Category: Uncategorized

Kennedy’s Sins Against Labor

By STEVE EARLY, Counterpunch

I was raised, like most Irish-Catholics, not to speak ill of the dead—at least while the wake is still underway. Of course, the affliction known as “Irish Alzheimers” exerts a powerful tug in the opposite direction. Forgetting everything except the grudges keeps you focused on those parts of a departed politician’s legacy that won’t be highlighted from the pulpit or, in Ted Kennedy’s case, in fulsome obituaries run as front-page news stories, op-ed pieces, editorials, and internet encomia throughout the nation.

Here’s my own view of the senator. I was not a fan of Ted when he was alive and expressed this dissenting opinion, on several occasions, in our local rag, The Boston Globe, after Kennedy’s reccurring lapses as a friend of the working class became too painful to ignore. Ted Kennedy was not on labor’s side when key public policy shifts were engineered that disastrously weakened and marginalized American unions. After helping to deliver these legislative hammer blows, Ted was quick to offer his hand to a labor movement now lying flat on its back. But forms of assistance like boosting the minimum wage, helping immigrants, securing local defense plant jobs, or co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act have hardly compensated for the ravages of “neoliberalism” that Kennedy aided and abetted. In the case of EFCA, any fundamental repair of federal labor law gets more unlikely every day, even if our vacant Senate seat gets filled sooner, rather than later.

Of course, all who speak officially for “labor” would strongly disagree with this assessment. They are busy heaping praise on our fallen champion, as labor’s best friend ever. Compared to centrist Democrats who are quick to abandon workers at the drop of a campaign donation, Ted did appear to be the true “liberal lion” and patron of union causes everywhere. But here’s what I remember about the same Ted Kennedy, who sided with corporate America in its late 1970s drive for deregulation, who was MIA during the biggest anti-concession battle of the 1980s, who pushed trade liberalization in the 1990s, and who settled short on health care reform for the last several decades. (By the usual count at Fenway Park, it’s three strikes and you’re out. Being a Kennedy, Ted always got an extra pitch—so, in the box score below, the strikes against him number four.)

An Architect of Deregulation

In several key industries—trucking, the airlines, and telecom–nothing has undermined union membership and bargaining power more than de-regulation. Kennedy embraced de-regulation with gusto and, despite his other differences with Jimmy Carter thirty years ago, helped ram through industry restructuring harmful to hundreds of thousands of workers and their union contracts. By 1985, as Kim Moody describes in U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, the number of workers covered by the Teamsters’ biggest trucking contract had been halved. Today, fewer than 100,000 work under the National Master Freight Agreement (NMFA)—down from 450,000 before Carter and Kennedy transformed the role of the Interstate Commerce Commission and codified that regulatory change via the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. The business-backed policy agenda “that would become known as ‘Reaganomics’ or more generally as neoliberalism,” had its roots in the Carter Administration, Moody points out. Two of its key objectives were deregulation and free trade; the first having been accomplished under Carter, the second was pursued with equal fervor and further Kennedy legislative vigor after Clinton became president.

A No-Show At NYNEX

Twenty years ago this month, 60,000 telephone workers in New York and New England began a bruising tussle with our regional phone company, then known as NYNEX. Two workers died, directly or indirectly, as a result of this strike. Hundreds were arrested, fired, or suspended (discipline that was, in some cases, later modified or reversed). Rallies of up to 15,000 people filled the streets of Boston, as IBEW and CWA members demanded “Health Care For All, Not Health Cuts At NYNEX,” and explicitly tied their fight against give-backs to political agitation for national health insurance. To break the strike, management cut off medical coverage for all strikers and their families.

Counterpunch for more

An organization helping teachers to promote conflict resolution in classrooms hopes the effort could blossom into a more peaceful national culture.

By Nicholas Blanford, CS Monitor Correspondent

Joun, Southern Lebanon – Some Lebanese, especially those with a sense of irony, like to share an American traveler’s impressions of their homeland on the eastern Mediterranean:

William Thomson noted that Lebanon’s religions and sects – there are 18 recognized ones in a country smaller than Connecticut – share a country but little fraternal feeling.

Of the Muslim sects, he wrote, the Sunnis “excommunicate” the Shiites, “both hate” the Druze, and all three “detest” the Alawites. As for the Christians, “the Maronites have no particular love for anybody and, in turn, are disliked by all.” The Greek Orthodox “cannot endure” the Greek Catholics, and “all despise the Jews.”

“They can never form one united people … and will therefore remain weak, incapable of self-government, and exposed to the … oppressions of foreigners,” Mr. Thomson concluded.

Thomson’s comments could be those of a contemporary observation. But he wrote them in 1870 in “The Land and the Book,” an account of his travels as a missionary in the Levant.

Breaking such deeply embedded and historical suspicions is no easy task, but one nongovernmental organization (NGO) is turning to Lebanese schools in a grass-roots approach to promote a culture of problem solving and tolerance in the classroom.

Search for Common Ground (SFCG), an international NGO specializing in conflict resolution, has launched a nationwide initiative to train schoolteachers in techniques to mediate and resolve classroom disputes among Lebanese youths.

“The idea is to institutionalize listening and problem solving among 8- and 14-year-olds in the schools,” says Sarah Shouman, SFCG’s country director for Lebanon.

Lebanese youths argue and fight over childish issues much the same as other young people all over the world. Additionally, however, the political and religious prejudices of their parents can seep onto the playground, particularly at times of heightened internal tension, perpetuating the legacy of communal mistrust.

Even Hezbollah participates

SFCG’s pilot project focuses on seven schools, three private and four public, in cities as well as rural regions. One of them, in Akkar Province in north Lebanon, is a private Greek Orthodox establishment with priests as teachers. Another is a mainly Shiite school in Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley run by the militant Hezbollah organization.

CS Monitor for more

Guardian
Government’s flagship schools told to ‘tighten belts’ because of downturn

The government is preparing to cut spending on its flagship academy programme, with schools’ sponsors told to expect a reduction in funding for each new academy school as soon as next year.

Academy leaders have been told to brace themselves for tighter spending from 2010 in the first admission that the government is preparing to reduce its spending in some areas of education.
The revelation prompted accusations from the Conservatives that Labour is backing away from the Blairite scheme of independent state schools, but the government said it was still planning to expand the number of academies.

Academies, which have received nearly £5bn in funding since their launch in 2001, have been told by government officials to “tighten their belts” in preparation for the downturn, according to Sir Bruce Liddington, head of a chain of academies and former chief civil servant for the programme. There are 130 academies currently open, with another 67 due to open in the next two weeks and 100 planned for September next year.

Some schools, principally small rural primary schools, may close as spending is reduced from next year, Liddington said.

Edutrust Academies Charitable Trust (EACT), the academy sponsorship charity he is responsible for, is preparing to step in to rescue small rural schools by running them as chains to cut costs and save them from closure.

The move could be part of a major expansion of academy sponsorship into the primary sector, Liddington said. “It’s anticipated that there will be cuts in the amount of money that goes towards new academies that are opening … We’re all anticipating, and officials are encouraging us to anticipate, that any academies we open from next year will not be as well funded as the academies opening this year,” he said.

Guardian for more

By JOHN CHERIAN, Frontline

The Obama administration’s track record so far has not matched the President’s promise to end torture as a policy instrument.
NATI HARNIK/AP

President Barack Obama. He tells Americans just to acknowledge the mistakes and go forward.

SUFFICIENT evidence has emerged to implicate the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Pentagon and even the White House under former President George W. Bush in war crimes perpetrated during the “global war against terror”. The horrific photographs that emerged from Abu Ghraib in 2004 are still etched in the collective memory of the Arab and Islamic world. Since then there have been more graphic exposes of American atrocities connected with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Atrocities similar to those at Abu Ghraib were carried out simultaneously in Baghram and other secret CIA “black sites” all over the world.

The international community had expected the new President of the United States, Barack Obama, to investigate the previous administration’s rendition and torture policies. But until now, the Obama administration has sought to portray these crimes against humanity as random acts by a few rogue elements in the establishment. Before being elected to the presidency, Obama promised the American people to bring about more “transparency” while probing the countless incidents of torture committed during the Bush administration’s eight-year tenure.

Obama had described the practice of “waterboarding”, routinely used by the CIA and the “contractors” hired by it, as torture. The CIA’s Inspector General wrote a critical report on the Bush administration’s torture programme in 2004. This declassified document is expected to be released soon. After taking over seven months ago, Obama ordered the CIA’s interrogation programme closed. He also promised to close down the military prison in Guantanamo Bay within a year.

But his administration’s track record in the past seven months has not matched his promises. Attorney General Eric Holder, according to reports in the U.S. media, has only agreed to hold an inquiry that would be “narrow” in its scope: it would be limited to finding out whether officials went beyond the scope of interrogation and torture techniques authorised by the Bush administration. Waterboarding, used widely in the past seven years, is being virtually glossed over by the Obama administration. “Nothing will be gained from spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” Obama said in March while releasing four Bush-era memos detailing CIA torture policies.

On a visit to the CIA headquarters earlier in the year, Obama, while acknowledging that “some mistakes” were made during the Bush presidency, urged Americans to “acknowledge them and just move forward”. The United Nations’ top official on torture-related matters, Manfred Nowak, had to remind him that Washington was obligated under the U.N. Convention Against Torture to act against those responsible for the violation of international law. The U.S. belatedly signed the Convention in 1994, after the Cold War ended.

Frontline for more

By William Blum

September 2nd, 2009

www.killinghope.org

“And on the most exalted throne in the world sits nothing but a man’s arse.” Montaigne

If there’s anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable”. His White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that the welcoming scenes in Libya were “outrageous and disgusting”. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed”, while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.” <1>

Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations”, that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. And it should be pointed out that the Vincennes captain, plus the officer in command of air warfare, and the crew were all awarded medals or ribbons afterward. <2> No one in the US government or media found this objectionable or outrageous, or disgusting or repulsive. The United States has always insisted that the shooting down of the Iranian plane was an “accident”. Why then give awards to those responsible?

Today’s oh-so-civilized officials have known of Megrahi’s innocence since 1989. The Scottish judges who found Megrahi guilty know he’s innocent. They admit as much in their written final opinion. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigated Megrahi’s trial, knows it. They stated in 2007 that they had uncovered six separate grounds for believing the conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice, clearing the way for him to file a new appeal of his case. <3> The evidence for all this is considerable. And most importantly, there is no evidence that Megrahi was involved in the act of terror.

The first step of the alleged crime, sine qua non — loading the bomb into a suitcase at the Malta airport — for this there was no witness, no video, no document, no fingerprints, nothing to tie Megrahi to the particular brown Samsonite suitcase, no past history of terrorism, no forensic evidence of any kind linking him to such an act.

And the court admitted it: “The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta to Frankfurt] is a major difficulty for the Crown case.” <4>

The scenario implicating Iran, Syria, and the PFLP-GC was the Original Official Version, endorsed by the US, UK, Scotland, even West Germany — guaranteed, sworn to, scout’s honor, case closed — until the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was needed for the broad Middle East coalition the United States was readying for the ouster of Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Washington was also anxious to achieve the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran. Thus it was that the scurrying sound of backtracking could be heard in the corridors of the White House. Suddenly, in October 1990, there was a New Official Version: it was Libya — the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq — that was behind the bombing after all, declared Washington.

The two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland on Nov. 14, 1991. Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages were released in Lebanon along with the most prominent British hostage, Terry Waite. <5>

In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. … I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.” <6>

And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.

The Sunday Times (London) recently reported: “American intelligence documents [of 1989, from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)] blaming Iran for the Lockerbie bombing would have been produced in court if the Libyan convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist attack had not dropped his appeal.” Added the Times: “The DIA briefing discounted Libya’s involvement in the bombing on the basis that there was ‘no current credible intelligence’ implicating her.” <7>

If the three governments involved really believed that Megrahi was guilty of murdering 270 of their people, it’s highly unlikely that they would have released their grip on him. Or is even that too much civilized behavior to expect.

One final note: Many people are under the impression that Libyan Leader Moammar Qaddafi has admitted on more than one occasion to Libya’s guilt in the PanAm 103 bombing. This is not so. Instead, he has stated that Libya would take “responsibility” for the crime. He has said this purely to get the heavy international sanctions against his country lifted. At various times, both he and his son have explicitly denied any Libyan role in the bombing.

Humankind shall never fly

All those angry people. Yelling at the president and members of Congress about how the proposed government health plan, and Obama himself, are “socialist”. (See the poster of Obama as the Joker character from Batman with “Socialism” in large letters, as the only word. <8>) These good folks wanna get their health care through good ol’ capitalism; better no health care at all than godless-atheist commie health care; better to see your child die than have her saved by a Marxist-Stalinist-collective doctor who works for the government. But these screaming, heckling Americans — like most of their countrymen — might be rather surprised to discover that they don’t really believe what they think they believe. I wrote an essay several years ago, which is still perfectly applicable today, entitled “The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?”

A common refrain, explicit or implicit, amongst the recent health-care hecklers is that the government can’t do anything better or cheaper than private corporations. Studies, however, have clearly indicated otherwise. In 2003, US federal agencies examined 17,595 federal jobs and found civil servants to be superior to contractors 89 percent of the time. The following year, a study to determine whether 12,573 federal jobs could be done more efficiently by private contractors found in-house workers winning 91 percent of the time, according to an Office of Management and Budget report. And in 2005, a study of tens of thousands of government positions concluded that federal workers had won the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time. All these studies, it should be kept in mind, took place under the administration of George W. Bush, who, upon taking office in 2001, declared it his top management priority that federal workers should compete with contractors for as many as 850,000 government jobs. <9> Thus, any pressure to influence the outcome of these studies would have been in the opposite direction — putting the outside contractors in the best light.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Boys of Capital have been chortling in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century — without exception — was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies. Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.

It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly.

The continual selling of the Afghanistan war

“But we must never forget,” said President Obama recently, “this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.” <10>

Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the ultra-nationalist group whose members would not question such sentiments. Neither would most Americans, including many of those who express opposition to the war when polled. It’s simple — We’re fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. We’re fighting the same people who attacked New York and Washington. Never mind that out of the tens of thousands the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001. Never mind that the “plot to kill Americans” in 2001 was hatched in Germany and the United States at least as much as in Afghanistan. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

As to “plotting to do so again” … there’s no reason to assume that the United States has any concrete information of this, anymore than did Bush or Cheney who tried to scare us in the same way for more than seven years to enable them to carry out their agenda.

There are many people in Afghanistan who deeply resent the US presence there and the drones that fly overhead and drop bombs on houses, wedding parties, and funerals. One doesn’t have to be a member of al Qaeda to feel this way. There doesn’t even have to be such a thing as a “member of al Qaeda”. It tells us nothing that some of them can be called “al Qaeda”. Almost every individual or group in that part of the world not in love with US foreign policy, which Washington wishes to stigmatize, is charged with being associated with, or being a member of, al Qaeda, as if there’s a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American aggression while being a member of al Qaeda and people retaliating against American aggression while NOT being a member of al Qaeda; as if al Qaeda gives out membership cards to fit in your wallet, as if there are chapters of al Qaeda that put out a weekly newsletter and hold a potluck on the first Monday of each month.

In any event, as in Iraq, the American “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists. This is scarcely in dispute even at the Pentagon.

The only “necessity” that draws the United States to Afghanistan is the need for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea area, the establishment of military bases in this country that is surrounded by the oil-rich Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions, and making it easier to watch and pressure next-door Iran. What more could any respectable imperialist nation desire?

But the war against the Taliban can’t be won. Except by killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States should negotiate the pipelines with the Taliban, as the Clinton administration unsuccessfully tried to do, and then get out.

The revolution was televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag [heroin] and skip out for beer during commercials.
Because the revolution will not be televised. …

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news
The revolution will not be right back after a message
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised

These are some of the lines of Gil Scott-Heron’s song that told people in the 1970s (which, I maintain, were just as ’60ish as the fabled 1960s) that a revolution was coming, that they would no longer be able to live their normal daily life, that they should no longer want to live their normal daily life, that they would have to learn to be more serious about this thing they were always prattling about, this thing they called “revolution”.

Fast Forward to 2009 … Gil Scott-Heron, now a ripe old 60, was recently interviewed by the Washington Post:

WP: In the early 1970s, you came out with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” about the erosion of democracy in America. You all but predicted that there would be a revolution in which a brainwashed nation would come to its senses. What do you think now? Did we have a revolution?

GS-H: Yes, the election of President Obama was the revolution. <11>

Oh? So that’s it? That’s what we took clubs over our heads for? Tear gas, jail cells, and permanent police and FBI files? Published a million issues of the underground press? To get a president who doesn’t have a revolutionary bone in his body? Not a muscle or nerve or tissue or organ that seriously questions cherished establishment beliefs concerning terrorism, permanent war, Israel, torture, marijuana, health care, and the primacy of profit over the environment and all else? Karl Marx is surely turning over in his London grave. If the modern counter-revolutionary United States had existed at the time of the American revolution, it would have crushed that revolution. And a colonial (white) Barack Obama would have worked diligently to achieve some sort of bi-partisan compromise with the King of England, telling him we need to look forward, not backward.

Yugoslavia

During 1998-1999, the United States used the Kosovo conflict to reaffirm its hegemonic role in Europe. US officials deliberately undercut a potential diplomatic solution to the Kosovo war; instead of using diplomacy to resolve the conflict, the United States sought a military solution in which NATO power could once again be demonstrated. The resulting air war, in 1999, succeeded in fully establishing the continued relevance of NATO, thus affirming US hegemony in Europe and undercutting European proclivities for foreign policy independence.
– David Gibbs, “First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia”

There’s no issue of the recent past that has caused more friction internationally amongst those on the left than the question of what really took place in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Gibbs’ new book explores many of the myths surrounding this very complicated and controversial slice of history, particularly those dealing with the supposed humanitarian motivation behind the Western powers intervention and the many alleged Serbian atrocities.

Notes

<1> Washington Post, August 22 and August 26, 2009 ?
<2> Newsweek magazine, July 13, 1992 ?
<3> Sunday Herald (Scotland), August 17, 2009 ?
<4> “Opinion of the Court”, Par. 39, issued following the trial in the Hague in 2001 ?
<5> Read many further details about the case at http://killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm ?
<6> The Independent (London daily), April 26, 2009 ?
<7> Sunday Times (London), August 16, 2009 ?
<8> Washington Post, August 6, 2009, p.C2 ?
<9> Washington Post, June 8, 2005 and March 23, 2006 for this citation plus the three studies mentioned ?
<10> Talk given at VFW convention in Phoenix, Arizona, August 17, 2009 ?
<11> Washington Post, August 26, 2009 ?

–

William Blum is the author of:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
* West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
* Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

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Australians For Peace, First posted on peoplesgeography.com – 13 February 2009

Based on Eqbal Ahmad’s “Strategy for Palestine”, artist and author Ricardo Levins Morales has written a propositional strategy for Palestine.

Excerpted from Morales’ Lihish’tah’weel: The Dystopia principle and the strategic basis for a just peace in Palestine (March 2007)

“In 1968 Pakistani revolutionary scholar Eqbal Ahmad was asked to give the principal address at a conference of Arab activists, including some of the leaders of the recently formed coalition, the Palestine Liberation Organization.² The delegates were stunned when Ahmad, a veteran leader of the Algerian revolution, outlined an unexpected analysis of the Palestinian situation. He suggested that the principle task of a liberation movement–whether armed or not–was to “out-legitimize” its opponent. This meant to dramatize the central contradiction in the colonizing society until it can no longer sustain the strain. This is how Gandhi understood the achievement of Indian independence. The Indian movement undermined the self-image of the English people. Their view of themselves as a decent, generous and democratic nation could not withstand the pressure of seeing British troops shooting, brutalizing, imprisoning unarmed civilians for the crimes of collecting salt and weaving cloth. Public support for the occupation collapsed and Britain pulled out rather than risk a deepening internal crisis. At this time Ahmad recommended a parallel strategy for Palestine: “This is a moment to fit ships in Cyprus, fit boats in Lebanon and say, ‘We’re not going to destroy Israel. That is not our intent. We just want to go home.’ Reverse the symbols of the Exodus. See if the Israelis are in a mood to sink some ships. They probably will. Some of us will die. Let us die.” He predicted that Israel would be unable to contain the internal pressures that would build up.
…

This was the era of the rising tide of national liberation movements. The Cuban revolution had triumphed and the United States military had followed France into the unforgiving jungles of Viet Nam. Guerrilla movements were causing tremors through colonial and semi-colonial regimes across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The road of armed struggle was the top item on the menu and it promised great successes to those who embarked upon it. Ahmad would return, along with his protégé, Edward Said, to meet with Palestinian leaders at later turning points in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Each time they would propose equally innovative courses of action. Each time they would be graciously thanked and their ideas ignored.

Given the actual course that history has followed, it is worth taking note of the trajectory of other anti-colonial and secessionist movements. Those conflicts that began as–or were transformed into–racial or religious confrontations between peoples, fueled by a cycle of retaliatory atrocities (Sri Lanka, the Basque country and Ireland as well as Palestine) are still ongoing or were fought to a standstill. Those who effectively highlighted the colonial or racist nature of the conflict and engendered divisions in the opposing civil society (India, Viet Nam, the Portuguese colonies in Africa–Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau–and South Africa) divided the citizenry of the colonizer, isolated their governments, and achieved victory. In the Algerian revolution–which employed both terrorism and guerrilla warfare–the rebellion was defeated militarily by French counterinsurgency but had shifted the center of the struggle to the political arena and succeeded by securing the moral isolation of the French government.

Endnote:
2 Edward Said, Cherish the Man’s Courage. Introduction to David Barsamian, Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire. 2000. South End Press

Australians for Palestine for more

By Lisa Skeen, NACLA

The announcement on June 25 that Spain will begin to limit its application of universal jurisdiction garnered no more than a humble blip in international media coverage. The principle, which asserts that certain crimes are so egregious that they are an affront to all humanity and therefore prosecutable by any nation, is at the center of fierce philosophical debate in international law. But for survivors of genocide in Guatemala, universal jurisdiction has represented something much more tangible—an important avenue for justice against the lingering impunity left in the wake Latin America’s dirty wars.

Spain’s lower house of Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of narrowing universal jurisdiction so that crimes committed outside of Spain may only be prosecuted if Spanish citizens are affected.

The six judges that make up Spain’s Audencia Nacional are currently handling thirteen diverse cases from all over the world, including several from Latin America. Spain has assured the human rights community that the change will not affect cases under investigation or those currently being tried.

Although the judges have been hailed by rights activists, their recent high-profile investigations into rights abuses by American, Israeli and Chinese government officials have created a diplomatic headache for Spain’s politicians, who pressed Parliament to pass the resolution.

While Washington has admitted to quietly pressuring the Spanish government to drop the investigations into allegations of U.S. torture at Guantanamo, Israel was outspoken in its criticism of the court’s decision to investigate a claim that Israeli forces had committed war crimes in Gaza in 2002. The investigation has since been dropped.

Many believe that China has been the biggest source of pressure, warning that continued investigations into the Tibet crackdowns could damage bilateral relations. With one of the weaker economies in Europe, Spain is no doubt wary of falling out with one of the world’s rising economic powerhouses.

NACLA for more

Culture and Art

By Les Blough, Editor. Axis of Logic.

When most people think of attacks on other countries by the United States, their thoughts turn to missiles, bombs and soldiers. When they think of the victims of those invasions and occupations, their thoughts turn to the injured, the dead and some remember their grieving families. But what receives little press coverage are other kinds of invasion by the U.S., Britain, Israel and their international crime partners. These invasions are executed with the weapons of media.

Attacks on national economies by means of transnational corporations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are one form of non-military attack on other countries. Another is the subject of this essay -the invasions of family and community structures, traditional values and culture. These are primarily carried out by the media, educational institutions and propaganda arms of NGOs.

Properly understood, all these forms of invasion emanate from the capitalist system. The capitalist system not only places a higher value on monetary profit than on social institutions, it also has an interest in their destruction. This can be seen in the capitalist destruction of traditional values abroad and even more thoroughly in the United States. We will first look at the latter of the two.

Targeting traditional values

This process of production and marketing necessarily has a corrupting influence on culture, systematically replacing traditional values with raw materialism. A Mennonite sociologist once wrote a book on the interior of Amish culture in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Because he was a Mennonite, he had a rare opportunity to conduct his research inside a thriving Amish community in Lancaster County. In one meeting with an Amish Elder the conversation went something like this:

“The English (i.e. non Amish) think it very strange that your community does not permit telephones, credit, pneumatic tires on vehicles, paint on your houses, electricity or even curtains on your windows. Why are these not permitted?”

The Amish elder responded with a smile,

“Well, if we had telephones, we would call one another on the wire and we wouldn’t take time to visit in our homes. We don’t have credit because we think usury is wrong and if we buy something on credit, it really doesn’t belong to us. If we had pneumatic tires, we would drive by a neighbor’s house at 50 mph and wave at them when passing as they sit on the front porch. In a horse and buggy, we stop and visit as we pass their house. Without electricity, we are off the grid and not dependent on people we do not know and we like the more relaxed pace and and ambience of lighting the oil lamps in the evening. If we began to paint our houses, we would begin to compete on whose house looks better, creating conflict in our community. As it is, keeping our houses and barns clean and in good condition and good work is sufficient for contentment in our lives. We don’t have curtains on our windows because we have nothing to hide from our neighbors. This way of living gives us a sense of freedom from things.”

Consumerism as a Religion

In the United States, materialism is the religion and shopping malls are the churches – all 46,000 of them. Consumerism is the liturgy and the prayer is the longing for more things. The worshippers earn the money and pay the bills when they come due. Finance capital makes the whole enterprise possible.

Axis of logic for more

By Ingrid B. Mork

There was a report on Al-Jazeera of another atrocity committed against the Palestinians: The PA (Palestinian Authority) in the West Bank had plans for 9 plants for the purification of underground aquifers because they are being polluted by waste products but were given permission to build these plants on condition that they purify the water supply to the Jewish settlements as well. The PA built one but the settlements it serviced refused to pay for the service and the tab had to be paid by the Palestinians. As a result, no more purification plants were built, partly because, submitting to Israeli demands for purification of the water supply to the settlements would have given the illegal settlements legitimacy and now the drinking water in the aquifers is seriously polluted.

Obama claims to know about Palestinian suffering and pontificates constantly about a “two-state solution” with Palestinians and Israelis living peacefully, side by side. Personally I have doubts. Palestinians have been subjected to all sorts of humiliation due to the Israeli policies. Most Israelis have been brainwashed into believing that it is their “god-given right” to be superior over the Palestinians in all things and that “anything goes” – theft, murder, humiliation, abuse of children.

Israel has to portray itself as a victim. In this situation, if a miracle were to happen and the Palestinians were given a state of their own, what would Israel do? Who, then, would it bully?

He, Obama, doesn`t give a rat`s ass.. If he did, he would do everything in his power to end the occupation of Palestine instead of lamely bleating about stopping settlement construction. It is a farce, a charade, futile words which ensure that the Zionists/Israelis get all the time they need to encircle Jerusalem and steal that, as they have stolen everything else. Why else would he have boldly declared to AIPAC and the world at large that Jerusalem would be the undisputed capital of Israel?

If Obama had given much of a damn about Palestinian suffering, he would have “made it very clear” to the Israelis from his first day in office, what all concerned citizens, in all the countries of the world have been demanding: an end to the occupation of Palestine. However, Obama is president of a country whose government also believes it has a “god-given right” to shape the world. So many people have died, so many made homeless, so many going hungry, even in the US, and for what?

I don’t know if it does any good e-mailing these people. I e-mailed the Israeli government last year. I do not remember it properly why I e-mailed. I think Scottish PSC were urging people to do so for some reason. I didn’t receive a reply then but months later they sent me an e-mail with propaganda and lies, I replied to that with two words- “BULL SHIT”

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

From the Ledge to the Edge

By JOSHUA FRANK and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, Counterpunch

That Tre Arrow, a tree-hugging vegan who espouses non-violence and lives by the airy and some nebulous philosophy of Gaia, would top the FBI’s Most Wanted list, only reaffirms the notion that the Bureau’s energy is being exerted in specious directions.

On August 12, 2008, after a tumultuous seven-year investigation, Arrow was sentenced in Federal court to six-and-a-half years for lighting three cement haulers ablaze at the notorious Ross Island Sand and Gravel in Portland, Oregon, as well as firebombing two trucks and one front loader owned by Ray Schoppert Logging Company near the timber town of Estacada, Oregon. The acts were in protest of the Eagle Creek timber sale in Mt. Hood National Forest in the late 1990s.

Located in a roadless area within Oregon’s Clackamas River watershed, the streams that snake through the old growth groves of Eagle Creek provide drinking water for over 185,000 people in the greater Portland area. Critics of the plan to log Eagle Creek argued that the forest’s steep slopes were in the “transient snow zone” and would likely lead to future landslides and mass flooding, which would ultimately spoil water quality during the region’s frequent rain-on-snow events. Arrow was one of the most creative and articulate activists opposing the sale.

A grim-faced, 34-year-old Arrow listened warily as Judge James Redden read his sentence. At the behest of his lawyers, Bruce Ellison and Paul Loney, Arrow earlier signed off on a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice and accepted responsibility for his role in the arsons, even though for years he denied any involvement.

“[I’m] true to a higher power … I don’t feel I need to be rehabilitated,” Arrow stated in a verbose speech to the court upon hearing the ruling. “Corporations have usurped much of the governmental power. Corporations seem to be able to get away with poisoning the very entity we rely on for our well-being with no punishment, or very little punishment,” he declared.

“I don’t know what happened to you but they were very serious crimes, and you know it,” responded a disgruntled Judge Redden.
The closing of the case was seen as a major victory by the FBI, which had long promoted Arrow as America’s most notorious and dangerous eco-terrorist.

“Now we know the truth, and we know he has to pay the price,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer brayed to reporters. “It sends a clear message that society doesn’t tolerate it, that these cases are solved and these people are brought to justice.”

Counterpunch for more