The Silence of the Antiwar Movement is Deafening

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The Silence of the Antiwar Movement is Deafening
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

By JOHN V. WALSH
August 26, 2009
Counterpunch.com

A funny thing has happened on Cindy Sheehan's long road from Crawford, Texas, to Martha's Vineyard. Many of those who claim to lead the peace movement and who so volubly praised her actions in Crawford, TX, are not to be seen. Nor heard. The silence in fact is deafening, or as Cindy put it in an email to this writer, "crashingly deafening." Where are the email appeals to join Cindy from The Nation or from AFSC or Peace Action or "Progressive" Democrats of America (PDA) or even Code Pink? Or United for Peace and Justice. (No wonder UFPJ is essentially closing shop, bereft of most of their contributions and shriveling up following the thinly veiled protest behind the "retirement" of Leslie Cagan.) And what about MoveOn although it was long ago thoroughly discredited as principled opponents of war or principled in any way shape or form except slavish loyalty to the "other" War Party. And of course sundry "socialist" organizations are also missing in action since their particular dogma will not be front and center. These worthies and many others have vanished into the fog of Obama's wars.

Just to be sure, this writer contacted several of the "leaders" of the "official" peace movement in the Boston area -- AFSC, Peace Action, Green Party of MA (aka Green Rainbow Party) and some others. Not so much as the courtesy of a reply resulted from this effort - although the GRP at least posted a notice of the action. (It is entirely possible that some of these organizations might mention Cindy's action late enough and quickly enough so as to cover their derrieres while ensuring that Obama will not be embarrassed by protesting crowds.) We here in the vicinity of Beantown are but a hop, skip and cheap ferry ride from Martha's Vineyard. Same for NYC. So we have a special obligation to respond to Cindy's call.

However, not everyone has failed to publicize the event. The Libertarians at Antiwar.com are on the job, and its editor in chief Justin Raimondo wrote a superb column Monday [reprinted below] on the hypocritical treatment of Sheehan by the "liberal" establishment. (1) As Raimondo pointed out, Rush Limbaugh captured the hypocrisy of the liberal left in his commentary, thus:

"Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: 'Enough already.' Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we're not interested, we're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle. You're just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her and they're through with her. They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president."

Limbaugh has their number, just as they have his. Sometimes it is quite amazing how well each of the war parties can spot the other's hypocrisy. But Cindy Sheehan is no one's dupe; she is a very smart and very determined woman who no doubt is giving a lot of White House operatives some very sleepless nights out there on the Vineyard. Good for her.

Obama is an enormous gift to the Empire. Just as he has silenced most of the single-payer movement, an effort characterized by its superb scholarship exceeded only by its timidity, Obama has shut down the antiwar movement, completely in thrall as it is to the Democrat Party and Identity Politics. Why exactly the peace movement has caved to Obama is not entirely clear. Like the single-payer movement, it is wracked by spinelessness, brimming with reverence for authority and a near insatiable appetite to be "part of the crowd." Those taken in by Obama's arguments that the increasingly bloody and brutal AfPak war is actually a "war of necessity," should read Steven Walt's easy demolition of that "argument." (2) Basically Obama's logic is the same as Bush's moronic rationale that "We are fighting them over there so we do not have to fight them over here." There is a potential for "safe havens for terrorists," as the Obamalogues and neocons like to call them, all over the world; and no one can possibly believe the US can invade them all. However, the ones which Israel detests or which allow control of oil pipelines or permit encirclement of China and Russia will see US troops sooner or later.

The bottom line is that everyone in New England and NYC who is a genuine antiwarrior should join the imaginative effort of Cindy Sheehan in Obamaland this week and weekend. We owe it to the many who will otherwise perish at the hands of the war parties of Bush and Obama.

1.See: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/23/war-coverage-and-the-obama-cult/

Or go to Antiwar.com and make a contribution while you are there. It's almost as good as CounterPunch.com.

2.See:http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/18/the_safe_haven_myth

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com He welcomes comments, and he looks forward to seeing crowds of CounterPunchers at Martha's Vineyard this week and weekend.

Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

By JOHN V. WALSH
August 26, 2009
Counterpunch.com

A funny thing has happened on Cindy Sheehan's long road from Crawford, Texas, to Martha's Vineyard. Many of those who claim to lead the peace movement and who so volubly praised her actions in Crawford, TX, are not to be seen. Nor heard. The silence in fact is deafening, or as Cindy put it in an email to this writer, "crashingly deafening." Where are the email appeals to join Cindy from The Nation or from AFSC or Peace Action or "Progressive" Democrats of America (PDA) or even Code Pink? Or United for Peace and Justice. (No wonder UFPJ is essentially closing shop, bereft of most of their contributions and shriveling up following the thinly veiled protest behind the "retirement" of Leslie Cagan.) And what about MoveOn although it was long ago thoroughly discredited as principled opponents of war or principled in any way shape or form except slavish loyalty to the "other" War Party. And of course sundry "socialist" organizations are also missing in action since their particular dogma will not be front and center. These worthies and many others have vanished into the fog of Obama's wars.

Just to be sure, this writer contacted several of the "leaders" of the "official" peace movement in the Boston area -- AFSC, Peace Action, Green Party of MA (aka Green Rainbow Party) and some others. Not so much as the courtesy of a reply resulted from this effort - although the GRP at least posted a notice of the action. (It is entirely possible that some of these organizations might mention Cindy's action late enough and quickly enough so as to cover their derrieres while ensuring that Obama will not be embarrassed by protesting crowds.) We here in the vicinity of Beantown are but a hop, skip and cheap ferry ride from Martha's Vineyard. Same for NYC. So we have a special obligation to respond to Cindy's call.

However, not everyone has failed to publicize the event. The Libertarians at Antiwar.com are on the job, and its editor in chief Justin Raimondo wrote a superb column Monday [reprinted below] on the hypocritical treatment of Sheehan by the "liberal" establishment. (1) As Raimondo pointed out, Rush Limbaugh captured the hypocrisy of the liberal left in his commentary, thus:

"Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: 'Enough already.' Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we're not interested, we're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle. You're just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her and they're through with her. They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president."

Limbaugh has their number, just as they have his. Sometimes it is quite amazing how well each of the war parties can spot the other's hypocrisy. But Cindy Sheehan is no one's dupe; she is a very smart and very determined woman who no doubt is giving a lot of White House operatives some very sleepless nights out there on the Vineyard. Good for her.

Obama is an enormous gift to the Empire. Just as he has silenced most of the single-payer movement, an effort characterized by its superb scholarship exceeded only by its timidity, Obama has shut down the antiwar movement, completely in thrall as it is to the Democrat Party and Identity Politics. Why exactly the peace movement has caved to Obama is not entirely clear. Like the single-payer movement, it is wracked by spinelessness, brimming with reverence for authority and a near insatiable appetite to be "part of the crowd." Those taken in by Obama's arguments that the increasingly bloody and brutal AfPak war is actually a "war of necessity," should read Steven Walt's easy demolition of that "argument." (2) Basically Obama's logic is the same as Bush's moronic rationale that "We are fighting them over there so we do not have to fight them over here." There is a potential for "safe havens for terrorists," as the Obamalogues and neocons like to call them, all over the world; and no one can possibly believe the US can invade them all. However, the ones which Israel detests or which allow control of oil pipelines or permit encirclement of China and Russia will see US troops sooner or later.

The bottom line is that everyone in New England and NYC who is a genuine antiwarrior should join the imaginative effort of Cindy Sheehan in Obamaland this week and weekend. We owe it to the many who will otherwise perish at the hands of the war parties of Bush and Obama.

1.See: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/23/war-coverage-and-the-obama-cult/

Or go to Antiwar.com and make a contribution while you are there. It's almost as good as CounterPunch.com.

2.See:http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/18/the_safe_haven_myth

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com He welcomes comments, and he looks forward to seeing crowds of CounterPunchers at Martha's Vineyard this week and weekend.

War Coverage and the Obama Cult

Why we aren't getting the real story
by Justin Raimondo
August 24, 2009
Antiwar.com

There was a time when Cindy Sheehan couldn't go anywhere without having a microphone and a TV camera stuck in front of her. As she camped out in front of George W. Bush's Crawford ranch, mourning the death of her son Casey in Iraq and calling attention to an unjust, unnecessary, and unwinnable war, the media created in her a symbolic figure whose public agony epitomized a growing backlash against the militarism and unmitigated arrogance of the Bush administration. It was a powerful image: a lone woman standing up to the most powerful man on earth in memory of her fallen son.

Touting "an exclusive interview with Cindy Sheehan" on Good Morning America, four years ago ABC anchorman Charles Gibson intoned: "Standing her ground. She lost her son in Iraq, she opposes the war, now she's camped out at President Bush's ranch and says she won't leave until he meets with her."

The level of coverage only increased in the coming days and weeks. As Cindy continued her vigil, Gibson enthused:

"All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch."

Flashing across their television screens, viewers saw the headline "MOM ON A MISSION: IS ANTIWAR MOVEMENT GROWING?" as Gibson averred:

"This morning a war of words. All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush's ranch. But is anyone in the White House feeling the heat?"

That was then. This is now: in an interview [.mp3] with Chicago's WLS radio on Aug. 18, Gibson was asked whether his network planned to cover Sheehan's plans to travel to Martha's Vineyard, where she is protesting the escalation of the war in Afghanistan while President Obama is vacationing there. Gibson's answer:

"Enough already."

It is one thing to decide war protests aren't newsworthy, that they're just the irrelevant emanations of a fringe element radically out of step with the 99 percent of the country that's marching happily off to war. That, however, is very far from being the case. Back in 2005, Cindy represented a minority that was on its way to becoming a majority. Today, she starts off her renewed vigil with over half of the American people agreeing with her that the Afghan war isn't worth it.

Yet Gibson's announced news blackout is being observed well nigh universally: aside from Rush Limbaugh, only the generally conservative Boston Herald, the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, a daytime MSNBC news show, and a few blogs bothered noticing Sheehan's determination to be "an equal opportunity vacation disruption," as the Herald writer put it. The bitterness of conservatives over the obvious double standard is expressed by Limbaugh in terms of the usual partisan rhetoric:

"When she's out there revving up people against George W. Bush, it's, let's cover her 24/7, let's make sure we have our cameras out there outside Bush's ranch when she's there, whatever she's saying, whatever she's doing, if she goes down and meets with Hugo Chavez, our cameras will be there. They could not get enough of her. Now that she's headed to Martha's Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: ‘Enough already.' Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we're not interested, we're not going to cover you going to Martha's Vineyard because our guy is president now and you're just a hassle. You're just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they're through with her and they're through with her. They don't want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president."

While Cindy is nobody's pawn – as she is proving by her actions – the general point Limbaugh is making seems all too true. So why isn't he cheering?

After all, what did this pro-war blowhard have to say about Cindy back when Gibson was breathlessly broadcasting her every utterance? Well, he basically said she was a traitor and a fraud, comparing her to Bill Burkett, who provided CBS with phony "evidence" purporting to show Bush's failure to show up for National Guard training. "Her story," he said, "is nothing more than forged documents." Sheehan's crusade, he claimed, was all part of a "coordinated" plan by the "far Left," which he seemed to equate with the Democratic Party.

In the beginning of this year, when a caller asked "where are all the … Cindy Sheehans, the Code Pink Tuscaderos [sic] of the Democratic Party" now that Obama is in the White House, Limbaugh replied:

"Well, frankly, that doesn't bother me. I had enough of Cindy Sheehan to last me a lifetime. She was always a nonfactor anyway. I mean, Cindy Sheehan, this is a poor woman who's lost her mind, and then that fact was used by the Drive-By Media to further drive her crazy into making everybody and her think that she was relevant, only because she was willing to accept enough money from a California PR film to build and occupy a little shack across the road from Bush's house down in Crawford, Texas."

Aside from the fact that he has no idea whether or not she has the same media handlers – the True Majority group, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, hired Fenton Communications to handle Cindy's media relations and thanked her when she (prematurely) announced her "retirement" from peace activism – one has to wonder what Rush is complaining about. Gibson is doing just what the bombastic radio commentator always wanted him to do: ignoring Cindy's antiwar protest.

Can't we all just get along? On the higher levels of the commentariat, the "Left" and the "Right" are slow-dancing in perfect harmony whenever Obama plays a martial tune. Now that the Obamaite think-tanks, such as the Center for a New American Security and the Center for American Progress, are holding joint conferences with Rush's neocon buddies – Bill Kristol and his Foreign Policy Initiative – hailing Obama's Afghan "surge" and proffering advice on how best to go about it, Rush ought to relax. He and Keith Olbermann can now march together, arm in arm, into the glorious war-torn future, united in steadfastly ignoring the Cindy Sheehans of this world.

We, of course, are not ignoring her passionate protest, including in our news section – but, then again, we don't fit into the Left/Right dichotomy that the "mainstream" media is stuck in and has a financial interest in promoting. With Keith Olbermann capturing the self-described "left-wing" pro-Obama demographic, and Limbaugh/Hannity/O'Reilly going after the anti-Obama crowd, they're divvying up the demographic pie, with Fox News settling for the older crowd, and MSNBC going for the younger and more "hip" set.

Here at Antiwar.com it isn't about demographics or Obama, and it certainly isn't about the two major parties, both of which now accept the central premise of America's wars: that the U.S. has both the right and means to police the world.

In rejecting that onerous principle, we stand outside the bipartisan "consensus" and the whole ersatz Left/Right division of American opinion – whose proponents exhibit a curious unity when it comes to the vital question of foreign policy.

As much as Limbaugh and his right-wing brothers and sisters railed against the "liberal" media for undermining the war effort, they never really questioned the factual basis of the administration's case for invading Iraq: that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," that he was on the verge of attacking his neighbors, and that he had proven links to the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Instead, they reported these claims uncritically – even as they were being debunked right here on this Web site.

The lesson of all this is simple: the "mainstream" media simply can't be trusted. That's why newspapers are losing circulation at a rapid clip, and television news is fading in importance. It's not the Internet that's killing off the sainted mandarins of the "mainstream" – it's their role as transmission belts for official propaganda, whether it be from the government or the partisan opposition. They're shills, and everybody knows it.

That's why Antiwar.com is more important than ever – and isn't it ironic that we're clinging to life by a very thin thread, just at the moment when we're needed the most?

Oh, well, life is like that, you know. I never expected it to be easy. Yet even I have to admit that this fundraising campaign is beginning to scare me: we're way behind where we were at this point last time around, to say nothing of last year. The number of contributors is equivalent, and even shows signs of increasing, but the amounts are smaller by as much as half. We all are facing some hard economic times. It just means we'll have to extend our fundraising campaign by as much as a week – hopefully not more. But we'll do what we have to do to stay afloat.

If you haven't given, or even if you have, I want to extend this appeal to all my readers, even the ones who don't agree with some (or much) of what I have to say in this space. You may love Obama or you may bitterly oppose him: whatever. You need to realize, however, that this isn't about him. It's about maintaining a skeptical approach to the foreign policy currently being conducted by those geniuses in Washington, who think they know all there is to know to bring order to a disorderly world.

It's about maintaining a wonderfully complete source of hard news, as well as an outlet for dissenting opinions – often colorfully expressed – in an age of ideological conformity and bland "pragmatism."

It's about maintaining the tradition of independent journalism in a world where "journalists" are bought and sold like the ladies of Amsterdam's red-light district and events are viewed through a partisan prism.

Antiwar.com has stood like a rock against the War Party, resisting and opposing the pressure that is brought to bear on any popular media outlet these days, and we've been doing it since 1995. Don't let this be our final year – which, I'm sad to say, is a very real possibility. Please make your tax-deductible contribution today.

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"Enough Already"

by Cindy Sheehan
August 20, 2009
Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox

"And you look at somebody like that (note: me) and you think here's somebody who's just trying to find some meaning in her son's death. And you have to be sympathetic to her. Anybody who has given a son to this country has made an enormous sacrifice, and you have to be sympathetic. But enough already."
ABC Nightly News Anchor, Charles Gibson August 18, 2009

"Enough already?" Hmmm...I don't know Charlie Gibson and I don't pay any attention to his career, but I seem to agree with him on this one: "Enough already."

Enough with the killing, torturing, wounding and profiting off of the backs of our troops and off of the lives of the people of Iraq-Af-Pak: as our brothers and sisters in Latin America say: "Basta!"

Somehow, I don't think that this is what Charlie Gibson meant, though. I am sure that he just wants me to go away like most of the rest of the anti-war movement has done under the Obama presidency.

One of the things I hear quite often from people from all over the political spectrum is: "Why don't you just go away, you've had your 15 minutes of fame."

Yes, that's exactly what I thought as soon as I heard that my son was killed in the US's illegal and immoral war in Iraq: "this is a perfect opportunity to get my 15 minutes of fame." Actually, after I slowly recovered from the shock and horror, the pain always remains, I thought that I had to do everything I can to end this nightmare so other mothers/families wouldn't have to go through what I was going through and what I am going through.

I certainly am not the anchor of a major network news show, but last time I checked, people are still dying at a heartrending clip in Iraq-Af-Pak.

If my goal was "15 minutes of fame," I could have gone quietly away a long time ago. I started because I wanted the wars to end, and I will figure I can go away when the wars end...but when is that going to be? In my lifetime, probably not.

I am cutting my writing-staycation short to head to Martha's Vineyard because I think the new titular head of the empire needs to know that his policies are devastating people as much as the same policies did when Bush was president.

I would rather be able to go away and spend the rest of my life worshipping my grandchildren, writing, reading, resting, and doing humanitarian work where I am needed.

I wish the wars would go away, but they aren't going away if we the people don't get more militantly insistent.

CAMP CASEY UNDER SAIL FOR SHEEHAN'S SHIPBOARD PEACE SUMMIT

Peace proponent Cindy Sheehan calls all peace leaders to come sail with her aboard 'SS Camp Casey' anchored in Martha's Vineyard for a shipboard peace summit.

MARTHA'S VINEYARD---Peace proponent Cindy Sheehan is calling for peace movement leaders, international news 'anchors' and pro-peace members of the public to sail around Martha's Vineyard, from August 27 to 29. The meetings will be aboard the grand sailing vessel dubbed the SS Camp Casey anchored in Martha's Vineyard. Sheehan will co-captain daily excursions as she holds this seaside peace summit.

Sheehan's purpose is to bring leaders together to stand as an acting 'Department of Peace'. She calls for immediate stipulations: "I am calling in the Peace Movement to encircle our country with our united demand for an immediate return of all U.S. forces around the globe. Bring every one of our troops home NOW! We need them in our families and towns. This world needs a permanent vacation from war."

Sheehan declares her plan to mobilize peace leaders to begin work with her to draft the world's first 'Universal Peace Treaty': "We must stop the terrorizing of our soldiers and the world's civilians with the imperial sword rattling of wartime administrations," said Sheehan. "We must BE the change we wish to see in our President!"

Sheehan demands that the Obama Administration issue a mandatory end to U.S. war policy. "The clock does not turn back with a new President.. We must return them all back here immediately. No more waiting will be tolerated. Zero acceptance for keeping our troops abroad!

"Security begins at home with intact families," says Sheehan. "The time of healing must begin. The true purpose of our nation should be Peace on Earth, starting with the decisive end to our failed war policies."

To the international peace community, Sheehan says: "This is our time to finally draw an end to America's wars. We must abide by the saying of ancient scriptures: Let peace and peace and peace be everywhere. I declare this to be our new national defense policy."

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Cindy Sheehan on 9/11 - Video

Posted at YouTube by JaneUnderground
March 02, 2007
Cindy Sheehan states her position on 9/11 Truth at Billings Auditorium at the University of Vermont where she came to speak in support of impeachment measures being put before voters on Town Meeting Day.

Q: "Cindy, do you buy into the government story of events on 9/11 and if not, which part or parts do you suspect or have you determined to be false?"

A: I think it's pretty safe to say that this regime lies, that this regime is capable of anything. ... Project for a New American Century ... Pearl Harbor-like event ... But I don't have time to study it. I've seen documentaries like Loose Change, I've read New Pearl Harbor by David Griffin ... and it's something that I'm constantly studying. I'm not going to come out and say our government did 9/11 because I don't know that and I haven't come to that conclusion yet. But I don't have a lot of time to study it because I'm working on ending this immoral and illegal ocupation ... And I know my son died because of 9/11 and I know we're over in Iraq and Afghanistan because of 9/11 but 9/11 has already happened. There's millions of people who are alive in those states. And there's so many lies that have already been proven about the lead-up to the war. So I think there's some really good people working on 9/11 truth. I encourage them to keep working on it. Like we said at our last meeting, it would be great if we had a true 9/11 commission in our country to study it and I would at least call for a true 9/11 commission to study what happened on that day, but I think our focus and energy has to be on bringing our troops home ..."

Cindy Sheehan, Statement of Support of NYCCAN

Cindy Sheehan
7/16/2009
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com

On April 4th, 2004, my son Casey was killed serving the United States Army in Iraq during the illegal occupation started by the Bush Administration.

That illegal occupation was made possible because of the attacks that took place on September 11th, 2001, resulting in the deaths of 2,973 people.

Since that horrid day, victims' family members have been doing everything within their power to seek justice and accountability for what happened, with little to no success. It is shameful that almost 8 years after the fact, they have been denied this. The official 9/11 commission report was a sham and a mockery of justice, not justice.

Currently, there is an effort underway in New York City to get a new investigation onto the ballot by this November. The New York City Coalition for Accountability Now (www.NYCCAN.org) is currently attempting to get enough signatures to make this happen, and they need your help. I wholeheartedly support and endorse this effort.

Please do what you can to support this effort, and thank you.

911Truth.org

Stand with Cindy Sheehan who Stands with 9/11 Truth

This is a call to every 9/11 truth advocate who can possibly get to Martha's Vineyard this week to do so. John Walsh at Counterpunch.com, and Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com have published the following powerful pieces asking where the anti-war movement is, now that Obama's in office. Excellent points.

As Cindy stated in the video below, "I know my son died because of 9/11 and I know we're over in Iraq and Afghanistan because of 9/11". Indeed. On August 18, Obama stated, "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defence of our people."

This week, while Obama is playing golf and relaxing at the beach, nearly 100 people, including another four US soldiers (that makes another 63 so far this month), were killed in the war in Afghanistan. Were those soldiers 'fundamentally' defending this commander in chief's opportunity to have a vacation from conflict? Whitehouse spokesman Gibbs stated, "there will be a certain point in which the president will largely be down enjoying his vacation, as well as I think the vacation that millions and millions of Americans hopefully will." The soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq are not among those "millions and millions" on vacation, (nor the six million of us in the US worrying about unemployment benefits running out while we still can't find a job and are on the verge of losing our homes, for that matter ...).

A war "worth fighting", "fundamental to our defence"? I think not, sir. Finally investigating and prosecuting the crimes of 9/11 (as opposed to perceiving 9/11 as an "act of war", responded to by initiating and perpetuating our own never-ending war), as the path to END these wars and restore our civil liberties, is the action "worth fighting for" and what is needed to fundamentally defend ourselves, as well as citizens of the rest of the world.

While the former "anti-war movement" in the United States has never been willing to look at the fundamental issue used as justification for the wars they opposed, 9/11 truth advocates have long maintained 9/11 Truth can indeed end them. We have an opportunity here to turn the hopeful and insightful "9/11 Truth for Peace" slogan into tangible action. Do we believe that 9/11 truth can, indeed, end these wars? Yes. Those of us who are able to get to Martha's Vineyard this week need to be there. If you can't get there, get creative. Stand in continuing, strong opposition to this madness, and in solidarity with Cindy, wherever you are.

Boycotts as a Legitimate Means of Resistance

As Determined by the Oppressed People

by Kim Petersen / August 29th, 2009 / Dissident Voice

Prejudice does not always come with an ugly face. The same holds for Zionism and racism. It is entirely possible for well-intentioned people to hold a prejudice and, even worse, act on held prejudices.

Uri Avnery opposes the brutality inflicted on Palestinians. He campaigns for peace with Palestinians. But he also has a Zionist past. He is European born and fought for the terrorist Irgun in perpetration of a holocaust (Nakba) against Palestinans. He later renounced Irgun’s tactics. He is antiwar, but he is not anti-the fruits of war. He approves of a two state solution. In other words, Israeli Jews will keep the fruits of their dispossessing others — this while continuing to press for the return of what they were dispossessed.¹

Avnery advocates selective use of tactics against Zionism. This is apparent when it comes to an international boycott of Israel. Avnery states that no one is better qualified than South African archbishop Desmond Tutu to answer this question.²

What does Tutu say? He has called on the international community to treat Israel as it treated apartheid South Africa. Tutu supports the divestment campaign against Israel.³

Avnery’s fellow Israeli, Neve Gordon, agrees that it is time for a boycott.⁴ Avnery laments, “I am sorry that I cannot agree with him this time – neither about the similarity with South Africa nor about the efficacy of a boycott of Israel.”

Indeed, the apartheids — while in many respects similar — are also different. Gary Zaztman pointed to a key difference:

For all its serious and undoubted evils and the numerous crimes against humanity committed in its name, including physical slaughters, South African white-racist apartheid was not premised on committing genocide. Zionism, on the other hand, has been committed to dissolving the social, cultural, political and economic integrity of the Palestinian people, i.e., genocide, from the outset, at least as early as Theodor Herzl’s injunction in his diaries that the “transfer” of the Palestinian “penniless population” elsewhere be conducted “discreetly and circumspectly.”⁵

Boycotts as a Tactic against Racism

Avnery says Tutu told him: “The boycott was immensely important, much more than the armed struggle.”

But it was the revolutionary, Nelson Mandela, who refused to give up the right to armed struggle, who negotiated the dismantling of South African apartheid.⁶

Tutu also told Avnery, “The importance of the boycott was not only economic but also moral.”

Avnery writes, “It seems to me that Tutu’s answer emphasizes the huge difference between the South African reality at the time and ours today.”

So what is Avnery saying? First he states that Tutu is best qualified person to speak to the effectiveness of boycotting as a tool in the fight against racism, then he says Tutu has it wrong. So is Avnery saying, then, that he is best qualified to speak on the effectiveness of boycotts against racism?

Avnery fears that Israeli Jews will feel “the whole world is against us.”

However, isn’t that, in a sense, what the purpose is: to show that the whole world is against Jewish racism against Palestinians? It must be emphasized that the world is not against Jews, as Israeli propaganda would choose to portray it. Although he doesn’t specifically state it, Avnery is using a version of the anti-Semitism smear: if you are against anything Israel does, then you are against Israelis. Hence, you are anti-Semitic. This grotesque perversion of morality and logic holds that to be against racism toward Palestinians makes one anti-Semitic.

Avnery admits, “In South Africa, the world-wide boycott helped in strengthening the majority and steeling [sic] it for the struggle. The impact of a boycott on Israel would be the exact opposite: it would push the large majority into the arms of the extreme right and create a fortress mentality against the ‘anti-Semitic world’. (The boycott would, of course, have a different impact on the Palestinians, but that is not the aim of those who advocate it.)”

Avnery merely states what is the current status quo. Israel is already hunkered down in an extreme right fortress mentality. The boycott is not the cause. Avnery fixates on the population dynamics. What is the relevance of majority and minority in Avnery’s reasoning? It would seem that Palestinians being in the minority – and the fact that the Palestinians support the boycott – to be even greater reason for international support of the boycott. Who and what is Avnery supporting: Palestinians from racism or Israeli Jews from the economic effects and moral stigma of an international boycott?

As for the aim of the boycott campaign: “to deny Israel the financial means to continue to kill Palestinians and occupy the lands.”⁷

Avnery raises “the Holocaust” arguing that Jewish suffering has imprinted itself deeply on the Jewish soul. That the Nazis rounded up Jews in concentration was a moral outrage. But what is the lesson of World War II? That suffering imposed on any identifiable group of people is evil and wrong, or that one group can appropriate a holocaust, make it their own, and use past suffering as a shield to inflict a holocaust on another people? Avnery argues that boycotting Jews will remind them of Nazism, but when Jews use Nazi-type techniques what should they be reminded of?

Avnery says it is okay to boycott of the product of the “settlements.” He draws a distinction between “settlers” (i.e., “colonisers”) and other Israeli Jews. How then does Avnery rationalize the fact that the “settlers” are in the West Bank?

Avnery asserts, “Those who call for a boycott act out of despair. And that is the root of the matter.” Indeed, despair is life for many Palestinians under occupation or in refugee camps.

Avnery states that an international boycott would be difficult to achieve, and the US would not be behind it. It was not easy to achieve against the apartheid regimes in South Africa either. Is that a reason not to try? Did not the US oppose a boycott of South Africa? Yes, it might take a long time. But times do change. The US (and its western allies’s) recalcitrance was steam rolled in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Empires have risen and fallen throughout history.

Avnery finds that the tactic of boycotting is “an example of a faulty diagnosis leading to faulty treatment. To be precise: the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles the South African experience leads to a mistaken choice of strategy.”

Avnery continues, “In South Africa there was total agreement between the two sides about the unity of the country. The struggle was about the regime. Both Whites and Blacks considered themselves South Africans and were determined to keep the country intact. The Whites did not want partition, and indeed could not want it, because their economy was based on the labor of the Blacks.”

Seems there is some faulty analysis going on. “Whites did not want partition”? How can Avnery state something so factually inaccurate? What were Venda, Lebowa, the Bantustans, if not sections of South Africa partitioned off by the White government? Furthermore, that Zionism is now no longer dependent on Palestinian labor does not mask that it at one time was dependent on such labor; Avnery is cherry picking in his argument. Denying Palestinians the right to work in historical Palestine is a tactic that evolved from Zionism.

Also, how is it that Avnery can argue against an international boycott of Israel when Israel maintains a crushing illegal embargo against Palestinians – a war crime? As long as Israel uses such a tactic, then resistance through boycott, certainly, is legitimate.

Avnery says Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have nothing in common. However, this same lack of commonality was true between White and Black South Africans as well. Nonetheless, I take exception with the thrust of such argumentation. It prepares the ground for racism. Israeli Jews, Palestinians, Black and White South Africans are all humans. They all eat, work, sleep, have dreams, have families. This should be reason enough to act humanely toward each other: love of humanity. It is entirely possible to embrace our shared humanity and respect diversity.

Avnery concludes, “In short: the two conflicts are fundamentally different. Therefore, the methods of struggle, too, must necessarily be different.”

This is logically flawed reasoning, much like the logical and moral flaw that being a victim of a genocide minimizes one’s own culpability in a subsequent genocide. One suspects that Avnery may well be the victim of a pained conscience and cognitive dissonance. I submit that the two “conflicts”⁸ are fundamentally similar. Fundamentally, colonial Israel and colonial South Africa share these hallmarks: a racially, culturally, spiritually, linguistically different group of outsiders through preponderant violence dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their homeland, and set up an apartheid system which humiliates the Indigenous peoples and privileges the occupiers.

Avnery focuses on certain “fundamentals” — which I submit are not fundamentals but nuances — that he considers different.

Avnery’s solution lies with “a comprehensive and detailed peace plan” from US president Barack Obama and “the full persuasive power of the United States” to lead to “a path of peace with Palestine.”

Avnery remembers well previous US-backed peace plans, like Oslo and the Roadmap. Why, then, does he cast his audacious hope on AIPAC appeaser Obama? Avnery hopes that Israeli Jews will realize that peace with Palestinians is the way? The peace activist touts a solution that has failed and been rejected many times. He rejects a solution that worked in South African because of the sensibilities of the oppressors.

But let us examine Avnery’s logic that fundamentally different “conflicts” demand different struggles.

Oppression is overthrown by struggle. Fundamentally different “conflicts” can succeed through similar struggles. As one example, revolutionaries overthrew an American-backed dictatorship in Cuba through armed struggle and Cuban revoluntionaries defeated South African forces in Angola through armed struggle.⁹

In his article’s finale, seemingly assured of his own argumentation over the person he deems the best qualified authority on boycotts as a tool to overcome apartheid, Avnery points to a prayer of Tutu’s – a prayer that would serve all of us well:

“Dear God, when I am wrong, please make me willing to see my mistake. And when I am right – please make me tolerable to live with.”

Hopefully, Avnery abides by such humbleness when he sees the error of his ways, as well.

1. See Dinah Spritzer, “Last chance for Holocaust restitution?” JTA, 30 June 2009. [↩]
2. Uri Avnery, “Tutu’s Prayer,” Gush Shalom, 29 August 2009. [↩]
3. Desmond Tutu, “Israel: Time to Divest,” New Internationalist magazine, January/February 2003. Available online at Third World Traveler. [↩]
4. Neve Gordon, “Boycott Israel,” Los Angeles Times, 20 August 2009. [↩]
5. Gary Zatzman, “The Notion of the ‘Jewish State’ as an ‘Apartheid Regime’ is a Liberal-Zionist One,” Dissident Voice, 21 November 2005. [↩]
6. See Bill Keller, Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela (Boston: Kingfisher, 2008). Mandela wanted to pursue a peaceful, non-violent settlement, but when faced with the violence of state power he felt compelled to use violence as a method of struggle. Mandela did emphasize that this violence was not terrorism: 98. [↩]
7. ”Aim of the boycott campaign,” Boycott Israel Now. [↩]
8. The word “conflict” minimizes the atrocities wreaked on Palestinians and South Africans by their oppressors. [↩]
9. Isaac Saney contends that the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the “turning point in the struggle against apartheid. ”Isaac Saney, “The Story of How Cuba Helped to Free Africa,” Morning Star, 4 November 2005. Available at Embajada de Cuba en Egipto. [↩]

Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org. Read other articles by Kim, or visit Kim's website.

This article was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 12:17pm and is filed under Boycotts, Israel/Palestine, Obama, Propaganda, Racism, Zionism.

Published on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 by TomDispatch.com

Climate Disobedience: Is a New 'Seattle' in the Making?

by Mark Engler

In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England. While other activists cut electricity on the plant's grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block letters a demand that Prime Minister Gordon Brown put an end to plants like the Kingsnorth facility, which releases nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day.

The activists, most of them in their thirties and forties, expected the climb to the top of the smokestack would take less than three hours. Instead, scaling a narrow metal ladder inside took nine. "It was the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done," 35-year-old Ben Stewart said later. "It was like climbing through a huge radiator -- the hottest, dirtiest place you could imagine."

In the end, the fatigued, soot-covered climbers were only able to paint the word "Gordon" on the chimney before, facing dizzying heights, police helicopters, and a high court injunction, they were compelled to abandon the attempt and submit to arrest. They could hardly have known then that their botched attempt at signage would help transform British debate about fossil-fuel power plants -- and that it would send tremors through an emerging global movement determined to use direct action to combat the depredations of climate change.

The case took on historic weight only after the Kingsnorth Six went to court, where they presented to a jury what is known in the United States as a "necessity" defense. This defense applies to situations in which a person violates a law to prevent a greater, imminent harm from occurring: for example, when someone breaks down a door to put out a fire in a burning building.

In the Kingsnorth case, world-renowned climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, flew to England to testify. According to the Guardian, he presented evidence that the Kingsnorth plant alone could be expected to cause sufficient global warming to prompt "the extinction of 400 species over its lifetime." Citing a British government study showing that each ton of released carbon dioxide incurs $85 in future climate-change costs, the activists contended that shutting the plant down for the day had prevented $1.6 million in damages -- a far greater harm to society than any rendered by their paint -- and that their transgressions should therefore be excused.

What surprised both Greenpeace and the prosecution was that 12 ordinary Britons agreed. The jury returned with an acquittal, and the freed defendants made the front pages of newspapers throughout the country. The tumult also produced political results. In April, British energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband announced a reversal in governmental policy on power stations, declaring, "The era of new unabated coal has come to an end." Discussing Kingsnorth, Daniel Mittler, a long-time environmental activist in Germany, told me recently, "it was probably one of the most impactful civil disobedience cases the world has ever seen, because it was the right action at the right time."

If Not Now...

The idea that now is the right time for more resolute action to address the climate crisis is spreading fast enough to dot the global map with hot spots of disobedience. As it turns out, the Kingsnorth Six are part of a rapidly growing population. Joining them are the Dominion 11, arrested after forming a human blockade to stop the construction of a coal plant in Wise County, Virginia, in November 2008, and the Drax 29, who went on trial this summer for boarding and stopping a train delivering coal to a power plant in North Yorkshire, England, last year.

In fact, arrests are piling up quicker than journalists can coin name-and-number nicknames. The Coal Swarm website keeps track of an ever-lengthening list of protests. New headlines now appear weekly:

"Activists scale 20-story dragline at mountaintop removal site in Twilight, WV"
"14 Arrested at TVA headquarters in Knoxville, TN"
"10 activists board coal ship in Kent, England"
"Activists shut down Collie Power Station, Western Australia"

In August 2007, Al Gore, Nobel-prize-winning author of An Inconvenient Truth, told Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." By the time Gore made that statement, some young people had already started blocking bulldozers, and many more, young and old, would soon follow.

Still, Gore can be excused for feeling that such measures were overdue. With global warming, perhaps more than any other issue, there is a disjuncture between a widespread acknowledgment of the gravity of the situation we face and a social willingness to respond in any proportionate way.

The landmark 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested that a two degree Celsius rise in average temperature, likely by 2050, would create severe water shortages for as many as two billion people and place between 20% to 30% of all plant and animal species at risk of extinction. It gets worse from there. An April 2009 Guardian poll reported: "Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed." More probable, they believe, is "an average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century," a level that could create hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing areas afflicted by desertification, depleted food supplies, or coastal flooding.

That these consensus predictions may feel remote and improbable to much of the American public does not reflect a real scientific debate, but rather a common reluctance to face unpleasant facts -- and also the considerable success of the coal and oil lobbies in dampening the electorate's sense of urgency about the issue. Those two realities are precisely what direct action intends to confront.

An Inconvenient Politics

When Vice President Gore started endorsing civil disobedience, Abigail Singer, an activist with Rising Tide, a leading network of grassroots climate groups, noted, "It'd be more powerful if he put his body where his mouth is." She had a point.

As it happens, 68-year-old James Hansen, arguably the most famous climate scientist alive, has been less reticent about putting himself on the line. His involvement has furnished a great deal of mainstream respectability to those turning to more confrontational means of expressing dissent, and the trajectory of his political engagement catches an important trend.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hansen published many groundbreaking papers demonstrating the reality of a warming planet. Just as the work scientists had done in the early 1980s proving that human activity was creating a hole in the ozone layer had resulted in a 1987 treaty against chlorofluorocarbons, Hansen assumed that the work of those documenting climate change would result in swift legislative remedy.

"He's very patient," Hansen's wife Anniek told Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker. "And he just kept on working and publishing, thinking that someone would do something." This time around, however, industrial interests proved far more entrenched. In order to help move glacially slow climate negotiations forward, Hansen started speaking out and, more recently, has begun risking arrest at demonstrations.

Of course, there is never a shortage of people who will question the tactics of civil disobedience and direct action. "We're every bit as worried about climate change as the protestors," a spokesperson for the E.On corporation, the energy company that runs Kingsnorth, said upon the announcement of the famous verdict, "but there are ways and means to protest and we would suggest their demonstration was not the way to do it."

There are far less compromised skeptics, too. Many harbor a distaste for social-movement theatrics or operate on the belief that, sooner or later, science will speak loudly enough to force the political situation to sort itself out. Harvard University oceanographer James McCarthy expressed such a view when the IPCC released its 2007 report. "The worst stuff is not going to happen," he said, "because we can't be that stupid."

Sadly, the latent hope that politicians will eventually come to their senses cannot suffice as a political strategy. The stark facts of segregation in the American South never put an end to that longstanding injustice; it took an unruly civil rights movement to force change. In this case, presumably less farsighted and more profit-hungry energy companies than the climate-concerned E.On have invested tens of millions of dollars in convincing elected officials and newspaper editorial boards that reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is neither practical nor particularly needed. The operative force at work here is not stupidity, but political power.

Hansen and others motivated to confront the industry head on have concluded that, unless there is a public counterbalance to the organized money of those who profit from the status quo, what science has to say will be largely irrelevant, no matter how theoretically convincing it may be. Unless citizens themselves become inconvenient, the truth will remain a minor consideration.

The Disaster You Can See

It is no accident that, on June 23rd, when Hansen was arrested for his first time, it was in West Virginia, the heart of coal country. Because coal is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions both in the United States and worldwide, and because there is enough coal left in the ground to heat the planet to catastrophic levels, that fossil fuel has been the focus of much new protest. As long as U.S. and European power plants continue spewing coal smoke, their governments will have absolutely no credibility in trying to influence the policies of rising economies such as China and India. Nonetheless, current U.S. legislation ensures that coal burning will continue largely unchecked for decades to come.

In West Virginia, concerns about coal's impact on the atmosphere have intersected with a local environmental atrocity known as mountaintop-removal mining, a practice that Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both claimed to oppose in the presidential campaign, but which continues today. This has made Appalachia the heart of direct action on the climate-change issue in the U.S. -- or, as a blog tracking area protests puts it, "Climate Ground Zero."

"You stand at the edge of one of these mountaintop removal sites and you'll never feel the same way again," says Mat Louis-Rosenberg, a staffer at Coal River Mountain Watch in southern West Virginia. The practice turns rolling mountains and valleys into flat, desolate moonscapes. Locals regularly hear the blasts of surface mines from their homes and then drink the resulting contaminants in their well water. When newly created lakes of toxic coal waste give way -- as happened last December as a billion gallons of sludge flooded 300 acres of land near Harriman, Tennessee -- they are the ones whose homes stand immediately downstream.

These dangers have given organizers a chance to create campaigns that connect the abstractions of climate change to specific sites of environmental ruin. "You can get a visceral and immediate sense of how bad this is," says Louis-Rosenberg. "It's not an invisible gas and a bunch of science that most people don't understand."

This year, in a series of escalating initiatives, environmentalists in the area have chained themselves to rock trucks, obstructed coal roads, and climbed up a huge crane-line mining machine to halt its work. A delegation of concerned citizens, including Hansen, crossed a police line onto the property of Massey Energy, a company responsible for mountaintop removals. Louis-Rosenberg places such direct action alongside a raft of other activities: community organizing, research for environmental impact statements, and gathering co-sponsors for a Congressional ban on filling valleys with mining waste. "Ultimately, things will have to see their resolution in some sort of federal regulation or legislation," he says. "But at this point there is not the political will to deal with the crisis. I see it as my role as an activist to create that political will."

The Next "Seattle Moment"?

When the Kingsnorth decision was announced, an E.On representative said the company was "worried that this ruling will encourage other protestors to engage in similar actions at power plants across the country." The worry was justified.

The diverse local protests taking place internationally are starting to feel like part of something larger, especially since they are already beginning to have an impact. Of the 214 new coal plants proposed in the United States since the year 2000, more than half have been cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold. The website Coal Moratorium Now, which tracks public campaigns, shows that citizen dissent played a critical role in many of the cancellations or delays. Other results have been less obvious but no less real. Facing greater resistance, and the prospect of costly public relations battles, power companies are simply proposing to build fewer coal plants than was once the case.

Environmental organizers are planning for still larger mobilizations. In March, hundreds of people, including Hansen and 350.org campaign organizer Bill McKibben, joined in human chains to block the entrances to a target of enticing symbolic importance: Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Power Plant, a coal-burning facility built in 1910 that provides steam and refrigeration power to Capitol Hill. Police avoided making arrests, which could have easily exceeded highs for any previous act of civil disobedience around climate issues in American history. Nonetheless, the gathering produced a desired effect: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Acting Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers requesting that the plant switch to natural gas.

On a global level, activists are starting to envision an international day of action that might launch disparate local campaigns into the mainstream spotlight and create a more unified global movement. A buzz of expectation and organizing now surrounds a December U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where environmental ministers and other officials will gather to create a new treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol. The conference is taking place almost exactly 10 years after the 1999 Seattle protests which overwhelmed the ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organization and altered the shape of globalization debates for years after.

Hopes for recreating an event of that magnitude are based on more than just a coincidental anniversary year. Before Seattle, localized activity by global justice advocates had similarly swelled -- with a wave of student anti-sweatshop drives, environmental boot camps, organic food gatherings, corporate ad spoofs, indigenous rights battles, and cross-border labor campaigns already simmering. Seattle united these into a recognized "movement of movements" more potent than the sum of its parts.

Organizers have suggested that as many as 100,000 people might take to the streets in Copenhagen. Among those planning around the Denmark conference, there is currently a debate about whether to converge on the conference itself or to target a heavily polluting company somewhere nearby as an example of bad climate-change behavior.

Likewise, in the United States, where events will be timed to take place in solidarity with the demonstrations in Copenhagen, there is a debate about whether to try to work with the Obama administration or turn up the heat on it. In the end, a range of tactics will no doubt be deployed in Copenhagen and in other cities around the world. A coalition of groups, including the normally satiric Yes Men, is managing a site called BeyondTalk.net, which allows people to sign a pledge expressing their willingness to join in nonviolent civil disobedience as the conference date nears.

As of this writing, 3,210 people have signed on. Compared with the numbers of people who will ultimately have to be persuaded of the need to act in order to force meaningful solutions to climate change, that remains a modest tally. In terms of the growing levels of dedication and personal sacrifice it represents, its significance is far greater. After all, that's more than 3,000 people willing to take the chance that a determined action, even a botched one, might ultimately reverberate far and wide. It's more than 3,000 people who may just be willing to climb for hours through a huge radiator in order to stop the planet from becoming one in all too short a time.

Copyright 2009 Mark Engler

Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the website DemocracyUprising.com. (An audio interview with him on climate-change activism is available by clicking here.) Research assistance for this article was provided by Sean Nortz.

Mother Should I Trust the Government

Berlin Wall

Mother Should I Trust the Government

Mother, do you think they’ll drop the bomb?

Mother, do you think they’ll like this song?

Mother, do you think they’ll try to break my balls?

Mother, should I build a wall?

Mother, should I run for president?

Mother, should I trust the government?

Mother, will they put me in the firing line?

Lyric from Mother © copyright Pink Floyd

"Mother"

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb
Mother do you think they'll like the song
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls
Ooooh aah, Mother should I build a wall
Mother should I run for president
Mother should I trust the government
Mother will they put me in the firing line
Ooooh aah, is it just a waste of time
Hush now baby, baby don't you cry
Mama's gonna make all of your
Nightmares come true
Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you
Mama's gonna keep you right here
Under her wing
she won't let you fly but she might let you sing
Mama will keep baby cosy and warm
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
Of course Mama's gonna help build the wall

Mother do think she's good enough for me
Mother do think she's dangerous to me
Mother will she tear your little boy apart
Oooh aah, mother will she break my heart
Hush now baby, baby don't you cry
Mama's gonna check out all your girl friends for you
Mama won't let anyone dirty get through
Mama's gonna wait up till you get in
Mama will always find out where
You've been
Mamma's gonna keep baby healthy and clean
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
You'll always be a baby to me
Mother, did it need to be so high.

Money power works on the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated and the Republic is destroyed.

The Bastards Never Die

by Joe Bageant / August 2nd, 2009 / Dissident Voice

Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War — the military industrial complex of the day — easily constituted the greatest threat to the American republic. Being president and all, he couldn’t call them what they were, and settled for the term “money power,” and predicted that, “money power will … work upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

(With running commentary by THE SCREAMING MAN)

Well, for starters, the above title is a damned lie, since this little screed is not a history. It’s just rumination on the tilting point at which Americans started the slide into the deepest sort of cultivated consumer consciousness — which is to say our corporate managed engorgement and swinedom at the service of the rich.

Very rich families and corporatists, to whom, as in earlier articles, we shall refer to as “the bastards,” have always been with us. Even Tom Jefferson thought periodic revolution against wealth and authority was desirable to keep these bastards in check. Which implies that he figured they would inevitably get us by the throat down on the floor from time to time.

But the bastards scared the hell out of later presidents too. Abe Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War — the military industrial complex of the day — easily constituted the greatest threat to the American republic. Being president and all, he couldn’t call them what they were, and settled for the term “money power,” and predicted that, “money power will … work upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

And as everyone knows, Dwight Eisenhower famously feared the same military-industrial complex was busy taking over the nation. What we never hear about though, is that Eisenhower’s definition of the complex included among the bastards, not only the military defense industry corporations, but also right alongside them the news media and the university and private research establishments.

If nothing else can be said for the bastards, we must admit they do plan far ahead, (or seemed to anyway, before the latest meltdown) even if only to screw us blind, which is usually the case. Since the early robber baron era of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, just after the turn of the century, the bastards understood that the key to national domination was oil — creating an economic culture based on petroleum — and planned toward that end. Big corps such as E.I. DuPont had invested heavily in the oil industry since the turn of the century, and especially since the 1930s creating synthetic materials such as plastics, in which the public was decidedly uninterested in buying. Then World War II came along, creating big demand for synthetics such as nylon for parachutes, tires, tents, ropes. DuPont and similar bastards had drawn a royal flush.

SCREAMING MAN HERE!: RIGHT! IT’S THE ONLY SURE RACKET. ASK ICE MAN CHENEY. YOU MAKE STUFF, SELL IT TO THE PENTAGON MOB AND RAM THE PRICE CLEAR UP THEIR ASSES. THEN THEY BLOW THE STUFF UP, INCENERATE IT, AND COME BACK FOR MORE AT DOUBLE THE PRICE BECAUSE NOW THERE’S A SHORTAGE! FOR A FAST DEPENDABLE BUCK, YOU CAN’T BEAT INDUSTRIAL SCALE WARFARE WITH A GODDAMNED STICK!

(Ahem!)

Unfortunately all good things end, no matter how bloody profitable. But those super-expanded wartime corporations that had cranked out planes and tanks were not going to downsize just because we had run out of Dresdens to bomb. They intended to remain dominant and even expand. With the war drawing to a close, and with fewer burning jeep tires on the battlefields and fewer parachutes left dangling in the trees of Belgium, American citizens were going to have to eat the slack. The bastards would have to stuff’em fuller than a Christmas goose; make them eat petroleum based synthetics, if it came down to that. Which it eventually did of course, in the form of petrochemical agriculture, food dyes, etc.

SCREAMING MAN: YOU GOTTA A FUCKING PROBLEM WITH NUMBER TWO RED DYE OR SOMETHING, ASSHOLE? DON’T BULLSHIT THESE PEOPLE, YOU FLAMING OLD FRAUD! I’VE SEEN YOU EAT A WHOLE BOX OF PINK HO-HOS BEHIND A BOTTLE OF JAY DEE AND SOME COLUMBIAN BUD! AM I GONNA HAVE TO TAKE MY NEEDLE NOSED PLIERS TO YOUR LYING ASS?

Plastics, heralded as durable and everlasting (and today lamented for the same reason) eventually gobbled up nearly every other material market, in the from of jewelry, dashboards, dishes, clothing, napkin rings, perfume bottles, knickknacks, flooring and carpeting, resin building materials, vinyl raincoats and boots, molded furniture, radio sets … America was remade in the image of open chain hydrocarbons. That nine tenths of what was produced and marketed was unnecessary, and downright shitty did not go unnoticed by the American public, which had been deeply distrustful of plastics and synthetics from the time they were first ballyhooed at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. People were just not buying the sales job. But the combination of wartime shortage frustrations and massive industrial public relations delivered the one-two punch, and the consumer knuckled under. Or perhaps they were just worn down by industry PR, which enlisted the help of trusted figures such as Frank Capra and Walt Disney, among others, along with in-school industry propaganda for the next generation: “Our story of the miracle of plastics starts with an oil well in a faraway place by the Persian Gulf … ”

AND IT GODDAMNED WELL IS GONNA END THERE TOO! IN ABOUT 15 MINUTES, IF IT HASN’T ALREADY! DOES ANYBODY REALIZE THE NUMBER OF SARAH PALIN BLOW-UP DOLLS SHIPPED TO THE TROOPS IN IRAQ? IF THAT’S THE KIND OF ARMY WE’RE SENDING TO KILL OFF THE PALM VERMIN, THEN WE’RE GONERS ALREADY!

As I was saying, the bastards not only created an economy by and for themselves, based on the black sticky stuff, they also built a civilization. From the tallest building right down to the petrochemical soaked dirt in which the food supply is grown, and all along the chain through processing and plastic packaging and distribution, The black stuff was cheap and it was plentiful, so long as the bastards were willing to buy off the top dog sheiks like ibn Saud, who would in turn keep the dusky peasantry in line through good old perennials such as beheadings and public stonings.

SCREAMING MAN MISSES THOSE POST 9/11 BEHEADING VIDEOS, DON’T YOU? IT WAS SO EASY TO TELL WHO AMERICA’S ENEMIES WERE THEN. BUT AT LEAST WE’VE STILL GOT BEN BERNANKE AND BILL GATES.

During the 1940s AND ‘50S while ibn Saud was fathering some 60 children by 22 wives in Arabia and dishing out corporeal punishment to the far flung wretches of his kingdom, here at home the corporations were doing their own hit jobs on the this nation’s peasantry — the farmers. Petroleum based synthetics, with legislative help, wiped out one quarter of the domestic cotton market in the first few years following the war, along with flax for linen, and hemp fiber, replacing them with ugly but profitable synthetic nylon and polymer textiles. Not to mention replacement of literally hundreds of farm produced natural organic materials for medicines, cosmetics, milk by products such as casein for glues and paints, with synthetic petro-based commodities, all of which were mercilessly hammered into the populace as “miracles of modern science.”

Kings may croak, but cash lives forever

The fact that the bastards were corporate entities made them more powerful than any robber baron’s best wet dream, because their power and reach extended beyond human mortality. Deathless corporations and trusts replaced the mortal thieves such as Rockefeller and Morgan; and despite the advent of income taxes, capital continued to aggregate in the bastards’ coffers, particularly financial bastards, at what was seen then as an unimaginable scale. “Money for nothin’ and chicks for free …”

Powered entirely by balance sheets, and existing for the sole le purpose of wealth accumulation, parting with any assets was antithetical to their very purpose. Not to mention the logic of the wealth based stockholders. The majority of assets were held by elite, whose main accomplishment was then and still is coming from families that commandeered some substantial portion of the public medium of exchange in order to derive more wealth.

WHOA THERE FATSO! WHOSE FAMILY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE? PARIS HILTON’S? OR MAYBE ALICE WALTON’S? PARIS HILTON HAS EARNED EVERY JEWEL ENCRUSTED THONG IN HER CLOSET! FROM TUSH TO TITTIES, WE’VE SEEN EVERYTHING PARIS HILTON HAS TO OFFER. AND IT’S WORTH A FEW BILLION TO KEEP HER IN CIRCULATION. GIVES THE MEN OF THIS MISERABLE WORKHOUSE NATION SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN. SOMETHING TANGIBLE. SOMETHING THEY CAN ACTUALLY SEE AND WHACK OFF TO. HER DIRTY FLICK, “1 NIGHT IN PARIS” WAS A GIFT TO ALL MANKIND. LET THE LESBIANS FIND THEIR OWN PARIS HILTON … BUT ALICE WALTON? SCREAMING MAN WOULDN’T FUCK HER WITH YOUR WHANG, BUSTER! THAT MISERABLE DRUNKEN BITCH RAN DOWN AND KILLED A FIFTY YEAR OLD WOMAN IN TEXAS. WHAT’D SHE GET? A $925 FINE! SHE HAS 20 BILLION DOLLARS AND GETS OFF FOR LESS THAN A THOU. AND WHAT DOES ALICE GIVE US? CHINK MADE FLIPFLOPS AND GODDAMNED PLASTIC PATIO CHAIRS THAT BUCKLE LIKE OBAMA AT A BAILOUT PARTY! GIVE THE SCREAMING MAN PARIS HILTON ANY DAY. NOW, FATSO … YOU WERE SAYING?

Hell, I can’t remember. Oh yes, the bastards. Once you are born into the Royal Court of the Kingdom of Bastardy and are issued your caviar spoon, no further effort is required to amass capital. You simply keep on withholding capital from those who had create it — the working masses — keep captive the economic lifeblood upon which all others depend. Observe, for instance, the banking industry’s present refusal to unass any money for credit, despite the hundreds of billions handed to them as a taxpayers’ gift, a bailout AFTER they’d ripped off their shareholders and customers, and looted their own institutions from the inside.

UPSET ARE YOU, FATSO? LET THE SCREAMER TELL YOU HOW IT REALLY IS. IT WAS ALL AN ACT. THE FED WAS JUST PRINTING AND HANDING OUT WORTHLESS WALLPAPER — WHICH THE BANKING BASTARDS, WITH ALL DUE APLOMB, WILL PAY BACK IN KIND. THEN THE BASTARDS WILL BE DECLARED SOLVENT, FAT AND HEALTHY AS A BUNCH OF PARK BEARS. MEANWHILE, YOU GODDAMNED PEASANTS WILL CONTINUE TO ANGUISH OVER THE BAILOUTS LONG AFTER THE REAL RIP-OFF IS IN. THE ONE YOU NEVER SAW AND CAN’T EVEN WRAP YOUR SORRY POINTED FUCKING HEADS AROUND. THE REAL DOUGH IS SPREAD ACROSS DUBAI, MONACO, LONDON, AND FOR SAFETY’S SAKE, BEIJING. WHILE YOU ANGUISH, PATE OF UNBORN VEAL CALF IS BEING SERVED TO THE REAL BASTARDS UP ON THE 50th FLOOR. THEY POUR ANOTHER GLASS OF 1999 PERRIER-JOUET, AND CHORTLE AT THE DISMEMBERMENT OF A NO-TALENT HACK LIKE BERNIE MADOFF. THAT HAPLESS SMALLTIME JEW GREASEBALL WHO CAME INTO THE GAME WITH $5,000 IN PENNY STOCKS THAT HE BOUGHT WITH MONEY HE MADE INSTALLING SPRINKLERS. NEVER A REAL PLAYER LIKE US, EVEN WITH HIS BULLSHIT WALL STREET TITLES. JUST A DUMB FUCK FROM QUEENS WHO DIDN’T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT A SCAM. LET THE SERFS GNAW AT HIM. KEEPS ‘EM BUSY AND OUT OF OUR HAIR. LOOK, THEY’VE PULLED ONE OF HIS ARMS OUT OF ITS SOCKET. CHRIST, NOW THEY’VE RUINED LUNCH.”

THAT’S WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON, FATSO.

The bastards. Why have they lasted this long? Purely on their own merits, most American corporations probably would not have survived the 1930s. By then our wildly fluctuating economy was already demonstrating the folly of overly concentrated capital and power. What was needed, said the big players who’d wrecked the economy with their uncontrolled speculation and greed, was, lo and beshit, a controlled economy! One even more controlled by corporations. Problem was, the only entity capable of such control was the government. And unfortunately, the Constitution of the United States was founded on a separation of business and state to the same degree as that of church and state.

If the bastards were to run the economy, if Americans were going to be pistol whipped down the road to “prosperity through unprecedented consumption,” then government authority by Constitutional law would be necessary. As a 1937 shareholder’s report of the E.I. DuPont Company “the revenue-raising power of government [taxation] must be converted into “an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas” and a “social reorganization.” Uh oh! Just whose sudden new ideas? And what kind of social reorganization?

The report stated bluntly that to realize further extensive profit from its wartime investments, the U.S. government “must be the primary tool.” While their plans to use the government were put into the shareholder’s report, they were never publicly discussed.

FDR saves the bastards’ bacon

The chance to pull it off came ironically or maybe not so ironically, with Roosevelt’s New Deal. FDR was, contrary to the subsequent hagiography that has grown up around his grave, was first and foremost a capitalist and was determined to save capitalism. Given his affluent background and times, he, like everyone else, could not imagine anything but capitalism as the nation’s economic system. Yet nowhere in the Constitution is capitalism specified as America’s preferred economic system. His lifelong circle of friends and associates consisted entirely of the elites of family and corporate wealth, which meant that it also included some of his enemies. But together they created a host of “emergency legislation,” in much the same fashion as 911 let George W. Bush get away with so much under the excuse of a national threat. Even allowing for the resistance of some wealthy elites, FDR favored the bastards’ plans toward a thoroughly corporatized national economy.

The Supreme Court, however, a stickler for details such as the U.S. Constitution, did not see things Roosy’s way. It would take a rewriting of the U.S. Constitution for the government to crawl into bed with the corporations. So every piece of legislation FDR and his cohorts created got snagged in Supreme Court and just kept piling up.

The key for FDR and the Princes of Bastardy turned out to be taxation. To control society means to control individual behavior. The Constitution prohibits that, except for those few powers granted in the Constitution, such as the coinage of money or declaring war. Throughout the 1930s the public watched FDR and the corporatists duke it out with the Supreme Court. While the public was engaged in the debate over FDR’s threatened stacking of the court, FDR and the bastards managed to accomplish their agenda in controlling opposing social behavior — taxing it to death. The government is granted the power to tax by god! And the Roosevelt era saw the art of behavior modification through taxation perfected.

Now in changing American social behavior through taxation there are two rules. The first tax must be a very logical one. And the second must be one created of whole cloth, a manufactured one to counter a manufactured threat. So after the Supreme Court knuckled under to FDR’s threat to divide up the judicial limelight by appointing more justices, a more compliant court happily passed a $200 tax on machine guns — the equivalent of $3,000 today — the same tax, incidentally, that allowed the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms division) and the FBI to invade the Branch Davidians at Waco. It was unconstitutional as hell. But the court understood public relations. What kind of deranged fucker needed a machine gun anyway? Well, there was There was John Dillinger (whose penis was 14 inches long, according to folk legend of the day, which was either threatening, or vastly intriguing, depending upon one’s sex or moral perspective on life). There was Seymour “Blue Jaws” Magoon, Bonnie and Clyde, Pittsburg Phil, Baby Face Nelson, Al Capone, Bummy Davis. And if there was any further doubt, there was also the fact that the members of Murder Incorporated were Jewish, Italian or Irish. Ah ha! More proof to the then-majority Anglo Americans of naked immigrant depravity. So two hundred bucks per tommy gun it would be under the 1937 Machine Gun Tax Act.

The second tax the court upheld was the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. Most Americans had never heard the word marijuana. The tax act had adopted a little known Mexican street term as a name in order to demonize it, and differentiate it from the thousands of acres of government hemp being grown for naval ropes, etc. Never mind that in the entire previous year only a couple of pounds of the stuff were seized by border police. A $200 an ounce tax had worked on machine guns, so a $200 tax per ounce was placed on hemp cultivation without permit, and no permits were issued. And so as an added bonus — or maybe intentionally — the synthetic fiber industry and the plastics industry saw its most threatening long term competitor, hemp, eliminated.

And for the first time in the history of the United States the bastards could use the government to tell farmers what seeds they could put into the earth. In short order by way of the New Deal, through various agricultural acts, corporatists, through government policy, had control over the land even though they did not own it. The chief competitors to industrial food giants and synthetics industry, the small farmer producers of thousands of natural goods and raw materials, were eventually taxed or regulated out of existence. At the same time, subsidies for big-time agri-biz producers started snowballing. A nation of consumers of synthetics was cultivated in the next generation. The result we see around us, obese Americans willingly wearing the bastards’ brands on acrylic clothing … and guzzling synthetic soft drinks, Americans who’ve never once considered that the pizza crusts they gnaw at start out with a grain crop called wheat.

Ten thousand years of agriculture was synthesized into money. The soil-to-city chain of small farms, villages, and towns to the great city markets was destroyed. Those ever more profitable compressed gobs of humanity in the cities and suburbs could be cultivated for maximum productivity and profit as the bastards increased their domination of the needs hierarchy. If you made a movie of this, swapping out the humans for some sort of large intelligent rodent or insect, and left everything else as it really is in American life, people would call it chilling science fiction.

Long story short: The bastards won.

This distillation of how they won, this little piece of feral scholarship, is sure to be disputed by hairsplitting pinheads in political science and history departments. The “Oh but …” crowd. Which is OK with me. Everybody needs a job, I suppose. But that’s the view from here in the cheap seats among the non-players, the fuckees in the great fuck-the-proles game of bastard politics and ever bigger money. Call this a pulp comic summary of post war history. It’s not a very damned funny history. Maybe that’s why we choose not to remember it. Here in the United States of Amnesia. We cannot retain what happened last week, much less history. But I’m trying here folks. I really am.

SCREAMING MAN: BULLSHIT FOLKS! DON’T BELIEVE A WORD FROM THIS GODDAMNED BEER SOAKED, REDNECK WHO CAN’T SPELL AND THINKS HE’S A GENIUS BECAUSE HE KNOWS HOW TO BRING UP WIKIPEDIA ON HIS BROWSER. IF AND WHEN HE’S SOBER ENOUGH. THE SCREAMING MAN HAS BEEN TRAPPED INSIDE BAGEANT’S BLOATED, DISEASED CARCASS FOR SIXTY TWO YEARS, AND THE SCREAMER CAN TELL YA THIS: IF BRAINS WERE DYNAMITE BAGEANT WOULDN’T HAVE ENOUGH POWER TO BLOW OFF A GOOD FART. YOU’VE JUST WASTED TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES OF COMPANY TIME. NOW GO TAKE UP SOMETHING USEFUL, LIKE NARCOTICS. FOR CHRISSAKE GET A LIFE!

Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Random House Crown), about working class America. He is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland" edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, to be published this summer by AK Press. A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his website. Feel free to contact him at: joebageant@joebageant.com. Read other articles by Joe, or visit Joe's website.

This article was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 7:00am and is filed under Capitalism, Corporate Globalization, Culture, History, Prejudice.