Published on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by Salon.com

The Suffocatingly Narrow Afghanistan 'Debate'

by Glenn Greenwald

Washington Post, September 21, 2009:

McChrystal's assessment, in the view of two senior administration officials, is just "one input" in the White House's decision-making process. The president, another senior administration official said, "has embarked on a very, very serious review of all options."

Associated Press, October 5, 2009:

The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama is not considering a strategy for Afghanistan that would withdraw U.S. troops from the eroding war there.

Apparently, "all options" does not mean "all options." As usual for American wars, examining "all options" means everything other than "ending the war." That's what accounts for this:

If one were to add the various military actions from the last several decades that aren't on this list -- our constant covert wars in Central America; our involvement in the Balkans; our invasions of Somalia, Haiti, Grenada, and Panama, etc. etc. -- that is as pure a picture of a perpetual war state as one can imagine.

Despite that, Obama yesterday met with 30 members of Congress from both parties to discuss the various possibilities for Afghanistan and, according to The New York Times, "some Democrats said they would support whatever he decided." In particular:

"The one thing that I thought was interesting was that everyone, Democrats and Republicans, said whatever decision you make, we’ll support it basically," said Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader.

That's not how things are supposed to work. There's not really any point in having a Congress if its members are simply going to tell the President: "whatever decision you make, we’ll support it basically." That was the same mentality that led House Democrats -- reluctantly, they claimed -- to vote for the war supplemental bill two months ago, appropriating another $106 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

In the end, 19 House Democrats backed the bill who had opposed it the first time, although some cited loyalty, not agreement with Obama's plans, as their reason.

"I want to support my president," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who changed her no vote to a yes.

The Times article does note that some Democrats -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Carl Levin -- expressed strong resistance to any escalation in Afghanistan. But the option which large numbers of Americans support -- withdrawal within a year and, especially, within two years -- is not even part of the debate. It's not even an option that is being examined by the White House's supposedly "comprehensive" review. As a result, the discussion is almost exclusively about tactics (how many troops?; what should they be doing?; how much can we rely on air power?) and almost none about the still-towering mystery of what we're likely to achieve by continuing to occupy that country.

What makes that fact most remarkable is that we're less than a year away from what was alleged to be an extremely close call with full-scale financial collapse. All Serious people are required to proclaim the exploding national debt to be a potentially cataclysmic threat. Here's the uber-Serious Tom Friedman today:

The same is true with America’s debt bomb. To recover from the Great Recession, we’ve had to go even deeper into debt. One need only look at today’s record-setting price of gold, in a period of deflation, to know that a lot of people are worried that our next dollar of debt -- unbalanced by spending cuts or new tax revenues -- will trigger a nonlinear move out of the dollar and torpedo the U.S. currency.

Yet the staggering cost of our ongoing occupations is being funded exactly that way: "unbalanced by spending cuts or new tax revenues." In these two posts -- here and here -- Howie Klein details how Congressional Democrats are now working to ensure that funding for these wars will be exempt from "pay-go" budgte. Their inclusion at least required that Congress, in order to continue to fund these wars, would either have to raise taxes or cut spending elsewhere.

By contrast, exempting war funding from this process would essentially enable Congressional Democrats to fund these wars through a process tantamount to the deceitful Bushian magic trick of appropriating money as part of the "supplemental budget" -- meaning, as Klein put it: "he just printed up hundreds of billions of dollars for all his misadventures without having to raise taxes or cut programs, in effect driving the country towards virtual bankruptcy and leaving the economy in a complete shambles." That was a process which Obama repeatedly condemned, yet Congress is conspiring to essentially replicate it. That, in turn, is all designed to enable the bizarre dynamic where the economic burden of continuing these wars is simply excluded from all discussions.

The great fallacy at the heart of discussions of Afghanistan is this: if one can plausibly argue that a war was originally justified, then that proves that the war should continue even eight years later (there's no need for us to leave because the Taliban let Al Qaeda use that country to attack us in 2001 and therefore it's self-defense). Often, the discussion, for many war supporters, rarely progresses beyond that point. But whether a war is "justified" is a completely separate question from whether it's "wise." Just as was true for Iraq, the supposed "costs" of leaving Afghanistan are endlessly highlighted (the Taliban will return, Al Qaeda will come back, it'll be a brutal and lawless state), while the costs to the U.S. from staying -- and from continuing to be a nation in a state of perpetual war and occupation -- are virtually ignored.

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.

Published on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by TruthDig.com

A War of Absurdity

by Robert Scheer

Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the recent statement of the president’s national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, concerning the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan:

“The al-Qaida presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

Less than 100! And he is basing his conservative estimate on the best intelligence data available to our government. That means that al-Qaida, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan—so why are we having a big debate about sending even more troops to fight an enemy that has relocated elsewhere? Because of the blind belief, in the minds of those like John McCain, determined to “win” in Afghanistan, that if we don’t escalate, al-Qaida will inevitably come back.

Why? It’s not like al-Qaida is an evil weed indigenous to Afghanistan and dependent on its climate and soil for survival. Its members were foreign imports in the first place, recruited by our CIA to fight the Soviets because there were evidently not enough locals to do the job. After all, U.S. officials first forged the alliance between the foreign fighters and the Afghan mujahedeen, who morphed into the Taliban, and we should not be surprised that that tenuous alliance ended. The Taliban and other insurgents are preoccupied with the future of Afghanistan, while the Arab fighters couldn’t care less and have moved on to more hospitable climes.

There is no indication that any of the contending forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, are interested in bringing al-Qaida back. On the contrary, all the available evidence indicates that the Arab fighters are unwelcome and that it is their isolation from their former patrons that has led to their demise.

As such, while one wishes that the Afghan people would put their houses in order, these are not, even after eight long years of occupation, our houses. Sure, there are all sorts of angry people in Afghanistan, eager to pick fights with each other and most of all any foreigners who seem to be threatening their way of life, but why should that any longer have anything to do with us?

Even in neighboring Pakistan, the remnants of al-Qaida are barely hanging on. As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, “Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. … For Arab youths who are al Qaeda’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.”

It’s time to declare victory and begin to get out rather than descend deeper into an intractable civil war that we neither comprehend nor in the end will care much about. Terrorists of various stripes will still exist as they have throughout history, but the ones we are most concerned about have proved mighty capable of relocating to less hostile environments, including sunny San Diego and southern Florida, where the 9/11 hijackers had no trouble fitting in.

There is a continued need for effective international police work to thwart the efforts of a widely dispersed al-Qaida network, but putting resources into that effort does not satisfy the need of the military establishment for a conventional field of battle. That is the significance of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s leaked report calling for a massive counterinsurgency campaign to make everything right about life in Afghanistan, down to the governance of the most forlorn village. The general’s report aims not at eliminating al-Qaida, which he concedes is barely existent in the country, but rather at creating an Afghan society that is more to his own liking.

It is a prescription, as the Russians and others before them learned, for war without end. That might satisfy the marketing needs of the defense industry and the career hopes of select military and political aspirants, but it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. In the end, it would seem that some of our leaders need the Afghanistan battleground more than the terrorists do.

Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.

For Anti-War Protesters, the Cause Isn't Lost But Will D.C. Rally Spark Groundswell?

Published on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by The Washington Post

For Anti-War Protesters, the Cause Isn't Lost

But Will D.C. Rally Spark Groundswell?

by Eli Saslow

The protesters convened for a final planning meeting, already triumphant, convinced that nine months of preparation was about to pay off. Antiwar organizers who had come to Washington from 27 states exchanged hugs inside a Columbia Heights convention hall and modeled their protest costumes: orange jumpsuits, "death masks," shackles and T-shirts depicting bloody Afghan children. Then Pete Perry, the event organizer, stood up to deliver a welcome speech.

"This is a great moment for our movement," he said. "We are continuing an incredible tradition."

"Like Gandhi," said the next speaker.

"Like Martin Luther King," said another.

A Sunday meeting and a Monday protest -- that was the agenda planned in advance of Wednesday's eighth anniversary of the start of the Afghan war. There had been other protests in Washington over the course of the conflict, dozens of them, but this time organizers believed they could revive the beleaguered antiwar movement, once such a force in U.S. policy. The next 48 hours would put their optimism on trial.

With public opinion polls showing a majority of Americans opposing the war, organizers wanted at least 1,000 people to march through downtown, risk arrest by creating a ruckus at the White House and draw President Obama across the manicured North Lawn to meet with them.

"The goal of this action is to hand-deliver a letter to Obama," Perry reminded the group. "We want a meeting to demand an end to this senseless violence."

It would also set the stage for 42 rallies and protests scheduled to take place Wednesday around the country. After decades of decline in the antiwar movement -- from throngs of half a million to fringe rallies to almost nothing at all -- the job of organizers in Washington was to generate momentum for a historic week.

Their work started Sunday afternoon, when about 50 organizers met to discuss final plans for a rally with a scope to match their ambition. They included veterans and pacifists, hippies and anarchists, feminists and Catholic workers. In total, there were more than a dozen "affinity groups," and each had choreographed its own demonstration for Monday's event. Some protesters would be shackled inside a cage, in solidarity with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Some would reenact the deaths of U.S. soldiers near the White House fence. Some would read the names of civilians killed in Afghanistan. Some would carry cardboard coffins.

"We have to be organized, or nobody will hear anything," Perry said.

As the meeting progressed, there were signs of discord. Some groups wanted to chant while they marched to the White House; others argued that a solemn, single-file procession would convey a "better sense of suffering," one protester said. Some wanted to take bathroom breaks during the protest; others argued that participants could wait until they were in jail, after their arrests. Some planned to misidentify themselves to police; others said they would simply refuse to answer questions.

"Lying is dumb," one protester shouted.

"Just because my resistance is different than yours doesn't mean I'm dumb," another yelled back, standing now, clenching his fist. "We are all traveling down our own paths to peace."

* * *

Every faction agreed on at least one goal for Monday's rally, knowing all too well that the survival of the movement depended on it: This was the time to attract new protesters, with the war in Afghanistan continuing to dominate the news and Obama debating his next move. After Sunday's meeting, Perry, the organizer, held a training session for first-time demonstrators in the sanctuary of a church. He arrived prepared for a crowd, with a co-teacher and a thick stack of handouts.

Instead, four people came. Three were experienced activists. Only one was a newcomer. Joan Wages, a mother of two, had driven five hours from Floyd, Va., to attend her first rally. She had voted for Obama but become disillusioned. Now she hoped to set an example for her children by "making my actions consistent with my beliefs," she said.

"I've done a few really little protest things, but that's it," Wages told the instructors. "I really don't know what to expect."

The instructors gave a brief lesson on the history of nonviolent resistance and then read motivational quotes from Buddhist monks. At the end of the class, they asked Wages to hold a make-believe vigil at the White House while the instructors mimicked angry right-wing activists and tried to bait her. Wages closed her eyes, set her hands in prayer and started singing.

"We should run you over with a big war tank!" the instructors yelled.

"We should shoot you with our guns!" they shouted.

Wages continued to sing, undaunted, until the instructors broke from character to applaud.

"You're ready," Perry said.

"Just remember that nonviolence is a way of life," said Susan Crane, the co-instructor.

"And that police officers are our brothers and sisters, too," Perry said.

Wages thanked them and left the training seminar, but she struggled to fall asleep later that night. The session had been helpful in a "philosophical kind of way," she said later, but she still had logistical concerns about Monday's protest. Like: "Who will pick me up from jail?" And: "After we all pretend to die in front of the White House, can I get up and move or does everyone have to stay totally still?"

* * *

The protesters met Monday morning in McPherson Square, a slab of grass in downtown Washington named after a war hero. They had hoped to fill the park, but instead 176 protesters gathered in one corner. The crowd was all familiar faces from the antiwar movement, except for a homeless man sleeping on a bench, a bicyclist eating a scone and a Street Sense newspaper salesman who saw a business opportunity in the gathering.

Eve Tetaz, 78, stood near a small sound stage and zipped up her orange jumpsuit. She had a trial pending from another protest, but she still planned to risk arrest Monday -- something she had done so often that preparing for jail was part of her routine. Phone numbers of fellow protesters were inked on her forearm so she could call from jail. A neighbor in Adams Morgan had agreed to watch her two cats. Her glaucoma medicine was packed underneath her jumpsuit. She wore a heavy sweatshirt that itched in the heat but would make for a fantastic pillow in a cell.

"Jail is a little uncomfortable," Tetaz said, "but so is the dentist."

On the stage in front of her, a rotation of speakers tried to excite the crowd. Two women strummed guitars and sang a folk song. Then a man recited a poem. Then a woman spoke about the persecution of blacks in Southeast Washington. Then another poet, and another singer, and a woman banging a tambourine, and a keynote speaker, and another folk song, this time performed in Hebrew.

"We should be going soon," Tetaz said.

Finally, an organizer stepped to the microphone and told the protesters to form a single-file line for the march to the White House. They were instructed to walk slowly, heads down, in absolute silence.

"A solemn march," the speaker said.

As the group departed, a few protesters smiled and chatted with nearby police officers.

"Please everybody, a solemn march," the speaker reiterated, louder this time. "Solemn. Solemn."

* * *

The protesters arrived at the White House and quickly realized they were entering into a ruckus, not just creating one. A construction crew was at work on Pennsylvania Avenue, removing excess water with two loud industrial vacuums. Smaller protest groups -- one demanding to see Obama's birth certificate, another enraged about health care -- shouted chants of their own. A maintenance worker used a chain saw to trim a tree on the White House grounds. Inside the building, press secretary Robert Gibbs was telling reporters that leaving Afghanistan was "not something that had ever been entertained."

The antiwar group launched into its demonstration, undeterred. One protester pretended to waterboard a war prisoner, screaming, "Tell me your secrets or else" as he poured distilled bottled water onto a friend's face. A woman wore shackles and a black bag over her head, the toenails on her bare feet painted a deep autumn red. Cindy Sheehan, a tireless protester, read from her International People's Declaration of Peace, and then, sensing an inattentive crowd, said, "I am going to skip a couple paragraphs and just go to the end."

The marchers marched, the singers sang, the chanters chanted. Tourists turned their cameras away from the White House to take pictures of the protest.

But there was a problem.

"Why aren't the police doing anything?" one demonstrator asked, referring to the 15 uniformed officers who stood casually in the distance.

The protesters wanted to engage them, so 15 activists wearing orange jumpsuits chained themselves to the White House fence. "Off the fence!" a police officer yelled, but the chains were locked. Five officers rode over on horseback.

Five more put on black gloves and came with wire cutters. Now the Secret Service was clearing the sidewalk, and the Park Police was issuing a warning for the protesters to disperse, then a second, then a third.

"We will have to arrest anyone who does not clear this area immediately," an officer announced over a megaphone.

Sixty-two protesters stood their ground, and the police walked over slowly with plastic handcuffs. Sheehan was arrested at 1:11 p.m., and she smiled as police frisked her. Tetaz, the 78-year-old, was arrested at 1:14, ready for another trip to jail. Wages, the newcomer, pretended to be a dying soldier and remained motionless as she waited for arrest, only to be forcibly removed instead.

Police loaded the protesters onto a Metro bus and drove them away from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Those who had avoided arrest tallied the rally's impact: 62 arrests, 23 others forcibly removed.

"A success," Perry said.

As the protesters walked away from the White House, they made plans to leave for other rallies across the country Wednesday. One was headed to an action in New York, another to Austin and another to San Francisco. Two planned to attend an event in Chicago, where the organizer, John Beacham, expected a big crowd and possibly more arrests. "We think this could be a turning-point kind of moment," he said.

Copyright 2009 The Washington Post

Friends of Leonard Peltier

Friends of Leonard Peltier

SIGN THE CLEMENCY PETITION

Call the White House Comment Line, Too:

202-456-1111 / 202-456-1112.

Mr. President, Free Peltier NOW!

Leonard Peltier

An innocent man, Leonard Peltier was wrongfully convicted in 1977 and has served over 30 years in federal prison despite proof of his innocence—also despite proof that he was convicted on the basis of fabricated and suppressed evidence, as well as coerced testimony.

The United States Courts of Appeal have repeatedly acknowledged investigative and prosecutorial misconduct in this case but, by their decisions, have refused to take corrective action. A model prisoner, Leonard also has been denied fair consideration for parole and Executive Clemency. This is clearly an abuse of the legal standards of American justice.

---

Learn more about the Peltier case.

Watch "Incident at Oglala,"

A Documentary Produced & Narrated by Robert Redford.

(Approximate Runtime: 90 Minutes)

This production was released in 1992. With the exception of the address for the White House, please disregard the information provided at the end of this film.

Download "Incident at Oglala"

Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story also is available for purchase from Amazon.com, or you may locate a VHS tape or DVD at your favorite movie rental outlet. In addition, Amazon.com offers the film as part of their video-on-demand catalog.

---

The World

Recognizing that Peltier has been imprisoned for decades for a crime he did not commit, various governments and dignitaries from around the world have called for Leonard's release.

On June 23, 1995, Amnesty International (AI) submitted a letter of concern about the Peltier case to the U.S. Attorney General. With no executive review of the case forthcoming, in 1999, AI called for Peltier's release. Before the U.S. Congress, in 2000, AI issued this statement:

"Amnesty International considers Leonard Peltier to be a political prisoner... Amnesty International believes that Leonard Peltier should be immediately and unconditionally released."

In briefings to the United Nations since 1992, AI has actively pursued Leonard's freedom. AI submitted a briefing to the U.N. Human Rights Committee in February 2006 (updated in early July 2006), in which AI again called for Peltier's release.

After the U.S. Parole Commission denied Peltier parole in August 2009, senior deputy director of Amnesty International-USA, Curt Goering, stated:

“Given that the case against Peltier unraveled years ago, his continued imprisonment is only protracting a grave miscarriage of justice... When you consider the concerns that plague the case... it is unconscionable that Leonard Peltier should continue to suffer behind bars. It is high time for the U.S. government to... right the wrongs of the past.”

And You

"You are the message," Leonard says. And each of us is an "Army of One." This concept, as it touches one's conscience, effectively motivates persons to act as individuals on Leonard's behalf. Now, however, a legion is required. Maybe two. We must be "Leonard's Legions," hundreds of thousands of supporters in solidarity worldwide. We must unite in purpose, speak with one voice: Free Peltier NOW!

Visit us often to learn more about efforts to win Leonard's freedom and find out what you can do to help.

The Economic Revolution Is Already Happening -- It's Just Not on Wall St.

The Economic Revolution Is Already Happening -- It's Just Not on Wall St.

By Maria Armoudian, AlterNet. Posted October 7, 2009.

Thousands of alternatives to the punishing corporate model have sprouted up across the US, building up an alternative economy as Wall St. crumbles.

America is in the midst of a new revolution. But this revolution is quiet, incremental, nonviolent and traveling beneath the mainstream media's radar.

The new American revolution challenges the current notions of dog-eat-dog capitalism -- through the building of a parallel economic system that shares, co-operates, empowers and benefits fellow workers and community members.

Over the past few decades, thousands of alternatives to the standard, top-down corporate model have sprouted up -- worker-owned companies and co-operatives, neighborhood corporations and trusts, community-owned technology centers and municipally owned enterprises.

In fact, today, involvement in these alternative models of business outnumber union membership as the means by which private-sector workers and community members are taking their economics into their own hands. The story is revealed in the 4-year-old book, America Beyond Capitalism, written by University of Maryland political science professor Gar Alperovitz.

Maria Armoudian: How big is this economic movement in the United States?

Gar Alperovitz: It's a huge development. But the president doesn't cover it, and the press, on the surface, is not aware of it.

At the grassroots level, there is a lot of activity that is changing the ownership of wealth and making it benefit neighborhoods, workers, cities and communities, at large. There are 11,000 worker-owned companies in the United States, and more people involved in them than are members of unions in the private sector. There are also 120 million Americans who are members of co-operatives -- a huge number, about a third of the population.

About 20 percent or 22 percent of our energy is done under public utilities of one kind or another. There are another 4,000 or 5,000 neighborhood corporations, in which neighborhoods own productive wealth to benefit the neighborhood. Much of that is related to housing and land development, but also stores, businesses and factories.

One estimate is that there are 4,500 of these. One, called Newark New Communities, does several million dollars a year in business and pours profits back into helping service the neighborhood -- health care and nutrition, education and jobs. So when you really begin to take the lid off of what is emerging in society, there are many forms of decentralized public ownership, social ownership or democratized wealth.

MA: Are there also new developments on the municipal level?

GA: Yes, because of fiscal crises, many cities, even under Republican mayors, are putting cities into enterprises. It was once called municipal socialism, but Republicans call it the "enterprising city," and it includes development of [municipally owned] cable television, Internet services, land and hotels.

Many cities are capturing methane from garbage areas and using it to produce electricity, create jobs and make money. They're dealing with greenhouse gases as an enterprise.

On a larger, regional scale, the Tennessee Valley Authority is a gigantic, ecological operation that controls the river systems and is an energy system. On the state level, Alaska derives a great deal of money from its energy resources, oil. It captures the profits and pays dividends to every Alaskan as a right. In the year 2000, every person in Alaska, as a legal right, received $2,000 [through this process]. So a family of five [together receive] $10,000.

MA: Worker-owned cooperative seem to be the most progressive and democratic models. They're usually nonprofit with profit circulating back to workers and communities, and they practice democracy in the workplace -- one person, one vote. How would you compare this model with other models?

GA: The one-person-one-vote worker co-operatives in the United States are the most democratic, advanced and ideal. But they number at about 500 maximum, maybe 1,000. These co-ops are on the cutting edge of the democratization process and where the learning will be taking place for the rest of the movements. People are experimenting with full democracy and full equality.

Of course, many co-ops are not that kind -- they don't have equal pay and have other differentials. And most of the [for-profit] worker-owned companies in the United States are employee stock-ownership plans, or ESOPs. In many cases, they are not democratic, and have a long way to go.

But as workers get more ownership, they demand more control. And as they participate more, they gain productivity and profits. So a key question is: How do we begin to democratize what is already owned? That is the likely trend.

MA: How might the American models compare to the giant cooperative in the Basque region of Spain -- Mondragon?

GA: Mondragon has over 100,000 workers in a very complicated group of 100 or more integrated co-ops. They pay back loans to a central fund and then build more co-ops in an integrated fashion. In 90 percent of them, the ratios of pay from top to bottom are 4 to 1. In others, it's 9 to 1. Compare that with American corporations, which are 200 or 300 to 1.

These co-ops are highly productive and state of the art with advanced technology, not your corner kind of tiny co-op. In the city of Cleveland, some groups are creating a large-scale Mondragon-type of cooperative. It will include a worker-owned laundry, with high-tech, green advanced technology, a solar-installation cooperative company, a land trust with a large-scale industrial-scale greenhouse and solar and geothermal heating.

They're going online over the next year and will produce 2,000-3,000 heads of lettuce each day. It's linked to the public purchasing of hospitals and universities, which provide some of the contracts for food and laundry. The model makes green jobs and green ownership and shows that worker ownership is practical.

MA: There are advocates who believe that building these types of cooperatives are the single most important form of activism that people can do. Do you agree?

GA: Ultimately there needs to be systemic change. But it is very important, and it's one thing that can be contributed. At this point, two central principles are developing in these "schools of democracy" -- they are changing who gets to own and benefit from capital, and they are changing the participatory process.

And in addition to cooperatives, neighborhood corporations and organizations, cities and land trusts, state pension funds are being used in [socially responsible] ways. These are very American means of decentralizing ownership of productive wealth -- as well as some central forms. We see a picture emerging of an America that is beyond capitalism. These [activities] give us a possible model.

If we build on what we are already doing, make it part of a political program and develop it, we could create something that is far better than what we now have and better than traditional socialist models.

It's time for people working in these sectors of cooperatives, worker ownership, land trusts, neighborhood corporations to begin calling meetings, share what they've learned and establish networks. In many cases they don't do this. People in the specific communities don't even know how much is going on.

Other interesting things are happening in Virginia, the District of Columbia and Maryland where, like in the '60s, people are meeting, reading, thinking and taking action from that. They are staging "action book clubs," where they read a political book and discuss, "What can we do in the direction of building something for the long haul?"

So if you don't like capitalism or state socialism, what do you want? What is your vision, your knowledge and theory? It's time for us to do that again.

MA: Do you have a sense of how this economic movement is impacting our current political and economic system?

GA: It's like what happened with the New Deal and the civil rights movement. A good [part] of the New Deal [began] as experiments of the '20s and '10s. But when the time was right, they became national.

Similarly, in the civil rights movement, the real heroes were those who laid the groundwork in the 1930s and '40s for what came next. That's what is happening at the grassroots level, economically. The most important things pertain to ownership of capital, wealth and assets.

Today, the top 1 percent owns almost 50 percent of the investment capital. The alternative state socialist idea was that the government should own it, but that had real problems with bureaucracy, centralization of power and so forth.

There is another alternative, which is what is emerging now. They are old historic ideas. But just over the last 30 years, these 11,000 companies that are substantially owned by workers have [emerged] from ground zero.

MA: So this movement has increased at a pretty rapid pace since the 1970s?

GA: Yes, amazing, and no coverage of it. Almost at the same pace at which the negatives have gone down, you're seeing the rise of these kinds of companies. They have many trial-and-error-related problems, but on the whole, they're moving towards greater ownership and democratization. They are very good for communities and workers. Because they are owned by the workers, they do not get up and run to get cheaper labor sources, so they keep jobs in local communities.

MA: Some of these employee-owned companies have not performed well -- financially or for their employees. United Airlines was one example of pretty dismal results. How are the others doing?

GA: It's important to know that United is a case study in what you shouldn't do. It was done in the midst of a strike in a very large corporation. That's not the best place to do worker ownership.

Most of the ones that work well are under 1,000 employees. United has numerous reasons why it failed, really, without worker ownership. On balance, the worker-ownership companies, particularly when there's good training, are more profitable; they have higher productivity; better pensions and better working conditions.

So on almost every indicator they are unquestionably equal or better than comparable firms of the same kind in the same field. It's not surprising, because people who have a stake in what they're doing tend to do better at it.

MA: In the face of globalization, how do these alternatives hold up?

GA: I think the globalization argument has been trumpeted in the press. They talk about manufacturing jobs being stolen, etc. That is true. But it is also the case that 90 percent of the American workforce is not involved in manufacturing, and over the next 15 years it'll be 5 percent. That's the trend.

What's really happening is within cities. This is a service economy and a trade, retail and wholesale economy -- that's the real action. It has gone from 40 percent of employment within cities to 50 percent and now closer to 60 percent. There are a lot of things people can do with that.

So the bogeyman of globalization is something we can challenge with stopping the so-called free-trade policies. But there's also a lot that can be done locally and not be put off by the fact that the press concentrates on these scare stories.

MA: You have been somewhat dismissive about the left's emphasis on messaging, ostensibly suggesting that what makes change are serious ideas and a coherent and powerful understanding of what makes sense. Can you elaborate on that?

GA: I don't disagree with better language, political rhetoric and framing. But that's often used as a substitute for programs that are out of date or for not thinking through alternatives.

So if a central issue is how to change the economy's organization, that's not a matter of framing. It's a matter of building up a vision and organizing a long-term strategy.

The framing argument can be positive, but it can also stand in the way of people rolling up their sleeves and getting down to work for the long haul.

MA: Are the alternative models being taught in the business schools yet? If not, how can people learn alternatives to the dominant corporate models?

GA: They aren't being taught yet, although in Cleveland, one of the business schools is beginning to design a course.

We are seeing business schools working on "social enterprise," which is another form of democratized wealth ownership, in this case, usually a nonprofit corporation making money for a public service.

For instance, in Seattle, there is Pioneer Services, which began as a drug-rehabilitation nonprofit. It began training people who had gone through the rehabilitation program, then produced some businesses so they can do their training on the job. They began making money in the businesses to finance their whole program.

I think they're a scale of about $60 million now. It went from 1 percent profits and 99 percent grants to almost 99 percent profits, used for public purposes.

This is now being developed in other parts of the country. Some of the business schools, Harvard and Yale, are teaching these principles in business school, and I think we're going to see them begin moving into the co-op area as more experience develops on the ground.

For people who are interested in doing this, www.community-wealth.org is a tool. There are people who are doing it and help others. That's a major change historically, upon which I think we can really build.

See more stories tagged with: new deal, coops, cooperatives, tennessee valley authorit, community wealth

Maria Armoudian is a Commissioner at the City of Los Angeles and Producer and On-Air Host at KPFK radio station. Her site is Armoudian.com.

Taibbi: Michael Moore Wants Us to Go Kick Ass

Taibbi: Michael Moore Wants Us to Go Kick Ass

Posted by Matt Taibbi, True/Slant at 7:12 AM on October 6, 2009.

If we got up off our chairs and went after the villains that Moore attacks in his latest documentary, everyone would be better off.

That quote is the unintentionally revealing tip of an ego iceberg lying below Moore’s public persona of Mr. Aw-Shucks Everyman. Moore clearly sees himself as a liberal Atlas, shrugging under the weight of a ungrateful world. Yet, for all his self-regard and all the attention his work gets, Moore has really only made two films worth watching in his twenty year career: Roger and Me and Bowling for Columbine. -- via Joseph Childers – Ephemera Etcetera – Liberals to Moore: ‘Thanks, but we got this’ – True/Slant.

The reaction to Michael Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, reinforces a suspicion I started having a few years back: that most of us Americans are much better at being movie and TV critics than we are at being political organizers. When we come out of a film like this, we find ourselves focusing on the flaws in Moore’s moviemaking and not on the film’s content, which just happens to be the reality of our own day-to-day political existences.

We’re not thinking about how to fix our lives, in other words, but how to fix the movie about our lives.

Now, I agree with most of the criticisms of Moore’s new movie. One of my editors at Rolling Stone put it best: “I just wish I could edit him a little.” Moore’s bizarre decision to inject himself into the movie at odd (and sometimes crucial) junctures undermines his ability to be an effective propagandist.

I was particularly struck by the way he very effectively portrayed the sit-down strike at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors factory at the end of the movie, i.e. an example of real people with real problems really organizing to lift themselves up a little, and then leaped at the very end of the film to a bizarre non-sequitur in which Moore, a multimillionaire taking care of the artistic problem of how to finish his movie, asked the rest of us to “Join me” (me, Michael Moore) as he unfurled crime scene tape around the Goldman Sachs offices in a purely cinematic action.

I thought that was really strange and I had no idea what the hell he meant. How do I join Michael Moore in this movement? Am I supposed to watch the movie again? Absent of any coherent context or further explanation, the end-of-film injunction was almost comic, sort of like the old, “Me, Al Franken” routines on Saturday Night Live.

But let’s give Michael Moore credit. Most of the movie isn’t about Michael Moore. It’s about what’s happened to this country, how far it’s fallen, in the age of financial deregulation.

Even just looking at the historical context provided by Moore’s own movies, the progression is kind of scary. Back when Moore made Roger and Me, he was describing how blue-collar workers could no longer could find jobs to support themselves. In Bowling for Columbine he talked about the workfare programs we cooked up to keep those ex-employed blue collar workers alive, how brutal and inhumane those programs can be.

In Capitalism: A Love Story we’re now talking about how the compensation for professional jobs we used to consider upper-middle class, like the job of airline pilot, have dropped below subsistence level. This is a portrait of a society steaming toward a feudal structure.

He then shows that the mechanisms we’re supposed to appeal to to correct these problems — the combination of public awareness (i.e. the media) and the elected government (i.e. congress) — have been almost completely corrupted. We have a media that doesn’t pay attention to the fact that airline pilots are giving plasma in order to buy groceries. Even after deadly crashes, they don’t focus on the real causes.

I found most of the content of Moore’s movie horrifying. It was also striking to me that the theme he is addressing here, i.e. the rapid peasant-ization of most of the country, is basically a taboo subject for every other major media outlet in the country. The vast majority of our movies are either thinly-disguised commercials for consumer products (Law Abiding Citizen), remakes of old shows and movies designed to transport us back to the good old days when life was better (i.e. Fame) , or gushy nerf-tripe with no hard edges crafted to serve as escapist fairy tales for stressed-out adults wanting to dream of happy endings (Love Happens).

What we call a “good movie” is usually also escapism, and sometimes even also a nostalgic remake, it just happens to be well-done and expertly directed, with great production values and acting performances (I haven’t seen it yet. but I assume Where the Wild Things Are will fall into this category).

But we’re living in a time of extreme crisis almost nothing on TV or in the movies is designed to get us thinking about how to fix our problems. If anything, most of the stuff on TV is designed to jack up our anxiety level without offering any solutions except the short-term fixes of buying and eating — witness the endless reality shows in which ordinary people slave away and scheme against each other for weeks on end for a 1 in 12 shot at a (pick one) modeling job/date with a non-deformed, non serial-killing person/chance to be shouted at by Donald Trump.

Now that stuff is cynical and monstrous. It is my sincere hope that the people who are producing these programs will someday be tried and executed by war crimes tribunals at the Hague.

At least Michael Moore is getting us talking about the right topics. And while I get that the right way to start a revolution is not to wildly misinterpret the nature of capitalism in a coffeeshop conversation with Wallace Shawn (whose line about the grabber product was the funniest thing in the movie, by the way), well, it’s not really Michael Moore’s job to start a revolution. He probably thinks it is — and this is that “Atlas” complex fellow True/Slant writer Joseph Childers is talking about — but that’s only because nobody else out there, in the major media at least, is doing a freaking thing.

It’s natural for Michael Moore to behave like someone who thinks he’s taking on the world alone. Because he is, sort of. If we want him to stop behaving like this, it’s kind of on us to do something about it. At some point we’re going to have to make a commitment to giving up our escapist entertainments for a while while we fix our actual lives. I’m as guilty as everyone else, spending half my time watching movies and sports. putting off my problems until later. If we all did less of that, my guess is that we might start thinking less like movie and TV critics, and more like citizens — at which point the flaws in Moore’s movies won’t seem so bad at all. We might not even notice them.

Published on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

We Are Standing Up to the Powers of the World

Let us then ABOLISH ALL NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND ALL WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and ABOLISH ALL WAR FOREVER AND EVER. AMEN.

by Liz McAlister

Speech given at National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance rally

Phil Berrigan would be 86 today. He disliked celebrations of his birthday. To give him a birthday gift meant using his birthday as the excuse to get something the community might need. But he'd so welcome the gift of this witness against weapons and war and the instruments of mass murder that you enact today. That kind of gift – he loved.

The war we resist today began in 2001; declared as a reaction to 9/11, it was fully prepared for prior to 9/11. In less than a year, Bush was agitating for war in Iraq – searching there for weapons of mass destruction. Three nuns found them in Colorado. Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson enacted a Citizens' Weapons Inspection – cutting the fence at the N-8 Missile Silo to expose the presence of a first strike nuclear weapon on high alert.

Their conviction – in the earliest days of the Second Iraq war – was a flagrant miscarriage of justice. The nuns did no sabotage; they did no felony destruction. There was no evidence for either. The judge and prosecutor coddled, coerced and lied to the jury that they might convict with no understanding of what they were convicting the nuns of doing.

For me it was the fall of the other shoe of my beloved Phil Berrigan's dying. We have loved so deeply, worked so hard, conspired, prayed and been through so much together. And we were separated by years of prison. But perhaps their trial and sentencing are a mirror of our times, a mirror into which we must look long and close to better understand the nature of this empire and what we stand for and what we stand against.

What I find myself reflecting on most is the long view – a tough perspective for North Americans who have yet to learn that the quick fix is neither. So I look at the struggle of South Africans against apartheid. It was May 1986. I was sitting on my bed in the Federal Prison in Alderson WV; the radio announced that the struggle against Apartheid in S. Africa was being carried by 9 year olds. It seemed so impossible, so hopeless. Yet, in less than 4 years, on Feb. 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison; in 4 more years (May 94) he was inaugurated the first black president of South Africa.

And I look at the struggle of the Palestinians whose ties to their land go back centuries and whose children can only see giving their lives in that struggle. And I look at the Colombians and the peasants of Central America who have to renew their strength every day and every generation. And I look at the history of our own country and the struggle of working people and people of color and women. None of these struggles is won – like a ball game; each must be borne daily. Clearly, we don't get everything we struggle for but we have to fight for everything we get. One of the tragedies in this country is the sense that freedom is a possession. We can own it; it can't be taken from us! It has made us the most pathetic and enslaved people of the world.

In his last major talk, Phil pleaded with thousands assembled here in D.C.: Don't get weary! So I want to echo Phil today: Don't get weary in the face of a world that has embraced endless war and bankrupting military spending – ever newer weapons of mass destruction, $12,000 ever second of every day, a world where lies pass for truth, sound bites for wisdom, arrogance for understanding. And don't get weary as citizens of this premeinent rogue state – rife with deceit and treachery where leader follows leader from bad to worse, as though by a malign law of nature. One ruler, evil or stupid or violent, breeds another more evil or stupid or violent. This may explain our periodic nostalgia for the likes of L.B.J.

Social critics, politicians, religionists multiply moral and political confusion. Wearyingly, they advocate verbal drugs, promises of relief, formulas of salvation, invocations to the god of the moment, pointing fingers at enemies – immigrants, the poor in our midst, the axes of evil. Religious, political and military "experts" push their wares: violence, domination, prospering of a few, misery for multitudes.

All of the above are forms of practical idolatry, though they commonly go under more acceptable names like patriotism. All are evidence of the spirit of death at large in our world, hidden persuaders, beckoners of the mighty, urging them to further unconscionable folly. In our day, the same powers legitimate the "law of the land," act as guardian spirits of "justice systems" and world banks and prisons and torture chambers and death rows. They normalize the excesses of the Pentagon, the military budget, the necessity of military intervention. They grease the wheels of the domination system.

We have to be about something utterly different. We have to give the diagnosis of skilled surgeons of the spirit. We have to learn to touch all the places where spirit joins flesh and name them aright. The disease is sin and high crime. The times are circular and closed. The society is ill; its illness is genetic. This analysis, woeful as it is, is a unique gift of people of conscience.

The hope we have to offer is a literal hope against hope, promulgated in the teeth of the worst times. With a sense of lively contempt, it is up to us to shuck off the victim role; cease to be mute, passive, resigned, otherworldly – roles urged (no – imposed) by the culture

Our claims may, at times, seem morbid, curmudgeonly. But we are living a hope that is concrete, of this world, and offered against the despair of present circumstances. I think we can grab it only if we grab the despair and if in that despair we are driven deeper – into - something, somewhere, someone. And, from that geography we are able to hear and realize the promise of justice; the promise of a newness wrought precisely in extremis, in exile, in moments when, it seems, there is little we can do but cling there.

And you know what – it is happening: It is happening here today/ among us. It is happening all over our world. Things are way more dynamic and alive that those in power calculate. Those who believe they are in control are deceived. The good news is that we have not collapsed or imploded with despair at this war! Many of us understand that a deeper resistance is summoned of us. We are trying, praying, working – to be strategic, to be faithful, to be human. And we know that we must keep at it – in all those areas and more.

The powers of death and destruction reign – or so it seems. But they are undone. So, dear friends, let us not be awed by the mayhem with which the powers of this world seeks to bamboozle us. Let us embrace intransigent resistance; let us imagine that a new world is possible. And then let us live as if that new world were indeed among us and so live it into being. Let us then ABOLISH ALL NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND ALL WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and ABOLISH ALL WAR FOREVER AND EVER. AMEN.

Liz McAlister lives in the Jonah House community in Baltimore, Maryland, which she co-founded in 1973 with Phil Berrigan (1923-2002) and others.