1- PROTEST Escalation of War in Afghanistan, Acacia Park, 5pm
3- STORY OF STUFF Annie Leonard, CC Packard Hall, 6pm
7-18 – COP15, UN Climate Change Conference, Kobenhavn DK
8- Sarah Palin book signing, Borders, Briargate Mall
9- Health Care Reform ambulance visit, S. Tejon, 10-11am
27-31 BOYCOTT ISRAELI APARTHEID, Chapel Hills Mall, for Free Gaza March
BOYCOTT ISRAELI APARTHEID, Chapel Hills Mall, noon
Congress has sadly overreacted to the Fox News video sting operation to discredit ACORN. Over the summer, most of the community activism offices did run the Giles/O’Keefe whore/pimp act straight out the door, but invariably some staff member was going to take pity on the inadvisably-dressed, street-smart-deficient pair.
What are you going to do, tell someone they’re too stupid to a) turn tricks b) mortgage a whorehouse c) traffic in child prostitutes?
Nor can you put the word out to all your offices to be on the lookout for two dopey white kids, dressed for success based on Quentin Tarantino characters, who appear to be trying to effect an undercover sting. Because that would be racial profiling. Community activists aren’t like the CIA, prepared to entrap the least idiot who voices aspirations to be an outlaw. Because American idiots abound.
I used to have a telephone number listed in the Yellow Pages under Science. Long story, but we’d get calls from uneducated white people looking for laboratory equipment, specifically beakers and measuring devices, for manufacturing Meth. Regularly. I didn’t tell them to get lost, or to turn themselves in. I referred them to the public library where a reference librarian would be able to redirect their wild hair with trained gentleness.
At yesterday’s Teabag Constitution Day Rally, I was reminded about interacting with idiots. There wasn’t an angry white person there who’d graduated high school. Someone was speaking about the constitution, and asked the crowd which amendment protected their right to free speech. The response was silent.
Arguments broke out between “patriots” and counter-protesters. Here’s how they devolved: “Have you read the Constitution?” “HAVE YOU?” “Have you?” “HAVE YOU?” “Have you?” Ad infinitum ignoratum.
The best sign was held aloft, directly in the center, by a young cracker daughter. It read, in giant, meticulously markered bold letters: LIEIR!
The is no talking sense with dumb bastards. You can only be nice, advise them to look things up, read, get an education. Why step on their dreams? If they think their best chances in life lay in prostitution and pimping, who are you to stand in their way. Their inglorious venture will be thwarted by law enforcement soon enough.
The Rock Creek Free Press is available online, but if you want it in print, the DC monthly is available in Colorado Springs at the Bookman, 3163 W. Colorado. The September issue features a speech given by legendary Australian journalist John Pilger on July 4th in San Francisco.
Here’s the RCFP transcript:
Two years ago I spoke at “Socialism in Chicago” about an invisible government which is a term used by Edward Bernays, one the founders of modern propaganda. It was Bernays, who in the 1920s invented public relations as a euphemism for propaganda. And it was Bernays, deploying the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud, who campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry for women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation calling cigarettes “tortures of freedom”. At the same time he was involved in the disinformation which was critical in overthrowing the Arbenz government in Guatemala. So you have the association of cigarettes and regime change. The invisible government that Bernays had in mind brought together all media: PR, the press, broadcasting, advertising and their power of branding and image making. In other words, disinformation.
And I suppose I would like to talk today about this invisible government’s most recent achievement, the rise of Barrack Obama and the silencing of much of the left. But all of this has a history, of course and I’d like to go back, take you back some forty years to a sultry and, for me, very memorable day in Viet Nam.
I was a young war correspondent who had just arrived in a village in the Central Highlands called Tuylon. My assignment was to write about a unit of US Marines who had been sent to the village to win hearts and minds. “My orders,” said the Marine Sergeant, “are to sell the American way of liberty, as stated in the Pacification Handbook, this is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks as stated on page 86.” Now, page 86 was headed in capital letters: WHAM (winning hearts and minds). The Marine Unit was a combined action company which explained the Sergeant, meant, “We attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays.” He was joking, of course, but not quite.
The Sergeant, who didn’t speak Vietnamese, had arrived in the village, stood up on a Jeep and said through a bullhorn: “Come on out everybody we’ve got rice and candies and toothbrushes to give you.” This was greeted by silence. “Now listen, either you gooks come on out or we’re going to come right in there and get you!” Now the people of Tuylon finally came out and they stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben’s Miracle Rice, Hershey Bars, party balloons, and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery operated, yellow, flush lavatories were held back for the arrival of the colonel.
And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned and the yellow, flush lavatories unveiled. The colonel cleared his throat and took out a handwritten speech,
“Mr. District Chief and all you nice people,” said the colonel, “what these gifts represent is more than the sum of their parts, they carry the spirit of America. Ladies and gentlemen there’s no place on Earth like America, it’s the land where miracles happen, it’s a guiding light for me and for you. In America, you see, we count ourselves as real lucky as having the greatest democracy the world has ever known and we want you nice people to share in our good fortune.”
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, even John Winthrope sitting upon a hill got a mention. All that was missing was the Star Bangled Banner playing softly in the background. Of course the villagers had no idea what the colonel was talking about, but when the Marines clapped, they clapped. And when the colonel waved, the children waved. And when he departed the colonel shook the Sergeant’s hand and said: “We’ve got plenty of hearts and minds here, carry on Sergeant.” “Yes Sir.” In Viet Nam I witnessed many scenes like that.
I’d grown up in faraway Australia on a cinematic diet of John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Walt Disney, and Ronald Reagan. The American way of liberty they portrayed might well have been lifted from the WHAM handbook. I’d learned that the United States had won World War II on its own and now led the free world as the chosen society. It was only later when I read Walter Lippmann’s book, Public Opinion, a manual of the invisible government, that I began to understand the power of emotions attached to false ideas and bad histories on a grand scale.
Now, historians call this exceptionalism, the notion that the United States has a divine right to bring what it calls “liberty” to the rest of humanity. Of course this is a very old refrain. The French and British created and celebrated their own civilizing missions while imposing colonial regimes that denied basic civil liberties. However, the power of the American message was, and remains, different. Whereas the Europeans were proud imperialists, Americans are trained to deny their imperialism. As Mexico was conquered and the Marines sent to Nicaragua, American textbooks referred to an Age of Innocence. American motives were always well meaning, moral, exceptional, as the colonel said, “There was no ideology” and that’s still the case.
Americanism is an ideology that is unique because its main feature is its denial that it is an ideology. It’s both conservative and it’s liberal. And it’s right and it’s left. And Barack Obama is its embodiment. Since Obama was elected leading liberals have talked about America returning to its true status as, “a nation of moral ideals”. Those are the words of Paul Krugman, the liberal columnist of The New York Times. In the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Mark Morford wrote,
“Spiritually advanced people regard the new president as a light worker who can help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”
Tell that to an Afghan child whose family has been blown away by Obama’s bombs. Or a Pakistani child whose house has been visited by one of Obama’s drones. Or a Palestinian child surveying the carnage in Gaza caused by American “smart” weapons, which, disclosed Seymour Hersh, were re-supplied to Israel for use in the slaughter, and I quote; “Only after the Obama team let if be known, it would not object.” The man who stayed silent on Gaza is the man who now condemns Iran.
In a sense, Obama is the myth that is America’s last taboo. His most consistent theme was never “change”, it was power. “The United States,” he said, “leads the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people.” And there is this remarkable statement, “At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world; that we stood and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders.” Words like these remind me of the colonel in the village in Viet Nam, as he spun much the same nonsense.
Since 1945, by deed and by example, to use Obama’s words, America has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, and crushed some 30 liberation movements and bombed countless men, women, and children to death. I’m grateful to Bill Blum for his cataloging of that. And yet, here is the 45th (sic) president of the United States having stacked his government with war mongers and corporate fraudsters and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, promising, not only more of the same, but a whole new war in Pakistan. Justified by the murderous clichés of Hilary Clinton, clichés like, “high value targets”. Within three days of his inauguration, Obama was ordering the death of people in faraway countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. And yet, the peace movement, it seems, is prepared to look the other way and believe that the cool Obama will restore, as Krugman wrote, “the nation of moral ideals.”
Not long ago, I visited the American Museum of History in the celebrated Smithsonian Institute in Washington. One of the most popular exhibitions was called “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War”. It was holiday time and lines of happy people, including many children, shuffled through a Santa’s grotto of war and conquest. When messages about their nation’s great mission were lit up; these included tributes to the; “…exceptional Americans who saved a million lives…” in Viet Nam; where they were, “…determined to stop Communist expansion.” In Iraq other brave Americans, “employed air-strikes of unprecedented precision.” What was shocking was not so much the revisionism of two of the epic crimes of modern times, but the shear scale of omission.
Like all US presidents, Bush and Obama have very much in common. The wars of both presidents and the wars of Clinton and Reagan, Carter and Ford, Nixon and Kennedy are justified by the enduring myth of exceptional America. A myth the late Harold Pinter described as, “a brilliant, witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist; partly because it is indeed extraordinary to see an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century and race together with gender, and even class, can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what is so often overlooked and what matters, I believe above all, is the class one serves. George Bush’s inner circle from the State Department to the Supreme Court was perhaps the most multi-racial in presidential history. It was PC par excellence. Think Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. It was also the most reactionary. Obama’s very presence in the White House appears to reaffirm the moral nation. He’s a marketing dream. But like Calvin Klein or Benetton, he’s a brand that promises something special, something exciting, almost risqué. As if he might be radical. As if he might enact change. He makes people feel good; he’s a post-modern man with no political baggage. And all that’s fake.
In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia in 1983; he describes his employer as, “…a consulting house to multi-national corporations.” For some reason he doesn’t say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation; which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action and infiltrating unions from the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia. Obama doesn’t say what he did at Business International and they may be absolutely nothing sinister. But it seems worthy of inquiry, and debate, as a clue to, perhaps, who the man is.
During his brief period in the senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority, but instead he has excused torture, reinstated military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact, and opposed habeas corpus.
Daniel Ellsberg, the great whistleblower, was right, I believe, when he said, that under Bush a military coup had taken place in the United States giving the Pentagon unprecedented powers. These powers have been reinforced by the presence of Robert Gates – a Bush family crony and George W. Bush’s powerful Secretary of Defense. And by all the Bush Pentagon officials and generals who have kept their jobs under Obama.
In the middle of a recession, with millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes, Obama has increased the military budget. In Colombia he is planning to spend 46 million dollars on a new military base that will support a regime backed by death squads and further the tragic history of Washington’s intervention in that region.
In a pseudo-event in Prague, Obama promised a world without nuclear weapons to a global audience, mostly unaware that America is building new tactical nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. Like George Bush, he used the absurdity of Europe threatened by Iran to justify building a missile system aimed at Russia and China. In another pseudo-event, at the Annapolis Naval Academy, decked with flags and uniforms, Obama lied that America had gone to Iraq to bring freedom to that country. He announced that the troops were coming home. This was another deception. The head of the army, General George Casey says, with some authority, that America will be in Iraq for up to a decade. Other generals say fifteen years.
Chris Hedges, the very fine author of Empire of Illusion, puts it very well; “President Obama,” he wrote, “does one thing and brand Obama gets you to believe another.” This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they make you feel. And so you are kept in a perpetual state of childishness. He calls this “junk politics”.
But I think the real tragedy is that Obama, the brand, appears to have crippled or absorbed much of the anti-war movement – the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress; 30, just 30, are willing to stand up against Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s war party. On June the 16th they voted for 106 billion dollars for more war.
The “Out of Iraq” caucus is out of action. Its member can’t even come up with a form of words of why they are silent. On March the 21st, a demonstration at the Pentagon by the once mighty United for Peace and Justice drew only a few thousand. The out-going president of UFPJ, Lesley Kagen, says her people aren’t turning up because, “It’s enough for many of them that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction.” And where is the mighty Move On, these days? Where is its campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what, exactly, was said when Move On’s executive director, Jason Ruben, met Barack Obama at the White House in February?
Yes, a lot of good people mobilized for Obama. But what did they demand of him? Working to elect the Democratic presidential candidate may seem like activism, but it isn’t. Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope. Woody Allen once said, “I felt a lot better when I gave up hope.” Real activism has little time for identity politics which like exceptionalism, can be fake. These are distractions that confuse and sucker good people. And not only in the United States, I can assure you.
I write for the Italian socialist newspaper, Il Manifesto, or rather I used to write for it. In February I sent the editor an article which raised questions about Obama as a progressive force. The article was rejected. Why, I asked? “For the moment,” wrote the editor, “we prefer to maintain a more positive approach to the novelty presented by Obama. We will take on specific issues, but we would not like to say that he will make no difference.” In other words, an American president drafted to promote the most rapacious system in history, is ordained and depoliticized by important sections of the left. It’s a remarkable situation. Remarkable, because those on the, so called, Radical Left have never been more aware, more conscious of the inequities of power. The Green Movement, for example, has raised the consciousness of millions, so that almost every child knows something about global warming. And yet, there seems to be a resistance, within the Green Movement, to the notion of power as a military force, a military project. And perhaps similar observations can also be made about sections of the Feminist Movement and the Gay Movement and certainly the Union Movement.
One of my favorite quotations is from Milan Kundera,
“The struggle of people against power is [the] struggle of memory against forgetting.”
We should never forget that the primary goal of great power is to distract and limit our natural desire for social justice and equity and real democracy.
Long ago Edward Bernays’ invisible government of propaganda elevated big business from its unpopular status as a kind of mafia to that of a patriotic driving force. The “American way of life” began as an advertising slogan. The modern image of Santa Claus was an invention of Coca Cola.
Today we are presented with an extraordinary opportunity. Thanks to the crash of Wall Street and the revelation, for many ordinary people, that the free market has nothing to do with freedom. The opportunity, within our grasp, is to recognize that something is stirring in America that is unfamiliar, perhaps, to many of us on the left, but is related to a great popular movement that’s growing all over the world. Look down at Latin America, less than twenty years ago there was the usual despair, the usual divisions of poverty and freedom, the usual thugs in uniforms running unspeakable regimes. Today for the first time perhaps in 500 years there’s a people’s movement based on the revival of indigenous cultures and language, a genuine populism. The recent amazing achievements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay represent a struggle for community and political rights that is truly historic, with implications for all of us. The successes in Latin America are expressed perversely in the recent overthrow of the government of Honduras, because the smaller the country, the greater is the threat of a good example that the disease of emancipation will spread.
Indeed, right across the world social movements and grass roots organization have emerged to fight free market dogma. They’ve educated governments in the south that food for export is a problem, rather than a solution to global poverty. They’ve politicized ordinary people to stand up for their rights, as in the Philippines and South Africa. Look at the remarkable boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign, BDS, for short, aimed at Israel that’s sweeping the world. Israeli ships have been turned away from South Africa and Western Australia. A French company has been forced to abandon plans to build a railway connecting Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli sporting bodies find themselves isolated. Universities in the United Kingdom have begun to sever ties with Israel. This is how apartheid South Africa was defeated. And this is how the great wind of the 1960s began to blow. And this is how every gain has been won: the end of slavery, universal suffrage, workers rights, civil rights, environmental protection, the list goes on and on.
And that brings us back, here, to the United States, because I believe something is stirring in this country. Are we aware, that in the last eight months millions of angry e-mails, sent by ordinary Americans, have flooded Washington. And I mean millions. People are outright outraged that their lives are attacked; they bear no resemblance to the passive mass presented by the media. Look at the polls; more than 2/3 of Americans say the government should care for those who cannot care for themselves, sixty-four percent would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone, sixty percent are favorable towards Unions, seventy percent want nuclear disarmament, seventy-two percent want the US completely out of Iraq and so on and so on. But where is much of the left? Where is the social justice movement? Where is the peace movement? Where is the civil rights movement? Ordinary Americans, for too long, have been misrepresented by stereotypes that are contemptuous. James Madison referred to his compatriots in the public as ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. And this contempt is probably as strong today, among the elite, as it was back then. That’s why the progressive attitudes of the public are seldom reported in the media, because they’re not ignorant, they’re subversive, they’re informed and they’re even anti-American. I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian, Martha Gellhorn, to explain the term “anti-American” to me. “I’ll tell you what anti-American is,” she said in her forceful way, “its what governments and their vested interests call those who honor America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity. There are millions of these anti-Americans in the United States, they are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms though they would call it common decency. They are not vain; they are the people with a waitful conscience, the best of America’s citizens. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional.” Truly exceptional, I like that.
My own guess is that a populism is growing, once again in America evoking a powerful force beneath the surface which has a proud history. From such authentic grass roots Americanism came women suffrage, the eight hour day, graduated income tax, public ownership of railways and communications, the breaking of the power of corporate lobbyists and much more. In other words, real democracy. The American populists were far from perfect, but they often spoke for ordinary people and they were betrayed by leaders who urged them to compromise and merge with the Democratic Party. That was long ago, but how familiar it sounds. My guess is that something is coming again. The signs are there. Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, “Mere sparks can ignite a popular movement that may seem dormant.” No one predicted 1968, no one predicted the fall of apartheid, or the Berlin Wall, or the civil rights movement, or the great Latino rising of a few years ago.
I suggest that we take Woody Allen’s advice and give up on hope and listen, instead, to voices from below. What Obama and the bankers and the generals and the IMF and the CIA and CNN and BBC fear, is ordinary people coming together and acting together. It’s a fear as old as democracy, a fear that suddenly people convert their anger to action as they’ve done so often throughout history.
“At a time of universal deceit,” wrote George Orwell, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Thank you.
Reports are emerging from July’s National Assembly, the vital effort to unite antiwar forces into a common movement. Delegates from the major peace organizations hammered out a strategy to address Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine. Missing from the consensus? Nonviolence, and good riddance. It goes without saying that humanitarian activists are peaceful. To legislate a dogma of non-confrontation plays right into the hands of the authoritarians. Here’s the official report:
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE FIRST YEAR OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TO END THE IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WARS AND OCCUPATIONS
Address given by Marilyn Levin, member, National Assembly Administrative Body, and Planning Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace Coalition, to the National Antiwar Conference held July 10-12, 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
July 10-12, 2009, 255 people representing diverse organizations and constituencies from all over the country came together in Pittsburgh:
1) To look at where we are today,
2) To articulate our long range goals to rejuvenate the antiwar movement towards building a massive movement capable of forcing an end to their wars and occupations, to take our money back from the war machine to meet pressing social needs, and to save our planet for our children, and
3) To develop and vote for action plans as steps to realize these objectives.
All of our major objectives were accomplished and we leave today with a comprehensive action agenda to carry us through to next spring. Everyone had a chance to speak and differences were aired without rancor or splits to achieve unity in action.
Friday night’s speakers, along with many conference participants, grappled with how to unify and broaden the movement. Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, we presented a great roster of workshops covering the major issues we face today. Saturday night’s rally was dynamic and inspiring.
There were two highlights of the conference for me. First was the international component where activist comrades joined us from Canada and courageous labor leaders of powerful mass movements in Haiti and Guadaloupe reminded us that imperialism and the struggle against it are global. There was a statement by members of the Viva Palestina aid convoy detained in Egypt. We passed motions in solidarity with the struggles of the people of Haiti, Honduras, and Palestine.
The second highlight was the discussion on Iran, where, in spite of strong passions stirred up by the rapidly evolving events there, we were able to illuminate the issues and debate our differences. Finally, we were able to agree on a unity position that all could embrace, as well as meeting the foremost call of the Iranians – US Hands off! No Sanctions! No interventions! Self-determination for the Iranian people! A wonderful example of a united front –- as inclusive as possible and taking principled positions that most will accept and act on.
So what is the National Assembly? What you saw this weekend explains who we are and how we function.
Democracy. All were invited and all perspectives welcomed. There was acceptance of the will of the conference even when it diverged from the proposals put forward by the leadership body. We were especially gratified that representatives from all the major antiwar coalitions came and addressed our conference.
Our willingness to struggle for unity and compromise when needed in order to move forward, as evidenced by a leadership that did not impose personal political views on others in service to unity.
An organization that admits to and learns from its mistakes and accepts its limitations when the unity we seek can’t yet be achieved.
An organization that has built a growing cadre of leaders that has developed trust, a structure that works, and a strong working relationship.
And finally, confidence, vision, and optimism. Confidence that we can provide leadership in rebooting our movement. A vision regarding how to accomplish that and an understanding of the necessity for these kinds of conferences leading to action. Optimism that masses of people will move in opposition to these horrendous policies that bring death and destruction and that they will have the power to change the world.
I’ve been asked to give an assessment of the first year since our initiation as an ongoing network with a mission, from our first conference in June, 2008 until today. Last year, we weren’t sure anyone would come and lo and behold 400 people came together in Cleveland to inaugurate a year of activities and set up a structure to maintain our work. A lot has transpired in that year and the National Assembly is well on its way as an established organization recognized throughout the movement as providing leadership and promoting a direction towards growth.
I need to start a little earlier and go back to why the National Assembly was called into existence in the first place.
What we saw, in the spring of 2008, was a movement at a low ebb – one that was shrinking rather than growing in spite of the war dragging on — this while the antiwar sentiment couldn’t be higher, and the disapproval rating for the Bush Administration couldn’t have been lower. From the high point of the largest action against the Iraq War in September, 2005 which drew 700,000 people, there was a pulling away from mass action by significant sections of the movement which supported electoral politics as the central strategy, in spite of a recurring pattern of disappointment when Democratic “antiwar” candidates voted again and again for war and war funding, and a split between the two major national coalitions, UFPJ and ANSWER, one that continues to this day. For the first time in five years, there was not enough unity or mass action perspective for any national demonstrations to take place marking the 5th year of the occupation of Iraq. Fundamentally, there was a vacuum of leadership.
Some far-sighted people like Jerry Gordon and Jeff Mackler, with experience gained from leadership in the last powerful antiwar movement that ended the Vietnam War, felt impelled to act. They began to organize a base of diverse but like-minded activists committed to building and expanding an effective antiwar movement in this country. The vehicle to accomplish this was the first national assembly, a national conference to pull activists together, to analyze the present state of the movement, to discuss where we needed to go and the actions that were needed to get us there.
We developed a unity statement with five basic principles that we hold today as the basis for where we stand:
1) Unity – all sections of the movement working together for common goals and actions;
2) Political Independence – no affiliations or support to any political party;
3) Democracy – decision-making at conferences with one person, one vote;
4) Mass Action – as the central strategy for organizing while embracing other forms of
outreach and protest; and5) Out Now – the central demand to withdraw all military forces, contractors, and bases
from the countries where the U.S. was waging war on the people.It seems simple but no one else saw it that way. Our conference was unique in the history of the present movement.
The organizers didn’t know what the mood and composition or strength of the conference would be, so we were cautious and minimal in the program we posed to the conference. We focused on Out Now from Iraq and modest action proposals, not being strong enough to initiate national actions on our own. The conference participants were ahead of us and ready to tackle the larger issues. Proposals were passed to add “Out Now from Afghanistan”, “End U.S. Support for the Occupation of Palestine”, and “Hands off Iran” to our set of demands, and given what has transpired in these areas, we were well prepared to take on a major role.
October 10th actions held in 20 cities were endorsed as well as a call for December actions building towards what we hoped would be unified, nationally coordinated bicoastal mass actions in the spring of 2009, the 6th year of the Iraq occupation. When Gaza was brutally assaulted, we joined with ANSWER and others to march in Washington and to demonstrate in the streets all over the country, and we’re still working under Palestinian leadership to bring justice and relief to a beleaguered population.
We made a concerted effort to find a common date for spring bi-coastal mobilizations. As you know, ANSWER chose March 21st as a day of united protests which we endorsed, while UFPJ called for a national march on Wall St. on April 4th. A number of National Assembly supporters who were also delegates to the UFPJ conference in December formed a mass action unity caucus and went to the conference with a resolution to allow delegates to vote for one or both actions but this was rejected. We’ll keep trying for 2010. The National Assembly endorsed and built both actions and marched behind our signs with our demands. The demonstrations were small (but spirited) and still of major importance.
For us, it’s quality, not quantity, as we position ourselves to be in the forefront as the pendulum swings in our direction once again.
Some take the position that mass demonstrations are not effective, unless we can pull 100,000 protestors into the streets. This is short-sighted and does not address how we get from small to large. Any successful movement for change doesn’t start with 100,000 people, and there has never been significant social change without mass actions. I remember my first anti-Vietnam war demonstration was in 1963 in Detroit and we had 15 people. In 1965, SDS called the first national march against the war in Washington. 25,000 people turned out and we thought it was huge!
Everyone talks about reaching out to the thousands of young people who mobilized to elect Obama. We agree, but we say the way to do this is by offering education and action. Action beyond calling, and emailing, and faxing the politicians they placed in office.
Why are mass demonstrations so important to building a powerful movement? It is because they accomplish so much in the process of building them. They provide:
Continuity. You can’t build anything by starting anew each time. Each action should lead to the next action or open national conference, with success building upon success. We need a continuity of leadership that builds trust and a reputation for integrity, and that learns lessons to improve. We need a continuity of organization and structure that can implement the tasks before us.
Visibility. Actions in the street give heart to the people the U.S. is attacking and occupying, letting them know that they are not alone. Mass actions create solidarity, offering support to anti-war soldiers, vets and their families, and a counter-force to the economic draft facing our youth, and they strengthen and deepen the antiwar sentiment of the people.
Inspiration. New people are brought into the movement, especially the youth, through activism. Have you ever talked to young people coming to a mass demonstration for the first time? They are inspired and thrilled to hear powerful speakers who are leaders of social justice movements and soldiers resisting the wars. They see they are not alone and get a taste of the power of large numbers of people marching together. They are energized to go home and join with others to continue to organize opposition to brutal U.S. wars and occupations. This is the way to reach out to the Obama supporters.
Explanation. An analysis of what is going on is offered along with tying together what seem at first to be disparate elements, i.e., war is tied to the economy, the war budget, bail-outs of the rich, the lack of basic needs being met, justice denied, and the impoverishment of the people.
Pressure on Government. People in this country are taught to be quiet. We’re told that our job is to elect officials whom we agree with periodically and then go home and wait while they fix things. This conveniently maintains the status quo but it sure doesn’t put pressure on them, or scare them, or force social change. Mass actions provide the most effective way to make significant change happen.
Let’s look at the present period. Obama’s election was based in large part on the hopes and aspirations of Americans for peace and a better life based on the promises and assumed promises that were made of peace, justice, and prosperity, which have not and will not be met.
Contrary to expectations, the previous administration’s policies are continued with a more handsome and articulate face. We all know that rather than winding down, wars and interventions are escalating and the rapacious greed of this immoral system knows no bounds.
Simultaneously, the economic crisis is causing terrible hardship for working people and for people who are no longer able to find work and their families. They are using this self-created financial disaster to further cut the standard of living and eliminate a secure future for older people and the young.
It was very moving and yet appalling to see this visually demonstrated when Robin Alexander of the United Electrical Workers Union asked people in the audience to stand who were unemployed, personally knew of soldier casualties, lived in communities where services were being cut, or who were otherwise negatively impacted by the wars and the failing economy. Nearly the entire room, a microcosm of the wider society, was standing by the end of that exercise.
It is inevitable that the present period of quiescence and hanging on to the hope that Obama and the new Congress will save us will come to a crashing end. People will not sit idly by forever while the world around them collapses. We are already seeing the beginnings of stirring. There is a greater willingness to go out in the streets to protest. There is more organizing taking place on campuses, more young people joining the movement. The many proposals for October actions are an indication that there is a widespread awareness of the need for actions this fall and the conviction that the movement must find common dates.
Brian Becker, National Coordinator of ANSWER, urged that we all work together to mount nationally coordinated actions next spring. Michael McPhearson, Co-Chair of UFPJ and Executive Director of Veterans for Peace, announced his support for October 17 and his willingness to do what he could to spur unified actions in the spring of 2010. We must have the faith and confidence that the people have the power to end the atrocities resulting from U.S. wars and occupations, and that they will recognize and utilize this power. As this happens, we must build a stronger antiwar movement that is able to provide leadership and the optimism to forge ahead no matter what the opposition throws at us.
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations is helping to provide that leadership and the vision that is needed. Although young and small, in one short year, we are now a force to be taken seriously and negotiated with, and by our persistent call for unity and mass action, our demonstrated ability to organize, and our coordinated strategy for revitalizing the movement, we are having an impact larger than our forces would indicate. In some ways, we too are a product of (and some say an antidote to) the 2008 election. To counter the malaise of the movement, we have quietly been building a solid core of activists and leaders around the country that understand the importance of a united front organized around principled demands and mass actions, not just calling Washington politicians when bills come up and crises happen.
At this conference, we have laid out an ambitious program of action that will take us through the spring of 2010. We are proud that we could provide the kick off for national organizing to bring a massive turnout to Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests September 25. Homeland Security is already making preparations to keep protesters hidden and stifle our right to speak out, but we won’t be silenced.
Following that, are a series of October building actions, culminating in large local and regional demonstrations on October 17 marking dates of significance related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations and remembering the legacy of the anti-Vietnam war movement. Throughout the year, we will organize educational programs, support various forms of protest and organize around the inevitable emergencies caused by our government’s unholy interventions and threats to other nations.
We have initiated a Free Palestine Working Committee to ensure this work, which includes the growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns and the efforts to break the siege of Gaza, continues to be in the forefront and fully integrated in our work until justice and self-determination and return is in the hands of the Palestinians.
And lastly, we will continue to advocate for unity of the movement and once again bring thousands to Washington and the West Coast in the spring, to let our government and the world know that the U.S. movement against wars and occupations is alive and will not be quiet.
We will march and continue to march until all U.S. forces come home, bases are dismantled, and the sovereign people of the world have the right to control their own resources and determine their own futures, and the war budget becomes the peace budget.
Don’t sit on the sidelines and watch history being made. We urge all organizations to join the National Assembly and to play your part in building and shaping the powerful movement that is coming.
All out for the September 25 G-20 march in Pittsburgh! All out for the actions in early October! All out October 17!
COLORADO COLLEGE- CC is holding a symposium on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre. Actually, it’s only called the Ludlow Symposium. True to Colorado Springs form, several among the audience want to call it an “incidence,” instead of a “massacre.” One of the participants, author Scott Martelle, is willing to oblige, explaining that if the militia hadn’t known that women and children were taking shelter beneath the tents which they were putting to the torch, then the soldiers were guilty only of criminally negligent homicide.
(*Note 4/12/09: this article has been revised in light of helpful comments offered by symposium participants. Also: Differences of opinion aside, I am remiss if I do not praise the scholars who were very generous with their time and encyclopedic memories to enrich this symposium.
1. CC’s own Professor David Mason authored an evocative narrative of lives caught up in the 1914 events, written in verse, entitled Ludlow.
2. Journalist Scott Thomas researched the most recent definitive account to date, the 2007 Blood Passion: the Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.
3. Thomas Andrews, Associate Professor at CU Denver, enlarged the context in 2008 with his award winning Killing For Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.
4. Zeese Papanikolas represented his authorative Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre, written in 1984.)
Does it matter what it’s called, or with what certainty? The symposium is filled with public school system educators looking for an angle with which to approach Ludlow with their kids. One of them expresses her doubt about teaching about Mother Jones, having just heard from the panelists a probably too-nuanced assessment of the labor hero’s tactics. The political climate of our age can’t find any purchase with moral nuance.
I’m stuck thinking that in recording social history, scholars cannot avoid writing the victor’s narrative. In particular as regards the history of labor, because neither academics nor even middle class hobbyists in the symposium’s audience can look at the events from the perspective of the working class.
Even the scholar’s objectivity is middle class. The opinion was expressed by the panel that the Ludlow aftermath was one of the few occasions when the story was spun to the benefit of labor interests. But this does not account for why authors and educators find themselves having to resurrect the tale of Ludlow these many years later. When it occurred, Americans may have swallowed the hyperbole, but since that time they’ve internalized its internment, effaced by a corporate culture so as to have disappeared from even our school textbooks.
I think this may have been something of the question posed by symposium organizer Jaime Stevensen to the panel, when she asked how the authors insulated themselves from the fictions woven into their own perspectives of history. She didn’t get any takers.
The very concept that history adds up to only so much trivial pursuit, is inherently a view from the ivory tower. 
Do the Ludlow scholars not recognize that common people today face the same foes as did the miners of Ludlow? With the added impediment of a corporate PR system erasing its malevolent deeds. Have not American unions been maligned to the point of extinction? Yet at the same time, capitalists have thoroughly reprised their Machiavellian ways. History can be a tool, not only for statecraft, but for the common American to protect his hard-fought democratic gains.
The United Mine Workers of America having successfully spun the deaths of the striking miner families as a “massacre” may have made an unmerited impact on the public’s sympathies, but likewise, deciding to call Ludlow “not a massacre” will be falsely charged as well. Is there a valuable lesson in unlearning that unbridled corporate greed can be unthinkably inhumane?
Historians can fancy themselves objective to ambivalence, but is that a luxury their readers and in particular the schoolchildren can afford? As we witness today the gloves coming off of the globalisation taskmasters?
How I prefer the emotional truth of earlier chroniclers like Barron Beshoar, author of OUT OF THE DEPTHS, a 1942 account of Ludlow, whose preface included this gem:
“If the mine guards and detectives, the mercenaries who served as the Gestapo and the coal districts appear to be scoundrels who sold themselves and their fellowmen for a few corporation dollars, the author will consider them adequately presented.”
At Colorado College the consensus of contemporary historical synthesis, embodied by CU Denver’s Thomas Andrews‘ excellent book KILLING FOR COAL, seems to conclude about Ludlow, “we may never know exactly what happened.” This may reflect the Factual Truth, but it does so at the expense of unrecorded oral accounts, by depreciating their traditional path to us through of folklore.
Another author made pains to debunk the lyrics “Sixteen tons, and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt,” a cultural indictment of the “company store,” which was one of the grievances of the Ludlow strikers. He postulated that modern readers could be prone to let folklore color a predisposition against the company store. Perhaps a company store was in fact a convenience, derided because it was an arbitrary restriction against which human nature bucked. Trying to be helpful, another panelist suggested: “Imagine if the company store was 7-11, and you were told you could only shop there.” I believe both of these gentlemen are overlooking the much grosser complaint which the miners were protesting, that of insurmountable debt, systematically forced on them by their employers. That’s a phenomena on the rise today, if maybe not among college professors. Around the world, indentured servitude has never abated.
In our ivory tower we can debate which side, the union or the militia, fired the first shots on April 20. Who was at fault, seemed to be what that question would decide. At least panelist Anne Hyde had the presence of mind to lay some of the responsibility on the mine owners, who weren’t there of course, but whose stubborn greed played a not unsubstantial part in what the other panelists were attributing to “macho intransigence.”
That expression was in vogue to describe Cowboy presidencies. What an effete put down of militant activism. Are we to blame the striking miners for holding firm to their demands?
Thank goodness someone in the audience brought up recent efforts to deny the Sand Creek Massacre, which two panelists quickly weighed in to say “that was a real massacre,” discrediting Ludlow, obviously, and failing to grasp her point that indeed some Colorado Springs locals are rewriting Sand Creek as a battle, and not a massacre.
Another isolationist luxury has become to judge every action as it compares to a nonviolent ideal. It was noted that UMWA union leader John Lawson always recused himself from violent tactics. During the symposium’s opening reception, someone performed a song dedicated to the Ludlow martyr Louis Tikas, which lauded him for choosing to fight with words not guns, as if guns would discredit him.
I’ll play devil’s advocate and suggest that the miners fired the first shots. They saw Louis Tikas bludgeoned in the back of the head and then executed as he lay on the ground unconscious, they saw the National Guard move a machine gun into position above their tent city, and they probably began to fire at the soldiers lest a rain of bullets descend on miners’ wives and children before they had a chance to flee the camp.
The miners were asking that their union be recognized, that the Colorado eight hour work day be enforced, that the scales which determined their pay be verified, that their full hours be compensated, etc. The mine owners clung to their profits, and ordered the miners’ tent city, their only shelter and all their worldly possessions burned to the ground. Women and children were hiding in underground pits dug to escape the sniper fire which the mine guards sporadically aimed at the tents. The guards drove an armored car around the perimeter of the union camp, at all hours, for that purpose.
Ultimately this climate erupted into the violent clash on April 20, 1914, in which the miners battled with the far better equipped soldiers. The casualties were 25 to 1. I call that a massacre.
ADDENDUM: Photographs from visit to the Ludlow Memorial.
LUDLOW MEMORIAL, COLORADO- Day three of the Colorado College Ludlow Symposium featured a bus ride to the site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, then on to Trinidad to the grave of Union leader Louis Tikas. A reporter for Colorado Public Radio interviewed the symposium panelists at the U.M.W.A. memorial grounds.
David Mason is interviewed by a freelance reporter for Colorado Public Radio.
Scott Martelle and Thomas Andrews are interviewed above the fatal cellar.
TRINIDAD, COLORADO- Masonic Cemetary.
Zeese Papanikolas spoke about his protagonist’s gravestone and its reference to Tikas as a “Patriot.”
DENVER- There’s an interesting sideshow at the Churchill v CU case having to do with a cadre of unsavory Ward Churchill online critics. What they are writing is hardly interesting but their unceasing doggedness, repeating only ad hominem attacks, leads one to wonder who they are and what horse do they have, in not only this race, but in Churchill’s ongoing activism. These are the same voices which heckled the DNC organizers, AIM, and the contra-Columbus actions.
It’s a little circle of shit-knitters, who cross-link or repost each other’s comments from Blogspot blogs Drunkablog, Slapstick Politics, People’s Press Collective, and riding point on the Churchill Trial, Pirate Ballerina. These are Little Green Football variety ditto-heads, and I hardly mean to draw attention to them, but their relentless character assassination seems to wag the local media dogs, and one might as well look into that.
Meaning, more in a bit.
Churchill amused the courtroom audience by illustrating his sarcastic use of quotation marks, as one might refer to the Rocky Mountain News as a “newspaper.”
It’s not enough to conclude Professor Churchill has enemies. There are Native American casino owners who might be threatened by Churchill’s revisiting of the past, there are rivals for Churchill’s influence in the American Indian Movement. Obviously there are historians eager to retread what they’ve invested in the Master Narrative. Curiously, there are Zionists who are vehemently opposed to the discussion Churchill wants to provoke. And I suppose there are stupid white males who will stand for no diminishment of God Blessed America.
These bloggers are the latter “Right Wing” variety obviously, and bring nothing to the table but personal attacks. But what sustains them, tasked as they appear to be, to hound Ward Churchill on a daily basis, year after year?
There are players both on the national scene, and locally, who I consider complete bastards who merit every rebuke possible, but that doesn’t mean I dedicate my every utterance when they so much as visit the bathroom.
When Voices For Creative Nonviolence activist Kathy Kelly visited Colorado Springs, she spoke of survivors of a family in Gaza who returned to their home to find a message left etched on their wall by an IDF soldier, it read “Sorry.” Kelly saw in it the glimmer of hope that Israeli soldiers were beginning to show some humanity. Hasbara efforts have taken this gesture a reservist’s letter step further. You can read it below uncut. Does it look to you like these propagandists need some counseling advice? Probably the rapist is the last person who should be asking his victim to be calm, especially by recounting the details of the violation, and especially if the rapist is unrepentant and laying out the justification for his act. Parental Advisory: Graphic Insensitivity.
Holy Fucking Shit you will not believe it! It’s one thing for us to tolerate pedantic lectures online, quite another if the bastard had quartered in our home in the meantime.
From AISH, via Israel Activism and the Hasbara fellowships. Seriously, this is a letter the Israeli press is touting to try to reach Gazans with the message that they must blame Hamas.
DEAR CITIZEN OF GAZA: I am the soldier who slept in your home.
Hello,
While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.
I am that someone.
I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.
I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.
I spent many days in your home. You and your family’s presence was felt in every corner. I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family. I saw your wife’s perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife. I saw your children’s toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.
I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect. When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer. I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth. I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.
I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light. Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.
I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.
I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students. Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you.
Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.
How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say “enough”?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?
I can hear you saying “it’s not me, it’s Hamas”. My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter. If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about “occupation”, you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.
The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif. Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).
Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns. For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us. A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.
You must lead a civil uprising against Hamas.
As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way. You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children’s education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.
I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now. If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed. If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.
You don’t have money, you tell me? You have more than you can imagine.
Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts. Gulf States, the emirates – your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world. If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people – your situation would be very different.
You must be familiar with Singapore. The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world. Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country. Why not the same for you?
My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly. I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did. However, I feel your pain. I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment. On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.
In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military. However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked. I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.
The only person who could make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How? I do not know. Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country. It is possible, and it is in your hands.
I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.
But only you can move the wheels of history.
Regards,
Yishai, (Reserve Soldier)
I’m actually unconvinced this was a real soldier. Too many of the GIYUS Megaphone talking points are woven into the letter. Singapore even!
It would surely be anti-Semitic to conclude easily that the Israeli propagandists are this dumb. The true motive of this letter cannot be to win Palestinian hearts, but to spread the effect of the state terror. The IDF couldn’t defile every Gaza home before being forced to cut their incursion short. With such letters the Israeli soldiers can make felt that violation by all Gazans.
Was the IDF incursion/invasion about stopping the rockets or about terrorizing the Gazans until they are driven from the land?
This is by no means a complete list of contemporary populist heros, but I’d like to start with comedian Stephen Colbert, who roasted President Bush at a Washington Correspondents Association Dinner, like a court jester gone rabid. With celebrated White House correspondent Helen Thomas’s help, Colbert belittled the decider-in-chief to his face right in front of his friends.
Don’t Taser Me Bro
There was University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, who held his ground asking critical questions of Senator John Kerry. Meyer was tackled and tasered for his impertinence, while Kerry kept mumbling, to divert attention from “Don’t taser me Bro.”
Bidder 70
Then Utah environmentalist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a government land auction, driving up prices and buying several leases raising paddle number 70, until federal agents took him away. Extraction industry spokesperson Kathleen Sgamma may have miscalculated the degree of DeChristopher’s popular support. She earned no one’s sympathy when she complained: “There’s a democratic process in place if you don’t like what’s happening. If we all just decided we wanted to change the laws unilaterally, that would run counter to our democracy.”
The Shoes
And Iraqi Journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi is in jail for throwing his shoes at that dog Bush, when our president was making a farewell visit to Baghdad. (His trial date is fast approaching actually.) The shoes missed, but Bush was made to duck, which is the closest anyone’s come to getting reality to register with the cretinous bitch.
Barack’s first press conference
Let’s also mention Helen Thomas again, at Barack Obama’s first press conference a week ago. When Obama ceremoniously called on Thomas to lob the last question, Thomas asked the president to name who in the Middle East had nuclear weapons. It was something of a leading question, because the answer is known, but bears reminding when the argument is repeated that Iran acquiring nukes would lead to proliferation. Thomas put Obama in the position of having to utter recognition of Israel’s never-mentioned nuclear program, or very conspicuously avoid the subject. Which is what he did.
Israel Divestment Movement
Now the Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine have succeeded in getting their school to divest in Israel, just as Hampshire College led the way in the nationwide divestitures which contributed to the fall of Apartheid in South Africa. Board of trustees chairman Sigmund Roos tried to explain that the school’s actions were in no way a repudiation of Israel, and accused the students of falsely claiming otherwise. Of the 800-signature petition, Roos explained: “We never took it up. Students know that.”
Really? A petition signed by 800 of your students and faculty, and the Hampshire College board of trustees wouldn’t even read it? Roos doesn’t know what hit him.
I am neither handy with a monkey-wrench, nor am I much of an outdoorsman, but when environmentalist Tim DeChristopher took the eco fight to a federal land lease auction, it was an example of disruptive activism for which I know I am qualified. There is an undisturbed comfort in thinking one person cannot make a difference, even if just in lacking for ideas how. Dare I say for most of us, now DeChristopher and Ebay have closed that loophole.
This week, Ken Salazar, the new Secretary of the Interior, moved to invalidate the Utah land-use leases which Bush & co tried to give to the extraction industries in the last minutes of his administration.
But back in December, Tim De Christopher and his fellow activists had no way of knowing that those leases would not be exploited. Tim was frustrated by the seemingly ineffectual picketing outside the Salt Lake City building where the auction was being conducted, so he went inside, where he discovered he was treated as any other potential bidder.
Democracy Now covered the story when it happened December 22, and interviewed DeChristopher again after Salazar’s action. NPR picked up the story this week, and added an interview with one of the culprits who DeChristopher had disrupted: indignant Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs at the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.
You know, until November 4th, the saying “America, where ANY kid can grow up to become President” was rightfully regarded as bull.
Like the “but some are more equal than others” caveat, this one had “…as long as the kid is White, Male, has a British Surname and is born wealthy. Patents of Royalty are considered a bonus even the connection between Bush and Vlad Dracula”
Now, many thanx to “Uncle” Thomas and the other Supremes, the duly elected Next President of the United States is being challenged in court, much like the Sore Loser RepubliKlan did in 2000 by George Bush’s brother filing a lawsuit to stop a fair count of the ballots.
Judicial Activism is only abhorred by these so-called “Conservatives” when it’s being used to uphold the Rights of all Americans.
Brown v Tqoeka, Miranda, Ruiz v Estelle, for instance.
They’re more comfortable with Dred Scott and the “separate but equal” fiction.
The case they’re considering in a Special Session, the tinfoil-hat theories
First that President-elect Obama was born in Kenya and smuggled to Hawaii.
That would only make sense if Momma Obama had planned to run him for President, and remember, this was in the early 60s, when Lynch Law was really really common.
That one is being dismissed out of hand.
The other theory the Supremes are debating is that even though he WAS born in America and IS an American citizen, his father having British Citizenship (not Kenyan as one might expect) somehow makes President-Elect Obama into a Second Class citizen, ineligible for the full rights and privileges accorded to other citizens.
Separate and Un-Equal.all over again…
Not surprising that not only did the RepubliKlan Klandidates Palin and McCain keep referencing the difference between REAL (white) Americans and “the others who aren’t as real or aren’t as American”, But Also their most Rabid Supporters are saying that slavery was a good thing and that the descendants of slaves should be GRATEFUL for it.
And, they have the Same Supremes who overturned the Will of the People in 2000 poised to create a precedent where nobody is considered equal unless he has special permission from Their Ruling Class.
The Republicans love war and that is all there is to it. But what about the Democratic Party crowd and their Pretend for Peace Donkeys? They got the US population snookered most of the time so what are they really doing to end the US government wars? Let’s go visit the Carter Center and other sites of these donkeys and see what they have to say about the War Against the Iraqi people, which has been going on now for YES, some 17 years or so! Kind of a relevant issue one might think?
Barack, perhaps the greatest Pretend for Peace donkey of them all, is setting up for continuing all the wars (and starting a few new ones, too), and all his Pretend for Peace donkey fans are temporarily tongue tied. ’nuff said. Let’s move on (pun intended) now.
Al Gore can’t work the Pretend for Peace angle too well, since he helped kill off hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as VP while Slick Willie was being sucked off on. Shame on you Tip! So he’s turned into Mr. Methane Gas Man instead. You won’t hear a bleep out of this ‘Man of Peace’ about Iraq. No Sir..eee Al Gore Action Center
That leaves us with the ‘Far Left’ of the donkey ‘Peace’rats, Jimmy and Dennis. Surely they got something to say now on their websites about how opposed they are to this US government war of 17+ and counting years aginst the Iraqi people? After all, the result has been millions killed, millions turned into refugees, and a country that is now squashed like a bug. I bet they’re calling for demonstrations to oppose this war?!!!!! After all, these folk are noted for their Peace activism! (sad joke it is, too)
So let’s head to the Carter Center that claims on its website that it is a place ‘Waging Peace’! I bet you’re getting excited now, after all this man has a rep of being so much a better donkey out of office than when he was in? What’s the Grand Dame of Pretend for Peace Donkeys have to say in his issues by country section there at the Carter Center? I bet he has really highlighted the US occupation of Iraq and the need to leave now? After all, Jimmy, haven’t ‘we’ (meaning you and your other donkey comrades) done enough yet? Carter Center Activities by Country United States
Wasn’t that impressive! Jimmy is really ‘Waging Peace’ here inside the country he is ex-President of! I mean isn’t he? You saw all that about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia? He is just ever so deeply involved…NOT. So why does this prick always get such respect in ‘Peace’crat circles? Might it be that the ‘Peace’crat groups are not doing much anything to help get the US out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, either?
They just Yap, Yap, Yap away about Peace in the abstract, yet have hardly done an action to mention of about Iraq or any of the other battered by the US countries out there. Afghanistan is off the radar screen almost entirely for them. They, the ‘Peace’crats, are a big sham, and the Born Again Jimmy is their American super idol! The ‘Peace’crats always grumble that demonstrations don’t accomplish anything so they don’t demonstrate. Go, Jimmy! You don’t demonstrate either.
OK? Well! we do have one last hope amongst the Pretend for Peace donkeys it seems? Hold the applause! I’m talking Dennis now. The guy is practically a Jesus even! What’s he doing? Walking on water for his Believers? Surely he is out there fighting to free Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia from the US government? Let’s check out The Dennis the Menace issues page You see it there? Iraq! Iraq? Afghanistan! Afghanistan? Dennis is a real fighter for ‘Peace’! He is one strong donkey almighty!
I hope that this roundup and quick look at the Pretend for Peace Donkeys has been educational? You do want an education, don’t you? These Pretend for Peace donkeys are something else! I mean aren’t they?
COLORADO SPRINGS- The PPJPC is collecting money to bring noted antiwar activist Ann Wright to Colorado Springs. They’re hoping to have her speak for a fundraiser. I’ve had a chance to meet the retired colonel/diplomat in person a number of times. You can too, with no fund-raising necessary. Go to an action.
The first time I met Wright was in Crawford Texas when a delegation from Colorado Springs joined Cindy Sheehan’s encampment outside George Bush’s ranch. Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin were the primary organizers behind Sheehan’s “Camp Casey” PR coup. When our group convened our own Camp Casey at Nevada Avenue and Dale Street, Wright was our liaison to the continued national effort.
Most recently we ran into Wright at the DNC in August. Ann Wright brought the white faceless masks to the Denver demonstrations. She spoke at the rallies and participated in several marches. Even now, whether the issue is closing Guantanamo or saying no to the Fed, you’ll see Wright’s squad with their masks, representing the faceless victims of America’s destructive imperialism.
While I look forward to Ann Wright’s upcoming visit, I think it is unfortunate that local energy for activism be dissipated with an in-house lecture. What would Wright rather see us doing? Hopefully she can illuminate the hole into which the PPJPC is burying its head. Perhaps a study of her successes can show that a nonviolent ethos need not limit one’s actions to the avoidance of confrontation.
The biggest liberal website out there online, Common Dreams, informs us with its headline today that ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES: HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. Common Dreams has become a major resource for the US Left and liberal community in the last couple of years through its posting of many important commentaries by Leftists and liberals plus its convenient links that many of us use quite often. Unfortunately there is a big weakness of the site, and that is their censorship of commentaries, writers, and readers who are not completely 100% on board with their ‘support the lesser of two evils’, pro-Democratic Party point of view.
As a result, when I go to read their headline, I today get the message that THE WEBSITE DECLINED TO SHOW THIS WEBPAGE (to me) HTTP 403 FORBIDDEN. What is Common Dreams scared of from me?
The exact post I made to one of their commentaries that got me blacklisted from their site was made on election night and was linked the following day to a commentary at Common Dreams, from the one I made here on Not My Tribe titled Sadly, Barack Obama will probably get us OUT of Iraq by getting us INTO Iran. Many people who read Common Dreams material link to other commentaries that back up their opinions and beliefs, and I merely did the same.
But this belief that Obama’s election will lead to yet more war ran counter to their cheeleading for the Democratic Party, and earned me their shunning. And you know what? I still think it is most probable that attacking Iran is a most possible final result, post national arrival of Obama into the White House. How will the Common Dreams’ censor feel if this actually happens? Will he/ she remember the decision to put me permanentl offline from their site, for simply making this observation? Probably not.
I certainly do not feel all alone at all in being treated so shabbily by the Common Dreams Democratic Party cheerleading censor on their site. The site shuns many others, too, including the Libertarian site ANTIWAR.COM that it has never chosen to link to and acts as if the site does not exist. ANTIWAR.COM, you see, is a major resource for those who oppose what they call one of the War Parties, the Democrats? Can’t do that per play book of Common Dreams censorship. Not at all if you want publication there.
Also of note, is that Common Dreams likes anarchists somewhat, linking to the giant academician anarchist site, Znet, but has no links to overt Marxist links. Major antiwar activists (and presidential candidates) like Gloria La Riva will never see any comment of theirs allowed the Common Dreams site. CENSORED by the CD group-ling of ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES:HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. More like BLOCKING, I would say, and Common Dreams doesn’t like people that are aware of that, and will comment to that effect on their pro-Democratic Party site.
I could list many people whose comments will never appear at Common Dreams, merely because they are activist Marxists. Many academic anarchists act at election time though as Social Democrats, and Social Democrats can be easily herded into voting Democratic Party in the US. ALLOWED.
The thing about Common Dreams is that they are not real honest, and pretend often to have no bias for the Democrat Party even as they push them with countless articles praising people like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, et al. With the final days to push to get Barack Obama elected though, they seem to have dropped much of their camouflage and subterfuge and the long time effects will be to make their site less attractive to people who actually do want uncensored Left opinion, and not just cheerleading for the new DP executives in power. The CD approach to activism is to try to herd all ‘Progressives’ into voting the Democratic Party. It really is about that plain and simple, but it would be much better for activism if this major Left resource in the US had a less sectarian and less Democratic Party partisan approach.
So to the question is it Common Dreams, or is it censorship in common with the corporate media? I leave you to contemplate that question? For me, I just know that I can no longer read the site on my home computer, let alone comment on their posted articles, all because I do not share their ‘common dream’, which seems narrowly limited to getting the Democratic Party politicians into office, and propagandizing for them. That’s why I see them as being so like the corporate media itself, which will only endorse one of the two corporate parties, and will censor those who want a different world.
As to those whose commentaries are promoted by Common Dreams? I will be writing to at least one of them, Ira Chernus who lives here in Colorado, and asking him what it feels like to have article after article of his promoting the idea of voting Democratic Party this last election published on the Common Dreams site, and then finding out how Common Dreams has censors who keep opposing ideas to his own offline at their Common Dreams site? I don’t think that Ira, or many of the other nice liberal Democratic Party voting writers, have given this censorship much thought. It reflects poorly on them though, when Common Dreams publishes their commentaries and then keeps ‘Progressives’ from actually being able to challenge their POV. Ira, that is censorship. Have you anything much to say about this?
PS.. That picture above is of Ira Chernus, whose multiple articles framed the Common Dreams site the last weeks of the election. He is a professor who happens to live in The Democratic Party Peoples Republic of Boulder.
Rita and her GRANDMOTHERS FOR PEACE found change.gov and gave them an earful. (change.gov is the President-Elect’s change.org)
FOLLOWING OBAMA OUT OF LA LA LAND
I was afraid. The 2/26/08 e-mail from Bob Nemanich, Obama El Paso County Co-Coordinator, had come in minutes earlier. It read in part:
“Now this is important. Jay Ferguson, the vice chair of the El Paso County Democratic Party and I have been receiving numerous reports of curious and even worse descriptions of attempts, by some volunteers managing the entrance doors last Saturday morning, attempting to turn rightfully elected delegates away from the convention. This is serious stuff. If any of you witnessed or experienced an attempt by someone telling delegates who were in line Saturday morning and told to go home because: “the crowds were too big,” “no more room inside,” “they had enough delegates,” “the fire marshal was going to close us down,” or were told “their name was not on their lists” or other intimidations…You need to contact us immediately! We will need the description of th e person who was at the door making these or other statements or intimidating anyone, which line you were in, the time, and other circumstances which might further identify this person and activity of attempting to suppress the vote.”
I’d read the words and shuddered. What should I do?
I stood and walked away from the computer, passing the side-by-side pictures of my brother and son – both very precious to me and both very disabled. What could happen to them if I spoke out and told what I knew and had seen?
More than a decade ago, my “Rainman” duplicate son was working at his part-time job in the laundry of a local hotel. Suddenly a C.S.P.D. cop appeared and began roughing my boy up as he arrested him. The hotel maid who witnessed the arrest later told me she had begged the cop not to scare or hurt him, that he was autistic and retarded and didn’t understand what was happening. The cop ignored her as he threw my son against the wall, handcuffed him, and roughly led him to the waiting squad car and onto jail.
My boy’s “crime” was a false accusation beyond the belief of all who know my son and understand his limitations. Eventually the deputy district attorney dismissed all charges against him, but only after the nearly unsurmountable fear and suffering of my son and all who love him. His “crime” could have possibly have been based on his coming from a well-to-do family, thereby designating him and us as a target for monetary awards from fraudulent civil actions. And just as likely was the possibility that his being so brutalized, charged and arrested was a result of my political activism and stands against discrimination and intimidation. I’ll most likely go to my grave not knowing which was the case. One thing for certain – from now on I’ll be on guard against dirty political retaliation, particularly against those I love.
Months before my son’s false arrest, I had taken on an infamous Colorado Republican state senator who had publicly and to the press referred to all women of color as ‘promiscuous.” Following her nationally publicized remark, at a Colorado Springs “Cure Rally,” I had jokingly awarded her the “Jackass of the Year Award.” A few months later, at the urging of a retired judge and former colleague of mine, I had filed a criminal charge of harassment against the senator’s son, who had spear-headed the anti-gay Colorado Amendment Two, an amendment approved by the voters and later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Representing the Colorado Springs Minority Coalition, I had appeared on a local t.v. talk show with the senator’s son and responded to phone calls from viewers regarding the Minority Coalition’s stands on Amendment Two and other issues. Following the show, the senator’s son had invited me, along with a man from the N.A.A.C.P., into a studio back room where he had attempted to intimidate me by stating that it looked like we were going to fight. He then knuckle punched me in the arm. I followed the advice of my judicial friend, and reported the incident. Shortly thereafter, others came forward, citing similar attempts at intimidation by the senator’s son.
The same week my son was brutalized and falsely arrested, it was announced that the senator’s son was being removed from his job as head of “Colorado for Family Values,” the organization behind Amendment Two. A longtime observer of partisan politics in this one-party town of Colorado Springs observed that the senator’s son’s political career had been nipped the bud due to what had happened following the t.v. show.
I will always wonder if my son’s being charged and arrested for a crime he could never have committed was in reality an attack on me for standing up to blatant bigotry and an attempt at intimidation. And now I was being asked by an official of the Obama campaign to come forward once again, and stand up to undemocratic manipulation and outrageous intimidation. What should I do?
Torn by indecision, my view switched from the photo of my beautiful, autistic son, to the photo taken years earlier of my beloved brother, a mentally ill, fully disabled vet. And I was jolted into the present. Weeks earlier, my brother had gone into a local fast food restaurant, and had been questioned by the police for his part in a fist fight that had occurred in the restaurant.
My brother had watched and listened to a man in the restaurant as the man loudly and angrily berated the “stupid nigger” Barack Obama. My brother, a gently and caring person, had gone up to the man and told him he disagreed with him about Sen. Obama, and was offended at what the man was saying, and how he was saying it.
The man then swung at my brother twice, causing my brother to punch the man in defense, knocking the man to the floor and bloodying the man’s nose. The man ceased his hate filled outrage, and the police were called in. A restaurant employee explained to the police that it was not brother who had instigated the attack, but rather it was my brother who was defending himself. The man was arrested, and my brother, feeling very guilty for having struck someone, returned home to tell me the story. I consoled him, and complimented him for his bravery in speaking out against such hatred and bigotry.
And now, remembering my brother’s courage and glancing at my deceased uncle and god father’s purple heart from World War II, I made my decision. Courage is vital if heaven is to be gained and democracy is to be maintained. Scared as I was, I returned to the computer and began typing my affidavit, the soon to be sworn to statement of what I had witnessed at the El Paso County Democratic Assembly days earlier.
The story was not a pretty one. Elected Obama delegates and alternates had stood outside for hours in the frigid cold, only to be kept from entering the high school where the assembly was held. They were turned away in number at the door by none other than the then head of the Colorado Springs ACLU, a former NSA man. This former NSAer reportedly later stated he was merely following the directions of the local Democratic party chairman.
Within days of my submitting my signed and sworn to affidavit to the Obama and party official who had requested information, with copies to state and national party officials and ACLU officials, my house and grounds and the neighbor’s house was broken into in the middle of the night. According to both my neighbor and my brother who resides with me, the intruder appeared to be eager to be both heard and seen, and did not attempt to run and hide when spotted. This is the first break-in we have experienced since living here.
I went to the police station and added my brother’s citing of the intruder onto the neighbor’s report to the police the neighbor had made at the time of the incident. The police officer asked me if, to the best of my knowledge, anyone was attempting to intimidate me, my brother, or my neighbor. I gave the officer a copy of my affidavit, and told him an attempt to intimidate me had been made by the ACLU chairman immediately prior to my submission of my affidavit.
The officer then advised me to go as public as possible with the information I had. The officer state that his grandmother had been among those at the the Democratic assembly and, along with so many others, had wondered just what was going on.
Shortly thereafter, a representative from the local Democratic party notified me that the platform committee, to which I had been elected at the recent assembly, had been disbanded. It was hardly a surprise when three months later, two peace demonstrators were arrested at the Democratic state convention, which was held in Colorado Springs. The demonstrators were standing outside an area which was taped off by police, and were being cheered on and waved at by Obama delegates and alternates who were entering the World Arena building where the convention was being held.
The demonstrators were arrested, handcuffed, and transported first to a nearby station, then transported and left miles away from where the convention was being held. The support poles of the banner they displayed (“Dems – please stop funding the war in Iraq”) were destroyed by police. Significant rooftop audio surveillance occurred prior to and during the arrest, but was denied and not produced during the motions for discovery at time of preliminary hearings. Prior to going to trial, charges were dropped by the city, just as charges were eventually dropped by the city after the first trial against peace demonstrators (google Colorado Springs St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2007, n.b. “Police Brutality”) resulted in a hung jury.
This is not one person’s story – this is a city’s story, a state’s story, an entire country’s story. The coup d’etat of which President Eisenhower warned us during a radio address on his last day in office is well established and is going to be extremely difficult to undo. The undoing of the military/industrial/corporate coup will require courage and persistence of the highest order.
Forty fusion centers nationwide, and super fusion centers such as Colorado Springs, will continue to strip away basic civil rights by means of surveillance, and infiltration of peace, justice, and political organizations. These centers will not go away easily. The return of a free and non-spin press will not just happen. Improvement in education nationwide is essential if democracy is to return and survive. We must discontinue simply educating to enable every child to eventually get a bigger and better paying job so as to produce a bigger and better consumer, but rather we must provide truly meaningful education that turns out perpetually self-educating, critical thinkers who are impervious to spin and manipulation.
The need for change list goes on and one, and as long as President elect Obama hangs tough and maintains the heart, brains, and courage that are so necessary to oversee the change, hope we indeed survive. Then he can and will indeed lead us our of La La Land, and forward to the top of the mountain of all our dreams.
God bless and protect Barack Obama and his oh so wonderful and brave and bright family. And, please God, bless and protect not just America, but the entire world and all our sisters and brothers in it. Peace and love be with you and with us all.
Rita Walpole Ague
It may be in the spirit of JACKASS, but I’m excited by the confrontational activism I think has evolved from Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield. And of course other pranksters like culture jammers Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos of the YES MEN, and Bill Talen of REVEREND BILLY AND THE CHURCH OF STOP SHOPPING. The new YouTube stars are personified by magnetic heros like University of Florida’s Andrew Meyer, ideal for revisiting the pie-throwing movement. There’s CheckpointUSA giving the finger to unconstitutional DHS road blocks, and for those who would expose 9/11: Luke Rudkowski, Anthony Verias and Matt Lepacek of WEARECHANGE:
Nathan Moulton demonstrates a tactic you might have the temerity to do:
Those interested in Darfur might want to check this book, ‘The Scramble for Africa’, out some when it comes out? Especially with the Biden, Obama gang headed towards the White House soon. Certainly this is a timely release for this book.
*** Book of the Month for** **October 2008*
*THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA*
*Darfur — Intervention and the USA*
*Steven Fake and Kevin Funk*
*As massive human suffering continues to engulf the Darfur region of
Sudan, the crisis has garnered a rhetorical circus of saber-rattling and
hand wringing from Western politicians, media, and activists. Yet such
bluster has not halted the violence.*
*In a careful yet scathing indictment of this constellation of
holier-than-thou government leaders, corporate media outlets, and spoon-fed
NGOs, Steven Fake and Kevin Funk reveal the myriad ways in which the West
has failed Darfur.*
*Praise for Scramble for Africa:*
*”A devastating critique of the ‘humanitarian’ response of the United
States to the Darfur crisis. Well-researched, easy to read, and utterly
convincing, a crucial book for anyone concerned about achieving a morally
and politically acceptable U.S. foreign policy.”
–Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of Law Emeritus, Princeton University*
*”Sudan has been a nightmare for many. It still is. The outside world is
responsible as well. This book shows why. The authors avoid easy answers,
and provide a quality analysis with compelling arguments to revise Western
policies.”
–Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of
Mission for the United Nations Mission in Sudan, 2004-06 *
*”Explosive, masterful, and impeccably fair. Consider it the thinking
person’s guide to Darfur.”
-John Ghazvinian, author of **Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil*
*STEVEN FAKE and KEVIN FUNK are activists and political commentators whose
writings have been published in such media as **Foreign Policy in Focus,
Common Dreams, CounterPunch, ZNet**, and **Black Commentator**.*
*344 pages, bibliography, index
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55164-322-9 $19.99
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-55164-323-6 $39.99*
*For more information on **The Scramble For Africa**, our October Book of
the Month selection, including additional testimonials and Table of
Contents, see **http://www.blackrosebooks.net/darfur.htm*
* *
*The Scramble For Africa will be launched in the Boston area on October
28th. For more information see http://www.blackrosebooks.net/events.htm*
*To Order This Book, Call Toll Free 1-800-565-9523*
*Independent Publishing for Independent Minds*
*What others are saying about Scramble for Africa*
“Kevin Funk and Steven Fake have written a devastating critique of the
‘humanitarian’ response of the United States to the Darfur crisis, while
offering a genuine humane alternative that would lessen the ordeal, if not
bring it to an end. Well-researched, easy to read, and utterly convincing, a
crucial book for anyone concerned about achieving a morally and politically
acceptable U.S. foreign policy.”
*–Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of Law Emeritus, Princeton University, and
since 2002, Visiting Distinguished Professor, Global Studies, UCSB*
“Sudan has been a nightmare for many. It still is. The outside world is
responsible as well. This book shows why. The authors avoid easy answers,
and provide a quality analysis with compelling arguments to revise Western
policies.”
*–Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of
Mission for the United Nations Mission in Sudan, 2004-06*
“At a time when everyone from George Clooney to George Bush is an instant
expert on Darfur, Kevin Funk and Steven Fake have given us what we so
urgently need: a clear, sober assessment of the conflict and how it fits
into the foreign policy of the United States. With neither fear nor favour,
they take us back stage, show us our blind spots, and come up with some
troubling conclusions. Explosive, masterful, and impeccably fair. Consider
it the thinking person’s guide to Darfur.”
*–John Ghazvinian, author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil*
“A commanding exposé of the duplicitous and damaging role played by US
leaders and others in a dark drama. Well-written, well focused, deeply
informed—an excellent corrective for the many who cannot tell the difference
between humanitarian assistance and imperial aggrandizement.”
*–Michael Parenti, author of ‘Contrary Notions’ and ‘Against Empire’*
“Elegantly written, erudite without being academic, and with a forceful yet
sensible political argument, Scramble for Africa is a must read for anyone
concerned with making sense of one of the most haunting crises of our time.”
*–Stephen Eric Bronner, Rutgers University*
“Scramble for Africa: Darfur Intervention and the USA is the book we’ve all
been waiting for. Clearly written, and scholarly without losing its
skeptical edge, this new work takes on the U.S. Government and the Save
Darfur coalition alike, offering a fresh analysis of Darfur in its larger
geopolitical context. Scramble for Africa belongs on every Darfur activist’s
bookshelf.”
*–David Morse, Darfur activist and journalist*
“So much of what has been written on Darfur is either expression of
humanitarian concern without awareness of the imperial context, or
denunciation of Western perfidy without appreciation of the horrible human
tragedy that has been unfolding. In this extremely well-documented study,
Steve Fake and Kevin Funk combine deep compassion with a keen critical
analysis to show how we might best support the suffering people of Darfur.
This is a book for all those interested in working for a more just world.”
*–Stephen R. Shalom, Professor of Political Science at William Paterson
University in New Jersey and author of, among other works, Imperial Alibis:
Rationalizing US Intervention After the Cold War*
“This extremely well-researched analysis reveals the real goals of US
foreign policy in one of the greatest horrors of our generation. The authors
have produced an essential book for analysts and activists everywhere,
together with a call to action which no-one should ignore.”
*–Mark Curtis, author, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World*
“One of the few works to tackle honestly the vexing question of what is to
be done about Darfur. Cheerleaders for intervention and humanitarians who
persist in rosy fantasies about the U.S. role in the world have had no
trouble advocating “solutions,” but for others on the left the question has
been much more difficult. Not content, like so many, to simply wash their
hands of the question, the authors have constructed a deeply informed and
carefully reasoned argument that addresses seriously the possibilities for
constructive humanitarian interventions in an imperfect world vitiated by
great power interests and political posturing. For the cruise-missile left
and the hard-core anti-interventionist left alike, Darfur is not about
Darfur but about their own self-image; Fake and Funk rightly bring the focus
back to what is best for the people on the ground.”
*–Rahul Mahajan, activist and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power
in Iraq and Beyond*
“At last there is a book on Darfur that places the conflict in the context
of the new ‘scramble for Africa,’ the contest between the old imperialism of
England and its successors, the US and China. Fake and Funk’s analysis
unmasks the propagandistic deploying of powerful language alleging
‘genocide’ and the ‘world’s worst humanitarian crisis’ in Sudan for its
political advantages to the US and its neglect of the suffering of Darfur’s
victims. When analyzing the politics of the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ the
journalists-authors work with a scalpel in a refreshing and penetrating
analysis of why the Darfur conflict became the ’cause célèbre,’ when it
should have been the war in Iraq. Activists and astute observers of the
contemporary global political scene will find this scrupulously researched
volume a must read, virtually unique among available works on the subject.”
*–Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Professor of Anthropology, Rhode Island College,
veteran Sudan researcher*
“For those, like myself, who have long felt both revulsion and confusion by
the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and wished to know more, this is the
perfect handbook. …an objective, dispassionate, meticulously researched
account of the conflict… The authors of Scramble for Africa… startle us with
their documentation of the little known but equally sordid role our own
government has played in Sudan for the past thirty years – suggesting that
our present official “humanitarian concerns” are merely crocodile tears
masking another agenda.”
*–Timothy Kendall, Ph. D., Senior Research Scholar, Dept. of
African-American Studies, Northeastern University and Director of
Archaeological Mission, Jebel Barkal (Karima), Sudan, Sudan Dept. of
Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), Khartoum, Sudan*
“The Scramble for Africa stands against the muck of neo-liberal ideology,
taking us through the Darfur conflict, putting it into history and allowing
us to think of a non-imperialist way to bring peace to a tormented region.
Save Darfur, surely; but as much from Washington as Khartoum, as much from
fantasies of humanitarian intervention as the brutalities of
IMFundamentalism and Islamism.”
*–Vijay Prashad, author, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third
World*
“The Darfur conflict has proven to be intractable, at terrible cost to the
people of that region. There is a crying need for on-going international
activism based on a thorough analysis of Sudan and the role of the US, China
and other states. The Scramble for Africa by Kevin Funk and Steven Fake is a
well-researched, important and progressive contribution in this regard. It
should be widely read, from the White House to the grassroots.”
*–Laurie Nathan, research fellow at the London School of Economics and
member of the African Union mediation team for Darfur in 2005/6*
“This excellent book presents the basic information on the political and
military aspects of the conflict, examines the options from a clear and
transparent ethical position, and presents ways forward with a concern for
broad international implications and concern for the hundreds of thousands
of victims. It is is exactly what is needed and I hope it is very widely
read. I will recommend it to everyone.”
*–Justin Podur, writer and activist*
Two PPJPC board members, Genie Durland and Dorothy Schlaeger, wrote to The Colorado Springs Independent trying to explain why the group’s officers locked some of its membership out of the PPJPC building where we had tried to hold a meeting.
To compound the insult of locking us out of the building, the new Board Director, Jo Ann Neiman, then called the police when she saw us still attending our meeting on the sidewalk in front of the PPJPC building! She explained to the police that she wanted us to be told that we were all trespassing!
So what did Genie and Dorothy have to say about all of this?
In short, they implied that we, the members of the PPJPC who wanted to meet inside the PPJPC rented building, were violence-prone, and they used a bunch of excessive religiosity about Gandhi to do so! They mixed their own liberal religious beliefs together with what they see as the teachings of the Hindu religious leader, Gandhi. Here is how they justified the current board director calling the police on us,
‘Many who consider themselves “peace activists” across the globe engage in tactics, which fail to engender peace. PPJPC is deeply committed to nonviolence and will neither engage nor support activism employing tactics inconsistent with Ghandian nonviolence.’
Genie and Dorothy, I might ask you both, what is ‘Gandhian’ nonviolent about suggesting we are violence-prone when we are not that in the least? You do the rather violence-prone Colorado Springs municipal police a big favor in labeling others amongst the PPJPC and general public in such a manner. You are actually encouraging police violence against us with this sort of rhetoric against us, who are all people that have in fact never engaged in any violent acts at all. In short, you are playing a game of Holier-Than-Thou and The Independent was absolutely correct in labeling and titling that as being ‘Malice in the Movement’.
What also is Gandhi-like in calling the police on us to tell us that we were supposedly trespassing by holding a nonviolent meeting, of all things? What is nonviolent in locking us out from the meeting we wanted to do inside of the PPJPC building, not out on the sidewalk? And most of all, what is nonviolent in a PPJPC organized to have a single membership meeting per year? That is undemocratic community organization, not nonviolence.
This is the real issue of concern, not whether to be tactically violent, as you falsely imply that it is. We tried to hold our meeting because we want some internal democracy within the PPJPC where now there isn’t any.
We want a group not controlled by paid office staff eating up tens of thousands of donated dollars in their salaries each year, just to run the group autocratically as they determine activities of their own making for non paid volunteers to carry out. This is non-sustainable situation in the long run, and it would be much better to help work out something, instead of locking members out of the PPJPC offices. Currently the group is headed towards a financial shipwreck and that is the Big Issue. The PPJPC has no real membership accountability at this time to check their deficit spending.
We also want a board picked by the activist , than have board members pick their own replacements beforehand and then present it as pre-determined fate to the rest of us who have no current voice in PPJPC policies. Most of all, we want a PPJPC that is not crippled by police interference into our own internal affairs. This has led to those who now hobnob at the police station with the cops in secret meetings then arranging affairs of the PPJPC where the cops are called out on other PPJPC members less religiously inclined than yourselves.
Most of all, this is about trying to make the PPJPC into something other than a religious-run clique, but into a true body of diverse people that for many different reasons are against the US government’s global militarism. You two are opposed to doing so, and hide behind the figure of Gandhi to oppose those who are. The religious and those not religious must be united in a Peace movement, not separated as you would have done.
Disagree with us if you will, but do not falsely label those who differ with you as being less non-nonviolent than yourselves. You are doing the work of the violence-eager police force and local government bodies when you do so. We respect your religious beliefs in nonviolence, but we ask you to not try to force these relgious beliefs that you have off on all others as you have currently justified doing so with your current letter to The Colorado Springs Independent.
We look forward to working with you together in the future as in the past inside the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.
One of the most disturbing things about lifestyle vegetarians and the group PETA is that they consistently distract people from paying attention to the real dangers to animals on this planet. They want to fight about whether one should have a hamburger or not and often engage in tactics that are just plain stupid.
They consistently seem to have a fetish about ‘liberating’ animals from cages, for just one example. It puts them in the news but not in a great way when they go about ‘freeing’ other people’s animals. I don’t like animal abuse by science either, but that is not the main threat facing animal life on this planet.
And just several weeks ago, local animal rights people were out in front of the KFC on Nevada doing their parade as big chickens! Really now, I just don’t think they are going to move people on the plight of chickens in this cruel hard world we live in. Will they show up at Petco and Petsmart some time soon to protest the mistreatment of fish there? Oh the horrors of selling feeder fish!
Meanwhile, there hardly is any animal rights movement at all to stop the animalcide of multiple species around the planet. The movement to protect natural areas where these animal species reside is quite separate from the PETA gang’s general activities. It is the Environmental Movement that does this work and not the animal rights gang.
The simple fact of the matter, is that if people are treated right on this planet, then so will animals as a whole. It doesn’t really do to single out the treatment of animals as the big issue above all else, it just makes one look rather silly. However that is not the case in regards to animalcide. When animal and plant biodiversity is destroyed, then all plants, animals, humans, are threatened at one and the same time.
At the top of our list of issues involving animals has to be the fact that Primates ‘face extinction crisis’. We are definitely talking about dangers to ourselves here and animal rights activists would do themselves and animals a favor by concentrating on this sort of major issue, rather than the chickens at KFC or the primates in cages over at the University’s labs. They would do us all right by doing that, and by stopping being media hounds through silly and poorly thought out activism.
A friend refuses to have anything to do with activists who will not commit to nonviolence. It’s not enough to denounce violence, they must swear it like an oath. The ARD has applied this literally. “I’ve seen it too many times” she says, violence erupts when there’s an insufficient commitment to nonviolence. Translation: too many are untrained to hold the line against violence. Meaning: people who taunt police officers, have knee-jerk self-defense responses, hurt the cause. But the same person complains that too few initiates are joining her [church].
Who can blame scholars for not wanting to discourse with the unschooled? I wouldn’t want to participate in a bridge tournament with an inexperienced partner. On the other hand, maybe I would, as I don’t play. Which I think is my point.
But I will question whether I have a handle on the bigger picture, or has she?
There is no growing your numbers in activism without inviting the participation of others less learned, less pure, and frankly less like you. Certainly in popular actions, you’d have to accept that not everyone will have the diligence or interest to adopt a spiritual ethos before expecting redress for a social ill. Union organizers don’t expect workers to sort out the ideologies themselves. It’s enough to impart on them the means and tools. It’s enough to have common goals.
In my opinion, you won’t widen your base of support if you make nonviolence training the prerequisite. A spontaneous movement of mass appeal will be bound by laws of human nature, including assertiveness –mistaken for aggression– and self-righteous indignation –anger. If you’re going to wait for our ever-degrading education system to supply minds fertile for a counter-culture re-adjustment… well, I won’t.
Or.
There will be no effective popular movement to initiate reform, until the masses are schooled to transcend violence.
Maybe either way, anger or transcendence, in hoping for mass-driven progress toward peace and justice, we’re not there yet.
“At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, [Barack Obama] is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver in the first 15 minutes after being sworn in that John McCain could in the next 100 years.”
Counterpoint columnist Joe Bageant was given the following essay by an unnamed political consultant:
Life in the Post-political Age.
Much has been written by political pundits in their attempt to explain the unexpected victory of Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton in this year’s Democratic Presidential Primary. When looking at the results of this race, none of the conventional political math that would help one handicap the outcome would make one conclude that Senator Obama would win this contest.
Inside a Democratic Party primary there is no demographic or political reason that a male first term African American senator from Illinois with an unorthodox name should come any where close to beating a white female senator, who happens to be the wife of the last Democratic President whose approval ratings are still above 70% with Democratic voters and who also happened to earn the endorsements of the substantial parts of the Democratic Party establishment.
The conventional analysis focused on the poor quality of the campaign run by Senator Clinton, her vote in support of the Iraq war and her advocacy of the cynical center-right triangulation policies of her husband, which soured her campaign to many primary voters and especially to Democratic Party activists. Senator Obama’s on the other hand was credited with running an innovative and inspiring campaign that excited primary voters and brought many new and especially younger voters into the electoral process.
There is some truth to this analysis, but as a whole it misses the underlying social change in society that had already laid the groundwork for a possible Obama victory. To get a clearer understanding of the results, we must better understand what this social change is and how its impact is far more significant than the dynamics of the two respective campaigns.
The underlying social change that led to the Obama victory is the unprecedented extent to which the narrative of popular consumer culture, and the media that drives it, has become the dominant influence on how Americans think, formulate their ideas and understand the world around them.
The most important result of this process has been the steady and consistent depoliticization of American society, to an extent that we can make the case that we are living at the dawn of the post political age.
The two primary features of the post political age are a politics completely drained of all its contents and ability or willingness to be used as an agent of change in social or economic policy, and its full integrations into the world of American popular, consumer and entertainment culture. To such an extent that there exists today a seamless web between our political, economic, media and consumer cultures wherein the modes and values of one are completely integrated and compatible with the others.
It should not come as a surprise that the dominant ideas and mores of popular culture have become the dominant ideas of our society. Popular culture is the breaker of customs, prejudice, tradition and relevant historical knowledge.
It is a result of this dynamic that the two consistent winners in American politics over the last 30 years have been the cultural left and the economic right. Despite the massive organizing drive of the religious right over the past three decades, they are further away from reversing the cultural liberalization of American society than when they started. On others side of the ledger, organized labor outside of a few urban pockets and industries is no longer a relevant force in American life. The ever greater electoral activism of both of these groups is generally misunderstood as a show of strength; in fact, it is the exact opposite. It is the desperate fight of the losing side of the American economic, cultural and political scene.
In essence the same forces that make it possible for the rapid acceptance of ideas such as gay marriage are the same force which can create a society that will accept massive social inequalities.
In the post political world and the candidates who can best thrive in it have tremendous appeal to the economic elites, a system that does not dwell on issues and will never ask the question, “who has power and why”, but simultaneously creates a social and media environment of stupefying distractions while destroying traditional social mores (under-credited as a source of much social solidarity). This can only benefit their continued rule of that society.
In such a setting our political choices like our consumer choices, regardless of the product, are primarily about what makes us more fulfilled and feel better about ourselves.
Senator Obama’s campaign understood much better the impact of these changes on our electoral system than any of his opponents’ campaigns. In the post political world, the campaign that is less political and less issue-based but is savvier in using new modes of communication technology will be the campaign to win the greatest market share of the electorate. The candidate in this case, Obama, was not a political entity but, in essence a product, an ornament that made his supporters feel better about themselves.
One of the most telling facts about the Obama’s constituency outside of African Americans (whose support needs no explanation) is that it is a coalition of people who need or demand the least amount of social benefit from our government. They are the under politicized younger voters and upper middle class whites. The two groups, coincidently, are the ones most influenced by trends in consumer popular culture and have the greatest of ease using the latest technologies.
In commercial advertising it is the poor commercial that lists the seventeen functions of the product being marketed. The best commercials are based on image associations entirely unrelated to the functions of the actual product. In the post political world, when the same principle is applied to the political realm, it makes complete sense how Barack Obama no longer is a black man with a strange name but the iPod to Hillary Clinton’s cell phone. In the world of toys it is the one that stands out the most is the most marketable.
The reality of the post political period is best highlighted in the failed themes and ideas of Barack Obama’s two primary opponents. The Clinton campaign was based on pushing two concurrent ideas: the inevitability factor of her candidacy and the other was her supposed experience. The only thing inevitable in the post political period is ceaseless change, which she could hardly offer while running against the candidate of “Change”. How valuable of an asset can experience be in a culture where knowledge, wisdom and history are frowned upon?
John Edwards campaign on the other hand was dead on arrival. His theme and emphasis was America’s ever widening class differences, a platform as truthful as it was irrelevant. The use of the word “class” will end any political career in America. That truth violates the primary narrative that our elite use to justify their legitimacy, which is the supposed meritocratic nature of America society. While the post political constituencies have absolutely no interest in class, whose very acknowledgment are the bases of all real politics and whose acknowledgement would only lead to an existential crisis in its ranks. In the post political period the only differences allowed can be in style and modes of consumption.
Given all this as the background, what are we to make of the campaign of the candidate of hope, audacity and change? The answer lies in understanding Senator Obama’s appeal to the brighter sections of the economic and political elite, and more importantly in the lack of any organized opposition against him, of the kind that within a matter of days destroyed Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004.
At the precise moment that the intellectual underpinnings of conservative free market ideas that have dominated politics for the past 30 years are crumbling across the globe. Obama calls for a post ideological and partisan world.
At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, he is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver in the first 15 minutes after being sworn in that John McCain could in the next 100 years.
His very presence, the color of his skin, the very strangeness of his name is the best guarantee of his betrayal of the expectations of the constituencies that will vote to elect him. Barack Obama is in short order a far more reassuring prospect for the continued dominance of the financial elite than another four years of neo-conservative rule which in an almost historically unique combination of greed, ill will, incompetence and stupidity have brought the country to the edge of disaster.
Audacity yes, change hardly.
DENVER, COLO.- The Alliance for Real Democracy (ARD), formed to counter the scrappily-named Recreate 68 at the DNC, is in reality an unwitting fifth column, set up by Democratic Party allies to temper protest in Denver. The UFPJ and other sundry “non-violent” progressives are funneling their members into the less populist ARD actions to divert participation from the major DNC demonstrations. But the aforementioned underwriters aren’t providing any funding, surprise! Leaving the ARD to protest exactly what it’s supposed to: nothing.
I think it’s heartbreaking to watch earnest young activists, representing the organizations comprising the ARD coalition, trying to organize activities without any commitment from their national affiliations. And some of the more outspoken national leaders, keen to make appearances at the DNC rallies, are beginning to smell a rat. They’re making backup arrangements to coordinate with the boots on the ground, R-68.
A Fifth Column refers to a group of partisans, usually spontaneously organized, which forms behind enemy lines as a conquering army approaches. It is the additional “column” of civilian fighters which an attacker might count on to stab the defenders in the back. Franco boasted of his fifth column in the Spanish Civil War. The French Resistance represented a fifth column for the Normandy liberators.
America’s antiwar movement has had its steady divisions, between UFPJ and A.N.S.W.E.R. most notably, but the rift has become more critical with the advent of another hopeful Democratic election win. Four years ago it was Kerry, with groups like Moveon.org trying to tone down the antiwar rhetoric. This year it’s Obama, and the appeasers are out in battalions. As usual, it’s done in the name of “nonviolence,” where too vigorous protest is seen as insufficiently nonviolent for the Democrat’s fragile delusions.
When R-68 began the groundwork for DNC protests, they were vilified for evoking the Chicago 1968 police riots. R-68 repudiated the violence, but not surprisingly those statements have yet to be reported in print. Meanwhile the bad press gave UFPJ and other nonviolence apostles the opportunity to break away and form their holy alliance to give their members sanctuary from the ruffians, re unpredictable young people.
But will it really? The R-68 group includes Unconventional Denver and Disrupt 08, but neither have violent plans. Black Block script-kiddies will turn up no matter whose event. Police agent provocateurs will instigate violence no matter how pious your crowd.
Code Pink, IVAW, Veterans For Peace, and UFPJ are among the national endorsers of ARD. Tent State, SFPJ, and Students for a Democratic Society are examples of young activists getting caught in their elders’ tar baby.
Because it’s not enough to vote for Obama, you have to quash dissent for Obama. It’s the Alliance For Real Democracy For Obama.
Naturally Denver protest organizers, whether ARD or R68, have found themselves having to confer about time slots and permits, out of respect for the success of each other’s activities. As a result, the national head of UFPJ, Leslie Cagan, issued an email decreeing that no ARD organization member would participate in the major Aug 24 kickoff antiwar demonstration. This drew question marks from prominent activist leaders who want to be at the biggest rally.
Bi-monthly CONSULTA meetings were scheduled by ARD and R68 to coordinate efforts. But the morning before the second Consulta, Leslie Cagan flew in from NYC for an emergency meeting with ARD leadership to brief them on what not to negotiate. She followed this with a hastily scheduled press conference the next day on the subject of Iran, it appeared to preempt her rivals’ DON’T BOMB IRAN action planned for August 2nd.
Colorado Springs own PPJPC is an endorser of ARD. Their letter of support was read into the minutes of a recent meeting, and it read like the typical support they’re getting from everyone. I’ll paraphrase the PPJPC letter:
“We at the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission are honored to endorse your efforts at the DNC … due to critical funding shortages, we cannot offer you any monetary support at this time … Likewise, I’m sorry that I will not be able to participate in any events that week , but will try to interest our members in attending…” We’ll be with you in spirit, etc.
Why form a fifth column if you’re not going to support it? Because the ARD‘s job is to do nothing. Doing nothing is exactly how you stab activism in the back.
What information was the PPJPC staff trying to keep from their members by thwarting a meeting? Below is the text of the meeting invite. Not only is the staff discouraging activism, it will act to prevent it.
“I just got back from Denver in meetings with both ARD and R68, and boy is there a lot to report! Good ideas, lots of young energy, opportunities for us to participate, alliances possibly to avoid, and some serious organizers with which to network. We’ve now got posters and fliers to distribute, and contacts for the various events. Not just for the DNC but for upcoming campaigns and actions. The August 2 national DON’T BOMB IRAN rally for starters.
We definitely want to get the word out and discuss what Colorado Springs can add to the message(s). There will be a march for the poor, a march for prisoners’ rights, antiwar, immigration, etc, and the schedules and permits are evolving everyday. Access to Denver is going to be very restricted. Do you want to be apprised about that?”
The PPJPC is not working out as it is presently organized. Currently it is organized as a non-profit corporation, has 3 paid staff members, and is run by a Board of Directors who are answerable to nobody other than themselves, because they the group as a whole simply has no membership meetings. That’s right. The group has no membership meetings and is run from top down.
Yes, there is one supposed membership meeting per year, but in reality the Board organizes itself beforehand and then presents its own decisions to the ‘membership meeting’, which is in fact a public event organized as a sort of pep rally with the office staff and Board in charge of arranging all of the show beforehand. All decisions are made prior to the membership meeting, and not during the year’s one ‘membership’ meeting itself.
During the rest of the year, the Board of Directors simply decides among themselves who is to replace any Board directors that might be necessary to add per vacancies. The group, as a whole, is completely absent from making these decisions, as it is absent from having any voice in choosing office staff. In fact, there is no group as a whole other than those who donate money, who are considered the membership, rather than those who might be doing the main volunteer work and active in protests against The War. In actual reality though, donors make no membership decisions and are not even consulted regarding them.
So what has been the result of this form of organization? In one word, the result has been total disorganization and chaos. The group simply does not have a membership at all beyond its ‘Board’ and paid staff. The group is not run democratically at all, but rather as a group of volunteers that do what the office staff arranges for them to do, supposedly with leadership direction given by the Board of Directors. In fact, even that is not usually the case, and decisions on what to do usually are principally made by the paid staff, and them pretty much alone.
How much does the paid staff take in salaries from the group? At $10/ hour for 3 people over one year, the amount is a whopping sum of over $50,000 a year! Yet, this same staff of 3 are most often missing from actions that are in protest of war in the city. That’s right. They are no shows, over and over and over again!
Well, do they do other things then? Not really. The PPJPC is a group that pays for a building, has three paid staff members, and then does not keep it open most hours of the week! How are these hours of business for you? The building is kept open from 10 to 2, Monday through Friday. And even that is not on a regular basis! Last years cost for this building not kept open? Way over $12,000 which is just rent alone being counted!
All this would be comical if it was not so sad. We have a group spending over $62,000 a year to pay three staff and keep a building open 20 hours a week. In addition, the 3 staff are largely absent from attending antiwar protest activities in this city! In addition, the group largely does not even organize most protests against war and in support of justice in this city. Oftentimes, the group merely seems largely to be taking credit for work that others are doing.
The PPJPC needs to be organized differently, or the people of Colorado Springs need to be informed that this is a group that is not the actual local organizing vehicle for protest against The War. It is a waste of dollars to donate to this group as presently disorganized as it is from top down. Your money is going to pay office people who are not real organizers or participants in much of anything happening in this city.
This is a group that did not organize itself to protest The War when Barack Obama recently came to town! Today, Barack Obama is advocating more US troops be sent to fight the War of US Occupation of Afghanistan. Where was the PPJPC? But it is not just this example that shows the inactivism of the PPJPC. Less than a year previous to the Obama visit to Colorado Springs, Dick Cheney came to town. The PPJPC only turned out 7 people in protest of Dick Cheney! Where were the ‘Board of Directors’ and paid office staff of the group? They were essentially not present at this protest.
Neither the ‘Board of Directors’ nor the paid office trio, participate in The Springs area’s only weekly vigil against the war. None of them! Despite the open use of torture being the main political issue in the country, none of the ‘Board of Directors’ or paid office staff, have challenged the Colorado Springs municipal government to pass a statement against federal use of torture. Why not? $62,000 plus a year paid in salaries and a building and where are they?
The time is now to demand a reorganization of this group, or failing that, we must organize another group that will do the necessary work of opposing War and standing for Justice. The group as presently disorganized is an actual impediment to doing antiwar work in this community. We sincerely hope that the PPJPC can turn itself around, but it will take much work before that that can be accomplished.
We propose now that the group immediately hold monthly membership meetings that are empowered to lead the group and not just respond to direction made by paid staff and a very few of the ‘Board of Directors’. The group must make itself democratic if it is going to effective in opposing the ‘Global War on Terrorism’, and regularly scheduled membership meetings are essential to making the group more democratic. At this time, it doesn’t even have a declared purpose in opposing ‘The Global War on Terror’. That must change, and the group must be made into a democratic community organization, or it will simply not function.
In making this analysis, no animosity is held towards anybody. However, for this group to move forward in changing itself for the better, the group must reorganize. Part of that reorganization must include a decrease in the costs of supporting 3 paid staff members, who think it their task to run the group, for the group. We issue the following challenge to these 3 paid staff members…
If you are in fact dedicated to opposing War effectively, then do so like the rest of us who give our time and energy for free. Stay active with the group, but give up your paid staff positions so that reorganization of the group can progress. We hope that you will work against The War, even if not paid to do so? Thank you most sincerely for what you have already done in fighting injustice and aggression. But the time has come, to stop receiving a salary from the PPJPC. We hope that you will make your personal transition to civilian life soon? There is no longer the money to spend in the manner that was done before with so little results. Your salaries are hemorrhaging major money from the community that wants to support Peace activities here, and your personal activities are largely not that productive for what is spent in paying you.
Al Jazeera’s INSIDE USA has a recent interview with Noam Chomsky. Chomsky: US public irrelevant. The partial transcript is mirrored below, as is the 2-part video: part 1 and part 2.
Part 2 of the interview:
Partial transcript:
AVI LEWSI: I’d like to start by talking about the US presidential campaign. In writing about the last election in 2004, you called America’s system a “fake democracy” in which the public is hardly more than an irrelevant onlooker, and you’ve been arguing in your work in the last year or so that the candidates this time around are considerably to the right of public opinion on all major issues.
So, the question is, do Americans have any legitimate hope of change this time around? And what is the difference in dynamic between America’s presidential “cup” in 2008 compared to 2004 and 2000?
NOAM CHOMSKY: There’s some differences, and the differences are quite enlightening. I should say, however, that I’m expressing a very conventional thought – 80 per cent of the population thinks, if you read the words of the polls, that the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves not for the population [and] 95 per cent of the public thinks that the government ought to pay attention to public opinion but it doesn’t.
As far as the elections are concerned, I forget the exact figure but by about three to one people wish that the elections were about issues, not about marginal character qualities and so on. So I’m right in the mainstream.
There’s some interesting differences between 2004 and 2008 and they’re very revealing, it’s kind of striking that the commentators don’t pick that up because it’s so transparent.
The main domestic issue for years … is the health system – which is understandable as it’s a total disaster.
The last election debate in 2004 was on domestic issues … and the New York Times the next day had an accurate description of it. It said that [former Democratic presidential candidate John] Kerry did not bring up any hint of government involvement in healthcare because it has so little political support, just [the support of] the large majority of the population.
But what he meant was it was not supported by the pharmaceutical industry and wasn’t supported by the financial institutions and so on.
In this election the Democratic candidates all have [health] programmes that are not what the public are asking for but are approaching it and could even turn into it, so what happened between 2004 and 2008?
It’s not a shift in public opinion – that’s the same as before, what happened is a big segment of US corporate power is being so harmed by the healthcare system that they want it changed, namely the manufacturing industry.
So, for example, [car manufacturer] General Motors says that it costs them maybe $1,500 more to produce a car in Detroit then across the border in Windsor, Canada, just because they have a more sensible healthcare system there.
Well, when a big segment of corporate America shifts its position, then it becomes politically possible and has political support. So, therefore, you can begin to talk about it.
AL: But those aren’t changes coming from pressure from below?
CHOMSKY: No, the public is the same, it’s been saying the same for decades, but the public is irrelevant, is understood to be irrelevant. What matters is a few big interests looking after themselves and that’s exactly what the public sees.
AL: And yet, you can see people agitating against the official story, even within the electoral process. There is definitely a new mood in the US, a restlessness among populations who are going to political rallies in unprecedented numbers.
What do you make of this well branded phenomenon of hope – which is obviously part marketing – but is it not also part something else?
CHOMSKY: Well that’s Barack Obama. He has his way, he presents himself – or the way his handlers present him – as basically a kind of blank slate on which you can write whatever you like and there are a few slogans: Hope, unity …
AL: Change?
CHOMSKY: Understandable that Obama is generating “enthusiasm” [Reuters]
For most people in the US the past 30 years have been pretty grim. Now, it’s a rich country, so it’s not like living in southern Africa, but for the majority of the population real wages have stagnated or declined for the past 30 years, there’s been growth but it’s going to the wealthy and into very few pockets, benefits which were never really great have declined, work hours have greatly increased and there isn’t really much to show for it other than staying afloat.And there is tremendous dissatisfaction with institutions, there’s a lot of talk about Bush’s very low poll ratings, which is correct, but people sometimes overlook the fact that congress’s poll ratings are even lower.
In fact all institutions are just not trusted but disliked, there’s a sense that everything is going wrong.
So when somebody says “hope, change and unity” and kind of talks eloquently and is a nice looking guy and so on then, fine.
AL: If the elite strategy for managing the electorate is to ignore the will of the people as you interpret it through polling data essentially, what is an actual progressive vision of changing the US electoral system? Is it election finance, is it third party activism?
CHOMSKY: We have models right in front of us. Like pick, say, Bolivia, the poorest county in South America. They had a democratic election a couple of years ago that you can’t even dream about in the US. It’s kind of interesting it’s not discussed; it’s a real democratic election.
A large majority of the population became organised and active for the first time in history and elected someone from their own ranks on crucial issues that everyone knew about – control of resource, cultural rights, issues of justice, you know, really serious issues.
And, furthermore, they didn’t just do it on election day by pushing a button, they’ve been struggling about these things for years.
A couple of years before this they managed to drive Bechtel and the World Bank out of the country when they were trying to privatise the war. It was a pretty harsh struggle and a lot of people were killed.
Well, they reached a point where they finally could manifest this through the electoral system – they didn’t have to change the electoral laws, they had to change the way the public acts. And that’s the poorest country in South America.
Actually if we look at the poorest country in the hemisphere – Haiti – the same thing happened in 1990. You know, if peasants in Bolivia and Haiti can do this, it’s ridiculous to say we can’t.
AL: The Democrats in this election campaign have been talking a lot, maybe less so more recently, about withdrawing from Iraq.
What are the chances that a new president will significantly change course on the occupation and might there be any change for the people of Iraq as a result of the electoral moment in the US?
CHOMSKY: Well, one of the few journalists who really covers Iraq intimately from inside is Nir Rosen, who speaks Arabic and passes for Arab, gets through society, has been there for five or six years and has done wonderful reporting. His conclusion, recently published, as he puts it, is there are no solutions.
This has been worse than the Mongol invasions of the 13th century – you can only look for the least bad solution but the country is destroyed.
The war on Iraq has been a catastrophe, Chomsky says [AFP]
And it has in fact been catastrophic. The Democrats are now silenced because of the supposed success of the surge which itself is interesting, it reflects the fact that there’s no principled criticism of the war – so if it turns out that your gaining your goals, well, then it was OK.We didn’t act that way when the Russians invaded Chechnya and, as it happens, they’re doing much better than the US in Iraq.
In fact what’s actually happening in Iraq is kind of ironic. The Iraqi government, the al-Maliki government, is the sector of Iraqi society most supported by Iran, the so-called army – just another militia – is largely based on the Badr brigade which is trained in Iran, fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq war, was part of the hated Revolutionary Guard, it didn’t intervene when Saddam was massacring Shiites with US approval after the first Gulf war, that’s the core of the army.
The figure who is most disliked by the Iranians is of course Muqtada al-Sadr, for the same reason he’s disliked by the Americans – he’s independent.
If you read the American press, you’d think his first name was renegade or something, it’s always the “renegade cleric” or the “radical cleric” or something – that’s the phrase that means he’s independent, he has popular support and he doesn’t favour occupation.
Well, the Iranian government doesn’t like him for the same reason. So, they [Iran] are perfectly happy to see the US institute a government that’s receptive to their influence and for the Iraqi people it’s a disaster.
And it’ll become a worse disaster once the effects of the warlordism and tribalism and sectarianism sink in more deeply.
Americans don’t like to look at their bloody history, their bloody leaders, their bloody genocides. In fact, many liberals think it their calling to ask for even more bloody military interventions, all in the name of our supposed national goodness.
Instead of building a real Movement to end US militarism, they tell us the problem is that we merely need to make our interventionism ‘humanitarian’ oriented, as if that would be a solution to the world poverty, misery, and chaos our corporate, government, and military leaders preside over! They forget about places like Peru, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Vietnam, to name just a few locales that we as a people have helped our elites torture and occupy.
Over at the local idiotic Justice and Peace Commission’s HQ, the paid staff and preacher jefe on top are all busy with building something they call a summer ‘Peace Camp’ for children (Vacation Bible School). There, they plan to preach the mantra they call ‘nonviolence’ to a very select few kids. This is inactivity they substitute for real activism, where they would have to talk to the general public about places like Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Haiti. There at ‘Bible School’, the kids will never hear of places like Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Peru, sites of bloody US atrocity and torture. The liberal ‘peace’ salaried workers will help blab on to the kids about turning the other cheek, etc.
Why won’t the Peace and Justice group tell the kids the real story? Why won’t they tell the kids about the unearthing of thousands of graves of other children, all murdered by a US campaign to terrorize an entire country… Peru? What a moral failure these ‘peace’ people are! They not only do not speak truth to power, they do not even speak truth to their own kids!
Yes, the US government-Peruvian government killed tens of thousands in the ’80s. Yes, Kids, your moms and dads paid the taxes for these massacres to happen, and voted for the Democrats and Republicans that authorized it. The blood of these dead kids, just like the dead kids of Gaza, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq are your responsibility, and the responsibility of your sheep-like parents. Are you going to let these atrocities continue without trying to do something to stop them?
Peruvians seek relatives in mass grave Our tax dollars should go to help these people find their relatives killed by the Pentagon. Shame on us as a society for playing dumb all the time.
And shame on the liberal Democratic Party voters for being some of the worst offenders in that regard. You know that your party is a war party alongside the Republicans, yet all the time you mouth to us the necessity of voting for them. Shame on you. Shame on you for demobilizing the protests against The War. These Peruvian graves are your fault, just as much as they are the fault of all those who vote Republcian. Iraq is your fault, the Clinton’s fault, Al Gore’s fault. You have blood on your voting hands.