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CARTOON / Charlie Loving : Rick Perry on Foreign Oil!
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Harry Targ : Korea and the U.S. Policy of Perpetual War
Let’s be frank:
The United States has been
in perpetual war
With the onset of the Korean War, the politics of fear converged with the politics of empire.
By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | December 27, 2011
Liberal cable commentators have been waxing eloquent about the withdrawal of the United States military from Iraq while ridiculing and scorning the recently deceased dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Il. They fail to see the historic connections between the onset of war along the Korean peninsula in 1950 and the Iraq war of our own day.
If pundits reflected on the causes of the Korean War and the consequences following it they might see the culpability of the United States in launching a 60-year war system that has cost the lives of millions of people all across the Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American landscape.
To use the language of our own day, we need to “Occupy Our Minds,” or “Occupy Our History.” We need to understand where the North Korea of Kim Jong Il came from and why the United States created a dictator in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and then destroyed him, his country, and hundreds of thousands of his people. This revisiting of the American past is painful but necessary.
Consider the Korean peninsula. It was a colony of expansionist Japan from the dawn of the twentieth century until the end of World War II. After that war, Korea was “temporarily” split at the 38th parallel by the United States and the former Soviet Union for “administrative purposes.” As the war ended, the Korean people fully expected to create their own independent state. “People’s Assemblies” were held throughout the peninsula to serve this purpose.
In the South, under U.S. control the assemblies were ignored. Over the next five years, using the new United Nations as the stamp of legitimacy the United States created an unpopular regime in the South led by Syngman Rhee. Rhee, tied to western anti-communist interests and domestic wealth very much like Chiang Kai Shek in China and later Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, established a brutal dictatorship. The Soviets, in the north, established a Communist regime led by Kim Il Sung.
In 1950 powerful foreign policy interests promoted a global U.S. foreign policy that would benefit from war. General Douglas McArthur, overseer of post-war Japan; John Foster Dulles, anti-communist foreign policy spokesperson of the Republican Party; and Rhee, on the verge of losing his power in South Korea, met in Tokyo in May. Conversation ensued that likely included making war on North Korea.
Back in Washington, Dean Acheson, Secretary of State, and his key aide, Paul Nitze, were lobbying for a new bold military policy, proclaimed in the secret National Security Document 68. It called for military spending to be the number one priority of each American administration. The reason, the document claimed, was the world-wide threat to civilization represented by international communism.
George Kennan’s “containment” policy, beefing up U.S. and allied forces to protect against any aggressive attack from a prospective enemy, was not enough. By 1954, the document predicted, the former Soviet Union would be as powerful as the United States.
As Acheson himself admitted in his memoirs, he felt the need to exaggerate the threat to United States security to gain support for a more global U.S. foreign policy. In other words, support for empire required lying to the American people. In the Korean case, an artificial division of the Korean peninsula, contestation between competing political forces, and a North Korean military attack on the South was reframed as a worldwide war on freedom and democracy. The Korean War institutionalized the big lie.
Then the Truman Administration, the Defense Department, big corporations, the major media, and many religious institutions launched a campaign of fear based on a fantasy of a dangerous communist subversion. Who could question a dramatic military response to a nation under siege.
With the onset of the Korean War, the politics of fear converged with the politics of empire. In sum, the United States redefined a civil war between Koreans, north and south of the 38th parallel, into a struggle between the “free world” and “international communism.”
The Korean War led to the deaths of 4 million Koreans and 54,000 U.S. soldiers. Between 1950 and 1995, the United States continued to develop the largest military force in the world, with hundreds of bases in 30 or more countries, dozens of covert military operations, and support for countless dictators in countries of the Global South. In wars in which the United States had a role during these 45 years, some 10 million people died, most of them civilians.
Fifty-three years after the onset of the Korean War, the United States launched a war on Iraq based on lies. The American people were told of the dangers the Iraqi regime posed for United States security. The threat was no longer communism but terrorists. And Saddam Hussein was framed as a supporter of terrorism against the West who possessed weapons of mass destruction.
These were lies based on significant historical distortions of the politics of the region. The details were different but the arguments for war on North Korea and the war on Iraq were both based on lies. The same case can be made for most U.S. interventions and wars from Korea to Iraq.
The policies of fear, empire, and military operations continued in the 21st century. The war in Afghanistan, begun in 2001, still goes on. We now celebrate the ostensible end of the Iraq war after nine years. About 10 thousand U.S. soldiers and probably a million Afghan and Iraqi people have died in these two wars. Economists predict that the Iraq war alone will have cost the U.S. government 3 trillion dollars by 2030, a total similar to U.S. military expenditures between 1945 and 1990.
So when pundits ridicule the dictatorship in North Korea and make grandiose statements about the millions imprisoned, killed, or starved, no mention is made about why the Korean War was launched, whose interests it served on the United States side, and how U.S. aggressiveness was used by North Korean political elites to justify dictatorship there.
And, the failures of the North Korean economy are presented as solely the result of their socialist economy, not the 60-year war and economic embargo on that country perpetrated by the world’s most powerful country.
Ironically, while media pundits condemn poor North Korea for constructing deliverable nuclear weapons, they fail to point out that countries defined as enemies of the United States, such as Iraq and Libya, were subject to U.S. military attack because they did not have such weapons to deter military assault.
The death of the current dictator of North Korea and the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq should encourage a frank and serious discussion about the United States foreign policy of perpetual war that has been a central feature of the U.S. role in the world since Korea. As masses of Americans mobilize in parks, reoccupy foreclosed homes, and in other ways petition government to change its ways, elimination of the system of constantly preparing for and engaging in war must be included in demands for change.
[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical — and that’s also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ’s articles on The Rag Blog.]
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As the troops return from Iraq, Rev. Jim Rigby, human rights activist and pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, reflects on the Christmas message and a “reframed” Christmas story that he wrote for a local newspaper during the “drumbeat” leading toward the Iraq War. In that article, which was rejected for its politics, three Iraqi wise men were arrested for suspicion of terrorism, and also implicated were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary. Rev. Rigby suggests we should stop the “frenzy of Christmas long enough to hear the song the angels sang to the wretched of the earth.”
Jim Rigby : Christmas Cancelled as Security Measure!
Christmas is no time to
talk about war and peace
When the angels sang, ‘peace on earth good will to all,’ they were expressing the song written in every heart. But, that song calls us out of empire and into our entire human family.
By Jim Rigby | The Rag Blog | December 22, 2011
When I heard the President speak to returning troops last week, my mind flashed back to an article I once wrote for our local newspaper. Each week a different member of the local clergy would write a column, and I had been asked to write the piece for Christmas.
That year all I could hear was the drumbeat leading toward a war with Iraq. I racked my brain trying to think of a way to put faces on the people we were about to bomb. Looking at a nativity scene I thought, “the people we are about to kill look like that.” Maybe a reframed Christmas story could help Americans stop hating Saddam long enough to care about the people who will pay the real cost of this invasion.
I submitted the following article, covering the Christmas story the way the U.S. press was covering the build-up to the Iraq war. Looking back, I should have known what was about to happen.
Christmas Cancelled as a Security Measure
ELLIS ISLAND — The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as “frankincense” and “myrrh.” While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission.
Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary. An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that her son would “bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly.” In what appears to be a call to anarchy, the couple claims their son will someday “help prisoners escape captivity.” “These people match our terrorist profile perfectly,” an official source reported.
All of the suspects claimed they heard angels singing of a new era of hope for the afflicted and poor. As one Wall Street official put it, “These one world wackos are talking about overturning the entire economic and political hierarchy that holds the civilized world together. I don’t care what some angel sang; God wants the status quo — by definition.”
A somber White House press secretary announced that it might be prudent to cancel Christmas until others in the plot are rounded up. “I assure you that this measure is temporary. The President loves Christmas as much as anyone. People can still shop and give expensive gifts, but we’re asking them not to think about world peace until after we have rid the world of evil people. For Americans to sing, ‘peace on earth, good will to all’, is just the wrong message to send to our enemies at this time.”
The strongest opponents of the Christmas ban were the representatives of retail stores, movie chains and makers of porcelain Christmas figurines. “This is a tempest in a teapot,” fumed one unnamed business owner. “No one thinks of the political meaning of Christmas any more. Christmas isn’t about a savior who will bring hope to the outcasts of the world; it’s about nativity scenes and beautiful lights. History has shown that mature people are perfectly capable of singing hymns about world peace while still supporting whatever war our leaders deem necessary. People long ago stopped tying religion to the real events in the world.”
There has been no word on where the suspects are being kept, or when their trial might be held. Authorities are asking citizens who see other foreigners resembling nativity scene figures to contact the Office of Homeland Security.
A few days after submitting that piece, I received a nervous call from an editor. “We love your story. It’s very funny.”
“Thank you,” I said waiting for the other shoe to fall.
“The thing is, we want to take out the part about Iraq and Palestine.”
After a horrified pause, I explained that had been the whole point of writing the story — to humanize the people who were about to be killed. When I refused to gut the story, he told me they would have to drop it all together.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Clergy who want to talk about real events in the world are seen as too political for the religious section, and too religious for the political section. Of course, if a minister gets in the pulpit and waves the flag and prays for the troops, that’s not called “political,” but if a minister questions any war, then it is considered mixing religion and politics. The resulting pablum in most clergy columns validates their strategic placement somewhere between the obituaries and the comics.
What have we learned as a result of the war? That was answered by Obama’s words to the returning troops:
Because of you — because you sacrificed so much for a people that you had never met — Iraqis have a chance to forge their own destiny. That’s part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right. There can be no fuller expression of America’s support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are.
Looking back at my earlier Christmas article, I feel pain not pride at what the President said. His speech to returning troops could have been taken from any leader, of any nation, from any period of history, simply by changing the names and places. It is the kind of speech every leader has given since the emperors: brave and noble words, written in someone else’s blood.
This President who ran, in part, against this war, has come to repeat the party line. This President, who once spoke of respect for all people of the world, has now deported more immigrants than Bush.
Hearing another speech expressing our nation’s narcissistic delusion made me physically ill. I could not help but think of the bloody wake such rhetoric leaves behind when put into action. The fact that we are leaving Iraq at this point says nothing about the purity of our initial motives. Even bank robbers don’t stay around after the crime has been committed.
I appreciate trying to make our young soldiers not feel like they were pawns in someone else’s parlor game, but for the sake of future generations we must painfully remember and affirm, that is exactly what happened.
We, from the United States, are not like the people in our nativity scenes. We are like the Romans looming ominously in the background of the story. Christmas is about the little people of the world who find joy and meaning while living under someone else’s boot. We from the United States can only celebrate Christmas by ending our cultural narcissism, renouncing empire, and making room for the poor and the weak of the world like Joseph and Mary.
Christmas is not a fact of history, but Christianity’s particular symbol of every human being’s hope for world peace and universal happiness. When the angels sang, “peace on earth good will to all,” they were expressing the song written in every heart. But, that song calls us out of empire and into our entire human family.
Maybe stopping the frenzy of Christmas long enough to really hear the song the angels sang to the wretched of the earth, would give us the humanity to stop hanging our Christmas lights until we no longer kill our brothers and sisters for the fuel to illumine them.
O ye beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.
[Rev. Jim Rigby, a human rights activist, is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com., and videos of his sermons are available online here. Read more articles by Jim Rigby on The Rag Blog.]
Lamar W. Hankins : A Humanist Looks at Christmas
Robert Green Ingersoll:
A humanist looks at Christmas
By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | December 22, 2011
Robert Green Ingersoll is one of the least known orators of the 19th century, yet he lectured six or seven times a week from the Civil War until his death in 1899. He was vastly influential and campaigned vigorously for every Republican elected President in those years.
He has been largely forgotten by history because he was a secular humanist, dubbed “The Great Agnostic” by friends and foes alike. His father was an abolitionist Presbyterian preacher. Ingersoll fought in the Civil War and greatly admired President Abraham Lincoln.
While Ingersoll was a lawyer by profession, he earned a good income from his mostly sold-out lectures for which people were charged $7 to $14 per person in today’s money. Much of this income he gave to charitable causes. Ingersoll had a photographic memory, which made it possible for him to memorize all of his lectures. A complete set of his written works and lectures were published in 12 volumes and are now available on CD.
Ingersoll’s life was summarized by Herman E. Kittredge:
He became the terror of the pulpit, reviled by the clergy, slandered by the religious media, and yet the friend of presidents, and the friend of great men and women such as Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Known as the “American Infidel,” he went on to become the first Attorney General of the State of Illinois.
And Ingersoll was a great influence on Clarence Darrow three decades before the Scopes Trial.
Ingersoll was a good friend of Walt Whitman, who considered Ingersoll the greatest orator of their time. Upon Whitman’s death in 1892, Ingersoll delivered his eulogy. It was so well-received that it was published and can be found in Phyllis Theroux’s 1977 collection, The Book of Eulogies. Whitman said of his friend Bob Ingersoll, “It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is Leaves of Grass… He lives, embodies, the individuality, I preach. I see in Bob the noblest specimen — American-flavored — pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light.”
While Ingersoll started no humanist organizations to carry on his beliefs, a humanist organization took up his mantle 80 years after his death. The Council on Secular Humanism supports “a nonreligious lifestance rooted in science, naturalistic philosophy, and humanist ethics.” As the Council explains:
Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs. They affirm that we must take responsibility for our own lives and the communities and world in which we live. Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation.
Ingersoll gave a lecture in 1897 in Boston titled “What I Want for Christmas.” Ingersoll’s views do not match everyone’s, and some of his thoughts will be abhorrent to many, but on the whole they harmonize nicely with the views of many Christians, for whom this time of year is especially meaningful:
If I had the power to produce exactly what I want for next Christmas, I would have all the kings and emperors resign and allow the people to govern themselves.
I would have all the nobility crop their titles and give their lands back to the people. I would have the Pope throw away his tiara, take off his sacred vestments, and admit that he is not acting for God — is not infallible — but is just an ordinary Italian. I would have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and clergymen admit that they know nothing about theology, nothing about hell or heaven, nothing about the destiny of the human race, nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels.
I would have them tell all their “flocks” to think for themselves, to be manly men and womanly women, and to do all in their power to increase the sum of human happiness.
I would have all the professors in colleges, all the teachers in schools of every kind, including those in Sunday schools, agree that they would teach only what they know, that they would not palm off guesses as demonstrated truths.
I would like to see all the politicians changed to statesmen, — to men who long to make their country great and free, — to men who care more for public good than private gain — men who long to be of use.
I would like to see all the editors of papers and magazines agree to print the truth and nothing but the truth, to avoid all slander and misrepresentation, and to let the private affairs of the people alone.
I would like to see drunkenness and prohibition both abolished.
I would like to see corporal punishment done away with in every home, in every school, in every asylum, reformatory, and prison. Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.
I would like to see the millionaires unite and form a trust for the public good.
I would like to see a fair division of profits between capital and labor, so that the toiler could save enough to mingle a little June with the December of his life.
I would like to see an international court established in which to settle disputes between nations, so that armies could be disbanded and the great navies allowed to rust and rot in perfect peace.
I would like to see the whole world free — free from injustice — free from superstition.
This will do for next Christmas. The following Christmas, I may want more.
It seems extraordinary to me that something written 114 years ago has such resonance for today. Whatever your lifestance, and whether or not you agree with Ingersoll, I hope you have a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday, and keep thinking free.
[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged American History, Christmas, Humanism, Lamar W. Hankins, Philosophy
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Rag Radio : Texas Music Hall of Fame Singer/Songwriter Eliza Gilkyson
Political Activist Eliza Gilkyson on Rag Radio
with Thorne Dreyer. Listen to it here:
Eliza Gilkyson was Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Friday, December 16, 2011.
Gilkyson, a Grammy-nominated recording artist and a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame, is one of the most respected musicians in folk and Americana music circles. The daughter of legendary songwriter Terry Gilkyson, Eliza grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Austin.
Gilkyson has appeared on NPR and Austin City Limits and has toured with Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Her songs have been recorded and performed by such greats as Rosanne Cash, Tom Rush, and Joan Baez, who covered Eliza’s song “Requiem,” which was originally written as a prayer for those who lost lives in the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. It has been nominated for two Grammys on different recordings.
Eliza Gilkyson is also a political activist, involved with water conservation issues and the Worker’s Defense Project, which advocates rights for undocumented workers in the United States. In 2010, she co-founded 5604 MANOR, a community center in Austin that promotes political activism and community involvement around issues of race, patriarchy, and global injustice.
In the past year, Eliza recorded two new albums: the Billboard-charting Red Horse and Roses at the End of Time, her first new solo recording in three years.
This episode of Rag Radio includes live performance and recorded music by Eliza Gilkyson.
Rag Radio — hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer — is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. KOOP is an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas.
Rag Radio, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.
Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is produced in the KOOP studios, in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.
Coming up on Rag Radio:
- Dec. 23, 2011 [Best of Rag Radio]: Anarchist community organizer scott crow, author of Black Flags and Windmills (originally recorded Aug. 5, 2011).
- Dec. 30, 2011: Environmentalist and global warming activist Bruce Melton.
- Jan. 6, 2012: New Years Special with SDS founder and political activist Tom Hayden.
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Tagged Austin Musicians, Eliza Gilkyson, Inteview, Rag Radio, Singer-Songwriters, Thorne Dreyer
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Anthony Cristofani : Cops ‘Peacefully Evacuate’ Occupy LA
Protester busted by LA cops at Occupy Los Angeles encampment outside City Hall. Photo by Lucy Nicholson / AFP / Getty Images.
The ‘peaceful evacuation’ of Occupy Los Angeles
‘Evacuation’ is what kindly firefighters do when buildings are in danger of collapsing. This was an attack on people exercising their first amendment rights to assembly and speech in a public space.
LOS ANGELES — I used to read stories of revolutionaries in Chiapas, Northern Ireland, Spain, and elsewhere, and think: if we were able to start something revolutionary in the USA, would I have the courage to stand my ground against the inevitable crackdown of the police state, once we started to escalate?
It turns out I didn’t have to wait for the USA to become truly revolutionary to experience that moment.
Truth be told, I didn’t need to see my brothers and sisters kidnapped and manhandled before my eyes to feel an overwhelming sense of anger and sorrow at the specter of what my country has become. I did three years between San Quentin and DVI Tracy prison in California. Living three years in the waste heap where the 1% spits out the human byproducts of its ingenious socialize-the-risks-and-privatize-the-profits enterprise, I already had that.
But I watched these people who had become a family — nah, scratch that. Family sounds too quaint for what we’re doing. Who had become a people at last. I watched them radicalize in a matter of days. As Rebel Alliance (from Star Wars) leader Princess Leia says to an Imperial general: the tighter you squeeze your fist, the more we slip through your fingers.
The rebel alliance is forming, and the more they crush us, the more rebel we get. Indeed, some of the liberal-democratic Democratic party patsies that annoyed me the most have become close comrades, just by virtue of the attack (let’s not mince words here).
But even for me — who went to what Lenin called a training ground for revolutionaries (prison) — something changes when you see the people you live with in your home dragged violently away, or chased into traps where they are kidnapped and safely stored away from our increasingly privatized “public” spaces.
Perhaps what made it poignant is that, although it was our home, it was truly our home, not my home in any way. That felt better than any apartment, cell, dorm, overcrowded ex-gymnasium full of triple-stacked bunks and 400 inmates, or house I’ve lived in. To be living Woody Guthrie’s ”This Land is Your Land,” instead of just singing the non-commie verses with my hand over my heart in grade school.
Perhaps we need to see each other suffer before our deepest and longest love comes to the forefront of our scattered American hearts. Perhaps watching people, whose commitment to democracy you could only guess at based on their listserve posts or handmade signs, stay behind in the freezing cold for hours and hours, knowing they are about to be attacked, finally allows you to put aside your mistrust and feel the force of an actual movement, which knows itself viscerally to be on the right side of history now.
Perhaps our government is making the same mistake as so many empires past — pushing people until they feel enough solidarity to feel like The People again.
I suppose I should get to some details. I’m hesitant, though, because even internally there were voices indignantly clamoring for “evidence” of police brutality. I am suspicious and do a quick privilege check when I or anyone around me seems loathe to believe their country could be oppressive in this way.
But the stories in the mainstream media the next day revealed just such an aversion to believing that we the people could live in the kind of police state that serves as the bad guy in our spy movies and bad Tom Clancy novels. The L.A. Times glowed about how “peaceful” the “evacuation” was.
Evacuation? Evacuation is what kindly firefighters do when buildings are in danger of collapsing. This was an attack on people exercising their first amendment rights to assembly and speech in a public space.
To be fair to the media, it’s hard to properly cover an incursion of a paramilitary force (complete with Department of Homeland Security patches on some of the uniforms, which I saw with my own eyes) when the city ad hoc creates a “media pool” allowing only a handful of trustily patsy media sources in to witness. Even then, the cops patiently waited until the media was gone before the violence.
While my partner was being arrested along with other friends and members of our newfound community of rich and poor, artistic and artisan, sober and using, educated and uneducated, I was out in the street with another mass of demonstrators.
We had finally overcome the conservative forces within Occupy that think obeying every order by the cops, no matter how unjust or illegal, will win us widespread public support. So we marched into the street chanting, “Whose streets?! Our streets!,” exercising what for many of us was a new understanding of public space as ours, not theirs.
It’s sad it’s come to this, that our elected representatives, their enforcers, and the 1% who they serve, are no longer us. These are the conditions for revolution, and that is what we are witnessing — first stirrings of revolution in perhaps the most counterrevolutionary industrialized nation.
The cops shoved batons into chests of those in the front row. Those from communities always and everywhere targeted by the LAPD and their Drug War chanted things like, “Oink, oink, bang, bang, everyday the same thang.” Those who come from communities where you never see cops and when you do they’re there to help, you gave flowers and (embarrassingly) chanted “You are part of the 99%.”
Meanwhile the police, in one of many ad hoc legal decisions, decided we were now all guilty of unlawful assembly and would be arrested. As in the park, those who were not willing to take such risks were escorted into a separate area where… they were arrested anyway.
Dastardly. Many escaped. Many didn’t. Those of us not about to follow an unjust order stayed, and when the cops moved in, we fled through Japantown, cops organizing on radios and meeting us head on at various crossings.
Each time we would sprint right or left, into a shopping center or parking garage, running, laughing, chanting, “Ain’t no power like the power of the people ‘cause the power of the people don’t stop,” and generally experiencing our common bonds like never before.
By now it was 4 a.m. and the cops had succeeded in dividing us into smaller groups. No media, no mob = safe to attack. Some were beaten as they were chased down steps. Others were beaten when they ran down the wrong dead end.
The frightening aspect of all this aggression and illegality is that there is video. We’re not dummies, and many of us were livestreaming or recording on phones, and we put them up on YouTube, sent them to mainstream media outlets, and generally tried to spread the word.
Did that change the story? Not much. Soon our videos began to be deleted from YouTube (wait — I thought Cuba was the country that censored media). Perhaps it’s the United States of American insistence on high-quality video footage. We don’t like those new Godard films with the unprofessional looking camerawork. But I suspect it’s something more sinister than that.
And this isn’t even to speak of the horrendous and illegal treatment of our people in the jails. Many were held on buses, in tight zipcuffs, for hours, begging to use a bathroom. People were denied medical treatment. Most were not booked for at least three hours after being arrested, some were held without booking up to nine hours.
Protesters with no prior arrests and no other complications should be released on their own recognizance when they show their identification. Occupiers were held for 48 hours, and only those who were able to contact the Bail Commissioner were considered for OR. These are all choices made by the LAPD to teach us a lesson.
In the days after, the LAPD and their cronies have stepped up the violence. One friend was mercilessly beaten for riding his bike along a march route. So were those who stepped in to protest.
As in New York City, the cops have taken to attacking people with cameras first. The arrests have become arbitrary along with the laws. One person was arrested for walking the City Hall steps with a sign at midnight. The next day the same person wasn’t. Suddenly a largely white and middle class group is being treated like our brothers and sisters on Skid Row. Big mistake. Before, half of us thought those people were treated like that because they’re misbehaving. Now we know, and the veil of Maya is lifted forever from the face of authority in the USA.
You had us where you wanted us — safely unradicalized and believing that the people in jail deserved to be there. Then we went and lived with them. Now we know. My friend Carolyn used to write and talk mostly about being more polite to each other, involving the cops in our struggle, and making sure we appeal to every single person in the USA with our message.
She got out of jail quoting revolutionary rappers and talking like Mike Davis. And there are many more like her now. Big mistake.
[Anthony Cristofani is a writer, musician, and PhD candidate based in Los Angeles.]
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Anthony Cristofani, Direct Action, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Wall Street, Police Brutality
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Eliza Gilkyson on Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer. Listen to it here:
Eliza Gilkyson was Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Friday, December 16, 2011.
Gilkyson, a Grammy-nominated recording artist and a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame, is one of the most respected musicians in folk and Americana music circles. The daughter of legendary songwriter Terry Gilkyson, Eliza grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Austin.Gilkyson has appeared on NPR and Austin City Limits and has toured with Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. Her songs have been recorded and performed by such greats as Rosanne Cash, Tom Rush, and Joan Baez, who covered Eliza’s song “Requiem,” which was originally written as a prayer for those who lost lives in the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. It has been nominated for two Grammys on different recordings.
Eliza Gilkyson is also a political activist, involved with water conservation issues and the Worker’s Defense Project, which advocates rights for undocumented workers in the United States. In 2010, she co-founded 5604 MANOR, a community center in Austin that promotes political activism and community involvement around issues of race, patriarchy, and global injustice. In the past year, Eliza recorded two new albums: the Billboard-charting Red Horse and Roses at the End of Time, her first new solo recording in three years.
This episode of Rag Radio includes live performance and recorded music by Eliza Gilkyson.
Rag Radio — hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer — is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. KOOP is an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas.
Rag Radio, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.
Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is produced in the KOOP studios, in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.
Coming up on Rag Radio:
- Dec. 30, 2011: Environmentalist and global warming activist Bruce Melton.
- Jan. 6, 2012: New Years Special with SDS founder and political activist Tom Hayden.
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Peter L. Myers : Pepper Spray Gazette (Numbers Don’t Lie)
Pepper Spray Gazette:
Numbers don’t lie!
By Peter L. Myers | The Rag Blog | December 20, 2011
2011 will be remembered for historic world-wide uprisings against despotism and against the astronomical, obscene growth of income and wealth inequality. It will also be remembered for assaults against unarmed protesters with tear gas and pepper spray and, in some nations, with live ammunition. In the U.S., the main achievement of the Occupy movements has been to put wealth/income disparity in the public consciousness:
- The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
- The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
- From 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.
- Of the 100 highest paid chief executives in 2010, 25 took home more pay than their companies paid in federal corporate income tax.
— Nicholas D. Kristof, “America’s Primal Scream,” The New York Times, October 15, 2011
- “Between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent… during the same period the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.”
— Paul Krugman, “The Social Contract,” The New York Times, September 22, 2011
It is immoral that immense wealth is increasingly concentrated in a tiny layer while:
- One in five children in America is at risk for hunger and lives in poverty. (Share our Strength; MSNBC)
- A record number of Americans — nearly one in two — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. (MSNBC)
Second, the “1%” and their corporations are stifling political democracy:
- Corporate lobbyists control Congress. This is no leftist paranoia: Jack Abramoff boasted on NBC that he had literally controlled at least 100 Congressional offices by buying off the staff.
- Almost half of Congress members are millionaires themselves.
- Tax laws are written so that billionaires like Ronald Lauder have their wealth protected.
— David Kocieniewski, “But Nobody Pays That: A Family’s Billions, Artfully Sheltered,” The New York Times, November 27, 2011 - Corporate influence on campaign finance and the media stifles public discourse and the political process.
The chief demand of the Occupy movements is to create and expand political, social, and economic democracy and a society at the service of human needs. We will end Occupy when Wall Street stops occupying our Congress and ripping off the poor, working, and middle classes. Please join the worldwide movement for freedom and an end to despotism and injustice.
[Peter L. Myers is a semi-retired professor of anthropology and alcohol/drug studies, and a text author and editor. He was active in the early civil rights and student movements. Send comments and additions to nyprof@gmail.com.]
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Concentration of Wealth, Occupy Wall Street, Peter L. Myers, Police Brutality
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Danny Schechter : Occupy Wall Street Marks Anniversary With New York Street Actions
Seeking ‘sanctuary’ at Trinity Church:
Protests mark third anniversary
of Occupy Wall Street
Trinity Church may be there to serve God, but the defense of their real estate portfolio seems to come before their pretensions to social justice.
By Danny Schechter /The Rag Blog / December 20, 2011
NEW YORK — This past Saturday marked the three-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. It was also Bradley Manning’s birthday. It was one of those days that confirmed the validity of the chant: “All Day, All Week, Occupy Wall Street.”
OK, maybe, it wasn’t a whole week but Saturday felt like a week in one day.
The plan for the day, as announced, was to gather at Duarte Park at Sixth Avenue and Canal Street to attempt a RE-Occupation of vacant land owned by Trinity Church, more of a real estate company than a house of worship.
For a few weeks, the Occupy Movement had been demanding that the Church allow the movement to take “sanctuary” on that land. There were earlier protests and even a hunger strike that made page one of The New York Times.
Police in riot gear had ousted the occupiers the last time they tried to take over the space a few weeks back, and, since then, there has been a rancorous standoff between a church that is supported by many fat cat one-percenters and OWS’s volunteer nonviolent army of outrage.
The Church has repeatedly turned the movement down, despite support for the OWS demands from many clergy in New York and the most famous Episcopal priest in the world, South Africa’s Desmond Tutu. (Tutu sent OWS a supportive message but, then later sent the church a disclaimer of any attempt on his part to sanction violence.)
No doubt church lawyers were expressing worries about financial liability should there be any claims, but many of their trustees had political objections. They are Wall Streeters, including, a Vice President of Brookfield Properties, the owner of the “public” Zuccotti Park that had been the Movement’s home until they were unceremoniously and violently ejected by police in the dark of night.
Trinity Church may be there to serve God, but the defense of their real estate portfolio seems to come before their pretensions to social justice.
The gathering at Duarte Park was predictably surrounded by cops, some in riot gear, while what looked like the Zuccotti Park alumni Association roamed around on a sliver of a City Park next to the unholy Trinity site.
At least half of the crowd, which grew as the day progressed, appeared to be covering the other half with still or video cameras and tape recorders. The press was out in force too, no doubt hoping for a bloody confrontation. Pacifica Radio outlet WBAI was broadcasting live and its programming was played back to the crowd on boom boxes.
The librarians of the People’s Library were on hand with a few boxes of newly donated books, but, despite the rhetoric, the scene seemed tired except for those who were dancing around or looking for action.
A few activists and clergy were arrested for climbing over the fence while others tried, but failed, to knock it down. (There were more than 50 arrests Saturday,)
I was pretty discouraged by the relatively small turnout and the focus on getting to occupy a new tiny land base in an area with no real pedestrian traffic nearby, instead of finding more ways to reach out to mainstream America.
Saturday was a big Xmas Shopping day. While tens of thousands of New Yorkers were flocking to stores in Times and Herald Square. I thought that if you want to hit at economic power, you should be Occupying Macy’s or Toys”R”Us.
All the stores were putting on new sales after Black Friday turned out to be a relative bust. Why not a march by Occupy Santas?
It all seemed unpromising when announced concerts at the park by Lou Reed and others didn’t seem to materialize, or at least I missed them.
But I left too soon.
Unknown to me, the movement then launched a previously unscheduled march, but, at the last minute, changed its direction and headed uptown, catching the police unaware.
The Live Stream people went with them so what happened next was shown on the Internet. (One of the live-streamers was busted but kept his camera-computer going from inside a Police paddy wagon.)
At one point, I saw coverage by three cameras. One view, in ironic counterpoint, covered several cops defending the statue of the Bull on an empty Wall Street traffic junction. No one there was bullish. Bullshit anyone?
The cops attacked as the activists marched up Seventh Avenue at 29th Street, arresting some for marching when they should be walking, a crime that may soon by punishable by the crazed new NDAA measure treating the homeland as a battlefield.
The crowd then broke into smaller guerrilla-style groups, darting in and out of various streets, and ending up in a packed Times Square on a Saturday night at the height of the Christmas shopping season.
This march was spontaneous, powered by the element of surprise. The police actually chased some out-of-towners out of Times Square to try to cut them off at the pass, but failed.
Before the Men in Blue, led by Men in White, could reassert their version of Law and Order, and while shoppers and tourists watched, the occupiers began “mic-checking,” with individual after individual shouting out “Why I Occupy,” and offering personal statements and testimonies that were repeated several times.
In this way, individual members of the movement, from every class, color, and gender, spoke with eloquence about their reasons for protesting — personal reasons and social reasons, national reasons and global reasons, economic reasons and political reasons — and reached out to thousands.
This had to electrify whoever was watching. The passion and sincerity was there for all to see.
I watched the Live Stream of the event on a computer in Harlem and was moved, at some points, to tears by how articulate and reasonable they were. They later left the square and returned to Zuccotti Park for a late-night General Assembly meeting.
Not only was this the best show on Broadway for that hour, but it proved the correctness of a political claim, asserted in one of the OWS signs written after the police raided Zuccotti Park.
It reads: “It’s So Not Over.”
[News Dissector Danny Schechter is covering Occupy Wall Street in his News Dissector blog and and other websites including Al Jazeera. He has collected his reporting into a new book, available next week, with a preface by writer Greg Palast. Email Danny at dissector@mediachannel.org. Read more by Danny Schechter on The Rag Blog.]
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Tagged Danny Schechter, Direct Action, New York, Occupy Wall Street
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BOOKS / Jerry Harris : Carl Davidson’s ‘Lost Writings of SDS’
Collection of ‘lost’ SDS writings reveals
depth of Sixties radical thinking
By Jerry Harris / The Rag Blog / December 19, 2011
[Revolutionary Youth and the New Working Class: Lost Writings of SDS, edited by Carl Davidson; (Pittsburgh PA: Changemaker Publications, 2011.)]
Carl Davidson has done a tremendous service to anyone who studies the history of social movements or anyone interested in the 1960s rebellion. This “lost” collection of papers reveals the depth and richness of radical thinking coming out of the student movement as the war raged in Vietnam and militant protestors marched through the streets of America.
The most important document is the “Port Authority Statement,” by SDS members David Gilbert, Robert Gottlieb, and Gerry Tenney. Although at the time not widely circulated, it offers great insight into the thinking and analysis of SDS as it turned to revolutionary theory and debate. This is an impressive document, detailed in statistical and economic analysis, grounded in revolutionary social theory, and innovative in its thinking and insights.
One of the most important sections of the paper was its class analysis with its focus on the new working class and the relationship of students to an economy shifting from manufacturing to services and technology. The document notes that, “Modern American capitalism is characterized by rapid technological change with scientific knowledge growing at a logarithmic rate.” This will result in the “elimination of unskilled labor (as) the blue-collar sector will decrease (and) jobs that require high degrees of education and training” will increase. (pages 88-89)
That analysis was made in 1966. Now read a recent article by Edward Luce from the Financial Times (Dec. 11, 2011) : “the middle-skilled jobs that once formed the ballast of the world’s wealthiest middle class are disappearing. They are being supplanted by relatively low-skilled (and low-paid) jobs that cannot be replaced either by new technology or by offshoring — such as home nursing and landscape gardening. Jobs are also being created for the highly skilled, notably in science, engineering and management.
Decades later the paper’s main thesis still holds up.
Continuing its class analysis the Port Authority document examined the capitalist class and the debate over ownership and control. The authors focused attention on the growing trend towards paying executives with large stock rewards, merging management and ownership.
Again we can turn to a recent article by Richard Peet, published in the December 2011 Monthly Review that reads, “More recently, David Harvey has argued that ownership (share holders) and management (CEOs) of capitalist enterprises have fused together, as upper management is increasingly paid with stock options.” This “recent” argument now being made by a leading Marxist trails Port Authority by some 45 years.
Although the authors grasped the sweeping impact that technology would have on American workers, what they could not see would be globalization and the advent of neoliberalism as a governing ideology.
As the paper noted at the time, “Corporate liberalism implies that the dominant economic institution is the corporation and that the prevailing political and social mode is liberalism.” (page 68) Of course it’s understandable how such changes would be all but invisible in 1966; it’s also a good reminder why political tactics and strategy must remain flexible and activists should always be willing to reevaluate their analysis.
The above are but a few of the enticing insights that are contained in page after page of these documents. As new social movements gather force throughout the world, a look into the thinking of activists from the last great social movement can help give direction to coming future battles.
I would highly recommend this book to all activists and academics interested in building a better world.
[Jerry Harris is National Secretary of the Global Studies Association and author of The Dialectics of Globalization.]
Find articles by Carl Davidson on The Rag Blog.
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