Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani have teamed up to write a book, one with a very ambitious title; “How to resolve the Israel – Palestine Conflict.” On Nov. 30th, they came to the Morse Auditorium at B.U. (after a talk at Occupy Boston earlier in the day) to explain the book, and why it should be read when it comes out. Radical stuff, I know.
Gathered to hear their pitch was a disparate group of students, citizens and school officials. There had been talk of a B.U. Hillel anti-Finkelstein action beforehand, and possibly a walk out during the lecture, but neither came to fruition.
While very few knew that Finkelstein holds views similar in many respects to what we call Zionism, everyone knew that he once called Israel a “lunatic state.” Many of the assembled students were on the edge of their seats, waiting for the fireworks. They didn’t come. Funny thing about most modern day “radicals,” they’re usually the only ones making a rational argument. To be sure, there were points where Finkelstein delved into sensationalism, but his analysis was very sober and careful.
Finkelstein, as he has for many years, said that “the international consensus” is what will drive the settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the larger, Israeli-Arab Conflict. According to Finkelstein, we need to look no further than the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for our definition of “international consensus.” Both bodies accept the two-state settlement on the June 1967 border, and end to occupation, including East Jerusalem, a “just settlement of the refugee question” and security for both parties.
Advocating one state, without the two- state international consensus in Finkelstein’s view, is potentially damaging and could lead to these advocates becoming “a cult.” He used the language of Gandhi, saying that “politics is not about changing public opinion, or bringing enlightenment to the benighted masses, it is about trying to get people to act on what they already know is wrong.” Because two states is what has been accepted, by the UNGA, the ICJ, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Conference, the Quartet, and basically every other international organization– as well as civilian populations throughout the world, including a plurality in the U.S.– this is what the general Palestinian solidarity movement should strive for.
Finkelstein had some mildly critical words for BDS and its “vagueness,” stating that in order for the movement to attract a wider audience, goals must be clearly stipulated – to include the final settlement, which in his view, should be based on the June 1967 borders, “two states for two peoples” and all that jazz. This drew the ire of many Palestinian Solidarity movement activists in the crowd. Jamil Sbitan, who is with Boston University’s Students for Justice in Palestine, remarked – “As the Palestinians have a right to self-determination and have called for this movement, it is unfair to tell them that the opinion of international institutions and states is more legitimate than their right to determine their own future.”
Perhaps most surprising of all was the constant stream of students getting up from their seats and leaving, not out of protest, but because they have heard lectures like Finkelstein’s before and- and maybe, just maybe- along the way they have come to agree with the burgeoning “cult” Finkelstein continually warned the audience of. While Finkelstein stressed the importance of mobilization of people toward a resolution based on his definition of international consensus, he eschewed audience member’s questions about the moral question of a two-state settlement, which would undoubtedly leave many Palestinians out in the cold.
“Israel is a reality” was the refrain. Finkelstein was also dismissive of the problem the settlers and the rightward shift in Israeli society pose for a settlement. One audience member asked him, “ You say two-states, but how does that happen without Jews killing Jews? – the settlers are fanatical and will not leave.” Finkelstein brushed the concern aside, saying, “they are cowards – they will leave.” I couldn’t help leaving the lecture a bit dumbfounded, and I wasn’t alone. I went to hear from Finkelstein some new proposals for peace; what I got was a utopian vision that has very little chance of materializing. If international law and institutions held the key for peace, there would already be peace.
Getting Israel and the United States to follow the law – in the mind of many in the audience, including myself – can only be achieved by demanding far more than what is already on the table. Finkelstein fell short of this mark.
Rabbani, who Finkelstein called “the shrewdest analyst on the Israel-Palestine conflict today,” has the unique trait of being very understated in his delivery, but a tremendous force once his words have been transcribed. He spoke of the events of the last year in the Arab world as an “Arab 1848,” whereby a “fundamental change has taken place in the social, economic and political order of the peoples of the region.” Everyday citizens have “broken through the barrier of fear” throughout the region, leading governments to try and counter this change, or move to stay relevant in light of it. Rabbani placed the Palestinian Authority ( PA) in the latter category.
With the election of Barack Obama, the PA believed they had their man. The PA, like most people with knowledge of the conflict, was becoming disillusioned with the idea of a two-state settlement. Under the Oslo process, the Palestinians were “hamsters in the wheel, having to prove their worth at every turn for the crumbs from the American/Israeli table.” With Obama, they thought that “salvation was just around the corner.” He spoke of wanting the U.S. to have a different relationship with Muslims, and of the Israel-Palestine conflict as being central to the current problems, and assigned a Middle East envoy (George Mitchell) within thirty six hours of taking office. Unfortunately, all that Obama had to offer was a “revival of Oslo,” and once this reality set in, “Obama went from a Jesus like savior to Judas” in the eyes of not only everyday Palestinians, but the PA leadership as well.
This posed a problem for the PA. Due to the fragmentation of the Palestinian body during the Oslo process, the PA had to contend with Hamas, who was gaining steam and threatening the legitimacy of the PA. The PA, according to Rabbani, “wanted an achievement.” So, in February of 2011, they went to the UN Security Council with a motion to condemn further settlements in the OPT. The PA leadership, according to Rabbani, thought with the events taking place in the Arab world, and the increased pressure on international institutions by popular movements, the U.S. would be “very wary of vetoing” the motion. The subsequent U.S. veto proved to be “a death blow” for the peace process to date. What the PA was looking for with their next move, the bid for statehood, according to Rabbani, was not “internationalization” of the conflict, but “electric shock for Oslo.” The PA was threatening the US and the Quartet with a “hold me back or I will kill him” scenario. But, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum – after being “kicked in the teeth” by Obama at the UN, the PA leadership has made it impossible to go back to the negotiating table without a “clear and credible agenda,” it would be “political suicide” for them to do so. The PA’s inadvertent internationalization of the conflict at the UN has lead to a “decided break with Oslo” and potentially an “end to the Quartet” with International Law and UN resolutions becoming the basis for any future talks.
What has to take place first and foremost according to Rabbani, is a “Palestinian National Reconciliation” between Fatah, Hamas, other Palestinian political movements, the Palestinian diaspora and those inside in the Green Line. “Human Agency plays a role” he declared. “Palestinian Solidarity, Arab solidarity and International solidarity need to be mobilized.” While Rabbani agrees with Finkelstein that current political realities lead to “the possibility, if not the certainty, of eventually solving the conflict” within the two-state paradigm, he advocates a full right of return for living Nakba victims and “perhaps” all of their descendants. Will this be problematic for a two-state settlement? Will it pose problems for the authors as they collaborate? We will have to wait and read. One thing is for certain, the students involved in the Palestinian Solidarity movement have a moral clarity you don’t find every day. On the right of return, Kareen Chehayeb had this to say – “I believe in the full right of return, and that if a two-state settlement [was to forego] the right of return, there will be a plethora of new problems.” Now that sounds like a radical.
~
Norman Finkelstein: Scholar, Advocate, Radical, or Liberal/Zionist?
Norman Finkelstein is called an ‘American Radical’, but I believe a far more appropriate term for him, and those who share his views is ‘American Liberal’.
I recently heard Norman Finkelstein speak at the American Muslims for Palestine conference, for the first time following the incredible uprisings and display of people power – which began in the Arab world, and inspired the occupy movement which continue to grow in strength and numbers daily. No doubt an outstanding scholar, Finkelstein has gone to great lengths to research, document and disseminate the ongoing atrocities and war crimes committed by Israel. His thorough, meticulous approach is unparalleled and he’s paid a great price to his professional career, as his advocacy on Palestine caused him to lose tenure at DePaul University. Yet, instead of using his address to seize and build upon our knowledge during this historic moment, I was disappointed to hear him give, almost verbatim, the same talk we’ve heard for years.
For the sake of progress, I believe it’s necessary to understand Finkelstein’s logic and to do so, we must note the line and important distinction, of where his scholarly work ends and his advocacy begins. When the role of scholar and advocate blur, it becomes unclear and difficult for the audience to follow a line of reasoning; creating a schism. The issues he shifts from academic to advocate are some of the most critical for Palestinians and include, but are not limited to: one-state versus two, right of Palestinian refugees to return, and boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
He stakes all of his positions on these issues, which are virtually based on the same premises, that we should a) do what is popular or ‘realistic’ b) adjust our language and positions to appeal to ‘global consensus’ for fear that c) if we don’t, we will inevitably ‘turn people off.’ It is difficult to understand from where he comes up with his conclusions and what he lays down to be, ‘realistic goals’. What is clear however, is that all of these positions he urges are heavily based in an antiquated top down model of power and are, it is worth noting, most commonly held liberal Zionist positions. During this historic time it is more important than ever to be critical and understand the role of our allies, while building mechanisms for communication – in order to learn from one another.
Though it’s not complicated to understand once presented with the truth, the corporate media would have us believe otherwise, and the majority of American’s are utterly confused by the situation, issues and facts on the ground. The role of a scholar is to present facts and information, in a clear and succinct manner; which is very important in educating the masses and is desperately needed today. This is especially true for the case of Palestine, as for anyone with a belief in justice and human rights, the facts alone speak for themselves compelling one to join the cause.
The role of an advocate is to take these available facts and use the information to create analysis, build positions and ultimately take action. For many years now, Finkelstein’s stated position has been consistent (with itself). He suggests, like so many liberals, with regards to advocacy for Palestinian justice, that we take a more “practical” or “realistic” approach to the most difficult issues, until we are able to achieve ‘global consensus’.
Despite taking note of the global uprisings and referencing the shift of power in his talk, he continues to selectively advocate for “realistic” strategies, and appeal to this ‘global consensus’. He goes on to define this ‘international consensus’ broadly to mean: “the authoritative political, legal and human rights bodies in the world”1 and suggests that we place our hope in international law and bodies such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice-despite what he recognizes as their historic inability and/or political unwillingness to enforce their own laws, as they relate to Palestine. He even goes on to acknowledge “one of the best kept diplomatic secrets is that a broad international consensus has long existed on how to settle the Israel-Palestine conflict.”1 and in doing so, displays another example of his confusing and contradictory conclusions.
Using the same logic when speaking about one of the most important issues for Palestinians-right of return, he continues to overlook and thus dismiss altogether, the unlimited potential for people power, handing it over to Zionists: “For now, Israel will not honor a Palestinian right of return; to ‘demand’ it is the emptiest of gestures. That right will be honored only if the Palestinians become powerful enough to enforce it. If or when that happens, that some leaders verbally renounced the right will count for nothing.”
If and when, we amass such a show of people power that we will be able to influence justice to be served, we certainly will not need Israel’s permission to grant us these rights. Just as the apartheid government of South Africa was forced to fall, so will the Israeli system of oppression. Would the activists who worked all those years to end apartheid in South Africa have done justice to their cause if they created goals, based on what they thought the oppressors would be wiling to concede? For 20 years Israel has shown a clear lack of good will to engage in negotiations, or even uphold the agreements they’ve already made!
Another one of his bizarre recommendations is, rather than educate the international community about the racist ideology of Zionism* and Israeli apartheid, he suggests we adjust our language to fit this ‘global consensus’. Would the civil rights, women’s rights or any other movements in the USA have succeeded if they backed down because they didn’t have popular support at the time? Could they have effectively succeeded without talking about the KKK and white supremacy, issues of gender and male dominance etc.? Are we more concerned about protecting people’s feelings, or “turning them off” – than we are capable of/educating the general public about the source of the injustices, and seeking justice for the oppressed?
He builds on this line of reasoning, with regards to perusing the two state solution, by saying that “thousands of Palestinians suffered, sacrificed, even died for a sovereign Palestinian state.” However, I would far more likely characterize Palestinian’s brave struggle and sacrifices have been for the sake of freedom, liberation and justice. And, finally in a blow to the logical thinking mind, Finkelstein admits, in a posting subtitled: The one-state solution is an attractive ideal mistaken for a live option, implies the one state solution is ideal, and goes on to recognize: “of course the two-state solution is unjust. It cements Zionist usurpation of Palestinian land. It lets the perpetrators of this usurpation go scot-free, without so much as compensation for their victims. Worst of all, it perpetuates a state based on racial supremacy. Israel’s notion of Jewishness, the determinant of who should hold sovereignty, is ultimately biological. It is based on kinship. In practice, this kinship does not, as in other countries, depend on tracing family lines back to residence in the sovereign state, but simply on closeness to anyone considered ‘Jewish’ in the racial sense of the term.” 2
He clearly lays out all the reasons to be against such a state, yet still defies his own knowledge of the issue, and astoundingly makes his case for a two state solution. Using the following logic:
“it leaves ‘Jewish property’, including the settlements, in place. Some advocates of the one-state solution are explicit about this, though they never seem to mention it when criticizing the two-state solution. Others don’t speak of the settlements, or make vague references to adjudication – not a promising way to expel committed fanatics.”
Yes, the settlements would remain in place and those who want to live in them as equals would be encouraged to do so. Those who wish to disrupt the process of justice and sharing the land as equals, could be taken in to be held to legal proceedings, in addition to truth commissions and international observers (such as, but necessarily the UN) to enforce the deal.
He also takes a hard, critical look at boycott, divestment and sanctions, a powerful nonviolent strategy, modeled after the case of South Africa, largely credited for ending apartheid. He rejects this strategy, in direct opposition to Palestinian calls for international solidarity, put forward by Palestinian activists and 170 NGO’s in 2005. He does so using the logic that it is divisive and will turn people off. Yet if Finkelstein were consistent with even his own positions, rather than catering to Zionist critics, he would recognize them as reasonable demands-to cease all relations with the state of Israel, until it complies with international law (demands of BDS call: http://www.bdsmovement.net/bdsintro.).
In fact, we can learn a great deal by Palestinian proponents of the call, who are well versed in steering clear of ideological debates altogether, and care not for semantics of a so called one or two state solution, and instead focus on achieving their rights.
He even continued his talk with commonly repeated Zionist logic, that India has a prevailing caste system and the struggle for Kashmiri independence and gives the example of so many of the other countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. All of which are indeed unjust and which we should most certainly be critical of! However, none of these countries proudly boasts to be US’s number one ally, or recipient much less largest recipient, of US tax dollars and weapons – without which Israel would never have amassed so much power.
Just as we don’t want a state based on religious purity, we also don’t want to be ideological purists. However, we have gone too long and come too far, to compromise on our most basic rights now. I understand wanting to be practical to achieve political gains. However, Palestinians have already been down that road and in the process, given up so much; and lost everything in the process. We should learn these important lessons from history, and must support allies based in principles and solidarity, rather than compromising our most basic fundamental rights. Besides, why would anyone with absolutely no power to negotiate officially, begin with such week positions when all we have is the truth and our principles.
The overwhelming show of people power globally, shows increasingly that we are no longer waiting for, nor depending on governmental or international bodies to correct the massive number of injustices which are taking place on our planet.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is in nearly 1,500 cities worldwide, and growing in strength and numbers daily. During this most historic moment, and incredible show of people’s power globally, we are discovering, defining and realizing what is possible. We have drawn massive inspiration from those across the globe who literally managed the impossible: to overthrow some of the most powerful US backed allies/dictators- which were, to the West, of utmost strategic importance. Just as the corrupt 1% of bankers, politicians, dictators and war makers are working closely together, so must we. The success of this global people’s movement to achieve our full potential, is directly related to the extent of which we learn to work together, learn from each other and share information.
In the role of an ally it is more important and necessary than ever to actively connect the various issues – from OWS, to Egpyt with the issue of Palestine etc, and show how they are all the same struggle. As the the 99% begin to collectively take matters into our own hands, it is literally impossible for anyone to predict what is ‘realistic’ or ‘possible’. Norman Finkelstein who is speaking to people from all over the country and the world, is in a position of great influence. The international solidarity movement (http://www.palsolidarity.org), the Flotillas (http://www.freegaza.org/) and the Global March to Jerusalem (link to www.globalmarchtojerusalem.org) and BDS (www.bdsmovement.net) are great ways and perfect examples of movements and campaigns for allies of the Palestinian people to support. Otherwise, just stick to the facts Norm! ; )
1. From his article, titled: Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we can learn from Gandhilink to www.normanfinkelstein.com
2. Article: Reasoned rejection of one-state position: The One state solution is an attractive ideal mistaken for a live option: link to www.normanfinkelstein.com
*The definition of Zionism is the belief in the right of a Jewish state to exist, which is in itself inherently racist. It is impossible to reconcile democracy, equality and justice with separate laws and standards for non-Jews. The definition of apartheid is ‘separate’, as in laws for non-Jews.
Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.
The Volt subsidies flow through multiple companies involved in production. The analysis includes adding up the amount of government subsidies via tax credits and direct funding for not only General Motors, but other companies supplying parts for the vehicle. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to the GM Brownstown plant that assembles the batteries. The company was also awarded approximately $106 million for its Hamtramck assembly plant in state credits to retain jobs. The company that supplies the Volt’s batteries, Compact Power, was awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits (combination tax breaks and cash subsidies). These are among many of the subsidies and tax credits for the vehicle.
It’s unlikely that all the companies involved in Volt production will ever receive all the $3 billion in incentives, Hohman said, because many of them are linked to meeting various employment and other milestones. But the analysis looks at the total value that has been offered to the Volt in different aspects of production – from the assembly line to the dealerships to the battery manufacturers. Some tax credits and subsidies are offered for periods up to 20 years, though most have a much shorter time frame.
GM has estimated they’ve sold 6,000 Volts so far. That would mean each of the 6,000 Volts sold would be subsidized between $50,000 and $250,000, depending on how many government subsidy milestones are realized.
If those manufacturers awarded incentives to produce batteries the Volt may use are included in the analysis, the potential government subsidy per Volt increases to $256,824. For example, A123 Systems has received extensive state and federal support, and bid to be a supplier to the Volt, but the deal instead went to Compact Power. The $256,824 figure includes adding up the subsidies to both companies.
The $3 billion total subsidy figure includes $690.4 million offered by the state of Michigan and $2.3 billion in federal money. That’s enough to purchase 75,222 Volts with a sticker price of $39,828.
Additional state and local support provided to Volt suppliers was not included in the analysis, Hohman said, and could increase the level of government aid. For instance, the Volt is being assembled at the Poletown plant in Detroit/Hamtramck, which was built on land acquired by General Motors through eminent domain.
“It just goes to show there are certain folks that will spend anything to get their vision of what people should do,” said State Representative Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills.
Greg Martin, director of Policy and Washington Communications for GM, wrote in an email, “While much less than the hundreds of billions of dollars that Japanese and Korean auto and battery manufacturers have received over the years, the investments provided by several different Administrations and Congresses to jump-start the country’s fledgling battery technology and domestic electric vehicle industries (not just specifically for the Volt as Ford’s offering will also use LG Chem batteries and Fisker will use the A123 system for example) matches the same foresight and innovation leadership that other countries are exhibiting and which America has historically taken pride in.”
Martin added that the Mackinac Center’s math was “simple and selective.” However, he offered no data or specifics to support his assertion.
“This is a matter of simple math,” said Hohman. “I added the known state and federal incentives that have been offered and divided by the number of Volts sold. If GM has additional information to add to the public data on the use of taxpayer money, I look forward to seeing it.”
It seems that relations between Turkey and France have deteriorated over a newly-voted bill criminalizing the denial of Armenian genocide.
As the Turkish envoy in France left Paris on Friday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused his country’s new rival of committing “genocide” in Algeria.
“France massacred an estimated 15 percent of the Algerian population starting from 1945. This is genocide,” Erdogan told a news conference after the French move on a massacre of Armenians by Ottoman-era forces.
The Turkish premier accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of “fanning hatred between Muslims and Turks for electoral gains.”
Also on Friday, the Turkish envoy in France had left Paris in protest of the new French law.
France is home to around 500,000 citizens of Armenian descent and they are seen as a key source of support for Sarkozy and his UMP ahead of presidential and legislative elections in April and June next year.
Paris appeared to have been caught out by the fury of Turkey’s response.
“I respect the views of our Turkish friends — it’s a great country, a great civilisation — and they must respect ours,” Sarkozy said in Prague where he was at the funeral of late Czech president Vaclav Havel.
On Thursday, France’s National Assembly voted the first step towards passing a law that would impose a jail term and a 45,000 euro fine on anyone in France who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians constitutes genocide.
France’s Foreign Minister Alain Juppe called on Turkey not to “overreact” to a bill that he insisted was a parliamentary initiative, and not a project of Sarkozy’s government.
Shuafat checkpoint that was inaugurated a few days ago disconnects the residents of the refugee camp from the center of their lives. It separates family members, employees from their place of work, patients from clinics, children from educational institutions and restricts the free movement of tens of thousands of human beings, for the ultimate goal set by its inventors and constructors to create a “strictly Jewish Jerusalem”.
The architecture of the checkpoint correlates to the principles of modern prisons, the Panopticon, the concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe all inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched, according to Michel Foucault’s definition:
“A metaphor for the modern disciplinary power which is based on isolation, individualization and supervision… the construction is divided into cells that provide the supervisors a clear view of the prisoners- so as to enable the creation of hierarchy and power. In this instance, the custodians (prison directors, wardens) are able to observe and control the space through different devises (closed-circuit televisions, patrols and so on) and they have control over and access to the entire site. In contrast, the prisoners’ movement is restricted to a defined and narrow space, and their accessibility, as well as their ability to observe, is partial and limited according to the regulations of the administration”.
When entering this lion’s den one is sure to lose his way in the concrete monster, adorned with the hidden eyes of countless cameras and the revealed eyes of the men in uniform, who are seated in a room separated by bullet proof glass.
The walls of this construction are impenetrable to sun beams, the vast space is lighted artificially, which causes the person walking in the meandering labyrinth to feel uncertain whether he is located on ground level or under it. In this atmosphere, in which one can’t tell if he is above or under, whether it is day or night, of estrangement and isolation from natural surroundings, and in which in each moment a side door might open and the person might disappear to god knows where, it’s no wonder that there is a sense of distress and suffocation.
A protest was supposed to be held on the inauguration ceremony. But the long arm of the occupation was quicker than the protest leaders, and in the dead of night it visited tens of houses and only at morning was it known that thirty five men were arrested. In the absence of the protest leaders children and teenagers took their places. Some had their faces bear and others covered them for fear of the cameras above that immortalize every movement made in the open space, as well as the long sighted camera that was attached to the military jeep patrolling at the side of the protest. Years of experience have taught them that after the cameras come hunters that do not distinguish between children and adults, to them they are all prey that can be arrested and locked up.
The children protested and threw stones and in response a burst of rubber bullets was fired, after which a group of armed men with drawn riffles came out of the checkpoint and stood at the center of the main street. Once they finished notifying every one of their presence- they headed back.
By the new pillbox, on the road heading out of the checkpoint, like a memoranda is the soldier post which was the symbol of the old checkpoint. The old checkpoint wasn’t more humane than the new one, but it gave a sense of impermanence, and with impermanence comes hope. Unlike the new one, the actual construction of the old one enabled a physical encounter between occupier and occupied, without the alienating sterility which is typical to the new checkpoints.
A checkpoint isn’t just a construction implemented for blocking and imprisoning, its essence isn’t architectural; it is also and perhaps mostly there to mold consciousness and ideology.
~
(Translated by Ruth Fleishman)
As a member of Machsomwatch, once a week Tamar Fleishman heads out to document the checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah. This documentation (reports, photos and videos) can be found on the organization’s site: www.machsomwatch.org. She is also a member of the Coalition of Women for Peace and volunteer in Breaking the Silence.
There are a few facts to keep in mind to understand what’s going on in the wake of the death this week of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
#1. US foreign policy vis-a-vis North Korea has always sought to force the latter’s collapse to pave the way for its absorption into the US-dominated South [1] — and did so well before Pyongyang began to work on nuclear weapons. US hostility toward North Korea has never been about nuclear weapons. On the contrary, North Korea’s nuclear weapons are a consequence of US hostility. US hostility, now in its seventh decade, is about what it has always been about: putting an end to what Washington mistakenly calls North Korea’s Marxist-Leninist system (Marxism-Leninism has been replaced by Juche ideology—a home-grown doctrine of self-reliance), its non-market system, and its self-directed economic development [2]. None of these offer much latitude for US profit-making at North Korea’s expense, and hence are singled out for demolition.
#2. North Korea only began to seek nuclear weapons after the United States announced in 1993 that it was re-targeting some of its strategic nuclear missiles from the former Soviet Union to North Korea. Since then the country has only been able to develop its nuclear capability to a kindergarten level. [3] The plutonium devices it tested in 2006 and 2009 produced only one-tenth the power of the Hiroshima blast. There is no evidence it has miniaturized a warhead to fit atop a missile. And its missile program is plagued by problems. [4]
#3. North Korea is a military pipsqueak, whose personnel are deployed in large numbers to agriculture. The military budgets and weapons’ sophistication of its adversaries, the United States, South Korea and Japan, tower over its own. If the Pentagon’s budget is represented by the 6’ 9” basketball player Magic Johnson, North Korea’s military budget is 1”, about the height of a small mouse. South Korea’s is 4.5” and Japan’s 3.9”, multiple times larger than the North’s. [5]
#4. North Korea has no more military heft to mount a provocation against the United States than a mouse has to beat Magic Johnson on the basketball court. Nor has it the capability to wage a civil war against its southern compatriots and expect to win. North Korea is not an aggressive threat. “In the Obama analysis,” writes New York Times reporter David Sanger, “the North is receding into what the president’s top strategists have repeatedly called a ‘defensive crouch,’ trying to stave off the world with a barrage of missile and nuclear tests…Constantly on the brink of starvation, its military so broke that it cannot train its pilots, it has no illusions about becoming a great power in Asia. Its main goal is survival.” [6]
#5. Because the United States is a military Gargantua compared to North Korea, and South Korea and Japan have better equipped militaries, they can safely stage provocations against the North, forcing Pyongyang into a defense-spending drain of its treasury, bringing closer the realization of the US goal of tipping the country into crisis and possibly collapse. On the other hand, North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party wants to avoid confrontations at all costs, short of surrendering to the demands that it close up shop, and re-open under South Korean management.
#6. Provocations, then, are all on the other side. There are few acts more provocative than the United States’ targeting of North Korea with strategic nuclear missiles, nor former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s warning that the Pentagon could turn North Korea into a charcoal briquette [7]. Six decades of Washington-led economic warfare against the country is equally provocative, and a principal cause of North Korea’s impoverishment. Tens of thousands of US troops are deployed along the North’s southern borders, US warships and nuclear missile-equipped submarines prowl the periphery of its territorial waters, and US warplanes menace its airspace. Pyongyang is only the immediate architect of North Korea’s Songun (military-first) policy. Washington is the ultimate architect. Finally, US and South Korean militaries conduct regular war games exercises, one of which, Ulchi Freedom Guardian, is an exercise in invading North Korea. Who’s provoking who?
#7. Kim Jong Il, the recently deceased North Korean leader–literally depicted in South Korean children’s books as a red devil with horns and fangs [8]–has been equally demonized in the Western mass media for starving his people. It is true that food shortages have plagued the country. But the vilifying Kim obituaries don’t mention why North Koreans are hungry. The answer is sanctions. [9] US foreign policy, like that of the Allied powers in WWI toward Germany, has been to starve its adversary into submission. This isn’t acknowledged, for obvious reasons. First, it would reveal the inhumane lengths to which US foreign policy is prepared to reach to secure its goals. And second, North Korean hunger must be used to discredit public ownership and a central planning as a workable economic model. North Koreans are hungry, the anti-Communist myth goes, because socialism doesn’t work. The truth of the matter is that North Koreans are hungry because Washington has made them so. Not surprisingly, calls by humanitarian groups for the United States to deliver food aid are being brushed aside with a litany of bizarre excuses, the latest being that food aid can’t be delivered because Kim Jong-il’s son, Kim Jong-eun, has succeeded him. [10] Huh? The real reason food aid won’t be delivered is because it would contradict US foreign policy. The United States once considered the death of half a million Iraqi children “worth it”. [11] Its leaders would consider the sanctions-produced demise through starvation of as many North Koreans worth it, as well.
#8. The death of Kim Jong-il is a potential boon for US foreign policy. There is a possibility of disorganization within the leadership, and internal conflicts leading to a fraying unity of purpose. Rather than focusing on external threats, the leadership may be divided, and pre-occupied with succession. If so, this is, from the perspective of the United States and South Korea, a pivotal moment—a time when the country may be tipped into collapse. And so, at this moment, who would you expect to unleash a provocation: Pyongyang? Or Washington and Seoul? At the best of times, Pyongyang wants to avoid a fight. At this critical juncture, it absolutely needs to. But the calculus works the other way round for the predators. Now is when North Korea is most vulnerable to predation.
#9. Predators never let on that they’re the hunters. Always they portray themselves as seeking to safeguard their security against the multiple threats of a dangerous world. Through guile and cunning, the mouse might just outmaneuver Magic Johnson and sink a basket or two. So it is that the United States, South Korea and Japan are said to be on high alert, in case the North Koreans stage another “provocation,” like the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan (for which the evidence of North Korean involvement is laughably thin at best [12]) or another Yeonpyeong Island artillery barrage (which the South set off by firing its own artillery into disputed waters, that, under international customary law, belong to the North. [13])
But as we’ve seen, it makes no sense to expect the scenario of a North Korean-furnished provocation to unfold. The more likely explanation for why US, South Korean and Japanese militaries are on high alert is because now is an ideal time for pressure on Pyongyang to be intensified, and because the triumvirate might be preparing to intervene militarily if conditions become propitious.
1. New York Times reporter David Sanger (“What ‘engagement’ with Iran and North Korea means,” The New York Times, June 17, 2009) notes that “American presidents have been certain they could … speed (North Korea’s) collapse, since the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953.” At the same time, Korea expert Selig S. Harrison has written that “South Korea is once again seeking the collapse of the North and its absorption by the South.” (“What Seoul should do despite the Cheonan”, The Hankyoreh, May 14, 2010.)
2. According to Dianne E. Rennack, (“North Korea: Economic sanctions”, Congressional Research Service, October 17, 2006) many US sanctions have been imposed on North Korea for reasons listed as either “communism”, “non-market economy” or “communism and market disruption.”
3. In an article on Newt Gingrich’s fantasies about North Korea or Iran setting off a nuclear device far above US territory in order to unleash an electromagnetic pulse attack, New York Times’ reporter William J. Broad cites a US military expert who characterizes “the nations in question (as being) at the kindergarten stage of developing nuclear arms.” (“Among Gingrich’s passions, a doomsday vision”, The New York Times, December 11, 2011.)
4. Keith Johnson, “Pyongyang neighbors worry over nuclear arms”, The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011
5. The annual military budgets in billions are: United States, $700; North Korea, $10; South Korea, $39; Japan, $34. With the exception of the Pentagon’s budget, annual military expenditures were estimated by multiplying a country’s GDP by its military spending as a percentage of GDP, as estimated by the CIA and reported in its World Factbook. The source for the Pentagon’s military budget is Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Weighing Pentagon cuts, Panetta faces deep pressures”, The New York Times, November 6, 2011.
6. David Sanger, “What ‘engagement’ with Iran and North Korea means,” The New York Times, June 17, 2009.
7. “Colin Powell said we would…turn North Korea into a ‘charcoal briquette,’ I mean that’s the way we talk to North Korea, even though the mainstream media doesn’t pay attention to that kind of talk. A charcoal briquette.” Bruce Cumings, “Latest North Korean provocations stem from missed US opportunities for demilitarizaton,” Democracy Now!, May 29, 2009.
8. David E. Sanger, “A ruler who turned North Korea into a nuclear state”, The New York Times, December 18, 2011.
9. See Stephen Gowans, “Amnesty International botches blame for North Korea’s crumbling healthcare”, What’s Left, July 20, 2010. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/amnesty-international-botches-blame-for-north-korea%E2%80%99s-crumbling-healthcare/
10. Evan Ramstad and Jay Solomon, “Dictator’s death stokes fears”, The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011.
11. Asked about a UN estimate that sanctions had killed 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said infamously, “It’s a hard choice, but I think, we, think, it’s worth it.” 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4. Retrieved June 19, 2011
12. See Tim Beal’s Crisis in Korea: American, China and the Risk of War. Pluto Press. 2011.
13. See Tim Beal, “Theatre of war: Smoke and mirrors on the Korean peninsula on the anniversary of the Yeonpyeong incident,” Pyongyang Report V13 N2, December 6, 2011 http://www.timbeal.net.nz/geopolitics/Theatre_of_War9.pdf and Stephen Gowans, “US Ultimately to Blame for Korean Skirmishes in Yellow Sea”, What’s Left, December 5, 2010. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/us-ultimately-to-blame-for-korean-skirmishes-in-yellow-sea/
A year ago yesterday, I got the dreaded house call from the FBI. I was at home working when two agents rang my buzzer and asked to speak with me.
I had been expecting such a visit; on 24 September 2010 the FBI raided the homes of prominent anti-war and international solidarity organizers I have worked with over the years in Chicago, as well as the homes of activists in the Twin Cities and the office of the Anti War Committee there. In the weeks that followed, more Palestine solidarity organizers and Palestinian Americans in Chicago were delivered subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago as part of an investigation into violations of the laws banning material support for foreign terrorist organizations.
I declined to speak with the two agents who visited me; they then gave me a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury on 25 January 2011. I spent last Christmas and New Year convinced that I would soon be in federal prison for civil contempt of court. Even though it meant we risked being jailed, all 23 of us who have been subpoenaed as part of this grand jury fishing expedition have refused to testify. We have asserted that our first amendment rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, protecting free speech and freedom of association, are being trampled on.
A first amendment issue
The grand jury — essentially a secret court in which you’re not allowed to have a lawyer, and there is not even a judge presiding over the proceedings — has been long abused as a tool of inquisition into domestic political movements. Indeed, no specific crime has been identified related to our case.
The FBI’s operations manual for the September raids, discovered last April to have been accidentally left amongst a raided activist’s files, make it clear that they wanted to question activists about associational information — who activists know and work with in the US, Colombia and Palestine, and how activists organize and what they believe. They wanted people to name everyone they know who has ever traveled to the Middle East or South America.
It is also obvious the FBI put up the LA County Sheriff to raid the home of veteran Chicano liberation activist Carlos Montes last May; he faces trumped-up technical firearms violation charges and serious prison time. The FBI was on hand during the raid to question Montes about his political associations (an organizer of the 2008 Republican National Convention protests, he was named in the search warrant used to raid the Anti War Committee office) and took material from his home related to his long history of political organizing. They even took a kuffiyeh — the traditional checkered Palestinian scarf — only one example of many demonstrating how federal agents so arbitrarily confiscated property from activists’ homes.
And while the threat of indictments looms, I am not spending Christmas and new year’s in federal prison for civil contempt of court. This is, I believe, thanks to the vocal protest that countless people around the US and around the world have made in support of the 24 of us and in support of civil liberties. This is a huge victory. But at the same time, civil liberties and constitutional protections have further eroded even in the last year. More protest must be shown before the situation gets even worse.
A bad time for civil liberties
Even The New York Times has excoriated the Obama administration over its civil liberties record after its justice department went even further than Bush’s to expand the FBI’s powers to investigate US citizens, “even when there is no firm basis for suspecting any wrongdoing.” In an editorial entitled “Backward at the FBI,” the Times takes the FBI’s new operations manual to task, as revised guidelines “will give agents significant new powers to search law enforcement and private databases, go through household trash or deploy surveillance teams, with even fewer checks against abuse.”
The Times adds:
They also expand the special rules covering “undisclosed participation” in an organization by an FBI agent or informant. The current rules are not public, and, as things stand they still won’t be. But we do know the changes allow an agent or informant to surreptitiously attend up to five meetings of a group before the rules for undisclosed participation — whatever they are — kick in.[…]
The FBI’s recent history includes the abuse of national security letters to gather information about law-abiding citizens without court orders, and inappropriate investigations of antiwar and environmental activists. That is hardly a foundation for further loosening the rules for conducting investigations or watering down internal record-keeping and oversight.
After that editorial was published in June, things only got worse. The United States government sanctioned and carried out the assassination of one of its citizens on foreign soil despite the fact that he posed no immediate danger to public safety. Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, stated after the Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone in Yemen:
The targeted assassination program that started under President Bush and expanded under the Obama Administration essentially grants the executive the power to kill any US citizen deemed a threat, without any judicial oversight, or any of the rights afforded by our Constitution. If we allow such gross overreaches of power to continue, we are setting the stage for increasing erosions of civil liberties and the rule of law.
Other stains on civil liberties this year included the persecution and conviction of the the Irvine 11 — a group of students (all of the Muslim, all of them young men) who were subjected to a criminal trial for briefly and nonviolently disrupting the speech of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren.
We unequivocally condemn these charges, which unfairly single out and criminalize Muslim students who chose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak out against Israel’s human rights abuses. Had the speaker not been Israeli, had the issue not been Palestine, had the students not been Muslim, these charges never would have been pursued. Rather, these charges reflect a climate of Islamophobia and an irrational exceptionalism for Israel when it comes to free speech. The charges chill the free exchange of ideas and students’ right to protest at universities nationwide.
Guantanamo comes to the US
But perhaps the scariest development in the war on civil liberties this year is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2012, which if enacted would allow the indefinite detention of US citizens without trial, not unlike Israel’s use of administrative detention. Indeed, as Human Rights Watch summarizes, “In addition to codifying indefinite detention without charge in US law, the bill would require that the military, rather than federal, state, or local law enforcement, handle certain terrorism cases.”
@theCCR
The CCR RT: #NDAA codifies into law military’s power to indefinitely detain any American citizen w/o charges, evidence, or trial. Obama must veto. Dec 02 via webFavoriteRetweetReply
it will be the first time that the United States Congress has codified the power of indefinite detention into the law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. The 1950 Congress passed a bill saying that communists and subversives could be imprisoned without a trial, without full due process, based on the allegation that they presented a national threat, an emergency, a threat to the national security of the United States. President Truman, knowing that the bill would—the veto would be overridden, nonetheless vetoed it and said that it made a mockery of the Bill of Rights. That law was repealed in 1971 with the Non-Detention Act, that said you cannot hold people in prison without charging them with a crime. The war on terror has eroded that principle, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, but Congress is now, with the Democrats in control of the Senate and a Democratic president, is about to enact into law the first bill that will say that the military and the United States government do have this power. It’s muddled whether it applies to US citizens on U.S. soil, but it’s clearly indefinite detention, and there’s a very strong case to make that it includes US citizens, as well, which, as we know, the Obama administration already claims anyway, and that’s what makes it so dangerous.
Not only is the Obama administration not closing Guantanamo, but it is paving the way for more Guantanamo-style indefinite detention of US citizens in a military court system.
Following the dismissing of an appeal for the Holy Land Foundation Case, Noor Elashi described on Counterpunch last week how her father — one of five men persecuted and convicted in the US because of the their humanitarian work in support of Palestinians living under US-funded Israeli occupation — has ended up in one of these facilities, and how his “significantly diminished phone calls and visitations are scheduled in advance and live-monitored from Washington DC.”
Will this become the bleak reality for not just Palestinian political prisoners in the US, but also those who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people? It’s a serious question as the US government moves to further criminalize solidarity with the Palestinian people — as they have criminalized almost all of Palestinian society itself by placing all the major Palestinian political parties (except that which collaborates with the US and Israel) on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
The proposed legislation to allow the US military to indefinitely detain without trial “domestic terrorism” suspects who are US citizens is especially scary considering that political activists are increasingly being treated as terrorists — whether it be animal welfare activists investigating factory farms or activists who organized in protest of the 2008 Republican National Convention. And now the Chicago Police Department is creating a counterterrorism unit for the May 2012 NATO and G8 summits in Chicago, at the same time that the city refuses to meet with or issue protest permits to antiwar activists mobilizing large demonstrations against the meetings.
Political repression in the US
Prosecuting Palestine solidarity activists for support of terrorism and going after environmentalists and animal rights organizers is not about protecting public safety. It’s about crushing dissent.
The laws banning material support to foreign terrorist organizations have been expanded so broadly in recent years that the US government defines as “material support” immaterial things like political speech, and travel to places like Colombia and Palestine are now grounds for a judge to approve a search warrant on someone’s home — things thought to be protected by the first amendment.
And Glenn Greenwald, the aforementioned constitutional law attorney, had this to say about the use of para-militarized forces to crush Occupy Wall Street protests around the US:
A country cannot radically reduce quality-of-life expectations, devote itself to the interests of its super-rich, and all but eliminate its middle class without triggering sustained citizen fury.
The reason the U.S. has para-militarized its police forces is precisely to control this type of domestic unrest, and it’s simply impossible to imagine its not being deployed in full against a growing protest movement aimed at grossly and corruptly unequal resource distribution. As Madeleine Albright said when arguing for U.S. military intervention in the Balkans: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” That’s obviously how governors, big-city Mayors and Police Chiefs feel about the stockpiles of assault rifles, SWAT gear, hi-tech helicopters, and the coming-soondrone technology lavished on them in the wake of the post/9-11 Security State explosion, to say nothing of the enormous federal law enforcement apparatus that, more than anything else, resembles a standing army which is increasingly directed inward.
Most of this militarization has been justified by invoking Scary Foreign Threats — primarily the Terrorist — but its prime purpose is domestic. As civil libertarians endlessly point out, the primary reason to oppose new expansions of government power is because it always — always — vastly expands beyond its original realm.
Reasons to be hopeful
It’s easy to get depressed about the increasingly repressive conditions in the US. But there are reasons to be hopeful.
The potential for true change was made brilliantly clear this year when huge numbers of people come out into the streets for a common goal — whether it be protecting workers’ rights in Wisconsin, calling for the downfall of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt or for economic justice on Wall Street. Or when young Palestinians born refugees in Syria and Lebanon attempted to march back to their homeland, unafraid of Israel’s landmines and machine guns.
Because of collective action’s power to change, this is precisely why it is being so severely repressed in the US right now. We must stay strong, keep our chins up and keep fighting for a better future.
More than sixty participants from fifteen countries (including CPT Palestine member Maria Delgado) heeded an urgent call by Kairos Palestine on 4-10 December 2011 as they joined Palestinians in the Kairos for Global Justice encounter in Bethlehem.
The participants gathered to commemorate the second anniversary of the launching in Bethlehem of the document Kairos Palestine: a Moment of Truth by Palestinian Christians. A significant representation from two Asian countries (India and the Philippines), and from South Africa, together with delegates from Jordan and Uruguay, demonstrated solidarity arising from the Global South towards the initiative.
Many churches, Christian and secular movements around the word have endorsed the Kairos document, and have issued responses in support of it.
After listening to the presentations and exchanging ideas in working groups (by regions and by themes), the participants approved a final declaration: The Bethlehem Call: Here we stand; Stand with us.
The document specifies some “non-negotiable” issues and asks Christians and churches to
“Reject the silence of the church, lest we be accomplices in crimes against humanity, such as those of apartheid and persecution.
“Refuse to be coerced into accepting financial assistance from any church or organisation that supports the Occupation. (…)
“Challenge any church which, either directly or indirectly, invests in companies which support the occupation.
“Call the Israeli occupation of Palestine a crime and sin.
“Reject any argument aimed at convincing Palestinians and the international community that the problems are caused by Muslims rather than the Occupation.
“Demand that churches take bold and courageous positions for justice against injustice. We are appalled at the spiritual and institutional cowardice that refuses to take an unequivocal stand for justice. Equally, victims and perpetrators cannot be put on equal footing in efforts to create illusions of balance.
“Confirm our obligation to resist the Occupation in faith, hope and love. We reject calls to cease advocating and practising [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] or any other form of non-violent civil resistance that will end the Occupation.
“Resist being party to any church or church-related organisation offering tours to the Holy Lands that do not include an encounter with local Palestinians and express our opposition to such initiatives.
“Demand that the Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees be enforced.
“Steadfastly uphold the principle of compassion toward the oppressor.”
Unbelievably, in 2011 this question has not yet been settled in the courts of the United States. Human rights attorneys are headed back to court in the coming month to argue that, yes, victims of war crimes and torture by contractors should have a path to justice. Attorneys from my organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, along with co-counsel, are representing Iraqi civilians who were horribly tortured in Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq in seeking to hold accountable two private contractors for their violations of international, federal and state law. By the military’s own internal investigations, private military contractors from the U.S.-based corporations L-3 Services and CACI International were involved in the war crimes and acts of torture that took place, which included rape, being forced to watch family members and others be raped, severe beatings, being hung in stress positions, being pulled across the floor by genitals, mock executions, and other incidents, many of which were documented by photographs. The cases, Al Shimari v. CACI and Al-Quraishi v. Nakhla and L-3 aim to secure a day in court for the plaintiffs, none of whom were ever charged with any crimes.
The Department of Justice has thus far failed to prosecute any of the contractors involved, so the only path currently available for any accountability is through these human rights lawsuits. However, after years of litigation, the allegations of torture by contractors in these cases have still never been seriously examined, much less ruled on, by the courts. None of the plaintiffs in any of these cases have yet to have his or her day in court to tell their account of what they suffered. The reason is because the private military contractors have raised numerous legal defenses, many of which the plaintiffs’ lawyers have argued are plainly inapplicable to private corporations. which have kept the cases from moving into the discovery phase, where the nature of the contractors obligations, actions and oversight, as well as what happened to the plaintiffs would be the examined in detail. So far, CACI and Titan/L-3 have focused the courts on any question but whether the plaintiffs were tortured. As CCR and co-counsel summarize the question in their brief in Al-Quraishi v. Nakhla and L-3:
Are corporate defendants entitled to categorical “law of war” immunity for their alleged torture and war crimes when such a proposed immunity runs counter to settled understandings of the law of war and centuries of Supreme Court precedent, and would give for-profit contractors more protection from suit than genuine members of the U.S. Armed Forces?
This week, CCR and co-counsel filed briefs that argue the cases must go forward. Additionally, yesterday a number of other human rights organizations along with a group of retired high-ranking military officers are filing supporting amicus briefs to add their voices to the chorus of concern over contractor impunity. The military officers’ brief argues that, “given that employees of civilian contractors indisputably are not subject to the military chain of command, and therefore cannot be disciplined or held accountable by the military, it makes little sense to extend to them such absolute tort law immunity for their misconduct.”
This legal battle is taking place as the United States is outsourcing war at a rate beyond anything ever seen in our history. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the number of contractors has at times far exceeded the number of soldiers. Now, as the U.S. ends the war in Iraq, the State Department is reporting that it has been in the process of tripling the number of armed security contractors it will employ in Iraq to provide security for the thousands of State Department employees that will remain to work in what is now by far the largest U.S. embassy in the world.
It’s important for people to understand what is going on in the courts regarding this current litigation not only because the torture survivors need justice, but also because these cases have wide implications beyond this particular situation. The corporations involved argue that they should be exempt from any investigation into the allegations against them because, among other reasons, our federal government’s interests in executing wars would be at stake if corporate contractors can be sued. This is incredibly flawed logic; the lawsuits are for acts that are far outside the “laws of war” and these are crimes that are not in the government’s interest.
They are also invoking a new, sweeping defense that first appeared two years ago in a separate case CCR and co-counsel brought against these same corporations, Saleh v Titan. The new rule is termed “battlefield preemption” and aims to eliminate any civil lawsuits against contractors that take place on any “battlefield.” Among the numerous alarms this should set off is the fact that in the U.S.’ War on Terror it is argued that many places far from any actual war zone are now battlefields. Indeed, a detention center in Iraq filled with civilians who were never charged with any crimes, which is what we’re talking about in these current cases before the court, should not be considered a battlefield. And acts of torture, which is what is at issue in these cases, cannot be characterized as “combat,” which is what this defense allows.
Think about what it would mean for private military contractors to be immune from any type of civil liability, even for war crimes, as long as it takes place on a so-called battlefield during this time of unprecedented use of contracting and when the term “battlefield” is being stretched to meaninglessness in the ever-expanding U.S. War on Terror. Anyone and everywhere could be a target. That is what is at stake here. Everyone who cares about human rights should be paying attention.
In giving their reasoning for dismissing these cases, the Fourth Circuit panel that originally heard the case (over a strong dissenting opinion) expressed its fear that cases like these would “undermine the flexibility that military necessity requires in determining the methods for gathering intelligence.” But this is exactly the point. No one should ever have the “flexibility” to commit war crimes, rape and other forms of torture. There absolutely must be consequences for these violations. If there are not, courts will essentially be saying anything goes – even the most sadistic and brutal torture – if you are a private military contractor.
Without substantial social reform and redistribution of economic assets, representative institutions – no matter how ‘democratic’ in form – will simply mirror the undemocratic power relations of society. Democracy requires a change in the balance of forces in society. Concentration of economic power in the hands of a small elite is a structural obstacle to democracy. It must be displaced if democracy is to emerge.1
All reformers, no matter how radical they thought themselves to be, could be (and have been) caught up in reform structures whose underlying purpose is to reduce the inharmonics of the existing social system.2
Even as attempts to curb protests through evictions and violence are conducted across the country, the movement is spreading – every day, more and more flock to their local parks and city centers, rallying under the banner of “Occupy!” First it was Occupy Wall Street, a call put out by Adbusters, a quasi-Situationist organization that has been at the forefront of the “culture jamming” ethos since 1989. From there, it was Occupy Chicago, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Boston, Occupy Omaha. The movement has gone global, with protestors catching the Zeitgeist in London and Rome. Regionalized discontent led to international solidarity in Greece, as further austerity measures loom on the horizon – imposed by none other than a government that dares to call itself socialist.
The central concept of the OWS movement is populist in nature, harking back to those that resisted capitalism’s harsh realities in the earlier parts of the 1900s: there is a major disconnect between the 99% of the population and the 1% that acts as the center of wealth and power. At the core, this division is rooted in Marxist terminology, the proletariat versus the bourgeois and their exploitation. We demand democracy, the multitude is saying, from Lexington, Kentucky to Madrid, Spain. We demand freedom from economic exploitation, freedom from indentured servitude to the moneyed class, freedom to live our lives with a higher degree of autonomy than has been allowed by those who seek to manipulate and oppress for their own material gain. Be they students in the universities, underpaid workers who need government aid to live, or citizens horrified that a piece of every paycheck is going to bail-out reckless firms and to support foreign wars, the multitude is gradually realizing that they are the engine of this world, and that it is time for them to sit in the driver seat. But all is not right in the movement. It is in times of unrest and cries to social change that hegemony rears its ugly head. Since time immemorial, overt repression has been swapped for the far more subtle process of assimilation – the system acknowledges its defects, and then harnesses people power and guides it by hand into compromises that leave the primary mechanisms of domination intact. Radical change is exchanged for the more “mature” approach of working within the system. This is a very real threat to the Occupy movement, one that needs to be acknowledged and resisted by any member who truly believes in striving for a better tomorrow.
Egypt: The Inspiration
OWS’s genesis lies not just in Adbusters, but in the Spanish Indignants movement, a coalition advocating grassroots democracy in reaction to the impact of the international financial crisis on their nation. Leading the coalition is a group by the name of ¡Democracia Real YA! (Real Democracy NOW!), which called for international solidarity and protests on October 15th. Adbusters responded with a poster portraying a dancer atop the Wall Street bull, and a request for people to join together to occupy the “second capital” of wealth and power in the United States – Wall Street.
¡Democracia Real YA!’s initial inspiration for the international protest was the shocking success of Arab Spring,3 the multi-country revolt that succeeded in toppling one of the world’s worst dictators, the US-backed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The opposing coalition, consisting mainly of tech-savy youth organizations such as the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution and the 6 April Youth Movement, has been a consistent icon and inspiration for the Occupy movement, and rightfully so – it is one of the rare examples of people pushing for social change and getting it. So often we see revolt being crushed under the wheels of power, organization shattered, and violence suppressing hope. But even with Egypt, questions must be asked.
Ideological solidarity is giving way now to direct ties being formed between these desperate threads that are disrupting the international order. Egyptian activist Mohammed Ezzeldin gave a rousing speech to protestors in NYC’s Washington Square Park, discussing the direct lineage between the two revolts. “”I am coming from there — from the Arab Spring. From the Arab Spring to the fall of Wall Street,” he said. “From Liberation Square to Washington Square, to the fall of Wall Street and market domination, and capitalist domination.”4
Wired magazine has also reported that Ahmed Maher, one of the founding members of the 6 April Youth Movement, has traveled from Egypt to Washington D.C.’s McPherson Square to directly interact with the Occupiers there and advise them on courses of action. For sometime now Maher has been communicating with the protestors in the multitude’s medium of choice – “We talk on the internet about what happened in Egypt, about our structure, about our organization, how to organize a flash mob, how to organize a sit-in, how to be non-violent with police”5 – but this will mark the first time that he has come face to face with the people he refers to as his “brothers.”
Behind and Below the Masses: the revolution factory
The Egyptian revolt, much like its counterparts in Tunisia and Libya, was a direct fall-out from the processes of globalization; namely, the domestic impact of US policies that were driving high the price of essential living commodities. As reported in the McClatchy Newspapers:
The Fed [Federal Reserve Bank] has been engaged in what economists call “quantitative easing,” buying U.S. Treasury bonds to attack the threat of deflation — the phenomenon of falling prices across an economy.
Quantitative easing has the effect of raising asset prices, whether they’re the prices of stocks or what traders are willing to pay for commodities such as wheat or corn. One of the side effects of this policy is that the dollar weakens against other currencies, and that’s helped push up the global prices of commodities.6
As the article notes, the Fed’s quantitative easing has led to wheat prices rising 70% over the past year, certainly bad news for the country of Egypt, which stands as the US’s eight largest export market. With an economy pried open by the International Monetary Fund to a flood of international products under the banner of benevolent “structural adjustments,” the skyrocketing prices in the US means skyrocketing prices in Egypt. With an oppressive leader under the thumb of the United States military, the stage was ripe for revolution. In other words, Egypt, like the other countries involved in the Arab Spring, was on the surface revolting against domestic policies; at its core; however, the revolt was against the structures of Late Capitalism, the mechanics of what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri refer to as “Empire” – the international monetary system that is rapidly rendering the concept of the “nation-state” obsolete.
So Mubarak is toppled and the Egyptian people seemingly liberate themselves. And what is the result? The country comes under the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Led by Mohamed Hussein Tantawi (a man described as “Mubarak’s poodle” for his loyalty to the disposed leader7 the Council has declared it will honor all existing political treaties and agreements, as well as maintaining the neoliberal stance of its predecessor. “We are not moving back to a socialist past,” Egypt’s temporary government has declared,8 as the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the European Investment Bank plan to descend upon the country with an “action plan” for foreign investment and “sustainable growth.9
Thus, Washington and the IMF’s program will go unchanged as it moves from Mubarak’s dictatorship to the new parliamentary democracy. How did it happen? How did we get from point A (the masses, infused with revolutionary potential) to point B (a cosmetic facelift of the prevailing economic system)? An analogous situation can be found in South Africa, where the spirit of the revolution was laid down in a document known as the Freedom Charter. In this document we can find declarations such as “the national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people… the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.10 Yet when the dust settled after 1994, a radically different picture emerged: the apartheid-era finance minister, Derek Keyes, remained in his position as head of the South African bank; the ANC signed onto the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; the World Bank was free to impose restrictions on socialized business models; and the IMF exerted authority over the approach to issues such as minimum wage. In the words of one activist, “they never freed us. They only took the chain from around our neck and put it around our ankles.”11
The dominant system will always resist widespread structural change, and the most common method of doing this is through the power of non-governmental institutions. Foundations constitute a main apparatus of this process – “everything the Foundation did could be regarded as ‘making the World safe for capitalism’, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government,” said McGeorge Bundy, the long-time president of the Ford Foundation.12 There is also the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a brainchild of the Reagan administration that seeks to provide a capitalist economic framework for developing nations, and ease former left-wing states into a financial and militaristic stance in line with Washington’s key values. The NED receives its funding from the State Department through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and in turn funnels the money into four subsidiary organizations: the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (Solidarity Center). The NDI and IRI are allied with their respective American political parties, while the CIPE is affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce. The Solidarity Center, on the other hand, is a program of the AFL-CIO labor union consortium. Other NED funds flow into Freedom House, a US-based human rights organization that has been described as a “Who’s Who of neoconservatives from government, business, academia, labor, and the press.”13 American libertarian politician Ron Paul has provided an excellent analysis and critique of the whole “democracy promoting” apparatus:
The misnamed National Endowment for Democracy is nothing more than a costly program that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and political parties abroad. What the NED does in foreign countries, through its recipient organizations the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (would be rightly illegal in the United States. The NED injects “soft money” into the domestic elections of foreign countries in favor of one party or the other. Imagine what a couple of hundred thousand dollars will do to assist a politician or political party in a relatively poor country abroad. It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation of foreign elections “promoting democracy.” How would Americans feel if the Chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China? Would this be viewed as a democratic development?14
After playing a role in the “color revolutions” of Georgia and the Ukraine, the NED’s attention then turned to Egypt. A recent New York Times article has revealed, citing WikiLeaks cables, that the disparate bands of dissident groups have been receiving “training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House.”15 Verification independent of the New York Times article can be found as well. Madeleine Albright, former Clinton-era Secretary of State and chairman of the NDI, appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show to give her analysis of the events in Egypt. “You mentioned that I was chairman of the board of the National Democratic Institute,” Albright says to Maddow in the interview, responding to the pundit’s questions concerning the post-Mubarak government. “We have been working within Egypt for a very long time, in terms of developing various aspects of civil society, and dealing with various and talking to opposition groups who are prepared to participate in a fair and free election.”
Freedom House also openly admits their role in fomenting the unrest. In a May 2009 report, the organization discusses their “New Generation Project” within Egypt, seeking to empower the nation’s “Youtube generation” by “promoting exchange” between “democracy advocates” and “emerging democracies” to “share best practices,” “providing advanced training on civil mobilization” and helping them understand the benefits of “new media.”16 In 2008, representatives from the organization attended the “Alliance of Youth Movements,” an activist summit funded by the State Department, Facebook, MTV, Google, and Youtube to provide a fertile meeting ground for ‘digital activists’ and the corporate leaders behind “new media.” The summit has subsequently been the topic of a set of leaked WikiLeaks cables, describing an ‘unnamed activist’ who there presented “his movement’s goals for democratic change in Egypt.” This same unnamed activist then met with a series of US Congressmen, discussing with them an “unwritten plan for democratic transition” of Egypt into a parliamentary democracy, a plan that had been accepted by “several opposition parties and movements.”17
Disturbingly, this is the same milieu that Ahmed Maher, now an adviser to OWS, travelled in. As researcher Tony Cartalucci has reported:
This of course isn’t Maher’s first trip to the United States. Years before the Egyptian revolution, the United States was quietly preparing a global army of youth cannon fodder to fuel region wide conflagrations throughout the world, both politically and literally. Maher’s April 6 organization had been in New York City for the US State Department’s first ‘Alliance for Youth Movements Summit’ in 2008. His group then traveled to Serbia to train under the US-funded ‘CANVAS’ organization before returning to Egypt in 2010 with US International Crisis Group (ICG) operative Mohamed ElBaradei to spend the next year building up for the ‘Arab Spring.18
CANVAS (Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies) was founded in 2003 by the Serbian youth organization Optor! (Resistance!), which utilized nonviolent methods of revolt to bring down Slobodan Milošević. Not surprisingly in the least, the organization had received millions of dollars in funding from both the NED and IRI19 while CANVAS itself has worked closely with Freedom House.20 Given the close ties between these youth-based activist organizations and US State Department’s bureaucracy, perhaps it is distressing to note that former Optor! Member and leader of CANVAS, Ivan Marovic, has given talks at the OWS rallies in NYC.21
The Right’s Favorite Boogeyman – and a useful opportunity
Perhaps the centerpiece of the Egyptian Revolution was the individual Mohamed ElBaradei, a director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and presidential hopeful for Egypt’s parliamentary democracy. ElBaradei, however, has ties of his own to suspicious Western interests – he sits on the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, which has been described by Madeleine Albright as a “full-service conflict prevention organization.” Despite this astute observation, the membership rosters of the Crisis Group’s various chairmen, trustees, and directors shows a significant overlap with affiliates of the National Endowment for Democracy: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Morton I. Abramowitz, and Stephen Solarz are just a handful of Crisis Group members who represent the interests of both. Here we can find the favorite whipping boy of the right-wing media, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Vilified as some sort of a socialist by the likes of Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, Soros, in truth, is far from that sort of ideology. A key figure in the transition of former Soviet states into the world of globalized capitalism, Soros helped engineer the economic ‘shock therapy’ that thrust Poland into a financial tail spin as extensive structural adjustments rattled the already crumbling economy.22
Soros, despite being a clear member of the 1%, has publicly stated his support of OWS:
Billionaire financier George Soros says he sympathizes with protesters speaking out against corporate greed in ongoing protests on Wall Street… Soros says he understands the frustrations of small business owners, for instance those who have seen credit card charges soar during the current crisis.23
There are ties, albeit indirect ones, that can tie Soros to the fledgling Occupy movement. MoveOn.org, a regular recipient of Soros funding, has thrown its weight behind the protestors in an apparent sign of solidarity. As TruthOut’s Steve Horn writes:
On October 5, Day 19 of Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn.org sent out an email calling on clicktivists (as opposed to activists) to “Join the Virtual March on Wall Street.” “The 99% are both an inspiration and a call that needs to be answered. So we’re answering it today, in a nationwide Virtual March on Wall Street to support their demand for an economy that serves the many, not the few … Join in the virtual march by doing what hundreds have done spontaneously across the web: Take your picture holding a sign that tells your story, along with the words ‘I am the 99%,’” wrote Daniel Mintz of MoveOn.org.24
MoveOn.org has a long history of left-wing co-option; as people flooded the streets of American cities in protest of the Iraq War, the online institution dove right into the populist fervor and proceeded to utilize people’s discontent with the Bush administration to garner support for John Kerry’s presidential campaign. The same process was repeated just a handful of years later, with MoveOn.org acting the second largest lobbying organization for Barack Obama (aside from the President’s own Organizing for America). Through a strategic ad campaign – one of MoveOn’s personnel is John Hlinko, a “social media marketing expert” – the organization managed to create a literal army of voters for Obama, reinforcing that the same “hope and change” imagery that was being pumped out by the campaign itself. Both MoveOn and Organizing America’s methodology was a foreshadow to the systems of new media utilized by the Arab Spring protestors; this tool is now being called “netroots,” the transporting of traditional grassroots activities into the virtual sphere.
MoveOn.org is not the only group chiming in to support for OWS. Rebuild the Dream, a progressive-style organization founded by former Obama White House adviser Van Jones, has championed the protestors – “Let’s all support Occupy Wall St.” reads a blurb on their website homepage. During an MSNBC interview, Van Jones directly linked the OWS movement to the Arab Spring, stating “you are going to see an American Fall, an American Autumn, just like we saw the Arab Spring.”
However, the institution changes that OWS is calling for contrast sharply with Jones’ vision of how to take America back: “We’re talking about U.S. senators who want to run as American Dream candidates – soon to be announced. We’ve reached out to the House Democratic Caucus; there are House members who want to run as American Dream candidates.25 Simply put, Rebuild the Dream is an unofficial organ of the Democrat Party, much like how MoveOn.org utilized, mobilized anti-war protestors to generate a large sector of the Democrat’s voting base. In actuality the ties run closer than that – Jones had worked hand in hand with MoveOn.org to initially launch Rebuild the Dream. Furthermore, he had been a senior fellow at Center for American Progress; the progressive institution has received funding from both George Soros26 and the Democracy Alliance organization, where Soros sits on the board of directors.
Co-option of social activism has always been the modus operandi of the Democrat Party. They play “’the role of shock absorber, trying to head off and co-opt restive [and potentially radical] segments of the electorate’” by posing as ‘the party of the people.27 President Obama, riding the crest of the MoveOn.orgs of the country – and not to mention a well orchestrated propaganda campaign – has fit this concept to a T, something that has even been noted by members of the liberal establishment:
Two and a half weeks after Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election, David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official, commented on the president-elect’s corporatist and militarist transition team and cabinet appointments with a musical analogy. Obama, Rothkopf told the New York Times, was following “the violin model: you hold power with the left hand and you play the music with the right.27
Liberal commentator Thomas Frank has observed the process of “voting for one thing, getting another” at work in the Republican Party:
The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again, receive deindustrialization … Vote to get governments off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking … Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.28
Is it really any different for the Democrat Party? Vote to end wars, receive troop escalation and change only years after the fact. Vote to allow workers to retain their rights, receive trade agreements that export jobs overseas. Vote to reign in the power of Wall Street, receive taxpayer-funded bail-outs that create moral hazards and prop up corrupt financial regimes. From the left to the right, the story is the same – the great violin keeps playing cheerfully as the world burns. It’s only the hands grasping it, not the system, that change.
One of the clearest portraits of co-option in recent history would be the history of the conservative Tea Party Movement. In its infancy, the Tea Party was a movement launched by libertarian politician Ron Paul, a staunch opponent of the government’s infringement on civil liberties, its use of military force on foreign soil, the monopolization of the financial market by entities such as the Federal Reserve Bank, and the crony capitalism that eventually erupted into the bail-outs. Aside from certain economics views, there is certainly a great deal in Ron Paul’s – and the early Tea Party Movement’s – agenda that is entirely compatible with the demands of the Occupy Movement; it is for this very reason that libertarians have begun to reach out and join in solidarity with the protestors. Furthermore, given the anti-foreign aid and anti-Federal Reserve stance of the early Tea Party Movement, there can perhaps be observed an unspoken lineage between the Tea Party and the uprisings in Egypt and surrounding countries, triggered by Western support of the people’s oppressors and the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Just as Soros controls the purse strings to disrupt and redirect leftist movements into positions aligned with the Democrat Party, the right can find his counterpart in the Koch brothers, the billionaire owners of the little-known Koch Industries. With their money bankrolling organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, David and Charles Koch were able to train torrents of so-called Tea Party activists whose espoused viewpoints are far more in line with typical Republican dialogue than with Ron Paul’s libertarian ethos. The focus was shifted from attacking the Fed and ending the wars and towards union-busting, securing borders, and more often than not, reinforcing unequivocal US support for Israel – a direct clash with the stance that Paul has taken on the topic.
This “astro-turfing” of grassroots movements, of course, requires multiple organizations and front groups to create the veneer of a unified public opinion, and operating alongside Americans for Prosperity is FreedomWorks. Perhaps it is worthy to take into consideration that when the organization was created from a 2004 merger between the Koch-funded Citizens for a Sound Economy and the neoconservative Empower America, several prominent NED officials sat on the board of directors of the former – including Vin Weber (an adviser to Mitt Romney’s ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign), Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (one of the most prominent of Cold War-era hardliners), and Michael Novak (an expert at the neoconservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute).
The Tea Party’s assimilation into the broader spectrum of the Republican political arena was marked by the establishment of the Tea Party Caucus, a coalition of House of Representatives and Senate members that represents perhaps the most powerful political body sitting in the US government – this consortium of leaders are essentially calling the shots when it comes to the right-wing of the American political system. Its members show utter disregard for the original protests of the Tea Party: Louie Gohmert has been a strong and vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, Steve King has openly supported the lobbying industry for their “effective and useful job”[s]29 and Dennis A. Ross was a member of the United States House Oversight Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs. Joe Barton eviscerated any ideological tie between himself and the early stages of the movement that he claims to rally behind (not to mention a disregard for any allegiance to the notion of really existing free markets) by arguing that the removal of subsidies to oil companies would act as a “disincentive” and result in the corporations going out of business.30
Curiously, the place where this whole process of right-wing co-option began – the corporate-financed milieu of Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks – was intended to be a “powerful answer to the challenge presented by the Left and groups like America Coming Together (ACT), MoveOn.org, and the Media Fund.31 All three of these organizations are Soros-financed, revealing the hidden irony that ultimately, these seemingly opposing institutions are simply moving potentially disruptive individuals into an entirely compatible paradigm of power that sits in the dual capitals of Washington D.C. and Wall Street. However, this odd dialectic can be entirely useful. Realizing this process will allow individuals who yearn for legitimate change on either side of the aisle to separate themselves from the system, and hopefully, discover the disparate strands that are ideologically compatible between them and their counterparts. It is a rare opportunity for the discontents of “left” and the “right” to shake off the labels applied to them and create an open dialogue and eventual solidarity with one another.
Conclusions and Other Thoughts
Though it may certainly seem like it, this essay was not written to belittle the OWS movement, or attack the actions of those who stood in opposition to Milosevic, apartheid, or Mubarak. However, it was my intention to acknowledge the shortcomings in the aftermath of these fights – Serbia and South Africa both jumped into bed with the IMF, imposing austerity measures in their nations that allowed persistent poverty to fester and even continue to grow. Egypt is certainly following suit now, so even though the brutal fist of the American-backed regime is gone, the slow-burning fires of neoliberalism continue to carry on the torch. For Serbia and Egypt, their revolts, though brilliant displays of the potential of people power, were in no small part shaped by the technicians in State Department, operating through the long arm of the NED. For South Africa, money from George Soros ended up in the coffers of activist groups who quickly changed their tune from the ANC’s quasi-socialist demands to jump starting South African neoliberalism.32 Not surprisingly, these same groups showed a willingness to work closely with the NED.33
The NED, much like Soros’ civil society empowering programs, promotes a little known methodology called low-intensity democracy.
Low-intensity democracies are limited democracies in that they achieve important political changes, such as the formal reduction of the military’s former institutional power or greater individual freedoms, but stop short in addressing the extreme social inequalities within… societies. …they provide a more transparent and secure environment for the investments of transnational capital… these regimes function as legitimizing institutions for capitalist states, effectively co-opting the social opposition that arises from the destructive consequences of neoliberal austerity, or as Cyrus Vance and Henry Kissinger have argued, the promotion of “pre-emptive” reform in order to co-opt popular movements that may press for more radical, or even revolutionary, change.34
Thus, it can be considered to be worrisome that individuals who were trained under institutions that implement this system are turning up at OWS rallies. While the NED’s agenda is to establish low-intensity democracies around the world, this is precisely the type of governance that we are dealing with in the United States, the very system that produced the antagonism found in both the Tea Party and OWS. To consent to it would be a rejection of the spirit of the protest and an embrace of what is opposes.
It is the Democrat Party that could possibly represent this system even more so than the Republicans. It is the party of Social Security, government-provided medical care, and other welfare programs. Does this function of the party not dim and obfuscate the fact that it is also the party of bail-outs and NAFTA? Realizing this simple fact is paramount to creating a movement of legitimate change in the world; we must seek to deconstruct low-intensity democracy and replace it with Really Existing Democracy. We have already seen this functioning in a micro-sense at OWS rallies, where leadership positions are voluntary and voted in by the whole of the people. Decisions are made in a similar matter, putting the course of action and the direction of the movement in its entirety in the hands of the protestors, not in bureaucrats and moneymen with agendas of their own. It is organic and autonomous, and on an international level holds to be what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari referred to as a ‘rhizome’ – “a nonhierarchal and noncentered network structure.35
There are further reasons to be optimistic about the movement’s direction. The official OWS website hosts a petition with a “formal demand that MoveOn.org leaves” – “this is OUR movement and it is NOT Obama’s personal reelection campaign,” it reads.36 The leftist online newspaper TruthOut has called attention to MoveOn.Org and Rebuild the Dream’s attempts to cozy up to the protestors, while Michel Chossudovsky, the professor emeritus of the economics department at the University of Ottowa, has published a piece for his Centre for Research on Globalization detailing the arrival of NED associates at OWS rallies.
There is an opportunity here. We live in a time marked by crisis, catastrophe, poverty, and war, but it is in times of disruption like these that rifts open in the landscapes of the global system, providing people with a chance to take the wheel, if they so choose. For America, this time arises from the great disappointments of our so-called democratic process – the hookwinking of the masses by the left-right one-two punch by the back to back presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama has led more people to step back, reconsider their presumptions about the world’s machinery, and begin to demand that their voices be heard. What happens from here, with the choices marked by the path to liberation or the well-worn roads of hegemony, is entirely contingent on the will of the people.
Barry Gills, Joen Rocamora, and Richard Wilson, Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order Pluto Press, 1993, quoted in Michael Barker “Do Capitalists Fund Revolutions? (Part 1 of 2)” Znet, September 4th, 2007.
James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 Beacon Press, 1968, pg. 254, quoted in Michael Barker, “Liberal Elites and the Pacification of Workers,” State of Nature.
The Boycott of Israeli goods is part of an international movement known as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. The movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organisations and has gained momentum internationally as the brutality of Israel has time and again been exposed to the world.
The main goals of the movement are to:
– Expose the true nature of Israel’s occupation and apartheid practices
-Give real value to human rights by making Israel accountable for its crimes
– Reveal and highlight the complicity of the international community in supporting Israeli crimes that relentlessly violate human rights and international law
– End international law support for Israeli occupation and apartheid with the understanding that apartheid cannot be sustained without external assistance.
U.S. service members and their Iraqi and Afghan allies have a common enemy. It is not Iran, the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but the Pentagon which operated hundreds of toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the U.S. completes its withdrawal from Iraq and begins to draw down in Afghanistan, the American military, pursuant to its “pollute and run” policy, is abandoning millions of kilograms of toxic and potentially radioactive waste. Everything is being buried and covered over, just as it did in Vietnam and in the Philippines when the U.S. withdrew from Clark Air Base and the Subic Bay naval installation.
The Pentagon seems to hope that all the health problems of U.S. troops can likewise be buried and covered over.
The (U.S.) Air Force Times ran an editorial on March 1, 2010 that read: “Stamp Out Burn Pits” We reprint the first portion of that editorial:
“A growing number of military medical professionals believe burn pits are causing a wave of respiratory and other illnesses among troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Found on almost all U.S. bases in the war zones, these open-air trash sites operate 24 hours a day, incinerating trash of all forms — including plastic bottles, paint, petroleum products, unexploded ordinance, hazardous materials, even amputated limbs and medical waste. Their smoke plumes belch dioxin, carbon monoxide and other toxins skyward, producing a toxic fog that hangs over living and working areas.”
On April 12, 2010, the Richmond Times-Dispatch carried an article by David Zucchino who investigated the American burn pits in Iraq. He interviewed Army Sgt. 1st Class Francis Jaeger who hauled military waste to the Balad burn. Jaeger told Zucchino:
“We were told to burn everything – electronics, bloody gauze, the medics’ biohazard bags, surgical gloves, cardboard. It all went up in smoke.”
According to a website called the “Burn Pits Action Center” large numbers of American veterans who came in contact with burn pit smoke have been diagnosed with cancer, neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, breathing and sleeping problems and various skin rashes.
On October 28, 2009, President George W. Bush, signed into law H.R. 2647, which included the provisions of “The Military Personnel War Zone Toxic Exposure Prevention Act.” The Act was sponsored by Congressman Tim Bishop of New York and supported by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the National Guard Association of the United States, and the Military Officers Association banned the use of burn pits unless they were specifically deemed essential by the Secretary of Defense. Despite the law, burn pit use continued in Iraq and reportedly continues today in Afghanistan.
The impetus for H.R. 2647 was Lieutenant Colonel Darrin L. Curtis, Ph.D., who was a Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight Commander at Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2006. Lt. Col. Curtis wrote a December 20, 2006, report on the environmental and health impacts of the Balad burn pit. He stated that the burn pit was “the worst environmental site” he had seen in seventeen years of environmental work in the United States. He characterized the smoke released by the military as: “an acute health hazard” to everyone who has been deployed or will be deployed to Balad. Lt. Col. Curtis’ report was reviewed and endorsed by Lieutenant Colonel James R. Elliott, Chief of Aeromedical Services. The Pentagon ultimately ignored the report just as it had ignored the Fall 2004 study in (U.S. Army) “Engineer – The Professional Bulletin” which found that by 2002, Kandahar Airfield was facing “a growing human health and environmental threat” from the uncontrolled burning of hazardous waste.
In June 2008, the U.S. Army Center of Health (USACHPPM) issued a “Fact Sheet” that downplayed any health problems associated with the burn pits. It stated that the safety of the burn pits had been independently validated by the Defense Health Board (DHB). It went on to claim that:
“The DHB is an independent board comprised of experts from private industry and recognized universities.”
Research into the DHB reveals otherwise. The Board is primarily composed of retired Generals, Admirals and Colonels, along with political appointees from prior Administrations and civilian consultants currently under contract to the Pentagon and other government agencies. There is nothing independent about the Board. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee took testimony from Dr. Anthony Szema, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at SUNY and a physician with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He provided a detailed refutation of the DHB’s flawed findings regarding the burn pits. His testimony is available on the Internet under the phrase: “Are Burn Pits Making Our Soldiers Sick?”
On October 3, 2008, the Military Times published a damning report by Kelly Kennedy entitled “Army Making Toxic Mess in War Zones.” The article was prompted by the release in September 2008, of a Rand Corporation study that detailed a horrific series of environmental spills, releases and disposals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bruce Travis of the U.S. Army Engineering School told the Times that no environmental rules were complied with in Iraq from 2003-2008 (this would presumably apply to Afghanistan also). He went on to state that an estimated 11 million pounds of hazardous waste were disposed of in Iraq up to 2008. This practice did not end in 2008. A U.S. Government Accountability Report in 2010, detailed inspections in 2009/2010 of four American bases in Afghanistan and none were found to be compliant with environmental standards.
Most American military waste falls into one of the following twelve (12) categories. They are called the “dirty dozen:”
2. Building materials that contain formaldehyde, copper, arsenic and hydrogen cyanide.
3. Hydraulic fluids (hazardous), aircraft de-icing fluids (toxic), antifreeze (poisonous) and used oil (cancer-causing).
4. Jet fuel, gasoline and diesel fuel.
5. Pesticides and various neuro-toxic poisons resulting from attempts to control flies, mosquitoes, ants, fleas and rodents. The military refers to such practices as “vector control.”
6. Lead, nickel, zinc and cadmium battery waste and acids (toxic/corrosive).
7. Electronic waste (or E-waste). This includes computers, printers, faxes, screens, televisions, radios, refrigerators, communications gear and test equipment. They contain cancer-causing chemicals such as the flame retardant PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), PCDD (polychlorinated dioxins), barium, copper, lead, zinc, cadmium oxides and cadmium sulphides and trivalent antimony.
8. Light bulbs containing hazardous levels of mercury. Disposal of these light bulbs in ordinary landfills is prohibited in the United States.
9. Plastics. When burned, many plastics release a deadly mix of chemicals including dioxins, furans, benzene, di 2-ethylhexyl phthalates (DEHP), hydrochloric acid, benzo(a)pyrene (BAP) and various acids and chlorine gas (which is a neurotoxin).
10. Medical/Infectious Disease waste and Biohazard Materials.
11. Ammunition waste. Lead, brass and other metals from ammunition along with all the constituents of the propellants, including trinitrotoluene, picric acid, diphenylamine, nitrocellulose, nitroglycerin, potassium nitrate, barium nitrate, tetracene, diazodintrophenol, phosphorus, peroxides, thiocarbamide, potassium chlorate, vinyl fluoride, vinyl chloride, sodium fluoride and sodium sulfate.
12. Radioactive waste. The American military routinely uses a large number of devices and equipment that contain radioactive elements or radioluminescent elements. These materials are referred to as “Radioactive Commodities” by the military. The primary radioactive materials are: Uranium, Tritium, Radium 226, Americium 241, Thorium, Cesium 137 and Plutonium 239. A partial list of radioactive equipment that may have been disposed of in burn pits or buried in Iraqi and Afghan landfills includes: night vision devices, calibration sets, engine components, weapon sights, compasses, fire control devices, level gauges, collimators, sensors, test equipment, vehicle dials, radios, chemical agent monitors and communication equipment, along with laboratory and hospital machines. In addition to these commodities, the military also uses 120mm depleted uranium (DU) warheads and 20mm DU ammunition along with DU armor plating.
The Pentagon admits operating 84 “official” burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet Adam Levine from CNN reported on October 15, 2010, that at least 221 burn pits were operated in Afghanistan alone. That number is believed to be only half of the actual burn pits operated in Afghanistan. On February 10, 2010, CBS News published a report by Nick Turse entitled: “the 700 military bases of Afghanistan.” CBS claims that about 400 bases, posts and camps belong to Coalition forces, most of which are American. Each of these facilities may have one or more burn pits, landfills, or disposal pits. The number of U.S. military bases in Iraq may be double this. Each needs to be excavated, sampled and analyzed.
The latest and perhaps the most disturbing burn pit information was published last month on Wired.Com. Written by Katie Drummond, it was entitled: “Congressman: The Military’s Burn Pit Screwed Our Soldiers.” The Congressman is Todd Akin from Missouri. The outrage was over a press release issued on October 31, 2011 by the Institute of Medicine, which is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences. It was unable to complete its report on the burn pits, a report that had been commissioned by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The Institute of Medicine found 53 toxins in the air above the Balad air base in Iraq but could not determine the sources for each due to a lack of assistance by the Pentagon. The Institute was unable to obtain information from the Pentagon as to what it burned and buried. The Pentagon claims it kept no records and has no scientific data,. The reason is that it apparently never sampled and analyzed the material in any of its Iraq or Afghan burn pits. The U.S. military is now simply covering them all over with dirt as the U.S. prepares to withdraw from Iraq and begins to draw down in Afghanistan.
In summary, there has been no competent assessment of the long-term environmental harm to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan from the abandonment of such a massive volume of toxic waste. The Pentagon has likewise abandoned its own solders, sailors, marines and airmen whom it poisoned and injured. Until all the burn pits are excavated and sampled, there is no way to determine the full makeup of the toxic soup of pollutants that U.S. military personnel were exposed to.
This “pollute and run” policy should not be permitted. If invading countries had to clean up and restore the countrysides they invaded and damaged, and if they had to treat and care for all those they injured, perhaps they might in the future think twice before launching such wars.
Sources for Further Reading:
Houston Chronicle – February 7, 2010 – “GIs tell of horror from burn pits”
Los Angeles Times – February 18, 2010 – “Veterans speak out against burn pits”
Salem News – March 29, 2010 – “Sick Veterans Sue KBR Over Iraq and Afghanistan Burn Pits”
Kabul Press – April 25, 2010 – “EXCLUSIVE REPORT: American Military Creating an Environmental Disaster in Afghan Countryside” (Part 1 of 3)
Kabul Press – May 2, 2010 – EXCLUSIVE REPORT: American Military Burn Pits Pollute Afghan Countryside (Part 2 of 3)
Kabul Press – May 4, 2010 – EXCLUSIVE REPORT: American Military Burn Pits Pose Risk to Future Generations of Afghans (Part 3 of 3).
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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