A new report by Spinwatch, a public interest investigation group, provides an in-depth scrutiny of The Henry Jackson Society and the Degeneration of British Neo-conservatism; it examines the history, activities and politics of the right-wing think tank, which is a leading exponent of neo-conservatism in Britain.
Based at the University of Bath, Spinwatch has developed a reputation for carrying out cutting-edge research and investigations into key social, political, environmental and health issues in Britain and Europe. Its previous report in this area was a detailed investigation into the Cold War on British Muslims that is being advanced by the political right-wing.
The new report is sponsored by the Cordoba Foundation, a London-based research and advocacy group promoting religious and cultural understanding. It exposes the Henry Jackson Society’s activities in pushing for liberal interventionism abroad, spreading Islamophobia and its stalwart support for the “war on terror”.
In the 83-page report, the four authors trace the ideological as well as the organisational evolution of the HJS. Beginning with a short biography of the eponymous US senator, whose most consistent characteristic was military intervention as the answer to almost all foreign problems, they sketch the militaristic and uncompromising worldview of the think tank’s mentors. The list includes US hawks like Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and others whose neo-conservative world view combined with strategic manoeuvring under the second Bush administration and led to arguably the worst foreign policy disasters of our time.
Many striking features of the cross Atlantic group are described in the report. None is more remarkable, perhaps, than its ubiquitous presence within the corridors of power and evolution from a small Cambridge group to an influential think tank in Westminster with powerful financial and political backers in Britain and the US.
Within the six different sections of the report, a number of interesting and at times worrying details of the group – which has influence over many British lawmakers and public officials – are exposed. Its close connection with William Shawcross, for example, an ex-director of the HJS and the current chair of Britain’s Charity Commission raises difficult questions about the impartiality of the regulator and its ability to investigate political lobby groups – such as the Henry Jackson Society – that are also registered charities.
The first part of the report sketches the political context and ideological roots that gave rise to the non-profit organisation back in 2005. The report portrays the organisation as a fluid movement capable of taking advantage of political ebbs and flows to further its own narrow agenda. It then takes us through the Cambridge Movement from 2004-2007 during which the HJS emerged as a leading institutional expression of British neo-conservatism, a novel creation of British intellectuals who shared the same concerns as the original American neo-conservatives in the face of an emerging popular anti-war movement in Britain.
Its flexibility is highlighted further in part three, in which the authors examine the internal coup followed by a sharp turn away from the pro-European style Atlanticism associated with its founders, such as the academic and historian Brendan Simms, towards a position more in line with the dominant Euro-scepticism of the British right.
It was during this period that the society aligned itself distinctly with illiberal anti-Muslim groups and figures like Daniel Pipes and Frank Gaffney, who worked previously under Richard Pearl. As the Henry Jackson Society’s Zionist credentials were strengthened, many of its founders were replaced by key people from Just Journalism, a pro-Israel media watchdog.
The society entered a new phase after 2011. It purged some of its less xenophobic staff members and merged with the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC); the latter’s director, Douglas Murray, joined the Henry Jackson Society as an associate director. Its lurch to the right and metamorphosis into a leading proponent of Israel and vilifier of Islam was complete. The society consolidated itself ideologically, matured as an organisation and relocated to Milbank Tower, a building known for housing high-profile political organisations, including the Conservative Party.
Financially secure and ideologically confident, the HJS began to have noticeable influence in Westminster through all-party parliamentary groups: it operated as a secretariat for Homeland Security, for example, and Transatlantic and International Security. This is the subject of discussion in part five of the report, which goes on to detail the frenzied lobbying and lack of transparency in carrying out parliamentary affairs, including the organisation of briefings and seminars.
Part six provides an eye opener about the exponential growth in the group’s funding levels which increased from a few thousand to over a million pounds. The sharp increase in donations in 2010 and 2011 appears to coincide with the period of the Henry Jackson Society’s controversial merger with the CSC, a move that marked a definitive break with the more liberal aspirations of some of the society’s early members.
An examination of known funding sources leads the authors to make two main conclusions. For a start, there has been a large overlap between the funders of the HJS and other pro-Israel groups in recent years. Secondly, the HJS’s largest known donors include a number of prominent backers of the Conservative Party.
The funding sources provide more evidence of the view that Israel and its international supporters are manoeuvring to influence the British democratic process in order to serve Israel’s interests. The pro-Israel lobby has, from 9/11 onwards (and perhaps earlier) wanted to link the pro-Palestine movement to terrorism. Zionist lobbyists want governments like Britain’s to create a regulatory framework that would mean the legal harassment of pro-Palestine activism. This is one of the desired outcomes of a very long game in which the Henry Jackson Society is playing a part.
Spinwatch has again produced a timely report which sheds light on the growing Islamophobia industry on both sides of the Atlantic, one that is also sweeping through Europe. The authors have raised a number of concerns, not least the hijacking of the democratic process on key issues such as foreign policy and Britain’s approach to “radical Islam” and the “war on terror”.
The rise in prejudice, anti-Muslim bigotry and suppression of pro-Palestine activism coincides with the rise of the Henry Jackson Society within the British establishment. In exposing this, if nothing else, Spinwatch has done us all a great service.
June 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Henry Jackson Society, Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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JERUSALEM – Israel has barred a Palestinian photographer allegedly shot in the eye by Israeli forces from entering occupied East Jerusalem for specialist treatment, the injured photographer told AFP on Wednesday.
Nidal Shtayyeh, who works for Chinese news agency Xinhua, was wounded while covering a small demonstration at Huwarra checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Nablus on May 16.
As he was covering the rally, Shtayyeh was hit in the face by a rubber bullet which entered his eye, causing serious damage, he told AFP.
“The march was peaceful and no stones were thrown, no photographers were taking any pictures,” he said, accusing soldiers of firing sound bombs at the photographers without any provocation.
“I raised my camera to my right eye to take a picture, but a soldier shot me in my left eye with his rifle, and the rubber bullet went through my gas mask’s glass eye cover and into my eye.”
An Italian camerawoman was also injured during the same demonstration which came as Palestinians commemorated 67 years since the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” when an estimated 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
At the time, Israeli forces said at least 100 Palestinians had been throwing stones and petrol bombs, and that the forces had responded with “riot dispersal means.”
Shtayyeh’s injury comes as rights groups criticize Israel for disproportionate use of force against unarmed civilians during such demonstrations.
While crowd control weapons are intended to be non-lethal, many methods used by Israeli forces can cause death, severe injury, and damage to property, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
Shtayyeh was rushed to Rafidiya hospital in Nablus for initial treatment but was prescribed specialist help at St John’s eye hospital in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 in a move considered illegal by the international community, and Palestinians living in the West Bank, are often barred by Israel from crossing into the city, which they consider their capital.
As a Palestinian living in the West Bank, Shtayyeh had to apply for an Israeli permit to enter, however Israeli authorities turned down his request.
He tried again two more times — once through the Red Cross and once through a private Israeli lawyer. But both requests were rejected.
A spokesman for the Shin Bet internal security agency did not have an immediate response.
Shtayyeh’s lawyer, Itai Matt, told AFP that his client had been informed it was the Shin Bet preventing his entry, despite his having been granted such permission in the past.
According to Matt, Israeli security services “regularly bar entry to anyone wounded by the army”.
“They even bar entry to wounded children seeking treatment in Jerusalem, because they are worried that anyone wounded will try and take revenge after their treatment,” he said.
Xinhua did not respond to AFP’s requests for a comment on the incident.
Shtayyeh is one of nearly 1,000 Palestinians to be injured by Israeli forces since the start of 2015, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli military courts rarely prosecute members of Israeli forces who cause injury or death . From 2000-2012, only 117 of 2,207 investigations opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigations Division were indicted, about 5% of the total files opened, according to Israeli human rights group Yesh-Din.
Shtayyah’s injury and inability to access treatment comes as groups Foreign Press Association and Reporters Without Borders have alleged that Israeli forces deliberately target press covering demonstrations.
Ma’an staff contributed to this report.
June 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Construction of the new planned townships that will house Palestinians displaced by Israel’s E1 plan is already well underway although the demolition of the current villages has not yet been implemented. The E1 plan will displace thousands of Palestinian Bedouin from the Jerusalem periphery area.
Within this colonial project – that has received significant criticism from across the ‘international community’ – the story of the village of Abu Nowwar is in many ways seen as a test case.
The residents of Abu Nowwar are themselves already refugees, as are the majority of all Bedouin in the West Bank, having been originally displaced in the early 1950’s from their ancestral lands in the Naqab. The more than 100 family homes in the village are all slated for demolition.
In early May, residents were told by the Israeli authorities that they must sign documents by May 31st stating that they agreed to being transferred to one of the planned new townships – a site known as al-Jabal – alongside a large Jerusalem Municipality landfill site. The community was told that anybody who refused to sign would have their houses immediately demolished. Yet the community resisted.
For now a legal challenge in the Israeli Supreme Court has delayed the promised demolitions, but time is short. Many people believe that the case of Abu Nowwar, if won by the State in the Supreme Court, will set a legal precedent that will allow E1 to be quickly implemented. None of the planned demolitions of entire communities in this latest phase of E1 have yet been implemented but this legal precedent, if granted, could set a swift and dangerous ball rolling.
Despite the widespread criticism that the E1 project has received internationally, no action has yet been taken to prevent this major advance within Israel’s settler-colonial project. E1 will link Ma’ale Adumim and other Israeli West Bank settlements in a contiguous ring to and around Jerusalem.
‘Forcible transfer’, which is an inherent aspect of the E1 plan, is a breach of the Geneva Conventions, and is recognised by both the Nuremberg Charter and the International Criminal Court as a ‘war crime’.
Image by MEMO Photographer Rich Wiles.
June 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, War Crimes | Human rights, Israeli settlement, Jerusalem, Palestine, West Bank |
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Data provided by the Israeli military and the UN has revealed that since martial law was imposed on the occupied West Bank in 1967, around 95,000 Palestinian children have been arrested by Israel, an average of more than 5 children per day. Almost 60,000 are believed to have been subjected to some form of physical abuse whilst in detention.
The details were revealed this week in a report submitted by rights group Military Court Watch (MCW) to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Over 300 pages of evidence relating to the treatment of Palestinian children held in Israeli military detention were included in the report.
MCW pointed out that the evidence included details of 200 minors detained by the Israeli military in the West Bank between January 2013 and May 2015. The submission confirmed an earlier finding by UNICEF that “the ill-treatment of children, who come in contact with the military detention system, appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised.”
According to the rights group, this finding is based on recent evidence that shows that intimidation, threats, verbal abuse, physical violence and the denial of basic legal rights are still commonplace within the system. “Based on the evidence, the submission also drew a link between this industrial scale abuse and the maintenance of Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” added MCW. “It concluded that in order to enable 370,000 Israeli settlers to live in the West Bank in violation of international law without serious interference, the military is required to adopt a strategy of mass intimidation and collective punishment.”
June 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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By Don Shay | ANTIMEDIA | June 10, 2015
I’ve always found it fascinating that supporters of Israeli-sponsored terrorism criticize Palestinian militants for targeting civilians—in spite of the fact that Israeli soldiers kill far more Palestinian non-combatants and destroy much greater amounts of civilian property. One can verify this claim by familiarizing themselves with the casualty statistics of Israel’s last rampage in Gaza last summer, also referred to as “Operation Protective Edge”.
During Operation Protective Edge, more than 2,000 Palestinian civilians were killed, among them 550 children. On the Israeli side, 5 civilians were killed, including 1 child. This is a ratio of 550-1 for the number of Palestinian children deaths versus their Israeli counterparts. More than 3,300 Palestinian children were injured, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled. On the Israeli side, 261 Israeli civilians were injured (included in the casualty reports were those who sustained injuries while running to bomb shelters and were not wounded by Palestinian weapons). Nearly 20,000 Palestinian homes were razed or severely damaged, compared to just one Israeli home being destroyed. While Israel’s property damage amounted to $11 million in reconstruction costs, Gaza’s property damage surpassed $6 billion in reconstruction costs over the next 20 years.
And we’re expected to believe that Palestinians are deliberately targeting civilians while Israelis do everything they can to avoid harming civilian lives and property? Does such data vindicate Israel’s position that it isn’t targeting civilians? Does such data undermine the claim that Palestinians are the only ones targeting civilians? While I will never argue that numbers tell an entire story, I can say at the very least that these casualty statistics suggest Israeli military operations are killing civilians and destroying civilian property at a much higher rate than operations conducted by the Palestinians. Such data is worth considering when we analyze Israeli arguments demonizing Palestinians for their choice of tactics in war.
We’ve had it pounded into our heads that Palestinian militants are the bad guys in this conflict because “they purposely target civilians.” That statement couldn’t be further from the truth: Palestinian projectiles, or what the media refers to as “rockets,” have no guiding system. This means Palestinians can’t target anyone. They can only lob a rocket into the sky and let gravity take its course. Palestinian rockets are guided by gravity, not by Palestinians. Palestinians do launch them, but they do not dictate who or what the rocket targets.
If your concern is targeting civilians, Israel should be held to a higher standard of criticism because her forces have modernized weapons in their arsenal which allow them to avoid and reduce civilian casualties. Israeli missiles are capable of targeting a specific location and confining the blast to a desired radius. How then, is it possible, that Israeli forces do everything in their capacity to avoid causing civilian deaths while causing the most civilian deaths in the conflict? Israeli apologists will argue it’s because ‘Palestinians are using their civilians as human shields,’ or whatever other ludicrous explanations are offered by their political pimps. Such an argument is not an argument at all, but a confession of ignorance.
Israel is purposely targeting civilians because that happens to be the only way it can ensure its strategic goals. Last summer, Israel announced its intention to enforce a 3 kilometer buffer zone around the entire Gaza-Israel border. The size of this buffer zone effectively amounts to roughly 44% of Palestinian territory, which is ultimately forcing thousands of Palestinians living in that area to either flee or die. During its operations in “Protective Edge,” Israeli military forces destroyed neighborhoods and turned entire civilian zones to rubble. Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians and property by bombing houses, businesses and other civilian infrastructure. Israel is documented to have done this at great lengths.
This is the grotesque absurdity inherently present in Israel’s narrative: Israel purposely targets civilians and their property while purporting to be the good guys defending themselves. They then demonize Palestinians for “targeting civilians”–despite the fact that Palestinians are in fact doing no such thing. You can make the argument that Palestinians are putting civilian lives’ at risk by launching unguided projectiles, but you can’t make the argument that they’re deliberately targeting civilians. For all we know, they want those rockets to hit Israeli soldiers, not civilians. Regardless, it is simply hypocritical and silly to say Palestinians are wrong for doing what Israelis do, but on a smaller scale.
For argument’s sake, however, let’s assume that Palestinians are deliberately targeting civilians and they just don’t have the capacity to achieve that goal. Should we take seriously the argument that Israelis have a right to engage in the practice of indiscriminately killing civilians with modernized weaponry while simultaneously condemning Palestinians for doing the same on a much smaller scale? In order for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians to reach a peaceful end, we must accept Israel’s role in perpetuating it. Only when we recognize that Israel is the main obstacle to peace can we begin to advance a discussion that offers tangible solutions to the conflict.
June 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Israeli Middle East commentator Meir Javedanfar and political scientist Kaveh Afrasiabi shared their strongly differing opinions on the latest report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
According to the article there are fears that Israel has been testing radioactive ‘dirty bombs.’ These kinds of weapon are intended to contaminate large areas with radiation, and can potentially have a long-lasting impact on the hit zone.
RT: The report claims Israel has dirty bombs for defense purposes only. Might this include preemptive strikes against countries like Iran?
Meir Javedanfar: Of course the state of Israel has never ever threatened to use any such weapons, Israel doesn’t even admit to having nuclear capabilities; it is something that has been reported only by foreign organizations. All that we understand is that the chances of Israel using such a weapon are almost zero. Israel’s alleged nuclear program is for defensive purposes only…
We [Israelis] are very worried if ISIS one day gets their hands on a dirty weapon they would use it against us, make no mistake. I think it’s very logical to be prepared for such a scenario.
It doesn’t matter if you’re Jew or Muslim; it doesn’t matter if you’re Sunni or Shia – this is an organization which would use such a weapon. You can’t use such a weapon back against them because ISIS leaders don’t care about their own population. So the least you can do is to be prepared.
RT: Do you think these allegations are correct? Do you think Israel is testing dirty bombs?
MJ: All I have is the same report that you’re reading from. If that report is true, Israel would only do this for defensive purposes, because if they do offensive testing of dirty bombs right now, it would carry a very high price for the state of Israel because right now we’re trying to convince Iran to stop its nuclear program. For Israel to go and test such weapons for offensive purposes it would be very counterproductive and very expensive… At the same time this is not about Iran, this is much more about ISIS; this is much more about Jihadi organizations.
RT: Israel is one of the staunchest critics of Iran’s nuclear program. Isn’t that a little hypocritical, if it really is secretly testing dirty bombs?
MJ: …The enemy in question is probably going to be the Jihadi organizations. Even in Israel we don’t think that Israel would use such weapons.
One of the reasons [there is ] this belief why the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks was because it is believed that [Osama] bin Laden was developing biological weapons; he was working on it, or he had plans to work on it. And this was something that they had to stop. And I think that is something that the states of Israel, Russia – and even Iran – have in common- all of us have to be prepared for the day if somebody like ISIS gets its hands on a dirty weapon, we could all be victims.
RT: There is a danger of arms escalation in region. If that is proved that Israel is experimenting with these dirty bombs, some countries might want to do the same thing, mightn’t they?
MJ: It really depends on what you use it for…. This was not aimed at any of our neighbors, we were not threatening anybody, we are not calling for anybody’s elimination, as the Iranian regime is doing to us. But you have to be realistic, this is not simulation.
RT: If this news is proved how, do you think it is going to go down in Iran?
MJ: I think this is something that Iran and Israel have in common: We are both potential victims of ISIS. ISIS is an extremist Sunni organization; so-called Sunni, I’m not sure they are real Sunnis; they are against Shia. When they take over Shia areas they are looting, they are burning, they are massacring and ethnic-cleansing Shia. Once they are finished with the Shias, the way they see it, the next target is the Jews… Both of us have to be prepared for the doomsday scenario… that if one day [ISIS] gets its hands on a chemical or biological weapon, first Iran would be the target, and then the state of Israel.
Kaveh Afrasiabi, political scientist, doesn’t agree with Meir Javedanfar’s viewpoint that the chances of Israel using dirty bombs “are almost zero.”
RT: The dirty bombs are reportedly intended for defense purposes only. Israel has the right to defend itself, doesn’t it?
Kaveh Afrasiabi: Well, so do all the other nations. I respectfully disagree with [Mr. Javedanfar] because you can’t find any nuclear weapons state that publically states that its weapons are for offensive purposes, everybody says it is for defensive. So if Israel detonated these dirty nuclear bombs, it’s in violation of its own commitments and the comprehensive test treaty, to which it is a signatory, although it hasn’t ratified. And I think it is a trial for a bigger test, and Israel is waiting to see the reaction by the international community to see if there is any will to stand up to it, and unfortunately there hasn’t been any. We saw that the US recently blocked the Middle East summit on nuclear disarmament – WMD-free in the Middle East – to appease Israel. A month later we hear this news that Israel has detonated not one or two, but 20 bombs. And I really question the timing of it coming on the verge of the deadline for the nuclear talks in Iran. One wonders if it’s part of ferocious Israeli propaganda effort to torpedo those talks.
RT: Do you think this test poses any real threat to Israel’s perceived enemies in the region?
KA: Of course, if Israel has tested these nuclear bombs, and has the capability to deliver them, as we all know they do, then that poses a clear and present danger to its Arab neighbors and beyond. And I really believe that Israel poses a nuclear threat to Iran and its allies in the region.
RT: If those weapons were being tested in Iran we would probably know what the international reaction would be. What do you expect the international reaction to be to Israel?
KA: This reflects the tremendous double standard that is operative in the international community that consistently turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear status and its refusal to allow the slightest inspection of its nuclear facilities. A part of that hypocrisy was demonstrated by the head of the UN’s Atomic Agency, Mr. [Yukiya] Amano, who about a year and half ago praised Israel’s nuclear air force instead of pressuring them to open up these facilities.
I really think that the time has come to stop [treating]Israel with kid gloves and put[ting] it into an exceptional bracket above international law, above proliferation concerns, and so on. At the time when Iran, which is a party to the non-proliferation treaty, has allowed the most extensive inspection of civilian nuclear facilities is under international sanctions and all the related pressures, and even military threat.
So the time has come to stop this hypocritical double standard on the part of the international community, and especially the Western states led by the US, which is the main defender and protector of Israel and its nuclear status.
June 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Nuclear weapons, Terrorism, USA, Violence, War |
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Breast cancer rates are five times higher than expected near a defunct nuclear power plant in Wales, according to a study by environmental scientist Dr Chris Busby.
The power plant in Trawsfynydd, which has not been in use since 1993 but is yet to be decommissioned, relied on a nearby lake to operate its cooling system.
It’s alleged that contaminated water was returned to the same body of water.
Busby’s investigation claims 90 percent of those living in areas downwind of the plant have been tested.
The report, published in the Jacobs Journal of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, says: “Trawsfynydd is a ‘dirty’ nuclear power station. As it has carbon dioxide gas-cooled graphite block reactors, its releases to air are higher than most other types of nuclear reactor.
“In addition, all the liquid releases are discharged to the lake, where they have accumulated to the lake body sediment,” the investigation claims.
“Results show very clearly that the downwind population has suffered because of these exposures.”
“This is most clear in breast cancer in younger women below 60, where the rates were almost five times the expected.”
“Additionally we see a doubling of risk in those who ate fish from Trawsfynydd Lake, which supports the conclusion that it is mainly a nuclear power station effect that is being seen.”
Busby, who has acted as an adviser to the Green Party, has been the subject of controversy in the past.
In 2011, his claims there was a leukemia cluster in North Wales were met with opposition from other prominent environmental activists, including the [pro-nuclear energy] Guardian writer George Monbiot.
In a piece for the paper published in 2011, Monbiot wrote that Busby’s claims “were the result of some astonishing statistical mistakes.”
He claimed an assessment of Busby’s findings – which were not peer-reviewed – found that Busby has counted Welsh leukemia incidences twice and overestimated the number of child leukemia cases by 90 percent.
Public Health Wales is currently investigating, in co-operation with local health teams, whether or not such a cluster exists around Traswfynydd.
June 11, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | Health, Nuclear Energy, UK, Wales |
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Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen’s “you’re no Jack Kennedy” put-down of Republican Sen. Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice presidential debate springs to mind on a day on which I cannot help but compare the character of President Barack Obama to that of John Kennedy, the first President under whom I served in the Army and CIA.
On this day 52 years ago, President John Kennedy gave a landmark speech at American University, appealing for cooperation instead of confrontation with the Soviet Union. Kennedy knew all too well that he was breaking the omerta-like code that dictated demonization of the Soviet leaders. But the stakes could not have been higher – a choice of an endless arms race (with the attendant risk of nuclear conflagration) or bilateral cooperation to curb the most dangerous weapons that jeopardized the future of humankind.
Forgoing the anti-Soviet rhetoric that was de rigueur at the time, Kennedy made an urgent appeal to slow down the arms race, and then backed up the rhetoric with a surprise announcement that the U.S. was halting nuclear testing. This daring step terrified those sitting atop the military-industrial complex and, in my opinion, was among the main reasons behind Kennedy’s assassination some five months later.
At American University, John Kennedy broke new ground in telling the world in no uncertain terms that he would strive to work out a genuine, lasting peace with the Soviet Union. And to underscore his seriousness, Kennedy announced a unilateral cessation of nuclear testing, but also the beginning of high-level discussions in Moscow aimed at concluding a comprehensive test ban treaty.
In tightly held conversations with speechwriter Ted Sorensen and a handful of other clued-in advisers, Kennedy labeled his address “the peace speech.” He managed to hide it from the military advisers who just eight months before had pressed hard for an attack on the Soviet nuclear missiles sent to Cuba in 1962.
It was then that Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, his Soviet counterpart, stood on the brink of ordering the incineration of possibly hundreds of millions of people, before the two worked out a face-saving compromise and thus thwarted the generals of both sides who were pressing for Armageddon.
Kennedy’s resistance to relentless pressure – from military and civilian advisers alike – for a military strike, combined with Khrushchev’s understanding of the stakes involved, saved perhaps the very life of the planet. And here’s the kicker: What neither Kennedy nor his advisers knew at the time was that on Oct. 26, 1962, just one day before the U.S.-Soviet compromise was reached, the nuclear warheads on the missiles in Cuba had been readied for launch.
This alarming fact was learned only 30 years later, prompting Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s defense secretary to write:
“Clearly there was a high risk that, in the face of a U.S. attack – which, as I have said, many were prepared to recommend to President Kennedy – the Soviet forces in Cuba would have decided to use their nuclear weapons rather than lose them. …
“We need not speculate about what would have happened in that event. We can predict the results with certainty. … And where would it have ended? In utter disaster.”
It was that searing experience and the confidential exchange of letters between Kennedy and Khrushchev that convinced them both that they needed to commit to working out ways to lessen the chance of another such near-catastrophe in the future.
American University Speech
Kennedy’s “peace speech” was a definitive break with the past. Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins wrote simply: “At American University on June 10, 1963, President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War.”
Kennedy told those assembled that he had chosen…
“this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived … world peace.”
“What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. … I am talking about genuine peace – the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. …
“Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles – which can only destroy and never create – is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. …
“So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable – and war need not be inevitable. … No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. … We can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements – in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.
“Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory … was turned into a wasteland – a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
“Today, should total war ever break out again … all we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the Cold War … our two countries … are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons, which could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease.
“So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us direct attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences can be resolved. … For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. …
“Above all, while defending our vital interest, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy – or of a collective death wish for the world. …
“Finally, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. … In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete. … We shall do our part to build a world of peace, where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on … toward a strategy of peace.”
As mentioned above, Kennedy backed up his words by announcing the unilateral halt to nuclear testing and the start of negotiations on a comprehensive test ban treaty. In a sharp break from precedent, the Soviets published the full text of Kennedy’s speech and let it be broadcast throughout the U.S.S.R. without the usual jamming.
Khrushchev told test-ban negotiator Averell Harriman that Kennedy had given “the greatest speech by any American president since Roosevelt.” The Soviet leader responded by proposing to Kennedy that they consider a limited test ban encompassing the atmosphere, outer space and water, as a way to get around the thorny issue of inspections.
In contrast, Kennedy’s AU speech was greeted with condescension and skepticism by the New York Times, which reported: “Generally there was not much optimism in official Washington that the President’s conciliation address at American University would produce agreement on a test ban treaty or anything else.”
A ‘Complex’
In giving pride of place to his rejection of “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” Kennedy threw down the gauntlet to the “military-industrial complex” against which President Dwight Eisenhower had pointedly warned in his Farewell Address:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, but the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Ike got that right. Then, as now, the military-industrial complex was totally dependent on a “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” It was policed by the Pentagon and was/is a hugely profitable enterprise.
Opposition coalesced around the negotiations toward a test ban treaty, with strong opponents in Congress, the media, and (surprise, surprise!) the military-industrial complex. Kennedy courageously kept his warmongering senior military out of the loop, and rushed Harriman through the talks in Moscow.
On July 25, 1963, Harriman initialed the final text of a Limited Test Ban Treaty outlawing nuclear tests “in the atmosphere, beyond its limits, including outer space, or under water, including territorial waters or high seas.”
The next evening, Kennedy went on TV, using his bully pulpit to appeal for support for ratification of the treaty. In a swipe at the various players in the formidable anti-treaty lobby, the President stressed that the vulnerability of children was a strong impetus to his determination to fight against all odds: “This is for our children and our grandchildren, and they have no lobby here in Washington.”
But the Establishment was not moved; and seldom have its anxieties been more transparent. It is axiomatic that peace is not good for business, but seldom do you see that in a headline. But the plaintive title of a U.S. News and World Report on Aug. 12, 1963, was “If Peace Does Come – What Happens to Business?” The article asked, “Will the bottom drop out if defense spending is cut?”
Kennedy circumvented the military-industrial complex by enlisting the Citizens Committee led by Norman Cousins, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and prominent religious leaders – among others – to appeal for ratification. In early August, Kennedy told his advisers he believed it would take a near-miracle to get the two-thirds Senate vote needed. On Sept. 24, the Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 80 to 19.
I am indebted to James Douglass and his masterful JFK and the Unspeakable; Why He Died & Why It Matters, for much of the play-by-play in that whirlwind rush to ratification. Douglass argues persuasively, in my view, that Kennedy’s bold move toward carving out a more peaceful strategic relationship with the Soviet Union, first announced on June 10 at American University, was one of the main factors that sealed his fate.
An Obama Complex
While it’s true that comparisons can be invidious, they can also be instructive. Will President Obama ever be able to summon the courage to face down the military-industrial complex and other powerful Establishment forces? Or is it simply (and sadly) the case that he simply does not have it in him?
Referring to Obama’s anemic flip-flopping on Ukraine, journalist Robert Parry wrote that Obama’s policy on Ukraine suggests that he (1) believes his own propaganda, (2) is a conscious liar, or (3) has completely lost his bearings, and simply adopts the position of the last person he talks to.
I see as the primary factor a toxic, enervating mix of fear and cowardice. Former Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who quit his job as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo when ordered to accept testimony based on waterboarding under the Bush administration, may have come close with his unusual burst of military-style candor.
Davis told an interviewer: “There’s a pair of testicles somewhere between the Capitol Building and the White House that fell off the President after Election Day [2008].”
Shortly before his re-election in 2012, Obama reportedly was braced at a small dinner party by wealthy donors who wanted to know whatever happened to the “progressive Obama.” The President did not take kindly to the criticism, rose from the table, and said, “Don’t you remember what happened to Dr. King?”
It is, of course, a fair question as to whether Obama should have run for President if he knew such fears might impinge on his freedom of decision. But let’s ask the other question: What did happen to Martin Luther King Jr.? Would you believe that the vast majority of Americans know only that he was killed and have no idea as to who killed him and why?
In late 1999, a trial took place in Memphis not far from where King was murdered. In a wrongful death lawsuit initiated by the King family, 70 witnesses testified over a six-week period. They described a sophisticated government plot that involved the FBI, the CIA, the Memphis Police, Mafia intermediaries, and an Army Special Forces sniper team. The 12 jurors, six black and six white, returned after 2 ½ hours of deliberation with a verdict that Dr. King has been assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government.
My hunch is that Obama walks around afraid, and that this helps explain why he feels he has to kowtow to the worst kind of thugs and liars lingering in his own administration – the torturers, the perjurers, and the legerdemain lawyers who can even make waterboarding, which Obama publicly condemned as torture, magically legal. So far at least, Obama has been no profile in courage – and he’s nearly 6 ½ years into his presidency.
I have two suggestions for him today. Let him take a few minutes to read and reflect on President Kennedy’s American University speech of 52 years ago. And let him also reflect on the words of Fannie Lou Hamer – the diminutive but gutsy civil rights organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and of Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964:
“Sometimes it seems like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom.”
Obama has a nine-inch height advantage over Fannie Lou Hamer; he needs somehow to assimilate a bit of her courage.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Can Obama Speak Strongly for Peace?”]
June 10, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, FBI, Russia, United States |
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Bankers, politicians and leaders of huge global businesses are set to meet in the annual Bilderberg conference in Austria this week, during which the rich and the powerful discuss global issues in secretive talks that influence global politics.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is set to rub shoulders with ex-CIA Director David H. Petraeus, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, former French Prime Minister Alan Juppé and Thomas Ahrenkiel, Director of the Danish Intelligence Service (DDIS) at the 63 Bilderberg conference, set to take place from 11-14 June in Telfs-Buchen, Austria.
The conference — surrounded by tight security — is notoriously secretive in its discussions and regularly attracts demonstrations against what critics describe as a global meeting of western capitalists, politicians and academics who wield great power behind the scenes. It is billed as “an annual meeting designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America.”
Bilderberg conferences are described as “private” and no minutes are taken, no report is written, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are made, and no policy statements are issued.
Daniel Estulin, author of ‘The True Story of the Bilderberg Group’ describes the meetings as “a shadow world government…threaten(ing) to take away our right to direct our own destinies (by creating) a disturbing reality.
“Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public.”
No-Fly Zone
Guests this year also include Google chairman Eric Schmidt; Paul M. Achleitner, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank; the Tyrolean property investor Rene Benko; Shell CEO Ben van Beurden; Thomas Enders, CEO, Airbus Group; Henri de Castries, the Chairman of the Euro Group; Austrian President Heinz Fischer; Siemens Austria CEO Wolfgang Hesoun; the CEO of Austrian oil and gas giant OMV, Gerhard Roiss; and Ryanair chairman Michael O’Leary.
Under discussion in Austria will be artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, chemical weapons threats, Greece, NATO and terrorism. Nobody representing Russia is on the guest list.
An elite anti-terrorism squad will be deployed under the command of Austria’s Interior Ministry and around 2,100 police officers will be on duty throughout the conference. The main road from Telfs to the Interalpen Hotel will be closed and the area around the hotel will be a no-fly zone.
A large protest march is expected on the afternoon of June 13, starting in Telfs square and making its way through the town.
June 10, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Bilderberg, NATO |
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Senator McCain and friends have a new push on to once again ban torture (except for exceptions in the Army Field Manual) that is being presented as an effort to preempt future Republican presidents’ torturing. This reinforces two false beliefs. One is that torture is not ongoing today under President Peace Prize. The other is that torture wasn’t banned before George W. Bush was ever selected by the Supreme Court.
Last December, Senator Ron Wyden had a petition up at MoveOn.org that read “Right now, torture is banned because of President Obama’s executive order. It’s time for Congress to pass a law banning torture, by all agencies, so that a future president can never revoke the ban.” This is the same mythology being pushed by McCain yet again. Wyden went on to explain:
“We live in a dangerous world. But when CIA operatives and contractors torture terrorist suspects, it doesn’t make us safer — and it doesn’t work. The recent CIA torture report made that abundantly clear. Right now, the federal law that bans torture only applies to the U.S. military — not our intelligence agencies. President Obama’s executive order barring all agencies from using torture could be reversed, even in secret, by a future president. That’s why it’s critical that Congress act swiftly to pass a law barring all agencies of the U.S. government, and contractors acting on our behalf, from engaging in torture. Without legislation, the door on torture is still open. It’s time for Congress to slam that door shut once and for all.”
Why in the world would anybody object to this unless they supported torture? Well, let me explain.
Torture and complicity in torture were felonies under U.S. law before George W. Bush moved into the White House, under both the torture statute and the war crimes statute. Nothing has fundamentally changed about that, other than the blatant lack of enforcement for several years running. Nothing in those two sections of the U.S. code limits the law to members of the U.S. military or excludes employees or contractors or subcontractors of so-called intelligence agencies. I emailed a dozen legal experts about that claim in the above petition. Michael Ratner replied “I don’t see where they get that from.” Kevin Zeese said simply “They’re wrong.” If anyone replies to me with any explanation, I’ll post it as an update at the top of this article on davidswanson.org — where I can be contacted if you have an explanation.
For the past several years, the U.S. Congress, White House, Justice Department, and media have gone out of their way to ignore the existence of U.S. laws banning torture. When silence hasn’t worked, the primary technique has been proposing over and over and over again to ban torture, as if it were not already banned. In fact, Congress has followed through and banned it a number of times, and done so with new exceptions that by some interpretations have in fact weakened the war crimes statute. This is my best guess where the nonsense about applying only to “intelligence agencies” comes from: laws like the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that claimed to pick and choose which types of torture to ban for whom.
When President Obama took President Bush’s place he produced an executive order purporting to ban torture (again), even while publicly telling the Justice Department not to enforce any existing laws. But an executive order, as Wyden seems to recognize, is not a law. Neither can it ban torture, nor can it give legal weight to the pretense that torture wasn’t already banned. In fact the order itself states: “Nothing in this order shall be construed to affect the obligations of officers, employees, and other agents of the United States Government to comply with all pertinent laws and treaties of the United States governing detention and interrogation, including but not limited to: the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution; the Federal torture statute, 18 U.S.C. 2340 2340A; the War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. 2441 . . . .”
Senator Wyden said he would introduce yet another bill to “ban torture.” Here’s how the Washington Post was spinning, and explaining, that:
“Torture is already illegal, but Wyden notes that protections can be strengthened. To oversimplify, the U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, in which participating states agreed to outlaw intentionally inflicting severe pain for specific purposes. The Bush administration obviously found a (supposedly) legal route around that.”
In other words, because it was done by a president, it was legal — the worldview of the Post’s old buddy Richard Nixon.
“After the Abu Graib revelations, John McCain helped pass a 2005 amendment that would restrict the military from using specific brutal interrogation tactics — those not in the Army Field Manual. (This didn’t preclude intel services from using these techniques, which might explain why CIA director John Brennan felt free to say the other day that future policymakers might revert to using them). In 2008, Congress passed a measure specifically applying those restrictions to intelligence services, too, but then-President Bush vetoed it. Senator Wyden would revive a version of that 2008 bill as a starting point, with the goal of codifying in law President Obama’s executive order banning the use of those specific techniques for all government employees, those in intelligence services included.”
But let’s back up a minute. When a president violates a law, that president — at least once out of office — should be prosecuted for violating the law. The law can’t be declared void because it was violated. Loopholes can’t be created for the CIA. Reliance on the Army Field Manual can’t sneak into law the loopholes built into that document. Presidents can’t order and un-order things illegal. Here’s how the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson responded to the release of the Senate’s report summary:
“The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes. The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the U.S. Government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability. International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the U.S. Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes. As a matter of international law, the U.S. is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice. The UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances require States to prosecute acts of torture and enforced disappearance where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. States are not free to maintain or permit impunity for these grave crimes.”
Now, one could try to spin the endless re-banning of torture as part of the process of enforcing an international treaty that under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. But banning a practice going forward, even when you ban it better, or ban it more emphatically for the 8th time, does absolutely nothing to fulfill the legal obligation to prosecute those crimes already committed. And here we are dealing with crimes openly confessed to by past officials who assert that they would “do it again” — crimes that resulted in deaths, thus eliminating any attempt at an argument that statutes of limitations have run out.
Here’s a different sort of petition that we’ve set up at RootsAction.org along with Witness Against Torture and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee: ” We call on President Obama to allow the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce our laws, and to immediately appoint a special prosecutor. As torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction, we call on any willing court system in the world to enforce our laws if our own courts will not do so.”
The purpose of such a petition is not vengeance or partisanship or a fetish with history. The purpose is to end torture, which is not done by looking forward or even by pardoning the crimes, as the ACLU has proposed — to its credit recognizing that the crimes exist. That should be a first step for anyone confused by the endless drumbeat to “ban torture.”
June 10, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Human rights, Obama, UN Convention Against Torture, UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances, United States |
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The Obama administration is trying to tack 20 years onto a Florida man’s tax fraud sentence for the supposed crime of possessing books the government doesn’t like. The Intercept reports:
Now, to demonstrate that Robertson’s tax charges merit a terrorism enhancement, the government has cited a number of books owned by Robertson that allegedly extol extremist beliefs. Robertson, who is recognized as an Islamic scholar, owned a library which included roughly 10,000 e-books, a small number of which are alleged by the government to have contained passages deemed controversial.
The government hasn’t provided any evidence to demonstrate that Robertson endorsed, let alone acted upon, any of the passages cited in these books, the defense counters. “There is nothing contained in the prosecution’s memorandum which connects Mr. Robertson to any actual conspiracy to commit terrorism,” Robertson’s attorney, Daniel Broderson, said. “He is an Islamic scholar who owned thousands of books, and they are trying to pull select passages from a handful of books he owned to try and make the case that he’s an extremist.”
Robertson, who says he’s worked for the FBI and CIA as an asset in the past, alleges that the government is retaliating against him for “refusing to conduct an overseas operation requested by the CIA.”
“The government is trying to use my case to establish a legal precedent, where even if a person is not charged with actual terrorism offenses they can still try them as a ‘terrorist’ using the sentencing adjustment,” Robertson told The Intercept. “This is not just about prosecuting my case specifically, it’s about creating a precedent whereby the government can simply go through the books you own and use them to frighten people into believing that you’re a terrorist.”
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time. Read more about his case, and about the Muslim Exemption to the First Amendment.
June 10, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, FBI, Human rights, Obama, United States |
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The movement that is emerging under the banner Black Lives Matter is not yet one year old, but it will be dead before it reaches the age of two if the Democratic Party has anything to say about it. The movement’s greatest challenge will be to survive the impending mass mobilization of Black Democratic officeholders and operatives in a $5 billion presidential election season.
The current Black-led grassroots campaign is, in very important ways, even more vulnerable to Democratic cooptation and dismantlement than was the white-led Occupy Wall Street movement, which succumbed to a combination of Democratic infiltration and repression – on top of its own contradictions – in the early months of 2012. Although its slogans remained imprinted in the minds of much of the “99%,” by the time the November election rolled around, Occupy had long been a spent force, swept from the streets and encampments by mainly Democratic mayors acting on orders from their Party leader and president, Barack Obama.
The Democratic Party poses a far greater institutional threat to the Black Lives Matter movement, by virtue of the fact that the Party permeates every aspect of African American civil society. Not only are virtually all Black elected officials Democrats, but all the major civic organizations – the NAACP, the Urban League, most Black local churches and labor organizations, fraternities and sororities, not to mention Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow-Push Coalition and “King Rat” Al Sharpton’s National Action Network – are annexes of the Democratic Party.
Put another way: the nascent Black-led movement for social transformation poses a grave threat to the Democratic Party’s chock-hold on Black politics. Therefore, the movement is inevitably on a collision course with the Democratic Party, although this may not yet be clear to many activists.
As I said at the closing plenary of the recent Left Forum gathering in New York City, the Democratic Party sits atop the Black polity “like a grotesque Sumo wrestler,” squeezing out the Black radical tradition. The Black Lives Matter movement consciously draws on this authentic – and still deeply honored – radical tradition, seeking to put it into practice under 21st century conditions.
In both its resistance to a criminal justice system designed to contain, criminalize and crush Blacks as a people, and its broader demand for social and economic transformation and global peace, the nascent Black-led movement picks up where a previous mass movement left off, two generations ago. The Sixties liberation movements were shut down through a combination of government repression and the rise of a class of Black office-holders and aspiring corporate collaborators whose interests lay in joining the existing order, not transforming it. Their political vehicle was, and remains, the Democratic Party – the organization through which this “Black Misleadership Class” became embedded in local and national power structures. As a loyal and key component of the ruling political duopoly, these Black Democratic politicians and power brokers have facilitated the exponential growth of the Black Mass Incarceration State in all its genocidal aspects, and greased the wheels of gentrification that is dispersing Black populations to the four winds, limiting the geography of effective Black political self-determination.
Malcolm X anticipated the rise of such a class, in the early Sixties, well before passage of the Voting Rights Act. His verbal assaults on the “Big Six” – the NAACP, Urban League, SCLC, CORE, SNCC, and A Philip Randolph – warned against Blacks becoming too close to the white power structure: specifically, the Kennedys and the Democratic Party. Malcolm advocated an independent Black politics:
“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”
Under the political hegemony of the misleaders, the Black polity slumbered, fitfully, for more than 40 years.
As appendages of the Democratic Party, the Black political class has gone from coffee with too much cream, to being the Kahlúa, the coffee liqueur, in the milk. (Or, more like a thin, chocolaty syrup in a foamy, homogenized corporate concoction.)
The mission of the movement is to challenge the legitimacy of the Black Mass Incarceration State, the machinery that killed Michael Brown and thousands of others, imprisons and permanently stigmatizes millions, and makes the entire Black community fair game for every atrocity imaginable at the hands of armed occupiers, the police. This direct confrontation with the State also explicitly rejects the rule of the classes that the police and military protect.
Black America is by far the most radical population group in the United States. History has made us so. The Black radical tradition, which encompasses the whole Left spectrum, is quite sufficient to inform the Black Lives Matter Movement – and to teach something to non-Black allies.
Most importantly, it must be understood that the political battlefield of the movement is largely delineated by a Black internal politics that has for two generations been warped and turned against itself by the deep infestation of the Democratic Party. Blacks in the U.S. cannot move forward, cannot resist the mass incarceration regime, cannot forge truly effective alliances with other groups in the U.S., or join the struggling peoples of the world, except to the extent that they break the internal stranglehold of the Democratic Party and its operatives in Black civil society. These are the lessons of Ferguson and, especially, Baltimore.
To succeed, the Black Lives Matter Movement must transform the politics of Black America. By definition, that means declaring war on the Democratic Party, and forcing Black politicians and activists to choose between the Party and the people’s struggle. The Democrats understand the logic, and have mounted a systematic cooption-repression response that will intensify as the election season – and Black cities – heat up.
As usual, the Democrats will try to make Black people more angry at the terminally racist Republican Party than at the police and local administration of their (typically) Democrat-run city. Hillary Clinton is already making noises of empathy with Blacks suffering under the urban police state. However, the Black Lives Matter movement has no institutional stake in the victory of either party, but is, in fact, locked in mortal political struggle with other Black people in the Democratic Party. These Black Democrats will insist on a truce, a cessation of agitation against national or local Democrats, until after the election. As with the Occupy movement, this will be accompanied by intensified police pressures against activists. At the end of the process, the Black Lives Matter movement is meant to go the way of Occupy, lost in the electoral Mardis Gras – killed by Democrats, not Republicans.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
June 10, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Black Lives Matter, Democratic Party, Occupy, United States |
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