The Best Laid Plans: How Quickly Will the US Leave Afghanistan?
This article by Tom Engelhardt is re-posted from TomDispatch.
n the wake of several deaths among its contingent of troops in a previously peaceful province in Afghanistan, New Zealand (like France and South Korea) is now expediting the departure of its 140 soldiers. That’s not exactly headline-making news here in the U.S. If you’re an American, you probably didn’t even know that New Zealand was playing a small part in our Afghan War. In fact, you may hardly have known about the part Americans are playing in a war that, over the last decade-plus, has repeatedly been labeled “the forgotten war.”
Still, maybe it’s time to take notice. Maybe the flight of those Kiwis should be thought of as a small omen, even if they are departing as decorously, quietly, and flightlessly as possible. Because here’s the thing: once the November election is over, “expedited departure” could well become an American term and the U.S., as it slips ignominiously out of Afghanistan, could turn out to be the New Zealand of superpowers.
You undoubtedly know the phrase: the best laid plans of mice and men. It couldn’t be more apt when it comes to the American project in Afghanistan. Washington’s plans have indeed been carefully drawn up. By the end of 2014, U.S. “combat troops” are to be withdrawn, but left behind on the giant bases the Pentagon has built will be thousands of U.S. trainers and advisers, as well as special operations forces to go after al-Qaeda remnants (and other “militants”), and undoubtedly the air power to back them all up.
Their job will officially be to continue to “stand up” the humongous security force that no Afghan government in that thoroughly impoverished country will ever be able to pay for. Thanks to a 10-year Strategic Partnership Agreement that President Obama flew to Kabul to seal with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as May began, there they are to remain until 2020 or beyond.
In other words, it being Afghanistan, we need a translator. The American “withdrawal” regularly mentioned in the media doesn’t really mean “withdrawal.” On paper at least, for years to come the U.S. will partially occupy a country that has a history of loathing foreigners who won’t leave (and making them pay for it).
Tea Boys and Old Men
Plans are one thing, reality another. After all, when invading U.S. troops triumphantly arrived in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in April 2003, the White House and the Pentagon were already planning to stay forever and a day — and they instantly began building permanent bases (though they preferred to speak of “permanent access” via “enduring camps”) as a token of their intent. Only a couple of years later, in a gesture that couldn’t have been more emphatic in planning terms, they constructed the largest (and possibly most expensive) embassy on the planet as a regional command center in Baghdad. Yet somehow, those perfectly laid plans went desperately awry and only a few years later, with American leaders still looking for ways to garrison the country into the distant future, Washington found itself out on its ear. But that’s reality for you, isn’t it?
Right now, evidence on the ground — in the form of dead American bodies piling up — indicates that even the Afghans closest to us don’t exactly second the Obama administration’s plans for a 20-year occupation. In fact, news from the deep-sixed war in that forgotten land, often considered the longest conflict in American history, has suddenly burst onto the front pages of our newspapers and to the top of the TV news. And there’s just one reason for that: despite the copious plans of the planet’s last superpower, the poor, backward, illiterate, hapless, corrupt Afghans — whose security forces, despite unending American financial support and mentoring, have never effectively “stood up” — made it happen. They have been sending a stark message, written in blood, to Washington’s planners.
A 15-year-old “tea boy” at a U.S. base opened fire on Marine special forces trainers exercising at a gym, killing three of them and seriously wounding another; a 60- or 70-year-old farmer, who volunteered to become a member of a village security force, turned the first gun his American special forces trainers gave him at an “inauguration ceremony” back on them, killing two; a police officer who, his father claims, joined the force four years earlier, invited Marine Special Operations advisers to a meal and gunned down three of them, wounding a fourth, before fleeing, perhaps to the Taliban.
About other “allies” involved in similar incidents — recently, there were at least 9 “green-on-blue” attacks in an 11-day span in which 10 Americans died — we know almost nothing, except that they were Afghan policemen or soldiers their American trainers and mentors were trying to “stand up” to fight the Taliban. Some were promptly shot to death. At least one may have escaped.
These green-on-blue incidents, which the Pentagon recently relabeled “insider attacks,” have been escalating for months. Now, they seem to have reached a critical mass and so are finally causing a public stir in official circles in Washington. A “deeply concerned” President Obama commented to reporters on the phenomenon (“We’ve got to make sure that we’re on top of this…”) and said he was planning to “reach out” to Afghan President Karzai on the matter. In the meantime, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta did so, pressing Karzai to take tougher steps in the vetting of recruits for the Afghan security forces. (Karzai and his aides promptly blamed the attacks on the Iranian and Pakistani intelligence agencies.)
General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, flew to Afghanistan to consult with his counterparts on what to make of these incidents (and had his plane shelled on a runway at Bagram Air Field — “a lucky shot,” claimed a NATO spokesman — for his effort). U.S. Afghan War commander General John Allen convened a meeting of more than 40 generals to discuss how to stop the attacks, even as he insisted “the campaign remains on track.” There are now rumblings in Congress about hearings on the subject.
Struggling With the Message
Worry about such devastating attacks and their implications for the American mission, slow to rise, is now widespread. But much of this is reported in our media as if in a kind of code. Take for example the way Laura King put the threat in a front-page Los Angeles Times piece (and she was hardly alone). Reflecting Washington’s wisdom on the subject, she wrote that the attacks “could threaten a linchpin of the Western exit strategy: training Afghan security forces in preparation for handing over most fighting duties to them by 2014.” It almost sounds as if, thanks to these incidents, our combat troops might not be able to make it out of there on schedule.
No less striking is the reported general puzzlement over what lies behind these Afghan actions. In most cases, the motivation for them, writes King, “remains opaque.” There are, it seems, many theories within the U.S. military about why Afghans are turning their guns on Americans, including personal pique, individual grudges, cultural touchiness, “heat-of-the moment disputes in a society where arguments are often settled with a Kalashnikov,” and in a minority of cases — about a tenth of them, according to a recent military study, though one top commander suggested the number could range up to a quarter — actual infiltration or “coercion” by the Taliban. General Allen even suggested recently that some insider attacks might be traced to religious fasting for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, combined with unseasonable summer heat, leaving Afghans hungry, tetchy, and prone to impulsive acts, guns in hand. According to the Washington Post, however, “Allen acknowledged that U.S. and Afghan officials have struggled to determine what’s behind the rise in attacks.”
“American officials are still struggling,” wrote the New York Times in an editorial on the subject, “to understand the forces at work.” And in that the editorial writers like the general reflected the basic way these acts are registering here — as a remarkable Afghan mystery. In other words, in Washington’s version of the blame game, the quirky, unpredictable Afghans from Hamid Karzai on down are in the crosshairs. What is the matter with them?
In the midst of all this, few say the obvious. Undoubtedly, a chasm of potential misunderstanding lies between Afghan trainees and their American trainers; Afghans may indeed feel insulted by any number of culturally inapt, inept, or hostile acts by their mentors. They may have been on edge from fasting for Ramadan. They may be holding grudges. None of the various explanations being offered, that is, may in themselves be wrong. The problem is that none of them allow an observer to grasp what’s actually going on. On that, there really should be few “misunderstandings” and, though you won’t hear it in Washington, right now Americans are actually the ones in the crosshairs, and not just in the literal sense either.
While the motives of any individual Afghan turning his gun on an American may be beyond our knowing — just what made him plan it, just what made him snap — history should tell us something about the more general motives of Afghans (and perhaps the rest of us as well). After all, the United States was founded after colonial settlers grew tired of an occupying army and power in their midst. Whatever the individual insults Afghans feel, the deeper insult almost 11 years after the U.S. military, crony corporations, hire-a-gun outfits, contractors, advisers, and aid types arrived on the scene en masse with all their money, equipment, and promises is that things are going truly badly; that the westerners are still around; that the Americans are still trying to stand up those Afghan forces (when the Taliban has no problem standing its forces up and fighting effectively without foreign trainers); that the defeated Taliban, one of the less popular movements of modern history, is again on the rise; that the country is a sea of corruption; that more than 30 years after the first Afghan War against the Soviets began, the country is still a morass of violence, suffering, and death.
Plumb the mystery all you want, our Afghan allies couldn’t be clearer as a collective group. They are sick of foreign occupying armies, even when, in some cases, they may have no sympathy for the Taliban. This should be a situation in which no translators are needed. The “insult” to Afghan ways is, after all, large indeed and should be easy enough for Americans to grasp. Just try to reverse the situation with Chinese, Russian, or Iranian armies heavily garrisoning the U.S., supporting political candidates, and trying to stand us up for more than a decade and it may be easier to understand. Americans, after all, blow people away regularly over far less than that.
And keep in mind as well what history does tell us: that the Afghans have quite a record of getting disgusted with occupying armies and blowing them away. After all, they managed to eject the militaries of two of the most powerful empires of their moments, the British in the 1840s and the Russians in the 1980s. Why not a third great empire as well?
A Contagion of Killing
The message is certainly clear enough, however unprepared those in Washington and in the field are to hear it: forget our enemies; a rising number of those Afghans closest to us want us out in the worst way possible and their message on the subject has been horrifically blunt. As NBC correspondent Jim Miklaszewski put it recently, among Americans in Afghanistan there is now “a growing fear the armed Afghan soldier standing next to them may really be the enemy.”
It’s a situation that isn’t likely to be rectified by quick fixes, including the eerily named Guardian Angel program (which leaves an armed American with the sole job of watching out for trigger-happy Afghans in exchanges with his compatriots), or better “vetting” of Afghan recruits, or putting Afghan counterintelligence officers in ever more units to watch over their own troops.
The question is: Why can’t our leaders in Washington and in the U.S. military stop “struggling” and see this for what it obviously is? Why can’t anyone in the mainstream media write about it as it obviously is? After all, when almost 11 years after your arrival to “liberate” a country, orders are issued for every American soldier to carry a loaded weapon everywhere at all times, even on American bases, lest your allies blow you away, you should know that you’ve failed. When you can’t train your allies to defend their own country without an armed guardian angel watching at all times, you should know that it’s long past time to leave a distant country of no strategic value to the United States.
As is now regularly noted, the incidents of green-on-blue violence are rising rapidly. There have been 32 of them reported so far this year, with 40 American or coalition members killed, compared to 21 reported in all of 2011, killing 35. The numbers have a chilling quality, a sense of contagion, to them. They suggest that this may be an unraveling moment, and don’t think — though no one mentions this — that it couldn’t get far worse.
To date, such incidents are essentially the work of lone wolf attackers, in a few cases of two Afghans, and in a single case of three Afghans plotting together. But no matter how many counterintelligence agents are slipped into the ranks or guardian angels appointed, don’t think there’s something magical about the numbers one, two, and three. While there’s no way to foresee the future, there’s no reason not to believe that what one or two Afghans are already doing couldn’t in the end be done by four or five, by parts of squads, by small units. With a spirit of contagion, of copycat killings with a message, loose in the land, this could get far worse.
One thing seems ever more likely. If your plan is to stay and train a security force growing numbers of whom are focused on killing you, then you are, by definition, in an impossible situation and you should know that your days are numbered, that it’s not likely you’ll be there in 2020 or even maybe 2015. When training your allies to stand up means training them to do you in, it’s long past time to go, whatever your plans may have been. After all, the British had “plans” for Afghanistan, as did the Russians. Little good it did them.
Imagine for a moment that you were in Kabul or Washington at the end of December 2001, after the Taliban had been crushed, after Osama bin Laden fled to Pakistan, and as the U.S. was moving into “liberated” Afghanistan for the long haul. Imagine as well that someone claiming to be a seer made this prediction: almost 11 years from then, despite endless tens of billions of dollars spent on Afghan “reconstruction,” despite nearly $50 billion spent on “standing up” an Afghan security force that could defend the country, and with more than 700 bases built for U.S. troops and Afghan allies, local soldiers and police would be deserting in droves, the Taliban would be back in force, those being trained would be blowing their trainers away in record numbers, and by order of the Pentagon, an American soldier could not go to the bathroom unarmed on an American base for fear of being shot down by an Afghan “friend.”
You would, of course, have been considered a first-class idiot, if not a madman, and yet this is exactly the U.S. “hearts and minds” record in Afghanistan to date. Welcomed in 2001, we are being shown the door in the worst possible way in 2012. Washington is losing it. It’s too late to exit gracefully
Obama Admininstration Backs Shell in Supreme Court Case
This article is re-posted from Corpwatch.
The Obama administration is backing Shell Oil after abruptly changing sides in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that could make it even more difficult for survivors of human rights abuses overseas to sue multinational corporations in federal courts. The case will be heard on October 1.
Lawyers at EarthRights International, a Washington-based human rights law nonprofit, say they suspect that a new legal submission – which was signed only by the U.S. Justice Department – reflects tensions inside the government on how to deal with multinational corporations do business in the U.S. Significantly, neither the State nor the Commerce Department signed on to the brief, despite their key roles in the case.
“It was shocking,” Jonathan Kaufman EarthRights legal policy coordinator commented to Reuters. “The brief was largely unexpected, based on what they had filed previously, and pretty breathtaking.”
At issue is the Alien Torts Claim Act (ATCA) – an 18th century U.S. law originally designed to combat piracy on the high seas – that has been used during the last 30 years as a vehicle to bring international law violations cases to U.S. federal courts. Lawyers began using ATCA as a tool in human rights litigation in 1979, when the family of 17-year-old Joel Filartiga, who was tortured and killed in Paraguay, sued the Paraguayan police chief responsible. Filartiga v. Peña-Irala set a precedent for U.S. federal courts to punish non-U.S. citizens for acts committed outside the U.S. that violate international law or treaties to which the U.S. is a party. ATCA has brought almost 100 cases of international (often state-sanctioned) torture, rape and murder to U.S. federal courts to date.
In recent years, a number of ATCA lawsuits have also been filed against multinationals which has angered the business lobby. “Expansion of this problem into the international arena via ATCA promises nothing but trouble for U.S. economic and foreign policy interests worldwide,” wrote John Howard, vice president of international policy and programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “U.S. national interests require that we not allow the continuing misapplication of this 18th century statute to 21st century problems by the latter day pirates of the plaintiffs’ bar.”
No plaintiff against a corporation has won on ATCA grounds, although some have settled or plea bargained. In 1996 Doe v. Unocal, a lawsuit filed by ethnic Karen farmers against Unocal (now owned by Chevron) set a new precedent when a U.S. federal court ruled that corporations and their executive officers could be held legally responsible for crimes against humanity. Unocal contracted with the Burmese military dictatorship to provide security for a natural gas pipeline project on the border of Thailand and Burma. The suit accused Unocal of complicity in murder, rape and forcing locals to work for Unocal for free. Shortly before the jury trial was set to begin in 2005, Unocal settled with the plaintiffs by paying an undisclosed sum, marking the first time a corporation settled in any way a case based on the ATCA. Another such case was filed against Chiquita, the global banana producer, by surviving victims of brutal massacres waged by right-wing paramilitary squads in Colombia. The paramilitary, who killed thousands of civilians during Colombia’s dirty war of the 1980s and 1990s, were on Chiquita’s payroll in the 1990s. Now-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended Chiquita in the case and won a plea bargain for them of $25 million and five years of probation.
Holder isn’t the only Justice Department staffer who defended a corporation in an ATCA case. Sri Srinivasan, recently nominated for the second highest position in the Justice Department, represented Exxon Mobil in a case brought against them by Indonesian villagers who survived alleged attacks, torture and murder by Indonesian military units hired by Exxon to provide security. Lower courts disagreed on Exxon’s liability under ATCA, and in 2011 an appeals court sent the case back to trial.
Which brings us to the case currently before the Supreme Court – Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (Shell) – brought by relatives of nine Nigerian Ogoni activists who were executed in 1995 by a military dictatorship allegedly working in collaboration with Shell. For the last ten years, the widow of executed Dr. Barinem Kiobel and other Nigerian refugees have been trying to prove in court that the British-Dutch multinational oil company Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., or Shell Oil, conspired with the Nigerian military to illegally detain, torture and kill critics of Shell’s environmentally destructive practices in the Niger Delta.
In February the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case to determine whether or not corporations – as opposed to private parties – could be sued under the ATCA. At that time the Justice Department, submitted a “friend of the court” brief that said they could.
Lawyers say that if the Supreme Court accepts that the case can be heard in U.S. courts, it will mark a significant step forward for human rights activists. It will also send a powerful signal to business that any violations overseas can be prosecuted if they do business in the U.S. Then in June, the Obama administration, suddenly changed its opinion. The new brief from the Justice Department “read like a roadmap for getting rid of cases Srinivasan and Holder had worked on previously” EarthRights attorney Kaufman told Reuters.
In its submission filed in response to a Supreme Court order to re-argue whether or not ATCA applied to territories outside the U.S., the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the suit against Shell. The brief’s authors stated that the ATCA was not appropriate for Kiobel or other lawsuits involving foreign corporations accused of collaborating in human rights abuses with a foreign government outside U.S. territory.
U.S. courts “should not create a cause of action that challenges the actions of a foreign sovereign in its own territory, where the [sued party] is a foreign corporation of a third country that allegedly aided and abetted the foreign sovereign’s conduct,” the Justice Department wrote.
However, the Justice Department stopped short of categorically barring all similar cases that occur outside the U.S. from ATCA eligibility, and it left ambiguous whether the current recommendation would prevent future ATCA lawsuits against U.S. citizens or corporations, or in cases where abuses take place on the high seas.
EarthRights International filed three Freedom of Information Act requests in July to look for evidence showing whether or not corporate interests and lobbying influenced the government’s decision to back Shell.
“If disclosed, this information will help reveal whether or not the business interests of Attorney General Eric Holder or Deputy Solicitor General Sri Srinivasan influenced the government’s position in Kiobel,” said Kaufman.
“Be Honest About the History of Our Country”: Remembering the People’s Historian Howard Zinn at 90
This video is re-posted from Democracy Now!
Editor’s note: For anyone interested in being part of a group discussion using Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, you can sign up for the GRIID class A History of US Social Movements.
The late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn would have turned 90 years old today. Zinn died of a heart attack at the age of 87 on January 27, 2010. After serving as a bombardier in World War II, Zinn went on to become a lifelong dissident and peace activist. He was active in the civil rights movement and many of the struggles for social justice over the past 50 years.
In 1980, Howard Zinn published his classic book, “A People’s History of the United States,” which would go on to sell more than a million copies and change the way we look at history in America. We air an excerpt of a Zinn interview on Democracy Now! from May 2009, and another from one of his last speeches later that year, just two months before his death.
[image: Robert Shetterly]
The Katrina Pain Index, 2012
This article by Bill Quigley and Davida Finger is re-posted from CounterPunch.
1 Rank of New Orleans in fastest growing US cities between 2010 and 2011. Source: Census Bureau.
1 Rank of New Orleans, Louisiana in world prison rate. Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of the other 50 states. Louisiana rate is five times higher than Iran, 13 times higher than China and 20 times Germany. In Louisiana, one in 86 adults is in prison. In New Orleans, one in 14 black men is behind bars. In New Orleans, one of every seven black men is in prison, on parole or on probation. Source: Times-Picayune.
2 Rank of New Orleans in rate of homelessness among US cities. Source: 2012 Report of National Alliance to End Homelessness.
2 Rank of New Orleans in highest income inequality for cities of over 10,000 Source: Census.
3 Days a week the New Orleans daily paper, the Times-Picayune, will start publishing and delivering the paper this fall and switch to internet only on other days. (See 44 below). Source: The Times-Picayune.
10 Rate that New Orleans murders occur compared to US average. According to FBI reports, the national average is 5 murders per 100,000. The Louisiana average is 12 per 100,000. The New Orleans reported 175 murders last year or 50 murders per 100,000 residents. Source: WWL TV.
13 Rank of New Orleans in FBI overall crime rate rankings. Source: Congressional Quarterly.
15 Number of police officer-involved shootings in New Orleans so far in 2012. In all of 2011 there were 16. Source: Independent Police Monitor.
21 Percent of all residential addresses in New Orleans that are abandoned or blighted. There were 35,700 abandoned or blighted homes and empty lots in New Orleans (21% of all residential addresses), a reduction from 43,755 in 2010 (when it was 34% of all addresses). Compare to Detroit (24%), Cleveland (19%), and Baltimore (14%). Source: Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC).
27 Percent of people in New Orleans live in poverty. The national rate is 15%. Among African American families the rate is 30% and for white families it is 8%. Source: Corporation for Enterprise Development (CEFD) and Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC) Assets & Opportunity Profile: New Orleans (August 2012).
33 Percent of low income mothers in New Orleans study who were still suffering Post Traumatic Stress symptoms five years after Katrina. Source: Princeton University Study.
34 Bus routes in New Orleans now. There were 89 before Katrina. Source: RTA data.
37 Percent of New Orleans families that are “asset poor” or lack enough assets to survive for three months without income. The rate is 50% for black households, 40% for Latino household, 24% for Asian household and 22% for white households. Source: Corporation for Enterprise Development (CEFD) and Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC) Assets & Opportunity Profile: New Orleans (August 2012)
40 Percent of poor adults in New Orleans region that work. One quarter of these people work full-time and still remain poor. Source: GNOCDC.
42 Percent of the children in New Orleans who live in poverty. The rate for black children is 65 percent compared to less than 1 percent for whites. Source: Census.
44 Rank of Louisiana among the 50 states in broadband internet access. New Orleans has 40 to 60 percent access. Source: The Lens.
60 Percent of New Orleans which is African American. Before Katrina the number was 67. Source: GNOCDC.
60 Percent of renters in New Orleans are paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities, up from 51 percent in 2004. Source: GNOCDC.
68 Percent of public school children in New Orleans who attend schools that pass state standards. In 2003-2004 it was 28 percent. Source: GNOCDC.
75 Percent of public school students in New Orleans who are enrolled in charter schools. Source: Wall Street Journal. This is the highest percentage in the US by far, with District of Columbia coming in second at 39 percent. Sources: Wall Street Journal and National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
76 Number of homes rebuilt by Make It Right Foundation. Source: New York Times.
123,934 Fewer people in New Orleans now than in 2000. The Census reported the 2011 population of New Orleans source as 360,740. The 2000 population was 484,674. Source: Census.
Greepeace Activists Occupy Arctic Oil Drilling Platform
This story is re-posted from Common Dreams.
“Melting Arctic ice is a warning, not a business opportunity.”
Six Greenpeace activists have occupied the Russian oil drilling platform Prirazlomnaya in the Arctic to protest the risky plans for drilling in the pristine ecosystem.
The group includes Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo, who tweeted during the action, “Melting Arctic ice is a warning, not a business opportunity.”
From Greepeace’s ship Arctic Sunrise, Greenpeace Campaigner Dima Litvinov, says, “This is the face of Arctic destruction. Prirazlomnaya is the first ice-capable permanent oil platform in the Arctic. It is a perfect example — it is a personification of the slowly creeping industrialization of this pristine area. And especially, given the information that is coming in all the time about the rapidly decreasing ice cover in the Arctic, it is an obscenity. It is an insult that the same companies that are responsible for this crisis are now seeking to profit from it.”
MLive article misses the point of the GQ article on ArtPrize
Nearly a week after the GQ story on ArtPrize has been circulating in Grand Rapids, MLive finally decided to join the conversation.
The MLive article, by entertainment writer Jeffrey Karczmarcxyk, frames the narrative around the GQ story on ArtPrize (So you think you can paint) as a glass half-full/half-empty story. Karczmarcxyk presents the argument that the Matthew Powers article in GQ pointed out the very best and the very worst of the annual art event in Grand Rapids.
While the GQ article did do what the MLive writer stated, the GQ article was much more than that. Matthew Power seemed to be asking both critical questions about ArtPrize the event, but equally important was its relationship to the political and economic power of the DeVos family.
The only real reference that the MLive writer made to the politics of the DeVos family was this line, “Power’s observations on the “ultra conservative” DeVos family and its support of “hot-button, conservative issues” is searing.” While I think that Powers made important statements about the DeVos family, in terms of their involvement in issues like anti-gay marriage, I would hardly call what he wrote as “searing.”
However, maybe to Karczmarcxyk, the GQ article was a searing indictment of the DeVos family, which might explain why he did not honestly deal with that aspect of the GQ article.
The MLive story does mention Paul Armenta and SITE: LAB, but fails to acknowledge the critical comments from Armenta or GR artist Michael Pfleghaar that were prominent in the GQ article. In fact, the only source that Karczmarcxyk uses in the MLive article, other than Power, was the PR guy for ArtPrize, Brian Burch. Burch applies his trade and puts his own spin on the GQ article with this innocuous comment, “The piece offers a number of interesting perspectives that add to the conversation and showcases how much complexity can come out of something so simple.”
The MLive story was in no way a surprise, it just demonstrated once again its unwillingness to provide a larger critique of ArtPrize, the DeVos family and their politics, which is what the GQ article was a least willing to do.
Let them Die: GM ignores workers on Hunger Strike in Colombia
This article is re-posted from Foreign Policy in Focus.
Minutes before he started to sew his mouth shut, Jorge Alberto Parra Andrade explained his rationale to me: “Essentially GM gave us a choice: to die of hunger or to die waiting for them to solve this problem.”
Mr. Parra is one of 68 injured workers fired by General Motors Colombia who started a protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá one year ago, on August 1st, 2011. The Association of Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL) had two simple demands: fair compensation for injuries incurred in the workplace and reintegration into GM’s workforce. In commemoration of their protest’s anniversary — and without any movement on their case — four leaders of ASOTRECOL decided to sew their mouths closed and initiate a hunger strike. Another three joined on August 8th, and a small group will join each week until their cases are resolved.
ASOTRECOL workers claim that they were among 200 employees injured on the job in GM’s plant in Colombia’s capital city. The majority of ASOTRECOL’s members have undergone multiple surgeries, most commonly to treat spinal injuries, tendinitis, carpal tunnel, rotator cuff syndrome, and lumbar damage. After working their bodies until they were disabled and unable to perform manual labor any longer, GM fired them and refused to pay medical benefits or a severance package. ASOTRECOL also alleges that GM lost, altered, erased, or fabricated their medical histories to exclude their injuries from the company’s official records, and that the Ministry of Labor approved the documents.
Consequently, GM does not accept the injuries as work-related, instead claiming that they were incurred outside the plant. Luis Alvarado Vásquez, the Inspector at the Ministry of Labor who reviewed ASOTRECOL members’ records, was convicted for falsifying their records and approving their illegal firings. He was suspended from work for 12 months and has a warrant out for his arrest. However, since his cases were not automatically voided, ASOTRECOL must reverse them by entering Colombia’s lengthy legal process.
The injured workers and their families do not have time to wait years navigating the legal system. The dramatic move by ASOTRECOL activists to start a hunger strike reflects their growing desperation. Before receiving six stitches in his lips, Carlos Ernesto Trujillo explained that the workers are running out of money to pay for their homes or support their spouses and children. “They fired us without just cause, endangering us and our families,” he said. “We are taking this decision because our health has worsened each day, we’re losing our houses, we practically live in the street, and we’ve been forgotten by the government.”
Inaction by the United States
ASOTRECOL’s case is especially alarming considering the U.S. government’s stake in General Motors. Two years before ASOTRECOL began its strike, GM filed for bankruptcy protection and reorganization with the United States government. It was the fourth-largest Chapter 11 filing in U.S. history, and the U.S. government became the company’s largest shareholder with 60-percent ownership. When GM failed to stay afloat after the Bush administration pumped $20 billion into the company in 2008, the Obama administration shelled out another $30 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2009. At the start of 2012, the United States still had $25 billion invested in GM.
GM seems to have recovered from its financial turmoil and this year reclaimed its position as the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States. However, even the billion-dollar quarterly profit margins for GM did not translate into a willingness to settle the small claims of ASOTRECOL members. The first week of the hunger strike, GM attended a mediation session with representatives from the International Labor Organization, the Office of Inspector General, and the Ministry of Labor, but walked out on the first day. GM did not even stay at the negotiating table long enough to initiate a dialogue with ASOTRECOL.
The U.S. government has remained silent on GM’s situation as well, despite its pledges to support labor rights in the Colombia. The United States walked a tight rope this past year as the Obama administration tried to convince Congress to pass a free trade agreement (FTA) with the South American country. Signed by the Bush administration, the FTA stalled for years in Congress due to concerns over the country’s abysmal labor rights record. According to journalist Garry Leech, almost 75 percent of the world’s union leaders killed in the last 20 years were Colombian, and less than 5 percent of these killings have resulted in a conviction for the perpetrators. In 2011, out of 76 union leaders killed globally, 29 were Colombian.
Despite Colombia’s record as the “most dangerous country in the world to be a unionist,” the U.S. government passed the FTA, which went into effect in May 2012. The countries implemented an “Action Plan for Labor Rights” to provide enhanced protection for Colombia’s most at-risk industries. Still, seven unionists have been killed in Colombia this year, and many more have received death threats.
ASOTRECOL is a case in point for labor rights violations in Colombia. The situation of these workers is all the more deplorable given the U.S. government’s promises to protect labor leaders while at the same time remaining one of GM’s largest shareholders. Although ASOTRECOL’s case is little-known in the United States, U.S. taxpayers are de facto GM shareholders. The U.S. government should recognize its two-sided stance on this case and pressure GM to stop ignoring these workers before they die of starvation. Mr. Parra and other fired workers’ resolve in their hunger strike is evident. “We must reclaim our rights and demand an end to the human rights violations committed by General Motors. GM must answer for its actions and what they have done to us,” concluded Parra. “If necessary, we are willing to die fighting for justice.”
5 Ways Privatization Is Ruining Our Communities
This article is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
A grand delusion has been planted in the minds of Americans, that privately run systems are more efficient and less costly than those in the public sector. Most of the evidence [3] points the other way. Private initiatives generally produce mediocre or substandard results while experiencing the usual travails of unregulated capitalism — higher prices, limited services, and lower wages for all but a few ‘entrepreneurs.’
With perverse irony, the corruption and incompetence of private industry has actually furthered the cause of privatization, as the collapse of the financial markets has deprived state and local governments of necessary public funding, leading to an even greater call for private development.
As aptly expressed by a finance company chairman [4] in 2008, “Desperate government is our best customer.”
The following are a few consequences of this pro-privatization desperation: We spend lifetimes developing community assets, then give them away to a corporation for lifetimes to come.
1. The infrastructure in our cities has been built up over many years with the sweat and planning of farsighted citizens. Yet the dropoff in tax revenues has prompted careless decisions to balance budgets with big giveaways of public assets that should belong to our children and grandchildren.
In Chicago, the Skyway tollroad [5] was leased to a private company for 99 years, and, in a deal growing in infamy, the management of parking meters was sold to a Morgan Stanley group for 75 years. The proceeds have largely been spent.
The parking meter selloff led to a massive rate increase, while hurting small businesses whose potential customers are unwilling to pay the parking fees. Meanwhile, it has beenestimated [6] that the business partnership will make a profit of 80 cents per dollar of revenue, a profit margin [7] larger than that of any of the top 100 companies in the nation.
Indiana has also succumbed to the shiny lure of money up front, selling control of a toll road [5]for 75 years. Tolls have doubled over the first five years of the contract. Indianapolis [8] sold off its parking meters for 50 years, for the bargain up-front price of $32 million. Atlanta’s [9] 20-year contract with United Water Resources Inc. was canceled because of tainted water and poor service.
2.Insanity is repeating the same mistake over and over and expecting different results. Numerous examples of failed or ineffective privatization schemes show us that hasty, unregulated initiatives simply don’t work.
A Stanford University study [10] “reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts.” A Department of Education study [11] found that “On average, charter middle schools that hold lotteries are neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement, behavior, and school progress.”
Our private health care system has failed us. We have by far the most expensive system in the developed world. The cost of common surgeries [12] is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Studies show that private prisons perform poorly [13] in numerous ways: prevention of intra-prison violence, jail conditions, rehabilitation efforts. The U.S. Department of Justice [14] offered this appraisal: “There is no evidence showing that private prisons will have a dramatic impact on how prisons operate. The promises of 20-percent savings in operational costs have simply not materialized.”
A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found [15] that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. Various privatization abuses or failures [16] occurred in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
California’s experiments [17] with roadway privatization resulted in cost overruns, public outrage, and a bankruptcy; equally disastrous was the state’s foray into electric power privatization [18]. Across industries and occupations, according to the Project on Government Oversight [19], the federal government paid billions more on private contractors than the amounts needed to pay public employees for the same services.
3.Facts about privatization are hidden from the public. Experience shows that under certain conditions, with sufficient monitoring and competition [20] and regulation [21], privatization can be effective. But too often vital information is kept from the public. The Illinois Public Interest Research Group [22] noted that Chicago’s parking meter debacle might have been avoided if the city had followed common-sense principles rather than rushing a no-bid contract through the city council.
Studies by both the Congressional Research Service [23] and the Pepperdine Law Review [24] came to the same conclusion: any attempt at privatization must ensure a means of public accountability. Too often this need is ignored.
The Arizona prison system [25] is a prime example. For over 20 years the Department of Corrections avoided cost and quality reviews for its private prisons, then got around the problem by proposing a bill to eliminate the requirement for cost and quality reviews.
In Florida, abuses [26] by the South Florida Preparatory Christian Academy went on for years without regulation or oversight, with hundreds of learning-disabled schoolchildren crammed into strip mall spaces where 20-something ‘teachers’ showed movies to pass the time. In Philadelphia [27], an announcement of a $38 million charter school plan in May turned into a $139 million plan by July.
In Michigan, the low-income [28] community of Muskegon Heights became the first American city [27] to surrender its entire school district to a charter school company. Details of the contract with Mosaica were not available [29] to the public for some time after the deal was made. Butdata [30] from the Michigan Department of Education revealed that Mosaica performed better than only 13% of the schools in the state of Michigan.
Also in Michigan, an investigation [31] of administrative salaries elicited this response from charter contractor National Heritage Academies: “As a private company, NHA does not provide information on salaries for its employees.” Education writer Danny Weil [32] summarizes the charter school secrecy: “The fact is that most discussions of charters and vouchers are not done through legally mandated public hearings under law, but in back rooms or over expensive dinners, where business elites and Wall Street interests are the shot-callers in a secret parliament of moneyed interests.”
Beyond prisons and schools, how many Americans know about the proposal [5] for the privatization of Amtrak, which would, according to West Virginia Representative Nick Rahall, “cripple Main Street by auctioning off Amtrak’s assets to Wall Street.” Or the proposal to sell off the nation’s air traffic control system? Or the sale of federal land in the west? Or the sale of the nation’s gold reserves, an idea that an Obama administration official referred to as “one level of crazy away from selling Mount Rushmore.
4.Privatizers have suggested that teachers and union members are communists. Part of the grand delusion inflicted on American citizens is that public employees and union workers are greedy good-for-nothings, enjoying benefits that average private sector workers are denied. The implication, of course, is that low-wage jobs with meager benefits should be the standard for all wage-earners.
The myth is propagated through right-wing organizations with roots in the John Birch Society [33], one of whose founding members was Fred Koch, also the founder of Koch Industries. To them, public schools are socialist or communist. Explained Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast with regard to private school vouchers in 1997, “we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.”
But the facts show, first of all, that government and union workers are not overpaid. According to the Census Bureau [34], state and local government employees make up 14.5% of the U.S. workforce and receive 14.3% of the total compensation. Union members make up about 12% of the workforce, but their total pay [35] amounts to just 9.5% of adjusted gross income [36] as reported to the IRS.
The facts also strongly suggest that wage stability is fostered by the lower turnover rate and higher incidence of union membership in government. The supportive environment that right-wingers call ‘socialism’ helps to sustain living wages for millions of families. The private sector, on the other hand, is characterized by severe wage inequality. Whereas the average private sector salary is similar to that of a state or local government worker, the MEDIAN [37]U.S. worker salary is almost $14,000 less, at $26,363. While corporate executives and financial workers (about one-half of 1% [38] of the workforce) make multi-million dollar salaries, millions of private company workers toil as food servers, clerks, medical workers, and domestic help at below-average pay.
5. Privatization often creates an “incentive to fail.” Privatized services are structured for profit rather than for the general good. A by-product of the profit motive is that some people will lose out along the way, and parts of the societal structure will fail in order to benefit investors.
This is evident in the privatized prison system, which relies on a decreasing adherence to the law to ensure its own success. Corrections Corporation of America [39] has offered to run the prison system in any state willing to guarantee that jails stay 90% full. “This is where it gets creepy,” says Business Insider’s [40] Joe Weisenthal, “because as an investor you’re pulling for scenarios where more people are put in jail.”
The incentive to fail was also apparent in road privatization deals [41] in California and Virginia, where ‘non-compete’ clauses prevented local municipalities from repairing any roads that might compete with a privatized tollroad. In Virginia, the tollway manager even demanded reimbursement from the state for excessive carpooling, which would cut into its profits.
The list goes on. The Chicago parking meter [42] deal requires compensation if the city wishes to close a street for a parade. The Indiana tollroad deal [5] demanded reimbursement when the state waived tolls for safety reasons during a flood. Plans to privatize the Post Office have created a massive incentive to fail [43] through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which requires the USPS to pre-pay the health care benefits of all employees for the next 75 years, even those who aren’t born yet. This outlandish requirement is causing a well-run public service to default [44] on its loans for the first time.
Also set up to fail are students enrolled in for-profit colleges [45], which get up to 90 percent [46] of their revenue from U.S. taxpayers. Less incentive remains for the schools after tuition is received, as evidenced by the fact that more than half [47] of the students enrolled in these colleges in 2008-9 left without a degree or diploma. And then we have our littler students, set up to fail [32] by private school advocates in Wisconsin who argue that a requirement for playgrounds in new elementary schools “significantly limit[s] parent’s educational choice in Milwaukee.”
In too many cases, privatization means success for a few and failure for the community being served. Unless success can be defined as a corporate logo carved into the side of Mount Rushmore.
Dick & Betsy DeVos fund Broadway play written by a sweatshop profiteer about the founder of an ultra conservative church
Yesterday, MLive posted an article about Dick & Betsy DeVos deciding to provide financial support for the Broadway play Scandalous, written by Kathie Lee Gifford.
The article calls the move by Dick and Betsy their “entry” into Broadway, as if this was a new venture for them.
The play they are funding is about a woman who was an evangelical and the founder of Foursquare Church, which has grown significantly since 1930s, but has maintained its hyper-conservative roots.
The MLive story mentions that this is not the first time that Dick and Betsy DeVos have decided to fund the arts and culture, with increasing amounts of money going to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and their financing of son Rick’s annual event, ArtPrize.
However, the article doesn’t explore why Dick and Betsy have decided to fund arts and culture. Instead, the MLive story refers to other articles in the New York Times and the Huffington Post, neither of which explores their motivations.
Nearly two years ago, we posted an article by artist Richard Kooyman, entitled What is ArtPrize, where Kooyman explores why he thinks the DeVos family has shifted to art & culture. Kooyman believes that the DeVos’ interest in art and culture is connected to the rest of the family philosophy of promoting capitalism and conservative religious values.
There are also aspects of the DeVos/Gifford/Foursquare partnership that are completely ignored by the MLive article.
First, there is no mention of Kathie Lee Gifford’s history of profiting from sweatshops in Central America. In 1996, Charles Kernaghan, with the National Labor Committee (MLC), investigated where Gifford’s brand name clothing was being manufactured and discovered that a factory in Honduras was using teenage girls to sew her clothes for little pay and under horrendous working conditions.
Gifford went on TV, cried and then said she would make sure such practices never happened again. Three years later it was discovered that Gifford continued to profit off of sweatshop labor, when the NLC found her clothing line being made in sweatshops in El Salvador.
This is relevant information as Gifford’s play is about a woman who promoted a certain kind of religious values, yet she herself has a history of exploited women workers abroad. It is also relevant in that the DeVos family has been a proponent of trade policies that have both benefited their company and created exploitative practices, such as the one that Gifford and Amway have profited from.
Second, there is no exploration about what the Foursquare Church has become and its relationship to the politics of DeVos and Gifford. Foursquare Church continues to promote hyper-conservative religious values such as anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage and the dominance of Christian values in public life. Former Foursquare pastor Jack Hayford, now the head of Kings College and Seminary, embraces Dominion theology, a theology that believes that religious doctrines should govern civic life. Essentially, those who embrace Dominion theology in the US would like to replace the US system of laws with the 10 Commandments. Hayford and other Foursquare leaders have also been involved with the patriarchal Christian movement known as the Promise Keepers.
It’s no surprise then that Dick and Betsy DeVos would finance a Broadway play written by a Sweatshop profiteer that promotes the story of the founder of an ultra-conservative Christian Church.
New website exposing Coca Cola’s racist practices
We have reported in the past about the international campaign to boycott Coca Cola because of their role in the murder of union organizers in Colombia and the company’s theft of water from communities in Indian.
Closer to home there is a major lawsuit against Coca Cola because of the blatant racial discrimination against its employees in several bottling plants in the US.
The lawsuit exposing Coke’s racial injustice has produced a new website, http://www.stopcokediscrimination.com/. The site provides details on the legal case against the company and this summary of the racial discrimination that Black and Latino employees face:
1. Coca-Cola may be an enjoyable refreshment for most, but its black and Hispanic workers produce Coca-Cola’s beverages in a cesspool of racial discrimination. There is an endemic culture of racism at Coca-Cola that runs through its management and supervisors at its New York bottling plants in Elmsford and Maspeth. The 16 Plaintiffs herein have suffered from the worst of its ills in terms of biased work assignments and allotment of hours, unfair discipline and retaliation, and the caustic work environment.
2. Black and Hispanic production workers at Coca-Cola are typically assigned to the most undesirable and physically dangerous positions, and to tests that are outside of their job descriptions. Meanwhile, the managers contravene the established seniority system by giving better jobs and more overtime hours to white workers with less seniority than minority workers. As several of the Plaintiffs have found, opportunities for advancement and promotion within the company are routinely biased against minority workers. Finally, the truck drivers among the Plaintiffs have had their hours unfairly limited and prevented from working overtime, while white drivers do not have to face these problems.
3. Those among the Plaintiffs who have dared to speak up about the discrimination to managers or human resources have not only found no resolution to their concerns, but instead have faced swift retaliation from the white managers. This retaliation has come in the form of unwanted scrutiny and unfair disciplinary actions, up to the point of suspension and termination for some of the Plaintiffs.
4. The minority workers of Coca-Cola face an atmosphere of casual racism from co-workers, which not only goes unpunished, but is often perpetrated by white supervisors and managers. The Plaintiffs frequently witness overt displays of racism in the plant in the form of offensive remarks and ridicule, while suffering from racially charged harassment from supervisors. This hostile work environment has caused many of the Plaintiffs significant emotional harm, to the point where they must seek therapy to deal with the stress from work.
The website also provides significant documents that related to the lawsuit, a news section, bios on the plaintiffs, protest information and a section that looks at the history of racial discrimination at Coca Cola.
The history section is instructive, with several good articles and a short video done by UK Channel 4, which includes an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last speech in Memphis, where he called for a boycott of Coca Cola.
