A father was dragged from his home and handcuffed in front of his children by a SWAT team looking for his estranged wife - to collect her unpaid student loans.
A stunned Kenneth Wright had his front door kicked in by the raiding party at 6 am yesterday before being dragged onto his front porch, handcuffed and led to a police car with his three children.
He says he was then detained for six hours while officers looked for his wife - who no longer lives at the house.
Mr Wright was later told by Stockton police that the order to send in the SWAT team came from The U.S. Department of Education who were looking for his estranged wife to collect defaulted loan payments.
Speaking to ABC News 10, a visibly shaken Mr Wright described what happened when he was woken by a banging on his front door.
He said: 'I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers.
Dressed in his boxer shorts, Mr Wright says he rushed downstairs and was about to open the door when it was kicked open.
An officer then grabbed him by the neck before dragging him out onto the front lawn.
His 3, 7, and 11-year-old children were also removed by officers and put in a waiting police car.
'He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there,' Mr Wright said.
'They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatising my kids.'
Held: Mr Wright was grabbed by the neck and forced into a waiting police car
Held: Mr Wright was grabbed by the neck and forced into a waiting police car
Mr Wrights three children, who were also led to the car with him
Mr Wrights three children, who were also led to the car with him
The Department for Education refused to comment on the incident, saying they would not do so until the case was closed.
They did however confirm that their Office of the Inspector General had issued the search warrant.
The office has its own branch of federal agents that carry out search warrants and investigations.
Mr Wright is now trying to get compensation for the destroyed door.
Speaking to ABC, he demonstrated that although the door had been patched up, the handle no longer worked.
He said: 'They busted down my door for this.
'It wasn't even me.
'All I want is an apology for me and my kids and for them to get me a new door.'
He even had words of advice for anyone thinking of skipping paying their college bills.
He added: 'People who have student loans , pay your bills, take care of your credit.
'If you don't belive me, this could be you one morning 6 o'clock.'
Except that, first, it wasn't a SWAT Team. SWAT teams are armed tactical teams from the local police department; the local (Stockton, California) department sent exactly one officer in a patrol car. This was a team from the federal Office of Inspector General (no, not the Department of Education, which doesn't have any armed SWAT teams either). And they weren't there over unpaid student loans. They were there as part of a criminal investigation, usually with OIG that means a multi-million dollar fraud operation. The local press in Stockton has put out follow-up stories clarifying the initial shoddy reporting, but I guess its easier to just pull the first wire service story and run the sensational stuff. And nobody will read the follow up, so this fake story will live on for years.
A LITTLE over the top? Why doesn't the county sheriff DEMAND that any actions on federal warrants be run through him? It sounds to me like he is not doing his job and needs to be recalled.
- Joe, Springfield MO, 09/6/2011 07:22
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@Gabriel As a liberal, I would tell you there is no reason why the Dept of Education should have a SWAT team. But there is something else going on here. As I have had defaulted student loans for 15 years, I have never had my wages garnished nor had a SWAT team at my door. All I have ever gotten is nasty letters and a few rude phone calls. On a separate note, the Government has been involved in Education since WWII (or have you forgotten the G.I. Bill?) which created generations of college graduates who then proceeded to build this country. I think you are mistaking Corporatism for Big Government. Not everything is for profit. @Zjak It's a big leap to take that the Affordable Healthcare Act (i.e. Obamacare, for those who want to make it a dirty word) means police at your door. BUT, since the government is already listening to your phone calls and reading your email thanks to George W. Bush and you didn't/haven't complained about that, you really aren't concerned about a police state.
- Jeff Chapman, Springfield, MO, USA, 09/6/2011 06:09
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Just a reminder to the Republican scolds: it was the Republicans a few years ago who instituted these new draconian student loan laws and forbid filing bankruptcy or giving any leniency. Republicans are at the beck and call of the banks, who provide the money for the loans. The federal government is just working as the bank collector here.
- Sue, Phoenix, USA, 09/6/2011 05:24
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Since when is it a crime to fail to repay your student loans? Outrageous, he should sue them.
- Catherine, Chicago, 09/6/2011 04:46
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SWAT teams need to be disbanded and done away with. They are the most visible example of the militarization of the police. One city in California disbanded their SWAT team after they broke into the wrong house and machine-gunned the hapless, innocent resident.
- jimpeel, Denver, CO, USA, 09/6/2011 04:31
Thursday, June 9, 2011
670 A little over the top?: SWAT team launch dawn raid on family home to collect unpaid student loans By Daily Mail Reporter
In Barackie's Um-err-ick-AH, we come to expect such bull shit as this:
669 Remote-Control Assassins Ground the Drones By DOUG NOBLE
With my involvement in ongoing protests at Hancock Field near Syracuse, a base for Reaper drones remotely "piloted" over Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have been trying to achieve greater clarity about my objections to weaponized ("killer") drones. A new children's book on Predator Drones explains their significance, "The US military is always looking for ways to reduce risks for soldiers and to keep pilots safe. This is why unmanned drones are important." This seems reasonable, but consider that, due to overwhelming US air power superiority, there hasn't been a US Air Force plane lost in combat in nearly 40 years, and so there is negligible difference in risk between piloting a drone aircraft and flying a fighter jet. Add to this the fact that killer (Predator or Reaper) drones are used most frequently in sovereign nations – Pakistan, Yemen, Libya - with which the US is neither at war nor has any official boots on the ground. So there are no US soldiers to keep safe in these places. It seems that neither US pilots nor soldiers are made safer by most drone deployments. And still their use has skyrocketed.
What is different about this latest weapon of war that we oppose so strenuously? True, they are remotely controlled by a risk-free videogame mentality that makes killing easy, even fun, with the trigger as far away our very backyard here in Upstate New York. But anyone who has viewed the Wikileaks footage of young helicopter gunship pilots picking off unarmed civilians, following orders issued in real time from afar, will recognize that this is not unique to drone pilots. Many of us cry out about the horrendous "collateral damage" of drones - the devastating civilian casualties and misidentified targets and technical disasters resulting in countless (because uncounted) innocent deaths. The targeted killing of Al Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud, for example, took 16 missile strikes over 14 months, with well over two hundred mistaken deaths.
But if the drones were made more precise and effective, with fewer casualties and more accurate target identification, would we then find them more acceptable? Would drones simply be seen as another weapon of war, whose casualties are not inherently different from such deaths caused by other horrendous weapons of war? Why do we focus on drones as somehow uniquely diabolical?
The answer is this: Killer drones are not primarily weapons of war, as usually defined, but instead are automated technologies designed for convenient, targeted killing or assassination outside of war zones. As mentioned, the usual targets are in countries we aren't at war with, far from usual areas of armed conflict. And killer drones in these countries are not even operated by the US military, but rather by the CIA and its private contractors like Blackwater, acting covertly, without uniforms or legal code and beyond any accountability. The US military has its drones, too, of course, for surveillance and some bombing in Afghanistan, but the real show, now and in the future, is the covert use of killer drones for large-scale extrajudicial assassination and targeted killing, under the cover of a global war on terror.
Drones, with their low cost and low risk, make targeted killing more convenient and more likely. The recent assassination of Osama bin Laden was carried out by elite special forces instead of drones in order to avoid collateral damage in a heavily populated area and to ensure positive evidence that bin Laden had been killed. But such elaborately orchestrated killings, without the host country's knowledge, are not feasible for the CIA's campaign of large-scale targeted killings. That is why drones are uniquely worthy of our attention, because their use has reconfigured war into a worldwide landscape of silent, targeted killings from above, whose victims could be anyone the CIA adds to its hit list of potential threats or terrorists.
There has been an unprecedented increase in CIA assassinations. Under president Obama the use of drones in Pakistan has escalated dramatically, from once a week to every other day. Drones are now labeled the weapon of choice, "the only game in town." And demand for drone technology has been called "insatiable."
The US keeps widening the definition of acceptable targets for drone killings. Though the CIA's methodology is secret and remains unknown, the Pentagon maintains a complex taxonomy of targets and elaborate formulas to determine its kill list, which includes mere foot soldiers, ordinary fighters as well as top commanders. Drone consultant Bruce Riedel likened the drone attacks to "going after a beehive, one bee at a time." A former National Security Council official has stated, "Not every target has to be a rock star."The Pentagon's list of approved targets in 2009 was even expanded to include Afghan drug lords funding the Taliban. More sobering still, the CIA requested and was given permission in 2008 to target not just individuals but also entire locations linked to al Qaeda, turning targeted killings into mass killings of suspected militants in an area.
Is any of this legal? Kill lists maintained both by the CIA and the covert military unit Joint Special Operations Command, using secret criteria, condemn even US citizens to summary execution - without charge, trial or conviction. No standards are disclosed under which someone becomes targeted for death, as the ACLU has found in trying unsuccessfully to obtain this information. Such killing violates US Constitution due process protections as well as international law, which labels premeditated killing of an individual by a government a homicide unless it takes place within an armed conflict. The UN Charter requires there be evident self-defense, Security Council authorization, or invitation by the sovereign host country, clearly missing in the case of Pakistan.
Prior to 9/11, CIA director George Tenet argued that it would be "a terrible mistake" for the CIA to use a weapon like killer drones. But after 9/11, Bush's legal advisers modeled a new rationale on Israel's use of drones against terrorists in Gaza and elsewhere, arguing that the US had the right to use lethal force against suspected Al Qaeda terrorists in what it called "anticipatory self-defense." Gary Solis, former director of the law program at US Military Academy, describes the Predator targeted killing program as a "sea change," a policy that the US had only recently abhorred in Israel. Of course, Israel's use of targeted assassination goes back at least as far as the 1970s, when it systematically went after and assassinated all the suspects behind the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, reenacted in the film Munich.
Israel claimed implausibly back then that its post-Munich assassinations were not for revenge but only for deterrence, as "pre-emptive self-defense." The US claims, too, that assassinations and targeted killings are very different acts. Assassination is defined as murder and is prohibited by US law. But targeted killing in self-defense is different. The killing of an al Qaeda member is technically not a revenge killing or an assassination, which applies only to politically inspired killings of people who are not combatants. Gary Solis of the US Military Academy says, "Nobody in the US government calls it assassination." It's all in the name of deterrence or self-defense.
Journalist Jane Mayer, who has studied the use of Predator drones extensively, insists they represent not just an extension of conventional warfare, but instead "a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force." Noam Chomsky, in a recent talk in Syracuse, reminded us that US leaders during World War II identified what they called a "Grand Area," spanning the entire Western Hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British Empire (including the Middle East), all of which the U.S. would dominate in perpetuity. Within this Grand Area, the U.S. would maintain unquestioned power, enabling US military intervention at will to ensure unimpeded access to key resources and to shape events that affect US security. The unbounded use of killer drones for targeted killing in the manner of Rambo, justified as self-defense and deterrence in the so-called war on terror, carries this global strategy of world domination with impunity into the present moment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights warns the killer drones usher in a "boundless war without end." But this is no longer war at all, as typically defined. And it will not just be perpetrated by the US. More than 40 countries currently fly drone aircraft, and within 20 years there will be swarms of bug-sized drones and many autonomous fighters and bombers in use around the globe.
A UN Human Rights report conceded in 2010 that "a missile fired from a drone is no different from any other commonly used weapon, legal so long as it complies with international law requiring discrimination, proportionality, necessity and precaution." But the report also states that drones are unique because of their "playstation mentality to killing" that makes "it easier to kill without risk" and so tempts commanders "to interpret who can be killed and under what circumstances, too expansively." Drone weapon systems, especially as they become increasingly autonomous to the point of making life and death decisions themselves, may well be uniquely dangerous. In fact the UN report concludes that drones might, like cluster bombs and landmines, be banned for being "so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance." We are absolutely correct to focus our energies opposing killer drones, and I hope it's now clearer why.
Doug Noble is an activist with the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones.
What is different about this latest weapon of war that we oppose so strenuously? True, they are remotely controlled by a risk-free videogame mentality that makes killing easy, even fun, with the trigger as far away our very backyard here in Upstate New York. But anyone who has viewed the Wikileaks footage of young helicopter gunship pilots picking off unarmed civilians, following orders issued in real time from afar, will recognize that this is not unique to drone pilots. Many of us cry out about the horrendous "collateral damage" of drones - the devastating civilian casualties and misidentified targets and technical disasters resulting in countless (because uncounted) innocent deaths. The targeted killing of Al Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud, for example, took 16 missile strikes over 14 months, with well over two hundred mistaken deaths.
But if the drones were made more precise and effective, with fewer casualties and more accurate target identification, would we then find them more acceptable? Would drones simply be seen as another weapon of war, whose casualties are not inherently different from such deaths caused by other horrendous weapons of war? Why do we focus on drones as somehow uniquely diabolical?
The answer is this: Killer drones are not primarily weapons of war, as usually defined, but instead are automated technologies designed for convenient, targeted killing or assassination outside of war zones. As mentioned, the usual targets are in countries we aren't at war with, far from usual areas of armed conflict. And killer drones in these countries are not even operated by the US military, but rather by the CIA and its private contractors like Blackwater, acting covertly, without uniforms or legal code and beyond any accountability. The US military has its drones, too, of course, for surveillance and some bombing in Afghanistan, but the real show, now and in the future, is the covert use of killer drones for large-scale extrajudicial assassination and targeted killing, under the cover of a global war on terror.
Drones, with their low cost and low risk, make targeted killing more convenient and more likely. The recent assassination of Osama bin Laden was carried out by elite special forces instead of drones in order to avoid collateral damage in a heavily populated area and to ensure positive evidence that bin Laden had been killed. But such elaborately orchestrated killings, without the host country's knowledge, are not feasible for the CIA's campaign of large-scale targeted killings. That is why drones are uniquely worthy of our attention, because their use has reconfigured war into a worldwide landscape of silent, targeted killings from above, whose victims could be anyone the CIA adds to its hit list of potential threats or terrorists.
There has been an unprecedented increase in CIA assassinations. Under president Obama the use of drones in Pakistan has escalated dramatically, from once a week to every other day. Drones are now labeled the weapon of choice, "the only game in town." And demand for drone technology has been called "insatiable."
The US keeps widening the definition of acceptable targets for drone killings. Though the CIA's methodology is secret and remains unknown, the Pentagon maintains a complex taxonomy of targets and elaborate formulas to determine its kill list, which includes mere foot soldiers, ordinary fighters as well as top commanders. Drone consultant Bruce Riedel likened the drone attacks to "going after a beehive, one bee at a time." A former National Security Council official has stated, "Not every target has to be a rock star."The Pentagon's list of approved targets in 2009 was even expanded to include Afghan drug lords funding the Taliban. More sobering still, the CIA requested and was given permission in 2008 to target not just individuals but also entire locations linked to al Qaeda, turning targeted killings into mass killings of suspected militants in an area.
Is any of this legal? Kill lists maintained both by the CIA and the covert military unit Joint Special Operations Command, using secret criteria, condemn even US citizens to summary execution - without charge, trial or conviction. No standards are disclosed under which someone becomes targeted for death, as the ACLU has found in trying unsuccessfully to obtain this information. Such killing violates US Constitution due process protections as well as international law, which labels premeditated killing of an individual by a government a homicide unless it takes place within an armed conflict. The UN Charter requires there be evident self-defense, Security Council authorization, or invitation by the sovereign host country, clearly missing in the case of Pakistan.
Prior to 9/11, CIA director George Tenet argued that it would be "a terrible mistake" for the CIA to use a weapon like killer drones. But after 9/11, Bush's legal advisers modeled a new rationale on Israel's use of drones against terrorists in Gaza and elsewhere, arguing that the US had the right to use lethal force against suspected Al Qaeda terrorists in what it called "anticipatory self-defense." Gary Solis, former director of the law program at US Military Academy, describes the Predator targeted killing program as a "sea change," a policy that the US had only recently abhorred in Israel. Of course, Israel's use of targeted assassination goes back at least as far as the 1970s, when it systematically went after and assassinated all the suspects behind the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, reenacted in the film Munich.
Israel claimed implausibly back then that its post-Munich assassinations were not for revenge but only for deterrence, as "pre-emptive self-defense." The US claims, too, that assassinations and targeted killings are very different acts. Assassination is defined as murder and is prohibited by US law. But targeted killing in self-defense is different. The killing of an al Qaeda member is technically not a revenge killing or an assassination, which applies only to politically inspired killings of people who are not combatants. Gary Solis of the US Military Academy says, "Nobody in the US government calls it assassination." It's all in the name of deterrence or self-defense.
Journalist Jane Mayer, who has studied the use of Predator drones extensively, insists they represent not just an extension of conventional warfare, but instead "a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force." Noam Chomsky, in a recent talk in Syracuse, reminded us that US leaders during World War II identified what they called a "Grand Area," spanning the entire Western Hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British Empire (including the Middle East), all of which the U.S. would dominate in perpetuity. Within this Grand Area, the U.S. would maintain unquestioned power, enabling US military intervention at will to ensure unimpeded access to key resources and to shape events that affect US security. The unbounded use of killer drones for targeted killing in the manner of Rambo, justified as self-defense and deterrence in the so-called war on terror, carries this global strategy of world domination with impunity into the present moment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights warns the killer drones usher in a "boundless war without end." But this is no longer war at all, as typically defined. And it will not just be perpetrated by the US. More than 40 countries currently fly drone aircraft, and within 20 years there will be swarms of bug-sized drones and many autonomous fighters and bombers in use around the globe.
A UN Human Rights report conceded in 2010 that "a missile fired from a drone is no different from any other commonly used weapon, legal so long as it complies with international law requiring discrimination, proportionality, necessity and precaution." But the report also states that drones are unique because of their "playstation mentality to killing" that makes "it easier to kill without risk" and so tempts commanders "to interpret who can be killed and under what circumstances, too expansively." Drone weapon systems, especially as they become increasingly autonomous to the point of making life and death decisions themselves, may well be uniquely dangerous. In fact the UN report concludes that drones might, like cluster bombs and landmines, be banned for being "so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance." We are absolutely correct to focus our energies opposing killer drones, and I hope it's now clearer why.
Doug Noble is an activist with the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones.
668 On the Wrong Side of History? Nukes and India By PRAFUL BIDWAI
Have our rulers decided to place India on the wrong side of history and arrest her social progress? Going by their policy of forcibly promoting nuclear power regardless of its hazards, environmental damage potential, high economic and social costs, and unpopularity, that seems to be the case.
Eight weeks into the Fukushima disaster—which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the world's worst-ever industrial accident, at Chernobyl—it is clear the world is moving away from nuclear power and embracing renewable energy as never before. The number of nuclear reactors in the world has fallen to 437 from its 2002 peak (444). Nuclear electricity generation has annually declined by 2 percent over the past four years and now only accounts for 5.5 percent of the world's primary energy.
Globally, annual renewables capacity additions have outpaced nuclear start-ups for 15 years. In 2010, for the first time, worldwide cumulative installed capacity of wind turbines, small hydro, biomass and solar power reached 381,000 MW, outpacing the installed nuclear capacity of 375,000 MW prior to Fukushima.
The global nuclear industry faces a bleak future. It was making losses despite huge subsidies for more than a quarter-century. The US, with the most reactors in the world (104), hasn't ordered a single new reactor since 1973. Western Europe—including France, the world's Number Two in number of reactors (58)—hasn't completed a new reactor since Chernobyl.
With Fukushima came the turn of the world's third-most nuclear country, Japan (55 reactors). Japan has written off four reactors and is radically reviewing the over-optimistic assumptions underlying its nuclear programme. Country after country is pausing, auditing or cancelling its nuclear power programme—including the US, the European Union, even China. Italy and Austria have opted out altogether. Germany has shut down seven reactors and will rapidly phase out the remaining 10.
Only Russia says it will proceed with its nuclear power plans. Russia is where the Chernobyl design originated. Russia isn't known for high industrial safety. Besides, it's oil- and gas-rich and unlikely to expand nuclear power greatly.
India wouldn't enhance its stature or energy security by joining the camp of Russia, and possibly, China. China may eventually revoke the present moratorium on 38 reactors, but it knows that nuclear power, even if it expands, will only form about 7 percent of its electricity generation, and under 3 percent of its primary energy production by 2030.
Yet, the Indian government is forging ahead with new projects based on imported reactors—as if Fukushima were a minor accident. But Fukushima is the world's worst nuclear catastrophe in a multiple-reactor station, in which three reactors underwent a partial core meltdown and the spent-fuel pools of four reactors lost their water cover and spewed radioactivity.
The amount of toxic iodine-131 and caesium-137 released from Fukushima is estimated to be of the same order as the quantity leaked from Chernobyl. And the accident hasn't ended. Nuclear-industry companies believe it will take many years to bring the reactors under control. As the Swiss investment bank UBS puts it: "We believe the Fukushima accident was the most serious ever for the credibility of nuclear power."
Yet, so eager is the Manmohan Singh government to deliver on its commitments to the French and US governments that their corporations will get Indian reactor orders in return for pushing the US-India nuclear deal through the International Atomic Energy Agency, that it is proceeding with the Jaitapur project in Maharashtra by crushing popular opposition. Maharashtra's police even broke up the April 23-25 Tarapur-to-Jaitapur citizens' peaceful yatra.
Jaitapur is to have six reactors of French company Areva's European Pressurised Reactor design. But this is untested and hasn't received regulatory approval anywhere, including France. The first-ever EPR under construction, in Finland, is a fiasco: four years behind schedule, 90 percent over budget and mired in bitter litigation over a contract that forbids cost escalation. The EPR has attracted hundreds of safety queries from Finnish, British, US and French regulators. A French government-appointed expert has called its design excessively complex and recommended "optimisation". Put simply, the EPR design is not yet frozen. But that hasn't prevented the DAE or Maharashtra Chief Minister Chavan from certifying it as safe!
Recently, Areva flew a group of Indian journalists to its headquarters. Its officials boasted: "The EPR has the highest safety standards, it can resist an air crash—an Airbus A380 crash." This is of course unverifiable. Areva and the French authorities claim that the EPR design is protected against both terrorist attacks and air crashes. Yet, when the EU mandated comprehensive reactor "stress tests", covering threats from airplane crashes and terrorists, France lobbied for their exclusion from the audits.
Areva is as hypocritical as India's Department of Atomic Energy in denying the Fukushima disaster's gravity. DAE Secretary Srikumar Banerjee said that the March 12-14 hydrogen explosions at Fukushima, which arose from serious core damage, were "a purely chemical reaction, not a nuclear emergency …." Nuclear Power Corporation Chairman SK Jain described the crisis, which sent operator TEPCO into panic, not as a "nuclear accident", but "a well-planned emergency preparedness programme …".
That men prone to such delusions run our nuclear programme inspires no confidence. That they aren't publicly accountable is positively frightening. Areva's CEO also pronounced that "Fukushima was not a nuclear catastrophe." Yet, on March 12, Areva pulled out all its staff from the Fukushima station.
The Jaitapur project is being rammed down the people's throats through a vicious campaign of illegal detentions, false charges, externment notices and firepower—witness the unprovoked firing of April 18, killing one person and injuring over 15. Bullet wounds in the upper torso show the police shot to kill, not to immobilise people.
The government has finally decided to separate the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board from the DAE. This is welcome. But the AERB's responsibilities and powers must be defined in advance and its members selected with exemplary care so that only persons with the highest integrity, impartiality, and commitment to the public interest are chosen by a broad-based collegium. This is as important as choosing the Lokpal. The life and death of millions will depend on the AERB.
However, the government has given very little thought to nuclear regulation. It hasn't studied the experience of other countries to learn how to prevent "regulatory capture" or sham nuclear regulation. Such capture is a fact in the US, France or Japan. In Japan, corporations like TEPCO have regularly appointed their executives to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. NISA in turn has shielded the industry, by ignoring countless safety violations and extending the operation of outdated reactors. The 40-year-old Fukushima reactors were granted a 10-year-extension only a month before the accident. India's experience with regulation in telecom, insurance and hydrocarbons has been unhappy. But the government has learnt nothing from it.
In its haste to push through "nuclear power parks" in five coastal locations and two inland sites, the government will probably create a poorly conceived and flawed regulatory structure, which is likely to be monopolised by retired and serving DAE officials, who deny that nuclear power poses grave hazards, and who can't be trusted to defend public safety.
Praful Bidwai is TNI Fellow and former senior editor of The Times of India, Praful is a freelance journalist and insightful columnist for several leading newspapers in South Asia writing regularly on all aspects of Indian politics, economy, society and its international relations. He is an associate editor of Security Dialogue, published by PRIO, Oslo; a member of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists against Proliferation (INESAP) and co-founder of the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND).
Eight weeks into the Fukushima disaster—which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the world's worst-ever industrial accident, at Chernobyl—it is clear the world is moving away from nuclear power and embracing renewable energy as never before. The number of nuclear reactors in the world has fallen to 437 from its 2002 peak (444). Nuclear electricity generation has annually declined by 2 percent over the past four years and now only accounts for 5.5 percent of the world's primary energy.
Globally, annual renewables capacity additions have outpaced nuclear start-ups for 15 years. In 2010, for the first time, worldwide cumulative installed capacity of wind turbines, small hydro, biomass and solar power reached 381,000 MW, outpacing the installed nuclear capacity of 375,000 MW prior to Fukushima.
The global nuclear industry faces a bleak future. It was making losses despite huge subsidies for more than a quarter-century. The US, with the most reactors in the world (104), hasn't ordered a single new reactor since 1973. Western Europe—including France, the world's Number Two in number of reactors (58)—hasn't completed a new reactor since Chernobyl.
With Fukushima came the turn of the world's third-most nuclear country, Japan (55 reactors). Japan has written off four reactors and is radically reviewing the over-optimistic assumptions underlying its nuclear programme. Country after country is pausing, auditing or cancelling its nuclear power programme—including the US, the European Union, even China. Italy and Austria have opted out altogether. Germany has shut down seven reactors and will rapidly phase out the remaining 10.
Only Russia says it will proceed with its nuclear power plans. Russia is where the Chernobyl design originated. Russia isn't known for high industrial safety. Besides, it's oil- and gas-rich and unlikely to expand nuclear power greatly.
India wouldn't enhance its stature or energy security by joining the camp of Russia, and possibly, China. China may eventually revoke the present moratorium on 38 reactors, but it knows that nuclear power, even if it expands, will only form about 7 percent of its electricity generation, and under 3 percent of its primary energy production by 2030.
Yet, the Indian government is forging ahead with new projects based on imported reactors—as if Fukushima were a minor accident. But Fukushima is the world's worst nuclear catastrophe in a multiple-reactor station, in which three reactors underwent a partial core meltdown and the spent-fuel pools of four reactors lost their water cover and spewed radioactivity.
The amount of toxic iodine-131 and caesium-137 released from Fukushima is estimated to be of the same order as the quantity leaked from Chernobyl. And the accident hasn't ended. Nuclear-industry companies believe it will take many years to bring the reactors under control. As the Swiss investment bank UBS puts it: "We believe the Fukushima accident was the most serious ever for the credibility of nuclear power."
Yet, so eager is the Manmohan Singh government to deliver on its commitments to the French and US governments that their corporations will get Indian reactor orders in return for pushing the US-India nuclear deal through the International Atomic Energy Agency, that it is proceeding with the Jaitapur project in Maharashtra by crushing popular opposition. Maharashtra's police even broke up the April 23-25 Tarapur-to-Jaitapur citizens' peaceful yatra.
Jaitapur is to have six reactors of French company Areva's European Pressurised Reactor design. But this is untested and hasn't received regulatory approval anywhere, including France. The first-ever EPR under construction, in Finland, is a fiasco: four years behind schedule, 90 percent over budget and mired in bitter litigation over a contract that forbids cost escalation. The EPR has attracted hundreds of safety queries from Finnish, British, US and French regulators. A French government-appointed expert has called its design excessively complex and recommended "optimisation". Put simply, the EPR design is not yet frozen. But that hasn't prevented the DAE or Maharashtra Chief Minister Chavan from certifying it as safe!
Recently, Areva flew a group of Indian journalists to its headquarters. Its officials boasted: "The EPR has the highest safety standards, it can resist an air crash—an Airbus A380 crash." This is of course unverifiable. Areva and the French authorities claim that the EPR design is protected against both terrorist attacks and air crashes. Yet, when the EU mandated comprehensive reactor "stress tests", covering threats from airplane crashes and terrorists, France lobbied for their exclusion from the audits.
Areva is as hypocritical as India's Department of Atomic Energy in denying the Fukushima disaster's gravity. DAE Secretary Srikumar Banerjee said that the March 12-14 hydrogen explosions at Fukushima, which arose from serious core damage, were "a purely chemical reaction, not a nuclear emergency …." Nuclear Power Corporation Chairman SK Jain described the crisis, which sent operator TEPCO into panic, not as a "nuclear accident", but "a well-planned emergency preparedness programme …".
That men prone to such delusions run our nuclear programme inspires no confidence. That they aren't publicly accountable is positively frightening. Areva's CEO also pronounced that "Fukushima was not a nuclear catastrophe." Yet, on March 12, Areva pulled out all its staff from the Fukushima station.
The Jaitapur project is being rammed down the people's throats through a vicious campaign of illegal detentions, false charges, externment notices and firepower—witness the unprovoked firing of April 18, killing one person and injuring over 15. Bullet wounds in the upper torso show the police shot to kill, not to immobilise people.
The government has finally decided to separate the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board from the DAE. This is welcome. But the AERB's responsibilities and powers must be defined in advance and its members selected with exemplary care so that only persons with the highest integrity, impartiality, and commitment to the public interest are chosen by a broad-based collegium. This is as important as choosing the Lokpal. The life and death of millions will depend on the AERB.
However, the government has given very little thought to nuclear regulation. It hasn't studied the experience of other countries to learn how to prevent "regulatory capture" or sham nuclear regulation. Such capture is a fact in the US, France or Japan. In Japan, corporations like TEPCO have regularly appointed their executives to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. NISA in turn has shielded the industry, by ignoring countless safety violations and extending the operation of outdated reactors. The 40-year-old Fukushima reactors were granted a 10-year-extension only a month before the accident. India's experience with regulation in telecom, insurance and hydrocarbons has been unhappy. But the government has learnt nothing from it.
In its haste to push through "nuclear power parks" in five coastal locations and two inland sites, the government will probably create a poorly conceived and flawed regulatory structure, which is likely to be monopolised by retired and serving DAE officials, who deny that nuclear power poses grave hazards, and who can't be trusted to defend public safety.
Praful Bidwai is TNI Fellow and former senior editor of The Times of India, Praful is a freelance journalist and insightful columnist for several leading newspapers in South Asia writing regularly on all aspects of Indian politics, economy, society and its international relations. He is an associate editor of Security Dialogue, published by PRIO, Oslo; a member of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists against Proliferation (INESAP) and co-founder of the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND).
667 "Give Us Your Money, Your Planet and Your Lives" The Nuclear Bandits By HARVEY WASSERMAN
At the end of John Huston's 1948 classic "Treasure of Sierra Madre," armed bandits tell Humphrey Bogart they are federal agents.
Bogie demands to see their badges.
"Badges?" says their leader. "We ain't got no badges. We don't need any badges. I don't have to show you no stinking badges."
Now nuclear fleet operator Entergy has, in effect, told New York the same thing.
Fire protection? We ain't got no fire protection. We don't need any fire protection. We don't have to show you no stinking fire protection.
Investigations by the New York News and others show Indian Point's fire detection and suppression systems to be woefully inadequate. "Indian Point's ongoing failure to comply with federal fire safety requirements is both reckless and unacceptable," says Eric Schneiderman, New York's Attorney-General.
The ill-will comes as Japan confirms that three reactors at Fukushima did melt, and that radiation emissions have been far higher than originally believe.
Japan has raised "acceptable" doses for school children and workers. Radiation levels within Unit One have risen, along with a call for elderly citizens to fill dangerous slots at the reactor.
In the US, California's Alliance for Survival has won a decision by the NRC's Atomic Safety & Licensing Board, postponing by 52 months a decision on re-licensing reactors at Diablo Canyon.
The rare triumph has not applied to Indian Point, which the NRC has allowed to operate with a wide range of fire protection exemptions.
In 2006 it told Entergy to justify why it should keep operating without meeting fire protection standards.
Three years later Entergy submitted a plan which is still pending. Meanwhile Entergy seeks a 20-year extension of operating licenses due to expire in 2013 and 2015.
Schneiderman says "for years the NRC has looked the other way as Indian Point ignores the most basic safety stands....With nearly 20 million people living and working within 50 miles….that's a risk we simply cannot afford."
Fred Dacimo, vice president of operations at Indian Point, says much of the facility is open space, made of concrete and steel that can't burn, or is near zones with fire suppression equipment.
But "it's hard to explain that to John Q. Public," Dacimo complains.
Or: We don't have to show you no stinking fire protection.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been unable to take ANY meaningful enforcement action against this industry on repeated violations of fire protection law," says Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. "They tried. They can't---or WON'T---do it."
After six years of staff meetings with industry violators, the NRC in 1998 issued 17 fire protection orders for 24 reactors. Overall, says Gunger, 89 of America's 104 licensed reactors have Thermo-Lag, a "fire protection" material that's flammable and in tests has failed to protect electrical circuits vital to shutting down and cooling the reactors in the event of serious fire, as claimed.
But the nuclear industry simply "thumbed their nose at the agency, and submitted unauthorized and unanalyzed programs that in fact allow these critical electrical circuits to burn up." For many reactors the plan in case of fire, says Gunter, is now to "send some guy running through the plant to manually operate shutdown equipment that the NRC had ordered to protect circuit integrity and to assure control room operation."
Since the workers will likely encounter smoke, fire or intense radiation, he adds, the plan is "potentially a suicide mission."
Rather than meet fire code, the industry staged "a mass civil disobedience." The NRC, says Gunter, did a "complete retreat" and gave industry "enforcement discretion….There has been no meaningful regulatory control of critical fire protection issues." Things are "as bad as they were in 1992."
So US reactors are now riddled at thousands of key junctures with "fire protection" materials that burn while leaving a dangerous char that hampers fire fighters. Since federal law restricts their liability, reactor owners would pay a bare fraction of the damages from such a fire's catastrophic fallout. A new NRC inspection has added possible earthquake dangers to the mix.
To prolong the misery, reactor owners want $36 billion in federal loan guarantees, now being opposed by a major grassroots movement you can help.
"Treasure of Sierra Madre" ends with Bogie murdered by those fake "federales" who never did show him their "stinking badges."
America's toothless regulators have given reactor owners no reason to shore up their "stinking fire protection."
So if an American Fukushima bankrupts our nation and destroys your family, reactor owners like Entergy could ride off as scott-free as those badgeless bandidoes that killed Bogie.
Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org web site. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com
Bogie demands to see their badges.
"Badges?" says their leader. "We ain't got no badges. We don't need any badges. I don't have to show you no stinking badges."
Now nuclear fleet operator Entergy has, in effect, told New York the same thing.
Fire protection? We ain't got no fire protection. We don't need any fire protection. We don't have to show you no stinking fire protection.
Investigations by the New York News and others show Indian Point's fire detection and suppression systems to be woefully inadequate. "Indian Point's ongoing failure to comply with federal fire safety requirements is both reckless and unacceptable," says Eric Schneiderman, New York's Attorney-General.
The ill-will comes as Japan confirms that three reactors at Fukushima did melt, and that radiation emissions have been far higher than originally believe.
Japan has raised "acceptable" doses for school children and workers. Radiation levels within Unit One have risen, along with a call for elderly citizens to fill dangerous slots at the reactor.
In the US, California's Alliance for Survival has won a decision by the NRC's Atomic Safety & Licensing Board, postponing by 52 months a decision on re-licensing reactors at Diablo Canyon.
The rare triumph has not applied to Indian Point, which the NRC has allowed to operate with a wide range of fire protection exemptions.
In 2006 it told Entergy to justify why it should keep operating without meeting fire protection standards.
Three years later Entergy submitted a plan which is still pending. Meanwhile Entergy seeks a 20-year extension of operating licenses due to expire in 2013 and 2015.
Schneiderman says "for years the NRC has looked the other way as Indian Point ignores the most basic safety stands....With nearly 20 million people living and working within 50 miles….that's a risk we simply cannot afford."
Fred Dacimo, vice president of operations at Indian Point, says much of the facility is open space, made of concrete and steel that can't burn, or is near zones with fire suppression equipment.
But "it's hard to explain that to John Q. Public," Dacimo complains.
Or: We don't have to show you no stinking fire protection.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been unable to take ANY meaningful enforcement action against this industry on repeated violations of fire protection law," says Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. "They tried. They can't---or WON'T---do it."
After six years of staff meetings with industry violators, the NRC in 1998 issued 17 fire protection orders for 24 reactors. Overall, says Gunger, 89 of America's 104 licensed reactors have Thermo-Lag, a "fire protection" material that's flammable and in tests has failed to protect electrical circuits vital to shutting down and cooling the reactors in the event of serious fire, as claimed.
But the nuclear industry simply "thumbed their nose at the agency, and submitted unauthorized and unanalyzed programs that in fact allow these critical electrical circuits to burn up." For many reactors the plan in case of fire, says Gunter, is now to "send some guy running through the plant to manually operate shutdown equipment that the NRC had ordered to protect circuit integrity and to assure control room operation."
Since the workers will likely encounter smoke, fire or intense radiation, he adds, the plan is "potentially a suicide mission."
Rather than meet fire code, the industry staged "a mass civil disobedience." The NRC, says Gunter, did a "complete retreat" and gave industry "enforcement discretion….There has been no meaningful regulatory control of critical fire protection issues." Things are "as bad as they were in 1992."
So US reactors are now riddled at thousands of key junctures with "fire protection" materials that burn while leaving a dangerous char that hampers fire fighters. Since federal law restricts their liability, reactor owners would pay a bare fraction of the damages from such a fire's catastrophic fallout. A new NRC inspection has added possible earthquake dangers to the mix.
To prolong the misery, reactor owners want $36 billion in federal loan guarantees, now being opposed by a major grassroots movement you can help.
"Treasure of Sierra Madre" ends with Bogie murdered by those fake "federales" who never did show him their "stinking badges."
America's toothless regulators have given reactor owners no reason to shore up their "stinking fire protection."
So if an American Fukushima bankrupts our nation and destroys your family, reactor owners like Entergy could ride off as scott-free as those badgeless bandidoes that killed Bogie.
Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org web site. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com
666 The real war: when the war effort is otherwise failing, it is critical that we silence the truth-tellers
Detaining Sami al-Hajj
The War on Al Jazeera
By PAUL MUTTER
Pakistani authorities detained Al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj on December 15, 2001 when he and a colleague attempted to leave Afghanistan as a result of the deteriorating security situation following Operation Enduring Freedom. The Pakistani police held him for a month before turning him over to U.S. forces as a suspected "enemy combatant."
He was eventually sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he arrived on June 14, 2002. He then spent the next six years there, until he was cleared of all charges in 2008.
Al-Hajj was classified as an "enemy combatant" whose "access to senior terrorist leaders demonstrates his probable connections to the al-Qaida network and other militant jihadist organizations." He was presented as "a member of al-Qaida who is an expert in logistics with direct ties to al-Qaida leadership."
However, new evidence has come to light that now shows the U.S. government hoped to use al-Hajj as an intelligence source, perhaps even an informant, to spy on Al Jazeera's operations, or to track down Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.
Al-Hajj was viewed as a valued asset in the U.S. government's efforts to keep tabs on the news outlet and, according to some, send a message to the agency over its allegedly anti-American coverage of the "War on Terror."
Al-Hajj's "prisoner profile," signed off on by then-Guantanamo commander Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby, rated al-Hajj's "intelligence value" as "high" because during his employment with al-Jazeera, "he made numerous contacts with high-level extremists to include leaders of al-Qaida and the Taliban" and "he can probably provide information about al-Jazeera Media's possible support to al-Qaida, the Taliban, and other Islamic militant groups."
WikiLeaks Revelations
Until this year, no documentation surfaced regarding his arrest and imprisonment, other than a string of official U.S. statements that labeled him a security risk. But in April 2011 WikiLeaks released "The Guantanamo Files" to several news outlets. The 779 internal memos in the collection are profiles of detainees produced for Department of Defense and Joint Task Force Guantanamo officials. They chronicle multiple instances of mismanagement, abuse, and other questionable actions taken toward the detainees.
Al-Hajj's guilt and association with al Qaeda's logistics arm, his profile states, is demonstrated partly by being "knowledgeable about certain illegal activities such as weapons and drug smuggling. " But the memo continues, "He is careful not to implicate himself as a member of an extremist organization, or to have had any dealings with extremists beyond performing interviews as a journalist." Most of the evidence for his supposed terrorist ties was based on testimony from other Guantanamo prisoners or unnamed foreign intelligence sources in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.
But after several years of appeals, al-Hajj was finally released from imprisonment and all of the charges against him were dropped.
The report details in-depth his travels and reportorial work for Al Jazeera but does not make much of his alleged al Qaeda links, even though he is described as a high-placed member of the organization. Al-Hajj interviewed several Taliban ministers and members of al Qaeda as an Al Jazeera correspondent. Al-Hajj himself believes that these links were the real reason for his imprisonment: The United States hoped to use him to get to these individuals, making the network an unknowing intelligence asset in the War on Terror. Given the Bush administration's intelligence tactics, it made sense.
Working for the "Enemy"
It also makes sense in light of the Bush administration's approach to media relations in the War on Terror. Al-Hajj's detention was symbolic of the way many in the U.S. policy establishment at the time viewed Al Jazeera. He was no accidental victim: Al-Hajj's imprisonment was only one aspect of the wider battle between the U.S. government and the news network.
Al Jazeera, founded in 1996 in Qatar, has had a troubled relationship with the U.S. government since its inception, particularly over its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, the relationship took a turn for the worse after 9/11, when the U.S. government accused it of airing "terrorist propaganda," and actively collaborating with al Qaeda. The network's coverage of civilian causalities from U.S. military operations (the Battle of Fallujah was a particularly contentious example) and playing footage from al Qaeda and other terrorist groups' videos drew sustained criticism from the Bush White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters in 2004 that "I can definitively say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable." As The Nation's Jeremy Scahill wrote in 2005, "Al Jazeera's real transgression during the 'war on terror' was a simple one: being there." Al-Hajj, according to the Al Jazeera interviewer who spoke to him recently, was "in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Relations have improved between the news network and the U.S. government during the Obama administration. With the United States eager to demonstrate support for the movements that have toppled the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes, "the Arab Spring has brought Al-Jazeera in from the cold" — for now, anyway.
But relations are still somewhat frosty. And anti-Muslim sentiment has contributed to slowing Al Jazeera's entry into the U.S. media market, as few cable providers offer the network's English language channel. Nor has Al-Hajj received a formal apology (in this, he is not alone).
After bin Laden
Al-Hajj's story, and those of many others who had nothing to do with al Qaeda but were imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, are in jeopardy of being forgotten after Osama bin Laden's death. Former Bush administration officials like John Yoo, the key Bush administration official who fleshed out the "enhanced interrogation techniques" policy implemented at Guantanamo by the Department of Defense, have claimed that, in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, any accusations of abuses must be weighed against its alleged role in finding bin Laden.
This type of thinking, like the thought process that led to al-Hajj's detention, demonstrates how bin Laden continues to menace the United States even in death.
Seven years ago, bin Laden released a video in which he said "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy… we, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat." The United States has indeed bankrupted itself, materially and morally, by fighting al Qaeda on its terms. We'll be fighting it on its terms for years to come at the rate our policies are going. Sadly, the United States is playing right into al Qaeda's hands.
Al-Hajj was arrested for his potential intelligence value, violating the American notion of a free press. His detention is a sign of how 9/11 changed the United States for the worse.
Bin Laden finished his 2004 tape by saying, "It all shows that the real loser is you." The case of Sami al-Hajj proves the real loser is indeed the United States.
Paul Mutter is a graduate student at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. A shorter version of this article oappeared on The Arabist.
The War on Al Jazeera
By PAUL MUTTER
Pakistani authorities detained Al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj on December 15, 2001 when he and a colleague attempted to leave Afghanistan as a result of the deteriorating security situation following Operation Enduring Freedom. The Pakistani police held him for a month before turning him over to U.S. forces as a suspected "enemy combatant."
He was eventually sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he arrived on June 14, 2002. He then spent the next six years there, until he was cleared of all charges in 2008.
Al-Hajj was classified as an "enemy combatant" whose "access to senior terrorist leaders demonstrates his probable connections to the al-Qaida network and other militant jihadist organizations." He was presented as "a member of al-Qaida who is an expert in logistics with direct ties to al-Qaida leadership."
However, new evidence has come to light that now shows the U.S. government hoped to use al-Hajj as an intelligence source, perhaps even an informant, to spy on Al Jazeera's operations, or to track down Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.
Al-Hajj was viewed as a valued asset in the U.S. government's efforts to keep tabs on the news outlet and, according to some, send a message to the agency over its allegedly anti-American coverage of the "War on Terror."
Al-Hajj's "prisoner profile," signed off on by then-Guantanamo commander Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby, rated al-Hajj's "intelligence value" as "high" because during his employment with al-Jazeera, "he made numerous contacts with high-level extremists to include leaders of al-Qaida and the Taliban" and "he can probably provide information about al-Jazeera Media's possible support to al-Qaida, the Taliban, and other Islamic militant groups."
WikiLeaks Revelations
Until this year, no documentation surfaced regarding his arrest and imprisonment, other than a string of official U.S. statements that labeled him a security risk. But in April 2011 WikiLeaks released "The Guantanamo Files" to several news outlets. The 779 internal memos in the collection are profiles of detainees produced for Department of Defense and Joint Task Force Guantanamo officials. They chronicle multiple instances of mismanagement, abuse, and other questionable actions taken toward the detainees.
Al-Hajj's guilt and association with al Qaeda's logistics arm, his profile states, is demonstrated partly by being "knowledgeable about certain illegal activities such as weapons and drug smuggling. " But the memo continues, "He is careful not to implicate himself as a member of an extremist organization, or to have had any dealings with extremists beyond performing interviews as a journalist." Most of the evidence for his supposed terrorist ties was based on testimony from other Guantanamo prisoners or unnamed foreign intelligence sources in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.
But after several years of appeals, al-Hajj was finally released from imprisonment and all of the charges against him were dropped.
The report details in-depth his travels and reportorial work for Al Jazeera but does not make much of his alleged al Qaeda links, even though he is described as a high-placed member of the organization. Al-Hajj interviewed several Taliban ministers and members of al Qaeda as an Al Jazeera correspondent. Al-Hajj himself believes that these links were the real reason for his imprisonment: The United States hoped to use him to get to these individuals, making the network an unknowing intelligence asset in the War on Terror. Given the Bush administration's intelligence tactics, it made sense.
Working for the "Enemy"
It also makes sense in light of the Bush administration's approach to media relations in the War on Terror. Al-Hajj's detention was symbolic of the way many in the U.S. policy establishment at the time viewed Al Jazeera. He was no accidental victim: Al-Hajj's imprisonment was only one aspect of the wider battle between the U.S. government and the news network.
Al Jazeera, founded in 1996 in Qatar, has had a troubled relationship with the U.S. government since its inception, particularly over its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, the relationship took a turn for the worse after 9/11, when the U.S. government accused it of airing "terrorist propaganda," and actively collaborating with al Qaeda. The network's coverage of civilian causalities from U.S. military operations (the Battle of Fallujah was a particularly contentious example) and playing footage from al Qaeda and other terrorist groups' videos drew sustained criticism from the Bush White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters in 2004 that "I can definitively say that what Al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable." As The Nation's Jeremy Scahill wrote in 2005, "Al Jazeera's real transgression during the 'war on terror' was a simple one: being there." Al-Hajj, according to the Al Jazeera interviewer who spoke to him recently, was "in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Relations have improved between the news network and the U.S. government during the Obama administration. With the United States eager to demonstrate support for the movements that have toppled the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes, "the Arab Spring has brought Al-Jazeera in from the cold" — for now, anyway.
But relations are still somewhat frosty. And anti-Muslim sentiment has contributed to slowing Al Jazeera's entry into the U.S. media market, as few cable providers offer the network's English language channel. Nor has Al-Hajj received a formal apology (in this, he is not alone).
After bin Laden
Al-Hajj's story, and those of many others who had nothing to do with al Qaeda but were imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, are in jeopardy of being forgotten after Osama bin Laden's death. Former Bush administration officials like John Yoo, the key Bush administration official who fleshed out the "enhanced interrogation techniques" policy implemented at Guantanamo by the Department of Defense, have claimed that, in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, any accusations of abuses must be weighed against its alleged role in finding bin Laden.
This type of thinking, like the thought process that led to al-Hajj's detention, demonstrates how bin Laden continues to menace the United States even in death.
Seven years ago, bin Laden released a video in which he said "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy… we, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat." The United States has indeed bankrupted itself, materially and morally, by fighting al Qaeda on its terms. We'll be fighting it on its terms for years to come at the rate our policies are going. Sadly, the United States is playing right into al Qaeda's hands.
Al-Hajj was arrested for his potential intelligence value, violating the American notion of a free press. His detention is a sign of how 9/11 changed the United States for the worse.
Bin Laden finished his 2004 tape by saying, "It all shows that the real loser is you." The case of Sami al-Hajj proves the real loser is indeed the United States.
Paul Mutter is a graduate student at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. A shorter version of this article oappeared on The Arabist.
665 Oh well, who cares about that Free Speech Amendment to to COTUSA anywy?
US Marshalls Mangle Free Speech Rights in Bizarre Crackdown
Here Come da Judge
By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.
Hampton Coleman, a military veteran, felt secure in his constitutional free speech rights until a few weeks ago when three U.S. Marshals showed up at his Delaware home issuing demands Coleman considered threats.
Those U.S. Marshals, two male and one female from Philadelphia, came to Coleman's home last month accusing him of sending a threatening letter to a federal magistrate judge.
"Why would I put my name and address on a letter containing a threat? I'm not crazy," Coleman said during a recent interview.
Those Marshals warned Coleman to not send any more letters to U.S. Magistrate L. Felipe Restrepo.
Coleman claims the Marshals service is overreacting to his three-sentence, 28-word letter voicing concern about bias he felt Restrepo had exhibited in a race discrimination case handled by that judge, who ordinarily has a reputation for fairness.
Coleman attended an April 2011 hearing in that case.
Coleman said when he asked the three Marshals about his supposed Constitutional right to freedom of speech, "one of the marshals said "that's an old document." Coleman said that response startled him implying that the U.S. Constitution is "irrelevant."
The five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution include barring the federal government from "abridging the freedom of speech" and from blocking "the right of the people…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Coleman's chilling encounter with those Marshals comes at a time when some experts and individuals across America are raising alarms about actions by governmental entities which are eroding Constitutional rights under the cloak of counterterrorism. Recent actions include revelations about surveillance of activists by FBI agents, court rulings limiting Bill of Rights protections and recent congressional renewal of the rights- curtailing Patriot Act.
Persons attempting "to exercise their rights will often be forced to defend themselves against an increasingly inflexible and uncompromising government," warns John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization, in a recent commentary.
Paralleling what Whitehead sees as increasing strong-arm government tactics imploding constitutional freedoms is what commentator Paul Craig Roberts sees as an "indifference and even hostility to civil liberties" among too many American citizens. Roberts once served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan.
Hampton Coleman calls the Marshals visit and their order intimidating. "My wife thought they came to arrest me. She was scared to death."
In a "Complaint of Misconduct" Coleman has filed against Judge Restrepo with federal judicial authorities Coleman stated Restrepo "made an intentionally inaccurate and false claim of a threat…and then employed the United States Marshals Service to retaliate, threaten and intimidate me for exercising" his First Amendment rights.
In early May 2011 Coleman sent a hand-written letter to Judge Restrepo, who is presiding over a race discrimination case filed by Coleman's nephew. The nephew, Reginald Roberts, has filed an employment discrimination case against officials in Montgomery County, a predominately suburban area adjacent to Philadelphia.
Montco's District Attorney fired Roberts in August 2008 after this decorated DA's detective filed charges with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) complaining about nearly a decade of racist slights that included his forced assignment to a basement office filed with visible mold on the walls, an action that led to Roberts contracting tuberculosis.
Even though Montco DA Risa Vetri Ferman fired Roberts one day after the PHRC held a hearing on Robert's complaint, she claims, rather improbably, that no retaliation existed between her firing of Roberts and his PHRC hearing.
Hampton Coleman sent his short letter of protest to Restrepo after attending a late April hearing in Restrepo's downtown Philadelphia courtroom, where Coleman thought the judge had unfairly favored the Montgomery County officials by not requiring their lawyers to follow the same rules of providing specific proof that he had imposed on the lawyer representing Roberts.
During that hearing, for example, a lawyer for the county told Restrepo that Roberts' poor job performance in 2007 had led to Roberts' firing, not racism.
The county's lawyer's claim about the reason for Roberts firing is contradicted by the PHRC's fact finding report, which supported Roberts' discrimination complaint. This report stated that Montco officials had in factpraised Roberts as late as September 28, 2007 for his "dedication and record" as a police officer and detective.
Also during 2007, Roberts supervised a few complicated wire-tap cases, worked alone on another time-consuming wire-tap case and was on medical leave because of the office mold problem – all events legitimately explaining his low number of arrests in the period, which the lawyer had told Judge Restrepro was the foundation for the poor job performance charge against Roberts.
Judge Restrepo, during that April hearing, did not require Montco's lawyer to provide any evidence documenting any of his assertions against Roberts though, in contrast, the judge required Roberts' lawyer to provide both case law citations and the page numbers of documents filed in the court record – a disparity in treatment that Coleman considered unfair.
The three U.S. Marshals who later visited Coleman at his house told Coleman that Judge Restrepo considered his letter threatening, and that he had asked their office to investigate.
But Coleman, a retired postal worker, defended his letter. "It was not my intent to threaten the judge. My intent was to remind the judge that justice is supposed to be fair."
One duty of the U.S. Marshals Service is providing protection for federal judges and prosecutors. Threats on federal judges escalated from 500 per year in 2003 to 1,278 in 2008.
Keeping judges safe is essential to proper court functioning and insuring that courts function free of intimidation is essential in a democratic society. However, there is a line between threats and legitimate criticism and curtailing free speech rights cripples a democracy.
America's first president, George Washington, once said: "If freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
The entirety Coleman's 28-word letter to Restrepo read as follows:
"Justice is supposed to be blind. Reginald A. Roberts is not the only one with his integrity on trial. We the people are watching and listening very carefully."
Coleman and his supporters feel the Marshals' visit and their order for Coleman to cease all contact with Restrepo is an attack on lawfully expressed opinion.
"This shows me an abuse of power by the judge and the Marshals. It's like we're living in Nazi Germany with the Gestapo," Coleman said.
"You say something that someone does not like and they send the government after you."
The U.S. Marshals Service would not comment about what is considered threatening in Coleman's letter. A Marshals Service spokesman also declined comment on the extent of first amendments rights citizens can exercise and would not explain the Marshals Service policy with respect to the content of letters from citizens to federal judges.
"It's an open investigation and we have a strict policy of not commenting particularly when involving the federal judiciary," said Jim Burke, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Philadelphia.
Ironically, this seeming assault on Coleman's free speech right regarding his communication with Judge Restrepo contains disturbing similarities with events surrounding the firing of his nephew following Roberts exercising his free speech right in filing complaints over enduring a litany of discriminatory abuses during eight-plus years as the only black among 36 Montco DA detectives.
For example, over two months before Roberts' August 2008 firing, he sent a letter to his Chief of Detectives and other Montco officials complaining in part about "racially offensive" items displayed openly on a refrigerator in a break room used by some detectives.
"I have serious concerns, not just with the [items] but with a culture that would even permit racially and sexually offensive [items] to be displayed," Roberts stated in that May 14, 2008 letter.
DA Ferman's June 30, 2008 letter to Roberts brushed-aside Roberts' concerns about the racist nature of those items yet it harshly lashed Roberts for removing the racist material from the door of that workspace refrigerator.
Ferman's letter, seemingly accepting racist antics as acceptable, castigated Roberts proclaiming his "conduct in illegally removing [the items] has the potential to seriously undermine the integrity of the District Attorney's Office."
Ferman's letter ordered Roberts to "immediately return" one of the items that she curiously acknowledged was "owned by a private citizen" but was being "held by" the DA's Office. (Roberts surrendered that item to Judge Restrepo as the judge requested.)
Coleman feels Judge Restrepo is smacking him down for his criticizing the judge for giving short-shrift to the solid evidence of discrimination against his nephew.
"It's obvious you don't have freedom of speech in certain places," Coleman said during an interview. "I was just looking for fairness."
Frederick Douglass, the legendary anti-slavery activist, reminded in an 1860 speech addressing suppression of speech that freedom of speech does not exist where force compels people "to suppress their honest opinions."
Douglass declared, "It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right of speech as it would be to rob him of his money."
LINN WASHINGTON, JR. is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper about to celebrate its first year of daily publication.
Here Come da Judge
By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.
Hampton Coleman, a military veteran, felt secure in his constitutional free speech rights until a few weeks ago when three U.S. Marshals showed up at his Delaware home issuing demands Coleman considered threats.
Those U.S. Marshals, two male and one female from Philadelphia, came to Coleman's home last month accusing him of sending a threatening letter to a federal magistrate judge.
"Why would I put my name and address on a letter containing a threat? I'm not crazy," Coleman said during a recent interview.
Those Marshals warned Coleman to not send any more letters to U.S. Magistrate L. Felipe Restrepo.
Coleman claims the Marshals service is overreacting to his three-sentence, 28-word letter voicing concern about bias he felt Restrepo had exhibited in a race discrimination case handled by that judge, who ordinarily has a reputation for fairness.
Coleman attended an April 2011 hearing in that case.
Coleman said when he asked the three Marshals about his supposed Constitutional right to freedom of speech, "one of the marshals said "that's an old document." Coleman said that response startled him implying that the U.S. Constitution is "irrelevant."
The five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution include barring the federal government from "abridging the freedom of speech" and from blocking "the right of the people…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Coleman's chilling encounter with those Marshals comes at a time when some experts and individuals across America are raising alarms about actions by governmental entities which are eroding Constitutional rights under the cloak of counterterrorism. Recent actions include revelations about surveillance of activists by FBI agents, court rulings limiting Bill of Rights protections and recent congressional renewal of the rights- curtailing Patriot Act.
Persons attempting "to exercise their rights will often be forced to defend themselves against an increasingly inflexible and uncompromising government," warns John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization, in a recent commentary.
Paralleling what Whitehead sees as increasing strong-arm government tactics imploding constitutional freedoms is what commentator Paul Craig Roberts sees as an "indifference and even hostility to civil liberties" among too many American citizens. Roberts once served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan.
Hampton Coleman calls the Marshals visit and their order intimidating. "My wife thought they came to arrest me. She was scared to death."
In a "Complaint of Misconduct" Coleman has filed against Judge Restrepo with federal judicial authorities Coleman stated Restrepo "made an intentionally inaccurate and false claim of a threat…and then employed the United States Marshals Service to retaliate, threaten and intimidate me for exercising" his First Amendment rights.
In early May 2011 Coleman sent a hand-written letter to Judge Restrepo, who is presiding over a race discrimination case filed by Coleman's nephew. The nephew, Reginald Roberts, has filed an employment discrimination case against officials in Montgomery County, a predominately suburban area adjacent to Philadelphia.
Montco's District Attorney fired Roberts in August 2008 after this decorated DA's detective filed charges with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) complaining about nearly a decade of racist slights that included his forced assignment to a basement office filed with visible mold on the walls, an action that led to Roberts contracting tuberculosis.
Even though Montco DA Risa Vetri Ferman fired Roberts one day after the PHRC held a hearing on Robert's complaint, she claims, rather improbably, that no retaliation existed between her firing of Roberts and his PHRC hearing.
Hampton Coleman sent his short letter of protest to Restrepo after attending a late April hearing in Restrepo's downtown Philadelphia courtroom, where Coleman thought the judge had unfairly favored the Montgomery County officials by not requiring their lawyers to follow the same rules of providing specific proof that he had imposed on the lawyer representing Roberts.
During that hearing, for example, a lawyer for the county told Restrepo that Roberts' poor job performance in 2007 had led to Roberts' firing, not racism.
The county's lawyer's claim about the reason for Roberts firing is contradicted by the PHRC's fact finding report, which supported Roberts' discrimination complaint. This report stated that Montco officials had in factpraised Roberts as late as September 28, 2007 for his "dedication and record" as a police officer and detective.
Also during 2007, Roberts supervised a few complicated wire-tap cases, worked alone on another time-consuming wire-tap case and was on medical leave because of the office mold problem – all events legitimately explaining his low number of arrests in the period, which the lawyer had told Judge Restrepro was the foundation for the poor job performance charge against Roberts.
Judge Restrepo, during that April hearing, did not require Montco's lawyer to provide any evidence documenting any of his assertions against Roberts though, in contrast, the judge required Roberts' lawyer to provide both case law citations and the page numbers of documents filed in the court record – a disparity in treatment that Coleman considered unfair.
The three U.S. Marshals who later visited Coleman at his house told Coleman that Judge Restrepo considered his letter threatening, and that he had asked their office to investigate.
But Coleman, a retired postal worker, defended his letter. "It was not my intent to threaten the judge. My intent was to remind the judge that justice is supposed to be fair."
One duty of the U.S. Marshals Service is providing protection for federal judges and prosecutors. Threats on federal judges escalated from 500 per year in 2003 to 1,278 in 2008.
Keeping judges safe is essential to proper court functioning and insuring that courts function free of intimidation is essential in a democratic society. However, there is a line between threats and legitimate criticism and curtailing free speech rights cripples a democracy.
America's first president, George Washington, once said: "If freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
The entirety Coleman's 28-word letter to Restrepo read as follows:
"Justice is supposed to be blind. Reginald A. Roberts is not the only one with his integrity on trial. We the people are watching and listening very carefully."
Coleman and his supporters feel the Marshals' visit and their order for Coleman to cease all contact with Restrepo is an attack on lawfully expressed opinion.
"This shows me an abuse of power by the judge and the Marshals. It's like we're living in Nazi Germany with the Gestapo," Coleman said.
"You say something that someone does not like and they send the government after you."
The U.S. Marshals Service would not comment about what is considered threatening in Coleman's letter. A Marshals Service spokesman also declined comment on the extent of first amendments rights citizens can exercise and would not explain the Marshals Service policy with respect to the content of letters from citizens to federal judges.
"It's an open investigation and we have a strict policy of not commenting particularly when involving the federal judiciary," said Jim Burke, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Philadelphia.
Ironically, this seeming assault on Coleman's free speech right regarding his communication with Judge Restrepo contains disturbing similarities with events surrounding the firing of his nephew following Roberts exercising his free speech right in filing complaints over enduring a litany of discriminatory abuses during eight-plus years as the only black among 36 Montco DA detectives.
For example, over two months before Roberts' August 2008 firing, he sent a letter to his Chief of Detectives and other Montco officials complaining in part about "racially offensive" items displayed openly on a refrigerator in a break room used by some detectives.
"I have serious concerns, not just with the [items] but with a culture that would even permit racially and sexually offensive [items] to be displayed," Roberts stated in that May 14, 2008 letter.
DA Ferman's June 30, 2008 letter to Roberts brushed-aside Roberts' concerns about the racist nature of those items yet it harshly lashed Roberts for removing the racist material from the door of that workspace refrigerator.
Ferman's letter, seemingly accepting racist antics as acceptable, castigated Roberts proclaiming his "conduct in illegally removing [the items] has the potential to seriously undermine the integrity of the District Attorney's Office."
Ferman's letter ordered Roberts to "immediately return" one of the items that she curiously acknowledged was "owned by a private citizen" but was being "held by" the DA's Office. (Roberts surrendered that item to Judge Restrepo as the judge requested.)
Coleman feels Judge Restrepo is smacking him down for his criticizing the judge for giving short-shrift to the solid evidence of discrimination against his nephew.
"It's obvious you don't have freedom of speech in certain places," Coleman said during an interview. "I was just looking for fairness."
Frederick Douglass, the legendary anti-slavery activist, reminded in an 1860 speech addressing suppression of speech that freedom of speech does not exist where force compels people "to suppress their honest opinions."
Douglass declared, "It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right of speech as it would be to rob him of his money."
LINN WASHINGTON, JR. is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper about to celebrate its first year of daily publication.
664 The shcolar's lament
What's a Scholar to Do?
The Bloodlust of Teddy Roosevelt
By WILLIAM LOREN KATZ
The New York Sunday Times on November 28, 2010 published noted historian Geoffrey C. Ward's review of a biography of President Theodore Roosevelt [TR]. His review reveals something distressing about the way some of our scholars gloss over our iconic figures and write history as the U.S. fights multiple wars. A popular war hero, President for seven years, a prominent international figure [awarded the Nobel Peace Prize], arguably the man who built the U.S. overseas empire, TR's brash aggressiveness has long made him Mount Rushmore in size and a favorite of school texts. He is always listed among our best and most important leaders.
At one point Ward refers to Roosevelt having "a bloodlust impossible to excuse." First a fact: In and out of the White House TR wielded enormous power at home and across the globe, and at the moment the U.S. rushed onto the world scene. Question: does not a bloodlust from this high a global perch have huge consequences? Ward simply mentions TR's bloodlust and then hurries on.
TR was an energetic, impetuous, rarely contained figure. What about his bloodlust? Did he open his heart to war and violence? In 1897 TR wrote a friend "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one" -- and carried around a list of six target nations on three continents. The next year the U.S. declared war on Spain, and TR at forty rushed to serve -- and did serve heroically as a Rough Rider. Years later he regretted he had not been "seriously wounded in Cuba in some striking and disfiguring way."
In what ways did TR's bloodlust impact the world stage? Reviewer Ward does not say, but TR does. "All the great masterful races have been fighting races," he claimed. To fellow Anglo-Saxons he said, "It is wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker races," and added, "The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages." He urged Anglo Saxon men to embrace war as a form of "spiritual renewal" that would prevent "race suicide" and stimulate "a clear instinct for racial selfishness." TR as a statesman embraced war as inevitable, justifiable, and politically useful. As an historian TR called "heroic" shocking U.S. Army massacres of innocent Indian villagers. He believed "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" and promoted the genocide of Native Americans.
President during a time when a hundred African Americans were killed by brutal lynch mobs each year, TR said he opposed lynching. He also spoke to Black audiences about lynching and announced the "rapists and criminals" among them "did more harm to their race than any white man can possibly do them."
During his White House years, TR boasted, "not a shot was fired at any soldier of a hostile nation by any American soldier or sailor." But when Filipinos demanded the right of self-determination, he ordered a U.S. Army occupation of the Philippines that continued throughout his presidency and beyond . . . and took hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.
During World War I TR's bloodlust was still kicking. At 60 he rushed to join the Army so he could die gloriously for his country, but was turned down. But when his son Archie was wounded overseas TR and his family raised a toast. TR died two years later peacefully in his bed.
Roosevelt's bloodlust carried a strong racial bias, a flawed memory, and lived deep in his soul. Like him it became a part of American policy. Confining it to four words is not the whole truth. Nor is it useful as the U.S. fights three Middle Eastern wars and contemplates another invasion.
Americans need to understand our leaders, our history and how to avoid bloodlust-driven policies.
William Loren Katz, author of forty books on American history, is a visiting scholar at New York University. His website is: williamlkatzl.com
The Bloodlust of Teddy Roosevelt
By WILLIAM LOREN KATZ
The New York Sunday Times on November 28, 2010 published noted historian Geoffrey C. Ward's review of a biography of President Theodore Roosevelt [TR]. His review reveals something distressing about the way some of our scholars gloss over our iconic figures and write history as the U.S. fights multiple wars. A popular war hero, President for seven years, a prominent international figure [awarded the Nobel Peace Prize], arguably the man who built the U.S. overseas empire, TR's brash aggressiveness has long made him Mount Rushmore in size and a favorite of school texts. He is always listed among our best and most important leaders.
At one point Ward refers to Roosevelt having "a bloodlust impossible to excuse." First a fact: In and out of the White House TR wielded enormous power at home and across the globe, and at the moment the U.S. rushed onto the world scene. Question: does not a bloodlust from this high a global perch have huge consequences? Ward simply mentions TR's bloodlust and then hurries on.
TR was an energetic, impetuous, rarely contained figure. What about his bloodlust? Did he open his heart to war and violence? In 1897 TR wrote a friend "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one" -- and carried around a list of six target nations on three continents. The next year the U.S. declared war on Spain, and TR at forty rushed to serve -- and did serve heroically as a Rough Rider. Years later he regretted he had not been "seriously wounded in Cuba in some striking and disfiguring way."
In what ways did TR's bloodlust impact the world stage? Reviewer Ward does not say, but TR does. "All the great masterful races have been fighting races," he claimed. To fellow Anglo-Saxons he said, "It is wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker races," and added, "The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages." He urged Anglo Saxon men to embrace war as a form of "spiritual renewal" that would prevent "race suicide" and stimulate "a clear instinct for racial selfishness." TR as a statesman embraced war as inevitable, justifiable, and politically useful. As an historian TR called "heroic" shocking U.S. Army massacres of innocent Indian villagers. He believed "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" and promoted the genocide of Native Americans.
President during a time when a hundred African Americans were killed by brutal lynch mobs each year, TR said he opposed lynching. He also spoke to Black audiences about lynching and announced the "rapists and criminals" among them "did more harm to their race than any white man can possibly do them."
During his White House years, TR boasted, "not a shot was fired at any soldier of a hostile nation by any American soldier or sailor." But when Filipinos demanded the right of self-determination, he ordered a U.S. Army occupation of the Philippines that continued throughout his presidency and beyond . . . and took hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.
During World War I TR's bloodlust was still kicking. At 60 he rushed to join the Army so he could die gloriously for his country, but was turned down. But when his son Archie was wounded overseas TR and his family raised a toast. TR died two years later peacefully in his bed.
Roosevelt's bloodlust carried a strong racial bias, a flawed memory, and lived deep in his soul. Like him it became a part of American policy. Confining it to four words is not the whole truth. Nor is it useful as the U.S. fights three Middle Eastern wars and contemplates another invasion.
Americans need to understand our leaders, our history and how to avoid bloodlust-driven policies.
William Loren Katz, author of forty books on American history, is a visiting scholar at New York University. His website is: williamlkatzl.com
663 The Penalties of Overkill Understanding Counter-Insurgency By SHAUKAT QADIR
If there is a counter insurgency; there has to be an ongoing insurgency for it to counter. If there is an ongoing insurgency, it can only thrive if the insurgents have one or more grievances to create a cause. If there is a cause that has created insurgents, who have resorted to the use of force, they would only take recourse to violence if they have come to the realization that, without violence, their grievances have not been attended to.
The US COIN strategy revolves around the use of force, in fact relies upon excessive use of force, which is why it is doomed to fail. I have written in sufficient detail in earlier articles, on the situation in Afghanistan and the activities of US forces which resulted in creating those conditions, not to have to repeat them. Suffice it as a reminder that, once again, the Taliban have begun to represent the aspirations of a sizeable portion of Afghans.
In Pakistan, we are faced with a different set of circumstances. The most significant one being that our insurgents rule over the territories they control, merely by the use of force and do not represent the aspirations of the people. So, to that extent, the use of force against them is more easily justifiable.
Pakistan’s military also, therefore, has frequently resorted to excessive use of force but it has been focused; targeting known militants, after confirming locations based on ‘reliable and actionable’ intelligence. The Pakistan military can boast two successes: Swat and South Waziristan, SWA.
Our problem is that, having created a politico-administrative vacuum by employing the military to oust the Pakistani insurgent Taliban (as I explained in an earlier article, not all Pakistani Taliban are insurgents against Pakistan; some are merely supporting the Afghan insurgency against US occupation of their land), the government refuses to govern the reclaimed territories.
By way of a few examples: Sabaoon (a Pushto word, meaning the crack of dawn and signifying hope) is a model venture in Mingora, Swat. It is a school run by a lady psychiatrist attempting to reclaim and rehabilitate young children whose minds had been corrupted and had been trained to become suicide bombers. Starting in 2009, she has had remarkable success. Almost 50 per cent of her students have returned home to lead normal lives. But the problem is; this was the brainchild of, funded by, and run under the aegis of the Pakistan army. No one at the provincial/central government level has even attempted to emulate this sterling example.
The Pakistan army is holding between 1500 to 2000 Taliban prisoners captured during the Swat and SWA operations, since 2009. By all legal standards, these individuals are in ‘illegal custody’ But, what can the army do? The political government is not prepared to take custody of them, let alone initiate legal proceedings. The Pakistan army refuses to follow the example set by the US in trying terrorists by a kangaroo military court. They can’t let them go. They won’t kill them. So, they continue to languish in illegal custody.
While Balochistan is beyond the focus of this study of COIN, it does provide another example of the point I am trying to make. One very legitimate complaint of the Baloch youth is that they have no access to affordable quality education and, therefore, are unable to compete against the youth of other provinces. Once again, in 2008, the army opened the only affordable school providing quality education to the Baloch youth in Quetta, capital of Balochistan. I believe the army plans on opening another in the interior at Khuzdar. Not enough; but a beginning. Once again, no one is prepared to emulate the army’s effort.
Today, when political administration has finally moved into Swat and surrounding areas, when faced with the most minor of crises, the civilian administration refuses to accept responsibility, seeking instructions from the senior-most accessible army officer; usually the local unit commander, a Lt Col.
Nonetheless, Pakistan is still better off than Afghanistan, even if the army is having to fill all aspects of COIN. It would be even better off, if the US didn’t feel compelled to stoke unrest within Pakistan.
Shaukat Qadir is a retired brigadier and a former president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. He can be reached at shaukatq@gmail.com
The US COIN strategy revolves around the use of force, in fact relies upon excessive use of force, which is why it is doomed to fail. I have written in sufficient detail in earlier articles, on the situation in Afghanistan and the activities of US forces which resulted in creating those conditions, not to have to repeat them. Suffice it as a reminder that, once again, the Taliban have begun to represent the aspirations of a sizeable portion of Afghans.
In Pakistan, we are faced with a different set of circumstances. The most significant one being that our insurgents rule over the territories they control, merely by the use of force and do not represent the aspirations of the people. So, to that extent, the use of force against them is more easily justifiable.
Pakistan’s military also, therefore, has frequently resorted to excessive use of force but it has been focused; targeting known militants, after confirming locations based on ‘reliable and actionable’ intelligence. The Pakistan military can boast two successes: Swat and South Waziristan, SWA.
Our problem is that, having created a politico-administrative vacuum by employing the military to oust the Pakistani insurgent Taliban (as I explained in an earlier article, not all Pakistani Taliban are insurgents against Pakistan; some are merely supporting the Afghan insurgency against US occupation of their land), the government refuses to govern the reclaimed territories.
By way of a few examples: Sabaoon (a Pushto word, meaning the crack of dawn and signifying hope) is a model venture in Mingora, Swat. It is a school run by a lady psychiatrist attempting to reclaim and rehabilitate young children whose minds had been corrupted and had been trained to become suicide bombers. Starting in 2009, she has had remarkable success. Almost 50 per cent of her students have returned home to lead normal lives. But the problem is; this was the brainchild of, funded by, and run under the aegis of the Pakistan army. No one at the provincial/central government level has even attempted to emulate this sterling example.
The Pakistan army is holding between 1500 to 2000 Taliban prisoners captured during the Swat and SWA operations, since 2009. By all legal standards, these individuals are in ‘illegal custody’ But, what can the army do? The political government is not prepared to take custody of them, let alone initiate legal proceedings. The Pakistan army refuses to follow the example set by the US in trying terrorists by a kangaroo military court. They can’t let them go. They won’t kill them. So, they continue to languish in illegal custody.
While Balochistan is beyond the focus of this study of COIN, it does provide another example of the point I am trying to make. One very legitimate complaint of the Baloch youth is that they have no access to affordable quality education and, therefore, are unable to compete against the youth of other provinces. Once again, in 2008, the army opened the only affordable school providing quality education to the Baloch youth in Quetta, capital of Balochistan. I believe the army plans on opening another in the interior at Khuzdar. Not enough; but a beginning. Once again, no one is prepared to emulate the army’s effort.
Today, when political administration has finally moved into Swat and surrounding areas, when faced with the most minor of crises, the civilian administration refuses to accept responsibility, seeking instructions from the senior-most accessible army officer; usually the local unit commander, a Lt Col.
Nonetheless, Pakistan is still better off than Afghanistan, even if the army is having to fill all aspects of COIN. It would be even better off, if the US didn’t feel compelled to stoke unrest within Pakistan.
Shaukat Qadir is a retired brigadier and a former president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. He can be reached at shaukatq@gmail.com
662 Occupation and Blowback How the US Wars Have Served Al-Qaeda By GARETH PORTER
Al-Qaeda strategists have been assisting the Taliban fight against U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan because they believe that foreign occupation has been the biggest factor in generating Muslim support for uprisings against their governments, according to the just-published book by Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistani journalist whose body was found in a canal outside Islamabad last week with evidence of having been tortured.
That Al-Qaeda view of the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan, which Shahzad reports in the book based on conversations with several senior Al- Qaeda commanders, represents the most authoritative picture of the organisation's thinking available to the public.
Shahzad's book "Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban" was published on May 24 – only three days before he went missing from Islamabad on his way to a television interview. His body was found May 31.
Shahzad, who had been the Pakistan bureau chief for the Hong Kong- based Asia Times, had unique access to senior Al-Qaeda commanders and cadres, as well as those of the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban organisations. His account of Al-Qaeda strategy is particularly valuable because of the overall ideological system and strategic thinking that emerged from many encounters Shahzad had with senior officials over several years.
Shahzad's account reveals that Osama bin Laden was a "figurehead" for public consumption, and that it was Dr. Ayman Zawahiri who formulated the organisation's ideological line or devised operational plans.
Shahzad summarises the Al-Qaeda strategy as being to "win the war against the West in Afghanistan" before shifting the struggle to Central Asia and Bangladesh. He credits Al-Qaeda and its militant allies in North and South Waziristan with having transformed the tribal areas of Pakistan into the main strategic base for the Taliban resistance to U.S.-NATO forces.
But Shahzad's account makes it clear that the real objective of Al- Qaeda in strengthening the Taliban struggle against U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan was to continue the U.S.-NATO occupation as an indispensable condition for the success of Al-Qaeda's global strategy of polarising the Islamic world.
Shahzad writes that Al-Qaeda strategists believed its terrorist attacks on 9/11 would lead to a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan which would in turn cause a worldwide "Muslim backlash". That "backlash" was particularly important to what emerges in Shahzad's account as the primary Al-Qaeda aim of stimulating revolts against regimes in Muslim countries.
Shahzad reveals that the strategy behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the large Al-Qaeda ambitions to reshape the Muslim world came from Zawahiri's "Egyptian camp" within Al-Qaeda. That group, under Zawahiri's leadership, had already settled on a strategic vision by the mid-1990s, according to Shahzad.
The Zawahiri group's strategy, according to Shahzad, was to "speak out against corrupt and despotic Muslim governments and make them targets to destroy their image in the eyes of the common people". But they would do so by linking those regimes to the United States.
In a 2004 interview cited by Shahzad, one of bin Laden's collaborators, Saudi opposition leader Saad al-Faqih, said Zawahiri had convinced bin Laden in the late 1990s that he had to play on the U.S. "cowboy" mentality that would elevate him into an "implacable enemy" and "produce the Muslim longing for a leader who could successfully challenge the West."
Shahzad makes it clear that the U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were the biggest break Al-Qaeda had ever gotten. Muslim religious scholars had issued decrees for the defence of Muslim lands against the non-Muslim occupiers on many occasions before the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan, Shahzad points out.
But once such religious decrees were extended to Afghanistan, Zawahiri could exploit the issue of the U.S. occupation of Muslim lands to organise a worldwide "Muslim insurgency". That strategy depended on being able to provoke discord within societies by discrediting regimes throughout the Muslim world as not being truly Muslim.
Shahzad writes that the Al-Qaeda strategists became aware that Muslim regimes - particularly Saudi Arabia - had become active in trying to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2007, because they feared that as long as they continued "there was no way of stopping Islamist revolts and rebellions in Muslim countries."
What Al-Qaeda leaders feared most, as Shahzad's account makes clear, was any move by the Taliban toward a possible negotiated settlement - even based on the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops. Al-Qaeda strategists portrayed the first "dialogue" with the Afghan Taliban sponsored by the Saudi king in 2008 as an extremely dangerous U.S. plot - a view scarcely supported by the evidence from the U.S. side.
Shahzad's book confirms previous evidence of fundamental strategic differences between Taliban leadership and Al-Qaeda.
Those differences surfaced in 2005, when Mullah Omar sent a message to all factions in North and South Waziristan to abandon all other activities and join forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And when Al-Qaeda declared the "khuruj" (popular uprising against a Muslim ruler for un-Islamic governance) against the Pakistani state in 2007, Omar opposed that strategy, even though it was ostensibly aimed at deterring U.S. attacks on the Taliban.
Shahzad reports that the one of Al-Qaeda's purposes in creating the Pakistani Taliban in early 2008 was to "draw the Afghan Taliban away from Mullah Omar's influence".
The Shahzad account refutes the official U.S. military rationale for the war in Afghanistan, which is based on the presumption that Al- Qaeda is primarily interested in getting the U.S. and NATO forces out of Afghanistan and that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are locked in a tight ideological and strategic embrace.
Shahzad's account shows that despite cooperative relations with Pakistan's ISI in the past, Al-Qaeda leaders decided after 9/11 that the Pakistani military would inevitably become a full partner in the U.S. "war on terror" and would turn against Al-Qaeda.
The relationship did not dissolve immediately after the terror attacks, according to Shahzad. He writes that ISI chief Mehmood Ahmed assured Al-Qaeda when he visited Kandahar in September 2011 that the Pakistani military would not attack Al-Qaeda as long it didn't attack the military.
He also reports that Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf held a series of meetings with several top jihadi and religious leaders and asked them to lie low for five years, arguing that the situation could change after that period. According to Shahzad's account, Al-Qaeda did not intend at the beginning to launch a jihad in Pakistan against the military but was left with no other option when the Pakistani military sided with the U.S. against the Jihadis.
The major turning point was an October 2003 Pakistani military helicopter attack in North Waziristan which killed many militants. In apparent retaliation in December 2003, there were two attempts on Musharraf's life, both organised by a militant whom Shahzad says was collaborating closely with Al-Qaeda.
In his last interview with The Real News Network, however, Shahzad appeared to contradict that account, reporting that ISI had wrongly told Musharraf that Al-Qaeda was behind the attempts, and even that there was some Pakistani Air Force involvement in the plot.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
That Al-Qaeda view of the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan, which Shahzad reports in the book based on conversations with several senior Al- Qaeda commanders, represents the most authoritative picture of the organisation's thinking available to the public.
Shahzad's book "Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban" was published on May 24 – only three days before he went missing from Islamabad on his way to a television interview. His body was found May 31.
Shahzad, who had been the Pakistan bureau chief for the Hong Kong- based Asia Times, had unique access to senior Al-Qaeda commanders and cadres, as well as those of the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban organisations. His account of Al-Qaeda strategy is particularly valuable because of the overall ideological system and strategic thinking that emerged from many encounters Shahzad had with senior officials over several years.
Shahzad's account reveals that Osama bin Laden was a "figurehead" for public consumption, and that it was Dr. Ayman Zawahiri who formulated the organisation's ideological line or devised operational plans.
Shahzad summarises the Al-Qaeda strategy as being to "win the war against the West in Afghanistan" before shifting the struggle to Central Asia and Bangladesh. He credits Al-Qaeda and its militant allies in North and South Waziristan with having transformed the tribal areas of Pakistan into the main strategic base for the Taliban resistance to U.S.-NATO forces.
But Shahzad's account makes it clear that the real objective of Al- Qaeda in strengthening the Taliban struggle against U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan was to continue the U.S.-NATO occupation as an indispensable condition for the success of Al-Qaeda's global strategy of polarising the Islamic world.
Shahzad writes that Al-Qaeda strategists believed its terrorist attacks on 9/11 would lead to a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan which would in turn cause a worldwide "Muslim backlash". That "backlash" was particularly important to what emerges in Shahzad's account as the primary Al-Qaeda aim of stimulating revolts against regimes in Muslim countries.
Shahzad reveals that the strategy behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the large Al-Qaeda ambitions to reshape the Muslim world came from Zawahiri's "Egyptian camp" within Al-Qaeda. That group, under Zawahiri's leadership, had already settled on a strategic vision by the mid-1990s, according to Shahzad.
The Zawahiri group's strategy, according to Shahzad, was to "speak out against corrupt and despotic Muslim governments and make them targets to destroy their image in the eyes of the common people". But they would do so by linking those regimes to the United States.
In a 2004 interview cited by Shahzad, one of bin Laden's collaborators, Saudi opposition leader Saad al-Faqih, said Zawahiri had convinced bin Laden in the late 1990s that he had to play on the U.S. "cowboy" mentality that would elevate him into an "implacable enemy" and "produce the Muslim longing for a leader who could successfully challenge the West."
Shahzad makes it clear that the U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were the biggest break Al-Qaeda had ever gotten. Muslim religious scholars had issued decrees for the defence of Muslim lands against the non-Muslim occupiers on many occasions before the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan, Shahzad points out.
But once such religious decrees were extended to Afghanistan, Zawahiri could exploit the issue of the U.S. occupation of Muslim lands to organise a worldwide "Muslim insurgency". That strategy depended on being able to provoke discord within societies by discrediting regimes throughout the Muslim world as not being truly Muslim.
Shahzad writes that the Al-Qaeda strategists became aware that Muslim regimes - particularly Saudi Arabia - had become active in trying to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2007, because they feared that as long as they continued "there was no way of stopping Islamist revolts and rebellions in Muslim countries."
What Al-Qaeda leaders feared most, as Shahzad's account makes clear, was any move by the Taliban toward a possible negotiated settlement - even based on the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops. Al-Qaeda strategists portrayed the first "dialogue" with the Afghan Taliban sponsored by the Saudi king in 2008 as an extremely dangerous U.S. plot - a view scarcely supported by the evidence from the U.S. side.
Shahzad's book confirms previous evidence of fundamental strategic differences between Taliban leadership and Al-Qaeda.
Those differences surfaced in 2005, when Mullah Omar sent a message to all factions in North and South Waziristan to abandon all other activities and join forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And when Al-Qaeda declared the "khuruj" (popular uprising against a Muslim ruler for un-Islamic governance) against the Pakistani state in 2007, Omar opposed that strategy, even though it was ostensibly aimed at deterring U.S. attacks on the Taliban.
Shahzad reports that the one of Al-Qaeda's purposes in creating the Pakistani Taliban in early 2008 was to "draw the Afghan Taliban away from Mullah Omar's influence".
The Shahzad account refutes the official U.S. military rationale for the war in Afghanistan, which is based on the presumption that Al- Qaeda is primarily interested in getting the U.S. and NATO forces out of Afghanistan and that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are locked in a tight ideological and strategic embrace.
Shahzad's account shows that despite cooperative relations with Pakistan's ISI in the past, Al-Qaeda leaders decided after 9/11 that the Pakistani military would inevitably become a full partner in the U.S. "war on terror" and would turn against Al-Qaeda.
The relationship did not dissolve immediately after the terror attacks, according to Shahzad. He writes that ISI chief Mehmood Ahmed assured Al-Qaeda when he visited Kandahar in September 2011 that the Pakistani military would not attack Al-Qaeda as long it didn't attack the military.
He also reports that Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf held a series of meetings with several top jihadi and religious leaders and asked them to lie low for five years, arguing that the situation could change after that period. According to Shahzad's account, Al-Qaeda did not intend at the beginning to launch a jihad in Pakistan against the military but was left with no other option when the Pakistani military sided with the U.S. against the Jihadis.
The major turning point was an October 2003 Pakistani military helicopter attack in North Waziristan which killed many militants. In apparent retaliation in December 2003, there were two attempts on Musharraf's life, both organised by a militant whom Shahzad says was collaborating closely with Al-Qaeda.
In his last interview with The Real News Network, however, Shahzad appeared to contradict that account, reporting that ISI had wrongly told Musharraf that Al-Qaeda was behind the attempts, and even that there was some Pakistani Air Force involvement in the plot.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
661 Bringing Obama Home Is Not Enough We Need a Culture Change Moving Left – Part 11
Cover Story
By Sharon Kyle
Publisher, LA Progressive
BlackCommentator.com Columnist
I care less about bringing President Barack Obama home than I care about having a government that exists to work for the common good – that enacts legislation and carries out policy that serves the people, not the corporate bottom line.
To get that kind of government, we'll need to do way more than just bring Obama home. We'll need to initiate a culture change.
When President Obama came into office, we were in the midst of two wars, a global economic crisis, were experiencing record unemployment, runaway debt, skyrocketing foreclosures, a healthcare crisis, failing public education systems, crumbling infrastructure, a political system so polarized, crony-ized, and corrupt that few trust it and, of course, unequivocal evidence that humans are causing runaway global climate change. What a mess!!
Who created this mess? And how are we addressing it?
Mainstream media and the blogosphere are teeming with articles about Obama's performance. They say he's too progressive or not progressive enough, too moderate or not moderate enough, too harsh on his base or too accommodating, too conciliatory, cautious, and cerebral - and believe me, there's plenty his Administration has done or failed to do that I find dismaying. Yet, while it is important to keep tabs on what's going on in Washington, I don't know if there is much value in debating the president's performance without also assessing our own.
This mess our country is in was caused by more than just politicians and none of the problems Obama inherited were of his making. This is an important point because it goes to the crux of this piece. The quagmire we find ourselves in was decades in the making. During those decades we created a culture of politically ignorant ambivalence. It is that culture that set the stage for power hungry opportunists to create or influence the decisions that resulted in what we have today. Without changing this culture, we're bound to end up right back here regardless of the decisions made by this or any other president.
In 2009, at the height of the hoopla over healthcare, Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC interviewed a woman who got quite a bit of media coverage for her emotional confrontation of then-Senator Arlen Spector. At one of Spector's town hall meetings, the woman, Katy Abram, asserted that Spector had awakened a sleeping giant because of his support of the healthcare bill and because he wasn't doing enough to restore the country "back to what our founders created".
Abram identified herself as a conservative Republican but, for me, irrespective of her political persuasion, she came to symbolize a core problem at the root of this nation's woes – a problem that transcends party affiliation or political leaning, a problem that Thomas Jefferson predicted could topple our system. The problem: we lack accurate information and as a result lack the will or motivation to get sufficiently politically active.
In recent times, Americans have typically stayed on the sidelines as observers until they personally experience the negative impact of political decisions then maybe they'll show up at the polls. This "spectator" mentality is even spreading within the two major political parties where activists once played key roles but now often see most decisions made by party insiders and monied interests behind closed doors.
In response to Katy Abram's confession that she had not taken an interest in politics until the healthcare town hall debates of 2009, Lawrence O'Donnell asked why now? "You said in your statement that you are 35 years old and nothing has gotten you interested in politics before now," O'Donnell asked. "What's interesting to me about that is that means you, as an adult, lived through 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq War, you lived through all of that and were not awakened into an interest in politics?"
When he asked why those events had no impact on her political involvement but learning that the Obama administration planned to provide healthcare to people who would otherwise not be able to afford it, ignited a fire in her, Abram responded that, in the past, she'd always had faith in the government but also went on to say, "Honestly, I didn't really care".
Perhaps Abram didn't care about the plethora of ills afflicting our country because she couldn't see that they would eventually impact her and her loved ones. Maybe she thought of them as someone else's problem. Perhaps we can attribute her lack of civic engagement on pressing issues such as the encroaching economic crises, global warming, the military-industrial complex, or the prison-industrial complex, to a lack of knowledge.
The interview doesn't give us enough clues to understand Abram's admitted political inactivity but I think we all know someone like Katy. Studies, conducted by respected institutions, suggest that Katy Abram, with respect to her lack of civic engagement, is a typical American.
In 2005, Georgetown University conducted a study of American civic engagement. According to the study, when compared to countries in northern and western Europe, the United States ranked among the lowest in civic engagement.
Of the 14 countries studied, the U.S. ranked 13th only second in inactivity to Austria, a country that was incorporated into the Third Reich and ceased to exist as an independent state until 1945.
We fared moderately better in the category of political activity, ranking in the middle. But in the same study, the United States ranked #1 in TV watching.
What the study found was that the population of the United States has, for the past three decades, become increasingly inactive in civic organizations while its participation in various forms of entertainment has increased.
Civic organizations that serve to both educate and support the interests of common people are often so poorly supported that they are struggling to survive. Organizations such as labor unions, environmental groups, civil rights organizations, political parties, human rights groups, consumer rights organizations, peace or animal rights groups and other interests can barely sustain themselves today for lack of participation.
In the early stages of this country's development, it was this type of civic engagement that served as the cornerstone of America's successful democratic experiment. Our high levels of civic engagement are what Tocqueville attributed to our success, but today we've become a nation of spectators, not activists.
Taken in isolation, this wouldn't be a recipe for catastrophe but when you combine the lack of civic engagement with the lack of civic education in schools and throw in the misinformation fed to the masses on TV, you get a populace that isn't equipped with the knowledge necessary to fully participate in democracy in a meaningful way - a way that ensures their interests are protected.
All too often, we just don't know enough about politicians or issues to vote in a way that is in our best interest. Thomas Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." Can we be trusted with ours?
Looking back to the 2008 presidential election, one can't help but revel in awe at the unprecedented voter turnout. Record numbers of first-time voters, African-Americans, Latinos, independents, and young voters put Obama in office. But that's as far as most of them went. They put him in office and went back to watching "American Idol." They walked away at one of the most pivotal times in American history.
Imagine the power of an administration that had the same awe-inspiring numbers that came out to vote for Obama – this time supporting the progressive agenda with activism, pushing for change by phone banking for progressive candidates in the 2010 election, or writing to Congress about prison-based gerrymandering, or marching en masse to protest the Citizens United decision, or forcing Congress to hold BP accountable for the clean up in the Gulf of Mexico, or supporting the Administration on any number of the pressing issues it confronts.
The monied interests in this country have a clear set of goals and a roadmap for achieving them. Yes, Wall Street gets what Wall Street demands. I contend that a mobilized progressive movement continually pressuring the Obama administration can also get what it demands. But as long as Katy Abram and the many varieties of Katy both on the Left and the Right continue to dominate the political landscape of this country, we'll continue to have this debate.
As did his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President Obama has challenged his supporters to "force" him to make the tough, progressive decisions they want. With a precious few exceptions, we have failed to do that. Until we do, we need to worry more about the home we have made than about bringing Obama back to it.
Click here to read any commentary in this BC series.
Click here to send a comment to all the participants in this BC series.
BlackCommentator.com Columnist Sharon Kyle is the Publisher of the LA Progressive. With her husband Dick, she publishes several other print and online newsletters on political and social justice issues. In addition to her work with the LA Progressive, Sharon is studying law at the People’s College of Law in Los Angeles. She is also mother and step-mother to four children, Wade, Deva, Raheem and Linnea and has three children-in-law, Dan, Kelli and Yoko. Click here to contact the LA Progressive and Ms. Kyle.
By Sharon Kyle
Publisher, LA Progressive
BlackCommentator.com Columnist
I care less about bringing President Barack Obama home than I care about having a government that exists to work for the common good – that enacts legislation and carries out policy that serves the people, not the corporate bottom line.
To get that kind of government, we'll need to do way more than just bring Obama home. We'll need to initiate a culture change.
When President Obama came into office, we were in the midst of two wars, a global economic crisis, were experiencing record unemployment, runaway debt, skyrocketing foreclosures, a healthcare crisis, failing public education systems, crumbling infrastructure, a political system so polarized, crony-ized, and corrupt that few trust it and, of course, unequivocal evidence that humans are causing runaway global climate change. What a mess!!
Who created this mess? And how are we addressing it?
Mainstream media and the blogosphere are teeming with articles about Obama's performance. They say he's too progressive or not progressive enough, too moderate or not moderate enough, too harsh on his base or too accommodating, too conciliatory, cautious, and cerebral - and believe me, there's plenty his Administration has done or failed to do that I find dismaying. Yet, while it is important to keep tabs on what's going on in Washington, I don't know if there is much value in debating the president's performance without also assessing our own.
This mess our country is in was caused by more than just politicians and none of the problems Obama inherited were of his making. This is an important point because it goes to the crux of this piece. The quagmire we find ourselves in was decades in the making. During those decades we created a culture of politically ignorant ambivalence. It is that culture that set the stage for power hungry opportunists to create or influence the decisions that resulted in what we have today. Without changing this culture, we're bound to end up right back here regardless of the decisions made by this or any other president.
In 2009, at the height of the hoopla over healthcare, Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC interviewed a woman who got quite a bit of media coverage for her emotional confrontation of then-Senator Arlen Spector. At one of Spector's town hall meetings, the woman, Katy Abram, asserted that Spector had awakened a sleeping giant because of his support of the healthcare bill and because he wasn't doing enough to restore the country "back to what our founders created".
Abram identified herself as a conservative Republican but, for me, irrespective of her political persuasion, she came to symbolize a core problem at the root of this nation's woes – a problem that transcends party affiliation or political leaning, a problem that Thomas Jefferson predicted could topple our system. The problem: we lack accurate information and as a result lack the will or motivation to get sufficiently politically active.
In recent times, Americans have typically stayed on the sidelines as observers until they personally experience the negative impact of political decisions then maybe they'll show up at the polls. This "spectator" mentality is even spreading within the two major political parties where activists once played key roles but now often see most decisions made by party insiders and monied interests behind closed doors.
In response to Katy Abram's confession that she had not taken an interest in politics until the healthcare town hall debates of 2009, Lawrence O'Donnell asked why now? "You said in your statement that you are 35 years old and nothing has gotten you interested in politics before now," O'Donnell asked. "What's interesting to me about that is that means you, as an adult, lived through 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq War, you lived through all of that and were not awakened into an interest in politics?"
When he asked why those events had no impact on her political involvement but learning that the Obama administration planned to provide healthcare to people who would otherwise not be able to afford it, ignited a fire in her, Abram responded that, in the past, she'd always had faith in the government but also went on to say, "Honestly, I didn't really care".
Perhaps Abram didn't care about the plethora of ills afflicting our country because she couldn't see that they would eventually impact her and her loved ones. Maybe she thought of them as someone else's problem. Perhaps we can attribute her lack of civic engagement on pressing issues such as the encroaching economic crises, global warming, the military-industrial complex, or the prison-industrial complex, to a lack of knowledge.
The interview doesn't give us enough clues to understand Abram's admitted political inactivity but I think we all know someone like Katy. Studies, conducted by respected institutions, suggest that Katy Abram, with respect to her lack of civic engagement, is a typical American.
In 2005, Georgetown University conducted a study of American civic engagement. According to the study, when compared to countries in northern and western Europe, the United States ranked among the lowest in civic engagement.
Of the 14 countries studied, the U.S. ranked 13th only second in inactivity to Austria, a country that was incorporated into the Third Reich and ceased to exist as an independent state until 1945.
We fared moderately better in the category of political activity, ranking in the middle. But in the same study, the United States ranked #1 in TV watching.
What the study found was that the population of the United States has, for the past three decades, become increasingly inactive in civic organizations while its participation in various forms of entertainment has increased.
Civic organizations that serve to both educate and support the interests of common people are often so poorly supported that they are struggling to survive. Organizations such as labor unions, environmental groups, civil rights organizations, political parties, human rights groups, consumer rights organizations, peace or animal rights groups and other interests can barely sustain themselves today for lack of participation.
In the early stages of this country's development, it was this type of civic engagement that served as the cornerstone of America's successful democratic experiment. Our high levels of civic engagement are what Tocqueville attributed to our success, but today we've become a nation of spectators, not activists.
Taken in isolation, this wouldn't be a recipe for catastrophe but when you combine the lack of civic engagement with the lack of civic education in schools and throw in the misinformation fed to the masses on TV, you get a populace that isn't equipped with the knowledge necessary to fully participate in democracy in a meaningful way - a way that ensures their interests are protected.
All too often, we just don't know enough about politicians or issues to vote in a way that is in our best interest. Thomas Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." Can we be trusted with ours?
Looking back to the 2008 presidential election, one can't help but revel in awe at the unprecedented voter turnout. Record numbers of first-time voters, African-Americans, Latinos, independents, and young voters put Obama in office. But that's as far as most of them went. They put him in office and went back to watching "American Idol." They walked away at one of the most pivotal times in American history.
Imagine the power of an administration that had the same awe-inspiring numbers that came out to vote for Obama – this time supporting the progressive agenda with activism, pushing for change by phone banking for progressive candidates in the 2010 election, or writing to Congress about prison-based gerrymandering, or marching en masse to protest the Citizens United decision, or forcing Congress to hold BP accountable for the clean up in the Gulf of Mexico, or supporting the Administration on any number of the pressing issues it confronts.
The monied interests in this country have a clear set of goals and a roadmap for achieving them. Yes, Wall Street gets what Wall Street demands. I contend that a mobilized progressive movement continually pressuring the Obama administration can also get what it demands. But as long as Katy Abram and the many varieties of Katy both on the Left and the Right continue to dominate the political landscape of this country, we'll continue to have this debate.
As did his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President Obama has challenged his supporters to "force" him to make the tough, progressive decisions they want. With a precious few exceptions, we have failed to do that. Until we do, we need to worry more about the home we have made than about bringing Obama back to it.
Click here to read any commentary in this BC series.
Click here to send a comment to all the participants in this BC series.
BlackCommentator.com Columnist Sharon Kyle is the Publisher of the LA Progressive. With her husband Dick, she publishes several other print and online newsletters on political and social justice issues. In addition to her work with the LA Progressive, Sharon is studying law at the People’s College of Law in Los Angeles. She is also mother and step-mother to four children, Wade, Deva, Raheem and Linnea and has three children-in-law, Dan, Kelli and Yoko. Click here to contact the LA Progressive and Ms. Kyle.
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