Z Magazine October 2011 issue

Z MAGAZINE

VOLUME 24

NUMBER 10

2011

Z MAGAZINE is an independent magazine of critical thinking on political, cultural, social, and economic life in the U.S. It sees the racial, gender, class, and political dimensions of personal life as fundamental to understanding and improving contemporary circumstances; and it aims to assist activist efforts for a better future. Z Magazine is a project of Z Communications (www.zcommunications.org). Other projects include: ZNet, Z Media Institute, and Z Video Productions. Z Magazine (ISSN 1056-5507) is published monthly except for a combined issue in July/August (Vol 7/8) by the Institute for Social and Cultural Communications. Copyright © 2011 by The Institute for Social and Cultural Communications, part of the Institute for Social and Cultural Change Inc., Cambridge, MA. Periodical postage paid at Woods Hole, MA ,and at additional mail offices. POSTMASTER: Send address corrections to Z Magazine’s main office: 18 Millfield Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543. Circulation office at 47 Barrows Street, Dedham, MA 02026. Statement of Ownership: Publisher: Lydia Sargent; Managing Editor: Eric Sargent. Total press run this issue: 6,071; Paid Sales to dealers: 2,000; Mail subscriptions: 3,828; Free distribution: 143; Returns from agents: 100; Total: 6,071.

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Table Of Contents/October 2011 Net Briefs

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Items of interest from the Internet

Commentary Obama’s Jobs Proposal Jack Rasmus on more of the same on the job front ENVIRONMENTAL TIDBITS: A Republican War on the Environment Don Monkerud on the many regulations the GOP is attempting to block MIDEAST REPORT: U.S.-Arab Disconnect: Revolutions Restate Region’s Priorities Ramzy Baroud on U.S. commitment to failed policies v. the Arab Spring FOG WATCH: Assassination Rights Edward S. Herman on Washington as assassination central CONSERVATIVE WATCH: The Chronicles of Christian Billionaire Phillip Anschutz Bill Berkowitz on a right-wingers incursion into entertainment, sports, etc. GAY & LESBIAN COMMUNITY NOTES: What Happened to Queer Anarchism? Michael Bronski looks at connections between gay liberation and anarchism WATER WARS: Water Rights Erica Carlino on stopping the privatization of water ECONOMIC NEWS:

Activism The San Jose Project Ed Williams on challenging Fortuna Silver Mines in Mexico NUCLEAR FALLOUT: Nuclear Battle in Georgia John Raymond on resistance to plans to build two more reactors LABOR ORGANIZING: Labor Must Play Its “Wild Card” Roger Bybee outlines a four point plan for increased labor militancy MINING DISASTERS:

Features Court Allows U.S. Citizens to Sue Rumsfeld for Torture Stephen Bergstein on an unprecedented ruling CLASS WAR: The Filthy Rich Paul Street on the mass ignorance and mythology that protects the wealthy POWER STRUGGLE: “Soft Power” in the Middle East Anthony B. Newkirk on U.S. motives and the future of uprisings MILITARISM: The World of Drones Tim Coles on the U.S. quest for Full Spectrum Dominance LAW REVIEW:

Book Reviews Anti-Capitalism by Ezequiel Adamovsky Review by Henry Milne Refusing to be Enemies by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta Review by Jim Miles Revolutionary Doctors By Steve Brouwer Review by Don Fitz Smeltertown by Monica Perales Review by Gabriel San Roman Tonight No Poetry Will Serve by Adrienne Rich Review by Gregg Mosson

Zaps

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16 16 18 20

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NET BRIEFS Labor Takes A Stand

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he website www.thestand.org sent “Here’s Why Longshore Workers in Longview Are So Angry” by David Groves. The article describes a major labor dispute in Washington State that has “simmered for months at the Port of Longview.” The dispute has led to work shutdowns at ports up and down the Washington coast. EGT Development is a joint venture of Japan-based Itochu Corp, South Korea’s STX Pan Ocean and St. Louis-based Bunge North America. Like many corporations, EGT got a special state tax exemption and a lease from the Port of Longview to build a $200 million grain terminal there. The government even seized adjacent land for the project. Despite high unemployment and the availability of hundreds of skilled union building trades workers in the area, EGT imported the majority of its construction crews from communities out-of-state and did not pay area standard wages. After the terminal was built, EGT decided to ignore the Port of Longview’s contract with ILWU Local 21 to hire union labor on its leased site. Instead, the multinational hired non-union workers, claiming it would save the company $1 million a year (a figure the company admitted had been plucked from the sky). EGT also sued the Port, arguing it was not bound by the ILWU contract. For months, ILWU members picketed EGT, attempting to pressure the company to negotiate. The protests gradually grew in size as EGT refused to meet with the union, culminating in a major rally on June 3, when more than 1,000 ILWU supporters from Washington to California rallied outside EGT’s headquarters in downtown Portland. The dispute escalated at a July 11 protest, when members tore down a chain-link gate and stormed the EGT grain terminal. About 100 union dock workers, including union leaders, were cited and arrested. On July 2

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14, hundreds of union dock workers crowded onto railroad tracks to block a train from delivering grain to the EGT terminal. The company then made a surprise announcement that it would hire a unionized subcontractor to run the terminal. EGT signed an agreement with Federal Waybased General Construction Company, a subsidiary of Kiewit, to operate the terminal with union members from the Portlandbased International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701, attempting to pit union members against each other. On September 7, when some 400 ILWU members stood on the railroad tracks for about four hours to block a train from delivering grain, the train passed through after protesters were confronted by 50 police officers in riot gear. ILWU President Robert McEllrath, who attended the protest, was detained by police, escalating

The dispute escalated at a July 11 protest, when members tore down a chain-link gate and stormed the EGT grain terminal tensions between protesters and police officers. In the confrontation that followed, police beat protesters with clubs and used pepper spray to disperse the crowd. Early the next day, hundreds of ILWU members and their supporters reportedly stormed the EGT terminal at the Port of Long view, broke down the gates, overpowered security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain. David Groves sums up the situation: “A taxpayer-subsidized international conglomerate, which is operating on public property, is suing the public so it can avoid paying the area’s standard wages and undercut its competitors that do. Then, it exacerbated tensions with the local labor community by importing union workers from another jurisdiction to cross the

picket lines. That’s why ILWU members are angry....”

Voting Rights and RightWing Pundits

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rom Facing South, the newsletter of www.southernstudies. org, comes this item: “Should the poor be allowed to vote?” by Chris Kromm. It seems recently, rightwing pundit Matthew Vadum wrote a piece in American Thinker titled, “Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American.” The piece asks why left-wing activists campaign to register the poor to vote? Vadum’s answer: “Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.... Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country—which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.” Rush Limbaugh seems to agree with Vadum. In December 2010, commenting on a news report about people lining up for housing assistance, Limbaugh asked: “If people can’t even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote?”

Human Rights & Wrongs

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rom www.freedomarchives.org comes the news that Leonard Peltier, an indigenous rights activist jailed in the United States for decades, has received the first Mario Benedetti Foundation’s international human rights prize. The group called Peltier the longest serving political prisoner in the Americas—Peltier turned 67 on September 12. (The Mario Benedetti Foundation was set up to support human rights and cul-

NET BRIEFS tural causes in synch with the work of the Uruguayan writer who died in 2009.) . A statement from the foundation described “Peltier [as] a symbol of resistance to repressive state policies by the United States, where there are people in jail for ethnic, racial, ideological, and religious reasons.” Peltier, whose family is indigenous Chippewa and Lakota, fled to Canada after the shooting and was later extradited. He was convicted, in part, based on the testimony of Myrtle Poor Bear, who claimed she was his girlfriend and that she witnessed the shootings. Poor Bear admitted later she was pressured to make the testimony.

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uman-wrongs-watch.net reports on the situation in Kibera, Nairobi, one of the biggest slums in the world and East Africa’s largest urban settlement. Over one million people struggle daily to meet basic needs such as access to water, nutrition and sanitation. In this community lacking education and opportunities, women and girls are most affected by poverty. Violence against women, rape, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, female genital mutilation, poverty, sexual abuse, unequal access to education, and lack of reproductive health care are some of the issues women face daily. One-fifth of the population of Kibera lives with HIV and at least 50,000 children are orphaned by AIDS. According to the organization Carolina for Kibera, young women in slums aged 15-24 are contracting HIV at five times the rate of their male counterparts.

Jobs

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avid Swanson (warisacrime. org) sent his commentary, “I Just Found 29 Million Jobs.” Says Swanson: No, not 29 million job offers. I just spotted an easy way to create 29 million jobs, one for every unemployed or underemployed U.S. worker.... I saw all the

reports on the $60 billion “wasted” by the Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan. This started me thinking. Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe looked at that $60 billion and asked what else could

Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There’s an additional 400,000 jobs.... have been done with it. Drawing on a 2009 study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), they concluded that instead, we might have created 193,000 jobs. That is to say, given all the military and contractor jobs that in fact were created for the U.S. workforce by that $60 billion, we could have created 193, 000 more jobs. This is, in fact, the tradeoff found in the 2009 study between military spending (not even “wasted” military spending) and tax cuts for working people. There are some other calculations in the same study, however. If we had spent that $60 billion on clean energy, we would have created (directly or indirectly) 330,000 more jobs. If we’d spent it on health care, we’d have created 480,000 more jobs. And if we’d spent it on education, we’d have created 1.05 million more jobs. But isn’t it strange to make this calculation using the $60 billion that was supposedly wasted, rather than the $1.2 trillion that has been spent in total on two wars that a majority says should be ended and should never have begun? But this is all looking at the past. What about going forward? Well, I also noticed Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s calculation that $1.8 trillion could be saved over 10 years by ending the wars now.... Of the $1.2 trillion spent each year now on the mili-

tary, about $700 billion goes through the Department of Defense.... Let’s say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That’s 2.9 million each year. Here’s one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There’s an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There’s another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane.”

Tar Sands

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ortside.org reports on a civil disobedience at the White House from August 20-September 3 where large numbers of people were arrested for protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would transport oil from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to American refineries at the Gulf of Mexico. Digging up new sources of fossil fuels will inevitably increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and result in higher carbon emissions than even conventional oil. On June 15, the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Panel approved a bill to expedite the decision on the pipeline, possibly trying to rush it through before adequate environmental impact assessments are completed. Tar sands (aka oil sands) are unconventional deposits of petroleum containing bitumen, a very viscous form of petroleum. Alberta, Canada contains the largZ MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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NET BRIEFS est deposits of crude bitumen in the world, the biggest of which are the Athabasca tar sands. Tar sands mining operations involve clearing trees and brush from a site and removing the soil that sits on top of the deposit. In Alberta, this results in significant destruction of the boreal forest. Building the Keystone pipeline to exploit an unconventional source of fossil fuels is a step in the wrong direction. More protests are planned.

Uprising: Chile

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hile has “really woken from its long, anesthetized, ‘centerleft’ induced slumber,” writes Dan Morgan in “Chile Awakes,” a news note sent by portside.org. Dozens of university faculties and secondary school students have been on strike for three months, often combined with sit-in occupations. The market model of education is being actively rejected by virtually all organizations of students, teachers, and parents. On August 4, the government decreed “enough was enough” and banned two planned marches in Santiago. The result: hundreds of tear gas bombs choking the center of the city and the first of weekly protests, banging of pots and pans on a massive scale. Since then, there have been marches in almost all provincial capitals. On August 21, close to a million people marched to a concert in Santiago’s biggest park. On August 24 and 25, the Trade Union Confederation CUT called for a general strike for labor, social, and economic reforms. The movement continues to grow. Linked to the demand for an end to the market system of education, other demands are gaining support: n Re-nationalization of copper production (70 percent of production is private) n Thorough tax reform, to change Chile’s incredibly regressive tax regime 4

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n Plebiscite to decide on free education n Constituent assembly to plan a new constitution.

The government eventually responded to the protests by announcing measures to try to stop the protests. Some money was found in order to reduce the interest rate paid on student loans to 2 percent (from 5.6 percent) and to give scholarships to poorer students, which university and secondary student federations say are “totally inadequate.” The pro-market forces are showing signs of desperation in their statements and actions. The president of one of the two government parties has said, “We must not give way to a load of useless subversives.” Morgan concludes: “Victory may not come this year, but Chile is awake.”

Bill Bragg & Political Music

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illy Bragg (www.billybragg.co. uk) sent “Why Music Needs To Get Political Again.” Bragg refers to the recent youth/student UK uprisings and notes “How ironic that The Clash should be on the cover of NME magazine in the week that London was burning; that their faces should be staring out from the shelves.... The Clash were formed in the wake of London riots in 1976: the disturbances that broke out at the end of the Notting Hill Carnival.” Fast-forward 35 years to the present day. Much has changed, yet “we find ourselves in the same quandary.” The August riots of 2011 are another moment when society “recoils in horror and says ‘I don’t understand you’.” The disturbances stirred up a shit storm of opinion in the mainstream media, much of it from people who have no real experience of the pressures faced by this generation, the first in a century that is likely to grow up worse off than their parents. Though this

situation has been building for some years, the disturbances have created an opportunity for young people to provide an alternative commentary. Things are different, not least in the music industry. In 1976, there was only one medium—pop music —through which to speak to each another and the world. The Internet has changed that. Now, if you have an opinion about something, you can blog, tweet, and post your thoughts for everyone to see. It makes you feel like you’re making a contribution, but are you really? Nobody ever got rich writing snarky remarks in the comment section or got to tour the world performing to thousands of people on the back of writing a blog. Nothing beats the thrill of making an audience of 50 people cheer a line in a song that you’ve just written that hits on something that they feel strongly about. I can understand why young artists might be unsure of how to approach politics.... But making political pop should not be a matter of setting Karl Marx to music.... Pop becomes political when it stops being self-pitying...and starts to speak truth to power. Punk was born in a time of rising unemployment and stultifying boredom among young people. It contained a strong nihilistic streak that claimed to only want to destroy.... Yet, at its core, punk contained a revolutionary idea that remains relevant today: “Here’s three chords, now form a band.” Of course, it doesn’t have to be a band. Technology has put the means of production into the hands of anyone with a computer and some beats. The recent riots were a spark. What is needed now is an alternative commentary and new songs with spirit that tell us something we don’t know about what happened in the last weeks, how we got to such a place, and where you think we should be going from here.

Commentary Economic News

Obama’s Jobs Proposal By Jack Rasmus

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n his address on September 8, 2011, President Obama proposed a $447 billion Jobs Act. What we got from Obama was a 2009 Stimulus Light proposal, with all the problems of the prior 2009 stimulus package in the form of inadequate magnitude of spending, wrong composition and targets, and bad timing. First, on the matter of the magnitude of spending in the proposal. Put in context, $447 billion won’t achieve the job creation it claims. It’s once again too little for an economy the size of the U.S. and for an economy facing downward momentum at home and globally. In February 2009, President Obama proposed $787 billion in economic stimulus. Unemployment was about 25 million. More than two years later, after the $787 billion has been spent, unemployment (measured by the Labor Department’s U-6 rate) is still around 25 million. Why should Obama’s latest proposals, about half the size of the 2009 stimulus, expect to create jobs when the larger stimulus did not? Even more important, like the 2009 stimulus, it is overloaded in tax cuts. In fact, a greater percentage (60 percent) of the total Jobs Act is composed of tax cuts than was the 2009 stimulus (38 percent). The 38 percent tax cut in 2009 amounted to about $300 billion in total tax reduction. That $300 billion followed a $90 billion tax cut in the spring of 2008. Another $50 billion in tax cuts was added later in 2009-10 in various bills and administrative actions for a total of $440 billion in tax cuts. Add to that another $270 billion in Bush tax cut extensions for 2011, plus another $100 billion in this year’s payroll tax cut. Now add the Job Act’s tax-heavy $270 billion and we’re well

over $1 trillion in tax cuts. And there are still 25 million unemployed. If someone needs still further evidence that tax cuts don’t create jobs in today’s environment, just step back a decade. In 2001-04 George W. Bush passed another $3 trillion in tax cuts, overwhelmingly biased toward the rich and their corporations in the form of capital gains, dividends, inheritance, business depreciation, and other corporate largesse. Over 80 percent of the $3 trillion went to the wealthiest 20 percent households and most of that to the wealthiest 5 percent and 1 percent. What kind of job creation resulted? We had the longest jobless recession in U.S. history up to that point. Furthermore, most of the jobs created under Bush were in the Finance and Housing sectors of the economy, which were both undergoing a boom due to speculative excesses before an eventual bust. These jobs had little to do with Bush’s tax cuts, however. Instead, millions of jobs were being lost in manufacturing while the tax cuts were taking effect. In 2004 Bush also pushed through a bill to allow multinational corporations to repatriate their then-$700 billion hoard of cash they were keeping offshore in their subsidiaries in order to avoid paying the U.S. 35 percent corporate tax rate.

Multinationals blackmailed Congress to let them pay only 5.25 percent instead. In exchange, they said they’d bring back the money (saving 29.75 percent for themselves) and use it to create jobs. Did they? No. The money brought back was used to buy back their stocks, pay out more dividends, and for mergers and acquisitions. Now the same game is being proposed in Congress, except this time their offshore cash hoard is $1.2 trillion. How much more will corporate America have to be given in tax cuts to finally create jobs? Will the additional $270 billion proposed by Obama yesterday suffice? What’s the magic number in more tax cuts that will finally result in job creation? But Obama’s tax-heavy proposal is not the only problem. His Jobs Act is too heavily weighted in favor of subsidies to the states. The 2009 stimulus provided $264 billion in subsidies to the states. It was supposed to create jobs. It didn’t. Local government laid off hundreds of thousands of workers despite the $264 billion. Will the states get the subsidy only if they first prove they’ve added the jobs? Don’t count on it. Another problem with the composition of Obama’s Jobs Act announcement is that it repeats the promise of

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Commentary

trillion cash hoard, their $1 trillion in excess free Fed money bank reserves, their $1.2 trillion held in offshore subsidiaries, and the more than $6 trillion they’ve stashed away in tax havens around the globe, from the Cayman islands to the Seychelles to Vanuatu and, of course, Switzerland. Politics in America today sadly is not about what will ensure true economic recovery and give 25 million Americans a job. It’s about how to extend tax cuts for Corporate America and its shareholder beneficiaries and about how to make everyone else in American pay for their bailouts so that the corporations and wealthiest do not have to. Z

the 2009 stimulus that infrastructure spending will create jobs. In 2009 about $100 billion was allocated to infrastructure-related spending that was supposed to create 4 million jobs. That didn’t happen. There were 6.4 million construction workers employed in June 2009. There are 5.5 million today. There just weren’t as many shovel-ready jobs as was claimed. Construction and infrastructure jobs are long term. What is needed today is immediate job creation. Infrastructure programs just won’t cut it. Obama promised his proposals would focus on small business by subsidizing their hiring of workers for each job they create. But for small business to create jobs, it needs more than a partial hiring subsidy. It needs funds to cover all the other costs of production. For that, small business needs bank loans and for two years now bank lending to small business declined for 15 consecutive months after June 2009 and it’s not much better today. Obama and the Federal Reserve bailed out the big banks to the tune of $9 trillion in the expectation they would start lending. They didn’t. They still aren’t. Like the big corporations hoarding their $2 trillion and not creating jobs, the big banks are hoarding their cash reserves. Obama would have done better to propose the Federal government bypass the banks and directly loan to small business at 0.25 percent. After all, that’s the interest 6

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rate at which the Fed today loans to the big banks. No, I take that back. Actually it’s only 0.1 percent, and then the Fed pays the banks 3 percent to temporarily park the free money with the Fed in the interim. What a deal: the Fed pays the big banks to take its free money. In summary, what we got from Obama’s Jobs Act was more of the same. Of course, the proposed Jobs Act won’t pass anyway because the Teapublicans will oppose it. At best, they might try to cherry-pick out the business tax cuts and then add even more tax cuts. The day before the president’s address, the Teapublican candidates gathered to hold their latest debate. They stumbled all over each other to see who could promise corporate America even greater tax cuts. Rick Perry promised to end all corporate taxes. Rick Santorum promised to lower capital gains and dividends taxes to zero. Others proposed no income taxes whatsoever for earners of $200,000 a year. These same candidates, after proposing cutting hundreds of billions a year in tax cuts for the rich and corporations, will demand cuts in social security, Medicare, and Medicaid to make up for their ever-generous handouts to the wealthy. A real job program today would be proposals and programs to re-create, in 21st century form, a Works Progress Administration—paid for by taxing the rich and their corporations’ $2

Jack Rasmus is the author of the Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression and the forthcoming Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few (Pluto Press and Palgrave-Macmillan, January 2012).

Environmental Tidbits

A Republican War on the Environment By Don Monkerud

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s the nation’s attention remains riveted on the GOP attempt to downsize government, the Party was working through the back door to destroy environmental protections. The Center for Media and Democracy recently analyzed 800 bills supported by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This secretive group consists of big businesses and conservatives who influence state legislatures around the country to lower wages and taxes on businesses and weaken environmental protections that could affect profits. Undoing efforts to address climate change is a priority of ALEC sponsors such as Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, AT&T, and Peabody Energy. For example, they created a model law—State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives—that is being introduced by state

Commentary

lawmakers to curb carbon reduction mandates and overturn cap-and-trade deals. The GOP’s efforts don’t stop there. Because they believe private property should be the basis for environmental policy, owners would be the only ones protecting the environment. Toward that end, House Republicans created a rider for the 2012 appropriations bill (HR 2584). As the Senate would have to confirm the changes and President Obama would have to sign the bill, it’s unlikely that such changes will pass. Nevertheless, the attempt reveals the GOP’s plans to rollback environmental protections already agreed on, promising more jobs and economic recovery as a reward for such actions. “Many of us think that over-regulation from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is at the heart of our stalled economy,” Mike Simpson (R-ID) said. HR 2584 is loaded with a promise to business to end environmental regulation and leave only the profit motive to determine the use of land, water, and wildlife. By blocking regulations, the GOP would allow:   Automobiles to stop increasing gas mileage after 2016   Pesticide manufacturers to use false and misleading information on their labels and chemical companies and agriculture to dump pesticides into waterways   Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon   The cement industry to pump cancer-causing dust into the air   Increased levels of arsenic, formaldehyde, and other cancer-causing substances in the air, soil, drinking water, and sediment, as well as increased ammonia emissions from power plants   Oil conglomerates to ignore health-based air quality standards offshore and make it more expensive for citizens to challenge government actions regulating oil extraction companies   Increased storm water discharge from commercial and residential construction sites, mountaintop removal water to run off into streams, and prohibit the EPA from forcing Florida to enforce

the state’s Water Quality Standards

emitting for one year and bar lawsuits during this time

  Increased ash from the burning of coal and methane from manure piles

  Prohibit funding for listing or protecting any new animal species under the Endangered Species Act

  Lawsuits over grazing on public lands to proceed more easily, livestock to move freely across government grazing land, and preventing reviews of grazing permits

  Block any updates to the Clean Water Act and prevent regulation of cool water intake facilities   Limit public appeals of Forest Service timber harvest plans

  Alaskan western red and yellow cedar to be cut and sold for shipment overseas

  Provide financial breaks for mining companies and prevent any new hard rock mining regulations

  Unlisted endangered animals to be hunted and killed and wolves to be de-listed from protection

  Allow Texas to implement its own cap-and-trade system without Federal input

  Endangering bighorn sheep by allowing more livestock to graze in their habitat

  Prevent boat inspection safety checks on the Yukon River

  Eliminate the regulation of livestock waste runoff and disposal

  Prevent the EPA from adopting water ballast requirements that stop the intrusion of invasive species into the Great Lakes

  Allow greenhouse gas producers, such as coal plants, to continue

  Force the EPA to ignore Clean Air Rules for power plants and

In addition, the GOP would:

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ignore the public health benefits of the Clean Air Act   Block the designation of Federal land to be set aside as wilderness   Require detailed records to be kept and quarterly reports on any gas or oil permits not allowed

These efforts make it clear Republicans are ignoring the role of deregulation of financial institutions that sunk the economy and robbed millions of Americans of their jobs and their savings. They hope voters will forget President Bush and the Republican role in this disaster, blame the depression on Obama, and give them the presidency in 2012. They destroyed the economy once and they can do it again—this time taking the environment with it. Z Don Monkerud is an Aptos, Californiabased writer who follows culture and politics and writes occasional satire.

Mideast Report

U.S.-Arab Disconnect: Revolutions Restate Region’s Priorities By Ramzy Baroud

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s the Arab Spring continues to challenge dictators, demolish old structures and ponder road maps for a better future, the U.S. remains committed to its failed policies, misconceptions, and selfish interests. Arabs may disagree on many things, but few disagree on the fact that there is now no turning back. The age of the dictator—the Mubaraks and Bin Alis— is fading. Debates in the region are now concerned with democracy, civil society, and citizenship. The only Arab intellectuals who still speak of terrorism and nuclear weapons are those commissioned by Washingtonbased think tanks or those desperate to appear on Fox News. Put simply, Arab priorities are no longer American priorities, as they 8

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may have been when Mubarak was still president of Egypt. Leading a group of Arab moderates, Mubarak’s main responsibility was portraying U.S. foreign policy as the core of Egypt’s national interest as well. Meanwhile, in Syria, Bashar al-Assad was caught in the realm of contradiction. While desperate to receive high marks on his performance in the socalled war on terror, he still sold himself as a guardian of Arab resistance. When the U.S. took on Afghanistan in late 2001, the term “war on terror” became a staple in Arab culture. Ordinary Arabs were forced to take stances on issues that mattered little to them, but which served as the backbone of U.S. military and political strategy in the region. The Arab people—denied rights, dignity, and even a semblance of hope—were mere subjects of opinion polls concerning Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and other issues that hardly registered on their daily radar of suffering and humiliation. Meanwhile, shrewd Arab dictators exploited America’s obsession with its security. Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh had to choose between a hostile takeover by the U.S. to “defeat al-Qaeda” or carry out the dirty war himself. He opted for the latter, soon to discover

the perks of such a role. When the Yemeni people took to the streets demanding freedom and democracy, Saleh sent a loyal army and Republican Guard units to kill al-Qaeda fighters (whose numbers suddenly exploded) and also to kill unarmed democracy protesters. The straightforward but shrewd act was the equivalent of an unspoken bargain with the United States: “I will fight your bad guys, as long as I am allowed to destroy mine.” Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi exploited America’s priorities as well. His regime’s emphasis on the presence of al-Qaeda fighters in the ranks of the opposition received a fair amount of validation in western media. Qaddafi went for the jugular in his attempts at wowing the west, suggesting that his war against the rebels was no different than Israel’s war against Palestinian “extremists.” The strange thing is, the language spoken by the U.S. and Arab dictators is largely absent from the lexicon of ordinary Arabs aspiring for their long-denied basic rights. The third UN Arab Development Report, published in 2005, surmised that in a modern Arab state, “the executive apparatus resembles a black hole which converts its surrounding social environment into a setting in which

Commentary

nothing moves and from which nothing escapes.” Things didn’t fare much better for Arab states in 2009 when the fifth volume stated: “While the state is expected to guarantee human security, it has been, in several Arab countries, a source of threat undermining both international charters and national constitutional provisions.” A May Time magazine story entitled, “How the Arab Spring Made Bin Laden an Afterthought” seemed to celebrate the collective, secular nature of Arab revolutions when it reminded readers that, “There were no banners hailing Osama bin Laden in Egypt’s Tahrir Square; no photos of his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri at anti-government protests in Tunisia, Libya or even Yemen.” The truthful depiction, reproduced in hundreds of reports throughout western media, is deceitful at best. The fact is, the al-Qaeda model never captured the imagination of mainstream Arab society. Arab revolutions didn’t challenge Arab society’s perception of al-Qaeda, as the latter had barely occupied even a tiny space in the collective Arab imagination. Nonetheless, these revolutions have yet to challenge the official American perception of the Arabs. An “Arab Attitudes, 2011” survey published last July by Zogby International communicated unsurprising views of six Arab nations, including the fact that Barak Obama’s popularity among Arabs had sunk to a new low of 10 percent. When Obama delivered his famous Cairo University speech in 2009, many Arabs felt that U.S.-Arab priorities might finally meet at some points. But U.S. policy didn’t shift in any favorable direction. The U.S. continued with its wars, its support of Israel, and its old alliances with the most corrupt Arab elites. Arabs discovered (or rediscovered) that not only were there no meeting points between their aspirations and U.S. policy, but the two were actually on a crash course. U.S. policies in an oil-rich region like the Middle East involve the complete hijacking of Arab aspirations and the national interests of most Arab countries to fit U.S. priorities. With the help of Arab dictators, U.S. misguided policies brought untold harm to Arab nations. Now millions of Arabs, whose priorities and expectations were so completely discounted, are showing

they are no longer willing to accept that reality. Z Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is a syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.

Fog Watch

Assassination Rights By Edward S. Herman

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ssassination is as American as apple pie. The record-breaking case of assassination-targeting is Fidel Castro. The 1976 Church Committee report on “Alleged Assassination Plots on Foreign Leaders” listed “at least” seven attempts to kill Castro, but the book by Fabian Escalante, the Cuban former official in charge of protecting Castro, claimed that the number of tries ran into the hundreds. Duncan Campbell pointed out that Luis Posada Carriles was still living in Florida after his failed effort to murder Castro

like Israel also have such exemptions by virtue of the power of their protector (see Herman, “Ag gres sion Rights,” Z Mag a zine, Feb ru ary, 2004). U.S. aggression rights were made perfectly clear with the U.S. attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, which was as clear a violation of the UN Charter as Saddam’s 1990 invasion/occupation of Kuwait. In the latter instance, the UN rushed to condemn Saddam on the same day his tanks and troops rolled into Kuwait, and that great law-enforcer, the United States, rushed to oust him by massive force. On the other hand, when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, this was seen as merely a case of tolerable “birthpangs of a new Middle East” (Condoleezza Rice). When the UN came into the picture, it was more to protect poor little Israel from future pea-shoots from Lebanon than to protect Lebanon from current and future attacks and invasions by a state that had already aggressed against it twice. Even more interesting was the invasion of Rwanda by elements of the Uganda army in October 1990, two months after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. Here, as in Lebanon, the invading forces were supported by the U.S., so the UN imposed no impediment or penalty and, in various other ways,

...it has been openly acknowledged that the United States and its NATO allies have more than once bombed Kadaffi’s compound in Tripoli in an effort to kill him

(among his other terrorist actions) and Campbell noted sardonically that Florida is “a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their home” (see “638 tries to kill Castro,” Guardian, August 3, 2006). It would be a mistake, however, to think that Florida is the terror center of the world—that honor falls to Washington, DC and its environs. Florida is just one branch of the center, just as Guantanamo is one branch of a DC-centered torture network.

Aggression Rights

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t is, of course, well established that the United States has aggression rights and that international law applies only to others, although clients

aided the invading party and facilitated a genocidal process in the 1990s (which extended into the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Assassination Rights

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ssassination rights follow in the same manner, flowing from military and economic power, arrogance, self-righteousness, and client status. As of early September 2011, it is not clear whether Moammar Kadaffi is dead or alive—or, if alive, will long survive—but it has been openly acknowledged that the United States and its NATO allies have more than once bombed Kadaffi’s compound in Tripoli in an effort to kill him, the first incident occurring as early as March 20, Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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the second day of the war. This is by no means the first time that the West has tried to assassinate Kadaffi. The British and French both tried and the United States made an earlier effort in 1986 when it bombed Kadaffi’s residence in Tripoli, missing him but killing his baby daugh ter and many nearby civilians. Assassination of civilians violates numerous international prohibitions of such killing beyond military “necessity” and it violates a stream of U.S. executive orders that declare, for example, that, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” This is regularly ignored by U.S. leaders, hence by the media and by any potential theoretical national or international law enforcement bodies. The rationales for ignoring law and executive orders can be funny. We can go after Kadaffi because he is “commander-in-chief” of the Libyan armed forces, hence a military target. One exposition of assassination law notes that “it seems fairly obvious that eliminating Qadaffi will go far toward bringing attacks on civilians to an end” (“Assassination under International & Domestic Law,” on the IntLawGrrls website, May 2, 2011). This might be especially true if his elimination would have ended NATO attacks on Libyan civilians, which, along with those of

killed) was explained on grounds that the station served up state propaganda and was, therefore, a quasi-military target whose destruction would hasten an end to the war. Then, of course, U.S. wars are always framed as a matter of self-defense against the threat of weapons of mass destruction or some other threat to the pitiful giant.

Israel’s Assassination Rights

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r for our pitiful little client in the Middle East, which is a kind of pioneer in “targeted assassinations” and “preventive strikes.” Israel has been killing Palestinians in extra-judicial actions for many years, both in the occupied territories and in Israel itself. The Pal es tine Cen tre for Hu man Rights estimates 604 targeted killings of Palestinians between September 2000 and March 2011, plus another 256 “collateral damage” bystanders killed. B’Tselem estimates 228 executions carried out by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) between September 2000 and October 2006, plus 154 non-targeted civilians. This just scratches the surface of the forms of violence carried out by the Israeli state and its settlers against those who stand in the way. The IDF uses only rubber bullets in Israeli protests, but live ammunition in dealing with the Palestinians. The assassination programs are built on the foundation that Israel is confronted

Given the monumental scale of the violence and of the death and destruction caused by U.S. military attacks against multiple countries around the world (formally or informally, in uniform or by hired-hands), the reported deaths in Pakistan to date are relatively small, when compared to the deaths of 1 to 2 million Iraqis caused by the United States and its allies from August 1990 to the present...

the NATO-supported insurgents, seem to have far exceeded those of Kadaffi and his forces. Bringing a war to a quicker end has long been a rationalization for attacking civilians. During the bombing war against Yugoslavia in 1999, the stepped up attacks on Serbian civilian structures and civilian occupants was explicitly designed to force a quicker surrender and the bombing of the Belgrade state broadcasting station (16 10

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with “terrorists” who can be dealt with summarily. That the IDF is the operative body of a system of wholesale terrorism that daily violates international law is unrecognized, not only in Israel, but throughout the world. Similarly, the Israeli wars of aggression in Lebanon and the genocidal war on Gaza in 2009 do not elicit sanctions or war crimes tribunals or discredit the Israeli state or leadership. Its right to aggress and assassinate remains intact.

In 2006, the Israeli assassination program received the imprimatur of the Israeli Supreme Court, which found that the assassinations of “terrorists,” who had not been tried in any court of law, were legal. “We cannot determine in advance that all targeted killings are contrary to international law,” the court ruled. “At the same time, it is not possible that all such liquidations are in line with international law.” But the Court did make it illegal to carry out an assassination attack where more than one victim was unidentified and was possibly an innocent (“Israeli court backs targeted killings,” BBC News, December 14, 2006). Of course, the non-innocence of the properly liquidated targets had not been determined in a court of law, but this extra-judicial decision-making, which flies in the face of international law, was acceptable to the court. The court also required that, if feasible, the terrorists should be arrested rather than simply assassinated. If the target resisted arrest, killing them would be acceptable and assassinating them where an arrest was not practicle was also acceptable. This was a de facto “license to kill,” that would only put the killing establishment to some minor pains to keep the record clean and lawful. “Targeted Assassinations—a License to kill” was, in fact, the title of an article published in Haaretz on November 27, 2008 by Uri Blau, using some IDF internal documents that described how the Israeli Supreme Court’s assassination-approving decision would only slightly inconvenience the IDF’s assassination program. Blau shows that the Israeli military regularly carried out assassination operations, planned in advance as targeted killings, under the guise of planned arrests. Blau cites evidence that top Israeli officers approved in advance the killing of Palestinians defined as “wanted.” This has been a scandal in Israel, with the alleged leaker of documents (Anat Kam, then a 23-year-old former IDF soldier) under arrest and Blau, a refugee in England, fearful of returning to Israel. Needless to say Blau’s “License to kill” and its findings have not been widely disseminated in the press, nor has the freedom of speech scandal gotten much attention.

Commentary

The U.S.: From Assassination to Global Free-FireZone Rights

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ith its greater capacity to kill on a global scale, the U.S. “license” far surpasses Israel’s. Despite its serious domestic problems and resource scarcity for its civil society needs, the U.S. permanent war establishment is upping-the-ante in pursuing its villain choices across the globe. The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill testified before the House Judiciary Committee in December 2010 that the U.S. Special Operations Forces and CIA have steadily ex panded their on go ing “shadow wars” around the world, conducting missions in 60 countries during the Bush administration and as many as 75 under Obama’s. As Scahill added, the Obama “administration has taken the Bush era doctrine that the ‘world is a battlefield’ and run with it.” Based on press reports dating back to June 17, 2004, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (UK) estimated that by the end of August 2011, between 2,309 and 2,880 persons had been killed in the U.S.’s “Covert Drone War” in Pakistan, with airstrikes by remote-controlled aerial killers under Obama outnumbering Bush’s by 243 to 52. These researchers found the reported civilian death-toll to be between 392 and 783—though the actual civilian toll is likely far greater. The press reports which form the basis of this research tend to repeat the U.S. and Pakistani government line that every strike kills “militants” and only in exceptional cases are civilian fatalities acknowledged in the reports (see Chris Woods, “Drone War Exposed,” and David Pegg, “Drone Statistics Visualized,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, August 10, 2011). A photographic exhibit in London last summer by the Pakistani Noor Behram, titled Gaming in Waziristan, detailed the wreckage caused by the U.S. drone war. Behram’s theme, in his own words, was that “far more civilians are being injured and killed than the Americans and Pakistanis admit.” As he told the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont: “For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant. I don’t go to count how many Taliban

are killed. I go to count how many children, women, innocent people are killed” (“US drone strikes in Pakistan claiming many civilian victims, says campaigner,” July 17, 2011). A lawsuit filed in Islamabad against the retired CIA lawyer John A. Rizzo on behalf of two surviving family members of drone attacks accuses him of having played a role in determining targets for the attacks and thus deciding who should die. This and similar evidence in other U.S. free-fire zones —Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya (until the overthrow of Kadaffi in August), and elsewhere—stands in dramatic contrast with the reassuring “For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant.”

words of White House’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan, who said, in answer to a question on June 29, that in the “types of operations the U.S. has been involved in in the counterterrorism realm...there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.” During the same speech, Brennan previewed the U.S. strategy in its Global War On Terror for the years ahead. Unsurprisingly, remote-controlled drones and U.S. Special Forces Operations in different countries where no official U.S. declaration of war has ever been made were featured prominently (“U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy; Ensuring Al-Qaida’s Demise,” Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, June 29, 2011). Brennan was lying about the sure-sightedness of this method of kill. Six weeks later the New York Times helped him get-off-the-hook when he “adjusted the wording of his earlier comment on civilian casualties,” no longer saying that “there hasn’t been a single collateral death” in the past year, but that “American officials could not confirm any such deaths.” In an amazing gloss on the argument, Georgetown University Pakistan expert C. Christine Fair also told the Times: “This is the least indiscriminate, least inhumane tool we have”

(Scott Shane, “C.I.A. Is Disputed On Civilian Toll In Drone Strikes,” August 12, 2011). Given the monumental scale of the violence and of the death and destruction caused by U.S. military attacks against multiple countries around the world (formally or informally; in uniform or by hired-hands), the reported deaths in Pakistan to date are relatively small when compared to the deaths of one to two million Iraqis caused by the United States and its allies from August 1990 to the present. But perhaps the most important point to note is the institutionalization, growth, and normalization of the work of the U.S. military machine. The CIA has grown in size, especially in its killing activities, featuring its drone war management, which Gareth Porter contends is unstoppable because of bureaucratic imperatives and power (“CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs,” IPSnews, September 5, 2011). It is, in the words of one CIA official, “one hell of a killing machine.” However, it is probably exceeded in its death-dealing by the semi-secret Joint Special Operations Command, which “has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the 9/11 attacks” (Dana Priest and William Arkin, “‘Top Secret America’: A look at the military’s Joint Special Operations Command,” Washington Post, September 2, 2011). These, along with the Pentagon, have made the entire globe a free-firezone in which people are assassinated without trial at U.S. discretion. NATO has been integrated into this process, expanded greatly since the break-up of the Soviet Union, whose alleged threat was the rationale for building NATO. NATO is now stressing “out of area” operations that gear well with the U.S. “projection of power.” It was noted recently in a reflection on 9/11 that America’s wars have greatly increased rather than decreased since the demise of the Soviet Union and the ending of their supposed threat to international peace and security (see Greg Jaffe, “On a war footing, set in concrete,” Washington Post, September 5, 2011). But that seeming paradox rested on the belief that it was the Soviets who needed to be contained, rather than the United States and its allies. The latter still do. And, as during the Vietnam Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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war where U.S. policy—free-fire zones, chemical warfare, massive killings of civilians in napalm and bombing raids—created a steady stream of recruits to keep fighting the aggressor, so today the U.S. (and Israeli) killing machine continues to produce recruits and resistance to its “out of area” advances. As this is a permanent self-fulfilling enemy- and war-generating process, it is ominous and may be an Armageddon March. Z Edward S. Herman is an economist, media critic, and author of numerous articles and books. His latest is The Politics of Genocide (with David Peterson).

Conservative Watch

The Chronicles of Christian Billionaire Phillip Anschutz By Bill Berkowitz

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e’s been dubbed the “stealth media mogul,” was labeled by Fortune magazine as “America’s greediest executive,” made Beliefnet’s list of “The 12 Most Powerful Christians in Hollywood,” and has been described as “secretive” and “reclusive”—he reportedly hasn’t spoken on the record to the press since 1974. He’s Phillip Anschutz and he is one of the wealthiest men in America. Anschutz made his fortune in railroads, telecommunications, the oil and gas business, and the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). He owns the Regal Entertainment theater chain, as well as movie making enterprises (Walden Media which co-produced The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe); arenas (LA’s Staples Center); a number of sports teams (including one-third of the Los Angeles Lakers and stakes in the LA Kings and the LA Galaxy soccer team); and AEG’s concerts division which promotes tours for pop stars like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and Jon Bon Jovi. 12

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Anschutz also owns the Examiner chain of conservative newspapers, as well as the conservative Weekly Standard (bought for a reported $1 million from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation).

Anschutzing Los Angeles

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or nearly 16 years, from the time that both the Raiders and Rams left Los Angeles, the city has been without a Na tional Foot ball League team. Now, thanks to Anschutz, within the next few years that could change. In August, the Los Angeles city council “unanimously approved tentative plans by Anschutz Entertainment Group to build a new NFL-quality stadium on the site of the outdated and underused LA Convention Center,” Forbes magazine’s Christopher Helman recently reported. “The deal still requires a raft of further approvals before construction can be gin, but it shows that Anschutz is moving assuredly towards the goal of bringing pro football back to LA. And what Anschutz (net worth: $7.5 billion or so) wants, Anschutz usually gets.” According to Helman, AEG “would put up the expected $1.2 billion to build the stadium. It would seat 72,000 and could be completed as early as 2016. The only cost to LA taxpayers would be some $275 million in tax breaks.” Anschutz’s stadium plan was aided by the California legislature. As the Los Angeles Times reported in September 2007, “One of the last things law-

makers did before they adjourned… was to pass a measure that would make Anschutz Entertainment Group, owner of Staples Center, eligible for millions of dollars in state funds to improve the downtown area around its arena. “Through AEG, Anschutz controls 120 entertainment venues around the world, including Staples Center in LA—part of his just-completed $2.5 billion LA Live complex, which includes the Nokia Theater and a 1,101-room hotel tower.” According to Helman, “AEG, in partnership with Ryan Seacrest, plans to launch a new music-and-lifestyle-themed TV network that will bring viewers into the likes of LA Live, Shanghai’s new Mercedes-Benz Arena, and [England’s] O2” [arena].

The Odd Couple: Michael Jackson and Anschutz

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erhaps the strangest of Anschutz’s busi ness re la tion ships re volves around the late Michael Jackson. AEG was the prime promoter of what was to be the “King of Pop’s” comeback tour. According to Portfolio.com’s Matt Haber, the deal was “potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” as AEG Live “would promote the 45 Lon don Jack son events…at London’s O2 arena.... AEG was so committed to keeping the event on track, it paid Dr. Conrad Murray to act as the singer’s personal physician. Dr. Murray is…at the center of a police investigation into Jackson’s overdose from the anesthetic Propofol.” AEG Live also partnered with Jackson’s estate to release This is It, a movie put together from “more than 100 hours of footage of Jackson preparing for the concerts.” Since its release, This Is It has become the highest grossing concert film in history with over $250 million in worldwide sales and nearly $45 million in from sale of the DVD .

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ccording to newsmeat.com, Anschutz has do nated nearly $550,000 to political candidates and causes, including $301,000 to special interest groups and $223,000 to Republican Party candidates and committees. Anschutz supported Colorado’s

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anti-gay Amendment 2, a ballot initiative designed to overturn a state law giving equal rights to gays and lesbians. He helped fund the Discovery Institute, a conservative philanthropysupported “think tank” based in Seattle, Washington that promotes intelligent design and critiques some theories of evolution. He also contributed to: •

Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center, the New York-based Institute for American Values

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Enough is Enough, a conservative philanthropy-supported organization that campaigns for marriage and against single parenting, which claims to be “Lighting the way to protect children and families from the dangers of illegal Internet pornography and sexual predators”

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Morality in the Media, established in 1962 “to combat obscenity and uphold decency standards in the media.” Z

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering conservative movements.

Gay & Lesbian Community Notes

Whatever Happened to Queer Anarchism? By Michael Bronski

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hen I was writing A Queer History of the United States, I began to formulate the argument that some of the major impulses inspiring the LGBT movement had roots in American anarchism. I was surprised by this at first, but then it began to make sense. Mid-19th century political thinkers such as Ezra Heywood—a social utopian who argued passionately that the state had no right to dictate people’s personal, emotional, or sexual lives—argued for frank public discussions of sexuality as indispensable for attaining personal and sexual liberation. Writers such as Stephen Pearl Andrews, another social utopian who also

participated in the free love movement, argued that any state regulation of personal relationships, particularly through state-controlled marriage, was unethical and damaging. Andrews also co-wrote Victoria Woodhull’s famous 1872 speech “The Truth Shall Set You Free” in which she delineated a free love doctrine and claimed it as her constitutional right. Self-described anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman—as they resisted state control over the individual—called for a repeal of all laws criminalizing homosexual behavior and explicitly spoke and wrote about the political and social oppression of homosexuals. Clearly, so much of the LGBT movement—especially from the 1950s to the mid-1970s—was about getting the state out of the sexual and emotional lives of lesbians and gays. As a political philosophy and strategy, this dovetailed with anarchism’s demand for complete individual liberty. Some of anarchism’s basic tenets helped shape the ideas behind the homophile movements of the 1950s and the Gay Liberation movements of the 1970s. But why hasn’t there been more written about it? The one exception is Terence Kissack’s lively and highly informative Free Comrades: Anarchists and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895-1917. While some aspects of anarchism—particularly the insistence that the state had no business dictating an individual’s personal or sexual choices or actions—clearly informed LGBT politics, broader anarchist theories never really took root. This is, in part, because anarchism, despite its tapping into longstanding ideals of American individualism and freedom, has never become a vital political influence in the United States. While these ideals emerged and resurfaced in 19th century utopian communities—such as New Harmony and Oneida with their complex systems of political beliefs, sexual behavior, and radical ideas about individual freedom—they were almost always on the fringe of American culture and society. The Mattachine Society (one of the earliest homophile organizations) was founded by former Communist Party member Harry Hay in 1950 (who was forced to leave the CP because of his homosexuality) whose far left views

and strict ideas about political regimentation informed early Mattachine politics. Other early homophile groups retreated into assimilation politics that demanded acceptance, not radical social change. A similar pattern happened in the late 1960s. The politics of the Gay Liberation Front were predicated on the anti-war, anti-militarist, pro-civil rights, and anti-government positions of the New Left modified by ideas from the Black Power movement and second wave feminism. The youth counter-culture of drugs, sex, and rock and roll—all of which displayed anarchistic tendencies—also had an effect, but it was contextual rather then political. As in the 1950s, the LGBT groups that emerged in response to this radicalism—beginning with the 1970s Gay Activist Alliance to such groups as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign —were reformist and assimilationist. In the late 1970s, there were a few groups and publications that espoused a union of Gay Liberationist ideas within an anarchist context. The second issue of Gay Anarchist Tide (Gay Pride Day, June 1978) stated: “Have you ever gone to a gay pride demonstration and felt that there was no group you could identify with? Are you tired of gay politicians and straight Gay politicians? There is an alternative to NGTF conservatism and Trotskyite ‘radicalism.’ We feel that a strong anarchist influence within the gay movement is essential.” In 1979, issues of the Gay Anarchist Bulletin, the newsletter of Gay Anarchist Tide, contained collaborative work with the Anarchist Feminist Conference, the Association of Libertarian Feminists, the Gay Atheist League, as well as other groups. There is a note about a May Day rally against the reinstitution of selective service with the War Resisters League and other left groups. A spokesperson for the group read a statement that began: “200 Thousand Gay People in the 1940s were killed in the concentration camps of national socialism. Today, as 1984 approaches, we do not intend to be sacrificed in the concentrations camps of national service.... As Gay Anarchists we totally reject the ideology that our lives belong to the state.... ” Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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Issues of Gay Clone, published in June 1977 by the Gay Men’s Alliance at New York’s Hunter College, contained articles on anarchism, political analysis, poetry, and the gay community’s boycott in response to the Anita Bryant Save Our Children crusade. In “May Day Gay Anarcho Statement” the editors note: “May Day has been an annual event which commemorates the victories gained by the working class in their struggle for liberation. Gay people share the struggles and joys of this working class holiday. We are an integral part of the world’s working class, and we are part of the revolutionary social movement that challenges all forms of human oppression. We demand complete liberation and sovereignty for the individual and particular lifestyles. Gays have made great strides in advancing these goals.” The Storm! A Journal for Free Spirits, also based in New York, was published during this time and was dedicated to an anarchist analysis and history. Using the slogan “Anarchy is free love; gay freedom now,” the editors state in the sixth issue: “In all areas of life The Storm! advocates nonauthoritarian, non-hierarchical, voluntary association. Upon the basis of individual sovereignty, anarchists in the past have advocated free love, the abolition of compulsory marriage. This idea is just now coming of age. The logical implication of free love is sexual anarchy, the overthrow of all social regulation of voluntary sexual interaction. Hand in hand with sexual anarchy goes the concept of psychological androgyny. That is...considering no psychological or personality trait as inherently characteristic of either sex.” In “Where We Stand,” the editors write: “Government creates, and the 14

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government permits, the existence of fictitious “person” called corporations. These privileged collectives control the natural resources and financial opportunities upon which we as working individuals must depend for our lives and liberty. Corporations are state, not private, institutions and it is naive or hypocritical for libertarians to talk about a corporation’s rights of free association and private discrimination.” In the late 1970s, the Anita Bryant crusade—with its specter of child molestation and sexual abuse—pushed the LGBT movement into a more defensive position that reinforced its most conservative tendencies. Looking for social acceptance, rather than widescale social change, the movement coalesced around socially acceptable goals. Most discussions of economic justice were also lost as the increasing visibility of lesbian and gay life became consumerized. In 1981, when the AIDS epidemic began, LGBT organizing efforts were channeled into caring for the sick and dying and fighting massive social and institutional discrimination against people with AIDS. These social and political forces steered the movement away from its radical inclinations. What has been lost these days— when marriage equality has become the main focus and the repeal of Don‘t Ask Don’t Tell has replaced earlier calls of anti-militarism—is the presence of voices and ideas that offer alternative visions. Z

Michael Bronski is senior lecturer in Women’s and Gender Studies at Dartmouth College. His books include A Queer History of the United States (Beacon Press.

Water Wars

Water Rights By Erica Carlino

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oday millions of people in the developed world take for granted that they have access to water for life and livelihood, while others struggle for subsistence, as 12 percent of the world’s population controls 85 percent of the world’s water. According to the 2006 UN Human Development Report, people have a minimum basic water requirement of 20 liters per day. This estimate takes into account drinking and personal hygiene. If bathing and laundry needs were factored in, this number would rise to about 50 liters per day. In the United Kingdom the average water consumption is around 150 liters. In the United States, one person taking a shower uses more water in five minutes than the average person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day. If the average water consumption in Europe per person is around 250 liters and in the United States around 600 liters, then these numbers are in stark contrast with the 1.8 billion people in developing countries whose access is limited to less than 20 liters of water per day. Why, then, are so many caught up in believing that our water crisis has more to do with scarcity of resources than a distribution of them? The answer can be found in the current economic ideology of neo-liberalism. According to neo-liberal rhetoric, effi-

Commentary

ciency and economic growth is realized through the privatization and commodification of everything, including public goods. The problem when we privatize everything from water to mass transit is that it no longer becomes profitable to provide services to those who can’t afford them. That’s why a home in Arizona can use more than 1,000 liters of water a day keeping its lawn green, while the parents of a child in Mozambique struggle to keep their children clean enough to ward off infections and maintain their health on 10 liters of water a day. However, national water usage averages can mask inequalities. An article from the Detroit News reported that 100,000 people in Detroit, Michigan were without water because they could not afford to pay their bills. When IMF and World Bank policies call for efficiency, this does not necessarily mean a call for universal access. Many believe that something can be done to ward off the solemn predictions like that of UNESCO’s Third World Water Development Report, which predicts nearly half of humanity will be living in areas of high water stress by 2030. If water access were more equally disseminated everyone could have more than enough for their individual need. In fact, household water requirements represent only a small fraction of total water usage, usually less than 5 percent. Therefore, there is no reason for such tremendous inequality in access to clean water and sanitation at a household level. Beyond water use for life, most people’s livelihoods depend on whole industries such as agriculture and fishing. These industries are most affected by the deterioration of water quantity and quality. Such disruptions of water exacerbate the effects of droughts and floods. Furthermore, water contamination affects food production, thereby directly affecting the health of all living things. Another challenge specific to postindustrialization includes the misuse of water. It is diverted from agriculture to industry, creating threats of hunger and less food production in the country being exploited. For example, Coca Cola in Kerala, India, according to one report, takes 3 liters of local water to produce 1 liter of Coke. In addition to the use of land and water from poor

An article from the Detroit News reported that 100,000 people in Detroit, Michigan were without water because they could not afford to pay their bills.

countries to produce products that are largely consumed in wealthy countries, it is also common to find countries dismantling their environmental protection laws in an attempt to compete for foreign investment. Such deregulation has led to the depletion and pollution of a significant percentage of inland water supplies. In Europe and North America alone, since 1985, between 56 and 65 percent of inland water systems suitable for agriculture have been drained. Additionally, the water pollution created by industry has had devastating effects on the environment. A 2010 report in Global Biodiversity Outlook states that the number of dead zone locations worldwide, defined as coastal areas where water oxygen levels are too low to sustain marine life, have been doubling every decade since 1960.

Activist Prospects

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l though pros pects may seem bleak, fortunately, some progress has been made in the right direction. Activists like Maude Barlow and former Chilean Ambassador Pablo Solon have imbued civil society with a renewed hope over the issue of water rights in the 21st century. Their efforts, along with many others, helped to pass the UN Convention of Water as a Human Right. This convention obligates governments to ensure that people enjoy “sufficient, safe, accessible and affordable water, without discrimination.” Moreover, it asserts that water be protected and dis tributed across all nations. Although this can be seen as a success on the side of civil society, it is important to realize that the real work has only just begun. The

implementation of this convention is far from realized. With water scarcity becoming a global geopolitical issue, moving up the ranks of National Security Agenda’s in Europe, America and China, getting countries to comply with these demands will not be an easy task. Thus, it is vital that civil society remain strong in the position that all people and the earth have a right to clean water. Furthermore, transnational corporations, who ignore international or nation-state laws, cannot be allowed to privatize precious natural resources such as water. The time has come for all people, not just the very wealthy, to have access to clean water. Z

Erica Carlino is a freelance artist and writer. She currently works as a project manager for Cultural Center development at Fermata Arts Foundation. She holds a masters degree in Sociology and Public Policy from the Anglo-American University in Prague. Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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Activism Mining Disasters

The San Jose Project By Ed Williams

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n 2006, the Mexican government ceded over 143,000 acres of indigenous land to a Canadian mining company. When Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines celebrated the grand opening of its first Mexican mine in September, communities on the ground felt some familiar impacts. “We felt a ‘boom’ come from the ground and then there was this crack in the wall,” said Bernardo Vásquez. The cracks would appear, sometimes suddenly, sometimes over time as the ground quivered from explosions as the mineshafts were being hollowed out below. One of over 60 damaged buildings in the Zapotec village of San José del Progreso, Oaxaca, the Vásquez home is a modest one-room dwelling typical of the area, with a dirt road in front and a milpa, or small cornfield, in back. A menacing, jagged crack splits the mud brick wall next to a makeshift clothes rack. Above, the trunk of a pine tree serving as a roof beam is buckling. Vásquez points to a discolored spot in the corner of the room where water seeps from another crack when it rains. “We built this house 25 years ago,” he said. “I hope my house doesn’t fall down, but the cracks keep getting bigger. If the walls give way, where will we go? We live in extreme poverty. There’s no future for us.” Like most Oaxacans, Bernardo Vasquez never made it past the sixth grade. Income is irregular and sometimes dries up completely, so the family relies on its small cornfield in hard times. With no running water, the springs that quench the crops and animals are all that stands between the Vásquez family and nutritional disaster. “The mine is a death sentence,” said Bernardo’s brother Hilario. 16

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“They poison our corn and our cattle. They dry up our water. They bring in pistoleros to push us around. But everyone knows what happens when the foreigners come. We will shut down the mine, cueste lo que cueste,” whatever the cost. A dozen heads nod agreement. The family patriarch, Abuelo, or grandpa, mutters from under his cowboy hat that the Canadians’ industrial slurry pond—dug just a few hundred yards from the village’s freshwater reservoir—will contaminate the groundwater like so many other mines have done across Mexico. “God knows how many microbes I’ve drank in my day,” Abuelo says, “but these chemicals, well that’s a different question.” Talk turns to the nearly 12 million tons of waste the company predicts it will produce, as well as the villagers’ acquaintances from neighboring towns who ended up with nothing to eat and nowhere to go after gringo corporations finished with similar mining projects. Seven miles away in San Jerónimo Taviche, toxic byproducts from older mining projects poisoned the soil and groundwater. After losing their farmland, many residents moved to urban slums in the capitol city. “For years animals were dying in Taviche and the people didn’t know why,” said José David, a veterinarian in the nearby urban center of Ocotlán de Morelos. When a peasant’s cow took ill in 2008, he knocked on David’s door and asked if he would come take a look. “But when we got to the village, the cow was already dead.” David took tissue samples from the cow and water samples from nearby streams for analysis. The results confirmed the animal died after ingesting dangerous amounts of arsenic, cadmium, and mercury. Lead levels in the streams were well above Mexico’s health standard. “We don’t know the extent of the contamination because the government and the companies ignore us. We’re probably contaminated ourselves,” he said. At another mine site 45 miles to the north, Fortuna’s former partner on the San José Project, Continuum Re-

sources, contaminated the soil with heavy metals and dried up 13 of the 20 springs in the indigenous village of Calpulalpan de Mendez. Fortuna Silver has opted not to make its environmental impact study available to the Vasquez’s or the hundreds of other concerned residents from nearby villages, insisting that environmental concerns are unfounded. With little oversight in Mexico and no disclosure requirements in Canada, Fortuna is the sole arbiter of information. The company’s keeping quiet and the fallout has come in the form of roadblocks, sabotage and all-out raids on the mine’s headquarters.

Mining on Public Land

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few decades ago this kind of project would have been illegal in San José del Progreso. Part of an ejido—communally held indigenous land constitutionally protected by the land redistribution programs of the Revolution of 1910—the land around San José del Progreso was reserved for agricultural use by the community. But in 1994 President Carlos Salinas repealed those protections to open up the countryside to foreign investors under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Today ejido dwellers are still afforded some measure of control over their land—any industrial project taking place there must have written approval from the ejido council—but the land is no longer viewed as sacrosanct by government or business, even if it remains so in the eyes of indigenous peasants like those in San José del Progreso. Canadian corporations run 70 percent of the mines currently operating in Mexico. As gold and silver prices reach record highs, the companies are jostling for even more. Amid poor oversight and enforcement by the Mexican government and no accountability laws in Canada for its mining companies operating internationally, cost cutting at the expense of local communities is all too common. Fortuna never made an agreement with the ejido council, nor did it bother to fill local communities in on its plans before showing up with the rights to a

Activism

swath of public land five times the size of Paris. But in the six years of construction leading up to the mine’s grand opening in September, the company has enjoyed the full support of the municipal, state, and federal governments. “Native people have the right to be consulted before this kind of project takes place,” said Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez, resident of San José and leader of the Coordinadora de Pueblos Unidos del Valle de Ocotlán, a local anti-mining group. “We make our own decisions about our lands and our communities.” In 2009, Vásquez Sánchez and other ejido residents passed a referendum calling for the mine’s closure. If the mayor didn’t make the company leave, residents warned, then they would. The mayor didn’t budge. Hundreds of residents from San José and a handful of nearby municipalities set up roadblocks and sent the miners packing—peacefully, but not without ruffling a few feathers. Authorities soon restored order with a full-scale police raid. Such a brazen challenge of authority irked local politicians. “The mayor walked around with a sawed-off shotgun like in the wild west movies,” said a former soldier who drives a taxi in San José. Right-wing civilian strongmen soon showed up in San José to back the municipal government. Human rights groups have charged Canadian mining companies with violating laws relating to everything from workplace safety to forced child labor. But with plenty of spare change for the occasional fine from regulators and little media scrutiny, companies are often able to continue mining. In Oaxaca, dissenters tend to be the ones who go to jail. “These conditions allow the companies to get away with almost anything,” said Jen Moore, Latin America Program Coordinator for Mining Watch Canada. “The majority of the population has supported us from the beginning,” said Manuel Ruiz-Conejo, who runs community relations for Fortuna’s subsidiary, Minera Cuzcatlán. “We’ve been working in relative tranquility, because the population sees the opportunities this investment provides them in development, education and work.”

But residents say Fortuna uses these “community relations” programs to buy support for the project. “People who back the mine and the government are poor just like everyone else,” said a local community radio reporter. “But somehow they can afford new cars and nice houses. Their kids go to private schools in the city. The businessmen offer these things as incentives to people they think are sympathetic. Now those people will fight their neighbors to keep their nice things,” he said.

The Cost of Dissent

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he padre always liked to listen to the Beatles,” said Sergio Perez, the priest’s personal assistant. It was Sunday eve ning and the old mission-style church should have been bustling with activity, but a sign taped to the sanctuary door read “No Service Today.” Across the highway in San José del Progreso, police stood guard at the vacant city hall. Both buildings were without their masters—the priest in handcuffs at the hospital and the mayor and his health minister in the morgue. Father Martin’s office was just the way he left it the Sunday before, when he rushed out with Perez for evening mass in San José. “We were running a little late because we had to pick up two women for the choir,” said Perez. As they turned on the exit to San José, a crowd of people blocked the road. “I didn’t recognize any of them,” Perez said. A group of masked men with

guns rushed to Father Martin’s car, demanding he get out. One of the men pistol-whipped the priest, shouting that he was going to pay for what he had done. “We didn’t know what they were talking about,” said Perez. Earlier that day, a group of villagers had stumbled upon members of San José’s municipal government on the outskirts of town. The local officials were armed and flanked by civilian bodyguards. An ensuing argument over the government’s support of the mine culminated in a shootout that left five villagers wounded and the mayor and health minister dead. Mine supporters fingered Father Martin—who preached environmental stewardship and organized forums of scientists and mining experts—as the instigator of the violence. Now Perez watched in horror as the priest lay curled on the ground, taking kicks from the masked assailants. “I got out of the car and shouted for the crowd to help, but everyone just watched. It was as if they all knew in advance.” The men dragged Father Martin into a pickup truck and drove to a house down the road. As the crowd dispersed, Perez called the police: “Two officers came an hour later. I told them what happened, that they were holding the padre in that house down the street. But they wouldn’t do anything. They just left.” After tying Father Martin naked to a chair, beating him senseless, and threatening to set him on fire, the kid-

Activists during the 2009 takeover of the mine—photographer unknown Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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nappers drove him to a hospital in Oaxaca City where the police were waiting. The kidnappers handed Father Martin to the officers, who cuffed him and led him to the infirmary. There Father Martin learned he was being charged with instigating the violence that took place earlier. Police moved the priest to a jail cell downtown after his condition stabilized. Faced with public outrage over the incident, the state dropped the charges against Father Martin and released him. The Church quickly whisked him to an unknown diocese for his safety. There was no investigation into the incident. Though the identities of the kidnappers are widely known, they have never been charged. In Oaxaca decisions come from the top down, explained Flavio Sosa, leader of the 2006 teacher strike that paralyzed the state for nearly a year. Barring a democratic revolution, he said, we can expect impunity for businesses and repression for dissenters to continue into the future. “Sixty percent of the land in Oaxaca is public property. The government cannot continue governing this way, supporting this type of project, without running up against resistance,” Sosa said. What the future holds for the company and for the villagers remains to be seen. Z Ed Williams is a reporter at KDNK FM in Carbondale, Colorado. His work has appeared on national Public Radio and in Texas Monthly, the Austin AmericanStatesman, and other media outlets.

Nuclear Fallout

Nuclear Battle in Georgia By John Raymond

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ndeterred by the nuclear power industry’s latest radiological catastrophe in Japan, the Obama administration is moving to put the stamp of approval on a far-reaching nuclear expansion project that has raised charges 18

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of environmental injustice from regional watchdog groups who have been fighting the project for over six years. Once deemed the “poster child” of a U.S. nuclear revival by the Nuclear ...cancer mortality and infant mortality rates increased sharply after two existing reactors on the site went online in the late 1980s

Energy Institute (NEI), the Washington-based propaganda wing of the nuclear establishment, the project would put two more nuclear reactors on a site in Burke County, Georgia in a black farming community where cancer mortality and infant mortality rates increased sharply after two existing reactors on the site went online in the late 1980s. The project—put forward by the Southern Company, a U.S. utility headquartered in Atlanta for its Plant Vogtle nuclear station—is the furthest along the track for approval of 14 reactors proposed for 7 sites (2 per site) throughout the southeast. All projects are based on a new reactor model known as the AP1000 sold by Westinghouse-Toshiba. The AP1000 is on the fast track for final certification, but remains the target of challenges over safety design flaws identified by nuclear engineers in and outside of the industry. Despite the unresolved issues, the NRC is expected to certify the reactor before the end of the year, allowing construction to begin. The increase in cancer and mortality data is shown in a report commissioned by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) based in Glendale Spring, North Carolina and a lead member in the regional coalition opposing the Plant Vogtle expansion. The report, “Health Risks of Adding New Reactors to the Alvin Vogtle Nuclear Plant,” showed changes in health status before and after the startup of the two reactors. It was based on data for annual deaths between 1979-2003 maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and found: “The cancer death rate for children and adolescents in the 11 counties closest to Vogtle rose 58.5 percent, compared to

a 14.1 percent decline nationally. The death rate in Burke County rose sharply for all cancers, especially for blacks and for children and young/ middle age adults, while U.S. rates declined. In the late 1980s, Burke County cancer mortality rates were below the U.S., but became considerably higher.” In studies of radiation health risk, “childhood cancer is perhaps the most-studied disease, due to the increased risk from radiation exposures to the fetus, infant, and child,” the report stated. The report included data on environmental contamination based on annual reports submitted by the utility to the NRC. Data on selected water samples and sediment showed that, “From 1987-1990 (as Vogtle began operating) to 1991-2003 (during full operation), average radioactivity levels in drinking water, river water, and sediment downriver or at the Vogtle plant rose:

> Beta in Raw Drinking Water + 37.1 percent

> Beta in Finished Drinking Water + 17.8 percent, Beryllium-7 in Sediment + 39.5 percent > Cesium-137 in Sediment + 37.4 percent > and Tritium in River Water + 44.6 percent

“The report found that increases in average levels of radioactivity in the local soil, sediment, and water are roughly equivalent to the increase in cancer deaths in Burke County,” Mangano said in a recent interview.... This should be a big red flag for the continued operations of Vogtle 1 and 2, and for the potential startup of Vogtle 3 and 4.” Mangnao noted that the report “underlines not just the increases in local contamination and cancer rates but also represents a lack of public accountability by the public utilities and government regulators to the public. What’s in this report should be presented by the government and the utilities to the public on an ongoing basis.” A news feature aired on CNN last year (“Town fights new nuclear plants,” 4/16/10) cited Mangano’s report in a story about the plight of residents in Shell Bluff who have asked for—but failed to get—environmental

Activism

testing done to determine the cause of their high cancer rates. The story noted that a radiological monitoring program under Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy was terminated in 2004. Until DOE cut the funds, Georgia’s EPD published reports on testing results on water, fish, and other samples near state facilities that emitted ionizing radiation, comparing the data to background levels. Test results for Vogtle from 1995 to 2002 showed that it was the source of 2 to 50 times the elevation of radionuclides contaminating sediment, river water, fish, and drinking water. “The funding for the program was cut off around the same time we heard about the so-called nuclear renaissance and we smelled a rat,” said Bobbie Paul, executive director of Georgia WAND (Women’s Action for New Directions), which works on health and social justice issues. “We believed Southern Company didn’t want any kind of sampling or testing that would disturb this major financial investment that was going to double the size of Vogtle.” The CNN story said that DOE had been contacted and stated in response that funding would be restored, but to date that has not happened. “We look at Vogtle first through the lens of the environmental justice issue,” said Paul. “The people who live in Shell Bluff are predominately African American, they’re poor people who farm the land. They have very few services and they live directly downwind and downstream from both Plant Vogtle and the Savannah River Site, the old bomb plant. And they have cancers—pancreatic, stomach, liver, brain, colon cancers.” The Savannah River Site (SRS), which produced plutonium and tritium and other weapons materials from five nuclear reactors, is now the site of the DOE’s tritium extraction operation producing tritium for the U.S. nuclear stockpile. An estimated 37,000,000 gallons of high-level liquid radioactive waste from weapons production are stored on the site in 49 underground tanks (many leaking, and eight or more near or below the water table, according to a 2010 GAO report). “Tritium levels have been read on the

site at over 220,000 picocuries per liter when the accepted level is 20,000, and we’re trying to get it reduced to four or five hundred as a public health goal,” Paul said. “What I see happening in Burke County is another injustice heaped upon a community which has already had major injustices heaped upon it in the past,” said BREDL’s science director, Lou Zeller. BREDL submitted a further report citing radiological pollution from Plant Vogtle to the NRC last year and charged the agency had failed to consider “the full impact” of two additional nuclear plants on the site. They “would double the danger of radiation exposure, double the risk of nuclear accidents, and double the impact on future generations.” The report, based on utility data, said that the existing reactors discharge 10,000 gallons of liquid waste per minute into the Savannah River. “This includes over 1,400 curies/year of nuclear fission products and tritium and two new proposed reactors would increase this radioactive pollution by an additional 2,020 curies per year.” The report further noted that local residents depend on the Savannah River for fish for food. Testing has shown that river fish are contaminated with cesium-137. Tests in the vicinity of the Vogtle plant have routinely found cesium-137 in the edible parts of fish. Exposure to cesium-137 is linked to increased risk of cancer. “Radioactive cesium-137 is of particular concern because levels actually increase when fish is cooked,” the report said.

One study found that cesium levels increase by 32 percent when fish are fried with breading and by 62 percent when fried without breading. Zeller said the addition of two more reactors at Plant Vogtle would “double the danger of radiation exposure, double the risk of nuclear accidents, and double the impact on future generations.... The NRC seems to be immune to arguments about environmental justice. We’ve raised arguments on issues of environmental justice going back to 2006 and they were never even considered by the NRC. They were dismissed out of hand.” In early August, 25 environmental groups across the country filed separate legal challenges with the NRC over pending actions involving 19 reactor facilities including Plant Vogtle. The motions were filed following the NRC’s recent report containing recommended actions based on “lessons learned” from the Fukushima disaster. The report calls for regulatory changes in reactor licensing. In their challenges, the groups stated that under federal laws, “the NRC may not issue or renew a single reactor license until it has either strengthened regulations to protect the public from severe accident risks or until it has made a careful and detailed study of the environmental impl- ications of not doing so, the groups said in a statement.” Z

John Raymond is a freelance writer based in New York City. Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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Labor Organizing

Labor Must Play Its “Wild Card” By Roger Bybee

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s America’s working class struggles to eke out a precarious existence through the fourth year of the most severe economic downturn in 80 years, labor’s voice in the raging national debates on economics is almost inaudible and invisible. Yet labor’s message about the decline of real wages, the shrinking of middle-class job opportunities, the disappearance of affordable health-care coverage, and the offshoring of U.S. jobs is more compelling than ever. Polling shows that labor’s agenda reflects concerns broadly shared among the 88 percent of the American workforce not belonging to unions. Even before the Wall Street meltdown of late 2008, American workers’ real wages were 18 percent less than they were in 1973, as Les Leopold points out in The Looting of America. To effectively address economic polarization, labor’s efforts are far too heavily concentrated in Washington, DC. A presence in the national government can be indispensable, but la-

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bor is hopelessly out-spent and out-gunned by corporate lobbies and marginalized by the mainstream media. In sharp contrast, there is much more potential for positive impact in local communities where it can draw on the collective imagination and strength of its 15 million members. With greatly enhanced media capacity and assistance in coalition-building efforts, the AFL-CIO could create considerable momentum with a bold declaration of a National Economic Emergency and proclaim its intent to enforce a national moratorium against the highly-unpopular offshoring of jobs to places like Mexico and China. But corporate domination at the local level has been too overwhelming without political redress. Corporations routinely blackmail workers into unjustified concessions despite massive profits (which rose 243 percent in 2009 and 61 percent in 2010) through threatening to relocate workers’ jobs. The right to strike is now rarely exercised because U.S. employers, unique among their counterparts in other democracies, are free to bring in scab “replacement workers.” Joseph McCartin noted in the New York Times (8/2/11), “By 2010, the number of workers participating in walkouts was less than 2 percent of what it had been when Reagan led the actors’ strike in 1952.” With sharply reduced possibilities for gains from collective bargaining,

“Unions have turned their attentions to public policy,” labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein observed. “While unions have to legislate for the entire working class and not just their own members, there are problematic relationships with the Democrats.” However, this trend tends to turn unions into political lobby groups further detached from their members’ lives. Labor’s populist and broadly inclusive message is now outlined by President Rich Trumka, the chief officer of the AFL-CIO. A typical Trumka line: “So how did we come to the point where our country’s ruling class thinks that firefighters…and teachers and nurses are the problem and people like Lloyd Blankfein [CEO of Goldman Sachs] and Rupert Murdoch [owner of NewsCorporation and FOX TV] are the solution?” But Trumka’s voice is rarely quoted in major news stories on the economy. Similarly, the AFL-CIO’s intensified preoccupation with electoral politics and lobbying has failed to heighten labor’s leverage with President Obama or Congress, even when there were Democratic majorities in both houses in 2008-09. Labor has outlined one job-creation program after another, Trumka has repeatedly fulminated against the failure of the Democratic Party to stand with workers and asserted its political independence (with the International Association of Fire Fighters shutting off funds to the Democratic Party), but no positive response has been forthcoming from Obama. A corollary of this legislative focus has been a distinctly dependent relationship with the Obama presidency and the Democratic Party in general, despite minimal returns on key issues like the Employee Free Choice Act, job-creation programs, and opposition to “free trade.” It has also corresponded with a loss of labor’s independent presence as a central moral force in American society, stresses labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein in his book State of the Union. This alliance has remained despite labor’s repeated betrayals by its supposed allies.“Labor has refused to make an enemy of Democrats even when evidence is lined up in the opposite direction,” observes labor historian and sociologist Stanley Aronowitz.

Activism

The dangers of labor’s reliance on President Obama were shockingly underscored in the negotiations over the debt ceiling. Pollster and author Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress notes: “The debt ceiling deal has been struck and the score looks to be in the neighborhood of Republicans: a zillion, Democrats: zero.... It is perhaps the inevitable outcome of a process in which Obama treated GOP default-threatening tactics as legitimate and accepted the GOP framework that cutting debt, not creating jobs, was the country’s central problem. As a result, we have a deal that severely undercuts Democratic policy priorities and cuts government spending just as the economic recovery is showing signs of tanking.”

Drawing On The Wild Card

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o set a different economic direction, labor will need to draw on the rank-and-file in the workplace and at the local level, which Aronowitz has de scribed as la bor’s in dis pens able “wild card. This wild card suddenly appeared in Wisconsin earlier this year when newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker introduced legislation to effectively eliminate all meaningful rights to union representation for public workers. The response from public workers—teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, firefighters—was instantaneous as they began picketing anti-labor legislators and gathering at the State Capitol. The spirit of rebellion rapidly spread to private-sector unionists, university and high school students, and, eventually, to non-union mid dle-class cit i zens who saw Walker’s actions as a threat to democracy. The surge of energy in Madison produced extensive international media coverage, support from unions across the U.S. and the world, and a six-week siege of the State Capitol by crowds of 100,000 or more. The events in Madison demonstrated labor’s power, inspiring labor activists beaten down by a one-sided class war waged by corporate America. Along with initially building an impressive level of sympathy from the public, the Madison protesters quickly and effectively de-centralized their movement around the state with a set of six efforts to replace Republican

state senators who had voted to deprive public workers of almost all meaningful rights to a union voice. Polling in Wisconsin conducted for Build a Better Wisconsin showed a 66 percent level of support, running just slightly ahead of the 60-plus percent support for public-union rights shown in national polls by Gallup, the New York Times, and others. The labor-led coalition won two Senate seats for Democrats, slicing the Republican majority to one vote. Three Democratic senators challenged by the Republicans in recall efforts stormed to victory, giving labor six wins in nine races. Moreover, labor and its partners in a new coalition have built up organizational strength in six traditionally Republican suburban and rural districts where residents rarely heard discussion about the shrinkage and declining prospects of the middle class. As Governor Walker’s budget cuts begin to take effect, organizers anticipate new upsurges of public anger in areas far from urban centers like Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, and others. We Are Wisconsin has already begun to hear from citizens heretofore untouched by citizen activism who are forming chapters of We Are Wisconsin,” according to a slightly incredulous Jim Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor.

Labor’s Response

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hile the six-day sit-down of Republic Door and Win dow by

United Electrical workers became a huge news story in the U.S. and internationally, no further sit-downs have occurred in the U.S. In order to get any momentum going, workers must be persuaded that their collective action can win over significant elements of the community, generate media coverage, and exert pressure on the company to retain their jobs. This critical step has become more difficult in the face of incessant corporate-media messages about the inevitability and desirability of globalization (“Get used to it,” advised a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel news story). Moreover, the labor movement has generally reacted passively to management announcements of job relocations to low-wage nations outside the U.S. The rest of the labor movement must also be persuaded that fighting this instance of offshoring is important and winnable. Further, a significant part of the broader community must believe the shutdowns and offshoring will have a devastating ripple effect throughout the community and must understand that there is virtually no realistic prospect of finding new employers paying comparable wages and benefits. Staughton Lynd, an activist in labor-community coalitions to save the steel industry in Ohio in the late 1970s and early 1980s and author of The Fight Against Plant Shutdowns, states, “We’ve had a catastrophic failure of the trade union movement in dealing with plant closings in one situation afZ MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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ter another. A funeral director mentality has set in.” Labor needs to replace that mentality with a mindset that every shutdown will be fiercely resisted especially those involving the relocation of jobs offshore. Here are four critical elements for creating a strategic focus on local militancy: 1. The long-term investment of resources in creating a strong, national media apparatus. While the Right has utilized talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, various Murdoch papers, and a more significant presence on the Internet, the media resources of progressives and labor fall far short of the right’s media machine, says George Lakoff. “There’s no communication system on the Left. Who’s going to get the message out there 24-7 in the districts? Who’s going to fund that? Who’s going to train people to deliver the message?” Meanwhile, progressive foundations have generally stressed face-to-face organizing projects over the development of a liberal/Left message apparatus. “The building of a strong media network is vitally important,” says Lakoff. 2. Support for an Economic Bill of Rights to frame progressive activism. A crucial dimension of a labor resurgence is framing labor struggles in moral terms. For example, the union movement needs to popularize the idea that workers have made a huge personal investment in their jobs and workplaces and are owed a commensurate level of loyalty from management. Labor must argue that workers are far more legitimate stakeholders in the future of their plants and communities than faraway CEOs who may never even have visited the plants that they are choosing to shut down and move offshore. In stressing this point, workers can establish an alternative set of moral principles about the limits of what employers can do in the name of private ownership. One means of spreading the notion of economic rights for workers may lie in reviving the Economic Bill of Rights outlined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his January 1944 State of the Union speech in which he pro22

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posed a second Bill of Rights that would guarantee all Americans basic economic rights. One of the rights Roosevelt suggested—freedom from economic insecurity—is particularly important. 3. A declaration of a National Economic Emergency affecting all Americans outside the ranks of the very richest. The AFL-CIO—in coalition with respected allies like the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, La Raza, and other major national groups whose constituencies are suffering—needs to establish a new framework for discussing the economy in urgent terms. Hopefully, numerous city councils and other elective bodies would adopt the declaration. With the declaration, the AFL-CIO would dramatize the stark choices the nation faces in the near future for all Americans—both inside and outside the labor movement. On the one hand, the nation can either lurch toward a recovery built on a further-enfeebled productive base, renewed exposure to what famed investor Warren Buffett called “the financial weapons of mass destruction,” and the intensified offshoring of U.S. jobs. Alternatively, the nation could insist that corporations acknowledge this national emergency and act to advance the public interest or suffer the consequences from nationally-supported labor-community outrage. The declaration of a National Economic Emergency is a firm statement that labor and its allies will not permit major corporations to destroy America’s productive heart and the means of support for millions of families without facing militant action at both the national and grass-roots level. 4. The promotion of a national moratorium on plant closings and the offshoring of jobs. The AFL-CIO and allies need to establish, in line with their declaration of a National Economic Emergency, a complete moratorium on plant closings and the offshoring of jobs from both union and non-union workplaces. This moratorium would be a statement of determination to devote extensive AFL-CIO resources to assist local unions in building member mobiliza-

tions, coalitions, liaisons with elected officials, and media work. Staughton Lynd argues that the moratorium should also dis courage unionized workers from accepting overtime when they have fellow union members on layoffs. Americans have been infuriated and distressed by disclosures that since 2000, U.S.-based multinational corporations have been cutting 2.9 million jobs while increasing their foreign employment by 2.4 million (Wall Street Journal, 4/19/11). A WSJ/NBC News poll conducted in September 2010 showed that 86 percent of Americans “agreed that outsourcing of manufacturing to foreign countries with lower wages was a reason the U.S. economy was struggling and more people weren’t being hired. No other factor was so often cited for current economic ills.” While tepid legislation to discourage offshoring was defeated by a combination of Republicans, along with a few conservative Democrats, there is a vast potential for a massive outpouring of opposition at the local level. Pre-recession polls indicate that opposition to off-shoring is about 77 percent among Americans. “There’s a lot more unions can get through publicity campaigns than lobbying and campaign contributions to politicians and elected officials,” stated Immanuel Ness, former labor organizer and now a professor at Brooklyn College. Labor’s fight back efforts can be especially effective in medium-sized towns where there are a limited number of media outlets and residents are keenly aware of the economic dependence of the community on a particular factory or other workplace. At the local level, there is much more chance for labor and its allies to persuade independents and Republicans to side with the moratorium, as both of these categories show a high degree of concern about the loss of jobs to overseas sites. “The program should be a moratorium that encompasses even non-unionized plants. Otherwise, the federation and unions as a whole will be seen as a narrower interest group, who they are not.” Based on recent observations at worker-occupied plants in Argentina, Ness foresees “greater traction” for labor through outreach to workers who do not belong to unions.

Activism

Just as they previously assembled teams of people to help workers receive benefits and other assistance when plants closed, the AFL-CIO can develop and train teams of specialists ready to assist local unions with the media, coalition building, and strategy. But the purpose of these new teams would be the precise opposite—helping local unionists to learn media skills, build broad coalitions, and develop winning strategies. By creating these teams, the AFL-CIO will ensure that the lessons of various struggles against offshoring will be widely shared within the labor movement rather than each local needing to learn basic lessons on its own. Firms shutting down profitable and productive plants could be confronted by local mayors, state legislators, and congresspeople demanding to see the company’s books and investigating alternatives to the closing. This initial pressure can be followed by news conferences, rallies, and other pressures leading to non-violent civil disobedience. Corporations—whether unionized or not—could be confronted with sit-downs and militant picket lines when they try to offshore work outside the U.S. In such situations, workers might not gain direct leverage from occupying the plant, but the symbolic occupation of a plant might drive home to both the public and elected officials that workers will assert their right to make a claim on the plant in which they have invested so much. Moreover, workers and the unemployed can meet with their congresspeople and senators to demand support for legislation prohibiting corporations from removing equipment or demolishing productive plants with the potential to keep the facilities open. For example, several instances of profitable plants being needlessly demolished, with an interested buyer standing by, underscores the urgent need for the federal and state governments to develop task forces to prevent the further destruction of the nation’s productive base. Chris Townsend, national political director of the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers union points out that, “President Obama could issue an executive order to secure the workplaces so that machinery isn’t moved out and plant demolished.”

While it is hard to imagine Obama taking such an almost-unprecedented move, the consequences of plant closings and relocations have never been higher for both working people and Obama’s reelection chances.” “People would rise to this if the Obama administration showed that it was putting the machinery of the state to work for them and to defend their jobs,” predicts Townsend. “We are losing one industry after another and we can’t afford to lose any more.” In other cases, workers may find it feasible to re-start production through democratic worker councils. This strategy has proved highly popular in Argentina and Venezuela. This approach would represent a sharp contrast to conventional corporate practices and exert pressure on both corporations and the Obama administration. Aronowitz suggests that, “Workers could form a co-op to produce needed

products and ask for stimulus money from the government.” Local action can take a thousand different forms that can contribute to a renewed labor presence in local communities. But for such a campaign to be successful, it will require a dramatic kickoff independent from the Obama administration. It will mean demanding an end to offshoring jobs and a commitment from the AFL-CIO of staff and resources to carry it out. To move away from its dependence on the Obama administration and catalyze support both inside and outside the AFL-CIO, labor must recognize that the road to a more democratic, egalitarian society begins with engaging its members in fighting locally and nationally against increasingly rootless and ruthless corporations. Z Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based writer, publicity consultant, and former editor of the Racine Labor Weekly. Z MAGAZINEOCTOBER 2011

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Court Allows U.S. Citizens To Sue Rumsfeld For Torture An unprecedented ruling

By Stephen Bergstein federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that two U.S. citizens who claimed they were tortured by U.S. military personnel in Iraq may sue former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for violating their constitutional rights. The case is notable not only for the harrowing allegations of torture and mental abuse, but for the Court of Appeals’ rejection of the usual arguments against second-guessing military decisions during wartime. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court decides to hear the case, the plaintiffs will be able to subpoena documents from the government and take sworn testimony from government officials about U.S. torture policies. In the August 8 decision, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals lays out the factual allegations in explicit detail. The plaintiffs, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, in 2005-06 worked for a privately-owned Iraqi security services company, Shield Group Security. Vance became suspicious that the company was involved in corruption and other illegal activity. After he met with an FBI agent, he and Ertel became informants by sharing documents with U.S. officials and reporting their observations that U.S. and Iraqi government officials were engaged in illegal arms trading, bribery, and the stockpiling of weapons. They also reported that their supervisor was trading liquor to American soldiers in exchange for U.S. weapons and ammunition that the Shield Group Security firm was using or selling for profit. This is classic whistleblowing. Everyone loves a whistleblower, right? Evidently, whistleblowing was frowned on in Iraq. After the security firm began to question Vance and Ertel’s loyalty and confiscated their credentials giving them access to the Green Zone, Vance and Ertel appealed to the U.S.

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government for help. The government told them to barricade themselves inside the compound and that U.S. forces would rescue them. Instead, U.S. forces took Vance and Ertel to the Embassy for questioning. Then things got ugly. The Court of Appeals writes: “After two or three hours of sleep, Vance and Ertel, who were under the impression that they had been rescued by their government, were in for a shock. They were awakened and arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded, and driven to Camp Prosperity, a U.S. military compound in Baghdad. There, plaintiffs allege, they were placed in a cage, strip-searched, fingerprinted, and issued jumpsuits. They were threatened that if they did speak, they would have ‘excessive force’ inflicted on them. Vance and Ertel were then taken to separate cells and held in solitary confinement for what they believe was two days.”

Camp Cropper

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hen things got even worse. Vance and Ertel were taken to Camp Cropper, another U.S. military facility, where “they experienced a nightmarish scene in which they were detained incommunicado, in solitary confinement, and subjected to physical and psychological torture for the duration of their imprisonment—Vance for three months and Ertel for six weeks.” The Court adds, “If the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, two young American civilians were trying to do the right thing by becoming whistleblowers to the U.S. government, but found themselves detained in prison and tortured by their own government, without notice to their families and with no sign of when the harsh physical and psychological abuse would end.” The torture included techniques forbidden by the U.S. Army Field Manual and the Detainee Treatment Act. Their lights were kept on at all times, day after day. Their cells were freezing and there was feces on the walls. They were given a concrete slab for beds, but guards woke them if they fell asleep. They were often denied food and water and necessary medical care. Intolerably loud music was pumped into their cells. They were slammed into walls while blindfolded with towels over their heads. During in-

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terrogations, Vance and Ertel were told that if they did not cerns: “A suit seeking a damages remedy against senior of“do the right thing,” they would never leave Camp ficials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy Cropper. would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of Vance and Ertel survived the physical and psychological the validity and rationale of that policy and its implementatorture. They then sued Donald Rumseld, claiming he was tion in this particular case, matters that directly affect siglegally responsible for the torture. Of course, if this kind of nificant diplomatic and national security concerns. It is abuse had taken place inside an American clear from the face of the complaint that prison, the courts would not have to decide Arar explicitly targets the ‘policy’ of exThis was a remarkable whether this abuse was actionable under the traordinary rendition; he cites the policy ruling by the Seventh Constitution. The Eighth Amendment protwice in his complaint, and submits docuCircuit. Many strong hibits cruel and unusual punishment. What ments and media reports concerning the cases are dismissed complicates this case is the fact that the practice. His claim cannot proceed without on qualified immunity abuse took place in Iraq during wartime. inquiry into the perceived need for the polgrounds. While the Constitution is the law of the icy, the threats to which it responds, the land, certain public institutions are given substance and sources of the intelligence the benefit of the doubt in litigation. Courts used to formulate it, and the propriety of often defer to the judgment of prison and public school offiadopting specific responses to particular threats in light of cials in disciplining inmates and students. Courts are also apparent geopolitical circumstances and our relations with reluctant to second-guess military judgments. In the 1970s, foreign countries.” the Supreme Court refused to rule on the constitutionality Fortunately for Vance and Ertel, the Seventh Circuit of the Vietnam War. Under the Feres doctrine, U.S. serCourt of Appeals found a way around the Second Circuit’s vicepeople cannot sue the government over war-related inArar ruling. Unlike Vance and Ertel, Arar was not a U.S. juries and U.S. military bases are immune from most First citizen. The Seventh Circuit also took seriously its obligaAmendment regulations. tion to review Executive Branch policies and practices. More broadly, courts often refrain from ruling on the This was a close case, however. The Court of Appeals constitutionality of federal decisionmaking through the ruled against Ashcroft by a 2-1 vote. so-called Bivens doctrine, named after a Supreme Court Seventh Circuit Ruling decision from 1971 that held that federal officials may be fter working around the presumption against secsued for constitutional violations only in limited circumond-guessing military judgments, Vance and Ertel had stances. This restriction stands in sharp contrast to constituto navigate the qualified immunity doctrine, which grants tional claims against state and local officials. While the government officials immunity from liability if the law was lawsuits against state and local officials are governed by a not clearly established at the time of the constitutional viocivil rights statute, Section 1983, which provides for broad lation. The theory is that, in close cases, government deprotection against constitutional abuses, there is no correfendants cannot be expected to know that a court in the fusponding statute authorizing constitutional lawsuits against ture will find a certain practice illegal. Qualified immunity federal officials. In the Bivens case, the Supreme Court also holds that government officials need flexibility in maksaid that limited constitutional claims may proceed against ing good-faith decisions without fear that their conduct in federal officials if the victims have no other way to attain an uncertain legal context will be deemed illegal through relief. A constitutional lawsuit against a federal official will the benefit of 20-20 judicial hindsight. But the Seventh Cirfail under Bivens so long as the plaintiff can achieve a fraccuit said that what happened to Vance and Ertel was inhertion of the relief through other means, even if that relief is ently illegal and that, if the torture allegations are true, unacceptable to the plaintiff. Many injustices have gone Ashcroft knowingly violated constitutional law in permitunremedied because of the Bivens rule. ting the use of torture in the interrogation of detainees. Arar v. Ashcroft This was a remarkable ruling by the Seventh Circuit. recent example of the federal courts’ refusal to interMany strong cases are dismissed on qualified immunity vene in military and national security judgements is grounds. This is because some of those cases are so innoArar v. Ashcroft. In that 2009 case, the federal appeals vative that they raise novel legal issues that inherently fail court in Manhattan ruled that a foreign torture victim could under the qualified immunity analysis. Yet, in this case alnot sue the federal government over its “extraordinary renleging that the Secretary of Defense was responsible for the dition” program, in which detainees are sent to other countorture of two American citizens in Iraq, the Court of Aptries to be tortured. Arar, a dual citizen of Syria and Canpeals denied Rumsfeld immunity even though cases like ada (where he lived), was detained at Kennedy Airport in this are rarely brought and Rumseld’s attorneys argued that New York City, but sent to Syria where he was beaten with the legal landscape in this area was inherently unclear. a two-inch thick electric cable and with bare hands and inHow did the Court of Appeals get around qualified imterrogated about Osama bin Laden, Iraq, and Palestine. munity in this novel case? For the Seventh Circuit, it was The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that Arar was an easy call. The Court writes, “plaintiffs have articulated not entitled to his day in court because the case would refacts which, if true, would show the violation of a clearly quire the courts to review national security policy. The folestablished constitutional right.... The plaintiffs have pled lowing reasoning is typical when courts decline to review that they were subjected to treatment that constituted torture cases that implicate war-making and national security conby U.S. officials while in U.S. custody. On what conceiv-

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able basis could a U.S. public official possibly conclude that it was constitutional to torture U.S. citizens?” The Court added, “the wrongdoing here violates the most basic terms of the constitutional compact between our government and the citizens of this country.” Courts rarely address whether the Constitution prohibits torture against U.S. citizens. The question is whether the alleged conduct “shocks the conscience,” a legal standard under the Due Process Clause that serves as a catch-all when citizens challenge government conduct under the Constitution. Courts are reluctant to find that objectionable government action “shocks the conscience.” In order to prevent the floodgates from opening up new claims for relief, courts do not want to second-guess all governmental decisions, even if those decisions are unfair. But in this case, the Seventh Circuit said that “the physical and mental torture of U.S. citizens...is a paradigm of conduct that ‘shocks the conscience.’” Borrowing its analysis from cases that struck down inhumane prison conditions, the Court concluded: “If a prisoner in a U.S. prison has his head covered and was repeatedly ‘walled,’ or slammed into walls on the way to interrogation sessions, we would have no trouble acknowledging that his...allegations, if true would describe a violation of his constitutional rights.... The plaintiffs in this case, detained without charges, have pled in detail allegations of such severe conditions and treatment, the likes of which courts have held unconstitutional when applied to convicted criminals in U.S. prisons.” But the Court of Appeals still had to get around the strongest hurdle in this case: whether torturing U.S. citizens in a war zone violates the Constitution. And, as noted above, this is a Bivens lawsuit, which allows for constitutional claims against federal defendants in limited circumstances, usually when the lawsuit is the only way the plaintiffs can recover any relief. What distinguishes this case from those involving the unlawful treatment of American inmates is that Vance and Ertel were in a war zone. Aren’t courts reluctant to interfere with military decisions in times of war? Yes, but in this case, there is no way for Vance and Ertel to recover any damages for the torture other than the Bivens action. While the government said that these plaintiffs did have an alternative remedy in that they could have complained about the torture at the time of their detention, the Court of Appeals rejected that suggestion out-of-hand. Not only did torture emanate from the top, that is, from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, but “if, as the plaintiffs allege here, there was a problem stretching to the very top of the chain of command, it would make little sense to limit their recourse to making complaints within the same chain of command.” In other words, such complaints would be futile.

A Sweeping Defense?

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urning to the central issue in this case, whether torture claims against the military may proceed in court for conduct arising from a war zone, the Court of Appeals declines to defer to the war machine, reasoning: “The defendants’ principal Bivens argument is that, because this case arose in a foreign war zone, no Bivens claim should be recognized. This sweeping defense is proposed against a fairly 26

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narrow claim. The defendants are arguing for a truly unprecedented degree of immunity from liability for grave constitutional wrongs committed against U.S. citizens. The defense theory would immunize not only the Secretary of Defense, but all personnel who actually carried out orders to torture a civilian U.S. citizen. The theory would immunize every enlisted soldier in the war zone and every officer in between. The defense theory would immunize them from civil liability for deliberate torture and even coldblooded murder of civilian U.S. citizens. The United States courts, and the entire United States government, have never before thought that such immunity is needed for the military to carry out its missions.” The Court added: “The unprecedented breadth of defendants’ argument should not be overlooked. The defendants contend that a Bivens remedy should not be available to U.S. citizens for any constitutional wrong, including torture and even cold-blooded murder, if the wrong occurs in a war zone. The defendants’ theory would apply to any soldier or federal official, from the very top of the chain of command to the very bottom. We disagree and conclude that the plaintiffs may proceed with their Bivens claims.” This is great language for civil liberties advocates and those who opposed the war in Iraq and the use of torture in interrogating detainees. The government was suggesting that certain claims cannot proceed in court no matter how appallingly the plaintiffs were treated. That this language arises in a case against the former Secretary of Defense makes it even more noteworthy. Relatedly, while the government argued that this case would require that the courts intrude upon national security decisions, here again, the Court of Appeals worked around this tried-and-true argument. It may be true that courts do not typically intrude upon matters of national security, but that is no reason to throw out the case. The better solution, the Court says, is to deal with the exposure of classified information as it arises. Trial courts are equipped to prevent the release of classified information. The court reasoned that “denying a Bivens remedy because state secrets might be revealed is a bit like denying a criminal trial for fear that a juror might be intimidated: it allows a risk, that the law is already at great pains to eliminate, to negate entirely substantial rights and procedures.” This ruling does not find that Vance and Ertel were, in fact, tortured or that Rumseld is personally liable for that torture. All the Court does is allow Vance and Ertel to proceed with their lawsuit because their claims are enough to allege a constitutional violation. Still, this is an unprecedented ruling. Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, Vance and Ertel will be able to proceed like any other litigants in court, and they may presumably take sworn testimony from Rumsfeld himself. This decision confirms that, despite the conservative trend in the federal judiciary, judges with life-tenure who have no fear of political repercussions can still dispassionately rule against the highest-ranking governmental officials, even on matters arising from wartime in another country. The Court of Appeals’ ruling in Vance v. Rumsfeld shows that no one is above the law. Z Stephen Bergstein is a civil rights lawyer in upstate New York.

Class War

The Filthy Rich The mass ignorance & mythology that protects the wealthy

By Paul Street recent broadcast on the “Public” Broadcasting System’s “News Hour” reported some chilling news on American life. The top 20 percent of Americans, it turns out, owns 84 percent of the nation’s wealth. That leaves 4 out of 5 Americans to fight it out for little more than a sixth of the nation’s net worth. Most in the nation’s bottom 40 percent are getting pummeled in that battle with only 0.3 percent of the nation’s wealth, basically nothing. The PBS story, titled “Land of the Free, Home of the Poor” (aired August 16, 2011) may have understated the wealth mal-distribution problem. As of 2007, the leading wealth and power analyst, G. William Domhoff, notes that the top 1 percent owned more than a third (34 percent) of the nation’s privately held wealth. Worse, the top hundredth owns 43 percent of the nation’s financial net worth, including 38.3 percent of all privately held stock, 60.6 percent of financial securities, and 62 percent of business equity. The top 10 percent have 90 percent of stocks, bonds, trust funds, business equity and more than three-fourths of non-home real estate. “Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets,” Domhoff notes, “we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.” But the really super-rich are found in the top thousandth, not the elite hundredth. In 2007, the top thousandth received 6 percent of all U.S. income. The top five hundredth, with incomes of $1 million or more, got 13 percent

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of all U.S. income. The top 400 income “earners” averaged $344.8 million per person. Last year, by stark contrast, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the quantity of Americans living in poverty in the U.S. in 2009 was “the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates have been published”—44 million. The Census Bureau forgot to add that the official U.S. poverty level, based on an arcane formula (the minimum adequate cost of food multiplied three times) is an open joke among serious poverty researchers (try to maintain a family of four at the official poverty threshold of $21,954 in any major U.S. metropolitan area today) and that many millions of those officially poor live in what those researchers now call “deep poverty”—at less than half that level. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported last year, the number and percentage of people mired in deep poverty hit a record high in 2009. Nineteen million Americans were stuck in deep poverty in 2009, up 2 million from 2008.

Pavé Rings for the Rich

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his wealth and power pyramid has certainly become steeper and its poverty base wider since 2007, thanks to the Great Recession that began at the end of that year. The collapse of home values beginning in 2006 and the epidemic of foreclosures has particularly hurt the net worth of the middle and working classes, whose net worth is far more tied up in home ownership than in financial assets when compared to the rich. From 2005 to 2009, a recent Pew Research Center study shows, inflation-adjusted median wealth plunged two-thirds among Hispanic households and 53 percent among black households, compared with just 16 percent for white households, leading to an expansion of the black-white median household wealth gap to 5 black cents on the white dollar. Millions have been thrown out of work, feeding extreme poverty across the land. Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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Class War

A New York Times article last August reported that the rich and super rich have fully resumed their ways of conspicuous and opulent luxury consumption. “Even Marked Up,” the headline runs, “Luxury Goods Fly Off Shelves.” Further: “Nordstrom has a waiting list for a Chanel sequined tweed coat with a $9,010 price. Neiman Marcus has sold out in almost every size of Christian Louboutin ‘Bianca’ platform pumps, at $775 a pair. Mercedes-Benz said it sold more cars last month in the United States than it had in any July in five years.... Even with the economy in a funk and many Americans pulling back on spending, the rich are again buying designer clothing, luxury cars and about anything that catches their fancy. Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering—they are zooming. Many high-end businesses are even able to mark up, rather than discount, items to attract customers who equate quality with price.... The luxury category has posted 10 consecutive months of sales increases compared with the year earlier, even as overall consumer spending on categories like furniture and electronics has been tepid.” The Times noted that, “the success luxury retailers are having in selling $250 Ermenegildo Zegna ties and $2,800 David Yurman pavé rings—the kind encircled with small precious stones—[stood] in stark contrast to the retailers who cater to more average Americans.… Apparel stores are holding near fire sales to get people to spend. Wal-Mart is selling smaller packages because some shoppers do not have enough cash on hand to afford multipacks of toilet paper” (NYT, August 3, 2011).

Wealth is Power

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orally problematic in and of itself, such extreme inequality makes functioning democracy impossible. Domhoff explains: “Wealth can be seen as a ‘resource’ that is very useful in exercising power. That’s obvious when we think of donations to political parties, payments to lobbyists, and grants to experts who are employed to think up

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new policies beneficial to the wealthy. Wealth also can be useful in shaping the general social environment to the benefit of the wealthy, whether through hiring public relations firms or donating money for universities, museums, music halls, and art galleries…certain kinds of wealth, such as stock ownership, can be used to control corporations, which of course have a major impact on how the society functions...[and] just as wealth can lead to power, so too can power lead to wealth. Those who control a government can use their position to feather their own nests, whether that means a favorable land deal for relatives at the local level or a huge federal government contract for a new corporation run by friends who will hire you when you leave government” (G.W. Domhoff, whorulesamerica.net). Domhoff could have added media ownership, a critical, reality-framing, populace-deadening, and mass-“consent-manufacturing” asset of the rich. When these processes of top-down domination are seen against the background of extreme wealth concentration in the U.S., the shocking disconnect between majority progressive public opinion on numerous key policy issues and the regressive plutocratic reality of actual policy on those and other issues becomes less than mysterious. So what if most Americans think that the ideal wealth distribution should be far more egalitarian than what actually exists? As business professor Michael Norton and psychologist Dan Ariely show in a recent study, most Americans think that ideal distribution would be one in which the top 20 percent owned between 30 and 40 percent of the privately held wealth and the bottom 40 percent had between 25 and 30 percent (Norton and Ariely, “Building a Better America One Wealth Quintile at a Time,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2010). None of this sort of longstanding majority progressive opinion ever seems to matter in the U.S. where, as the American philosopher John Dewey noted more than a century ago, “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” Welcome to America’s gaping “democratic deficit,” a significantly greater problem than the nation’s much bemoaned and overplayed financial deficit. As Noam Chomsky recently noted, “Since the 1970s, [Dewey’s] shadow has become a dark cloud enveloping society and the political system. Corporate power, by now largely financial capital, has reached the point that both political organizations, which now barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate” (Chomsky, “American Decline: Causes and Consequences,” Alakhbar English, August 24, 2011). How and why are such astonishing disparities tolerated in the U.S.? Part of the answer is that—thanks in no small part to the aforementioned problem of privately owned media—most Americans are ignorant of the depth and degree of wealth inequality in

Class War

“their” country. When shown three pie charts representing possible wealth distributions, more than 90 percent of 5,522 respondents —regardless of gender, age, income level, or party affiliation—thought U.S. wealth distribution most resembled one in which the top 20 percent possesses 60 percent of the wealth. Most people in the survey guessed that the bottom 40 percent had between 8 and 10 percent. It’s hard to be angry about a problem you don’t know exists. Here we confront a viciously circular fact of ruling class power. The top 1 percent owns the major media that millions rely on for information about the world they inhabit. The wealthy few are hardly eager to see the citizenry accurately informed about the distribution of wealth and, hence, power in the U.S. As a result, the problem of extreme wealth concentration and its negative consequences does not receive serious and sustained treatment by the five giant media conglomerates that own more than half the nation’s media print and electronic. The recent “News Hour” story on wealth inequality is an anomaly, crafted for PBS’ relatively affluent audience amid the wild stock market volatility of August 2011.

“They Earned It”

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anufactured mass ignorance aside, plutocrats still fall back on powerful myths to justify America’s spectacular wealth inequality. One standard fairy tale holds that the rich deserve their wealth because they “earned” it on their own and that it is “none of anyone’s business” what they do with the riches they obtained because of their own special talents and efforts. It is “robbery,” this narrative holds, to tax their wealth and “give it to someone else.” This longstanding fable of the elite is so full of holes it is hard to know where to begin in tearing it apart. In terms of the egregious negative consequences wealth inequality holds for democracy and social experience more broadly, it is neither here nor there whether or not the rich worked hard or well for their wealth. It is very much “our business” what they do or don’t do with their fortunes. In fact, the wealthy classes are loaded with people who are rich, independent of any special effort or skill on their part due to the simple fact of inheritance. The passing on of net worth and connections and other benefits across generations covers up the stupidity, decrepitude, and/or laziness of many rich people and offers stupendous advantages to more able and/or energetic elites who profit from the fact that success in the “free market” of the present and future depends significantly on how much accumulated capital you bring to that market from the past. Bad behavior and poor skills have little negative economic impact on those born into wealth; they stay rich regardless, just as most born into the lower and working classes remain there regardless of how hard, honestly, and skillfully they toil. Even in cases of remarkable first-generation ascendancy into the wealthy elite (without the benefit of big inheritances), the notion that the rich “earn” their fortunes on

their own is false. As the U.S. ultra-billionaire investor Warren Buffett has acknowledged more than once, people can earn large amounts only when they live under favorable social circumstances. They certainly don’t create those circumstances by themselves. Society, Buffett admits, is responsible for his wealth. “If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru,” he once said, “you’ll find out how much my [special talent for sensing market opportunities] is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil.” The Nobel Prize-winning economist and social scientist Herbert Simon has estimated that “social capital” is responsible for at least 90 percent of the income that people receive in rich nations. By social capital, Simon means not only natural resources but also technology, organizational skills, and “good [wealth-friendly] government. On moral grounds,” Simon added, “we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent.”

Our Sufferance is a Gain to Them

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ut the wealthy do not simply benefit from society; they accumulate fortunes at the expense of it. They profit from: > mass unemployment’s depressive impact on wages,

which cuts their labor costs > regressive tax cuts and loopholes, which increase

with wealth while shutting down social services for the poor > the cutting and undermining of environment regula-

tions, which reduce their business costs while spoiling livable ecology > wars and giant military budgets that feed the bottom

lines of the “defense” corporations they own while killing and crippling millions and stealing money from potential investment in social uplift > a hyper-commercialized mass consumer culture that

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worth to exchange value and destroying peoples’ capacity for critical thought > deals with corrupt dictators who provide natural re-

sources at cheap prices while depressing wages and crushing democracy in “developing countries” > the closing down of livable wage jobs in the U.S.

and the export of employment to repressive and low-wage peripheries > a health care system that privileges the profits of gi-

ant insurance and drug companies over the well being of ordinary people > exorbitant credit card interest rates that lead to mil-

lions of bankruptcies each year > predatory lending practices that spread and perpetu-

ate poverty and foreclosure > agricultural and trade practices that destroy sustain-

able local and regional food cultivation and distribution practices at home and abroad > the imposition of overly long working hours that

keep employee compensation levels down while helping maintain a large number of unemployed workers > exorbitant public business subsidies and taxpayer in-

centives and bailouts to the rich at the expense of the rest

The list goes on and on. As the left political scientist David McNally notes, profits have been restored in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis “largely because working class people have paid for them, through layoffs, wage cuts, reduced work hours, and the decimation of social services. The rich are capitalists, for the most part, and under the modern marketplace and corporate capitalism—generator of contemporary fortunes—the wealth of the few is related to the comparative impoverishment of the many. Indeed, the exploitation of the latter by the former is the essence of what passes for reasonable and normal economic activity under the standard rules of the capitalist system. Most of us engage with the market (primarily by renting out our core human capacity for work to more privileged others) to survive, to purchase simple use values that make life possible. Capitalists are very different. They care about nothing but exchange value and profit and engage the market to exploit the world and its people. There would be no point in their investments without exploitation. There would be no point in paying wages and salaries without surplus value—extra labor value going to them beyond the commodity price of our labor power. When profit and its critical ingredient surplus value are deemed unattainable, they toss us into the gutter where, as members of the reserve army of labor, we help them bid down the commodity value of the labor.

Trickle Down Mythology

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second great fable holds that making rich people richer makes the rest of us richer. It’s called “trickle down economics.” It is rich people, the argument runs, who smell out market opportunities and exploit them in ways that create wealth for the rest of us. Like it or not,

poor people can become more well off in the long run only by making the already opulent yet filthier rich. When you give the wealthy a bigger share of the pie, the pieces given to others shrink in the short term. In the long run, the poor get bigger absolute slices because the rich expand the size of the pie through investment of the wealth granted them by policymakers who understand that “populist” taxation of the rich to spread the wealth more equitably is “dysfunctional”—a drag on economic expansion. As the liberal Cambridge (UK) economist Ha Joon Chang notes in his bestselling book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (2010), recent economic history does not support the “trickle down” thesis. “Despite the usual dichotomy of ‘growth-enhancing pro-rich policy’ and ‘growth-reducing pro-poor policy,’” Chang writes, “pro-rich policies have failed to accelerate growth in the last three decades.” Thirty-plus years of “free market” policies that have given the rich an ever larger slice of wealth and income have only generated slow growth (the world economy’s growth rate fell from more than 3 percent in the Keynesian 1960s and 1970s to 1.4 percent in the neoliberal, “free market” years since 1980) and persistent high levels of structural unemployment within and beyond the rich nations. “Trickle down” leading to increased jobs does not happen without the intervention of public mechanisms and institutions to compel the rich to take their increased wealth and invest in job-creating activities—mechanisms that have been assaulted and undermined by concentrated wealth and its political agents in the neoliberal era. Without such mechanisms there is nothing to prevent the rich from spending on their luxury “needs” and using their surplus in other ways that do nothing to create jobs. As numerous media reported after Barack Obama agreed to extend George W. Bush’s deficit-fueling tax cuts for the rich last January, many leading U.S. companies have been sitting on capital and storing up liquidity like never before. Firms who no longer believe they can borrow quickly have decided to keep a lot more cash on hand for precautionary purposes. At the same time, low interest rates created an incentive for many firms to “exploit the spread between a zero funds rate and rates on Treasury bonds.” This permits corporations to “mark profits without selling much or hiring anyone” (Michael Powell, “Profits Are Booming, Why Aren’t Jobs?” NYT, January 8, 2011). Some big American firms have shown higher profits because their competition has faded. Following the financial collapse of 2008, for example, the financial giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Chase no longer have to compete with Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., and Merrill Lynch. Many jobs disappeared with the collapse of the defeated behemoths, of course. And then there’s the simple fact that a large reserve army of unemployed workers is a great profit boon to corporate America in its ongoing class war on workers’ income and security. As Desmond Lachman, a former managing director at Salomon Smith Barney who serves as a “scholar” at the influential right-wing American Enterprise Institute, told the Times last January, “Corporations are taking huge advantage of the slack in the labor market—they are in a very strong position and workers are in a Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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very weak position. They are using that bargaining power to cut benefits and wages, and to shorten hours” (Powell, “Profits Are Booming”). Sharing wealth and income more equitably would do more to create employment. “In an economic downturn,” Chang notes, “the best way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downward, as poorer people tend to spend a higher portion of their incomes. The economy-boosting effect of the extra billion dollars given to the lower-income households through increased welfare spending will be bigger than the same amount given to the rich through tax cuts.” Give ordinary folks more money and they quickly buy necessities, stimulating the economy. Extra money for the rich funds numerous activities that have little stimulus effect and some that are quite contrary to the growth and wages promised: the purchase of back-stocked luxuries, mergers and acquisitions that actually cut jobs, storage of surplus wealth in off-shore tax havens, the hiring of management consultants who advise on how to shrink payrolls and eliminate unions; the hiring of lobbyists who push for cutting public sector programs, jobs, and unions; the hording of cash reserves; the purchase of sophisticated financial instruments that cannibalize the economy; and numerous other forms of parasitism that “mark profits without hiring anyone.”

The Growth Sedative

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hang is empirically correct, but his critique of trickle-down mythology is too kind to the rich. In Chang’s 23 Things, modern “free market” or neoliberal capitalism’s greatest crime is not its role in furthering capitalism’s inherent tendency towards inequality and concentration of wealth, but rather its role in slowing growth. But growth has long been western capitalism’s false and environmentally (some would add spiritually) lethal “solution” for the inequality that capitalism creates. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” the conventional western growth ideology proclaims, supposedly rendering irrelevant popular anger over the fact that an opulent minority sails in luxurious yachts while millions struggle on rickety dinghies and in leaking rowboats. As the liberal economist Henry Wallich explained in 1972, “Growth is a substitute for equality of income. So long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable.” (As a Federal Reserve governor, Wallich was defending western capitalism against ecological economists who warned about the environmental limits of unchecked growth.) “Governments love growth,” British environmental writer and activist George Monbiot noted in the fall of 2007, “because it excuses them from dealing with inequality…. Growth is a political sedative, snuffing out protest, permitting governments to avoid confrontation with the rich, preventing the construction of a just and sustainable economy.” As Le Monde’s ecological editor Herve Kempf noted four years ago, “the oligarchy” sees “the pursuit of material growth” as “the solution to the social crisis,” the “sole means of fighting poverty and unemployment,” and

the “only means of getting societies to accept extreme inequalities without questioning them.” When growth stops, William Grieder notes, “the political system loses its cover. The safety valve is off. The comforting mythology about growth loses its power to distract the public from anger and to discourage critical inquiry into how the system actually functions.”

The Rich We Cannot Always Have With Us

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he pressure on business and political elites to keep the safety valve on—the secret behind the growth attachment that has snared even a clever economic critic like Chang—comes at an unsustainable price, setting up a devil’s choice between jobs and income for proletarianized masses on one hand and livable ecology for humanity (and other living things) on the other hand. The wealthy few’s reliance on growth to cloak inequality and keep “populist” sentiments at bay is at the heart of, to use the title of Kempf’s most recent book, How The Rich Are Destroying the Earth. The ruination of livable ecology seems to be nothing less than an “institutional imperative” (Noam Chomsky) for the capitalist elite, which spends billions of dollars on a propaganda war against modern science’s consensus findings and warnings on anthropogenic climate change. As the current, ever-deepening ecological catastrophe should tell us, humanity is running out of time when it comes to carrying the rich and failing to seriously confront its dominant institutions and ideologies. The rich themselves do not need to be liquidated and distributed across society, but their wealth and power do if humanity is going to enjoy a decent, democratic, and desirable future on this glorious but far from endlessly forgiving planet we all inhabit. Z

Paul Street is the author of numerous books, including Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm, 2004), The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Paradigm, 2010), and (co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio) Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Paradigm, 2011). Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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“Soft Power” in the Middle East U.S. motives and the future of nonviolent uprisings

By Anthony B. Newkirk n May 19, President Barack Obama acknowledged that a “new chapter in American diplomacy” is beginning due to the “extraordinary change taking place in the Middle East.” But, while conflicts continue, the future of the wave of nonviolent uprisings dubbed the “Arab Spring” is uncertain. In February, military rule followed the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and a bloody crackdown began in Yemen. In March, Saudi troops under GCC command had intervened in Bahrian at the behest of its king. At the same time, warfare broke out in Libya between Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and “rebels” backed by NATO airpower. On-going conflicts, such as in Gaza and Iraq, persist with American recalcitrance fundamentally unchanged. In April, Bill Spindle and Margaret Coker wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a “cold war” is also emerging between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia. The United States is backing the Saudis in this struggle even though there is no hard evidence that the Iranian government is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The nuclear question just won’t go away. While neoconservatives relentlessly call for war, others are more sophisticated. In 2009, Alan Kuperman at the University of Texas at Austin wrote that Tehran’s rejection of a uranium enrichment offer “could” enable it to undertake nuclear weapons research, but admitted that “knocking out...nuclear plants [with] aerial bombing might not work.” In 2010, Richard Haass, former State Department advisor to both Bushes and president of the Council on Foreign Rela-

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tions, advocated regime change through a “two-track” policy that alternates between force and negotiation. In February, Nation columnist Eric Alterman welcomed rumors that Tel Aviv and Washington undermined Iran’s nuclear program with the Stuxnet computer worm. Such expressions fuel the idea that conflict at some level is inevitable, if not preferable. It is true that the International Atomic Energy Agency has found Tehran in noncompliance with aspects of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is true that the Iranians are in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions demanding a halt to their civilian nuclear program. The summary of a classified 2007 National Intelligence Estimate indicates that Tehran may have discontinued nuclear weapons research in 2003. A new classified NIE apparently suggests that work may have re-commenced, but there may also be a debate over this in the Iranian government (the existence of this document was made known in February). Director of National Intelligence James Clapper gave a similar message to the Senate Intelligence Committee in February. It is also true that there is discord in Iran over President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad’s privatization programs, crony capitalism, and the contested results of the 2009 presidential election. Nor should it be forgotten that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a close ally of Iran, is conducting a brutal campaign of repression in his own country. But these facts do not excuse Washington’s conduct in the region. What drives Iranian conduct? James Madison University political scientist Bernd Kaussler suggests that the Islamic Republic wants closer diplomatic and economic ties with Gulf Cooperation Council countries. At the same time, it “seems convinced that one can only rely on military deterrence as means of securing territorial integrity and security.” The Iranian leadership deliberately projects an irrational image and resorts to “cold war practices.” Iranian foreign policy in the Gulf is defensive as the U.S. presence overshadows the region. U.S. methods with Iran entail diplomacy, economic sanctions in force over the past three

Power Struggle

decades, and attempts to build an anti-Iranian coalition in the region.

A New Containment Doctrine

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to develop civilian nuclear power but warned that chances for negotiation “will not remain open indefinitely.” In October 2009, the first high-level public meetings of Iranian and U.S. diplomats in 30 years took place in Vienna. Later, Western proposals to ship Iranian low enriched uranium to a “third country” for further enrichment before returning it have not yet come to pass. Meanwhile, the Obama administration backs international nuclear arms control agreements and civilian nuclear power programs in countries like India and the United Arab Emirates. The Administration also wishes to upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. President Obama’s much-acclaimed declaration at Cairo University in June 2009 that the United States is turning a new leaf in the Middle East must be seen in a new light.

he record of U.S. aggression against the Iranian people includes the overthrow of prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, support for the Shah’s brutal dictatorship until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and open attacks on Iranian naval vessels and a civilian airliner during the Iran-Iraq War in the late 1980s. This is not to mention “arms for hostages” dealings by the Reagan White House in the 1980s and talks between neo-conservative operatives and expatriate arms dealer Manuchar Ghorbanifar early in the Bush Jr. administration. What escapes public attention is that U.S. diplomacy with Iran is based on pressure short of general war. Nuclear holocaust may not be in the offing, Economic Sanctions but neither is sustainable peace. Current U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf resembles conhe 1996 Iran Libya Sanction Act was a milestone of a tainment of the Soviet Union after World War II. Albeit sanctions regime that has been in place since the fall of less unilateralist, the Obama administration is using conthe Shah. This law penalized foreign companies that intainment against Iran much as George Bush Jr. did. Presivested over $20 million in the Iranian petroleum industry. dent Obama’s commitment to two-track diplomacy is in the In pursuance of an executive order issued by George Bush tradition of “realist” diplomacy. The Nixon administration Jr. in 2005, a number of federal agencies targeted key Irabeing the most noted case in living nian institutions. For instance, the Treamemory, realists (or “neorealists” in acsury Department bans transactions beademic jargon) put national power tween U.S. citizens and Iranian compaabove ideology, public opinion, or ethnies that finance Tehran’s military proics. Wishing to avoid undue risks, realgrams. ists see war and peace as means to In March 2009, Obama extended enhance “national interest.” greetings to the Iranian people on the ocThe Persian Gulf containment recasion of the Iranian new year. Nine gime is composed of a regional military days earlier, he had authorized a represence, overt (and perhaps covert) innewal of sanctions in line with a “natervention in Iranian domestic affairs, tional emergency” decreed by Bill and economic sanctions. Washington Clinton in 1995. This paradox attracted maintained “dual containment” against little attention in the United States. Tehran and Baghdad from 1979 to Also ignored are details about sanc2003. Even when the focus shifted to tions legislation passed during the 111th Tehran after the invasion of Iraq, and Congress. In effect, incorporating legiswhen realists gained more influence in lation introduced when George Bush Jr. the second Bush Jr. term, military pres- President Obama at Cairo University, June was president—the Comprehensive Iran 2009—Getty Images sure and economic sanctions remained Sanction, Accountability and Divestment central. A self-conscious commitment to Act—penalizes American and foreign two-track diplomacy is a hallmark of President Barack companies that import refined petroleum into Iran or refine Obama’s Iran policy. The transcript of a meeting disclosed it there. Admittedly, sanctions are compelling some multiby Wikileaks between Deputy Assistant Secretary of the national corporations to lessen commercial activities in Iran Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, and are making Iranian access to European and American Daniel Glaser, and EU officials in April 2009 poses the isbanks more difficult. But habitual conflicts of interest sue succinctly, saying “‘engagement’ [is] an important asamong multinational corporations weaken enforcement and pect of a comprehensive strategy to dissuade Iran from acthe Iranians can find fuel and technology elsewhere. quiring nuclear weapons. However, engagement alone is Coming on the heels of President Obama’s May 19 “reunlikely to succeed. Diplomacy’s best chance of success reset” speech, the State Department announced the easing of quires all elements combining pressure and incentives to visa laws for Iranian students in the United States. This work simultaneously, not sequentially. Our shared chalmove fits the pattern of two-tack diplomacy. An executive lenge is to find the right mix of measures.... The order confirming U.S. commitment to sanctions enforceinternational community must urgently choose between ment issued three days later also fits this pattern. So does several bad options…none of [them] is without cost.” military aid. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton characterized engageThe Gulf Security Dialogue ment as “soft power” or a “willingness to talk” backed by egun under George Bush Jr., the Gulf Security Dia“the world’s strongest military, economic strength and the logue sought to tighten U.S.-GCC military ties. In power of…example.” She acknowledged Tehran’s “right”

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2009, Secretary of State Clinton remarked that the United States might place the GCC under a “defense umbrella” if Tehran “spark[s] an arms race in the region” by acquiring nuclear weapons. She also said that Americans “do a lot of military business and sell a lot of weapon systems to a number of countries in the Middle East and the Gulf…to beef up…defensive capabilities.” This concern dates from World War II. To keep oil-drilling rights in the hands of Standard Oil of California, the Roosevelt administration extended Lend Lease aid to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia despite being neutral in the war. A post-war naval presence in the Gulf safeguarded a pipeline owned by Standard affiliate ARAMCO linking the Kingdom’s oil-producing Eastern Province to the Mediterranean. Military aid continued after ARAMCO’s nationalization in the 1970s. Based on official records solicited by investigative journalist Nick Turse, the Kingdom got $295 million in U.S. military aid from 1946 to 2007 and bought nearly $80 billion of military equipment and construction services from 1950 to 2006. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that Riyadh was the largest weapons importer in the region between 1990 and 2009. On average, military spending accounted for 10 percent of Saudi GDP each year between 2000 and 2008. SIPRI estimates that 57 percent of military imports went to the UAE and 10 percent to Saudi Arabia in 2005-2009. Most U.S. forces left the Kingdom in 2003 for bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. In addition to related costs, construction, garrisoning, and maintenance of bases there totaled over $22 billion in the 2001-2009 period (all countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are members of the GCC). Washington cultivates GCC chauvinism, as with the 2010 Pentagon directive that Navy personnel use the term “Arabian Gulf” instead of “Persian Gulf.” Key Pentagon commands that support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are headquartered in the Gulf. A goal of the Gulf Security Dialogue is to create an anti-Iran partnership consisting of Israel, the GCC, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. This undertaking is hindered by social conflicts within Arab states and fears of Israeli aggression by Arab populations. Ambiguity also plays a role in Gulf

states’ diplomacy. As confirmed by Wikileaks disclosures, some Gulf rulers fear Iran, but also want trade and diplomatic ties with both the Americans and the Iranians. The Bush Jr. administration gave U.S. arms contractors a stimulus by negotiating a $63 billion arms package with America’s Middle East allies in the summer of 2007. Over 10 years, Israel’s share will total $30 billion and Egypt’s $13 billion (as documented by the Congressional Research Service, it appears this arrangement is unaffected by the official military take-over in Egypt earlier this year). The share for GCC states was originally slated at $20 billion. When the proposal was submitted to Congress for approval, as per the Arms Control Export Act, there was opposition to selling the Saudis potentially destabilizing Joint Direct Attack Munitions (also known as JDAMs, these are satellite-guided devices that turn dumb bombs into smart bombs, which could threaten Israeli military superiority). This compelled the White House to divvy up the GCC share nation-by-nation. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE got clearance by the end of the year to purchase $11.42 billion in “defensive” equipment.

The Saudi Arms Deal

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n October 20, 2010, after months of negotiation, Administration officials announced their intention to authorize over $60 billion in transactions between several U.S. arms contractors and the Kingdom to last for 15 years, pending congressional approval. Besides upgrades to F-15S fighters in the Royal Saudi Air Force, the proposal foresees approving sales of small arms, missile launchers, and detection equipment, plus the following items: > 84 F-15SA aircraft > 190 military helicopters > 12,667 missiles > 18,350 bombs > 1,000 JDAM kits (interestingly)

Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro said that the deal signals to “countries in the region” that the United States backs “key partners and allies” like Saudi Arabia, which must “deter and defend against threats on its borders and to its oil infrastructure.” Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow added that the sale would make Saudi forces “more interoperable” with U.S.-supplied forces in the region and it does not threaten Israeli military dominance. Except for one inquiry, no resolution opposing the sale was introduced within the 30-day legal time limit. Requests for information through the spring from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, and Congress-person Anthony Weiner (D-NY), a noted congresFuneral of Zakria Rashid al-Asherri, a Bahraini blogger who died in police custody—EPA sional critic of Saudi Arabia, have been

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unsuccessful (Weiner resigned from office in June over a sex scandal). But in February, this terse email came from the office of Tim Griffin (R-AR), the author’s congressional representative: “The $60 billion Saudi deal for F-15 fighters has already cleared Congress but prospective sales of naval ships and missile-defense systems to Saudi Arabia and other regional partners have yet to be completed and could run into congressional hurdles.” Recently elected to Congress, but by no means a political newcomer, Griffin is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The few public references to the arms deal are ambiguous. In early May, after admitting that policy-makers must take account of the changing “geopolitical landscape” in the Middle East, Shapiro declared at the State Department that the Administration “remain[s] committed to Gulf security, which was borne out last year when we signed the largest defense trade deal in history with Saudi Arabia.” In testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs a week later, Principle Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James Miller said that planned transactions with Middle Eastern nations have been “put on pause, put on hold.” He offered to discuss the transactions in “closed session.” Could this lack of transparency have anything to do with the nature of Saudi Arabia’s military activities in the region, such as the air strikes against Houthi tribal insurgents in northern Yemen in late 2009? When he was still the head of Central Command, General David Petraeus told an audience in Washington DC several weeks after the attacks that Riyadh was “understandably” alarmed by Yemen’s “social and political, economic and developmental difficulties.” What he did not mention is that the Houthis are one part of the domestic opposition to authoritarian president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is closely allied with Saudi Arabia. Nor did the general refer to allegations that U.S. cruise missiles killed Yemeni civilians between late 2002 and 2010. According to a disclosed January 2010 cable from the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Saleh offered to take responsibility for these attacks. A cable from the U.S. embassy in Riyadh embassy claims that Saudi Assistant Minister of Defense and Aviation Prince Khaled bin Sultan admitted that Saudi warplanes killed Yemeni civilians in the border raids. The New York Times claimed in early June that U.S. airstrikes have resumed in Yemen.

A Persian Gulf “Tiananmen Square”

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he Arab Spring is doing its part to reveal the dangers to regional democracy and peace inherent in soft power. The small island country of Bahrain is a case in point. Situated in the Persian Gulf between Iran and Saudi Arabia’s strategic Eastern Province, Bahrain is a “flash point” in the emerging conflict between U.S./GCC and Iranian interests. Bahrain is torn by a domestic conflict between an unpopular Sunni Muslim elite and a Shia Muslim majority. Bahrain’s Khalifa ruling family offers the pretext that it must weaken disloyal pawns of Shia Iran—over half of Bahrain’s official Arab population of about 530,000 (the

other half of the population are mostly foreign “guest workers”). On February 14, Shia and Sunni Bahrainis massed at Pearl Roundabout in the capital city of Manama, to protest long-standing discrimination. A month later, Saudi troops and UAE police attached to the Peninsula Shield Force en-

Saudi forces in Bahrain (Reuters)

tered Bahrain. Within the next two days, King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa imposed martial law and Bahraini police attacked Pearl Roundabout. A systematic crackdown was underway. The number of PSF troops in Bahrain is often cited in the neighborhood of 1,000. In a February interview with London-based Asharq al-Awsat, PSF commander Mutlaq Bin Salem al-Azima said that the force is “around 10 percent” of the entire PSF. According to Asharq al-Awsat and the Wall Street Journal, the PSF’s current strength is 40,000. In May, Kuwait’s ambassador to Bahrain announced that naval forces from his country were deploying to the island “to protect its borders” in support of the PSF presence. The state of emergency officially ended on June 1, but the crackdown continues. As documented by Human Rights Watch, there have been raids on the homes of activists and lawyers in the dead of night, activists sentenced to death by a military court, and “disappearances” of medical doctors who treated wounded protestors. The Ministry of Information temporarily closed a leading opposition newspaper in April. Men in plainclothes and masks, possibly from other Arab countries, used deadly force in Shia villages. In textbook cases of ethnic cleansing, Bahraini troops destroyed Shia mosques. The parliamentary opposition is defunct. There is evidence of torture and murder in detention. The United States has been remarkably silent in the face of these events that so flagrantly violate the same “international humanitarian law” that has lately been of concern to the White House when Libya and Syria enter the conversation. During an April stop-over in Saudi Arabia, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he did not discuss the PSF intervention with Saudi King Abullah Bin Abdul-Aziz Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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Al Saud. Gates did tell reporters that Tehran wanted to “exploit the situation in Bahrain,” a charge also made by King Hamad. However, as noted in the leaked transcript of a July 2008 meeting with U.S. Ambassador Christopher Ereli and General Petraeus, King Hamad “admitted he had no definitive proof” of Iranian interference. Nor was there “convincing evidence” to back up a “theory” that Bahrainis were trained in Lebanon by pro-Iranian Hizbollah. In fact, Gates visited Manama a few days before the PSF intervention. It is unlikely that he was unfamiliar with Bahraini affairs. As CIA Deputy Director in 1985, Gates circulated a memo in the upper echelons of the Reagan administration advocating weapons sales to Tehran. Aside from being a “major non-NATO ally” and close U.S. trade partner, Bahrain hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet and the naval headquarters of Qatar-based U.S. Central Command. Furthermore, the contents of diplomatic cable leaks suggest that the U.S. embassy in Manama keeps track of commercial opportunities in Bahrain for U.S.-based multinational corporations. In 2008, when Gates was Secretary of Defense in the Bush Jr. White House, King Hamad expressed

totals $508 million thus far, exist in budget requests made by the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations. In July, a Bahraini newspaper reported that a Fifth Fleet spokesperson denied the claim by the London Times that the Fifth Fleet may be withdrawn from Bahrain. In the wake of the Gulf War in 1991, the George Bush Sr. administration negotiated a ten-year security agreement with Bahrain, which was extended for another ten years by his son’s diplomats in 2001. According to a recent piece by Thomas W. Lippman in the Washington Post, the Bush Jr. administration renegotiated the pact a year after its renewal so that it would instead end in 2016, instead of October 2011. If this is true, it would go a long way to explain why the Pentagon is spending millions of dollars to expand the Navy base and why official Washington is keeping silent. Whatever the truth is, it is a fact that since the summer of 2010, Marine Corps brass have been considering opening two new “joint task force” headquarters in the Middle East and Africa. On March 1 of this year, Marine Commandant General James F. Amos informed the House Armed Services Committee that one of these headquarters was already established in Bahrain (a few days before, the Armed Forces Press Service had reported that then-Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited this facility shortly after protests began at Pearl Roundabout). Perhaps the Navy is in Bahrian to stay for some time to come.

Missile Defense

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ther factors are also contributed to rising tensions in the Gulf. The Pentagon has expedited deployment of Raytheon’s Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missile batteries in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE over the past nine years. GCC governments are also interested in Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system. In early 2010, General Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Saudi Assistant Minister of Defense and Petraeus announced that two Coalition warships Aviation Prince Khalid bin Sultan, April 2011—Getty Images in the Gulf were equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. At the end of the year, NATO endorsed missile defense in the Middle East interest in “several complete Patriot batteries to cover the as a matter of “Euro-Atlantic security.” island.” In 2009, the King asked General Petraeus for help The latest Nuclear Posture Review holds that the United in attracting American aircraft manufacturers to the States will not attack states that comply with “nuclear Bahrain Air Show. non-proliferation obligations.” National Security Council In addition to the usual blandishments about “self-deterofficial Gary Samore described this phrase as a “broad mination” and “dialogue,” President Obama observed in clause [that] we’ll interpret…in accordance with what we his May 19 speech that “Bahrain is a longstanding partner, judge to be a meaningful standard.” He added that Iran is and we are committed to its security. We recognize that “not protected from the threat or use of U.S. nuclear weapIran has tried to take advantage of the turmoil there, and ons under current circumstances.” that the Bahraini government has a legitimate interest in the This is a classic realist worldview. It is also morally rule of law....” Although these words are ambiguous at bankrupt. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration face value, the truth behind them may slowly be emerging. considers force a legitimate tool of diplomacy. But wars, A January 2008 lease agreement between the Bush Jr. hot or cold, with Iran or any other country court disaster. administration and the Bahraini government allowed for exNo doctrine of force, whether neoconservative or pansion of facilities at Naval Support Activity-Bahrain, neorealist, will secure a sustainable world. Z where the Fifth Fleet is based. According to reports by Navy Times and the Congressional Research Service, construction began in May 2010 and is expected to be completed by 2015. The first phase of construction is not yet Anthony B. Newkirk is a professor of history at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. completed. Appropriations for this project, which officially 36

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A World of Drones The U.S. continues its quest for Full Spectrum Dominance of land, sea, air, and outer space

By Tim Coles ebruary 2012 will mark the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Space Command’s declaration of war on the world, namely its quest to achieve Full Spectrum Dominance of land, sea, air, and outer space by 2020, “to close the ever-widening gap between diminishing resources and increasing military commitments.” Commenting on the Space Command’s announcement, Rebecca Johnson of the UN Disarmament Commission observed that, “Notions of full spectrum dominance…are perceived as a security threat by countries that have no political desire or intention to threaten the United States, but which would be expected by their own citizens and militaries to develop countermeasures to deter the United States nevertheless.” One of the many dangerous aspects of Full Spectrum Dominance is the U.S. Air Force’s Prompt Global Strike doctrine, which will give the United States, “the capability to rapidly attack fleeting or emerging high-value targets without warning, anywhere on the globe”—in the words of the U.S. Air Force (USAF). The British company BAE Systems is developing the Taranis unmanned aerial vehicle (drone), which is being designed to “test the possibility of developing the first ever autonomous stealthy Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) that would ultimately be capable of precisely striking targets at long range, even in another continent,” the company boasted, indicating the drone’s potential for Prompt Global Strike. Following the exploitation of 9/11, the Pentagon and Whitehall succeeded in securing two of the world’s major energy regions—the Middle East and Central Asia. Under

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the pretext of a self-appointed Responsibility to Protect, they are developing the means to control a third—North Africa (in lieu of the NATO assault on Libya). War planners envisage key energy areas and, eventually, the world in general, patrolled by drones in order “to close the ever-widening gap,” about which the Space Command is concerned. In 2009, it was reported, erroneously, that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had cancelled a Bush-era $340 billion-dollar Future Combat Systems program, which was designed to “build an entirely new army, reconfigured to perform the global policing mission.” It transpired that the system was not only going ahead (just the Unmanned Ground Vehicle component was being cut), but it was, in fact, being expanded. Renamed the Army’s Brigade Combat Team Modernization Initiative, the program actually involves the acquisition of more drones than previously anticipated, P.W. Singer noted in Wired For War, his generally enthusiastic study of robotic warfare. Furthermore, the principal contracts have been awarded to the Boeing corporation. These, and other drones, are allowing the USAF to be able to achieve its ultimate goal, “to find, fix, track, target, and engage any moving ground target anywhere on the surface of the Earth.”

Civilian Deaths

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ver since a Boeing-co-produced Hellfire missile was launched from a Predator drone in 2002, the human cost of drones has been exponential. “[A]long the mountainous eastern border of Afghanistan, a Predator reportedly followed and killed three suspicious Afghans, including a tall man in robes who was thought to be bin Laden. The victims turned out to be innocent villagers gathering scrap metal,” the New Yorker reported. In November of that year, six people, each of them alleged to be suspected al-Qaeda militants, were also killed at the push of a button as they travelled through Yemen in a car. The U.S. is currently running two drone operations: the military’s and the CIA’s. The latter is classified, and assassination orders come directly from the president. During Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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George W. Bush’s tenure, the CIA conducted 45 known drone attacks. In the first year of Obama’s tenure, the CIA conducted 53 known drone attacks. According to the Foreign Policy Journal, the CIA’s program “extends further [than the military’s], reaching countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.” The drone strikes in Somalia and elsewhere, “anger the population and make the Islamic insurgents more popular.” In its public letter to Obama, Human Rights Watch noted that, “The U.S. government says [the terrorist sympathizer, Anwar] al-Awlaki is linked to the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but has not brought formal charges against him,” concluding that targeting individuals for death without due process of law “will inevitably violate international law and set a dangerous precedent for abusive regimes around the globe.” Obama’s repeal of Executive Order 12333 has given the president the self-appointed right to assassinate U.S. nationals (al-Awlaki) on the basis of their beliefs (however repugnant and provocative those beliefs may be). In 2009, Kathy Kelly reported that 30 schools in Afghanistan had closed because the children were too afraid of the drones to attend and those who did could not concentrate. Foreign Policy Journal reported that, “Since January 2008, more than 1,000 Predator sorties were flown out of Balad,” a U.S.-occupied Air Base in Iraq, “lasting more than 20,000 hours.” The New York Times claimed that in 2007, the U.S. launched 46 drone strikes in Iraq, 77 in 2008, and 6 in 2009. As the strikes apparently decreased in Iraq, they increased exponentially in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In January 2010, Bloomberg reported that the Pakistani government “said it doesn’t support U.S. drone attacks in its territory as they are counterproductive, after reports that raids…killed 17 [alleged, suspected] militants in a northwest region bordering Afghanistan.” In 2010, it was reported that since the start of drone operations in Pakistan in 2004, operators had killed 1,200 people. Of that number, 32 percent were civilians, according to an organization which supports drone attacks, the New America Foundation. This would appear to be a gross underestimate when we consider that General Petraeus’s military advisor, Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, informed the New York Times that 714 people had been killed by drone operators in Pakistan from mid-2008 to mid-2009 alone, of whom 14 were “al-Qaeda” and/or Taliban suspects—meaning that 98 percent of the victims in that one period were civilians. (Kilcullen’s figure is compounded by other factors present in the New America Foundation study.) In the first two months of 2010, at least 140 people had been killed in drone attacks. In that year, the U.S. launched 118 strikes. According to Channel 4 News Online, the New America Foundation estimated that between 607 to 993 people had been killed by drone operators in 2010 and “the foundation [sic] suggests that only two percent were senior Taliban or al-Qaeda figures,” a figure which corresponds to Kilcullen’s estimate for the previous year. In the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, “the number of attacks has increased from one per week to one per day,” Foreign Policy Journal noted. 38

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On March 17, 2011, the Associated Press reported that “Pakistan’s army chief [Ashfaq Kayani] strongly condemned a U.S. drone attack that killed more than three dozen people, saying the missiles struck a peaceful meeting of tribal elders near the Afghan border.… Kayani’s condemnation contradicted statements provided by Pakistani intelligence officials,” whom, the AP reported, had originally claimed that the “38 people killed and seven wounded in the attack were militants meeting to discuss sending additional fighters into Afghanistan.” Drone attacks seem to be linked to a frightening new development in military/secret service assassinations: “nanotags,” or Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) chips. “I was given U.S.$122 to drop chips wrapped in a cigarette paper at al-Qaeda and Taliban houses. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars,” a young man from Wiziristan confessed to the Taliban before being shot for treason. “I thought this was a very easy job. The money was so good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money.” The U.S. historian and investigator, Gareth Porter, reported that “residents of Waziristan, including one student identified as Taj Muhammad Wazir, had confirmed that tribesman have been paid to lay the electronic devices to target drone strikes.” The New Yorker also reported “rumors that paid C.I.A. informants have been planting tiny silicon-chip homing devices for the drones in the tribal areas.” There are long-standing U.S. military plans to “nanotag” everything.

Radicalizing “Our Little Paki Friends”

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ritain’s Prince Harry exemplified the undying colonial-era racism of the UK establishment when he referred to one of his Army colleagues, Ahmed Raza Khan, as “our little Paki friend”—which was “just a joke,” of course. Contempt for people of another age, ethnicity, gender, nation, religion, etc., is a necessary part of the dehumanization process, which is itself necessary in order to attempt to justify the killing and torture of others—especially to oneself. When it comes to drones, however, there seems to be a new form of psychological distancing between the action and the consequence. In 2009, the UN Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston, cautioned that operators risk developing “a Playstation [sic] mentality” to killing. Indeed, many drone and robot control panels are modelled on PlayStation and Xbox joypads. The grainy, monochrome, low-resolution images of buildings being vaporized seems to be part of the propaganda process of dissociation in the era of “clean wars.” The media rarely report who was in the given building and, when doing so, usually cite unchallenged military allegations that the victims were “al-Qaeda” militants or Taliban fighters. This is not surprising. USAF’s 46-year drone expansion plan stated in 2009 that the Air Force would seek to monopolize all of the information released to the media regarding drone attacks. “In order to conduct a successful communication campaign, public affairs activities focus on three main areas of operation—Media Relations, Internal Information and

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Community Relations,” according to the detailed plan. “Additionally, communication strategies are executed at the senior levels of government by appropriate Air Force leadership to enhance leaders’ and lawmakers’ understanding of UAS [unmanned aerial systems’] current and future role.” “You’d be hard pressed to find a Pakistani anywhere in the world, regardless of class, education, or citizenship, who does not object to the U.S. drone strikes that have killed hundreds of innocent civilians in Pakistan since President Barack Obama took office,” Business Week reported, adding that, “It would also be difficult to find a Pakistani who does not object to the government in Islamabad allowing the strikes to continue.” Liaquat Ali Khan reported in CounterPunch that, “In a case filed with the Pakistan Supreme Court,” a petition read: “The Americans, like in [former Pakistani President] Musharraf’s time, have also been given a free hand by President Zardari and fundamental rights of the (indigenous) people are being violated daily in tribal areas and (in northern areas of) Dir, Swat, and Chitral. A large number of (indigenous) people have migrated from these areas and suffered tremendous losses with no hope of returning to their homes because of U.S. drone attacks, but the government is sitting as a silent spectator.” “Presuming that Pakistan is secretly supporting drone strikes,” Ali Khan continued, “the vengeful militants have begun to attack the citadel cities of Lahore and Islamabad. As drone attacks continue to kill and generate the IDPs [internally displaced persons] among the indigenous population and as militants undertake retaliatory measures in major cities, the nuclear-armed Pakistan is predicted to plunge into uncontrollable chaos and carnage threatening international peace and security.” In their analysis of the overall death toll in Pakistan from drone strikes between early- to mid-2009, BBC South Asia—tellingly, not BBC UK—highlighted the corollary between drone attacks and terrorist reprisals. Between 2009 and 2010, “nearly 2,500 people have been killed in Pakistan as a result of U.S. drones and Islamic militant attacks.… Islamic militant strongholds in the border area close to Afghanistan have been targeted by U.S. drone aircraft, while, at the same time, Islamic militants have carried out attacks across Pakistan.” The BBC went on to explain how, “Missile attacks by U.S. drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas have more than trebled under the Obama administration.… Compared with 25 drone strikes between January 2008 and January 2009, there were at least 87 such attacks between President Obama taking office on 20 January 2009 and the end of June 2010. More than 700 people have been killed in such attacks under Mr. Obama, compared with slightly fewer than 200 from under his predecessor, George W Bush. The militant backlash over the same period has been even more violent. Extremists have struck more than 140 times in various Pakistani locations, killing more than 1,700 people and injuring hundreds more.”

The BBC concluded that, “Pakistan has consistently argued that drone attacks are hindering rather than helping with the battle against extremism, saying they fuel public anger against the government and the U.S. and boost support for militants.” The information on drone cause and effect in terms of how such civilian murders radicalize populations is very rarely reported by mainstream, Western television news networks, making Muslim terrorism (which is always reported) seem unprovoked. More recently, Reuters reported “mounting resentment from Pakistanis who decry the government for bowing to U.S. wishes.” Perhaps in an effort to appease the mounting civilian opposition to drone attacks, President Zardari did acknowledge that “drones are radicalizing more people to side with the Taliban,” Arnaud de Borchgrave reported. In 2009, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, “said missile strikes by U.S. drones on the northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan were in fact strengthening the militants,” the Financial Times (London) reported. Mehdi Hasan in the Guardian explained that Obama’s “backing of indiscriminate slaughter in Pakistan can only encourage new waves of militancy.” David Kilcullen recognized that “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.” Kathy Kelly reported in the Huffington Post, “The drones feed hourly intelligence information to U.S. war commanders, but the machinery can’t inform people about the spiraling anger as the U.S. conducts assassination operations in countries throughout the 1.3 billion-strong Muslim world.” Kelly cited Fred Branfman as saying that, “Sold as defending Americans…[it] is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come.” Likewise, Le Monde Diplomatique confirmed that, “The drones worsen the resentment of Pakistan’s people: Public opinion, which already views its government as corrupt, sees drones as an attack on the legitimacy of national power. While most of the world gives more credit to Obama than to his predecessor, his ratings in Pakistan are little higher than those of George Bush.” Furthermore, Business Week reported that the hometown of the failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, “is close to the Pakistani region where the militants are now being targeted by U.S. drone attacks.” Terrorism specialist Jerrold Post was quoted as saying, “There is intense anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. This has been magnified by some of the drone killings, [and] targeted assassination[s].” Business Week added that, “Shahzad felt let down when his home government failed to put a stop to the drone strikes carried out by the government of his host country. He seems to have experienced some sort of psychological Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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break[down], after which he was no longer defined by family and career, but by what he felt was the failed policy of both countries.” Human Rights Watch noted in its annual global report that, “Anti-U.S. sentiment deepened markedly in Pakistan in 2009 due to perceived U.S. violations of Pakistani sovereignty through aerial drone strikes in the tribal areas that killed hundreds of civilians and persistent rumors, denied by Pakistani authorities, that personnel from the private military company Xe Services ([formerly] Blackwater) are conducting covert operations in Pakistan,” concluding that “Substantial sections of Pakistani society, particularly opinion makers and the media, blamed U.S. behavior for the surge in militant attacks in the country, even as they expressed broad support for the government’s fight against the Taliban and affiliated groups.” Drone resistance is proving difficult, with “a Pakistani court up[holding] the dismissal of a petition against U.S. drone attacks,” the Jurist reported in 2009. Added to which, Kathy Kelly and three friends were arrested in the United States for trespassing, “when after a ten-day vigil outside the [Creech] air force base, we entered it with a letter we wanted to circulate among the base personnel, describing our opposition to a massive targeted assassination program.” Le Monde Diplomatique highlighted the “economic reality” of murdering people with robots. “It costs $2.6m to train a U.S. fighter pilot and just $135,000 to train a drone pilot.” Micah Zenko, of the Council on Foreign Relations, was quoted as saying that in 2008, “the Bush administration took the decision to turn the CIA into a counter-insur-

line are through Afghanistan and Pakistan—one of which is under an Anglo-American occupation and the other is being subjected to mounting drone attacks. These “chessboard” games, as British colonialists used to refer to the ruining of people’s lives, have an extra, potentially terminal potency in today’s nuclear weapons-armed world—as Liaquat Ali Khan, and others, have pointed out. As trade barriers are lowered for nanotech and other highly dangerous technologies, the human race is pushed to what Martin Rees, one of the world’s leading astrophysicists, cautioned in his book Our Final Hour?, namely humanity’s “fifty-fifty” odds of surviving the next ninety years “without a serious setback.” A few years after Rees’s warning, a U.S. Navy-commissioned study into robot ethics noted parenthetically that “civilian computer systems have failed and raised worries that can carry over to military applications.… Thus, it is a concern that we also may not be able to halt some (potentially-fatal) chain of events caused by autonomous military systems that process information and can act at speeds incomprehensible to us, e.g., with high-speed unmanned aerial vehicles.” Likewise, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), a couple of years later, predicted that by 2040, “the increased complexity of networks are likely to increase the risk, and the impact of catastrophic systems failure [emphasis in original].” These highly dangerous systems are due to become even more hazardous as human beings are put “out of the loop,” to use the military parlance, by autonomous systems. According to USAF’s drone expansion plan, “Increasingly humans will no longer be “in the loop,” but rather “on the loop”—monitoring the execution of certain decisions.” HowAs trade barriers are lowered for nanotech and other highly danger- ever, the U.S. Navy-commisous technologies, the human race is pushed to what Martin Rees, sioned study noted that, “One of one of the world’s leading astrophysicists, cautioned in his book Our the few near-certainties in the development of military robots Final Hour?, namely humanity’s “fifty-fifty” odds of surviving the is that keeping a human in the next ninety years “without a serious setback.” decision-making loop is going to seriously degrade battle effirection air force working in support of the Pakistani govciency,” meaning that safety is an institutional flaw of the ernment.… The CIA attacks are secret, which rules out a military. public debate on their effectiveness.” Humanity’s greatest challenges were perhaps best laid There is something familiar to intelligence analysts, out in a futures study by the MOD, published a few years which does not seem to penetrate much mainstream or even prior to the one cited above: “Many of the concerns over antiwar analysis, namely that a destabilized Pakistan is in the development of new technologies lie in their safety, inthe Pentagon’s interest because of its destabilizing effect on cluding the potential for disastrous outcomes, planned and China. A National Intelligence Council (NIC) Study unplanned.” We may wish to take note of the word pointed out in 2008 that were Pakistan to “erupt,” it would planned. “For example, it is argued that nanotechnology hamper the Sino-Iranian oil and gas ambition to construct a could have detrimental impacts on the environment, genetic pipeline through Pakistan in order to supply China with modification could spiral out of control and that AI [artificheap Iranian resources (China already having taken a loss cial intelligence] could be superior to that of humans, but on Iraqi oil due to the Anglo-American occupation, the without the restraining effect of human social conditionIraqis having taken an incomparably worse loss). “China’s ing.” The MoD concluded, “Various doomsday scenarios concerns about security in Pakistan…have dampened plans arising in relation to these and other areas of development for a Pakistan-China oil pipeline,” the NIC affirmed. By present the possibility of catastrophic impacts, ultimately 2025, the NIC predicted in a futures study, “the long-deincluding the end of the world, or at least of humanity.” Z layed plans for the “peace pipeline” connecting Iran, Pakistan, and India (IPI) are back on track again and the IPI pipeline may be extended to China,” hence the need to Tim Coles is a writer and filmmaker whose articles have appeared in Z Magazine and Peace Review. destabilize Pakistan. The only feasible routes for the pipe40

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Review s Book Reviews

Anti-Capitalism By Ezequiel Adamovsky Seven Stories Press, 2011, 176 pp.

Review by Henry Milne

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t’s not surprising that Trotskyists were annoyed by this book. In one section, it depicts a bearded and bespectacled leftist intellectual, in an impeccable illustration, lecturing protesters who are engaged in a confrontation with police that: “I’ve come to show you how to fight capitalism.” Under his arm is a book with “Trotsky” emblazoned across the front. In another section, it quotes an appealing-looking Trotsky saying, “The Soviets will be able to continue to function: Anyway, real power is already in the hands of the party. Workers’ control over production should cease because of its inefficiency. In its place, we the state will name company directors.” Of course, most open minded Trotskyists who are capable of being critical of their own tradition rightly reject this particularly unsavory attitude in favor of workers’ democracy. And while Trotsky’s ideas and legacy can’t be reducible to a decontextualized quote, the illustrations and text certainly give vent to the all too common behavior of posturing leftist militants. However, the sheer quality of this little book far supersedes the generalizations it must inevitably offer. To ignore it would be to miss perhaps the best book to convey anti-capitalist ideas in such an understandable way. Ezequiel Adamovsky is an Argentine political activist and historian who has written numerous books, articles, and essays (much of his work can be accessed online in English at ZNet). His book Anti-Capitalism has recently been translated into English. It is illustrated by Ilustradores Unidos, a group of artists who are co-authors in elaborating the ideas discussed and add a unique aesthetic flair. As the book describes, they “are visual artists who participate in the Taller Popular de Serigrafia, a group that formed during the intense upsurge of political and social movements during the popular rebellion of December 2001. They formed with the objective of stamping images of support, artistic, and political accompaniment to all kinds of protests.” As veterans of

the December 2001 revolt in Argentina, this biography gives a sense of authenticity to their illustrations. It also encapsulates the ethos of this book, in that the artists and the author do not represent a political party or line, but are simply committed to supporting progressive struggles. The book is divided into five sections, beginning with an analysis and disassembling of all the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual justifications for capitalism. It describes capitalism as an oppressive, classist, imperialist, and globalized system, which reproduces itself and its own ideology under the hegemony of the dominant class, the bourgeoisie. So far, so good. Karl Marx explains economic coercion, Mikhail Bakunin tells us that the state “is a fundamental instrument of oppression,” and Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and John Holloway, among others, pop up to give their opinions on a variety of issues. One particularly perceptive page, under the heading “a global and expansive system” elucidates: “Even though capitalism arose in Europe only five centuries ago, it quickly spread throughout the entire globe; its expansive logic seems to have no limit.” The illustration then aptly summarizes these five centuries in the drawn black and white palette that is utilized throughout the book. It starts on a medieval sailing ship, with two figures in medieval frocks standing on the bow. One says: “We’re going to America to conquer new lands and bring back riches.” The other figure replies “and to conquer souls.” A few centuries later, the sailor on a steamship explains that: “we are bringing progress and civilization to Asia,” while a capitalist in a top hat replies: “and to trade with the natives.” And in the modern era, a USAF bomber says: “We are on a humanitarian mission in Eastern Europe,” while a fat cat capitalist with a cigar drawls: “and we’re going to do great business.” The relationship between capitalism and the exercise of state power could not be made clearer. Indeed, as Adamovsky writes later in the book: “the State adopts the form of the capitalist society that it belongs to.” Far from promoting democracy, capitalism undermines it. Adamovsky cites the example of the 1973 coup against democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, as a historical example of how whenever elected representatives threaten the power of the dominant class, they are removed by force. In that case, it was organized by the U.S. government and local capitalists. From this, Adamovsky draws the conclusion that: “we can’t say that we live in a true democracy; really, we live in a dictatorship of capital in which we can choose representatives and make decisions regarding only minor issues.” This will resonate with many who feel little difference between the center-left and Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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center-right political parties, as both adopt almost identical neoliberal programs. The second section of the book is entitled “from resistance to anti-capitalism” which explores historical developments, pre-capitalist resistance struggles, the emergence of anti-capitalist ideologies, and political revolutions. In the pre-capitalist era, we are introduced to such figures as Thomas Muntzer, a German theologian who was a rebel leader in the German Peasants’ War of 1524-1526, though he himself was captured and decapitated in 1525. The peasants who joined Muntzner in this revolt found inspiration in biblical stories and “organized themselves into a sect and decided to collectivize property, so as to live life just as they imagined the early Christians had done.” After a brief look at the impact of the French and Industrial Revolutions, the basic ideas of socialism, anarchism, and Marxism are discussed. Among the ranks of the early socialists are the utopians Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, while the three main anarchist figures are Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Piotr Kropotkin, and, of course, Bakunin. Beneath a picture of a white bearded Marx, the Marxist concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is mentioned but not explained, along with the hoped for ultimate disappearance of the state and inequality in a communist society. In terms of the legacy of Marx’s ideas, Adamovsky trots out the familiar argument of blaming Friedrich Engels for distorting Marxist thought for presenting it as “scientific and flawless.” A quote from Engels follows: “Marx is the Newton of social sciences; his socialism is the only scientific truth. The rest is nothing but utopian socialism.” Adamovsky does concede that, “Marxism inspired millions to fight for socialism,” but that by then it had converted itself into a dogma and found itself in difficulty to adapt to changing circumstances. While Marxists may take issue with some of these characterizations, clearly it is not the task of this book to get into the nitty gritty of Marxism and its historical legacy. Generally, it treats socialist and Marxist ideas fairly and seriously. On the very next page, the history of the First International is recalled. In an image sure to bring a smile to the lips of every socialist and anarchist, Marx and Bakunin, looking rather silly, yell insults back and forth at each other. The Russian Revolution, “the first anti-capitalist revolution” as Adamovsky calls it, is examined sympathetically, starting with the activities of the soviets. The Bolshevik party is credited with gaining support “from the majority of sectors struggling for revolution.” Adamovsky lists the immediate achievements of the Bolsheviks as treating national minorities in a far more egalitarian fashion, and new rights for women. It might have been pertinent to mention perhaps the Bolsheviks most popular policy—removing Russia from the horrific conflagration known as World War One. Unfortunately, these achievements quickly disintegrated in the course of invasion and civil war. Adamovsky sees the growing authoritarianism and brutality of the Bolsheviks as part and parcel with Leninism as much as anything else. He does not detail just how severe the impact of Tsarism, World War I, imperialist invasion, civil war, and the backward development of Russia had on the aspirations of the Bolsheviks. Moreover, he does not relate the belief of Lenin that the only means to save the infant Russian workers’ state would be a revolution in a more developed country like Germany. As that failed, it doomed the Bolsheviks to failure. However, it should be remembered that both Lenin and Trotsky did make queasy theoretical justifications for mas42

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sive centralization of power into the hands of the state, despite also elucidating ideas for human liberation and having a revolutionary and democratic rhetoric. To romanticize them in any way is to do them and history a disservice. It can’t be denied that the Bolsheviks acted appallingly when they thought it served their interests. The real question is, were these inherent traits of Bolshevism or the inevitable results of monstrous circumstances? Also, could the soviets have survived; could any kind of socialism have existed in the conditions of the time? Did the Socialist Revolutionary Party or the anarchists really pose any kind of successful alternative? Perhaps we shall never know, but a closer examination of the period in other texts would be required. Democratic centralism is viewed by Adamovsky as contributing to how “Lenin’s party ended up imposing on society its own centralized and hierarchical structures” which saw the rise of the bureaucracy which replaced capitalists as the dominant class, but was just as oppressive. He then cites how there were similar results for other countries which implemented the communist model, “far from the ideals of equality and emancipation,” but does not mention the pernicious influence of Stalinism, colonialism, imperialism, poverty, and underdevelopment. Despite this, Adamovsky’s criticism is well founded and effectively challenges assumptions while providing a quick history lesson. Adamovsky is keen to make a distinction between the “traditional Left” and the “new anti-capitalism,” a somewhat amorphous term for a movement with amorphous qualities. Adamovsky does try to quantify some basic aspects that distinguish the “new anti-capitalism,” with particular regard to power and autonomy. Adamovsky judges that historically, most Leftist traditions have had one common feature—that is, whether reformist or revolutionary, their aim was to “use the State as a tool to emancipate society.” The illustration below this text depicts a goateed male and a female with short hair and an eyebrow piercing, who represent the people emblematic of the ideas and values of the “new anti-capitalism.” The man explains that power is not only political and not just concentrated in the state, while the woman reinforces his point by questioning whether state power is really in the hands of nation-states. The man continues: “the state is a machine that divides, disciplines, and subordinates people. And one can’t create a new world with a machine like that.” A worthwhile and necessary observation, to be sure. Adamovsky clarifies his position through the proxy male figure: “The new anti-capitalism tries to avoid being taken over by power. It’s about creating social relations where power disappears or is limited. It’s more about “disempowering” the state than it is about “taking over” it.” This has been labelled “popular power,” “anti-power,” or “counter-power,” and “refers to the struggle to extend autonomy to the oppressed.” As such, it has links to the ideas of Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and Holloway especially. While Adamovsky’s aversion to state power is clear, he does take a nuanced position, explaining that elections and occupying the state can sometimes be useful, but it isn’t the overall political tactic. Autonomy beyond the state is the goal, and in that noble aspiration lie the seeds of a new world. The last two sections explore contemporary anti-capitalist movements and some ideas as to how to change the world. The Zapatistas are prominently featured, along with illustrations and quotes from Subcomandante Marcos. Environmentalist, feminist, workers’ control, immigration, anti-privat-

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ization, and alternative media movements show both the ingenuity, diversity, and perhaps most importantly, the scale of the struggles occurring worldwide. This is very important to express as many activists often feel isolated and this section shows just how much they are connected to a global movement. Helpfully, website links to these organizations are also provided. The final section, which is the shortest in the book, shows ideas in action and posits realistic proposals that can be fought for right now. Some are familiar, such as the “immediate cancellation of foreign debt and the abolition of the IMF,” an unconditional universal basic income, and global citizenship. Ideas about participatory and direct democracy are considered, as is non-commercial exchange, market socialism, libertarian municipalism, and Michael Albert’s participatory economy model. The sheer level and scope of the history, concepts, and contemporary political debates that manage to be covered in this little book make it an invaluable resource. Not only is it useful to those beginning to become politically active, but it even manages to offer something for grizzled old veterans. In its rush to excoriate many ideas from the past, it may end up throwing off a cliff some excellent ideas that are still worthy of debate and consideration. It would also have been nice for Adamovsky to include a discussion of libertarian Marxist figures like CLR James, Raya Dunayevskaya, and the constantly overlooked Anton Pannekoek. Indeed, Pannekoek is perhaps the best libertarian communist critic of Lenin and Leninism and his book Workers’ Councils deserves to be as widely read as Lenin’s State and Revolution. Overall, Anti-Capitalism is easy on the eyes, refreshing, and never dull. Z

Harry Milne is an Australian writer, freethinker, and libertarian socialist. His writings have been published in the Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal and Political Affairs. He blogs at http://theredstartwinklesmischievously.wordpress.com.

Refusing to be Enemies Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation

By Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta Ithaca Press, Garnet Publishing, UK, 2011

Review by Jim Miles

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srael has always indicated that there is no partner for peace in its relationships with the Palestinian people. Refusing to be Enemies refutes that idea solidly through its investigation into the non-violent resistance movement taking place in Palestine and Israel. It also clarifies the nature of the Palestinian resistance and the nature of what non-violence truly stands for. As cited from Mohammed Khatib, “what the state of Israel fears most of all is the hope that people can live together based on justice and equality for all.” A forward by Ursula Franklin points out that, “it is the violent response, the abnormal, that is recorded, and analyzed and taught.” It is also the corporate media that finds the violence agreeable to its narrative of events, which for the most part, as indicated by Jeff Halper, depicts “Israel as an innocent democracy and a victim of terrorism that is sim-

ply defending itself,” rather than the reality of Israel using “occupation as a pro-active policy by an ethnocracy that is the strong party in the conflict and is engaged in ethnic cleansing.” The “lethal dynamic” of having “Palestinians resisting violently and resisting through things like suicide bombings,” supports the innocent victim narrative. It helps create inside Israel a “war culture that is perpetrating wars.” As with U.S. foreign policy, linked tightly to that of Israel, having an enemy is very convenient for the distribution of a narrative to the general population; in contrast, as indicated by Franklin, “for individual citizens, refusing to be enemies is a profoundly political act.” This relates very strongly to the often expressed idea that the simple act of living and existing is a form of resistance to the Israeli occupation. In Refusing to be Enemies, Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta extends the idea of non-violence beyond the merely passive. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta interviewed many participants in the non-violent organizations participating in resistance to that Israeli occupation and all that it entails. From these many interviews several themes and arguments stand out. The first idea is that of non-violent resistance itself and what it actually comprises. Obviously violence is not part of the process, but the other extreme of passivity in the face of occupation is also not part of the process. Non-violence in this book becomes a pro-active dynamic, with actions taken similar to civil disobedience (in cultures where there is civil law, rather than military rule). One of the main examples relates to the iconic olive tree and the manner in which non-violent demonstrators from both Israel and internationals have assisted the Palestinians in their age-old rhythms of harvesting their olives. Other acts include tax avoidance, peaceful protests against the wall and house demolitions. These are not passive acts and have led to serious injury and death, but it is the Israeli violence of occupation producing those results. Another aspect that rises is that of normalization. Normalization was the process before the first Intifada when Israeli governance tried to make life appear “normal” in the occupied territories through various means of trade, labor practices, and non-invasive policing. In this sense, the Palestinians do not want to “normalize” their relationship with Israel, they wish to dramatically alter it to that of equality in all areas. In other words, through non-violent resistance, the Palestinians are not accepting the status quo, are not accepting that the media will be able to present a picture that life continues as normal in the occupied territories. The non-violence campaign involves mostly the Palestinians, with support from several Israeli groups and from the international community. Without the latter as witnesses, the campaign for non-violence would be met with much stiffer military reaction than already occurs. Refusing to be Enemies recognizes that while international solidarity is essential, it is the Palestinians who by necessity must perform most of the actual non-violent actions. With the western media essentially presenting the full Israeli narrative and with the full support of the U.S. in all dimensions, the non-violent campaign by a similar necessity must be carried on and enlarged by the international community. The boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign is a prime factor in raising people’s awareness of the true nature of the occupation in Palestine. That this campaign is successful is evident by the responses of the Israeli government and other associated governments (U.S. and Canada, in particular) to try and quash the campaign as being anti-seZ MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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mitic or a race-based hate campaign. The majority of informed global citizens appear to be able to see through this charade. BDS, as described by George Rishmawi, is “definitely one of the most important methods that can really get people around the world to be part of the attempts to end the Israeli military occupation of Palestine.” The boycott involves, “not only Israeli products, but any products that contribute to maintaining the occupation.” As with South Africa, BDS will be a long struggle, as Israel has commercial military ties with most western countries and the corporate elites that rule them. With more information available, with more media attention, and with the ongoing persistence of the Palestinian people, some form of non-violent solution could be attainable. The discussion at the end of the book covers the many permutations of one state, two states, federated states, bi-national states, but with the all encompassing underlying idea that, yes, there is a way to peace, that there are many “partners for peace” looking for a similar response from Israel. The nature of U.S., Canadian, and EU support for the “war on terror” and its creation of the evil other makes this a difficult yet imperative challenge. Kaufman-Lacusta’s work is a valuable addition to the library of books supporting the Palestinian cause and the necessary wider cause of global justice. Z

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’s work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Revolutionary Doctors How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conceptualization of Health Care

By Steve Brouwer NY, Monthly Review Press, 2011, 245 pp.

Review by Don Fitz

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s Venezuela becomes the first country to reproduce the Cuban medical model on a mass scale, it is doing so in unique ways. Steve Brouwer’s Revolutionary Doctors is essential reading for anyone interested in the transformation of medical systems at a cost vastly less than in the U.S. and other overdeveloped countries. Readers knowledgeable of developments in Cuba and Venezuela, as well as those first learning about them, can learn from Brouwer’s insights into how medicine intertwines with national and international politics. Revolutionary Doctors builds on the growing body of information about medicine in Cuba. Some of the best recent writings include Linda Whiteford and Laurence Branch’s 44

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Primary Health Care in Cuba (2008) and John Kirk and Michael Erisman’s Cuban Medical Internationalism (2009). Together, the three works show how the Cuban model grew by responding to a series of contradictions. The first was the enormous disparity in the quality of medical care between rich and poor, urban and rural, and light-skinned vs. dark-skinned that characterized Cuba in the 1950s. The revolutionary government immediately devoted itself to increasing the number of hospitals throughout the island. Expansion of the access to medical care during the 1960s presented a new contradiction. The best medical care would be preventive rather than a hospital-based reaction to disease. So the 1970s saw the introduction of polyclinics, which provided preventive care in the form of inoculations and education for 20,000 to 40,000 residents (they now serve 40,000 to 60,000). Cuba was probably the first country in the world to recognize that clinics, though invaluable, do not create the close contact between health professionals and patients that are essential for genuine preventive care. In the 1980s, the Family Doctor Program began Basic Health Teams (BHTs), which are a doctor and nurse pair living at a small medical office, or consultorio, in the community they serve. The most revolutionary concept of Cuban medicine is family doctors being responsible for everyone in a defined geographical area. Unlike the first three contradictions, that of the 1990s was 100 percent external in origin. The fall of the Soviet Union, the crash of the Cuban economy, and U.S. embargo bills left the island with much less energy, food, and medicine. Hardships were extreme: young men lost 25 percent of their caloric intake and nutritional deficits led to 50,000 cases of optic neuropathy. But Cuba trained four times more doctors during this decade than it did during the 1970s. Amazingly, rates of infant mortality continued to fall. Polyclinics and consultorios had become so much a part of life that Cuba was able to weather the economic storm. The fifth contradiction was Cuba’s understanding that socialized medicine could not be realized in one country alone. Though international medical humanitarianism spanned 50 years of revolutionary change, it was the first decade of the 21st century when it grew by leaps and bounds, with international medical brigades responding to crises throughout the world and over 20,000 students from 100 countries coming to Cuba for free education to become doctors. The Cuban concept of medicina general integral (MGI, comprehensive general medicine) defines the Family Doctor Program put into effect in the 1980s. Building close doctor-patient relationships means seeing patients in the morning at the consultorio and making home visits in the afternoon. The Venezuelan Barrio Adentro (inside the neighborhood) program is likewise based on this concept of medical professionals living in the same communities as their patients. Its foundation was laid with the October 2000 agreement signed by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, which included Venezuela’s pledging oil and other goods and Cuba’s providing

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human resources: teachers, agronomists and medical professionals. Though 17 of 24 million Venezuelans had no regular access to medical care when Chavez took office in 1998, in 2003 the first wave of 2,000 Cuban doctors arrived to help extend care to every corner of the country. By 2009, 14,000 Cuban doctors had participated. Like the Cuban MGI model, the Venezuelan MIC program (comprehensive community medicine) begins by recruiting thousands of students who go to medical school for six years. They observe doctor/patient interactions beginning with their first year. In addition to treating people in their communities, the MIC program trains doctors in village settings. Some Venezuelan students are mothers and Brouwer describes one who began medical school at 71 years of age. Barrio Adentro I began in 2003 with a massive expansion of neighborhood consultorios populares. In 2004, the Chavez government initiated Barrio Adentro II, which supported the mushrooming consultorios populares with a system of Clinicas Diagnosticas Integrales (CDIs, Comprehensive Diagnostic Clinics). CDIs have a variety of specialists, analytic equipment and treatment alternatives not available in neighborhood settings. The following year saw the introduction of Barrio Adentro III, which attempted to overhaul Venezuela’s complex maze of hospital systems. In 2007, Barrio Adentro IV began the construction of specialty hospitals. One of the most striking differences between health care in Cuba and Venezuela is their time frames. Each major shift in Cuban medicine marked a decade. A year was devoted to corresponding modifications in Venezuela: 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007 for initiating Barrio Adentro I to IV. Brouwer notes the inevitable conflicts and problems which accompanied such rapid transformation. It is not surprising that a course which takes decades to chart can be recreated much more rapidly. But it is not obvious that stages of the process may be reversed in doing so. It took three decades for Cuban medicine to evolve from focusing on hospital care and polyclinics before hitting upon the MGI concept of the Basic Health Team. Once the Cubans realized that a doctor-nurse pair living in the community should be the cornerstone of community health, the Venezuelans used it as the beginning point of the Barrio Adentro program. With massive expansion of consultorios populares as their first step, the Venezuelans built more clinics to strengthen neighborhood health and then overhauled their hospital system, modifying their medical systems in an order opposite to what Cubans had done. Of course, many other differences affected conversions of health systems in the two countries. With 11 million residents, Cuba has a much smaller population and when the vast majority of nay-sayers departed from Cuba, it was able to develop a cohesive approach to health care. Venezuela, by contrast, has the continued presence of large anti-revolutionary forces using the media they control to denounce any progressive change.

Despite these differences, there are many parallels between revolutionary medicine in Cuba and Venezuela, beginning with doctor-nurse teams living in areas served. As in countries throughout Latin America, established physicians were highly reluctant to practice medicine in poor barrios or rural areas. The revolutionary government needed to train thousands of doctors who would themselves go to areas most in need, as Che Guevara said, “immediately and with unreserved enthusiasm to help their brothers.” The beginning point of revolutionary medicine is a new generation of doctors motivated by revolutionary consciousness. These doctors work not to become wealthy, but because they find their efforts rewarding and meaningful for their patients’ lives. Governments in both countries quickly increased spending on medicine in the poorest areas, resulting in rapid reductions in infant mortality and infectious diseases and increases in life expectancy. These improvements could only occur because Cuba and Venezuela realized that improving medical care presupposes simultaneous improvements in literacy, education, and housing. U.S. doctors not seeing patients until they are sick is symptomatic of “sickness-based” medicine. When Brouwer described statistical charts on the walls of a consultorios popular in Venezuela, I remembered the same types of charts I saw in a Havana consultorio. Charting behaviors that need to change reflects the “wellness-based” medicine of doctors who are familiar with their patients because they interact with them informally throughout the year. As the U.S. moves toward destruction of Medicare and programs which are essential for healthy living (such as Social Security), international financial Scrooges demand “austerity” approaches that sacrifice the health of entire nations on the alter of bank security. Brouwer describes an alternative in Venezuela which is truly revolutionary because patients are anything but passive recipients of a benevolent government. Each neighborhood of 1,500 to 2,000 people that wanted a Cuban doctor to serve them was expected to organize a committee of 10 to 20 volunteers from the community who would commit themselves to finding office spaces, providing sleeping quarters, collecting furniture and simple fixtures, and feeding the medical providers. Venezuela is now emulating Cuba’s example of training doctors from other countries at its medical schools. If the Cuban MGI model morphs into MIC in Venezuela, what new concepts will be born in countries of Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean? We can be sure that they will not rely on expensive technologies of Western “sickness-based” medicine. We also know that they will not be static repeats of Cuba or Venezuela but dynamic recreations of medicine for the cultures they serve. Z

Don Fitz is editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought, which is sent to members of the Greens/Green Party USA. He produces Green Time TV in St. Louis. Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2011

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Smeltertown Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community

By Monica Perales University of North Carolina Press, 2010, 277 pp.

By Gabriel San Roman

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n writing Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community, University of Houston assistant professor of history, Monica Perales, tells the important story of how the Southwest border community shaped or made the lives of those who lived and worked there before it was ultimately leveled for lead contamination four decades ago. Perales, a former El Paso resident with family ties to Smeltertown, used newspaper clippings, employee records from ASARCO, parish newsletters, and oral history in putting the book together. In focusing on the people of Smeltertown, it joins David Romo’s Ringside Seat to Revolution in creating an ever emerging historiography of El Paso from the bottom up. The book begins with an ironic introduction as Smeltertown’s existence is threatened by a new environmental consciousness of the early 1970s with the ushering in of Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency. ASARCO’s decades-long polluting of the area with lead caused many children to have unhealthy levels of it in their blood. As a result, angry residents gathered at the local Catholic Church in March 1972, demanding answers to their suspicions that lead contamination was a ruse to uproot Smeltertown. After the introduction, Perales goes on to describe ASARCO’s role in El Paso within a larger context of international capitalist commerce and the migrant labor force from Mexico it attracted—turning the city into a copper capital of the Southwest by the 1930s. As ASARCO began operations and La Esmelda grew, it was divided into two sections: El Alto where the Anglo managers and supervisors lived and El Bajo where Mexican families lived in substandard conditions. The separation between the two was so vast in many dimensions that my mother—who grew up there—recalls never even knowing of El Alto’s existence. Through quoted racist statements from institutions like El Paso’s Chamber of Commerce and with the employee records provided by ASARCO, Perales was able to demonstrate the wage discrepancies that correlated with the bigoted view of Mexican men as an exploitable labor pool. It wasn’t until the 1940s, through the union leadership of people like Humberto Silex, that basic worker rights were demanded and attained at the smelting plant. For women living in Smeltertown, the copper plant wasn’t the arena for assimilation. Instead, schools were the main channels of “Americanization.” My grandmother Consuelo Roman, as a student at Courchesne Elementary School, was once sent to the principal’s office for tearing out a page from 46

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the history textbook that described Mexicans as cowardly during the insurrection that established the Republic of Texas. When it wasn’t history or discouraging speaking Spanish, it was home economics. Perales, interestingly, illustrates how instruction on cooking sought to change a Mexican household into a more “American one.” Was La Esmelda simply a classic “company town?” The book makes compelling arguments about the real and imagined worlds the residents created, while also transcending the capitalist paternalism of ASARCO. The church, of course, figured prominently as a social space that preserved Mexicanidad to the extent it is intertwined with Catholicism. If company stores were a means of strengthening ASARCO’s grip on workers and their access to basic goods, that gave way over time to family owned and operated small businesses. Residents didn’t refer to stores by their banner name, but by the names of the people who ran them. As Perales’s book comes to a close, the “remembering” part of her subtitle takes shape. Readers see the demise of Smeltertown in the 1970s and begin to see ASARCO for the environmental nuisance that it was. The company had a long history of pollution abuses that came to a head with the testing of Smeltertown’s children for unhealthy levels of lead in their blood compelling El Paso’s Mayor Bert Williams to declare a medical emergency—one that would set the wheels in motion for the ultimate leveling of the community. Relocation was proposed setting the stage for a final battle. It’s not as if esmeltianos were woefully unaware of the environmental hazards. Memory frames that have passed through my family history include the retellings by my mother of how one could blow their nose there only to find a white handkerchief dirtied by soot. Nevertheless, skepticism surrounded the sudden interest of outsiders, as did more immediate and pressing economic concerns. Where would the residents relocate to? In what sector of El Paso’s post-World War II economy would they find comparable wages? The environmental concerns of the city regarding the public health safety were valid, but the improper manner in which relocations were carried out showed that the rage and suspicions of residents were also valid. As the January 1, 1973 deadline loomed, only a handful of families stayed until the very end. As a student of history, I deeply appreciated the analytical frameworks that informed me of the political economy of this particular section of West Texas. For my family, whose fondest memories are often drawn from their childhood in La Esmelda, they sought, not so much an explanation, but more of a recreation of the world they inhabited with all its stories and characters. Smeltertown started the conversations and recollections anew anyway and drew us closer together in the process. Z

Gabriel San Roman is a contributing writer for the Orange County Weekly. He blogs about music and politics at donpa labraz.com.

Reviews

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve By Adrienne Rich New York, W.W. Norton, 2011, 89 pp.

Review by Gregg Mosson

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n her latest book of poetry Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, Adrienne Rich tackles the contemporary American landscape of war, consumerism, and social conflicts by internalizing it as both public intellectual and poet. This twin capacity—intellectual rigor and emotional resonance—is what makes Rich’s recent work so fresh. Rich’s outlook, though often dark, is explorative, creative, and full of vibrancy. Tonight No Poetry Will Serve actually serves well as surprising, challenging, and explorative poetry for our times. In the book’s title poem, Rich despairs over America’s embrace of torture and writes: verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing

By transforming history into grammar, Rich highlights brute force versus moral contemplation at the crux of political and moral choice. That the verb “goes on doing” despite the “disgrac[e]” is part of the mystery of our times. Today the information superhighway forecloses the excuse of I did not know. Rich ends the poem with a command: “now diagram the sentence.” This contrasts today’s brutalities with how formal schooling often distracts us. School teaches skills—like grammar—but not the essentials, such as how to live or handle crisis. For instance, how can Americans “diagram” the recent blunder of spending trillions on murderous wars rather than energy independence and ameliorating global warming? Maybe the subtle point here is that rational categorizations can’t capture the human experience. Further, poetry and history can portray and explain our human choices. Tonight No Poetry Will Serve is a good summary of where Rich is now as a poet in her elder years. In the 1991 Atlas of a Difficult World, Rich began a reconsideration of what it means to be a writer in an America embracing consumerism, personal isolation, militarism, and free markets that create vast disparity. Does it mean a writer should simply write, as she ponders in the book’s title poem? Should a professor simply teach, wonders “USonian Journals 2000” in Rich’s 2004 book, The School Among The Ruins? Rich’s answer in both poems is that being neutral embraces the status quo. Rich’s solution is to live, as well as write, through her conscience, as augmented by intellectual studies and personal experiences. In the title poem of her 1995 Midnight Salvage, Rich imagines a businessman pushing his daughter onto the dance floor to dance with a nerve-gas salesman just to make a deal. Her new book takes place within this same worldview. It

may be difficult to read for those not familiar with her recent work. Starting with some of the other titles mentioned here is a better bet. Rich does come to some sort of new reckoning, however, in her new book in both “Don’t Flinch” and “Reading the Illiad (As If) for the First Time.” In “Don’t Flinch,” Rich looks at the role of brute force in history and life and chants: Reach again for the Iliad. The lines pulse into sense. Turn up the music now do you hear it? Can you smell the smoke under the near shingles?

In “Reading the Illiad,” Rich contrasts the idealization of art and history as captured best by Romantic poet John Keats in “Ode to a Grecian Urn” with the realities of war, as described through re-reading the Illiad. This leaves Rich asking, “Beauty?” Her collection as a whole answers: maybe not. But life, the collection answers, is vibrant. There is a lot of sensuality and partial song in her fragmented, imagistic poetry. Since 1991, Adrienne Rich has been asking herself and her readers how a progressive vision of society can reckon with human nature and the negative trends in America. Tonight No Poetry Will Serve augments the proposition that all social thinkers must reckon with humanity’s proclivity for brute force and violence. In “Domain,” Rich recalls somewhat nostalgically and somewhat ironically the “[r]ebuked utopian projection” of her 1960s domain in Northern California. Nevertheless, in the very good poem “Scenes from the Negotiation,” Rich offers a dialogue between multiple voices, ranging from someone clinging to work to support their family to an underground anti-establishment revolutionary to a visiting neophyte. This collage poem, like many of the poems in her new book, is difficult to summarize or encapsulate. Its overall effect, I think, favors courage of living one’s convictions. Dana Gioia, former head of the National Academy of Arts & Sciences under the last president, complained in his well-known book Can Poetry Matter? that contemporary poetry has made itself culturally irrelevant. Poets themselves are often ensconced in academia these days and write myopically. Adrienne Rich is a poet as public intellectual and internal explorer. In Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, one finds a dynamic poetry for our times. Z

Gregg Mosson is the author of two books of poetry, including Questions of Fire. He most recently edited the anthology Poems Against War: Bending Toward Justice (Wasteland Press 2010). Z MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2011

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ZAPS Events - Inspired by the courageous, nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Greece, Spain and elsewhere, over 50 populist organizations and thousands of activists have joined the October 2011 movement and are planning protests on October 6 at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC. The event will begin with a concert and rally at noon, with the stated goal “to kick off massive sustained occupation and nonviolent civil resistance to rampant corporatism and militarism.” OCCUPATION

Contact: october2011.org.

- The 24th annual Out On Film Festival will take place September 29-October 6, in Atlanta, GA. Out On Film is one of the oldest LGBTQ film festivals in the country. Films include Cho Dependent and Legalize Gay. LGBTQ/FILM

Contact: [email protected]; http://outonfilm.org.

- “The War on the Working Class” is the title of a conference scheduled for October 1 at St. Francis College, Brooklyn. Sponsored by the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE), the conference aims to bring together activists and theorists. CLASS WAR

Contact: Union for Radical Political Economics, Gordon Hall, University of Massachusetts, 418 N. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01002; 413-577- 0806; [email protected]; www.urpe.org.

- The U.S. Human Rights Network has announced this year’s Dignity in Schools Campaign National Week of Action, for October 1-8. The Week of Action will include teach-ins, workshops, rallies and town halls in more than 15 U.S. cities. EDUCATION

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Contact: chloe@dignityin schools.org; http://www. dignityinschools.org. OCCUPATION -

United for Peace and Justice (UJP) Boston will sponsor the “End the Endless Wars and Occupations Conference” on October 1, at Suffolk University. Speakers include Kathy Kelly and Noam Chomsky. Contact: [email protected]; http://justicewith peace.org.

- Warrior Writers are hosting the Veterans and Community Conference: Coming Home Through Art and Dialogue, in Chicago, on October 9. The conference will feature writing and art-making workshops, seminars on building healthy relationships between veterans and allies, and discussion panels exploring local support for veterans. WAR RESISTANCE

Contact: info@warriorwriters. org; http://www.warriorwriters.org/home.html; http://ivaw. org.

- For over 200 years the United States, with its military, has been interfering in the internal affairs of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) is inviting groups and organizations to participate in the Invasion Day (Columbus) Weekend, which will include education, entertainment, and protest. REPRESSION

Contact: [email protected]; http://soaw.org/call-to-action.

- Climate Justice Action is a global network of people and groups committed to taking urgent actions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. October 12-16 is a week of actions dedicated to this end. CLIMATE JUSTICE

Contact: [email protected]; http://www.climate-justice-action.org.

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PEACE CONFERENCE -

The Peace in Asia and the Pacific conference will be held October 21 & 22 in Washington DC. Hosted by the American Friends Service Committee and other organizations, the conference brings together organizers and activists working to move money from the Pentagon to communities, to end the Central Asian wars, and for nuclear weapons abolition. Contact: [email protected]; http://afsc.org/peace-asia-pacific-conference.

- October 22 is the National Day Against Police Brutality. The October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation will have various events around the country. POLICE BRUTALITY

Contact: october22-ny.org; www.october22.org.

- Green Festivals are scheduled for New York City (October 1-2), Los Angeles (October 29-30) and San Francisco (November 12-13). Programs are oriented to fair trade and social and environmentally responsible exhibitors and include local and international speakers, as well as workshops, demonstrations, music, films, food and other activities. GREEN FESTIVAL

Contact: http://www.greenfestivals.org.

- The annual International Days of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space is scheduled for October 1-8. Resources to help plan educational events or demonstrations are available online and by request. Participants include United Against Drones (US/UK), and the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom. SPACE FOR PEACE

Contact: globalnet@minds pring.com; http://www.space4

peace.org/; http://unitedagainst drones.wordpress.com. TEACHERS -

The 11th annual conference, “Teaching for Social Justice - The Power of Community” will be held Sunday, October 9, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM at Mission High School in San Francisco. The free event features workshops and resources, and offers free childcare. Contact: Teachers for Social Justice, 542 Munich Street, San Francisco, CA 94112; 415-6767844; http://www.t4sj.org.

- The Organic Consumers Association is organizing the March Against Monsanto, on World Food Day, October 16. Hundreds of events are scheduled throughout the U.S. and worldwide. FOOD

Contact: http://organicconsumers.org/monsanto/index.cfm.

- The Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival is scheduled for October 20 in Burlington, VT. Films include Truck Farm and Animals Save the Planet. ENVIRONMENT/FILM

Contact: 802-223-2328; [email protected]; http://www. wildandscenicfilmfestival.org.

- United Workers, a National Economic & Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) partner, has organized the first Fair Development Conference in Baltimore, October 28-30. The gathering of organizers, low-wage workers, academics, faith leaders, artists, activists, students and others aims to develop a collective vision for public participation in job creation. LABOR

Contact: conferenc@united workers.org; http://www. nesri.org. LITERACY -

The School of Commoning is running a Campaign for Commons Literacy through October. The Campaign is to create awareness about the International Commons Movement and its

ZAPS message that there are forces besides markets and governments that need strengthening to create good governance of commons. Contact: modernherbalmedicine @gmail.com; http://www.indie gogo.com/CommonsCampaign.

- 1,252 people were arrested outside of the White House during The Tar Sands Action between August 22 - September 3, protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. The group is currently raising funds for future actions. ENVIRONMENT

Contact: tarsandsaction@gmail. com; http://www.tarsandsaction. org.

- The Proletarian Center for Research, Education and Culture is currently considering several calls to radical action, including encouraging workers to start or join unions; a student-loan payment strike; and other actions. LABOR

Contact: josephwaters3@gmail. com; http://prolecenter.word press.com . MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION - The National Associ-

ation for Multicultural Education (NAME) will host its 21st annual conference in Chicago, November 2-5. This year’s theme, “Reworking Intersections, Reframing Debates, Restoring Hope,” will be addressed in intensive institutes, talks and workshops. Contact: [email protected]; http://nameorg.org.

- The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is holding the “Nuclear Weapons: Don’t Buy Them, Don’t Own Them,” conference in Kansas City, November 4-6. War tax resistance (WTR) groups and local war resisters will work together in workshops, panels and discussions. RESISTERS

Contact: [email protected]; http://www.nwtrcc.org.

[email protected]; http:// www.press.uillinois.edu.

- The annual November vigil to protest the School of the Americas (referred to as the School of Assassins, but now officially WHIN- SEC) is scheduled for November 18-20 at Fort Benning, GA. Additional events include teach-ins and workshops.

SOCIAL SECURITY -

DIRECT ACTION

Contact: SOA Watch, PO Box 4566, Washington, DC 20017; 202-234-3440; [email protected]; http://soaw.org/index.php. CLASS -

The Center for Study of Working Class Life has announced the “How Class Works - 2012 Conference,” to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, July 7-9, 2012. Proposals for papers, presentations, and sessions are welcome until December 12, 2011. Contact: Center for Study of Working Class Life, Dept. of Economics, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384; 631-632-7536; [email protected] du; http://www.stonybrook. edu/workingclass.

Books - At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance, A New History of the Civil Rights Movement; and Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC are two new books attempting to upend both traditional and radical histories of the modern civil rights movement by placing women at the center of their narrative and interpretive process. WOMEN

Contact: Alfred A. Knopf, 1745 Broadway 10th floor, New York, NY 10019; 212-782-9000; http:// www.randomhouse.com. Contact: University of Illinois Press, 1325 South Oak Street, MC-566, Champaign, IL 61820-6903;

The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security from Reagan to Obama is a new book by Eric Laursen about the history of the Social Security debate. The book tries to imagine a future for Social Security that radically democratizes it and returns it to its roots in mutual aid. Contact: AK Press, 674-A 23rd Street, Oakland, CA 94612; 510-208-1700; info@akpress. org; http://www.akpress.org. CLASS -

Chris Lehmann’s new book, Rich People Things: Real-Life Secrets of the Predator Class, addresses the various dogmas and delusions of plutocratic rule in the U.S., by cataloguing the fortifications that shelter the elite from the general population. Contact: Haymarket Books, PO Box 180165, Chicago, IL 60618; [email protected]; http://www.haymarketbooks.org.

In Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight for Free Expression in American Schools, David L. Hudson Jr. details the history and growth of the First Amendment in public schools. Topics addressed include dress codes, cyberbullying and the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, Morse v. Frederick, among others. FREE SPEECH/EDUCATION

Contact: Beacon Press, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2892; 617-723-3097; [email protected]; http:// beacon.org.

- Christopher Howard’s debut novel, Tea of Ulaan- baatar, tells the story of a disaffected Peace Corps volunteer who flees life in late-capitalist America to find himself in the post-Soviet industrial life of Mongolia, where the American presence is crumbling.

Contact: Seven Stories Press, 140 Watts Street, New York, NY 10013; 212-226-8760; ruth@ sevenstories.com; http:// sevenstories.com. LGBTQ -

In Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, Dean Spade raises revelatory critiques of the current civil rights and “equality” strategies of mainstream gay and lesbian organizations. Going beyond just legal inclusion, the book is a call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformation it will require. Contact: southend@ southendpress.org; http:// www.southendpress.org.

Film - A new documentary, The Flaw, tells the story of the credit bubble that caused the financial crash of 2008, explaining how excessive income inequality leads to economic instability. FINANCIAL CRASH

Contact: Bullfrog Films, PO Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; 800-5433764; info@bullfrog fims.com; www.bullfrog films.com.

- I Want To See, blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, follows French actress Catherine Deneuve from a banquet in Beirut to South Lebanon, where she witnesses first-hand the devastation caused by Israel’s 2006 invasion. PALESTINE

Contact: Typecast Films, 888-591-3456; info@type castfilms.com; http://typecast films.com.

FICTION

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