The Press doesn’t question Israeli military propaganda tour as it comes through Grand Rapids
On Saturday, the Grand Rapids Press ran a story in the religion section about two Israeli soldiers who were in town on a speaking tour.
The Press reporter presents the two men as very human, by quoting both of them, telling readers a bit about their childhood years and their desire to live in peace. The article gives the impression that these soldiers really struggle with the difficult circumstances they find themselves in at time, since Hamas and other “Palestinian terrorist groups” hide behind civilians. “They know … we’re not going to fire,” Bernstein said. “At times it does feel like were fighting with two hands tied behind our backs.”
There is no indication from the story that the Press reporter asked any questions of the soldiers or challenged them in any way. There was no mention of the fact that the Israeli military illegally occupies the West Bank and Gaza, something the global community (besides Israel and the US) has condemned for decades.
The reporter did not ask the soldiers about the 2008/2009 Israeli assault on Gaza that killed over 1,000 Palestinian civilians, destroyed homes, hospitals and schools as was documented in the United Nations Goldstone Report.
The Press reporter also did not look into the fact that there are a group of Israeli soldiers, who, when faced with the same hard decisions as the two men who visited Grand Rapids, decided not to be deployed in the occupied territories. These soldiers are part of a group called Courage to Refuse and they provide a sharp contrast to the stories and claims made by the Israeli soldiers on tour.
The Press article does mention that these soldiers were on speaking tour through a group called Stand With Us. After reading through the Stand With Us website it seems pretty clear that this is an organized and well funded effort to win over public opinion in favor of Israel. The website paints Israel as the victim in the conflict and that when the Israel military acts it is only for the safety and security of its citizens.
One simple question that could be asked of the Press reporter and editors is if they would write a similar article about Palestinians on tour who might be speaking out against the Israeli occupation. Would they humanize the Palestinians in the same way? Would they not question the claims made by the Palestinians and would they not seek out other perspectives to provide some “balance” for its readers?
IDF soldiers silence Israeli apartheid at local church
As Israel’s apartheid occupation of Gaza continues, more Americans are hearing reports of its brutal Zionist policies. These reports are slowly eroding the American public’s perception of this close United States military ally. To silence those reports, Zionist PR experts are fueling the fire of Christian fundamentalism (some of which are Christian Zionists) and its focus on the end times, where, according to its extreme and literal interpretations of scripture, Israel plays a pivotal role as “God’s chosen people.”
The Zionists are also raising political clout to ensure that the powerful Israeli lobby in Washington DC doesn’t lose influence. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) remains one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington DC, a group so powerful that not once has funding or support for Israel been denied over the past 35 years. Indeed, during that same time span, the US has vetoed dozens of United Nations resolutions condemning Israel for war crimes and other breaches of International law as well as refuted the Goldstone report that detailed the brutal war crimes Israel committed during the December 2008-January 2009 Operation Cast Lead, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 civilians in Gaza (12 Israelis, ten of them soldiers, lost their lives during this month-long attack on the occupied territory).
Now that we have an African American president in office, a president who has recently and quite timidly raised concerns about Israel’s expanding settlements, an influential Christian Pro-Israeli organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), is taking their message to African American churches. Along with the Zionist front-group, Stand With Us, they are sponsoring Israeli soldiers on a speaking tour through Europe and United States. Two of those soldiers brought their message to Grand Rapids on Sunday October 17, specifically to an African American church, Word of Faith Christian Center, 3030 Eastern Ave. SE, in Wyoming. As the refrains of “Prepare the way for the coming of the son,” the sanctuary filled with folks who had been hoodwinked into believing that the Israeli military is a present day army of God.
“It was clear to me what was going on there. It was part of the Pro Israeli lobby making inroads into the American political system in not so subtle ways,” said one African American man attending the service who was not a congregation member. “What was most disturbing, while not surprising, was that politicians always find a use for black people.’This is what we can use them for next.’ You can get people to do whatever you want them to do if you convince them ‘this is what God wants’ them to do. If Black America’s Christian faithful believe that these people wearing these funny caps are the people of the Bible from 2,000 years ago, then everything Israel does is holy and cannot be challenged.”
Indeed, much of what Israel is doing during its illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank needs to challenged. The human rights abuses here have 
reduced a healthy, hard working people into a population of refugees living in tents. Those who still have homes never know when an Israeli bulldozer might come to demolish it. Towering cement walls, which dwarf the former Berlin Wall, separate families from each other and from their places of employment.
Checkpoints restrict movement to school, work and medical care. Palestinians are often detained at them for eight or ten hours and routinely beaten and arrested. Because of the damage Israeli military strikes have made to infrastructure, access to clean water, electricity, education and medical care are spotty at best. And, while children go hungry, Israel blocks humanitarian aid.
Of course, this in not the picture the slightly built, congenial, handsome and articulate soldiers presented to the congregation. They claimed checkpoints were no different than going through security at O Hare International Airport in Chicago. And, they rewrote recent history to portray a peace-seeking Israeli populace that is constantly under attack by rockets and suicide bombers.
“They work very hard to create an image that you can be killed at any minute by a suicide bomber or a stray missile, then when asked about visiting (Israel), they tell you it’s the safest place, no one’s ever had an issue ,” said Nidal Kanaan, a Palestinian American who attended the service. “There was a big difference between their rehearsed comments and their (responses during the ) Q and A, which was very interesting to see. It was propaganda and lies and the church seemed to buy into it without reservation.
Historically, another group used propaganda and an ideology/military power to ethnically cleanse a people, very disturbing. Not once did they (the soldiers) ever say ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian people’ only “civilians.” They refused to acknowledge our presence.”
The first soldier, a former commander and decorated paratrooper, told how he was born on a kibbutz, grew up in small town near Haifa where Jews, Christians and Muslims “all live side by side in a good neighborly fashion.” He then shared how suicide bombers turned this idyllic life into a life of terror. “Suicide bombers are something ordinary, at shopping malls, on the buses, all the places where young people go to have fun,” he claimed. However, during the question and answer portion of the evening, as Kanaan pointed out, both soldiers assured the audience that tourists were safer in Israel than on the streets of Chicago or Philadelphia.
The soldiers went on to “debunk” Israel’s murder of nine people aboard one of the Humanitarian Aid Flotilla boats, Mavi Marmara. They claimed the murdered peace activists aboard the flotilla were all members of a terrorist group who were killed in self-defense. The soldiers lied that humanitarian aid flows freely into Gaza and the West Bank. And they dishonestly asserted that Israel seeks a peaceful two-state solution when in fact their actions prove their intention is to have free reign and total control of the region.
In retelling his experience during Operation Cast Lead, one soldier said, “Israel said enough is enough. Hamas is a worldwide terrorist organization with headquarters in hospitals. They use ambulances as a getaway car. IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) never fires at medical aid and never prevents medical aid. Guys when you’re out there its a whole different world. It’s horrible. I gotta be honest, it’s scary.”
According to the Goldstone report, a report commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council, Operation Cast Lead deliberately targeted schools, mosques and civilians. Israeli military blocked rescue parties from reaching the wounded, used human shields and killed fleeing civilians waving white flags. Former president Jimmy Carter wrote, “The Goldstone committee examined closely the cause of deaths of the 1,387 Palestinians who perished, and the degree of damage to the various areas. The conclusion was that the civilian areas were targeted and the devastation was deliberate.”
The soldier’s song and dance worked its charm, well, miraculously. Congregation members praised them, applauded them and hotly defended them against concerns brought up during the question and answer portion. And, at the close of the service, they passed the plate. Seems having air power second only to the US and $3 billion in US Aid (annually) isn’t enough to silence a broken, poverty-stricken, hungry and homeless Palestinian people.
The same soldiers from the Stand With Us tour made a subsequent stop at the University of Michigan on October 20th. Here’s how students there upstaged the deceitful presentation.
Iraq War documents provide more evidence of US brutality
On Friday, the group Wikileaks released some 400,000 documents on human rights abuses and US military actions in Iraq between 2004 – 2009. These newly released documents reveal the US military and private contractors engaged in war crimes on a massive scale. However, if one was to rely on the mainstream press coverage this is not the perspective one would get.
Yesterday, the Associated Press (AP) article in the Grand Rapids Press used the recently released documents as a way of justifying an ongoing US military occupation of Iraq by saying, “They appear to support arguments by some experts that the U.S. should keep thousands of troops there beyond their scheduled departure in 2011, to buy more time for Iraq to become stable.”
The AP article gives the impression that the US engaged in no wrong-doing and even prevented torture of prisoners. However, if one actually reads the documents it is painfully clear that the US committed human rights violations on a massive scale.
Independent journalist Robert Fisk writes that the documents show that the US was responsible for prisoner abuse, torture, rape and murder. Fisk also notes that the documents show the US killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, many at checkpoints and that private military contractors engaged in widespread abuse as well.
Josh Stieber, an Iraq War Veteran who participated in the 2007 “Surge” speaks to the recently released Iraq War documents and says they provide further evidence for US citizens to demand real accountability for the war crimes committed in our name.
Democracy Now invited Vietnam era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971 to talk about the significance of these new documents on the real role of the US in Iraq.
Another good source of coverage on this issue has been Al Jazeera TV, which has some of the best and most in-depth coverage of the new WikiLeaks documents so far. Here is one report on the role of US torture in Iraq.
Codes of Gender film at the Bloom Collective this Thursday
This Thursday the Bloom Collective will host a screening of the MEF documentary Codes of Gender: Identity and Performance in Pop Culture.
Written and directed by MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally, The Codes of Gender applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman’s groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape, showing how one of American popular culture’s most influential forms communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity.
In striking visual detail, The Codes of Gender explores Goffman’s central claim that gender ideals are the result of ritualized cultural performance, uncovering a remarkable pattern of masculine and feminine displays and poses. It looks beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that focus on biological difference or issues of objectification and beauty, to provide a clear-eyed view of the two-tiered terrain of identity and power relations.
The event begins at 6:30 with food provided by the Bloom Collective. The film starts at 7pm, followed by discussion.
Suggested donation of $3 – 5.
Codes of Gender
Thursday, October 28 6:30pm
Steepletown Center 671 Davis NW
Election Ads Breed Apathy and Ignorance
(This article was submitted by Aquinas College student Joe Spaulding)
Post-structuralist philosopher Michael Foucault talked about how what he called the “repressive hypothesis” – the idea that the nature of power is purely repressive, and individuals can empower themselves by fighting whomever is in charge.
His book The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 was specific to government and individual power over sex, but he uses that specific example to show that the repressive hypothesis is pretty terrible at accurately describing the nature of power relations. He also argues that the public’s acceptance of the repressive hypothesis as a true concept, can be used to further control them. Because people think they have the ability to resist, they are actually easier to control.
During the over-bloated onslaught of inescapable campaign ads, the American public is set to fall victim to the perilous political trappings of the repressive hypothesis once again. There are a few reasons for this, as well as a few implications, but the good news is, as long as people are mindful and observant, they should be able to help keep real democracy alive in America.
Most people know campaign ads should not be taken at face value, and politicians should not be taken at their word, especially when they are running for office. If a person is particularly partisan, they might see through what they perceive as the lies in the ads of the opposition, while meeting the candidate they favor half-way with claims that might be stretching the truth.
As shown by the growing dissatisfaction with the two major political parties as well as the two party system itself, most people aren’t decisively partisan. Not being blinded by ideology, most people can tell that the ads for candidates from both parties for every office worth running ads for are filled with both boastful and insulting lies.
The truth is so blatantly distorted in political ads that it’s difficult not to immediately recognize the dishonesty and hypocrisy. People can watch an ad accusing candidates of caring more about workers in China than in the U.S., and they know that is not be true for virtually every person running for every office here. When someone like Republican candidate for governor Rick Snyder claims he “created thousands of jobs” in his ads, most people know he wasn’t personally and solely responsible for those thousands. If the politicians in the ads didn’t get to hold an office of power after the election, these ads would simply be a rhetorical spitting contest not far from the dozens.
Why do lies matter if everyone can see through them? Because recognizing a lie makes a person feel satisfied and intelligent, and individuals that are those things are less likely to suspect they are able to be deceived This, rationally enough, makes them much easier to deceive The nature of this particular deception is one of masking. The thinly veiled lies in political ads create the illusion that the differences between Democratic and Republican candidates are vast enough to distort the truth over. They provide the framework necessary to convince masses of voters that the only standard that matters in the ballot box is selecting the lesser of two evils.
Make no mistake, if Pat Miles and Justin Amash, or Rick Snyder and Virg Bernero were so different, they wouldn’t need to spend millions of dollars trying to convince you those differences are real between 30 Rock and The Office or during the 7th inning stretch of the National League Championship Series final game.
The other aspect of campaign ads that has deeper impacts than the ones that are initially obvious is their pervasiveness. Billboards can be seen on the way to work, radio ads can be heard on the same trip or on the job site itself, online ads are visible at home and work as well, and television ads are as common as televisions themselves. This provides a huge psychological disincentive to researching candidates on an individual’s own time. Why would people want to spend the precious few moments they have out of earshot and line-of-sight of political ads looking up politicians’ positions? When individuals have this sentiment, and it is combined with the idea that they have seen through the obvious lies in ads, they end up dually deceived. They think they understand the candidates well and are extremely disinclined to check if their understanding is less than accurate. Political ads simultaneously breed ignorance and the acceptance of ignorance.
The pervasiveness and thinly masked deception that come with the political ad season will once again have the effect of pacifying the American public into accepting the two party system, and keeping them further alienated from their government. The traditional media will continue to do little more than report on which candidate’s tidal wave of airtime is having the best effect in the polls. At the very least, unstoppable ads will convince many that they only have two options at the ballot box; this undemocratically disempowers Libertarian, Socialist, Green, and other parties’ candidates and their supporters.
There are structural barriers to overcoming this desecration of democracy, like our winner-take-all/non-proportional representation elections, but they have no chance of being overcome until individual citizens take it upon themselves to put up with the garbage of political ads, and do the research themselves.
The real-time access to information the internet provides gives people today the tools to better understand who is being elected to govern them. People need to not be content that they saw through an obvious lie on a prime-time 30 second spot. They need to dig deeper to see what candidates’ positions really are, but they also need to vote their conscience. The old “I don’t know anything about this third party candidate’s policies because the have no ads” excuse doesn’t fly in the online age.
Traditional partisan politics has resulted in watering down bills that the public needed to be robust, fights over cutting taxes for those that need it least, and inaction at times when action was necessary. Obviously, and importantly, people, once they have informed themselves, need to vote. Things probably won’t change a great deal with a single election, but change will become evident in every new election over time. As long as people continue to put in the effort despite disincentives, we can make both Michigan and America more democratic.
We could learn a few things from the French Resistance
(This article by Mike Whitney is re-posted from CounterPunch)
Thank God for France. While American liberals tremble at the idea of sending an angry e mail to congress for fear that their name will appear on the State Department’s list of terrorists, French workers are on the front lines choking on tear gas and fending off billyclubs in hand-to-hand combat with Sarkozy’s Gendarmerie. That’s because the French haven’t forgotten their class roots. When the government gets too big for its britches, people pour out onto to the streets and Paris becomes a warzone replete with overturned Mercedes Benzs, smashed storefront windows, and stacks of smoldering tires issuing pillars of black smoke. This is what democracy looks like when it hasn’t been emasculated by decades of propaganda and consumerism. Here’s a blurp from the trenches:
Headline:
“French Energy Sector Crippled by Nationwide Strike… French energy facilities are close to total disruption in the wake of nationwide strike against the raise of the retirement age…..France has been hit by numerous protests across the country against a controversial pension reform that would rise the retirement age to 62 from 60….On October 22 morning 80 protesters blockaded Grandpuits oil refinery outside Paris, key supplier for Charles de Gaulle and Orly international airport.” (The Financial)
Shut ’em down. Take note, Tea Party crybabies who moan about restoring “our freedoms” while stuffing the backyard bunker with seed corn and ammo. Glenn Beck won’t save you from the “mean old” gov’mint. Liberty isn’t free anymore. If you want it, get out of the barko-lounger and organize. The amount of freedom that any nation enjoys is directly proportionate to the amount of blood its people spilled fighting the state. No more, no less. The man who is willing to accept the blunt force of a cop’s truncheon on his back is infinitely more praiseworthy than the leftist/rightist scribe crooning from the bleachers. The state isn’t moved by lyrical editorials or prosaic manifestos. It responds to force alone, which is why it takes people who are willing to “throw themselves on the gears” of the apparatus and stop it from moving forward. Unfortunately, most of those people appear to live in France.
The resistance is steadily building in France. The budding rebellion is cropping up everywhere—“secondary schools, train stations, refineries and highways have been blockaded, there have been occupations of public buildings, workplaces, commercial centers, directed cuts of electricity, and ransacking of electoral institutions and town halls…” And the big unions are calling for more strikes, more agitation, more ferment.
For more than a week, transportation has been blocked across the France due to the protests by students and workers. Sarkozy’s popularity has plummeted. 65% of people surveyed don’t like the way the French president is handling the strikes. 79% of the people would like to see Sarkozy negotiate with the Union on terms and conditions, but he won’t budge. Thus, the cauldron continues to boil while the prospect of violence rises.
“STRIKE, BLOCKADE, SABOTAGE”
This is from an anonymous striker:
“In each city, these actions are intensifying the power struggle and demonstrate that many are no longer satisfied with the order imposed by the union leadership. In the Paris region, amongst the blockades of train stations and secondary schools, the strikes in the primary schools, the workers pickets in front of the factories, people create inter-professional meetings and collectives of struggle are founded to destroy categorical isolation and separation. Their starting point: self-organization to meet the need to take ownership over our struggles without the mediation of those who claim to speak for workers.
We decided Saturday to occupy the Opera Bastille. This was to disturb a presentation that was live on radio, to play the trouble makers in a place where the cultural merchandise circulates and to organize an assembly there. So we met with more than a thousand people at the “place de la nation”, with banners stating “the bosses understand only one language: Strike, blockade, sabotage.” (end of communique)
The action was met with predictable police violence and mass arrests.
The pension turmoil is not limited to France either. US pension funds are underfunded by nearly $3 trillion. Will US workers be as willing as their French counterparts to face the beatings (to defend “what’s theirs”) or will they throw up their hands and appeal to Obama for help?
There’s no question that Washington elites have joined with Wall Street to offload the massive debts from the financial meltdown onto workers and retirees. Nor is their any doubt that they will invoke (what Slavoj Zizek calls) a “permanent state of economic emergency” to justify their actions. That will allow them to move ahead with so-called “austerity measures” that are designed to impoverish workers and strip popular government programs of their funding. The trend towards “belt-tightening” merely masks the ongoing class war which is aimed at restoring a feudal system of royalty and serfs.
This is from an article by economist Mark Weisbrot:
“If the French want to keep the retirement age as is, there are plenty of ways to finance future pension costs without necessarily raising the retirement age. One of them, which has support among the French left – and which Sarkozy claims to support at the international level — would be a tax on financial transactions. Such a “speculation tax” could raise billions of dollars of revenue – as it currently does in the U.K. – while simultaneously discouraging speculative trading in financial assets and derivatives. The French unions and protesters are demanding that the government consider some of these more progressive alternatives.”
But the retirement age is not really the issue at all. This is about union busting and “putting people in their place.” It’s about “who will call-the-shots” and in whose interests will society be run.
The French are fighting back against this “oligarchy of racketeers” and the ripoff system they represent, while, namby-pamby Americans are neutralized by signing their umpteenth petition or venting their spleen at a Palin rally.
Vive la France. Vive la Résistance.
Moral Ground Town Hall Meeting 10/26
This Tuesday, October 26 there will be a town hall meeting in Grand Rapids with co-editors of a new book entitled, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.
Author’s Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael Nelson will be talking about their new book and inviting people to be part of the discussion of whether or not we have a moral obligation to fight in the struggle against ecological devastation.
The book includes essays from radical writers/activists such as Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben, Barbara Kingsolver, Derrick Jensen, Wendell Berry, Wangari Mathai, Linda Hogan, Bell Hooks and Ursula LeGuin.
However, the book also includes essays from Thomas Friedman and Barak Obama, which on many levels seems to be counter to the messages of the other writers, particularly since Friedman and Obama are such strong defenders of the Capitalist system and are merely asking for reformist action with an economic system which inherently is ecologically destructive. This might be a useful question to pose to the authors when they are in town.
In a recent interview, Kathleen Dean Moore said that the whole “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Planet,” like changing light bulbs is just “technological tinkering.” “All of this kind of technological change is on the edges when what’s really needed is a cultural sea change. We really need to have a wave of sensibility and affirmation of our obligations.”
Moral Ground Town Hall Meeting
Tuesday, October 26 7pm
Spectrum Theater
160 Fountain St. NE, Grand Rapids
(Free Event)
Love Your Body Day event at GVSU
Yesterday, the GVSU Women Studies Center hosted an event in Allendale entitled Gleeks, Grenades and Girls with Curves: Pop Culture Images of the Body. Professor Jennifer Jameslyn gave a presentation on the importance of critically examining representation in popular media as part of Love Your Body Day.
Professor Jameslyn began by presenting some data from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) on representation in current network TV shows. Of the 587 main characters on 84 evening broadcast shows there are 565 Straight character, 14 Gay Men, 2 Lesbians and 7 Trans-gendered characters. A racial breakdown shows that 480 of the main characters are White, while only 72 are Black. For characters with disabilities there are a total of 6, 5 are men and all are White. Only one of these actors who plays a disabled person, is disabled in real life.
The presenter then talks about the importance of thinking critically about popular culture – whose bodies are represented, whose bodies are absent, whose stories are told and whose voices are silenced. Thinking critically about popular culture tells us something about ourselves and about societal norms.
The first example she critiques is the show Jersey Shore, which she says is a classic stereotype of Italian-Americans. Jersey Shore intentionally focuses on the bodies of the characters, both male and female.
One of the interesting aspects of the show is that the men do most of the cooking, they do the laundry and the cleaning, while the women tend to drink and fight. So while the show promotes strong stereotypes about male and female bodies it does subvert certain gender stereotypes in terms of what the characters do.
At the same time, Prof. Jameslyn says that despite some behaviors not being traditional gender norms, the show does perpetuate hyper-sexualized, heterosexual norms. For instance, the male characters will often talk about women in the show in negative ways, calling them hippos, grenades and whores, thus affirming hyper-sexualized norms about beauty.
The next show she talked about is the highly popular show Glee, which at one level has much more diversity than many other shows. However, the way they use race tends to reinforce racism and racialized norms. The show’s director does state that the show is designed to try to demonstrate that it is difficult for some people to fit in.
To illustrate the point about how the show sometimes trivializes racism she shows a clip of how one of the White students interacts with a Filipina exchange student that uses racism/White Supremacy in a comedic scene. The idea is to use racist depictions in order to make a point about racist depiction, but the presenter asks if this approach just ends up perpetuating racist stereotypes and attitudes.
Professor Jameslyn said that Glee is walking a fine line between doing comedy and perpetuating racist stereotypes. The show tends to do the same things with the down-syndrome characters, which are used more as extras with no real character development. However, there is one character in a wheelchair who is presented as a much more complex person. One show even has all the students in wheelchairs so that students would be more sensitive to the difficulties for people in wheelchairs. This episode ends with a musical performance with everyone singing and moving on stage in wheelchairs.
While many people may have viewed this episode as positive for bringing attention to those with disabilities, many individuals and organizations responded to this episode with strong critiques. One critique was that while this scene may have some positive elements they are still presented from an able-bodied point of view. The presenter points out that while the show spends lots of money to bring big name celebrities on the show they don’t spend the money to hire actors with disabilities, which would make a much stronger statement.
A third show she looked at is called Huge, which is based upon teenagers at a weight-loss camp. This show does a better job at showing more complex characters, characters which dig deeper with issues around body image and beauty. In this scene one of the main characters refuses to give into the idea that she should hate her body.
Even though the show is about people struggling with their weight it is more about identity and finding out who they are. In contrast to the show The Biggest Loser, Huge is not about celebrating people losing weight, but loving themselves for who they are. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after 10 episodes.
The presenter ended by stating that consuming pop culture is an important thing to do. “It can connect you to people, but we really need to be thoughtful about what media we consume. These representations are not fixed commodities. We don’t have to accept the media created norms about representation. We can step outside of that through more conversation and by making our own media that tells other stories and sends other messages about representation.”
How Permanent Are America’s Afghan Bases?
(This article by Nick Turse is re-posted from Common Dreams.)
Some go by names steeped in military tradition like Leatherneck and Geronimo. Many sound fake-tough, like Ramrod, Lightning, Cobra, and Wolverine. Some display a local flavor, like Orgun-E, Howz-e-Madad, and Kunduz. All, however, have one thing in common: they are U.S. and allied forward operating bases, also known as FOBs. They are part of a base-building surge that has left the countryside of Afghanistan dotted with military posts, themselves expanding all the time, despite the drawdown of forces promised by President Obama beginning in July 2011.
The U.S. military does not count the exact number of FOBs it has built in Afghanistan, but forward operating bases and other facilities of similar or smaller size make up the bulk of U.S. outposts there. Of the hundreds of U.S. bases in the country, according to Gary Younger, a U.S. public affairs officer with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 77% house units of battalion size (approximately 500 to 1,000 troops) or smaller; 20% are occupied by units smaller than a Brigade Combat Team (about 3,000 troops); and 3% are huge bases, occupied by units larger than a Brigade Combat Team, that generally boast large-scale military command-and-control capabilities and all the amenities of Anytown, USA. Younger tells TomDispatch that ISAF does not centrally track its base construction and up-grading work, nor the money spent on such projects.
However, Major General Kenneth S. Dowd — the Director of Logistics for U.S. Central Command for three years before leaving the post in June — offered this partial account of the ongoing Afghan base build-up in the September/October issue of Army Sustainment, the official logistics journal of the Army:
“Military construction projects scheduled for completion over the next 12 months will deliver 4 new runways, ramp space for 8 C−17 transports, and parking for 50 helicopters and 24 close air support and 26 intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. This represents roughly one-third of the airfield paving projects currently funded in the Afghanistan theater of operations. Additional minor construction plans called for the construction of over 12 new FOBs and expansion of 18 existing FOBs.”
If Dowd offered the barest sketch of some of the projects planned or underway, a TomDispatch analysis of little-noticed U.S. government records and publications, including U.S. Army and Army Corps of Engineers contracting documents and construction-bid solicitations issued over the last five months, fills in the picture. The documents reveal plans for large-scale, expensive Afghan base expansions of every sort and a military that is expecting to pursue its building boom without letup well into the future. These facts-on-the-ground indicate that, whatever timelines for phased withdrawal may be issued in Washington, the U.S. military is focused on building up, not drawing down, in Afghanistan.
Jobs on FOBs
A typical forward operating base set to undergo expansion is FOB Salerno, a post located near the Afghan city of Khost, not far from the Pakistani border. According to documents from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, plans are in the works for an expansion of that base’s fuel facilities. Estimated to cost $10 million to $25 million, these upgrades will increase fuel storage capacity to one million gallons to enhance land and air operations, and may not be completed for a year and a half; that is, until well into 2012.
In June, work was completed on a new, nearly $12 million runway at Forward Operating Base Shank, near the city of Puli Alam in Logar Province, south of Kabul. The base was formerly accessible only by road and helicopter, but its new 1.4-mile-long airstrip can now accommodate large Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, enabling ever larger numbers of personnel to be deployed to the site.
Not surprisingly, government documents released in August show that FOB Shank is also set for a major boost in troop housing. Already home to approximately 4,500 military personnel, it will be adding a new two-story barracks, constructed of containerized housing units known as “relocatable buildings” or RLBs, to accommodate 1,100 more troops. Support facilities, access roads, parking areas, new utilities, and other infrastructure required to sustain the housing complex will also be installed for an estimated $5 million to $10 million. In addition, the Army Corps of Engineers just began seeking contractors to add 452,000 square feet of airfield parking space at the base. It’s meant for Special Operations Forces’ helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. New aircraft maintenance facilities and 80,000 square feet more of taxiways will also be built at the cost of another $10 million to $25 million.
Documents reveal that this sort of expansion is now going on at a remarkably rapid pace all over the country. For instance, major expansions of infrastructure to support helicopter operations, including increased apron space, taxiways, and tarmac for parking, servicing, loading, and unloading are planned for facilities like FOB Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan Province, FOB Dwyer, a Marine base in Helmand Province, and FOB Sharana, a Paktika Province base near the Pakistani border, where the Army also announced plans for the construction of an ammunition supply facility, with storage space for one million pounds of munitions, and related infrastructure.
In late August, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reported that construction was slated to begin on at least three $100 million base projects, including FOB Dwyer, that were not “expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011.” In addition to enhancing helicopter operations infrastructure, plans were also announced for the construction of a new, large-scale wastewater treatment facility at Dwyer, a project estimated to cost another $10 million to $25 million and, like so much of what is now being built by the U.S. military in the backlands of Afghanistan, it is not expected to be completed and put fully into use until well into the second half of 2011, if not later — that is, after President Obama’s theoretical due date for beginning to lessen the mission in that country.
And whenever you stumble upon a document indicating that work of a certain sort is taking place at one FOB, you can be sure that, sooner or later, you will find similar work at other FOBs. In this case, for example, FOB Frontenac in Kandahar Province and Tarin Kowt, north of Kandahar, are, like Dwyer, slated to receive new wastewater plants.
Much of this work may sound mundane, but the scale of it isn’t. Typical is another of the bases identified by Pincus, FOB Shindand in western Afghanistan, which is to receive, among other things, new security fencing, new guard towers, and new underground electrical lines. And that’s just to begin the list of enhancements at Shindand, including earthen berms for four 200,000-gallon “expeditionary fuel bladders and a concrete pad suitable for parking and operating fourteen R-11 refueling vehicles” — tanker trucks with a 6,000-gallon capacity — as well as new passenger processing and cargo handling facilities (an $18 million contract) and an expansion of helicopter facilities (another $25 million to $50 million).
Multiply this, FOB by FOB, the length and breadth of Afghanistan, and you have a building program fit for a long war.
Permanent Bases?
This building boom has hardly been confined to FOBs. Construction and expansion work at bases far larger than FOBs, including the mega-bases at Bagram and Kandahar, is ongoing, often at a startling pace. The Army, for example, has indicated it plans to build a 24,000 square-foot, $10-million command-and-control facility as well as a “Joint Defense Operations Center” with supporting amenities — from water storage tanks to outdoor landscaping — at Bagram Air Base. At bustling Kandahar Air Field, the military has offered contracts for a variety of upgrades, including a $28.5 million deal for the construction of an outdoor shelter for fighter aircraft, as well as new operations and maintenance facilities and more apron space, among a host of other improvements.
In June, Noah Shachtman of Wired.com’s Danger Room reported on the Army’s plans to expand its Special Operations headquarters at Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and cited documents indicating that construction would include a “communications building, Tactical Operations Center, training facility, medical aid station, Vehicle Maintenance Facility… dining facility, laundry facility, and a kennel to support working dogs.” A contract for that work, worth $30 million, was awarded at the end of September.
Similarly, according to a recent article in the Marine Corps Times, Camp Leatherneck, which expanded in late 2009 from a 660-acre facility to 1,550 acres, or approximately 2.4 square miles, is slated to add three new gyms to the one already there, as well as a chapel complex with three separate buildings (one big enough to accommodate up to 200 people), a second mess hall (capable of serving 4,000 Marines at a time), a new PX housed in a big-top tent, with 10,000 square feet of sales space — the current base facility only has 3,000 square feet — and the installation of a $200 million runway that can accommodate C-5 cargo planes and 747 passenger jets.
Despite a pledge from the Obama administration to begin its troop drawdowns next July, this ongoing base-construction splurge, when put together with recent signals from the White House, civilians at the Pentagon, and top military commanders, including Afghan war chief General David Petraeus, suggests that the process may be drawn out over many years. During a recent interview with ABC News Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz, for instance, Petraeus affirmed the president’s July 2011 timeline, but added a crucial caveat. “It will be a pace that is determined by conditions,” he said.
Almost a decade into the Afghan War, he claimed, the U.S. military had “finally gotten the inputs right in Afghanistan.” Raddatz then asked if the “counterinsurgency clock” had just restarted — if, that is, it could be another nine or ten years to achieve success. “Yeah,” replied Petraeus, hastening to add that American soldiers killed there over the previous nine years had not simply died for nothing. “But it is just at this point that we feel that we do have the organizations that we learned in Iraq and from history are necessary for the conduct that this kind of campaign.”
The building boom occurring on U.S. bases across Afghanistan and the contracts for future construction being awarded at the moment seem to confirm that, whatever the White House has in mind, the military is operating on something closer to the Petraeus timeline. The new Special Operations base at Mazar-e-Sharif, to take but one of many examples, may not be completed and fully occupied for at least a year and a half. Other construction contracts, not yet even awarded, are expected to take a year or more to complete. And military timelines suggest that, if the Pentagon gets its way, American troop levels may not dip below the numbers present when Obama took office, approximately 36,000 troops, until 2016 or beyond.
At the moment, the American people are being offered one story about how the American war in Afghanistan is to proceed, while in Afghanistan their tax dollars are being invested in another trajectory entirely. The question is: How permanent are U.S. bases in Afghanistan? And if they are not meant to be used for a decade or more to come, why is the Pentagon still building as if they were?
Recently, the Army sought bids from contractors willing to supply power plants and supporting fuel systems at forward operating bases in Afghanistan for up to five years. Power plants, fuel systems, and the bases on which they are being built are facts on the ground. Such facts carry a weight of their own, and offer a window into U.S. designs in Afghanistan that may be at least as relevant as anything Barack Obama or his aides have been saying about draw-downs, deadlines, or future withdrawal plans.
If you want to ask hard questions about America’s Afghan War, start with those bases.
Yesterday, the Grand Rapids Press ran an Associated Press (AP) story about a group of state law from around the country who want to change the US Constitution say that children of undocumented immigrants who are born in the US can no longer get automatic citizenship.
The article cites Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce as one of the lawmakers pushing for a change to the US Constitution. In the article Pearce, who wrote Arizona’s anti-immigrant law that went into affect this year, says, “We’ve allowed the hijacking of the 14th Amendment.”
The article also cites a constitutional lawyer and a spokesperson with a pro-immigration group also from Arizona.
At the end of the story the AP reporters list the states that have lawmakers who are joining in on this effort – Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
Among the Michigan lawmakers whom are in favor of changing the US Constitution so as to not grant automatic citizenship to child born in the US from undocumented immigrants is Rep. Dave Agema. This fact prompted Grand Rapids Press writer Troy Reimink to post a short piece on MLive yesterday in order to stimulate some discussion about the topic.
Reimink quotes Rep. Agema who says, “When you get a whole bunch of states on board with this, we’ll try to get the Congress to change the 14th Amendment back to what it should be.” However, the Press writer does not ask Agema what he means when he says changing the 14th Amendment back to what it was.
Reimink also does not provide any background on Agema as to why he would support such an effort. Agema is one of the state legislators who supported a Michigan version of the anti-immigration Arizona bill. Agema also favors making English the “official” language of Michigan and held a bogus public hearing on immigration in 2007.
In addition, Reimink links to a Washington Independent article which states that lawmakers working to change the 14th Amendment would, “receive help in crafting the legislation from Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legislative arm of the pro-enforcement Federation for American Immigration Reform.”
It is unfortunate that Reimink did not mention that this group would help craft this legislation, especially since they are one of the largest anti-immigration groups in the country. FAIR has also been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
