The Rag Blog

Health Care Reform : A Bad Proposal or a Worse One?

Posted on February 26, 2010 by RagBlog

Senator Alexander, sitting next to Senator McCain, provided the Republicans’ opening statement at the Health Care Forum at Blair House, and he challenged President Obama and the Democrats “to renounce jamming it through in a partisan way.” Photo: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
Corporate Restructuring of Healthcare
Fails the American People

By Billy Wharton / The Rag Blog / February 26, 2010

At the President’s Healthcare Summit today, the American people witnessed a debate between the bad proposal for healthcare reform and the even worse one. The Democrats’ House and Senate bills fail to address the growing problems of for-profit healthcare. Instead, by mandating the purchase of healthcare, their plan will create a profitable market for private health insurance companies to exploit.

The Republicans’ counter-proposal, which seeks to allow consumers to buy insurance plans across state lines, would reverse decades of necessary reforms carried out at the state level. This would give mega-healthcare corporations a free-hand to expand their already abusive practices.

While the two parties squabble about how to carry out the corporate restructuring of healthcare, the American people continue to suffer under a for-profit healthcare system. 50 million people are uninsured, another 20 million underinsured and nearly 50,000 people die each year from preventable illnesses. In response, millions of Americans have begun to avoid healthcare — a recent survey indicates that six out of 10 have either deferred or delayed necessary care in the last year.

A fundamental political shift in the healthcare debate is necessary. Instead of a discussion of how markets should operate or how to build the proper risk pool to insure profits, we should be examining how to recognize healthcare as a basic human right.

Simply put, healthcare should not be treated as a commodity. Private health insurers provide no medical benefit to the people they cover. They merely extract profits from the doctor-patient relationship. Instead, we should create a comprehensive medical system that guarantees no-charge access and the provision of all medically necessary care.

Near the end of today’s summit, President Barack Obama asked “Can America, the wealthiest nation on earth, do what every industrialized country in the world does?” As a socialist, my answer is yes, but it will not come from the Democratic or Republican proposals. Instead, a single-payer National Healthcare Program would provide universal access for all people in America. Such a program would pave the way for the creation of a fully-socialized medical system that would ensure healthcare as a human right.

The time for high-level summits and backroom wrangling among politicians who have received large-scale contributions from private insurers and pharmaceutical companies has ended. It is now time for the creation of a mass social movement that expresses the desires of everyday Americans for a medical system organized around the values of solidarity, compassion, and justice. Rejecting both the Democratic and Republican proposals will be a key part of this process.

[Billy Wharton is the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA and the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Health Care Reform, Obama Administration, U.S. Government | 3 Comments

Juan Cole on the U.S. Defense Budget

Posted on February 26, 2010 by RagBlog

Gates Wants Europe to Beggar Itself on War Expenditures the Way the U.S. Has

By Juan Cole / February 25, 2010

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decries Europe for general anti-war sentiment, unwillingness to beggar itself with expenditures on war.

But as far as I can tell, Europe is the world’s largest economy and got there without any recent substantial wars except those the U.S. dragged it into. Moreover, the fastest-growing economy for the past nearly 30 years has been China, which spends a fraction on their military of what the US spends on its, and, aside from a skirmish with Vietnam in the early 1980s, has been at peace. Apparently massive war expenditures are unrelated to economic growth or prosperity.

In contrast, the U.S. has been at war for 19 of the last 47 years (not counting U.S.-backed insurgencies such as 1980s Afghanistan, on which we spent billions) but has not grown faster than the other two economically.

Moreover, the increasingly unwieldy U.S. national debt, deriving from the U.S. government spending more than it took in in recent decades, would not exist if the U.S. military budget had been the same as that of the European Union since 1980. The U.S. overspent on its military because Washington mistakenly thought the Soviet economy was twice as big as it actually was, and vastly over-estimated Soviet military capabilities.

The bloated military budgets continue now, apparently because of a couple thousand al-Qaeda operatives hiding out in caves in the Hadhramawt and Waziristan.

Some statistics to ponder:

U.S. Military Budget 2009: $711 billion
European Union Military Budget 2009: $289 billion
China Military Budget 2009: $122 billion.

U.S. GDP 2009: $14.4 trillion
European Union GDP 2009: $16.5 trillion (PPP)
China GDP 2009: $8.8 trillion (PPP)

U.S. economic growth 2009: 0.2%
European Union economic growth 2009: -4%
China economic growth 2009: 8.7 %

The real military-related expenditures of the U.S. are closer to $1 trillion. If the US cut those back to the level of the European Union and spent the money on promoting solar energy and making it inexpensive, America would have a chance of remaining a great power in the 21st century. If it goes on rampaging around the world bankrupting itself by invading and occupying other countries, the Chinese will laugh at us all the way to world dominance.

Source / Informed Comment

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Department of Defense, Economy, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Government | 2 Comments

Harvey Wasserman : Putting Lipstick on a Radioactive Pig

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from Texas Vox / Public Citizen.
High dollar nuclear makeover:
$645 million in lipstick for a radioactive pig

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / February 24, 2010

The mystery has been solved.

Where is this “new reactor renaissance” coming from?

There has been no deep, thoughtful re-making or re-evaluation of atomic technology. No solution to the nuke waste problem. No making reactors economically sound. No private insurance against radioactive disasters by terror or error. No grassroots citizens now desperate to live near fragile containment domes and outtake pipes spewing radioactive tritium at 27 U.S. reactors.

No, nothing about atomic energy has really changed.

Except this: $645 MILLION for lobbying Congress and the White House over the past 10 years.

As reported by Judy Pasternak and a team of reporters at American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop, filings with the Senate Office of Public Records show that members of the Nuclear Energy Institute and other reactor owner/operators admit spending that money on issues that “include legislation to promote construction of new nuclear power plants.”

Money has also gone to “other nuclear-related priorities” including “energy policy, Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal, plant decommissioning costs, uranium issues such as tariffs, re-enrichment and mining, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission funding.” But even that may not fully account for money spent on coal and other energy sources, or on media campaigning.

In short: think $64.5 million, EVERY YEAR since the coming of George W. Bush.

That’s $1 million per every U.S. Senator and Representative, plus another, say, $100 million for the White House, courts, and media.

“I think that’s understated,” says Journalism Professor Karl Grossman of the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. The “torrent of lies” from General Electric and Westinghouse, the “Coke and Pepsi” of the nuclear industry, “has made the tobacco industry look like a piker.

Their past, present and/or future media mouthpieces, says Grossman, span CBS, NBC, and a global phalanx of interlocking radio-TV-print directorates.

All are geared, adds MediaChannel.org’s Rory O’Connor, to flood the globe with “Nukespeak,” the Orwellian lingo that sells atomic power while rhetorically airbrushing its costs and dangers.

Thus Noam Chomsky’s “manufacturing consent” has become an “outright purchase.”

Thus National Public Radio is now the Nuclear Proliferation Redux. Disgraced ex-Greenpeacer Patrick Moore (who also sells clear-cut forests and genetically modified food) is portrayed as an “environmentalist” rather than an industry employee.

That’s not to say all reactor advocates do it for the money. Certainly some have grown on their own to like nuke power.

But $645 million — SIX HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE MILLION — can buy a lot of opinion going one way, and suppresses a lot going the other. Op eds, air time, “independent” reports, phony claims that “green” nukes can solve global warming… not to mention campaign “donations,” fact-finding junkets, political fundraisers, K-Street dinners… all can be had for a trifling drip from the mega-slush fund.

The latest payback is Barack Obama’s $8.33 billion in promised loan guarantees for two new nukes proposed in Georgia. Two old ones came in at 3000% over budget at a site where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission warns the proposed new ones might crumble in an earthquake or hurricane.

As Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! points out, Team Obama has taken VERY goodly chunks of that $645 million from Chicago’s nuke-loving Exelon. Despite his campaign hype for a green revolution, Obama’s first two named advisors, David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel, were proud Exelon “associates.”

Now Obama wants taxpayers to pony up $36 billion MORE in loan guarantees. (John McCain wants a mere trillion.)

All this BEFORE the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are “persons” who can spend without limit to buy Congress and the media. The cash pouring into the pockets of politicians voting for still more taxpayer money to build still more reactors will parallel the gusher of radiation that poured from Chernobyl.

But does this mean the flood of new reactors is inevitable?

NO!

Despite that cash tsunami, grassroots activists stopped $50 billion in loan guarantees three times since 2007. No new U.S. reactor construction has started since the 1970s, when public opinion was over 70% in favor of atomic power, and Richard Nixon promised 1,000 U.S. reactors by the year 2000.

With green jobs advocate Van Jones ditched and Obama now openly in the nuclear camp, atomic energy is still a loser.

It can’t solve its waste problems, can’t operate without leaking radiation, can’t pay for itself, and can’t get private insurance against terror or error.

Once hyped as “too cheap to meter,” Warren Buffett, the National Taxpayers Union, the Heritage Foundation, and the CATO Institute are among those joining the Congressional Budget Office in warning that atomic energy is really “too expensive to matter.”

With all those hundreds of millions to spend, the reactor backers are still selling a technological corpse. With licensing and construction and the inevitable unforeseen, not one new U.S. reactor can come on line in less than seven years.

Meanwhile, renewable/efficiency prices will continue to plummet. And grassroots opposition will not stop, as in Vermont and wherever else reactors operate or are proposed.

As Abe Lincoln reminds us: you can’t buy all the people all the time. And the ones that can’t be bought CAN be damn powerful.

Those loan guarantees, all that hype about a new nuclear age… they are NOT a done deal. They still must withstand a Solartopian revolution in green technology that’s left atomic power in its economic dust… and a human species whose core instincts DEMAND economic and ecological survival.

So when you hear some hired gun selling nukes, remember: even $645 million can buy only so much green lipstick for a dead radioactive pig.

And when Nature bats last, the final score is not about cash.

[Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States. He is Senior Advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. This article was also published at http://freepress.org.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Energy, Environment, Harvey Wasserman, Lobbyists, Nuclear Power, Technology | 4 Comments

Harry Targ : How the Ruling Class Rules

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from La Revue Gauche.
The new class society:
How does the ruling class rule?

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / February 23, 2010

The substructure

In an effort to teach and reflect more systematically about class rule in the United States, I have used an interesting book by Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong, The New Class Society. It describes the transformation of the class system over the last 30 years from one in which there was a small ruling class, a significantly-sized “middle class,” and a lesser population of the poor and working classes.

According to these sociologists the diamond-shaped distribution of wealth, income, and power that existed during the “golden years” of U.S. capitalist hegemony after World War II began to change in the 1970s. Today, in the “new class society” the top one percent of income, wealth, and power holders, in conjunction with the remainder of the top 20 percent of managers, professionals and support staff of the super class, dominate at the expense of the bottom 80 percent of the population.

Using older language, ownership and control of the means of production and the relationships that exist between the owners and those who work constitute the “substructure” of the capitalist system. But what remains a puzzle is “how does the ruling class rule?”

The superstructure

Perrucci and Wysong suggest some answers that can serve as a basis for others to analyze and refine. They suggest four critical institutions, what I might call the “superstructure,” which ensure the maintenance of class rule. These are the political system, the education industry, the information industry, and the culture industry. Each in its own way is designed to shape the consciousness the new working class, the bottom 80 percent, has of itself and its place in the world of economics, politics, and society.

The political system constitutes the public arena where choices get made about public policy. It remains relevant to all actors in the society, from those who are at the top of the class system to the vast majority of the population constituting the new working class. However, since wealth most often can be translated into power, political institutions in usual times are used to serve the interests of the ruling class. Wealth is used to maintain power through financing elections, lobbying decision-makers, and funding so-called “think tanks” to give “expert” advice to the rulers.

Sometimes combined efforts of trade associations and corporations martial national campaigns to pressure government to shift the direction of public policy away from the popular classes to the rulers.

In an enlightening book by Elizabeth Fones-Wolff, Selling Free Enterprise, the author describes a continuing struggle in the 1940s and 1950s by the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, and like minded groups to convince the American people that individualism, private enterprise, and union-busting were more in their interests than expanding government programs, communities assuming more responsibility for social well-being, and building workers associations as sources of strength and protection from corporate elites.

In sum, political institutions are portrayed as the venue through which “the people decide,” when in fact usually their interests are not adequately represented.

The education industry, that is K through 12, college and university, and professional school education, provides the tools for credentialing some young people and not others. Usually the highest educational achievement is earned by those who come from privileged class families.

Systems of “tracking,” which are supposed to shape education to the talents and needs of individual students are used to promote and encourage those who come from the wealthy and to channel in other directions the children of the working class. “Streaming” policies are designed to encourage the creativity and interests of the children of wealth.

In sum, the education system, which does enlighten, inform, and train, also serves as a gatekeeper to reward and encourage those from the privileged classes and sustain and reproduce the new working class.

Perhaps the most vital function the education system serves is to “socialize” the young into their proper political roles in adulthood. Curricula promote the idea among children of the wealthy that they are creative, they can and should serve the public, and that their obligation is to be engaged citizens. Children of the new working class are taught to be obedient, respect authority and expertise, and participate in politics only as a voter.

The information industry provides our lens on the world. As communications theorists have long suggested, most of people’s information and experience of the world is indirect and mediated by electronic and print media.

The information we consume is packaged in “media frames.” Since most of the information we receive comes from fewer than 10 mega-media corporations, they are shaping the understanding of the world of the new working class. Why making war is necessary, how the United States must continue to support Wall Street during this economic crisis, and the diabolical reasons why some countries, such as Cuba or Venezuela, criticize the United States are examples of most people’s experience of these issues.

Media framing includes what stories are left out as well as how the ones communicated are covered.

Finally, the culture industry provides entertainment or activity for the non-working hours of most people. Television, movies, music, sporting activities are presented to people by the same handful of mega-corporations that dominate the information industry. Increasingly the products of these two industries merge so that “news” and “entertainment” become one. This is true for sex, violence, and mayhem reported as news and the fake news as reported by the comedians.

Perhaps most important to the culture industry is its portrait of presumed human experience. This experience highlights the super-natural, the futuristic, or the “reality” of swallowing insects and brutally competing with others for prize money or attractive sexual objects.

When the culture industry addresses contemporary experience, for example in situation comedies and crime shows, there are no workers present, African-Americans are hoodlums or victims, women are helpless, and authority figures such as the police are the friends of the people rather than employees of the state. Perrucci and Wysong refer to the primary role of the culture industry as “pacification.”

The points raised in this essay do not break any new theoretical ground. But, in my view, clearly identifying critical elements of the “substructure” and the “superstructure” can provide a road map for progressives to plan their future political agendas. Of course, a fundamental change in the mode of production, capitalism, is basic. But in the interim, organizing around the political system, and the education, information, and culture industries makes sense.

[Harry Tarq is a professor in American Studies who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged American Society, Capitalism, Economics, Harry Targ, Ruling Class, Sociology | Leave a comment

Susie Q and Oh Susanna : Riffing on Music About Women

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Rick Nelson and James Burton. Image from theexpress-band.com.
From Susanna to Suzie Q:
Don’t you cry for me…

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / February 23, 2010

You can gauge the status of women from the music we like to listen to. The fascination with the manner in which Black people have traditionally regarded women has been an obsession for hundreds of years in the USA. Starting with the notoriously racist Minstrel Shows in the early 1800s, mean spirited blackface lampooning of black mannerisms, but also earnest attempts to mimic black music.

“Oh Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “Bluetail Fly,” Stephen Foster Minstrel Show songs from almost 200 years ago still infuse what’s left of our folk music heritage. “Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me, for I come from Alabama, with a banjo on my knee.” Or alternately: “I’m going to Louisiana for to see my Suzyanna sing Polly wolly doodle all the day!” Anyway you cut it, our best music comes from those most decidedly un-PC days of cotton picking plantation nostalgia.

One guy who really does come from Louisiana is James Burton. For those of you who don’t know James Burton, he was the white kid who played electric guitar behind Ricky Nelson’s little rock and roll bit at the end of the Ozzie and Harriet Show in the late 1950s.

So? So, it just happened that, before the Beatles, just about the only Rock and Roll you were ever going to see (outside of the super fake American Bandstand) was the weekly Ricky Nelson number. And there it was, in living black and white, a teenage kid (like you and me) playing the hell out of a Fender Telecaster in a domestic comedy show.

Ozzie Nelson, Ricky’s dad, a former Big Band leader, saw the benefit of a (controlled) Rock and Roll display. He even consented to let James Burton live with the (actual) Nelson family as Ricky’s roommate in 1958. Many of Ricky’s best songs were cooked up at home in LA with the teenage Louisiana swamp Rock connection.

Another artist, also from Louisiana, who benefited from his association with James Burton was Dale Hawkins. Dale was jamming with the young Mr. Burton in 1957. The improvised lyrics he set to Burton’s twisting, modal guitar lick were partially lifted from a Howlin’ Wolf vocal line which may have been derived from a 1920s dance craze. In other words, the folk tradition.

“Susie Q” was just about the snarlingist thing anyone had ever heard at that time, with a hypnotic downward bass riff that fought with the overdriven guitar. Definitely the swampiest Rockabilly ever and perhaps James Burton’s finest moment, not withstanding his later long association with Elvis Presley.

At the moment when the folk tradition meets the commercial realities, strange things happen. Of course the actual “author” of “Susie Q,” James Burton, was never credited. The kid who pulled the words out of the air at the time of the recording, Dale Hawkins, got a one third writer’s credit, shared with a record distributor and the wife of a local disc jockey, people none of the actual artists had ever heard of. This of course is all part of the way the music industry protects our hallowed intellectual property rights.

Dale Hawkins. Checker Records publicity photo of singer Dale Hawkins, late 1950s, from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Dale Hawkins toured as a Rockabilly star and prospered for a while. The Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival did versions of “Susie Q.” Dale’s cousin Ronnie Hawkins also became a Rockabilly artist and when the genre went cold in the USA, fled to Canada where his late 1950s backing band eventually became The Band.

So from “Oh Susanna” to “Susie Q” we continue to see the fascination with the Black/hipster female role model. She is liberated and sexual, but still inspires respect, reverence and awe. She is now young and white, but somehow still related to the Black Goddess Mother.

Dial forward past the death of the Beatles and the pure blues of Jimi and the Cream to the post punk days of the dreary new wave and we get to meet Dale Hawkins’ duet partner this month in the waiting room of Heaven/whatever, Doug Fieger. Who? “My Sharona”? Oh.. The end product of the “Oh Susanna”-“Susie Q” continuum, one of the many milestones along the road to institutionalized female disrespect and the general disavowal of our Black musical heritage.

Fieger’s group The Knack harkened back to a cynical Brit movie …and How to Get It. The Knack’s leering looks and mock Beatles pose matched the superficiality of the jerky riff that fuelled the underaged girl-as-sex-object hit. After only six minutes of fame (actually months in the top 10) the song and the group disappeared. Now if we could only get the damn thing out of our heads…

One way to do that is to recall “Susie Q,” and of course “Oh Susannah” and perhaps take a moment to ponder where our love affair with the songs that honor Black woman has taken us over the years.

[Carl R. Hultberg’s grandfather, Rudi Blesh, was a noted jazz critic and music historian, and Carl was raised in that tradition. After spending many years as a music archivist and social activist in New York’s Greenwich Village, he now lives in an old abandoned foundry in Danbury, New Hampshire, where he runs the Ragtime Society.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Carl R. Hultberg, Music, Racism, Rock 'n Roll, Rockabilly, Women | 2 Comments

Perfect Storm Coming? : GOP Winning With Message Control

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from The Situationist.
Democrats facing perfect political storm?
GOP raises misinformation to an art form

By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / February 22, 2010

As E.J. Dionne writes, Barack Obama, Democrats, and liberals are losing now. Big time! The Democrats are in a terrible fix because there is no prospect that joblessness will be ended anytime soon and people are frustrated because government appears to have accomplished little for months on end.

The G.O.P.’s strategy of across- the-board obstruction and disinformation has worked so well that they have a shot at picking up eight Senate seats and perhaps 25 to 30 House seats. For a year, they have framed the political debate and there is no evidence that the hapless Democrats are capable of reversing this tendency.

The Republicans’ wall-to-wall obstructionism is not very patriotic, but it is paying big political dividends. People blame Obama and the governing Democrats for government’s paralysis. Most voters do not follow politics very carefully and do not grasp that the GOP, with its 41 lockstep Senate votes has an absolute veto on policy.

No amount of explaining will make a difference; it requires too much thought. Nor do most voters have good memories. They have heard the Republican talking points so often that they now blame unemployment on the Democratic stimulus package and even accept the idea that the Wall Street bailout was a Democratic idea.

Behind what appear to be conventional political tactics, the Republicans are

Drawing upon expertise in linguistics and cognitive psychology,
Creating a low grade authority crisis that is bound to hurt those in power,
Continuing to perfectly arouse and exploit right-wing populism,
Moving beyond generic populism to something more powerful and dangerous,
Reaping the benefits of the Tea Bag nation movement as it evolves a collective memory.

There is no question that the Republicans have been coached by communications experts, but it is anyone’s guess as to whether they have had expert help with the rest.

Pin distributed at GOP convention in Texas.

Expertise in framing political discussions

For decades the GOP adeptly practiced message control, but without almost everyone reading from the same script at the same time. Few remember when the GOP pundits got together to coordinate their anti-Clinton messages. Republican strategists understand cognitive science and linguistics and are expert at destroying the public image of the Democratic brand and at portraying their essentially unpopular conservative policies in the best possible light.

Somehow they have learned how the emotions are tied to cognitive processes and they have mastered ways of rewiring people’s memories that guarantee that they will reach desired convulsions. They understand “post rational” and “post factual” political debate while Democrats are stuck with the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment notion of dispassionate reason as the duty of citizenship.

Anyone who doubts Republican expertise in framing messages and shaping opinion needs only to look at these recent Daily Kos poll results. One quarter of Republicans think their states should leave the federal union to escape President Barack Obama’s socialist policies! Thirty-six percent are sure Obama was born outside the United States. Thirty-one percent think Obama is a racist who hates whites. Twenty-four percent are sure he wants the terrorists to win, and a third were not sure.

There has been no need to directly address race. A recent Stanford study found that “People’s implicit racial prejudices corresponded with a reluctance to vote for Obama and with opposition to his health care reform plan.” Faced, with a looming depression and collapse of the financial system, some people — probably so-called independents — briefly put aside racial hang-ups to vote for Obama. As soon as he averted both depression and financial crack up, their long established thought patterns reasserted themselves.

Among Republicans, the old mental programming came back in full force with people believing with John Boehner that all was fine until Obama came along with socialist designs and big spending.

Collecting the benefits of an authority crisis

Since the days when Newt Gingrich was minority leader, the GOP has deployed obstructionist tactics and shunned civility. Bob Dole and older leaders briefly criticized these tactics and then fell in line. By the mid-1990s, Dole was using regular threats of filibusters to blackmail the Democrats. They have practiced obstructionism so long now it seems to have become an acceptable political tactic.

Now it is gridlock across the board as cynical Mitch McConnell holds an absolute veto in the Senate, and not one of his followers is willing to buck him for long. Most recent judicial nominees have been blocked, and the Bush U.S. attorneys are clinging to power, refusing to resign. Two top Treasury Undersecretary nominations are blocked.

Obama even took a big hit for the Transportation Safety Administration’s screw ups in the Christmas underwear bomber case even though the GOP refused to let him have a chief for that agency. Jim DeMint, who refused to vote for funding for the agency and was blocking the nominee, drew praise for leading the criticism.

The people who operate the 24 hour a day cable news cycle dare not explain how the obstruction works; to do so would be perceived as unfair to the Republicans.

Recently, McConnell and six other Republicans who had favored a Congressional deficit reduction commission reversed their position to embarrass President Obama. Few in the mainstream media noted the betrayal. Likewise, the few columnists in the political middle pass over all of this in silence. The size of their syndication lists might shrink.

Creating governmental paralysis generates anti-Washington and anti-governing party sentiment. It is being done so well now that we are on the edge of a low grade crisis of authority. Crises of authority generally damage the party in power no matter who is responsible for gridlock.

Our strong habits of political stability will guarantee that the crisis does not go beyond ugly words, occasional incidents, and an electoral nightmare for the Democrats. Since Obama’s election, there have been nine political deaths, including that of abortionist Dr. George Tiller. Professors, political organizers, and progressive activists are reporting more death threats than before.

The authority crisis has generated a new, powerful conservative movement that is demanding, as the price of alliance with the GOP, that Republicans continue to refuse to compromise with Democrats.

If the authority crisis gets out of hand, it is possible that the nation will have to attack Iran or enlarge our wars in some other way. Ernest Becker once wrote, “war is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies.”

Going beyond generic right-wing populism

Republican success has been built on manipulating right-wing populism, with its fear of imaginary “elites” and profound trust in the gut instincts of provincial America. George Will just wrote a column arguing that Sarah Palin is a populist and thus need not be feared. Populists do not win presidential elections and populism’s impact is supposedly short- lived.

What he did not note is that the GOP has found ways to fan the flames of right-wing populism for decades and to harvest populist votes without giving them the presidency. So long as “otherization” works well against liberals, right-wing populists will focus on their fears and anger and not notice they receive very little for their votes.

From time to time, Republicans, use people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to activate people who inhabit the right-wing fringes of American politics — the Constitutionalists, the survivalists, the militias, the “patriots,” white supremacists, Christian Identity types, the many Christian Dominionists, Alaska Independence Party folks, and just plain libertarians. These folks were bizarrely silent when George W. Bush was rolling up big deficits; now they are up in arms and blaming all our woes on liberals, Democrats, and that “socialist” Obama.

In 2008, there was a concerted effort to activate these people, and some Republican rallies, especially those of Governor Sarah Palin, took on the aspect of Klan meetings. The effort to keep those people excited and at a fever pitch continued in the “birthers” movement. The Tea Baggers emerged out of the efforts to disrupt town hall meetings.

We have watched numerous town meetings at which raging rightists shouted down Congressmen and Senators. The noisy ones rarely had coherent comments. They came to disrupt and were fueled by their hatred of progressives.

Tea Bagger William Kostric packed heat to greet the President in Arizona. Photo from London Daily Mail / History Commons.
When President Barack Obama appeared in Arizona, people showed up wearing guns. One man showed newsmen his semiautomatic rifle. Others had guns strapped on their hips. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a man named William Kostric showed up with a gun at President Obama’s August 11, 2009, meeting and recited Thomas Jefferson’s words about occasionally sprinkling the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.

This man did not understand that most Americans believe that violence may have been sanctioned before we became a republic, but that violence thereafter is an attack on the republic and people of the United States.

Lately people have been appearing at meetings with posters of Obama as Hitler. Some of these posters came from the followers of Lyndon LaRouche. One can only wonder who gave the cash-strapped LaRouche movement money for the vile signs. The inclusion of the LaRouchists in the rightist anti-Obama coalition underscores a decision to draw more upon the growing far-right fringe groups.

Now there are more Tea Baggers than anyone could have thought possible because so many independents have joined their ranks. By some accounts, they are, in the words of The Economist “the most potent force in American politics. In 21 states, they are now organizing at the precinct level. Recently they elected Republican Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat and, in New York, they forced a moderate Republican to abandon a Congressional race.

There are some cranks and racists among the Tea Baggers, but most of these people are as intelligent as other Americans. A recent survey showed that almost 48% of them hold college degrees. Most of them are not prone to violence or racism, they are white working people who are simply very worried about mounting debt and threats to their economic security.

They see jobs disappearing or going overseas and want to lash out in some way. If progressives call them names, they make it impossible to communicate with them and explain why they are in trouble. .

The Tea Baggers or Tea Party Nation might throw a few stones at the Republicans and criticize some GOP leaders, but they will vote with them in November and clearly are being manipulated by Republican operations such as those directed by Dick Armey and Grover Norquist.

Rick Perlstein has noted that the Republicans, at each outbreak of rightist extremism, have been able to “adroitly hive off the embarrassing fringe while laying claim to some of the grassroots anger that inspired it.” This time they cannot do this. In the House, spokespersons for the Tea Party wing are demanding a larger role in setting policy, and the GOP will eventually have to accommodate them.

Independents join the Tea Baggers or Tea Party Nation

The important thing to note is that the Tea Baggers are attracting large numbers of Independents, many of whom had voted for Obama. They were brought over to the far right by deep economic insecurity and the crisis of authority created by the Republican strategy of wall to wall filibusters, obstructionism, and perfectly delivered disinformation

The danger is that the longer these independents are allied with the Tea Baggers, the more likely it is that they will start thinking like them and get recruited into some of their other organizations. Right now, these people, who have been more or less politically inactive, are getting political educations from the Tea Party Nation. In this way, the Tea Baggers are moving from the margins into the political mainstream, and in the process the Republican Party will have to move in their direction.

Too many people think that Independents stand somewhere between the two parties, weigh matters carefully, and are moderates. The truth is that they are all over the place in their views, are too impatient to follow politics with any care, demand instant gratification, and are easily swayed by what they think is the conventional wisdom. They were set in motion by economic uncertainty and attracted by anti-government rhetoric and simplistic solutions offered by the Tea Baggers and Republicans.

Not all or even a majority of the independents are genuine racists. But race is an issue here, and there has been some racist buyers remorse. Independents who were terrified that a depression was in the offing shelved concerns about race and backed Barack Obama. Now that he has not worked miracles, they have jumped to the right.

The strength of the “birther” sentiment — the belief that Obama was not born in the United States — is one indication that Obama’s race is a problem for them. The crowd at the recent Tea Party Nation convention went wild when a speaker demanded to see Obama’s birth certificate. Another thing is the surprising number of people who think Obama favors the terrorists and hates white America.

Would so many people be screaming about socialism if he were white? Obama’s policy support ratings have fallen more rapidly than those of any president in the history of polling. He is not getting the benefit of the doubt or even credit for averting a depression and financial system meltdown.

This Republican gambit of going far beyond generic right wing populism carries with it dangers to our political process. It polarizes the electorate, drives civility from the public marketplace, and it crosses over into playing with fire — what Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, a student of German history calls “eliminationism.”

The rhetoric used leads people to want to exclude others from full participation in our culture and politics. It is a very dangerous tactic, but fortunately, our fundamental built-in stability would prevent it from ever morphing into the extreme forms of eliminationism Goldhagen studied in Germany.

We see where this can go in the ranting of Tom Tancredo about wanting to return to the Jim Crow literacy tests as a means of preventing blacks and browns from voting. Tancredo addressed the recent Tea Party Nation Convention at Nashville and was rewarded with thunderous applause. He denounced the “cult of multiculturalism” and said that the election of Barack Hussein [his emphasis] Obama was a good thing because it alerted patriots to the fact that they were losing their county to socialism.

Image from Say Something Funny.

It is this kind of rhetoric that has increased gun sales. The Tea Bagger rhetoric level is white hot sometimes. Guns and ammo, are literally flying off the shelves. The presence of the first African American president has convinced the extremists that he will soon confiscate all guns.

Much of the paranoia about ACORN was really about preventing poor people from voting. After all, ACORN itself came to the authorities when some of its employees were submitting false registration data. There was no evidence ACORN ever set out to submit one fraudulent voter application. Rightists consistently overlooked this basic fact because the real target of their wrath was black people voting. ACORN’s serious management deficiencies and embezzlement cover-up did not help the situation.

The successful and growing effort to require people to present all sorts of identification materials at the polls is also about this.

Organizers in the immigrant community see many signs that conservative strategists, pundits, and think tanks are interested in bringing about clashes between immigrants and law enforcement. Fox News, conservative talk radio, and right wing politicians are trying to generate anger in the white community against immigrants.

The historic pattern is for exclusionists to draw heavily upon Social Darwinism, the complex of ideas that suggests that those at the top deserve to be there and those at the bottom deserve their fates. South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer provided an example when he said: “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed… so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior.”

George Will assures us there is no danger that the Republicans will nominate Sarah Palin or someone like her for the presidency. Many who are attracted to the Tea Bagger movement and eliminationism have a predisposition for authoritarianism, and part of that is they need leadership from glorified tribunes of some sort, such as Father Charles Caughlin or Senator Joseph McCarthy. They have their media tribunes in Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and Lou Dobbs is considering transitioning from a media spokesman to a politician.

At the moment, Sarah Palin, master of low soapbox oratory, has not convinced enough people that she has the smarts to be president. But if unemployment remains high and government gridlock continues, her references to shadowy “elites” and tendency to appeal to “real “ Americans could change her favorability numbers.

Now she is aligning Ronald Reagan with the Tea Baggers, noting his interest in states rights and opposition to big government. However, he did not play to the politics of grievance, though he repeatedly invoked Social Darwinism against the dispossessed.

Image from News Today.

Creating a collective memory of victimization

Now what is needed by the right is a method of keeping the fringe elements activated and tying down the allegiance of the wandering independents. The European social scientists have been studying something they call collective memory. The beauty of collective memory is that it creates memories that can have nothing to do with reality. They can be passionately believed because they become inextricable from identity. Sometimes all of this happens by historical accident, but some scholars think it can be helped along.

Creating a Tea Bagger collective memory is simply an extension of several decades of Republican mastery of linguistic and cognitive theory. The Tea Baggers are in the process of assuming the identity of American history’s victims — good, patriotic, productive folks who are victimized by big government that spends too much and does not respect their rights.

To be sure, this collective memory will include versions of historical events and processes that are far from the truth. Yet, they will be fervently believed and will become nearly impossible for outsiders to challenge with facts, logic, and analysis. The most powerful collective identities have clear enemies. Of course, liberals are at the top of the list. Others who will have this status are black and brown people.

What to do: A few modest proposals

The Democrats only have eight months to move to limit their losses. They need to start learning how to communicate. Beyond that, they must reach out to frightened, working America with specific proposals that will create jobs and enable the Democrats to explain what has gone wrong. Obama needs to stop wasting time seeking impossible bipartisanship and frame the national discussion around specific jobs measures, financial reregulation, and fees for the banks..

Big legislative packages give the GOP all kinds of room for obstruction and spreading disinformation. Bring a series of job creating, worker friendly measures up for votes.

Don’t follow Harry Reid in scuttling the bipartisan Pension Protection Act. If the Republicans vote it down, explain why.

Dust off the decades-old Hartke Bill, which strips away almost all incentives to export jobs.

Judson Phillips, who organized the recent Tea Bagger convention, claims the Tea Baggers are angry that Congress does so much for Wall Street. By backing Obama’s fee on Wall Street banks that accepted the stimulus, the Democrats can distance themselves from the banks. They must also tie this issue to reregulation. So far, not one Republican in the House has been willing to support it. There should be separate votes on these matters, and Democrats need to start the long campaign to strip corporations of their status as persons in the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

If the Democrats want to avoid a repeat of 1994, they must salvage something from all their efforts on health care reform. They should put together a limited measure containing only items that have broad popular support and pass it quickly.

If all else fails, borrow a stratagem from Harry Truman. He once called Congress back into session and promised to sign Republican legislation. They produced nothing, and it was an object lesson for many independent voters.

Obama could announce that he got the message from the voters and offer the GOP a month and Democratic procedural help in enacting their jobs and health care plans. He should exclude reenactment of the Bush tax cuts and estate tax legislation, both of which should be subject to negotiations at another time. Odds are, they would produce nothing. Even if they did enact legislation, the Democrats would get some credit for cooperating and reduce their losses in November.

[Sherman DeBrosse is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. A retired history professor, he also blogs at Sherm Says and on DailyKos.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Democratic Party, Economy, Electoral politics, Marketing, Political Opinion, Political Spin, Populism, Racism, Republican Party, Right Wing Extremists, Sherman DeBrosse, Tea Baggers | 5 Comments

Afghanistan : Telling the Wolves from the Sheep

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

It all started in Rhode Island…
They shoot Americans, don’t they?

To expect that they won’t be shot at is an example of that sort of American innocence that has worn awfully thin after centuries of American invasions of other countries.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / February 22, 2010

Near the end of the 17th century, Roger Williams — the founder of Rhode Island — complained to the Governor of Massachusetts that Indians were shooting English colonists during a brutal military clash that has come to be known as King Philip’s War. The Indians were also using guerrilla warfare, Williams explained; they lured the English into woods and swamps and attacked them there with “fire, smoke and bullets.”

Williams was shocked and outraged. America as an offshoot of Europe was just beginning to wear breeches and so perhaps Williams might be excused for his inability to see that the English had invaded the continent, and that the indigenous inhabitants did not, on the whole, enjoy the invasion. So they used whatever weapons they had at hand: bows, arrows, guns, bullets, and fire, to repel the invaders.

Williams expressed his views in 1675 — 375 years ago. That was near the start of “native” resistance — military, cultural, and diplomatic — to colonizers and empire builders on the continent of North America. Now, 375 years later, it seems incredible for Americans to be shocked once again that all around the world, and especially in Afghanistan right now, soldiers from “native” populations are shooting at American troops.

They are not only shooting at American troops. They are also taking close aim at American troops, and trying to kill them, as reported in a February 17, 2010 article by C. J. Chivers, entitled “Snipers Imperil U.S.-led Forces in Afghan Offensive” that was published in The New York Times.

Oh, dear me, Taliban soldiers aiming at U.S. troops. “Five marines and two Afghan soldiers have been struck here in recent days by bullets fired at long range,” Chivers wrote. “Some of the shooting has apparently been from Kalashnikov machine guns, the Marines say, mixed with sniper fire.” My, my, my, what will the Taliban fighters think of next? Imagine that, using Russian-made machine guns — left perhaps years ago by fleeing Russian troops unable to subdue the Taliban.

Americans have long had what might be called a “perception problem.” For hundreds of years, Americans have viewed themselves as liberators, and as fighters for freedom. They have believed that they were overturning tyrannical regimes and bringing democracy to the rest of the world.

Granted, in World War II, Americans helped to defeat Nazi Germany, and free Europeans from fascism. That was one of the very few times that American troops were welcomed with open arms and applauded — by the French, for example, and by Jews in concentration camps. But ever since then, time and time again, American troops — whether in Korea or Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan — have been shot at and killed with the aim of driving them out of those countries. The foes have often been sharpshooters and snipers. That is what happens in war, and as William T. Sherman observed at the time of the American Civil War, “War is hell.”

I wish it were not hell. I wish wars were picnics. I wish that American troops did not die or have to die. I want all troops to come home safely. But I also know my history. I know that American troops have been shot at again and again in countries all over the world. To expect that they won’t be shot at is an example of that sort of American innocence that has worn awfully thin after centuries of American invasions of other countries. That American innocence is now a deadly infection, and a contagious disease.

The story is the same over and over again. It is in many ways the same story that unfolded in New England in the 17th century, when the English colonists battled the Indians, and the Indians battled back. Roger Williams ought to have known better. He should have understood that once the English lied to the Indians, kidnapped them, took their land and robbed them of their rights and freedoms they would meet with armed resistance. Even Indians who had used bows and arrows learned to use muskets and to take deadly aim.

To expect that the people of Afghanistan will greet the Americans with open arms is delusional. It does this country and our soldiers and citizens a grievous harm. The New York Times might give the reporter C.J. Chives the assignment of writing a story about why Taliban snipers are shooting bullets at U.S. Marines and killing them.

We know they are. We know where, when, how, and with what. Tell us why please. Perhaps if we understood their reasons we might be able to extricate ourselves from the myth of our own innocence that condemns us to send soldiers to countries around the world where they are killed.

In 1675, when King Philip’s forces engaged in guerrilla warfare with the colonists, Roger Williams wrote, “it is not possible at present to keep peace with these barbarous men of blood.” He added that they “are as justly to be repelled and subdued as wolves that assault the sheep.”

American military commanders tend to see the Taliban in a similar way, as “barbarous men of blood” who must “be repelled and subdued as wolves that assault the sheep.” But who are the real sheep and who are the real wolves? Who are the wolves in sheep’s clothing? And who are the sheep in wolves’s clothing?

Perhaps The New York Times and its reporter C. J. Chivers might answer those thorny questions, and not divide the world all-too neatly into innocent sheep and guilty wolves.

[Jonah Raskin teaches media at Sonoma State University and is the author of Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating and Drinking Wine in California and The Mythology of Imperialism.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Afghanistan, History, Imperialism, Jonah Raskin, U.S. Military | 6 Comments

Tilting at Windmills : Don Quixote, the Israel Ballet, and the Dance of Apartheid

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Don Quixote goes mad. Engraving by Gustave Doré. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Showing Israel’s ‘prettier face’:
Don Quixote comes to Burlington

Whether conscious or not, there is a deep irony in the choice of Don Quixote as a touring piece for the Israel Ballet.

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / February 22, 2010

Last Shabbat, as part of “Brand Israel,” the state-supported ballet arrived in Burlington with their lavish production of Don Quixote, to bring (according to their website) “honor to the state of Israel.”

Given the unruly contents of that extraordinary book, I thought it curious to pick that story to, in the words of the Foreign Ministry, “show Israel’s prettier face” as “an enlightened center of arts and technology.” So I wrote a little piece which our group, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel, thought we might distribute to the incoming audience, so that they might have something to read while waiting for the show to begin, and to ask them, gently, to understand the burgeoning movement toward boycotting Israeli produce as was done to end a similar apartheid in South Africa.

This is what I wrote:

A modern Don Quixote

Whether conscious or not, there is a deep irony in the choice of Don Quixote as a touring piece for the Israel Ballet.

For the company here presents a story of enchantment and self-enchantment, delusion and self-delusion, a fairytale of madness and delusory nobility, the story of a dreamer driven mad by ancient books, his mental state now lucid, now insane.

Tonight you will meet The Knight of Sorrowful Countenance, surrounded by enemies and magicians, battling the world of evil. He is cruelly used, physically and mentally, beaten and scorned by the powers around him. Normally grave and self-controlled, he can be goaded into mad fits of rage, unable to distinguish between his fantasies and the world’s realities.

By the end of the book, our hero’s soul is taunted by doubt, by the suspicion that his quest to reestablish the past through arms and armor may be an illusion. “I find myself, Niece,” he says, “at the point of death, and I would die in such a way as not to leave the impression of a life so bad that I shall be remembered as a madman: for even though I have been one, I do not wish to confirm it on my deathbed.”

There are lessons here for all of us.

You art-lovers, people of conscience, members of the international community of intellectuals, have historically stood with the ancient — perhaps quixotic — moral responsibility to fight injustice — as you did, for instance, in helping abolish wage slavery among grape-pickers in California, or apartheid in South Africa — through various forms of boycott.

Given that the UN has many times condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal, and that six decades of diplomacy have until now failed to convince Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its oppression of the people of Palestine, we ask you in the future to support a general boycott of Israeli goods and cultural offerings — an international non-violent effort to impel the Israeli government to end its occupation of Arab lands, to end the house demolitions, dismantle the walls, recognize the claims of Arab citizens of Israel to full equality, and to promote the globally recognized rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

As it is not anti-American to call for ending our own wars, it is not antisemitic to call on the Israeli government to change its policies in the name of freedom and justice.

Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (vtjp.org).

Israel Ballet performs Don Quixote.

Eight of us from vtjp left 249 one-pagers in the hands of audience members, and thought we had achieved a good opening for a larger community discussion, and more active events in the future. As one audience member wrote to the website,

Last night I attended the Israeli Ballet at the Flynn Theater. As I
was going in I was handed a flier [sic] — A Modern Don Quixote. This was
done respectfully and the message thought-provoking. Whether we
agree with the message or not, it was a very good way to get your
message out and make us Think.

But her message was headed “What Were You Thinking??!!!” She continued,

A few minutes after the performance began your guys marched to the front of the room with large banners of protest. What were you thinking? For those of us who have been supportive or at least try
to understand the Palestine/Israel situation, this was a slap in the face… you lost the support you had. And, that’s what I’m mad about.

You have a message. You need support. And by doing something crazy like this you lost it! I know of many Jews in that audience who decry what Israel has done/is doing, but I can just bet that they are pretty angry with what you did last night. And to do so to those who work in the arts? Just because they live in Tel Aviv
you do not know that they are against you. My interactions with performers across the world is that the majority of them try to bring peace between nations, especially the ones they are all wrapped with. This was a very inappropriate action!

Please, really do what your mission states – Just Peace. Try to make it work, too, and the rest of us will be more willing to support you.

The fact is, it wasn’t “our guys,” but rather four independent human rights activists — one of the four Israeli — who, unknown to us, planned, actually bought $50 tickets for front row seats, and carried out the inside-the-theater event you may watch here.

And now things get really interesting. Somehow Yedioth Ahronoth, a major Israeli newspaper, learned of the evening’s events, and with, let’s say… excessive imagination, described them to the readers of its on-line English version, YNetnews.com. You may read the article here. The forcing a way into the theater, the security personnel, the police, the escorting out, the intermission were all — well, let’s just say poetic license, if poor reporting. Maybe it sells newspapers.

But what is most interesting of all are the now more than 50 comments. I suggest you begin with #28, written by one of the protesters, not to prioritize it, but just so you get the facts of what actually went on. Then, if you have time and interest, read the flow of other comments — an extraordinary display.

The controversy, though a tempest in the teapot of middle class, ballet-going, mostly liberal Burlington, gives us a glimpse at several key threads in the quest to end the four-decade Israeli occupation of Palestine and to achieve peace with justice in the core of the core of the middle east.

I will only name some of the issues, since this space is inadequate to discuss them. (Our website, vtjp.org, has great depth, gets 30,000+ hits a week, and can serve as a good introduction to the problems, present and historical.)

It’s very hard to discuss rationally anything that presents with the word Palestine in it. The 250th copy of our mild-mannered flyer was brought back to us by an elderly man who had walked all the way back from inside against the incoming crowd. It was crumpled up in a ball. His instructions were “You can shove this up your ass!”

The question of whether Israel is practicing “apartheid” or not is still an issue, though the upcoming intensifying of the Gazan situation with the underground fourth wall now under construction to choke off the very last trickle of goods and food (and yes, no doubt some weapons — though the $3 billion a year worth of rather larger weapons the U.S. sends to Israel, is seen as “military aid” and not “smuggling”) may very well modulate from a question of apartheid to one of frank genocide, as 1.5 million captives are starved to death. Jimmy Carter ran afoul of these semantics with the title of his book. And many South African activists assert that what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank is not apartheid, but much worse, with far tighter restrictions and far more brutal behavior.

This issue is important because the American public generally understands that boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) were key in bringing down the apartheid regime in South Africa — a piece of modern history generally approved of. In the face of half a century of U.S.-supported Israeli intransigence to the norms of international law and behavior, it is looking as if a similar BDS campaign may be the only way to effect change in that world-poisonous situation. Our flyer was meant to ask the audience to consider the need for such a strategy.

The Palestine-Israel struggle is one of many fronts of extreme turbulence we face today. We will need many approaches to shake things up from their pathological gestalt.

[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Apartheid, Ballet, Dance, Don Quixote, Genocide, Israel, Marc Estrin, Palestinian Occupation, Protest | 1 Comment

Health Care Blues : Citizens Suffer While Insurance Profits Soar

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Photo from Public Option Health Care Now.
Health care blues:
Insurance profits soar, Congress fiddles,
Teabaggers rail against ‘socialist’ Obama

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / February 21, 2010

As I write, we await the President’s open discussion about health care on CSPAN. How illuminating it will be to have an open forum to which the American people will have access, unlike the previous behind-closed-door consultations with the health care insurance executives and the lobbyists for PhARMA.

What a rare privilege for the physicians, nurses, and public health workers to finally have some real understanding of the politicians’ plans, since they have been kept on the periphery of any substantive discussions and have been denied constructive input regarding the issues that involve them and their patients.

In the meantime we who are interested in genuine health care for the nation watch hopefully as the roll of senators signing on to a bill containing a public option, to be passed through the “reconciliation” process, continues to grow. Perhaps, just perhaps, our elected representatives will actually turn their backs on their corporate donors and look, just this once, to the welfare of their constituents.

It should certainly be noted that the five largest U.S. health insurance companies sailed through the worst economic turndown since the Great Depression by setting new profit records in 2009, while leaving behind 2.7 million Americans who had been in private health plans. For customers who kept their benefits, the insurers raised rates and cost sharing, and cut the share of premiums spent on medical care.

According to Insurance and Security Exchange Commission filings the executives and shareholders of the five biggest for-profit health insurers, UnitedHealth Group, Inc, Well Point Inc, Aetna Inc, Humana, Inc. and the Cigna Corp, enjoyed a combined profit of $12.2 billion in 2009, up 56% from the previous year. It was the best year ever for Big Insurance.

The proportion of premium dollars spent on health care expenses went down for three of the five firms, with higher proportions going to administrative expenses and profits. The shedding of 2.7 million members from private health plans is part of the industry’s long-term shifting of responsibility for millions of sick, older, or low-income customers to tax-payer-supported government health programs such as Medicaid and the states’ children’s health insurance plans.

The Center For Responsive Politics reports that WellPoint spent $4.7 million last year to lobby in Washington against comprehensive national health reform proposals while United Health spent $4.5 million; Cigna, $1.6 million; Aetna, $2.8 million; and Humana, $3.2 million.

The President should join with the Progressive Caucus in the House in demanding that the health insurance industry be brought under the anti-trust laws, as well as finally supporting Medicare for All as proposed by the Physicians for a National Health Program, and their hundreds of co-endorsing organizations. At the very least Obama could support an unencumbered public option. It is time to stand up for the American people rather than the large corporations that were complicit in the current financial meltdown.

I saw in the morning paper that the recession is causing the states to cut back on Medicaid payments, thus decreasing the amount of medical care funding for our poorest citizens. According to Steven Hill’s outstanding book Europe’s Promise, the national health plan in Germany has also had to reduce services due to the recession.

Viagra and certain other medications are no longer covered, as well as fertility-related treatments, breast implants, artificial insemination, sterilization procedures, and certain eyeglasses and dentures. A $12 co-payment has been introduced on doctor’s visits. These are the horrors of a government supervised health system!

Incidentally, Hill points out that Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Japan have programs in which universal coverage is provided by private, non-profit insurance companies at 50% of the cost, or less, that we pay here in the United States. This is not to say that their care is better, or worse, than in the U.K., Sweden, Denmark, or Canada, where health care is directly supervised by the government. Europe’s Promise contains a wealth of information about planning and methodology within the E.U. and it also discusses in detail energy, environment, governance via social-capitalism, national security, immigration, and social welfare.

According to Bloomberg News, the average income reported by the 400 highest-earning households grew to almost $345 million in 2007, up 31% from a year earlier. These figures, for the last year of economic expansion, show the average income reported by the top 400 earners more than doubled from $131.1 million in 2001. Each household in the top 400 paid an average tax rate of 16.6%, the lowest figure since the IRA began tracking data in 1992. The average tax rate in 1993 was 29.4%.

I find it a mystery why the Republicans and their right wing followers hate President Obama so much. I am particularly baffled by these folks calling him a “socialist,” when he seems to me to be just the opposite. He appointed to his treasury department the top rung folks from Wall Street and the big banks, and has pursued a very non-socialist agenda, not pushing hard for strict financial controls on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, or the big banks. And he has continued the Bush policies of surveillance and detention. He has expanded the Bush war policies and has increased our military bases (we now have more than 700 worldwide) with no apparent concern about cost.

Jim Hightower provides a useful breakdown of how these mobs that rant against reform are financed, much of the support coming from the brothers Charles and David Koch, both billionaires and sons of Fred Koch, who was a founder of the John Birch Society in 1958. Other family foundations contributing to the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and others cited by the New York Times (the Friends of Liberty, the Oath Keepers, the Freedom Works), are the Bradley Foundation, the Coors Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and the Scaife Foundation — as well as Glenn Beck of Fox News.

The ironic thing is that the majority of these white middle class and working class people are demonstrating against their own best interests, demanding an end to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. The New York Times tells us that leaders of the movement — like former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack — rail against a “despotic government,” Interpol (!), the council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Brady gun control law, the major TV networks (excluding Fox News), immigrants, and secularists.

A February 2, 2010, CBS News poll indicates that a majority of Americans do not know that they got a tax cut. The survey showed that 24% of respondents said that they recently have had taxes increased, 53% said taxes were the same, 12% said taxes were decreased. Of those identifying with the Tea Party movement, only 2% think taxes have been decreased, 46% say taxes are the same, 44% say taxes have been increased.

In reality the Obama administration has passed 25 different tax cuts. Taxes have been cut for 95% of working families, for first-time home buyers, for 8 million Americans paying for college. And the administration wants to end the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest families, set to expire next year. Maybe the teabaggers somehow see this as a tax increase that will affect them. Or, perhaps, they still believe in the discredited “trickle-down” hypothesis.

We are surely at a crossroads, with the direction of social policy in this country up for grabs — challenging whether we can continue with a true democracy in the kind of America conceived and established by our founders who were products of the Age of Reason. It was, for instance, their intention to create a secularist society where all are free to choose a religious affiliation of choice, or no religion at all. We should recall the words of Eric Hoffer:

It is easy to see the faultfinding man of words, by persistent ridicule and denunciation, shakes prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and familiarizes the masses with the idea of change. What is not so obvious is the process by which the discrediting of existing beliefs and institutions makes possible the rise of a new fanatical faith. For it is a remarkable fact that the militant man of words who ‘sounds the established order to its source to mark its want of authority and justice’ often prepares the ground not for a society of freethinking individuals but for a corporate society that cherishes utmost unity and blind faith.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, lives in Erie, PA. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged American Society, Corporate Profits, Dr. Stephen R. Keister, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Right Wing, Tea Baggers | 8 Comments

Leonardo Boff: Haiti : A Test for Humanity

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

“Village,” acrylic on canvas by Haitian artist Hilome Jose.
Haiti: A test for humanity

We have reached a moment in history in which we all find ourselves intertwined in a unique geosociety. Without the solidarity of all towards all, and towards Mother Earth, there will be no future for anyone.

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / February 21, 2010

The disaster that devastated Haiti, demolishing Port au Prince, killing thousands, and depriving the people of the minimum infrastructure needed for survival, is a test for humanity.

According to the predictions of those who systematically follow the state of the Earth, it will not be long before we confront several Haitis, with millions and millions of climate-change refugees, provoked by extreme events that could cause true ecological devastation and destroy countless human lives.

Two virtues, linked to the essence of being human, should have special relevance in this context: hospitality and solidarity.

Hospitalidad, as philosopher Kant saw it, is the right and duty of all, because all of us are inhabitants, or better, sons and daughters, of the same Earth. We have the right to move freely, to receive and to offer hospitality. Will the world’s nations be prepared to attend to this basic right of the multitudes who will no longer be able to live in their over heated regions, without water or harvests?

The survival instinct does not respect the borders of nation states. The barbarians of yesteryear destroyed empires and the new “barbarians” of today will not do otherwise, unless they are exterminated by those who usurped the Earth for themselves. I will stop here because the probable, and the not impossible, scenarios are Dantesque.

The second virtue is solidarity. Solidarity is inherent in the social essence of the human being. The classics of the study of solidarity, such as Renouvier, Durkheim, Bourgeois, and Sorel, emphasize the fact that a society does not exist without the solidarity of one for the others. It presupposes a collective consciousness and the sense of belonging to the whole. Everyone accepts living together naturally, so that together we can realize the goal, namely, the search for the well being of all.

We must critique the concept of modernity that begins with the absolute autonomy of the subject in the solitude of its freedom. It is said: we should all attend to our own needs, without needing anyone else. For such solitary human beings to be able to live together requires a social contract, such as was elaborated by Rousseau, Locke, and Kant.

But that kind of individualism is false and illusory. We must acknowledge the undeniable fact that the human being is always a being in relationships, a-being-with-the-others, always intertwined in a tapestry of innumerable connections. Never alone. The social contract does not create society, it only organizes it juridically.

Moreover, solidarity has a cosmological background. All beings, from the topquarks, but particularly living organisms, are beings of relationships, and no one lives outside of the net of inter-retro-connections.

Therefore, all beings are reciprocally solidarian. Each helps the other to survive — that is the meaning of biodiversity — and thus do not necessarily fall victim to natural selection. At the human level, instead of natural selection, due to solidarity, we introduced caring, especially for the most vulnerable. This way they do not succumb to the selfish interests of groups or a kind of ferocious culture that puts ambition above life and dignity.

We have reached a moment in history in which we all find ourselves intertwined in a unique geosociety. Without the solidarity of all towards all, and towards Mother Earth, there will be no future for anyone. The tragedies of a people are our tragedies, their tears are our tears; their progress is our progress. Their dreams are our dreams.

Che Guevara put it well: “Solidarity is the tenderness of the people.” It is the tenderness that we must give to our suffering brothers and sisters of Haiti.

Translated from the Spanish by Melina Alfaro.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and “promoted himself to the state of laity.”]

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Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Community, Ecology, Haiti, Leonardo Boff, Philospophy | 2 Comments

Rabbi Arthur Waskow: 1,000 : Afghanistan Milestone of Death

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

On April 5, 2009,the American public saw the flag-draped casket of a fallen service member for the first time since 1991 — that of Staff Sergeant Phillip Meyers. Sadly, we’ve seen way too many more.
Milestone of death: 1,000 GIs
And God knows how many Afghans

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / February 20, 2010

Usually we look upon the next milestone in our lives as a great step forward. But we also need to mark and mourn milestones of death, not only the physical deaths of beloved people but explosions of moral and ethical death for those who brought about these deaths — milestones that remind us of how human beings — who bear the Image of God — are killing other human beings who bear the Image of God.

For this kind of death, God is inconsolable, and we should be as well.

We have nearly reached the tragic milestone of the death of the 1,000th U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. As of this writing, the most reliable source (icasualities.org) lists 998 U.S. soldiers as having died in Afghanistan. So it is sadly probable that the milestone will be reached in the next few days. Check the link above.

God only knows how many Afghans have now died in this war, including many civilians — just recently, an entire family, including six children, in a house bombed by “mistake,” for which the U.S. military “apologized.” But no apology can redress those deaths. We can mourn them, however, along with the American dead.

Various groups are preparing vigils throughout the USA. Some will be the day after, others are scheduled for the next working day. There seems to be no national list; if you find one near you, I urge you to join it and/or to mark this moment in prayerful communal services or private prayer and meditation this weekend.

I hope and urge that such memorial events will mourn the human and economic cost of war, call for the troops to come home, and support transferring most of the funds being spent for death to meeting the urgent public needs of our own country, with some going to fund an Afghan-led reconstruction of the war-torn country.

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center; co-author of The Tent of Abraham; author of Godwrestling — Round 2, Down-to-Earth Judaism — and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on U.S. public policy. The Shalom Center voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life.]

Editor’s note: As we publish this article, the total of GI deaths in Afghanistan stands at 999.

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Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Afghanistan, Peace Movement, Protest, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, War Fatalities | 1 Comment

Colombia and FARC : Six Long Decades of Fighting for Peace

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Andres Pastrana, President of Colombia from 1998-2002, in peace negotiations with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda Velez. Photo from Latin American Studies.
A Promise of Peace:
Colombia, the guerrillas, and the paracos

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / February 20, 2010

Part One: Peace and the FARC

[The phrase “peace process” has been heard throughout the country of Colombia for years. It refers to a way to end the violence, now more than a half century old that, has involved many different groups and many different governments of this war-torn country. This is the first of a three part series from our man in Cartegena, Marion Delgado.]

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — In October 1997, in a non-binding ballot accompanying municipal elections, the vast majority of voters — 10 million Colombians in all — voiced support for a peaceful end to Colombia’s conflicts.

That was not the first time that the people of Colombia have voiced their desire for peace. Votes, marches, petitions, commissions, promises; in every way imaginable Colombian citizens have for 60 years, since El Bogotazo of 1948, called for an end to the Bogota government’s war against the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia — Ejército del Pueblo (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army), also known by the acronym of FARC or FARC-EP. This war has killed, and is still killing, hundreds of thousands, and has displaced millions.

This time, their wish got some traction.

After the vote, the people kept up the drumbeat for peace, and the media joined in. Even the ruling class, forgetting for a minute how much the war had benefitted them, joined the outcry. In May 1998, on the one-year anniversary of the murder of two human rights workers, thousands of Colombians took to the streets to demand peace. The peaceful protests were the largest in Bogotá in decades.

1998 was a presidential election year, and on June 15, with popular clamor growing for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, peace became a key issue in Colombia’s presidential campaign. Candidate Andrés Pastrana revealed that his emissary, future High Commissioner for Peace Victor G. Ricardo, had met with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda Velez (alias “Tirofijo,” or “Sureshot”).

Pastrana’s cooptation of the desire for peace worked. He was elected president. By October 1998, one year after the “Vote for Peace,” the government and guerrilla representatives were discussing a FARC proposal to pull all security forces out of five municipalities in southern Colombia, creating a temporary “clearance zone” for holding peace talks. The municipalities were Vistahermosa, La Macarena, Uribe, and Mesetas in Meta department and San Vicente del Caguán in Caquetá department.

The guerrillas‘ clearance plan required that the “Cazadores” Infantry Battalion vacate their headquarters in San Vicente del Caguán, Caquetá. The government, however, insisted that the 130 troops stationed there be allowed to remain.

Eventually, the government and the FARC agreed to demilitarize the five municipalities, except for the Cazadores Battalion. In November, the first 90-day demilitarization period officially began in the five municipalities where talks were to occur. Except for those stationed in the Cazadores Battalion, all soldiers and some police in the newly demilitarized zone were recalled.

(Colombia has several types of police. Those recalled, sometimes referred to as “housed” or “domiciled” police, live in barracks, usually in a compound, as opposed to ordinary street cops that live at home.)

The FARC conditioned the start of official talks on the removal of the Cazadores Battalion and added a new condition. They wanted the government to agree to a controversial prisoner exchange.

Finally, on December 14, FARC leader “Tirofijo” and Ricardo agreed to hold talks on January 7, 1999. Ricardo agreed to withdraw the Cazadores Battalion, apparently without consulting the Colombian Army (COLAR).

Peace talks begin

On January 7, 1999, formal peace talks began between the government and FARC.

Things got off to a rough start when Victor Julio Suarez Rojas, aka “Jorge Briceño Suarez” or “Mono Jojoy“, the number two man in the FARC, threatened to begin kidnapping congress people and other politicians if the government refused to agree to the proposed prisoner exchange.

Pastrana responded that the peace process would end immediately if the FARC carried out Briceño’s threat. By the end of the week, citing an upsurge in paramilitary activity, the FARC “froze” the peace dialogue until April 20. Talks would not continue, a guerrilla communiqué stated, until the government acted against right-wing paramilitary groups (paracas) and military officials believed linked to them.

Though talks with the FARC remained frozen, on February 6 the Pastrana government announced a 90-day extension of the demilitarized zone in southern Colombia. The “clearance” was then set to expire on May 7.

Indigenous-rights activist Ingrid Washinawatok was kidnapped and murdered by FARC forces. Photo from El Pais.
With FARC talks frozen the “hot” war resumed. Three U.S. indigenous-rights activists, Terence Freitas, Lahe’ena’e Gay, and Ingrid Washinawatok, were abducted on February 25 by FARC guerrillas in the northeastern state of Arauca. Their bodies were found on March 6. The three had been working with the U’wa, an indigenous ethnic group in the region. After conducting its own investigation, the FARC admitted responsibility for the murders, asking forgiveness and blaming the act on a low-ranking field commander in the area.

The Colombian government, however, alleged that higher-ranking FARC commanders ordered the killings, including the chief of one group operating in the area, German Briceño (“Grannobles“), the brother of Mono Jojoy.

In early May, President Pastrana visited FARC rebels in the “clearance zone” for the second time since becoming president. Pastrana met with FARC leader Marulanda for six hours, convincing him to agree to formal peace talks with the government starting May 6. In a statement, Pastrana mentioned the “unwavering political commitment of both sides to find a political solution to the conflict.”

Although the size of the clearance zone was not expanded, its expiration date was postponed. The two leaders also agreed to form an international commission to verify agreements and monitor FARC actions in the clearance zone.

FARC and government officials met again on May 6 and agreed on a joint Twelve-point Agenda for formal negotiations, a stage that past talks with the FARC were unable to reach. The formal talks were to begin in approximately three weeks.

Just as talks were about to begin, the respected Minister of Defense, Rodrigo Lloreda, threw a hissy-fit and abruptly resigned, citing disagreements over the peace process with the FARC. Lloreda protested statements made on May 21 by government Peace Commissioner Ricardo that the “clearance zone” might be extended indefinitely. The defense minister also cited Pastrana’s failure to return a phone call asking about Ricardo’s statements.

Lloreda’s resignation was accompanied by the alarming resignations of at least 50 other high-ranking officers, including 18 generals. While President Pastrana accepted Lloreda’s resignation, he refused to accept the others. The head of the armed forces, Gen. Fernando Tapias, offered Pastrana a public show of support.

Luis Fernando Ramirez was named as the new Defense minister.

In June, the government announced that the formal negotiations with the FARC would begin on July 7. But on July 6, the government and FARC postponed peace talks until July 19. Reasons given for the postponement were (1) the inability of three members of the FARC negotiating team to arrive at the clearance zone on time, and (2) the need for more time to define “the rules of the game” for the international commission, agreed upon by Pastrana and Marulanda, that would verify conditions in the clearance zone. Things seemed to be back on track, until…

Two days later, the FARC launched a five-day offensive throughout Colombia which one army official called “the largest and most insane guerrilla offensive in the past 40 years.” The attacks occurred in 15 towns, one only 35 miles south of the capital, Bogotá. The guerrillas bombed banks and blew up bridges and energy infrastructure; they blocked roads and assaulted police barracks.

The Colombian military successfully countered the offensive, thanks in part to U.S. intelligence that enabled government aircraft to bomb FARC transports en route to target areas. Government reports claimed that over 300 combatants lost their lives in the fighting, over 200 of them FARC guerrillas. The FARC said the government exaggerated FARC losses.

The Associated Press called a FARC attack on the town of Nariño, Antioquia, “one of the most deadly guerrilla assaults on civilians in memory,” with 300 guerrillas going up against a police station guarded by 35 police officers. The guerrillas‘ use of inaccurately launched bombs made from gas canisters destroyed the downtown area and killed 17 people, including eight civilians, four of them children.

On October 24, between six and 12 million Colombians mobilized in the streets to demand an end to the fighting. Several peace and human rights groups, among them País Libre, Redepaz and Viva la Ciudadanía, organized this nationwide protest against kidnappings and the armed conflict.

This same date also saw a restart of talks between the FARC and the government.

In November, a FARC offensive — believed to be in response to President Pastrana’s call for a holiday cease-fire — dealt the peace process another setback. Colombian armed forces turned back a FARC attempt to take Puerto Inírida, the capital of remote Guainía department.

FARC leaders and Colombian government officials held a televised meeting at Los Pozos, Meta, on December 5, asking the Colombian people for suggestions or questions via e-mail, fax and phone. The event, however, was plagued by technical difficulties which prevented many Colombians from viewing it or contacting participants.

Beginning on December 9 and lasting until December 20, the FARC carried out another offensive, with combat in seven different departments. The greatest casualties resulted from an attack on a naval post in Juradó, Chocó, near the border with Panama, and from a military air attack on FARC fighters outside Hobo, Huila.

On December 20, the FARC announced a holiday cease-fire, calling off military operations until January 10, 2000. Peace talks were to resume on January 13.

On January 14, 2000, FARC leader Marulanda paid a surprise visit to the site of the talks in Los Pozos. Marulanda voiced optimism, stating that talks were near the point at which substantive negotiations, following the Twelve-point Agenda agreed to in May, could begin.

In spite of the imminent peace talks, its Christmas truce over, the FARC carried out attacks again in Nariño department and southeast of Bogotá on the day of the announcement.

With Colombia’s economic model the first topic on the agenda, Finance Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo traveled to Los Pozos in February to meet Marulanda and seven other FARC leaders. He stayed two weeks. The purpose of the meeting was to evaluate the cost of making peace and other economic issues, particularly unemployment

FARC leader Manuel Marulanda Velez, center, with number two man Mono Jojoy in San Vicente del Caguan, southern Colombia, April 29, 2000. Photo from AP.

International efforts

At the same time, Peace Commissioner Ricardo and a delegation of FARC negotiators traveled to Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, France, and Spain on a “tour” facilitated by Jan Egeland, the special representative for Colombia for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The trip’s primary purpose was to inform the negotiations’ discussion of Colombia’s economic model by familiarizing participants with the mixed economies of Scandinavia and Western Europe. An unstated secondary goal was to increase the FARC’s exposure to a changing world and international expectations.

In March 2000, America Online co-founder James Kimsey traveled to the FARC demilitarized zone for a meeting with Marulanda. The meeting’s purpose was to educate the guerrillas about the changes in the world economy wrought by new technologies and international investment.

A group including some of Colombia’s most important businessmen (known colloquially as “los cacaos“) traveled to the zone to meet Marulanda and the FARC leadership.

Even as the peace process showed progress, the war went on. The FARC earned widespread condemnation by carrying out a brutal attack in Vigía del Fuerte, Chocó, killing 21 policemen and several civilians.

In April, the FARC and Colombian government hosted a “public audience” in Los Pozos, inviting Colombian organizations and citizens to the demilitarized zone for an open discussion on “the generation of employment.” Though the meetings were marked by tensions between representatives of unions and business groups, both called on the FARC to implement a cease-fire, a halt to kidnappings, and respect for international humanitarian law in the conflict.

Government and FARC negotiators announced that a possible open-ended cease-fire agreement was “on the table.” Cease-fire discussions would take place behind closed doors, with confidential proposals. According to reports, the FARC’s proposal foresaw a temporary cessation of hostilities for a fixed period that could then be extended. A bilateral government-FARC commission would verify the agreement. The most difficult condition in the FARC proposal was a demand that the cease-fire apply to all parties to the conflict, including right-wing paramilitary groups.

Mono Jojoy then announced that any person whose net worth exceeded $1 million would be “taxed” by the FARC.

Peace Commissioner Ricardo, in apparent response, announced his resignation. While Ricardo said he was leaving because the peace process had reached “a point of no return,” there was speculation that frequent death threats influenced his decision.

Camilo Gómez, the president’s private secretary and a member of the government negotiating team, replaced Ricardo as high commissioner.

On May 17, 2000, President Pastrana suspended peace talks with the FARC for several days after a woman in Boyacá department was killed by a bomb placed around her neck. It was the first time since the peace process began that the government had suspended the talks. A few days later, the Colombian government acknowledged that evidence did not implicate the FARC in this crime and peace talks resumed.

June came and went with little movement on either side. More than 20 diplomats from Europe, Canada, Japan, and the United Nations meet in San Vicente del Caguán with Colombian officials and FARC leaders to talk about alternatives to drug production. This was the first discussion of drug policy since peace talks began.

On July 3, FARC and government negotiators exchanged cease-fire proposals in sealed envelopes. Though the proposals were to be discussed after a one-month analysis period, no progress was made.

September saw more war than peace. A FARC guerrilla named Arnubio Ramos hijacked a commuter airplane and forced it to land in San Vicente del Caguán, in the FARC demilitarized zone. Government officials insisted that the guerrillas turn Ramos over to show their commitment to the peace process. The guerrillas refused to hand him over, arguing that Ramos hijacked the plane on his own account and “the FARC bears no responsibility.”

The FARC called an “armed strike” in the southern department of Putumayo, where the U.S.-funded anti-drug offensive is very active. Demanding an end to Plan Colombia‘s military component, the guerrillas prohibited all vehicular traffic in Putumayo. As a result, isolated towns and hamlets suffered severe shortages of food, gasoline, and drinking water. The prohibition lasted until early December, when the FARC unilaterally lifted it.

October brought more peace initiatives and voting. More than 300 people met in Costa Rica for a three-day gathering known as “Paz Colombia.” The meeting was designed to increase civil-society participation in peace efforts and to come to agreement on alternatives to “Plan Colombia.”

The meeting brought together representatives from the Colombian government and civil society. More than six weeks after the Arnubio Ramos hijacking, government and rebel representatives resumed talks. Discussions of a possible cease-fire led the agenda.

Four FARC units then launched attacks in Dabeiba, Antioquia, and Bagadó, Chocó. The upsurge in fighting came right before nationwide elections for both municipal and departmental posts. Officials said that, aside from isolated fighting between members of the FARC and army troops in the outlying provinces, the election was carried out with no major disruptions.

On October 15, the FARC declared a unilateral “freeze” on the peace process. The guerrillas said they were suspending talks until the government took firmer measures against paramilitary groups. On October 29, Carlos Julio Rosas, mayor of Orito, Putumayo, was assassinated; the seventeenth Colombian mayor killed that year.

At the end of 2000, Camilo Gomez met with Manuel Marulanda, though the talks remained officially “frozen.” President Pastrana announced that the guerrillas‘ despeje (demilitarized) zone was extended until January 31, 2001.

COLAR chief Gen. Jorge Mora declared that the Army was prepared to reclaim the demilitarized zone whenever it was called upon to do so.

On the eve of the New Year, Diego Turbay, a Colombian legislator who headed a congressional peace committee, was assassinated along with his mother and five other people on a highway in southern Caquetá, not far from the demilitarized zone. The assassination was widely attributed to the FARC, casting further doubt on the future of peace talks.

James Monaghan, Martin McCauley, and David Bracken, alleged to be members of the Irish Republican Army, were arrested and accused of training the FARC. Photo from Latin American Studies.

Year three

The two-year anniversary of the FARC peace talks passed in a moment of pessimism, with dialogue frozen since mid-November. Reports indicated that the FARC might release 100-150 soldiers and police officers in its custody by the middle of February.

On January 23, the FARC rejected a Colombian government proposal for re-starting the talks, which had called for an end to kidnappings and the guerrillas’ use of homemade bombs. With a January 31 deadline for renewal of the demilitarized zone approaching, the COLAR announced that 600 counter-guerrilla troops had been airlifted to sites near the zone. “If Manuel Marulanda wants an extension of the safe haven, he has to sit at the negotiating table,” President Pastrana said.

On the eve of the deadline, Pastrana extended the zone for four more days, asking for a face-to-face meeting with FARC leader Marulanda. Marulanda agreed to meet on February 8-9.

President Pastrana stayed overnight in the FARC demilitarized zone between the two days of meetings with Marulanda. The two emerged with a deal to revive peace talks, the 13-point “Pact of Los Pozos.” Pastrana and Marulanda agreed to extend the demilitarized zone for another eight months, and to negotiate a prisoner exchange and a possible ceasefire.

The Pact created a 3-panel advisory group to report on the paramilitary and guerrilla terrorism problem, side issues that could threaten the peace process, and conditions in the demilitarized zone. The pact, while often ambiguous, increased optimism about the peace talks’ future.

Under a June 2 accord, the FARC agreed to free 42 sick military and police personnel in exchange for 15 ailing guerrillas in government prisons. On June 5, FARC released police Col. Alvaro León Acosta and three other officers, a beginning of compliance with the exchange agreement.

But on June 23, FARC militias attack La Picota prison in southern Bogotá, freeing 98 prisoners, including several FARC members.

Later that week, the FARC unilaterally released 242 soldiers and police agents it had held prisoner, in most cases for years. The group threatened more kidnappings, however. Jorge Briceño told prisoners he released, “We have to grab people from the Senate, from Congress, judges and ministers, from all the three branches (of the Colombian state), and we’ll see how they squeal.”

The public-relations impact of the prisoner release was further dulled by the group’s kidnapping of Hernán Mejia Campuzano, vice-president of the Colombian Soccer Federation. Mejia was not kidnapped because of his position; in fact, the guerrillas released him unharmed on June 29 so that the Copa America tournament, scheduled to begin in mid-July in Colombia, wouldn’t move elsewhere.

Queen Noor of Jordan and America Online founder Kimsey visited the demilitarized zone for a meeting with Marulanda and Gómez in July, but two more FARC kidnappings angered the international community and slowed the peace talks.

On July 15, FARC guerrillas in Meta kidnapped the department’s former governor, Alan Jara, while he was traveling in a clearly marked United Nations vehicle. A FARC statement later accused Jara of paramilitary ties, criticized the UN for transporting him, and promised to submit the former governor to a “popular tribunal.”

Then, on July 16, the FARC kidnapped three German development workers in Cauca department, demanding an end to U.S.-driven aerial spraying of coca plants in the zone (which had started the day before). The UN and European Union issued strong protests.

The Pastrana government named a new team of negotiators (now called “consultants”) for the peace talks: Manuel Salazar, the president’s advisor for social policy; Ricardo Correa, secretary-general of the National Association of Industries (ANDI, one of Colombia’s main business associations); Reinaldo Botero, coordinator of the government’s human rights program; and Luis Fernando Criales, assistant high commissioner for peace for the FARC peace talks.

In August, the Colombian government arrested three suspected members of the Irish Republican Army in the Bogotá airport. James Monaghan, Martin McCauley, and David Bracken were accused of spending five weeks in the FARC demilitarized zone, offering training in urban terror tactics.

Finally, in September, a “notables commission” created on May 11 to find solutions to the paramilitary problem issued a report recommending that government-FARC talks proceed under a six-month cease-fire. Under this proposal, the FARC would abstain from kidnappings and extortion, while the government would pay for the FARC members’ basic needs and refrain from herbicidal spraying of small-holding coca-growers.

On September 29, Liberal Party presidential candidate Horacio Serpa was forced to give up an attempt to lead a protest march into the FARC demilitarized zone. FARC fighters at the zone’s entrance fired warning shots with rifles and mortars, calling into question the status of the zone just over a week before its renewal deadline.

Soldiers then found the body of Consuelo Araújonoguera, a popular former minister of Culture and the wife of Attorney-General Edgardo Maya. Araujonoguera had been kidnapped September 24 by the FARC at a roadblock near Valledupar, Cesar. The FARC admitted the kidnapping but denied the murder, though witnesses say Araujonoguera’s guerrilla captors shot her at pointblank range while being pursued by COLAR.

Days before the FARC demilitarized zone’s next expiration deadline of October 10, FARC and Colombian government negotiators signed the “San Francisco de la Sombra Accord,” renewing the zone until January 20, 2002. (FARC negotiators expressed disappointment that it was not renewed until August, when President Pastrana’s term would end.)

The accord committed both sides to focusing talks on conditions for a cease-fire, and the FARC pledged to cease its practice of “miracle fishing,” staging roadblocks and kidnapping travelers for ransom. The government pledged to increase anti-paramilitary efforts.

In a letter to his negotiators, dated November 7, Marulanda listed demands for the stalled peace talks’ resumption. These included, among other items, suspension of government over-flights of the demilitarized zone, a government affirmation that the FARC are not terrorists or narco-traffickers, an end to military incursions in the zone (COLAR denied any such episodes had occurred), and suspension of the government’s ban on unauthorized foreigners in the zone.

If these demands were not met, Marulanda said, “it will be necessary to agree upon a day… to officially hand over” the demilitarized zone to the government. President Pastrana and other government officials rejected Marulanda’s “ultimatum.”

Residents of the indigenous community of Caldono, Cauca, resisted an attempted FARC takeover of their town by assembling nonviolently in the town center. Similar examples of nonviolent resistance to incursions followed in several indigenous towns in southwest Colombia. FARC fighters killed some nonviolent resisters in Purace, Cauca, on December 31, 2001.

FARC leader Marulanda invited Pastrana, leaders of business groups, Colombia’s Congress, judiciary, and the Catholic Church to a January 15 meeting in the demilitarized zone. The meeting, Marulanda indicated, would seek to determine “what is negotiable” among a list of concerns, among them Plan Colombia, drug crop eradication, prisoner exchanges, and paramilitarism. The meeting would occur five days before the January 20, 2002, deadline for expiration of the demilitarized zone where talks were taking place. The Colombian government declared it would “study” Marulanda’s proposal and respond in writing.

Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped by the FARC on Feb. 26, 2002. Photo from Latin American Studies.

Year four

The third anniversary of the beginning of peace talks rolled by. The FARC and Colombian government agreed to hold talks, for the first time since mid-October, on January 3 and 4, 2002. According to a January 3 FARC communiqué, the talks’ purpose was “to find formulas to get the process moving and to allow for discussion” of the talks’ common agenda, a cease-fire, subsidies for the unemployed, the September recommendations of the “notables commission,” and the previous October’s San Francisco de la Sombra accord.

No progress was made in two days of talks. The FARC continued to insist that the government lift the control measures it had implemented in the area surrounding the group’s demilitarized zone, such as border controls and air patrols that the guerrillas viewed as tantamount to a blockade. Arguing that the control measures had brought a reduction in kidnappings, the government, particularly armed forces Chief Gen. Fernando Tapias, made clear its intention to keep them in place.

On January 8, another meeting between the FARC and the government failed to make progress. The FARC continued to cite government controls on the demilitarized zone as the chief obstacle to progress and to the guerrillas‘ compliance with the San Francisco de la Sombra accord. In a letter, Marulanda left the talks’ future up to Pastrana. He also proposed a timetable, should the present difficulties be overcome: discussion of a subsidy for the unemployed in February and March, and discussion of a ceasefire in April and May. The FARC released a series of open letters to officials and sectors of society.

The next day, the Colombian government announced the suspension of peace talks. The military was to enter the demilitarized zone 48 hours after Pastrana issued an order. The U.S. State Department blamed the FARC for the talks’ collapse.

As troops massed on the fringes of the demilitarized zone, Pastrana granted the United Nations time to find a solution to the stalled dialogues with the FARC. If no agreement was reached, the 48-hour countdown for the guerrillas’ exit from the zone would begin the evening of Saturday, January 12.

UN representative James LeMoyne arrived in the demilitarized zone in early afternoon of January 11 for last-ditch talks with the FARC. The two sides had until 9:30 pm the following day to find a way to save the peace process.

After two days of talks with LeMoyne, the FARC released a proposal for re-starting the peace talks, just before the 9:30 deadline. The guerrillas’ draft re-affirmed the commitments of the San Francisco de la Sombra accord, but left out the question of government controls in the area surrounding the demilitarized zone. The FARC had demanded that these measures be lifted in order for talks to continue.

To most observers, the statement tacitly acknowledged that the FARC had yielded on the issue of the control measures, though the guerrilla proposal would create a commission to investigate complaints about the measures.

At midnight, Pastrana rejected the guerrillas‘ proposal and ordered COLAR to re-take the zone at 9:30 pm on Monday, January 14. Pastrana offered one last hope: that the guerrillas clearly state that the dialogues may continue even with the control measures in place. The UN’s Lemoyne and FARC negotiators continued meeting on January 13.

The FARC announced that they would hand over the demilitarized zone’s town centers, officially ending the three-year-old peace process.

In late afternoon on the 14th, after a day of efforts from the UN, international, and church representatives, the FARC announced that guarantees existed for the peace process to continue, complying with President Pastrana’s demand. The January 20 deadline for the demilitarized zone’s renewal remained in place, Pastrana said, unless both sides could agree on a strict timetable for cease-fire discussions. Future talks would include international representatives in a more formal fashion.

FARC offensives on February 5, much of it sabotage of infrastructure and bombings of urban areas, further increased skepticism about the peace process. The Colombian government issued a proposal for a six-month cease fire.

Shortly before the February 14 deadline for expiration of the guerrilla demilitarized zone, the FARC and the Colombian government agreed to a timetable for cease-fire discussions. The main issues to be discussed were cease-fire terms, kidnapping, and paramilitarism. The document, drawn up in the presence of UN, foreign embassy, and church representatives, laid out a brisk schedule that would bring a cease-fire by April 7. President Pastrana extended the demilitarized zone until April 10.

As time ran out on the FARC peace process, several presidential candidates, including Horacio Serpa, Luis Eduardo Garzón, and Ingrid Betancourt traveled to the demilitarized zone for a meeting scheduled as part of the peace talks’ timetable. All candidates sharply criticized the guerrillas’ ongoing offensive against civilian targets.

FARC and government representatives exchanged cease-fire proposals. The government proposal called for maintaining guerilla fronts in small zones to keep them separate from the armed forces.

February 20, 2002. Last call.

The end of the FARC peace process

The FARC hijacked a domestic airliner, forcing it to land on a stretch of highway in Huila department. All passengers were freed but one, Colombian Senator Jorge Gechem Turbay, the fifth member of Colombia’s Congress to be kidnapped by the guerrillas since June 2001.

President Pastrana responded by announcing the end of the three-year-old talks with the FARC. Aerial bombardment, the first phase of military operations to re-take the demilitarized zone, began at midnight.

It should be noted that this declaration was signed in Washington, D.C., where Pastrana had gone to receive orders from his masters of war.

Senator and presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped three days later by FARC while traveling to the former demilitarized zone on a mission to advocate respect for the rights of the zone’s residents.

The FARC gave the Colombian government one year to negotiate the exchange of Betancourt and five other kidnapped legislators for FARC prisoners in Colombian jails. She was freed by the COLAR six and a half years later.

Presidential elections were held on May 20, 2002. Alvaró Uribe Velez won. That was the end of the “peace process” as it relates to the FARC.

Under the Uribe regime, a new and different kind of “peace process” would take place.

Next: Colombian peace process, Part two: the AUC. (This very different peace process, between the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia [AUC], [United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia] and the government of Alvaro Uribe Velez, began even as the previous one with the FARC failed.)

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Colombia, FARC, History, Latin America, Marion Delgado, South America | 2 Comments

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