AlterNet.org

Ed Schultz Hammers Home the Importance of Wisconsin Protests

Last night MSNBC host Ed Schultz spent his show's hour focusing on the unprecedented people power being demonstrated in Wisconsin. He covered every angle from the media's ignoring domestic left-wing protests, to the over-hyping of the "financial crisis" in the State of Wisconsin, to the absence of Democratic "fire" and leadership on the issue of labor.

Schultz says that this is a fight for the "soul of America."

Watch the first segment below, and the rest of the show at MSNBC.com

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Atlas Slacked (and So Should We)

by E.R. Bills / February 16th, 2011

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

Thus spake Henry Miller on the first page of his first book, Tropic of Cancer, in 1934—no doubt one of the reasons it was banned from publication in the United States until 1961. Miller was a square wheel and not the kind of influence a country trying to get things rolling after a Great Depression wanted folks being exposed to. The book was deemed pornographic as well, but the social criticism was more risqué than the gratuitous sex.

Today, as we continue to work our way out of the Great Recession, many of Miller’s Cancer sentiments still ring true as we mark the 50th anniversary of its appearance on our shores. Materialism is unwise. Over-consumption is destructive. And the most recent incarnation of American Capitalism is simply a diagonally slit wrist that we’re watching bleed out.

Deep down, we all know this, but we can’t seem to muster the craw or the courage to square our wheels. It makes me think back to a time and place in my life when people tried.

It was Austin, Texas in the early 1990s and I lived on my friend Jerry’s couch in a duplex in Hyde Park for nine months. I kept odd jobs and odder hours, usually scheduled around manic chess marathons and bleary-eyed, late-night philosophical volleys. The debates always started with a lob, but three hours later we were both trying to maintain serve with obscure, paraphrased excerpts from Nietzche or clever parries from Kierkegaard, Camus, or Sartre.

Jerry had an uncanny knowledge of local happy hours at restaurants that offered free finger foods for the thirsty souls that frequented their establishments to imbibe alcohol. So we would show up, buy one beer each and then just eat; it was a nice dinner 2-3 days a week.

When the hinges of our toilet seat broke off, we simply hung the lid on the bathroom door. Using our water closet involved placing the lid on the toilet bowl and balancing yourself.

I barely had a pot to piss in, and it was one of the happiest times in my life. I didn’t have a mortgage or car payments or credit cards. I wasn’t prostituting myself in some pathetic, cubicled slog and I wasn’t a stock-optioned salary-slave with no place to go but up the arse of a corporate colossus slinking after ill-begotten profit margins.

I was free. I could loaf. And I could sit still and think.

Richard Linklater’s Slacker touched on the phenomena, but conveyed the weirder aspects of the process more than the wisdom. In fact, the movie reinforced the stereotype that a “slacker” was a young adult whose existence was characterized by apathy, lack of ambition and general aimlessness. The derogatory connotations masked the profounder aspects of what was really happening. We weren’t apathetic or lazy or aimless; we just had serious reservations about the catalogue of ways people demeaned themselves for money.

Austin in the early 1990s was a place where “Atlases” came to shrug. Moms and dads across the state were sending their kids off to UT or Southwest Texas State for vocational training, but some of stuff in some of the books was leaving an impression. And a significant number of students theretofore scheduled to become normal, traditionally successful yuppies were garnering (1) levels of awareness that were counterproductive, (2) penchants for self-examination that were downright dangerous, and (3) a contrarian vein that approached anarchy.

Resignation, obsequiousness and utter convention were out. Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf had observed that to think was to undermine and, with our educations in hand, that’s exactly what we did. We didn’t have much practice and our non-conformist leanings were almost unanimously discouraged by real “grown-ups,” but once we thought for ourselves for a summery instant we realized the entire phony system wasn’t worth engaging in, struggling for or reducing ourselves to. So we stayed in Austin and held out as long as we could (but not nearly long enough).

I bring this up because my happy “shrug” in Austin comes to mind a lot lately, especially when I see Tea Partiers hold up signs that say “Who is John Galt?” For the record, I like Ayn Rand, but she made a mistake in Atlas Shrugged when she assumed that talented folks and great innovators would automatically be capitalists. Rand had too much reverence for the “system” and naively suggested that capitalist Atlases might shrug, but that’s never been the case–because they always benefited too much from the “system.” Rand might as well have titled the book Robber-Barron Shrugged or Industrialist Shrugged or When Corporations Shrug.

History clearly suggests that the “shruggers” were never members of the upper capitalist caste. They were hardscrabble types, common people, beset-upon folks that refused to surrender to the robber-barons, industrialists, and corporatists who solemnly and repeatedly endeavored to relegate them to capitalism’s dirty, secret byproduct: a powerless heap of the collaterally damaged and chronically disenfranchised (also known as the middle and lower classes).

So take notes, Ayn. A union work stoppage is John Galt. A strain of talented college graduates refusing to become cogs in a soul-crushing, environment-ravaging corporate machine is John Galt. And collection of Egyptian protestors speaking truth to power in Tahir Square is also John Galt.

America is in trouble because we don’t believe in it anymore. And we shouldn’t. But not because our president is black or because our government is too big or we pay too many taxes. It’s because we no longer operate under the precept of collective self-interest. We have self-interest down to a science and regard self-indulgence as the fulfillment of the American Dream. But “collective” no longer has a place in the equation because it’s an unpleasantness that the have-mores and the have-mosts pay legions of lawmakers and lobbyists to help them avoid. Then they enthusiastically hail unrestrained, unregulated free markets as the amazing cure-all for our times and utilize their government-sanctioned privileges to remove the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th wrung on every ten foot stretch of the socio-economic ladder so that we are systemically and perpetually beholden to them if we are inclined to climb.

The ladder is still navigable if you’re connected, related, incredibly lucky or prepared to jump real high when they tell you to—but if you question their authority or resent their entitlement, you’re an extremist, a radical or an insurrectionist who must be quashed.

As I think Henry Miller would have colorfully noted, unrestrained capitalism, corporatism, materialism and our destructive way of life in general are not too big to fail and we’re not so small that we won’t survive when they do.

The have-mores and the have-mosts who control everything in this country are a conglomerate version of Hosni Mubarak. Different crime scene, different M.O., but same criminality. And obligatorily shouldering their burden simply makes us enablers.

So become a square wheel. Slack a little. Take some time and think.

The mortgage, the car and the flat-screen can wait.

There’s always surrender. But it should be a last resort. Not our chief priority.

E. R. Bills is a freelance writer from Fort Worth, Texas. His works appear in Fort Worth Weekly, South Texas Nation, Fort Worth Magazine, etc. He can be reached at: erbillsthinks@gmail.com. Read other articles by E.R..

This article was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 8:02am and is filed under Capitalism, Classism, Corporate Globalization, Economy/Economics.

Kucinich: Obama should face liberal primary challenger in 2012

Kucinich: Obama should face liberal primary challenger in 2012

By Sahil Kapur
Friday, February 11th, 2011 -- 1:56 pm

WASHINGTON – Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said Thursday that President Barack Obama "absolutely" ought to face a Democratic primary challenge from the left in 2012, predicting it would make him "stronger."

"I think primaries can have the opportunity of raising the issues and make the Democratic candidate a stronger candidate," Kucinich told CSPAN's Washington Journal. "I think it's safe to predict that President Obama will continue to be the nominee of the Democratic primary, but he can be a stronger nominee if he receives a strong challenge in a primary."

But it won't be him, warned Kucinich, a seven-term Democratic congressman who ran for his party's nomination for the presidency in 2004 and 2008. (He dropped out mid-way through the 2008 primaries and endorsed Obama.)

"I intend to run for reelection in the House," he said.

The Ohio Democrat said it's "not up to me to say" who should challenge Obama next year, adding that "I'm focusing on being reelected to the House of Representatives."

Kucinich's remarks reflect a shift in stance from an interview with Raw Story last October, when he said a primary challenge to Obama would only weaken the president and help propel the GOP to victory.

"I think anybody who runs against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination would be handing the presidency to the other party on a silver platter," he said at the time.

No viable liberal candidate has stepped up to challenge Obama, motivating analysts to write off the president's renomination in 2012 a foregone conclusion. Sitting presidents also rarely face reelection challenges from within their party.

But a coalition of hundreds of prominent liberal and anti-war activists have pledged not to support Obama's reelection is he doesn't reverse his support for the Afghan war and take on the military-industrial complex.

This video is from CSPAN's Washington Journal.

AlterNet.org

VISION

AlterNet / By Rose Aguilar

Vision: Across the Country, People Are Rising Up to Fight for Change

Howard Zinn: "Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world."

February 10, 2011 |

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world.” -The late people’s historian Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010)

Over the years, Milwaukee Labor Press editor Dominique Paul North has covered a “heck of a lot of protests” in Wisconsin. Last summer, a peace rally in Wisconsin’s inner city drew about 100 people calling for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan. “There was no media coverage,” he says. “I was the only reporter there.”

The next day, 40 people attended a tea party event in Wisconsin and every local media outlet was there to cover it. “This is what we’ve been seeing over the past year. If there’s a peace rally or a worker’s rights rally, it’s ho hum. You might find a reporter or two. The tea party would gather five people on the corner and there would be coverage.”

So while it was disappointing, it came as no surprise when most Wisconsin and national media outlets ignored the state’s first anti-inaugural rally on January 3.

Over 700 people gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol to protest the inauguration of newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker.

The Milwaukee Courier did report that "such a mobilization of popular discontent at the inauguration of a new governor is unprecedented in recent Wisconsin political history," but Paul North says it deserved far more attention. “This is very unusual for an inaugural. I went to look at history books and couldn’t find any anti-inaugural events. There wasn't a single story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the biggest paper in Wisconsin. I didn't see any local TV news coverage in Milwaukee, but there was a lot of coverage of his inaugural.”

Participants waved signs saying "Then They Came for the Trade Unions," "Christmas Sucked, Thanks Scott," and "We Need Good Jobs NOW." Demonstrators said they want jobs that are family-sustaining and pay a living wage, not minimum wage. Governor Walker has promised to create 250,000 jobs in the next four years.

“Today isn’t about Scott Walker, it’s about the people standing up to say we need good jobs now,” said Roderick Caesar, an unemployed Milwaukee worker, in an interview with the paper. “I’m college educated and I want a job so that I can support my family.”

Organizers from churches and groups including the Milwaukee Area Labor Council and Voces de la Frontera, also expressed opposition to the Governor’s decision to kill the proposed 110-mph Madison-Milwaukee high-speed rail line. They say the derailment of the federally funded train line will cost the state 13,000 jobs.

The U.S. Department of Transportation recently withdrew an $810 million grant from Wisconsin and divided it among other states, including California and Florida. According to the Journal Sentinel, Walker called the grant withdrawal a "victory" because he believes the rail line is a symbol of excessive governments spending. “The Madison-to-Milwaukee train line is dead,” he said in a statement.

"I think it's an absolute travesty that the man who is about to take the governorship of the state of Wisconsin would find victory in giving away $810 million dollars," said Sheila Cochran, COO of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council. "Aside from becoming the laughingstock of the rest of the nation, a lot of us just can't understand why you’d give away a grant."

"It was good news to see such a diverse mix of people brave chilly weather on a week day to stand up and push back," writes Gary Storck, co-founder of Madison NORML. "The one silver lining to Walker's policies is they are so extreme they have united a diverse array of citizens willing to brave even a January day to stand up for the real Wisconsin we all know and love."

Hear what Milwaukee residents have to say about what their state is facing.

Here’s a summary of a few of the other actions you may have missed last month (unfortunately not all important could be included):

-- On January 8, hundreds of Ohioans gathered outside a pre-inauguration event at the Columbus statehouse in subfreezing temperatures to send a message to the newly-elected Republican Governor John Kasich. According to People's World, it was so cold, the bullhorns wouldn't work, but that didn't stop citizens from denouncing Governor Kasich's plans to repeal the state's collective bargaining law for public employees, raise tuition at colleges and universities, and privatize Ohio state prisons.

Citizens chanted, "We don't care about the cold, Ohio can't be bought and sold."

"We're not going to sit idly by and watch our state get sold to corporate interests," said Deb Steele, and organizer with Columbus Jobs with Justice.

Like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Governor Kasich also refused federal stimulus money for a 258-mile high-speed 3C rail project linking Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, calling it "one of the dumbest ideas" he's ever heard.

The $400 million project had the potential to create at least 225 immediate construction jobs over two years, and approximately 8,000 indirect and spin-off jobs, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation. The rail service was projected to attract 478,000 passengers a year, and save up to 15,000 gallons of fuel a day by reducing automobile use. Over time, Ohio could have become an interregional rail hub connecting the Midwest and Northeast, which would generate $3 billion worth of economic development and support 16,700 jobs, according to the Illinois PIRG Education Fund.

At his first news conference after the election, Governor Kasich, another Republican climate change denier, said, "Passenger rail is not in Ohio's future. That train is dead."

"It's unbelievable these states would send back $400million and $800 million in free money. It's mind-boggling," said Mike Pracht, CEO of US Railcar Co, a Columbus-based railroad-car manufacturer, in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch. "The only thing I can compare it to is the interstate-highway program back in the '60s. Where would Ohio be today if it opted out of the interstate highway system? To suggest passenger rail would be any different is naive."

At another action on January 14, more than 400 people attended a candlelight rally outside City Hall in Cincinnati to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and express their support for healthcare and childcare providers. They also condemned Governor Kasich's anti-worker plan to strip them of their bargaining rights and get rid of wage rules, which mandate union-wages for public projects.

"Why is John Kasich singling me out and trying to take away my voice? I struggle everyday to make ends meet in this tough economy," said longtime home healthcare worker Teresa Laws. "I do this work, not for the money, but because I love the patients I take care of. It frustrates me to hear that Gov. Kasich is trying to take away my voice and make it even harder for me to support my family and the clients I assist."

"We want to say to Governor Kasich that these workers and all workers deserve the right to join a union if they so desire and once they have that right, we should be talking about helping them to advance the quality of their life, not diminishing it by taking away their rights," said organizer Pierette Talley in an interview with Fox 19.

Campus Progress reports that "when Republican lawmakers like Kasich deride unions for giving their members lavish lifestyles, they are talking about workers making $60,000 (including benefits) and a difference of $5000 in compensation between the public and private employees. In comparison, Kasich made nearly $1.4 million in 2008, including $587,175 from Lehman Brothers, where he worked until the firm collapsed that September."

Watch video from the rally here.

-- On January 9, more than 300 people gathered in New York City to mark the second anniversary of the Israeli government's assault on Gaza, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians and wounded 5,300. The action was sponsored by more than 20 groups including The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Columbia University Students for Justice in Palestine, and New York City Labor Against the War. The Socialist Worker was one of the few outlets to report on the action, which was held to bring attention to the ongoing and often forgotten siege of Gaza where 1.5 million people don't have access to basic necessities. More than 60 percent of the population is unemployed and 80 percent live in poverty, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs.

-- In San Diego, more than 100 people marked the anniversary by marching through the city’s tourist center and reading the names and ages of the 325 Gazan children who were killed.

-- On January 10, demonstrators across the state of California gathered in front of Democratic Governor Jerry Brown's offices to oppose his budget proposal, which calls for $12.5 billion in cuts affecting everything from higher education and healthcare for the poor and disabled to childcare and in-home supportive services.

California's Health and Human Services Network compiled links to local coverage of the rallies.

On that same day, over 1,000 grassroots activists joined 500 members of the California Health Professional Student Alliance for their annual lobbying day. They rallied on the steps of the State Capitol to call for a Medicare for All system, which would consolidate thousands of different health insurance plans into a single system run by the state government. The California Universal Healthcare Act passed the legislature in 2006 and 2008, but was vetoed both times by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Single Payer Now rally comes just a few months before Blue Shield of California plans to increase rates by as much as 59 percent. "I have California Blue Shield, I have private insurance, and now they have just raised, said they were going to raise rates this year by 50.5%, and I am now paying $2,800 a month for private insurance with a $1,500 deductible. I can’t do it anymore," said single-payer advocate Eleanor Clarke in an interview with KALW News.

Amanda Forman, an occupational therapist at the California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, told California Healthline that the national healthcare bill fails to address the problems she sees every day. "As a clinician, I see patients come into the ER all the time because that's the only way they can see a doctor. And of course, it's the most expensive."

Almost one in four Californians under age 65, or 8.2 million, have no health insurance, and 5.7 million Californians lack job-based health insurance, according to UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research.

See photos of the event.

-- On January 11, human rights activists gathered in Chicago, Washington DC, Berkeley, CA, and San Francisco to call on the Obama administration to close Guantanamo. On the ninth anniversary of the prison’s opening, activists wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods rallied in front of the White House to represent the 173 prisoners who remain in custody, then marched to the Department of Justice to hold a silent vigil. Sixty anti-torture activists blocked three entrances to the Department for an hour and a half. No arrests were made.

Organizers from groups including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International, and September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows are calling on the Obama administration to either put Guantanamo detainees on trial in federal court or release them.

“Approximately 30 men could be released from Guantánamo tomorrow but for a fear of torture or persecution in their home countries," said Pardiss Kebriaei, Center for Constitutional Rights staff attorney representing men detained at Guantánamo. "These men appeal to the international community for help in offering them safe havens and a chance to rebuild their lives. People of conscience in the world cannot let yet another anniversary of Guantánamo pass without doing something to help close it. Offering resettlement is a key part of the solution.”

The Washington Post was one of the few corporate outlets to cover the rally. Watch coverage from The Real News Network.

Demonstrators in Berkeley marched from the Old City Hall to the Berkeley Marine Recruiting Station to mark the anniversary and call for the release of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst who’s been held in solitary confinement at a maximum security military prison in Virginia for over eight months. On June 6, 2010, he was charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice for allegedly passing a massive trove of U.S. state secrets and video showing American soldiers killing unarmed civilians in Iraq to Wikileaks. He faces 52 years in prison if convicted.

-- On January 17, a group of protesters in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, gathered outside of Combined Systems Inc. (CSI), the company that sells tear gas to the Israeli, Tunisian, and Egyptian militaries.

"The owners of CSI treat their workers like slaves, and they treat the Palestinians like target practice," said Werner Lange, of the Coalition for Peace in the Middle East, in an interview with WKBN. "We want this gross injustice to end, and we want it to end now."

This protest followed a January 11 action at the offices of Point Lookout Capital Partners, a New York-based investment firm that owns a majority interest in CSI.

According to Adalah-NY, “Jawaher Abu Rahmah died in a hospital a day after she was engulfed in a cloud of tear gas and collapsed at a protest in the village of Bil’in. Additionally, Israeli soldiers have shot directly at and hit at least HYPERLINK "http://www.popularstruggle.org/content/under-repression"18 protesters with tear gas canisters over the last two years in the villages of Bil’in and Ni’ilin alone. No one from the Israeli military has been held accountable for the deaths and injuries caused by shooting tear gas canisters at protesters.”

See photos here.

CNN recently ran a piece about CSI’s tear gas also being used on protesters in Tunisia and Egypt. On January 17, Lucas Mebrouk Dolega , a 32-year-old photographer for the European PressPhoto Agency, died three days after being hit by a tear gas grenade at close range.

-- On January 19, approximately 200 union workers shut down a Mortgage Bankers Association conference at the JW Mariott in Washington DC for about 10 minutes, taking over the stage to protest the Pulte Group, one of the largest homebuilders in the country, before leaving peacefully.

According to the Huffington Post, protestors from the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, the International Union of Painters, and Allied Trades, many wearing overalls and hardhats, burst into the crowded conference room shouting, “Where is the money? Where are our jobs?”

Organizers held the action to hold the Pulte Group accountable for the $900 million in government tax breaks it received to help spur job creation and avoid layoffs.

“This is the second time we have attempted to get answers from Pulte executives about how they spent the money. Wherever they go, we will follow until there is accountability for those taxpayer dollars,” said Saundra Williams, president of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO. “We bailed out the auto companies. We bailed out the banks. We bailed out Pulte. It's time for them to show us the money that was supposed to create jobs. There needs to be accountability here.”

Watch CNBC’s coverage.

-- On January 30, from Portland, Oregon to Queens, New York, thousands of people took to the streets to express solidarity with the people of Egypt and to call for the dictator Hosni Mubarak to step down after 30 years in power and unfettered support from the U.S. government. They also called on the U.S. government to end all aid to Egypt. Check out a compilation of photos from MRZine.

--On January 30, police in riot gear arrested 25 people for trespassing as over 1,000 protested outside a four-day meeting in Rancho Mirago, CA held by the billionaire tea-party funders David and Charles Koch, conservative activists, and politicians including House Republican leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

Jeff McCall, 67, a retired teacher told the LA Times he was there to express opposition to the Citizens United ruling. “It’s putting American democracy in the hands of people like the Kochs and others,” he said. “It’s not who you vote for, it’s how much money you’ve got.”

“I want to zero in on Medicare and Social Security, as these are programs that the Koch Brothers want to destroy,” said DeAnn McEwen, a Long Beach nurse and co-president of the California Nurses Association.

Politico’s Kenneth Vogel reports that the Koch brothers have hired a team of public relation professionals to “quietly engage reporters to try to shape their Koch coverage.”

The Koch brothers are worth a reported $21.5 billion each. According to an August New Yorker piece, the Koch brothers have quietly given more than $100 million to organizations and think tanks that lobby for personal and corporate tax cuts, social service reductions, and deregulation. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control 4,000 miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns a wide range of products including Brawny paper towels, Dixie Cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra.

Rose Aguilar is the host of Your Call, a daily call-in radio show on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz, and author of Red Highways: A Liberal's Journey into the Heartland.

Muslim Brotherhood Join Egypt Talks as Mubarak Allies Make Concessions

Muslim Brotherhood Join Egypt Talks as Mubarak Allies Make Concessions

Sunday 06 February 2011

by: David D. Kirkpatrick, Kareem Fahim and Alan Cowell, The New York Times News Service | Report

An Egyptian anti-government protester prays in front of Egyptian soldiers during ongoing protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square. (Photo: Scott Nelson / the New York Times)

Cairo — Members of the Muslim Brotherhood joined other opposition groups meeting with Vice President Omar Suleiman on Sunday in what seemed a significant departure in the nation’s uprising and political history.

The Brotherhood is an outlawed Islamist organization often depicted by the authorities as committed to the overthrow of the secular order in the heart of the Middle East. Official attitudes toward it here have swung between outright repression and reluctant tolerance. But it has remained Egypt’s biggest opposition force against the autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

After the meeting had started, The Associated Press said that talks included some of the top issues for the opposition — including freedom of the press and the release of those detained since anti-government protests started — as well as agreement to begin setting up a structure to study amending the country’s constitution.

A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Gamal Nassar, said the huge and sometimes violent demonstrations that have paralyzed Cairo for 13 days, reverberating around the Middle East, would continue “until the political path can have a role in achieving the aspirations of the protesters” — an apparent reference to their goal of removing Mr. Mubarak.

Mr. Nassar said mediators had brokered the encounter with Mr. Suleiman, who Saturday received public backing from the Obama administration and other Western governments that confirmed him as the West’s choice to guide any transfer of power.

“The brothers decided to enter a round of dialogue to determine how serious the officials are achieving the demands of the people,” Mr. Nassar said. “The regime keeps saying we’re open to dialogue and the people are the ones refusing, so the Brotherhood decided to examine the situation from all different sides.”

“The Egyptian regime is stubborn, and cannot relinquish power easily,” he said. “In politics, you must hear everyone’s opinions.”

Another member of the Brotherhood, the former lawmaker Mohasen Rady, said the organization had not abandoned its demand for Mr. Mubarak’s ouster. “He can leave in any way the regime would accept him to leave, but it has to be that he is out,” he said.

Other members of the Brotherhood described its presence at the talks on Sunday as exploratory rather than part of a full negotiation.

According to The Associated Press, footage on state television showed youthful supporters of a leading democracy advocate, Mohamed ElBaradei, and a number of smaller leftist, liberal group along with representatives of the Brotherhood meeting Mr. Suleiman.

The move in Egypt seemed to reflect a wider regional acknowledgment of the Brotherhood’s influence. On Thursday, King Abdullah II of Jordan, struggling to stave off growing public discontent, also met with his own country’s representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood for the first time in nearly a decade.

The development came a day after American officials said Mr. Suleiman had promised them an “orderly transition” that would include constitutional reform and outreach to opposition groups.

“That takes some time,” Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton said, speaking at a Munich security conference. “There are certain things that have to be done in order to prepare.”

But the formal endorsement came as Mr. Suleiman appeared to reject the protesters’ main demands, including the immediate resignation of Mr. Mubarak and the dismantling of a political system built around one-party rule, according to leaders of a small, officially authorized opposition party who spoke with Mr. Suleiman on Saturday. Instead of loosening its grip, moreover, the authorities appeared to be consolidating their power: The prime minister said police forces were returning to the streets, and an army general urged protesters to scale back their occupation of Tahrir Square.

Protesters interpreted the simultaneous moves by the Western leaders and Mr. Suleiman as a rebuff to their demands for an end to the dictatorship led for almost three decades by Mr. Mubarak, a pivotal American ally and pillar of the existing order in the Middle East.

“What they are saying behind closed doors, they are backing Mubarak,” said Noha el-Shakawy, 52, a pharmacist with dual Egyptian and American citizenship. “We are nothing to them. The United States wants to sacrifice all of our lives, 85 million people.”

On Sunday — the first day of the working week — Cairo seemed to be re-assuming some of the trappings of normalcy.

Some banks reopened for several hours after a week of closures, with limits on withdrawals by customers who stood in line to access their accounts. The city’s notoriously rambunctious traffic began to rebuild across bridges over the Nile that had been access routes to Tahrir Square for pro-democracy protesters and their adversaries.

But tanks remained in position on the square itself, and an overnight curfew was still technically in force. Reporters in the city said foreigners risked being stopped at night-time road-blocks and some had been threatened with arrest as spies.

On Sunday — the Christian holy day — Muslim and Coptic prayers resounded over Tahrir Square in what seemed a show of interfaith harmony just weeks after a suicide bomber killed at least 21 people as a New Year’s Eve Mass was ending in Alexandria. In the past, some members of the Coptic minority have accused their leaders of reluctance to confront the state.

Tens of thousands of protesters milled again in the square, which seemed to be taking on an air of semi-permanency with tents, food stalls, worship and music. Vendors offered dates. On the perimeters, a Bahrain airline office had reopened, as had a store called “Hana Eastern Gifts.”

The numbers seemed initially to be slightly fewer than on Saturday. But as the day wore on thousands of people headed to the square, so that the city offered rival visions — one promoted by footage on state television of a capital returning to its normal ways; and another, in Tahrir Square, of continued defiance.

Just days after President Obama demanded publicly that change in Egypt must begin right away, many in the streets accused the Obama administration on Saturday of sacrificing concrete steps toward genuine change in favor of a familiar stability.

“America doesn’t understand,” said Ibrahim Mustafa, 42, who was waiting to enter Tahrir Square. “The people know it is supporting an illegitimate regime.”

Leaders of the Egyptian opposition and rank-and-file protesters had earlier rejected any negotiations with Mr. Suleiman until after the ouster of Mr. Mubarak, arguing that moving toward democracy will require ridding the country of not only its dictator but also his rubber-stamp Parliament and a Constitution designed for one-party rule.

On Saturday, Mr. Mubarak’s party announced a shake-up that removed its old guard, including his son Gamal, from the party’s leadership while installing younger, more reform-minded figures. But such gestures were quickly dismissed as cosmetic by analysts and opposition figures.

Mrs. Clinton’s message, echoed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, and reinforced in a flurry of calls by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Egyptian and regional leaders, appears to reflect an attempt at balancing calls for systemic change with some semblance of legal order and stability.

Mrs. Clinton said Mr. Mubarak, having taken himself and Gamal out of the September elections, was already effectively sidelined. She emphasized the need for Egypt to reform its Constitution to make a vote credible. “That is what the government has said it is trying to do,” she said.

She also stressed the dangers of holding elections without adequate preparation and highlighted fears about deteriorating security inside Egypt, noting an explosion at a gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula, and uncorroborated news reports of an earlier assassination attempt on Mr. Suleiman.

In a statement, the Egyptian government said there had been no assassination attempt, but added that on Jan. 28 a car in Mr. Suleiman’s motorcade was struck by a bullet fired by “criminal elements.”

Protesters noted that Western worries about security and orderly transitions sounded remarkably like Mr. Mubarak’s age-old excuses for postponing change. And they said they had waited long enough.

“We don’t want Omar Suleiman to take Mubarak’s place. We are not O.K. with this regime at all,” said Omar el-Shawy, a young online activist. “We want a president who is a civilian.”

This article “Muslim Brotherhood Join Egypt Talks as Mubarak Allies Make Concessions” originally appeared at The New York Times.

© 2010 The New York Times Company

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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...)

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