Obama Drops 2009 Pledge to Withdraw Combat Troops from Iraq
(This article is re-posted from the Inter Press Service.)
Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.
Obama declared in a speech to disabled U.S. veterans in Atlanta that “America’s combat mission in Iraq” would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of “supporting and training Iraqi security forces”.
That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on Feb. 27, 2009, when he said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”
In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, “I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months.” Obama said nothing in his speech Monday about withdrawing “combat brigades” or “combat troops” from Iraq until the end of 2011.
Even the concept of “ending the U.S. combat mission” may be highly misleading, much like the concept of “withdrawing U.S. combat brigades” was in 2009.
Under the administration’s definition of the concept, combat operations will continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of U.S. forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to “advise and assist” Iraqi forces.
An official who spoke with IPS on condition that his statements would be attributed to a “senior administration official” acknowledged that the 50,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline will have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been withdrawn.
The official also acknowledged that the troops will engage in some combat but suggested that the combat would be “mostly” for defensive purposes.
That language implied that there might be circumstances in which U.S. forces would carry out offensive operations as well.
IPS has learned, in fact, that the question of what kind of combat U.S. troops might become involved in depends in part on the Iraqi government, which will still be able to request offensive military actions by U.S. troops if it feels it necessary.
Obama’s jettisoning of one of his key campaign promises and of a high-profile pledge early in his administration without explicit acknowledgment highlights the way in which language on national security policy can be manipulated for political benefit with the acquiescence of the news media.
Obama’s apparent pledge of withdrawal of combat troops by the Sept. 1 deadline in his Feb. 27, 2009 speech generated headlines across the commercial news media. That allowed the administration to satisfy its anti-war Democratic Party base on a pivotal national security policy issue.
At the same time, however, it allowed Obama to back away from his campaign promise on Iraq withdrawal, and to signal to those political and bureaucratic forces backing a long- term military presence in Iraq that he had no intention of pulling out all combat troops at least until the end of 2011.
He could do so because the news media were inclined to let the apparent Obama withdrawal pledge stand as the dominant narrative line, even though the evidence indicated it was a falsehood.
Only a few days after the Obama speech, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was more forthright about the policy. In an appearance on Meet the Press Mar. 1, 2009, Gates said the “transition force” remaining after Aug. 31, 2010 would have “a very different kind of mission”, and that the units remaining in Iraq “will be characterized differently”.
“They will be called advisory and assistance brigades,” said Gates. “They won’t be called combat brigades.”
But “advisory and assistance brigades” were configured with the same combat capabilities as the “combat brigade teams” which had been the basic U.S. military unit of combat organization for six years, as IPS reported in March 20009.
Gates was thus signaling that the military solution to the problem of Obama’s combat troop withdrawal pledge had been accepted by the White House.
That plan had been developed in late 2008 by Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM chief, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who were determined to get Obama to abandon his pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
They came up with the idea of “remissioning” – sticking a non-combat label on the combat brigade teams — as a way for Obama to appear to be delivering on his campaign pledge while actually abandoning it.
The “remissioning” scheme was then presented to Obama by Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in Chicago on Dec. 15, 2008, according a report in the New York Times three days later.
It was hardly a secret that the Obama administration was using the “remissioning” ploy to get around the political problem created by his acceding to military demands to maintain combat troops in Iraq for nearly three more years.
Despite the fact that the disparity between Obama’s public declaration and the reality of the policy was an obvious and major political story, however, the news media – including the New York Times, which had carried multiple stories about the military’s “remissioning” scheme – failed to report on it.
The “senior administration official” told IPS that Obama is still “committed to withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011”. That is the withdrawal deadline in the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement of November 2008.
But the same military and Pentagon officials who prevailed on Obama to back down on his withdrawal pledge also have pressed in the past for continued U.S. military presence in Iraq beyond 2011, regardless of the U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government.
In November 2008, after Obama’s election, Gen. Odierno was asked by Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks “what the U.S. military presence would look like around 2014 or 2015”. Odierno said he “would like to see a …force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000”, which would still be carrying out combat operations.
Last February, Odierno requested that a combat brigade be stationed in Kirkuk to avoid an outbreak of war involving Kurdish and Iraqi forces vying for the region’s oil resources – and that it be openly labeled as such – according to Ricks.
In light of the fact that Obama had already agreed to Odierno’s “remissioning” dodge, the only reason for such a request would be to lay the groundwork for keeping a brigade there beyond the 2011 withdrawal deadline.
Obama brushed off the proposal, according to Ricks, but it was unclear whether the reason was that Iraqi political negotiations over a new government were still ongoing.
In July, Odierno suggested that a U.N. peacekeeping force might be needed in Kirkuk after 2011, along with a hint that a continued U.S. presence there might be requested by the Iraqi government.
This is the second of a three-part series . Look for Part 3 next week.
In 2005, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community tried to lease the sacred Eagle Rock site from the State of Michigan for ceremonial use. Located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula near Marquette, Eagle Rock and the surrounding Yellow Dog Plains are part of lands ceded to the tribe for hunting and fishing by an 1842 government treaty upheld by the courts again in 1983. The DNR declined to lease them the land because of concerns about how ceremonial use might impact this pristine wildlife habitat.
In 2007, the State of Michigan leased the land to Rio Tinto’s Kennecott Mining Company. Today, the lofty trees, endangered animal habitats and celebrated blueberry bushes surrounding Eagle Rock are just a memory. Kennecott bulldozed them, erected chain-link and razor wire fence and prepares to drill its entryway to the new mine, directly through the sacred rock. This destruction will seem miniscule when compared to the environmental devastation that will soon follow—damage that will lay waste the Yellow Dog plains, poison the Salmon Trout River, kill wildlife and impact one of the world’s most important sources of fresh drinking water, the Great Lakes.
Why would the State refuse the gentle use of the land to its indigenous peoples but allow its destruction by a corporation known for environmental destruction and human rights abuses? Well, the answer of course, is profit. Profit has always trumped the treaties our government has made with Native Americans.
Who will stand and fight? The Native American people living in the area and their few allies. From the look of the situation today, the fight is all but lost.
“Throughout the US, Native American People are fighting to protect the sacred places from development,” says Jessica Koski, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community member. “The courts have ruled that constitution isn’t strong enough to protect native people, especially when it comes in conflicts with development.”
Some environmentalists say the new Michigan mining law is to blame. Others say the law is good, but the MDNRE (formerly MDEQ) is not enforcing it. Either way, our Native peoples lose. That loss will be felt sorely by all of Michigan’s residents in the not too distant future.
Weekend gathering inspires a last stand
Last weekend, Native and non-Native people from the Marquette area and across the Great Lakes region joined together at the 3rd Annual Protect the Earth gathering.
Winona LaDuke’s Saturday morning Keynote speech emphasized the importance of creating greater resiliency and self-determination within Native communities. She urged Native peoples to strive for food and energy sovereignty in order to decrease their dependence on multinational corporations. This advice seems just as applicable for those of us living in non-native communities.
“As Anishinaabekwe (Anishinaabe women), it is our responsibility to care for the water,” Koski says “Protect the Earth and the annual walk to Eagle Rock re-energized our spirits and commitments to protecting the Yellow Dog Plains. As a people, it is our responsibility to not allow Rio Tinto the social license to mine near our freshwater and Great Lakes.”
A main focus of the gathering was Kennecott’s Eagle Mine and how to increase public awareness of sulfide and uranium mining interest throughout the Upper Peninsula. Protecting Migi zii wa sin, Eagle Rock, as a National Historic Site and Sacred Place to the Anishinaabe people was of special concern.
University of Michigan anthropologist, Stuart Kirsch, spoke near the Yellow Dog River about the detrimental effects of mining along the Ok Tedi and Fly Rivers for the Yonggom people of Papua New Guinea. Indeed, Rio Tinto/Kennecott has a record of abuses against indigenous peoples all over the world. Kirsch emphasized that it is not too late to stop sulfide mining from contaminating our rivers and watersheds here in the U.P.
We need the whole state, the public to say ‘no.’
Indeed, the Native Americans living in the UP will feel the first and greatest impact of the Kennecott Eagle mine. Like the indigenous tribes in the film Avatar, they are watching their sacred site desecrated for profit. They will feel the loss of income and an important food source as fisheries are fouled. Their stand against bulldozers and barbed wire has already resulted in overzealous police action and illegal arrests. Non-native people and those living downstate cannot afford to let them stand alone.
“We really need supporters downstate,” Koski says. “ We need the whole state, the public to say ‘no.’ We need to look at what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico and realize the responsibility that Michigan holds to the Great Lakes. These are the biggest fresh water lakes in the world. We need to stand up and protect our water.”
New GRIID Feature – Dissecting Green Capitalism
In recent years, those who embrace the so-called free market system have been presenting themselves as a “green” business or promoting a form of corporate sustainability. We have already written a fair amount that critiques this new development in Capitalism, but we thought it would be important to have a section to archive articles that dissect corporate sustainability.
Starting today, GRIID will be posting articles that either critique “Green Capitalism” in general, focus on the sustainability claims of a particular company or provide information about resources that are truly sustainable and not just a green label.
Corporate Profile – ALCOA
Every week MiBiz sends out an E-mail about companies in the area that are promoting themselves as practicing some sort of sustainability. One of the companies featured this week was Alcoa Howmet in Whitehall.
The article in MiBiz talks about the company’s “Make an Impact” project, which is a joint effort between Alcoa and the Pew Center for Global Climate Change. The whole point of the “Make an Impact” project is for Alcoa to get the employees to think about ways to personally save some money and reduce their carbon footprint.
The whole webpage is designed to look at what one can do at home, with transportation, shopping, in the yard, recycling and at work. However, none of the suggestions are really advocating the kind of serious shift that is necessary to avert global warming. In fact, this seems to be the approach to much of the co-called sustainability efforts that corporate America practices, where they promote personal responsibility instead of corporate behavior.
The MiBiz article sites Alcoa Howmet representative Amy Heisser who says, “It’s absolutely an Alcoa value to really be able to sustain where we live, work and play.” The business paper does say that the Alcoa company in Whitehall plans to reduce some of its landfill waste, but they also acknowledged that the company increased “the amount of metal it has melted by 48 percent from 2002 to 2006.” Herein lies one of the many fallacies of Green Capitalism. It promotes what they label sustainability, while at the same time promoting growth. And we have to always ask ourselves what kind of growth are we talking about?
In the case of Alcoa, it means the mining and production of aluminum. By it’s own admission, Alcoa expects aluminum consumption to double by 2020. So, what does that mean for the planet and what is the company’s track record to date as it relates to environmentally sustainable practices?
First, it should be mentioned that Alcoa uses coal-fired power plants at several of its facilities in the US and we know how much carbon is produced from coal burning. Second, Alcoa has been cited numerous times by the state and federal agencies for pollution violations at facilities all across the US. One example is at the Alcoa facility near Austin, Texas where the EPA found them guilty of violating the Clean Air Act. “One hundred and four thousand tons of emissions (calculated from Alcoa’s own estimates) were pouring annually from the plant; including 40,000 tons of smog-producing nitrogen dioxode and 60,000 tons of acid-rain-generating sulphur dioxide, as well as highly toxic metals such as mercury, copper, lead, and others, which eventually accumulated in Texas lakes and rivers.”
Third, Alcoa operates in many countries and also has a history of polluting communities and eco-systems around the world. CorpWatch cites examples in Australia where Alcoa has polluted and they cite an example in Suriname where the company forced thousands of people to relocate so that the company could construct a damn to generate electricity for their production facility. Damning of rivers is common where aluminum production occurs and Alcoa operates 228 facilities in 32 different countries.
Politically, Alcoa is very connected and active in efforts to limit policies to reduce global warming. The company is a member of the US Climate Action Partnership, a business consortium that has actively worked to fight against or limit legislative efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country. As an individual corporation, Alcoa has spent lots of money to influence Washington politics and according to Open Secrets has spent over $1 million this year already lobbying members of Congress.
So while the Muskegon Chamber of Commerce might be endorsing Alcoa Howmet’s education programs about reducing one’s carbon footprint, we should not be fooled about Alcoa’s role in polluting the planet and negatively affecting communities of people around the world.
Arizona: State of Fear
(This story is re-posted from the Real News Network.)
‘Attrition by enforcement’ is the name of the game in Arizona. The goal is to dissuade undocumented immigration by making life unbearable for the undocumented already living in Arizona. Desert tent jails and arbitrary checkpoints are two of the tactics used to strike fear into the undocumented with the goal of deterring others from coming. Ecuadorian filmmaker Oscar León, who has been covering this issue from Arizona for the past three years, points out that the undocumented can’t possibly be separated from the documented Latino population without a police state, and Arizona has been developing its own version long before the controversial SB1070 law was on the map.
Enbridge: Profile of a Corporate Polluter
“Energy is necessary for us to live long healthy lives. The oil sands is the second largest reserve in the world, and we can’t deny access to the rest of the world to that huge resource.” Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel speaking to Chamber of Commerce Canada
Last week we provided some initial background on the company that is responsible for the 1 million gallon plus oil spill into the Kalamazoo River. After further investigation we found that Enbridge has a long history of environmental contamination, left of land and environmental racism.
According to a report from Tar Sands Watch:
Between 1999 and 2008, across all of Enbridge’s operations there were 610 spills that released close to 132,000 barrels of hydrocarbons into the environment. This amounts to approximately half of the oil that spilled from the oil tanker the Exxon Valdez after it struck a rock in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1988.
This legacy of spills has resulted in wildlife extermination, water and soil contamination and increased levels of negative human healthy effects due to exposure to the fossil fuel leakage from Enbridge pipelines.
Over the years Enbridge has also used numerous lawsuits against citizens and communities of people to gain access to land to run their pipelines through. They have used eminent domain as a way to force people from their land and lawsuits against numerous communities, particularly indigenous communities in Canada and the US.
Enbridge is able to achieve these goals because it is a well-connected corporation, with numerous members of its board of directors working for or connected to some of the largest banks in Canada, as well as the CEO and board members connections to universities. Enbridge has been developing its political ties for decades now and these relationships are paying off in the form of massive subsidies and access to land for their projects. The Grand Rapids Press did publish a story about former Governor James Blanchard being on the board of Enbridge, but the article does little to explore the vast political connections that the company has.
The issue that Enbridge is most recently connected with and one that has recent virtually no coverage in the commercial news media is the company’s role in the Canadian Tar Sands Project.
The Tar Sands Project is a massive multi-billion dollar project that will mine vast areas of Western Canada in order to extract fossil fuels. Many environmentalists refer to the tar sands project as one of the most devastating single industrial projects in the history of humanity.
According to one activist website, “The tar sands are already slated to be the cause of up to the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin. Currently approved projects will see 3 million barrels of tar sands mock crude produced daily by 2018; for each barrel of oil up to as high as five barrels of water are used.” This source goes on to say that, “The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.”
The role that Enbridge will play is to construct pipelines that will carry the asphalt-like substance to the west coast, where it will be transported to Asian refineries. Most of pipelines will go through indigenous territories throughout Canada, according to Andrew Nikiforuk, author of one of the best books on this topic, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent.
For us to have an honest assessment of the consequences of the recent Michigan oil disaster and expect any real accountability, it is essential that we have a better understanding of the Enbridge company and the role it plays as a major corporate polluter and political power broker.
Dow Chemical and the Greenwashing of the Olympics
Recently it was announced that the Michigan-based company Dow Chemical will be the official “chemistry company” of the Olympic Games. West MiBiz made this announcement in one of their weekly updates that the chemical company would be a corporate sponsor of the Olympic Games through 2020.
According to the Detroit News, “Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, praised Dow’s innovation and commitment to sustainability in an announcement in New York Friday.” This is clearly another example of corporate green-washing, where a company with an atrocious track record is hoping to buy public opinion by sponsoring the Olympics.
If we had serious journalism in this country reporters would first probably fall out of their seats at such an announcement by Dow Chemical and then they would provide the public with an honest assessment of Dow’s “innovation.”
Dow Chemical is the largest chemical company in the US and the second largest in the world. Their pesticides and other chemicals they have produced have left a toxic legacy that will impact generations to come. One of those pesticides is called chlorpyrifos and was first used as a nerve gas during WWII. Dow turned it into pesticides that were used in the home and eventually by agribusiness. The side effects of this chemical are cancer, birth defects and other reproductive problems.
Dow also has a history of war profiteering. During the US invasion and bombing of Vietnam Dow developed (along with Monsanto) Agent Orange. Agent Orange is a herbicide used by the US military to destroy plant life that provided cover for the Viet Cong. However, Agent Orange has left a toxic legacy of millions contaminated, deformed or dead throughout Southeast Asia.
In addition, Dow developed the use of Napalm and made millions by selling it to the US government for its use in their counter-insurgency war in Vietnam. One Vietnam Veteran recounts in graphic detail how Dow developed Napalm to make it a lethal weapon used on civilians.
“We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn’t so hot – if the gooks (Vietnamese) were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene – now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorus) so’s to make it burn better. It’ll burn under water now. And just one drop is enough; it’ll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning.”
So, when an Olympic official praises Dow for its commitment to sustainability we need to recognize that we are being manipulated.
Some suggestions for Dow’s Olympic sponsorship might be a 100 meter try to out-run napalm being dropped from planes event. This would really inspire a fast race as people would be running for their lives. There could also be an Agent Orange relay race, where people born with deformities from exposure to the chemical could compete. This would involve people with missing limbs or deformed lungs due to Dow’s creation of Agent Orange and contestants could crawl or roll across the finish line.
What We Are Reading
Below is a list of books that we have read in recent weeks. The comments are not a review of the books, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these books are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession With Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health – And a Vision for Change, by Annie Leonard. This book is a more detailed investigation than the animated video that Annie Leonard produced called the Story of Stuff. The author provides a great deal more material to make her case about the human and environmental cost of consumerism. During the process of researching and writing this book Leonard came to the conclusion what she was ultimately critiquing was Capitalism. Well written, good documentation and excellent examples of people and movements that are challenging our current economic model.
The Bomb, by Howard Zinn – This short book consists of two essays from radical historian Howard Zinn on the realties of modern warfare and dropping bombs on civilian populations. The first essay is Zinn’s investigation into the US bombing of Hiroshima, with the second essay looking at the bombing of the French town of Royan. These two essays were not just academic exercises for Zinn. He flew planes during WWII and was on the mission that dropped bombs on Royan and his time in the military was ended because of Hiroshima. Zinn not only excavates for us the truth of these bombings, he offers a confession of sorts for how these experiences radically changed hi life.
The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950s America, by Anna McCarthy. The Citizen Machine is a fresh, new look into the role that powerful sectors in US society played in determining the use of TV during the 1950s. McCarthy looks at how the DuPont corporation, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Ford Foundation and the AFL-CIO all used TV as a meaning of trying to influence public opinion and develop “citizens” in a narrowly constructed sense. By sifting through TV shows and documents from the 1950s, McCarthy provides us with an insight into how elite sectors of society wanted to use TV to fashion how Americans would see themselves and even how the world might view this country.
Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love, by Dave Zirin – Left sports writer and host of the radio show Edge of Sports, Dave Zirin, has done it again. Bad Sports is an excellent analysis of modern sports owners and why anyone who cares of social justice should care. Zirin not only appeals to sports fans whose teams have been transformed by greedy owners, he appeals to people who care about how corporate greed, the misuse of public tax money and urban development impacts us all. This collection of essays examines specific professional sports team owners in cities across the country, including a chapter on the owner of the NBAs Orlando Magic, Richard DeVos. Zirin concludes the book with a refreshing essay on the Green Bay Packers since the community owns the team. This powerful contrast of ownership demonstrates that public ownership is far superior to private ownership and can act as a model for how we deal with things like energy and transportation.
BP’s Environmental Racism
(This article by Robert Bullard is re-posted from OpEdNews.com.)
For three months the nation watched and held its breadth as the busted British Petroleum (BP) well spewed as much as 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons) of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day. Government officials estimate that the ruptured well leaked between 94 million and 184 million gallons of oil into the Gulf, surpassing the record-setting, 140-million gallon Ixtoc I spill off Mexico’s coast from 1979 to 1980.
Clearly, the massive BP oil spill disaster has created an environmental nightmare on the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government closed more than 81,181 square miles in the Gulf to fishing, which is approximately 33.5 percent of Gulf of Mexico federal waters. The spill fouled 120 miles of U.S. coastline, imperiled multibillion fishing and tourism industries and killed birds, sea turtles and dolphins. The full health, environmental, and economic impact of this catastrophe may not become clear for decades.
While the media spotlight has focused attention on efforts at stopping the massive oil leak and cleaning up the spill, the same level of attention has not been given to where the oil-spill clean-up waste is eventually dumped–even after an Associated Press spot check showed mishandling of waste and shoddy disposal work. Before one drop of oil was cleaned up, black people were asking “where will the oil- spill waste go after it has been collected from the beaches and skimmed off the water?” The answer: solid waste landfills. Concern mounted about which communities would be selected as the final resting place for BP’s garbage. Because of the size of the massive oil spill, even white communities in the Gulf Coast began asking this same question, “where is the waste going?”
Given the sad history of waste disposal in the southern United States, it should be no surprise to anyone that the BP waste disposal plan looks a lot like “Dumping in Dixie,” and has become a core environmental justice concern , especially among low-income and people of color communities in the Gulf Coast–communities whose residents have historically borne more than their fair share of solid waste landfills and hazardous waste facilities before and after natural and man-made disasters.
For decades, African American and Latino communities in the South became the dumping grounds for all kind of wastes–making them “sacrifice zones.” Nowhere is this scenario more apparent than in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” the 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi from Baton Rough to New Orleans. Gulf Coast residents, who have for decades lived on the fenceline with landfills and waste sites, are asking why their communities are being asked again to shoulder the waste disposal burden for the giant BP oil spill. They are demanding answers from BP and the EPA in Washington, DC and the EPA Region 4 office in Atlanta and EPA Region 6 office in Dallas–two EPA regions that have a legacy of unequal protection, racial discrimination, and bad decisions that have exacerbated environmental and health disparities.
A large segment of the African American community was skeptical of BP, the oil and gas industry, and the government long before the disastrous Gulf oil disaster, since black communities too often have been on the receiving end of polluting industries without the benefit of jobs and have been used as a repository for other people’s rubbish. It is more than ironic that black and other communities of color get BP’s garbage, while mostly white companies rake in the millions in BP contracts. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out this inequitable flow of benefits.
An NAACP investigation this month concluded that “Community members and business owners [of color] have been locked out of access to contracts for cleanup and other opportunities related to addressing this disaster.” Using the latest Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) information (July 9, 2010), environmental writer Brentin Mock reports that “minorities see little green in BP oil spill jobs.” He finds only $2.2 million of $53 million in federal contracts, a paltry 4.8 percent, has actually gone to small, disadvantaged businesses. Women-owned businesses received 4.2 percent of contracts. And of the 212 vendors with contracts, just two are African American, 18 are minority-owned, none are historically black colleges or universities (HBCUs), despite the three in New Orleans alone: Xavier University, Dillard University and Southern University at New Orleans.
In mid-June, environmental justice and equity concerns were aired on an EPA conference call meeting “attended” by more than 370 callers. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, who was on the call for 30 minutes, emphasized that environmental justice was a priority and she indicated that her agency has added staffers to the Joint Information Center to work specifically on environmental justice concerns in day-to-day operations.
In an August 2009 letter to environmental justice stakeholders, Mathy Stanislaus, EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER), posited some key questions and challenges for his office. One question seems especially relevant for the BP spill. Stanislaus, asks, “How can we develop better strategies for handling waste or cleaning up contaminated sites?” The answer is simple: make the strategies fair, just, and equitable without regard to race color or national origin, or income status.
African American communities in the Gulf Coast still see the “PIBBY” (Place in Blacks Back Yard) principle operating that allows a disproportionate share of black communities to be targeted for BP oil-spill waste disposal. Gulf Coast residents who live on the fenceline with landfills are determined not to see past mistakes repeated where waste from a major industrial accident or disaster get dumped on poor and politically powerless African American communities.
We saw this pattern emerge more than twenty-five years ago with toxic the dumping of PCB-waste cleaned up from roadways and later dumped in a landfill in mostly black and poor Warren County, North Carolina in 1982. We also saw the pattern continue in 2009 when 3.9 million tons of toxic coal ash from the massive Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) power plant spill in East Tennessee were cleaned up and shipped more than 300 miles south by train and disposed in a landfill in rural and mostly black Perry County, Alabama.
Today, we are seeing this disturbing pattern re-emerge in the disposal of the BP oil-spill waste. Because of the haphazard handling and disposal of the wastes from the busted well, the U.S Coast Guard and the U.S. EPA leaned on BP and increased their oversight of the company’s waste management plan. BP’s waste plan, “Recovered Oil/Waste Management Plan Houma Incident Command,” was approved on June 13, 2010. The company hired private contractors, including Waste Management, Inc., the nation’s largest trash hauler, to cart away and dispose of thousands of tons of polluted sand, crude-coated boom and refuse that washed ashore. At the beginning of July, waste haulers sent more than 3,913 tons of oil garbage to landfills in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Although the U.S. EPA has made environmental justice one of its seven priorities, no environmental justice or equity analysis has been conducted as to where the BP oil-spill clean-up waste ends up. The approved Gulf Coast solid waste landfills (Subtitle D landfills) and the percent minority residents living within a one-mile radius of the facilities are listed below:
ALABAMA
Chastang Landfill (Waste Management Inc.), Mount Vernon, AL (56.2%)
Magnolia Landfill (Waste Management Inc.), Summerdale, AL (11.5%)
Timberland Landfill (Allied Waste), Brewton, AL (15.4%)
FLORIDA
Springhill Regional Landfill (Waste Management, Inc.), Campbellton, FL (76.0%)
LOUISIANA
Colonial Landfill (Allied Waste), Ascension Parish, LA (34.7%)
Jefferson Parish Sanitary Landfill (Waste Management, Inc.), Avondale (51.7%)
Jefferson Davis Parish Landfill (Allied Waste), Welsh, LA (19.2%)
River Birch Landfill (Waste Management, Inc.), Avondale, LA (53.2%)
Tide Water Landfill (Environmental Operators LLC), Venice, LA (93.6%)
MISSISSIPPI
Central Landfill (Waste Management, Inc.), Pearl River, MS (5.0%)
Pecan Grove Landfill (Waste Management, Inc.), Harrison, MS (12.5%)
Even as the Obama administration oversees BP’s waste management plan, the oil giant been allowed to dump oil-spill waste on a disproportionately large share of African Americans and other people of color communities in the Gulf Coast states. This targeting of people of color for BP oil-spill waste is consistent with past practices in the region.
Generally, it has been more of the same when it comes to disposal of oil-spill waste. African Americans and other people of color comprise a majority of the residents living within a one-mile radius in five of the nine landfills (56%) where BP oil-spill waste has been dumped. Two landfills in mostly white communities–Jefferson Davis Landfill in Walsh, LA and the Central Landfill in Poplarville, MS–although approved for disposal, have not yet received any BP oil-spill waste.
The two government approved landfills in Mississippi are located in mostly white communities. The disposal of BP waste in the Pecan Grove Landfill in Harrison and the “contingency plan” that would allow oil waste to be dumped at the Central Landfill in Pearl River County, MS generated an inordinate amount of media and government attention, unlike that generated in the mostly black communities where BP waste is dumped. Oil-spill waste was dumped in the Harrison County Pecan Grove Landfill over the objections of county supervisors. However, as of July 13, no BP oil waste had made its way to the Central Landfill in Pearl River County. Waste Management, Inc. Market Area Engineer Dan Bell informed Pearl County supervisors that there was no “economic value” in dumping any of the oil-spill waste at its Central Landfill. Ball added, “It is just more feasible right now and closer to the site at this time to use Pecan Grove. Right now we have no plans to use Central Landfill. But that could change tomorrow.”
BP oil-spill waste in Florida is sent to the lone landfill that’s located in a community where three-fourths of the population is people of color. One of the three landfills (33%) in Alabama approved for BP oil-spill waste is located in a mostly black community.
Although African Americans make up about 32 percent of Louisiana’s population, three of the four approved landfills (75%) in the statethat have received BP oil-spill waste are located in mostly black communities. African American communities in Louisiana’s Gulf Coast were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and have experienced the toughest challenge to rebuild and recover after five years. Now they are targets for BP garbage. Dumping more disaster waste on them is not a pathway to recovery and long-term sustainability.
Clearly, Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” signed by President William J. Clinton in 1994, requires the EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard to do a better job monitoring where BP oil-spill waste ends up to ensure that minority and low-income populations do not bear an adverse and disproportionate share of the burdens and negative impacts associated with the disastrous BP oil spill. Allowing the BP, Gulf Coast states, and the private disposal industry to select where the oil-spill waste is dumped only adds to the legacy of environmental racism and unequal protection.
Time Magazine uses Afghan women
You may remember in 2001, when the US first began its invasion/occupation of Afghanistan, the Bush administration was arguing that one of the reasons for this invasion was to liberate Afghani women. Laura Bush herself took this position and publicly became the face of the administration’s claim to be concerned about the plight of the women in Afghanistan.
Some media pundits and political sectors continue to use this argument to justify the US occupation, even the escalation of US troops by the Obama administration. One recent example of this justification and moral pontification is the most recent issue of Time Magazine.
Time uses the photo of an 18 year-old Afghani women who had her nose cut off by the Taliban. The headline for the cover story reads, “What happens if we leave Afghanistan?” The article reads in part like a White House position paper where the well being of women is held up as a reason to question the nearly 9 year occupation.
However, there are several things that the Time Magazine cover story fails to address. First, it is important that the Taliban are an outgrowth of the ultra-right group of Muslim men knows as the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen were financially backed by the US with the goal of overthrowing the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, but the Mujahideen also wanted to impose its own ideology on the people of Afghanistan, particularly women.
Before the Mujahideen took power, women enjoyed a great deal of equality in Afghanistan, as is well documented in the book by Afghani writer Sonali Kolhatkar, Bleeding Afghanistan. Kolhatkar is also the co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, an organization that has been calling for the end of the US occupation.
Second, Afghani women have suffered from 3 decades of war, violence and occupation. The Time article frames the issue of female suffering primarily at the hands of the Taliban, when in fact women in Afghanistan were viciously targeted by the Mujahideen, various warlords and under the current Karzai administration. The Karzai administration, you will recall, last March passed a law, which essentially legalizes rape in Afghanistan. Such an extreme law was never passed while the Taliban were in power.
Third, the headline of the cover story, “What happens if we leave Afghanistan,” reflects an imperialist mind set by the editorial staff at Time Magazine. It suggests that Afghanistan will be worse off if the 9-year occupation ends. This ignores any historical context – the US-backed counter-insurgency war of the 1980s, the role of the US in back specifics warlords in the early 1990s, the US support of the Taliban in its first years of rule and the tremendous human cost to Afghanis of the current occupation.
A more honest cover-story headline would read, “What has the 9 year occupation meant for Afghanis?” Unfortunately, this is not the kind of reporting we are likely to see from the corporate media in the US, as is evidenced by the coverage of the recently released US documents regarding Afghanistan by Wikileaks. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has noted that the mainstream news response by Wikileaks has been to either downplay the seriousness of those documents or to further justify the current US military escalation in Afghanistan.
The 18 year-old woman on the front cover of Time Magazine may have indeed suffered at the hands of the Taliban, a political movement which has a horrendous record of violence towards women. However, the picture and the story are misleading at best and could easily be classified as propaganda, since it not only distorts the historical record, it also can be used by the Obama administration as further justification for the US occupation of Afghanistan.
The Time article also ignores other Afghan women’s voices, many of which have condemned the US occupation. Listen to what Afghani women have to say in this portion of the documentary Rethink Afghanistan.
(This Media Release is from the ACLU of Michigan.)
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan today asked the FBI to turn over records related to the agency’s collection and use of race and ethnicity data in local communities. According to a 2008 FBI operations guide, FBI agents have the authority to collect information about and map so-called “ethnic-oriented” businesses, behaviors, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with concentrated ethnic populations. While some racial and ethnic data collection by some agencies might be helpful in lessening discrimination, the FBI’s attempt to collect and map demographic data using race-based criteria for targeting purposes invites unconstitutional racial profiling by law enforcement, says the ACLU.
“For more than 50 years, the ACLU of Michigan has fought for the public’s right to know about government abuses of power,” said Mark P. Fancher, American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan Racial Justice Project staff attorney. “Today we continue this tradition by asking the federal government to account for the troubling civil rights and civil liberties implications of the FBI’s racial data gathering and mapping practices. Through this effort we hope to finally bring this important information to light and assess whether the FBI has abused its authority.”
The FBI’s power to collect, use and map racial and ethnic data in order to assist the FBI’s “domain awareness” and “intelligence analysis” activities is described in the 2008 FBI Domestic Intelligence and Operations Guide (DIOG). The FBI released the DIOG in heavily redacted form in September 2009, but a less-censored version was not made public until January of this year, in response to a lawsuit filed by Muslim Advocates. Although the DOIG has been in effect for more than a year and a half, very little information is available to the public about how the FBI has implemented this authority.
“The FBI’s mapping of local communities and businesses based on race and ethnicity, as well as its ability to target communities for investigation based on supposed racial and ethnic behaviors, raises serious civil liberties concerns,” said Michael German, ACLU policy counsel and former FBI agent. “Creating a profile of a neighborhood for criminal law enforcement or domestic intelligence purposes based on the ethnic makeup of the people who live there or the types of businesses they run is unfair, un-American and will certainly not help stop crime.”
ACLU affiliate offices across the nation today filed coordinated Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover records about the FBI’s collection and use of racial and ethnicity data from their local FBI field offices. The requests were filed by the ACLU affiliates in Alabama, Arkansas, California (Northern, Southern and San Diego), Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
The DIOG provisions in question are available online at: www.muslimadvocates.org/DIOGs_Chapter4.pdf
The entire DIOG is at: www.muslimadvocates.org/latest/profiling_update/community_alert_seek_leg…
