IT'S NOT HARD TO GET THE US TO GO TO WAR.
WHY WE FIGHT VIDEO
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Documentary – “Why we fight?”
99 min - Feb 14, 2008
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Why we fight
2 min - Jun 21, 2006
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►Why We Fight - A Film By Eugene Jarecki analyzes US Security State, the American war machine, militarism, imperialism, combining personal stories with commentary by military and political insiders. This 3-minute introduction also enables you to order the film and a study guide. www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/ -
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Directed by Eugene Jarecki. Starring George W. Bush, Frank Capra, Joseph Cirincione. Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's ...
www.imdb.com/title/tt0436971/ - Why We Fight (2005 film)
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2005 documentary film about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II-era ...
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight_(2005_film) - Cached - SimilarWhy We Fight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWhy We Fight is a series of seven propaganda films commissioned by the ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight - Show more results from wikipedia.orgAmazon.com: Why We Fight: Gore Vidal, John McCain, Ken Adelman ...
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Amazon.com: Why We Fight: Gore Vidal, John McCain, Ken Adelman, John Ashcroft, Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, George W. Bush, Robert Byrd, Frank Capra, ...
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Why We FightMar 23, 2005 ... Why We Fight. What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy ...
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Why We Fight by Karen Kwiatkowski Feb 11, 2006 ... Why We Fight carefully illustrates how our beliefs, our national character, our shared view of ourselves as Americans have changed since ...
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Books for Why We FightWhy We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on ... - William J. Bennett - 2003 - 197 pages
Bill Bennett makes a case for our moral duty in the world and why the anti-war left ...
Why we fight: theories of human aggression and ... - David Churchman - 2005 - 254 pages
Drawing from over twenty academic disciplines, Why We Fight describes more than 100 ...
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CORPORATE-PENTAGON-INTELLIGENCE-WHITE HOUSE-THINK TANKS-CONGRESS-CORPORATE MEDIA-GLOBAL WARMING COMPLEX
Military–industrial complex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaPresident Dwight Eisenhower famously warned the US about the "military-industrial complex" in his farewell address. Military–industrial complex (MIC) is a ...
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Eisenhower warns us of the military industrial ...
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Eisenhower - Military/Industrial Complex ...
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Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. ...
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Military Industrial Complex - United States Military Contracts and ...MilitaryIndustrialComplex.com has recorded a total of 15086 publicly-reported defense contracts. To date, that is an average of $3647 for each member of the ...
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What is the Military-Industrial Complex?The Military-Industrial Complex is a phrase used to signify a comfortable ...
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By Paul J. Balles Paul J. Balles views the growing dependence of the US economy on the military-industrial complex, including arms exports and foreign wars ...Redress Information & Analysis - 5 related articles
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Military-industrial complex - SourceWatchJan 7, 2009 ... The phrase military-industrial complex was first used on January 17, 1961, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower [1] in his farewell address to ...
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What Is the Military-Industrial Complex?Jul 22, 2002 ... The term the "military-industrial complex" was made famous by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address. ...
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Military Industrial Complex | War Is A Crime .orgFifty years after Dwight D. Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 speech on the “military-industrial complex”, that threat has morphed into a far more powerful and ...
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Military Industrial Complexunsought, by the military- industrial complex." President Dwight D. Eisenhower Farewell Address. January 17, 1961. "A billion here, a billion there, ...
www.cdi.org/issues/usmi/complex/ - Cached - SimilarThe five pillars of the U.S. military-industrial complexJan 4, 2007 ... 11, 2001, were a bonanza for the American military-industrial complex. This was an event, a "New Pearl Harbor," that some had openly been ...
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CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITYAbout The Center for Public Integrity - Charles Lewis, FounderCharles Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1989 and served as its executive director until January 2005. He is the founding president of the ...
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►Charles Lewis to Step Down as Executive Director of the Center for ...WASHINGTON, D.C. April 27, 2004 — Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for ...
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Show more results from wikipedia.orgProfile Charles R. LewisCharles Lewis is a national investigative journalist; a former ABC News and CBS News 60 ... As executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, Lewis ...
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Monday, January 31, 2011
President Obama's State of the Union, Response by Historians Against the War
Response to President Obama’s January 25, 2011 State of the Union Address
Historians Against the War, adopted by the Steering Committee, January 27, 2011
President Obama’s State of the Union address, coming two months after his party’s defeat in the 2010 elections, makes clear that he puts a high value on winning. He wants the United States to compete more effectively, to be number one around the world again. He wants every child to have the opportunity to compete to achieve the American dream. He wants American industry to compete more successfully in the global marketplace. He wants improvements to our infrastructure to create and sustain more jobs. He wants to produce innovative and competitive scientists, engineers, and technicians. Although competitiveness is not the only value Mr. Obama upholds, by making it number one and allowing it to trump other values, he fails to identify the true sources of our problems at home and abroad such as the bloated military budget and, therefore, fails to effectively address those problems.
Mr. Obama declared that “America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream,” but his focus on competitiveness means embracing corporate rather than democratic values and reflects Mr. Obama’s recent appointments of business executives and business-oriented advisors to crucial advisory and policy formation positions within his administration. The push for competiveness is an attempt to reassert what historian William Appleman Williams called “open door imperialism,” the export of goods and investment of capital abroad with concern only for profits, disregarding the human consequences and paving the way for military intervention when needed to achieve political stability or cooperation. What we need if we are to advance as a nation is a spirit of cooperation at home and abroad. We need to organize our educational system not around competition but around personal rights, ensuring, as John Kennedy explained in his address to the country on civil rights, that all children have the right “to be educated to the limit” of their talents. We need to organize our society around meeting the basic needs of all and cooperating with one another rather than merely asserting everyone should have the chance to try to grab the brass ring. We need to create a world economy based on equality and friendship among peoples, not a competitive race to the top which often forces people from poorer nations and working people in richer nations to the bottom. Symptomatic of the mistaken idea that the competitive market solves all problems is the adoption of NAFTA and other so-called free trade pacts. Although several Latin American states have successfully rejected the International Monetary Fund model of austerity and privatization and put resources toward expanding social benefits and infrastructure development, NAFTA has increased profits for U.S. agricultural firms, flooded Mexico with corn and meat subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and undermined Mexico's rural economy. Workers in neither country have benefitted and large numbers of Mexicans have been forced to leave the land, work in American-owned border town factories as cheap labor under the most deplorable working and living conditions, or to seek employment in our country.
In the late nineteenth century, corporations came to dominate our economy and have often had a stranglehold on our political system. Beginning in the late 1970s, corporations with headquarters in the United Sates have transferred manufacturing capital out of the country to low-wage societies. The federal government has not regulated such outflows and indeed has embraced deregulation. The loss of good-paying jobs, attacks on unions, regressive taxes, and deregulation have created the widest wealth and income gap between the corporate elite and the rest of the population in our history. The Supreme Court’s green-lighting of unlimited corporate funding of political campaigns makes the more than century-old problem of money corrupting politics worse than ever. The corporate dictum that we must dominate other countries in order to maximize profits has turned the United States into a warfare state.
The jobs crisis that Mr. Obama hopes to address can only be understood in the context of a political situation dominated by business interests who believe that our economy runs best through a dog-eat-dog competition that has millions of unemployed people seeking jobs. Corporate interests want workers to work harder; they seek to eliminate unions and keep wages low and hours long. At the same time, the most irresponsible portion of the corporate elite wants to minimize its obligation to fund the government and to forsake the needs of ordinary people. However, it expects aid to support its business interests and relies on U.S. military power around the globe to achieve its objectives.
In his address at Tucson on January 8, Mr. Obama confirmed movingly that “those who were harmed, those who were killed -- they are part our family, an American family 300 million strong.” He suggested that we should use the occasion “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
Mr. Obama’s notion that we should be one America makes sense if it is coupled with the idea of the government serving the needs of all the people, with the bulk of the costs being borne by the people with the ability to pay. Sixty-seven years ago, during the midst of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt used his state of the union address to propose an Economic Bill of Rights in which all of us would be guaranteed “useful and remunerative” jobs, medical care, education, and decent homes. Mr. Roosevelt combined his call for an expanded New Deal with support for tax reform, placing the tax burden on the wealthy and the large corporations because those who reap the most benefits from the economy should be willing to bear the greatest tax burden. As Mr. Roosevelt saw it at the time of his second inaugural address in 1937: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Mr. Roosevelt did not succeed in securing guaranteed jobs or tax reform, but he tried to achieve the ideal of community by promoting justice and that is what is needed again today.
Mr. Obama can claim some important recent achievements including the ratification of the START treaty and open participation by gay and lesbian soldiers in our military. We welcome Mr. Obama’s call for the elimination of nuclear weapons since the nuclear arms race has been dangerous, harmful to human health, and economically destructive; it continues to cause instability in world politics. We also appreciate Mr. Obama’s pledge last Saturday, on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade, to protect reproductive freedom. On most peace, national security, and human rights issues, however, Mr. Obama’s record has been disappointing to peace and justice advocates.
The peace movement is critical of Mr. Obama’s desire to maintain a significant military presence in Iraq despite his earlier advocacy of complete withdrawal of our fighting forces from that country. We need to bring a complete end to our unjust intervention in Iraq. Although 60 percent of the U.S. public now believes that the war in Afghanistan is “not worth fighting,” the administration’s December 2010 review of Afghanistan policy led to dubious claims of successes, which the president repeated in his State of the Union address, and to a decision to continue the war for four more years. The choice to continue a policy which the government’s own National Intelligence Estimate makes clear is failing is a grave error. How many more people must die before the forces in conflict sit around a table to negotiate an end to an unwinnable war? With the government making use of private corporations to carry out its military enterprise and warfare, military expenditures have continued to grow under Mr. Obama, reaching over one trillion dollars in 2010 alone. How can the government meet the needs of the people of the United States when military expenditures are at such a level?
Peace forces are also troubled by the administration’s human rights record, by its failure to close the Guantánamo prison as promised, by the opening of military trials of detainees in defiance of international human rights standards, by the many deaths of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan in attacks that amount to war crimes, by continuing interventions against left-wing governments in Latin America, by the recent FBI raids against peace activists, and by the U.S.’s failure to pressure Israel to end its denial of Palestinian rights. Although peace and justice activists support the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” we do not agree that democratic reform should be used to promote further militarization of our society as Mr. Obama did with his call to universities to open their doors to the ROTC and military recruiters. Our university graduates are needed in fields that meet people’s needs and that develop the country’s infrastructure rather than in staffing an overextended empire.
The human cost to the civilians in societies where we are intervening and to our own and other combatants is tragic and unsustainable. Continuing down the path of spending almost as much on the military as all other countries put together is bankrupting the country, failing to achieve the control our government seeks, and making us less safe.
Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower’s farewell address warned the country against domination by the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower recognized the destructive nature of militarization. He said in 1953: “"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” Unfortunately, domination by the military-industrial complex has grown stronger in the past five decades with negative consequences to our democratic polity. It has hampered the ability of our economy to meet the needs of our people and contribute in a positive way to help the poorer people of the world.
Historians Against the War (HAW) was formed in 2003 in response to the Iraq War to offer historical expertise to a burgeoning mass movement in our country against an unjust war. Like the mass movement against the unjust Vietnam War, the movement against the Iraq war raised pragmatic, legal, and moral questions and contributed to a change in U.S. policy. The Democratic capture of Congress in 2006 and Mr. Obama’s election in 2008 owe much to the popular revulsion to the Iraq war, stimulated in part by the anti-war movement.
Since Mr. Obama’s election, peace activists have held vigils, teach-ins, participated in the World Social Forum, the One Nation Coming Together march led by the AFL-CIO, and the National Day of Action to Confront U.S. Militarism in the Americas. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the grass roots pressure for peace is modest right now. Movements wax and wane and presidents, of course, have to give leadership every day and sometimes trim their sails to deal with political realities.
Our standard is not perfection but having the political courage to move in the right direction. The grass roots will stir again, helped along by peace and justice movements and by contingencies yet to develop, but will Mr. Obama be their ally? We need the president to have the political courage to honestly address the need to finally and fully extricate us from Iraq, end our involvement in the failed war in Afghanistan, contribute to finding peaceful and just solutions to other foreign policy problems, and create a new national security posture based on peace, friendship and equality with other nations rather than domination via overweening military power.
Historians Against the War, adopted by the Steering Committee, January 27, 2011
President Obama’s State of the Union address, coming two months after his party’s defeat in the 2010 elections, makes clear that he puts a high value on winning. He wants the United States to compete more effectively, to be number one around the world again. He wants every child to have the opportunity to compete to achieve the American dream. He wants American industry to compete more successfully in the global marketplace. He wants improvements to our infrastructure to create and sustain more jobs. He wants to produce innovative and competitive scientists, engineers, and technicians. Although competitiveness is not the only value Mr. Obama upholds, by making it number one and allowing it to trump other values, he fails to identify the true sources of our problems at home and abroad such as the bloated military budget and, therefore, fails to effectively address those problems.
Mr. Obama declared that “America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream,” but his focus on competitiveness means embracing corporate rather than democratic values and reflects Mr. Obama’s recent appointments of business executives and business-oriented advisors to crucial advisory and policy formation positions within his administration. The push for competiveness is an attempt to reassert what historian William Appleman Williams called “open door imperialism,” the export of goods and investment of capital abroad with concern only for profits, disregarding the human consequences and paving the way for military intervention when needed to achieve political stability or cooperation. What we need if we are to advance as a nation is a spirit of cooperation at home and abroad. We need to organize our educational system not around competition but around personal rights, ensuring, as John Kennedy explained in his address to the country on civil rights, that all children have the right “to be educated to the limit” of their talents. We need to organize our society around meeting the basic needs of all and cooperating with one another rather than merely asserting everyone should have the chance to try to grab the brass ring. We need to create a world economy based on equality and friendship among peoples, not a competitive race to the top which often forces people from poorer nations and working people in richer nations to the bottom. Symptomatic of the mistaken idea that the competitive market solves all problems is the adoption of NAFTA and other so-called free trade pacts. Although several Latin American states have successfully rejected the International Monetary Fund model of austerity and privatization and put resources toward expanding social benefits and infrastructure development, NAFTA has increased profits for U.S. agricultural firms, flooded Mexico with corn and meat subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and undermined Mexico's rural economy. Workers in neither country have benefitted and large numbers of Mexicans have been forced to leave the land, work in American-owned border town factories as cheap labor under the most deplorable working and living conditions, or to seek employment in our country.
In the late nineteenth century, corporations came to dominate our economy and have often had a stranglehold on our political system. Beginning in the late 1970s, corporations with headquarters in the United Sates have transferred manufacturing capital out of the country to low-wage societies. The federal government has not regulated such outflows and indeed has embraced deregulation. The loss of good-paying jobs, attacks on unions, regressive taxes, and deregulation have created the widest wealth and income gap between the corporate elite and the rest of the population in our history. The Supreme Court’s green-lighting of unlimited corporate funding of political campaigns makes the more than century-old problem of money corrupting politics worse than ever. The corporate dictum that we must dominate other countries in order to maximize profits has turned the United States into a warfare state.
The jobs crisis that Mr. Obama hopes to address can only be understood in the context of a political situation dominated by business interests who believe that our economy runs best through a dog-eat-dog competition that has millions of unemployed people seeking jobs. Corporate interests want workers to work harder; they seek to eliminate unions and keep wages low and hours long. At the same time, the most irresponsible portion of the corporate elite wants to minimize its obligation to fund the government and to forsake the needs of ordinary people. However, it expects aid to support its business interests and relies on U.S. military power around the globe to achieve its objectives.
In his address at Tucson on January 8, Mr. Obama confirmed movingly that “those who were harmed, those who were killed -- they are part our family, an American family 300 million strong.” He suggested that we should use the occasion “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
Mr. Obama’s notion that we should be one America makes sense if it is coupled with the idea of the government serving the needs of all the people, with the bulk of the costs being borne by the people with the ability to pay. Sixty-seven years ago, during the midst of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt used his state of the union address to propose an Economic Bill of Rights in which all of us would be guaranteed “useful and remunerative” jobs, medical care, education, and decent homes. Mr. Roosevelt combined his call for an expanded New Deal with support for tax reform, placing the tax burden on the wealthy and the large corporations because those who reap the most benefits from the economy should be willing to bear the greatest tax burden. As Mr. Roosevelt saw it at the time of his second inaugural address in 1937: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Mr. Roosevelt did not succeed in securing guaranteed jobs or tax reform, but he tried to achieve the ideal of community by promoting justice and that is what is needed again today.
Mr. Obama can claim some important recent achievements including the ratification of the START treaty and open participation by gay and lesbian soldiers in our military. We welcome Mr. Obama’s call for the elimination of nuclear weapons since the nuclear arms race has been dangerous, harmful to human health, and economically destructive; it continues to cause instability in world politics. We also appreciate Mr. Obama’s pledge last Saturday, on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade, to protect reproductive freedom. On most peace, national security, and human rights issues, however, Mr. Obama’s record has been disappointing to peace and justice advocates.
The peace movement is critical of Mr. Obama’s desire to maintain a significant military presence in Iraq despite his earlier advocacy of complete withdrawal of our fighting forces from that country. We need to bring a complete end to our unjust intervention in Iraq. Although 60 percent of the U.S. public now believes that the war in Afghanistan is “not worth fighting,” the administration’s December 2010 review of Afghanistan policy led to dubious claims of successes, which the president repeated in his State of the Union address, and to a decision to continue the war for four more years. The choice to continue a policy which the government’s own National Intelligence Estimate makes clear is failing is a grave error. How many more people must die before the forces in conflict sit around a table to negotiate an end to an unwinnable war? With the government making use of private corporations to carry out its military enterprise and warfare, military expenditures have continued to grow under Mr. Obama, reaching over one trillion dollars in 2010 alone. How can the government meet the needs of the people of the United States when military expenditures are at such a level?
Peace forces are also troubled by the administration’s human rights record, by its failure to close the Guantánamo prison as promised, by the opening of military trials of detainees in defiance of international human rights standards, by the many deaths of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan in attacks that amount to war crimes, by continuing interventions against left-wing governments in Latin America, by the recent FBI raids against peace activists, and by the U.S.’s failure to pressure Israel to end its denial of Palestinian rights. Although peace and justice activists support the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” we do not agree that democratic reform should be used to promote further militarization of our society as Mr. Obama did with his call to universities to open their doors to the ROTC and military recruiters. Our university graduates are needed in fields that meet people’s needs and that develop the country’s infrastructure rather than in staffing an overextended empire.
The human cost to the civilians in societies where we are intervening and to our own and other combatants is tragic and unsustainable. Continuing down the path of spending almost as much on the military as all other countries put together is bankrupting the country, failing to achieve the control our government seeks, and making us less safe.
Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower’s farewell address warned the country against domination by the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower recognized the destructive nature of militarization. He said in 1953: “"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” Unfortunately, domination by the military-industrial complex has grown stronger in the past five decades with negative consequences to our democratic polity. It has hampered the ability of our economy to meet the needs of our people and contribute in a positive way to help the poorer people of the world.
Historians Against the War (HAW) was formed in 2003 in response to the Iraq War to offer historical expertise to a burgeoning mass movement in our country against an unjust war. Like the mass movement against the unjust Vietnam War, the movement against the Iraq war raised pragmatic, legal, and moral questions and contributed to a change in U.S. policy. The Democratic capture of Congress in 2006 and Mr. Obama’s election in 2008 owe much to the popular revulsion to the Iraq war, stimulated in part by the anti-war movement.
Since Mr. Obama’s election, peace activists have held vigils, teach-ins, participated in the World Social Forum, the One Nation Coming Together march led by the AFL-CIO, and the National Day of Action to Confront U.S. Militarism in the Americas. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the grass roots pressure for peace is modest right now. Movements wax and wane and presidents, of course, have to give leadership every day and sometimes trim their sails to deal with political realities.
Our standard is not perfection but having the political courage to move in the right direction. The grass roots will stir again, helped along by peace and justice movements and by contingencies yet to develop, but will Mr. Obama be their ally? We need the president to have the political courage to honestly address the need to finally and fully extricate us from Iraq, end our involvement in the failed war in Afghanistan, contribute to finding peaceful and just solutions to other foreign policy problems, and create a new national security posture based on peace, friendship and equality with other nations rather than domination via overweening military power.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Capitalism USA 21st Century
OMNI CAPITALISM NEWSLETTER, JANUARY 30, 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett
US capitalism is capitalism corrupted. Here the left and right can agree. "When government and private finance are in bed with each other, it's not a right versus left issue; it's a haves versus have-nots issue." Matt Taibbi.
Contents
Moore’s Capitalism
Rich and Poor
Plutonomy
Big Banks/Government Complex
Little for Local Governments
Foreclosure Crisis Unnecessary
Big Banks Avoiding Obligations
Monopoly, Oligopoly
Personhood of Corporations
Citizens United Case
OMNI VIDEO UNDERGROUND FEBRUARY 13, 2011 AT OMNI, 7PM
MICHAEL MOORE, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
Interv. Democracy Now (9-24-09). Capitalism is unfair and unjust, and capitalists recently looted our national Treasure and individual treasuries.
OMNI’S 2011 VIDEO SERIES WILL SHOW 11 FILMS ON ENVIRONMENT/PLANET AND 11 FILMS ON THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE-- the Corporate-Pentagon-Intelligence-White House-Congressional-Warming/CO2/Climate Change Complex.
RICH AND POOR
Plutonomy
WSJ says the rich are doing the heavy lifting. Lifting sacks of wealth to purchase expensive stuff. That's because they can and that's what Feroli calls a plutonomy.
"Sales of luxury goods are soaring, while sales at Wal-Mart are tepid. The affluent cardholders of American Express have rebounded, while Visa and MasterCard have yet to see the same surge. Mansions are selling again, ranch houses are not.
The reasons for the divergence are simple enough: The rich are benefiting from soaring stock markets, cheap money and rapid growth overseas. The rest of America is still weighed down by unemployment, poor credit, falling real-estate values and slow domestic growth.
Economists call this a plutonomy, or an economy dominated by the rich. “The heavy lifting is being done by the upper-income households,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. told Bloomberg.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/01/19/the-rich-doing-all-the-heavy-lifting-in-the-economy/ (from Larry W)
Richard Wolff, : Calling Time on Capitalism
Guardian UK 2011 Intro: "Recent decades have seen a massive redistribution of wealth, imposing the cost of successive crises on the poorest. Enough!"
READ MORE https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12d47e53eab0a3d0
BIG BANKS/GOVERNMENT COMPLEX
$12.3 TRILLION FOR THE BIG BANKS, LITTLE FOR MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS
Ellen Brown. The Fed Has Spoken: No Bailout for Main Street , Web of Debt
Ellen Brown begins: "The Federal Reserve was set up by bankers for bankers, and it has served them well. Out of the blue, it came up with $12.3 trillion in nearly interest-free credit to bail the banks out of a credit crunch they created. That same credit crisis has plunged state and local governments into insolvency, but the Fed has now delivered its ultimatum: there will be no 'quantitative easing' for municipal governments."
READ MORE https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12d9026eb7546091
Elizabeth Warren | Foreclosure Crisis Was Avoidable,” The Miami Herald
Elizabeth Warren writes: "Lost in much of the back-and-forth over wrongful foreclosures is the question of whether the scandal could have been prevented. The answer is yes." https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12d3862e6399f47e
August 12, 2010
"Gaming the System": Study Details How Big Banks Are Avoiding Lending Obligations Under Community Reinvestment Act
A new report from National People’s Action shows how big banks have been able to wiggle around their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act. The act was passed in 1977 to stop the redlining of low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Federal bank and thrift regulatory agencies are holding a public hearing in Chicago today, one of several held nationwide this summer to reevaluate the act. [includes rush transcript]
Bill Moyers' Journal - PBS
“Was the Financial Bailout Just a Slick, Friendly Takeover of the Federal Government?”
Video:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10092009/watch.html
Transcript:
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143209/bill_moyers:_was_the_financial_bailout_just_a_slick,_friendly_takeover_of_the_federal_government
Suggestion: Open these in two separate Tabs or Windows. Then read the transcript while you listen to the video. This adds to the clarification. Though each are perfectly fine as is. MT
TRUE VALUE
Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing. On the hidden costs of merchandise (subsidies) esp. the environmental costs that are not incorporated into prices. Prices need to reflect the true costs.
MONOPOLY, OLIGOPOLY, CARTELIZATION
EXAMPLE IN POTASH MINING
“The world’s eight largest potash miners are poised to tighten their grip on prices of the crop fertilizer as proposed mergers consolidate sales channels,” by Yuriy Humber and Maria Kolesnikova, Bloomberg News, in ADG (10-6-10).
EXAMPLE OF POWER IN EXXON VALDEZ CASE
Riki Ott, Not One Drop: The Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill. 11 million gallons of oil polluted 1200 miles of shoreline and still harming the enviro. and species. Original fine was $5 billion, but a judge cut it to $2 billion, and then to $500,000,000, and that is still not paid. Author argued need for change from 1886 Supreme Court ruling giving 14th Amend. protection to corporations. Democracy Now 3-24-09.
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism - Cached - Similar
►
2. Monopoly Capital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order is an essay from 1966 by Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran. It made a major contribution to ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_Capital - Cached - Similar
3. Monopoly Capitalism
Dec 14, 2009 ... Monopoly Capitalism We live in an age of giants. Unchecked, they stride across the earth consuming much that lies in their path, ...
www.marxist.com › Historical Analysis › Economic theory - Cached - Similar
4. Monthly Review October 2004 Paul M. Sweezy
by PM Sweezy - 2004 - Cited by 11 - Related articles
Among Marxian economists “monopoly capitalism” is the term widely used to denote the stage of capitalism which dates from approximately the last quarter of ...
monthlyreview.org/1004pms2.htm - Cached
[For more, google Monopoly Capitalism—D]
CINDY SHEEHAN ON SUPREME COURT REMOVAL OF ALL RESTRICTIONS ON CORPORATE MONEY TO INFLUENCE ELECTIONS , Cindy’s Soapbox, Jan. 21, 2010
We have talked about the scandal of corporate personhood and how one sentence of Supreme Court Chief Justice Waite, before the oral arguments were even heard in 1886 in the case of The City and County of Santa Clara v. The Southern Pacific Railroad, changed our history forever:
"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
No law was passed giving corporations rights, not just privileges-no Supreme Court decision gave Goldman Sachs literally millions more votes than me (or you)-it was a freaking statement before the hearing ever began! We are losing everything because some old dead white guy flapped his jaws and, voila, the 14th Amendment applied to corporations.
Today, in Citizens United v. the Federal Election's Commission the Supreme Court ruled that any cap put on corporations and, presumably unions and other organizations, to spend on campaign ads and other campaign expenses (paid canvassers, etc) violates a corporation's "Freedom of Speech" which has been legally protected for 134 years.
Like I pointed out in the Myth that Elections Matter-our system is already rigged in favor of the Robber Class-corporations have NO MOUTHS, how can they have free speech?
This expansion of "Free Speech" to corporations effectively kills our "Free Speech" when it comes to elections.
Money is what buys influence with our government-that's all, nothing else. We ain't got no money-so we ain't got no influence.
The only tool we have left to us is Revolution as JFK said: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
BOOKS
--Harvey, David. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford UP, 2010. Dismisses all of Wall Street’s claims to be adding to general prosperity.
--Stiglitx, Joseph. Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. 2010. Interv. Amy Goodman 10-20-10
US capitalism is capitalism corrupted. Here the left and right can agree. "When government and private finance are in bed with each other, it's not a right versus left issue; it's a haves versus have-nots issue." Matt Taibbi.
Contents
Moore’s Capitalism
Rich and Poor
Plutonomy
Big Banks/Government Complex
Little for Local Governments
Foreclosure Crisis Unnecessary
Big Banks Avoiding Obligations
Monopoly, Oligopoly
Personhood of Corporations
Citizens United Case
OMNI VIDEO UNDERGROUND FEBRUARY 13, 2011 AT OMNI, 7PM
MICHAEL MOORE, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
Interv. Democracy Now (9-24-09). Capitalism is unfair and unjust, and capitalists recently looted our national Treasure and individual treasuries.
OMNI’S 2011 VIDEO SERIES WILL SHOW 11 FILMS ON ENVIRONMENT/PLANET AND 11 FILMS ON THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE-- the Corporate-Pentagon-Intelligence-White House-Congressional-Warming/CO2/Climate Change Complex.
RICH AND POOR
Plutonomy
WSJ says the rich are doing the heavy lifting. Lifting sacks of wealth to purchase expensive stuff. That's because they can and that's what Feroli calls a plutonomy.
"Sales of luxury goods are soaring, while sales at Wal-Mart are tepid. The affluent cardholders of American Express have rebounded, while Visa and MasterCard have yet to see the same surge. Mansions are selling again, ranch houses are not.
The reasons for the divergence are simple enough: The rich are benefiting from soaring stock markets, cheap money and rapid growth overseas. The rest of America is still weighed down by unemployment, poor credit, falling real-estate values and slow domestic growth.
Economists call this a plutonomy, or an economy dominated by the rich. “The heavy lifting is being done by the upper-income households,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. told Bloomberg.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/01/19/the-rich-doing-all-the-heavy-lifting-in-the-economy/ (from Larry W)
Richard Wolff, : Calling Time on Capitalism
Guardian UK 2011 Intro: "Recent decades have seen a massive redistribution of wealth, imposing the cost of successive crises on the poorest. Enough!"
READ MORE https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12d47e53eab0a3d0
BIG BANKS/GOVERNMENT COMPLEX
$12.3 TRILLION FOR THE BIG BANKS, LITTLE FOR MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS
Ellen Brown. The Fed Has Spoken: No Bailout for Main Street , Web of Debt
Ellen Brown begins: "The Federal Reserve was set up by bankers for bankers, and it has served them well. Out of the blue, it came up with $12.3 trillion in nearly interest-free credit to bail the banks out of a credit crunch they created. That same credit crisis has plunged state and local governments into insolvency, but the Fed has now delivered its ultimatum: there will be no 'quantitative easing' for municipal governments."
READ MORE https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12d9026eb7546091
Elizabeth Warren | Foreclosure Crisis Was Avoidable,” The Miami Herald
Elizabeth Warren writes: "Lost in much of the back-and-forth over wrongful foreclosures is the question of whether the scandal could have been prevented. The answer is yes." https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12d3862e6399f47e
August 12, 2010
"Gaming the System": Study Details How Big Banks Are Avoiding Lending Obligations Under Community Reinvestment Act
A new report from National People’s Action shows how big banks have been able to wiggle around their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act. The act was passed in 1977 to stop the redlining of low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Federal bank and thrift regulatory agencies are holding a public hearing in Chicago today, one of several held nationwide this summer to reevaluate the act. [includes rush transcript]
Bill Moyers' Journal - PBS
“Was the Financial Bailout Just a Slick, Friendly Takeover of the Federal Government?”
Video:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10092009/watch.html
Transcript:
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143209/bill_moyers:_was_the_financial_bailout_just_a_slick,_friendly_takeover_of_the_federal_government
Suggestion: Open these in two separate Tabs or Windows. Then read the transcript while you listen to the video. This adds to the clarification. Though each are perfectly fine as is. MT
TRUE VALUE
Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing. On the hidden costs of merchandise (subsidies) esp. the environmental costs that are not incorporated into prices. Prices need to reflect the true costs.
MONOPOLY, OLIGOPOLY, CARTELIZATION
EXAMPLE IN POTASH MINING
“The world’s eight largest potash miners are poised to tighten their grip on prices of the crop fertilizer as proposed mergers consolidate sales channels,” by Yuriy Humber and Maria Kolesnikova, Bloomberg News, in ADG (10-6-10).
EXAMPLE OF POWER IN EXXON VALDEZ CASE
Riki Ott, Not One Drop: The Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill. 11 million gallons of oil polluted 1200 miles of shoreline and still harming the enviro. and species. Original fine was $5 billion, but a judge cut it to $2 billion, and then to $500,000,000, and that is still not paid. Author argued need for change from 1886 Supreme Court ruling giving 14th Amend. protection to corporations. Democracy Now 3-24-09.
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism - Cached - Similar
►
2. Monopoly Capital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order is an essay from 1966 by Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran. It made a major contribution to ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_Capital - Cached - Similar
3. Monopoly Capitalism
Dec 14, 2009 ... Monopoly Capitalism We live in an age of giants. Unchecked, they stride across the earth consuming much that lies in their path, ...
www.marxist.com › Historical Analysis › Economic theory - Cached - Similar
4. Monthly Review October 2004 Paul M. Sweezy
by PM Sweezy - 2004 - Cited by 11 - Related articles
Among Marxian economists “monopoly capitalism” is the term widely used to denote the stage of capitalism which dates from approximately the last quarter of ...
monthlyreview.org/1004pms2.htm - Cached
[For more, google Monopoly Capitalism—D]
CINDY SHEEHAN ON SUPREME COURT REMOVAL OF ALL RESTRICTIONS ON CORPORATE MONEY TO INFLUENCE ELECTIONS , Cindy’s Soapbox, Jan. 21, 2010
We have talked about the scandal of corporate personhood and how one sentence of Supreme Court Chief Justice Waite, before the oral arguments were even heard in 1886 in the case of The City and County of Santa Clara v. The Southern Pacific Railroad, changed our history forever:
"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
No law was passed giving corporations rights, not just privileges-no Supreme Court decision gave Goldman Sachs literally millions more votes than me (or you)-it was a freaking statement before the hearing ever began! We are losing everything because some old dead white guy flapped his jaws and, voila, the 14th Amendment applied to corporations.
Today, in Citizens United v. the Federal Election's Commission the Supreme Court ruled that any cap put on corporations and, presumably unions and other organizations, to spend on campaign ads and other campaign expenses (paid canvassers, etc) violates a corporation's "Freedom of Speech" which has been legally protected for 134 years.
Like I pointed out in the Myth that Elections Matter-our system is already rigged in favor of the Robber Class-corporations have NO MOUTHS, how can they have free speech?
This expansion of "Free Speech" to corporations effectively kills our "Free Speech" when it comes to elections.
Money is what buys influence with our government-that's all, nothing else. We ain't got no money-so we ain't got no influence.
The only tool we have left to us is Revolution as JFK said: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
BOOKS
--Harvey, David. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford UP, 2010. Dismisses all of Wall Street’s claims to be adding to general prosperity.
--Stiglitx, Joseph. Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. 2010. Interv. Amy Goodman 10-20-10
Revolution in Egypt? Three Nonviolent Responses, Rabbi Waskow, Medea Benjamin, Mazin Qumsiyeh
ARTHUR WASKOWA Prophetic Voice in Jewish, Multireligious, and American Life
"Egypt's Pharaohs – Ancient & Today:
Mubarak's Military Mindset & His Allies Here & Elsewhere"
Every year at Passover, Jews recall the story of an ancient Egyptian ruler who oppressed his people and was overthrown by God, the People, and the Earth itself.
This story is not just an antiquarian tale. It is an archetypal vision of what happens, again and again, when top-down tyranny becomes addicted to its own power, at first unwilling and then unable to change.
We saw again these past weeks how profound the story is -- first in Tunisia and then in Egypt.
During the past week, we have seen hundreds of thousands of Egyptians face down their own modern Pharaoh –- dictatorial, repressive, and corrupt. We have seen crowds kiss the police and soldiers sent to control them, we have seen minimal violence and maximum resistance from the revolutionaries even when they are beaten, jailed, tortured, killed.
In Israel and Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, even in America, other governments are worrying or even quaking in their military boots.
Why? Because these other governments gambled that repression would work forever. Now they are frightened by the near-collapse of tyranny. An Israeli government that got addicted to military control of the Palestinian people made allies with an Egyptian government that did the same to its own people. And the US government did the same with them both, funneling huge amounts of military aid to both governments and then even huger amounts of its own blood and treasure into military control of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The result: 18 wasted years. Since 1993, when the Oslo Agreement was signed on the White House lawn, Israeli governments have refused to face up to what would have made peace while the making was possible, refused to affirm and negotiate the emergence of an independent Palestine alongside Israel, refused even to discuss the proposal from the Arab League for a regional peace treaty on condition that a free Palestine join other Arab states in making peace with Israel and being made peace with by Israel.
Of course the Israeli government had Palestinian allies in their rejection. The best allies of hawks on one side of any barricade are hawks on the other side. Terrorist murders of Israeli civilians certainly plucked on the hypersensitive nerve of Jewish fear. Most Israeli governments during these years rejected the notion that the way to end terrorism was to negotiate a peace with Palestinian and Arab leaders. Instead, they boasted that "separation" -- the Fence/Wall that tracked not the 1967 borders but swallowed huge chunks of Palestinian land; the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza; the blockade against Gaza -- all this, they said, would end terrorism. But "separation" led not to peace but to the self-destructive wars against Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009.
"Separation" and military force were not the only conceivable response to terrorism. The bravest and wisest Israelis and Palestinians were those who joined in the "Circle of Bereaved Families" to insist that the killing of their own children by "the other side" made peace crucial, not impossible.
Nor was fear the only possible response. Yitzhak Rabin again and again insisted in every city, town, and kibbutz, that Israelis were no longer victims, no longer helpless, and could afford the practicality of making peace through the Oslo Agreement. But the Jewish terrorist who murdered Rabin left behind Israeli politicians too stupid or too cowardly to carry forward Rabin's late-blooming message or his policy.
Indeed, the "Palestine Papers" published by Al Jazeera show that for the last 10 years, the Palestinian Authority was in fact ready to make deep concessions to win peace, and it was the Israeli government -- supported by the US government –that rejected them.
It is true that the Oslo agreement and the Arab League peace plan would have made a deal with top-down governments throughout the region. But by freeing Palestine, it would have taken that issue off the table. When uprisings came – as they now have – Israelis and their supporters would not have had to fear that the uprisings would create new governments much more hostile to Israelis who are still occupying the West Bank, blockading and bombing Gaza, and destroying Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
And the new Uprising societies would not have seen America as the arsenal of their tyrants if America had actually used its clout to insist on a regional peace settlement that included peace for both Israel and Palestine, had stayed out of Iraq, had decided against Predator bombings in Pakistan, had pressed Mubarak to end corruption and coercion. (Not just in words: with reductions in military aid, for example.)
We who enjoy many aspects of Israeli society and culture (try reading David Grossman, for example) and admired what used to be the vibrancy of Israeli democracy and is still a democracy-for-Jews, though a democracy wounded, coughing blood with every shout of protest -- we live in agony over the 18 wasted years.
There might still be time to redress the short-sightedness of those years. Maybe the Israeli and US governments are not utterly addicted to the coercive use of military power. Maybe the Obama Administration can rescue the courageous words of its early days and turn them into courageous deeds for an over-all Middle East regional peace.
But they are not likely to do so unless sizeable numbers of American Jews, Christians, and Muslims can band together in strong support of the people of Egypt, strong support for an emergency regional peace conference insisting on peace among Israel, Palestine, all Arab governments, and Iran as well.
NOW.
It is the end of the Exodus story that makes possible the living and telling of its beginnings. The biblical stories of Pharaoh, the plagues, the Exodus, the Red Sea -- those stories hang on how a disorderly band of runaway slaves began to shape a new kind of community at Sinai and in the Wilderness. Today we face the same imperative: Shape a new planetary community, or slave and die under new planetary Pharaohs imposing on us new planetary plagues.
Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I have just finished a book of searching examination of the wisdom of that story. (Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia, by Jewish Lights Publishing -- available February 25. Reserve a copy by clicking here. )
Our book applies the ancient wisdom to today, on a global scale. Today we face Pharaohs. Big Oil, Big Coal, the Military-Corporate Complex, and Big Banking are chief among those pharaohs, bringing plagues upon the Earth and all humanity. It is clear that after a certain point, these Pharaohs become so addicted to their own power that only their utter ruin – and that of their society --can undo it.
But it is also true that these "Pharaohs" have many opportunities to turn their path around. And that the people have many opportunities to make the turning happen.
It is up to us and the God Who is YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, the Breath of Life Who breathes and speaks in every language, every culture, every life-form, every era, Who calls us to courage and compassion.
Our official political system is paralyzed. Creative direct action – people power in the tradition of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Gandhi, the Flint Michigan auto sit-down strikes of 1937, the sit-in movement of 1960, King, Mandela -- is not paralyzed. Indeed, Tunisia showed us that one spark can free the imagination into utterly unexpected action.
Time to light our nonviolent sparks. Which one will illuminate the world, we cannot know in advance. But we do know that if we refuse to light the sparks, we will be condemned to live – and die -- in darkness.
Between now and mid-April, the coming of Passover and Palm Sunday (that brave Passover-time demonstration against the tyranny of the Roman Empire, led by a radical rabbi), we at The Shalom Center are planning to light several such sparks. Freedom Journeys is only one of them. Interfaith direct nonviolent action will be another. So will be a report on "Who are the Pharaohs, Caesars, and Abu-Jahls Today?" It will be a great help if you can support our work both with your own action and with (tax-deductible) donations. To make them, please click on our logo below.
Many thanks -- and many blessings of shalom, salaam, peace, grounded in justice and freedom and truth.
-- Arthur
CODE PINK, MEDEA BENJAMIN Dear Dick,
After several cancelled flights, I am finally on my way to Egypt to join my CODEPINK colleagues who are already there. We were supposed to be leading a delegation to Gaza right now, traveling through the Sinai to get to Gaza's southern border. The Rafa crossing into Gaza has been closed, our delegation is unable to leave Cairo, and we have been caught up in the breath-taking people's movement that is sweeping Egypt. CODEPINK’s Tighe Barry has been out on the streets of Cairo all week long. You can hear a compelling report from him here.
When CODEPINK was in Cairo for the Gaza Freedom March last year, we led and participated in small, peaceful protests that were set upon by hundreds of riot police at the behest of repressive Mubarak regime.
But now there has been a seismic shift. There are not 50 people rallying in Cairo, but hundreds of thousands protesting across the nation. Dozens have been killed; hundreds have been wounded.
But the Egyptian people will not be turned back. They feel their power and are determined to seize the moment.
The US has given Egypt $68 billion since 1948, and since 1979, Egypt has been the second-biggest recipient of US aid after Israel. Our government currently gives $1.3 billion a year of our tax dollars in military aid to the Mubarak regime.
Join us in telling President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Congress to stop funding the Mubarak regime now, to call on Mubarak to resign, and to expressly say that our government stands with the Egyptian people. After all, in his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama declared: “The United States stands with the people of Tunisia.” Shouldn’t we also stand with the Egyptians?
Sign here to stand in solidarity with people who are giving their government, our government and the world a lesson in democracy.
Mubarak is refusing to leave. But our government can—and must—break its ties to this dictator. As courageous Egyptian citizens are being assaulted with U.S. tear gas and other Made-in-the-USA weapons, we must say: Enough.
In solidarity,
Medea Benjamin
8Share201
Stop funding the Mubarak regime now!
The US government must break its ties to the current regime in Egypt. As courageous Egyptian citizens are being bombarded with U.S. tear gas and other Made-in-the-USA weapons, we must say: Basta. The US gives $1.3 billion a year of our tax dollars to Hosni Mubarak. We have given Egypt $68 billion since 1948, and since 1979, Egypt has been the second- biggest recipient of US aid after Israel.
Join us in telling President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Congress to stop funding the Mubarak regime now, to call on Mubarak to resign, and to expressly say that our government stands with the Egyptian people.
MAZIN QUMSIYEH [HumanRights in Egypt] Transformation in the Arab World by Mazin Qumsiyeh
1-30-11
"Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he's been very
responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle
East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing
relationship with Israel.. I would not refer to him as a dictator" US Vice
President Je Biden ( a lackey of AIPAC)
I first visited Egypt 30 years ago in 1981 to do research for my master's
thesis which was later published in my first book "The Bats of Egypt". I
visited Egypt twice since then and I recall vividly police abuse of their
own people and yet the Egyptians I encountered mocked and joked about
dictatorship. We tried at least from a distance to support our Egyptian
brothers and sisters as they struggle for freedom. Arabs everywhere (yes
even here in occupied Palestine) are talking about a transformation and
about revolution. But all such transformations carry pain. Over 200
Egyptians were killed, thousands injured, and there is much destruction.
Yet in a nation of 85 million people this is still a relatively peaceful
transformation. While dealing with the present is critical we must also at
this juncture start to look post dictatorship in the Arab world and plan the
future.
I recall vividly a talk by a self-described "Liberal Zionist" (an oxymoron)
at Duke University on 1 March 198l; at 77 year old he had no inhibitions in
saying "Zionists do not want democracy in the Arab world." He explained
that if Egypt was a democracy, it would not have signed a peace deal with
Israel since the sentiments of the Arab people does not accept such
arrangements that could be done with someone like President Sadat or King
Hussein. On this point he was absolutely correct but in the long run such
short-sighted perspective is self-destructive (1).
As I watched last night Hosni Mubarak make his (hopefully last) speech, I
was very much reminded of the last speech of the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the
Philippines, Bin Ali of Tunisia. They all claimed after so many years of
torturing their own people that they now want to "reform". The US funded
and supported the brutal Mubarak regime for over 30 years even as plenty of
evidence from human rights organizations documented its abuse of its own
citizens. See example videos of torture by Egyptian police (2). This is
also the same police who, on the instruction of the Mubarak dictatorship,
beat international activists trying to provide humanitarian relief to
besieged Gaza (3). Mubarak then went on to for the first time appoint a
vice president (his intelligence chief and ex-army buddy Omar Suleiman) and
appoint another army officer as prime minister. It is now recognized that
his reign is ending and a new era is beginning.
It is rather amusing that the brutal dictator of "Saudi" Arabia (a country
named after a ruling family!) called to support Mubarak and stated that the
demonstrators are hooligans and criminals. Anyone who knows anything about
Egypt knows that this amazing and inspiring mostly nonviolent revolution is
a true expression of the will of the Egyptian people regardless of their
political or religious persuasions (leftist, Muslim Brotherhood, Nasserite
Arab Nationalist, Christians, Muslims, etc).
In other news in brief for those who don't keep up with internet news or
those who watch mainly the (supine) Western Media:
-Large demonstrations by Egyptians and human rights defenders at Egyptian
embassies around the world all demanding democracy
-Israeli embassy in Cairo essentially emptied (an apartheid state embassy in
the largest Arab country is an abomination)
-Israeli pundits very worried about how Egypt might look after Mubarak.
-There are many signs that the Egyptian military (like the Tunisian
military) may be critical in this struggle. Already there are instances
where the demonstrators were protected from the Egyptian police by the
Egyptian military. See footage (4)
-A number of human rights groups and Egyptian community representatives
abroad all called for ending the Egyptian police brutality. By contrast EU
and US government officials are making feeble statements to hedge their bets
and at best call for "peaceful" actions from "all sides". Slowly they were
forced to modify their retorhic to talk about "change" but must finally call
on their puppet Mubarak to leave power and insist that he and his sons and
family return the billions stolen from the Egyptian people.
-A number of religious and civil organizations in Egypt broke their silence
to support the ouster of the "last Pharaoh"
-The dictatorship cutting of web and mobile phone services and banning
reporting by groups like Al-Jazeera did little to stem the tide of protest
because people are living it daily in their homes and on the streets and
they are not being incited from outside.
-Protests spread to Jordan and Yemen (two other Western supported
governments). There are now plans for large protests in Syria and other
countries.
-On the Palestinian Authority TV news, they noted that Mahmoud Abbas called
Mubarak and stated his support for stability of Egypt. Other news outlets
stated that he fully supports the Mubarak regime. Hamas then came in to say
that they support the Egyptian people. Sadly, I think all rational human
beings know which horse to bet on in this struggle between people and a
western-supported dictator who accomplished nothing for his people and
instead enriched his family (his sons are billionaires in a country in which
tens of millions of people live on less than $1 a day).
I wrote seven months ago that "The political leadership in the fragmented
Arab countries and Palestinian authority have convinced themselves that they
have no option but to endlessly try to talk to politicians from Tel Aviv and
Washington (the latter also Israeli occupied territory) hoping for some
'gestures'..I know most politicians like to feel 100% safe (mostly for their
position of power) and are afraid of any change. But I wish they would
realize that daring politicians make the history books and those who hang
around trying to protect their seats will be forgotten. Cowardice is never
a virtue." And then I concluded that "In the demonstrations yesterday, a
child in Gaza was carrying a sign that says 'we demand freedom' and a child
in Cairo that says 'children in Egypt and in Gaza want the siege lifted'.
That is our future - not elderly politicians meeting to do media damage
control with empty words. "(5)
But make no mistake about it: no power transformation happens without a
period of unrest, instability, and pain. I believe in these difficult
periods, humans are tested. Some are weak and may even try to use the
situations to make some quick personal profit. Others are of strong and
decent character and this shows in their watching for their neighbors and
their community. I have seen countless pictures and heard countless stories
of acts that can only be described as heroic (e.g. people protecting the
national museum in Cairo or their neighbors' houses). Intellectuals are
stepping forward to articulate rational scenarios for the future. People
helping other people. So I think we will weather the transition. As to
what the future holds. Clearly, the era of ignoring the masses is gone. It
will not be easy since we have a legacy of decades of poor education (one
that does not emphasize civic and individual responsibility etc). Getting
rid of dictators is not enough. Building a civic participatory society is
not easy (Europe's enlightenment did not come just from removing a few
dictators).
People's expectation raised for change will dash against the reality that it
will take decades to create systems of governance, accountability, economic
justice, etc to allow for unleashing the great potential in the Arab world.
And there is great potential (natural resources, water, educated
hard-working middle class etc). It is critical that people begin to chart
this future honestly and pragmatically. Slogans will not work. We the
people must take responsibility for our own lives and for our communities.
We need to take time to educate children in a very, very different way than
we were educated. The beginnings may be simple. For example, in many Arab
countries, people were thinking that as long as the country is not theirs
(ruled by dictators), they can only watch over their own personal space and
literally dump trash in the public space. In the new era, they have to
learn that public space is theirs too. Order and respect for fellow
citizens and for the country will have to be taught very early to our
children. This is but one example for laying a brick in the road to real
freedom and real prosperity. The bricks though are many and they will have
to be fashioned and laid by the people. It is very hard work but it is the
only way forward.
(1) I challenged him on this in the Q&A and then wrote a follow-up letter
that was published in the Duke Chronicle. See
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/zionistpositionfailstorecognizeotherside/
(2) Torture at Egyptian police stations, here are three examples (warning
disturbing content!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhQRFz65M6s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCHM6LYiBsY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8KG5N_yq1s
3) Egyptian police beat Free Gaza convoy activist on December 30, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT4tk2RiNIo
4) See this associated press story about role of Egyptian military
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/29/ap/middleeast/main7296653.shtml
and this interesting footage of military shielding demonstrators
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfqcEsDwgYQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQD-X9G9xfk
5) Mazin Qumsiyeh "Of Cowardice, Dignity and Solidarity"
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/ofcowardicedignityandsolidarity/
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org
URL:
_______________________________________________
HumanRights newsletter
http://lists.qumsiyeh.org/mailman/listinfo/humanrights
This message was sent to jbennet@uark.edu. To unsubscribe, visit:
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"Egypt's Pharaohs – Ancient & Today:
Mubarak's Military Mindset & His Allies Here & Elsewhere"
Every year at Passover, Jews recall the story of an ancient Egyptian ruler who oppressed his people and was overthrown by God, the People, and the Earth itself.
This story is not just an antiquarian tale. It is an archetypal vision of what happens, again and again, when top-down tyranny becomes addicted to its own power, at first unwilling and then unable to change.
We saw again these past weeks how profound the story is -- first in Tunisia and then in Egypt.
During the past week, we have seen hundreds of thousands of Egyptians face down their own modern Pharaoh –- dictatorial, repressive, and corrupt. We have seen crowds kiss the police and soldiers sent to control them, we have seen minimal violence and maximum resistance from the revolutionaries even when they are beaten, jailed, tortured, killed.
In Israel and Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, even in America, other governments are worrying or even quaking in their military boots.
Why? Because these other governments gambled that repression would work forever. Now they are frightened by the near-collapse of tyranny. An Israeli government that got addicted to military control of the Palestinian people made allies with an Egyptian government that did the same to its own people. And the US government did the same with them both, funneling huge amounts of military aid to both governments and then even huger amounts of its own blood and treasure into military control of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The result: 18 wasted years. Since 1993, when the Oslo Agreement was signed on the White House lawn, Israeli governments have refused to face up to what would have made peace while the making was possible, refused to affirm and negotiate the emergence of an independent Palestine alongside Israel, refused even to discuss the proposal from the Arab League for a regional peace treaty on condition that a free Palestine join other Arab states in making peace with Israel and being made peace with by Israel.
Of course the Israeli government had Palestinian allies in their rejection. The best allies of hawks on one side of any barricade are hawks on the other side. Terrorist murders of Israeli civilians certainly plucked on the hypersensitive nerve of Jewish fear. Most Israeli governments during these years rejected the notion that the way to end terrorism was to negotiate a peace with Palestinian and Arab leaders. Instead, they boasted that "separation" -- the Fence/Wall that tracked not the 1967 borders but swallowed huge chunks of Palestinian land; the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza; the blockade against Gaza -- all this, they said, would end terrorism. But "separation" led not to peace but to the self-destructive wars against Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009.
"Separation" and military force were not the only conceivable response to terrorism. The bravest and wisest Israelis and Palestinians were those who joined in the "Circle of Bereaved Families" to insist that the killing of their own children by "the other side" made peace crucial, not impossible.
Nor was fear the only possible response. Yitzhak Rabin again and again insisted in every city, town, and kibbutz, that Israelis were no longer victims, no longer helpless, and could afford the practicality of making peace through the Oslo Agreement. But the Jewish terrorist who murdered Rabin left behind Israeli politicians too stupid or too cowardly to carry forward Rabin's late-blooming message or his policy.
Indeed, the "Palestine Papers" published by Al Jazeera show that for the last 10 years, the Palestinian Authority was in fact ready to make deep concessions to win peace, and it was the Israeli government -- supported by the US government –that rejected them.
It is true that the Oslo agreement and the Arab League peace plan would have made a deal with top-down governments throughout the region. But by freeing Palestine, it would have taken that issue off the table. When uprisings came – as they now have – Israelis and their supporters would not have had to fear that the uprisings would create new governments much more hostile to Israelis who are still occupying the West Bank, blockading and bombing Gaza, and destroying Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
And the new Uprising societies would not have seen America as the arsenal of their tyrants if America had actually used its clout to insist on a regional peace settlement that included peace for both Israel and Palestine, had stayed out of Iraq, had decided against Predator bombings in Pakistan, had pressed Mubarak to end corruption and coercion. (Not just in words: with reductions in military aid, for example.)
We who enjoy many aspects of Israeli society and culture (try reading David Grossman, for example) and admired what used to be the vibrancy of Israeli democracy and is still a democracy-for-Jews, though a democracy wounded, coughing blood with every shout of protest -- we live in agony over the 18 wasted years.
There might still be time to redress the short-sightedness of those years. Maybe the Israeli and US governments are not utterly addicted to the coercive use of military power. Maybe the Obama Administration can rescue the courageous words of its early days and turn them into courageous deeds for an over-all Middle East regional peace.
But they are not likely to do so unless sizeable numbers of American Jews, Christians, and Muslims can band together in strong support of the people of Egypt, strong support for an emergency regional peace conference insisting on peace among Israel, Palestine, all Arab governments, and Iran as well.
NOW.
It is the end of the Exodus story that makes possible the living and telling of its beginnings. The biblical stories of Pharaoh, the plagues, the Exodus, the Red Sea -- those stories hang on how a disorderly band of runaway slaves began to shape a new kind of community at Sinai and in the Wilderness. Today we face the same imperative: Shape a new planetary community, or slave and die under new planetary Pharaohs imposing on us new planetary plagues.
Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I have just finished a book of searching examination of the wisdom of that story. (Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia, by Jewish Lights Publishing -- available February 25. Reserve a copy by clicking here. )
Our book applies the ancient wisdom to today, on a global scale. Today we face Pharaohs. Big Oil, Big Coal, the Military-Corporate Complex, and Big Banking are chief among those pharaohs, bringing plagues upon the Earth and all humanity. It is clear that after a certain point, these Pharaohs become so addicted to their own power that only their utter ruin – and that of their society --can undo it.
But it is also true that these "Pharaohs" have many opportunities to turn their path around. And that the people have many opportunities to make the turning happen.
It is up to us and the God Who is YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, the Breath of Life Who breathes and speaks in every language, every culture, every life-form, every era, Who calls us to courage and compassion.
Our official political system is paralyzed. Creative direct action – people power in the tradition of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Gandhi, the Flint Michigan auto sit-down strikes of 1937, the sit-in movement of 1960, King, Mandela -- is not paralyzed. Indeed, Tunisia showed us that one spark can free the imagination into utterly unexpected action.
Time to light our nonviolent sparks. Which one will illuminate the world, we cannot know in advance. But we do know that if we refuse to light the sparks, we will be condemned to live – and die -- in darkness.
Between now and mid-April, the coming of Passover and Palm Sunday (that brave Passover-time demonstration against the tyranny of the Roman Empire, led by a radical rabbi), we at The Shalom Center are planning to light several such sparks. Freedom Journeys is only one of them. Interfaith direct nonviolent action will be another. So will be a report on "Who are the Pharaohs, Caesars, and Abu-Jahls Today?" It will be a great help if you can support our work both with your own action and with (tax-deductible) donations. To make them, please click on our logo below.
Many thanks -- and many blessings of shalom, salaam, peace, grounded in justice and freedom and truth.
-- Arthur
CODE PINK, MEDEA BENJAMIN Dear Dick,
After several cancelled flights, I am finally on my way to Egypt to join my CODEPINK colleagues who are already there. We were supposed to be leading a delegation to Gaza right now, traveling through the Sinai to get to Gaza's southern border. The Rafa crossing into Gaza has been closed, our delegation is unable to leave Cairo, and we have been caught up in the breath-taking people's movement that is sweeping Egypt. CODEPINK’s Tighe Barry has been out on the streets of Cairo all week long. You can hear a compelling report from him here.
When CODEPINK was in Cairo for the Gaza Freedom March last year, we led and participated in small, peaceful protests that were set upon by hundreds of riot police at the behest of repressive Mubarak regime.
But now there has been a seismic shift. There are not 50 people rallying in Cairo, but hundreds of thousands protesting across the nation. Dozens have been killed; hundreds have been wounded.
But the Egyptian people will not be turned back. They feel their power and are determined to seize the moment.
The US has given Egypt $68 billion since 1948, and since 1979, Egypt has been the second-biggest recipient of US aid after Israel. Our government currently gives $1.3 billion a year of our tax dollars in military aid to the Mubarak regime.
Join us in telling President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Congress to stop funding the Mubarak regime now, to call on Mubarak to resign, and to expressly say that our government stands with the Egyptian people. After all, in his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama declared: “The United States stands with the people of Tunisia.” Shouldn’t we also stand with the Egyptians?
Sign here to stand in solidarity with people who are giving their government, our government and the world a lesson in democracy.
Mubarak is refusing to leave. But our government can—and must—break its ties to this dictator. As courageous Egyptian citizens are being assaulted with U.S. tear gas and other Made-in-the-USA weapons, we must say: Enough.
In solidarity,
Medea Benjamin
8Share201
Stop funding the Mubarak regime now!
The US government must break its ties to the current regime in Egypt. As courageous Egyptian citizens are being bombarded with U.S. tear gas and other Made-in-the-USA weapons, we must say: Basta. The US gives $1.3 billion a year of our tax dollars to Hosni Mubarak. We have given Egypt $68 billion since 1948, and since 1979, Egypt has been the second- biggest recipient of US aid after Israel.
Join us in telling President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Congress to stop funding the Mubarak regime now, to call on Mubarak to resign, and to expressly say that our government stands with the Egyptian people.
MAZIN QUMSIYEH [HumanRights in Egypt] Transformation in the Arab World by Mazin Qumsiyeh
1-30-11
"Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he's been very
responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle
East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing
relationship with Israel.. I would not refer to him as a dictator" US Vice
President Je Biden ( a lackey of AIPAC)
I first visited Egypt 30 years ago in 1981 to do research for my master's
thesis which was later published in my first book "The Bats of Egypt". I
visited Egypt twice since then and I recall vividly police abuse of their
own people and yet the Egyptians I encountered mocked and joked about
dictatorship. We tried at least from a distance to support our Egyptian
brothers and sisters as they struggle for freedom. Arabs everywhere (yes
even here in occupied Palestine) are talking about a transformation and
about revolution. But all such transformations carry pain. Over 200
Egyptians were killed, thousands injured, and there is much destruction.
Yet in a nation of 85 million people this is still a relatively peaceful
transformation. While dealing with the present is critical we must also at
this juncture start to look post dictatorship in the Arab world and plan the
future.
I recall vividly a talk by a self-described "Liberal Zionist" (an oxymoron)
at Duke University on 1 March 198l; at 77 year old he had no inhibitions in
saying "Zionists do not want democracy in the Arab world." He explained
that if Egypt was a democracy, it would not have signed a peace deal with
Israel since the sentiments of the Arab people does not accept such
arrangements that could be done with someone like President Sadat or King
Hussein. On this point he was absolutely correct but in the long run such
short-sighted perspective is self-destructive (1).
As I watched last night Hosni Mubarak make his (hopefully last) speech, I
was very much reminded of the last speech of the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the
Philippines, Bin Ali of Tunisia. They all claimed after so many years of
torturing their own people that they now want to "reform". The US funded
and supported the brutal Mubarak regime for over 30 years even as plenty of
evidence from human rights organizations documented its abuse of its own
citizens. See example videos of torture by Egyptian police (2). This is
also the same police who, on the instruction of the Mubarak dictatorship,
beat international activists trying to provide humanitarian relief to
besieged Gaza (3). Mubarak then went on to for the first time appoint a
vice president (his intelligence chief and ex-army buddy Omar Suleiman) and
appoint another army officer as prime minister. It is now recognized that
his reign is ending and a new era is beginning.
It is rather amusing that the brutal dictator of "Saudi" Arabia (a country
named after a ruling family!) called to support Mubarak and stated that the
demonstrators are hooligans and criminals. Anyone who knows anything about
Egypt knows that this amazing and inspiring mostly nonviolent revolution is
a true expression of the will of the Egyptian people regardless of their
political or religious persuasions (leftist, Muslim Brotherhood, Nasserite
Arab Nationalist, Christians, Muslims, etc).
In other news in brief for those who don't keep up with internet news or
those who watch mainly the (supine) Western Media:
-Large demonstrations by Egyptians and human rights defenders at Egyptian
embassies around the world all demanding democracy
-Israeli embassy in Cairo essentially emptied (an apartheid state embassy in
the largest Arab country is an abomination)
-Israeli pundits very worried about how Egypt might look after Mubarak.
-There are many signs that the Egyptian military (like the Tunisian
military) may be critical in this struggle. Already there are instances
where the demonstrators were protected from the Egyptian police by the
Egyptian military. See footage (4)
-A number of human rights groups and Egyptian community representatives
abroad all called for ending the Egyptian police brutality. By contrast EU
and US government officials are making feeble statements to hedge their bets
and at best call for "peaceful" actions from "all sides". Slowly they were
forced to modify their retorhic to talk about "change" but must finally call
on their puppet Mubarak to leave power and insist that he and his sons and
family return the billions stolen from the Egyptian people.
-A number of religious and civil organizations in Egypt broke their silence
to support the ouster of the "last Pharaoh"
-The dictatorship cutting of web and mobile phone services and banning
reporting by groups like Al-Jazeera did little to stem the tide of protest
because people are living it daily in their homes and on the streets and
they are not being incited from outside.
-Protests spread to Jordan and Yemen (two other Western supported
governments). There are now plans for large protests in Syria and other
countries.
-On the Palestinian Authority TV news, they noted that Mahmoud Abbas called
Mubarak and stated his support for stability of Egypt. Other news outlets
stated that he fully supports the Mubarak regime. Hamas then came in to say
that they support the Egyptian people. Sadly, I think all rational human
beings know which horse to bet on in this struggle between people and a
western-supported dictator who accomplished nothing for his people and
instead enriched his family (his sons are billionaires in a country in which
tens of millions of people live on less than $1 a day).
I wrote seven months ago that "The political leadership in the fragmented
Arab countries and Palestinian authority have convinced themselves that they
have no option but to endlessly try to talk to politicians from Tel Aviv and
Washington (the latter also Israeli occupied territory) hoping for some
'gestures'..I know most politicians like to feel 100% safe (mostly for their
position of power) and are afraid of any change. But I wish they would
realize that daring politicians make the history books and those who hang
around trying to protect their seats will be forgotten. Cowardice is never
a virtue." And then I concluded that "In the demonstrations yesterday, a
child in Gaza was carrying a sign that says 'we demand freedom' and a child
in Cairo that says 'children in Egypt and in Gaza want the siege lifted'.
That is our future - not elderly politicians meeting to do media damage
control with empty words. "(5)
But make no mistake about it: no power transformation happens without a
period of unrest, instability, and pain. I believe in these difficult
periods, humans are tested. Some are weak and may even try to use the
situations to make some quick personal profit. Others are of strong and
decent character and this shows in their watching for their neighbors and
their community. I have seen countless pictures and heard countless stories
of acts that can only be described as heroic (e.g. people protecting the
national museum in Cairo or their neighbors' houses). Intellectuals are
stepping forward to articulate rational scenarios for the future. People
helping other people. So I think we will weather the transition. As to
what the future holds. Clearly, the era of ignoring the masses is gone. It
will not be easy since we have a legacy of decades of poor education (one
that does not emphasize civic and individual responsibility etc). Getting
rid of dictators is not enough. Building a civic participatory society is
not easy (Europe's enlightenment did not come just from removing a few
dictators).
People's expectation raised for change will dash against the reality that it
will take decades to create systems of governance, accountability, economic
justice, etc to allow for unleashing the great potential in the Arab world.
And there is great potential (natural resources, water, educated
hard-working middle class etc). It is critical that people begin to chart
this future honestly and pragmatically. Slogans will not work. We the
people must take responsibility for our own lives and for our communities.
We need to take time to educate children in a very, very different way than
we were educated. The beginnings may be simple. For example, in many Arab
countries, people were thinking that as long as the country is not theirs
(ruled by dictators), they can only watch over their own personal space and
literally dump trash in the public space. In the new era, they have to
learn that public space is theirs too. Order and respect for fellow
citizens and for the country will have to be taught very early to our
children. This is but one example for laying a brick in the road to real
freedom and real prosperity. The bricks though are many and they will have
to be fashioned and laid by the people. It is very hard work but it is the
only way forward.
(1) I challenged him on this in the Q&A and then wrote a follow-up letter
that was published in the Duke Chronicle. See
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/zionistpositionfailstorecognizeotherside/
(2) Torture at Egyptian police stations, here are three examples (warning
disturbing content!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhQRFz65M6s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCHM6LYiBsY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8KG5N_yq1s
3) Egyptian police beat Free Gaza convoy activist on December 30, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT4tk2RiNIo
4) See this associated press story about role of Egyptian military
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/29/ap/middleeast/main7296653.shtml
and this interesting footage of military shielding demonstrators
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfqcEsDwgYQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQD-X9G9xfk
5) Mazin Qumsiyeh "Of Cowardice, Dignity and Solidarity"
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/ofcowardicedignityandsolidarity/
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org
URL:
_______________________________________________
HumanRights newsletter
http://lists.qumsiyeh.org/mailman/listinfo/humanrights
This message was sent to jbennet@uark.edu. To unsubscribe, visit:
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Friday, January 28, 2011
Haiti, Aristide, and the US
OMNI HAITI NEWSLETTER #1, JANUARY 28, 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace
Contents
Aristide
History of Haiti
Reliable Aid to Haiti
ARISTIDE
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (1-21-11) published an essay by Ray Walser of the Heritage Foundation entitled “Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Out!” The essay is extremely hostile to Aristide: “Aristide’s shameful record of polarizing politics, corruption and thuggery.” “…Aristide pretty well shattered Haiti—and kept it that way.” No evidence was given, so we can only guess why Walser feels such animosity.
Others who share his dislike of Aristide:
Amy Wilentz. The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. See her article in The Nation (2-8) “The Haiti Haters,” about David Brooks, Anne Applebaum, Pat Robertson, and ideas for a renewed Haiti
AND OFFICIAL US POLICY
WHO IS TO BLAME FOR HAITI’S POLARIZED POLITICS AND CORRUPTION? ARISTIDE?
Farmer, Paul. The Uses of Haiti. “In 1994 [Farmer] wrote The Uses of Haiti, a sweeping history that reveals the consistent role of foreign powers, especially the United States, in the exploitation and oppression of the Haitian people. After several years out of print, an updated version of The Uses of Haiti has now been reissued.
The book rips apart the myth, so often repeated in the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets, that Haiti is a world apart, inexplicably the "poorest country in the Western hemisphere." Farmer shows that Haiti has always been enmeshed in a global system of imperialist competition, its resources and people ruthlessly exploited for profit, its repeated struggles for liberation brutally suppressed. As Noam Chomsky wrote in the 1994 introduction, the book "tells the truth about what has been happening in Haiti, and the U.S. role in its bitter fate."' Helen Scott, “The Uses and Abuses of Haiti.” International Socialist Review (April 2003). http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/Uses_Abuses_Haiti.html
--Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti , Aristide, and the Politics of Containment.
Hallward interv. by Amy Goodman 2-21-10. History of gross inequalities and exploitation. Haitians forced to work for $3 a day, their public resources were privatized for gain of a few, Aristide rose through grassroots democracy: won election by 70%, his party held big majority in Parliament, he disbanded the army, resisted foreign military rule. But he was kidnapped by US and exiled to South Africa, where he remains 2-21-10. [Still there 1-28-11—D] Haiti lost at least 200,000 people by the earthquake, perhaps 300,000; the nation needs him. But he is not allowed to return.
--Pate, Shirley. “Paying for Winning the Revolution.” Peace and Freedom (Spring 2010). How France compelled Haiti to pay billions for restitution to French clave owners for loss of property (including slaves), how Pres. Aristide sued France seeking reparation , and how France with US and Canadian support organized a coup against him.
--Naomi Klein, “Haiti: A Creditor, Not a Debtor.” The Nation (March 1, 2010). Argues Haiti’s right to reparations.
Date: Tuesday, December 28, 2010, 7:04 AM
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22518
“The UN Mission in Haiti: OAS official Ricardo Seitenfus speaks out”
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin
The Special Representative for the Organisation of American States Ricardo Seitenfus was relieved of his duties 24 hours after he gave a candid interview to the Swiss newspaper Le Temps on Monday December 20th in which he lambasted the UN occupation of Haiti.
In an interview with the Swiss paper Le temps (December 20th 2010), Ricardo Seitenfus, blamed international capitalism for the ills of Haiti. Referring to Haiti’s 200 year national liberation struggle the Brazilian born academic said…..: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22518
Gearóid Ó Colmáin is a columnist in English and Gaelic with Metro Éireann, Ireland’s multicultural newspaper. His blog is at www.metrogael.blogspot.com . He can be contacted at gaelmetro@yahoo.ie.
“WikiLeaks Points to US Meddling in Haiti”
Kim Ives, Guardian UK
Intro: "US embassy cables reveal how anxious the US was to enlist Brazil to keep the deposed Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti."
READ MORE https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12db45197671b471
WHO IS ARISTIDE? READ ARISTIDE HIMSELF
--Aristide, Jean Bertrand. In the Parish of the Poor and Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization. Aristide is part of the Catholic movement by priests and nuns for the poor in Latin America, which confronted establishment exploitation of the poor throughout the hemisphere.
WHO ARE ARISTIDE’S SUPPORTERS IN THE US?
Miami Herald runs full-page statement calling for the return of Aristide
Signers included Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, actor Danny Glove rand Reverend Jesse Jackson.
http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/miami-herald-runs-full-page-statement-calling-return-aristide
WHY WAS THE RECENT ELECTION A SHAM, AND HOW IS ARISTIDE INVOLVED, OR NOT?
Bill Quigley and Nicole Phillips: Five Reasons to Care about Haiti’s Sham Elections 11-27-10
Haiti needs legitimate leaders right now. Unfortunately, the elections set for November 28, 2010 are a sham. Here are five reasons why the world community should care.
First, Haitian elections are supposed to choose their new President, the entire House of Deputies and one-third of the country's Senate. But election authorities have illegally excluded all the candidates from the country's most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas - and other progressive candidates. Lavalas, the party of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has won many elections in Haiti - probably the reason it was excluded. If this were the US, this would be like holding elections just between the Tea Party and the GOP - and excluding all others. Few Haitians will respect the outcome of these elections.
Second,
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3317?akid=290.126591.y05nKh&t=22
MEDIA RESPONSE TO EARTHQUAKE
By Kiilu Nyasha, “The Haitian Tragedy and Mainstream Media Response” Jan. 17, 2010.
I cannot remain silent in the face of so much racism and disinformation streaming over the mainstream media regarding the ongoing Haitian tragedy… Ignored by most commentators is the truth of Haiti's historic and ongoing poverty -" in classic "blame the victim" coverage. E.g., it's not mentioned that Haitians fought their way out of slavery in 1804, and were celebrating their bicentennial when the U.S. kidnapped and exiled (for the second time) their popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who won two landslide victories in internationally monitored elections
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Haitian-Tragedy-and-Ma-by-Kiilu-Nyasha-100116-842.html
HISTORY OF HAITI
ST. DOMINGUE, NAPOLEON, JEFFERSON
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/011310.html
“Haiti and America's Historic Debt” By Robert Parry
January 13, 2010
“Announcing emergency help for Haiti after a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, President Barack Obama noted America’s historic ties to the impoverished Caribbean nation, but few Americans understand how important Haiti’s contribution to U.S. history was………” http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/011310.html This fascinating essay gives an account of the Haitian revolts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and their consequences to the US and to Haiti.
“30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots” By BILL QUIGLEY
April 21, 2008
For the whole article go to:
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04212008.html\
………The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.
Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?
In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.
Doctor Paul Farmer (BG: Farmer has been shown recently as a commentator on the earthquake in Haiti)was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.…………” From B. Geary, “thinkcivic”
TWO MORE BOOKS
…..As Randall Robinson, the founder of the TransAfrica Forum correctly says, "Haiti's
misery is largely not of its own making."
"An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President"
Randall Robinson Basic Civitas Books, 2008
"Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance"
Beverly Bell Cornell University Press, 2001
WHO’S TO BLAME? WHAT ABOUT BUSH II AND CHENEY?
BUSH’S. IMPEACHABLE CRIMES AGAINST HAITI
“The Other Regime Change: Overthrowing Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide” by Lyn Duff and Dennis Bernstein in Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney,” ed. Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips Seven Stories P, 2006.
HELPING HAITI. Immediately following the earthquake solicited suggestions for qualified, reliable relief organizations. This caution is required because some organizations were not trustworthy. Timothy Schwartz. Travesty in Haiti: A True Account of Christian Missions, Orphanages, Fraud, Food Aid, and Drug Trafficking. Book Surge, 2011. Rev. The Progressive (Dec. 2010-Jan. 2011). “A must read for everyone, but especially for those who want to work in Haiti to actually empower Haitians to help themselves and rebuild their country.”
AID TO HAITI 4TH LIST
Fayetteville Free Weekly (1-28-10) provides a helpful checklist on how to avoid scam and give your money directly to Haitians: “Give to Haitians, Not to Scam Artists,” p. 35.
Haitian Women Hardest Hit By Earthquake….
USAID As the world responds to the devastation in Haiti, it's critical that we remember those who are both hardest hit by natural disasters and least likely to receive international aid: women and children. Read why.
In choosing where to donate, we highly encourage you to give to local, grassroots women's organizations, who know best how to help their communities but often cannot access international aid.
For our suggestions on U.S. organizations giving 100% of donations to grassroots Haitian groups click here.
More on women, Haiti and reconstruction:
Mourning The Loss of Haitian Feminist Leaders
Food and Agriculture Organization: Haiti's Rehabilitation Starts with Farmers
AL-ISLAM AND HUMANITY FIRST
Dick,
Al-Islam Students Association (AISA) is raising funds for Haiti Earthquake Victims through a Charity Organization "Humanity First." Would you please include Humanity first in your listserve. They have sent several medical teams comprising of doctors and nurses with medical and food supplies. These relief teams travel using their own funds and the donated money almost entirely (95%) goes to the victims. …..
Every time someone sends a text message "Support Humanity" to 20222, their phone bill will be charged with $5 donation for Haiti for Humanity First. Their website is usa.humanityfirst.org.
Thanks, Hameed Naseem
AID TO HAITI 3RD LIST
Compiled by Dick Bennett for OMNI
United Way is working on the long-term recovery in Haiti
volunteer.united-e-way.org/
Rapid Response Chaplains
are deploying to Haiti-you can make a difference by partnering with us!
www.BillyGraham.org
AmeriCares Sending Emergency Relief to Haiti. Donate Now
www.AmeriCares.org/haiti-earthquake
Habitat for Humanity is working on shelter for victims. Donate today!
www.habitat.org/Haiti (these 4 from Denise Garner)
In Arkansas: Haiti Education Foundation, 1810 W. Block St., El Dorado, Ark. 71730. And see: www.arkansasonline.com/haitiquake (from DemGaz)
From American Friends Service Committee
Today, AFSC’s first shipment of medical supplies arrived in Port-au-Prince. This is only the beginning of AFSC’s longer-term response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
To address the immediate need for medical equipment and supplies, AFSC released $50,000 to our partner, Handicap International. They have received the first shipment for supplies today.
Also today, AFSC is releasing an additional $50,000, to provide ten thousand meals over the next 100 days to families in three hard-hit neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, where food is an increasingly urgent priority. In this phase of response, AFSC is partnering with HEKS (Swiss Interchurch Aid).
AFSC’s plan extends beyond short-term, needs such as food and water. We are also planning an ongoing response to help Haitians rebuild their communities over time.
Help us continue to support the Haitian earthquake survivors as they rebuild their lives and communities – make a donation now ……...
Be sure to check our web site, afsc.org/Haiti , and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news.
AVAAZ
avaaz@avaaz.org
Dear friends,
Avaaz members have surged to the help of Haiti raising over $1 million in just a few days! Every dollar/euro/yen donated is immediately being sent to empower trustworthy local partner organizations to scale up their efforts, but the devastation is staggering and the needs remain massive. See the email below -- let´s stand with the Haitian people, help now! https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti ………………
Based on expert advice from leading humanitarian NGOs who have been working in Haiti for over 20 years, we're offering donations to trusted local organizations, including:
Honor and Respect for Bel Air, a big community-based network in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, which is also supported by our friends at the respected Brazilian NGO Viva Rio
Coordination Régionale des Organisations de Sud-Est (CROSE), which brings together some of the most active community groups in the South of Haiti where the earthquake struck hardest. These groups include: women's groups, schools networks and local cooperatives
Zanmi Lasante, sister organization of Partners in Health (PiH) in Haiti. PiH and its partners have been among the first to respond with emergency medical services to the most vulnerable
In 2008, Avaaz members donated over $2 million for Burmese monks to respond to the devastating Cyclone Nargis. Our money made an incredible difference there -- because it went directly to local people on the front lines of the aid effort………
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti
With hope for Haiti, Luis, Paul, Graziela, Paula, Ricken, Pascal, Alice, Benjamin, Milena and the whole Avaaz team……
ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva. Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns. Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages! You can also follow Avaaz on Twitter! …..To contact Avaaz, please do not reply to this email. Instead, write to us via the webform at http://www.avaaz.org/en/contact . You can also call us at +1-888-922-8229 (US) or +55 21 2509 0368 (Brazil).
NATIONS SENDING AID (what nation is not?)
USA, Germany, France, Venezuela, Gaza…….
EARTHQUAKE AID TO HAITI 2nd list
Here are more humanitarian groups suggested by other orgs. Dick
Oxfam
Israeli nation
Partners in Health
Unitarian Universalist Assoc. and UUSC
Mercy Corps
Grameen Haiti
Doctors Without Borders (repeated)
Fonkoze
Haiti Relief (a Lutheran Church)
Here is what two of my friends, retired from a major news network, have encouraged their friends to use. OXFAM
https://secure.oxfamamerica.org/site/Donation2?idb=181463811&df_id=3560&3560.donation=form1&JServSessionIdr004=g30isa3o02.app240a
I trust it because they were in a position to know who does what with donated monies.
LW
…….A number of organizations are already engaged in critical relief efforts, and I urge you to support as many of them as you can. One of them, Oxfam America, has an emergency response team of more than 200 people already on the ground. Make a donation to Oxfam's earthquake relief effort in Haiti:
http://acp.climateprotect.org/oxfam
Or, for a list of other organizations to donate to and ways to make a difference, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/haitiearthquake_embed ........
Al Gore Chairman Alliance for Climate Protection
The Israeli team is actually en route now. They left Israel yesterday evening in two Boeing 747's. But there is a 4-man Israeli rescue team on the ground that came from Mexico.
As for places to donate:
In the United States, several Jewish groups -- including the American Jewish World Service (www.ajws.org/haitiearthquake), American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (www.jdc.org), American Jewish Committee (www.ajc.org/haitifund) and B'nai B'rith International (https://secure.ga1.org/05/web_relief_donations) -- have set up mailboxes for donations. As always with Jewish groups - too many!
And did you know that if you donate money via Visa card, Visa takes a 3% cut of your donations? Mike Lieber
Dear Readers,
Below is a letter written by Ophelia Dahl, Executive Director of Partners in Health (PIH), an international organization dedicated to healthcare for the poor. They are currently working in Haiti to coordinate relief efforts and save lives after the dreadful earthquake that struck the nation.
It is estimated that the death toll could rise to over 100,000 and many more will be left hungry and homeless. We at the Americas Program strongly encourage all of you to give generously to support our partner organization PIH in these efforts—the donation links follow Ophelia’s letter. DONATE NOW TO HELP OUR EARTHQUAKE RELIEF EFFORTS
Watch for exclusive updates on the pages of the Americas Program www.americaspolicy.org as we seek to locate and hear from our collaborators. We will be following the situation closely……….
UUSC and the Unitarian Universalist Association have launched a joint earthquake relief fund to help the survivors of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake centered near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The situation is chaotic, communications systems are down, and debris impedes movement around the city. The U.N. estimates that 2.2 million people are affected and fears that the loss of life may reach into the tens of thousands.
Please donate now — your generous support will help us help the people of Haiti recover from this disaster………
Mercy Corps, Grameen Haiti
…….We have heard from quite a few people asking what they can do to help. We've created a link page on our website with many support organizations who are already on the ground in Haiti. If you feel so moved, please make a contribution to one of these or your favorite charity.
While there are many good organizations you can support, we are directly familiar with the following two. These groups do long-term sustainable development and conflict resolution work (both have people on the ground in Haiti helping with this crisis).
Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps works almost exclusively in high-risk conflict and post-conflict environments, implementing innovative conflict resolution and peacebuilding programs which will be essential to Haiti both now and moving forward. They are working right now to deliver rapid, lifesaving aid to hard-hit communities in Haiti.
Grameen Haiti
"For years, Grameen Foundation has been using microfinance and technology to help Haitians move themselves out of poverty. Grameen is working to help the nation recover from this recent disaster and will continue, as hard as it may be to imagine, to help their local partners build a Haiti that is more prosperous than pre-earthquake conditions."
This is an opportunity to stand in support of our brothers and sisters in Haiti.
All of us at The Peace Alliance.
AID TO HAITI LIST #1
……..There are many excellent organizations doing humanitarian work. If you are
considering making a Haiti-related donation, you might consider these three
organizations:
Doctors Without Borders
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
Partners in Health
http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
Fonkoze
http://www.fonkoze.org/
Carolyn Griffith forwarded this from Calvin Bey:
……If you are looking for a place to send money here is another option. I know these folks will make wise use of every penny. Send contributions to Haiti Relief, Lord of Life Lutheran Church, 5114 Twinbrook Rd, Fairfax, VA 22032……....
END OF OMNI HAITI NEWSLETTER #1, JANUARY 28, 2011
Contents
Aristide
History of Haiti
Reliable Aid to Haiti
ARISTIDE
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (1-21-11) published an essay by Ray Walser of the Heritage Foundation entitled “Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Out!” The essay is extremely hostile to Aristide: “Aristide’s shameful record of polarizing politics, corruption and thuggery.” “…Aristide pretty well shattered Haiti—and kept it that way.” No evidence was given, so we can only guess why Walser feels such animosity.
Others who share his dislike of Aristide:
Amy Wilentz. The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. See her article in The Nation (2-8) “The Haiti Haters,” about David Brooks, Anne Applebaum, Pat Robertson, and ideas for a renewed Haiti
AND OFFICIAL US POLICY
WHO IS TO BLAME FOR HAITI’S POLARIZED POLITICS AND CORRUPTION? ARISTIDE?
Farmer, Paul. The Uses of Haiti. “In 1994 [Farmer] wrote The Uses of Haiti, a sweeping history that reveals the consistent role of foreign powers, especially the United States, in the exploitation and oppression of the Haitian people. After several years out of print, an updated version of The Uses of Haiti has now been reissued.
The book rips apart the myth, so often repeated in the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets, that Haiti is a world apart, inexplicably the "poorest country in the Western hemisphere." Farmer shows that Haiti has always been enmeshed in a global system of imperialist competition, its resources and people ruthlessly exploited for profit, its repeated struggles for liberation brutally suppressed. As Noam Chomsky wrote in the 1994 introduction, the book "tells the truth about what has been happening in Haiti, and the U.S. role in its bitter fate."' Helen Scott, “The Uses and Abuses of Haiti.” International Socialist Review (April 2003). http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/Uses_Abuses_Haiti.html
--Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti , Aristide, and the Politics of Containment.
Hallward interv. by Amy Goodman 2-21-10. History of gross inequalities and exploitation. Haitians forced to work for $3 a day, their public resources were privatized for gain of a few, Aristide rose through grassroots democracy: won election by 70%, his party held big majority in Parliament, he disbanded the army, resisted foreign military rule. But he was kidnapped by US and exiled to South Africa, where he remains 2-21-10. [Still there 1-28-11—D] Haiti lost at least 200,000 people by the earthquake, perhaps 300,000; the nation needs him. But he is not allowed to return.
--Pate, Shirley. “Paying for Winning the Revolution.” Peace and Freedom (Spring 2010). How France compelled Haiti to pay billions for restitution to French clave owners for loss of property (including slaves), how Pres. Aristide sued France seeking reparation , and how France with US and Canadian support organized a coup against him.
--Naomi Klein, “Haiti: A Creditor, Not a Debtor.” The Nation (March 1, 2010). Argues Haiti’s right to reparations.
Date: Tuesday, December 28, 2010, 7:04 AM
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22518
“The UN Mission in Haiti: OAS official Ricardo Seitenfus speaks out”
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin
The Special Representative for the Organisation of American States Ricardo Seitenfus was relieved of his duties 24 hours after he gave a candid interview to the Swiss newspaper Le Temps on Monday December 20th in which he lambasted the UN occupation of Haiti.
In an interview with the Swiss paper Le temps (December 20th 2010), Ricardo Seitenfus, blamed international capitalism for the ills of Haiti. Referring to Haiti’s 200 year national liberation struggle the Brazilian born academic said…..: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22518
Gearóid Ó Colmáin is a columnist in English and Gaelic with Metro Éireann, Ireland’s multicultural newspaper. His blog is at www.metrogael.blogspot.com . He can be contacted at gaelmetro@yahoo.ie.
“WikiLeaks Points to US Meddling in Haiti”
Kim Ives, Guardian UK
Intro: "US embassy cables reveal how anxious the US was to enlist Brazil to keep the deposed Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti."
READ MORE https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12db45197671b471
WHO IS ARISTIDE? READ ARISTIDE HIMSELF
--Aristide, Jean Bertrand. In the Parish of the Poor and Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization. Aristide is part of the Catholic movement by priests and nuns for the poor in Latin America, which confronted establishment exploitation of the poor throughout the hemisphere.
WHO ARE ARISTIDE’S SUPPORTERS IN THE US?
Miami Herald runs full-page statement calling for the return of Aristide
Signers included Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, actor Danny Glove rand Reverend Jesse Jackson.
http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/miami-herald-runs-full-page-statement-calling-return-aristide
WHY WAS THE RECENT ELECTION A SHAM, AND HOW IS ARISTIDE INVOLVED, OR NOT?
Bill Quigley and Nicole Phillips: Five Reasons to Care about Haiti’s Sham Elections 11-27-10
Haiti needs legitimate leaders right now. Unfortunately, the elections set for November 28, 2010 are a sham. Here are five reasons why the world community should care.
First, Haitian elections are supposed to choose their new President, the entire House of Deputies and one-third of the country's Senate. But election authorities have illegally excluded all the candidates from the country's most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas - and other progressive candidates. Lavalas, the party of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has won many elections in Haiti - probably the reason it was excluded. If this were the US, this would be like holding elections just between the Tea Party and the GOP - and excluding all others. Few Haitians will respect the outcome of these elections.
Second,
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3317?akid=290.126591.y05nKh&t=22
MEDIA RESPONSE TO EARTHQUAKE
By Kiilu Nyasha, “The Haitian Tragedy and Mainstream Media Response” Jan. 17, 2010.
I cannot remain silent in the face of so much racism and disinformation streaming over the mainstream media regarding the ongoing Haitian tragedy… Ignored by most commentators is the truth of Haiti's historic and ongoing poverty -" in classic "blame the victim" coverage. E.g., it's not mentioned that Haitians fought their way out of slavery in 1804, and were celebrating their bicentennial when the U.S. kidnapped and exiled (for the second time) their popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who won two landslide victories in internationally monitored elections
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Haitian-Tragedy-and-Ma-by-Kiilu-Nyasha-100116-842.html
HISTORY OF HAITI
ST. DOMINGUE, NAPOLEON, JEFFERSON
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/011310.html
“Haiti and America's Historic Debt” By Robert Parry
January 13, 2010
“Announcing emergency help for Haiti after a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, President Barack Obama noted America’s historic ties to the impoverished Caribbean nation, but few Americans understand how important Haiti’s contribution to U.S. history was………” http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/011310.html This fascinating essay gives an account of the Haitian revolts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and their consequences to the US and to Haiti.
“30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots” By BILL QUIGLEY
April 21, 2008
For the whole article go to:
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04212008.html\
………The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.
Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?
In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.
Doctor Paul Farmer (BG: Farmer has been shown recently as a commentator on the earthquake in Haiti)was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.…………” From B. Geary, “thinkcivic”
TWO MORE BOOKS
…..As Randall Robinson, the founder of the TransAfrica Forum correctly says, "Haiti's
misery is largely not of its own making."
"An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President"
Randall Robinson Basic Civitas Books, 2008
"Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance"
Beverly Bell Cornell University Press, 2001
WHO’S TO BLAME? WHAT ABOUT BUSH II AND CHENEY?
BUSH’S. IMPEACHABLE CRIMES AGAINST HAITI
“The Other Regime Change: Overthrowing Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide” by Lyn Duff and Dennis Bernstein in Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney,” ed. Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips Seven Stories P, 2006.
HELPING HAITI. Immediately following the earthquake solicited suggestions for qualified, reliable relief organizations. This caution is required because some organizations were not trustworthy. Timothy Schwartz. Travesty in Haiti: A True Account of Christian Missions, Orphanages, Fraud, Food Aid, and Drug Trafficking. Book Surge, 2011. Rev. The Progressive (Dec. 2010-Jan. 2011). “A must read for everyone, but especially for those who want to work in Haiti to actually empower Haitians to help themselves and rebuild their country.”
AID TO HAITI 4TH LIST
Fayetteville Free Weekly (1-28-10) provides a helpful checklist on how to avoid scam and give your money directly to Haitians: “Give to Haitians, Not to Scam Artists,” p. 35.
Haitian Women Hardest Hit By Earthquake….
USAID As the world responds to the devastation in Haiti, it's critical that we remember those who are both hardest hit by natural disasters and least likely to receive international aid: women and children. Read why.
In choosing where to donate, we highly encourage you to give to local, grassroots women's organizations, who know best how to help their communities but often cannot access international aid.
For our suggestions on U.S. organizations giving 100% of donations to grassroots Haitian groups click here.
More on women, Haiti and reconstruction:
Mourning The Loss of Haitian Feminist Leaders
Food and Agriculture Organization: Haiti's Rehabilitation Starts with Farmers
AL-ISLAM AND HUMANITY FIRST
Dick,
Al-Islam Students Association (AISA) is raising funds for Haiti Earthquake Victims through a Charity Organization "Humanity First." Would you please include Humanity first in your listserve. They have sent several medical teams comprising of doctors and nurses with medical and food supplies. These relief teams travel using their own funds and the donated money almost entirely (95%) goes to the victims. …..
Every time someone sends a text message "Support Humanity" to 20222, their phone bill will be charged with $5 donation for Haiti for Humanity First. Their website is usa.humanityfirst.org.
Thanks, Hameed Naseem
AID TO HAITI 3RD LIST
Compiled by Dick Bennett for OMNI
United Way is working on the long-term recovery in Haiti
volunteer.united-e-way.org/
Rapid Response Chaplains
are deploying to Haiti-you can make a difference by partnering with us!
www.BillyGraham.org
AmeriCares Sending Emergency Relief to Haiti. Donate Now
www.AmeriCares.org/haiti-earthquake
Habitat for Humanity is working on shelter for victims. Donate today!
www.habitat.org/Haiti (these 4 from Denise Garner)
In Arkansas: Haiti Education Foundation, 1810 W. Block St., El Dorado, Ark. 71730. And see: www.arkansasonline.com/haitiquake (from DemGaz)
From American Friends Service Committee
Today, AFSC’s first shipment of medical supplies arrived in Port-au-Prince. This is only the beginning of AFSC’s longer-term response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
To address the immediate need for medical equipment and supplies, AFSC released $50,000 to our partner, Handicap International. They have received the first shipment for supplies today.
Also today, AFSC is releasing an additional $50,000, to provide ten thousand meals over the next 100 days to families in three hard-hit neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, where food is an increasingly urgent priority. In this phase of response, AFSC is partnering with HEKS (Swiss Interchurch Aid).
AFSC’s plan extends beyond short-term, needs such as food and water. We are also planning an ongoing response to help Haitians rebuild their communities over time.
Help us continue to support the Haitian earthquake survivors as they rebuild their lives and communities – make a donation now ……...
Be sure to check our web site, afsc.org/Haiti , and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news.
AVAAZ
avaaz@avaaz.org
Dear friends,
Avaaz members have surged to the help of Haiti raising over $1 million in just a few days! Every dollar/euro/yen donated is immediately being sent to empower trustworthy local partner organizations to scale up their efforts, but the devastation is staggering and the needs remain massive. See the email below -- let´s stand with the Haitian people, help now! https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti ………………
Based on expert advice from leading humanitarian NGOs who have been working in Haiti for over 20 years, we're offering donations to trusted local organizations, including:
Honor and Respect for Bel Air, a big community-based network in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, which is also supported by our friends at the respected Brazilian NGO Viva Rio
Coordination Régionale des Organisations de Sud-Est (CROSE), which brings together some of the most active community groups in the South of Haiti where the earthquake struck hardest. These groups include: women's groups, schools networks and local cooperatives
Zanmi Lasante, sister organization of Partners in Health (PiH) in Haiti. PiH and its partners have been among the first to respond with emergency medical services to the most vulnerable
In 2008, Avaaz members donated over $2 million for Burmese monks to respond to the devastating Cyclone Nargis. Our money made an incredible difference there -- because it went directly to local people on the front lines of the aid effort………
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti
With hope for Haiti, Luis, Paul, Graziela, Paula, Ricken, Pascal, Alice, Benjamin, Milena and the whole Avaaz team……
ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva. Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns. Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages! You can also follow Avaaz on Twitter! …..To contact Avaaz, please do not reply to this email. Instead, write to us via the webform at http://www.avaaz.org/en/contact . You can also call us at +1-888-922-8229 (US) or +55 21 2509 0368 (Brazil).
NATIONS SENDING AID (what nation is not?)
USA, Germany, France, Venezuela, Gaza…….
EARTHQUAKE AID TO HAITI 2nd list
Here are more humanitarian groups suggested by other orgs. Dick
Oxfam
Israeli nation
Partners in Health
Unitarian Universalist Assoc. and UUSC
Mercy Corps
Grameen Haiti
Doctors Without Borders (repeated)
Fonkoze
Haiti Relief (a Lutheran Church)
Here is what two of my friends, retired from a major news network, have encouraged their friends to use. OXFAM
https://secure.oxfamamerica.org/site/Donation2?idb=181463811&df_id=3560&3560.donation=form1&JServSessionIdr004=g30isa3o02.app240a
I trust it because they were in a position to know who does what with donated monies.
LW
…….A number of organizations are already engaged in critical relief efforts, and I urge you to support as many of them as you can. One of them, Oxfam America, has an emergency response team of more than 200 people already on the ground. Make a donation to Oxfam's earthquake relief effort in Haiti:
http://acp.climateprotect.org/oxfam
Or, for a list of other organizations to donate to and ways to make a difference, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/haitiearthquake_embed ........
Al Gore Chairman Alliance for Climate Protection
The Israeli team is actually en route now. They left Israel yesterday evening in two Boeing 747's. But there is a 4-man Israeli rescue team on the ground that came from Mexico.
As for places to donate:
In the United States, several Jewish groups -- including the American Jewish World Service (www.ajws.org/haitiearthquake), American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (www.jdc.org), American Jewish Committee (www.ajc.org/haitifund) and B'nai B'rith International (https://secure.ga1.org/05/web_relief_donations) -- have set up mailboxes for donations. As always with Jewish groups - too many!
And did you know that if you donate money via Visa card, Visa takes a 3% cut of your donations? Mike Lieber
Dear Readers,
Below is a letter written by Ophelia Dahl, Executive Director of Partners in Health (PIH), an international organization dedicated to healthcare for the poor. They are currently working in Haiti to coordinate relief efforts and save lives after the dreadful earthquake that struck the nation.
It is estimated that the death toll could rise to over 100,000 and many more will be left hungry and homeless. We at the Americas Program strongly encourage all of you to give generously to support our partner organization PIH in these efforts—the donation links follow Ophelia’s letter. DONATE NOW TO HELP OUR EARTHQUAKE RELIEF EFFORTS
Watch for exclusive updates on the pages of the Americas Program www.americaspolicy.org as we seek to locate and hear from our collaborators. We will be following the situation closely……….
UUSC and the Unitarian Universalist Association have launched a joint earthquake relief fund to help the survivors of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake centered near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The situation is chaotic, communications systems are down, and debris impedes movement around the city. The U.N. estimates that 2.2 million people are affected and fears that the loss of life may reach into the tens of thousands.
Please donate now — your generous support will help us help the people of Haiti recover from this disaster………
Mercy Corps, Grameen Haiti
…….We have heard from quite a few people asking what they can do to help. We've created a link page on our website with many support organizations who are already on the ground in Haiti. If you feel so moved, please make a contribution to one of these or your favorite charity.
While there are many good organizations you can support, we are directly familiar with the following two. These groups do long-term sustainable development and conflict resolution work (both have people on the ground in Haiti helping with this crisis).
Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps works almost exclusively in high-risk conflict and post-conflict environments, implementing innovative conflict resolution and peacebuilding programs which will be essential to Haiti both now and moving forward. They are working right now to deliver rapid, lifesaving aid to hard-hit communities in Haiti.
Grameen Haiti
"For years, Grameen Foundation has been using microfinance and technology to help Haitians move themselves out of poverty. Grameen is working to help the nation recover from this recent disaster and will continue, as hard as it may be to imagine, to help their local partners build a Haiti that is more prosperous than pre-earthquake conditions."
This is an opportunity to stand in support of our brothers and sisters in Haiti.
All of us at The Peace Alliance.
AID TO HAITI LIST #1
……..There are many excellent organizations doing humanitarian work. If you are
considering making a Haiti-related donation, you might consider these three
organizations:
Doctors Without Borders
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
Partners in Health
http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
Fonkoze
http://www.fonkoze.org/
Carolyn Griffith forwarded this from Calvin Bey:
……If you are looking for a place to send money here is another option. I know these folks will make wise use of every penny. Send contributions to Haiti Relief, Lord of Life Lutheran Church, 5114 Twinbrook Rd, Fairfax, VA 22032……....
END OF OMNI HAITI NEWSLETTER #1, JANUARY 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Control of Information for Wars
US WARS AND US MEDIA
Control of Information for Wars Newsletter #1, January 26, 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett
Contents: (placed in web site, and to What’s Happening? 1-26-11)
Pilger on Media Deception by Mainstream Media
Z Magazine Example of Alternative Media Truth-Telling
Graphic Images Effective
Books on US Wars and Media
Limits of Dissent
Manufacturing Consent
Selling War
Ruses for War
Spinning War (made easy)
Posted by: "radtimes" resist@comcast.net radman94606
Wed Dec 29, 2010 8:03 am (PST)
“Why Are Wars Not Being Reported Honestly?”
http://www.truth-out.org/why-are-wars-not-being-reported-honestly65844
Tuesday 14 December 2010
by: John Pilger
In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander
Gen. David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a "war of perception …
conducted continuously using the news media." What really matters is
not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the
adventure is sold in America, where "the media directly influence the
attitude of key audiences." Reading this, I was reminded of the
Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government
in 2002. "We had a secret weapon," he boasted. "We had the media,
especially TV. You got to have the media."
Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring
journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars which, say the
media-friendly generals, are now "perpetual." In echoing the west's
more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former US
vice-president Dick Cheney, who predicated "50 years of war," they
plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay
an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public.
At Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the Ministry of Defence's
psychological warfare (Psyops) establishment, media trainers devote
themselves to the task, immersed in a jargon world of "information
dominance," "asymmetric threats" and "cyberthreats." They share
premises with those who teach the interrogation methods that have led
to a public inquiry into British military torture in Iraq.
Disinformation and the barbarity of colonial war have much in common.
Of course, only the jargon is new. In the opening sequence of my
film, The War You Don't See, there is reference to a pre-WikiLeaks
private conversation in December 1917 between David Lloyd George,
Britain's prime minister during much of the first world war, and CP
Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian. "If people really knew the
truth," the prime minister said, "the war would be stopped tomorrow.
But of course they don't know, and can't know."
In the wake of this "war to end all wars", Edward Bernays, a
confidante of President Woodrow Wilson, coined the term "public
relations" as a euphemism for propaganda, "which was given a bad name
in the war." In his book, Propaganda (1928), Bernays described PR as
"an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our
country" thanks to "the intelligent manipulation of the masses." This
was achieved by "false realities" and their adoption by the media.
(One of Bernays's early successes was persuading women to smoke in
public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he achieved
headlines that lauded cigarettes as "torches of freedom.")
I began to understand this as a young reporter during the American
war in Vietnam. During my first assignment, I saw the results of the
bombing of two villages and the use of Napalm B, which continues to
burn beneath Message clipped] View entire message http://www.truth-out.org/why-are-wars-not-being-reported-honestly65844
When people complain about the failure of media to tell the truth or at least the truth adequately, they mainly refer to the MAINSTREAM media, for the US Constitution and democracy are strengthened by thousands of critical, truth-telling journals, magazines, and newsletters exposing the illegal US wars.
Here’s the example of one print journal and its online counterpart:
MEDIA REPORTING THE WARS: Z MAGAZINE AND Z NET
Z NET ON IRAQ WIKILEAKSDear Dick Bennett,
On Friday October 22nd [2010] WikiLeaks released the "Iraq War Logs," in what they are calling “the largest classified military leak in history” with 391,832 reports. The logs document the war and occupation in Iraq between 2004-2009 “as told by soldiers in the United States Army.” ZNet is featuring our coverage of this event and so far we have a number of items on the site. These include articles and video by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Josh Stieber who was deployed in Iraq, and whose Infantry Company was shown in the Wikileaks’ “Collateral Murder” video released April this year, and finally, by legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971.
Here are a few items that we have published so far:
Julian Assange: Explaining the Logs (Video)
Assange: Defending the Logs (Video)
Josh Stieber: Responding to the Leak (Article)
Daniel Ellsberg: Logs Released (Video and Article)
info@zcommunications.org
We hope you find these useful. Please check the site for more news and analysis over the coming days.
Z MAGAZINE: 8 ARTICLES AND ONE VIDEO IN ONE NUMBER (January 2011)
Inside the back cover you’ll find a description of the documentary, Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic, that examines a U.S. counterinsurgency initiative under which social scientists are embedded with combat troops. Contact: Bullfrog Films, info@bullfrogfilms.com ; www.bullfrogfilms.com
The 8 articles:
--What WikiLeaks reveals about the wars and enrages the rightwingers: the truth. Assange: “The more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership.”
--How violent toys and games legitimate our warrior culture. “Normalizing militarism in culture prepares a large segment of the population to support war.” But resistance is widespread (see list of organizations vs. war entertainment).
US strengthening Israeli offensive capability: “The actual bribe…will massively escalate the offensive capacity and reach of Israel’s Air Force……”.
IVAW’s Operation Recovery, “a campaign to transition this country out of our declared ‘endless war’and heal some of its wounds.” www.ivaw.org/operation-recovery .
Dangers of nuclear war: interview with Fidel Castro..
US empire, the Mideast, the world (Chomsky), entitled “U.S. Savage Imperialism,” Part II on Israel/Palestine.
US military spending and China: analyzes the $2 trillion surge in US military spending between 1999 and 2010.
Obama’s Bush foreign policy (rev. of Ali’s The Obama Syndrome) In military spending “Obama makes Bush look like a welterweight.”.
If we broadened the subject, we could add the article on the US bullying culture against glbtq., the 2 articles on the violence of the US prison system, and the 2 on US/Western domination of Haiti...
Greg Harton, “Can Graphic Images Change the World?” (NAT 11-15-10). New studies show they can, e.g. one at UA on smoking. The truth can awaken people. WikiLeaks is revealing the hidden truths of US warmaking. We need also more graphic truths of combat, which the recruiters and the corporate media are not showing.
BOOKS and FILMS
--Dimaggio, Anthony. When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent. Monthly Review P, 2009. Dissects the limits of dissent in the US press, stressing the government and mass media’s use of propaganda to restrict information in the “war on terror.” That is, the book explains how U.S. mainstream media frame foreign policy on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran in accord with the views of political officials and other elite representatives. The book’s central analytical method is that of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
--Herman, Edward and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon, 1988/2002. Explains the performance of mainstream US media in terms of basic institutional structures and relationships within which they operate, especially the powerful societal and financial interests that control them. Media function to inculcate and defend the agendas of privileged groups that dominate the US in many ways, including selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping the bounds of debate within acceptable premises. Especially, five media filters function to direct access and disseminate information to the public: 1) ownership, owner wealth, profit orientation, 2) advertising the main income source, 3) reliance on government, business, and experts funded by these institutions of power, 4)”flak” to discipline media, and 5) anti-communism as national religion to silence criticism (which today includes anti-terrorism).
--Osgood, Kenneth and Andrew Frank. Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century. UP of Florida, 2010. How US presidents have promoted war.
--Quigley, John. The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II. 1992. Chapter on “Won’t the Media Protect Us?” See books by William Blum, Killing Hope and Rogue State on US interventions and invasions.
--Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Wiley, 2005.
1. Videos for War Made Easy
War Made Easy
70 min - Aug 28, 2007
Uploaded by Media Education Foundation
video.google.com
War Made Easy - TRAILER
3 min - Jun 11, 2007
Uploaded by ChallengingMedia
youtube.com
2. ►
3. War Made Easy - Narrated by Sean Penn
War Made Easy | A new documentary featuring Norman Solomon and narrated by Sean Penn that chronicles how propaganda has been used to sell wars to the ...
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/ - Cached - Similar
4. about the film - War Made Easy - The Movie
War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year ...
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/synopsis.html - Cached - Similar
5. [PDF]
T R A N S C R I P T War Made Easy HOW PRESIDENTS & PUNDITS KEEP ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
War Made Easy. HOW PRESIDENTS & PUNDITS KEEP SPINNING US TO DEATH ...
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/downloads/full_transcript.pdf
Show more results from warmadeeasythemovie.org
6. War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death ...
7. Rating: 7.8/10 - from 594 users
8. Directed by Loretta Alper, Jeremy Earp. Starring George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Phil Donahue. War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception... See full summary »
www.imdb.com/title/tt1015246/ - Cached - Similar
9. Amazon.com: War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep ...
Amazon.com: War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (9780471694793): Norman Solomon: Books.
www.amazon.com › ... › Communication › Media & Politics - Cached - Similar
10. Democracy Now! | War Made Easy
Jan 6, 2011 ... Media critic Norman Solomon and the Media Education Foundation have released a documentary titled “War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits ...
www.democracynow.org/features/war_made_easy - Cached
11. War Made Easy | Media Education Foundation
War Made Easy,How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death | The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes documentary films and other ...
www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action... - Cached - Similar
12. War made easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death - Google Books Result
Norman Solomon - 2005 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 314 pages
This is a stop-the-presses book filled with mind-blowing facts about Washington's warmongers who keep the Pentagon budget rising.
books.google.com/books?isbn=0471694797...
Searches related to War Made Easy
war made easy wiki
war made easy dvd
war made easy download
war made easy review
war made easy summary
movie war made easy photos
military movie war made easy
martyrdom made easy
END OF NEWSLETTER # 1 ON CONTROL OF INFORMATION FOR WAR
Control of Information for Wars Newsletter #1, January 26, 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett
Contents: (placed in web site, and to What’s Happening? 1-26-11)
Pilger on Media Deception by Mainstream Media
Z Magazine Example of Alternative Media Truth-Telling
Graphic Images Effective
Books on US Wars and Media
Limits of Dissent
Manufacturing Consent
Selling War
Ruses for War
Spinning War (made easy)
Posted by: "radtimes" resist@comcast.net radman94606
Wed Dec 29, 2010 8:03 am (PST)
“Why Are Wars Not Being Reported Honestly?”
http://www.truth-out.org/why-are-wars-not-being-reported-honestly65844
Tuesday 14 December 2010
by: John Pilger
In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander
Gen. David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a "war of perception …
conducted continuously using the news media." What really matters is
not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the
adventure is sold in America, where "the media directly influence the
attitude of key audiences." Reading this, I was reminded of the
Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government
in 2002. "We had a secret weapon," he boasted. "We had the media,
especially TV. You got to have the media."
Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring
journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars which, say the
media-friendly generals, are now "perpetual." In echoing the west's
more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former US
vice-president Dick Cheney, who predicated "50 years of war," they
plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay
an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public.
At Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the Ministry of Defence's
psychological warfare (Psyops) establishment, media trainers devote
themselves to the task, immersed in a jargon world of "information
dominance," "asymmetric threats" and "cyberthreats." They share
premises with those who teach the interrogation methods that have led
to a public inquiry into British military torture in Iraq.
Disinformation and the barbarity of colonial war have much in common.
Of course, only the jargon is new. In the opening sequence of my
film, The War You Don't See, there is reference to a pre-WikiLeaks
private conversation in December 1917 between David Lloyd George,
Britain's prime minister during much of the first world war, and CP
Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian. "If people really knew the
truth," the prime minister said, "the war would be stopped tomorrow.
But of course they don't know, and can't know."
In the wake of this "war to end all wars", Edward Bernays, a
confidante of President Woodrow Wilson, coined the term "public
relations" as a euphemism for propaganda, "which was given a bad name
in the war." In his book, Propaganda (1928), Bernays described PR as
"an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our
country" thanks to "the intelligent manipulation of the masses." This
was achieved by "false realities" and their adoption by the media.
(One of Bernays's early successes was persuading women to smoke in
public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he achieved
headlines that lauded cigarettes as "torches of freedom.")
I began to understand this as a young reporter during the American
war in Vietnam. During my first assignment, I saw the results of the
bombing of two villages and the use of Napalm B, which continues to
burn beneath Message clipped] View entire message http://www.truth-out.org/why-are-wars-not-being-reported-honestly65844
When people complain about the failure of media to tell the truth or at least the truth adequately, they mainly refer to the MAINSTREAM media, for the US Constitution and democracy are strengthened by thousands of critical, truth-telling journals, magazines, and newsletters exposing the illegal US wars.
Here’s the example of one print journal and its online counterpart:
MEDIA REPORTING THE WARS: Z MAGAZINE AND Z NET
Z NET ON IRAQ WIKILEAKSDear Dick Bennett,
On Friday October 22nd [2010] WikiLeaks released the "Iraq War Logs," in what they are calling “the largest classified military leak in history” with 391,832 reports. The logs document the war and occupation in Iraq between 2004-2009 “as told by soldiers in the United States Army.” ZNet is featuring our coverage of this event and so far we have a number of items on the site. These include articles and video by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Josh Stieber who was deployed in Iraq, and whose Infantry Company was shown in the Wikileaks’ “Collateral Murder” video released April this year, and finally, by legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971.
Here are a few items that we have published so far:
Julian Assange: Explaining the Logs (Video)
Assange: Defending the Logs (Video)
Josh Stieber: Responding to the Leak (Article)
Daniel Ellsberg: Logs Released (Video and Article)
info@zcommunications.org
We hope you find these useful. Please check the site for more news and analysis over the coming days.
Z MAGAZINE: 8 ARTICLES AND ONE VIDEO IN ONE NUMBER (January 2011)
Inside the back cover you’ll find a description of the documentary, Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic, that examines a U.S. counterinsurgency initiative under which social scientists are embedded with combat troops. Contact: Bullfrog Films, info@bullfrogfilms.com ; www.bullfrogfilms.com
The 8 articles:
--What WikiLeaks reveals about the wars and enrages the rightwingers: the truth. Assange: “The more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership.”
--How violent toys and games legitimate our warrior culture. “Normalizing militarism in culture prepares a large segment of the population to support war.” But resistance is widespread (see list of organizations vs. war entertainment).
US strengthening Israeli offensive capability: “The actual bribe…will massively escalate the offensive capacity and reach of Israel’s Air Force……”.
IVAW’s Operation Recovery, “a campaign to transition this country out of our declared ‘endless war’and heal some of its wounds.” www.ivaw.org/operation-recovery .
Dangers of nuclear war: interview with Fidel Castro..
US empire, the Mideast, the world (Chomsky), entitled “U.S. Savage Imperialism,” Part II on Israel/Palestine.
US military spending and China: analyzes the $2 trillion surge in US military spending between 1999 and 2010.
Obama’s Bush foreign policy (rev. of Ali’s The Obama Syndrome) In military spending “Obama makes Bush look like a welterweight.”.
If we broadened the subject, we could add the article on the US bullying culture against glbtq., the 2 articles on the violence of the US prison system, and the 2 on US/Western domination of Haiti...
Greg Harton, “Can Graphic Images Change the World?” (NAT 11-15-10). New studies show they can, e.g. one at UA on smoking. The truth can awaken people. WikiLeaks is revealing the hidden truths of US warmaking. We need also more graphic truths of combat, which the recruiters and the corporate media are not showing.
BOOKS and FILMS
--Dimaggio, Anthony. When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent. Monthly Review P, 2009. Dissects the limits of dissent in the US press, stressing the government and mass media’s use of propaganda to restrict information in the “war on terror.” That is, the book explains how U.S. mainstream media frame foreign policy on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran in accord with the views of political officials and other elite representatives. The book’s central analytical method is that of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
--Herman, Edward and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon, 1988/2002. Explains the performance of mainstream US media in terms of basic institutional structures and relationships within which they operate, especially the powerful societal and financial interests that control them. Media function to inculcate and defend the agendas of privileged groups that dominate the US in many ways, including selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping the bounds of debate within acceptable premises. Especially, five media filters function to direct access and disseminate information to the public: 1) ownership, owner wealth, profit orientation, 2) advertising the main income source, 3) reliance on government, business, and experts funded by these institutions of power, 4)”flak” to discipline media, and 5) anti-communism as national religion to silence criticism (which today includes anti-terrorism).
--Osgood, Kenneth and Andrew Frank. Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century. UP of Florida, 2010. How US presidents have promoted war.
--Quigley, John. The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II. 1992. Chapter on “Won’t the Media Protect Us?” See books by William Blum, Killing Hope and Rogue State on US interventions and invasions.
--Solomon, Norman. War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Wiley, 2005.
1. Videos for War Made Easy
War Made Easy
70 min - Aug 28, 2007
Uploaded by Media Education Foundation
video.google.com
War Made Easy - TRAILER
3 min - Jun 11, 2007
Uploaded by ChallengingMedia
youtube.com
2. ►
3. War Made Easy - Narrated by Sean Penn
War Made Easy | A new documentary featuring Norman Solomon and narrated by Sean Penn that chronicles how propaganda has been used to sell wars to the ...
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/ - Cached - Similar
4. about the film - War Made Easy - The Movie
War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year ...
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/synopsis.html - Cached - Similar
5. [PDF]
T R A N S C R I P T War Made Easy HOW PRESIDENTS & PUNDITS KEEP ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
War Made Easy. HOW PRESIDENTS & PUNDITS KEEP SPINNING US TO DEATH ...
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/downloads/full_transcript.pdf
Show more results from warmadeeasythemovie.org
6. War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death ...
7. Rating: 7.8/10 - from 594 users
8. Directed by Loretta Alper, Jeremy Earp. Starring George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Phil Donahue. War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception... See full summary »
www.imdb.com/title/tt1015246/ - Cached - Similar
9. Amazon.com: War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep ...
Amazon.com: War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (9780471694793): Norman Solomon: Books.
www.amazon.com › ... › Communication › Media & Politics - Cached - Similar
10. Democracy Now! | War Made Easy
Jan 6, 2011 ... Media critic Norman Solomon and the Media Education Foundation have released a documentary titled “War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits ...
www.democracynow.org/features/war_made_easy - Cached
11. War Made Easy | Media Education Foundation
War Made Easy,How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death | The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes documentary films and other ...
www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action... - Cached - Similar
12. War made easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death - Google Books Result
Norman Solomon - 2005 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 314 pages
This is a stop-the-presses book filled with mind-blowing facts about Washington's warmongers who keep the Pentagon budget rising.
books.google.com/books?isbn=0471694797...
Searches related to War Made Easy
war made easy wiki
war made easy dvd
war made easy download
war made easy review
war made easy summary
movie war made easy photos
military movie war made easy
martyrdom made easy
END OF NEWSLETTER # 1 ON CONTROL OF INFORMATION FOR WAR
Obama's State of the Union
OBAMA'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH JAN. 25, 2011
See a regular video of the President's remarks here or read the full text here.
https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12dc33eedc54b702
A video of the enhanced version of his speech, with charts and graphs, is also available and you can leave questions and comments here: WhiteHouse.gov/sotu.
HIGHLIGHTS OF PRES. OBAMA'S STATE OF THE UNION JAN. 25, 2011, BY OBAMA
"What I just told the nation"
democraticparty@democrats.org
Dick --
Tonight I addressed the American people on the future we face together.
Though at times it may seem uncertain, it is a future that is ours to decide, ours to define, and ours to win.
I know we will.
Because, after the worst recession in decades, we see an economy growing again.
Because, after two years of job losses, we've added private-sector jobs for 12 straight months -- more than 1 million in all.
Because, time after time, when our resolve has been tested, we, as a nation, have always prevailed.
Overcoming the challenges we face today requires a new vision for tomorrow. We will move forward together, or not at all -- for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.
Yet the story of America is this: We do big things.
Just as the progress of the past two years would not have been possible without your hard work, we will not realize the agenda I described tonight without you.
So as we continue this great mission together, and we set out the plans for how far we can go, I need to know that you are ready to work side by side with me once more.
Will you stand with me as we strive to win the future?
The last two years have been marked by unprecedented reforms and historic progress.
But there is much more work to do.
Moving forward, America's economic growth at home is inextricably connected to our competitiveness in the global community. The more products American companies can export, the more jobs we can create at home.
This vision for the future starts with innovation, tapping into the creativity and imagination of our people to create the jobs and industries of the future. Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. It's why I challenged Congress to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources.
It means leading the world in educating our kids, giving each of our children the best opportunity to succeed and preparing them for the jobs of tomorrow.
We must build a 21st century infrastructure for our country, putting millions of Americans to work rebuilding roads and bridges and expanding high-speed Internet and high-speed rail.
We must reform government, making it leaner, smarter, and more transparent.
And we must take responsibility for our shared debt, reining in our long-term deficit so we can afford the investments we need to move our country forward.
That is the vision I laid out tonight. That is how we win the future.
It is going to take a lot of work -- but I have no doubt we are up to the task.
Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist.
But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets. We unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.
This is our generation's Sputnik moment.
Please stand together with me:
http://my.democrats.org/WinTheFuture
It is because of each of you, who define the will of a people, that the state of our union is strong in the face of tough challenges. You are the reason our future is still bright in the face of deep uncertainty.
And you are the reason I believe that future is ours to win.
Thank you,
Barack
Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org.
This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003
CRITIQUES OF OBAMA'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH JANUARY 25, 2011
HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR
“Response to President Obama’s January 25, 2011 State of the Union Address, Historians Against the WarDraft by Marty Halpern, Edrene McKay, and Staughton Lynd
[COMPETITION: headings and bold by Dick]
President Obama’s State of the Union address, coming two months after
his party’s defeat in the 2010 elections, makes clear that he puts a
high value on winning. He wants the United States to compete more
effectively, to be number one around the world again. He wants every
child to have the opportunity to compete to achieve the American dream.
He wants American industry to compete more successfully in the global
marketplace. He wants improvements to our infrastructure to create and
sustain more jobs. He wants to produce innovative and competitive
scientists, engineers, and technicians. Although competitiveness is not
the only value Mr. Obama upholds, by making it number one and allowing
it to trump other values, he fails to identify the true sources of our
problems at home and abroad such as the bloated military budget and,
therefore, fails to effectively address those problems.
Mr. Obama declared that “America has been the story of ordinary people
who dare to dream,” but his focus on competitiveness means embracing
corporate rather than democratic values and reflects Mr. Obama’s recent
appointments of business executives and business-oriented advisors. The
push for competiveness is an attempt to reassert what historian William
Appleman Williams called “open door imperialism,” the export of goods
and investment of capital abroad with regard only to profits,
disregarding the human consequences and paving the way for military
intervention when needed to achieve political stability or cooperation.
[COOPERATION]
What we need if we are to advance as a nation is a spirit of
cooperation at home and abroad. We need to organize our educational
system not around competition but around personal rights, ensuring, as
John Kennedy explained in his address to the country on civil rights,
that all children have the right “to be educated to the limit” of their
talents. We need to organize our society around meeting the basic
needs of all and cooperating with one another rather than merely
asserting everyone should have the chance to try to grab the brass ring.
We need to create a world economy based on equality and friendship
among peoples, not a competitive race to the top which often forces
people from poorer nations and working people in richer nations to the
bottom. Symptomatic of the mistaken idea that the competitive market
solves all problems is the adoption of NAFTA and other so-called free
trade pacts. Although several Latin American states have successfully
rejected the International Monetary Fund model of austerity and
privatization and put resources toward expanding social benefits and
infrastructure development, NAFTA has increased profits for U.S. agricultural firms, flooded Mexico with corn and meat subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and undermined Mexico's rural economy. Workers in neither country have benefitted and large
numbers of Mexicans have been forced to leave the land, work in
American-owned border town factories as cheap labor under the most
deplorable working and living conditions, or to seek employment in our
country.
[CORPORATIONS]
In the late nineteenth century, corporations came to dominate our
economy and have often had a stranglehold on our political system.
Beginning in the late 1970s, corporations with headquarters in the
United Sates have transferred manufacturing capital out of the country
to low-wage societies. The federal government has not regulated such
outflows and indeed has embraced deregulation. The loss of good-paying
jobs, attacks on unions, regressive taxes, and deregulation have created
the widest wealth and income gap between the corporate elite and the
rest of the population in our history. The Supreme Court’s
green-lighting of unlimited corporate funding of political campaigns
makes the more than century-old problem of money corrupting politics
worse than ever. The corporate dictum that we must dominate other
countries in order to maximize profits has turned the United States into
a warfare state.
The jobs crisis that Mr. Obama hopes to address can only be understood
in the context of a political situation dominated by business interests
who believe that our economy runs best through a dog-eat-dog competition
that has millions of unemployed people seeking jobs. Corporate interests
want workers to work harder; they seek to eliminate unions and keep
wages low and hours long. At the same time, the most irresponsible
portion of the corporate elite wants to minimize its obligation to fund
the government and to forsake the needs of ordinary people. However, it
expects aid to support its business interests and relies on U.S.
military power around the globe to achieve its objectives.
[PRESIDENTS OBAMA AND ROOSEVELT: ONE USA]
In his address at Tucson on January 8, Mr. Obama confirmed movingly that
“those who were harmed, those who were killed -- they are part our
family, an American family 300 million strong.” He suggested that we
should use the occasion “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to
each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and
remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
Mr. Obama’s notion that we should be one America makes sense if it’s
coupled with the idea of the government serving the needs of all the
people, with the bulk of the costs being borne by the people with the
ability to pay. Sixty seven years ago, during the midst of World War
II, President Franklin Roosevelt used his state of the union address to
propose an Economic Bill of Rights in which all of us would be
guaranteed “useful and remunerative” jobs, medical care, education, and
a decent home. Mr. Roosevelt combined his call for an expanded New Deal
with support for tax reform, placing the tax burden on the wealthy and
the large corporations because those who reap the most benefits from the
economy should be willing to bear the greatest tax burden. As Mr.
Roosevelt saw it at the time of his second inaugural address in 1937:
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of
those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have
too little.” Mr. Roosevelt did not succeed in securing guaranteed jobs
or tax reform, but he tried to achieve the ideal of community by
promoting justice and that is what is needed again today.
[PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES IN PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS]
Mr. Obama can claim some important recent achievements including the
ratification of the START treaty and open participation by gay and
lesbian soldiers in our military. We welcome Mr. Obama’s call for the
elimination of nuclear weapons since the nuclear arms race has been
dangerous, harmful to human health, and economically destructive; it
continues to cause instability in world politics. We also appreciate
Mr. Obama’s pledge last Saturday, on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade,
to protect reproductive freedom. On most peace, national security, and
human rights issues, however, Mr. Obama’s record has been disappointing
to peace and justice advocates.
[WARS AND CONSEQUENCES: MILITARISM]
The peace movement is critical of Mr. Obama’s desire to maintain a
significant military presence in Iraq despite his earlier advocacy of
complete withdrawal of our fighting forces from that country. We need
to bring a complete end to our unjust intervention in Iraq. Although 60
percent of the U.S. public now believes that the war in Afghanistan is
“not worth fighting,” the administration’s December 2010 review of
Afghanistan policy led to dubious claims of successes, which the
president repeated in his State of the Union address, and to a decision
to continue the war for four more years. The choice to continue a
policy which the government’s own National Intelligence Estimate makes
clear is failing is a grave error. How many more people must die before
the forces in conflict sit around a table to negotiate an end to an
unwinnable war? With the government making use of private corporations
to carry out its military enterprise and warfare, military expenditures
have continued to grow under Mr. Obama, reaching over one trillion
dollars in 2010 alone. How can the government meet the needs of the
people of the United States when military expenditures are at such a
level?
Peace forces are also troubled by the administration’s human rights
record, by its failure to close the Guantánamo prison as promised, by
the opening of military trials of detainees in defiance of international
human rights standards, by the many deaths of civilians in Afghanistan
and Pakistan in attacks that amount to war crimes, by continuing
interventions against left-wing governments in Latin America, by the
recent FBI raids against peace activists, and by the U.S.’s failure to
pressure Israel to end its denial of Palestinian rights. Although peace
and justice activists support the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” we
don’t agree that democratic reform should be used to promote further
militarization of our society as Mr. Obama did with his call to
universities to open their doors to the ROTC and military recruiters.
Our university graduates are needed in fields that meet people’s needs
and that develop the country’s infrastructure rather than in staffing an
overextended empire.
The ?? to the civilians in societies where we are intervening
and to our own and other combatants is tragic and unsustainable.
Continuing down the path of spending almost as much on the military as
all other countries put together is bankrupting the country, failing to
achieve the control our government seeks, and making us less safe.
Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower’s farewell address warned the
country against domination by the military-industrial complex.
Eisenhower recognized the destructive nature of militarization. He said
in 1953: “"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket
fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and
are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms
is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
Unfortunately, domination by the military-industrial complex has grown
stronger in the past five decades with negative consequences to our
democratic polity and to the ability of our economy to meet the needs of
our people and contribute in a positive way to help the poorer people of
the world.
[PEACE MOVEMENT FOR A NEW NATIONAL SECURITY]
Historians Against the War (HAW) was formed in 2003 in response to the
Iraq War to offer historical expertise to a burgeoning mass movement in
our country against an unjust war. Like the mass movement against the
unjust Vietnam War, the movement against the Iraq war raised pragmatic,
legal, and moral questions and contributed to a change in U.S. policy.
The Democratic capture of Congress in 2006 and Mr. Obama’s election in
2008 owe much to the popular revulsion to the Iraq war, stimulated in
part by the anti-war movement.
Since Mr. Obama’s election, peace activists have held vigils, teach-ins,
participated in the World Social Forum, the One Nation Coming Together
march led by the AFL-CIO, and the National Day of Action to Confront
U.S. Militarism in the Americas. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the
grass roots pressure for peace is modest right now. Movements wax and
wane and presidents, of course, have to give leadership every day and
sometimes trim their sails to deal with political realities.
Our standard is not perfection but having the political courage to move
in the right direction. The grass roots will stir again, helped along
by peace and justice movements and by contingencies yet to develop, but
will Mr. Obama be their ally? We need the president to have the
political courage to honestly address the need to finally and fully
extricate us from Iraq, end our involvement in the failed war in
Afghanistan, contribute to finding peaceful and just solutions to other
foreign policy problems, and create a new national security posture
based on peace, friendship and equality with other nations rather than
domination via overweening military power.
_______________________________________________
Haw-Sc mailing list
Haw-Sc@lists.historiansagainstwar.org
http://lists.historiansagainstwar.org/listinfo.cgi/haw-sc-historiansagainstwar.org
List archives at http://historiansagainstwar.org/mailman/private/haw-sc_historiansagainstwar.org/
See a regular video of the President's remarks here or read the full text here.
https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12dc33eedc54b702
A video of the enhanced version of his speech, with charts and graphs, is also available and you can leave questions and comments here: WhiteHouse.gov/sotu.
HIGHLIGHTS OF PRES. OBAMA'S STATE OF THE UNION JAN. 25, 2011, BY OBAMA
"What I just told the nation"
democraticparty@democrats.org
Dick --
Tonight I addressed the American people on the future we face together.
Though at times it may seem uncertain, it is a future that is ours to decide, ours to define, and ours to win.
I know we will.
Because, after the worst recession in decades, we see an economy growing again.
Because, after two years of job losses, we've added private-sector jobs for 12 straight months -- more than 1 million in all.
Because, time after time, when our resolve has been tested, we, as a nation, have always prevailed.
Overcoming the challenges we face today requires a new vision for tomorrow. We will move forward together, or not at all -- for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.
Yet the story of America is this: We do big things.
Just as the progress of the past two years would not have been possible without your hard work, we will not realize the agenda I described tonight without you.
So as we continue this great mission together, and we set out the plans for how far we can go, I need to know that you are ready to work side by side with me once more.
Will you stand with me as we strive to win the future?
The last two years have been marked by unprecedented reforms and historic progress.
But there is much more work to do.
Moving forward, America's economic growth at home is inextricably connected to our competitiveness in the global community. The more products American companies can export, the more jobs we can create at home.
This vision for the future starts with innovation, tapping into the creativity and imagination of our people to create the jobs and industries of the future. Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. It's why I challenged Congress to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources.
It means leading the world in educating our kids, giving each of our children the best opportunity to succeed and preparing them for the jobs of tomorrow.
We must build a 21st century infrastructure for our country, putting millions of Americans to work rebuilding roads and bridges and expanding high-speed Internet and high-speed rail.
We must reform government, making it leaner, smarter, and more transparent.
And we must take responsibility for our shared debt, reining in our long-term deficit so we can afford the investments we need to move our country forward.
That is the vision I laid out tonight. That is how we win the future.
It is going to take a lot of work -- but I have no doubt we are up to the task.
Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist.
But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets. We unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.
This is our generation's Sputnik moment.
Please stand together with me:
http://my.democrats.org/WinTheFuture
It is because of each of you, who define the will of a people, that the state of our union is strong in the face of tough challenges. You are the reason our future is still bright in the face of deep uncertainty.
And you are the reason I believe that future is ours to win.
Thank you,
Barack
Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org.
This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003
CRITIQUES OF OBAMA'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH JANUARY 25, 2011
HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR
“Response to President Obama’s January 25, 2011 State of the Union Address, Historians Against the WarDraft by Marty Halpern, Edrene McKay, and Staughton Lynd
[COMPETITION: headings and bold by Dick]
President Obama’s State of the Union address, coming two months after
his party’s defeat in the 2010 elections, makes clear that he puts a
high value on winning. He wants the United States to compete more
effectively, to be number one around the world again. He wants every
child to have the opportunity to compete to achieve the American dream.
He wants American industry to compete more successfully in the global
marketplace. He wants improvements to our infrastructure to create and
sustain more jobs. He wants to produce innovative and competitive
scientists, engineers, and technicians. Although competitiveness is not
the only value Mr. Obama upholds, by making it number one and allowing
it to trump other values, he fails to identify the true sources of our
problems at home and abroad such as the bloated military budget and,
therefore, fails to effectively address those problems.
Mr. Obama declared that “America has been the story of ordinary people
who dare to dream,” but his focus on competitiveness means embracing
corporate rather than democratic values and reflects Mr. Obama’s recent
appointments of business executives and business-oriented advisors. The
push for competiveness is an attempt to reassert what historian William
Appleman Williams called “open door imperialism,” the export of goods
and investment of capital abroad with regard only to profits,
disregarding the human consequences and paving the way for military
intervention when needed to achieve political stability or cooperation.
[COOPERATION]
What we need if we are to advance as a nation is a spirit of
cooperation at home and abroad. We need to organize our educational
system not around competition but around personal rights, ensuring, as
John Kennedy explained in his address to the country on civil rights,
that all children have the right “to be educated to the limit” of their
talents. We need to organize our society around meeting the basic
needs of all and cooperating with one another rather than merely
asserting everyone should have the chance to try to grab the brass ring.
We need to create a world economy based on equality and friendship
among peoples, not a competitive race to the top which often forces
people from poorer nations and working people in richer nations to the
bottom. Symptomatic of the mistaken idea that the competitive market
solves all problems is the adoption of NAFTA and other so-called free
trade pacts. Although several Latin American states have successfully
rejected the International Monetary Fund model of austerity and
privatization and put resources toward expanding social benefits and
infrastructure development, NAFTA has increased profits for U.S. agricultural firms, flooded Mexico with corn and meat subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and undermined Mexico's rural economy. Workers in neither country have benefitted and large
numbers of Mexicans have been forced to leave the land, work in
American-owned border town factories as cheap labor under the most
deplorable working and living conditions, or to seek employment in our
country.
[CORPORATIONS]
In the late nineteenth century, corporations came to dominate our
economy and have often had a stranglehold on our political system.
Beginning in the late 1970s, corporations with headquarters in the
United Sates have transferred manufacturing capital out of the country
to low-wage societies. The federal government has not regulated such
outflows and indeed has embraced deregulation. The loss of good-paying
jobs, attacks on unions, regressive taxes, and deregulation have created
the widest wealth and income gap between the corporate elite and the
rest of the population in our history. The Supreme Court’s
green-lighting of unlimited corporate funding of political campaigns
makes the more than century-old problem of money corrupting politics
worse than ever. The corporate dictum that we must dominate other
countries in order to maximize profits has turned the United States into
a warfare state.
The jobs crisis that Mr. Obama hopes to address can only be understood
in the context of a political situation dominated by business interests
who believe that our economy runs best through a dog-eat-dog competition
that has millions of unemployed people seeking jobs. Corporate interests
want workers to work harder; they seek to eliminate unions and keep
wages low and hours long. At the same time, the most irresponsible
portion of the corporate elite wants to minimize its obligation to fund
the government and to forsake the needs of ordinary people. However, it
expects aid to support its business interests and relies on U.S.
military power around the globe to achieve its objectives.
[PRESIDENTS OBAMA AND ROOSEVELT: ONE USA]
In his address at Tucson on January 8, Mr. Obama confirmed movingly that
“those who were harmed, those who were killed -- they are part our
family, an American family 300 million strong.” He suggested that we
should use the occasion “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to
each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and
remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
Mr. Obama’s notion that we should be one America makes sense if it’s
coupled with the idea of the government serving the needs of all the
people, with the bulk of the costs being borne by the people with the
ability to pay. Sixty seven years ago, during the midst of World War
II, President Franklin Roosevelt used his state of the union address to
propose an Economic Bill of Rights in which all of us would be
guaranteed “useful and remunerative” jobs, medical care, education, and
a decent home. Mr. Roosevelt combined his call for an expanded New Deal
with support for tax reform, placing the tax burden on the wealthy and
the large corporations because those who reap the most benefits from the
economy should be willing to bear the greatest tax burden. As Mr.
Roosevelt saw it at the time of his second inaugural address in 1937:
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of
those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have
too little.” Mr. Roosevelt did not succeed in securing guaranteed jobs
or tax reform, but he tried to achieve the ideal of community by
promoting justice and that is what is needed again today.
[PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES IN PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS]
Mr. Obama can claim some important recent achievements including the
ratification of the START treaty and open participation by gay and
lesbian soldiers in our military. We welcome Mr. Obama’s call for the
elimination of nuclear weapons since the nuclear arms race has been
dangerous, harmful to human health, and economically destructive; it
continues to cause instability in world politics. We also appreciate
Mr. Obama’s pledge last Saturday, on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade,
to protect reproductive freedom. On most peace, national security, and
human rights issues, however, Mr. Obama’s record has been disappointing
to peace and justice advocates.
[WARS AND CONSEQUENCES: MILITARISM]
The peace movement is critical of Mr. Obama’s desire to maintain a
significant military presence in Iraq despite his earlier advocacy of
complete withdrawal of our fighting forces from that country. We need
to bring a complete end to our unjust intervention in Iraq. Although 60
percent of the U.S. public now believes that the war in Afghanistan is
“not worth fighting,” the administration’s December 2010 review of
Afghanistan policy led to dubious claims of successes, which the
president repeated in his State of the Union address, and to a decision
to continue the war for four more years. The choice to continue a
policy which the government’s own National Intelligence Estimate makes
clear is failing is a grave error. How many more people must die before
the forces in conflict sit around a table to negotiate an end to an
unwinnable war? With the government making use of private corporations
to carry out its military enterprise and warfare, military expenditures
have continued to grow under Mr. Obama, reaching over one trillion
dollars in 2010 alone. How can the government meet the needs of the
people of the United States when military expenditures are at such a
level?
Peace forces are also troubled by the administration’s human rights
record, by its failure to close the Guantánamo prison as promised, by
the opening of military trials of detainees in defiance of international
human rights standards, by the many deaths of civilians in Afghanistan
and Pakistan in attacks that amount to war crimes, by continuing
interventions against left-wing governments in Latin America, by the
recent FBI raids against peace activists, and by the U.S.’s failure to
pressure Israel to end its denial of Palestinian rights. Although peace
and justice activists support the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” we
don’t agree that democratic reform should be used to promote further
militarization of our society as Mr. Obama did with his call to
universities to open their doors to the ROTC and military recruiters.
Our university graduates are needed in fields that meet people’s needs
and that develop the country’s infrastructure rather than in staffing an
overextended empire.
The ?? to the civilians in societies where we are intervening
and to our own and other combatants is tragic and unsustainable.
Continuing down the path of spending almost as much on the military as
all other countries put together is bankrupting the country, failing to
achieve the control our government seeks, and making us less safe.
Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower’s farewell address warned the
country against domination by the military-industrial complex.
Eisenhower recognized the destructive nature of militarization. He said
in 1953: “"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket
fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and
are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms
is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
Unfortunately, domination by the military-industrial complex has grown
stronger in the past five decades with negative consequences to our
democratic polity and to the ability of our economy to meet the needs of
our people and contribute in a positive way to help the poorer people of
the world.
[PEACE MOVEMENT FOR A NEW NATIONAL SECURITY]
Historians Against the War (HAW) was formed in 2003 in response to the
Iraq War to offer historical expertise to a burgeoning mass movement in
our country against an unjust war. Like the mass movement against the
unjust Vietnam War, the movement against the Iraq war raised pragmatic,
legal, and moral questions and contributed to a change in U.S. policy.
The Democratic capture of Congress in 2006 and Mr. Obama’s election in
2008 owe much to the popular revulsion to the Iraq war, stimulated in
part by the anti-war movement.
Since Mr. Obama’s election, peace activists have held vigils, teach-ins,
participated in the World Social Forum, the One Nation Coming Together
march led by the AFL-CIO, and the National Day of Action to Confront
U.S. Militarism in the Americas. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the
grass roots pressure for peace is modest right now. Movements wax and
wane and presidents, of course, have to give leadership every day and
sometimes trim their sails to deal with political realities.
Our standard is not perfection but having the political courage to move
in the right direction. The grass roots will stir again, helped along
by peace and justice movements and by contingencies yet to develop, but
will Mr. Obama be their ally? We need the president to have the
political courage to honestly address the need to finally and fully
extricate us from Iraq, end our involvement in the failed war in
Afghanistan, contribute to finding peaceful and just solutions to other
foreign policy problems, and create a new national security posture
based on peace, friendship and equality with other nations rather than
domination via overweening military power.
_______________________________________________
Haw-Sc mailing list
Haw-Sc@lists.historiansagainstwar.org
http://lists.historiansagainstwar.org/listinfo.cgi/haw-sc-historiansagainstwar.org
List archives at http://historiansagainstwar.org/mailman/private/haw-sc_historiansagainstwar.org/
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