The Egyptian Uprising: Facts and Fiction

by Ahmed Amr / February 5th, 2011

As hundreds of thousands of Egyptians entered Tahrir Square on Friday, they were welcomed by a human corridor of young men clapping and chanting “keep the faith countrymen – freedom is being born.” The protest was billed as “Yom El Raheel” – a farewell party for Hosni Mubarak.

There was something obviously different about the crowd that showed up to participate in what turned out to be the largest demonstration since the uprising began. For one thing, they came without their children and there were fewer women in the crowd. That was to be expected. Fear of violent attacks by the hired thugs of the Mubarak’s ruling party haunted the event and the square was littered with stones and debris from the battles on Wednesday. Many of the veterans of those attacks were limping or walking around with blood soaked bandages.

The few foreign journalists who came to cover the event were edgy and visibly concerned for their own personal safety. In a desperate effort to reduce coverage of the demonstrations, Mubarak’s goons had attacked them in their hotels and stolen or damaged their equipment. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 114 foreign journalists have been attacked or arrested in the last two days. The government blamed the intimidation campaign on unidentified rogue elements in the security forces but the harassment continues.

Neutering the foreign press was an essential tactic for a propaganda campaign by the organs of the State owned media which has been shameless in distorting the realities on the ground. The employees of Egyptian government newspapers and television stations are nothing more than ruling party hacks but they are not without their talents. While some of the rumors they were circulating were marginally plausible, others were off the wall.

Perhaps the most entertaining rumor was the “Kentucky Fried” allegation. According to one story circulated by the ‘national press,’ the million plus protestors came to the square in expectation of a platter of spicy chicken and 50 Euros. The fictional foreign agents serving the crowd came armed with tons of cash and the Colonel’s secret recipe. Whoever dreamed up that rumor forgot to mention that there is only one Kentucky Fried outlet in Tahrir Square and it’s been closed since the uprising began.

The general theme of the government’s propaganda assault has revolved around foreign agents organizing and deceiving the naïve anti-regime protestors. One concocted report in Al-Akhbar had 300 foreign saboteurs caught red handed in Suez. In government media accounts, alien provocateurs were everywhere to be found. The source of the mischief all depended on which hallucination you were reading. The agitators are apparently Israeli spies sponsored by Americans and Hamas activists financed by Iranians on a joint mission to turn Egypt into a striptease club ruled by a Shiite theocracy.

To give you an idea of how disgraceful Egyptian state journalism can be; it took ten days for Al-Ahram to notice that the demonstrator’s essential demand was for Mubarak to abdicate his throne. Until yesterday, the flagship of the government’s propaganda machine portrayed the demonstrations as rallies against high food prices and unemployment and in support of unspecified ‘reforms.’ The day after the slaughter at Tahrir Square, Al-Ahram boasted this headline “Millions demonstrate in support of Mubarak.” The reporting is so scandalous that many government employed journalists have quit in protest and others are simply refusing to write.

The regime’s efforts at damage control were not ineffective. The campaign hit a chord with the argument that Mubarak had already resigned and was just waiting for his term to expire in September. Egyptians are a sentimental people and the appeal to treat Mubarak as the father of the nation had some resonance. They failed to mention that Mubarak was the kind of father who devours his own children. So far, over 300 hundred have died because of his stubborn refusal to accept early retirement.

To date, the government owned papers have yet to raise or answer questions regarding the virtual disappearance of the police force. On the one hand, their editorials paint the soon to be deposed president as the only man on the planet who can insure internal security and prevent chaos. On the other hand, they can’t explain where or why his police vanished, who gave the orders to disband them or why Egypt even needs a police force. For over a week, the people have managed quite nicely without them and crime stats are probably at an all time low. Thanks to the citizen security committees that were set up to confront the criminal elements, no burglar in his right mind would brave the gauntlet of checkpoints set up on virtually every block. It’s always been safe to walk Cairo’s streets. It’s even safer now. After we toss the dictator out, the costs of Mubarak’s bloated security forces obviously needs to be addressed.

Another part of the propaganda campaign is to portray the uprising as an organized plot by the Muslim Brotherhood. The truth is that the uprising was spontaneous and unorganized. While the fuse was lit by a group of liberal-minded internet-savvy activists, it has evolved into a nationalist movement dominated by citizens unaffiliated with any group or party. They have all rallied around a single cause – bringing down the regime. All you have to do is walk around Tahrir Square and read the home-made signs. “The people demand the removal of the regime,” “He Goes – We Stay” “Go already, Have some self-respect, I’m tired of holding up this sign.” What you won’t find are “Death to America” signs or anyone burning an American flag. When the demonstrators in Tahrir square got the badly translated message that Obama had asked Mubarak to step down – they were ecstatic. Of course, Obama had done nothing of the sort. It’s now clear that the United States has decided to throw its weight behind Mubarak’s regime. With or without Mubarak, America wants a compliant dictator to rule over Egypt.

If history repeats itself in Egypt, it will lead to a new polity in the Turkish mold not a replay of the Iranian Revolution. Unfortunately, Hillary and Obama have apparently fallen victim to the canard that this uprising will lead to a power grab by mullahs. Egypt doesn’t have mullahs and Egyptians don’t do theocracy. Win or lose, the American betrayal of the Egyptian revolt against tyranny will not be soon forgotten.

Another bit of slander against the young rebels is that they are agents of chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth. It wasn’t the rebels who resorted to violence – it was Mubarak’s goons. The rebels didn’t throw open the prison gates – that was a chore left to Mubarak’s security forces who then abandoned their stations and betrayed their duty to maintain law and order. Had the regime allowed peaceful demonstrations, the tourists in Sharm, Luxor and Hurghada would have stayed put.

It wasn’t the rebels who turned off the internet and cell phones. Again, that was Mubarak. It wasn’t the rebels who enforced the curfew that paralyzed economic activity; that was Mubarak. To extend his thirty year dictatorship, the strongman canceled train service, blocked highway travel, closed the banks and brought the country to a virtual standstill. So aside from being a ruthless dictator, the man is an economic arsonist.

The last time Mubarak bothered to speak to his subjects was last Tuesday night – five days ago. To say that he has a tin ear would be the understatement of the year. He’s always treated Egyptians with utter disdain and he’s most likely in a vengeful mood. If he prevails, Egyptians will pay dearly for daring to rise up against his regime.

There is really only one story here and it is ever so uncomplicated. This is an uprising against an octogenarian dictator who could have done us all a favor by retiring two decades ago. After he goes, the remaining 84 million Egyptians can sort things out among themselves. Everything else is fiction.

Keep the faith – freedom is being born.

Ahmed Amr is the former editor of NileMedia.com and the author of The Sheep and The Guardians - Diary of a SEC Sanctioned Swindle. He can be reached at: Montraj@aol.com. Read other articles by Ahmed.

This article was posted on Saturday, February 5th, 2011 at 9:49pm and is filed under Egypt, Media, Revolution.

February 5, 2011 at 13:20:14

Big Brother and the Holding Company: Turning Repression into Resistance

By Ricardo Levins Morales (about the author)

opednews.com

Solidarity with the People of the United States by Ricardo Levins Morales

The cold winds of political repression have begun to blow a little colder. The widening FBI probe of the anti-war and solidarity movements--launched with coordinated raids in Minneapolis and Chicago in September, 2010--attests to the expanding reach of Washington's repressive apparatus. The new face of domestic repression is characterized by rapidly developing technical capacity for surveillance and data sharing, the integration of local policing into the national security system and a blurring of boundaries between private and government police functions and goals.

Repression--the use of state power to limit political action and discourse--doesn't develop in isolation. It compensates for the weakening of other, less intrusive methods for ensuring social stability. Today it corresponds to growing economic inequality driven by the flight of manufacturing, the demolition of public sector services, the decline of union power and the ascension of a ravenous financial sector. These changes severely strain the mechanisms that maintain popular consensus.

Our task in the following pages will be to note current trends in political and social police repression, identify some of the systemic vulnerabilities they betray and to find points of leverage from which to launch a pro-democracy counteroffensive. We are experiencing a system-wide assault on the democratic public space that, besides police activity, encompasses attacks on academic expression, criminalization of whistle-blowing, corporatization of elections and hobbling the open internet. Piecemeal, defensive strategies will not be adequate. We will need to mount a challenge to the repressive enterprise as a whole. In particular I would assert that our strategy should promote solidarity and cooperation among the sectors that bear the brunt of repression but have historically remained separate in their responses.

Within days of the September raids, several hundred people turned out at a south side community church in Minneapolis to begin organizing a defense campaign. Several days later, a similar-sized crowd gathered on the city's north side to support the family of Fong Lee, a Hmong teenager killed by police in 2006, at that time appealing his case to the US Supreme Court. Between them, these cases embody the two levels of a police-repressive system that has operated in the United States since its earliest days.

The September raids marked a shift in the "anti-terror" narrative. Until then the domestic front of the "war on terror" had targeted dark people with foreign names and accents. Almost all of the thousand or so terrorism cases pursued since 9/11 have been instances of entrapment, involving financially desperate, mentally unstable or otherwise vulnerable men in Muslim communities. These hapless individuals have been cajoled, threatened and even bribed into conspiratorial activities conceived, financed and equipped by the FBI. These prosecutions have not foiled real threats to public safety but they do "send a message" that the nation is under attack from Islam at home and abroad and must "circle the wagons" in defense.

This time the targets are US citizens, predominantly of European descent and with respectable, mostly white collar jobs; well-known in their communities for public protest and educational activities. Repression usually targets those who can easily be isolated and moves up the social ladder as it builds the case that enemies are all around us. This is the principle famously summed up by Pastor Martin Neumoller in his 1946 statement, "First they came for the Communists"" The September raids represent a rather abrupt leap up that ladder, risking an outpouring of support for their targets that has, indeed, materialized.

It has been widely noted that the raids came on the heels of a Justice Department report critical of the FBI for spying on peaceful activism. Their timing suggests a defensive move on the part of the Bureau, saying, in effect, "See, peace activists really are in league with terror!"

The report was released by the DoJ's Inspector General under pressure from Senators, following a Pittsburgh newspaper expose. A revealing incident in its pages involves an agent sent to observe a protest organized by the pacifist Thomas Merton Center. When pressed by investigators to justify the spying, Bureau officials quickly created a false back story (complete with paper trail) to pretend that their intent was to keep tabs on Farooq Houssaini, the director of the local Islamic Center. The problem is that they had no legitimate reason to spy on Houssaini either! The officials seemed to assume that by linking the protest to a prominent member of an Ethnically Targeted Community (an ETC), they would escape criticism. A similar ploy may be discerned in the September raids; the inclusion of a single Palestinian, Hatem Abudayeh (the respected director of Chicago's Arab American Action Network), to provide the necessary intimation of guilt (more Palestinians were targeted in a subsequent round of subpoenas).

While the DoJ report may explain the timing of the raids, their pretext flags them as a test of new police powers stemming from the Supreme Court ruling in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law. This ruling criminalizes interaction with groups deemed "terrorist" by the feds, even for the purpose of conflict resolution, investigation or humanitarian aid. This new instrument is, logically, being tested on leftist activists rather than mainstream institutions like the Carter Center which has expressed alarm over its draconian reach.

Colonial Legacy

Today's police system has its roots in the colonial past. Control over Ethnically Targeted Communities was the operative principle of the early slave patrols and, later, of the urban militias who monitored a growing number of free black workers and Native people (whose movements were subject to a pass book system). As these organizations morphed into police departments, their mandate would evolve to include maintaining order among immigrant factory workers, keeping wages down by suppressing union agitation and, eventually, becoming the enforcement arm for corrupt political machines.

In a racially stratified country, compliance with the social order is based on a two-tiered modality: collective management of ETCs and other low social strata, but individual treatment for offenders from the privileged classes. Charges might be pursued against a white person who disturbed the public order whereas an entire Black community would be punished if one of their own stepped out of line.

This pattern is familiar to US communities of color. It plays out in the indiscriminate rage directed at local communities when a member of the force has been shot by an unknown assailant; in post-Katrina New Orleans where the police acted as enforcers to assist white communities and suppress dark ones; in the contrasting responses to the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing and the 9/11 attacks. The first, perpetrated by white Christian racists was treated as individual criminal pathology whereas the latter unleashed a full-bodied assault on Muslim and immigrant communities which has yet to end.

A shift in police philosophy, beginning in the 1970s, places domestic policing into a frame of counterinsurgency. Rather than seeking out the perpetrators when crimes have been committed, counterinsurgency emphasizes widespread surveillance and infiltration to identify and neutralize threats before they materialize. Based as it is on a war paradigm, counterinsurgency ("COIN," in the professional jargon) justifies police action on the basis of intent, suspicion and association rather than the higher standards of evidence associated with a crime-fighting model. Within the logic of COIN, civil society is a breeding ground for subversion, crime and terror and must be closely monitored to guard against outbreaks. There is a presumed natural progression from truancy, petty theft and political discontent to protest, organized crime and terrorism. The more effectively you disrupt these threats to stability when they are seeds, the more you will succeed in preventing their becoming thistles. Spying on and disrupting pacifist groups, mine protestors, death penalty opponents and civil libertarians, therefore, are not instances of careless overreach or poor supervision but, rather, are the purest application of counterinsurgency logic. In communities of color-- where preventive disruption has long been the norm--the introduction of COIN has, through "community policing," increased police reliance on informants to trigger reckless paramilitary home raids.

These developments fit within a broader cultural offensive aimed at dividing and disrupting civil society. Thus we see the imposition of racist immigration laws in Arizona (to keep down labor costs and redirect white economic fears) linked to the banning of Ethnic Studies instruction (to undermine the seeds of cultural resistance).

The racialized dual structure of US policing finds expression in the deepest racial/cultural divide in our society: the chasm that cuts across public perceptions of the police. The admiration and trust for police with which white, middle class children are inculcated stands in irreconcilable contrast to the hatred and fear with which they are viewed by the young of the ETCs. These sets of perceptions are rooted in real disparities in treatment experienced in these communities. The fact that cases like Fong Lee's (or the better-known Oscar Grant) are commonplace is not known to white USAmerica, where conflict with the police is seen as evidence of criminality. Poet Bao Phi distills it clearly:

Put a blindfold on me

Tell me who you fear

And I will tell you

Your skin.

When Fong Lee and his friends were confronted by the police, it's not surprising that his impulse would be to get away. Officer Jason Anderson, an officer with a brutal history, chased Lee around a school building, shooting him eight times. A handgun which materialized later turned out to have come from storage in a Police Department evidence room. As a young member of an ETC, it would be assumed by the white public that he must have done something pretty bad to attract police bullets. The attorneys for the city exploited this bias by repeating the word "gang" as many times as possible in connection with Fong's name while excluding evidence of the officer's anti-Asian racism and penchant for brutality.

An Expanding Web

Racial and political repression is systematized through vast databases that have morphed into virtual maps of their respective social sectors. State-level gang databases are, like lobster traps, easy to get into but difficult to leave. In some states saggy pants and hip-hop sensibilities are enough to flag you as gang-connected and that, in turn, implicates your friends. For young people in trouble with the legal system, a gang "association" can bring enhanced penalties. Anti-dissident databases are equally sweeping in scope. Data collected from direct surveillance and infiltration, commercial sources, phone, car rental and travel records, public sources (such as Facebook) and past investigations are amalgamated through over seventy regional, state and city "fusion centers." These are staffed by police and agents from multiple agencies alongside private security contractors (who are conveniently exempt from oversight laws). The resulting map of personal connections and associations identifies key hubs of activism for closer inspection.

Revelations involving fusion centers in Missouri, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Los Angeles and Texas, among others, expose a systematic pattern of spying on legal activity. In some cases the data is collected with the assistance of corporations who are the targets of protests and who, in turn, receive intelligence reports about their critics. An inadvertently posted memo from the director of Homeland Security in Pennsylvania highlights this cozy relationship: "We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies."

Driving the expansion of police powers is a decline in the global position of the US, shifts in its racial makeup and growing inequality globally and locally. The accelerated integration of private and public police functions reflects a parallel integration of corporations and government at all levels, from the federal cabinet (composed increasingly of executives from the most powerful corporate sectors); to legislatures selected with unlimited private contributions; to the leadership and staff of regulatory agencies. This merger has given rise to a brazen kleptocracy in which corporate criminality carries little risk of punishment while those who expose or protest it are treated as insurgents.

Growing inequality and impoverishment produce three predictable responses from the base of the social pyramid: protest, crime and psychological/emotional breakdown. These expressions of social distress--not the systemic exploitation which engenders them--are the problems which an expanded police universe is assigned to contain. All of these challenges will increase as a returning stream of psychologically and physically wounded war veterans collides with a drastically downsized social safety net.

Into this volatile mix corporations have poured hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor a resurgence of right wing political action. The agenda of the new rightist groups is to support corporate-friendly measures (dressed up as defenses of personal liberty) and to pin the blame for societal collapse on vulnerable populations. Counterinsurgency policing exactly complements this conservative agenda by disrupting the opponents of corporate power and suppressing the responses (organized or random) of the hardest hit communities. There is a high degree of overlap between the targets of hate radio and its vigilante followers and those of Homeland Security and the repression-technology complex.

Stripped of its ideological baggage, the grievances of the Tea Party rank and file can be summarized as: "things are getting worse and I'm being treated unfairly." The right wing sound machine directs these sentiments into resentment toward "elites" who conspire with brown people, foreigners, queers and the parasitic poor to deprive white citizens of all they have worked so hard for. The same frustrations (albeit with a different narrative) are experienced in the marginalized communities that came out of the shadows to elect Obama only to find him expanding the policies they had rejected. Whatever the actual reality, the idea of fair play is deeply engrained in US culture. Painful as financial hardship is in its own right, the perception that there are privileged people who rate special treatment is what turns frustration into rage.

Evidence of impunity stares us in the face every day although different expressions of it are visible to us depending on where we stand: Wall street gamblers unleash massive social destruction and are rewarded with the keys to the treasury; BP destroys the Gulf ecology and is protected by the government; police kill unarmed youth, falsify the evidence and face no punishment; Blackwater mercenaries massacre civilians and are spared prosecution; an investment banker crashes his car into a cyclist and faces reduced charges because the prosecutor feels that a felony record could have "serious job implications for someone in (his) profession" ; simple consumer purchases and services come wrapped in complex agreements that allow companies to change the rules at will; wars are unleashed on the basis of faked evidence and kidnapping and torture are routinized with no consequences to the perpetrators; Dick Cheney and Haliburton slip free of criminal bribery charges in Nigeria by paying a fine smaller than the original bribes; retirement benefits guaranteed in union contracts are gutted with court approval to protect shareholder investments; police beat, raid, frame and harass on the street with little concern for fallout even when caught on video; insurance executives who deny needed treatment to the ill and injured remain free and powerful. Those who protest or resist these injustices are the ones that face investigation and harassment at the hands of the criminal justice system.

Turning the Tables

The repressive universe has grown quickly and haphazardly, post-9/11, creating a profusion of organizations and a confusion of interests. Such uncontrolled growth creates its own contradictions and vulnerabilities. Foremost among these is the size and technological prowess of the system itself. Unassailable superiority easily leads to "power blindness"; an overreliance on a few blunt tools to control a complex and changing cultural reality. This has proven the downfall of US ambitions in Iraq and Afghanistan; its lopsided advantage led planners to assume they could roll a massive military machine across these societies without regard to their cultures, history and traditions. As I observed in a 2003 piece (The Return of History), this weakness would doom the occupation virtually from the start. What an opponent considers its great strength may be its Achilles heel.

The full spectrum nature of the repressive assault produces another unintended consequence. It largely removes the option of seeking personal safety by staying below the government radar. Even seemingly inoffensive activity falls within the purview of the national security state now under construction. That construction must be blocked and reversed or it will continue to besiege the shrinking democratic space.

This sets the stage for exactly the kind of political challenge that repression is meant to prevent: the building of broad alliances among segments of society that are traditionally fragmented but who can perceive an increasing danger to their own interests.

The simple answer to this stark challenge is that we must organize. But piecemeal, or defensive, organizing is rarely effective in the face of a systemic assault. For challenge on this scale, organizing efforts need to be harmonized within a common counteroffensive. An ensemble of jazz musicians all playing at once must either coalesce around a common theme or they end up at cross purposes, unable to convey a coherent message. This is one of the keys to the right's rise to power: while we were coming up with brilliant solos, they established a few common themes with which to unify their multiple campaigns into a unified current.

Following are examples of tactics that can begin to shift the initiative. They are meant to fulfill three requirements: to capture the attention of communities impacted by repression in its various forms; to immediately put our opponents on the defensive and; to unite our friends and divide our enemies. The mechanism can be called "guerrilla legislation." It takes the lawmaking process--often seen as a way to steer popular aspirations into safe channels--and turns it into a flashpoint for organizing. Distinct from organizing itself, these initiatives function like the lead goose in a formation: to point the direction and create a "wind shadow" with which organizing campaigns can align themselves. The Republican representatives who voted to repeal the health reform bill knew that the gesture would not be successful in the sense of passing the measure. It was more important to advance the story.

The easiest point of entry for these measures would be to have them introduced by friendly legislators at the appropriate levels of government. Their utility derives from the favorable polarization they create and does not depend on their passing.

1) The Integrity in Law Enforcement Bill. This measure will impose harsh penalties on police, prosecutors, coroners or other employees, officials and subcontractors of the policing world if found guilty of pursuing contrived charges; falsifying, planting or concealing evidence; or soliciting or engaging in perjury for the purpose of securing a conviction or who bring charges against any person or group of persons with the intent of stifling or discouraging political dissent. Police and politicians can neither support nor oppose such a bill without undermining their own legitimacy.

2) The International Peace and National Security Act. A federal bill making it "the legal equivalent of treason" to manufacture evidence; present false testimony before Congress; plant deliberately false information in the media for the purpose of involving the United States in a state of military or covert conflict with state or non-state entities outside of its borders . Failing to report such criminal activity will be an enhanced felony . Simply forcing Congressional hearings on such a bill would rivet international media attention as well as galvanize the anger of families of fallen soldiers. The prospect of the death penalty could have a sobering effect on mid-level functionaries called upon to carry out the routine but illegal tasks of empire. Being forced to respond to this reasonable proposal would place the White House and Congress in an untenable dilemma both domestically and internationally.

3) The Health and Wellbeing Under Confinement Act. This will make it a serious felony to deny medical treatment, access to medications or necessary nutrition or activity to anyone held in the criminal justice or immigration detention systems or any other institutions of involuntary confinement. Such inhumane practices are widespread. This issue will resonate deeply in both immigrant and US-born communities of color.

4) Freedom from Entrapment Act. Manufacturing a crime for the purpose of prosecuting people who otherwise would not have committed one will constitute a major offense, triggering serious prison time and lifetime banishment from law enforcement.

5) Other measures will criminalize the diversion of public police and security resources to the service of private interests (as in the Pennsylvania DHS case).

These proposals would all include a "betrayal of public trust" sentencing enhancement modeled on the "gang enhancements" which are used to extend prison time of poor youth of color. Public and police officials, who like to claim that police abuse is the work of "a few bad apples," would be invited to endorse these clean-up measures.

The theatricality of these ideas aside, they take aim at official impunity and stimulate deeply held grievances; exposing the gaping chasm between what they must say and what they must do. If no elected officials can be found to introduce such legislation it will illuminate the moral distance between them and their constituents. A public campaign to force these bills onto the agenda would echo the 1789-1791 demands for inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. The grievances embodied in these proposals are as deeply felt as those which fuelled popular anger in 1789. Such efforts would resonate in the community and "ethnic" media which are relatively independent of corporate control and are relied on by tens of millions in the most affected communities. They would also bolster local struggles. The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal from Fong Lee's family for a retrial of his killer. The legal arguments presented by Minneapolis' attorneys relied on the statements of officer Anderson --by then fired for lying under oath in another case. Had the case come to the Court against the backdrop of a national movement against police impunity it might have seemed more compelling for the Justices to consider.

Dividing the Dividers

Following the decline of the urban political machines, police departments emerged as the most powerful component of city government, overshadowing the mayors and city councils to which they supposedly answer. Since 9/11 they have become increasingly integrated into the national security apparatus centered in the Department of Homeland Security. "National Security Events" such as Democratic and Republican conventions and ministerial meetings are used to accelerate this process. Local police and sheriff departments are showered with shiny military-style hardware, advanced training, direct lines of communication to the feds and the new, exciting self-image of frontline troops in the war on terror. This further weakens the leverage of city governments, who find themselves sidelined as "their" police align themselves ever more with Washington. This parallels how the training and weaponry lavished on Latin American militaries in the 1970s and 80s produced an officer corps more loyal to Washington than to its respective governments. City councils today end up as little more than liability insurers to their police, doling out large cash settlements in brutality and wrongful death settlements but wielding little influence over the departments themselves.

The national security universe is comprised of over 1,200 government entities and almost 2,000 private companies competing, cooperating, sharing and withholding data, often attempting to enhance their standing by exaggerating the supposed threats they are uncovering. (The Ramsey County Sherriff's Department, which spearheaded harassment of activists opposing the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota, claimed to have investigated 22 domestic and 11 international terrorist groups operating in its jurisdiction in 2009--figures which turned out to be fabrications.) Databases are riddled with inaccuracies and bloated with useless entries. Local police departments sacrifice strategic coherence in their scramble to re-define such distinct phenomena as gang violence, organized crime and political speech as sub-categories of anti-terrorism. This complex landscape--and the full spectrum assault on civil liberties which underlies it--gives rise to divisions inside and out of the police sector.

In the big picture, repression serves to keep people disorganized and divided, thus holding down labor costs and regulations and preventing civil society from competing with the top 1% for resources. The current wave is part of a concerted effort to roll back the era of reform ushered in with the New Deal almost a century ago. This agenda can be seen in the current offensive against public sector unions, intended to eradicate unionism altogether as a factor in society; preparations to erode social security and Medicare; the Presidential green light to corporations to dismantle inconvenient regulations; and the engineering of budget crises to justify gutting popular public services.

As a practical matter, repression depends on fomenting division, fear, confusion and isolation among marginalized communities and political movements. It only works when we obligingly become divided, fearful, confused and isolated. Repressive agencies do not aim to imprison everyone who harbors dissenting thoughts. Instead they target the few so as to frighten the many. In fact, repression is never completely effective because the very conditions that make it necessary will continually generate new resistance. Their hope is to disable democratic protections sufficiently that whatever opposition emerges can be prevented from becoming a political force.

Three levels of response are called for:

1) Prevention: preparing activists and communities to identify and resist divisive tactics, intimidation and entrapment;

2) Defense: supporting and defending those singled out for persecution; and

3) Counter-offense: building a movement across traditional social barriers that targets the sources of repressive power and legitimacy.

It is a useful exercise from time to time to try and see ourselves as our opponents see us. The resources which the government is devoting to the repressive endeavor make clear that it sees in our nascent movements and battered communities a serious threat to be contained. Our custom on the US left of seeing only our own weaknesses and our opponents' strength does not serve us well. The advantage in political conflict does not accrue to the side with the greatest technological and financial might but to the side that can seize and retain the initiative. This is clearly understood by the right, which is setting the national political agenda by defining and fighting for a set of values. The left, in contrast, fights mostly defensive battles, hoping against the evidence that the liberal wing of the establishment will provide the leadership which we ourselves have abdicated. This is of particular importance in relation to repression, where a liberal White House is championing the both protection of state secrecy and the eradication of personal privacy (to the extreme of claiming a right to order extrajudicial assassinations of enemies foreign or domestic).

A reckless corporate feeding frenzy has thrown families out of their homes, workers out of their jobs and students into debt. The current trajectory is aimed at evicting all but a small, bloated elite from the governance of society, a course which will lead to still greater inequality. The national security-police-prison complex has been assigned the impossible task of ensuring that this process goes smoothly. Its primary mission is to prevent the emergence of effective solidarity within and between domestic communities and with the international victims of the same exploitative policies. Challenging repression, however, can open new avenues for building that very solidarity. Just as President Nixon demonstrated that the cover-up can be more damning than the original crime, so repression can be the Achilles heel of a regime that comes to rely on it. Mistreatment at the hands of the police has more than once sparked youth-led movements, organizations and uprisings in the US and beyond that quickly draw attention to it was intended to defend. How we rise to the challenge will determine, more than any other factor, whether today's chill wind will usher in a new ice age.

www.rlmarts.com

I am a movement artist and activist. I was born into the Puerto Rican independence movement and have been active in US social movements from an early age. I worked for 30 years in the Northland poster Collective which provided art services and (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Twenty-Five Arrested, Thousands Converge on Koch Brothers Billionaire's Caucus in the California Desert

AlterNet.org

NEWS & POLITICS

Firedoglake / By David Dayen

Twenty-Five Arrested, Thousands Converge on Koch Brothers Billionaire's Caucus in the California Desert

Sunday's protest against the Koch brothers' right-wing gathering in Rancho Mirage demonstrated a growing boldness by progressive causes and activists.

January 31, 2011

Note: The article below reprinted from FireDogLake by David Dayen recounts the events of Sunday's protest against the Koch brothers in Rancho Mirage, CA. The demonstration signals a series of promising developments for progressive groups and activists. Notably, the event was marked by an impressive coalition effort by the participating organizations, positive energy and activism by the attendants, and the wide-held understanding that it is the Koch's ill-gotten, obscene wealth that has made the Tea Party and hundreds of right-wing abuses of our democratic system possible. Author Jim Hightower said it well in the kick-off event in a packed large movie theater before the protest; the problem the Kochs represent is what the 19th century populists used to call "the money power," and our right to speak out against it is rooted in our "democratic authority" as citizens concerned with the general welfare of the country.

Twenty-five protesters were arrested in Rancho Mirage, California on Sunday, at a protest in front of the Rancho Las Palmas resort, site of the “Billionaire’s Caucus,” an annual meeting put on by the Koch Brothers and other corporate entities and conservative movement operators.

Riverside Sheriff’s deputy Melissa Nieburger said that the sheriff’s department did have contacts with protest organizers, which included the California Courage Campaign, CREDO, MoveOn.org, 350.org, the California Nurses Association, United Domestic Workers of America and the main sponsor, the good-government group Common Cause, prior to the event, and that they were aware that some protesters would seek to be arrested for trespassing. She would not guarantee that all 25 who were arrested were part of that coordinated operation. The police, who wore riot gear, batons and helmets, did put the arrested into plastic handcuffs. Nieburger described them as “passive restraints.” They were being processed at press time, and Nieburger would not say whether they would be released or would spend the night at the jail in Indio.

Nieburger estimated between 800 and 1,000 activists at the “Uncloak the Kochs” event. Event organizers chartered buses from several locations around Southern California and claimed 1,500 people signed up for those buses, on top of any local activists who attended. It appeared from the ground that well over 1,000 protesters were there.

While the sheriff’s deputy claimed no knowledge of who called out the Riverside County sheriffs and the Palm Springs police department to the proceedings, Common Cause was contacted by the sheriff to see what they were planning and coordinate appropriate resources. The city of Rancho Mirage contracts with the Riverside County sheriff’s department for their law enforcement needs.

Van Jones, the former green jobs deputy in the Obama Administration and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, described the anti-Koch rally as “the beginning of our fight back.” The leadership of Common Cause, generally a far more congenial organization, was a bit unusual, part of a new aggressiveness and penchant for direct action from the group. “I think you’re going to see a new Common Cause.”

The Koch Brothers, billionaires who have generously funded conservative and libertarian causes for over a generation – including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and tea party groups like Americans for Prosperity – put together an annual meeting, typically held in the California desert, with fellow corporate CEOs and conservative operatives, to plan the year ahead. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain were reputed to attend the gathering at the sprawling Rancho Las Palmas resort. The Kochs bought out the entire resort for Saturday and Sunday. Some activists who stayed at the resort Friday night and booked dinners at their restaurants on Saturday had their reservations canceled by the resort, and were given $150 each for their trouble.

Common Cause organized the protest weeks ago, and set up a stage in the parking lot across the street from the Rancho Las Palmas resort. But from the beginning, activists were far more interested in the resort site, and they massed themselves across the street and then eventually in the driveway of the resort. The police, in their riot gear, came out very early to guard the resort, only letting in authorized personnel. Hotel guests, presumably attendees to the Koch Brothers meeting, looked on, holding smart phone cameras and taking pictures of the display. In addition, conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, resplendent in shorts and roller skates, mulled around the crowd with a couple lackeys and a small video camera, talking to (and arguing with) attendees. I asked Breitbart exactly who necessitated the riot police, the lady with the papier-maché puppet or the Code Pink lady’s umbrella, and he claimed to have seen unspecified “internal emails” proving the potential for violence and the need for security. Surely that will come out in the next few days. I didn’t want to keep him from his workout, so I wrapped up the interview.

After a litany of speakers – including Jim Hightower, Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign, and Common Cause President and former Illinois Congressman Bob Edgar, the entire group of protesters moved to the setup across the street from the resort. Police helicopters buzzed overhead. After a while, the police agreed to shut down Bob Hope Drive, and the protesters streamed across the street and directly in front of the resort, just a few inches away from the phalanx of riot cops. The usual protest chanting and raising of banners ensued. More cops were brought in, traipsing over the flower beds. And 25 protesters were taken away in a paddy wagon. The protests were generally peaceful, and the police professional.

The protesters generally decried the Koch Brothers’ influence over American democracy, in particular their use of the Citizens United ruling to spend corporate money in elections. Koch Industries’ funding of climate denialism and other conservative causes was on the minds of the protesters as well.

After about 45 minutes, the cops opened the road again (the police originally said they would only shut the street for 7 minutes) and asked the crowd to disperse. Eventually, the crowd did so, chanting “This is just the beginning.”

Sheriff’s deputy Neiburger would not say whether this was the first time protesters had disrupted the Koch Brothers meetings, but up until last year and a series of articles by Lee Fang of Think Progress, they had not been well-publicized.

Bob Edgar, the President of Common Cause, said in a brief interview that he was happy with the turnout and the outcome. I asked him if this was evidence of a more aggressive organization. “Keep watching,” he said.

FDL’s Gregg Levine and David Dayen will have more pictures and video that they will post on FireDogLake.

David Dayen writes for FireDogLake's News Desk.

The Olbermann Era

The Olbermann Era

Tuesday 25 January 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Keith Olberman in Washington, DC, in 2009. (Photo: afagen)

A quick confession that might not sit well with many Truthout readers: I was, on a personal level, quite ambivalent about the loss of Keith Olbermann's show, "Countdown," when he announced his exit last week. If "Meh" can sum up an emotion, then that's how I felt when I heard the deal went down.

Don't get me wrong here: I was, and remain, a great and devoted fan of Keith Olbermann and the work he did at MSNBC. I have been a devotee of Mr. Olbermann since his old-school moustache days anchoring the ESPN show “Sportscenter” during the golden age of that program. But I have spent the last several years experiencing his “Countdown” work in text form, i.e. reading instead of watching, and in ten-minute online video snippets, because I avoid all cable “news” programming the way cats avoid water. All of it, even the stuff I tend to agree with.

When "Countdown" first began in 2003, I watched it almost every night - the only cable “news” show I consistently tuned in to - but quickly soured on the whole experience. I just can’t stand it, any of it. I can’t stand the emotional manipulation that comes with all forms of televised “news,” and have for many times many a day now refused to let them in my head. I also never saw the point in getting all riled up at eight o'clock at night. What was I supposed to do with all that rage after nine? Punch the walls and kick the cat, maybe indulge in a little firebombing? Didn’t seem prudent.

The production of "Countdown" - the flashes, the music, the jump cuts - made me feel like I had rocks rolling around in my head. This was not solely an Olbermann problem for me; all cable “news” programming leaves me feeling the same way, which is why I swore it off years ago. If CNN or MSNBC played footage of puppies playing with baby pandas next to a pile of bunnies and kittens, it would still give me a headache. It wasn't Keith's fault. I'm just allergic to the medium itself, and have largely avoided it for more than a decade.

All that aside, there is no doubt that Mr. Olbermann’s “Countdown” was something very special. In a polluted sea of corrupted corporate “news” brainwashing, his was a voice of loud, angry reason. He paved the way for the excellence of Rachel Maddow to make its own impressive mark on the TV “news” landscape. He spoke a great deal of truth that had not been heard on the airwaves for far too long. By modeling himself and his show after Edward R. Murrow, even going so far as to use Murrow's iconic "Good night, and good luck" sign-off at the end of every broadcast, he gave us a daily reminder that the "news" was not always like it is today, and that it can - nay, must - improve for the good of the republic.

His very existence became a thorn in the side of the corporation that owns his network, and the corporations behind all the other networks. He kicked some cash to a few Democratic candidates - Rep. Gabrielle Giffords being one - and it turned into a nine-day wonder of a debate about broadcasting standards and the hypocrisy of MSNBC's upper management. It still cracks me up when I think about it: here were these corporate network owners who scream bloody murder about money equaling speech, but when Olbermann exercised his constitutional right to participate in the political process by way of that particular brand of "speech," he got a two-day rip and a public scolding. The whole charade shamed his bosses deeply and publicly, and probably had more than a bit to do with his eventual departure from the network he pretty much single-handedly put on the map.

To me and so many others, he was a beacon of sanity during the bleak darkness of the Bush years. Remember the timeline here: the 2000 election catastrophe was followed by a ceaseless cable “news” refrain of, "This is an orderly transition of power, nothing to see here, go back to bed," which infuriated everyone who knew that particular game had been fixed. This was followed by the push for war in Iraq ballyhooed by every cable network - "Navy SEALS rock!" - until the bullets started flying and the IED's started going off. All throughout, the myriad scandals and crimes of the Bush administration went largely ignored and unreported...until Keith came along, reminding us that, "Today is the 521st day since the declaration of 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq."

Mr. Olbermann was one of the only voices in broadcasting who openly discussed the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame by the Bush administration. When the 2004 election results in Ohio were corrupted by brazen manipulation and vote fraud, it was Olbermann who raised the loudest televised cry. It was Olbermann who, day after day, hammered the awful truth about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it was Olbermann who pounded home the fact that the Bush administration was little more than a deranged criminal enterprise that threatened the very fabric of the nation.

For me, Mr. Olbermann delivered his most memorable, impassioned and important "Special Comment" in 2006, in the aftermath of George W. Bush's press conference in the Rose Garden, in which Bush played the Nazi card and essentially implied that anyone who disagreed with him and his policies was an ally of al Qaeda. That night, Mount Olbermann erupted:

It is to our deep national shame - and ultimately it will be to the President's deep personal regret - that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies - or even question their effectiveness or execution - to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 - without ever actually saying so - the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, "a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government."

Make no mistake here - the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the "media."

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle: the attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word - "media" - the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President's re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

"In the 1920's a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews," President Bush said today, "the world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price."

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek - a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration's recent Nazi "kick" is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

The forces against independent journalism are growing. Help Truthout keep up the fight against ignorance and regression! Support us here.

The manner of Mr. Olbermann's departure remains shrouded in mystery; the man himself has made no comment on the matter, which may have something to do with the deal that was cut to end his contract two years early. Many have opined – correctly, in all likelihood - that the looming Comcast takeover of NBC Universal played a large role. As Buzzflash Editor Mark Karlin wrote over the weekend:

According to James Wolcott of Vanity Fair, the chairman of Comcast Spectacor, Ed Snider, is funding a right-wing cable channel/Internet site called "RightNetwork." Wolcott sniffs at "RightNetwork" as a "pseudo-populist operation" starring an array of right-wing freaks.

Ominously, Wolcott notes "that it was Snider who invited Sarah Palin to drop the hockey puck at the Flyers' season opener in 2008, and Palin's been dropping pucks ever since."

There's little reason to doubt that Olbermann's abrupt exit from MSNBC was the first puck to drop as Comcast slap shots MSNBC away from being a progressive beachhead.

In one man we find the confluence of so many pressing issues. Mr. Olbermann stands at the center of the dire need for – and dire lack of – progressive voices within “mainstream news” broadcasting; he threw his shoulder against the wall of corporate hypocrisy; he stood and bellowed against the misdeeds of those in political power; and, ultimately, he stands today as the likely victim of the continued right-wing domination of the “news” media.

People are understandably outraged and disturbed over his abrupt and ill-defined departure from MSNBC…so how, in the face of all this, can I justify my “Meh” reaction?

Well, I already explained the first reason.

The second reason is simple: Keith Olbermann is not dead. He was not beamed to Neptune, never to be seen or heard from again.

Write it down, carve it in stone, make a note, and bet the farm:

Olbermann will be back.

Somewhere, somehow, some day, in one form or another, Mr. Olbermann will be with us again. We will hear or read his own words on the matter of his departure, and then we will hear him again, and again, and again. Giants do not fall easily, and this particular era of political commentary is not over by a long chalk. Edward R. Murrow had his own troubles with management in the darkness of the McCarthy days, and it did not keep him down or silent one iota. So shall it be with Mr. Olbermann in these dark days of corporate hegemony.

Same as it ever was.

Giants do not fall easily. Count on it.

In the meantime, good night, and good luck.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

January 8, 2011 at 12:44:31

Dissent, Once The Highest Form Of Patriotism, Now An Endangered Concept

By michael payne (about the author)

opednews.com

Dissenters by Michael Payne


The historical quote, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" has often been attributed to Thomas Jefferson but historians have been unable to verify that belief. Who actually said it matters little; what matters is the intent of the words themselves that tell us American citizens have a patriotic duty to dissent and to speak out when it is apparent their government is creating policies and taking actions that are in conflict with the best interests of the people and the laws of the land.

The right of patriotic dissent has been a part of America since those days that brought us our independence. However, in recent years, especially since 9/11, the notion that Americans have the right to dissent has become more and more problematic. Right-wing conservatives and their many associates in the controlled media have tried to silence voices of dissent in America. Serious attempts to question the actions of our government, especially in matters relating to war, are met with charges of unpatriotic behavior and treasonous intentions.

A great example of patriotic dissent can be found during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. While some historians consider his presidency to have been devoid of great achievements, during his time in office, from 1953 to 1961, after he had ended the Korean War, America enjoyed a period of peace without war. That is certainly a great achievement.

Eisenhower was a five-star general and the commander of the allied forces in World War II. After the war he became the first commander of NATO. This was a man who knew war, a man who had conducted a massive invasion of France and Germany. Here's an excerpt from his wise and insightful speech entitled, "The Chance for Peace" that he gave to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953, shortly after he became president:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

Is there no other way the world may live?"

These are very powerful words that should resonate across the full spectrum of America in this great time of national crisis as our government leads us further and further into a massive quagmire of foreign wars.

Yes, this was a man who knew what war was all about. He knew how to conduct wars; but he also knew that wars were not the real answers to nations' differences. At the end of this speech he said these words of great wisdom -- "This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

That speech was given after he had just returned from Korea where he had witnessed that conflict first hand. He returned convinced that the war had to be ended and that peace negotiations had to be initiated. He was met with great opposition by his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Defense Secretary Charles Wilson. He was subjected to the scathing criticism of the military and congressional war hawks who called him an appeaser, and even threatened him with impeachment. But he knew what he had to do and he prevailed.

It was said that "Ike" blew the whistle on those who were determined to continue on the path to war. President Eisenhower was a true American patriot and, by that speech and similar statements, he was exercising a form of patriotic dissent while he was a part of the government that he knew was going in the wrong direction. Yes, anyone can and should exercise the right to dissent, when the situation requires it; even a president of the United States.

He was not hesitant to speak out and directly challenge the views of those elements of the government, the military, and the defense industry that had intentions of using America's military power to pursue and sustain an agenda of global hegemony. As he was leaving office in 1961 he gave a notable farewell speech in which he stated, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Consider this recent headline from the Huffington Post website: "63% of Americans Oppose War in Afghanistan." That's great news but also troubling. It's easy to respond to polling, but when the majority of America is against that war, where is the real dissent, where are the voices of the people? There are some dissenting voices in the progressive movement such as antiwar activist David Swanson, and even a handful of those in Congress, if you can believe it. However, the mass media, including liberal voices, are simply not speaking out. For the most part passive silence has become the order of the day.

These trying times call for more involvement -- not less -- by Americans in questioning the actions of their government. Going into the future, one of the greatest dangers to this nation will be the suppression of dissent by those in positions of power. When the voice of the people is silenced out of fear of retribution, America will become a pacified, controlled society. Sad to say, that eventuality is far closer to reality than we realize.

Michael Payne is an independent progressive who writes articles about domestic social and political matters as well as American foreign policy. His major goal is to convince Americans that our perpetual wars must end before they bankrupt our nation. (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Responding to the Conservative Propaganda Machine

Responding to the Conservative Propaganda Machine

Saturday 02 January 2010

by: Joe Brewer, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Photo: paparatti)

So now you've seen the power of conservative propaganda for setting America's agenda. During the November 2010 elections, we saw the annihilation of progressive ideas by the most sophisticated, deeply funded and precisely orchestrated public relations system ever concocted.

And they are preparing to take things up a notch now that they've won. The gears are well-greased and the engine is humming. Prospects are slim for President Obama and the remaining progressives in Congress. If we don't act now, 2012 will mark the end of the progressive rise to power in American politics.

Now is the time to respond with force.

We have to rally together and stop the message machine that aligns corporate wealth with the American story. The stakes are too high for us to ignore this threat any longer. Our enemy is not a party. It is a system designed to manipulate public perceptions about what it means to be American - and it is unraveling the tapestry of our culture and destroying our democracy.

I've watched the progressive leadership closely in the last five years as they have repeatedly underestimated this oppositional force and overlooked its fundamental threat to America's future. They have invested nearly all of their time and money in candidates and policies, naively thinking that rational discourse would save the day despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Very little has been done to build the twenty-first-century communication infrastructure we need to counter the vast network of think tanks, media outlets and cultural myths that preserve the status quo.

To give you a sense of exactly what we're up against, consider how the Tea Party movement came into being:

1. A group of billionaires organized by Koch Industries came together and designed the initiative.
2. Spokespeople were planted in the mainstream media to suggest that it was time for a revolution reminiscent of the founding days of our country.
3. A massive media platform, including Fox News and conservative radio, spread the meme to every corner of the country.
4. Seed funding was provided to organize the first rallies, all the while painting it as a "grassroots movement."
5. Narratives that had been planted by conservative think tanks throughout the last forty years were evoked as "traditional values."
6. Real concerns by people suffering under corporate corruption were tapped to evoke strong anger and fear.
7. People came out in droves to support Tea Party candidates who were actually in cahoots with their corporate benefactors.

All of the investments have paid off. The Democratic majority in Congress is gone. President Obama has been put on the defensive. And local initiatives across the country have advanced conservative policies into law at the city, county and state levels.

Put simply, we're getting our asses kicked.

Now more than ever, we need effective governance in the various sectors, including both public and private, to save our country from collapse. Yet what we have is a deep collusion between wealthy corporatists and a significant cabal in government. Their collusion is profoundly anti-democratic and even anti-market (as demonstrated by the devastating impacts of their policies on financial markets in 2008). So what we're getting is a group of financiers who set up communication systems to manipulate public perception and drive boom-crash cycles in the economy to siphon all forms of wealth into their coffers.

We can't let this happen any longer. Now is the time to act.

Are you concerned about the future of America? Would you like to finally see the American people have a stronger footing than large corporations in our politics? Then you should invest wisely in the infrastructure that is capable of elevating progressive ideas so that they can dominate public discourse. Stop dumping all your money and time into reactive campaigns to save progressive policy from the conservative hammer. Break out of the election cycle mold and build for the long haul. And start being strategically proactive by targeting the source of power our opposition holds – the conservative worldview.

When I was a fellow of the now-defunct Rockridge Institute, I saw the potential for decisive strategic action that reframes political debate. It was painful to watch progressive philanthropists turn their backs on this foundational work and pour all their money into the 2008 campaign. What would have happened if they had instead pooled a few million dollars to invest in the design of a communication framework that brings coherence to the progressive vision? How might this year's election have been different if progressives across the country were taught how to deconstruct conservative stories and challenge them in a manner that fundamentally weakens their influence?

It's getting late in the game and our side is way behind. Our only chance for a comeback is to respond directly to the conservative propaganda machine. Right now we don't have adequate capacity for getting our messages out to the public, and we rely too heavily on outdated tactics that repeatedly fail in the face of such a powerful opposition.

We have to be smart. We have to be organized. And we have to be strategic. It's now or never.

Are you with me?

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

January 1, 2011 at 11:18:46

Compassionate Resistance - #5 Conspiracy Theory

By Jeeni Criscenzo (about the author)

opednews.com

#5 CONSPIRACY THEORY: The courage to think critically

The other night, on our local news, there was a report about the flooding at Qualcomm Stadium following days of torrential rain. The stadium and the shopping centers in Mission Valley were built on a flood plain. Everyone knew this was a floodplain and that sometimes floodplains flood. But the way the reporter told it, the reason the stadium and shopping centers flooded was because environmentalists had held up channel clearing in Murphy Canyon Creek. No one said a word about the developers who pulled strings to build in a flood plain the first place, or the fact that the City has known about this situation for years and could have done the necessary impact review long ago. I wonder how many people watching that report caught the insidious way that the developer-controlled media used this event to disparage environmentalists. How many people asked themselves, What do environmentalists have to gain by insisting on ecological safeguards versus what do developers have to gain by disregarding them?

Does it matter if we'd rather not think about whether or not what our government/media/military/corporations tells us is the truth? We have so much to deal with just trying to survive, what difference does it make if we're not being given the real story? And, isn't it possible that sometimes we're not being told everything for our own protection? We can't possibly investigate everything ourselves, so we just have to trust that our government is protecting us. So maybe some people make some money along the way, but basically people are good and they wouldn't do something that would jeopardize our country and the American people. Right?

If we are going to build a resistance movement, we are going to have to confront those thoughts, in both ourselves and our family and neighbors. A good place to start is the official account of the events of September 11, 2001. Has any part of that story ever seemed suspect to you? When you watched the twin towers collapsed at freefall speed, over and over again, did you wonder how that could happen when the planes hit the upper parts of the building. When you heard about Building 7 collapsing later that evening, did that seem strange? When they showed photos of the Pentagon, did you wonder where the debris from the plane was? When they displayed photos of the 19 hijackers on TV that day and identified Osama bin Ladin as the perpetrator, did you wonder how they got that information so quickly?

If we question the official story told to us by the 9/11 commission, we are immediately labeled conspiracy nuts. Everything else we try to do will lose credibility. So there's not a lot of motivation to "go there". Even progressive media sources like "Democracy Now" avoid the subject of 9/11. Liberal intellectuals who speak and write extensively about the crimes of the Bush administration, yet depend on government grants, remain mum. The few politicians who have dared to question the official story have not been re-elected. Investigative journalists Gary Webb and Hunter Thompson, who dared to touch the subject, have paid dearly -" both were "suicided". Ah, but that sounds like just another conspiracy theory"

Fear of repercussion is not the only factor that compels otherwise intelligent people to avoid questioning the outrageous inconsistencies in the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. There are so many levels of fear involved: fear of acknowledging that Americans could have been so universally duped; fear that there are human beings with so much power and totally lacking in moral restraints, who could pull this off; fear of seeming paranoid; fear of fear itself. We have so many nice rational reasons to just letting sleeping dogs lie"

I don't pretend to know who was actually responsible for 9/11 or if it was in fact a conspiracy, but by publicly questioning the findings of the 9/11 Commission and THEIR conspiracy theory, I have been labeled a "Conspiracy Nut". I think that 9/11 was a test: a test to see how willing American's were to deny the obvious when it was too uncomfortable to acknowledge it; a test to see how easily we could could be controlled by fear; a test to see if we were willing to relinquish personal freedom and our innate sense of morality in order to protect our personal comfort zone.

When I was writing my daily blog, "CPR4Democracy" between 2003 -" 2005, I asked a lot of questions that no one wanted to answer, not just about 9/11. I asked why the investigation into the anthrax attacks was suddenly dropped when the source was attributed to a U.S. government lab. I asked why we were attacking Afghanistan when the supposed hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. I asked why were attacking Iraq when they had no WMDs. It seemed like no one was listening.

But here in San Diego, one woman read an article I'd written called "Qui Bono", that listed how everyone on the 9/11 Commission had profited from the 9/11 attacks and the two wars it justified. And she was motivated by that article to find out more. I suggested that she read a book written by Dr. David Ray Griffin, a shy theologian who asked a lot of questions about the things we were being told about 9/11 that didn't make sense in a book titled "The New Pearl Harbor". She began to tell others about the unmistakable inconsistencies in what we were being told took place on that terrible morning in September 2001. Since then, Nelisse Mugga has built one of the most active "Truther" groups in the country (www.sd911truth.org). Every month 100 or more people show up at their meetings at Joyce Beers Community Center.

What drives people like Nelisse Muga to work relentlessly to educate people about something they would rather not know about? I suspect it has something to do with how much they love their freedom and the realization that if we don't start asking questions, we are going to lose it. They know that 9/11 wasn't the first BIG LIE foisted on the American people, although it might have been the most dramatic. And it wasn't the last. Our collective willingness to deny what our eyes can clearly see has opened the door to a continuous barrage of assaults on our democracy and our future. Here are two of the most pressing, in my opinion.

Chemtrails: Almost any day, in almost any part of the WORLD you can look up in the sky and see planes laying a grid of cloud-like trails across our skies. They are doing this in plain sight and hardly anyone questions it. If you do, you are labeled a "conspiracy nut" and that shuts most people up. But who is doing this and what are they doing? The cost of this global operation boggles the mind. Who has this kind of money and who has the power to do this throughout the world without answering to any government? If they are doing something good, why aren't we being told about it? "What in the World Are They Spraying" (http://www.viddler.com/explore/Drewsick/videos/24/) is an excellent video to get you thinking -" I promise you will never be able to look up in the sky with innocence again.

BP Oil Spill -" so you think that somehow, magically, BP capped their "leaky" well and all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico disappeared? This disaster is still unfolding and its consequences are so far-reaching that it boggles the mind. Maybe that's why we're not being told anything. Do your homework and use the internet and you will learn that oil and gas continue to pour into the Gulf through fractures in the sea bed. The Gulf Loop, a critical part of the ocean conveyor system, has by some accounts stopped. Possibly the entire Gulf Stream has stopped or slowed and this could be what's causing the brutal winter in Northern Europe and could usher in a mini ice age.

It's overwhelming and yes, and it's depressing. Once you realize the scope of the deception we are under, you start to question everything. That doesn't make you paranoid -" it makes you prepared. If something doesn't make sense, consider what hidden agendas are behind the message and who benefits? You can't have a resistance movement if you are afraid to acknowledge who and what you are up against. Only the truth will set us free. Be certain that you will be mocked, perhaps even threatened in your pursuit of the truth. No one ever said resistance was easy, but the alternative will be far worse.

www.criscenzo.com

Jeeni Criscenzo is an entrepreneur, peace activist and author. She was 2006 Democratic candidate for Congress - 49th District. In 2003 she traveled around the country in an RV, writing her daily blog: CPR4Democracy. She is also a founder of (more...)

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