chosen regent 15 yearsold bavarian prince knowledge greece language document stipulated monarchys budget provision giving priority repayment debts three powers repayment would routed the160rothschild bank160of paris london bankers would paid greece must also reimburse troikas expenses installing monarchy recruiting 3500 bavarian mercenaries wage war independence also shown early 19th160century 20 greeces loans actually arrived greece rest diverted paying rothschilds commissions fees mercenaries travel expenses greece expenses incurred creating monarchy since greece living situation permanent subordination even manifest since 2010 public authorities joined hands raise funds pay private creditors time french german belgian dutch banks history also points complicity ruling classes indebted countries creditor states understand history debt system role local ruling class kept mind always urges authorities borrow internally externally funds permit bourgeoisie avoid heavily taxed class also lives income government bonds issued country benito juárez mexican liberal democrat160 partly repudiated debts previously contracted conservatives bourgeoisie requested french naturalization hoping france would use pretext reimbursing nationals try overthrow regime military intervention holds true today end 2001 argentina suspended debt repayment countrys bourgeoisie offended argentine capitalists held large part debt issued wall street concept odious debt developed 1920s produced neither left alterglobalists 19th160century series debt repudiations especially united states 1830 social upheavals led overthrow corrupt governments four states states also repudiated debt crooked bankers infrastructure projects planned debt never materialised due corruption 1865 north south decreed latter abrogate debts banks financing war 14th160amendment constitution united states debt considered odious contracted defend slavery end 19th160century united states also refused allow cuba gained independence help us military intervention repay spains debt incurred paris behalf colony united states considered odious financed domination cuba wars spain waged elsewhere 1919 costa rica repudiated debt contracted family former dictator tinoco arbitrator intervened ratified repudiation happened former us president reason loan intended personal purposes alexander sack russian legal theorist exiled paris bolshevik revolution160 formulated legal doctrine160based jurisprudence cases stated debts contracted previous regime binding nation exception debt contracted interests people creditors aware could aware debt decreed odious cancelled sack conservative professor seeking defend creditors interests preach caution lending purpose statement shows possible nations repudiate debt odious greek debt odious since 2010 troika asking greece repay loans clearly granted interest greek people fundamental rights throttled living conditions deteriorated impositions evidence money lent returned immediately foreign greek banks responsible crisis also proved troika governments perfectly aware responsible dictated contents memorandum conclusion also valid france bevy audits submitted april 2014160 identified 59 french debt illegitimate serve interests french people benefited minority enjoyed tax cuts banks charging high160 interest rates repudiation states able find banks willing lend certainly apprehension regarding creditors widespread idea state less likely get fresh loans repudiates debt quite false example mexico repudiated debt 1861 1867 1883 1913 found new lenders time bankers hesitate lend see country regained good financial health suspending its160 debt service160or repudiating debt repudiating debt 1837 portugal went contract 14 successive loans french bankers february 1918160 soviets repudiated debts contracted tsar blockade enforced lifted 1922 british decided lend russians could buy british equipment germany norway sweden belgium followed suit even france renounced blockade even though 16 million french bought russian securities through160crédit lyonnais repudiated revolution major french metallurgical producers pressed french loans soviets could sense orders doorsteps another example 2003 ten days invading iraq160 us treasury secretary called upon g7 colleagues cancel saddam husseins debts arguing odious united states however lent great deal iraq late 1970s 1980s wage war iran october 2004 80 iraqs debt cancelled debt also stranglehold prevents alternative illegitimate debt needs cancelled resources freed policy ecological transition implemented step alone insufficient repudiating debts without implementing policies concerning banks money taxation focal points investments democracy would entail rerun debt cycle repudiation must part overall plan article originally appeared interview eric toussaint granted erwan manach french weekly160politis | 836 |
<p>Nazareth.</p>
<p>In <a href="" type="internal">a CounterPunch article</a> criticising Human Rights Watch for singling out Hizbullah rather than Israel for harsher condemnation of its military actions during the Lebanon war, I made sure to quote the organisation fairly and accurately before seeking to refute its arguments. Unfortunately, in <a href="" type="internal">her recent response</a> HRW’s Middle East policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson, did not return the favour. Possibly realising that her case was weak, she decided to paraphrase my argument instead, misrepresenting it, and only then try to rebut it.</p>
<p>According to Whitson, I claim to know that Hizbullah was trying to hit military rather than civilian targets in Israel during this summer’s war because on several occasions its rockets actually did strike military targets. If only, for her sake, that were my argument. As she points out, it is easy to discredit such reasoning: if Hizbullah’s rockets were entirely random, they might still have hit an Israeli military site or two by chance.</p>
<p>By misrepresenting my position, Whitson benefits in two ways. First, she is able to suggest that I am an apologist, naïve or mischievious, for Hizbullah’s war crimes. I am either a dupe or a dissembler. And second, she enjoys the satisfaction of asserting that she and her organisation are facing down the extremists on both sides: apologists for Hizbullah’s war crimes like me on the one hand, and the supporters of pre-emptive wars and torture like Alan Dershowitz on the other. Whitson can then smugly claim to be occupying the sensible centre.</p>
<p>If this is how one of the directors of HRW distorts my arguments and evidence when I carefully set out my case in black and white on the page, one has to wonder how faithfully she and her organisation sift the evidence in the far trickier cases relating to human rights, where things are rarely so black and white.</p>
<p>Which brings me back to my original argument. My point was not, as Whitson asserts, to claim that I knew whether Hizbullah — or Israel — was trying to distinguish between military and civilian targets during the war. Quite the reverse, in fact. I made it clear that I could not know what either side intended because I was not sitting alongside the Katyusha rocket teams or Israel’s military intelligence officers.</p>
<p>I took issue with HRW precisely because it appears to believe it does know what the two sides intended, even though it was no nearer to the rocket teams or Israeli command bunkers than I was. In fact, not only does it claim to know what Hizbullah and Israel hoped to achieve in the war, HRW also feels able to conclude that Hizbullah’s intentions were far more malign than Israel’s and therefore produced the greater war crimes.</p>
<p>I am not challenging HRW’s research, which appears to show unequivocally that Israel did commit major war crimes; I am contesting its distorted presentation of the facts it unearthed to suit what looks suspiciously like a political agenda. The impression is that HRW is trying to present a more damning picture of Hizbullah’s actions than Israel’s, despite the evidence, to avoid attracting yet more allegations of anti-Semitism from Israel’s influential defenders.</p>
<p>It is for that very reason, of course, that Israel’s apologists use the slur: to intimidate organisations like HRW. The inevitable conclusion, at least based on HRW’s presentation of its findings about the Lebanon war, is that the Israel lobby is succeeding.</p>
<p>Let’s recap on the quote from HRW’s senior researcher, Peter Bouckaert, published in the New York Times, that provoked my original article:</p>
<p>“I mean, it’s perfectly clear that Hezbollah is directly targeting civilians, and that their aim is to kill Israeli civilians. We don’t accuse the Israeli army of deliberately trying to kill civilians. Our accusation, clearly stated in the report, is that the Israeli army is not taking the necessary precautions to distinguish between civilian and military targets. So, there is a difference in intent between the two sides. At the same time, they are both violating the Geneva Convention.”</p>
<p>I hope I am not the only person discomforted by the idea that a major human rights organisation thinks it has a legitimate role divining what two sides in a war wanted to achieve rather than what they did in fact achieve, and then seeks to make judgments about war crimes based on its interpretations of such intentions.</p>
<p>Whitson could have distanced herself from Bouckaert’s comments, saying they were unjustified, but instead she chose to defend them. Which serves only to increase my suspicions about HRW’s agenda.</p>
<p>A responsible human rights organisation ought to be concerned with the events of the Lebanese conflict only, and then try to judge the degree to which the acts committed by both sides fell within the parameters of legitimate warfare, defined as self-defence and the protection of important national interests. War is never a moral event, but it can be conducted within certain constraints that should be the primary concern of human rights monitors.</p>
<p>According to the findings of Human Rights Watch, and reports in the media, we know much about what Israel actually did during the war. Its airforce massively attacked Lebanon’s infrastructure, such as roads and power stations, collectively punishing the populaton; its aerial bombardments resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 Lebanese, the overwhelming majority of them civilians; its air strikes forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee their homes as villages were destroyed in the south; convoys of refugees and medical personnel, as well as a United Nations peacekeeping base, were attacked; and finally, in the last few hours of war, as the deadline for a ceasefire rapidly approached, Israel dropped hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs, tiny land mines that are maiming and killing returning refugees and will continue to do so for years to come.</p>
<p>On all these grounds, Israel grossly violated international law — it committed war crimes. We need know nothing about its intentions to make this judgment. None of these forms of attack was necessary in terms of Israel’s right to self-defence or its right to protect its interests: the return of the two soldiers captured by Hizbullah, the pretext for the war, and the reassertion of its sovereignty.</p>
<p>Given that Hizbullah immediately offered a prisoner exchange for the soldiers, in return for Lebanese prisoners of war being held in Israeli jails, it is clear that options other than the ones above were available to Israel.</p>
<p>So what about the facts in relation to Hizbullah? Let’s examine its behaviour in the war’s two main phases: Hizbullah’s provocation of hostilities, and its conduct during the war.</p>
<p>We know that the Shiite group provoked the confrontation with Israel by launching a military operation on July 12 designed to capture Israeli soldiers under cover of a small and harmless volley of mortars and rockets fired at border posts and at the northern community of Shilo in what the Israeli army characterised at the time as “diversionary tactics”. In a gunfight, three Israeli troops were killed as the two soldiers were captured.</p>
<p>This was presented as an act of unprovoked aggression by the Western media, which stripped the attack of its context. In truth, the military operation was the latest flare-up in long-running, if small-scale, hostilities between Israel and Hizbullah since Israel ended its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000. Those tensions have focused on a disputed corridor of land, known as the Shebaa Farms, claimed by Lebanon but held by Israel.</p>
<p>In addition, after withdrawing, Israel maintained and exacerbated the state of hostilities by refusing to release a handful of Lebanese PoWs, by failing to hand over maps of the hundreds of thousands of land mines it laid during the occupation, by repeatedly shooting at, and killing, Lebanese shepherds who strayed into the Shebaa Farms area, and, most significantly, by violating almost daily Lebanese sovereignty by sending warplanes and spy drones as far as Beirut.</p>
<p>Hizbullah’s operation was not the first it had launched to capture Israeli soldiers since 2000, and its motives for wanting to do so were well known to Israel. Hizbullah immediately offered to return the soldiers in a prisoner swap.</p>
<p>Thus, although Hizbullah’s operation may have been foolhardy, it was most certainly not a war crime under any interpretation of international law.</p>
<p>What about the second phase of the war, when Hizbullah began firing rockets into Israel? Again, these attacks have been stripped of their context, after much misinformation from Israel and its supporters. Hizbullah did not initiate the rocket fire, as is sometimes suggested; it retaliated after Israel began its massive bombardment of Lebanon. There was clear cause and effect, which HRW knows.</p>
<p>In his speeches, Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, repeatedly stated that its rocket fire was a response to Israel’s far greater attacks and would end when Israel stopped firing missiles and dropping bombs on Lebanon. When Israeli guns briefly fell silent after a US-imposed “period of calm”, Hizbullah studiously observed the 48-hour lull whereas Israel quickly broke it. Each expansion of Hizbullah’s range of rocket fire was preceded by a warning from Nasrallah of what was in store if Israel continued or intensified its assault.</p>
<p>The rocket fire, therefore, adequately fits any reasonable definition of self-defence, not just of Hizbullah’s military assets but of Lebanon as a whole. Given the weakness of the Lebanese army — the reason, after all, why Israel was able to occupy the country for so long — Hizbullah can justifiably claim that the duty to defend Lebanon from Israeli attack fell to it by default.</p>
<p>So again, it is difficult to see in what way Hizbullah’s conduct during the second phase of the war can be categorised as a war crime — and even harder to understand how HRW believes it can be described as a greater war crime than Israel’s assault.</p>
<p>But HRW believes it has one trump card up its sleeve. It says Hizbullah should never have fired any of its rockets, even in self-defence, because they were too primitive to be accurately aimed at Israeli military targets. Even if Hizbullah intended to hit military sites (and again we cannot be sure), and even if the victims of its attacks were mainly soldiers, HRW regards Hizbullah as having “deliberately targeted” civilians because whatever rockets were sent over the border would in all probability strike civilian areas.</p>
<p>I have previously pointed out the paradox of HRW criticising Hizbullah for killing mostly soldiers, even with its “imprecise” arsenal, more harshly than Israel, which killed mostly civilians with its smart bombs and precision missiles. I will not labour the point again.</p>
<p>Instead I will repeat the questions I asked last time, and which Whitson failed to answer — presumably because, given HRW’s public position, she could find no moral high ground from which to respond.</p>
<p>According to HRW’s understanding of international law, what was Hizbullah supposed to do, given its inferior arsenal, when Israel started to wreck Lebanon, destroying its infrastructure, killing its civilian population and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes? If by firing just one of its rudimentary rockets, it was immediately committing a war crime, what military options were available to it as a response to what we have already seen was unwarranted Israeli aggression against the whole of Lebanon?</p>
<p>If for weeks on end Israel used its superior armoury from the air — relying on an air force against which Hizbullah, lacking anti-aircraft guns, had no defence — in what ways could Hizbullah engage with such warfare? Under international law, was Hizbullah required to sit tight and let the people of Lebanon die in their hundreds while it waited to see whether Israel would begin a ground invasion? Would a ground invasion have happened had Hizbullah not continued firing its rockets? And was Israel’s belated attack by land the first moment Hizbullah was entitled to fight back?</p>
<p>The nearest to an answer Whitson supplied in her response to my original article was the following: “[T]hese constraints [provided by international law] hardly preclude a military strategy for either side should it decide to pursue one. Hezbollah has a long history of cross-border attacks on Israeli military facilities and soldiers, including the one that launched the most recent round of fighting.”</p>
<p>What a wonderfully complete circle her argument is. Hizbullah has the right under international law to launch a cross-border attack to capture soldiers, as it did, but then what? What rights under international law does Hizbullah have if Israel chooses to destroy Lebanon in response? Whitson offers no answers.</p>
<p>Let me finally suggest a further two questions for her. Does HRW characterise Hizbullah’s return of fire as a war crime even though its undiminished ability to launch rockets was what finally brought Israel’s war machine to a standstill and led to a ceasefire? And exactly how much of a war crime would the firing of those rudimentary rockets be if it turned out that not only did they halt the war but they also prevented its expansion to include Syria and Iran?</p>
<p>If on this occasion Whitson can address my point, I would be interested to hear her response.</p>
<p>JONATHAN COOK is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming “ <a href="" type="internal">Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State</a>” published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is <a href="http://www.jkcook.net/" type="external">www.jkcook.net</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | nazareth counterpunch article criticising human rights watch singling hizbullah rather israel harsher condemnation military actions lebanon war made sure quote organisation fairly accurately seeking refute arguments unfortunately recent response hrws middle east policy director sarah leah whitson return favour possibly realising case weak decided paraphrase argument instead misrepresenting try rebut according whitson claim know hizbullah trying hit military rather civilian targets israel summers war several occasions rockets actually strike military targets sake argument points easy discredit reasoning hizbullahs rockets entirely random might still hit israeli military site two chance misrepresenting position whitson benefits two ways first able suggest apologist naïve mischievious hizbullahs war crimes either dupe dissembler second enjoys satisfaction asserting organisation facing extremists sides apologists hizbullahs war crimes like one hand supporters preemptive wars torture like alan dershowitz whitson smugly claim occupying sensible centre one directors hrw distorts arguments evidence carefully set case black white page one wonder faithfully organisation sift evidence far trickier cases relating human rights things rarely black white brings back original argument point whitson asserts claim knew whether hizbullah israel trying distinguish military civilian targets war quite reverse fact made clear could know either side intended sitting alongside katyusha rocket teams israels military intelligence officers took issue hrw precisely appears believe know two sides intended even though nearer rocket teams israeli command bunkers fact claim know hizbullah israel hoped achieve war hrw also feels able conclude hizbullahs intentions far malign israels therefore produced greater war crimes challenging hrws research appears show unequivocally israel commit major war crimes contesting distorted presentation facts unearthed suit looks suspiciously like political agenda impression hrw trying present damning picture hizbullahs actions israels despite evidence avoid attracting yet allegations antisemitism israels influential defenders reason course israels apologists use slur intimidate organisations like hrw inevitable conclusion least based hrws presentation findings lebanon war israel lobby succeeding lets recap quote hrws senior researcher peter bouckaert published new york times provoked original article mean perfectly clear hezbollah directly targeting civilians aim kill israeli civilians dont accuse israeli army deliberately trying kill civilians accusation clearly stated report israeli army taking necessary precautions distinguish civilian military targets difference intent two sides time violating geneva convention hope person discomforted idea major human rights organisation thinks legitimate role divining two sides war wanted achieve rather fact achieve seeks make judgments war crimes based interpretations intentions whitson could distanced bouckaerts comments saying unjustified instead chose defend serves increase suspicions hrws agenda responsible human rights organisation ought concerned events lebanese conflict try judge degree acts committed sides fell within parameters legitimate warfare defined selfdefence protection important national interests war never moral event conducted within certain constraints primary concern human rights monitors according findings human rights watch reports media know much israel actually war airforce massively attacked lebanons infrastructure roads power stations collectively punishing populaton aerial bombardments resulted deaths 1000 lebanese overwhelming majority civilians air strikes forced hundreds thousands lebanese civilians flee homes villages destroyed south convoys refugees medical personnel well united nations peacekeeping base attacked finally last hours war deadline ceasefire rapidly approached israel dropped hundreds thousands cluster bombs tiny land mines maiming killing returning refugees continue years come grounds israel grossly violated international law committed war crimes need know nothing intentions make judgment none forms attack necessary terms israels right selfdefence right protect interests return two soldiers captured hizbullah pretext war reassertion sovereignty given hizbullah immediately offered prisoner exchange soldiers return lebanese prisoners war held israeli jails clear options ones available israel facts relation hizbullah lets examine behaviour wars two main phases hizbullahs provocation hostilities conduct war know shiite group provoked confrontation israel launching military operation july 12 designed capture israeli soldiers cover small harmless volley mortars rockets fired border posts northern community shilo israeli army characterised time diversionary tactics gunfight three israeli troops killed two soldiers captured presented act unprovoked aggression western media stripped attack context truth military operation latest flareup longrunning smallscale hostilities israel hizbullah since israel ended twodecade occupation south lebanon 2000 tensions focused disputed corridor land known shebaa farms claimed lebanon held israel addition withdrawing israel maintained exacerbated state hostilities refusing release handful lebanese pows failing hand maps hundreds thousands land mines laid occupation repeatedly shooting killing lebanese shepherds strayed shebaa farms area significantly violating almost daily lebanese sovereignty sending warplanes spy drones far beirut hizbullahs operation first launched capture israeli soldiers since 2000 motives wanting well known israel hizbullah immediately offered return soldiers prisoner swap thus although hizbullahs operation may foolhardy certainly war crime interpretation international law second phase war hizbullah began firing rockets israel attacks stripped context much misinformation israel supporters hizbullah initiate rocket fire sometimes suggested retaliated israel began massive bombardment lebanon clear cause effect hrw knows speeches hizbullahs leader hassan nasrallah repeatedly stated rocket fire response israels far greater attacks would end israel stopped firing missiles dropping bombs lebanon israeli guns briefly fell silent usimposed period calm hizbullah studiously observed 48hour lull whereas israel quickly broke expansion hizbullahs range rocket fire preceded warning nasrallah store israel continued intensified assault rocket fire therefore adequately fits reasonable definition selfdefence hizbullahs military assets lebanon whole given weakness lebanese army reason israel able occupy country long hizbullah justifiably claim duty defend lebanon israeli attack fell default difficult see way hizbullahs conduct second phase war categorised war crime even harder understand hrw believes described greater war crime israels assault hrw believes one trump card sleeve says hizbullah never fired rockets even selfdefence primitive accurately aimed israeli military targets even hizbullah intended hit military sites sure even victims attacks mainly soldiers hrw regards hizbullah deliberately targeted civilians whatever rockets sent border would probability strike civilian areas previously pointed paradox hrw criticising hizbullah killing mostly soldiers even imprecise arsenal harshly israel killed mostly civilians smart bombs precision missiles labour point instead repeat questions asked last time whitson failed answer presumably given hrws public position could find moral high ground respond according hrws understanding international law hizbullah supposed given inferior arsenal israel started wreck lebanon destroying infrastructure killing civilian population driving hundreds thousands homes firing one rudimentary rockets immediately committing war crime military options available response already seen unwarranted israeli aggression whole lebanon weeks end israel used superior armoury air relying air force hizbullah lacking antiaircraft guns defence ways could hizbullah engage warfare international law hizbullah required sit tight let people lebanon die hundreds waited see whether israel would begin ground invasion would ground invasion happened hizbullah continued firing rockets israels belated attack land first moment hizbullah entitled fight back nearest answer whitson supplied response original article following constraints provided international law hardly preclude military strategy either side decide pursue one hezbollah long history crossborder attacks israeli military facilities soldiers including one launched recent round fighting wonderfully complete circle argument hizbullah right international law launch crossborder attack capture soldiers rights international law hizbullah israel chooses destroy lebanon response whitson offers answers let finally suggest two questions hrw characterise hizbullahs return fire war crime even though undiminished ability launch rockets finally brought israels war machine standstill led ceasefire exactly much war crime would firing rudimentary rockets turned halt war also prevented expansion include syria iran occasion whitson address point would interested hear response jonathan cook writer journalist based nazareth israel author forthcoming blood religion unmasking jewish democratic state published pluto press available united states university michigan press website wwwjkcooknet 160 160 | 1,211 |
<p>Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it.</p>
<p>Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, ‘ <a href="" type="internal">Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States</a>.'” [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] “It’s an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what’s happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet.</p>
<p>The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but, for the sake of time,” [flips through the pages, which are numerous] “I will just leave it as a recommendation.</p>
<p>It reads easily, it is a very good book, I’m sure Madame [President] you are familiar with it. It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house.</p>
<p>The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.</p>
<p>“And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here.” [crosses himself] “And it smells of sulfur still today.</p>
<p>Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.</p>
<p>I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.</p>
<p>An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: “The Devil’s Recipe.”</p>
<p>As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.</p>
<p>The world parent’s statement — cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.</p>
<p>They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.</p>
<p>What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.</p>
<p>What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?</p>
<p>The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I’m quoting, “Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom.”</p>
<p>Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother — he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.</p>
<p>The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It’s not that we are extremists. It’s that the world is waking up. It’s waking up all over. And people are standing up.</p>
<p>I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.</p>
<p>Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.</p>
<p>The president then — and this he said himself, he said: “I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace.”</p>
<p>That’s true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They’ll say yes.</p>
<p>But the government doesn’t want peace. The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.</p>
<p>It wants peace. But what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela — new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?</p>
<p>He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?</p>
<p>This is crossfire? He’s thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.</p>
<p>This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, “We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’</p>
<p>The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples — to the peoples of the world. He came to say — I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.</p>
<p>And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?</p>
<p>And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, “Yankee imperialist, go home.” I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.</p>
<p>And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something that has now been confirmed — fully, fully confirmed.</p>
<p>I don’t think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let’s accept — let’s be honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It’s worthless.</p>
<p>Oh, yes, it’s good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Abel’s yesterday, or President Mullah’s . Yes, it’s good for that.</p>
<p>And there are a lot of speeches, and we’ve heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.</p>
<p>But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations.</p>
<p>Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.</p>
<p>The first is expansion, and Mullah talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That’s step one.</p>
<p>Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.</p>
<p>Point three, the immediate suppression — and that is something everyone’s calling for — of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.</p>
<p>Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.</p>
<p>Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we’ve always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.</p>
<p>Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.</p>
<p>Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our voice, our thinking.</p>
<p>Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.</p>
<p>This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar’s home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council.</p>
<p>Let’s see. Well, there’s been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council.</p>
<p>The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.</p>
<p>And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there’s no need to announce things.</p>
<p>But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.</p>
<p>Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.</p>
<p>And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many others.</p>
<p>I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing not only Venezuela’s thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.</p>
<p>Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet would have said “helplessly optimistic,” because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.</p>
<p>As Silvio Rodriguez says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?</p>
<p>What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.</p>
<p>We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.</p>
<p>Venezuela joins that struggle, and that’s why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.</p>
<p>President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.</p>
<p>And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.</p>
<p>And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner.</p>
<p>And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.</p>
<p>And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.</p>
<p>And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.</p>
<p>Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army was too, and so I’m here today.</p>
<p>But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government. And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.</p>
<p>We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.</p>
<p>And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don’t worry, I’m not going to read it.</p>
<p>But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent matter — more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group of the nonaligned with new momentum.</p>
<p>And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent further advances of imperialism.</p>
<p>And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.</p>
<p>Unfortunately they thought, “Oh, Fidel was going to die.” But they’re going to be disappointed because he didn’t. And he’s not only alive, he’s back in his green fatigues, and he’s now presiding the nonaligned.</p>
<p>So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.</p>
<p>With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I’m now closing my file. I’m taking the book with me. And, don’t forget, I’m recommending it very warmly and very humbly to all of you.</p>
<p>We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.</p>
<p>And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We’ve proposed Venezuela.</p>
<p>You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.</p>
<p>May God bless us all. Good day to you.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | representatives governments world good morning first would like invite respectfully read book read noam chomsky one prestigious american world intellectuals noam chomsky one recent books hegemony survival imperialist strategy united states holds book waves front general assembly excellent book help us understand happening world throughout 20th century whats happening greatest threat looming planet hegemonic pretensions american empire placing risk survival human species continue warn danger appeal people united states world halt threat like sword hanging heads considered reading book sake time flips pages numerous leave recommendation reads easily good book im sure madame president familiar appears english russian arabic german think first people read book brothers sisters united states threat right house devil right home devil devil right house devil came yesterday yesterday devil came right crosses smells sulfur still today yesterday ladies gentlemen rostrum president united states gentleman refer devil came talking owned world truly owner world think could call psychiatrist analyze yesterdays statement made president united states spokesman imperialism came share nostrums try preserve current pattern domination exploitation pillage peoples world alfred hitchcock movie could use scenario would even propose title devils recipe chomsky says clearly depth american empire consolidate system domination allow allow world dictatorship consolidated world parents statement cynical hypocritical full imperial hypocrisy need control everything say want impose democratic model thats democratic model false democracy elites would say original democracy thats imposed weapons bombs firing weapons strange democracy aristotle might recognize others root democracy type democracy impose marines bombs president united states yesterday said us right room im quoting anywhere look hear extremists telling escape poverty recover dignity violence terror martyrdom wherever looks sees extremists brother looks color says oh theres extremist evo morales worthy president bolivia looks like extremist imperialists see extremists everywhere extremists world waking waking people standing feeling dear world dictator going live rest days nightmare rest us standing rising american imperialism shouting equality respect sovereignty nations yes call us extremists rising empire model domination president said said come speak directly populations middle east tell country wants peace thats true walk streets bronx walk around new york washington san diego city san antonio san francisco ask individuals citizens united states country want want peace theyll say yes government doesnt want peace government united states doesnt want peace wants exploit system exploitation pillage hegemony war wants peace whats happening iraq happened lebanon palestine whats happening whats happened last 100 years latin america world threatening venezuela new threats venezuela iran spoke people lebanon many said seen homes communities caught crossfire cynical get capacity lie shamefacedly bombs beirut millimetric precision crossfire hes thinking western people would shoot hip somebody would caught crossfire imperialist fascist assassin genocidal empire israel firing people palestine lebanon happened hear suffering see homes destroyed president united states came talk peoples peoples world came say brought documents morning reading statements see talked people afghanistan people lebanon people iran addressed peoples directly wonder president united states addresses peoples world would peoples world tell given floor would say think inkling peoples south oppressed people think would say yankee imperialist go home think people would say given microphone could speak one voice american imperialists madam president colleagues friends last year came hall past eight years said something confirmed fully fully confirmed dont think anybody room could defend system lets accept lets honest un system born second world war collapsed worthless oh yes good bring us together year see make statements prepare kinds long documents listen good speeches like abels yesterday president mullahs yes good lot speeches weve heard lots president sri lanka instance president chile assembly turned merely deliberative organ power power make impact terrible situation world venezuela proposes today 20 september reestablish united nations last year madam made four modest proposals felt crucially important assume responsibility heads state ambassadors representatives discuss first expansion mullah talked yesterday right security council permanent nonpermanent categories inaudible developing countries ldcs must given access new permanent members thats step one second effective methods address resolve world conflicts transparent decisions point three immediate suppression something everyones calling antidemocratic mechanism known veto veto decisions security council let give recent example immoral veto united states allowed israelis impunity destroy lebanon right front us stood watching resolution council prevented fourthly strengthen weve always said role powers secretary general united nations yesterday secretary general practically gave us speech farewell recognized last 10 years things gotten complicated hunger poverty violence human rights violations worsened tremendous consequence collapse united nations system american hegemonistic pretensions madam venezuela years ago decided wage battle within united nations recognizing united nations members lending voice thinking voice independent voice represent dignity search peace reformulation international system denounce persecution aggression hegemonistic forces planet venezuela presented bolivars home sought nonpermanent seat security council lets see well theres open attack us government immoral attack try prevent venezuela freely elected post security council imperium afraid truth afraid independent voices calls us extremists extremists would like thank countries kindly announced support venezuela even though ballot secret one theres need announce things since imperium attacked openly strengthened convictions many countries support strengthens us mercosur bloc expressed support brothers mercosur venezuela brazil argentina paraguay uruguay full member mercosur many latin american countries caricom bolivia expressed support venezuela arab league full arab league voiced support immensely grateful arab world arab brothers caribbean brothers african union almost africa expressed support venezuela countries russia china many others thank warmly behalf venezuela behalf people behalf truth venezuela seat security council expressing venezuelas thoughts also voice peoples world defend dignity truth madam president think reasons optimistic poet would said helplessly optimistic wars bombs aggressive preventive war destruction entire peoples one see new era dawning silvio rodriguez says era giving birth heart alternative ways thinking young people think differently already seen within space mere decade shown end history totally false assumption shown pax americana establishment capitalist neoliberal world shown system generate mere poverty believes define future world dawn breaking see africa europe latin america oceanea want emphasize optimistic vision strengthen battle awareness build new better world venezuela joins struggle thats threatened us already planned financed set motion coup venezuela continues support coup attempts venezuela elsewhere president michelle bachelet reminded us moment ago horrendous assassination former foreign minister orlando letelier would add one thing perpetrated crime free event american citizen also died american cia killers terrorists must recall room days another anniversary thirty years passed horrendous terrorist attack cuban plane 73 innocents died cubana de aviacion airliner biggest terrorist continent took responsibility blowing plane spent years jail venezuela thanks cia government officials allowed escape lives country protected government convicted confessed crime us government double standards protects terrorism wants say venezuela fully committed combating terrorism violence one people fighting peace luis posada carriles name terrorist protected tremendously corrupt people escaped venezuela also living protection group bombed various embassies assassinated people coup kidnapped going kill think god reached people came streets army im today people led coup today country protected american government accuse american government protecting terrorists completely cynical discourse mentioned cuba yes days ago came happily see another era born summit 15 summit nonaligned adopted historic resolution outcome document dont worry im going read whole set resolutions adopted open debate transparent matter 50 heads state havana capital south weeks launched group nonaligned new momentum anything could ask companions brothers sisters please lend good lend momentum nonaligned movement birth new era prevent hegemony prevent advances imperialism know fidel castro president nonaligned next three years trust lead charge efficiently unfortunately thought oh fidel going die theyre going disappointed didnt hes alive hes back green fatigues hes presiding nonaligned dear colleagues madam president new strong movement born movement south men women south document ideas criticisms im closing file im taking book dont forget im recommending warmly humbly want ideas save planet save planet imperialist threat hopefully century long time see see new era children grandchildren world peace based fundamental principles united nations renewed united nations maybe change location maybe put united nations somewhere else maybe city south weve proposed venezuela know personal doctor stay plane chief security left locked plane neither gentlemen allowed arrive attend un meeting another abuse another abuse power part devil smells sulfur god us embrace may god bless us good day 160 160 160 | 1,359 |
<p>Clayton Lockett was supposed to be unconscious. The state of Oklahoma, like most states that still enforce death sentences, uses a three-drug cocktail to execute inmates. The first drug was <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/04/double-execution-tonight-ok-using-secret-experimental-drug-protocol" type="external">supposed to knock Lockett out</a>. The second drug would paralyze him. The third, potassium chloride, stops the heart.</p>
<p>But it was clear midway through Lockett’s execution that he was not unconscious. Lockett’s “body started to twitch,” according to his attorney Dean Sanderford. Then Lockett “mumbled something I couldn’t understand.” Soon, “ <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/30/us/oklahoma-botched-execution/" type="external">[t]he convulsing got worse, it looked like his whole upper body was trying to lift off the gurney</a>. For a minute, there was chaos.”</p>
<p>At 6:39, sixteen minutes after the execution began, Lockett was still alive. According to Cary Aspinwall with the Tulsa World, <a href="https://twitter.com/caryaspinwall/status/461297136793948161" type="external">Lockett lifted own head</a> shortly before corrections officials closed a curtain that obscured the execution chamber from witnesses. By one account, Lockett tried to speak during the botched execution, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/30/us/oklahoma-botched-execution/" type="external">saying the word “man” aloud</a>. Corrections officials later said that Lockett had a “blown vein” and that they were “ <a href="https://twitter.com/caryaspinwall/status/461305640694988800" type="external">not sure where drugs went in his body and how much absorbed</a>.” Lockett’s vein, according to a Department of Corrections spokesperson had “ <a href="http://fox59.com/2014/04/29/oklahoma-stops-execution-after-botching-drug-delivery-inmate-dies-vein-exploded/#axzz30NO4oxhe" type="external">exploded</a>.”</p>
<p>The slow, torturous ordeal that marked Lockett’s final hour of life — he died of a heart attack at 7:06, <a href="http://kfor.com/2014/04/27/debate-over-two-death-row-inmates-is-over-execution-set/" type="external">forty-three minutes after the execution started</a> — should surprise no one. As international opinion turns sharply against the death penalty —  <a href="" type="internal">only 22 nations not currently experiencing military conflict carried out an execution in 2013</a> — America states that still carry out executions are finding it harder and hard to obtain the drugs they use to kill people. Europe imposed tight restrictions on the exportation of several drugs used in executions, and many drug manufacturers simply <a href="" type="internal">refuse to sell the drugs to state officials who intend to use them to kill someone</a>. The result is that many states have turned to “compounding pharmacies,” which sell <a href="" type="internal">loosely regulated drugs of uncertain quality</a>, to obtain drugs for executions.</p>
<p>Lockett is not the first inmate to visibly suffer during his execution since states lost access to reliable drugs. Michael Wilson, another Oklahoma man executed last January, cried out that “ <a href="http://nation.time.com/2014/01/10/oklahoma-convict-who-felt-body-burning-executed-with-controversial-drug/" type="external">I feel my whole body burning</a>” shortly after he was injected with a drug known as pentobarbital. Dennis McGuire, an Ohio inmate, <a href="http://www.ncadp.org/blog/entry/execution-drug-secrecy-is-it-unconstitutional" type="external">spent nearly 25 minutes gasping for air before he finally expired</a>.</p>
<p>The dangers presented by drugs of questionable quality are compounded by the fact that executions are rarely supervised by medical professionals. As ThinkProgress’ Tara Culp-Ressler explains, the “American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Board of Anesthesiology, and the American Nurses Association <a href="" type="internal">all prohibit their members from assisting in executions</a>, saying that practice violates their medical code of ethics. So the IV is usually administered by another state official who’s not necessarily an expert in anesthesiology, often an EMT.”</p>
<p>So death row inmates receive unreliable painkillers, and may even be injected with tainted drugs that increase their suffering. And there is no guarantee that these drugs are administered properly. Although a doctor was apparently present during Lockett’s execution, one reporter says that “ <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117585/clayton-lockett-execution-botched-problem-lethal-injection" type="external">the doctor was just an attending physician to monitor the inmate and his condition throughout</a>.” Under Oklahoma’s execution protocol, Lockett’s IV would not have been inserted by a medical or nursing professional. That may explain why his vein “exploded.”</p>
<p>We know that Lockett, and other inmates like Wilson and McGuire, suffered horribly before their deaths. But the truth is that this kind of suffering may be the norm. We do not know how much pain the inmates who appear to drift off quietly actually feel during their executions — and the only people who can tell us what they were feeling are dead.</p>
<p>The reason we know so little about the pain caused by lethal injection is because of the second drug used in many states’ execution protocols — the drug that paralyzes inmates before they are injected with the poison that stops their heart. As Justice John Paul Stevens explained in 2008, “[b]ecause it <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10752510346595419167&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr" type="external">masks any outward sign of distress</a>,” the paralytic drug “creates a risk that the inmate will suffer excruciating pain before death occurs.” Stevens wrote those words about a particular drug, pancuronium bromide, that was used in a Kentucky execution protocol that was before his Court. “Several States — including Kentucky — have enacted legislation prohibiting use of [pancuronium bromide] drug in animal euthanasia,” according to Justice Stevens. “It is unseemly — to say the least — that Kentucky may well kill [people] using a drug that it would not permit to be used on their pets.”</p>
<p>Pancuronium bromide serves “no therapeutic purpose,” according to the trial court in that case. And, yet, the Supreme Court upheld its use. Oklahoma’s execution protocol <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/04/double-execution-tonight-ok-using-secret-experimental-drug-protocol" type="external">also includes pancuronium bromide</a>.</p>
<p>When the Kentucky case, a case known as Baze v. Rees, was pending before the Supreme Court, many death penalty opponents were hopeful that it would strike a severe blow against state-sponsored killings. Indeed, while Baze was pending before the Court, most states honored — or were ordered by courts to honor — an <a href="http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/lethal-injection-moratorium-inches-closer-85899387485" type="external">effective moratorium on lethal injections</a>, lest a person be executed under a protocol that the Supreme Court was about to declare unconstitutional.</p>
<p>But the Supreme Court did not declare Kentucky’s lethal injections protocol unconstitutional. Though the Court was very divided in their reasoning and no more than three justices signed on to a single opinion, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baze_v._Rees" type="external">seven justices voted to uphold Kentucky’s lethal injection procedure</a>.</p>
<p>One consequence of Baze is that it gives states an incentive to model their own execution protocols upon the Kentucky procedure upheld by the Supreme Court — since they can now point to a binding decision by the highest court in the land which says that that the Kentucky protocol is constitutional. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion, “[a] stay of execution may not be granted on grounds such as those asserted here unless the condemned prisoner establishes that the State’s lethal injection protocol creates a demonstrated risk of severe pain. He must show that the risk is substantial when compared to the known and available alternatives. A State with a lethal injection protocol substantially similar to the protocol we uphold today would not create a risk that meets this standard.”</p>
<p>The process used to kill Lockett, however, differs from the procedure upheld in Baze in one important way. Kentucky used a drug known as sodium thiopental as the first part of their three drug cocktail. This drug, however, is <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/58333/botched-execution-why-us-has-turned-untried-drugs" type="external">largely unavailable for executions</a> due to objections by manufacturers and foreign governments to its use to kill inmates. Without access to sodium thipental, Oklahoma <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/oklahoma-inmate-dies-of-heart-attack-after-botched-execution/" type="external">used a different drug, known as midazolam, to sedate Lockett</a>.</p>
<p>The crux of Roberts’ plurality opinion is that the inmates challenging Kentucky’s execution protocol had not shown sufficient risk that the drug sodium thipental would be improperly administered to them, causing them to suffocate from the second drug in the protocol or to experience great pain from the third drug. Whatever the wisdom of this decision, we now know that the risk of suffering is very real under Oklahoma’s protocol. Clayton Lockett endured that very suffering for 43 minutes before he died.</p>
<p>Last week, the Oklahoma Supreme Court briefly stayed Lockett’s execution after his attorneys sought more information on the drugs that would be used to kill him. They later <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/oklahoma-inmate-dies-of-heart-attack-after-botched-execution/" type="external">dissolved that stay</a>. Given the way Lockett’s execution played out, it is difficult to argue that Oklahoma’s court system honored the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishments when they allowed him to be executed.</p>
<p>It is likely that the judicial system will reconsider Oklahoma’s execution procedure in the wake of Lockett’s botched execution. But there is something myopic about this inquiry. As Roberts noted in Baze, American states have gone to great lengths to <a href="" type="internal">sanitize executions</a> — “[t]he firing squad, hanging, the electric chair, and the gas chamber have each in turn given way to more humane methods, culminating in today’s consensus on lethal injection.” We no longer spill blood at executions. Or intentionally subject witnesses to the spectacle of watching a dying man or woman suffer. American executions don’t actually look like executions. They look like medical procedures.</p>
<p>We can replace the gallows with a gurney, but we have not succeeded in erasing the racial inequities at the core of our death penalty. In Louisiana, death sentences are 97 percent more likely in murder cases where the victim is white. In Alabama, 6 percent of murders involve black defendants and white victims, but 60 percent of black death row inmates were convicted of murdering a white person. In the nation as a whole, only 20 white people have been executed since 1976 for killing a black person. 269 black defendants were executed for killing someone who is white. The state of Florida, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, has <a href="" type="internal">never executed a white person for killing a black person</a>. Ever.</p>
<p>Last year, there were 39 executions in the United States. 32 involved a white victim. Only <a href="" type="internal">one white person was executed for killing only a black man</a>.</p>
<p>Even if these disparities can be eradicated, the death penalty likely still fails as a method of preventing crime. According to Dartmouth University statistician John Lamperti, “an overwhelming majority among America’s leading criminologists [have concluded that] that <a href="" type="internal">capital punishment does not contribute to lower rates of homicide</a>.” Murder rates in states that do not sentence people to die are <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates#stateswithvwithout" type="external">consistently lower</a> than murder rates in states that do.</p>
<p>The death penalty is also increasingly uncommon throughout the nation. Though Chief Justice Roberts begins his opinion in Baze by claiming that the law in “35 other States and the Federal Government” permits death sentences, this claim is misleading. According to a 2011 study by the Death Penalty Information Center, <a href="" type="internal">just 12 states executed someone in 2010, and only 7 states executed more than one person</a>. Thirty-two U.S. jurisdictions executed no one in the previous five years, and more than half of these jurisdictions haven’t executed anyone since the Supreme Court created the modern constitutional regime governing death penalty cases in 1976. More than one-third of all American executions took place in just one state — Texas.</p>
<p>At the local level, the <a href="" type="internal">data is even starker</a>. One study that examined death sentences and executions from 2004–2009 discovered that only 10 percent of American counties returned a single death sentence, and only 1 percent of counties produced more than one death sentence. In 2011, an estimated 14,612 murders occurred in the United States, but there were only 43 executions.</p>
<p>Because the Constitution forbids “cruel and unusual punishments,” the death penalty stands on <a href="" type="internal">much weaker constitutional ground as it becomes more and more “unusual.”</a></p>
<p>And it is doubtful that many people could watch the slow, painful death of Clayton Lockett, and conclude that the death penalty is not “cruel.”</p> | true | 4 | clayton lockett supposed unconscious state oklahoma like states still enforce death sentences uses threedrug cocktail execute inmates first drug supposed knock lockett second drug would paralyze third potassium chloride stops heart clear midway locketts execution unconscious locketts body started twitch according attorney dean sanderford lockett mumbled something couldnt understand soon convulsing got worse looked like whole upper body trying lift gurney minute chaos 639 sixteen minutes execution began lockett still alive according cary aspinwall tulsa world lockett lifted head shortly corrections officials closed curtain obscured execution chamber witnesses one account lockett tried speak botched execution saying word man aloud corrections officials later said lockett blown vein sure drugs went body much absorbed locketts vein according department corrections spokesperson exploded slow torturous ordeal marked locketts final hour life died heart attack 706 fortythree minutes execution started surprise one international opinion turns sharply death penalty 22 nations currently experiencing military conflict carried execution 2013 america states still carry executions finding harder hard obtain drugs use kill people europe imposed tight restrictions exportation several drugs used executions many drug manufacturers simply refuse sell drugs state officials intend use kill someone result many states turned compounding pharmacies sell loosely regulated drugs uncertain quality obtain drugs executions lockett first inmate visibly suffer execution since states lost access reliable drugs michael wilson another oklahoma man executed last january cried feel whole body burning shortly injected drug known pentobarbital dennis mcguire ohio inmate spent nearly 25 minutes gasping air finally expired dangers presented drugs questionable quality compounded fact executions rarely supervised medical professionals thinkprogress tara culpressler explains american medical association american public health association american board anesthesiology american nurses association prohibit members assisting executions saying practice violates medical code ethics iv usually administered another state official whos necessarily expert anesthesiology often emt death row inmates receive unreliable painkillers may even injected tainted drugs increase suffering guarantee drugs administered properly although doctor apparently present locketts execution one reporter says doctor attending physician monitor inmate condition throughout oklahomas execution protocol locketts iv would inserted medical nursing professional may explain vein exploded know lockett inmates like wilson mcguire suffered horribly deaths truth kind suffering may norm know much pain inmates appear drift quietly actually feel executions people tell us feeling dead reason know little pain caused lethal injection second drug used many states execution protocols drug paralyzes inmates injected poison stops heart justice john paul stevens explained 2008 masks outward sign distress paralytic drug creates risk inmate suffer excruciating pain death occurs stevens wrote words particular drug pancuronium bromide used kentucky execution protocol court several states including kentucky enacted legislation prohibiting use pancuronium bromide drug animal euthanasia according justice stevens unseemly say least kentucky may well kill people using drug would permit used pets pancuronium bromide serves therapeutic purpose according trial court case yet supreme court upheld use oklahomas execution protocol also includes pancuronium bromide kentucky case case known baze v rees pending supreme court many death penalty opponents hopeful would strike severe blow statesponsored killings indeed baze pending court states honored ordered courts honor effective moratorium lethal injections lest person executed protocol supreme court declare unconstitutional supreme court declare kentuckys lethal injections protocol unconstitutional though court divided reasoning three justices signed single opinion seven justices voted uphold kentuckys lethal injection procedure one consequence baze gives states incentive model execution protocols upon kentucky procedure upheld supreme court since point binding decision highest court land says kentucky protocol constitutional chief justice john roberts wrote plurality opinion stay execution may granted grounds asserted unless condemned prisoner establishes states lethal injection protocol creates demonstrated risk severe pain must show risk substantial compared known available alternatives state lethal injection protocol substantially similar protocol uphold today would create risk meets standard process used kill lockett however differs procedure upheld baze one important way kentucky used drug known sodium thiopental first part three drug cocktail drug however largely unavailable executions due objections manufacturers foreign governments use kill inmates without access sodium thipental oklahoma used different drug known midazolam sedate lockett crux roberts plurality opinion inmates challenging kentuckys execution protocol shown sufficient risk drug sodium thipental would improperly administered causing suffocate second drug protocol experience great pain third drug whatever wisdom decision know risk suffering real oklahomas protocol clayton lockett endured suffering 43 minutes died last week oklahoma supreme court briefly stayed locketts execution attorneys sought information drugs would used kill later dissolved stay given way locketts execution played difficult argue oklahomas court system honored constitutions ban cruel unusual punishments allowed executed likely judicial system reconsider oklahomas execution procedure wake locketts botched execution something myopic inquiry roberts noted baze american states gone great lengths sanitize executions firing squad hanging electric chair gas chamber turn given way humane methods culminating todays consensus lethal injection longer spill blood executions intentionally subject witnesses spectacle watching dying man woman suffer american executions dont actually look like executions look like medical procedures replace gallows gurney succeeded erasing racial inequities core death penalty louisiana death sentences 97 percent likely murder cases victim white alabama 6 percent murders involve black defendants white victims 60 percent black death row inmates convicted murdering white person nation whole 20 white people executed since 1976 killing black person 269 black defendants executed killing someone white state florida according american civil liberties union never executed white person killing black person ever last year 39 executions united states 32 involved white victim one white person executed killing black man even disparities eradicated death penalty likely still fails method preventing crime according dartmouth university statistician john lamperti overwhelming majority among americas leading criminologists concluded capital punishment contribute lower rates homicide murder rates states sentence people die consistently lower murder rates states death penalty also increasingly uncommon throughout nation though chief justice roberts begins opinion baze claiming law 35 states federal government permits death sentences claim misleading according 2011 study death penalty information center 12 states executed someone 2010 7 states executed one person thirtytwo us jurisdictions executed one previous five years half jurisdictions havent executed anyone since supreme court created modern constitutional regime governing death penalty cases 1976 onethird american executions took place one state texas local level data even starker one study examined death sentences executions 20042009 discovered 10 percent american counties returned single death sentence 1 percent counties produced one death sentence 2011 estimated 14612 murders occurred united states 43 executions constitution forbids cruel unusual punishments death penalty stands much weaker constitutional ground becomes unusual doubtful many people could watch slow painful death clayton lockett conclude death penalty cruel | 1,080 |
<p>Last week I read that the glitzy world of virtual reality created instant multi-millionaires and several billionaires when Facebook went public selling shares.</p>
<p>Last week I also noted the important real world problem of some 250 million tons of solid waste a year in our country alone.</p>
<p>Guess which “world” gets the most investment, status, fame, klieg lights, and attention of the skilled classes and the power structure?</p>
<p>Guess which world is more important for our wellbeing and that of the planet?</p>
<p>You’ve heard of CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s 900 million users exchanging gossip and other personal pleasantries or worries through a medium that inflates narcissism.</p>
<p>You’ve probably not heard of Ben Rose of the New York City Materials Exchange Development Program (NYC MEDP) or the equivalent organizations in your <a href="" type="internal" />communities providing services to thousands of charitable non-profit groups which promote the donating and reusing of materials to avoid incineration, landfilling and recycling.</p>
<p>To grasp the enormity of modern society’s waste products, Ann Leonard created a sparkling website, visited by millions of people ( <a href="http://www.storyofstuff.org/" type="external">www.storyofstuff.org</a>). She also published a recent popular book titled “The Story of Stuff” that details every aspect of your environment and physical being. Air, water, food, soil and even your genes absorb the byproducts of processing mountains of stuff. The results are not pretty.</p>
<p>While recycling efforts in cities like San Francisco, Vancouver and Los Angeles rise above 50 percent, New York City has been slipping behind its own 2002 level and is still struggling to reach 20 percent. New York City has been a leader in improving air quality and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it still has dreaded incinerators producing toxic air and toxic residues.</p>
<p>In the early 90s, pragmatic environmental scientist, Professor Barry Commoner demonstrated in two operational pilot projects that the city could reach a residential recycling level of nearly 100 percent. Unfortunately, New York City missed a chance to become a world leader in recycling when its leaders, beginning with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, declined to establish a city-wide recycling program based on Professor Commoner’s model.</p>
<p>The New York City recycling challenge still hasn’t recovered from that devastatingly wrongheaded decision. Politicians and corporations cannot stop an even superior environmental cycle, presently driven by charitable associations, in Mr. Rose’s words, “nimbly accepting, exchanging and distributing thousands of tons of reusable material each year”, as they have done for generations, “all the while contributing to the social, economic and environmental fabric of New York City.” Over the decades, the recipients have been communities in need, such as homeless shelters and poor populations.</p>
<p>The NYC Materials Exchange Development Program now sees a great potential to “organize, grow and advocate for the practice of donating and reusing materials for the benefit of all New Yorkers,” creating local jobs and adding productivity without any tax dollars. They are rediscovering the past of a thrifty culture and expanding it mightily to contribute to the neighborhood and economic landscape.</p>
<p>Donating materials instead of trashing or recycling them enlarges the gifting culture and the beneficial human interactions that follow. As Ben Rose notes: “In contrast to recycling, where used materials are broken down into their raw elements to make new items, reuse takes useful products and exchanges them without reprocessing, thus saving time, money, energy and valuable resources.”</p>
<p>The obstacles are obvious. First a throwaway economy of waste is profitable for sellers who want you to keep throwing away and buying. They plan product obsolescence and lure consumers with the convenience of disposable products. So we have to change habits: become more cunning about what manufacturers and vendors are up to and expand second hand, reuse and material exchange programs.</p>
<p>What are reusable materials? Just about everything you purchase that doesn’t spoil or perish. Clothing, furniture, books, bicycles, containers, computers, tools, surplus construction materials and things you buy or grow that you do not use. Reuse outlets include Goodwill or Thrift stores, charitable book and clothing drives, ecology centers and creative arts programs.</p>
<p>Nothing less than a “New Age” for a burgeoning sub-economy of reusable products and materials is being envisioned by the collaborative likes of the New York City Sanitation Department and the City College of New York’s Department of Civil Engineering. Collecting data which shows how much energy is saved, how many jobs can be created, how much better pricing systems can be, and how much solid waste can be prevented will elevate this subject and its social status within &#160;the “zero waste” movement. We should aspire to using resources, in the worlds of Paul Hawkins, “10 to 100 times more productively.”</p>
<p>Other countries are advancing in the reuse sector in ways we can learn from immediately. Holland is starting numerous “Repair Cafes,” that are attracting increasing interest in “fixing” rather than dumping. These used to be called “Fix-It Shops” in the U.S. before the advent of our throw away corporate culture.</p>
<p>For more information visit ( <a href="http://www.nycmedp.org/" type="external">www.nycmedp.org</a>)</p>
<p>Ralph Nader&#160;is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!</a>&#160;He is a contributor to&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion</a>, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Kindle edition</a>.</p> | true | 4 | last week read glitzy world virtual reality created instant multimillionaires several billionaires facebook went public selling shares last week also noted important real world problem 250 million tons solid waste year country alone guess world gets investment status fame klieg lights attention skilled classes power structure guess world important wellbeing planet youve heard ceo mark zuckerberg facebooks 900 million users exchanging gossip personal pleasantries worries medium inflates narcissism youve probably heard ben rose new york city materials exchange development program nyc medp equivalent organizations communities providing services thousands charitable nonprofit groups promote donating reusing materials avoid incineration landfilling recycling grasp enormity modern societys waste products ann leonard created sparkling website visited millions people wwwstoryofstufforg also published recent popular book titled story stuff details every aspect environment physical air water food soil even genes absorb byproducts processing mountains stuff results pretty recycling efforts cities like san francisco vancouver los angeles rise 50 percent new york city slipping behind 2002 level still struggling reach 20 percent new york city leader improving air quality reducing greenhouse gas emissions still dreaded incinerators producing toxic air toxic residues early 90s pragmatic environmental scientist professor barry commoner demonstrated two operational pilot projects city could reach residential recycling level nearly 100 percent unfortunately new york city missed chance become world leader recycling leaders beginning mayor rudolph giuliani declined establish citywide recycling program based professor commoners model new york city recycling challenge still hasnt recovered devastatingly wrongheaded decision politicians corporations stop even superior environmental cycle presently driven charitable associations mr roses words nimbly accepting exchanging distributing thousands tons reusable material year done generations contributing social economic environmental fabric new york city decades recipients communities need homeless shelters poor populations nyc materials exchange development program sees great potential organize grow advocate practice donating reusing materials benefit new yorkers creating local jobs adding productivity without tax dollars rediscovering past thrifty culture expanding mightily contribute neighborhood economic landscape donating materials instead trashing recycling enlarges gifting culture beneficial human interactions follow ben rose notes contrast recycling used materials broken raw elements make new items reuse takes useful products exchanges without reprocessing thus saving time money energy valuable resources obstacles obvious first throwaway economy waste profitable sellers want keep throwing away buying plan product obsolescence lure consumers convenience disposable products change habits become cunning manufacturers vendors expand second hand reuse material exchange programs reusable materials everything purchase doesnt spoil perish clothing furniture books bicycles containers computers tools surplus construction materials things buy grow use reuse outlets include goodwill thrift stores charitable book clothing drives ecology centers creative arts programs nothing less new age burgeoning subeconomy reusable products materials envisioned collaborative likes new york city sanitation department city college new yorks department civil engineering collecting data shows much energy saved many jobs created much better pricing systems much solid waste prevented elevate subject social status within 160the zero waste movement aspire using resources worlds paul hawkins 10 100 times productively countries advancing reuse sector ways learn immediately holland starting numerous repair cafes attracting increasing interest fixing rather dumping used called fixit shops us advent throw away corporate culture information visit wwwnycmedporg ralph nader160is consumer advocate lawyer author of160 superrich save us160he contributor to160 hopeless barack obama politics illusion published ak press hopeless also available a160 kindle edition | 543 |
<p>As the&#160; tv networks give&#160; unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion&#160; across its borders without retaliation.</p>
<p>The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.</p>
<p>Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.</p>
<p>Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City.&#160;The missile missed the car.&#160; Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.</p>
<p>Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.</p>
<p>Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.</p>
<p>That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.</p>
<p>Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.</p>
<p>Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried.</p>
<p>Israel regrets… But no! As noted above,&#160; it doesn’t regret in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza&#160; Rice nor John Bolton who is&#160; the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.</p>
<p>None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them.&#160; Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.</p>
<p>You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.</p>
<p>This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back into history. Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.</p>
<p>In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.</p>
<p>Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant — if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously — a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory.&#160; So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.</p>
<p>Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.</p>
<p>With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.</p>
<p>The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times — 2.42 and 3.38 — of two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of Palestine.</p>
<p>When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.</p>
<p>Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.</p>
<p>The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.</p>
<p>Sick of their terrible trials,&#160; Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at will.</p>
<p>So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.</p>
<p>Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously —&#160; Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike —&#160; to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.</p>
<p>I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 — don’t like what Israel is up to.</p>
<p>Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | the160 tv networks give160 unlimited airtime israels apologists message rolls nation least israel permit bombardment armed incursion160 across borders without retaliation guiding rule tsunami drivel viewers denied slightest access historical context indeed anything happened prior june 28 capture israeli soldier killing two others hamas hit headlines followed soon thereafter attack unit hezbollahs fighters memory supposed stop tracks june 28 2006 lets go brief excursion prehistory im talking june 20 2006 israeli aircraft fired least one missile car attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt road jabalya gaza city160the missile missed car160 instead killed three palestinian children wounded 15 back go june 13 2006 israeli aircraft fired missiles van another attempted extrajudicial assassination successive barrages killed nine innocent palestinians really dark ages reaching far far back june 9 2006 israel shelled beach beit lahiya killing 8 civilians injuring 32 thats brief trip memory lane trip bodies twenty dead fortyseven wounded palestinians women children israel regrets israel doesnt regret least time doesnt even bother pretend regret says reserve right slaughter palestinians whenever want reserve right assassinate leaders crush homes steal water tear olive groves try resist call terrorists intent wrecking peace process israel says wants wipe hezbollah wishes harm people lebanon long theyre supporters hezbollah standing anywhere neighborhood person house car truck road bus field power station port might mind israeli commander pilot something hezbollah eventualities bets wife mother baby get fried israel regrets noted above160 doesnt regret least neither george bush condoleezza160 rice john bolton is160 moral savage brings shame country day sits americas ambassador unconfirmed un told world dead israel civilian worth whole terms moral outrage lebanese one none regrets say hezbollah cancer body lebanon sometimes kill cancer end killing body bodies bodies babies lots them160 go website fromisraeltolebanoninfo take look sign petition site calling governments world stop barbarity say israel brought hezbollah world prove though involves another frightening excursion history time go far almost unimaginably far back history back 1982 dinosaurs cnn fox tv oreilly limbaugh neocons time already crawled primal slime exactly advising american president give israel green light solve security problems destroying lebanon 1982 israel problem yasir arafat headquartered beirut making ready announce plo prepared sit israel embark peaceful good faith negotiations towards twostate solution israel didnt want twostate solution meant un resolutions taken seriously palestinian state right next door water contiguous territory160 israel decided chase plo right lebanon announced palestinian fighters broken yearlong ceasefire lobbing shells northern israel palestinians done nothing sort remember well brian urquhart time assistant secretary general united nations charge un observers israels northern border invited office 38th floor un hq midmanhattan showed current reports zone year thered shelling north border israel lying without pretext israel wanted invade lebanon rolled beirut shelled lebanese towns villages bombed air sharons forces killed maybe 20000 people let lebanese christians slaughter hundreds palestinian refugees camps sabra chatilla killing got bad even ronald reagan awoke slumbers called tel aviv tell israel stop sharon gave white house finger bombing beirut precise times 242 338 two un resolutions calling peaceful settlement matter palestine dust settled rubble israel bunkered several miles inside lebanese sovereign territory illegally occupied defiance un resolutions years supervising brutal local militia running version abu graibh torture center prison alkhiam occupy country torture citizens end face resistance israels case hezbollah end hezbollah ran israel lebanon lot lebanese regard hezbollah terrorists courageous liberators years roll israel successful best destroy possibility viable twostate solution builds illegal settlements chops palestine jewsonly roads collars water cordons jerusalem steals even land bisecting palestinian territory fence anyone trying organize resistance gets jailed tortured blown sick terrible trials160 palestinians elect hamas whose leaders make perfectly clear ready deal basis old twostate solution course one thing israel endure israel doesnt want peaceful solution gives palestinians anything trashed acres surrounded barbed wire tanks israeli settlements whose goons murder pretty much 24 years sharon best destroy lebanon 1982 heirs since cant endure idea settlement palestinians thing know call lebanon terrorhaven bomb back stone age call gaza terrorhaven bomb power plant first stop journey back stone age bomb damascus bomb teheran course wont destroy hezbollah every time kill another lebanese family multiply hatred israel support hezbollah theyve even unified parliament baghdad voted unanimously 160 sunnis shiites kurds alike 160 deplore israels conduct call ceasefire hope youve enjoyed little excursions history even though history dangerous us press gives wide birth even without benefit historical instruction majority americans cnns instant poll 55 per cent 800000 midday july 19 dont like israel dislike one thing least short term doesnt help much israels 1982 attack lebanon grew unpopular us first days forcing us pressure israel settle basic problem takes political courage virtually us politician prepared buck israel lobby however many families lebanon gaza may sacrificed altar cowardice 160 160 160 | 784 |
<p>The United Methodist Church should be bringing disciplinary action against President George Bush for war crimes. Evidence continues to mount that Bush, a United Methodist, deliberately used his religious faith to deceive the American people in the run-up to his administration’s pre-meditated war against non-threatening, sanctions-weakened, defenseless Iraq. He then continued using his faith in “the ways of Providence” to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He has violated a long-cherished United Methodist Book of Discipline social principle: that “war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ . . . [and] we insist that the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute between or among them.” (pages 123, 124, 2004)</p>
<p>Resolving disputes peacefully was the first thing out of President Bush’s mouth and apparently the last thing on his mind. His pre-war public posture was that of a man of faith and peace. At his March 6, 2003 news conference, he said, “I pray daily. I pray for wisdom and guidance and strength. . . . I pray for peace. I pray for peace.” (The New York Times, Mar. 7, 2003) Two weeks later he ordered the bombing of the Iraqi people and the invasion of their country.</p>
<p>President Bush continually justified his administration’s pre-emptive war against Iraq by charging that Saddam Hussein threatened America with “mushroom cloud”-like weapons of mass destruction. When no such weapons were found in Iraq after the invasion, Bush repeatedly used his religious faith again to justify his administration’s disastrous and criminal war: “Freedom is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to every man and woman in the world.” (“Acceptance Speech to Republican Convention Delegates,” The New York Times, Sept 3, 2004)</p>
<p>A growing body of evidence reveals that it is not about spreading freedom but falsehoods to deceive the American people and justify the war crimes being committed against the Iraqi people. The latest revelation was aired April 23, 2006 by CBS News television program “60 Minutes,” in an interview with Tyler Drumheller, a top CIA officer. Drumheller headed an operation that established a covert relationship with a paid informant, Foreign Minister Naji Sabir, a member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle. “He told us that they have no active weapons of mass destruction program,” Drumheller said.</p>
<p>Some six months before America invaded Iraq, C.I.A. Director George Tenet delivered Foreign Minister Sabir’s critical intelligence news at a meeting attended by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Advisor. But they were only interested in intelligence that would justify their decision to invade Iraq. Drumheller stated, “The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said, ‘They’re no longer interested.’ And we said, ‘Well, what about the intel?,’ And they said. ‘Well, this isn’t isn’t about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'”</p>
<p>When “60 Minutes” host Ed Bradley said that the Iraqi foreign minister’s disclosure “directly contradicts what the president and his staff were telling us,” Tyler Drumheller replied, “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”</p>
<p>Drumheller ended, “The American people want to believe the president. I have relatives who I’ve tried to talk to about this who say, ‘Well, no, you can’t tell me the president had this information and just ignored it.’ But I think over time, people will look back on this and see this was– this is– this is going to be one of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time.”</p>
<p>A month earlier, Paul Pillar, another veteran C.I.A. official, publicly charged that the Bush administration had selectively ignored crucial intelligence assessments about Iraq’s unconventional weapons and about the likelihood of post-war chaos in Iraq.” (The New York Times, Apr. 22, 2006)</p>
<p>Another reported example of paving the pathway to war and occupation with deceit involves two small trailers captured by American-led coalition forces, and cited by the Bush administration as mobile laboratories for making biological weapons. On May 29, 2003, President Bush claimed on Polish television, “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.”</p>
<p>A Washington Post story recently disclosed that a secret Pentagon-sponsored team of experts had examined the two trailers and “unanimously” concluded they “had nothing to do with biological weapons.” The experts’ findings were communicated “to</p>
<p>Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president’s statement.” A final report was presented “three weeks later.” The reports “were stamped ‘secret’ and shelved. Meanwhile,” The Post story went on, “for nearly a year, administration officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.” (Apr. 12, 2006)</p>
<p>One of those “administration officials” who continued to turn the two benign trailers into terrorist weaponry was Vice President Cheney, also a United Methodist. Over three months after authoritative opinion dubbed the two trailers “the biggest sand toilets in the world,” Cheney said about them on NBC ‘s Meet the Press, “They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack.” (Sept. 14, 2003)</p>
<p>Considerable evidence of deceit and hypocrisy exists that would seem to morally outrage United Methodist leaders-and other people of faith as well. “The secret Downing Street memo” of July 2002 revealed that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,” and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” by the Bush administration to justify invading Iraq. (The Sunday Times ­ Britain, May 1, 2005)</p>
<p>Another confidential British memo, reported by The New York Times on March 27, 2006, states that President Bush “made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair,” in a private Oval Office meeting on January 31, 2003, “that he was determined to invade Iraq” without a UN resolution condemning Iraq, “or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons.” The “extremely secretive” memo also says that Bush and Blair “acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq.” And “the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion” led Bush to propose provoking “a confrontation” by painting “a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in the hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.” (Mar. 27, 2006)</p>
<p>“I pray for peace. I pray for peace.” Paul O’Neill, former Treasury Secretary, said that removing Saddam Hussein from power “was topic ‘A’ 10 days after the inauguration-eight months before Sept 11.” (www.cbsnews.com, Jan 11, 2004)</p>
<p>“I pray daily. I pray for wisdom and guidance and strength.” Richard Clarke, President Bush’s former chief advisor on terrorism, reported that Bush seemed determined to use the 9/11 attack against America as a pretext to invade Iraq. Clarke said Bush told him “to find whether Iraq did this.” And when he replied, “We looked into it . . . [and] there’s no connection,” Bush insisted that he “come back with a report that said Iraq did this.” (www.cbsnews.com, Mar. 21, 2004) Out of one side of his mouth Bush was secretly “fixing” intelligence to justify military aggression against Iraq, while publicly “praying for peace” out of the other side.</p>
<p>Last November, 95 United Methodist bishops signed a “Statement of Conscience” in which they said, “We repent of our complicity in what we believe to be an unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.” They lamented that “too many of us were silent . . . in the face of the United States Administration’s rush toward military action based on misleading information.” (italics added) They confessed “preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, while poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated.” Their concluding commitment: “Let us object with boldness when governing powers offer solutions of war that conflict with the gospel message of self-emptying love.”</p>
<p>When will these United Methodist bishops really begin to “object with boldness” against the “governing powers” who have violated the gospel’s “message of self-emptying love?” The “governing powers,” who have also violated United Methodism’s insistence that “the first moral duty . . . is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute between [nations],” are these bishops’ own church members: President Bush and Vice President Cheney! Furthermore, the “rush toward military action based on misleading information “was not an act of “the United States Administration” but of the Bush administration. And contrary to the opinions of certain “military professionals,” the present “quagmire” is not believed to be about making “mistakes” in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but about committing war crimes.</p>
<p>If these 95 United Methodist bishops really believe the invasion and occupation of Iraq is “unjust and immoral,” their next bold step should be presenting a resolution to their own Council of Bishops, calling for the censure of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The Council should also recommend to the Church’s Jurisdictional Council that, in accordance with the Book of Discipline, these two “professing member[s] . . . be charged with the following offenses: . . . (b) crime . . . and (c) disobedience to the Order and Discipline of The United Methodist Church.” (“Chargeable Offenses,” p. 719) And local churches, Annual Conferences, the Methodist Federation for Social Action and its Conference chapters, and other related agencies across United Methodism could also initiate resolutions censuring Bush and Cheney, which might include calls for impeachment proceedings.</p>
<p>Considerable evidence indicates that America’s United Methodist president and vice president repeatedly used deceit and hypocrisy to wage war for oil and global domination apparently, and to maintain political power at home, primarily to serve corporate interests. As a result of their horrible war crimes against Iraq, a vast majority of people abroad believe our president is the most dangerous leader in the world. And a growing majority of Americans believe he has become the greatest threat to their security.</p>
<p>Numerous religious organizations and interfaith groups have opposed the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. The next prophetic step of these people of faith should also be to initiate their own movements to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and call for impeachment proceedings. For the sake of Iraq and Iran and North Korea-and America, it is time to stop President Bush from “praying for peace.”</p>
<p>Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:william.alberts@bmc.org" type="external">william.alberts@bmc.org</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | united methodist church bringing disciplinary action president george bush war crimes evidence continues mount bush united methodist deliberately used religious faith deceive american people runup administrations premeditated war nonthreatening sanctionsweakened defenseless iraq continued using faith ways providence justify invasion occupation iraq violated longcherished united methodist book discipline social principle war incompatible teachings example christ insist first moral duty nations resolve peaceful means every dispute among pages 123 124 2004 resolving disputes peacefully first thing president bushs mouth apparently last thing mind prewar public posture man faith peace march 6 2003 news conference said pray daily pray wisdom guidance strength pray peace pray peace new york times mar 7 2003 two weeks later ordered bombing iraqi people invasion country president bush continually justified administrations preemptive war iraq charging saddam hussein threatened america mushroom cloudlike weapons mass destruction weapons found iraq invasion bush repeatedly used religious faith justify administrations disastrous criminal war freedom americas gift world gods gift every man woman world acceptance speech republican convention delegates new york times sept 3 2004 growing body evidence reveals spreading freedom falsehoods deceive american people justify war crimes committed iraqi people latest revelation aired april 23 2006 cbs news television program 60 minutes interview tyler drumheller top cia officer drumheller headed operation established covert relationship paid informant foreign minister naji sabir member saddam husseins inner circle told us active weapons mass destruction program drumheller said six months america invaded iraq cia director george tenet delivered foreign minister sabirs critical intelligence news meeting attended president bush vice president cheney condoleezza rice national security advisor interested intelligence would justify decision invade iraq drumheller stated group dealing preparation iraq war came back said theyre longer interested said well intel said well isnt isnt intel anymore regime change 60 minutes host ed bradley said iraqi foreign ministers disclosure directly contradicts president staff telling us tyler drumheller replied policy set war iraq coming looking intelligence fit policy justify policy drumheller ended american people want believe president relatives ive tried talk say well cant tell president information ignored think time people look back see going one great think policy mistakes time month earlier paul pillar another veteran cia official publicly charged bush administration selectively ignored crucial intelligence assessments iraqs unconventional weapons likelihood postwar chaos iraq new york times apr 22 2006 another reported example paving pathway war occupation deceit involves two small trailers captured americanled coalition forces cited bush administration mobile laboratories making biological weapons may 29 2003 president bush claimed polish television found weapons mass destruction found biological laboratories washington post story recently disclosed secret pentagonsponsored team experts examined two trailers unanimously concluded nothing biological weapons experts findings communicated washington field report may 27 2003 two days presidents statement final report presented three weeks later reports stamped secret shelved meanwhile post story went nearly year administration officials continued publicly assert trailers weapons factories apr 12 2006 one administration officials continued turn two benign trailers terrorist weaponry vice president cheney also united methodist three months authoritative opinion dubbed two trailers biggest sand toilets world cheney said nbc meet press theyre possession today mobile biological facilities used produce anthrax smallpox whatever else wanted use course developing capacity attack sept 14 2003 considerable evidence deceit hypocrisy exists would seem morally outrage united methodist leadersand people faith well secret downing street memo july 2002 revealed bush wanted remove saddam hussein military action justified conjunction terrorism wmd intelligence facts fixed around policy bush administration justify invading iraq sunday times britain may 1 2005 another confidential british memo reported new york times march 27 2006 states president bush made clear prime minister tony blair private oval office meeting january 31 2003 determined invade iraq without un resolution condemning iraq even international arms inspectors failed find unconventional weapons extremely secretive memo also says bush blair acknowledged unconventional weapons found inside iraq possibility finding planned invasion led bush propose provoking confrontation painting united states surveillance plane colors united nations hopes drawing fire assassinating mr hussein mar 27 2006 pray peace pray peace paul oneill former treasury secretary said removing saddam hussein power topic 10 days inaugurationeight months sept 11 wwwcbsnewscom jan 11 2004 pray daily pray wisdom guidance strength richard clarke president bushs former chief advisor terrorism reported bush seemed determined use 911 attack america pretext invade iraq clarke said bush told find whether iraq replied looked theres connection bush insisted come back report said iraq wwwcbsnewscom mar 21 2004 one side mouth bush secretly fixing intelligence justify military aggression iraq publicly praying peace side last november 95 united methodist bishops signed statement conscience said repent complicity believe unjust immoral invasion occupation iraq lamented many us silent face united states administrations rush toward military action based misleading information italics added confessed preoccupation institutional enhancement limited agendas american men women sent iraq kill killed thousands iraqi people needlessly suffer die poverty increases preventable diseases go untreated concluding commitment let us object boldness governing powers offer solutions war conflict gospel message selfemptying love united methodist bishops really begin object boldness governing powers violated gospels message selfemptying love governing powers also violated united methodisms insistence first moral duty resolve peaceful means every dispute nations bishops church members president bush vice president cheney furthermore rush toward military action based misleading information act united states administration bush administration contrary opinions certain military professionals present quagmire believed making mistakes invasion occupation iraq committing war crimes 95 united methodist bishops really believe invasion occupation iraq unjust immoral next bold step presenting resolution council bishops calling censure president bush vice president cheney council also recommend churchs jurisdictional council accordance book discipline two professing members charged following offenses b crime c disobedience order discipline united methodist church chargeable offenses p 719 local churches annual conferences methodist federation social action conference chapters related agencies across united methodism could also initiate resolutions censuring bush cheney might include calls impeachment proceedings considerable evidence indicates americas united methodist president vice president repeatedly used deceit hypocrisy wage war oil global domination apparently maintain political power home primarily serve corporate interests result horrible war crimes iraq vast majority people abroad believe president dangerous leader world growing majority americans believe become greatest threat security numerous religious organizations interfaith groups opposed bush administrations invasion occupation iraq next prophetic step people faith also initiate movements censure president bush vice president cheney call impeachment proceedings sake iraq iran north koreaand america time stop president bush praying peace rev william e alberts phd hospital chaplain unitarian universalist united methodist minister written research reports essays articles racism war politics religion reached williamalbertsbmcorg 160 160 160 | 1,087 |
<p />
<p>This just in: War is good for business if you’re a arms manufacturer. But the business is not just booming because the US has to restock its arsenal.</p>
<p>THE BOSTON GLOBE reports that <a href="/arms/" type="external">US arms makers</a> may wind up seeing a windfall from unexpected sources resulting from the bombing of Yugoslavia earlier this year. Recently published statistics show that the NATO campaign was highly dependent upon superior US military technology. The disparity in quality between the US and European militaries has prompted European NATO partners to seek an upgrade in their arsenals. At a meeting last week in Toronto, NATO officials agreed to 58 initiatives aimed at closing that technology gap.</p>
<p>According to the GLOBE, these initiatives, if properly funded, could translate into big business for US arms makers. In addition to increased sales to the NATO countries of Europe, the bombing campaign is also being used as an effective tool for <a href="/arms/" type="external">marketing US-made arms to customers all around the world</a>. The GLOBE predicts increased sales for “smart” bombs made by Boeing and Raytheon, jet engines made by General Electric, and laser guidance equipment from <a href="/reality_check/F22.html" type="external">Lockheed Martin</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/273/business/US_arms_firms_to_benefit_from_showing_in_Kosovo_conflict+.shtml" type="external">http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/273/business/…</a></p>
<p>— <a href="" type="internal">JB</a></p>
<p />
<p>_ <a type="external" href="" />In Scotland,sometimes rape is OK</p>
<p>Sept. 30</p>
<p>Just months after the outcry over <a href="http://www.fanseverywhere.org/" type="external">rapes at Woodstock</a>, researchers on the other side of the Atlantic uncovered more bad news on the sexual violence front. A study by Scotland’s Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust found that fully half of the young men surveyed thought forcing a woman to have sex was sometimes acceptable, reported the <a href="http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_456000/456845.st%20m" type="external">BBC</a>. A third of women aged 14 to 21 felt the same way.</p>
<p>One researcher said she had not predicted such a widespread acceptance of rape, saying, “We didn’t set out to find such a result so we were shocked by it.” Reasons both men and women chose as justifying rape ranged from being in a long-term relationship to having slept around. That’s not surprising in itself; kids hear those cultural messages every day. It’s the sheer numbers that are shocking: 50 percent of 14-to-21-year-old Scottish men shows a lot of justification for the unjustifiable. The number of young women buying into the rape-is-OK reasoning is equally disturbing.</p>
<p>There’s one thing Woodstock and Glasgow have in common: They’re both strong evidence that media messages of women-as-victims don’t go unheard.</p>
<p>For more resources on violence against women, check out the American Bar Association’s <a href="http://www.abanet.org/domviol/home.html" type="external">Domestic Violence Homepage</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_456000/456845.stm" type="external">http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_456000/456845.stm</a></p>
<p>— <a href="" type="internal">KS</a></p>
<p />
<p>_ <a type="external" href="" />That’s imaginary cancer, Junior</p>
<p>Sept. 29</p>
<p>According to the ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS SERVICE (ENS), 103 children in Dover Township, New Jersey are suffering from cancer, making it the nation’s largest “cancer cluster.” State investigators have found evidence of extensive toxic contamination of the local drinking water. However, despite compelling circumstantial evidence, no government study has definitively linked the high rate of cancer in Dover’s children to contaminated groundwater.</p>
<p>Cancer clusters have been getting increasing attention of late. In 1997, President Clinton issues an executive order requiring federal agencies to make identifying environmental health risks to children a “high priority.” Last year, the story of Woburn, Mass. — a small town where 21 children contracted leukemia — was portrayed in a popular film called “A Civil Action,” starring John Travolta.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, according to the ENS, state and federal investigators still claim that in no case have groundwater contaminants been linked to a cancer cluster. In fact, they say a legitimate child cancer cluster has never been proven to exist in the United States.</p>
<p>Check out this excellent, in depth article for more information on the issue.</p>
<p><a href="http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep99/1999L-09-27-01.html" type="external">http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep99/1999L-09-27-01.html</a></p>
<p>— <a href="" type="internal">JB</a></p>
<p />
<p>_ <a type="external" href="" />Get thee to a fact-checker</p>
<p>Sept. 28</p>
<p />
<p>On Sept. 19, ABC ran an hour-long special called “Is America # One?” which compared the economies of India, the US, and Hong Kong in an attempt to prove the successes of American-style free-market capitalism. The show featured ABC correspondent John Stossel (never one to let objectivity get in the way of reporting) interviewing economists, waxing philosophical about health care, and comparing poverty in the first and third worlds. Not everyone was happy with the show’s conclusions, however. <a href="http://www.fair.org/activism/stossel-america.html" type="external">FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN REPORTING</a> (FAIR) issued a highly critical assessment of the show this week, saying, “The program was filled with so many factual inaccuracies … and unsubstantiated claims that it calls into question whether ABC News applied any sort of journalistic standards to the broadcast.” The FAIR release gives contact information and encourages people to voice their opinions directly to the network and the reporter.</p>
<p>Among Stossel’s claims: Poor Americans don’t usually suffer from a lack of access to heath care. He said, “the truth is that when someone is denied [health] care, it makes headlines because it’s so unusual. Most of the time, even the poorest person going to the emergency room gets the same … treatment” as wealthy people. After asking people lined up at a food pantry in the South Bronx if they owned VCRs and microwaves, he issued this touching dispatch: “These people … aren’t here because they’ve been going without food. They come because the food is free.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fair.org/activism/stossel-america.html" type="external">http://www.fair.org/activism/stossel-america.html</a></p>
<p>— <a href="" type="internal">jr</a></p>
<p />
<p>_ <a type="external" href="" />School of Americas still in business</p>
<p>Sept. 27</p>
<p />
<p>Last July, the House voted 230 to 197 to cut $2 million in funding for the US Army-run School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Last week, however, a House conference committee voted 8-7 to restore the funds, which are used to cover the costs of bringing soldiers from Latin America to the US for training. Over its 53-year history, the School of the Americas has graduated more than “57,000 officers, cadets, noncommissioned officers, and government civilians from 22 Latin American countries” and the US, according to the school’s own <a href="http://www.benning.army.mil/usarsa/index.html" type="external">Web site</a>. As reported in the <a href="http://www.l-e-o.com/news/0923soacopy.htm" type="external">LEDGER-ENQUIRER</a> (Colombus, Ga.), SOA spokesman Nicholas Britto said, “We feel that finally the American people, through Congress, have decided that the school is needed.” (In an unfortunate oversight, Britto did not explain how a vote by 15 people, which nullified the will of more than 400 elected officials, represents democracy at work, but we’ll take his word for it.)</p>
<p>Not everyone is happy with the decision, however. Critics — like Washington DC-based <a href="http://www.soaw.org/" type="external">SOA Watch</a> — say that the school’s graduates “have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America,” funded and endorsed by the US when it suited national objectives. Calls to shut down the SOA intensified after graduates from the school were implicated in the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests and two women in El Salvador.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.l-e-o.com/news/0923soacopy.htm" type="external">http://www.l-e-o.com/news/0923soacopy.htm</a></p>
<p>— <a href="" type="internal">jr</a></p>
<p /> | true | 4 | war good business youre arms manufacturer business booming us restock arsenal boston globe reports us arms makers may wind seeing windfall unexpected sources resulting bombing yugoslavia earlier year recently published statistics show nato campaign highly dependent upon superior us military technology disparity quality us european militaries prompted european nato partners seek upgrade arsenals meeting last week toronto nato officials agreed 58 initiatives aimed closing technology gap according globe initiatives properly funded could translate big business us arms makers addition increased sales nato countries europe bombing campaign also used effective tool marketing usmade arms customers around world globe predicts increased sales smart bombs made boeing raytheon jet engines made general electric laser guidance equipment lockheed martin httpwwwbostoncomdailyglobe2273business jb _ scotlandsometimes rape ok sept 30 months outcry rapes woodstock researchers side atlantic uncovered bad news sexual violence front study scotlands zero tolerance charitable trust found fully half young men surveyed thought forcing woman sex sometimes acceptable reported bbc third women aged 14 21 felt way one researcher said predicted widespread acceptance rape saying didnt set find result shocked reasons men women chose justifying rape ranged longterm relationship slept around thats surprising kids hear cultural messages every day sheer numbers shocking 50 percent 14to21yearold scottish men shows lot justification unjustifiable number young women buying rapeisok reasoning equally disturbing theres one thing woodstock glasgow common theyre strong evidence media messages womenasvictims dont go unheard resources violence women check american bar associations domestic violence homepage httpnews2thlsbbccoukhienglishukscotlandnewsid_456000456845stm ks _ thats imaginary cancer junior sept 29 according environmental news service ens 103 children dover township new jersey suffering cancer making nations largest cancer cluster state investigators found evidence extensive toxic contamination local drinking water however despite compelling circumstantial evidence government study definitively linked high rate cancer dovers children contaminated groundwater cancer clusters getting increasing attention late 1997 president clinton issues executive order requiring federal agencies make identifying environmental health risks children high priority last year story woburn mass small town 21 children contracted leukemia portrayed popular film called civil action starring john travolta nevertheless according ens state federal investigators still claim case groundwater contaminants linked cancer cluster fact say legitimate child cancer cluster never proven exist united states check excellent depth article information issue httpenslycoscomenssep991999l092701html jb _ get thee factchecker sept 28 sept 19 abc ran hourlong special called america one compared economies india us hong kong attempt prove successes americanstyle freemarket capitalism show featured abc correspondent john stossel never one let objectivity get way reporting interviewing economists waxing philosophical health care comparing poverty first third worlds everyone happy shows conclusions however fairness accuracy reporting fair issued highly critical assessment show week saying program filled many factual inaccuracies unsubstantiated claims calls question whether abc news applied sort journalistic standards broadcast fair release gives contact information encourages people voice opinions directly network reporter among stossels claims poor americans dont usually suffer lack access heath care said truth someone denied health care makes headlines unusual time even poorest person going emergency room gets treatment wealthy people asking people lined food pantry south bronx owned vcrs microwaves issued touching dispatch people arent theyve going without food come food free httpwwwfairorgactivismstosselamericahtml jr _ school americas still business sept 27 last july house voted 230 197 cut 2 million funding us armyrun school americas fort benning georgia last week however house conference committee voted 87 restore funds used cover costs bringing soldiers latin america us training 53year history school americas graduated 57000 officers cadets noncommissioned officers government civilians 22 latin american countries us according schools web site reported ledgerenquirer colombus ga soa spokesman nicholas britto said feel finally american people congress decided school needed unfortunate oversight britto explain vote 15 people nullified 400 elected officials represents democracy work well take word everyone happy decision however critics like washington dcbased soa watch say schools graduates responsible worst human rights abuses latin america funded endorsed us suited national objectives calls shut soa intensified graduates school implicated 1989 murders six jesuit priests two women el salvador httpwwwleocomnews0923soacopyhtm jr | 663 |
<p>In an attempt to win people to its side, or at least distance them from the Nile Uprising that has made its symbolic home in Tahrir Square, the Egyptian government has promised a 15% increase in the salaries of all public sector employees.&#160; This, of course, is merely the latest gesture of change offered by the ruling regime and follows far more dramatic events, including the removal of high profile political types from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), not the least of which being Mubarak himself; discussion with certain members of the opposition; and condemnations of violent acts against the protesters themselves over the last two weeks.&#160; It is not terribly likely that these moves by the government will strike many of the Egyptian people as being even remotely sincere.&#160; Over the past thirty years of his reign, Mubarak has promised change and followed up on nothing.&#160; The pay raises, however, are a craftier policy move, one that is undoubtedly intended to show an immediate change in the regime’s course of action.&#160; All in all, this is the other side of despotic rule, the side that would feign abhorrence towards the fullness of its own brutality and offer paltry fixes to the much deeper problems that lurk just at the surface.</p>
<p>Will this move work?&#160; We will have to wait and see.&#160; If the country’s economy continues to fall into a tailspin, it’s quite likely that it will fail spectacularly.&#160; Any sharp uptick in inflation would render a 15% salary increase unnoticeable to the man or woman plugging away diligently in the offices of Egypt’s labyrinthine governmental agencies.&#160; If the economy stabilizes, on the other hand, the question then is whether or not the government has an accurate read on the demands of the people.&#160; Is it the economy, stupid?&#160; Or is it a far more entangled mess that Hosni has gotten himself and his coddling benefactors into.&#160; After all, in addition to the economy, what of arbitrary police brutality? Or what of the regime’s habit of crushing any semblance of political opposition?&#160; Or what of the rampant corruption that gums up the basic daily lives of millions of Egyptians?&#160; And so on and so forth.</p>
<p>The problem is as complex as the bureaucratic structure built up by Mubarak to shield his rule from accountability and change.&#160; Ultimately, the government has landed in an impossible predicament and I say this without the slightest sympathy for them.&#160; In order to meet the ultimately moderate demands of the Nile Uprising, the government would need to cease to be what it has created itself to be.&#160; Over the past 30 years, it has meticulously grown a security apparatus that leaves its mark on all aspects of Egyptian life.&#160; From the presence of well-armed uniformed policemen to the constant threat of undercover agents who can kidnap and torture with impunity, security is the true source of terror for the Egyptian people.&#160; The intent, of course, is to create the sense that Egyptians are being watched, constantly and in every place.&#160; The constant threat of force and intimidation was undoubtedly meant to work its way into the psyche of the people, thereby creating a permanently docile and controllable populace.&#160; And for decades, this seemed to be a functional and effective tactic.&#160; Policy experts and politicians, pundits and business leaders spoke with tremendous confidence that the “stability” of Egypt was a given not to be questioned.&#160; The capitals of the western world echoed with loving praise of Mubarak’s efforts.&#160; He had, in their eyes, created the perfect system, one that could carry the trappings of a 21st Century developing nation, facilitate a mild trickle of capital through that corner of the African continent, and ensure an unquestioning partner in the U.S.’s Global War on Terror.</p>
<p>But Mubarak and his western patrons were obviously caught with their proverbial pants down.&#160; With intense speed and sophistication we have seen that a huge portion of the Egyptian people is no longer willing to be subjected to the security interests of others at their own expense.&#160; No longer content with being pawns in someone else’s game, what we have seen over the last few weeks is people rising up to create an entirely new game for themselves.</p>
<p>The question now facing western governments is whether they will hedge their bets, praying that their capsizing comprehension of the world will right itself, or whether they will support real reform in Egypt and beyond.&#160; Given current statements and actions (as well as a wealth of historical guidance) I think we can safely say that the west will put all their chips on the table and bet on the NDP.&#160; After all, they are as complicit in the construction of Egypt’s police state as Mubarak himself.&#160; And because of this, the status quo is equally in the interest of Mubarak’s regime and those who haunt the halls of power in Washington, Tel Aviv, and London.&#160; The Nile Uprising, in other words, is so important because there is so much at stake.</p>
<p>And what of this conglomeration of western powers?&#160; Without doubt, Mubarak owes deep gratitude to the U.S., which has, through thick and thin, good times and bad, pumped a constant flow of cash and expertise into his government, military, and security apparatus.&#160; Without the U.S., the Mubarak regime would have faded into the annals of history years ago.&#160; Obama, though showing profound ineptitude at the outset of this crisis, has gathered his wits and is at present working diligently with his Secretary of State to develop a plan that would sufficiently defuse the momentum and demands of the uprising.&#160; Calls for change are twinned with dire warnings of the need for a smooth transition of power.&#160; Omar Suleiman, the U.S.’s rendition program Torture Czar go-to man in Egypt has assumed a central position in the decision-making process and is offering the world assurances that change will happen when the people of Egypt have proven that they are mature enough for the democratic process.&#160; He and Hillary seem to chat on a daily basis, which ought to give us a clear picture of the Obama Administration’s position on participatory governance in Egypt.&#160; Meanwhile, despite the fact that he holds far more power than he did prior to the uprising, Suleiman makes it clear that Mubarak is still present and running the show.&#160; Whether this is true or not is thoroughly beside the point simply because the policies of Mubarak will be the policies of Suleiman which will be the policies of his successor if the U.S. has any say in the matter.&#160; As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.</p>
<p>Mubarak also owes immeasurable thanks to Israel’s current Likudist government, as well as governments past.&#160; Throughout the uprising, the Israelis held out unwavering support to their friend-to-the-south, cajoled any governments that dared offer tepid condemnation of the NDP’s brutal attacks on Egyptian protesters, and pressured the U.S. government to not finally cut the Egyptian regime loose once and for all.&#160; And then, of course, there are the French, Germans, and British who have done their part in ensuring that a democratic system never sees the light of day in Egypt.&#160; Such is life in the days of 21st Empire!</p>
<p>There is tremendous irony in this wave of support for the regime coming from the west.&#160; From January 25 forward, the NDP cynically attempted to roil the Egyptian masses during the uprising with constant claims in the state-run media that “outside forces” were the source of the conflict.&#160; Reports even trickled in to Al Jazeera that NDP members of parliament were rallying people to defend the nation against Americans who, apparently, had taken over Tahrir Square.&#160; Of course there weren’t Americans there. Instead, they found Egyptians rising up for Egyptians.&#160; This did not deter extreme acts of violence on the part of the regime and its mercenaries.&#160; For those of us who watched Al Jazeera’s grainy live video feeds, we saw thugs of all stripes rain wrath and violence on what had been a peaceful protest.&#160; Alongside those tricked into defending Egypt from invasion were official employees of Egypt’s Ministry of the Interior.&#160; Others were temporary workers, offered short-term employment with considerable compensation.&#160; As convulsions of violence ripped through the center of Egypt’s capital and throughout the country, the Obama Administration and other western leaders pathetically called for restraint on all sides.&#160; But the side that spoke the language of violence only continued.&#160; After all, they had received $1.3 billion a year since 1981 to do just that, so why stop now?</p>
<p>At present, Mubarak remains in power.&#160; His underling, Omar Suleiman, is meant to be the new face of the NDP’s old terror machine.&#160; But this public relations move is clearly meant for western media consumption only.&#160; After all, his is a face quite familiar to the peopleof Egypt and one that does not bring to the mind words like hope or change.&#160; Indeed, it is a face that reflects the hypocrisy of western foreign policy when it comes to that part of the world.&#160; After all, when it comes to the Middle East, we love change, as long as everything stays the same.</p>
<p>TARECQ M. AMER is a doctoral candidate in geography at the University of California, Davis and can be reached at <a href="mailto:tmamer@ucdavis.edu" type="external">tmamer@ucdavis.edu</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | attempt win people side least distance nile uprising made symbolic home tahrir square egyptian government promised 15 increase salaries public sector employees160 course merely latest gesture change offered ruling regime follows far dramatic events including removal high profile political types ruling national democratic party ndp least mubarak discussion certain members opposition condemnations violent acts protesters last two weeks160 terribly likely moves government strike many egyptian people even remotely sincere160 past thirty years reign mubarak promised change followed nothing160 pay raises however craftier policy move one undoubtedly intended show immediate change regimes course action160 side despotic rule side would feign abhorrence towards fullness brutality offer paltry fixes much deeper problems lurk surface move work160 wait see160 countrys economy continues fall tailspin quite likely fail spectacularly160 sharp uptick inflation would render 15 salary increase unnoticeable man woman plugging away diligently offices egypts labyrinthine governmental agencies160 economy stabilizes hand question whether government accurate read demands people160 economy stupid160 far entangled mess hosni gotten coddling benefactors into160 addition economy arbitrary police brutality regimes habit crushing semblance political opposition160 rampant corruption gums basic daily lives millions egyptians160 forth problem complex bureaucratic structure built mubarak shield rule accountability change160 ultimately government landed impossible predicament say without slightest sympathy them160 order meet ultimately moderate demands nile uprising government would need cease created be160 past 30 years meticulously grown security apparatus leaves mark aspects egyptian life160 presence wellarmed uniformed policemen constant threat undercover agents kidnap torture impunity security true source terror egyptian people160 intent course create sense egyptians watched constantly every place160 constant threat force intimidation undoubtedly meant work way psyche people thereby creating permanently docile controllable populace160 decades seemed functional effective tactic160 policy experts politicians pundits business leaders spoke tremendous confidence stability egypt given questioned160 capitals western world echoed loving praise mubaraks efforts160 eyes created perfect system one could carry trappings 21st century developing nation facilitate mild trickle capital corner african continent ensure unquestioning partner uss global war terror mubarak western patrons obviously caught proverbial pants down160 intense speed sophistication seen huge portion egyptian people longer willing subjected security interests others expense160 longer content pawns someone elses game seen last weeks people rising create entirely new game question facing western governments whether hedge bets praying capsizing comprehension world right whether support real reform egypt beyond160 given current statements actions well wealth historical guidance think safely say west put chips table bet ndp160 complicit construction egypts police state mubarak himself160 status quo equally interest mubaraks regime haunt halls power washington tel aviv london160 nile uprising words important much stake conglomeration western powers160 without doubt mubarak owes deep gratitude us thick thin good times bad pumped constant flow cash expertise government military security apparatus160 without us mubarak regime would faded annals history years ago160 obama though showing profound ineptitude outset crisis gathered wits present working diligently secretary state develop plan would sufficiently defuse momentum demands uprising160 calls change twinned dire warnings need smooth transition power160 omar suleiman uss rendition program torture czar goto man egypt assumed central position decisionmaking process offering world assurances change happen people egypt proven mature enough democratic process160 hillary seem chat daily basis ought give us clear picture obama administrations position participatory governance egypt160 meanwhile despite fact holds far power prior uprising suleiman makes clear mubarak still present running show160 whether true thoroughly beside point simply policies mubarak policies suleiman policies successor us say matter160 say things change stay mubarak also owes immeasurable thanks israels current likudist government well governments past160 throughout uprising israelis held unwavering support friendtothesouth cajoled governments dared offer tepid condemnation ndps brutal attacks egyptian protesters pressured us government finally cut egyptian regime loose all160 course french germans british done part ensuring democratic system never sees light day egypt160 life days 21st empire tremendous irony wave support regime coming west160 january 25 forward ndp cynically attempted roil egyptian masses uprising constant claims staterun media outside forces source conflict160 reports even trickled al jazeera ndp members parliament rallying people defend nation americans apparently taken tahrir square160 course werent americans instead found egyptians rising egyptians160 deter extreme acts violence part regime mercenaries160 us watched al jazeeras grainy live video feeds saw thugs stripes rain wrath violence peaceful protest160 alongside tricked defending egypt invasion official employees egypts ministry interior160 others temporary workers offered shortterm employment considerable compensation160 convulsions violence ripped center egypts capital throughout country obama administration western leaders pathetically called restraint sides160 side spoke language violence continued160 received 13 billion year since 1981 stop present mubarak remains power160 underling omar suleiman meant new face ndps old terror machine160 public relations move clearly meant western media consumption only160 face quite familiar peopleof egypt one bring mind words like hope change160 indeed face reflects hypocrisy western foreign policy comes part world160 comes middle east love change long everything stays tarecq amer doctoral candidate geography university california davis reached tmamerucdavisedu 160 | 804 |
<p>Photo by Blondinrikard Fröberg | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>Shahid Beshesti University (SBU), Tehran</p>
<p>On several occasions, meeting with brilliant, tech-savvy Iranian university students who are thoroughly charming, fearless and outspoken, this observer is presented a very different picture of what Iranians are facing than what is being offered by some pro-regimen internet bloggers and water carriers.</p>
<p>It is from Iranian students, among others that this observer has learned during recent scintillating conversations about current events in Iran as well student’s radiant optimism about Iran’s future if what they call the current “theocratic dictatorship” is removed.</p>
<p>More than 1,000 students, most of whom attend Tehran or Beshesti Universities are among approximately 4,000 Iranian civilians who have been arrested, more than 200 in “preventive detention.” This, according to reports from the Iranian Students’ News Agency which quoted Mahmoud Sadeghi, a reformist member of parliament as complaining that “many of those arrested were not even involved in protests.” One Iranian woman, speaking from Europe, told Fox News by phone on 1/9/2017 that her family member – 31-year-old Alireza Gomar – suffered a “bullet in the heart” while demonstrating outside an office for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tuyserkan, Hamadan Province, on 12/31/2017. The relative said he was rushed to the hospital by fellow activists but later died and that members of&#160;the Iranian Revolutionary Guards took his body – and others who had&#160;been wounded – directly from the hospital. “Our family had to beg to get the body back. The Guards wanted them first to agree to be silent, to not tell the media what had happened,” the relative claimed. “Only after five days did they get his body back as the family kept up the pressure,&#160;but there were IRGC surrounding the funeral.”</p>
<p>Unlike the widespread 2009 election fraud protests, which left at least 30 citizens dead and hundreds jailed with some politicians still under house arrest eight years later, the current protests are not only about various specific economic grievances but rather they constitute an historic challenge to the very presumption of an Islamic republic.</p>
<p>Also unlike 2009, Iranians today have a powerful weapon in social/mass media communication, which, while being franticly targeted by the regime, will survive and it will grow. It’s true that seemingly panicked hard-liner Iranian clerics have recently been calling for Iran to create its own indigenous social media apps, blaming current social apps for the uprising. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami preached this during last&#160;week’s Friday prayers in Tehran. He insisted that when the regime blocked social media “the riots stopped.” Khatami insists that “the nation does not support a social network because its key is in the hand of the United States and that anyone who burned Iran’s flag should be sentenced to death.” This view is agreed to, but qualified slightly, by Ali Khomeini who blames the usual suspects, the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The regime has blocked much social media but without significant intimidation of protesters.</p>
<p>Regime officials last week also announced that teaching English in Iran opened the way to a western “cultural invasion” and the regime&#160;has now banned the teaching of English in primary schools, a senior education official has announced. “Teaching English in government and non-government schools is against laws and regulations,” Mehdi Navid-Adham, head of the regimes high education council, told state television. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei voiced outrage over the “teaching of the English language spreading to nursery schools, insisting that “this is the promotion of a foreign culture in the country and among children, young adults and youths.” A video of the announcement of the ban has become a joke in Iran and is being widely circulated by students and others on social media with Iranians calling it “the filtering of English” while sarcastically comparing it to the recent blocking of the popular apps Telegram, and Instantgram by the government.</p>
<p>The formidable impediments regime internal security forces are currently targeting protestors with, according to students at Tehran and Beshesti Universities, and other Iranians, as well as research by Iran scholar Saeid Golkar include some of the following:</p>
<p>The main security, military, and judicial branches of Iran’s coercive apparatus are the police (NAJA), the Basij, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). All are under the control of Ali Khamenei.</p>
<p>The NAJA (police) national police commandership oversees all of Iran’s 31 provinces, each of which controls all police stations in a specific province. Each city within a province has one disciplinary area (nahieh-e entezami) that administers all police stations. Normally, according to a Professor at Tehran University, every Iranian police station has deputies of prevention, of intelligence, of inspections, of operations, as well as a judiciary police official. There are approximately 200,000 police with 100,000 additional support staff. Roughly 40% of the latter work for various surveillance organizations that closely monitor more than 4,600 neighborhoods.</p>
<p>In addition to the police, Iran’s notorious Basij target students and other protestors regardless of the subject, should they criticize the regime. Iran’s Basij is the largest civil militia organization in the world, including China and Russia’s. It has approximately six million members working from twenty-four branches with four rankings, regular, active, cadre, and special. The Basij also operate a network consisting of Basij bases, districts, and regions. The Basij bases operate in more than 50,000 locations throughout Iran and students claim not much ever happens, on or off campus, without them keeping close tabs. Each Basij district operates ten to fifteen bases and is home to around 45 sundry, opaque local security and military forces. These districts are controlled by IRGC regional branches.</p>
<p>The Basij also operate security and military units, including the Imam Ali Security Battalions, which are trained in special tactics such as the use of customized bespoke weapons and motorcycles to suppress unrest. Some active Basij members are organized into rapid-reaction battalions called the Beit al-Muqaddas, with responsibility for defending vital installations in their neighborhoods.</p>
<p>In addition, the IRGC operates approximately a dozen regional headquarters with each commanding a handful of provincial corps specializing in neutralizing opposition to the regime such as protests and insurgency. All members of the IRGC Ground Forces and Basij report to their local IRGC provincial corps and focus on quelling internal disorder. The IRGC-IO also has its Basij intelligence staff (stead-e khaberi-e Basij), whose members operates in Iran’s estimated 4,000 Basij districts. Much like the Herasat noted below, the Basij intelligence officers act as the regime’s eyes and ears by monitoring citizen activities and keeping files on local activists.</p>
<p>The Iranian regime also operates two dozen different security organizations, in addition to the Ministry of Intelligence, the IRGC Intelligence Organization (IRGC-IO), and the Intelligence and Public Security Police (PAVA), a branch of the NAJA. All of them are overseen by the Supreme Leader and all work exclusively to protect the regime.</p>
<p>These organizations also have control over Iranian society through the Herasat and IRGC-IO. The Intelligence Ministry has established Herasat branches in every civilian organization and all of the Universities in the country. Their main job is to identify and neutralize perceived security threats. Herasat officials reportedly surveil employees by monitoring their communications and act as informants, and influence hiring and firing practices.</p>
<p>PAVA, the Public Security Police (PAVA), a branch of the NAJA is responsible for gathering intelligence in neighborhoods and penetrating Iran’s guilds, arresting any workers who are deemed too subversive. To do so, it runs a network of local informers (mokhber mahali) to collect news and rumors. PAVA has also been tasked with conducting religious activities and ferreting out homes used for Christian worship.</p>
<p>The regime controlled judiciary, according to Iranian sources, is another key part of Iran’s coercive apparatus currently being used against protestors. The regime operates numerous extraconstitutional courts, the Special Court of the Clergy specializes in silencing dissident clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Courts try dissent against the regime cases. These court were used to suppress uprisings, including the 1992 riots in Mashhad and Shiraz (where some demonstrators were sentenced to death during summary trials) and the 2009 Green Movement, where 30 activists were killed, and hundreds were sentenced to long-term imprisonment. Color coding Iran’s protesters At any given time, Iran’s security condition, is assigned one of four colors: white, gray, yellow, and red. White is everyday public order. Gray is when unorganized opposition peacefully undermine public order, with no sign of violence. In that case, the police are mainly responsible for controlling the situation and maintaining order. Basij offices help the police quash any strikes, while Herasat personnel help gather intelligence and identify protestors.</p>
<p>If the police cannot control a given situation and the crisis intensifies, the regime invokes condition yellow, in which an organized opposition has begun more violent forms of protest such as disrupting order, blocking public spaces, and attacking public buildings. In response, the Basij are required to work more closely with the police by intensifying their intelligence activities and increasing their patrols and checkpoint stops. Plainclothes Basij officers are responsible for penetrating demonstrations, identifying activists, and misleading protestors. Other Basij members deploy near police personnel, recording videos and occasionally attacking people. In some cases, they use motorcycles to take control of the streets, contain unrest, and intimidate protesters, using force as needed to scatter people.</p>
<p>Finally, if the above measures fail to reestablish control, the security level increases to condition red, defined as a crisis in which revolts have expanded throughout the country and the opposition is using weapons. In this case, the IRGC takes full control of internal operations, and all other forces must work with the Guards to restore control. During the current protests, IRGC forces have reportedly been deployed in three provinces to smash demonstrations. Following my hosts two-hour detailed description of how government security forces will attack their demands, my Iranian friends gazed at my chagrined face and pursed lips with a touch of concern and empathy. And, bless them, they tried to assure this observer that all was not hopeless. They explained to me that I should take some solace from the fact that they, and many Iranian protesters know a lot of the security forces, especially the Basij some of whose members may be neighbors, friends, or relatives.</p>
<p>Although the regime has spent a lot of money on security groups, Iranian friends question how reliable or disciplined they sometimes are when it comes to beating, terrorizing and arresting their own community.</p>
<p>Many in the security services also themselves suffer from economic and other regime caused problems. Moreover, morale and cohesion are impacted by the social makeup of individual units, as well as the social and class cleavages present in Iranian society. This has been a serious problem for the regime during the current protests because many security personnel are reportedly drawn from the country’s lower and lower-middle classes and its smaller cities. These are the same people they are being ordered to suppress.</p>
<p>I am advised that there is also speculation that cracks may be appearing among the Republican Guards leading to a domino effect shaking the regime. History vaguely instructs that the tipping point for a repressive regime often comes-sometimes suddenly-when those tasked with internal repression sympathize with the protesters and either stand down or declare their rejection of the regime.</p>
<p>Today there is much concern on University campuses in Iran for students and other citizens who have been “disappeared” by regime forces.</p>
<p>On 1/9/2018 Amnesty international called for an investigation of reports that at least five people were murdered in custody among 23 killed among the nearly 4000 arrested. Iranian authorities claim that all five-committed suicide. Amnesty wants independent autopsies of all of them according to Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa: “We have long documented the nightmarish conditions in detention facilities in Iran, including the use of torture. Those suspected of having any responsibility for these deaths must be prosecuted in proceedings that respect international fair trial standards and without recourse to the death penalty.”</p>
<p>Fears for the lives of hundreds of detainees have been heightened by the unexplained death of five students held in the ‘quarantine’ section of Tehran’s Evin prison, where detainees are taken immediately after being arrested. Among the regime claimed ‘suicides’ are of Sina Ghanbari, 23, and Vahid Heydari and Moshsen Adeli, who died in custody in Markazi and Khuzestan provinces. Not one of them, according to fellow prisoners and family members committed suicide.</p>
<p>In this observer’s view the continuing demonstrations constitute an historic watershed moment for the Iranian people. The genie is out of the bottle and humpty dumpty has been splattered.</p>
<p>Regime efforts to turn back the clock of global communication and cut off Iranians from engaging politically with one another will ultimately fail. Nor are most Iranians supportive of the Mullahs insistence to turn Iran into a regional hegemonic power. Iranians, like most people, want to improve lives in their own country and not subjugate other countries fantasizing about what may have been 2500 years ago during the Persian empire, which, in all events only lasted a bit more than 200 years.</p>
<p>Students report that the uprising is not a question of being pro-West. Rather they simply do not want to be a part of an Islamic Republic. The idea of having Mullahs dictate the conduct of their personal lives and beliefs in the country is simply not acceptable to this generation. Nor for an increasing number of their parents’ generation. They want much more freedom and much more democracy. Not because they seek what Western countries have but because they are universal human value</p>
<p>One student explained that many regime officials fancy themselves “revolutionaries” and that there is nothing they fear more than a “counterrevolution.” When asked about speculation that the current uprising will die out or be crushed by the regime, the students were emphatic. “This may well be the case. The Mullahs have the highest per capita execution rate in the world, they treat us women like second-class citizens, constantly harass gays and religious minorities. For many Iranians they appear to resemble Daesh (ISIS)! And there is no such thing as free speech. So real change will not be easy.” His friend added. “The more we demonstrate the more brutal the regime will be. Victory will not be fast, nor will it be easy for us, but I promise you that we will succeed.”</p>
<p>While this observer does not concur with all of UK journalist Robert Fisk’s views on Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Iran, he does credit Fisk’s comment published this week: “My own concerns lie in the inherent cruelty of an (Iranian) regime which can send a young and innocent woman to the gallows as a prison official yells taunts at her mother on the daughter’s mobile phone. I’ve said before that the gallows stain Iran far more than the centrifuge.”</p>
<p>Near the entrance to Tehran’s ‘Grand Bazaar’ Souk, an Iranian mother of three beautiful rambunctious children, who teaches in a private North Tehran school explained to this observer when he asked her about reports of growing agnosticism among educated young Iranians, “I am sure there is some of this happening. And its likely due to our religiously bigoted regime. I am a devout Muslim. Islam will always play a role in my life and I think the same is true of most of Iranians. But why not allow us to return Islam to our homes. Religion is a personal, private and family matter isn’t it? That is what the Koran teaches us, and it makes sense. What we Iranians want is to live in an Iranian republic not an 7th Century Islamic republic! We can get that from Daesh (ISIS). Many of these holier than thou Mullahs care less about true Islam. They are quite simply corrupt politicians using Islam to repress us and steal Iran’s wealth and potential. When the Madhi (PBUH) does appear from Occultation, he will surely damn these corrupt Mullahs, every one of them!”</p>
<p>However, whatever happens during the months ahead, a key regime barrier has been shattered. Iranians are no longer contained by the wall of fear. Iranians have demonstrated that they will no longer participate in the political game of “reformist vs. conservative” (better known as “moderates vs. conservatives” in the West). For them, no one from the establishment, including the so-called reformists, can make their lives better.</p>
<p>For them, the entire system must fall for a new Iran to be reborn. Iranians are focused on improving life inside Iran and given the opportunity, Iran’s Steller people can quickly achieve this.</p> | true | 4 | photo blondinrikard fröberg cc 20 shahid beshesti university sbu tehran several occasions meeting brilliant techsavvy iranian university students thoroughly charming fearless outspoken observer presented different picture iranians facing offered proregimen internet bloggers water carriers iranian students among others observer learned recent scintillating conversations current events iran well students radiant optimism irans future call current theocratic dictatorship removed 1000 students attend tehran beshesti universities among approximately 4000 iranian civilians arrested 200 preventive detention according reports iranian students news agency quoted mahmoud sadeghi reformist member parliament complaining many arrested even involved protests one iranian woman speaking europe told fox news phone 192017 family member 31yearold alireza gomar suffered bullet heart demonstrating outside office iranian revolutionary guard corps irgc tuyserkan hamadan province 12312017 relative said rushed hospital fellow activists later died members of160the iranian revolutionary guards took body others had160been wounded directly hospital family beg get body back guards wanted first agree silent tell media happened relative claimed five days get body back family kept pressure160but irgc surrounding funeral unlike widespread 2009 election fraud protests left least 30 citizens dead hundreds jailed politicians still house arrest eight years later current protests various specific economic grievances rather constitute historic challenge presumption islamic republic also unlike 2009 iranians today powerful weapon socialmass media communication franticly targeted regime survive grow true seemingly panicked hardliner iranian clerics recently calling iran create indigenous social media apps blaming current social apps uprising ayatollah ahmad khatami preached last160weeks friday prayers tehran insisted regime blocked social media riots stopped khatami insists nation support social network key hand united states anyone burned irans flag sentenced death view agreed qualified slightly ali khomeini blames usual suspects usa israel saudi arabia regime blocked much social media without significant intimidation protesters regime officials last week also announced teaching english iran opened way western cultural invasion regime160has banned teaching english primary schools senior education official announced teaching english government nongovernment schools laws regulations mehdi navidadham head regimes high education council told state television ayatollah ali khamenei voiced outrage teaching english language spreading nursery schools insisting promotion foreign culture country among children young adults youths video announcement ban become joke iran widely circulated students others social media iranians calling filtering english sarcastically comparing recent blocking popular apps telegram instantgram government formidable impediments regime internal security forces currently targeting protestors according students tehran beshesti universities iranians well research iran scholar saeid golkar include following main security military judicial branches irans coercive apparatus police naja basij islamic revolutionary guard corps irgc control ali khamenei naja police national police commandership oversees irans 31 provinces controls police stations specific province city within province one disciplinary area nahiehe entezami administers police stations normally according professor tehran university every iranian police station deputies prevention intelligence inspections operations well judiciary police official approximately 200000 police 100000 additional support staff roughly 40 latter work various surveillance organizations closely monitor 4600 neighborhoods addition police irans notorious basij target students protestors regardless subject criticize regime irans basij largest civil militia organization world including china russias approximately six million members working twentyfour branches four rankings regular active cadre special basij also operate network consisting basij bases districts regions basij bases operate 50000 locations throughout iran students claim much ever happens campus without keeping close tabs basij district operates ten fifteen bases home around 45 sundry opaque local security military forces districts controlled irgc regional branches basij also operate security military units including imam ali security battalions trained special tactics use customized bespoke weapons motorcycles suppress unrest active basij members organized rapidreaction battalions called beit almuqaddas responsibility defending vital installations neighborhoods addition irgc operates approximately dozen regional headquarters commanding handful provincial corps specializing neutralizing opposition regime protests insurgency members irgc ground forces basij report local irgc provincial corps focus quelling internal disorder irgcio also basij intelligence staff steade khaberie basij whose members operates irans estimated 4000 basij districts much like herasat noted basij intelligence officers act regimes eyes ears monitoring citizen activities keeping files local activists iranian regime also operates two dozen different security organizations addition ministry intelligence irgc intelligence organization irgcio intelligence public security police pava branch naja overseen supreme leader work exclusively protect regime organizations also control iranian society herasat irgcio intelligence ministry established herasat branches every civilian organization universities country main job identify neutralize perceived security threats herasat officials reportedly surveil employees monitoring communications act informants influence hiring firing practices pava public security police pava branch naja responsible gathering intelligence neighborhoods penetrating irans guilds arresting workers deemed subversive runs network local informers mokhber mahali collect news rumors pava also tasked conducting religious activities ferreting homes used christian worship regime controlled judiciary according iranian sources another key part irans coercive apparatus currently used protestors regime operates numerous extraconstitutional courts special court clergy specializes silencing dissident clerics islamic revolutionary courts try dissent regime cases court used suppress uprisings including 1992 riots mashhad shiraz demonstrators sentenced death summary trials 2009 green movement 30 activists killed hundreds sentenced longterm imprisonment color coding irans protesters given time irans security condition assigned one four colors white gray yellow red white everyday public order gray unorganized opposition peacefully undermine public order sign violence case police mainly responsible controlling situation maintaining order basij offices help police quash strikes herasat personnel help gather intelligence identify protestors police control given situation crisis intensifies regime invokes condition yellow organized opposition begun violent forms protest disrupting order blocking public spaces attacking public buildings response basij required work closely police intensifying intelligence activities increasing patrols checkpoint stops plainclothes basij officers responsible penetrating demonstrations identifying activists misleading protestors basij members deploy near police personnel recording videos occasionally attacking people cases use motorcycles take control streets contain unrest intimidate protesters using force needed scatter people finally measures fail reestablish control security level increases condition red defined crisis revolts expanded throughout country opposition using weapons case irgc takes full control internal operations forces must work guards restore control current protests irgc forces reportedly deployed three provinces smash demonstrations following hosts twohour detailed description government security forces attack demands iranian friends gazed chagrined face pursed lips touch concern empathy bless tried assure observer hopeless explained take solace fact many iranian protesters know lot security forces especially basij whose members may neighbors friends relatives although regime spent lot money security groups iranian friends question reliable disciplined sometimes comes beating terrorizing arresting community many security services also suffer economic regime caused problems moreover morale cohesion impacted social makeup individual units well social class cleavages present iranian society serious problem regime current protests many security personnel reportedly drawn countrys lower lowermiddle classes smaller cities people ordered suppress advised also speculation cracks may appearing among republican guards leading domino effect shaking regime history vaguely instructs tipping point repressive regime often comessometimes suddenlywhen tasked internal repression sympathize protesters either stand declare rejection regime today much concern university campuses iran students citizens disappeared regime forces 192018 amnesty international called investigation reports least five people murdered custody among 23 killed among nearly 4000 arrested iranian authorities claim fivecommitted suicide amnesty wants independent autopsies according magdalena mughrabi amnesty deputy director middle east north africa long documented nightmarish conditions detention facilities iran including use torture suspected responsibility deaths must prosecuted proceedings respect international fair trial standards without recourse death penalty fears lives hundreds detainees heightened unexplained death five students held quarantine section tehrans evin prison detainees taken immediately arrested among regime claimed suicides sina ghanbari 23 vahid heydari moshsen adeli died custody markazi khuzestan provinces one according fellow prisoners family members committed suicide observers view continuing demonstrations constitute historic watershed moment iranian people genie bottle humpty dumpty splattered regime efforts turn back clock global communication cut iranians engaging politically one another ultimately fail iranians supportive mullahs insistence turn iran regional hegemonic power iranians like people want improve lives country subjugate countries fantasizing may 2500 years ago persian empire events lasted bit 200 years students report uprising question prowest rather simply want part islamic republic idea mullahs dictate conduct personal lives beliefs country simply acceptable generation increasing number parents generation want much freedom much democracy seek western countries universal human value one student explained many regime officials fancy revolutionaries nothing fear counterrevolution asked speculation current uprising die crushed regime students emphatic may well case mullahs highest per capita execution rate world treat us women like secondclass citizens constantly harass gays religious minorities many iranians appear resemble daesh isis thing free speech real change easy friend added demonstrate brutal regime victory fast easy us promise succeed observer concur uk journalist robert fisks views lebanon iraq syria iran credit fisks comment published week concerns lie inherent cruelty iranian regime send young innocent woman gallows prison official yells taunts mother daughters mobile phone ive said gallows stain iran far centrifuge near entrance tehrans grand bazaar souk iranian mother three beautiful rambunctious children teaches private north tehran school explained observer asked reports growing agnosticism among educated young iranians sure happening likely due religiously bigoted regime devout muslim islam always play role life think true iranians allow us return islam homes religion personal private family matter isnt koran teaches us makes sense iranians want live iranian republic 7th century islamic republic get daesh isis many holier thou mullahs care less true islam quite simply corrupt politicians using islam repress us steal irans wealth potential madhi pbuh appear occultation surely damn corrupt mullahs every one however whatever happens months ahead key regime barrier shattered iranians longer contained wall fear iranians demonstrated longer participate political game reformist vs conservative better known moderates vs conservatives west one establishment including socalled reformists make lives better entire system must fall new iran reborn iranians focused improving life inside iran given opportunity irans steller people quickly achieve | 1,603 |
<p>When outgoing Maryland Governor Parris Glendening put a hold on all executions and commissioned a report on the administration of the death penalty in 2000, he was primarily concerned with finding out the answer to one question: Is the death penalty more often imposed when the murder victim is white and the defendant black?</p>
<p>The comprehensive report, released January 7, 2003, is entitled “ <a href="http://www.urhome.umd.edu/newsdesk/pdf/finalrep.pdf" type="external">An Empirical Analysis of Maryland’s Death Sentencing System with Respect to the Influence of Race and Legal Jurisdiction</a>.” Lead author is University of Maryland criminology professor Raymond Paternoster. Backed up with methodology that can withstand any skeptic’s scrutiny, it answers Glendening’s question with an unequivocal “yes.” Race matters. Eighty percent of death sentences were imposed in cases of white victims. A case is seventy-five percent more likely to result in death when the killing is black-on-white than when it is white-on-white. Put another way, one is three times more likely to be put to death for killing a white person than a black person; a black defendant is twice as likely to be put to death as a white person if the victim was white.</p>
<p>The authors considered all of the 6,000 first and second-degree murders that were committed in the state of Maryland from August of 1978 (when Maryland’s death penalty statute became effective) until September of 1999. Using a panel of experts to sort the cases according to the aggravating and mitigating factors that must be taken into consideration when ordering death, they came up with 1,311 death eligible cases. Of these cases, they found that state’s attorneys filed a formal notification to seek the death penalty in 353 (27%) of those cases; however, 140 (40%) were withdrawn by the prosecutor or ended in guilty pleas that led to life in prison. Prosecutors abandoned the death penalty in some cases, leading to 180 cases that went to trial and to the penalty phase (a death penalty case takes place in two parts-guilt is first voted on, then the penalty).</p>
<p>Why is it that a white victim is more death-worthy than a black victim? The answer to this question is also unequivocal: Prosecutors more often ask for the death penalty when the victim is white. Baltimore County State’s Attorney Sandra O’Connor at least lays claim to this fame-you can’t call her a racist. She asks for the death penalty in all cases in which it could be supported by the statute. Her self-serving reason? So she won’t be considered a racist. I guess you cannot argue with that logic.</p>
<p>The methodology studied the patterns by geography (county), not personalities of prosecutors. But since prosecutors are elected, then it is safe to bet that their death-penalty stances gets votes and that it is just that-getting votes rather than being irrationally fair, that is in minds of heartless prosecutors (surely a redundancy there) like O’Connor. However, the report sticks to the data, and does not suggest that prosecutors are bigots. Rather, it points to other factors, like victim families’ wishes and types of crime that influence prosecutor decisions.</p>
<p>To its credit, the legislature of Maryland has crafted a decent death penalty, as capital statutes go. Unlike the more bloodthirsty states of Virginia, Texas, and Florida, Maryland does not allow the death penalty unless the defendant pulled the trigger or paid someone to do so (what in the law is called a “principal in the first degree”). The defendant must have been over the age of 18 at the time of the offense and must not be mentally retarded. These constraints on the death penalty is why Attorney General John Ashcroft snatched “Beltway snipers” John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo (Malvo is a juvenile) right out of their Maryland jail cells and awarded them to Virginia jurisdictions, a move that he admitted was designed to insure that they died for their alleged crimes.</p>
<p>Incoming Gov.-elect Robert Ehrlich promised during his campaign that everyone on Maryland’s death row will die as expeditiously as possible. The report will have no bearing on his policy. (This may be a Republican tradition– President Bush told author Robert Woodward that he does not listen to the opinions of others-they listen to him.) After the report was released, he said he would have his Lieutenant Governor review each case before death warrants are signed (no rubber stamp, that). One can wonder how he will deal with another aspect of Maryland’s racism-racial profiling in routine traffic stops-led to a settlement agreement with the U.S. Justice Department a few days before the death penalty report was released. Will he find a way to thwart its mandate to stop harassing black drivers on Maryland’s highways?</p>
<p>Lest we be unfair to Maryland, if similar studies were conducted in all death-penalty states, the results would no doubt be similar. Virginia has some death-happy prosecutors (Ashcroft handed over one sniper to each). Texas’s Harris County prides itself in executions. Some Louisiana prosecutors wear ties with nooses on them, give each other plaques with needles affixed, and have toy electric chairs in their offices. The passion for killing, if it could be measured, would probably outrank even racism a motive for the policies of such prosecutors. And governors who brag about their immunity from second-thoughts about ordering executions are in the best of company with our current President, who never, ever ordered the execution of an innocent man and who never, ever lost a moment’s sleep worrying about it, either.</p>
<p>But setting aside menacing meanness and bigotry in Maryland (or elsewhere), which can hardly be operationalized, the authors of this landmark report have controlled for every conceivable measurable confounding variable. The results-that a white life means more than a black life when meting out the ultimate punishment is inescapable. As of this writing, all thirteen men on Maryland’s death row were sentenced to death for killing whites; eight of the defendants are black.</p>
<p>As Gov.-elect Ehrlich takes office January 15, 2003 and lifts the moratorium on the death penalty, let the killing begin.</p>
<p>ELAINE CASSEL practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia and is a contributor to Counterpunch and Findlaw.com. She is the chair of the American Bar Association’s Behavioral Science Committee of the Science and Technology Law Section and is the author, with Douglas Bernstein, of Criminal Behavior (Allyn &amp; Bacon, 2001). She also teaches law and psychology. She can be reached at: <a href="mailto:cassel@counterpunch.org" type="external">cassel@counterpunch.org</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | outgoing maryland governor parris glendening put hold executions commissioned report administration death penalty 2000 primarily concerned finding answer one question death penalty often imposed murder victim white defendant black comprehensive report released january 7 2003 entitled empirical analysis marylands death sentencing system respect influence race legal jurisdiction lead author university maryland criminology professor raymond paternoster backed methodology withstand skeptics scrutiny answers glendenings question unequivocal yes race matters eighty percent death sentences imposed cases white victims case seventyfive percent likely result death killing blackonwhite whiteonwhite put another way one three times likely put death killing white person black person black defendant twice likely put death white person victim white authors considered 6000 first seconddegree murders committed state maryland august 1978 marylands death penalty statute became effective september 1999 using panel experts sort cases according aggravating mitigating factors must taken consideration ordering death came 1311 death eligible cases cases found states attorneys filed formal notification seek death penalty 353 27 cases however 140 40 withdrawn prosecutor ended guilty pleas led life prison prosecutors abandoned death penalty cases leading 180 cases went trial penalty phase death penalty case takes place two partsguilt first voted penalty white victim deathworthy black victim answer question also unequivocal prosecutors often ask death penalty victim white baltimore county states attorney sandra oconnor least lays claim fameyou cant call racist asks death penalty cases could supported statute selfserving reason wont considered racist guess argue logic methodology studied patterns geography county personalities prosecutors since prosecutors elected safe bet deathpenalty stances gets votes thatgetting votes rather irrationally fair minds heartless prosecutors surely redundancy like oconnor however report sticks data suggest prosecutors bigots rather points factors like victim families wishes types crime influence prosecutor decisions credit legislature maryland crafted decent death penalty capital statutes go unlike bloodthirsty states virginia texas florida maryland allow death penalty unless defendant pulled trigger paid someone law called principal first degree defendant must age 18 time offense must mentally retarded constraints death penalty attorney general john ashcroft snatched beltway snipers john allen muhammad john lee malvo malvo juvenile right maryland jail cells awarded virginia jurisdictions move admitted designed insure died alleged crimes incoming govelect robert ehrlich promised campaign everyone marylands death row die expeditiously possible report bearing policy may republican tradition president bush told author robert woodward listen opinions othersthey listen report released said would lieutenant governor review case death warrants signed rubber stamp one wonder deal another aspect marylands racismracial profiling routine traffic stopsled settlement agreement us justice department days death penalty report released find way thwart mandate stop harassing black drivers marylands highways lest unfair maryland similar studies conducted deathpenalty states results would doubt similar virginia deathhappy prosecutors ashcroft handed one sniper texass harris county prides executions louisiana prosecutors wear ties nooses give plaques needles affixed toy electric chairs offices passion killing could measured would probably outrank even racism motive policies prosecutors governors brag immunity secondthoughts ordering executions best company current president never ever ordered execution innocent man never ever lost moments sleep worrying either setting aside menacing meanness bigotry maryland elsewhere hardly operationalized authors landmark report controlled every conceivable measurable confounding variable resultsthat white life means black life meting ultimate punishment inescapable writing thirteen men marylands death row sentenced death killing whites eight defendants black govelect ehrlich takes office january 15 2003 lifts moratorium death penalty let killing begin elaine cassel practices law virginia district columbia contributor counterpunch findlawcom chair american bar associations behavioral science committee science technology law section author douglas bernstein criminal behavior allyn amp bacon 2001 also teaches law psychology reached casselcounterpunchorg 160 | 592 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was gobbling up as much data as possible from companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft.</p>
<p>“What’s on your mind?”</p>
<p>This innocent Facebook status question is today answered through 21st century digital platforms, then shared with an awaiting audience ready to consume our latest 140-character anecdote. The Internet, through social media, helps us answer mundane questions like “Which Game of Thrones Character Would You Be?” and “Do You Know How to Take the Subway like a Real New Yorker?” (I’m apparently a Pro). We know more about a greater number of people in our lives than we ever did before—but we’re not the only ones.</p>
<p>Today’s digital and mobile technologies give us the tools to stay connected, but in exchange, the companies that own that infrastructure have made a business of manipulating the data we are creating. We generate information every time we use our smartphones or log on the Web. Our Google searches, website history, call logs, text messages and even GPS coordinates are constantly being tracked.</p>
<p>This may not seem like a big deal to some, who have come to expect the annoyance of targeted ads as a tradeoff for “free” access to a Facebook profile. But what happens to the data that is collected? Who is it shared with, and, more importantly, under what circumstances are they allowed to share it?</p>
<p>A little less than a year ago, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order" type="external">the Edward Snowden leaks</a>blew the lid off just where all those status updates, tweets, emails, phone calls and text messages were going. Snowden revealed a series of domestic surveillance programs of the National Security Agency aimed at gobbling up as much data as possible from companies like Google, Verizon, Yahoo!, Facebook, Microsoft and others. Rather than collecting targeted information from potential “foreign suspects,” these dragnet surveillance programs were collecting data from nearly everyone in the United States.</p>
<p>Surveillance With a Purpose</p>
<p>Martin Luther King became a prime target for FBI surveillance shortly after his “I Have a Dream” speech.</p>
<p>To what end is the NSA doing this? We’ve long been told that it’s necessary to sacrifice privacy to maintain our safety and security, especially in a post-9/11 world. Domestic surveillance, however, has a long and shameful history in the United States, most notably carried out by agencies like the FBI and NSA, which from the 1950s to 1970s monitored the day-to-day activities of key political figures in the civil rights movement.</p>
<p>As Bloomberg News ( <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-27/king-address-that-stirred-world-led-to-fbi-surveillance-program.html" type="external">8/27/13</a>) pointed out, it was shortly after his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech that civil rights leader Martin Luther King became a prime target for the FBI:</p>
<p>Initially approved in October 1963 by then–Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the FBI’s wiretap and hidden-microphone campaign against King lasted until his assassination in April 1968. It was initially justified to probe King’s suspected, unproven links to the Communist Party, morphing into a crusade to “neutralize” and discredit the civil rights leader.</p>
<p>The FBI also established the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) with the intent of targeting groups or individuals considered “subversive.” The program targeted leaders in the NAACP, American Indian Movement, Black Panther Party and Socialist Workers Party as well as anti-war activists, student groups and feminist organizations. The intended goal of COINTELPRO was to <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=zBgDPupR_lMC&amp;pg=PA182#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false" type="external">“expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize”</a> groups for their supposed subversive activities. The program accomplished this through illegal means, oftentimes falsifying evidence that led to the arrest and conviction of key political leaders, and at times supporting or carrying out assassinations (Huffington Post, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-flint-taylor/the-fbi-cointelpro-progra_b_4375527.html" type="external">12/3/13</a>).</p>
<p>The extent of the FBI’s domestic surveillance programs came to light after a congressional investigation following the Watergate Scandal. The 1975–76 <a href="http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm" type="external">Church Committee</a> report revealed an FBI program called “HT-LINGUAL” that intercepted, opened and photographed over 200,000 pieces of US mail. The report also revealed the NSA’s spying activities through Project Shamrock, a program that intercepted telegraph messages coming into and out of the United States.</p>
<p>These programs operated without courts issuing warrants or providing any legal oversight. Though the existence of these programs was justified as a necessary means to maintain national security, in practice these programs were mechanisms to stifle the political speech of groups who represented the new left.</p>
<p>Public outcry over these revelations led in 1978 to the establishment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law meant to limit the power of agencies like the NSA and FBI to carry out surveillance programs by introducing procedures for how physical and electronic communications could be monitored and collected. But since 1978, the ways we communicate have changed dramatically, and so have the various ways our communications and movements can be tracked.</p>
<p>The Times Are Not A-Changin’</p>
<p>The NSA has a plan “to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches.”</p>
<p>The same directive which guided the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations, to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” those deemed subversive, are again being applied to the programs created through the NSA. As the Huffington Post ( <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html" type="external">11/26/13</a>) reported, the NSA is tracking the online viewing habits of people with no connections to “terrorist organizations,” but who are deemed “radicalizers” because of what they’ve said on the Internet:</p>
<p>The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document.</p>
<p>The secret FISA courts established as a safeguard against unwarranted surveillance under the so-called war on terror became <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/06/13/191226106/fisa-court-appears-to-be-rubberstamp-for-government-requests" type="external">rubber stamp</a> courts where any and all personal data requests were approved. The danger of empowering agencies like the NSA and FBI to operate with little oversight is that under the guise of national security, any violation of our civil liberties and personal freedoms can be justified.</p>
<p>At what point will the social movements of today become the “radicalizers”? How long before our struggles for immigrants rights, against police repression, for living wages, jobs with dignity, healthier communities, for communication rights, become targeted for vulnerabilities? As Fahd Ahmed (YouTube, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl3kdob6fk8&amp;list" type="external">10/23/13</a>), policy director of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), pointed out:</p>
<p>Any time we see any levels of policing—whether it’s day-to-day policing in the streets, surveillance by the police or Internet surveillance—social control, particularly of those that resist the existing system, becomes an inherent part of that system.</p>
<p>To Detect and Surveil</p>
<p>After the September 11 attacks, which reignited a xenophobic backlash against immigration, the Department of Homeland Security began recruiting local law enforcement agencies as the next front in the detection and apprehension of undocumented immigrants. What followed was a massive wave of deportations that increased under the Obama administration to over 2 million (Politico, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/national-council-of-la-raza-janet-murguia-barack-obama-deporter-in-chief-immigration-104217.html" type="external">3/4/14</a>).</p>
<p>Like immigration, the “War on Terror” is now being shifted to local law enforcement agencies who, in exchange for federal dollars, are deploying powerful surveillance tools with little oversight and applying these tools to everyday policing, not just “counterterrorism.”</p>
<p>In Northern California, police departments from San Jose to Sacramento have begun using <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/documents-reveal-unregulated-use-stingrays-california" type="external">StingRay</a>, a powerful surveillance tool that tricks cell phones into communicating with it by posing as a cell tower. It lets police officers capture cell data from a wide swath of people, including people who are not suspects of an investigation. It also gives them the capacity to eavesdrop and listen in on phone conversations without the need for a warrant.</p>
<p>Many other local law enforcement agencies are becoming part of the surveillance machine, and this is leading to <a href="http://www.aaiusa.org/blog/entry/senate-report-says-dhs-fusion-centers-wasted-money-and-stepped-on-civil-lib/" type="external">violations of civil liberties</a>, especially with the use of surveillance technology absent any real standards for how data can be collected and used. Caught in the dragnet are communities whose every movement is tracked. At a time when communities of color are transitioning more and more onto the Internet, it’s that very platform, along with other surveillance technologies, that are being used to monitor them.</p>
<p>Status Update</p>
<p>We’re in a signature moment that will determine the future of our privacy. Shortly after the Snowden leaks, <a href="https://optin.stopwatching.us/" type="external">hundreds of organizations and millions of people</a> spoke out against the NSA’s surveillance, including my own Center for Media Justice. Members of CMJ’s <a href="http://www.mag-net.org/" type="external">Media Action Grassroots Network</a> like <a href="https://mayfirst.org/" type="external">May First People Link</a> are teaching organizers and activists how to use encryption technology, and free and open source software, to protect their communication from unwarranted surveillance.</p>
<p>Congress is debating <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-03-24/news/bs-ed-metadata-bill-20140324_1_metadata-bulk-collection-government" type="external">legislation</a> that would limit the NSA’s ability to collect bulk phone data and implement stronger guidelines for what information companies are required to share. The White House even opened up a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/03/06/join-conversation-big-data-and-privacy" type="external">90-day review period</a> to gather public input on big data and privacy. A report will follow that will outline the administration’s approach.</p>
<p>It is up to us to continue pressuring our elected officials at the federal and state level to end mass surveillance and keep our communities safe from spying. At stake is the ability of our communities to say what’s on their minds. The right to have a status update free from surveillance is tied to the right to improve the status of our communities.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Steven Renderos is the national organizer at the <a href="http://centerformediajustice.org/" type="external">Center for Media Justice</a>. He is passionate about the role of media and communications in building movements for social change. He’s been a community organizer for the past 10 years, leading campaigns for affordable housing, immigrant rights and, most recently, communications rights.</p> | true | 4 | 160 edward snowden revealed nsa gobbling much data possible companies like google facebook microsoft whats mind innocent facebook status question today answered 21st century digital platforms shared awaiting audience ready consume latest 140character anecdote internet social media helps us answer mundane questions like game thrones character would know take subway like real new yorker im apparently pro know greater number people lives ever beforebut ones todays digital mobile technologies give us tools stay connected exchange companies infrastructure made business manipulating data creating generate information every time use smartphones log web google searches website history call logs text messages even gps coordinates constantly tracked may seem like big deal come expect annoyance targeted ads tradeoff free access facebook profile happens data collected shared importantly circumstances allowed share little less year ago edward snowden leaksblew lid status updates tweets emails phone calls text messages going snowden revealed series domestic surveillance programs national security agency aimed gobbling much data possible companies like google verizon yahoo facebook microsoft others rather collecting targeted information potential foreign suspects dragnet surveillance programs collecting data nearly everyone united states surveillance purpose martin luther king became prime target fbi surveillance shortly dream speech end nsa weve long told necessary sacrifice privacy maintain safety security especially post911 world domestic surveillance however long shameful history united states notably carried agencies like fbi nsa 1950s 1970s monitored daytoday activities key political figures civil rights movement bloomberg news 82713 pointed shortly nowfamous dream speech civil rights leader martin luther king became prime target fbi initially approved october 1963 thenattorney general robert kennedy fbis wiretap hiddenmicrophone campaign king lasted assassination april 1968 initially justified probe kings suspected unproven links communist party morphing crusade neutralize discredit civil rights leader fbi also established counter intelligence program cointelpro intent targeting groups individuals considered subversive program targeted leaders naacp american indian movement black panther party socialist workers party well antiwar activists student groups feminist organizations intended goal cointelpro expose disrupt misdirect discredit otherwise neutralize groups supposed subversive activities program accomplished illegal means oftentimes falsifying evidence led arrest conviction key political leaders times supporting carrying assassinations huffington post 12313 extent fbis domestic surveillance programs came light congressional investigation following watergate scandal 197576 church committee report revealed fbi program called htlingual intercepted opened photographed 200000 pieces us mail report also revealed nsas spying activities project shamrock program intercepted telegraph messages coming united states programs operated without courts issuing warrants providing legal oversight though existence programs justified necessary means maintain national security practice programs mechanisms stifle political speech groups represented new left public outcry revelations led 1978 establishment foreign intelligence surveillance act fisa law meant limit power agencies like nsa fbi carry surveillance programs introducing procedures physical electronic communications could monitored collected since 1978 ways communicate changed dramatically various ways communications movements tracked times achangin nsa plan harm reputations agency believes radicalizing others incendiary speeches directive guided fbis cointelpro operations expose disrupt misdirect discredit otherwise neutralize deemed subversive applied programs created nsa huffington post 112613 reported nsa tracking online viewing habits people connections terrorist organizations deemed radicalizers theyve said internet national security agency gathering records online sexual activity evidence visits pornographic websites part proposed plan harm reputations agency believes radicalizing others incendiary speeches according topsecret nsa document secret fisa courts established safeguard unwarranted surveillance socalled war terror became rubber stamp courts personal data requests approved danger empowering agencies like nsa fbi operate little oversight guise national security violation civil liberties personal freedoms justified point social movements today become radicalizers long struggles immigrants rights police repression living wages jobs dignity healthier communities communication rights become targeted vulnerabilities fahd ahmed youtube 102313 policy director desis rising moving drum pointed time see levels policingwhether daytoday policing streets surveillance police internet surveillancesocial control particularly resist existing system becomes inherent part system detect surveil september 11 attacks reignited xenophobic backlash immigration department homeland security began recruiting local law enforcement agencies next front detection apprehension undocumented immigrants followed massive wave deportations increased obama administration 2 million politico 3414 like immigration war terror shifted local law enforcement agencies exchange federal dollars deploying powerful surveillance tools little oversight applying tools everyday policing counterterrorism northern california police departments san jose sacramento begun using stingray powerful surveillance tool tricks cell phones communicating posing cell tower lets police officers capture cell data wide swath people including people suspects investigation also gives capacity eavesdrop listen phone conversations without need warrant many local law enforcement agencies becoming part surveillance machine leading violations civil liberties especially use surveillance technology absent real standards data collected used caught dragnet communities whose every movement tracked time communities color transitioning onto internet platform along surveillance technologies used monitor status update signature moment determine future privacy shortly snowden leaks hundreds organizations millions people spoke nsas surveillance including center media justice members cmjs media action grassroots network like may first people link teaching organizers activists use encryption technology free open source software protect communication unwarranted surveillance congress debating legislation would limit nsas ability collect bulk phone data implement stronger guidelines information companies required share white house even opened 90day review period gather public input big data privacy report follow outline administrations approach us continue pressuring elected officials federal state level end mass surveillance keep communities safe spying stake ability communities say whats minds right status update free surveillance tied right improve status communities steven renderos national organizer center media justice passionate role media communications building movements social change hes community organizer past 10 years leading campaigns affordable housing immigrant rights recently communications rights | 912 |
<p>WENHAM, Mass. — Joggers weaved their way through a group of friends along the Gordon Woods trail on a sunny Friday afternoon. Behind them, a breeze rippled across the quiet surface of Gull Pond. On the beach, a tree log served as a makeshift bench.</p>
<p>It’s a spot where many students at Gordon College, a conservative Christian campus of approximately 1,700 students just north of Boston, go to relax. But for Isabella — who asked to be identified only by her first name out of fear of backlash — it’s where her nightmare began.</p>
<p>It was the first semester of Isabella’s freshman year when Mischael Pierre Celestin invited her to hang out with him and another male student on the trails of Gordon Woods one night in October 2012, according to an internal sexual assault report obtained by ThinkProgress.</p>
<p>On the beach, she and Celestin traded swigs from his bottle of liquor. Celestin’s flirtations had already made her nervous, the report says. What she didn’t know was that he’d been expelled from another college almost a year earlier for alleged involvement in a sexual assault.</p>
<p>Before long, the report says, Isabella was drunk. What happened next is foggy, but Isabella told Gordon College police she is sure of one thing: Celestin raped her.</p>
<p>Choking back tears in an interview with ThinkProgress, Isabella recalled lying on the cement behind the dining hall afterward and feeling sore “down there.” Celestin and the other man yanked her up, walked her back to her dorm and “handed her off,” as Isabella characterizes it, to another female student.</p>
<p>In an interview with ThinkProgress, that woman said Isabella came to her room very briefly that night, drunk and claiming she’d been raped — a story the woman said she does not believe. “There’s no way they would have raped her, because she is a whore,” the woman said. “[Isabella’s] doing it for attention.”</p>
<p>A woman at Celestin’s home directed ThinkProgress reporters to his lawyer in a separate criminal case, who declined to comment on these allegations. Celestin did not respond to messages requesting comment.</p>
<p>However, the other man who was on the beach with Isabella and Celestin that night largely confirmed her story. Reached by phone, the man said Isabella and Celestin were both drunk on the beach that night, though he himself wasn’t drinking. Isabella performed oral sex on the man while Celestin had sex with her, the man said. Afterward, she was so drunk the man and Celestin had to carry her back to her dorm, where they gave her to a woman the man said he did not know.</p>
<p>“Pierre was smashed, and so was she,” the man told ThinkProgress. “That’s the only reason this happened.”</p>
<p>Initially, the man thought Isabella might be too drunk, he said in an interview. But, he insisted, she asked him to join in more than once.</p>
<p>“She wouldn’t leave me alone, so I gave her what she asked for,” he said.</p>
<p>Isabella reported the incidents to Gordon College police in January 2014, but she told them she was unsure whether she wanted to pursue the campus judicial process. That March, she sent an email to an administrator, documented in a confidential sexual assault report obtained by ThinkProgress, saying she couldn’t face retelling her story in front of a disciplinary panel. Instead, she gave up her scholarship at Gordon and transferred to a different school.</p>
<p>“I pray to God that the other females on this campus in the future do not have to go through what I went through,” Isabella wrote in the email. “Hopefully somebody else will speak up.”</p>
<p>After the email, Gordon quietly closed the case, according to the report. Two people named in the report said the school never contacted them, including the other man who was on the beach with Isabella and Celestin that night.</p>
<p>While Isabella’s story is shocking, she isn’t alone. Ten current and former Gordon students told ThinkProgress they were sexually assaulted at the school, in incidents involving nine alleged perpetrators. In two of the cases, alleged perpetrators continued attending classes even after multiple accusations of sexual assault. In another, administrators dismissed an alleged assault by one woman against another woman as just an alcohol violation. Meanwhile, victims lost their faith, left the school, and struggled with the emotional fallout.</p>
<p>“The best decision of my life was leaving that school,” Isabella said. “Worst decision of my life was going to that school.”</p>
<p>Gordon reopened its investigation into Isabella’s case in October 2016, citing “new information&#160;… that pertains to the incident report,” according to an email obtained by ThinkProgress. The university also offered to pay for eight counseling sessions, since Isabella is no longer a Gordon student and cannot use the on-campus counseling center.</p>
<p>On the same day, the university made an identical offer to Shayla Lopez, another former student who said Celestin assaulted her and reported the incidents to an administrator in late 2013 or early 2014, after the school reopened her case because of “new information we received,” according to an email to Lopez from an administrator.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3887897-Gordon-College-statement.html" type="external">a statement</a>, Gordon spokesperson Rick Sweeney said that a detailed list of questions submitted by ThinkProgress contained “several significant inaccuracies” and lacked “appropriate context.” However, he declined to answer any specific questions, citing federal privacy laws.</p>
<p>“The college is confident that, in each case, it responded to the information available at the time of any report or allegation in a thoughtful and compassionate manner, and respected the complainant’s wishes to the greatest extent possible,” Sweeney’s statement read, in part.</p>
<p>Secular universities, including <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harvard-sexual-assault-lawsuit_us_56c3da31e4b0c3c55053232e" type="external">Harvard</a> and <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2016/12/stanford-faces-backlash-from-students-over-sexual-assault.html" type="external">Stanford</a>, have come under heavy fire for their handling of sexual assault in recent years. But religious schools that put a premium on sexual purity have unique challenges when they try to address rape on their campuses, according to Dianna Anderson, author of Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity.</p>
<p>Those challenges have bubbled to the surface at some of the nation’s most well-known Christian schools, like <a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/article/silence-at-baylor/" type="external">Baylor University</a> in Texas, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/education/christian-school-faulted-for-halting-abuse-study.html?_r=0" type="external">Bob Jones University</a> in South Carolina, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/what-colleges-shared-about-u-va-suspect-then-accused-of-sexual-assault-is-murky/2014/10/11/9db7234c-4d6c-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html" type="external">Liberty University</a> in Virginia.</p>
<p>“Because Christians tend to frame rape as a loss of purity rather than a loss of individual agency, they struggle with handling sexual assault cases appropriately,” Anderson told ThinkProgress in a message.</p>
<p>One impediment to victims coming forward may be that they fear running afoul of the school policies themselves.</p>
<p>At Gordon, the student handbook <a href="https://gordonedu.sharepoint.com/WebLinks/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=005af90f183354281a2ad17f1ddd85a77&amp;authkey=AV66AZ0o0QMkB_3hNiezHfU" type="external">forbids</a> “drunkenness, sexual relations outside marriage, and homosexual practice.” Its website <a href="http://www.gordon.edu/sexualassaultpolicy" type="external">promises “amnesty</a>” for “tangential infractions of College policy, such as alcohol use or visiting hours” to students who report a sexual assault, and its sexual misconduct policy <a href="https://gordonedu.sharepoint.com/WebLinks/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=08f43b4c1f7e344749431659824a14c9a&amp;authkey=Ab-oAGEEuwsx9kyZG96SeOA" type="external">offers amnesty</a> for “personal consumption of alcohol or drugs at or near the time of the incident.” But neither amnesty policy explicitly mentions premarital sex or same-sex relationships.</p>
<p>“A lot of people don’t even know there’s an amnesty policy,” said Abby Booth, a Gordon College senior and a member of the student-led advocacy group Fighting Against Sexual Trauma, or FAST.</p>
<p>Before enrolling at Gordon, Isabella’s alleged assailant, Mischael Celestin, attended Eastern Nazarene College, a Christian school in Quincy, Massachusetts. An incident report by the school’s campus security from early December 2011, obtained by ThinkProgress, records allegations Celestin was involved in a sexual assault on a female student in his dorm room in mid-November of that year. Celestin denied the allegations at the time, according to the document.</p>
<p>Two former faculty members discussed in that report — Eric Clark, the former director of Eastern Nazarene’s Center for Academic Success, and his wife Ashley Clark, a former visiting instructor at the school — spoke to ThinkProgress and explained that the victim is one of their relatives. They confirmed that the victim told them about the incident less than a month after it allegedly occurred.</p>
<p>The report also matches accounts by former Eastern Nazarene students Sidney Karr and Alexis Malloy, who told ThinkProgress the woman talked to each of them separately about the incident around the same time.</p>
<p>The woman did not respond to messages requesting comment. Current and former administrators at Eastern Nazarene declined to comment, citing federal privacy laws.</p>
<p>The incident report does not give a disposition for the case or mention what, if any, punishment Celestin received. But an internal email obtained by ThinkProgress shows Eastern Nazarene College expelled him and banned him from campus within days of the incident coming to light. A <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3887895-ENC-incident-report.html" type="external">separate university document</a> from late February 2015, also obtained by ThinkProgress, confirms that the school expelled Celestin and banned him from campus indefinitely. Neither the internal email nor the document list the reason for the expulsion.</p>
<p>“Hoes want attention,” Celestin wrote on his public Facebook page the same day Eastern Nazarene administrators announced his expulsion in an internal email. “Women want respect.”</p>
<p>By fall 2012, Celestin — the son of a Baptist minister — was attending Gordon College. Officials there would not say what they knew about the allegations against Celestin, but Eastern Nazarene does not record student disciplinary decisions on academic transcripts, according to Scott MacFarland, Eastern Nazarene’s executive director of marketing and communications. Colleges in Massachusetts do not have to include expulsions for sexual assault on student transcripts.</p>
<p>In January 2015, Eric Clark’s family attended a basketball game between the two rival teams on Gordon’s campus. Clark told ThinkProgress that he went to Gordon College police before the game to make sure Celestin didn’t cause them any trouble.</p>
<p>“I told him that [Celestin] had set up this sexual assault with my family member [at Eastern Nazarene College],” Clark said. “I didn’t sugar coat. [I told him t]hat’s why he was expelled.”</p>
<p>By early 2015, at least three people, including Eric Clark and Isabella, had spoken to Gordon staff or administrators about Celestin, who was still a student on campus at the time.</p>
<p>Shayla Lopez told ThinkProgress that Celestin sexually assaulted her twice while they were both students at Gordon — once in late September or early October 2012 and again in December 2013. Shortly after the second alleged assault, Lopez said that she reported both incidents to her dorm’s director, a Gordon staff member who agreed to pass on the report while keeping Lopez anonymous. Lopez didn’t get any updates after that.</p>
<p>It’s unclear whether the resident director passed Lopez’s report on to other school administrators or, if so, whether they took any action. The resident director did not return emails requesting comment.</p>
<p>“Nothing was done,” Lopez told ThinkProgress. “But I was kind of OK with that.&#160;… I didn’t want to have to deal with media people, the emotions and all that. I figured, all right, I just want to forget it and move on.”</p>
<p>Gordon senior Pauline — she asked only to be identified by her first name — told ThinkProgress that Celestin also tried to assault her in his on-campus apartment one night in January or February 2014 when they were drinking together with a friend, Marianthy Posadas-Nava. Thankfully, according to Pauline, Posadas-Nava opened the bedroom door just a few seconds into the attempted assault and Celestin let up.</p>
<p>In fall 2016, Pauline says she saw Celestin walking down a flight of stairs in Gordon’s science center after hearing about his arrest in a separate sexual assault case. “I was like, ‘Oh God, they’re going to let him run free until he’s in jail,’” she told ThinkProgress in an interview. “That’s when I went to report.” She reported the incident to school administrators and says the school has handled her case well — a big difference from what she says that she saw when her friend Posadas-Nava reported unrelated assaults.</p>
<p>“I had held Marianthy’s hand through a lot of her experiences at Gordon, so I actually had very low expectations of Gordon,” Pauline said. “So I was pleasantly surprised.”</p>
<p>Despite multiple complaints against him, Celestin attended Gordon until late August 2016, when Brockton, Massachusetts, police arrested him after he tried to meet a 15-year old girl he had been trying to talk into a friendship and had forcibly kissed, according to a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4321067-Celestin-Court-Documents.html#document/p5" type="external">police report</a>. In his backpack, they found cognac and two condoms.</p>
<p>After the arrest, Jennifer Jukanovich, Gordon’s vice president for student life, <a href="https://twitter.com/Gordon_VP/status/771045549130846208" type="external">tweeted</a> that Celestin was “no longer a student” and “no longer allowed on campus.”</p>
<p>Prosecutors have charged Celestin with one count of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 and one count of accosting or annoying another person. His trial is set to begin in Brockton District Court on August 29.</p>
<p>A woman at Celestin’s home directed ThinkProgress reporters to his lawyer in the Brockton case, Marjorie P. Tynes. Reached by phone, Tynes said her client denies the allegations in the Brockton case. However, she declined to comment on the other allegations and said she would advise her client not to comment with a pending criminal case. Celestin did not respond to messages requesting comment.</p>
<p>Posadas-Nava’s case is another example of students reporting apparent serial perpetrators at Gordon, but whose allegations — and attackers — fell through the cracks, according to survivor accounts.</p>
<p>During Posadas-Nava’s freshman year at Gordon, a senior raped her after she stayed over with him one night in November 2013, Posadas-Nava said in a report she later filed with Gordon College police, a report she filed with Wenham police, and a complaint she filed with the U.S. Department of Education under Title IX, the law that mandates gender equality at schools that receive federal funds. After the alleged rape, according to the Wenham police report and interviews with Posadas-Nava, the man pressured her into a relationship during which she says they had consensual sex but the man also continued to coerce her into unwanted sex, as well.</p>
<p>The man Posadas-Nava says raped her declined to comment for this story.</p>
<p>In May 2014, Posadas-Nava reported the November 2013 incident and an alleged assault by the same man in December 2013 to Gordon College police, according to an <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3896839-Posadas-Nava-Sexual-Assault-Report.html#document/p4/a363322" type="external">internal document</a> obtained by ThinkProgress. After another alleged rape in late June 2014, she went to Salem District Court and got a restraining order. At the court hearing, the man denied that Posadas-Nava ever told him to stop during the June incident, and the judge took no position on whether a crime occurred, according to a transcript of the hearing.</p>
<p>The man violated the restraining order in September 2014, Posadas-Nava told ThinkProgress, and school documents and internal emails obtained by ThinkProgress show Gordon police banned him from campus that month as a result. The man sent Posadas-Nava a Snapchat invite in mid-February 2015, violating the restraining order again, according to court records.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Posadas-Nava pressed forward with the school’s disciplinary process. In her Title IX complaint, Posadas-Nava said administrators gave her conflicting information on how the process worked. She had to repeat her story multiple times, and the hearing panel met to decide her case just seven days after she agreed to pursue the case — not enough time, the Title IX complaint says, to fully investigate.</p>
<p>When the hearing panel interviewed Posadas-Nava in late July 2014, her Title IX complaint says, its questions focused on her relationship with the man after the first time he allegedly raped her. “During my questioning, the focus seemed to be on my relationship with [the man] following the first assault,” the complaint said, “with very few questions addressing either of the assaults specifically.”</p>
<p>After interviewing the man and Posadas-Nava, the panel decided the November 2013 rape accusation was “inconclusive,” according to a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3896892-Posadas-Nava-Notice-of-Outcome.html#document" type="external">second internal document</a> obtained by ThinkProgress. That document does not mention the December 2013 or June 2014 incidents, and Posadas-Nava’s Title IX complaint says the school made no determination on them.</p>
<p>Terry Charek, Gordon’s dean of student care, told Posadas-Nava about the decision in his office that same day, she told ThinkProgress. At the time, she said, he recommended that she seek “discipleship,” or spiritual accountability, and said the panel worried the man might be addicted to sex.</p>
<p>That’s a common explanation for sexual misconduct in Evangelical communities, according to Dianna Anderson — whether it’s premarital sex or rape. “You’re either abstinent or you’re addicted to [sex],” says Anderson. That dichotomy “prevents them from having to confront the idea that a good Christian man might still have behaviors that are negative for women,” she explained.</p>
<p>Asked for comment, Charek directed ThinkProgress to Sweeney, Gordon’s spokesperson.</p>
<p>In December, Posadas-Nava decided to appeal the panel’s decision. Administrators determined the November 2013 incident “did not constitute sexual assault,” according to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3896892-Posadas-Nava-Notice-of-Outcome.html#document" type="external">the second internal document</a>. As before, the written decision does not address the incidents from December 2013 or June 2014.</p>
<p>“[T]he whole situation was hostile,” Posadas-Nava said. “I did not feel supported at all.”</p>
<p>Posadas-Nava told ThinkProgress that she approached a fellow student, Sarah, in May 2014 after realizing the man had been in a romantic relationship with both of them at the same time. Sarah confided in Posadas-Nava that the man assaulted her several times in January and February 2014, according to Posadas-Nava.</p>
<p>Sarah — who asked to be identified only by her first name — confirmed Posadas-Nava’s account of their conversations to ThinkProgress. Sarah wanted to date the man, she said, but didn’t want to have sex outside of a relationship.</p>
<p>“[T]he first time, he raped me, and it happened several more times,” Sarah said in an interview. “And I just gave up and kind of let him do it.”</p>
<p>Posadas-Nava mentioned Sarah’s allegations to an administrator in May 2014 — a detail recorded in Gordon’s <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3896839-Posadas-Nava-Sexual-Assault-Report.html#document/p4/a363322" type="external">sexual assault report</a> on Posadas-Nava’s case. But after hearing from Posadas-Nava how the school handled her case, Sarah decided that August to go to police in Wenham, the town where Gordon is located, instead.</p>
<p>“I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because Gordon has this whole no sex policy,” Sarah told ThinkProgress. “I didn’t even tell my roommate about it because I was so ashamed and upset.”</p>
<p>When Sarah went to Wenham police in August 2014, an officer told her that he couldn’t make an arrest without physical evidence or allegations by more than one woman, she said — even though police records show Posadas-Nava had made allegations to Wenham police against the same man just a month earlier.</p>
<p>Wenham’s chief of police, Thomas Perkins, declined to comment on Sarah’s case, citing state privacy laws. Perkins said his department usually cannot share information with a school that both the alleged victim and perpetrator attend without the victim’s “specific request or express permission.”</p>
<p>“Each case is different, and our department’s response depends upon the facts and circumstances specific to any particular case,” Perkins told ThinkProgress in an email.</p>
<p>Sarah dropped out of Gordon College that fall. She filled out an official withdrawal form online in January 2015, she says, and listed a sexual assault on campus as her reason for leaving. “No one got back to me,” she told ThinkProgress, “like they didn’t care.”</p>
<p>Reached by phone, the man both Posadas-Nava and Sarah say raped them said his lawyer advised him not to comment.</p>
<p>These cases highlight a major obstacle facing universities as they battle campus sexual assault, according to Colby Bruno, senior legal counsel at the Boston-based Victim Rights Law Center. While the science isn’t settled, <a href="http://www.davidlisak.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/RepeatRapeinUndetectedRapists.pdf" type="external">multiple</a> <a href="https://www.ncherm.org/documents/McWhorterVV2009.pdf" type="external">studies</a> suggest that repeat offenders commit the vast majority of sexual assaults.</p>
<p>Still, schools are often reluctant to combine these cases in order to get serial predators off their campus, according to Bruno.</p>
<p>“What they’ve unintentionally done is brought over that idea [from the criminal system] that you can’t have multiple victims testifying against one person, because of the bias that it could create,” she told ThinkProgress in an email. “But they’re two totally separate systems. So of course you can.”</p>
<p>In 2014, the Obama White House issued <a href="http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/03/white-house-releases-updated-title-ix-guidance-on-campus-sexual-assault/" type="external">guidance to colleges and universities</a> on how to handle campus sexual assault under Title IX. That guidance gave greater detail on how to implement a <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201104.html" type="external">2011 letter from the Department of Education</a> to colleges and universities on their legal obligations in student sexual assault cases.</p>
<p>Gordon has made strides to address sexual assault since then, spokesman Rick Sweeney said. Those efforts, led by Gordon’s Title IX coordinator, Nancy Anderson, and its vice president for student life, Jennifer Jukanovich, included revising its procedures for assault cases and requiring online training for students, faculty, and staff on how to respond to reports of sexual assault.</p>
<p>Even after the reforms, however, some students still say Gordon should do more. After a long night of studying together in early May 2015, a fellow student assaulted 22-year-old Gordon senior Rachel Lehmann, according to reports she later filed with police in Wenham and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3896860-Lehmann-Sexual-Assault-Report.html" type="external">with Gordon</a>, both obtained by ThinkProgress.</p>
<p>The man kissed and groped Lehmann, both reports say, pulling her on top of him into a parked car despite her insistence that she didn’t want a physical relationship.</p>
<p>“I was trying to come up with creative new ways to frame my dissent,” she told ThinkProgress in an interview. When Lehmann curled up in a ball and started talking about her mom, she said, the man finally relented.</p>
<p>The man drove Lehmann back to campus and told her not to tell anyone, she said — especially their mutual friends. Then he asked her if he was a good kisser.</p>
<p>After studying abroad the following school year, Lehmann contacted Gordon police about the assault in early May 2016. Gordon College police called an officer from the Wenham police department who is a certified sexual assault investigator to take down Lehmann’s initial report, according to the report that officer filed. Another Gordon police officer followed up with Lehmann the same day to make a Title IX report for the college.</p>
<p>Lehmann decided not to pursue an internal school investigation because she believed the man would graduate soon, according to an email obtained by ThinkProgress. When he appeared back on campus as a student in February 2017, however, Lehmann contacted a Gordon administrator to re-open the case.</p>
<p>In an interview, the man denied these allegations.</p>
<p>Six other women came forward to Gordon administrators in February and March 2017 to accuse the same man of sexual assault or harassment, according to another <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3887901-Lehmann-summary-of-findings.html" type="external">internal university document</a> obtained by ThinkProgress. In late March 2017, Gordon’s Title IX panel found that the man “violated Gordon’s sexual misconduct policy in the past and poses a threat to women on Gordon’s campus in the future,” that document says.</p>
<p>Some of these women had previously reported the incidents to faculty members, according to Lehmann. During a February 2017 meeting with Nancy Anderson, Gordon’s Title IX coordinator, Lehmann asked why these faculty hadn’t reported the incidents. Anderson told her the school only began training faculty on Title IX within the past year to year-and-a-half, Lehmann told ThinkProgress. The faculty involved may not have felt the reports they heard rose to the level of “sexual misconduct,” Anderson reportedly said, or they may not have known they’re suppose to report incidents of rape and sexual assault.</p>
<p>In an email to faculty and staff in mid September 2015, obtained by ThinkProgress, Anderson told employees they have a legal obligation to report “sexual harassment and sexual misconduct” against students. “Under Title IX, you, as a Gordon employee, are expected to play an active role,” Anderson said in the email.</p>
<p>Instead of expelling the man after the Title IX panel found that he posed a threat, Charek required him to move off campus in early April and barred him from campus except during class times, according to an email from Nancy Anderson to Lehmann obtained by ThinkProgress. The school also barred him from contacting any of the seven women who came forward.</p>
<p>“These consequences are in line with precedent,” Charek said in a separate email to Lehmann in mid-April 2017, explaining that the man wasn’t suspended or expelled because the Title IX panel found him guilty of sexual assault, not rape.</p>
<p>Two weeks later, Nancy Anderson emailed Lehmann to let her know the man was being suspended for two years, during which he would also be banned from campus entirely. Gordon would reassess the man’s suspension at the end of the two years, Anderson said in the email.</p>
<p>The suspension was triggered by an incident unrelated to the charges of sexual assault and sexual harassment, according to Gordon spokesperson Rick Sweeney.</p>
<p>“Given the privacy issues involved, just as we could not discuss the details of the sexual misconduct complaint, we similarly cannot discuss the details of the unrelated subsequent issue, but it is not of the same nature at all,” Sweeney told ThinkProgress by email.</p>
<p>Reached by phone, the man said he was not suspended for sexual assault or harassment, though he would not give the specific cause.</p>
<p>The man also denied Lehmann’s and the six other women’s allegations and said he is appealing the school’s decision in those cases. “If someone felt uncomfortable, that’s one thing,” he told ThinkProgress. “But to say I’m some sort of predator — that’s kind of unfortunate, kind of sad.”</p>
<p>Gordon enjoyed a long reputation as one of the more moderate Evangelical universities in the country. That changed in 2014, when its president, D. Michael Lindsay, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/hobby-lobby-is-already-creating-new-religious-demands-on-obama/373853/" type="external">signed a letter</a> with 13 other Christian leaders asking the Obama administration to add a religious exemption to an <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2014/07/23/2014-17522/further-amendments-to-executive-order-11478-equal-employment-opportunity-in-the-federal-government" type="external">executive order</a> that barred federal contractors from discriminating against LGBTQ employees.</p>
<p>The letter set off a wave of protests on Gordon’s campus that spurred the administration to crack down on dissent, according to students, alumni, and an administrator who spoke with ThinkProgress.</p>
<p>“[T]echnically homosexual behavior was not allowed,” said a faculty member who spoke with ThinkProgress on the condition of anonymity. “But it was not enforced, we had students who were out, and we all kind of assumed it would go away over time. Instead, [Lindsay] doubled down on it. So it was pretty tragic for the whole school.”</p>
<p>Gordon’s stance on LGBTQ relationships can make it especially hard to report assaults by a member of the same sex, according to Paul Miller, a Gordon alumnus and co-founder of the LGBTQ advocacy group ONE Gordon.</p>
<p>“[T]he ban on homosexual practice creates a problematic dynamic,” Miller told ThinkProgress in an email.</p>
<p>Jessica Mahan found herself at the intersection of these policies after her female roommate, who was also a close friend, sexually assaulted her after they had been drinking at a friend’s home in mid-March 2013.</p>
<p>The roommate turned herself in to the dorm’s resident director — a Gordon staff member — after the alleged assault, according to both women. The former resident director did not return multiple requests for comment.</p>
<p>“Following the assault, I was grief-stricken and deeply remorseful, and I wanted to reach out to Residence Life to work with them in addressing the issue because I trusted them,” the roommate told ThinkProgress in an email. “I knew that I was in the wrong in this situation, and I told my [residence director] that I wanted to have my actions addressed, and to figure out a way to get me and Jess the support and guidance we each needed.”</p>
<p>Gordon denied the roommate’s request to change rooms because there were only five weeks left in the academic year, she told Think Progress. When she stayed with friends instead, she says the school threatened to discipline her if she didn’t return to her room.</p>
<p>Mahan says she was never sure when her roommate — now also her assailant — would be in their room or staying with a friend, and Mahan’s mental health declined sharply. Administrators told the roommate to suggest that Mahan seek counseling, both women said, but the school never reached out to Mahan directly.</p>
<p>“In their eyes, it was only an alcohol violation, and nothing more — and that was the last I heard of it,” the roommate said.</p>
<p>Mahan published <a href="https://studentinqueery.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/heteronormativity-and-assault/" type="external">a blog post about her experience</a> in early May 2014. Before it went up, she sent Charek an email asking whether the post was accurate. In his response, obtained by ThinkProgress, Charek said none of the initial information his office received about the case pointed to sexual assault. But he also acknowledged that “the question of assault would certainly have come up” if the incident involved a woman and a man.</p>
<p>“Clearly, we should have had a conversation with you to get the full details instead of dismissing you through a third party to get some counseling,” Charek wrote. “As I write that it sounds awful………ugh.”</p>
<p>Charek referred requests for comment by ThinkProgress to a Gordon spokesperson, who declined to comment on specific allegations.</p>
<p>Like many of the women interviewed for this story, Mahan no longer attends church. She’s disillusioned with both Gordon and the larger Christian community. The Evangelical emphasis on community and forgiveness makes it difficult to talk openly about assault, according to Mahan.</p>
<p>“Forgiveness means ‘shut up and don’t address it,’” she told ThinkProgress. “This is a personal, not systemic, problem. And we aren’t going to admit it’s a systemic problem, because then there’s something wrong with our community instead of something wrong with you.”</p>
<p>Do you have information about sexual assault at Gordon College, Eastern Nazarene College, or another university? Contact reporter Cristina T. Quinn at <a href="mailto:reporterquinn@gmail.com" type="external">reporterquinn@gmail.com</a>. Contact reporter Joshua Eaton at <a href="" type="internal">jeaton@thinkprogress.org</a> or via Signal at 202–684–1030.</p>
<p>Intern Ellen Cranley transcribed interviews for this report.</p> | true | 4 | wenham mass joggers weaved way group friends along gordon woods trail sunny friday afternoon behind breeze rippled across quiet surface gull pond beach tree log served makeshift bench spot many students gordon college conservative christian campus approximately 1700 students north boston go relax isabella asked identified first name fear backlash nightmare began first semester isabellas freshman year mischael pierre celestin invited hang another male student trails gordon woods one night october 2012 according internal sexual assault report obtained thinkprogress beach celestin traded swigs bottle liquor celestins flirtations already made nervous report says didnt know hed expelled another college almost year earlier alleged involvement sexual assault long report says isabella drunk happened next foggy isabella told gordon college police sure one thing celestin raped choking back tears interview thinkprogress isabella recalled lying cement behind dining hall afterward feeling sore celestin man yanked walked back dorm handed isabella characterizes another female student interview thinkprogress woman said isabella came room briefly night drunk claiming shed raped story woman said believe theres way would raped whore woman said isabellas attention woman celestins home directed thinkprogress reporters lawyer separate criminal case declined comment allegations celestin respond messages requesting comment however man beach isabella celestin night largely confirmed story reached phone man said isabella celestin drunk beach night though wasnt drinking isabella performed oral sex man celestin sex man said afterward drunk man celestin carry back dorm gave woman man said know pierre smashed man told thinkprogress thats reason happened initially man thought isabella might drunk said interview insisted asked join wouldnt leave alone gave asked said isabella reported incidents gordon college police january 2014 told unsure whether wanted pursue campus judicial process march sent email administrator documented confidential sexual assault report obtained thinkprogress saying couldnt face retelling story front disciplinary panel instead gave scholarship gordon transferred different school pray god females campus future go went isabella wrote email hopefully somebody else speak email gordon quietly closed case according report two people named report said school never contacted including man beach isabella celestin night isabellas story shocking isnt alone ten current former gordon students told thinkprogress sexually assaulted school incidents involving nine alleged perpetrators two cases alleged perpetrators continued attending classes even multiple accusations sexual assault another administrators dismissed alleged assault one woman another woman alcohol violation meanwhile victims lost faith left school struggled emotional fallout best decision life leaving school isabella said worst decision life going school gordon reopened investigation isabellas case october 2016 citing new information160 pertains incident report according email obtained thinkprogress university also offered pay eight counseling sessions since isabella longer gordon student use oncampus counseling center day university made identical offer shayla lopez another former student said celestin assaulted reported incidents administrator late 2013 early 2014 school reopened case new information received according email lopez administrator statement gordon spokesperson rick sweeney said detailed list questions submitted thinkprogress contained several significant inaccuracies lacked appropriate context however declined answer specific questions citing federal privacy laws college confident case responded information available time report allegation thoughtful compassionate manner respected complainants wishes greatest extent possible sweeneys statement read part secular universities including harvard stanford come heavy fire handling sexual assault recent years religious schools put premium sexual purity unique challenges try address rape campuses according dianna anderson author damaged goods new perspectives christian purity challenges bubbled surface nations wellknown christian schools like baylor university texas bob jones university south carolina liberty university virginia christians tend frame rape loss purity rather loss individual agency struggle handling sexual assault cases appropriately anderson told thinkprogress message one impediment victims coming forward may fear running afoul school policies gordon student handbook forbids drunkenness sexual relations outside marriage homosexual practice website promises amnesty tangential infractions college policy alcohol use visiting hours students report sexual assault sexual misconduct policy offers amnesty personal consumption alcohol drugs near time incident neither amnesty policy explicitly mentions premarital sex samesex relationships lot people dont even know theres amnesty policy said abby booth gordon college senior member studentled advocacy group fighting sexual trauma fast enrolling gordon isabellas alleged assailant mischael celestin attended eastern nazarene college christian school quincy massachusetts incident report schools campus security early december 2011 obtained thinkprogress records allegations celestin involved sexual assault female student dorm room midnovember year celestin denied allegations time according document two former faculty members discussed report eric clark former director eastern nazarenes center academic success wife ashley clark former visiting instructor school spoke thinkprogress explained victim one relatives confirmed victim told incident less month allegedly occurred report also matches accounts former eastern nazarene students sidney karr alexis malloy told thinkprogress woman talked separately incident around time woman respond messages requesting comment current former administrators eastern nazarene declined comment citing federal privacy laws incident report give disposition case mention punishment celestin received internal email obtained thinkprogress shows eastern nazarene college expelled banned campus within days incident coming light separate university document late february 2015 also obtained thinkprogress confirms school expelled celestin banned campus indefinitely neither internal email document list reason expulsion hoes want attention celestin wrote public facebook page day eastern nazarene administrators announced expulsion internal email women want respect fall 2012 celestin son baptist minister attending gordon college officials would say knew allegations celestin eastern nazarene record student disciplinary decisions academic transcripts according scott macfarland eastern nazarenes executive director marketing communications colleges massachusetts include expulsions sexual assault student transcripts january 2015 eric clarks family attended basketball game two rival teams gordons campus clark told thinkprogress went gordon college police game make sure celestin didnt cause trouble told celestin set sexual assault family member eastern nazarene college clark said didnt sugar coat told thats expelled early 2015 least three people including eric clark isabella spoken gordon staff administrators celestin still student campus time shayla lopez told thinkprogress celestin sexually assaulted twice students gordon late september early october 2012 december 2013 shortly second alleged assault lopez said reported incidents dorms director gordon staff member agreed pass report keeping lopez anonymous lopez didnt get updates unclear whether resident director passed lopezs report school administrators whether took action resident director return emails requesting comment nothing done lopez told thinkprogress kind ok that160 didnt want deal media people emotions figured right want forget move gordon senior pauline asked identified first name told thinkprogress celestin also tried assault oncampus apartment one night january february 2014 drinking together friend marianthy posadasnava thankfully according pauline posadasnava opened bedroom door seconds attempted assault celestin let fall 2016 pauline says saw celestin walking flight stairs gordons science center hearing arrest separate sexual assault case like oh god theyre going let run free hes jail told thinkprogress interview thats went report reported incident school administrators says school handled case well big difference says saw friend posadasnava reported unrelated assaults held marianthys hand lot experiences gordon actually low expectations gordon pauline said pleasantly surprised despite multiple complaints celestin attended gordon late august 2016 brockton massachusetts police arrested tried meet 15year old girl trying talk friendship forcibly kissed according police report backpack found cognac two condoms arrest jennifer jukanovich gordons vice president student life tweeted celestin longer student longer allowed campus prosecutors charged celestin one count indecent assault battery person 14 one count accosting annoying another person trial set begin brockton district court august 29 woman celestins home directed thinkprogress reporters lawyer brockton case marjorie p tynes reached phone tynes said client denies allegations brockton case however declined comment allegations said would advise client comment pending criminal case celestin respond messages requesting comment posadasnavas case another example students reporting apparent serial perpetrators gordon whose allegations attackers fell cracks according survivor accounts posadasnavas freshman year gordon senior raped stayed one night november 2013 posadasnava said report later filed gordon college police report filed wenham police complaint filed us department education title ix law mandates gender equality schools receive federal funds alleged rape according wenham police report interviews posadasnava man pressured relationship says consensual sex man also continued coerce unwanted sex well man posadasnava says raped declined comment story may 2014 posadasnava reported november 2013 incident alleged assault man december 2013 gordon college police according internal document obtained thinkprogress another alleged rape late june 2014 went salem district court got restraining order court hearing man denied posadasnava ever told stop june incident judge took position whether crime occurred according transcript hearing man violated restraining order september 2014 posadasnava told thinkprogress school documents internal emails obtained thinkprogress show gordon police banned campus month result man sent posadasnava snapchat invite midfebruary 2015 violating restraining order according court records meanwhile posadasnava pressed forward schools disciplinary process title ix complaint posadasnava said administrators gave conflicting information process worked repeat story multiple times hearing panel met decide case seven days agreed pursue case enough time title ix complaint says fully investigate hearing panel interviewed posadasnava late july 2014 title ix complaint says questions focused relationship man first time allegedly raped questioning focus seemed relationship man following first assault complaint said questions addressing either assaults specifically interviewing man posadasnava panel decided november 2013 rape accusation inconclusive according second internal document obtained thinkprogress document mention december 2013 june 2014 incidents posadasnavas title ix complaint says school made determination terry charek gordons dean student care told posadasnava decision office day told thinkprogress time said recommended seek discipleship spiritual accountability said panel worried man might addicted sex thats common explanation sexual misconduct evangelical communities according dianna anderson whether premarital sex rape youre either abstinent youre addicted sex says anderson dichotomy prevents confront idea good christian man might still behaviors negative women explained asked comment charek directed thinkprogress sweeney gordons spokesperson december posadasnava decided appeal panels decision administrators determined november 2013 incident constitute sexual assault according second internal document written decision address incidents december 2013 june 2014 whole situation hostile posadasnava said feel supported posadasnava told thinkprogress approached fellow student sarah may 2014 realizing man romantic relationship time sarah confided posadasnava man assaulted several times january february 2014 according posadasnava sarah asked identified first name confirmed posadasnavas account conversations thinkprogress sarah wanted date man said didnt want sex outside relationship first time raped happened several times sarah said interview gave kind let posadasnava mentioned sarahs allegations administrator may 2014 detail recorded gordons sexual assault report posadasnavas case hearing posadasnava school handled case sarah decided august go police wenham town gordon located instead felt like couldnt talk anyone gordon whole sex policy sarah told thinkprogress didnt even tell roommate ashamed upset sarah went wenham police august 2014 officer told couldnt make arrest without physical evidence allegations one woman said even though police records show posadasnava made allegations wenham police man month earlier wenhams chief police thomas perkins declined comment sarahs case citing state privacy laws perkins said department usually share information school alleged victim perpetrator attend without victims specific request express permission case different departments response depends upon facts circumstances specific particular case perkins told thinkprogress email sarah dropped gordon college fall filled official withdrawal form online january 2015 says listed sexual assault campus reason leaving one got back told thinkprogress like didnt care reached phone man posadasnava sarah say raped said lawyer advised comment cases highlight major obstacle facing universities battle campus sexual assault according colby bruno senior legal counsel bostonbased victim rights law center science isnt settled multiple studies suggest repeat offenders commit vast majority sexual assaults still schools often reluctant combine cases order get serial predators campus according bruno theyve unintentionally done brought idea criminal system cant multiple victims testifying one person bias could create told thinkprogress email theyre two totally separate systems course 2014 obama white house issued guidance colleges universities handle campus sexual assault title ix guidance gave greater detail implement 2011 letter department education colleges universities legal obligations student sexual assault cases gordon made strides address sexual assault since spokesman rick sweeney said efforts led gordons title ix coordinator nancy anderson vice president student life jennifer jukanovich included revising procedures assault cases requiring online training students faculty staff respond reports sexual assault even reforms however students still say gordon long night studying together early may 2015 fellow student assaulted 22yearold gordon senior rachel lehmann according reports later filed police wenham gordon obtained thinkprogress man kissed groped lehmann reports say pulling top parked car despite insistence didnt want physical relationship trying come creative new ways frame dissent told thinkprogress interview lehmann curled ball started talking mom said man finally relented man drove lehmann back campus told tell anyone said especially mutual friends asked good kisser studying abroad following school year lehmann contacted gordon police assault early may 2016 gordon college police called officer wenham police department certified sexual assault investigator take lehmanns initial report according report officer filed another gordon police officer followed lehmann day make title ix report college lehmann decided pursue internal school investigation believed man would graduate soon according email obtained thinkprogress appeared back campus student february 2017 however lehmann contacted gordon administrator reopen case interview man denied allegations six women came forward gordon administrators february march 2017 accuse man sexual assault harassment according another internal university document obtained thinkprogress late march 2017 gordons title ix panel found man violated gordons sexual misconduct policy past poses threat women gordons campus future document says women previously reported incidents faculty members according lehmann february 2017 meeting nancy anderson gordons title ix coordinator lehmann asked faculty hadnt reported incidents anderson told school began training faculty title ix within past year yearandahalf lehmann told thinkprogress faculty involved may felt reports heard rose level sexual misconduct anderson reportedly said may known theyre suppose report incidents rape sexual assault email faculty staff mid september 2015 obtained thinkprogress anderson told employees legal obligation report sexual harassment sexual misconduct students title ix gordon employee expected play active role anderson said email instead expelling man title ix panel found posed threat charek required move campus early april barred campus except class times according email nancy anderson lehmann obtained thinkprogress school also barred contacting seven women came forward consequences line precedent charek said separate email lehmann midapril 2017 explaining man wasnt suspended expelled title ix panel found guilty sexual assault rape two weeks later nancy anderson emailed lehmann let know man suspended two years would also banned campus entirely gordon would reassess mans suspension end two years anderson said email suspension triggered incident unrelated charges sexual assault sexual harassment according gordon spokesperson rick sweeney given privacy issues involved could discuss details sexual misconduct complaint similarly discuss details unrelated subsequent issue nature sweeney told thinkprogress email reached phone man said suspended sexual assault harassment though would give specific cause man also denied lehmanns six womens allegations said appealing schools decision cases someone felt uncomfortable thats one thing told thinkprogress say im sort predator thats kind unfortunate kind sad gordon enjoyed long reputation one moderate evangelical universities country changed 2014 president michael lindsay signed letter 13 christian leaders asking obama administration add religious exemption executive order barred federal contractors discriminating lgbtq employees letter set wave protests gordons campus spurred administration crack dissent according students alumni administrator spoke thinkprogress technically homosexual behavior allowed said faculty member spoke thinkprogress condition anonymity enforced students kind assumed would go away time instead lindsay doubled pretty tragic whole school gordons stance lgbtq relationships make especially hard report assaults member sex according paul miller gordon alumnus cofounder lgbtq advocacy group one gordon ban homosexual practice creates problematic dynamic miller told thinkprogress email jessica mahan found intersection policies female roommate also close friend sexually assaulted drinking friends home midmarch 2013 roommate turned dorms resident director gordon staff member alleged assault according women former resident director return multiple requests comment following assault griefstricken deeply remorseful wanted reach residence life work addressing issue trusted roommate told thinkprogress email knew wrong situation told residence director wanted actions addressed figure way get jess support guidance needed gordon denied roommates request change rooms five weeks left academic year told think progress stayed friends instead says school threatened discipline didnt return room mahan says never sure roommate also assailant would room staying friend mahans mental health declined sharply administrators told roommate suggest mahan seek counseling women said school never reached mahan directly eyes alcohol violation nothing last heard roommate said mahan published blog post experience early may 2014 went sent charek email asking whether post accurate response obtained thinkprogress charek said none initial information office received case pointed sexual assault also acknowledged question assault would certainly come incident involved woman man clearly conversation get full details instead dismissing third party get counseling charek wrote write sounds awfulugh charek referred requests comment thinkprogress gordon spokesperson declined comment specific allegations like many women interviewed story mahan longer attends church shes disillusioned gordon larger christian community evangelical emphasis community forgiveness makes difficult talk openly assault according mahan forgiveness means shut dont address told thinkprogress personal systemic problem arent going admit systemic problem theres something wrong community instead something wrong information sexual assault gordon college eastern nazarene college another university contact reporter cristina quinn reporterquinngmailcom contact reporter joshua eaton jeatonthinkprogressorg via signal 2026841030 intern ellen cranley transcribed interviews report | 2,823 |
<p>Nearly three weeks have passed since Sept. 11, and the United States has yet to launch a military offensive in the new unlimited global war on terrorism that President Bush declared on Sept. 20.</p>
<p>Combined with news reports that Secretary of State Colin Powell is battling within the Administration for a more diplomatic approach, this period of “calm” has many — including some in the antiwar movement — talking as if a full-scale war has been averted. No news of war, they say, is good news.</p>
<p>Several considerations suggest the opposite: no news is most likely bad news.</p>
<p>The first, and most obvious, point is that military operations on the scale that the Bush administration has discussed cannot be implemented overnight. Troops and materiel take time to move into place, especially when delicate negotiations are needed to establish bases in countries where such a move can have domestic political costs. Few countries are eager to become part of the American military machine; on Sunday, a Saudi Arabian official said no attacks on Afghanistan would be launched from his nation, an indication of the political touchiness of this endeavor.</p>
<p>Remember that the buildup to the Gulf War lasted five months. No matter how tough the talk in the first weeks after the terror attacks, Pentagon planners and their civilian chiefs do not make large-scale plans for military operations based on rhetoric. Words of war are spoken for public relations, not planning purposes.</p>
<p>In short: The antiwar movement should not get taken in by a diplomatic and media shell-game.</p>
<p>Again, the Gulf War is the perfect example. From the August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait up until days before the U.S. began bombing Baghdad, officials from the first Bush administration talked about their commitment to exploring a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. At the time, it was clear they weren’t serious, since they said publicly many times that there would be no negotiations; Iraq had to either accept U.S. conditions or face an attack (that’s what passes for diplomacy in the United States). This was widely acknowledged; early on, for example, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that the “diplomatic track” should be avoided because it might “defuse the crisis.”</p>
<p>In his book Shadow, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reported that the Bush administration was afraid Saddam Hussein might pull his forces out of Kuwait before the U.S. could strike. If that happened, it would be hard to justify keeping U.S. military forces in the region, leading then-President Bush to tell his national security team, “We have to have a war,” according to the book.</p>
<p>In an interview for a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/" type="external">PBS Frontline documentary on the Gulf War</a>, then-Secretary of State James Baker conceded that his January 9, 1991, meeting with Iraq’s foreign minister was mostly for appearances, to help to secure the congressional vote for war three days later.</p>
<p>In fact, the whole saga, while billed as a question of whether Saddam Hussein would come to his senses and negotiate, was anything but. The numerous plans presented to give him a face-saving formula, to retreat with the most minor of gains, were serially shot down by an administration bent on war.</p>
<p>As we hear talk about the United States engaging in diplomacy, we must remember this:. the U.S. conception of diplomacy does not mean seeking to avoid war, as the U.N. charter requires. It means coupling a “principled” refusal to negotiate with threats and verbal provocations designed to stiffen the spine of an enemy, so that situations cannot be resolved peacefully. It means lining up allies — sometimes by naked coercion, sometimes by bribes of debt-restructuring or trade favors — so that military actions can begin.</p>
<p>We see the same thing in the current situation no negotiations with the Taliban, no attempt to offer evidence linking bin Laden to the crime against humanity of September 11, but many peremptory demands, not just to turn over bin Laden but to effectively cede sovereignty to the United States by opening up training camps and other sensitive areas to American scrutiny. Plus ca change</p>
<p>Recent history offers another reason to expect that plans for war have not been shelved: An empire’s need to maintain “credibility.”</p>
<p>Credibility in this sense means the notion that anyone who challenges U.S. domination will pay the price. The destruction of one country keeps others from rising up. All empires must maintain this credibility, or they cease to be empires.</p>
<p>The major conflict of the American empire in the post-World War II era — the wars against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — was motivated by a central U.S. doctrine: Any attempt at independent development in the Third World had to be destroyed. But by 1967, at the absolute latest, it was clear to everyone — including U.S. planners — that a military victory was out of reach. From that point on, the war was continued in large part to further destroy Indochina, so that the United States was not seen to withdraw in defeat. The million tons of bombs dropped since that time were done to maintain credibility.</p>
<p>The war planners are going about the business of planning war. Still, the fact that one of the Gulf War planners, Colin Powell, now sits as secretary of state and is arguing for what seems to be a less aggressive posture has led many to be hopeful that a split in the administration could derail war. While we can only speculate on discussions going on inside the White House, again history and common sense can guide us.</p>
<p>First, the stories in the mainstream media about the rift between Powell and Rumsfeld, the doves and the hawks, may or may not have any connection to what is really happening. Internal policy disputes do break out in any administration. But just as often officials manipulate the press to float trial balloons and distract the public (even conservative columnist George Will has suggested news of this disagreement might just be “disinformation to confound our enemies”). Even if such a rift exists, it appears that the question for the Administration isn’t whether or not to go to war, but merely when, where and with what force.</p>
<p>Before we put our hopes in Powell-the-peacemaker, let us recall that he is the man who put forth the Powell Doctrine, which he summarized in the Frontline documentary as: “If this is important enough to go to war for, we’re going to do it in a way that there’s no question what the outcome will be and we’re going to do it by putting the force necessary to take the initiative away from your enemy and impose your will upon him.”</p>
<p>Again, remember that marshaling the forces to “impose your will” upon an enemy is not an easy process.</p>
<p>At this point we have little choice but to base our antiwar work on informed speculation; it would be foolish to think the administration is going to tell us forthrightly what it has in store for the world. A reasonable assumption at this point is that whatever instinct there might have been for an immediate demonstration bombing to signal the world that the United States has a “spine of steel” has been reined in, and that a more careful planning process is underway.</p>
<p>While this process continues, a severe human toll is already being exacted.</p>
<p>The administration’s bellicose posture has sparked such fear in Afghanistan that the flight of refugees has begun, with the accompanying likelihood of mass starvation. The United States is pressing to ensure that any food distribution plan is carried out ”in a manner that does not allow this food to fall into the hands of the Taliban,” according to deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. Since the Taliban itself, like most ruling elites, remains well-fed, this is plainly doublespeak for a plan to selectively starve the roughly 90% of the country controlled by them.</p>
<p>Translated: The war on the civilian population of Afghanistan using fear, flight and food is underway.</p>
<p>Beyond these basic observations, there is little we can know about what is in the minds of people gathered in the White House, the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom.</p>
<p>But we can and must use the time they have given us to step up our organizing and education efforts, not slow them down.</p>
<p>The polls, like the minds of most Americans, are full of contradiction. Although over 90% supposedly favor going to war, 63% think that strikes on Afghanistan make future terrorist attacks more, not less, likely. Simultaneously, the natural sympathies of Americans have been touched, resulting in a spontaneous upwelling of concern for the already starved, bombed, and brutalized Afghan people a concern that has already forced a change in rhetoric from the halls of power. Perhaps most important, people who are normally apolitical are paying attention to this issue.</p>
<p>Put together, it represents a mix with heady possibilities. The chance to build a genuine antiwar movement is greater than it has been in a very long time as long as, to take a leaf from George W. Bush, we do not tire and we do not falter. CP</p>
<p>Rahul Mahajan serves on the National Board of Peace Action. Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas. Both are members of the <a href="http://www.nowarcollective.com/" type="external">Nowar Collective</a>. They can be reached at <a href="" type="internal">rahul@tao.ca</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | nearly three weeks passed since sept 11 united states yet launch military offensive new unlimited global war terrorism president bush declared sept 20 combined news reports secretary state colin powell battling within administration diplomatic approach period calm many including antiwar movement talking fullscale war averted news war say good news several considerations suggest opposite news likely bad news first obvious point military operations scale bush administration discussed implemented overnight troops materiel take time move place especially delicate negotiations needed establish bases countries move domestic political costs countries eager become part american military machine sunday saudi arabian official said attacks afghanistan would launched nation indication political touchiness endeavor remember buildup gulf war lasted five months matter tough talk first weeks terror attacks pentagon planners civilian chiefs make largescale plans military operations based rhetoric words war spoken public relations planning purposes short antiwar movement get taken diplomatic media shellgame gulf war perfect example august 2 1990 invasion kuwait days us began bombing baghdad officials first bush administration talked commitment exploring diplomatic resolution crisis time clear werent serious since said publicly many times would negotiations iraq either accept us conditions face attack thats passes diplomacy united states widely acknowledged early example thomas friedman wrote new york times diplomatic track avoided might defuse crisis book shadow washington posts bob woodward reported bush administration afraid saddam hussein might pull forces kuwait us could strike happened would hard justify keeping us military forces region leading thenpresident bush tell national security team war according book interview pbs frontline documentary gulf war thensecretary state james baker conceded january 9 1991 meeting iraqs foreign minister mostly appearances help secure congressional vote war three days later fact whole saga billed question whether saddam hussein would come senses negotiate anything numerous plans presented give facesaving formula retreat minor gains serially shot administration bent war hear talk united states engaging diplomacy must remember us conception diplomacy mean seeking avoid war un charter requires means coupling principled refusal negotiate threats verbal provocations designed stiffen spine enemy situations resolved peacefully means lining allies sometimes naked coercion sometimes bribes debtrestructuring trade favors military actions begin see thing current situation negotiations taliban attempt offer evidence linking bin laden crime humanity september 11 many peremptory demands turn bin laden effectively cede sovereignty united states opening training camps sensitive areas american scrutiny plus ca change recent history offers another reason expect plans war shelved empires need maintain credibility credibility sense means notion anyone challenges us domination pay price destruction one country keeps others rising empires must maintain credibility cease empires major conflict american empire postworld war ii era wars vietnam laos cambodia motivated central us doctrine attempt independent development third world destroyed 1967 absolute latest clear everyone including us planners military victory reach point war continued large part destroy indochina united states seen withdraw defeat million tons bombs dropped since time done maintain credibility war planners going business planning war still fact one gulf war planners colin powell sits secretary state arguing seems less aggressive posture led many hopeful split administration could derail war speculate discussions going inside white house history common sense guide us first stories mainstream media rift powell rumsfeld doves hawks may may connection really happening internal policy disputes break administration often officials manipulate press float trial balloons distract public even conservative columnist george suggested news disagreement might disinformation confound enemies even rift exists appears question administration isnt whether go war merely force put hopes powellthepeacemaker let us recall man put forth powell doctrine summarized frontline documentary important enough go war going way theres question outcome going putting force necessary take initiative away enemy impose upon remember marshaling forces impose upon enemy easy process point little choice base antiwar work informed speculation would foolish think administration going tell us forthrightly store world reasonable assumption point whatever instinct might immediate demonstration bombing signal world united states spine steel reined careful planning process underway process continues severe human toll already exacted administrations bellicose posture sparked fear afghanistan flight refugees begun accompanying likelihood mass starvation united states pressing ensure food distribution plan carried manner allow food fall hands taliban according deputy secretary state richard armitage since taliban like ruling elites remains wellfed plainly doublespeak plan selectively starve roughly 90 country controlled translated war civilian population afghanistan using fear flight food underway beyond basic observations little know minds people gathered white house pentagon foggy bottom must use time given us step organizing education efforts slow polls like minds americans full contradiction although 90 supposedly favor going war 63 think strikes afghanistan make future terrorist attacks less likely simultaneously natural sympathies americans touched resulting spontaneous upwelling concern already starved bombed brutalized afghan people concern already forced change rhetoric halls power perhaps important people normally apolitical paying attention issue put together represents mix heady possibilities chance build genuine antiwar movement greater long time long take leaf george w bush tire falter cp rahul mahajan serves national board peace action robert jensen professor journalism university texas members nowar collective reached rahultaoca 160 | 830 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>There is so much propaganda, faith-based economic theorizing and simple ignorance and naiveté surrounding the question of soaring gasoline and oil prices in this country!</p>
<p>For heaven’s sake, of course there is collusion, monopolistic behavior and price fixing in the oil industry. It’s the way this particular industry operates.</p>
<p>Start with the OPEC, that gang of producers, largely in the thrall of the major oil companies, which sets production quotas for most of the major oil producing nations.</p>
<p>Then move to the large companies. There used to be seven. Now there are far fewer mega companies, thanks to mergers like Exxon/Mobil and BP/Amoco.</p>
<p>Even when they were seven those companies aren’t really functioning as independent, competitive enterprises, and it’s only gotten worth with increasing concentration. Because refineries, offshore drilling platforms and pipelines are gigantic multi-billion-dollar capital projects–a typical refinery can cost upwards of $5 billion to construct–most are joint projects involving several oil companies, while others lease the use of them. In such a situation, all those elements of a business which are normally closely-held trade secrets important to maintaining competitive advantage–inventories, crude reserves, pricing, production rates, relative mix of heating oil, low and high-octane gasoline, etc.–are common knowledge.</p>
<p>It’s not like a typical business–say automobiles or television sets–where companies keep those kinds of numbers secret or, if they collude, have to do it by meeting in secret and agreeing on higher prices. The executives of the oil industry never have to get together, whether over a game of golf or in a back office. They know all about each other’s operations without ever talking. Collusion, not competition, is a way of life in this industry.</p>
<p>There is simply no way to use a competitive model to explain what happened to gasoline prices after the Katrina storm hit New Orleans. At best, 10 percent of production was shut down, according to reports. That’s 10 percent of 1/4 of U.S. demand–a tiny amount. Even if it were 10 percent of total demand because of reduced import capability at the Louisiana port, we’re talking about 10 percent, while gas prices rose 25-35 percent and even more in some areas. Not often mentioned in the same articles on this phenomenon was the fact that the world price of oil actually fell by almost 10 percent over the same period.</p>
<p>When the world oil price rises, I notice, as I’m sure most readers also notice, that the price at the pump is up the next day–sometimes the same day that a report comes out. Yet oil from places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait takes months to go from the wellhead to retail gas stations in the U.S. Even oil from Venezuela takes weeks to become gas at the station in the U.S. What other product do you know of where the retail price in stores jumps immediately when the price of raw materials that goes into it goes up? Does bread go up at the store the day that wheat prices kick up on the Chicago Merc? Does candy in the store go up when the price of sugar rises on the Comex? Of course not! Just gasoline and home heating oil. So if more expensive crude oil doesn’t actually physically get to the pump for months, and the price at the pump goes up immediately, who’s pocketing that money in the meantime? Hint: It’s not your local gas station owner. Just check out the stock prices of the oil companies, and you’ll have the correct answer.</p>
<p>In a competitive model, the kind Milton Friedman likes to celebrate, companies like Sunoco and Exxon would keep their retail prices as low as possible until costs forced them to raise prices–something that simply doesn’t happen. Indeed, it’s a one-way arrangement: When the per barrel price of crude falls, the price at the pump hangs at its high level, sometimes for weeks, but if crude goes up, so does the pump price. Consumers can’t shop for bargains, because all gas stations behave the same way. For the most part, though, it’s not the stations that are doing this gouging–many of them aren’t even independent businesses, but are owned by the major companies–but rather the oil companies themselves. The money that results from this collusive, monopolistic behavior, in other words, is accruing to the oil companies and their stockholders.</p>
<p>The beauty of this arrangement, from the oil industry’s perspective, is that nobody can be fined or jailed for it. Under U.S. anti-trust law, it’s not illegal to have collusive results. The government would have to prove collusive intent, and as long as the oil executives don’t actually sit in a room or a teleconference, and expressly conspire to collude on raising prices or cutting production, that simply cannot be done.</p>
<p>If Congress and the White House were serious about combating price rigging,coordinated production slowdowns and artificial scarcities, they would be changing the anti-trust laws so that the objective existence of anti-competitive pricing and production alone would be illegal, not just deliberate conspiring to fix prices. A simple step would be just to make all the competitive information regarding production and pricing of oil and oil products, all the way from wellhead to pump, public. After all, if the oil companies all know everything about each other’s internal pricing and production, there’s no justification for keeping that information from the public. Instead we have the opposite situation of course: secret meetings by our oil-industry-subsidized vice president and executives of the oil industry, where real collusive decisions were made.</p>
<p>Oil and energy are too crucial to the economy and to people’s daily lives to allow them to remain the private domain of oil company executives and the oilmen–Bush and Cheney to name two–who run this blood-and-oil administration.</p>
<p>DAVE LINDORFF is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512283/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal</a>. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512984/counterpunchmaga" type="external">This Can’t be Happening!</a>” is published by Common Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at <a href="http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/" type="external">www.thiscantbehappening.net</a>.</p>
<p>He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:dlindorff@yahoo.com" type="external">dlindorff@yahoo.com</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>CLARIFICATION</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH</p>
<p>We published an article entitled “A Saudiless Arabia” by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the “Article”), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the “Website”).</p>
<p>Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.</p>
<p>We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.</p>
<p>As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi’s lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.</p>
<p>We are pleased to clarify the position.</p>
<p>August 17, 2005</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | 160 much propaganda faithbased economic theorizing simple ignorance naiveté surrounding question soaring gasoline oil prices country heavens sake course collusion monopolistic behavior price fixing oil industry way particular industry operates start opec gang producers largely thrall major oil companies sets production quotas major oil producing nations move large companies used seven far fewer mega companies thanks mergers like exxonmobil bpamoco even seven companies arent really functioning independent competitive enterprises gotten worth increasing concentration refineries offshore drilling platforms pipelines gigantic multibilliondollar capital projectsa typical refinery cost upwards 5 billion constructmost joint projects involving several oil companies others lease use situation elements business normally closelyheld trade secrets important maintaining competitive advantageinventories crude reserves pricing production rates relative mix heating oil low highoctane gasoline etcare common knowledge like typical businesssay automobiles television setswhere companies keep kinds numbers secret collude meeting secret agreeing higher prices executives oil industry never get together whether game golf back office know others operations without ever talking collusion competition way life industry simply way use competitive model explain happened gasoline prices katrina storm hit new orleans best 10 percent production shut according reports thats 10 percent 14 us demanda tiny amount even 10 percent total demand reduced import capability louisiana port talking 10 percent gas prices rose 2535 percent even areas often mentioned articles phenomenon fact world price oil actually fell almost 10 percent period world oil price rises notice im sure readers also notice price pump next daysometimes day report comes yet oil places like saudi arabia kuwait takes months go wellhead retail gas stations us even oil venezuela takes weeks become gas station us product know retail price stores jumps immediately price raw materials goes goes bread go store day wheat prices kick chicago merc candy store go price sugar rises comex course gasoline home heating oil expensive crude oil doesnt actually physically get pump months price pump goes immediately whos pocketing money meantime hint local gas station owner check stock prices oil companies youll correct answer competitive model kind milton friedman likes celebrate companies like sunoco exxon would keep retail prices low possible costs forced raise pricessomething simply doesnt happen indeed oneway arrangement per barrel price crude falls price pump hangs high level sometimes weeks crude goes pump price consumers cant shop bargains gas stations behave way part though stations gougingmany arent even independent businesses owned major companiesbut rather oil companies money results collusive monopolistic behavior words accruing oil companies stockholders beauty arrangement oil industrys perspective nobody fined jailed us antitrust law illegal collusive results government would prove collusive intent long oil executives dont actually sit room teleconference expressly conspire collude raising prices cutting production simply done congress white house serious combating price riggingcoordinated production slowdowns artificial scarcities would changing antitrust laws objective existence anticompetitive pricing production alone would illegal deliberate conspiring fix prices simple step would make competitive information regarding production pricing oil oil products way wellhead pump public oil companies know everything others internal pricing production theres justification keeping information public instead opposite situation course secret meetings oilindustrysubsidized vice president executives oil industry real collusive decisions made oil energy crucial economy peoples daily lives allow remain private domain oil company executives oilmenbush cheney name twowho run bloodandoil administration dave lindorff author killing time investigation death row case mumia abujamal new book counterpunch columns titled cant happening published common courage press information books work lindorff found wwwthiscantbehappeningnet reached dlindorffyahoocom 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 clarification alexander cockburn jeffrey st clair becky grant institute advancement journalistic clarity counterpunch published article entitled saudiless arabia wayne madsen dated october 22 2002 article website institute advancement journalistic clarity counterpunch wwwcounterpunchorg website although intention counsel mohammed hussein al amoudi advised us article suggests could read suggesting mr al amoudi funded supported way associated terrorist activities osama bin laden al qaeda terrorist network evidence connecting mr al amoudi terrorism result exchange communications mr al amoudis lawyers removed article website pleased clarify position august 17 2005 160 | 658 |
<p>Image: AP Photo/Jassim Mohammed</p>
<p />
<p>Most of the United States’ attention is now focused on the NATO bombing of Kosovo. But just because a new war has started doesn’t mean the old one is over. On Friday, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/AP19990402_126.html" type="external">the U.S. bombed</a> an Iraqi communications control facility and an Iraqi radio relay station — one more incident to add to the eighty-plus that have occured over the past three months. However, the media seemingly lost interest in this tired conflict months ago, after the dramatic headlines and night-glow images of Operation Desert Fox had subsided.</p>
<p>Newspapers have generally relegated their coverage of the more recent U.S./British bombing “incidents” to a few paragraphs in the international section. And Time and Newsweek have largely ignored the ongoing campaign, which has inflicted more damage than December’s intensive four-day bombing blitz.</p>
<p>Neither magazine, amazingly, bothered to report the January 25 missile attacks on civilian areas that wounded nearly 100 people and killed ten children. Newsweek didn’t even mention the current conflict with Iraq in its <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/issue/10_99a/common/index/index.htm" type="external">March 8 issue</a> devoted entirely to “Americans at War.” (The magazine did have the audacity to claim, though, that “America has not started a war in this century.” Perhaps Vietnam was just a decade-long police action.)</p>
<p>The media’s relative silence is disturbing, but hardly surprising: the U.S. government’s attempt to defeat Iraq through a slow-moving war of attrition just doesn’t make for good copy. Combine that fact with the Clinton administration’s bumblingly inconsistent spin, and the result is an American public that has remained mostly in the dark about its government’s past, present, and future actions in Iraq.</p>
<p />
<p>We know now that United States intelligence operatives used the cover of UNSCOM inspections to spy on the Iraqis — a charge that the Iraqis had long alleged. The day before the Boston Globe and The Washington Post reported, on January 6, that “U.S. intelligence agencies, working under the cover of the United Nations, carried out an ambitious spying operation,” the Clinton administration refused comment on the issue. The day the story broke, UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler stated at the United Nations in New York that “we have never conducted spying for anybody” and insisted that UNSCOM did not possess any eavesdropping equipment.</p>
<p>After the papers broke the story, the Clinton administration acknowledged that the United States had received intelligence information about Iraq from UNSCOM inspectors. However, State Department Spokesman James Rubin asserted that “it is my understanding that at no time did the U.S. work with anyone at UNSCOM to collect information for the purpose of undermining the Iraqi regime.”</p>
<p>The next day, Kenneth Bacon of the Defense Department attempted to “clarify” matters:</p>
<p />
<p>Bacon: In order to do its job, UNSCOM asked about 40 different countries at various times to support its mission…so we responded to UNSCOM’s request.</p>
<p>Q: Despite the fact that you say that UNSCOM had to be increasingly aggressive about its job…that increased aggression did not include spying?</p>
<p>Bacon: It had to work hard to gather information…</p>
<p>Q: Where do you draw the line between spying and just gathering information?</p>
<p>Bacon: I don’t. There’s no need to. UNSCOM was a disarmament agency, not a spy agency.</p>
<p />
<p>Then the story changed again. On March 2, The Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence services “infiltrated agents and espionage equipment for three years…to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military without the knowledge of the U.N. agency that it used to disguise its work.” (Unfortunately, only articles printed within the last two weeks are readily available on the Post’s Web site. You have to pay a small fee to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/archives/front.htm" type="external">download it</a>.) U.S. officials had apparently “considered the risk of discrediting an international arms control system by infiltrating it for their own eavesdropping…[and] they deemed the risks worth running.”</p>
<p>Even while printing these revelations, most newspapers did not address their implications: The justification for bombing Iraq had been thrown into question. The December bombing blitz was precipitated by the release of Butler’s <a href="http://www.un.org/depts/unscom/s98-1172.htm" type="external">report</a> stating that Iraq was not satisfactorily complying with UNSCOM inspections — partially because they believed UNSCOM was a front for U.S. spying operations. UNSCOM was a front for U.S. spying operations. We bombed them anyway.</p>
<p />
<p>Despite being caught once using a U.N. operation to conceal its actions, the U.S. continues to veil its Iraq policy behind the authority of the United Nations. In a January 5 press briefing, State Department Spokesman Rubin explained that U.S. and British enforcement of</p>
<p />
<p>“…the no-fly zones [is] very important to protect the people of Iraq from its dictatorship, which has so blatantly and completely brutalized and terrorized it. We have been enforcing no-fly zones since 1991. The coalition created them in accordance with [U.N.] Resolution 688, as well as Resolution 678 and 687. We are acting pursuant to those resolutions.”</p>
<p>Perhaps Mr. Rubin should read the resolutions.</p>
<p><a href="gopher://gopher.undp.org:70/00/undocs/scd/scouncil/s91/4" type="external">Resolution 687</a> (1991) allows for the creation of “a Special Commission, which shall carry out immediate on-site inspection of Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile capabilities” and clarifies the sanctions levied against Baghdad.</p>
<p><a href="gopher://gopher.undp.org:70/00/undocs/scd/scouncil/s91/5" type="external">Resolution 688</a>(1991) “condemns the repression of the Iraqi civilian population in many parts of Iraq” and calls for humanitarian efforts “to address urgently the critical needs of the refugees.”</p>
<p>Only <a href="gopher://gopher.undp.org:70/00/undocs/scd/scouncil/s90/32" type="external">Resolution 678</a> (1990) could remotely be interpreted to authorize the no-fly zones. It demands that Iraq “comply fully with <a href="gopher://gopher.undp.org:70/00/undocs/scd/scouncil/s90/14" type="external">Resolution 660</a>” (which called for Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait) and “authorizes Member States … to use all necessary means” to implement resolution 660 and “all subsequent relevant resolutions.”</p>
<p>However, nowhere in the body of any of the three resolutions is the concept of a “no-fly” zone introduced. Yet the Clinton administration continues to use the pretext of U.N. mandates to justify the bombing runs — and the major U.S. media outlets do little more than echo that assertion. Not once in two months of (rarely) reporting the conflict did <a href="http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/intl/0,3266,21167,00.html" type="external">Time</a> &#160;or <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/issue/02_99a/printed/us/in/in0202_1.htm" type="external">Newsweek</a> &#160;even mention that the legality of the no-fly zones has been contested by Russia and China, two of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Instead, the media has characterized all opposition to the no-fly zones as coming from Iraq, which “considers” the zones illegal and an infringement of its sovereignty.</p>
<p />
<p>While continuing to enforce the no-fly zones, the U.S. is also strategizing new ways to defeat Saddam. Once again, these actions have been kept mostly out of the public eye. On October 31, President Clinton signed the <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c105:1:./temp/~c1051sF8oZ:e4114:" type="external">Iraq Liberation Act</a>, which authorizes the president to give up to $97 million in weapons, “defense services,” and military training to Iraqi opposition groups that are “opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime and are committed to democratic values.” When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott introduced the bill, he said, “It is time to openly state our policy goal is the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.”</p>
<p>The bill was signed despite widespread concerns — even within the Clinton administration — that it would lead to fractiousness and instability within Iraq. In an October 22 article in USA Today, even the region’s commanding officer, Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni (who claims that he was never consulted about the bill), expressed doubts: “I don’t think this has been thought out … A Saddam in place and contained is better than promoting something that causes Iraq to explode, implode, fragment into pieces, cause turmoil.” (Such concerns have put the actual disbursement of arms and military support on hold, but the policy remains in place.)</p>
<p>The passage of the bill was barely noticed by the media, despite the ethical and legal implications of a formal U.S. policy to remove a sovereign country’s leader from power, the dubious likelihood of such a plan succeeding, and the tremendous resources committed. Even more disturbing was an <a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/981228/28war.htm" type="external">article</a> that appeared in the December 28 issue of U.S. News and World Report claiming, incredulously, that</p>
<p />
<p>” … there appears to be little intensification of American efforts to weaken Saddam’s grip on the Iraqi people. Retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing, who has advised some of the Iraqi opposition leaders, says there have been no efforts to start training opposition groups … or other steps to bolster their standing.”</p>
<p>Surely the passage of a bill — two months before the publication of the article — authorizing almost $100 million in military aid to Iraqi opposition groups qualifies as “bolstering” their standing. The article only acknowledged the provisions of the Iraq Liberation Act in passing: “Administration officials tout a new ‘containment plus’ strategy…while working more aggressively with Iraqi dissidents who might one day depose Saddam.” Actually, ousting Saddam Hussein had become a formalized U.S. foreign policy objective.</p>
<p>If media reports were misleading, the Clinton administration was just plain evasive. At a State Department Briefing on October 13, after Congress had passed the Iraq Liberation Act, spokesman Rubin fielded a question about how the $97 million would be spent: “We have an elaborate arrangement that we’ve briefed Congress on, on how to spend those funds. And it is a broad-based arrangement designed to promote and present … a Democratic alternative, and to get maximum cooperation between the various groups.” Attempts by the reporter to get Rubin to further define this “elaborate arrangement” were unsuccessful.</p>
<p>Undoubtedly, the Clinton administration will continue to fumble and misrepresent its way through future actions against Iraq — and the media will continue to miss the story. Unfortunately, the majority of the American public believes what they read (or don’tread) in Time and Newsweek. The lesson learned from all of this? What you do isn’t as important as what you say you do, especially when you’re blessed with a complicit press and a complacent public.</p>
<p />
<p>Photo by AP Photo/Jassim Mohammed</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>In search of an alternative perspective on the U.S.-Iraqi conflict? The following Web sites are good places to start.</p>
<p>The Iraq Foundation <a href="http://www.iraqfoundation.org/index.html" type="external">http://www.iraqfoundation.org/index.html</a>In their words: “The Iraq Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organization working for democracy and human rights in Iraq…” In other words: A good source for frequent updates on Iraq-related news. The site also provides information on human rights in Iraq and an online forum.</p>
<p>The Iraq Action Coalition <a href="http://leb.net/IAC/" type="external">http://leb.net/IAC/</a>In their words: “The Iraq Action Coalition is an independent grassroots coalition dedicated to ending the war on the people of Iraq…” In other words: The place to go for information on the sanctions, including an online petition and a speakers resource list.</p>
<p>The International Action Center <a href="http://www.iacenter.org" type="external">http://www.iacenter.org</a> In their words: “The IAC was initiated in 1992 by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark … to expose the U.S. bombing of innocent Iraqi civilians…” In other words: The IAC site specializes in the legal aspects of the Iraqi conflict. Added bonuses: information on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the crisis in Kosovo.</p>
<p>The Open Directory Project <a href="http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Economic_Sanctions/on_Iraq" type="external">http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Economic_Sanctions/on_Iraq</a>In their words: “The Open Directory Project’s goal is to produce the most comprehensive directory of the Web, by relying on a vast army of volunteer editors.” In other words: Their page on Iraq contains a broad array of speakers, video clips, essays, book listings, and other information.</p>
<p>Iraq Net Information Network <a href="http://www.iraq.net/" type="external">http://www.iraq.net/</a> In their words: “Iraq Net is a small effort towards bringing Iraqis scattered around the globe, to one place. To share ideas, discuss Iraqi concerns, meet old friends.” In other words: Here you’ll find tons of links to news organizations, an “events board” highlighting important events worldwide, an online forum, and a chat community.</p>
<p>The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) <a href="http://www.adc.org" type="external">http://www.adc.org</a>In their words: “The [ADC] is a civil-rights organization committed to defending the rights of people of Arab descent and promoting their rich cultural heritage.” In other words: Although you have to dig a little to find information specifically on Iraq, it’s there, along with information on Palestinian statehood and threats to Arab-American civil liberties.</p>
<p>U.S. Out of the Gulf: Committee Against U.S. Intervention <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/iraq/iraq.html" type="external">http://www.antiwar.com/iraq/iraq.html</a>In their words: They don’t describe who they are or give a mission statement on the site, at least not one we could find.In other words: This site has plenty of links to newspaper coverage of the Iraq fiasco, as well as to anti-intervention essays written by people like Dennis Halliday, Noam Chomsky, and Camille Paglia.</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | image ap photojassim mohammed united states attention focused nato bombing kosovo new war started doesnt mean old one friday us bombed iraqi communications control facility iraqi radio relay station one incident add eightyplus occured past three months however media seemingly lost interest tired conflict months ago dramatic headlines nightglow images operation desert fox subsided newspapers generally relegated coverage recent usbritish bombing incidents paragraphs international section time newsweek largely ignored ongoing campaign inflicted damage decembers intensive fourday bombing blitz neither magazine amazingly bothered report january 25 missile attacks civilian areas wounded nearly 100 people killed ten children newsweek didnt even mention current conflict iraq march 8 issue devoted entirely americans war magazine audacity claim though america started war century perhaps vietnam decadelong police action medias relative silence disturbing hardly surprising us governments attempt defeat iraq slowmoving war attrition doesnt make good copy combine fact clinton administrations bumblingly inconsistent spin result american public remained mostly dark governments past present future actions iraq know united states intelligence operatives used cover unscom inspections spy iraqis charge iraqis long alleged day boston globe washington post reported january 6 us intelligence agencies working cover united nations carried ambitious spying operation clinton administration refused comment issue day story broke unscom executive chairman richard butler stated united nations new york never conducted spying anybody insisted unscom possess eavesdropping equipment papers broke story clinton administration acknowledged united states received intelligence information iraq unscom inspectors however state department spokesman james rubin asserted understanding time us work anyone unscom collect information purpose undermining iraqi regime next day kenneth bacon defense department attempted clarify matters bacon order job unscom asked 40 different countries various times support missionso responded unscoms request q despite fact say unscom increasingly aggressive jobthat increased aggression include spying bacon work hard gather information q draw line spying gathering information bacon dont theres need unscom disarmament agency spy agency story changed march 2 washington post reported us intelligence services infiltrated agents espionage equipment three yearsto eavesdrop iraqi military without knowledge un agency used disguise work unfortunately articles printed within last two weeks readily available posts web site pay small fee download us officials apparently considered risk discrediting international arms control system infiltrating eavesdroppingand deemed risks worth running even printing revelations newspapers address implications justification bombing iraq thrown question december bombing blitz precipitated release butlers report stating iraq satisfactorily complying unscom inspections partially believed unscom front us spying operations unscom front us spying operations bombed anyway despite caught using un operation conceal actions us continues veil iraq policy behind authority united nations january 5 press briefing state department spokesman rubin explained us british enforcement nofly zones important protect people iraq dictatorship blatantly completely brutalized terrorized enforcing nofly zones since 1991 coalition created accordance un resolution 688 well resolution 678 687 acting pursuant resolutions perhaps mr rubin read resolutions resolution 687 1991 allows creation special commission shall carry immediate onsite inspection iraqs biological chemical missile capabilities clarifies sanctions levied baghdad resolution 6881991 condemns repression iraqi civilian population many parts iraq calls humanitarian efforts address urgently critical needs refugees resolution 678 1990 could remotely interpreted authorize nofly zones demands iraq comply fully resolution 660 called iraq withdraw forces kuwait authorizes member states use necessary means implement resolution 660 subsequent relevant resolutions however nowhere body three resolutions concept nofly zone introduced yet clinton administration continues use pretext un mandates justify bombing runs major us media outlets little echo assertion two months rarely reporting conflict time 160or newsweek 160even mention legality nofly zones contested russia china two five permanent members un security council instead media characterized opposition nofly zones coming iraq considers zones illegal infringement sovereignty continuing enforce nofly zones us also strategizing new ways defeat saddam actions kept mostly public eye october 31 president clinton signed iraq liberation act authorizes president give 97 million weapons defense services military training iraqi opposition groups opposed saddam hussein regime committed democratic values senate majority leader trent lott introduced bill said time openly state policy goal removal saddam husseins regime power bill signed despite widespread concerns even within clinton administration would lead fractiousness instability within iraq october 22 article usa today even regions commanding officer marine corps general anthony zinni claims never consulted bill expressed doubts dont think thought saddam place contained better promoting something causes iraq explode implode fragment pieces cause turmoil concerns put actual disbursement arms military support hold policy remains place passage bill barely noticed media despite ethical legal implications formal us policy remove sovereign countrys leader power dubious likelihood plan succeeding tremendous resources committed even disturbing article appeared december 28 issue us news world report claiming incredulously appears little intensification american efforts weaken saddams grip iraqi people retired army gen wayne downing advised iraqi opposition leaders says efforts start training opposition groups steps bolster standing surely passage bill two months publication article authorizing almost 100 million military aid iraqi opposition groups qualifies bolstering standing article acknowledged provisions iraq liberation act passing administration officials tout new containment plus strategywhile working aggressively iraqi dissidents might one day depose saddam actually ousting saddam hussein become formalized us foreign policy objective media reports misleading clinton administration plain evasive state department briefing october 13 congress passed iraq liberation act spokesman rubin fielded question 97 million would spent elaborate arrangement weve briefed congress spend funds broadbased arrangement designed promote present democratic alternative get maximum cooperation various groups attempts reporter get rubin define elaborate arrangement unsuccessful undoubtedly clinton administration continue fumble misrepresent way future actions iraq media continue miss story unfortunately majority american public believes read dontread time newsweek lesson learned isnt important say especially youre blessed complicit press complacent public photo ap photojassim mohammed search alternative perspective usiraqi conflict following web sites good places start iraq foundation httpwwwiraqfoundationorgindexhtmlin words iraq foundation nonprofit nongovernmental organization working democracy human rights iraq words good source frequent updates iraqrelated news site also provides information human rights iraq online forum iraq action coalition httplebnetiacin words iraq action coalition independent grassroots coalition dedicated ending war people iraq words place go information sanctions including online petition speakers resource list international action center httpwwwiacenterorg words iac initiated 1992 former us attorney general ramsey clark expose us bombing innocent iraqi civilians words iac site specializes legal aspects iraqi conflict added bonuses information mumia abujamal crisis kosovo open directory project httpwwwdmozorgsocietyissueseconomic_sanctionson_iraqin words open directory projects goal produce comprehensive directory web relying vast army volunteer editors words page iraq contains broad array speakers video clips essays book listings information iraq net information network httpwwwiraqnet words iraq net small effort towards bringing iraqis scattered around globe one place share ideas discuss iraqi concerns meet old friends words youll find tons links news organizations events board highlighting important events worldwide online forum chat community americanarab antidiscrimination committee adc httpwwwadcorgin words adc civilrights organization committed defending rights people arab descent promoting rich cultural heritage words although dig little find information specifically iraq along information palestinian statehood threats arabamerican civil liberties us gulf committee us intervention httpwwwantiwarcomiraqiraqhtmlin words dont describe give mission statement site least one could findin words site plenty links newspaper coverage iraq fiasco well antiintervention essays written people like dennis halliday noam chomsky camille paglia | 1,184 |
<p>“In a striking admission from the Obama Administration’s top intelligence officer, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair announced Wednesday that the United States may target its own citizens abroad for death if it believes they are associated with terrorist groups.” (Feb 4, 2010)</p>
<p>We face a multi-trillion dollar deficit derived to fund two ongoing wars of dubious legality against unconquerable nations and still, U.S. school kids learn we are a nation “of laws not men.”</p>
<p>“Conservatives” refer reverently to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, but where in that Document does a President derive authority to order assassinations? Must the Constitution adapt to wars against terror and communism? Like the contemporary conflict with “terror” the Cold War (1946-91) required our Commander in Chief to use “extrajudicial procedures: the CIA executed “enemies” without judicial process.</p>
<p>The media reports such procedures as routine news stories. “U.S. Predator Drones fired two missiles into Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border… killing at least a dozen people … the third such attack by a CIA-operated drone aircraft in Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun tribal areas this month.”</p>
<p>The October 16, 2009, Reuters dispatch continues: “An intelligence official in the region said 12 people were killed in the attack targeting a house while another put the death toll at 15 and said most were Afghans…the dead included eight women and children.”</p>
<p>The drones hit a house “close to a sprawling madrasa, or religious school, set up by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former veteran Afghan militant commander who is also a senior Taliban leader … close to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.”</p>
<p>Another CIA drone killed “militants” and maybe civilians in Pakistan. The news media treats these as if they were routine oil spills, psychos whacking fellow workers or celebrities divorcing. The story assumes the CIA’s “right” to murder people in a foreign – and friendly — country.</p>
<p>For almost a decade, “patriotic” citizens have berated the CIA, which “discovered” bin Laden, for its failure to assassinate him and other members of his gang. No one mentions indictments or trials.</p>
<p>During the Cold War, most of the CIA’s murders escaped the media. In 1954, President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to plot the overthrow of the elected Guatemalan government under President Jacobo Arbenz.</p>
<p>The Agency apparently refused the request of their Guatemalan General Castillo Armas (chosen to depose Arbenz) to assassinate 58 leftist Arbenz backers. Instead, one CIA official, whose name was blacked out in a subsequently declassified report, “thought the assassination of a smaller number ‘say 20’ would be sufficient.”</p>
<p>By the late 1940s, the CIA had already set up sabotage teams to use against governments Washington opposed and created a special ‘K’ group trained to perform assassinations.” (Gerald K. Haines, CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952-1954, pp. 12-13, found at the National Security Archive)</p>
<p>Under the guise of fighting communism, the Agency became the President’s Praetorian Guard. Eisenhower helped key U.S. corporations to maximize their foreign investments. In 1953, the CIA deposed the elected government of Iran, for the benefit of U.S. oil companies. The Guatemalan caper benefited the United Fruit Company. “Democracy” triumphed – even though Arbenz was not a Communist.</p>
<p>Who benefits now from drone attacks on “suspected militants?” And what are the costs – in expected blowback? Does anyone care that President Obama boasted: “We took out” Mehsud, the man “the CIA blamed for bombings across Pakistan.” (Reuters Aug. 21 2009)</p>
<p>No court indicted this man, much less tried him under any law. Obama, or some underling in “intelligence”, declared Mohammed Doe evil, like a Nebraska abortion doctor, and thus a reason to assassinate him.</p>
<p>You’d think Law Professor Obama could cite Justice Louis Brandeis’ words. “Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution.” (Olmstead et al v. United States (1928))</p>
<p>Instead of discussing this ethical premise, the national debate still rages around how many more crimes the government should commit to ensure “security.” Few talk of how relatives of “droned down” victims in North Waziristan will exact revenge!</p>
<p>On December 30, 2009, a suicide bomber killed seven Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan. On February 3, “a U.S. drone struck a Pakistani target killing six militants.” On the same day, “Pakistan’s Taliban claimed responsibility for a bomb on Wednesday that killed three U.S. soldiers outside a school in the northwest of the country and threatened more attacks on Americans.” (Reuters)</p>
<p>Also, on February 3, “a suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles into Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing six militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.” (Reuters)</p>
<p>SAUL LANDAU is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His films on DVD are available (roundworldproductions.com). His A BUS AND BOTOX WORLD was published by Counterpunch. &#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | striking admission obama administrations top intelligence officer director national intelligence dennis blair announced wednesday united states may target citizens abroad death believes associated terrorist groups feb 4 2010 face multitrillion dollar deficit derived fund two ongoing wars dubious legality unconquerable nations still us school kids learn nation laws men conservatives refer reverently founding fathers constitution document president derive authority order assassinations must constitution adapt wars terror communism like contemporary conflict terror cold war 194691 required commander chief use extrajudicial procedures cia executed enemies without judicial process media reports procedures routine news stories us predator drones fired two missiles pakistans north waziristan region afghan border killing least dozen people third attack ciaoperated drone aircraft pakistans ethnic pashtun tribal areas month october 16 2009 reuters dispatch continues intelligence official region said 12 people killed attack targeting house another put death toll 15 said afghansthe dead included eight women children drones hit house close sprawling madrasa religious school set jalaluddin haqqani former veteran afghan militant commander also senior taliban leader close al qaeda leader osama bin laden another cia drone killed militants maybe civilians pakistan news media treats routine oil spills psychos whacking fellow workers celebrities divorcing story assumes cias right murder people foreign friendly country almost decade patriotic citizens berated cia discovered bin laden failure assassinate members gang one mentions indictments trials cold war cias murders escaped media 1954 president eisenhower authorized cia plot overthrow elected guatemalan government president jacobo arbenz agency apparently refused request guatemalan general castillo armas chosen depose arbenz assassinate 58 leftist arbenz backers instead one cia official whose name blacked subsequently declassified report thought assassination smaller number say 20 would sufficient late 1940s cia already set sabotage teams use governments washington opposed created special k group trained perform assassinations gerald k haines cia guatemala assassination proposals 19521954 pp 1213 found national security archive guise fighting communism agency became presidents praetorian guard eisenhower helped key us corporations maximize foreign investments 1953 cia deposed elected government iran benefit us oil companies guatemalan caper benefited united fruit company democracy triumphed even though arbenz communist benefits drone attacks suspected militants costs expected blowback anyone care president obama boasted took mehsud man cia blamed bombings across pakistan reuters aug 21 2009 court indicted man much less tried law obama underling intelligence declared mohammed doe evil like nebraska abortion doctor thus reason assassinate youd think law professor obama could cite justice louis brandeis words decency security liberty alike demand government officials shall subjected rules conduct commands citizen government laws existence government imperiled fails observe law scrupulously government potent omnipresent teacher good ill teaches whole people example crime contagious government becomes lawbreaker breeds contempt law invites every man become law unto invites anarchy declare administration criminal law end justifies means declare government may commit crimes order secure conviction private criminal would bring terrible retribution olmstead et al v united states 1928 instead discussing ethical premise national debate still rages around many crimes government commit ensure security talk relatives droned victims north waziristan exact revenge december 30 2009 suicide bomber killed seven central intelligence agency cia operatives us base eastern afghanistan february 3 us drone struck pakistani target killing six militants day pakistans taliban claimed responsibility bomb wednesday killed three us soldiers outside school northwest country threatened attacks americans reuters also february 3 suspected us drone aircraft fired two missiles pakistans north waziristan region afghan border tuesday killing six militants pakistani intelligence officials said reuters saul landau institute policy studies fellow films dvd available roundworldproductionscom bus botox world published counterpunch 160 160 | 586 |
<p>We’ve entered a new era of history. The troops and tanks rumbling toward Baghdad take with them the ashes and dust of international law, diplomacy, human rights, civil liberties, democratic self-governance, and much else. But, as Arlo Guthrie famously said about his convictions for littering and creating a nuisance during America’s last major imperial disaster, “That’s not what I came here to talk about.”</p>
<p>The verdict of history will have to await developments in the fog and chaos of this criminal war. A war sought and pursued by the Bush gang in Washington for oil and power, in the name of liberation and disarmament. It is now just a week after the opening salvos of “shock and awe.” This is the time period of journalism, not yet history. But obvious contradictions and shortcomings of US military strategy are already becoming glaringly clear, even through the pillow talk of “embedded” US corporate media. What we hear from such sources is essentially propaganda, not journalism. The confusion reflected in roller coaster public opinion polls comes from this lack of reliable information, from the constant refusal to ask any hard questions about historical context that would lead to real understanding, and from the apparent confusion of the “flexible” war plan itself.</p>
<p>Rumsfeld and his underlings seem to have based their entire strategy on either a magic bullet hitting Saddam Hussein, or on the psychological impacts of the initial bombing runs, without regard to the brutal realities of war. Perhaps that’s because, having successfully avoided any personal sacrifices in their rise to the top, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld &amp; Co. don’t understand war.</p>
<p>Generals are reputed to always be effective in “fighting the last war.” The Iraqis mostly cut and ran in Gulf War I. Today their country is prostrate, practically starving, and their weapons even more out of date. US military power reigns supreme. How dare they fight back? We were told that it would be a relatively quick and easy war, and we are still being told that victory is assured. But life (and death) is strange. No matter what the short-term issues in any particular case, you have to use power wisely or you can get yourself in trouble quick. That’s when you call the guerilla forces attacking your supply lines “terrorists,” to cover up the gross inadequacies of your own ideas and actions.</p>
<p>Is there a Bush administration playbook (since football analogies for war are all the rage these days) on these things? The government “spin” on the ground war sounds just like the way they avoided any investigation into their incompetent failures to deal with the known threat of al-Quaida before September 11.</p>
<p>And fuck the football analogies. These are our brothers and sisters risking their lives and dying. This is no game. The judgment and decisions of US war leaders should produce tactics and strategies designed to minimize casualties. They have apparently failed to do so. This conduct of the massacre of modern war by selfish political and economic criteria is only the latest obscenity in the Bush junta’s so-called “war on terrorism.”</p>
<p>First they failed to put enough troops in the field to ensure victory with minimal losses through the application of overwhelming force, as dictated by the Powell doctrine. Then they sent the ground troops rolling hundreds of miles into the desert, without adequate protection against the Iraqi forces on their flanks threatening their supply lines. Now April is expected to be the worst month for sandstorms. They ordered the troops into the environmental catastrophe of burning oil wells, the kind of hazards that resulted in approximately one out of five veterans of Gulf War I being granted benefits for Gulf War syndrome (and many others have made such claims and been denied). In the teeth of these tactical dilemmas, they boldly promise a campaign of “shock, awe, and flexibility,” as if war was simply an exercise in mass marketing, based on the lure of great sex. And they piously call on Americans to “support the troops” in their mad project.</p>
<p>These political leaders and their imperial aggression are the ones who are really and seriously failing to “support the troops.”</p>
<p>If I can look at a map on the internet and see how US troops are now unreasonably exposed to danger, spread out for hundreds of miles from Umm Quasr to Baghdad, then Iraqi military commanders can do it. US/UK military forces didn’t begin to destroy their communications facilities until a week into the ground war, and did not use air power effectively against the enemy forces before sending ground troops into the battle.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because they want to use Iraqi oil and communication facilities and other infrastructure, even Iraqi military forces, to pacify the country and market its oil. Maybe the troops were sent into Iraq earlier than planned, because the Iraqis were burning their oil wells, thus threatening the real objective of this whole rancid operation. Maybe the US chickenhawk command is simply drunk and over-confident with their own power. They don’t care if their poor tactical choices cost more lives, whether the lives of US service men and women, or those of Iraqi civilians caught in the middle of Stalingrad/Jenin-style house-to-house warfare. There should be an especially hot place in hell for such hypocrites, who exhort us to “support the troops” while they bugger and sacrifice young working class Americans from the relative safety of Washington and Quatar.</p>
<p>There is no certainty in war. Even given this government’s apparent willingness to get large numbers of young American soldiers unnecessarily killed, the People of Iraq will probably die at rates of hundreds or thousands to every one US casualty. And that’s not counting Iran, North Korea, Syria, or whichever country is next up on the US “regime change” agenda. For now the life-threatening risk to everyone involved on the ground, on all sides of this totally unnecessary war of US aggression, dominates everything. But in the long run the chickenhawk architects of this desert slaughter will not escape the verdict of history. See you at Nuremberg, Mr. Bush.</p>
<p>TOM STEPHENS is a lawyer from Detroit. He can be reached at: <a href="" type="external">lebensbaum4@earthlink.net</a></p>
<p>Yesterday’s Features</p>
<p>Daniel Wolff <a href="" type="internal">A Road Trip in Wartime</a></p>
<p>Chris Clarke <a href="" type="internal">We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers</a></p>
<p>David Lindorff <a href="" type="internal">Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington</a></p>
<p>Pierre Tristam <a href="" type="internal">Icarus on Crack: American Hubris and Iraq</a></p>
<p>Jason Leopold <a href="" type="internal">Richard Perle: the Enterprising Hawk</a></p>
<p>Saul Landau <a href="" type="internal">Technological Massacre</a></p>
<p>Carol Norris <a href="" type="internal">The Mother of All Bombs</a></p>
<p>Riad Abdelkarim, MD <a href="" type="internal">Iraq War Lingo 101</a></p>
<p>Adam Engel <a href="" type="internal">Schlock and Awe</a></p>
<p>Website of the War <a href="http://www.iraqbodycount.net/" type="external">Iraq Body Count</a></p>
<p>Keep CounterPunch Alive: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/Donations.html" type="external">Make a Tax Deductible Donation Today Online!</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/" type="external">home</a> / <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Subscriptions.html" type="external">subscribe</a> / <a href="aboutus.html" type="external">about us</a> / <a href="books.html" type="external">books</a> / <a href="archive.html" type="external">archives</a> / <a href="search.html" type="external">search</a> / <a href="links.html" type="external">links</a> /</p> | true | 4 | weve entered new era history troops tanks rumbling toward baghdad take ashes dust international law diplomacy human rights civil liberties democratic selfgovernance much else arlo guthrie famously said convictions littering creating nuisance americas last major imperial disaster thats came talk verdict history await developments fog chaos criminal war war sought pursued bush gang washington oil power name liberation disarmament week opening salvos shock awe time period journalism yet history obvious contradictions shortcomings us military strategy already becoming glaringly clear even pillow talk embedded us corporate media hear sources essentially propaganda journalism confusion reflected roller coaster public opinion polls comes lack reliable information constant refusal ask hard questions historical context would lead real understanding apparent confusion flexible war plan rumsfeld underlings seem based entire strategy either magic bullet hitting saddam hussein psychological impacts initial bombing runs without regard brutal realities war perhaps thats successfully avoided personal sacrifices rise top bush cheney rumsfeld amp co dont understand war generals reputed always effective fighting last war iraqis mostly cut ran gulf war today country prostrate practically starving weapons even date us military power reigns supreme dare fight back told would relatively quick easy war still told victory assured life death strange matter shortterm issues particular case use power wisely get trouble quick thats call guerilla forces attacking supply lines terrorists cover gross inadequacies ideas actions bush administration playbook since football analogies war rage days things government spin ground war sounds like way avoided investigation incompetent failures deal known threat alquaida september 11 fuck football analogies brothers sisters risking lives dying game judgment decisions us war leaders produce tactics strategies designed minimize casualties apparently failed conduct massacre modern war selfish political economic criteria latest obscenity bush juntas socalled war terrorism first failed put enough troops field ensure victory minimal losses application overwhelming force dictated powell doctrine sent ground troops rolling hundreds miles desert without adequate protection iraqi forces flanks threatening supply lines april expected worst month sandstorms ordered troops environmental catastrophe burning oil wells kind hazards resulted approximately one five veterans gulf war granted benefits gulf war syndrome many others made claims denied teeth tactical dilemmas boldly promise campaign shock awe flexibility war simply exercise mass marketing based lure great sex piously call americans support troops mad project political leaders imperial aggression ones really seriously failing support troops look map internet see us troops unreasonably exposed danger spread hundreds miles umm quasr baghdad iraqi military commanders usuk military forces didnt begin destroy communications facilities week ground war use air power effectively enemy forces sending ground troops battle maybe want use iraqi oil communication facilities infrastructure even iraqi military forces pacify country market oil maybe troops sent iraq earlier planned iraqis burning oil wells thus threatening real objective whole rancid operation maybe us chickenhawk command simply drunk overconfident power dont care poor tactical choices cost lives whether lives us service men women iraqi civilians caught middle stalingradjeninstyle housetohouse warfare especially hot place hell hypocrites exhort us support troops bugger sacrifice young working class americans relative safety washington quatar certainty war even given governments apparent willingness get large numbers young american soldiers unnecessarily killed people iraq probably die rates hundreds thousands every one us casualty thats counting iran north korea syria whichever country next us regime change agenda lifethreatening risk everyone involved ground sides totally unnecessary war us aggression dominates everything long run chickenhawk architects desert slaughter escape verdict history see nuremberg mr bush tom stephens lawyer detroit reached lebensbaum4earthlinknet yesterdays features daniel wolff road trip wartime chris clarke never spit baby killers david lindorff saddam hero made washington pierre tristam icarus crack american hubris iraq jason leopold richard perle enterprising hawk saul landau technological massacre carol norris mother bombs riad abdelkarim md iraq war lingo 101 adam engel schlock awe website war iraq body count keep counterpunch alive make tax deductible donation today online home subscribe us books archives search links | 646 |
<p>Spend 48 or 72 hours in Saigon—yes, I know, its nom de guerre is Ho Chi Minh City but that’s fading in the din of conspicuous consumption—and you will have no doubt that South Vietnam won the war.</p>
<p>Compared to Hanoi, with its red stars over state ministries and Ho’s Leninist mausoleum, Saigon might well be Hong Kong in a minor key, a city of weaving motor scooters, high-rise office buildings, hipster cafés, posh restaurants, and air conditioned cars.</p>
<p>I realize that in 1975 the city rushed for the exits and many departed the rooftops on American helicopters. And after 1978 more than a million South Vietnamese floated away as “boat people,” to avoid the North’s re-education camps and Maoist doctrines of collectivization.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in the last twenty years, the means of production have become the hi-test of franchise capitalism, which has turned Saigon—ironically, given the war’s initial outcome—into a showroom of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society (guns and butter, plus some strip clubs).</p>
<p>Vietnam might well be a success story, had it not broken so many American dreams.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>For my second visit to Saigon, I came the “long way around,” descending the Mekong River and its tributaries from Phnom Penh into the heart of the Delta. (Saigon is not on the Mekong, but north of it.)</p>
<p>A few boats make the passage from the Cambodian capital to Chau Doc, just across the border in Vietnam. I decided on the early service (it had the look of a Ukrainian Swift boat) and booked my ticket the day before from a waiter in a riverside restaurant, who, while he had me in a consumer embrace, wondered if maybe I didn’t also want to have lunch or, using the local parlance, “go boom-boom.” I passed on both.</p>
<p>I left on the 8:30 a.m. boat, which I found the next morning tied up at a wharf near downtown Phnom Penh. Only a few other passengers that morning were heading down the river. A Russian-speaking couple looked like Pacific islanders, such were their many colorful tattoos. There were two women who were fisheries experts from Seattle, and a Japanese businessman dressed as if he had signed up for a golf tournament.</p>
<p>The seats on the boat had decent legroom but otherwise had the feel of an Aeroflot commuter flight, circa the era of Yuri Andropov. Most of the passengers, however, rode outside on the deck, holding on to whatever handle was nearby. Cambodian law has yet to embrace the safety regulations of a nanny state.</p>
<p>Never having been on the Congo River (except in the stories of Joseph Conrad), I cannot say if the Mekong compares to it, although the jungle and palm trees along the riverbanks, and the presence of wooden sampans drifting in the currents, did make me think I was heading in the direction of Mr. Kurtz.</p>
<p>The only man-made object that we saw was a soaring bridge over the river at Neak Leung, probably built with Chinese aid money.</p>
<p>During the American bombing campaigns in Cambodia in the 1970s, B-52 bombers errantly dropped a payload on Neak Leung (think of Hannibal, Missouri, in terms of size). The “navigational error” killed 137 civilians, and wounded several hundred more.</p>
<p>In the film The Killing Fields, in which Sam Waterston plays the New York Times foreign correspondent Sydney Schanberg, he and his associate, Dith Pran, bribe their way onto a Cambodian patrol boat to get down the river to the town, and later break the story of the wayward American blitz that was being covered up. (Up another river Conrad wrote: “There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget.”)</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>We cleared Cambodian immigration at a small riverside compound that had border agents, a temple, sleepy cats, and warm orange soda for sale in the shade. While we got our passports stamped, the ferry crew fished with a net in the murky water of the Mekong. (Think of catching your dinner in the Detroit River.)</p>
<p>On the horizon, there were dozens of green-hulled barges riding at anchor, waiting for approval to continue their runs up the river. Cambodia still lives by its water trade.</p>
<p>For those grasping for their fifth grade geography lessons, the Mekong forms in southern China, and connects Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam to the South China Sea. In some sense, all the recent wars in Indochina have been fought to see who (France, Japan, America, Hanoi, or Maoist China) will control its course to the sea.</p>
<p>For the last part of the journey, the ferry headed west toward Chau Doc along a narrow canal. It was no wider than an American interstate. On either side there was a riverside civilization of houses on stilts, boats tied to wharfs, small factories, rusting hulls, drying fishing nets, small boys swimming in the opaque waters, and the smoke of cooking fires.</p>
<p>The Mekong Delta is bayou country, but Chau Doc loomed at the end of the canal as a modest skyline of hotels and riverside apartments, like a Holiday Inn rising from a corner of the Everglades.</p>
<p>Rather than stay in Chau Doc—nondescript despite aspirations for a tourist trade—I had decided to catch a bus to Vinh Long, a city in the heart of the Delta about 100 miles to the south. And during much of the run down from Phnom Penh, I had carried on a spirited bus-ticket negotiation with a deck hand, who assured me that if I gave him $12, he would get me on a bus when we landed.</p>
<p>I paid $6 as front money, and the rest when he delivered the bus ticket, although I still had to wait more than an hour for my intermodal connection.</p>
<p>I passed the time at a dockside restaurant, where I ordered fried rice and a beer, and recharged my computer. I ate watching river traffic shunt along this spur of the Mekong, thinking of life on the Mississippi. (Huck: “It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.”)</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>After a while, a mini-van collected me. In the town center of Chau Doc I transferred to a larger bus, on which all the seats had the look of barcaloungers in a reclining position.</p>
<p>I climbed into my not-very-large berth and spent the next four hours crossing the heart of the Mekong Delta, which is a mix between urban stretches, rice paddies, and a Dutch landscape of rivers, canals, bogs, and ditches.</p>
<p>I was headed to the village of Ap Bac, the site of a battle fought in 1963 between the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) and the Viet Cong. Based on my reading, especially Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie and William Prochnau’s <a href="" type="internal">Once Upon a Distant War</a>, I had come to believe that Ap Bac was the Rubicon for America in Vietnam.</p>
<p>After the Viet Cong defeated ARVN troops there (supported by U.S. helicopters and amphibious armor), the United States came to the conclusion that the only way the war could be won was if American troops did the fighting.</p>
<p>Although the battle featured less than 1000 soldiers on both sides, Ap Bac loomed as large as Pearl Harbor in convincing the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to go “all in” over the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>The ARVN defeat at Ap Bac (a small Delta hamlet near My Tho) made the point that South Vietnam’s army was hopeless, and that only the can-do spirit of the American military could carry the day.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The deckhand had booked me on a Saigon bus that stopped about six kilometers outside Vinh Long, at a rest stop emporium crawling with noodle stands.</p>
<p>Normally in Southeast Asia, such bus stations are chock full of taxis or tuk-tuk drivers. But this stop had the loneliness of that roadside in North by Northwest where Cary Grant (aka Roger Thornhill) gets off in the cornfields.</p>
<p>I thought of walking into Vinh Long or calling a taxi, but those I asked said both propositions were hopeless. The only way to go, I was told, was to flag down a scooter driver and pay him for a ride into town, which is what I did.</p>
<p>For $2 he dropped me at the ferry landing for An Binh Island, which sits in the channel opposite Vinh Long, astride the Tien River (a branch of the Mekong). I had booked a $10 room in what is called a homestay—a rustic inn—but even that turned out to be another 15 kilometers from the ferry landing.</p>
<p>My last scooter ride ($4) went from roads to sidewalks and then jungle paths, such that I wondered if maybe I hadn’t booked a room with Viet Cong. (It “liberated” many villages on An Binh during the war.) Finally I was dropped at my homestay, a collection of thatched cottages overlooking the river.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>For two nights I did laundry, swam in the pool, drank coffee and cold beer, and read in the shade beside this branch of the Mekong—in particular, a memoir of the American retreat in 1975, <a href="" type="internal">Escape With Honor: My Last Hours in Vietnam</a> by Francis Terry McNamara and Adrian Hill (McNamara was the consulate general in nearby Can Tho when the order came to evacuate), and Jeffrey St. Clair’s article, “What John Kerry Really Did in Vietnam” (as most of what he did or didn’t do on Swift boats happened in waters similar to those I was reading beside).</p>
<p>A career foreign service officer, McNamara was a believer in the Vietnam intervention right until he had to pull down the flag over the consulate and lead his people out of the Delta on two improvised river barges.</p>
<p>In his memoir, McNamara makes the case that the government of South Vietnam could have held out in the Delta behind its river banks and with its enormous food production. He writes:</p>
<p>Burgeoning production in the rich Delta had brought rural prosperity. With the “miracle rice” strains developed by Ford Foundation researchers in the Philippines, the tough, hardworking farmers of the Delta managed, in the space of a few years, to quadruple yields. More recently, the introduction of simple, cheap Japanese-built irrigation pumps was making it possible to grow an extra crop during the dry season.</p>
<p>Instead, when the dominos fells across Vietnam in April 1975, the artifice that was the South Vietnamese government (a puppet theater with an all-American audience) collapsed, as did the ARVN, which had often functioned as a palace guard.</p>
<p>Nothing in the memoir is more damning that McNamara’s portrait of the CIA station in Can Tho, which, nominally, reported to the consulate general, but in practice operated as a freelance gang, with plunder as one of its mandates.</p>
<p>Not only does the CIA station chief ignore his superior officer, but come the general evacuation on April 29, 1975, the spooks brushed off the orders to put to sea with the rest of the consulate and, instead, commandeered precious helicopters to head out with their stereos, loot, and call girls—leaving behind locals who had done the CIA’s dirty work.</p>
<p>Drifting down his own river to the sea, McNamara describes seeing the CIA in flight:</p>
<p>And with that came the steady beating of a chopper, low over the water. It came fast, a silver Huey that clattered deafeningly above our heads, flying swiftly in the direction of the sea. “There go the CIA,” growled a Marine, “in full flight.” Watching that helicopter fade into a speck above the brown surface of the Mekong was like observing a symbol of all that went wrong for America in Vietnam. I only had to look at the faces of my Vietnamese charges in the well deck. It was in their eyes. I was ashamed. These simple human beings were staring with an odd mixture of fear and contempt at the helicopter, as though watching mercenaries abandon a battlefield, running for safe haven with no thought spared for what has passed.</p>
<p>By making the 70-mile run to the open sea on barges, McNamara could at least take with him hundreds of local Vietnamese who had served the American war effort. But when he got into the South China Sea, he saw the American fleet standing off the coast and wrote, bitterly:</p>
<p>I shook my head in dismay. How could a nation with so much strength end a war abandoning its allies and saving its own citizens in such ignominious circumstances? It would not be the last time I would ask that question in the months and years ahead. The sight of this huge fleet was a wound that would never fully heal.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The other sailor I had in mind during my Delta days was former presidential candidate, senator, and Secretary of State John Kerry, whose 2004 election bid foundered, so to speak, when his war record was—as we now say—“Swift boated.”</p>
<p>Even though John Kerry had enlisted in the Navy, served in Vietnam, and returned home with three purple hearts, plus a silver and bronze star, when election operative Karl Rove (“Turd Blossom” in W’s immortal description) got done with Lt. Kerry, you would have thought it was Kerry who had dodged combat in the National Guard’s Champagne Unit (W’s flight squadron in Alabama) and it was Bush who had taken on the North Vietnamese, as if on a mission with John Rambo (“Sir, do we get to win this time?).</p>
<p>During the 2004 election, I assumed that even though Kerry was a tone-deaf candidate (windsurfers don’t swing many precincts in Ohio), he probably had served honorably in Vietnam, despite all the Swift boat veterans on TV ads making him look like someone who had skipped off to Canada.</p>
<p>Reading Jeff’s excellent article (which you can find <a href="" type="internal">here</a>) while idling in the Delta opened my eyes about Kerry’s Mekong service. In short, during four months of combat, Kerry was awarded three purple hearts, although from none of the wounds did he actually bleed. Nor does it seem that any were sustained in action against the enemy. But with three purple hearts he could transfer out of the combat zone, which he did.</p>
<p>As well, his silver star was awarded for beaching his Swift boat (against standing orders) and chasing down an enemy soldier, who may or may not have been armed. And there are doubts that his bronze star should have included a mention of hostile fire during an action in which he helped to rescue a member of the special forces whose boat had hit a mine.</p>
<p>If anything, Kerry looks better at gaming the medal system than in sustaining a rapport with his men. He also turns out—in the true fashion of a politico thinking about running for office—to be the only source for many of his combat exploits.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>What I find most striking in the debate over Kerry’s war record is how much ill will he generated amongst his crew and fellow officers, while only serving four months in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Leaving aside whether he deserved his medals or not, one thing that cannot be disputed is how many men in or near his command found him a self-serving hypocrite, to the point that they eagerly signed up for Karl Rove’s infomercials and denounced Kerry in primetime. One of them says:</p>
<p>My name is Steve Gardner. I served in 1966 and 1967 on my first tour of duty in Vietnam on Swift boats, and I did my second tour in ’68 and ’69, involved with John Kerry in the last 2 1/2 months of my tour. The John Kerry that I know is not the John Kerry that everybody else is portraying. I served alongside him and behind him, five feet away from him in a gun tub, and watched as he made indecisive moves with our boat, put our boats in jeopardy, put our crews in jeopardy. . . if a man like that can’t handle that 6-man crew boat, how can you expect him to be our Commander-in-Chief?</p>
<p>Another said:</p>
<p>Only 120 days in-country and he puts himself in for a Purple Heart for scratches we wouldn’t bother to report to the corpsman. This guy was punching his ticket and used a loophole in the regulations to get out early. What a disgrace!</p>
<p>For a comparison, read what Marine corporal Eugene Sledge wrote about the loss of his company commander, Andy Haldane, on the island of Peleliu in World War II. He writes:</p>
<p>Our company commander represented stability and direction in a world of violence, death, and destruction. Now his life had been snuffed out. We felt forlorn and lost. It was the worst grief I endured during the entire war. The intervening years haven’t lessened it any.</p>
<p>At the very least it seems that many men under or near Kerry’s command couldn’t wait to denounce him as a fraud.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The only way off the island of An Binh was on the back of a scooter. This time the manager of the hotel, hearing that $20 was on offer, volunteered to take me to Ap Bac, some 60 kilometers from the guest house. We left early on a Sunday morning, and I figured we would be at the village in less than hour.</p>
<p>Instead, I got a full, if inadvertent, lesson in why the Mekong and certain provinces around Vinh Long were labyrinths of death during the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>My driver had Google Maps on his phone, and I had copied from the Internet certain army military diagrams. But still, on our drive to Ap Bac, we constantly ended up on dead ends in the jungle or against a riverbank. In one case, we took a ferry across a tributary of the Tien River that showed up as farmland on Google Maps.</p>
<p>For the last kilometers into Ap Bac, we rode along what the troops would have called a “berm”—a dyke alongside rice paddies. In all, the trip took three hours under a hot sun. Imagine getting around the Delta in the 1960s, before there was Google Maps?</p>
<p>On the day of the battle, despite having the backing of American helicopters and a senior American advisor, the celebrated Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, the South Vietnamese failed to wipe out a Viet Cong force of 700 men, who had taken up a position in a tree line at the end of a paddy (with a canal at the their backs).</p>
<p>Believing that the Viet Cong force was there to be rolled into the canal, Vann (circling the battlefield in a spotter plane) called in helicopter gunships and even paratroops, to close the trap on the guerrillas.</p>
<p>Instead, the Viet Cong shot down several American helicopters, and armored vehicles sent in support of ground troops bogged down in the rice paddies and were destroyed piecemeal.</p>
<p>Much as the French were always searching for a “set-piece battle” with the North Vietnamese during the First Indochina War, so too were Vann and American advisors in 1963 looking for a situation in which U.S. air and armor superiority could be deployed against the Viet Cong.</p>
<p>As the battle unfolded on January 2, 1963, however, the Viet Cong stood and fought the ARVN, who found all sorts of reasons for not closing with the enemy. Vann became furious at its incompetence (as later did the American command and political system).</p>
<p>Neil Sheehan, then a UPI correspondent but later with the New York Times and the author of <a href="" type="internal">A Brief Shining Lie</a> (it’s the best if you want only one book on your night table about Vietnam), broke the story of the ARVN defeat, despite considerable American assistance.</p>
<p>Sheehan drove down from his office in Saigon (much closer than my dockside restaurant in Chau Doc) and filed several wire service reports on the defeat, which the Kennedy administration promptly dismissed as inaccurate.</p>
<p>U.S. officials then cited the article, and others like it, as an example of how American correspondents were filing “negative” stories about the war. (No wonder Aeschylus liked to say: “In war, truth is the first casualty.”) In the administration’s telling of Ap Bac, ARVN had carried the day’s fighting, much the way throughout the 1960s light was always at the end of the tunnel.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Although I was hot and bothered from my three hours of scootering through the Delta, I toured Ap Bac’s small military museum, but then lost my temper with the museum man when I asked him where the battlefield was in relation to the museum front door. He said he didn’t know; nor, he added, did he care. So much for Vietnam still being a military nation.</p>
<p>On my own I figured out the contours of the battlefield. In navigating the small lanes of the village and wandering into the rice paddies, I came away perplexed as to why John Paul Vann was willing to stake all on such terrain.</p>
<p>In Sheehan’s book (maybe it has changed since the 1960s?) Ap Bac sounds like relatively open terrain on which tanks and helicopters could maneuver. But the Ap Bac I saw from the back of a scooter and on foot was every bit as tangled—in terms of streams, jungle, and overgrowth—as the rest of Vietnam.</p>
<p>Yes, the ARVN could approach the Viet Cong across a broad expanse of rice paddies and possibly push them into the canal at their backs. But in the battle’s amphitheater, all the surrounding stage sets were dense jungle, which concealed the Viet Cong riflemen, allowing them to bring down five American helicopters and escape the ARVN noose.</p>
<p>The museum has a photograph of the battle’s end, with downed helicopters on their side in the fields. Although Ap Bac was the first battle of the American War (as the Vietnamese call it), it might well have been the last.</p>
<p>Air power, artillery, and armor were supposed to win the day; instead, they became sea anchors in the mud.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>After Ap Bac I was done scootering. To get into Saigon I caught a bus along Highway One. I stood for less than ten minutes beside a vegetable stand with my arm out (bus-hiking, not hitchhiking).</p>
<p>Almost immediately a van pulled over in the traffic, opened its front door, accepted $2 for the ride, and whisked me into Saigon, which was a two-hour ride across the broad rice fields of the Delta—more Texas than the catacombs around An Binh Island.</p>
<p>Thinking about Ap Bac and how the Kennedy administration had pushed back against Sheehan’s stories of the ARVN defeat reminded me that John F. Kennedy is one of the tragic figures of the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>Of all the American politicians who got close to Indochina, Kennedy was in the best position to make the right decisions. Instead he made some of the worst, including his criticism of the press for telling the truth about Ap Bac and how badly the war was going in the early 1960s.</p>
<p>Not only did Kennedy serve as a PT boat commander during World War II in the Solomon Islands (as covered with jungle and swampland as is Vietnam), but after the war—when he was a member of the House of Representatives—he traveled to French Indochina with his brother Robert.</p>
<p>In Saigon in 1951, Kennedy got the dog-and-pony show from the U.S. ambassador and other embassy officials, but then he struck out on his own to meet reporters covering the French war against the Vietminh.</p>
<p>They told him that the colonial war was destined to fail (this was three years before Dien Bien Phu).</p>
<p>On his return to Washington, Kennedy gave several eloquent speeches in Congress on Vietnam, including one in which he said:</p>
<p>The Indo-Chinese states are puppet states, French principalities with great resources but, as typical examples of empire and colonialism as can be found anywhere. To check the southern drive of Communism makes sense but not only through reliance on the force of arms. The task is, rather, to build strong native non-Communist sentiment within these areas and rely on that as a spearhead of defense. To do this, apart from and in defiance of, innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure.</p>
<p>During the 1950s, however, after Kennedy became a senator and started dreaming about the White House, he got behind the doomed Vietnamese presidency of Ngo Dinh Diem (the one with whom the U.S. was to “sink or swim…”).</p>
<p>In part it was because Diem was a Catholic and the darling not just of Time magazine but also Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York and something of a Kennedy family in-house priest. John Kennedy needed the continued devotions of his Catholic constituencies if he was to make it to the White House.</p>
<p>As president, John F. Kennedy understood that Vietnam was a lost cause but at the same time a war he needed to fight if the Soviets were to take him seriously (or so he believed).</p>
<p>The confident, intellectually curious Kennedy was the one who sought out French reporters in Saigon in 1951, and got the unvarnished truth about the white man’s burdens in Indochina.</p>
<p>The status quo Kennedy was the president who in 1961 sent 16,000 military advisors, including John Paul Vann, to Vietnam, plus millions in military aid, so that the hawks in Washington, not to mention the Russians, would understand he could not be pushed around.</p>
<p>In the end, JFK’s assassination, several weeks after Diem himself was killed in an American-orchestrated coup, has the feel of a Shakespearean tragedy played out on Saigon’s rue Catinat, once Indochina’s Fifth Avenue.</p>
<p>Diem died because he failed to prosecute the Vietnam war to the satisfaction of the American military and (probably) the president; and if the novelist Charles McCarry ( <a href="" type="internal">Tears of Autumn</a>) is to be believed, Kennedy died in a conspiracy that was hatched to revenge Diem’s killing.</p>
<p>McCarry writes: “They [Diem’s coterie] believed Kennedy had done this thing to them—whether he did or not doesn’t matter. The way they think, they couldn’t do anything but kill Kennedy in return. It’s an imperative with them—insult for insult, blood for blood.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Maybe because I arrived on a slow Sunday afternoon, but I warmed to Saigon on this occasion. Both the traffic and the heat were less oppressive. I found it easier to walk around on the sidewalks (I wasn’t always sharing them with motorbikes) and fewer touts were in my face, although to be truthful they were always lurking on the fringes of any sale.</p>
<p>I remained long enough to catch my breath from the Delta and make plans to get to the Iron Triangle, near the famous Cu Chi Tunnels, about thirty miles north of the city.</p>
<p>There I had booked what I thought was a room in a resort outside Saigon, from which I could explore a battle detailed in Jonathan Schell’s <a href="" type="internal">The Village of Ben Suc</a>—one of those Vietnamese hamlets that needed to be destroyed in order to save it.</p>
<p>The easiest way to get to my resort was to book a $4 tour bus to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and then to bail on the tour and move on to the Iron Triangle.</p>
<p>Each day the tunnels attract dozens of tour groups—it’s the main war attraction from Saigon—and they spend a few hours looking at the underground network that stretched some 250 kilometers and was the staging area for some 16,000 Viet Cong guerrillas.</p>
<p>The irony of the Cu Chi Tunnels is that the Americans built a base directly on top of them, and it took several years to figure out the extent of the network, which in the meantime allowed the Viet Cong to snipe at American troops even after they thought they had pacified the area.</p>
<p>Only in 1969 did B-52 bombers lay waste to the tunnels, but by then the Americans were losing interest in the war.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>I stayed with the Cu Chi tour long enough to see the battle exhibits, which included not just tunnels and trenches, but displays on how the Viet Cong rigged mines, set booby traps, cooked meals, treated the wounded, and stitched together their tire-tread scandals.</p>
<p>At $20 a clip, I decided against trying my aim with an AK-47 or an M-16, which are the soundtracks in the Cu Chi woods (near the gift shop)—with tattooed Australians at a rifle range appearing in the role of Victor Charles.</p>
<p>My Iron Triangle “resort” turned out to be a sad guest house run by a toothless German and four enthusiastic dogs. There was no pool, and the “bottled” water came in recycled plastic bottles, which might have been collected from the roadside. The only food on site was beer, which may explain why all the online reviews indicated its “excellence.”</p>
<p>Although the owner spoke little Vietnamese (apparently his wife, who was away, did all the local talking), he managed to find me a driver to take me around the Iron Triangle—an American battlefield as bleak as the Wilderness outside Chancellorsville.</p>
<p>During Operation Cedar Falls, launched in 1967, the American army and ARVN cleared the area of villagers and conducted broad search and destroy missions—an operation that Schell describes in his book, which was first serialized in the New Yorker magazine.</p>
<p>Everything that was evil about the American intervention in Vietnam can be gleaned from Schell’s account, which ends with the village of Ben Suc (it was near my resort) being razed to the ground.</p>
<p>He writes: “The bulldozers cut their own paths across the backyard fences, small graveyards, and ridged fields of the village, ignoring the roads and lanes…. Air Force jets sent their bombs down on the deserted ruins…”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>I had printed maps of Operation Cedar Falls, and after some diffidence my scooter driver warmed to the search for the traces of the 1967 battle.</p>
<p>We began in Ben Suc (now a crossroads of small shops and food stalls) and fanned out through the Iron Triangle, which matches Daniel Boone’s description of Kentucky, a “dark and bloody ground.”</p>
<p>Most of the time we weaved along dirt paths. Several times we crossed the meandering Saigon River (muddy and clogged with floating vegetation) on a small ferry.</p>
<p>The surrounding landscape was scrub jungle, and we came across many villages with small patches of rice paddies and farmyard animals. But think of it all as a tank trap and a sniper’s paradise. (During Cedar Falls, the Viet Cong never did stand and fight, as they did in Ap Bac, but snipers and mines killed a number of Americans.)</p>
<p>Down one of the lanes in the Iron Triangle, I came to the conclusion that Vietnam was America’s Boer War, in the sense that a weapon of choice was the concentration camp for bothersome civilians.</p>
<p>Just as the British in South Africa rounded up the Boers in what were called laagers, so, too, did the Americans—with their Strategic Hamlet Program and its successors—decide that Vietnamese villagers were best disposed behind barbed wire.</p>
<p>Much of Schell’s book about Ben Suc concerns how the villages in the Iron Triangle were drained of their population, which was trucked away—cows and all—to a wired compound.</p>
<p>In American-established concentration camps (run by ARVN soldiers), villagers could be divided among those loyal to the Saigon regime and those sympathetic to the Viet Cong. Without a local population in the Iron Triangle, it became a “free fire” zone, into which artillery and napalm could be dropped without second thoughts.</p>
<p>One officer tells Schell: “From now on, anything that moves around here is going to be automatically considered V.C. and bombed or fired upon. The whole Triangle is going to become a Free Zone. These villages here are all considered hostile villages.”</p>
<p>In fighting the battle of the Iron Triangle, American troops deployed large bulldozers to plow under large swaths of jungle, as if cutting lanes for a future interstate. They were off-ramps to nowhere.</p>
<p>For all the jungle plowed under and villages burned in the Iron Triangle, the Americans never grasped the extent to which Vietnamese snipers were buried beneath them in a subterranean network the size of the New York City subway.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Faced with the prospect of a night at the four-dog resort, I did a runner. I paid off the owner for the room (he threw in the bottled water), and he dropped me at the 87 bus for Cu Chi, which connected with another bus to Tay Ninh, once the Fort Apache of the northwest frontier that nestles against the Cambodian border.</p>
<p>Because this military district could determine the fate of Saigon, it was always among the most contested in the war.</p>
<p>I first learned about Tay Ninh from the novels and stories of my friend Larry Heinemann, who wrote Close Quarters (1974) and Paco’s Story (1987), the latter of which won the National Book Award for Fiction. (He beat out the self-absorbed Toni Morrison, who denounced Larry as unworthy of a prize only she should win.)</p>
<p>Larry served as a grunt with the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam from March 1967 to March 1968, and his writing centers on the road to Tay Ninh (through Cu Chi and Trang Bang) much the way Melville’s novels are set in the whaling grounds of the South Pacific.</p>
<p>Even though I was on a dilapidated bus, with all the windows open and music blaring from another passenger’s boom box, I still felt as if I were on one of the those literary tours to the house of a famous author.</p>
<p>I became friends with Larry in the 1970s after his first novel, Close Quarters, was published. Nearly all of our conversations touched on Vietnam and many of the writers who came out of the war.</p>
<p>I recall him describing how Gloria Emerson ( <a href="" type="internal">Winners and Losers</a>, about how the war broke so many Americans) “got it” and his admiration for such writers as Robert Mason ( <a href="" type="internal">Chickenhawk</a>), Philip Caputo ( <a href="" type="internal">A Rumor of War</a>), and W.D. Ehrhart ( <a href="" type="internal">Vietnam-Perkasie</a>).</p>
<p>Much of Larry’s writing describes the dislocations of coming home from the war, as when he wrote: “Any soldier returning home must rediscover his humanity and establish a livable peace with the discovered, liberated, permanently dark places in his own heart—the darkness that is always with us.”</p>
<p>In particular, I remember a Vietnam writers’ conference in New York City, at the West Side YMCA, in the early 1980s. About fifty people were present, and someone tried to make the case that that war had a moral purpose. Larry would have none of that argument. As if on fire, he said to the audience: “I was there, and it was evil. Don’t let anyone tell you it wasn’t.”</p>
<p>If you have any doubts, read the rape scene in <a href="" type="internal">Paco’s Story</a>, in which he writes:</p>
<p>A peasant girl not more than fourteen, say, or sixteen…. Her eyes got bigger than a deer’s, and chunks and slivers of tile ground into her scalp and face, her breasts and stomach, and Jesus-fucking-Christ, she had her nostrils flared and teeth clenched and eyes squinted, tearing at the sheer humiliating, grinding pain of it.</p>
<p>Other victims of the assault include American innocence.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>As my bus meandered along the Tay Ninh highway—passing a long Vietnamese strip mall on either side of the road—I thought of Larry and his books. (He writes in <a href="" type="internal">Close Quarters</a>:</p>
<p>“From camp or some fire base or other, into the jungle or the rubber or the paddies north of Trang Bang. We would gather at the seven-four to sip some smoke, slap on some camouflage, and go. And after the first dozen or so I got used to the pig [an M-60 machine gun] and preferred it. That and the two hundred rounds.”)</p>
<p>Closer to Tay Ninh, I caught my first site of Black Virgin Mountain, an incongruous peak that rises from the broad plains around the city. In the war, such high ground was often violently contested, as the Americans had a fire base at its summit, and stationed troops there to track enemy infiltration.</p>
<p>When Larry wrote a book about returning to Vietnam in the 1990s, he gave it the title <a href="" type="internal">Black Virgin Mountain</a>, as it was a looming presence when he and his reconnaissance company worked up and down the road from Cu Chi to Tay Ninh (often a highway of death).</p>
<p>I stayed in Tay Ninh long enough to inspect the headquarters of the Cao Dai religion; it was founded in 1926 and worships, among other things, the French novelist Victor Hugo. (Mostly it feels like a Buddhist interpretation of the Catholic Church.) And I spent a lot of time looking up at the mountain (imagine Denali outside Kansas City).</p>
<p>At the end of the American presence in Vietnam, American bombers attacked the mountaintop fort, yet another metaphor for the self-destructive confusion of American war aims.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>On my last morning in Saigon, I did something few do in the city, which is to go for a long walk. I started at the War Remnants Museum—part history, part agitation propaganda—looped around the grounds of the American embassy (that from which the helicopters departed in 1975), and ended up at the rooftop bar of the Rex Hotel, where some correspondents spent much of their war. (The Five O’Clock Follies is now the name of a lime-green cocktail.)</p>
<p>Although Vietnam is loaded with war museums—they tend to have the same haggard photograph of Lyndon Johnson, clearly getting ready to throw in the towel—most Saigon visitors end up at the War Remnants Museum, which, across the three floors of photographic exhibits, toes the party line.</p>
<p>I went again to see the pictures of photographers killed in war. On one very bad day in 1971, a single helicopter crash near the Laos border killed four celebrated photojournalists: Larry Burrows, Henri Huet, Kent Potter and Keisaburo Shimamoto, all of whom have haunting black-and-white photographs on exhibit.</p>
<p>Vietnam may be the last American war that will have given the press free access to the fighting. The army flew journalists of all stripes (some came with accreditation from local or college papers) into battle, one reason so many were killed. Now the Pentagon “embeds” reporters, as if they were mercenaries in a religious war.</p>
<p>As much as I like the idea of a war museum in Saigon, on this occasion I grew tired of its strident tone, which often has the feel of some party congress poster, exhorting the masses to remember the evils of capitalism.</p>
<p>To be sure, Agent Orange, the American bombings, Operation Phoenix, and My Lai are part of the Vietnam War story. So are the war crimes of Senator Bob Kerrey, which get a lot of play in the museum. But then so, too, should be the death of 5,000 Hue inhabitants who were rounded up, killed, and dumped in pits after the Viet Cong captured that ancient city during the 1968 Tet Offensive.</p>
<p>The real war, in Saigon anyway, only makes it into the display cabinets when the subject is American imperialism.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>For some reason it took me two tries to find the former U.S. embassy in Saigon (now it’s just a consulate). I knew the address was 4 Le Duan and that it was next to the French embassy. Such are the fortress walls (you see nothing from the street except a medieval rampart) that I walked by it without seeing the flag or the helicopter pad on the roof.</p>
<p>Why the United States needs a consulate in Saigon the size of a city block is anyone’s guess. The last I heard, the Trump administration isn’t effusive over the idea of issuing immigration visas. Nor is a consulate needed in Saigon to encourage the investments of American businesses, which have their franchises (Starbucks, Nike, etc.) on most corners.</p>
<p>Too bad no one had the idea to turn the embassy grounds into an open university with a curriculum to study how it happened—after the fiasco of the Vietnamese intervention (from 1954 to 1975)—that the United States marched into the same folly in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>In my travels around Indochina, I have read countless histories about the origins of American involvement in Vietnam. Save for a handful of public figures—among them were George Ball, George McGovern, William Fulbright, Adlai Stevenson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—those in government waved the bloody shirt with the same enthusiasm that, forty years later, Barack Obama showed when he called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” not a “war of choice.”</p>
<p>It is also remarkable that the words of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon over Vietnam almost match verbatim some of the statements that George W. Bush and Obama made about fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Lyndon Johnson said in 1965: “There are those who wonder why we have a responsibility there. We have it for the same reason we have a responsibility for the defense of freedom in Europe.” In the same vein W said: “The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it.”</p>
<p>From there it is not a long way to Trump’s statement: “These heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated. The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this horrific attack and all other horrific attacks, for that matter.”</p>
<p>I have no doubt that Donald Trump, when he finds his own Vietnam—North Korea, Syria, the Philippines, and Yemen are currently auditioning—will join the ranks of his predecessors in believing that only through a splendid little war can America continue its pursuit of happiness.</p> | true | 4 | spend 48 72 hours saigonyes know nom de guerre ho chi minh city thats fading din conspicuous consumptionand doubt south vietnam war compared hanoi red stars state ministries hos leninist mausoleum saigon might well hong kong minor key city weaving motor scooters highrise office buildings hipster cafés posh restaurants air conditioned cars realize 1975 city rushed exits many departed rooftops american helicopters 1978 million south vietnamese floated away boat people avoid norths reeducation camps maoist doctrines collectivization nevertheless last twenty years means production become hitest franchise capitalism turned saigonironically given wars initial outcomeinto showroom lyndon johnsons great society guns butter plus strip clubs vietnam might well success story broken many american dreams second visit saigon came long way around descending mekong river tributaries phnom penh heart delta saigon mekong north boats make passage cambodian capital chau doc across border vietnam decided early service look ukrainian swift boat booked ticket day waiter riverside restaurant consumer embrace wondered maybe didnt also want lunch using local parlance go boomboom passed left 830 boat found next morning tied wharf near downtown phnom penh passengers morning heading river russianspeaking couple looked like pacific islanders many colorful tattoos two women fisheries experts seattle japanese businessman dressed signed golf tournament seats boat decent legroom otherwise feel aeroflot commuter flight circa era yuri andropov passengers however rode outside deck holding whatever handle nearby cambodian law yet embrace safety regulations nanny state never congo river except stories joseph conrad say mekong compares although jungle palm trees along riverbanks presence wooden sampans drifting currents make think heading direction mr kurtz manmade object saw soaring bridge river neak leung probably built chinese aid money american bombing campaigns cambodia 1970s b52 bombers errantly dropped payload neak leung think hannibal missouri terms size navigational error killed 137 civilians wounded several hundred film killing fields sam waterston plays new york times foreign correspondent sydney schanberg associate dith pran bribe way onto cambodian patrol boat get river town later break story wayward american blitz covered another river conrad wrote taint death flavor mortality lieswhich exactly hate detest worldwhat want forget cleared cambodian immigration small riverside compound border agents temple sleepy cats warm orange soda sale shade got passports stamped ferry crew fished net murky water mekong think catching dinner detroit river horizon dozens greenhulled barges riding anchor waiting approval continue runs river cambodia still lives water trade grasping fifth grade geography lessons mekong forms southern china connects burma laos thailand cambodia vietnam south china sea sense recent wars indochina fought see france japan america hanoi maoist china control course sea last part journey ferry headed west toward chau doc along narrow canal wider american interstate either side riverside civilization houses stilts boats tied wharfs small factories rusting hulls drying fishing nets small boys swimming opaque waters smoke cooking fires mekong delta bayou country chau doc loomed end canal modest skyline hotels riverside apartments like holiday inn rising corner everglades rather stay chau docnondescript despite aspirations tourist tradei decided catch bus vinh long city heart delta 100 miles south much run phnom penh carried spirited busticket negotiation deck hand assured gave 12 would get bus landed paid 6 front money rest delivered bus ticket although still wait hour intermodal connection passed time dockside restaurant ordered fried rice beer recharged computer ate watching river traffic shunt along spur mekong thinking life mississippi huck lovely live raft sky speckled stars used lay backs look discuss whether made happened minivan collected town center chau doc transferred larger bus seats look barcaloungers reclining position climbed notverylarge berth spent next four hours crossing heart mekong delta mix urban stretches rice paddies dutch landscape rivers canals bogs ditches headed village ap bac site battle fought 1963 south vietnamese army arvn viet cong based reading especially neil sheehans bright shining lie william prochnaus upon distant war come believe ap bac rubicon america vietnam viet cong defeated arvn troops supported us helicopters amphibious armor united states came conclusion way war could american troops fighting although battle featured less 1000 soldiers sides ap bac loomed large pearl harbor convincing kennedy johnson administrations go vietnam war arvn defeat ap bac small delta hamlet near tho made point south vietnams army hopeless cando spirit american military could carry day deckhand booked saigon bus stopped six kilometers outside vinh long rest stop emporium crawling noodle stands normally southeast asia bus stations chock full taxis tuktuk drivers stop loneliness roadside north northwest cary grant aka roger thornhill gets cornfields thought walking vinh long calling taxi asked said propositions hopeless way go told flag scooter driver pay ride town 2 dropped ferry landing binh island sits channel opposite vinh long astride tien river branch mekong booked 10 room called homestaya rustic innbut even turned another 15 kilometers ferry landing last scooter ride 4 went roads sidewalks jungle paths wondered maybe hadnt booked room viet cong liberated many villages binh war finally dropped homestay collection thatched cottages overlooking river two nights laundry swam pool drank coffee cold beer read shade beside branch mekongin particular memoir american retreat 1975 escape honor last hours vietnam francis terry mcnamara adrian hill mcnamara consulate general nearby tho order came evacuate jeffrey st clairs article john kerry really vietnam didnt swift boats happened waters similar reading beside career foreign service officer mcnamara believer vietnam intervention right pull flag consulate lead people delta two improvised river barges memoir mcnamara makes case government south vietnam could held delta behind river banks enormous food production writes burgeoning production rich delta brought rural prosperity miracle rice strains developed ford foundation researchers philippines tough hardworking farmers delta managed space years quadruple yields recently introduction simple cheap japanesebuilt irrigation pumps making possible grow extra crop dry season instead dominos fells across vietnam april 1975 artifice south vietnamese government puppet theater allamerican audience collapsed arvn often functioned palace guard nothing memoir damning mcnamaras portrait cia station tho nominally reported consulate general practice operated freelance gang plunder one mandates cia station chief ignore superior officer come general evacuation april 29 1975 spooks brushed orders put sea rest consulate instead commandeered precious helicopters head stereos loot call girlsleaving behind locals done cias dirty work drifting river sea mcnamara describes seeing cia flight came steady beating chopper low water came fast silver huey clattered deafeningly heads flying swiftly direction sea go cia growled marine full flight watching helicopter fade speck brown surface mekong like observing symbol went wrong america vietnam look faces vietnamese charges well deck eyes ashamed simple human beings staring odd mixture fear contempt helicopter though watching mercenaries abandon battlefield running safe thought spared passed making 70mile run open sea barges mcnamara could least take hundreds local vietnamese served american war effort got south china sea saw american fleet standing coast wrote bitterly shook head dismay could nation much strength end war abandoning allies saving citizens ignominious circumstances would last time would ask question months years ahead sight huge fleet wound would never fully heal sailor mind delta days former presidential candidate senator secretary state john kerry whose 2004 election bid foundered speak war record wasas sayswift boated even though john kerry enlisted navy served vietnam returned home three purple hearts plus silver bronze star election operative karl rove turd blossom ws immortal description got done lt kerry would thought kerry dodged combat national guards champagne unit ws flight squadron alabama bush taken north vietnamese mission john rambo sir get win time 2004 election assumed even though kerry tonedeaf candidate windsurfers dont swing many precincts ohio probably served honorably vietnam despite swift boat veterans tv ads making look like someone skipped canada reading jeffs excellent article find idling delta opened eyes kerrys mekong service short four months combat kerry awarded three purple hearts although none wounds actually bleed seem sustained action enemy three purple hearts could transfer combat zone well silver star awarded beaching swift boat standing orders chasing enemy soldier may may armed doubts bronze star included mention hostile fire action helped rescue member special forces whose boat hit mine anything kerry looks better gaming medal system sustaining rapport men also turns outin true fashion politico thinking running officeto source many combat exploits find striking debate kerrys war record much ill generated amongst crew fellow officers serving four months vietnam leaving aside whether deserved medals one thing disputed many men near command found selfserving hypocrite point eagerly signed karl roves infomercials denounced kerry primetime one says name steve gardner served 1966 1967 first tour duty vietnam swift boats second tour 68 69 involved john kerry last 2 12 months tour john kerry know john kerry everybody else portraying served alongside behind five feet away gun tub watched made indecisive moves boat put boats jeopardy put crews jeopardy man like cant handle 6man crew boat expect commanderinchief another said 120 days incountry puts purple heart scratches wouldnt bother report corpsman guy punching ticket used loophole regulations get early disgrace comparison read marine corporal eugene sledge wrote loss company commander andy haldane island peleliu world war ii writes company commander represented stability direction world violence death destruction life snuffed felt forlorn lost worst grief endured entire war intervening years havent lessened least seems many men near kerrys command couldnt wait denounce fraud way island binh back scooter time manager hotel hearing 20 offer volunteered take ap bac 60 kilometers guest house left early sunday morning figured would village less hour instead got full inadvertent lesson mekong certain provinces around vinh long labyrinths death vietnam war driver google maps phone copied internet certain army military diagrams still drive ap bac constantly ended dead ends jungle riverbank one case took ferry across tributary tien river showed farmland google maps last kilometers ap bac rode along troops would called berma dyke alongside rice paddies trip took three hours hot sun imagine getting around delta 1960s google maps day battle despite backing american helicopters senior american advisor celebrated lt col john paul vann south vietnamese failed wipe viet cong force 700 men taken position tree line end paddy canal backs believing viet cong force rolled canal vann circling battlefield spotter plane called helicopter gunships even paratroops close trap guerrillas instead viet cong shot several american helicopters armored vehicles sent support ground troops bogged rice paddies destroyed piecemeal much french always searching setpiece battle north vietnamese first indochina war vann american advisors 1963 looking situation us air armor superiority could deployed viet cong battle unfolded january 2 1963 however viet cong stood fought arvn found sorts reasons closing enemy vann became furious incompetence later american command political system neil sheehan upi correspondent later new york times author brief shining lie best want one book night table vietnam broke story arvn defeat despite considerable american assistance sheehan drove office saigon much closer dockside restaurant chau doc filed several wire service reports defeat kennedy administration promptly dismissed inaccurate us officials cited article others like example american correspondents filing negative stories war wonder aeschylus liked say war truth first casualty administrations telling ap bac arvn carried days fighting much way throughout 1960s light always end tunnel although hot bothered three hours scootering delta toured ap bacs small military museum lost temper museum man asked battlefield relation museum front door said didnt know added care much vietnam still military nation figured contours battlefield navigating small lanes village wandering rice paddies came away perplexed john paul vann willing stake terrain sheehans book maybe changed since 1960s ap bac sounds like relatively open terrain tanks helicopters could maneuver ap bac saw back scooter foot every bit tangledin terms streams jungle overgrowthas rest vietnam yes arvn could approach viet cong across broad expanse rice paddies possibly push canal backs battles amphitheater surrounding stage sets dense jungle concealed viet cong riflemen allowing bring five american helicopters escape arvn noose museum photograph battles end downed helicopters side fields although ap bac first battle american war vietnamese call might well last air power artillery armor supposed win day instead became sea anchors mud ap bac done scootering get saigon caught bus along highway one stood less ten minutes beside vegetable stand arm bushiking hitchhiking almost immediately van pulled traffic opened front door accepted 2 ride whisked saigon twohour ride across broad rice fields deltamore texas catacombs around binh island thinking ap bac kennedy administration pushed back sheehans stories arvn defeat reminded john f kennedy one tragic figures vietnam war american politicians got close indochina kennedy best position make right decisions instead made worst including criticism press telling truth ap bac badly war going early 1960s kennedy serve pt boat commander world war ii solomon islands covered jungle swampland vietnam warwhen member house representativeshe traveled french indochina brother robert saigon 1951 kennedy got dogandpony show us ambassador embassy officials struck meet reporters covering french war vietminh told colonial war destined fail three years dien bien phu return washington kennedy gave several eloquent speeches congress vietnam including one said indochinese states puppet states french principalities great resources typical examples empire colonialism found anywhere check southern drive communism makes sense reliance force arms task rather build strong native noncommunist sentiment within areas rely spearhead defense apart defiance innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure 1950s however kennedy became senator started dreaming white house got behind doomed vietnamese presidency ngo dinh diem one us sink swim part diem catholic darling time magazine also francis cardinal spellman archbishop new york something kennedy family inhouse priest john kennedy needed continued devotions catholic constituencies make white house president john f kennedy understood vietnam lost cause time war needed fight soviets take seriously believed confident intellectually curious kennedy one sought french reporters saigon 1951 got unvarnished truth white mans burdens indochina status quo kennedy president 1961 sent 16000 military advisors including john paul vann vietnam plus millions military aid hawks washington mention russians would understand could pushed around end jfks assassination several weeks diem killed americanorchestrated coup feel shakespearean tragedy played saigons rue catinat indochinas fifth avenue diem died failed prosecute vietnam war satisfaction american military probably president novelist charles mccarry tears autumn believed kennedy died conspiracy hatched revenge diems killing mccarry writes diems coterie believed kennedy done thing themwhether doesnt matter way think couldnt anything kill kennedy return imperative theminsult insult blood blood maybe arrived slow sunday afternoon warmed saigon occasion traffic heat less oppressive found easier walk around sidewalks wasnt always sharing motorbikes fewer touts face although truthful always lurking fringes sale remained long enough catch breath delta make plans get iron triangle near famous cu chi tunnels thirty miles north city booked thought room resort outside saigon could explore battle detailed jonathan schells village ben sucone vietnamese hamlets needed destroyed order save easiest way get resort book 4 tour bus cu chi tunnels bail tour move iron triangle day tunnels attract dozens tour groupsits main war attraction saigonand spend hours looking underground network stretched 250 kilometers staging area 16000 viet cong guerrillas irony cu chi tunnels americans built base directly top took several years figure extent network meantime allowed viet cong snipe american troops even thought pacified area 1969 b52 bombers lay waste tunnels americans losing interest war stayed cu chi tour long enough see battle exhibits included tunnels trenches displays viet cong rigged mines set booby traps cooked meals treated wounded stitched together tiretread scandals 20 clip decided trying aim ak47 m16 soundtracks cu chi woods near gift shopwith tattooed australians rifle range appearing role victor charles iron triangle resort turned sad guest house run toothless german four enthusiastic dogs pool bottled water came recycled plastic bottles might collected roadside food site beer may explain online reviews indicated excellence although owner spoke little vietnamese apparently wife away local talking managed find driver take around iron trianglean american battlefield bleak wilderness outside chancellorsville operation cedar falls launched 1967 american army arvn cleared area villagers conducted broad search destroy missionsan operation schell describes book first serialized new yorker magazine everything evil american intervention vietnam gleaned schells account ends village ben suc near resort razed ground writes bulldozers cut paths across backyard fences small graveyards ridged fields village ignoring roads lanes air force jets sent bombs deserted ruins printed maps operation cedar falls diffidence scooter driver warmed search traces 1967 battle began ben suc crossroads small shops food stalls fanned iron triangle matches daniel boones description kentucky dark bloody ground time weaved along dirt paths several times crossed meandering saigon river muddy clogged floating vegetation small ferry surrounding landscape scrub jungle came across many villages small patches rice paddies farmyard animals think tank trap snipers paradise cedar falls viet cong never stand fight ap bac snipers mines killed number americans one lanes iron triangle came conclusion vietnam americas boer war sense weapon choice concentration camp bothersome civilians british south africa rounded boers called laagers americanswith strategic hamlet program successorsdecide vietnamese villagers best disposed behind barbed wire much schells book ben suc concerns villages iron triangle drained population trucked awaycows allto wired compound americanestablished concentration camps run arvn soldiers villagers could divided among loyal saigon regime sympathetic viet cong without local population iron triangle became free fire zone artillery napalm could dropped without second thoughts one officer tells schell anything moves around going automatically considered vc bombed fired upon whole triangle going become free zone villages considered hostile villages fighting battle iron triangle american troops deployed large bulldozers plow large swaths jungle cutting lanes future interstate offramps nowhere jungle plowed villages burned iron triangle americans never grasped extent vietnamese snipers buried beneath subterranean network size new york city subway faced prospect night fourdog resort runner paid owner room threw bottled water dropped 87 bus cu chi connected another bus tay ninh fort apache northwest frontier nestles cambodian border military district could determine fate saigon always among contested war first learned tay ninh novels stories friend larry heinemann wrote close quarters 1974 pacos story 1987 latter national book award fiction beat selfabsorbed toni morrison denounced larry unworthy prize win larry served grunt 25th infantry division vietnam march 1967 march 1968 writing centers road tay ninh cu chi trang bang much way melvilles novels set whaling grounds south pacific even though dilapidated bus windows open music blaring another passengers boom box still felt one literary tours house famous author became friends larry 1970s first novel close quarters published nearly conversations touched vietnam many writers came war recall describing gloria emerson winners losers war broke many americans got admiration writers robert mason chickenhawk philip caputo rumor war wd ehrhart vietnamperkasie much larrys writing describes dislocations coming home war wrote soldier returning home must rediscover humanity establish livable peace discovered liberated permanently dark places heartthe darkness always us particular remember vietnam writers conference new york city west side ymca early 1980s fifty people present someone tried make case war moral purpose larry would none argument fire said audience evil dont let anyone tell wasnt doubts read rape scene pacos story writes peasant girl fourteen say sixteen eyes got bigger deers chunks slivers tile ground scalp face breasts stomach jesusfuckingchrist nostrils flared teeth clenched eyes squinted tearing sheer humiliating grinding pain victims assault include american innocence bus meandered along tay ninh highwaypassing long vietnamese strip mall either side roadi thought larry books writes close quarters camp fire base jungle rubber paddies north trang bang would gather sevenfour sip smoke slap camouflage go first dozen got used pig m60 machine gun preferred two hundred rounds closer tay ninh caught first site black virgin mountain incongruous peak rises broad plains around city war high ground often violently contested americans fire base summit stationed troops track enemy infiltration larry wrote book returning vietnam 1990s gave title black virgin mountain looming presence reconnaissance company worked road cu chi tay ninh often highway death stayed tay ninh long enough inspect headquarters cao dai religion founded 1926 worships among things french novelist victor hugo mostly feels like buddhist interpretation catholic church spent lot time looking mountain imagine denali outside kansas city end american presence vietnam american bombers attacked mountaintop fort yet another metaphor selfdestructive confusion american war aims last morning saigon something city go long walk started war remnants museumpart history part agitation propagandalooped around grounds american embassy helicopters departed 1975 ended rooftop bar rex hotel correspondents spent much war five oclock follies name limegreen cocktail although vietnam loaded war museumsthey tend haggard photograph lyndon johnson clearly getting ready throw towelmost saigon visitors end war remnants museum across three floors photographic exhibits toes party line went see pictures photographers killed war one bad day 1971 single helicopter crash near laos border killed four celebrated photojournalists larry burrows henri huet kent potter keisaburo shimamoto haunting blackandwhite photographs exhibit vietnam may last american war given press free access fighting army flew journalists stripes came accreditation local college papers battle one reason many killed pentagon embeds reporters mercenaries religious war much like idea war museum saigon occasion grew tired strident tone often feel party congress poster exhorting masses remember evils capitalism sure agent orange american bombings operation phoenix lai part vietnam war story war crimes senator bob kerrey get lot play museum death 5000 hue inhabitants rounded killed dumped pits viet cong captured ancient city 1968 tet offensive real war saigon anyway makes display cabinets subject american imperialism reason took two tries find former us embassy saigon consulate knew address 4 le duan next french embassy fortress walls see nothing street except medieval rampart walked without seeing flag helicopter pad roof united states needs consulate saigon size city block anyones guess last heard trump administration isnt effusive idea issuing immigration visas consulate needed saigon encourage investments american businesses franchises starbucks nike etc corners bad one idea turn embassy grounds open university curriculum study happenedafter fiasco vietnamese intervention 1954 1975that united states marched folly iraq afghanistan travels around indochina read countless histories origins american involvement vietnam save handful public figuresamong george ball george mcgovern william fulbright adlai stevenson martin luther king jrthose government waved bloody shirt enthusiasm forty years later barack obama showed called afghanistan war necessity war choice also remarkable words eisenhower kennedy johnson nixon vietnam almost match verbatim statements george w bush obama made fighting iraq afghanistan lyndon johnson said 1965 wonder responsibility reason responsibility defense freedom europe vein w said united states nations nothing deserve invite threat everything defeat long way trumps statement heinous actions assad regime tolerated united states stands allies across globe condemn horrific attack horrific attacks matter doubt donald trump finds vietnamnorth korea syria philippines yemen currently auditioningwill join ranks predecessors believing splendid little war america continue pursuit happiness | 3,731 |
<p>Let me start off by saying, <a href="" type="internal">I cannot stand Ann Coulter</a>. That said, she doesn’t really make me angry because she’s too ridiculous to take seriously. This woman is nothing more than a “troll” who, for whatever reason (money I’m sure is one of them), gets a kick out of seemingly going out of her way to say whatever she thinks will offend people.</p>
<p>But&#160;this is the United States, right? As Americans we’re all given the First Amendment right of free speech, am I correct?</p>
<p>So let the woman speak!</p>
<p>Yes, protesting is a valid form of free speech. But there’s a difference between protests meant to express opposition toward something or someone, and a “protest” aimed at trying to shut down and silence those with whom you disagree.</p>
<p>As a person who’s a staunch defender of our Constitutional rights as Americans, I defend those rights for everyone — even those I disagree with, dislike, and think are the lowest forms of “human” life walking this planet.</p>
<p>Of course I can’t stand Coulter’s hateful rhetoric, but I don’t want her&#160;silenced. Why would I? The best tool I have to expose <a href="" type="internal">exactly how horrible people like Ann Coulter are</a> is the ignorance they volunteer on their own.</p>
<p>The best way to allow the world to see the true awfulness of Ann Coulter and the people who support her is by letting her say the hateful, ignorant, and disgusting things that she says. I feel the same way about Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and a whole host of bottom-feeding parasites who better display the <a href="" type="internal">shameful values of today’s conservatives</a> than anything anyone who opposes them can say or do ourselves.</p>
<p>Sad to say, but the story right now isn’t about how terrible Ann Coulter is, it’s about how ridiculous the people at Berkeley are behaving. And&#160;this isn’t just Berkeley. There’s an epidemic plaguing the left all across this country where college campuses are becoming less and less tolerant of one of the cornerstones of what makes this country great: Free Speech.</p>
<p>This idea that we have to somehow shelter ourselves from hateful or offensive things is unrealistic. That’s not life nor is it any way to live. A large part of our development as humans is being able to deal with a rather harsh world that’s not always fair, tolerant, sensitive, or worried about how someone feels. Being educated isn’t just about learning what’s inside of a book, it’s also about preparing yourself for life — real life. Often our successes come from the experiences we learned overcoming failure, adversity, and some of the tougher moments in our lives.</p>
<p>If you want to live in a bubble and pretend the world isn’t what it really is, that’s fine, go right ahead. However, once that bubble bursts, you’re going to be in a whole lot of trouble. Life’s going to knock you down, walk all over you, and there’s not going to be someone there to rush to your side, pick you up, tell you that you’re amazing, and give you a participation trophy.</p>
<p>What people like Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Trump want is for liberals to act like fools during these protests. They want them to show up, cause some big scene, vandalize property, and attempt to silence whoever happens to be speaking. That way they’re handed the mocking talking point of the “whiny, overly-sensitive, PC liberals who are hypocrites about their support for free speech.”</p>
<p>Then just as we’re seeing now, the story isn’t about what ignorant things they said, but the behavior of those who tried to silence them. When liberals act like this, all they’re doing is feeding into a negative stereotype that, like it or not, is driving voters to the Republican Party. I’ve met more than a few moderate Republicans who cite as one of their biggest issues with liberals this overly-PC nonsense that’s at the heart of what’s fueling situations like this.</p>
<p>If you want to protest peacefully, by all means, go for it. Don’t block roads, entrances to a venue, make threats, or try to keep the person or group you oppose from having their chance and right to speak. Standing along roads or outside the particular place where a speech is being given and expressing&#160;your right to free speech and freedom of expression is a beautiful thing. But nobody should deny someone their right to free speech by claiming they’re simply exercising theirs.</p>
<p>When you do that, that’s not protesting or free speech — that’s just bullying. At that point you’re not protesting a person/group/message, you’re hoping to cause enough havoc to intimidate a person or situation with the hope that by doing so you’ll get your way.</p>
<p>Don’t protest them, engage with them. If you oppose their message, don’t try to shut it down, offer a better one. Let their ignorance be what exposes who they are while letting your positive message be what represents you.</p>
<p>Or here’s a crazy idea — ignore them. As the saying goes, don’t “feed the trolls.” What someone like Coulter wants is what we’re seeing now. When she accepted this speaking gig, she knew exactly what would happen and most likely counted on it. Why do you think she’s still claiming she’s going to show up on April 27th despite the school announcing her speech was cancelled? All these people did who lost their minds over her scheduled speech was give a person they hate exactly what she wanted.</p>
<p>If this particular group of liberals wants to claim to be smarter than people like her, or other “rubes on the right” — then they need to start acting like it. Because guess what? Ann “Troll” Coulter just got these individuals to fall for her trap hook, line, and sinker.</p>
<p>You know how disappointed she would have been if it was announced that she was speaking at Berkeley and nobody cared? She’d never admit it, but that would have driven her nuts. Unfortunately, it seems too many were more than eager to give her exactly what she was hoping for.</p>
<p>Some folks reading this might agree with me, some might not, which is fine. But I’m a firm believer in, and supporter of, the First Amendment. That&#160;means I support the right to protest just as much as I support the right for the person/group being protested to be allowed their right to speak.</p>
<p>A big part of supporting free speech is being mature enough to understand that responsibilities come with supporting and defending those rights. And one of those responsibilities is understanding that no one person, or group of people, gets to determine who can or cannot exercise their Constitutionally protected right.</p>
<p>In my opinion, you either support free speech or you don’t. But you can’t claim you defend the right for every American to speak while trying to silence those with whom you disagree. As I said earlier, there’s a difference between the peaceful expression of your opposition of someone or some group, and an overbearing attempt to bully, intimidate, and silence those you oppose.</p>
<p>Feel free to express your First Amendment rights by <a href="https://www.twitter.com/allen_clifton" type="external">hitting me up on Twitter</a> or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/allencliftonroc" type="external">Facebook</a> to tell me what you think</p>
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Ann Coulter is Nothing but a One-Woman Hate Group Who the Mainstream Media Needs to Stop Promoting</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Ann Coulter Goes off on Disgusting Racist Rant, Compares Immigration Reform to Sexual Assault</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Stop Calling Ann Coulter Names, Seriously</a></p>
<p>7 Facebook comments</p> | true | 4 | let start saying stand ann coulter said doesnt really make angry shes ridiculous take seriously woman nothing troll whatever reason money im sure one gets kick seemingly going way say whatever thinks offend people but160this united states right americans given first amendment right free speech correct let woman speak yes protesting valid form free speech theres difference protests meant express opposition toward something someone protest aimed trying shut silence disagree person whos staunch defender constitutional rights americans defend rights everyone even disagree dislike think lowest forms human life walking planet course cant stand coulters hateful rhetoric dont want her160silenced would best tool expose exactly horrible people like ann coulter ignorance volunteer best way allow world see true awfulness ann coulter people support letting say hateful ignorant disgusting things says feel way donald trump sean hannity alex jones rush limbaugh whole host bottomfeeding parasites better display shameful values todays conservatives anything anyone opposes say sad say story right isnt terrible ann coulter ridiculous people berkeley behaving and160this isnt berkeley theres epidemic plaguing left across country college campuses becoming less less tolerant one cornerstones makes country great free speech idea somehow shelter hateful offensive things unrealistic thats life way live large part development humans able deal rather harsh world thats always fair tolerant sensitive worried someone feels educated isnt learning whats inside book also preparing life real life often successes come experiences learned overcoming failure adversity tougher moments lives want live bubble pretend world isnt really thats fine go right ahead however bubble bursts youre going whole lot trouble lifes going knock walk theres going someone rush side pick tell youre amazing give participation trophy people like coulter limbaugh hannity trump want liberals act like fools protests want show cause big scene vandalize property attempt silence whoever happens speaking way theyre handed mocking talking point whiny overlysensitive pc liberals hypocrites support free speech seeing story isnt ignorant things said behavior tried silence liberals act like theyre feeding negative stereotype like driving voters republican party ive met moderate republicans cite one biggest issues liberals overlypc nonsense thats heart whats fueling situations like want protest peacefully means go dont block roads entrances venue make threats try keep person group oppose chance right speak standing along roads outside particular place speech given expressing160your right free speech freedom expression beautiful thing nobody deny someone right free speech claiming theyre simply exercising thats protesting free speech thats bullying point youre protesting persongroupmessage youre hoping cause enough havoc intimidate person situation hope youll get way dont protest engage oppose message dont try shut offer better one let ignorance exposes letting positive message represents heres crazy idea ignore saying goes dont feed trolls someone like coulter wants seeing accepted speaking gig knew exactly would happen likely counted think shes still claiming shes going show april 27th despite school announcing speech cancelled people lost minds scheduled speech give person hate exactly wanted particular group liberals wants claim smarter people like rubes right need start acting like guess ann troll coulter got individuals fall trap hook line sinker know disappointed would announced speaking berkeley nobody cared shed never admit would driven nuts unfortunately seems many eager give exactly hoping folks reading might agree might fine im firm believer supporter first amendment that160means support right protest much support right persongroup protested allowed right speak big part supporting free speech mature enough understand responsibilities come supporting defending rights one responsibilities understanding one person group people gets determine exercise constitutionally protected right opinion either support free speech dont cant claim defend right every american speak trying silence disagree said earlier theres difference peaceful expression opposition someone group overbearing attempt bully intimidate silence oppose feel free express first amendment rights hitting twitter facebook tell think ann coulter nothing onewoman hate group mainstream media needs stop promoting ann coulter goes disgusting racist rant compares immigration reform sexual assault stop calling ann coulter names seriously 7 facebook comments | 651 |
<p>As I headed out in my ’94 Volvo to drive from Philadelphia to Washington for the first day of <a href="" type="internal">October2011.org</a>&#160;, the occupation of Washington, I spotted some trouble: the ABS warning light on my dashboard panel was lit. Stopping at my neighborhood mechanic to get his okay for the drive, I found him busy inflating the tire of a new white Mercedes. As the driver, a well-dressed middle-aged woman, looked on, he asked me what my problem was. I told him the ABS &#160;light was staying on and asked if it was safe to drive the car to D.C.</p>
<p>After telling me my brakes were fine and I just didn’t have skid prevention, he asked why I was going to the capital. “To cover the first day of the occupation there,” I said.</p>
<p>The woman interjected, “Oh, is that part of those protests against corporate greed?”</p>
<p>As I pulled onto the Interstate and headed for Washington, I thought about her question. Clearly, something huge has just happened. <a href="http://www.occupywallst.org" type="external">Occupy Wall Street,</a> and the wave of occupations that have spread to over 100 cities across the country, have broken through some invisible wall in American consciousness. If this member of the upper class, or at least upper middle class, with her $50-60,000 car, can casually talk about “corporate greed,” a term that is also starting to appear in the nation’s mainstream media, we are in a new place.</p>
<p>I got the same sense of being in some kind of alternate reality or new world as I joined thousands of people marching through the streets of Washington, first denouncing President Obama at a stop in front of the White House, then briefly blockading the entrance and shutting down the US Chamber of Commerce building just down the street from theWhite House, and then finally blocking traffic on K Street, the home of the big corporate lobbying offices. Unlike at prior anti-war demonstrations I’ve attended over the past decade in Washington, nobody heckled or cursed us out this time for inconveniencing them at rush hour. Nobody derided our signs or our rousing chant of “Banks got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out!”&#160; In fact, we got cheers, beeping horns, and raised fists and peace signs from passing drivers and people standing along the sidewalks–including men in tailored suits and women in heels.</p>
<p>There were some striking differences between the occupations of Washington, DC which began Thursday, and the occupation of Wall Street in New York City, which is into its third week, and which I visited over the weekend. First of all, it’s the amount of gray hair you see in DC.</p>
<p>While the Wall Street occupation in Liberty Plaza is overwhelmingly the work of young people, most of whom haven’t had a 30th birthday yet, Washington’s Freedom Plaza was awash in people who looked like they were veterans of the ‘60s antiwar movement, or even the Civil Rights movement that preceded it.&#160; Don’t get me wrong, the young were there too, but they weren’t the dominant age cohort. There were also more people of color in Washington.</p>
<p>The other big difference that was immediately obvious upon arriving at the occupation site several blocks from the White House was the much stronger emphasis in Washington on ending the US wars. Signs calling for an end to the wars and signs linking Wall Street’s crimes with American militarism were prominent everywhere, while they fairly rare in New York.</p>
<p>Medea Benjamin of Code Pink said in an interview with TCBH! that she thought one reason for the greater emphasis on attacking military spending and US war-mongering at the Washington occupation may have to do with the fact that “this is the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghan War,” and the fact that the event itself had “originally been planned as an anti-war rally.”&#160; But I think there is more to it than that.</p>
<p>For one thing, it is understandable that an occupation of Wall Street would focus directly on condemning the crimes of the companies — primarily banks and investment banks — that have their home offices right there in the world’s main financial center. For another, the young people who are doing the occupying haven’t come out of a history of resisting wars. In fact, for many of them, an America at war has been simply a fact of life through all their years as teens and young adults.</p>
<p>But the differences in focus between the two occupations are actually a great thing, born of the amorphous, essentially leaderless or collectively-organized growth of this burgeoning movement. It is inevitable that the various strands of rebellion and grievances will coalesce. It is inevitable that the link between America’s trillion-dollar-a-year imperialist war machine and the collapsing social and economic system will become a central issue, along with the frontal challenge to the current corporate domination of the American political system.</p>
<p>On Sunday, when I was in Liberty Park, I spoke with a burly truck driver from New Jersey named Brendan, who was kind of monitoring access to the media “office” of the occupation. He expressed “disappointment” that New York City’s labor unions had done nothing beyond providing some token support — food and ponchos — to the young people in the square.&#160; Three days later, tens of thousands of union rank-and-file members were marching with the young occupiers, calling for an end to corporate crime and political control.</p>
<p>Later, down at the Washington occupation, Jerry and Christine McDonough, two county workers from Madison, Wisconsin who said they planned to sleep on Freedom Plaza as part of the occupation, staying on “as long as we can,” offered another perspective on this movement which also gives some indication of how it has grown. Jerry, a vice president and organizer of his local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, said he had been involved “from day one” in the dramatic occupation of the Madison State House last February. “What did that action do?” he asked. “It made everyone in this country see the attack on public workers for what it was: part of a nationwide corporate/Republican plan.&#160; Maybe this occupation movement will do the same thing.”&#160; He added, “This occupation movement is a direct outgrowth of our occupation in Madison.”</p>
<p>Christine, who’s been laid off of her job since 2008, expressed the fury and exasperation of the one-in-five Americans who have been dumped from their jobs, spitting out angrily, “We’ve been out-sourced, in-sourced and H1-B’ed. Our system doesn’t work anymore!”</p>
<p>Her husband Jerry added, “I called the national office of the AFL-CIO today, to say I was a local AFSCME VP from Wisconsin, and I wanted to know why [AFL-CIA President Richard] Trumka wasn’t here. The office is right her in Washington after all. They said Trumka was ‘out of town.’ So I asked why they haven’t sent someone else over. They said they’d call me back.”</p>
<p>He added, “Uh-Huh. I’m still waiting. What it comes down to is nobody’s going to save us but us!”</p>
<p>And that’s the point. Unlike the Tea Party “movement,” which has been a creation of the Koch brothers and several right-wing organizations, this much bigger occupation movement is not being organized from the top down. It’s a bursting forth of the pent-up fury of ordinary Americans — young, old, white, black, brown, poor and middle-class, peace activists and recent war veterans — who are finally saying they are sick of having greedy and rapacious corporations controlling, and ruining, their and their childrens’ lives.</p>
<p>As one young Wall Street occupier in military fatigues, a veteran of the Marines from Afghanistan who now works at a $42,000-a-year IT job for a Wall Street bank and is unable to pay down his $120,000 in student debt, put it, “Now I know who my real enemy is.”</p>
<p>A reporter from Tehran state radio called me today and asked what I thought the occupation movement would accomplish. I had to tell her I don’t know. I don’t think anyone could know. Forty-three years ago, back in October 1968, I was an 18-year-old kid sitting in protest on the mall of the Pentagon at the front of a group of several hundred thousand protesters who had stormed across the Pentagon lawn and “occupied” the main entrance to the center of the American war machine. I spent three days in federal jail in Occoquan, VA for that action. If someone had asked me at the time what I thought we’d achieve, I might well have boldly answered, “We’ll end the fucking war!”</p>
<p>And we did, or at least we helped the Vietnamese to do it, but it took seven years.&#160; Who knows what this occupation movement will result in, but it’s clear that it has already shattered the political stasis in the United States, and opened up a debate over whether corporations are even compatible with a democratic society.</p>
<p>DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent alternative online newspaper, now in its second year of daily publication.&#160;&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | headed 94 volvo drive philadelphia washington first day october2011org160 occupation washington spotted trouble abs warning light dashboard panel lit stopping neighborhood mechanic get okay drive found busy inflating tire new white mercedes driver welldressed middleaged woman looked asked problem told abs 160light staying asked safe drive car dc telling brakes fine didnt skid prevention asked going capital cover first day occupation said woman interjected oh part protests corporate greed pulled onto interstate headed washington thought question clearly something huge happened occupy wall street wave occupations spread 100 cities across country broken invisible wall american consciousness member upper class least upper middle class 5060000 car casually talk corporate greed term also starting appear nations mainstream media new place got sense kind alternate reality new world joined thousands people marching streets washington first denouncing president obama stop front white house briefly blockading entrance shutting us chamber commerce building street thewhite house finally blocking traffic k street home big corporate lobbying offices unlike prior antiwar demonstrations ive attended past decade washington nobody heckled cursed us time inconveniencing rush hour nobody derided signs rousing chant banks got bailed got sold out160 fact got cheers beeping horns raised fists peace signs passing drivers people standing along sidewalksincluding men tailored suits women heels striking differences occupations washington dc began thursday occupation wall street new york city third week visited weekend first amount gray hair see dc wall street occupation liberty plaza overwhelmingly work young people havent 30th birthday yet washingtons freedom plaza awash people looked like veterans 60s antiwar movement even civil rights movement preceded it160 dont get wrong young werent dominant age cohort also people color washington big difference immediately obvious upon arriving occupation site several blocks white house much stronger emphasis washington ending us wars signs calling end wars signs linking wall streets crimes american militarism prominent everywhere fairly rare new york medea benjamin code pink said interview tcbh thought one reason greater emphasis attacking military spending us warmongering washington occupation may fact 10th anniversary start afghan war fact event originally planned antiwar rally160 think one thing understandable occupation wall street would focus directly condemning crimes companies primarily banks investment banks home offices right worlds main financial center another young people occupying havent come history resisting wars fact many america war simply fact life years teens young adults differences focus two occupations actually great thing born amorphous essentially leaderless collectivelyorganized growth burgeoning movement inevitable various strands rebellion grievances coalesce inevitable link americas trilliondollarayear imperialist war machine collapsing social economic system become central issue along frontal challenge current corporate domination american political system sunday liberty park spoke burly truck driver new jersey named brendan kind monitoring access media office occupation expressed disappointment new york citys labor unions done nothing beyond providing token support food ponchos young people square160 three days later tens thousands union rankandfile members marching young occupiers calling end corporate crime political control later washington occupation jerry christine mcdonough two county workers madison wisconsin said planned sleep freedom plaza part occupation staying long offered another perspective movement also gives indication grown jerry vice president organizer local american federation state county municipal employees afscme union said involved day one dramatic occupation madison state house last february action asked made everyone country see attack public workers part nationwide corporaterepublican plan160 maybe occupation movement thing160 added occupation movement direct outgrowth occupation madison christine whos laid job since 2008 expressed fury exasperation oneinfive americans dumped jobs spitting angrily weve outsourced insourced h1bed system doesnt work anymore husband jerry added called national office aflcio today say local afscme vp wisconsin wanted know aflcia president richard trumka wasnt office right washington said trumka town asked havent sent someone else said theyd call back added uhhuh im still waiting comes nobodys going save us us thats point unlike tea party movement creation koch brothers several rightwing organizations much bigger occupation movement organized top bursting forth pentup fury ordinary americans young old white black brown poor middleclass peace activists recent war veterans finally saying sick greedy rapacious corporations controlling ruining childrens lives one young wall street occupier military fatigues veteran marines afghanistan works 42000ayear job wall street bank unable pay 120000 student debt put know real enemy reporter tehran state radio called today asked thought occupation movement would accomplish tell dont know dont think anyone could know fortythree years ago back october 1968 18yearold kid sitting protest mall pentagon front group several hundred thousand protesters stormed across pentagon lawn occupied main entrance center american war machine spent three days federal jail occoquan va action someone asked time thought wed achieve might well boldly answered well end fucking war least helped vietnamese took seven years160 knows occupation movement result clear already shattered political stasis united states opened debate whether corporations even compatible democratic society dave lindorff founding member thiscantbehappening new independent alternative online newspaper second year daily publication160160 160 160 160 160 | 810 |
<p>&#160; Billy Preston: <a href="" type="internal">Ultimate Collection</a> (Hip-O)</p>
<p>Billy Preston died this week after a prolonged coma, during which he was lovingly cared for by his friends Joyce and Sam (of Sam and Dave) Moore. Preston was only 59, but his career spanned much of the history of rock and soul. At the age of 12, he played W.C. Handy as a child prodigy in St. Louis Blues, a biopic about the composer. As a teen, he played piano and organ in the touring bands of Sam Cooke and Little Richard. He was befriended at an early age was none other than Ray Charles, who produced his first album, yielding the minor hit “Billy’s Bag,” and got him a standing gig as the keyboard player for the house band on Shindig, the weekly dance and music show on ABC. Preston was groomed on gospel and never really lost that flavor to his playing, as evident on his album The Most Exciting Organ Ever (no pun intended then, though later on that other organ would land Billy in a spot of trouble). His own records were good, but not great, marred by his limited voice. But Preston helped make great records for other bands and musicians, notably the Beatles (Let It Be and Get Back), George Harrison (All Things Must Pass and the Concert for Bangladesh) and the Rolling Stones (Love You Live). Indeed, Preston was known as the Fifth Beatle-the single “Get Back” was credited to The Beatles with Billy Preston. Preston had a big hit with Stevie Wonder’s “Will It Go Round It Circles”, while his own song, You Are So Beautiful, soared to number one featuring the broken voice of Joe Cocker.</p>
<p>Blind Boy Fuller: <a href="" type="internal">Truckin’ My Blues Away</a> (Yazoo)</p>
<p>In the 1930s, Blind Boy Fuller, a native of the North Carolina piedmont, traveled up and down the East Coast playing a unique form of country blues. Between 1935-1940, Fuller recorded more than 135 songs before a debilitating illness, which thought was God’s punishment for playing the devil’s music, prompted Fuller to devote himself to spirituals, recording stunning versions of “Twelve Gates to the City” and “Precious Lord.” The conversion didn’t do Fuller any good. He died in 1941 at the age of 33. Truckin’ My Blues Away, with classic cover art by R. Crumb, captures the best of Fuller’s music, which is some of the bawdiest blues ever recorded: “Meat Shaking Woman”, “Bad Luck Blues” and the hilarious and X-rated “Sweet Honey Hole.”</p>
<p>Barbecue Bob Hicks: <a href="" type="internal">Chocolate to the Bone</a> (Yazoo)</p>
<p>Blues for the summertime. The most popular bluesman in Atlanta in the 1920s and a top seller for Columbia Records, until his tragic death in 1931 at the age of 29, Bob Hicks was a virtuoso of the 12-string guitar, featuring an aggressive attack that might humble Jimmy Page or Roger McGuinn. Hicks was also a witty and prolific songwriter, specializing in multi-layered sexual innuendo in songs like “She Shook Her Gin”, “Atlanta Moan” and “Goin’ Up the Country”. A neglected titan of the country blues, who, as Dave Marsh reminded me, is a largely unknown influence on the stylings of Van Morrison and, by extension, the hordes of singers who swiped from Van the Man.</p>
<p>The Brains: Electronic Eden (Mercury)</p>
<p>Cut to Atlanta 60 years after the demise of BBQ Bob for the thrashing music of the best (and one of the few) southern punk band. You’ll search in vain for a single blues riff, but the camaraderie of spirit is inescapable. The political combo’s mini-hit “Money Changes Everything” is angst-ridden southern rock informed by a speed-reading of the Communist Manifesto,</p>
<p>I said I’m sorry baby, I’m leaving you tonight I’ve found someone new, he’s waiting in the car outside Oh honey how can you do it, we swore each other everlasting love I said yeah I know, but when we did there was one thing We weren’t thinking of And that’s money Money changes everything</p>
<p>The Saints: <a href="" type="internal">Nothing is Straight in My House</a> (Cadiz)</p>
<p>The best Aussie punk band? How far can you dispute the claim, against songs like “I’m Stranded,” “Swing for Crime” and “Church of Indifference.” These days perhaps even Olivia Newton-John is grunting out the lyrics to “Madman Wrecked My Happy Home”.</p>
<p>Art Pepper: <a href="" type="internal">Meets the Rhythm Section</a> (Contemporary)</p>
<p>LA saxman, brawler and heroin addict Art Pepper teams up with Miles Davis’s rhythm section (and fellow devotees of the opiated spike) to produce one of the greatest West Coast sessions in the history of jazz. Pepper’s autobiography, Straight Life, is a harrowing account of the life of a musician, ex-con and junky, including his bracing detour into the strange cult of Synanon.</p>
<p>Buffy Sainte-Marie: <a href="" type="internal">It’s My Way!</a>(Vanguard)</p>
<p>Music from a real vampire slayer, who made LBJ’s enemies list as a “singer who should be suppressed”. The early work of the Cree singer-songwriter, including Universal Soldier, Where Have the Buffalo Gone and The Incest Song, holds up better than most of the folk music from a decade that fetishized authenticity. Her version of the traditional song “Cripple Creek” is so much better than The Band’s lugubrious send-up. Buffy come home, the resistance needs you.</p>
<p>JEFFREY ST. CLAIR’s music writings (as well as CPers Ron Jacobs, David Vest and Daniel Wolff) can be found in <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Serpents in the Garden</a>. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:sitka@comcast.net" type="external">sitka@comcast.net</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | 160 billy preston ultimate collection hipo billy preston died week prolonged coma lovingly cared friends joyce sam sam dave moore preston 59 career spanned much history rock soul age 12 played wc handy child prodigy st louis blues biopic composer teen played piano organ touring bands sam cooke little richard befriended early age none ray charles produced first album yielding minor hit billys bag got standing gig keyboard player house band shindig weekly dance music show abc preston groomed gospel never really lost flavor playing evident album exciting organ ever pun intended though later organ would land billy spot trouble records good great marred limited voice preston helped make great records bands musicians notably beatles let get back george harrison things must pass concert bangladesh rolling stones love live indeed preston known fifth beatlethe single get back credited beatles billy preston preston big hit stevie wonders go round circles song beautiful soared number one featuring broken voice joe cocker blind boy fuller truckin blues away yazoo 1930s blind boy fuller native north carolina piedmont traveled east coast playing unique form country blues 19351940 fuller recorded 135 songs debilitating illness thought gods punishment playing devils music prompted fuller devote spirituals recording stunning versions twelve gates city precious lord conversion didnt fuller good died 1941 age 33 truckin blues away classic cover art r crumb captures best fullers music bawdiest blues ever recorded meat shaking woman bad luck blues hilarious xrated sweet honey hole barbecue bob hicks chocolate bone yazoo blues summertime popular bluesman atlanta 1920s top seller columbia records tragic death 1931 age 29 bob hicks virtuoso 12string guitar featuring aggressive attack might humble jimmy page roger mcguinn hicks also witty prolific songwriter specializing multilayered sexual innuendo songs like shook gin atlanta moan goin country neglected titan country blues dave marsh reminded largely unknown influence stylings van morrison extension hordes singers swiped van man brains electronic eden mercury cut atlanta 60 years demise bbq bob thrashing music best one southern punk band youll search vain single blues riff camaraderie spirit inescapable political combos minihit money changes everything angstridden southern rock informed speedreading communist manifesto said im sorry baby im leaving tonight ive found someone new hes waiting car outside oh honey swore everlasting love said yeah know one thing werent thinking thats money money changes everything saints nothing straight house cadiz best aussie punk band far dispute claim songs like im stranded swing crime church indifference days perhaps even olivia newtonjohn grunting lyrics madman wrecked happy home art pepper meets rhythm section contemporary la saxman brawler heroin addict art pepper teams miles daviss rhythm section fellow devotees opiated spike produce one greatest west coast sessions history jazz peppers autobiography straight life harrowing account life musician excon junky including bracing detour strange cult synanon buffy saintemarie wayvanguard music real vampire slayer made lbjs enemies list singer suppressed early work cree singersongwriter including universal soldier buffalo gone incest song holds better folk music decade fetishized authenticity version traditional song cripple creek much better bands lugubrious sendup buffy come home resistance needs jeffrey st clairs music writings well cpers ron jacobs david vest daniel wolff found serpents garden reached sitkacomcastnet 160 160 160 | 529 |
<p>This post originally ran on <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2015/06/implications-jerusalem-decision.html" type="external">Juan Cole’s website</a>.</p>
<p>It has been the position of the US presidents for decades that the status of Jerusalem in international law is unsettled. That is why the US embassy is in Tel Aviv, and why US passports showing the place of birth as Jerusalem just list the name of the city without indicating a country. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/08/supreme-court-jerusalem-israel-passport%20" type="external">The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the president’s right to make this determination</a>, in a 6-3 decision. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, found that Congress was not given by the constitution any role in recognizing other countries (or parts of other countries), and that in contrast the constitution gives the president this prerogative.</p>
<p>The issue began with a 2002 law passed by Congress instructing the executive to let Americans born in Jerusalem list Israel as their birthplace. The State Department refused to comply, denying Menachem Zivotofsky a passport that listed his birthplace as Jerusalem, Israel. His family sued under the 2002 law. The Supreme Court just struck down that law as unconstitutional.</p>
<p>No one is bringing up that a lot of Palestinian-Americans born in Jerusalem would like their passports to read “Jerusalem, Palestine”.</p>
<p />
<p>The law was pushed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful umbrella group for thousands of pro-Israel lobbies. These lobbies in turn play a major role in funding political campaigns, so that AIPAC has gained outsized influence on Congress. Jewish-Americans are less than two percent of the population, but those who strenuously support Israel on a “my country right or wrong” basis can usually get their way on congressional votes. They are aided, often, by evangelical Christians and also by old-time liberals who grew up before Israel entered its current Apartheid phase. Prominent right-Zionist congressional representatives have <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2010/11/ros-lehtinen-channels-israeli-right-on-usurpation-of-jerusalem-displacement-of-palestinians.html%20" type="external">attempted to use Congress to push the US to recognize Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.</a></p>
<p>The Israel lobbies have never been as strong with regard to the presidency or the courts as they are with regard to Congress, however. The Supreme Court decision showed the limits of their power. The reason this point is important is that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is increasingly being litigated not in national legislatures, where a lobby can sway votes, but in courtrooms. If the occupation and its Apartheid policies ever go to the International Criminal Court, the ICC will certainly rule against Israel. It already has, in a 2004 advisory opinion. Since the ICC is respected by signatories of the 2002 Rome Statue, in turn, that bodies ruling would be widely influential, including in Europe.</p>
<p>SCOTUS just showed what happens to such political campaigns for support of colonialism when they go to a court in a country with a rule of law.</p>
<p>The United Nations General Assembly in 1947 put forward a partition plan for the British Mandate of Palestine, giving the one-third of the population that was Jewish far more of the territory than the 6% it actually owned. The UN Security Council never signed off on the plan, so its status in international law is unclear. It was in any case overtaken by the 1948 war in which Israel took even more territory and consolidated borders far beyond what the General Assembly stipulated. But the UNGA envisaged that Jerusalem would be an international city not dominated by either Israelis or Palestinians.</p>
<p>In 1967 Israel unilaterally overturned the UN partition plan entirely, grabbing the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem and thereafter settling them and integrating them into Israel, while keeping millions of subject Palestinians stateless and without rights.</p>
<p>The rest of the world sees the status of Jerusalem as unsettled and as something that will be determined by final status peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. In the meantime, Israel has illegally annexed all of Jerusalem, surrounded it with squatter settlments built on stolen Palestinian land, and found pretexts for expelling large numbers of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem. The UN Security Council passed several resolutions on Jerusalem roundly condemning Israeli annexation. It should be remembered that one of the justifications given by the Neocons for attacking Iraq was that it had ignored UNSC resolutions. UNSC on Jerusalem:</p>
<p>Adopted by the Security Council at its 2245th meeting, on 20 August 1980 (14-0, US abstention)</p>
<p>The Security Council,</p>
<p>Recalling its resolution 476 (1980),</p>
<p>Reaffirming again that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible,</p>
<p>Deeply concerned over the enactment of a “basic law” in the Israeli Knesset proclaiming a change in the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, with its implications for peace and security,</p>
<p>Noting that Israel has not complied with resolution 476 (1980),</p>
<p>Reaffirming its determination to examine practical ways and means, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, to secure the full implementation of its resolution 476 (1980), in the event of non-compliance by Israel,</p>
<p>1. Censures in the strongest terms the enactment by Israel of the “basic law” on Jerusalem and the refusal to comply with relevant Security Council resolutions;</p>
<p>2. Affirms that the enactment of the “basic law” by Israel constitutes a violation of international law and does not affect the continued application of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since June 1967, including Jerusalem;</p>
<p>3. Determines that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which have altered or purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and in particular the recent “basic law” on Jerusalem, are null and void and must be rescinded forthwith;</p>
<p>4. Affirms also that this action constitutes a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East;</p>
<p>5. Decides not to recognize the “basic law” and such other actions by Israel that, as a result of this law, seek to alter the character and status of Jerusalem and calls upon:</p>
<p>(a) All Member States to accept this decision;</p>
<p>(b) Those States that have established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City;</p>
<p>6. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the implementation of the present resolution before 15 November 1980;</p>
<p>7. Decides to remain seized of this serious situation.</p> | true | 4 | post originally ran juan coles website position us presidents decades status jerusalem international law unsettled us embassy tel aviv us passports showing place birth jerusalem list name city without indicating country supreme court monday upheld presidents right make determination 63 decision justice kennedy writing majority found congress given constitution role recognizing countries parts countries contrast constitution gives president prerogative issue began 2002 law passed congress instructing executive let americans born jerusalem list israel birthplace state department refused comply denying menachem zivotofsky passport listed birthplace jerusalem israel family sued 2002 law supreme court struck law unconstitutional one bringing lot palestinianamericans born jerusalem would like passports read jerusalem palestine law pushed american israel public affairs committee powerful umbrella group thousands proisrael lobbies lobbies turn play major role funding political campaigns aipac gained outsized influence congress jewishamericans less two percent population strenuously support israel country right wrong basis usually get way congressional votes aided often evangelical christians also oldtime liberals grew israel entered current apartheid phase prominent rightzionist congressional representatives attempted use congress push us recognize israeli sovereignty jerusalem israel lobbies never strong regard presidency courts regard congress however supreme court decision showed limits power reason point important israeli occupation palestine increasingly litigated national legislatures lobby sway votes courtrooms occupation apartheid policies ever go international criminal court icc certainly rule israel already 2004 advisory opinion since icc respected signatories 2002 rome statue turn bodies ruling would widely influential including europe scotus showed happens political campaigns support colonialism go court country rule law united nations general assembly 1947 put forward partition plan british mandate palestine giving onethird population jewish far territory 6 actually owned un security council never signed plan status international law unclear case overtaken 1948 war israel took even territory consolidated borders far beyond general assembly stipulated unga envisaged jerusalem would international city dominated either israelis palestinians 1967 israel unilaterally overturned un partition plan entirely grabbing gaza strip west bank jerusalem thereafter settling integrating israel keeping millions subject palestinians stateless without rights rest world sees status jerusalem unsettled something determined final status peace talks israel palestinians meantime israel illegally annexed jerusalem surrounded squatter settlments built stolen palestinian land found pretexts expelling large numbers palestinians homes east jerusalem un security council passed several resolutions jerusalem roundly condemning israeli annexation remembered one justifications given neocons attacking iraq ignored unsc resolutions unsc jerusalem adopted security council 2245th meeting 20 august 1980 140 us abstention security council recalling resolution 476 1980 reaffirming acquisition territory force inadmissible deeply concerned enactment basic law israeli knesset proclaiming change character status holy city jerusalem implications peace security noting israel complied resolution 476 1980 reaffirming determination examine practical ways means accordance relevant provisions charter united nations secure full implementation resolution 476 1980 event noncompliance israel 1 censures strongest terms enactment israel basic law jerusalem refusal comply relevant security council resolutions 2 affirms enactment basic law israel constitutes violation international law affect continued application geneva convention relative protection civilian persons time war 12 august 1949 palestinian arab territories occupied since june 1967 including jerusalem 3 determines legislative administrative measures actions taken israel occupying power altered purport alter character status holy city jerusalem particular recent basic law jerusalem null void must rescinded forthwith 4 affirms also action constitutes serious obstruction achieving comprehensive lasting peace middle east 5 decides recognize basic law actions israel result law seek alter character status jerusalem calls upon member states accept decision b states established diplomatic missions jerusalem withdraw missions holy city 6 requests secretarygeneral report security council implementation present resolution 15 november 1980 7 decides remain seized serious situation | 591 |
<p>The data and evidence are clear: to a scientific certainty, only a single-payer “Medicare-for-All” system of health care financing will solve the serious cost and access problems and achieve good, affordable health care for all in the United States. As a scientist and physician, this is my conclusion after studying the data for years. The data are voluminous, stretching back to World War II, and come not only from the United States, but from all other industrialized countries. Except for the United States, all industrialized countries have some form of universal health care.</p>
<p>Americans are increasingly afraid that they can’t afford to get sick, and with good reason. About half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by medical expenses, and 76 percent of these individuals had health insurance when they got sick or injured. Those of us with insurance are paying a greater share of the premium and more deductibles and co-pays as well. Thus, not only do we have 46 million Americans without health insurance, but at least an equal number who are seriously underinsured. With the recent economic downturn, the ranks of those who are uninsured and underinsured are growing. Many are faced with choosing between paying for medicine and needed health care and paying for food and housing. A typical story is: get sick or injured, lose your job, lose your health insurance, go bankrupt.</p>
<p>A majority of physicians (59%) and an even higher proportion of Americans (at least 62%) support single payer national health insurance or “Medicare-for-All”. In spite of this, virtually all we are hearing about today are mandate plans that would require everyone to buy the same private for-profit insurance that is already failing us. The for-profit insurance companies and their plethora of plans make for a terribly complex, fragmented, costly and inefficient system. Administrative overhead consumes about 31% of health care dollars in the United States, and the for-profit insurance companies are responsible for half of this, or 15% of $2.4 trillion. This money, more than $350 billion per year, provides no health care: it is consumed by enormous administrative costs, profits for investors and shareholders, and large salaries for managers of these for-profit insurance companies.</p>
<p>All of the incremental reform programs proposed — tax subsidies, health savings accounts, individual or employer mandates, increased regulation of for-profit insurance companies — keep these proverbial foxes in the henhouse and are doomed to fail to control costs and provide universal access. Competition among the foxes does not benefit the chickens, the patients, the doctors or the hospitals. The for-profit insurance companies fundamentally reduce choice — your preferred doctor or hospital is “out-of-network”? Too bad, we won’t pay, says your insurance company.</p>
<p>The data are in. Incremental reforms, mostly mandate schemes which retain the for-profit insurance companies have been tried in seven states over the past two decades: Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Vermont, Maine. In all of these states the reforms have failed to contain costs. In all but Massachusetts, they have failed to reduce the number of uninsured. In Massachusetts, there has been a modest decrease in the number of uninsured, falling from 13% of adults in 2006 to 7.1% of adults in 2007, but at the cost of a substantial increase in public spending (spending for “Commonwealth Care” was $629.8 million in fiscal year 2007, $1089.2 million in fiscal year 2008 and $1317.7 million in fiscal year 2009). Most of the gain in Massachusetts has come from expanding Medicaid and subsidizing the purchase of private insurance; very few people have signed up for the unsubsidized but mandated private insurance. Not to mention that 7.1% uninsured is unacceptably high. Far from controlling costs, these mandate plans will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation’s health care costs.</p>
<p>The United States spends about twice as much per capita on health care than other industrialized countries. Yet it is a myth that the United States has the best health care in the world. The United States ranks near the bottom of industrialized countries in terms of important morbidity and mortality outcomes (for example, life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality). Out of 19 industrialized countries, the United States ranks last in reducing deaths from treatable conditions (Health Affairs, 2008). About 18,000 American adults die unnecessarily every year due to lack of insurance (Institute of Medicine, 2002). As reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2003, repair of an aortic aneurysm cost $8,647 in Canada and $13,432 in the U.S. What accounted for the substantial difference? Most of the difference was due to much greater overhead costs in the U.S. The surgeons and surgical facilities are top-notch in Canada. The surgeons are very well-paid. The difference is that Canada has adopted a true insurance system for financing health care, one that spreads risk across a broad population: a publicly funded single-payer national health insurance plan that eliminates the parasitic, investor-owned “insurance” companies that make profits by enrolling the healthy, screening out the sick and denying claims.</p>
<p>Single-payer national health insurance for financing health care is NOT “socialized medicine”. Under a single-payer, “Medicare-for-All” system, delivery of health care remains private. The providers of health care remain private. Patients choose any doctor and any hospital. Parenthetically, replacing the wasteful for-profit insurance companies with a single-payer national health insurance program for financing health care in the United States would save enough money (more than $350 billion) to not only achieve universal coverage, but allow the coverage to expand and be more comprehensive, while not spending any more than we do now.</p>
<p>We have an American system that works. It’s Medicare. It’s not perfect, but Americans with Medicare are far happier than those with for-profit insurance. Doctors face fewer hassles in getting paid, and Medicare has been a leader in keeping costs down. And keep in mind that Medicare insures people with the greatest health care needs: people over 65 and the disabled. We should improve and expand Medicare to cover everyone. In contrast to the wasteful for-profit insurance companies, Medicare has a very low overhead — about 3 percent. Unfortunately, the for-profit insurance companies have been infiltrating Medicare in the form of “Medicare Advantage” plans, substantially raising costs when compared to traditional Medicare.</p>
<p>A single-payer “Medicare-for-All” system — improved and expanded Medicare — is embodied in a bill currently in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and cosponsored by 93 other members of Congress in the last congressional session. Its features are: automatic enrollment for everyone; comprehensive services covering all medically necessary care and drugs; free choice of doctor and hospital, who remain independent and negotiate their fees and budgets with a public or nonprofit agency; processing and payment of bills by a public or nonprofit agency; promotion of job growth and the entire U.S. economy by removing the excessive burden of health care costs from businesses; coverage for everyone without spending any more than we are now.</p>
<p>The growth in health care costs must be addressed if any proposal is to succeed. Single-payer offers real tools to contain costs: budgeting, especially for hospitals, planning of capital investments (to avoid wasteful duplication and concentration of expensive technology), and an emphasis on primary care and coordination of care. Mandate plans offer only false hopes: competition among for-profit insurance companies, computerization and chronic disease management. Competition among the shrinking number of for-profit insurance companies has already failed to contain costs and, in the absence of single-payer and reformed primary care (so that everyone has a primary care home), computerization and chronic disease management will raise costs, not lower them.</p>
<p>Single-payer “Medicare-for-All” for financing health care is the right answer. It is right on choice: it provides free choice of doctor and hospital, the choice Americans want and value. In mandate plans, we lose those choices. It is right on efficiency and quality: single payer would slash administrative costs and promote efficient primary care. It would also enhance evidence-based quality assurance. It is right on accountability: it will be a public, nonprofit system that will respond to what doctors and their patients need, not what corporate executives and their stockholders want. The nation will pay about the same, while covering all Americans (no more exclusions based on “pre-existing conditions”). A modest increase in employer/employee payroll taxes would be offset by savings in out-of-pocket costs for insurance premiums, deductibles and co-payments, as well as by more comprehensive health services coverage.</p>
<p>The single-payer program will cover all medically necessary services, including primary care, inpatient care, outpatient care, emergency care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, hearing services, long term care, mental health services, dentistry, eye care, chiropractic, and substance abuse treatment. Patients have their choice of physicians, providers, hospitals, clinics, and practices. No co-pays or deductibles are allowed. The program will negotiate reimbursement rates annually with physicians, allow for global budgets for hospitals, and negotiate prices for prescription drugs, medical supplies and equipment.</p>
<p>Business leaders are well on their way to understanding how the current system makes their businesses uncompetitive with those in industrialized countries that have cost-effective health care systems not based on profit. Doctors and hospitals are increasingly fed up with the current system. Increasingly, both realize that treating health care as a commodity that some can afford and others cannot — apportioned based on profit motive and the ability to pay, rather than need — is the most irrational and inhumane form of rationing and interferes with their mission of providing high-quality, compassionate, evidence-based, necessary health care to patients, while still maintaining adequate operating budgets, capital budgets and incomes for health care providers and administrators.</p>
<p>Finally, the most important group is patients. We are all sometimes patients. All patients must rise up and remove the foxes from the henhouse. Foxes are not evil, but their nature is such that they must not be allowed in the henhouse.</p>
<p>Daniel P. Wirt, M.D. is a Pathologist, Houston, Texas and member of <a href="http://www.healthcareforalltexas.org" type="external">Health Care for All Texas</a> and member of Physicians for a National Health Program. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:boojum@wt.net" type="external">boojum@wt.net</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | data evidence clear scientific certainty singlepayer medicareforall system health care financing solve serious cost access problems achieve good affordable health care united states scientist physician conclusion studying data years data voluminous stretching back world war ii come united states industrialized countries except united states industrialized countries form universal health care americans increasingly afraid cant afford get sick good reason half personal bankruptcies caused medical expenses 76 percent individuals health insurance got sick injured us insurance paying greater share premium deductibles copays well thus 46 million americans without health insurance least equal number seriously underinsured recent economic downturn ranks uninsured underinsured growing many faced choosing paying medicine needed health care paying food housing typical story get sick injured lose job lose health insurance go bankrupt majority physicians 59 even higher proportion americans least 62 support single payer national health insurance medicareforall spite virtually hearing today mandate plans would require everyone buy private forprofit insurance already failing us forprofit insurance companies plethora plans make terribly complex fragmented costly inefficient system administrative overhead consumes 31 health care dollars united states forprofit insurance companies responsible half 15 24 trillion money 350 billion per year provides health care consumed enormous administrative costs profits investors shareholders large salaries managers forprofit insurance companies incremental reform programs proposed tax subsidies health savings accounts individual employer mandates increased regulation forprofit insurance companies keep proverbial foxes henhouse doomed fail control costs provide universal access competition among foxes benefit chickens patients doctors hospitals forprofit insurance companies fundamentally reduce choice preferred doctor hospital outofnetwork bad wont pay says insurance company data incremental reforms mostly mandate schemes retain forprofit insurance companies tried seven states past two decades massachusetts tennessee washington oregon minnesota vermont maine states reforms failed contain costs massachusetts failed reduce number uninsured massachusetts modest decrease number uninsured falling 13 adults 2006 71 adults 2007 cost substantial increase public spending spending commonwealth care 6298 million fiscal year 2007 10892 million fiscal year 2008 13177 million fiscal year 2009 gain massachusetts come expanding medicaid subsidizing purchase private insurance people signed unsubsidized mandated private insurance mention 71 uninsured unacceptably high far controlling costs mandate plans add hundreds billions dollars nations health care costs united states spends twice much per capita health care industrialized countries yet myth united states best health care world united states ranks near bottom industrialized countries terms important morbidity mortality outcomes example life expectancy infant maternal mortality 19 industrialized countries united states ranks last reducing deaths treatable conditions health affairs 2008 18000 american adults die unnecessarily every year due lack insurance institute medicine 2002 reported archives internal medicine 2003 repair aortic aneurysm cost 8647 canada 13432 us accounted substantial difference difference due much greater overhead costs us surgeons surgical facilities topnotch canada surgeons wellpaid difference canada adopted true insurance system financing health care one spreads risk across broad population publicly funded singlepayer national health insurance plan eliminates parasitic investorowned insurance companies make profits enrolling healthy screening sick denying claims singlepayer national health insurance financing health care socialized medicine singlepayer medicareforall system delivery health care remains private providers health care remain private patients choose doctor hospital parenthetically replacing wasteful forprofit insurance companies singlepayer national health insurance program financing health care united states would save enough money 350 billion achieve universal coverage allow coverage expand comprehensive spending american system works medicare perfect americans medicare far happier forprofit insurance doctors face fewer hassles getting paid medicare leader keeping costs keep mind medicare insures people greatest health care needs people 65 disabled improve expand medicare cover everyone contrast wasteful forprofit insurance companies medicare low overhead 3 percent unfortunately forprofit insurance companies infiltrating medicare form medicare advantage plans substantially raising costs compared traditional medicare singlepayer medicareforall system improved expanded medicare embodied bill currently us house representatives hr 676 sponsored rep john conyers dmich cosponsored 93 members congress last congressional session features automatic enrollment everyone comprehensive services covering medically necessary care drugs free choice doctor hospital remain independent negotiate fees budgets public nonprofit agency processing payment bills public nonprofit agency promotion job growth entire us economy removing excessive burden health care costs businesses coverage everyone without spending growth health care costs must addressed proposal succeed singlepayer offers real tools contain costs budgeting especially hospitals planning capital investments avoid wasteful duplication concentration expensive technology emphasis primary care coordination care mandate plans offer false hopes competition among forprofit insurance companies computerization chronic disease management competition among shrinking number forprofit insurance companies already failed contain costs absence singlepayer reformed primary care everyone primary care home computerization chronic disease management raise costs lower singlepayer medicareforall financing health care right answer right choice provides free choice doctor hospital choice americans want value mandate plans lose choices right efficiency quality single payer would slash administrative costs promote efficient primary care would also enhance evidencebased quality assurance right accountability public nonprofit system respond doctors patients need corporate executives stockholders want nation pay covering americans exclusions based preexisting conditions modest increase employeremployee payroll taxes would offset savings outofpocket costs insurance premiums deductibles copayments well comprehensive health services coverage singlepayer program cover medically necessary services including primary care inpatient care outpatient care emergency care prescription drugs durable medical equipment hearing services long term care mental health services dentistry eye care chiropractic substance abuse treatment patients choice physicians providers hospitals clinics practices copays deductibles allowed program negotiate reimbursement rates annually physicians allow global budgets hospitals negotiate prices prescription drugs medical supplies equipment business leaders well way understanding current system makes businesses uncompetitive industrialized countries costeffective health care systems based profit doctors hospitals increasingly fed current system increasingly realize treating health care commodity afford others apportioned based profit motive ability pay rather need irrational inhumane form rationing interferes mission providing highquality compassionate evidencebased necessary health care patients still maintaining adequate operating budgets capital budgets incomes health care providers administrators finally important group patients sometimes patients patients must rise remove foxes henhouse foxes evil nature must allowed henhouse daniel p wirt md pathologist houston texas member health care texas member physicians national health program reached boojumwtnet 160 160 160 | 1,000 |
<p>For anyone who lives near a natural gas shale, the story of the Hallowich family of Washington County, Pennsylvania, is a familiar one. It begins with a knock on the door from a representative from a multi-billion dollar natural gas company offering an enticing sum of money in exchange for the mineral rights to the land. Then comes the drilling, followed by reports of headaches, or nosebleeds, or worse. Then the legal fees. Then silence.</p>
<p>What’s not familiar in the case is what may have happened to Chris and Stephanie Hallowich’s children.</p>
<p>The Hallowiches's dream home, which they built on ten acres of land in southwestern Pennsylvania, sat atop the site of one of the biggest fracking operations in the country: the Marcellus Shale. A sedimentary rock that runs thousands of feet below ground from upstate New York through Pennsylvania, parts of Ohio, and into West Virginia, its millions of years’ worth of decomposition creating so-called natural gas, the Marcellus Shale is <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/marcellus-gas-production-rising-fast-pa-wva-19965387" type="external">currently on track</a> to produce the gas equivalent of about 550 million barrels of oil this year alone. In the Hallowiches' case, it was the previous owner of their property who had cut several deals to cash in on this underground resource. The gas processing plant, compressor station, underground pipelines, three-acre plastic-lined holding pond, and four natural gas wells that sprouted up around the Hallowiches’ two-story house as a result of these deals soon became more health hazard than eyesore, the family says.</p>
<p>After opposing the fracking industry for years—accusing the businesses that had set up shop on their land of contaminating their air and water, making them and their small children sick, and devaluing their property—the Hallowiches sued the companies Range Resources, MarkWest Energy and Williams Gas/Laurel Mountain Midstream. Without accepting responsibility for the family’s health claims, the gas companies agreed to pay the Hallowiches $750,000 so that the family could move out—in exchange for their signatures on a non-disclosure agreement.</p>
<p>Such agreements aren’t uncommon outcomes for these types of suits, neither is having the details of the settlement sealed, as this one was. But two years after being barred from attending the Hallowiches’ settlement hearing, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette requested that the court release <a href="http://ae3b703522cf9ac6c40a-32964bea949fe02d45161cf7095bfea9.r89.cf2.rackcdn.com/2013/212/676/pg-settlement-hearing-transcript.pdf" type="external">a transcript</a> and discovered something odd. By signing the agreement, it appeared that Chris and Stephanie were not only promising never to speak about Marcellus Shale gas drilling or any of the companies with which they settled—they were also ostensibly vowing that their 7 and 10-year-old children would keep their mouths shut about fracking. Forever.</p>
<p>Two years after their suit was settled, the unsealed transcript thrust the Hallowiches into national news headlines, symbolizing the apparent lengths to which corporations would go to keep adversaries quiet. At least one of the companies jolted into damage control mode, <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/washington/confidential-agreement-should-have-been-part-of-washington-county-marcellus-shale-case-record-697530/?ocid=msnnws" type="external">sending a letter</a> to a Hallowich family lawyer insisting that, contrary to what was said in the hearing, it "has never, at any time, had the intention of seeking to hold a minor child legally accountable for a breach of that provision of the settlement agreement.”</p>
<p>But the companies' intention and the actual effect on the children are two different things—both of which continue to be debated.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is still somewhat of a mystery to most of the country. It’s probably best identified as what Matt Damon’s character tries to push on a small Pennsylvania farming town in the 2012 film Promised Land. Or it’s what (arguably) caused a Colorado man to light his tap water on fire two years earlier in the Academy Award-nominated documentary Gasland.</p>
<p>Though fracking has been around for well over 65 years, it wasn’t until the method of injecting water, sand, and chemicals into the ground to break up oil and rock formations was introduced on an industrial scale in the U.S. that the process became newsworthy. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-23/u-s-reduces-marcellus-shale-gas-reserve-estimate-by-66-on-revised-data.html" type="external">In the past 25 years,</a> with the discovery of gas-rich shales and the introduction of industrial fracking, shale gas production has gone from zero to 23 percent of all U.S. gas production. That percentage is predicted to balloon to 49 percent by 2035, moving the U.S. closer to its universally endorsed goal of “ending our dependence on foreign oil.” When President Obama says he wants to boost natural gas exports from the U.S., he’s talking about fracking.</p>
<p>Douglas Shields, a former Pittsburgh City Councilman who passed a ban on fracking for Pittsburgh in 2010, says he first started getting calls from constituents who’d been offered cash for their mineral rights in 2008. Shields had been around the gas industry his entire life—from working on an oil field boat in the Gulf of Mexico in 1974 to building a legal career in environmental and regulatory law—and Pennsylvania has had a long history of gas drilling. So when gas companies promised to bring business back to a state that had been in decline since the end of the industrial era, most people, including Shields, were excited.</p>
<p>But Pennsylvanians, as well as people sitting on natural gas shales around the country, would soon discover that fracking is unlike anything they’d ever encountered before. By the time Stephanie Hallowich and others complained of headaches and nosebleeds and contaminated water, Shields says, “it was too late for anyone to do anything politically effective.”</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>The research on the health impacts of fracking is mixed and relatively limited. According to a recent <a href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/dert/sphb/programs/peph/podcasts/fracking/fracking_podcast_transcript_508.pdf" type="external">National Institutes of Health Environmental Health Science podcast,</a> it’s clear to scientists who’ve studied fracking that the process emits chemicals into the air and possibly water. What’s unclear is the amount of chemicals that are released and the extent to which people might be exposed. <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/300231-interior-to-unveil-revised-draft-fracking-rules" type="external">Back in May</a> the Obama Administration unveiled new fracking regulations that require companies to disclose which chemicals are used in the process and to have management plans in place to ensure that contaminated liquids don’t make their way into groundwater. And while some in the oil and gas industry like <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-11/chevron-ceo-says-industry-must-deal-with-fracking-concern.html" type="external">Chevron CEO John Watson</a> have come out in favor of stricter fracking restrictions to mitigate risks, many others maintain that the practice is not responsible for air and water contamination or the health issues that could cause.</p>
<p>Attorney Mark Bern estimates that there have been somewhere between 50 and 100 civil lawsuits against natural gas companies just like the Hallowiches’—his Chicago-based firm Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik LLP has handled about 40 of them—and he predicts that number will only continue to grow. “The litigation is still very young, partially because all of this fracking has happened so fast throughout the country,” Bern told The Daily Beast. “Even though there has been a lot of contamination, I don’t believe it will really manifest itself for another 10 to 20 years because we won’t be drinking water from many of the aquifers that have been contaminated for that long.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Have the Hallowich kids really been gagged? The court transcript in the case reveals a hearing wrought with confusion over the settlement’s implications for Chris and Stephanie Hallowich's children. Peter Villari, the family’s attorney, notes that he has never seen a request to silence minor in his 30 years of practicing law. In the transcript, he repeatedly asks Chris and Stephanie Hallowich if they understand that by signing the agreement they may be giving up the First Amendment rights of their child—if that’s possible. They question how they were to be expected to control what their children say when out from under their supervision.</p>
<p>James C. Swetz, the attorney representing Range Resources at the hearing, is quoted saying that “the Hallowiches are defined as the whole family. That’s the way the contract has been written. That’s what we’ve agreed to.” The judge states flatly that he doesn’t know whether parents could make such a promise on behalf of their children, calling it “a law school question.” Swetz doubles down, clarifying, “I guess our position is that it does apply to the whole family. We would certainly enforce it.”</p>
<p>Gabe Rottman, a free speech expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, is concerned about the constitutionality of such an agreement. “They can’t comment on Marcellus Shale or fracking at all, ever,” Rottman said in an email to The Daily Beast. (Emphasis his.) “Aside from the contract law issues, I would argue that’s unenforceable as a violation of the First Amendment. This would cover speech that has little or nothing to do with the terms of the agreement between the company and the Hallowiches.” Rottman also pointed out that children have the right to disaffirm a contract they’re entered into before they turn 18. He says they should do that.</p>
<p>Bern, however, says the answer to this question is simple: the Hallowich kids, like all children included in a lawsuit settled with any kind of major corporation, are most likely bound by the agreement. Minors can’t sign settlements, but they are often plaintiffs in these types of suits, with their parents arguing for them that drilling made them sick or created an unsafe environment for them to live. Trials, Bern explained, make cases public. So if corporations don’t want to open themselves up to bad press or future lawsuits, they will settle out of court and insist on a non-disclosure agreement. Generally, he said, those who sign “are bound forever.”</p>
<p>Pittsburgh’s Douglas Shields called this “an extortion process” but added, “I don’t blame anyone in these circumstances for taking the money and getting the hell out.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“You’re giving me goose bumps,” says Jane, who spoke to The Daily Beast under the condition of anonymity, when asked about the idea of permanently prohibiting her two children from talking about fracking. “Oh, that’s sick.” She says she, her husband, and their two kids were lucky enough to get the hell out.</p>
<p>They didn’t lease their land to the gas company that came to their small Colorado town because they didn’t own the mineral rights to their property. But the neighbors did. And two weeks after fracking began on the land around her house, Jane says, “our water went bad.”</p>
<p>Jane and her husband sued the drilling company that had paid the neighbors to frack on their land, claiming the fumes and chemicals emitted by the company’s rigs had caused the family nosebleeds, blackouts, rashes, constant coughing, and other illnesses. Their case was initially dismissed, but just last month—with the help of Bern’s firm—they won an appeal. And they didn’t have to sign a non-disclosure agreement—though she knows people who’ve had to.</p>
<p>While Jane is certain that she and her family haven’t gotten any sicker since they had to do a constructive eviction—in which a home is declared uninhabitable—and move towns, she says their health is still suffering. “I’m really worried about our children’s future, what they’ve been exposed to,” she said. Still, it’s hard for her to say what she would have done in the Hallowiches’ position. “We’ve always said from day one we want to let people know what’s happening so it happens to as few people as possible,” she said.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It’s been weeks since the Hallowiches’ court transcripts were released, and Range Resources's communications director Matt Pitzarella objects strongly to the way the story has played out. “To be very clear, the agreement was never intended to be applied to the elementary school aged children,” he wrote in an email to The Daily Beast. “The agreement begins by mentioning the names of the children only once, because they were named in the lawsuit. But matters like the real estate covenant, nondisclosure, and those matters are all clearly in reference to the parents.”</p>
<p>Pitzarella referred to Swetz’s comment that the order would apply to the entire family and be enforced as “one of several made by a former outside counsel to Range, who never informed us of the questions surrounding the children. When we learned of it, we immediately sent a letter to the plaintiff’s attorney.” Swetz is no longer employed by the prestigious law firm K&amp;L Gates, where he was working at the time of the Hallowich hearing. He’s also no longer representing Range Resources. When asked if the outcome of the case had anything to do with this, Pitzarella replied, “We were unsatisfied with many aspects of the handling of the settlement.” The Daily Beast made multiple unsuccessful attempts to reach Swetz. (Requests to Williams Gas/Laurel Mountain Midstream were unreturned as well. MarkWest Energy declined to comment.)</p>
<p>Hallowich lawyer Villari doesn’t deny receiving the letter, but he isn’t buying any of it. “There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the moment [Swetz] opened his mouth he was speaking on Range’s behalf. He did what he was hired to do.” Villari said that he sent a letter in response to Range Resources, MarkWest Energy and Williams Gas/Laurel Mountain Midstream—the companies involved in the original settlement agreement—inviting all of them to enter into a joint stipulation withdrawing the gag order against the children. No one has responded. In fact, other than Range Resources, the rest of the defendants in the agreement have, like the Hallowiches, remained silent.</p>
<p>Corrections: The original version of this article incorrectly cited the amount of natural gas the Marcellus Shale is on track to produce this year. It also stated that the Hallowiches weren't aware that their home sat atop a fracking operation; court records show the family was aware that the previous owner had leased natural gas rights.</p> | true | 4 | anyone lives near natural gas shale story hallowich family washington county pennsylvania familiar one begins knock door representative multibillion dollar natural gas company offering enticing sum money exchange mineral rights land comes drilling followed reports headaches nosebleeds worse legal fees silence whats familiar case may happened chris stephanie hallowichs children hallowichess dream home built ten acres land southwestern pennsylvania sat atop site one biggest fracking operations country marcellus shale sedimentary rock runs thousands feet ground upstate new york pennsylvania parts ohio west virginia millions years worth decomposition creating socalled natural gas marcellus shale currently track produce gas equivalent 550 million barrels oil year alone hallowiches case previous owner property cut several deals cash underground resource gas processing plant compressor station underground pipelines threeacre plasticlined holding pond four natural gas wells sprouted around hallowiches twostory house result deals soon became health hazard eyesore family says opposing fracking industry yearsaccusing businesses set shop land contaminating air water making small children sick devaluing propertythe hallowiches sued companies range resources markwest energy williams gaslaurel mountain midstream without accepting responsibility familys health claims gas companies agreed pay hallowiches 750000 family could move outin exchange signatures nondisclosure agreement agreements arent uncommon outcomes types suits neither details settlement sealed one two years barred attending hallowiches settlement hearing pittsburgh postgazette requested court release transcript discovered something odd signing agreement appeared chris stephanie promising never speak marcellus shale gas drilling companies settledthey also ostensibly vowing 7 10yearold children would keep mouths shut fracking forever two years suit settled unsealed transcript thrust hallowiches national news headlines symbolizing apparent lengths corporations would go keep adversaries quiet least one companies jolted damage control mode sending letter hallowich family lawyer insisting contrary said hearing never time intention seeking hold minor child legally accountable breach provision settlement agreement companies intention actual effect children two different thingsboth continue debated hydraulic fracturing fracking still somewhat mystery country probably best identified matt damons character tries push small pennsylvania farming town 2012 film promised land arguably caused colorado man light tap water fire two years earlier academy awardnominated documentary gasland though fracking around well 65 years wasnt method injecting water sand chemicals ground break oil rock formations introduced industrial scale us process became newsworthy past 25 years discovery gasrich shales introduction industrial fracking shale gas production gone zero 23 percent us gas production percentage predicted balloon 49 percent 2035 moving us closer universally endorsed goal ending dependence foreign oil president obama says wants boost natural gas exports us hes talking fracking douglas shields former pittsburgh city councilman passed ban fracking pittsburgh 2010 says first started getting calls constituents whod offered cash mineral rights 2008 shields around gas industry entire lifefrom working oil field boat gulf mexico 1974 building legal career environmental regulatory lawand pennsylvania long history gas drilling gas companies promised bring business back state decline since end industrial era people including shields excited pennsylvanians well people sitting natural gas shales around country would soon discover fracking unlike anything theyd ever encountered time stephanie hallowich others complained headaches nosebleeds contaminated water shields says late anyone anything politically effective start finish day top stories daily beast speedy smart summary news need know nothing dont research health impacts fracking mixed relatively limited according recent national institutes health environmental health science podcast clear scientists whove studied fracking process emits chemicals air possibly water whats unclear amount chemicals released extent people might exposed back may obama administration unveiled new fracking regulations require companies disclose chemicals used process management plans place ensure contaminated liquids dont make way groundwater oil gas industry like chevron ceo john watson come favor stricter fracking restrictions mitigate risks many others maintain practice responsible air water contamination health issues could cause attorney mark bern estimates somewhere 50 100 civil lawsuits natural gas companies like hallowicheshis chicagobased firm napoli bern ripka shkolnik llp handled 40 themand predicts number continue grow litigation still young partially fracking happened fast throughout country bern told daily beast even though lot contamination dont believe really manifest another 10 20 years wont drinking water many aquifers contaminated long hallowich kids really gagged court transcript case reveals hearing wrought confusion settlements implications chris stephanie hallowichs children peter villari familys attorney notes never seen request silence minor 30 years practicing law transcript repeatedly asks chris stephanie hallowich understand signing agreement may giving first amendment rights childif thats possible question expected control children say supervision james c swetz attorney representing range resources hearing quoted saying hallowiches defined whole family thats way contract written thats weve agreed judge states flatly doesnt know whether parents could make promise behalf children calling law school question swetz doubles clarifying guess position apply whole family would certainly enforce gabe rottman free speech expert american civil liberties union concerned constitutionality agreement cant comment marcellus shale fracking ever rottman said email daily beast emphasis aside contract law issues would argue thats unenforceable violation first amendment would cover speech little nothing terms agreement company hallowiches rottman also pointed children right disaffirm contract theyre entered turn 18 says bern however says answer question simple hallowich kids like children included lawsuit settled kind major corporation likely bound agreement minors cant sign settlements often plaintiffs types suits parents arguing drilling made sick created unsafe environment live trials bern explained make cases public corporations dont want open bad press future lawsuits settle court insist nondisclosure agreement generally said sign bound forever pittsburghs douglas shields called extortion process added dont blame anyone circumstances taking money getting hell youre giving goose bumps says jane spoke daily beast condition anonymity asked idea permanently prohibiting two children talking fracking oh thats sick says husband two kids lucky enough get hell didnt lease land gas company came small colorado town didnt mineral rights property neighbors two weeks fracking began land around house jane says water went bad jane husband sued drilling company paid neighbors frack land claiming fumes chemicals emitted companys rigs caused family nosebleeds blackouts rashes constant coughing illnesses case initially dismissed last monthwith help berns firmthey appeal didnt sign nondisclosure agreementthough knows people whove jane certain family havent gotten sicker since constructive evictionin home declared uninhabitableand move towns says health still suffering im really worried childrens future theyve exposed said still hard say would done hallowiches position weve always said day one want let people know whats happening happens people possible said weeks since hallowiches court transcripts released range resourcess communications director matt pitzarella objects strongly way story played clear agreement never intended applied elementary school aged children wrote email daily beast agreement begins mentioning names children named lawsuit matters like real estate covenant nondisclosure matters clearly reference parents pitzarella referred swetzs comment order would apply entire family enforced one several made former outside counsel range never informed us questions surrounding children learned immediately sent letter plaintiffs attorney swetz longer employed prestigious law firm kampl gates working time hallowich hearing hes also longer representing range resources asked outcome case anything pitzarella replied unsatisfied many aspects handling settlement daily beast made multiple unsuccessful attempts reach swetz requests williams gaslaurel mountain midstream unreturned well markwest energy declined comment hallowich lawyer villari doesnt deny receiving letter isnt buying doubt anyones mind moment swetz opened mouth speaking ranges behalf hired villari said sent letter response range resources markwest energy williams gaslaurel mountain midstreamthe companies involved original settlement agreementinviting enter joint stipulation withdrawing gag order children one responded fact range resources rest defendants agreement like hallowiches remained silent corrections original version article incorrectly cited amount natural gas marcellus shale track produce year also stated hallowiches werent aware home sat atop fracking operation court records show family aware previous owner leased natural gas rights | 1,264 |
<p>We were promised a “New Economy” of high-tech tradable services to take the place of the offshored manufacturing economy. Wondering what had become of the “New Economy,” Duke University’s Offshoring Research Network searched for it and located it offshore. Yes, the activities of the “New Economy” are also outsourced offshore.</p>
<p>Call centers, IT operations, back-office operations, and manufacturing have long been moved offshore. Now high-value-added proprietary activities such as research and development, engineering, product development, and analytical services are being sent offshore. All that’s left is finance, and it is crumbling before our eyes.</p>
<p>Independent broker-dealers are disappearing: Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers. These venerable institutions were too thinly capitalized for the risks that they took. Merrill Lynch is now part of the Bank of America, and Lehman Brothers is history.</p>
<p>Ill-advised financial deregulation led to financial concentration and not to more efficient markets. Independent local banks, which focused on financing local businesses, and Saving and Loan Associations, which knew the local housing market, have been replaced with large institutions that package unanalyzed risks and sell them worldwide.</p>
<p>Regulation over-reached. The pendulum swung. Deregulation became an ideology and a facilitator of greed.</p>
<p>Deregulating electric power gave us Enron.</p>
<p>Deregulating the airlines destroyed famous American brand names such as Pan Am, shrank the number of companies, and caused a decline in service. When airlines were regulated, they could afford standby equipment, and cancelled flights were rare. Today, the bottom line prohibits standby equipment, and mechanical problems result in cancelled flights. When economists calculated the benefits of deregulation, they left out many of its costs.</p>
<p>There are no longer any blue chip companies, which means that investing for retirement has become a crapshoot. People realize this; thus, the privatization of Social Security has no support.</p>
<p>If we look realistically at the US economy, we see that what is not moved offshore is being bailed out. Last year, the US Department of Energy was authorized to make $25 billion in loans to auto manufacturing firms and suppliers of automotive parts. Last week the Secretary of the Treasury took $5 trillion dollars in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac home mortgages under its wing. The Congressional Budget Office says this action by the Treasury means “that the operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be directly incorporated into the federal budget.” http://cboblog.cbo.gov/ Their revenues would be treated as federal revenues, and their expenditures as federal expenditures. If the former were greater than the latter, there would be no reason for the takeover.</p>
<p>The open question is: what do these new liabilities do to the Treasury’s own credit standing?</p>
<p>For now, this question is submerged. The traditional practice of fleeing to the US dollar and US Treasury bonds during periods of financial stress and uncertainty has boosted the dollar and kept interest rates low. But sooner or later the large US budget deficit, worsened by recession and bailouts, and the large trade deficit, which requires constant recycling of dollars held by foreigners into US financial and real assets, will result in renewed effort on the part of foreigners to lighten their dollar holdings.</p>
<p>When this time arrives, US interest rates will have to rise in order for the government to be able to continue to rely on foreigners to recycle the dollars acquired in trade to finance the US government’s annual budget deficit.</p>
<p>The current financial problems have pushed into the background the larger problems of the US budget and trade deficits. Goods and services for American markets that US corporations outsource offshore return as imports, which widen the US trade deficit. Moving production offshore reduces US GDP and employment and increases foreign GDP and employment. Moving production offshore reduces the export capacity of the US economy while raising the import bill.</p>
<p>Therefore, how is the trade deficit to be closed? One way is through the dollar’s loss in exchange value, which would reduce American consumers’ real incomes and leave them too poor to purchase the offshored goods and services.</p>
<p>How is the budget deficit to be closed when jobs are disappearing and GDP (tax base) is being relocated offshore?</p>
<p>Not by higher taxes. Higher taxes are problematic for a recessionary economy in which unemployment, properly measured, is already in double digits (www.shadowstats.com).</p>
<p>Some people have speculated that the budget deficit will be closed by dismantling entitlement programs such as Medicare. However, considering the cost of medical insurance, this would be catastrophic for tens of millions of older Americans.</p>
<p>The more likely avenue will be a raid on private pensions. The Clinton administration’s appointee, Alicia Munnell, as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy argued that private pensions should face a capital levy to make up for the fact that their accumulation was tax free. I expect that the federal government, faced with its own bankruptcy, will resurrect this argument, as it will be preferable to printing money like a banana republic or Weimar Germany.</p>
<p>In the 21st century, the US economy has been kept going by debt expansion, not by real income growth. Economists have hyped US productivity growth, but there is no sign that increased productivity has raised family incomes, an indication that there is a problem with the productivity statistics. With consumers overloaded with debt and the value of their most important asset–housing–falling, the American consumer will not be leading a recovery.</p>
<p>A country that had intelligent leaders would recognize its dire straits, stop its gratuitous wars, and slash its massive military budget, which exceeds that of the rest of the world combined. But a country whose foreign policy goal is world hegemony will continue on the path to destruction until the rest of the world ceases to finance its existence.</p>
<p>Most Americans, including the presidential candidates and the media, are unaware that the US government today, now at this minute, is unable to finance its day-to-day operations and must rely on foreigners to purchase its bonds. The government pays the interest to foreigners by selling more bonds, and when the bonds come due, the government redeems the bonds by selling new bonds. The day the foreigners do not buy is the day the American people and their government are brought to reality.</p>
<p>This is not the financial position of a superpower.</p>
<p>Will what happened to Lehman Brothers today be America’s fate tomorrow?</p>
<p>PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of <a href="" type="internal">The Tyranny of Good Intentions</a>. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com" type="external">PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Your Ad Here</a> &#160;</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | promised new economy hightech tradable services take place offshored manufacturing economy wondering become new economy duke universitys offshoring research network searched located offshore yes activities new economy also outsourced offshore call centers operations backoffice operations manufacturing long moved offshore highvalueadded proprietary activities research development engineering product development analytical services sent offshore thats left finance crumbling eyes independent brokerdealers disappearing merrill lynch bear stearns lehman brothers venerable institutions thinly capitalized risks took merrill lynch part bank america lehman brothers history illadvised financial deregulation led financial concentration efficient markets independent local banks focused financing local businesses saving loan associations knew local housing market replaced large institutions package unanalyzed risks sell worldwide regulation overreached pendulum swung deregulation became ideology facilitator greed deregulating electric power gave us enron deregulating airlines destroyed famous american brand names pan shrank number companies caused decline service airlines regulated could afford standby equipment cancelled flights rare today bottom line prohibits standby equipment mechanical problems result cancelled flights economists calculated benefits deregulation left many costs longer blue chip companies means investing retirement become crapshoot people realize thus privatization social security support look realistically us economy see moved offshore bailed last year us department energy authorized make 25 billion loans auto manufacturing firms suppliers automotive parts last week secretary treasury took 5 trillion dollars fannie mae freddie mac home mortgages wing congressional budget office says action treasury means operations fannie mae freddie mac directly incorporated federal budget httpcboblogcbogov revenues would treated federal revenues expenditures federal expenditures former greater latter would reason takeover open question new liabilities treasurys credit standing question submerged traditional practice fleeing us dollar us treasury bonds periods financial stress uncertainty boosted dollar kept interest rates low sooner later large us budget deficit worsened recession bailouts large trade deficit requires constant recycling dollars held foreigners us financial real assets result renewed effort part foreigners lighten dollar holdings time arrives us interest rates rise order government able continue rely foreigners recycle dollars acquired trade finance us governments annual budget deficit current financial problems pushed background larger problems us budget trade deficits goods services american markets us corporations outsource offshore return imports widen us trade deficit moving production offshore reduces us gdp employment increases foreign gdp employment moving production offshore reduces export capacity us economy raising import bill therefore trade deficit closed one way dollars loss exchange value would reduce american consumers real incomes leave poor purchase offshored goods services budget deficit closed jobs disappearing gdp tax base relocated offshore higher taxes higher taxes problematic recessionary economy unemployment properly measured already double digits wwwshadowstatscom people speculated budget deficit closed dismantling entitlement programs medicare however considering cost medical insurance would catastrophic tens millions older americans likely avenue raid private pensions clinton administrations appointee alicia munnell assistant secretary treasury economic policy argued private pensions face capital levy make fact accumulation tax free expect federal government faced bankruptcy resurrect argument preferable printing money like banana republic weimar germany 21st century us economy kept going debt expansion real income growth economists hyped us productivity growth sign increased productivity raised family incomes indication problem productivity statistics consumers overloaded debt value important assethousingfalling american consumer leading recovery country intelligent leaders would recognize dire straits stop gratuitous wars slash massive military budget exceeds rest world combined country whose foreign policy goal world hegemony continue path destruction rest world ceases finance existence americans including presidential candidates media unaware us government today minute unable finance daytoday operations must rely foreigners purchase bonds government pays interest foreigners selling bonds bonds come due government redeems bonds selling new bonds day foreigners buy day american people government brought reality financial position superpower happened lehman brothers today americas fate tomorrow paul craig roberts assistant secretary treasury reagan administration associate editor wall street journal editorial page contributing editor national review coauthor tyranny good intentions reached paulcraigrobertsyahoocom ad 160 160 160 160 | 636 |
<p>When US politicians are forced to discuss critical Middle East matters, more often than not their remarks either display an ignorance of facts, are shaped more by political needs than reality, or are just plain dumb. Commentary about the popular revolt in Egypt provides a case in point.</p>
<p>There was no doubt that the events in Cairo were momentous and, therefore, deserving of response. In the case of most US political leaders, however, struggling to come up with the right TV sound bite didn’t require actually knowing anything about Egypt. All that was needed was to frame the issue through either the prism of partisanship or that of unbending loyalty to Israel. The result was a string of comments, some bizarre, others dangerous.</p>
<p>The new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for example, cornered the market on incoherence and contradiction when she observed that “Mr Mubarak should… immediately schedule legitimate, democratic, internationally recognised elections,” adding however that “the US should learn from past mistakes and support a process which includes candidates who meet basic standards for leaders of responsible nations — candidates who have publicly renounced terrorism, uphold the rule of law, [and] recognise Egypt’s… peace agreement with the Jewish state of Israel.”</p>
<p>In other words, Ros-Lehtinen supports a democracy where we (not they) set up the criteria. Not quite “respect for the will of the people,” but still better than former Republican speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s partisan tirade.</p>
<p>Gingrich, who is reported to be considering a presidential run, is shallow and remarkably uninformed about most Middle East issues. He gets by largely because he sounds so authoritative and always has a clever quip or two. In Gingrich’s assessment of the current situation, “there’s a real possibility in a few weeks… that Egypt will join Iran, and join Lebanon, and join Gaza, and join the things that are happening that are extraordinarily dangerous to us.”</p>
<p>Having thus displayed almost no understanding of the Middle East, Gingrich goes on to ridicule US President Barack Obama’s “naiveté”, charging that Obama “went to Cairo and gave his famous speech in which he explained that we should all be friends together because we’re all the same… and there are no differences between us. Well, I think there are a lot of differences between the Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of us.”</p>
<p>Gingrich’s parting shot was to state that the US administration “doesn’t have a clue”. Then, in order to demonstrate that he does, Gingrich offered this “advice” to Obama: “study Reagan and Carter and do what Reagan did and avoid what Carter did.”</p>
<p>If the need to take a partisan shot is central to some, more important for others, both Democrats and Republicans, is the need to make this all about Israel. Presidential aspirant and former governor Mike Huckabee, for example, used the occasion of the Egyptian uprising to make his 15th trip to Israel where he lamented that “the Israelis feel alone… and they cannot depend upon the United States, because they just don’t have confidence that the US will stand with them.”</p>
<p>Representatives Shelley Berkley and Anthony Weiner, both Democrats, worried about “Arab democracies”. Weiner observed that “Israel has been seared by the experience recently of seeing democracy elect their enemies,” while Berkeley shockingly added “the reality is this: democracy as we think of it and democracy as it is often played out in the Middle East are two different things.”</p>
<p>Trying to sound smart and concerned with defence matters, and failing miserably, was Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr Jackson said that “US military technology can’t fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood or… Iran’s allies in Egypt. Our partnership with Egypt has provided [them] with a technological military advantage… it must be secured and not allowed to fall into the hands of enemies.” A number of other members of the US Congress focussed on the threat they believe the uprising poses to the Suez Canal and therefore to the price of oil. They, therefore, are pressing the White House to use this crisis to focus on renewing efforts to pass an energy bill in Congress.</p>
<p>What has been so disturbing about all this is that there have been plenty of instances during the past few decades where American political leaders had not only the opportunity, but were challenged with the imperative, to learn more about the Arab world. Despite this, they failed. As a result, they continue to frame critical issues as mere political issues. A transformative uprising in Egypt or Tunisia comes to be seen as being about Israel, or as a club to use against one’s opponent.</p>
<p>The reality, of course, is that Egypt is about Egypt. No one in Tahrir Square is waiting for Newt Gingrich’s, or even Barack Obama’s blessing. And the silly US TV anchor, who recently tried to get the Muslim Brotherhood spokesman to say that he would recognise Israel as a Jewish state, was just that — silly.</p>
<p>And just as silly was Eliot Abrams, one of the neo- conservative ideologues-in-residence in the Bush White House who wrote an article last Sunday attempting to give Bush credit for the uprising in Egypt, since Bush advocated for democracy while Obama has not. The reality is more complex. Bush did speak about democracy, but then went on to pursue regional policies that were so wildly unpopular with the Arab public that governments friendly with the US felt compelled to subdue their own public’s outcry in order to maintain their friendship and support for the US. Arab leaders found that their embrace of and cooperation with the US could be politically costly. Demands on their friendship only served to delegitimise their rule at home. When the US’s favourable rating is 12 per cent in Egypt (and lower still in Jordan), cosying up to America can be quite costly.</p>
<p>US politicians may need to hear themselves talk, but they need to realise that, in fact, until they have at least a basic knowledge of the Arab world and work to change America’s policies across the region, they will have no constructive role to play. They can threaten to withhold aid and make more demands, but the wiser course might be to simply assert US principles, take a more humble back seat role and let the situation play out. The Egyptians in Tahrir Square may cheer the US’s pulling the plug on their president, but they won’t be cheering for the US. When the dust settles, US regional policies will still be the same, and Arab anger at those policies, and the US, will not have changed either.</p>
<p>JAMES ZOGBY is president of the Arab American Institute.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> | true | 4 | us politicians forced discuss critical middle east matters often remarks either display ignorance facts shaped political needs reality plain dumb commentary popular revolt egypt provides case point doubt events cairo momentous therefore deserving response case us political leaders however struggling come right tv sound bite didnt require actually knowing anything egypt needed frame issue either prism partisanship unbending loyalty israel result string comments bizarre others dangerous new chair house foreign affairs committee republican ileana roslehtinen example cornered market incoherence contradiction observed mr mubarak immediately schedule legitimate democratic internationally recognised elections adding however us learn past mistakes support process includes candidates meet basic standards leaders responsible nations candidates publicly renounced terrorism uphold rule law recognise egypts peace agreement jewish state israel words roslehtinen supports democracy set criteria quite respect people still better former republican speaker house newt gingrichs partisan tirade gingrich reported considering presidential run shallow remarkably uninformed middle east issues gets largely sounds authoritative always clever quip two gingrichs assessment current situation theres real possibility weeks egypt join iran join lebanon join gaza join things happening extraordinarily dangerous us thus displayed almost understanding middle east gingrich goes ridicule us president barack obamas naiveté charging obama went cairo gave famous speech explained friends together differences us well think lot differences muslim brotherhood rest us gingrichs parting shot state us administration doesnt clue order demonstrate gingrich offered advice obama study reagan carter reagan avoid carter need take partisan shot central important others democrats republicans need make israel presidential aspirant former governor mike huckabee example used occasion egyptian uprising make 15th trip israel lamented israelis feel alone depend upon united states dont confidence us stand representatives shelley berkley anthony weiner democrats worried arab democracies weiner observed israel seared experience recently seeing democracy elect enemies berkeley shockingly added reality democracy think democracy often played middle east two different things trying sound smart concerned defence matters failing miserably congressman jesse jackson jr jackson said us military technology cant fall hands muslim brotherhood irans allies egypt partnership egypt provided technological military advantage must secured allowed fall hands enemies number members us congress focussed threat believe uprising poses suez canal therefore price oil therefore pressing white house use crisis focus renewing efforts pass energy bill congress disturbing plenty instances past decades american political leaders opportunity challenged imperative learn arab world despite failed result continue frame critical issues mere political issues transformative uprising egypt tunisia comes seen israel club use ones opponent reality course egypt egypt one tahrir square waiting newt gingrichs even barack obamas blessing silly us tv anchor recently tried get muslim brotherhood spokesman say would recognise israel jewish state silly silly eliot abrams one neo conservative ideologuesinresidence bush white house wrote article last sunday attempting give bush credit uprising egypt since bush advocated democracy obama reality complex bush speak democracy went pursue regional policies wildly unpopular arab public governments friendly us felt compelled subdue publics outcry order maintain friendship support us arab leaders found embrace cooperation us could politically costly demands friendship served delegitimise rule home uss favourable rating 12 per cent egypt lower still jordan cosying america quite costly us politicians may need hear talk need realise fact least basic knowledge arab world work change americas policies across region constructive role play threaten withhold aid make demands wiser course might simply assert us principles take humble back seat role let situation play egyptians tahrir square may cheer uss pulling plug president wont cheering us dust settles us regional policies still arab anger policies us changed either james zogby president arab american institute | 588 |
<p>Washington DC was a swamp at the beginning of 2017. When Donald Trump held his inauguration party that so many did not go to, it became an even muddier swamp. At the beginning of 2018 it is clear that there is a leaking septic tank in the middle of that swamp. The smell of corruption that has always emanated from that town to some degree has become a stench that is so heavy and repulsive it hangs on the fabric of the thousand dollar suits worn by those who ram through laws legitimizing theft in our name but for the benefit of the world’s most powerful. When these suits travel the world in search of new places to rob or destroy, the stench of their ill-gotten millions attracts others of similar ilk.</p>
<p>The threat of war is heightened and the Trumpists are throwing gasoline on some of the globe’s hottest spots. &#160;The Middle East and Korea are the first that come to mind. &#160;Of course, it’s not like the loyal opposition in the media and the political world seem to have much of a problem with waging war against Pyonyang, Palestine or Tehran. War is the surest symptom of the health of the state, especially when that state is as unhealthy as the entity we call the United States. Like most administrations, the Trump/GOP budget cuts do not affect the Pentagon. Like most GOP administrations, the war profiteers watch their share of taxpayer money increase while social services face more cuts. No matter how many times the Republican Party tries to make it so, it is impossible to provide both guns and butter. So, Washington’s answer is more guns and less butter. For too many folks, there isn’t much bread for the butter anyhow, so the issue is merely an exercise.</p>
<p>There are those who argue that the situation would be just as bad with a Democrat in the White House. While I tend to agree, I think there would be a very important difference. The public discourse would not be as full of race, gender and class hatred. In other words, white supremacists would not have the forum they currently enjoy, male supremacists would be strutting less, and the rich would be much quieter about the ongoing theft of working people’s wealth. Under Trump and the Trumpists, those who cheer these actions have not only been given a forum, their ideas are regaining a legitimacy they have not had for decades. Furthermore, that legitimacy is considerably nastier and brutish. Is this the crisis that needs to culminate in order for positive social change to arrive? I would like to think so, but I fear that is too hopeful of a reading. It seems more likely that the brutishness and hatred will intensify while positive change will cease to be considered.</p>
<p>Trump even has some folks who grew up during Nixon’s reign wishing for Tricky Dick over the madman currently in the White House. I want to use this moment to remind them that Nixon was as authoritarian as Trump and, so far anyhow, killed exponentially more people. It’s not Nixon you want, it’s the mass left-leaning movement in the streets that you long for. Millions of us cheered Nixon’s departure and wished he had been put in prison for his crimes. He was as much of an enemy then as Trump is now.</p>
<p>Besides Nixon’s legacy of murder and corruption, there’s the little known fact that it was under his administration that the Health Maintenance Organization Act was passed. This act made it legal to profit from health care for the first time in the United States. As a favor to the CEO of Kaiser-Permanente, Nixon signed the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. We are all paying for that law. Under Trump, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is being dismantled with nothing in mind but greater profit. In case you forgot, the ACA is the feeble attempt to relieve the health-seeking public from some of the more disastrous aspects of health-care-for-profit. Although it has serious faults stemming from its establishment as part of the health care for profit industry, the ACA has helped millions to receive much needed health care. Trump and the GOP are determined to end that. Along with a hell of a lot more than civility.</p>
<p>Like Jim Morrison sang in his song “Roadhouse Blues,”, “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” Multiply that a hundredfold in the land of Trump. The uncertainty is certainly part of the Trumpist strategy, but it could also be their undoing. By stirring the teapot of unrest like he has done, he is adding an element over which he has less control—the element of resistance. However, in order for that resistance to effectively counter the Trumpist agenda, it must also be unpredictable and uncontrollable to some extent. Pat of its strategy should be to make the current situation ungovernable.</p>
<p>That means the Democratic Party cannot and should not have a leading role. This isn’t to say the Democrats should not oppose Trump. It’s just that any opposition they might provide can only be part of the party’s strategy to take the seats of power currently under control of their counterpart in capitalist rule—the Republican Party. It is ultimately a losing strategy. If the Democrats somehow managed to field candidates who could deliver single payer healthcare and an end to the war economy, those candidates would get my vote. However, unless those policies were written into the Constitution, the wealthy lords of the political system would convince/pay other politicians to overturn them as soon as they could. If the reader doubts this, just go back fifty years to the Great Society programs and see what remains of them. Even better, go back to the New Deal and describe what remains of those attempts to distribute wealth more fairly. The point I am trying to make is that the capitalist class never gives up its goal of maximizing its profits. Therefore, you can’t really depend on their political parties to do much to change that. Of course, a complete overhaul is also unlikely. Yet, that is what should be the goal, just like it was when Nixon was the president.</p>
<p>The swamp is not being drained. It is becoming more toxic by the day. It is now ebb tide at the pig farm and the sewage is in the pool where your children go to swim. If protests don’t begin to fill the streets, expect more of the same. If they do fill the streets, expect a serious struggle with equally serious consequences, one way or another.</p> | true | 4 | washington dc swamp beginning 2017 donald trump held inauguration party many go became even muddier swamp beginning 2018 clear leaking septic tank middle swamp smell corruption always emanated town degree become stench heavy repulsive hangs fabric thousand dollar suits worn ram laws legitimizing theft name benefit worlds powerful suits travel world search new places rob destroy stench illgotten millions attracts others similar ilk threat war heightened trumpists throwing gasoline globes hottest spots 160the middle east korea first come mind 160of course like loyal opposition media political world seem much problem waging war pyonyang palestine tehran war surest symptom health state especially state unhealthy entity call united states like administrations trumpgop budget cuts affect pentagon like gop administrations war profiteers watch share taxpayer money increase social services face cuts matter many times republican party tries make impossible provide guns butter washingtons answer guns less butter many folks isnt much bread butter anyhow issue merely exercise argue situation would bad democrat white house tend agree think would important difference public discourse would full race gender class hatred words white supremacists would forum currently enjoy male supremacists would strutting less rich would much quieter ongoing theft working peoples wealth trump trumpists cheer actions given forum ideas regaining legitimacy decades furthermore legitimacy considerably nastier brutish crisis needs culminate order positive social change arrive would like think fear hopeful reading seems likely brutishness hatred intensify positive change cease considered trump even folks grew nixons reign wishing tricky dick madman currently white house want use moment remind nixon authoritarian trump far anyhow killed exponentially people nixon want mass leftleaning movement streets long millions us cheered nixons departure wished put prison crimes much enemy trump besides nixons legacy murder corruption theres little known fact administration health maintenance organization act passed act made legal profit health care first time united states favor ceo kaiserpermanente nixon signed health maintenance organization act 1973 paying law trump affordable care act aca dismantled nothing mind greater profit case forgot aca feeble attempt relieve healthseeking public disastrous aspects healthcareforprofit although serious faults stemming establishment part health care profit industry aca helped millions receive much needed health care trump gop determined end along hell lot civility like jim morrison sang song roadhouse blues futures uncertain end always near multiply hundredfold land trump uncertainty certainly part trumpist strategy could also undoing stirring teapot unrest like done adding element less controlthe element resistance however order resistance effectively counter trumpist agenda must also unpredictable uncontrollable extent pat strategy make current situation ungovernable means democratic party leading role isnt say democrats oppose trump opposition might provide part partys strategy take seats power currently control counterpart capitalist rulethe republican party ultimately losing strategy democrats somehow managed field candidates could deliver single payer healthcare end war economy candidates would get vote however unless policies written constitution wealthy lords political system would convincepay politicians overturn soon could reader doubts go back fifty years great society programs see remains even better go back new deal describe remains attempts distribute wealth fairly point trying make capitalist class never gives goal maximizing profits therefore cant really depend political parties much change course complete overhaul also unlikely yet goal like nixon president swamp drained becoming toxic day ebb tide pig farm sewage pool children go swim protests dont begin fill streets expect fill streets expect serious struggle equally serious consequences one way another | 558 |
<p>When I was a boy, my farm town used to put on a show called a greased pig contest. A young pig would be greased and set free in a watered down arena. To the rough-edged delight of townspeople, the local kids, those daring enough, would climb inside the arena and attempt to catch the greased pig, which they would soon learn was smarter, faster, and, oh, so very much slicker. The mud and feces besmeared pig catcher got to keep the squealing and exhausted animal which in a year or so would end up on the family dinner table.</p>
<p>This tradition has moved east, for I saw something that reminded me of it just the other day. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee provided the slicked-down arena. The Navajo Indian Settlement Act, S1171, was the greased prize. A plane-load-of-free-loaders from New Mexico were the eager and expectant participants.</p>
<p>But before this show could come to Washington, advance men, like those who used to come to the farm towns to advertise a coming event such as a carnival, circus, or even a greased pig contest, were needed to make it a success. Chief among the new breed of advance men was the Bush administration’s new Secretary of Interior, the erstwhile Governor of Idaho, Dirk Kempthorne. He had proven essential to the carnival atmosphere by issuing a slick opinion, called a hydrologic determination, that there is more water in the Colorado River than anyone ever imagined.</p>
<p>So how is there more water? Why, because our diminished rivers no longer fill our shrunken reservoirs. Ergo, there is less evaporation from these reservoirs and therefore more water available from our rivers. Thus, we enter the head-spinning world of New-Science-on-the-Potomac where politics trumps all reason, all common sense. Indeed, this New Science, truly, as the poet would have it, “calls all in doubt.”</p>
<p>And what’s to be done with this miracle water found on the drought stricken Colorado River? Well, that plane load of free-loading politicians and assorted hangers-on, headed by representatives for presidential aspirant Bill Richardson, had come east expecting to celebrate the easy passage of S1171. Thereby, Kempthorne’s miracle water would be used to expand the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP) and to build a billion dollar pipeline to Gallup, New Mexico, and to portions of the Navajo Reservation–with all but a sliver of the costs coming at taxpayer’s expense.</p>
<p>As for the Navajo-Gallup pipeline, the Indian Health Services will have to find 100’s of millions of dollars more to get the water to the intended Indians, especially those living seasonally in isolated traditional dwellings known as Hogans. In the case of Gallup, a city of about 30,000 souls, its ruling elite dream of becoming a new Moab for mountain-biking, boutique-beer-swilling Yuppiedom–if they only had the water.</p>
<p>But perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the scheme S1171 represents is the fact that the billion-dollar, federally-constructed NIIP loses large amounts of money every year even though the Congress, for decades, has funded all its operating costs, ignoring its own long-standing prohibition against doing so. Some suspect payola, postponing, thereby, a long over due accounting of all Indian irrigation projects and hiding the outsized lies undergirding them. These circumstances give finer definition to what Washington means when it promises to help the Indians.</p>
<p>Yet, despite all the advance work done to make the hearing a greased success, a damper was put on what should have been a festive, glad-handing event by the most unlikely of participants. The Department of Interior, the very people preaching the good news that the Colorado River is brimming with new water for new projects, announced that since it had not participated in the New Mexico Indian negotiations resulting in the Navajo Settlement Act now before the Committee, it could not support it. There was no hush, because at these affairs there are no surprises.</p>
<p>Out of 23 senators on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, only two were in attendance, both from New Mexico. Putting on an amateurish act of sputtering disbelief so common to western melodrama, Jeff Bingaman, the Committee chair, played the good cop, while Pete Domenici, the Committee’s Ranking Member, played the bad cop. In fact, Domenici could be heard declaiming loudly, off mike, that they would just take this plan to the Corp of Engineers to construct if Interior didn’t fall in line.</p>
<p>And why did Interior, the Department of Bad Irrigation Projects, as they,re known out west, decide to wreck a hearing that had every indication of being well staged for quick passage of S1171? The new Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Bob Johnson, speaking for Interior, said the bill did not comport with longstanding policy requiring, among other things, that OMB review the economic feasibility of Indian settlements and the costs of other alternatives.</p>
<p>Imagine my surprise at this complete turnabout, since only weeks earlier I had brought the subject of economic review of the Navajo settlement up with Mr. Johnson at a Bureau conference entitled “Managing for Excellence. (The words and wisdom of convicted felon and former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles were held up for approbation several times during the conference, indicating, perhaps, just how ambitious an undertaking bringing excellence to Interior really is.)</p>
<p>In that setting, Johnson had told me it was not the habit of Reclamation to require economic evaluation of Indian projects even though federal policy required it. I asked if they didn’t think it was important to know if the public’s money was being well spent on these projects, particularly in light of the fact that NIIP lost money, lots of it, every year. No answer was forthcoming other than a meaningless deflection about everyone having a right to an opinion.</p>
<p>Now, for another subplot in this growing western melodrama–The small grassroots organization I chair had insisted several years ago, when the infamous Animas-La Plata project, another purported Indian project, was up for funding, that the published policy governing Indian water settlements be observed, including an economic evaluation. We consulted with OMB itself where we were told that office had been directed to butt out. Moreover, the attorney representing the Department of Interior, a flack by the name of Mike Connors, told us straight out that, while the policy was still in force, Interior was free to apply it selectively. This all took place during the Clinton administration when the hapless Bruce Babbitt was running Interior, thus giving the lie to the idea the Bush administration invented the concept of executive exception. Mr. Connors can now be found working for Senator Bingaman as counsel for the Committee.</p>
<p>And then there are the absent 21, the members of the Committee who sensibly were not there, knowing, first hand, that someone else’s greased legislation is nothing to wrestle with. But the Senator from Colorado, Ken Salazar, noted for his easy collapse into a compromising position on almost any and all issues probably should have been there unless he truly believes the water alchemy concocted by Interior. Otherwise, the water Senators Bingaman and Domenici want for New Mexico belongs to the people of Colorado under an interstate treaty called the Colorado River Compact, and Salazar should be protecting the interests of Coloradoans. But remember he’s already caught his porker. It’s called the Animas-La Plata project and quid pro quos are what Washington runs on.</p>
<p>Is it too cynical, even in a world as obviously devoid of decency and justice as present-day Capitol Hill, to suggest that Senator Domenici’s recent conversion to the get-out-of-Iraq brigade might be a bargaining chip for billions of dollars in new water projects for New Mexico?</p>
<p>One thing is for sure, Mies van der Rohe’s dictum that “less is more” has been turned into a carnival of nonsense, greasy legislation and all.</p>
<p>In an interesting coda to the above, Senator Domenici, still in a “I want it, I get it frame of mind, gave a direct warning to former Iowa congressman Jim Nussle and the Bush administration’s new designee to head OMB at his confirmation hearing. He told him that if OMB did not reverse course on S1171 that he would not vote favorably for his confirmation.</p>
<p>But there is still more. In a more recent House hearing on its version of the Navajo settlement act, HR1970, Colorado congressman Mark Udall, apparently acting as surrogate for his cousin, New Mexico congressman Tom Udall who is HR1970’s sponsor, lit into the fretting Bob Johnson, Reclamation’s new commissioner, who is obviously only carrying stinging coals for OMB.</p>
<p>Declaring himself the undying friend of the Indian, Udall said OMB had to get over its queasiness about how the public was being asked to spend its money, for after all hadn’t Governor Richardson promised at least $75 million toward a tax bill that will easily exceed $1 billion in construction costs alone? Wasn’t that enough he intoned? Never once did Mark Udall, the man who would be the next Democratic senator from Colorado, ask questions concerning the baffling hydrologic study; never once did he elicit concern over the adverse impact this settlement would have on Colorado’s legitimate rights to water in the Colorado River under the interstate compact; and never once did he show concern that more irrigation for the Navajo might actually cause them to lose more money than presently.</p>
<p>PHIL DOE, who once worked in the Interior Department, is chair of Citizens Progressive Alliance in Littleton, Colorado. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:ptdoe@comcast.net" type="external">ptdoe@comcast.net</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | boy farm town used put show called greased pig contest young pig would greased set free watered arena roughedged delight townspeople local kids daring enough would climb inside arena attempt catch greased pig would soon learn smarter faster oh much slicker mud feces besmeared pig catcher got keep squealing exhausted animal year would end family dinner table tradition moved east saw something reminded day senate energy natural resources committee provided slickeddown arena navajo indian settlement act s1171 greased prize planeloadoffreeloaders new mexico eager expectant participants show could come washington advance men like used come farm towns advertise coming event carnival circus even greased pig contest needed make success chief among new breed advance men bush administrations new secretary interior erstwhile governor idaho dirk kempthorne proven essential carnival atmosphere issuing slick opinion called hydrologic determination water colorado river anyone ever imagined water diminished rivers longer fill shrunken reservoirs ergo less evaporation reservoirs therefore water available rivers thus enter headspinning world newscienceonthepotomac politics trumps reason common sense indeed new science truly poet would calls doubt whats done miracle water found drought stricken colorado river well plane load freeloading politicians assorted hangerson headed representatives presidential aspirant bill richardson come east expecting celebrate easy passage s1171 thereby kempthornes miracle water would used expand navajo indian irrigation project niip build billion dollar pipeline gallup new mexico portions navajo reservationwith sliver costs coming taxpayers expense navajogallup pipeline indian health services find 100s millions dollars get water intended indians especially living seasonally isolated traditional dwellings known hogans case gallup city 30000 souls ruling elite dream becoming new moab mountainbiking boutiquebeerswilling yuppiedomif water perhaps embarrassing aspect scheme s1171 represents fact billiondollar federallyconstructed niip loses large amounts money every year even though congress decades funded operating costs ignoring longstanding prohibition suspect payola postponing thereby long due accounting indian irrigation projects hiding outsized lies undergirding circumstances give finer definition washington means promises help indians yet despite advance work done make hearing greased success damper put festive gladhanding event unlikely participants department interior people preaching good news colorado river brimming new water new projects announced since participated new mexico indian negotiations resulting navajo settlement act committee could support hush affairs surprises 23 senators senate energy natural resources committee two attendance new mexico putting amateurish act sputtering disbelief common western melodrama jeff bingaman committee chair played good cop pete domenici committees ranking member played bad cop fact domenici could heard declaiming loudly mike would take plan corp engineers construct interior didnt fall line interior department bad irrigation projects theyre known west decide wreck hearing every indication well staged quick passage s1171 new commissioner bureau reclamation bob johnson speaking interior said bill comport longstanding policy requiring among things omb review economic feasibility indian settlements costs alternatives imagine surprise complete turnabout since weeks earlier brought subject economic review navajo settlement mr johnson bureau conference entitled managing excellence words wisdom convicted felon former deputy interior secretary steven griles held approbation several times conference indicating perhaps ambitious undertaking bringing excellence interior really setting johnson told habit reclamation require economic evaluation indian projects even though federal policy required asked didnt think important know publics money well spent projects particularly light fact niip lost money lots every year answer forthcoming meaningless deflection everyone right opinion another subplot growing western melodramathe small grassroots organization chair insisted several years ago infamous animasla plata project another purported indian project funding published policy governing indian water settlements observed including economic evaluation consulted omb told office directed butt moreover attorney representing department interior flack name mike connors told us straight policy still force interior free apply selectively took place clinton administration hapless bruce babbitt running interior thus giving lie idea bush administration invented concept executive exception mr connors found working senator bingaman counsel committee absent 21 members committee sensibly knowing first hand someone elses greased legislation nothing wrestle senator colorado ken salazar noted easy collapse compromising position almost issues probably unless truly believes water alchemy concocted interior otherwise water senators bingaman domenici want new mexico belongs people colorado interstate treaty called colorado river compact salazar protecting interests coloradoans remember hes already caught porker called animasla plata project quid pro quos washington runs cynical even world obviously devoid decency justice presentday capitol hill suggest senator domenicis recent conversion getoutofiraq brigade might bargaining chip billions dollars new water projects new mexico one thing sure mies van der rohes dictum less turned carnival nonsense greasy legislation interesting coda senator domenici still want get frame mind gave direct warning former iowa congressman jim nussle bush administrations new designee head omb confirmation hearing told omb reverse course s1171 would vote favorably confirmation still recent house hearing version navajo settlement act hr1970 colorado congressman mark udall apparently acting surrogate cousin new mexico congressman tom udall hr1970s sponsor lit fretting bob johnson reclamations new commissioner obviously carrying stinging coals omb declaring undying friend indian udall said omb get queasiness public asked spend money hadnt governor richardson promised least 75 million toward tax bill easily exceed 1 billion construction costs alone wasnt enough intoned never mark udall man would next democratic senator colorado ask questions concerning baffling hydrologic study never elicit concern adverse impact settlement would colorados legitimate rights water colorado river interstate compact never show concern irrigation navajo might actually cause lose money presently phil doe worked interior department chair citizens progressive alliance littleton colorado reached ptdoecomcastnet 160 | 888 |
<p>Early in May, federal immigration agents raided a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, where they arrested almost 400 illegal immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico. This sort of thing happens frequently throughout the Middle West. The only thing new about this raid was that many of those arrested were sentenced to five months in prison for illegal use of social security cards.</p>
<p>Whenever anyone asks why companies like this one hire illegal immigrants to work in their plants, the bosses always say that native-born Americans won’t work in packinghouses. This statement is a lie and an insult to every worker in the United States. Let me tell you a story.</p>
<p>In 1962, I got a job at the John Morrell and Company packinghouse in Ottumwa, Iowa.&#160; The man who hired me wore a crisp gray suit that summer morning.&#160; He told me he hoped I wouldn’t join the union, by which he meant Local 1 of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA).&#160; He also said the company would pay me $2.50 an hour. By the standards of that distant era, two-fifty an hour was good pay for a kid like me.</p>
<p>I didn’t tell the guy that three of my uncles worked there and that all of them belonged to the union. I didn’t mention my father and all my other relatives who worked for railroads and other industries and that all of them belonged to unions. I didn’t want to get fired before I had even begun, so I kept all those statistics to myself.</p>
<p>Off I went into the belly of the slaughterhouse, a clandestine union sympathizer surrounded by over three thousand union members.&#160; I worked first in one place, then another.&#160; Sullen foremen gave me the least instruction possible, then went away and seldom came back.&#160; In the bacon department, all the workers were woman.&#160; After the foreman (a man) walked away, a middle-aged woman took a motherly interest in my welfare.&#160; “Watch out,” she said.&#160; “You’re getting too close to the saw.”</p>
<p>I was getting too close because the blade of the band saw moved so fast I couldn’t see it.&#160; A band saw slices bacon as neatly as you like, but it can also slice fingers and thumbs.&#160; The nice lady then showed me what the foreman hadn’t, the safe way to slice bacon with a band saw.&#160; That short, plump, brown-haired, fair-skinned woman in a white dress, wearing the required hair net, sent me home that night with the required cap on my head and my fingers and thumbs still on my hands.</p>
<p>I never worked in any department more than two or three days.&#160; The noise level usually prevented conversation.&#160; Finally I arrived in the canned-ham department, which stood on the top floor of one of the many interconnected buildings that formed the plant.&#160; During my brief career as a packinghouse worker, this huge room was the only place I recall that admitted natural light.&#160; Every other department could have instantly become as dark as Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher’s cave simply by turning off the lights.</p>
<p>The foreman was an agitated little man of about my own height and weight, but twenty years older.&#160; He led me to many stacks of cans on many pallets, located at the head of the five-pound-ham line.&#160; While speaking faster than I thought humanly possible, he said, “Keep the conveyer belt full of cans.&#160; Never drop one on the floor.&#160; If you drop it, throw it away.&#160; Sanitation laws.&#160; They’re expensive.&#160; Don’t drop them.&#160; Don’t stack.&#160; Keep the belt full.&#160; Got it?”</p>
<p>I started to say I got it, but the man had already turned and walked away.&#160; I began my task.&#160; The belt started and stopped for reasons I never learned.&#160; I kept it full.&#160; Didn’t stack.&#160; Didn’t drop.&#160; Didn’t throw away.&#160; Noticed sharpness at top edges of unsealed cans.&#160; Noticed cuts on hands.&#160; Foreman returned.</p>
<p>“Faster,” he said.</p>
<p>I looked at the belt.&#160; “It’s full,” I said.</p>
<p>“No, no!&#160; Like this.”&#160; He picked up three cans in each hand and shoved them onto the end of the conveyer belt.&#160; A few feet down the line, two or three cans fell off the belt.</p>
<p>I’d worked at the packinghouse over a week by then and had begun to doubt the judgment of the foremen.&#160; “You told me not to drop them on the floor,” I said.&#160; “They’re expensive.”&#160; I picked up the cans and started to throw them into a trash hopper.</p>
<p>“Stop!”</p>
<p>“They were on the floor.”</p>
<p>He ignored my concern for the clean food and drug laws.&#160; “You can’t throw that many away.”</p>
<p>I took this opportunity to raise another issue.&#160; “I’m getting these cuts,” I said, showing him my hands.&#160; “Can I wear gloves?”&#160; I took a pair of jersey gloves out of the back pocket of my jeans.&#160; Since I never knew what job I’d have when I got to the plant, I always brought a pair of gloves.</p>
<p>“No cloth gloves.&#160; Rubber gloves.”</p>
<p>“Where can I get them?”</p>
<p>“Company store.&#160; Down front.&#160; Look!&#160; More cans!”</p>
<p>I looked at the belt. &#160;A tiny beachhead had opened.&#160; I filled it and turned back toward the foreman.&#160; Vanished.&#160; I’d have to find the store on my own.</p>
<p>The line stopped for lunch at about eleven o’clock every day.&#160; In addition, each worker got a number of short breaks each day.&#160; You knew your turn had arrived when a man appeared at your side and said, “Piss break.”&#160; The women in the bacon department didn’t use that vulgar term, but there were no women in the canned-ham department.&#160; The union and the company had negotiated all these arrangements for the functioning of the human bladder, and the contract spelled everything out.&#160; I don’t know how the contract spelled the part about the pee breaks.</p>
<p>When the line stopped for lunch, I gulped down the food my mother had prepared, then ran downstairs and found the company store.&#160; An old guy with thin gray hair commiserated with me about the cuts and fixed me up with a pair of black rubber gloves.&#160; I don’t remember how much they cost.&#160; I returned to the canned-ham department, after which my blood no longer added its flavor to the hams.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The next day, I arrived at the canned-ham department with my rubber gloves, only to learn that I no longer needed them.&#160; The foreman led me to the end of the room, where the line curved around and stopped someplace that I never saw.&#160; He pointed at four men, all of whom were older and larger than I.&#160; “Work with them,” he said.&#160; “They’ll show you what to do.”&#160; He walked away without making introductions.</p>
<p>Before the belt started to move, the tallest of my four comrades, a middle-aged man with an authoritative voice and manner, showed me what to do.&#160; “We cut the hams,” he said, “and push the pieces down the cutting board to you.&#160; You take a can off the belt, put the pieces in like this, put in a scoop of this brown powder, and put the can back on the belt.”&#160; He demonstrated all this with perfect clarity.&#160; From my new vantage point, I saw that five-man crews stood all along the line, ready to do exactly what we did.</p>
<p>I told my workmates my name, they told me theirs, and I promptly forgot them.&#160; At the cutting board on my left, the man who’d shown me what to do stood beside me.&#160; Another middle-aged man, shorter than the other, stood beyond the first one.&#160; On my right, a short stocky black man about thirty stood closest to me.&#160; A younger man—tall, lean, and white—stood beyond him.&#160; At exactly seven o’clock, the belt started to move.</p>
<p>Each of the four men beside me made a variety of cuts on an entire ham.&#160; No one made the same cut repeatedly.&#160; So no one developed carpal tunnel syndrome, unlike the men and women in today’s disposable-worker packing plants.&#160; The men worked steadily but without frenetic haste.&#160; Each piece of meat reached me in the perfect size and shape.&#160; I had the easiest job and managed to keep up with my coworkers. &#160;The foreman maintained a studious absence.</p>
<p>As we got into the rhythm of the day, the two older men on my left began to talk.&#160; Among other things, they talked about union matters. They were proud of their union and didn’t hesitate to say so. It turned out that the man who had shown me my job was the union steward in that department. He, not the foreman, was the most powerful man in that department, and I cannot begin to tell you how much joy it brought me when the steward later ordered the foreman to get out of his sight and never come back.</p>
<p>I subsequently learned that many of the workers at the plant were the children or grandchildren of coalminers. When John Morrell sent his nephew, Thomas Foster, from England to Ottumwa to open a packinghouse in 1877, Foster hired out-of-work coalminers because he knew they would work hard. He forgot or never knew that they were also rabidly pro-union. For example, John L. Lewis was born in a coal camp near Lucas, Iowa. Lewis eventually became the leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW) and later the CIO. Ottumwa really isn’t a good place to tell someone that American workers refuse to work in packinghouses.</p>
<p>The strike of 1948 is one of the most memorable events in Ottumwa’s union history. The strike was long and sometimes violent. On one occasion, when hundreds of workers, both men and women, blocked a boxcar loaded with meat, the company asked the county sheriff to use fire hoses on the strikers. But Sheriff Everett Orman, a Republican, refused.&#160; “These are human beings,” he said. (Shelton Stromquist, Solidarity &amp; Survival, University of Iowa Press, 1993, pp. 185-86)</p>
<p>But for the most part, Morrell could rely on all the elements of state power to side with the company. Nonetheless, for Local 1, the strike confirmed the wisdom of its faith in worker solidarity. For better or worse, many packinghouse workers across the country regarded Local 1 as the most militant local in the history of the UPWA. Nothing, however, could save the plant from ultimate extinction. It was too old and inefficient, the owners said. They wanted packing plants that were new, shiny, and more profitable.</p>
<p>In 1973, Morrell and Company closed the Ottumwa plant forever.&#160; One thousand seven hundred men and women lost their jobs.&#160; The company had already laid off hundreds of others.&#160; By 1979, after two union mergers, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) represented all Morrell retirees in Ottumwa and other cities in the United States.&#160; On January 25, 1995, after finding a loophole in its contract with the UFCW and making its case in court, the company cut off all health and life-insurance benefits for over three thousand retirees nationwide, including those for my last surviving uncle and hundreds of other retirees in Ottumwa.</p>
<p>The Morrell Retirees Club in Ottumwa sought an injunction against the company’s actions, but failed to get it.&#160; A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by Tom Daschle of South Dakota failed to pass.&#160; One elderly man in Ottumwa shot himself to death.&#160; He did this, his son told the Ottumwa Courier, when confronted with hundreds of dollars in monthly prescription-drug costs he couldn’t pay.&#160; John Morrell and Company won its final battle with the veterans of Local 1.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>In 1974, Hormel built a small packinghouse near the remains of the old one and hired 120 production workers. The workers soon organized a union local, and by the early 1980s, employment had risen to over 800. For new workers, the starting pay was about $11 per hour. After a long dispute later in that decade, the union granted wage concessions, but Hormel soon asked for more. In 1985, workers at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota, went on strike to protest these new company demands. The following year, Ottumwa’s workers, always faithful, struck in sympathy with the workers in Austin.</p>
<p>Hormel responded by firing 507 workers in Ottumwa. When an arbitrator later ordered Hormel to rehire the fired workers, Hormel hired some but not all. Instead, after many threats and delays, it announced that it would close the Ottumwa plant in 1987.</p>
<p>This event led directly to the arrival of Excel, which leased and eventually bought the Hormel plant. Excel is one of the “Big Three” packinghouse companies that now dominate the industry. Like ConAgra and Iowa Beef Processors (IBP), Excel obtains high profits by paying the lowest wages possible, opposing unions with fanatical zeal, and using high-speed production techniques requiring repetitive motions that often lead to cuts, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other injuries. Meatpacking is now one of the most dangerous industries in the United States.</p>
<p>Despite all this, when Excel advertised 450 jobs, over 3000 local workers applied. Although the workers successfully organized Local 230 of the UFCW, Excel threatened to close the plant if the workers asked for too much, which effectively reduced the union’s bargaining power. In the fall of 1988, the union and the company ratified a new contract. This contract rewarded workers with starting pay of $6.80 per hour and two weeks of vacation after three years on the job.</p>
<p>Faced with these wages, work without end, and repeated injuries, most workers found it impossible to continue by the time they reached middle age. Workers at Excel have told me that the company makes it as difficult as possible for employees to win benefits for injuries on the job.</p>
<p>Despite its frequent threats to close the plant, Excel continued to hire more employees. By 1998 over 1000 people worked there, although low pay, few benefits, and approximately 1000 injuries per year maintained a brisk turnover in the work force. Excel announced that it wanted to hire between 500 and 700 new employees. (Wilson Warren, Struggling with “Iowa’s Pride,” University of Iowa Press, 2000, pp. 123-131) Then the big lie went to work in Ottumwa.</p>
<p>Excel (now grandly renamed “Cargill Meat Solutions”) complained that Ottumwa had too few workers. By this time, the news media had already convinced millions of people in the United States that our workers would no longer take certain jobs. Something was wrong with our workers. We were all spoiled and lazy. Times had changed.</p>
<p>The big lie always reminds me of the history of the Morrell plant in Ottumwa, which at one time employed almost 4000 men and women, most of whom were either black or white, just like the people who had once mined the coal of southern Iowa. But now, suddenly, no one would work.</p>
<p>Paul McCrory didn’t know that no one would work. On November 16, 2005, McCrory, age 41, was on the job at Excel in Ottumwa. At about 9:20 AM, the overhead rails of a conveyer belt collapsed, fell on McCrory, and trapped him where he lay.</p>
<p>The paramedics, police, and fire fighters all arrived quickly, freed McCrory, and carried him to the Ottumwa Hospital, where at 10:03 AM, doctors pronounced him dead. (Ottumwa Courier, Nov. 17, 2005)</p>
<p>McCrory was married and had one child. He coached T-Ball, Little League, and Babe Ruth baseball. He loved music. The Iowa Department of Labor eventually fined Excel $80,000 for safety violations associated with McCrory’s death. (Ottumwa Courier, Feb. 10, 2006) I assume the company had no trouble finding another worker.</p>
<p>Because of the alleged labor shortage in Ottumwa, Excel said it would have to begin recruiting elsewhere. According to the Ottumwa Courier (Nov. 13, 2007), Randy Zorn, general manager of Excel, later said that the company had done its recruiting primarily in the U.S. Southwest. As a result, Ottumwa now has a new Latino population of between 2000 and 3000 people. I’ve talked to many Anglos in Ottumwa, and they all agree that the Latinos are hard workers.</p>
<p>But other statistics come to mind. Excel began recruiting in 1998 when it had about 1000 workers. (Wilson Warren, p. 130) It now employs about 2300 people, and about 30 percent of those are Latinos. (Ottumwa Courier, Nov. 13, 2007) If you do the arithmetic, you’ll see that the workforce now includes about 690 Latinos and 1610 black and white locals.</p>
<p>In other words, Excel now employs 1610 Iowa natives who allegedly won’t work and 690 Latinos who will work. What do the 1610 natives do all day, fry bacon for supper? It’s all part of the big lie, and one goal of the lie is to prevent a unified labor movement that includes both the locals and the Latinos. The bosses in this country want the black and white workers to blame the Latinos for their problems. If the workers want to win concessions from the companies, they have to resist this trick and build union solidarity.</p>
<p>The claim that working-class Americans won’t work is a lie. But they don’t want to die of injuries received on the job. They want jobs with safety, good pay, and good benefits. The lie was invented by industries that want huge profits and a surplus of throw-away workers.</p>
<p>The only thing that will correct this problem is a strong union movement that includes workers of all colors and ethnicities. A federal government sympathetic to the rebirth of healthy unions would help, but don’t sit around waiting for it to arrive. Now, as always, workers have to take control of their own lives.</p>
<p>Welcome to Iowa, amigos. &#160;Venceremos!</p>
<p>Footnote: A portion of this essay first appeared in <a href="" type="internal">A Firefly in the Night</a>, Ice Cube Press, 2007.</p>
<p>PATRICK IRELAN is a retired high-school teacher. He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">A Firefly in the Night</a> (Ice Cube Press) and <a href="" type="internal">Central Standard: A Time, a Place, a Family</a> (University of Iowa Press). You can contact him at <a href="mailto:pwirelan43@yahoo.com" type="external">pwirelan43@yahoo.com</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Your Ad Here</a> &#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | early may federal immigration agents raided slaughterhouse postville iowa arrested almost 400 illegal immigrants guatemala mexico sort thing happens frequently throughout middle west thing new raid many arrested sentenced five months prison illegal use social security cards whenever anyone asks companies like one hire illegal immigrants work plants bosses always say nativeborn americans wont work packinghouses statement lie insult every worker united states let tell story 1962 got job john morrell company packinghouse ottumwa iowa160 man hired wore crisp gray suit summer morning160 told hoped wouldnt join union meant local 1 united packinghouse workers america upwa160 also said company would pay 250 hour standards distant era twofifty hour good pay kid like didnt tell guy three uncles worked belonged union didnt mention father relatives worked railroads industries belonged unions didnt want get fired even begun kept statistics went belly slaughterhouse clandestine union sympathizer surrounded three thousand union members160 worked first one place another160 sullen foremen gave least instruction possible went away seldom came back160 bacon department workers woman160 foreman man walked away middleaged woman took motherly interest welfare160 watch said160 youre getting close saw getting close blade band saw moved fast couldnt see it160 band saw slices bacon neatly like also slice fingers thumbs160 nice lady showed foreman hadnt safe way slice bacon band saw160 short plump brownhaired fairskinned woman white dress wearing required hair net sent home night required cap head fingers thumbs still hands never worked department two three days160 noise level usually prevented conversation160 finally arrived cannedham department stood top floor one many interconnected buildings formed plant160 brief career packinghouse worker huge room place recall admitted natural light160 every department could instantly become dark tom sawyer becky thatchers cave simply turning lights foreman agitated little man height weight twenty years older160 led many stacks cans many pallets located head fivepoundham line160 speaking faster thought humanly possible said keep conveyer belt full cans160 never drop one floor160 drop throw away160 sanitation laws160 theyre expensive160 dont drop them160 dont stack160 keep belt full160 got started say got man already turned walked away160 began task160 belt started stopped reasons never learned160 kept full160 didnt stack160 didnt drop160 didnt throw away160 noticed sharpness top edges unsealed cans160 noticed cuts hands160 foreman returned faster said looked belt160 full said no160 like this160 picked three cans hand shoved onto end conveyer belt160 feet line two three cans fell belt id worked packinghouse week begun doubt judgment foremen160 told drop floor said160 theyre expensive160 picked cans started throw trash hopper stop floor ignored concern clean food drug laws160 cant throw many away took opportunity raise another issue160 im getting cuts said showing hands160 wear gloves160 took pair jersey gloves back pocket jeans160 since never knew job id got plant always brought pair gloves cloth gloves160 rubber gloves get company store160 front160 look160 cans looked belt 160a tiny beachhead opened160 filled turned back toward foreman160 vanished160 id find store line stopped lunch eleven oclock every day160 addition worker got number short breaks day160 knew turn arrived man appeared side said piss break160 women bacon department didnt use vulgar term women cannedham department160 union company negotiated arrangements functioning human bladder contract spelled everything out160 dont know contract spelled part pee breaks line stopped lunch gulped food mother prepared ran downstairs found company store160 old guy thin gray hair commiserated cuts fixed pair black rubber gloves160 dont remember much cost160 returned cannedham department blood longer added flavor hams next day arrived cannedham department rubber gloves learn longer needed them160 foreman led end room line curved around stopped someplace never saw160 pointed four men older larger i160 work said160 theyll show do160 walked away without making introductions belt started move tallest four comrades middleaged man authoritative voice manner showed do160 cut hams said push pieces cutting board you160 take belt put pieces like put scoop brown powder put back belt160 demonstrated perfect clarity160 new vantage point saw fiveman crews stood along line ready exactly told workmates name told promptly forgot them160 cutting board left man whod shown stood beside me160 another middleaged man shorter stood beyond first one160 right short stocky black man thirty stood closest me160 younger mantall lean whitestood beyond him160 exactly seven oclock belt started move four men beside made variety cuts entire ham160 one made cut repeatedly160 one developed carpal tunnel syndrome unlike men women todays disposableworker packing plants160 men worked steadily without frenetic haste160 piece meat reached perfect size shape160 easiest job managed keep coworkers 160the foreman maintained studious absence got rhythm day two older men left began talk160 among things talked union matters proud union didnt hesitate say turned man shown job union steward department foreman powerful man department begin tell much joy brought steward later ordered foreman get sight never come back subsequently learned many workers plant children grandchildren coalminers john morrell sent nephew thomas foster england ottumwa open packinghouse 1877 foster hired outofwork coalminers knew would work hard forgot never knew also rabidly prounion example john l lewis born coal camp near lucas iowa lewis eventually became leader united mine workers umw later cio ottumwa really isnt good place tell someone american workers refuse work packinghouses strike 1948 one memorable events ottumwas union history strike long sometimes violent one occasion hundreds workers men women blocked boxcar loaded meat company asked county sheriff use fire hoses strikers sheriff everett orman republican refused160 human beings said shelton stromquist solidarity amp survival university iowa press 1993 pp 18586 part morrell could rely elements state power side company nonetheless local 1 strike confirmed wisdom faith worker solidarity better worse many packinghouse workers across country regarded local 1 militant local history upwa nothing however could save plant ultimate extinction old inefficient owners said wanted packing plants new shiny profitable 1973 morrell company closed ottumwa plant forever160 one thousand seven hundred men women lost jobs160 company already laid hundreds others160 1979 two union mergers united food commercial workers ufcw represented morrell retirees ottumwa cities united states160 january 25 1995 finding loophole contract ufcw making case court company cut health lifeinsurance benefits three thousand retirees nationwide including last surviving uncle hundreds retirees ottumwa morrell retirees club ottumwa sought injunction companys actions failed get it160 bill introduced us senate tom daschle south dakota failed pass160 one elderly man ottumwa shot death160 son told ottumwa courier confronted hundreds dollars monthly prescriptiondrug costs couldnt pay160 john morrell company final battle veterans local 1 1974 hormel built small packinghouse near remains old one hired 120 production workers workers soon organized union local early 1980s employment risen 800 new workers starting pay 11 per hour long dispute later decade union granted wage concessions hormel soon asked 1985 workers hormel plant austin minnesota went strike protest new company demands following year ottumwas workers always faithful struck sympathy workers austin hormel responded firing 507 workers ottumwa arbitrator later ordered hormel rehire fired workers hormel hired instead many threats delays announced would close ottumwa plant 1987 event led directly arrival excel leased eventually bought hormel plant excel one big three packinghouse companies dominate industry like conagra iowa beef processors ibp excel obtains high profits paying lowest wages possible opposing unions fanatical zeal using highspeed production techniques requiring repetitive motions often lead cuts carpal tunnel syndrome injuries meatpacking one dangerous industries united states despite excel advertised 450 jobs 3000 local workers applied although workers successfully organized local 230 ufcw excel threatened close plant workers asked much effectively reduced unions bargaining power fall 1988 union company ratified new contract contract rewarded workers starting pay 680 per hour two weeks vacation three years job faced wages work without end repeated injuries workers found impossible continue time reached middle age workers excel told company makes difficult possible employees win benefits injuries job despite frequent threats close plant excel continued hire employees 1998 1000 people worked although low pay benefits approximately 1000 injuries per year maintained brisk turnover work force excel announced wanted hire 500 700 new employees wilson warren struggling iowas pride university iowa press 2000 pp 123131 big lie went work ottumwa excel grandly renamed cargill meat solutions complained ottumwa workers time news media already convinced millions people united states workers would longer take certain jobs something wrong workers spoiled lazy times changed big lie always reminds history morrell plant ottumwa one time employed almost 4000 men women either black white like people mined coal southern iowa suddenly one would work paul mccrory didnt know one would work november 16 2005 mccrory age 41 job excel ottumwa 920 overhead rails conveyer belt collapsed fell mccrory trapped lay paramedics police fire fighters arrived quickly freed mccrory carried ottumwa hospital 1003 doctors pronounced dead ottumwa courier nov 17 2005 mccrory married one child coached tball little league babe ruth baseball loved music iowa department labor eventually fined excel 80000 safety violations associated mccrorys death ottumwa courier feb 10 2006 assume company trouble finding another worker alleged labor shortage ottumwa excel said would begin recruiting elsewhere according ottumwa courier nov 13 2007 randy zorn general manager excel later said company done recruiting primarily us southwest result ottumwa new latino population 2000 3000 people ive talked many anglos ottumwa agree latinos hard workers statistics come mind excel began recruiting 1998 1000 workers wilson warren p 130 employs 2300 people 30 percent latinos ottumwa courier nov 13 2007 arithmetic youll see workforce includes 690 latinos 1610 black white locals words excel employs 1610 iowa natives allegedly wont work 690 latinos work 1610 natives day fry bacon supper part big lie one goal lie prevent unified labor movement includes locals latinos bosses country want black white workers blame latinos problems workers want win concessions companies resist trick build union solidarity claim workingclass americans wont work lie dont want die injuries received job want jobs safety good pay good benefits lie invented industries want huge profits surplus throwaway workers thing correct problem strong union movement includes workers colors ethnicities federal government sympathetic rebirth healthy unions would help dont sit around waiting arrive always workers take control lives welcome iowa amigos 160venceremos footnote portion essay first appeared firefly night ice cube press 2007 patrick irelan retired highschool teacher author firefly night ice cube press central standard time place family university iowa press contact pwirelan43yahoocom 160 160 160 160 ad 160 160 160 160 160 | 1,708 |
<p>A police riot over an austerity bill, or a failed attempt to oust leftist Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa from office? In the aftermath of the Sept. 30 attack on Correa by police in Quito, it is looking more and more like this was an orchestrated coup. And while there is no evidence that the U.S. was directly involved, the Obama administration’s strong support for the current Honduran government may well have encouraged the plotters to expect similar treatment by Washington.</p>
<p>The police attack on Correa was co-coordinated with similar takeovers in several other cities, the seizure of Ecuador’s two largest airports by army troops, and the occupation of the National Assembly. In the end the Ecuadorian Army supported the President, freed him from the police hospital where he was being held, and whisked him to safety, but only after a firefight killed one soldier and a student who had turned out to support Correa. The President’s car was struck by five bullets. According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, eight people died and 274 were wounded in incidents nationwide.</p>
<p>Suspicion has fallen on former president and army colonel Lucio Gutierrez, who led a 2000 coup and has called for Correa’s ouster. Gutierrez currently lives in Brazil and denies any link to the attempted coup. Correa also charges that Gutierrez’s brother Gilmar, a member of the National Assembly, supported the coup.</p>
<p>Last year’s coup in Honduras that ousted Manuel Zelaya has cast a shadow across the region, raising up the ghosts of a previous era when military takeovers routinely toppled governments in Latin America, including those in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador. According to The Guardian, Correa said in the aftermath of the Honduran coup, “We have intelligence reports that say after Zelaya, I’m next.”</p>
<p>After Zelaya was ousted, the coup-led government of Roberto Micheletti organized elections—boycotted by most the population—and put Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo into power. Most countries in the region refuse to recognize the Lobo government, including the region’s major players, Brazil and Argentina.</p>
<p>In spite of the fact that the Lobo government has overseen a wave of terror directed at journalists, trade unionists, gays and lesbians, and opposition activists, Washington is pushing hard for countries to end Honduras’s regional isolation and its suspension from the Organization of American States (OAS).</p>
<p>“Now is the time for the hemisphere as a whole to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the OAS.</p>
<p>But most countries are wary of anything that might give the appearance of endorsing a government brought in via a coup. There is also concern about the ongoing human rights crisis in Honduras. Reporters Without Borders has labeled Honduras the most dangerous country in the world for journalists—eight have been murdered in the past year—and human rights groups, including Amnesty International, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have all condemned the on-going reign of terror directed at members of the Honduran opposition, the National Front of Popular Resistance.</p>
<p>While most nations in the region are reluctant to bed down with the Honduran government, the U.S. has opened the military aid spigot, donating $812,000 worth of heavy trucks to the Honduran Army. In the meantime, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is handing out $75 million for development projects, and $20 million for the “Merida” security program.</p>
<p>“Washington’s support for the coup government in Honduras over the past year has encouraged and increased the likelihood of rightwing coups against democratic left governments in the region,” writes The Guardian’s Latin American correspondent Mark Weisbrot. “This attempt in Ecuador has failed, but there will likely be more threats in the months and years ahead.”</p>
<p>Two obvious candidates are Bolivia and Paraguay. In the case of the former, organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—both of which gave active support to organizations behind the Honduran coup—are active.</p>
<p>In Honduras, NED and USAID helped finance the Peace and Democracy Movement and the Civil Democratic Union, both dominated by the country’s tiny elite, and which strongly supported the coup. Many of the Honduran Army’s officers, including coup leaders Gen. Vasquez Velasquez and Gen. Prince Suazo, have been trained by the U.S. Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, the former “School for the Americas” that has trained coup makers and human rights violators from throughout Latin America.</p>
<p>According to !Presente!, a publication critical of the School for the Americas, the commander of the police barracks where Honduran President Correa was attacked, Col Manuel Rivadeneira Tello, is a graduate of the School’s combat arms training course.</p>
<p>Bolivian President Evo Morales recently threatened to expel USAID for its role in financing opposition separatist groups based in the country’s wealthy eastern provinces. Along with the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)—an organization long associated with the Central Intelligence Agency—USAID and NED have underwritten separatist media and organizations based in the wealthy province of Santa Cruz, where most of the country’s natural gas deposits lie.</p>
<p>The possibility of Eastern Bolivia declaring independence is very real and, if it happens, U.S. organizations will have played a major role in encouraging it.</p>
<p>In May of this year, Fernando Lugo, the progressive president of Paraguay, reported to the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) meeting in Buenos Aires, that he had evidence of a coup aimed at overthrowing his government. Lugo had a closed-door meeting with the UNASUR members, following which UNASUR reaffirmed its full support for the Paraguayan government.</p>
<p>Paraguay is one of the poorest and most unequal countries on the continent, and it was long dominated by a military dictatorship. Lugo, who took office in August 2008 for a five-year term, put together a coalition that broke the 60-year stranglehold the conservative Colorado Party had over the country.</p>
<p>Lugo has weathered some personal scandals—he is a former Catholic Bishop who fathered a number of children—and is currently suffering from lymphoma. He is locked in a battle with his more conservative vice-president, Federico Franco, and at loggerheads with a fractious congress that has made getting legislation through a trial. Those are the kind of difficulties that might well encourage Paraguay’s rightwing military and the Coloradoans to consider a coup, particularly if they think that Washington will eventually take a position similar to the one it took on Honduras.</p>
<p>Of course not all coups are successful these days. An outpour of popular support for Hugo Chavez reversed the 2001 Venezuela coup, and Correa’s 67 percent positive rating—he has doubled healthcare spending, increased social services, and stiffed a phony $3.2 billion foreign debt—certainly played a role in spiking the Ecuador coup.</p>
<p>But U.S. organizations like NED and AIFLD, active throughout the hemisphere, were closely associated with the Venezuelan coup makers.</p>
<p>The Obama Administration promised a new deal in Latin America and a break from the policies of the Bush Administration. Instead it has beefed up its military presence in Colombia, sharpened its attacks on Venezuela, refused to back away from its blockade of Cuba, and played footsie with Honduran government.</p>
<p>If countries in the region are paranoid, maybe they have reasons for it.</p>
<p>CONN HALLINAN can be reached at: <a href="mailto:ringoanne@sbcglobal.net" type="external">ringoanne@sbcglobal.net</a></p> | true | 4 | police riot austerity bill failed attempt oust leftist ecuadorian president rafael correa office aftermath sept 30 attack correa police quito looking like orchestrated coup evidence us directly involved obama administrations strong support current honduran government may well encouraged plotters expect similar treatment washington police attack correa cocoordinated similar takeovers several cities seizure ecuadors two largest airports army troops occupation national assembly end ecuadorian army supported president freed police hospital held whisked safety firefight killed one soldier student turned support correa presidents car struck five bullets according latin american herald tribune eight people died 274 wounded incidents nationwide suspicion fallen former president army colonel lucio gutierrez led 2000 coup called correas ouster gutierrez currently lives brazil denies link attempted coup correa also charges gutierrezs brother gilmar member national assembly supported coup last years coup honduras ousted manuel zelaya cast shadow across region raising ghosts previous era military takeovers routinely toppled governments latin america including brazil argentina chile ecuador according guardian correa said aftermath honduran coup intelligence reports say zelaya im next zelaya ousted coupled government roberto micheletti organized electionsboycotted populationand put porfirio pepe lobo power countries region refuse recognize lobo government including regions major players brazil argentina spite fact lobo government overseen wave terror directed journalists trade unionists gays lesbians opposition activists washington pushing hard countries end hondurass regional isolation suspension organization american states oas time hemisphere whole move forward welcome honduras back interamerican community us secretary state hillary clinton told oas countries wary anything might give appearance endorsing government brought via coup also concern ongoing human rights crisis honduras reporters without borders labeled honduras dangerous country world journalistseight murdered past yearand human rights groups including amnesty international un office high commissioner human rights interamerican commission human rights condemned ongoing reign terror directed members honduran opposition national front popular resistance nations region reluctant bed honduran government us opened military aid spigot donating 812000 worth heavy trucks honduran army meantime united states agency international development usaid handing 75 million development projects 20 million merida security program washingtons support coup government honduras past year encouraged increased likelihood rightwing coups democratic left governments region writes guardians latin american correspondent mark weisbrot attempt ecuador failed likely threats months years ahead two obvious candidates bolivia paraguay case former organizations like usaid national endowment democracy nedboth gave active support organizations behind honduran coupare active honduras ned usaid helped finance peace democracy movement civil democratic union dominated countrys tiny elite strongly supported coup many honduran armys officers including coup leaders gen vasquez velasquez gen prince suazo trained us western hemispheric institute security cooperation former school americas trained coup makers human rights violators throughout latin america according presente publication critical school americas commander police barracks honduran president correa attacked col manuel rivadeneira tello graduate schools combat arms training course bolivian president evo morales recently threatened expel usaid role financing opposition separatist groups based countrys wealthy eastern provinces along american institute free labor development aifldan organization long associated central intelligence agencyusaid ned underwritten separatist media organizations based wealthy province santa cruz countrys natural gas deposits lie possibility eastern bolivia declaring independence real happens us organizations played major role encouraging may year fernando lugo progressive president paraguay reported union south american nations unasur meeting buenos aires evidence coup aimed overthrowing government lugo closeddoor meeting unasur members following unasur reaffirmed full support paraguayan government paraguay one poorest unequal countries continent long dominated military dictatorship lugo took office august 2008 fiveyear term put together coalition broke 60year stranglehold conservative colorado party country lugo weathered personal scandalshe former catholic bishop fathered number childrenand currently suffering lymphoma locked battle conservative vicepresident federico franco loggerheads fractious congress made getting legislation trial kind difficulties might well encourage paraguays rightwing military coloradoans consider coup particularly think washington eventually take position similar one took honduras course coups successful days outpour popular support hugo chavez reversed 2001 venezuela coup correas 67 percent positive ratinghe doubled healthcare spending increased social services stiffed phony 32 billion foreign debtcertainly played role spiking ecuador coup us organizations like ned aifld active throughout hemisphere closely associated venezuelan coup makers obama administration promised new deal latin america break policies bush administration instead beefed military presence colombia sharpened attacks venezuela refused back away blockade cuba played footsie honduran government countries region paranoid maybe reasons conn hallinan reached ringoannesbcglobalnet | 711 |
<p>What was the first drink you ever had? “I literally turned 21 a week before I got my first newspaper job right out of college. I was already married at that point and had a three-year-old kid, so it wasn’t like I was a big partier. I’ll never forget, in the newsroom, the guys said, ‘We got to take the new guy out to have a drink.’ You’re going to think this is nuts, but I had never had a mixed drink before in my life. I didn’t know anything about alcohol. So they took me across the street to the newspaper bar in this small Florida town. Somebody ordered me a Tom Collins, which was fantastic because, as usual, it was about 90 degrees and all those kinds of drinks taste good. I think that was my first adult beverage besides beer.”</p>
<p>Wow! That is amazing. “I will tell you a funny story. My dad died when I was pretty young and he was an attorney. He liked his <a href="" type="internal">Jack Daniel’s</a>. I never acquired a taste for it. But when he died, I saw the will and he’d written into it that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes put in a Jack Daniel’s bottle [to be] left on a chair in his law office. And if there was no Jack Daniel’s bottle around, he said just use a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can. I thought that was fantastic. My mom didn’t go for it. We didn’t end up doing that. But I think that’s what he would have loved.”</p>
<p>As a newspaperman for more of your life than not, what do you think is a quintessential newsroom drink? “I go back to when the newsrooms were just what you would see on television. I was lucky enough to be at the Miami Herald when all that was happening. I was working on the investigations team there. We had pretty late deadlines then. You could work late on a story and get it done and go out with everybody and have a drink. I have one drink, it’s Tanqueray &amp; Tonic, and that’s it. I’d have one and whoever else was at the table would have whatever they wanted, some would be drinking <a href="" type="internal">bourbon</a>, some of them would be drinking <a href="" type="internal">vodka</a>. There wasn’t one thing.”</p>
<p>Have things changed today? “I don’t mean to be nostalgic, but those days are kind of gone. Newsrooms have changed so much. First of all, they’ve shrunk dramatically. They’re more like insurance offices than like the old newsrooms. It was kind of a golden time, sitting around in smoky darkness just talking about editors and how they screwed up the headline on your story. It was a great thing. You had a drink or two and then you’d go home. The mass exodus from the newsroom to the bar—I doubt if it exists much anymore because there are no masses to exodus. Newsrooms are so small.”</p>
<p>Do you ever have a drink while you write? “No. If I had one beer, I couldn’t write a postcard afterward. I don’t know how these guys used to do it, <a href="" type="internal">Hemingway</a> and Faulkner. I don’t know, honestly, how they functioned. I’m such a wimp. If I work all day, my wife and I go out and I love to have a Tanqueray &amp; Tonic and it feels great. But if I had it in the morning or the afternoon or any kind of alcohol, I’m telling you the words don’t look the same on paper. Nothing that my brain is spitting out is going to be as sharp or as good if I have any. It requires every ounce of sobriety just for me to get a paragraph right.”</p>
<p>Do you have any tips for making a Gin &amp; Tonic? “I always like the bottles of tonic water instead of [out of a soda gun]. I think the carbonation is better and it’s usually sharper. Once in a while I’ll have Hendrick’s. Hendrick’s is good gin, too. But there are also some brands of gin out there that will take the chrome off a trailer hitch and they taste like it. I don’t drink them. I’m a pretty boring drinker. On most days in Florida nothing tastes better than a Gin &amp; Tonic. The silly thing is, I’m going off on this book tour and I’ll be in Toronto in a couple of weeks and Boston and it might be 60 degrees out and I’ll still order one of those.”</p>
<p>Do you ever drink wine? “I’ve tried to drink some wine. Once in a while I’ll have a glass of red wine with my wife because that’s what she drinks. It’s fine, but I can’t get into the whole wine thing. I can’t be a student of wine and spend a lot of time thinking about it. I write all day. I just want a drink that is friendly and familiar and makes me feel good. I don’t want to have to study a label to figure out what year or where it came from. That’s too much work. I’m too fricking lazy to do that.”</p>
<p>How about beer? “I confess I haven’t gotten into the craft beer trend. I’m sure it’s great. I have sat down with guys, you could name ten craft beers and they could tell you the precise alcohol content of each one. They like to study it. I’m thinking, who has the energy to do that? I don’t want to have to take out a calculator to figure out how much alcohol is in a drink. It’s just too much work. At the end of the day it’s just beer. I haven’t been able to throw myself into that culture. I’m sure it’s generational. I’m sure I’m just an old fart.”</p>
<p>Is it important to you what a character drinks in your novels? “It is important. In Yancy’s case in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Girl-novel-Carl-Hiaasen/dp/0385349742/" type="external">Razor Girl</a>, he likes Barbancourt Rum. That is a good rum. I’ve been to Haiti many, many years ago and had Barbancourt down there. But Yancy has one precious little bottle of it in his house. He’s not a guy that makes a lot of money. He’s restaurant inspector for god’s sake. He’s on roach patrol. But that’s his thing. It’s his sunset drink. Everybody’s got one in Florida and Barbancourt is his.”</p>
<p>Will you try everything a character orders in one of your books? “I will never have them drink something that I haven’t tasted.”</p>
<p>Carl Hiaasen is the author of dozens of books, including the brand-new <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Girl-novel-Carl-Hiaasen/dp/0385349742/" type="external">Razor Girl: A Novel</a>, and has been writing a column for the Miami Herald since 1985.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Find the Drinking Rules of other famous tipplers.</a></p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>Interview has been condensed and edited.</p> | true | 4 | first drink ever literally turned 21 week got first newspaper job right college already married point threeyearold kid wasnt like big partier ill never forget newsroom guys said got take new guy drink youre going think nuts never mixed drink life didnt know anything alcohol took across street newspaper bar small florida town somebody ordered tom collins fantastic usual 90 degrees kinds drinks taste good think first adult beverage besides beer wow amazing tell funny story dad died pretty young attorney liked jack daniels never acquired taste died saw hed written wanted cremated ashes put jack daniels bottle left chair law office jack daniels bottle around said use pabst blue ribbon beer thought fantastic mom didnt go didnt end think thats would loved newspaperman life think quintessential newsroom drink go back newsrooms would see television lucky enough miami herald happening working investigations team pretty late deadlines could work late story get done go everybody drink one drink tanqueray amp tonic thats id one whoever else table would whatever wanted would drinking bourbon would drinking vodka wasnt one thing things changed today dont mean nostalgic days kind gone newsrooms changed much first theyve shrunk dramatically theyre like insurance offices like old newsrooms kind golden time sitting around smoky darkness talking editors screwed headline story great thing drink two youd go home mass exodus newsroom bari doubt exists much anymore masses exodus newsrooms small ever drink write one beer couldnt write postcard afterward dont know guys used hemingway faulkner dont know honestly functioned im wimp work day wife go love tanqueray amp tonic feels great morning afternoon kind alcohol im telling words dont look paper nothing brain spitting going sharp good requires every ounce sobriety get paragraph right tips making gin amp tonic always like bottles tonic water instead soda gun think carbonation better usually sharper ill hendricks hendricks good gin also brands gin take chrome trailer hitch taste like dont drink im pretty boring drinker days florida nothing tastes better gin amp tonic silly thing im going book tour ill toronto couple weeks boston might 60 degrees ill still order one ever drink wine ive tried drink wine ill glass red wine wife thats drinks fine cant get whole wine thing cant student wine spend lot time thinking write day want drink friendly familiar makes feel good dont want study label figure year came thats much work im fricking lazy beer confess havent gotten craft beer trend im sure great sat guys could name ten craft beers could tell precise alcohol content one like study im thinking energy dont want take calculator figure much alcohol drink much work end day beer havent able throw culture im sure generational im sure im old fart important character drinks novels important yancys case razor girl likes barbancourt rum good rum ive haiti many many years ago barbancourt yancy one precious little bottle house hes guy makes lot money hes restaurant inspector gods sake hes roach patrol thats thing sunset drink everybodys got one florida barbancourt try everything character orders one books never drink something havent tasted carl hiaasen author dozens books including brandnew razor girl novel writing column miami herald since 1985 find drinking rules famous tipplers start finish day top stories daily beast speedy smart summary news need know nothing dont interview condensed edited | 551 |
<p>and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR</p>
<p>Last of a three-part series.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton’s propensity for overkill earned her and Bill the enmity of people capable of inflicting serious damage, as the Whitewater and Cattle Futures scandals duly attested. And soon, as they embarked on the 1992 presidential campaign, the same overkill reflex produced a perfect storm of bad publicity that came within an ace of finishing Clinton off altogether.</p>
<p>In January 2002, America was introduced to the Gennifer Flowers scandal, courtesy of the National Enquirer. Flowers was a former Little Rock newscaster with whom Governor Clinton had an extended love affair for five years in the 1980s, as pleasingly chronicled in Flowers’ entirely credible memoir, Gennifer Flowers: Passion and Betrayal.</p>
<p>After the Enquirer broke the Flowers story while Clinton was campaigning in New Hampshire, his campaign advisors went into crisis mode, trying to figure out the best defense. Seasoned tacticians like Betsey Wright and David Ifshin suggested that the best course would be to shrug the story off as unsubstantiated gossip mongering by a supermarket tabloid. The national press corps was already taking this tack, since the reporters on the campaign bus were loath to admit they had been scooped by the Enquirer – whose story was in fact a piece of well-researched investigative reporting, backed up by taped phone calls and messages to Gennifer from Bill.</p>
<p>It was Hillary who instructed the campaign to put the ruthless private investigator Jack Palladino on the case. In her memo to Palladino, she ordered him to “impeach Flowers’ character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition.” Thus primed, Palladino went into action, seeking to portray Flowers as a prostitute, a shakedown artist and career scamster.</p>
<p>While Palladino was trying to finish off Flowers, Hillary urged Bill to follow the high-risk strategy of both of them going on CBS’s 60 Minutes for an interview conducted by Steve Kroft. In front of a vast national audience Bill, visibly ill at ease, admitted to causing pain to his family while denying that their marriage was merely an arrangement. “This is a marriage” he asserted. Hillary broke in. Years of effort in burnishing Bill’s image as a Son of the South went up in smoke as she declared, “You know, I’m not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.”</p>
<p>The polls promptly showed Bill’s numbers plummeting south of the Mason-Dixon line. An affair with Flowers was one thing, but insulting Tammy Wynette? The nation’s number one country star had been watching the program and was furious. She immediately called her publicist to vent her outrage, and the publicist relayed this to the press. For three days the Clinton campaign tried to talk to Wynette. She declined all calls until finally they got Burt Reynolds to call her, and she relented, releasing the news she would accept Hillary’s apologies.</p>
<p>The next storm the Clintons had to face was the matter of his avoidance of the draft during the Vietnam War. James Carville, the campaign manager, advocated forthright admission that this is what he had done. Clinton agreed with Carville’s plan to go on ABC’s Nightline with Ted Koppel, bringing with him his famous letter to Colonel Eugene Holmes frankly discussing the conflict between his desire to go and fight in Vietnam and his concomitant eagerness to “maintain my political viability”. But Hillary was adamant. He should not admit that he wanted to avoid the draft. On the other hand, he should not be forced to apologize for being against the war. The entire file of documents and letters should be concealed. Her view prevailed, and the inevitable consequence was the draft-dodging issue stayed alive as a steady stream of compromising documents was leaked to the press over the next five months.</p>
<p>The desire for secrecy is one of Mrs. Clinton’s enduring and damaging traits, which is why these campaign imbroglios are of consequence. Clinton dug himself into many a pit, but his greatest skill was in talking his way out of them in a manner Americans found forgivable. Befitting a Midwestern Methodist with a bullying father, repression has always been one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent characteristics. Hers has been the instinct to conceal, to deny, to refuse to admit any mistake. Mickey Kantor, the Los Angeles lawyer who worked on the 1992 campaign, said that Hillary adamantly refused to admit to any mistakes.</p>
<p>It’s clear from Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.’s very revealing Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mrs. Clinton played a major role in driving White House lawyer Vince Foster to suicide. After the Clintons arrived in the White House, it became Foster’s role to guard their secrets. It was one thing to lock documents into a secret room during the campaign. It was quite another to play hide-and-seek with files in the White House, as Mrs. Clinton required Foster to do. Now there weren’t nosy reporters but special prosecutors with subpoenas, looking for documents relevant to Whitewater, to Mrs. Clinton’s billing records at Rose Law, her tax records relevant to the commodity trades. Foster was tasked with hiding all these documents: some in his house, some in his office and some – the most damaging files – back in his Little Rock house.</p>
<p>There were additional burdens for Foster. He was trying to douse another fire started by Mrs. Clinton. This was her instruction to fire the White House travel staff, on a trumped-up rationale. There were six separate investigations into these firings, all of which Foster had to deal with. Finally, the wretched man had to listen to Mrs. Clinton publicly blame the whole “Travelgate” mess on him, even as he was concealing documents making it clear she had been the person initiating the mess. On top of that, Mrs. Clinton demanded Foster be the principal liaison with Congress on her health reform plan. For the last month of his life, she refused to communicate with him, even though their offices were thirty feet apart.</p>
<p>Health reform was Mrs. Clinton’s assignment in her husband’s first term. The debacle is well known. In early 1993, 64 per cent of all Americans favored a system of national health care. By the time Mrs. Clinton’s 1342-page bill, generated in secret, landed in Congress, she had managed to offend the very Democratic leadership essential to making health reform a reality. The proposal itself, under the mystic mantra “Managed Competition”, embodied all the distinctive tropisms of neoliberalism: a naïve complicity with the darker corporate forces, accompanied by adamant refusal to even consider building the popular political coalition that alone could have faced and routed the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies – two of the most powerful forces on the American political scene. Mrs. Clinton’s rout on health reform remains one of the great avoidable disasters of the last century in American politics, and one with appalling human and social consequences</p>
<p>This disaster was compounded by the fact that after the collapse of health reform, on the advice of Dickie Morris (summoned by Mrs. Clinton), the Clintons swerved right, toward all the ensuing ghastly legislative ventures of their regime – the onslaughts on welfare, the crime bill, NAFTA. With Morris came the birth of “triangulation” – the tactic of the Clinton White House working with Republicans and conservative Democrats and actively undermining liberal and progressive initiatives in Congress. Money that could have given the House back to the Democrats in 1996 was snatched by the White House purely for the self-preservation of the Clintons.</p>
<p>After health care went down the tubes, Hillary adopted a very low-key political profile, in part because Leon Panetta, the new White House chief of staff, banned her from political meetings. She outflanked him in two ways: by secret strategizing with Morris every two weeks and by nightly strategy sessions with Clinton and Al Gore. She swung back into a crucial public role with the Lewinsky affair, ironically enough, standing by her man. Gerth and Van Natta establish that she knew the full extent of her husband’s relations with the woman she called “Elvira” (the mid-’90s horror queen) on January 21, 1998, eight months before the official narrative claims that Bill informed her of his treachery the night before he gave his deposition. She ordered a full-bore attack on Lewinsky as “a stalker with a weight problem” and shoved Bill toward the doomed posture of total denial. He himself had initially been trending toward a stuttering half-admission that hanky-panky might have taken place. But after he returned from the Lehrer show where he had taken this non-combative route, Hillary lashed him into the categorical denial – “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” – that exploded so disastrously in the months and years ahead. (Only months earlier, Hillary had been the one who insisted that no deal be made with Paula Jones, who could have been bought off with the modest settlement her lawyer was requesting. Hillary said she didn’t want Jones to get “a single dollar”.)</p>
<p>Bill had his Tammy, and he knew the price. “Whatever Hil wants, Hil gets,” he told his staff in 1998, and he began to read books about the campaigns of successful female politicians – Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir. As Clinton headed toward impeachment, Hillary set her course for the New York Senate seat.</p>
<p>Since Vietnam, there’s never been a war that Mrs. Clinton didn’t like. She argued passionately in the White House for the NATO bombing of Belgrade. Five days after September 11, 2001, she was calling for a broad war on terror. Any country presumed to be lending “aid and comfort” to al-Qaeda “will now face the wrath of our country.” Bush echoed these words eight days later in his nationally televised speech on September 21. “I’ll stand behind Bush for a long time to come”, Senator Clinton promised, and she was as good as her word, voting for the Patriot Act and the wide-ranging authorization to use military force against Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Of course she supported without reservation the attack on Afghanistan and, as the propaganda buildup toward the onslaught on Iraq got underway, she didn’t even bother to walk down the hall to read the national intelligence estimate on Iraq before the war. (She wasn’t alone in that. Only six senators read that NIE.) When she was questioned about this, she claimed she was briefed on its contents, but in fact no one on her staff had the security clearance to read the report. And her ignorance showed when it came time to deliver her speech in support of the war, as she reiterated some of the most outlandish claims made by Dick Cheney. In this speech, she said Saddam Hussein had rebuilt his chemical and biological weapons program; that he had improved his long-range missile capability; that he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program; and that he was giving aid and comfort to Al Qaeda. The only other Democratic senator to make all four of these claims in his floor speech was Joe Lieberman. But even he didn’t go as far as Senator Hillary. In Lieberman’s speech, there was conditionality about some of the claims. In Senator Clinton’s, there was no such conditionality, even though a vehement war hawk, Ken Pollack, advising Senator Clinton prior to her vote, had told her that the allegation about the al-Qaeda connection was “bullshit”.</p>
<p>Later, as the winds of opinion changed, Senator Clinton claimed – and continues to do so to this day – that hers was a vote not for war but for negotiation. In fact, the record shows that only hours after the war authorization vote she voted against the Democratic resolution that would have required Bush to seek a diplomatic solution before launching the war.</p>
<p>Today, Hillary Clinton says she supports the “surge” in Iraq and claims it’s working. From candidate, maybe president Hillary Clinton, Iran can expect no mercy.</p>
<p>Click here for Part One: <a href="" type="internal">The Making of Hillary Clinton</a>.</p>
<p>Click here for Part Two: <a href="" type="internal">Hillary and the Arkansas Elite.</a></p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN and Jeffrey St. Clair’s latest book is <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate</a>, published by CounterPunch/AK Press. St. Clair’s new book, <a href="" type="internal">Born Under a Bad Sky</a>, will be published in December.</p> | true | 4 | jeffrey st clair last threepart series hillary clintons propensity overkill earned bill enmity people capable inflicting serious damage whitewater cattle futures scandals duly attested soon embarked 1992 presidential campaign overkill reflex produced perfect storm bad publicity came within ace finishing clinton altogether january 2002 america introduced gennifer flowers scandal courtesy national enquirer flowers former little rock newscaster governor clinton extended love affair five years 1980s pleasingly chronicled flowers entirely credible memoir gennifer flowers passion betrayal enquirer broke flowers story clinton campaigning new hampshire campaign advisors went crisis mode trying figure best defense seasoned tacticians like betsey wright david ifshin suggested best course would shrug story unsubstantiated gossip mongering supermarket tabloid national press corps already taking tack since reporters campaign bus loath admit scooped enquirer whose story fact piece wellresearched investigative reporting backed taped phone calls messages gennifer bill hillary instructed campaign put ruthless private investigator jack palladino case memo palladino ordered impeach flowers character veracity destroyed beyond recognition thus primed palladino went action seeking portray flowers prostitute shakedown artist career scamster palladino trying finish flowers hillary urged bill follow highrisk strategy going cbss 60 minutes interview conducted steve kroft front vast national audience bill visibly ill ease admitted causing pain family denying marriage merely arrangement marriage asserted hillary broke years effort burnishing bills image son south went smoke declared know im sitting like little woman standing man like tammy wynette polls promptly showed bills numbers plummeting south masondixon line affair flowers one thing insulting tammy wynette nations number one country star watching program furious immediately called publicist vent outrage publicist relayed press three days clinton campaign tried talk wynette declined calls finally got burt reynolds call relented releasing news would accept hillarys apologies next storm clintons face matter avoidance draft vietnam war james carville campaign manager advocated forthright admission done clinton agreed carvilles plan go abcs nightline ted koppel bringing famous letter colonel eugene holmes frankly discussing conflict desire go fight vietnam concomitant eagerness maintain political viability hillary adamant admit wanted avoid draft hand forced apologize war entire file documents letters concealed view prevailed inevitable consequence draftdodging issue stayed alive steady stream compromising documents leaked press next five months desire secrecy one mrs clintons enduring damaging traits campaign imbroglios consequence clinton dug many pit greatest skill talking way manner americans found forgivable befitting midwestern methodist bullying father repression always one mrs clintons prominent characteristics instinct conceal deny refuse admit mistake mickey kantor los angeles lawyer worked 1992 campaign said hillary adamantly refused admit mistakes clear jeff gerth van natta jrs revealing way hopes ambitions hillary rodham clinton mrs clinton played major role driving white house lawyer vince foster suicide clintons arrived white house became fosters role guard secrets one thing lock documents secret room campaign quite another play hideandseek files white house mrs clinton required foster werent nosy reporters special prosecutors subpoenas looking documents relevant whitewater mrs clintons billing records rose law tax records relevant commodity trades foster tasked hiding documents house office damaging files back little rock house additional burdens foster trying douse another fire started mrs clinton instruction fire white house travel staff trumpedup rationale six separate investigations firings foster deal finally wretched man listen mrs clinton publicly blame whole travelgate mess even concealing documents making clear person initiating mess top mrs clinton demanded foster principal liaison congress health reform plan last month life refused communicate even though offices thirty feet apart health reform mrs clintons assignment husbands first term debacle well known early 1993 64 per cent americans favored system national health care time mrs clintons 1342page bill generated secret landed congress managed offend democratic leadership essential making health reform reality proposal mystic mantra managed competition embodied distinctive tropisms neoliberalism naïve complicity darker corporate forces accompanied adamant refusal even consider building popular political coalition alone could faced routed insurance pharmaceutical lobbies two powerful forces american political scene mrs clintons rout health reform remains one great avoidable disasters last century american politics one appalling human social consequences disaster compounded fact collapse health reform advice dickie morris summoned mrs clinton clintons swerved right toward ensuing ghastly legislative ventures regime onslaughts welfare crime bill nafta morris came birth triangulation tactic clinton white house working republicans conservative democrats actively undermining liberal progressive initiatives congress money could given house back democrats 1996 snatched white house purely selfpreservation clintons health care went tubes hillary adopted lowkey political profile part leon panetta new white house chief staff banned political meetings outflanked two ways secret strategizing morris every two weeks nightly strategy sessions clinton al gore swung back crucial public role lewinsky affair ironically enough standing man gerth van natta establish knew full extent husbands relations woman called elvira mid90s horror queen january 21 1998 eight months official narrative claims bill informed treachery night gave deposition ordered fullbore attack lewinsky stalker weight problem shoved bill toward doomed posture total denial initially trending toward stuttering halfadmission hankypanky might taken place returned lehrer show taken noncombative route hillary lashed categorical denial sexual relations woman ms lewinsky exploded disastrously months years ahead months earlier hillary one insisted deal made paula jones could bought modest settlement lawyer requesting hillary said didnt want jones get single dollar bill tammy knew price whatever hil wants hil gets told staff 1998 began read books campaigns successful female politicians margaret thatcher indira gandhi benazir bhutto golda meir clinton headed toward impeachment hillary set course new york senate seat since vietnam theres never war mrs clinton didnt like argued passionately white house nato bombing belgrade five days september 11 2001 calling broad war terror country presumed lending aid comfort alqaeda face wrath country bush echoed words eight days later nationally televised speech september 21 ill stand behind bush long time come senator clinton promised good word voting patriot act wideranging authorization use military force afghanistan course supported without reservation attack afghanistan propaganda buildup toward onslaught iraq got underway didnt even bother walk hall read national intelligence estimate iraq war wasnt alone six senators read nie questioned claimed briefed contents fact one staff security clearance read report ignorance showed came time deliver speech support war reiterated outlandish claims made dick cheney speech said saddam hussein rebuilt chemical biological weapons program improved longrange missile capability reconstituting nuclear weapons program giving aid comfort al qaeda democratic senator make four claims floor speech joe lieberman even didnt go far senator hillary liebermans speech conditionality claims senator clintons conditionality even though vehement war hawk ken pollack advising senator clinton prior vote told allegation alqaeda connection bullshit later winds opinion changed senator clinton claimed continues day vote war negotiation fact record shows hours war authorization vote voted democratic resolution would required bush seek diplomatic solution launching war today hillary clinton says supports surge iraq claims working candidate maybe president hillary clinton iran expect mercy click part one making hillary clinton click part two hillary arkansas elite alexander cockburn jeffrey st clairs latest book end times death fourth estate published counterpunchak press st clairs new book born bad sky published december | 1,160 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluerobot/5546855457/"&gt;Rob Chandanais&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175556/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll%2C_how_the_wisconsin_uprising_got_hijacked/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>The revelers watched in stunned disbelief, cocktails in hand, dressed for a night to remember. On the big-screen TV a headline screamed in crimson red: “Projected Winner: Scott Walker.” It was 8:49 p.m. In parts of Milwaukee, people learned that news networks had declared Wisconsin’s governor the winner while still in line to cast their votes. At the election night party for Walker’s opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, supporters talked and cried and ordered more drinks. Barrett soon took the stage to concede, then waded into the crowd, where a distraught woman <a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/06/06/watch-wisconsin-recall-challenger-tom-barrett-slapped-by-a-supporter/" type="external">slapped</a> him in the face.</p>
<p>Walker is the first governor in American history to win a recall election. His lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, dispatched her recall challenger no less decisively. So, too, did three Republican state senators in their recall elections. Democrats avoided a GOP sweep with a win in the sixth and final senate recall vote of the season, in Wisconsin’s southeastern 21st District, but that was small consolation. Put simply, Democrats and labor unions got rolled.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" />The results of Tuesday’s elections are being heralded as the death of public-employee unions, if not the death of organized labor itself. Tuesday’s results are also seen as the final chapter in the story of the populist uprising that burst into life last year in the state capital of Madison. The Cheddar Revolution, so the argument goes, was buried in a mountain of ballots.</p>
<p>But that burial ceremony may prove premature. Most of the conclusions of the last few days, left and right, are likely wrong.</p>
<p>The energy of the Wisconsin uprising was never electoral. The movement’s mistake: letting itself be channeled solely into traditional politics, into the usual box of uninspired candidates and the usual lineup of debates, primaries, and general elections. The uprising was too broad and diverse to fit electoral politics comfortably. You can’t play a symphony with a single instrument. Nor can you funnel the energy and outrage of a popular movement into a single race, behind a single well-worn candidate, at a time when <a href="" type="internal">all the money in the world</a> from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPQkd_AA6c" type="external">corporate “individuals”</a> and <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77139.html" type="external">right-wing</a> billionaires is <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/102778/harold-simmons-campaign-donor-2012-gop" type="external">pouring</a> into races like the Walker recall.</p>
<p>Colin Millard, an organizer at the International Brotherhood of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers, admitted as much on the eve of the recall. We were standing inside his storefront office in the small town of Horicon, Wisconsin. It was night outside. “The moment you start a recall,” he told me, “you’re playing their game by their rules.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>From Madison to Zuccotti Park and Beyond</p>
<p>A recap is in order.</p>
<p>The uprising began with Colin Millard. The date was February 11, 2011, when Walker <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/05/120305fa_fact_finnegan" type="external">“dropped the bomb,”</a> as he later put it, with his “budget repair” bill, which sought to gut collective bargaining rights for most public-employee unions,&#160; Later that day, a state Democratic Party staffer who knew Millard called him and pleaded with him to organize a protest. Millard agreed, even though other unions, including the AFL-CIO, urged him to back out. Don’t make a fuss, they advised. Let’s call some lawmakers and urge them to oppose Walker’s bill. “Fuck off,” was Millard’s response.</p>
<p>On the Sunday after Walker unveiled his bill, Millard rounded up <a href="http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/116121859.html" type="external">more than 200 people</a> and marched down Lake Street, past the John Deere factory and Dannyboy’s Bar, to the home of Republican Jeff Fitzgerald, the speaker of the state Assembly and a Walker ally. Fitzgerald lived a mile or two from Millard in Horicon. “I’ve got a message for Scott Walker,” Millard told the crowd outside Fitzgerald’s house. “This is my union card and you can pry it from my cold, dead hand.”</p>
<p>As rumors spread of more protests, Walker <a href="http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/115928094.html" type="external">threatened</a> to call out the National Guard to deal with the protesting public workers. That’s when popular outrage erupted. Students marched on the state Capitol, and then a local teaching assistants union led the effort to take over the capitol rotunda, transforming intermittent protests into <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/02/das_capitol.html" type="external">a round-the-clock occupation</a>. Organizers provided food, shelter, health care, day care, education, and a sense of purpose for those who had taken up residence inside the Capitol.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086EF89K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=tomdispatch-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B0086EF89K" type="external" />In support of the occupiers, the daily protests outside the Capitol grew into crowds of 10,000, 25,000, then upward of 100,000. People marched in the snowy streets to challenge Walker, Wisconsin Republicans, and their political donors. Tractors circled the Capitol in protest, as did firefighters and cops, even though their bargaining rights had been exempted from Walker’s “reform” proposals. By now, Madison had captured the nation’s attention.</p>
<p>A two-week occupation of the Capitol and months of protests didn’t, however, deter Walker and Republican lawmakers. He signed his budget repair bill, known as Act 10, into law in March. But that doesn’t mean the Wisconsin uprising had no effect. For one thing, the “Walkerville” occupation of the grounds outside the state capitol helped inspire the <a href="http://bloombergvillenow.org/" type="external">“Bloombergville”</a> protest in New York City targeting Mayor Michael Bloomberg. That, in turn, would be a precursor to the Occupy Wall Street events of the following September and later the Occupy movement nationwide. Without Wisconsin, without the knowledge that such things could still happen in America, there might never have been an Occupy.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Hijacking the Uprising</p>
<p>By the time Occupy Wall Street took off, the Wisconsin uprising had swapped its come-one-come-all organizing message for a far narrower and more traditional political mission. Over the summer of 2011, the decision was made that the energy and enthusiasm displayed in Madison should be channeled into recall elections to defeat <a href="" type="internal">six Republican state senators</a> who had voted for Walker’s anti-union Act 10. (Three Democratic senators would, in the end, face recall as well.) By that act, Democrats and unions hoped to wrestle control of the senate away from Walker and use that new power to block his agenda.</p>
<p>The Democrats won two of the 2011 recalls, one short of gaining control of the Senate, and so the Republicans clung to their majority.</p>
<p>What followed was more of the same, but with the ante upped. This time, the marquee race would be the recall of Walker himself. Launched last November, the grassroots campaign to recall the governor put the populist heart of the Wisconsin uprising on full display. Organizing under the United Wisconsin banner, 30,000 volunteers statewide gathered nearly 1 million signatures to trigger the election. The group’s people-powered operation recaptured some of the spirit of the Capitol occupation, but the decision had been made: recalling Walker at the ballot box was the way forward.</p>
<p>The Walker recall effort would, in fact, splinter the masses of anti-Walker protesters. Many progressives and most of the state’s labor unions rallied behind former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, who in January 2012 announced her intent to challenge Walker. Tom Barrett, who had lost the governor’s race to Walker in 2010, didn’t announce his candidacy until late March, his entry pitting Democrat against Democrat, his handful of union endorsements pitting labor against labor. Unions pumped $4 million into helping Falk clinch the Democratic nomination. In the end, though, it wasn’t close: Barrett stomped her in the May 8 primary by 24 percentage points.</p>
<p>By now, the Madison movement was the captive of ordinary Democratic politics in the state. After all, Barrett was hardly a candidate of the uprising. People who had protested in the streets and slept in the Capitol groused about his uninspired record on workers’ rights and public education. He never inspired or unified the movement that had made a recall possible—and it showed on Election Day: Walker beat Barrett by 7 percentage points, almost his exact margin of victory in 2010. Democrats and their union allies needed to win over new voters and old enemies; by all accounts they failed.</p>
<p>And had Barrett by some miracle won, after a few days of celebration and self-congratulation, those in the Madison movement would have found themselves in the same box, in the same broken system, with little sense of what to do and, in a Barrett governorship, little hope. Win or lose, there was loss written all over the recall decision.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The Fate of the Uprising</p>
<p>The takeaway from Walker’s decisive win on Tuesday is not that Wisconsin’s new populist movement is dead. It’s that such a movement does not fit comfortably into the present political/electoral system, stuffed as it is with corporate money, overflowing with bizarre ads and media horse-race-manship. Its members’ beliefs are too diverse to be confined in what American electoral politics has become. It simply couldn’t be squeezed into a system that stifles and, in some cases, silences the kinds of voices and energies it possessed.</p>
<p>The post-election challenge for the members of Wisconsin’s uprising is finding a new way to fight for and achieve needed change without simply pinning their hopes on a candidate or an election. After all, that’s part of what absorbed the nation when a bunch of students first moved into the Wisconsin Capitol and wouldn’t go home, or when a ragtag crew of protesters camped out in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park and wouldn’t leave either. In both cases, they had harnessed the outrage felt by so many Americans for a cause other than what’s usually called “politics” in this country.</p>
<p>And they were successful—even in the most traditional terms; that is, both movements affected traditional politics most strongly when they weren’t part of it. The Occupy movement, for all its flaws, moved even mainstream political discourse away from austerity and deficit slashing and toward the issues of income inequality and the hollowing out of the American middle and working classes.</p>
<p>Avoiding politics as we know it with an almost religious fervor, Occupy still managed to put its stamp on national political fights. Last October, for instance, Ohioans <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175470/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll,_occupy_wall_street%27s_political_victory_in_ohio/" type="external">voted overwhelmingly</a> to repeal SB 5, a law that curbed collective bargaining rights for all public-employee unions. Occupy’s “We Are the 99 Percent” message reverberated through Ohio, and the volunteers who blitzed the state successfully drew on Occupy themes to make their case for the law’s repeal. Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which spent $500,000 in Ohio fighting SB 5, told me at the time, “Every conversation was in the context of the 99 percent and the 1 percent, this discussion sparked by Occupy Wall Street.”</p>
<p>The money that flowed into Walker’s recall fight speaks loudly to the disadvantages a Wisconsin-like movement faces within the walls of electoral politics and the need for it to resist being confined there. On the <a href="" type="internal">post-Citizens United</a> playing field, the unlimited amounts of the money that rose to the top of this society in recent decades, as the 1 percent definitively separated itself from the 99 percent, can be reinvested in preserving the world as it is and electing those who will make it even more amenable. The advantage invariably goes corporate; it goes Republican.</p>
<p>Historically, the Republicans have long been the party of big business, of multinational corporations, of wealthy, union-hating donors like Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Amway heir Dick DeVos—and in recent decades the Democrats have followed in their wake sweeping up the crumbs (or worse). And here’s the reality of a deeply corrupt system: Unless Congress and state legislators act to patch up their tattered campaign finance rule books, the same crew with the same money will continue to dominate the political wars. (And any movement that puts its own money on changing those rules is probably in deep trouble.)</p>
<p>In the wake of the recall losses, the people of Wisconsin’s uprising must ask themselves: Where can they make an impact outside of politics? The power of nonviolent action to create social and economic change is well documented, most notably by Jonathan Schell in his classic book <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175510/andy_kroll_how_empires_fall" type="external">The Unconquerable World</a>. The men and women in Schell’s invaluable history—Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights fighters, the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel, and so many others—can serve as guides to a path to change that doesn’t require recall elections. Already mainstays of the Madison protests have suggested campaigns to refuse to spend money with businesses that support Walker. “Hit ’em where it hurts. Pocketbooks,” C.J. Terrell, one of the Capitol occupiers, recently wrote on Facebook.</p>
<p>Wisconsinites could also turn to one of their own: Robert “Fightin’ Bob” La Follette. He created his own band of “insurgents” within the late 19th- and early 20th-century Republican Party. Together they formed the Progressive Party, which fought for workers’ rights, guarded civil liberties, and worked to squeeze corruption out of government.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, the decision on what comes next rests in the hands of those who inspired and powered the Wisconsin uprising. And with an emboldened Governor Walker, there should be no shortage of reasons to fight back in the next two years. But success, as Tuesday’s election made clear, isn’t likely to come the traditional way. It will, of course, involve unions; it might draw on state and local political parties. But in the end, it’s in the hands of the people again, as it was in February 2011.</p>
<p>The future they want is theirs to decide.</p>
<p>Andy Kroll is a <a href="" type="internal">staff reporter</a> in the DC bureau of Mother Jones magazine. He is also an <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175510/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll%2C_the_unlikely_oracle_of_occupy_wall_street/" type="external">associate editor</a> at <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175470/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll%2C_occupy_wall_street%27s_political_victory_in_ohio/" type="external">TomDispatch.com</a>. He has <a href="" type="internal">covered</a> <a href="" type="internal">Wisconsin</a> <a href="" type="internal">politics</a> since the first protests <a href="" type="internal">ignited</a> in February 2011. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Kroll discusses what Scott Walker’s recall win means for the future, click <a href="http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2012/06/do-you-recall.html" type="external">here</a> or download it to your iPod <a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&amp;amp;subid=&amp;amp;offerid=146261.1&amp;amp;type=10&amp;amp;tmpid=5573&amp;amp;RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817" type="external">here</a>. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch, join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" type="external">Facebook</a>, and check out the latest TD book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086EF89K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=tomdispatch-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B0086EF89K" type="external">Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050</a>.</p> | true | 4 | lta hrefhttpwwwflickrcomphotosbluerobot5546855457gtrob chandanaisltagtflickr story first appeared tomdispatch website revelers watched stunned disbelief cocktails hand dressed night remember bigscreen tv headline screamed crimson red projected winner scott walker 849 pm parts milwaukee people learned news networks declared wisconsins governor winner still line cast votes election night party walkers opponent milwaukee mayor tom barrett supporters talked cried ordered drinks barrett soon took stage concede waded crowd distraught woman slapped face walker first governor american history win recall election lieutenant governor rebecca kleefisch dispatched recall challenger less decisively three republican state senators recall elections democrats avoided gop sweep win sixth final senate recall vote season wisconsins southeastern 21st district small consolation put simply democrats labor unions got rolled results tuesdays elections heralded death publicemployee unions death organized labor tuesdays results also seen final chapter story populist uprising burst life last year state capital madison cheddar revolution argument goes buried mountain ballots burial ceremony may prove premature conclusions last days left right likely wrong energy wisconsin uprising never electoral movements mistake letting channeled solely traditional politics usual box uninspired candidates usual lineup debates primaries general elections uprising broad diverse fit electoral politics comfortably cant play symphony single instrument funnel energy outrage popular movement single race behind single wellworn candidate time money world corporate individuals rightwing billionaires pouring races like walker recall colin millard organizer international brotherhood bridge structural ornamental reinforcing iron workers admitted much eve recall standing inside storefront office small town horicon wisconsin night outside moment start recall told youre playing game rules 160 madison zuccotti park beyond recap order uprising began colin millard date february 11 2011 walker dropped bomb later put budget repair bill sought gut collective bargaining rights publicemployee unions160 later day state democratic party staffer knew millard called pleaded organize protest millard agreed even though unions including aflcio urged back dont make fuss advised lets call lawmakers urge oppose walkers bill fuck millards response sunday walker unveiled bill millard rounded 200 people marched lake street past john deere factory dannyboys bar home republican jeff fitzgerald speaker state assembly walker ally fitzgerald lived mile two millard horicon ive got message scott walker millard told crowd outside fitzgeralds house union card pry cold dead hand rumors spread protests walker threatened call national guard deal protesting public workers thats popular outrage erupted students marched state capitol local teaching assistants union led effort take capitol rotunda transforming intermittent protests roundtheclock occupation organizers provided food shelter health care day care education sense purpose taken residence inside capitol support occupiers daily protests outside capitol grew crowds 10000 25000 upward 100000 people marched snowy streets challenge walker wisconsin republicans political donors tractors circled capitol protest firefighters cops even though bargaining rights exempted walkers reform proposals madison captured nations attention twoweek occupation capitol months protests didnt however deter walker republican lawmakers signed budget repair bill known act 10 law march doesnt mean wisconsin uprising effect one thing walkerville occupation grounds outside state capitol helped inspire bloombergville protest new york city targeting mayor michael bloomberg turn would precursor occupy wall street events following september later occupy movement nationwide without wisconsin without knowledge things could still happen america might never occupy 160 hijacking uprising time occupy wall street took wisconsin uprising swapped comeonecomeall organizing message far narrower traditional political mission summer 2011 decision made energy enthusiasm displayed madison channeled recall elections defeat six republican state senators voted walkers antiunion act 10 three democratic senators would end face recall well act democrats unions hoped wrestle control senate away walker use new power block agenda democrats two 2011 recalls one short gaining control senate republicans clung majority followed ante upped time marquee race would recall walker launched last november grassroots campaign recall governor put populist heart wisconsin uprising full display organizing united wisconsin banner 30000 volunteers statewide gathered nearly 1 million signatures trigger election groups peoplepowered operation recaptured spirit capitol occupation decision made recalling walker ballot box way forward walker recall effort would fact splinter masses antiwalker protesters many progressives states labor unions rallied behind former dane county executive kathleen falk january 2012 announced intent challenge walker tom barrett lost governors race walker 2010 didnt announce candidacy late march entry pitting democrat democrat handful union endorsements pitting labor labor unions pumped 4 million helping falk clinch democratic nomination end though wasnt close barrett stomped may 8 primary 24 percentage points madison movement captive ordinary democratic politics state barrett hardly candidate uprising people protested streets slept capitol groused uninspired record workers rights public education never inspired unified movement made recall possibleand showed election day walker beat barrett 7 percentage points almost exact margin victory 2010 democrats union allies needed win new voters old enemies accounts failed barrett miracle days celebration selfcongratulation madison movement would found box broken system little sense barrett governorship little hope win lose loss written recall decision 160 fate uprising takeaway walkers decisive win tuesday wisconsins new populist movement dead movement fit comfortably present politicalelectoral system stuffed corporate money overflowing bizarre ads media horseracemanship members beliefs diverse confined american electoral politics become simply couldnt squeezed system stifles cases silences kinds voices energies possessed postelection challenge members wisconsins uprising finding new way fight achieve needed change without simply pinning hopes candidate election thats part absorbed nation bunch students first moved wisconsin capitol wouldnt go home ragtag crew protesters camped lower manhattans zuccotti park wouldnt leave either cases harnessed outrage felt many americans cause whats usually called politics country successfuleven traditional terms movements affected traditional politics strongly werent part occupy movement flaws moved even mainstream political discourse away austerity deficit slashing toward issues income inequality hollowing american middle working classes avoiding politics know almost religious fervor occupy still managed put stamp national political fights last october instance ohioans voted overwhelmingly repeal sb 5 law curbed collective bargaining rights publicemployee unions occupys 99 percent message reverberated ohio volunteers blitzed state successfully drew occupy themes make case laws repeal mary kay henry president service employees international union spent 500000 ohio fighting sb 5 told time every conversation context 99 percent 1 percent discussion sparked occupy wall street money flowed walkers recall fight speaks loudly disadvantages wisconsinlike movement faces within walls electoral politics need resist confined postcitizens united playing field unlimited amounts money rose top society recent decades 1 percent definitively separated 99 percent reinvested preserving world electing make even amenable advantage invariably goes corporate goes republican historically republicans long party big business multinational corporations wealthy unionhating donors like las vegas casino mogul sheldon adelson amway heir dick devosand recent decades democrats followed wake sweeping crumbs worse heres reality deeply corrupt system unless congress state legislators act patch tattered campaign finance rule books crew money continue dominate political wars movement puts money changing rules probably deep trouble wake recall losses people wisconsins uprising must ask make impact outside politics power nonviolent action create social economic change well documented notably jonathan schell classic book unconquerable world men women schells invaluable historymohandas gandhi martin luther king jr civil rights fighters czech dissident vaclav havel many otherscan serve guides path change doesnt require recall elections already mainstays madison protests suggested campaigns refuse spend money businesses support walker hit em hurts pocketbooks cj terrell one capitol occupiers recently wrote facebook wisconsinites could also turn one robert fightin bob la follette created band insurgents within late 19th early 20thcentury republican party together formed progressive party fought workers rights guarded civil liberties worked squeeze corruption government ultimately however decision comes next rests hands inspired powered wisconsin uprising emboldened governor walker shortage reasons fight back next two years success tuesdays election made clear isnt likely come traditional way course involve unions might draw state local political parties end hands people february 2011 future want decide andy kroll staff reporter dc bureau mother jones magazine also associate editor tomdispatchcom covered wisconsin politics since first protests ignited february 2011 listen timothy macbains latest tomcast audio interview kroll discusses scott walkers recall win means future click download ipod follow tomdispatch twitter tomdispatch join us facebook check latest td book terminator planet first history drone warfare 20012050 | 1,332 |
<p>&lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/truthout/4603014978/"&gt;Truthou.org&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175836/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>It’s mind-boggling. Torture is still up for grabs in America. No one questions anymore whether the CIA waterboarded one individual 83 times or another 186 times. The basic facts are no longer in dispute either by those who champion torture or those who, like myself, despise the very idea of it. No one questions whether some individuals died being tortured in American custody. ( <a href="https://www.aclu.org/human-rights-national-security/us-operatives-killed-detainees-during-interrogations-afghanistan-and-" type="external">They did.</a>) No one questions that it was a national policy devised by those at the very highest levels of government. ( <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html" type="external">It was.</a>) But many, it seems, still believe that the torture policy, politely renamed in its heyday “the enhanced interrogation program,” was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html" type="external">a good thing</a> for the country.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" /> Now, the nation awaits the newest chapter in the torture debate without having any idea whether it will close the book on American torture or open a path of pain and shame into the distant future. No one yet knows whether we will be allowed to awake from the nightmarish and unacceptable world of illegality and obfuscation into which torture and the network of offshore prisons, or “black sites,” plunged us all.</p>
<p>April 28th marks the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/iraq/abughraib/timeline.html" type="external">tenth anniversary</a> of the moment that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were made public in this country. On that day a decade ago, the TV news magazine “60 Minutes II” <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/abuse-of-iraqi-pows-by-gis-probed/" type="external">broadcast</a> the first photographs from that American-run prison in “liberated” Iraq. They showed US military personnel humiliating, hurting, and abusing Iraqi prisoners in a myriad of perverse ways. While American servicemen and women smiled and gave a thumbs up, naked men were threatened by dogs, or were hooded, forced into sexual positions, placed standing with wires attached to their bodies, or left bleeding on prison floors.</p>
<p>Thus began America’s public odyssey with torture, a story in many chapters and still missing an ending. As the Abu Ghraib anniversary nears and the White House, the CIA, and various senators <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/11/cia-white-house-pressure-leaked-senate-report" type="external">still battle</a> over the release of a summary of a 6,300-page report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Bush-era torture policies, it’s worth considering the strange journey we’ve taken and wondering just where we as a nation mired in the legacy of torture might be headed.</p>
<p>Chapter One: Revelations</p>
<p>The odyssey started with the shock of those “60 Minutes II” photos, followed two days later by the reporting of veteran New Yorker writer <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact?currentPage=all" type="external">Seymour Hersh</a>. Having seen even more grim photographs and interviewed many in the chain of command stretching from Abu Ghraib to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Pentagon, Hersh painted a picture of a deliberate policy of abuse. He traced Abu Ghraib’s crimes to pressure from “military-intelligence teams, which included CIA officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors,” urging the production—and fast—of crucial information from US captives in Iraq. Towards this end, the guards at Abu Ghraib were encouraged to “soften up” the detainees for interrogation.</p>
<p>That summer and fall of 2004, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the ACLU, and others got their hands on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html" type="external">several Bush administration memos</a> justifying and legalizing torture. These had largely been written by John Yoo and Jay Bybee, lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, and they proved grim reading indeed. The documents provided uniquely tortured definitions of torture that made almost any act in which the infliction of pain didn’t <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/dojinterrogationmemo20020801.pdf" type="external">rise to the level</a> of “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” acceptable. As if that weren’t enough, they developed <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26431-2004Jul3.html" type="external">no less tortured</a> theories of executive power in which the president as commander-in-chief retained the right to authorize torture for national security reasons, despite its illegality under domestic, military, and international law.</p>
<p>With this anything-goes green light switched on, the memos proceeded to expressly approve <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/olc/zubaydah.pdf" type="external">individual methods</a> of abuse (previously defined as torture) for American interrogators. Used in combination and repeatedly, these were known to destroy the human psyche and bring severe pain to the body as well. Specifically, they put the Bush administration’s stamp of approval on graphically described “techniques,” including sleep deprivation, slapping, the dangling of trussed prisoners from beams, and especially waterboarding, a process in which individuals essentially experience drowning, only to be saved at the last moment.</p>
<p>The trail of evidence went right to the top. The office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the interrogators of “the American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh, to “ <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/63903/mark_danner_bush's_state_of_exception" type="external">take the gloves off</a>.” Vice President Dick Cheney, who famously <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html" type="external">said</a>it was time to “work the dark side,” has <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=6464697" type="external">repeatedly defended</a> the policy of harsh interrogation techniques, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/09/dick-cheney-defends-torture-al-qaida" type="external">including waterboarding</a>, as effective and essential in keeping the nation safe.Top officials reportedly had various “enhanced interrogation techniques” <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-558812/Dick-Cheney-Condoleezza-Rice-authorised-waterboarding-torture-Al-Qaeda-prisoners.html" type="external">demonstrated</a> in the White House. The 2002 torture memos were addressed to White House Counsel and later Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.</p>
<p>CIA director George Tenet <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256" type="external">knew</a>, too. Rumsfeld approved the use of special techniques in a <a href="http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/documents/20021127-1.pdf" type="external">December 2002 memo</a>. It is impossible to imagine that Yoo’s boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, didn’t know about the memos as well, and given what everyone else knew, it’s unlikely President George W. Bush was left in the dark for long, if at all.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/019975411X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />There were those who protested, but they did so only inside “the family.” FBI Director <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-we-warned-about-torture-of-detainees/" type="external">Robert Mueller</a>, for instance, knew enough to forbid the Bureau to use the techniques. He even <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html" type="external">pulled his men</a> away from CIA interrogations of terror suspects, including the one that ended with the brutal waterboarding of suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html?adxnnl=1&amp;adxnnlx=1398186075-AsriF5lZjcNpThmPOXHa0w" type="external">83 times</a>. Colin Powell, the four-star general who was Secretary of State, balked at the notion of removing the prisoner of war protections of the Geneva Conventions from al-Qaeda detainees for the <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.01.26.pdf" type="external">purposes</a> of “interrogation and length of the detention.” He went no further, however, than protesting vigorously in that early 2002 memo, urging the president to reconsider his options and stay within the law.</p>
<p>Michael Chertoff, the head of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice and the future head of the Department of Homeland Security, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451673930/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">abruptly left</a> a meeting at which he was asked to give immunity in advance to those who would use harsh interrogation techniques. He refused to do so. But no one went public.</p>
<p>All told, there were no vocal dissidents when it came to the torture policy; no one resigned over it; no one even leaked the story to the media to protest the evisceration of American values and the constitutional or legal principles involved. In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib and the revelations that followed, there was just a chorus of “it wasn’t torture” or “I didn’t know” from nearly every official inside the executive branch who had known.</p>
<p>Chapter Two: The End Is(n’t) in Sight</p>
<p>Many initially believed that the Abu Ghraib revelations would bring a quick policy about-face. After all, torture is against the law in the United States, as well as under international law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Once awakened to the facts, could there be any question that the country’s nightmare would end promptly? Americans and their officials would wake up, shake off the bad episodes, and move on in law-abiding fashion.</p>
<p>The government, it was assumed, would back down from its violations of the law, the programs would be terminated, the perpetrators would be punished, Americans would lament the error, and chalk it all up—ruefully—to the misbehavior unleashed by the shock and fears of 9/11.</p>
<p>But these predictions—and they were widespread—proved wrong. Rather than recant, the administration, top to bottom, chose to lie, denying that “torture” in its true sense was taking place, and accusing the media and civil libertarians of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2004/05/the_rights_abu_ghraib_denial.html" type="external">exaggerating</a>. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for example, <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=43951" type="external">called</a> the accusations “isolated pockets of international hyperventilation.”</p>
<p>The administration’s <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=26516" type="external">counter-story</a> took the My Lai massacre path: there was no policy, no conspiracy to torture. The Abu Ghraib photos <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rumsfeld-worst-still-to-come/" type="external">reflected</a> a few low-level bad apples and rogue players, soldiers with anger management issues, who were understandably full of hate post-9/11 and unfortunately sexually perverse as well. They were in need of punishment, to be sure, but no one else was. And as for those memos, they were just drafts and suggestions, not accepted policy at all.</p>
<p>Chapter Three: Yet More Revelations (Don’t) Turn the Tide</p>
<p>Meanwhile, by summer’s end in 2004, four official reports on detainee treatment had already been released to the public, making it clear that Abu Ghraib represented a pattern of abuse extending elsewhere. All concluded that what had occurred there violated military code. All also concluded that, when it came to the military, <a href="https://www.aclu.org/human-rights_national-security/unredacted-church-report-documents-previously-classified" type="external">there was</a> “no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior [Pentagon] officials or military authorities.” One of them, <a href="http://www.npr.org/documents/2004/abuse/fay-jones_report.pdf" type="external">the Fay-Jones Report</a>, hinted that the problem did not lie inside the military at all. “It is clear that the interrogation practices of other government agencies led to a loss of accountability at Abu Ghraib,” it noted, adding, “This requires further investigation.”</p>
<p>Once again, however, revelations and documentation led to nothing. George Bush was decisively reelected sixth months after the first stories on Abu Ghraib broke. The shadow of torture seemed not to harm him at all and had done nothing to deter his claim to the presidency, despite the fact that <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/5257/war-terrorism.aspx#2" type="external">a Gallup poll</a> at the time of his second inauguration showed that American opposition to torture—39% in favor, 59% against—hadn’t changed significantly since the war on terror began, when a Gallup poll showed 45% in favor and 53% against.</p>
<p>The implications of reelecting a president who had presided over a policy of torture soon came further into focus. In November 2005, Washington Post reporter Dana Priest documented the existence of “ <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html" type="external">black sites</a>,” secret CIA prisons scattered in eight countries around the world. They had been set up to interrogate detainees without any fear of being bothered by the US legal system or its courts. The idea was to find convenient spots where no one would complain when those newly approved brutal techniques of interrogation were put into action by the CIA, private contractors, or in some cases foreign torturers. In other words, an offshore system of injustice for a state-sponsored policy of torture had been successfully created.</p>
<p>Chapter Four: The President Embraces the Torture Program</p>
<p>In the wake of Bush’s reelection, any pressure to change the detention and interrogation practices of the government naturally ebbed. Although late in 2004 the Justice Department revoked the original torture memos, new memos approved harsh interrogation techniques, albeit not the harshest of the earlier approved methods like waterboarding. A <a href="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/gazette/2005/12/detainee-treatment-act-of-2005-white.php" type="external">Detainee Treatment Act</a> was indeed passed in 2005, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/15/torture.bill/" type="external">introduced by John McCain</a>, but its focus was on the military, not the CIA. Worse yet, it was amended to offer <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10480690/#.U1avS16zCag" type="external">immunity</a> to personnel who had followed “lawful” interrogation procedures—that is, the ones to which the torture memos had given the go-ahead. In other words, Congress was not about to step forward and rid the country of its torture regime.</p>
<p>In September 2006, five days before the anniversary of 9/11, however, President Bush <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html" type="external">suddenly announced</a> an end to the black sites interrogation program. In this way, he admitted for the first time that an official policy of brutality in the service of interrogation had indeed existed. There was, however, little cause for rejoicing. Yes, <a href="http://www.defense.gov/news/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=721" type="external">14 “high value detainees”</a> held in black sites were moved to Guantanamo—the centerpiece of the administration’s system of offshore injustice—but only because, <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html" type="external">according to</a> the president, they held “little or no additional intelligence value.”</p>
<p>In reality, the program hadn’t come to an end and some of the black sites <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-hidden-history-of-the-cias-prison-in-poland/2014/01/23/b77f6ea2-7c6f-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html" type="external">continued</a> to be used; nor had the president actually recanted anything. In fact, he embraced the program, stepping even further into the nightmarish realm of state-sponsored torture. Without the slightest indication of remorse, he <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html" type="external">assured</a> Americans that it had been a splendid success. “I can say that questioning the detainees in this program has given us information that has saved innocent lives by helping us stop new attacks—here in the United States and across the world.”</p>
<p>To this day, evidence that this statement was true has failed to prove convincing, which is undoubtedly why the claim is always made through a veil of national security secrecy. In his speech, the president insisted that information obtained from two of the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/05/idUSN05191813" type="external">three waterboarded subjects</a>—9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Mohammed and alleged top operative Abu Zubaydah—had been crucial to identifying and preventing terrorist attacks. “This program,” he <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html" type="external">added</a>, “has been and remains one of the most vital tools in our war against the terrorists. It is invaluable to America and to our allies. Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives.”</p>
<p>Chapter Five: Impunity and Immunity</p>
<p>The proof that George Bush had not fully ended the torture program came the moment Barack Obama entered the Oval Office. On that day the new president, as his first act in office, issued an <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/EnsuringLawfulInterrogations" type="external">executive order</a> officially ending the illegal treatment of detainees for interrogation or other purposes. Henceforth, the Geneva Conventions, suspended by Bush for detainees in the war on terror, were to be restored. Torture was once again to be considered illegal. The president even <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-of-President-Barack-Obama-on-Release-of-OLC-Memos" type="external">released</a> several previously unseen <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/16/torture-memos-bush-administration" type="external">Bush-era memos</a> on torture that were more detailed when it came to enumerating abusive practices than those already on the record.</p>
<p>Once again, however, the revelations came to naught. In the Obama years, the truth has become a substitute for accountability, a subject that the Obama Justice Department refused to tackle in any meaningful way. As the president said upon release of the new memos, he was not seeking prosecution. It <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/16/torture-memos-bush-administration" type="external">was</a> to be a “time for reflection not retribution.” We <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html" type="external">were to</a> “look forward, not backward.”</p>
<p>While the Justice Department did officially investigate <a href="http://www.wired.com/2011/06/cia-exhales-99-out-of-101-torture-cases-dropped/" type="external">101</a> cases of alleged CIA torture violations, including two deaths, it found no reason to charge anyone—not those who devised the policy, not those who created the legal rationale for it, not those who lied about it, not those who carried it out, not even the CIA official who brazenly <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/04/jose-rodriguez-60-minutes-torture.html" type="external">destroyed 92 videotapes</a> of torture interrogations. In August 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder formally <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/August/12-ag-1067.html" type="external">dismissed</a> the last two cases, investigations of the deaths of two prisoners while in CIA hands. He announced the end of all investigations, and that was that. There was to be no accountability, no reckoning at all.</p>
<p>Chapter Six: The Elusive Finale</p>
<p>Despite President Obama’s aversion to addressing the legacy of torture, in <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&amp;sid=cp113Zqrb4&amp;r_n=sr007.113&amp;hd_count=50&amp;item=6&amp;&amp;sel=TOC_52049&amp;" type="external">2009</a> the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence went to work on a review of what had happened. After years of effort and a reported six million pages of documents read, it has now completed a 6,300-page report. After heated debate, Congress has <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/03/politics/senate-cia-report/" type="external">decided</a> that the report’s executive summary and conclusion should be released, though only after their subject, the CIA, has vetted them.</p>
<p>Stories about wrongdoing and injustice usually feature villains and heroes. The villains in this tale of torture—from Vice President <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/06/cia-torture-nancy-pelosi-blames-dick-cheney" type="external">Dick Cheney</a> and his legal counsel <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/03/060703fa_fact1?currentPage=all" type="external">David Addington</a> to the CIA agents who, as <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/11/224085/cias-use-of-harsh-interrogation.html" type="external">recent leaks</a> from the Senate report indicate, went beyond even the techniques okayed in the torture memos—are clear enough by now. The question is: Where are the heroes?</p>
<p>To date, no individual has taken charge of the anti-torture movement—not Senator John McCain, who was himself tortured during the Vietnam War and who has spoken out <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/us/politics/16mccain.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" type="external">repeatedly</a> against torture at American hands, or Jimmy Carter who dedicated his post-presidency to human rights, and certainly not President Obama who refused to “look back” and so protect us from a possible future with torture in it. There are, to be sure, some honorable figures who left the government with little fanfare and much remorse, taking what they knew and their shame with them. They are useless as heroes, however, for they continue to refuse to speak out.</p>
<p>The Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance policy had such a hero in then-acting Attorney General (now FBI director) James Comey, who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/politics/01spy.html?ex=1179374400&amp;en=cb8221ee6567f18f&amp;ei=5070" type="external">famously</a> faced down the Bush White House and refused to reauthorize that illegal surveillance policy. In contrast, torture has been an all-villain, all-shame event.</p>
<p>Arguably, however, a rare hero of the unlikeliest sort has emerged in these last months, someone who has refused to back down when attacked and even maligned by the CIA and other defenders of the torture policy. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/12/feinstein-doesnt-like-the-cia-spying-on-her-committee-but-shes-fine-with-nsa-bulk-data-collection/" type="external">willing</a> to sacrifice civil liberties in deference to the wishes of the national security state when it comes to surveillance, but it seems that she has drawn the line at torture and gone very public about it. She even took to <a href="http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=db84e844-01bb-4eb6-b318-31486374a895" type="external">the Senate floor</a> to denounce the CIA for its recent actions and older policies.</p>
<p>But what will happen when some redacted version of the summary of the report she has shepherded through is finally released? Will it be the beginning of the last chapter in America’s era of torture? Will there be enough of the report left to matter after it’s been vetted by the White House, the CIA, and others? Will Americans actually learn much more about the extremity of the CIA’s torture regime—about, that is, what was done in their name? Or will most of that material be left on the cutting room floor? And will it matter anyway? Will Americans even care that the torture policy was carried out knowingly in a state of utter illegality, contrary to constitutional principle, and in a way meant to evade both the American people and parts of the government?</p>
<p>Given the story so far, the odds are that “chapter six” will be no ending at all, perhaps not even the beginning of the end. The book of torture may prove to be the Game of Thrones of real world fantasies of blood and pain, a multi-volume epic and a waking nightmare extending far into the future. Despite all evidence to the contrary, many Americans are likely to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/torture-poll-2012_n_2301492.html" type="external">continue to believe</a> that brutality, torture, and rank illegality is the road to national safety. One thing is certain: as long as those who perpetrated the torture policies are considered beyond the law, there will be no safe landing for this national fall from grace that began with the revelations at Abu Ghraib.</p>
<p>Karen J. Greenberg is the Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law. A <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175812/tomgram%3A_karen_greenberg,_obama%27s_commandments/" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>, she is the editor of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521674611/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The Torture Debate in America</a> and co-editor of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521853249/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20" type="external">The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib</a>. She is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/019975411X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days</a>. Kevin Garnett, research fellow at the Center on National Security, contributed research to this article.</p>
<p>Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" type="external">Facebook</a> and <a href="http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/" type="external">Tumblr</a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Ann Jones’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars—The Untold Story</a>. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&amp;id=1e41682ade" type="external">here</a>.</p> | true | 4 | lta hrefhttpswwwflickrcomphotostruthout4603014978gttruthouorgltagtflickr story first appeared tomdispatch website mindboggling torture still grabs america one questions anymore whether cia waterboarded one individual 83 times another 186 times basic facts longer dispute either champion torture like despise idea one questions whether individuals died tortured american custody one questions national policy devised highest levels government many seems still believe torture policy politely renamed heyday enhanced interrogation program good thing country nation awaits newest chapter torture debate without idea whether close book american torture open path pain shame distant future one yet knows whether allowed awake nightmarish unacceptable world illegality obfuscation torture network offshore prisons black sites plunged us april 28th marks tenth anniversary moment horrors abu ghraib made public country day decade ago tv news magazine 60 minutes ii broadcast first photographs americanrun prison liberated iraq showed us military personnel humiliating hurting abusing iraqi prisoners myriad perverse ways american servicemen women smiled gave thumbs naked men threatened dogs hooded forced sexual positions placed standing wires attached bodies left bleeding prison floors thus began americas public odyssey torture story many chapters still missing ending abu ghraib anniversary nears white house cia various senators still battle release summary 6300page report senate intelligence committee bushera torture policies worth considering strange journey weve taken wondering nation mired legacy torture might headed chapter one revelations odyssey started shock 60 minutes ii photos followed two days later reporting veteran new yorker writer seymour hersh seen even grim photographs interviewed many chain command stretching abu ghraib joint chiefs staff pentagon hersh painted picture deliberate policy abuse traced abu ghraibs crimes pressure militaryintelligence teams included cia officers linguists interrogation specialists private defense contractors urging productionand fastof crucial information us captives iraq towards end guards abu ghraib encouraged soften detainees interrogation summer fall 2004 washington post new york times aclu others got hands several bush administration memos justifying legalizing torture largely written john yoo jay bybee lawyers office legal counsel department justice proved grim reading indeed documents provided uniquely tortured definitions torture made almost act infliction pain didnt rise level organ failure impairment bodily function even death acceptable werent enough developed less tortured theories executive power president commanderinchief retained right authorize torture national security reasons despite illegality domestic military international law anythinggoes green light switched memos proceeded expressly approve individual methods abuse previously defined torture american interrogators used combination repeatedly known destroy human psyche bring severe pain body well specifically put bush administrations stamp approval graphically described techniques including sleep deprivation slapping dangling trussed prisoners beams especially waterboarding process individuals essentially experience drowning saved last moment trail evidence went right top office defense secretary donald rumsfeld told interrogators american taliban john walker lindh take gloves vice president dick cheney famously saidit time work dark side repeatedly defended policy harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding effective essential keeping nation safetop officials reportedly various enhanced interrogation techniques demonstrated white house 2002 torture memos addressed white house counsel later attorney general alberto gonzales cia director george tenet knew rumsfeld approved use special techniques december 2002 memo impossible imagine yoos boss attorney general john ashcroft didnt know memos well given everyone else knew unlikely president george w bush left dark long protested inside family fbi director robert mueller instance knew enough forbid bureau use techniques even pulled men away cia interrogations terror suspects including one ended brutal waterboarding suspected alqaeda operative abu zubaydah 83 times colin powell fourstar general secretary state balked notion removing prisoner war protections geneva conventions alqaeda detainees purposes interrogation length detention went however protesting vigorously early 2002 memo urging president reconsider options stay within law michael chertoff head criminal division department justice future head department homeland security abruptly left meeting asked give immunity advance would use harsh interrogation techniques refused one went public told vocal dissidents came torture policy one resigned one even leaked story media protest evisceration american values constitutional legal principles involved aftermath abu ghraib revelations followed chorus wasnt torture didnt know nearly every official inside executive branch known chapter two end isnt sight many initially believed abu ghraib revelations would bring quick policy aboutface torture law united states well international law uniform code military justice awakened facts could question countrys nightmare would end promptly americans officials would wake shake bad episodes move lawabiding fashion government assumed would back violations law programs would terminated perpetrators would punished americans would lament error chalk upruefullyto misbehavior unleashed shock fears 911 predictionsand widespreadproved wrong rather recant administration top bottom chose lie denying torture true sense taking place accusing media civil libertarians exaggerating secretary defense donald rumsfeld example called accusations isolated pockets international hyperventilation administrations counterstory took lai massacre path policy conspiracy torture abu ghraib photos reflected lowlevel bad apples rogue players soldiers anger management issues understandably full hate post911 unfortunately sexually perverse well need punishment sure one else memos drafts suggestions accepted policy chapter three yet revelations dont turn tide meanwhile summers end 2004 four official reports detainee treatment already released public making clear abu ghraib represented pattern abuse extending elsewhere concluded occurred violated military code also concluded came military evidence policy abuse promulgated senior pentagon officials military authorities one fayjones report hinted problem lie inside military clear interrogation practices government agencies led loss accountability abu ghraib noted adding requires investigation however revelations documentation led nothing george bush decisively reelected sixth months first stories abu ghraib broke shadow torture seemed harm done nothing deter claim presidency despite fact gallup poll time second inauguration showed american opposition torture39 favor 59 againsthadnt changed significantly since war terror began gallup poll showed 45 favor 53 implications reelecting president presided policy torture soon came focus november 2005 washington post reporter dana priest documented existence black sites secret cia prisons scattered eight countries around world set interrogate detainees without fear bothered us legal system courts idea find convenient spots one would complain newly approved brutal techniques interrogation put action cia private contractors cases foreign torturers words offshore system injustice statesponsored policy torture successfully created chapter four president embraces torture program wake bushs reelection pressure change detention interrogation practices government naturally ebbed although late 2004 justice department revoked original torture memos new memos approved harsh interrogation techniques albeit harshest earlier approved methods like waterboarding detainee treatment act indeed passed 2005 introduced john mccain focus military cia worse yet amended offer immunity personnel followed lawful interrogation proceduresthat ones torture memos given goahead words congress step forward rid country torture regime september 2006 five days anniversary 911 however president bush suddenly announced end black sites interrogation program way admitted first time official policy brutality service interrogation indeed existed however little cause rejoicing yes 14 high value detainees held black sites moved guantanamothe centerpiece administrations system offshore injusticebut according president held little additional intelligence value reality program hadnt come end black sites continued used president actually recanted anything fact embraced program stepping even nightmarish realm statesponsored torture without slightest indication remorse assured americans splendid success say questioning detainees program given us information saved innocent lives helping us stop new attackshere united states across world day evidence statement true failed prove convincing undoubtedly claim always made veil national security secrecy speech president insisted information obtained two three waterboarded subjects911 planner khalid sheik mohammed alleged top operative abu zubaydahhad crucial identifying preventing terrorist attacks program added remains one vital tools war terrorists invaluable america allies program intelligence community believes alqaeda allies would succeeded launching another attack american homeland giving us information terrorist plans could get anywhere else program saved innocent lives chapter five impunity immunity proof george bush fully ended torture program came moment barack obama entered oval office day new president first act office issued executive order officially ending illegal treatment detainees interrogation purposes henceforth geneva conventions suspended bush detainees war terror restored torture considered illegal president even released several previously unseen bushera memos torture detailed came enumerating abusive practices already record however revelations came naught obama years truth become substitute accountability subject obama justice department refused tackle meaningful way president said upon release new memos seeking prosecution time reflection retribution look forward backward justice department officially investigate 101 cases alleged cia torture violations including two deaths found reason charge anyonenot devised policy created legal rationale lied carried even cia official brazenly destroyed 92 videotapes torture interrogations august 2012 attorney general eric holder formally dismissed last two cases investigations deaths two prisoners cia hands announced end investigations accountability reckoning chapter six elusive finale despite president obamas aversion addressing legacy torture 2009 bipartisan senate select committee intelligence went work review happened years effort reported six million pages documents read completed 6300page report heated debate congress decided reports executive summary conclusion released though subject cia vetted stories wrongdoing injustice usually feature villains heroes villains tale torturefrom vice president dick cheney legal counsel david addington cia agents recent leaks senate report indicate went beyond even techniques okayed torture memosare clear enough question heroes date individual taken charge antitorture movementnot senator john mccain tortured vietnam war spoken repeatedly torture american hands jimmy carter dedicated postpresidency human rights certainly president obama refused look back protect us possible future torture sure honorable figures left government little fanfare much remorse taking knew shame useless heroes however continue refuse speak bush administrations warrantless surveillance policy hero thenacting attorney general fbi director james comey famously faced bush white house refused reauthorize illegal surveillance policy contrast torture allvillain allshame event arguably however rare hero unlikeliest sort emerged last months someone refused back attacked even maligned cia defenders torture policy dianne feinstein chair senate intelligence committee willing sacrifice civil liberties deference wishes national security state comes surveillance seems drawn line torture gone public even took senate floor denounce cia recent actions older policies happen redacted version summary report shepherded finally released beginning last chapter americas era torture enough report left matter vetted white house cia others americans actually learn much extremity cias torture regimeabout done name material left cutting room floor matter anyway americans even care torture policy carried knowingly state utter illegality contrary constitutional principle way meant evade american people parts government given story far odds chapter six ending perhaps even beginning end book torture may prove game thrones real world fantasies blood pain multivolume epic waking nightmare extending far future despite evidence contrary many americans likely continue believe brutality torture rank illegality road national safety one thing certain long perpetrated torture policies considered beyond law safe landing national fall grace began revelations abu ghraib karen j greenberg director center national security fordham law tomdispatch regular editor torture debate america coeditor torture papers road abu ghraib author least worst place guantanamos first 100 days kevin garnett research fellow center national security contributed research article follow tomdispatch twitter join us facebook tumblr check newest dispatch book ann joness soldiers wounded return americas warsthe untold story stay top important articles like sign receive latest updates tomdispatchcom | 1,789 |
<p>“Poems from the Pond: 107 Years of Words and Wisdom—The Writings of Peggy Freydberg” A book edited by Laurie David</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The following two poems by Peggy Freydberg were reprinted with permission from “Poems from the Pond.” All net profits go to the Margaret Howe Freydberg Scholarship Fund.</p>
<p>Poems from the Pond: 107 Years of Words and Wisdom—The Writings of Peggy Freydberg Purchase in the Truthdig Bazaar</p>
<p />
<p>“The Swimming Lesson”</p>
<p>“There’s the little family,” I cried. He came to stand beside me, watching the splendid slow progress on the pond, this calm clear summer morning, of a flotilla of wild geese – the goose, the gander, and their seven goslings.</p>
<p>Propelled invisibly by busy feet beneath the surface of the water, They seem as stationary, and as one-dimensional as a toy of wooden birds strung on a knotted cord. One only knows they move because behind the line of them, A V-shaped wake appears, And slowly widens.</p>
<p>We stand, This man and I, So old, So near our endings, Watching The miniature and mighty convoy Moving in a line as straight as though a ruler had underscored it— The great, unerring, long-necked gander leading, The seven goslings, way below him, following, Each space between obedient baby birds, not by a fraction different, And bringing up the rear, In queenly and impeccable positioning, The goose who hatched and laid The seven golden eggs, Gliding in serene pride of it.</p>
<p>If I were a goslin, I thought, I would never have to doubt my trust in those two parents, who fly free and wild, and mate for life, and who conduct their lives, and guard their nests, with a nobility I ascribe to them because their behavior is my definition of it.</p>
<p>I have a sudden recognition of why it is that he, and I, are standing here. I may have always known, in languageless recesses of myself, about the primal and perfected craft of the guiding, and the guarding, of existence. But today, with wondrous grasping, I see, in a goose, a gander, and their seven goslings, a stately demonstration of First Purpose, wearing its eternal smile.</p>
<p>We stand together, he and I, so old, so near our endings, and watch, with wonder, and with wanting, the pure and sure beginnings of seven goslings being taught to swim in a straight line.</p>
<p>“What I Always Wanted to Be Is Bare”</p>
<p>I am sitting on the steps of a small, empty old farm house, under a lilac bush as high as the roof.</p>
<p>You are sitting against a tree a few feet away.</p>
<p>Here is an essential bareness, a small entirely empty house— two rooms, a lilac bush, a hill sloping down from the front stoop to the valley.</p>
<p>Be with me in this bareness. We need to be what we are— two empty rooms of an old house and a lilac bush— your lost bareness, and mine</p>
<p>Fear of bareness bought the Ferrari in the three car garage of the house we built thirty years ago with Fortuny draperies hanging along the pitted lavender window panes bought at auction and installed in the dining room paneled with dark wood found in an old house in Connecticut.</p>
<p>Fear of bareness bought the Ferrari and the Fortuny draperies and the wines of the right year.</p>
<p>What covers our souls is the silk wallpaper. What keeps us strangers is what we think we need. When what we need is only the bareness of ourselves. Only two ancient rooms grateful for being empty, and an ancient lilac bush giving out sweetness.</p>
<p>I have always wanted to say only three words to you: You. Me. Us. No one of them adjective beyond its essentiality. Only you, and me, and us, bare as the day we were born. I have always wanted us, bare on a composted forest floor— the essential bed.</p>
<p>I sit on the stoop, for a moment knowing bareness absolutely. You sit against a tree, looking away toward the valley, planning how much you will offer Taggert for the house. There is a part of you that wants to buy its bareness.</p>
<p>I always wanted, more than silk wallpaper, bareness. And I have lived all my life covered up and trying to be bare. I have lived all the years of my life with you, wanting you to be bare, so that I could be.</p>
<p>Maybe bareness is not what you needed from me. Maybe you needed the smooth neck that warmed the string of sixty pearls you gave me for my sixtieth birthday? And when the smoothness began to sink into folds, you were no longer glad for pearls, for I was now bare and could not be adorned?</p>
<p>Bareness—beneath the young skin and beneath the old skin— did you ever want either?</p>
<p>I mean, did you ever want me? Or only me, covered/ Because to want me bare, you would have to be bare.</p>
<p>But I have gotten to need to be covered. And so have you. Our ancient bareness, yours and mine, is a communion that can never be.</p>
<p>The world nearly always covers bareness.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>In turbulent times, poetry offers a sense of connection, a deeper understanding of living. This holds true for poems that are overtly political or excitingly abstract, and also for poems that are quietly honest, about small detail. I’m aware that certain poems I’m not very thrilled about speak to somebody — and some that I love, other people don’t care for. That’s fine. Lord knows I seem to be the only human on the planet who doesn’t love YouTube kittens.</p>
<p>My sentiments about kitten memes probably prove that I am a dark cloud of doom unable to take part in the joy of humanity. Be that as it may, I like poetry. Sometimes I even read cheerful poems. Occasionally, even cheerful cat poems.</p>
<p>What I find discouraging are poems wrapped in unnecessary frou-frou. Poetry shouldn’t be served up like cod liver oil for unhealthy times, but it also doesn’t need to be packaged like expensive chocolate. I like a beautiful book as much as the next person; I have littered my personal world with objects that I find lovely. But hagiography isn’t what poetry needs. It sure as hell gets in the way of art.</p>
<p>This is my great frustration in reading “Poems from the Pond: 107 Years of Words and Wisdom — The Writings of Peggy Freydberg.” So far as I can tell, author Peggy Freydberg was not a saint. She was a flawed, interesting woman who lived a very long life. She loved her family and her cats, but she also studied herself intensely, her reactions to the outside world and the emotional internal one. She wrote a couple of very good poems, which is as much as any poet can hope for. And Freydberg was lucky. She had 107 years of life to work with, and on, her writing, and she curated the details of her life carefully:</p>
<p>I like to think it matters to the lilac that its evolutionary purpose is to tease me</p>
<p>But her sharp sense of humor and observation are at odds with this book’s presentation. Her poetry is undercut by the reverence that oozes from the expensive production values. Design is not what makes me want to read a poem, no matter how the ribbons are wrapped or how the sacred smoke wafts toward me. Freydberg doesn’t need these things. If anything, the cloud of worship gets in the way.</p>
<p>For example, why did the editor choose the self-conscious typewriter font? Fonts are always tricky — Comic Sans, anyone? — so why space the poems out as if they need to be framed elaborately for us to notice them? Let the poems be read, and stop fussing. Also, as readers, are we incapable of appreciating Freydberg’s words without random lushly colorful photographs? My attention is distracted by the fact that, following a poem about geese, there is a photograph of a heron. Is that intentional? I assume not, but then, further on, there’s a photo that seems to be a sunset, illustrating a poem about sunrise.</p>
<p>I put the book down on the coffee table and flee the living room.</p>
<p>After a few hours, I edge back into the room, prepared to get over the design and just read the darn poems. The various introductions and memories about Freydberg weigh me down, but I struggle bravely on. I get briefly tangled up with a white wedding album ribbon, attached as a bookmark. Fine, I tell the book, I get it, you are Important, Valuable, a Good Gift Item for Troubled Times. I’m surprised I am so emotional about a white satin ribbon.</p>
<p>I make myself a cup of tea and sit down in another attempt to read the book.</p>
<p>The problem with my concentration, in case I’m not being clear, has really nothing to do with Peggy Freydberg or her poems. It’s that this book feels more like an album at the author’s memorial service.</p>
<p>The book includes a letter Freydberg wrote to Richard Reston at The Vineyard Gazette, hoping to interest him in one of her poems. There is something peculiar about the letter’s placement in the middle of her poetry — what is it doing here? Perhaps the idea is that Freydberg was a homey amateur, charmingly unprofessional. Yet its placement somehow implies that ambition in an elderly woman is inappropriate. Unwomanly, perhaps.</p>
<p>I don’t think Peggy Freydberg thought ambition in an aging female poet was inappropriate. Freydberg was professionally ambitious and she had six books published within her lifetime, including memoir, fiction and poetry.</p>
<p>I have a glitter of a life, genuine in endeavor to survive alone, scrupulous in undertaking “successful” in the eyes of all who marvel at nonagenarian accomplishment.</p>
<p>She is well aware of those quotation marks around her success, and I don’t blame her for being aggravated.</p>
<p>This morning, determined to emulate one of Freydberg’s suggestions, I came back into the living room and tried to find a lighter heart. I don’t know if I will ever exactly approve of this book. I judge it by its appearance — which is wrong of me, I know. Chocolates are delightful when wrapped like expensive lingerie, in layers of pink tissue paper and ribbon. Shouldn’t I rejoice in similar care given to poetry? Curmudgeonly, no. I want the poem printed on a page so I can read it. I like book covers well enough, but should the quality of the paper really affect my reading of these poems? Obviously it has. The ribbon has stuck in my mind more than Freydberg’s words. What I’ve ended up reviewing is the physicality of the book itself. The fabric of the hard cover is very tasteful, a textured sailcloth. Rather like a sofa I had years ago, when we couldn’t afford a new one and we repurposed some beige canvas as slipcovers.</p>
<p>I’d prefer to stick with Freydberg, who wrote in her memoir: “…what I really craved was to be recognized not primarily for my appearance but profoundly and longingly, even pathetically, for something in me that knew better — my mind, my true spirit, my integrity.”</p>
<p>Because the woman was funny: “I sharpen pencils with an out-damn-spot intensity.” And even in extreme old age, she was restless: “To sit, / and wait, / for all those satisfactions / that always fail to satisfy.” A bit like this book, unfortunately. All the signifiers get in its way and weigh down Freyberg’s authentic, accessible, personal voice. And for that, I am sorry.</p> | true | 4 | poems pond 107 years words wisdomthe writings peggy freydberg book edited laurie david 160 following two poems peggy freydberg reprinted permission poems pond net profits go margaret howe freydberg scholarship fund poems pond 107 years words wisdomthe writings peggy freydberg purchase truthdig bazaar swimming lesson theres little family cried came stand beside watching splendid slow progress pond calm clear summer morning flotilla wild geese goose gander seven goslings propelled invisibly busy feet beneath surface water seem stationary onedimensional toy wooden birds strung knotted cord one knows move behind line vshaped wake appears slowly widens stand man old near endings watching miniature mighty convoy moving line straight though ruler underscored great unerring longnecked gander leading seven goslings way following space obedient baby birds fraction different bringing rear queenly impeccable positioning goose hatched laid seven golden eggs gliding serene pride goslin thought would never doubt trust two parents fly free wild mate life conduct lives guard nests nobility ascribe behavior definition sudden recognition standing may always known languageless recesses primal perfected craft guiding guarding existence today wondrous grasping see goose gander seven goslings stately demonstration first purpose wearing eternal smile stand together old near endings watch wonder wanting pure sure beginnings seven goslings taught swim straight line always wanted bare sitting steps small empty old farm house lilac bush high roof sitting tree feet away essential bareness small entirely empty house two rooms lilac bush hill sloping front stoop valley bareness need two empty rooms old house lilac bush lost bareness mine fear bareness bought ferrari three car garage house built thirty years ago fortuny draperies hanging along pitted lavender window panes bought auction installed dining room paneled dark wood found old house connecticut fear bareness bought ferrari fortuny draperies wines right year covers souls silk wallpaper keeps us strangers think need need bareness two ancient rooms grateful empty ancient lilac bush giving sweetness always wanted say three words us one adjective beyond essentiality us bare day born always wanted us bare composted forest floor essential bed sit stoop moment knowing bareness absolutely sit tree looking away toward valley planning much offer taggert house part wants buy bareness always wanted silk wallpaper bareness lived life covered trying bare lived years life wanting bare could maybe bareness needed maybe needed smooth neck warmed string sixty pearls gave sixtieth birthday smoothness began sink folds longer glad pearls bare could adorned barenessbeneath young skin beneath old skin ever want either mean ever want covered want bare would bare gotten need covered ancient bareness mine communion never world nearly always covers bareness turbulent times poetry offers sense connection deeper understanding living holds true poems overtly political excitingly abstract also poems quietly honest small detail im aware certain poems im thrilled speak somebody love people dont care thats fine lord knows seem human planet doesnt love youtube kittens sentiments kitten memes probably prove dark cloud doom unable take part joy humanity may like poetry sometimes even read cheerful poems occasionally even cheerful cat poems find discouraging poems wrapped unnecessary froufrou poetry shouldnt served like cod liver oil unhealthy times also doesnt need packaged like expensive chocolate like beautiful book much next person littered personal world objects find lovely hagiography isnt poetry needs sure hell gets way art great frustration reading poems pond 107 years words wisdom writings peggy freydberg far tell author peggy freydberg saint flawed interesting woman lived long life loved family cats also studied intensely reactions outside world emotional internal one wrote couple good poems much poet hope freydberg lucky 107 years life work writing curated details life carefully like think matters lilac evolutionary purpose tease sharp sense humor observation odds books presentation poetry undercut reverence oozes expensive production values design makes want read poem matter ribbons wrapped sacred smoke wafts toward freydberg doesnt need things anything cloud worship gets way example editor choose selfconscious typewriter font fonts always tricky comic sans anyone space poems need framed elaborately us notice let poems read stop fussing also readers incapable appreciating freydbergs words without random lushly colorful photographs attention distracted fact following poem geese photograph heron intentional assume theres photo seems sunset illustrating poem sunrise put book coffee table flee living room hours edge back room prepared get design read darn poems various introductions memories freydberg weigh struggle bravely get briefly tangled white wedding album ribbon attached bookmark fine tell book get important valuable good gift item troubled times im surprised emotional white satin ribbon make cup tea sit another attempt read book problem concentration case im clear really nothing peggy freydberg poems book feels like album authors memorial service book includes letter freydberg wrote richard reston vineyard gazette hoping interest one poems something peculiar letters placement middle poetry perhaps idea freydberg homey amateur charmingly unprofessional yet placement somehow implies ambition elderly woman inappropriate unwomanly perhaps dont think peggy freydberg thought ambition aging female poet inappropriate freydberg professionally ambitious six books published within lifetime including memoir fiction poetry glitter life genuine endeavor survive alone scrupulous undertaking successful eyes marvel nonagenarian accomplishment well aware quotation marks around success dont blame aggravated morning determined emulate one freydbergs suggestions came back living room tried find lighter heart dont know ever exactly approve book judge appearance wrong know chocolates delightful wrapped like expensive lingerie layers pink tissue paper ribbon shouldnt rejoice similar care given poetry curmudgeonly want poem printed page read like book covers well enough quality paper really affect reading poems obviously ribbon stuck mind freydbergs words ive ended reviewing physicality book fabric hard cover tasteful textured sailcloth rather like sofa years ago couldnt afford new one repurposed beige canvas slipcovers id prefer stick freydberg wrote memoir really craved recognized primarily appearance profoundly longingly even pathetically something knew better mind true spirit integrity woman funny sharpen pencils outdamnspot intensity even extreme old age restless sit wait satisfactions always fail satisfy bit like book unfortunately signifiers get way weigh freybergs authentic accessible personal voice sorry | 984 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Bruno Guigue <a href="http://arretsurinfo.ch/lettre-ouverte-aux-charlatans-de-la-revolution-syrienne-par-bruno-guigue/" type="external">Arret Sur Info</a></p>
<p>Following the death of a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/13/hezbollah-commander-killed-israel-mustafa-badreddine" type="external">prominent leader</a> of the Arab-Lebanese resistance, murdered by the Zionist forces while on Syrian soil, I address this open letter to all left-wing&#160; intellectuals and activists who have aligned themselves with the Syrian “revolution” and believe that by dreaming of the fall of Damascus, they are defending the Palestinian cause.</p>
<p>In the spring of 2011, you were telling us that the Arab revolutions represented an unprecedented hope for the peoples living under oppressive, bloodthirsty tyrants.&#160; Our excessive optimism persuaded us to listen to your arguments for this miraculously flourishing democracy and your proclamations on the universal human rights.</p>
<p>You almost persuaded us that these popular uprisings deposing the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators were going to universally sweep tyranny from the arab world, in Libya as in Syria, in Yemen as in Bahrain and who knows where else.</p>
<p>However the flaws in this evolving narrative began to reveal themselves. The first glaring flaw appeared in Libya. A UN resolution, adopted by the Security Council to ostensibly save endangered civilians, transformed itself into a blank cheque for the military removal of a head of state that had become undesirable for his western partner states. This “regime change” operation can be considered one of the worst moments of the neo-conservative era, accomplished on behalf of the US by two powerful European nations in search of neo-imperialist influence, it precipitated a disaster for which Libya is still paying the price.&#160; The collapse of this unitary state in its infancy delivered the country into the hands of the tribes &amp; factions whose unbridled ambitions were driven by oil lusting western scavengers.</p>
<p><a href="https://cruziest.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/nato-bombings-and-rebel-heavy-artillery-the-devastation-of-libyan-civilian-infrastructure/" type="external">Sirte, Libya</a></p>
<p>Despite this, the “good souls” among you managed to find “extenuating circumstances” for this operation thus justifying the demands for a similar fate for the government in Damascus. Consequently, the winds of revolution that were blowing in Syria seemed to validate your interpretation of events and retrospectively provided a rationale for the humanitarian warmongering unleashed against the Tripoli potentate.</p>
<p>However, far from the mainstream media arena, certain analysts observed that the Syrian people were not unanimous.&#160; The anti-government protests arose in certain towns, traditional bastions of the Islamist opposition and these feverish protests by those impoverished by the financial crisis did not present any real threat to the government in Damascus.</p>
<p>You chose to ignore these rational, logical warning signs.&#160; Simply because these facts did not correspond with your narration of events, you extracted only that which suited your interpretation. Where these objective observers saw a polarisation of Syrian society, you only wanted to see a bloody tyrant assassinating his people. Where a dispassionate view would have allowed you to discern the weaknesses but also the strengths of the Syrian state, you deployed a self righteous rhetoric to bring to trial a government that is not the only perpertrator of violence inside Syria.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Tens of thousands march in support of the Syrian Government. Photo: Bassem Tellawi AP</a> You saw many protests against Bashar Al Assad yet you failed to see the overwhelming marches in support of the government and the proposed reforms, these marches filled the streets of Damascus, Aleppo and Tartous but you didn’t see them. You have highlighted the macabre accounts of the government victims but failed to report those of the victims of the armed opposition. In your eyes, there are good and bad victims. There are victims that you talk about and those you don’t want to hear about. You have deliberately chosen to see one side and ignore the other.</p>
<p>At the same time, the French government, whose domestic policies you openly criticize to maintain the illusion of independence, has entirely supported your narrative. Curiously, your narrative coincides perfectly with that of French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, the master of servility, combining unconditional support for the Israeli war against the Palestinians with a Pavlovian alignment with the US leadership and hostility towards Arab resistance.&#160; You seem unperturbed by your apparent marriage to the French Foreign Office.</p>
<p>You were defending the Palestinians while dining with their assassins behind their backs. You even accompanied french state officials on a visit to the State of Israel. You are willing accomplices to a French President who has declared that he will ” always support the Israeli leaders”.&#160; It seems that was not enough to scandalise you and you still joined everyone else who boarded the plane with the President.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016/05/15/netanyahu-slams-hollande-for-supporting-shameful-unesco-resolution-denying-jewish-ties-in-jerusalem/" type="external">Netanyahu with Hollande.&#160; Photo: AFP</a></p>
<p>You correctly condemned US military intervention in Iraq in 2003. You were left “cold” by the carpet bombing for democracy and you doubted the educational value of surgical strikes. However, your indignation at such “high tech” gunboat diplomacy seems bizarrely selective. Now you justify the hue and cry against Damascus that you found intolerable 10 years earlier, against Baghdad.&#160; A decade has sufficed to render you so malleable that you envisage the salvation of the Syrian people to be a rain of cruise missiles targeting a country that has done nothing to harm you.</p>
<p>You have denied your anti-imperialist convictions to be enthusiastically wedded to the Washington agenda. Shamelessly, not only were you applauding the B52s but you upheld the most grotesque US propaganda, when you should have been immunised against it by the Iraqi precedent and the unforgettable lies from the Bush era.</p>
<p><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall/?_r=0" type="external">Bush addressing 25,000 military 2005</a></p>
<p>While you were inundating the French press with your inaccuracy, an outstanding American investigative journalist tore the pitiful chemical weapons “false flag” to shreds. A false flag destined to pin responsibility for a chemical attack onto Bashar Al Assad despite no international organisation supporting these accusations.&#160; The experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons even went so far as to accuse the opposition of carrying out the attacks.</p>
<p>Ignoring facts and concealing them where necessary you played your miserable part in this orchestra of lies. Even worse, you continue to do so. Even Obama had said he didnt believe it, but you persisted in regurgitating your lies like guard dogs that bark long after the intruder has escaped. To what aim? To justify the bombing, by your own government, of a small sovereign state, whose greatest crime was to resist the imperialist order. To come to the aid of a&#160; Syrian “revolution” whose true face you have hidden behind a mask, perpetuating the myth of a moderate, democratic opposition that, in reality,&#160; exists only in the meeting rooms of luxury hotels in Doha, Paris or Ankara.</p>
<p>You have therefore exalted this “Syrian revolution” but have turned a blind eye to its mafia practices, its sectarian ideology and its troubling and dubious funding. You have painstakingly obscured the interfaith hatred that inspires this morbid aversion to other faiths, a hatred held in place by the Wahhabi ideological cement.</p>
<p>You knew that the secular Baathist government acted as a life insurance for all minorities inside Syria but you persisted in discrediting and ridiculing those who came to the defence of the persecuted Christian communities. But thats not all.&#160; On the day of reckoning there remains one ultimate ignominy: you have endorsed the politics of Laurent Fabius who has declared that Al Nusra, Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, is “doing a good job”.&#160; No compassion for the mutilated civilians on the streets of Homs or the Alawites of Zahra massacred by the “rebels”, in your view these human beings have no significance.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/13/hezbollah-commander-killed-israel-mustafa-badreddine" type="external">Mustafa Badreddine</a></p>
<p>Between 2011 and 2016, the masks have fallen. You refer to the international law but you applaud its violation against a Sovereign State. You pretend to promote democracy for the Syrians but you are the harbingers of the terrorism that is prolonging their suffering. You say you defend the Palestinians but you are on the same side as Israel. When a Zionist missile is launched at Syria, don’t worry, it will never harm your friends. Thanks to Israel, thanks to the CIA, and thanks to you, these courageous “rebels” will continue to work towards a “brighter” future for Syria under the Takfiri banner.&#160; The Zionist missile will, in fact, kill one of the leaders of the Arab resistance that you have cynically betrayed.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Translation by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/vanessa.beeley" type="external">Vanessa Beeley</a> for 21st Century Wire.</p>
<p><a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Guigue" type="external">Bruno Guigue</a> is a French author and political analyst born in Toulouse 1962. Professor of philosophy and lecturer in international relations for highter education. The author of 5 books including&#160; Aux origines du conflit Israélo-Arabe, l’invisible remords de l’Occident (L’Harmattan, 2002).</p>
<p>READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Syria Files</a></p> | true | 4 | bruno guigue arret sur info following death prominent leader arablebanese resistance murdered zionist forces syrian soil address open letter leftwing160 intellectuals activists aligned syrian revolution believe dreaming fall damascus defending palestinian cause spring 2011 telling us arab revolutions represented unprecedented hope peoples living oppressive bloodthirsty tyrants160 excessive optimism persuaded us listen arguments miraculously flourishing democracy proclamations universal human rights almost persuaded us popular uprisings deposing tunisian egyptian dictators going universally sweep tyranny arab world libya syria yemen bahrain knows else however flaws evolving narrative began reveal first glaring flaw appeared libya un resolution adopted security council ostensibly save endangered civilians transformed blank cheque military removal head state become undesirable western partner states regime change operation considered one worst moments neoconservative era accomplished behalf us two powerful european nations search neoimperialist influence precipitated disaster libya still paying price160 collapse unitary state infancy delivered country hands tribes amp factions whose unbridled ambitions driven oil lusting western scavengers sirte libya despite good souls among managed find extenuating circumstances operation thus justifying demands similar fate government damascus consequently winds revolution blowing syria seemed validate interpretation events retrospectively provided rationale humanitarian warmongering unleashed tripoli potentate however far mainstream media arena certain analysts observed syrian people unanimous160 antigovernment protests arose certain towns traditional bastions islamist opposition feverish protests impoverished financial crisis present real threat government damascus chose ignore rational logical warning signs160 simply facts correspond narration events extracted suited interpretation objective observers saw polarisation syrian society wanted see bloody tyrant assassinating people dispassionate view would allowed discern weaknesses also strengths syrian state deployed self righteous rhetoric bring trial government perpertrator violence inside syria tens thousands march support syrian government photo bassem tellawi ap saw many protests bashar al assad yet failed see overwhelming marches support government proposed reforms marches filled streets damascus aleppo tartous didnt see highlighted macabre accounts government victims failed report victims armed opposition eyes good bad victims victims talk dont want hear deliberately chosen see one side ignore time french government whose domestic policies openly criticize maintain illusion independence entirely supported narrative curiously narrative coincides perfectly french foreign minister laurent fabius master servility combining unconditional support israeli war palestinians pavlovian alignment us leadership hostility towards arab resistance160 seem unperturbed apparent marriage french foreign office defending palestinians dining assassins behind backs even accompanied french state officials visit state israel willing accomplices french president declared always support israeli leaders160 seems enough scandalise still joined everyone else boarded plane president netanyahu hollande160 photo afp correctly condemned us military intervention iraq 2003 left cold carpet bombing democracy doubted educational value surgical strikes however indignation high tech gunboat diplomacy seems bizarrely selective justify hue cry damascus found intolerable 10 years earlier baghdad160 decade sufficed render malleable envisage salvation syrian people rain cruise missiles targeting country done nothing harm denied antiimperialist convictions enthusiastically wedded washington agenda shamelessly applauding b52s upheld grotesque us propaganda immunised iraqi precedent unforgettable lies bush era bush addressing 25000 military 2005 inundating french press inaccuracy outstanding american investigative journalist tore pitiful chemical weapons false flag shreds false flag destined pin responsibility chemical attack onto bashar al assad despite international organisation supporting accusations160 experts massachusetts institute technology organisation prohibition chemical weapons even went far accuse opposition carrying attacks ignoring facts concealing necessary played miserable part orchestra lies even worse continue even obama said didnt believe persisted regurgitating lies like guard dogs bark long intruder escaped aim justify bombing government small sovereign state whose greatest crime resist imperialist order come aid a160 syrian revolution whose true face hidden behind mask perpetuating myth moderate democratic opposition reality160 exists meeting rooms luxury hotels doha paris ankara therefore exalted syrian revolution turned blind eye mafia practices sectarian ideology troubling dubious funding painstakingly obscured interfaith hatred inspires morbid aversion faiths hatred held place wahhabi ideological cement knew secular baathist government acted life insurance minorities inside syria persisted discrediting ridiculing came defence persecuted christian communities thats all160 day reckoning remains one ultimate ignominy endorsed politics laurent fabius declared al nusra syrian branch al qaeda good job160 compassion mutilated civilians streets homs alawites zahra massacred rebels view human beings significance mustafa badreddine 2011 2016 masks fallen refer international law applaud violation sovereign state pretend promote democracy syrians harbingers terrorism prolonging suffering say defend palestinians side israel zionist missile launched syria dont worry never harm friends thanks israel thanks cia thanks courageous rebels continue work towards brighter future syria takfiri banner160 zionist missile fact kill one leaders arab resistance cynically betrayed translation vanessa beeley 21st century wire bruno guigue french author political analyst born toulouse 1962 professor philosophy lecturer international relations highter education author 5 books including160 aux origines du conflit israéloarabe linvisible remords de loccident lharmattan 2002 read syria news 21st century wire syria files | 782 |
<p>“People say that Australia has given two people to the world,” Julian Assange told me in London recently, “Rupert Murdoch and me.” Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, was humbly dismissing my introduction of him, to a crowd of 1,800 at East London’s Troxy theater, in which I suggested he had published perhaps more than anyone in the world. He said Murdoch took that publishing prize.</p>
<p>Two days later, the Milly Dowler phone hacking story exploded, and Murdoch would close one of the largest newspapers in the world, his News of the World, within a week.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Murdoch claimed before the British House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport that it was his “most humble day.” But what does it mean for a man with no humility to suffer his most humble day? The principal takeaway from the committee hearing must be, simply, that Rupert Murdoch is not responsible for the criminal activities under investigation, from police bribery to phone hacking. When asked if he was ultimately responsible, his answer was simple: “No.” Who was? “The people I trusted to run it and maybe the people they trusted.”</p>
<p>The monosyllabic denials stood in stark juxtaposition to his rhetorically nimble son, James Murdoch. Frequently reminding the committee that he was not present at News of the World during the dark days of hacking and bribing, James used more words to say essentially the same thing: I know nothing.</p>
<p />
<p>The performance, for now, seems to have worked. No, the buck doesn’t stop with Rupert Murdoch, but the money sure rolls in nicely. News Corp.’s stock price inched up throughout the day. The Murdochs’ apparent success in the hearing might be attributed to the stone-faced lawyer sitting directly behind James throughout: News Corp. Executive Vice President Joel Klein.</p>
<p>Klein is a new addition to the executive stable at Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, hired, according to a News Corp. press release, as “a senior adviser to Mr. Murdoch on a wide range of initiatives, including developing business strategies for the emerging educational marketplace.” Klein formerly was deputy White House counsel to President Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>More lately, and more likely germane to his hiring by Murdoch, was Klein’s tenure as chancellor of New York City schools, the largest school system in the U.S., serving more than 1.1 million students in more than 1,600 schools. Klein, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, undertook controversial restructuring of the school system. My colleague at the “Democracy Now!” news hour, Juan Gonzalez, who is a columnist at the New York Daily News (the main competitor to Murdoch’s New York Post), consistently documented Klein’s failures as chancellor, reporting on “countless parents and teachers who long ago grew weary of his autocratic and disrespectful style.” Klein’s attempt to shutter 19 schools in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods was reversed by the New York State Supreme Court. Claims of improved performance on standardized tests made under Klein’s direction were shown to be based on inflated scores.</p>
<p>Less than two weeks after his hire was announced, News Corp. bought a privately held company, Wireless Generation. Murdoch said of the $360 million purchase, “When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone.”</p>
<p>Which is why one of the leading education tweeters, Leonie Haimson, a New York public-school parent and executive director of Class Size Matters, is concerned. She told me: “With all the allegations about phone hacking, etc., we really have concerns about the privacy of New York state students. And secondly, we don’t want to open up the public coffers wide for the Murdoch companies to make money off of our kids.”</p>
<p>New York City public schools have already granted the company a $2.7 million contract, and the New York State Education Department is close to granting Wireless Generation a $27 million no-bid contract.</p>
<p>News Corp. has announced the formation of a Management and Standards Committee that will answer directly to Klein. Klein, who sits on the News Corp. board of directors, will report to fellow board member and former fellow Justice Department attorney Viet Dinh. Dinh was assistant attorney general under George W. Bush and a principal author of the USA Patriot Act, the law that, among other things, prompted an unprecedented expansion of government eavesdropping. According to recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Dinh and other directors lined up on July 3 to sell off stock options, with Dinh netting about $25,000, just as the scandal broke.</p>
<p>News Corp. is far from a news corpse, though the term is sadly relevant, with the initial exposé of News of the World’s grotesque hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler’s voice mail, giving false hope to her family that she was alive. The FBI is now investigating whether Murdoch papers tried to profit from hacking into the voice mails of victims of the 9/11 attacks. U.S. journalists must now dig into News Corp.’s operations here, to expose not only potential criminality, but also the threat to democracy posed by unbridled media conglomerates like the Murdoch empire. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.</p>
<p>Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.</p>
<p>© 2011 Amy Goodman</p>
<p>Distributed by King Features Syndicate</p> | true | 4 | people say australia given two people world julian assange told london recently rupert murdoch assange founder whistleblowing website wikileaks humbly dismissing introduction crowd 1800 east londons troxy theater suggested published perhaps anyone world said murdoch took publishing prize two days later milly dowler phone hacking story exploded murdoch would close one largest newspapers world news world within week tuesday murdoch claimed british house commons select committee culture media sport humble day mean man humility suffer humble day principal takeaway committee hearing must simply rupert murdoch responsible criminal activities investigation police bribery phone hacking asked ultimately responsible answer simple people trusted run maybe people trusted monosyllabic denials stood stark juxtaposition rhetorically nimble son james murdoch frequently reminding committee present news world dark days hacking bribing james used words say essentially thing know nothing performance seems worked buck doesnt stop rupert murdoch money sure rolls nicely news corps stock price inched throughout day murdochs apparent success hearing might attributed stonefaced lawyer sitting directly behind james throughout news corp executive vice president joel klein klein new addition executive stable rupert murdochs media empire hired according news corp press release senior adviser mr murdoch wide range initiatives including developing business strategies emerging educational marketplace klein formerly deputy white house counsel president bill clinton lately likely germane hiring murdoch kleins tenure chancellor new york city schools largest school system us serving 11 million students 1600 schools klein mayor michael bloomberg undertook controversial restructuring school system colleague democracy news hour juan gonzalez columnist new york daily news main competitor murdochs new york post consistently documented kleins failures chancellor reporting countless parents teachers long ago grew weary autocratic disrespectful style kleins attempt shutter 19 schools citys poorest neighborhoods reversed new york state supreme court claims improved performance standardized tests made kleins direction shown based inflated scores less two weeks hire announced news corp bought privately held company wireless generation murdoch said 360 million purchase comes k 12 education see 500 billion sector us alone one leading education tweeters leonie haimson new york publicschool parent executive director class size matters concerned told allegations phone hacking etc really concerns privacy new york state students secondly dont want open public coffers wide murdoch companies make money kids new york city public schools already granted company 27 million contract new york state education department close granting wireless generation 27 million nobid contract news corp announced formation management standards committee answer directly klein klein sits news corp board directors report fellow board member former fellow justice department attorney viet dinh dinh assistant attorney general george w bush principal author usa patriot act law among things prompted unprecedented expansion government eavesdropping according recent securities exchange commission filings dinh directors lined july 3 sell stock options dinh netting 25000 scandal broke news corp far news corpse though term sadly relevant initial exposé news worlds grotesque hacking murder victim milly dowlers voice mail giving false hope family alive fbi investigating whether murdoch papers tried profit hacking voice mails victims 911 attacks us journalists must dig news corps operations expose potential criminality also threat democracy posed unbridled media conglomerates like murdoch empire denis moynihan contributed research column amy goodman host democracy daily international tvradio news hour airing 900 stations north america author breaking sound barrier recently released paperback new york times bestseller 2011 amy goodman distributed king features syndicate | 553 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>A few days after Lebanon’s latest war came to an end, I went through many of the reporter’s notebooks I have used in my last 30 years in the Middle East. Some contained the names of dead colleagues, others the individual stories of the suffering of Arabs and Kurds and Christians and Jews. One, dated 1991, is even splashed with a dark and viscous substance, the oil that came raining down on us from the skies over the Kuwaiti desert after Saddam blew up the wells of the Emirate. It was only after a few minutes that I realised what I was looking for: some hint, back in the days of dangerous innocence, of what was going to happen on 11 September 2001.</p>
<p>And sure enough, in one notebook, part of a transcript of an interview I gave in Toronto in the late 1990s, I see myself trying to discourage the Middle East optimism of my host. “There is an explosion coming in the Middle East,” I tell him. What was this explosion I was talking about? I find myself writing almost the same thing a couple of years later in The Independent–I refer to “the explosion to come” without locating it in the Middle East at all. What was I talking about? And then, most disturbingly, I re-run parts of a film series I made with the late Michael Dutfield for Channel 4 and Discovery in 1993. Called From Beirut to Bosnia, it was billed as an attempt to record “Muslims growing anger towards the West.”</p>
<p>In one sequence, I walk into a destroyed mosque in a Bosnian village called Cela. And I hear my voice on the soundtrack, saying: “When I see things like this, I think of the place I work, the Middle East… I wonder what the Muslim world has in store for us… Maybe I should end each of my reports with the words: ‘Watch out!’ ” And when I checked back to my post-production notes, I find the dates of all our film sequences listed. I had walked into that Bosnian mosque, watched by Serb policemen, on 11 September 1993. My warning was exactly eight years too early.</p>
<p>I don’t like journalists who, in middle age, start to pontificate morbidly about the wickedness of a world that should be full of love, or who rummage through old notebooks in search of pessimism. So I own up at once. Surely we don’t have to be weighed down by the baggage of history, always looking backwards and holding up billboards with the “The End of the World is Nigh” written in black for readers too bored to look at the fine print. Yet when I sit on my seafront balcony today, I am waiting for the next explosion to come.</p>
<p>Beirut is a good place to reflect on the tragedy through which the Middle East is now inexorably moving. After all, the city has suffered so many horrors these past 31 years, it seems haunted by the mass graves that lie across the region, from Afghanistan to Iraq to “Palestine” and to Lebanon itself. And I look across the waters and see a German warship cruising past my home, part of Nato’s contribution to stop gun-running into Lebanon under UN Security Council Resolution 1701. And then, I ask myself what the Germans could possibly be doing when no guns have ever been run to the Hizbollah guerrilla army from the sea. The weapons came through Syria, and Syria has a land frontier with the country and is to the north and east of Lebanon, not on the other side of the Mediterranean.</p>
<p>And then when I call on my landlord to discuss this latest, hopeless demonstration of Western power, he turns to me in some anger and says, “Yes, why is the German navy cruising off my home?” And I see his point. For we Westerners are now spreading ourselves across the entire Muslim world. In one form or another, “we”–“us”, the West–are now in Khazakstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Lebanon. We are now trapped across this vast area of suffering, fiercely angry people, militarily far more deeply entrenched and entrapped than the 12th-century crusaders who faced defeat at the battle of Hittin, our massive forces fighting armies of Islamists, suicide bombers, warlords, drug barons, and militias. And losing. The latest UN army in Lebanon, with its French and Italian troops, is moving in ever greater numbers to the south, young men and women who have already been threaten! ed by al-Qa’ida and who will, in three of four months, be hit by al-Qa’ida. Which is one reason why the French have been pallisading themselves into their barracks in southern Lebanon. There is no shortage of suicide bombers here, although it will be the Sunni — not the Hizbollah-Shiite variety — which will strike at the UN.</p>
<p>When will the bombers arrive? After further massacres in Iraq? After the Israelis cross the border again? After Israel–or the US–bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months? After someone in the northern city of Tripoli, perhaps, or in the Palestinian camps outside Sidon, decides he has seen too many Western soldiers trampling the lands of southern Lebanon, too many German warships off the coast, or heard too many mendacious statements of optimism from George W Bush or Tony Blair or Condoleezza Rice. “There will be no ‘new’ Middle East, Miss Rice,” a new Hizbollah poster says south of Sidon. And the Hizbollah is right. The entire region is sinking deeper into bloodshed and all the time, over and over again, Bush and Blair tell us it is all getting much better, that we can all be heartened by the spread of non-existent democracies, that the dawn is rising on Condi’s “new” Middle East. Are they really hoping that they can distort! the mirror of the world’s reality with their words? There is a kind of new dawn rising in the lands from the old Indian empire to the tides of the Mediterranean. The only trouble is that it is blood red.</p>
<p>It is as if the Bushes and Blairs do not live on this planet any more. As my colleague Patrick Cockburn wrote recently, the enraging thing about Blair’s constant optimism is that, to prove it all a pack of lies, a journalist has to have his throat cut amid the anarchy which Blair says does not exist. The Americans cannot protect themselves in Iraq, let alone the Iraqis, and the British have twice nearly been defeated in battles with the Taliban, and the Israeli army–counting it as part of the “West” for a moment — were soundly thrashed when they crossed the border to fight the Hizbollah, losing 40 men in 36 hours. Yet still Blair delayed a ceasefire in Lebanon. And still–be certain of this–when the fire strikes us again, in London or New York or wherever, Blair and Bush will say that the attack has nothing to do with the Middle East, that Britain’s enemies hate “our values” or our “way of life”.</p>
<p>I once mourned the lack of titans in the modern world, the Roosevelts and the Churchills, blood-drenched though their century was. Blair and Bush, posing as wartime leaders, threatening the midget Hitlers around them, appear to have gone through a kind of “stasis”, a psychological inability to grasp what they do not want to hear or what they do not want to be true. And they have lost the thread of history.</p>
<p>In the past, we–the “West”–could have post-war adventures abroad and feel safe at home. No North Korean tried to blow himself up on the London Tube in the 1950s. No Viet Cong ever arrived in Washington to assault the United States. We fought in Kenya and Malaya and Palestine and Suez and Yemen, but we felt safe in Gloucestershire. Perhaps the change came with the Algerian War of Independence when the bombers attacked in Paris and Lyons, or perhaps it came later when the IRA arrived to bomb London.</p>
<p>But it is a fact that “we” cannot take our armies and warships and tanks and helicopter gunships and para battalions for foreign wars and expect to be unhurt at home. This is the inescapable logic of history that Bush and Blair will not face, will not acknowledge, will not believe–will not even let us believe. All across the Middle East, we are locked in battle in our preposterous “war on terror” because “the world changed forever” on 11 September, even though I have said many times that we should not allow 19 murderers to change our world. So we live in a darker world of phone-taps and “terror plots” and underground CIA prisoners whose interrogators set about victims in secret, tearing to pieces the Geneva Conventions so painfully constructed after the Second World War.</p>
<p>And in a world betrayed. Remember all those promises we made to the Arabs about creating a wonderful new functioning democracy in Iraq whose example would be followed by other Middle East states? And remember our promise to honour the fledgling democracy of Lebanon, the famous “Cedars Revolution”–a title invented by the US State Department, so the Lebanese should have been suspicious–which brought the retreat of the Syrian army. Lebanon was then held up to be a future model for the Arab world. But once the Hizbollah crossed the frontier and seized two Israeli soldiers, killing three others on 12 July, we stood back and watched the Lebanese suffer. “If there is one thing this last war has convinced me of,” a young Lebanese woman put it to me this month, “it is that the Lebanese are on their own. I can never trust a foreign promise again.”</p>
<p>And this is true. For the direct result of the disastrous Israeli campaign has been to turn the Hizbollah into heroes of the Arab–indeed the Muslim–world, to break apart the fragile political stability established by the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and to have Hizbollah’s leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, declare a “divine victory” and demand a “national unity” government which, if it comes about, will be pro-Syrian. The language now being used in Lebanon by the country’s political leaders is approaching the incendiary, lethal grammar of pre-civil war Lebanon.</p>
<p>Samir Geagea, the Christian ex-militia commander, brought out tens of thousands of supporters to jeer at Nasrallah. “They demand a strong state but how can a strong state be built with a statelet in its midst?” Geagea demanded to know after the Hizbollah suddenly announced that it has no intention of handing over its weapons. Indeed, Nasrallah is now boasting that he still has 20,000 missiles in southern Lebanon, a claim which led the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, to abuse Nasrallah as a creature of Syria–there is speculation over the depth of his relationship with Damascus but his arms certainly come from Iran–and to say to him: “Sayed Nasrallah, rest your mind, I will not reach an agreement with you. When you separate yourself from the Syrian leadership, I will possibly hold a dialogue with you.” Thus two more paper-thin links–between Lebanon’s Druze community and the Christians and the larger population of Shiite Muslims–have bee! n broken. And that is how civil wars start.</p>
<p>Had Bush–indeed Blair — denounced Israel’s claim that it held the Lebanese government responsible for the kidnapping and killing of its soldiers, and demanded an immediate ceasefire, then the disaster that is destroying Lebanon’s democracy would not have happened. But no, Bush and Blair let the bloodshed go on and postponed hopes of a ceasefire for the Lebanese upon whom they had lavished so much praise a year ago. Just last week, the Lebanese recovered the bodies of five more children under the rubble of the Sidon Vocational Training Centre in Tyre. Ali Alawiah identified his children Aya, Zeinab and Hussein and his nephews Battoul and Abbas. All would have been alive if even Blair and Margaret Beckett had demanded a ceasefire. But they are dead. And Blair and Beckett and Bush should have this on their conscience.</p>
<p>The fact they don’t speaks sorrowfully of our double standard of morality. Almost all Lebanon’s 1,300 dead–which comes close to half the total of the World Trade Centre murders–were civilians. But we don’t care for them as we do our own “kith and kin”. This is the same sickness that pervades our policies in Iraq where we never counted the number of civilians killed, only the tally of our precious soldiers who died there.</p>
<p>How did we come to be infected by this virus of negligence and betrayal? Does it really go back to the Crusades or the ramblings of Spanish Christians of the 15th century–whose portrayals of the Prophet Mohamed were infinitely more obscene than Denmark’s third-rate cartoonist–or to the vicious anti-Muslim ravings of long-forgotten Popes who seem to obsess the present incumbent of the Vatican? I am still uncertain what Benedict meant by his quotation of the old man of Byzantium–while I am equally suspicious of his almost equally insulting remarks at Auschwitz where he blamed Nazi Germany’s cruelty on a mere “gang of criminals”. But then again, this is a Pope–anti-divorce, anti-homosexual and, once, anti-aircraft–who has signally failed to follow John Paul II’s devotions on the need for the seed of Abraham to acknowledge the love they should show to each other.</p>
<p>This failure to see the Other as the same as “us” is now evident across the Middle East. Some months ago, I received letters originally written to his family by a young Marine officer in Iraq who was trying–eloquently, I have to add–to explain how frustrating his work with Iraqis had become. “There is something culturally childish in their understanding of Western governance and management that will require immeasurable education and probably several generations to overcome if they find it of any interest,” he wrote. “Our understanding of their tribal governance and its relationship to formal civil management is equally naÔve and charges our frustration… The reality is that they cannot, culturally, comprehend our altruism or believe our stated intentions… Liberation will compete with invasion as our legacy but locally we are ideologically irrelevant… I share the American fascination with action and it has consistently betrayed us ! in our foreign policy.”</p>
<p>The reality in Iraq is summed up by the same American Marine officer’s description of the building of the Ramadi glass factory, a story that shows just how vacuous all the stories of our “success” there are. “The Division has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a glass factory. It does not work. It will take millions of dollars to rehabilitate and modernise. There are supposed to be 2,500 Iraqis employed there but they have nothing to do and no more than 100 arrive on any given day to sit in their offices as new computers and furniture are delivered with our compliments… It is like walking through a fictional business that physically exists. It may be Kafka’s revenge. Most rooms are empty but are still preserved as they had been under a layer of dust. Some areas hold a man at a desk in a stark room too large for him. It is like Pompeii being slowly reoccupied, as if nothing had happened. I stood on a tall mound of broken glass ou! tside. Shards of window panes shattered in the process of manufacturing them. The windows of the city were poured and cut here once… This glass was made from sand, desert made invisible until exposed by reflection. The bright sunlight makes little impression on the pile due to a dull coating of dust but the fragments fracture further and slide beneath my feet with the sound of ruin. Walking on windows and unable to see the ground.” Could there be a more Conradian description of the failure of the American empire in Iraq?</p>
<p>And does it not echo a remark that TE Lawrence–Lawrence of Arabia–made of Iraq in the 1920s: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly… Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work may not be as good as, perhaps, you think.”</p>
<p>A different kind of alienation, of course, is reflected in our dispute with Iran. “We” think that its government wants to make nuclear weapons–in six months, according to the Israelis; in 10 years, according to some nuclear analysts. But no one asks if “we” didn’t help to cause this “nuclear” crisis. For it was the Shah who commenced Iran’s nuclear power programme in 1973 and Western companies were shoulder-hopping each other in their desire to sell him nuclear reactors and enrichment technology. Siemens, for example, started to build the Bushehr reactor. And the Shah was regularly interviewed on Western television stations where he said that he didn’t see why Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons when America and the Soviets had them. And we had no objection to the ambitions of “our” Policeman of the Gulf.</p>
<p>And when Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution engulfed Iran, what did he do? He called the nuclear programme “the work of the devil” and closed it down. It was only when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran the following year and began showering Iran with missiles and chemical weapons–an invasion supported by “us”–that the clerical regime decided they may have to use nuclear weapons against Iraq and reopened the complex. In other words, it was the West which supported Iran’s original nuclear programme and it was closed by the chief divine of George Bush’s “axis of evil” and then reopened when the West stood behind Saddam (in the days when he was “our strongman” rather than our caged prisoner in a dying state).</p>
<p>The greater irony, of course, is that if we were really concerned about the spread of nuclear technology among Muslim states, we would be condemning Pakistan, most of whose cities are in a state of almost Iraqi anarchy and whose jolly dictator now says he was threatened with being “bombed back to the Stone Age” by the Americans if he didn’t sign up to the “war on terror”. Now it happens that Pakistan is infinitely more violent than Iran and it also happens that it was a close Pakistani friend of the Pakistani President- General Pervez Musharraf–a certain scientist called Abdul Qadeer Khan–who actually gave solid centrifuge components to Iran. But all that has been taken out of the story. And so they will remain out of the narrative because Pakistan already has a bomb and may use it if someone decided to create a new Stone Age in that former corner of the British empire.</p>
<p>But all this raises a more complex question. Are we really going to carry on arguing for years–for generation after generation of crisis–over who has or doesn’t have nuclear technology or the capacity to build a bomb? Are “we” forever going to decide who may have a bomb on the basis of his obedience to us–Mr Musharraf now being a loyal Pakistani shah–or his religion or how many turbans are worn by ministers in the government. Are we still going to be doing this in 2007 or 2107 or 3006?</p>
<p>What I suspect lies behind much of our hypocrisy in the Middle East is that Muslims have not lost their faith and we have. It’s not just that religion governs their lives, it is the fact that they have kept the faith–and that is why we try to hide that we have lost it by talking about Islam’s “difficulty with secularism”. We are the good liberals who wish to bestow the pleasures of our Enlightenment upon the rest of the world, although, to the Muslim nations, this sounds more like our desire to invade them with different cultures and traditions and–in some cases–different religions.</p>
<p>And Muslims have learnt to remember. I still recall an Iraqi friend, shaking his head at my naivety when I asked if there was not any cup of generosity to be bestowed on the West for ridding Iraqis of Saddam’s presence. “You supported him,” he replied. “You supported him when he invaded Iran and we died in our tens of thousands. Then, after the invasion of Kuwait, you imposed sanctions that killed tens of thousands of our children. And now you reduce Iraq to anarchy. And you want us to be grateful?”</p>
<p>And I recalled seeing a train load of gassed Iranian soldiers on the way to Tehran, coughing up mucus and blood into stained handkerchiefs and coughing up the gas too because I suddenly smelled a kind of dirty perfume and walked down the train opening all the windows. I saw their vast wobbling blisters upon which ever-smaller blisters would form, one on top of the other. And where did this filthy stuff come from, this real weapon of mass destruction Saddam was using? Components came from Germany and from the US. No wonder US Lieutenant Rick Francona noted indifferently in a report to the Pentagon that the Iraqis had drenched Fao in gas when he visited the battlefield during the war. So do we expect the Iranians to be grateful that we eventually toppled Saddam?</p>
<p>Needless to say, the division between Shias and Sunnis–especially in Iraq–can reach stages of cruelty not seen since the European Protestant-Catholic wars; nor, in this context, should we forget the conflict we are still trying to control in Northern Ireland. Islam as a society, rather than a religion, does have to face the “West”; it must find, in the words of that fine former Iranian president Mohamad Khatami, a “civil society”. And it is outrageous that Muslims have not condemned the slaughter in Darfur or, indeed, in Iraq and, one might add, on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war where one and a half million Muslims killed each other over almost eight years. Self-criticism is not in great supply across the Muslim world where, of course, our spirited Western political conflicts and elections sometimes look like self-flagellation.</p>
<p>As for our desire to award the Muslim Middle East with “our” democratic systems, it’s not just in Lebanon that we have proved to be much less enthusiastic about its existence in the Arab world. The former US ambassador to Iraq–once he realised the Shiites would join the Sunni resistance if they did not have elections, for democracy was originally not going to be America’s gift there–accepted a dominant role for Muslim clerics in the government, thus ensuring discrimination against women in marriage, divorce and inheritance.</p>
<p>When Daniel Fried, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs visited Paris last year, he lectured European and Arab diplomats on what he called “the US-European imperative to support democratic reform and democratic reformers in the Middle East”–forgetting, it seems, that just such a man, Khatami, existed in Iran but had been snubbed by the US. His failure as a genuinely elected president produced his somewhat cracked successor. Fried, however, insisted that bringing democracy to the Middle East “is not for us a question of political theory, but of central strategic importance”, something that clearly didn’t matter less than a year later in Lebanon and certainly not when the Palestinians participated in genuine elections, of which more later.</p>
<p>Fried took the risky step of quoting the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville to back his claim that democracy, far from being a fragile flower, was “robust, and its applicability is potentially universal”. The former French foreign minister, Hubert VÈdrine, was invited to reply to respond to Fried’s words and he cynically spoke of “people who have historical experience, who have seen how past experiences turned out”, the subtext of which was: “You Americans have no sense of history.” VÈdrine spoke of meeting with Madeleine Albright when she was the US Foreign Secretary. “I told her we had no problem regarding the objective of democracy, but I asked whether it was a process, or a religious conversion, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.” And he quoted the Mexican writer, Octavio Pas: “Democracy is not like NescafÈ, you don’t just add water.” For historical reasons, VÈdrine told Fried, “Beca! use of colonialism, the Middle East is the region of the world where external intervention is most at risk of being rejected.”</p>
<p>And when it is imposed, as America says it would like to do in Damascus, what will happen? A nice, flourishing electoral process to put Syrians in power or another descent into Iraqi-style horrors with a Sunni-Muslim regime in place in Damascus?</p>
<p>And so to “Palestine”–the inverted commas are more important than ever today–and its own act of democracy. Of course, the Palestinians elected the wrong people, Hamas, and had to suffer for it. Democratic Israel would not accept the results of Palestine’s democratic elections and the Europeans joined with America in placing sanctions against the newly elected government unless it recognised Israel and all agreements signed with Israel since the Camp David accords of the 1970s. Even when Ariel Sharon was staging his withdrawal of 8,500 settlers from Gaza last year, he was shifting 12,000 more settlers into the West Bank, and George W Bush had effectively accepted this illegality by talking of the “realities” of the Jewish settlements still being enlarged there. And that was the end of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 upon which the “peace process” was supposed to be based–Israeli w! ithdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, in return for the security of all states in the area.</p>
<p>One of the few honourable American statesmen to grasp what this portends is ex-President Jimmy Carter, who wrote after the Palestinian elections in May this year that “innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the US government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life… The additional restraints imposed on the new government are a planned and deliberate catastrophe for the citizens of the occupied territories, in hopes that Hamas will yield to the economic pressure.” Oh, for the years of the Carter administration…</p>
<p>And now we have the wall–or the “fence” as too many journalists gutlessly call it. The Palestinians went to the International Court in the Hague to have it declared illegal because much of its course runs through their land. The court said it was illegal. And Israel ignored the court’s decision and, once more, the US supported Israel. Here was another lesson for the Palestinians. They went peacefully–without violence or “terrorism”–to our Western institutions to get justice. And we were powerless to help them because Israel rejected this symbol of Western freedoms.</p>
<p>Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister whose Lebanese bombardment was such a catastrophe, still says that the wall is only temporary, as if it might be shifted back to the original frontiers of Israel. But if it is only temporary, it can also be moved forward to take in more Jewish settlements on Arab land, colonies which, it must be noted, are illegal under international law. Olmert says he wants to draw “permanent borders” unilaterally–which is against the spirit of Camp David which Hamas is now supposed to abide by.</p>
<p>And how does US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice respond to this? Well, try this for wriggle room. “I wouldn’t on the face of it just say absolutely we don’t think there’s any value in what the Israelis are talking about.” And if the US does recognise–which it will–unilaterally fixed borders of the kind proposed by Olmert, it will sanction the permanent annexation of up to 10 per cent of the Arab territory seized in 1967, contrary to all previous US policy and to the International Court. All this, of course, is part of the new flouting of international laws which the US–and increasingly Israel–now regards as its right since the world “changed forever” on 11 September, 2001.</p>
<p>Remarkably, however, the US still believes that it is increasingly loathed in the Arab world not because of its policies but because its policies are not being presented fairly. It’s not a political problem, it’s a public-relations problem. Curiously, that is what Israel thought when accused of killing too many Lebanese during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. What we do is right. We’re just not selling it right. Hence, the appointment of Karen Hughes as US “Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy”. Her line is straight to the point. “I try to portray the facts in the best light for our country,” she said after her appointment. “Because I believe we’re a wonderful country and that we are doing things across the world.”</p>
<p>The columnist Roger Cohen placed her problem in a nutshell. The problem are the facts. And they include the fact that, in the 65-year period between 1941 and 2006, the US has been at war in some form or another for all but 14 of them. And people around the world have got tired of this. They got tired of America’s insatiable need for an enemy–and suspicious of all the talk of democracy, freedom and morality in which every war was cast. They stopped buying the US narrative. Hughes says that the vision followed by bin Laden’s followers “is a mission of destruction and death; ours a message of life and opportunity.” Well, yes. “If only it were that simple,” Cohen wrote.</p>
<p>At that Paris meeting with Fried, VÈdrine won almost all the arguments, not that Fried realised it. VÈdrine pleaded with the Americans to exercise caution in the Middle East. “We don’t know how things are going to turn out in Afghanistan, Iraq or Egypt,” he said presciently. “This is a high-risk process, like transporting nitroglycerine. You talk about an alliance; if there is an alliance, it must not be an ideological alliance, but an alliance of surgeons, of professionals, of chemists specialised in explosive substances. If we set out to do this, it will take 20 or 30 years, far longer than the second Bush administration.”</p>
<p>But the US Marines and the 82 Airborne are not surgeons or chemists. They are losing control of lands they thought they had conquered or “liberated”. Iraq is already out of control. So is much of Afghanistan. Palestine looks set to go the same way and Lebanon is in danger of freefall. A series of letters in The New York Times in April this year suggested that ordinary US citizens grasp the “democratic” argument better than their leaders. “Democracy cannot be easily imposed on people who are not prepared to accept it,” one wrote. “Democracy cannot be exported,” wrote another. “Changing a political culture happens only if the people embrace it. Iraqi society is too traumatised by the history of Saddam Hussein and the war to do more than survive both at this point.” Spot on.</p>
<p>It may well be that journalists in the “West” should feel a burden of guilt for much that has happened because they have, with their gullibility, helped to sell US actions much more effectively than Karen Hughes. Their constant references to a “fence” instead of a wall, to “settlements” or “neighbourhoods” instead of colonies, their description of the West Bank as “disputed” rather than occupied, has bred a kind of slackness in reporting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just as it did in Iraq when so many reporters from the great Western newspapers and TV stations used US ambassador Bremer’s laughable description of the ferocious insurgents as “dead-enders” or “remnants”–the same phrase still being used by our colleagues in Kabul in reference to a distinctly resurgent Taliban which is being helped–despite General Musharraf’s denials–by the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI.</p>
<p>Much worse, however, is the failure to enquire into the real policies of governments. Why, for example, was there no front-page treatment of this year’s Herzliya conference, Israel’s most important policy-making jamboree? Most of the important figures in the Israeli government–they had yet to be elected–were in attendance. The conference was the place where Ehud Olmert first suggested handing over slices of the West Bank: “The choice between allowing Jews to live in all parts of the land of Israel”–the “land of Israel” in this context included the West Bank–“and living in a state with a Jewish majority mandate giving up part of the land of Israel. We cannot continue to control parts of the territories where most of the Palestinians live.”</p>
<p>However, most speakers agreed that the Palestinians would be given a state on whatever is left after the huge settlements had been included behind the wall. Benjamin Netanyahu even suggested the wall should be moved deeper into the West Bank. But the implications were obvious. A Palestinian state will be allowed, but it will not have a capital in east Jerusalem nor any connection between Gaza and the bits of the West Bank that are handed over. So there will be no peace, and the words “Palestinian” and “terrorist” will, again, be inextricably linked by Israel and the US.</p>
<p>There were articles in the Israeli press about Herzliya, including one by Sergio Della Pergola in which he warned of the “menace” to Israel of Palestinian birth rates and advised that “if the demographic tie doesn’t come in 2010, it will come in 2020.” Earlier conferences have discussed the possible need for the revoking of the citizenship rights of some Israeli Arabs. Already this year, Haaretz has reported an opinion poll in which 68 per cent of Israeli Jews said they would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab–26 per cent would agree to do so–and 46 per cent of Israeli Jews said they would refuse to allow an Arab to visit their home. The inclination toward segregation rose as the income level of the respondents dropped–as might be expected–and there was no poll of Palestinian opinion, though the Palestinians might be able to point out that tens of thousands of Israelis already ! do live on their land in the huge colonies across the West Bank, most of which will remain, illegally, in Israeli hands.</p>
<p>All these details are available in the Arab press–and of course, the Israeli press, but are largely absent from our own. Why? Even when Norman Finkelstein wrote a damning academic report on the way Israel’s High Court of Justice “proved” the wall–deemed illegal by the Hague — was legal, it was virtually ignored in the West. So, for that matter, was the US academics’ report on the power of the Israeli lobby, until the usual taunts of “anti-Semitism” forced the American mainstream to write about it, albeit in a shifty, frightened way.</p>
<p>There are so many other examples of our fear of Middle Eastern truth. Our soft handling of Hosni Mubarak’s increasingly autocratic regime in Egypt is typical. So is reporting of Algeria now that British governments are prepared to deport refugees home on the grounds that they no longer face arrest and torture. But arrest and torture continue in Algeria. Its recent amnesty poll effectively immunises all members of the security services involved in torture and makes it a crime to oppose the amnesty.</p>
<p>Is this really the best that we journalists can do? Save for the indefatigable Seymour Hersh, there are still no truly investigative correspondents in the US press. But challenging authority should not be that difficult. No one is being asked to end the straightforward reporting of Arab tyrannies. We are still invited to ask–and should ask–why the Muslim world has produced so many dictatorships, most of them supported by “us”. But there are too many dark corners into which we will not look. Where, for example, are the CIA’s secret torture prisons? I know two reporters who are aware of the locations. But they are silent, no doubt in the interests of “national security”.</p>
<p>This reluctance to confront unpleasant truths diminishes the reader or viewer for whom Middle East reporting in the US media is almost incomprehensible to anyone who does not know the region. It also has its trickle-down effects even in theatres, universities and schools in America. The case of the play about Rachel Corrie–the young US activist twice run over by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes–taken off the New York stage was one of the more deplorable of these. I was also surprised in the Bronx to find that Fieldston, a private school in Riverdale–was forced to cancel a college meeting with two Palestinian lecturers when parents objected to the absence of an Israeli on the panel. The fact that Israeli speakers were to be invited later made no difference. The school’s principal later announced that the meeting would “not be appropriate given t! he sensitivity and complexity of the issue”. Complex problems are supposed to be explained. But this could not be explained because, well, it was too complex and–the truth–would upset the usual Israeli lobbyists.</p>
<p>So there we go again. Freedom of speech is a precious commodity but just how precious I found out for myself when I addressed the American University of Beirut after receiving an honorary degree there this summer. I made my usual points about the Bush administration and the growing dangers of the Middle East only to find that a US diplomat in Beirut was condemning me in front of Lebanese friends for being allowed to criticise the Bush administration in a college which receives US government money.</p>
<p>And so on we go with the Middle East tragedy, telling the world that things are getting better when they are getting worse, that democracy is flourishing when it is swamped in blood, that freedom is not without “birth pangs” when the midwife is killing the baby.</p>
<p>It’s always been my view that the people of this part of the Earth would like some of our democracy. They would like a few packets of human rights off our supermarket shelves. They want freedom. But they want another kind of freedom–freedom from us. And this we do not intend to give them. Which is why our Middle East presence is heading into further darkness. Which is why I sit on my balcony and wonder where the next explosion is going to be. For, be sure, it will happen. Bin Laden doesn’t matter any more, alive or dead. Because, like nuclear scientists, he has invented the bomb. You can arrest all of the world’s nuclear scientists but the bomb has been made. Bin Laden created al-Qa’ida amid the matchwood of the Middle East. It exists. His presence is no longer necessary.</p>
<p>And all around these lands are a legion of young men preparing to strike again, at us, at our symbols, at our history. And yes, maybe I should end all my reports with the words: Watch out!</p>
<p>ROBERT FISK is a reporter for The Independent and author of <a href="" type="internal">Pity the Nation</a>. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s collection, <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Bookshop.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>. Fisk’s new book is <a href="" type="internal">The Conquest of the Middle East</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | 160 days lebanons latest war came end went many reporters notebooks used last 30 years middle east contained names dead colleagues others individual stories suffering arabs kurds christians jews one dated 1991 even splashed dark viscous substance oil came raining us skies kuwaiti desert saddam blew wells emirate minutes realised looking hint back days dangerous innocence going happen 11 september 2001 sure enough one notebook part transcript interview gave toronto late 1990s see trying discourage middle east optimism host explosion coming middle east tell explosion talking find writing almost thing couple years later independenti refer explosion come without locating middle east talking disturbingly rerun parts film series made late michael dutfield channel 4 discovery 1993 called beirut bosnia billed attempt record muslims growing anger towards west one sequence walk destroyed mosque bosnian village called cela hear voice soundtrack saying see things like think place work middle east wonder muslim world store us maybe end reports words watch checked back postproduction notes find dates film sequences listed walked bosnian mosque watched serb policemen 11 september 1993 warning exactly eight years early dont like journalists middle age start pontificate morbidly wickedness world full love rummage old notebooks search pessimism surely dont weighed baggage history always looking backwards holding billboards end world nigh written black readers bored look fine print yet sit seafront balcony today waiting next explosion come beirut good place reflect tragedy middle east inexorably moving city suffered many horrors past 31 years seems haunted mass graves lie across region afghanistan iraq palestine lebanon look across waters see german warship cruising past home part natos contribution stop gunrunning lebanon un security council resolution 1701 ask germans could possibly guns ever run hizbollah guerrilla army sea weapons came syria syria land frontier country north east lebanon side mediterranean call landlord discuss latest hopeless demonstration western power turns anger says yes german navy cruising home see point westerners spreading across entire muslim world one form another weus westare khazakstan afghanistan pakistan iraq egypt algeria yemen qatar bahrain kuwait saudi arabia oman lebanon trapped across vast area suffering fiercely angry people militarily far deeply entrenched entrapped 12thcentury crusaders faced defeat battle hittin massive forces fighting armies islamists suicide bombers warlords drug barons militias losing latest un army lebanon french italian troops moving ever greater numbers south young men women already threaten ed alqaida three four months hit alqaida one reason french pallisading barracks southern lebanon shortage suicide bombers although sunni hizbollahshiite variety strike un bombers arrive massacres iraq israelis cross border israelor usbombs irans nuclear facilities coming months someone northern city tripoli perhaps palestinian camps outside sidon decides seen many western soldiers trampling lands southern lebanon many german warships coast heard many mendacious statements optimism george w bush tony blair condoleezza rice new middle east miss rice new hizbollah poster says south sidon hizbollah right entire region sinking deeper bloodshed time bush blair tell us getting much better heartened spread nonexistent democracies dawn rising condis new middle east really hoping distort mirror worlds reality words kind new dawn rising lands old indian empire tides mediterranean trouble blood red bushes blairs live planet colleague patrick cockburn wrote recently enraging thing blairs constant optimism prove pack lies journalist throat cut amid anarchy blair says exist americans protect iraq let alone iraqis british twice nearly defeated battles taliban israeli armycounting part west moment soundly thrashed crossed border fight hizbollah losing 40 men 36 hours yet still blair delayed ceasefire lebanon stillbe certain thiswhen fire strikes us london new york wherever blair bush say attack nothing middle east britains enemies hate values way life mourned lack titans modern world roosevelts churchills blooddrenched though century blair bush posing wartime leaders threatening midget hitlers around appear gone kind stasis psychological inability grasp want hear want true lost thread history past wethe westcould postwar adventures abroad feel safe home north korean tried blow london tube 1950s viet cong ever arrived washington assault united states fought kenya malaya palestine suez yemen felt safe gloucestershire perhaps change came algerian war independence bombers attacked paris lyons perhaps came later ira arrived bomb london fact take armies warships tanks helicopter gunships para battalions foreign wars expect unhurt home inescapable logic history bush blair face acknowledge believewill even let us believe across middle east locked battle preposterous war terror world changed forever 11 september even though said many times allow 19 murderers change world live darker world phonetaps terror plots underground cia prisoners whose interrogators set victims secret tearing pieces geneva conventions painfully constructed second world war world betrayed remember promises made arabs creating wonderful new functioning democracy iraq whose example would followed middle east states remember promise honour fledgling democracy lebanon famous cedars revolutiona title invented us state department lebanese suspiciouswhich brought retreat syrian army lebanon held future model arab world hizbollah crossed frontier seized two israeli soldiers killing three others 12 july stood back watched lebanese suffer one thing last war convinced young lebanese woman put month lebanese never trust foreign promise true direct result disastrous israeli campaign turn hizbollah heroes arabindeed muslimworld break apart fragile political stability established lebanese prime minister fouad siniora hizbollahs leader sayed hassan nasrallah declare divine victory demand national unity government comes prosyrian language used lebanon countrys political leaders approaching incendiary lethal grammar precivil war lebanon samir geagea christian exmilitia commander brought tens thousands supporters jeer nasrallah demand strong state strong state built statelet midst geagea demanded know hizbollah suddenly announced intention handing weapons indeed nasrallah boasting still 20000 missiles southern lebanon claim led druze leader walid jumblatt abuse nasrallah creature syriathere speculation depth relationship damascus arms certainly come iranand say sayed nasrallah rest mind reach agreement separate syrian leadership possibly hold dialogue thus two paperthin linksbetween lebanons druze community christians larger population shiite muslimshave bee n broken civil wars start bushindeed blair denounced israels claim held lebanese government responsible kidnapping killing soldiers demanded immediate ceasefire disaster destroying lebanons democracy would happened bush blair let bloodshed go postponed hopes ceasefire lebanese upon lavished much praise year ago last week lebanese recovered bodies five children rubble sidon vocational training centre tyre ali alawiah identified children aya zeinab hussein nephews battoul abbas would alive even blair margaret beckett demanded ceasefire dead blair beckett bush conscience fact dont speaks sorrowfully double standard morality almost lebanons 1300 deadwhich comes close half total world trade centre murderswere civilians dont care kith kin sickness pervades policies iraq never counted number civilians killed tally precious soldiers died come infected virus negligence betrayal really go back crusades ramblings spanish christians 15th centurywhose portrayals prophet mohamed infinitely obscene denmarks thirdrate cartoonistor vicious antimuslim ravings longforgotten popes seem obsess present incumbent vatican still uncertain benedict meant quotation old man byzantiumwhile equally suspicious almost equally insulting remarks auschwitz blamed nazi germanys cruelty mere gang criminals popeantidivorce antihomosexual antiaircraftwho signally failed follow john paul iis devotions need seed abraham acknowledge love show failure see us evident across middle east months ago received letters originally written family young marine officer iraq tryingeloquently addto explain frustrating work iraqis become something culturally childish understanding western governance management require immeasurable education probably several generations overcome find interest wrote understanding tribal governance relationship formal civil management equally naÔve charges frustration reality culturally comprehend altruism believe stated intentions liberation compete invasion legacy locally ideologically irrelevant share american fascination action consistently betrayed us foreign policy reality iraq summed american marine officers description building ramadi glass factory story shows vacuous stories success division poured hundreds thousands dollars glass factory work take millions dollars rehabilitate modernise supposed 2500 iraqis employed nothing 100 arrive given day sit offices new computers furniture delivered compliments like walking fictional business physically exists may kafkas revenge rooms empty still preserved layer dust areas hold man desk stark room large like pompeii slowly reoccupied nothing happened stood tall mound broken glass ou tside shards window panes shattered process manufacturing windows city poured cut glass made sand desert made invisible exposed reflection bright sunlight makes little impression pile due dull coating dust fragments fracture slide beneath feet sound ruin walking windows unable see ground could conradian description failure american empire iraq echo remark te lawrencelawrence arabiamade iraq 1920s try much hands better arabs tolerably perfectly actually also odd conditions arabia practical work may good perhaps think different kind alienation course reflected dispute iran think government wants make nuclear weaponsin six months according israelis 10 years according nuclear analysts one asks didnt help cause nuclear crisis shah commenced irans nuclear power programme 1973 western companies shoulderhopping desire sell nuclear reactors enrichment technology siemens example started build bushehr reactor shah regularly interviewed western television stations said didnt see iran shouldnt nuclear weapons america soviets objection ambitions policeman gulf ayatollah khomeinis islamic revolution engulfed iran called nuclear programme work devil closed saddam hussein invaded iran following year began showering iran missiles chemical weaponsan invasion supported usthat clerical regime decided may use nuclear weapons iraq reopened complex words west supported irans original nuclear programme closed chief divine george bushs axis evil reopened west stood behind saddam days strongman rather caged prisoner dying state greater irony course really concerned spread nuclear technology among muslim states would condemning pakistan whose cities state almost iraqi anarchy whose jolly dictator says threatened bombed back stone age americans didnt sign war terror happens pakistan infinitely violent iran also happens close pakistani friend pakistani president general pervez musharrafa certain scientist called abdul qadeer khanwho actually gave solid centrifuge components iran taken story remain narrative pakistan already bomb may use someone decided create new stone age former corner british empire raises complex question really going carry arguing yearsfor generation generation crisisover doesnt nuclear technology capacity build bomb forever going decide may bomb basis obedience usmr musharraf loyal pakistani shahor religion many turbans worn ministers government still going 2007 2107 3006 suspect lies behind much hypocrisy middle east muslims lost faith religion governs lives fact kept faithand try hide lost talking islams difficulty secularism good liberals wish bestow pleasures enlightenment upon rest world although muslim nations sounds like desire invade different cultures traditions andin casesdifferent religions muslims learnt remember still recall iraqi friend shaking head naivety asked cup generosity bestowed west ridding iraqis saddams presence supported replied supported invaded iran died tens thousands invasion kuwait imposed sanctions killed tens thousands children reduce iraq anarchy want us grateful recalled seeing train load gassed iranian soldiers way tehran coughing mucus blood stained handkerchiefs coughing gas suddenly smelled kind dirty perfume walked train opening windows saw vast wobbling blisters upon eversmaller blisters would form one top filthy stuff come real weapon mass destruction saddam using components came germany us wonder us lieutenant rick francona noted indifferently report pentagon iraqis drenched fao gas visited battlefield war expect iranians grateful eventually toppled saddam needless say division shias sunnisespecially iraqcan reach stages cruelty seen since european protestantcatholic wars context forget conflict still trying control northern ireland islam society rather religion face west must find words fine former iranian president mohamad khatami civil society outrageous muslims condemned slaughter darfur indeed iraq one might add battlefields iraniraq war one half million muslims killed almost eight years selfcriticism great supply across muslim world course spirited western political conflicts elections sometimes look like selfflagellation desire award muslim middle east democratic systems lebanon proved much less enthusiastic existence arab world former us ambassador iraqonce realised shiites would join sunni resistance elections democracy originally going americas gift thereaccepted dominant role muslim clerics government thus ensuring discrimination women marriage divorce inheritance daniel fried us assistant secretary state european eurasian affairs visited paris last year lectured european arab diplomats called useuropean imperative support democratic reform democratic reformers middle eastforgetting seems man khatami existed iran snubbed us failure genuinely elected president produced somewhat cracked successor fried however insisted bringing democracy middle east us question political theory central strategic importance something clearly didnt matter less year later lebanon certainly palestinians participated genuine elections later fried took risky step quoting french historian alexis de tocqueville back claim democracy far fragile flower robust applicability potentially universal former french foreign minister hubert vÈdrine invited reply respond frieds words cynically spoke people historical experience seen past experiences turned subtext americans sense history vÈdrine spoke meeting madeleine albright us foreign secretary told problem regarding objective democracy asked whether process religious conversion like saint paul road damascus quoted mexican writer octavio pas democracy like nescafÈ dont add water historical reasons vÈdrine told fried beca use colonialism middle east region world external intervention risk rejected imposed america says would like damascus happen nice flourishing electoral process put syrians power another descent iraqistyle horrors sunnimuslim regime place damascus palestinethe inverted commas important ever todayand act democracy course palestinians elected wrong people hamas suffer democratic israel would accept results palestines democratic elections europeans joined america placing sanctions newly elected government unless recognised israel agreements signed israel since camp david accords 1970s even ariel sharon staging withdrawal 8500 settlers gaza last year shifting 12000 settlers west bank george w bush effectively accepted illegality talking realities jewish settlements still enlarged end un security council resolutions 242 338 upon peace process supposed basedisraeli w ithdrawal territories occupied 1967 middle east war return security states area one honourable american statesmen grasp portends expresident jimmy carter wrote palestinian elections may year innocent palestinian people treated like animals presumption guilty crime voted candidates members hamas us government become driving force behind apparently effective scheme depriving general public income access outside world necessities life additional restraints imposed new government planned deliberate catastrophe citizens occupied territories hopes hamas yield economic pressure oh years carter administration wallor fence many journalists gutlessly call palestinians went international court hague declared illegal much course runs land court said illegal israel ignored courts decision us supported israel another lesson palestinians went peacefullywithout violence terrorismto western institutions get justice powerless help israel rejected symbol western freedoms ehud olmert israeli prime minister whose lebanese bombardment catastrophe still says wall temporary might shifted back original frontiers israel temporary also moved forward take jewish settlements arab land colonies must noted illegal international law olmert says wants draw permanent borders unilaterallywhich spirit camp david hamas supposed abide us secretary state condoleezza rice respond well try wriggle room wouldnt face say absolutely dont think theres value israelis talking us recognisewhich willunilaterally fixed borders kind proposed olmert sanction permanent annexation 10 per cent arab territory seized 1967 contrary previous us policy international court course part new flouting international laws usand increasingly israelnow regards right since world changed forever 11 september 2001 remarkably however us still believes increasingly loathed arab world policies policies presented fairly political problem publicrelations problem curiously israel thought accused killing many lebanese 1982 invasion lebanon right selling right hence appointment karen hughes us undersecretary state public diplomacy line straight point try portray facts best light country said appointment believe wonderful country things across world columnist roger cohen placed problem nutshell problem facts include fact 65year period 1941 2006 us war form another 14 people around world got tired got tired americas insatiable need enemyand suspicious talk democracy freedom morality every war cast stopped buying us narrative hughes says vision followed bin ladens followers mission destruction death message life opportunity well yes simple cohen wrote paris meeting fried vÈdrine almost arguments fried realised vÈdrine pleaded americans exercise caution middle east dont know things going turn afghanistan iraq egypt said presciently highrisk process like transporting nitroglycerine talk alliance alliance must ideological alliance alliance surgeons professionals chemists specialised explosive substances set take 20 30 years far longer second bush administration us marines 82 airborne surgeons chemists losing control lands thought conquered liberated iraq already control much afghanistan palestine looks set go way lebanon danger freefall series letters new york times april year suggested ordinary us citizens grasp democratic argument better leaders democracy easily imposed people prepared accept one wrote democracy exported wrote another changing political culture happens people embrace iraqi society traumatised history saddam hussein war survive point spot may well journalists west feel burden guilt much happened gullibility helped sell us actions much effectively karen hughes constant references fence instead wall settlements neighbourhoods instead colonies description west bank disputed rather occupied bred kind slackness reporting israelipalestinian conflict iraq many reporters great western newspapers tv stations used us ambassador bremers laughable description ferocious insurgents deadenders remnantsthe phrase still used colleagues kabul reference distinctly resurgent taliban helpeddespite general musharrafs denialsby pakistani intelligence service isi much worse however failure enquire real policies governments example frontpage treatment years herzliya conference israels important policymaking jamboree important figures israeli governmentthey yet electedwere attendance conference place ehud olmert first suggested handing slices west bank choice allowing jews live parts land israelthe land israel context included west bankand living state jewish majority mandate giving part land israel continue control parts territories palestinians live however speakers agreed palestinians would given state whatever left huge settlements included behind wall benjamin netanyahu even suggested wall moved deeper west bank implications obvious palestinian state allowed capital east jerusalem connection gaza bits west bank handed peace words palestinian terrorist inextricably linked israel us articles israeli press herzliya including one sergio della pergola warned menace israel palestinian birth rates advised demographic tie doesnt come 2010 come 2020 earlier conferences discussed possible need revoking citizenship rights israeli arabs already year haaretz reported opinion poll 68 per cent israeli jews said would refuse live building arab26 per cent would agree soand 46 per cent israeli jews said would refuse allow arab visit home inclination toward segregation rose income level respondents droppedas might expectedand poll palestinian opinion though palestinians might able point tens thousands israelis already live land huge colonies across west bank remain illegally israeli hands details available arab pressand course israeli press largely absent even norman finkelstein wrote damning academic report way israels high court justice proved walldeemed illegal hague legal virtually ignored west matter us academics report power israeli lobby usual taunts antisemitism forced american mainstream write albeit shifty frightened way many examples fear middle eastern truth soft handling hosni mubaraks increasingly autocratic regime egypt typical reporting algeria british governments prepared deport refugees home grounds longer face arrest torture arrest torture continue algeria recent amnesty poll effectively immunises members security services involved torture makes crime oppose amnesty really best journalists save indefatigable seymour hersh still truly investigative correspondents us press challenging authority difficult one asked end straightforward reporting arab tyrannies still invited askand askwhy muslim world produced many dictatorships supported us many dark corners look example cias secret torture prisons know two reporters aware locations silent doubt interests national security reluctance confront unpleasant truths diminishes reader viewer middle east reporting us media almost incomprehensible anyone know region also trickledown effects even theatres universities schools america case play rachel corriethe young us activist twice run israeli bulldozer trying prevent demolition palestinian homestaken new york stage one deplorable also surprised bronx find fieldston private school riverdalewas forced cancel college meeting two palestinian lecturers parents objected absence israeli panel fact israeli speakers invited later made difference schools principal later announced meeting would appropriate given sensitivity complexity issue complex problems supposed explained could explained well complex andthe truthwould upset usual israeli lobbyists go freedom speech precious commodity precious found addressed american university beirut receiving honorary degree summer made usual points bush administration growing dangers middle east find us diplomat beirut condemning front lebanese friends allowed criticise bush administration college receives us government money go middle east tragedy telling world things getting better getting worse democracy flourishing swamped blood freedom without birth pangs midwife killing baby always view people part earth would like democracy would like packets human rights supermarket shelves want freedom want another kind freedomfreedom us intend give middle east presence heading darkness sit balcony wonder next explosion going sure happen bin laden doesnt matter alive dead like nuclear scientists invented bomb arrest worlds nuclear scientists bomb made bin laden created alqaida amid matchwood middle east exists presence longer necessary around lands legion young men preparing strike us symbols history yes maybe end reports words watch robert fisk reporter independent author pity nation also contributor counterpunchs collection politics antisemitism fisks new book conquest middle east 160 160 | 3,327 |
<p>With audacity and grace, the “Mothers of the Movement” have reminded us of the humanity of their slain children and the inhumanity of the racist practices that took those innocent lives. Standing united at the Democratic National Convention, in the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection, these brave women spoke for the dead. They shared their heart-wrenching stories and exposed the ugly, real-life consequences of so-called “law and order.” Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland, who was found hanging in a jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop, told us that when “a young black life is cut short, it’s not just a personal loss. It is a national loss. It is a loss that diminishes all of us.”</p>
<p>In some corners of the right, these earnest pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Fox News, talk radio, and their consumers never miss the chance to defend police brutality. Voicing the vitriol of a conservative fringe, Rudy Giuliani recently lectured black parents, telling them to “teach your children to be respectful to the police.” Of course, respect did not save Philando Castile’s life or the lives of many others. At the same time, the push for criminal justice reform has been embraced by many conservative intellectuals and officials. Many have begun to acknowledge that black lives have not mattered as much as their colorblind faith suggested they would. They realize that, as the leader of the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, Newt Gingrich, admitted, whites “don’t understand being black in America.”</p>
<p>Almost a half century ago, crime was on the rise. Cities burned. Black and white activists stormed streets, campuses, and party conventions demanding equal rights and an end to the nation’s unjust war in Vietnam. Aghast at the violence and rebellion, many whites began to believe that a reckless, radical minority had turned their well-ordered American dream into a nightmare. Richard Nixon exploited the racial, economic, and moral anxieties of this “silent majority” to win the White House and forge the “New Right.” Today Donald Trump has embraced this strategy. This time around, however, it may not work.</p>
<p>“I am the law and order candidate,” the bombastic billionaire blustered at the Republican National Convention. Yet today, “law and order” feels like a threadbare trope. Despite the reality TV star’s call for “peace on our streets and the safety of our police,” we have never been safer. While homicides in Chicago and other communities should alarm us, crime is at historical lows. Although the slaughter of courageous police officers frays our collective sense of security, the number of those killed in the line of duty is nowhere near previous highs. These times certainly try our souls, but they’re nothing like the late 1960s and early 1970s.</p>
<p>Demographically, the electorate looks very different than it did then. Whites will no longer be a majority by 2043, and, in many counties, they are already outnumbered. Plus, there has been a backlash to the New Right strategy. No Republican nominee would have won the black vote, but explicit and implicit racial appeals have so alienated African American voters that Trump is polling zero percent among that demographic in key battleground states. Given that blacks outvoted whites for the first time in 2012, that’s a troubling sign for him. Adding insult to injury, Trump has decided to label Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists.” Not surprisingly, he’s currently polling between the mid-teens and low twenties among Latinos, far worse than either Mitt Romney or George W. Bush. There’s also the Muslim ban, and the winks and nods to anti-Semites and white supremacists.</p>
<p>To be clear, the dog whistles of Kevin Phillips, Lee Atwater, and other Republican strategists succeeded for decades. (It should be noted, however, that Phillips has long since moved to the left, while Atwater repented for his race-baiting as he faced death.) The GOP successfully used coded language to stoke the insecurities of working and middle-class whites in order to undermine organized labor, resist increases in the minimum wage, cut taxes for the wealthy, and tear a gaping hole in the social safety net. Party leaders appeased birtherism and courted the Tea Party in order to restore its congressional majority, stall the Obama agenda, and impose austerity on a nation suffering the ravages of the Great Recession.</p>
<p>Ironically, these policies have fragmented the “new Republican majority” that produced them.&#160; The conservative assault on government exacerbated economic inequality and divided white America. Reaganomics gutted the middle class, and now poor and working-class whites, and their upper-middle-class and wealthy counterparts, inhabit different worlds.</p>
<p>Because of these cleavages, the Republican primary became a contest between the establishment—the uneasy coalition of upwardly mobile, Sunbelt evangelicals, new and old-moneyed Chamber of Commerce types, and trigger-happy neo-conservatives—and the angry base it cultivated. There’s a split between elites that favor military interventions and a constituency that wants neither to lose wars nor send their children to fight them. Whites without a college education tend to express less support for trade, immigration, and diversity than those with an undergraduate degree.</p>
<p>Nowhere are these tensions more apparent than in the area of criminal justice. Cities are not on fire, but the murder of black men at the hands of law enforcement has heightened tensions in many neighborhoods and reminded millions of the evils of Jim Crow. Black Lives Matter has forced an indifferent nation to confront the immorality of mass incarceration and the over-policing of people of color.</p>
<p>Well-heeled party regulars are finally grimacing at the racism they countenanced for so long. A dejected Jeb Bush declared that Trump does not reflect “the principles or inclusive legacy of the Republican Party.” After hearing her nominee’s foreboding “law and order” address, Republican strategist Nicole Wallace, who introduced Sarah Palin to the world, lamented, “The Republican party…died in this room tonight.” That’s only partially true. A <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-poll/" type="external">recent CNN/ORC poll</a> showed Trump has expanded his lead among whites without a college degree. But he’s down among college-educated whites, a group Republicans have never lost.</p>
<p>Will Donald Trump win this election? At this point, no one can say. Maybe Sanders supporters still smarting from the demise of their revolution will vote third party, or not at all. Without Obama on the ticket, some African Americans might stay home. White and blue collar Republicans could unite once more to defend their American dream from incursions by a menacing “other.” On the other hand, the GOP is being consumed by xenophobia and its own inherent contradictions. This might just be the last hurrah of the white silent majority—its influence having been undercut by population shifts, neo-liberal policies, a backlash against reactionary Republican politics, historically low crime rates, the movement for black lives, and, finally, the fight for the fair administration of laws and a more just order.</p> | true | 4 | audacity grace mothers movement reminded us humanity slain children inhumanity racist practices took innocent lives standing united democratic national convention city brotherly love sisterly affection brave women spoke dead shared heartwrenching stories exposed ugly reallife consequences socalled law order geneva reedveal mother sandra bland found hanging jail cell arrested traffic stop told us young black life cut short personal loss national loss loss diminishes us corners right earnest pleas fallen deaf ears fox news talk radio consumers never miss chance defend police brutality voicing vitriol conservative fringe rudy giuliani recently lectured black parents telling teach children respectful police course respect save philando castiles life lives many others time push criminal justice reform embraced many conservative intellectuals officials many begun acknowledge black lives mattered much colorblind faith suggested would realize leader 1994 republican takeover congress newt gingrich admitted whites dont understand black america almost half century ago crime rise cities burned black white activists stormed streets campuses party conventions demanding equal rights end nations unjust war vietnam aghast violence rebellion many whites began believe reckless radical minority turned wellordered american dream nightmare richard nixon exploited racial economic moral anxieties silent majority win white house forge new right today donald trump embraced strategy time around however may work law order candidate bombastic billionaire blustered republican national convention yet today law order feels like threadbare trope despite reality tv stars call peace streets safety police never safer homicides chicago communities alarm us crime historical lows although slaughter courageous police officers frays collective sense security number killed line duty nowhere near previous highs times certainly try souls theyre nothing like late 1960s early 1970s demographically electorate looks different whites longer majority 2043 many counties already outnumbered plus backlash new right strategy republican nominee would black vote explicit implicit racial appeals alienated african american voters trump polling zero percent among demographic key battleground states given blacks outvoted whites first time 2012 thats troubling sign adding insult injury trump decided label mexican immigrants criminals rapists surprisingly hes currently polling midteens low twenties among latinos far worse either mitt romney george w bush theres also muslim ban winks nods antisemites white supremacists clear dog whistles kevin phillips lee atwater republican strategists succeeded decades noted however phillips long since moved left atwater repented racebaiting faced death gop successfully used coded language stoke insecurities working middleclass whites order undermine organized labor resist increases minimum wage cut taxes wealthy tear gaping hole social safety net party leaders appeased birtherism courted tea party order restore congressional majority stall obama agenda impose austerity nation suffering ravages great recession ironically policies fragmented new republican majority produced them160 conservative assault government exacerbated economic inequality divided white america reaganomics gutted middle class poor workingclass whites uppermiddleclass wealthy counterparts inhabit different worlds cleavages republican primary became contest establishmentthe uneasy coalition upwardly mobile sunbelt evangelicals new oldmoneyed chamber commerce types triggerhappy neoconservativesand angry base cultivated theres split elites favor military interventions constituency wants neither lose wars send children fight whites without college education tend express less support trade immigration diversity undergraduate degree nowhere tensions apparent area criminal justice cities fire murder black men hands law enforcement heightened tensions many neighborhoods reminded millions evils jim crow black lives matter forced indifferent nation confront immorality mass incarceration overpolicing people color wellheeled party regulars finally grimacing racism countenanced long dejected jeb bush declared trump reflect principles inclusive legacy republican party hearing nominees foreboding law order address republican strategist nicole wallace introduced sarah palin world lamented republican partydied room tonight thats partially true recent cnnorc poll showed trump expanded lead among whites without college degree hes among collegeeducated whites group republicans never lost donald trump win election point one say maybe sanders supporters still smarting demise revolution vote third party without obama ticket african americans might stay home white blue collar republicans could unite defend american dream incursions menacing hand gop consumed xenophobia inherent contradictions might last hurrah white silent majorityits influence undercut population shifts neoliberal policies backlash reactionary republican politics historically low crime rates movement black lives finally fight fair administration laws order | 673 |
<p>If any state ought to be pro-trade, it’s California. America’s second-largest exporter, after Texas, the Golden State boasts 840 miles of coastline rimming the burgeoning Asia-Pacific economy, as well as the nation’s busiest port, Los Angeles. Trade supports the jobs of more than 1 in 5 Californians.</p>
<p>Yet most of California’s overwhelmingly Democratic congressional delegation refuses to support President Obama’s trade agenda.</p>
<p>Only two of the state’s 39 House Democrats—Representatives Ami Bera of Sacramento and Jim Costa of Fresno—have publicly backed Obama’s request for trade negotiating authority (or TPA in Washington speak). The rest are either opposed or undeclared. Has this famously entrepreneurial, outward-looking and future-oriented state suddenly caught the protectionist virus?</p>
<p>Not likely. It’s true that trade has become a tough issue for Democrats in recent decades as California has become more liberal. But the White House did manage to muster double-digit support among House Democrats there for pacts with Korea and Panama. The paucity of support this time may reflect Obama’s declining clout, but it’s also a testament to the success of a ham-fisted campaign of political intimidation spearheaded by organized labor.</p>
<p>In a raw display of financial muscle, the AFL-CIO has frozen all contributions to Democrats until after the TPA vote. Not only that, but labor and anti-trade “progressives” promise to spend lavishly on primary challenges to defeat Democrats, and if that doesn’t work, to spend more against them in the general election—to the benefit of Republicans.</p>
<p>Remember that the next time you hear progressives bemoaning the sinister power of money in American politics. It’s insidious all right, but it’s hardly confined to the Koch brothers and right-wing super PACs.</p>
<p>Organized labor has organized protests in Representative Bera’s district, launched an ad buy slamming him for betraying “working people” and taken out mock want ads for a replacement. The intrepid Bera, however, is unbowed: “Really what they’re trying to do is bully me into something that’s wrong for my district.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, other California Democrats seem less inclined to stand up for the economic interests of their districts and state.</p>
<p>California, after all, is the nation’s leading exporter of computer and electronic equipment, and a major exporter of software and high-tech services. Yet Democrats representing Silicon Valley and San Francisco haven’t come out for TPA, which Obama says is essential to negotiating a Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 countries that account for 40 percent of global commerce.</p>
<p>And it’s not all high tech: The state also is a major exporter of manufacturing goods and is America’s leading exporter of agricultural products.</p>
<p>All of which raises an interesting question: Are California’s tech companies, farmers, wine producers and transport equipment manufacturers—not to mention the state’s 4.7 million trade-dependent workers—paying attention to how their congressional representatives plan to vote? Maybe they should, along with more than 72,000 small enterprises (with fewer than 500 employees) that also trade in global markets.</p>
<p>The rise of protectionist sentiment on the left—now rebranded more fashionably as “populism”—is a big problem for Democrats. It threatens to taint the party with mindless business bashing, a reactionary stance toward economic progress, and nostalgia for the industrial landscape of the 1970s. None of this will help Democrats seize the high ground of jobs, innovation and growth in 2016.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>As Obama often points out, blocking new trade agreements won’t freeze trade or throw globalization into reverse. It will deprive Washington of the ability to set fair and liberal rules for international trade—including strong labor and human-rights and environmental protections—while making it harder for America to tap into an Asian-Pacific economy that will add billions of new middle-class consumers in coming decades.</p>
<p>Labor’s fratricidal campaign against pro-growth progressives couldn’t come at a worse time. Republican sweeps in 2010 and 2014 have consolidated the GOP’s hold on Congress, especially the House of Representatives. A string of divisive primary challenges aimed at punishing pro-trade Democrats will elect more Republicans, especially in places less deeply “blue” than California.</p>
<p>Instead of trying to create a left-wing version of the Tea Party, populists would be wise to leave House Democrats free to vote their conscience and their districts. According to Pew Research, a solid majority of Democrats (58 percent) think free-trade agreements are good for the United States.</p>
<p>And such attitudes are likely to persist, since millennials (69 percent) and Hispanics (71 percent) are particularly supportive of trade deals. What labor and other anti-trade activists are really doing is driving a wedge into the heart of the progressive coalition.</p>
<p>Finally, labor does itself no favors by making trade a political loyalty test for Democrats. On the contrary, it seems bent on confirming the worst stereotype of unions as a retrograde force in American life. Labor’s claims to be channeling the just demands of “working people” ring hollow at a time when less than 8 percent of the private U.S. workforce belongs to unions.</p>
<p>It’s sad to see U.S. unions wasting their waning power on a doomed crusade to protect yesterday’s jobs at the expense of tomorrow’s. If labor really wants to help working Americans, it should stop fighting rearguard actions, and invent new ways to equip them to succeed in a global knowledge economy.</p>
<p>Will Marshall is president of the Progressive Policy Institute.</p> | true | 4 | state ought protrade california americas secondlargest exporter texas golden state boasts 840 miles coastline rimming burgeoning asiapacific economy well nations busiest port los angeles trade supports jobs 1 5 californians yet californias overwhelmingly democratic congressional delegation refuses support president obamas trade agenda two states 39 house democratsrepresentatives ami bera sacramento jim costa fresnohave publicly backed obamas request trade negotiating authority tpa washington speak rest either opposed undeclared famously entrepreneurial outwardlooking futureoriented state suddenly caught protectionist virus likely true trade become tough issue democrats recent decades california become liberal white house manage muster doubledigit support among house democrats pacts korea panama paucity support time may reflect obamas declining clout also testament success hamfisted campaign political intimidation spearheaded organized labor raw display financial muscle aflcio frozen contributions democrats tpa vote labor antitrade progressives promise spend lavishly primary challenges defeat democrats doesnt work spend general electionto benefit republicans remember next time hear progressives bemoaning sinister power money american politics insidious right hardly confined koch brothers rightwing super pacs organized labor organized protests representative beras district launched ad buy slamming betraying working people taken mock want ads replacement intrepid bera however unbowed really theyre trying bully something thats wrong district unfortunately california democrats seem less inclined stand economic interests districts state california nations leading exporter computer electronic equipment major exporter software hightech services yet democrats representing silicon valley san francisco havent come tpa obama says essential negotiating transpacific partnership 11 countries account 40 percent global commerce high tech state also major exporter manufacturing goods americas leading exporter agricultural products raises interesting question californias tech companies farmers wine producers transport equipment manufacturersnot mention states 47 million tradedependent workerspaying attention congressional representatives plan vote maybe along 72000 small enterprises fewer 500 employees also trade global markets rise protectionist sentiment leftnow rebranded fashionably populismis big problem democrats threatens taint party mindless business bashing reactionary stance toward economic progress nostalgia industrial landscape 1970s none help democrats seize high ground jobs innovation growth 2016 start finish day top stories daily beast speedy smart summary news need know nothing dont obama often points blocking new trade agreements wont freeze trade throw globalization reverse deprive washington ability set fair liberal rules international tradeincluding strong labor humanrights environmental protectionswhile making harder america tap asianpacific economy add billions new middleclass consumers coming decades labors fratricidal campaign progrowth progressives couldnt come worse time republican sweeps 2010 2014 consolidated gops hold congress especially house representatives string divisive primary challenges aimed punishing protrade democrats elect republicans especially places less deeply blue california instead trying create leftwing version tea party populists would wise leave house democrats free vote conscience districts according pew research solid majority democrats 58 percent think freetrade agreements good united states attitudes likely persist since millennials 69 percent hispanics 71 percent particularly supportive trade deals labor antitrade activists really driving wedge heart progressive coalition finally labor favors making trade political loyalty test democrats contrary seems bent confirming worst stereotype unions retrograde force american life labors claims channeling demands working people ring hollow time less 8 percent private us workforce belongs unions sad see us unions wasting waning power doomed crusade protect yesterdays jobs expense tomorrows labor really wants help working americans stop fighting rearguard actions invent new ways equip succeed global knowledge economy marshall president progressive policy institute | 544 |
<p>I know what some people are probably saying: Allen, why are you writing this article now — how is this subject still relevant?&#160;To be honest, I avoided writing this for weeks. However, as I’ve sat back and watched countless people talk about how the Democratic Party is “lost” and in “disarray,” my patience has worn thin.</p>
<p>Yes, Trump won the electoral college victory while Republicans kept a majority control in both the House and the Senate.</p>
<p>That being said, when you factor in <a href="" type="internal">the context behind all of that</a>, it paints a much different picture than “Democrats must be in panic mode to recover.” While I’m not going to deny Trump won and Republicans kept control of Congress, it’s important to note that:</p>
<p>Another part of this “Democrats are in disarray” argument has been the still on-going discussion about&#160;why&#160;Hillary&#160;Clinton lost. To listen to many of these so-called “experts” talk about her loss, you’d think that her campaign was some sort of epic disaster when it wasn’t.</p>
<p>It’s important to remember that&#160;more people voted for her.&#160;</p>
<p>So, I finally decided I’d offer my thoughts on some of the main reasons why this nation elected a buffoon as our next president. I’m not going to get into the subjective debate over her “message.” All things being what they were, without the following, the election is&#160;much&#160;different.</p>
<p>1. She’s not a very good candidate: Unfortunately, getting elected in this country is really a popularity contest. It really is baffling to think that some of the most qualified people we have in this country, people who might be able to do amazing jobs as public servants, might not ever get elected to public office because they’re not good at giving speeches or they’re not as witty as their opponent.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton is a fairly bland, executive-type who knows how to bust her ass and get things done. But because she couldn’t “excite” large crowds of people with some level of charisma&#160;like a Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders or even Donald Trump, this often made her appear too robotic, fake or disingenuous. She’s not someone who’s very comfortable being “on stage” like many politicians are. Which is something she even admitted during a debate.</p>
<p>In a country where how you give a speech is probably more important than what you’re actually saying (which is really sad), that weakness cost her.</p>
<p>2. Bernie Sanders: I know, I know… don’t blame Bernie, right? Well, wrong. The folks who’ve said Sanders had nothing to do with this&#160;might&#160;have a point had I not <a href="" type="internal">literally predicted this</a> in May of 2015, barely a week after he had launched his campaign —&#160;long&#160;before “Feel the Bern” became a national craze.</p>
<p>What Sanders did more than anything was he weakened her with the&#160;one&#160;voting demographic Trump had an advantage with: White, working/middle class Americans.</p>
<p>He&#160;spent over a year irrationally painting her as a “Wall Street shill” ( <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/15/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-she-called-wall-street-regula/" type="external">she wasn’t</a>) and some sort of pro-trade enemy of working Americans. Sanders was the anti-free trade agreement candidate to the white working class, a demographic he did very well with during the primary (unfortunately he failed miserably with minority voters, <a href="" type="internal">which is why he lost</a>) — the same voting demographic that one Donald J. Trump just happened to do very well with.</p>
<p>You skew that white middle class vote toward Clinton by even 2-3% away from Trump and she wins this election by a blow out. And you can’t tell me over a year of Sanders painting her as a villain to the working class didn’t have any negative impact on her.</p>
<p>3. Russia/Wikileaks/FBI: In an election that came down to a handful of votes in three states, don’t tell me the Russian-ordered hacking of emails that were then surgically released by Wikileaks, and the FBI’s unprecedented letter just before Election Day, didn’t have any negative impact on her campaign. All of that certainly didn’t help her and nobody&#160;can sit here and tell me these events had zero impact. Again, in an election that was as close as this year’s was, even a 1-1.5% negative hit on her overall support could have been the difference in places&#160;like Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan — states&#160;she lost by less than 1.5% of the vote.</p>
<p>4. The media: The media incorrectly painted&#160;Clinton and Trump as “equally flawed” when reality <a href="" type="internal">couldn’t be further from the truth</a>, and that was an issue she was never able to shake. While I’m not going to say Clinton didn’t have her issues, most were not nearly as big of a deal as the media made them out to be, while Trump’s were often downplayed significantly.</p>
<p>5. Liberals are too prone to being apathetic and aren’t good at voting consistently: There’s a reason why we now had both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, two presidents who were very successful, followed by two Republican candidates&#160;who lost the popular vote, yet won the presidency. And there’s a reason why Democrats lost power in Congress during each of their presidencies despite their successes — liberal apathy. The simple truth is when liberals shows up to vote in numbers they’re capable of, we win, nearly every single time. The only reason why Republicans seem to win more often&#160;isn’t because their ideas are better, or supported by most Americans, it’s because they’re much better at doing one thing&#160;consistently&#160;that liberals are terrible at doing: Showing up to vote.&#160;</p>
<p>6. People didn’t take the possibility of Donald Trump seriously enough: Donald Trump’s win reminds me a lot of the Brexit vote. Too many people didn’t take it seriously enough, which allowed what most didn’t expect to happen — to actually happen. Most people assumed Clinton was headed for a fairly easy win, which I think hurt her in these states where she lost by less than 1-2%.</p>
<p>7. Because her opponent was a white male: Imagine for a moment a minority candidate, or woman, having the baggage of Trump. There’s absolutely no way any other demographic but a white male would be elected president despite:</p>
<p>Forget everything else shameful about Trump (or even everything on this list) — those four things alone would disqualify anyone who isn’t a white male from ever being elected president.</p>
<p>Are there more reasons? Sure. But if we would eliminate all (or even a couple — especially that last one) of the things on this list, I can say with almost absolute certainty that we’re not swearing in Donald Trump as our next president on January 20, 2017.</p>
<p>Feel free to <a href="https://www.twitter.com/allen_clifton" type="external">hit me up on Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/allencliftonroc" type="external">Facebook</a> to let me know what you think.</p>
<p />
<p>0 Facebook comments</p> | true | 4 | know people probably saying allen writing article subject still relevant160to honest avoided writing weeks however ive sat back watched countless people talk democratic party lost disarray patience worn thin yes trump electoral college victory republicans kept majority control house senate said factor context behind paints much different picture democrats must panic mode recover im going deny trump republicans kept control congress important note another part democrats disarray argument still ongoing discussion about160why160hillary160clinton lost listen many socalled experts talk loss youd think campaign sort epic disaster wasnt important remember that160more people voted her160 finally decided id offer thoughts main reasons nation elected buffoon next president im going get subjective debate message things without following election is160much160different 1 shes good candidate unfortunately getting elected country really popularity contest really baffling think qualified people country people might able amazing jobs public servants might ever get elected public office theyre good giving speeches theyre witty opponent hillary clinton fairly bland executivetype knows bust ass get things done couldnt excite large crowds people level charisma160like barack obama bernie sanders even donald trump often made appear robotic fake disingenuous shes someone whos comfortable stage like many politicians something even admitted debate country give speech probably important youre actually saying really sad weakness cost 2 bernie sanders know know dont blame bernie right well wrong folks whove said sanders nothing this160might160have point literally predicted may 2015 barely week launched campaign 160long160before feel bern became national craze sanders anything weakened the160one160voting demographic trump advantage white workingmiddle class americans he160spent year irrationally painting wall street shill wasnt sort protrade enemy working americans sanders antifree trade agreement candidate white working class demographic well primary unfortunately failed miserably minority voters lost voting demographic one donald j trump happened well skew white middle class vote toward clinton even 23 away trump wins election blow cant tell year sanders painting villain working class didnt negative impact 3 russiawikileaksfbi election came handful votes three states dont tell russianordered hacking emails surgically released wikileaks fbis unprecedented letter election day didnt negative impact campaign certainly didnt help nobody160can sit tell events zero impact election close years even 115 negative hit overall support could difference places160like pennsylvania florida wisconsin michigan states160she lost less 15 vote 4 media media incorrectly painted160clinton trump equally flawed reality couldnt truth issue never able shake im going say clinton didnt issues nearly big deal media made trumps often downplayed significantly 5 liberals prone apathetic arent good voting consistently theres reason bill clinton barack obama two presidents successful followed two republican candidates160who lost popular vote yet presidency theres reason democrats lost power congress presidencies despite successes liberal apathy simple truth liberals shows vote numbers theyre capable win nearly every single time reason republicans seem win often160isnt ideas better supported americans theyre much better one thing160consistently160that liberals terrible showing vote160 6 people didnt take possibility donald trump seriously enough donald trumps win reminds lot brexit vote many people didnt take seriously enough allowed didnt expect happen actually happen people assumed clinton headed fairly easy win think hurt states lost less 12 7 opponent white male imagine moment minority candidate woman baggage trump theres absolutely way demographic white male would elected president despite forget everything else shameful trump even everything list four things alone would disqualify anyone isnt white male ever elected president reasons sure would eliminate even couple especially last one things list say almost absolute certainty swearing donald trump next president january 20 2017 feel free hit twitter facebook let know think 0 facebook comments | 582 |
<p>Dan Cohen is an independent journalist and filmmaker. He is the director of the upcoming documentary, 'Killing Gaza'.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> AARON MATE: It's the Real News, I'm Aaron Mate. The Al-Aqsa Compound or Temple Mount in East Jerusalem has long been a flash point in the Israel Palestine Conflict. Now there is a new escalation. On Friday, Israel canceled prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the first time in decades. This came after a gun fight that left three Palestinian gunman and two Israeli soldiers dead. The Palestinians opened fire on Israeli forces before they were shot dead inside the compound. The Mosque has since reopened, but Palestinian worshipers are refusing to enter because Israel imposed new restrictions. Previous tensions at the Al-Aqsa Compound have led to deadly clashes including the protests that launched the Second Intifada in 2000. Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He is the director of the upcoming documentary Killing Gaza. Dan, welcome.
<p />DAN COHEN: Good to be with you, Aaron.
<p />AARON MATE: Thank you for joining me. Let's talk first about what happened last week, this attack that led to deaths of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers and then Israel closing Friday prayers at the Compound for the first time in decades.
<p />DAN COHEN: Right, so three Palestinian citizens of Israel from actually the same family in the Northern city of Umm al-Fahm opened fire on Israeli occupation soldiers just outside the Compound and fled inside the Compound. They clashed with other soldiers there and were shot and then executed on the spot in a torrent of gunfire. The Israeli occupation canceled Friday prayers for the day, which as you described in the opening hasn't happened in decades and instituted collective punishment shutting down the Muslim quarter of the old city for Palestinians. You just have bewildered tourists walking through not knowing what's going on. The following day, the Israelis continued to keep it closed, keep the Al-Aqsa Compound closed, and then installed metal detectors as under the guise of security at the Compound.
<p /> It has since been reopened and that's basically the point we're at today. Actually, the director of the Al-Aqsa Compound, Shaykh Omar Kiswani, was detained and a number of Al-Aqsa guards were detained and interrogated. That is the situation right now. What's missing from the story, and what I've described there is basically what we've heard in establishment media, which is all correct. The huge context that is missing, which might explain what precipitated this attack, was that there is a far right, what I would call an apocalyptic right-wing Israeli movement that tours the Al-Aqsa Compound under military protection on a daily basis where they make explicit threats to destroy the mosques hoping that they will provoke Palestinians to react violently.
<p /> Then the Israeli military will have the pretext to arrest, expel, and even kill anyone who resists with the idea that eventually Israel will control the entire Compound and be able to destroy the mosques and build a temple in its place. That's basically the missing context that we just did not see in establishment media.
<p />AARON MATE: In this movement, who are they?
<p />DAN COHEN: Well, the temple movement, it comes from religion. It's a fundamentalist ideology that the way to ... what Judaism for thousands of years has understood as Jewish redemption, the building of a temple but by supernatural means, it was completely forbidden in Orthodox Judaism. It would fall from the sky according to Orthodox Jews. Then we would have a Jewish kingdom of God, but in Orthodox Judaism it was completely forbidden. What religious Zionism did is take that idea that instead of God making it happen, Jews would essentially become God and make it happen themselves and build it. Originally, the whole idea of building the temple was forbidden. Over the decades, since the advent of Zionism more than 120 years ago, this idea has slowly, slowly, slowly mainstreamed.
<p /> In the past decades and especially the past couple years, it had mainstreamed into Israeli society as religious Zionist fundamentalists have achieved prominence and really taken over the state. There's been a theocratization of the Israeli military, the institutions. Now this movement to destroy the Al-Aqsa Compound is positioned as the tip of the spear in the Zionist project, in Israeli society, against Palestinians. It's understood as the way, really, to expel all Arabs and create this ultimate war to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'll read off a few quotes from Israeli officials, first from the temple movement itself, the official body temple movement in response to this weekend's incident.
<p /> They said, "We must liberate the Temple Mount from the murderous Islam and return it to the people of Israel." That's the fanatical movement, their official statement. Then we have members of Parliament echoing that. Member of Parliament Nissan Slomiansky, "Expel Arabs from the Compound." Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan, "Expel Arabs from the compound." Member of Parliament Motiv Yogev, "Expel Arabs," basically, he didn't say it explicitly but, "from the West Bank City Nablus, from the West Bank City of Hebron, from the Al-Aqsa Compound." It's very much mainstreaming Israeli society, and it's extremely dangerous.
<p />AARON MATE: Dan, when you talk about them visiting the Al-Aqsa Compound under police protection, can you talk about what that looks like and why you think it's provocative to Palestinians?
<p />DAN COHEN: Well, basically you have Israeli settlers surrounded by Israeli soldiers, heavily armed Israeli soldiers, going around the premises of the compound, explicitly they'll sing chants of, "We will build the temple," which implies, "We will destroy your mosques, because there's not really room for two." It's an Islamic worship site. It's been that way for about 1,500 years. If you go up there and watch these guys, they'll also explicitly call for demolishing the mosque. It's anything to provoke. It's not just my assessment. Actually, if you look at what Avi Dichter said in 2008 when he was the Minister of Internal Security, the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, he said, "Jewish prayer at the compound would serve as a provocation and cause bloodshed."
<p /> Since then, to get an idea of how much it's mainstreamed, Dichter was one of the MKs who just said, "We should assert Jewish sovereignty at the Al-Aqsa Compound." It goes to show how this movement mainstreamed, that he full well knows that it's actually a provocation but we should do it anyway because it's seen as a populist statement in Israel.
<p />AARON MATE: Right. Dan, so on that point, it reminds me of previous incidents at the Al-Aqsa Compound or Temple Mount. In '96 when Netanyahu was serving his first term as Prime Minister he authorized the digging of these tunnels around the site, which angered Palestinian worshipers and sparked deadly clashes. Then of course, much more consequentially in 2000 right after the failure of the Camp David Peace Talks in the summer of 2000, tensions were very high, and in the fall you have Ariel Sharon, the former IDF Commander and Prime Minister, visiting the Al-Aqsa Compound under police protection. That sparked the clashes that set off the Intifada.
<p />DAN COHEN: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's the most sensitive spot in the country and has impact on the region as well. We've seen time and time again that it's the dome of the rock, the golden dome is ... they see it as the big golden button to really set it all off, and so they continue to go and set up sparks. As you said, we've seen in '96 with Netanyahu's opening of the Western Wall Tunnels and in Ariel Sharon storming the Compound with hundreds of soldiers surrounding him and helicopters overhead. It's not as if these settlers are going up there and saying, "Let's have some kind of peaceful anything." They make their intention very, very clear to the Palestinians up there. It's really no secret to Palestinians.
<p />AARON MATE: Dan, let's talk about what's happening right now. Netanyahu has announced new restrictions on the site. There are security cameras now and also metal detectors. Palestinians, as I mentioned, have been protesting this, refusing to enter, and actually praying outside, refusing to go inside and say their prayers. Can Israel say, "We're only doing this in response to the fact that these Palestinian gunman open fire and killed our soldiers?"
<p />DAN COHEN: Well, I mean, Israel has an agreement with the Jordanians as part of the Peace Agreement with the Jordanians, that part of that is Israel coordinates everything with the Muslim Religious Endowment at the Al-Aqsa Compound called the [Walkith] and Israel does not really have the power to make these unilateral decisions. It's not exactly surprising the Palestinians are protesting that because it is, again, it is an Islamic worship site. The arrangement has been that Jews and that non-Muslims are allowed to visit but are not allowed to worship there. Israel really doesn't have any right to the place. It's occupied territory and it's an illegal military occupation despite the agreement with the Jordanians.
<p /> Yeah, we see that Palestinians are resisting by refusing to go through the metal detectors. One of the really crazy things is an Israeli member of Knesset took one of these photos of Palestinians doing a prayer in protest in front of the metal detectors. In the photo, they're on the ground praying in front of the Israeli soldiers and he said, "They're bowing down to the Israeli soldiers as they should." I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what he said. He's talking in the terms of this is what should happen in the theocracy when they build temple that they want, that Arabs will bow down to Jews. This is the ISIS-like mentality that is taking over.
<p />AARON MATE: Dan, you mentioned Jordan, so can you talk about what regional implications this whole escalation has and what you expect to see going forward as now Palestinians are gathering and protesting at this very sensitive site?
<p />DAN COHEN: Well, I mean, the first thing is that we're going to see this is the beginning of Israel implementing the model that it established or that it used in Hebron in terms of after extreme violence. In 1994, after the massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron by the Brooklyn-born settler, Baruch Goldstein, Israel partitioned the mosque and said, "Okay, now we have to allow these settlers to have equal rights as Palestinians even though it's Palestinian area," and at the same time turned the old city of Hebron into a ghost town. If you go to Hebron now, it's one of the most shocking forms of Israeli apartheid that you'll see.
<p /> That is what's gradually happening in Jerusalem. Now, how that will affect the ... That has been talked about in the Knesset, implementing that strategy in Jerusalem. We saw on Friday and Saturday the old city shut down. [crosstalk]
<p />AARON MATE: Dan, I should say, at least in public Netanyahu says he's committed to the status quo.
<p />DAN COHEN: Right. I mean, he says that in the same way he says he's committed to the peace process. The status quo continues to change under Netanyahu more and more. We see restrictions on Palestinian worship, freedom of worship at the Al-Aqsa Compound, and expansion of settler visits to the Compound. It's really just paying lip service while the reality on the ground is that the status quo is more or less becoming meaningless.
<p />AARON MATE: The regional context, Dan.
<p />DAN COHEN: The regional context is this is a crucial part of Israel's agreement with Jordan. Israel's agreement with Jordan has what is euphemistically termed security coordination as well. Of course, there are millions of Palestinians who would love to return home to Palestine that Jordan essentially prevents for Israel, and Jordan is also an ally of the U.S., and Israel, and Syria. The Israelis do not really want to turn Jordan against their interests in Syria as they continue. Israel announced yesterday it's rejecting a ceasefire as if it has that right. It's up to Netanyahu what happens from this point out, but it remains to be seen.
<p /> I think in the longterm, we're going to see the eventual segregation and partition of the Al-Aqsa Compound, which could spark mass clashes. Actually, there were protests yesterday here in Amman saying, "We are all responsible for the Al-Aqsa Compound." The Jordanian government is forced to make a statement condemning Israeli actions there, so Israel is really rocking the boat.
<p />AARON MATE: Just to clarify there for people in terms of this ceasefire in Syria, Dan's referring to the U.S.-Russia negotiated ceasefire in southwestern Syria, which Israel has rejected because it says that it's empowering Iran. Dan Cohen, we'll leave it there though. Independent journalist and filmmaker, director of the upcoming documentary Killing Gaza. Dan, thanks a lot.
<p />DAN COHEN: Thanks for having me.
<p />AARON MATE: Thank you for joining us on The Real News. | true | 4 | dan cohen independent journalist filmmaker director upcoming documentary killing gaza aaron mate real news im aaron mate alaqsa compound temple mount east jerusalem long flash point israel palestine conflict new escalation friday israel canceled prayers alaqsa mosque first time decades came gun fight left three palestinian gunman two israeli soldiers dead palestinians opened fire israeli forces shot dead inside compound mosque since reopened palestinian worshipers refusing enter israel imposed new restrictions previous tensions alaqsa compound led deadly clashes including protests launched second intifada 2000 dan cohen journalist filmmaker director upcoming documentary killing gaza dan welcome dan cohen good aaron aaron mate thank joining lets talk first happened last week attack led deaths palestinians israeli soldiers israel closing friday prayers compound first time decades dan cohen right three palestinian citizens israel actually family northern city umm alfahm opened fire israeli occupation soldiers outside compound fled inside compound clashed soldiers shot executed spot torrent gunfire israeli occupation canceled friday prayers day described opening hasnt happened decades instituted collective punishment shutting muslim quarter old city palestinians bewildered tourists walking knowing whats going following day israelis continued keep closed keep alaqsa compound closed installed metal detectors guise security compound since reopened thats basically point today actually director alaqsa compound shaykh omar kiswani detained number alaqsa guards detained interrogated situation right whats missing story ive described basically weve heard establishment media correct huge context missing might explain precipitated attack far right would call apocalyptic rightwing israeli movement tours alaqsa compound military protection daily basis make explicit threats destroy mosques hoping provoke palestinians react violently israeli military pretext arrest expel even kill anyone resists idea eventually israel control entire compound able destroy mosques build temple place thats basically missing context see establishment media aaron mate movement dan cohen well temple movement comes religion fundamentalist ideology way judaism thousands years understood jewish redemption building temple supernatural means completely forbidden orthodox judaism would fall sky according orthodox jews would jewish kingdom god orthodox judaism completely forbidden religious zionism take idea instead god making happen jews would essentially become god make happen build originally whole idea building temple forbidden decades since advent zionism 120 years ago idea slowly slowly slowly mainstreamed past decades especially past couple years mainstreamed israeli society religious zionist fundamentalists achieved prominence really taken state theres theocratization israeli military institutions movement destroy alaqsa compound positioned tip spear zionist project israeli society palestinians understood way really expel arabs create ultimate war end israelipalestinian conflict ill read quotes israeli officials first temple movement official body temple movement response weekends incident said must liberate temple mount murderous islam return people israel thats fanatical movement official statement members parliament echoing member parliament nissan slomiansky expel arabs compound deputy defense minister eli bendahan expel arabs compound member parliament motiv yogev expel arabs basically didnt say explicitly west bank city nablus west bank city hebron alaqsa compound much mainstreaming israeli society extremely dangerous aaron mate dan talk visiting alaqsa compound police protection talk looks like think provocative palestinians dan cohen well basically israeli settlers surrounded israeli soldiers heavily armed israeli soldiers going around premises compound explicitly theyll sing chants build temple implies destroy mosques theres really room two islamic worship site way 1500 years go watch guys theyll also explicitly call demolishing mosque anything provoke assessment actually look avi dichter said 2008 minister internal security israeli minister internal security said jewish prayer compound would serve provocation cause bloodshed since get idea much mainstreamed dichter one mks said assert jewish sovereignty alaqsa compound goes show movement mainstreamed full well knows actually provocation anyway seen populist statement israel aaron mate right dan point reminds previous incidents alaqsa compound temple mount 96 netanyahu serving first term prime minister authorized digging tunnels around site angered palestinian worshipers sparked deadly clashes course much consequentially 2000 right failure camp david peace talks summer 2000 tensions high fall ariel sharon former idf commander prime minister visiting alaqsa compound police protection sparked clashes set intifada dan cohen yeah exactly mean sensitive spot country impact region well weve seen time time dome rock golden dome see big golden button really set continue go set sparks said weve seen 96 netanyahus opening western wall tunnels ariel sharon storming compound hundreds soldiers surrounding helicopters overhead settlers going saying lets kind peaceful anything make intention clear palestinians really secret palestinians aaron mate dan lets talk whats happening right netanyahu announced new restrictions site security cameras also metal detectors palestinians mentioned protesting refusing enter actually praying outside refusing go inside say prayers israel say response fact palestinian gunman open fire killed soldiers dan cohen well mean israel agreement jordanians part peace agreement jordanians part israel coordinates everything muslim religious endowment alaqsa compound called walkith israel really power make unilateral decisions exactly surprising palestinians protesting islamic worship site arrangement jews nonmuslims allowed visit allowed worship israel really doesnt right place occupied territory illegal military occupation despite agreement jordanians yeah see palestinians resisting refusing go metal detectors one really crazy things israeli member knesset took one photos palestinians prayer protest front metal detectors photo theyre ground praying front israeli soldiers said theyre bowing israeli soldiers im paraphrasing thats essentially said hes talking terms happen theocracy build temple want arabs bow jews isislike mentality taking aaron mate dan mentioned jordan talk regional implications whole escalation expect see going forward palestinians gathering protesting sensitive site dan cohen well mean first thing going see beginning israel implementing model established used hebron terms extreme violence 1994 massacre ibrahimi mosque hebron brooklynborn settler baruch goldstein israel partitioned mosque said okay allow settlers equal rights palestinians even though palestinian area time turned old city hebron ghost town go hebron one shocking forms israeli apartheid youll see whats gradually happening jerusalem affect talked knesset implementing strategy jerusalem saw friday saturday old city shut crosstalk aaron mate dan say least public netanyahu says hes committed status quo dan cohen right mean says way says hes committed peace process status quo continues change netanyahu see restrictions palestinian worship freedom worship alaqsa compound expansion settler visits compound really paying lip service reality ground status quo less becoming meaningless aaron mate regional context dan dan cohen regional context crucial part israels agreement jordan israels agreement jordan euphemistically termed security coordination well course millions palestinians would love return home palestine jordan essentially prevents israel jordan also ally us israel syria israelis really want turn jordan interests syria continue israel announced yesterday rejecting ceasefire right netanyahu happens point remains seen think longterm going see eventual segregation partition alaqsa compound could spark mass clashes actually protests yesterday amman saying responsible alaqsa compound jordanian government forced make statement condemning israeli actions israel really rocking boat aaron mate clarify people terms ceasefire syria dans referring usrussia negotiated ceasefire southwestern syria israel rejected says empowering iran dan cohen well leave though independent journalist filmmaker director upcoming documentary killing gaza dan thanks lot dan cohen thanks aaron mate thank joining us real news | 1,148 |
<p>So now it turns out that the whole Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was a flop or more likely a scam. Remember Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson telling us last September that credit markets had locked up, and then, after half of the $750 billion that he extorted out of Congress was handed out to Wall Street firms, new President Barack Obama justifying the spending of the second half of the money because we needed to “get the banks lending again”?</p>
<p>Well, now Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP, is telling us that all that money, and another more than $2 trillion in loans, accomplished nothing.&#160; In an interview with Lagan Sebert, published in Huffington Post, Barofsky says, “We were told by Treasury that the purpose of the TARP fund was to increase lending. But we haven’t increased lending.”</p>
<p>Well yeah, that’s true. Just ask any ordinary working stiff. My little bank, the Harleysville National Bank here in eastern Pennsylvania, far from expanding lending, has been shutting down customer credit lines. As a bank manager told me, they were “reviewing all our equity lines” in light of declining property values (actually, property values in our area north of Philadelphia have remained pretty stable).&#160; In general, banks across the country have been canceling credit lines, closing credit card accounts on customers deemed risky—including small businesses—and making it very hard to get a new mortgage. (They’ve also been raising all kinds of fees, ripping customers off in other ways, but that’s another story.)</p>
<p>And that goes for the biggest banks that got billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout funds.</p>
<p>Barofsky has been trying doggedly to find out whatever happened to all that money of ours that was shoveled out to the banks, and as he reports, he’s been working not just without any help from the Treasury Department, but actually against the active resistance of Treasury, which he accuses of having tried to dissuade him from even looking into it.</p>
<p>“My biggest surprise,” he says, “is when we announced an audit (of TARP), Treasury went out of their way to say…it would be a big waste of time.” He says Treasury officials including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, claimed that it would be impossible to find out where the money went, on the argument that money is “fungible”—that is to say all money is the same.&#160; Of course this is a cynical and ridiculous assertion. If it were true, there would be no job for auditors, since all auditors do is look to find out where money went. (Imagine telling an IRS auditor that it is a waste of time auditing your books, because money is fungible!)</p>
<p>In any event, Barofsky has gone about his work, with or without the backing of the Obama Treasury Department, and what he found is that instead of lending out the money that they were provided with by taxpayers, the banks have been “acquiring other institutions, sitting on it, paying down credit lines,” and, of course, paying out obscene bonuses to executives.</p>
<p>The one thing the banks are not doing is lending.</p>
<p>But then, as I wrote last February, it was silly to think that by shoveling money into banks during a record recession, the banks would then lend it out.&#160; First of all, there was the awkward reality that good companies were and still are not looking to borrow money. Rather, they are trying to pay down debt and get their balance sheets on more solid ground to survive a period of low or declining sales and earnings.&#160; The only companies that would be trying to borrow right now would be the ones that were on the rocks, and wanted money just to stay afloat. And what banker would lend to them? And second, if the banks could make more money by investing their new cash instead of making risky loans with it, why would they lend? So most of them just used the money to invest in Treasury Bonds.</p>
<p>The long and the short of it is that we’ve been taken for a very big and costly ride by banks that created a huge crisis and that then got the government to bail them out of it with our money, and by two administrations, one Republican and now one Democratic, that have been submissive and willing servants of the big banks.</p>
<p>The big surprise to me has been Paul Volcker, who I mistakenly took to be an over-the-hill relic and Wall Street patsy.&#160; The former Carter and Reagan-era Federal Reserve Board chairman, currently chair of President Obama’s economic advisory panel, is publicly warning that the president’s bank policies are preserving a system of giant banks that are “too big to fail,” and are risking further, even larger bailouts.</p>
<p>Barofsky agrees, saying that since the bailout, under Obama’s bank policies, big banks already deemed “too big to fail” have become even bigger, and he concludes, “We may be in a far more dangerous place today than we were in a year ago,” for having told certain financial companies that we will not let them fail.</p>
<p>Little wonder that the smart money—that would be the insiders in corporate boardrooms and executive suites—is reportedly selling shares as fast as they can be sold, with the experts reporting that insider sales of company stock are running 31:1 on the sell side. The explanation: with layoffs still running at over 500,000 a month, and nobody hiring, these executives don’t see anything in the year ahead or even longer that is likely to put the economy on a renewed growth path.</p>
<p>Putting these bits of news together doesn’t paint a pretty picture: We’ve got an economy that appears headed for at best a long period of stagnation and, more likely, for a second downturn, once the effect of last March’s stimulus package wears off. We’ve got a financial system that has been propped up artificially, its balance sheets soggy with underwater mortgages and worthless derivatives, and its executives holding assurances that they can count on the government bailing them out no matter what stupid or self-serving decisions they make. We’ve got an economy that is 70% based upon consumer spending, in which one in five people is unemployed or involuntarily underemployed. We’ve got a nation that hardly makes anything, at the same time that its currency is sinking like a stone, making imports increasingly expensive, And we have a stock market that has been inflated into a giant bubble, just waiting to pop.</p>
<p>October should be an interesting month this year.</p>
<p>DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at <a href="http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/" type="external">www.thiscantbehappening.net</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | turns whole troubled assets relief program tarp flop likely scam remember bush treasury secretary henry paulson telling us last september credit markets locked half 750 billion extorted congress handed wall street firms new president barack obama justifying spending second half money needed get banks lending well neil barofsky special inspector general tarp telling us money another 2 trillion loans accomplished nothing160 interview lagan sebert published huffington post barofsky says told treasury purpose tarp fund increase lending havent increased lending well yeah thats true ask ordinary working stiff little bank harleysville national bank eastern pennsylvania far expanding lending shutting customer credit lines bank manager told reviewing equity lines light declining property values actually property values area north philadelphia remained pretty stable160 general banks across country canceling credit lines closing credit card accounts customers deemed riskyincluding small businessesand making hard get new mortgage theyve also raising kinds fees ripping customers ways thats another story goes biggest banks got billions dollars taxpayer bailout funds barofsky trying doggedly find whatever happened money shoveled banks reports hes working without help treasury department actually active resistance treasury accuses tried dissuade even looking biggest surprise says announced audit tarp treasury went way sayit would big waste time says treasury officials including treasury secretary tim geithner claimed would impossible find money went argument money fungiblethat say money same160 course cynical ridiculous assertion true would job auditors since auditors look find money went imagine telling irs auditor waste time auditing books money fungible event barofsky gone work without backing obama treasury department found instead lending money provided taxpayers banks acquiring institutions sitting paying credit lines course paying obscene bonuses executives one thing banks lending wrote last february silly think shoveling money banks record recession banks would lend out160 first awkward reality good companies still looking borrow money rather trying pay debt get balance sheets solid ground survive period low declining sales earnings160 companies would trying borrow right would ones rocks wanted money stay afloat banker would lend second banks could make money investing new cash instead making risky loans would lend used money invest treasury bonds long short weve taken big costly ride banks created huge crisis got government bail money two administrations one republican one democratic submissive willing servants big banks big surprise paul volcker mistakenly took overthehill relic wall street patsy160 former carter reaganera federal reserve board chairman currently chair president obamas economic advisory panel publicly warning presidents bank policies preserving system giant banks big fail risking even larger bailouts barofsky agrees saying since bailout obamas bank policies big banks already deemed big fail become even bigger concludes may far dangerous place today year ago told certain financial companies let fail little wonder smart moneythat would insiders corporate boardrooms executive suitesis reportedly selling shares fast sold experts reporting insider sales company stock running 311 sell side explanation layoffs still running 500000 month nobody hiring executives dont see anything year ahead even longer likely put economy renewed growth path putting bits news together doesnt paint pretty picture weve got economy appears headed best long period stagnation likely second downturn effect last marchs stimulus package wears weve got financial system propped artificially balance sheets soggy underwater mortgages worthless derivatives executives holding assurances count government bailing matter stupid selfserving decisions make weve got economy 70 based upon consumer spending one five people unemployed involuntarily underemployed weve got nation hardly makes anything time currency sinking like stone making imports increasingly expensive stock market inflated giant bubble waiting pop october interesting month year dave lindorff philadelphiaarea journalist latest book case impeachment st martins press 2006 work available wwwthiscantbehappeningnet 160 160 160 160 | 600 |
<p>So as to avoid any confusion, let it be stated loud and clear: There is no Palestinian Solidarity Movement.</p>
<p>Palestinian solidarity is different from Palestinian Liberation, a principal that implies the Palestinian people being able to express their aspirations of freedom. Palestinian society, with its massive and disorganised diaspora, is lost in dispersion, lacks the means to insist that the media gives equal time to its story, and has enormous difficulty expressing and sustaining a unified project, whether it be a vision of a Palestinian State, secular or religiously inspired as it may be, or co-existence together in a single State with the Jews of Israel.</p>
<p>The sole element on which all Palestinians concur is their need to become political subjects and to abandon their stateless status. Only in this way will they be finally able to come into possession of their human and civil rights, including the Right of Return.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Solidarity “Movement” is rather a galaxy of individuals and organisations that are generally not Palestinians. The common ground is that they all agree that their program is “Peace in the Middle East”. On one end of the parabola we have those who see no problem with the idea of Israel as a Jewish State. They would like to see some kind of settlement for the Palestinians that will abate them, tossing a virtual bone at them by supporting the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (but not the West Bank, which is another story, seeing as how it is historically relevant to the Jewish people). They sustain that the only way to guarantee a secure Israel, which is a given, is by maintaining a Jewish majority, and other matters must take off from that premise. People in this camp run the gamut of the political spectrum, from right to left. They generally have the most space dedicated to them in public discourse, as it is a message that reflects and embraces many elements of the accepted Zionist stance, and they address a general public with great success, often depicting themselves as progressives when upon close observation, there is very little progressive in their ideas.</p>
<p>On the opposite end of the parabola, and often in conflict with the former are those who put the interests of the Palestinians first, as they accept to support the cause for justice of the victims of the appropriation of Palestinian land and those living under occupation or in exile. This group often, but not always, insists on the full Right of Return for the Palestinians, because it is a guaranteed right, and therefore, legitimate and just, in addition to compensation and integration into a unified State together with Jews. This group sometimes is in touch with what Palestinians aspire to, but not always.</p>
<p>Since these people are often not Palestinians, they have a tendency to identify and define themselves by their personal characteristics. Within this latter group we find primarily people who identify themselves as being on “the Left”. Many are members of leftist political parties, others are sympathisers, almost all engage in dialectical discussion groups with progressives, rather than reach out to the first group or even to the general public. They operate in a closed milieu of others just like them, progressive or Marxist collectives and discussion groups. Many of them have years of hands on political experience, and are imbued with the culture of these groups. They refer to those in other parties as comrades quite naturally. In essence, they should be weaned on dialectic.</p>
<p>In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has invited Gilad Atzmon to appear at their annual convention this July, “Marxism 2005”. Atzmon, former Israeli, is a fervent and outspoken anti-Zionist, promoter of full Right of Return, and is in favour of the establishment of a Single State which encompasses all the people in historical Palestine. He is engaged in deconstructing the supremacist nature inherent in an ideology like Zionism that excludes a priori those who are not Jews, and which grants Jews special rights in historical Palestine. He is a writer and musician. His performances include the message dedicated to his political beliefs. Although he is not affiliated with any political party, he is a political artist whose agenda is Palestine and the interests of the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>It is expected that he won’t just perform his music at Marxism 2005, but that he will make a presentation of some sort, the title advertised as being “Beauty Against Zionism”. This will be Atzmon’s third appearance at the SWP convention, or rather, it is scheduled to be, since there are some Marxists who don’t want that to happen.</p>
<p>In the UK, Jews Against Zionism can’t abide Gilad Atzmon, and they have demanded that the SWP renege his invitation. Tony Greenstein, together with others, has publicised his demands on the forum of <a href="ttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/justpeaceuk/" type="external">Just Peace UK</a>, a mainly, but not exclusively Jewish group. He has put forth an edict that Atzmon is an anti-semite (as well as anyone who supports him), that he is associated with anti-semites (because he, like thousands of others, reads material which Tony does not approve of), and that he is a Holocaust Denier or at the very least, an apologist for them.</p>
<p>Greenstein and several of his friends on JPUK, the UK Left Network and JAZ have determined that Atzmon is a liability (a title wielded at Atzmon’s supporters as well as some other even more offensive opinions) to the Palestinian Solidarity Movement and that his voice is leading towards a dangerous path and has no place in it. He has placed conditions upon Atzmon, as well has having placed demands upon the SWP even though Greenstein is not affiliated with this party.</p>
<p>He undertakes these actions, which seem to be the tip of the iceberg that has been building up for a long time in his desire to weed out the movement, and divide it into Tony-friendly or not, largely for the stated reason that Atzmon distributed through his mailing list a paper “The Holocaust Wars” written by Paul Eisen. Greenstein, having decided that it is classified as “Holocaust Denial” yet not having been able to establish his position except within his small group of comrades, (“It is not an opinion, it is a fact”, he states), actually assigns the third person voice of the author as representing Atzmon’s views. Atzmon is accused of having read the paper and thinking others might want to read it as well. Regardless of the content of the paper, which should be debated properly, if anyone is really interested, the very appearance of the paper is unfathomable for Greenstein and for those who share his opinion. Those responsible for it should not have voice in the Palestinian solidarity movement, because they would contaminate it.</p>
<p>Greenstein has written to the SWP demanding, not requesting, that they cancel Atzmon’s appearance as well as a speaking event at the SWP’s bookshop in London, which in lieu of cancellation, will be picketed. In other words, Greenstein decides who he likes or not, who has the right to speak or not, and when they do speak, he dictates what it is they talk about. He wants to be master of discourse; the most vocal, most pure, and official voice of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. Those who disagree with him and his agenda are in his mind on the “other side of the camp” and gone full circle, having fallen into anti-semitism. They are not good for the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>Atzmon <a href="" type="internal">wrote an article</a> exposing the attempts of some of the members of this group to undermine an important Palestinian Solidarity group, Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR), which has the crime of hosting people on its board of whom Greenstein and his close allies do not approve and not for any merit or demerit of the organisation itself. Greenstein criticised the contents of the article, but since it was primarily direct quotes from people on the JPUK board, it could not be contested for accuracy or denied. In <a href="" type="internal">a recent epistolary exchange</a> between Atzmon and Greenstein, we see Greenstein saying:</p>
<p>“I certainly wish to see a speedy end to Deir Yassin Remembered. It can only do great damage to the Palestinian cause in so far as it is led by a holocaust denier and associated with another virulent anti-Semite.”</p>
<p>Greenstein seems to know what is best for the Palestinian people, but what precisely gives him this information is a real mystery. Is he a self-appointed spokesman for them or does he just set the agenda because his ideas are the most important, significant and true ones? Atzmon claims that non-Palestinian activists are soldiers for the Palestinian people, required to listen to them and be at their service and states, “Instead of doing that (debating the paper he contests) you prefer to act under your Jewish banner whatever it means (something that you do constantly). You run campaigns solely with your Jewish comrades (rather than in the forefront of world working class). Rather than joining or even forming a humanistic open discourse, you try to stop the world from moving on. You insist on locating your worldview in the centre of any possible discourse. Why do you do it? Because you are a supremacist Jew. You must believe that you know better. You must believe that you know better than the SWP what is important for the British working class. You must think that you know better than the Palestinians what is right for the Palestinian people. Are you familiar with the notion of modesty? Just contemplate over the remote possibility that you may not know better.”</p>
<p>One can <a href="" type="internal">read Atzmon</a> and not agree with him, dislike his ideas or style, and especially when he critiques the mindset of Zionism and Jewish Identification as well as the mechanisms that protect Israel from having to act decently as is expected of any other nation in the world,, but no one should be permitted to deny him the possibility to exercise his right of free speech. One might not like what he says, whether the critic be Zionist or anti-Zionist, but shutting him up seems to be very old school left, right out of Stalinism.</p>
<p>MARY RIZZO lives in Italy. She can be reached at: <a href="mailto:humdrum2@libero.it" type="external">humdrum2@libero.it</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | avoid confusion let stated loud clear palestinian solidarity movement palestinian solidarity different palestinian liberation principal implies palestinian people able express aspirations freedom palestinian society massive disorganised diaspora lost dispersion lacks means insist media gives equal time story enormous difficulty expressing sustaining unified project whether vision palestinian state secular religiously inspired may coexistence together single state jews israel sole element palestinians concur need become political subjects abandon stateless status way finally able come possession human civil rights including right return palestinian solidarity movement rather galaxy individuals organisations generally palestinians common ground agree program peace middle east one end parabola see problem idea israel jewish state would like see kind settlement palestinians abate tossing virtual bone supporting israeli withdrawal gaza west bank another story seeing historically relevant jewish people sustain way guarantee secure israel given maintaining jewish majority matters must take premise people camp run gamut political spectrum right left generally space dedicated public discourse message reflects embraces many elements accepted zionist stance address general public great success often depicting progressives upon close observation little progressive ideas opposite end parabola often conflict former put interests palestinians first accept support cause justice victims appropriation palestinian land living occupation exile group often always insists full right return palestinians guaranteed right therefore legitimate addition compensation integration unified state together jews group sometimes touch palestinians aspire always since people often palestinians tendency identify define personal characteristics within latter group find primarily people identify left many members leftist political parties others sympathisers almost engage dialectical discussion groups progressives rather reach first group even general public operate closed milieu others like progressive marxist collectives discussion groups many years hands political experience imbued culture groups refer parties comrades quite naturally essence weaned dialectic uk socialist workers party swp invited gilad atzmon appear annual convention july marxism 2005 atzmon former israeli fervent outspoken antizionist promoter full right return favour establishment single state encompasses people historical palestine engaged deconstructing supremacist nature inherent ideology like zionism excludes priori jews grants jews special rights historical palestine writer musician performances include message dedicated political beliefs although affiliated political party political artist whose agenda palestine interests palestinian people expected wont perform music marxism 2005 make presentation sort title advertised beauty zionism atzmons third appearance swp convention rather scheduled since marxists dont want happen uk jews zionism cant abide gilad atzmon demanded swp renege invitation tony greenstein together others publicised demands forum peace uk mainly exclusively jewish group put forth edict atzmon antisemite well anyone supports associated antisemites like thousands others reads material tony approve holocaust denier least apologist greenstein several friends jpuk uk left network jaz determined atzmon liability title wielded atzmons supporters well even offensive opinions palestinian solidarity movement voice leading towards dangerous path place placed conditions upon atzmon well placed demands upon swp even though greenstein affiliated party undertakes actions seem tip iceberg building long time desire weed movement divide tonyfriendly largely stated reason atzmon distributed mailing list paper holocaust wars written paul eisen greenstein decided classified holocaust denial yet able establish position except within small group comrades opinion fact states actually assigns third person voice author representing atzmons views atzmon accused read paper thinking others might want read well regardless content paper debated properly anyone really interested appearance paper unfathomable greenstein share opinion responsible voice palestinian solidarity movement would contaminate greenstein written swp demanding requesting cancel atzmons appearance well speaking event swps bookshop london lieu cancellation picketed words greenstein decides likes right speak speak dictates talk wants master discourse vocal pure official voice palestinian solidarity movement disagree agenda mind side camp gone full circle fallen antisemitism good palestinian people atzmon wrote article exposing attempts members group undermine important palestinian solidarity group deir yassin remembered dyr crime hosting people board greenstein close allies approve merit demerit organisation greenstein criticised contents article since primarily direct quotes people jpuk board could contested accuracy denied recent epistolary exchange atzmon greenstein see greenstein saying certainly wish see speedy end deir yassin remembered great damage palestinian cause far led holocaust denier associated another virulent antisemite greenstein seems know best palestinian people precisely gives information real mystery selfappointed spokesman set agenda ideas important significant true ones atzmon claims nonpalestinian activists soldiers palestinian people required listen service states instead debating paper contests prefer act jewish banner whatever means something constantly run campaigns solely jewish comrades rather forefront world working class rather joining even forming humanistic open discourse try stop world moving insist locating worldview centre possible discourse supremacist jew must believe know better must believe know better swp important british working class must think know better palestinians right palestinian people familiar notion modesty contemplate remote possibility may know better one read atzmon agree dislike ideas style especially critiques mindset zionism jewish identification well mechanisms protect israel act decently expected nation world one permitted deny possibility exercise right free speech one might like says whether critic zionist antizionist shutting seems old school left right stalinism mary rizzo lives italy reached humdrum2liberoit 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 | 837 |
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.
<p />
<p />The Philadelphia school board recently announced it's going to close 23 schools and lay off nearly 4,000 employees, including over 600 teachers, 200 counselors, 100 assistant principals, and more than 1,200 noontime aides.
<p />
<p />To discuss this latest news, we're joined by two guests.
<p />
<p />Anissa is a high school teacher, community leader, core member of the Teacher Action Group, and rank-and-file member of the Philadelphia federation of teachers. She's been teaching in Philadelphia for the last seven years, but recently was notified that she was going to be laid off, along with 3,800 of her colleagues.
<p />
<p />Gerald Wright is a father of two girls who attend Philadelphia public schools. One is a sixth-grade student at John Story Jenks Elementary School, and the other is an eleventh-grade student at Constitution High.
<p />
<p />Thank you both for joining us.
<p />
<p />ANISSA WEINRAUB, TEACHER ACTION GROUP: Thanks for having me.
<p />
<p />NOOR: Gerald, let's start with you. Your children do not attend a school that's going to be closed down. Will your children and will your children's school still be impacted?
<p />
<p />GERALD WRIGHT, PARENTS UNITED FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION: Absolutely. The school closings are impacting all of the schools across the city, because the budgets that have been given to all of the schools have been cut by about 25&#160;percent. So every school in the School District of Philadelphia is affected, whether it's closing or not.
<p />
<p />NOOR: Gerald, you're also a cofounder of Parents United for Public Education in Philadelphia. Can you talk a little bit about what this group has been doing in response to these announced cuts?
<p />
<p />WRIGHT: Parents United for Public Education continues to call on the School District of Philadelphia and the School Reform Commission to be transparent in their decision-making and include parents in all levels of their deliberations about what to do next as a result of the crisis that we face. So we updated information on our website. We continue to work with all groups across the city that are engaging and responding to this crisis. And we continue to call on our elected leadership to provide the necessary funds for public education, funding that is sustainable, consistent, and that will stabilize the ability of the public schools to function.
<p />
<p />NOOR: So, Gerald, for over the past decade, Philadelphia's schools have been managed by the state. What impact has this had on the priorities of the budget in Philadelphia public schools?
<p />
<p />WRIGHT: Well, the state takeover is managed by a group called the School Reform Commission, and that's been in place since 2001. The prior governor before the current governor, Ed Rendell, as a result of that takeover put more money into public education. And each year that he put more money in, the results from the public system have been better. Students have done better consistently as money was put into the system.
<p />
<p />The current governor, Corbett, took about $1&#160;billion away from the education system in Pennsylvania, which certainly impacted Philadelphia significantly. As a result, we're now looking at a school district that passed a budget that does not appear to provide enough money to allow the schools to operate at any kind of quality level. The budgets that the individual schools have received will only pay for a principal and teachers. Extracurricular activity is done away with, counselors are removed, noontime aides are removed, support staff's removed, and a large number of teachers are taken out. Nearly 700 teachers are going to be laid off come the fall of 2013.
<p />
<p />NOOR: And, Gerald, the cuts are going to disproportionately affect African-American and low-income students. Talk about the impact they're going to have on these communities, on these high-need communities.
<p />
<p />WRIGHT: Well, the school closings are by far disproportionately impacting low-income and African-American neighborhoods. For example, the school district has pretty much closed every high school in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. There will no longer be a neighborhood high school in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. So students will either have to travel a greater distance to another section of the city or they'll have to find a school with special [incompr.] privileges. And you still have to travel to get to that school, because those schools are not located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.
<p />
<p />NOOR: I wanted to bring Anissa Weinraub into the conversation. Anissa, you're one of over 600 teachers that has been notified they're being laid off this year. Talk about the moment you found out about this layoff and what your reaction was.
<p />
<p />WEINRAUB: Yes. Actually, you know, it's interesting because, you know, we in Philadelphia, this is not the first time we've had--a couple of years ago there were a few thousand layoffs, and at that time I was lucky enough to receive a layoff as well--unlucky enough, actually. And what's different this time is, whereas last time there were layoffs, it was actually a person, my principal, my supervisor who brought me down and talked to me, this time what happened was it was a Saturday afternoon and I came home to find a white envelope in my mailbox. And, you know, I'm not alone with this story. People out, you know, having brunch, playing with their kids, maybe doing some final grading, and came home on a Saturday to find this letter that says, we regret to inform you that your services are no longer needed.
<p />
<p />And I think that's really indicative of what's going on in the School District, because we see, you know, as Gerald so explained, we see that we have a state that has taken over our school system. There's no elected representation for the decisions that are made on our school board. People are really insulated and not had to be held accountable for the kind of budgets and mismanagement and decisions that they're making. Similar to that, you know, there's no human there that is responsible to tell me and to take some kind of accountability for the fact that I and, you know, 3,800 other people are going to be laid off.
<p />
<p />NOOR: Anissa, what's the impact going to be for the students at your school that teachers are going to be laid off there?
<p />
<p />WEINRAUB: My school and every single school across the entire city is losing counselors, support staff, secretaries, assistant principals, nurses. Essentially, everyone it takes to really run a school will not be here. So the ripple effects of that are devastating, disastrous, and destabilizing. As Gerald poignantly mentioned, you can't run a school, you can't run a school, you cannot ensure student safety if there aren't any people around to make sure that the people in the hallway are supposed to be there. You cannot ensure student social and emotional health if you don't have counselors. And you can definitely not ensure student academic performance when you're going to have overstuffed, 33 students to a classroom classes where you're going to have teachers who are overwhelmed with the kind of responsibility of taking on all the responsibilities that a dean and a counselor and a secretary and an assistant principal used to do. So essentially what are we doing to our building is we're consigning our schools and our students and the people who work for the School District of Philadelphia to failure.
<p />
<p />NOOR: Now, Gerald, I wanted to read you a quote from the superintendent of Philadelphia public schools, Dr.&#160;William Hite Jr. He said the layoffs are a result of severe budget cuts necessary to keep the nation's eighth-largest school district financially sound. He says the School District of Philadelphia must live within its means. We can only spend the revenues that are given to us by the city and the state. Unfortunately, this is the harsh reality of how that looks. Gerald, you've talked about the priorities of the state, and the same time they have slashed the public school budget, they have allocated $400&#160;million to build new prisons near Philadelphia. What's your response?
<p />
<p />WRIGHT: Well, I mean, it doesn't make sense. That $400&#160;million is in addition to the budget passed for the Corrections Department in Pennsylvania. So if you can find $400&#160;million in addition to the budget that was passed to build prisons, why wouldn't you want to divert at least some of that money to schools that are clearly suffering and responsible for the well-being and the education of tomorrow's workforce and today's children?
<p />
<p />NOOR: Anissa, I wanted to get your response to Robert Pollin. We recently had him on The Real News. He was talking about the most effective way to create jobs. And a lot of these cutbacks you've seen around the country, like, for example, in Pennsylvania, where they're facing a massive budget shortfall, the same time they're cutting public education they're also cutting taxes to corporations. And the idea is to create jobs. But Robert Pollin says in fact the best way to create jobs is to fund public education. Let's go to that clip.
<p />
<p />~~~
<p />
<p />ROBERT POLLIN, CODIRECTOR, POLITICAL ECONOMY RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Spending on education is one of the best ways to create jobs, and it's maybe the best way insofar as we already have an infrastructure in place called the system of public education at the state level, at the local level. And when you spend $1&#160;million on education, you're going to create 27 jobs.
<p />
<p />So we must reverse this thinking that somehow public education is a drag on economic well-being, that we need austerity in public education. Quite the opposite. Even on strictly economic terms, on job creation terms, invest in education, invest in public education. It's the single best route to creating jobs right now.
<p />
<p />~~~
<p />
<p />WEINRAUB: I think it's very clear that those who have been elected to be our so-called leaders are really asserting priorities that are not in a line with most people's common sense and our communities' well-being. When you give tax--you know, when the idea of economic development is give megacorporations tax breaks, don't have downtown real estate holders pay their fair share of taxes, and then to slide that burden and to try to balance that budget on the backs of my students, my colleagues, and our city, you know, we're living in an upside-down world.
<p />
<p />And I think that the gentleman is correct that if we are--it really begs the question: what kind of community, what kind of city, what kind of nation do we want to live in? Do we want to live in one where everyone is literate, where everyone can function within 21st-century demands of technology and ability to collaborate? Is it one in which people will be able to work and then know that they will have health care that's affordable to them and will have city services that are there for them? Or is it one where a very few will, you know, extract all of the wealth and the rest of us will just be left for low-wage labor, unemployment, incarceration, joblessness, and really tearing at the real threads of our community?
<p />
<p />So I do think that this moment in public education in Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, and across the nation is asking us in our cities and in our communities what are our priorities. Will we invest in schools as public institutions and the cornerstones of healthy communities and the future generations? Or are we going to invest in this kind of casino capitalism where, you know, it's just the very few richest that get to take away all of the wealth? We're really living at a moment that I see as a tipping point.
<p />
<p />NOOR: So, Gerald, at the same time public schools are being shut down and teachers are being fired, do you still have the expansion of publicly funded but privately managed charter schools in Philadelphia? What's your response? And what will the next steps be for parents and community members in Philadelphia challenging these policies?
<p />
<p />WRIGHT: Well, the first thing that parents and community folks need recognize is we have to fight real hard to expand the amount of money coming into the pot to provide taxpayer-paid public education, whether it's charter or whether it's, you know, traditional public schools.
<p />
<p />That being said, given the pot of money that we have right now, the continued drive to expand charter schools without expanding the amount of money that we're receiving to provide education, the way that charter schools are organized and the way that the political will is being expressed in Philadelphia is draining needed resources from the public schools run by the School District of Philadelphia. Charter schools appear to be something of a priority the way that the state law has been interpreted, and as a result--there's still only one pot of money, so as a result, you have more hands in that one pot of money, and therefore the School District of Philadelphia has less money to provide to the schools that it is directly responsible to manage.
<p />
<p />And ironically, we don't have rational discussions. We have political discussions around School District-run schools and charters. So one of the things that parents and the rest of the community needs to do is to begin to change this contentious discussion into one where we're talking rationally about what we need to do in order to provide public education that's run by the School District of Philadelphia, which is still the place where most of the children are going to receive their education, and it is the only place that those children have to be accepted. Charter schools don't necessarily have to accept schools, and if they kick a child out of their schools, that child comes back to the School District run public schools. And in this current scenario, those are the very schools that are being hit hardest by the budget cuts and by the lack of positive reinforcement that's going on now in the education reform discussion.
<p />
<p />NOOR: So, Anissa, we'll end with you. How does the teachers union fit into this picture?
<p />
<p />WEINRAUB: Well, I think what we have seen this year in Philadelphia is something that's very exciting, where parents, teachers, and students, and community groups, and other labor unions are coming together through a coalition called PCAPS, the Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools. And so I think inside of that we're seeing much more grassroots and school-based organizing happen among the rank-and-file in the teachers union.
<p />
<p />And so, you know, I am a member of both the Teacher Action Group and the Philly Federation of Teachers. And so, as a teacher leader, I think it is critical for all of us on the ground level, all of us who are working directly with students and directly with parents, to see ourselves as the union and to ensure that we push ourselves and our colleagues as the union forward, and really understanding that our working conditions and teaching conditions are our students' learning conditions, and that we have to have a real collective understanding that these are our schools, and so we must fight together.
<p />
<p />So this summer is going to be a real exciting one. We're going to be in the streets a lot. We're going to be canvassing with students and parents. We're going to be getting the word out. And we're going to be fighting for a contract that's good for us and good for our students and communities.
<p />
<p />NOOR: Anissa, thank you for joining us.
<p />
<p />WEINRAUB: Thanks for having me.
<p />
<p />NOOR: Gerald Wright, thank you for joining us.
<p />
<p />WRIGHT: Thanks for having me.
<p />
<p />NOOR: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />End
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | true | 4 | jaisal noor trnn producer welcome real news network im jaisal noor baltimore philadelphia school board recently announced going close 23 schools lay nearly 4000 employees including 600 teachers 200 counselors 100 assistant principals 1200 noontime aides discuss latest news joined two guests anissa high school teacher community leader core member teacher action group rankandfile member philadelphia federation teachers shes teaching philadelphia last seven years recently notified going laid along 3800 colleagues gerald wright father two girls attend philadelphia public schools one sixthgrade student john story jenks elementary school eleventhgrade student constitution high thank joining us anissa weinraub teacher action group thanks noor gerald lets start children attend school thats going closed children childrens school still impacted gerald wright parents united public education absolutely school closings impacting schools across city budgets given schools cut 25160percent every school school district philadelphia affected whether closing noor gerald youre also cofounder parents united public education philadelphia talk little bit group response announced cuts wright parents united public education continues call school district philadelphia school reform commission transparent decisionmaking include parents levels deliberations next result crisis face updated information website continue work groups across city engaging responding crisis continue call elected leadership provide necessary funds public education funding sustainable consistent stabilize ability public schools function noor gerald past decade philadelphias schools managed state impact priorities budget philadelphia public schools wright well state takeover managed group called school reform commission thats place since 2001 prior governor current governor ed rendell result takeover put money public education year put money results public system better students done better consistently money put system current governor corbett took 1160billion away education system pennsylvania certainly impacted philadelphia significantly result looking school district passed budget appear provide enough money allow schools operate kind quality level budgets individual schools received pay principal teachers extracurricular activity done away counselors removed noontime aides removed support staffs removed large number teachers taken nearly 700 teachers going laid come fall 2013 noor gerald cuts going disproportionately affect africanamerican lowincome students talk impact theyre going communities highneed communities wright well school closings far disproportionately impacting lowincome africanamerican neighborhoods example school district pretty much closed every high school germantown section philadelphia longer neighborhood high school germantown section philadelphia students either travel greater distance another section city theyll find school special incompr privileges still travel get school schools located germantown section philadelphia noor wanted bring anissa weinraub conversation anissa youre one 600 teachers notified theyre laid year talk moment found layoff reaction weinraub yes actually know interesting know philadelphia first time weve hada couple years ago thousand layoffs time lucky enough receive layoff wellunlucky enough actually whats different time whereas last time layoffs actually person principal supervisor brought talked time happened saturday afternoon came home find white envelope mailbox know im alone story people know brunch playing kids maybe final grading came home saturday find letter says regret inform services longer needed think thats really indicative whats going school district see know gerald explained see state taken school system theres elected representation decisions made school board people really insulated held accountable kind budgets mismanagement decisions theyre making similar know theres human responsible tell take kind accountability fact know 3800 people going laid noor anissa whats impact going students school teachers going laid weinraub school every single school across entire city losing counselors support staff secretaries assistant principals nurses essentially everyone takes really run school ripple effects devastating disastrous destabilizing gerald poignantly mentioned cant run school cant run school ensure student safety arent people around make sure people hallway supposed ensure student social emotional health dont counselors definitely ensure student academic performance youre going overstuffed 33 students classroom classes youre going teachers overwhelmed kind responsibility taking responsibilities dean counselor secretary assistant principal used essentially building consigning schools students people work school district philadelphia failure noor gerald wanted read quote superintendent philadelphia public schools dr160william hite jr said layoffs result severe budget cuts necessary keep nations eighthlargest school district financially sound says school district philadelphia must live within means spend revenues given us city state unfortunately harsh reality looks gerald youve talked priorities state time slashed public school budget allocated 400160million build new prisons near philadelphia whats response wright well mean doesnt make sense 400160million addition budget passed corrections department pennsylvania find 400160million addition budget passed build prisons wouldnt want divert least money schools clearly suffering responsible wellbeing education tomorrows workforce todays children noor anissa wanted get response robert pollin recently real news talking effective way create jobs lot cutbacks youve seen around country like example pennsylvania theyre facing massive budget shortfall time theyre cutting public education theyre also cutting taxes corporations idea create jobs robert pollin says fact best way create jobs fund public education lets go clip robert pollin codirector political economy research institute spending education one best ways create jobs maybe best way insofar already infrastructure place called system public education state level local level spend 1160million education youre going create 27 jobs must reverse thinking somehow public education drag economic wellbeing need austerity public education quite opposite even strictly economic terms job creation terms invest education invest public education single best route creating jobs right weinraub think clear elected socalled leaders really asserting priorities line peoples common sense communities wellbeing give taxyou know idea economic development give megacorporations tax breaks dont downtown real estate holders pay fair share taxes slide burden try balance budget backs students colleagues city know living upsidedown world think gentleman correct areit really begs question kind community kind city kind nation want live want live one everyone literate everyone function within 21stcentury demands technology ability collaborate one people able work know health care thats affordable city services one know extract wealth rest us left lowwage labor unemployment incarceration joblessness really tearing real threads community think moment public education philadelphia pennsylvania across nation asking us cities communities priorities invest schools public institutions cornerstones healthy communities future generations going invest kind casino capitalism know richest get take away wealth really living moment see tipping point noor gerald time public schools shut teachers fired still expansion publicly funded privately managed charter schools philadelphia whats response next steps parents community members philadelphia challenging policies wright well first thing parents community folks need recognize fight real hard expand amount money coming pot provide taxpayerpaid public education whether charter whether know traditional public schools said given pot money right continued drive expand charter schools without expanding amount money receiving provide education way charter schools organized way political expressed philadelphia draining needed resources public schools run school district philadelphia charter schools appear something priority way state law interpreted resulttheres still one pot money result hands one pot money therefore school district philadelphia less money provide schools directly responsible manage ironically dont rational discussions political discussions around school districtrun schools charters one things parents rest community needs begin change contentious discussion one talking rationally need order provide public education thats run school district philadelphia still place children going receive education place children accepted charter schools dont necessarily accept schools kick child schools child comes back school district run public schools current scenario schools hit hardest budget cuts lack positive reinforcement thats going education reform discussion noor anissa well end teachers union fit picture weinraub well think seen year philadelphia something thats exciting parents teachers students community groups labor unions coming together coalition called pcaps philadelphia coalition advocating public schools think inside seeing much grassroots schoolbased organizing happen among rankandfile teachers union know member teacher action group philly federation teachers teacher leader think critical us ground level us working directly students directly parents see union ensure push colleagues union forward really understanding working conditions teaching conditions students learning conditions real collective understanding schools must fight together summer going real exciting one going streets lot going canvassing students parents going getting word going fighting contract thats good us good students communities noor anissa thank joining us weinraub thanks noor gerald wright thank joining us wright thanks noor thank joining us real news network end disclaimer please note transcripts real news network typed recording program trnn guarantee complete accuracy | 1,344 |
<p>I. BACKGROUND, 1975-1989</p>
<p>April 30, 1975</p>
<p>South Vietnam falls. The end of a massive US campaign of imperial aggression, including the systematic use of torture, dating back to 1962. At the time, a low point in US international prestige. The last several years of direct US military involvement featured widespread mutiny in the military, troops killing their officers, and intense social conflicts at home between the government and militant peace and civil rights movements. Beginning of the “Vietnam Syndrome,” in which US leaders hesitate to unleash mass murder on the world, for fear of such domestic political repercussions.</p>
<p>1976-80</p>
<p>President Jimmy Carter rhetorically supports human rights, and calls for energy conservation programs that are “the moral equivalent of war,” partly to deal with US reliance on unstable and unjust regimes in the oil-rich Middle East, long recognized by US strategic planners as one of the greatest material prizes in world history, and therefore targeted for US influence, control and dominance. Carter’s energy programs fail.</p>
<p>1979</p>
<p>Iranian revolution against the US-supported Shah. 52 US hostages held at the embassy in Tehran until January 20, 1981. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and massive US CIA support for the Afghan mujahadeen resistance, also involving Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies. These same Islamic resistance fighters would later organize the international Islamic terror network symbolized by Al-Qaeda.</p>
<p>1980-88</p>
<p>President Ronald Reagan includes in his administration many of the same foreign and military policy appointees who would return to the Bush II administration 20 years later. Declares a “war on terrorism.” Terrorizes people and popular organizations throughout Latin America, and supports apartheid and terrorism in Africa. Escapes impeachment in the “Iran/Contra Affair,” for selling missiles to Iran and using the proceeds to illegally fund contra terrorists in Nicaragua.</p>
<p>1983</p>
<p>Invasion of tiny Caribbean island nation of Grenada begins to counter the “Vietnam Syndrome.”</p>
<p>1989</p>
<p>Invasion of longstanding US client state Panama continues to counter the “Vietnam Syndrome.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>II. NEW HORIZONS OF US EMPIRE, 1990-2000</p>
<p>1990</p>
<p>Iraq under Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait on August 2.</p>
<p>1991</p>
<p>Fall of the Soviet Union. End of the “Cold War.” Operations “Desert Shield” and “Desert Storm” drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. US President George H.W. Bush publicly calls on Iraqi Shia and Kurds to rise up against Saddam’s Sunni-based tyranny, then abandons them to be massacred when they do. The “Vietnam Syndrome” is largely forgotten, and there has been no significant evidence of an effective political left in the US since that time. Deadly economic “sanctions of mass destruction” are imposed on the Iraqi people, strengthening Saddam’s dictatorial power over their impoverished nation.</p>
<p>1992­2000</p>
<p>Under President Bill Clinton, the US continues sanctions against Iraq, estimated to kill more than 500,000 children and about a million people total. US missiles strike Baghdad in 1996. US and UK develop and implement the doctrine of “humanitarian warfare” against former Yugoslavia in 1999. Corporate globalization policies in the form of “free trade” agreements, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other institutional organs of global corporate power and governance systematically maintain and extend US imperial power. US Corporate globalization policies aim to conquer the entire world through market economics. Project for a New American Century (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other subsequent architects of the post-9/11 “war on terror”) calls for invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam and control Iraqi oil.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>III. AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001; THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY, WAR CRIMES, AND TORTURE</p>
<p>September 11, 2001</p>
<p>Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC kill more than 3,000 people and provide a pretext for US aggression. As a direct result of this deadly “blowback” from the CIA’s anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan 20 years before, “everything changed.” That is, previously established political checks and balances on the President’s imperial powers were systematically cast aside, to facilitate US military and corporate power projection into the strategic energy producing regions of the Middle East. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other powerful Bush administration policy makers immediately counsel war against Iraq. Bush reportedly states: “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”</p>
<p>September 14, 2001</p>
<p>Congress grants Bush the power “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determined planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11.”</p>
<p>September 25, 2001</p>
<p>Justice Department lawyer John Yoo directs a 15 page memo to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, arguing that there are effectively “no limits” on Bush’s powers to respond to the 9/11 attacks, by attacking “pre-emptively” any countries that harbor terrorists, “whether or not they can be linked to the specific terror incidents of Sept. 11.” This is significantly broader than the authority granted by Congress on September 14. Bush’s decisions “are for him alone and are unreviewable.”</p>
<p>November 2001 A Justice Department memo written for the CIA puts forth an extremely narrow interpretation of the international anti-terror convention, allowing sleep deprivation and other “stress and duress” techniques. Bush announces that any non-US citizens he deems to be “terrorists” can be tried by secret military tribunals, rather than in conventional criminal trials. Ordinary evidence rules would not apply, a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt would not be required, and no appellate relief beyond Bush would be available. He reserved the right to keep the defendants in prison, even if they were acquitted by the tribunal. After the surrender of the Kunduz fortress in Afghanistan, hundreds of Taliban prisoners (as well as American John Walker Lindh) are taken prisoner. Hundreds of these prisoners die by suffocation in container trucks or by outright execution, with American forces working intimately with the Afghan perpetrators of the massacre.</p>
<p>December 28, 2001</p>
<p>Justice Dept. Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion argues that US courts lack jurisdiction to review the treatment of foreign prisoners at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>January 2002</p>
<p>Rumsfeld approves the use of aggressive interrogation methods, including dogs, to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo.</p>
<p>January 9, 2002 OLC’s John Yoo co-authors a 42 page memo concluding that neither the Geneva Conventions nor any of the laws of war apply to the war in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Mid-January 2002</p>
<p>First plane load of prisoners lands at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo.</p>
<p>January 25, 2002</p>
<p>Gonzalez advises Bush that the Geneva Convention does not apply to detainees in the “war on terrorism” at Guantanamo. Gonzalez describes provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete.” In fact, the Geneva Convention provides comprehensive protection for all persons in all armed conflicts, and no one has the lawful power to suspend its provisions. Gonzalez says he is concerned that without this conclusion US officials could be subject to prosecution for war crimes.</p>
<p>February 7, 2002</p>
<p>Over State Dept. objections, Bush issues a Memorandum adopting the essence of Gonzalez’ legal position that detainees at Guantanamo are not Prisoners of War entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions. This is an attempt to shield US officials from responsibility for torture. Soon thereafter Bush signs a secret order granting new powers to the CIA to set up a series of secret detention facilities outside the US, and to interrogate detainees there harshly. The administration increases the “rendering” of suspects in a secret CIA jet to other governments to be tortured.</p>
<p>August 1, 2002</p>
<p>A Justice Department Memo (“The Torture Memo”) requested by Gonzalez narrowly defines “torture” under US law and the Geneva Convention, as limited to practices causing physical pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Specific practices like “water boarding” are discussed and approved. The memo opined that laws prohibiting torture “do not apply to the President’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants,” because he is Commander-in-Chief of the US military. The author, Jay Bybee, has subsequently been appointed to a lifetime position as a federal appellate judge.</p>
<p>September 2002</p>
<p>The Bush administration adopts its National Security Strategy, announcing the doctrine of “pre-emptive war” wherever and whenever they choose. Cofer Black, head of CIA Countertorrorist Center, testifies at a joint hearing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee: “This is a highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves came off.”</p>
<p>November 14, 2002</p>
<p>Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, one of the Bush government’s leading neocons, addresses the Federalist Society, a right wing legal organization that promotes judicial candidates for the Bush administration. Bolton denounces the International Criminal Court, and says that an alternative to international war crimes prosecutions “is for the parties themselves to try their own alleged war criminals. Indeed, there are substantial arguments that the fullest cathartic impact of the prosecutorial approach to war crimes occurs when the responsible population itself comes to grips with its past and administers appropriate justice.”</p>
<p>December 2002</p>
<p>Rumsfeld approves initial list of 16 interrogation methods for Guantanamo, in addition to the 17 traditionally approved methods in the Army Field Manual. The new techniques clearly violate the Geneva Convention and US anti-torture laws.</p>
<p>March 6, 2003</p>
<p>Defense Department “Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism” (the “Pentagon Torture Manual”) requested by Rumsfeld, adopts the Yoo/Gonzalez legal analyses of torture. “In order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, [the statutory prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority. Congress lacks authority under Article I to set the terms and conditions under which the President may exercise his authority as Commander-in-Chief to control the conduct of operations during a war. [NOTE: In fact, Art. I, Sec. 8 of the US Constitution expressly states that “The Congress shall have Power to declare War and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water”]</p>
<p>March 20, 2003</p>
<p>US military forces invade Iraq without authorization by the United Nations Security Council, in violation of international law.</p>
<p>April 2003</p>
<p>Rumsfeld issues a final policy approving 24 special interrogation techniques, some of which need his permission to be used.</p>
<p>May 2003</p>
<p>A group of military lawyers disclose the administration’s legal approval of torture and abuse to the Chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the City Bar Association in New York. They repeat their request that the Bar Association take action in October 2003.</p>
<p>June 26, 2003</p>
<p>Amnesty International raises concerns about allegations of inhuman treatment in US detention camps in Iraq in a letter to Ambassador Paul Bremer</p>
<p>July 23, 2003</p>
<p>Amnesty International releases report, “Iraq: memorandum on concerns relating to law and order,” warning of allegations of torture and abuse in US prisons, including Abu Ghraib: “Regrettably, testimonies from recently released detainees held at Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib Prison do not suggest that conditions of detention have improved” since AI’s June 26 letter to Bremer There are “a number of reports of cases of detainees who have died in custody, mostly as a result of shooting by members of the Coalition forces.” A Saudi national “alleged that he was subjected to beatings and electric shocks.”</p>
<p>August 18-26, 2003</p>
<p>Nearly two dozen prisoners at Guantanamo Bay ­ “Gitmo” ­ try to hang or strangle themselves, including ten simultaneous attempts in a single day, to protest conditions there. They were among 350 “self-harm” incidents recorded in 2003, including 120 “hanging gestures” at the prison, according to a Gitmo spokesman. “The 2003 protests came after Maj. Gen Geoffrey Miller took command with a mandate to get more information from the prisoners”</p>
<p>August -September 2003</p>
<p>In the face of intensifying resistance to US military occupation of Iraq, including bombings of the Jordanian embassy, UN headquarters, and police headquarters in Baghdad, General Miller, Guantanamo Prison Commander, visits Iraq to “Gitmoize” detention operations in US prisons there. Miller is acting under orders from fundamentalist US General Boykin and Rumsfeld’s deputy Stephen Cambone. He recommends that military police be used by military intelligence and CIA interrogators to “set the conditions” for interrogation of Iraqi detainees. That is, he recommends that US personnel torture Iraqis. His recommendations are accepted and implemented. Furthermore, Rumsfeld and Cambone expand the scope of their top-secret “special access plan” (“Copper Green”) and apply it to detained prisoners at Abu Ghraib, treating male prisoners there roughly and exposing them to sexual humiliation. October 2003</p>
<p>Delegate from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visit Abu Ghraib prison, and witness “the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty [NOTE: without any charges, trial, or right to counsel or any other contact with the outside world] completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness” for days. A military intelligence officer tells the ICRC that this practice was “part of the process.” The ICRC reports that this “went beyond exceptional cases” and was “in some cases tantamount to torture.” ICRC complains directly to top US authorities. National Lawyers Guild Convention resolves that Bush and other officials responsible for the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, and other international instruments and treaties, and without a formal declaration of war as required by the US Constitution, should be impeached. November 2003</p>
<p>An internal report by the Army’s chief law enforcement officer criticizes the practice of involving Military Police officers in the process of “softening up prisoners for interrogation.” December 2003</p>
<p>An FBI e-mail describes methods used by Defense Department interrogators, posing as FBI agents, as “torture techniques.” The FBI document says no “intelligence of a threat neutralization nature” was garnered by this torture.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>January 13, 2004</p>
<p>Military policeman Joseph Darby reports the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the Army Criminal Investigations Division, and turns over a CD full of photographs. Within three days, a report made its way to Rumsfeld, who informed Bush. They begin developing the cover story “that some kids got out of control.” February 2004</p>
<p>Secret internal report of General Antonio Taguba regarding abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq states that General Miller of Guantanamo urged military commanders in Baghdad to put military intelligence in charge of the prison, and recommended that “detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.” Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. There was a policy of holding “ghost detainees” in secret, hiding their presence from the Red Cross. March 19, 2004</p>
<p>A Justice Department memo, reportedly written at the request of Gonzalez, authorizes the CIA to transfer detainees from Iraq to other countries for interrogation, in violation of international law. The memo apparently sanctioned a CIA policy of “rendering” detainees to countries with known records of grave human rights violations, including torture. March 31, 2004</p>
<p>The Peacerights organization in the UK issues a detailed report calling on the International Criminal Court Prosecutor to investigate members f the UK government, a signatory to the Treaty of Rome ICC Statute, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Iraq in 2003, as part of a “Joint Criminal Enterprise” with the USA. April 2004</p>
<p>Committee on International Human Rights of the City Bar Association of New York, prompted by senior military lawyer whistle blowers, issues a report on interrogation of detainees. The Committee criticizes exclusion of military lawyers from supervising interrogations. April 20-28, 2004</p>
<p>US Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the Guantanamo (Rasul) and US (Hamdi and Padilla) “enemy combatants” cases. CBS “60 Minutes II” broadcasts the first infamous photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. One of the pictures depicts a hooded figure standing on a box attached to wires in a stress position known in the intelligence community as the “Vietnam” technique. May 2004</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal publicly discloses the contents of the ICRC’s October 2003 report on torture. May 5, 2004</p>
<p>A US Army summary of deaths and mistreatment of prisoners in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse, involving more military units than previously known, and at least 37 deaths in US custody. May 7, 2004</p>
<p>Amnesty International sends an open letter to Bush, saying that abuses committed by US agents in Abu Ghraib prison were war crimes, and calling on the administration to fully investigate these abuses and ensure there is no impunity for anyone found responsible, regardless of position or rank. May 10, 2004</p>
<p>Bush publicly reiterates his complete support of Rumsfeld, in the aftermath of public release of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Seymour Hersh publishes his first New Yorker piece on the torture at Abu Ghraib.</p>
<p>May 11, 2004</p>
<p>The Washington Post reports that the policy of denying due process, kidnapping and transporting foreigners to foreign governments to be tortured, “has been developed by military or CIA lawyers, vetted by Justice Department’s office of legal counsel and, depending on the particular issue, approved by White House general counsel’s office or the president himself.” May 15, 2004</p>
<p>Seymour Hersh reports in The New Yorker on the Pentagon’s top-secret “Copper Green Special Access Plan,”, which “encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.” “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want.'” A confidential Pentagon consultant involved with such programs says: “The issue is that, since 9/11, we’ve changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism, and created conditions where the ends justify the means. You don’t keep prisoners naked in their cell and then let them get bitten by dogs. This is sick.” The New Zealand Herald reports that “Almost 10,000 prisoner’s from President George W. Bush’s so-called war on terror are being held around the world in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison.” May 16, 2004</p>
<p>The British Observer reports that “Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp [If the allegations are proven] they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees has become an insitutionalised feature of America’s war on terror” May 19, 2004</p>
<p>US military spokesmen in Kabul, Afghanistan said they would keep their network of “around 20” secret detention facilities in that country shut to the outside world, after reported deaths there. European Philosophy Professor John Gray writes: “[T]he United States is facing an historic defeat in Iraq ­ a blow to American power more damaging than it suffered in Vietnam, and far larger in its global implications. The inescapable implication of currently available evidence is that the use of torture by US forces was not an aberration, but a practice sanctioned at the highest levels. Abuse on the scale suggested by the Red Cross report cannot be accounted for by any mere lapse in discipline or the trailer-park mentality of some American recruits. It was inherent in the American approach to war.” May 20, 2004</p>
<p>US officials admit that unspecified “harsher” interrogation techniques on some detainees at Guantanamo went beyond accepted military practice, and were “non-doctrinal.” “The military lawyers believed some of those techniques went too far, other officials said.” The fourteen Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee write to Attorney General John Ashcroft “to request that you appoint a special counsel to investigate whether high ranking officials within the Bush Administration violated the War Crimes Act by approving the use of torture techniques banned by international law.” May 21, 2004</p>
<p>US Govt. seeks to renew immunity from war crimes prosecutions previously granted in 2002 to American peacekeepers, with a new resolution before the UN Security Council, but in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal there is growing international opposition to such an extension.</p>
<p>May 24, 2004</p>
<p>Bush gives a speech in which he describes the incidents at Abu Ghraib as acts “by a few American troops who disregarded our country and disregarded our values.” June 2004</p>
<p>An FBI “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up. An FBI agent reported witnessing “numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees,” including “strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings.” June 8, 2004</p>
<p>Ashcroft tells the Senate Judiciary Committee that the international ban against torturing prisoners of war does not necessarily apply to suspects detained in the war on terror. He denies Congress access to memos by Bush administration lawyers who reportedly “concluded the president can legally order interrogators to abuse or even kill terrorist suspects in the interests of national security.” June 9, 2004</p>
<p>A New York Times editorial states: “Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration.” June 10, 2004</p>
<p>A New York Times op-ed states: “Under the doctrine of command responsibility, officials can be held resoponsible for war crimes committed by their subordinates even if they did not order them ­ so long as they had control over the perpetrators, had reason to know about the crimes, and did not stop them or punish the criminals. Moreover, the abuses seem to have been more than isolated actions. Instead, they now appear to be part of an explicit policy of coercive interrogations conducted around the globe and supported by Justice Department and White House lawyers, who argued in 2002 and 2003 that the Geneva Conventions and other domestic and international bans on torture did not apply in these cases.” June 11, 2004</p>
<p>Knight-Ridder newspapers announces that the US Army is now investigating deaths of 127 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from 37 in early May. “In a press conference Thursday [June 10], President Bush said his instructions were that ‘anything we did would conform to US law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations.’ But the administration memos that have become public argued that US laws do not flatly prohibit torture.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>June 28, 2004</p>
<p>US Supreme Court issues decisions in the “enemy combatant” cases (Hamdi, Padilla, and Rasul): “We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President” The Court rejects OLC’s 12/28/01 opinion exempting such cases from US courts’ jurisdiction, after around 600 men and boys were held for more than two years without charges or trial..</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>July 30, 2004</p>
<p>An FBI agent reports that a detainee at Guantanamo was wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music and strobe lights.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>August 2, 2004</p>
<p>An FBI agent reports interrogations at Guantanamo in which detainees were shackled hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor for 18 to 24 hours at a time, and most had urinated or defecated on themselves. One detainee was reportedly left in an unventilated room at a temperature “probably well over a hundred degrees.” He was “almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him,” apparently having pulled out his own hair through the night. December 20, 2004</p>
<p>An FBI document dated May 2004, from “On Scene Commander ­ Baghdad,” released under court order to the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act request, states that Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq, including sleep deprivation, stress positions, dogs, hooding, and sensory deprivation. The Bush administration denies the existence of such an Executive Order.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>December 30, 2004</p>
<p>US Justice Department releases a rewritten legal memo, disavowing it previous legal opinions regarding torture. “This memorandum supersedes the August 2002 Memorandum [i.e., “The Torture Memo”] in its entirety.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>January 2, 2005</p>
<p>Washington Post reports that Bush administration is planning to imprison suspected terrorists indefinitely and without charges or trial.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>January 6, 2005</p>
<p>Alberto Gonzalez testifies at hearings of Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination as US Attorney General, provoking a flood of outraged commentary. For example: “Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzalez himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Americans began torturing prisoners, and they have never really stopped. Mr. Gonzalez is unfit because the slow river of litigation is certain to bring before the next attorney general a raft of torture cases that challenge the very policies that he personally helped devise and put into practice. He is unfit because, while the attorney general is charged with upholding the law, the documents show that as White House counsel, Mr. Gonzalez, in the matter of torture, helped his client to concoct strategies to circumvent it. And he is unfit, finally, because he has rightly become the symbol of the United States’ fateful departure from a body of settled international law and human rights practice for which the country claims to stand. One does not teach democracy, or freedom, through torture. By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>January 8, 2005</p>
<p>Newsweek reports that the Pentagon is discussing “the Salvador option” in Iraq: employing death squads for assassination and kidnapping campaigns that echo the “Phoenix” state terrorism program in Vietnam, and Central American death squad crimes in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras throughout the 1980s.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>January 13</p>
<p>The New York Times reports that in December 2004 the White House persuaded Congress to drop a new law that would have restricted “extreme interrogation measures.” “Among the procedures approved by the document was waterboarding, in which a subject is made to believe he might be drowned. At times, their discussion included an assessment of whether specific measures, on a detainee by detainee basis, would cause such pain as to be considered torture.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>January 25, 2005</p>
<p>The Baltimore Sun reports that the US Army investigated dozens of cases of detainee abuse in Iraq over the last two years, “but case after case was closed with US troops facing no charges or only minimal punishment The documents, internal reports from more than 50 criminal investigations, challenge the government’s claims last year that photographed abuses at Abu Ghraib were the isolated pranks of a few low-ranking soldiers.” The Washington Post reports that Iraqis are still being routinely tortured under the occupation, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>February 6, 2005</p>
<p>The Minneapolis Star Tribune raises the question of command responsibility for war crimes in Iraq: “independent human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and two of America’s most respected investigative reporters, Mark Danner and Seymour Hersh, have all concluded, in detailed investigations, that torture of prisoners was authorized at the highest levels of command. [quoting Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch] ‘No soldier higher than the rank of sergeant has been charged with a crime. No civilian leader at the Pentagon or the CIA is even being investigated. But the privates and the sergeants are not the ones who cast aside the Geneva Conventions, or who authorized illegal interrogation methods. Unless the higher-level officials who approved or tolerated crimes against detainees are also brought to justice, all the protestations of ‘disgust’ at the Abu Ghraib photos by President George W. Bush and others will be meaningless.'” February 18, 2005</p>
<p>The Chicago Tribune reports that an Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning US soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA torture in a position known as “Palestinian hanging,” suspended by his wrists with his hands cuffed behind his back. A guard told an interviewer “the prisoner’s arms were stretched behind him in a way [the guard] never had seen before,” so he was surprised the man’s arms “didn’t pop out of their sockets.” As guards released the man’s shackles, “blood gushed from his mouth ‘as if a faucet had been turned on.'” Perpetrators “received non-judicial punishment.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>March 17, 2005</p>
<p>CIA Director Porter Goss testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee that “I am not able to tell you that” interrogation techniques employed by the CIA in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks were always in compliance with the law. The CIA issued two statements “to clarify his remarks but no official would agree to be named” Goss claimed that “waterboarding” is “an area of what I will call professional interrogation techniques.” March 19, 2005</p>
<p>On the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Veterans For Peace, Inc. sends a letter and statement of violations to the members of the US Congress, calling for the removal of Bush and Cheney from office, because of a war of aggression on Iraq and war crimes and crimes against humanity in the execution of the war. March 25, 2005</p>
<p>In spite of recommendations by investigators that they be charged, US Army commanders decide not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. April 23, 2005</p>
<p>Human Rights Watch issues a report calling for a special prosecutor to investigate US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA Director George Tenet regarding abuse of prisoners. April 25, 2005</p>
<p>The Independent (UK) reports that the top UN human rights investigator in Afghanistan was fired “under American pressure just days after he presented a report criticising the US military for detaining suspects without trial and holding them in secret prisons often before being shipped to Guantanamo Bay.” April 28, 2005</p>
<p>The US Army Inspector General, on the one year anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal, announces that no senior US military officer will be held accountable; only Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is relieved of her command and reprimanded. The transparent and utterly shameful whitewash provokes an eloquent denunciation by commentator Joe Conason: “In this disgraceful story, accountability diminishes with every ascending link in the chain of command. Miller and Sanchez at least were criticized in official reports, but Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and Gonzales haven’t endured even that degree of discomfort. They haven’t even been investigated. Instead, all three have been rewarded and lavishly praised by the president. Tenet got the Medal of Freedom. Gonzales got a promotion from White House counsel to attorney general. And Rumsfeld, despite widespread bipartisan demands for his resignation, got to keep his job. The failure of our “system” in this scandal has not been confined to the White House or the Pentagon, awful as their failures are. Although traditional news organizations such as CBS News, the New Yorker magazine and a few newspapers deserve tremendous credit for their reporting on Abu Ghraib and its sequels, most of the American media has conspicuously hesitated to emphasize this story or to confront the responsible officials. It was remarkable to read the transcript of Rumsfeld’s press briefing this week, which reveals the extent of journalistic timidity on this topic. No doubt emboldened by this weakness, Rumsfeld recently placed unprecedented restrictions on the First Amendment freedoms of reporters covering the court-martial of a sergeant at Fort Bragg. On the anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the only appropriately outraged editorial in any major publication appeared in the Washington Post, a paper whose editorial support for the Iraq war hasn’t diminished its desire to see national honor restored. And then there is Congress, which might once have been expected to enforce accountability on rogue officialdom. Not any more. The House of Representatives is entirely useless under its current leadership, except to echo the excuses of the executive branch and perform whatever favors its corporate sponsors have bought.”</p>
<p>TOM STEPHENS is a lawyer in Detroit. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:lebensbaum4@earthlink.net" type="external">lebensbaum4@earthlink</a>.</p>
<p>A BRIEF NOTE ON SOURCES:</p>
<p>I have a very large number of news, investigative and official government reports on file.</p>
<p>I have tried to provide a specific, credible source for each of the events identified in Part III, since 9/11/01. Some of the more notable documents I have used are listed below:</p>
<p>– National Lawyers Guild Practitioner, Vol. 60, No. 4 Fall 2003, special issue focusing on Unilateral Power vs. International Law, in the context of the Iraq war.</p>
<p>-Articles by Prof. Marjorie Cohn, Prof. Jules Lobel and Michael Ratner, Prof. John Quigley, Prof. Karima Bennoune, Edward J. Flynn, and Staughton Lynd</p>
<p>– National Lawyers Guild Practitioner, Vol. 61, No. 2 Spring 2004, “Atrocity by Frenzy or by Policy? Tracing the Blame up the Chain of Command in the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal,” by Michael S. Bryant</p>
<p>– “Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations,” March 6, 2003, posted on the web site of the Center for Constitutional Rights</p>
<p>– National Lawyers Guild Resolution Calling for the Impeachment of George W. Bush and Cabinet Officials Responsible for Suppression of Constitutional Rights and Violation of International Law, Which is Part of the Supreme Law of the Land, NLG Convention, Minneapolis, MN, October 2003</p>
<p>– “Report of the Inquiry into the Alleged Commission of War Crimes by Coalition Forces in the Iraq War During 2003,” Peacerights March 31, 2003</p>
<p>– “Chaos in Washington,” TomDispatch, 5/17/04, by Tom Englehardt</p>
<p>– “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, 5/10/04, by Seymour Hersh</p>
<p>– “The Gray Zone,” The New Yorker, 5/15/04, by Seymour Hersh</p>
<p>– “Abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Psychodynamics of Occupation, and the Responsibility of Us All,” ZNet, 5/1/04, by Stephen Soldz</p>
<p>– “The Roots of Torture,” Newsweek, May 18, 2004, by John Barry, Michael Hirsch, and Michael Issikoff</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | background 19751989 april 30 1975 south vietnam falls end massive us campaign imperial aggression including systematic use torture dating back 1962 time low point us international prestige last several years direct us military involvement featured widespread mutiny military troops killing officers intense social conflicts home government militant peace civil rights movements beginning vietnam syndrome us leaders hesitate unleash mass murder world fear domestic political repercussions 197680 president jimmy carter rhetorically supports human rights calls energy conservation programs moral equivalent war partly deal us reliance unstable unjust regimes oilrich middle east long recognized us strategic planners one greatest material prizes world history therefore targeted us influence control dominance carters energy programs fail 1979 iranian revolution ussupported shah 52 us hostages held embassy tehran january 20 1981 soviet invasion afghanistan massive us cia support afghan mujahadeen resistance also involving pakistani saudi intelligence agencies islamic resistance fighters would later organize international islamic terror network symbolized alqaeda 198088 president ronald reagan includes administration many foreign military policy appointees would return bush ii administration 20 years later declares war terrorism terrorizes people popular organizations throughout latin america supports apartheid terrorism africa escapes impeachment irancontra affair selling missiles iran using proceeds illegally fund contra terrorists nicaragua 1983 invasion tiny caribbean island nation grenada begins counter vietnam syndrome 1989 invasion longstanding us client state panama continues counter vietnam syndrome 160 ii new horizons us empire 19902000 1990 iraq saddam hussein invades kuwait august 2 1991 fall soviet union end cold war operations desert shield desert storm drive iraqi forces kuwait us president george hw bush publicly calls iraqi shia kurds rise saddams sunnibased tyranny abandons massacred vietnam syndrome largely forgotten significant evidence effective political left us since time deadly economic sanctions mass destruction imposed iraqi people strengthening saddams dictatorial power impoverished nation 19922000 president bill clinton us continues sanctions iraq estimated kill 500000 children million people total us missiles strike baghdad 1996 us uk develop implement doctrine humanitarian warfare former yugoslavia 1999 corporate globalization policies form free trade agreements world trade organization wto general agreement tariffs trade gatt international monetary fund imf world bank institutional organs global corporate power governance systematically maintain extend us imperial power us corporate globalization policies aim conquer entire world market economics project new american century including dick cheney donald rumsfeld paul wolfowitz subsequent architects post911 war terror calls invading iraq overthrow saddam control iraqi oil 160 iii september 11 2001 imperial presidency war crimes torture september 11 2001 alqaeda terrorist attacks new york washington dc kill 3000 people provide pretext us aggression direct result deadly blowback cias antisoviet operations afghanistan 20 years everything changed previously established political checks balances presidents imperial powers systematically cast aside facilitate us military corporate power projection strategic energy producing regions middle east cheney rumsfeld wolfowitz powerful bush administration policy makers immediately counsel war iraq bush reportedly states dont care international lawyers say going kick ass september 14 2001 congress grants bush power use necessary appropriate force nations organizations persons determined planned authorized committed aided terrorist attacks occurred september 11 september 25 2001 justice department lawyer john yoo directs 15 page memo white house counsel alberto gonzalez arguing effectively limits bushs powers respond 911 attacks attacking preemptively countries harbor terrorists whether linked specific terror incidents sept 11 significantly broader authority granted congress september 14 bushs decisions alone unreviewable november 2001 justice department memo written cia puts forth extremely narrow interpretation international antiterror convention allowing sleep deprivation stress duress techniques bush announces nonus citizens deems terrorists tried secret military tribunals rather conventional criminal trials ordinary evidence rules would apply finding guilt beyond reasonable doubt would required appellate relief beyond bush would available reserved right keep defendants prison even acquitted tribunal surrender kunduz fortress afghanistan hundreds taliban prisoners well american john walker lindh taken prisoner hundreds prisoners die suffocation container trucks outright execution american forces working intimately afghan perpetrators massacre december 28 2001 justice dept office legal counsel olc opinion argues us courts lack jurisdiction review treatment foreign prisoners guantanamo january 2002 rumsfeld approves use aggressive interrogation methods including dogs intimidate prisoners guantanamo january 9 2002 olcs john yoo coauthors 42 page memo concluding neither geneva conventions laws war apply war afghanistan midjanuary 2002 first plane load prisoners lands camp xray guantanamo january 25 2002 gonzalez advises bush geneva convention apply detainees war terrorism guantanamo gonzalez describes provisions geneva conventions quaint obsolete fact geneva convention provides comprehensive protection persons armed conflicts one lawful power suspend provisions gonzalez says concerned without conclusion us officials could subject prosecution war crimes february 7 2002 state dept objections bush issues memorandum adopting essence gonzalez legal position detainees guantanamo prisoners war entitled protection geneva conventions attempt shield us officials responsibility torture soon thereafter bush signs secret order granting new powers cia set series secret detention facilities outside us interrogate detainees harshly administration increases rendering suspects secret cia jet governments tortured august 1 2002 justice department memo torture memo requested gonzalez narrowly defines torture us law geneva convention limited practices causing physical pain equivalent intensity pain accompanying serious physical injury organ failure impairment bodily function even death specific practices like water boarding discussed approved memo opined laws prohibiting torture apply presidents detention interrogation enemy combatants commanderinchief us military author jay bybee subsequently appointed lifetime position federal appellate judge september 2002 bush administration adopts national security strategy announcing doctrine preemptive war wherever whenever choose cofer black head cia countertorrorist center testifies joint hearing house senate intelligence committee highly classified area say need know 911 911 911 gloves came november 14 2002 secretary state arms control international security john bolton one bush governments leading neocons addresses federalist society right wing legal organization promotes judicial candidates bush administration bolton denounces international criminal court says alternative international war crimes prosecutions parties try alleged war criminals indeed substantial arguments fullest cathartic impact prosecutorial approach war crimes occurs responsible population comes grips past administers appropriate justice december 2002 rumsfeld approves initial list 16 interrogation methods guantanamo addition 17 traditionally approved methods army field manual new techniques clearly violate geneva convention us antitorture laws march 6 2003 defense department working group report detainee interrogations global war terrorism pentagon torture manual requested rumsfeld adopts yoogonzalez legal analyses torture order respect presidents inherent constitutional authority manage military campaign statutory prohibition torture must construed inapplicable interrogations undertaken pursuant commanderinchief authority congress lacks authority article set terms conditions president may exercise authority commanderinchief control conduct operations war note fact art sec 8 us constitution expressly states congress shall power declare war make rules concerning captures land water march 20 2003 us military forces invade iraq without authorization united nations security council violation international law april 2003 rumsfeld issues final policy approving 24 special interrogation techniques need permission used may 2003 group military lawyers disclose administrations legal approval torture abuse chairman human rights committee city bar association new york repeat request bar association take action october 2003 june 26 2003 amnesty international raises concerns allegations inhuman treatment us detention camps iraq letter ambassador paul bremer july 23 2003 amnesty international releases report iraq memorandum concerns relating law order warning allegations torture abuse us prisons including abu ghraib regrettably testimonies recently released detainees held camp cropper abu ghraib prison suggest conditions detention improved since ais june 26 letter bremer number reports cases detainees died custody mostly result shooting members coalition forces saudi national alleged subjected beatings electric shocks august 1826 2003 nearly two dozen prisoners guantanamo bay gitmo try hang strangle including ten simultaneous attempts single day protest conditions among 350 selfharm incidents recorded 2003 including 120 hanging gestures prison according gitmo spokesman 2003 protests came maj gen geoffrey miller took command mandate get information prisoners august september 2003 face intensifying resistance us military occupation iraq including bombings jordanian embassy un headquarters police headquarters baghdad general miller guantanamo prison commander visits iraq gitmoize detention operations us prisons miller acting orders fundamentalist us general boykin rumsfelds deputy stephen cambone recommends military police used military intelligence cia interrogators set conditions interrogation iraqi detainees recommends us personnel torture iraqis recommendations accepted implemented furthermore rumsfeld cambone expand scope topsecret special access plan copper green apply detained prisoners abu ghraib treating male prisoners roughly exposing sexual humiliation october 2003 delegate international committee red cross icrc visit abu ghraib prison witness practice keeping persons deprived liberty note without charges trial right counsel contact outside world completely naked totally empty concrete cells total darkness days military intelligence officer tells icrc practice part process icrc reports went beyond exceptional cases cases tantamount torture icrc complains directly top us authorities national lawyers guild convention resolves bush officials responsible illegal wars afghanistan iraq violation un charter nuremberg principles international instruments treaties without formal declaration war required us constitution impeached november 2003 internal report armys chief law enforcement officer criticizes practice involving military police officers process softening prisoners interrogation december 2003 fbi email describes methods used defense department interrogators posing fbi agents torture techniques fbi document says intelligence threat neutralization nature garnered torture 160 january 13 2004 military policeman joseph darby reports abuses abu ghraib army criminal investigations division turns cd full photographs within three days report made way rumsfeld informed bush begin developing cover story kids got control february 2004 secret internal report general antonio taguba regarding abuses abu ghraib prison iraq states general miller guantanamo urged military commanders baghdad put military intelligence charge prison recommended detention operations must act enabler interrogation taguba found october december 2003 numerous instances sadistic blatant wanton criminal abuses abu ghraib policy holding ghost detainees secret hiding presence red cross march 19 2004 justice department memo reportedly written request gonzalez authorizes cia transfer detainees iraq countries interrogation violation international law memo apparently sanctioned cia policy rendering detainees countries known records grave human rights violations including torture march 31 2004 peacerights organization uk issues detailed report calling international criminal court prosecutor investigate members f uk government signatory treaty rome icc statute crimes humanity war crimes committed iraq 2003 part joint criminal enterprise usa april 2004 committee international human rights city bar association new york prompted senior military lawyer whistle blowers issues report interrogation detainees committee criticizes exclusion military lawyers supervising interrogations april 2028 2004 us supreme court hears oral arguments guantanamo rasul us hamdi padilla enemy combatants cases cbs 60 minutes ii broadcasts first infamous photos abu ghraib prison iraq one pictures depicts hooded figure standing box attached wires stress position known intelligence community vietnam technique may 2004 wall street journal publicly discloses contents icrcs october 2003 report torture may 5 2004 us army summary deaths mistreatment prisoners us custody iraq afghanistan shows widespread pattern abuse involving military units previously known least 37 deaths us custody may 7 2004 amnesty international sends open letter bush saying abuses committed us agents abu ghraib prison war crimes calling administration fully investigate abuses ensure impunity anyone found responsible regardless position rank may 10 2004 bush publicly reiterates complete support rumsfeld aftermath public release abuses abu ghraib seymour hersh publishes first new yorker piece torture abu ghraib may 11 2004 washington post reports policy denying due process kidnapping transporting foreigners foreign governments tortured developed military cia lawyers vetted justice departments office legal counsel depending particular issue approved white house general counsels office president may 15 2004 seymour hersh reports new yorker pentagons topsecret copper green special access plan encouraged physical coercion sexual humiliation iraqi prisoners effort generate intelligence growing insurgency iraq rules grab must want confidential pentagon consultant involved programs says issue since 911 weve changed rules deal terrorism created conditions ends justify means dont keep prisoners naked cell let get bitten dogs sick new zealand herald reports almost 10000 prisoners president george w bushs socalled war terror held around world secretive americanrun jails interrogation centres similar notorious abu ghraib prison may 16 2004 british observer reports dozens videotapes american guards allegedly engaged brutal attacks guantanamo bay detainees stored catalogued camp allegations proven provide final proof brutality detainees become insitutionalised feature americas war terror may 19 2004 us military spokesmen kabul afghanistan said would keep network around 20 secret detention facilities country shut outside world reported deaths european philosophy professor john gray writes united states facing historic defeat iraq blow american power damaging suffered vietnam far larger global implications inescapable implication currently available evidence use torture us forces aberration practice sanctioned highest levels abuse scale suggested red cross report accounted mere lapse discipline trailerpark mentality american recruits inherent american approach war may 20 2004 us officials admit unspecified harsher interrogation techniques detainees guantanamo went beyond accepted military practice nondoctrinal military lawyers believed techniques went far officials said fourteen democratic members house judiciary committee write attorney general john ashcroft request appoint special counsel investigate whether high ranking officials within bush administration violated war crimes act approving use torture techniques banned international law may 21 2004 us govt seeks renew immunity war crimes prosecutions previously granted 2002 american peacekeepers new resolution un security council wake abu ghraib scandal growing international opposition extension may 24 2004 bush gives speech describes incidents abu ghraib acts american troops disregarded country disregarded values june 2004 fbi urgent report director fbi raises concerns abuse detainees covered fbi agent reported witnessing numerous physical abuse incidents iraqi civilian detainees including strangulation beatings placement lit cigarettes detainees ear openings june 8 2004 ashcroft tells senate judiciary committee international ban torturing prisoners war necessarily apply suspects detained war terror denies congress access memos bush administration lawyers reportedly concluded president legally order interrogators abuse even kill terrorist suspects interests national security june 9 2004 new york times editorial states new revelation makes clear inhumanity abu ghraib grew morally dubious culture legal expediency disregard normal behavior fostered top administration june 10 2004 new york times oped states doctrine command responsibility officials held resoponsible war crimes committed subordinates even order long control perpetrators reason know crimes stop punish criminals moreover abuses seem isolated actions instead appear part explicit policy coercive interrogations conducted around globe supported justice department white house lawyers argued 2002 2003 geneva conventions domestic international bans torture apply cases june 11 2004 knightridder newspapers announces us army investigating deaths 127 prisoners iraq afghanistan 37 early may press conference thursday june 10 president bush said instructions anything would conform us law would consistent international treaty obligations administration memos become public argued us laws flatly prohibit torture 160 june 28 2004 us supreme court issues decisions enemy combatant cases hamdi padilla rasul long since made clear state war blank check president court rejects olcs 122801 opinion exempting cases us courts jurisdiction around 600 men boys held two years without charges trial 160 july 30 2004 fbi agent reports detainee guantanamo wrapped israeli flag bombarded loud music strobe lights 160 august 2 2004 fbi agent reports interrogations guantanamo detainees shackled hand foot fetal position floor 18 24 hours time urinated defecated one detainee reportedly left unventilated room temperature probably well hundred degrees almost unconscious floor pile hair next apparently pulled hair night december 20 2004 fbi document dated may 2004 scene commander baghdad released court order aclu freedom information act request states bush issued executive order authorizing use inhumane interrogation methods detainees iraq including sleep deprivation stress positions dogs hooding sensory deprivation bush administration denies existence executive order 160 december 30 2004 us justice department releases rewritten legal memo disavowing previous legal opinions regarding torture memorandum supersedes august 2002 memorandum ie torture memo entirety 160 january 2 2005 washington post reports bush administration planning imprison suspected terrorists indefinitely without charges trial 160 january 6 2005 alberto gonzalez testifies hearings senate judiciary committee nomination us attorney general provoking flood outraged commentary example process redefinition largely overseen mr gonzalez practice clear abhorrent violation law become effect law land shortly 911 attacks americans began torturing prisoners never really stopped mr gonzalez unfit slow river litigation certain bring next attorney general raft torture cases challenge policies personally helped devise put practice unfit attorney general charged upholding law documents show white house counsel mr gonzalez matter torture helped client concoct strategies circumvent unfit finally rightly become symbol united states fateful departure body settled international law human rights practice country claims stand one teach democracy freedom torture using torture americans transform caricature enemies sought make us 160 january 8 2005 newsweek reports pentagon discussing salvador option iraq employing death squads assassination kidnapping campaigns echo phoenix state terrorism program vietnam central american death squad crimes el salvador nicaragua guatemala honduras throughout 1980s 160 january 13 new york times reports december 2004 white house persuaded congress drop new law would restricted extreme interrogation measures among procedures approved document waterboarding subject made believe might drowned times discussion included assessment whether specific measures detainee detainee basis would cause pain considered torture 160 january 25 2005 baltimore sun reports us army investigated dozens cases detainee abuse iraq last two years case case closed us troops facing charges minimal punishment documents internal reports 50 criminal investigations challenge governments claims last year photographed abuses abu ghraib isolated pranks lowranking soldiers washington post reports iraqis still routinely tortured occupation according report human rights watch 160 february 6 2005 minneapolis star tribune raises question command responsibility war crimes iraq independent human rights organizations amnesty international human rights watch two americas respected investigative reporters mark danner seymour hersh concluded detailed investigations torture prisoners authorized highest levels command quoting reed brody human rights watch soldier higher rank sergeant charged crime civilian leader pentagon cia even investigated privates sergeants ones cast aside geneva conventions authorized illegal interrogation methods unless higherlevel officials approved tolerated crimes detainees also brought justice protestations disgust abu ghraib photos president george w bush others meaningless february 18 2005 chicago tribune reports iraqi whose corpse photographed grinning us soldiers abu ghraib died cia torture position known palestinian hanging suspended wrists hands cuffed behind back guard told interviewer prisoners arms stretched behind way guard never seen surprised mans arms didnt pop sockets guards released mans shackles blood gushed mouth faucet turned perpetrators received nonjudicial punishment 160 march 17 2005 cia director porter goss testifies senate armed services committee able tell interrogation techniques employed cia aftermath 911 attacks always compliance law cia issued two statements clarify remarks official would agree named goss claimed waterboarding area call professional interrogation techniques march 19 2005 second anniversary invasion iraq veterans peace inc sends letter statement violations members us congress calling removal bush cheney office war aggression iraq war crimes crimes humanity execution war march 25 2005 spite recommendations investigators charged us army commanders decide prosecute 17 american soldiers implicated deaths three prisoners iraq afghanistan april 23 2005 human rights watch issues report calling special prosecutor investigate us defense secretary donald rumsfeld former cia director george tenet regarding abuse prisoners april 25 2005 independent uk reports top un human rights investigator afghanistan fired american pressure days presented report criticising us military detaining suspects without trial holding secret prisons often shipped guantanamo bay april 28 2005 us army inspector general one year anniversary abu ghraib scandal announces senior us military officer held accountable brigadier general janis karpinski relieved command reprimanded transparent utterly shameful whitewash provokes eloquent denunciation commentator joe conason disgraceful story accountability diminishes every ascending link chain command miller sanchez least criticized official reports rumsfeld former cia director george tenet gonzales havent endured even degree discomfort havent even investigated instead three rewarded lavishly praised president tenet got medal freedom gonzales got promotion white house counsel attorney general rumsfeld despite widespread bipartisan demands resignation got keep job failure system scandal confined white house pentagon awful failures although traditional news organizations cbs news new yorker magazine newspapers deserve tremendous credit reporting abu ghraib sequels american media conspicuously hesitated emphasize story confront responsible officials remarkable read transcript rumsfelds press briefing week reveals extent journalistic timidity topic doubt emboldened weakness rumsfeld recently placed unprecedented restrictions first amendment freedoms reporters covering courtmartial sergeant fort bragg anniversary abu ghraib scandal appropriately outraged editorial major publication appeared washington post paper whose editorial support iraq war hasnt diminished desire see national honor restored congress might expected enforce accountability rogue officialdom house representatives entirely useless current leadership except echo excuses executive branch perform whatever favors corporate sponsors bought tom stephens lawyer detroit reached lebensbaum4earthlink brief note sources large number news investigative official government reports file tried provide specific credible source events identified part iii since 91101 notable documents used listed national lawyers guild practitioner vol 60 4 fall 2003 special issue focusing unilateral power vs international law context iraq war articles prof marjorie cohn prof jules lobel michael ratner prof john quigley prof karima bennoune edward j flynn staughton lynd national lawyers guild practitioner vol 61 2 spring 2004 atrocity frenzy policy tracing blame chain command abu ghraib prison scandal michael bryant working group report detainee interrogations global war terrorism assessment legal historical policy operational considerations march 6 2003 posted web site center constitutional rights national lawyers guild resolution calling impeachment george w bush cabinet officials responsible suppression constitutional rights violation international law part supreme law land nlg convention minneapolis mn october 2003 report inquiry alleged commission war crimes coalition forces iraq war 2003 peacerights march 31 2003 chaos washington tomdispatch 51704 tom englehardt torture abu ghraib new yorker 51004 seymour hersh gray zone new yorker 51504 seymour hersh abuse abu ghraib psychodynamics occupation responsibility us znet 5104 stephen soldz roots torture newsweek may 18 2004 john barry michael hirsch michael issikoff 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 | 3,543 |
<p>“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life,” Ernest Hemingway said in his <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-speech.html" type="external">1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech</a>. “He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.” For full access to a genuine voice, Hemingway argues that a writer must depopulate his or her world, physically or metaphysically. (Though Hemingway seems to have depopulated his world of big words instead.) To write is to be completely and utterly alone during the course of the process—or at least pretend to be.</p>
<p>But what if you could be alone and together at the same time? In 1977, French literary theorist Roland Barthes gave a lecture course on precisely that, the notes of which have been translated by Kate Briggs and gathered into the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Live-Together-Simulations-Perspectives/dp/023113617X/" type="external">How To Live Together</a>.</p>
<p>Central to Barthes’s argument is the idea of idiorrhythmy. It is a term most often associated with monks and which describes a method for people to live together but also apart——individual planets orbiting in a communal galaxy. In a monastery, the wall is a symbolic divide between the believer and the non-believer, between sacred and civilian space. Boundaries tell us who we are not as much as they tell us who we are. Houses are usually made of 90-degree angles, but rarely do we find them in nature. In the same way that square or rectangle frames separate a work of art from “reality,” our homes frame, define and separate us. Ninety-degree angles might be artificial, but they do allow homes to be organized efficiently into apartment complexes, neighborhoods and cities. Alone and together.</p>
<p>In August, <a href="http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/hermits-of-the-third-millennium/" type="external">The New York Times published a series</a> of photographs by Carlo Bevilacqua of individuals who have separated themselves from society, usually for spiritual reasons—the subjects are mostly monks, hermits, and recluses. One image looks like a Dr. Seuss illustration, showing a house perched atop a looming rock formation. There’s something irresistibly attractive about these images—they show us the freedom we have over how we live our lives. Alone looks alluring in this age of hyperconnectivity and lack of privacy. “Today more than 50 percent of U.S. residents are single, nearly a third of all households have just one resident and five million adults younger than 35 live alone,” a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/04/16/120416crbo_books_heller" type="external">New Yorker article</a> published in April showed. Does living alone satisfy something in us that we’ve been denied, or are we simply incapable of living together?</p>
<p>Barthes himself did not live alone—he lived with his mother until the day she died. They shared a house in the country and a house in Paris that they bounced between, depending on the season. I wondered whether Barthes preferred it that way, so I spoke to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Howard, who was Barthes’ translator and friend for 30 years. “I knew his mother. I met her at the airport and we had days together,” Howard told me. ”She was a wonderful woman, just remarkable. Roland lived with her. He had a room where he worked in the attic that he sometimes slept in. He lived a perfectly satisfactory, not very happy life in the room upstairs.”</p>
<p>To Barthes, idiorrhythmy is the ultimate domestic ideal. “Fantasmically speaking, there’s nothing contradictory about wanting to live alone and wanting to live together,” he wrote. But Barthes never had to accustom himself to the domestic idiosyncrasies and habits of a roommate, which many of us struggle to learn like a foreign language. That, perhaps, was the source of Barthes’s deep belief in idiorrhythny. “They had an understanding of each other and the life they wished to lead,” Howard said about Barthes and his mother. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He wanted to try to explain the possibility of lives being satisfactory that weren’t ordinary.”</p>
<p>In his lectures, Barthes used literary examples like Robinson Crusoe and The Magic Mountain to explore atypical living arrangements, but also to think about the way we define space. For example, nicknames are another way of establishing emotional enclosure: “The invention of new names: a way of breaking with everyone else and creating a supremely safe enclosure, a new integration; in short, a conversion.”</p>
<p>Despite being tied to his mother in ways most contemporary Americans would find slightly embarrassing, Barthes was not socially awkward; nor was he a recluse. He enjoyed his stature as a public figure in Paris. “He became a very famous man, and was known in the streets of Paris. When I would walk to lunch with him, people would point,” Howard said. “He wasn’t weird about being famous. He accepted it.”</p>
<p>As Howard pointed out, Barthes, who died in 1980, is now more popular than ever—“he’s hot stuff,” as he put it. Howard’s new translation (with Annette Lavers) of Barthes’s classic study of pop culture, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mythologies-Complete-Translation-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374532346/" type="external">Mythologies</a>, came out earlier this year. How to Live Together is quite different, composed of notes that Barthes probably never meant to publish. It is more of an outline than a polished and complete project, consisting of fragments, questions and poetic gestures in a dialogue that rely on his students—or the reader—to participate in.</p>
<p>Even in this aspect Barthes did not validate the cliché of the solitary writer. “I loved translating him and he loved being translated,” Howard told me. In 1974, he wrote an essay on Barthes that pointed out that although “reading is still the principal thing we do by ourselves in culture,” we read alone in order to not feel so alone, to connect with the voice of another human being. Barthes himself wrote that Robinson Crusoe is “an epic tale of solitude [that] enjoys the mythic status of a novel conceived for the express purpose of enriching the experience of solitude: ‘the book you’d take to a desert island!’” That, also, is the best thing about Barthes—he enriches our experience of solitude by leaving us images like this: “Living together: perhaps simply a way of confronting the sadness of the night together. Being among strangers is inevitable, necessary even, except when night falls.”</p> | true | 4 | writing best lonely life ernest hemingway said 1954 nobel prize acceptance speech grows public stature sheds loneliness often work deteriorates work alone good enough writer must face eternity lack day full access genuine voice hemingway argues writer must depopulate world physically metaphysically though hemingway seems depopulated world big words instead write completely utterly alone course processor least pretend could alone together time 1977 french literary theorist roland barthes gave lecture course precisely notes translated kate briggs gathered book live together central barthess argument idea idiorrhythmy term often associated monks describes method people live together also apartindividual planets orbiting communal galaxy monastery wall symbolic divide believer nonbeliever sacred civilian space boundaries tell us much tell us houses usually made 90degree angles rarely find nature way square rectangle frames separate work art reality homes frame define separate us ninetydegree angles might artificial allow homes organized efficiently apartment complexes neighborhoods cities alone together august new york times published series photographs carlo bevilacqua individuals separated society usually spiritual reasonsthe subjects mostly monks hermits recluses one image looks like dr seuss illustration showing house perched atop looming rock formation theres something irresistibly attractive imagesthey show us freedom live lives alone looks alluring age hyperconnectivity lack privacy today 50 percent us residents single nearly third households one resident five million adults younger 35 live alone new yorker article published april showed living alone satisfy something us weve denied simply incapable living together barthes live alonehe lived mother day died shared house country house paris bounced depending season wondered whether barthes preferred way spoke pulitzer prizewinning poet richard howard barthes translator friend 30 years knew mother met airport days together howard told wonderful woman remarkable roland lived room worked attic sometimes slept lived perfectly satisfactory happy life room upstairs barthes idiorrhythmy ultimate domestic ideal fantasmically speaking theres nothing contradictory wanting live alone wanting live together wrote barthes never accustom domestic idiosyncrasies habits roommate many us struggle learn like foreign language perhaps source barthess deep belief idiorrhythny understanding life wished lead howard said barthes mother ive never seen anything like wanted try explain possibility lives satisfactory werent ordinary lectures barthes used literary examples like robinson crusoe magic mountain explore atypical living arrangements also think way define space example nicknames another way establishing emotional enclosure invention new names way breaking everyone else creating supremely safe enclosure new integration short conversion despite tied mother ways contemporary americans would find slightly embarrassing barthes socially awkward recluse enjoyed stature public figure paris became famous man known streets paris would walk lunch people would point howard said wasnt weird famous accepted howard pointed barthes died 1980 popular everhes hot stuff put howards new translation annette lavers barthess classic study pop culture mythologies came earlier year live together quite different composed notes barthes probably never meant publish outline polished complete project consisting fragments questions poetic gestures dialogue rely studentsor readerto participate even aspect barthes validate cliché solitary writer loved translating loved translated howard told 1974 wrote essay barthes pointed although reading still principal thing culture read alone order feel alone connect voice another human barthes wrote robinson crusoe epic tale solitude enjoys mythic status novel conceived express purpose enriching experience solitude book youd take desert island also best thing bartheshe enriches experience solitude leaving us images like living together perhaps simply way confronting sadness night together among strangers inevitable necessary even except night falls | 560 |
<p>Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit.. These remarks, which he has made available to CounterPunch, have been recently delivered to various peace groups in New Mexico. His wife Kathy also worked in the CIA, retiring in 1979.Since then she has been mainly preoccupied by the issue of Palestine.</p>
<p>On January 15 the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, held a press conference in order to describe the initial criminal charges that the government would make against John Walker, the 20-year-old American citizen who had joined the Taliban military forces. In his talk, Ashcroft said this, and I quote: “The United States does not casually or capriciously charge one of its own citizens with providing support to terrorists. We are impelled to do so today by the inescapable fact of September the 11th, a day that reminded us in no uncertain terms that we have enemies in the world and that these enemies seek to destroy us. We learned on September 11 that our way of life is not immune from attack, and even from destruction.”</p>
<p>The guts of what Ashcroft said is ­ and I quote again ­ “We have enemies in the world and these enemies seek to destroy us.” Unquote. I submit to you that this is simply not a true statement. The evidence I’ve seen shows that the real objective of the Muslim extremists led by Osama bin Laden was to rid the Muslim world itself of American domination and influence. They wanted NOT to destroy the United States; rather they wanted the U.S. out of their own land. Bin Laden and his supporters also wanted, and those yet alive still want, to unite Muslim nations behind an extreme version of Islam, believing that the Islamic world can thereby better control its own future. I think they realize full well there is no possibility they can “destroy ” the United States, and their objective, while still pretty grandiose, is considerably more limited. Their aim, according to one recent analysis that appeared in the New York Review of Books ­ and I quote again ­ “is to create one Islamic world. .This is a call to purify the Islamic world of the idolatrous West, exemplified by America. The aim is to strike at American heathen shrines, and show, in the most spectacular fashion, that the U.S. is vulnerable, a paper tiger” Unquote.</p>
<p>These Islamic extremists are not nice people. Those still alive, and other future adherents to their cause, will continue to try to kill innocent people in the U.S. and elsewhere. But what the extremists see themselves as trying to do is to stop the United States from continuing its drive for global hegemony, including hegemony over the Islamic world. I think it’s important to understand this, because if people in the United States believe that some enemy is trying to “destroy” the U.S. ­ and actually has some possibility of doing so ­ then waging an all-out war against that enemy can be more easily justified. But what if the U.S. is not trying to prevent its own destruction, but instead is trying to preserve and extend its global hegemony? In that case, I think we should all step back and start demanding of our government a serious public debate over future U.S. foreign policies. We should be strenuously debating the degree to which the people in this country, given all of our own domestic problems, want the U.S. government to continue foreign policies intended to strengthen U.S. hegemony over and domination of the rest of the world in the political, economic, and militarily areas.</p>
<p>In short, Ashcroft’s claim that enemies are seeking to destroy the United States makes it easier for the U.S. government to avoid any limits that might otherwise be imposed on its “war against terrorism” by an informed public opinion. President George W. Bush’s references in his own speeches to America’s enemies as “the evil ones” tend in the same direction. Although acts of terrorism ­ which I’m defining here as killings of, or other violence against, innocent noncombatants ­ are always inexcusable, simply labeling perpetrators as “the evil ones” makes it easier for the U.S. government to avoid any inconvenient discussion of ways in which the U.S. might modify its foreign policies to reduce the likelihood of future terrorist acts. But are all Afghans “evil ones?” Or all members of the Taliban? Or did only a few Taliban leaders know about the planned terrorist attacks before September 11? In any case, is it clear that all Taliban members were accomplices of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? And if they were accomplices, is it not true that the better legal systems of the world do not punish accomplices to a crime as severely as the criminals themselves? Is it right that in this war the U.S. is punishing the accomplices just as much the criminals themselves? It seems to me that the use of the term “evil ones” is intended to avoid discussion of a lot of nuances.</p>
<p>My own view is that the United States is now, almost five months after September 11, heading into an extraordinarily difficult time, when substantial changes in our foreign policies will be required. Yet all the polls seem to show that up to 90 percent of the people in this country still don’t even want to listen to anyone who proposes alternatives to our present foreign policies. So I guess that shows that only ten percent of Americans care much about our policies toward the rest of the world. But I’ll bet that in this room right now, a much higher proportion of you do care about the rest of the world and do want to see changes in our foreign policies</p>
<p>The first and most basic belief I have about the current situation is that military action will never be effective in solving the problem of terrorism against the United States. At best it will only prevent terrorism temporarily. As I’ve already mentioned, there’s little doubt that the U.S. will somehow kill or capture or otherwise neutralize Osama bin Laden and most of his lieutenants. The U.S. has already pretty much pulverized Afghanistan by bombing, and has incidentally killed an unknown number of innocent noncombatants in the process. The U.S. government, by the way, seems uninterested in even estimating how many innocent noncombatants have in fact been killed, but it is possible that the number is as large as or larger than the 3,000 killed in the U.S. on September 11. Whatever the military success of the U.S., however, a couple of years hence new extremists just as clever as bin Laden, and hating the U.S. even more, will almost certainly arise somewhere else in the world. That’s why we need to understand the root causes behind the terrorism. If I am right that military action will not prevent future terrorism, but only delay it, we should start working on these root causes right away. We should not wait until the military actions are finished before looking at root causes, as some people would urge us to do.</p>
<p>So let’s go. I’m going to list six major root causes of the terrorism that I think are important. Either Kathy of I will make some comments on each one and then propose how we should change our foreign policy on each. The critical thing you should keep in mind on all of these six issues is that there is a great deal of disagreement in Washington and elsewhere over the relative importance of one compared to another. With that caveat, here are the six root causes of terrorism against the U.S. that we’ve chosen to talk about. I’ve arranged them in a rough order that starts with those I think are most difficult to deal with, but the order does not necessarily reflect their relative importance. My personal feeling is that all six are of equal importance.</p>
<p>ONE: My number one root cause is the support by the U.S. over recent years for the policies of Israel with respect to the Palestinians, and the belief among Arabs and Muslims that the United States is as much to blame as Israel itself for the continuing, almost 35-year-long Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>My first comment on this issue is that it is a more controversial root cause than any of the others on our list. The government of Israel, and many supporters of Israel in the United States, really did not want to talk about any root causes immediately after September 11. Top leaders in the United States, most of whom strongly support Israel, preferred to talk only in general terms ­ about how the terrorists were mad and irrational, and how they had attacked “freedom itself,” out of mindless hatred. More recently, when pressured to talk about root causes at all, the Israelis and their supporters have gone to great lengths to reject arguments that Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians, or U.S. support for Israel, are in any way even a partial cause of the terrorism. When forced to say something positive about root causes, they tend to allege a broader Islamic religious hatred of the West and its modern technology than I think exists. They also emphasize the internal tensions within the Arab world, the lack of democracy and the dictatorial rulers of Arab nations, who are depicted as trying to distract their people from their own internal grievances by whipping up hatred of Israel.</p>
<p>I need to digress for a moment. In a situation where there are clearly multiple root causes of terrorism, it’s in the interest of any person or nation that might be blamed for one of the root causes to emphasize instead the other root causes. In the last couple of months, a sizable propaganda campaign has been launched suggesting that Saudi Arabia is the most important root cause of the September 11 terrorism. I certainly agree that the dictatorial and decrepit Saudi government and its support throughout the Muslim world for a harsh and immoderate version of Islam can be seen as one ­ but only one ­ of the root causes behind the recent terrorism. I’ll have more to say about this later. What I want to point out here is that I suspect supporters of Israel are aggressively pressing this campaign against Saudi Arabia, in the hope of persuading other world leaders that the issue of Palestine is NOT a significant root cause. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is a leading practitioner of this pro-Israel campaign. Both Kathy and I believe, however, that the United States’ strong support for Israel and for its occupation and colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is indeed is a major root cause of the terrorism against the U.S.</p>
<p>After I go through the rest of the root causes, Kathy is going to talk in much more detail about the Israel-Palestine issue and its tragic consequences. Kathy will also give you her thoughts on changes in U.S. foreign policy that might be necessary if the U.S. does in fact desire a peaceful resolution of this issue ­ a resolution that would also help to reduce the likelihood of future terrorism against the U.S.</p>
<p>TWO: My number two root cause is the present drive of the United States to spread its hegemony and its version of big-corporation, free enterprise globalization around the world. At the same time, the massive poverty of average people, not only in Arab and Muslim nations but also in the whole third world, has become more important as a global political issue. The gap between rich and poor nations, and rich and poor people within most of the nations, has grown wider during the last 20 years of globalization or, more precisely, the U.S. version of globalization. Animosities against the United States have grown among the poor of the world, who have watched as the U.S. has expanded both its hegemony and a type of globalization based on its own economic system, while they themselves have seen no or very little benefit from these changes.</p>
<p>This problem of poverty around the world is so immense that it’s almost impossible to grasp. Global statistics are far from perfect, buy they show that the world’s population hit 6 billion last year. 2.8 billion people, almost half of the world’s total, have incomes of less than two dollars a day. Here’s another statistic: the richest one percent of the world’s people receive as much income as the poorest 57 percent. And here’s a final statistic: The richest 25 million people in the United States receive more income than the 2 billion poorest people of the world ­ one third of the world’s total population. Can we here, sitting in this room, even comprehend the magnitude of the injustice that these figures represent? And have no doubt ­ we in the United States are, rightly or wrongly, blamed for these figures.</p>
<p>The catalog of reasons for animosity toward the U.S. throughout the world includes a number of things in addition to our overbearing assertion of both economic and political hegemony: our arrogance in insisting that whatever we say goes, our penchant for abrogating or ignoring international treaties that we don’t happen to like, as well as the influence of U.S. corporations that exploit cheap labor in third world countries to make consumer goods for Americans, Take all these things together and you have a wide sense among the poor people of the world of being oppressed by the United States. This in turn made it possible for Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalists around him to instill and spread intense hatred of us, just as a sense of being oppressed by the Allies after World War I made it possible for Hitler to arouse the kind of fear and hatred among Germans that led both to the slaughter of Jews and to World War II.</p>
<p>The pressures arising from the complex and related problems of U.S. hegemony, globalization and the immense gap in wealth will grow steadily more explosive. My proposal is that the U.S. should immediately develop and implement, with active participation of the U.N. and the European Union (E.U.), a new, very large, and long-term “Marshall Plan” type of aid program for all of the poor nations of the world. This plan should specifically be aimed at reducing the size of the income gap between the poorest and richest nations, and at reducing the income gap between the rich and poor within nations. This type of plan could contribute significantly to reducing the likelihood of future terrorism against the United States. It would also show a far more generous side of the United States to people who at present see only a U.S. version of globalization that seems to them highly selfish and beneficial largely to big corporations and the rich of the world.</p>
<p>I’ve been talking about a massive aid program for the world’s poor since last October, when I spoke to a number of peace groups in Santa Fe. More recently, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has proposed a similar plan, in the amount of $100 billion for each of the next four years. My own suggestion as to the amount is $350 billion spread over three years. $350 billion is, after all, just about what the U.S. military budget will probably amount to in the next ONE fiscal year. One would think that we could find an equal amount to spend over a three-year period for what I would regard as a better purpose.</p>
<p>About now some of you are probably thinking, how unrealistic can this guy get! He of all people ­ meaning me ­ should be aware of how corrupt the governments of most third-world nations are, and you can just see all this money simply going down the drain. My answer is that solving the problem of massive income inequalities around the world is absolutely critical to the future stability of the world, and so far the U.S. version of globalization has not improved the situation at all. I think there are enough intelligent people in the U.N., U.S., Europe, and the underdeveloped countries themselves that we could set up a planning and monitoring group to oversee the wise use of such large funds and to hold the level of corruption to a minimum. The United States should not run such a program unilaterally, and the institutions set up to manage it should not be used to perpetuate and strengthen U.S. global hegemony, as the case now with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. When you hear charges of unrealism before some new program is even in the detailed planning stages, I think you’re entitled to ask if those making the charges aren’t really opposing the new program for some other reason. My own feeling is that the world is in such a mess, and the inequality problem is so severe, that maybe we should worry less about alleged “unrealism” and more about getting on with the business of planning, followed by real action, to do something about the problem.</p>
<p>THREE: The number three root cause I want to discuss is the continuing sanctions and lack of food and medicines for the people of Iraq, deaths of Iraqi children, and the almost daily bombing of Iraq by the U.S. and Great Britain. Right or wrong, the Arab and Muslim “street” blames this on the U.S., not on Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>I don’t have much to comment about on this one. The sanctions and the bombings have been in effect for ten years, and have neither brought about the ouster of Saddam Hussein nor significantly weakened him. And they have caused the deaths of children variously estimated at up to or over a million. The U.S. government’s position is that Saddam himself is to blame for the troubles of the Iraqi people, but the fact remains that after all these years, the Iraqi people are the ones hurt by U.S. actions, not Saddam.</p>
<p>My view is that simple justice argues for an end to both the sanctions and the bombings. My proposal is that we do precisely that.</p>
<p>FOUR: My number four root cause is the continued presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Ten years ago this was the principal cause of Osama bin Laden’s hostility toward the United States. (His hostility on account of U.S. actions against Iraq and then the massive U.S. support for Israel came later and in both cases may be tactical ­ an effort to broaden his own popularity in the Arab world.) Today the thousands of U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia are a constant irritant in Saudi-U.S. relations. The Saudi people clearly do not want them there. Unless we plan to invade Iraq again, I doubt there is any longer a vital reason to keep men and U.S. ground-based military facilities there.</p>
<p>My proposal? The obvious one ­ that we remove the troops. I understand, of course ­ you’d have to be blind and deaf not to know this ­ that some people at high levels in the U.S. government do want to invade Iraq again. All I can say is, I hope such people do not carry the day. I can’t think of a thing that would do more to broaden this “war on terrorism” into a Judeo-Christian war against Islam ­ despite any U.S. governmental protestations to the contrary.</p>
<p>FIVE: The fifth root cause on my list is the dissatisfaction and anger of many average and even elite Arabs and Muslims over their own authoritarian, undemocratic, and often corrupt governments, which are supported by the United States.</p>
<p>My first comment here is that Osama bin Laden is a good example of this particular root cause. His extremist wrath was directed as much against the Saudi government, for example, as it was against the United States. His opposition to what used to be his own government was probably the main reason why he had the support of a majority of the young men under 25 in Saudi Arabia. He received similar support from many young men in other Arab and Muslim states as well. Right now these groups of angry young men obviously no longer have a viable leader in Osama bin Laden, but other extremist leaders are almost sure to arise. In addition, the next generation of leaders in at least some of these states may well emerge from among these young men. If any of them do come into power, their future governments will likely be more anti-American than the present governments, which Washington likes to call “moderate,” but which are really nothing of the sort. If we have not reduced our energy dependence on oil in the meantime, we may face serious trouble.</p>
<p>In my view, this IS a truly difficult problem. My proposal is that we should adopt draconian measures immediately to reduce our overall energy usage, including but not limited to cutting our dependence on Mideast oil. We should, for example, change our tax structure to make energy as expensive to consumers in the United States as it is in Europe and Japan. This will require significant life-style changes in the U.S. I think we kid ourselves if we believe that we can solve any coming energy crunch by expanding alternative power sources or by increasing “clean coal” usage, nuclear power usage, and Alaskan oil usage. The shortages will be too great; so will the long-term environmental costs; and so will the political costs in our relationships with other nations that have already accepted higher energy prices for consumers as a necessary burden of 21st Century life.</p>
<p>We also should not count on new oil supplies from Central Asia allowing us to forget about the need for conservation and to stop being concerned about the stability of Saudi Arabia or other areas of the Middle East. Even assuming that massive supplies of oil from Central Asia become available quickly, all we’ll be doing is transferring our support from the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to the dictatorships of Central Asia. That is not a prospect that we should blithely accept. In my view, conservation is the route we must follow.</p>
<p>I think we should, at the same time, gradually reduce the closeness of our ties with the present authoritarian governments in Arab and Muslim states, and try to develop a better understanding of and improved relations with groups in these states that oppose their own present governments. We should seek out groups that appear to be democratically inclined and “moderate” in the true meaning of the word. Difficult? Of course it will be. But it is the best shot we’ve got, in my opinion, to have a decent relationship with many Muslim states in the future. It’s also the best shot we’ve got if we wish to diminish, over time, the support for future Osama bin Ladens that arises from the anger of Arabs and Muslims with their own governments.</p>
<p>SIX. The sixth and last root cause on my list arises directly from the U.S. “war on terrorism.” It has to do with the kind of war the U.S. is now able to fight. On three recent occasions ­ the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the Kosovo war of 1999 against Yugoslavia, and the current war against Afghanistan ­ the United States has easily achieved victories by relying almost exclusively on air power, on missiles launched from a great distance, and now even on drone aircraft with no humans on board. The U.S. has won these wars with practically no casualties among its own forces. But while few Americans get killed, sizable numbers of other nationalities do.</p>
<p>Most people in the United States are proud both of these victories and of the low U.S. casualties in these three wars. From the viewpoint of anyone who supports the wars, this prowess of U.S. armed forces deserves to be honored. But elsewhere in much of the world, especially the underdeveloped world, this overwhelming invincibility of the U.S. military intensifies the frustrations about and hatred of the United States. This in turn makes future terrorist acts against the U.S. ­ or what is now called by U.S. strategic thinkers asymmetrical warfare ­ even more likely. Those in underdeveloped lands who oppose the U.S. drive for worldwide hegemony are increasingly coming to see no means other than terrorism as an effective method of opposing the United States.</p>
<p>This is an issue that demands a lot more discussion than it’s been getting, and it goes to the heart of our future foreign policies. For the immediate future, perhaps the next five or ten years, it’s going to be tempting for any government of the United States to implement and enforce whatever foreign policies it chooses by going to war, because it will be confident – even overconfident – that it won’t lose a military confrontation and won’t suffer many casualties. The U.S. government in fact has already started moving in this direction, by threatening to launch preemptive wars against nations that are trying to develop nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. Another thing the U.S. is already doing is to militarize the United States to an unprecedented, and wholly unnecessary, degree in comparison with other nations. An editorial in the March 3 New York Times puts it bluntly. “If Congress cranks up the Pentagon’s budget as much as President Bush would like, the United States will soon be spending more on defense than all the other countries of the world combined.” To me, this is absurd – but there you are. These military expenditures will clearly lead to cuts in spending on domestic U.S. problems such as poverty and healthcare, and make it harder to do anything about solving the problems of global poverty and income inequality that I’ve already discussed. In this same five to ten year period, the readily available military option will also encourage the U.S. to avoid facing up to the hard decisions necessary for a peaceful resolution of our more intractable foreign policy problems.</p>
<p>This leads me to a very important conclusion. Since the greater willingness to initiate and fight wars intensifies hatred of the U.S., it is in the U.S. interest to show restraint and voluntarily stop employing warfare based on bombing in order to combat future acts of terrorism. The fact that U.S. bombs and missiles have already killed innocent civilians is tragic and puts us on a par with the extremists who committed the September 11 acts. The U.S. should stop, right now, all further military action that risks killing more civilians.</p>
<p>At the same time, I want to emphasize that I am quite sure there is enough evidence of Osama bin Laden’s complicity in the September 11 terrorist actions to arrest and indict him. Assuming he is still alive, I would therefore support covert or Green-Beret-type operations to capture, but not assassinate, him. Maximum precautions should be taken, however, to prevent such operations from killing or injuring any more innocent civilians. Once captured, bin Laden should be prosecuted and tried in an international court.</p>
<p>I fully understand that compared to most views you hear concerning the U.S. “war on terrorism,” my views are RADICAL. But I believe that unless the U.S. moves in the directions I’ve been suggesting throughout this talk, in five or ten years the terrorism against the United States will become so intense that our global relationships with other nations will be in shambles. On the other hand, if the U.S. government voluntarily moves toward the kind of foreign policy changes I’ve been talking about, I think that its actions might start a trend toward a considerably more peaceful, and stable, 21st Century than now seems likely.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | bill christison joined cia 1950 served analysis side agency 28 years early 1970s served national intelligence officer principal adviser director central intelligence certain areas various times southeast asia south asia africa retired 1979 director cias office regional political analysis 250person unit remarks made available counterpunch recently delivered various peace groups new mexico wife kathy also worked cia retiring 1979since mainly preoccupied issue palestine january 15 attorney general united states john ashcroft held press conference order describe initial criminal charges government would make john walker 20yearold american citizen joined taliban military forces talk ashcroft said quote united states casually capriciously charge one citizens providing support terrorists impelled today inescapable fact september 11th day reminded us uncertain terms enemies world enemies seek destroy us learned september 11 way life immune attack even destruction guts ashcroft said quote enemies world enemies seek destroy us unquote submit simply true statement evidence ive seen shows real objective muslim extremists led osama bin laden rid muslim world american domination influence wanted destroy united states rather wanted us land bin laden supporters also wanted yet alive still want unite muslim nations behind extreme version islam believing islamic world thereby better control future think realize full well possibility destroy united states objective still pretty grandiose considerably limited aim according one recent analysis appeared new york review books quote create one islamic world call purify islamic world idolatrous west exemplified america aim strike american heathen shrines show spectacular fashion us vulnerable paper tiger unquote islamic extremists nice people still alive future adherents cause continue try kill innocent people us elsewhere extremists see trying stop united states continuing drive global hegemony including hegemony islamic world think important understand people united states believe enemy trying destroy us actually possibility waging allout war enemy easily justified us trying prevent destruction instead trying preserve extend global hegemony case think step back start demanding government serious public debate future us foreign policies strenuously debating degree people country given domestic problems want us government continue foreign policies intended strengthen us hegemony domination rest world political economic militarily areas short ashcrofts claim enemies seeking destroy united states makes easier us government avoid limits might otherwise imposed war terrorism informed public opinion president george w bushs references speeches americas enemies evil ones tend direction although acts terrorism im defining killings violence innocent noncombatants always inexcusable simply labeling perpetrators evil ones makes easier us government avoid inconvenient discussion ways us might modify foreign policies reduce likelihood future terrorist acts afghans evil ones members taliban taliban leaders know planned terrorist attacks september 11 case clear taliban members accomplices al qaeda osama bin laden accomplices true better legal systems world punish accomplices crime severely criminals right war us punishing accomplices much criminals seems use term evil ones intended avoid discussion lot nuances view united states almost five months september 11 heading extraordinarily difficult time substantial changes foreign policies required yet polls seem show 90 percent people country still dont even want listen anyone proposes alternatives present foreign policies guess shows ten percent americans care much policies toward rest world ill bet room right much higher proportion care rest world want see changes foreign policies first basic belief current situation military action never effective solving problem terrorism united states best prevent terrorism temporarily ive already mentioned theres little doubt us somehow kill capture otherwise neutralize osama bin laden lieutenants us already pretty much pulverized afghanistan bombing incidentally killed unknown number innocent noncombatants process us government way seems uninterested even estimating many innocent noncombatants fact killed possible number large larger 3000 killed us september 11 whatever military success us however couple years hence new extremists clever bin laden hating us even almost certainly arise somewhere else world thats need understand root causes behind terrorism right military action prevent future terrorism delay start working root causes right away wait military actions finished looking root causes people would urge us lets go im going list six major root causes terrorism think important either kathy make comments one propose change foreign policy critical thing keep mind six issues great deal disagreement washington elsewhere relative importance one compared another caveat six root causes terrorism us weve chosen talk ive arranged rough order starts think difficult deal order necessarily reflect relative importance personal feeling six equal importance one number one root cause support us recent years policies israel respect palestinians belief among arabs muslims united states much blame israel continuing almost 35yearlong israeli occupation west bank gaza strip first comment issue controversial root cause others list government israel many supporters israel united states really want talk root causes immediately september 11 top leaders united states strongly support israel preferred talk general terms terrorists mad irrational attacked freedom mindless hatred recently pressured talk root causes israelis supporters gone great lengths reject arguments israels behavior toward palestinians us support israel way even partial cause terrorism forced say something positive root causes tend allege broader islamic religious hatred west modern technology think exists also emphasize internal tensions within arab world lack democracy dictatorial rulers arab nations depicted trying distract people internal grievances whipping hatred israel need digress moment situation clearly multiple root causes terrorism interest person nation might blamed one root causes emphasize instead root causes last couple months sizable propaganda campaign launched suggesting saudi arabia important root cause september 11 terrorism certainly agree dictatorial decrepit saudi government support throughout muslim world harsh immoderate version islam seen one one root causes behind recent terrorism ill say later want point suspect supporters israel aggressively pressing campaign saudi arabia hope persuading world leaders issue palestine significant root cause new york times columnist thomas friedman leading practitioner proisrael campaign kathy believe however united states strong support israel occupation colonization west bank gaza strip indeed major root cause terrorism us go rest root causes kathy going talk much detail israelpalestine issue tragic consequences kathy also give thoughts changes us foreign policy might necessary us fact desire peaceful resolution issue resolution would also help reduce likelihood future terrorism us two number two root cause present drive united states spread hegemony version bigcorporation free enterprise globalization around world time massive poverty average people arab muslim nations also whole third world become important global political issue gap rich poor nations rich poor people within nations grown wider last 20 years globalization precisely us version globalization animosities united states grown among poor world watched us expanded hegemony type globalization based economic system seen little benefit changes problem poverty around world immense almost impossible grasp global statistics far perfect buy show worlds population hit 6 billion last year 28 billion people almost half worlds total incomes less two dollars day heres another statistic richest one percent worlds people receive much income poorest 57 percent heres final statistic richest 25 million people united states receive income 2 billion poorest people world one third worlds total population sitting room even comprehend magnitude injustice figures represent doubt united states rightly wrongly blamed figures catalog reasons animosity toward us throughout world includes number things addition overbearing assertion economic political hegemony arrogance insisting whatever say goes penchant abrogating ignoring international treaties dont happen like well influence us corporations exploit cheap labor third world countries make consumer goods americans take things together wide sense among poor people world oppressed united states turn made possible osama bin laden fundamentalists around instill spread intense hatred us sense oppressed allies world war made possible hitler arouse kind fear hatred among germans led slaughter jews world war ii pressures arising complex related problems us hegemony globalization immense gap wealth grow steadily explosive proposal us immediately develop implement active participation un european union eu new large longterm marshall plan type aid program poor nations world plan specifically aimed reducing size income gap poorest richest nations reducing income gap rich poor within nations type plan could contribute significantly reducing likelihood future terrorism united states would also show far generous side united states people present see us version globalization seems highly selfish beneficial largely big corporations rich world ive talking massive aid program worlds poor since last october spoke number peace groups santa fe recently british chancellor exchequer gordon brown proposed similar plan amount 100 billion next four years suggestion amount 350 billion spread three years 350 billion us military budget probably amount next one fiscal year one would think could find equal amount spend threeyear period would regard better purpose probably thinking unrealistic guy get people meaning aware corrupt governments thirdworld nations see money simply going drain answer solving problem massive income inequalities around world absolutely critical future stability world far us version globalization improved situation think enough intelligent people un us europe underdeveloped countries could set planning monitoring group oversee wise use large funds hold level corruption minimum united states run program unilaterally institutions set manage used perpetuate strengthen us global hegemony case international monetary fund world bank hear charges unrealism new program even detailed planning stages think youre entitled ask making charges arent really opposing new program reason feeling world mess inequality problem severe maybe worry less alleged unrealism getting business planning followed real action something problem three number three root cause want discuss continuing sanctions lack food medicines people iraq deaths iraqi children almost daily bombing iraq us great britain right wrong arab muslim street blames us saddam hussein dont much comment one sanctions bombings effect ten years neither brought ouster saddam hussein significantly weakened caused deaths children variously estimated million us governments position saddam blame troubles iraqi people fact remains years iraqi people ones hurt us actions saddam view simple justice argues end sanctions bombings proposal precisely four number four root cause continued presence us troops saudi arabia ten years ago principal cause osama bin ladens hostility toward united states hostility account us actions iraq massive us support israel came later cases may tactical effort broaden popularity arab world today thousands us military personnel saudi arabia constant irritant saudius relations saudi people clearly want unless plan invade iraq doubt longer vital reason keep men us groundbased military facilities proposal obvious one remove troops understand course youd blind deaf know people high levels us government want invade iraq say hope people carry day cant think thing would broaden war terrorism judeochristian war islam despite us governmental protestations contrary five fifth root cause list dissatisfaction anger many average even elite arabs muslims authoritarian undemocratic often corrupt governments supported united states first comment osama bin laden good example particular root cause extremist wrath directed much saudi government example united states opposition used government probably main reason support majority young men 25 saudi arabia received similar support many young men arab muslim states well right groups angry young men obviously longer viable leader osama bin laden extremist leaders almost sure arise addition next generation leaders least states may well emerge among young men come power future governments likely antiamerican present governments washington likes call moderate really nothing sort reduced energy dependence oil meantime may face serious trouble view truly difficult problem proposal adopt draconian measures immediately reduce overall energy usage including limited cutting dependence mideast oil example change tax structure make energy expensive consumers united states europe japan require significant lifestyle changes us think kid believe solve coming energy crunch expanding alternative power sources increasing clean coal usage nuclear power usage alaskan oil usage shortages great longterm environmental costs political costs relationships nations already accepted higher energy prices consumers necessary burden 21st century life also count new oil supplies central asia allowing us forget need conservation stop concerned stability saudi arabia areas middle east even assuming massive supplies oil central asia become available quickly well transferring support dictatorships saudi arabia gulf states dictatorships central asia prospect blithely accept view conservation route must follow think time gradually reduce closeness ties present authoritarian governments arab muslim states try develop better understanding improved relations groups states oppose present governments seek groups appear democratically inclined moderate true meaning word difficult course best shot weve got opinion decent relationship many muslim states future also best shot weve got wish diminish time support future osama bin ladens arises anger arabs muslims governments six sixth last root cause list arises directly us war terrorism kind war us able fight three recent occasions gulf war 19901991 kosovo war 1999 yugoslavia current war afghanistan united states easily achieved victories relying almost exclusively air power missiles launched great distance even drone aircraft humans board us wars practically casualties among forces americans get killed sizable numbers nationalities people united states proud victories low us casualties three wars viewpoint anyone supports wars prowess us armed forces deserves honored elsewhere much world especially underdeveloped world overwhelming invincibility us military intensifies frustrations hatred united states turn makes future terrorist acts us called us strategic thinkers asymmetrical warfare even likely underdeveloped lands oppose us drive worldwide hegemony increasingly coming see means terrorism effective method opposing united states issue demands lot discussion getting goes heart future foreign policies immediate future perhaps next five ten years going tempting government united states implement enforce whatever foreign policies chooses going war confident even overconfident wont lose military confrontation wont suffer many casualties us government fact already started moving direction threatening launch preemptive wars nations trying develop nuclear weapons weapons mass destruction another thing us already militarize united states unprecedented wholly unnecessary degree comparison nations editorial march 3 new york times puts bluntly congress cranks pentagons budget much president bush would like united states soon spending defense countries world combined absurd military expenditures clearly lead cuts spending domestic us problems poverty healthcare make harder anything solving problems global poverty income inequality ive already discussed five ten year period readily available military option also encourage us avoid facing hard decisions necessary peaceful resolution intractable foreign policy problems leads important conclusion since greater willingness initiate fight wars intensifies hatred us us interest show restraint voluntarily stop employing warfare based bombing order combat future acts terrorism fact us bombs missiles already killed innocent civilians tragic puts us par extremists committed september 11 acts us stop right military action risks killing civilians time want emphasize quite sure enough evidence osama bin ladens complicity september 11 terrorist actions arrest indict assuming still alive would therefore support covert greenberettype operations capture assassinate maximum precautions taken however prevent operations killing injuring innocent civilians captured bin laden prosecuted tried international court fully understand compared views hear concerning us war terrorism views radical believe unless us moves directions ive suggesting throughout talk five ten years terrorism united states become intense global relationships nations shambles hand us government voluntarily moves toward kind foreign policy changes ive talking think actions might start trend toward considerably peaceful stable 21st century seems likely 160 160 | 2,431 |
<p>DEAR DOV YERMIYA,</p>
<p>I have received the distressing letter that you recently sent to a limited number of friends. You paint the Israeli reality in dark – but true – colors, and end by cutting your ties with it.</p>
<p>“Therefore I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,</p>
<p>“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>SINCE I first met you, Dov, some fifty years ago, I have always considered you the salt of the earth. You were born in a village, the son of a farmer, were a fighter in the 1948 war and later a Colonel in the army, a modest man, a moral person in every fiber.</p>
<p>In the first Lebanon War, you exposed the atrocities committed against the Palestinian refugees in the Tyre-Sidon area, and your courageous report shocked me no less than those of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. You did not hesitate to break the silence, as the “Breaking the Silence” youngsters are doing now, knowing full well that your peers in the officers’ corps would excommunicate you.</p>
<p>You are a man of my heart, Dov. That is why your words distress me so much.</p>
<p>I think it important to share the statement of a man of your caliber with those in our camp who spend sleepless nights worrying about the situation of our state.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>YOU START your letter by mentioning the founders of the Zionist movement.</p>
<p>“If Herzl could come to life again and see what those who claim to carry the flag of Zionism are doing, he would flee at once, miserable and shocked, back to his grave. So would Chaim Weizmann and most of the pioneers, the fathers and mothers of my generation. They were people of conscience and morality, who held to the axiom that human beings are decent and honest.”</p>
<p>Most of your fierce accusations concern Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. “And thus, for 42 years, Israel turned what should have been Palestine into a giant detention camp, and is holding a whole people captive under an oppressive and cruel regime, with the sole aim of taking away their country, come what may!!!</p>
<p>“The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts at rebellion, with the active assistance of the settlement thugs, by the brutal means of a sophisticated Apartheid and a choking blockade, inhuman harassment of the sick and of women in labor, the destruction of their economy and the theft of their best land and water.</p>
<p>“Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities.”</p>
<p>But I believe that the abysmal despair echoed in your words has other roots, too. It is a feeling that troubles the heart of many of your and my generation, the feeling that “they have stolen our state”, that there is no resemblance between the state which we dreamed of and fought for and the thing that has taken its place.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>WHEN I think of our youth, yours and mine, one scene is never far from my mind: the 1947 Dalia festival.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of young men and women were sitting on the slope of a hill in the natural amphitheater near Kibbutz Dalia on Mount Carmel. Ostensibly it was a festival of folk dancing, but in reality it was much more – a great celebration of the new Hebrew culture which we were then creating in the country, in which folk dancing played an important role. The dancing groups came mainly from the kibbutzim and the youth movements, and the dances were original Hebrew creations, interwoven with Russian, Polish, Yemenite and Hassidic ones.&#160; A group of Arabs danced the Debka in ecstasy, dancing and dancing and dancing on.</p>
<p>In the middle of the event, the loudspeakers announced that members of the UN Commission of Inquiry, which had been sent by the international organization to decide upon the future of the country, were joining us. When we saw them entering the amphitheater, the tens of thousands spontaneously rose to their feet and started to sing the “Hatikva”, the national anthem, with a holy fervor that reverberated from the surrounding mountains.</p>
<p>We did not know then that within half a year the great Hebrew-Arab war would break out – our War of Independence and their Naqba. I believe that most of the 6000 young people who fell in the war on our side, as well as the thousands that were wounded – like you and me –&#160; were present at that moment in Dalia, seeing each other and singing together.</p>
<p>What state did we think of then? What state did we set out to create?</p>
<p>What has happened to the Hebrew society, the Hebrew culture, the Hebrew morality that we were so proud of then?</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>YES, WE did create a state. As the old song goes: “On the battlefield, a town is now standing”. We have brought millions of people to this country. From a Hebrew community of 650 thousand we have grown into a population of 7.5 million. A fourth and fifth generation speaks Hebrew as their mother tongue. Our economy is large and solid, even in these times of crisis. In several fields we are in the first rank of human endeavor.</p>
<p>But is this the society, is this the state, which we saw in our mind’s eye on the day it was set up? Is this the army that you and I swore allegiance to on the day it was founded?</p>
<p>Did we dream of this corrupt society, a society without compassion, where a handful of the very rich live off the fat of the land, with a large band of politicians and media people and other lackeys groveling in the dust at their feet?</p>
<p>Did we dream of a state that is an isolated and shunned ghetto in the region, lording it over an oppressed Palestinian ghetto-within-a-ghetto?</p>
<p>There were days when we could stand up anywhere in the world and proudly declare “I am an Israeli”. No one can do that now. The name of Israel has become mud. Since the Gaza War, in which our army poured molten lead onto men, women and children, many Israelis avoid speaking Hebrew in the streets of foreign cities and the IDF has ordered the faces of some of its officers – those whose rank equals yours – be obscured in pictures published in the media.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>WHY DID this happen? When did this happen?</p>
<p>My aim is not to start a discussion with you about the fundamentals of Zionism, both positive and negative. We might not agree. Nor shall I enter into the question of whether everything really started in 1967, with the intoxicating and corruptive victory, or whether the seeds of disaster were sown earlier. On one thing I agree with you entirely: that the fatal step was taken then, on the morrow of that war, when we had the choice between the shining gold of peace and the base metal of annexation, and stretched our hands out towards the latter.</p>
<p>My personal conscience is clean. I am proud that I was one of the few in the country, and the sole voice in the Knesset, who proposed even during the war to turn over the occupied territories to the Palestinian people, so as to enable them to set up their state. This unique opportunity was missed, as you point out in your letter, because of the greed of the founders of the settlement movement, the champions of a Greater Israel.</p>
<p>From there things rolled on, as in a Greek tragedy, to where we are now, with an assorted crew of settlers, racists, nationalists, messianic zealots and ordinary fascists in charge of the state, turning the Knesset into a circus, undermining the Supreme Court, perverting the army, imposing obscurantist religious laws, handing the public treasury to unbridled tycoons, polluting the education system with a primitive nationalist indoctrination, persecuting poor asylum seekers, oppressing the national minority and planning military attacks that will wreak death and destruction on civilian populations.</p>
<p>This is the state that you detest. I have no quarrel with you about that.</p>
<p>This is the state that you despair of. About that I do have a dispute with you.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>YOU BEAR the name of the prophet who is nearest to my heart, Yirmiyahu, the prophet of anger who called out: “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole world … every one doth curse me!” (Jer. 15:10)</p>
<p>But Jeremiah was not only an accuser, he was also a healer: “to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down – to build and to plant.” (Jer. 1:10)</p>
<p>You, Dov, have invested in this state much too much to turn your back on it in a gesture of anger and despair. The most hackneyed and worn-out slogan in Israel is also true: “We don’t have another state!”</p>
<p>Other states in the world have sunk to the depths of depravity and committed unspeakable crimes, far beyond our worst sins, and still brought themselves back to the family of nations and redeemed their souls.</p>
<p>We and all the members of our generation, who were among those who created this state, bear a heavy responsibility for it. A responsibility to our offspring, to those oppressed by this state, to the entire world. From this responsibility we cannot escape.</p>
<p>Even at your respectable age, and precisely because of it and because of what you represent, you must be a compass for the young and tell them: This state belongs to you, you can change it, don’t allow the nationalist wreckers to steal it from you!</p>
<p>True, 61 years ago we had another state in mind. Now, after our state has tumbled to where it is today, we must remember that other state, and remind everybody, every day, what the state should have been like, what it can be like, and not allow our vision to disappear like a dream. Let’s lend our shoulders to every effort to repair and heal!</p>
<p>You have voiced the message of Jeremiah, the prophet of anger. I beg you, give voice also to Jeremiah, the prophet of hope!</p>
<p>URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | dear dov yermiya received distressing letter recently sent limited number friends paint israeli reality dark true colors end cutting ties therefore 95 year old sabra native born israeli jew plowed fields planted trees built house fathered sons grandsons greatgrandsons also shed blood battle founding state israel declare herewith renounce belief zionism failed shall loyal jewish fascist state mad visions shall sing anymore nationalist anthem shall stand attention days mourning fallen sides wars look broken heart israel committing suicide three generations offspring bred raised since first met dov fifty years ago always considered salt earth born village son farmer fighter 1948 war later colonel army modest man moral person every fiber first lebanon war exposed atrocities committed palestinian refugees tyresidon area courageous report shocked less sabra shatila massacre hesitate break silence breaking silence youngsters knowing full well peers officers corps would excommunicate man heart dov words distress much think important share statement man caliber camp spend sleepless nights worrying situation state start letter mentioning founders zionist movement herzl could come life see claim carry flag zionism would flee miserable shocked back grave would chaim weizmann pioneers fathers mothers generation people conscience morality held axiom human beings decent honest fierce accusations concern israels treatment palestinians thus 42 years israel turned palestine giant detention camp holding whole people captive oppressive cruel regime sole aim taking away country come may idf eagerly suppresses efforts rebellion active assistance settlement thugs brutal means sophisticated apartheid choking blockade inhuman harassment sick women labor destruction economy theft best land water waving black flag frightening contempt life blood palestinians israel never forgiven terrible toll blood spilt especially blood children hairraising quantities believe abysmal despair echoed words roots feeling troubles heart many generation feeling stolen state resemblance state dreamed fought thing taken place think youth mine one scene never far mind 1947 dalia festival tens thousands young men women sitting slope hill natural amphitheater near kibbutz dalia mount carmel ostensibly festival folk dancing reality much great celebration new hebrew culture creating country folk dancing played important role dancing groups came mainly kibbutzim youth movements dances original hebrew creations interwoven russian polish yemenite hassidic ones160 group arabs danced debka ecstasy dancing dancing dancing middle event loudspeakers announced members un commission inquiry sent international organization decide upon future country joining us saw entering amphitheater tens thousands spontaneously rose feet started sing hatikva national anthem holy fervor reverberated surrounding mountains know within half year great hebrewarab war would break war independence naqba believe 6000 young people fell war side well thousands wounded like 160 present moment dalia seeing singing together state think state set create happened hebrew society hebrew culture hebrew morality proud yes create state old song goes battlefield town standing brought millions people country hebrew community 650 thousand grown population 75 million fourth fifth generation speaks hebrew mother tongue economy large solid even times crisis several fields first rank human endeavor society state saw minds eye day set army swore allegiance day founded dream corrupt society society without compassion handful rich live fat land large band politicians media people lackeys groveling dust feet dream state isolated shunned ghetto region lording oppressed palestinian ghettowithinaghetto days could stand anywhere world proudly declare israeli one name israel become mud since gaza war army poured molten lead onto men women children many israelis avoid speaking hebrew streets foreign cities idf ordered faces officers whose rank equals obscured pictures published media happen happen aim start discussion fundamentals zionism positive negative might agree shall enter question whether everything really started 1967 intoxicating corruptive victory whether seeds disaster sown earlier one thing agree entirely fatal step taken morrow war choice shining gold peace base metal annexation stretched hands towards latter personal conscience clean proud one country sole voice knesset proposed even war turn occupied territories palestinian people enable set state unique opportunity missed point letter greed founders settlement movement champions greater israel things rolled greek tragedy assorted crew settlers racists nationalists messianic zealots ordinary fascists charge state turning knesset circus undermining supreme court perverting army imposing obscurantist religious laws handing public treasury unbridled tycoons polluting education system primitive nationalist indoctrination persecuting poor asylum seekers oppressing national minority planning military attacks wreak death destruction civilian populations state detest quarrel state despair dispute bear name prophet nearest heart yirmiyahu prophet anger called woe mother thou hast borne man strife man contention whole world every one doth curse jer 1510 jeremiah accuser also healer root pull destroy throw build plant jer 110 dov invested state much much turn back gesture anger despair hackneyed wornout slogan israel also true dont another state states world sunk depths depravity committed unspeakable crimes far beyond worst sins still brought back family nations redeemed souls members generation among created state bear heavy responsibility responsibility offspring oppressed state entire world responsibility escape even respectable age precisely represent must compass young tell state belongs change dont allow nationalist wreckers steal true 61 years ago another state mind state tumbled today must remember state remind everybody every day state like like allow vision disappear like dream lets lend shoulders every effort repair heal voiced message jeremiah prophet anger beg give voice also jeremiah prophet hope uri avnery israeli writer peace activist gush shalom contributor counterpunchs book politics antisemitism 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 160 | 880 |
<p>Back in 2004, George W. Bush, full of “political capital” and hell bent on besting his predecessors in beating back the twentieth century, discovered that Social Security was still a “third rail” in American politics.&#160;&#160; But that was before Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008, and before Barack Obama.&#160; Social Security along with other so-called entitlements are now on the chopping block again, and it remains to be seen whether they can survive the up-coming “bipartisan” assault.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, another third rail seems more robust: the blank check the American government gives Israel – in the form of subsidies, military cooperation, and unstinting diplomatic support.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Fortunately, in our politics, as in Newton’s laws of motion, for every action, there is ultimately an equal and opposite reaction.&#160; And so it is that ruling class (not just Republican) overreach has finally awakened the vast majority of the 99% or more of the American people for who have suffered through decades of unremitting neoliberal rule.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Although the Occupy Wall Street movement expressly rejects vanguardist political styles, it is fair to say that the people who have been living in tents, and who now bear the brunt of police repression (called in mainly by Democratic mayors!), are the vanguard of this rising discontent.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Who knows what will come of their efforts as the movement evolves and as the repression intensifies.&#160;&#160; What is clear for now is just that a whole lot of what used to be called consciousness raising has taken place.&#160; As recently as this summer, there was little reason not to despair for the Land of the Free.&#160; No longer.&#160; Consciousness may even now be raised enough to turn the juice back on in the old third rail — by defeating the coming “bipartisan” drive for austerity and against the few socially useful things our government still does.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Another question is what the consequences will be for that other third rail.&#160;&#160; As of now, U.S. support for the Israeli settler state seems infrangible.&#160; And while it is a good bet that few, if any, militants in the Occupy movement support the Israeli occupation of Palestine, taking back America’s blank check has so far not been an issue for them, much less a priority.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Could that change?&#160; I would venture that the answer is Yes, unlikely as that may seem.&#160; Occupy AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the linchpin of the Israel lobby – could be on the agenda, if not literally, then in effect.&#160; Consciousness raising could spill over even there.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>To be sure, the immediate causes that brought Occupy Wall Street and many hundreds of similar occupations into being do not imply the necessity of moving on to Occupy AIPAC; Israeli ethnocrats are not part of our 1%.&#160;&#160; But consciousness raising has its own dynamic.&#160; Fighting back, even if only for self-interested reasons, leads, almost inevitably, to solidarity with other victims of the system in place.&#160; It suffices only to bring the morally compelling and urgent grievances of others into public consciousness.&#160; The grievances of Palestinians are nothing if not urgent and morally compelling.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>*&#160;&#160; *&#160;&#160; *</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>So far, the Occupy movement has focused mainly on fighting back against finance capitalists on and off Wall Street.&#160; This is fitting: in today’s world, their machinations are the most immediate reasons for the misfortunes afflicting 99% or more of the population.&#160; But it has never been just about that, if only because the interests of banksters are intertwined with those of other capitalists whose power and wealth depend more directly on imperial predations — especially on the perpetual war machine and its archipelago of overseas bases, and on the institutions that comprise our ever-expanding national security state.&#160; Occupy militants have always been aware of this; it is why the grievances they voice spill over into matters of foreign and military affairs, and to the lawlessness and general disregard of traditional (small-r) republican freedoms that Barack Obama his ther latest in a long line to superintend.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>But it is one thing to fight back against a regime that turns economic conscripts into cannon fodder and purveyors of murder and mayhem, and something else to take aim at the oppression of a far away people. What the Israeli settler state does to Palestinians scarcely affects most Americans at the level of lived experience.&#160; And then there is the fact that the institutions that shape opinion in the United States have been inculcating Zionist ideas for decades.&#160; These factors militate against the prospect of an Occupy AIPAC consciousness coalescing any time soon.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Of course, the subsidies American taxpayers send to Israel could be put to use in ways that would the benefit the 99%, and subservience to the dictates of right-wing Israeli governments is a source of potentially dangerous blowback.&#160; However, in the larger scheme of things, these are drops in the bucket compared to more immediate targets of indignation and resistance.&#160; The reasons to Occupy AIPAC have more to do with justice than self-interest, and, as the Bush-Obama recession grinds on, questions of justice naturally give way to more pressing concerns.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Or maybe not – because, in this instance, there is a countervailing consideration: the fact that support for “Israel right or wrong” is increasingly detrimental not only to the interests of the 99%, but arguably to (almost) everybody.&#160; It is therefore unlikely that the political representatives of the 1% would fight back as hard in this case as when the bottom lines of their paymasters are directly threatened.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>But for there to be any chance of that, it would first have to become plain that the Israel lobby is not nearly as powerful as it seems; that it is a Paper Tiger.&#160; I would venture that, for that to happen, it would suffice only to call its bluff; that AIPAC’s power is like the emperor’s new clothes in the Hans Christian Andersen fable, awaiting only a child’s voice to call out the obvious.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>I must say that I find the concept “national interest” hard to reconcile with what I take to be obviously true: that class divisions are of fundamental importance for explaining many social phenomena, including relations between states, and that the intra-national interests these divisions sustain are generally at odds.&#160; My inclination, therefore, is to regard appeals to national interests as disingenuous efforts to rally popular support for (ruling) class interests that popular social strata ought to oppose.&#160; But even I must concede that, in the world today (though perhaps not the world of recent memory), America’s blank check to Israel is emphatically not in the American national interest.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>This is why it has become harder to deny than it used to be that it is the Israel lobby, not the demands of empire, which explains American policy on Israel and Palestine.&#160; The lobby’s hold over Congress and over successive administrations is demonstrable, even if it has not always been decisive.&#160; But its power, I think, is at least in part a consequence of irrationally sustained illusions that would not survive for long if challenged.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The power a lobby wields in Washington depends ultimately on the support or at least the indifference of much of the population.&#160; Most Americans don’t care all that much about Israel, and could be easily turned against the idea that the United States must do its bidding.&#160; I would conjecture too that many American Jews feel the same way.&#160; Of course, most American Jews will say that they support Israel.&#160; But, despite the best efforts of Zionists over the years, that support is shallow and therefore easier to dislodge than is widely assumed.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>These are conjectures about matters of fact, and therefore cannot be settled by speculation alone.&#160; But pertinent empirical evidence is, for the most part, missing, and the extant survey data is equivocal.&#160; Even so, the idea that support for “Israel right or wrong” is shallow, even among American Jews, is very plausible.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Among America Jews, there are, of course, many dedicated Zionists.&#160; Because they control the self-described “major” Jewish organizations, it is easy to exaggerate how representative they are.&#160; Also because many Israelis have emigrated to North America and Europe, there are now many American Jews with Israeli family ties.&#160; By no means are they all hard core Zionists.&#160; But unlike the majority of American Jews, they do harbor loyalties to friends and family in Israel and often to the state itself.&#160; The ties may be more personal than ideological, but the consequences are similar.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are secular and progressive Jews who are among the most stalwart critics of a settler state run by and for ethnocrats.&#160; There are probably not so many of these as there are hard core Zionists, but the number of principled non- and anti-Zionist Jews is not insignificant.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>For millennia, shared religious beliefs and practices, familial ties and commercial associations fostered a sense of Jewish peoplehood.&#160; But Jewish ethnicity, like other ethnicities in the world today, has been imagined for less than two centuries.&#160; And the idea of a real world Jewish state, as distinct from a Messianic fiction inscribed in an otherworldly theology, is an even more recent concoction.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>This is why, before the end of the Second World War, when the extent of the Nazi Judeocide became widely known, Judaism and Zionism were often at odds.&#160; In the United States, both the Orthodox and Reform movements were in varying degrees opposed to the Zionist enterprise; and there are orthodox sects that still are.&#160; Conservative Judaism has always been more Zionist-friendly, but not always as fervently as it now is.&#160; Indeed, it was not until the 1967 war, when the Jewish state had already existed for some two decades, that Zionists, backed by an emerging “national religious” movement in Israel itself, effectively highjacked American Judaism.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Unlike many Western European Jews before the Second World War, most American Jews in the post-War period were determined to resist assimilation.&#160; But they were also well beyond traditional religiosity.&#160; For all but a few recalcitrants, Judaism, like much of Christianity, has been effectively dead – along with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – for a long time.&#160; Therefore even if the Zionist enterprise did not exist, its functional equivalent would have had to be invented for a Jewish identity to be maintained — especially in an America effectively free of anti-Semitism, where full-fledged assimilation has become easy.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>However the Zionist enterprise did exist, and so it was all but inevitable that Judaism would take a Zionist turn.&#160; But a Jewish identity based on Zionism is voluntarily assumed, not ascribed; and chosen identities, unlike identities that a benighted world imposes, are precarious.&#160;&#160; An identity politics grounded on Zionist practice is especially so.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Zionism is a nationalism launched by assimilated Western European Jews that soon took on the form and fervor of contemporaneous Eastern European nationalisms.&#160;&#160; Why would American Jews, especially those with few if any ties to Israel, be attracted to that?</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>National identities are socially constructed.&#160; As Ernest Renan famously put it long ago, in order for a nation to exist, it is necessary that its members forget a great deal.&#160; Otherwise they could hardly comprise what Benedict Anderson called “imaginary communities.”&#160;&#160; Karl Deutsch’s definition of a nation as “a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors” is even more on point.&#160; Shlomo Sand and a few other Israeli writers have lately shown how these characterizations apply to Jewish nationalism and to Zionism, its political expression.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>But the news has yet to reach most American Jews, though it plainly describes our situation.&#160; Most of us have no connection to Jews from non-European countries, now the majority within Israel itself.&#160; And our ancestors came to North America even before the ancestors of most Israeli Jews set foot in Palestine.&#160; Most of us therefore know little if anything of distant relatives living in Israel; we don’t even know that they exist.&#160; This is why Zionism is a slender reed upon which to ground a sense of American Jewish identity, no matter how hard Jewish educational and cultural institutions try; and why, as well-publicized surveys suggest, hard core support for Israel among American Jews is now confined mostly to the elderly – in other words, to people for whom memories of the Judeocide in Europe are more vivid than theoretical.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>It is also likely that, as Israeli and American interests increasingly diverge, and as the government of Israel continues to flaunt its contempt for international public opinion and for widely accepted norms of conduct towards a subjugated population, the efforts of Zionists to turn support for Israel into a basis for Jewish identity politics will be even less successful than they now are.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Should Palestinians continue to mount a sustained, non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation, Zionism’s appeal to American Jews is likely to diminish even further.&#160; Many Jews may not yet be ready to side against their own imaginary community, even if they ultimately care little about Israel itself.&#160; But younger Jews especially do not want to be on the wrong side of a moral struggle replete with overtones of the American civil rights movement or the struggle against South African apartheid.&#160; This is why Palestinian freedom rides and similar act of non-violent resistance are a stroke of genius.&#160; Identity politics be damned if it comes down to siding with Bull Connor over Martin Luther King.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Perhaps it was because they realized that the day would come when American Jewish support for Zionism would wane that the Israeli Right, soon to be joined by the entire Israeli political class, began courting American Evangelicals.&#160; They did a fine job, enlisting gaggles of snake oil salesmen to their cause.&#160; Their pandering to believers in an imminent Apocalypse in which Jews who do not accept Jesus will be cast into the fires of hell for all eternity has brought the Republican base into the Zionist fold, shoring up Israel’s stranglehold over Washington.&#160; But the unholy alliance that makes this possible is as fragile as it is contemptible.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Christian Zionism draws on formerly obscure strains of (very) low Church Anglo-Protestant theology and, of course, on anti-Muslim hysteria.&#160; That hysteria may not soon go away, though there is no reason why Islamophobes need Israeli help to prosper.&#160; As for the theology, it is telling that before Israeli politicians launched their charm offensive – in other words, for more than four centuries — evangelicals took no interest in the politics of the Middle East.&#160; Their enthusiasm for a Jewish state is a very recent phenomenon; and however fervent it may be, it is shallow.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Of course, as long as the Zionist tide rides high in American public opinion, Christian Zionism will continue to appeal to the Michele Bachmanns among us.&#160; But how long will that last once it is revealed that the emperor has no clothes?&#160; If and when an Occupy AIPAC consciousness takes hold among those who still have the sense they were born with, the rest, the Republic base, will surely follow suit.&#160; Then Evangelicals will revert back to their longstanding indifference to Middle Eastern affairs, and the world will be a better place for it.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>The Israel lobby, with AIPAC at its lead, has put together a bipartisan consensus beyond Obama’s wildest dreams.&#160;&#160; But, like the corporate predators and financiers who made Occupy Wall Street both&#160; necessary and possible, AIPAC may soon find itself the victim of its own success.&#160; The tide is turning, and there is no telling what it will sweep away.</p>
<p>ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and <a href="" type="internal">POLITICAL KEY WORDS</a>&#160;(Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. &#160;He is a contributor to&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion</a>, forthcoming from AK Press.&#160;</p>
<p>Exclusively in the New Print Issue of CounterPunch</p>
<p>THE SLOW DEATH OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH&#160;– Nancy Scheper-Hughes on Clerical Sex Abuse and the Vatican. PLUS Fred Gardner on Obama’s Policy on Marijuana and the Reform Leaders’ Misleading Spin. &#160; <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">SUBSCRIBE NOW</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Order your subscription today and get</a> <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">CounterPunch by email for only $35 per year.</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | back 2004 george w bush full political capital hell bent besting predecessors beating back twentieth century discovered social security still third rail american politics160160 democratic victories 2006 2008 barack obama160 social security along socalled entitlements chopping block remains seen whether survive upcoming bipartisan assault 160 meanwhile another third rail seems robust blank check american government gives israel form subsidies military cooperation unstinting diplomatic support 160 fortunately politics newtons laws motion every action ultimately equal opposite reaction160 ruling class republican overreach finally awakened vast majority 99 american people suffered decades unremitting neoliberal rule 160 although occupy wall street movement expressly rejects vanguardist political styles fair say people living tents bear brunt police repression called mainly democratic mayors vanguard rising discontent 160 knows come efforts movement evolves repression intensifies160160 clear whole lot used called consciousness raising taken place160 recently summer little reason despair land free160 longer160 consciousness may even raised enough turn juice back old third rail defeating coming bipartisan drive austerity socially useful things government still 160 another question consequences third rail160160 us support israeli settler state seems infrangible160 good bet militants occupy movement support israeli occupation palestine taking back americas blank check far issue much less priority 160 could change160 would venture answer yes unlikely may seem160 occupy aipac american israel public affairs committee linchpin israel lobby could agenda literally effect160 consciousness raising could spill even 160 sure immediate causes brought occupy wall street many hundreds similar occupations imply necessity moving occupy aipac israeli ethnocrats part 1160160 consciousness raising dynamic160 fighting back even selfinterested reasons leads almost inevitably solidarity victims system place160 suffices bring morally compelling urgent grievances others public consciousness160 grievances palestinians nothing urgent morally compelling 160 160160 160160 160 far occupy movement focused mainly fighting back finance capitalists wall street160 fitting todays world machinations immediate reasons misfortunes afflicting 99 population160 never interests banksters intertwined capitalists whose power wealth depend directly imperial predations especially perpetual war machine archipelago overseas bases institutions comprise everexpanding national security state160 occupy militants always aware grievances voice spill matters foreign military affairs lawlessness general disregard traditional smallr republican freedoms barack obama ther latest long line superintend 160 one thing fight back regime turns economic conscripts cannon fodder purveyors murder mayhem something else take aim oppression far away people israeli settler state palestinians scarcely affects americans level lived experience160 fact institutions shape opinion united states inculcating zionist ideas decades160 factors militate prospect occupy aipac consciousness coalescing time soon 160 course subsidies american taxpayers send israel could put use ways would benefit 99 subservience dictates rightwing israeli governments source potentially dangerous blowback160 however larger scheme things drops bucket compared immediate targets indignation resistance160 reasons occupy aipac justice selfinterest bushobama recession grinds questions justice naturally give way pressing concerns 160 maybe instance countervailing consideration fact support israel right wrong increasingly detrimental interests 99 arguably almost everybody160 therefore unlikely political representatives 1 would fight back hard case bottom lines paymasters directly threatened 160 chance would first become plain israel lobby nearly powerful seems paper tiger160 would venture happen would suffice call bluff aipacs power like emperors new clothes hans christian andersen fable awaiting childs voice call obvious 160 must say find concept national interest hard reconcile take obviously true class divisions fundamental importance explaining many social phenomena including relations states intranational interests divisions sustain generally odds160 inclination therefore regard appeals national interests disingenuous efforts rally popular support ruling class interests popular social strata ought oppose160 even must concede world today though perhaps world recent memory americas blank check israel emphatically american national interest 160 become harder deny used israel lobby demands empire explains american policy israel palestine160 lobbys hold congress successive administrations demonstrable even always decisive160 power think least part consequence irrationally sustained illusions would survive long challenged 160 power lobby wields washington depends ultimately support least indifference much population160 americans dont care much israel could easily turned idea united states must bidding160 would conjecture many american jews feel way160 course american jews say support israel160 despite best efforts zionists years support shallow therefore easier dislodge widely assumed 160 conjectures matters fact therefore settled speculation alone160 pertinent empirical evidence part missing extant survey data equivocal160 even idea support israel right wrong shallow even among american jews plausible 160 among america jews course many dedicated zionists160 control selfdescribed major jewish organizations easy exaggerate representative are160 also many israelis emigrated north america europe many american jews israeli family ties160 means hard core zionists160 unlike majority american jews harbor loyalties friends family israel often state itself160 ties may personal ideological consequences similar 160 hand secular progressive jews among stalwart critics settler state run ethnocrats160 probably many hard core zionists number principled non antizionist jews insignificant 160 millennia shared religious beliefs practices familial ties commercial associations fostered sense jewish peoplehood160 jewish ethnicity like ethnicities world today imagined less two centuries160 idea real world jewish state distinct messianic fiction inscribed otherworldly theology even recent concoction 160 end second world war extent nazi judeocide became widely known judaism zionism often odds160 united states orthodox reform movements varying degrees opposed zionist enterprise orthodox sects still are160 conservative judaism always zionistfriendly always fervently is160 indeed 1967 war jewish state already existed two decades zionists backed emerging national religious movement israel effectively highjacked american judaism 160 unlike many western european jews second world war american jews postwar period determined resist assimilation160 also well beyond traditional religiosity160 recalcitrants judaism like much christianity effectively dead along god abraham isaac jacob long time160 therefore even zionist enterprise exist functional equivalent would invented jewish identity maintained especially america effectively free antisemitism fullfledged assimilation become easy 160 however zionist enterprise exist inevitable judaism would take zionist turn160 jewish identity based zionism voluntarily assumed ascribed chosen identities unlike identities benighted world imposes precarious160160 identity politics grounded zionist practice especially 160 zionism nationalism launched assimilated western european jews soon took form fervor contemporaneous eastern european nationalisms160160 would american jews especially ties israel attracted 160 national identities socially constructed160 ernest renan famously put long ago order nation exist necessary members forget great deal160 otherwise could hardly comprise benedict anderson called imaginary communities160160 karl deutschs definition nation group people united mistaken view past hatred neighbors even point160 shlomo sand israeli writers lately shown characterizations apply jewish nationalism zionism political expression 160 news yet reach american jews though plainly describes situation160 us connection jews noneuropean countries majority within israel itself160 ancestors came north america even ancestors israeli jews set foot palestine160 us therefore know little anything distant relatives living israel dont even know exist160 zionism slender reed upon ground sense american jewish identity matter hard jewish educational cultural institutions try wellpublicized surveys suggest hard core support israel among american jews confined mostly elderly words people memories judeocide europe vivid theoretical 160 also likely israeli american interests increasingly diverge government israel continues flaunt contempt international public opinion widely accepted norms conduct towards subjugated population efforts zionists turn support israel basis jewish identity politics even less successful 160 palestinians continue mount sustained nonviolent resistance israeli occupation zionisms appeal american jews likely diminish even further160 many jews may yet ready side imaginary community even ultimately care little israel itself160 younger jews especially want wrong side moral struggle replete overtones american civil rights movement struggle south african apartheid160 palestinian freedom rides similar act nonviolent resistance stroke genius160 identity politics damned comes siding bull connor martin luther king 160 perhaps realized day would come american jewish support zionism would wane israeli right soon joined entire israeli political class began courting american evangelicals160 fine job enlisting gaggles snake oil salesmen cause160 pandering believers imminent apocalypse jews accept jesus cast fires hell eternity brought republican base zionist fold shoring israels stranglehold washington160 unholy alliance makes possible fragile contemptible 160 christian zionism draws formerly obscure strains low church angloprotestant theology course antimuslim hysteria160 hysteria may soon go away though reason islamophobes need israeli help prosper160 theology telling israeli politicians launched charm offensive words four centuries evangelicals took interest politics middle east160 enthusiasm jewish state recent phenomenon however fervent may shallow 160 course long zionist tide rides high american public opinion christian zionism continue appeal michele bachmanns among us160 long last revealed emperor clothes160 occupy aipac consciousness takes hold among still sense born rest republic base surely follow suit160 evangelicals revert back longstanding indifference middle eastern affairs world better place 160 israel lobby aipac lead put together bipartisan consensus beyond obamas wildest dreams160160 like corporate predators financiers made occupy wall street both160 necessary possible aipac may soon find victim success160 tide turning telling sweep away andrew levine senior scholar institute policy studies author recently american ideology routledge political key words160blackwell well many books articles political philosophy professor philosophy university wisconsinmadison research professor philosophy university marylandcollege park 160he contributor to160 hopeless barack obama politics illusion forthcoming ak press160 exclusively new print issue counterpunch slow death roman catholic church160 nancy scheperhughes clerical sex abuse vatican plus fred gardner obamas policy marijuana reform leaders misleading spin 160 subscribe order subscription today get counterpunch email 35 per year 160 160 160 160 160 | 1,493 |
<p>Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Gen. Raymond Odierno, and President Obama unveil their new military strategy at the Pentagon.&lt;a href="http://www.defense.gov/DODCMSShare/NewsStoryPhoto/2012-01/scr_120105-D-BW835-005c.jpg"&gt;Department of Defense&lt;/a&gt;</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175473/tomgram%3A_steve_fraser%2C_%22de-fault_is_ours%22/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>Here’s the ad for this moment in Washington (as I imagine it): Militarized superpower adrift and anxious in alien world. Needs advice. Will pay. Pls respond qkly. PO Box 1776-2012, Washington, DC.</p>
<p>Here’s the way it actually went down in Washington last week: a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/05/remarks-president-defense-strategic-review" type="external">triumphant performance</a> by a commander-in-chief who wants you to know that he’s at the top of his game.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" />When it came to rolling out a new 10-year plan for the future of the US military, the leaks to the media began early and the message was clear. One man is in charge of your future safety and security. His name is Barack Obama. And—not to worry—he has things in hand.</p>
<p>Unlike the typical president, so the reports went, he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/obama-to-unveil-austere-pentagon-strategy/2012/01/04/gIQAMRBRbP_print.html" type="external">held</a> six (count ’em: six!) meetings with top Pentagon officials, the Joint Chiefs, the service heads, and his military commanders to plan out the next decade of American war making. And he was no civilian bystander at those meetings either. On a planet where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country" type="external">no other power</a> has more than two aircraft carriers in service, he <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45880843/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/#.Twmxv0rByUc" type="external">personally nixed</a> a Pentagon suggestion that the country’s aircraft carrier battle groups be reduced from 11 to 10, lest China think our power-projection capabilities were weakening in Asia.</p>
<p>His secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, <a href="http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4953" type="external">spared no words</a> when it came to the president’s role, praising his “vision and guidance and leadership” (as would Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin E. Dempsey). Panetta described Obama’s involvement thusly: “[T]his has been an unprecedented process, to have the president of the United States participate in discussions involving the development of a defense strategy, and to spend time with our service chiefs and spend time with our combatant commanders to get their views.”</p>
<p>In other words, Obama taking ownership of the rollout of “ <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/282223-defense-strategic-guidance.html" type="external">Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense</a>,” a 16-page document summarizing a review of America’s strategic interests, defense priorities, and military spending. Its public unveiling was to reflect the steady hand of a commander-in-chief destined to be in charge of American security for years to come.</p>
<p>The president even made a <a href="http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2012/01/04/obama-will-make-rare-pentagon-visit-announce-new-military-strategy-and-reductions" type="external">“rare visit”</a> to the Pentagon. There, he was hailed as the first occupant of the Oval Office ever to make comments, no less present a new <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/04/us-usa-military-obama-idUSTRE8031Z020120104" type="external">“more realistic”</a> strategic guidance document, from its press office. All of this, in turn, was billed as introducing “major change” into the country’s military stance, leading to ( <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/pentagon-asia-strategy/" type="external">shades of</a> former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) a “ <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2012/January/Obama-Outlines-Strategy-for-Leaner-US-Military-/" type="external">leaner, meaner</a>” force, slimmed down and recalibrated for economic tough times and a global “moment of transition.”</p>
<p>As political theater, it couldn’t have been smarter. For a president, vulnerable like all Democrats to charges of national security weakness in an election year, it was a chance for great photo ops and headlines. And it left his Republican opponents (Ron Paul, of course, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKfuS6gfxPY&amp;feature=player_embedded" type="external">excepted</a>) in the dust, sputtering, fuming, and complaining that he was “ <a href="http://mckeon.house.gov/this_in_detail.aspx?NewsID=2013" type="external">leading from behind</a>” and “imperiling” the nation.</p>
<p>Even better, in an election season which has <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175478/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_the_1%25_election/" type="external">mesmerized</a> the media, not a single reporter or pundit seemed to notice that, whatever the new Pentagon plan might mean for the US military globally, it was great domestic politics for a president whose second term was in peril.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Another “Mission Accomplished” Moment?</p>
<p>The actual Pentagon planning document, released the day of the president’s Pentagon appearance, might as well have been written in cuneiform script or hieroglyphics. Just about any military future might have been read into or out of its purposely foggy, not to say impenetrable, pages. That, too, seemed politically canny, offering the president a militarized version of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too-ism.</p>
<p>While the document only referred to the Pentagon budget-cutting process that had been making headlines for weeks in the most oblique manner, the briefings offered by the president, the secretary of defense, and <a href="http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4954" type="external">other top officials</a> highlighted those “cuts”: $487 billion over the next decade. It was the sort of thing that should have made any deficit hawk’s heart flutter. Yet somehow—a bow to defense hawks?—the same budget, already humongous from an <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/01/07/obamas_dangerous_pentagon_budget_cuts/" type="external">unprecedented 12 straight years</a> of expansion, was, Obama assured his audience, actually slated to keep on growing.</p>
<p>Like a magician pulling the proverbial rabbit from the hat, the president <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/05/remarks-president-defense-strategic-review" type="external">described the situation</a> this way: “Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow, because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration.”</p>
<p>This magic trick was only possible because those headlined cuts were to come largely from the Pentagon’s “ <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-announces-new-military-approach/2012/01/05/gIQAFWcmcP_print.html" type="external">projected defense spending</a>.” You’ll get the idea if you imagine an obese foodie announcing that he’s going to “diet” by cutting back on his dreams of future feasts, even as he modestly increases his actual caloric intake.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.defense.gov/dodcmsshare/photoessay/2012-01/hires_120105-D-BW835-003a.jpg" type="external">Surrounded by</a> Panetta, Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs, and the service secretaries, the president had so much more to offer. Those nasty, unwinnable, nation-building-style <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/contradictions-defense-plan/#more-68903" type="external">counterinsurgency</a> wars “with large military footprints” were now a thing of the past. On them, the tide was, as he so poetically put it, receding. Yes, there would be losers—Army and Marine Corps troop strength was slated to drop by perhaps <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45880843/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/#.TwaAfyPBp7x" type="external">80,000</a> to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/06/history-repeats-itself-dangers-slashing-military/" type="external">100,000</a> in the coming decade—but weren’t they already the losers of wars no one wanted?</p>
<p>Listening to his presentation and those to follow, you could have been pardoned for imagining that we were already practically out of Afghanistan and looking to a time when everything military would be just cool as hell. In that future, there would be nothing but neat, high-tech military operations (and war toys) to the horizon.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608461548/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />These <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/pentagon-asia-strategy/" type="external">would include</a> our latest <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175265/tom_engelhardt_america_detached_from_war" type="external">perfect weapon</a>, the pilotless drone; nifty cyberwar-style online combat; plenty of new spy and advanced surveillance gear; and sexy shadow wars, just the thing for “environments where adversaries try to deny us access.” Elite special operations forces—the secret military, cocooned inside the regular military, that took down Osama bin Laden—would be <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-announces-new-military-approach/2012/01/05/gIQAFWcmcP_print.html" type="external">further expanded</a>; and finally, there would be a “ <a href="http://www.cfr.org/united-states/pentagon-pivots-asia/p26979" type="external">pivot to Asia</a>” to confront the planet’s rising superpower, China, by sea and air, leaving all those nasty Arabs and Pashtuns and their messy, ugly guerrilla insurgencies, IEDs, and suicide bombers behind.</p>
<p>It couldn’t have sounded cheerier once the media speculation began and it offered something for just about anyone who mattered in imperial Washington. In fact, as sober as Obama looked and as business-like as his surroundings were, if you closed your eyes, you could almost imagine a <a href="http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/6/Mission_Accomplished.jpg" type="external">flight suit</a> and an <a href="http://media.salon.com/2011/05/when_george_w_bush_killed_bin_laden_an_alternate_history-460x307.jpg" type="external">aircraft carrier deck</a>, for this felt eerily like his “mission accomplished” moment.</p>
<p>Hostilities of the old nasty sort were practically at an end and a new era of high-tech, super-secret, elite warfare was upon us. The future would be so death-of-bin-Laden-ish all the way. It would be safe, secure, and glorious in the hands of our reconfigured military and its efficiently reconfigured budget.</p>
<p>Military-First Imperial Realism</p>
<p>This particular reconfiguration also allowed the globe’s last great imperial power to put a smiley face on a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175484/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_lessons_from_lost_wars_in_2012/" type="external">decade of military disasters</a> in the Greater Middle East and—for all the clever politics of the moment—to cry uncle in its own fashion. More miraculous yet, it was doing so without giving up its global military dreams.</p>
<p>It was a way of saying that, if the US ever gets itself out of Afghanistan, when it comes to invading and occupying another Muslim land, building <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175204/nick_turse_america%27s_shadowy_baseworld" type="external">hundreds of bases</a> and an embassy <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174789/the_mother_ship_lands_in_iraq" type="external">the size of the Ritz</a>, and running riot in the name of “nation-building” and democracy: never again—or not for a few decades anyway.</p>
<p>Consider this a form of begrudging imperial realism that managed never to leave behind that essential American stance of <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175338/nick_turse_the_pentagon%27s_planet_of_bases" type="external">garrisoning the planet</a>. In fact, in order to <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175454/nick_turse_america%27s_secret_empire_of_drone_bases" type="external">fly all those drones</a> and land all those <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175426/nick_turse_a_secret_war_in_120_countries" type="external">special operations units</a>, Washington may need more, not less bases globally. And of course, those 11 carrier battle groups are themselves floating bases, massively armed American small towns at sea.</p>
<p>As it happens, though, we already know how this story ends and it’s nothing to write home about. Yes, they’re going with what’s hot, especially those drones. But keep in mind that, only a few years ago, the hottest thing in town was counterinsurgency warfare and its main proponent, General David Petraeus, was being hailed as a new Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or US Grant. And you know what happened there.</p>
<p>Now, counterinsurgency is <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2012/01/the_president_s_new_defense_strategy_will_spark_an_epic_war_over_the_pentagon_budget_.single.html" type="external">history</a>. The new hot ticket of the moment, that “revolutionary weapon” of our time—the drone or robotic airplane—is to fit the bill instead. Drones are, without a doubt, technologically remarkable and growing more sophisticated by the year. But air power has historically proved a poor choice if you want to accomplish anything political on the ground. It hardly matters whether those planes in the distant heavens have pilots or not, or whether they can see ants crawl from 20,000 feet and blast them away with precision.</p>
<p>Despite hosannas about the air war in Libya, count on one thing: air power will prove predictably inept when it comes to an American version of “revolutionary” counterterror warfare in the twenty-first century. So much for the limits of realism.</p>
<p>Washington-style realism assumes that we made a few mistakes, which can be rectified with the help of advanced technology and without endangering the military-industrial-crony-capitalist way of life. That’s about as radical as Obama’s Washington is likely to get.</p>
<p>When compared to the Republicans (Ron Paul aside again) storming the <a href="http://mckeon.house.gov/this_in_detail.aspx?NewsID=2013" type="external">rhetorical barricades</a> daily, threatening <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Walter-Rodgers/2012/0110/War-with-Iran-Consult-history." type="external">war with Iran</a> nightly, promising to <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2012/01/08/gov-perry-vows-to-reinvade-iraq-if-elected/" type="external">reinvade Iraq</a>, or swearing that a military budget larger than those of the next 10 countries combined is wussiness itself, the Obama administration’s approach does look like shining realism. Up against this planet as it actually is today, its military-first policies look like wishful thinking.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>What Drones Can’t Do</p>
<p>Climate-change advocates sometimes say that we’re on a new planet. (Bill McKibben calls it “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312541198/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Eaarth</a>,” with that ungainly extra “a” to signify an ungainly place that used to be comfy enough for humanity.) It is, they say, a planet under pressure and destabilizing in all sorts of barely imagined ways.</p>
<p>Here’s the strange thing, though. Set aside climate change, and to the passing, modestly apocalyptic eye, this planet still looks as if it were destabilizing. Your three economic powerhouses—the European Union, China, and the United States—are all teetering at the edge of interrelated financial crises. The EU seems to be literally destabilizing. It’s now perfectly reasonable to suggest that the present Eurozone may, within years, be Eurozones (or worse). Who knows when European banks, up to their elbows in bad debt, will start to tumble or whole countries like Greece go down (whatever that may mean)?</p>
<p>At the same time, the Chinese, with the hottest economy on the planet, have a housing bubble, which may already be <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-a-chinese-economic-slump-on-the-horizon/2012/01/06/gIQAfPL9jP_story.html" type="external">bursting</a>. (Americans should have at least a few <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53146442-82/china-bubble-economy-real.html.csp" type="external">passing memories</a> of just what kinds of troubles a popped housing bubble can bring.) And for all we know, the US economy, despite recent headlines about growing consumer confidence and an unemployment rate dropping to 8.5 percent, may be on life support.</p>
<p>As for the rest of the world, it looks questionable as well. The powerhouse <a href="http://www.euronews.net/2011/08/30/india-s-economic-growth-slows/" type="external">Indian economy</a>, like the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/16/2548407/brazils-economy-slows.html" type="external">Brazilian</a> one, is slowing down. Whatever the glories of the Arab Spring, the Middle East is now in tumult and shows no signs of righting itself economically or politically any time soon. And don’t forget the Obama administration’s attempt to ratchet up sanctions on Iranian oil. If things go wrong, that might end up <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175487/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_energy_wars_2012/" type="external">sending</a> energy prices right through the roof and <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2012/01/will-his-new-sanctions-on-iran-cost-obama-the-presidency.html" type="external">blowing back</a> on the global economy in painful ways. With the major economies of the globe balancing on a pin, the possibility of a spike in those prices thanks to any future US/Iran/Israeli crisis should be terrifying.</p>
<p>The globalization types of the 1990s used to sing hymns to the way this planet was morphing into a single economic creature. It’s worth keeping in mind that it remains so in bad times. This year could, of course, be another bumble-through year of protest and tumult, or it could be something much worse. And don’t think that I—a non-economist of the first order—am alone in such fears. The new head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has been traveling the planet recently making Jeremiah sound like an optimist, suggesting that we could, in fact, <a href="http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2011/12/16/IMF-head-World-faces-1930-type-Depression/UPI-83971324024200/" type="external">be at the edge</a> of another global Great Depression.</p>
<p>But know this: you can buy drones till they’re coming out your ears and they won’t help keep Greece afloat for an extra second. Expand special operations forces to your heart’s content and you still can’t send them into those failing European banks. Take over cyberspace or outer space and you won’t prevent a Chinese housing bubble from bursting. None of the crucial problems on this planet are, in fact, amenable to military solutions, not even by a country willing to pour its treasure into previously unheard of military and <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175361/chris_hellman_the_real_national_security_budget" type="external">national security</a> expenditures.</p>
<p>Over the years, “the perfect storm” came to be a perfectly overused cliché, which is why you don’t see it much any more. But it might be worth dusting off and keeping in reserve this year and next—just in case. After all, when any situation destabilizes, all bets are off, including for a president having his mission accomplished moment. (Just ask John McCain <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226246/what-sank-mccain/byron-york" type="external">what happened</a> to his 2008 presidential bid when the economy suddenly began to melt down.)</p>
<p>In such a situation, the sort of military-first policy the president has made his own couldn’t be more useless. Maybe it’s time to take out a little insurance. Just not with AIG.</p>
<p>Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460711/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s</a> as well as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The End of Victory Culture</a>, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608461548/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The United States of Fear</a> (Haymarket Books), has just been published. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:43308/acctId:25612" type="external">here</a>.</p> | true | 4 | defense secretary leon panetta gen raymond odierno president obama unveil new military strategy pentagonlta hrefhttpwwwdefensegovdodcmssharenewsstoryphoto201201scr_120105dbw835005cjpggtdepartment defenseltagt story first appeared tomdispatch website heres ad moment washington imagine militarized superpower adrift anxious alien world needs advice pay pls respond qkly po box 17762012 washington dc heres way actually went washington last week triumphant performance commanderinchief wants know hes top game came rolling new 10year plan future us military leaks media began early message clear one man charge future safety security name barack obama andnot worryhe things hand unlike typical president reports went held six count em six meetings top pentagon officials joint chiefs service heads military commanders plan next decade american war making civilian bystander meetings either planet power two aircraft carriers service personally nixed pentagon suggestion countrys aircraft carrier battle groups reduced 11 10 lest china think powerprojection capabilities weakening asia secretary defense leon panetta spared words came presidents role praising vision guidance leadership would chairman joint chiefs general martin e dempsey panetta described obamas involvement thusly unprecedented process president united states participate discussions involving development defense strategy spend time service chiefs spend time combatant commanders get views words obama taking ownership rollout sustaining us global leadership priorities 21st century defense 16page document summarizing review americas strategic interests defense priorities military spending public unveiling reflect steady hand commanderinchief destined charge american security years come president even made rare visit pentagon hailed first occupant oval office ever make comments less present new realistic strategic guidance document press office turn billed introducing major change countrys military stance leading shades former secretary defense donald rumsfeld leaner meaner force slimmed recalibrated economic tough times global moment transition political theater couldnt smarter president vulnerable like democrats charges national security weakness election year chance great photo ops headlines left republican opponents ron paul course excepted dust sputtering fuming complaining leading behind imperiling nation even better election season mesmerized media single reporter pundit seemed notice whatever new pentagon plan might mean us military globally great domestic politics president whose second term peril 160 another mission accomplished moment actual pentagon planning document released day presidents pentagon appearance might well written cuneiform script hieroglyphics military future might read purposely foggy say impenetrable pages seemed politically canny offering president militarized version haveyourcakeandeatittooism document referred pentagon budgetcutting process making headlines weeks oblique manner briefings offered president secretary defense top officials highlighted cuts 487 billion next decade sort thing made deficit hawks heart flutter yet somehowa bow defense hawksthe budget already humongous unprecedented 12 straight years expansion obama assured audience actually slated keep growing like magician pulling proverbial rabbit hat president described situation way next 10 years growth defense budget slow fact matter still grow global responsibilities demand leadership fact defense budget still larger toward end bush administration magic trick possible headlined cuts come largely pentagons projected defense spending youll get idea imagine obese foodie announcing hes going diet cutting back dreams future feasts even modestly increases actual caloric intake surrounded panetta dempsey joint chiefs service secretaries president much offer nasty unwinnable nationbuildingstyle counterinsurgency wars large military footprints thing past tide poetically put receding yes would losersarmy marine corps troop strength slated drop perhaps 80000 100000 coming decadebut werent already losers wars one wanted listening presentation follow could pardoned imagining already practically afghanistan looking time everything military would cool hell future would nothing neat hightech military operations war toys horizon would include latest perfect weapon pilotless drone nifty cyberwarstyle online combat plenty new spy advanced surveillance gear sexy shadow wars thing environments adversaries try deny us access elite special operations forcesthe secret military cocooned inside regular military took osama bin ladenwould expanded finally would pivot asia confront planets rising superpower china sea air leaving nasty arabs pashtuns messy ugly guerrilla insurgencies ieds suicide bombers behind couldnt sounded cheerier media speculation began offered something anyone mattered imperial washington fact sober obama looked businesslike surroundings closed eyes could almost imagine flight suit aircraft carrier deck felt eerily like mission accomplished moment hostilities old nasty sort practically end new era hightech supersecret elite warfare upon us future would deathofbinladenish way would safe secure glorious hands reconfigured military efficiently reconfigured budget militaryfirst imperial realism particular reconfiguration also allowed globes last great imperial power put smiley face decade military disasters greater middle east andfor clever politics momentto cry uncle fashion miraculous yet without giving global military dreams way saying us ever gets afghanistan comes invading occupying another muslim land building hundreds bases embassy size ritz running riot name nationbuilding democracy never againor decades anyway consider form begrudging imperial realism managed never leave behind essential american stance garrisoning planet fact order fly drones land special operations units washington may need less bases globally course 11 carrier battle groups floating bases massively armed american small towns sea happens though already know story ends nothing write home yes theyre going whats hot especially drones keep mind years ago hottest thing town counterinsurgency warfare main proponent general david petraeus hailed new alexander great napoleon us grant know happened counterinsurgency history new hot ticket moment revolutionary weapon timethe drone robotic airplaneis fit bill instead drones without doubt technologically remarkable growing sophisticated year air power historically proved poor choice want accomplish anything political ground hardly matters whether planes distant heavens pilots whether see ants crawl 20000 feet blast away precision despite hosannas air war libya count one thing air power prove predictably inept comes american version revolutionary counterterror warfare twentyfirst century much limits realism washingtonstyle realism assumes made mistakes rectified help advanced technology without endangering militaryindustrialcronycapitalist way life thats radical obamas washington likely get compared republicans ron paul aside storming rhetorical barricades daily threatening war iran nightly promising reinvade iraq swearing military budget larger next 10 countries combined wussiness obama administrations approach look like shining realism planet actually today militaryfirst policies look like wishful thinking 160 drones cant climatechange advocates sometimes say new planet bill mckibben calls eaarth ungainly extra signify ungainly place used comfy enough humanity say planet pressure destabilizing sorts barely imagined ways heres strange thing though set aside climate change passing modestly apocalyptic eye planet still looks destabilizing three economic powerhousesthe european union china united statesare teetering edge interrelated financial crises eu seems literally destabilizing perfectly reasonable suggest present eurozone may within years eurozones worse knows european banks elbows bad debt start tumble whole countries like greece go whatever may mean time chinese hottest economy planet housing bubble may already bursting americans least passing memories kinds troubles popped housing bubble bring know us economy despite recent headlines growing consumer confidence unemployment rate dropping 85 percent may life support rest world looks questionable well powerhouse indian economy like brazilian one slowing whatever glories arab spring middle east tumult shows signs righting economically politically time soon dont forget obama administrations attempt ratchet sanctions iranian oil things go wrong might end sending energy prices right roof blowing back global economy painful ways major economies globe balancing pin possibility spike prices thanks future usiranisraeli crisis terrifying globalization types 1990s used sing hymns way planet morphing single economic creature worth keeping mind remains bad times year could course another bumblethrough year protest tumult could something much worse dont think ia noneconomist first orderam alone fears new head international monetary fund christine lagarde traveling planet recently making jeremiah sound like optimist suggesting could fact edge another global great depression know buy drones till theyre coming ears wont help keep greece afloat extra second expand special operations forces hearts content still cant send failing european banks take cyberspace outer space wont prevent chinese housing bubble bursting none crucial problems planet fact amenable military solutions even country willing pour treasure previously unheard military national security expenditures years perfect storm came perfectly overused cliché dont see much might worth dusting keeping reserve year nextjust case situation destabilizes bets including president mission accomplished moment ask john mccain happened 2008 presidential bid economy suddenly began melt situation sort militaryfirst policy president made couldnt useless maybe time take little insurance aig tom engelhardt cofounder american empire project author american way war bushs wars became obamas well end victory culture runs nation institutes tomdispatchcom latest book united states fear haymarket books published stay top important articles like sign receive latest updates tomdispatchcom | 1,358 |
<p />
<p>Photo by Evan Guest | <a type="external" href="">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p />
<p>The Trump agenda, it seems, is not set in stone. The president-elect has a range of advisors with as many ideas. Steven Mnuchin, his nominee for Treasury Secretary, <a href="" type="internal">said in November</a> that “we’ll take a look at everything,”even the possibility of extending the maturity of the federal debt with 50-year or 100-year bonds to take advantage of unusually low interest rates.</p>
<p>Steve Bannon, appointed chief White House strategist, seems to be envisioning Roosevelt-style experimentation with whatever works. “We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks,” he said <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview-trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747" type="external">in an interview</a> posted by Michael Wolff on November 18th:</p>
<p>Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement. It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, ironworks, get them all jacked up. . . . It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.</p>
<p>That sounds promising. Obsolete systems will go and will be replaced. But how to ensure that the replacements are an improvement?</p>
<p>Another Look at the Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Plan</p>
<p>Current proposals for funding Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure project have been <a href="" type="internal">heavily criticized</a>. In October, his economic advisors <a href="http://peternavarro.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/infrastructurereport.pdf" type="external">Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro proposed</a> funding the plan with tax credits to private investors, who would then borrow from the bond markets. An infrastructure bank tapping into private investment has also been suggested. Both rely on public/private partnerships. <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-infrastructure-plan-is-a-full-on-privatization-assault/" type="external">Michelle Chen, writing in The Nation</a> on December 2, calls the plan “a full on privatization assault.”</p>
<p>A February 2015 report by Public Services International titled “ <a href="http://www.world-psi.org/sites/default/files/rapport_eng_56pages_a4_lr.pdf" type="external">Why Public-Private Partnerships Don’t Work</a>” maintains that public/private partnerships are just another form of government borrowing, moved off-balance-sheet to evade debt ceilings and deficit fears. The report concludes:</p>
<p>[E]xperience over the last 15 years shows that PPPs are an expensive and inefficient way of financing infrastructure and diverting government spending away from other public services. They conceal public borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies.</p>
<p>PPPs also won’t work to fund the sorts of unprofitable but necessary infrastructure projects that Trump’s plan is supposed to include. As <a href="" type="internal">observed on Bloomberg View</a> on November 18th:</p>
<p>The problem is that pension funds, hedge funds and other private parties will only back projects that produce a lucrative and steady stream of revenue to cover operating costs, interest and principal on the debt, and dividends to repay their investment. . . .</p>
<p>Most of the physical structures that undergird the economy — for example, non-tolled roads, sewage-treatment plants, train stations and schools — produce little or no revenue. The same is true for spending on routine maintenance. . . .</p>
<p>Unglamorous projects, like mass transit and removing lead contamination from drinking water, would fail to attract investor interest and therefore wouldn’t get funding. . . .</p>
<p>There’s also the matter of capital shift, in which companies behind already-planned construction seek infrastructure-bank financing, resulting in no net new spending or hiring.</p>
<p>Net New Spending Requires Net New Money</p>
<p>There would be no net new spending or new hiring for another reason. Funding through the bond markets merely recirculates existing money, transferring it from one pocket to another, without creating the new money needed to fund new GDP. Government investment “crowds out” private investment. So argues investment advisor Paul Krasiel in a November 21st article titled “ <a href="http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/paul-kasriel/do-larger-budget-deficits-stimulate-spending" type="external">Do Larger Budget Deficits Stimulate Spending? Depends on Where the Funding Comes From</a>.” He writes:</p>
<p>President-elect Trump’s economic advisers have suggested that an increase in infrastructure spending could be funded largely by private entities through some kind of public-private plan. This . . . would not result in net increase in U.S. spending on domestically-produced goods and services and net increase in employment unless there were a net increase in thin-air credit. The private entities providing the bulk of financing of the increased infrastructure spending would have to get the funds either from some entities increasing their saving, that is, by cutting back on their current spending, or by selling other existing assets from their portfolios. . . . [U]nder these circumstances, there would be no net increase in spending on domestically-produced goods and services.</p>
<p>Krasiel concludes that “tax-rate cuts and increased government spending do not have a significant positive cyclical effect on economic growth and employment unless the government receives the funding for such out of ‘thin air’.” So who creates money out of thin air? One obvious possibility is the government itself, following the revolutionary lead of the American colonists and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. (See my earlier article <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.)</p>
<p>But the current conservative Congress is likely to balk at that solution. A more acceptable alternative in that case could be to borrow from banks. Ideally, this would be the central bank, since the loan would be interest-free and could be rolled over indefinitely. But borrowing from private banks would also work, since they too simply create the money they lend on their books. (See <a href="" type="internal">the Bank of England’s 2014 quarterly report</a>.) Krasiel writes:</p>
<p>[L]et’s assume that the new government bonds issued to fund new government infrastructure spending are purchased by the depository institution system (commercial banks, S&amp;Ls and credit unions) and the Federal Reserve. In this case, the funds to purchase the new government bonds are created, figuratively, out of “thin air”. This implies that no other entity need cut back on its current spending on goods and services while the government increases its spending in the infrastructure sector.</p>
<p>Most New Money Is Created by Banks</p>
<p>Richard Werner, Professor of Economics at the University of Southampton in the UK, agrees. Werner invented the term “quantitative easing,” but the central banks that adopted the term did not follow his policy advice. They tried to expand credit creation by padding the reserve accounts of banks; but the banks did not follow through with new lending into the market. Werner’s suggestion was for the banks to lend directly to governments.</p>
<p>In a July 2012 research paper titled “ <a href="" type="internal">How to End the European Crisis – At No Further Cost and Without the Need for Political Changes</a>,” he noted that a full 97% of the UK money supply is created by ordinary commercial banks. That makes banks far superior to the bond market in their ability to create the credit necessary to stimulate the economy. To the objection that banks don’t have sufficient money to fund governments, he wrote:</p>
<p>That may be true in one sense. But this is true for any loan granted by a&#160;bank. Which is why banks do not lend money, they create it: banks are allowed to&#160;invent a deposit in the borrower’s account (although no new deposit was made by&#160;anyone from outside the bank) and since they function as the settlement system of the economy, nobody can tell the difference between these invented deposits and “real” ones.</p>
<p>Werner lists other advantages of governments funding themselves by tapping bank credit lines rather than issuing bonds. One is that the borrowing rate is substantially lower. Basel banking regulations give governments the lowest risk-weighting (zero), so they can borrow from banks at the favored-client rate; and the banks will be happy to lend, because with zero risk-weighting they will need no new capital to back the loans.</p>
<p>Another advantage: “Instead of primary market bond underwriters, such as Goldman Sachs, earning large fees in cosy relationships with semi-privatised public debt management agencies, banks will be the beneficiaries of this business.”</p>
<p>Most important, however, is that with the government as borrower, banks can create the new credit necessary to underwrite new productivity.</p>
<p>For historical precedent, Werner cites the system of short-term bills of trade known as “Mefo Wechsel” issued by semi-public entities in Germany from 1933 onwards. These bills were bought by German banks, increasing bank credit creation:</p>
<p>[T]he sharp German economic recovery from over 20% unemployment in early 1933 to virtually full employment by the end of 1936 was the result of the ensuing expansion in bank credit creation – in other words, it was the funding of fiscal policy through credit creation that caused the recovery, not fiscal stimulus per se. Japan’s experience of the 1990s has proven how even far larger fiscal expansions will not boost the economy at all if they are not funded by credit creation. [Citing sources.]</p>
<p>Unlike borrowing money created by the Federal Reserve, borrowing money created by banks would involve an interest cost. But as Steve Bannon observes, interest rates today are at record lows; and borrowing from banks would have the consummate advantage over borrowing from the bond market that it would expand the pool of bank deposits that are now officially counted as “money” in M2. This is what the Fed tried but failed to do with its quantitative easing policies: stimulate the economy by expanding the bank lending that expands the money supply.</p>
<p>For a compelling video presentation of these ideas, see Prof. Werner’s Power Point given in Dublin in April 2016, linked <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.</p>
<p>A revolutionary movement needs a revolutionary financial system. If everything is on the table, as Steven Mnuchin says,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">the Trump team could consider</a>&#160;funding its trillion dollar infrastructure plan with newly-issued credit, whether created by the Treasury or the central bank or through government credit lines with commercial banks. An Andrew Jackson-style president could avoid adding to the national debt altogether, &#160;by simply issuing an executive order to the Treasury to&#160;mint a trillion dollar coin.&#160;As shown in earlier articles&#160; <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/trillion-dollar-coin" type="external">here</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">here</a>, this could be done without the need for congressional approval and without trrggering hyperinflation.</p> | true | 4 | photo evan guest cc 20 trump agenda seems set stone presidentelect range advisors many ideas steven mnuchin nominee treasury secretary said november well take look everythingeven possibility extending maturity federal debt 50year 100year bonds take advantage unusually low interest rates steve bannon appointed chief white house strategist seems envisioning rooseveltstyle experimentation whatever works going throw wall see sticks said interview posted michael wolff november 18th like andrew jacksons populism going build entirely new political movement everything related jobs conservatives going go crazy im guy pushing trilliondollar infrastructure plan negative interest rates throughout world greatest opportunity rebuild everything shipyards ironworks get jacked exciting 1930s greater reagan revolution conservatives plus populists economic nationalist movement sounds promising obsolete systems go replaced ensure replacements improvement another look trillion dollar infrastructure plan current proposals funding trumps 1 trillion infrastructure project heavily criticized october economic advisors wilbur ross peter navarro proposed funding plan tax credits private investors would borrow bond markets infrastructure bank tapping private investment also suggested rely publicprivate partnerships michelle chen writing nation december 2 calls plan full privatization assault february 2015 report public services international titled publicprivate partnerships dont work maintains publicprivate partnerships another form government borrowing moved offbalancesheet evade debt ceilings deficit fears report concludes experience last 15 years shows ppps expensive inefficient way financing infrastructure diverting government spending away public services conceal public borrowing providing longterm state guarantees profits private companies ppps also wont work fund sorts unprofitable necessary infrastructure projects trumps plan supposed include observed bloomberg view november 18th problem pension funds hedge funds private parties back projects produce lucrative steady stream revenue cover operating costs interest principal debt dividends repay investment physical structures undergird economy example nontolled roads sewagetreatment plants train stations schools produce little revenue true spending routine maintenance unglamorous projects like mass transit removing lead contamination drinking water would fail attract investor interest therefore wouldnt get funding theres also matter capital shift companies behind alreadyplanned construction seek infrastructurebank financing resulting net new spending hiring net new spending requires net new money would net new spending new hiring another reason funding bond markets merely recirculates existing money transferring one pocket another without creating new money needed fund new gdp government investment crowds private investment argues investment advisor paul krasiel november 21st article titled larger budget deficits stimulate spending depends funding comes writes presidentelect trumps economic advisers suggested increase infrastructure spending could funded largely private entities kind publicprivate plan would result net increase us spending domesticallyproduced goods services net increase employment unless net increase thinair credit private entities providing bulk financing increased infrastructure spending would get funds either entities increasing saving cutting back current spending selling existing assets portfolios circumstances would net increase spending domesticallyproduced goods services krasiel concludes taxrate cuts increased government spending significant positive cyclical effect economic growth employment unless government receives funding thin air creates money thin air one obvious possibility government following revolutionary lead american colonists abraham lincoln civil war see earlier article current conservative congress likely balk solution acceptable alternative case could borrow banks ideally would central bank since loan would interestfree could rolled indefinitely borrowing private banks would also work since simply create money lend books see bank englands 2014 quarterly report krasiel writes lets assume new government bonds issued fund new government infrastructure spending purchased depository institution system commercial banks sampls credit unions federal reserve case funds purchase new government bonds created figuratively thin air implies entity need cut back current spending goods services government increases spending infrastructure sector new money created banks richard werner professor economics university southampton uk agrees werner invented term quantitative easing central banks adopted term follow policy advice tried expand credit creation padding reserve accounts banks banks follow new lending market werners suggestion banks lend directly governments july 2012 research paper titled end european crisis cost without need political changes noted full 97 uk money supply created ordinary commercial banks makes banks far superior bond market ability create credit necessary stimulate economy objection banks dont sufficient money fund governments wrote may true one sense true loan granted a160bank banks lend money create banks allowed to160invent deposit borrowers account although new deposit made by160anyone outside bank since function settlement system economy nobody tell difference invented deposits real ones werner lists advantages governments funding tapping bank credit lines rather issuing bonds one borrowing rate substantially lower basel banking regulations give governments lowest riskweighting zero borrow banks favoredclient rate banks happy lend zero riskweighting need new capital back loans another advantage instead primary market bond underwriters goldman sachs earning large fees cosy relationships semiprivatised public debt management agencies banks beneficiaries business important however government borrower banks create new credit necessary underwrite new productivity historical precedent werner cites system shortterm bills trade known mefo wechsel issued semipublic entities germany 1933 onwards bills bought german banks increasing bank credit creation sharp german economic recovery 20 unemployment early 1933 virtually full employment end 1936 result ensuing expansion bank credit creation words funding fiscal policy credit creation caused recovery fiscal stimulus per se japans experience 1990s proven even far larger fiscal expansions boost economy funded credit creation citing sources unlike borrowing money created federal reserve borrowing money created banks would involve interest cost steve bannon observes interest rates today record lows borrowing banks would consummate advantage borrowing bond market would expand pool bank deposits officially counted money m2 fed tried failed quantitative easing policies stimulate economy expanding bank lending expands money supply compelling video presentation ideas see prof werners power point given dublin april 2016 linked revolutionary movement needs revolutionary financial system everything table steven mnuchin says160 trump team could consider160funding trillion dollar infrastructure plan newlyissued credit whether created treasury central bank government credit lines commercial banks andrew jacksonstyle president could avoid adding national debt altogether 160by simply issuing executive order treasury to160mint trillion dollar coin160as shown earlier articles160 here160and160 could done without need congressional approval without trrggering hyperinflation | 975 |
<p>LOS ANGELES—The nation’s homeless population increased this year for the first time since 2010, driven by a surge in the number of people living on the streets in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its annual Point in Time count Wednesday, a report that showed nearly 554,000 homeless people across the country during local tallies conducted in January. That figure is up nearly 1 percent from 2016.</p>
<p>Of that total, 193,000 people had no access to nightly shelter and instead were staying in vehicles, tents, the streets and other places considered uninhabitable. The unsheltered figure is up by more than 9 percent compared to two years ago.</p>
<p>Increases are higher in several West Coast cities, where the&#160; <a href="https://apnews.com/d480434bbacd4b028ff13cd1e7cea155/Amid-booming-economy,-homelessness-soars-on-US-West-Coast" type="external">explosion in homelessness</a>&#160;has prompted at least 10 city and county governments to declare states of emergency since 2015.</p>
<p />
<p>City officials, homeless advocates and those living on the streets point to a main culprit: the region’s&#160; <a href="https://apnews.com/9309128222ab4c4f92b0d0022e1ec133/%27We-still-need-to-eat%27:-Tech-boom-creates-working-homeless" type="external">booming economy</a>&#160;.</p>
<p>Rents have soared beyond affordability for many lower-wage workers who until just a just few years ago could typically find a place to stay. Now, even a temporary setback can be enough to leave them out on the streets.</p>
<p>“A lot of people in America don’t realize they might be two checks, three checks, four checks away from being homeless,” said Thomas Butler Jr., who stays in a carefully organized tent near a freeway ramp in downtown Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Butler said he was in transitional housing—a type of program that prepares people for permanent homes—for a while but mostly has lived on the streets for the past couple of years.</p>
<p>The numbers in the report back up what many people in California, Oregon and Washington have been experiencing in their communities: encampments sprouting along freeways and rivers; local governments struggling to come up with money for long-term solutions; conflicts over whether to crack down on street camping and even feeding the homeless.</p>
<p>The most alarming consequence of the West Coast homeless explosion is a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that has affected Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and San Diego, the popular tourist destination in a county where more than 5,600 people now live on the streets or in their cars. The disease is spread through a liver-damaging virus that lives in feces.</p>
<p>The outbreak prompted California officials to declare a state of emergency in October.</p>
<p>The HUD report underscores the severity of the problem along the West Coast.</p>
<p>While the overall homeless population in California, Oregon and Washington grew by 14 percent over the past two years, the part of that population considered unsheltered climbed 23 percent to 108,000. That is in part due a shortage of affordable housing.</p>
<p>In booming Seattle, for example, the HUD report shows the unsheltered population grew by 44 percent over two years to nearly 5,500.</p>
<p>The homeless service area that includes most of Los Angeles County, the epicenter of the crisis, saw its total homeless count top 55,000 people, up by more than 13,000 from 2016. Four out of every five homeless individuals there are considered unsheltered, leaving tens of thousands of people with no place to sleep other than the streets or parks.</p>
<p>By comparison, while&#160; <a href="https://apnews.com/145e200283e5431f8218d367bd068931/East-Coast-offers-homeless-insights-as-West-Coast-struggles" type="external">New York City’s homeless population</a>&#160;grew to more than 76,000, only about 5 percent are considered unsheltered thanks to a system that can get people a cot under a roof immediately.</p>
<p>In the West Coast states, the surge in homelessness has become part of the&#160; <a href="https://apnews.com/card/afs:Card:1520990010/BEHIND-THEIR-EYES:-AN-AP-PHOTO-ESSAY-BY-JAE-HONG" type="external">fabric of daily life.</a></p>
<p>The Monty, a bar in the Westlake neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles, usually doesn’t open until 8 p.m. Partner and general manager Corey Allen said that’s because a nearby shelter requires people staying there to be in the building by 7. Waiting until after that to open means the streets outside are calmer.</p>
<p>Allen said the homeless have come into his bar to bathe in the restroom wash basins, and employees have developed a strategy for stopping people from coming in to panhandle among customers.</p>
<p>Seventy-eight-year-old Theodore Neubauer sees the other side of it. Neubauer says he served in Vietnam but now lives in a tent in downtown Los Angeles. He is surrounded by thriving business and entertainment districts, and new apartments that are attracting scores of young people to the heart of the nation’s second most populous city.</p>
<p>“Well, there’s a million-dollar view,” he said.</p>
<p>Helping those like Neubauer is a top policy priority and political issue in Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Since last year, voters in the city and Los Angeles County have passed a pair of tax-boosting ballot initiatives to raise an expected $4.7 billion over the next decade for affordable housing and services for the homeless. HUD Secretary Ben Carson praised the region for dealing with the issue and not relying solely on the federal government.</p>
<p>“We need to move a little bit away from the concept that only the government can solve the problem,” he said.</p>
<p>But Mayor Eric Garcetti said that insufficient federal funding for affordable housing and anti-homelessness programs are part of the reason for the city’s current crisis.</p>
<p>“Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis was not created in a vacuum, and it cannot be solved by L.A. alone,” Garcetti said in a statement.</p>
<p>Excluding the Los Angeles region, total homelessness nationwide would have been down by about 1.5 percent compared with 2016.</p>
<p>The California counties of Sacramento, which includes the state capital, and Alameda, which is home to Oakland, also had one-year increases of more than 1,000 homeless people.</p>
<p>In contrast, the HUD report showed a long-running decline in homelessness continuing in most other regions. Nationally, the overall homeless number was down by 13 percent since 2010 and the unsheltered number has dropped by 17 percent over that seven-year span, although some changes in methodology and definitions over the years can affect comparisons.</p>
<p>Places where the numbers went down included Atlanta, Philadelphia, Miami, the Denver area and Hawaii, which declared a statewide homelessness emergency in 2015.</p>
<p>The homeless point-in-time survey is based on counts at shelters and on the streets. While imperfect, it attempts to represent how many people are homeless at a given time. Those who work regularly with the homeless say it is certainly an undercount, although many advocates and officials believe it correctly identifies trend lines.</p>
<p>The report is submitted to Congress and used by government agencies as a factor in distributing money for programs designed to help the homeless.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. AP videographer Krysta Fauria and photographer Jae Hong in Los Angeles contributed to this article.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Weber at&#160; <a href="http://twitter.com/WeberCM" type="external">http://twitter.com/WeberCM</a>&#160;and Mulvihill at&#160; <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</a></p> | true | 4 | los angelesthe nations homeless population increased year first time since 2010 driven surge number people living streets los angeles west coast cities us department housing urban development released annual point time count wednesday report showed nearly 554000 homeless people across country local tallies conducted january figure nearly 1 percent 2016 total 193000 people access nightly shelter instead staying vehicles tents streets places considered uninhabitable unsheltered figure 9 percent compared two years ago increases higher several west coast cities the160 explosion homelessness160has prompted least 10 city county governments declare states emergency since 2015 city officials homeless advocates living streets point main culprit regions160 booming economy160 rents soared beyond affordability many lowerwage workers years ago could typically find place stay even temporary setback enough leave streets lot people america dont realize might two checks three checks four checks away homeless said thomas butler jr stays carefully organized tent near freeway ramp downtown los angeles butler said transitional housinga type program prepares people permanent homesfor mostly lived streets past couple years numbers report back many people california oregon washington experiencing communities encampments sprouting along freeways rivers local governments struggling come money longterm solutions conflicts whether crack street camping even feeding homeless alarming consequence west coast homeless explosion deadly hepatitis outbreak affected los angeles santa cruz san diego popular tourist destination county 5600 people live streets cars disease spread liverdamaging virus lives feces outbreak prompted california officials declare state emergency october hud report underscores severity problem along west coast overall homeless population california oregon washington grew 14 percent past two years part population considered unsheltered climbed 23 percent 108000 part due shortage affordable housing booming seattle example hud report shows unsheltered population grew 44 percent two years nearly 5500 homeless service area includes los angeles county epicenter crisis saw total homeless count top 55000 people 13000 2016 four every five homeless individuals considered unsheltered leaving tens thousands people place sleep streets parks comparison while160 new york citys homeless population160grew 76000 5 percent considered unsheltered thanks system get people cot roof immediately west coast states surge homelessness become part the160 fabric daily life monty bar westlake neighborhood near downtown los angeles usually doesnt open 8 pm partner general manager corey allen said thats nearby shelter requires people staying building 7 waiting open means streets outside calmer allen said homeless come bar bathe restroom wash basins employees developed strategy stopping people coming panhandle among customers seventyeightyearold theodore neubauer sees side neubauer says served vietnam lives tent downtown los angeles surrounded thriving business entertainment districts new apartments attracting scores young people heart nations second populous city well theres milliondollar view said helping like neubauer top policy priority political issue los angeles since last year voters city los angeles county passed pair taxboosting ballot initiatives raise expected 47 billion next decade affordable housing services homeless hud secretary ben carson praised region dealing issue relying solely federal government need move little bit away concept government solve problem said mayor eric garcetti said insufficient federal funding affordable housing antihomelessness programs part reason citys current crisis los angeles homelessness crisis created vacuum solved la alone garcetti said statement excluding los angeles region total homelessness nationwide would 15 percent compared 2016 california counties sacramento includes state capital alameda home oakland also oneyear increases 1000 homeless people contrast hud report showed longrunning decline homelessness continuing regions nationally overall homeless number 13 percent since 2010 unsheltered number dropped 17 percent sevenyear span although changes methodology definitions years affect comparisons places numbers went included atlanta philadelphia miami denver area hawaii declared statewide homelessness emergency 2015 homeless pointintime survey based counts shelters streets imperfect attempts represent many people homeless given time work regularly homeless say certainly undercount although many advocates officials believe correctly identifies trend lines report submitted congress used government agencies factor distributing money programs designed help homeless ___ mulvihill reported cherry hill new jersey ap videographer krysta fauria photographer jae hong los angeles contributed article ___ follow weber at160 httptwittercomwebercm160and mulvihill at160 httpwwwtwittercomgeoffmulvihill | 659 |
<p>John DeGrove was the father of land use planning in Florida and the principal architect of the state land use agency, the Florida Department of Community Affairs. The agency was established in 1985 to oversee compliance with the Growth Management Act. Most Floridians are unlikely to know either what the Department of Community Affairs did or what its disappearance means. Fewer still understand the challenges to design and implement a regulatory framework for rationale growth and development in one of the nation’s fastest growing states, or, how DCA and DeGrove’s mission was a target of anti-government, pro-property rights zealots from the first.</p>
<p>Why this matters is simple. Presupposing the failure of government regulatory authority virtually guarantees it will happen. The notion that government cannot do anything that private industry can do better, cheaper, and faster including protecting public safety, health and welfare has spread its toxic roots far and wide. Florida provides more than its share of examples of government-designed-to-fail.</p>
<p>These didn’t happen overnight. DCA was caught up in a thirty year war against governmental regulation of land use and the environment. Initially, the agency’s work enjoyed broad bipartisan support. By the time the agency was frog-marched to the platform and guillotined by the Florida legislature and an indifferent governor, it had already mostly surrendered to “regulatory capture” by special interests. When the final blow was delivered, no one was quite so surprised as the insiders to watch decades of history simply wash away.</p>
<p>DeGrove, who passed away recently at age 87, lived long enough to see his life’s work first praised as a national paradigm for growth management, then eroded by well-financed and determined special interests, pilloried by one session of the Republican-led legislature after another, and finally consigned to a closet in the state capitol with dust brooms. DCA is not alone. Despite irrefutable evidence of mounting pollution in Florida and its social costs, state government programs protecting the environment have been under the same withering attack.</p>
<p>The Palm Beach Post editorialized, “Legislators tried to rip the stuffing out the DCA in 2009 and 2010 but botched the bill, and a court overturned it. Gov. Scott’s cover story is that the agency kills jobs by asking developers to follow the law, meaning that public services be in place for the new residents. … this is a governor and Legislature that would rather break government than fix it.” (“Last straw for DCA? Gov. Scott goes after growth-management agency on false premise”, Palm Beach Post, Feb 8, 2011)</p>
<p>The St. Pete Times called Scott, “a new governor ignorant of the state’s history and indifferent about its future” and tersely concluded, “Now the state has given up virtually of its oversight of development and its authority to require developers to help pay for roads, schools and parks. Local governments can pretty much do as they please. Florida has turned back the clock three decades.” (“An obituary for Florida Growth Management”, St. Pete Times, June 5, 2011)</p>
<p>By 2011, the collapse of housing markets had knocked the state legislature off-kilter. The housing boom lay spent in the dirt. Keeping the boom alive had been the mother’s milk of Florida politics. For builders and the various components of the Growth Machine that fund political campaigns, markets had dried up and vanished. Overdevelopment plus foreclosures meant increasing supply was like pushing on a string: there was no demand. Lobbyists accustomed to tinkering with environmental regulations and regulations associated with the Growth Management Act, DCA’s enabling legislation, needed an organizing principle.</p>
<p>They had been accustomed to whipping legislators into a frenzy of bad decision making at the last minute– gloating over strategies to tie civic activists in knots or sending them down rabbit holes and one way legislative alleys—often shepherded bills in the dead of the night on the last day of the legislative session that no one read but those who crafted them – and now had to justify their existence.</p>
<p>The Florida Department of Community Affairs had an important mission but was one of Florida’s smallest executive agencies. The agency’s budget for 2011 was $780 million. For 2012, Governor Scott proposed cuts of about $100 million. For 2013, he proposed a budget of $70 million. By spring 2011 the agency was finished.</p>
<p>Florida is an enduring fascination. It is politically influential and culturally backward. It is a great backdrop for television for which no one can remember the plot. Florida exalts development and possesses unique natural resources. Its chief attractions that drove development in the 1950’s are in states of decay, aquifers, springs, estuaries, rivers, bays and the Everglades alternately treasured and spurned, vaunted and trashed, lit by God’s towering thunderheads and buried in a God forsaken culture of strip malls and anonymous platted subdivisions far from places of work.</p>
<p>The built landscape of Florida, like so much suburban sprawl around the nation, is seemingly designed to strip vitality from communities. It was John DeGrove’s life mission to deploy growth management policies in a way to encourage better outcomes. The economic disaster fomented by excessive risk taking in the private sector – banking, mortgage origination, construction and development based on speculation—should have lead decision-makers exactly toward DeGrove’s values: the rational allocation of resources to reinforce community planning, environmental and economic security. A bolder approach than ones conceived in the 1980’s would have attached regulation and enforcement of land use to the investment vehicles used by banking and insurance industries – those financial derivatives based on mortgages that profess to be agnostic to any value other than the free market.</p>
<p>During the boom, the Growth Machine offered critics it was only supplying “what the market wants”. The market hardly wanted the worst bust since the Great Depression, nor did the Growth Machine want attention turned to policies and candidates it supported whose blind fealty led to such disastrous results. The Growth Machine needed scapegoats to deflect attention from its diverse roles causing the crisis. It needed “bogeymen” and DCA conveniently fit the bill. It was a term actually applied to the agency by the ex-president of Associated Industries of Florida. DCA was his bogeyman.</p>
<p>In his second term inaugural speech, in January 2003 former Governor Jeb Bush rhapsodized about a future when state capitol buildings would be emptied of workers in recognition of government’s limitations. “There will be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; as silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill.” It was a moment of exuberance and supreme confidence: 9/11 had threatened the economy and the housing industry, thanks to unprecedented policies by the Federal Reserve, responded. The boom was in full flight.</p>
<p>The workers Bush had in mind were state regulators like the ones at DCA who oversaw mandated development plans. The requirements of the Growth Management Act compelled cities and counties to formalize long-term development plans; a constant irritation to developers and bankers. Four years earlier, in 1998, Jeb Bush had been propelled to the governor’s mansion by a well-oiled political machine in Miami-Dade County. It was Florida’s largest county, the most influential politically, and Jeb’s home base.</p>
<p>The machine was grounded in local legislative and state legislature elections that revolved around hatred of Castro. The campaign funders were developers and members of the local Latin Builders Association who had grown extraordinarily wealthy building ring suburbs from the core of Miami to the edges of the Everglades.</p>
<p>But not even Jeb Bush in 2002 could have imagined that it would take an economic crash of historic proportions – one triggered largely by GOP supporters and excessive risk taking – to eliminate the Florida Department of Community Affairs. It was not as though DCA were a bastion or stronghold of bureaucrats and regulators insensitive to political pressure. Far from it. The very presence of Jeb Bush on the horizon – who had lost to a Democrat Lawton Chiles in 1994 – had already undermined land use planning.</p>
<p>It is all in the history. Understanding what happened in Florida is not a matter of reading tea leaves or looking for signs in the stars. &#160;The Florida GOP majority could not believe its good luck to have a Republican governor so oblivious to the reasons growth management mattered in Florida. Not even Bush –publicly longing for less government but fearing the public fallout of draconian cuts– could have imagined that the Florida Department of Community Affairs would be shrunk to fit the size of a bathtub without even the power to reach the handles for hot and cold water.</p>
<p>The upward track of the post-World War II economy in the United States closely follows the fastest growing states. Florida is exemplary and distinguished from other states in the Sunbelt that attracted massive migration. Its main industries are agriculture, tourism, mining of phosphates, lime rock used in construction and roadways, real estate speculation and development.</p>
<p>These industries are connected because they depend entirely on flood control to accommodate dry winters alternating with copious, tropical rain fall. Land use management is the flip side of flood control. The segregation of laws governing water resources and development is well established by Florida law. The point: agriculture and development should be allowed to get whatever quantities of water they wanted whenever it was needed. Wherever, involved questions of ownership, of public lands, property rights, the boundaries of cites and counties and how growth should be prioritized and managed. Wherever, is what drove John DeGrove to the forefront in the 1970’s with ideas and then the legislative support to implement what started out as a rigorous, bipartisan consensus of the Florida legislature to balance land use to protect Florida’s natural resources, quality of life and economic potential.</p>
<p>From that perspective – the bipartisan consensus through which DCA evolved—it was a kinder, gentler time. Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers (Jeb Bush’ first consultant contract after leaving the office of governor in 2006 was for Lehman, the largest supplier of financial bonds to the state pension funds), consumers are caught in a vicious cycle of reduced expectations and unprecedented political polarization, sifting through the cinders of lost equity and dashed hopes.</p>
<p>In Florida, managing water supply, land use, and environmental protection is popularly described as a balancing act. Land use planning does not inspire page-turners the way Wall Street and financial fraud wrapping up leviathans and government, does. But the slow dissolve of DCA under the cheerleading of growth-at-any-cost appears in the light, side-by-side with the financial implosion.</p>
<p>The economic crisis was due to two factors: miscalculation of financial risk – through debt instruments whose nominal purpose was to diversity, not magnify risk – and speed of execution, using leverage, computer models and boiler room operations to process paper transactions like home or commercial mortgages into tranches of debt so complicated that they defied understanding much less common sense.</p>
<p>For DCA, evaluating risk – especially large scale development– and deliberate analysis of costs and consequences of determining where construction and development should occur, or be inhibited, were central features of state authority lined up in opposition to the tendency of the “free” market toward miscalculating risk and speed of execution. Growth management in Florida served, in principle, as a brake or friction on where those billions in housing backed mortgage securities would materialize.</p>
<p>How did this come to pass? It is a societal phenomenon, not economic or strictly political. The leaders of the American century, DeGrove’s generation, had been shaped by the hardships of the Great Depression and World War; people pulling together solved problems. After World War II, and through a resurgent economy, Florida began to quickly grow. It was the sense of risk from unregulated growth that gave rise, in Florida, to legislation constraining exuberant developers from killing the goose that laid the golden egg. That was the principle.</p>
<p>Awareness of history guided this earlier generation of Florida’s leaders who had come of age in 1940’s and 1950’s. Although draining and filling Florida wetlands had been a purpose of Florida government for a century, Florida was still a small state plagued by mosquitos and swamps. What could be had scarcely emerged as a glint in Walt Disney’s eye. Many Florida legislators of that era enjoyed Florida’s bountiful springs, rivers, bays and pristine wetlands from the Florida Panhandle to St. Augustine and Florida Bay. The same was true for civic activists, who were on the front lines in the 1980’s but have now passed. They were children of the Great Depression and understood the value of shared sacrifice: Dagny Johnson, George Kunst, and Grace Maniello in the Florida Keys, Johnny and Mariana Jones, Art Marshall, and Wayne Nelson – who also died recently – for Lake Okeechobee.</p>
<p>People in DeGrove’s generation of leadership didn’t think of the environment as separate from daily life. It was something you enjoyed like everyone else. It was there, before you were born. Something you recognized as fragile. Something that needed to be protected because, after all, the thinking went: you can’t just bulldoze wetlands, dig up Florida for rock mines or sugar fields, or drain and contaminate springs forever.</p>
<p>In Florida, early efforts to plan land use and water resources in the 1970’s gave rise to new regulatory authority in the 1980’s, such as laws requiring that taxpayer funded infrastructure for schools, roadways, water and sewer should be in place concurrent with growth and measures to protect fragile waterways, wetlands and estuaries.</p>
<p>Nationally, Florida’s Growth Management Act was hailed as the most forward-thinking effort by state government to responsibly manage and account for growth, quality of life, and the environment. In the 1980’s other states watched to learn how to incorporate the Florida model into their own policies.</p>
<p>Even as the environmental movement was gaining traction in the public imagination in the 1970’s, Wall Street had walled itself off from any intrusion on the free flow of capital. In Florida, the laws were written to incorporate shades of gray, leaving interpretation open with conditional “should’s”, and massive industries including lobbyists and engineering consultants filled to interpret with the studious intensity of medieval monks disputing the number of angels who could fit on the head of a pin. Nationally, in the wake of the nation’s most important federal environmental laws, private industry was assessing how to create new message frames to accompany the erosion of laws now established to protect the nation’s air and water. It didn’t take long for private industry to push back or for the calculations of risk to the natural environment to shift.</p>
<p>In the late 1980s, I learned as a Florida Keys activist how John DeGrove’s hope for Florida designated, as a matter of state law, Monroe County as an Area of Critical State Concern. The requirements of state land use planning had wealthy and influential developers in the Keys, fuming. The Keys were the test tube for land use policies and thresholds like pegging growth to objective criteria, and they didn’t like it at all. (In the Keys, DCA linked housing units to hurricane evacuation time standards. The entry and exit from the island archipelago is only served by one state road.) As a result, the Great Destroyers keyed in on DeGrove and DCA, under secretaries who followed like Tom Pelham.</p>
<p>During the Reagan presidency, the Sagebrush Rebellion – a manifestation of the Wise Use Movement and progenitor of the Tea Party—took root in the Keys, secretly funded by sugar billionaires determined to keep federal policies from inhibiting their use of the Everglades for storm water drainage and damaging their profits. The movement came to life in the Western states, where land owners and investors in mineral extraction, ranching, and timber on public lands rebelled against what they viewed as federal impingement on their rights.</p>
<p>In the Keys, whether it was state authority – through growth management – or federal – through efforts to protect the coral reef and Florida Bay — big agriculture and Big Sugar objected. If the Florida Keys were a test to work out models that could be applied elsewhere, they feared the worst. They chipped away at the agency in one court battle after another, creating an entire industry of engineers, lawyers, and land use “experts” who resorted to political pressure and state administrative court to undermine its mission. Despite assurances from agency bureaucrats that “one size does not fit all”, the Great Destroyers were determined to blow up the whole enterprise. They had many willing accomplices.</p>
<p>By the time I arrived in Key West in 1988, the DCA designation of the Florida Keys as a special Area of Critical State Concern was being tested by the Great Destroyers. It took me some time to understand what I was experiencing. Those long night-time meetings in Key West and Marathon – public hearings on the county growth management plan or initiatives to protect the Keys fragile marine resources — seemed like honest labor and exactly the sort of civic activism that would give back to the community that nourished us and an example for younger generations. The pushback was well coordinated. Even then it was clear: if one prevails with the public from a point of view that government cannot work, is it any wonder it doesn’t?</p>
<p>Young attorneys on the public interest side were galvanized by the challenge of proving otherwise. Richard Grosso, then of 1000 Friends of Florida, and Ross Burnaman, of the Wilderness Society did the heavy legal lifting in state administrative courts. Curtis Kruer, a former US Army Corps of Engineers permitting official in the Keys, knew the waypoints. (Although DCA is gone, Grosso has the distinction of winning the sole case in Florida jurisprudence – known as Pinecrest — that caused a structure being torn down for violating the state’s Growth Management Act. It happened just once, and it may never happen again.)</p>
<p>The Growth Management Act was incorporated in the Florida statutes, known as Chapter 163. In its broad outline, it required local jurisdictions throughout the state to prepare and adopt “a comprehensive plan” and to implement the plan through development regulations. The disciplines required to fulfill the Growth Management Act spawned a generation of land use lawyers, engineers and consultants to government, to developers and speculators. A small number worked for public interest organizations who opened avenues of judicial appeal for citizens and activists like those battling the speculators in the Florida Keys in the early 1980’s. (Tellingly, such is the power of the Growth Machine to intimidate that public interest organizations had tremendous difficulty securing professional engineers or scientists in Florida to testify as expert witnesses in court on their behalf.)</p>
<p>This was also roughly the same period when Wall Street financier Lewis Ranieri decoded mortgage backed securities and created an market for new forms of debt. Ranieri was a top bond salesman for Salomon Brothers, then vice chairman. It is conjecture to believe there was ever a link – during the 1980’s – between the finance methods working out billion dollar markets for derivatives based on mortgages and opposition to land use regulations that might inhibit what became, twenty years later, incessant demand for more platted subdivisions to peg debt pinned to demographics, but in 1988 Ranieri acquired his own bank in Florida – Bank United – to test vertical integration of the mortgage backed supply chain: from cement makers who poured foundations and built roads, to sheet rock, plywood and plumbing suppliers to electric utilities, to real estate brokers, mortgage and title companies, from land aggregators, scrapers that took the Everglades down to cap rock, all the way to mortgage backed derivatives.</p>
<p>These innovations in debt became the soft foundation for cheap, affordable Florida and countless rosy projections. Under Florida’s Democratic leadership in the 1990’s, things went downhill fast. The late Governor Lawton Chiles took his cue from President Clinton and Dick Morris’ theory of political triangulation. Also, he needed little encouragement. Jeb Bush and the Latin Builders were nipping at his heels in 1994; an election he surprisingly won. Still, he set out to placate the Growth Machine. Under Chiles, in the early 1990’s growth management had a small window of opportunity to regulate the loss of Everglades wetlands to sprawl in Broward County. Instead of taking a hard stand to reinforce core, state Democrats rolled growth management and the rolling never stopped gaining momentum until DCA’s head rolled off the platform.</p>
<p>Civic activists howled in complaint, to no avail. The effort to be ‘Republican Lite’ was a disaster and set the stage starting for the Jeb Bush victory in 1998, ‘market-based environmentalism’, the crowding of conservative think tanks into Florida, the pressure of states rights and eventually, the collapse of federal resolve to protect the environment. One super mall near Wellington in Palm Beach County opened before footprints for giant subdivisions had even been poured. The mall was open, waiting for customers. It included a Thomas Kinkade gallery, its walls hung with oil paintings, discretely lit; the entire gallery muffled with hushed nostalgia for a past that never existed and certainly would never exist with the scenes of snowy pine tops looming over blessed, cozy stone houses or framed by weeping willows by the burbling brook. This mall’s over-weening confidence in smoke rings of future profit presently valued as homey hearths without a person in sight might have been taken for a sign: blind faith.</p>
<p>What is not conjecture – because it is written in the landscape – is that the state regulatory response for growth management was cordoned from Wall Street. No one in the political class – not in Florida or anywhere else – was interested to probe the risks segregating mortgage backed securities from land use, or, how land use could be reinforced from extra weight through financial regulations. One can minimize risk by pointing investors in other directions, into safer investments, the same way government regulations turn consumers away from poison or should.</p>
<p>9/11 provided the extraordinary opportunity for GOP funders to tighten down the laser focus on the frictionless growth of the housing sector. Their purpose was to foster the dream of home ownership. They named the initiative, the Ownership Society, in 2002. The public didn’t ask where those mortgages went; the money was in the pools of mortgages, blessed by ratings agencies, and implicitly backed by taxpayers through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The whole program depended on individual mortgages gathered into pools and derivatives shaped from computer algorithms stacked neatly as a hundred pennies in a paper sleeve.</p>
<p>The “cookie-cutter” forms of construction and development – from strip malls, to big box centers and platted subdivisions—were sold as “what the market wants”. The economic crisis did not start with financial derivatives; it started where John DeGrove’s mission began. It started in Florida where developers of platted subdivisions off-loaded risks to banks who off-loaded risk to larger financial institutions who off-loaded risk to remote investors. It all depended on speed of execution, corralling and inhibiting government regulators and enforcement, and in this light, financial institutions held as paragons of virtue – like Countrywide Financial and BankUnited—were just dressed-up versions of a game of three-card monte in Times Square.</p>
<p>As markets for housing-based financial derivatives developed into a massive wealth transfer operation, the sophistication of the Growth Machine in Florida also increased; matching the small cogs at the local permitting levels to larger and larger gears, operated finally by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs et al. and the pressure to knock down barriers at the regulatory base also grew by leaps and bounds. (One of the most enduring images, during the housing boom years, was a trendy gossip telling me that in the early 2000’s former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan regularly spent Miami Beach weekends with his wife, in the words of my source “trying to find the coolest parties to invite themselves, to.”)</p>
<p>Gliding by those threats and ensuring government-designed-to-fail was powered by campaign contributions from a supply chain of politically influential individuals who gained the maximum advantage and profit from converting wetlands and cheap farmland close to population centers into low density, scattered suburban sprawl. It was a vast wealth generator wringing advantage from massive leverage and financial innovations that skirted, like invisible toxic pollution, under regulatory radars that never exchanged data with land use regulators. The whole enterprise depended on externalizing costs and hobbling the enforcement role of regulatory agencies by capturing its principals. Once the whole fell apart, there was nothing left to do but eat its own.</p>
<p>Despite the massive contraction of banking and finance related to real estate development and home mortgages, despite the overwhelming accumulation of science that the regulations in place are inadequate to protect either human health, drinking water, or natural resources, political advantage remains rooted in the business of converting wetlands and farmland to suburban sprawl and condominiums along the fragile coast, rock mining and sugar farming in Florida’s Everglades.</p>
<p>The dichotomy—even schizophrenia—of government policies encouraging growth while at the same time seeking to constrain its most impulsive and perverse forms – like platted subdivisions in wetlands – is like a line separating the the late period economy of Florida from earlier assumptions and faith that the underlying financial arrangements of suburban sprawl could be independently managed for risk without ever touching risk-based assessments of environmental carrying capacity.</p>
<p>What materialized is different from what I imagined would occur, after a real estate crash. In the 1990’s – never mind the early aught’s– whoever could peer intensely into the march of Insta-Gro suburbs and infrastructure at the edge of the Everglades, the Florida Turnpike or the Florida Keys knew something had to give.</p>
<p>Despite the trillions of taxpayer dollars spent to underwrite the risk takers who very nearly blew up the world economy, private industry is still determined to maintain exactly the gears and leverage of the Growth Machine calibrated to deliver the maximum volume of mortgage instruments to Wall Street. Those political interests in control of ultra-conservative legislatures and Congress are dead-set on eliminating rules and regulations protecting the environment as though breaking the back of state regulatory authority were enough rubbing to conjure fire from wood.</p>
<p>These thirty years have not been kind to the mission for which DeGrove dedicated his career.</p>
<p>Citizens and environmental groups hoping to challenge local decisions &#160;— fostering suburban sprawl in environmentally sensitive wetlands, for example — were more frequently thwarted by DCA than not. To contest changes to local growth plans, they needed to raise funds for attorneys, experts, scientists and often endure years of court appearances and appeals. DCA turned into exactly the revolving door between the regulators and regulated that causes low morale among staff and public disgust with government.</p>
<p>On the other hand, for citizens trying to gain control over communities and development schemes, through which development plans appeared bought and sold long before the first gavel struck in local commission chambers, DCA was the single point for citizens to attach to the otherwise high, smooth walls of state government, protecting legislators beholden to land developers from the public.</p>
<p>While defenders of wildlife, lakes, streams, waters and bays—of small town retail against big box retailers—cobbled together funding for administrative court challenges allowed through the Growth Management Act, speculators and developers used marketing budgets to hire their own sets of environmental experts to compete, claiming with feigned dignity or shrill outrage that regulators were on the same side as the cabal of their opposition: no-growth’ers, naysayers, tree huggers and worse. No one is more leery of an environmentalist than a career regulator. But for the Growth Machine, it is ‘off with all their heads’.</p>
<p>This prevailing mindlessness also explains why the broad consensus that John DeGrove represented, vanished. From the opening bell in 1985, the agency that John DeGrove led was targeted by large land owners, farmers, speculators and the conservative foundations they funded as an example of over-reaching state authority.</p>
<p>After the market top of 2005, as the economic catastrophe gathered steam, the agency John DeGrove helped bring to its imperfect life was used as a “bogeyman” by Associated Industries, developers and powerful agricultural interests. The speculators and developers blamed the agency DeGrove founded for slowing growth, killing jobs, as though eliminating DCA would miraculously restore the demand for subdivisions and the massive oversupply of housing and commercial real estate that scarred wetlands, made mockery of environmental rules and regulations, and wrapped up hundreds of thousands of home owners in the weight of underwater mortgages. Over-arching principles and regulations that made common sense were divided into ever smaller fractions until the whole was lost in ways that no one understood.</p>
<p>Florida, under the influence of the Great Destroyers, is like a skier frozen in place ten feet in front of a snow making machine nozzle thinking he is lost in a blizzard.</p>
<p>When the Florida Department of Community Affairs was dissolved by Governor Rick Scott in 2011, Floridians were otherwise absorbed, too caught up in the economic crisis unleashed, in large part, by the rampant overdevelopment that the Florida Department of Community Affairs might have thwarted but was thwarted itself by influence exerted on behalf of the Growth Machine and its powerful campaign contributors.</p>
<p>Today, Florida’s voters are misled by arguments that growth management is a “jobs killer”. What would they know?</p>
<p>All the structures to keep the public good in view were rickety and jerry-rigged and held together by the slimmest of legal thresholds requiring citizen activists to test again and again in lengthy, exhausting and costly administrative court challenges. Now they have been torn down. So goes the Miami-Dade Urban Development Boundary and the careful testing by developers of the local county commission, searching for new limits now that DCA is gone, the same way tiger sharks use the murk to probe its prey’s vulnerability. The extension of a major expressway, SR 826, into farmland owned by politically influential local power brokers, the exchange of lands and speculation in the Bird Drive Basin and South Miami Dade: all waiting for the miracle to come.</p>
<p>The erosion of federal and state authority to protect quality of life and environment, reflected in the destruction of DCA, now pushes permitting and zoning decisions straight onto the backs of local officials who are themselves coping with massive budget deficits and use the crisis to cut land use planners, as among the first examples of excess government waste.</p>
<p>In a recent New York Times editorial (“Sam Spade at Starbucks”, April 12, 2012) David Brooks took young social entrepreneurs to task for not applying themselves to the “noir” business of political change. Thirty years experience on the noir front lines of environmental and growth management battles lead to a different conclusion.</p>
<p>They may not understand the particulars, but see that the current quagmire makes it very unlikely that there is a wagon to hitch one’s train to. It is no wonder that young, entrepreneurial Americans are seeking change through individual participation in small-scale change. With public confidence in government and institutions so low, and the chances of success so transparently poor, what else is there for a young person to do who wants to make change happen?</p>
<p>In Florida, the imperative to profit from cement, sheetrock, and platted subdivisions is ferocious. Even in the absence of demand, the engine fires like an automaton. It is made to work that way.</p>
<p>Understanding the economic crisis that shed 8.5 million jobs and caused the loss of $11 trillion in consumer net worth is like assembling a Rubik’s cube. It is not one view or one facet of financial fraud, because there was no industrial policy at any level of government attempting to integrate the contributors; from environmental protection to housing and transportation, except in Florida through the Department of Community Affairs. What DeGrove tried to codify, the principles of concurrency, did exactly that. Surely, when the economy based on housing and construction imploded, attention would turn DCA’s way. And it did, but not in the way I expected.</p>
<p>The point of the Growth Machine was to create transactions—millions of them—that were frictionless and risk free to the originators. The amalgamation needed to cast no shadows and leave as few traces as possible. The biggest gears connected to propulsion through smaller and smaller gears, marking each level of economic interest – from cement supplier to sheetrock to mortgage broker—and political layer – from lowly county commissioner in Miami-Dade, for example, to cabinet secretaries in transportation and housing, to Congress and the White House. &#160;The Florida Department of Community Affairs, a state agency dedicated to overarching principles of sound growth, was rarely a brake. The political process exerted too much leverage, but when the economy turned sour, someone had to be blamed. DCA held out the potential of friction in zoning processes where the goal of developers and speculators was to create transactions as frictionless as possible. &#160;DCA was “the bogeyman”.</p>
<p>It is no coincidence how the arc of DCA parallels political polarization, the disappearance of bipartisan consensus on managing growth to balance the economy and environment, and a modern depression whose depth is papered over with ‘good news’ stories to prop up the spending habits of consumers.</p>
<p>The landscape civic activists in Florida have been trying to protect is imperceptibly sloped. In the imagination of environmentalists, the landscape provides a clear and imperceptibly slow flow of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, nearly as wide as the peninsula of Florida itself. In the imagination of land use planners, the low density, scattered sprawl that is the bread and butter of local politics is kept away from the main course; threatened natural resources and drinking water supplies. In both the imagination of environmentalists and land use planners, zoning changes in farmland are side courses. The big downtown law firms, with prestigious names like Greenberg Traurig in Miami, are waiters. The menu to convert wetlands and raw farmland into sprawl fits the parameters of the Department of Community Affairs and a rational process to build a sustainable economic platform that would, at the same time, protect the environment. That is in the imagination.</p>
<p>In reality, 20 year old MBA’s or PhD’s in mathematics invent impossibly complex algorithms for deep, dark pools of financial derivatives tied to mortgages, luring investors lulled to sleep by the assurance of bond rating agencies tied to the hip to Wall Street executives paid billions but still not enough: what they need are more subdivisions, more mortgages, more mortgagees. What they need is more wetlands to be converted to lime rock pits, lakes for subdivisions and condos on the coast. It all has to be without friction or delay. Costs of protecting the environment – the Everglades – have to be externalities that are never priced into the model. The free market has to be all light and no shadow. If there are courts inclined to a broader interpretation of laws from a kinder, gentler time; the judges have to be replaced. And they were. And they are.</p>
<p>The financial system is designed to compartmentalize debt from the built landscape. While the masters of debt seclude themselves in gated estates and communities that imitate the amenities and prerequisites of small town America, their business models and political influence deprive Americans of the same advantages. (Interestingly, in one of these small town places in Putnam County, New York, Fox News president Roger Ailes and his wife are testing these issues of zoning control through a small newspaper they own.)</p>
<p>Everglades activists can explain how risk analyses that projected regulatory thresholds to protect ecosystems were all wrong in the past half century. But they have no where to go once they do the explaining, compared to financial engineers who wrote derivatives that turned to crap and now are in business making silk purses from sows’ ears. It doesn’t change the fact that they were wrong the first time, and very well could be wrong, the second and third.</p>
<p>The difficulty in understanding the scope and scale of the economic malaise is that the entire infrastructure of development is implicated. In a time of diminished capacity of the mainstream media to investigate and to report, what happened inside agencies fated to influence Florida’s quality of life and environment was relegated to hotel conference rooms, blue ribbon panels, planning events, the rubbing of shoulders and interests, the revolving door between regulated and regulators. With so many masters, it is no wonder so few noticed when DCA disappeared.</p>
<p>This analysis of what John DeGrove helped establish and has now passed sends a message that few in positions of responsibility and political authority want to hear much less acknowledge: that careful integration of regulation of land use and financial derivatives at the most important nexus of the housing equation, where and how land is allocated and zoned for development and how to bind financing to those places in particular, could have saved the economy. The tools are there. The will is not.</p>
<p>Instead, having plunged the economy into the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the Growth Machine that succeeded in “regulatory capture” has now defined risk as any regulations at all; the worst being those that inhibit growth and jobs. The more science-based arguments to the contrary, the more suspect. What the Growth Machine requires of consumers is blind faith in the miracle to come.</p>
<p>Congress has never considered how regulation of mortgage backed securities could be used to strengthen growth management and reinvigorate the US economy. In hindsight, it is shocking that decision makers embraced financial derivatives based on mortgages without making any connection to impoverished built landscape created through the so-called diversification of financial risk. It was the business of the Growth Machine at the state and local levels to tame growth management to its purposes. And tame, they did.</p>
<p>Floridians are as shell-shocked by the collapse of housing values as roseate spoonbills seeking refuge in Tampa far from their natural habitat in the dying Everglades. Today’s generation of Florida’s leaders did not grow up with experience of Florida’s Everglades. Once the baselines are lost, any outcome is like multiplying a number by zero. Still, the questions demand answers.</p>
<p>Had Governor Rick Scott ever heard of John DeGrove before he invested more than $75 million of his own money, paving the road to the Governor’s Mansion? Does he even know where growth management is, now? DeGrove could tell you if he were still alive: it’s gone.</p>
<p>Recently, Scott announced an initiative to solicit community input on what Florida’s future should look like. Prior iterations by Florida governors of blue ribbon panels were used chiefly to undermine DCA. This time it is different. The state is a tabula rasa. But to what purpose?</p>
<p>There is a strong argument to be made that Florida – and the nation – is in an epochal transition. On the one hand, large investments continue to be made – like the announcement of real estate giant Swire Properties to invest $1 billion into a new city center project in downtown Miami. On the other hand, the force of economic uncertainty compounded by climate change promises mean politics of scarcity will seep into depreciation schedules until insurance companies stop writing policies. Florida, with its low lying coastlines, has the most to lose in the nation. In a scenario where powerful financial interests are increasingly hedging their bets – with taxpayer dollars as the case may be – it is no wonder that maximum advantage is served by limiting the role of government. On a sinking ship, it is every man for himself, damn the women and children.</p>
<p>John DeGrove and a small cadre of land use policy experts sought a better and more civil way. They maintained professional excellence and high standards despite political malfeasance and fraud above their pay grades. It took wise men a seeming eternity to create the Florida Department of Community Affairs. It took a man-made calamity to destroy what they created.</p>
<p>ALAN FARAGO, conservation chair of&#160; <a href="http://www.everglades.org/" type="external">Friends of the Everglades</a>, lives in south Florida. He can be reached at:&#160; <a href="mailto:afarago@bellsouth.net" type="external">afarago@bellsouth.net</a></p> | true | 4 | john degrove father land use planning florida principal architect state land use agency florida department community affairs agency established 1985 oversee compliance growth management act floridians unlikely know either department community affairs disappearance means fewer still understand challenges design implement regulatory framework rationale growth development one nations fastest growing states dca degroves mission target antigovernment proproperty rights zealots first matters simple presupposing failure government regulatory authority virtually guarantees happen notion government anything private industry better cheaper faster including protecting public safety health welfare spread toxic roots far wide florida provides share examples governmentdesignedtofail didnt happen overnight dca caught thirty year war governmental regulation land use environment initially agencys work enjoyed broad bipartisan support time agency frogmarched platform guillotined florida legislature indifferent governor already mostly surrendered regulatory capture special interests final blow delivered one quite surprised insiders watch decades history simply wash away degrove passed away recently age 87 lived long enough see lifes work first praised national paradigm growth management eroded wellfinanced determined special interests pilloried one session republicanled legislature another finally consigned closet state capitol dust brooms dca alone despite irrefutable evidence mounting pollution florida social costs state government programs protecting environment withering attack palm beach post editorialized legislators tried rip stuffing dca 2009 2010 botched bill court overturned gov scotts cover story agency kills jobs asking developers follow law meaning public services place new residents governor legislature would rather break government fix last straw dca gov scott goes growthmanagement agency false premise palm beach post feb 8 2011 st pete times called scott new governor ignorant states history indifferent future tersely concluded state given virtually oversight development authority require developers help pay roads schools parks local governments pretty much please florida turned back clock three decades obituary florida growth management st pete times june 5 2011 2011 collapse housing markets knocked state legislature offkilter housing boom lay spent dirt keeping boom alive mothers milk florida politics builders various components growth machine fund political campaigns markets dried vanished overdevelopment plus foreclosures meant increasing supply like pushing string demand lobbyists accustomed tinkering environmental regulations regulations associated growth management act dcas enabling legislation needed organizing principle accustomed whipping legislators frenzy bad decision making last minute gloating strategies tie civic activists knots sending rabbit holes one way legislative alleysoften shepherded bills dead night last day legislative session one read crafted justify existence florida department community affairs important mission one floridas smallest executive agencies agencys budget 2011 780 million 2012 governor scott proposed cuts 100 million 2013 proposed budget 70 million spring 2011 agency finished florida enduring fascination politically influential culturally backward great backdrop television one remember plot florida exalts development possesses unique natural resources chief attractions drove development 1950s states decay aquifers springs estuaries rivers bays everglades alternately treasured spurned vaunted trashed lit gods towering thunderheads buried god forsaken culture strip malls anonymous platted subdivisions far places work built landscape florida like much suburban sprawl around nation seemingly designed strip vitality communities john degroves life mission deploy growth management policies way encourage better outcomes economic disaster fomented excessive risk taking private sector banking mortgage origination construction development based speculationshould lead decisionmakers exactly toward degroves values rational allocation resources reinforce community planning environmental economic security bolder approach ones conceived 1980s would attached regulation enforcement land use investment vehicles used banking insurance industries financial derivatives based mortgages profess agnostic value free market boom growth machine offered critics supplying market wants market hardly wanted worst bust since great depression growth machine want attention turned policies candidates supported whose blind fealty led disastrous results growth machine needed scapegoats deflect attention diverse roles causing crisis needed bogeymen dca conveniently fit bill term actually applied agency expresident associated industries florida dca bogeyman second term inaugural speech january 2003 former governor jeb bush rhapsodized future state capitol buildings would emptied workers recognition governments limitations greater tribute maturity society make buildings around us empty workers silent monuments time government played larger role deserved could adequately fill moment exuberance supreme confidence 911 threatened economy housing industry thanks unprecedented policies federal reserve responded boom full flight workers bush mind state regulators like ones dca oversaw mandated development plans requirements growth management act compelled cities counties formalize longterm development plans constant irritation developers bankers four years earlier 1998 jeb bush propelled governors mansion welloiled political machine miamidade county floridas largest county influential politically jebs home base machine grounded local legislative state legislature elections revolved around hatred castro campaign funders developers members local latin builders association grown extraordinarily wealthy building ring suburbs core miami edges everglades even jeb bush 2002 could imagined would take economic crash historic proportions one triggered largely gop supporters excessive risk taking eliminate florida department community affairs though dca bastion stronghold bureaucrats regulators insensitive political pressure far presence jeb bush horizon lost democrat lawton chiles 1994 already undermined land use planning history understanding happened florida matter reading tea leaves looking signs stars 160the florida gop majority could believe good luck republican governor oblivious reasons growth management mattered florida even bush publicly longing less government fearing public fallout draconian cuts could imagined florida department community affairs would shrunk fit size bathtub without even power reach handles hot cold water upward track postworld war ii economy united states closely follows fastest growing states florida exemplary distinguished states sunbelt attracted massive migration main industries agriculture tourism mining phosphates lime rock used construction roadways real estate speculation development industries connected depend entirely flood control accommodate dry winters alternating copious tropical rain fall land use management flip side flood control segregation laws governing water resources development well established florida law point agriculture development allowed get whatever quantities water wanted whenever needed wherever involved questions ownership public lands property rights boundaries cites counties growth prioritized managed wherever drove john degrove forefront 1970s ideas legislative support implement started rigorous bipartisan consensus florida legislature balance land use protect floridas natural resources quality life economic potential perspective bipartisan consensus dca evolvedit kinder gentler time five years collapse lehman brothers jeb bush first consultant contract leaving office governor 2006 lehman largest supplier financial bonds state pension funds consumers caught vicious cycle reduced expectations unprecedented political polarization sifting cinders lost equity dashed hopes florida managing water supply land use environmental protection popularly described balancing act land use planning inspire pageturners way wall street financial fraud wrapping leviathans government slow dissolve dca cheerleading growthatanycost appears light sidebyside financial implosion economic crisis due two factors miscalculation financial risk debt instruments whose nominal purpose diversity magnify risk speed execution using leverage computer models boiler room operations process paper transactions like home commercial mortgages tranches debt complicated defied understanding much less common sense dca evaluating risk especially large scale development deliberate analysis costs consequences determining construction development occur inhibited central features state authority lined opposition tendency free market toward miscalculating risk speed execution growth management florida served principle brake friction billions housing backed mortgage securities would materialize come pass societal phenomenon economic strictly political leaders american century degroves generation shaped hardships great depression world war people pulling together solved problems world war ii resurgent economy florida began quickly grow sense risk unregulated growth gave rise florida legislation constraining exuberant developers killing goose laid golden egg principle awareness history guided earlier generation floridas leaders come age 1940s 1950s although draining filling florida wetlands purpose florida government century florida still small state plagued mosquitos swamps could scarcely emerged glint walt disneys eye many florida legislators era enjoyed floridas bountiful springs rivers bays pristine wetlands florida panhandle st augustine florida bay true civic activists front lines 1980s passed children great depression understood value shared sacrifice dagny johnson george kunst grace maniello florida keys johnny mariana jones art marshall wayne nelson also died recently lake okeechobee people degroves generation leadership didnt think environment separate daily life something enjoyed like everyone else born something recognized fragile something needed protected thinking went cant bulldoze wetlands dig florida rock mines sugar fields drain contaminate springs forever florida early efforts plan land use water resources 1970s gave rise new regulatory authority 1980s laws requiring taxpayer funded infrastructure schools roadways water sewer place concurrent growth measures protect fragile waterways wetlands estuaries nationally floridas growth management act hailed forwardthinking effort state government responsibly manage account growth quality life environment 1980s states watched learn incorporate florida model policies even environmental movement gaining traction public imagination 1970s wall street walled intrusion free flow capital florida laws written incorporate shades gray leaving interpretation open conditional shoulds massive industries including lobbyists engineering consultants filled interpret studious intensity medieval monks disputing number angels could fit head pin nationally wake nations important federal environmental laws private industry assessing create new message frames accompany erosion laws established protect nations air water didnt take long private industry push back calculations risk natural environment shift late 1980s learned florida keys activist john degroves hope florida designated matter state law monroe county area critical state concern requirements state land use planning wealthy influential developers keys fuming keys test tube land use policies thresholds like pegging growth objective criteria didnt like keys dca linked housing units hurricane evacuation time standards entry exit island archipelago served one state road result great destroyers keyed degrove dca secretaries followed like tom pelham reagan presidency sagebrush rebellion manifestation wise use movement progenitor tea partytook root keys secretly funded sugar billionaires determined keep federal policies inhibiting use everglades storm water drainage damaging profits movement came life western states land owners investors mineral extraction ranching timber public lands rebelled viewed federal impingement rights keys whether state authority growth management federal efforts protect coral reef florida bay big agriculture big sugar objected florida keys test work models could applied elsewhere feared worst chipped away agency one court battle another creating entire industry engineers lawyers land use experts resorted political pressure state administrative court undermine mission despite assurances agency bureaucrats one size fit great destroyers determined blow whole enterprise many willing accomplices time arrived key west 1988 dca designation florida keys special area critical state concern tested great destroyers took time understand experiencing long nighttime meetings key west marathon public hearings county growth management plan initiatives protect keys fragile marine resources seemed like honest labor exactly sort civic activism would give back community nourished us example younger generations pushback well coordinated even clear one prevails public point view government work wonder doesnt young attorneys public interest side galvanized challenge proving otherwise richard grosso 1000 friends florida ross burnaman wilderness society heavy legal lifting state administrative courts curtis kruer former us army corps engineers permitting official keys knew waypoints although dca gone grosso distinction winning sole case florida jurisprudence known pinecrest caused structure torn violating states growth management act happened may never happen growth management act incorporated florida statutes known chapter 163 broad outline required local jurisdictions throughout state prepare adopt comprehensive plan implement plan development regulations disciplines required fulfill growth management act spawned generation land use lawyers engineers consultants government developers speculators small number worked public interest organizations opened avenues judicial appeal citizens activists like battling speculators florida keys early 1980s tellingly power growth machine intimidate public interest organizations tremendous difficulty securing professional engineers scientists florida testify expert witnesses court behalf also roughly period wall street financier lewis ranieri decoded mortgage backed securities created market new forms debt ranieri top bond salesman salomon brothers vice chairman conjecture believe ever link 1980s finance methods working billion dollar markets derivatives based mortgages opposition land use regulations might inhibit became twenty years later incessant demand platted subdivisions peg debt pinned demographics 1988 ranieri acquired bank florida bank united test vertical integration mortgage backed supply chain cement makers poured foundations built roads sheet rock plywood plumbing suppliers electric utilities real estate brokers mortgage title companies land aggregators scrapers took everglades cap rock way mortgage backed derivatives innovations debt became soft foundation cheap affordable florida countless rosy projections floridas democratic leadership 1990s things went downhill fast late governor lawton chiles took cue president clinton dick morris theory political triangulation also needed little encouragement jeb bush latin builders nipping heels 1994 election surprisingly still set placate growth machine chiles early 1990s growth management small window opportunity regulate loss everglades wetlands sprawl broward county instead taking hard stand reinforce core state democrats rolled growth management rolling never stopped gaining momentum dcas head rolled platform civic activists howled complaint avail effort republican lite disaster set stage starting jeb bush victory 1998 marketbased environmentalism crowding conservative think tanks florida pressure states rights eventually collapse federal resolve protect environment one super mall near wellington palm beach county opened footprints giant subdivisions even poured mall open waiting customers included thomas kinkade gallery walls hung oil paintings discretely lit entire gallery muffled hushed nostalgia past never existed certainly would never exist scenes snowy pine tops looming blessed cozy stone houses framed weeping willows burbling brook malls overweening confidence smoke rings future profit presently valued homey hearths without person sight might taken sign blind faith conjecture written landscape state regulatory response growth management cordoned wall street one political class florida anywhere else interested probe risks segregating mortgage backed securities land use land use could reinforced extra weight financial regulations one minimize risk pointing investors directions safer investments way government regulations turn consumers away poison 911 provided extraordinary opportunity gop funders tighten laser focus frictionless growth housing sector purpose foster dream home ownership named initiative ownership society 2002 public didnt ask mortgages went money pools mortgages blessed ratings agencies implicitly backed taxpayers fannie mae freddie mac whole program depended individual mortgages gathered pools derivatives shaped computer algorithms stacked neatly hundred pennies paper sleeve cookiecutter forms construction development strip malls big box centers platted subdivisionswere sold market wants economic crisis start financial derivatives started john degroves mission began started florida developers platted subdivisions offloaded risks banks offloaded risk larger financial institutions offloaded risk remote investors depended speed execution corralling inhibiting government regulators enforcement light financial institutions held paragons virtue like countrywide financial bankunitedwere dressedup versions game threecard monte times square markets housingbased financial derivatives developed massive wealth transfer operation sophistication growth machine florida also increased matching small cogs local permitting levels larger larger gears operated finally fannie mae freddie mac goldman sachs et al pressure knock barriers regulatory base also grew leaps bounds one enduring images housing boom years trendy gossip telling early 2000s former federal reserve chair alan greenspan regularly spent miami beach weekends wife words source trying find coolest parties invite gliding threats ensuring governmentdesignedtofail powered campaign contributions supply chain politically influential individuals gained maximum advantage profit converting wetlands cheap farmland close population centers low density scattered suburban sprawl vast wealth generator wringing advantage massive leverage financial innovations skirted like invisible toxic pollution regulatory radars never exchanged data land use regulators whole enterprise depended externalizing costs hobbling enforcement role regulatory agencies capturing principals whole fell apart nothing left eat despite massive contraction banking finance related real estate development home mortgages despite overwhelming accumulation science regulations place inadequate protect either human health drinking water natural resources political advantage remains rooted business converting wetlands farmland suburban sprawl condominiums along fragile coast rock mining sugar farming floridas everglades dichotomyeven schizophreniaof government policies encouraging growth time seeking constrain impulsive perverse forms like platted subdivisions wetlands like line separating late period economy florida earlier assumptions faith underlying financial arrangements suburban sprawl could independently managed risk without ever touching riskbased assessments environmental carrying capacity materialized different imagined would occur real estate crash 1990s never mind early aughts whoever could peer intensely march instagro suburbs infrastructure edge everglades florida turnpike florida keys knew something give despite trillions taxpayer dollars spent underwrite risk takers nearly blew world economy private industry still determined maintain exactly gears leverage growth machine calibrated deliver maximum volume mortgage instruments wall street political interests control ultraconservative legislatures congress deadset eliminating rules regulations protecting environment though breaking back state regulatory authority enough rubbing conjure fire wood thirty years kind mission degrove dedicated career citizens environmental groups hoping challenge local decisions 160 fostering suburban sprawl environmentally sensitive wetlands example frequently thwarted dca contest changes local growth plans needed raise funds attorneys experts scientists often endure years court appearances appeals dca turned exactly revolving door regulators regulated causes low morale among staff public disgust government hand citizens trying gain control communities development schemes development plans appeared bought sold long first gavel struck local commission chambers dca single point citizens attach otherwise high smooth walls state government protecting legislators beholden land developers public defenders wildlife lakes streams waters baysof small town retail big box retailerscobbled together funding administrative court challenges allowed growth management act speculators developers used marketing budgets hire sets environmental experts compete claiming feigned dignity shrill outrage regulators side cabal opposition nogrowthers naysayers tree huggers worse one leery environmentalist career regulator growth machine heads prevailing mindlessness also explains broad consensus john degrove represented vanished opening bell 1985 agency john degrove led targeted large land owners farmers speculators conservative foundations funded example overreaching state authority market top 2005 economic catastrophe gathered steam agency john degrove helped bring imperfect life used bogeyman associated industries developers powerful agricultural interests speculators developers blamed agency degrove founded slowing growth killing jobs though eliminating dca would miraculously restore demand subdivisions massive oversupply housing commercial real estate scarred wetlands made mockery environmental rules regulations wrapped hundreds thousands home owners weight underwater mortgages overarching principles regulations made common sense divided ever smaller fractions whole lost ways one understood florida influence great destroyers like skier frozen place ten feet front snow making machine nozzle thinking lost blizzard florida department community affairs dissolved governor rick scott 2011 floridians otherwise absorbed caught economic crisis unleashed large part rampant overdevelopment florida department community affairs might thwarted thwarted influence exerted behalf growth machine powerful campaign contributors today floridas voters misled arguments growth management jobs killer would know structures keep public good view rickety jerryrigged held together slimmest legal thresholds requiring citizen activists test lengthy exhausting costly administrative court challenges torn goes miamidade urban development boundary careful testing developers local county commission searching new limits dca gone way tiger sharks use murk probe preys vulnerability extension major expressway sr 826 farmland owned politically influential local power brokers exchange lands speculation bird drive basin south miami dade waiting miracle come erosion federal state authority protect quality life environment reflected destruction dca pushes permitting zoning decisions straight onto backs local officials coping massive budget deficits use crisis cut land use planners among first examples excess government waste recent new york times editorial sam spade starbucks april 12 2012 david brooks took young social entrepreneurs task applying noir business political change thirty years experience noir front lines environmental growth management battles lead different conclusion may understand particulars see current quagmire makes unlikely wagon hitch ones train wonder young entrepreneurial americans seeking change individual participation smallscale change public confidence government institutions low chances success transparently poor else young person wants make change happen florida imperative profit cement sheetrock platted subdivisions ferocious even absence demand engine fires like automaton made work way understanding economic crisis shed 85 million jobs caused loss 11 trillion consumer net worth like assembling rubiks cube one view one facet financial fraud industrial policy level government attempting integrate contributors environmental protection housing transportation except florida department community affairs degrove tried codify principles concurrency exactly surely economy based housing construction imploded attention would turn dcas way way expected point growth machine create transactionsmillions themthat frictionless risk free originators amalgamation needed cast shadows leave traces possible biggest gears connected propulsion smaller smaller gears marking level economic interest cement supplier sheetrock mortgage brokerand political layer lowly county commissioner miamidade example cabinet secretaries transportation housing congress white house 160the florida department community affairs state agency dedicated overarching principles sound growth rarely brake political process exerted much leverage economy turned sour someone blamed dca held potential friction zoning processes goal developers speculators create transactions frictionless possible 160dca bogeyman coincidence arc dca parallels political polarization disappearance bipartisan consensus managing growth balance economy environment modern depression whose depth papered good news stories prop spending habits consumers landscape civic activists florida trying protect imperceptibly sloped imagination environmentalists landscape provides clear imperceptibly slow flow fresh water lake okeechobee florida bay nearly wide peninsula florida imagination land use planners low density scattered sprawl bread butter local politics kept away main course threatened natural resources drinking water supplies imagination environmentalists land use planners zoning changes farmland side courses big downtown law firms prestigious names like greenberg traurig miami waiters menu convert wetlands raw farmland sprawl fits parameters department community affairs rational process build sustainable economic platform would time protect environment imagination reality 20 year old mbas phds mathematics invent impossibly complex algorithms deep dark pools financial derivatives tied mortgages luring investors lulled sleep assurance bond rating agencies tied hip wall street executives paid billions still enough need subdivisions mortgages mortgagees need wetlands converted lime rock pits lakes subdivisions condos coast without friction delay costs protecting environment everglades externalities never priced model free market light shadow courts inclined broader interpretation laws kinder gentler time judges replaced financial system designed compartmentalize debt built landscape masters debt seclude gated estates communities imitate amenities prerequisites small town america business models political influence deprive americans advantages interestingly one small town places putnam county new york fox news president roger ailes wife testing issues zoning control small newspaper everglades activists explain risk analyses projected regulatory thresholds protect ecosystems wrong past half century go explaining compared financial engineers wrote derivatives turned crap business making silk purses sows ears doesnt change fact wrong first time well could wrong second third difficulty understanding scope scale economic malaise entire infrastructure development implicated time diminished capacity mainstream media investigate report happened inside agencies fated influence floridas quality life environment relegated hotel conference rooms blue ribbon panels planning events rubbing shoulders interests revolving door regulated regulators many masters wonder noticed dca disappeared analysis john degrove helped establish passed sends message positions responsibility political authority want hear much less acknowledge careful integration regulation land use financial derivatives important nexus housing equation land allocated zoned development bind financing places particular could saved economy tools instead plunged economy worst crisis since great depression growth machine succeeded regulatory capture defined risk regulations worst inhibit growth jobs sciencebased arguments contrary suspect growth machine requires consumers blind faith miracle come congress never considered regulation mortgage backed securities could used strengthen growth management reinvigorate us economy hindsight shocking decision makers embraced financial derivatives based mortgages without making connection impoverished built landscape created socalled diversification financial risk business growth machine state local levels tame growth management purposes tame floridians shellshocked collapse housing values roseate spoonbills seeking refuge tampa far natural habitat dying everglades todays generation floridas leaders grow experience floridas everglades baselines lost outcome like multiplying number zero still questions demand answers governor rick scott ever heard john degrove invested 75 million money paving road governors mansion even know growth management degrove could tell still alive gone recently scott announced initiative solicit community input floridas future look like prior iterations florida governors blue ribbon panels used chiefly undermine dca time different state tabula rasa purpose strong argument made florida nation epochal transition one hand large investments continue made like announcement real estate giant swire properties invest 1 billion new city center project downtown miami hand force economic uncertainty compounded climate change promises mean politics scarcity seep depreciation schedules insurance companies stop writing policies florida low lying coastlines lose nation scenario powerful financial interests increasingly hedging bets taxpayer dollars case may wonder maximum advantage served limiting role government sinking ship every man damn women children john degrove small cadre land use policy experts sought better civil way maintained professional excellence high standards despite political malfeasance fraud pay grades took wise men seeming eternity create florida department community affairs took manmade calamity destroy created alan farago conservation chair of160 friends everglades lives south florida reached at160 afaragobellsouthnet | 3,946 |
<p>Oscar León is an experienced international press correspondent and documentary filmmaker based in Arizona. His work has reached continental TV broadcast in many occasions on Telesur, ECTV, Ecuavisa, Radio Canada, Canal Uno and even Fox Sports Latin America and El Garaje TV; he has been a TRNN correspondent since 2010. Oscar has reported from as many as 9 countries and more than 12 cities in US; his coverage includes TV reports, special reports and TV specials, not only covering social movements, politics and economics but environmental issues, culture and sports as well. This includes the series "Reportero del Sur", "Occupy USA - El Otoño Americano", "Habia una vez en Arizona", "Motor X" all TV mini series broadcasted to all Americas and "Once upon a time in Arizona" finalist in Radio Canada's "Migration" 2010 contest.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> OSCAR LEÓN, TRNN PRODUCER: In Colombia, the 21-days national strike, which enjoyed broad support, was a victory for the farmers' movement. After 12 deaths, four disappearances, and 485 injured, they got a law to control seeds suspended, along with subsidies to gas and supplies, to compensate the farmers for their losses, competing with international multinationals brought in the country by free-market treaties.
<p />
<p />The government and the strike board are currently negotiating new farming and mining laws, along with a revision of ten free market treaties, trying to compensate or reduce the losses of farmers and miners. In the cities, while the solidarity with the farmers were the spark for the protests, the privatization of health care and education brought even more people to the streets.
<p />
<p />Facing police repression, and despite the threat of paramilitary violence, they got a political victory, paralyzing the country while President Santos saw his popularity fall to an all-time low of 24&#160;percent.
<p />
<p />But even after such demonstration for farmers to oppose mining and oil projects can be a very dangerous activity, "Julio", farmer and human rights defender from Guayabero, has received death threats. He believes not only him but everyone else in town is also in danger:
<p />
<p />"JULIO", FARMER AND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER FROM GUAYABERO (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): There are about 20,000 farmers near the Guayabero River, and now all we've got is the fight for our rights as Colombians. All these people are suffering the scourge of war; we have been living that for 30 years, being systematically attacked by the Colombian state, by the police and the army, which almost every day they bully us and call us insurgents or guerrilla members. We are honest and humble farmers who want to keep our lands, but all we can do is hope things will get better.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: Adelinda Gomez Gaviria was gunned down, reportedly, by two right-wing paramilitaries on September&#160;30 when she was returning home from an activists meeting accompanied with her 16-year-old son, who was injured but survived.
<p />
<p />Adelinda Gomez was a vocal environment advocate. She was a leader of the group called Proceso de Mujeres del Macizo Colombiano del CIMA, a farmers women group that had organized an Environmental and Mining Forum, to which 1,500 indigenous and farmers participated. Adelinda received threatening phone calls warning her to stay off mining or she would get killed. And she's not the only one. Genaro Graciano from Movimiento Rios Vivos, which means movement for living rivers, had a bomb thrown outside his house at 10:30 pm on October 17. There where no casualties.
<p />
<p />Precisely in the town of Las Acacias, where The Real News recently reported on a local effort against an oil company in the defense of their water resources; a crime occurred on October&#160;10, one that sent a ripple of fear across the villagers from all the area. Ricardo Rodriguez Cajamarca, a local human rights monitor, was murdered by two hit men, who gunned him down around noon, opening fire from a motorcycle while he was driving his car. Rodriguez was well known for defending farmers and indigenous from state abuse.
<p />
<p />Amnesty International has long reported how an unknown number of farmers and indigenous leaders have been murdered because of their opposition to mega mining and oil drilling, choosing to preserve natural resources instead of supporting industrial development.
<p />
<p />Rural communities, students, and intellectuals had lost their voice amid extreme violence by both sides of a conflict that lasts over 60 years now and very often kept the communities paralyzed with gruesome crimes. On December&#160;2012, Telesur reported 600 farmers leaders murdered since 2005.
<p />
<p />ABILIO PEÑA, CHURCH PEACE AND JUSTICE COMMISSION (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): All these crimes against farmer leaders are related to specific claims made by farming communities against businessmen who took over their lands.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: Under Álvaro Uribe's government on 2007, 31,671 members of Autodefensas Unidas Colombianas (AUC), a paramilitary Group that, according to Semana magazine, "in the early 2000s grew to be the most powerful armed force in the country and is responsible for a great number of crimes" were demobilized. Fourteen of their leaders have been extradited to U.S. under drug trafficking charges.
<p />
<p />But the paramilitaries didn't go away. Nowadays there are four right-wing paramilitary armies: ERPAC, for Anti Communist Popular Army; Los Rastrojos; Los Urabeños; and the main one, Agulas Negras, or Black Eagles.
<p />
<p />A video emerged on the news and on YouTube on which we see the last moments of a group of farmers whose lands where stolen by alleged paramilitary men. They where filming with their phone before they got shot dead by the armed men.
<p />
<p />UNIDENTIFIED (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Call the police! They are shooting at us! The have automatic guns and they are shooting it us.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: Speaking for HispanTV, "Caliche", a paramilitary member, describes their mindset:
<p />
<p />"CALICHE", PARAMILITARY COMMANDER (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): If we must respect someone's life, we will; but if not, we will kill him,
<p />because we do not share many leftist ideals, which are to blame for the way things are in Colombia now.
<p />
<p />Two or three guys invented some leftist crap, and that is how a gunmen war started. That is why we hunt down union leaders, because they are pimps for a lot of bad people here in our town. They are pimps for all those farmers who are guerrilla fighters who then turn around and say they that are farmers displaced by war, helping NGO's collect money from international governments so they can then live the good life.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: Farmers' protest movements are closely linked with victims of forced land displacement and war violence, also organizations of people defending their land from contamination or appropriation by private interest.
<p />
<p />Teofilo Acuña, a farmers leader, was also threaten by paramilitary men. In behalf, he believes of a transnational corporation called Pacific Rubiales Energy:
<p />
<p />TEOFILO ACUÑA, FARMER'S MOVEMENT LEADER AND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER: In my case, the threats came as an internet pamphlet and a note saying they will kill me.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: He describes a relation between state and private interest:
<p />
<p />ACUÑA: We know the state is involved with private interest on this, because the state had a project to bring transnational corporations to the region. And we mention the state because we have observed that where there are mining interest is precisely where there have been more human rights violations. How else can you understand that in a region so militarized and controlled, threats, murders, and disappearances can happen so easily?
<p />
<p />On the south of the Bolivar regions, we know that between 2003 and 2007 there have been around 700 disappeared and murdered people. So we believe the multinationals are fully supported by the state.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: While covering the March for Peace on 2012, I spoke to many farmers displaced from their lands. "Yupanqui", one of them, describes how does it feel being trapped on a crossfire.
<p />
<p />"YUPANQUI", FARMER, WAR REFUGEE (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): If the army gets to the village, they claim we are all infiltrated guerrillas. If the guerrilla gets there, they claim we work for the army. Any armed faction that gets to the village, we don't know what to do or what to say. Many times they made direct threats to our life.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: It is important to remember that the paramilitary armies were created as a counterpart for the FARC and ELN, leftist guerrillas that have also committed atrocities against civilians. In everyone's memory are the hundreds of kidnapped and the "collar bombs", a terrifying device to used to ask for ransom. The guerrillas have also been accused by the state of acting as security forces for narco cartels.
<p />
<p />The army has also been involved in a case called "False Positives", where many officials have been formally accused of murdering people and then claim that they were guerrilla fighters fallen in combat, not only remaining immune of prosecution for those crimes, but also buffing up the count of dead enemies.
<p />
<p />This video was allegedly shot by a farmer using his phone camera in 2008 and recently resurfaced from a criminal case being filed by the farmers, accusing the soldiers to not only murder the farmers, but also trying to steal the bodies to later claim them as dead "enemy combatants" or "falsos positivos".
<p />
<p />According to a well-known human rights defender, winner of 2007's Roger Baldwin Freedom Medal and Representative for Bogotá district, Ivan Cepeda, this association of state and paramilitary violence reached its climax under Álvaro Uribe's presidency.
<p />
<p />IVAN CEPEDA, REPRESENTATIVE FOR BOGOTÁ DISTRICT (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): Uribe's eight years in power were fatal for Colombia. The paramilitary got their people elected for Congress. All kinds of crimes were perpetrated, like the infamous "falsos positivos" cases--young people were assassinated by the army to be presented before TV cameras as if they were terrorist. Also, there was espionage on the political opposition, using the executive power's secret police. So there is a very long list of human rights violations committed during Álvaro Uribe's administration.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: Defying fear and possible retaliations, on October&#160;11 many students protested Álvaro Uribe's visit to Santo Tomas University.
<p />
<p />STUDENT WEARING A URIBE MASK (SUBTITLED TRANSL.): I am here before you to declare that I am involved on crimes against humanity.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: "Diego" says that they are here to make a statement against a political project of state violence:
<p />
<p />"DIEGO", STUDENT: We are against the "paramilitary political project" that Álvaro Uribe represents, one which continues under the current government by making military targets of human rights defenders and student movement leaders.
<p />
<p />We are a bit afraid to do this, yet here we are to denounce him for what he is and to defend our right to protest, which is the only way to get change, as it has been proven this year by the farmers' and student's strike.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: Both Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos, current president of Colombia, have accused the farmers' movement of being manipulated by Marcha Patriotica, a leftist political organization whom they both accuse of having ties with the FARC, the leftist guerrilla.
<p />
<p />Ivan Cepeda remembers what happened to the last leftist social movement that was accused of similar charges back in the '80s:
<p />
<p />CEPEDA: In Colombia were committed an untold number of war crimes, one of which was precisely the destruction of a whole political movement, a real genocide against the Patriotic Union movement. Today we are here in the rise of a new movement, the Patriotic March. I hope the future of this movement is full of light and not a blood bath like the one that ended Patriotic Union.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: Nancy Vargas and Milciades Cano, two survivors of the extermination of Union Patriotica, were murdered on October&#160;6 at 5pm when they where returning home precisely from a meeting of Marcha Patriotica the movement that wants to bring the left back to Colombia and was founded in memory of Union Patriotica, the original movement.
<p />
<p />Among all this violence, there are still people willing to stand up to mining and oil projects to defend the water, their lands, labor and human rights. However, they do so knowing they don't have the support of the Colombian state. As "Tomas", from Farmers' Union from Cauca, explains:
<p />
<p />"TOMAS", FARMERS' UNION FROM CAUCA: These regimes have always been about defending their own personal interest and those of the multinational corporations.
<p />
<p />We worry when the president goes to Europe and offers supposed "opportunities for investment in Colombia." He then surrenders for cheap our farming lands, those of the indigenous communities and our national parks.
<p />
<p />LEÓN: While neoliberal policies and income inequality will continue putting pressure in the social struggle, Colombia's polarization and long history of violence makes it that much harder for social movements and farmers to vindicate their grievances.
<p />
<p />Reporting for The Real News, this is Oscar León.
<p />
<p />End
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | true | 4 | oscar león experienced international press correspondent documentary filmmaker based arizona work reached continental tv broadcast many occasions telesur ectv ecuavisa radio canada canal uno even fox sports latin america el garaje tv trnn correspondent since 2010 oscar reported many 9 countries 12 cities us coverage includes tv reports special reports tv specials covering social movements politics economics environmental issues culture sports well includes series reportero del sur occupy usa el otoño americano habia una vez en arizona motor x tv mini series broadcasted americas upon time arizona finalist radio canadas migration 2010 contest oscar leÓn trnn producer colombia 21days national strike enjoyed broad support victory farmers movement 12 deaths four disappearances 485 injured got law control seeds suspended along subsidies gas supplies compensate farmers losses competing international multinationals brought country freemarket treaties government strike board currently negotiating new farming mining laws along revision ten free market treaties trying compensate reduce losses farmers miners cities solidarity farmers spark protests privatization health care education brought even people streets facing police repression despite threat paramilitary violence got political victory paralyzing country president santos saw popularity fall alltime low 24160percent even demonstration farmers oppose mining oil projects dangerous activity julio farmer human rights defender guayabero received death threats believes everyone else town also danger julio farmer human rights defender guayabero subtitled transl 20000 farmers near guayabero river weve got fight rights colombians people suffering scourge war living 30 years systematically attacked colombian state police army almost every day bully us call us insurgents guerrilla members honest humble farmers want keep lands hope things get better leÓn adelinda gomez gaviria gunned reportedly two rightwing paramilitaries september16030 returning home activists meeting accompanied 16yearold son injured survived adelinda gomez vocal environment advocate leader group called proceso de mujeres del macizo colombiano del cima farmers women group organized environmental mining forum 1500 indigenous farmers participated adelinda received threatening phone calls warning stay mining would get killed shes one genaro graciano movimiento rios vivos means movement living rivers bomb thrown outside house 1030 pm october 17 casualties precisely town las acacias real news recently reported local effort oil company defense water resources crime occurred october16010 one sent ripple fear across villagers area ricardo rodriguez cajamarca local human rights monitor murdered two hit men gunned around noon opening fire motorcycle driving car rodriguez well known defending farmers indigenous state abuse amnesty international long reported unknown number farmers indigenous leaders murdered opposition mega mining oil drilling choosing preserve natural resources instead supporting industrial development rural communities students intellectuals lost voice amid extreme violence sides conflict lasts 60 years often kept communities paralyzed gruesome crimes december1602012 telesur reported 600 farmers leaders murdered since 2005 abilio peÑa church peace justice commission subtitled transl crimes farmer leaders related specific claims made farming communities businessmen took lands leÓn Álvaro uribes government 2007 31671 members autodefensas unidas colombianas auc paramilitary group according semana magazine early 2000s grew powerful armed force country responsible great number crimes demobilized fourteen leaders extradited us drug trafficking charges paramilitaries didnt go away nowadays four rightwing paramilitary armies erpac anti communist popular army los rastrojos los urabeños main one agulas negras black eagles video emerged news youtube see last moments group farmers whose lands stolen alleged paramilitary men filming phone got shot dead armed men unidentified subtitled transl call police shooting us automatic guns shooting us leÓn speaking hispantv caliche paramilitary member describes mindset caliche paramilitary commander subtitled transl must respect someones life kill share many leftist ideals blame way things colombia two three guys invented leftist crap gunmen war started hunt union leaders pimps lot bad people town pimps farmers guerrilla fighters turn around say farmers displaced war helping ngos collect money international governments live good life leÓn farmers protest movements closely linked victims forced land displacement war violence also organizations people defending land contamination appropriation private interest teofilo acuña farmers leader also threaten paramilitary men behalf believes transnational corporation called pacific rubiales energy teofilo acuÑa farmers movement leader human rights defender case threats came internet pamphlet note saying kill leÓn describes relation state private interest acuÑa know state involved private interest state project bring transnational corporations region mention state observed mining interest precisely human rights violations else understand region militarized controlled threats murders disappearances happen easily south bolivar regions know 2003 2007 around 700 disappeared murdered people believe multinationals fully supported state leÓn covering march peace 2012 spoke many farmers displaced lands yupanqui one describes feel trapped crossfire yupanqui farmer war refugee subtitled transl army gets village claim infiltrated guerrillas guerrilla gets claim work army armed faction gets village dont know say many times made direct threats life leÓn important remember paramilitary armies created counterpart farc eln leftist guerrillas also committed atrocities civilians everyones memory hundreds kidnapped collar bombs terrifying device used ask ransom guerrillas also accused state acting security forces narco cartels army also involved case called false positives many officials formally accused murdering people claim guerrilla fighters fallen combat remaining immune prosecution crimes also buffing count dead enemies video allegedly shot farmer using phone camera 2008 recently resurfaced criminal case filed farmers accusing soldiers murder farmers also trying steal bodies later claim dead enemy combatants falsos positivos according wellknown human rights defender winner 2007s roger baldwin freedom medal representative bogotá district ivan cepeda association state paramilitary violence reached climax Álvaro uribes presidency ivan cepeda representative bogotÁ district subtitled transl uribes eight years power fatal colombia paramilitary got people elected congress kinds crimes perpetrated like infamous falsos positivos casesyoung people assassinated army presented tv cameras terrorist also espionage political opposition using executive powers secret police long list human rights violations committed Álvaro uribes administration leÓn defying fear possible retaliations october16011 many students protested Álvaro uribes visit santo tomas university student wearing uribe mask subtitled transl declare involved crimes humanity leÓn diego says make statement political project state violence diego student paramilitary political project Álvaro uribe represents one continues current government making military targets human rights defenders student movement leaders bit afraid yet denounce defend right protest way get change proven year farmers students strike leÓn uribe juan manuel santos current president colombia accused farmers movement manipulated marcha patriotica leftist political organization accuse ties farc leftist guerrilla ivan cepeda remembers happened last leftist social movement accused similar charges back 80s cepeda colombia committed untold number war crimes one precisely destruction whole political movement real genocide patriotic union movement today rise new movement patriotic march hope future movement full light blood bath like one ended patriotic union leÓn nancy vargas milciades cano two survivors extermination union patriotica murdered october1606 5pm returning home precisely meeting marcha patriotica movement wants bring left back colombia founded memory union patriotica original movement among violence still people willing stand mining oil projects defend water lands labor human rights however knowing dont support colombian state tomas farmers union cauca explains tomas farmers union cauca regimes always defending personal interest multinational corporations worry president goes europe offers supposed opportunities investment colombia surrenders cheap farming lands indigenous communities national parks leÓn neoliberal policies income inequality continue putting pressure social struggle colombias polarization long history violence makes much harder social movements farmers vindicate grievances reporting real news oscar león end disclaimer please note transcripts real news network typed recording program trnn guarantee complete accuracy | 1,204 |
<p>Sculptor Enzo Gallo Chiapardi hurriedly crafted a bust of Fidel on the night before the Caravan of Liberty reached Havana, January 8, 1959, after triumphantly crossing the island following the Rebel Army’s victory. With the same speed, upon hearing the news of the sculpture erected near the Colombia military base, Fidel ordered that it be immediately removed, to the Italian artist’s dismay.</p>
<p>Given such evidence, it should not have surprised us to hear the leader of the Cuban Revolution’s last wishes – announced by Raúl in Santiago de Cuba’s Antonio Maceo Plaza – that after his death, neither his name or likeness should ever be used to name any institution or public site, nor should monuments, busts, or statues in his memory ever be erected.</p>
<p>Even prior to this announcement, certain media had been perplexed when President Raúl Castro Ruz communicated Fidel’s death this past November 25, and reported the Comandante en Jefe’s request that his remains be cremated.</p>
<p>More than one international journalist asked if plazas and other public spaces would soon bear the name Fidel Castro. Speculation fueled expectations. Some even recalled that Fidel had previously opposed honoring leaders with statues and avenues bearing their names, while they were alive.</p>
<p>The man who resisted the hostility of eleven U.S. administrations understood the dangers and consequences of personality cults. That is why one of the first laws adopted after the triumph of the Revolution, January 1, 1959, was an absolutely unprecedented prohibition on erecting statues of living leaders or using their names for any street, city, town, or factory… likewise ruling out official photographs of authorities in government offices.</p>
<p>Fidel, the statesman, talked about this law in a speech on March 13, 1966, saying, “It is not necessary to be seeing a statue on every corner, or the name of some leader on every town, all over the place. No! Because this would reveal a lack of confidence in the people on the part of leaders; this would reveal a very poor conception of the people, of the masses, as incapable of believing because of a lack of consciousness, or having confidence because of a lack of consciousness – artificially fabricating consciousness or confidence, using reflex responses.”</p>
<p>He referred to Karl Marx, Frederic Engels, and Vladimir I. Lenin in his remarks, saying that they never “made gods of themselves,” but rather “were humble their entire lives, until death, loath to cults,” he added.</p>
<p>Fidel knew the history of humanity and was clear on the role played by personality cults, without distinguishing between countries based on capitalism or socialism, ranging from Mao Tse Tung to Rafael Léonidas Trujillo, statues of whom proliferated across the Dominican Republic, where even churches were told to popularize the slogan, “Trujillo on earth, God in heaven.”</p>
<p>Reference texts indicate than the term “personalty cult” was first used in 1956 by Nikita Khrushchev, secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in a speech denouncing Stalin, during the 20th Congress of the organization.</p>
<p>In Rosenthal and Ludin’s <a href="" type="internal">Dictionary of Philosophy</a>, it is defined as “blind deference to the authority of a figure, excessive consideration of real merits, the conversion of a historical figure’s name into a fetish.”</p>
<p>Maintaining a philosophical lens, it is not difficult to see that underlying such cults is an idealistic conception of history – as Thomas Carlyle would say – which considers the will of individuals, as opposed to the action of the masses, as the determining factor in making history, precisely as Francisco Franco would have his compatriots believe his self-proclaimed status as god’s messenger and ruler of Spain by the grace of god.</p>
<p>As Fidel stated in 1966, events have confirmed the Marxist precept, “It is not men, but rather peoples who write history,” while at the same time recognizing, “The revolutionary leader is necessary as an instrument of the people, necessary as an instrument of the Revolution.”</p>
<p>In more than one international forum, Cuban researcher and journalist Luis Toledo Sande has spared no words denouncing the allegations of a personality cult of Fidel in Cuba, noting that such accusations are coming, in fact, from countries where university degrees are granted in the name of monarchies.</p>
<p>Toledo, who has also studied José Martí, noted that in Cuba, for example, the names of leaders’ family members are not attached to public institutions either, no matter how charming they may be, although it is here, some allege, where a personality cult exists.</p>
<p>Toledo recalled, years later, that his comments were not included in the summary of the event during which they were made, due, he was told, to space limitations. Nevertheless, he has said he would have liked them to have been published, so no one might think they were excluded because he used the metaphor, “the noose in the house of the hanged man.”</p>
<p>The supposed personality cult of Fidel and the media campaign against Cuba are two sides of the same coin; that is both seek to discredit the leader as well as his most important work: the Revolution, in which the people play the leading role.</p>
<p>When Nicaraguan Tomás Borge was asked about the issue, he responded, “In a country like this one, it is very difficult for some form of absolute power to exist, because Cubans, with their idiosyncrasies, their mentality, argue everything, analyze everything; it could just as well be baseball, agriculture, politics, anything; Cubans discuss it all, they have character, a special idiosyncrasy.”</p>
<p>These virtues, verified in the people by Fidel, are far removed from the perspective of Plato, the first to address the elements associated with the charisma of leaders, who described the masses as ignorant and malleable, at the whim of charismatic individuals.</p>
<p>Leadership and political charisma, are terms which have inspired many to think:</p>
<p>Aristotle, Machiavelli, Weber, Freud and Bourdieu, and have been epitomized in the person who headed the Cuban state for more than 50 years and survived&#160;638 attempts on his life, emanating basically from the entrails of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, looking to eliminate his example that inspired the world.</p>
<p>Despite such real – not mythical – greatness, his body was reduced to ashes, which have been resting, since December 4, inside a massive rock in Santiago de Cuba’s Santa Ifigenia Cemetery. The site dedicated to his memory, could well have been placed on top of Mt. Turquino, exemplifying modesty and austerity, contrary to the forecasts of detractors of the man who did not seek glory, but encountered it along his way.”</p>
<p>Enrique Ojito writes for Granma, where this article originally appeared.</p> | true | 4 | sculptor enzo gallo chiapardi hurriedly crafted bust fidel night caravan liberty reached havana january 8 1959 triumphantly crossing island following rebel armys victory speed upon hearing news sculpture erected near colombia military base fidel ordered immediately removed italian artists dismay given evidence surprised us hear leader cuban revolutions last wishes announced raúl santiago de cubas antonio maceo plaza death neither name likeness ever used name institution public site monuments busts statues memory ever erected even prior announcement certain media perplexed president raúl castro ruz communicated fidels death past november 25 reported comandante en jefes request remains cremated one international journalist asked plazas public spaces would soon bear name fidel castro speculation fueled expectations even recalled fidel previously opposed honoring leaders statues avenues bearing names alive man resisted hostility eleven us administrations understood dangers consequences personality cults one first laws adopted triumph revolution january 1 1959 absolutely unprecedented prohibition erecting statues living leaders using names street city town factory likewise ruling official photographs authorities government offices fidel statesman talked law speech march 13 1966 saying necessary seeing statue every corner name leader every town place would reveal lack confidence people part leaders would reveal poor conception people masses incapable believing lack consciousness confidence lack consciousness artificially fabricating consciousness confidence using reflex responses referred karl marx frederic engels vladimir lenin remarks saying never made gods rather humble entire lives death loath cults added fidel knew history humanity clear role played personality cults without distinguishing countries based capitalism socialism ranging mao tse tung rafael léonidas trujillo statues proliferated across dominican republic even churches told popularize slogan trujillo earth god heaven reference texts indicate term personalty cult first used 1956 nikita khrushchev secretary general communist party soviet union speech denouncing stalin 20th congress organization rosenthal ludins dictionary philosophy defined blind deference authority figure excessive consideration real merits conversion historical figures name fetish maintaining philosophical lens difficult see underlying cults idealistic conception history thomas carlyle would say considers individuals opposed action masses determining factor making history precisely francisco franco would compatriots believe selfproclaimed status gods messenger ruler spain grace god fidel stated 1966 events confirmed marxist precept men rather peoples write history time recognizing revolutionary leader necessary instrument people necessary instrument revolution one international forum cuban researcher journalist luis toledo sande spared words denouncing allegations personality cult fidel cuba noting accusations coming fact countries university degrees granted name monarchies toledo also studied josé martí noted cuba example names leaders family members attached public institutions either matter charming may although allege personality cult exists toledo recalled years later comments included summary event made due told space limitations nevertheless said would liked published one might think excluded used metaphor noose house hanged man supposed personality cult fidel media campaign cuba two sides coin seek discredit leader well important work revolution people play leading role nicaraguan tomás borge asked issue responded country like one difficult form absolute power exist cubans idiosyncrasies mentality argue everything analyze everything could well baseball agriculture politics anything cubans discuss character special idiosyncrasy virtues verified people fidel far removed perspective plato first address elements associated charisma leaders described masses ignorant malleable whim charismatic individuals leadership political charisma terms inspired many think aristotle machiavelli weber freud bourdieu epitomized person headed cuban state 50 years survived160638 attempts life emanating basically entrails united states central intelligence agency looking eliminate example inspired world despite real mythical greatness body reduced ashes resting since december 4 inside massive rock santiago de cubas santa ifigenia cemetery site dedicated memory could well placed top mt turquino exemplifying modesty austerity contrary forecasts detractors man seek glory encountered along way enrique ojito writes granma article originally appeared | 603 |
<p>When he announced the indictment of Scooter Libby, vice president Cheney’s chief of staff, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald included a homily on the importance of truth. And in truth it sounded a bit quaint, like someone trying to recite the Sermon on the Mount on the floor of the New York stock exchange. But of course Fitzgerald was right. When lying becomes the accepted currency, you haven’t got the rule of law but a criminal conspiracy.</p>
<p>All governments lie, but Reagan and his crew truly raised the bar. From about 1978 on, when the drive to put Reagan in the White House gathered speed, lying was the standard mode for Reagan, his handlers and a press quite happy to retail all the bilge, from the Soviet Union’s supposed military superiority to the millionaire welfare queens on the South Side of Chicago.</p>
<p>The press went along with it. Year after year, on the campaign trail and then in the White House, the press corps reported Reagan’s news conferences without remarking that the commander in chief dwelt mostly in a twilit world of comic-book fables and old movie clips. They were still maintaining this fiction even when Reagan’s staff was discussing whether to invoke the 25th amendment and have the old dotard hauled off to the nursing home.</p>
<p>Lying about Reagan’s frail grip on reality was only part of the journalistic surrender. For those who see Judith Miller’s complicity in the lying sprees of the Neocons as a signal of the decline of the New York Times from some previous plateau of objectivity and competence I suggest a review of its sometime defense correspondent Richard Burt in the late Carter years, as Al Haig’s agent in place. Burt relayed truckloads of threat-inflating nonsense about the military balance in the Cold War, particularly in the European theater, most of them on a level of fantasy matching the lies Miller got from Chalabi’s disinformers and trundled in print.</p>
<p>When the Reaganites seized power in 1981, Burt promptly threw down his press badge and went to work</p>
<p>In the State Department as Director of Politico-Military Affairs a post previously held by another former Times man, Leslie Gelb, no garden rose but not a two-timer on the order of Burt. At least Miller didn’t go and officially work for Cheney.</p>
<p>Many of the associates of Libby and of his boss, now threatened by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, are veterans of that Reagan culture and hardened survivors of the crisis that ultimately threatened several of them with legal sanction and lengthy terms in prison. That crisis was the Iran-contra affair which burst upon the nation on October 6, 1986, the day Eugene Hasenfus successfully parachuted from a CIA-piloted plane illegally shuttling arms to the contras.</p>
<p>Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a former US prosecutor and judge from Oklahoma City, a life-long Republican, began his investigation. In the probe that stretched through the rest of Reagan-time and the entire presidency of G.H.W Bush,</p>
<p>Walsh made his most effective headway by bringing charges for lying to Congress. This is how he nailed Elliott Abrams, Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, Alan Fiers, Clair George and Robert McFarlane . They all either pleaded guilty to what Libby was just indicted for, obstruction of justice and making false statements, or were convicted of same or, in the cases of Weinberger and Clarridge, were awaiting trial.</p>
<p>As Walsh plowed forward, those trying to protect Reagan and Bush included Stephen Hadley, a long-time Cheney sidekick now possibly in Fitzgerald’s line of fire as the current president’s national security advisor. In the Iran contra era Hadley was Counsel to the Special Review Board, known as the Tower Commission, established by President Reagan to enquire into U.S. arms sales to Iran, which headed off any unwelcome focus on Reagan or Bush’s complicity in the scandal. Meanwhile in the House, Rep Richard Cheney was the ranking Republican on a House committee also investigating Iran-contra. He played a major role in stopping the probe from staining Bush or Reagan. (Libby himself had been working in the Pentagon ifrom 1982-85 as director of Special Projects.)</p>
<p>By the fall of 1992 Walsh was finally closing in on Bush for his role in contra-gate as Reagan’s vice president. Days before the 1992 election Walsh reindicted Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s defense secretary, for lying to Congress. The trial was scheduled for January of 1993. Walsh was expected to grill Weinberger about notes that implicated Bush. In the line of fire here too was Colin Powell, who had been Weinberger’s assistant in the crucial year of 1985. Walsh was also planning to question Bush his failure to turn over a diary he’d kept in the mid-1980s. We could have seen a former president indicted for obstruction of justice and making false statements.</p>
<p>The press was mostly against Walsh. There were plenty of nasty articles about the cost and duration of his probe. Bush felt politically safe covering his own ass and that of his co-conspirators by issuing pardons, which he duly did, on Christmas Eve, 1992. Off Walsh’s hook slipped Weinberger, Abrams, Clarridge, St George, Fiers, and McFarlane. Walsh said furiously that “the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.”</p>
<p>Will history come close to repeating itself? John Dean, White House counsel in Nixon time and knowledgeable about executive cover-ups, argues that Fitzgerald has Cheney in his sights, and may b ed planning to charging him under the Espionage Act for revealing Plame’s name. Cheney’s survival depends on Libby keeping his mouth shut, and of taking the fall until Christmas Eve, 2008, when Bush Jr.issues the necessary pardon or pardons.</p>
<p>Already in the wake of Libby’s indictment the air has been thick with talk of pardons, as though it’s now become a predictable ritual for incumbent presidents to clear their subordinates of indictments or convictions for crimes committed during government service. Fitzgerald should say that anyone seriously urging pardons may risk indictment for conspiracy to obstruct justice.</p>
<p>Such pardons go hand in hand with the lying which Fitzgerald denounced. If officials violating the law and then lying about it knows with certainty that they are going to escape legal sanction, then we no longer have a government. We have a sequence of criminal conspiracies. There have been scandalous pardons down the decades, but as with lying the Reagan years raised the bar.. It should become a major political issue. A model here could be Jonathan Pollard, sentenced to life in 1987 for spying for Israel. Bush Sr and Clinton were under huge pressure to pardon him but declined to buckle because the Armed Services simply said No, we won’t stand for it. To the prospect of any pardon for Libby and others the popular message should be the same. Otherwise Fitzgerald will be wasting his time and the people’s money.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Judy Miller Hits the Road</p>
<p>Her lawyers cut a deal with the New York Times and now Miller is set for freelancing, and a memoir on her years at the New York Times and her days in prison. I saw her on Larry King on Thursday night and she did well, declining all opportunities to kick sand in Maureen Dowd’s face. It was the right choice. I have to speak in a whisper here because my coeditor is a Dowd fan whereas I’ve always thought there’s something tinny about Dowd’s columns.</p>
<p>In retrospect the Beat Up on Judy day at the New York Times when Dowd’s nasty column followed on the heels of Keller’s “internal memo” looks like a carefully calculated one-two. (I seem to remember reading that Keller and Dowd were an item, though maybe it was Dowd and Howell Raines. Dowd’s and Miller’s in-house love lives blend in my memory like a daquiri left out in the sun.) At the time I wrote here that Keller’s memo was disgusting and now he’s confirmed my initial judgment, apologizing for having insinuated in his chickenshit memo that Miller and Libby were “entangled” in all the paroxysms that that word implies, also that she had “misled” her editor, Philip Taubman. Keller now concedes that Taubman had never complained of being misled by Miller.</p>
<p>I hold no brief for Miller who wrote terrible stories for many years, but the people at the New York Times who should get the axe are publisher, Sulzberger, and Editor Keller. They’ve made a terrible hash of things and the Board should make them walk the plank.</p>
<p>Larry King asked Miller if she’d be listening to Chalabi’s lecture at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and she said she’d be giving her own talk in DC. Chalabi’s popping up everywhere. Kris Lofgren attended Ahmed Chalabi’s lecture at the American Enterprise Institute in midweek, and reports a starry-eyed Hitchens claiming on the way out after the lecture that Chalabi could have broken American intelligence codes himself, because “he is a mathematical genius” and “his expertise is cryptology”. This is silly says CounterPuncher Assaf Kfoury who got a PhD from MIT, 1972, and overlapped with Chalabi’s years there. “Chalabi was not a mathematical genius. Basically MIT, which awarded him a Master’s degree, didn’t want to keep him for a PhD. And Chalabi didn’t do his thesis in anything remotely connected to cryptology. His at the University of Chicago was on the theory of knots.”</p>
<p>He certainly tied up Judy.</p>
<p>Footnote: an earlier version of the first item ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | announced indictment scooter libby vice president cheneys chief staff special prosecutor patrick fitzgerald included homily importance truth truth sounded bit quaint like someone trying recite sermon mount floor new york stock exchange course fitzgerald right lying becomes accepted currency havent got rule law criminal conspiracy governments lie reagan crew truly raised bar 1978 drive put reagan white house gathered speed lying standard mode reagan handlers press quite happy retail bilge soviet unions supposed military superiority millionaire welfare queens south side chicago press went along year year campaign trail white house press corps reported reagans news conferences without remarking commander chief dwelt mostly twilit world comicbook fables old movie clips still maintaining fiction even reagans staff discussing whether invoke 25th amendment old dotard hauled nursing home lying reagans frail grip reality part journalistic surrender see judith millers complicity lying sprees neocons signal decline new york times previous plateau objectivity competence suggest review sometime defense correspondent richard burt late carter years al haigs agent place burt relayed truckloads threatinflating nonsense military balance cold war particularly european theater level fantasy matching lies miller got chalabis disinformers trundled print reaganites seized power 1981 burt promptly threw press badge went work state department director politicomilitary affairs post previously held another former times man leslie gelb garden rose twotimer order burt least miller didnt go officially work cheney many associates libby boss threatened prosecutor patrick fitzgerald veterans reagan culture hardened survivors crisis ultimately threatened several legal sanction lengthy terms prison crisis irancontra affair burst upon nation october 6 1986 day eugene hasenfus successfully parachuted ciapiloted plane illegally shuttling arms contras special prosecutor lawrence walsh former us prosecutor judge oklahoma city lifelong republican began investigation probe stretched rest reagantime entire presidency ghw bush walsh made effective headway bringing charges lying congress nailed elliott abrams duane dewey clarridge alan fiers clair george robert mcfarlane either pleaded guilty libby indicted obstruction justice making false statements convicted cases weinberger clarridge awaiting trial walsh plowed forward trying protect reagan bush included stephen hadley longtime cheney sidekick possibly fitzgeralds line fire current presidents national security advisor iran contra era hadley counsel special review board known tower commission established president reagan enquire us arms sales iran headed unwelcome focus reagan bushs complicity scandal meanwhile house rep richard cheney ranking republican house committee also investigating irancontra played major role stopping probe staining bush reagan libby working pentagon ifrom 198285 director special projects fall 1992 walsh finally closing bush role contragate reagans vice president days 1992 election walsh reindicted caspar weinberger reagans defense secretary lying congress trial scheduled january 1993 walsh expected grill weinberger notes implicated bush line fire colin powell weinbergers assistant crucial year 1985 walsh also planning question bush failure turn diary hed kept mid1980s could seen former president indicted obstruction justice making false statements press mostly walsh plenty nasty articles cost duration probe bush felt politically safe covering ass coconspirators issuing pardons duly christmas eve 1992 walshs hook slipped weinberger abrams clarridge st george fiers mcfarlane walsh said furiously irancontra coverup continued six years completed history come close repeating john dean white house counsel nixon time knowledgeable executive coverups argues fitzgerald cheney sights may b ed planning charging espionage act revealing plames name cheneys survival depends libby keeping mouth shut taking fall christmas eve 2008 bush jrissues necessary pardon pardons already wake libbys indictment air thick talk pardons though become predictable ritual incumbent presidents clear subordinates indictments convictions crimes committed government service fitzgerald say anyone seriously urging pardons may risk indictment conspiracy obstruct justice pardons go hand hand lying fitzgerald denounced officials violating law lying knows certainty going escape legal sanction longer government sequence criminal conspiracies scandalous pardons decades lying reagan years raised bar become major political issue model could jonathan pollard sentenced life 1987 spying israel bush sr clinton huge pressure pardon declined buckle armed services simply said wont stand prospect pardon libby others popular message otherwise fitzgerald wasting time peoples money 160 judy miller hits road lawyers cut deal new york times miller set freelancing memoir years new york times days prison saw larry king thursday night well declining opportunities kick sand maureen dowds face right choice speak whisper coeditor dowd fan whereas ive always thought theres something tinny dowds columns retrospect beat judy day new york times dowds nasty column followed heels kellers internal memo looks like carefully calculated onetwo seem remember reading keller dowd item though maybe dowd howell raines dowds millers inhouse love lives blend memory like daquiri left sun time wrote kellers memo disgusting hes confirmed initial judgment apologizing insinuated chickenshit memo miller libby entangled paroxysms word implies also misled editor philip taubman keller concedes taubman never complained misled miller hold brief miller wrote terrible stories many years people new york times get axe publisher sulzberger editor keller theyve made terrible hash things board make walk plank larry king asked miller shed listening chalabis lecture council foreign relations new york said shed giving talk dc chalabis popping everywhere kris lofgren attended ahmed chalabis lecture american enterprise institute midweek reports starryeyed hitchens claiming way lecture chalabi could broken american intelligence codes mathematical genius expertise cryptology silly says counterpuncher assaf kfoury got phd mit 1972 overlapped chalabis years chalabi mathematical genius basically mit awarded masters degree didnt want keep phd chalabi didnt thesis anything remotely connected cryptology university chicago theory knots certainly tied judy footnote earlier version first item ran print edition nation went press last wednesday 160 160 | 901 |
<p>Humankind has never changed, and it never will.</p>
<p>The essential misapprehension under which individuals labor –generation after generation– is that we are on some endless collective journey that will take our species from weak-chinned, flint-chipping anthropoid misery to an exalted state wherein our lives will pass with the elegance of a new-age celebrity wedding in Tahiti. People imagine we’re about three-fifths of the way along this evolutionary trek. They have always imagined this, and they have always been wrong. Nothing ever changes, and nothing ever will.</p>
<p>Which is not to say that nothing ever changes. Change is the only constant in this universe. It’s just that the changes that occur around us (and within us) have all happened before, but on a quantum scale. The human curse –and our greatest blessing– is that man’s intersection with the world (and most women’s, excepting Marie Antoinette, who crops up in past-life regressions approximately six in ten times) is limited to one lifetime. Look at history, we surmise, and avoid the obvious mistakes recorded there, and progress will be made. All we have to do is internalize the idea that “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.</p>
<p>Clever-boots know that this statement is attributed to George Santayana, which shows they’re very well informed and aren’t likely to repeat the mistakes of the past. Except for always. George, now armed with such insight into the brevity of human existence as being dead provides, would probably agree that history is inescapable. We are all doomed to repeat it, regardless of what we learn of mankind’s errant peregrination along its course. There are two obstacles to genuine progress: first, we are hard-wired to repeat behaviors; and second, history is rubbish.</p>
<p>It would be nice to think that our species, which after all has come to rely on its brain power more than its physical prowess (I am living proof of this, or proof that inertia trumps both attributes), could innovate its collective way out of the situation. But it can’t. History is primarily the glorification of murderers as told by liars to idiots. What we can learn from the past by studying history is much like what we can learn about a 1963 Chateau d’Yquem 1er Cru Superieur Bordeaux by studying chip vinegar.</p>
<p>Even if history could be relied upon, it wouldn’t change the human desire to do the same goddamn things, over and over and over again, because these things worked for our stoatish proto-ancestor Morganucodon Watsoni 225 million years ago, they worked for Siamopithecus back in the day, and in terms of DNA-swapping (which is the purpose of organic life) these behaviors still work for humans today.</p>
<p>Ah, but Morganucodon Watsoni couldn’t fly, you say (although Volaticotherium antiquus could glide pretty handily, 150 million years ago); we modern man types have made progress!</p>
<p>Pother.</p>
<p>The fossil record demonstrates that genus Homo was always on the go, cropping up in Africa first, then toddling off to Asia and points north the minute he got the hang of ambulating on his back legs. We started off walking, then figured out riding; when the wheel came along I’ll bet everybody scoffed at their ancestors for dragging things around. Then they scoffed at their ancestors for relying on animal power, and scoffed again at steam, and anybody that isn’t scoffing at internal combustion today should be taken out back of the woodshed and beaten soundly. The means of getting about has changed, but our desire to do so, on a species-wide scale, is absolutely constant. We simply mistake innovation for transformation. Despite twenty thousand technological solutions, the best mousetrap remains the cat.</p>
<p>It makes no difference if hauling ourselves and our goods from place to place is destroying the ozone layer and ruining the landscape and causing the North Atlantic Current to reverse itself. We gotta keep moving. Another example might be our desire to live above-ground. Would it make sense for us to dig down, instead of building up? Of course it would. Manhattan could be two hundred stories deep, and Central Park could cover the entire island, and it would be just like in Popular Science. But humans like to live above the root line. People that prefer subterranean dwellings are still considered weirdos. Ah, but didn’t we once favor the cave as a desirable address? Sure, as long as it was on a slope. It’s living below the horizon that bugs us. So we continue to pile up massive edifices that, from a historical perspective, are 100% guaranteed to collapse. The caves, it is worth noting, are still around.</p>
<p>A thousand years ago, there was an industrial revolution no less impressive than the recent version that brought us the Eiffel Tower and World War One. Huge numbers of able-bodied men –belligerent, religion-crazed nitwits– marched off to the crusades, leaving behind the cleverer fellows and a dearth of ready manpower (I’m paraphrasing a vast, complex stretch of history for my own purposes here, although the basic arc of the thing is correct, so keep a grain of salt handy). What was needed was a way to turn crops into portable food with a minimum of human effort. The main innovation was harnessing free energy– wind, water, and so forth. With this power our forebears could turn grain into flour at a terrific clip, which meant that enormous amounts of food energy could be accumulated for later use. Which led to a revolution in agriculture, because now one could grind as much grain as one could grow– so science came into play and brilliant new growing techniques were developed. This, combined in devious ways with advances in metallurgy, war-making, and the number of babies that survived past their first year, paved the way for explosive growth in urbanization and non-agricultural trades and industries. By the 14th Century people were worried about pollution and mineral rights, there were unions, strikes, miserable conditions in cloth factories, and the great cathedrals of Europe were being erected. Gosh, it sounds just like the 18th and 19th Centuries. But haven’t we made progress?</p>
<p>Not really. We’re still operating sweatshops and mines as miserable as anything they had in the Dark Ages, although we’ve innovated transportation so much that we can use serfs in distant countries to do the grunt work. We’ve revolutionized pollution, but not in the better sense of the idea. We’ve only figured out how to make more of it that’s more poisonous. Just as the people of medieval Europe eventually self-destructed, so are we doing. There are many more parallels throughout history to the sort of state we’re in today: the rise and fall of superstition, the building up and tearing down of secular and religious states (ask the Greeks, ask the Romans), the ebb and flow of knowledge, art, and innovation.</p>
<p>One could argue that improvements in technology and advances in the human condition have allowed us to go from maybe 200 million people on earth in the time of that guy Christ, to 6.5 billion people today. Tell that to the trilobites, for example, that kicked so much ass with their little expodite legs they ran to 15,000 species before the inevitable end came. Or the dimetrodons, critters that ran the show for 30 million years. You don’t see them around any more. In fact, ingenious as humans consider themselves (no trilobite ever figured out how to build even the simplest four-stroke rotary engine) we are on the same road to extinction that marks all highly successful species, the terminus of which appears again and again in the fossil record. It’s tough titty for us, that’s all. None of this ought to be particularly upsetting, unless you take the vast cycles of creation and destruction personally. Species come and go, merely another manifestation of the transfer of energy (force operating on matter), or in layman’s terms: W = \int \mathbf{F} \cdot \mathrm{d}\mathbf{s} I don’t know about you, but I find that comforting. On the other hand, just as I once believed in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus (college cured me of that), and just as millions of people still believe in those magical fellows Jesus, Yaweh, and Mohammed today, an enormous number of people believe that mankind is going to sort it all out, head off into a vaguely Romanesque future with flying cars and charabanc tours to Venus, and beat entropy once and for all. That new-age celebrity wedding in Tahiti is never going to happen, however. As long as there is somebody getting something right, there will be someone else killing him and running off with it. As long as we’re succeeding in one area, we’re dooming ourselves in another. We can study history all we want; the real tale of human non-progress has been artfully concealed by every single teller of tales since the species first took on latent memory as a specialization.</p>
<p>Our species has never changed, it is true. And never will, regardless of the guaranteed pan-fatal consequences. This being, however, the early 21st Century, a time when people require an uplifting coda at the end of any depressing narrative, just as the ancient Greeks required a god to descend from the heavens and thwack somebody at the end of their plays, I will provide an uplifting coda. A real one, at that.</p>
<p>If mankind has a single talent above all others, it is a knack for acceleration. Paleontologists go back and forth about what adaptation let hominids, and especially our ancestors, take off like blazes up the evolutionary ladder. Anybody that has ever been menaced by a big dog on a lonely road knows the correct answer. It’s not the opposable thumb, an upright stance, or a large brain. It’s the simple ability to throw a rock with accuracy.</p>
<p>Hitting a sabretooth cat on the head with a rock in hand might be good enough for some hominids; apparently not, though, because they’re extinct. The throw is the thing. It doesn’t matter if you have the biggest fangs or the sharpest claws if there’s a dent in your forehead with brains leaking out of it and your quarry is still thirty feet away. That opposable thumb makes it easier to put a wicked topspin on the rock, walking upright frees the hands for hurling, and that big brain can do some lightning calculations that will get the missile from fingers to enemy cranium every time. It’s all part of the throw. Problem is, other bands of us could throw, too. And then nobody has an advantage.</p>
<p>So someone comes up with the throwing stick, which allows even a runty specimen to hurl a stone with formidable power over long distances. Someone else comes up with the spear, which allows a point to be thrown with accuracy; this is the difference between a bruise and a sucking chest wound. The next gink develops the bow and arrow, or in other words a miniature long-distance spear. This stuff is going faster and faster, accelerating. And the violence is accelerating. Twenty thousand years later the spear has become the ICBM and instead of arrows we’re launching air-to-ground missiles from F-22 Raptor jet fighters. Faster and faster, accelerating. Repeating the same behavior again and again. So far this doesn’t sound like good news. But it is good news.</p>
<p>Even as the consequences of our actions come hurtling up at us (say the North Atlantic Current really does reverse itself– Europe could be in for an ice age in 200 years) we are getting faster and faster at coming up with antidotes. Populations have figured out how to move fast. We’ve gotten better at insulating our dwellings. Hell, we can move stuff all over the world, including our lifestyles. Religious end-times fervor has gripped the United States again, and it looks like the government may finally drop its pro-democratic posture in favor of corporate fascism. But as fast as these things occur, new things rise up to take their places. Expect another age of enlightenment. Expect a chastened mankind (after a few decades of extremely shitty weather) to start taking environmentalism and conservation seriously. No matter how bad we make things, we’re unlikely to have such an unsalutary effect as the volcanism that precipitated the Permian extinction (95% of species wiped out), or the K-T extinction that ended the age of large leathery non-mammal creatures.</p>
<p>Imagining that the consequences of our unwillingness to change will somehow cause everything else to change is probably hubris. Things will change regardless. It’s just that the changes in the world are now subject to man’s accelerating influence. As I said, the human grasp of things extends not more than a lifetime; historians are trained to extend their grasp of time, but their heads are filled with nonsense made up by long-dead bullshitters, so it hardly matters. Our great-great-great-great grandchildren will look on our works and scoff, like everybody has scoffed through the ages. But they probably won’t get upset that the jungles, elephants, polar bears, arctic ice, rhinos, low-lying coastal communities, sources of potable water, predictable winters, rivers, islands, and fish are all gone. We don’t miss the mastodons, the woolly rhinoceroses, the Neanderthals, or being able to walk across a land bridge from China to Australia. Hell, we don’t even miss ox carts.</p>
<p>The faster things change, the more we have to remember that it is our short-sighted experience of change that makes us think things are getting worse– or worser than usual, to coin a phrase. in fact things have always been getting worse, unless you’re of a mind that they’re getting better, in which case they’ve always been doing that; but in actuality things are moving through immense cycles we cannot comprehend, let alone have any impact upon, except to create a little turbulence at the very end of the Holocene epoch.</p>
<p>That said, I will miss the elephants.</p>
<p>BEN TRIPP, author of <a href="http://books.lulu.com/content/86922" type="external">Square in the Nuts</a>, is a hack in many mediums. He may be reached at <a href="mailto:credel@earthlink.net" type="external">credel@earthlink.net</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | humankind never changed never essential misapprehension individuals labor generation generation endless collective journey take species weakchinned flintchipping anthropoid misery exalted state wherein lives pass elegance newage celebrity wedding tahiti people imagine threefifths way along evolutionary trek always imagined always wrong nothing ever changes nothing ever say nothing ever changes change constant universe changes occur around us within us happened quantum scale human curse greatest blessing mans intersection world womens excepting marie antoinette crops pastlife regressions approximately six ten times limited one lifetime look history surmise avoid obvious mistakes recorded progress made internalize idea learn history doomed repeat cleverboots know statement attributed george santayana shows theyre well informed arent likely repeat mistakes past except always george armed insight brevity human existence dead provides would probably agree history inescapable doomed repeat regardless learn mankinds errant peregrination along course two obstacles genuine progress first hardwired repeat behaviors second history rubbish would nice think species come rely brain power physical prowess living proof proof inertia trumps attributes could innovate collective way situation cant history primarily glorification murderers told liars idiots learn past studying history much like learn 1963 chateau dyquem 1er cru superieur bordeaux studying chip vinegar even history could relied upon wouldnt change human desire goddamn things things worked stoatish protoancestor morganucodon watsoni 225 million years ago worked siamopithecus back day terms dnaswapping purpose organic life behaviors still work humans today ah morganucodon watsoni couldnt fly say although volaticotherium antiquus could glide pretty handily 150 million years ago modern man types made progress pother fossil record demonstrates genus homo always go cropping africa first toddling asia points north minute got hang ambulating back legs started walking figured riding wheel came along ill bet everybody scoffed ancestors dragging things around scoffed ancestors relying animal power scoffed steam anybody isnt scoffing internal combustion today taken back woodshed beaten soundly means getting changed desire specieswide scale absolutely constant simply mistake innovation transformation despite twenty thousand technological solutions best mousetrap remains cat makes difference hauling goods place place destroying ozone layer ruining landscape causing north atlantic current reverse got ta keep moving another example might desire live aboveground would make sense us dig instead building course would manhattan could two hundred stories deep central park could cover entire island would like popular science humans like live root line people prefer subterranean dwellings still considered weirdos ah didnt favor cave desirable address sure long slope living horizon bugs us continue pile massive edifices historical perspective 100 guaranteed collapse caves worth noting still around thousand years ago industrial revolution less impressive recent version brought us eiffel tower world war one huge numbers ablebodied men belligerent religioncrazed nitwits marched crusades leaving behind cleverer fellows dearth ready manpower im paraphrasing vast complex stretch history purposes although basic arc thing correct keep grain salt handy needed way turn crops portable food minimum human effort main innovation harnessing free energy wind water forth power forebears could turn grain flour terrific clip meant enormous amounts food energy could accumulated later use led revolution agriculture one could grind much grain one could grow science came play brilliant new growing techniques developed combined devious ways advances metallurgy warmaking number babies survived past first year paved way explosive growth urbanization nonagricultural trades industries 14th century people worried pollution mineral rights unions strikes miserable conditions cloth factories great cathedrals europe erected gosh sounds like 18th 19th centuries havent made progress really still operating sweatshops mines miserable anything dark ages although weve innovated transportation much use serfs distant countries grunt work weve revolutionized pollution better sense idea weve figured make thats poisonous people medieval europe eventually selfdestructed many parallels throughout history sort state today rise fall superstition building tearing secular religious states ask greeks ask romans ebb flow knowledge art innovation one could argue improvements technology advances human condition allowed us go maybe 200 million people earth time guy christ 65 billion people today tell trilobites example kicked much ass little expodite legs ran 15000 species inevitable end came dimetrodons critters ran show 30 million years dont see around fact ingenious humans consider trilobite ever figured build even simplest fourstroke rotary engine road extinction marks highly successful species terminus appears fossil record tough titty us thats none ought particularly upsetting unless take vast cycles creation destruction personally species come go merely another manifestation transfer energy force operating matter laymans terms w int mathbff cdot mathrmdmathbfs dont know find comforting hand believed easter bunny santa claus college cured millions people still believe magical fellows jesus yaweh mohammed today enormous number people believe mankind going sort head vaguely romanesque future flying cars charabanc tours venus beat entropy newage celebrity wedding tahiti never going happen however long somebody getting something right someone else killing running long succeeding one area dooming another study history want real tale human nonprogress artfully concealed every single teller tales since species first took latent memory specialization species never changed true never regardless guaranteed panfatal consequences however early 21st century time people require uplifting coda end depressing narrative ancient greeks required god descend heavens thwack somebody end plays provide uplifting coda real one mankind single talent others knack acceleration paleontologists go back forth adaptation let hominids especially ancestors take like blazes evolutionary ladder anybody ever menaced big dog lonely road knows correct answer opposable thumb upright stance large brain simple ability throw rock accuracy hitting sabretooth cat head rock hand might good enough hominids apparently though theyre extinct throw thing doesnt matter biggest fangs sharpest claws theres dent forehead brains leaking quarry still thirty feet away opposable thumb makes easier put wicked topspin rock walking upright frees hands hurling big brain lightning calculations get missile fingers enemy cranium every time part throw problem bands us could throw nobody advantage someone comes throwing stick allows even runty specimen hurl stone formidable power long distances someone else comes spear allows point thrown accuracy difference bruise sucking chest wound next gink develops bow arrow words miniature longdistance spear stuff going faster faster accelerating violence accelerating twenty thousand years later spear become icbm instead arrows launching airtoground missiles f22 raptor jet fighters faster faster accelerating repeating behavior far doesnt sound like good news good news even consequences actions come hurtling us say north atlantic current really reverse europe could ice age 200 years getting faster faster coming antidotes populations figured move fast weve gotten better insulating dwellings hell move stuff world including lifestyles religious endtimes fervor gripped united states looks like government may finally drop prodemocratic posture favor corporate fascism fast things occur new things rise take places expect another age enlightenment expect chastened mankind decades extremely shitty weather start taking environmentalism conservation seriously matter bad make things unlikely unsalutary effect volcanism precipitated permian extinction 95 species wiped kt extinction ended age large leathery nonmammal creatures imagining consequences unwillingness change somehow cause everything else change probably hubris things change regardless changes world subject mans accelerating influence said human grasp things extends lifetime historians trained extend grasp time heads filled nonsense made longdead bullshitters hardly matters greatgreatgreatgreat grandchildren look works scoff like everybody scoffed ages probably wont get upset jungles elephants polar bears arctic ice rhinos lowlying coastal communities sources potable water predictable winters rivers islands fish gone dont miss mastodons woolly rhinoceroses neanderthals able walk across land bridge china australia hell dont even miss ox carts faster things change remember shortsighted experience change makes us think things getting worse worser usual coin phrase fact things always getting worse unless youre mind theyre getting better case theyve always actuality things moving immense cycles comprehend let alone impact upon except create little turbulence end holocene epoch said miss elephants ben tripp author square nuts hack many mediums may reached credelearthlinknet 160 | 1,277 |
<p>Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>Several weeks ago, Israeli authorities arrested M, a pregnant woman, along with her three-year-old, Israeli-born son. The young family—sans the father, who had been deported several months before—was briefly detained then expelled from the country.</p>
<p>But don’t break out those Palestinian flags just yet. This was a family of migrant workers.</p>
<p>The father is Thai; the mother, Filipina. They both arrived in Israel, legally, on state-issued work visas. Here, they met and fell in love. And that’s how they became “illegal.”</p>
<p>The father lost his visa because of an Israeli policy that forbids romantic relationships between migrant workers (read: non-Jews). The mother lost her legal status due to the governmental policy that forces women to choose between their visa and their baby. M made the choice most women would—after she gave birth, she refused to send her infant to live with extended family in a faraway land. So she became “illegal”, along with her child.</p>
<p>About a week after M and her toddler were deported, the Israeli High Court struck the latter policy down (pointing out in its ruling that the policy was actually breaking the state’s own labor laws). While future families might be spared, the current expulsion that will see some 500 children kicked out of the country, along with their parents, has already begun. And, so far, there is no sign that the High Court ruling will be applied retroactively. (Given the state’s tendency to ignore left-leaning court decisions—including the 2007 order to reroute the separation barrier that has sliced the West Bank Palestinian village of Bilin into two—it’s unclear whether the policy will indeed be changed.)</p>
<p>And so the deportation continues—one family at a time—in the name of preserving a “Jewish and democratic” state.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>At first glance, migrant workers might seem unrelated to the Palestinian struggle. But migrant workers were introduced to Israel during the First Intifada to replace Palestinian day laborers from the Occupied Territories. While the siege on Gaza is often discussed as something that began suddenly in 2006, it is the most severe manifestation of a gradual closure that the Israelis started during the First Intifada. Despite the fact that the Palestinian resistance to the occupation was, by and large, nonviolent at the time, this gradual closure included restrictions on movement. In some cases, it prevented Palestinian laborers from reaching their jobs—low-paying jobs that Israelis didn’t want, jobs that are now held by migrant workers.</p>
<p>Having replaced those other “others”—Palestinians—foreign laborers and their children have become the new battleground for Israeli nationalism. Interior Minister Eli Yishai has called the kids “a demographic threat… liable to damage the state’s Jewish identity.” During his tenure as Finance Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu called Palestinian citizens of Israel a “demographic problem”. As Prime Minister, Netanyahu has extended this racist rhetoric to non-Jewish foreigners in general, lumping African asylum seekers and undocumented migrant workers into one group that poses “a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country.”</p>
<p>But nationalism cuts both ways. And those who oppose the deportation also tend to frame their arguments in patriotic terms.</p>
<p>Israeli Children is the most prominent grassroots movement that was formed in response to the planned deportation, which initially included 1200 children and was announced in the summer of 2009 (the same year Israel issued a record number of visas to bring new migrant workers). As the name suggests, its leaders and affiliated activists emphasized how quintessentially Israeli the kids facing deportation are.</p>
<p>Last May, a massive rally against the expulsion was held under a blue and white banner that read, “We don’t have another country.” A tweaking of the title of a beloved Israeli folk song, “I don’t have another country,” the event drew over 10,000 supporters.</p>
<p>But the movement against the deportation was a victim of its own success.</p>
<p>In August 2010, the Israeli cabinet voted on arbitrary criteria that would allow most school-aged children to be naturalized. In other words, these 700 kids were considered Israeli enough to stay. Forget about human rights for the little ones (and for the older ones who have already graduated from Israeli schools).</p>
<p>Now, as the deportation is being carried out, Israeli Children is struggling to bring media attention to the issue.</p>
<p>“When people are against the deportation, they always imagine a 10-year-old that speaks Hebrew and goes to the Israeli school system,” says Rotem Ilan, co-founder of Israeli Children. “When they are talking about a 3-year-old, they don’t see him in the same way…”</p>
<p>“When we talk about the younger children, we talk about basic human rights,” she adds, “[I can’t] say that a one year old is Israeli. And yet I don’t believe that these children should be in jail.”</p>
<p>The movement’s success and, now, its failure points to the issue facing the “Jewish and democratic” state—human rights, stripped down, pure and simple.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Amongst friends and colleagues, I have angrily referred to this deportation as the new nakba. Arabic for catastrophe, it refers to the dispossession that befell hundreds of thousands of Palestinians when Israel was established in 1948. As my friends and colleagues are keen to remind me, invoking the nakba for this current expulsion is a mistake, it deflates the power of the word.</p>
<p>But we need a word. Something must be a said about a state that brings non-Jewish migrant workers and, in denying their basic human right to love and make love, treats them as little more than machines. Something must be said about a state that, some 60 years ago, treated humans like objects to be moved outside of its newly forged borders and continues to do so today. Something must be said about a state that arrests and deports children whose only “crime” is being born to a non-Jewish mother.</p>
<p>MYA GUARNIERI am a freelance journalist and writer based in Tel Aviv. I am a regular contributor to Al Jazeera English. She can be reached at: myaguarnieri(at)gmail(dot)com</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
<p /> | true | 4 | tel aviv several weeks ago israeli authorities arrested pregnant woman along threeyearold israeliborn son young familysans father deported several months beforewas briefly detained expelled country dont break palestinian flags yet family migrant workers father thai mother filipina arrived israel legally stateissued work visas met fell love thats became illegal father lost visa israeli policy forbids romantic relationships migrant workers read nonjews mother lost legal status due governmental policy forces women choose visa baby made choice women wouldafter gave birth refused send infant live extended family faraway land became illegal along child week toddler deported israeli high court struck latter policy pointing ruling policy actually breaking states labor laws future families might spared current expulsion see 500 children kicked country along parents already begun far sign high court ruling applied retroactively given states tendency ignore leftleaning court decisionsincluding 2007 order reroute separation barrier sliced west bank palestinian village bilin twoits unclear whether policy indeed changed deportation continuesone family timein name preserving jewish democratic state first glance migrant workers might seem unrelated palestinian struggle migrant workers introduced israel first intifada replace palestinian day laborers occupied territories siege gaza often discussed something began suddenly 2006 severe manifestation gradual closure israelis started first intifada despite fact palestinian resistance occupation large nonviolent time gradual closure included restrictions movement cases prevented palestinian laborers reaching jobslowpaying jobs israelis didnt want jobs held migrant workers replaced otherspalestiniansforeign laborers children become new battleground israeli nationalism interior minister eli yishai called kids demographic threat liable damage states jewish identity tenure finance minister benjamin netanyahu called palestinian citizens israel demographic problem prime minister netanyahu extended racist rhetoric nonjewish foreigners general lumping african asylum seekers undocumented migrant workers one group poses concrete threat jewish democratic character country nationalism cuts ways oppose deportation also tend frame arguments patriotic terms israeli children prominent grassroots movement formed response planned deportation initially included 1200 children announced summer 2009 year israel issued record number visas bring new migrant workers name suggests leaders affiliated activists emphasized quintessentially israeli kids facing deportation last may massive rally expulsion held blue white banner read dont another country tweaking title beloved israeli folk song dont another country event drew 10000 supporters movement deportation victim success august 2010 israeli cabinet voted arbitrary criteria would allow schoolaged children naturalized words 700 kids considered israeli enough stay forget human rights little ones older ones already graduated israeli schools deportation carried israeli children struggling bring media attention issue people deportation always imagine 10yearold speaks hebrew goes israeli school system says rotem ilan cofounder israeli children talking 3yearold dont see way talk younger children talk basic human rights adds cant say one year old israeli yet dont believe children jail movements success failure points issue facing jewish democratic statehuman rights stripped pure simple amongst friends colleagues angrily referred deportation new nakba arabic catastrophe refers dispossession befell hundreds thousands palestinians israel established 1948 friends colleagues keen remind invoking nakba current expulsion mistake deflates power word need word something must said state brings nonjewish migrant workers denying basic human right love make love treats little machines something must said state 60 years ago treated humans like objects moved outside newly forged borders continues today something must said state arrests deports children whose crime born nonjewish mother mya guarnieri freelance journalist writer based tel aviv regular contributor al jazeera english reached myaguarnieriatgmaildotcom 160 | 553 |
<p>History may be written by the victors, as Winston Churchill is said to have observed, but the opening up of archives can threaten a nation every bit as much as the unearthing of mass graves.</p>
<p>That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the country’s 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.</p>
<p>The new 70-year disclosure rule is the government’s response to Israeli journalists who have been seeking through Israel’s courts to gain access to documents that should already be declassified, especially those concerning the 1948 war, which established Israel, and the 1956 Suez crisis.</p>
<p>The state’s chief archivist says many of the documents “are not fit for public viewing” and raise doubts about Israel’s “adherence to international law”, while the government warns that greater transparency will “damage foreign relations”.</p>
<p>Quite what such phrases mean was illustrated by the findings of a recent investigation by an Israeli newspaper. Haaretz revisited the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel seized not only the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also a significant corner of Syria known as the Golan Heights, which Israel still refuses to relinquish.</p>
<p>The consensus in Israel is that the country’s right to hold on to the Golan is even stronger than its right to the West Bank. According to polls, an overwhelming majority of Israelis refuse to concede their little bit of annexed Syria, even if doing so would secure peace with Damascus.</p>
<p>This intransigence is not surprising. For decades, Israelis have been taught a grand narrative in which, having repelled an attack by Syrian forces, Israel then magnanimously allowed the civilian population of the Golan to live under its rule. That, say Israelis, is why the inhabitants of four Druze villages are still present there. The rest chose to leave on the instructions of Damascus.</p>
<p>One influential journalist writing at the time even insinuated anti-Semitism on the part of the civilians who departed: “Everyone fled, to the last man, before the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] arrived, out of fear of the ‘savage conqueror’ … Fools, why did they have to flee?”</p>
<p>However, a very different picture emerges from Haaretz’s interviews with the participants. These insiders say that all but 6,000 of the Golan’s 130,000 civilians were either terrorised or physically forced out, some of them long after the fighting finished. An army document reveals a plan to clear the area of the Syrian population, with only the exception of the Golan Druze, so as not to upset relations with the loyal Druze community inside Israel.</p>
<p>The army’s post-war tasks included flushing out thousands of farmers hiding in caves and woods to send them over the new border. Homes were looted before the army set about destroying all traces of 200 villages so that there would be nowhere left for the former inhabitants to return to. The first Jewish settlers sent to till the fields recalled seeing the dispossessed owners watching from afar.</p>
<p>The Haaretz investigation offers an account of methodical and wholesale ethnic cleansing that sits uncomfortably not only with the traditional Israeli story of 1967 but with the Israeli public’s idea that their army is the “most moral in the world”. That may explain why several prominent, though unnamed, Israeli historians admitted to Haaretz that they had learnt of this “alternative narrative” but did nothing to investigate or publicise it.</p>
<p>What is so intriguing about the newspaper’s version of the Golan’s capture is the degree to which it echoes the revised accounts of the 1948 war that have been written by later generations of Israeli historians. Three decades ago – in a more complacent era – Israel made available less sensitive documents from that period.</p>
<p>The new material was explosive enough. It undermined Israel’s traditional narrative of 1948, in which the Palestinians were said to have left voluntarily on the orders of the Arab leaders and in the expectation that the combined Arab armies would snuff out the fledging Jewish state in a bloodbath.</p>
<p>Instead, the documents suggested that heavily armed Jewish forces had expelled and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before the Jewish state had even been declared and a single Arab soldier had entered Palestine.</p>
<p>One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the army’s intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Its existence explains the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 per cent of Palestinians in the war, followed by a military campaign to destroy hundreds of villages to ensure the refugees never returned.</p>
<p>Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of both these Israeli conquests. A deeper probe of the archives will almost certainly reveal in greater detail how and why these “cleansing” campaigns were carried out – which is precisely why Mr Netanyahu and others want the archives to remain locked.</p>
<p>But full disclosure of these myth-shattering documents may be the precondition for peace. Certainly, more of these revelations offer the best hope of shocking Israeli public opinion out of its self-righteous opposition to meaningful concessions, either to Syria or the Palestinians.</p>
<p>It is also a necessary first step in challenging Israel’s continuing attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, as has occurred in the last few weeks against the Bedouin in both the Jordan Valley and the Negev, where villages are being razed and families forced to leave again.</p>
<p>Genuine peacemakers should be demanding that the doors to the archives be thrown open immediately. The motives of those who wish to keep them locked should be clear to all.</p>
<p>JONATHAN COOK is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “ <a href="" type="internal">Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”</a> (Pluto Press) and “ <a href="" type="internal">Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair</a>” (Zed Books). His website is <a href="http://www.jkcook.net" type="external">www.jkcook.net</a>.</p> | true | 4 | history may written victors winston churchill said observed opening archives threaten nation every bit much unearthing mass graves danger explains decision quietly taken last month benjamin netanyahu israeli prime minister extend additional 20 years countrys 50year rule release sensitive documents new 70year disclosure rule governments response israeli journalists seeking israels courts gain access documents already declassified especially concerning 1948 war established israel 1956 suez crisis states chief archivist says many documents fit public viewing raise doubts israels adherence international law government warns greater transparency damage foreign relations quite phrases mean illustrated findings recent investigation israeli newspaper haaretz revisited six day war 1967 israel seized palestinian territories west bank gaza also significant corner syria known golan heights israel still refuses relinquish consensus israel countrys right hold golan even stronger right west bank according polls overwhelming majority israelis refuse concede little bit annexed syria even would secure peace damascus intransigence surprising decades israelis taught grand narrative repelled attack syrian forces israel magnanimously allowed civilian population golan live rule say israelis inhabitants four druze villages still present rest chose leave instructions damascus one influential journalist writing time even insinuated antisemitism part civilians departed everyone fled last man idf israel defence forces arrived fear savage conqueror fools flee however different picture emerges haaretzs interviews participants insiders say 6000 golans 130000 civilians either terrorised physically forced long fighting finished army document reveals plan clear area syrian population exception golan druze upset relations loyal druze community inside israel armys postwar tasks included flushing thousands farmers hiding caves woods send new border homes looted army set destroying traces 200 villages would nowhere left former inhabitants return first jewish settlers sent till fields recalled seeing dispossessed owners watching afar haaretz investigation offers account methodical wholesale ethnic cleansing sits uncomfortably traditional israeli story 1967 israeli publics idea army moral world may explain several prominent though unnamed israeli historians admitted haaretz learnt alternative narrative nothing investigate publicise intriguing newspapers version golans capture degree echoes revised accounts 1948 war written later generations israeli historians three decades ago complacent era israel made available less sensitive documents period new material explosive enough undermined israels traditional narrative 1948 palestinians said left voluntarily orders arab leaders expectation combined arab armies would snuff fledging jewish state bloodbath instead documents suggested heavily armed jewish forces expelled dispossessed hundreds thousands palestinians jewish state even declared single arab soldier entered palestine one document particular plan dalet demonstrated armys intention expel palestinians homeland existence explains ethnic cleansing 80 per cent palestinians war followed military campaign destroy hundreds villages ensure refugees never returned ethnic cleansing common theme israeli conquests deeper probe archives almost certainly reveal greater detail cleansing campaigns carried precisely mr netanyahu others want archives remain locked full disclosure mythshattering documents may precondition peace certainly revelations offer best hope shocking israeli public opinion selfrighteous opposition meaningful concessions either syria palestinians also necessary first step challenging israels continuing attempts ethnically cleanse palestinians occurred last weeks bedouin jordan valley negev villages razed families forced leave genuine peacemakers demanding doors archives thrown open immediately motives wish keep locked clear jonathan cook writer journalist based nazareth israel latest books israel clash civilisations iraq iran plan remake middle east pluto press disappearing palestine israels experiments human despair zed books website wwwjkcooknet | 536 |
<p>There are sections in Selma that I treasure. They deal with strategy and the tactics involved in the struggle to secure the vote for black citizens that ultimately resulted in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.</p>
<p>Scenes with Martin Luther King Jr (strongly played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0654648/" type="external">David Oyelowo</a>) and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) aides-de-camp evaluating whether Selma is an advantageous staging ground for the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement; scenes about negotiating the hard feelings with the local Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which isn’t happy to see King&#160;sweep in and take over their turf; scenes about managing the surprise appearance in Selma of King’s severest intra-movement critic, Malcolm&#160;X; scenes about King’s contentious attempts to persuade Lyndon Johnson to take swift action on voting rights legislation.</p>
<p>I wish such scenes had been twice as detailed and twice as long. I want to see intelligent political activism modeled in films, old and new. Popular films so often provide us with representations of what we lack in our culture — that’s what makes them popular. And Selma is doing&#160; <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=selma.htm" type="external">very brisk business</a> in American theaters.</p>
<p>One of the best scenes in Selma features King doing a vivid postmortem on a largely failed anti-segregation protest campaign he helped lead in Albany, GA, in order to make sure the same mistakes are not made in Selma, AL. One of the big errors? Tactics — lots of marches, innumerable arrests — but no goal-reaching strategy, just the amorphous aim of desegregating the city through protests on many fronts. (This is a disputed interpretation of the <a href="http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_albany_movement/" type="external">Albany Movement</a>, by the way, though King’s assessment of it in the film reflects his assessment in his autobiography.)</p>
<p>I realize that most people aren’t going to see Selma, or any mainstream film, as a tutorial. This is too bad, because commercial cinema has served tutorial purposes from its beginnings. We don’t just look at formally designated “educational films” to consider how to think about things, and how to do things. Using film to figure out how to be an effective activist is an excellent idea.</p>
<p>It is precisely because we are so far from the levels of political activism of an era like the 1960s — when educative and radicalizing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Cinema" type="external">Third Cinema</a> aided&#160;revolutionary struggles around the world — that we need to gobble up every cinematic crumb we can get and then demand more. We need political film groups just as we need political reading groups.</p>
<p>So let’s say we’re starting with Selma.</p>
<p>Selma is clearly intended to resonate with the current moment, in particular the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Even without the closing credits song “Glory” — which ties explicitly what happened in Selma to what happened in Ferguson — the film’s immediate relevance would be recognizable.</p>
<p>Some critics have marveled at the almost uncanny synchronicity of the film’s timing, and even director <a href="http://www.avaduvernay.com/" type="external">Ava DuVernay</a> has acknowledged the shock of seeing variations on scenes from the movie replayed in the streets today. But even if the timing of Selma was fortuitous, its consciousness-raising aim is intentional and explicit.</p>
<p>The shrewd decision to structure the film around securing a vital piece of legislation seems pretty clearly borrowed by screenwriter Paul Wells (and, though uncredited, DuVernay) from Tony Kushner’s script for Lincoln. I loved big chunks of Lincoln too, for its unusual interest in the nitty-gritty difficulties of politics, the factionalism, the infighting, the horse-trading, the ugly compromises, the absolute impurity of it.</p>
<p>The two films arguably share some of the same flaws, such as a conventionalized “prestige film” approach to historical subject matter that preserves raw, bloody events in amber with handsome, stately production values. They also showcase their “cast of thousands” in ways that makes a diverting game out of naming all the famous performers that turn up in sometimes-unlikely roles.</p>
<p>With Selma, it’s a constant series of “Oh look!” recognitions: Oh look! It’s Tim Roth as George Wallace .&#160;.&#160;. Tom Wilkinson as Lyndon Johnson .&#160;.&#160;. Dylan Baker as J. Edgar Hoover .&#160;.&#160;. Common as civil rights strategist and organizer James Bevel .&#160;.&#160;. Oprah Winfrey as a downtrodden Alabama woman radicalized by the demeaning voting process under Jim Crow .&#160;.&#160;. Giovanni Ribisi .&#160;.&#160;. Cuba Gooding Jr .&#160;.&#160;. Martin Sheen .&#160;.&#160;. Stephen Root&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.</p>
<p>But never mind. Let’s focus on the benefits of films dealing with topical politics — which are rare in American cinema at any time — becoming popular at a time when we need huge numbers of people to get politicized, and fast.</p>
<p>Selma puts a laudable emphasis on a very practical problem in modern political activism: the absolute necessity of gaining media attention favorable to your cause, and the complexities of trying to engineer in advance how any given action will be framed. Obviously, sufficient media attention of the right kind can put pressure on law enforcement and the local, state, and federal government. But getting that favorable attention is a tricky rhetorical problem with new wrinkles in every campaign.</p>
<p>The film shows&#160;King possessing a keen awareness of these complexities, and the sheer risk and effort involved in working them out in extremely hostile circumstances. He&#160;is portrayed as a man acutely conscious that he has taken the leading role in a drama that he himself is staging — and must keep on staging — in order to struggle for civil rights.</p>
<p>The opening scene of the film might seem an odd one if you miss the way it sets up what follows: King is shown fretting over the tie he’s going to wear to&#160;the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. It’s an ascot, and he’s wary of appearing ostentatious with his largely impoverished Southern black community back home.</p>
<p>There’s a key scene later — my favorite scene — when King explains that the success of the Civil Rights Movement depends on generating “drama” for the public, the media, the government. The anti-segregation campaign in Albany, GA is regarded by King as a relative failure because of the absence of an intelligent strategy and the failure to achieve concrete goals — largely because Sheriff Laurie Pritchett treats the protesters humanely, unlike the brutish Sheriff Bull Connor of Birmingham, AL.</p>
<p>“Is your sheriff Bull Connor, or is he Laurie Pritchett?” asks King, and upon hearing that Sheriff Jim Clarke is in the mold of Bull Connor, he confirms that Selma is the proper stage.</p>
<p>“Drama” in these terms involves avowing nonviolent protest while deliberately provoking the most shocking violence from those more than inclined to provide it. It involves&#160;making manifest the latent coercion of the Jim Crow system. Drama is heads cracked open by nightsticks, nice old ladies shoved to the ground, elderly gents beaten without mercy, screaming girls chased down by mounted police, young men shot down by the police in cold blood.</p>
<p>And then the funeral oration over the dead, invaluable for scourging the consciences of different groups all over the nation — the government, the clergy, quiescent members of the black community, and the majority of the white population witnessing these horrors through the media.</p>
<p>The psychological toll exacted on King for pursuing this strategy is addressed at some length. When the film starts, King is presented as already embedded in his central role, rarely unaware of his own performance before multiple audiences at any given time.</p>
<p>He and his aides are aware they’re constantly being monitored by the FBI, for example, and joke about it (we in the audience are alerted to it when the FBI logo appears on the screen, along with the date and time of the photographed, bugged, or wiretapped event taking place).</p>
<p>But King’s wife, Coretta&#160;Scott King, is portrayed as offering a pained resistance to the bitter theatrics of the movement. She doesn’t confer with him over the uncomfortable symbolism of the tie, for example, but simply helps him put it on and reassures him that he’ll “look distinguished” — displaying traditional wifely behavior that suggests her persistent attempts to secure a more regular domestic life for the family, safely removed from the movement.</p>
<p>The “tie scene” ends with King filling an awkward silence by describing a tranquil future, house and all, that they both know they’ll never have. Later, Scott King&#160;will protest that their children “don’t have what they ought to” because of his concern with “how it might look.” As Scott King, Carmen Ejogo hovers tentatively at the fringe of the action for most of the film, looking fragile and beautiful, expressing tremulous doubts about ever feeling “ready” for the challenges of the movement.</p>
<p>Though I assume Wells and DuVernay have done thorough research and know more about her than I do, this seems so at odds with the real-life Scott King&#160;that&#160;I was baffled by their choice to present her this way. This portrayal seems to me a far more controversial choice than the portrayal of LBJ as intensely resistant to King’s push for the Voting Rights Act, which has sparked so much <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-movie-selma-has-a-glaring-historical-inaccuracy/2014/12/26/70ad3ea2-8aa4-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html" type="external">high-profile</a> <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/what-selma-gets-wrong-113743.html#.VMOxYmTF8Vl" type="external">criticism</a>.</p>
<p>As Scott King&#160;biographer Barbara Reynolds <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/19/the-biggest-problem-with-selma-has-nothing-to-do-with-lbj-or-the-oscars/" type="external">argues</a> in the Washington Post, she&#160;was an activist before she ever met her husband, worked valiantly side-by-side with him during his life, and continued civil rights work long after his death. But here Scott King is&#160;perilously close to the matronly figure we’ve seen in so many fiction films, fretting from the sidelines about her heroic husband’s dangerous endeavors because they imperil domestic happiness and prosperity.</p>
<p>In Selma, Scott King&#160;seems so removed from the main work of the movement that it’s a slight shock when she’s the one meeting with Malcolm X after his arrival in Selma. Who would send this hothouse flower to confront the man who scorned King as an Uncle Tom, and who’s so feared in America that he can offer himself up as the nightmarish alternative to King (in the imaginations of white politicians)?</p>
<p>Though regrettable in most ways, Scott King’s&#160;portrayal&#160;makes sense in terms of exploring the implications and complications of the “drama” of the movement. She&#160;is depicted&#160;as the guardian of their private, “normal” life, up against the forces of the FBI as they aggressively monitor every aspect of King’s existence, with a view to curtailing or even destroying his ability to function on behalf of the movement.</p>
<p>Her strongest scene is the one in which she plays the FBI tapes sent to her that purportedly includes the sounds of his sexual encounter with one of his girlfriends. He’s reduced to stammering, “It’s not me,” while she stands over him and scornfully replies, “I know — I know what you sound like.” But the threat is clear: they will have no private life. Everything will be made part of the public drama.</p>
<p>The most deliberately dramatic part of the movie follows this scene, depicting events as if they had become to conform to theatrical structures that sweep King along with them: the “three act” attempts by the protesters to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge as part of an epic Selma-to-Montgomery march.</p>
<p>As an act of penance for the “drama” he’s brought on his family, King stays home from the first attempt to cross the bridge and misses the “Bloody Sunday” beatings and tear-gassings that electrify the nation. This dusty, sun-scorched sequence of terror is shot with tremendous visceral impact by cinematographer Bradford Young, and the audience views with trepidation each additional attempt to cross the bridge.</p>
<p>King’s participation in the second attempt, the ranks&#160;swelled by reinforcements of activists and clergy from across the country, ends in a mysterious stalemate when the amassed police force appears to clear the road for the protesters. But King hesitates, prays, and turns back. Does he suspect it’s a trap, or can he no longer summon up the will to “go on with the show?”</p>
<p>The third attempt succeeds, bolstered by national media coverage and another influx of new protesters, including a planeload of Hollywood stars flown in by singer-actor-activist Harry Belafonte. It’s the ultimate security, marching in the company of celebrities, lives that truly matter in America! “Daaaaay-O!” sings one of the SCLC leaders when they hear the news, both in tribute and mockery.</p>
<p>At this point the film dissolves into a montage of the marchers, blending into black-and-white shots of the real-life marchers, and then to newspaper headlines verifying the success of the campaign. It has an “and the rest is history” quality that is conventional yet striking if viewed as King’s full transformation from man staging drama, to man absorbed and overwhelmed by drama, to “great man” of American myth.</p>
<p>But it’s a bit disturbing as well. Ending on the triumph of the voting rights campaign in Selma might be experienced as soothing closure, with the reaction, “See? The system works. There’s LBJ announcing the Voting Rights Act. It just takes perseverance!” Even the haunting awareness throughout the film that King is only four years away from his assassination, even “Glory” playing over the closing credits, may not be enough to remind people of the crushing load of unfinished business that ought to land on our shoulders as the theater lights go up.</p>
<p>Certain scenes in the film are stronger than others in&#160;reminding us that this film ought to be a call for strategic, concerted action. One scene designed to be recalled is the jailhouse discussion between King and one of his fellow SCLC leaders on the economic underpinnings of black second-class citizenship in America. Referring to the successful Birmingham lunch-counter sit-ins, King laments, “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?”</p>
<p>That, though it’s still not as widely known as it should be, was King’s next and final fight: he was deeply involved in the struggle&#160; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign" type="external">for economic justice</a> when he was killed. This&#160;should be the subject of the next film about King, charting his last days of life and advocacy. Such a film’s lack of a triumphal ending would be its great strength, because it would so clearly pass the torch on to us.</p> | true | 4 | sections selma treasure deal strategy tactics involved struggle secure vote black citizens ultimately resulted voting rights act 1965 scenes martin luther king jr strongly played david oyelowo southern christian leadership conference sclc aidesdecamp evaluating whether selma advantageous staging ground next phase civil rights movement scenes negotiating hard feelings local student nonviolent coordinating committee sncc isnt happy see king160sweep take turf scenes managing surprise appearance selma kings severest intramovement critic malcolm160x scenes kings contentious attempts persuade lyndon johnson take swift action voting rights legislation wish scenes twice detailed twice long want see intelligent political activism modeled films old new popular films often provide us representations lack culture thats makes popular selma doing160 brisk business american theaters one best scenes selma features king vivid postmortem largely failed antisegregation protest campaign helped lead albany ga order make sure mistakes made selma al one big errors tactics lots marches innumerable arrests goalreaching strategy amorphous aim desegregating city protests many fronts disputed interpretation albany movement way though kings assessment film reflects assessment autobiography realize people arent going see selma mainstream film tutorial bad commercial cinema served tutorial purposes beginnings dont look formally designated educational films consider think things things using film figure effective activist excellent idea precisely far levels political activism era like 1960s educative radicalizing third cinema aided160revolutionary struggles around world need gobble every cinematic crumb get demand need political film groups need political reading groups lets say starting selma selma clearly intended resonate current moment particular rise black lives matter movement even without closing credits song glory ties explicitly happened selma happened ferguson films immediate relevance would recognizable critics marveled almost uncanny synchronicity films timing even director ava duvernay acknowledged shock seeing variations scenes movie replayed streets today even timing selma fortuitous consciousnessraising aim intentional explicit shrewd decision structure film around securing vital piece legislation seems pretty clearly borrowed screenwriter paul wells though uncredited duvernay tony kushners script lincoln loved big chunks lincoln unusual interest nittygritty difficulties politics factionalism infighting horsetrading ugly compromises absolute impurity two films arguably share flaws conventionalized prestige film approach historical subject matter preserves raw bloody events amber handsome stately production values also showcase cast thousands ways makes diverting game naming famous performers turn sometimesunlikely roles selma constant series oh look recognitions oh look tim roth george wallace 160160 tom wilkinson lyndon johnson 160160 dylan baker j edgar hoover 160160 common civil rights strategist organizer james bevel 160160 oprah winfrey downtrodden alabama woman radicalized demeaning voting process jim crow 160160 giovanni ribisi 160160 cuba gooding jr 160160 martin sheen 160160 stephen root160160160 never mind lets focus benefits films dealing topical politics rare american cinema time becoming popular time need huge numbers people get politicized fast selma puts laudable emphasis practical problem modern political activism absolute necessity gaining media attention favorable cause complexities trying engineer advance given action framed obviously sufficient media attention right kind put pressure law enforcement local state federal government getting favorable attention tricky rhetorical problem new wrinkles every campaign film shows160king possessing keen awareness complexities sheer risk effort involved working extremely hostile circumstances he160is portrayed man acutely conscious taken leading role drama staging must keep staging order struggle civil rights opening scene film might seem odd one miss way sets follows king shown fretting tie hes going wear to160the nobel peace prize ceremony oslo ascot hes wary appearing ostentatious largely impoverished southern black community back home theres key scene later favorite scene king explains success civil rights movement depends generating drama public media government antisegregation campaign albany ga regarded king relative failure absence intelligent strategy failure achieve concrete goals largely sheriff laurie pritchett treats protesters humanely unlike brutish sheriff bull connor birmingham al sheriff bull connor laurie pritchett asks king upon hearing sheriff jim clarke mold bull connor confirms selma proper stage drama terms involves avowing nonviolent protest deliberately provoking shocking violence inclined provide involves160making manifest latent coercion jim crow system drama heads cracked open nightsticks nice old ladies shoved ground elderly gents beaten without mercy screaming girls chased mounted police young men shot police cold blood funeral oration dead invaluable scourging consciences different groups nation government clergy quiescent members black community majority white population witnessing horrors media psychological toll exacted king pursuing strategy addressed length film starts king presented already embedded central role rarely unaware performance multiple audiences given time aides aware theyre constantly monitored fbi example joke audience alerted fbi logo appears screen along date time photographed bugged wiretapped event taking place kings wife coretta160scott king portrayed offering pained resistance bitter theatrics movement doesnt confer uncomfortable symbolism tie example simply helps put reassures hell look distinguished displaying traditional wifely behavior suggests persistent attempts secure regular domestic life family safely removed movement tie scene ends king filling awkward silence describing tranquil future house know theyll never later scott king160will protest children dont ought concern might look scott king carmen ejogo hovers tentatively fringe action film looking fragile beautiful expressing tremulous doubts ever feeling ready challenges movement though assume wells duvernay done thorough research know seems odds reallife scott king160that160i baffled choice present way portrayal seems far controversial choice portrayal lbj intensely resistant kings push voting rights act sparked much highprofile criticism scott king160biographer barbara reynolds argues washington post she160was activist ever met husband worked valiantly sidebyside life continued civil rights work long death scott king is160perilously close matronly figure weve seen many fiction films fretting sidelines heroic husbands dangerous endeavors imperil domestic happiness prosperity selma scott king160seems removed main work movement slight shock shes one meeting malcolm x arrival selma would send hothouse flower confront man scorned king uncle tom whos feared america offer nightmarish alternative king imaginations white politicians though regrettable ways scott kings160portrayal160makes sense terms exploring implications complications drama movement she160is depicted160as guardian private normal life forces fbi aggressively monitor every aspect kings existence view curtailing even destroying ability function behalf movement strongest scene one plays fbi tapes sent purportedly includes sounds sexual encounter one girlfriends hes reduced stammering stands scornfully replies know know sound like threat clear private life everything made part public drama deliberately dramatic part movie follows scene depicting events become conform theatrical structures sweep king along three act attempts protesters cross edmund pettus bridge part epic selmatomontgomery march act penance drama hes brought family king stays home first attempt cross bridge misses bloody sunday beatings teargassings electrify nation dusty sunscorched sequence terror shot tremendous visceral impact cinematographer bradford young audience views trepidation additional attempt cross bridge kings participation second attempt ranks160swelled reinforcements activists clergy across country ends mysterious stalemate amassed police force appears clear road protesters king hesitates prays turns back suspect trap longer summon go show third attempt succeeds bolstered national media coverage another influx new protesters including planeload hollywood stars flown singeractoractivist harry belafonte ultimate security marching company celebrities lives truly matter america daaaaayo sings one sclc leaders hear news tribute mockery point film dissolves montage marchers blending blackandwhite shots reallife marchers newspaper headlines verifying success campaign rest history quality conventional yet striking viewed kings full transformation man staging drama man absorbed overwhelmed drama great man american myth bit disturbing well ending triumph voting rights campaign selma might experienced soothing closure reaction see system works theres lbj announcing voting rights act takes perseverance even haunting awareness throughout film king four years away assassination even glory playing closing credits may enough remind people crushing load unfinished business ought land shoulders theater lights go certain scenes film stronger others in160reminding us film ought call strategic concerted action one scene designed recalled jailhouse discussion king one fellow sclc leaders economic underpinnings black secondclass citizenship america referring successful birmingham lunchcounter sitins king laments good right sit lunch counter cant afford buy hamburger though still widely known kings next final fight deeply involved struggle160 economic justice killed this160should subject next film king charting last days life advocacy films lack triumphal ending would great strength would clearly pass torch us | 1,307 |
<p />
<p>By Andrew Bacevich</p>
<p>Introduction by Tom Engelhardt</p>
<p>We are now in an America where it’s a commonplace for our President, wearing a “ <a href="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3131557" type="external">jacket with ARMY</a> printed over his heart and ‘Commander in Chief’ printed on his right front,” to address vast assemblages of American troops on the virtues of bringing democracy to foreign lands at the point of a missile. As <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46581-2005Apr12.html" type="external">Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post</a> puts it: “Increasingly, the president uses speeches to troops to praise American ideals and send a signal to other nations the administration is targeting for democratic change.”</p>
<p>As it happens, the Bush administration has other, no less militarized ways of signaling “change” that are even blunter. We already have, for instance, <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/21/MNGJ65OS4J1.DTL&amp;type=printable" type="external">hundreds and hundreds of military bases</a>, large and small, spread around the world, but never enough, never deeply enough embedded in the former borderlands of the Soviet Union and <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050425&amp;s=klare" type="external">the energy heartlands</a> of our planet. The military budget soars; planning for high-tech weaponry for the near (and distant) future — like the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38272-2005Mar15?language=printer" type="external">Common Aero Vehicle</a>, a suborbital space capsule capable of delivering “conventional” munitions anywhere on the planet within 2 hours and due to come on line by 2010 — is the normal order of business in Pentagonized Washington. War, in fact, is increasingly the American way of life and, to a certain extent, it’s almost as if no one notices.</p>
<p>Well, not quite no one. Andrew J. Bacevich has written a book on militarism, American-style, of surpassing interest. Just published, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195173384/nationbooks08" type="external">The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War</a> would be critical reading no matter who wrote it. But coming from Bacevich, a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, former contributor to such magazines as the Weekly Standard and the National Review, and former Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, it has special resonance.</p>
<p>Bacevich, a self-professed conservative, has clearly been a man on a journey. He writes that he still situates himself “culturally on the right. And I continue to view the remedies proferred by mainstream liberalism with skepticism. But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering foreign policy, a disregard for the Constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values. On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as the professional conservatives who define the problem.”</p>
<p>I’ve long recommended Chalmers Johnson’s book on American militarism and military-basing policy, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805077979/nationbooks08" type="external">The Sorrows of Empire</a>. Bacevich’s The New American Militarism, which focuses on the ways Americans have become enthralled by — and found themselves in thrall to — military power and the idea of global military supremacy, should be placed right beside it in any library. Below, you’ll find the first of two long excerpts (slightly adapated) from the book, and posted with the kind permission of the author and of his publisher, Oxford University Press. This one offers Bacevitch’s thoughts on the ways in which, since the Vietnam War, our country has been militarized, a process to which, as he writes, the events of September 11 only added momentum. On Friday, I’ll post an excerpt on the second-generation neoconservatives and what they contributed to our new militarism.</p>
<p>Bacevich’s book carefully lays out and analyzes the various influences that have fed into the creation and sustenance of the new American militarism over the last decades. Bacevich is, for instance, fascinating on evangelical Christianity (and its less than war-like earlier history) as well as on the ways in which the military, after the Vietnam debacle, rebuilt itself as a genuine imperial force, separated from the American people and with an ethos “more akin to that of the French Foreign Legion” — a force prepared for war without end. But for that, and much else, you’ll have to turn to the book itself.</p>
<p />
<p>By Andrew J. Bacevich</p>
<p>At the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The skepticism about arms and armies that pervaded the American experiment from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamored with military might.</p>
<p>The ensuing affair had and continues to have a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue. Few in power have openly considered whether valuing military power for its own sake or cultivating permanent global military superiority might be at odds with American principles. Indeed, one striking aspect of America’s drift toward militarism has been the absence of dissent offered by any political figure of genuine stature.</p>
<p>For example, when Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, ran for the presidency in 2004, he framed his differences with George W. Bush’s national security policies in terms of tactics rather than first principles. Kerry did not question the wisdom of styling the U.S. response to the events of 9/11 as a generations-long “global war on terror.” It was not the prospect of open-ended war that drew Kerry’s ire. It was rather the fact that the war had been “extraordinarily mismanaged and ineptly prosecuted.” Kerry faulted Bush because, in his view, U.S. troops in Iraq lacked “the preparation and hardware they needed to fight as effectively as they could.” Bush was expecting too few soldiers to do too much with too little. Declaring that “keeping our military strong and keeping our troops as safe as they can be should be our highest priority,” Kerry promised if elected to fix these deficiencies. Americans could count on a President Kerry to expand the armed forces and to improve their ability to fight.</p>
<p>Yet on this score Kerry’s circumspection was entirely predictable. It was the candidate’s way of signaling that he was sound on defense and had no intention of departing from the prevailing national security consensus.</p>
<p>Under the terms of that consensus, mainstream politicians today take as a given that American military supremacy is an unqualified good, evidence of a larger American superiority. They see this armed might as the key to creating an international order that accommodates American values. One result of that consensus over the past quarter century has been to militarize U.S. policy and to encourage tendencies suggesting that American society itself is increasingly enamored with its self-image as the military power nonpareil</p>
<p>How Much Is Enough?</p>
<p>This new American militarism manifests itself in several different ways. It does so, first of all, in the scope, cost, and configuration of America’s present-day military establishment.</p>
<p>Through the first two centuries of U.S. history, political leaders in Washington gauged the size and capabilities of America’s armed services according to the security tasks immediately at hand. A grave and proximate threat to the nation’s well-being might require a large and powerful military establishment. In the absence of such a threat, policymakers scaled down that establishment accordingly. With the passing of crisis, the army raised up for the crisis went immediately out of existence. This had been the case in 1865, in 1918, and in 1945.</p>
<p>Since the end of the Cold War, having come to value military power for its own sake, the United States has abandoned this principle and is committed as a matter of policy to maintaining military capabilities far in excess of those of any would-be adversary or combination of adversaries. This commitment finds both a qualitative and quantitative expression, with the U.S. military establishment dwarfing that of even America’s closest ally. Thus, whereas the U.S. Navy maintains and operates a total of twelve large attack aircraft carriers, the once-vaunted [British] Royal Navy has none — indeed, in all the battle fleets of the world there is no ship even remotely comparable to a Nimitz-class carrier, weighing in at some ninety-seven thousand tons fully loaded, longer than three football fields, cruising at a speed above thirty knots, and powered by nuclear reactors that give it an essentially infinite radius of action. Today, the U.S. Marine Corps possesses more attack aircraft than does the entire Royal Air Force — and the United States has two other even larger “air forces,” one an integral part of the Navy and the other officially designated as the U.S. Air Force. Indeed, in terms of numbers of men and women in uniform, the U.S. Marine Corps is half again as large as the entire British Army–and the Pentagon has a second, even larger “army” actually called the U.S. Army — which in turn also operates its own “air force” of some five thousand aircraft.</p>
<p>All of these massive and redundant capabilities cost money. Notably, the present-day Pentagon budget, adjusted for inflation, is 12 percent larger than the average defense budget of the Cold War era. In 2002, American defense spending exceeded by a factor of twenty-five the combined defense budgets of the seven “rogue states” then comprising the roster of U.S. enemies.16 Indeed, by some calculations, the United States spends more on defense than all other nations in the world together. This is a circumstance without historical precedent.</p>
<p>Furthermore, in all likelihood, the gap in military spending between the United States and all other nations will expand further still in the years to come. Projected increases in the defense budget will boost Pentagon spending in real terms to a level higher than it was during the Reagan era. According to the Pentagon’s announced long-range plans, by 2009 its budget will exceed the Cold War average by 23 percent — despite the absence of anything remotely resembling a so-called peer competitor. However astonishing this fact might seem, it elicits little comment, either from political leaders or the press. It is simply taken for granted. The truth is that there no longer exists any meaningful context within which Americans might consider the question “How much is enough?”</p>
<p>On a day-to-day basis, what do these expensive forces exist to do? Simply put, for the Department of Defense and all of its constituent parts, defense per se figures as little more than an afterthought. The primary mission of America’s far-flung military establishment is global power projection, a reality tacitly understood in all quarters of American society. To suggest that the U.S. military has become the world’s police force may slightly overstate the case, but only slightly.</p>
<p>That well over a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States continues to maintain bases and military forces in several dozens of countries — by some counts well over a hundred in all — rouses minimal controversy, despite the fact that many of these countries are perfectly capable of providing for their own security needs. That even apart from fighting wars and pursuing terrorists, U.S. forces are constantly prowling around the globe — training, exercising, planning, and posturing — elicits no more notice (and in some cases less) from the average American than the presence of a cop on a city street corner. Even before the Pentagon officially assigned itself the mission of “shaping” the international environment, members of the political elite, liberals and conservatives alike, had reached a common understanding that scattering U.S. troops around the globe to restrain, inspire, influence, persuade, or cajole paid dividends. Whether any correlation exists between this vast panoply of forward-deployed forces on the one hand and antipathy to the United States abroad on the other has remained for the most part a taboo subject.</p>
<p>The Quest for Military Dominion</p>
<p>The indisputable fact of global U.S. military preeminence also affects the collective mindset of the officer corps. For the armed services, dominance constitutes a baseline or a point of departure from which to scale the heights of ever greater military capabilities. Indeed, the services have come to view outright supremacy as merely adequate and any hesitation in efforts to increase the margin of supremacy as evidence of falling behind.</p>
<p>Thus, according to one typical study of the U.S. Navy’s future, “sea supremacy beginning at our shore lines and extending outward to distant theaters is a necessary condition for the defense of the U.S.” Of course, the U.S. Navy already possesses unquestioned global preeminence; the real point of the study is to argue for the urgency of radical enhancements to that preeminence. The officer-authors of this study express confidence that given sufficient money the Navy can achieve ever greater supremacy, enabling the Navy of the future to enjoy “overwhelming precision firepower,” “pervasive surveillance,” and “dominant control of a maneuvering area, whether sea, undersea, land, air, space or cyberspace.” In this study and in virtually all others, political and strategic questions implicit in the proposition that supremacy in distant theaters forms a prerequisite of “defense” are left begging — indeed, are probably unrecognized. At times, this quest for military dominion takes on galactic proportions. Acknowledging that the United States enjoys “superiority in many aspects of space capability,” a senior defense official nonetheless complains that “we don’t have space dominance and we don’t have space supremacy.” Since outer space is “the ultimate high ground,” which the United States must control, he urges immediate action to correct this deficiency. When it comes to military power, mere superiority will not suffice.</p>
<p>The new American militarism also manifests itself through an increased propensity to use force, leading, in effect, to the normalization of war. There was a time in recent memory, most notably while the so-called Vietnam Syndrome infected the American body politic, when Republican and Democratic administrations alike viewed with real trepidation the prospect of sending U.S. troops into action abroad. Since the advent of the new Wilsonianism, however, self-restraint regarding the use of force has all but disappeared. During the entire Cold War era, from 1945 through 1988, large-scale U.S. military actions abroad totaled a scant six. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, they have become almost annual events. The brief period extending from 1989’s Operation Just Cause (the overthrow of Manuel Noriega) to 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) featured nine major military interventions. And that count does not include innumerable lesser actions such as Bill Clinton’s signature cruise missile attacks against obscure targets in obscure places, the almost daily bombing of Iraq throughout the late 1990s, or the quasi-combat missions that have seen GIs dispatched to Rwanda, Colombia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Altogether, the tempo of U.S. military interventionism has become nothing short of frenetic.</p>
<p>As this roster of incidents lengthened, Americans grew accustomed to — perhaps even comfortable with — reading in their morning newspapers the latest reports of U.S. soldiers responding to some crisis somewhere on the other side of the globe. As crisis became a seemingly permanent condition so too did war. The Bush administration has tacitly acknowledged as much in describing the global campaign against terror as a conflict likely to last decades and in promulgating — and in Iraq implementing — a doctrine of preventive war.</p>
<p>In former times American policymakers treated (or at least pretended to treat) the use of force as evidence that diplomacy had failed. In our own time they have concluded (in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney) that force “makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems.” Policymakers have increasingly come to see coercion as a sort of all-purpose tool. Among American war planners, the assumption has now taken root that whenever and wherever U.S. forces next engage in hostilities, it will be the result of the United States consciously choosing to launch a war. As President Bush has remarked, the big lesson of 9/11 was that “this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense.” The American public’s ready acceptance of the prospect of war without foreseeable end and of a policy that abandons even the pretense of the United States fighting defensively or viewing war as a last resort shows clearly how far the process of militarization has advanced.</p>
<p>The New Aesthetic of War</p>
<p>Reinforcing this heightened predilection for arms has been the appearance in recent years of a new aesthetic of war. This is the third indication of advancing militarism.</p>
<p>The old twentieth-century aesthetic of armed conflict as barbarism, brutality, ugliness, and sheer waste grew out of World War I, as depicted by writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, and Robert Graves. World War II, Korea, and Vietnam reaffirmed that aesthetic, in the latter case with films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket.</p>
<p>The intersection of art and war gave birth to two large truths. The first was that the modern battlefield was a slaughterhouse, and modern war an orgy of destruction that devoured guilty and innocent alike. The second, stemming from the first, was that military service was an inherently degrading experience and military institutions by their very nature repressive and inhumane. After 1914, only fascists dared to challenge these truths. Only fascists celebrated war and depicted armies as forward-looking — expressions of national unity and collective purpose that paved the way for utopia. To be a genuine progressive, liberal in instinct, enlightened in sensibility, was to reject such notions as preposterous.</p>
<p>But by the turn of the twenty-first century, a new image of war had emerged, if not fully displacing the old one at least serving as a counterweight. To many observers, events of the 1990s suggested that war’s very nature was undergoing a profound change. The era of mass armies, going back to the time of Napoleon, and of mechanized warfare, an offshoot of industrialization, was coming to an end. A new era of high-tech warfare, waged by highly skilled professionals equipped with “smart” weapons, had commenced. Describing the result inspired the creation of a new lexicon of military terms: war was becoming surgical, frictionless, postmodern, even abstract or virtual. It was “coercive diplomacy” — the object of the exercise no longer to kill but to persuade. By the end of the twentieth century, Michael Ignatieff of Harvard University concluded, war had become “a spectacle.” It had transformed itself into a kind of “spectator sport,” one offering “the added thrill that it is real for someone, but not, happily, for the spectator.” Even for the participants, fighting no longer implied the prospect of dying for some abstract cause, since the very notion of “sacrifice in battle had become implausible or ironic.”</p>
<p>Combat in the information age promised to overturn all of “the hoary dictums about the fog and friction” that had traditionally made warfare such a chancy proposition. American commanders, affirmed General Tommy Franks, could expect to enjoy “the kind of Olympian perspective that Homer had given his gods.”</p>
<p>In short, by the dawn of the twenty-first century the reigning postulates of technology-as-panacea had knocked away much of the accumulated blood-rust sullying war’s reputation. Thus reimagined — and amidst widespread assurances that the United States could be expected to retain a monopoly on this new way of war — armed conflict regained an aesthetic respectability, even palatability, that the literary and artistic interpreters of twentieth-century military cataclysms were thought to have demolished once and for all. In the right circumstances, for the right cause, it now turned out, war could actually offer an attractive option–cost-effective, humane, even thrilling. Indeed, as the Anglo-American race to Baghdad conclusively demonstrated in the spring of 2003, in the eyes of many, war has once again become a grand pageant, performance art, or a perhaps temporary diversion from the ennui and boring routine of everyday life. As one observer noted with approval, “public enthusiasm for the whiz-bang technology of the U.S. military” had become “almost boyish.” Reinforcing this enthusiasm was the expectation that the great majority of Americans could count on being able to enjoy this new type of war from a safe distance.</p>
<p>The Moral Superiority of the Soldier</p>
<p>This new aesthetic has contributed, in turn, to an appreciable boost in the status of military institutions and soldiers themselves, a fourth manifestation of the new American militarism.</p>
<p>Since the end of the Cold War, opinion polls surveying public attitudes toward national institutions have regularly ranked the armed services first. While confidence in the executive branch, the Congress, the media, and even organized religion is diminishing, confidence in the military continues to climb. Otherwise acutely wary of having their pockets picked, Americans count on men and women in uniform to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. Americans fearful that the rest of society may be teetering on the brink of moral collapse console themselves with the thought that the armed services remain a repository of traditional values and old fashioned virtue.</p>
<p>Confidence in the military has found further expression in a tendency to elevate the soldier to the status of national icon, the apotheosis of all that is great and good about contemporary America. The men and women of the armed services, gushed Newsweek in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, “looked like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. They were young, confident, and hardworking, and they went about their business with poise and élan.” A writer for Rolling Stone reported after a more recent and extended immersion in military life that “the Army was not the awful thing that my [anti-military] father had imagined”; it was instead “the sort of America he always pictured when he explained… his best hopes for the country.”</p>
<p>According to the old post-Vietnam-era political correctness, the armed services had been a refuge for louts and mediocrities who probably couldn’t make it in the real world. By the turn of the twenty-first century a different view had taken hold. Now the United States military was “a place where everyone tried their hardest. A place where everybody… looked out for each other. A place where people — intelligent, talented people — said honestly that money wasn’t what drove them. A place where people spoke openly about their feelings.” Soldiers, it turned out, were not only more virtuous than the rest of us, but also more sensitive and even happier. Contemplating the GIs advancing on Baghdad in March 2003, the classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson saw something more than soldiers in battle. He ascertained “transcendence at work.” According to Hanson, the armed services had “somehow distilled from the rest of us an elite cohort” in which virtues cherished by earlier generations of Americans continued to flourish.</p>
<p>Soldiers have tended to concur with this evaluation of their own moral superiority. In a 2003 survey of military personnel, “two-thirds [of those polled] said they think military members have higher moral standards than the nation they serve… Once in the military, many said, members are wrapped in a culture that values honor and morality.” Such attitudes leave even some senior officers more than a little uncomfortable. Noting with regret that “the armed forces are no longer representative of the people they serve,” retired admiral Stanley Arthur has expressed concern that “more and more, enlisted as well as officers are beginning to feel that they are special, better than the society they serve.” Such tendencies, concluded Arthur, are “not healthy in an armed force serving a democracy.”</p>
<p>In public life today, paying homage to those in uniform has become obligatory and the one unforgivable sin is to be found guilty of failing to “support the troops.” In the realm of partisan politics, the political Right has shown considerable skill in exploiting this dynamic, shamelessly pandering to the military itself and by extension to those members of the public laboring under the misconception, a residue from Vietnam, that the armed services are under siege from a rabidly anti-military Left.</p>
<p>In fact, the Democratic mainstream — if only to save itself from extinction — has long since purged itself of any dovish inclinations. “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about,” Madeleine Albright demanded of General Colin Powell, “if we can’t use it?” As Albright’s Question famously attests, when it comes to advocating the use of force, Democrats can be positively gung ho. Moreover, in comparison to their Republican counterparts, they are at least as deferential to military leaders and probably more reluctant to question claims of military expertise.</p>
<p>Even among Left-liberal activists, the reflexive anti-militarism of the 1960s has given way to a more nuanced view. Although hard-pressed to match self-aggrandizing conservative claims of being one with the troops, progressives have come to appreciate the potential for using the armed services to advance their own agenda. Do-gooders want to harness military power to their efforts to do good. Thus, the most persistent calls for U.S. intervention abroad to relieve the plight of the abused and persecuted come from the militant Left. In the present moment, writes Michael Ignatieff, “empire has become a precondition for democracy.” Ignatieff, a prominent human rights advocate, summons the United States to “use imperial power to strengthen respect for self-determination [and] to give states back to abused, oppressed people who deserve to rule them for themselves.”</p>
<p>The President as Warlord</p>
<p>Occasionally, albeit infrequently, the prospect of an upcoming military adventure still elicits opposition, even from a public grown accustomed to war. For example, during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, large-scale demonstrations against President Bush’s planned intervention filled the streets of many American cities. The prospect of the United States launching a preventive war without the sanction of the U.N. Security Council produced the largest outpouring of public protest that the country had seen since the Vietnam War. Yet the response of the political classes to this phenomenon was essentially to ignore it. No politician of national stature offered himself or herself as the movement’s champion. No would-be statesman nursing even the slightest prospects of winning high national office was willing to risk being tagged with not supporting those whom President Bush was ordering into harm’s way. When the Congress took up the matter, Democrats who denounced George W. Bush’s policies in every other respect dutifully authorized him to invade Iraq. For up-and-coming politicians, opposition to war had become something of a third rail: only the very brave or the very foolhardy dared to venture anywhere near it.</p>
<p>More recently still, this has culminated in George W. Bush styling himself as the nation’s first full-fledged warrior-president. The staging of Bush’s victory lap shortly after the conquest of Baghdad in the spring of 2003 — the dramatic landing on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with the president decked out in the full regalia of a naval aviator emerging from the cockpit to bask in the adulation of the crew — was lifted directly from the triumphant final scenes of the movie Top Gun, with the boyish George Bush standing in for the boyish Tom Cruise. For this nationally televised moment, Bush was not simply mingling with the troops; he had merged his identity with their own and made himself one of them — the president as warlord. In short order, the marketplace ratified this effort; a toy manufacturer offered for $39.99 a Bush look-alike military action figure advertised as “Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush — U.S. President and Naval Aviator.”</p>
<p>Thus has the condition that worried C. Wright Mills in 1956 come to pass in our own day. “For the first time in the nation’s history,” Mills wrote, “men in authority are talking about an ‘emergency’ without a foreseeable end.” While in earlier times Americans had viewed history as “a peaceful continuum interrupted by war,” today planning, preparing, and waging war has become “the normal state and seemingly permanent condition of the United States.” And “the only accepted ‘plan’ for peace is the loaded pistol.”</p>
<p>Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, he has a doctorate in history from Princeton and was a Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is the author of several books, including the just published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195173384/nationbooks08" type="external">The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 2005 Andrew J. Bacevich</p>
<p>The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War, copyright © 2005 by Andrew J. Bacevich. Used by permission of the author and Oxford University Press, Inc.</p>
<p>This piece first appeared at <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">Tomdispatch.com</a>.</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | andrew bacevich introduction tom engelhardt america commonplace president wearing jacket army printed heart commander chief printed right front address vast assemblages american troops virtues bringing democracy foreign lands point missile jim vandehei washington post puts increasingly president uses speeches troops praise american ideals send signal nations administration targeting democratic change happens bush administration less militarized ways signaling change even blunter already instance hundreds hundreds military bases large small spread around world never enough never deeply enough embedded former borderlands soviet union energy heartlands planet military budget soars planning hightech weaponry near distant future like common aero vehicle suborbital space capsule capable delivering conventional munitions anywhere planet within 2 hours due come line 2010 normal order business pentagonized washington war fact increasingly american way life certain extent almost one notices well quite one andrew j bacevich written book militarism americanstyle surpassing interest published new american militarism americans seduced war would critical reading matter wrote coming bacevich west point graduate vietnam veteran former contributor magazines weekly standard national review former bush fellow american academy berlin special resonance bacevich selfprofessed conservative clearly man journey writes still situates culturally right continue view remedies proferred mainstream liberalism skepticism disenchantment passes mainstream conservatism embodied present bush administration groupies absolute fiscal irresponsibility buccaneering foreign policy disregard constitution barest lip service response profound moral controversies qualify authentically conservative values score views come coincide critique long offered radical left mainstream professional liberals well professional conservatives define problem ive long recommended chalmers johnsons book american militarism militarybasing policy sorrows empire bacevichs new american militarism focuses ways americans become enthralled found thrall military power idea global military supremacy placed right beside library youll find first two long excerpts slightly adapated book posted kind permission author publisher oxford university press one offers bacevitchs thoughts ways since vietnam war country militarized process writes events september 11 added momentum friday ill post excerpt secondgeneration neoconservatives contributed new militarism bacevichs book carefully lays analyzes various influences fed creation sustenance new american militarism last decades bacevich instance fascinating evangelical christianity less warlike earlier history well ways military vietnam debacle rebuilt genuine imperial force separated american people ethos akin french foreign legion force prepared war without end much else youll turn book andrew j bacevich end cold war americans said yes military power skepticism arms armies pervaded american experiment founding vanished political leaders liberals conservatives alike became enamored military might ensuing affair continues heedless gatsbylike aspect passion pursued utter disregard consequences might ensue power openly considered whether valuing military power sake cultivating permanent global military superiority might odds american principles indeed one striking aspect americas drift toward militarism absence dissent offered political figure genuine stature example senator john kerry democrat massachusetts ran presidency 2004 framed differences george w bushs national security policies terms tactics rather first principles kerry question wisdom styling us response events 911 generationslong global war terror prospect openended war drew kerrys ire rather fact war extraordinarily mismanaged ineptly prosecuted kerry faulted bush view us troops iraq lacked preparation hardware needed fight effectively could bush expecting soldiers much little declaring keeping military strong keeping troops safe highest priority kerry promised elected fix deficiencies americans could count president kerry expand armed forces improve ability fight yet score kerrys circumspection entirely predictable candidates way signaling sound defense intention departing prevailing national security consensus terms consensus mainstream politicians today take given american military supremacy unqualified good evidence larger american superiority see armed might key creating international order accommodates american values one result consensus past quarter century militarize us policy encourage tendencies suggesting american society increasingly enamored selfimage military power nonpareil much enough new american militarism manifests several different ways first scope cost configuration americas presentday military establishment first two centuries us history political leaders washington gauged size capabilities americas armed services according security tasks immediately hand grave proximate threat nations wellbeing might require large powerful military establishment absence threat policymakers scaled establishment accordingly passing crisis army raised crisis went immediately existence case 1865 1918 1945 since end cold war come value military power sake united states abandoned principle committed matter policy maintaining military capabilities far excess wouldbe adversary combination adversaries commitment finds qualitative quantitative expression us military establishment dwarfing even americas closest ally thus whereas us navy maintains operates total twelve large attack aircraft carriers oncevaunted british royal navy none indeed battle fleets world ship even remotely comparable nimitzclass carrier weighing ninetyseven thousand tons fully loaded longer three football fields cruising speed thirty knots powered nuclear reactors give essentially infinite radius action today us marine corps possesses attack aircraft entire royal air force united states two even larger air forces one integral part navy officially designated us air force indeed terms numbers men women uniform us marine corps half large entire british armyand pentagon second even larger army actually called us army turn also operates air force five thousand aircraft massive redundant capabilities cost money notably presentday pentagon budget adjusted inflation 12 percent larger average defense budget cold war era 2002 american defense spending exceeded factor twentyfive combined defense budgets seven rogue states comprising roster us enemies16 indeed calculations united states spends defense nations world together circumstance without historical precedent furthermore likelihood gap military spending united states nations expand still years come projected increases defense budget boost pentagon spending real terms level higher reagan era according pentagons announced longrange plans 2009 budget exceed cold war average 23 percent despite absence anything remotely resembling socalled peer competitor however astonishing fact might seem elicits little comment either political leaders press simply taken granted truth longer exists meaningful context within americans might consider question much enough daytoday basis expensive forces exist simply put department defense constituent parts defense per se figures little afterthought primary mission americas farflung military establishment global power projection reality tacitly understood quarters american society suggest us military become worlds police force may slightly overstate case slightly well decade collapse soviet union united states continues maintain bases military forces several dozens countries counts well hundred rouses minimal controversy despite fact many countries perfectly capable providing security needs even apart fighting wars pursuing terrorists us forces constantly prowling around globe training exercising planning posturing elicits notice cases less average american presence cop city street corner even pentagon officially assigned mission shaping international environment members political elite liberals conservatives alike reached common understanding scattering us troops around globe restrain inspire influence persuade cajole paid dividends whether correlation exists vast panoply forwarddeployed forces one hand antipathy united states abroad remained part taboo subject quest military dominion indisputable fact global us military preeminence also affects collective mindset officer corps armed services dominance constitutes baseline point departure scale heights ever greater military capabilities indeed services come view outright supremacy merely adequate hesitation efforts increase margin supremacy evidence falling behind thus according one typical study us navys future sea supremacy beginning shore lines extending outward distant theaters necessary condition defense us course us navy already possesses unquestioned global preeminence real point study argue urgency radical enhancements preeminence officerauthors study express confidence given sufficient money navy achieve ever greater supremacy enabling navy future enjoy overwhelming precision firepower pervasive surveillance dominant control maneuvering area whether sea undersea land air space cyberspace study virtually others political strategic questions implicit proposition supremacy distant theaters forms prerequisite defense left begging indeed probably unrecognized times quest military dominion takes galactic proportions acknowledging united states enjoys superiority many aspects space capability senior defense official nonetheless complains dont space dominance dont space supremacy since outer space ultimate high ground united states must control urges immediate action correct deficiency comes military power mere superiority suffice new american militarism also manifests increased propensity use force leading effect normalization war time recent memory notably socalled vietnam syndrome infected american body politic republican democratic administrations alike viewed real trepidation prospect sending us troops action abroad since advent new wilsonianism however selfrestraint regarding use force disappeared entire cold war era 1945 1988 largescale us military actions abroad totaled scant six since fall berlin wall however become almost annual events brief period extending 1989s operation cause overthrow manuel noriega 2003s operation iraqi freedom overthrow saddam hussein featured nine major military interventions count include innumerable lesser actions bill clintons signature cruise missile attacks obscure targets obscure places almost daily bombing iraq throughout late 1990s quasicombat missions seen gis dispatched rwanda colombia east timor philippines altogether tempo us military interventionism become nothing short frenetic roster incidents lengthened americans grew accustomed perhaps even comfortable reading morning newspapers latest reports us soldiers responding crisis somewhere side globe crisis became seemingly permanent condition war bush administration tacitly acknowledged much describing global campaign terror conflict likely last decades promulgating iraq implementing doctrine preventive war former times american policymakers treated least pretended treat use force evidence diplomacy failed time concluded words vice president dick cheney force makes diplomacy effective going forward dealing problems policymakers increasingly come see coercion sort allpurpose tool among american war planners assumption taken root whenever wherever us forces next engage hostilities result united states consciously choosing launch war president bush remarked big lesson 911 country must go offense stay offense american publics ready acceptance prospect war without foreseeable end policy abandons even pretense united states fighting defensively viewing war last resort shows clearly far process militarization advanced new aesthetic war reinforcing heightened predilection arms appearance recent years new aesthetic war third indication advancing militarism old twentiethcentury aesthetic armed conflict barbarism brutality ugliness sheer waste grew world war depicted writers ernest hemingway erich maria remarque robert graves world war ii korea vietnam reaffirmed aesthetic latter case films like apocalypse platoon full metal jacket intersection art war gave birth two large truths first modern battlefield slaughterhouse modern war orgy destruction devoured guilty innocent alike second stemming first military service inherently degrading experience military institutions nature repressive inhumane 1914 fascists dared challenge truths fascists celebrated war depicted armies forwardlooking expressions national unity collective purpose paved way utopia genuine progressive liberal instinct enlightened sensibility reject notions preposterous turn twentyfirst century new image war emerged fully displacing old one least serving counterweight many observers events 1990s suggested wars nature undergoing profound change era mass armies going back time napoleon mechanized warfare offshoot industrialization coming end new era hightech warfare waged highly skilled professionals equipped smart weapons commenced describing result inspired creation new lexicon military terms war becoming surgical frictionless postmodern even abstract virtual coercive diplomacy object exercise longer kill persuade end twentieth century michael ignatieff harvard university concluded war become spectacle transformed kind spectator sport one offering added thrill real someone happily spectator even participants fighting longer implied prospect dying abstract cause since notion sacrifice battle become implausible ironic combat information age promised overturn hoary dictums fog friction traditionally made warfare chancy proposition american commanders affirmed general tommy franks could expect enjoy kind olympian perspective homer given gods short dawn twentyfirst century reigning postulates technologyaspanacea knocked away much accumulated bloodrust sullying wars reputation thus reimagined amidst widespread assurances united states could expected retain monopoly new way war armed conflict regained aesthetic respectability even palatability literary artistic interpreters twentiethcentury military cataclysms thought demolished right circumstances right cause turned war could actually offer attractive optioncosteffective humane even thrilling indeed angloamerican race baghdad conclusively demonstrated spring 2003 eyes many war become grand pageant performance art perhaps temporary diversion ennui boring routine everyday life one observer noted approval public enthusiasm whizbang technology us military become almost boyish reinforcing enthusiasm expectation great majority americans could count able enjoy new type war safe distance moral superiority soldier new aesthetic contributed turn appreciable boost status military institutions soldiers fourth manifestation new american militarism since end cold war opinion polls surveying public attitudes toward national institutions regularly ranked armed services first confidence executive branch congress media even organized religion diminishing confidence military continues climb otherwise acutely wary pockets picked americans count men women uniform right thing right way right reasons americans fearful rest society may teetering brink moral collapse console thought armed services remain repository traditional values old fashioned virtue confidence military found expression tendency elevate soldier status national icon apotheosis great good contemporary america men women armed services gushed newsweek aftermath operation desert storm looked like norman rockwell painting come life young confident hardworking went business poise élan writer rolling stone reported recent extended immersion military life army awful thing antimilitary father imagined instead sort america always pictured explained best hopes country according old postvietnamera political correctness armed services refuge louts mediocrities probably couldnt make real world turn twentyfirst century different view taken hold united states military place everyone tried hardest place everybody looked place people intelligent talented people said honestly money wasnt drove place people spoke openly feelings soldiers turned virtuous rest us also sensitive even happier contemplating gis advancing baghdad march 2003 classicist military historian victor davis hanson saw something soldiers battle ascertained transcendence work according hanson armed services somehow distilled rest us elite cohort virtues cherished earlier generations americans continued flourish soldiers tended concur evaluation moral superiority 2003 survey military personnel twothirds polled said think military members higher moral standards nation serve military many said members wrapped culture values honor morality attitudes leave even senior officers little uncomfortable noting regret armed forces longer representative people serve retired admiral stanley arthur expressed concern enlisted well officers beginning feel special better society serve tendencies concluded arthur healthy armed force serving democracy public life today paying homage uniform become obligatory one unforgivable sin found guilty failing support troops realm partisan politics political right shown considerable skill exploiting dynamic shamelessly pandering military extension members public laboring misconception residue vietnam armed services siege rabidly antimilitary left fact democratic mainstream save extinction long since purged dovish inclinations whats point superb military youre always talking madeleine albright demanded general colin powell cant use albrights question famously attests comes advocating use force democrats positively gung ho moreover comparison republican counterparts least deferential military leaders probably reluctant question claims military expertise even among leftliberal activists reflexive antimilitarism 1960s given way nuanced view although hardpressed match selfaggrandizing conservative claims one troops progressives come appreciate potential using armed services advance agenda dogooders want harness military power efforts good thus persistent calls us intervention abroad relieve plight abused persecuted come militant left present moment writes michael ignatieff empire become precondition democracy ignatieff prominent human rights advocate summons united states use imperial power strengthen respect selfdetermination give states back abused oppressed people deserve rule president warlord occasionally albeit infrequently prospect upcoming military adventure still elicits opposition even public grown accustomed war example runup us invasion iraq spring 2003 largescale demonstrations president bushs planned intervention filled streets many american cities prospect united states launching preventive war without sanction un security council produced largest outpouring public protest country seen since vietnam war yet response political classes phenomenon essentially ignore politician national stature offered movements champion wouldbe statesman nursing even slightest prospects winning high national office willing risk tagged supporting president bush ordering harms way congress took matter democrats denounced george w bushs policies every respect dutifully authorized invade iraq upandcoming politicians opposition war become something third rail brave foolhardy dared venture anywhere near recently still culminated george w bush styling nations first fullfledged warriorpresident staging bushs victory lap shortly conquest baghdad spring 2003 dramatic landing carrier uss abraham lincoln president decked full regalia naval aviator emerging cockpit bask adulation crew lifted directly triumphant final scenes movie top gun boyish george bush standing boyish tom cruise nationally televised moment bush simply mingling troops merged identity made one president warlord short order marketplace ratified effort toy manufacturer offered 3999 bush lookalike military action figure advertised elite force aviator george w bush us president naval aviator thus condition worried c wright mills 1956 come pass day first time nations history mills wrote men authority talking emergency without foreseeable end earlier times americans viewed history peaceful continuum interrupted war today planning preparing waging war become normal state seemingly permanent condition united states accepted plan peace loaded pistol andrew j bacevich professor international relations director center international relations boston university graduate west point vietnam veteran doctorate history princeton bush fellow american academy berlin author several books including published new american militarism americans seduced war copyright 2005 andrew j bacevich new american militarism americans seduced war copyright 2005 andrew j bacevich used permission author oxford university press inc piece first appeared tomdispatchcom | 2,691 |
<p>“The deepest emotion I have is my malice against the well-constituted as compared with the ill-constituted…Dwarfs, morons, idiots, imbeciles, hunchbacks, degenerates, perverts, paranoiacs, neurasthenics, every type of individual upon whom the world looked down, I loved…admired…and imitated.” – John Cowper Powys</p>
<p>“The mystery of mysteries is Personality, a living person…” – John Cowper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance</p>
<p>“I was unlike others of my generation in one thing. I am very religious, and deprived…of the simple-minded religion of my childhood, I had made a new religion, almost an infallible church of poetic tradition…Then gradually the attitude towards religion of almost everybody… got upon my nerves, for I broke out after some lecture or other with all the arrogance of raging youth. They attacked religion, I said, or some such words, and yet there must be a change of heart, and only religion could make it.” – W.B. Yeats quoted in Poetry &amp; Mysticism, by Colin Wilson</p>
<p>“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…” – M.L. King, Letter from Birmingham Jail</p>
<p>The task of staying out of neoliberal reality, out of mainstream bogus news and supposed fascination with stupid people glamorized by TV is problematic, especially in a provincial town like Utica. Here, corporate chain store sameness is dominant, and efforts to make something “indigenous” happen are indeed effort-ful, always dependent upon the downward trickle of capitalism, grants from someone’s largesse. One of my strategies is to read a lot …..For many weeks I have been making my way through the longest and overall strangest work of fiction I have ever read: The Glastonbury Romance by J.C. Powys. I picked it up following a reference to the writer made by a CounterPunch reader. (Many thanks!) Of all writers I’ve read, the relatively unknown Powys (1872-1963), a philosophical anarchist, puts forth convincingly a love for the human individual that is anarchist (also Dostoyevskian) in scope, not only presenting people sympathetically as workers oppressed under capitalism, but also as the real singular expressions of cosmic or spiritual purpose (my reading, of course!) – and he does so entertainingly! Glastonbury, a novel of 1120 pages set in early 20th century England, contains 50 regular characters and a host of smaller ones, some conventionally likeable or even admirable, though never unmixed, and many neither admirable nor likeable. Included in this panorama, astonishingly, is a cancer sufferer who appears in several scenes. In these scenes, the reader must acknowledge her “close up,” hear her moans, learn of her strategies for addressing her constant and irremediable pain, listen to the various characters expressing either sympathy or frustration in relation to her public presence, and uncomfortably wonder which we would be were the situation “real.”</p>
<p>This feature of his writing, focusing on the least admirable, most unacceptable and “ill-constituted” human beings tells me Powys understood the task set for him as artist by his own creative soul. That task was to defy his inner ‘class society’ of better thans and lesser thans and to include in his consciousness, as he does in his novel, that which is least acceptable to and despised by his autocratic ego, the soul itself as “other.”</p>
<p>At this moment, in our western civilization, as capitalism in its dying throes intensifies the suffering for all but the few at the top, something seems to be asked of our understanding of love that’s never before been asked, and you will not hear it asked today on any mainstream media, Hollywood movie, or by your friends on Facebook. Not only is “love” now understood to include the full diversity that exists on the earth, in terms of different races and cultures and species, in terms of minority groups in our own society, but it is also to include the diversity of individuals. This involves a little understood requirement that, as an individual, each one must take up the responsibility handed to her/him in the form of individual freedom, and must seek the full expression of his/her essential difference; otherwise there is no difference and no tolerance for difference, let alone love. This challenge to love across difference is formulated in the New Testament as “Love thine enemy.” For that which feels truly different – in oneself – threatens the ego structure that cannot tolerate other centers, other realities, other gods. It cannot tolerate difference in one’s own children, thus resulting in that issue common to psychotherapists’ offices, the pain of not having been seen by one’s parents. Modern parents fail to see their child in his/her otherness because the ego’s need for self-preservation demands there should be “no other gods before me.”</p>
<p>Such intolerance in the soul, routine by now in a civilization that has perfected individual freedom, makes class stratification necessary. It makes race difference, gender difference and differences in sexual orientation necessarily determinative in classifying one’s relative humanity. Soul-level intolerance makes it necessary to decide whom one can include in the human community that will be reasonably friendly to the ego and its defenses, and who must be left outside the palisade to feed the beasts. Somebody has to be sacrificed. Liberal ideals, liberal policies cannot abrogate intolerance if it cannot get at the intolerance enthroned in the soul and invisible to the positively self-regarding ego. And they cannot approach this rigidity in the soul when religiophobia is allowed to reign unchallenged for the religiophobe does not see that his/her adamant antipathy to religion, as well as superstitious lip service to being a “good Christian,” is a cover-up for fear of the difference – the enemy – within the deeps of ‘thine own soul.’</p>
<p>The “cosmic” or “evolutionary”demand that our individuality be expressed, testified to in the early 20th century by C.G. Jung and by the archetypal movement he engendered, as well as by prophetic writers and artists in many eras, though implicit in the anarchist vision as well as the development of consciousness in the West, has been eclipsed by capitalism’s preferred ethos of competitive individualism. The stories inculcated under the one reality of capitalist civilization promote sameness under the guise of commodified “difference.” Even though we “know” other stories can be told, have been told, that are more in keeping with nature’s balance and with human nature – that contain wisdom, beauty, resonance and meaning – to we who’ve been fully conditioned by our society’s harsh individualistic ethos, they seem not much more than whimsy. Only “crazies” like Powys and D.H. Lawrence, like Jesus and Thoreau, take such alternative stories seriously. This marginalization of the positive call to presence is further intensified by constant access to media and screens which prevent access to solitude. Thus the possibility that individuals will take up the task of finding (through art and artful living) their essential, unique, and thoroughly unacceptable expression is ever more unlikely.</p>
<p>The call to develop our singular characters brings out an aspect of anarchism that has been under-emphasized up until now. The central faith of anarchism, that individuals can cooperate and govern themselves, without need of top-down authority, rests upon an assumption that society consists of individuals. But as we are horrified to see, this is less and less the case; as the “first world” world advances, the human individual is increasingly erased; be all you can be an empty slogan to sell us a brand and join with the rest in forgetting all about the tedious, painful, lifelong quest of becoming human, a task not only arduous but completely without guarantee of success. Even artists, the “crazies” socially positioned to be our shamans, shirk the task in order to obtain the grant or the teaching position.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, our “getting” this demand that we become our individual characters is the revolutionary element needed to realize the ‘brotherhood of man’ religion teaches. It makes it possible for the modern man or woman, brainwashed by materialism and hampered by a shallow grasp of freedom’s meaning, to return to the old-fashioned concepts learned by human communities over time, learned in place, in committed relationships with community, family, plants and animals, hills, rocks and fields. The commitment to one’s own becoming, a task of imagination, means the best move is not to move, to stay where you are, in the fully impossible relationships in which one finds oneself, and use all that frustratingly obdurate given material to learn about and express more completely the difference each one is.</p>
<p>When one accepts these new terms for love, that is, that first must come a truly anarchist love for one’s own unacceptable difference (unity with oneself), then that difference must be expressed creatively and without ceasing or the unity is lost; the connectedness realized via the spiritual creative process is not guaranteed, but only brought into being by the practitioners of art as they practice their art. This duty ought to be a pleasurable one, a pleasure denied to those who must instead of creative work, work only to keep the beast of capitalism going.</p>
<p>Antithetical to love as such selfish pursuit of personal bliss may seem, it is the only way to an authentic “liberal” vision; taken to its true radical depth liberalism is anarchism, not staunch defense of group identities. Anarchy is anathema throughout modern history not because of the threat of bomb throwers but because espoused liberal ideals exist nervously and inauthentically. The root of liberal truth is anarchist truth, soul deep; at once a complete threat to the capitalist project, to the ego’s supremacy, and to the secret desire in every person to remain hidden and to never seriously rock the boat. Anarchism, truer to nature’s riotous variety, to its interconnectedness and interdependence, carries with it the duty, as well as the nature-given “right” to be free. Shorn of its true anarchist depth, liberalism can never be more than a puny corrective to capitalism’s project of limitless growth that defies the truth of interdependence, destroys relatedness, and fattens the fat at the expense of everyone else.</p>
<p>As the shyster says, “I’m not gonna lie to you;” this life of individuating is a blues life. The Blues, we know, are made from off the cross of suffering. This religious language is intense, but passion is an intensity. What we (white people) do not see is we have used our “freedom” (gained on the backs of others not free) to escape the social limitations on our freedom, as if through escaping these “chains” – traditional espousals to communities, places, spouses, children, parents, etc., we could escape death, or, as it happened, life. We should not have accepted the terms that made it acceptable to forsake the very conditions that make human life possible, which is life circumscribed in community, in places over time, bound by the bonds of affection. Having escaped life, our context is banality. Life is not banal, we make it so, we make it a death culture. Legitimate suffering makes a life culture, there is no other way. Religion at its true mythopoetic level, is means for inhabiting the human story of transformation, in sync with the transformations of nature, providing the “eyes” for seeing this kind of humanizing truth; without religion’s eyes our hearts are blind to it.</p> | true | 4 | deepest emotion malice wellconstituted compared illconstituteddwarfs morons idiots imbeciles hunchbacks degenerates perverts paranoiacs neurasthenics every type individual upon world looked lovedadmiredand imitated john cowper powys mystery mysteries personality living person john cowper powys glastonbury romance unlike others generation one thing religious deprivedof simpleminded religion childhood made new religion almost infallible church poetic traditionthen gradually attitude towards religion almost everybody got upon nerves broke lecture arrogance raging youth attacked religion said words yet must change heart religion could make wb yeats quoted poetry amp mysticism colin wilson real sense life interrelated men caught inescapable network mutuality tied single garment destiny whatever affects one directly affects indirectly never ought ought never ought ought ml king letter birmingham jail task staying neoliberal reality mainstream bogus news supposed fascination stupid people glamorized tv problematic especially provincial town like utica corporate chain store sameness dominant efforts make something indigenous happen indeed effortful always dependent upon downward trickle capitalism grants someones largesse one strategies read lot many weeks making way longest overall strangest work fiction ever read glastonbury romance jc powys picked following reference writer made counterpunch reader many thanks writers ive read relatively unknown powys 18721963 philosophical anarchist puts forth convincingly love human individual anarchist also dostoyevskian scope presenting people sympathetically workers oppressed capitalism also real singular expressions cosmic spiritual purpose reading course entertainingly glastonbury novel 1120 pages set early 20th century england contains 50 regular characters host smaller ones conventionally likeable even admirable though never unmixed many neither admirable likeable included panorama astonishingly cancer sufferer appears several scenes scenes reader must acknowledge close hear moans learn strategies addressing constant irremediable pain listen various characters expressing either sympathy frustration relation public presence uncomfortably wonder would situation real feature writing focusing least admirable unacceptable illconstituted human beings tells powys understood task set artist creative soul task defy inner class society better thans lesser thans include consciousness novel least acceptable despised autocratic ego soul moment western civilization capitalism dying throes intensifies suffering top something seems asked understanding love thats never asked hear asked today mainstream media hollywood movie friends facebook love understood include full diversity exists earth terms different races cultures species terms minority groups society also include diversity individuals involves little understood requirement individual one must take responsibility handed herhim form individual freedom must seek full expression hisher essential difference otherwise difference tolerance difference let alone love challenge love across difference formulated new testament love thine enemy feels truly different oneself threatens ego structure tolerate centers realities gods tolerate difference ones children thus resulting issue common psychotherapists offices pain seen ones parents modern parents fail see child hisher otherness egos need selfpreservation demands gods intolerance soul routine civilization perfected individual freedom makes class stratification necessary makes race difference gender difference differences sexual orientation necessarily determinative classifying ones relative humanity soullevel intolerance makes necessary decide one include human community reasonably friendly ego defenses must left outside palisade feed beasts somebody sacrificed liberal ideals liberal policies abrogate intolerance get intolerance enthroned soul invisible positively selfregarding ego approach rigidity soul religiophobia allowed reign unchallenged religiophobe see hisher adamant antipathy religion well superstitious lip service good christian coverup fear difference enemy within deeps thine soul cosmic evolutionarydemand individuality expressed testified early 20th century cg jung archetypal movement engendered well prophetic writers artists many eras though implicit anarchist vision well development consciousness west eclipsed capitalisms preferred ethos competitive individualism stories inculcated one reality capitalist civilization promote sameness guise commodified difference even though know stories told told keeping natures balance human nature contain wisdom beauty resonance meaning whove fully conditioned societys harsh individualistic ethos seem much whimsy crazies like powys dh lawrence like jesus thoreau take alternative stories seriously marginalization positive call presence intensified constant access media screens prevent access solitude thus possibility individuals take task finding art artful living essential unique thoroughly unacceptable expression ever unlikely call develop singular characters brings aspect anarchism underemphasized central faith anarchism individuals cooperate govern without need topdown authority rests upon assumption society consists individuals horrified see less less case first world world advances human individual increasingly erased empty slogan sell us brand join rest forgetting tedious painful lifelong quest becoming human task arduous completely without guarantee success even artists crazies socially positioned shamans shirk task order obtain grant teaching position paradoxically getting demand become individual characters revolutionary element needed realize brotherhood man religion teaches makes possible modern man woman brainwashed materialism hampered shallow grasp freedoms meaning return oldfashioned concepts learned human communities time learned place committed relationships community family plants animals hills rocks fields commitment ones becoming task imagination means best move move stay fully impossible relationships one finds oneself use frustratingly obdurate given material learn express completely difference one one accepts new terms love first must come truly anarchist love ones unacceptable difference unity oneself difference must expressed creatively without ceasing unity lost connectedness realized via spiritual creative process guaranteed brought practitioners art practice art duty ought pleasurable one pleasure denied must instead creative work work keep beast capitalism going antithetical love selfish pursuit personal bliss may seem way authentic liberal vision taken true radical depth liberalism anarchism staunch defense group identities anarchy anathema throughout modern history threat bomb throwers espoused liberal ideals exist nervously inauthentically root liberal truth anarchist truth soul deep complete threat capitalist project egos supremacy secret desire every person remain hidden never seriously rock boat anarchism truer natures riotous variety interconnectedness interdependence carries duty well naturegiven right free shorn true anarchist depth liberalism never puny corrective capitalisms project limitless growth defies truth interdependence destroys relatedness fattens fat expense everyone else shyster says im gon na lie life individuating blues life blues know made cross suffering religious language intense passion intensity white people see used freedom gained backs others free escape social limitations freedom escaping chains traditional espousals communities places spouses children parents etc could escape death happened life accepted terms made acceptable forsake conditions make human life possible life circumscribed community places time bound bonds affection escaped life context banality life banal make make death culture legitimate suffering makes life culture way religion true mythopoetic level means inhabiting human story transformation sync transformations nature providing eyes seeing kind humanizing truth without religions eyes hearts blind | 1,025 |
<p>In Santiago on September 11, 1973 I watched as Chilean air force jets flew overhead. Moments later I heard explosions and saw fireballs of smoke fill the sky as the presidential palace went up in flames. Salvador Allende, the elected Socialist president of Chile died in the palace.</p>
<p>As an American the death of General Augusto Pinochet brings back many memories of the military coup and the role played by my government in the violent overthrow of Allende. From the moment of his election in September, 1970 the Nixon administration mounted a covert campaign against him. Henry Kissinger, then Nixon’s National Security adviser, declared: “I don’t see why we need to stand idly by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” Weeks later the pro-constitutionalist head of the army, General Rene Schneider, was assassinated in a failed attempt to stop the inauguration of Allende.</p>
<p>For the next three years CIA-backed terrorist groups bombed and destroyed state railroads, power plants and key highway arteries to create chaos and stop the country from functioning. The goal was to “make the economy scream” as Nixon ordered. US corporations such as IT&amp;T also participated in the efforts to destabilize the country.</p>
<p>In the midst of this struggle for control of Chile, Allende insisted, almost stubbornly, on maintaining the country’s democratic institutions. He enjoyed immense popular support from below, even in the waning days of his government when the economy was in shambles and virtually everyone believed a confrontation was imminent. I’ll never forget the last major demonstration on September 4, 1973, when the Alameda, the major avenue of downtown Santiago, was packed with tens of thousands of marchers, all intent on passing by the presidential palace where Allende stood on a balcony waving to the crowd. This was no government-orchestrated demonstration in which people were trucked in from the barrios and countryside. These people came out of a deep sense of commitment, a belief that this was their government and that they would defend it to the end.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the coup over three thousand people perished, including two American friends of mine, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi. The United States knowing of these atrocities, rushed to support the military regime, reopening the spigot of economic aid that had been closed under Allende. When the relatives of Horman and Terrugi made determined inquires about their disappearances and deaths, the US embassy and the State Department stonewalled along with the new military junta. Four weeks after the coup, I fled across the Andes, returning to the United States to do what I could to denounce the crimes of Pinochet and my government.</p>
<p>I returned to Chile for the 1988 plebiscite that finally forced Pinochet out of office after seventeen long and brutal years. But for eight more years his dark hand hung over Chile as he continued in his role as the commander in chief of the army. Finally as a result of years of hard work by the international human rights movement, Pinochet was detained in London in October 1998 for crimes against humanity. Five hundred days later he was sent back to Chile, allegedly for health reasons. There the Chilean courts lead by Judge Juan Guzman squared off with the general’s right wing supporters and the military, stripping him of his immunity from prosecution as “Senator-for-Life,” a position he bestowed on himself when he retired from the army.</p>
<p>As the proceedings against Pinochet advanced, new reports of US complicity in the coup and the repression began to surface, particularly about the role of Kissinger. The Chilean courts tried to compel Kissinger to testify, but they received no cooperation from the US Justice Department. French courts also issued orders for the interrogation of Kissinger, making him realize that he like Pinochet did not enjoy international impunity from prosecution. Small wonder that Kissinger wrote an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, decrying the use of the principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’ by courts to bring human rights violators to justice.</p>
<p>In Chile President Michele Bachelet whose father died in prison under Pinochet has refused to grant the ex-dictator a state funeral. Only military bands will play at his interment. Eduardo Contreras, a Chilean human rights lawyer, declared, “Pinochet should be buried as a common criminal,” adding, “The dictator died on December 10, the International Day of Human Rights. It is as if humanity chose this special moment to weigh in with its final judgment, declaring ‘enough’ for the dictator.”</p>
<p>The burial of Pinochet comes at a moment when the current Bush administration is being scrutinized for its atrocities and crimes against humanity that are even more appalling than those of the former Chilean dictator. It is another irony of history that Pinochet died on Donald Rumsfeld’s last full day as Secretary of Defense. Like Pinochet and Kissinger, Rumsfeld may very well spend the rest of his life trying to escape the grasp of domestic and international courts. Eleven Iraqi prisoners held in Abu Ghraib and a Saudi detained in Guantanamo are filing criminal charges in German courts against Rumsfeld and other US civilian and military officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. And on last Friday as Rumsfeld was making a farewell speech to his cohorts at the Pentagon, attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a Washington D.C. federal court that Rumsfeld and three senior military officials should be held responsible for the torture of Iraqi and Afghani detainees.</p>
<p>The Pinochet affair has shaped a whole new generation of human rights activists and lawyers. They are determined to end the impunity of public officials, including that of the civilian and military leaders in the United States who engage in state terrorism and human rights abuses while violating international treaties like the Geneva Conventions.</p>
<p>ROGER BURBACH is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is co-author with Jim Tarbell of “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842774972/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire</a>,” His latest book is: “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842774352/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice.</a>”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | santiago september 11 1973 watched chilean air force jets flew overhead moments later heard explosions saw fireballs smoke fill sky presidential palace went flames salvador allende elected socialist president chile died palace american death general augusto pinochet brings back many memories military coup role played government violent overthrow allende moment election september 1970 nixon administration mounted covert campaign henry kissinger nixons national security adviser declared dont see need stand idly watch country go communist due irresponsibility people weeks later proconstitutionalist head army general rene schneider assassinated failed attempt stop inauguration allende next three years ciabacked terrorist groups bombed destroyed state railroads power plants key highway arteries create chaos stop country functioning goal make economy scream nixon ordered us corporations itampt also participated efforts destabilize country midst struggle control chile allende insisted almost stubbornly maintaining countrys democratic institutions enjoyed immense popular support even waning days government economy shambles virtually everyone believed confrontation imminent ill never forget last major demonstration september 4 1973 alameda major avenue downtown santiago packed tens thousands marchers intent passing presidential palace allende stood balcony waving crowd governmentorchestrated demonstration people trucked barrios countryside people came deep sense commitment belief government would defend end aftermath coup three thousand people perished including two american friends mine charles horman frank terrugi united states knowing atrocities rushed support military regime reopening spigot economic aid closed allende relatives horman terrugi made determined inquires disappearances deaths us embassy state department stonewalled along new military junta four weeks coup fled across andes returning united states could denounce crimes pinochet government returned chile 1988 plebiscite finally forced pinochet office seventeen long brutal years eight years dark hand hung chile continued role commander chief army finally result years hard work international human rights movement pinochet detained london october 1998 crimes humanity five hundred days later sent back chile allegedly health reasons chilean courts lead judge juan guzman squared generals right wing supporters military stripping immunity prosecution senatorforlife position bestowed retired army proceedings pinochet advanced new reports us complicity coup repression began surface particularly role kissinger chilean courts tried compel kissinger testify received cooperation us justice department french courts also issued orders interrogation kissinger making realize like pinochet enjoy international impunity prosecution small wonder kissinger wrote article foreign affairs magazine decrying use principle universal jurisdiction courts bring human rights violators justice chile president michele bachelet whose father died prison pinochet refused grant exdictator state funeral military bands play interment eduardo contreras chilean human rights lawyer declared pinochet buried common criminal adding dictator died december 10 international day human rights humanity chose special moment weigh final judgment declaring enough dictator burial pinochet comes moment current bush administration scrutinized atrocities crimes humanity even appalling former chilean dictator another irony history pinochet died donald rumsfelds last full day secretary defense like pinochet kissinger rumsfeld may well spend rest life trying escape grasp domestic international courts eleven iraqi prisoners held abu ghraib saudi detained guantanamo filing criminal charges german courts rumsfeld us civilian military officials including attorney general alberto gonzalez last friday rumsfeld making farewell speech cohorts pentagon attorneys american civil liberties union argued washington dc federal court rumsfeld three senior military officials held responsible torture iraqi afghani detainees pinochet affair shaped whole new generation human rights activists lawyers determined end impunity public officials including civilian military leaders united states engage state terrorism human rights abuses violating international treaties like geneva conventions roger burbach director center study americas censa visiting scholar institute international studies university california berkeley coauthor jim tarbell imperial overstretch george w bush hubris empire latest book pinochet affair state terrorism global justice 160 160 | 595 |
<p>Webster: frequenting the bottom. When a right-wing cell (FBI), from its inception, at the heart of government, now appears to the Left of the leading candidate for president (Clinton), one knows that she is fishing on the shoreline of fascism. From a democratic standpoint, it doesn’t get any worse. Even her challenger, matching her stride for stride in vulgarian (pretentious, indecent), gut-authoritarianism, the two the Janus-faced expression of the Class-State, at least does not demonize Putin and Russia, as preparatory, in her case, to still wider confrontation, including China, as dangerously leading up to a catastrophic war, or at first the breakdown of the international order.</p>
<p>The FBI, from cops and robbers, to reds and fellow subversives, as television and popular opinion would have it, was a spearhead for McCarthyism and a practical annex of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Those were the days, from Baby-face Nelson to the Rosenbergs, and now, hardly chastened from its turbid (muddy, foul, opaque) past, still the guardian of American innocence, Director Comey makes one correct move to undo the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover, and the American political world falls apart. I am not a fan of Comey’s for his initial exoneration of Clinton in her use of a private server at State, but surely, this is an eye-opener, about how far the political spectrum has shifted to the Far Right.</p>
<p>Whomever wins the election, America digs itself deeper into the cesspool of hierarchical class-differentiation, wealth-concentration, a pervasive ideological atmosphere of solipsistic hatred at home for human difference, rancid hegemony abroad for any who seek an alternative path to modernization away from the example of US petrifying capitalism. This election reveals that America, like a broken record, is stuck, playing over and over again the themes of domestic repression and foreign counterrevolution, the ideal synthesis for the unilateral assertion of world power. Neither candidate nor major party distances itself from the latter goal.</p>
<p>Comey, perhaps against his will and ideological proclivities, achieves standing here, merely, as he should, by doing his duty. The bipartisan consensus maneuvering in place to chastise him reveals the dark reality of a nation so devoted to denial and untruth, possibly to cover over its sins of commission (war crimes, indigenous racism and xenophobia) and omission (failure to act on environmental degradation, an adequate system of health care, a military budget crowding out the general welfare), that it has lost its way and falsified its original promised constitutional existence. America is presently normless, and has been since capitalism inaugurated its take-off stage following the Civil War. And before that, with institutionalized slavery, internal genocidal expansion, and cap-in-hand deference to political ideologues not adverse to compromise with, if not actually representing, vested interests.</p>
<p>Scratch America from the democratic column, transposed now to an enlarged banana republic wherein one can expect, from either party and successful candidate, enhanced features of an already ripening Police State. Surveillance, proscription, total exclusion of viable methods, measures, and structural changes pointed toward democratization, America will formally become what it already is: a panicked response to the self-realization of its nihilistic core of moral values and systemic attributes—a nuclear-armed Goliath lacking soul and conscience, and for that reason a menace to world peace and self-renewal at home. No, Comey, by his actions, is not the enemy, but one who for the first time has put on his spectacles and looked around him. There are some things that even an ardent “patriot” cannot stomach.</p>
<p>I recall how in the 1960s, e.g., Mississippi Freedom Summer, the FBI would interrogate us, try to sow doubts in the hearts of the demonstrators, act as intimidators pure and simple, combined with its undercover role in breaking up antiwar protests throughout the decade, so I hardly have much hope that things have changed. Yet, my hat is off to Comey, even if only to anger Clinton, force Democrats into self-protective mode, and raise questions about the rotten stinking fish used to fertilize her and the party’s position on war and peace, capitalism (Wall Street’s Miss America), and the Clintons’ own mind-boggling accumulation of personal wealth—all of which is instinctively known by the public, but unable to extricate from the mental prison of submerged guilt for totalitarian ways and practices.</p>
<p>We await the election, a studied exercise in un-freedom, where tyranny of false consciousness defines the psychological mental set of America, what Adorno writing sixty-six years ago called authoritarian submission, a framework where the Leadership Principle comes to the foreground if it has not already. Parallels to the incipient stages of Nazism are not an exaggeration, and it is not a loud-mouthed Trump who is necessarily the greatest danger. He is predominantly all-surface. It is Clinton who plumbs the depths of arrogance, ambition, congealed militarism. America, R.I.P.</p>
<p>My New York Times Comment to its editorial, “James Comey’s Big Mistake,” 11-1-16, follows:</p>
<p>Comey acted honorably. Unlike Hoover, he is here depoliticizing the FBI. The Times has demonstrated such partiality to Clinton, in news selection as well as editorial opinion, that it is hard to take its criticism seriously. Endorsement is one thing, blind-siding the other side quite different. Are not emails a legitimate area of investigation? Does not the public have the right to know, especially in an election? If there is no smoking gun, this will redound to Clinton’s benefit; if there is, yes, it might change minds. But what is wrong with that?</p>
<p>Clinton invariably is treated with kid gloves. Even the initial issue, the use of a private server to transact government business, is forgotten. Rather than jump on Comey, why not revisit the whole question–which Comey had originally dismissed–of Clinton’s valuing of transparency, and from there (although it is now late in the game) her whole foreign policy framework and hostility, in particular, to Putin and Russia?</p>
<p>To criticize Clinton does not necessarily make one an apologist for Trump. Call the shots with equal endeavor; responsible journalism requires no less.</p> | true | 4 | webster frequenting bottom rightwing cell fbi inception heart government appears left leading candidate president clinton one knows fishing shoreline fascism democratic standpoint doesnt get worse even challenger matching stride stride vulgarian pretentious indecent gutauthoritarianism two janusfaced expression classstate least demonize putin russia preparatory case still wider confrontation including china dangerously leading catastrophic war first breakdown international order fbi cops robbers reds fellow subversives television popular opinion would spearhead mccarthyism practical annex house unamerican activities committee days babyface nelson rosenbergs hardly chastened turbid muddy foul opaque past still guardian american innocence director comey makes one correct move undo legacy j edgar hoover american political world falls apart fan comeys initial exoneration clinton use private server state surely eyeopener far political spectrum shifted far right whomever wins election america digs deeper cesspool hierarchical classdifferentiation wealthconcentration pervasive ideological atmosphere solipsistic hatred home human difference rancid hegemony abroad seek alternative path modernization away example us petrifying capitalism election reveals america like broken record stuck playing themes domestic repression foreign counterrevolution ideal synthesis unilateral assertion world power neither candidate major party distances latter goal comey perhaps ideological proclivities achieves standing merely duty bipartisan consensus maneuvering place chastise reveals dark reality nation devoted denial untruth possibly cover sins commission war crimes indigenous racism xenophobia omission failure act environmental degradation adequate system health care military budget crowding general welfare lost way falsified original promised constitutional existence america presently normless since capitalism inaugurated takeoff stage following civil war institutionalized slavery internal genocidal expansion capinhand deference political ideologues adverse compromise actually representing vested interests scratch america democratic column transposed enlarged banana republic wherein one expect either party successful candidate enhanced features already ripening police state surveillance proscription total exclusion viable methods measures structural changes pointed toward democratization america formally become already panicked response selfrealization nihilistic core moral values systemic attributesa nucleararmed goliath lacking soul conscience reason menace world peace selfrenewal home comey actions enemy one first time put spectacles looked around things even ardent patriot stomach recall 1960s eg mississippi freedom summer fbi would interrogate us try sow doubts hearts demonstrators act intimidators pure simple combined undercover role breaking antiwar protests throughout decade hardly much hope things changed yet hat comey even anger clinton force democrats selfprotective mode raise questions rotten stinking fish used fertilize partys position war peace capitalism wall streets miss america clintons mindboggling accumulation personal wealthall instinctively known public unable extricate mental prison submerged guilt totalitarian ways practices await election studied exercise unfreedom tyranny false consciousness defines psychological mental set america adorno writing sixtysix years ago called authoritarian submission framework leadership principle comes foreground already parallels incipient stages nazism exaggeration loudmouthed trump necessarily greatest danger predominantly allsurface clinton plumbs depths arrogance ambition congealed militarism america rip new york times comment editorial james comeys big mistake 11116 follows comey acted honorably unlike hoover depoliticizing fbi times demonstrated partiality clinton news selection well editorial opinion hard take criticism seriously endorsement one thing blindsiding side quite different emails legitimate area investigation public right know especially election smoking gun redound clintons benefit yes might change minds wrong clinton invariably treated kid gloves even initial issue use private server transact government business forgotten rather jump comey revisit whole questionwhich comey originally dismissedof clintons valuing transparency although late game whole foreign policy framework hostility particular putin russia criticize clinton necessarily make one apologist trump call shots equal endeavor responsible journalism requires less | 560 |
<p>Mexico City.</p>
<p>The criminal fraud perpetrated in the July 2 presidential election against leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) by the right-wing PAN party, President Vicente Fox, the Federal Electoral Institute and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal once again rips the mask off racism in Mexico.</p>
<p>As has been evident since the campaigns kicked off last January, Lopez Obrador represents the aspirations of Mexico’s brown underclass. His right-wing rival Felipe Calderon’s people are translucently white. Although the media and the political class refuse to recognize this reality, two months after the most hotly-contested presidential race in the nation’s history, racism is driving the Mexican car to the precipice.</p>
<p>This Monday (August 29), the all-white Tribunal accelerated the suicide run when it ignored ample evidence of ballot box tampering and computer fraud presented by Lopez Obrador’s electoral representatives, to confirm Calderon’s ­ and the white ruling elite’s – much-questioned “victory.”</p>
<p>Although color has been at the core of post-electoral turmoil here for two months, one of the few to play the race card out loud was newly-elected senator Maria Irma Ortega of the anything but green Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM), a sometimes Fox ally that is always available to the highest bidder. Forced to enter the Senate building in downtown Mexico City by the back door because striking teachers from Oaxaca were blocking the front entrance and Lopez Obrador’s people were clogging the side streets, Ortega screamed at the press what a lot of white Mexicans are muttering under their breath these days: “how is it possible that these pinche indios (f– Indians) won’t let me pass?”</p>
<p>The startlingly incendiary conflict in the southern state of Oaxaca where police death squads roll through the streets before dawn gunning down teachers and supporters grouped together in the Oaxaca Popular Peoples’ Assembly (APPO) on orders from Governor Ulisis Ruiz, a white man, is fragrant with racism. Oaxaca is Mexico’s most indigenous state, home to 17 distinct Indian cultures, More than 1.5 million citizens of indigenous descent are the majority in 412 out of the state’s 572 municipalities or counties. The APPO is comprised of representatives from many of these majority indigenous municipalities and many of their comrades on the barricades, striking members of Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union, teach in the Indian outback ­ bi-lingual “maestros” are traditionally the most radical wing of Section 22.</p>
<p>It is hardly a coincidence that Lopez Obrador, a white man who grew up in the Chontal Indian region of his native Tabasco state and who has the overwhelming support of “the people the color of the earth” as the absent Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos once tagged the brown underclass, won Oaxaca handily last July 2. In fact, AMLO won 16 highly indigenous, impoverished, “brown” southern states while Calderon swept 16 states in the much more lightly complected north in the fraud-marred July balloting.</p>
<p>In Chiapas where the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) first ripped the mask off Mexican racism in 1994 by rising up against the “mal gobierno” (bad government), both AMLO’s PRD party and the long-ruling PRI in alliance with Calderon’s PAN all ran white men in August 20 gubernatorial elections in a state where at least a third of the population are Mayan Indians ­ Lopez Obrador’s white man seems to have squeaked out a narrow victory in a race which featured 55% absenteeism.</p>
<p>In selling their candidates to the indigenous communities, the parties pitted Indians against Indians and the killing began before the ballots were even counted when supporters of the PRI and the PRD opened fire on each other in the highland Tzotzil municipality of Zinacantan. The bodies lay on the town basketball court for hours, the villagers too frightened to approach their dead. The Zapatistas reject elections and the political parties precisely because they divide and wound Indian communities.</p>
<p>The Indian-ness of Lopez Obrador’s crusade to prevent a tiny white elite personified by Felipe Calderon from assuming the presidency is evidenced each evening at 7 PM when spectators gather by the thousands in Mexico City’s Zocalo plaza where they have been encamped for a month. The color of those convened is almost uniformly that of the earth ­ there are few white and even “guero” (lightly pigmented) mestizo faces in the crowd and fewer suits. This reporter often feels like a Martian in this mix ­ but I am redeemed by my age. So many who come to these nightly gatherings come on canes, hobbled by age, tired of being stepped on all their hard lives by the whites who rule this racially polarized land.</p>
<p>You see it in their lined brown faces, 70 year-old janitors and exhausted maids just off work from the nearby tourists hotels, the “abaniles” or day laborers, short dark street vendors, their faces taut with the fury that has been bottled up for 500 years, buried under the whips of the overseers and the crumbs the mal gobierno sprinkles on the poor, the hypocritical lip service paid to them on patriotic holidays, the dictatorship of the Televisocracy.</p>
<p>You hear it in the intensity of their chants, how they erupt from each brown throat in short angry bursts: “Duro!” (Hard!), “Fraude!” (Fraud!), “No Pasaran!” The signature cry of “Voto Por Voto, Casilla Por Casilla” (“Vote by Vote, Precinct by Precinct!”) is almost too long to express their frustrations now.</p>
<p>The official stats are always undercounted but close to 15,000,000 people identify themselves as indigenous Mexicans, about 17 per cent of the Mexican people.</p>
<p>The vast girth of the population ­ 80,000,000 or so souls ­ get grouped together as “Mestizos” or those of mixed blood, a category that includes acculturated Indians and ranges in pigmentation from the very dark (“negros”) to wheat-colored (“triguenos”) to “claras” or palefaces, with a deep, rich brown predominating.</p>
<p>Under the colony, Mexico was a slave state and African bloodlines ran so strong that the Spanish installed a system of 16 racial castes (the offspring of blacks and blacks, blacks and Indians, etc.), the most stringent system of apartheid in the new world. But Afro-Mexicans, a third of the population at liberation in 1821, have largely blended into the general racial milieu save for pockets on the Oaxaca coast and in Veracruz, darkening the face of the people in the process.</p>
<p>Finally, another 8,000,000 upper middle class and ruling elites are as bone white as Felipe Calderon and the PAN hierarchy. The PAN, in fact, is a party that has been established to protect the white skin privileges of its constituents.</p>
<p>In the grand gringo tradition of Great White Fatherism, Felipe Calderon ventured out to meet the Indians August 22, when he was helicoptered into a Mazahua community just west of Mexico City. A few thousand indigenas ­ the Mazahuas are divided with some aligned with the Zapatistas’ Other Campaign ­ were trucked in from outlying villages and lined up to be searched and pass through metal detectors to insure they carried no bombs or pro-AMLO materials. Calderon and his wife Margarita, decked out in an expensive Indian gown and escorted by the Presidential military guard or Estado Mayor (although Calderon was not yet president) passed down the main street behind the same two meter-tall metal barriers that now surround the Mexican Congress to keep Lopez Obrador’s supporters at bay.</p>
<p>There were the usual speeches about “our Indian brothers” and how Calderon would be “the president of the poor” topped off by folkloric Indian dances. But when the hungry Mazahuas at last sat down to table to wolf the free “barbacoa” (mutton), a torrential downpour fell from the skies and instantly ended the fiesta. The Gods are not crazy.</p>
<p>White News</p>
<p>Mexico’s unmentioned race war is perhaps most dramatically reflected on the television screen. 100 per cent of those who read the lies-as-news on Televisa and TV Azteca are white Mexicans, some with blonde hair. They deliver the white news, the news of Calderon and his dubious “victory” and how awful AMLO’s brown people are for fouling the streets of Mexico City with their filthy encampments. Although he is white like them, AMLO himself rarely even rates a mention unless Le Monde or the New York Times has run an interview with him that day and any notice of the great fraud perpetrated against the Mexican people is treated with disdain.</p>
<p>In Oaxaca, brown people are so pissed off at the white man’s news that they have occupied the state television and 11 radio stations and started broadcasting their own. Most of the owners just shut down the transmitters but some were eager to destroy their own equipment to keep the brown news off the air ­ goons poured acid into the consoles at Channel 8.</p>
<p>But brown news is resilient and indeed is being nosed around the state on dozens of indigenous community radio outlets, some legal and others not quite, like Radio Planton (Radio Sit-In) that brings you the brown news straight from the occupied plaza of Oaxaca city.</p>
<p>Up in the capital, although Lopez Obrador fumes at being exorcized from the white screens, he counsels serenity. The brown crowd often bellows back “Que Muere Televisa!” (That Televisa should die) and verbally lacerates any cameraperson caught filming in their midst. “We must take over Televisa like our brothers in Oaxaca!” a young very Indian-looking man yells, pumping his fist into the air an inch from my scalp. “No, you are wrong!” a bent, very Indian-looking woman on my right admonishes the “joven”, “we have promised AMLO that we will not be violent.”</p>
<p>Although Televisa’s top anchor Joaquin Lopez Dorriga is the king of the white news, last week he featured some brown faces for once ­ three Mexican shark fisherman who purportedly had drifted for nine months all the way to the Marshall Islands after the motor on their 27-foot open boat konked out off the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit. The intrepid, affable young men had survived on raw fish and a dead duck a week and drank rain water during their odyssey, Dorriga marveled ­ at this point he was devoting most of his hour-long broadcast to the story.</p>
<p>But something was wrong with the picture – the “fisherman” looked rather well fed and hardly burnt to a crisp by the brutal sun, as is usually the case with long-adrift castaways. “Survivors Submerged In A Sea of Doubts” headlined El Universal. Some suggested that the men had actually been out fishing for “white shark” i.e. packets of cocaine dumped into the sea by low-flying narco-planes. Two more fishermen had been aboard when they shipped out of Nayarit last November and their disappearance gave voice to “chisme” (gossip) of cannibalism.</p>
<p>Lopez Obrador’s people had another and more plausible explanation: Televisa had invented the whole tele-myth to divert attentions from the post-electoral crisis.</p>
<p>Missing in this contemporary war of the castes are the voices of those who first so valiantly tore the mask off Mexican racism ­ the Zapatistas wear their ski-masks because before the rebellion they were people “without faces” to the whites of Chiapas.</p>
<p>Since May, the Zapatista “caracoles” or public centers in Chiapas have been abandoned on orders from Subcomandante who, on the eve of the horrific police assault on the defiant farmers of San Salvador Atenco, declared the EZLN on “Red Alert.” As Mexico disintegrates into chaos, the rebels’ general command, the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee has remained mute and the usually loquacious Marcos, the Other Campaign shipwrecked by the numbing electoral fraud, silently moves around the country huddling with handfuls of supporters ­ sightings have been reported in Puebla, Morelos, Queretero and an informant in the highlands swears that the Sup recently visited Chiapas. The anticipated arrival of Zapatista comandantes in Mexico City has never materialized.</p>
<p>Although the troubles in Oaxaca would seem a suitable vehicle to revive the Other Campaign, Marcos quarreled with Section 22 last winter and the maestros turn dour when questioned about the quixotic Zapatista spokesperson. When his name ­ and that of La Otra ­ was pronounced from the stage at a Zocalo gathering last week (not by Lopez Obrador), a resounding “rechifla” (derisive whistling) flew out of the crowd, and at last Sunday’s informative assembly, the old guys I always stand with wrinkled up their noses like it smelled bad when I tried to defend the EZLN. Many AMLO supporters who now diss the rebels enthusiastically turned out to welcome them in 2001 when the Zapatistas filled this same plaza with a quarter of a million people.</p>
<p>The Zapatistas’ 1994 National Democratic Convention (CND) in a Lacandon jungle clearing brought many visions of Mexico together in an unforgettable and historic “coyuntura” (conjunction) but Marcos’s presence at the mammoth conclave of the same name set for the Zocalo September 16 (over a million delegates are expected to attend) is anything but confirmed ­ indeed if the Subcomandante were to show up, given his broadside attacks on Lopez Obrador during the Other Campaign, he might wind up dangling from the nearest lamppost.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, AMLO’s CND which is bound to be a much more tepid version of the Zapatistas’ Convention, sorely needs the Sup’s revolutionary acumen and is, in fact, shaping up as a battle for the hearts and minds of Mexico’s Indians. Lopez Obrador has invited all of the nation’s 57 Indigenous peoples to stand at the front of the Convention and the Zapatistas’ Accords on Indian Rights and Culture (“Los Acuerdos de San Andres”) signed by the mal gobierno but never honored (AMLO’s own party shot it down in the Mexican Senate) is sure to become a plank in the new CND’s struggle program. The giant meeting, really a congress of los de abajo (those from down below), citizens severely disaffected with the electoral process, could be fertile recruiting ground for the anti-electoral Other Campaign.</p>
<p>These are crucial days for Mexico. In a breathtakingly fast track decision this Monday, the seven judges of the TRIFE ­ the court of last resort for fixing the fraud ­ took just three hours to unanimously disregarded mountains of evidence of malfeasance in thousands of recently recounted ballot boxes and, despite the social cost such a manipulated verdict implies, upheld Calderon’s advantage. In doing so, the judges confirmed not only the stealing of the 2006 election from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador but also the prevalence of 500 years of institutional racism in Mexico.</p>
<p>September is the patriotic month in this distant neighbor nation. The 15th and 16th commemorate the revolt of Father Miguel Hidalgo and his mostly black and brown underclass army against the Crown in 1810. Earlier in the month, patriotic wreathes will be laid at monuments to the “Ninos Heroes” (“Heroic Children”), young cadets who threw themselves from the balustrades of Chapultepec Castle rather than surrender to the Yanqui invaders in 1846, and the San Patricios, the Irish contingent that came to fight on the side of the Mexicans against the American intruders and who were hung for this maximum expression of solidarity.</p>
<p>The facades of the government buildings that border the Zocalo are decorated with enormous swatches of red, white, and green, the Mexican colors, and giant electric representations of “the heroes who gave us a fatherland” blaze on their walls. This past Sunday, perhaps animated by all the patriotic hoopla, Lopez Obrador spoke of these heroes and how in their time they were all maligned by the white elite, which continues to keep this nation of brown people in thrall. Father Hidalgo was excommunicated; Benito Juarez, the first democratically elected president, was a “dirty Indian”; Francisco Madero who declared the Mexican revolution after the 1910 election was stolen by dictator Porfirio Diaz, was “crazy”; the revolutionary martyrs Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata were “brigands and bandits.” “Now they call us crazy too and they are right ­ we are crazy for democracy. Together we are making history and one day, all of us here today will be recognized as heroes too” Lopez Obrador told thousands of people the color of the earth this past Sunday.</p>
<p>On my way home Sunday afternoon, I ran into Rutilio, the crippled, very brown (and very grimey) begger to whose newspaper fund I regularly contribute. “Hola” he waved happily, crouching against the church wall, “I am the President of Mexico!”</p>
<p>This is a battle about many things, about brown and white and rich and poor, electoral democracy and a just, humane society – but above all, it is a battle for the soul of Mexico.</p>
<p>JOHN ROSS’s ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible–Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006 will be published by Nation Books in October. Ross will travel the left coast this fall with the new volume and a hot-off-the-press chapbook of poetry Bomba!–all suggestions of venues will be cheerfully entertained–write <a href="mailto:johnross@igc.org" type="external">johnross@igc.org</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | mexico city criminal fraud perpetrated july 2 presidential election leftist andres manuel lopez obrador amlo rightwing pan party president vicente fox federal electoral institute supreme electoral tribunal rips mask racism mexico evident since campaigns kicked last january lopez obrador represents aspirations mexicos brown underclass rightwing rival felipe calderons people translucently white although media political class refuse recognize reality two months hotlycontested presidential race nations history racism driving mexican car precipice monday august 29 allwhite tribunal accelerated suicide run ignored ample evidence ballot box tampering computer fraud presented lopez obradors electoral representatives confirm calderons white ruling elites muchquestioned victory although color core postelectoral turmoil two months one play race card loud newlyelected senator maria irma ortega anything green mexican green environmental party pvem sometimes fox ally always available highest bidder forced enter senate building downtown mexico city back door striking teachers oaxaca blocking front entrance lopez obradors people clogging side streets ortega screamed press lot white mexicans muttering breath days possible pinche indios f indians wont let pass startlingly incendiary conflict southern state oaxaca police death squads roll streets dawn gunning teachers supporters grouped together oaxaca popular peoples assembly appo orders governor ulisis ruiz white man fragrant racism oaxaca mexicos indigenous state home 17 distinct indian cultures 15 million citizens indigenous descent majority 412 states 572 municipalities counties appo comprised representatives many majority indigenous municipalities many comrades barricades striking members section 22 national education workers union teach indian outback bilingual maestros traditionally radical wing section 22 hardly coincidence lopez obrador white man grew chontal indian region native tabasco state overwhelming support people color earth absent zapatista spokesperson subcomandante marcos tagged brown underclass oaxaca handily last july 2 fact amlo 16 highly indigenous impoverished brown southern states calderon swept 16 states much lightly complected north fraudmarred july balloting chiapas zapatista army national liberation ezln first ripped mask mexican racism 1994 rising mal gobierno bad government amlos prd party longruling pri alliance calderons pan ran white men august 20 gubernatorial elections state least third population mayan indians lopez obradors white man seems squeaked narrow victory race featured 55 absenteeism selling candidates indigenous communities parties pitted indians indians killing began ballots even counted supporters pri prd opened fire highland tzotzil municipality zinacantan bodies lay town basketball court hours villagers frightened approach dead zapatistas reject elections political parties precisely divide wound indian communities indianness lopez obradors crusade prevent tiny white elite personified felipe calderon assuming presidency evidenced evening 7 pm spectators gather thousands mexico citys zocalo plaza encamped month color convened almost uniformly earth white even guero lightly pigmented mestizo faces crowd fewer suits reporter often feels like martian mix redeemed age many come nightly gatherings come canes hobbled age tired stepped hard lives whites rule racially polarized land see lined brown faces 70 yearold janitors exhausted maids work nearby tourists hotels abaniles day laborers short dark street vendors faces taut fury bottled 500 years buried whips overseers crumbs mal gobierno sprinkles poor hypocritical lip service paid patriotic holidays dictatorship televisocracy hear intensity chants erupt brown throat short angry bursts duro hard fraude fraud pasaran signature cry voto por voto casilla por casilla vote vote precinct precinct almost long express frustrations official stats always undercounted close 15000000 people identify indigenous mexicans 17 per cent mexican people vast girth population 80000000 souls get grouped together mestizos mixed blood category includes acculturated indians ranges pigmentation dark negros wheatcolored triguenos claras palefaces deep rich brown predominating colony mexico slave state african bloodlines ran strong spanish installed system 16 racial castes offspring blacks blacks blacks indians etc stringent system apartheid new world afromexicans third population liberation 1821 largely blended general racial milieu save pockets oaxaca coast veracruz darkening face people process finally another 8000000 upper middle class ruling elites bone white felipe calderon pan hierarchy pan fact party established protect white skin privileges constituents grand gringo tradition great white fatherism felipe calderon ventured meet indians august 22 helicoptered mazahua community west mexico city thousand indigenas mazahuas divided aligned zapatistas campaign trucked outlying villages lined searched pass metal detectors insure carried bombs proamlo materials calderon wife margarita decked expensive indian gown escorted presidential military guard estado mayor although calderon yet president passed main street behind two metertall metal barriers surround mexican congress keep lopez obradors supporters bay usual speeches indian brothers calderon would president poor topped folkloric indian dances hungry mazahuas last sat table wolf free barbacoa mutton torrential downpour fell skies instantly ended fiesta gods crazy white news mexicos unmentioned race war perhaps dramatically reflected television screen 100 per cent read liesasnews televisa tv azteca white mexicans blonde hair deliver white news news calderon dubious victory awful amlos brown people fouling streets mexico city filthy encampments although white like amlo rarely even rates mention unless le monde new york times run interview day notice great fraud perpetrated mexican people treated disdain oaxaca brown people pissed white mans news occupied state television 11 radio stations started broadcasting owners shut transmitters eager destroy equipment keep brown news air goons poured acid consoles channel 8 brown news resilient indeed nosed around state dozens indigenous community radio outlets legal others quite like radio planton radio sitin brings brown news straight occupied plaza oaxaca city capital although lopez obrador fumes exorcized white screens counsels serenity brown crowd often bellows back que muere televisa televisa die verbally lacerates cameraperson caught filming midst must take televisa like brothers oaxaca young indianlooking man yells pumping fist air inch scalp wrong bent indianlooking woman right admonishes joven promised amlo violent although televisas top anchor joaquin lopez dorriga king white news last week featured brown faces three mexican shark fisherman purportedly drifted nine months way marshall islands motor 27foot open boat konked pacific coast state nayarit intrepid affable young men survived raw fish dead duck week drank rain water odyssey dorriga marveled point devoting hourlong broadcast story something wrong picture fisherman looked rather well fed hardly burnt crisp brutal sun usually case longadrift castaways survivors submerged sea doubts headlined el universal suggested men actually fishing white shark ie packets cocaine dumped sea lowflying narcoplanes two fishermen aboard shipped nayarit last november disappearance gave voice chisme gossip cannibalism lopez obradors people another plausible explanation televisa invented whole telemyth divert attentions postelectoral crisis missing contemporary war castes voices first valiantly tore mask mexican racism zapatistas wear skimasks rebellion people without faces whites chiapas since may zapatista caracoles public centers chiapas abandoned orders subcomandante eve horrific police assault defiant farmers san salvador atenco declared ezln red alert mexico disintegrates chaos rebels general command clandestine indigenous revolutionary committee remained mute usually loquacious marcos campaign shipwrecked numbing electoral fraud silently moves around country huddling handfuls supporters sightings reported puebla morelos queretero informant highlands swears sup recently visited chiapas anticipated arrival zapatista comandantes mexico city never materialized although troubles oaxaca would seem suitable vehicle revive campaign marcos quarreled section 22 last winter maestros turn dour questioned quixotic zapatista spokesperson name la otra pronounced stage zocalo gathering last week lopez obrador resounding rechifla derisive whistling flew crowd last sundays informative assembly old guys always stand wrinkled noses like smelled bad tried defend ezln many amlo supporters diss rebels enthusiastically turned welcome 2001 zapatistas filled plaza quarter million people zapatistas 1994 national democratic convention cnd lacandon jungle clearing brought many visions mexico together unforgettable historic coyuntura conjunction marcoss presence mammoth conclave name set zocalo september 16 million delegates expected attend anything confirmed indeed subcomandante show given broadside attacks lopez obrador campaign might wind dangling nearest lamppost nonetheless amlos cnd bound much tepid version zapatistas convention sorely needs sups revolutionary acumen fact shaping battle hearts minds mexicos indians lopez obrador invited nations 57 indigenous peoples stand front convention zapatistas accords indian rights culture los acuerdos de san andres signed mal gobierno never honored amlos party shot mexican senate sure become plank new cnds struggle program giant meeting really congress los de abajo citizens severely disaffected electoral process could fertile recruiting ground antielectoral campaign crucial days mexico breathtakingly fast track decision monday seven judges trife court last resort fixing fraud took three hours unanimously disregarded mountains evidence malfeasance thousands recently recounted ballot boxes despite social cost manipulated verdict implies upheld calderons advantage judges confirmed stealing 2006 election andres manuel lopez obrador also prevalence 500 years institutional racism mexico september patriotic month distant neighbor nation 15th 16th commemorate revolt father miguel hidalgo mostly black brown underclass army crown 1810 earlier month patriotic wreathes laid monuments ninos heroes heroic children young cadets threw balustrades chapultepec castle rather surrender yanqui invaders 1846 san patricios irish contingent came fight side mexicans american intruders hung maximum expression solidarity facades government buildings border zocalo decorated enormous swatches red white green mexican colors giant electric representations heroes gave us fatherland blaze walls past sunday perhaps animated patriotic hoopla lopez obrador spoke heroes time maligned white elite continues keep nation brown people thrall father hidalgo excommunicated benito juarez first democratically elected president dirty indian francisco madero declared mexican revolution 1910 election stolen dictator porfirio diaz crazy revolutionary martyrs francisco villa emiliano zapata brigands bandits call us crazy right crazy democracy together making history one day us today recognized heroes lopez obrador told thousands people color earth past sunday way home sunday afternoon ran rutilio crippled brown grimey begger whose newspaper fund regularly contribute hola waved happily crouching church wall president mexico battle many things brown white rich poor electoral democracy humane society battle soul mexico john rosss zapatistas making another world possiblechronicles resistance 20002006 published nation books october ross travel left coast fall new volume hotoffthepress chapbook poetry bombaall suggestions venues cheerfully entertainedwrite johnrossigcorg 160 160 | 1,589 |
<p>Editors’ Note: What follows is a brief but biting excerpt from one of our favorite books, <a href="" type="internal">The Air-Conditioned Nightmare</a>, by one of our favorite writers, HENRY MILLER. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is Miller’s travelogue across Depression Era America on the eve of World War Two. It is essential reading, even though there’s not much sex in these vivid pages. — JSC / AC</p>
<p>I had to travel about ten thousand miles before receiving the inspiration to write a single line about America. Everything worth saying about the American way of life I could put in thirty pages. Topographically the country is magnificent-and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.</p>
<p>We are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say we are democratic, liberty-loving, free of prejudice and hatred. This is the melting pot, the seal of a great human experiment. Beautiful words, full of noble, idealistic sentiment. Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has become the land of senseless sweat and struggle. The goal of all of our striving has long been forgotten. We no longer wish to succor the oppressed and homeless; there is no room in this great, empty land for those who, like our forefathers before us, now seek a place of refuge. Millions of men and women are, or were until very recently, on relief, condemned like guinea pigs to a life of forced idleness. The world meanwhile looks to us with a desperation such as it has never known before. Where is the democratic spirit? Where are the leaders?</p>
<p>To conduct a great human experiment we must first of all have men. Behind the conception MAN there must be grandeur. No political party is capable of ushering in the Kingdom of Man. The workers of the world may one day, if they ever cease listening to their bigoted leaders, organize a brotherhood of man. But men cannot be brothers without first becoming peers, that is, equals in a kingly sense. What prevents men from uniting as brothers is their own base inadequacy. Slaves cannot unite; cowards cannot unite; the ignorant cannot unite. It is only by obeying our highest impulses that we can unite. The urge to surpass oneself has to be instinctive, not theoretical or believable merely. Unless we make the effort to realize the truths which are in us we shall fail again and again. As Democrats, Republicans, Fascists, Communists, we are all on one level. That is one of the reasons why we wage war so beautifully. We defend with our lives the petty principles which divide us. The common principle, which is the establishment of the empire of man on earth, we never lift a finger to defend. We are frightened of any urge which would lift us out of the muck. We fight only for the status quo, our particular status quo. We battle with heads down and eyes closed. Actually there never is status quo, except in the minds of political imbeciles. All is flux. Those who are on the defensive are fighting phantoms.</p>
<p>What is the greatest treason? To question what it is one may be fighting for. Here insanity and treason join hands. War is a form of insanity-the noblest or the basest, according to your point of view. Because it is a mass insanity the wise are powerless to prevail against it. Above any other single factor that may be adduced in explanation of war is confusion. When all other weapons fail one resorts to force. But there may be nothing wrong with the weapons which we so easily and readily discard. They may need to be sharpened, or we may need to improve our skill, or both. To fight is to admit that one is confused; it is an act of desperation, not of strength. A rat can fight magnificently when cornered. Are we to emulate the rat?</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>These wars teach us nothing, not even how to conquer our fears. We are still cave men. Democratic cave men, perhaps, but that is small comfort. Our fight is to get out of the cave. If we were to make the least effort in that direction we would inspire the whole world.</p>
<p>If we are going to play the role of Vulcan let us forge dazzling new weapons which will unshackle the chains which bind us. Let us not love the earth in a perverse way. Let us stop playing the role of recidivist. Let us stop murdering one another. The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is Paradise, the only we will ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don’t have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it,</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Some people think that a declaration of war changes everything. If only it were true! If only we could look forward to a radical, sweeping change from top to bottom! The changes brought about by war are nothing, however, compared to the discoveries and inventions of Edison. Yet, for good or ill, war can bring about a change in the spirit of a people. And that is what I am vitally interested in-a change of heart, a conversion.</p>
<p>We have a condition now which is called “a national emergency.” Though the legislators and politicians may rant at will, though the newspaper tribe may rave and spread hysteria, though the military clique may bluster, threaten, and clamp down on everything which is not to their liking, the private citizen, for whom and by whom the war is being fought, is supposed to hold his tongue. Since I have not the least respect for this attitude, since it does nothing to advance the cause of freedom, I have left unaltered those statements which are apt to cause annoyance and irritation even in times of peace. I believe with John Stuart Mill that “a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.” I would rather my opinions and appraisals were proved wrong-by the emergence of a new and vital spirit. If it takes a calamity such as war to awaken and transform us, well and good, so be it. Let us now see if the unemployed will be put to work and the poor properly clothed, housed and fed; let us see if the rich will be stripped of their booty and made to endure the privations and sufferings of the ordinary citizen; let us see if all the workers of America, regardless of class, ability or usefulness, can be persuaded to accept a common wage; let us see if the people can voice their wishes in direct fashion, without the intercession, the distortion, and the bungling of politicians; let us see if we can create a real democracy in place of the fake one we have finally been roused to defend; let us see if we can be fair and just to our own kind, to say nothing of the enemy whom we shall doubtless conquer over.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | editors note follows brief biting excerpt one favorite books airconditioned nightmare one favorite writers henry miller airconditioned nightmare millers travelogue across depression era america eve world war two essential reading even though theres much sex vivid pages jsc ac travel ten thousand miles receiving inspiration write single line america everything worth saying american way life could put thirty pages topographically country magnificentand terrifying terrifying nowhere else world divorce man nature complete nowhere encountered dull monotonous fabric life america boredom reaches peak accustomed think emancipated people say democratic libertyloving free prejudice hatred melting pot seal great human experiment beautiful words full noble idealistic sentiment actually vulgar pushing mob whose passions easily mobilized demagogues newspaper men religious quacks agitators like call society free peoples blasphemous offer world beside superabundant loot recklessly plunder earth maniacal delusion insane activity represents progress enlightenment land opportunity become land senseless sweat struggle goal striving long forgotten longer wish succor oppressed homeless room great empty land like forefathers us seek place refuge millions men women recently relief condemned like guinea pigs life forced idleness world meanwhile looks us desperation never known democratic spirit leaders conduct great human experiment must first men behind conception man must grandeur political party capable ushering kingdom man workers world may one day ever cease listening bigoted leaders organize brotherhood man men brothers without first becoming peers equals kingly sense prevents men uniting brothers base inadequacy slaves unite cowards unite ignorant unite obeying highest impulses unite urge surpass oneself instinctive theoretical believable merely unless make effort realize truths us shall fail democrats republicans fascists communists one level one reasons wage war beautifully defend lives petty principles divide us common principle establishment empire man earth never lift finger defend frightened urge would lift us muck fight status quo particular status quo battle heads eyes closed actually never status quo except minds political imbeciles flux defensive fighting phantoms greatest treason question one may fighting insanity treason join hands war form insanitythe noblest basest according point view mass insanity wise powerless prevail single factor may adduced explanation war confusion weapons fail one resorts force may nothing wrong weapons easily readily discard may need sharpened may need improve skill fight admit one confused act desperation strength rat fight magnificently cornered emulate rat wars teach us nothing even conquer fears still cave men democratic cave men perhaps small comfort fight get cave make least effort direction would inspire whole world going play role vulcan let us forge dazzling new weapons unshackle chains bind us let us love earth perverse way let us stop playing role recidivist let us stop murdering one another earth lair neither prison earth paradise ever know realize moment open eyes dont make paradiseit one make fit inhabit man gun man murder heart possibly recognize paradise even shown people think declaration war changes everything true could look forward radical sweeping change top bottom changes brought war nothing however compared discoveries inventions edison yet good ill war bring change spirit people vitally interested ina change heart conversion condition called national emergency though legislators politicians may rant though newspaper tribe may rave spread hysteria though military clique may bluster threaten clamp everything liking private citizen war fought supposed hold tongue since least respect attitude since nothing advance cause freedom left unaltered statements apt cause annoyance irritation even times peace believe john stuart mill state dwarfs men order may docile instruments hands even beneficial purposes find small men great thing really accomplished would rather opinions appraisals proved wrongby emergence new vital spirit takes calamity war awaken transform us well good let us see unemployed put work poor properly clothed housed fed let us see rich stripped booty made endure privations sufferings ordinary citizen let us see workers america regardless class ability usefulness persuaded accept common wage let us see people voice wishes direct fashion without intercession distortion bungling politicians let us see create real democracy place fake one finally roused defend let us see fair kind say nothing enemy shall doubtless conquer 160 | 664 |
<p>Recently declassified (partially blacked out) CIA, FBI and State Department reports (see <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB157/index.htm" type="external">National Security Archive Briefing Book #153</a>, Peter Kornbluh) indicate that former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles had been trained by CIA in demolition and explosives in the early 1960s. He was ostensibly in the US military, February 1963 to March 1964, which was the cover CIA gave its training agents then. During the 1960s, as a salaried agent he ran a school in Florida training others in his trade, financed by CIA. He also did forays to other countries to do covert bombings and assassinations. CIA was using him as an “operative” in Caracas 1976. In 1972 he had listed his permanent residence as Miami. When he left Florida for Caracas to work with the Venezuelan intelligence agency DISIP, he had with him a supply of CIA bomb-making materials and explosive devices. On the date of the bombing of Havana bound Cubana flight 455, October 6, 1976, he had supposedly left DISIP and was operating a private detective agency in Caracas.</p>
<p>The reports suggest that the Cubana bombing was a joint DISIP-CIA project and CIA was involved in the planning. They refer to meetings in Santo Domingo in the summer and in Caracas in early September involving agent Posada and his partner Orlando Bosch and top DISIP officials, at which discussions were held about bombing Cubana flights, also the Letelier car bombing which occurred in Washington, DC in mid-September. At the time, Bosch was head of CORU, a new umbrella organization of violent anti-Castro groups in US which CIA had urged them to form. He was also involved with “Condor” operations, a CIA supported super-secret web in South America which exterminated and disappeared many leftists.</p>
<p>CIA had been kept informed of previous attempts by its agent Posada to bomb Cubana airliners in the summer. In late September Posada (referred to “informant”) reported: “We’re going to hit the Cubana airliner.” On October 1, our State Department — at Posada’s request and under a special procedure — issued a US visa for the week of the bombing to one of Posada’s two employees who placed the bomb in the plane restroom at the Barbados stop, then left the plane. The other Posada employee-bomb-planter had a secret Caracas CIA telephone number in his belongings when arrested in Trinidad after sending this message to Bosch: “A bus went off the cliff and 73 dogs died.” These reports were not made available to the Venezuelan officials who prosecuting Bosch and Posada in the 1980s.</p>
<p>No one warned Cuba or potential passengers of the impending attack. George Bush, Sr. was the CIA Director at the time of the bombing. He was Vice President when Posada was allowed to escape from jail during his trial in Venezuela (CIA bribed his guards when the evidence started to implicate them) and report to Col. Oliver North in El Salvador to work on the Nicaraguan Contra supply operation being run out of the White House. Bush, Sr. was President when he pardoned Bosch against the recommendation of his own Justice Department, thereby harboring him in Miami.</p>
<p>In 1976 CIA was aware the Bush family had important connections in the oil business and was dealing with key politicians in Venezuela. Jeb Bush (now governor of Florida) was establishing himself in Caracas with the Commerce Bank of Texas, owned by Bush family friend (later Secretary of State) James Baker. When Bosch arrived in Caracas on September 14, 1976, after a visit with Pinochet officials in Chile, then Venezuelan President Perez allowed Bosch and Posada to conduct fundraising and operate freely in Venezuela, even contributing funds to their projects.</p>
<p>In custody after the bombing, Posada threatened that if he were forced to talk, the Venezuelan government would go down the tube and the US would have another Watergate. Indeed, another Watergate type cover-up seems now in progress, spawned by Posada’s resurfacing in US and the declassification of some of CIA’s reports after 28 years. Homeland Security has charged Posada with not reporting immediately to them, an immigration matter which could be settled by a small fine. However, it’s been set for trial on August 29 and Posada’s Miami lawyers have filed motions to move the case to Miami (to be ruled on in writing in the next week), bond reduction, and asylum petitions. From State Department’s comments, one would think that the Homeland immigration cases will go on for many months and State has no extradition obligation until they’re finished.</p>
<p>There’s no legally valid reason why our State Department should not submit the Venezuelan request to the extradition judge now. Posada is a Venezuelan citizen who committed the Cubana crime there and is a fugitive who escaped from their justice system during trial there for that crime. The present Bush Administration well knows who is responsible for bombing the Cubana flight. It didn’t need to wait for Venezuela to produce or translate the evidence, much of which is in still classified or blacked out CIA files. Nor is there any valid reason to wait while lawyers fool around with Homeland’s illegal entry claim or Posada’s venue and asylum claims.</p>
<p>Venezuela and US have had an extradition treaty for 83 years which has always been honored by both countries. Immigration cases concern lawfulness of entry and where an illegal migrant should be sent or deported to. Extradition concerns where an alleged criminal should be tried regardless of his immigration status. It’s not a question of policy or discretion, it’s a question of law. The ultimate issue here is whether the rule of law still exists in US. In January, Bush, Jr. took an oath as president to faithfully execute the US Constitution, laws and treaties.</p>
<p>On May 27 Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said that Venezuela’s extradition request for Posada had been rejected as inadequate because unsupported by evidence. But the US Embassy in Caracas had told Venezuela to translate the 700 pages of evidence (without any time limit), and on May 27 said it was still ready to receive it. Venezuela has now filed the translated evidence and complied with all other US procedural requirements.</p>
<p>Washington had previously denied Venezuela’s request to keep Posada in custody pending extradition. A hearing is set for June 24 to reduce Posada’s bond, which will probably be granted because the charge is such a minor one. If he is released on bond, he will probably disappear again. Washington seems to be trying to justify harboring Posada in a country like El Salvador where he presumably could be kept from talking. It has already induced or pressured Salvadoran officials to start preparing their own extradition request.</p>
<p>Deft maneuvering by Washington may keep CIA involvement in the bombing under wraps for a while, but eventually the truth will out. So far the damage to our government is primarily in the international arena, where the corporate mass media’s are somewhat less under the control of the commercial oligarchies. This Administration obviously cares very little about the rule of law or its image abroad. But more and more American reporters and people are starting to demand that Posada be sent to Venezuela and that CIA open its files on the matter.</p>
<p>TOM CRUMPACKER is a lawyer who works with the Miami Coalition to End the US Embargo of Cuba. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:Crump8@aol.com" type="external">Crump8@aol.com</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | recently declassified partially blacked cia fbi state department reports see national security archive briefing book 153 peter kornbluh indicate former cia agent luis posada carriles trained cia demolition explosives early 1960s ostensibly us military february 1963 march 1964 cover cia gave training agents 1960s salaried agent ran school florida training others trade financed cia also forays countries covert bombings assassinations cia using operative caracas 1976 1972 listed permanent residence miami left florida caracas work venezuelan intelligence agency disip supply cia bombmaking materials explosive devices date bombing havana bound cubana flight 455 october 6 1976 supposedly left disip operating private detective agency caracas reports suggest cubana bombing joint disipcia project cia involved planning refer meetings santo domingo summer caracas early september involving agent posada partner orlando bosch top disip officials discussions held bombing cubana flights also letelier car bombing occurred washington dc midseptember time bosch head coru new umbrella organization violent anticastro groups us cia urged form also involved condor operations cia supported supersecret web south america exterminated disappeared many leftists cia kept informed previous attempts agent posada bomb cubana airliners summer late september posada referred informant reported going hit cubana airliner october 1 state department posadas request special procedure issued us visa week bombing one posadas two employees placed bomb plane restroom barbados stop left plane posada employeebombplanter secret caracas cia telephone number belongings arrested trinidad sending message bosch bus went cliff 73 dogs died reports made available venezuelan officials prosecuting bosch posada 1980s one warned cuba potential passengers impending attack george bush sr cia director time bombing vice president posada allowed escape jail trial venezuela cia bribed guards evidence started implicate report col oliver north el salvador work nicaraguan contra supply operation run white house bush sr president pardoned bosch recommendation justice department thereby harboring miami 1976 cia aware bush family important connections oil business dealing key politicians venezuela jeb bush governor florida establishing caracas commerce bank texas owned bush family friend later secretary state james baker bosch arrived caracas september 14 1976 visit pinochet officials chile venezuelan president perez allowed bosch posada conduct fundraising operate freely venezuela even contributing funds projects custody bombing posada threatened forced talk venezuelan government would go tube us would another watergate indeed another watergate type coverup seems progress spawned posadas resurfacing us declassification cias reports 28 years homeland security charged posada reporting immediately immigration matter could settled small fine however set trial august 29 posadas miami lawyers filed motions move case miami ruled writing next week bond reduction asylum petitions state departments comments one would think homeland immigration cases go many months state extradition obligation theyre finished theres legally valid reason state department submit venezuelan request extradition judge posada venezuelan citizen committed cubana crime fugitive escaped justice system trial crime present bush administration well knows responsible bombing cubana flight didnt need wait venezuela produce translate evidence much still classified blacked cia files valid reason wait lawyers fool around homelands illegal entry claim posadas venue asylum claims venezuela us extradition treaty 83 years always honored countries immigration cases concern lawfulness entry illegal migrant sent deported extradition concerns alleged criminal tried regardless immigration status question policy discretion question law ultimate issue whether rule law still exists us january bush jr took oath president faithfully execute us constitution laws treaties may 27 assistant secretary state roger noriega said venezuelas extradition request posada rejected inadequate unsupported evidence us embassy caracas told venezuela translate 700 pages evidence without time limit may 27 said still ready receive venezuela filed translated evidence complied us procedural requirements washington previously denied venezuelas request keep posada custody pending extradition hearing set june 24 reduce posadas bond probably granted charge minor one released bond probably disappear washington seems trying justify harboring posada country like el salvador presumably could kept talking already induced pressured salvadoran officials start preparing extradition request deft maneuvering washington may keep cia involvement bombing wraps eventually truth far damage government primarily international arena corporate mass medias somewhat less control commercial oligarchies administration obviously cares little rule law image abroad american reporters people starting demand posada sent venezuela cia open files matter tom crumpacker lawyer works miami coalition end us embargo cuba reached crump8aolcom 160 | 693 |
<p />
<p>Photo by Marc Nozell | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p />
<p>Reactions to Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States oscillate between great trepidation and great mockery. Will Donald Trump do something outlandish—something with terrible consequences—or will what he does bring discredit on himself? Uncertainty dogs the next US president and his administration. The old establishment seems sidelined and the “deep state” appears bewildered.</p>
<p>The Bush Years</p>
<p>George W. Bush had evoked similar feelings of fear and hilarity, although his administration seemed handpicked by the establishment and Bush made no noises about changing the broad parameters of the world order. There was, from Bush, no gesture against the European Union or NATO nor against the major trade agreements or the security arrangements. That Bush would illegally invade Iraq in 2003, preside over the emergence of the BRICS in trade discussions, and stand—a deer in the headlights—as the Western financial system metastasized was not entirely predictable when he took office.</p>
<p>What had become clear during Bush’s eight years was that the United States was no longer the first amongst equals and that US-driven unipolarity was slowly unraveling. Russia, devastated in the first decade after the fall of the USSR, had rebuilt its military strength through high commodity prices and was more confident in its dealing with other powers. China’s economic ascent in the decade of the 1990s gradually provided its leadership with the urgency to change the geopolitical balance of power. India, Brazil and South Africa—disadvantaged by the global economic rules—pushed for their own interests in the multilateral forums.</p>
<p>These powers, i.e. the BRICS, exerted themselves at different tempos against the unipolar set-up. It was Russia and China, with an assertive Latin America, that seemed prepared to challenge the West for the right to set trade rules and to claim territorial sovereignty over parts of the world far from their own boundaries.</p>
<p>The Obama Years</p>
<p>Barack Obama’s decidedly more attractive personality could not, of course, clean up Bush’s messes. He was not able to settle the contradictions opened up by Bush’s wars in West Asia, nor was he able to control the ambitions of Russia and China.</p>
<p>Not that Obama did not try, for Obama’s White House drove a fierce policy to encage both ends of Eurasia—with NATO being pushed closer and closer to Russia’s western border and US ships aggravating the Chinese in the South China Sea. It was under Obama that the US poked its stick into Russia’s bear cave, provoking Russian intervention into the Crimea. Attempts to get the Chinese to revalue their currency to help a spluttering US domestic economy through threats about intellectual property piracy, currency manipulation, and internet hacking came to naught. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even egged on the Japanese to set aside an elected government so that its bases in Okinawa would remain—these bases being a challenge to the Chinese and Russians. The Chinese would not be swayed. Even the ships in the South China Sea did not scare the Chinese to do as Washington bid.</p>
<p>Europe, which has not recovered evenly from the great recession of 2007/08, was disadvantaged by a set of policies that it had endorsed. Bush’s illegal war against Iraq (2003), famously supported by what Bush called “New Europe” and the United Kingdom, allowed Iran to flex its ambitions across West Asia. The US, then, tried to push Iran back to its borders with the Syria Accountability Act (2003), the Israeli war on Lebanon (2006) and the sanctions regime on Iran (2006).</p>
<p>Sanctions on Iran removed it from the ledger of suppliers of energy for Europe’s market. When NATO destroyed Libya (2011), another major provider of energy slipped off the European map. NATO’s eastward move created the crisis in Eastern Europe, which led to the sanctions on Russia (2014). The Kremlin moved closer to China and began to sell its energy to the Chinese. Iran, Libya, and Russia were three major energy sources for Europe. Now, in the space of a decade, all three went off-line. Pressure on the Obama administration to undo the Iran isolation led to the Iran deal (2015). These European contradictions, rather than the principles of international law, pushed the Obama administration to do the Iran deal.</p>
<p>The Trump Years</p>
<p>How will Trump manage these important shifts in the world order, with the Russians and Chinese—and other parts of the Global South—in ascendance, and with the Europeans turning inwards and in disarray? Would he continue to pressure Russia and China with military force at the two ends of Eurasia?</p>
<p>It is clear that Trump is not as concerned as the “deep state” in the United States is about Russia’s return to the world stage. Whether he will be able to override the mainstream consensus that Russia is a grave threat to the United States remains to be seen. Threats against Russia for the alleged hacking of the Democrats will force Trump to respond in some way, either with sanctions or with some kind of secret intervention. How he will respond to the deep state’s rhetoric on Russia is an open question.</p>
<p>Trump is certainly incoherent in his views. He appears friendly to Russia but has great antipathy towards China, particularly on trade. Russia had tasted humiliation after the fall of the USSR (1991) and after its expulsion from the G7 (2014). Rather than go into the wilderness, Russia formed an enduring bond with the Chinese on military, economic, and diplomatic grounds. This bond is very strong and appears to be strengthening. Trump is hallucinating if he imagines that he can break the link between Russia and China—two powers with some harmony on their views of the world order, more harmony than during the early years of the Cold War before the Sino-Soviet break.</p>
<p>It will be difficult to force China to revalue its currency to the advantage of the United States. No previous administration, with US battle ships close to the Chinese coastline, has been able to force the Chinese into this—for China—suicidal policy. Trump, short of a war against China, will not be able to force them to act to benefit the US heartland. This is more rhetoric from Trump than policy.</p>
<p>The administration assembled by Trump is united by a great hatred of Iran. Will they be able to renege on the Iran nuclear deal and perhaps go to war against Iran?</p>
<p>It is unlikely that Trump will be able to even cast the deal aside. He will find no partners in Europe, where the energy shortfall has constrained policy options. There is no appetite in the European capitals for a return to sanctions. Neither Russia nor China—both of whom rely on Iran for their West Asia policy—will allow United Nations sanctions on Iran. Trump might want to go alone in his crusade against Iran, but he will not find many Arab allies—apart from a handful of Gulf monarchies—who would endorse such a war. Egypt, Algeria, and Iraq would be steadfast against it. Hezbollah, from Lebanon, would threaten Israel, which is not prepared for a return to hostilities on its northern perimeter. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu enjoyed his belligerent rhetoric, but it is clear that he hid behind Obama. Now he shall have no one to hide behind. Nor will Trump.</p>
<p>Harsh rhetoric against Mexico as an alibi for the weaknesses of the fortunes of ordinary Americans is not going to bear Trump much fruit. He has miscalculated on Mexico, believing perhaps that it is an isolated and poor country. Mexico is well attached to the agenda of the Global South on several major issues, namely Northern subsidy reform, Northern financial system reform, and renegotiation of the intellectual property regime that benefits Northern pharmaceutical and high-tech firms. Corn subsidies in the US and liberalized trade due to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) spurred the migration of impoverished Mexicans to the United States. Any change of the trade regime would have to take into consideration the advantages to Northern capital of the liberalized trade environment.</p>
<p>Trump’s call to renegotiate treaties is welcome news in many of the capitals of the South, but what they mean by renegotiation is very different. Mexico is a founding member of the G20 group of developing countries within the World Trade Organization (WTO), which held its own at the 2003 Cancun (Mexico) WTO ministerial meeting, where under the leadership of India, Brazil, and South Africa the G20 pushed back against the Northern agenda. Mexico has vacillated in the G20, but Trump’s insults and his policies on immigration and trade might push Mexico into the front ranks of the G20. This would be welcome news to other Latin American states.</p>
<p>Even if the era of US unipolarity is now over, the period of US-driven imperialism is not at an end. The United States still possesses the largest military force, has tentacles across the planet through its bases and aircraft carriers, and is the biggest dealer of weapons. Power will be exercised in various forms by the United States to maintain its declining authority. Trump could very likely have a dangerous trigger finger. But fewer allies and less legitimacy might make it harder for him to pull that trigger. In the end, he might find himself more victim of the world than its assassin.</p> | true | 4 | photo marc nozell cc 20 reactions donald trumps election president united states oscillate great trepidation great mockery donald trump something outlandishsomething terrible consequencesor bring discredit uncertainty dogs next us president administration old establishment seems sidelined deep state appears bewildered bush years george w bush evoked similar feelings fear hilarity although administration seemed handpicked establishment bush made noises changing broad parameters world order bush gesture european union nato major trade agreements security arrangements bush would illegally invade iraq 2003 preside emergence brics trade discussions standa deer headlightsas western financial system metastasized entirely predictable took office become clear bushs eight years united states longer first amongst equals usdriven unipolarity slowly unraveling russia devastated first decade fall ussr rebuilt military strength high commodity prices confident dealing powers chinas economic ascent decade 1990s gradually provided leadership urgency change geopolitical balance power india brazil south africadisadvantaged global economic rulespushed interests multilateral forums powers ie brics exerted different tempos unipolar setup russia china assertive latin america seemed prepared challenge west right set trade rules claim territorial sovereignty parts world far boundaries obama years barack obamas decidedly attractive personality could course clean bushs messes able settle contradictions opened bushs wars west asia able control ambitions russia china obama try obamas white house drove fierce policy encage ends eurasiawith nato pushed closer closer russias western border us ships aggravating chinese south china sea obama us poked stick russias bear cave provoking russian intervention crimea attempts get chinese revalue currency help spluttering us domestic economy threats intellectual property piracy currency manipulation internet hacking came naught secretary state hillary clinton even egged japanese set aside elected government bases okinawa would remainthese bases challenge chinese russians chinese would swayed even ships south china sea scare chinese washington bid europe recovered evenly great recession 200708 disadvantaged set policies endorsed bushs illegal war iraq 2003 famously supported bush called new europe united kingdom allowed iran flex ambitions across west asia us tried push iran back borders syria accountability act 2003 israeli war lebanon 2006 sanctions regime iran 2006 sanctions iran removed ledger suppliers energy europes market nato destroyed libya 2011 another major provider energy slipped european map natos eastward move created crisis eastern europe led sanctions russia 2014 kremlin moved closer china began sell energy chinese iran libya russia three major energy sources europe space decade three went offline pressure obama administration undo iran isolation led iran deal 2015 european contradictions rather principles international law pushed obama administration iran deal trump years trump manage important shifts world order russians chineseand parts global southin ascendance europeans turning inwards disarray would continue pressure russia china military force two ends eurasia clear trump concerned deep state united states russias return world stage whether able override mainstream consensus russia grave threat united states remains seen threats russia alleged hacking democrats force trump respond way either sanctions kind secret intervention respond deep states rhetoric russia open question trump certainly incoherent views appears friendly russia great antipathy towards china particularly trade russia tasted humiliation fall ussr 1991 expulsion g7 2014 rather go wilderness russia formed enduring bond chinese military economic diplomatic grounds bond strong appears strengthening trump hallucinating imagines break link russia chinatwo powers harmony views world order harmony early years cold war sinosoviet break difficult force china revalue currency advantage united states previous administration us battle ships close chinese coastline able force chinese thisfor chinasuicidal policy trump short war china able force act benefit us heartland rhetoric trump policy administration assembled trump united great hatred iran able renege iran nuclear deal perhaps go war iran unlikely trump able even cast deal aside find partners europe energy shortfall constrained policy options appetite european capitals return sanctions neither russia chinaboth rely iran west asia policywill allow united nations sanctions iran trump might want go alone crusade iran find many arab alliesapart handful gulf monarchieswho would endorse war egypt algeria iraq would steadfast hezbollah lebanon would threaten israel prepared return hostilities northern perimeter israels benjamin netanyahu enjoyed belligerent rhetoric clear hid behind obama shall one hide behind trump harsh rhetoric mexico alibi weaknesses fortunes ordinary americans going bear trump much fruit miscalculated mexico believing perhaps isolated poor country mexico well attached agenda global south several major issues namely northern subsidy reform northern financial system reform renegotiation intellectual property regime benefits northern pharmaceutical hightech firms corn subsidies us liberalized trade due north american free trade agreement nafta spurred migration impoverished mexicans united states change trade regime would take consideration advantages northern capital liberalized trade environment trumps call renegotiate treaties welcome news many capitals south mean renegotiation different mexico founding member g20 group developing countries within world trade organization wto held 2003 cancun mexico wto ministerial meeting leadership india brazil south africa g20 pushed back northern agenda mexico vacillated g20 trumps insults policies immigration trade might push mexico front ranks g20 would welcome news latin american states even era us unipolarity period usdriven imperialism end united states still possesses largest military force tentacles across planet bases aircraft carriers biggest dealer weapons power exercised various forms united states maintain declining authority trump could likely dangerous trigger finger fewer allies less legitimacy might make harder pull trigger end might find victim world assassin | 858 |
<p>Janine Jackson interviewed asha bandele and Laura Carlsen about the War on Drugs for the <a href="" type="internal">April 1, 2016, episode</a> of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.</p>
<p>asha bandele: “It’s not like we do this stuff based on science or based on public health or public safety…. In fact, the laws we create generate public danger.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">MP3 Link</a></p>
<p>John Ehrlichman: “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”</p>
<p>Janine Jackson: Here is the quote, if you haven’t heard it, attributed by a recent <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/" type="external">story</a> in Harper’s to John Ehrlichman, domestic policy advisor to Richard Nixon, referring to Nixon’s declaration of a war on drugs:</p>
<p>You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.</p>
<p>Well, the Huffington Post <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nixon-drug-war-racist_us_56f16a0ae4b03a640a6bbda1" type="external">story</a> on the quote showed an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-nixon-drug-war-john-ehrlichman_us_56f58be6e4b0a3721819ec61?j4cvxkk6gn39b2o6r" type="external">update</a>, noting that some of Ehrlichman’s former colleagues say he never said that, and if he did, he was being sarcastic. But our question might be, what difference does it make? Has the War on Drugs been less of an assault on black communities as well as social justice activists if we don’t have such a smoking-gun admission? Here to help separate words from reality when it comes to racism and the drug war is journalist and author asha bandele, who is senior director of grants, partnerships and special projects at Drug Policy Alliance. She joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, asha bandele.</p>
<p>Asha Bandele: Thank you so much. Hello, hello.</p>
<p>JJ: You get the patronizing vibe from its headline, “Was Nixon’s War on Drugs a Racially Motivated Crusade? It’s a Bit More Complicated.” This is a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs" type="external">piece</a> by Vox.com that ties itself into a pretzel, saying that Nixon was racist, but you have to keep in mind that also he “personally despised drugs, to the point that it’s not surprising he would want to rid the world of them.” But here’s the big finish:</p>
<p>None of that means that the drug war hasn’t disproportionately hurt black Americans, it clearly has. But the lessons of Nixon’s drug policies may not be so much that he was a racist power-hungry politician, although again he was, but rather that even well-meaning policies can have big, terrible unintended consequences.</p>
<p>I’m not going to ask you to make actual sense of that, but instead to talk about this useful confusion, if you will, the idea that a set of policies and practices can’t be properly described as racist unless you can show evidence of explicitly racist intent. How much should it matter what Ehrlichman said?</p>
<p>AB: Yeah. I mean, I think that it matters somewhat, but I’m not intent at looking at that. Right? I think that we look at every drug law that’s been started in America, and it’s always been tied to race. When you were talking about the first opiate laws, those were against Chinese people. The first cocaine laws are against black people, with the New York Times <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/how-myth-negro-cocaine-fiend-helped-shape-american-drug-policy/" type="external">screaming</a> about the Negro cocaine menace. You know, describing the Negro from the South in much in the same ways we heard Mike Brown described when Darren Wilson shot and killed him: that he was lurching toward him, he couldn’t stop him, you had to shoot down and kill this big, unstoppable black monster. And, of course, <a href="" type="internal">marijuana laws</a> targeted in particular Mexicans who were coming into the United States.</p>
<p>And so you see that in all of these cases there’s a fundamental tie-in, and that’s around economic policy. Right? They were worried about blacks coming up from the South and taking jobs, the Chinese men who were here building the railroad and what else would happen after that was gone, and Mexicans coming up from Mexico and taking jobs. So there’s never been a drug law that has started in the United States that wasn’t explicitly tied to race, and wasn’t around race. When you had white women who were using opiates to soothe their pain in the 1800s, there were never any laws against them. They were treated as people who needed public health intervention, if in fact they were using it in a way that was deleterious to their lives.</p>
<p>And much in the same way, we see that now. Right? So now we’re getting a kinder, gentler drug war, because they’re concerned that white people are dying of opiate overdose. And we didn’t have that, and there’s been no plan to talk about what are they going to do to repair the harms that have been done to people who were criminalized.</p>
<p>And, you know, when it comes to black people and Nixon, I will say this. We do know that Nixon participated in various counterintelligence-type programs, including <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/04/19/did-an-fbi-call-accidentally-kill-an-nypd-officer/" type="external">Project New Kill</a> comes up under his administration, and all these ways to disrupt black people and activists in general. And it strikes me that the War on Drugs begins right at the time, under Nixon, that black people really had the world looking at us and looking at the human rights violations that had been going on in America for so long against black people. Right? We’re at the height of that. The civil rights movement coming to a close, and really, now that we’ve gotten civil rights, how do we demand full human rights, which was what the Black Power movement was doing?</p>
<p>And so, right as that’s happening, Nixon finds a way to criminalize a whole swath of the American populace, the African-American swath of the American populace. There’s so many lies tied up in it that we even begin to believe that—the kind of misinformation that’s put out, not just about drug users, but about drugs themselves. Right? So you have marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, you have 10, 15 years later, all the lies about crack that are put out, that really have been debunked at this point by people like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/magazine/carl-hart-crack-wasnt-the-real-problem.html" type="external">Dr. Carl Hart</a>. But, you know, that’s really what happened: In the moment we held the moral high ground, we were all criminalized.</p>
<p>JJ: And I think there’s confusion about saying that just because you can say that policies are about something in addition to race, that that somehow means that race and racism are not irreducible factors in those policies.</p>
<p>Well, you’re talking about the shift, and new compassionate outlook, as the demographics, if you will, or perceived demographics of drug use change. The New York Times ran a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/heroin-war-on-drugs-parents.html" type="external">piece</a> last September with the headline, “In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs.” And the reporter laid it out:</p>
<p>When the nation’s long-running war against drugs was defined by the crack epidemic and based in poor predominantly black urban areas, the public response was defined by zero tolerance and stiff prison sentences. Today’s heroin crisis is different.</p>
<p>And so on, to talk about the compassionate approach. Now, I take issue with the phrase “the public response.” People don’t make drug policy.</p>
<p>AB: Uh-huh.</p>
<p>JJ: But they are pointing to race as being a driver in this new compassionate approach to heroin. But what I wanted to get to is, in that piece, there’s an explanation given by Michael Botticelli, who heads the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, and he suggests that the reason these white and sometimes middle-class heroin addicts are getting a compassionate approach is their families and communities know how to politically organize and demand that kind of response. As if to suggest that if black people had only organized about the harms of the drug war, or as if to suggest that black people did not organize about the harms of the drug war, and that’s why that approach was different.</p>
<p>AB: No. 1, the only relationship that black people have continuously had to the government of the United States is a relationship of confinement and containment. Right? Whether it was chattel slavery, whether it was the terrorism imposed by the Ku Klux Klan, the Jim Crow laws and then immediately following that—those ended officially in 1968—Nixon starts the drug war in 1971, or the modern drug war, in 1971, which begins the climb from 200,000 people in the prison system then to over 2 million now, and another 5 million on paper, as we call it. Right? Still being monitored by the criminal justice system through parole, probation and whatever, their citizenship not fully intact.</p>
<p>So there’s never been a relationship, and I don’t even know that America and the people we have in leadership now fully know how to create a relationship with black people, that is not bounded by that fact, and that’s what we’re pushing against. But when it comes to—what Botticelli says is extraordinarily insulting. It’s a black woman who leads the first and successful raid during the Civil War. That’s Harriet Tubman. There’s always been resistance to oppression by black people.</p>
<p>Video image of the first SWAT raid–directed against the Black Panther Party (via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/us/the-rise-of-the-swat-team-in-american-policing.html" type="external">New York Times</a>)</p>
<p>Now, the response has been extraordinary. Right? We remember the <a href="http://www.jasmyneacannick.com/blog/41st-central-the-untold-story-of-the-l-a-black-panthers-featured-in-l-a-times-magazine/" type="external">first SWAT raids</a> were leveled against the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles. Right? So those weren’t done to, like, take down a whole bunch of criminals. Those were activists they used it against. It was activists in Detroit who had tanks rolled on them, and it was activists in Baltimore and in Ferguson who had tanks and rubber bullets. It was the police who started that violence against young people, primarily, who were protesting another murder of another one of our own at the hands of police. So we’ve always resisted. The response to that resistance, the response to that organizing against oppression and against state violence, has been extraordinary.</p>
<p>JJ: Let me ask you on another tip, because I think people think, you know, the winds of change are in the air, and one of the things people would point to is the decriminalization, in many states, of marijuana. Does that marijuana decriminalization automatically bring with it an improvement in the lives of black and brown people?</p>
<p>AB: Marijuana was decriminalized in my city, New York City, in 1977, and yet arrest rates went skyrocketing. Until De Blasio gets in office, it was an extraordinary skyrocket in the arrests for marijuana. So that’s no guarantee. I think in some places like Washington, DC, where there was a full-out legalization, you saw a precipitous drop, I think really almost down to zero in arrest rates, and I think legalization may allow us to get to that level where drugs are fully taken out of the criminal justice system. Decriminalization is helpful, but it’s not the full answer for something that you can’t—it’s legislating morality. Right? And in deciding which drug is licit and which drug isn’t licit, and it really makes no sense. If you were to take pure acetaminophen into your body, it’s actually more toxic to your body than pure heroin.</p>
<p>So it’s not like we do this stuff based on science or based on public health or public safety. That’s not what happens. In fact, the laws we create generate public danger. Prohibitionist policies generate public danger, they generate underground markets, they generate all of that, just like they did during alcohol prohibition.</p>
<p>I don’t know that that’s the full answer. I look more toward where legalization has had a better impact, and then that’s only one part of the equation there. Because even with legalization, are we talking about full economic justice or are we still talking about economic violence where people are locked out of any systems of wealth creation and stabilizing their families?</p>
<p>JJ: Right. And the key factor there being that in many of the states that have legalized marijuana, if you have a drug-related felony conviction, you can’t open that cannabis-related business. So that’s going to close that path for a lot of people who were victimized by the drug war. Now things have changed, but they will not be on the winning team in terms of —</p>
<p>AB: And even if you get that, what percentage of the money that’s made by an above-ground licit market now in marijuana, or anything else that comes down the road, is going to go to repair of the harm? This is a moment for repairing the harm, it’s a moment for reparations, which people don’t want to think about. But it’s hard to speak to people’s intent. Right? We think that we know their heart; maybe we do, maybe we don’t. I’m going to speak to just the outcomes and the policies, and I’m interested in changing people’s behavior on this stuff. And when this is the outcome of what you did, you have to pay a price. Communities were destroyed, families were destroyed. People were locked out of having any kind of jobs when they came home. They were locked out of being able to go to school. You have to hold people accountable for that.</p>
<p>JJ: We’ve been speaking with asha bandele of the Drug Policy Alliance. She’s author of The Prisoner’s Wife, among other titles, and you can find the Alliance on line at <a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/" type="external">DrugPolicy.org</a>. asha bandele, thank you so much for joining us today on CounterSpin.</p>
<p>AB: Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to be here.</p>
<p>Laura Carlsen: “This repressive apparatus of the War on Drugs, that’s supposedly aimed at breaking down the drug cartels, is actually being turned against grassroots movements.” (image: <a href="https://youtu.be/KGLYhsYbE7A" type="external">Emergencia Mx</a>)</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">MP3 Link</a></p>
<p>Janine Jackson: The impact of the US War on Drugs is not felt only in the United States, of course, and there is a vivid effort now underway to call attention to that fact. Our next guest is part of the Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice traveling through Central America and Mexico to New York. Laura Carlsen is the director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, based in Mexico City. She joins us now by phone from Honduras. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Laura Carlsen.</p>
<p>Laura Carlsen: Thanks so much, Janine. It’s a pleasure.</p>
<p>JJ: Tell us, what is Caravan 2016; what is it itself, and then what is the message?</p>
<p>LC: Well, the caravan is an initiative that’s been in the process of organization for months now, and the idea is we started in Tegucigalpa, in Honduras, and we’re going through five countries—Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and the United States—to end up on the 19th of April at the United Nations special session on drugs. And the idea is to open the debate on prohibition policies and the War on Drugs. And as we go through the different towns and cities and countries that we’re visiting along the way, what we’re hearing are scores of testimonies as to the specific and concrete impact of the War on Drugs policy in these countries.</p>
<p>Maria Herrera Magdaleno, mother of four disappeared children, speaks at the opening of the Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice in Tegucigalpa (Image: Telesur via <a href="https://www.popularresistance.org/day-2-caravan-for-peace-life-and-justice/" type="external">Popular Resistance</a>)</p>
<p>Of course, we chose Central America and Mexico because the violence that’s generated by this war mentality in respect to the enforcement of prohibitionist policies is so keenly felt in these countries. And although we’ve only been on the road now for several days, we’ve already heard many accounts of this. After starting in Tegucigalpa with human rights groups, and hearing the problems that they’re facing in terms of human rights violations and the direct impact of militarization, we then went to the Atlantic Coast, with indigenous population of mostly Afro-descendants there, and they have a particular perspective on it. They’re very clear about asking the United States to withdraw all support for this militarization policy and for the Honduran security forces.</p>
<p>Because one of the classic cases was several years ago. Their population suffered a <a href="" type="internal">massacre in Ahuas</a> that was actually carried out by a State Department helicopter with DEA agents on board and Honduran military that apparently mistook a boat full of Garífuna indigenous people and Miskito Indian people for drug traffickers, and just began shooting in the predawn hours. There’s no full investigation, and there’s no prosecutions. They’ve suffered several assassinations since then.</p>
<p>They joined the caravan, and then we went from there to the town where we are right now, where the environmental activist Berta Cáceres was assassinated. &#160;The relationship is that this repressive apparatus of the War on Drugs, that’s supposedly aimed at breaking down the drug cartels, is actually being turned against grassroots movements, and particularly grassroots movements like Berta Cáceres and like the Garífuna people that are fighting to defend their land and resources against the incursions of transnational corporations.</p>
<p>JJ: Well, what you’re making clear here is that the reaction here and the activism here is in response not just to violence from drug trafficking, but very much a response to the violence of those that are ostensibly seeking to reduce drug trafficking. This is not a caravan that is simply saying, drug trafficking and the drug business is bad; it’s very much about what we are told is an effort to root out that drug trafficking, but which in fact is not having that effect, and is having other harmful effects on communities.</p>
<p>LC: That’s exactly right. And the people that we speak to are very clear about this. Because there’s a number of problems that are rooted in US prohibition policies. And the first is that when you create a multi-billion dollar market for an illegal substance, then you’re delivering this huge business into the hands of criminals, by definition. And so the violence generated by the drug cartels is also a huge part of it, and it’s also avoidable with better policies that are more focused on health.</p>
<p>But the other part of it is that illicit drug trafficking has been going on for ages, as long as prohibition has existed. And what the people are talking about here is that it generated a fairly controllable, at least, or low level of violence until the government security forces turned it into a war. And then that destabilized relationships between cartels, in some cases between security forces and the cartels themselves. But it also initiated this era in which the corruption of the security forces, police and armed forces—because in these countries the army and navy are deployed against cartels as well, which is very questionable, to say the least, in itself—and the contact has created a high level of complicity and corruption. So that you have the state actively involved, by many indications, in the illegal businesses themselves, and the citizenry suffering the consequences of the violence that’s generated as a result.</p>
<p>JJ: How important is the building of international connections and international solidarity? It seems that the national boundaries have kind of skewed our understanding and worked against our making common cause, victims of the drug war in the US and in other countries. The international aspect of this caravan is very important, is it not?</p>
<p>LC: Absolutely. Just one of the major objectives of the caravan—by going through these countries, we’re hoping to enable, as people get to know each other who are on the caravan, as people on the caravan get to know the grassroots organizations in the other countries, to enable more linkages between people who are fighting this policy and asking for more sensible policies based on public health and public safety. To get to know each other, to begin to work together, to begin to see how regional this problem is, to be able to understand the linkages that it has. And there’s already a high level of understanding here of US policy and the extremely high levels of the sales of arms and military and defense and security aid from the United States that’s going into perpetuating this war.</p>
<p>And on the other side, it’s been already one of the most wonderful outcomes of the caravan to see the appreciation of peoples like the Garífuna, like the Lenca people here in La Esperanza, when the caravan arrived, what it means to them to know that in other places of the world, there’s an understanding of what they have to go through, the risks they have to take, and the obstacles they face in defending their rivers, their lands, their traditional and ancestral territories. So it’s an encouraging process to all those involved, and it’s a process that we’re hoping and we really do think will leave some long-term kind of a basis for continuing to build on.</p>
<p>JJ: We’ve been speaking with Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy. Thank you so much, Laura Carlsen, for taking time to speak with us this week on CounterSpin.</p>
<p>LC: Thank you for the opportunity.</p>
<p>Subscribe: <a href="" type="internal">Android</a> | <a href="" type="internal">RSS</a></p> | true | 4 | janine jackson interviewed asha bandele laura carlsen war drugs april 1 2016 episode counterspin lightly edited transcript asha bandele like stuff based science based public health public safety fact laws create generate public danger mp3 link john ehrlichman know lying drugs course janine jackson quote havent heard attributed recent story harpers john ehrlichman domestic policy advisor richard nixon referring nixons declaration war drugs want know really nixon campaign 1968 nixon white house two enemies antiwar left black people understand im saying knew couldnt make illegal either war black getting public associate hippies marijuana blacks heroin criminalizing heavily could disrupt communities could arrest leaders raid homes break meetings vilify night night evening news know lying drugs course well huffington post story quote showed update noting ehrlichmans former colleagues say never said sarcastic question might difference make war drugs less assault black communities well social justice activists dont smokinggun admission help separate words reality comes racism drug war journalist author asha bandele senior director grants partnerships special projects drug policy alliance joins us phone welcome counterspin asha bandele asha bandele thank much hello hello jj get patronizing vibe headline nixons war drugs racially motivated crusade bit complicated piece voxcom ties pretzel saying nixon racist keep mind also personally despised drugs point surprising would want rid world heres big finish none means drug war hasnt disproportionately hurt black americans clearly lessons nixons drug policies may much racist powerhungry politician although rather even wellmeaning policies big terrible unintended consequences im going ask make actual sense instead talk useful confusion idea set policies practices cant properly described racist unless show evidence explicitly racist intent much matter ehrlichman said ab yeah mean think matters somewhat im intent looking right think look every drug law thats started america always tied race talking first opiate laws chinese people first cocaine laws black people new york times screaming negro cocaine menace know describing negro south much ways heard mike brown described darren wilson shot killed lurching toward couldnt stop shoot kill big unstoppable black monster course marijuana laws targeted particular mexicans coming united states see cases theres fundamental tiein thats around economic policy right worried blacks coming south taking jobs chinese men building railroad else would happen gone mexicans coming mexico taking jobs theres never drug law started united states wasnt explicitly tied race wasnt around race white women using opiates soothe pain 1800s never laws treated people needed public health intervention fact using way deleterious lives much way see right getting kinder gentler drug war theyre concerned white people dying opiate overdose didnt theres plan talk going repair harms done people criminalized know comes black people nixon say know nixon participated various counterintelligencetype programs including project new kill comes administration ways disrupt black people activists general strikes war drugs begins right time nixon black people really world looking us looking human rights violations going america long black people right height civil rights movement coming close really weve gotten civil rights demand full human rights black power movement right thats happening nixon finds way criminalize whole swath american populace africanamerican swath american populace theres many lies tied even begin believe thatthe kind misinformation thats put drug users drugs right marijuana schedule 1 drug 10 15 years later lies crack put really debunked point people like dr carl hart know thats really happened moment held moral high ground criminalized jj think theres confusion saying say policies something addition race somehow means race racism irreducible factors policies well youre talking shift new compassionate outlook demographics perceived demographics drug use change new york times ran piece last september headline heroin crisis white families seek gentler war drugs reporter laid nations longrunning war drugs defined crack epidemic based poor predominantly black urban areas public response defined zero tolerance stiff prison sentences todays heroin crisis different talk compassionate approach take issue phrase public response people dont make drug policy ab uhhuh jj pointing race driver new compassionate approach heroin wanted get piece theres explanation given michael botticelli heads white house office drug control policy suggests reason white sometimes middleclass heroin addicts getting compassionate approach families communities know politically organize demand kind response suggest black people organized harms drug war suggest black people organize harms drug war thats approach different ab 1 relationship black people continuously government united states relationship confinement containment right whether chattel slavery whether terrorism imposed ku klux klan jim crow laws immediately following thatthose ended officially 1968nixon starts drug war 1971 modern drug war 1971 begins climb 200000 people prison system 2 million another 5 million paper call right still monitored criminal justice system parole probation whatever citizenship fully intact theres never relationship dont even know america people leadership fully know create relationship black people bounded fact thats pushing comes towhat botticelli says extraordinarily insulting black woman leads first successful raid civil war thats harriet tubman theres always resistance oppression black people video image first swat raiddirected black panther party via new york times response extraordinary right remember first swat raids leveled black panther party los angeles right werent done like take whole bunch criminals activists used activists detroit tanks rolled activists baltimore ferguson tanks rubber bullets police started violence young people primarily protesting another murder another one hands police weve always resisted response resistance response organizing oppression state violence extraordinary jj let ask another tip think people think know winds change air one things people would point decriminalization many states marijuana marijuana decriminalization automatically bring improvement lives black brown people ab marijuana decriminalized city new york city 1977 yet arrest rates went skyrocketing de blasio gets office extraordinary skyrocket arrests marijuana thats guarantee think places like washington dc fullout legalization saw precipitous drop think really almost zero arrest rates think legalization may allow us get level drugs fully taken criminal justice system decriminalization helpful full answer something cantits legislating morality right deciding drug licit drug isnt licit really makes sense take pure acetaminophen body actually toxic body pure heroin like stuff based science based public health public safety thats happens fact laws create generate public danger prohibitionist policies generate public danger generate underground markets generate like alcohol prohibition dont know thats full answer look toward legalization better impact thats one part equation even legalization talking full economic justice still talking economic violence people locked systems wealth creation stabilizing families jj right key factor many states legalized marijuana drugrelated felony conviction cant open cannabisrelated business thats going close path lot people victimized drug war things changed winning team terms ab even get percentage money thats made aboveground licit market marijuana anything else comes road going go repair harm moment repairing harm moment reparations people dont want think hard speak peoples intent right think know heart maybe maybe dont im going speak outcomes policies im interested changing peoples behavior stuff outcome pay price communities destroyed families destroyed people locked kind jobs came home locked able go school hold people accountable jj weve speaking asha bandele drug policy alliance shes author prisoners wife among titles find alliance line drugpolicyorg asha bandele thank much joining us today counterspin ab thank much pleasure laura carlsen repressive apparatus war drugs thats supposedly aimed breaking drug cartels actually turned grassroots movements image emergencia mx mp3 link janine jackson impact us war drugs felt united states course vivid effort underway call attention fact next guest part caravan peace life justice traveling central america mexico new york laura carlsen director americas program center international policy based mexico city joins us phone honduras welcome back counterspin laura carlsen laura carlsen thanks much janine pleasure jj tell us caravan 2016 message lc well caravan initiative thats process organization months idea started tegucigalpa honduras going five countrieshonduras el salvador guatemala mexico united statesto end 19th april united nations special session drugs idea open debate prohibition policies war drugs go different towns cities countries visiting along way hearing scores testimonies specific concrete impact war drugs policy countries maria herrera magdaleno mother four disappeared children speaks opening caravan peace life justice tegucigalpa image telesur via popular resistance course chose central america mexico violence thats generated war mentality respect enforcement prohibitionist policies keenly felt countries although weve road several days weve already heard many accounts starting tegucigalpa human rights groups hearing problems theyre facing terms human rights violations direct impact militarization went atlantic coast indigenous population mostly afrodescendants particular perspective theyre clear asking united states withdraw support militarization policy honduran security forces one classic cases several years ago population suffered massacre ahuas actually carried state department helicopter dea agents board honduran military apparently mistook boat full garífuna indigenous people miskito indian people drug traffickers began shooting predawn hours theres full investigation theres prosecutions theyve suffered several assassinations since joined caravan went town right environmental activist berta cáceres assassinated 160the relationship repressive apparatus war drugs thats supposedly aimed breaking drug cartels actually turned grassroots movements particularly grassroots movements like berta cáceres like garífuna people fighting defend land resources incursions transnational corporations jj well youre making clear reaction activism response violence drug trafficking much response violence ostensibly seeking reduce drug trafficking caravan simply saying drug trafficking drug business bad much told effort root drug trafficking fact effect harmful effects communities lc thats exactly right people speak clear theres number problems rooted us prohibition policies first create multibillion dollar market illegal substance youre delivering huge business hands criminals definition violence generated drug cartels also huge part also avoidable better policies focused health part illicit drug trafficking going ages long prohibition existed people talking generated fairly controllable least low level violence government security forces turned war destabilized relationships cartels cases security forces cartels also initiated era corruption security forces police armed forcesbecause countries army navy deployed cartels well questionable say least itselfand contact created high level complicity corruption state actively involved many indications illegal businesses citizenry suffering consequences violence thats generated result jj important building international connections international solidarity seems national boundaries kind skewed understanding worked making common cause victims drug war us countries international aspect caravan important lc absolutely one major objectives caravanby going countries hoping enable people get know caravan people caravan get know grassroots organizations countries enable linkages people fighting policy asking sensible policies based public health public safety get know begin work together begin see regional problem able understand linkages theres already high level understanding us policy extremely high levels sales arms military defense security aid united states thats going perpetuating war side already one wonderful outcomes caravan see appreciation peoples like garífuna like lenca people la esperanza caravan arrived means know places world theres understanding go risks take obstacles face defending rivers lands traditional ancestral territories encouraging process involved process hoping really think leave longterm kind basis continuing build jj weve speaking laura carlsen americas program center international policy thank much laura carlsen taking time speak us week counterspin lc thank opportunity subscribe android rss | 1,801 |
<p>In a classic essay[1] George Orwell describes himself as "amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations." Rather it leads to "orgies of hatred" as "young men . . . kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators."</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; With the possible exception of certain Wagner operas, musical performances do seem less likely than sports to foment actual physical violence. Even so, Orwell’s characterization applies pretty well. In particular, even if it doesn’t provoke race riots or ethnic bloodletting, contrary to what is frequently claimed, music does not "bring people together" at least in the sense of bringing people of differing class, racial, and ethnic lines together. In fact, it does the opposite: it tends to divide people into tribes. The musical community in which I am involved is perhaps the most tribal in this respect. Audiences of classical orchestral and chamber music, whether new or traditional, have roughly the racial and class composition of a Tea Party convention.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Those not belonging to the tribe seem to implicitly understand that a message of exclusion is being conveyed when they are confronted with it. Administrators of public spaces have by now long since recognized that classical music can be weaponized to function within the ever growing arsenal of crowd management techniques, a highly effective mechanism to dislodge the poor, black, and unwashed from New York’s Penn Station, among numerous other locations to which the legions of homeless cannot be legally denied access.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Of course, the converse also applies: an ex-urban, middle aged academic like myself will certainly derive a message from a late model SUV blasting Lil Wayne, and it’s not a comforting one. We might like it when we hear it in the right context, in a random encounter on iTunes, or when a student sends us a YouTube link, but the element of menace, specifically of expropriative street violence is undeniable — just as Mozart connotes menace in the form of a cop’s night stick to a homeless man.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; I make these observations as an introduction to some general thoughts on an overlapping subject. The waning years of the second Bush administration brought with them a wave of what was called at the time political music. Much of this came from younger composers around New York and was of extremely high quality. I’ll recommend three pieces of this type as exemplary: David Little’s moving and widely performed Soldier Songs, Judd Greenstein’s riveting and impressive Free Speech Zone[2] composed for the excellent new chamber music group the Now Ensemble,[3] and Ted Hearne’s poignant alt-oratorio Katrina Ballads.[4]</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; These works and others like them were often performed in events specifically organized as protest concerts. Greenstein’s Free Speech Zone was included in a four-city tour of the same name programmed along with other "politically charged" works.[5] Another event along similar lines was Republic in Ruins[6] a concert series featuring a cross section of new music composers and improvisers as well as Emerson String Quartet violinist Eugene Drucker, with musical performances interspersed among speeches by Nation magazine columnists Patricia Williams and Jonathan Schell. A third, Breaking the Silence: An Evening of Music and Discourse for Peace and Democracy,[7] brought together a different group of musicians to "voice their concerns over the actions and policies of this administration."</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Now, only a few years later the political music genre and the protests associated with it are virtually extinct. The groups and individuals who participated in the above mentioned events continue to perform frequently and impressively, but so far as I know, not in contexts which express any particular concern or anger with the direction the nation has taken. The three composers mentioned, and others of their generation continue to produce work of astonishing invention, craft, and commitment. But there has not been much indication that these works have been anything other than non-referentially "pure," in the tradition of works such as Bach’s Art of the Fugue, Strauss’s 1940 opera Die Liebe der Danae, or Milton Babbitt’s Partitions largely shorn of any reference to the world, outside of that which the music itself evokes.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Most notably, there is a complete absence of protest or even recognition within new works of atrocities and outrages of recent years. There is no cantata commemorating the Obama administration’s proposals for cuts in Social Security or Medicare. There is no song cycle for Bradley Manning’s torture at the hands of the military justice system, drone attacks in Pakistan, or the administration’s hounding of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Nor is there any mention, except in the most abstract terms of the near certainty of planetary catastrophe due to global warming and the complete failure of our political system to address it.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; I’m not going to pretend that I find this asymmetry anything other than disappointing: the same policies which were denounced and ridiculed when undertaken by a malaprop prone, frat boy dunce are applauded or at least ignored when undertaken by a smooth talking, neo-liberal technocrat, who, phenotypical appearances notwithstanding, (or, more likely, because of these), we see as representing the best of who we are and what we aspire to. The underlying conclusion seems to be that tribal loyalty, not commitment to any set of defensible political principles or ethical code is what defines us as artists, professionals, and individuals. Based on the functional tendency of music to divide us into tribes noted at the beginning, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. But even so, insofar as the description I’m offering here is an accurate portrayal of who we are, it is not an attractive one.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; I am not alone in having a rather jaundiced view of the general class milieu which I am, for better or worse, included within. In the political sphere, Glenn Greenwald has consistently pointed out the tendency of Obama supporters to mount tortured apologetics for the same policies which they deplored under the Bush regime.[8] More broadly, Chris Hedges[9] has written of a liberal class which, over the past decades, has shown itself incapable of exercising critical judgment and which by now has altogether sacrificed even its most minimal claim to moral or intellectual authority.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; These are harsh judgments and possibly somewhat unfair when applied to music and those of us who try to create it, so I will mitigate them slightly. I’ll do so by noting that music, perhaps to a greater degree than other art forms, consists of the creation and reinforcement of communicative bonds within groups and between individuals. A few examples will suffice to give some idea of the relevant categories: we know from the work of cognitive psychologists Laurel Trainor[10] and Sandra Trehub[11] that a form of musicalized speech known as motherese or infant directed speech (IDS) is crucial in establishing affective bonds between mothers and infant children. Also, as discussed in Steven Mithen’s The Singing Neanderthals[12] and elsewhere, there is evidence to suggest that the earliest humans made use of music to coordinate group activities whether these were necessary work routines or drills instilling discipline within a martial class, a topic discussed in historian William McNeill’s Keeping Together in Time.[13]</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; All of these instances have at their core music functioning as a communicative system to establish and enhance social bonds. It would therefore seem that deliberately addressing subjects which expose fissures within the communities to which it is addressed is not just uncomfortable but arguably violative of music’s most fundamental purposes — insofar as these can be inferred.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; At the same time, any honest contemporary artistic statement must necessarily involve the recognition of some highly unpleasant truths about ourselves. And if subverting what are functionally sacrosanct rituals of the concert hall is what is necessary to convey this message to those who need to hear it, one might hope that a few composers would be willing to transgress these boundaries.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>That this is the way which I see these matters should be apparent to those who have heard what I have composed in the last few years and which I won’t discuss except to note the obvious, namely that there is no recipe for producing works that anyone will care about now, much less a year or a decade from now; a political recipe is no better than any other and maybe even worse.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Furthermore, when it comes to political music, it is reasonable to argue, contrary to the position I’m taking above, that not only is the notion of political music fundamentally self-negating, but even insofar as it is not, that is, insofar as political content has been conveyed through music, those works which succeed most powerfully in doing so are themselves non-political in the sense in which I am assuming above. For in these cases, rather than embodying or articulating an explicit political position, whatever referential content a work contains is not immanent but projected onto it by listeners either contemporaneously or post hoc.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; As an indication of how politically meanings are constructed and conferred, I’ll mention a notoriously problematic instance, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, a work which functioned as a Cold War cultural front battleground since its premier in 1937.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; That the work is political, more specifically that it conveys a statement with respect to a political system, namely, Soviet Communism, is undisputed. Also indisputable is that there is no consensus as to the content of Shostakovich’s political statement, either contemporaneously or now seven decades after its first performance. In a series of important essays, Richard Taruskin has shown how the Fifth Symphony managed to be, at different times, and even concurrently, all things to all ideological persuasions.[14] Thus, among those sympathetic to the work included some elements of Soviet officialdom who accepted a triumphalist reading of the work with the concluding D major tonality taken to represent, in the words of the unlikely commissar Count Alexei Tolstoy, "all that is bright, optimistic, life-affirming." Other sympathizers included the polemicist and author of Testimony, the fraudulent Shostakovich memoir, Solomon Volkov, who confidently asserted that "you have to be an oaf" to hear the finale as "a celebration of anything," least of all Socialist collectivism. Among the oafs accepting this view was Igor Stravinsky, who claimed to hear the work as a "Symphony of Socialism" in which the finale represents "the image of the gratitude and the enthusiasm of the masses." Finally, Taruskin has unearthed conclusive evidence that within the Soviet nomenklatura some were sophisticated enough to accept the possibility of a less than triumphalist reading with what one characterized as "the numb, torpid Largo" casting ominously renewed suspicion on Shostakovich’s commitment to the Stalinist variant of state socialism.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; It might seem that the ultimate verdict as to meaning of the Fifth would derive from Shostakovich himself, and for this we at least have the subtitle, "A composer’s response to just criticism." But any attempt to take the words at face value needs to be accompanied by the awareness that they were written with a gun pointed at Shostakovich’s head and that the gun in question was not altogether metaphorical: Stalin’s notorious remark that the composer’s previous experiments in bourgeois formalism were "sure to end badly" could be reasonably interpreted as an invitation to the Gulag at best and the gallows at worst, a fate visited on several of Shostakovich’s friends and acquaintances. Whatever "meaning" Shostakovich was projecting on his work in these circumstances was nothing more than the pro forma, terrified utterances which a humble shopkeeper delivers in the presence of the local mafia don.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; As Taruskin observes, this remark, and, its expansion within a possibly ghostwritten explanatory essay constitutes the totality of what Shostakovich had to say about the Fifth in the three decades which remained to him after having completed it. Given the absence of a definitive statement from the composer, and the contradictory attributes assigned to it, we are left with a labyrinth of multivalence from which it is hard to see any way out.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>But if the semantic level of description yields nothing more than a morass, the syntactic level, which is to say, the organization of musical materials which is at the core of Shostakovich’s compositional technique, offers more promise. Due to the relative neglect of formal studies of composers of Shostakovich’s general stylistic orientation, the requisite taxonomy is only now being developed by music theorists.[15] While by no means easy, questions of this sort — how Shostakovich fashioned and organized his musical materials — do seem to allow for certain kinds of real answers. This state of affairs contrasts sharply with questions with respect to meaning which are, it would seem, ultimately mysterious — a hall of mirrors in which the orientation of the observer is implicated in what appears.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; It is these purely formal elements of the work which not so much enable but compel us to seek answers about its ultimate content, even if, as Taruskin notes, very few are forthcoming. That we would find it necessary to provide such answers is not a testimony to the inherent and pervasively ambiguous content of the work. Many, if not all, musical works are necessarily exactly that. Rather it is a testimony to the inherent sophistication and appeal of the musical syntax that listeners feel compelled to search for these meanings and feel required to attach their preferred ideological perspective onto the work.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; What is political about the work, then, is (paradoxically) what is least political about it: namely its unmistakable and demonstrable commitment to traditional, timeless principles of musical craftsmanship, those which have existed under all socio-political systems ranging from the most benignly libertarian to the most repressively authoritarian. In this sense, every piece of music demanding attention is inherently apolitical.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; This background provides a more sympathetic perspective through which to view the quick evaporation of the protest music wave discussed (and deplored) earlier. According to this view, composers now, as was Shostakovich then, are negotiating the same ideological currents as the society in which they are attempting to survive. If the political climate is favorable for a dissident statement, then it will be projected onto even a nominally apolitical work. In the absence of a broader movement providing a lexicon through which a critique of state and corporate power can be conveyed, whatever political content injected into music will come across as preachy, self-righteous, and hectoring. Conversely, in a climate of political ferment, whatever qualities which force us to attend to music, to feel that it is speaking to us, can allow us to contextualize the work as in the service of political content. Under these circumstances, the fundamental bases of our relationship to the world and to each other generally, and to works of art in particular will be understood as political or at least politicized.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is not the only work which projects highly contradictory images when refracted through the lens of conflicting political ideologies. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, also widely performed within the Soviet Union, would be understood in stark, Marxian terms its "fate" motive embodying the "final conflict" between the proletarian mass and counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, a reading contrasting with the predominant liberal Western narrative which tends to view the victory motive as pertaining to the struggle of the heroic individual against impersonal forces and social conformity associated with the Leviathan state. Less problematically, the "Va, pensiero" chorus from Nabucco was a natural choice as the unofficial anthem for the resorgimento, though a more revealing indication of the predisposition to project political content was the reinterpretation of earlier Verdi operas as premature exponents of a liberatory narrative. Finally, a contemporary example is provided by the sphinx-like character and works of Bob Dylan, which continue to be championed by leftists as definitive classics of the civil rights and anti-war protest movements despite the routine denial of this content by Dylan himself and his sullen denigration of the entire genre as "music for fat people."</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; As mentioned before, all of this casts a more sympathetic light on composers’ apparent failure to directly engage political subjects. The explanation I’m proposing, it should be noted, relies on an implicit comparison between the political climate which prevails here now and the Stalinist police state with which Shostakovich had to contend. Many will, of course, find it hard to see any similarities. But while the differences, needless to say, are stark, it is, at the same time necessary to recognize that what Noam Chomsky has famously described as "thought control in democratic societies"[16] is exercised here in a manner notable both for being comparatively mild and also for its effectiveness.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; It also needs to be recognized that any comparison between the climate of Soviet Russia and our own is flawed in a very different respect: it has now been nearly a half century since what can be even loosely classified as contemporary classical music has had the capacity to communicate its message to a broad public. This status contrasts not only with canonic composers such as Shostakovich but also with pop music icons like Bob Dylan who, like Shostakovich, command not only huge followings but also significant cultural authority. The verdict reached by musicologist Robert Fink a decade ago that classical music is "merely one style among many and by no means the most prestigious"[17] while a bit shocking at the time, now seems fairly uncontroversial.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; While granting the niche status to which it has been consigned, contemporary classical music does still in some fashion continue to function as a "high" art form as it has traditionally: works having comparatively tiny audiences, performed in small performance spaces by obscure artists in and around downtown New York receive respectful and sometimes enthusiastic coverage in remaining organs of the artistic and political establishment, most notably the New York Times. And some composers including those mentioned, while not addressing a broad public with the same degree of cultural authority which Shostakovich took for granted three generations ago, manage on rare occasions to produce work which transcends its now compressed boundaries.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Of the composers mentioned above, one can take credit for what the industry would call a "breakout" piece of this type: Judd Greenstein’s Change[18] released in March of this year would become an NPR classical music pick of the month, subsequently reaching high positions on the Amazon, i-Tunes and Billboard classical charts. In its video incarnation as the musical component of Plan of the City, Change has now acquired upwards of 90,000 hearings after having been posted to the website www.vimeo.com in June.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; While still small in comparison to commercially viable genres, these figures begin to approach levels at which it becomes reasonable to discuss a work not just in terms of its form but also in terms of its content, that is, as indicative of broader social and political attitudes which it embodies and communicates to its audience. Just as Shostakovich demands, and still provokes, exegesis of its political content and reception, so too can Greenstein’s Change be approached along similar lines.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Moreover, Change invites these sorts of questions for several reasons. First, while Change has not provoked much political controversy, thanks to the internet we do have access to a substantial number of reactions in the form of online reviews, facebook postings, and comments attached to blogs and websites where it has been discussed. Secondly, whereas Shostakovich’s political sympathies, insofar as they were in any way unconventional, are, for obvious reasons, unknown, Greenstein has written perceptively and at considerable length on political subjects, his Williams College thesis on Plan Colombia having been published in a prestigious undergraduate journal.[19] Finally, the basic musical materials of the work itself allow for a similar multiplicity of interpretations as does the Shostakovich, and for many of the same reasons.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; What listeners report hearing in Change won’t come as a surprise to those familiar with it. The major tonalities, the Rossiniesque motoric energy, the consistently rising gestures, the syncopated vamps introducing elaborately wrought passages of what turn out to be, on closer examination, highly refined and brilliantly controlled traditional counterpoint, all these add up to a musical statement of (in the words of one critic) thoroughgoing "cheerfulness." Another critic is impressed by the "openness and optimism in the music ... very far from the hyper-intense anxiety, hysteria, and despair that are almost to be expected in much new concert music."[20]</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Here comparisons to Shostakovich’s Fifth, in particular to the finale, seem unavoidable. The fortisissimo D major brass fanfare which closes the piece is optimistic in much the same way as Change. Or is it? Similarly optimistic are the soliloquys of Ophelia in Hamlet. "Only a total oaf" would fail to recognize the underlying current of denialist hysteria which Shakespeare dramatized as Ophelia’s response to Hamlet’s betrayals and which Shostakovich communicates through the Fifth — according to the dissident perspective of the work. Volkov’s description of the Shostakovich’s Fifth as rendering a celebration "forced" by "someone beating you with a stick . . . saying ‘your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing’" seems equally applicable to the almost unrelieved succession of upbeat proclamations conveyed through Change.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; I should say that I don’t know of anyone else who has raised the possibility of the dissident hearing of Change I’m suggesting here, and I will admit that my own political sympathies no doubt play some role in my willingness to do so. That said, many aspects of the piece and its composition come into focus if one hears the piece as providing insight into the interior landscape prevalent among those in their twenties — one encapsulated in their self-administered description "generation last": a generation which has not only stopped hoping for change but has banished the concept of hope from their mental lexicon.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; In support of this interpretation, it should be noted that Greenstein, like many other artists in and around New York, was an active participant in the Obama campaign. Another beautiful work for the Now Ensemble, Folk Music, was donated to Obama for America for which it functioned with considerable success as the accompanying music for a fundraising video.[21] Greenstein’s blog[22] contains entries on both musical and political subjects, the latter staking out positions consistent with the prevailing climate in denouncing crimes of the Bush regime, and celebrating Obama’s rise, albeit voicing considerable skepticism as troubling signs began to emerge.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; As for Greenstein’s subsequent political trajectory there is less to go on, though what there is seems significant. In particular, Greenstein was among the few musicians joining with Noam Chomsky, Immanuel Wallerstein, Cornel West among others in signing an open letter[23] calling for intensified protest directed against Wall Street bailouts, civil rights abridgements, environmental pillage, perpetual war, and other policies of the administration.[24] Greenstein has not made any direct statements as to whether he has re-evaluated his political commitments either in various interviews he has given recently or on his blog which has fallen silent, with only a few postings since 2009, these limited to musical topics. While silence can usually be reasonably equated to consent, here it seems more appropriate to see it as stunned disbelief at the havoc which an administration, widely seen as the repository of the hopes of a generation, is visiting on the nation and the world.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Finally there is the matter of the title, which, under a dissident reading constitutes the amputated hindquarters of the now notorious sales pitch accompanying the roll-out of the Obama campaign. "Hope" having been extinguished, what remains is late capitalist Change understood as it was by Marx: a society under the heel of perpetual revolutions in production and marketing and through which "all which is holy becomes profaned."</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; In examining possible hearings of Change, it is worth bearing in mind Taruskin’s insistent exhortation that "no one owns the meaning of (Shostakovich’s) music." The Soviet commissars who found much to celebrate in the "optimism" of Shostakovich’s Fifth were within their rights to do so. And no doubt many of the 80,000 downloads of Change were experienced as a nostalgic, albeit infinitely higher quality reprise of the kinds of emotions elicited by the insipid Will I Am youtube video[25] which would become the unofficial anthem of the Obama campaign, in all its preeningly cynical, celebrity driven vacuity. For them, the comment of one critic comparing the effects of the music to that of Prozac would seem to be applicable, though the allusion to a pharmacologically induced sense of well being is perhaps revealing of something deeper. For probably a more common response is to experience the work as "transformative" of one’s surroundings, which is to say as escapism. Indeed, the video Plan of the City embodies exactly this narrative as the musicians take flight in a space ship and embarking on an inter-planetary exodus welcomed at their destination by throngs of admirers.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; The hijacking of our political discourse and institutions by corporations and the wealthy and with it the careening of our civilization toward unparalleled economic and environmental catastrophe makes such escapism not only predictable but maybe even defensible. Under such circumstances it may be that, in the words of poet Martin Espada, "music is all we have," all other forms of artistic experience necessarily being by their nature too referential to support the all-pervasive denialism which we have been required to adopt out of self-defense, or self-regard. If so, Walter Pater’s often cited reference to all arts aspiring to the condition of music assumes an ominous connotation. Classical music may have begun to regain its status as queen of the arts, as it had in Soviet Russia, but now, as then, at a cost which no sane person would be willing to bear.</p>
<p><a href="/filter/tips" type="external">More information about formatting options</a></p> | true | 4 | classic essay1 george orwell describes amazed hear people saying sport creates goodwill nations rather leads orgies hatred young men kick shins amid roars infuriated spectators 160160160160160 possible exception certain wagner operas musical performances seem less likely sports foment actual physical violence even orwells characterization applies pretty well particular even doesnt provoke race riots ethnic bloodletting contrary frequently claimed music bring people together least sense bringing people differing class racial ethnic lines together fact opposite tends divide people tribes musical community involved perhaps tribal respect audiences classical orchestral chamber music whether new traditional roughly racial class composition tea party convention 160160160160160 belonging tribe seem implicitly understand message exclusion conveyed confronted administrators public spaces long since recognized classical music weaponized function within ever growing arsenal crowd management techniques highly effective mechanism dislodge poor black unwashed new yorks penn station among numerous locations legions homeless legally denied access 160160160160160 course converse also applies exurban middle aged academic like certainly derive message late model suv blasting lil wayne comforting one might like hear right context random encounter itunes student sends us youtube link element menace specifically expropriative street violence undeniable mozart connotes menace form cops night stick homeless man 160160160160160 make observations introduction general thoughts overlapping subject waning years second bush administration brought wave called time political music much came younger composers around new york extremely high quality ill recommend three pieces type exemplary david littles moving widely performed soldier songs judd greensteins riveting impressive free speech zone2 composed excellent new chamber music group ensemble3 ted hearnes poignant altoratorio katrina ballads4 160160160160160 works others like often performed events specifically organized protest concerts greensteins free speech zone included fourcity tour name programmed along politically charged works5 another event along similar lines republic ruins6 concert series featuring cross section new music composers improvisers well emerson string quartet violinist eugene drucker musical performances interspersed among speeches nation magazine columnists patricia williams jonathan schell third breaking silence evening music discourse peace democracy7 brought together different group musicians voice concerns actions policies administration 160160160160160 years later political music genre protests associated virtually extinct groups individuals participated mentioned events continue perform frequently impressively far know contexts express particular concern anger direction nation taken three composers mentioned others generation continue produce work astonishing invention craft commitment much indication works anything nonreferentially pure tradition works bachs art fugue strausss 1940 opera die liebe der danae milton babbitts partitions largely shorn reference world outside music evokes 160 notably complete absence protest even recognition within new works atrocities outrages recent years cantata commemorating obama administrations proposals cuts social security medicare song cycle bradley mannings torture hands military justice system drone attacks pakistan administrations hounding wikileaks founder julian assange mention except abstract terms near certainty planetary catastrophe due global warming complete failure political system address 160160160160160 im going pretend find asymmetry anything disappointing policies denounced ridiculed undertaken malaprop prone frat boy dunce applauded least ignored undertaken smooth talking neoliberal technocrat phenotypical appearances notwithstanding likely see representing best aspire underlying conclusion seems tribal loyalty commitment set defensible political principles ethical code defines us artists professionals individuals based functional tendency music divide us tribes noted beginning shouldnt come surprise even insofar description im offering accurate portrayal attractive one 160160160160160 alone rather jaundiced view general class milieu better worse included within political sphere glenn greenwald consistently pointed tendency obama supporters mount tortured apologetics policies deplored bush regime8 broadly chris hedges9 written liberal class past decades shown incapable exercising critical judgment altogether sacrificed even minimal claim moral intellectual authority 160160160160160 harsh judgments possibly somewhat unfair applied music us try create mitigate slightly ill noting music perhaps greater degree art forms consists creation reinforcement communicative bonds within groups individuals examples suffice give idea relevant categories know work cognitive psychologists laurel trainor10 sandra trehub11 form musicalized speech known motherese infant directed speech ids crucial establishing affective bonds mothers infant children also discussed steven mithens singing neanderthals12 elsewhere evidence suggest earliest humans made use music coordinate group activities whether necessary work routines drills instilling discipline within martial class topic discussed historian william mcneills keeping together time13 160160160160160 instances core music functioning communicative system establish enhance social bonds would therefore seem deliberately addressing subjects expose fissures within communities addressed uncomfortable arguably violative musics fundamental purposes insofar inferred 160160160160160 time honest contemporary artistic statement must necessarily involve recognition highly unpleasant truths subverting functionally sacrosanct rituals concert hall necessary convey message need hear one might hope composers would willing transgress boundaries 160 way see matters apparent heard composed last years wont discuss except note obvious namely recipe producing works anyone care much less year decade political recipe better maybe even worse 160160160160160 furthermore comes political music reasonable argue contrary position im taking notion political music fundamentally selfnegating even insofar insofar political content conveyed music works succeed powerfully nonpolitical sense assuming cases rather embodying articulating explicit political position whatever referential content work contains immanent projected onto listeners either contemporaneously post hoc 160160160160160 indication politically meanings constructed conferred ill mention notoriously problematic instance shostakovichs fifth symphony work functioned cold war cultural front battleground since premier 1937 160160160160160 work political specifically conveys statement respect political system namely soviet communism undisputed also indisputable consensus content shostakovichs political statement either contemporaneously seven decades first performance series important essays richard taruskin shown fifth symphony managed different times even concurrently things ideological persuasions14 thus among sympathetic work included elements soviet officialdom accepted triumphalist reading work concluding major tonality taken represent words unlikely commissar count alexei tolstoy bright optimistic lifeaffirming sympathizers included polemicist author testimony fraudulent shostakovich memoir solomon volkov confidently asserted oaf hear finale celebration anything least socialist collectivism among oafs accepting view igor stravinsky claimed hear work symphony socialism finale represents image gratitude enthusiasm masses finally taruskin unearthed conclusive evidence within soviet nomenklatura sophisticated enough accept possibility less triumphalist reading one characterized numb torpid largo casting ominously renewed suspicion shostakovichs commitment stalinist variant state socialism 160160160160160 might seem ultimate verdict meaning fifth would derive shostakovich least subtitle composers response criticism attempt take words face value needs accompanied awareness written gun pointed shostakovichs head gun question altogether metaphorical stalins notorious remark composers previous experiments bourgeois formalism sure end badly could reasonably interpreted invitation gulag best gallows worst fate visited several shostakovichs friends acquaintances whatever meaning shostakovich projecting work circumstances nothing pro forma terrified utterances humble shopkeeper delivers presence local mafia 160160160160160 taruskin observes remark expansion within possibly ghostwritten explanatory essay constitutes totality shostakovich say fifth three decades remained completed given absence definitive statement composer contradictory attributes assigned left labyrinth multivalence hard see way 160 semantic level description yields nothing morass syntactic level say organization musical materials core shostakovichs compositional technique offers promise due relative neglect formal studies composers shostakovichs general stylistic orientation requisite taxonomy developed music theorists15 means easy questions sort shostakovich fashioned organized musical materials seem allow certain kinds real answers state affairs contrasts sharply questions respect meaning would seem ultimately mysterious hall mirrors orientation observer implicated appears 160160160160160 purely formal elements work much enable compel us seek answers ultimate content even taruskin notes forthcoming would find necessary provide answers testimony inherent pervasively ambiguous content work many musical works necessarily exactly rather testimony inherent sophistication appeal musical syntax listeners feel compelled search meanings feel required attach preferred ideological perspective onto work 160160160160160 political work paradoxically least political namely unmistakable demonstrable commitment traditional timeless principles musical craftsmanship existed sociopolitical systems ranging benignly libertarian repressively authoritarian sense every piece music demanding attention inherently apolitical 160160160160160 background provides sympathetic perspective view quick evaporation protest music wave discussed deplored earlier according view composers shostakovich negotiating ideological currents society attempting survive political climate favorable dissident statement projected onto even nominally apolitical work absence broader movement providing lexicon critique state corporate power conveyed whatever political content injected music come across preachy selfrighteous hectoring conversely climate political ferment whatever qualities force us attend music feel speaking us allow us contextualize work service political content circumstances fundamental bases relationship world generally works art particular understood political least politicized 160160160160160 shostakovichs fifth symphony work projects highly contradictory images refracted lens conflicting political ideologies beethovens fifth symphony also widely performed within soviet union would understood stark marxian terms fate motive embodying final conflict proletarian mass counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie reading contrasting predominant liberal western narrative tends view victory motive pertaining struggle heroic individual impersonal forces social conformity associated leviathan state less problematically va pensiero chorus nabucco natural choice unofficial anthem resorgimento though revealing indication predisposition project political content reinterpretation earlier verdi operas premature exponents liberatory narrative finally contemporary example provided sphinxlike character works bob dylan continue championed leftists definitive classics civil rights antiwar protest movements despite routine denial content dylan sullen denigration entire genre music fat people 160160160160160 mentioned casts sympathetic light composers apparent failure directly engage political subjects explanation im proposing noted relies implicit comparison political climate prevails stalinist police state shostakovich contend many course find hard see similarities differences needless say stark time necessary recognize noam chomsky famously described thought control democratic societies16 exercised manner notable comparatively mild also effectiveness 160160160160160 also needs recognized comparison climate soviet russia flawed different respect nearly half century since even loosely classified contemporary classical music capacity communicate message broad public status contrasts canonic composers shostakovich also pop music icons like bob dylan like shostakovich command huge followings also significant cultural authority verdict reached musicologist robert fink decade ago classical music merely one style among many means prestigious17 bit shocking time seems fairly uncontroversial 160160160160160 granting niche status consigned contemporary classical music still fashion continue function high art form traditionally works comparatively tiny audiences performed small performance spaces obscure artists around downtown new york receive respectful sometimes enthusiastic coverage remaining organs artistic political establishment notably new york times composers including mentioned addressing broad public degree cultural authority shostakovich took granted three generations ago manage rare occasions produce work transcends compressed boundaries 160160160160160 composers mentioned one take credit industry would call breakout piece type judd greensteins change18 released march year would become npr classical music pick month subsequently reaching high positions amazon itunes billboard classical charts video incarnation musical component plan city change acquired upwards 90000 hearings posted website wwwvimeocom june 160160160160160 still small comparison commercially viable genres figures begin approach levels becomes reasonable discuss work terms form also terms content indicative broader social political attitudes embodies communicates audience shostakovich demands still provokes exegesis political content reception greensteins change approached along similar lines 160160160160160 moreover change invites sorts questions several reasons first change provoked much political controversy thanks internet access substantial number reactions form online reviews facebook postings comments attached blogs websites discussed secondly whereas shostakovichs political sympathies insofar way unconventional obvious reasons unknown greenstein written perceptively considerable length political subjects williams college thesis plan colombia published prestigious undergraduate journal19 finally basic musical materials work allow similar multiplicity interpretations shostakovich many reasons 160160160160160 listeners report hearing change wont come surprise familiar major tonalities rossiniesque motoric energy consistently rising gestures syncopated vamps introducing elaborately wrought passages turn closer examination highly refined brilliantly controlled traditional counterpoint add musical statement words one critic thoroughgoing cheerfulness another critic impressed openness optimism music far hyperintense anxiety hysteria despair almost expected much new concert music20 160160160160160 comparisons shostakovichs fifth particular finale seem unavoidable fortisissimo major brass fanfare closes piece optimistic much way change similarly optimistic soliloquys ophelia hamlet total oaf would fail recognize underlying current denialist hysteria shakespeare dramatized ophelias response hamlets betrayals shostakovich communicates fifth according dissident perspective work volkovs description shostakovichs fifth rendering celebration forced someone beating stick saying business rejoicing business rejoicing seems equally applicable almost unrelieved succession upbeat proclamations conveyed change 160160160160160 say dont know anyone else raised possibility dissident hearing change im suggesting admit political sympathies doubt play role willingness said many aspects piece composition come focus one hears piece providing insight interior landscape prevalent among twenties one encapsulated selfadministered description generation last generation stopped hoping change banished concept hope mental lexicon 160160160160160 support interpretation noted greenstein like many artists around new york active participant obama campaign another beautiful work ensemble folk music donated obama america functioned considerable success accompanying music fundraising video21 greensteins blog22 contains entries musical political subjects latter staking positions consistent prevailing climate denouncing crimes bush regime celebrating obamas rise albeit voicing considerable skepticism troubling signs began emerge 160160160160160 greensteins subsequent political trajectory less go though seems significant particular greenstein among musicians joining noam chomsky immanuel wallerstein cornel west among others signing open letter23 calling intensified protest directed wall street bailouts civil rights abridgements environmental pillage perpetual war policies administration24 greenstein made direct statements whether reevaluated political commitments either various interviews given recently blog fallen silent postings since 2009 limited musical topics silence usually reasonably equated consent seems appropriate see stunned disbelief havoc administration widely seen repository hopes generation visiting nation world 160160160160160 finally matter title dissident reading constitutes amputated hindquarters notorious sales pitch accompanying rollout obama campaign hope extinguished remains late capitalist change understood marx society heel perpetual revolutions production marketing holy becomes profaned 160160160160160 examining possible hearings change worth bearing mind taruskins insistent exhortation one owns meaning shostakovichs music soviet commissars found much celebrate optimism shostakovichs fifth within rights doubt many 80000 downloads change experienced nostalgic albeit infinitely higher quality reprise kinds emotions elicited insipid youtube video25 would become unofficial anthem obama campaign preeningly cynical celebrity driven vacuity comment one critic comparing effects music prozac would seem applicable though allusion pharmacologically induced sense well perhaps revealing something deeper probably common response experience work transformative ones surroundings say escapism indeed video plan city embodies exactly narrative musicians take flight space ship embarking interplanetary exodus welcomed destination throngs admirers 160160160160160 hijacking political discourse institutions corporations wealthy careening civilization toward unparalleled economic environmental catastrophe makes escapism predictable maybe even defensible circumstances may words poet martin espada music forms artistic experience necessarily nature referential support allpervasive denialism required adopt selfdefense selfregard walter paters often cited reference arts aspiring condition music assumes ominous connotation classical music may begun regain status queen arts soviet russia cost sane person would willing bear information formatting options | 2,315 |
<p>Photo illustration: To enlarge, click &lt;a href="https://motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/images/whatsthematterwithflorida.preview.jpg"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.</p>
<p />
<p>Not to pick on the Sunshine State, where I was reared and the 2000 election was sorta decided, but it’s always been the crazy-news nexus of the universe…and that was before last year’s elections, which handed legislative supermajorities and every state cabinet office over to the GOP—including the governorship, to tea party-friendly (and common-sense-challenged) Gov. Rick Scott. In recent weeks, we’ve detailed the hilarity that ensues when tea partiers decide to dismantle the protections of government that had been assembled by Democrats and Republicans alike in this, the fourth-largest state in the union. Included in the fun:</p>
<p>But wait!&#160;There’s more! Here’s a roundup of the latest Tallahassee terror from just the past three days. If we have time, this will probably become a regular feature. There should be no shortage of down-South silliness, at least until the 2012 elections.</p>
<p>1) The anti-government, anti-tax GOP has finally found a solution to its budget woes:&#160;Hike up the cost of state education! College tuition <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/another-year-another-15-percent-tuition-hike-florida-universities?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tampabaycom%2Fblogs%2Fbuzz+(The+Buzz+%7C+tampabay.com)&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader" type="external">will likely rise 15 percent next year</a> (again), the maximum permitted by law. But reducing access to public colleges for the worst-off students may not be enough to kill off the state’s deficit woes, so other steps will need to be taken, like:</p>
<p>2) <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-tenure-community-colleges-20110329,0,6829648.story" type="external">Killing off tenure for college professors!</a>&#160;It took all of a few minutes Tuesday for a state House committee to approve a measure that would force all professors into one-year renewable contracts and leave them vulnerable to firing for “poor performance,”&#160;however that’s defined. (We guess it has something to do with how much pro-union email you forward.)</p>
<p>3) What’s another quick way to “save” government money, steer contracts to friends, and mess with a Democratic state stronghold?&#160; <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/privatizing-miami-dade-broward-prisons-advances?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tampabaycom%2Fblogs%2Fbuzz+(The+Buzz+%7C+tampabay.com)&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader" type="external">Privatize the jails—especially in blue counties</a>! On a straight 15-8 party line, the House appropriations committee approved language to turn all of the Broward and Miami-Dade County jails over to private firms. Hopefully, they can be filled with freshly convicted felons before the next election, amirite?</p>
<p>4)&#160;GOP&#160;senators are also moving forward on <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/bill-make-it-easier-evict-tenants-moves-forward-despite-sheriffs-opposition" type="external">a bill to make evictions of tenants easier in Miami-Dade</a>, which is ground zero for the mortgage bust…as well as a Democratic bastion where it’s much harder to vote when you don’t have a place of residence. (Maybe they can ship transients to those newly privatized jails.) Even law enforcement was against this one. But hey, they’re unionized public employees!&#160;Who can trust ’em?</p>
<p>5) God, it’s so hard to become a barber in Florida, what with needing a license that costs money!&#160;Thank goodness GOPers <a href="http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=46688&amp;SessionId=66" type="external">this week are speeding a “Deregulation of Professions” bill</a>, which would get rid of the state’s agencies for licensing and regulating</p>
<p>“yacht &amp; ship brokers, auctioneers, talent agencies, athlete agents, persons practicing hair braiding, hair wrapping, or body wrapping, interior designers, professional fundraising consultants &amp; solicitors, water vending machines &amp; operators, health studios, ballroom dance studios, commercial telephone sellers &amp; salespersons, movers &amp; moving brokers, certain outdoor theaters, certain business opportunities, motor vehicle repair shops, sellers of travel, contracts with sales representatives involving commissions, &amp; television picture tubes…”</p>
<p>How much will this triumph of deregulation save state taxpayers?&#160; <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/deregulation-bill-would-cost-florida-6-million-lost-revenue-100-jobs" type="external">It will save them negative $6 million, and negative 100 jobs</a>. Which is to say, it will cost $6&#160;million and 100 jobs extra over not deregulating (also known as, you know, regulating). Buy with confidence, Floridians!</p>
<p>6) Also worth not doing, according to GOPers:&#160;requiring tire sellers to tell you how old the tires are when you buy them. <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/senate-committee-rejects-plan-place-warnings-tires" type="external">This bill was sponsored by a Republican senator</a>, who lost sight in one eye due to an accident caused by blowout on tires that were too old. His party overruled him.</p>
<p>7)&#160;Florida Republicans would like to pass a “ <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/fetal-pain-abortion-bill-passes-house-committee" type="external">fetal pain abortion bill</a>” soon. Because, you know, everybody’s doing it.</p>
<p>8)&#160;Speaking of public employees, have we cut $1 billion from their pay and benefits yet?&#160;Are they still getting raises to match the ever-rocketing cost of living in Florida?&#160; <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/senate-budget-includes-1-billion-cut-employee-pay-and-benefits" type="external">Yeah, let’s get on that, shall we?</a></p>
<p>9)&#160;Also, GOPers are not going to kill state workers’ rights to bargain collectively, since they don’t really have that right in Florida anyway. But what they can do is <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/looking-union-members-who-support-paycheck-protection-bill" type="external">make it illegal to have workers’ union dues directly debited from their state pay</a>. The sponsor of this bill says tons of union members have called and written him to support the plan. Too bad <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/looking-union-members-who-support-paycheck-protection-bill" type="external">they couldn’t find a record of a single supportive union member</a> when the St. Pete Times requested said records.</p>
<p>10) Finally, Rick Scott’s got problems. First, the good news:&#160;His approval rating has remained steady since he took office…at 32 percent. The bad news:&#160;His disapproval rating has skyrocketed to 55 percent, which “makes him the least popular currently serving governor,” <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_FL_032913.pdf" type="external">according to Public Policy Polling</a> (pdf).</p>
<p>Also, one of his showcase plans is in serious danger of imploding, again:&#160;As his first act in office, this prophet of deregulation <a href="http://rulemaking.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/florida-eo/" type="external">signed an executive order to freeze all new rulemaking</a> in every state government office until his administration could review and approve each one. Too bad he <a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-01-05/news/os-rick-scott-rules-moratorium-20110105_1_prescription-drug-abuse-new-rules-rick-scott" type="external">never announced how the myriad rules would be reviewed or by whom</a>…but then, that would be creating a new rule for rules, wouldn’t it!&#160;Damned government waste! In any case, Scott’s rulemaking freeze is now being challenged in court:&#160; <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/lawsuit-filed-supreme-court-challenges-constitutionality-gov-scotts-rulemaking-freeze?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tampabaycom%2Fblogs%2Fbuzz+(The+Buzz+%7C+tampabay.com)&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader" type="external">He’s being sued by a blind woman in Miami who lives on food stamps</a>, who says her ability to reapply for food stamps online would have been improved by one of the rules Scott’s office is sitting on. The woman is being represented by Sandy&#160;D’Alemberte, an ex-president and law professor at Florida State University whose penchant for bowties, suspenders, and playing the simple Southern lawyer could spell even more trouble for the beleaguered governor. Hell, he could even see his popularity slide further. Wait…no he couldn’t. No, really, it’s statistically unlikely to happen.</p>
<p>But if it does, rest assured, dear reader, it will be in the next Sunshine State roundup!</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | photo illustration enlarge click lta hrefhttpsmotherjonescomwpcontentuploadsimageswhatsthematterwithfloridapreviewjpggthereltagt pick sunshine state reared 2000 election sorta decided always crazynews nexus universeand last years elections handed legislative supermajorities every state cabinet office gopincluding governorship tea partyfriendly commonsensechallenged gov rick scott recent weeks weve detailed hilarity ensues tea partiers decide dismantle protections government assembled democrats republicans alike fourthlargest state union included fun wait160theres heres roundup latest tallahassee terror past three days time probably become regular feature shortage downsouth silliness least 2012 elections 1 antigovernment antitax gop finally found solution budget woes160hike cost state education college tuition likely rise 15 percent next year maximum permitted law reducing access public colleges worstoff students may enough kill states deficit woes steps need taken like 2 killing tenure college professors160it took minutes tuesday state house committee approve measure would force professors oneyear renewable contracts leave vulnerable firing poor performance160however thats defined guess something much prounion email forward 3 whats another quick way save government money steer contracts friends mess democratic state stronghold160 privatize jailsespecially blue counties straight 158 party line house appropriations committee approved language turn broward miamidade county jails private firms hopefully filled freshly convicted felons next election amirite 4160gop160senators also moving forward bill make evictions tenants easier miamidade ground zero mortgage bustas well democratic bastion much harder vote dont place residence maybe ship transients newly privatized jails even law enforcement one hey theyre unionized public employees160who trust em 5 god hard become barber florida needing license costs money160thank goodness gopers week speeding deregulation professions bill would get rid states agencies licensing regulating yacht amp ship brokers auctioneers talent agencies athlete agents persons practicing hair braiding hair wrapping body wrapping interior designers professional fundraising consultants amp solicitors water vending machines amp operators health studios ballroom dance studios commercial telephone sellers amp salespersons movers amp moving brokers certain outdoor theaters certain business opportunities motor vehicle repair shops sellers travel contracts sales representatives involving commissions amp television picture tubes much triumph deregulation save state taxpayers160 save negative 6 million negative 100 jobs say cost 6160million 100 jobs extra deregulating also known know regulating buy confidence floridians 6 also worth according gopers160requiring tire sellers tell old tires buy bill sponsored republican senator lost sight one eye due accident caused blowout tires old party overruled 7160florida republicans would like pass fetal pain abortion bill soon know everybodys 8160speaking public employees cut 1 billion pay benefits yet160are still getting raises match everrocketing cost living florida160 yeah lets get shall 9160also gopers going kill state workers rights bargain collectively since dont really right florida anyway make illegal workers union dues directly debited state pay sponsor bill says tons union members called written support plan bad couldnt find record single supportive union member st pete times requested said records 10 finally rick scotts got problems first good news160his approval rating remained steady since took officeat 32 percent bad news160his disapproval rating skyrocketed 55 percent makes least popular currently serving governor according public policy polling pdf also one showcase plans serious danger imploding again160as first act office prophet deregulation signed executive order freeze new rulemaking every state government office administration could review approve one bad never announced myriad rules would reviewed whombut would creating new rule rules wouldnt it160damned government waste case scotts rulemaking freeze challenged court160 hes sued blind woman miami lives food stamps says ability reapply food stamps online would improved one rules scotts office sitting woman represented sandy160dalemberte expresident law professor florida state university whose penchant bowties suspenders playing simple southern lawyer could spell even trouble beleaguered governor hell could even see popularity slide waitno couldnt really statistically unlikely happen rest assured dear reader next sunshine state roundup | 605 |
<p>Illustration: John Ritter</p>
<p />
<p>As he walks the quiet Main Street of Farmville, Virginia, Rep. Tom Perriello has his work cut out for him. Wearing khakis, brown boots, and an open-collar shirt in the 100-degree heat, the <a href="http://perriello.house.gov/" type="external">freshman Democrat</a> pops into stores and offices—he’s not always recognized—and asks how business is going and what he can do to help. He tells his constituents that America needs to “make things,” and “the elites” in Washington don’t get this. At Key Office Supply, owner Jim Ailsworth thanks Perriello for his health care reform vote, noting that he plans to use the law’s small-business tax credit for his staff. At Davenport &amp; Company, an independent stock brokerage, manager Brad Watson says he’s worried that the stimulus (which Perriello also supported) won’t yield long-lasting public works. Perriello points out that he argued “for a stimulus that is focused on 10 years—not 18 months.” After Perriello leaves, Watson points to campaign literature on his desk for <a href="http://www.roberthurtforcongress.com/" type="external">state Sen. Robert Hurt</a>, who vanquished several tea party candidates to become Perriello’s Republican challenger. “Hurt’s a nice, moderate Republican,” Watson says; he intends to vote for him.</p>
<p>Some 175 miles away in Washington, Republican strategists would be heartened to hear Watson talk. Defeating Perriello is one of the GOP’s top priorities as the party <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/08/nation/la-na-house-gop-20100808" type="external">fights to gain the 39 seats</a> it needs to seize control of the House and create an anti-Obama fire wall. These few sleepy blocks in central Virginia constitute one of the front lines in this fight. (Before the campaign even began, Perriello was already the target of $1 million in attack ads.) Given that political handicappers estimate the GOP is likely to bag at least 30 House seats, the Dems’ fate could depend on whether Perriello manages to hold on.</p>
<p>Virginia’s <a href="http://perriello.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=7&amp;sectiontree=7" type="external">5th Congressional District</a>—a New Jersey-size triangle that combines liberal-leaning Charlottesville with stretches of rural and Bible Belt territory—was drawn by GOP legislators to be an easy win for a Republican. But in 2008, Perriello narrowly beat incumbent <a href="http://www.virgilgoode.com/" type="external">Virgil Goode Jr.</a>, a Democrat-turned-Republican, by 727 votes. Barack Obama’s presence on the ticket, which boosted African American turnout, probably helped (though John McCain handily won the district). But this year, Perriello, a Virginia native, Yale Law graduate, and former international human rights attorney, is on his own. He can count on Charlottesville, but he must secure some votes in the southern and rural regions to remain a congressman.</p>
<p>A short fellow with a compact build, Perriello, 35, strides past several empty storefronts before hitting The Bakery, where co-owner Synthia Starkey complains about how hard it is for small businesses to obtain credit and health insurance. She tells me, “I’m sick of being taken advantage of. Seems like big business runs this country.” She seems just right for Perriello’s populist pitch. Did she vote for him last time? No, she declares, explaining she’s from a conservative family. Then she reconsiders and says that she thinks she did vote for Perriello “to see what would happen.” Asked if he’s told her anything that will make it easier for her to decide between him and Hurt in the fall, she laughs and says no.</p>
<p>Later, racing through farmland in his white Ford pickup, Perriello explains why he thinks his brand of “conviction politics” can win over voters like Starkey: “I don’t see the dividing line as liberal versus conservative. It’s populist versus corporatist. If we’re not standing up to the most powerful interests, where is the Democratic Party?” Perriello acknowledges that some in the conservative district may judge him harshly based on his votes for health care, cap and trade, and the stimulus. (After a tea party blogger angry about “Obamacare” <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34843.html" type="external">published the address</a> of Perriello’s brother—believing it was the congressman’s home—someone cut the propane line to the gas grill.) But, Perriello notes, “I’ve been incredibly critical of [White House economic adviser] Lawrence Summers as someone who wouldn’t know anyone making less than six figures, unless that person was driving him around.” He often reminds constituents that he didn’t vote for continuing the bank bailout.</p>
<p>When a saleswoman at an appliance store tells him that her elderly customers often can’t afford the cost of replacement parts, Perriello replies, “We’re not producing anything anymore. The elites in both parties are too close to Wall Street. If jobs are created in India, that’s fine with them.” This is not a made-in-DC message tailored by Democratic strategists. It’s Perriello’s home brew. He was first elected as a populist bashing the incumbent’s corporate campaign donors. Now, he’s running against the corporate consensus in the nation’s capital—including his own party’s brass.</p>
<p>Back in January, after Republican <a href="" type="internal">Scott Brown won</a> the Massachusetts Senate race, Perriello says, he told party leaders that the Democrats ought to introduce a different jobs bill every week to force Republicans to take a stand: “They said it was a great idea, but then it didn’t happen. And the Senate is always a problem. I think most people in Washington don’t get how serious the job situation is.” He declares it “embarrassing” that the Democrats decided to take a six-week recess to campaign as the economy teeters. “I can’t tell you how many times people in the White House say to me, ‘We want to help you; what can we do?’ I say, ‘Put out a real jobs bill.'” Perriello is pushing to end a corporate tax credit that encourages outsourcing jobs and use the revenue—an estimated $14 billion—for job-creating programs like weatherization and energy-efficiency retrofitting.</p>
<p>That kind of pitch is part of Perriello’s bring-it-home strategy: He says House Democrats have to toil extra hard to show how people in their districts can benefit from the big, abstract bills cooked up in Washington. During the House debate over the climate bill, Perriello recalls, he came to the district and talked to dairy farmers about how they could turn <a href="http://www.thefranklinnewspost.com/article.cfm?ID=13984" type="external">cow manure into power</a> and possibly get off the grid—a notion, he says, that appeals to the “independent and libertarian streaks of farmers.”</p>
<p>Perriello’s positions have also earned him the attention of some well-heeled enemies. From the moment he settled into Washington, he was bombarded with attack ads. Americans for Responsible Health Care, a group funded by the wife of a retired Florida real estate developer, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyhSfVcxcXU" type="external">ran an ad</a> blasting Perriello for voting “with the liberals in Washington” for a government “takeover” of health care. An outfit called Freedom’s Defense Fund <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4cfXQTuz1M" type="external">slammed him</a> for supporting the stimulus. The National Republican Congressional Committee has bought time for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n81dzIewAKE" type="external">ads tying him</a> to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Perriello anticipates that in the weeks before the election, corporate front groups will blitz his district with negative ads. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, he notes, will render it even easier for outside organizations to pour money into the race.</p>
<p>But Perriello has been a hardy fundraiser, pocketing nearly $2.3 million as of the end of June. As he tours these towns, people comment on his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqc8DuWqY74" type="external">campaign’s first ad</a>, a slapstick spot that shows him stepping into a cow pie, crawling under desks to lay broadband cable, breathing landfill exhaust, and getting covered with construction dust because “no one will work harder to bring jobs to Virginia.” And the GOP’s “out-of-touch liberal” line of attack may not work so well with a gun-rights advocate who’s <a href="http://perriello.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=25&amp;sectiontree=6,25&amp;itemid=552" type="external">hailed the NRA</a> as the “epitome of people-powered politics.” A social-justice Catholic, Perriello backed the anti-abortion Stupak amendment during the health care reform debate. He occasionally drops a slightly drawled “you all” into conversation, telling one group of constituents, “You all have a blessed day.”</p>
<p>The next day, Perriello’s Main Street tours resume with a stop in down-on-its-luck <a href="http://www.lawrencevilleweb.com/" type="external">Lawrenceville</a>, where the mayor bemoans the closing of a nearby state prison—maybe, the mayor suggests, it could become a firing range. On the drive to the city of South Boston, Perriello passes by billboards defending the Confederate flag. Decades ago, there was <a href="http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:MLA000872" type="external">massive resistance</a> to desegregation in this area. More recently, the region’s economic mainstays—tobacco, textiles, furniture-making—have collapsed. “A lot of elites in the Senate and the president’s economic team think that we need to get back just to 2006 and we’ll be fine,” Perriello says. “But a lot of Americans need to get back 20 years or more, to when the middle class had purchasing power.”</p>
<p>That afternoon, Perriello races two hours to Charlottesville, where he’s the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=135533573126387&amp;comments&amp;ref=mf" type="external">celebrity bartender</a> at a fundraiser for groups working against sexual assault and domestic violence. As the congressman slings drinks in a trendy wine bar, he’s gone from one political pole to another, from Red State land to Blue State land, all inside his district.</p>
<p>Several in the crowd are eager to talk politics. They know the GOP is gunning for Perriello, but hope he might benefit from the entry into the race of Jeffrey Clark, a tea party activist who’s <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/07/20/tea-party-scalds-gop-candidate-in-va/" type="external">running as an independent</a> and could siphon votes from Hurt. Standing near a painting of a woman reading the New York Times, John Hesslebart, a 66-year-old software designer, gushes about Perriello, predicting that he could become a major force in Congress—if he wins. But then, shaking his head slowly, he says the district “is like two different planets.” He takes a sip of wine before adding, “And Tom needs to live in both places at once.”</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | illustration john ritter walks quiet main street farmville virginia rep tom perriello work cut wearing khakis brown boots opencollar shirt 100degree heat freshman democrat pops stores officeshes always recognizedand asks business going help tells constituents america needs make things elites washington dont get key office supply owner jim ailsworth thanks perriello health care reform vote noting plans use laws smallbusiness tax credit staff davenport amp company independent stock brokerage manager brad watson says hes worried stimulus perriello also supported wont yield longlasting public works perriello points argued stimulus focused 10 yearsnot 18 months perriello leaves watson points campaign literature desk state sen robert hurt vanquished several tea party candidates become perriellos republican challenger hurts nice moderate republican watson says intends vote 175 miles away washington republican strategists would heartened hear watson talk defeating perriello one gops top priorities party fights gain 39 seats needs seize control house create antiobama fire wall sleepy blocks central virginia constitute one front lines fight campaign even began perriello already target 1 million attack ads given political handicappers estimate gop likely bag least 30 house seats dems fate could depend whether perriello manages hold virginias 5th congressional districta new jerseysize triangle combines liberalleaning charlottesville stretches rural bible belt territorywas drawn gop legislators easy win republican 2008 perriello narrowly beat incumbent virgil goode jr democratturnedrepublican 727 votes barack obamas presence ticket boosted african american turnout probably helped though john mccain handily district year perriello virginia native yale law graduate former international human rights attorney count charlottesville must secure votes southern rural regions remain congressman short fellow compact build perriello 35 strides past several empty storefronts hitting bakery coowner synthia starkey complains hard small businesses obtain credit health insurance tells im sick taken advantage seems like big business runs country seems right perriellos populist pitch vote last time declares explaining shes conservative family reconsiders says thinks vote perriello see would happen asked hes told anything make easier decide hurt fall laughs says later racing farmland white ford pickup perriello explains thinks brand conviction politics win voters like starkey dont see dividing line liberal versus conservative populist versus corporatist standing powerful interests democratic party perriello acknowledges conservative district may judge harshly based votes health care cap trade stimulus tea party blogger angry obamacare published address perriellos brotherbelieving congressmans homesomeone cut propane line gas grill perriello notes ive incredibly critical white house economic adviser lawrence summers someone wouldnt know anyone making less six figures unless person driving around often reminds constituents didnt vote continuing bank bailout saleswoman appliance store tells elderly customers often cant afford cost replacement parts perriello replies producing anything anymore elites parties close wall street jobs created india thats fine madeindc message tailored democratic strategists perriellos home brew first elected populist bashing incumbents corporate campaign donors hes running corporate consensus nations capitalincluding partys brass back january republican scott brown massachusetts senate race perriello says told party leaders democrats ought introduce different jobs bill every week force republicans take stand said great idea didnt happen senate always problem think people washington dont get serious job situation declares embarrassing democrats decided take sixweek recess campaign economy teeters cant tell many times people white house say want help say put real jobs bill perriello pushing end corporate tax credit encourages outsourcing jobs use revenuean estimated 14 billionfor jobcreating programs like weatherization energyefficiency retrofitting kind pitch part perriellos bringithome strategy says house democrats toil extra hard show people districts benefit big abstract bills cooked washington house debate climate bill perriello recalls came district talked dairy farmers could turn cow manure power possibly get grida notion says appeals independent libertarian streaks farmers perriellos positions also earned attention wellheeled enemies moment settled washington bombarded attack ads americans responsible health care group funded wife retired florida real estate developer ran ad blasting perriello voting liberals washington government takeover health care outfit called freedoms defense fund slammed supporting stimulus national republican congressional committee bought time ads tying house speaker nancy pelosi perriello anticipates weeks election corporate front groups blitz district negative ads supreme courts citizens united decision notes render even easier outside organizations pour money race perriello hardy fundraiser pocketing nearly 23 million end june tours towns people comment campaigns first ad slapstick spot shows stepping cow pie crawling desks lay broadband cable breathing landfill exhaust getting covered construction dust one work harder bring jobs virginia gops outoftouch liberal line attack may work well gunrights advocate whos hailed nra epitome peoplepowered politics socialjustice catholic perriello backed antiabortion stupak amendment health care reform debate occasionally drops slightly drawled conversation telling one group constituents blessed day next day perriellos main street tours resume stop downonitsluck lawrenceville mayor bemoans closing nearby state prisonmaybe mayor suggests could become firing range drive city south boston perriello passes billboards defending confederate flag decades ago massive resistance desegregation area recently regions economic mainstaystobacco textiles furnituremakinghave collapsed lot elites senate presidents economic team think need get back 2006 well fine perriello says lot americans need get back 20 years middle class purchasing power afternoon perriello races two hours charlottesville hes celebrity bartender fundraiser groups working sexual assault domestic violence congressman slings drinks trendy wine bar hes gone one political pole another red state land blue state land inside district several crowd eager talk politics know gop gunning perriello hope might benefit entry race jeffrey clark tea party activist whos running independent could siphon votes hurt standing near painting woman reading new york times john hesslebart 66yearold software designer gushes perriello predicting could become major force congressif wins shaking head slowly says district like two different planets takes sip wine adding tom needs live places | 932 |
<p>READ</p>
<p>John Jeremiah Sullivan is the kind of writer that will take something that you couldn’t give a shit about and make it the most compelling, beautiful thing you’ve ever read. “READ THIS!!”, you’ll type in text messages and email subject lines, sending it to all of your friends. Here’s a <a href="" type="internal">new thing</a>of his in the Oxford American, about Texas, race, music and a whole lot more.&#160; – Megan</p>
<p>A letter of recommendation about <a href="" type="internal">seltzer water</a> seems silly, but then you realize Mary H.K Choi wrote it, and you’re like, “Oh, word? I’m gonna read this RIGHT NOW.” – Megan</p>
<p>I read a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/rapt" type="external">review</a>of Helen Macdonald’s H Is For Hawk, grabbed the free sample on my Kindle, and when I was finished, bought the book immediately. She writes with such grace. It’s the kind of writing that you want to read very, very quickly, because each sentence is so good, but I urge you to slow down, and take your time. – Megan</p>
<p>I plan to start reading <a href="http://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com/x/c/Qmub_XZwbSxdc0UdqevRYQsAAAFiOILEtQEAAAFKAS0vc14/https://www.amazon.com/Yargo-Jacqueline-Susann/dp/0553128558/ref=as_at/?creativeASIN=0553128558&amp;linkCode=w50&amp;tag=thefrisky06-20&amp;imprToken=Zgky-PDdrpgDynmRuw0mhg&amp;slotNum=0&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1425659889&amp;am..." type="external">Yargo</a>, a science fiction romance novel by Valley of The Dolls author Jacqueline Susann, which I have only recently discovered exists. Wikipedia says: “Yargo tells the story of Susan Cooper, a young human woman abducted by aliens from Avalon, N.J. where she is captivated but disturbed by the beautiful and intelligent but emotionless Yargoans.” So yeah, I’m pretty fucking excited about that. – Robyn</p>
<p>The second issue of 2015 of the LA-based indie mag&#160;Darling is out, and I plan to spend the rest of my Hobbit-filled weekend lounging in bed very luxuriously, while flipping through its heavy creamy pages filled with gorgeous photography and badass features written by women I admire about women who are badasses. It &#160;only comes out 4 times a year, is $20 a pop, and is absolutely worth it. You can subscribe <a href="http://shop.darlingmagazine.org/products/subscription." type="external">here</a>.&#160;– Beejoli</p>
<p>WATCH</p>
<p>Starring Michael Fassbender as a mysterious musician who wears a papier mache head 24/7, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1605717/?ref_=nv_sr_1" type="external">“Frank”</a>&#160;follows the adventures of an eccentric and mostly untalented pop band as they attempt to record an album. It’s dark, it’s funny as hell, and I love it. – Claire</p>
<p>About once a year, on a date of no particular significance other than it being a good day to be a shut-in, I like to perform my most meditative activity of my life: get super high and watch the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, while eating Pizza Hut. It’s incredibly specific, I’m aware, but it’s the best nine hours of my life. Clearly, you should do this too. –Beejoli</p>
<p>Beejoli has been going on and on about “The Jinx” on HBO for weeks and I kept thinking she was talking about that show “The Knick,” but it turns out, “The Jinx” is a multi-part documentary directed by Andrew Jarecki, about real estate heir and accused murderer Robert Durst. I love a true crime docuseries, so I started watching it yesterday and quickly realized I knew the story — that Durst had been on trial for the murder of his neighbor in Galvaston, Texas, but that he had also been suspected of killing his first wife Kathie 20 years prior. And I knew the story because I had seen “All Good Things,” starring my boo Ryan Gosling, which was a dramatization of those events, also directed by Jarecki. Apparently the real Robert Durst — who is a free man, by the way, and maintains his innocence in Kathie’s disappearance — agreed to do the documentary after seeing Jarecki’s film. Anyway, this is a really long way of saying you should totally watch “All Good Things” — because GOSLING, obvs — and then immediately start binging on “The Jinx.” If you start RIGHT NOW, you can be all caught up by the time the fifth episode airs tonight at 8 p.m. – Amelia</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I am all caught up, so I’m going to invest my Sunday in watching <a href="https://vimeo.com/channels/highmaintenance" type="external">“High Maintenance,”</a> the Vimeo webseries about a weed delivery guy in New York City, with each episode focusing on a particular client. As a midnight toker myself, there is something fascinating about the relationships between people and their dealers. I expect to laugh my ass off. – Amelia</p>
<p>I’ll be watching “ <a href="http://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com/x/c/Qmub_XZwbSxdc0UdqevRYQsAAAFiOILEtQEAAAFKAS0vc14/https://www.amazon.com/Absolute-Beginners-Patsy-Kensit/dp/B000089737/ref=as_at/?creativeASIN=B000089737&amp;linkCode=w50&amp;tag=thefrisky06-20&amp;imprToken=Zgky-PDdrpgDynmRuw0mhg&amp;slotNum=1&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1425677932&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=absolute+beginners" type="external">Absolute Beginners</a>,” the David Bowie-acted movie based on the coming-of-age novel by Colin MacInnes after which <a href="" type="internal">my new fitness column</a> is named. – Rebecca</p>
<p>LISTEN</p>
<p>Oh look, Solange <a href="http://saintheron.com/news/listen-favorite-jams-february/%20" type="external">curated a playlist</a> for you and it’s full of chill jams perfect for this “is-it-spring-yet-i-think-it-might-be” weather we’re having. – Megan</p>
<p>The podcast <a href="http://gimletmedia.com/show/reply-all/" type="external">“Reply All”</a>&#160;explores all things internet. Whether it’s the tale of the tech guy tasked with expanding&#160;Paper’s crash-proofing capabilities before Kim Kardashian’s internet-breaking photos were released or the emotional stories we inadvertently make public through Venmo, it’ll make you think twice about what’s really going on behind our glowing screens. – Claire</p>
<p>I’ve listen to the occasional episode of the <a href="http://wtfpod.libsyn.com/webpage" type="external">WTF Marc Maron podcast</a>, but I finally decided to download the app and buy a premium subscription so that I always have some amazing conversation to listen to while I’m out and about. Marc Maron has interviewed a wide range of characters for his podcast, producing hundreds of hour-plus-long in-depth conversations about depression, drug abuse, comedy, music, politics, fear, love, you name it, with the likes of RuPaul, Robin Williams, Louis CK, Jenny Slate, Amy Poehler, Lena Dunham — really, fucking everyone. Every single episode offers a snapshot into a rarely seen side of these entertainers, but also resonates on a deeply human level. – Amelia</p>
<p>I plan to organize my makeup, a giant pile of which is currently spread across my bureau like an Old Country Buffet of MAC and OCC, while listening to the new audiobook version <a href="http://www.audible.com.au/pd/Biographies-Memoirs/Agorafabulous-Audiobook/B00TZY9PDU" type="external">Agorafabulous: Dispatches From My Bedroom</a> by the hilarious Sara Benincasa. – Robyn</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ibeyi.fr/" type="external">Ibeyi</a> is a French-Cuban art pop duo who sing in French and Yoruba. From what I’ve heard so far it’s super minimal and beautiful and I’m anxious for mooooooore. – Rebecca</p>
<p>MAKE/DO</p>
<p><a href="http://www.self.com/body/recipes/2007/06/avocado-mango-chicken/" type="external">Avocado-mango chicken</a> is not for the faint of heart, depending on how you make it, but it combines pretty much all of my favorite cooking ingredients in one place. Also, I have a box of mangoes I have to put to use, and this seems like a darn good place to start.&#160;– Rebecca</p> | true | 4 | read john jeremiah sullivan kind writer take something couldnt give shit make compelling beautiful thing youve ever read read youll type text messages email subject lines sending friends heres new thingof oxford american texas race music whole lot more160 megan letter recommendation seltzer water seems silly realize mary hk choi wrote youre like oh word im gon na read right megan read reviewof helen macdonalds h hawk grabbed free sample kindle finished bought book immediately writes grace kind writing want read quickly sentence good urge slow take time megan plan start reading yargo science fiction romance novel valley dolls author jacqueline susann recently discovered exists wikipedia says yargo tells story susan cooper young human woman abducted aliens avalon nj captivated disturbed beautiful intelligent emotionless yargoans yeah im pretty fucking excited robyn second issue 2015 labased indie mag160darling plan spend rest hobbitfilled weekend lounging bed luxuriously flipping heavy creamy pages filled gorgeous photography badass features written women admire women badasses 160only comes 4 times year 20 pop absolutely worth subscribe here160 beejoli watch starring michael fassbender mysterious musician wears papier mache head 247 frank160follows adventures eccentric mostly untalented pop band attempt record album dark funny hell love claire year date particular significance good day shutin like perform meditative activity life get super high watch entire lord rings trilogy eating pizza hut incredibly specific im aware best nine hours life clearly beejoli beejoli going jinx hbo weeks kept thinking talking show knick turns jinx multipart documentary directed andrew jarecki real estate heir accused murderer robert durst love true crime docuseries started watching yesterday quickly realized knew story durst trial murder neighbor galvaston texas also suspected killing first wife kathie 20 years prior knew story seen good things starring boo ryan gosling dramatization events also directed jarecki apparently real robert durst free man way maintains innocence kathies disappearance agreed documentary seeing jareckis film anyway really long way saying totally watch good things gosling obvs immediately start binging jinx start right caught time fifth episode airs tonight 8 pm amelia meanwhile caught im going invest sunday watching high maintenance vimeo webseries weed delivery guy new york city episode focusing particular client midnight toker something fascinating relationships people dealers expect laugh ass amelia ill watching absolute beginners david bowieacted movie based comingofage novel colin macinnes new fitness column named rebecca listen oh look solange curated playlist full chill jams perfect isitspringyetithinkitmightbe weather megan podcast reply all160explores things internet whether tale tech guy tasked expanding160papers crashproofing capabilities kim kardashians internetbreaking photos released emotional stories inadvertently make public venmo itll make think twice whats really going behind glowing screens claire ive listen occasional episode wtf marc maron podcast finally decided download app buy premium subscription always amazing conversation listen im marc maron interviewed wide range characters podcast producing hundreds hourpluslong indepth conversations depression drug abuse comedy music politics fear love name likes rupaul robin williams louis ck jenny slate amy poehler lena dunham really fucking everyone every single episode offers snapshot rarely seen side entertainers also resonates deeply human level amelia plan organize makeup giant pile currently spread across bureau like old country buffet mac occ listening new audiobook version agorafabulous dispatches bedroom hilarious sara benincasa robyn ibeyi frenchcuban art pop duo sing french yoruba ive heard far super minimal beautiful im anxious mooooooore rebecca makedo avocadomango chicken faint heart depending make combines pretty much favorite cooking ingredients one place also box mangoes put use seems like darn good place start160 rebecca | 575 |
<p>A recent pair of articles by Marc Ambinder of the <a href="" type="internal">Atlantic</a> has shed new light upon activities in the secret so-called “black jail” on the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Among other aspects, these new revelations suggest that psychologists may be playing a major role inside the facility, raising questions about the reasons for American Psychological Association (APA) lobbying activities in support of the agency that Ambinder reports is running the detention center.</p>
<p>In recent months the <a href="" type="internal">Washington Post</a>, <a href="" type="internal">New York Times</a>, and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8674179.stm" type="external">BBC</a> reported on a secret prison on fringes of the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Referred to by former prisoners as the “black jail,” this institution is reportedly a site where prisoner abuse is regular and systematic. The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8674179.stm" type="external">BBC</a> reported that all nine former prisoners they interviewed:</p>
<p>told consistent stories of being held in isolation in cold cells where a light is on all day and night.</p>
<p>The men said they had been deprived of sleep by US military personnel there.</p>
<p>Thus, we can assume that <a href="" type="internal">psychological torture techniques</a> of isolation, sleep deprivation, and hypothermia are routine aspects of treatment inside the facility.</p>
<p>The <a href="" type="internal">Washington Post</a> provided additional details through interviews with two youths imprisoned in the black jail. As one young man, Rashid, who is “younger than 16” described:</p>
<p>At the beginning of his detention, he was forced to strip naked and undergo a medical checkup in front of about a half-dozen American soldiers. He said that his Muslim upbringing made such a display humiliating and that the soldiers made it worse.</p>
<p>“They touched me all over my body. They took pictures, and they were laughing and laughing,” he said. “They were doing everything.”</p>
<p>He said he lived in a small concrete cell that was slightly longer than the length of his body. Food was tossed in a plastic bag through a slot in the metal door. Both teenagers said that when they tried to sleep, on the floor, their captors shouted at them and hammered on their cells.</p>
<p>When summoned for daily interrogations, Rashid said, he was made to wear a hood, handcuffs and ear coverings and was marched into the meeting room. He said he was punched by his interrogators while being prodded to admit ties to the Taliban; he denied such ties. During some sessions, he said, his interrogator forced him to look at pornographic movies and magazines while also showing him a photograph of his mother.</p>
<p>“I was just crying and crying. I was too young,” Rashid said. “I didn’t know what a prison looks like or what a prison is.”</p>
<p>Ambinder received confirmation from the Defense Department of the existence of this secret detention center at Bagram that Department had previously <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8674179.stm" type="external">consistently denied</a> existed. [Ambinder has a picture of the facility <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.] He reports that the center is run, not by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as was <a href="" type="internal">previously reported</a>, but by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC) in course of its providing intelligence services for Task Force 714. For those with long memories, DCHC is essentially where the Defense Department stuffed the old Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) after the latter was “disbanded” due to several major scandals involving <a href="" type="internal">spying on Americans</a> <a href="" type="internal">and</a> <a href="http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14898" type="external">fraud</a> connected with former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.</p>
<p>It isn’t clear if it really makes a difference if the “black jail” is run by JSOC or DCHC. After all, Task Force 714, which DCHC is serving, is itself a <a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/67136/special-operations-chiefs-quietly-sway-afghanistan-policy" type="external">JSOC special ops</a> force:</p>
<p>McRaven runs a secretive detachment of Special Forces known as Task Force 714 — once commanded by McChrystal himself — that the NSC staffer described as “direct-action” units conducting “high-intensity hits.” In an email, Sholtis said that because Task Force 714 was a “special ops organization” he “can’t go into much detail on authorities, etc.” But the NSC staffer — who called McRaven “McChrystal Squared” — said Task Force 714 was organized into “small groups of Rangers going wherever the hell they want to go” in Afghanistan and operating under legal authority granted at the end of the Bush administration that President Obama has not revoked.</p>
<p>[Scott Horton has made a similar point <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.]</p>
<p>As Ambinder reports, the Defense Department now admits that this secret Afghan prison uses interrogation techniques from the <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm2-22-3.pdf" type="external">Army Field Manual’s</a> <a href="" type="internal">infamous</a> Appendix M. This appendix <a href="" type="internal">authorizes abusive techniques</a>, <a href="" type="internal">including</a> sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and “environmental manipulation [think freezing someone or blinding light] that often amount to torture.</p>
<p>Consistent with the multitudinous reports of severe abuse in the black jail, Ambinder reports that there is a top secret Special Action Program authorizing DCHC interrogations. As Jeff Kaye pointed out in an <a href="" type="internal">emptywheel</a>comment, if only Appendix M-based techniques — which are covered by the Army Field Manual — are used, why the need for a Special Action Program? Thus, we must wonder what, exactly, DCHC is doing at Bagram and other sites. Whatever it is, it apparently isn’t something they want us, the public, to know about.</p>
<p>For those who think that President Obama banned torture centers like this, think again. Obama’s Executive Order only banned CIA secret prisons. This administration thus apparently intended from the beginning to maintain its torture facility, only under a Defense Department rather than CIA label.</p>
<p>Further information about the black jail is provided in a <a href="" type="internal">follow-up post</a>, where Ambinder provides this description of the “black prison”:</p>
<p>From what information I’ve been able to gather, the interrogation environment is much like a social science laboratory, with psychologists and experts in human behavior looking for clues to see who might know more than they do, alternating with interrogators trained to ferret out actionable intelligence information. [emphasis added]</p>
<p>If the detention facility is being run as a “social science laboratory,” it raises concerns that the psychologists and others may be conducting research on the detainees without these detainees’ consent. As a result of the abusive research of the Nazi doctors and research on poor black men in this country denied by the US Public Health Service well-known treatments for syphilis as they got sick and died in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, informed consent has been a requirement in this country for all but the most benign research for decades. Thus, Ambinder’s report raises the prospect that detainees in the black jail may be subjects of otherwise banned research procedures.</p>
<p>Wherever psychologists are involved in national security work, links to the APA are seldom hard to find. In this case, the APA has regularly lobbied for funding for DCHC while a former top APA research scientist was until very recently at CIFA and its successor DCHC investigating “deception detection,”&#160; like that reportedly occurring inside the “black jail.”</p>
<p>Over the years, the APA has devoted considerable lobbying resources to maintaining Congressional funding for CIFA. Thus, in a <a href="" type="internal">report</a> on APA lobbying for fiscal year 2009, the APA ignored all the issues regarding corruption and illegal spying at CIFA as they advocated for protecting the agency’s funding:</p>
<p>Dr. Boehm-Davis concluded her testimony by noting another APA concern – the potential loss of invaluable behavioral science programs within DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) as it reorganizes and loses personnel strength. APA’s testimony urged Congress to provide ongoing funding in the next fiscal year for CIFA’s behavioral research programs on cyber security, insider threat, and other counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence operational challenges.</p>
<p>After CIFA was folded into DCHC in the Defense Intelligence Agency, the APA lobbied Congress for money for “behavioral science” to support the DIA’s activities, including the counterintelligence work now located in DCHC. Here is a section from the written APA testimony to the US Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense regarding appropriations&#160; for the Fiscal Year 2010 budget:</p>
<p>APA… is concerned with maintaining invaluable human-centered research programs formerly within DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) now that staff and programming have been transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency.&#160; Within this DIA program, psychologists lead intramural and extramural research programs on counterintelligence issues ranging from models of “insider threat” to cybersecurity and detection of deception.&#160; These psychologists also consult with the three military services to translate findings from behavioral research directly into enhanced counterintelligence operations on the ground.</p>
<p>APA urges the Subcommittee to provide ongoing funding in FY10 for counterintelligence behavioral science research programs at DIA in light of their direct support for military intelligence operations.</p>
<p>There have been strong personal contacts between APA and CIFA/DCHC psychologists. The former Director of Behavioral Science for CIFA, Scott Shumate, was selected for the <a href="" type="internal">APA’s 2005 PENS</a> [Psychological Ethics and National Security] taskforce, where he and the majority of other members from the military-intelligence establishment proclaimed it ethical, even essential, for psychologists to aid Bush-era interrogations at Guantánamo and elsewhere. Shumate had previously served with the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and was present for at least part of the 2002 torture of Abu Zubaydah; Shumate claims to have <a href="" type="internal">left in disgust</a>, but the New York Times’ Scott Shane reports skepticism about this claim. He quotes “[o]ne witness [who] said he believed that ‘revisionism’ in light of the torture controversy had prompted some participants to exaggerate their objections.”</p>
<p>More recently, Susan Brandon – a former APA Senior Scientist who brought together psychologists and “operational personnel” from the intelligence community and later served as <a href="" type="internal">Assistant Director for Social, Behavioral and Educational Sciences</a> for the Bush White House – <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/8/383/74a#name" type="external">landed at CIFA</a> and after the reorganization <a href="http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12854&amp;page=95" type="external">at DCHC</a>. Brandon was one of the silent observers at the PENS taskforce <a href="" type="internal">described</a> by dissident taskforce member Jean Maria Arrigo as exerting pressure on members to adopt a likely pre-approved policy in favor of participation in Guantánamo, CIA, and other interrogations. Throughout her career, including her time at CIFA/DCHC, Brandon worked on “deception detection” and other matters relevant to interrogations.</p>
<p>Thus, personal ties as well as a general desire to curry favor with the military-intelligence establishment likely influence APA support for CIFA and counterintelligence efforts within DIA – that is, for DCHC.&#160; While these agencies employ a number of psychologists – <a href="" type="internal">CIFA reportedly employed 20 psychologists</a> when Shumate was director of behavioral sciences there – the numbers of psychologists potentially affected by budget cuts alone cannot explain APA support over the years.</p>
<p>In pursuit of influence and a seat at the table with the national security apparatus, the APA has usually bought into unsubstantiated claims that these and other military-connected intelligence psychologists were opposed to torture and abuse, even as evidence mounted that many intelligence psychologists were participants in torture and other abuses that permeated much of US detention operations at Guantánamo, Bagram, and Iraq in recent years. That is, claims that psychologists were preventing abuses <a href="" type="internal">were cover</a> for the fact that APA’s leadership <a href="" type="internal">apparently never cared</a> what it was that these psychologists might be doing.</p>
<p>Given this history of APA’s leadership turning a blind eye to reports of psychologist involvement in abuses, we shouldn’t hold our breath expecting the APA to change its position on DIA/DCHC funding now that the defense department admits that DCHC runs a detention facility using techniques like sleep deprivation that the APA itself has <a href="" type="internal">proclaimed unethical</a> and amounting to either <a href="" type="internal">torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment</a>. After all, for the APA leadership in recent years, professional opportunities for psychology have always trumped professional ethics, at least in the national security sector.</p>
<p>Psychology as a profession is at a crossroads. As the connections discussed here illustrate, the profession has long-standing ties to the military-intelligence establishment that, outside of the awareness of many members, permeate much of its public policy making. While it is, perhaps, too much to expect that these relations will totally end, they must become more transparent and subject to public discussion and debate. A first step would be for APA leaders to express concerns and call for an independent investigation of the possibility that psychologists are studying or otherwise aiding abuses at the “black jail.” That, alas, is a simple step that is extremely unlikely from the profession’s current leadership.</p>
<p>STEPHEN SOLDZ is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the <a href="http://www.bgsp.edu/" type="external">Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis</a>. He edits the <a href="http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/" type="external">Psyche, Science, and Society</a> blog. He is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations. He is President-Elect of <a href="http://psysr.org/" type="external">Psychologists for Social Responsibility</a> [PsySR]. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:ssoldz@bgsp.edu" type="external">ssoldz@bgsp.edu</a></p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/" type="external">WORDS THAT STICK</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p /> | true | 4 | recent pair articles marc ambinder atlantic shed new light upon activities secret socalled black jail bagram air base afghanistan among aspects new revelations suggest psychologists may playing major role inside facility raising questions reasons american psychological association apa lobbying activities support agency ambinder reports running detention center recent months washington post new york times bbc reported secret prison fringes bagram air base afghanistan referred former prisoners black jail institution reportedly site prisoner abuse regular systematic bbc reported nine former prisoners interviewed told consistent stories held isolation cold cells light day night men said deprived sleep us military personnel thus assume psychological torture techniques isolation sleep deprivation hypothermia routine aspects treatment inside facility washington post provided additional details interviews two youths imprisoned black jail one young man rashid younger 16 described beginning detention forced strip naked undergo medical checkup front halfdozen american soldiers said muslim upbringing made display humiliating soldiers made worse touched body took pictures laughing laughing said everything said lived small concrete cell slightly longer length body food tossed plastic bag slot metal door teenagers said tried sleep floor captors shouted hammered cells summoned daily interrogations rashid said made wear hood handcuffs ear coverings marched meeting room said punched interrogators prodded admit ties taliban denied ties sessions said interrogator forced look pornographic movies magazines also showing photograph mother crying crying young rashid said didnt know prison looks like prison ambinder received confirmation defense department existence secret detention center bagram department previously consistently denied existed ambinder picture facility reports center run joint special operations command jsoc previously reported defense intelligence agencys dia defense counterintelligence human intelligence center dchc course providing intelligence services task force 714 long memories dchc essentially defense department stuffed old counterintelligence field activity cifa latter disbanded due several major scandals involving spying americans fraud connected former rep randy duke cunningham isnt clear really makes difference black jail run jsoc dchc task force 714 dchc serving jsoc special ops force mcraven runs secretive detachment special forces known task force 714 commanded mcchrystal nsc staffer described directaction units conducting highintensity hits email sholtis said task force 714 special ops organization cant go much detail authorities etc nsc staffer called mcraven mcchrystal squared said task force 714 organized small groups rangers going wherever hell want go afghanistan operating legal authority granted end bush administration president obama revoked scott horton made similar point ambinder reports defense department admits secret afghan prison uses interrogation techniques army field manuals infamous appendix appendix authorizes abusive techniques including sleep deprivation sensory deprivation environmental manipulation think freezing someone blinding light often amount torture consistent multitudinous reports severe abuse black jail ambinder reports top secret special action program authorizing dchc interrogations jeff kaye pointed emptywheelcomment appendix mbased techniques covered army field manual used need special action program thus must wonder exactly dchc bagram sites whatever apparently isnt something want us public know think president obama banned torture centers like think obamas executive order banned cia secret prisons administration thus apparently intended beginning maintain torture facility defense department rather cia label information black jail provided followup post ambinder provides description black prison information ive able gather interrogation environment much like social science laboratory psychologists experts human behavior looking clues see might know alternating interrogators trained ferret actionable intelligence information emphasis added detention facility run social science laboratory raises concerns psychologists others may conducting research detainees without detainees consent result abusive research nazi doctors research poor black men country denied us public health service wellknown treatments syphilis got sick died tuskegee syphilis experiment informed consent requirement country benign research decades thus ambinders report raises prospect detainees black jail may subjects otherwise banned research procedures wherever psychologists involved national security work links apa seldom hard find case apa regularly lobbied funding dchc former top apa research scientist recently cifa successor dchc investigating deception detection160 like reportedly occurring inside black jail years apa devoted considerable lobbying resources maintaining congressional funding cifa thus report apa lobbying fiscal year 2009 apa ignored issues regarding corruption illegal spying cifa advocated protecting agencys funding dr boehmdavis concluded testimony noting another apa concern potential loss invaluable behavioral science programs within dods counterintelligence field activity cifa reorganizes loses personnel strength apas testimony urged congress provide ongoing funding next fiscal year cifas behavioral research programs cyber security insider threat counterterrorism counterintelligence operational challenges cifa folded dchc defense intelligence agency apa lobbied congress money behavioral science support dias activities including counterintelligence work located dchc section written apa testimony us senate committee appropriations subcommittee defense regarding appropriations160 fiscal year 2010 budget apa concerned maintaining invaluable humancentered research programs formerly within dods counterintelligence field activity cifa staff programming transferred defense intelligence agency160 within dia program psychologists lead intramural extramural research programs counterintelligence issues ranging models insider threat cybersecurity detection deception160 psychologists also consult three military services translate findings behavioral research directly enhanced counterintelligence operations ground apa urges subcommittee provide ongoing funding fy10 counterintelligence behavioral science research programs dia light direct support military intelligence operations strong personal contacts apa cifadchc psychologists former director behavioral science cifa scott shumate selected apas 2005 pens psychological ethics national security taskforce majority members militaryintelligence establishment proclaimed ethical even essential psychologists aid bushera interrogations guantánamo elsewhere shumate previously served cias counterterrorism center present least part 2002 torture abu zubaydah shumate claims left disgust new york times scott shane reports skepticism claim quotes one witness said believed revisionism light torture controversy prompted participants exaggerate objections recently susan brandon former apa senior scientist brought together psychologists operational personnel intelligence community later served assistant director social behavioral educational sciences bush white house landed cifa reorganization dchc brandon one silent observers pens taskforce described dissident taskforce member jean maria arrigo exerting pressure members adopt likely preapproved policy favor participation guantánamo cia interrogations throughout career including time cifadchc brandon worked deception detection matters relevant interrogations thus personal ties well general desire curry favor militaryintelligence establishment likely influence apa support cifa counterintelligence efforts within dia dchc160 agencies employ number psychologists cifa reportedly employed 20 psychologists shumate director behavioral sciences numbers psychologists potentially affected budget cuts alone explain apa support years pursuit influence seat table national security apparatus apa usually bought unsubstantiated claims militaryconnected intelligence psychologists opposed torture abuse even evidence mounted many intelligence psychologists participants torture abuses permeated much us detention operations guantánamo bagram iraq recent years claims psychologists preventing abuses cover fact apas leadership apparently never cared psychologists might given history apas leadership turning blind eye reports psychologist involvement abuses shouldnt hold breath expecting apa change position diadchc funding defense department admits dchc runs detention facility using techniques like sleep deprivation apa proclaimed unethical amounting either torture cruel inhuman degrading treatment apa leadership recent years professional opportunities psychology always trumped professional ethics least national security sector psychology profession crossroads connections discussed illustrate profession longstanding ties militaryintelligence establishment outside awareness many members permeate much public policy making perhaps much expect relations totally end must become transparent subject public discussion debate first step would apa leaders express concerns call independent investigation possibility psychologists studying otherwise aiding abuses black jail alas simple step extremely unlikely professions current leadership stephen soldz psychoanalyst psychologist public health researcher faculty member boston graduate school psychoanalysis edits psyche science society blog founder coalition ethical psychology one organizations working change american psychological association policy participation abusive interrogations presidentelect psychologists social responsibility psysr reached ssoldzbgspedu words stick 160 | 1,216 |
<p>As a Flint native, I always check out Michael Moore’s films. I’m just a few years older than Mike and lived through and benefited from the same times when the UAW and General Motors brought prosperity, a Working Class Middle Class, health care, education and hope to our hometown and America. So, of course, I love the collective work of America’s prolific, most accurate and biggest-hearted filmmaker.</p>
<p>I used to think Canadian Bacon was Michael Moore’s best movie. Naw, not really, though it is pretty good. Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 are treasures and deserve every accolade they’ve received. Those two are in a class by themselves. But, Capitalism: A Love Story is pretty close.</p>
<p>(Spoiler alert: I’m going to talk about a lot of what’s actually in the movie. Jump down to the last few paragraphs if you’d like to not know details of what’s in it. Hopefully, once you read it, you’ll want to see the real deal. But, see it now, before it’s too late.)</p>
<p>“I refuse to live in a country like this, and I’m not leaving.”</p>
<p>— Michael Moore</p>
<p>What’s not to like about a movie that starts off with Iggy Pop doing Louie, Louie and ends with The Hag doing Woody Guthrie’s “But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross;” exposes the crooks on Wall Street and in the Treasury; exposes politicians of both Parties; stands up for Democracy; speaks well of Socialism; shows common folks fighting back, sometimes successfully; gives us the brilliance, heart and brass ovaries of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and even makes the Catholic Church look good?</p>
<p>I’m very pleased that the Flint Sit-Down Strikers of 1936-37 got a little love – and due credit for their heroic stand for Workers’ Rights. The Sit-Down Strike is worthy of a long-overdue movie in and of itself. Moore says Capitalism may be his last, but I sure hope he’s up for a Flint Sit-Down one – I envision a John Sayles-esque drama. Capitalism’s focus on the successful Sit-Down by the ousted workers at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors plant shows there is life in the old tactic. The movie also shows Miami citizens refusing to back down and, as Rep. Kaptur righteously recommends, reoccupying their foreclosed homes.</p>
<p>Villains and heroes abound. Starting with Ronnie Reagan and Alan Greenspan; on to Larry Summers, Paul Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and the rest of the Goldman Sachs brigands now running, not only Wall Street, but also the friggin’ US Treasury; Moore sets out just what the scam is all about. He clearly delineates how in half a century we went from a country where the president once proposed a Second Bill of Rights guaranteeing economic security to all citizens to one where 1% of the population controls 95% of the country’s wealth and the People’s Congress is bought off with “donations” and sweetheart loans from the very banks and other corporations they are supposed to be regulating.</p>
<p>Just compare our current “leadership” and “greed is good” culture and where it’s led us with FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights which assured the general public of 1) a job with a living wage; 2) freedom from unfair competition and monopolies; 3) a home; 4) Universal Health Care (even Nixon proposed Universal Health Care!); 5) a good education; and 6) time off for recreation. Roosevelt stated flat out that these rights would provide “security” for our country. The footage of the Sit-Downers and of FDR laying out his Second Bill of Rights alone are worth the price of admission.</p>
<p>The movie shows the overwhelming support for “change” as embodied in the Obama campaign. It succinctly explains how “Yes, we can” so quickly devolved into “No, we can’t.” The fact is that the oligarchs saw Obama’s support continue to swell despite the constant bleating of “Socialism” from the corporate media. So, Goldman Sachs hastily became Obama’s top private donor; leading a rogue’s gallery of other corporations ponying-up millions – end of threat.</p>
<p>Two parish priests and two bishops take sides with the working class victims of Wall Street greed. Cleverly-altered footage of 1977’s Jesus of Nazareth has Jesus spouting Capitalist bromides and rejecting the pleas of a bed-ridden supplicant with “I cannot heal your preexisting condition.” Detroit Bishop Thomas Gumbleton states that Capitalism runs counter to the teachings of Christ. He notes that Jesus would not have anything to do with Capitalism were Jesus to walk the Earth today. (The irony here is that He would likely have nothing to do with the good bishop’s church, either.)</p>
<p>The Home Foreclosure epidemic gets a lot of play. One family gets paid $1000 to clean up their own house as they go out the door; a home on a farm that was in the family for generations – indignity upon humiliation. People are shown ousted from their homes of decades by the very banks who were rescued themselves by taxpayer billions. Another hero, Wayne County Michigan Sheriff Warren Evans boldly refuses to carry out any more Foreclosure evictions in his county.</p>
<p>Moore’s Image; just another pack of Right-wing Lies</p>
<p>Moore is unjustly criticized by his opponents of never telling the other side – whatever that means, besides naked doubt-seeding. Certainly when billions of taxpayer dollars were being shoveled to these unaccountable crooks, no one at Fox News, ABC, NBC, CNN, etc. tracked down Moore, Nader, Kucinich, Cockburn, Kaptur et al. for the “other side.” And, who criticized Ken Burns when he when he didn’t give any defenders of Abner Doubleday air-time in his doc Baseball?</p>
<p>But here, Moore allows Peter Zalewski, founder of Condo Vultures, a company that buys up defaulted homes, plenty of air-time. Zalewski might have the film’s best line: “What’s the difference between me and a real vulture? I say that’s simple: I don’t vomit on myself.”</p>
<p>Moore even lets Stephen Moore (quickly noting, “No relation”) of the Wall Street Journal editorial board the time to explain how Capitalism is wonderful and Democracy is not. He lets all kinds of Wall Street champions spout their acquisitive, insensitive views. He goes out of his way trying to get the fat cats to explain their beliefs. He gets rebuffed at every office tower he approaches. He stands outside Wall Street and asks the traders for advice on how to salvage the economy as they leave for the day. One wag says, “Don’t make any more movies.” Moore laughs. Not sure what advice they could provide given that none of them that bothers to try can coherently explain such things as “derivatives,” “collateralized debt obligations,” etc., but a rather funny, astute professor sure can and does.</p>
<p>I read the horrible review in The New Yorker just before I went out the door to the movie. The movie of that and other critical reviews is unrecognizable on the big screen. It’s an outrageous canard that Michael Moore produces slipshod, inaccurate stuff that doesn’t even qualify as documentary. He has produced not only the most successful documentaries of all time, but also the most precise documentaries of all time.</p>
<p>The soundtrack is also excellent, as it is in all Moore’s other movies. Moore’s long-time collaborator, Flint native Jeff Gibbs’ original score is superb, setting the right tone over and over.</p>
<p>I agree with this movie 99+%. The sole problem I have with the movie is the pontificating of Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) who lambastes former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson’s original bailout plan for “suspending all the laws.” The phony DeFazio has had no problem at all suspending the laws himself time and again when it benefits his Big Timber supporters looting our public-owned forests.</p>
<p>I find myself defending Moore all the time. How many other well-off Americans (yeah, yeah, in a way, capitalism has been very, very good to Moore) would risk the threats to life and limb that have rained down on Moore for taking these stands? I know he cannot walk down the street without getting accosted – thanks to the lying swine at Fox et al. In my mind, he’d be totally justified moving to the south of France and never uttering another word.</p>
<p>Dating back 20 years to the seminal Roger &amp; Me, Michael Moore has also been irrationally disparaged for pointing out short-comings, but not offering solutions. Many of my Flint family and friends hold that against him. Well, it’s probably not irrational, as it is done with a purpose by his detractors; those who gravely fear his anti-corporate, anti-war, anti-violence and anti-greed messages.</p>
<p>The fact that nobody threw light, with or without any suggested solutions, on the same, sad dynamic in Pontiac, Gary, Cleveland or Bethlehem or any other of the collapsing cities that make up our former industrial base helped spare them from following in Flint’s fate. Ultimately Moore’s job is not to provide solutions, but to diagnose the disease. And, with Capitalism, Dr. Moore is dead on.</p>
<p>MICHAEL DONNELLY grew up when GM was the top corporation in the world and Flint was as close to a workers’ paradise as we’ve ever seen. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:pahtoo@aol.com" type="external">pahtoo@aol.com</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | flint native always check michael moores films im years older mike lived benefited times uaw general motors brought prosperity working class middle class health care education hope hometown america course love collective work americas prolific accurate biggesthearted filmmaker used think canadian bacon michael moores best movie naw really though pretty good bowling columbine fahrenheit 911 treasures deserve every accolade theyve received two class capitalism love story pretty close spoiler alert im going talk lot whats actually movie jump last paragraphs youd like know details whats hopefully read youll want see real deal see late refuse live country like im leaving michael moore whats like movie starts iggy pop louie louie ends hag woody guthries bankers preachers nailed cross exposes crooks wall street treasury exposes politicians parties stands democracy speaks well socialism shows common folks fighting back sometimes successfully gives us brilliance heart brass ovaries rep marcy kaptur doh even makes catholic church look good im pleased flint sitdown strikers 193637 got little love due credit heroic stand workers rights sitdown strike worthy longoverdue movie moore says capitalism may last sure hope hes flint sitdown one envision john saylesesque drama capitalisms focus successful sitdown ousted workers chicagos republic windows doors plant shows life old tactic movie also shows miami citizens refusing back rep kaptur righteously recommends reoccupying foreclosed homes villains heroes abound starting ronnie reagan alan greenspan larry summers paul bernanke hank paulson tim geithner rest goldman sachs brigands running wall street also friggin us treasury moore sets scam clearly delineates half century went country president proposed second bill rights guaranteeing economic security citizens one 1 population controls 95 countrys wealth peoples congress bought donations sweetheart loans banks corporations supposed regulating compare current leadership greed good culture led us fdrs economic bill rights assured general public 1 job living wage 2 freedom unfair competition monopolies 3 home 4 universal health care even nixon proposed universal health care 5 good education 6 time recreation roosevelt stated flat rights would provide security country footage sitdowners fdr laying second bill rights alone worth price admission movie shows overwhelming support change embodied obama campaign succinctly explains yes quickly devolved cant fact oligarchs saw obamas support continue swell despite constant bleating socialism corporate media goldman sachs hastily became obamas top private donor leading rogues gallery corporations ponyingup millions end threat two parish priests two bishops take sides working class victims wall street greed cleverlyaltered footage 1977s jesus nazareth jesus spouting capitalist bromides rejecting pleas bedridden supplicant heal preexisting condition detroit bishop thomas gumbleton states capitalism runs counter teachings christ notes jesus would anything capitalism jesus walk earth today irony would likely nothing good bishops church either home foreclosure epidemic gets lot play one family gets paid 1000 clean house go door home farm family generations indignity upon humiliation people shown ousted homes decades banks rescued taxpayer billions another hero wayne county michigan sheriff warren evans boldly refuses carry foreclosure evictions county moores image another pack rightwing lies moore unjustly criticized opponents never telling side whatever means besides naked doubtseeding certainly billions taxpayer dollars shoveled unaccountable crooks one fox news abc nbc cnn etc tracked moore nader kucinich cockburn kaptur et al side criticized ken burns didnt give defenders abner doubleday airtime doc baseball moore allows peter zalewski founder condo vultures company buys defaulted homes plenty airtime zalewski might films best line whats difference real vulture say thats simple dont vomit moore even lets stephen moore quickly noting relation wall street journal editorial board time explain capitalism wonderful democracy lets kinds wall street champions spout acquisitive insensitive views goes way trying get fat cats explain beliefs gets rebuffed every office tower approaches stands outside wall street asks traders advice salvage economy leave day one wag says dont make movies moore laughs sure advice could provide given none bothers try coherently explain things derivatives collateralized debt obligations etc rather funny astute professor sure read horrible review new yorker went door movie movie critical reviews unrecognizable big screen outrageous canard michael moore produces slipshod inaccurate stuff doesnt even qualify documentary produced successful documentaries time also precise documentaries time soundtrack also excellent moores movies moores longtime collaborator flint native jeff gibbs original score superb setting right tone agree movie 99 sole problem movie pontificating rep peter defazio dor lambastes former secretary treasury henry paulsons original bailout plan suspending laws phony defazio problem suspending laws time benefits big timber supporters looting publicowned forests find defending moore time many welloff americans yeah yeah way capitalism good moore would risk threats life limb rained moore taking stands know walk street without getting accosted thanks lying swine fox et al mind hed totally justified moving south france never uttering another word dating back 20 years seminal roger amp michael moore also irrationally disparaged pointing shortcomings offering solutions many flint family friends hold well probably irrational done purpose detractors gravely fear anticorporate antiwar antiviolence antigreed messages fact nobody threw light without suggested solutions sad dynamic pontiac gary cleveland bethlehem collapsing cities make former industrial base helped spare following flints fate ultimately moores job provide solutions diagnose disease capitalism dr moore dead michael donnelly grew gm top corporation world flint close workers paradise weve ever seen reached pahtooaolcom 160 | 863 |
<p>The Independent</p>
<p>He was everything loyal and everything miserable about the Palestinian dream. I have a tape recording of Arafat, sitting with me on a cold, dark mountainside outside the Lebanese port of Tripoli in 1983 where the old man–he was always called the old man, long before he was elderly–was under siege by the Syrian army, another of the Arab “brothers” who wanted to lead the Palestinian cause and ended up fighting Palestinians rather than Israelis.</p>
<p>Even worse, the Syrians had suborned some of “their” Palestinians to join the siege. Just a year before, Arafat and his PLO had withstood an 88-day encirclement in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, by the Israeli army, led by the then defence minister, Ariel Sharon. Now Arafat’s fortunes had crumbled again.</p>
<p>The tape hisses and occasionally, far away, shells thump into a hillside. I played it again yesterday, listening to the wind.</p>
<p>“I will not be away from my freedom fighters while they are facing death and dangers from death,” says Arafat’s voice, “It is my duty to be beside my freedom fighters and my officers and my soldiers.”</p>
<p>“A year ago,” I tell him, “you and I talked in west Beirut. Here we are on a windy hilltop outside Tripoli, 50 miles further from the border of Israel, or the border of Palestine, and people within Fatah are rebelling.”</p>
<p>Arafat replied: “You see, I give you another proof that we are a nut that is not easy to be cracked. I hope you still remember what Sharon mentioned in the beginning of his invasion. He was dreaming that in three or five days he would liquidate or smash the PLO, our people, our freedom fighters, and here we are. The siege of Beirut, the battles of the south of Lebanon, this miracle, 88 days, the longest Arab-Israeli war–and after that we have this war of attrition against the Israeli army, not only the Palestinians–definitely, we and our allies the Lebanese, are participating in this war of attrition and we are proud, I am proud, I have this brave alliance.”</p>
<p>“Fifty miles further from Palestine!” I replied.</p>
<p>“What is the difference to be 50 miles or to be 50,000 miles?” came the reply “One metre outside the border of Palestine, I am far away.”</p>
<p>Arafat was a dreamer, a popular characteristic for Palestinians who had only dreams to give them hope. Even in the early days, if compromise was required of him, he could talk to Israelis, even hint at acceptance of the partition of Palestine. “I will live on one square metre of my land,” he would say.</p>
<p>But if one of the PLO’s more outlandish satellites embarrassed the Palestinians–and the world–by murdering an innocent, Arafat would step in to prevent further tragedy, thus acquiring prestige from the crimes of his own organisation. Hence the murder by Palestinians of a crippled Jewish pensioner called Leon Klinghoffer on board the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 was supposed to be overshadowed by Arafat’s humanitarian gesture in arranging for the liberation of the other 300 passengers.</p>
<p>But it was his greatest political error–his support for Saddam Hussein after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait–that gave him his greatest and hollowest victory. His refusal to support President George Bush Sr’s Pax Americana left Arafat weak enough to make peace with Israel; and the Oslo agreement was the bait to pull him in.</p>
<p>Arafat thought he was being given Palestine–statehood, stamps, a national airline, prestige, admiration, east Jeru-salem and an army–but he was being offered nothing. Instead, Oslo turned out to be an offer of collaboration: Arafat was being asked to police the West Bank and Gaza on Israel’s behalf. His job was not to represent his people but to “control” them, which is why the mantra question, “Can Arafat control his own people?” was taken up with such speed by the Israelis.</p>
<p>Of course, he could not. Hamas had been an Israeli creation to balance Arafat’s power, when the PLO were the “super-terrorists” of the Middle East, and Arafat was not going to fight a civil war in “Palestine” on Israel’s behalf. So he clung to power not with authority but with cash, paying off his gunmen and his cronies, ignoring some of the PLO’s splinter outfits while promising security, peace, prosperity, statehood and all the other things Oslo would not give him. His cronyism was part of his failure. Unwilling to allow younger, educated Palestinians to run even his public relations network, he surrounded himself with hopeless, middle-aged spokesmen whose anger was loud but whose English was incomprehensible. When Israel reneged on withdrawal agreements, Arafat pleaded with the Americans for help in keeping to a timetable which no one but himself believed in. “It is up to the parties concerned,” the State Department told him, handing all decisions to the most powerful of those parties, the Israelis.</p>
<p>He could not protect his people from Israeli military incursions or air raids and he could not protect the Israelis when Palestinian suicide bombers began to hurl themselves into Israel. He could not stop the illegal settlements for Jews on Arab land and he could not obtain even a sliver of Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital.</p>
<p>He could not obtain permission for a single Palestinian refugee to return to live in the home from which their family was driven in 1948. He could not guard his own national frontiers. He was not allowed to control his own airport. In the end, he could only leave the wrecked building in which he lived by starting the long process of dying.</p>
<p>Arafat governed by emotion rather than reason and this led him into flights of rhetoric that were a panacea to his people as they were an insult to his educated elite. Edward Said, that most brilliant of Palestinian scholars, was driven to distraction by Arafat’s nonsense as well as by his vain, dictatorial rule; Arafat banned Professor Said’s books and Palestinians who wished to read them had to purchase them in Israel.</p>
<p>“The people loved him, of course,” Professor Said told me. “He stood on the podium and he promised them a Palestinian state and they clapped and shouted and banged their feet. Someone asked him what the state would be like and Arafat pointed to a small child in the front and said, ‘If you want to know the answer to this, you must ask every Palestinian child what he wants.’ And the crowd went wild again. It was a popular reply. But what was he talking about? What did he mean?”</p>
<p>Only Hanan Ashrawi could speak her mind to Arafat. “I was the only one who would call him up and say he was wrong,” she told me. “I would say, ‘Mr Chairman, this is wrong, this will not work.’ And after, his advisers would come to me and say, ‘How can you speak to the Chairman like that? How dare you criticise him.’ But someone had to.”</p>
<p>There was another, more profound conversation, between Professor Said and Arafat, in 1985 when they were discussing Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who supported the 1936 revolt against British rule, and who believed the Zionists would take Palestinian land but who ended up in Berlin, urging Hitler to prevent the emigration of Jews to Palestine and encouraging Bosnian Muslims to join the SS. Professor Said told me Arafat said: “Edward, if there’s one thing I don’t want to be, it’s like Haj Amin. He was always right and he got nothing and died in exile.”</p>
<p>What will they say of Arafat? The Israelis refused permission for Haj Amin to be buried in Jerusalem. Ariel Sharon has said the same rule will apply to Arafat. In death, at least, Arafat and Haj Amin were equal.</p>
<p>ROBERT FISK is a reporter for The Independent and author of <a href="" type="internal">Pity the Nation</a>. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s hot new book, <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Bookshop.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>. &#160;</p> | true | 4 | independent everything loyal everything miserable palestinian dream tape recording arafat sitting cold dark mountainside outside lebanese port tripoli 1983 old manhe always called old man long elderlywas siege syrian army another arab brothers wanted lead palestinian cause ended fighting palestinians rather israelis even worse syrians suborned palestinians join siege year arafat plo withstood 88day encirclement lebanese capital beirut israeli army led defence minister ariel sharon arafats fortunes crumbled tape hisses occasionally far away shells thump hillside played yesterday listening wind away freedom fighters facing death dangers death says arafats voice duty beside freedom fighters officers soldiers year ago tell talked west beirut windy hilltop outside tripoli 50 miles border israel border palestine people within fatah rebelling arafat replied see give another proof nut easy cracked hope still remember sharon mentioned beginning invasion dreaming three five days would liquidate smash plo people freedom fighters siege beirut battles south lebanon miracle 88 days longest arabisraeli warand war attrition israeli army palestiniansdefinitely allies lebanese participating war attrition proud proud brave alliance fifty miles palestine replied difference 50 miles 50000 miles came reply one metre outside border palestine far away arafat dreamer popular characteristic palestinians dreams give hope even early days compromise required could talk israelis even hint acceptance partition palestine live one square metre land would say one plos outlandish satellites embarrassed palestiniansand worldby murdering innocent arafat would step prevent tragedy thus acquiring prestige crimes organisation hence murder palestinians crippled jewish pensioner called leon klinghoffer board hijacked cruise ship achille lauro 1985 supposed overshadowed arafats humanitarian gesture arranging liberation 300 passengers greatest political errorhis support saddam hussein 1990 iraqi invasion kuwaitthat gave greatest hollowest victory refusal support president george bush srs pax americana left arafat weak enough make peace israel oslo agreement bait pull arafat thought given palestinestatehood stamps national airline prestige admiration east jerusalem armybut offered nothing instead oslo turned offer collaboration arafat asked police west bank gaza israels behalf job represent people control mantra question arafat control people taken speed israelis course could hamas israeli creation balance arafats power plo superterrorists middle east arafat going fight civil war palestine israels behalf clung power authority cash paying gunmen cronies ignoring plos splinter outfits promising security peace prosperity statehood things oslo would give cronyism part failure unwilling allow younger educated palestinians run even public relations network surrounded hopeless middleaged spokesmen whose anger loud whose english incomprehensible israel reneged withdrawal agreements arafat pleaded americans help keeping timetable one believed parties concerned state department told handing decisions powerful parties israelis could protect people israeli military incursions air raids could protect israelis palestinian suicide bombers began hurl israel could stop illegal settlements jews arab land could obtain even sliver jerusalem palestinian capital could obtain permission single palestinian refugee return live home family driven 1948 could guard national frontiers allowed control airport end could leave wrecked building lived starting long process dying arafat governed emotion rather reason led flights rhetoric panacea people insult educated elite edward said brilliant palestinian scholars driven distraction arafats nonsense well vain dictatorial rule arafat banned professor saids books palestinians wished read purchase israel people loved course professor said told stood podium promised palestinian state clapped shouted banged feet someone asked state would like arafat pointed small child front said want know answer must ask every palestinian child wants crowd went wild popular reply talking mean hanan ashrawi could speak mind arafat one would call say wrong told would say mr chairman wrong work advisers would come say speak chairman like dare criticise someone another profound conversation professor said arafat 1985 discussing haj amin alhusseini grand mufti jerusalem supported 1936 revolt british rule believed zionists would take palestinian land ended berlin urging hitler prevent emigration jews palestine encouraging bosnian muslims join ss professor said told arafat said edward theres one thing dont want like haj amin always right got nothing died exile say arafat israelis refused permission haj amin buried jerusalem ariel sharon said rule apply arafat death least arafat haj amin equal robert fisk reporter independent author pity nation also contributor counterpunchs hot new book politics antisemitism 160 | 676 |
<p />
<p>Too many Americans have credit cards: “ <a href="http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2000/0900lead.pdf" type="external">Credit Cards: Use and Consumer Attitudes, 1970-2000</a>,” Federal Reserve Board.</p>
<p>Cardholders with too many cards: <a href="http://www.cardweb.com" type="external">Cardweb.com</a>.</p>
<p>Americans are drowning in credit card debt: <a href="http://www.cardweb.com" type="external">Cardweb.com</a>.</p>
<p>54 poorest countries owe less in foreign debt: <a href="http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk" type="external">Jubilee Debt Campaign, United Kingdom</a>.</p>
<p>Credit card companies’ “preferred customer”: <a href="http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&amp;pid=524906" type="external">Maxed Out</a>, James Scurlock, Scribner.</p>
<p>Americans in debt for more than a year: “ <a href="http://www.demos.org/pubs/PSN_low.pdf" type="external">Plastic Safety Net</a>,” Demos.</p>
<p>Average U.S. household has a lot of debt: <a href="http://www.cardweb.com" type="external">Cardweb.com</a>.</p>
<p>Calculating toward a debt-free life: <a href="http://www.bankrate.com" type="external">Bankrate.com</a></p>
<p>Responsible borrowers: <a href="http://www.cardweb.com" type="external">Cardweb.com</a>.</p>
<p>What the industry calls responsible borrowers: <a href="http://www.cardtrak.com" type="external">Cardtrak.com</a>.</p>
<p>Credit card penalties on the rise: “ <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06929.pdf" type="external">Credit Cards: Increased Complexity in Rates and Fees Heightens Need for More Effective Disclosures to Consumers</a>,” Government Accountability Office, September 2006.</p>
<p>Best-of-debt marketing: <a href="http://www.americanexpress.com/pes/uk/benefits/red/microsite/thecard.shtml" type="external">American Express Red</a>; <a href="http://www.cardweb.com/cardtrak/news/2004/july/30a.html" type="external">Usher Raymond Debit Card</a>; <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2959-2004Oct2.html" type="external">Hello Kitty Debit Mastercard</a>; <a href="http://www.hduff.net/hilary/visa_card.html" type="external">Hilary Duff Prepaid Visa</a>; <a href="http://www.enlightenmentcard.com" type="external">Enlightenment Visa Reward Card</a>; <a href="http://www.firstusa.com/cgi-bin/webcgi/webserve.cgi?ct=&amp;card=3H6Q&amp;mkid=6B01&amp;partner_dir_name=kiss&amp;=benefit" type="external">Kiss Platinum Visa Card</a>.</p>
<p>Disposable income spent paying off credit card debt: “ <a href="http://www.infopolicy.org/pdf/fcra_report.pdf" type="external">Fair Credit Reporting Act: Access, Efficiency &amp; Opportunity, The Economic Importance of Fair Credit Reauthorization</a>,” Information Policy Institute, June 2003.</p>
<p>Americans aren’t saving: “ <a href="http://www.creditcardnation.com/testimony-20070125.pdf" type="external">Examining the Billing, Marketing, and Disclosure Practices of the Credit Card Industry, and Their Impact on Consumers</a>,” Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Robert D. Manning, Professor of Consumer Finance, Rochester Institute of Technology, January 25, 2007.</p>
<p>Total credit cards in circulation: “ <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06929.pdf" type="external">Credit Cards: Increased Complexity in Rates and Fees Heightens Need for More Effective Disclosures to Consumers</a>,” Government Accountability Office, September 2006.</p>
<p>Credit card companies’ direct mail habit: <a href="http://www.cardtrak.com" type="external">Cardtrak.com</a>.</p>
<p>Signing up a new credit card customer: $58: “ <a href="http://www.infopolicy.org/pdf/fcra_report.pdf" type="external">Fair Credit Reporting Act: Access, Efficiency &amp; Opportunity: The Economic Importance of Fair Credit Reauthorization</a>,” Information Policy Institute, June 2003.</p>
<p>Madonna’s daughter’s credit card habit: “ <a href="http://www.eonline.com/print/index.jsp?uuid=acdb83d3-c58f-4f0e-9aee-6877aabd9722&amp;contentType=tabFab" type="external">Tab Fab</a>,” E! Online; Liz Rosenberg, publicist to Madonna, Warner Brothers.</p>
<p>Visa, official currency in the “Game of Life”: <a href="http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=68329&amp;p=irol-newsArticle&amp;ID=971861" type="external">Press Release from Hasbro</a>, March 8, 2007.</p>
<p>Quarter pounder with fries? Just charge it: <a href="http://www.cardtrak.com" type="external">Cardtrak.com</a>.</p>
<p>Low- and middle-income households incur credit card debt for cost of living expenses: “ <a href="http://www.demos.org/pubs/PSN_low.pdf" type="external">Plastic Safety Net</a>,” Demos.</p>
<p>Blogging about debt: <a href="http://kissofdebt.blogspot.com" type="external">Kiss of Debt</a>, <a href="http://www.makelovenotdebt.com" type="external">Make Love, Not Debt</a>, <a href="http://www.wallowingindebt.typepad.com" type="external">Wallowing in Debt</a>, <a href="http://brokeass-student.typepad.com" type="external">Brokeass Student</a>.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court’s effect on credit card fees and late penalties: <a href="http://www.cardweb.com" type="external">Cardweb.com</a>.</p>
<p>Credit card companies clean up with interest and fees: Robert K. Hammer, CEO of <a href="http://www.rkhammer.com" type="external">R.K. Hammer Investments</a>.</p>
<p>Discover Bank v Owens: Discover Bank v Owens, Cleveland Municipal Court, September 8, 2004.</p>
<p>Bankruptcy filers’ credit card debt = year’s salary: <a href="http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465090907" type="external">The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke</a>, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, Basic Books.</p>
<p>New, tighter bankruptcy laws—courtesy of the industry: NPR’s Fresh Air with Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard University Law School, March 27, 2007.</p>
<p>Top 5 credit card companies in 2006: <a href="http://www.cardweb.com" type="external">Cardweb.com</a>.</p>
<p>Credit card companies’ gifts to Congress in 2006: <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org" type="external">Opensecrets.org</a>.</p>
<p>Bankruptcy and medical expenses: “ <a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w5.63/DC1" type="external">MarketWatch: Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy</a>,” Health Affairs, February 2005.</p>
<p>Military debts for soliders injured and killed in combat: “ <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06494.pdf" type="external">Hundreds of Battle-Injured GWOT Soldiers Have Struggled to Resolve Military Debts</a>,” Government Accountability Office, April 2006.</p>
<p>Credit cards’ sneakiest tricks: Contract hits: “Fine Print: Growing Profit Source for Banks,” Mitchell Pacelle, Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2004.</p>
<p>Credit cards’ sneakiest tricks: Let’s bounce: “ <a href="http://www.consumer-action.org/press/articles/consumer_action_releases_its_2007_credit_card_survey/" type="external">2007 Credit Card Survey</a>,” Consumer Action, May 2007.</p>
<p>Credit cards’ sneakiest tricks: Growing rates: “ <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06929.pdf" type="external">Credit Cards: Increased Complexity in Rates and Fees Heightens Need for More Effective Disclosures to Consumers</a>,” Government Accountability Office, September 2006.</p>
<p>Credit cards’ sneakiest tricks: Outside interests: “ <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06929.pdf" type="external">Credit Cards: Increased Complexity in Rates and Fees Heightens Need for More Effective Disclosures to Consumers</a>,” Government Accountability Office, September 2006.</p>
<p>Credit cards’ sneakiest tricks: Double trouble: “ <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06929.pdf" type="external">Credit Cards: Increased Complexity in Rates and Fees Heightens Need for More Effective Disclosures to Consumers</a>,” Government Accountability Office, September 2006.</p>
<p>Lower rates for soldiers in combat: <a href="http://www.aaefes.com/docs/deploy/0105-4.pdf" type="external">Military Star Card</a>.</p>
<p>Circle of debt: “ <a href="http://www.responsiblelending.org/pdfs/ip012-Risking_Homes_Credit_Cards-1105.pdf" type="external">Risking Homes to Pay Off Credit Cards</a>,” Center for Responsible Lending.</p>
<p>Troubled teens and debt: <a href="http://www.wwasp.com/refinance.htm" type="external">WWASP refinancing plan</a>.</p>
<p>Human billboards sell credit cards: Karen Ammond, Publicist for Chris and Luke.</p>
<p>Automobile auto warning for subprime auto loans: <a href="http://www.ppsontime.com" type="external">Payment Protection Systems</a>.</p>
<p>Sharia-compliant credit cards: “ABC Islamic Bank Launches Islamic Credit Card,” Middle East Company News Wire, September 24, 2002.</p>
<p>Credit card companies follow laws of their own states, not their customers’: Marquette National Bank v First of Omaha Corporation, December 18, 1978.</p>
<p>Former South Dakota governor Bill Janklow on credit cards: “ <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/interviews/janklow.html" type="external">Secret History of the Credit Card</a>,” Frontline, PBS.</p>
<p>Dante on usury: <a href="http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle7.html" type="external">Circle 7, cantos 12-17.</a></p>
<p /> | true | 4 | many americans credit cards credit cards use consumer attitudes 19702000 federal reserve board cardholders many cards cardwebcom americans drowning credit card debt cardwebcom 54 poorest countries owe less foreign debt jubilee debt campaign united kingdom credit card companies preferred customer maxed james scurlock scribner americans debt year plastic safety net demos average us household lot debt cardwebcom calculating toward debtfree life bankratecom responsible borrowers cardwebcom industry calls responsible borrowers cardtrakcom credit card penalties rise credit cards increased complexity rates fees heightens need effective disclosures consumers government accountability office september 2006 bestofdebt marketing american express red usher raymond debit card hello kitty debit mastercard hilary duff prepaid visa enlightenment visa reward card kiss platinum visa card disposable income spent paying credit card debt fair credit reporting act access efficiency amp opportunity economic importance fair credit reauthorization information policy institute june 2003 americans arent saving examining billing marketing disclosure practices credit card industry impact consumers testimony us senate committee banking housing urban affairs robert manning professor consumer finance rochester institute technology january 25 2007 total credit cards circulation credit cards increased complexity rates fees heightens need effective disclosures consumers government accountability office september 2006 credit card companies direct mail habit cardtrakcom signing new credit card customer 58 fair credit reporting act access efficiency amp opportunity economic importance fair credit reauthorization information policy institute june 2003 madonnas daughters credit card habit tab fab e online liz rosenberg publicist madonna warner brothers visa official currency game life press release hasbro march 8 2007 quarter pounder fries charge cardtrakcom low middleincome households incur credit card debt cost living expenses plastic safety net demos blogging debt kiss debt make love debt wallowing debt brokeass student supreme courts effect credit card fees late penalties cardwebcom credit card companies clean interest fees robert k hammer ceo rk hammer investments discover bank v owens discover bank v owens cleveland municipal court september 8 2004 bankruptcy filers credit card debt years salary twoincome trap middleclass mothers fathers going broke elizabeth warren amelia warren tyagi basic books new tighter bankruptcy lawscourtesy industry nprs fresh air professor elizabeth warren harvard university law school march 27 2007 top 5 credit card companies 2006 cardwebcom credit card companies gifts congress 2006 opensecretsorg bankruptcy medical expenses marketwatch illness injury contributors bankruptcy health affairs february 2005 military debts soliders injured killed combat hundreds battleinjured gwot soldiers struggled resolve military debts government accountability office april 2006 credit cards sneakiest tricks contract hits fine print growing profit source banks mitchell pacelle wall street journal july 6 2004 credit cards sneakiest tricks lets bounce 2007 credit card survey consumer action may 2007 credit cards sneakiest tricks growing rates credit cards increased complexity rates fees heightens need effective disclosures consumers government accountability office september 2006 credit cards sneakiest tricks outside interests credit cards increased complexity rates fees heightens need effective disclosures consumers government accountability office september 2006 credit cards sneakiest tricks double trouble credit cards increased complexity rates fees heightens need effective disclosures consumers government accountability office september 2006 lower rates soldiers combat military star card circle debt risking homes pay credit cards center responsible lending troubled teens debt wwasp refinancing plan human billboards sell credit cards karen ammond publicist chris luke automobile auto warning subprime auto loans payment protection systems shariacompliant credit cards abc islamic bank launches islamic credit card middle east company news wire september 24 2002 credit card companies follow laws states customers marquette national bank v first omaha corporation december 18 1978 former south dakota governor bill janklow credit cards secret history credit card frontline pbs dante usury circle 7 cantos 1217 | 596 |
<p>In an act of civil disobedience on Sunday marking the first anniversary of protests against the imprisonment of children at the T. Don Hutto immigrant prison in Taylor, Texas, 100 people carried holiday toys and wrapping paper into the prison lobby. The action at sundown was the first time this year that protesters carried their message onto prison property.</p>
<p>Jaime Martinez, National Treasurer of the League of United Latin American Citizens called for the toy march shortly after 5:30 p.m. Carrying a bullhorn, Martinez informed the protesters that prison officials had made a promise to come out and get the toys at 5 p.m.</p>
<p>When Martinez called for people to take the toys to the children, the crowd pressed forward across a yellow line painted on the driveway marking official prison property and walked up to the lobby of the prison. Accompanying the protesters was LULAC National President Rosa Rosales.</p>
<p>“Bring the toys!” called Martinez from the prison door as volunteers grabbed boxes and bags of toys along with rolls of wrapping paper and rushed to the prison door.</p>
<p>One of the volunteers, Georgetown resident Peter Dana, later described carrying a box of toys through a metal detector. He said he thought about his experience years ago helping to engineer a metal detector.</p>
<p>Inside the lobby, prison officials appeared to be accepting the toys for the imprisoned children. Previous reports from various sources say that the Hutto prison houses about 400 immigrants, half of them children.</p>
<p>On Friday, Georgetown activist Sherry Dana reported that Hutto prison held 142 people, more than half of them children: 13 men, 55 women, 31 boys (17 and under), and 43 girls (17 and under). The numbers can change on a daily basis. The toy march was the high point of an active day that began with a longer march from downtown Taylor to the prison that lies upon a large, flat field at the outskirts of town, across the tracks.</p>
<p>Local LULAC Secretary Jose Orta began the day’s preparations by parking a rented trailer across the street from the prison. The trailer served as a stage for speakers during an afternoon rally.</p>
<p>“The children were out playing when we first marched here from town,” said Orta. “They saw us, but they were taken inside.”</p>
<p>“Of all the sick and perverted acts committed in this country in the name of the United States is the imprisonment of innocent children by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff,” said Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr. in a pre-event email. “ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests innocent children and their mothers and turns them over to a private ‘for profit’ prison which, as of today, receives some $20,000 per child…per month…to keep an innocent child in an 8′ x 12′ prison cell.” Johnson-Castro joined the marchers on Sunday.</p>
<p>The Hutto prison is managed by Corrections Corporation of America which boasts itself as “founder of the private corrections industry and the nation’s largest provider of jail, detention and corrections services to governmental agencies.” CCA co-founder T. Don Hutto secured the first contract for private incarceration of immigrants in 1983 and spent New Year’s Eve of that year searching for a motel in Houston that would yield rooms to the venture.</p>
<p>At sundown Sunday, the final speaker of the day, Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, asked the people to turn around and face the Hutto prison. By that time, most of the participants were holding lit candles as part of a sundown vigil.</p>
<p>Shortly after the crowd had turned around, Martinez began walking among the people with his bullhorn.</p>
<p>“Free the Children, Now!” chanted the crowd with Martinez. “Close Hutto Down!”</p>
<p>When marchers stepped toward the prison, they were accompanied by a banner that declared, “Schools not Prisons. Education not Incarceration. Texas Families of Incarcerated Youth.”</p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security says the Hutto prison is dedicated to immigrant families with children. Organizers agreed that protests will continue until the prison is closed and child imprisonment is brought to an end.</p>
<p>After the toy march, filmmakers Matthew Gossage and Lily Keber transformed the chilly night darkness into a screening of their 16-minute film, “Hutto: America’s Family Prison” which can be viewed at: <a href="http://www.americasfamilyprison.com/Hutto.mov" type="external">americasfamilyprison.com/Hutto.mov</a>.</p>
<p>Keber was taping the day’s protest, including the toy march, so perhaps a sequel will be forthcoming.</p>
<p>Near the end of the screening, a few people made two more attempts to deliver more toys to the front door of the Hutto prison. The first attempt was rebuffed by a security guard, but the second attempt succeeded as a young man carrying a child took bags of toys past the guard to the front door. Inside the lobby, it appeared that people dressed in civilian clothes were processing the toys for delivery to the children inside.</p>
<p>Texans United for Families (TUFF) was lead organizer of the first protest in 2006 and co-sponsor of Sunday’s event. One of TUFF’s organizers, Bob Libal maintains a watchdog blog, Texas Prison Bid’ness. Over the past year, several blogs and web spaces have been dedicated to the protest against imprisonment at the Hutto prison.</p>
<p>During more than a dozen protests since Dec. 16, 2006 security guards have jealously guarded the perimeter of the prison to discourage protesters from walking on prison grounds. A few participants Sunday evening held themselves back from the toy march for fear of arrest.</p>
<p>GREG MOSES is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of <a href="" type="internal">Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence</a>. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Dime’s Worth of Difference</a>, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:gmosesx@prodigy.net" type="external">gmosesx@prodigy.net</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | act civil disobedience sunday marking first anniversary protests imprisonment children hutto immigrant prison taylor texas 100 people carried holiday toys wrapping paper prison lobby action sundown first time year protesters carried message onto prison property jaime martinez national treasurer league united latin american citizens called toy march shortly 530 pm carrying bullhorn martinez informed protesters prison officials made promise come get toys 5 pm martinez called people take toys children crowd pressed forward across yellow line painted driveway marking official prison property walked lobby prison accompanying protesters lulac national president rosa rosales bring toys called martinez prison door volunteers grabbed boxes bags toys along rolls wrapping paper rushed prison door one volunteers georgetown resident peter dana later described carrying box toys metal detector said thought experience years ago helping engineer metal detector inside lobby prison officials appeared accepting toys imprisoned children previous reports various sources say hutto prison houses 400 immigrants half children friday georgetown activist sherry dana reported hutto prison held 142 people half children 13 men 55 women 31 boys 17 43 girls 17 numbers change daily basis toy march high point active day began longer march downtown taylor prison lies upon large flat field outskirts town across tracks local lulac secretary jose orta began days preparations parking rented trailer across street prison trailer served stage speakers afternoon rally children playing first marched town said orta saw us taken inside sick perverted acts committed country name united states imprisonment innocent children secretary department homeland security michael chertoff said jay johnsoncastro sr preevent email ice immigration customs enforcement arrests innocent children mothers turns private profit prison today receives 20000 per childper monthto keep innocent child 8 x 12 prison cell johnsoncastro joined marchers sunday hutto prison managed corrections corporation america boasts founder private corrections industry nations largest provider jail detention corrections services governmental agencies cca cofounder hutto secured first contract private incarceration immigrants 1983 spent new years eve year searching motel houston would yield rooms venture sundown sunday final speaker day rev jim rigby st andrews presbyterian church austin asked people turn around face hutto prison time participants holding lit candles part sundown vigil shortly crowd turned around martinez began walking among people bullhorn free children chanted crowd martinez close hutto marchers stepped toward prison accompanied banner declared schools prisons education incarceration texas families incarcerated youth department homeland security says hutto prison dedicated immigrant families children organizers agreed protests continue prison closed child imprisonment brought end toy march filmmakers matthew gossage lily keber transformed chilly night darkness screening 16minute film hutto americas family prison viewed americasfamilyprisoncomhuttomov keber taping days protest including toy march perhaps sequel forthcoming near end screening people made two attempts deliver toys front door hutto prison first attempt rebuffed security guard second attempt succeeded young man carrying child took bags toys past guard front door inside lobby appeared people dressed civilian clothes processing toys delivery children inside texans united families tuff lead organizer first protest 2006 cosponsor sundays event one tuffs organizers bob libal maintains watchdog blog texas prison bidness past year several blogs web spaces dedicated protest imprisonment hutto prison dozen protests since dec 16 2006 security guards jealously guarded perimeter prison discourage protesters walking prison grounds participants sunday evening held back toy march fear arrest greg moses editor texas civil rights review author revolution conscience martin luther king jr philosophy nonviolence chapter civil rights clinton bush appears dimes worth difference edited alexander cockburn jeffrey st clair reached gmosesxprodigynet 160 160 | 576 |
<p>By Nika Knight / <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/08/31/debtors-prison-kids-poor-children-incarcerated-when-families-cant-pay-juvenile-court" type="external">Common Dreams</a></p>
<p>&#160; &#160; “The debt in effect creates a rift between parents and their children,” said one respondent to the Juvenile Law Center survey. (Richard Ross / Youth First)</p>
<p>Many states are incarcerating poor children whose families can’t afford to pay juvenile court fees and fines, a report published Wednesday finds, which amounts to punishing children for their families’ poverty—and that may be unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Although the growing practice of <a href="/news/2016/08/10/ferguson-area-cities-terrorizing-poor-through-modern-day-debtors-prisons-federal" type="external">incarcerating</a> adults who are <a href="/views/2014/03/16/town-turned-poverty-prison-sentence" type="external">unable to pay</a> municipal and court <a href="/views/2014/12/02/poverty-incarceration-and-criminal-justice-debt" type="external">fees and fines</a>has been documented <a href="/views/2012/07/05/courts-should-stop-jailing-people-being-poor" type="external">for several years</a>, as Common Dreams <a href="/news/2015/02/10/lawsuits-launched-target-missouri-debtors-prisons-scheme" type="external">has noted</a>, the latest report from the Juvenile Law Center is the first in-depth examination of the practice within the juvenile justice system.</p>
<p />
<p>The report, “ <a href="http://debtorsprison.jlc.org/documents/JLC-Debtors-Prison.pdf" type="external">Debtor’s Prison for Kids? The High Cost of Fines and Fees in the Juvenile Justice System</a>” (pdf), documents the results of a survey of 183 people involved in the juvenile justice system—including lawyers, family members, and adults who had been incarcerated as children in the juvenile justice system—in 41 states.</p>
<p>The report authors discovered that in most states there is a pile-up of fees and fines imposed on children and their families once a child enters the juvenile justice system, and that “[m]any statutes establish that youth can be incarcerated or otherwise face a loss of liberty when they fail to pay.”</p>
<p>There are myriad ways in which juvenile court systems levy fines on children’s families, the report authors found, and then imprison those children when their families are too poor to pay the mounting costs:</p>
<p>One individual who had been in the juvenile justice system there reported that he spent three months in a locked facility at age 13 because he couldn’t afford the truancy fine. He appeared in court without a lawyer or a parent and was never asked about his capacity to pay or given the option of paying a reduced amount. He assumed he had to either pay the full fine or spend time in jail. He explained, “my mind was set to where I was just like forget it, I might as well just go ahead and do the time because I ain’t got no money and I know the [financial] situation my mom is in. I ain’t got no money so I might as well just go and sit it out.”</p>
<p>Juvenile detention facilities are often unsafe and inhumane, as Common Dreams has <a href="/news/2016/03/03/stop-locking-children-americans-say" type="external">reported</a>.</p>
<p>And the fines imposed by juvenile court are “highly burdensome,” according to the report. The average cost of juvenile system involvement is $2,000 per case in Alameda County, California, for example, and “[f]or young people incarcerated for extended periods of time, the costs can be significantly higher.”</p>
<p>The debt divides families already struggling with the ramifications of poverty, the report notes.</p>
<p>“The debt in effect creates a rift between parents and their children,” one survey respondent said, recalling that “I… spoke to a family where a grandmother had taken custody of her grandson but when facing these insurmountable fees, she was told (by a county employee) that the only way she could avoid paying was to hand over custody. Given her limited income, she has seriously considered giving up custody of her grandson, which would make him a ward of the state…”</p>
<p>In some cases, parents can even face imprisonment themselves if they fail to pay their children’s juvenile court system fees. “In a number of states, parents, like youth, may be found in contempt, either civil or criminal, for failure to pay,” the report says.</p>
<p>“Parents may also face increased financial liability through collection fees and interest accruing on payments, as well as civil judgments for failure to pay,” the report authors add. “When parents face incarceration or mounting debt for failure to pay, they have even fewer resources to devote to educating, helping, and supporting their children.”</p>
<p>The report authors also observe that incarcerating children for their families’ inability to pay fees may be unconstitutional:</p>
<p>[I]t is worth noting that the United States Supreme Court has made clear that an individual may not be incarcerated for nonpayment if the court does not first conduct an indigence determination and establish that the failure to pay was willful. The Supreme Court has also held that courts must consider “alternative measures of punishment other than imprisonment” for indigent defendants. Nonetheless, some states require neither willfulness nor capacity to pay in statute, and only a few explicitly limit or prohibit incarceration for failure to pay.</p>
<p>Additionally, the Supreme Court has held that “courts must provide meaningful notice and, in appropriate cases, counsel, when enforcing fines and fees.” This right is even more important for children, who lack both the developmental capacity and the legal knowledge to represent themselves.</p>
<p>“Moreover,” the report continues, “while further research is needed, existing studies suggest that court costs, fees, and fines have limited, if any, fiscal benefit to states and counties, given the difficulty in collecting from families in poverty and the high administrative costs in trying to do so.”</p>
<p>The Juvenile Law Center details the varying policies on juvenile court system fees state-by-state on <a href="http://debtorsprison.jlc.org/#!/map" type="external">a new website</a>, and also highlights the few counties and states who are attempting to rectify the problem.</p>
<p>“Ultimately, state and local policymakers should establish more sustainable and effective models for funding court systems rather than imposing costs on youth and families who simply can’t afford to pay,” the Juvenile Law Center says.</p>
<p>Nika Knight is a staff writer at Common Dreams.</p> | true | 4 | nika knight common dreams 160 160 debt effect creates rift parents children said one respondent juvenile law center survey richard ross youth first many states incarcerating poor children whose families cant afford pay juvenile court fees fines report published wednesday finds amounts punishing children families povertyand may unconstitutional although growing practice incarcerating adults unable pay municipal court fees fineshas documented several years common dreams noted latest report juvenile law center first indepth examination practice within juvenile justice system report debtors prison kids high cost fines fees juvenile justice system pdf documents results survey 183 people involved juvenile justice systemincluding lawyers family members adults incarcerated children juvenile justice systemin 41 states report authors discovered states pileup fees fines imposed children families child enters juvenile justice system many statutes establish youth incarcerated otherwise face loss liberty fail pay myriad ways juvenile court systems levy fines childrens families report authors found imprison children families poor pay mounting costs one individual juvenile justice system reported spent three months locked facility age 13 couldnt afford truancy fine appeared court without lawyer parent never asked capacity pay given option paying reduced amount assumed either pay full fine spend time jail explained mind set like forget might well go ahead time aint got money know financial situation mom aint got money might well go sit juvenile detention facilities often unsafe inhumane common dreams reported fines imposed juvenile court highly burdensome according report average cost juvenile system involvement 2000 per case alameda county california example young people incarcerated extended periods time costs significantly higher debt divides families already struggling ramifications poverty report notes debt effect creates rift parents children one survey respondent said recalling spoke family grandmother taken custody grandson facing insurmountable fees told county employee way could avoid paying hand custody given limited income seriously considered giving custody grandson would make ward state cases parents even face imprisonment fail pay childrens juvenile court system fees number states parents like youth may found contempt either civil criminal failure pay report says parents may also face increased financial liability collection fees interest accruing payments well civil judgments failure pay report authors add parents face incarceration mounting debt failure pay even fewer resources devote educating helping supporting children report authors also observe incarcerating children families inability pay fees may unconstitutional worth noting united states supreme court made clear individual may incarcerated nonpayment court first conduct indigence determination establish failure pay willful supreme court also held courts must consider alternative measures punishment imprisonment indigent defendants nonetheless states require neither willfulness capacity pay statute explicitly limit prohibit incarceration failure pay additionally supreme court held courts must provide meaningful notice appropriate cases counsel enforcing fines fees right even important children lack developmental capacity legal knowledge represent moreover report continues research needed existing studies suggest court costs fees fines limited fiscal benefit states counties given difficulty collecting families poverty high administrative costs trying juvenile law center details varying policies juvenile court system fees statebystate new website also highlights counties states attempting rectify problem ultimately state local policymakers establish sustainable effective models funding court systems rather imposing costs youth families simply cant afford pay juvenile law center says nika knight staff writer common dreams | 529 |
<p>[Text of speech given at the conference, “The Failure of Global Empire and Birth of Global Community,” San Francisco, CA, August 3, 2005]</p>
<p>More than two years later, many people still ask, “Why did the US invade Iraq?” Some people answer, “For oil.” Others say, “To remove a dangerous dictator,” or, “To liberate Iraqis,” or, “To spread democracy.” There are other possible answers as well: To project American power in the strategic and volatile Middle East. To spread democracy. To help Israel. The question lingers because the initial reasons that our government gave, that Iraq had WMD and planned to use them against the US, or that Iraq was allied with Al Qaeda, have been disproved.</p>
<p>Here’s another answer to the question: We invaded Iraq to invade Iraq.</p>
<p>That’s right, it’s a circular answer. It might not be the only answer, it might not be provable, but let’s consider it: We invaded Iraq to have a war. We had a war because there are powerful interests in our country that are geared toward making money from war. How? Let us count the ways. There are companies that help break things, by making the tools for violence and destruction, such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. There are companies that fix what gets broken, such as Bechtel and Halliburton. There are companies that protect people as they break things and as they fix what’s broken, such as Blackwater and Vinnell Corp. There are companies that want our government to smash across borders so they may bring new products and infrastructure, companies that we will see set up shop in that country. There are companies that want our government to smash across other countries’ borders so they may suck the resources out from underneath the people there, such as the big oil companies. There are companies that like the US to attack other countries so they may have something entertaining to tell their audiences in the time between commercials: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN.</p>
<p>This is war profiteering, but with a twist. Historically, war profiteering amounted to this: when there was a war, people tried to profit from it. A company making clothes might also start making uniforms and sell them to the army ­ and make them as cheaply as possible and sell for the highest price possible. Now, though, companies are making war for profit. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Vinnell and Blackwater, such companies would not exist as we know them without war.</p>
<p>This is not a conspiracy theory. This is basic corporate law. Corporations are set up to limit their owners’ risk of liability while the owners maximize profits. The directors and managers who run the company for the owners have a legal duty to maximize profits. The owners (shareholders) can sue the directors and managers if these employees don’t maximize profits in any given situation. These companies are not breaking the law by serving the US military and government. Indeed, they believe they are helping it. Look at their websites. They flaunt the companies’ connections to the US government. Old Glory and aggressive-looking eagles abound!</p>
<p>Forget “social responsibility,” the idea that says a corporate manager may decide not to maximize profits if doing so would harm other “stakeholders” of the corporation, that is, individuals other than the company’s owners. Although many people can see how building weapons is detrimental to other stakeholders (read: everyone on our planet), what manager of a weapons company would ever decide to stop selling these products?</p>
<p>So, the weapons companies have a legal duty to make as many weapons as possible and as cheaply as possibly and sell as many of them as possible at the highest possible price. The only limitation is the market. And these companies will do whatever they can to capture the market and expand their markets (just as if they were making and selling diapers or cars). So they aim to sell as many as they can to the US government. And to foreign governments as well. If the rules prohibit US companies from selling weapons to foreign governments, or to particular foreign governments, these companies will try to have those rules rewritten.</p>
<p>How do companies get the government to buy their weapons? Marketing, for one. Good old fashioned campaign donations and lobbying, for another. And newfangled influence, such as getting their people onto the Defense Policy Board, a group of 30 people who advise the Pentagon. A 2003 study showed that 9 of the 30 members on the Defense Policy Board were connected to weapons companies. Then there is the “revolving door,” where the companies hire people from the government, and people from the companies go work for the government. People like dealing with people they know.</p>
<p>Weapons companies also exert influence via “briefings,” “position papers” and op eds from “policy centers” and “foundations” that include people connected to these companies (and other companies with an interest in making war for profit). Some of these think tanks are funded in part by weapons companies or other companies that profit from war. Some of these companies even get a tax break for such “charitable contributions.” (For more on this phenomenon, I recommend William D. Hartung’s book, <a href="" type="internal">How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy?</a> (2003) and Jeffrey St. Clair’s forthcoming <a href="" type="internal">Grand Theft Pentagon</a>).</p>
<p>But it’s not just the government that these companies seek to influence. They will try to influence the media and the general public, through think tanks and ad campaigns. They know that if there’s a climate of fear, then the public will be assuaged by the government’s buying more weapons. Various officials will work to prove they’re “tough on defense.” Officials who are “weak on defense” will not stay in office long.</p>
<p>The companies also hire lobbying firms. These firms make money from war, too. In fact, the US government has hired PR firms to help the government “sell” its wars, such as the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>The problem has become worse since the 1990s, when many military duties were “outsourced” from the government to private companies. Private companies help build bases, deliver mail, and cook meals. Private contractors even interrogate prisoners captured on the battlefield. If there are no troops, no bases, and no prisoners, such companies can’t make money.</p>
<p>Again, this is not a conspiracy theory. It is institutions and people acting in their interests. We all act in our own interests, one way or another. To think that these institutions and people would not use all of the means ­ none of what I have described, by the way, is necessarily against the law ­ available to them to pursue their interests would be naïve. So, this is a serious problem, because it is so embedded in our economic and political system, our way of life. It’s also a problem that flies under the radar screen of most of the public and even most activists.</p>
<p>What to do?</p>
<p>– “Return” the war-making powers to Congress. This will help curb these corporations’ influence on the government. This is not a perfect solution, of course, but Congress is the branch of government that is supposed to debate the issue of going to war, and Congress is more transparent than the Executive Branch. Right now the power is concentrated in the Executive, and the decision to go to war has been streamlined. Corporate interests can quietly focus their energy there.</p>
<p>– Check out the War Resisters League, the world’s oldest secular antiwar group. The WRL is waging a “Stop the Merchants of Death” campaign that is teaching people about this corporate connection, about “making war for profit.” We must expose what is going on and educate the public about it how our system is geared toward making war in order to make profit. For example, the WRL recommends that we join antiwar groups; campaign against our local “merchant of death”; expose the profiteering on the Defense Policy Board; demand that our government officials be free of conflicts of interest; become activist shareholders in weapons companies; take available legal action against companies that break the law as they profit from war. The WRL has a speakers’ bureau that can provide someone to address your local school, church, book group, talk group or the like. You can contact WRL at www.warresisters.org</p>
<p>– Organize politically to increase and improve social welfare programs. Many people don’t speak out because they’re afraid of losing their jobs, which, in our country, is a sort of death: no more job means no more money, no more health care, no more pension plan. What Lockheed employee, for example, wants to go to war protest when his boss might end up seeing her marching and chanting “No Blood for Oil” on TV? Who will email information about an upcoming antiwar protest, or forward an incisive article about why the US should not invade, say, Iran or Syria, when their employer can read the email? If peoples’ basic needs are provided for regardless of their employer, they will become braver citizens.</p>
<p>This concern is especially acute for young people, who have historically been a font of political activism. Many fear they’ll never be able to pay off their school loans. Why join antiwar groups or go to protests when potential employers might find out? If young people know they are headed off to the corporate world, they might decide to make the transition easier by adopting the attitudes and values of the companies they plan to serve.</p>
<p>We can also get through to young people by working to reveal that it is not a great thing to work for weapons companies. Activists made working for Big Tobacco look unpalatable. We can do the same thing vis a vis “defense” companies. We can help provide information about alternative careers that would let people work for social justice, and where people can speak freely. Let’s let young people know they are being duped by these companies about war ­ about bravery, glory, fear, the need for war, and the like.</p>
<p>None of us wants to be duped. But we have been duped. Many Americans believe that violence is a simple and quick solution to diplomatic and social problems. You don’t have to learn Arabic to bomb Iraq, for example. But we’ve seen that bombing doesn’t solve much of anything. We must educate people about the success of diplomacy, peace work, exchanges, nonviolent movements. Our country’s faith in weapons and war is based on our culture’s faith in violence. Our fellow citizens must be encouraged to drop this faith, to become freethinkers, heretics. And to declare a war on their own terror, to rigorously question those who warn that our nation is in enormous danger from various enemies.</p>
<p>We must point out how we’re being sold this philosophy of fear.</p>
<p>BRIAN J. FOLEY is a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law and State Chancellor for Florida for the International Association of Educators for World Peace. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:brian_j_foley@yahoo.com" type="external">brian_j_foley@yahoo.com</a></p>
<p>Further information from the San Francisco conference can be found at <a href="http://www.worldcitizens.org/conferencesummary.html" type="external">http://www.worldcitizens.org/conferencesummary.html</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>CLARIFICATION</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH</p>
<p>We published an article entitled “A Saudiless Arabia” by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the “Article”), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the “Website”).</p>
<p>Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.</p>
<p>We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.</p>
<p>As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi’s lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.</p>
<p>We are pleased to clarify the position.</p>
<p>August 17, 2005</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | text speech given conference failure global empire birth global community san francisco ca august 3 2005 two years later many people still ask us invade iraq people answer oil others say remove dangerous dictator liberate iraqis spread democracy possible answers well project american power strategic volatile middle east spread democracy help israel question lingers initial reasons government gave iraq wmd planned use us iraq allied al qaeda disproved heres another answer question invaded iraq invade iraq thats right circular answer might answer might provable lets consider invaded iraq war war powerful interests country geared toward making money war let us count ways companies help break things making tools violence destruction lockheed martin northrop grumman companies fix gets broken bechtel halliburton companies protect people break things fix whats broken blackwater vinnell corp companies want government smash across borders may bring new products infrastructure companies see set shop country companies want government smash across countries borders may suck resources underneath people big oil companies companies like us attack countries may something entertaining tell audiences time commercials abc nbc cbs fox cnn war profiteering twist historically war profiteering amounted war people tried profit company making clothes might also start making uniforms sell army make cheaply possible sell highest price possible though companies making war profit lockheed martin northrop grumman vinnell blackwater companies would exist know without war conspiracy theory basic corporate law corporations set limit owners risk liability owners maximize profits directors managers run company owners legal duty maximize profits owners shareholders sue directors managers employees dont maximize profits given situation companies breaking law serving us military government indeed believe helping look websites flaunt companies connections us government old glory aggressivelooking eagles abound forget social responsibility idea says corporate manager may decide maximize profits would harm stakeholders corporation individuals companys owners although many people see building weapons detrimental stakeholders read everyone planet manager weapons company would ever decide stop selling products weapons companies legal duty make many weapons possible cheaply possibly sell many possible highest possible price limitation market companies whatever capture market expand markets making selling diapers cars aim sell many us government foreign governments well rules prohibit us companies selling weapons foreign governments particular foreign governments companies try rules rewritten companies get government buy weapons marketing one good old fashioned campaign donations lobbying another newfangled influence getting people onto defense policy board group 30 people advise pentagon 2003 study showed 9 30 members defense policy board connected weapons companies revolving door companies hire people government people companies go work government people like dealing people know weapons companies also exert influence via briefings position papers op eds policy centers foundations include people connected companies companies interest making war profit think tanks funded part weapons companies companies profit war companies even get tax break charitable contributions phenomenon recommend william hartungs book much making war daddy 2003 jeffrey st clairs forthcoming grand theft pentagon government companies seek influence try influence media general public think tanks ad campaigns know theres climate fear public assuaged governments buying weapons various officials work prove theyre tough defense officials weak defense stay office long companies also hire lobbying firms firms make money war fact us government hired pr firms help government sell wars 1991 gulf war 2003 invasion iraq problem become worse since 1990s many military duties outsourced government private companies private companies help build bases deliver mail cook meals private contractors even interrogate prisoners captured battlefield troops bases prisoners companies cant make money conspiracy theory institutions people acting interests act interests one way another think institutions people would use means none described way necessarily law available pursue interests would naïve serious problem embedded economic political system way life also problem flies radar screen public even activists return warmaking powers congress help curb corporations influence government perfect solution course congress branch government supposed debate issue going war congress transparent executive branch right power concentrated executive decision go war streamlined corporate interests quietly focus energy check war resisters league worlds oldest secular antiwar group wrl waging stop merchants death campaign teaching people corporate connection making war profit must expose going educate public system geared toward making war order make profit example wrl recommends join antiwar groups campaign local merchant death expose profiteering defense policy board demand government officials free conflicts interest become activist shareholders weapons companies take available legal action companies break law profit war wrl speakers bureau provide someone address local school church book group talk group like contact wrl wwwwarresistersorg organize politically increase improve social welfare programs many people dont speak theyre afraid losing jobs country sort death job means money health care pension plan lockheed employee example wants go war protest boss might end seeing marching chanting blood oil tv email information upcoming antiwar protest forward incisive article us invade say iran syria employer read email peoples basic needs provided regardless employer become braver citizens concern especially acute young people historically font political activism many fear theyll never able pay school loans join antiwar groups go protests potential employers might find young people know headed corporate world might decide make transition easier adopting attitudes values companies plan serve also get young people working reveal great thing work weapons companies activists made working big tobacco look unpalatable thing vis vis defense companies help provide information alternative careers would let people work social justice people speak freely lets let young people know duped companies war bravery glory fear need war like none us wants duped duped many americans believe violence simple quick solution diplomatic social problems dont learn arabic bomb iraq example weve seen bombing doesnt solve much anything must educate people success diplomacy peace work exchanges nonviolent movements countrys faith weapons war based cultures faith violence fellow citizens must encouraged drop faith become freethinkers heretics declare war terror rigorously question warn nation enormous danger various enemies must point sold philosophy fear brian j foley professor florida coastal school law state chancellor florida international association educators world peace reached brian_j_foleyyahoocom information san francisco conference found httpwwwworldcitizensorgconferencesummaryhtml 160 160 160 160 clarification alexander cockburn jeffrey st clair becky grant institute advancement journalistic clarity counterpunch published article entitled saudiless arabia wayne madsen dated october 22 2002 article website institute advancement journalistic clarity counterpunch wwwcounterpunchorg website although intention counsel mohammed hussein al amoudi advised us article suggests could read suggesting mr al amoudi funded supported way associated terrorist activities osama bin laden al qaeda terrorist network evidence connecting mr al amoudi terrorism result exchange communications mr al amoudis lawyers removed article website pleased clarify position august 17 2005 160 | 1,087 |
<p>and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR</p>
<p>Torture’s back in the news, courtesy of those lurid pictures of exultant Americans laughing as they torture their Iraqi captives in Abu Ghraib prison run by the US military outside Baghdad. Apparently it takes electrodes and naked bodies piled in a simulated orgy to tickle America’s moral nerve ends. Kids maimed by cluster bombs just don’t do it any more. But torture’s nothing new. One of the darkest threads in postwar US imperial history has been the CIA’s involvement with torture, as instructor, practitioner or contractor. Since its inception the CIA has taken a keen interest in torture, avidly studying Nazi techniques and protecting their exponents such as Klaus Barbie. The CIA’s official line is that torture is wrong and is ineffective. It is indeed wrong. On countless occasions it has been appallingly effective.</p>
<p>Remember Dan Mitrione, kidnapped and killed by Uruguay’s Tupamaros and portrayed by Yves Montand in Costa-Gavras’s film State of Siege? In the late 1960s Mitrione worked for the US Office of Public Safety, part of the Agency for International Development. In Brazil, so A.J. Langguth (a former New York Times bureau chief in Saigon) related in his book Hidden Terrors, Mitrione was among the US advisers teaching Brazilian police how much electric shock to apply to prisoners without killing them. In Uruguay, according to the former chief of police intelligence, Mitrione helped “professionalize” torture as a routine measure and advised on psychological techniques such as playing tapes of women and children screaming that the prisoner’s family was being tortured.</p>
<p>In the months after the 9/11/01 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, “truth drugs” were hailed by some columnists such as Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter for use in the war against Al Qaeda. This was an enthusiasm shared by the US Navy after the war against Hitler, when its intelligence officers got on the trail of Dr. Kurt Plotner’s research into “truth serums” at Dachau. Plotner gave Jewish and Russian prisoners high doses of mescaline and then observed their behavior, in which they expressed hatred for their guards and made confessional statements about their own psychological makeup.</p>
<p>As part of its larger MK-ULTRA project the CIA gave money to Dr. Ewen Cameron, at McGill University. Cameron was a pioneer in the sensory-deprivation techniques. Cameron once locked up a woman in a small white box for thirty-five days, deprived of light, smell and sound. The CIA doctors were amazed at this dose, knowing that their own experiments with a sensory-deprivation tank in 1955 had induced severe psychological reactions in less than forty hours. Start torturing, and it’s easy to get carried away.</p>
<p>Torture destroys the tortured and corrupts the society that sanctions it. Just like the FBI after 9/11/01 the CIA in 1968 got frustrated by its inability to break suspected leaders of Vietnam’s National Liberation Front by its usual methods of interrogation and torture. So the agency began more advanced experiments, in one of which it anesthetized three prisoners, opened their skulls and planted electrodes in their brains. They were revived, put in a room and given knives. The CIA psychologists then activated the electrodes, hoping the prisoners would attack one another. They didn’t. The electrodes were removed, the prisoners shot and their bodies burned. You can read about it in our book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859842585/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Whiteout</a>.</p>
<p>In recent years the United States has been charged by the UN and also by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International with tolerating torture in US prisons, by methods ranging from solitary, twenty-three-hour-a-day confinement in concrete boxes for years on end, to activating 50,000-volt shocks through a mandatory belt worn by prisoners? Many of the Military Police guards now under investigation for abuse of Iraqis earned their stripes working as guards in federal and state prisons, where official abuse is a daily occurence. Indeed, Charles Granier, one of the abusers at Abu Ghraib and the lover of Linndie England the Trailer Park Torturer, worked as a guard at Pennsylvania’s notorious Greene Correctional Unit and has since gone back to work there.</p>
<p>And as a practical matter torture is far from unknown in the interrogation rooms of U.S. law enforcement, with Abner Louima, sodomized by a cop using a stick one notorious recent example. The most infamous disclosure of consistent torture by a police department in recent years concerned cops in Chicago in the mid-70s through early 80s who used electroshock, oxygen deprivation, hanging on hooks, the bastinado and beatings of the testicles. The torturers were white and their victims black or brown. A prisoner in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison was thrown into boiling water. Others get 50,000-volt shocks from stun guns.</p>
<p>Many states have so-called “secure housing units” where prisoners are kept in solitary in tiny concrete cells for years on end, many of them going mad in the process. Amnesty International has denounced U.S. police forces for “a pattern of unchecked excessive force amounting to torture.”</p>
<p>In 2000 the UN delivered a severe public rebuke to the United States for its record on preventing torture and degrading punishment. A 10-strong panel of experts highlighted what it said were Washington’s breaches of the agreement ratified by the United States in 1994. The UN Committee Against Torture, which monitors international compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture, has called for the abolition of electric-shock stun belts (1000 in use in the U.S.) and restraint chairs on prisoners, as well as an end to holding children in adult jails.</p>
<p>It also said female detainees are “very often held in humiliating and degrading circumstances” and expressed concern over alleged cases of sexual assault by police and prison officers. The panel criticized the excessively harsh regime in maximum security prisons, the use of chain gangs in which prisoners perform manual labor while shackled together, and the number of cases of police brutality against racial minorities.</p>
<p>So far as rape is concerned, because of the rape factories more conventionally known as the U.S. prison system, there are estimates that twice as many men as women are raped in the U.S. each year. A Human Rights Watch report in April of 2001 cited a December 2000 Prison Journal study based on a survey of inmates in seven men’s prison facilities in four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facilities.</p>
<p>A 1996 study of the Nebraska prison system produced similar findings, with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while incarcerated. Of these, more than 50 percent had submitted to forced anal sex at least once. Extrapolating these findings to the national level gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped.</p>
<p>Want to read more? Then RUSH to order our new book <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Imperial Crusades</a>. Hot off the presses, and everything you can’t find in the corporate press about Uncle Sam’s rampages. It’s a must-read diary, up there with Tacitus and Macaulay. Order here on the site, or call CounterPunch at 1-800-840-3683 where CounterPunch business staff are standing by. It’s an inflation busting $15, shipping and handling included.</p> | true | 4 | jeffrey st clair tortures back news courtesy lurid pictures exultant americans laughing torture iraqi captives abu ghraib prison run us military outside baghdad apparently takes electrodes naked bodies piled simulated orgy tickle americas moral nerve ends kids maimed cluster bombs dont tortures nothing new one darkest threads postwar us imperial history cias involvement torture instructor practitioner contractor since inception cia taken keen interest torture avidly studying nazi techniques protecting exponents klaus barbie cias official line torture wrong ineffective indeed wrong countless occasions appallingly effective remember dan mitrione kidnapped killed uruguays tupamaros portrayed yves montand costagavrass film state siege late 1960s mitrione worked us office public safety part agency international development brazil aj langguth former new york times bureau chief saigon related book hidden terrors mitrione among us advisers teaching brazilian police much electric shock apply prisoners without killing uruguay according former chief police intelligence mitrione helped professionalize torture routine measure advised psychological techniques playing tapes women children screaming prisoners family tortured months 91101 attacks world trade center pentagon truth drugs hailed columnists newsweeks jonathan alter use war al qaeda enthusiasm shared us navy war hitler intelligence officers got trail dr kurt plotners research truth serums dachau plotner gave jewish russian prisoners high doses mescaline observed behavior expressed hatred guards made confessional statements psychological makeup part larger mkultra project cia gave money dr ewen cameron mcgill university cameron pioneer sensorydeprivation techniques cameron locked woman small white box thirtyfive days deprived light smell sound cia doctors amazed dose knowing experiments sensorydeprivation tank 1955 induced severe psychological reactions less forty hours start torturing easy get carried away torture destroys tortured corrupts society sanctions like fbi 91101 cia 1968 got frustrated inability break suspected leaders vietnams national liberation front usual methods interrogation torture agency began advanced experiments one anesthetized three prisoners opened skulls planted electrodes brains revived put room given knives cia psychologists activated electrodes hoping prisoners would attack one another didnt electrodes removed prisoners shot bodies burned read book whiteout recent years united states charged un also human rights organizations human rights watch amnesty international tolerating torture us prisons methods ranging solitary twentythreehouraday confinement concrete boxes years end activating 50000volt shocks mandatory belt worn prisoners many military police guards investigation abuse iraqis earned stripes working guards federal state prisons official abuse daily occurence indeed charles granier one abusers abu ghraib lover linndie england trailer park torturer worked guard pennsylvanias notorious greene correctional unit since gone back work practical matter torture far unknown interrogation rooms us law enforcement abner louima sodomized cop using stick one notorious recent example infamous disclosure consistent torture police department recent years concerned cops chicago mid70s early 80s used electroshock oxygen deprivation hanging hooks bastinado beatings testicles torturers white victims black brown prisoner californias pelican bay state prison thrown boiling water others get 50000volt shocks stun guns many states socalled secure housing units prisoners kept solitary tiny concrete cells years end many going mad process amnesty international denounced us police forces pattern unchecked excessive force amounting torture 2000 un delivered severe public rebuke united states record preventing torture degrading punishment 10strong panel experts highlighted said washingtons breaches agreement ratified united states 1994 un committee torture monitors international compliance un convention torture called abolition electricshock stun belts 1000 use us restraint chairs prisoners well end holding children adult jails also said female detainees often held humiliating degrading circumstances expressed concern alleged cases sexual assault police prison officers panel criticized excessively harsh regime maximum security prisons use chain gangs prisoners perform manual labor shackled together number cases police brutality racial minorities far rape concerned rape factories conventionally known us prison system estimates twice many men women raped us year human rights watch report april 2001 cited december 2000 prison journal study based survey inmates seven mens prison facilities four states results showed 21 percent inmates experienced least one episode pressured forced sexual contact since incarcerated least 7 percent raped facilities 1996 study nebraska prison system produced similar findings 22 percent male inmates reporting pressured forced sexual contact incarcerated 50 percent submitted forced anal sex least extrapolating findings national level gives total least 140000 inmates raped want read rush order new book imperial crusades hot presses everything cant find corporate press uncle sams rampages mustread diary tacitus macaulay order site call counterpunch 18008403683 counterpunch business staff standing inflation busting 15 shipping handling included | 720 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oschene/5646206231/"&gt;Philip Chapman-Bell&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" />This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175443/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_dearest_president_and_professor_barack_obama/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>Note to Readers: Who hasn’t received one—or 100—of those “Nigerian” letters offering you, in florid prose, millions of potential dollars and with nary a catch in sight? But who knew that the highest officials in Washington have been receiving them as well—and from our war zones rather than Africa.</p>
<p>We investigated each of the letters that follow and now believe that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, was never trapped in a Kabul airport bathroom, that “Iraqi parliamentarian” Sami Malouf does not exist, and that the letter writer who calls herself Serena Massoud could not be the lost granddaughter of the Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud whom al-Qaeda operatives assassinated two days before the 9/11 attacks. Curiously enough, however, all the Washington or Pentagon scandals the letter writers mention involving lost, squandered, or stolen money turn out to be perfectly real. In fact, they represent one of the true scams of our time.</p>
<p>Below, then, are three of the letters we have chosen as representative from the enormous archive that ScamiLeaks will soon release to the world. We have touched none of them, not even to correct various obvious grammatical errors and misspellings. We have only added a small number of links not in the originals, so that readers can explore the corruption scandals the letter writers refer to. We do not know whether any of the Washington officials addressed responded to these letters or were taken in by them (as they evidently were by <a href="" type="internal">scam after scam</a> in our war zones these last ten years).</p>
<p>Whatever you make of the three letters below, consider them collectively a little parable about the fallout from our now decade-old set of wars in the Greater Middle East.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>To My Closest of Friends President and Professor Barack Obama,</p>
<p>I send this missive to you with deepest urgency. My embarrassment at importuning you in any way in your busy life is beyond expression. Please excuse my rushedness, but I, your friend and associate, Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, have lost my wallet, passport, and Kabul Bank deposit book in the men’s room of Kabul International Airport.</p>
<p>It is to my dismay to discover, in addition, that the $31 billion in small bills I had secured within the sleeves of my chapan, thanks to your most generous heart and <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/31/140084801/as-much-as-60-billion-of-waste-and-fraud-in-war-related-contracts" type="external">the reconstruction abilities of the American contractor</a>, is now gone as well. Without it, I cannot return to the presidential palace.</p>
<p>Please let me ask whether you can at moment soonest respond at this email address and let me know that you are willing to deposit a new $33 billion in the Kabul Bank for me. I will then, of course, provide you with the necessary account numbers and transmission information. (Lest you would think me in any way dishonest, my dear friend, I hasten to point out that Kabul Bank is the shining light of Afghan Banking and the extra $2 billion above and beyond the lost $31 billion, are deeply necessary if I am to present alms on my way from the airport to the Palace.)</p>
<p>As we are the closest of companions, I reassure you immediately and in no uncertain terms that this money of yours, a mere pittance compared to what is surely available to the President of the United States, is Absolutely Safe in the Kabul Bank (whose <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_filkins" type="external">small troubles</a> will soon be straightened out) and will in no way be lost to you. If you remit the said sum to me with all due speed, I will return it to you with $2 billion in interest within the month. You have my sincerest promise of that.</p>
<p>Act with great haste, my erstwhile companion!</p>
<p>Your Friend and Associate in Need,</p>
<p>Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Attention: Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Gythner, Washington CD</p>
<p>From: Barrister Hammad al-Saad, First Assistant and Secretary to Parliamentarian Sami Malouf, Baghdad, Iraq</p>
<p>With due respect, Good News!</p>
<p>Thanks to a dead business associate who lacks all heirs, an accountant for my lawerly firm, Al-Azawi &amp; Sons, has discovered an abandoned sum of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613,0,4414060.story" type="external">$6.6 billion</a> (SIX BILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) in US bills in a deserted warehouse on the outskirts of Baghdad owned by said dead associate. They are all shrink-wrapped $100 (ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR) bills with your Benjamin on the front cover. No one has claimed this money.</p>
<p>It has come to our attention that one of your Predecessors also lost $6.6 billion (SIX BILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) in shrink-wrapped $100 (ONE HUNDRD DOLLAR) bills with same Benjamin on cover, which were shipped to my country by C-130 cargo plane in 2003. In the discrepitude of Iraq at that moment, such a misplacement is not strange.</p>
<p>However, your loss of such moneys must weigh deeply on you. We wish to alleviate that weight and return to you the rightful sums. This can happen almost immediately. In order to ship Benjamin to you, we must, of course, avoid Iraqi customs, which is sorrowfully corrupt.</p>
<p>To do this we need a few small fees from you, esteemed Gythner, to grease other palms with friendship and hire such a plane as to return your sums. I, Barrister Hammad Al-Saad, will personally fly this money to you. This is 100% (ONE HUNDRED PERCENT) risk free!</p>
<p>Do not worry. You are in our thoughts momentarily. Please contact us to firm up details and to exchange pleasantries on necessary fees!</p>
<p>Yours Most Fully Sincerely and Honorably,</p>
<p>Hammad Al-Saad</p>
<p>To: David Petreaus, Director-General of the Central Intelligence Agency</p>
<p>From: Serena Massoud, Granddaughter of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshi</p>
<p>My dearest,</p>
<p>I beg your indulgence, Kind General, I am the Lost Granddaughter of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the erstwhile, sadly al-Qaeda assassinated Lion of Panjshir. Mine is a dismal tale to tell and it is yours to be patient, I hope with utter nonindifference, while I explain.</p>
<p>Let me preface this dawn of the weighted heart by assuring you that it will be worth all your whiles. I, Serena Massoud, out of my full heart and deep love for America and the CIA, and You—I, a poor Afghan woman awash in her times, wish to return to you $125 million. This, you will agree, is part of the $360 million that, according to one of your <a href="http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/08/ap-360-million-lost-to-corruption-in-afghanistan-081611/" type="external">most esteemed news sources</a>, “has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals, and power brokers with ties to both.”</p>
<p>I must beg your forgiveness. To explain how such fundings came almost into my own hands and how—with barely no effort on your part—you will get them back, I have a tangled tale to tell of a dark and stormy decade in my country whose breezes and gales buffeted me. But if I told it all to you, dear General, you would stumble into Incredulity.</p>
<p>Let me just state that, after many and various adventures of the terrible kind, I found myself, against my uttermost will, in the grips of marriage to Omar Fahim Dadulah, whom you would know as a War Lord. He was a man of Evil Incarnate and his treatment of yours truly was not to be described. He was, moreover, In League With the Taliban, and among those whom Navy Times so rightly describes as absorbing your moneys with obscure nefariousness of purpose.</p>
<p>Without straining your patience, My Darling Director-General, in the end he was expectably poisoned by the self-same proclaimed Taliban and, as death came upon him, called me to his bedside. He then informed me in tones too solemn to mistake of that fund of $125 million, the very dollars which you have slipped upon the Taliban in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22contractors.html" type="external">trucking fees</a> and safety passes and the like, which he had hidden in a spot unmentionable and which he meant for me.</p>
<p>I beg of you, my dearest General, lend me a helping hand to assist me in claiming this money. Be my guardian, let me be your orphan ward, and receive the money in your account. Also promise to invest a small part of it for me in a lucrative business since I am still a young woman and make arrangements for me to come over to your country to further my education and secure a beloved citizenship permit.</p>
<p>I have seen the photos of you. Your chest of medals is the light of my day. It is with the most profound and sincerity that I make this gesture to you from deep within my loving soul. Your open heart has touched me. I eagerly await your tiptoed words.</p>
<p>Humbly Yrs and Only Yrs,</p>
<p>Serena Masoud</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460711/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />A Further Note: The “Nigerian” letter scam is, in its own way, remarkable. Smart grifters from another land generally pose as highly (or strategically) placed individuals, but also ignorant yokels and innocents with a minimalist grasp of over-the-top nineteenth-century English. It’s a highly skilled compositional con and it works, evidently to the tune of tens of millions of dollars yearly. If you want to explore how it operates, fleecing significant numbers of people, the Snopes.com website is most useful. (Click <a href="http://www.snopes.com/fraud/advancefee/nigeria.asp" type="external">here</a>.) For a wonderful older essay on the charms of those scam letters, check out Douglas Cruickshank’s “I crave your distinguished indulgence (and all your cash)” at <a href="http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/08/07/419scams/print.html" type="external">Salon.com</a>.</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, you prefer to explore the scams Washington has been involved in these last endless years of war, you could start with Adam Weinstein’s recent Mother Jones piece “ <a href="" type="internal">The All-Time Ten Worst Military Contracting Boondoggles</a>.” The individual scams from this period are a dime a dozen (or rather, unfortunately, billions of dollars a dozen, making the “Nigerians” look like the rubes they aren’t). These would include, to mention just a few examples, that missing <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62392.html" type="external">$31 to $60 billion</a> in contractor waste and fraud in the Afghan and Iraq war zones; the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613,0,4414060.story" type="external">$6.6 billion</a> (evidently largely Iraqi oil money held in US banks) that the Bush administration sent in pallets of shrink-wrapped bills to Iraq, and which then went missing-in-action; the <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44171605/ns/politics/t/taliban-criminals-get-million-us-taxes/#.TnOQsk9UgpQ" type="external">$360 million</a> in US taxpayer dollars that, according to a special military task force, headed directly for the Taliban and other Afghan lovelies; the <a href="http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/despite-65-billion-investment-worlds-most-costly-jet-still-grounded" type="external">$65 billion</a> that went into the development of the F-22, the most expensive fighter jet ever built not to be used—since May, all of the F-22s in the US fleet have been grounded indefinitely; and the <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/the-yearly-bill-for-the-pentagons-no-bid-contracts-140-billion/" type="external">more than $140 billion</a> in contracts the Pentagon awarded to companies in 2010 without a hint of competitive bidding, up from $50 billion in 2001.</p>
<p>Believe me, the “Nigerians” have a great deal to learn from the Pentagon and from US operations in the Greater Middle East, as do the real rubes in the larger scam of things, gullible American taxpayers!</p>
<p>Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460711/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s</a> as well as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The End of Victory Culture</a>, runs the Nation Institute’s <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">TomDispatch.com</a>. His latest book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608461548/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The United States of Fear</a> (Haymarket Books), will be published in November. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:43308/acctId:25612" type="external">here</a>.</p> | true | 4 | lta hrefhttpwwwflickrcomphotososchene5646206231gtphilip chapmanbellltagtflickr story first appeared tomdispatch website note readers hasnt received oneor 100of nigerian letters offering florid prose millions potential dollars nary catch sight knew highest officials washington receiving welland war zones rather africa investigated letters follow believe hamid karzai afghan president never trapped kabul airport bathroom iraqi parliamentarian sami malouf exist letter writer calls serena massoud could lost granddaughter afghan leader ahmad shah massoud alqaeda operatives assassinated two days 911 attacks curiously enough however washington pentagon scandals letter writers mention involving lost squandered stolen money turn perfectly real fact represent one true scams time three letters chosen representative enormous archive scamileaks soon release world touched none even correct various obvious grammatical errors misspellings added small number links originals readers explore corruption scandals letter writers refer know whether washington officials addressed responded letters taken evidently scam scam war zones last ten years whatever make three letters consider collectively little parable fallout decadeold set wars greater middle east closest friends president professor barack obama send missive deepest urgency embarrassment importuning way busy life beyond expression please excuse rushedness friend associate hamid karzai president afghanistan lost wallet passport kabul bank deposit book mens room kabul international airport dismay discover addition 31 billion small bills secured within sleeves chapan thanks generous heart reconstruction abilities american contractor gone well without return presidential palace please let ask whether moment soonest respond email address let know willing deposit new 33 billion kabul bank course provide necessary account numbers transmission information lest would think way dishonest dear friend hasten point kabul bank shining light afghan banking extra 2 billion beyond lost 31 billion deeply necessary present alms way airport palace closest companions reassure immediately uncertain terms money mere pittance compared surely available president united states absolutely safe kabul bank whose small troubles soon straightened way lost remit said sum due speed return 2 billion interest within month sincerest promise act great haste erstwhile companion friend associate need hamid karzai president afghanistan 160 attention secretary treasury timothy gythner washington cd barrister hammad alsaad first assistant secretary parliamentarian sami malouf baghdad iraq due respect good news thanks dead business associate lacks heirs accountant lawerly firm alazawi amp sons discovered abandoned sum 66 billion six billion six hundred thousand dollars us bills deserted warehouse outskirts baghdad owned said dead associate shrinkwrapped 100 one hundred dollar bills benjamin front cover one claimed money come attention one predecessors also lost 66 billion six billion six hundred thousand dollars shrinkwrapped 100 one hundrd dollar bills benjamin cover shipped country c130 cargo plane 2003 discrepitude iraq moment misplacement strange however loss moneys must weigh deeply wish alleviate weight return rightful sums happen almost immediately order ship benjamin must course avoid iraqi customs sorrowfully corrupt need small fees esteemed gythner grease palms friendship hire plane return sums barrister hammad alsaad personally fly money 100 one hundred percent risk free worry thoughts momentarily please contact us firm details exchange pleasantries necessary fees fully sincerely honorably hammad alsaad david petreaus directorgeneral central intelligence agency serena massoud granddaughter ahmad shah massoud lion panjshi dearest beg indulgence kind general lost granddaughter ahmad shah massoud erstwhile sadly alqaeda assassinated lion panjshir mine dismal tale tell patient hope utter nonindifference explain let preface dawn weighted heart assuring worth whiles serena massoud full heart deep love america cia youi poor afghan woman awash times wish return 125 million agree part 360 million according one esteemed news sources ended hands people americanled coalition spent nearly decade battling taliban criminals power brokers ties must beg forgiveness explain fundings came almost hands howwith barely effort partyou get back tangled tale tell dark stormy decade country whose breezes gales buffeted told dear general would stumble incredulity let state many various adventures terrible kind found uttermost grips marriage omar fahim dadulah would know war lord man evil incarnate treatment truly described moreover league taliban among navy times rightly describes absorbing moneys obscure nefariousness purpose without straining patience darling directorgeneral end expectably poisoned selfsame proclaimed taliban death came upon called bedside informed tones solemn mistake fund 125 million dollars slipped upon taliban trucking fees safety passes like hidden spot unmentionable meant beg dearest general lend helping hand assist claiming money guardian let orphan ward receive money account also promise invest small part lucrative business since still young woman make arrangements come country education secure beloved citizenship permit seen photos chest medals light day profound sincerity make gesture deep within loving soul open heart touched eagerly await tiptoed words humbly yrs yrs serena masoud 160 note nigerian letter scam way remarkable smart grifters another land generally pose highly strategically placed individuals also ignorant yokels innocents minimalist grasp overthetop nineteenthcentury english highly skilled compositional con works evidently tune tens millions dollars yearly want explore operates fleecing significant numbers people snopescom website useful click wonderful older essay charms scam letters check douglas cruickshanks crave distinguished indulgence cash saloncom hand prefer explore scams washington involved last endless years war could start adam weinsteins recent mother jones piece alltime ten worst military contracting boondoggles individual scams period dime dozen rather unfortunately billions dollars dozen making nigerians look like rubes arent would include mention examples missing 31 60 billion contractor waste fraud afghan iraq war zones 66 billion evidently largely iraqi oil money held us banks bush administration sent pallets shrinkwrapped bills iraq went missinginaction 360 million us taxpayer dollars according special military task force headed directly taliban afghan lovelies 65 billion went development f22 expensive fighter jet ever built usedsince may f22s us fleet grounded indefinitely 140 billion contracts pentagon awarded companies 2010 without hint competitive bidding 50 billion 2001 believe nigerians great deal learn pentagon us operations greater middle east real rubes larger scam things gullible american taxpayers tom engelhardt cofounder american empire project author american way war bushs wars became obamas well end victory culture runs nation institutes tomdispatchcom latest book united states fear haymarket books published november stay top important articles like sign receive latest updates tomdispatchcom | 988 |
<p>In a world where the “clash of civilizations” is unfolding as a self-fulfilling prophecy, reclaiming the Mediterranean as a cultural bridge acquires unprecedented import and urgency. Countering the United States’ crusade of neo-colonial hegemony, disregard for international law, xenophobia and unchecked projection of immense power on the world stage necessitates a world-wide rejection of fundamentalism, whether in the north or the south, the east or the west. People of conscience everywhere are compelled to unite in resisting empire, or else the ravages and devastation of the old world colonialism will pale in comparison with what we might expect in this modern “crusade,” to borrow George W. Bush.</p>
<p>Rather than succumb to the “clash” temptation by reinforcing “defensive self-pride,” it is time to come to terms with “the bewildering interdependence of our time,” as Edward Said called it years ago in his article about “The Clash of Ignorance.” We are called upon “to reflect, examine, sort out what it is we are dealing with in reality, the interconnectedness of innumerable lives, ‘ours’ as well as ‘theirs,'” debunking, in the process, the confused and confusing myths about who or what the West or the Other may be.</p>
<p>The Mediterranean has once again found itself representing a conflict mired in myths and misunderstanding; but it is also from the Mediterranean that new paths can emerge. Despite its tendency to close itself within a fortress, the European Union includes within it strong civil society organizations, which can play a key role in forging a new partnership with all progressive forces within the Euro-Mediterranean region and beyond. Such an alliance can elaborate and push forward a program for holistic development in the interrelated fields of politics, culture, the environment, and the economy.</p>
<p>A progressive alliance that focuses on the Mediterranean can be a credible, indeed a crucial, core of a larger alliance that presents a counterweight to American unilateralism and European cultural ethnocentrism and economic protectionism, as well as a new paradigm for cross-regional partnerships based on a harmonizing vision and a geopolitical philosophy that is essentially at odds with the neocon worldview. It is not civilizations or even cultures that are pitted against each other, but the haves and the have-nots, the “powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice.”</p>
<p>Although religion assumes at times key significance in the Euro-Med discourse, as evident in the ongoing debate on Turkey’s prospects for accession to the EU, it is important to reexamine the hypothetical line in the sea separating Christianity from Islam. The increasing population of Muslims in Europe and the indigenous presence of Christian Arabs are often ignored when drawing such a rigid line. Furthermore, the centuries-long religious co-existence in the region has been lost on the “clash” theorists. If fundamentalism in all religions is undoubtedly a source of schism and hostility towards the “Other,” diversity in faith per se does not have to be divisive. Malta, as a possible bridge between the “two sides” of what could be viewed as one region with a wealth of diversity, is one place where this re-evaluation of the “divide” can be carried out by critically re-reading the past and rethinking the taken-for-granted present.</p>
<p>Religion aside, Euro-Med skeptics on either side present a number of compelling arguments that ought to be considered.</p>
<p>On one side of the proposed cross-Mediterranean bridge we have a largely successful experiment of integrating very distinct European nations that have in the not-so-distant past led protracted, devastating wars against each other; while on the other we have one Arab nation, interspersed with indigenous national minorities, torn apart by former colonial powers into separate countries with artificial borders and still languishing under fragmentation, authoritarian rule and developmental stagnation. That’s what any snapshot of the two sides would reveal. But if snapshots may account for part of reality, they ultimately remain distorted images that freeze the time and space context and thus fail to reveal the complex processes at play and the inherent potential for change. The Mediterranean region’s latent strength should not be underestimated.</p>
<p>The Mediterranean domain is where some of the world’s most vibrant civilizations once thrived on interaction, acculturation, trade and common interest. It is a region that has contributed a disproportionately great share to human philosophy, arts and sciences, anchored in a seamless blend of different cultures. Its potential is embedded in its history. It is also borne by geopolitical and economic realities of the present.</p>
<p>Pragmatically speaking, both sides stand to gain from such an alliance.</p>
<p>As the constant flow of migration shows, the Mediterranean and its surrounding regions are full of brave and resourceful people who are willing to work hard, even to risk their lives, to carve out a better future for themselves and for their families and communities. With its surplus of underutilized university graduates on its Northern and Southern shores, the Mediterranean, in partnership with all forces of good will, has the potential to come up with the practical solutions of its own problems and to serve as a model for other regions of the world where global powers wield their unrestrained control.</p>
<p>European proponents of Euro-Med politics are well aware of the region’s potential in helping Europe translate its massive economic power into political potency and international influence, currently in short supply. Having easier, safer and cheaper access to Arab oil (until safer, cleaner sources of energy are developed), enjoying open trade in a stable, prosperous and free zone and having access to the growing Arab market are all factors that enter into their calculations. Arabs who strive for a pan-Arab unity as a necessary condition for resuming healthy development and transcending fragmentation and powerlessness ought not dismiss this alliance out of hand, either. For Europe is, above everything else, an appealing, if embattled, model of political and economic integration that can be emulated. Striving to form an alliance with Europe may indeed act as a catalyst for democratization and preciously needed modernization in parallel with Arab reunification. Furthermore, open cultural and intellectual channels with Europe can help progressive Arabs combat fundamentalism and corruption, both inhibiting true progress in the Arab world. And it can empower those Europeans on the left of what is left of the political “spectrum,” especially those involved in concrete ways in the new global movements, in their efforts to reclaim the unified continent from the choking hold of multinational corporations, to debunk myths and to counter the demonization of the Other, both within Europe itself and in the surrounding Mediterranean countries. By strengthening their ties in the region, European progressives will be in a better position to understand those who are crossing the sea to enter an increasingly unwelcoming Europe and to propose and run projects that would really make the lives of people throughout the region more dignified, thus worth living.</p>
<p>Repositioning the Mediterranean in the centre of a new progressive project means thinking about this diverse region and its resources in original and truly sustainable ways. The Mediterranean, for example, has an overabundance of sunlight that can provide countries in the region and beyond with cleaner energy. This would not only have serious, long-term positive effects on the health of our planet as a whole but would also promote the region as a hub of research in the field of sustainable energy development. Europe, on the other hand, would provide already available technology and know-how, and possibly the initial investment that sets the ball rolling. Of course, this is not meant to encourage the rich to waste more energy and the poor to produce it for them – it is meant, rather, to encourage a new reliance on renewable sources and to start a chain reaction of sustainable practices throughout the region and beyond, an outreach guaranteed by the millions of tourists who visit the region every year and who would therefore be exposed to this wave of green innovation. The other long-term effect would be to establish a more fruitful relationship between equals and to provide more skilled jobs for people on all sides of the Sea.</p>
<p>Another area in which civil society, possibly in partnership with the institutions, can play a major role in rethinking and rejuvenating the Mediterranean and the relationship between the various cultures and resources within it is cultural, ecological and agricultural tourism. As a hub of research and production of alternative energies, the region could attract people through conferences, research visits and the like. It could also provide renewable energy to small-scale farms, resorts and cultural sites and thus have a direct effect on the income and livelihood of people in the region who would not need to flee to continental Europe in the hope of a better future. The shift from mass tourism, which has a devastating impact on the environment, and therefore on all living species in the region, to cultural, ecological, and agricultural tourism would also pave the way for more research into traditional, more sustainable and holistic ways of living, and possibly even to ethical tourism.</p>
<p>Moreover, with its popularity among so many northerners, the Mediterranean is a region with a great potential to develop fair trade, encouraging local communities to produce crafts and foodstuffs that reflect and respect their environment and culture and guarantee fair wages for the producer and a fair price for the consumer. There are already some important fair trade producer initiatives and “social cooperatives” in Palestine and Southern Italy, to mention but two. A democratic strategy based on empowering local communities has the potential to succeed because it aims to provide for a generally guaranteed demand but also because it has the potential to create a new demand for forms of “recreation” or leisure such as eco-villages that have long-term effects even on those who benefit from them as visitors or short-term residents. These are initiatives that start to refuse the “ours-theirs” divide that Said talks about and builds on the “interconnectedness of innumerable lives.”</p>
<p>The role of culture as a “vehicle for dialogue” within the Euromed area was highlighted in a 2003 Report by the High-Level Group established on the initiative of the President of the European Commission, who at the time was Romano Prodi. Apart from the Barcelona process, the Group proposes to “involve civil societies in ending the discriminations from which European citizens of immigrant origin still too often suffer and the persistent situation of injustice, violence and insecurity in the Middle East, in implementing educational programmes designed to replace negative mutual perceptions with mutual knowledge and understanding, and so on.” Culture, the report suggests, must be used to “reinforce the emerging sense of fellowship and common destiny, so that Europe and its Mediterranean partners lay the foundations of a wider civic consciousness based on a convergent understanding of history and their common heritages.” The Group, which recommends mobility and sharing of expertise, proposes to make education a vehicle for learning about diversity and transmitting knowledge of the Other, and this includes, amongst others, redefining the foundations of the humanities and social sciences and the way they are taught, as regards the anthropological, legal, cultural, religious, economic and social dimensions of the history of the Mediterranean region, and to develop elements of common knowledge.</p>
<p>On an institutional level, the Barcelona Process launched by the Conference of EU and Mediterranean foreign ministers that was held in Barcelona in November 1995 can be a proper foundation for starting the dialogue — particularly among civil society representatives — about this alternative Mediterranean project. It emphasizes friendly relations based on: political and security partnership through the establishment of a common area of peace and stability; economic partnership by creating an area of shared prosperity; and partnership in social, cultural and human affairs, by developing human resources, promoting understanding between cultures and collaboration between civil societies.</p>
<p>Tackling these serious tasks, however, entails challenging the three main impediments that stand in the way: current US foreign policy in the region; Israel’s occupation of Arab land and denial of Palestinian rights; and Europe’s colonial legacy in the Arab world, manifested in socio-economic and political weakness in the south and uncontrollable immigration to the north.</p>
<p>Although Cyprus presents another serious obstacle that must be addressed, the fact that there is general agreement — supported by the UN and most major players — that the EU is the proper framework for solving this conflict, makes this issue not among the major impediments mentioned above. Reunifying the island on the basis of equality, democracy and withdrawal of all foreign forces, remains the only internationally-sanctioned solution, regardless of how long it may take.</p>
<p>Going back to the primary challenge to the suggested Mediterranean alliance, it is naïve to assume that the US will just stand by and watch while a competing Euro-Arab pole is being established. The possibility for aggressive and multi-faceted US intervention to thwart the effort should be taken into consideration in all phases of planning for this alliance. Emphasizing the UN’s central role as the best available — if not perfect — embodiment of international law and universal rights can attract wide international support, which will be needed to fence off any American attempts to sabotage the entire process. Regardless, Europe is invited to take a stand, to disengage from anachronistic, cold-war groupings such as NATO, to free itself of its current role of “washing the dishes,” while the US cooks the dinner and eats it too, as expressed by Robert Kagan, a leading neocon ideologue. With the ominous consolidation of power in the hands of fundamentalists, militarists and financial oligarchs in the US, the wider the Atlantic, the narrower the Mediterranean will be.</p>
<p>As for the second obstacle, although the Barcelona process has included Israel — for obvious reasons — it is time to critically analyze the roots and prospects of resolving the long standing Arab-Zionist conflict, the most deep-rooted conflict troubling the region. Despite differentiating itself from US foreign policy to various degrees in other conflicts, Europe remains overall submissive in its relation with the US in the Middle East. “We are friends and allies but we are not servants,” French president Jacques Chirac recently burst out in protest. Facts on the ground, however, can blur this distinction.</p>
<p>Europe’s understandable guilt over the Holocaust is often cited as the most profound cause of its direct or indirect acquiescence in aspects of Israel’s violation of international law, mainly its illegal occupation of Arab lands, its stubborn rejection of the right of Palestinian refugees to return and its entrenched and distinguished form of apartheid against its own Palestinian citizens. Going beyond moral inconsistency and guilt-generated injustice, though, requires overcoming this basic obstacle on the path of translating Euro-Med rhetoric into sustainable realities on the ground. Arab leaders may sign anything that overlooks this conflict, but their legitimacy is as solid as ice-cream on a hot Mediterranean summer day. The Arab world’s hearts and minds cannot be remotely represented by its unelected, despotic rulers. This is where civil society, even where it is stifled by corrupt institutions, can be empowered by a strong Mediterranean initiative.</p>
<p>Ignoring the gravity and implications of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, as the 2003 EU Report Dialogue Between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area mentioned earlier does, is not acceptable or constructive. Creative, bold and morally sound solutions are indeed required to achieve justice and lasting peace in this century-old conflict. A project that has every potential to win wide Arab support for a Mediterranean alliance is the unitary, secular and democratic state solution to the Palestine-Israel problem. Only such a state can reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable: the inalienable, UN-sanctioned rights of the indigenous people of Palestine to self-determination and the internationally accepted rights of Israeli Jews to live in peace and security after justice has prevailed. Regardless of Israel’s establishment on the ruins of Palestinian society and as a result of massive ethnic cleansing of most Palestinians during the Nakba (catastrophe of 1948), Israeli Jews and Palestinian-Arabs (Muslims and Christians) should enjoy equal democratic rights without discrimination, and without ethnic supremacy of either community. The return and compensation of the Palestinian refugees, in accordance with international law, remains the cornerstone of any such historic solution to this long conflict. This would not only redress the injustice done to Palestinians and end the last remnant of colonialism in the world, but will also remove Europe’s sore thorn from the heart of the Arab nation. It may well spawn an authentic process of democratic reform in the Arab world at large, after denying Arab rulers their age-long alibi of the “conflict” with Israel. This home-grown political transformation will better promote and protect the process of integrating the Mediterranean region on shared values of freedom, democracy, rule of law and the fundamental equality of all humans, regardless of faith, ethnicity or nationality.</p>
<p>As for the last mentioned obstacle, the colonial legacy, it must be admitted that European colonial ravage and cruel exploitation of the south has left its nations impoverished, dependent and incapable of sustaining any meaningful development. Without seriously stopping its collusion with the south’s autocratic regimes and consistently investing into the region’s infrastructure and sustainable economic, political and cultural development as compensation for decades of organized robbery and horrific atrocities, we shall continue to witness this often uprooting phenomenon of one-way migration.</p>
<p>Forming a Mediterranean alliance of progressive forces everywhere in the region that attracts the support of similar elements elsewhere would be beneficial to all those involved and would reflect the Mediterranean’s true heritage of coexistence, multiculturalism, stability and prosperity. And as the eminent Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes says: “[C]ultures are not isolated, and perish when deprived of contact with what is different and challenging. […] No culture […] retains its identity in isolation; identity is attained in contact, in contrast, in breakthrough.”</p>
<p>* Omar Barghouti, independent political and cultural analyst who has published essays on the rise of empire, the Palestine question and art of the oppressed. He holds a Masters degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University, and is currently a doctoral student of philosophy (ethics) at Tel Aviv University. He contributed to the published book, The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid (Verso Books, 2001). He is an advocate of the secular, democratic state solution in historic Palestine. His article “9.11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms” was chosen among the “Best of 2002” by The Guardian.</p>
<p>Adrian Grima, a lecturer at the University of Malta, has published books and articles about Maltese Literature and about the Mediterranean and has read papers and poetry at conferences in Europe, the United States and the Caribbean. In 1999, he published It-Trumbettier, a prize-winning book of poetry in Maltese. Some of his poems have appeared in anthologies in Europe and Israel. His second collection of poetry, including a Maltese-Arabic bilingual edition, will be published in 2006. Dr. Grima is a cultural activist and the Maltese correspondent of the Babelmed.net website about culture in the Mediterranean region. <a href="http://www.adriangrima.com/" type="external">www.adriangrima.com</a></p>
<p>They can be reached at: <a href="mailto:jenna@palnet.com" type="external">jenna@palnet.com</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | world clash civilizations unfolding selffulfilling prophecy reclaiming mediterranean cultural bridge acquires unprecedented import urgency countering united states crusade neocolonial hegemony disregard international law xenophobia unchecked projection immense power world stage necessitates worldwide rejection fundamentalism whether north south east west people conscience everywhere compelled unite resisting empire else ravages devastation old world colonialism pale comparison might expect modern crusade borrow george w bush rather succumb clash temptation reinforcing defensive selfpride time come terms bewildering interdependence time edward said called years ago article clash ignorance called upon reflect examine sort dealing reality interconnectedness innumerable lives well debunking process confused confusing myths west may mediterranean found representing conflict mired myths misunderstanding also mediterranean new paths emerge despite tendency close within fortress european union includes within strong civil society organizations play key role forging new partnership progressive forces within euromediterranean region beyond alliance elaborate push forward program holistic development interrelated fields politics culture environment economy progressive alliance focuses mediterranean credible indeed crucial core larger alliance presents counterweight american unilateralism european cultural ethnocentrism economic protectionism well new paradigm crossregional partnerships based harmonizing vision geopolitical philosophy essentially odds neocon worldview civilizations even cultures pitted haves havenots powerful powerless communities secular politics reason ignorance universal principles justice injustice although religion assumes times key significance euromed discourse evident ongoing debate turkeys prospects accession eu important reexamine hypothetical line sea separating christianity islam increasing population muslims europe indigenous presence christian arabs often ignored drawing rigid line furthermore centurieslong religious coexistence region lost clash theorists fundamentalism religions undoubtedly source schism hostility towards diversity faith per se divisive malta possible bridge two sides could viewed one region wealth diversity one place reevaluation divide carried critically rereading past rethinking takenforgranted present religion aside euromed skeptics either side present number compelling arguments ought considered one side proposed crossmediterranean bridge largely successful experiment integrating distinct european nations notsodistant past led protracted devastating wars one arab nation interspersed indigenous national minorities torn apart former colonial powers separate countries artificial borders still languishing fragmentation authoritarian rule developmental stagnation thats snapshot two sides would reveal snapshots may account part reality ultimately remain distorted images freeze time space context thus fail reveal complex processes play inherent potential change mediterranean regions latent strength underestimated mediterranean domain worlds vibrant civilizations thrived interaction acculturation trade common interest region contributed disproportionately great share human philosophy arts sciences anchored seamless blend different cultures potential embedded history also borne geopolitical economic realities present pragmatically speaking sides stand gain alliance constant flow migration shows mediterranean surrounding regions full brave resourceful people willing work hard even risk lives carve better future families communities surplus underutilized university graduates northern southern shores mediterranean partnership forces good potential come practical solutions problems serve model regions world global powers wield unrestrained control european proponents euromed politics well aware regions potential helping europe translate massive economic power political potency international influence currently short supply easier safer cheaper access arab oil safer cleaner sources energy developed enjoying open trade stable prosperous free zone access growing arab market factors enter calculations arabs strive panarab unity necessary condition resuming healthy development transcending fragmentation powerlessness ought dismiss alliance hand either europe everything else appealing embattled model political economic integration emulated striving form alliance europe may indeed act catalyst democratization preciously needed modernization parallel arab reunification furthermore open cultural intellectual channels europe help progressive arabs combat fundamentalism corruption inhibiting true progress arab world empower europeans left left political spectrum especially involved concrete ways new global movements efforts reclaim unified continent choking hold multinational corporations debunk myths counter demonization within europe surrounding mediterranean countries strengthening ties region european progressives better position understand crossing sea enter increasingly unwelcoming europe propose run projects would really make lives people throughout region dignified thus worth living repositioning mediterranean centre new progressive project means thinking diverse region resources original truly sustainable ways mediterranean example overabundance sunlight provide countries region beyond cleaner energy would serious longterm positive effects health planet whole would also promote region hub research field sustainable energy development europe hand would provide already available technology knowhow possibly initial investment sets ball rolling course meant encourage rich waste energy poor produce meant rather encourage new reliance renewable sources start chain reaction sustainable practices throughout region beyond outreach guaranteed millions tourists visit region every year would therefore exposed wave green innovation longterm effect would establish fruitful relationship equals provide skilled jobs people sides sea another area civil society possibly partnership institutions play major role rethinking rejuvenating mediterranean relationship various cultures resources within cultural ecological agricultural tourism hub research production alternative energies region could attract people conferences research visits like could also provide renewable energy smallscale farms resorts cultural sites thus direct effect income livelihood people region would need flee continental europe hope better future shift mass tourism devastating impact environment therefore living species region cultural ecological agricultural tourism would also pave way research traditional sustainable holistic ways living possibly even ethical tourism moreover popularity among many northerners mediterranean region great potential develop fair trade encouraging local communities produce crafts foodstuffs reflect respect environment culture guarantee fair wages producer fair price consumer already important fair trade producer initiatives social cooperatives palestine southern italy mention two democratic strategy based empowering local communities potential succeed aims provide generally guaranteed demand also potential create new demand forms recreation leisure ecovillages longterm effects even benefit visitors shortterm residents initiatives start refuse ourstheirs divide said talks builds interconnectedness innumerable lives role culture vehicle dialogue within euromed area highlighted 2003 report highlevel group established initiative president european commission time romano prodi apart barcelona process group proposes involve civil societies ending discriminations european citizens immigrant origin still often suffer persistent situation injustice violence insecurity middle east implementing educational programmes designed replace negative mutual perceptions mutual knowledge understanding culture report suggests must used reinforce emerging sense fellowship common destiny europe mediterranean partners lay foundations wider civic consciousness based convergent understanding history common heritages group recommends mobility sharing expertise proposes make education vehicle learning diversity transmitting knowledge includes amongst others redefining foundations humanities social sciences way taught regards anthropological legal cultural religious economic social dimensions history mediterranean region develop elements common knowledge institutional level barcelona process launched conference eu mediterranean foreign ministers held barcelona november 1995 proper foundation starting dialogue particularly among civil society representatives alternative mediterranean project emphasizes friendly relations based political security partnership establishment common area peace stability economic partnership creating area shared prosperity partnership social cultural human affairs developing human resources promoting understanding cultures collaboration civil societies tackling serious tasks however entails challenging three main impediments stand way current us foreign policy region israels occupation arab land denial palestinian rights europes colonial legacy arab world manifested socioeconomic political weakness south uncontrollable immigration north although cyprus presents another serious obstacle must addressed fact general agreement supported un major players eu proper framework solving conflict makes issue among major impediments mentioned reunifying island basis equality democracy withdrawal foreign forces remains internationallysanctioned solution regardless long may take going back primary challenge suggested mediterranean alliance naïve assume us stand watch competing euroarab pole established possibility aggressive multifaceted us intervention thwart effort taken consideration phases planning alliance emphasizing uns central role best available perfect embodiment international law universal rights attract wide international support needed fence american attempts sabotage entire process regardless europe invited take stand disengage anachronistic coldwar groupings nato free current role washing dishes us cooks dinner eats expressed robert kagan leading neocon ideologue ominous consolidation power hands fundamentalists militarists financial oligarchs us wider atlantic narrower mediterranean second obstacle although barcelona process included israel obvious reasons time critically analyze roots prospects resolving long standing arabzionist conflict deeprooted conflict troubling region despite differentiating us foreign policy various degrees conflicts europe remains overall submissive relation us middle east friends allies servants french president jacques chirac recently burst protest facts ground however blur distinction europes understandable guilt holocaust often cited profound cause direct indirect acquiescence aspects israels violation international law mainly illegal occupation arab lands stubborn rejection right palestinian refugees return entrenched distinguished form apartheid palestinian citizens going beyond moral inconsistency guiltgenerated injustice though requires overcoming basic obstacle path translating euromed rhetoric sustainable realities ground arab leaders may sign anything overlooks conflict legitimacy solid icecream hot mediterranean summer day arab worlds hearts minds remotely represented unelected despotic rulers civil society even stifled corrupt institutions empowered strong mediterranean initiative ignoring gravity implications illegal israeli occupation palestine 2003 eu report dialogue peoples cultures euromediterranean area mentioned earlier acceptable constructive creative bold morally sound solutions indeed required achieve justice lasting peace centuryold conflict project every potential win wide arab support mediterranean alliance unitary secular democratic state solution palestineisrael problem state reconcile seemingly irreconcilable inalienable unsanctioned rights indigenous people palestine selfdetermination internationally accepted rights israeli jews live peace security justice prevailed regardless israels establishment ruins palestinian society result massive ethnic cleansing palestinians nakba catastrophe 1948 israeli jews palestinianarabs muslims christians enjoy equal democratic rights without discrimination without ethnic supremacy either community return compensation palestinian refugees accordance international law remains cornerstone historic solution long conflict would redress injustice done palestinians end last remnant colonialism world also remove europes sore thorn heart arab nation may well spawn authentic process democratic reform arab world large denying arab rulers agelong alibi conflict israel homegrown political transformation better promote protect process integrating mediterranean region shared values freedom democracy rule law fundamental equality humans regardless faith ethnicity nationality last mentioned obstacle colonial legacy must admitted european colonial ravage cruel exploitation south left nations impoverished dependent incapable sustaining meaningful development without seriously stopping collusion souths autocratic regimes consistently investing regions infrastructure sustainable economic political cultural development compensation decades organized robbery horrific atrocities shall continue witness often uprooting phenomenon oneway migration forming mediterranean alliance progressive forces everywhere region attracts support similar elements elsewhere would beneficial involved would reflect mediterraneans true heritage coexistence multiculturalism stability prosperity eminent mexican writer carlos fuentes says cultures isolated perish deprived contact different challenging culture retains identity isolation identity attained contact contrast breakthrough omar barghouti independent political cultural analyst published essays rise empire palestine question art oppressed holds masters degree electrical engineering columbia university currently doctoral student philosophy ethics tel aviv university contributed published book new intifada resisting israels apartheid verso books 2001 advocate secular democratic state solution historic palestine article 911 putting moment human terms chosen among best 2002 guardian adrian grima lecturer university malta published books articles maltese literature mediterranean read papers poetry conferences europe united states caribbean 1999 published ittrumbettier prizewinning book poetry maltese poems appeared anthologies europe israel second collection poetry including maltesearabic bilingual edition published 2006 dr grima cultural activist maltese correspondent babelmednet website culture mediterranean region wwwadriangrimacom reached jennapalnetcom 160 160 160 160 | 1,755 |
<p>Posters in inner-city Sydney sponsored by the Australian Greens Party promote the 'Yes' campaign.Rex Features/AP</p>
<p>For the past month, Australians have been casting their ballots in a nonbinding-yet-divisive survey to advise their elected leaders on the question: “Should&#160;the law be&#160;changed to allow&#160;same-sex couples to marry?” As an overseas Aussie who cares deeply about the issue, I wanted my say. So, one day a few weeks ago, I entered my personal details into a designated government website and received a “Secure Access Code” that allowed me to cast my vote online.</p>
<p>When I checked my mail later that day, however, I found a letter from the&#160;Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the agency administering the survey. This letter contained a different Secure Access Code. My reporter’s red flag flew up immediately.</p>
<p>Was it possible, I wondered, that the system would validate both of these codes and let me vote twice? That would be a potentially troubling situation, because if I could do it, then others could, too. I had to find out.</p>
<p>Lo and behold, both codes were accepted, and I was allowed to cast a second ballot, receiving the same message as before: “Thank you. Your response has been submitted.”</p>
<p>Such a glitch, I realized, could throw yet another wrench into a campaign that’s already bizarre and bitter—and there’s still a month left to go. Since the vote was announced, Australia has experienced an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-25/same-sex-marriage-swastika-southern-brisbane/8984768" type="external">outbreak of homophobic violence</a>, “No” ads warning of <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/08/30/anti-marriage-equality-ad-australia/" type="external">cross-dressing kids</a>, and a culture war over rugby <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/29/asia/australia-same-sex-marriage-macklemore/index.html" type="external">pitting</a> American rapper Macklemore against a former prime minister. Adding to the mayhem is a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/lanesainty/email-me-your-questions-please?utm_term=.nsZraWYdy#.kmoOKYR63" type="external">convoluted voting process</a> involving a mixture of snail-mail and electronic balloting that experts say is far from ideal.</p>
<p>“Obviously, they stuffed up,” says Ian Brightwell, <a href="https://au.linkedin.com/in/ian-brightwell-a038573" type="external">former technology chief</a> for the New South Wales Electoral Commission, one of Australia’s state-level election boards. “It is fair to say anyone who is interested in e-voting in Australia is concerned about the ABS…I hope to get in front of a Senate committee to stop this happening again.”</p>
<p>Voting twice freaked me out, so I immediately emailed the ABS to come clean and to ask how such a thing could have occurred. “There are measures in place to ensure the integrity of the process,” replied an agency spokesman who wouldn’t reveal his name, citing internal policies—so we’ll just call him Spokesman. “These measures will detect any attempted multiple responses associated with an individual eligible Australian with only the last response counted.” (Spokesman later clarified that only the vote associated with the latest code generated would be counted—that would have been my first vote, based on the code I obtained through the website.)</p>
<p>This response didn’t satisfy Brightwell. “No real information, so not sure if this would be true or not,” he says, adding that the ABS “has not released any information about their systems, and do not intend doing so.” (The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/07/same-sex-marriage-survey-count-watchers-bound-by-lifetime-secrecy" type="external">reported</a> last week that campaign observers of the tally were asked to sign confidentiality agreements.)</p>
<p>Spokesman admitted that the flaw I discovered needs to be dealt with, but only after voting concludes on November 7. At that point “work will be done to check the data and reconcile duplicates,” he assured me during our lengthy email exchange. This means the ABS will have a week to clean up the mess before the results are officially <a href="https://marriagesurvey.abs.gov.au/key-dates" type="external">announced on November 15</a>.</p>
<p>I spoke with four e-voting experts for this story, and all of them said the problem I encountered raises concerns about integrity, oversight, and the government’s ability to safeguard voter data. Three of them also criticized government officials for not being more transparent about the vote-counting process. “It’s about trust,” says <a href="http://www.researchweek.uwa.edu.au/speakers/dr-david-glance-director-the-uwa-centre-for-software-practice/" type="external">David Glance</a>, director of the Centre for Software Practice at the University of Western Australia. “Do we have absolute confidence that the ABS can do this? I’d say no. And I’d say they’ve done a bad job of communicating.”</p>
<p>Casting multiple votes, Spokesman added, could result in a fine of about $1,640 (US dollars).</p>
<p>My two online votes.</p>
<p>Voting is usually compulsory in Australia, but not this time. The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/14/turnbull-signs-coalition-statement-urging-marriage-equality-yes-vote" type="external">supports same-sex marriage</a>, but his political fortunes are wed, so to speak, to the more ideological wing of his conservative governing coalition. So when other major parties opposed attempts to launch a compulsory national vote on the issue, arguing that Parliament can and should change the law itself, pressure mounted for Turnbull’s team to come up with another plan. This was their compromise: a voluntary <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/factcheck/2017-08-22/fact-check-same-sex-marriage-postal-survey/8826300" type="external">$122 million opinion poll</a> overseen by the country’s statisticians—not the federal election board that normally keeps watch on things. “A vote in Australia is covered by all sorts of legislation and there are expectations set up about the process,” Glance told me. This “is a survey, not a vote.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, a “yes” result could, in theory, hand Turnbull a mandate to push through a marriage-equality law with other major parties, perhaps even <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-08/same-sex-marriage-pm-moves-to-hold-postal-plebiscite-vote/8784822" type="external">by year’s end</a>, without the unanimous support of his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/07/marriage-equality-liberals-vote-to-keep-plebiscite-with-postal-vote-as-backup" type="external">deeply divided governing coalition</a>—many of whose members (including former prime minister Tony Abbott, the one at war with Macklemore) are dead set against it.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull supports same-sex marriage, but his governing coalition is deeply divided.</p>
<p>Rod McGuirk / AP</p>
<p>While the bulk of the voting is done by snail mail in-country ( <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/media/media-releases/2017/08-25.htm" type="external">16 million ballots</a> were sent out earlier last month), voters living or traveling overseas&#160; <a href="https://www4.abs.gov.au/web/survey.nsf/AMLPSSACEnqForm" type="external">can apply for a unique 16-digit code</a> that lets them <a href="https://marriagesurvey.abs.gov.au/survey/" type="external">vote online</a> or by phone. The government also sent letters to overseas citizens, like me, whose whereabouts are known. Both of the ways I voted “are valid,” according to Spokesman. On the other hand, says Glance, “People shouldn’t have to call and ask the ABS if they voted twice.”</p>
<p>The experts I consulted were also troubled by Spokesman’s claims that the ABS is doubling back to check for duplicates. “Clearly, the online voting system is tracking you, so the ABS knows exactly how you voted,” said Rajeev Gore, a computer scientist at the Australian National University. “This is of concern, since your vote is supposed to be private. But a simple online voting system cannot guarantee vote secrecy.”</p>
<p>Spokesman insisted that “personal details will never be seen or stored alongside the answer to the survey question.” But even if that’s the case, Glance told me, “it is definitely possible that someone can take both bits of information and put it together.”</p>
<p>The gap between when the government first announced the vote and when Australians began receiving ballots was just over a month. That’s not a lot of time. “If I was handed the task of building the software to do this under that deadline, I would’ve frankly refused,” says Robert Merkel, a software engineer at Monash University.&#160;</p>
<p>Buzzfeed Australia <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/joshtaylor/inside-the-scramble-at-the-abs-to-run-the-marriage-equality?utm_term=.xuqmBaMkj#.bvxJDNEne" type="external">got its hands on internal ABS emails</a> showing how the agency scrambled to get the national survey up and running. That rush may have led to the problems I encountered: “It’s definitely taking [the ABS’s techies] out of their comfort zone,” Glance says. It was probably quicker and easier, he adds, to make the online portion of the survey a “dumb” collection machine, incapable of tracking the history of an individual’s vote in the moment.</p>
<p>Glance compares the situation to the ABS’s much-maligned rollout of the national census in 2016: The government’s computer systems endured a denial-of-service attack that hobbled data collection for 40 hours. The onslaught, Prime Minister Turnbull <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/census-bosses-unprepared-for-utterly-predictable-cyber-attack-emails-reveal/news-story/e44170060f35de0ee5e5620f69f19660" type="external">noted</a> at the time, was “utterly predictable, utterly foreseeable.”</p>
<p>The postal voting has run into problems as well. Multiple ballots were <a href="http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/gay-marriage/what-happens-if-you-vote-in-the-samesex-marriage-postal-survey-more-than-once/news-story/db8b298695b6aa5ba7e774a54052dfd8" type="external">sent</a> to the same households under different names because some voters hadn’t updated their enrollment details. Unopened ballots may even have been <a href="http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/gay-marriage/what-to-do-if-your-samesex-marriage-survey-form-is-stolen/news-story/f995c1ddd2220903d7fbabc209a0879c" type="external">stolen</a> and submitted by the wrong person.</p>
<p>“The big issue is the participation will be potentially 50 percent or less, and the unused postal packs can be picked up by anyone and returned and ABS will never be able to tell if it was the correct person who sent it,” Brightwell says. The ABS warns that “theft or tampering with mail is a criminal offence and carries serious penalties”—but this <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-15/same-sex-marriage-extra-survey-form-lands-in-the-mailbox/8950588" type="external">crime</a> may prove difficult to police.</p>
<p>At the top of my mind, of course, was whether the ability of overseas Australians to double-vote would make a difference if those votes were counted. Probably not, the computer scientists told me. There just aren’t enough of us to sway the results a whole lot—certainly not enough to make the loophole pay off for a hacker. “The odds of being able to do it on a large scale to change the results in any substantial way would be probably low,” Merkel says.</p>
<p>But with an inconclusive or closely contested vote, this sort of glitch could undermine public trust: “If the result is close and doesn’t differ by an amount greater than a margin of error, then it should be held in doubt,” Glance says. “The execution was rushed and suited more to a statistical survey exercise than real voting, and so confidence in the result should be treated in this way.”</p>
<p>“Voting doesn’t have a margin of error,” he adds. “Or at least it’s not supposed to.”</p>
<p>In addition to my exchange with Spokesman, who insisted I didn’t really vote twice—at least once the agency goes back and fixes it—I sent the ABS a full summary of what happened, and a formal request that my votes be reconciled. I haven’t heard back.</p>
<p>Update (10/10/2017): The ABS “Customer Assistance Team” finally got back to me, the day after this story published, backing up what Spokesman said earlier: “The ABS can confirm that your responses will be reconciled during the counting process such that only one will be counted.”</p> | true | 4 | posters innercity sydney sponsored australian greens party promote yes campaignrex featuresap past month australians casting ballots nonbindingyetdivisive survey advise elected leaders question should160the law be160changed allow160samesex couples marry overseas aussie cares deeply issue wanted say one day weeks ago entered personal details designated government website received secure access code allowed cast vote online checked mail later day however found letter the160australian bureau statistics abs agency administering survey letter contained different secure access code reporters red flag flew immediately possible wondered system would validate codes let vote twice would potentially troubling situation could others could find lo behold codes accepted allowed cast second ballot receiving message thank response submitted glitch realized could throw yet another wrench campaign thats already bizarre bitterand theres still month left go since vote announced australia experienced outbreak homophobic violence ads warning crossdressing kids culture war rugby pitting american rapper macklemore former prime minister adding mayhem convoluted voting process involving mixture snailmail electronic balloting experts say far ideal obviously stuffed says ian brightwell former technology chief new south wales electoral commission one australias statelevel election boards fair say anyone interested evoting australia concerned absi hope get front senate committee stop happening voting twice freaked immediately emailed abs come clean ask thing could occurred measures place ensure integrity process replied agency spokesman wouldnt reveal name citing internal policiesso well call spokesman measures detect attempted multiple responses associated individual eligible australian last response counted spokesman later clarified vote associated latest code generated would countedthat would first vote based code obtained website response didnt satisfy brightwell real information sure would true says adding abs released information systems intend guardian reported last week campaign observers tally asked sign confidentiality agreements spokesman admitted flaw discovered needs dealt voting concludes november 7 point work done check data reconcile duplicates assured lengthy email exchange means abs week clean mess results officially announced november 15 spoke four evoting experts story said problem encountered raises concerns integrity oversight governments ability safeguard voter data three also criticized government officials transparent votecounting process trust says david glance director centre software practice university western australia absolute confidence abs id say id say theyve done bad job communicating casting multiple votes spokesman added could result fine 1640 us dollars two online votes voting usually compulsory australia time prime minister malcolm turnbull supports samesex marriage political fortunes wed speak ideological wing conservative governing coalition major parties opposed attempts launch compulsory national vote issue arguing parliament change law pressure mounted turnbulls team come another plan compromise voluntary 122 million opinion poll overseen countrys statisticiansnot federal election board normally keeps watch things vote australia covered sorts legislation expectations set process glance told survey vote nevertheless yes result could theory hand turnbull mandate push marriageequality law major parties perhaps even years end without unanimous support deeply divided governing coalitionmany whose members including former prime minister tony abbott one war macklemore dead set prime minister malcolm turnbull supports samesex marriage governing coalition deeply divided rod mcguirk ap bulk voting done snail mail incountry 16 million ballots sent earlier last month voters living traveling overseas160 apply unique 16digit code lets vote online phone government also sent letters overseas citizens like whose whereabouts known ways voted valid according spokesman hand says glance people shouldnt call ask abs voted twice experts consulted also troubled spokesmans claims abs doubling back check duplicates clearly online voting system tracking abs knows exactly voted said rajeev gore computer scientist australian national university concern since vote supposed private simple online voting system guarantee vote secrecy spokesman insisted personal details never seen stored alongside answer survey question even thats case glance told definitely possible someone take bits information put together gap government first announced vote australians began receiving ballots month thats lot time handed task building software deadline wouldve frankly refused says robert merkel software engineer monash university160 buzzfeed australia got hands internal abs emails showing agency scrambled get national survey running rush may led problems encountered definitely taking abss techies comfort zone glance says probably quicker easier adds make online portion survey dumb collection machine incapable tracking history individuals vote moment glance compares situation abss muchmaligned rollout national census 2016 governments computer systems endured denialofservice attack hobbled data collection 40 hours onslaught prime minister turnbull noted time utterly predictable utterly foreseeable postal voting run problems well multiple ballots sent households different names voters hadnt updated enrollment details unopened ballots may even stolen submitted wrong person big issue participation potentially 50 percent less unused postal packs picked anyone returned abs never able tell correct person sent brightwell says abs warns theft tampering mail criminal offence carries serious penaltiesbut crime may prove difficult police top mind course whether ability overseas australians doublevote would make difference votes counted probably computer scientists told arent enough us sway results whole lotcertainly enough make loophole pay hacker odds able large scale change results substantial way would probably low merkel says inconclusive closely contested vote sort glitch could undermine public trust result close doesnt differ amount greater margin error held doubt glance says execution rushed suited statistical survey exercise real voting confidence result treated way voting doesnt margin error adds least supposed addition exchange spokesman insisted didnt really vote twiceat least agency goes back fixes iti sent abs full summary happened formal request votes reconciled havent heard back update 10102017 abs customer assistance team finally got back day story published backing spokesman said earlier abs confirm responses reconciled counting process one counted | 902 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>It was the end of a strange career. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a little known Jordanian petty criminal turned Islamic fundamentalist fanatic until he was denounced by the US in 2003 as an insurgent leader of great importance. This enabled him to recruit men and raise money to fight a cruel war, waged mostly against Iraqi civilians. His death is important in Iraq because he was the most openly sectarian of the Sunni resistance leaders, butchering Shia as heretics deemed as worthy of death as any foreign invader. His chosen instrument was the suicide bomber, usually recruited from outside the country. Their targets were almost invariably Shia young men desperate for work, lining up for jobs as policemen or soldiers. Few of the 20,000 US soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq in the last three years have died at the hands of al-Zarqawi’s men according to the US military.</p>
<p>President Bush and Tony Blair cautiously welcomed the news of the death of the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. But paradoxically, among those most pleased by his elimination may be the other insurgent leaders. ‘He was an embarrassment to the resistance itself,” said Ghassan al-Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator. “They never liked him taking all the limelight and the Americans exaggerated his role.”</p>
<p>Al-Zarqawi owed his rise to the US in two different ways: his name was unknown when he was suddenly denounced on February 5, 2003 by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, before the UN Security Council as the link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. There turned out to be no evidence for this connection and al-Zarqawi did not at this time belong to al Qaeda. But across the Muslim world Powell’s denunciation made him a symbol of resistance to the US. It also fitted in with Washington’s political agenda that attacking Iraq was part of the war on terror.</p>
<p>The invasion gave al-Zarqawi a further boost. Within months of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the whole five-million strong Sunni Arab community in Iraq opposed the occupation. Cheering crowds gathered every time a US soldier was shot or an American vehicle blown up. Armed resistance was popular and for the first time Sunni militants known as the Salafi, religious fundamentalists demonstrating their faith by religious war or Jihad, had a bed rock of support in Iraq. Osama bin Laden and the original al Qaeda had never had this degree of acceptance in Afghanistan and were forced to hire local tribesmen to take part in their propaganda videos.</p>
<p>The next critical moment in al-Zarqawi’s career was the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 15, 2003. Previously US military and civilian Spokesmen had blamed everything on the former Iraqi leader. The mounting insurgency was blamed on remnants of his regime. His brutal rule of Iraq made him easy to demonize at home and abroad. No sooner had Saddam Hussein been captured than the US spokesmen began to mention al-Zarqawi’s name in every sentence. “If the weather is bad they will blame it on Zarqawi,” an Iraqi journalist once said to me as we sat through one American briefing. It emerged earlier this year that the US emphasis on al-Zarqawi as the prime leader of the Iraqi resistance was part of a carefully calculated propaganda program. A letter supposedly from al-Zarqawi was conveniently discovered. One internal briefing document quoted by the Washington Post records Brigadier General Kimmitt, the chief US military spokesman at the time, as saying: “The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date.”</p>
<p>The US Zarqawi campaign was largely aimed at the American public and above all the American voter. It was intent on hammering in the message that the invasion of Iraq was a reasonable response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. This meant it was necessary to show that al Qaeda was strong in Iraq and play down the fact that this had only happened after the invasion.</p>
<p>In an increasingly anti-American Arab world hostility from the US made it easy for al-Zarqawi develop his own organization and finance it. The siege of Fallujah in April 2004 and the storming of the city by US Marines in November the same year saw al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad), whose name was later changed to al Qaeda’s Organization in Iraq, become a powerful force. The suicide bombing campaign had already begun in November 2003 and was from the start directed against Shia as much as foreign troops or officials.</p>
<p>Al-Zarqawi’s war was devised to have the maximum political impact. There was the beheading of foreign captives shown on videos and broadcast via the internet. For all his professed wish to return to a pure seventh-century Muslim state al-Zarqawi was adept at using the internet for propaganda and recruitment. Journalists, Iraqi and foreign, were treated as enemies to be killed where possible.</p>
<p>He was an enemy to America’s liking. Though US military officials in Baghdad openly admitted that few insurgents were non-Iraqi al-Zarqawi’s Jordanian origins were useful in suggesting that the insurrection was orchestrated from outside Iraq. Unfortunately the US commanders believed much of their own propaganda and treated the insurrection as if it was the work of a few cell leaders. Once they were eliminated, they proclaimed, the resistance would collapse. The general unpopularity of the occupation , demonstrated by the repeated defection of police and army units, was disregarded.</p>
<p>There were always going to be sectarian and ethnic differences between Shia, Sunni and Kurd after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This would have given a constituency to al-Zarqawi whatever happened but he also did much to deepen sectarian hatred by killing Iraqi Shia whenever he could. This destabilized the Iraqi government and it also meant that his anti-Shia fanaticism was increasing acceptable, as the Shia retaliated in 2005, in the Sunni community. Meanwhile the American promotion of him as predominant leader of the insurgency did him nothing but good.</p>
<p>The death of al-Zarqawi may lessen Shia-Sunni sectarianism but most likely it comes too late. Diyala, the province where he was killed, is already seeing a savage civil war in which Iraq’s communities hunt each other down and whoever is in the minority is forced to run, fight or die.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | 160 end strange career abu musab alzarqawi little known jordanian petty criminal turned islamic fundamentalist fanatic denounced us 2003 insurgent leader great importance enabled recruit men raise money fight cruel war waged mostly iraqi civilians death important iraq openly sectarian sunni resistance leaders butchering shia heretics deemed worthy death foreign invader chosen instrument suicide bomber usually recruited outside country targets almost invariably shia young men desperate work lining jobs policemen soldiers 20000 us soldiers killed wounded iraq last three years died hands alzarqawis men according us military president bush tony blair cautiously welcomed news death leader al qaeda iraq paradoxically among pleased elimination may insurgent leaders embarrassment resistance said ghassan alattiyah iraqi commentator never liked taking limelight americans exaggerated role alzarqawi owed rise us two different ways name unknown suddenly denounced february 5 2003 colin powell us secretary state un security council link saddam hussein al qaeda turned evidence connection alzarqawi time belong al qaeda across muslim world powells denunciation made symbol resistance us also fitted washingtons political agenda attacking iraq part war terror invasion gave alzarqawi boost within months overthrow saddam hussein whole fivemillion strong sunni arab community iraq opposed occupation cheering crowds gathered every time us soldier shot american vehicle blown armed resistance popular first time sunni militants known salafi religious fundamentalists demonstrating faith religious war jihad bed rock support iraq osama bin laden original al qaeda never degree acceptance afghanistan forced hire local tribesmen take part propaganda videos next critical moment alzarqawis career capture saddam hussein december 15 2003 previously us military civilian spokesmen blamed everything former iraqi leader mounting insurgency blamed remnants regime brutal rule iraq made easy demonize home abroad sooner saddam hussein captured us spokesmen began mention alzarqawis name every sentence weather bad blame zarqawi iraqi journalist said sat one american briefing emerged earlier year us emphasis alzarqawi prime leader iraqi resistance part carefully calculated propaganda program letter supposedly alzarqawi conveniently discovered one internal briefing document quoted washington post records brigadier general kimmitt chief us military spokesman time saying zarqawi psyop program successful information campaign date us zarqawi campaign largely aimed american public american voter intent hammering message invasion iraq reasonable response 911 attacks world trade centre pentagon meant necessary show al qaeda strong iraq play fact happened invasion increasingly antiamerican arab world hostility us made easy alzarqawi develop organization finance siege fallujah april 2004 storming city us marines november year saw altawhid waljihad monotheism jihad whose name later changed al qaedas organization iraq become powerful force suicide bombing campaign already begun november 2003 start directed shia much foreign troops officials alzarqawis war devised maximum political impact beheading foreign captives shown videos broadcast via internet professed wish return pure seventhcentury muslim state alzarqawi adept using internet propaganda recruitment journalists iraqi foreign treated enemies killed possible enemy americas liking though us military officials baghdad openly admitted insurgents noniraqi alzarqawis jordanian origins useful suggesting insurrection orchestrated outside iraq unfortunately us commanders believed much propaganda treated insurrection work cell leaders eliminated proclaimed resistance would collapse general unpopularity occupation demonstrated repeated defection police army units disregarded always going sectarian ethnic differences shia sunni kurd overthrow saddam hussein would given constituency alzarqawi whatever happened also much deepen sectarian hatred killing iraqi shia whenever could destabilized iraqi government also meant antishia fanaticism increasing acceptable shia retaliated 2005 sunni community meanwhile american promotion predominant leader insurgency nothing good death alzarqawi may lessen shiasunni sectarianism likely comes late diyala province killed already seeing savage civil war iraqs communities hunt whoever minority forced run fight die 160 160 | 585 |
<p>The fighter plane is the quintessence of modern civilisation, the modern goddess. It is the product of the collective input of all the sciences and the neutralisation of all morals and values. In it converge the laser, micro-optics, microelectronics and high-tech aerodynamics, allowing for precision flying, hairline fine guidance, dead-on targeting and surgical destruction. It is hygienic and ultra-precise and its factories, hangars and assembly plants are as tall and spacious cathedrals. These planes are only manufactured in the most industrially developed states, assembled by huge corporations whose employees inhabit equality-oriented societies and receive high salaries. They can only be piloted by highly qualified individuals. They are simultaneously the product of absolute individualism and institutionalised collective labour. The employees who contribute to their manufacture embody societies that have achieved much; they are the elite, a cut above the rest, the chosen ones, the new Aryan race.</p>
<p>As with any goddess of consumerist society it has a built-in obsolescence; a new plane has to be produced every two or three years in order to keep up with demand, incorporating the latest technological developments and scientific discoveries in order to preserve her superiority over the gods of other people.</p>
<p>The fighter plane makes the immoral moral. It soars above good and evil, a celestial goddess with an insatiable thirst for sacrificial tribute. The pilot does not see the blood; he doesn’t see the bayonet or the bullet piercing through the body of the victim. He does not get dirty because he does not have to crawl. Or see the eyes of his victims. Nor does he break the commandment thou shalt not kill. All he does is press a button from a long way away.</p>
<p>All the victims hear is the screech of the oncoming missile. Then the world shakes around them and they topple over, without so much as swaying. Perhaps they feel excruciating pain before passing into nothingness. All people are helpless before the fighter planes; no father or mother can protect their child. Children are torn to pieces, or buried beneath the rubble of buildings that collapse with an echoing groan that blends with the sound of limbs being torn. Stones, planks of wood, shreds of steel crash into human bone and pulverise skulls — all in the twinkling of an eye.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, from up there in the pilot’s seat, all that can be seen are a plume of smoke and a cloud of dust. “Mission accomplished,” radios the pilot to the base, as he executes a neat turn overhead in skies beyond the sea of morals. Then he lands, jumps out of the plane and heads to the barracks, helmet tucked under his arm like a motorcyclist. He goes for coffee in the cafeteria, exchanges jokes with his fellow pilots, with the female staff on the base, and with the mechanics who will be getting his plane ready for another sortie of death. Then he heads home. On his way he listens to some music, clowns around with some children and, maybe, engages in a conversation about politics. He might be earnest, or indifferent or incensed. He could be a leftist or a rightist, in support of gay rights or against them, a self- acclaimed dove or a rabid hawk. But these are not the criteria that qualified him to push the button. All such thoughts and criteria fade i! nto meaninglessness in the religion of the fighter bomber.</p>
<p>The peoples of the world are divided into the haves and have-nots of F-15s and F-16s.</p>
<p>The haves are divided into countries that own these planes and countries that are possessed by them. The Arabs are divided not only into the have-nots, but those who don’t have and yet have made the planes into golden cows.</p>
<p>These fighter planes are omnipresent. They can be visible or invisible. But there is no escaping their venom, nowhere to hide from their missiles. The planes remain in the air but their missiles will swoop down on the passengers of a fleeing car, a bus, an ambulance, and they will bore through the ceilings of bunkers and shelters until they reach the tender bodies within. Human flesh stands no chance against a missile flying toward it from a fighter plane. The body stands naked before the goddess who roams the heavens as edifices of stone and reinforced cement crumble before her.</p>
<p>The planes wreak massive destruction, but they cannot resolve the battle against those who have right on their side. To do that the goddess’s followers have to fight a ground war. But once the inhabitants of that civilisation start fighting on the ground, they start to die and begin to cry. This phenomenon has given rise to a curious belief, which is that while their soldiers have the right to kill, others do not have the right to kill their soldiers, even in war. This is why when one of their soldiers is struck they are overcome by shock and why when their armies suffer a defeat at the hands of the forces of the weak and oppressed they take it as an affront to the prestige of their army and their military superiority. At such a point Israel stealthily withdraws the ground forces and unleashes the F-16s to bomb “terrorist” locations, be they homes or villages. It is a cowardly and vindictive way to behave, open to those who possess an air force which en! able them to become arrogant airborne tyrants. On the ground they are human beings like everyone else: fragile and brittle. But in the air, with the protection of their goddess, they can stomp around, invisible to the naked eye but certain to make their thunder heard as they pass overhead, taking full advantage of the fragility of those who are left on the ground without planes, and even those who have taken refuge in the holes in the ground. They avenge themselves not just because they have the will to do so — they hold no monopoly on will — but because their goddess makes it possible for them to do so.</p>
<p>And the Lord said unto Joshua:</p>
<p>“See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.</p>
<p>“And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days.</p>
<p>“And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns. And the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets…”</p>
<p>…[A]nd it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.</p>
<p>And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword…</p>
<p>And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein. Only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.</p>
<p>And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.</p>
<p>(Joshua 6)</p>
<p>It is destructive power that fills them with pride … the sort that comes before the fall. The death of a child, two children, three; the death of a woman or two; the destruction of an ambulance — when does brute force against innocent people become unacceptable? Thirty children? Fifty? In front of the cameras? How many when there are no cameras at hand? At what point do the scales tip? Cameras, incidentally, do not transmit the putrid odor of bodies crushed beneath the rubble.</p>
<p>It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the cup slips out of the hand of an Arab or western official as he stares at the television screen. Which image of dying children got through to him? Did his mouth drop agape as his cup crashed to the floor? Did he choke on the food he was eating? Does he think that he should have listened to his aides sooner and called for an immediate ceasefire? Does he groan at the horror of the crimes committed by Israel or slump in despair at Israel’s folly in forfeiting yet another opportunity?</p>
<p>Israel was built on targeting civilians. In 1948 it targeted them in order to displace them and usurp their land. It targeted entire villages that it alleged were fedayeen — resistance fighter — bases. The “strategy” was founded upon two tenets: the need to deter civilians from supporting the resistance, which is to say to repress the expression of any political or social position, and the need to feed and quench the Israeli thirst for revenge. This two- pronged military creed was epitomised by Unit 101, led by Ariel Sharon in the early 1950s. It raided villages, blew up houses and slaughtered the residents. Among the most notorious fruits of this philosophy were the massacres of Qubya, Nahalin and Al-Bureij in the fifties, and the massacres of Jabalya, Beit Hanoun, Al-Shajaiya, Qasba in Nablus and Jenin in more recent times. To perform these deeds Israel needed butchers, though it called them “legendary warriors”. It was a hands-on approach. It did n! ot involve F-16s. With these all that are needed are spoiled youths of the appropriate religious affiliation and with their hearts set on an American consumerist lifestyle.</p>
<p>Israel is deliberately targeting civilians in Lebanon, capitalising on an expedient moment. Its aims are to punish anyone who might have supported the resistance, to displace civilians northward in order to aggravate sectarian tensions in the country and to quench its barbaric thirst for revenge. The current attack, in all its ferocity and with its toll of innocent victims, was planned well in advance, with malice aforethought. Israel is a terrorist state. The diabolical logic of this state is actively supported by another terrorist state led by George Bush, a very dangerous, pathologically violent and sadistic man surrounded by a gang of cool and calculating Machiavellians and apologists for state terrorism. They ardently believe that civilians who don’t own fighter planes are so far down the rungs of the ladder in the survival of the fittest that if they die well that’s their own fault, a result of their own lack of realism.</p>
<p>This logic has one flaw that makes it unpardonable, a curse that will haunt that civilization, a permanent indictment of its control of the skies: how can children be expected to be “realistic”? How can anyone blame them for their own death?</p>
<p>It is wrong to sing the praises of dead children as if they were heroes, a disgrace to put their bodies on display. These children were not warriors. They were not in the resistance. They did not die in order to achieve a victory for others who didn’t die and who hadn’t put their lives on the line. These children died because they couldn’t escape in time or manage to hide from the planes. They are the victims of the criminally barbaric civilization of fighter planes. Their murderers must be brought to account and the resistance against the aggression must be sustained.</p>
<p>AZMI BISHARA writes for Al-Ahram, where this essay originally appeared.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | true | 4 | fighter plane quintessence modern civilisation modern goddess product collective input sciences neutralisation morals values converge laser microoptics microelectronics hightech aerodynamics allowing precision flying hairline fine guidance deadon targeting surgical destruction hygienic ultraprecise factories hangars assembly plants tall spacious cathedrals planes manufactured industrially developed states assembled huge corporations whose employees inhabit equalityoriented societies receive high salaries piloted highly qualified individuals simultaneously product absolute individualism institutionalised collective labour employees contribute manufacture embody societies achieved much elite cut rest chosen ones new aryan race goddess consumerist society builtin obsolescence new plane produced every two three years order keep demand incorporating latest technological developments scientific discoveries order preserve superiority gods people fighter plane makes immoral moral soars good evil celestial goddess insatiable thirst sacrificial tribute pilot see blood doesnt see bayonet bullet piercing body victim get dirty crawl see eyes victims break commandment thou shalt kill press button long way away victims hear screech oncoming missile world shakes around topple without much swaying perhaps feel excruciating pain passing nothingness people helpless fighter planes father mother protect child children torn pieces buried beneath rubble buildings collapse echoing groan blends sound limbs torn stones planks wood shreds steel crash human bone pulverise skulls twinkling eye meanwhile pilots seat seen plume smoke cloud dust mission accomplished radios pilot base executes neat turn overhead skies beyond sea morals lands jumps plane heads barracks helmet tucked arm like motorcyclist goes coffee cafeteria exchanges jokes fellow pilots female staff base mechanics getting plane ready another sortie death heads home way listens music clowns around children maybe engages conversation politics might earnest indifferent incensed could leftist rightist support gay rights self acclaimed dove rabid hawk criteria qualified push button thoughts criteria fade nto meaninglessness religion fighter bomber peoples world divided haves havenots f15s f16s haves divided countries planes countries possessed arabs divided havenots dont yet made planes golden cows fighter planes omnipresent visible invisible escaping venom nowhere hide missiles planes remain air missiles swoop passengers fleeing car bus ambulance bore ceilings bunkers shelters reach tender bodies within human flesh stands chance missile flying toward fighter plane body stands naked goddess roams heavens edifices stone reinforced cement crumble planes wreak massive destruction resolve battle right side goddesss followers fight ground war inhabitants civilisation start fighting ground start die begin cry phenomenon given rise curious belief soldiers right kill others right kill soldiers even war one soldiers struck overcome shock armies suffer defeat hands forces weak oppressed take affront prestige army military superiority point israel stealthily withdraws ground forces unleashes f16s bomb terrorist locations homes villages cowardly vindictive way behave open possess air force en able become arrogant airborne tyrants ground human beings like everyone else fragile brittle air protection goddess stomp around invisible naked eye certain make thunder heard pass overhead taking full advantage fragility left ground without planes even taken refuge holes ground avenge hold monopoly goddess makes possible lord said unto joshua see given thine hand jericho king thereof mighty men valour ye shall compass city ye men war go round city thus shalt thou six days seven priests shall bear ark seven trumpets rams horns seventh day ye shall compass city seven times priests shall blow trumpets came pass people heard sound trumpet people shouted great shout wall fell flat people went city every man straight took city utterly destroyed city man woman young old ox sheep ass edge sword burnt city fire therein silver gold vessels brass iron put treasury house lord joshua saved rahab harlot alive fathers household dwelleth israel even unto day hid messengers joshua sent spy jericho joshua 6 destructive power fills pride sort comes fall death child two children three death woman two destruction ambulance brute force innocent people become unacceptable thirty children fifty front cameras many cameras hand point scales tip cameras incidentally transmit putrid odor bodies crushed beneath rubble difficult pinpoint exactly cup slips hand arab western official stares television screen image dying children got mouth drop agape cup crashed floor choke food eating think listened aides sooner called immediate ceasefire groan horror crimes committed israel slump despair israels folly forfeiting yet another opportunity israel built targeting civilians 1948 targeted order displace usurp land targeted entire villages alleged fedayeen resistance fighter bases strategy founded upon two tenets need deter civilians supporting resistance say repress expression political social position need feed quench israeli thirst revenge two pronged military creed epitomised unit 101 led ariel sharon early 1950s raided villages blew houses slaughtered residents among notorious fruits philosophy massacres qubya nahalin albureij fifties massacres jabalya beit hanoun alshajaiya qasba nablus jenin recent times perform deeds israel needed butchers though called legendary warriors handson approach n ot involve f16s needed spoiled youths appropriate religious affiliation hearts set american consumerist lifestyle israel deliberately targeting civilians lebanon capitalising expedient moment aims punish anyone might supported resistance displace civilians northward order aggravate sectarian tensions country quench barbaric thirst revenge current attack ferocity toll innocent victims planned well advance malice aforethought israel terrorist state diabolical logic state actively supported another terrorist state led george bush dangerous pathologically violent sadistic man surrounded gang cool calculating machiavellians apologists state terrorism ardently believe civilians dont fighter planes far rungs ladder survival fittest die well thats fault result lack realism logic one flaw makes unpardonable curse haunt civilization permanent indictment control skies children expected realistic anyone blame death wrong sing praises dead children heroes disgrace put bodies display children warriors resistance die order achieve victory others didnt die hadnt put lives line children died couldnt escape time manage hide planes victims criminally barbaric civilization fighter planes murderers must brought account resistance aggression must sustained azmi bishara writes alahram essay originally appeared 160 160 | 940 |
<p />
<p>This post originally ran on <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2015/03/netanyahus-interference-talks.html" type="external">Juan Cole’s website</a>.</p>
<p>As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu makes a bid to thwart President Barack Obama’s foreign policy toward Iran, the Iranian press is reacting to the wrench Netanyahu is trying to throw into negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program. For some odd reason, US mass media are almost never interested in what critics of the US are saying; it is almost as if there is an unwritten rule of American journalism that you don’t allow the ‘enemy’ to have a voice. But I don’t think good journalism on the Iran negotiations can be done if one is only quoting the American side. Iranians, of course, like Americans, are divided on the nuclear negotiations:</p>
<p>Reformers and moderates remain hopeful that Obama will prevail against the far right wing Israeli Likud Party and what Iranians call “extremists” in the US Congress. (It should be a wake-up call for US congressmen when Iranians think they are the extremists).</p>
<p />
<p>The hard liners in Iran don’t care, since they do not believe that Obama is negotiating in good faith to begin with. They point out that the US sanctions on Iran are arbitrary and by fiat, and have no basis in international law, and that Iran is being made to bend over backwards to please Washington just to get back to a normal situation. That is, they don’t think Iran is really gaining anything here. Indeed, some want reparations for the damage the US has done the Iranian economy.</p>
<p>According to BBC Monitoring, Piruz Mujtahidzadeh wrote in the moderate newspaper <a href="http://tinyurl.com/o9ryqjc" type="external">Iran,</a> “The USA and Tel Aviv have strategic relations, and they will not change regardless of any disagreement that may at some points occur between the two sides. Defending Israel’s security and ensuring its survival were an essential principle for the US presidents. The different views that the Obama and Netanyahu have regarding Iran dominate the two countries’ current relations. Despite Netanyahu’s opposition [to Iran’s nuclear deal] … Obama intends to solve Iran’s nuclear programme in the final years of his tenure. Therefore, he will strongly stand against the Congress’s extremist currents who have close ties with Tel Aviv. Hence, Israel’s destructive efforts against Iran will have no impact on the White House’s policy whatsoever.”</p>
<p>Mujtahidzadeh, then, believes that Obama really wants the agreement with Iran as part of his presidential legacy, and that he will find a way to sideline Netanyahu. But being realistic, he doesn’t expect the prime minister’s speech to do lasting damage to the US-Israel relationship.</p>
<p>BBCM writes that Hamed Hoshangi of the reformist <a href="http://tinyurl.com/nlbamal" type="external">I’temad</a> has been following the Obama administration’s hard ball with Netanyahu, translating his op ed: “In an unprecedented attack against the Israeli prime minister on Wednesday [25 February], US Secretary of State John Kerry said: We should not forget that Netanyahu encouraged the then President George Bush to attack Iraq in October 2002. … John Kerry is forced to attack Netanyahu directly amidst the Israeli prime minister’s opposition to Washington’s policy in the Middle East and his opposition to continuation of the [nuclear] talks with Iran given that the possibility of reaching an agreement over [Iran’s] nuclear dossier has entered a serious stage…. It seems that disagreements among a group of US Democrat politicians over Netanyahu’s intense involvement and his attempts to shape a policy for Washington have entered a new dimension, and the powerful Jewish lobby in the USA is facing serious problems with regard to support for Netanyahu.”</p>
<p>Hoshangi thinks that the Israel lobby (it isn’t properly called a Jewish lobby) may well end up being weakened within the Democratic Party by Netanyahu’s antics.</p>
<p>Hasan Hanizadeh of the reformist newspaper Arman wrote about Congressional sabotage of the talks, saying (BBC Monitoring):</p>
<p>“Disputes between the US Congress and White House will definitely affect nuclear talks. On the other hand, the Zionist regime’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly stated that this regime will never allow Iran and P5+1 to reach a comprehensive agreement, even if this results in Israeli-US confrontation. Although his remarks include aspects of election propaganda and are made for domestic use, they indicate that there is complete coordination between the Zionist regime and some extremist members of the US Congress … Barack Obama, who is in sharp disagreement with Netanyahu, is also trying to prevent [Israeli party] Likud’s victory through achieving a comprehensive agreement with Iran … If America does not meet its commitments against Iran by the 10th of month of Tir, 31 July, it will certainly be condemned by public opinion, because Iran has met all its commitments.”</p>
<p>Hanizadeh, then, sees a coordination between the far right in Israel and in the US. But he also seems to think that Obama is attempting to interfere in Israeli electoral politics by doing a deal with Iran that will weaken the extreme nationalist Likud Party of Netanyahu. He believes, in any case, that Iran has been entirely forthcoming in the negotiations, and if they do fail, people will blame Obama rather than Tehran.</p>
<p>Likewise, BBCM translates a report of the hard line <a href="http://tinyurl.com/nz8y45r%20" type="external">Risalat</a> that takes the talks seriously but does not think the Iranian side is asking for enough:</p>
<p>“What has not been considered in [nuclear] talks between Iran and P5+1 member states is the issue of the financial damage that they [the West] inflicted on Iranians and public funds. … Iran should come up with some serious financial issues and calculations [during the talks] and also ask the other side in the talks for compensation for the damage . . .”</p>
<p>In contrast, BBC Monitoring says, the conservative <a href="http://tinyurl.com/l7w899x%20" type="external">Hemayat</a> wrote yesterday that US sanctions will not be reduced under any circumstances, and that Washington is only pretending to negotiate:</p>
<p>“Sanctions are based and planned on the colonialist ideology and its total removal can only be expected if one of following two conditions is realized. First, Iran’s complete surrender to excessive demands of the enemy; second, the West’s total surrender to Iran! Since neither is possible, this friction is likely to continue. In other words, sanctions have not been imposed to remove them or discuss their abolition. The enemy’s rhetoric and promise on lifting sanctions are nothing but deception.”</p>
<p>Iranian commentary on this issue seems on the whole somewhat hopeful, and shows awareness of the fissures in Washington and the discomfort of many Democrats with the ways in which Netanyahu is attempting to undermine their party’s and their leader’s policies toward Iran. Some think the episode will change US relations with Israel, while others question whether that is really possible. They see the GOP obstructionists in league with Netanyahu as “extremists.”</p>
<p>Related video:</p>
<p><a href="http://youtu.be/M6uzsyyQl-w" type="external">WotchitGeneralNews: “Iran’s Zarif Says Netanyahu Trying to Undermine Nuclear Talks”</a></p>
<p /> | true | 4 | post originally ran juan coles website israeli prime minister binyamin netanyahu makes bid thwart president barack obamas foreign policy toward iran iranian press reacting wrench netanyahu trying throw negotiations irans civilian nuclear enrichment program odd reason us mass media almost never interested critics us saying almost unwritten rule american journalism dont allow enemy voice dont think good journalism iran negotiations done one quoting american side iranians course like americans divided nuclear negotiations reformers moderates remain hopeful obama prevail far right wing israeli likud party iranians call extremists us congress wakeup call us congressmen iranians think extremists hard liners iran dont care since believe obama negotiating good faith begin point us sanctions iran arbitrary fiat basis international law iran made bend backwards please washington get back normal situation dont think iran really gaining anything indeed want reparations damage us done iranian economy according bbc monitoring piruz mujtahidzadeh wrote moderate newspaper iran usa tel aviv strategic relations change regardless disagreement may points occur two sides defending israels security ensuring survival essential principle us presidents different views obama netanyahu regarding iran dominate two countries current relations despite netanyahus opposition irans nuclear deal obama intends solve irans nuclear programme final years tenure therefore strongly stand congresss extremist currents close ties tel aviv hence israels destructive efforts iran impact white houses policy whatsoever mujtahidzadeh believes obama really wants agreement iran part presidential legacy find way sideline netanyahu realistic doesnt expect prime ministers speech lasting damage usisrael relationship bbcm writes hamed hoshangi reformist itemad following obama administrations hard ball netanyahu translating op ed unprecedented attack israeli prime minister wednesday 25 february us secretary state john kerry said forget netanyahu encouraged president george bush attack iraq october 2002 john kerry forced attack netanyahu directly amidst israeli prime ministers opposition washingtons policy middle east opposition continuation nuclear talks iran given possibility reaching agreement irans nuclear dossier entered serious stage seems disagreements among group us democrat politicians netanyahus intense involvement attempts shape policy washington entered new dimension powerful jewish lobby usa facing serious problems regard support netanyahu hoshangi thinks israel lobby isnt properly called jewish lobby may well end weakened within democratic party netanyahus antics hasan hanizadeh reformist newspaper arman wrote congressional sabotage talks saying bbc monitoring disputes us congress white house definitely affect nuclear talks hand zionist regimes prime minister benjamin netanyahu explicitly stated regime never allow iran p51 reach comprehensive agreement even results israelius confrontation although remarks include aspects election propaganda made domestic use indicate complete coordination zionist regime extremist members us congress barack obama sharp disagreement netanyahu also trying prevent israeli party likuds victory achieving comprehensive agreement iran america meet commitments iran 10th month tir 31 july certainly condemned public opinion iran met commitments hanizadeh sees coordination far right israel us also seems think obama attempting interfere israeli electoral politics deal iran weaken extreme nationalist likud party netanyahu believes case iran entirely forthcoming negotiations fail people blame obama rather tehran likewise bbcm translates report hard line risalat takes talks seriously think iranian side asking enough considered nuclear talks iran p51 member states issue financial damage west inflicted iranians public funds iran come serious financial issues calculations talks also ask side talks compensation damage contrast bbc monitoring says conservative hemayat wrote yesterday us sanctions reduced circumstances washington pretending negotiate sanctions based planned colonialist ideology total removal expected one following two conditions realized first irans complete surrender excessive demands enemy second wests total surrender iran since neither possible friction likely continue words sanctions imposed remove discuss abolition enemys rhetoric promise lifting sanctions nothing deception iranian commentary issue seems whole somewhat hopeful shows awareness fissures washington discomfort many democrats ways netanyahu attempting undermine partys leaders policies toward iran think episode change us relations israel others question whether really possible see gop obstructionists league netanyahu extremists related video wotchitgeneralnews irans zarif says netanyahu trying undermine nuclear talks | 637 |
<p>In August 2010, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah presented “intercepted Israeli reconnaissance footage” and “the recorded confessions of Israeli spies” at news conference in Beirut to support his claim that Israel was responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. The aerial footage, taken by Israeli unmanned drones, showed the same route taken by Hariri’s motorcade on the day of the assassination, suggesting that the ex-PM was being pursued.</p>
<p>Nasrallah’s revelations were compelling but, unfortunately, they were ignored by the western media except for the Christian Scientist Monitor which compiled the information in an article titled “Is Hezbollah right that Israel assassinated Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri?”</p>
<p>Here’s an excerpt from the CSM:</p>
<p>“Israel has the capability to carry out this type of operation, such as Hariri’s assassination and the other assassinations that targeted Lebanon during the past few years,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, adding that Israel’s motive was to cast the blame on its enemies, Syria and Hezbollah. (“Is Hezbollah right that Israel assassinated Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri?”, Christian Scientist Monitor)</p>
<p>Nasrallah’s damning evidence is especially important now that the prosecutor for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has issued his draft indictments. (On Monday) For now, the contents are being kept secret, but it’s widely expected that members of Hezbollah will be charged in Hariri’s murder. Nasrallah has warned that he won’t allow members of his militia to be arrested, so if warrants are issued, fighting will surely break out. Already, many schools in Beirut have been closed and Lebanese security forces have been put on high alert.</p>
<p>At the same time, the Obama administration has been working behind the scenes to influence key members in Lebanon’s government to support the US-Israeli position. In fact, Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry summoned US Ambassador Maura Connelly to explain why she had met with Lebanese lawmaker Nicolas Fattouch over the weekend. It appears as though the US is meddling in the country’s internal affairs in an effort to discredit Hezbollah. Connelly has not yet explained what she was up to.</p>
<p>The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is supposed to be an “independent” investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Nasrallah has dismissed the STL as an “American and Israeli project” designed to label Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. The STL has culled all information that does not comply with its primary objectives. Thus, the fact that more than 100 people in Lebanon have been arrested in the last year “on charges of collaborating with the Mossad… including one who said his Israeli handlers instructed him to delude the late prime minister into thinking Hezbollah was out to kill him (Hariri) and so allow the agent to alter the route Hariri’s motorcade would take that fateful February day”, or that Lebanon’s “telecommunications network had been infiltrated by Israel, compromising all its communications” (“The Hariri Assassination: All Eyes on Lebanon”, Ranni Amiri, CounterPunch) will undoubtedly be omitted from the investigation’s final report.</p>
<p>Here’s more from Ranni Amiri’s article:</p>
<p>“According to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, Qazzi confessed to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters. These could then be used by Israeli intelligence to monitor communications, locate and target individuals for assassination, and potentially deploy viruses capable of erasing recorded information in the contact lines. Qazzi’s collaboration with Israel reportedly dates back 14 years. (Note–Charbel Qazzi was head of transmission and broadcasting at Alfa, one of Lebanon ‘s two state-owned mobile service providers.” (“The Hariri Assassination: The Role Of Israel?” Rannie Amiri, CounterPunch)</p>
<p>So, the question arises: Who had the communications systems, aerial drones and explosives capable of killing Hariri? Who knew the route of his motorcade? Who had the motive?</p>
<p>And why is Israel’s chief of staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi, making predictions that the political situation in Lebanon will progressively deteriorate following the STL’s indictments? Here’s a clip from the political theatrics website:</p>
<p>“The Israeli Chief of Staff told the Knesset’s Foreign Committee that “with lots of wishes and a little bit of information” the situation in Lebanon will probably deteriorate following the issuance of an indictment by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)…</p>
<p>Although the date of issuing the indictment has not been set yet, Ashkenazi predicted it will be in September and insinuated that it will implicate Hezbollah. The Israeli general’s comments were seen as momentous particularly that he made them in front of a committee involved in Israel’s strategic policies.” (“Merlin” Ashkenazi Wishfully Predicts Deterioration In Lebanon In September”, politicaltheatrics.net)</p>
<p>So, why is Ashkenazi speculating on the STL indictments way back in July 2010, and why would he bring it up at a meeting devoted to “Israel’s strategic policies”? Does this explain why there are reports of increased military activity on Israel’s northern border? Is there a broader strategy to use the indictments to resume hostilities between Israel and Lebanon?</p>
<p>And why is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton so deeply involved in the activities of a so called “independent” tribunal? Clinton put the kibosh on a Syria-Saudi team that was trying to find a resolution between the rival factions in Lebanon’s ruling body. Why? And why did she preemptively torpedo the S-S negotiations and tell “Saudi King Abdullah and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri that the U.S. would reject any settlement at the expense of the UN tribunal.” Saad Hariri has reluctantly acquiesced to Clinton’s demands, but what does that mean? Should we assume that Clinton cares more about finding out who killed Rafik Hariri than his own son?</p>
<p>The loose ends and unanswered questions abound. The case that’s being made by the STL may seem convincing, but there is an equally cogent narrative that supports Hezbollah’s position. Here’s how British politician George Galloway summed it up in a speech in Edmonton in November 2010:</p>
<p>“I believe, and I don’t know anybody who is objective in this matter who does not believe, that Hezbollah are absolutely innocent of this crime, and it is time that the tribunal looked to the people who benefited from this crime…..in Israel.</p>
<p>“Any law student here knows, the first thing you do when confronted with a crime is ask the question, cui bono, who benefited?</p>
<p>“Did Syria benefit from the killing of the Sunni leader in Lebanon? Syria lost everything.</p>
<p>“Did Hezbollah benefit? Would Hezbollah benefit from destroying forever the respect and admiration that the Sunni Muslim population, not just in Lebanon but throughout the Arab and Muslim world, had towards them? No! They would lose everything.</p>
<p>“But Israel gained everything from this crime. It deepened the schism between Sunni and Shia in Lebanon. It deepened the schism between Sunni and Shia throughout the Muslim world. They plunged Lebanon into absolute chaos, and may do so again in the next few days and months.</p>
<p>“If this tribunal issues this indictment and anyone seeks to implement it, there will be war in Lebanon and there will be war almost certainly between Israel and Lebanon, and all of us will be dragged into it one way or another.” (“Galloway unedited: ‘Special Tribunal for Lebanon’ should have asked ‘who benefited?'”, rabble.ca)</p>
<p>Is that the goal, another war in Lebanon to create the “New Middle East” that Bush and Condi used to opine about? It’s too soon to say, but it’s not looking good.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY can be reached at: <a href="mailto:fergiewhitney@msn.com" type="external">fergiewhitney@msn.com</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | august 2010 hezbollah secretary general hassan nasrallah presented intercepted israeli reconnaissance footage recorded confessions israeli spies news conference beirut support claim israel responsible assassination former lebanese prime minister rafik hariri aerial footage taken israeli unmanned drones showed route taken hariris motorcade day assassination suggesting expm pursued nasrallahs revelations compelling unfortunately ignored western media except christian scientist monitor compiled information article titled hezbollah right israel assassinated lebanons rafik hariri heres excerpt csm israel capability carry type operation hariris assassination assassinations targeted lebanon past years said sheikh hassan nasrallah adding israels motive cast blame enemies syria hezbollah hezbollah right israel assassinated lebanons rafik hariri christian scientist monitor nasrallahs damning evidence especially important prosecutor special tribunal lebanon stl issued draft indictments monday contents kept secret widely expected members hezbollah charged hariris murder nasrallah warned wont allow members militia arrested warrants issued fighting surely break already many schools beirut closed lebanese security forces put high alert time obama administration working behind scenes influence key members lebanons government support usisraeli position fact lebanons foreign ministry summoned us ambassador maura connelly explain met lebanese lawmaker nicolas fattouch weekend appears though us meddling countrys internal affairs effort discredit hezbollah connelly yet explained special tribunal lebanon supposed independent investigation assassination rafik hariri doesnt seem case nasrallah dismissed stl american israeli project designed label hezbollah terrorist organisation stl culled information comply primary objectives thus fact 100 people lebanon arrested last year charges collaborating mossad including one said israeli handlers instructed delude late prime minister thinking hezbollah kill hariri allow agent alter route hariris motorcade would take fateful february day lebanons telecommunications network infiltrated israel compromising communications hariri assassination eyes lebanon ranni amiri counterpunch undoubtedly omitted investigations final report heres ranni amiris article according lebanese daily assafir qazzi confessed installing computer programs planting electronic chips alfa transmitters could used israeli intelligence monitor communications locate target individuals assassination potentially deploy viruses capable erasing recorded information contact lines qazzis collaboration israel reportedly dates back 14 years notecharbel qazzi head transmission broadcasting alfa one lebanon two stateowned mobile service providers hariri assassination role israel rannie amiri counterpunch question arises communications systems aerial drones explosives capable killing hariri knew route motorcade motive israels chief staff general gabi ashkenazi making predictions political situation lebanon progressively deteriorate following stls indictments heres clip political theatrics website israeli chief staff told knessets foreign committee lots wishes little bit information situation lebanon probably deteriorate following issuance indictment special tribunal lebanon stl although date issuing indictment set yet ashkenazi predicted september insinuated implicate hezbollah israeli generals comments seen momentous particularly made front committee involved israels strategic policies merlin ashkenazi wishfully predicts deterioration lebanon september politicaltheatricsnet ashkenazi speculating stl indictments way back july 2010 would bring meeting devoted israels strategic policies explain reports increased military activity israels northern border broader strategy use indictments resume hostilities israel lebanon secretary state hillary clinton deeply involved activities called independent tribunal clinton put kibosh syriasaudi team trying find resolution rival factions lebanons ruling body preemptively torpedo ss negotiations tell saudi king abdullah lebanese prime minister saad hariri us would reject settlement expense un tribunal saad hariri reluctantly acquiesced clintons demands mean assume clinton cares finding killed rafik hariri son loose ends unanswered questions abound case thats made stl may seem convincing equally cogent narrative supports hezbollahs position heres british politician george galloway summed speech edmonton november 2010 believe dont know anybody objective matter believe hezbollah absolutely innocent crime time tribunal looked people benefited crimein israel law student knows first thing confronted crime ask question cui bono benefited syria benefit killing sunni leader lebanon syria lost everything hezbollah benefit would hezbollah benefit destroying forever respect admiration sunni muslim population lebanon throughout arab muslim world towards would lose everything israel gained everything crime deepened schism sunni shia lebanon deepened schism sunni shia throughout muslim world plunged lebanon absolute chaos may next days months tribunal issues indictment anyone seeks implement war lebanon war almost certainly israel lebanon us dragged one way another galloway unedited special tribunal lebanon asked benefited rabbleca goal another war lebanon create new middle east bush condi used opine soon say looking good mike whitney reached fergiewhitneymsncom 160 | 683 |
<p>Danny Johnston/AP</p>
<p />
<p>Jeremy Bird guided Barack Obama to victory in&#160;Ohio in 2008, a year, Bird recalls, when “we didn’t see lines and barriers and obstacles” to the ballot box that&#160;had <a href="http://www.salon.com/2006/06/03/kennedy_39/" type="external">so badly marred</a> Ohio’s previous presidential election. But as Obama’s national field director in 2012, Bird watched Ohio with dismay. Voting in Ohio had gotten harder—lines were longer, early voting days pared back, evening hours restricted—but no laws had changed since 2008. So what had happened? Bird says he knows the culprit: Republican Jon Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state. As the state’s chief election officer, Husted has considerable latitude to shape election rules and expand—or limit—access to the ballot box.</p>
<p>On Election Day this year, Bird is again watching secretaries of state. This time around, Bird is the head of <a href="http://www.ivoteforamerica.org" type="external">iVote</a>, a group that is targeting secretary of state races in four key battleground states—Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and Ohio. And with good reason: The results of these four races will have serious consequences for voting rights, and they might even help determine the winner of the 2016 presidential campaign.</p>
<p>Each of the four races iVote is targeting, Bird says, features a Democratic candidate seeking to expand voting rights and a Republican pledging—directly or indirectly—to do the opposite. Bird’s group is spending more than $1.25 million on TV advertisements alone, in addition to online ads, grassroots organizing, and direct contributions to&#160;candidates where possible under state law.</p>
<p>Perhaps the Democrats’&#160;best shot at winning a key secretary of state race is in Nevada. There’s no daylight in the polls between Democratic state Treasurer Kate Marshall and Republican state Sen. Barbara Cegavske, but there is <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/oct/10/q-voters-guide-nevada-secretary-state-campaign/" type="external">plenty of space</a> between their positions. Marshall backs same-day voter registration and greater transparency in political spending in state races. Cegavske, for her part, opposes those ideas and instead wants a new voter ID law. In 2011, Cegavske joined several other Nevada lawmakers in <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/aug/10/secretary-state-nonpartisan-position-race-it-not/" type="external">proposing</a> a bill eliminating early voting, and she has voted against new campaign finance measures to beef up disclosure of money in politics.</p>
<p>In Colorado, outgoing Secretary of State Scott Gessler has probably garnered more headlines than his five predecessors combined—and not for reasons that a Democrat like Bird would appreciate. Gessler offered to raise money to help pay off fines incurred by the Larimer County Republican Party for not submitting required campaign finance filings. The problem: Gessler’s office issued the fine. (He backed down the fundraising appearance.) A judge struck down Gessler’s directive to county clerks to stop sending 2012 ballots to so-called inactive voters—namely, people who hadn’t voted in the 2010 elections, which included troops stationed overseas. And in 2011, Gessler <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/153079-gop-says-5000-non-citizens-voting-in-colorado-a-wake-up-call-for-states" type="external">claimed</a> that 5,000 “noncitizens” had voted in the 2010 elections. Colorado officials <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/colorado-voter-purge-list_n_1841731.html" type="external">later vetted 1,400 of those names</a> and found that 1,200 of those people were in fact eligible voters. ( <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/zero-prosecutions-of-scot_n_4303289.html" type="external">No prosecutions</a> resulted from Gessler’s allegation.)</p>
<p>The race to replace Gessler is close. Democrats are abuzz over the candidacy of Joe Neguse, a rising political star and the son of Eritrean immigrants, who has billed himself as the anti-Gessler. “I’m the guy running to clean up Scott Gessler’s mess,” he <a href="http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2014/04/10/joe-neguse-colorado-secretary-of-state/108027/" type="external">said</a> in announcing his candidacy. But Neguse trails Republican Wayne Williams by single digits in polls. Williams, meanwhile, <a href="http://www.cpr.org/news/story/colorado-secretary-state-race-neguse-schambach-and-williams-issues" type="external">supports</a> the type of voter ID law implemented by conservatives nationwide. Despite efforts by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Democratic-controlled state Legislature to expand voting rights with universal mail-in voting and same-day registration, a Republican secretary of state could throw a wrench in Colorado’s voting system come 2016.</p>
<p>In Iowa, the race between Democrat Brad Anderson and Republican Paul Pate is <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2014/11/01/iowa-poll-big-branstad-lead/18345321/" type="external">a dead heat</a>. Anderson, who managed Obama’s Iowa campaign in 2012, <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/2014/10/14/brad-anderson-secretary-of-state-paul-pate-jason-kander-mark-ritchie/17251733/" type="external">has called</a> for mail-in voting, <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx#no_excuse" type="external">no-excuse absentee voting</a>, and online voter registration. Pate, Anderson’s opponent, toes the GOP line in supporting a voter ID law, a divisive measure that Republicans say protects the integrity of elections and that Democrats say aims to disenfranchise college students and minorities.</p>
<p>Ohio’s secretary of state race is likely to be Democrats’ biggest disappointment of the four campaigns. The Democratic candidate, state Sen. Nina Turner, is probably the best known of the four iVote-backed candidates: She’s a fixture on MSNBC, which <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/30-30-women-candidates-watch-2014-nina-turner" type="external">named her</a> one of its “Women Candidates to Watch in 2014,” and her supporters include <a href="http://www.ninaturner.org/content/emilys-list-endorses-ohio-democrats-2014" type="external">EMILY’s List</a>, <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/06/nina_turner_lands_endorsement.html" type="external">Howard Dean</a>, and talk-show host <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/10/jerry_springer_to_stump_for_ni.html" type="external">Jerry Springer</a>. (At a recent debate in Columbus, Turner quoted Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Justin Timberlake—she said she wanted to “bring sexy back” to voting.)</p>
<p>For long stretches, Turner was <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/08/ohio-republicans-fall-behind-in-hypothetical-ballot.html" type="external">neck and neck</a> in the polls with Republican Jon Husted, whose restrictions on Ohio voting rights have enraged state and national Democrats. But Democratic gubernatorial candidate <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/26/the-remarkable-implosion-of-ed-fitzgerald/" type="external">Ed FitzGerald’s implosion</a> has dragged down the rest of the party’s ticket, and in its final 2014 poll, the <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/11/02/1-gop-candidates-appear-to-be-locks.html" type="external">Columbus Dispatch</a> showed Turner trailing by 21 percentage points.</p>
<p>To hear Jeremy Bird tell it, the consequences of these four secretary of state races could mean the difference between smooth, snafu-free elections in November 2016 and the type of debacles seen in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. iVote, Bird says, is a way of taking the fight to the “voter fraud” crowd seeking to limit the vote. “We need to be on the offensive with voting rights,” he says. “We’ve relied on the courts for too long.”</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | danny johnstonap jeremy bird guided barack obama victory in160ohio 2008 year bird recalls didnt see lines barriers obstacles ballot box that160had badly marred ohios previous presidential election obamas national field director 2012 bird watched ohio dismay voting ohio gotten harderlines longer early voting days pared back evening hours restrictedbut laws changed since 2008 happened bird says knows culprit republican jon husted ohios secretary state states chief election officer husted considerable latitude shape election rules expandor limitaccess ballot box election day year bird watching secretaries state time around bird head ivote group targeting secretary state races four key battleground statescolorado iowa nevada ohio good reason results four races serious consequences voting rights might even help determine winner 2016 presidential campaign four races ivote targeting bird says features democratic candidate seeking expand voting rights republican pledgingdirectly indirectlyto opposite birds group spending 125 million tv advertisements alone addition online ads grassroots organizing direct contributions to160candidates possible state law perhaps democrats160best shot winning key secretary state race nevada theres daylight polls democratic state treasurer kate marshall republican state sen barbara cegavske plenty space positions marshall backs sameday voter registration greater transparency political spending state races cegavske part opposes ideas instead wants new voter id law 2011 cegavske joined several nevada lawmakers proposing bill eliminating early voting voted new campaign finance measures beef disclosure money politics colorado outgoing secretary state scott gessler probably garnered headlines five predecessors combinedand reasons democrat like bird would appreciate gessler offered raise money help pay fines incurred larimer county republican party submitting required campaign finance filings problem gesslers office issued fine backed fundraising appearance judge struck gesslers directive county clerks stop sending 2012 ballots socalled inactive votersnamely people hadnt voted 2010 elections included troops stationed overseas 2011 gessler claimed 5000 noncitizens voted 2010 elections colorado officials later vetted 1400 names found 1200 people fact eligible voters prosecutions resulted gesslers allegation race replace gessler close democrats abuzz candidacy joe neguse rising political star son eritrean immigrants billed antigessler im guy running clean scott gesslers mess said announcing candidacy neguse trails republican wayne williams single digits polls williams meanwhile supports type voter id law implemented conservatives nationwide despite efforts democratic gov john hickenlooper democraticcontrolled state legislature expand voting rights universal mailin voting sameday registration republican secretary state could throw wrench colorados voting system come 2016 iowa race democrat brad anderson republican paul pate dead heat anderson managed obamas iowa campaign 2012 called mailin voting noexcuse absentee voting online voter registration pate andersons opponent toes gop line supporting voter id law divisive measure republicans say protects integrity elections democrats say aims disenfranchise college students minorities ohios secretary state race likely democrats biggest disappointment four campaigns democratic candidate state sen nina turner probably best known four ivotebacked candidates shes fixture msnbc named one women candidates watch 2014 supporters include emilys list howard dean talkshow host jerry springer recent debate columbus turner quoted lyndon johnson martin luther king jr justin timberlakeshe said wanted bring sexy back voting long stretches turner neck neck polls republican jon husted whose restrictions ohio voting rights enraged state national democrats democratic gubernatorial candidate ed fitzgeralds implosion dragged rest partys ticket final 2014 poll columbus dispatch showed turner trailing 21 percentage points hear jeremy bird tell consequences four secretary state races could mean difference smooth snafufree elections november 2016 type debacles seen florida 2000 ohio 2004 ivote bird says way taking fight voter fraud crowd seeking limit vote need offensive voting rights says weve relied courts long | 576 |
<p>“Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America”</p>
<p>A book by David M. Kennedy</p>
<p>Few white Americans are aware how racially segregated our society remains in the 21st century, yet the gaping divide becomes immediately apparent to anyone who gets behind prison walls. It is still a shock to me, even after years of driving the same route, to turn off the rural road lined with the homes of mostly white families onto the grounds of the prison in which I teach, where barbed-wire fences enclose a sea of dark faces. Inside the prison, instructors waiting for permission to proceed to classrooms watch inmates file past the grille gate like the sequential images of a filmstrip. Most are urban gang members convicted of gun violence and drug dealing. One by one, the tattooed, identically dressed young African-American men move silently along the hallway, staring straight ahead in compliance with prison rules.</p>
<p>As David M. Kennedy points out in his riveting new book, “Don’t Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America,” the rise of mass incarceration in the U.S. has added terribly to the devastation that guns and drugs inflict on our inner cities. More than 2.3 million people in this country are now behind bars, almost 40 percent of them black. One in nine African-American men aged 20 to 34 is in prison; some 60 percent of black high school dropouts serve time by age 40. Many of the laws locking them up took shape during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s and the ensuing surge in gun violence. “Crack blew through America’s poor black neighborhoods like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had traded their steeds for supercharged bulldozers,” Kennedy recalls. More than any other factor, the drug lit a fuse that littered city streets with the bodies of young “thugs” and innocent victims caught in the crossfire. Although homicides among black men aged 18 to 24 declined in the early 1980s, with crack the rate shot up, from 68 per 100,000 to more than 180 between 1984 and 1993.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/1608192644?aff=Truthdig" type="external" /></p>
<p>By David M. Kennedy</p>
<p>Bloomsbury USA, 320 pages</p>
<p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/1608192644?aff=Truthdig" type="external" /></p>
<p>In the 1990s, municipal, state and federal governments responded to the violence by expanding police forces (45 percent in New York City) and sharply increasing prison sentencing. These policies, to some extent, made cities safer, but at an incredible social cost: So many men from impoverished urban neighborhoods do time that youths in the community come to see this as a normal stage in adult male life. The prisoners’ own children, raised by mothers and grandmothers struggling to find resources, are 50 percent more likely than other kids to end up in prison. Once inmates return home, their lack of education and job skills severely limit their chances of legal employment. Many fall back into crime and substance abuse, exacerbating the social, economic and moral decay of their communities and filling prisons yet again.</p>
<p>Given the ongoing economic crisis and rampant availability of guns in the U.S. — more than 200 million at current estimates, some 65 million of them handguns –the chances of breaking the cycle of inner-city poverty, violent crime, drugs and incarceration might seem bleak. But unlike so much work in urban sociology and criminology, “Don’t Shoot” offers a genuine message of hope. This is the gripping story of Boston’s <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/188741.pdf" type="external">Operation Ceasefire</a> and the interventions it spawned across the nation. The book is part memoir, part police thriller, taking us through the ups and downs in the genesis and evolution of one of the most promising responses to urban violence and drug markets in the last two decades. The notes refer to scholarly studies affirming the merits of the strategies Kennedy and his associates developed over 16 years of work, but his writing here is the antithesis of academic jargon: a rapid-fire, street-smart prose that brooks no dissent, colored with telling detail to convey the tragedy of inner cities — the dealer hocking heroin in full view of the Baltimore police; the EMTs frantically trying to revive the young man dying at Kennedy’s feet; the RIP Facebook pages of black youth, still alive, preparing for their own deaths.</p>
<p>Kennedy acquired his knowledge of criminology without formal education in the field. We learn about his family’s experience in the Detroit riots of 1967 when he was 8, and his political activism at Swarthmore. From Swarthmore he went to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where he joined a team headed by professor <a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/mark-moore" type="external">Mark Moore</a> to study the new ideas of problem-oriented policing. Working for Moore took Kennedy to Los Angeles in 1985, where he accompanied two officers on foot patrol through the crack-infested Watts housing project of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickerson_Gardens" type="external">Nickerson Gardens</a>, perhaps, Kennedy writes, the most dangerous place in the country that day. “If you could have seen the fear and tension — fear-vision goggles — everything would have glowed white-hot.” Despite the horror of such neighborhoods, he realized, there was a profound sense of community among their “decent” residents (to borrow Elijah Anderson’s term) — the majority of adults who fretted over their children’s safety, made sure they were fed, properly clothed and went to school, and helped one another through the roughest periods. Visiting Watts had a visceral effect on Kennedy. He threw himself into researching drug markets, but within 10 years he needed to do more than study the problems. Although his knowledge of academic criminology is formidable, he met his most important teachers in the field: cops who took him on patrol rides; Paul Joyce, head of Boston’s Youth Violence Strike Force that developed the Wendover Street operation, a model for Operation Ceasefire; gang outreach groups like Boston’s <a href="http://www.bostonfoundation.org/Content.aspx?ID=11522" type="external">Streetworkers</a>; gang members who told Kennedy of the fear that drove them to carry guns; local women who wept as they remembered children, grandchildren, brothers and cousins killed in gang warfare, yet recounted the terror of police raids and their hatred of police who harassed the young men through the “zero tolerance” and “stop and frisk” tactics that have inflamed targeted neighborhoods.</p>
<p>The book opens with Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old, unarmed black father in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-Rhine" type="external">Over-the-Rhine</a>, Cincinnati, shot to death in April 2001 as he ran from police. Why did he run? Because he had 14 outstanding warrants, mainly for minor traffic offenses. In Cincinnati’s most dangerous district, hours of policing went into ticketing traffic violations. Thomas was the 15th young black male killed by Cincinnati cops or dying in their custody since 1995. His death sparked four days of rioting.</p>
<p>Both my gang-member students at the prison and the many women I’ve talked with in the distressed city of Camden, N.J., who invariably detest the police, have taught me much about the moral corrosiveness of guns, substance abuse, poverty and crime. A central theme of “Don’t Shoot,” however, is that we cannot end the violence and mass incarceration plaguing our inner cities unless we bridge the chasms of misunderstanding and suspicion that separate law-abiding inhabitants, the police and gangs. All three “communities,” as Kennedy insists, include rational, fundamentally decent people. Sometimes they behave in destructive ways, but most would act differently if another path were made clear to them through the chaos.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/1608192644?aff=Truthdig" type="external" /></p>
<p>By David M. Kennedy</p>
<p>Bloomsbury USA, 320 pages</p>
<p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/1608192644?aff=Truthdig" type="external" /></p>
<p>In 1994, Kennedy and his collaborator, <a href="http://econweb.rutgers.edu/apiehl/" type="external">Anne Piehl</a>, set out to find such a path. Armed with a grant from the <a href="http://nij.gov/" type="external">National Institute of Justice</a>, they contacted the Boston police commissioner, who put them in touch with Joyce to discuss applying problem-oriented policing to gun homicides among Boston’s youth. In problem-oriented policing, specific types of crime are studied to devise new strategies for preventing them. Public and private partners help implement the strategies, results are evaluated and adjustments are made for the next time around.</p>
<p>The “Working Group” of the <a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/criminaljustice/research-publications/gangs,-guns,-urban-violence/operation-ceasefire-boston-gun-project" type="external">Boston Gun Project</a> began meeting in early 1995. While Boston had lower rates of gun violence than New York and other large cities, a surge in homicides in the poor black districts of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan had overwhelmed police. Homicide among men below age 24 soared from 22 to 73 victims between 1987 and 1990 and averaged 44 victims yearly between 1991 and 1995. Gang members were not the only casualties; innocents like 12-year-old Tiffany Moore also died. The Working Group sought a “near-term” solution to this crisis. Analysis revealed, contrary to expectations, that a small number of gang members in a few “hot spots” were responsible for a disproportionate number of homicides. Recognizing that Boston police lacked the capacity to stop all gang crime, Kennedy’s team developed a “retail deterrence” strategy. One of the worst offenders was arrested and given a 19-year sentence in a distant federal prison. Meetings were then convened with police, youth workers, probation and parole officers, and community leaders who told invited gang members what had happened. The young men attending the “call-ins” were promised jobs, housing and protection, all on one condition: The shooting had to stop. The first one to violate the cease-fire would cause all “levers” to be pulled. The entire gang would be punished; penalties would be swift, severe and 100 percent certain.</p>
<p>The result has been called the Boston Miracle. Follow-up studies correlated Operation Ceasefire with a 63 percent decline in youth homicide. The program quickly gained national attention and went on the road, first to Minneapolis and then Stockton, Calif. Over the next 15 years, the Working Group and its national partners refined their strategies and extended them to other problems — sexual assaults in Memphis, Tenn.; open-air drug markets in High Point, N.C.; and other cities. Much data shows that the interventions have been very effective, though they are not the only policies to have made a difference. Although whites in the U.S. outnumber blacks, as Kennedy stresses, the latter are still much more likely to be killed: In 2005, more than 2,200 black men aged 18 to 24 were homicide victims, compared with 1,400 whites. The rate again seems to be rising; in New York City, white homicides decreased 27 percent in 2010 but increased 31 percent among black men. In light of these grim statistics, Kennedy is abruptly dismissive of scholars, politicians and police who have questioned his assessment of the problems or the benefits of Ceasefire. Yet he gives too short shrift to the decline of gun violence during the 1990s in cities that tried other responses. The significant decrease in New York City between 1995 and 2001 has been credited to its enlarged police force and zero-tolerance tactics, though with terrible damage to civil liberties and relations between police and minority communities. Some studies suggest that Boston homicides possibly began to subside before Ceasefire was under way. There too other interventions and factors may have contributed.</p>
<p>The my-way-or-the-highway tenor of parts of “Don’t Shoot” goes hand-in-hand with the misleading “one man” of its subtitle. As becomes clear from Kennedy’s own narrative, Ceasefire depended on the painstaking development of partnerships between multiple individuals and agencies. It cannot be replicated everywhere partly for this reason; even in Boston, the interagency collaboration of the 1990s fell apart in 2000.</p>
<p>Although Kennedy is highly critical of challengers, he does not stint in praising his many associates around the country who have shared his passion and struggled alongside him to develop strategies, if only for a time. The good they achieved was not a miracle, he notes, but the result of long hours of grinding work — another reason the Ceasefire approach has sometimes proven hard to disseminate. People like Kennedy, obsessed with a vision of how to diminish suffering in this world and driven to act on their vision, are not always pleasant. They don’t have to be. What we need is for them to light a fire under the rest of us so that we also get to work, perhaps finding ways to reduce the violence in cities where Ceasefire was not successfully implemented. “Don’t Shoot” may be the spark.</p>
<p>Celia Chazelle is chair of the history department at The College of New Jersey and co-founder of its <a href="http://cpoe.pages.tcnj.edu/" type="external">Center for Prison Outreach and Education</a>.</p>
<p /> | true | 4 | dont shoot one man street fellowship end violence innercity america book david kennedy white americans aware racially segregated society remains 21st century yet gaping divide becomes immediately apparent anyone gets behind prison walls still shock even years driving route turn rural road lined homes mostly white families onto grounds prison teach barbedwire fences enclose sea dark faces inside prison instructors waiting permission proceed classrooms watch inmates file past grille gate like sequential images filmstrip urban gang members convicted gun violence drug dealing one one tattooed identically dressed young africanamerican men move silently along hallway staring straight ahead compliance prison rules david kennedy points riveting new book dont shoot one man street fellowship end violence innercity america rise mass incarceration us added terribly devastation guns drugs inflict inner cities 23 million people country behind bars almost 40 percent black one nine africanamerican men aged 20 34 prison 60 percent black high school dropouts serve time age 40 many laws locking took shape crack epidemic 1980s 1990s ensuing surge gun violence crack blew americas poor black neighborhoods like four horsemen apocalypse traded steeds supercharged bulldozers kennedy recalls factor drug lit fuse littered city streets bodies young thugs innocent victims caught crossfire although homicides among black men aged 18 24 declined early 1980s crack rate shot 68 per 100000 180 1984 1993 david kennedy bloomsbury usa 320 pages 1990s municipal state federal governments responded violence expanding police forces 45 percent new york city sharply increasing prison sentencing policies extent made cities safer incredible social cost many men impoverished urban neighborhoods time youths community come see normal stage adult male life prisoners children raised mothers grandmothers struggling find resources 50 percent likely kids end prison inmates return home lack education job skills severely limit chances legal employment many fall back crime substance abuse exacerbating social economic moral decay communities filling prisons yet given ongoing economic crisis rampant availability guns us 200 million current estimates 65 million handguns chances breaking cycle innercity poverty violent crime drugs incarceration might seem bleak unlike much work urban sociology criminology dont shoot offers genuine message hope gripping story bostons operation ceasefire interventions spawned across nation book part memoir part police thriller taking us ups downs genesis evolution one promising responses urban violence drug markets last two decades notes refer scholarly studies affirming merits strategies kennedy associates developed 16 years work writing antithesis academic jargon rapidfire streetsmart prose brooks dissent colored telling detail convey tragedy inner cities dealer hocking heroin full view baltimore police emts frantically trying revive young man dying kennedys feet rip facebook pages black youth still alive preparing deaths kennedy acquired knowledge criminology without formal education field learn familys experience detroit riots 1967 8 political activism swarthmore swarthmore went harvards kennedy school government joined team headed professor mark moore study new ideas problemoriented policing working moore took kennedy los angeles 1985 accompanied two officers foot patrol crackinfested watts housing project nickerson gardens perhaps kennedy writes dangerous place country day could seen fear tension fearvision goggles everything would glowed whitehot despite horror neighborhoods realized profound sense community among decent residents borrow elijah andersons term majority adults fretted childrens safety made sure fed properly clothed went school helped one another roughest periods visiting watts visceral effect kennedy threw researching drug markets within 10 years needed study problems although knowledge academic criminology formidable met important teachers field cops took patrol rides paul joyce head bostons youth violence strike force developed wendover street operation model operation ceasefire gang outreach groups like bostons streetworkers gang members told kennedy fear drove carry guns local women wept remembered children grandchildren brothers cousins killed gang warfare yet recounted terror police raids hatred police harassed young men zero tolerance stop frisk tactics inflamed targeted neighborhoods book opens timothy thomas 19yearold unarmed black father overtherhine cincinnati shot death april 2001 ran police run 14 outstanding warrants mainly minor traffic offenses cincinnatis dangerous district hours policing went ticketing traffic violations thomas 15th young black male killed cincinnati cops dying custody since 1995 death sparked four days rioting gangmember students prison many women ive talked distressed city camden nj invariably detest police taught much moral corrosiveness guns substance abuse poverty crime central theme dont shoot however end violence mass incarceration plaguing inner cities unless bridge chasms misunderstanding suspicion separate lawabiding inhabitants police gangs three communities kennedy insists include rational fundamentally decent people sometimes behave destructive ways would act differently another path made clear chaos david kennedy bloomsbury usa 320 pages 1994 kennedy collaborator anne piehl set find path armed grant national institute justice contacted boston police commissioner put touch joyce discuss applying problemoriented policing gun homicides among bostons youth problemoriented policing specific types crime studied devise new strategies preventing public private partners help implement strategies results evaluated adjustments made next time around working group boston gun project began meeting early 1995 boston lower rates gun violence new york large cities surge homicides poor black districts roxbury dorchester mattapan overwhelmed police homicide among men age 24 soared 22 73 victims 1987 1990 averaged 44 victims yearly 1991 1995 gang members casualties innocents like 12yearold tiffany moore also died working group sought nearterm solution crisis analysis revealed contrary expectations small number gang members hot spots responsible disproportionate number homicides recognizing boston police lacked capacity stop gang crime kennedys team developed retail deterrence strategy one worst offenders arrested given 19year sentence distant federal prison meetings convened police youth workers probation parole officers community leaders told invited gang members happened young men attending callins promised jobs housing protection one condition shooting stop first one violate ceasefire would cause levers pulled entire gang would punished penalties would swift severe 100 percent certain result called boston miracle followup studies correlated operation ceasefire 63 percent decline youth homicide program quickly gained national attention went road first minneapolis stockton calif next 15 years working group national partners refined strategies extended problems sexual assaults memphis tenn openair drug markets high point nc cities much data shows interventions effective though policies made difference although whites us outnumber blacks kennedy stresses latter still much likely killed 2005 2200 black men aged 18 24 homicide victims compared 1400 whites rate seems rising new york city white homicides decreased 27 percent 2010 increased 31 percent among black men light grim statistics kennedy abruptly dismissive scholars politicians police questioned assessment problems benefits ceasefire yet gives short shrift decline gun violence 1990s cities tried responses significant decrease new york city 1995 2001 credited enlarged police force zerotolerance tactics though terrible damage civil liberties relations police minority communities studies suggest boston homicides possibly began subside ceasefire way interventions factors may contributed mywayorthehighway tenor parts dont shoot goes handinhand misleading one man subtitle becomes clear kennedys narrative ceasefire depended painstaking development partnerships multiple individuals agencies replicated everywhere partly reason even boston interagency collaboration 1990s fell apart 2000 although kennedy highly critical challengers stint praising many associates around country shared passion struggled alongside develop strategies time good achieved miracle notes result long hours grinding work another reason ceasefire approach sometimes proven hard disseminate people like kennedy obsessed vision diminish suffering world driven act vision always pleasant dont need light fire rest us also get work perhaps finding ways reduce violence cities ceasefire successfully implemented dont shoot may spark celia chazelle chair history department college new jersey cofounder center prison outreach education | 1,214 |
<p>The Cathar heretics believed in the transmigration of souls. They thought the world was created by a malevolent deity, Rex Mundi. They referred to themselves as bonas femnas and bons omes (good women and good men) the way caribeños often call each other mami and papi. Lord have mercy: they thought matter and spirit were two separate things. But the most remarkable thing about the Cathar heretics is that they never existed.</p>
<p>Mind you, the genocidal crusade against the “Albigensian” (as they were called at the time) heretics from 1208-1229 in what is now southwestern France was very real. Pope Innocent III’s frothing anathemas against the enemy destroying Christendom from within; the massed armies of martial pilgrims raised against them; the officially sanctioned slaughter of entire villages—all of this was real. So was the torture, and the confessions, and realest of all was the triumphant reinforcement of doctrinal and institutional authority for the Church, and the expansion of the French Crown’s power into the region between the Garonne and the Rhône rivers.</p>
<p>But the Cathar heresy itself was the lurid fabrication of a paranoid and aggressive Church looking for enemies: “Everything about the Cathars is utter fantasy,” writes medieval historian Mark Gregory Pegg, and such is the boldly iconoclastic thesis of his recent book, A Most Holy War: the Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford, 2008). The Cathars (as the “heretics” were retroactively labeled centuries later) and their heresy was the creation of a vindictive Church–a papal legate was murdered in the area that was subsequently targeted for the crusade–eager to demonstrate its might and authority. The coherent heretical doctrine that the churchmen cooked up was the perfect mirror image of the Fourth Lateran Council’s new doctrines formulated in 1215. Since then, the myth of a Cathar heresy flourishing in what is now southwestern France has been nurtured by many a New Age seeker after hidden knowledge and by a perhaps greater number of accredited historians.</p>
<p>So why bring this up now? This past weekend saw the national opening of Angels &amp; Demons, a movie which, like The DaVinci Code, is based on Dan Brown’s bestselling spiritualist conspiracy thrillers. The Code was about the hidden survival of the Cathar heresy despite centuries of Papal suppression, and from the TV commercials it looks like Angels is about some other age-old secret sect that doesn’t get along with the Catholic Church. Ho-hum. Far-reaching conspiracies are the political theory of morons, whether used to explain America’s invasion of South Vietnam (“They killed Kennedy ‘cause he wouldn’t go along with it!” or the 9-11 attacks (“Inside job!”). The more far-reaching the conspiracy, the more foolish.</p>
<p>The true history of the Albigensian Crusade supplies no heretical doctrine to dovetail with Dan Brown’s silly books. But, as Pegg notes, “the Albigensian Crusade is even more horrific and more pertinent because it was not a martial pilgrimage against a discrete religion with an organized heretical ‘Church.’” Instead, this crusade is the story of a frenzy of royally and divinely sanctioned violence against innocent people who didn’t understand the accusations against them. It’s the story of the destruction of the town of Béziers and all its 7,000 inhabitants because they were deemed an existential threat to Christendom. The story of ordinary people desperate to show they were orthodox believers who knew nothing of heresy, but getting exterminated anyway (to cleanse the killers’ souls). The story of an invading army placing impossible demands on local rulers only as a formal prelude to plunder and mass murder. The story of the finest legal minds of Europe decreeing that “if it can be shown that some heretics are in a city, then all the inhabitants can be burnt.” It is one of the critical events of Europe’s Middle Ages, an event which, says Pegg, “ushered genocide into the West,” along with the moral imperative of “redemptive homicide.” (Anti-Semitism, writes Pegg, only came into its own in Europe after the Albigensian crusade.) When a peace was negotiated 21 years after the crusade began, the French Crown ended up snatching all lands west of the Rhône; the Papacy got everything to the east. Inquisitions, enthusiastically staffed by the Dominican Order of Friars Preachers, moved in and subjected the region to proselytizing harassment for decades. But how on earth, as the historian let slip, is the history “pertinent?”</p>
<p>Authoritarian governments and the people who love them tend to get kind of defensive about previous eras’ witch hunts. According to Leonardo Sciascia in his essential Death of an Inquisitor, it was nearly impossible to find any histories of the Inquisition in Franco’s Spain. Even bringing up the subject of a divinely and royally sanctioned genocide eight hundred years ago makes some people touchy today. Pegg’s book is “[j]ust the thing if you’re interested in subtle and accessible falsehoods,” shrieks First Things, intellectual journal of the Catholic right. For the ultra-orthodox, as well as for the crystal-wearing set, the Cathar heresy just has to have been real!</p>
<p>But the red-faced churchmen can relax, for verily it is not they who should be feel their ears burning when Pegg’s most excellent book is discussed. Nowadays the devastation wrought by the world’s mightiest military is cheered on not by men of the cloth but by can-do secular intellectuals, from Wolfowitz to Hitchens to Fukuyama to Coulter to Ignatieff … It is these brave souls who have impressed upon us the moral duty to lay waste, kick ass and (for the sake of the conquered people’s human rights) vanquish evil, or at least the existential threat that is posed to us by Islamism, or Islamofascism, or Fascislamism, take your pick.</p>
<p>Professor Pegg is a serious historian with a professional’s disdain for “presentist” writings about the Middle Ages. His little slip about “pertinence” aside, he would surely balk at the suggestion that his historical narrative—which by the way is a tour de force, commanding a wide variety of sources, from the simperings of embedded troubadors to ethnohistory of the region’s peasant farming—might somehow be “relevant” to the crusading violence, sacred and secular, of our own day. I fully expect to get a pissed-off email from the good man for even hinting that his story offers any insight into our own misguided rampages in Afghanistan and Iraq. As for the inquisition that dominated the post-Crusade peace between the Garonne and the Rhône, any similarity to our own totally different panics and prosecutions at home—against Muslim charitable organizations today, against Communists yesterday, against youthful “gang members,” undocumented immigrants, ritual satanic abusers—well, any such parallels surely exist in the mind of the reader alone.</p>
<p>CHASE MADAR is a translator of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cursed-Poets-Green-Integer/dp/1931243158/" type="external">Verlaine</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Buñuel</a> and a civil rights lawyer in New York. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:chasemadar@hotmail.com" type="external">chasemadar@hotmail.com</a></p> | true | 4 | cathar heretics believed transmigration souls thought world created malevolent deity rex mundi referred bonas femnas bons omes good women good men way caribeños often call mami papi lord mercy thought matter spirit two separate things remarkable thing cathar heretics never existed mind genocidal crusade albigensian called time heretics 12081229 southwestern france real pope innocent iiis frothing anathemas enemy destroying christendom within massed armies martial pilgrims raised officially sanctioned slaughter entire villagesall real torture confessions realest triumphant reinforcement doctrinal institutional authority church expansion french crowns power region garonne rhône rivers cathar heresy lurid fabrication paranoid aggressive church looking enemies everything cathars utter fantasy writes medieval historian mark gregory pegg boldly iconoclastic thesis recent book holy war albigensian crusade battle christendom oxford 2008 cathars heretics retroactively labeled centuries later heresy creation vindictive churcha papal legate murdered area subsequently targeted crusadeeager demonstrate might authority coherent heretical doctrine churchmen cooked perfect mirror image fourth lateran councils new doctrines formulated 1215 since myth cathar heresy flourishing southwestern france nurtured many new age seeker hidden knowledge perhaps greater number accredited historians bring past weekend saw national opening angels amp demons movie like davinci code based dan browns bestselling spiritualist conspiracy thrillers code hidden survival cathar heresy despite centuries papal suppression tv commercials looks like angels ageold secret sect doesnt get along catholic church hohum farreaching conspiracies political theory morons whether used explain americas invasion south vietnam killed kennedy cause wouldnt go along 911 attacks inside job farreaching conspiracy foolish true history albigensian crusade supplies heretical doctrine dovetail dan browns silly books pegg notes albigensian crusade even horrific pertinent martial pilgrimage discrete religion organized heretical church instead crusade story frenzy royally divinely sanctioned violence innocent people didnt understand accusations story destruction town béziers 7000 inhabitants deemed existential threat christendom story ordinary people desperate show orthodox believers knew nothing heresy getting exterminated anyway cleanse killers souls story invading army placing impossible demands local rulers formal prelude plunder mass murder story finest legal minds europe decreeing shown heretics city inhabitants burnt one critical events europes middle ages event says pegg ushered genocide west along moral imperative redemptive homicide antisemitism writes pegg came europe albigensian crusade peace negotiated 21 years crusade began french crown ended snatching lands west rhône papacy got everything east inquisitions enthusiastically staffed dominican order friars preachers moved subjected region proselytizing harassment decades earth historian let slip history pertinent authoritarian governments people love tend get kind defensive previous eras witch hunts according leonardo sciascia essential death inquisitor nearly impossible find histories inquisition francos spain even bringing subject divinely royally sanctioned genocide eight hundred years ago makes people touchy today peggs book thing youre interested subtle accessible falsehoods shrieks first things intellectual journal catholic right ultraorthodox well crystalwearing set cathar heresy real redfaced churchmen relax verily feel ears burning peggs excellent book discussed nowadays devastation wrought worlds mightiest military cheered men cloth cando secular intellectuals wolfowitz hitchens fukuyama coulter ignatieff brave souls impressed upon us moral duty lay waste kick ass sake conquered peoples human rights vanquish evil least existential threat posed us islamism islamofascism fascislamism take pick professor pegg serious historian professionals disdain presentist writings middle ages little slip pertinence aside would surely balk suggestion historical narrativewhich way tour de force commanding wide variety sources simperings embedded troubadors ethnohistory regions peasant farmingmight somehow relevant crusading violence sacred secular day fully expect get pissedoff email good man even hinting story offers insight misguided rampages afghanistan iraq inquisition dominated postcrusade peace garonne rhône similarity totally different panics prosecutions homeagainst muslim charitable organizations today communists yesterday youthful gang members undocumented immigrants ritual satanic abuserswell parallels surely exist mind reader alone chase madar translator verlaine buñuel civil rights lawyer new york reached chasemadarhotmailcom | 612 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.