New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these items are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century, by Dorothy Roberts – Institutional racism and White Supremacy are very resilient and always seem to be manifesting themselves in ways that are not easy to detect. Black scholar Dorothy Roberts has been keeping an eye on these more subtle forms of institutional racism by looking at what the scientific and corporate pharmaceutical world has been doing in recent decades. Robert’s assertion is that the old racist propaganda promoted through eugenics is alive and well in scientific research, particularly in the medical field. Roberts investigates the research being done in genetics and exposes the racialized research that argues in part that black people are less healthy because of their genes and not because of social forces. Roberts demonstrates that institutional racism is deeply entrenched within some sectors of the scientific community, particularly those working for pharmaceutical companies. A must read for people who care about confronting institutional racism.
Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance, by David McNally – Global Slump is one of the best books I have read that looks at both the 2008 global economic crisis and the response from the public. McNally provides an important anti-capitalist analysis that re-frames how we understand the 2008 economic crash. He argues that is wasn’t so much about corruption and greed as it was an intentional crisis created by centers of capital as a mechanism of transferring more public wealth into private hands. McNally says this is evident with the use of the term “austerity measures,” where governments are eliminating public sector jobs, drastically reducing funds for public social programs, privatizing public services and changing policies and tax structures which benefit the rich. This effort to move more public funds into private hands has met significant resistance around the world in places like Greece, Iceland, Spain, the UK and Madison. McNally devotes several chapters to this resistance and suggests that this is the only real mechanism to fight global capitalism.
Homocons: The Rise of the Gay Right, by Richard Goldstein – Even though this book is nearly a decade old, it provides important analysis for those concerned about the future of the LGBTQ movement. Goldstein, an editor with Village Voice, argues that there are several writers within the LGBTQ community that have increasingly become “stars” of right-wing and conservative sectors. In fact, Goldstein argues that some of these writers have even adopted self-hating LGBTQ positions. Writers like Andrew Sullivan and Camille Paglia, according to Goldstein, have become what Ward Connelly is to the Black community – a neo-conservative who spends most of his energy trying to dismantle the gains made by Black Americans. However, Goldstein notes that the embrace of the likes of Sullivan and Paglia are not just with the right, but more often within liberal circles. Sullivan and Paglia argue that the LGBTQ community has asked for too much and pushed to hard, so much so that they have done damage to those in the gay community who just want to be “tolerated.” A quick read, Homocons is important for the continued discussion around whether or not the LGBTQ community wants to be assimilated or liberated.
Will the Real Terrorists Please Stand Up (DVD) – A fabulous documentary that looks at the recent case of the Cuban Five and in the process provides a detailed look at the US response to the Cuban revolution since 1959. Saul Landau, who has produced numerous political documentaries, presents us with an important critique of 5 decades of US policy towards Cuba. Landau uses Cuban nationals, Cubans in exile, US officials and political analysts in this in depth film. A must see for anyone who is interested in Cuban history and for those who are willing to come to terms with how US foreign policy functions.
Meijer and DeVos got richer while West Michigan poverty increased
Today, MLive reported that Fred Meijer and Richard DeVos are tied for 60th place on the Forbes 400 richest people in the US.
Besides listing other rich people on the list from Michigan, MLive reporter Chris Knape echoes the message from both Meijer and DeVos about how they made their wealth. Meijer, because he practices “higher standards, lower prices,” and DeVos because of his “international multi-level marketing business in his basement.”
The article did have useful data, since it reported that DeVos’ wealth had increase by 43% since 2007 and Meijer’ wealth went up 150% during the same period of time. Both, according to Forbes are worth $5 Billion.
These substantial increases in their wealth raise numerous questions, which the Press writer doesn’t pursue. One question might be how has the federal and state tax structures benefited these obscenely rich men? Citizens for Tax Justice note in a recent fact sheet that corporations pay well below the amount of taxes they should be paying because of the current federal tax structure. We all know what kind of tax cuts for businesses have taken place in Michigan in 2011, with the elimination of the business tax legislation.
Another question, which could be asked by journalists, would be how both DeVos and Meijer were able to increase their wealth at 43 and 150 percent respectively during a major global economic crisis? Some Meijer employees are unionized, but that union has made significant concessions in recent years on wages and benefits. Amway isn’t unionized and isn’t likely to unionize since the DeVos family has been rabidly anti-union from the beginning of their pyramid scheme business.
Maybe the most important question to ask about the $5 billion dollars that DeVos and Meijer are worth is how one can reconcile this increase in wealth during a period when more people in Michigan are living in poverty?
According to a 2010 report by the Brookings Institute, poverty in the Grand Rapids area increased 8.9% between 2000 – 2008. The same report shows that the percentage of the population living in poverty in the Grand Rapids area went from 15.7 in 2000, to 22.7 in 2007 and 24.7 in 2008. This would mean that one quarter of the people living in this area are living in poverty.
This increase in poverty is just as bad for children. According to the Michigan League for Human Services children living in poverty increased 19.4 in 2008 to 22.1 in 2009.
Considering that one quarter of the population in the Grand Rapids area are living in poverty and having to rely on some form of assistance, the announcement that Meijer and DeVos are both now worth $5 Billion dollars should cause us to question how that is possible.
My own experience in Latin America is that the poor to not celebrate and idolize the rich. In fact, they see the rich oligarchies as the source of their misery. Here in West Michigan, Fred Meijer and Richard DeVos are labeled as generous philanthropists that everyone should be grateful for. This is a stunning achievement of class warfare being conducted by the wealthy elite, when working class people think fondly of the local robber barons. However, as long as MLive and the other local commercial news media continue to celebrate such individuals, the possibility of developing a class-consciousness amongst working people will be a difficult task.
Obama’s Arc of Instability: Destabilizing the World One Region at a Time
This article by Nick Turse is re-posted from Tom’s Dispatch.
It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them — from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia — Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.
Garrisoning the planet is just part of it. The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services are also running covert special forces and spy operations, launching drone attacks, building bases and secret prisons, training, arming, and funding local security forces, and engaging in a host of other militarized activities right up to full-scale war. But while you consider this, keep one fact in mind: the odds are that there is no longer a single nation in the arc of instability in which the United States is in no way militarily involved.
Covenant of the Arc
“Freedom is on the march in the broader Middle East,” the president said in his speech. “The hope of liberty now reaches from Kabul to Baghdad to Beirut and beyond. Slowly but surely, we’re helping to transform the broader Middle East from an arc of instability into an arc of freedom.”
An arc of freedom. You could be forgiven if you thought that this was an excerpt from President Barack Obama’s Arab Spring speech, where he said “[I]t will be the policy of the United States to… support transitions to democracy.” Those were, however, the words of his predecessor George W. Bush. The giveaway is that phrase “arc of instability,” a core rhetorical concept of the former president’s global vision and that of his neoconservative supporters.
The dream of the Bush years was to militarily dominate that arc, which largely coincided with the area from North Africa to the Chinese border, also known as the Greater Middle East, but sometimes was said to stretch from Latin America to Southeast Asia. While the phrase has been dropped in the Obama years, when it comes to projecting military power President Obama is in the process of trumping his predecessor.
In addition to waging more wars in “arc” nations, Obama has overseen the deployment of greater numbers of special operations forces to the region, has transferred or brokered the sale of substantial quantities of weapons there, while continuing to build and expand military bases at a torrid rate, as well as training and supplying large numbers of indigenous forces. Pentagon documents and open source information indicate that there is not a single country in that arc in which U.S. military and intelligence agencies are not now active. This raises questions about just how crucial the American role has been in the region’s increasing volatility and destabilization.
Flooding the Arc
Given the centrality of the arc of instability to Bush administration thinking, it was hardly surprising that it launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and carried out limited strikes in three other arc states — Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. Nor should anyone have been shocked that it also deployed elite military forces and special operators from the Central Intelligence Agency elsewhere within the arc.
In his book The One Percent Doctrine, journalist Ron Suskind reported on CIA plans, unveiled in September 2001 and known as the “Worldwide Attack Matrix,” for “detailed operations against terrorists in 80 countries.” At about the same time, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed that the nation had embarked on “a large multi-headed effort that probably spans 60 countries.” By the end of the Bush years, the Pentagon would indeed have special operations forces deployed in 60 countries around the world.
It has been the Obama administration, however, that has embraced the concept far more fully and engaged the region even more broadly. Last year, the Washington Post reported that U.S. had deployed special operations forces in 75 countries, from South America to Central Asia. Recently, however, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me that on any given day, America’s elite troops are working in about 70 countries, and that its country total by year’s end would be around 120. These forces are engaged in a host of missions, from Army Rangers involved in conventional combat in Afghanistan to the team of Navy SEALs who assassinated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, to trainers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines within U.S. Special Operations Command working globally from the Dominican Republic to Yemen.
The United States is now involved in wars in six arc-of-instability nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. It has military personnel deployed in other arc states, including Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. Of these countries, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all host U.S. military bases, while the CIA is reportedly building a secret base somewhere in the region for use in its expanded drone wars in Yemen and Somalia. It is also using already existing facilities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates for the same purposes, and operating a clandestine base in Somalia where it runs indigenous agents and carries out counterterrorism training for local partners.
In addition to its own military efforts, the Obama administration has also arranged for the sale of weaponry to regimes in arc states across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. It has been indoctrinating and schooling indigenous military partners through the State Department’s and Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training program. Last year, it provided training to more than 7,000 students from 130 countries. “The emphasis is on the Middle East and Africa because we know that terrorism will grow, and we know that vulnerable countries are the most targeted,” Kay Judkins, the program’s policy manager, recently told the American Forces Press Service.
According to Pentagon documents released earlier this year, the U.S. has personnel — some in token numbers, some in more sizeable contingents — deployed in 76 other nations sometimes counted in the arc of instability: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Syria, Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
While arrests of 30 members of an alleged CIA spy ring in Iran earlier this year may be, like earlier incarcerations of supposed American “spies”, pure theater for internal consumption or international bargaining, there is little doubt that the U.S. is conducting covert operations there, too. Last year, reports surfaced that U.S. black ops teams had been authorized to run missions inside that country, and spies and local proxies are almost certainly at work there as well. Just recently, the Wall Street Journal revealed a series of “secret operations on the Iran-Iraq border” by the U.S. military and a coming CIA campaign of covert operations aimed at halting the smuggling of Iranian arms into Iraq.
All of this suggests that there may, in fact, not be a single nation within the arc of instability, however defined, in which the United States is without a base or military or intelligence personnel, or where it is not running agents, sending weapons, conducting covert operations — or at war.
The Arc of History
Just after President Obama came into office in 2009, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Drawing special attention to the arc of instability, he summed up the global situation this way: “The large region from the Middle East to South Asia is the locus for many of the challenges facing the United States in the twenty-first century.” Since then, as with the Bush-identified phrase “global war on terror,” the Obama administration and the U.S. military have largely avoided using “arc of instability,” preferring to refer to it using far vaguer formulations.
During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, for example, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, then the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, pointed toward a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, said Olson, the lit portion of the planet — the industrialized nations of the global north — were considered the key areas. Since then, he told the audience, 51 countries, almost all of them in the arc of instability, have taken precedence. “Our strategic focus,” he said, “has shifted largely to the south… certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t.”
More recently, in remarks at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., John O. Brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, outlined the president’s new National Strategy for Counterterrorism, which highlighted carrying out missions in the “Pakistan-Afghanistan region” and “a focus on specific regions, including what we might call the periphery — places like Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and the Maghreb [northern Africa].”
“This does not,” Brennan insisted, “require a ‘global’ war” — and indeed, despite the Bush-era terminology, it never has. While, for instance, planning for the 9/11 attacks took place in Germany and would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid hailed from the United Kingdom, advanced, majority-white Western nations have never been American targets. The “arc” has never arced out of the global south, whose countries are assumed to be fundamentally unstable by nature and their problems fixable through military intervention.
Building Instability
A decade’s evidence has made it clear that U.S. operations in the arc of instability are destabilizing. For years, to take one example, Washington has wielded military aid, military actions, and diplomatic pressure in such a way as to undermine the government of Pakistan, promote factionalism within its military and intelligence services, and stoke anti-American sentiment to remarkable levels among the country’s population. (According to a recent survey, just 12% of Pakistanis have a positive view of the United States.)
A semi-secret drone war in that nation’s tribal borderlands, involving hundreds of missile strikes and significant, if unknown levels, of civilian casualties, has been only the most polarizing of Washington’s many ham-handed efforts. When it comes to that CIA-run effort, a recent Pew survey of Pakistanis found that 97% of respondents viewed it negatively, a figure almost impossible to achieve in any sort of polling.
In Yemen, long-time support — in the form of aid, military training, and weapons, as well as periodic air or drone strikes — for dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh led to a special relationship between the U.S. and elite Yemeni forces led by Saleh’s relatives. This year, those units have been instrumental in cracking down on the freedom struggle there, killing protesters and arresting dissenting officers who refused orders to open fire on civilians. It’s hardly surprising that, even before Yemen slid into a leaderless void (after Saleh was wounded in an assassination attempt), a survey of Yemenis found — again a jaw-dropping polling figure — 99% of respondents viewed the U.S. government’s relations with the Islamic world unfavorably, while just 4% “somewhat” or “strongly approved” of Saleh’s cooperation with Washington.
Instead of pulling back from operations in Yemen, however, the U.S. has doubled down. The CIA, with support from Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, has been running local agents as well as a lethal drone campaign aimed at Islamic militants. The U.S. military has been carrying out its own air strikes, as well as sending in more trainers to work with indigenous forces, while American black ops teams launch lethal missions, often alongside Yemeni allies.
These efforts have set the stage for further ill-will, political instability, and possible blowback. Just last year, a U.S. drone strike accidentally killed Jabr al-Shabwani, the son of strongman Sheikh Ali al-Shabwani. In an act of revenge, Ali repeatedly attacked of one of Yemen’s largest oil pipelines, resulting in billions of dollars in lost revenue for the Yemeni government, and demanded Saleh stop cooperating with the U.S. strikes.
Earlier this year, in Egypt and Tunisia, long-time U.S. efforts to promote what it liked to call “regional stability” — through military alliances, aid, training, and weaponry — collapsed in the face of popular movements against the U.S.-supported dictators ruling those nations. Similarly, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, popular protests erupted against authoritarian regimes partnered with and armed courtesy of the U.S. military. It’s hardly surprising that, when asked in a recent survey whether President Obama had met the expectations created by his 2009 speech in Cairo, where he called for “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” only 4% of Egyptians answered yes. (The same poll found only 6% of Jordanians thought so and just 1% of Lebanese.)
A recent Zogby poll of respondents in six Arab countries — Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — found that, taking over from a president who had propelled anti-Americanism in the Muslim world to an all-time high, Obama managed to drive such attitudes even higher. Substantial majorities of Arabs in every country now view the U.S. as not contributing “to peace and stability in the Arab World.”
Increasing Instability Across the Globe
U.S. interference in the arc of instability is certainly nothing new. Leaving aside current wars, over the last century, the United States has engaged in military interventions in the global south in Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Egypt, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, the Philippines, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Somalia, Thailand, and Vietnam, among other places. The CIA has waged covert campaigns in many of the same countries, as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Chile, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, and Syria, to name just a few.
Like George W. Bush before him, Barack Obama evidently looks out on the “unlit world” and sees a source of global volatility and danger for the United States. His answer has been to deploy U.S. military might to blunt instability, shore up allies, and protect American lives.
Despite the salient lesson of 9/11– interventions abroad beget blowback at home — he has waged wars in response to blowback that have, in turn, generated more of the same. A recent Rasmussen poll indicates that most Americans differ with the president when it comes to his idea of how the U.S. should be involved abroad. Seventy-five percent of voters, for example, agreed with this proposition in a recent poll: “The United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest.” In addition, clear majorities of Americans are against defending Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and a host of other arc of instability countries, even if they are attacked by outside powers.
After decades of overt and covert U.S. interventions in arc states, including the last 10 years of constant warfare, most are still poor, underdeveloped, and seemingly even more unstable. This year, in their annual failed state index — a ranking of the most volatile nations on the planet — Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace placed the two arc nations that have seen the largest military interventions by the U.S. — Iraq and Afghanistan — in their top ten. Pakistan and Yemen ranked 12th and 13th, respectively, while Somalia — the site of U.S. interventions under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, during the Bush presidency in the 2000s, and again under Obama — had the dubious honor of being number one.
For all the discussions here about (armed) “nation-building efforts” in the region, what we’ve clearly witnessed is a decade of nation unbuilding that ended only when the peoples of various Arab lands took their futures into their own hands and their bodies out into the streets. As recent polling in arc nations indicates, people of the global south see the United States as promoting or sustaining, not preventing, instability, and objective measures bear out their claims. The fact that numerous popular uprisings opposing authoritarian rulers allied with the U.S. have proliferated this year provides the strongest evidence yet of that.
With Americans balking at defending arc-of-instability nations, with clear indications that military interventions don’t promote stability, and with a budget crisis of epic proportions at home, it remains to be seen what pretexts the Obama administration will rely on to continue a failed policy — one that seems certain to make the world more volatile and put American citizens at greater risk.
Industry rationale for the Tar Sands Oil Pipeline a Lie
In recent weeks there has been more debate about the Keystone crude oil pipeline that is being proposed from Western Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast.
Most of the attention came from the mass civil disobedience campaign in late August/early September in Washington, DC in an attempt to send a strong message to the US government that such a pipeline would be disastrous for the environment and indigenous people.
Those who have been promoting or endorsing the Keystone tar sands pipeline have argued that one of the main benefits of such a project is that it will allow the US to rely less on foreign oil. However, a new report from Oil Change International exposes that justification as a lie.
The new report, entitled Exporting Energy Security: Keystone XL Exposed, found that:
- Keystone XL is an export pipeline. The Port Arthur, Texas, refiners at the end of its route are focused on expanding exports to Europe, and Latin America. Much of the fuel refined from the pipeline’s heavy crude oil will never reach U.S. drivers’ tanks.
- Valero, the key customer for crude oil from Keystone XL, has explicitly detailed an export strategy to its investors. Because Valero’s Port Arthur refinery is in a Foreign Trade Zone, the company can carry out its strategy tax-free.
- In a shrinking U.S. market, Keystone XL is not needed. Since the project was announced, the oil industry acknowledges that higher fuel economy standards and slow economic growth mean declining U.S. oil demand, even as domestic production is booming. Oil from Keystone XL will therefore displace American crude from new, “unconventional” domestic fields in Texas or North Dakota.
Oil Change International Director Stephen Kretzmann noted, “To issue a presidential permit for the Keystone XL, the Administration must find that the pipeline serves the national interest. An honest assessment shows that rather than serving U.S. interests, Keystone XL serves only the interests of tar sands producers and shippers, and a few Gulf Coast refiners aiming to export the oil.”
However, we know that big oil is one of the main contributors to electoral politics and you can bet they are buying influence to make sure the Keystone pipeline goes through. You can track which oil companies are giving money and to whom at http://dirtyenergymoney.com/#.
Music Legend Tony Bennett on 9/11 and US Foreign Policy
While people may be familiar with the music legacy of jazz singer Tony Bennett, they probably aren’t familiar with his politics.
Yesterday, on the Howard Stern show, Bennett, when confronted by the misogynist Howard Stern, told the radio audience about a private conversation he had with President George W. Bush. Bennett when on to challenge Stern who wanted to blame the war on terror on the people who hit the World Trade Center, by saying, “they flew the planes, but we caused it……..we were bombing them first.”
Senator Stabenow announces new legislation that benefits agri-business
Last week Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, Chairwoman of the US Senate Committee on Agriculture, announced that she and her colleagues were proposing a new piece of legislation called The Charitable Agriculture Research Act.
According to the Press Release from Stabenow’s office, this new legislation would “amend the tax code to allow for the creation of a new type of charitable, tax-exempt agricultural research organization (ARO).”
Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Nunes from California, known as HR. 2959.
Both Stabenow and Nunes state that the benefits of such legislation would be the increased investment from the private sector in future agriculture research.
Stabenow states, “This is a ‘win-win’ effort that builds on decades of success and momentum by continuing to pursue new research – and doing so in a cost-effective way by engaging the private sector.” Nunes adds, “This bill provides an incentive for donations to ag research, creating an important new funding source and providing significant future benefits to innovation, production, and success in agriculture.”
While neither Stabenow nor Nunes explicitly mention private entities that will benefit from such legislation, it clearly will allow greater incentives for private corporations to make greater investments in agriculture research at the university level.
According to the corporate dairy industry, this new legislation is a benefit to them and other corporations and private agriculture associations. They provide a long list of agri-business entities that support the legislation, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation – a right-wing lobbying group for agri-business, and the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
At a time when food production, nutrition and environmental sustainability are paramount, government officials should not be providing greater incentives for corporate agriculture to be involved in a food system that benefits them and not the public.
Congressional Millionaires To Weigh Obama’s Proposed ‘Buffett Rule’
(This article is re-posted from OpenSecrets.org.)
President Barack Obama’s plan for a new minimum tax rate for people who earn more than $1 million a year will likely affect some of the people who will have a say on whether the rule becomes law.
Namely: Congress.
Obama’s new tax proposal, which has been dubbed the “Buffett rule” after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, may include a change in how capital gains are taxed.
According to research by the Center for Responsive Politics, about 40 percent of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and nearly half of all U.S. senators reported capital gains in 2009.
Among the 176 current members of the House and 48 sitting senators to do so? Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Tom Petri (R-Wis.) and Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
In contrast to Obama, many of the Republicans running for the GOP presidential nomination have proposed eliminating the capital gains tax.
Currently, according to the Tax Policy Center, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans pay 44 percent of all capital gains taxes, and 68 percent of the tax is paid by the richest 1 percent. The bottom 80 percent of Americans account for less than 3 percent of all capitals gains taxes paid.
Furthermore, according to the Center’s research, 244 current members of Congress were millionaires in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. That figure includes 138 Republicans and 106 Democrats.
That lofty financial status is claimed by only about 1 percent of Americans. The median American family had a net worth of $96,000 in 2009, according to the Federal Reserve Board.
Of course, not all millionaires make more than $1 million in income annually — that’s an even loftier financial status enjoyed by an even more elite slice of Americans.
No matter how you look at it, though, members of Congress as a whole are a wealthy bunch — typically several times wealthier than most of their constituents.
The median net worth for a current member of the U.S. House of Representatives was $725,000 in 2009, according to the Center’s research, and the media net worth of a U.S. Senator was $2.4 million.
The richest member of Congress is Issa, whose net worth was valued between $156 million and $451 million. (When members of Congress disclose information about their financial assets and liabilities, they are allowed to do so by giving broad ranges.)
Here is a list of the 20 wealthiest current members of Congress, according to the Center’s research, based on their financial reports covering calendar year 2009. (The Center plans to unveil its analysis of lawmakers’ 2010 financial disclosures later this fall.).
| Rank | Name | Party | Min. Net Worth | Average Net Worth | Max. Net Worth |
| 1 | Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) | R | $156,050,022 | $303,575,011 | $451,100,000 |
| 2 | Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) | D | $182,755,534 | $238,812,296 | $294,869,059 |
| 3 | Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) | D | $65,692,210 | $174,385,102 | $283,077,995 |
| 4 | Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) | D | $36,694,140 | $160,909,068 | $285,123,996 |
| 5 | Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) | D | $89,358,027 | $160,302,011 | $231,245,995 |
| 6 | Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R-Fla.) | R | -$69,434,661 | $148,373,160 | $366,180,982 |
| 7 | Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) | R | $73,685,086 | $137,611,043 | $201,537,000 |
| 8 | Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) | R | $38,936,114 | $109,034,052 | $179,131,990 |
| 9 | Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) | D | $61,446,018 | $98,832,010 | $136,218,002 |
| 10 | Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) | D | $64,210,256 | $94,870,116 | $125,529,976 |
| 11 | Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) | D | $46,055,250 | $77,082,134 | $108,109,018 |
| 12 | Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) | D | $49,083,204 | $76,886,611 | $104,690,018 |
| 13 | Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) | D | -$7,356,915 | $58,436,537 | $124,229,990 |
| 14 | Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) | R | $19,365,053 | $51,833,526 | $84,302,000 |
| 15 | Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) | R | $9,778,047 | $50,717,522 | $91,656,998 |
| 16 | Rep. Diane Lynn Black (R-Tenn.) | R | $14,673,049 | $49,409,519 | $84,145,990 |
| 17 | Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) | R | $19,898,179 | $43,797,589 | $67,697,000 |
| 18 | Rep. Richard Berg (R-N.D.) | R | $19,347,579 | $39,164,515 | $58,981,451 |
| 19 | Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) | D | $14,900,036 | $39,012,518 | $63,125,000 |
| 20 | Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) | R | $13,303,385 | $38,204,868 | $63,106,351 |
Bloom Collective to host planning event for the 10th Anniversary of the US Occupation of Afghanistan
The 10th Anniversary of the US Occupation is October 7, making this current war the longest in US history.
There are numerous actions being planned around the world. In the US there are actions planned in coordination with the Occupy Wall Street encampment, with online information at http://october2011.org/welcome.
The Bloom Collective will be hosting an event on Tuesday, September 27 at 7:00PM, in the basement level of the Steepletown Community Center, located at 671 Davis, NW in Grand Rapids.
According to the facebook announcement, they will show the film Million Dollar Militia (Big Noise Films – 22 minutes), a film that critiques the US effort to create an Afghan Army that will provide security if and when the US ever leaves.
After the film there will be an opportunity to brainstorm ideas for potential actions in Grand Rapids to draw attention to and resist the ongoing US occupation of Afghanistan.
Occupy Wall Street protests continue
It is now day 3 as thousands of people are marching, demonstrating and occupying an area near and around the US financial district known as Wall Street.
Organizers have been saying that they want this occupation to follow what has happened in Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, Spain and the UK, where the populations of those countries have been resisting government repression and global capitalism.
The Occupy Wall Street blog reported:
“Today, we occupied Wall Street from the heart of the Financial District. Starting at 8:00 AM, we began a march through the Wall Street area, rolling through the blocks around the New York Stock Exchange. At 9:30 AM, we rang our own “morning bell” to start a “people’s exchange,” which we brought back to Liberty Plaza. Two more marches occurred during the day around the Wall Street district, each drawing more supporters to us.
Hundreds of us have been occupying One Liberty Plaza, a park in the heart of the Wall Street district, since Saturday afternoon. We have marched on the Financial District, held a candlelight vigil to honor the fallen victims of Wall Street, and filled the plaza with song, dance, and spontaneous acts of liberation.”
The original call for this occupation was published by Adbusters in July; since then, many individuals across the country have stepped up to organize this event, such as the people of the NYC General Assembly and US Day of Rage. There’ll also be similar occupations in the near future such as October2011 in Freedom Plaza, Washington D.C.
Here is a segment from Democracy Now that frames the action in the context of what the Obama administration is doing to continually protect Wall Street.
Rep. Agema responds to citizen plea to abandon Islamaphobic legislation
After reading the September 3, 2011 GRIID post on HB 4769, Anti-Sharia law legislation proposed by Representative Dave Agema, I decided to email him to voice my objections. As a mother of Muslim-convert son and grandmother of two beautiful Muslim grandsons, I asked him to reconsider his stance as in reality we are in no danger of being subjected to Sharia law here in Michigan. I further related that such legislation only serves to further the Islamaphobia that the nation’s fear-mongers are hoisting on those American folks without an understanding of how our Muslim American neighbors live. In short, I asked him to keep Michigan a safe place for my family. I shared with him that mainstream Islam consider Muslims, Christians and Jews all “People of the Book,” as they consider the Old and New Testaments as holy books as well as their Quran.
Agema emailed me a response. I forwarded it to my son, Abdul Nur, who converted to Islam some 12 years ago and has studied Islam at schools in Chicago and at the University of Medina, Saudi Arabia.
Agema: My bill has only to do with foreign laws entering our courts that are contradictory to our state or federal laws. As far as “People of the Book,” I have read large portions of the Koran and his prophets sayings that are all adhered to by Muslims. While this is America and we have freedom of religion, much of the Sharia law is anathema to our laws.
Abdul Nur: Part of sharia law is that when a Muslim lives in a foreign land, he agrees to the conditions put out by that land. Muslims in the U.S. don’t want to implement the Islamic Jurisprudence of Sharia; they want to benefit from the domestic rules of Islam such as marriage, divorce, inheritance etc.
Agema: (Under Sharia law) only Muslims will be allowed to carry guns.
Abdul Nur: This is an absurd notion considering my first point.
Agema: Sharia law allows a man to have four wives.
Abdul Nur: If this is a point that is extremely offensive to Christians, understand that most Muslims also don’t want to have multiple wives.
(Abdul Nur further explained that under Sharia law, the parties involved in any marriage must both want to be married, without coercion. I might add that the Quran isn’t the only holy book with polygamist heroes.)
Agema: . . . women have half the rights of a man.
Abdul Nur: This is 100% false. Women don’t have a blanket ‘half the rights of men’ law applied to them. There are some situations where women are given less money than men in inheritance, mainly because men are the providers, more often than not, in Islamic relationships.”
Agema: . . . a man can beat his wives.
Abdul Nur: There is little to no evidence to support such a thing, and the commonly quoted evidence is of a weak nature.
Agema: When a divorce happens the kids go to the father.
Abdul Nur: Not true at all, the child is allowed to choose in most cases which parent he would like to live with.
Agema: Also, if you are a Christian then you can’t abide by their beliefs that Jesus is not the Son of God nor Savior.
Abdul Nur: Good thing we live in America where we have freedom of religion, and separation of church and state, oh wait…”
Agema: Also look up the word “tequia-spelling may be wrong)(sic). This allows Muslims to lie to Christians (sic) and jews (sic) if it furthers Islam.
Abdul Nur: This Is common amongst Shi’ah Muslims, and is considered an egregious practice amongst orthodox Muslims. It’s quite ironic to hear a politician claiming that our fault in this world is lying to further our benefits.
Agema: Islam means submission. 60% of the Koran and Mohammed’s writings are about how to treat infidels or kafirs.
Abdul Nur: This doesn’t justify any kind of response, and is blatantly untrue. I really doubt anyone took the time to quantify the amount of the Islamic Law pertains to non-Muslim people. Not to mention that in Islamic states, for over 1,000 years, non-Muslim people had rights and the freedom of religion. Something that, unfortunately, cannot be said about most Christian countries.
Agema: They have a right to believe what they want but they don’t have the right to be free from our laws and constitution when they disagree.
Abdul Nur: I agree with this, and I don’t know a single Muslim that wishes to make non-Muslims subjected to Islamic law in this country.
Agema: This bill applies to UN mandates as well and any other law that comes our way that denies someones rights according to our constitution. Most are found in child custody cases and divorce cases that have crept into our judicials system.
Abdul Nur: What’s wrong with us referring to our beliefs in domestic matters if both parties wish for it to happen? We aren’t trying to make anyone else do it. We just want to live peacefully according to our religion. Should that be against the law?
Agema also wrote, “When these (Sharia law) enter our courts through progressive judges our justice system is in error and people’s constitutional rights are lost because they used these instead of ours (50 cases in 23 states.”
I looked up this bit of propaganda, which is being disseminated by an extreme right-wing think tank, the Center for Security Policy, a group which Source Watch describes as being part of the Islamaphobia network. The Center for Security Policy invented and disseminated the Ground Zero Mosque hoax and served as major inspiration to Norwegian terrorist, Anders Breivik, who bombed Oslo and murdered 68 people (mostly teenagers) at a youth camp in July 2011.
What is Sharia Law?
According to the Islamic Society of Lansing, the group sponsoring a petition against HB 4769, “Sharia is a Muslim code of conduct, in the same way that the Bible guides Christians with their daily life. Sharia calls on Muslims to engage in daily prayers, give alms to the poor, partake in good deeds, and avoid sin. Sharia is not monolithic. While some elements of Islamic law are central to the faith, other elements are contextual based on time and place.
At no time does Sharia seek to supersede the Constitution or the local laws of the land. Muslims are obligated to abide by the laws of the country in which they reside as long as the country offers religious protection and grants the right to worship freely.
They go on to explain, “The bill does not specifically mention sharia, but as Muslims we feel that the legislation targets us based on its similarity to other “anti-Sharia” laws popping up in other states.
These bills play on the public’s fear of the unknown and capitalize on misinformation in the public discourse about the nature of Sharia. Additionally, the constitutionality of these laws will likely be called into question.”
This writer whole heartedly agrees with The Islamic Society of Greater Lansing summation of the bill. “HB 4769 does nothing to protect our legal institutions but only contributes to the growing climate of fear mongering against the American Muslim community which marginalizes and casts suspicion upon loyal Americans.”
