How To Waste Your Vote In 2012
This article by Bruce Dixon is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
It’s true enough. Your vote really is your voice, and in the modern era, every government on earth claims to rule with the consent of the people. This bestows upon the vote a unique kind of legal and symbolic power. The gap, however, between this legal, this symbolic power of the vote and any real ability to change things for the better is a vast one. The authorities rightly fear the people’s voice, and so have contrived law and custom to ensure that we are seldom heard and almost never heeded.
They would never dream of allowing us to vote on the price of gas, food, housing, credit or college tuition. But they don’t mind at all letting us choose between corporate-funded Republicans and corporate-funded Democrats. The powers that rule our economy, our media and our politics won’t let us vote on whether to bring the troops home from 140 countries and the seven seas, or whether to continue spending more on weapons of death and destruction than the other 95% of humanity combined. But they will let us choose between an ignorant, crazy or racist Republican who promises to give banksters, polluters and corporate criminals a free pass, and a sane, smart, level-headed free market liberal Democrat who does exactly the same thing, no matter what he promised.
The authorities won’t let us vote on whether the broadcast spectrum should be privatized, whether we should have the right to start and join unions, whether to create millions of good-paying green jobs. They won’t allow voters to decide whether corporations deserve more rights than flesh and blood people, or whether the president should be able to kidnap, torture, imprison and murder people without trials or even charges. But they will let us choose between a white guy and a black guy. As long as it’s their white guy, and their black one as well.
This imposition of false and meaningless choices is how, in these United States, our voices are suppressed, our votes wasted and made irrelevant, with the black vote rendered most irrelevant of all.
The gaps between black and white employment and household wealth are greater, and expanding faster than at any time in the last six decades. But the black vote will go to a man who doesn’t believe black unemployment or dispossession or even black mass incarceration merit any special attention. Though black voters are historically more opposed to foreign wars and military intervention, their votes this time are pledged to a president who made a war speech while receiving a peace prize, who invaded Arab and African countries with drones and special forces, and who heartily endorses Israeli apartheid.
This is how the game is played. This is how the legal and symbolic authority of millions of our wasted votes is hijacked every election cycle, making possible wars we do not endorse, ratifying policies we never wanted, and pretending to believe promises we know, or should know will never be kept. This is what Eugene Debs referred to a century ago, when he declared he would rather cast a meaningful vote for what he did want, and not get it, than a fake and hollow one for what he didn’t want, and get that.
And so, a hundred years later, the game is still the game. If we want our votes to have any meaning, it’s time to reject the fake choices between the two corporate parties. It’s time to wise up, to grow up and like adults, to take a view longer than dessert, or the next two or three elections.
OKT hosts activist Bryant Terry in community dialogue
Bryant Terry, eco-chef, activist and author
Community Dialogue with OKT
2 to 4 p.m. Sat. Jan. 21
Sherman Street Church
1000 Sherman St. SE
Grand Rapids
Eco-chef, food justice activist and author, Bryant Terry will meet with Our Kitchen Table and community members for dialogue from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday Jan. 21 at Sherman Street Church, 1000 Sherman St. SE in Grand Rapids. If you’d like to be better prepared for the dialogue, Terry has recommended reading Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson.
Terry’s stop in Grand Rapids kicks off the release of his new cookbook, The Inspired Vegan. He is here principally to participate in Calvin College’s Wake-up Weekend, which includes a Friday evening lecture, “Cooking as Inspiration for Liberation” and a Saturday morning brunch and panel discussion featuring OKT’s executive director, Lisa Oliver King. Hosted by Brick Road Pizza, 1017 Wealthy Street SE. The free panel discussion takes place at 10 a.m. with brunch following at a cost of $12 per person.
Terry’s other books are Grub and Vegan Soul Kitchen. He has appeared on the Sundance Channel’s original TV series “Big Ideas for a Small Planet,” the BET series “My Two Cents” and on PBS’ “Nourish: Food + Community” and “The Endless Feast.”
Enjoy this brief clip of Terry talking about food discrimination:
Local TV stations making money from Oil Industry ads, again
As is always the case during a major election cycle, local broadcasters will reap the benefits of those seeking to influence elections and legislation.
As we have noted in pervious election cycles, local broadcasters, particularly TV stations will make millions from money paid to buy airtime from political parties, political action committees (PACs) and from individual corporations and associations.
Recently, the American Petroleum Institute has been buying airtime in West Michigan with a commercial advocating that the Obama administration approve the Keystone Pipeline Project.
The ad, like all political ads, over simplifies what is at stake. The American Petroleum Institute uses language that tries to make it sound like the Obama administration must approve this project in order to be true to his claims to getting the US economy back on track. The ad focuses mostly on how the Keystone Project would create jobs and provide a safe energy source for the US.
The American Petroleum Institute ad, however, is full of misinformation. First, the bulk of the oil from the Alberta Tar Sands Project will mostly be for export and not for domestic use as the ad claims. Second, the project is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in recent years. According to Tar Sands Watch the project is using an excessively large amount of water resources from Canada and it is now the number one emitter of greenhouse gases in the country. Third, the project is opposed by Aboriginal groups, since the pipeline will threaten the sovereignty of native lands.
These facts and others are not included in the American Petroleum Institute ad and local TV stations are not challenging or questioning their claims.
In addition, the local TV broadcasters are not reporting on the fact that one of the main players in the Keystone Pipeline Project is Enbridge, as you can see from this map below. So not only are local broadcasters making money from this ad they are not investigating the link between a company with a major oil spill in West Michigan and one of the worst ecologically disastrous projects in recent decades.
West Michigan TV viewers are also not likely to hear local TV stories about the political influence of the American Petroleum Institute. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the American Petroleum Institute has spent millions annually lobbying Congress.
Lastly, this new ad campaign from the American Petroleum Institute is right on the heels of another ad campaign they rolled out late last year called the Vote 4 Energy campaign, where viewers were led to believe that people off the street were saying positive things about the oil industry. We know that the ad was scripted and not the spontaneous reflections of average Americans because a Greenpeace activist was able to get in on the production of the commercial and tape how lines were being fed to people. The ad campaign was also exposed by the group Polluter Watch, which did its own spoof ad we encourage you to watch here.
Is the US Military Addicted to War Porn?
This article by Matthis Chiroux is re-posted from Common Dreams.
The recent images in the media of uniformed U.S. Marines urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan rightfully invokes nearly universal condemnation. Besides respect for the dead being somewhat of a universal human value at this point, it is a supreme law of war for every single nation on the planet.
These images should prompt a lot of questions here in America, about our military, our wars, our culture and our role in global affairs. To some, mostly the weavers and backers of war policy, it seems again that ‘a few bad apples’ have acted on their own within the military, and will be brought to justice in accordance with domestic military law.
To others, such as myself and the majority of veterans I associate with, the barbarity of these images is synonymous with our experiences within a military at war. No crime our brothers and sisters commit really surprises us anymore, but confirms to us our nation’s brutal history, of which for a time we became a part, and offers us a reminder that nothing’s really changed.
But while our military’s mission of ‘engage and destroy’ remains essentially the same in Afghanistan as it has been in every other conflict, the modes of documentation have changed, as now nearly every troop carries his own camera into combat. From this fact flows a cinematic phenomenon that troops and veterans recognize as ‘war porn.’
War porn means different things to different people, similar to the ‘adult material’ from which it draws its name. Generally, in military and veteran circles, war porn is recognized as any image or video produced in a combat zone depicting death, violence, gore, brutality, depravity, lewd behavior or any other shocking act that would be perceived unacceptable or even criminal if committed on American soil.
War porn, like pornography, is traded mostly in secret. It is consumed mostly in private, and those who possess it may often feel hesitant to share it with anyone outside of the military or veteran communities. However, during the past decade, the American people and the world have witnessed several stark examples of war porn leaking to the surface. Perhaps the most famous incident to date are the images of bound and naked prisoners being abused in Abu Ghraib Prison, in Iraq, that leaked in 2004.
However, not every piece of war porn that bubbles to the surface ever generates public outcry on the level of the Abu Ghraib photos or the latest disgusting iteration. Several websites have risen to prominence during the War on Terror, solely for the purpose of trafficking war porn. Gotwarporn.com claims that it is “countering the cyber-jihad one video at a time,” by uploading examples of, “the devastating force we bring to bear on our enemies.” Videos can be browsed according to the type of weapon used, the type of violence committed and the location where the violence occurred. Gotwarporn.com regularly displays user-uploaded video, referring to most of their content as having been “leaked.”
But gotwarporn.com is not the first website to help soldiers traffic their war porn. Nowthatsfuckedup.com, which now directs to the Polk County, Flor., Sheriff’s Office, was removed from the web in 2006, after its proprietor, Chris Wilson, was charged with misdemeanor obscenity. The site, which began as an amateur pornographic hub where users could share images of their partners for a fee, became a central depository for war porn after Wilson began allowing site users from the U.S. Military to forgo the membership fee in exchange for posting an image proving they served overseas. According to a Nation magazine article from 2004, the uploaded photos began as “benign images of troops leaning against their tanks, but graphic combat images also began to appear.”
These images, while horrifying to most, serve a purpose for the soldier, and further, have broader public appeal in the U.S. More than simply being in-demand for their shock value, images like these, “constitute a field report on the production and reproduction of U.S. global dominance,” according to Prof. Mary Ann Tetreault of Trinity University in her 2006 piece entitled, “The Sexual Politics of Abu Gharib.”
“The Abu Ghraib images and documents describe violations of the captives’ bodily integrity, masculine self-image, and religious rules about cleanliness,” writes Tetreault. “Photos show naked victims arranged in piles, smeared with filth, and forced to simulate sexual acts. Their manhood is disparaged in many ways. Indeed, they are feminized—unmanned—by the gaze of their captors who strip them, scrutinize and manipulate their bodies, taunt them, and create pornography out of their humiliation by taking pictures of them.”
To me, the images of the Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters share a similar cultural significance with the images from Abu Ghraib. Again, we see depicted not just random degenerate acts carried out purely for shock value, but instead, we see an image structured in a very specific way; one that acts as a metaphor for U.S. domination. The image is of not just a physically defeated enemy, but of an enemy that has also been stripped of his dignity, customs and masculinity.
Regardless of the face that soldiers are trained to show the world, these types of dominance narratives are highly in-demand in military communities, especially after a decade of relative combat-defeat in which few, if any, of the U.S.’s larger goals for occupation have been accomplished. Historically, defeated or nearly defeated armies have been guilty of some of the most serious atrocities. Indeed, combat journalists throughout history have reported retreating troops to be some of the most dangerous individuals on the battle-field.
It has been my experience within and without the military that soldiers covet nothing greater than power over others. Be it expressed internally through the military rank structure, or externally through the destruction of an enemy, family or coercion of a sexual partner, soldiers generally believe themselves superior human beings to someone, and the affirmation of this desire can take on many brutal forms. Further, when the superiority of a soldier is questioned by a force outside the chain of command, brawls tend to erupt, barracks rumbles ensue and bitter rivalries take shape. What this generates is a ‘wild west’ atmosphere on and around many bases in the world. What this translates to for local communities is violence in nearly every form.
Statistically speaking, military communities are among the more violent U.S. communities, with military bases reporting significantly higher rates of incidents such as rape, domestic assault and suicide. U.S. military bases, both in the U.S. and abroad, have reputations for drunkenness, prostitution and general ‘vice,’ as if each installation were its own little ‘Vegas,’ promising the men within riches of whiskey, wealth, women and weapons.
Not surprisingly, addiction in the military is also something that runs rampant world-wide. But while we’re all used to hearing about the alcoholism and the drugs, pornography addiction is reaping increasingly devastating havoc on military families, according to a recent Army Times story. In the story, Navy Lt. Michael Howard, a licensed therapist and military chaplain who councils soldiers for sex addiction, suggests that as many as twenty percent of our troops are addicted to online porn. “That would be a conservative estimate,” he says, while others in the story corroborate his statements.
But war porn is something in a category of its own. Soldiers don’t just download it, they are the primary manufacturers, and its existence doesn’t just destroy American families. War porn, by definition, documents the destruction of someone else’s family. Furthermore, if it can be argued that pornography normalizes violence against women, it certainly cannot be disputed that war porn normalizes violence against everyone!
We’ve only started as a society to be exposed to the bottomless archives of war porn that exist on hard-drives throughout the country. While particularly blood-thirsty participants in prior wars were forced to either keep simple snapshots or body parts of the people they killed to use as war trophies, troops of today have very different options. While an actual finger or an ear, which still are taken as war trophies, may not make it back across the boarder, a JPEG or an MOV file can be effortlessly concealed; even sent back ahead of the group with the simple click of a mouse.
While I have never heard an official estimate of how much war porn may exist from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, I have spoken to fellow soldiers and veterans around the country and have been exposed to many individual collections. Given what I’ve seen myself, and knowing how many soldiers today carry cameras into combat, I’d estimate that there are many hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data in existence that could be classified as war porn.
While it is true that soldiers have gotten a lot more shrewd about who they’ll share their war porn with, certainly as the result of various related scandals, I do not believe this has led many of them to destroy their individual collections. If anything, the war porn has simply been archived, and may be released at a later time. Many soldiers and veterans are yet to realize the true weight and consequence of what they carry with them. Hopefully, as their consciouses continue to recover, some of the more courageous ones may feel compelled to share publicly what they possess.
But even for those who will never share publicly, the evidence of their acts will continue to exist. It’s the nature of digital information to stick around and be inconveniently discovered later on. It’s only a matter of time until the flood gates open. Perhaps, as I said, it will be the veterans themselves who feel so moved by conscious. More likely, it will be hacked free by information anarchists or recovered by tech-savy garbage pickers in electronics landfills and recycling plants somewhere south of the equator. When that begins happening on a regular basis, we’re going to have a lot to account for as Americans, after having blindly supported our troops through two bloody and unjust military occupations.
Yes America, our military is addicted to war porn, and this fact may ultimately usurp any legacy of honor or glory the military may cling to. No longer can the world be duped by the government-controlled facade of the U.S. soldier as a liberating force for good. Our image is that of an armed, drunken fiend in a public square with his pants down pissing into the wind. Sure, we may be an affront to those around us, but we’re only really soiling ourselves.
Matthis Chiroux is a former Army sergeant, an Iraq War Resister and an Afghanistan veteran. In 2008, he refused deployment orders to Iraq in the U.S. Congress, calling the war illegal and immoral. Eventually, he obtained endorsement for his position from 13 Democratic House Members who penned a letter to then President George W. Bush expressing support for Iraq War Resisters. Matthis has organized extensively within the veterans peace movement since, organizing a variety of direct actions and campaigns in military communities around the country.
MLK event speaker on Hip Hop Activism in the Age of Obama
GVSU hosted the first of several events today for Martin Luther King Jr. week on campus, with a public lecture by author/activist Bakari Kitwana. Kitwana has written several books on the politics of Hip Hop, with his most recent book entitled Hip Hop Activism in the Obama Era.
The speaker began by talking about the connection between MLK, the Civil Rights movement and young people today. He also stated that he wanted to demystify the work of activism.
One thing he pointed out was to say that MLK day should be seen as a celebration of all the participants of the Civil Rights Movement and not just King the individual. This led Bakari to identify three Civil Rights activists, such as Diane Nash, a co-founder of SNCC and a participant in the Freedom Rides.
Another woman he mentioned was Dr. BerniceJohnson Reagon, who was a founding member of the musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Bakari spoke about how important music was and what role it played in the movement. He said that Bernice told him about her own involvement in the movement and how at times they were very afraid to take a public stand against injustice.
The third woman that Bakari identified was Carlotta Walls LaNier, one of the Little Rock Nine. At a lecture in which Bakari was at, where Carlotta was also present, people were talking about the mergence of Hip Hop and politics. Carlotta said to Bakari, “what are you waiting for?” Barkari told that story to illustrate the point that each generation needs to step up and make change.
Bakari then shifted to talking about the legacy and the message of Dr. King. He identified three main points that he felt is relevant to take from the Civil Rights movement and what it means for today.
The speaker emphasized how this movement is always moving and is made up of many. He cites Vincent Hardings book There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, which makes the point that each generation of African Americans gave birth to leaders and organizations that determined what direction the struggle would go.
Bakari then shifted to discussing how morality was viewed by the likes of King and Malcolm. Too often morality is limited to just being against something like pre-marital sex. It ends up just being a position. However, for King morality has more to do with what action we take to intervene in major issues of the day such as war. Kitwana then applies King’s notion of morality to the current US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bakari particularly points out both the human and monetary costs of these wars and even provides data from the National Priorities Project.
Another issue that King spoke and acted on was the wealth divide in the US and how a disproportionately large percentage of people living in poverty. The gap between the rich and the poor has tripled in the last three decades, according to Kitwana, with an estimated 40 million Americans living in poverty.
King, of course, also addressed the intersection of race and class, according to the speaker. He tells the story of King talking to poor Whites while being in jail in Birmingham and that those poor Whites have the same reasons to march against injustices as Blacks do.
Kitwana then shifted his talk to the youth of today and the history of the Hip Hop movement. Much of the original Hip Hop artists came out of the growing economic divide that resulted in the 1980s with a large shift of US manufacturing jobs to overseas markets.
Hip Hop emerged as a response to this kind of economic disparity in the US and particularly how it impacted the Black community. With Hip Hop you have people in the Black community articulating a vision for struggle across the country. This vision led to the formation of Hip Hop organizations and coalitions, with an emphasis on voter registration with youth. This organizing began in 2004, with the campaign in support of John Kerry and continued to the campaign of Barack Obama in 2008.
Unfortunately, the energy and activism amongst youth that led to the election of Obama, drastically declined after the election. People have not honestly come to terms with the failure to continue political work and organizing, but he also notes that young people in particular are less likely to put faith in the political process since it has not done what people worked so hard for.
Bakari said that now young people are organizing in different ways and mentions the role that youth have played in the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, the message has to be more than just protest, it needs a political savvy that energizes people to fight for what they need to today!
Kitwana did not address in detail the role of Hip Hop in politics today, but during the Q&A he did respond to a question about the importance of having a cultural shift from the corporate music industry produced Hip Hop and the grassroots Hip Hop.
Bakari said that there are more and more Hip Hop artists who are not only operating independently of the commercial music industry, they are also involved in local grassroots politics across the country. He noted how groups like Industry ears are not only exposing the racist and classist elements of the dominant commercial culture, they are organizing around media justice at the local level and in terms of policy.
Having read Kitwana’s books I will say he is a better writer than speaker. However, his message today was valuable and he did not cheapen the memory of King with clichés and a blind call to support Barack Obama without a critical eye.
Rep. Agema and proposed legislation on teaching US History
On Saturday, the Grand Rapids Press ran a brief article about State Representative Dave Agema’s latest legislative proposal.
Agema, the term limited State Representative from Grandville, wants the State of Michigan to pass legislation that would require what Agema refers to as the core government documents – US Constitution, Federalist Papers, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
In addition, Agema wants in mandatory that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited in public schools daily. The Press reporter cites only Agema who comments that he hopes Tea Party members would put pressure on the State government to make such legislation official.
Press reporter Jim Harger doesn’t verify if Michigan public schools already teach such documents nor does he provide any response from a different perspective.
The Press reporter also doesn’t mention that this legislation is just one more example of Agema’s extremist proposals. Agema over the years has proposed numerous pieces of legislation that demonizes and criminalizes immigrants. The Grandville legislator has also supported Governor Snyder’s austerity measures that attack unionized public sector workers and working families in general. Agema is a proponent of making Michigan a Right to Work state and has proposed legislation that promotes Islamophobia. Agema’s most recent attack on working people was to eliminated domestic partner benefits for those who are state employees, an action that is widely understood to be an attack against the LGBT community in Michigan.
Having said that I would support the teaching of US government documents that Agema mentions. We all should be familiar with this history and we should be educated to take a critical look at the significance of documents such as the Bill of Rights. Michigan schools should also expose students to the writings of Thomas Paine and other dissidents who challenged the failure of the founding fathers to take such documents seriously.
For instance, it should be known to children in Michigan public schools that the only people who could vote after the country was founded were White men who owned property. In addition, it should be taught that many of the founding fathers owned slaves and would not support efforts to abolish chattel slavery in the early years of this nation.
Michigan children should be taught about the Sedition Act of 1798. The Sedition Act fundamentally made it illegal to publicly oppose any measure of the federal government, legislation that was targeted at dissidents.
One additional part of Michigan’s education could be the statement inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which was written by Emma Lazarus is 1883:
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame. With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Such a statement flies in the face of the position that Representative Agema takes towards immigrants.
Then there is the matter of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The original pledge was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In 1924 the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution lobbied to change the Pledge’s words, ‘my Flag,’ to ‘the Flag of the United States of America. It wasn’t until 1954, during the height of the McCarthy hearings that the words “under God” were added to the Pledge, a campaign initiated by the Catholic group the Knights of Columbus.
Representative Agema continues to push his far right agenda on the people of Michigan and the news media continues to give him a pass by not asking reasonable questions to challenge his proposed legislation.
The continued sanitizing of Dr. King by the local press
As the country prepares to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, everyone with their own agendas tends to come out and use the memory of the slain civil rights leader for their own purposes.
A few years ago Glen Beck organized an event on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and many social conservatives will often misuse Dr. King’s comment about judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
However, social conservatives are not the only ones who misuse the memory of Dr. King. We often see social liberals use King in very sanitized, self-serving ways.
Such was the case in a January 15 story on MLive. The article focuses on what three local African Americans have to say about how to achieve Dr. King’s dream of equality. The Press reporter never really clarifies what was meant by King in terms of equality and presents each of the three responses as in step with what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.
What is particularly problematic about the article was the focus on black businesses, being entrepreneurs, development and preparing youth to “survive in the work world.” The comment about black businesses came from the head of the Black Chamber of Commerce, the statement about development came from a City Commissioner and the comment about youth surviving in the work world was from the acting superintendent of Grand Rapids Public Schools.
While one could certainly argue that King supported more Black economic autonomy and independence, he more often spoke about economic justice and against poverty. This is not the focus of the Grand Rapids Black Chamber of Commerce, as we noted in an article in September.
Ironically, although much of the emphasis is on economics, not much of what was said reflects the analysis that Dr. King provided during his life, particularly during the last few years of his life.
First, King recognized that the poverty that befell Americans, particularly Black Americans, is based on a history of exploitation.
“No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures, which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. I am proposing, therefore, that just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial.” (Why We Can’t Wait)
In addition to King’s version of reparations, the slain civil rights leader was also critical of free market capitalism:
“We are now making demands that will cost the nation something. You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with the captains of industry….Now this means that we are treading in difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism…here must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism.”
King’s critique of capitalism and the growing wealth gap in the US led him to support worker rights campaigns, which is well documented in Michael Honey’s recent book, “All Labor Has Dignity.” This support for workers led him to Memphis in April of 1968 to support sanitation workers who were striking for better work conditions and pay. King was also in the midst of an organizing effort to confront the federal government’s failure to defend American families it what was known as the Poor People’s Campaign.
None of this kind of analysis and advocacy on behalf of the poor is reflected in the comments by those cited in the MLive story. The lack of substantive commentary is disappointing as is the failure of the Press reporter to question how the sources comments were consistent with Dr. King’s notion of equality.
Lastly, it should be noted that the group United for a Fair Economy has just come out with their annual State of the Dream Report. In the 2012 report, which looks at the wealth divide in the US along racial lines, the authors identify four roadblocks to achieving Dr. King’s Dream.
- Disparities in income perpetuate poverty in communities of color and will continue to do so unless change is made.
- Increasing wealth inequality entrenches the racial economic divide.
- Education is one of the most important tools we have for increasing social mobility, yet dramatic disparities in education perpetuate inequality.
- The mass incarceration of people of color is historically unprecedented.
Imagine if the Press reporter had known about this report or familiarized herself with what Dr. King really stood for. How would that have changed the content and what would be the benefit to the West Michigan community?
This article by Anthony DiMaggio is re-posted from ZNet.
The Obama administration becomes a more worthy successor to the neoconservatives’ criminal agenda as every day passes. The parallels between the Bush and Obama administrations are so striking as to make me wonder, is there any difference between these administrations at all? The answer, sadly, seems to be a resounding no. In terms of public opinion, there appears to be a large difference in how the administrations are perceived, with Obama-noids among liberal segments of the population worshipping Obama for allegedly restoring honor to the American presidency and pushing for a more multilateral foreign policy. Such celebration is nonsense, considering the reckless criminality with which Obama has carried himself. The most recent example is seen in the newly emerged video depicting American soldiers urinating on a number of dead Afghans; whether they are civilians or Taliban “insurgents” is not ultimately known.
If nothing else, this act is flagrantly illegal under the rules of war, as described in the Geneva Conventions – which are legally binding upon U.S. military forces acting abroad. As the Guardian reports, the recent surfacing of the urination video compounds feelings of anger toward the U.S., in light of previous military transgressions in Afghanistan:
“The US military command in Kabul, which was severely embarrassed last year by revelations that Americans soldiers were running a ‘kill squad’ murdering Afghan civilians, said it would investigate the undated video, and that if it proved to be authentic, desecration of corpses would be regarded as a serious crime. Despoiling of the dead is illegal under the Geneva conventions as well as under US military law.”
The video depicts behavior that is unquestionably illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention requires parties to an armed conflict to take steps “to search for the killed and wounded,” while the First Geneva Convention (Article 15) and the Second Geneva Convention (Article 18) state explicitly that occupying powers’ responsibilities with regard to those killed in combat are to “prevent their being despoiled.” Urination on the bodies of the dead (whether they are civilians or military personnel) clearly constitutes a violation of the rules of war, as agreed to by the United States. Such protections under the Geneva Conventions hold the force of national law in the United States, as the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution states that foreign treaties enjoy protected status as the highest law of the land.
The Obama administration is trying to distance itself from the disturbing behavior in question, releasing a series of statements depicting these acts as the vulgar acts of a vicious few, and with buck passing directed at those in the field who engaged in this behavior. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called the act “deplorable,” and that “this conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military.” Panetta refrained from referring to the behavior as criminal, however, similarly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who expressed “total dismay” at the video, but also explained that the behavior ran contradictory to the alleged standards that “the vast, vast majority of our personnel – particularly our marines – hold themselves to.”
The harsh reality surrounding recent events in Afghanistan – when taken in conjunction with other behaviors of the U.S. – suggest that the Obama administration is guilty of the very same criminality and thuggery that characterized the Bush-neocon agenda. This is ultimately Obama’s war, and all the criminal and terrorist acts undertaken by foot soldiers on the ground ultimately fall on Obama’s shoulders. Obama may not have ordered soldiers to urinate on the Afghan dead, but he – like Bush – has created a system of criminality and impunity in which the United States flouts national and international law while contemptuously wagging its finger at the rest of the world. U.S. paternalism and aggression, it turns out, didn’t end with Bush. Democrats and faithful liberals will shudder at these thoughts, but their rose-colored glasses looking back at Obama’s first term are the product of their own indoctrination and willful ignorance concerning the reality of U.S. foreign policy.
Little distinguishes the foreign policy agendas of the past three presidents – Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Those who question this claim should review Clinton’s national security strategy, which reads like a carbon copy of the Bush administration’s strategy – articulated only a few years later. Clinton, like Bush, spoke in his security strategy about the importance of using military force to further U.S. military power and secure key natural resources around the globe. Clinton’s strategy similarly focused on the issues of radical Islamists and terrorism, while also stressing the alleged dangers of weapons of mass destruction and their supposed proliferation among Arab and Muslim states throughout the Middle East. Clinton was a gleeful supporter of murderous sanctions and the military siege directed against Iraq; his administration was long concerned with overthrowing Saddam Hussein through the use of military force. The only real difference between the Clinton and Bush administration was tactical; Clinton recognized that a long, protracted military occupation of Iraq would be toxic to his presidential legacy, whereas Bush stumbled incompetently through a war that destroyed his presidency’s credibility.
Obama’s behavior as commander in chief is identical in most respects to that of the Bush regime, as he’s displayed a fundamental contempt for the rule of law, for the sovereignty of foreign nations, and for the basic securities of the people of the Middle East and surrounding regions. His escalation of the war in Afghanistan led to the widespread destruction and destabilization of a society already left in ruins after decades of war. According to the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, estimates suggest that 1,462 civilians were killed in the first half of 2011 alone, an increase of 15 percent from 2010. The UN documented another 2,677 civilian deaths in 2010, following Obama’s surge in Afghanistan, translating into a total of 4,239 for the first year and a half of Obama’s Afghan campaign. This total represents a significantly larger death toll than that seen in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in which 2,966 were murdered. In total, various estimates suggest that somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 Afghan civilian lives were lost since 2001, between six to 13 times as many lives as those lost on 9/11. This pattern of killings is tantamount to dramatically escalating terrorism in the name of “fighting terror.”
Obama is continuing Bush’s reckless contempt for the law, state sovereignty, and elementary principles of democracy in many other ways. Most recently, he signed Congressional legislation illegally allowing the government to indefinitely detain American citizens who are merely suspected of supporting or engaging in terrorism (court proceedings used to determine whether such charges were legitimate). A list of other transgressions from this administration is extensive, and includes the following:
– A contempt for open public access to information, most clearly seen in the sadistic punishment directed at Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. While Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg successfully avoided incarceration following his exposure of official lies used to justify the Vietnam War, and is now celebrated as an anti-war hero, Manning has been held in solitary confinement – a punitive practice in which civil liberties lawyer Glenn Greenwald correctly refers to as “cruel and inhumane treatment.” As Greenwald argues, such confinement – and the accompanying deprivation of social contact that solitary confinement necessitates, “create[s] long term psychological injuries…For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he [Manning] sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.”
– The Obama administration’s invocation of the state secrets doctrine. In late 2010, Obama invoked this doctrine in order to prohibit a federal judge from obtaining information in relation to the CIA’s criminal targeting of U.S. citizens for assassination. The case in question involved U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi (who was believed to be residing in Yemen) for his alleged role in attempting to bomb a Detroit bound airliner. In encouraging the federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit over the targeted assassination, Obama claimed that the case would reveal information that would threaten U.S. national security. The state secrets doctrine is based on a long discredited and dubious justification for refusing to share information with other branches of government that reaches back to the 1950s. In 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government had the right to classify information that would endanger national security in relation to the widows of three engineers who were killed in a military airplane crash. The widows, who had sued the government for negligence, were denied remuneration after the court allowed the government to refrain from sharing information about the deaths. Declassified government documents made available decades later definitively refuted the notion that classifying information on the accident had anything to do with national security. Rather, the documents revealed embarrassing information exposing government negligence in relation to the crash. The government’s bogus state secrets justification didn’t stop the Obama administration from declaring its “right” to refusing to share information about its illegal assassination program (in terms of illegality, the 5th amendment explicitly states that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”). The state secrets declaration was rightly condemned by even the neoconservative elements of the establishment media such as the Washington Post, which complained that “there is something utterly un-American about saying that the executive branch can simply tell the judicial branch to butt out of a matter for national security reasons – and there’s no recourse.”
– Obama’s engagement in illegal attacks against a variety of sovereign states, including Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. All three have been targeted in various predator drone strikes, to the dismay of political leaders in those countries. These strikes were undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism, but clearly violate the United Nations Charter, which allows force only with either Security Council authorization or in the case of an act of self-defense against an ongoing attack. Obama would no doubt cite the 9/11 attacks as justifying predator drone strikes in the name of self-defense, but there’s little to take seriously in such a claim. The U.N. Charter (Article 51) states that any acts of self defense must be immediately reported to the Security Council (a stipulation in which the Obama administration has not fulfilled, since many of these attacks were secret and information about them was classified). The Charter also states that self defense includes only actions taken “if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.” The 9/11 terrorist attacks do not represent an ongoing attack on the United States (especially since the Obama administration already declared an end to the “War on Terror”), and this point is important to establish in light of the stipulation, referred to in Article 51 U.N. Charter, that military force used must be to repel an attack that is occurring in the present, rather than in an increasingly distant past. If the 9/11 attacks can be used to legally justify the use of force against any alleged terrorist threat, at any time, in any place that the U.S. chooses through the foreseeable future, then international law becomes vacuous – a tragic farce.
– The Obama administration’s complete contempt for law in the case of its vicious attacks on the rule of law, as related to due process and the rights of the detained. Obama notoriously succumbed to Democratic Congressional opposition to the closing of Guantanamo and the movement of detainees to U.S. federal prisons where they could await trial. Obama folded on closing Guantanamo, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that detainees festering there have to be granted full due process rights, as required under the Geneva Conventions and the Bill of Rights. Obama also continued the rendition torture program began under Bush, despite the fact that the use of rendition and torture for intelligence gathering is blatantly illegal under the Geneva Conventions and the 8th amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Obama announced this month that he will be moving forward with the lifting of the ban on military tribunals, in direct violation of the Supreme Court ruling, which declared such tribunals illegal. The Supreme Court declared in 2004 that military tribunals violate the normal proceedings that accompany domestic U.S. trials, since they grant a far lower standard of protection to the accused (tribunals allow hearsay to be admitted into court, allow convictions based on majority, rather than unanimous voting, and allow the government to monitor attorney client communications). Obama’s decision to ignore the Supreme Court’s outlawing of military tribunals (which violate the Geneva Conventions’ requirement that court proceeding provide normal protections for the accused) reveals just how far this administration has come in its criminality and contempt for the law.
Obama’s assault on basic principles of liberal democracy is an affront to our basic dignity. He’s helped institutionalize fundamental attacks on the American legal and political system that were the hallmark of an imperial Bush presidency. That Obama’s been able to pursue essentially identical policies to the Bush administration, while liberals praise the president for restoring respectability to the White House, is a testament to the powers of Orwellian propaganda and liberal delusion. Fortunately, most Americans reject such propaganda. As of November 2011, CNN polling found that Americans were twice as likely to oppose the Afghan war than to support it. Three-quarters want a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Strong majorities oppose rendition and the denial of due process to detainees. Most are suspicious of the notion that the president (or any political leader) can refuse to provide basic information to other branches of government or to the public. Sadly, the many transgressions of the Obama administration are largely ignored by a political-media system that obsessed over Bush’s crimes, but is all too happy to ignore them when they’re engaged in by a Democrat in the White House.
Occupy and home foreclosures
This video is re-posted from ZNet.
In recent weeks there has been an increasing shift on the part of some in the Occupy Movement, with emphasis on occupying vacant and foreclosed homes.
In December there was a national day against home foreclosures and in some communities people have moved from occupying public parks to occupying abandoned homes. There is great information and stories posted regularly at the facebook page Occupy Against Foreclosures.
The video below from the Real News Network features a man in Brooklyn who has occupied a foreclosed home and gain the support of the local Occupy Movement to keep and repair the home.
Take Action to stop deportation of young man from Oceana County
Over the past few years, the US government has increased its efforts to target and deport more and more political & economic refugees who have come to this country.
Many in the immigrant community and their allies have been alarmed at the rate at which these deportations have taken place. People have also organized to respond to this unjust policy of deportation through a variety of actions.
Last month we reported on efforts in southern Michigan to prevent the deportation of a mother of three that was successful, in part to the amount of people who objected to the deportation and the coalition of groups that came together to advocate on this woman’s behalf.
Now there is a campaign to prevent the deportation of a young man from Oceana County. The groups involved in the case provide the following background information:
On a November evening of last year 24-year-old Manuel Marron Marquez was relaxing at his home after work in Hart, a small town in Oceana County Michigan. Suddenly a group of armed Federal agents began banging on the front door.
The ICE agents demanded to be let in and claimed they were looking for a person who was on a wanted list as part of a Fugitive Operations detail. Manuel and his family felt they had no choice but to let them in but explained that the person they were looking for did not live there. In fact they honestly told the agents they did not even know who he was. The agents apparently did not believe them and insisted that Manuel and the others show their identity documents and submit to interrogations. The person they were searching for was not present and it is believed either never lived there or has not been at the address in years.
After determining that Manuel was not in US lawfully, Manuel was then arrested. Although he was not charged with any criminal charges he has been detained in Immigration custody at the Battle Creek jail ever since, including through the holidays, as if he was a grand criminal… Bond was denied by the judge because he does not qualify for any long term relief under current immigration laws. The legal arm of ICE who has been specifically authorized to use prosecutorial discretion particularly for Dream act youths also denied discretion although Manuel is a H.S graduate who has lived in the US almost his whole life.
This is another clear example of how our current immigration policies are not only flawed, but how they impact people and families.
People are being asked to sign an online petition created by One Michigan, a undocumented youth immigration rights group.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 