-
09 Mar 2010 06:52
_________________The World's Sickest Warrior StateBy Paul J. BallesWe have now reached a stage where our extreme horrors of brutality and cruelty have exceeded our past records. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24931.htm===The Untouchable BudgetDefense Department, Inc.By SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDESCongress taking from the have-nots and giving it to the have-mores. Indeed, the economic, political and military potentates depend on the federal budget to transfer taxpayer resources to them. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24936.htm===Mullen Wary of Israeli Attack on IranBy Ray McGovernAdm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came home with sweaty palms from his mid-February visit to Israel. He has been worrying aloud that Israel will mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24939.htm===There Has Never Been an Israeli Peace CampBy Gideon LevyThe Israeli peace camp didn't die. It was never born in the first place. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24934.htm===Washington's Road to RuinUS - China: Provoking the Creditor, Hugging the Holy ManBy James PetrasDrones, military surges and surrogate puppet armies engaged in endless wars are no match for the surging investments, robust developing markets and joint ventures linking China with the dynamic emerging economies of the world. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24932.htm===Time for a U.S. Revolution - Fifteen ReasonsBy Bill QuigleyIt is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24935.htm===Calling All RebelsBy Chris HedgesThere are no constraints left to halt America's slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24941.htm===To Hell In A HandbasketBy David Michael GreenAmerican government is in the process of imploding, and it won't be long until the pathetically minuscule social safety net that we have will be shredded as well. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24933.htm===Bolivia, A Beacon of HopeBy Matt KennardThe inspiring example of Evo Morales's Bolivian government. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24940.htm===Socialized Medicine Saved MeBy Geraldine BrooksWhen Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks was diagnosed with cancer overseas, she didn't hightail it back home, to "the best health care in the world"-she stayed in Australia, home to a humane, rational system. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24938.htm===Proof that 9/11 Truthers Are DangerousBy Washington's BlogThis is a list of people who question what our Government has said about 9/11. The list proves - once and for all - that people who question 9/11 are dangerous. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24942.htm===Economist Lewis Black Tells It Like It IsBy Mike FernerADULT CONTENT WARNING: If you're not familiar with Lewis Black, I'd turn back if I were you. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24937.htm===Blasts Kill 12 in Northwest Afghanistan:Police spokesman Abdul Raouf Ahmadi said the first blast hit a civilian vehicle in Badghis province, killing 10 passengers. The second, minutes later nearby, struck a police car, killing two policemen.http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=10038600===UK occupation force soldier killed in Afghan blast:The soldier is the fifth British serviceman to die in the region in the space of a week.http://snipurl.com/upmvb===12 killed in bombing of spy agency in Pakistan:Twelve people were killed when a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden car into a building housing the office of a state spy agency in Lahore Monday, security officials said.http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\03\08\story_8-3-2010_pg7_9===8 Taliban killed in S Waziristan airstrike:Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen killed a local Taliban commander identified as Maulvi Noor Muhammad in North Waziristan. The Taliban commander was targeted on the outskirts of Miranshah.http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\03\08\story_8-3-2010_pg7_9===Karzai offers families 'blood money' for sons killed in raid:The President paid relatives Afs100,000 (£1,300) for each of the victims - eight students from one family, a 12-year-old shepherd boy who was the family's guest and a farmer from a neighbouring compound.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7052982.ece===Iraqi PM's coalition seen leading vote:Early estimates from a range of Iraqi parties predict a coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will take the lead in the parliamentary race.http://snipurl.com/upmwi===Candidate calls for probe of Iraq election:Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, trying to regain his job, called for an investigation of Iraq's election because of confusion at some polling centershttp://snipurl.com/upmy4===Iraq Inquiry: David Miliband says war has boosted Britain's reputation in Arab world:Britain is more respected in the Arab world because of its role in the Iraq war, David Miliband has told the Iraq inquiry.http://snipurl.com/upmyr===Mottaki: US, Britain behind region's acts of terror:"Foreign (military) bases in our region have not been set up for stability and security purposes and military cooperation but are aimed at interfering in internal affairs of regional countries," he added.http://presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120346§ionid=351020101===US wants Israel military dominant in Mideast: Biden:"I can promise the Israeli people that we will confront, as allies, any security challenge it will face. A nuclear-armed Iran would constitute a threat not only to Israel - it would also constitute a threat to the United States."http://presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120350§ionid=351020202===Manufacturing Consent For Attack On IranBiden's Israel visit is a year too late:With so much attention, it's a shame he's arriving a year late - a year which his boss, President Barack Obama, wasted on fruitless diplomatic moves that only further compromised the shaky stature of the United States in the Middle East.http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1154836.html===Manufacturing Consent For Attack On Iran Barak:Iran not currently posing existential threat to Israel:"Iran is not currently an existential threat to Israel. However, Iran has to potential to develop an existential threat to Israel, and we are taking action to prevent this."http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3859491,00.html===Manufacturing Consent For Attack On Iran Bolton:Israel's Options - Attack Iran or Accept Nuclear Power:Former United States ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton warned Sunday that Israel has just two choices: a strike aimed at Iran's nuclear facilities, or a nuclear Iran.http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136402===Iran ready to do uranium exchange with new countries, says ministry:Iran is ready to conduct its uranium exchange plan also with fresh countries, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Sundayhttp://snipurl.com/upn0t===China Signals Defiance on U.S. Relations:China gave little hope that it would accommodate Washington on Iran and other thorny foreign-policy issues, despite the first real sign of flexibility in years over its exchange rate, which has been a growing source of friction with the U.S.http://snipurl.com/upn1g===Israel to unveil plans to create nuclear generated power:Israel will unveil this week plans to produce nuclear-generated electricity, officials said on Monday, a move that could draw fresh international attention towards its assumed atomic arsenal.http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1154921.html===Israel to build more illegal settler homes:Israel has given the green light for the building of 112 illegal new homes in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank despite a partial moratorium on such construction.http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/20103874222169756.html===Interpol seeks arrest of 16 more suspects in Dubai hit:The international police agency Interpol on Monday issued arrest notices for an additional 16 suspects over the assassination of a Hamas operative in Dubai earlier this year, the AFP news agency reported.http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1154922.html===Netanyahu: My father foresaw 9/11 attacks in 1990s:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that his father predicted the 9/11 attacks on New York's twin towers back in the '90s.http://presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120347§ionid=351020202===Nigeria violence: Muslim-Christian clashes kill hundreds:As many as 500 people were killed Sunday in Nigeria violence that pitted Muslim herders against Christian farmers near the volatile city of Jos.http://snipurl.com/upn29===Vatican: Nigeria violence not due to religion:The Vatican says that economic and social reasons, not religious hatred, are behind violence in Nigeria that has killed more than 200 people.http://snipurl.com/upn2l===US to engage in 'hit and run' war in Somalia:The United States is involved in preparatory military operations in Somali for a 'major' offensive against Somali fighters, report says.http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120260§ionid=351020501===UK Government attempts to keep torture case secret:Holding case taken by former Guantánamo detainees behind closed doors would set 'very dangerous precedent', says lawyerhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/08/rendition-torture-case-secret===Ad campaign urges Obama to hold firm on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial:A prominent US rights group urged the Obama administration on Sunday not to back down in the face of fierce opposition to its plans to try September 11 plotters in a civilian court in New York.http://snipurl.com/upn2t===US hunts for citizens training with Al Qaeda, other terrorist groups:The Obama Administration is gathering information with Pakistan and other governments to identify and locate people holding US passports who are receiving "terrorist training" then legally returning to commit violent acts, according to a top US diplomat.http://www.littleabout.com/news/77460,us-hunts-citizens-training-al-qaeda-terrorist-groups.html===Official: Former Army intel officer to lead TSA:The administration official says President Barack Obama has chosen retired General Robert Harding to lead the federal agency charged with keeping terrorists and bombs off airplaneshttp://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-07-tsa-nominee-named_N.htm===Pakistani lawmakers refuse "naked" body scan, cut short US visit: -A delegation of Pakistani lawmakers refused to subject themselves to a controversial full-body X-ray scan at a Washington airport, a media report said on Sunday.http://snipurl.com/upnmw===It's terror check chaos as dozens miss US flights:Controversial anti-terrorist restrictions imposed on Britons travelling to the US have led to scores of people missing their flights since they were introduced six weeks agohttp://snipurl.com/upnna===New visa fee to visit the US:Aiming to reverse a steep drop in international visitors since the 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress last week passed legislation creating a non-profit corporation to promote the United States as a travel destination.http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/new-visa-fee-to-visit-the-us/story-e6frfq80-1225838039571==='We will not offer Greece a cent':German economy minister deals hammer blow to Athens as rioters attack police on the streetshttp://snipurl.com/upnnj===British civil servants hold strike:Hundreds of thousands of civil servants in Britain have begun a two-day strike over cuts to redundancy pay, that is likely to cause disruption to the country's ports and airports.http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/20103891547748920.html===Paul Krugman: An Irish Mirror :"Almost all the apparent causal factors of the U.S. crisis are missing in the Irish case," and vice versa. Yet the shape of Ireland's crisis was very similar: a huge real estate bubble - prices rose more in Dublin than in Los Angeles or Miami - followed by a severe banking bust that was contained only via an expensive bailout.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/opinion/08krugman.html===Layoffs increase after four months of lower claims:Employers took 1,521 mass layoff actions in January, which resulted in 182,261 workers losing their jobs, said the Bureau of Labor Statistics.http://www.optoiq.com/index/lasers-for-manufacturing/display/ils-wire-news-display/142190962.html===Retail gasoline prices match 2010 high:Average retail gasoline prices, continuing a surge that started last month, have now matched their 2010 high on the way to prices that many analysts believe will top $3 per gallon this spring.http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i5TtajgUpSm7KY5jf-lCJGHBB-tAD9EAHQ3O0News For March 07, 2010More than 50 killed as Afghan factions clash:Zalmai Mangal, a local police official, said the fighting appears to have resulted from a power struggle between local Taliban forces and the Hezb-e-Islami faction loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a powerful regional commander.http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/03/2010379849966700.html===Five Afghan civilians killed in explosions:Five civilians, including two children, were killed in separate roadside bomb explosions in southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Afghan Interior Ministry said Sunday.http://snipurl.com/upno3===Three NATO occupation force soldiers killed in Afghanistan:Three NATO soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Sunday in separate incidents, the international force said, bringing the number of foreign troops who have died in the war this year to 117.http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100307/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestnato===3 top Pak Taliban men killed in single day?:Pakistani military dealt a crippling blow to Tehreek-e-Taliban by killing its three top commanders, including the group's deputy-chief Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, in Mohmand tribal region in the country's northwest, interior minister Rehman Malik said on Saturday.http://snipurl.com/upnoa===U.S.-Born al Qaeda Arrest News Incorrect:CBS News' Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad writes that earlier reports the detained individual was Gadahn proved false. According to a Pakistan security official who spoke with CBS News on condition of anonymity, the arrested individual is in fact "a Taliban militant leader who is known as Abu Yahya."http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/07/world/main6275953.shtml?tag=stack===Over 40 die as Iraqis defy deadly bomb attacks to vote :Regional officials for the Independent High Electoral Commission said in initial forecasts that voter turnout was 50 percent.http://www.pakistantimes.net/pt/detail.php?newsId=9225===British forces accused of torture and murder as inquiry opens:The long-awaited public inquiry into the alleged torture and murder of up to 20 Iraqis by British troops in Iraq gets under way on Tuesday.http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/87676==='US running intl. network of secret detentions':A United Nations report on the existence of secret detention facilities in countries around the world puts most of the blame on the US and its Central Intelligence Agency.http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120288§ionid=3510203===Turkey rallies condemn US vote:A resolution by a US congressional committee branding the killing of Armenians during World War I as "genocide" has triggered protests in Turkey.http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/20103661914779817.html===Iceland rejects bank payback deal:Some 93.1 per cent of voters cast ballots opposing the deal, partial results showed after 32 per cent of ballots were ounted, RUV public broadcaster, which compiles all electoral statistics, said.http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/201036224143997328.html_________________________ -
28 Feb 2010 19:16
_________
Democrats vote to renew Patriot Act
By Bill Van Auken WSWS, February 27, 2010 With almost no debate, the Democratic leadership in Congress pushed through an unamended extension of the USA Patriot Act's most notorious provisions, granting sweeping powers to eavesdrop and seize library, Internet and other personal records of US citizens.The provisions were set to expire by Sunday. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the legislation before then, securing his administration the ability to continue and expand the domestic spying and attacks on basic democratic rights that he and other Democrats had pretended to oppose under the Bush administration.The three extended provisions give US intelligence agencies the power to: 1) conduct "roving" wiretaps without specifying a particular phone number or e-mail account; 2) force institutions to surrender credit, banking, medical, mental health and library records; and 3) spy on so-called lone-wolf foreign nationals, who have no affiliation to either terrorist organizations or foreign governments.The Senate approved the one-year extension Wednesday by a voice vote and without any debate. The House followed suit on Thursday night, voting 315 to 97 in favor of the legislation.Originally, the three provisions were to expire at the end of December, but Congress passed a two-month extension late last year, while continuing to discuss proposed amendments that would ostensibly introduce greater protection of privacy and constitutional rights.Last fall, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved President Obama's request to renew the measures after debating various limited proposals to increase judicial oversight and otherwise reform the legislation, while keeping its essential powers intact. The Obama administration offered no support for even the most modest changes, with both the Justice Department and the FBI calling for the provisions to be extended as is.Among the proposed changes was an amendment that would have barred the government from using National Security Letters (NSLs)-administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon-to obtain confidential records of US citizens who are not suspected of terrorism or espionage. Another would have let the "lone-wolf" provision expire. A third would have required the government to issue written statements setting out the factual basis for obtaining an NSL. There was also a proposal to allow recipients of NSLs limited ability to challenge the so-called gag orders that bar them from informing anyone that they have been targeted for investigation.A separate proposal called for the repeal of the section of the FISA Amendments Act that granted blanket immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government in its illegal warrantless wiretapping program.Seeking bipartisan consensus on the legislation, all of these measures were defeated, with the committee ultimately adopting-with eight Democrats voting in favor and only three against-virtually meaningless proposals introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee and chairman of the Senate intelligence panel.
Even these toothless amendments were stripped from the final extension resolution. Democratic leaders justified the action on the grounds that it was necessary to secure Republican support.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy justified extending the worst abuses in the Patriot Act without any changes by declaring, "I would have preferred to add oversight and judicial review improvements to any extension of expiring provisions in the USA Patriot Act, but I understand some Republican senators objected."
The media has largely attributed the Democrats' support for the renewal of the Patriot Act provisions and the scrapping of any attempt to amend them as an attempt to avoid any debate that would allow the Republican minority to portray them as "soft on terrorism" in the run-up to the midterm election.
While no doubt such cowardice and opportunism govern all of the decisions made by the Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the reality is that support for the police state measures introduced with the Patriot Act has been bipartisan from the outset.
The measure was passed by the Senate in 2001 with just one dissenting vote and under conditions in which members of Congress acknowledged that they had not even read the legislation. The Democrats have provided the necessary votes for approving every attack on democratic rights enacted since, while leading members of the party in Congress have collaborated in covering up illegal surveillance activities.
While the Democratic Party won the 2008 election based on a platform that explicitly promised to overturn unconstitutional provisions in the Patriot Act and halt "the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime," since coming to office the Obama administration has continued and expanded these practices.
Successive reports have revealed that hundreds of thousands of NSLs have been issued since the Patriot Act was initially enacted, and there have been repeated revelations of illegal spying on American citizens-including reporters writing stories placing intelligence agencies in a bad light. Nonetheless, the Obama administration Justice Department insisted that there was no real abuse of authority under the Bush administration, and that therefore the act should be renewed.
At the same time, the administration has intervened repeatedly in lawsuits challenging illegal wiretapping under the Bush administration, invoking the "state secrets privilege" to have them quashed. Last October, US Attorney General Eric Holder used this method to seek the dismissal of the a suit demanding a halt to the National Security Agency's illegal dragnet surveillance of AT&T Internet communications and to hold Bush administration officials responsible for this unconstitutional program accountable.
The Obama White House opposes such lawsuits because it does not want its own powers curtailed and fears that any prosecution of former officials could set a legal precedent that could be used against it.
Similarly, it has opposed any probe of senior Bush administration and CIA officials responsible for the torture and killing of detainees, under conditions in which the Obama administration has upheld the policies of rendition and administrative detention without charges or trials.
Just as with its foreign policy that continues the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and an economic policy designed to defend Wall Street at the expense of workers' jobs, wages and benefits, the Obama administration is continuing the wholesale assault on democratic rights initiated by its predecessor.
The staggering repudiation of the promises made by the so-called candidate of "change" is not a matter merely of Obama's own duplicity. He heads a government that is dedicated to the defense of the essential interests of a financial oligarchy.
Under conditions of deepening economic crisis and in the face of ever-wider social polarization at home, it can defend these interests only by embracing the unconstitutional methods adopted by the Bush administration. The Obama White House is continuing to build up a police state not for use against some ubiquitous terrorist threat, but to counter the inevitable growth of mass struggles by the American working class.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=63699America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution
Stephen Lendman February 26, 2010
On October 13, 1932, in laying the Supreme Court Building's cornerstone, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes said: "The Republic endures and this is the symbol of its faith." The words "Equal Justice Under Law" adorn its west facade. Facing east is the motto "Justice, the Guardian of Liberty." Since the Court's 1789 establishment, these words belie its decisions, arguments, and "supreme" allegiance to power, not "We the people."
Since its founding, privilege always counted most in America. The prevailing fiction then and now is that constitutional checks and balances restrain government, the founders having created an egalitarian country free from wealth and poverty extremes common most elsewhere.
Like today, wealthy 18th century colonialists had vastly disproportional land holdings; controlled banking, commerce and industry; assured its own ran the government and courts; and the supreme law of the land, then and now, deters no president, sitting government, or Supreme Court from doing what they wish.
-
From inception, America was always ruled by men, not laws, who lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much do what they want for their own self-interest and powerful constituents. In 1787, "the people" who mattered most were elitists. The American revolution substituted new management for old. Everything changed but stayed the same under a system establishing:
- the illusion of democracy; today the best one money can buy; even "better" now with unfettered corporate spending and two-thirds of federal judges from or affiliated with the extremist Federalist Society (FS); it advocates rolling back civil liberties; ending New Deal social policies; opposing reproductive choice, government regulations, labor rights and environmental protections; and subverting justice in defense of privilege; current SCOTUS members from or affiliated with FS include Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas;- a powerful chief executive at the top; a virtual dictator in times of war;- a bicameral Congress with a single senatorial member able to thwart the will of the majority;- a committee system run by power brokers;- one vulnerable to lobbyist interests;- staggered elections to assure continuity;- a one-party state with two wings, vulnerable to corruption; and- a separate judiciary with power to overrule Congress and the Executive, and at times does.
The Constitution's "We the People" opening words are meaningless window dressing. So is Article I, Section 8 stating:
"The Congress shall have power to... provide for (the) general welfare of the United States" - the so-called welfare clause applicable also to the Executive and High Court.
The record shows otherwise - decades of permanent wars, repressive laws, rampant crime, unsafe streets, injustice, political corruption, dishonest police, racketeering labor officials, corporate fraud, raging unaddressed social problems, rare efforts to change things, and since the 1970s, virtually none.
The notion of "government of the people, by the people and for the people" is bogus on its face. People don't govern directly or through representatives. They are governed by the rich and well-born, movers and shakers, wheeler dealers, power brokers, a Wall Street crowd looking after themselves at the expense of most others. It's how America always worked, including the High Court, established under the Constitution's Article III stating:
"The judicial power shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
Congress is explicitly empowered to regulate the Court, but, in fact, the Court often controls Congress, freely using what's called "judicial review," even though it's unmentioned in the Constitution and the founders didn't authorize it.
The concept derives from Article VI, Section 2 saying the Constitution, laws, and treaties are the "supreme Law of the Land" and judges are bound by them. Also from Article III, Section 1 saying judicial power applies to all cases, implying judicial review is allowed. Under this interpretation, appointed judges literally have power to annul acts of Congress and presidential decisions - though nothing in the Constitution explicitly allows this.
The famous 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision was defining. As articulated by Chief Justice John Marshall, it established the principle of judicial supremacy, meaning the Court is the final arbiter of what is or is not the law. He set a precedent by voiding an act of Congress and the President, and put a brake on congressional and presidential powers - except that Executives are only constrained to the degree they wish, able to take full advantage of Article II, Section 1 stating:
"The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America," and Article II, Section 3 stating:
"The President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed," omitting that they lawlessly make them through Executive Orders, Presidential Directives, and other means, including George Bush claiming "Unitary Executive" powers, what Chalmers Johnson called a "ball-faced assertion of presidential supremacy dressed up in legal mumbo jumbo."
However, no constitutional wording explicitly permits this. Yet Congress and the High Court rarely override the Executive, so effectively he's empowered with vast, frightening authority, including as commander-in-chief of the military, an autonomous capacity in peace but dictatorial during war.
With some ingenuity, Executives have sovereign power. Congress is mostly a paper tiger, and the High Court usually upholds presidential authority. But if it wishes, it can make laws it wants by judicial rulings.
Notable Court Decisions
- in Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the law of property rights was stabilized, especially contracts for the purchase of land; it was one of the first times the Court ruled a state law unconstitutional;
- in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), the Court held that private corporate charters were contracts, and as such, were protected by the Constitution's Article I, Section 10 Contract Clause including among other provisions that:
"No State shall (make any) Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts...;"
- in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Court ruled that a state can't tax a bank branch established by an act of Congress;
- in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Court upheld the supremacy of the United States over the individual states in the regulation of intestate commerce;
- in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Court ruled that black slaves and their descendants had no constitutional protections; could never become US citizens; that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in federal territories; slaves couldn't sue for redress and their freedom; and as chattel property, they couldn't be taken from owners without due process;
The decision was never overruled, but in the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases, the Court held that the 14th Amendment annulled part of it by making all native born Americans citizens by birth.
- in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court affirmed segregation in public places;
- in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the Court granted corporations personhood under the 14th Amendment with all accruing rights and privileges but none of the obligations;
The case and Court ruling involved a simple land dispute, unrelated to corporate personhood. After the decision, the Court reporter, JC Bancroft Davis, wrote it in his "headnotes." The Court allowed it to give corporations the same rights as people, but their limited liability absolved them of the obligations, empowering them to become the dominant institution of our times, able to control Congress, the Executive, and win numerous other favorable Court decisions.
Of all High Court rulings, this was the most far-reaching and harmful. It gave corporations unchecked powers, let them grow to oligarchic size, operate outside the law, and subvert the general welfare.
- in Lochner v. New York (1905), the Court held that a "liberty of contract" was implicit in the 14th Amendment's due process clause, rejecting a New York law limiting the number of hours a baker could work for reasons of health; calling it "unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract," it was one of the Court's most controversial decisions during the Lochner era from 1897-1937, when numerous laws regulating working conditions were invalidated in favor of property rights;
- in Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Court ruled Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order (EO) 9066 constitutional, ordering the internment of Japanese Americans during WW II; Korematsu challenged his conviction for violating the EO; in 1984, the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in his favor, Judge Marilyn Patel stating:
"there is substantial support in the record that the government deliberately omitted relevant information (including military justification) in provided misleading information in papers before the court" that was critical to the Supreme Court's decision.
- in Bush v. Gore (2000), the Court overruled the majority vote to make George Bush president; it overrode Florida's Supreme Court, halting the state recount on the spurious grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, an implausible argument but it held; it was the first time ever in US history that the Court reversed the popular will, installing its preferred candidate instead; months later, when it was too late to matter, a media-sponsored National Opinion Research Center tabulation of all uncounted votes showed Gore won Florida and was elected president; he knew it all along but didn't contest;
- in Watters v. Twombly (2007), the Court prevented states from regulating national bank subsidiaries just as the subprime crisis erupted;
- in Regents of the University of California v. Merrill Lynch (2008), the court denied restitution from Enron's collusion and defrauding investors; in Arthur Andersen v. United States (2005), it absolved Enron's partner in crime ruling jury instructions "failed to convey the requisite consciousness of wrongdoing" because jurors were told to convict Andersen if it had an "improper purpose," even if it thought it was acting legally; of course, Andersen knew the law, knew it acted illegally, but thought it could get away with it and did;
- in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Court sided with the gun lobby saying even though they're "aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country... constitutional rights necessarily (take) policy choices off the table;"
- in Exxon Shipping v. Baker (2008 - 19 years after the Exxon Valdez spill), the Court reduced the original $5 billion punitive damage award to $500 million; this and earlier cases lowered the bar for future malfeasance settlements, the Court nearly always siding with business, giving fraudulent and negligent companies wide latitude to endanger the public and get away with it;
- in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Court ruled that the government can't put limits on corporate spending in political elections as doing so violates First Amendment freedoms, legal "political speech," according to Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority.
The decision overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), restricting corporate political spending on the notion that (c)orporate wealth can unfairly influence elections," and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003), upholding part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the McCain-Feingold Act) restricting corporate and union campaign spending.
In its January ruling, the Court set a precedent, but does it matter given the political power of big money, past failures to curb it, and Professor John Kozy saying:
"Expecting the Congress, most if not all of whose members reside deep in corporate pockets, to eliminate that influence can be likened to expected the rhinovirus to eliminate the common cold. Corporate money (in large or smaller amounts) is the diseased life-blood of American politics; it carries its cancerous spores to all extremities."
As for the Court, Kozy cited Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' Lochner dissent, saying "the Court has taken its task to be the constitutionalization of a totally immoral, rapacious, economic system instead of the promotion of justice, domestic tranquility, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty."
However, as HL Mencken observed, Holmes was no "advocate of the rights of man (but rather) an advocate of the rights of lawmakers. (Under his judicial philosophy), there would be scarcely any brake at all upon lawmaking, and the Bill of Rights would have no more significance than the Code of Manu (referring to discrimination against women in Hindu literature)."
Of course, the same observation applies throughout Court history with past civil libertarians far outnumbered by supporters of the established order and big money that runs it. For every William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall there have been dozens of John Jays (the first chief justice), Roger Taneys, William Howard Tafts, Scalias, Burgers, Rehnquists, and Roberts.
Even liberal Republican Earl Warren, as California Attorney General, supported interning Japanese Americans during WW II, despite later writing the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision as Chief Justice as well as supporting other progressive rulings. Under Lyndon Johnson, however, he also chaired the Warren Commission cover-up of Jack Kennedy's assassination, saying:
"... there may be some things that would involve security. This would be preserved but not made public," even though the public has a right to know as a democratic state's final arbiter.
The Commission took testimony in secret, later publishing sanitized versions two months after the Warren Report. It prompted critics like Sylvia Meagher in her landmark book titled, "Accessories After the Fact" to rebut the Commission's findings, largely based on evidence it published. It excluded everything deemed sensitive and called Lee Harvey Oswald the lone assassin, a conclusion very much in dispute with growing evidence to prove it.
Michael Parenti calls the Supreme Court an "autocratic branch" of government. Its members are appointed, serve for life, and have great power for good or ill, nearly always supporting institutions of power, including corporate America. Even during the 1930s, "the Supreme Court was the activist bastion of laissez-faire capitalism" until public and White House pressure got it to accept New Deal legislation.
Post-1960s courts, however, reverted to form:
- making it harder to prove discrimination;
- weakening Miranda rights,
- diluting Roe v. Wade;
- giving child abusers more rights than victims;
- weakening unreasonable searches and seizures;
- turning a blind eye to illegal surveillance;
- reinstating the death penalty in 1976;
- supporting economic inequality by upholding laws reducing welfare and other rulings against the disadvantaged;
- granting more executive power to the president;
- siding with business against labor and victims of corporate fraud and harmful products;
- ignoring the separation of church and state by granting religious organizations tax exemptions;
- ruling in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) for a federal law limiting campaign contributions, but saying money influencing elections is constitutionally protected speech, and candidates may give unlimited amounts to their own campaigns; and
- numerous other pro-business, pro-state power rulings.
As for unfettered political spending, Ralph Nader's comments were unsurprising, saying "The Supremes Bow(ed) to King Corporation," further weakening a fragile democracy and deeply corrupted electoral process. With Washington already corporate occupied territory, it's debatable what more they need do. But they:
can now directly pour (unlimited) amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars. Without (shareholder) approval, (they) can reward or intimidate people running for office at the local, state, and national levels.
The Court saying "Government may not suppress political speech based on the speaker's corporate identity" means influence depends on the ability to buy it. The public is more than ever left out. The electoral process is further corrupted, and the notion of free, fair, and open elections is fanciful, absurd, and the reason many voters opt out.
Nader supports a grassroots effort for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and get big money out of politics. Also vital are:
- publicly funded elections;
- independent parties and candidates;
- repeal of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), empowering corporations through easily manipulated touchscreen electronic voting machines, replacing them with hand-counted paper ballots, administered by independent civil servants; and
- numerous other reforms to turn sham elections into real ones.
Most important is:
- America's growing repressiveness;
- its abandonment of the rule of law, due process, and judicial fairness for society's most disadvantaged;
- its bogus democracy under a homeland police state apparatus;
- permanent war agenda;
- growing denial of civil liberties and constitutional freedoms;
- letting social services erode when they're most needed during growing economic duress; and
- the High Court's acquiesce propelling America toward tyranny unless an aroused public intervenes to stop it. So far, there's not a hint of it in sight.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM-1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.
:: Article nr. 63676 sent on 26-feb-2010 18:42 ECT
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=63676:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website._____________
-
From inception, America was always ruled by men, not laws, who lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much do what they want for their own self-interest and powerful constituents. In 1787, "the people" who mattered most were elitists. The American revolution substituted new management for old. Everything changed but stayed the same under a system establishing:
-
24 Feb 2010 22:16
-
24 Feb 2010 10:15
Portland State Investigates a Professor Who
Accused a Student of FBI Ties
By Jill Laster
The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/article/Portland-State-Investigates-a/64008/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Portland State University is investigating a tenured professor of economics who is reported to have accused a student during class of being an FBI informant and selling weapons to other members of the class.
Students in the class say the professor, John B. Hall, stopped teaching in the middle of a lecture on January 14.
According to their accounts, Mr. Hall said an FBI informant was in the room and pointed at one of their classmates, Zaki Bucharest.
Mr. Hall then went on to say that Mr. Bucharest had served as a sniper in the Israeli army, tried to sell weapons to members of the class, and worked with the FBI, among other claims, the students said. Mr. Hall also showed students a letter he had written to the FBI.
"His voice was in a totally normal tone," said Brett Condron, a student in the class. "It was just like he was lecturing on."
Students say Mr. Bucharest, who is chief of staff for the university's student government, stayed silent while the professor talked. When Mr. Hall finished speaking, Mr. Bucharest stood and told the class that it was true that he had been a sniper in the Israeli army, but that Mr. Hall was wrong about other things. He then left.
"I expected that Zak was in on the joke and would scream, 'Psych,'" said another student, Jeremy Veysseire.
Mr. Hall could not be reached by phone or e-mail for comment on Thursday.
In a letter to the university's student-run newspaper, the Vanguard, Mr. Hall wrote that, based upon his students' reports, "I cannot help but to think that the process currently is being shaped in order to end my tenure at PSU."
"I decided to take a stand," he said in the letter. "I observed the situation becoming extremely dangerous, not only for me but for about eight of my very finest students. I felt that what I had to do should not have been my responsibility. "
A university spokesman, Scott Gallagher, said a student has filed a complaint against Mr. Hall, but the spokesman could not give any details. He said Mr. Hall has been relieved of his teaching duties and an investigation is under way; no disciplinary action has been taken so far.
The university said it had no record of any complaints being filed about Mr. Bucharest.
A new professor has been brought in to teach Mr. Hall's class, and students have been encouraged to go to the university's office of public safety if they have any concerns about their well-being.
Mr. Bucharest's lawyer, Elden Rosenthal, declined to comment beyond issuing a statement in which his client stated: "I have never been affiliated with the FBI in any way, and I have never been an informant. I have never in any way done anything to incite violence at PSU. I have admired Professor Hall since I first took a class from him and cannot imagine what I did or said to cause him to treat me the way he did."
The Vanguard first reported the story on Wednesday. Its Web site crashed at one point because of high traffic the story drew, said Sarah J. Christensen, the editor in chief.
"It's just a very confusing situation," Ms. Christensen said. "I think that's what's so interesting. It's a whodunit."
-
23 Feb 2010 06:11
____________
Eddie Skrgic Response
I am glad that you brought this story up professor as I was planning on bringing it up in class on Tuesday. I remember I remember hearing about this story and thinking that it is another attack on the U.S by a foreign source but to my surprise it was a white American citizen that led a suicide attack with an airplane towards a government building. To tell you the truth my first thought was, great finally something to break the whole stereotype of all terrorists being Muslim, but when I saw the news reports coming out and finally at the press conference the officials calling this a "criminal act" and not a terrorist act I was just pissed the whole day.
After this whole thing happened I had a couple of conversations with people regarding this attack and they were all surprised that this is not being considered a terrorist attack. This is a prime example of how western media is blatantly singling out terrorists as being Muslims/ Arabs. If we look at the definition the U.S uses to define terrorism it is:
"Pursuant to 22 USC § 2656f(d)(2), terrorism is "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents."
If we look at this incident we can conclude that:
- 1. Did the incident involve violence? Obviously!
- 2. Was the perpetrator a sub national or non-state actor? No doubt!
- 3. Was the target a noncombatant target? Absolutely!
- 4. Was the attack premeditated? Yes!
- 5. Was the crash politically motivated Yes!
This whole event just reinforced my views on the western media and how it uses its influence to imbed ideas into people's minds that are ignorant enough not to seek the truth. How in the world can a person who flies a plane into a government building because he does not agree with its policies NOT BE CONSIDERED A TERRORIST? In the first couple of hours of this event the word terrorism was not even mentioned, as if it was being ignored all together. I guess Joseph Stack should have grown a beard, maybe worn traditional Arab clothes, maybe then he could be a semi-terrorist?
Unbelievable.
__________________________________________ -
21 Feb 2010 09:43
Terrorism: The Most Meaningless and Manipulated Word
By Glenn Greenwald
February 19, 2010 "Salon" -- Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in order to advance the political grievances he outlined in a perfectly cogent suicide-manifesto. Stack's worldview contained elements of the tea party's anti-government anger along with substantial populist complaints generally associated with "the Left" (rage over bailouts, the suffering of America's poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants). All of that was accompanied by an argument as to why violence was justified (indeed necessary) to protest those injustices:I remember reading about the stock market crash before the "great" depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn't it ironic how far we've come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn't have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it's "business-as-usual" . . . . Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn't so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.
Despite all that, The New York Times' Brian Stelter documents the deep reluctance of cable news chatterers and government officials to label the incident an act of "terrorism," even though -- as Dave Neiwert ably documents -- it perfectly fits, indeed is a classic illustration of, every official definition of that term. The issue isn't whether Stack's grievances are real or his responses just; it is that the act unquestionably comports with the official definition. But as NBC's Pete Williams said of the official insistence that this was not an act of Terrorism: there are "a couple of reasons to say that . . . One is he's an American citizen." Fox News' Megan Kelley asked Catherine Herridge about these denials: "I take it that they mean terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to?," to which Herridge replied: "they mean terrorism in that capital T way."
All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity. It has really come to mean: "a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies." That's why all of this confusion and doubt arose yesterday over whether a person who perpetrated a classic act of Terrorism should, in fact, be called a Terrorist: he's not a Muslim and isn't acting on behalf of standard Muslim grievances against the U.S. or Israel, and thus does not fit the "definition." One might concede that perhaps there's some technical sense in which term might apply to Stack, but as Fox News emphasized: it's not "terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to . . . terrorism in that capital T way." We all know who commits terrorism in "that capital T way," and it's not people named Joseph Stack.
Contrast the collective hesitance to call Stack a Terrorist with the extremely dubious circumstances under which that term is reflexively applied to Muslims. If a Muslim attacks a military base preparing to deploy soldiers to a war zone, that person is a Terrorist. If an American Muslim argues that violence against the U.S. (particularly when aimed at military targets) is justified due to American violence aimed at the Muslim world, that person is a Terrorist who deserves assassination. And if the U.S. military invades a Muslim country, Muslims who live in the invaded and occupied country and who fight back against the invading American army -- by attacking nothing but military targets -- are also Terrorists. Indeed, large numbers of detainees at Guantanamo were accused of being Terrorists for nothing more than attacking members of an invading foreign army in their country, including 14-year-old Mohamed Jawad, who spent many years in Guantanamo, accused (almost certainly falsely) of throwing a grenade at two American troops in Afghanistan who were part of an invading force in that country. Obviously, plots targeting civilians for death -- the 9/11 attacks and attempts to blow up civilian aircraft -- are pure terrorism, but a huge portion of the acts committed by Muslims that receive that label are not.
In sum: a Muslim who attacks military targets, including in war zones or even in their own countries that have been invaded by a foreign army, are Terrorists. A non-Muslim who flies an airplane into a government building in pursuit of a political agenda is not, or at least is not a Real Terrorist with a capital T -- not the kind who should be tortured and thrown in a cage with no charges and assassinated with no due process. Nor are Christians who stand outside abortion clinics and murder doctors and clinic workers. Nor are acts undertaken by us or our favored allies designed to kill large numbers of civilians or which will recklessly cause such deaths as a means of terrorizing the population into desired behavioral change -- the Glorious Shock and Awe campaign and the pummeling of Gaza. Except as a means for demonizing Muslims, the word is used so inconsistently and manipulatively that it is impoverished of any discernible meaning.
All of this would be an interesting though not terribly important semantic matter if not for the fact that the term Terrorist plays a central role in our political debates. It is the all-justifying term for anything the U.S. Government does. Invasions, torture, due-process-free detentions, military commissions, drone attacks, warrantless surveillance, obsessive secrecy, and even assassinations of American citizens are all justified by the claim that it's only being done to "Terrorists," who, by definition, have no rights. Even worse, one becomes a "Terrorist" not through any judicial adjudication or other formal process, but solely by virtue of the untested, unchecked say-so of the Executive Branch. The President decrees someone to be a Terrorist and that's the end of that: uncritical followers of both political parties immediately justify anything done to the person on the ground that he's a Terrorist (by which they actually mean: he's been accused of being one, though that distinction -- between presidential accusations and proof -- is not one they recognize).
If we're really going to vest virtually unlimited power in the Government to do anything it wants to people they call "Terrorists," we ought at least to have a common understanding of what the term means. But there is none. It's just become a malleable, all-justifying term to allow the U.S. Government carte blanche to do whatever it wants to Muslims it does not like or who do not like it (i.e., The Terrorists). It's really more of a hypnotic mantra than an actual word: its mere utterance causes the nation blindly to cheer on whatever is done against the Muslims who are so labeled.
UPDATE: I want to add one point: the immediate official and media reaction was to avoid, even deny, the term "terrorist" because the perpetrator of the violence wasn't Muslim. But if Stack's manifesto begins to attract serious attention, I think it's likely the term Terrorist will be decisively applied to him in order to discredit what he wrote. His message is a sharply anti-establishment and populist grievance of the type that transcends ideological and partisan divisions -- the complaints which Stack passionately voices are found as common threads in the tea party movement and among citizens on both the Left and on the Right -- and thus tend to be the type which the establishment (which benefits from high levels of partisan distractions and divisions) finds most threatening and in need of demonization. Nothing is more effective at demonizing something than slapping the Terrorist label onto it.
Copyright ©2010 Salon Media Group, Inc. -
06 Feb 2010 16:56
LEARN!
L Liberation
E Education
A Action
R Research
N Network
_Liberation Central is an educational website offering alternative news; social justice curriculae; and anti-imperialist educational materials from June Terpstra, Ph.D.. June is an activist educator and university lecturer in Justice Studies, Criminal Justice and Sociology. She has founded numerous programs for homeless, abused, youth and oppressed people in the USA. She is presently teaching courses on Law and Terrorism, Social Justice, Media and Politics, Human Rights, Resistance, and Revolution. She is a former Community Research Fellow and doctoral graduate of Loyola University Chicago.
______________________________________________
-
05 Feb 2010 23:19
___CIA Has Program to Assassinate U.S. Citizens By Thomas R. Eddlem
February 04, 2010 "The New American" Jan. 30, 2010 -- - - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has maintained an assassination list of U.S. citizens for the last eight year and has actually assassinated Americans, according to January 27 Washington Post story.The Post reported a story of a predator drone strike in late 2001 in Yemen:
"The target was Abu Ali al-Harithi, organizer of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Killed with him was a U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, who the CIA knew was in the car.
"Word that the CIA had purposefully killed Derwish drew attention to the unconventional nature of the new conflict and to the secret legal deliberations over whether killing a U.S. citizen was legal and ethical.
"After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose 'a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,' said one former intelligence official."
One may expect the Bush administration to give the military and the CIA the “authority” to assassinate American citizens without trial. The Bush administration had made a point of claiming unlimited power under the lawyerly advice of the Justice Department's John Yoo and had imprisoned American citizens Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi for years without trial. Only after taking the Hamdi case all the way to the Supreme Court — and taking the Padilla case to the Supreme Court twice — did the Bush administration concede it couldn't throw an American citizen away in a CIA dungeon forever without a trial. Assassination was only the next logical step to the Bush administration policy of the “unitary executive.”
But the Post explains that “the Obama administration has adopted the same stance.” This might be surprising to casual observers, since the Obama administration has publicly claimed a restoration of law and order. The Post noted that “as of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens,” and explained that Obama “has embraced the notion that the most effective way to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates is to work closely with foreign partners, including those that have feeble democracies, shoddy human rights records and weak accountability over the vast sums of money Washington is giving them to win their continued participation in these efforts.”
Don't expect establishment Republicans to raise a hue and cry over this continuation of Bush administation policies similar to their outrage over Obama continuing Bush's outlandish spending policies. Many in the John Yoo wing of the Republican Party — which is today the dominant wing of the party — continue to campaign against “giving” rights to foreign detainees. A recent example of that includes the Republican “response” to Obama's “State of the Union” address January 27 by Bob McDonnell, Virginia's new Governor. McDonnell told the nation:
Americans were shocked on Christmas Day to learn of the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit. This foreign terror suspect was given the same legal rights as a U.S. citizen, and immediately stopped providing critical intelligence. As Senator-elect Scott Brown says, we should be spending taxpayer dollars to defeat terrorists, not to protect them.
Constitutionalists have long known that rights flow directly from God; they are not "given" by government. The Declaration of Independence acknowledges as “self-evident” that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Those Founding Fathers fought against the British view that rights could be canceled because they resided far from the mother land. They fought a war to secure rights as “unalienable” — inseparable gifts from God. Then the Founders ratified a Constitution that protected — not “gave” — the rights Americans already possessed from God. The Bill of Rights was added immediately afterward — not to dole out rights, but — to limit the Federal government and prevent it from infringing on rights the people already possessed.
Politicians in both parties running Washington today have flouted this self-evident truth at least since the September 11 attacks under the excuse that we are “at war” (even though Congress explicitly rejected a declaration of war). Their argument is based on the false premise that government “gives” rights to people, leading to the false conclusion that if people clothed with government authority dislike some people with a certain threshold of intensity, then those people probably ought not to be “given” rights. It is an argument as much marked by an openly atheistic worldview as it is one that quickly turns to brutality and an end to all law. The Bush administration's declaration that foreign detainees in this undeclared war (Note: The Constitution requires only Congress can declare war) have no rights led to the assassination of Americans without trial in a matter of months after the September 11 attacks. The lesson of the last few years is that political leaders cannot take away the rights of some people without endangering the rights of everyone.
The fact that only three Americans remain on the CIA assassination list ought not to comfort alert Americans. If the CIA has the right to kill three Americans without trial, then in principle it has the right to assassinate three million Americans without trial. Nor should the fact that these Americans happened to be abroad while targeted provide any sense of security that our rights won't be violated while residing within our own country. Mere geographical location is no protection against a government that refuses to respect rights, as American citizen Jose Padilla discovered when he was taken into custody in Chicago's O'Hare Airport in 2002. Without the principle of the Constitution and its limits on the federal government, Americans and their inalienable rights and freedoms remain in a kind of peril that no terrorist could ever create.
_______________ -
03 Feb 2010 16:22
TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2010
When Scholars Join the Slaughter
Tuesday 26 January 2010
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report
A core tenet of the Obama administration's plans for "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan is an increased reliance on counterinsurgency.
As previously reported on this web site, the US military has sent shock troops - anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists - with their own troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, who also donned helmets and flak jackets. By the end of 2007, American scholars in these fields were embedding with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a Pentagon program called Human Terrain System (HTS), which evolved shortly thereafter into a $40 million program that embedded four or five person groups of scholars in the aforementioned fields in all 26 US combat brigades that were busily occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The program is currently comprised of approximately 400 employees, and is actively seeking new recruits.
Anthropology, in particular, has been referred to throughout history as the "handmaiden of colonialism," thus putting anthropologists, at least those with a moral conscience, on guard against anything that smells like exploitation or oppression of their subjects. Roberto Gonzalez, an associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and a leading member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, told Time magazine that the militarization of anthropology will cause the field to become "just another weapon ... not a tool for building bridges between peoples." Anthropology has core professional ethics standards that require voluntary, informed consent from subjects, and that anthropologists do no harm. How likely do you think these will be adhered to by the flack-jacket-wearing, gun-toting, embedded anthropologists working directly with regimental combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan?"
The two highest ethical principles of anthropology are protection of the interests of studied populations and their safety. All anthropological studies consequently are premised on the consent of the subject society. Clearly, the HTS anthropologists have thrown these ethical guidelines out the window. They are to anthropology what state stenographers like Judith Miller and John Burns are to journalism.
Truthout consulted David Price, author of "Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War" and a contributor to the "Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual," a work of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, of which he is a member.
According to Price, "HTS presents real ethical problems for anthropologists, because the demands of the military in situations of occupation put anthropologists in positions undermining their fundamental ethical loyalties to those they study. Moreover, it presents political problems that link anthropology to a disciplinary past where anthropologists were complicit in assisting in colonial conquests. Those selling HTS to the military have misrepresented what culture is and have downplayed the difficulties of using culture to bring about change, much less conquest. There is a certain dishonesty in pretending that anthropologists possess some sort of magic beans of culture, and that if only occupiers had better cultural knowledge, or made the right pay-offs, then occupied people would fall in line and stop resisting foreign invaders. Culture is being presented as if it were a variable in a linear equation, and if only HTS teams could collect the right data variables and present troops with the right information conquest could be entered in the equation. Life and culture doesn't work that way; occupied people know they are occupied, and while cultural knowledge can ease an occupation, historically it has almost never led to conquest - but even if it could, anthropology would irreparably damage itself if it became nothing more than a tool of occupations and conquest."
The handbook for the HTS offers the human terrain "toolkit" for the US military to understand subjects living in militarily occupied areas. It stated:
"HTTs will use the Map-HT Toolkit of developmental hardware and software to capture, consolidate, tag, and ingest human terrain data. HTTs use this human terrain information gathered to assist commanders in understanding the operational relevance of the information as it applies to the unit's planning processes. The expectation is that the resulting courses of actions developed by the staff and selected by the commander will consistently be more culturally harmonized with the local population, which in Counter-Insurgency Operations should lead to greater success. It is the trust of the indigenous population that is at the heart of the struggle between coalition forces and the insurgents." (Emphasis added.)
The mission of the human terrain social scientists gains legitimacy and credibility when expressed in terms of engineering the "trust of the indigenous population."
The military's benign description specifies that HTS will "improve the military's ability to understand the highly complex local social-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed." Proponents of the program go as far as to claim that its goal is to help the military save lives.
"Human Terrain Teams (HTT) are special units that imbed with battalions in Afghanistan and are trained to promote counterinsurgency practices," Price explained to Truthout, "Each Human Terrain Teams has a team leader who is usually retired military personnel, frequently from Special Forces, and each team has a social scientist. Though these social scientists are often referred to as 'anthropologists' in the press, the program has had great difficulty hiring many anthropologists to work on the program - especially those with relevant linguistic or cultural experience. These Human Terrain Teams are envisioned as providing cultural information to the occupying troops, and to also conduct research on populations under military control - though the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) recent report found that in many instances the tasks undertaken by HTS blur distinctions between research and intelligence work. But the basic tasks and methods of HTT violate basic ethical tenants of anthropological field research as the safety of research participants cannot be assured, nor can voluntary informed consent; and questions remain about what becomes of HTT data gathered in the field."
In December, the AAA held annual meetings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the association made public a significant report titled the "AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC)," co-authored by David Price, which dealt directly with the ethical problems of the HTS.
Key findings in the executive summary of the report state:
"1. HTS and similar programs are moving to become a greater fixture within the U.S. military. Given still outstanding questions about HTS, such developments should be a source of concern for the AAA but also for any social science organization or federal agency that expects its members or its employees to adhere to established disciplinary and federal standards for the treatment of human subjects.
"2. The current arrangement of HTS includes potentially irreconcilable goals which, in turn, lead to irreducible tensions with respect to the program’s basic identity. These include HTS at once: fulfilling a research function, as a data source, as a source of intelligence, and as performing a tactical function in counterinsurgency warfare. Given this confusion, any anthropologist considering employment with HTS will have difficulty determining whether or not s/he will be able to follow the disciplinary Code of Ethics."
And:
"In summary, while we stress that constructive engagement between anthropology and the military is possible, CEAUSSIC suggests that the AAA emphasize the incompatibility of HTS with disciplinary ethics and practice for job seekers and that it further recognize the problem of allowing HTS to define the meaning of 'anthropology' within DoD."
While there has been some recent coverage of the HTS, Price told Truthout, "I haven't seen anything written that really gets to how these HTS teams fit into Obama's plans for increased counterinsurgency domination in Afghanistan."
The HTS continues to be condemned by the AAA, and in the wake of the filing of the CEAUSSIC, Price said, "our committee's evaluation of the program is purely negative and among our conclusion we determined that: 'When ethnographic investigation is determined by military missions, not subject to external review, where data collection occurs in the context of war, integrated into the goals of counterinsurgency, and in a potentially coercive environment - all characteristic factors of the HTS concept and its application - it can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology.'"
In a recent article on the topic, that links the HTS with the increasing use of drones and the US military expansion of AFRICOM, Price wrote, "Today, in Iraq and Afghanistan, anthropologists are being told that they're needed to make bad situations better. But no matter how anthropological contributions ease and make gentle this conquest and occupation, it will not change the larger neocolonial nature of the larger mission; and most anthropologists are troubled to see their discipline embrace such a politically corrupt cause."
While the vast majority of mainstream media coverage of the HTS has been and remains favorable, Time magazine wrote a critical piece of the HTS after the CEAUSSIC was filed.
The House Armed Services Committee is currently undertaking a review of the HTS by directing the secretary of defense to undertake an assessment of HTS, and another HTS team member was wounded in Afghanistan. Given the Obama administration's escalation of counterinsurgent warfare and "soft power" as the US becomes further entrenched in Afghanistan, it is very likely more money will be allocated to HTS, despite any independent study indicating that HTS operates in any way similar to how it is promoted in the media.
Nevertheless, the use of HTS continues unabated in Afghanistan, and is going to be expanded in the future in Africa, both where, according to Price, the future of the program rests.
"The military seems increasingly interested in adapting some sort of Human Terrain like program for use in AFRICOM, and given AFRICOM's merging of military personnel and projects with counterinsurgent tactics and goals, it stands to reason that as AFRICOM takes on an increasing role in exploiting civil unrest in Africa as a way to leverage an increasing American military presence in resource rich Africa, something like HTS will be a part of these plans," Price told Truthout, "Given all the bad publicity HTS has been getting, I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the name but used a similar program."
Another problem with the problems is corruption. Currently, HTS training is geared towards Afghanistan, not Iraq, and is being conducted by the contracting firm CLI Solutions. The firm is funding training schools in Leavenworth, Omaha, and elsewhere, in addition to having found a way to rip off taxpayers and continue paying HTS using the "GG" scale (different than GS, GG provides a loophole in the GS systems that allows the government to sometimes hire "experts" at rates off the prevailing scale), which has elevated the pay scale back up to the levels it did when BAE Systems, a British military contractor, the world's second largest, ran the program.
Of this trick, Price revealed to Truthout that it is "a real boondoggle for the American taxpayers" and added, "Someone leaked the pay-scale to me and it shows scenarios where a GG-15, working 60 hours a week in the field in Afghanistan for 12 months would make over $230k per year, so presto change, we're back to the gravy train money days of BAE. That they are allowed to use the GG scale is scandalous: GG needs to exist in concept (so that for example when some expensive piece of government equipment needs to be worked on by experts, we can find a way to hire them) but use of GG for this end seems a clear abuse of what it was created for. So far no one has written anything on this in the press."
When asked why US taxpayers should be concerned about this payment scheme, Price told Truthout, "In terms of Pentagon spending and waste, $250,000,000 dollars spent on Human Terrain each year is small potatoes, but the program can't work as advertised. Taxpayers should be concerned that their president is committing us to a counterinsurgency-based war that will likely be impossible to successfully implement, and if the failed Human Terrain program is one of the star programs of US counterinsurgency efforts, we're in a lot of trouble."
Price refers to the AAA report as "devastating" with regard to the HTS, President Obama's policy of a huge escalation of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan as "doomed" and said the only way Obama's handling of the HTS has differed from Bush's is to have brought about "increases in HTS funding."
Stacey Fritz is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who studies cold war militarization of the Arctic and other aspects of modern American militarism, including its impacts on academia. She is also a member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, an independent ad-hoc group that seeks to promote an ethical anthropology and that believes that anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting the US military in combat. On November 18, Fritz debated Kathleen Reedy, an employee in the HTS, assigned to the 1/25th Stryker Brigade out of Fort Wainwright, Fairbanks.
"She seemed to be trying to make herself believe the HTS lines, but they are so unbelievable that I think that it is very, very difficult to debate/defend that perspective, especially since I had plenty of quotes from military leaders saying very candidly that the HTTs do HUMINT [Human Intelligence gathering] that the military uses to figure out who the bad guys are and which good guys can be co-opted."
Fitz explained that Reedy opted not to debate the central HTS issues, but rather attempted to persuade the audience that she, as an anthropologist, had control over her information, and that she maintained "strong ethical guidelines concerning what she would pass on to them."
Fritz believes the entire edifice of ethics that anthropologists who participate in the HTS believe it is flawed.
"One of the main questions the NCA asks concerns whether the good intentions of anthropologists working in HTTs are being met - this is important -the anthropologists really are or come off as seeming well intentioned, but I don't think that it is believable that their actions could be positive even on the surface since the entire discussion presupposes that the military means the population well, and that there is such thing as a non-violent counterinsurgency war," Fitz told Truthout, "Of course, a huge portion of individuals in the military mean well and want the best for the Iraqis, which is great, but the policy under which they are acting makes that impossible. If they were doing what the Iraqis wanted, they would leave."
Price feels it is imperative for individuals to watch how the Obama administration uses and augments the HTS, because the mainstream media has largely been a unwilling to carry out much overdue critical reportage of the program.
"Since its conception HTS has been given an uncritical free ride in the press," Price explained, "There have been glossy profiles on its designers and supporters in places like the Wall Street Journal, Elle, and the New Yorker. I've seen drafts of feature stories on HTS that had critical counter-points removed by editors because they 'complicated the narrative,' and academics working on HTS have not had to answer the mounting questions about fundamental ethical, financial, and design problems that haunt the program - in some cases skipping out on academic conferences where they had agreed to engage with me and others. The mainstream media has cut HTS a lot of slack as it uncritically portrays the program as a way to engage in less lethal conquest; and given the severity of the findings of this recent American Anthropological Association report - which the New York Times did cover (in a small story in the Arts Section) - I have a hard time imagining a report from the American Medical Association or the Association of Applied Biologists declaring a key governmental program to be operating outside the most basic ethical and practical boundaries of the disciplines of medicine or biology, and receiving such little notice."
Fritz explained why this likely occurs. "I think the most important thing for the public to understand is the bigger picture of U.S. counterinsurgency wars. Counterinsurgency wars have always been fought on two fronts - one against the insurgents and the other, a propaganda war against a less than supportive public at home. This kind of tactic particularly appeals to liberals who are opposed to the war and grasp at any information that lets them feel better about it. It's very seductive - I think the worse people feel the more desperate they are to just believe that something like HTS is making a bloody illegal occupation better."
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan," (Haymarket Books, 2009), and "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last five years.
© 2010 truthout -
25 Jan 2010 14:02
Revolution in the Time of the Hamsters
Ricardo Levins Morales
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," Dorothy shared her suspicion with her little dog as they peered out onto an unfamiliar landscape. Still reeling from her own climate crisis, Dorothy could recognize a new strategic reality when she saw it; one which would force her to rethink her capabilities, her goals and the alliances she would need to pursue her interests under radically altered conditions.
We in US left and progressive politics are experiencing a "Dorothy moment." Pressures that have been building for decades along underground political fault lines are combining to produce political tremors that cannot be ignored. Words do feeble justice to the dramatic scope of the changes: the steep decline of US imperial power; an unraveling financial sector and disintegrating social support systems such as housing, health care and nutrition; receding glaciers, rising sea levels, extreme storms and droughts, collapsing fisheries and agricultural systems; re-emergent infectious diseases, increasing hunger and burgeoning migrant flows.
Most of what passes for the US left, however, is content to believe that we are still in Kansas; that it will be sufficient to do what we have always done but more so: "redoubling our efforts" to protest abuses, fighting to expand the "political space" and hoping that more favorable conditions will someday allow us to address fundamental issues. These comments are meant to challenge that complacency. I will argue that the very way that protest and advocacy are structured ensures that our impact will be safely contained and that working twice as hard at flawed strategies will not bring us closer to a humane and sustainable future. I suggest that the tired leftist mantra, "we are weak, we are powerless," reflects a learned helplessness that prevents us from seeing, let alone seizing, a world of opportunity that surrounds us.
Our inability to think in bold strategic terms or to appreciate the abundant resources within our grasp is not an accident. It is the structural legacy of the mass movements that peaked forty years ago and the methods employed to disperse them. Brutal police repression was directed against the militant organizations of the darker communities while millions of federal and corporate dollars were directed into a fast-growing "non-profit" sector. Their emergence
represented both a victory for movements that had demanded resources be directed toward
the services and organizing efforts they had initiated and the success of the power structure in
stripping them of their radical content. The aspirations of civil society would now be channeled
through these closely regulated entities whose mandates are to advocate for specific
constituencies or seek to limit the damage from particular corporate or government practices.
Questioning the sanctity of corporate rule itself is not on the table. Accepting these constraints
qualifies an organization to maintain its tax exempt status and compete for corporate and
government funds. This provides an outlet for discontent but ensures that even when we win
hard-fought victories they do not impact the overall balance of power.
This set-up can be likened to an array of hamster wheels. They do generate energy and often
provide vital and necessary support to those most in need, but within limits that they usually
cannot see. Struggles for homeless shelters, side agreements to treaties, pollution standards,
welfare rights, media access and civilian police review boards, after all, are not struggles for
justice. They are struggles to mitigate, limit and regulate injustice. Challenges to the structures
of oppression (not just individual perpetrators) are quickly deemed "beyond our mission" and
certain to alarm funders. Meanwhile, our adversaries work on a larger scale, molding the
broader landscape upon which a hundred thousand hamster wheels doggedly spin. The non-
profit focus on limited goals is reinforced by the lingering trauma of the Red Scare, which has
made leftists exceedingly shy about articulating an alternative moral vision.This devil's compact has precedents. The Wagner Act of 1935 (and its 1947 step-child, Taft
Hartley) conferred recognition on unions' right to organize for narrowly defined purposes while
declaring broader political and class issues off limits. A year before Wagner, the Indian
Reorganization Act conceded a truncated "sovereignty" to Indigenous Nations in exchange for
their submission to federal authority. The establishment of the "Commonwealth" of Puerto
Rico (1952) fits this pattern.The Oval Office operates within similar constraints. A President may seek reforms that do not
threaten the sanctity of corporate power. Policies that express the current consensus of the corporate
elite as a whole are known as "bipartisan" issues and are beyond the reach of a mere President to tinker
with. Policy papers from the Rand Corporation or the Council on Foreign relations or Wall Street Journal
editorials are generally a better predictor of future Presidential policies than any promises made on the
campaign trail. This is why today's major policy initiatives, be they about health coverage reform,
financial regulation, housing, climate change or foreign policy, all have the protection of corporate
interests at their center.The current effort to invite the progressive non-profit sector into the imperial coalition follows
the route taken by the labor movement over the last half century. In exchange for a bargaining
relationship with domestic employers, the AFL-CIO assisted a US offensive against activist
unions worldwide. The resulting suppression of union militancy in the poorer countries
facilitated outsourcing of manufacturing to these now-pacified regions, followed by an all-out
assault on those pesky US unions. As Tecumseh argued two hundred years ago, individual
bargains with the empire don't tend to end well.This structural overview tells only part of the story. Need produces innovation and there is no
shortage of viable and exciting solutions to the crises afflicting our essential life support
systems. What is lacking is what former UN Development administrator James Gustave Speth
calls "a new operating system" which could integrate these initiatives into a new, sustainable
social paradigm. That would require a radical shift of power from the corporate/financial elites
to democratic structures rooted in civil society. The world can be a sustainable home for all
who reside here or a giant ATM for the insatiable few... it cannot be both.
Uniting a multitude of fractured mini-struggles into a powerful movement requires a vision
broad enough to embrace them all. This can produce both short-term and long-term benefits.
People's movements won more progressive reforms under Richard Nixon than under Bill
Clinton because mass movements were in the streets making "unthinkable" demands. The
liberal establishment was spurred to make concessions to Martin Luther King Jr., knowing that
more militant Black Power forces to his left were gaining influence.Believing that the President is the "organizer-in chief" for a people's agenda has led labor and
progressive leaders to seek influence rather than build power. Bill Clinton demonstrated where
such a strategy leads: he paid eloquent lip service to labor law reform (including banning
"replacement workers") but reserved his real political capital to pass NAFTA and "end Welfare
as we know it." A glance at the current line-up of forces suggests a similar fate for the Employee
Free Choice Act. The rabid attacks from the right against even the most tepid reforms - and by
extension the Obama White House -- is causing the liberal left to mobilize all its capacity in
defense of tepid, corporate-friendly bills.If the road we are on leads to a precipice, then a shift in our strategic orientation is overdue. If
the Obama administration proposes modest green-oriented initiatives and then waters them down to
mollify corporate interests, we will still (it can be argued) end up further along than we were to begin
with. If we envision ourselves as advancing across an expanse of open field, then we can measure our
progress in terms of yardage gained and be satisfied that we are least moving in the right direction. If,
instead, a chasm has opened up which we must leap across to survive, then the difference between
getting twenty percent versus forty percent of the way across is meaningless. It means we have
transitioned from a system of political letter grades to one of "pass/fail." We either make the leap or
not.Organizing is a form of public story-telling as the right wing has devastatingly demonstrated. At its best it
transcends specific grievances to point to a compelling vision. Students in 1960 risked their lives to
integrate lunch counters because it was part of a larger narrative about dignity and equal rights.To achieve that kind of resonance our reform struggles must transcend the hamster-wheel model of
addressing narrow grievances on behalf of single constituencies. Instead they should serve to illustrate
the commonality of our dreams so as to foster grassroots alliances. In the 2006 strategy paper Beyond
Marriage, its 17 authors propose a radical framework for challenging conservative "family" politics.
Rather than a narrow focus on legalizing same-sex marriage, they articulate a broadly defined, pro-
family agenda that encompasses legal protection for a wide range of deliberate domestic relationships
(romantic or not): the right of immigrant families to be reunited (and an end to the raids that break
them apart); mutual care agreements among elders; support for families with incarcerated members;
nutritional support for school children and so forth. The Arizona Repeal Coalition in Arizona takes a
similar approach in their campaign to roll back all anti-immigrant legislation, demanding "Freedom to
Love, Live and Work Anywhere We Please." What emerges is a strategy that organically links
constituencies that can otherwise be played against each other (witness Proposition 8 in California).A radical, narrative approach to organizing can open new strategic possibilities. Reframing the issue of
immigration, for example, might include blockading the Mississippi River with small boats to block the
barges hauling subsidized GMO corn to Mexico where it undercuts the subsistence farm economy,
driving farmers off the land. It would illuminate the common interests of immigrant and other workers,
farmers (on both sides of the river), and consumers all confronting the same corporate interests.
Targeting the logistics of trade would expose a vulnerability in the system and open attractive avenues
for youth participation.The expanding financial crisis offers other promising arenas for organizing around immediate human
needs. The emerging movement against home foreclosures in the US includes in its tactical arsenal
blocking evictions and moving homeless families into foreclosed houses. This directly challenges the
legitimacy of the "bankocracy," asserts the primacy of need over greed and demonstrates the power of
collective direct action. Like the landless movement in Brazil it combines protest with reclaiming vital
resources for those who need them. Most significantly it embodies a transfer of sovereignty from the
suites to the streets.The tired dichotomy between struggling to improve people's real-life conditions vs. fighting for
fundamental change will not serve us now. If the advancing ecological and social crises increase the
urgency of bringing about systemic change, they do the same for essential reforms. For progressive
administration insiders such as Hilda Solis or Van Jones to make effective use of their window of
opportunity, they will need a stronger wind at their backs than that which blows from the oval office.
That wind will not come from corporate power centers but must emerge from the streets in the form of
demands for more far-reaching changes than are currently "thinkable."If we raise our sights from our advocacy struggles, to take in the entirety of the dominant system, it
becomes possible to notice its weak points. Of particular significance is the dual strategy of population
management: the exponential expansion of a color-coded penal system to bring the African-American
population substant6ially under the control of the criminal justice system (today's version of the "Black
Laws"); and the restructuring of immigration policy to replace the vast, undocumented workforce with a
documented but highly monitored labor pool with limited legal rights, subject to inescapable employer
control. In other words a new domestic order is under construction that straps the two populations who
for historical and demographic reasons are best positioned to mount a major political challenge, into a
straightjacket of legal vulnerability. This should suggest that targeting these repressive systems - and
reducing that vulnerability - is a key to unlocking the political power of these constituencies. For other
indicators of weak points in the system, look to what paths have been closed to us through legal or
bureaucratic means: unions meddling in broad class issues, civil organizations addressing the causes of
oppression and direct action which interrupts the functioning of commerce and empire. What clearer
invitations do we need?This larger perspective can also reveal strategic resources that are invisible from the hamster-wheel
world of single-issue advocacy and contract management. The one growing sector in the collapsing
newspaper industry, for example, consists of publications serving communities of color. These outlets
are more progressive than the corporate press and enjoy the confidence of their readers. With Black
newspaper circulation at fifteen million, Latino dailies at sixteen million and Chinese language papers
reaching one million (to give only a partial picture), they constitute an established network of relatively
independent media rooted in thousands of communities. These under-resourced outlets are often
receptive to alternative news and analysis but rely on the wire services because they are easy to access.
Offering a steady harvest of movement material to these papers along with neighborhood and local
labor council press, can help shape the national discourse in way that is hard to do if we wait for New
York Times to transmit our story. Such a strategy might have kept the battered Gulf Coast from slipping
off the national radar even as it became the central battle ground for corporate land grabs and ethnic
replacement. We may not have the media sound system of the corporate class but shouting down a
canyon can make hella noise!There is more and in many ways more sophisticated organizing taking place today than at the peak of
the mass movements, but without a unifying vision it does not constitute a movement. It is as though
we had suffered a traumatic brain injury that severed our strategic vision centers from our functional
capacity. This issue -the connections between our vision, our voice and our on-the-street capacity -
defines the difference between generating energy and accumulating power.No one knows what will trigger the next wave of mass struggles, what frame of reference will unify them
into a movement or what organizational forms will emerge to embody their aspirations. Movement
experience suggests that there are still things we can do to improve their chances for success. The most
urgent of these tasks is to "decolonize our minds."Is it sensible to speak of revolution in the time of the hamsters? Some experienced movement heads are
counseling the opposite. They argue that after decades of bombardment by the right wing sound
machine it would isolate us to present any ideas too radical for our time. We would be vulnerable to
reactionary attack and ridicule. That is true of course, but the right will attack as fiercely no matter what
we offer and nothing excites them more than the scent of timidity. When conservative activists
regrouped following the electoral defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, they wisely began their march to
power by establishing a clear right wing pole around which to organize. They did not water down their
vision because the left was dominating the public space. An unfavorable political culture is a thing to
change, not accommodate to. The left intellectual strata have largely fallen into a paradigm of learned
helplessness. When liberals are in power we are compelled to defend them lest the Republicans return.
When the right is in power we must replace them at all costs, which means backing the Democrats.
Logically that means there will never be circumstances that would justify building a movement that
speaks with its own voice. The absence of such a voice makes us even weaker at each new juncture and
that fact becomes an argument for further timidity. With no countervailing pole to the left of them the
Democrats continue to move right in the Republican wake.A strategy of timidity today will only reproduce the pathetic spectacle of the health care "debate":
orchestrated, right-wing mobs launching attacks against a tepid, corporate-friendly "reform" that sets
no one on fire (despite mass public support, single payer is declared "off the table" by the ruling
Democrats). If things have deteriorated to the point that the selections on the political menu range from
neo-liberal to neo-fascist it is past time to proclaim another option rather than select among those
offered. After decades of rightist propaganda people are hungry for someone, anyone, to
unapologetically declare for cooperation, generosity and solidarity. That's what they thought they had
found in Obama. Millions of people stepped up to support what they thought was a radical turn toward
justice, peace and compassion! Does that seem noteworthy?Leaders do not create movements. Movements create leaders. When there is no movement, there are
no movement leaders. In such a time the job of activists is to prepare the soil for both. Steps that can be
taken include probing for volatile pressure points around popular grievances (remember the
Montgomery bus boycott); instigating radical/narrative strategies in popular struggles (as in the
examples above); strengthening our fragile web of movement institutions (the right figured this out a
long time ago); learning from sister struggles in other places and times; encouraging the practice of
concrete, rather than symbolic, solidarity; and continually exposing the oppressive structures underlying
our people's suffering.Most important of all, we need to talk. This cannot be overstated. In other times that called for
movement renewal we have turned to study circles, consciousness raising groups, freedom schools,
popular education encounters, and other means to tap the creative reserves of the grassroots. Resetting
the strategic compass for a movement is not something we can leave to a self-selected few. The
changing correlation of political, economic and natural forces calls for a wide-ranging, complex, strategic
discussion at every level of our movement and in our communities. This process, which is beginning to
crystallize, should become an explicit priority for radical activists of all political tendencies. It is a process
that can merge into organizing if discussions are initiated around people's concrete experiences, such as
food prices, gang violence, housing and homelessness, jobs and workplace power, war and the
economic draft, and so forth. When community people share their stories of police brutality it quickly
becomes apparent that the problem is bigger than "a few bad apples." Through such collective,
participatory engagement we can begin to shape the activist theory and organizing language we will
need to break away from the hamster wheels of Kansas and reclaim the struggle for that other world we
like to say is possible.
Search the Site
