In first decade of the 21st century we have witnessed the West’s embrace of the full spectrum of extremism in both domestic and foreign policy. Extremism is a common practice by self-styled conservatives, liberals and social-democrats. In the past, conservative implied preserving the status quo and, at most, tinkering with change at the margins. Today’s ‘conservatives’ demand the wholesale dismantling of entire social welfare systems and the elimination of traditional legal protection of workers and the environment. Liberals and social democrats, who in the past, occasionally, questioned colonial systems, are now in the forefront of prolonged multi-front colonial wars, which have killed and displaced millions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

Extremism, in terms of its methods, means and goals, has obliterated the distinctions between center left, center, and rightwing politicians. Moderates opposed to the current policies of subsidizing the major banks while impoverishing tens of millions of workers, are now labeled the ‘hard left,’ ‘extremists,’ or ‘radicals.’

In the wake of the government’s extremist policies, the respectable, prestigious print media have engaged in their own versions of extremism.¹ Colonial wars, devastating civil society and stable cultures while impoverishing millions in the colonized country, are justified, embellished and presented as lawful and humane advances in secular democratic values. Domestic wars on behalf of oligarchies and against wage and salaried workers, which concentrate wealth and deepen despair of the dispossessed, are described as rational, virtuous and necessary. The distinctions between the prudent, balanced, prestigious and serious media and the sensationalist, yellow press have disappeared. The fabrication of facts, blatant omissions and distortions of context are found in one just as well as the other.

To illustrate the reign of extremism in officialdom and among the prestigious press, we will examine two case studies. These involve US policies toward Colombia and Honduras and the Financial Times and New York Times coverage of the two nations.

Colombia: The “Oldest Democracy in Latin America” versus “The Death Squad Capital of the World”

Following the giddy eulogies of Colombia’s emergence as Latin America’s poster boy for democracy in an April issue of Time magazine, as well as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post, the Financial Times ran a series of articles including a special insert on Colombia’s political and economic ‘miracle’ entitled, “Investing in Colombia.”² According to the FT’s leading Latin American journalist, John Paul Rathbone, Colombia is the ‘oldest democracy in the hemisphere.’³ Rathbone’s rapturous praise for Colombia’s President Santos extends from his role as an ‘emerging power broker’ for the South American continent, to making Colombia safe for foreign investors and ‘exciting the envy’ of other less successful regimes in the region. Rathbone gives prominence to one Colombia business leader who claims that Colombia’s second biggest city, Medellín, ‘is living through its best of times.’³ In line with the opinion of the foreign and business elite, the respectable print media describe Colombia as prosperous, peaceful, business friendly, charging the lowest mining royalty payments in the hemisphere, and a model of a stable democracy to be emulated by all forward-looking leaders.

Under President Santos, Colombia has signed a free trade agreement with President Obama, his closest ally in the hemisphere.⁴ During the term of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, trade unions, human rights and church groups, as well as the majority of Congressional Democrats, were successful in blocking any similar agreement because of Colombia’s sustained human rights violations. Any such opposition from the AFL-CIO and Democratic legislators evaporated, when President Obama embraced free trade, claiming a vast improvement in human rights and President Santos commitment to ending the murder of trade union leaders and activists.⁴

Colombia’s peace, security, and prosperity, praised by the oil, mining, banking, and agro-business elite, are based on the worst human rights record in Latin America. With regard to the murder of trade unionists, Colombia exceeds the entire world. From 1986-2011 over 60% of the all killings of trade unionists in the world took place in Colombia by combined military-police-paramilitary death squads, largely at the behest of foreign and domestic corporate leaders.⁵ The ‘peace’, so enthusiastically praised by Rathbone and his colleagues at the Financial Times, comes with a heavy price tag: Over 12,000 arrests, attacks, assassinations and disappearances of trade unionists occurred between January 1, 1986 and October 1, 2010.⁵ In that time span nearly 3,000 trade union leaders and activists were murdered, hundreds more disappeared and are assumed dead. The current Colombian President Santos was the Defense Minister under the previous President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). In those years, over 762 trade union officials and activists were murdered by state or allied paramilitary forces.⁵

Under both Presidents Uribe and Santos (2002-2012), over 4 million peasants and rural dwellers were driven into internal exile and their homes and lands were taken over by big landlords, speculators and narco-traffickers.⁶ The Colombian government’s counter-insurgency strategy serves a dual function of repressing dissent and accumulating wealth for its supporters. The Financial Times journalists gloss over this aspect of Colombia’s ‘resurgent growth’ as they applaud the results of death-squad ‘security’, including the over $6 billion dollars of large-scale foreign investment which flowed into mining and oil regions in 2012 – in areas ‘formerly troubled by unrest.’⁷

Some leading drug lords, clearly linked to the Uribe-Santos regime, were jailed and extradited to the US. They have testified how they financed and elected one-third of the Congress members affiliated with Uribe-Santos party – in what the Financial Times describes as Latin America’s ‘oldest democracy.’ Salvatore Mancuso, ex-chief of the 30,000-member United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC), described how he met with then-President Uribe in different regions of the country to give him money and logistical support for his re-election campaign of 2006. Mancuso, who led the largest paramilitary death squad army in Colombia (now fragmented but still active), also affirmed that national and multi-national corporations (MNC) financed the growth and expansion of the death squads.

What Rathbone and his fellow journalists at the FT celebrate as Colombia’s emergence as an investor’s paradise is writ large with the blood and torture of thousands of Colombian peasants, trade unionists and human rights activists. The brutal history of the Uribe/Santos reign of terror has been completely erased from the current account of Colombia’s ‘success story.’ Detailed records of the brutality of the killings and torture by Uribe/Santos sponsored death squads, describing the use of chain saws to mutilate peasants suspected of leftist sympathies are available to any journalist willing to consult Colombia’s leading human rights organizations.⁸

The death squads and military act in concert. The Colombian military is trained by over one thousand US Special Forces advisers. They wage counter-insurgency style war on the Colombian countryside, arriving in villages in waves of US-supplied helicopters, cordoning off targeted areas from the guerillas and then sending in the AUC and other death squads to destroy the villages, torturing and murdering peasant men, women and children suspected of being guerilla sympathizers and committing widespread rape. This state-sponsored terror campaign has driven millions of peasants out of the countryside allowing the generals and drug lords to seize their land.

Human rights advocates (HRA) are frequently targeted by the military and death squads. Presidents Uribe and Santos usually first accuse human rights workers of being active collaborators of the guerillas because of their work in exposing the regime’s crimes against humanity. Once labeled, the HRA became ‘legitimate targets’ for death squads and the military operating with complete impunity. From 2002-2011 there were 1,470 attacks against HRA, with a record number of 239 in 2011, including 49 killings under President Santos.⁹ Over half of the murdered human rights workers are Indian and Afro-Colombians.

State terrorism was and continues to be the main instrument of rule under Presidents Uribe and Santos. The Colombian ‘killing fields’, according to the Fiscalia General, include tens of thousands of homicides, 1,597 massacres and thousands of forced disappearances from 2005-2010.¹⁰

Courageous members of the Colombian press revealed a practice, known as ‘false positives’, numerous instances in which the military secretly kidnapped young peasants and poor urban males forcing them to dress as guerrillas, murdered them in cold blood and then displayed their bodies to the respectable Colombian and international press as ‘proof’ of Santos/Uribe’s combat successes against the guerrillas. There are 2,472 documented cases of military ‘false positive’ murders.¹¹

Honduras: New York Times and State Terrorism

The New York Times featured an article on Honduras, emphasizing the regime’s ‘co-operation’ with the US war on drugs.¹² The Times writer, Thom Shanker, describes a ‘partnership’ based on the expansion of three new US military bases and the stationing of US Special Forces in the country.¹²

Shanker reported on the successful operation of the Honduras Special Operations forces under the direction of US Special Forces trainers. In Shanker’s coverage, a US Congressional delegation praised the Honduran Special Operations forces ‘respect for human rights,’ quoting the US ambassador description of the Honduran regime as ‘eager and capable partners in this joint effort.’¹²

There are blatant parallels between the NY Times white-wash of the criminal extremist regime in Honduras and the Financial Times’ crude promotion of Colombia’s death squad democracy.

The current extremist Honduran regime, headed by ‘President’ Lobos, which invited the Pentagon to expand its military control over huge swathes of Honduran territory, is a product of the US-backed military coup that overthrew a democratically-elected liberal President on June 28, 2009, a recent historical point Shanker avoids in his coverage. Lobos, the predator president, retains control by killing, jailing and torturing his critics, including journalists, human rights advocates and lawyers, as well as now-landless peasants demanding a return of their properties after they were violently seized by Lobos’ big-landlord allies.

Following the military coup, thousands of Honduran pro-democracy demonstrators were killed, beaten and arrested. According to conservative estimates by Human Rights Watch, 20 pro-democracy dissidents were openly murdered by the military and police.¹³ From January 2010 to November 2011 at least 12 journalists, critical of the Lobos regime, were assassinated.

In the countryside, where NY Times reporter Shanker describes a love fest between the US Special Forces and their Honduran counterparts, 30 farm workers in northern Honduras Bajo Aguan valley were killed by death squads hired by Lobos powerful allies.¹⁴ Not one military, police or death squad assassin has been brought to justice. The original coup leader, Roberto Micheletti and his successor, President Lobos, repeatedly attacked pro-democracy demonstrations, particularly those led by school teachers, students and trade unionists. Hundreds of jailed political dissidents have been tortured. During the period of NY Times most euphoric articles on the cozy relations between the US and Honduras, the death toll among pro-democracy advocates rose precipitously: Eight journalists and a TV commentator were killed during the first 4 months of 2012.¹⁴ In late March and early April of 2012 nine farm workers and employees were murdered by pro-Lobos landlords.¹⁴ With impunity reigning in the Central American land of US military bases, no one has been arrest for these murders. The NY Times coverage of Honduras follows the Mafia rule of omega — silence and complicity.

Syria: How the Financial Times Absolves Al Qaeda Terrorists

As Western-backed Islamist terrorists savage the secular regime in Syria, the Western press, especially the Financial Times, continue to absolve the terrorists use of huge car bombs, which have killed and mutilated hundreds of Syrian citizens. With crude cynicism Western reporters shrug their shoulders and parrot the claims of the London-based anti-regime propagandists, that the Assad regime was destroying its own cities and killing its own citizens and security forces.¹⁵

Conclusion

As the Obama regime and its European allies publically embrace extremism, including state terror, targeted assassinations and the car bombings in crowded urban neighborhoods, the respectable press has joined in. Extremism takes many forms — from the refusal to report honestly about the use of mercenary force and violence to overthrow another anti-colonial regime to the blatant cover-up of the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians and the dispossession of millions of peasants and farmers. The ‘educated classes’, the respectable affluent reading public are being continuously indoctrinated by the respectable Western media to believe that the smiling and pragmatic President Santos in Colombia and elected President Lobos in Honduras have succeeded in establishing peace, market-based prosperity, mutually beneficial free trade agreements, and military base concessions with the US — even as these two regimes currently lead the world in the murder of trade unionists and journalists. On May 15, 2012 the US Hispanic Congressional caucus awarded Lobos a leadership in democracy award – the same day the Honduran press reported the murder of the news director of radio station, HMT, Alfredo Villatoro, the 25th critical journalist killed between January 27, 2010 and May 15, 2012.¹⁶

The respectable press’ embrace of extremism and its use of demonological and vitriolic language to describe critical regimes opposed to imperialism are matched by its euphoric and effusive praise of state and pro-western mercenary brutality. The systematic cover-up of crimes by extremist journalism goes far beyond the cases of Colombia and Honduras. Financial Times reporter Michael Peel ‘covered’ the assault on the Libyan government of Gaddaffi without mentioning the NATO-led bombing campaign that destroyed Africa’s most advanced welfare state. Peel presented the rise of armed gangs of fanatical tribal and Islamic terrorists as a victory for democracy over a “brutal dictatorship.”¹⁷ Peel’s mendacity and cant is evident in his outrageous claims that the destruction of the Libyan economy and the mass torture and racially motivated murders, which followed NATO’s war, was a victory for the Libyan people.

The totalitarian twist in the respectable press is a direct consequence of its long-term toadying to the extremist policies pursued by the western regimes. Since extremist measures, like the use of force, violence, assassination and torture, have become routine by the incumbent presidents and prime ministers, the reporters have no choice but to fabricate lies to render ‘respectable’ such crimes, to spit out a constant flow of highly charged adjectives in order to convert victims into executioners and executioners into victims. Extremism in defense of pro-US regimes has led to the most grotesque accounts imaginable: Colombia and Mexico’s Presidents are the leaders of the most thoroughly narcotized economies in the hemisphere yet they are praised for their war on drugs, while Venezuela, the most marginal producer of any drug, is stigmatized as a major narco- pipeline.¹⁸

Articles with no factual basis, which are worthless as sources of objective information, direct us to seek an underlying rationale: Colombia has signed a free trade agreement, which will benefit US exports over Colombian by over a two to one ratio.¹⁹ Mexico’s free trade policy has benefited US agro-business and giant retailers by a similar ratio.

All forms of extremism permeate Western regimes and find justification and rationalization through the respectable media whose job is to indoctrinate civil society and turn citizens into uncritical accomplices to extremism. By endlessly prefacing ‘reports’ on Russia’s President Putin as an authoritarian Soviet-era tyrant, the respectable media avoid any discussion of the doubling of the Russian standard of living and Putin’s over 60% electoral triumph. By magnifying an authoritarian past, the murdered Libyan President Gaddafi’s vast public works, social welfare programs and generous immigration and foreign aid programs to sub-Sahara Africa can be relegated to the oblivion. The respectable press’s praise of death squad Presidents Santos and Lobos is part of a large-scale, long-term systematic shift from the hypocritical pretence of pursuing the virtues of a democratic republic to the open embrace of a virulent, murderous empire. The new journalists’ code reads ‘extremism in defense of empire is no vice.’

1. There’s a general consensus that the respectable print media include the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
2. Financial Times (FT) 5/8/12; See also FT (5/4/12) “Colombia looks to consolidate gainsin country of complexities.”
3. FT 5/8/12 (p. 1).
4. BBC News, May 5, 2012.
5. Renan Vega Cantor, Sindicalicidio! (Un cuento poco imaginativo) de Terrorismo Laboral Bogotá, Feb. 25, 2012.
6. Inforrme CODHES Novembre 2010.
7. FT, 5/8/12 p. 4.
8. See the Annual Reports of CODHES, Reiniciar and Human Rights Watch.
9. Claroscuro Informe Aual 2011; Programa Somos Defensores Bogota 2012; Corporacion Colectivo de Abogados. Jan-March 2012.
10. Fiscalia General, Informe 2012.
11. Falsos Positivos Blogspot.
12. Thom Shanker, “Lessons of Iraq Help US Fight a Drug War in Honduras,” New York Times, May 6, 2012.
13. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2012.
14. Honduran Human Rights, May 12m, 2012.
15. The notorious cover-up of the car bombing is the handiwork of the FT’s star middle east journalists. See Michael Peel and Abigail Fielding-Smith, “At Least 55 Die in two Damascus Explosions: Responsibility for Blasts Disputed,” FT, 5/11/12.
16. Honduras Human Rights, April 24, 2012.
17. Michael Peel, “The Colonels Last Stand,” FT, 5/12-13/12.
18. One of Colombia’s most notorious paramilitary narco traffickers described the close financial and political ties between the Colombian United Self Defense terrorists and the Uribe-Santos regime. See La Jornada, 5/12/12.
19. BBC News, 5/15/12. According to the US International Trade Commission estimates the value of US exports to Colombia could rise by $1.1 billion while Colombia’s exports could grow by $487 million.

In the run-up to the demonstrations against the NATO summit in Chicago this month, Ashley Smith interviewed the State Department official-turned-antiwar activist.

Ashley Smith: You had been a career military officer and State Department official. What compelled you to resign and join the antiwar movement?

Ann Wright: I was in the military for 29 years –13 years on active duty and 16 years in the reserves, and then another 16 years while I was in the State Department as a U.S. diplomat. So I was a part of the system under seven different presidents, from Lyndon Johnson all the way to George Bush Jr.

I didn’t believe in, or agree with, all the policies of all these administrations. I disagreed with many of them, but I never resigned. I always found other things I could work on that I felt were not harming people. It was only at the end of my government career that I finally resigned over something, because there were plenty of things I could have resigned over earlier, but I didn’t. I held my nose about them, like most government employees do.

The tipping point for me was the decision of the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq. They used the excuse of weapons of mass destruction. I didn’t believe them. We all knew that there had been two no-fly zones over the country over a period of 10 years. There had been quarantine, a blockade around the country, and there had been endless inspections for weapons of mass destruction.

On top of that, the UN inspectors, most of whom were U.S. intelligence agents, didn’t find anything, or the few weapons they found they destroyed. But, in general, the consensus of the international community was that there were no weapons of mass destruction left in the country.

So I just didn’t believe what the Bush administration was saying. When Colin Powell gave that lengthy address to the General Assembly in February 2003, I remember sitting in our embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. I watched it on live TV with all of our staff around, because we all realized that this was a momentous event, and we knew that our lives would again be changing if the U.S. decided to invade and occupy Iraq.

With the buildup of rhetoric that was coming out of Washington in the fall of 2002, I was very, very uneasy, and I had trouble sleeping. I ended up having to be medically evacuated to Singapore because they thought I was suffering symptoms that are often the precursor of a stroke. I was having all sorts of light-headedness, shortness of breath, and I had arrived at the age where you need to watch out for this sort of stuff.

After an intense week of every type of medical exam possible, the doctor said, “Are you under any particular stress?” And I said, “Well, yes, I’m under stress. My nation is about to blast the hell out of another country.”

I continued waking up in the middle of the night, not being able to go back to sleep, and then staying up and just reading and writing out my concerns about what was going on. Every night I was reading materials, underlining passages and writing comments in the margins like, “This is the stupidest thing they could ever think up!” I was piling up pages and pages of writing detailing all my disagreements with Bush’s policy.

When I finally resigned, I ended up writing what I’ve been told was the longest resignation letter in the history of the State Department. It’s about three pages long and it not only talks about the war in Iraq, but other concerns about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the Bush administration’s lack of effort to engage North Korea, and its unnecessary curtailing of civil liberties under the Patriot Act.

When I resigned, I got over 400 e-mails from friends and colleagues in the State Department and other agencies saying, “You’re doing the right thing. We wish we could resign, but we’ve got kids in college, mortgages, you know, the whole financial thing.” But there are plenty of people in the government I think that have retired early and with severe cases of ulcers from having had to go through all of the horrors of the Bush administration.

AS: After you resigned, you became an antiwar leader while Bush was in office, but you did not stop when Obama was elected. What’s your assessment of Obama and his policies?

AW:  Everyone was hoping for a real change from what George Bush had dished out during his eight-year reign. But let’s remember that even during the campaign, candidate Obama did tell us that he felt the Afghanistan war was a good war, and he intended to escalate it. On that bad promise he’s delivered, but on many other good ones he has not.

He’s not closed Guantánamo. We still have the military commissions trying a few prisoners in Guantánamo. Virtually nobody has been released during the Obama administration, or even put on trial — these people are in imprisoned with no hope of resolution of their cases.

On the issue of curtailing of civil liberties, it’s worse under the Obama administration. Whistleblowers are getting the worst of the raw deals — six people have now been charged with espionage for revealing classified information that shows government malfeasance and criminal acts.

I’ve been very disappointed and displeased with Obama’s tenure. Like many other people, I have been challenging those policies, and writing and speaking and having endless vigils out in front of the White House. I, like many others, have gone to protest the president at various events, disrupting them over a variety of issues and getting arrested, just as we did under the Bush administration.

How to deal with the Obama administration has been a big debate in the movement. At our recent Veterans for Peace convention, we had a long and good discussion about whether we should call for the impeachment of President Obama as we had called for the impeachment of President Bush. While we were hesitant to come out against the first Black president, after we laid out all the evidence we decided that we had no choice but to call for Obama’s impeachment.

AS: What do you think of Obama’s policies in his Afghanistan?

AW: I think his escalation of the war in Afghanistan is perhaps his worst decision. He’s caused a huge number of civilian casualties, wasted a tremendous amount of money on sweetheart deals for private contractors, and enabled enormous amounts of corruption among Afghan businessmen as well as in the Afghan government itself.

Many of these Afghan corporate and governmental elites are part of the warlord class. We’re training and equipping their militias in the police and army. They will be there to fight not for the country of Afghanistan, but for the warlords to whom they belong.

Obama has decided to extend his patronage of the corrupt Afghan elite with this new 10-year strategic pact. He’s supposedly closing the door in Afghanistan as he supposedly had closed the door in Iraq. This is all, in fact, a public relations ploy. Behind the supposedly closed door, the U.S. is spending billions of dollars in Iraq and there will be billions for the next 10 years in Afghanistan.

AS: What’s your analysis of Obama’s new focus on Asia to contain Chinese power?

AW: Obama sees China as a rising rival, a huge economic powerhouse as well as a regional military power with the largest land army in the world and with an increasingly advanced air force and the navy. As you said, he wants to contain it.

He and the Congress are whipping up anti-Chinese rhetoric here in the U.S. Just recently the administration denounced the Chinese for building their first aircraft carrier. This is pure hypocrisy. The U.S. already has 14 of them. And for the first time, the Chinese have one, and they talk about it as that’s the greatest threat to all of the world.

That’s not to absolve the Chinese government of its problems and its own bad policies. But the U.S. should not be adding them to the “axis of evil.” This pivot to Asia will only push China into a corner and may lead them to do something that will give the excuse for the U.S. to make even more hostile policies.

And the U.S. pivot seems almost designed to provoke China. Obama has increased the military to military relationships with the Philippines. We still have a huge number of soldiers stationed in Okinawa in Japan.

He’s opened a new base for 2,500 Marines in Australia and an airfield that will be dedicated toward big Global Hawk drones that can stay indefinitely in the air for surveillance in Asia. And in South Korea, we still have over 30,000 troops and he’s pushing for a new naval base in a pristine place called Jeju Island. Obama wants that to be the homeport for Asia’s part of America’s worldwide missile defense system.

This last decision is very significant since it will increase tensions with not only the Chinese but also Russians. The missile shield in Europe as well as the new one proposed for Asia is one of the reasons that Putin did not attend the G8 meeting. He wanted to send a signal that he is going to be putting more and more pressure on the U.S. to stop this missile defense system. Otherwise, he’s going to put one in, too, which will not be good for world security.

AS: Why is the U.S. putting an increasing emphasis on drones as a central part of its new strategy?

AW: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are an easy, clean way for the U.S. to wage war. You don’t have to have your own military on the ground. These drones are capable of flying long distances, they can be refueled in the air, and they can do the dirty work of the U.S. without any American’s life being risked.

They are automating warfare. Some of these drones are as large as the 727 and can carry payloads that are enormous. They can put big bunker buster bombs under these things and fly them over and just drop wherever they want.

But this new automated military will not, in fact, protect American lives. Just like traditional military actions or missile strikes, drone warfare will inevitably precipitate blowback. We’ve already seen attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates specifically in response to drone attacks. So, the administration’s claim that these are the safest things that we could be using isn’t true.

We’ve already had examples of blowback from Obama’s drone war. Remember the young Pakistani-American guy who had planned to detonate a carload of explosive in Times Square. Luckily a hot-dog vendor thwarted his plot, but afterward when he was asked why he planned the attack, he explained, “Well, it’s the drones. The U.S. is using them to kill families in Pakistan.”

We also have the incident of the Jordanian doctor who was recruited to be an asset of the CIA. The CIA wanted him to infiltrate al-Qaeda and bring back information. But, this agent became horrified by the U.S. drone war. So he went to a CIA base in Afghanistan and blew himself up and killed all eight CIA agents.

Afterward it came out that he left a letter for his wife saying, “I am so horrified about what the U.S. is doing with these drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I refuse to work with them anymore.”

The drone war is even complicating U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Pakistan closed the main supply route for over three months in protest against CIA drone strikes. The U.S. has been forced to bring in equipment into Afghanistan through the northern road network from Latvia, which is extraordinarily expensive. Despite Obama’s hopes, war, including drone war, will never be bloodless and clean.

AS:  A lot of people think that Obama is bringing an end to the wars Bush’s started. What is the real picture of U.S. militarism today?

AW: First of all, we have to be very watchful of what the Obama is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is he has not really ended the U.S. domination over either of those countries. The U.S. has hoards of American private contractors in each of those countries, and many of them are private security firms who have every bit as much firepower as the U.S. military.

Beyond that, the U.S. has increased its bases throughout the Middle East. We don’t even know the total number of bases, outposts, runways and landing strips in Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We do know that there are CIA and U.S. military bases in Yemen. There’s a huge base in Qatar. There are, I think, seven bases now in Oman.

In Africa, the U.S. has established a military base in Somalia. They are using various alibis to justify increased military presence throughout the continent. The U.S. is sending the military into Ethiopia all the time. We have U.S. military forces in Kenya. And then we have U.S. Special Forces in Uganda to supposedly to go after Kony. Well, you can be sure that once they’re in, they’ll never leave.

Over in Mali and West Africa, the U.S. always has what they call mobile training teams, groups of Special Forces that will come in and do specialized training for militaries. That’s their way to establish relationships between senior leaders of the military, to try to get some sort of compatibility with the military in case the U.S. decides it needs to go in there. So the U.S. has a large number of small groups of military all over Africa.

In Asia, the U.S. pivot against China is ratcheting up tensions throughout the region. We have Special Forces in the Philippines, down in the island of Mindanao that are using drones and have assassinated 11 people already. And there are members of the Philippine government and legislature, their parliament, who are outraged about what’s going on.

Walden Bello, one of the wonderful international activists and member of the Philippine parliament, has already written to his government saying, “What’s going on? These are things you’re doing without any consultation — allowing U.S. military and armies, military operations that are killing Filipino people.”

And then, of course, we have many U.S. military forces in Korea, Japan and Okinawa. We’ve had a large naval base down in Singapore for a long time. We do have military to military relationships now with Vietnam, with Laos, Cambodia. So, the U.S. has its tentacles everywhere and, depending on who gets out of line, the U.S. may put great military as well as economic pressure on that country. And the U.S. will use the global “war on terror” to declare its right to go anywhere, anytime, do anything.

AS: So what do you think the key tasks for the antiwar movement today?

AW: Well, to be vigilant, to be vocal, to be on the streets, to keep after the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t let them fade out of view. And one can use a variety of levers on it, because we’ve got to have some hook to make the public aware. In Iraq, we have to call attention to the issue of private contractors and the numbers that are there — who they are and what they’re doing — and also where U.S. oil companies are and what sort of contracts they’ve got there.

And in Afghanistan, we will be seeing war sponsored by the U.S. well after 2014. We have to debunk the idea that U.S. forces will be leaving behind an independent country. I think that the next 10-year period we will see U.S. forces there in large numbers fighting Taliban, conducting night raids and drone strikes, and violating the sovereignty of Pakistan. We should also watch out for U.S. using its power to control pipeline routes in the region as well as exploit the natural resources of Afghanistan.

Pakistan will likely be the most volatile of all of the areas. What the U.S. is doing there just has the potential to be a greater catastrophe than even Afghanistan. The U.S. is killing untold numbers of people with drones and essentially thumbing its nose at the Pakistani government, which has pleaded with us to stop because of the reaction that they are getting from their own people.

I mean it could explode in just so many horrific ways. People are furious with the U.S. The U.S. embassy in Pakistan has already been burned twice over the past decades.

We really have to follow what the U.S. is up to in Asia and the Pacific. We have to be watchful of the rhetoric of the administration and do everything we can to tamp it down, to call the hand of the government.

We also need to keep agitating against the occupation of Palestine. We need all sorts of international citizen activism to highlight the illegal settlements in the West Bank, the apartheid wall, and the treatment of Palestinians within Israel and the blockade of Gaza. I think that campus activists have played a key role doing all sorts of things like building walls to bring home what the apartheid structure of Israel is like.

We have to keep up the international effort to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Very soon, we’ll be announcing a new project called Gaza’s Ark. Rather than trying to get boats to break the blockade from outside, we are going to work with Palestinians to break the blockade from the inside. We’re going to help sponsor a Gaza boat building and sailing school. This will provide some much needed jobs for the people of Gaza.

This is an important shift. We all have felt badly about spending so much money on flotillas from the outside that gets a lot of publicity for the issue but they don’t really help the people inside Gaza that much. With this new approach, we can get work for people and help stimulate the economy to a small degree.

Once the boats get built, we’ll solicit people all over the world to order products from Gaza. We’ll put these products on the boat and have them set sail from Gaza to deliver them to the world. Everyone will know that the probability of ever getting this stuff is pretty low, but they can be a part of helping break the blockade and also help the people of Gaza earn money for the beautiful work that they do. It’s an important new step for the continuing struggle to liberate Palestinians from Israeli occupation.

Finally, we need to keep the pressure on the American government and the Israeli government to stop any drive to war against Iran. We really need to pester the hell out of the Obama administration on this rhetoric that they’ve been saying about Iran developing weapons of mass destruction.

I mean we’ve heard all of this before. These same allegations against Iraq lead me to resign my post. Instead we should be encouraging them to talk with Iran. We should be in dialogue, not in military confrontation.

*  This article first appeared at Socialist Worker.

1. If President Barack Obama is re-elected, with the Democratic Party retaining control of at least one chamber of Congress, there probably will be four more years of economic stagnation, high unemployment, increasing poverty and inequality, more wars, erosions of civil liberties and global warming.

2. If Mitt Romney is elected, with the right/far right Republican Party dominating either House or Senate, every particular of the travail afflicting the country today will be multiplied, with emphasis on fulfilling the desires of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

What else could be expected during the present conservative era? Paul Krugman, the liberal Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, recently described Obama, whom he supports, as having ruled like “a moderate Republican circa 1992″. Viewing the ultra-conservatives, African American professor and left intellectual Cornell West detected “creeping fascism.”

In today’s society — based on gross economic inequality facilitated by a two-party political system spanning center right to far right and where big money is the decisive factor in the electoral process — an ostensibly democratic election can hardly mitigate the worst of abuses afflicting working people and their families much less bring about substantial reform.

This dreary reality is offset by an important new development. For the first time over the last several presidential elections — when voters are usually cheering exclusively for their candidate — masses of people are protesting in the streets against inequality of income and opportunity, and the class war waged by the wealthy, as well as global warming, ending wars, dismantling NATO and the like. Some unions, too, are not simply backing Obama but protesting on their own against Wall Street’s depredations.

Thirty years of wage stagnation, the growing rich-poor chasm, evisceration of the so-called American Dream and the long, painful effects of the Great Recession are the objective conditions behind the developing political consciousness of many Americans. Like the Roman Catholic church after widespread evidence of priests molesting children, sacrosanct capitalism — the economic holy of holies — is finally attracting public criticism for its crimes and hypocrisy, not yet on a huge scale but growing.

The sudden entrance of Occupy Wall St. last September with an open critique of the substantial excesses of capitalism in American society, following the democratic Arab Spring and Wisconsin uprising, has energized much of the left and progressive forces. Nationwide May Day actions and the 15,000 who demonstrated against NATO in Chicago later in May, among other protests, including civil disobedience, are encouraging harbingers that many more people eventually will take their grievances to the streets and meeting halls, where all social progress begins. If this momentum manages to continue for the next few years it could become a broad and diverse national movement for social change — but it’s still a big “if.”

The political system seems no longer accountable to the public. Several matters of great importance to the American people do not even figure in this year’s election because both ruling parties basically agree  about them and there’s little to squabble about but details. The administration has taken the U.S. up to its elbows in the quagmire of war, so the conservatives cry, “up to the shoulders!” Here are some issues the voters won’t be able to influence at the ballot box:

• President Obama is presiding over U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, killing “terrorist suspects” in Somalia and wherever the CIA’s drones wander. May opinion polls show 66% of the American people want the expensive 10-year-old stalemated Afghan conflict to end, and 40% — many of whom want it terminated now — are strongly opposed. Only 27% support the war, 8% strongly. For all the chatter about nearing the end of the Afghan war at the NATO summit in Chicago May 20, Obama, days earlier, announced that he was prolonging the war a decade after his “final” pullout date at the end of 2014. An undetermined number of special forces combat troops, military trainers, and CIA paramilitaries will “defend” the corrupt Kabul government until 2024. American taxpayers will foot the bills — several billion a year. Progressive Democrats in Congress seek to restrain Washington’s penchant for wars, but they are consistently ignored and occasionally berated by the Obama Administration for their efforts.

• Most citizens want cuts in the war budget. But as they go to the polls, the American people will be lugging a military and national security behemoth on their recession-bent backs, costing about $1.2 trillion a year. Rumors of meaningful reductions are illusory. The Pentagon accounts for over half of this amount (about $642 billion for fiscal 2013); the rest goes to Homeland Security, 17 spy agencies, nuclear weapons, interest on past war debts, and so on.

• Global warming is here and getting worse while the White House is opening up new areas to drill for oil and supports massive development of shale-derived natural gas (which requires fracking), “clean” coal (though it does not yet exist), nuclear power, and dirty tar sands fuel. The Obama Administration’s support for alternative non-carbon development is a token tossed to the environmental movement. Meanwhile, the U.S. — which demands to be recognized as world leader — is using its leadership to undermine international progress in fighting climate change. Big business and Wall St., primarily concerned with expansion and greater profits, heartily approve. Like Rhett Butler, the conservatives, frankly, just don’t give a damn.

• Since he has borrowed populist phrases for the election, some of from Occupy, President Obama has finally at least mentioned poverty, inequality and low wages, but he has done nothing about this situation since taking office and will not put forward an anti-poverty program if reelected. The United States is the most economically unequal of the top 20 advanced, industrialized capitalist economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The U.S. also pays the lowest wages to its working class compared with OECD countries. Almost 25% of the American work force receives low wages (about $10 an hour down to minimum wage and below), usually without any benefits or health care. One in two Americans is low income or poor. The poor account for one in seven people. About 47 million Americans require food stamps to eat. Food stamps are the only “income” for six million of them. This has not come about by mistake; it’s the political system’s payoff to the ever-richer plutocracy and its minions.

• The Obama Administration has responded more resourcefully to the Great Recession than the conservative opposition, but it only goes a quarter or half  way in remedial action, which adds to the stagnation and prolongs the pain for the working class, lower middle class and a large sector of the middle class as well. When Obama delivers on the economy — whether in the stimulus, jobs, foreclosures, bank regulations, or infrastructure — it’s always partial and inadequate because the main concessions are made with the power structure up front before the inevitable compromises with the right wing. There’s a difference between talking like a fighter when trawling for votes, and avoiding confrontation as president. Krugman says “we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion.” This is a major reason why over 22 million Americas need but cannot secure full time work.

• President Obama has retained all former President Bush’s many erosions of civil liberties, particularly the onerous Patriot Act, and added many of his own, such as when he approved of indefinite detention for suspects, including American citizens. A unique coalition of liberals and conservatives in the House tried to pass legislation to reject indefinite detention May 18, but the effort was defeated. The U.S., under Obama, is becoming a full fledged surveillance state. Tom Engelhardt writes that “30,000 people [are] hired to listen in on conversations and other communications in this country.”

• Any listing of the important issues that are not part of the election campaign and over which the citizenry has no say must include a foreign/military/national security policy based on exercising world hegemony backed by military power. What’s the “pivot” to East Asia really all about, other than to weaken China in its own sphere of possible influence and cling to world domination? Why has the U.S. been taking steps to bring about regime change in Syria, other than to dominate yet another country and weaken Iran in the process? Why did Obama facilitate a violent civil war for regime change in Libya, other than to gain another oil-rich client state, but this time with an enormous aquifer under its sands which may become more precious than the oil as water supplies dwindle through North Africa? Why did the president get behind the coup in Honduras, other than to dispatch a potentially progressive regime friendly to Venezuela?

Further, why does Obama still maintain Cold War sanctions and a trade blockade against Cuba, other than to win Florida votes in November? Why is Washington supporting the vicious Sunni monarchy in Bahrain which routinely oppresses and attacks the Shi’ite majority seeking equality, other than satisfying the obnoxious rulers of Saudi Arabia? Why is Obama now fighting a war in Yemen, other than to keep the new president, who ran unopposed with strong U.S. support, in his pocket, and to bestow another favor upon the Saudi lords? Why is the administration seeking to strangle Iran, other than to prevent an Iran-Iraq alliance that might compromise U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf, through which 40% of the world’s oil must pass? And what is the real purpose of the Oval Office’s new “scramble for Africa,” other than establishing a military presence throughout the continent while elbowing China out of the way to grab natural resources, trade and markets.

President Obama blames all his failures in office on the conservatives and the recession, and most Democrats accept this explanation. Even progressive Democrats, well aware of Obama’s abundant shortcomings, will cut him slack for fear of the “greater evil.”

The corrosive impact of far right ideology in America must not be underestimated. But despite Don’t-tread-on-me Tea Party reactionaries and conservative obstruction in Congress, Democrats in the House and Senate remain responsible for many unmet objectives and a weak legislative record. Led by Obama, they would not fight for progressive goals and spent much of the time trying to fulfill the naïve presidential fantasy of “governing like Americans, not Republicans or Democrats.” Once the conservatives understood Obama would rather compromise than fight they attacked full force and virtually paralyzed the Democratic agenda.

The silence of some Democratic politicians toward the erosion of civil liberties, indifference to climate change and support for unnecessary wars — a silence many would have broken had a Republican been in the White House — should subject them to publicly wearing scarlet letters inscribed with a “C” (for craven) around their necks.

Despite the stagnant economy —  the main issue in the election according to 86% of potential voters — the Republican Party’s lurch to the far right and the bizarre legislative behavior of the Tea Party-influenced GOP House majority led by the ineffable Speaker John Boehner seem to have at least evened the election odds. Stranger things have happened in American politics, but it remains very doubtful that the critically important independent voters will swing toward fringe conservatism. This factor, in our view, gives Obama the edge.

In this connection the April 28 international edition of Britain’s conservative magazine, The Economist, wondered “What happens to a two-party political system when one party goes mad?” The article quotes the following from the new book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, a product of one author from the establishment Brookings Institute and the other from the conservative American Enterprise Institute: “The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Many right wing voters despise Romney, a shape-shifting opportunist whom they distrust, but they will stick with him because Republican leaders and funders insist he has the best chance to defeat the “big government socialist” whom many Tea Partiers scandalously allege conceals his “true” nationality and religion. Those funders, by the way, will see to it that — as opposed to 2008 — the Republicans will spend at least enough money to buy the election as the Democrats, so the race should be close.

Once a moderate Republican, Romney adopted far right positions on most issues to secure the nomination, calling for severe cutbacks in social programs for the poor, unemployed, foreclosed and similarly discarded, among a plethora of counterproductive social and economic nostrums satisfying to the Rush Limbaughs and Michele Bachmanns. Now he’s in a tight bind. It is absolutely necessary to gravitate partially toward the center, where the independent votes are, but he is under considerable restraint from his own unforgiving constituency.

Consistent with mendacious ultra-conservative propaganda, Romney attributes the economic crisis entirely to Obama’s presidency, without suggesting that the Great Recession emanated from the millionaire tax cuts, war spending and the huge deficits of his Republican predecessor (following years of Clinton Administration deregulations of banking and Wall St. that set the stage for what by now had become a “winner take all” economic system.)

Romney’s nonsensical economic speech in Iowa May 15 was an epic self-exposure. While promising to cut social spending, increase the war budget and not raise taxes, he declared:

President Obama is an old-school liberal whose first instinct is to see free enterprise as the villain and government as the hero…. America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined.

Virtually every word was a lie, according to an analysis of the entire speech by the Associated Press the next day which pointed out that “the debt has gone up by about half under Obama. Under Ronald Reagan, it tripled.” AP didn’t mention Romney’s political characterization of Obama, but he’s hardly a liberal — as was clear during his first term, and his adhesion to “free enterprise” capitalism is indissoluble.

Romney has been sharply critical of Obama on two of the biggest issues of the campaign — health care and the Afghan war —  despite the fact that his own past positions on both matters were nearly identical to those of his rival. Obama’s health care plan is based on the program Romney implemented as governor of Massachusetts. And despite far more hawkish rhetoric to please the far right during the primaries, the Republican’s views on Afghanistan did not differ markedly from those of Obama. In recent weeks before and after the NATO summit, Romney has hardly spoken of the Afghan war, obviously recognizing that his primary views are anathema to the American people as a whole.

Obama and Romney have agreed on other issues. An article in Grist, April 24 by Lisa Hymas pointed out that  Obama’s “smart growth” initiative — the Partnership for Sustainable Communities — was also created in the mold of a Romney program…. As governor, Romney actively fought sprawl and promoted density. He ran on a smart-growth platform: ‘Sprawl is the most important quality-of-life issue facing Massachusetts,’ he said in 2002…. Under President Obama, the EPA moved from praising Romney’s smart-growth office to mimicking it.” It went into effect in June 2009. Romney also supported abortion rights, environmentalism and immigration as governor.

These “coincidences” are the outstanding ironies of the campaign so far. “Far right” Romney and “liberal populist” Obama have both resembled “moderate Republicans” when in power. Obama will revert to his center-right configuration if reelected, but if Romney ever gets to the White House his constituency will force him to largely govern as an ultra-conservative.

A principal Republican issue in the past several presidential elections has been that the Democrats were “weak on defense,” including in 2008 when Obama opposed the Iraq war, but the right wing has lowered the volume significantly because it can’t work this year.

The Democratic Party, of course, voted for, supported and funded the Afghan and Iraq wars, but Obama defeated pro-war Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination because his critique of the disastrous adventure in Iraq accorded with that of most Democratic primary voters — then turned around when elected and stole the Republican thunder by transforming into a war president. He governs foreign/military affairs as a hawk, juggling several bloody conflicts simultaneously, abjectly pandering to the armed forces and fostering the growth of militarism in American society. A year after the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa, the Obama Administration has launched its own Imperialist Spring in the same region.

Many Democrats voted for Obama in the 2008 primaries because he was considered a “peace candidate” of sorts. A recent article by Atlantic Magazine staff writer Conor Friedersdorf compiled a brief partial account of Obama’s “peace” record:

• Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, adding tens of thousands of troops at a cost of many billions of dollars. • He committed American forces to a war in Libya, though he had neither approval from Congress nor reason to think events there threatened national security. • He ordered 250 drone strikes that killed at least 1,400 people in Pakistan. • He ordered the raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. • He ordered the killings of multiple American citizens living abroad. • He expanded the definition of the War on Terrorism and asserted his worldwide power to indefinitely detain anyone he deems a terrorist. • He expanded drone attacks into Somalia. • He ordered a raid on pirates in Somalia. • He deployed military squads to fight the drug war throughout Latin America. • He expanded the drone war in Yemen, going so far as to give the CIA permission to kill people even when it doesn’t know their identities so long as they’re suspected of ties to terrorism. • He’s implied that he’d go to war with Iran rather than permitting them to get nuclear weapons.”

No matter who wins in November nothing listed above will change, except perhaps for the worse. If Obama returns to the White House, it will be to the same mess the U.S. finds itself in today, along with the wars, inequality and hardship. Should Romney get in it will be a mess on steroids.

Progressive change certainly remains possible in America, although neither ruling party is equipped to bring it about. These parties were not prepared to end the Vietnam war either, or to get rid of Jim Crow, or to implement the eight-hour day, or to allow women the democratic right to vote. But the people organized radical mass movements to fight for these goals and won.

The informal people’s struggles of various organizations that began coalescing early last year, propelled several months later by Occupy’s left critique of inequality, Wall St. and the 1% ruling plutocracy, has the potential to become a mass movement. Many such potentials have come along and faded for various reasons, including some that were co-opted or lost their vision. But such broad and deep movements — as long as they are massive, activist, radical and well organized — also have significantly changed American history. It may be a long, arduous struggle, but that’s the light at the end of this dismal electoral tunnel.

– Chitto Harjo (Crazy Snake), address to the Special Senate Investigation Committee for the Indian Territory, Nov. 23, 1906

Chitto Harjo, Crazy Snake, was the leader of a dissident band of Creek Indians that stood in opposition to the political leaders of the Creek Nation during the early years of the twentieth century. They would come to be known as “Snake Indians” in deference to their recognized leader.

The Snakes were motivated by their opposition to the allotment of Creek lands and the efforts to assimilate Creek people in violation of the terms of the Treaty of 1832 between the United States and the Creek Nation. With the Dawes Act of 1887 and the Curtis Act of 1898 the U.S. Government sought to break up the communal land bases of the remaining Indigenous Nations and allot the land in small plots to individual Indians with the “surplus” lands left over going to new waves of Anglo-settlers.

Harjo had travelled to Washington with a delegation of Creek leaders attempting to obtain the support of President Theodore Roosevelt for the terms of the treaty. Finding little or no support, Harjo returned to Oklahoma and called for the establishment of a separate traditional Creek government at the Old Hickory Stomp Grounds.

The Snakes urged tribal towns not to participate in the allotment process and began to engage in open conflicts with individual tribal citizens who did participate in the process. Chitto Harjo remained an ardent opponent of allotment and assimilation till his death in 1911.

What is apparent from Harjo’s words and actions was his position and perspective as a traditional Muskogee Creek. He stood in opposition to any attempt by the government of the United States to denigrate the sovereignty of Creek Nation. He stood opposed to the Creek National Council that was colluding with the Americans and the individual Creeks who were accepting the allotment of Creek lands. He was an ardent proponent of the Treaty of 1832 which he saw, correctly, as a formal agreement between two sovereign entities. He knew full well the price paid by the Creek people for the Treaty of 1832, the loss of their traditional homelands in southeast and the horrors of the “Trail of Tears” that lead them to the Oklahoma territory.

Chitto Harjo saw himself as a citizen of an Indigenous Nation and understood his relationship to the government of the nation that had colonized Creek territory. His loyalties and allegiances are obvious to any who examines his life and work.

As we look back at Harjo’s example we must ask ourselves how we, as Indigenous People, relate to the political power structures that exist around us. Like Harjo we need to ask, “What has become of the relations between the Indians and the white people?”

Divided Loyalties, Conflicting Interest

There is much to be learned from the terms that some of us have grown accustomed to using as self-identifiers. We generally give little thought to the implications of “Native American” or “American Indian” nor do we seriously examine the rhetoric that attaches itself to these terms. If we were to examine that rhetoric and pay close attention to the words being spoken in the name of “Native America,” we would get a much clearer picture of the struggles postulated by the Indigenous leaders today compared to the battles fought by leaders like Chitto Harjo a century ago.

On January 26th, 2012 Jefferson Keel, the President of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) delivered the tenth annual State of Indian Nations Address. The speech is often portrayed as the definitive description of the status of the native nations within the United States.

Perhaps the most telling difference between Chitto Harjo’s impassioned speech to U.S. Senate Committee in 1906 and the words of President Keel in 2012 has to do with the clarity of position and identity provided by Harjo.

Where Harjo provides distinct lines of separation between Nations and Peoples giving deference to Creek sovereignty we find much less clarity in the words of the NCAI President. The contrast is very apparent when President Keel articulates his vision for the political entity he terms “Our America.” Lacking in his speech is a defined acknowledgement of the separate sovereign status of native nations, Keel instead points to a linked destiny as he states… ”Our nations are committed to the success of the United States of America.” Where Harjo had stressed the importance of treaty rights and self-determination as the best strategies for the Creek Nation, Keel tells us that our goals need to be centered on greater participation in the U.S. elections and a more direct role within the American political system.

Harjo understood that for native nations the struggle for treaty rights and self-determination was a struggle for what freedoms they could retain in the face of a colonial reality. The struggle for self-determination is, after all, a struggle for freedom and the responsibilities that true freedom brings. After centuries of oppression large portions of the indigenous population cling to the concepts articulated by the colonizer, such as “trust status” and “domestic dependent nationhood,” and shy away from the obligations and responsibilities that true freedom bring.

Paulo Freire, the critical theorist, examines the syndrome in some detail:

“The fear of freedom which afflicts the oppressed, a fear which may equally lead them to desire the role of oppressor or bind them to the role of oppressed, should be examined.”

“The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility.”¹

We are being told that the Presidential election of 2012 will afford native America an unprecedented chance to engage in the U.S. political system. Under the Indian Country Today headline “President Obama’s Million-Dollar Native Fund-Raiser,” we are told: “In a sign of growing tribal political clout, 70 Indian officials attended a first-ever Native-specific campaign fund-raiser with President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C. on January 27.” Tickets for this event started at the reasonable price of $15,000 apiece.

For some perspective let us quickly review some basic demographic figures for the indigenous population living within the borders of the United States of America. You can rest assured that the 70 tribal officials at this gala where representative of the 40% of federally recognized tribes that operate gaming enterprises. As a whole the native people comprises less than 2% of the U.S. population and are the most impoverished of all ethnic groups. Native people have the highest rates of teen suicide, the highest rates of teen pregnancy, the highest high school dropout rates, the lowest per capita income and the highest unemployment rate.

In over two centuries of American colonization, our people have been reduced to the poorest, most impoverished levels of society. We have struggled to maintain what aspects of sovereignty and self-determination were not stripped away by the plenary power of the U.S. Government and watched as the monolithic monster of western capitalism continues to devour the land and resources that have sustained us for a millennium. Now we are lead to believe that our answer lies in handing over a million dollars to help the election campaign of the current American emperor?

In response to the million dollar donation President Obama told the gathered tribal officials that he was committed to making sure that “we” get the relationship between the U.S. and tribal governments’ right. His promise to native people that “Your children and your grandchildren have an equal shot at the American Dream.” The reality, of course, is that the million dollar night will have little or no effect on the vast majority of the indigenous population but will make the gaming interest that produced most of the political payoff more secure.

The argument that is made in defense of this tactic is that it offers the only way forward for our people; we must after all be practical. Only by investing ourselves within the American political system can we have any hope of our voices being heard within the corridors of power.

Among my people, the Houma, this strategy has been put forth many times. Written accounts of our attempts to gain the ears of the rich and powerful are well known.

In 1921 Jean Baptiste Parfait, a Houma community leader, lead a delegation from the lower bayous to the Lafourche Parish seat in Thibodaux. They made the two day boat trip to meet and lobby Congressman W.P. Martin for a school for Houma children. Indian children were excluded from the all-white public education system with the only access to formalized learning coming from sporadic missionary efforts.

Unfortunately for the Houma, there would be no direct assistance from the congressman other than his forwarding the request to the Federal Office of Indian Affairs. This did little to address the problem and there would be no school for Houma children in the near term.

Of interest to our discussion is a short description of the Houma written in correspondence inspired by the visit to the congressman.

They are poor it is true, but they are devout Christians, loyal citizens and staunch Republicans. At the last Presidential election their undivided votes aided in carrying the 3rd Congressional District solidly for President Harding and Congressman Martin.²

This was the pattern at the time and the one that continues, to some extent, to the present day. Politicians come into the Indian community and express their great concern for the plight of the Indian people. The people are encouraged to vote for candidate “A” because they have paid attention to the tribe and have promised to remember the needs of the Houma community when they are elected.

The issues within the story illustrate perfectly the reality of the struggle for political influence and the futility of the strategy. The Houma case for inclusion in public education went as far as the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1917 and was laid before Congressmen, Governors, and Presidents for years on end. In the end, the basic need for education for the Houma People would remain unmet for generations. It would take the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the conclusion of a lawsuit aided by its passage that would finally open the doors of public education to Houma children. Gaining the ear of a congressmen in exchange for votes forty years prior had done little for the cause, victory for the Houma came from fighting from the outside and not access to the inside of U.S. politics.

Even the precious gaming compacts of the fortunate few tribes that have them are serious breaches of any concept of genuine sovereignty. Compacts are made subject to the input of local and regional powerbrokers as well as federal machinations. All these players are given the ability to control or influence any legitimate exercise of self-determination or economic independence on tribal land.

So again we ask the question, what are we fighting for? Are we content with the crumbs that fall from the table of the emperor, or can we set our sights on regaining the ability to feed ourselves? Can we stand again as free men and women like our grandparents. or will we continue to bend our knees to the will of the colonizers?

Admittedly our Nations today lack the ability to seize power as we once did but we can commit our communities to move towards real self-determination with every step we take. If we really believe in the rhetoric that we preach then should we not be obligated to walk that path? Have we not given up enough ground in the last two centuries?

If we ask these questions of ourselves with sincerity of heart and listen closely with earnest expectation then perhaps we will hear again the voice of the Dragon as it carries across the ages…

Should we not therefore run all risks, and incur all consequences, rather than submit to further loss of our country? Such treaties may be all right for men who are too old to hunt or fight. As for me, I have my young warriors about me, we will have our lands. A-Waninski, I have spoken. — Tsi’yu-gunsini, Dragging Canoe

1. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
2. Ernest Coycault to L.M. Gensman, 1 Dec. 1921.

Affirms that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and warns that time is limited to prevent that from happening. Urges increasing economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran to secure an agreement that includes: (1) suspension of all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, (2) complete cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding Iran’s nuclear activities, and (3) a permanent agreement that verifiably assures that Iran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful. Supports: (1) the universal rights and democratic aspirations of the Iranian people, and (2) U.S. policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Rejects any U.S. policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran. Urges the President to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat. (emphasis mine)

The resolution passed the House 401-11, with a few representatives absent and a few abstaining. This means it had massive bipartisan support – for those of you who only consider Republicans to be warmongers: 166 of 190 Democrats voted in support, including some of its ostensibly most progressive members, such as Barney Frank and Rush Holt.

The language used bodes terribly for the United States’ already disastrous and destructive foreign policy. The House affirms not merely that Iran will not be allowed to manufacture nuclear weapons, but that it will not be permitted the capability of said manufacturing. Never mind that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta observed that Iran is not actually pursuing these weapons; given the extreme and persistent threats from the nuclear-armed Israel and United States, coupled with the U.S. forces surrounding Iran, we would have no right to prevent them if they were.

Further, examining the House’s reasoning for denouncing Iran as a repressive regime highlights severe hypocrisy:

Whereas, on December 26, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution denouncing the serious human rights abuses occurring in Iran, including torture, cruel and degrading treatment in detention, the targeting of human rights defenders, violence against women, and ‘the systematic and serious restrictions on freedom of peaceful assembly’, as well as severe restrictions on the rights to ‘freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.’

Switch in that paragraph “the United States” for “Iran” and you might think we should be sanctioning ourselves. Regarding the first several accusations, consider this: the United States tortures foreign adversaries by proxy, abuses accused whistle-blowers in prison before trial, detains more prisoners than any country on Earth, and continues to pass state laws assaulting women’s rights. Perhaps the most hypocritical, though, is the accusation of the repression of peaceful assembly. Just two days after the House passed this resolution, Chicago riot police beat protesters with nightsticks, hit others with CPD vehicles, and used sound canons to disrupt peaceful demonstrators against the NATO summit. So the idea that the U.S. deems Iran a barbaric nation that represses political speech is extremely two-faced at best.

The worst part about the bill, though, is not what policies it specifically introduces or accusations it announces but rather what it signifies more broadly: the U.S. is taking the next step in the war on Iran that has already begun.

For one thing, Israel has already teamed up with a U.S.-backed terror group within Iran to assassinate nuclear scientists, serving both the temporary, practical purpose of inhibiting Iran’s nuclear progress and the long-term, psychological purpose of instilling fear within Iran and its fledgling nuclear program.

More insidiously, the U.S. has imposed severe sanctions on Iran that most describe as “crippling” and that all should describe as acts of war. Just today, the Senate voted unanimously to escalate those very sanctions. While President Obama may say that sanctions are intended to isolate Iran’s leaders in their nuclear position, it is citizens who bear the burden of these economic moves. Look to Iraq for the devastating effects, where a senior U.N. official estimated that U.N.-imposed sanctions in the 1990s killed a staggering 500,000 children under the age of 5. They don’t call ‘em “crippling” for nothing.

We should also look to Iraq to understand how this bipartisan process of escalation works, from sanctions to bombing to occupation. Arguing against sanctions on Iran in April 2010, Rep. Ron Paul recalled how sanctions on Iraq led inevitably to war:

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

The Iraq war did not begin with the 2003 invasion – it began with the 1990s embargo. Sanctions on Iraq not only killed hundreds of thousands, but they structured the narrative on Iraq to winnow out peaceful options on the path to war. And the same is true of Iran. Now debates on Iran focus on whether Ahmadinejad will relent in his pursuit of weapons, whether sanctions are “working” sufficiently, or where the U.S. and Israel should draw “red lines” for attack.

President Obama called last month’s “negotiations” with Iran that country’s “last chance,” effectively threatening to escalate sanctions or initiate an attack if Iran didn’t cease and desist its nuclear enrichment program entirely. How are those “negotiations”? How is that “diplomacy”? Threatening Iran to completely submit to the U.S.’s will to get nothing in return is not a discussion – it’s bullying.

What would Iran have to gain in that situation? Iran is seeking to defend itself from nuclear-armed bullies surrounding it constantly. Passively complying would only speed up the U.S. plan to replace the Iranian regime with one even more compliant.

But the United States will not relent on Iran – just as it did not relent on Iraq. Examine again the House resolution’s first principle:

…it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and warns that time is limited to prevent that from happening.

Compare that with President Bill Clinton’s 1998 remarks on Iraq:

One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.

This is how American bipartisanship – or more accurately, duopoly – works. Both parties want war with Iran, the way both parties wanted war with Iraq. It is in both of their interests – appeasing Israel and its chief lobby, AIPAC, and posturing for their respective bases. Republicans take the hard line on our “enemies,” using blatantly aggressive language, refusing to “apologize for America” and reducing our victims to less than human. Democrats take the more “pragmatic” approach, adopting “national security” rhetoric based in protecting Americans that disguises the exact same policies. The Senate vote to go to war with Iraq, after all, didn’t barely squeak through on Republican support: it passed 96-4. (Now, 9/11 catalyzed the whole process in Iraq and made dissent even less popular, but the biggest antiwar protest in recorded history couldn’t sway more than four measly votes in the Senate.)

This endless posturing is how President Obama can be accused of being “soft on terror” and simultaneously escalate sanctions on Iran and massive drone campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

This is why, in the interest of war, sanctions by one party is a huge gift to the other. If Mitt Romney is elected this year, he’ll likely announce that Obama’s sanctions were insufficient and encourage an Israeli attack on Iran behind closed doors. If Obama is re-elected, he’ll continue on the path he’s currently on: allowing Israel to assassinate Iranian scientists, officially recognizing the terror group seeking regime change in Iran, and escalating sanctions that cripple the Iranian people and isolate its leaders.

Citing Glenn Greenwald and Greg Sargent on liberal support for Obama’s escalated drone strikes, here’s Stephen Walt on ‘Why Hawks Should Vote for Obama’:

Obama can do hawkish things as a Democrat that a Republican could not (or at least not without facing lots of trouble on the home front). It’s the flipside of the old “Nixon Goes to China” meme: Obama can do hawkish things without facing (much) criticism from the left, because he still retains their sympathy and because liberals and non-interventionists don’t have a credible alternative (sorry, Ron Paul supporters). If someone like John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, or George W. Bush had spent the past few years escalating drone attacks, sending Special Forces into other countries to kill people without the local government’s permission, prosecuting alleged leakers with great enthusiasm, and ratcheting up sanctions against Iran, without providing much information about exactly why and how we were doing all this, I suspect a lot of Democrats would have raised a stink about some of it. But not when it is the nice Mr. Obama that is doing these things.

So if you vote for Barack Obama because you think that Mitt Romney would put troops on the ground, you’ll only be doing it to make yourself feel better. You’ll be playing right into the partisan posturing that seeks to fabricate a meaningful difference between the two major parties, both with long histories of support for wars of aggression. You’ll be fundamentally misunderstanding how American duopoly works: both parties decry each other for tactically approaching the same policies differently in the interest of electing their own representatives to power. Both parties want war – they just want to play it to their respective bases properly.

If you think Al Gore wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, that Ralph Nader ruined the antiwar movement and George Bush is all to blame, point me to where Gore opposed Clinton’s sanctions on Iraq when he was Vice President. In the meantime, read how Gore argued for regime change in Iraq a few short months before Bush invaded: “Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”

If you think Bush’s war was a terrible mistake that warranted John Kerry’s election in 2004, read Kerry on Iraq two months before the invasion:

Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation … And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real…

Find more quotes from Democrats leading up to and supportive of Bush’s 2003 invasion here.

Liberals criticize President Obama for escalating drone strikes, failing to close Guantanamo, aggressively persecuting Bradley Manning, illegally invading Libya, offering cuts to Social Security, and immunizing the war crimes and torture of the Bush administration – but many same liberals say that despite all of these transgressions, the ostensible likelihood of Mitt Romney attacking Iran makes them feel they have to re-elect the president.

If this were true, wouldn’t these liberals be criticizing Obama’s sanctions on Iran? Wouldn’t they have abandoned Clinton, Gore, and Kerry after their comments on Iraq? More to the point, if these liberals despise war so much, why aren’t Obama’s surge in Afghanistan or expanded wars in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen deal-breakers for re-election?

If you actually don’t want war with Iran, you have to help end duopoly. You can’t support either of the two establishment parties who feed the military-industrial complex and fear-monger voters into submission. We must make it known that the people want peace – meaning no sanctions, no assassinations, no threats of war.

We must make war making and fear mongering unacceptable. Come Election Day, we can vote third party, or boycott the election, or protest to shut down military recruitment centers or drone bases. But we can’t fund or vote for the war parties – our victims can’t afford it. No votes for empire, no money for war. No exceptions.

The Secretary of State has recommended that the application [for the pipeline] be denied…I agree…This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but [on] the arbitrary nature of a deadline.

Obama even hinted at his future support of the pipeline: “[there may be] development of an oil pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico.” These deceptive words used by the President made me think:  Is the president heavily influenced by Big Oil or is the statement he made in the 2008 campaign, “I don’t take money from oil companies” true?

The election campaign of 2008 was a hard-fought campaign on all sides, mostly which involved lots of corporate sponsors since all the “frontrunners” were awash with money. Then-Senator Barack Obama raised $745 million dollars and spent $730 million dollars. $916,162 of those dollars came from the Oil and Gas industry according to OpenSecrets. A FactCheck.org post continued this message, nine months before the Presidential election was held, noting that Obama received over $66,000 dollars from employees at ExxonMobil, Hess, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and British Petroleum (BP). In addition, the post noted that “two oil industry executives…bundl[ed] money for Obama” one of which was a multi-billionaire. A Reuters article in May 2008 noted that BP contributed more to Obama’s campaign than it had contributed to federal candidates since the late 1980s. Even with these contributions, one may be unsure of Big Oil’s real impact on Barack Obama.

Steve Coll’s new book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Empire, sheds light on part of that impact, especially on ExxonMobil’s role in the election. According to Coll, in the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama “spoke most pointedly about ExxonMobil…[and] offered none of the nuanced support he had voiced to Chad’s dictator Idriss Deby [in 2006]” about the inviolability of international oil contracts.  Even with this aggressive tact, he seemed to exploit the unpopularity of ExxonMobil for his own benefit. He pushed the idea of American ‘energy independence’ even though, according to Coll, it is “not achievable [or] desirable.” In addition, every time he used the word “ExxonMobil” it seemed to work in his favor. But, according to the Washington Independent, individual Exxon, Chevron and BP contributors preferred Barack Obama. At the same time, he boldly declared that “we must end the age of oil in our time.” Still, the Washington Post wrote in January 2008 that “one of Obama’s foreign policy advisers on the Middle East [Daniel Shapiro]… registered to lobby for several corporate clients…including…the American Petroleum Institute.” Also, three political aides on the Obama’s campaign payroll were lobbyists for corporations such as BP. Still, after his victory over John McCain in the Presidential election, ExxonMobil changed its approach to the political arena.

As Obama was entering the Presidency, Eric Foner, of The Nation Magazine, called him “Our Lincoln” and Time Magazine named him “Person of the Year.” Just like the online game, Oiligarchy, made by Mollenindustria, President Obama became “oiled,” and would work in the interest of Big Oil due to its campaign contributions to his presidential election campaign.

In May 2009, Obama appointed Steve Koonin, the former Chief Scientist of BP, to be second Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy (he was confirmed shortly after by the U.S. Senate). The next year, Koonin became a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.  Also, the former contact employee for Goldman Sachs, Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s Chief of Staff for 21 months, lived for five years in a “rent-free…D.C. apartment of…Rep. Rosa DeLauro…and her husband, Stanley Greenberg,” whose firm was the creator of “BP’s…green…slogan “Beyond Petroleum.”” At the same time, Goldman Sachs had a huge investment in BP, which it sold in early 2010 for an unknown reason, pocketing “slightly more than $266 million” according to Raw Story, an independent news site. Currently the company owns about 2% of BP’s stock.

This connection of Obama to Big Oil is not based around stocks, rather around policy that has been enacted or pushed. In the early days of his administration, a cap-and-trade bill failed in Congress. According to an online site about cap-and-trade this policy has its problems. Ralph Nader says it would cause a war “between interest groups seeking billions in carbon credit handouts and the regulator[s].” The Institute of Energy Research states it will hurt jobs, “make Canadian oil more expensive than oil from the Middle East…[and] create…incentives to import more oil from the Middle East.” The political magazine, Corporate Knights continues this criticism. They remark that “the President has not stood up to the climate-denial machine” and has been increasingly silent on the issue of a changing climate. At the same time, they wonder why Obama is not doing “far more to defend the science” of global warming.

In November 2009 the pro-Big Oil policy was evident once again. According to AlterNet, Obama and “his administration [were]…vocal and active proponents” of an Iraqi law that permitted new oil contracts in the country, which are also called protection sharing agreements (PSAs). The law offered oil companies “a 75 percent stake” in oil development, “reduced the amount the foreign companies pay in taxes…allow[ed]…them to use private security forces to protect their facilities” and let foreign companies to “hire and train [non]Iraqi workers and…transfer…needed technology.” At the same time, the law made companies pay “reimbursement fees for capital and operational expenses…[and] den[ied foreign] companies [from]…book[ing] reserves.”  Under this agreement, different corporations were given the ability to drill in Iraqi oil fields: BP, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil Company got sweet deals in Iraq, drilling in areas with 4-18 billion barrels of oil. Other foreign oil companies won out as well, but these American companies were some the big bread winners and the Obama Administration’s support of the law is no coincidence.

The next year, the international environmental NGO, the Bellona Foundation, noted a Presidential decision that missed the headlines. President Obama, one month before the explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig reversed a “20 year moratorium…open[ed much of]… the Atlantic coast line, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling…[and] at the same time [he] reject[ed]…some sites that had been propose[d in]…Alaska, California and Oregon.” Then less than thirty days later, the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill began. The aftermath showed the collusion of policy with Big Oil. Even, Sarah Palin, roundly denounced by “liberals” for her seemingly crazy statements told a Fox News show, “I don’t know why the question isn’t asked…if there’s any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration.” Recently, others have even suggested that “the Obama administration went easy on BP before the 2010 oil spill in return for a pledge to support cap-and-trade legislation.” Two years later, Black Agenda Report came out with an article attacking Obama’s inaction: “Barack Obama and his Democrats passed no new laws, promulgated no new executive decisions to regulate Big Oil…the damages recoverable from BP’s holdings [were restricted to]…its Gulf revenues [not revenues on other continents]… [which] ensur[ed]…BP’s reckless operations in the gulf of Mexico [would]…continue.”

After the spill occurred, President Obama and his administration quickly worked to clean up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. In that process, a dispersant named Corexit was poured into Gulf, 2 million gallons by mid-June 2011, with the green light from Obama and his administration. But everyone didn’t follow the administration line. According to Democracy Now!, “many lawmakers and advocacy groups sa[id]…the Obama administration [was]…not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants.” At the same time, residents on the Gulf Coast were outraged that Kenneth Feinburg’s “$20 billion government-administered claim fund [would]…subtract money cleanup workers earn by working for the cleanup effort.” Also this claim fund was seen as an “effort to limit the number of lawsuits against BP.” Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst of the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response at the time, boldly said the government was “sock puppets for BP in this cover-up…by hiding the amount of spill [which]…sav[ed] [BP] hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines.” In addition to this corruption, many numbers of EPA and OSHA Administrators said the chemical was safe, but it was not. Kaufman went even further saying that the company, BlackRock is run by Larry Fink who has connections to “Mr. Geithner, Mr. Summers and others in the administration.” He concluded that the go ahead to disperse Corexit was part of a cover-up to hide BP’s use of “the volume of oil that has been released” into the Gulf from the American public.

The string of pro-Big Oil policy continued despite the “biggest investment in stimulating a green economy in history,” the creation of more green jobs, tax credits for wind energy, money for environmental maintenance, and greening federal buildings in the stimulus bill according to TreeHugger. For one, no one in BP has been criminally charged for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. A community fund to pay victims of the spill was set up, but there was no real damage to BP’s profits. Even a prosecution has started against BP but the trial was delayed by Judge Barbier until January 14, 2013, conveniently after the November presidential elections. In mid-2011, when the debt-ceiling crisis was occurring, the “Obama administration gave $12.4 million in research grants to oil and gas companies…to help the industry improve the way it drills for oil and gas” according to Daily Beast Contributor Daniel Stone. At the same time, Democrats in Congress were decrying a deal which would not cut subsidies for oil companies (about a year later, Obama would support gutting those subsidies). As the year continued, his policy was still deeply connected to Big Oil despite what was said in the articles of “clean capitalist” magazines like Corporate Knights.

Earlier that year in March 2011, President Obama began a war in Libya. Officially its purpose  was to “assist an international effort authorized by the United Nations…Security Council…to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe…[and stop] all attacks against civilians…[by] target[ing]…air defense systems, command and control structures…of Gaddafi’s armed forces.” As a result, this war was advertised by the Obama Administration as a humanitarian war. But the real reason for war was not humanitarian reasons, it was oil. Antiwar.com lays it out clearly. In 2008, Gaddafi threatened the oil companies in Libya and then made an agreement that promised billions of barrels of oil with tough conditions to American oil companies. At the same time, the U.S. government plotted to stop the Russian oil company Gazprom from gaining Libyan oil. When the Libyan revolution began, Gaddafi refused to step down.  The 2008 agreement and the plot to stop the Russian oil company, connected to Vladimir Putin, was threatened. In addition, University of London Professor Gilbert Achar noted that a huge massacre in Libya would cause an “embargo on Libyan oil” which would hurt the volatile oil markets. This revealed the real reason for entering a war into Libya: Oil. Representative Ed Markey at the time also said the war was because of oil.

The connections of the war to oil are different depending on what source the information comes from. Black Star News in an April 2011 post echoed the positions of antiwar.com and Gilbert Achar. They argued that the war occurred because “America wants to control Africa’s oil supply…[and protect] U.S. oil companies and others are presently invested in Libya; these companies include Marathon, Hess, Conoco, Gulf, Occidental, British Petroleum (BP).” The post finally gets to the punch: “This [war] is about oil and power, not saving people.  It’s about maximizing profits.” Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation had a different analysis. He noted that “Libya’s new leaders…plan to favor their NATO backers [one of which is the United States] when handing out access to Libya’s oil.” Peter Dale Scott goes even farther, saying that the war was about protecting the declining “global petrodollar economy” which Gaddafi threatened just like Saddam Hussein did before the Iraq invasion in 2003. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the war was about oil (it cost over $1.1 billion dollars, according to Politifact) and was in Big Oil’s interest.

In the month of the Libya war beginning, March 2011, President Obama made a speech at Georgetown University officially about “America’s energy security.” In the speech, Obama touted the use of alternative energy, nuclear power, coal, natural gas and oil all together, later called the “all-of-the above” strategy. More importantly, he announced a goal to cut America’s dependence on oil by one-third through his “all-of-the above” energy plan. However, he noted that to achieve this plan, America’s oil supply would have to be increased through expediting drilling permits for oil companies. Yet again, the President was on the side of Big Oil. He remarked casually that after new supposedly “higher standards” had been put in place, the government had “approved 39 new shallow-water permits…seven deepwater permits…two permits last year for every new well that the industry started to drill” offshore. The influence of Big Oil in government was apparent once again as the discussion switched back to the aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill. In the speech, Obama revealed that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was sent by him down to “the BP offices [where]…he essentially designed the cap” that supposedly stopped the oil from leaking into the Gulf. If this doesn’t sound like collusion between BP and the national government, I don’t know what is.

A few months later in June 2011, President Obama made a rash decision. He decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. One news outlet, the Cable News Network (CNN) considered this an “economic stimulus…[in a time of] a looming supply  shortage…a wake up call to OPEC…[or] a warning shot to speculators in the oil market.” Other times in his administration he has tapped the national reserve, especially in times of “crisis”. This reserve was about 695.9 million barrels as of February 2012, which is about 36 days of oil consumption. Even though this is true, the releasing of oil just keeps America’s addiction on oil, which doesn’t solve any problems. It just keeps things at the status quo.

In late 2011 the policy of helping Big Oil continued. The infamous Keystone XL pipeline was proposed by TransCanada. It would be a pipeline that would snake across the western United States and would consist of drilling in dirty tar sands and overtopping the largest aquifer in the world, the Ogallala Aquifer. Environmental activists and other politicians opposed the action while others stood their ground, saying the pipeline would create jobs. An opinion posted on the Qatari-based news service, Al Jaazera, by a Tar Sands activist Bill McKibben expresses his frustration with the Obama Administration four months before the project was rejected. In his opinion, there were numerous “indication[s] from this administration…that it is prepared to grant the necessary permission for [this] project…[even] the State Department, at the recommendation of Keystone XL pipeline builder TransCanada, hired a second company to carry out the environmental review [which]…considered itself a “major client” of TransCanada.” This collusion of business and government to McKibben was “simply corrupt [and] potentially the biggest scandal of the Obama years,” an ongoing crime that President Obama didn’t even try to stop.

The Keystone XL pipeline’s rejection seemed a lapse in pro-Big Oil policy. But the pipeline was not delayed in January 2012 because of environmental considerations, but due to “the arbitrary nature of the deadline.” Even though there was a review done, it occurred with the help of one of TransCanada’s major clients. However, this was not a powerful pro-Big Oil development.  The powerful move was the renewed support of the “All of the Above” energy policy which was touted back in March 2011. In the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama touted the same energy policy based in the nationalist idea of “energy independence.” In February 2012, Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, justified such a policy by numerous statistics one would expect under a Republican administration:

Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gases production has increased each year…[and] imports of foreign oil have decreased…[and] the Obama Administration put in place..new standards that ensured that [oil] drilling continued [after] the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

These were not the only justifications for this new energy policy. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf, hundreds of drilling permits for the region were approved by the Obama Administration. These numbers were higher than what Obama spoke of in March 2011. 308 permits were approved for “deep water drilling activities…and…113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico.” More evidence of government collusion with Big Oil is the permitting of oil drilling “at levels seen before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill” on land and in the water. This resulted in “more oil produced [in 2011] in this country…since 2003.” This was conveniently made possible because America has more “oil…rigs at work in the field than the rest of the world.” While this seems like an overstatement, this phenomenon led the government to another conclusion. Obama allowed the “further exploration in the Arctic” and he established “an interagency Alaska working group…[to] review…Shells proposed exploration…in the Arctic.” For many environmentalists, this may be a betrayal of the initiatives in his administration that have helped the planet (pushing solar, wind, biofuels a little bit). Arctic exploration is not the only place the President pledges his support. Obama has allowed the building of dozens of pipelines in his term of office and has pledged to work with “TransCanada…to expedite the necessary federal permits” for the Keystone XL pipeline.

The next month, those permits were expedited. Obama signed an Executive Order on March 22nd, 2012 titled “Improving Performance of Federal Permitting and Review of Infrastructure Projects”. The Executive Order told all Federal Agencies and departments to “significantly reduce the…time required to make decisions [on]…permitting and review of [Federal government] infrastructure projects.” Also it mandated that all steps be taken “to execute Federal permitting and review processes with maximum efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring the health, safety, and security of communities and the environment while supporting vital economic growth.”  Even though there is talk of a safe community and the environment, this was meant to expedite the Keystone XL pipeline and future pipelines.

How can a full analysis occur if time is limited and “economic growth” is promoted? In the speeches he made the same day, March 22, his support of the pipeline is evident. He told a crowd, mostly of his supporters, in Maljamar, New Mexico that “we’ve announced our support for more [pipelines] including” the Keystone XL pipeline.  He repeated the same message at Ohio State University and in Cushing, Oklahoma. Cushing is where the President explained his justification for approving this leg of the pipeline, echoing the themes of his executive order:

There’s a bottleneck…here because we can’t get enough…oil to our refineries fast enough… TransCanada has applied to build a new pipeline to speed more oil from Cushing to…refineries down on the Gulf Coast.  And today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape…and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done…So the southern leg of it [is] a [government] priority…The northern portion…[is] going to…[be] review[ed] properly…if [the government approves this pipeline]…we going to see jobs and growth…all across the country.

The following month, after the pro-pipeline speeches, Obama tried to act all tough against the oil and gas industry. According to an April 18th CNN Article, he required “drillers to capture emissions of certain air pollutants from new wells.” But under his direction, the Environmental Protection Agency allowed companies to “burn the pollutants [in question]…until the start of 2015” in a “nod to industry concerns [that the]…rules were being enacted too quickly.” This is not only a pro-Big Oil move, but it shows he weighs the concerns of the common American lower than that of Big Oil.

This month, the Obama Administration made what the independent blog site, Firedoglake, called “a deeply corrupt move.” Companies that used hydraulic fracturing (fracking) only needed to “disclose what chemicals they use after the well has been drilled.” This was giving in to Big Oil, thanks to meetings at the White House after the original rule was proposed three months earlier. Lobbyists representing those interests helped change the rule to their liking. As Firedoglake put it, the decision “to side with big oil over the American people and basic common sense” is pathetic. This decision is a further sign that Obama is an “oiled” president.

This corrupted nature comes back again when you look at Obama’s stance on speculation. His response has been weak-handed. He has said that should be investigated by Attorney General Eric Holder, “but nothing [really] has happened [because]… he seems to kind of accept the logic [that] we need to produce more domestic oil…and alternative energy sources” according to Paul Jay of the Real News Network.  In addition, Jay notes that Obama “doesn’t…talk…about the issue of speculation, about position limits [or about] the financialization [of oil].” Fidelity Investments continues this idea saying that “Obama would like to crack down…but he doesn’t talk about it often…or have enough friends in Congress [and that]…Obama’s attack on oil speculators…[is] doomed to join his legislative Wish List to Nowhere.” But this is not an issue isolated to Obama. The lack of action on these issues goes from the President to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and lack of a meeting of the CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, created by the Dodd-Frank Act, since 2009. Then Fidelity gets to the punch: “Obama can’t keep his eye on the crude [oil] bubble for very long.”

As a result of all of these connections to Big Oil, it wouldn’t be a surprise that the President gets money from them. Even though this is true, Republicans receive most of the money from them resulting in ThinkProgress’s derogatory name: the “Grand Oil Party.” But, the facts are undeniable: Big Oil has given to the Obama reelection campaign. The ExxonMobil Corporation has already given Obama $14,914 and Chevron Corporation has given him $9,750; still both corporations favor Mitt Romney for President in terms of money. In addition, Koch Industries, which is usually considered a Tea Party financier, is also an oil refining company, has given Obama a measly $1,000. Not surprisingly, after the administration’s response to the Gulf Oil Spill, BP favors Obama’s reelection. More money was given to him than contributions to Eric Cantor and John Boehner combined. Overall, OpenSecrets details that President Obama is the 12th biggest recipient of money, out of the top 20 recipients in the oil and gas industry.  He has received $181,957 in his campaign coffers. This comes at a time after Obama supposedly led the effort to end Big Oil’s big tax breaks, which was defeated in the Senate due to their influence. In recent times, however, especially in the past year, it has become evident that Obama is on the side of Big Oil, more than ever.

Big Oil (the “supermajors”) is the world’s five or sometimes six biggest publicly-owned oil & gas companies including American-based Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips Company British-based Royal Dutch Shell and BP and French-based Total S.A. Of the American companies, Obama seems to be on their side completely and overall on Big Oil’s side. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s eight years in office was much more on the side of the oil companies, but Obama still has a significant stake. What benefits the powerful oil corporations in America will, in turn, benefit the other world players. If such companies have headquarters in the United States like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, this is firmly the case. President Obama is on the side of Big Oil and is subsequently an “oiled” President. Until the President admits that he is more on the side of the world’s large oil corporations than the middle class, he will continue rhetoric that seems to speak for all Americans.

Let’s examine the administration’s political prose in claiming that its drone strikes are efficacious, ethical, legal, and wise.

On the Orwellian Claim that Drone Strikes are Efficacious

To be efficacious, drone strikes must a) actually achieve their objective and by a reasonable deadline; b) pursue the right objective; c) pursue a credible objective; d) be the best means available to achieve the objective; and e) avoid undesirable side effects and chain reactions.

a. Drone strikes can never achieve the objective of eliminating al-Qaeda and ending terrorism against the U.S. Drone strikes anger people in the countries struck, guaranteeing that al-Qaeda or mutations of it will keep the U.S. war on terror in perpetuity.

b. The objective of eliminating terrorism by eliminating al-Qaeda is not the right one. An unachievable objective can never be the right one.

c. Despite the propagandizing for it, the objective isn’t credible. Not everyone is gullible.  Consider these two truly patriotic and knowledgeable Americans. Paul Craig Roberts, a high-ranking official in the Reagan administration thinks the war on terror is a hoax designed to make Americans fearful and subservient. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the antiwar group Code Pink wasn’t fooled either. She was in the audience and interrupted the speaker to dispute his claims before being whisked away and handcuffed.

Another benefit to the administration is that its war propaganda and warring help distract Americans from the growing deterioration of socioeconomic conditions at home while U.S. militarism and imperialism continue to starve the domestic part of the federal budget solely for corporate and political self interests.

d. Drone strikes are the worst means for eliminating terrorism. The best means would be those designed to end the U.S. support of Israel’s militarism and her illegal building of settlements; substantially reduce U.S. military presence in the Great Middle East; substantially reduce welfare to the war industry; reduce dependence on foreign oil; and stop aiding global exploitation by multinational corporations headquartered in the U.S. or doing business primarily in the U.S.

e. Drone strikes can never avoid the so-called “collateral” killing and maiming of hundreds of non-targeted men, women and children and might not be able to avoid eventual retaliation worse than the attack on the twin towers.

On the Orwellian Claim that Drone Strikes are Ethical

Throughout history and across very different cultures certain ethical values have remained constant such as accountability, caring for others, excellence, fairness, fidelity, honesty, integrity, promise keeping, respecting others, and responsible citizenship. Only an Orwellian claim could twist those universal values to justify drone strikes; could argue that the “principle of humanity,” whatever that means to the administration “requires it to use weapons that will not inflict unnecessary suffering;” could cite abstruse principles of “necessity,” “distinction,” and “proportionately” as additional proof that drone strikes are ethical; and could assert that the administration is “harnessing every element of American power— [including] the power of our values.”

While acknowledging that many innocent, noncombatant men, women and children have been killed and wounded by U.S. drone strikes, the speaker claims the “administration puts a “premium—on protecting human life, including innocent civilians” but does not go on to say what exactly this premium is and what limit, if any, the administration has set on the toll taken by drone strikes before it decides that they are no longer efficacious and ethical. In truth, the administration, like those before it put a premium on sustaining the corpocracy, the Devil’s marriage between powerful corporate and political interests.

On the Orwellian Claim that Drone Strikes are Legal

Purportedly authoritative legal sources are cited, one after another, to substantiate the claim that drone strikes are legal but no mention is made of counter arguments such as, for instance, one made by the U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich that “Drones [are] a direct hit upon rule of law” or one made by Philip Ashton, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings suggesting that in certain circumstances (e.g., when the CIA is conducting the strikes) “U.S. drone strikes may violate international law.”

There is no acknowledgement by the administration that it is relying on legal loop holes to claim the legality of drone strikes; loop holes such as not declaring drone strikes to be an act of war since the Constitution requires Congress to declare war and using the CIA because it is somehow not bound by the same legal accountabilities.

Like Mafia bosses with their hit men, it can be argued that the war industry and war politicians are committing surrogate murders. What is ethical and legal about surrogate murdering?

On the Orwellian Claim that Drone Strikes are Wise

Drone strikes compared to other military means are a wise choice according to the Orwellian claim. Drone strikes are less constrained by geographical considerations; can be done more quickly; avoid danger to U.S. personnel by remotely flying the drones; reduce the danger to innocent people in the targeted area; can aim precisely at the intended targets; and strategically avoid troublesome consequences that can ensue from “deploying large armies.”

In assessing the wisdom of its choice the speaker side steps the issue of whether a wiser choice in the long run would be to persistently pursue peaceful means to eliminating al-Qaeda.

Only an Orwellian spokesperson would brag about the precautions the administration takes to ensure that its drone strikes demonstrate that the administration is a “standard bearer,” on the insistence of President Obama, in the conduct of war, including the use of drone strikes, adding that “if we want other nations to use these technologies responsibly, we must use them responsibly.” Welcome world to the Devil’s premium quality drones!

In Closing

Reading the transcript also reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s phrase, “the banality of evil” that she coined to characterize the thoughtless mind of Adolph Eichmann, whose trial she was reporting on for The New Yorker. Well, some of us have looked banal evil in the eye and it did not blink.

America’s worse enemy is not al-Qaeda, as treacherous as it may be according to the administration. America’s worse enemy is her own corpocracy. The only way to end it for good in this writer’s opinion is for Americans to organize and launch “two-fisted democracy power,” with one fist being a virtual network of organizations and groups carrying out a strategic plan of political, legislative, judicial and economic reform initiatives and the other fist being a large coalition of different segments of the populace applying pressure behind the reform initiatives (see further details here). The corpocracy is united. Its opposition is divided and weak.

Like many acculturated Americans, I was familiar with Robeson as an entertainer; his rendition of “Ol’ Man River” from Showboat (written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern in 1927) is considered an American classic. The dirgeful ballad describes the toil and strife of the black slave working the gambling ferry boats:

Colored folks work on de Mississippi,
Colored folks work while de white folks play,
Pullin’ dose boats from de dawn to sunset,
Gittin’ no rest till de judgement day.

In the score this refrain is marked optional; replaced with “[a] musical part” depending on the whim of the director, in deference to audiences perhaps not comfortable with this rendition. This “comfort level” is the driving force of acceptance of Othered minorities as citizens, as well as their presence within cultural manifestations and national mythologies. The allowance or not of these couplets speaks of an understood ever-shifting limit of tolerance, the tolerated never quite alloted full freedom.

From this vantage point, the recent presidential election takes on a different significance, the opposite of current received wisdom, that a historic event has taken place with the election of a black American as marking a “post-race” America. Barack Obama’s election instead represents a similar “limit of tolerance”, based on the behavior, thought, and action of the one tolerated. His mediation* as a new “ideal” on the other hand, wholly separate from actions which make him hard to differentiate from his predecessors, and removed from the mood on the street and realities suffered on the ground, is, in this light, not a contradiction.

One month before the election in 2008 I stopped into a hip-hop clothing store in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Various T-shirts sported the visage of Obama along with statements of pride and hope. “My President Is Black” read one, against the backdrop of an American flag, and with the words “The American Dream” on the reverse. This explosion in production of T-shirts and signage outside of the licensing purview of the Democratic National Committee¹ bears witness more to the weight placed on Obama’s shoulders than belief in “Hope” or “Change”. On the wall of the shop was a graffitied art piece reflecting Obama’s perceived political peers: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. To peer into Obama’s future we simply have to examine King, sadly reduced post-mortem to a shill for Alcatel and Cingular, and Mandela, who now serves a similar function as an ideal wholly removed from the realities of a post-apartheid South Africa, currently morphed into a neo-liberal and globalized nightmare.

Malcolm X, on the other hand, represented in image as well as in word and deed something much closer to the reality of lived life for many in the country, as stated in his famous “Ballot or the Bullet” speech in 1964:

No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver–no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare….

Reframed, these T-shirts thus become a grassroots manifestation of the poet Langston Hughes’s The Dream Deferred;² they implicitly contain the projection of what might happen if the dream is put off any longer. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of an Obama presidency.

Malcolm X also happens to be the only Black activist in the USPS booklet (this due to lobbying efforts), nonetheless painstakingly described therein as a “lifelong criminal” who did time in prison before his conversion to Islam. No mention is made of his assassination, perhaps due to his prescient description of the assassination of John Kennedy as America’s “chickens [coming] home to roost”. This was echoed by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright who said the same about the attack on the World Trade Center, and Like Malcolm X and Paul Robeson, Reverend Wright also suffered a smear campaign to paint him as a threat to the nation.

Full acceptance in a culture which mocked their aspirations

Part of what marks X, King, Robeson, and even Obama is their not matching their bestowed stereotype. In his book Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (Harper Torchbooks, 1966), Gilbert Osofsky states:

What was most striking about the Negro stereotype was the way it portrayed a people in an image so totally the reverse of what Americans considered worthy of emulation and recognition. The major and traditional American values were all absent from the Negro stereotype. The Negro was conceived of as lazy in an ambitious culture; improvident and sensuous in a moralistic society; happy in a sober world; poor in a nation that offered riches to all who cared to take them; childlike in a country of men…. Negroes hoped for full acceptance in a culture which mocked their aspirations.

The condition of the American black man was a function not just of racism, but of a built-in inability of those so tagged to voice or discuss the nature of the problem; an inversion in which the dominant discourse promulgated stereotypes which were subsumed within the dominated culture itself, and then further assumed and re-characterized by the targeted group in question.

It is only relatively recently that we are witnessing documentation of Robeson and his work–time having defused any revolutionary potential here–along with one of the first stars of an entertainment realm that tolerated black performance: Bert Williams. In 1903 Williams staged a musical comedy entitled In Dahomey that was so successful it forced the racial integration of many theaters in the States. Simultaneously, W.E.B. DuBois was seeing the birth of a Black cultural awakening in such work. In an essay from 1916 entitled “The Drama Among Black Folk”, he wrote:

In later days Cole and Johnson and Williams and Walker lifted minstrelsy by sheer force of genius into the beginnings of a new drama. White people refused to support the finest of their new conceptions like the “Red Moon” and the cycle apparently stopped. Recently, however, with the growth of a considerable number of colored theatres and moving picture places, a new and inner demand for Negro drama has arisen which is only partially satisfied by the vaudeville actors….The next step will undoubtedly be the slow growth of a new folk drama built around the actual experience of Negro American life.

This cultural expression, wrested from the dominant class, spoken in its own language, and directed inward in terms of audience was the de facto segregated black nation attempting to stand on its own feet and create its own place, speak in its own voice. For this reason it could not be tolerated. Dubois’s appeals for funds for such a theater went unheeded; audiences wished to see re-affirmation of their view of black Americans, as shaped by white actors in blackface makeup. The stillborn theatrical awakening was reduced even further to the horrific tragedy of actors such as Williams smearing oily burnt cork ash on their own [not] black [enough] faces.

This inversion of Black culture through the mediation of the white artist is evident as well in Porgy and Bess, an opera about Black life (written by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward in 1935). In a biography of George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, the jazz-era band leader stated, “the times are here to debunk Gershwin’s lampblack Negroisms.” Similarly, when listened to outside of the dominant discourse such as on the radio show L’épopée des musiques noires broadcast on Radio France Internationale,³ such artists speak openly of the racism that they suffered and which continues to plague them. That Duke Ellington successfully staged all-black musicals that rose above the minstrel dross remains lost within history; meanwhile, Showboat and Porgy and Bess have replaced actual historical memory.⁴

Black to the future

This specter of white men in black face rises every so often as a reminder and as a warning, but also as a marker of white privilege defended as “free speech”, as in the case of firefighters on Long Island who wore Afro wigs and black face in a community parade in the late ’80s:

The police commissioner’s management authority has been undermined by federal Judge John Sprizzo’s June 23 ruling, following a non-jury trial, that the city did not have the right to fire a police officer and two firefighters who rode in blackface and wore Afro wigs on a parade float in 1988. Police Officer Joseph Locurto and the two firefighters were punished, wrote Sprizzo, “in retaliation for engaging in protected speech.” This “protected speech” involved being part of a float with the banner “Black [sic] to the Future: Broad Channel 2098,” which the defendants said was a parody of black racial integration into the mainly white Broad Channel neighborhood. They threw watermelon and fried chicken at parade goers and, as the parade was ending, a firefighter grabbed the back of the truck and dangled himself toward the ground, re-enacting the brutal dragging murder of a black man in Texas two months earlier.

Although we might not remember the vaudeville circuits of the early 20th century, this news item attests to the lingering epithets and uglinesses that were used to disparage blacks of that period. Their deep-seatedness is revealed in the non-reaction to their use, and the ensuing disapproval if not dismissal of the discussion that might follow such an event. This legally protected “free speech” leaves no humanizing aspect untargeted, by referring directly to black stage characters and their disempowering nicknames (Step-‘n’-Fetch-It, Jim Crow); to the sight of white eyes peering out of black face ([rac]coon); to the percentage of black blood in a person’s bloodstream (high yellow, quadroon); to one’s renegade slave background (maroon). Furthermore, the “reverse” of this often used as a defense, namely, disparaging terms for whites, are few in number, hardly as powerful, and are by contrast comical in their ineffectiveness.

This brings up the main point of any such discussion of representation, which cannot be limited to its visual or aural perception: the power differential involved. Who is the audience, and where do they fit societally speaking? What is my physical, technical, and economic ability to reach them? What are the various legal rights that enable and/or impinge such communication? What is my privilege to make such a statement, and what personal, communal, moral, etc. limitations might I place on myself before doing so? What is my luxury to so speak, above and beyond these other aspects of such expression?

Examples of unspoken referents thus weigh even heavier, in the sense that one need not even speak to evoke the same racist sentiment: Confederate flags flying over southern state capitol buildings (or in hidden locations out of public view); separated primary elections that reflect the class breakdown of the political parties along racial lines; the voting down of a federal holiday commemorating Martin Luther King (“states’ rights” makes direct reference to George Wallace’s statement of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”); the practice of diluting minority power via the gerrymandering of electoral districts; the use of scare tactics at the polls; the prohibition of the vote for felons; etc.

The equivalent disparity of direct expression within the culture, along similar overt as well as covert lines, includes endless examples: Billie Holiday used to relate how she was run out of Mobile, Alabama for singing “Strange Fruit” (written by Abel Meeropol in 1937), a song about the infamous practice of lynching. In Louisiana more recently, black students were convicted and imprisoned for their protest and reaction to a noose being hung from a tree on the school lawn; this “warning” to the black student population came after they decided to assemble underneath the “white student’s” tree. A super-mediated* discussion of the word “nigger” took place when Michael Richards (Kramer from the television show Seinfeld), not happy with some black hecklers, informed them that “fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass.” More disturbing are the commemorative postcards made from photographs of hanged men, these “black bodies swinging/in the Southern breeze”, surrounded by smiling white faces as might be seen at a picnic or a communal pigsticking, and today disturbingly mimicked by images from Abu Ghaib prison in Iraq, as well as of soldiers in Afghanistan posing with corpses.

A share of the wealth and a piece of the action

It should thus come as no surprise that during the Democratic primaries of 2008, Andrew Cuomo made reference to Barack Obama’s “shuck and jive”, a phrase which has no meaning outside of imposed black vaudeville dialect for shiftiness and evasiveness, making semantic reference to costume change, rapid dance steps, and a fancy ability with words. The attorney general’s disavowal of the term as racist is contradicted by his former statement that voting for his [black] rival for the New York governor’s race, Carl McCall, would result in a “racial contract” between Black and Hispanic Democrats which “can’t happen”.⁵ Similar was the statement from Georgia Congressman Lynn Westmoreland that Obama seemed “uppity”. Everyone who speaks American English completes this noun phrase with the one epithet that follows, explicitly referring to a black man who should “know his role”.

These terms and images are so loaded that they only need be hinted at to get the message across; even in their denial they hit the target and leave their mark. The resulting backtracking can be seen to be prefigured; meaning they are planned if not staged, the knowledge remains that exculpation awaits for simply denouncing the action of having stated them, or else by labeling the targets thereof as “oversensitive”, “politically correct”, or “racist” themselves. In this way, the legacy of the ignoble practices and codes of that time most assuredly live on, as a chronic condition of the culture itself; the equivalent of linguistic sucker punches such as “I would never refer to my opponent as a Communist.”⁶

Then candidate Obama listlessly defended himself against such provocations, and was rewarded with the presidency. In stark contrast, no U.S. postage stamp, indeed, few American history books represent any leader from the Black Power movements of the 1960s, and this despite the acknowledgment at that time by then president Richard Nixon, who used the term Black Power in a speech attempting to subvert the movement at its core:

[M]uch of the Black militant talk these days is actually in terms far closer to the doctrines of free enterprise than to those of the welfarist thirties–terms of “pride”, “ownership”, “private enterprise”, “capital”, “self-assurance”, “self-respect”… What most of these militants are asking is not separation, but to be included in–not as supplicants, but as owners, as entrepreneurs–to have a share of the wealth and a piece of the action. And this is precisely what the Federal central target of the new approach ought to be. It ought to be oriented toward more Black ownership, for from this can flow the rest–Black pride, Black jobs, Black opportunity and yes, Black power…⁷

The actuality is better known: the former Black Power movement leaders have either been assassinated or put in prison, have come around to parrot the dominant discourse, or have retreated to obscurity and/or academia; all have been rendered place-less, historically silenced and disappeared. Similarly, if no one remembers the black musicians of jazz, blues, funk, gospel, etc. that the U.S. Postal Service attempts to pay tribute to, everyone on the other hand knows their white stand-ins, their role-reversers: Elvis, Joe Cocker, The Rolling Stones, Eminem, etc. To reinforce this diminishment, blacks of a certain celebrity are often referred to as the shadow of their white counterparts, especially in terms of politics and culture: “the black Daniel Webster” applied to Samuel Ringgold Ward, or “the black Callas”, attributed to Barbara Hendricks, or now, “the black Kennedy”, in a reflection of racial privilege, and the one-way directional flow of cultural appropriation and political designation.

The rainbow sign

In one such Black spiritual now forgotten, God gives Noah the “Rainbow Sign” that ends his estrangement from the land; however the sign comes with a warning that He is done with water, promising “the fire next time”. In his book of the same name, James Baldwin describes Malcolm X’s relationship with the United States thus:

Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals’ attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives, or even their knowledge–revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man. When Malcolm X, who is considered the movement’s second-in-command, and heir apparent, points out that the cry of “violence” was not raised, for example, when the Israelis fought to regain Israel, and, indeed, is raised only when black men indicate that they will fight for their rights, he is speaking the truth. The conquests of England, every one of them bloody, are part of what Americans have in mind when they speak of England’s glory. In the United States, violence and heroism have been made synonymous except when it comes to blacks, and the only way to defeat Malcolm’s point is to concede it and then ask oneself why this is so….there is no reason that black men should be expected to be more patient, more forebearing, more farseeing than whites; indeed, quite the contrary. The real reason that non-violence is considered a virtue in Negroes…is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened.

Here Baldwin presages the purely symbolic non-threatening black man who will be acceptable in the United States. Another such example, Bill Cosby, echoes this when he states that “all the problems [on his TV show] were not solved, but were dealt with without violence.” In contrast to the [acceptable] violence of Israel and England (which too has its own “Jerusalem”⁸ ) Baldwin reveals what is most threatening about the landless or placeless minority nations within Anglo-Saxon realms. More importantly, he reveals society’s inherent fear of those who have similarly examined the topic of self-representation (Ture, Fanon, Roy, Dabashi, etc.), and who conclude that violence is, perhaps, the only possible reaction to greater violences both actual and virtual suffered by the oppressed.

We’re here without any rights

This discussion of violence controlled by those who have the power to define the parameters for said violence brings us to Sacha Cohen, and his portrayal of an Arab leader in his movie The Dictator. In naming the dictator “Gen. Shabazz Aladeen”, pointed reference is made to the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X’s taken name, juxtaposed mockingly against the exoticized “Aladdin” (which removes any religious significance here). In an interview with Howard Stern Cohen states:

“All these dictators blame everything on the Zionists,” said Baron Cohen, “it’s a great scapegoat. Now, young people are saying the reason we’re not happy is we’re living in these dictatorships. There’s a guy who’s a trillion-aire who’s sleeping with models and actresses, and we’re here without any rights being persecuted.”

In a failed bid to play victim, Cohen instead reveals his “Arab-face” minstrelsy; his portrayal of stereotypes are in fact directed at an audience the class of which has controlled the destiny of those living “under dictatorships” for the greater part of the last century, if not the past 500 years. The insinuation here is that such dictatorships are a function of the Arab inability to assume democracy (a great Orientalism, barely worthy of non-scholars such as Bernard Lewis) and claiming falsely that the region has no democratic or, indeed, socialist, pan-Arabist, anti-colonialist, etc. aspects to its past. It is too easy to discuss these neglected historical forces of liberation in the Arab and Muslim world to debunk such heinous racism–Mossadegh, Shari’ati, Fanon, Memmi, Nasser, etc. (among many, many others) all come quickly to mind–and this, coupled with the fact that the Third World’s leftist realm has been targeted for extermination for decades if not more than a century, only reinforces the hubris of Cohen’s statement.

In economic terms, it also reveals the power differential inherent to capitalism and globalization, and is reminiscent of Bill Cosby’s attacks on “bling”-style rap artists–he doesn’t even admit to their more political precursors–who have managed to acquire wealth and status by following all of the lessons learned in a neo-liberal society (similar to Mexican drug cartels, the Mafia, the Saudi monarchy, etc.) but who get punished when they become too competitive (like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan) and are thus rendered docile and brought within the domain of global Capital. “The trillionaire sleeping with models and actresses” is a glorified trope within American culture, so it is odd to find it given populist overtones as concerns the current Arab revolts and uprisings, as if we are to believe that in any way Sacha Cohen finds common cause with the Arab street.

The idea that the struggle against the colonial apartheid state of Israel, indeed, that the resistance to First-World globalizing dominance in the region as premised and foregrounded by the Palestinian struggle, might somehow be simplistically reduced to “criticism” of Zionism (in and of itself an ignoble ideology) is so Orwellian an inversion as to be unworthy of retort. There is no point wasting time considering the cultural “flip”, in imagining an Arab or Muslim “doing the same thing” culturally speaking; there is likewise no point in discussing the ridiculous concept of “reverse racism” when such debates require a thorough examination of said expression along economic and political lines. This, the power differential of the dominant culture as portrayed by that culture’s media, is the central point of this discussion, and however we might examine it, those who are minority, who are Other, fundamentally cannot rise above such representations as they are played out within this mediated system.

A critical black gaze

As a black American convert to Islam, Malcolm X, despite mediated attempts to historically reduce him, could very well be a case of a sub-mediated* image that survives such a pulverization, and as such, serves as a model to follow to bring us out of this quandary. As stated by bell hooks, in one of her essays concerning and quoting Malcolm X:

Understanding the power of mass media images as forces that can overdetermine how we see ourselves and how we choose to act, Malcolm X admonished black folks: “Never accept images that have been created for you by someone else. It is always better to form the habit of learning how to see things for yourself: then you are in a better position to judge for yourself.” Interpreted narrowly, this admonition can be seen as referring only to images of black folks created in the white imagination. More broadly, however, its message is not simply that black folks should interrogate only the images white folks produce while passively consuming images constructed by black folks; it urges us to look with a critical eye at all images. Malcolm X promoted and encouraged the development of a critical black gaze, one that would be able to move beyond passive consumption and be fiercely confronting, challenging, interrogating.⁹

Proclaimed “hope” or promised “change” should not derail any criticism of the Image Machine, especially when this Machine has minimized minority histories to literally belittled images riding on tickets of commerce; to bogus misrepresentative celluloid trash; to symbolic representations of white privilege embodied in the heads of state and power: All the more reason we must be “fiercely confronting, challenging, interrogating…look[ing] with a critical eye at all images”.

The answer to such racism lies not in a faux multi-culturalism, nor in a homogenizing, “borderless”, “nomadic” neo-liberalism. The answer lies in manifestations of resistance to this dominant culture which are able to pre-emptively prevent co-optation by the dominant discourse. Hamid Dabashi, in his book Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in Time of Terror, states:

Out of this cul-de-sac, one possibility has always remained open: a creative re/constitution of cultural character and historical agency from a range of poetic and aesthetic possibilities, where the notion of the beautiful is violently wrested out of the banal, the sublime forcefully out of the ridiculous, agency defiantly out of servitude, subjection combatively out of humiliation.

This requires, however, that we change our perspective and our own viewpoint first; that we radically re-orient ourselves in terms our relationship to cultural consumption and its source. These manifestations as described by Dabashi are hard to suss out since we have unfortunately lost the ability to read them as such, for having been so long out of touch with our own creative potential, and for having forgotten the formerly “local” media manifestations of guerrilla television, public access cable, pirate radio, radical journals, homegrown theater, etc.

True to our native land

On January 30, 2009, in Denver, Colorado, a black woman was asked to sing the national anthem during the State of the City address by the mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper.¹⁰ Instead of the Star-Spangled Banner, Rene Marie offered a rendition of the “black national anthem”, resulting in hate mail and an outcry denouncing her action. She stated that her decision was based on “how I feel about living in the United States, as a black woman, as a black person”. Further, she said that she would no longer sing the national anthem because she “often feels like a foreigner in the United States”.

The correct response of the mayor’s office should have been “this is her right; this is her freedom of speech”, like our blackfaced firemen, like Andrew Cuomo; this was not forthcoming. The song which originally debuted in 1900 is entitled, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (words and music by John Johnson, ironically quoted in the benediction for Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony), and it ends with the lyrics: “May we forever stand,/True to our God,/True to our native land.” This takes on a particularly humbling tone given the replacement of the previous attempts of minority Americans to leave their ghettoes with more current almost prideful acceptances of this, their “allowed” place.

This is manifested in the outlying reaches of Los Angeles–180 degrees removed from Cohen’s Hollywood–the scene of the Watts and Rodney King riots, and described in the music of Bambu¹¹ among many others, and where a “beautiful” form of dance was created from the “banal” by Tommy Johnston, aka “Tommy the Clown”, borrowing from stripper pole-dancing, although performed by both sexes, and used to entertain children and adults at birthday and block parties. The dance is referred to as clowning, and it went on to spawn another form of dance, angrier and reflective of street realities for a generation lost, often mimicking police beatings and other brutalities, called crumping. Both are performed by youth attempting to escape the reality of gang-controlled streets, where misuse of colors is a marker for murder, and choices of home, school, job, and future are systemically limited.

In the documentary about this dance form called Rize! the youth in the movie describe their lives imbued with a renascent spirituality, sense of purpose, and avoidance of the commercialization that has befallen previous expression from this community. Included in this film is the striking image of a black man now painting his face up in white clown makeup and not minstrel black burnt cork, referencing a forgotten cultural marker and not a racist imposition; following Malcolm’s advice to “never accept images that have been created for you by someone else.”

Speak from the street

And so as Arabs and Muslims now targeted with similar minstrelsies, we do ourselves no favor when we simply smear brown paint on our brown features in order to entertain the Master in the Master’s house; we perform no beneficent action by simply parroting endless mediated exchanges with little bark and less bite. Sacha Cohen would ironically represent all of us as tinpot dictators, when it is he, culturally, politically, economically, and in terms of class and avowed ideological affiliation, who has much more in common with this fetid realm of the world stage than does the majority of Arabs and Muslims on the planet. What does Sacha Cohen know about what is going on in his own backyard, much less this world in active revolt? Indeed, it is Cohen who needs to “know his role”.

While we point out this obvious classist and racist arrogance, we must also strive to find the countervailing non-mediated* representatives that exist closer to home and which speak from the street: the Egyptian women whose strikes in the textile mills (not Twitter) led to intifada; similarly the women of the neighborhoods surrounding Tahrir Square in Cairo whose cooking fed this revolution; the 70,000 Palestinian refugees marching to the Lebanese border in May of 2011; the owner of the last kufiyyeh factory¹² in occupied and embattled Al-Khalil, undone by sanctions and outdone by Chinese imports; the Syrian migrant workers slaving to build Beirut skyscrapers, far from their rural communities rightfully rising up in revolts kidnapped by regional powers; the Bedouin populations kept stateless and impoverished; Palestinian hunger strikers; etc. ad infinitum, all with their unique creative contributions of craft, art, music, graffiti, dance, calligraphy, song, poetry, spoken and written word, theater, etc.

For of this common resistance might rise the creative manifestations–the “new folk drama”–that feed back into the revolts against the likes of Sacha Cohen and his ilk who would define us and confine us; manifestations that do not allow simply for a misconstrued and patently false “comfort level” or status quo, that do not inadvertently sell us short, that do not continue to sell us out. In this is perhaps a great step forward, since, as Malcolm X asks of us, once the realization of such mediated deception and the unveiling of the deceivers hits home, once we move from defensive mode to rediscovering the energy that would be better put to creative output, once we wean ourselves from the source of our own misrepresentation, then we might actually recognize the creative source all around us; a new nahdah; proving with our creative action what we already know to be true in our thoughts and words. Paul Robeson, in control of his own creative manifestation in concert, changed the formal and staged lyrics of “Ol’ Man River” to better frame his feelings of being an outsider within American society. It is likewise time for our own re-imaging; our own reformulation; our own restaging.

* Mediation
Mediation defines expression as a function of the distance from direct sensorial witnessing, on a spectrum that ranges from non-mediated to super-mediated.

Non-mediated: A spontaneous expression that is not designed, pre-selected, edited, planned; the voicer of the unsaid.

Example(s): The spontaneous verbal utterance or physical actualization in reaction to witnessing a car accident; Kanye West going off-prompt during a televised fundraiser for the victims of hurricane Katrina, stating: “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”

Super-mediated: Expression that is designed, pre-selected, edited, or planned, possibly within the constraints of a given group, its ideology, its manifesto or tenets, that may or may not stand in opposition to the dominant discourse, but whose use of tools, languages, systems, and technologies in fact are meant to enable, sustain, and promote such dominant discourse.

Example(s): The television show Cops with an episode concerning drunk driving; drivers’ education movies; a presidential press conference in the aftermath of Katrina.

Sub-mediated: Expression that is designed, pre-selected, edited, or planned within the constraints of a given group, its ideology, its manifesto, or tenets, that absolutely stands in opposition to the dominant discourse often in its uniqueness and its non-derivation from current customs or tropes, and which avoids or attempts to subvert the tools, languages, systems, and technologies of super-mediation.

Example(s): The white-painted ghost bikes of various cities that represent both the individual killed in an accident and their collective whole; the Legendary K.O’s rap song set to mashup videos for “George Bush Don’t Like Black People”.

1. “Dreaming XXL”; Jake Austen. Harper’s, November 2008. p. 58–59.
2. What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up/Like a raisin in the sun?/Or fester like a sore–/And then run?/Does it stink like rotten meat?/Or crust and sugar over–/like a syrupy sweet?/Maybe it just sags/like a heavy load./Or does it explode?
3. The Story of Black Musics [sic].
4. Both musicals are featured as postage stamps. To note is that “First-day” issue of stamps exists for a very particular audience that collects such stamps for their value; this is a different audience than the subject of the stamps themselves.
5. Reference to this conversation taped by a reporter for the Jewish Forward. Interesting here and necessitating another treatise is the ability of Cuomo to claim “whiteness”, as opposed to his formerly equally marking ethnic identity.
6. Testimony of Paul Robeson before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
7. Black Liberation and Socialism, Ahmed Shawki.
8. William Blake poem and later hymn.
9. Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations.
10. USA Today, January 31, 2009; “Controversy after singer substitutes ‘black national anthem’ for ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’
11. “Pull It Back.”
12. Kufiyeh project.

Starting from the adopted home base of Killadelphia — city of descending tough guy mayors like Frank Rizzo, MOVEabomber Wilson Goode and, now, raccoon-killer Michael Extermi-Nutter, a city where the pedophile priests and NAMBLA-pamby football coaches roam and the streets overflow with the cheapest narcotics (Philly cheese steaks), a city where the homeless and their outdoor nuisance feedings are now “raptured” out of sight from the brand new Barnes Foundation building and where Christian forgiveness is reserved for dogfighting millionaire quarterbacks (so long as they convert on third and ten) — I drove 2700 miles to San Diego.

The Pennsylvania turnpike, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were all uneventful. But somewhere in southern Missouri, towering over the puppy mills (and really blossoming in Oklahoma), the Intercontinental Ballistic Crosses (ICBCs) started to appear — gigantic symbols of the Lord, having nothing to do architecturally with the churches they dwarfed, just proudly smiting the earth amid funny church signs and the dubious morality of the “Kum & Go” convenience stores. I imagined that people woke up one morning and found the ICBCs erected overnight, unaware that they were actually defused Russian ordnance from the Cold War. I think when Gorbachev found his marbles and went home, he changed the targeting a few degrees and, in a kind gesture, fired the empty crosses where they would be most appreciated.

Ohio is just as religious as Oklahoma but you won’t see these showy crosses along the highways of the buckeye state. The reason is that Ohio is very poor and if these crosses weren’t secured really well, they’d end up torn apart and sold for scrap or tinkered with in somebody’s barn; some crafty person might take a blow torch and tin snips and fashion them into howling wolves, grizzly bears, soaring eagles, coyotes wearing bandanas and other iconic symbols of American freedom that nobody in work-till-you-drop Ohio has ever actually experienced. Or, whole ICBCs might be laid out in the parking lot of the Caesar Creek Flea Market just like any other self-defense weapon we have a God-given right to carry — whether we can carry it or not. A mechanic from Donnelsville might turn the tiniest ones into formula one crosses and race them at the Kil-Kare Speedway in Xenia. So long Akron Soap Box Derby, hello Crucifix 500.

(It may surprise you to learn that should there ever be a revolution in America, Ohioans will be at the forefront. This is because Ohioans understand that laws are bullshit. The first step of revolution is lawlessness because anything lawful you can do is totally ineffective, and anything effective that you can do will soon be outlawed. For instance, no one in Philly will ever — again — lead a revolution because they all think it’s normal to sit obediently in traffic for two hours. In Ohio, if there’s a wreck on I-70 and people have to sit for longer than ten minutes, you’ll see cars backing two miles down the shoulder to get off at the previous exit or pick up trucks driving over the most broken down fence they can find through somebody’s field. And the cops know to mind their own business which is not the people’s business. “Waiting” is for rude loud REMFs from New Jersey, whose state bird is the tufted nowherefastgoomba. People from New Jersey think they’re whip smart but they don’t know the answers to the simplest questions — like: What’s the difference between a hillbilly, a briar and a briar-hopper?)

But don’t imagine that God is troubled by the uses that Ohioans might find for crosses. God loves Ohio’s hillbillies — that’s why He didn’t ruin our lives with money. I didn’t even know I was a hillbilly till I moved to Philadelphia several years ago. Then I found out I have a drawl and that I operate on “Ohio time,” meaning I’m slow as agave nectar. Apparently, East Coasters can see their entire lives pass before their eyes before I can get the next word out. We Ohioans know that hillbillies, proper, are from Kentucky and we make all kinds of fun of them.

Where does that put Tennessee, you might ask? For the answer, I recommend that you stand high on Route 449, just entering Pigeon Forge, and look at all the booths and shops and stalls and shelves and tables that line both sides of the road for what seems like miles, the people let outside and doing their business on God’s creation, the beautiful junk sale of America all tamped down by a bosomy haze, said to be fog but really just smoke from round the clock gun blasts. Like a lot of sanitized American history, they don’t teach you in school that this area was originally called the Great Gunsmoky Mountains. Then have one more cup of coffee before you go to the valley below, onward to Dollywood where you will bounce off the sweltering human wall paper of sexist t-shirts, rebel flags, hunting caps and, unlike any other amusement park parking lot I’ve ever been in and for no discernible reason, white guys walking around with shotguns and rifles. (It’s OK, Dolly, the Thunderhead coaster makes up for everything.)

What’s Alabama like, you persist in asking? It’s like this: Once, on a roller coaster trip, a friend woke up from a nap and saw I was driving his brand new company car 100 mph in a 70 mph zone. “What the fuck are you doing — slow down!” he shouted. And I said, “Go back to sleep, everybody’s passing me, they’re pissed off I’m going so slow.” See, Alabama might have some revolutionary tendencies.

But I digress. Back to Oklahoma.

Interspersed with the funtasmal play of crosses and Kum & Gos there are also large highway signs noting five Oklahoma people treasures: General Tommy Franks, Toby Keith, Garth Brooks, Will Rogers and Mickey Mantle. (WARNING: two first names = trouble ahead.)

Right away I don’t like these signs because 40% of the people on them either directed (Franks) or vocally supported (Keith) America’s monstrous wars of aggression and racist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn’t have a permit to carry my paranoia, negativity and vengefulness into Oklahoma but, being an unlawful Ohioan by birth, I did it anyway, and I found these signs to be jingoistic, probably racist, probably expressing a certain (highly crappy) political viewpoint rather than some innocuous list of meritorious Oklahomans, and all probably geared toward reminding us white people the required every five miles and every five minutes that we’re still on top, goddamit, whether it’s kicking dark-skinned ass across the ocean or making it magically disappear in the “homeland” — like the African-American author of “Invisible Man,” Oklahoman Ralph Ellison, who’s probably in line to get his name on a sign right after a Toby Keith roadie.

I can see Will Rogers being on this list. And Mickey Mantle, too — although if I wanted the greatest American athlete of the previous century, according to a 2001 ABC Wide World of Sports poll, it would be Sac and Fox Nation Jim Thorpe. And although I don’t like “new country” music; I understand putting Garth Brooks up there because, wake up and smell the tofu chicken fried steak (yeah, Brooks and wife Trisha Yearwood are now vegan): Brooks has sold more records than anybody except Elvis and the Beatles — more than Sinatra, Dylan, the Stones and Johnny Cash. But if I chose an Oklahoma musician it would be the communist Woody Guthrie. Brooks (let alone Toby Keith) will never have the influence on other musicians or the country as a whole that Woody Guthrie continues to have. Guthrie wrote the most communistic popular song, “This Land Is Your Land,” that American school children are still joyously belting out, and he’s famous for having a sign on his guitar which read: “This machine kills fascists.” If Gen. Tommy Franks was a troubadour his guitar would say, “This machine kills women and children” and, with every strum, white phosphorus would blow from the hole as he sang his greatest hit, “Lord, I Don’t Do Body Counts.”

So I called the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to find out what’s up with these signs. What I found out is that my carefully considered thesis was wrong because these signs went up in 1994, way before the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq, and I mean the 2003 George W. Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq, not the 1990-1991 George H.W. Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq which, actually, Tommy Franks was also part of, though not in the “starring” role.

America, I know you can forgive me about being wrong about this because you forgave Condi Rice scaring the bejesus out of you talking about a a nonexistent “mushroom cloud” and Colin Powell talking about Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and Dick Cheney talking about the nonexistent Saddam/al-Qaeda connection. You know, all the mass murder that your nonexistent empathy leads to.

Still, to show what a tussle God and the Devil go through in Oklahoma I give you, in this corner, ruling class gangsters like General Franks, neo-con CIA spook Jim Woolsey and gay-bashing Family Research Council director Tony Perkins.

But in the other corner, punching way above his weight: a young gay Oklahoma man, a peace hero, a working class hero, the kind of stand up and be counted person that America always says it loves, let’s hear it for Private First Class Braaaaaadley Maaaaaanning who, if he actually did release the classified documents of American war crimes to WikiLeaks, is a great patriot and that most rare specie on earth, an American CITIZEN — someone who believes in an informed and engaged populace, who believes that America’s misleaders should be held accountable and taxpayers should see how our money’s spent, who believes that the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Principles matter more than the emetic decrees of Baracchio Obama whose ears get bigger with every promise he breaks — presumably, all the better to “listen” to us in his panopticon surveillance state. (Right on, Big Brother! Disempower to the sheeple! Gimme five — no, no, hold up, not five years in prison, not five bucks an hour, not five more tours of Ragheadistan, I don’t want your reelection platform, just gimme five — oh, you wouldn’t understand…) And Manning not only believes in being a functioning American citizen but is willing to go to jail for it, possibly for the rest of his life.

(Cartoon intermission. Here’s how fractured this fairy tale is: Baracchio, formed by his creator Goldman “Geppetto” Sachs, has morphed into Dumbo the Republican elephant while Pinocchio at least changed part-way into the Democrat’s symbol, the jackass. Can’t Joe Biden give a blowhardy speech to all the insects on the White House lawn in the hope that a Jiminy Cricket hops forward to give Baracchio a little conscience?)

Contrast Manning’s courage and self-sacrifice with the video game drone killers bombing people from 7,000 miles away or the silence of Baracchio’s vacant liberal lambs, who had such a blast trashing the Texlexic bumpkin (before war crimes were cool), and whose racist floodgates are now officially open to “get tough on” and slaughter people of color around the globe just like their secret idols, the right wing fascists. Manning is not a “good German” — guess we should update this to “good American” — but he’s a great Oklahoman.

To better honor Gen. Tommy Franks I suggest that Oklahoma have a million crime scene silhouettes painted on the roads representing the Iraqis that Franks is partly responsible for killing and erect four million minaret-shaped reflectors along the shoulders representing the Iraqi refugees he helped make. The whole state could be haunted, just like this entire country needs haunted until it stops its savage destruction of other nations. The American military has every advantage in the world but is still getting kicked out of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite trillions spent and despite hundreds of thousands of American soldiers wounded, maimed and mentally destroyed and over 6,400 killed. And Bradley Manning gets put in a cage — this is all that the world needs to know about the in-your-face evil rot that is America. And what have the “good Americans” done — aside from their children baking cookies for the troops in the beginning? Nothing — they’re more immature than their children: they won’t fight the wars, they won’t end the wars, they won’t even pay for the wars — that’s on their kids’ dime. They lost interest in the broken Iraq and Afghanistan toys a long time ago. KMAG YOYO indeed.

Oklahoma has never produced a leader, a president, of the white settler nation of America while Ohio has produced eight of them. And this white settler nation has never had a woman leading it, unless you count Eleanor Roosevelt. Oklahoma, however, has produced the leader of a nation, the Cherokee nation and a woman to boot, Wilma Mankiller. Oklahoma, you have leaders and heroes, maybe you just don’t like their color, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or political beliefs. Jim Thorpe, Bradley Manning, Woody Guthrie, Ralph Ellison, Wilma Mankiller … shhhhhh. You might as well have roads signs that say: Leaving the MediOKre State — Please Drive Through Like Hell Again.

The real problem with Oklahoma isn’t the ICBCs or the lack of recognition for many of its heroes and leaders. No, the real problem is that Oklahoma conquered the world, starting in the 1930s. I knew the world was conquered, and I unfriended it a long time ago, but I didn’t know exactly how it got conquered until recently.

Back in the 1930s, the zeitgeist was buzzing like flies on shit in Oklahoma. Wiley Post became the first person to fly around the world in 1931 and he designed the pressurized flight suit in 1934 (he later died in the same plane crash as Will Rogers.) And in 1935 electric guitar pioneer Bob Dunn made one of the first recordings (western swing) of the electric guitar for Decca.

And, for our purposes, several Oklahoma visionaries wandered alone in the flat dusty non-wilderness, unknowingly creating a great and powerful new religion that would rapidly eclipse and make all others seem really boring: engineering professors Holger Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale invented the parking meter (1935), Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Oklahoma City Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain, invented the shopping cart (1937) and police officer Clinton Riggs first conceived of the highway yield sign (1939). These prophetic Oklahomans understood that modern Americans and their wheeled contraptions needed to be rounded up, tamed and organized for the coming religion of Stuff — their innovations helped the faithful forage for it more safely, haul it more efficiently and wait our turn for it more fairly. The streets of heaven were to be paved with… more pavement, lots of pavement, and the purpose of life was revealed to be buying and spending and acquiring. Goldman, in particular, stands taller each day because his ingenious shopping cart is now the home on wheels for millions of Americans, but without the pollution and waste of resources associated with a motor home or the upkeep of the stationary kind.

And it all led inexorably to the temples of Oklahoma-based Walmart, the pointy end of late monopoly capitalism’s spear, where the believers, though speaking in tongues, can be understood to say: “I saved 5 cents on the knife used to cut my own throat! Hallelujah!” And if you need further proof that this religion has arrived, (i.e., they’re fighting about it), attend the Black Friday service or the midnight madness prayers where the lumpen shoppetariat tramples and pepper sprays other worshoppers to “save” and get “saved” the most. As a kind of Crackerjack prize, there’s also self-flagellation but it doesn’t happen on the pilgrimage — it happens 30 days later upon opening the mail, at 23% interest compounded anally for however long you can take it.

This land isn’t my land and it’s not Woody Guthrie’s land. Oklahoma, this land really is your land. It’s a Piggly Wiggly world.

I’d like to thank the people at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation who answered my questions about the highway signs, though one did wonder, “Where are you’re going with this, Randy?” As you can see, as with most things in life, there’s never really anything to worry about.

Countering, Democrats will huff that the travails of their dead battery, soft spot, touching turmoil or whatever it is that’s inside their boxer’s shorts or panties is no one’s business, least of all the government, though, of course, the Democrat-appointed Janet Napolitano and her TSA hordes have set up an enduring base next to their exposed, uh, discount toys. Irradiated and propped up by Cialis, they don’t look half bad. Oh yes, they do.

According to Democrats, Obama is a good liberal because he will also send gay men and women worldwide to massacre whoever gets in the way of the oil liberals need to drive their SUVs to anti-war rallies.

According to Republicans, Mitt is a good conservative since he can’t stand Ellen DeGeneres, Johnny Weir, or Barney the Dinosaur, although he will condemn a husband or wife halfway across the globe to commit unspeakable acts for years, while the remaining spouse languishes at home in anxiety and loneliness, to be comforted by some groggy chick at the bar, talk radio, a young cable guy, Jesus, reruns of American Idol or, in the best case scenario, nothing at all.

Republican politicians pretend to cherish the traditional family, while their Democratic counterparts feign that everyone should have a right to a family, but, in fact, neither side cares about anyone’s family, because they are indifferent if not hostile to human connections, period. Propped up by our military-banking complex, both parties support a bankrupting and bankrupted banking system and an endless war policy that destroy families worldwide, including here.

On top of that, they’ve tricked you into being plugged to their various brainwashing machines all day long, so that you’re divorced from your very self, honey. Outside, birds, sunshine and mounds of corpses your tax money murdered, though you wouldn’t know it, because you’re addicted to songs you’ve heard for the billionth time, each, as well as Snookie updates, pixelated pussies, cocks and boxscores.

Outside, a busking violinist says that his life is easier now, since there are so many out-of-business stores he can play in front of, without being shooed away. Outside, a person, male or female, it’s not clear, poses as a horse for tips, as a real horse looks on. Outside, a Vietnam vet drinks mouthwash to get high, while an Iraq vet shows his discharge paper to prove that he is a genuine, disposable piece of fodder, and not just an ordinary panhandler. A pint of Listerine with 21.6% alcohol costs $4.50, compared to a 24 oz., tallboy can of Natural Ice at $1.49, with 5.9 % alcohol, so Listerine is a much, much better value. It’s not exactly Jameson, true, but a few gulps will get you buzzed for maybe five hours. Outside, a man sells Newport cigarettes, “Two for a dollar, two for a dollar. Who’s next? How are you today? Very good to see you. Welcome back, it’s happy Monday. Time to go to work! It’s a beautiful day today, but don’t get used to it. It’s going to rain tomorrow! We all have our own cross to bear, ladies and gentlemen. My, aren’t you lovely today! Yes, you! Welcome back!” If he sells the entire pack in an hour, he will make $3.50. Outside, a man drains a leftover soda fished from a trash can in a well-manicured downtown plaza surrounded by bank skyscrapers.

But inside the screen, and thus inside your mind, all is well, stable and sexy. The recovery is on track, unemployment is steadily going down, and new college graduates are entering an improving job market, with multiple offers even. Inside the screen, what happens in Europe stays in Europe, Detroit is back, California is still the land of milk and honey and, soon enough, we will be amped up by orations of hope, change, forward, believe in America, let America be America and, yes, America can!

In this land of peeling yet persistent illusions, none is more farcical than the Presidential election, for even as it promises renewal, common purpose, focus and hope, and demands a collective soul searching, even, this elaborate and drawn out ritual will deliver nothing more than a new (or renewed) apologist for the same set of crimes against humanity, country and you. If there’s any good to this coming circus, it’s that the empire seems determined to maintain a relative peace until the electoral shenanigans are over. Though it’s itching for new rounds of shock and awesome, y’all, because that’s how it makes its money, it doesn’t want to tip this tottering economy into the mother of all ditches, not when citizens are somewhat focused on how to correct or improve our common lot.

If enough machinists, PhDs and war veterans dumpster dive and share a honey bucket, if whores dally in middle-class suburbs and gas goes to 6 bucks, for example, the country will explode from sea to shining sea, and not just because of well-placed FBI agents. With events quickly spiraling out of control, this election may not go as choreographed, family values be damned.

To be sure, progressivism demands that LGBTQ share the same rights as every other person, and the United States president’s affirmation of that right is important, but it should be a given — not a sudden, monumental revelation. Yet, even though Obama has tepidly espoused a tenet of progressivism, endorsement of one or two progressivist principles does not make one a progressive.

Obama’s evilism (it’s definitely not lesser) lost (or it should have lost) a while back the support of progressives. When a presidential candidate promises change (and gullible people start to envision an end to warring, an end to torture, an end to incarceration without habeas corpus, and an end to unfair distribution of wealth, and other progressive moves) and carries on with the extremist status quo of warring and neoliberalism, what reaction should one expect from progressives?

Obama does not acknowledge, by deeds, the right of workers to form unions unencumbered — which is vital to ensuring workplace safety, protecting worker rights, and attaining a fair wage for their labor.

Obama does not acknowledge, by deeds, the rights of all humans to have a job — especially a decent paying job that upholds the integrity of labor.

Obama does not acknowledge, by deeds, the right of all citizens to universal, easy access to healthcare whether poor or well off.

Obama does not acknowledge, by deeds, the rights of Afghanis, Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Syrians, Yemenis, Libyans, and Palestinians to live free from the fear of drone attack and US or US-backed military assault.

Back in the homeland, the president does not acknowledge, by deeds, the rights of citizens to escape the clutches of financial robber barons. His administration has been surveilling the Occupation movement. Whose side is Obama on? He bails out the 1% and he spies on the 99%.

Wealth at any given moment is finite. Imagine if one divides the economic pizza in a crowd of 100 people, and 100 slices are cut. That is one slice for everyone, and everyone should be satisfied, no? However, what if one person grabs 67 slices of pizza and leaves 33 slices for the rest of the people? How will the 99% feel then? It seems very clear to see what would happen. There is a reason why the Occupation movement arose.

While average citizens were being foreclosed and jobs were disappearing, Obama bailed out the 1% with cash — much of it created by the blood, sweat, and tears of working people, and yet he says nothing meaningful about the right of the 99% to have their slice of the economic pie.

Workers cannot even retire secure in the knowledge that they will be provided for in their retirement years under Obama.

Why can Cuba provide free education right through university, universal healthcare, and high employment with poverty constrained? What does the Cuban Revolution know about progressivism and an egalitarian society that stymies Obama and the others who follow the Washington Consensus through its economic collapses, bailouts, and to whichever economic precipice looms next on the dark capitalist horizon?

Anyway, at least gays can now sleep well knowing that the president has drummed up the gumption to say it is okay for them to marry.

The most glaring and obvious question is: why?

Since President Felipe Calderón declared “war” against some of the region’s murderous drug cartels in 2006, some 50,000 Mexicans have been butchered. Activists, journalists, honest law enforcement officials but also ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire, the vast majority of victims, have been the targets of mafia-controlled death squads, corrupt police and the military.

Underscoring the savage nature of another “just war” funded by U.S. taxpayers, last week The Dallas Morning News reported that “23 people were found dead Friday–nine hanging from a bridge and 14 decapitated–across the Texas border in the city of Nuevo Laredo.”

The arcane and highly-ritualized character of the violence, often accompanied by sardonic touches meant to instill fear amongst people already ground underfoot by crushing poverty and official corruption that would make the Borgias blush, convey an unmistakable message: “We rule here!”

“The latest massacres are part of a continuing battle between the paramilitary group known as the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel,” the Morning News averred. “The violence appears to be part of a strategy by the Sinaloa cartel to disrupt one of the most lucrative routes for drug smugglers by bringing increased attention from the federal government.”

According to investigators the “two warring cartels are fighting for control of the corridor that leads into Interstate 35, known as one of the most lucrative routes for smugglers.”

But as Laura Carlsen, the director of the Americas Program pointed out last month in CounterPunch, “In a series of ‘Joint Operations’ between Federal Police and Armed Forces, the Mexican government has deployed more than 45,000 troops into various regions of the country in an unprecedented domestic low-intensity conflict.”

The militarization of Mexican society, as in the “Colossus to the North,” has also seen the expansion of a bloated Surveillance State. Carlsen averred that when the Army and Federal Police are “deployed to communities where civilians are defined as suspected enemies, soldiers and officers have responded too often with arbitrary arrests, personal agendas and corruption, extrajudicial executions, the use of torture, and excessive use of force.”

But expanding the surveillance capabilities of secret state agencies as the State Department proposes in its multimillion dollar gift to the Israeli-founded firm, Verint Systems, far from inhibiting violence by drug gangs and the security apparatus, on the contrary, will only rationalize repression as new “targets” are identified and electronic communications are data-mined for “actionable intelligence.”

Indeed, The New York Times reported last summer that “after months of negotiations, the United States established an intelligence post on a northern Mexican military base.”

Although anonymous “American officials” cited by the Times “declined to provide details about the work being done” by a team of spooks drawn from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the CIA and “retired military personnel members from the Pentagon’s Northern Command,” they said that “the compound had been modeled after ‘fusion intelligence centers’ that the United States operates in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor insurgent groups.”

Such developments are hardly encouraging considering the role played by “fusion centers” here in the heimat. As the ACLU has amply documented, “Americans have been put under surveillance or harassed by the police just for deciding to organize, march, protest, espouse unusual viewpoints, and engage in normal, innocuous behaviors such as writing notes or taking photographs in public.”

In Mexico, the results will be immeasurably worse; with corruption endemic on both sides of the border, who’s to say authorities won’t sell personal data gleaned from these digital sweeps to the highest bidder?

Only this time, the data scrapped from internet search queries, emails, smartphone chatter or text messages grabbed by bent officials won’t result in annoying targeted ads on your browser but in piles of corpses.

Guns In, Drugs Out: Iran/Contra Redux

While Obama administration officials hypocritically washed their hands of responsibility for failing to clamp-down on what journalist Daniel Hopsicker christened The New American Drug Lords, an old boys club of dodgy bankers, shady investment consultants, defense contractors and other glad handers, the violence following drug flows north like a swarm of locusts is fueled in no small part by arms which federal intelligence and law enforcement allowed to “walk” across the border.

Indeed, as Hopsicker pointed out in MadCow Morning News: “Ten years ago Miami Private Detective Gary McDaniel, a 30-year veteran investigator for both Government prosecutors and attorneys for major drug traffickers, educated me on the basics of the drug trade.”

Every successful drug trafficking organization (DTO) needs four things to be successful,’ he said. He ticked each one off on his fingers: ‘Production, distribution, transportation, and–most important of all–protection’.

To McDaniel’s list we can add a fifth element: intelligence gleaned from the latest advances in communications’ technologies.

If all this sounds familiar, it should.

During the 1980s, as the Reagan administration waged its anticommunist crusade across Central and South America, the CIA forged their now-infamous “Dark Alliance” with far-right terrorists (our “boys,” the Nicaraguan Contras), Argentine, Bolivian and Chilean death-squad generals and the up-and-coming cocaine cartels who had more on their minds than ideological purity.

By the end of that blood-soaked decade, with much encouragement from Washington, including a get-out-of-jail-free card for their dope dealing assets in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department, the region was on its way towards becoming a multibillion dollar growth engine for the well-connected.

Does history repeat? You bet it does!

As Narco News investigative journalist Bill Conroy reported:

A top enforcer for the Sinaloa drug organization and his army of assassins in Juarez, Mexico–responsible for a surge in violence in that city that has led to thousands of deaths in recent years–may well have been supplied hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons through an ill-fated US law-enforcement operation known as Fast and Furious.

But which agency has the wherewithal to guarantee that weapon flows from the United States fall into the right hands? More than a few analysts believe that Fast and Furious was an “intelligence” gambit overseen by the CIA.

Indeed, Narco News reported:

When it comes to prime intelligence targets, they don’t come much better than the leaders of Mexican drug organizations, who have their tentacles planted deep inside Latin American governments due to the corrupt reach of the drug trade. So it is not unreasonable to suspect that part of the reason that ATF’s Fast and Furious makes no sense in terms of a law enforcement operation is because it wasn’t one at all. (emphasis added)

“In fact,” Conroy wrote, “it may well have been co-opted and trumped by a covert U.S. intelligence agency operation, such as one run by CIA, that is shielded even from most members of Congress–possibly even the White House, if it was launched under a prior administration and parts of it have since run off the tracks on their own.”

Conroy revealed that enforcer, Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, who was arrested in February by Mexican authorities, “is now the subject of a 14-count US indictment unsealed in late April in San Antonio, Texas, that also charges the alleged leaders of the Sinaloa organization (Joaquin Guzman Loera, or El Chapo; and Ismael Zambada Garcia, or El Mayo) and 21 other individuals with engaging in drug and firearms trafficking, money laundering and murder in ‘furtherance of a criminal enterprise’.”

According to officials, Marrufo was allegedly responsible for the murders of some 18 patients at a Juárez drug treatment center in 2009. However, the significance of the gangster’s arrest may be overshadowed by the additional disclosure that his close associates, Eduardo and Jesus A. Miramontes Varela “worked for the Sinaloa Cartel when they became informants for the FBI in 2009.”

“Under Fast and Furious,” Conroy wrote, “the nation’s federal gun-law enforcer, ATF, in conjunction with a task force composed of several other federal agencies, including the FBI, allowed nearly 2,000 weapons to be smuggled into Mexico.”

Amongst the firearms allowed to “walk,” according to multiple published reports, were AK-47 assault rifles, Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, .38 caliber revolvers and FN Five-seven automatic pistols. Most of the arms purchased with ATF and Justice Department approval went to the Sinaloa or other drug cartels and have since turned up at some 170 crime scenes in Mexico.

While field level investigators objected to the operation and voiced their opposition to higher-ups in ATF, they were smacked-down by senior supervisors David Voth.

Responding to strong objections from his own agents, Voth wrote a threatening email to disgruntled officers in March 2010:

I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors, or other adolescent behavior. I don’t know what all the issues are but we are all adults, we are all professionals, and we have an exciting opportunity to use the biggest tool in our law enforcement tool box. If you don’t think this is fun you are in the wrong line of work–period!

Fun? Try telling that to the families of U.S. Border Patrol officer Brian Terry, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata or the families of hundreds of unnamed Mexican victims who turned up dead, murdered with weapons supplied by the U.S. government.

Conroy also informed us that “deadly weapons were allowed to ‘walk’ across the border, where they were put into the clutches of criminal organizations, such as those overseen by alleged Sinaloa enforcer Marrufo, so that US law enforcers could supposedly later trace the trail of those guns to the so-called kingpins of Mexico’s criminal organizations.”

There was just one small catch. “A Feb. 1, 2012, memo drafted by staff for [U.S. Senator Charles] Grassley and [U.S. Rep. Darryl] Issa, thickens the plot, indicating that there were, in fact, two FBI informants involved with purchasing weapons from [Manuel Celis] Acosta, [presumably the "main target" of Fast and Furious] and ATF had no clue that these so-called ‘big fish,’ the high-level targets of Fast and Furious, were, in fact, working for a sister agency.”

According to that Congressional memo:

During the course of this separate investigation, the FBI designated these two cartel associates as national security assets. [essentially foreign-intelligence agents, or informants]. In exchange for one individual’s guilty plea to a minor count of ‘Alien in Possession of a Firearm,’ both became FBI informants and are now considered to be unindictable. This means that the entire goal of Fast and Furious–to target these two individuals and bring them to justice–was a failure. ATF’s discovery that the primary targets of their investigation were not indictable was ‘a major disappointment’.

Brilliant, right? If one were to fall for “conspiracy theories,” one would almost believe that U.S. secret state agencies, like their Mexican counterparts, were favoring one narcotrafficking gang (the Sinaloa cartel) over their rivals, the equally violent and sinister group Los Zetas or the Juárez cartel founded by self-described “Lord of the Heavens,” Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

In fact, it wasn’t only the ATF-DEA-FBI that allowed guns to “walk” across the border into the hands of state-connected killers. To the list of the clueless, add the Pentagon.

In an earlier report, Conroy disclosed, citing State Department cables published by the secrecy-shredding web site WikiLeaks, that grenades used to attack the Televisa TV station and the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in 2008-2009 “involved military grade explosives made in the USA that somehow found their way to Mexico.” A second cable confirms that “U.S. military munitions sold in the 1990s to a foreign military were subsequently diverted to Mexican narco-traffickers.”

Narco News also reported that the State Department cables confirm “that the U.S. government is very aware that much of the heavy firepower now in the hands of Mexican criminal organizations isn’t linked to mom-and-pop gun stores, but rather the result of blowback from U.S. arms-trading policies (both current and dating back to the Iran/Contra era) that put billions of dollars of deadly munitions into global trade stream annually.”

Indeed, “bellicose government policies, such as the U.S.-sponsored Mérida Initiative, that are premised on further militarizing the effort to impose prohibition on civil society only serve to expand the profit margin on the bloodshed.”

But what if that is precisely the goal of U.S. policy planners and their masters, corrupt American financial institutions like Wachovia Bank or the defense contractors who reap billions from the slaughter?

In that case then, the so-called “War on Drugs” is really a war over who controls the drug flow and the fabulous profits derived from the illicit trade.

Back to the Future

While Colombia continues to be the principle source of processed cocaine entering Europe and the United States, despite some $7.5 billion dispensed to that country’s repressive military and police apparatus under Plan Colombia, wholesale distribution of narcotics entering the U.S. are now controlled by Mexican DTOs.

It is a demonstrable fact that Plan Colombia failed to stop the tsunami of narcotics entering the U.S. and that “success” or “failure” in that enterprise was besides the point. As multiple analysts and investigative journalists across the decades have documented, U.S. intelligence agencies, principally the CIA, have cultivated ties and operational links to DTOs and their ruling class enablers, favoring cartels that advanced U.S. geopolitical goals whilst targeting those perceived as liabilities.

As researchers Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle pointed out in Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia: “Among the compradores, short-term arrangements were made on coca production that paved the road for longer-term agreements of all kinds, one of which supported the emergence of the narco-bourgeoisie, whose business operations had remained relatively independent.”

Villar and Cottle averred:

Emerging narco-capitalism permeated Colombia’s financial system, creating financial connections throughout the Colombian economy. The active participation of banks in the cocaine industry greatly strengthened financial connections among the narco-bourgeoisie. The Cali cartel metamorphosed into numerous legitimate business enterprises such as pharmaceutical companies and real estate firms to operate the cocaine trade, whereas the Medellín cartel focused on money-laundering.

This production and distribution system was highly unstable however, and “created fierce competition among traffickers with connections to the Colombian ruling class,” Villar and Cottle wrote. “The Medellín cartel waged a desperate battle against enterprises that refused to enter into an alliance with them. All manner of underhanded methods, from blackmail to murder, were employed in this battle. The violent liquidation of rival enterprises, many who collaborated with the CIA, provoked retaliation from the United States which declared a war on drugs that targeted Pablo Escobar.”

As with Plan Colombia, under terms of the Mérida Initiative, the U.S. Congress has authorized some $1.6 billion for Mexico and Central American states blown away by the narcotics hurricane. However, much of the funds doled out to Mexican military and police organizations never leave the United States. Instead, as with other “foreign aid” boondoggles these funds flow directly into the coffers of giant U.S. defense firms and will be used to purchase aircraft, surveillance equipment and other hardware produced by the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex.

As in Colombia during the 1990s, a similar consolidation process, accompanied by spectacular levels of violence, is currently wracking Mexican society as drug gangs vie for control over the lucrative distribution market and are said to control 90% of the trafficking routes entering the U.S.

According to some estimates, approximately $49.4 billion annually pour into the accounts of major DTOs, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported back in 2007. However, most studies of global drug trafficking fail to analyze the benefits accrued by major U.S. financial institutions — banks, the stock market, hedge funds, etc. — who have been the direct beneficiaries of the $352 billion in annual drug profits “absorbed into the economic system,” as The Observer reported in 2009.

“In a nutshell,” Villar and Cottle wrote, “the war of drugs and terror is part of a counterrevolutionary strategy designed to maintain rather than eliminate the economic conditions that allow the drug trade to thrive.” That pattern is being replicated today in Mexico. “From Reagan to Obama, U.S. covert intervention has, paradoxically, only accentuated the social violence and systematized the production and distribution of cocaine.”

Corporate grifters, profiting on everything from weapons’ sales to surveillance kit have names. In the context of the Mérida Initiative, one firm stands out, the Israeli-founded spy shop Verint Systems Inc.

Drugs, Terror, War… Whatever

Like the “War on Terror,” the “War on Drugs” is predicated on the fallacy that “persistent situational awareness” obtained through the driftnet surveillance of electronic communications will give secret state agencies a leg-up on their adversaries.

Better think again! As Villar and Cottle pointed out, “the 1994 discovery of a computer owned by members of the Cali cartel offered clues on the complexities of the system and illustrated the technological sophistication of Colombia’s narco-economy.”

Indeed, the $1.5 million IBM AS400 mainframe “networked with half a dozen terminals and monitors and six technicians overseeing its operations,” and its “custom-written data-mining software cross-referenced the Cali phone exchange’s traffic with the phone numbers of American personnel and Colombian intelligence and law enforcement officials.”

That network was “set up by a retired Colombian army intelligence officer,” a fact which the Colombian government denied despite strong evidence to the contrary. And when Colombian officials “established a toll-free hotline for information about the Cali cartel leaders,” Villar and Cottle reported that a “former high-level DEA official said: ‘All of these anonymous callers were immediately identified, and they were killed.”

By today’s standards, that IBM mainframe is a throwback to the stone age. With advanced communications and encryption technologies readily available to anyone, and with any number of dodgy spy firms specializing in everything from the mass harvesting of information from social networks to the installation of malware on personal computers and GPS smartphone tracking as the WikiLeaks Spyfiles revealed, only a fool — or a State Department bureaucrat — would believe that a weaponized spy kit won’t fall into the hands of billion dollar organized crime groups. Yet that’s exactly what Washington plans to do.

In the NextGov report cited above, we were informed that the State Department’s “Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, in a contract notice published late Friday, said it will fund what it called the Mexico Technical Surveillance System for use by that country’s Public Security Secretariat to ‘continue to help deter, prevent and mitigate acts of major federal crimes in Mexico that include narcotics trafficking and terrorism’.”

The contract proposal specifies that “all awards will be based on the following criteria in order of importance for 1) Technical Approach/Understanding/Personnel, 2) Corporate Experience, 3) Past Performance and 4) Price. Technical merit (captured in the three (3) technical evaluation factors enumerated above, taken together) is significantly more important than cost/price.”

But as NextGov reported while the procurement, at least on paper, is “competitive,” the State Department “came close to ruling out any other bidder except Verint with the caveat that ‘the new equipment must function seamlessly with the existing in a single system or be entirely replaced’.”

That pretty much “levels the playing field” for the Israeli firm and the suite of surveillance tools it offers, the Reliant Monitoring System, which “intercepts virtually any wired, wireless or broadband communication network and service.” Indeed, the State Department plans to “triple the capacity of the current Verint system from 30 workstations to 107,” according to NextGov. Given the spooky nature of the company, no doubt El Chapo is drooling over the prospect.

As James Bamford pointed out in The Shadow Factory and in a series of recent articles in Wired Magazine, “Verint was founded in Israel by Israelis, including Jacob ‘Kobi’ Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Some 800 employees work for Verint, including 350 who are based in Israel, primarily working in research and development and operations.”

As Antifascist Calling disclosed back in 2008 (see: “Thick as Thieves: The Private (and very profitable) World of Corporate Spying”): “When Comverse Infosys [now Verint] founder and CEO Jacob ‘Kobi’ Alexander fled to Israel and later Namibia in 2006, the former Israeli intelligence officer and entrepreneur took along a little extra cash for his extended ‘vacation’–$57 million to be precise.”

Alexander, a veteran of Israel’s ultra-secretive Unit 8200, the equivalent of America’s National Security Agency, fled to Namibia because he faced a 32-count indictment by the Justice Department over allegations that he masterminded a scheme to backdate millions of Comverse stock options which allowed the enterprising corporate grifter to embezzle some $138 million from company shareholders.

As I wrote back then:

Despite alarms raised by a score of federal law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), fearful that sensitive wiretap information was finding its way into the hands of international narcotrafficking cartels, virtually nothing has been done to halt the outsourcing of America’s surveillance apparatus to firms with intimate ties to foreign intelligence entities. Indeed, as America’s spy system is turned inward against the American people, corporations such as Verint work hand-in-glove with a spooky network of security agencies and their corporatist pals in the telecommunications industry.

But as we know, software and the spy trojans embedded in their code are “neutral.” What can be used by law enforcement agencies such as Mexico’s Secretaría de Seguridad Pública (SSP) and the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI) can also be handed over by corrupt officials to their presumed targets, the Sinaloa, Gulf, Juárez, Knights Templar, Tijuana or Los Zetas narcotrafficking cartels, all of whom have ties to Mexico’s narco-bourgeoisie, police and the military.

It wouldn’t be the first time that “retired” Israeli military officers or “ex” Mossad men were exposed as trainers for some of the drug world’s most notorious killers.

Nearly a decade ago, investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood revealed in Narco News that drug gangster and far-right political actor Carlos Castaño, the future founder of the blood-soaked Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC, “was only 18 years old when he arrived in Israel in 1983 to take a year-long course called ’562.’ Castaño, a Colombian, had come to the Holy Land as a pilgrim of sorts, but not to find peace. Course 562 was about war, and how to wage it, and it was something Carlos Castaño would eventually excel at, becoming the most adept and ruthless paramilitary leader in Latin America’s history.”

Bigwood reported that Castaño’s IDF trainers emphasized instruction in “urban strategies,” which included the use of fragmentation grenades, RPG-7s as well as “complementary courses” on terrorism and counter-terrorism.

Narco News informed us that “not all was study for Castaño in Israel, and he used his free time to meet with Colombian soldiers undergoing regular military training there–soldiers of the worst human rights violators in the western hemisphere were being trained by some of the worst human rights violators in the Middle East. But these were precisely the connections that would prove so useful in the future.”

A future that encompassed the wholesale massacre of Colombian peasants, union organizers and left-wing activists as the AUC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CIA-anointed Cali cartel, founded by Iran/Contra drug kingpins, the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, engaged in a brutal war to the death with Pablo Escobars’ Medellín cartel in the 1990s.

According to declassified CIA, DEA and State Department documents published by the National Security Archive in 2008, “U.S. espionage operations targeting top Colombian government officials in 1993 provided key evidence linking the U.S.-Colombia task force charged with tracking down fugitive drug lord Pablo Escobar to one of Colombia’s most notorious paramilitary chiefs.”

Documents published by the Archive “include two heavily-censored CIA memos describing briefings provided by members of a ‘Blue Ribbon Panel’ of CIA investigators to members of U.S. congressional intelligence committees and the National Security Council. The Panel–which included personnel from the CIA’s directorate for clandestine intelligence operations–had been investigating the possibility that intelligence shared with the Medellín Task Force in 1993 ended up in the hands of Colombian paramilitaries and narcotraffickers from the Pepes. That investigation concluded on December 3, 1993, the day Escobar was killed.”

“The collaboration between paramilitaries and government security forces evident in the Pepes episode is a direct precursor of today’s ‘para-political’ scandal,” said Michael Evans, director of the National Security Archive’s Colombia Documentation Project. “The Pepes affair is the archetype for the pattern of collaboration between drug cartels, paramilitary warlords and Colombian security forces that developed over the next decade into one of the most dangerous threats to Colombian security and U.S. anti-narcotics programs. Evidence still concealed within secret U.S. intelligence files forms a critical part of that hidden history.”

While both the Cali and Medellín cartels have faded into history, cocaine processed on an industrial scale continues to flood out of Colombia and other “legs” of the Crystal Triangle. Control over that distribution network, worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually, much of which finds its way into U.S. banks, is the source of the bloodshed currently tearing Mexico and Central America to pieces.

Is history repeating itself when it comes to favoring one drug gang over another? The answer is yes. According to a 2010 National Public Radio report, “an NPR News investigation has found strong evidence of collusion between elements of the Mexican army and the Sinaloa cartel in the violent border city of Juarez.”

“Dozens of interviews with current and former law enforcement agents, organized crime experts, elected representatives, and victims of violence suggest that the Sinaloans depend on bribes to top government officials to help their leader, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, elude capture, expand his empire and keep his operatives out of jail.”

Sound far-fetched? As Bill Conroy reported last year in Narco News, court pleadings in the case of accused Sinaloa capo Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla “demonstrate the insidious nature of the cooperation that exists between the US government and Mexico’s Sinaloa mafia organization.”

“According to Zambada Neibla, he and the rest of the Sinaloa leadership, through the informant [Humberto] Loya Castro, negotiated a quid-pro-quo immunity deal with the US government in which they were guaranteed protection from prosecution in exchange for providing US law enforcers and intelligence agencies with information that could be used to compromise rival Mexican cartels and their operations.”

“The alleged deal,” Conroy averred, “assured protection for the Sinaloa Cartel’s business operations while also undermining its competition–such as the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization out of Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world.”

Inquiring minds can’t help but wonder why, if Zambada Neibla’s allegations are so much hot-air, would U.S. prosecutors invoke “national security” under provisions of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) “in his trial in an attempt to assure certain sensitive and/or embarrassing evidence is not made available to Zambada Niebla’s attorneys”?

As Narco News disclosed, “Perhaps any deal that might exist between the Sinaloa leadership is limited to Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada, perhaps it was put in place by a US intelligence agency under the guise of law enforcement, or through some secret pact cobbled together by the US State Department that does not have to be honored by the Justice Department because it applies only in Mexico. In this case, the devil is in the details, and in all those scenarios, the cloak of national security could easily be invoked to prevent evidence of the pact surfacing in a court of law.”

With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake and a “drug war” that favors one group of cut-throats over another to obtain leverage over corrupt politicians, along with an endless source of funds for intelligence-connected black operations, the Verint deal seems like a slam-dunk.

After all, with powerful communications’ intercept technologies in the hands of the Mexican secret state, “national security,” on both sides of the border, is little more than code for business as usual.

The new documents, which PCJF National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists “are likely only a subset of responsive materials,” in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies, only “scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.”

Nonetheless, blacked-out and limited though they are, she says they offer clues to the extent of the government’s concern about and focus on the wave of occupations that spread across the country beginning with last September’s Occupy Wall Street action in New York City.

The latest documents reveal “intense involvement” by the DHS’s so-called National Operations Center (NOC). In its own literature, the DHS describes the NOC as “the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management.”

The DHS says that the NOC is “the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room” and that it also “facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector.”

A better description for a fascist police state network could not be written.

Remember, this sprawling yet centralized operation — what Verheyden-Hilliard describes as “a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people” — was in this case deployed not against some terrorist organization or even mob or drug cartel, but rather against a loose-knit band of protesters, all conscientiously and publicly committed to nonviolence, who were exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to gather in public places and to speak out against the crimes and abuses of the corporate elite and the politicians who are bought and paid by that elite.

Among the documents obtained by the PCJF in this second batch of responses to its FOIA filing is one Nov. 5, 2011 from the NOC Fusion Center Desk, which collects at the federal level and then distributes the names and contact information of a group of Occupy protesters who were arrested during a demonstration in Dallas, TX against Bank of America, one of the nation’s biggest predatory lenders. Although none of the seven arrested were charged with any serious crime (six were charged with “using the sidewalk!”), their names and contact information were widely disseminated by the DHS.

Fusion Centers, a post-9-11 creation, are a federally-funded joint project of the DHS and the US Justice Department which are designed to share intelligence information among such federal agencies as the DHS, the FBI, the CIA and the US Military, as well as state and local police agencies. By their nature they are designed to circumvent legal constraints on various agencies, for example the ban on CIA domestic spying, or the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars active military activity within the borders of the US. There are currently 72 Fusion Centers around the US.

Another group of documents shows that on November 9, two days after a demonstration by 1000 Occupy activists in Chicago protesting social service cuts in that city, the NOC Fusion Desk relayed a request from Chicago Police asking other local police agencies what kind of tactics they were using against Occupy activists. They specifically requested that information be sought from police departments in New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. Denver, Boston, Portland OR, and Seattle — all the scene of major Occupation actions and of violent police repression. Realizing that it would look bad if it assisted in such coordination overtly, higher officials in the DHS ordered the recall of the request but then simply rerouted it through “law enforcement channels,” where presumably it would be harder for anyone to spot a federal role in the coordination of local police responses. In response to that order, the documents show that the duty director of the NOC wrote that he would “reach out” to “LEO LNOs (liaison officer) on the floor” to assist. Verheyden-Hilliard explains that LEO is FBI’s nationally integrated law enforcement, intelligence and military network.

On December 12, when Occupy planned anti-war protests at various US ports, Verheyden-Hilliard says the new documents show that the NOC “went into high gear” seeking information from local field offices of the Department of Homeland Security about what actions police in Houston, Portland, Oakland, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles planned to deal with Occupy movement actions.

Another document shows that earlier, in advance of a planned Occupy action at the Oakland, CA port facility on Nov. 2, DHS “went so far as to keep the Pentagon’s Northcom (Northern Command) in the intelligence loop.”

Given the subterfuge revealed in these documents that went into trying to create the illusion that the DHS was and is not coordinating a national campaign of spying, disruption and repression against Occupy activists, it is almost comical to find documents that show the DHS was in “direct communication with the White House” to obtain advance approval of public statements by DHS officials denying any DHS involvement in anti-Occupy actions.

These documents show that both DHS and one of that department’s police arms, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) were in direct contact with Portland, Oregon’s police chief and mayor, discussing how to deal with protesters who were in part on federal property. The coordination between the feds and the local police and political authorities were intense. Yet the approved statement sent to DHS from the White House read:

Any decisions on how to handle specifics (sic) situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. If a protest area is located on Federal property and has been deemed unsanitary or unsafe by the General Services Administration (GSA) or city officials, and they make a decision to evacuate participants — the Federal Protective Service (FPS) will work with those officials to develop a plan to ensure the security and safety of everyone involved.

There was, comically, also a White House-approved DHS “background” statement, too! (Typically background statements by federal officials are supposed to be used when they want to tell a journalist the true situation but don’t want to have that statement attributed to them or their department. Having it pre-approved by the White House defeats that purpose and is simply a manipulation of the media.)

The faux “background” information included the following–a flat-out lie:

DHS is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy encampments writ large.

Tellingly, the documents also include a Dec. 5 copy of the Weekly Informant, an intelligence report published by the DHS’s Office for State and Local Law Enforcement. The issue includes an update from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) concerning the activities of the Occupy Movement. PERF, Verheyden-Hilliard notes, is the group that the federal government claims organized a series of multi-city law enforcement calls to coordinate the police response to Occupy, which led immediately to the wave of violent crackdowns. It was at those meetings that police were advised among other things to act at night, to use aggressive tactics and weapons like tasers and pepper spray, and to take steps to remove journalists and cameras from the scene of crackdowns.

The overall sense from these latest documents is that Washington and the DHS, along with the FBI, was the nexus of the crackdown, orchestrating it, encouraging it, and attempting to cover its tracks.

The documents among other things expose the massive hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which this election year have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme of the “We are the 99%”-chanting Occupiers, while actually acting in the interest of Bank of America and its fellow financial sector mega-firms in trying to crush the movement itself.

To see all the new FOIA documents, go to the PJIF website.

Where does it stop?  God intended Adam and Eve to be a couple, not Adam and Steve.

— Jethro James, Senior Pastor at Paradise Baptist Church Newark, May 10, 2012

The gay marriage debate in New Jersey has gone national, with President Obama throwing his own hat in the ring with resounding approval for same-sex unions.  Evangelicals are shuddering, and various pro-Obama supporters are shaking their heads.  One is pastor Jethro James of the Paradise Baptist Church in Newark.  ‘I don’t understand why he did it – and why now.  I was gung-ho for his re-election and now, I don’t know.  This troubles my spirit’ (Star-Ledger, May 10).

States such as North Carolina, given an overwhelming vote there to ban gay marriage, suggest that the issue for Obama, at least when it comes to the November election, is not a negligible one.  Ditto South Carolina.  Individuals such as Bakari Middleton, chairman of the Richland County Democratic Party tend to stay mum about the president’s stance.  ‘Nobody wants to comment on that’ (Rock Hill Herald, May 12).  State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter tends to have faith amongst the voters – notably ‘communities of colour’ whose perceptiveness she holds with a degree of reverence.  “We are not electing President Obama to be bishop…  We aren’t looking to him for our religious beliefs”.   Cobb-Hunter, it would seem, is a defiant optimist.

A closer look at the responses, and a few truths emerge.  Anything that will garner votes will be entertained, though the gay lobby is hardly as packed a church as the evangelical equivalents.  Approval for gay marriage amongst black churchgoers is amongst the lowest in the country.  Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post suggests that the move simply gave Obama a bit more leg room should the issue come up later in the campaign.  But at the end of the day, an obsession with the marriage debate can always risk lessening the value of the advocate’s message in other areas.

Then comes the issue of business, something that every political principle in the United States is ultimately subordinated to.  Karen Kontos, whose family owns a number of restaurants and catering halls in New Jersey, could see the dollar signs lighting up like neon lights.  “I think it’s wonderful if it brings in more business. We’d welcome anyone who wants us to cater their wedding.”   The lawyers will be thrilled too – a marriage rush can just as easily lead to a divorce exodus – where there are unions, dissolutions follow.

At the end of the day, Obama’s stance can only ring true in a symbolic sense.  The debate would be taking place however ‘evolved’ his views on the subject might be.  Several states have already passed rules allowing gay marriages – New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, Massachusetts, Washington DC, to name a selection.  Thirty one, however, have banned it.  The laws of marriage, and for that matter the laws of sentencing, are sovereign bastions for US states.

The President of the United States might be able to annihilate countries at the push of a trigger or initiate a drone attack in Pakistan, but he is unable to change a state’s rules on unions and marriages or force the courts to heed his views.  That is both the miracle and the splendid perversion of the American constitution.

Just as the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in power in Bahrain is vowing, publicly, to keep arresting, tear-gassing, raiding their homes, confiscating their jobs and forcing pro-democracy protesters to live in non-stop fear, Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa is being hosted in Washington by the Barack Obama administration.

Prince Salman – who Bahraini propaganda sells as a “moderate” – showed up at the US State Department side-by-side with Secretary of State Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton. Those who “die” are evil dictators of the Muammar Gaddafi variety; “our” bastards get to party in DC after being extended a red carpet welcome.

Is there any Arab Spring-related repression and killing going in Bahrain? According to Clinton, of course not; these are only “internal issues” – in her own words.

What this means in practice is that Clinton subscribes to the official narrative that the sectarianization of everything happening in Bahrain is to be blamed on the protesters – and not the al-Khalifas, who for a year now have been destroying Shi’ite mosques and investing on all-out demonization of all things Shi’ite (blame it on “evil” Iran).

The al-Khalifas have been way wilier than President Bashar al-Assad in Syria; they have killed only an acceptable number of people. But why is Bahrain substantially “different” from Syria? Because “it hosts the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, helping the US military project its might in the Gulf and contain Iran”; and that’s not a neo-conservative talking, but Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski.

A Bunch of Cowards

Here is Libya conqueror Clinton:

Bahrain is a valued ally of the United States. We partner on many important issues of mutual concern to each of our nations and to the regional and global concerns as well. I’m looking forward to a chance to talk over with His Royal Highness a number of the issues both internally and externally that Bahrain is dealing with and have some better understanding of the ongoing efforts that the government of Bahrain is undertaking. So again, His Royal Highness, welcome to the United States.

Here’s a Bahraini government spokesman telling it like it is to Reuters only one day before the Clinton-Crown Prince schmooze:

We are looking into the perpetrators and people who use print, broadcast and social media to encourage illegal protest and violence around the country. If applying the law means tougher action, then so be it.

Translation: we will keep going on a rampage because the masters in Washington have our backs covered.

Not a word from the Obama administration on the arrest of top Bahraini human-rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who Amnesty International declared a “prisoner of conscience”, as well as calling for his immediate release. Activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, for his part, has been on a hunger strike for three months, protesting his life imprisonment by the al-Khalifa regime.

R2P, “responsibility to protect”, that oh so lovely doctrine espoused by the Three Graces – Clinton, US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and Special Assistant to Obama Samantha Power – does not apply to civilian protesters, the majority of them Shi’ites, in Bahrain. They have been yelling for their basic human rights – of which they don’t have much – to be protected for over a year now.

Bahrain’s Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa – whose Medieval methods would lead Egyptian Omar “Sheikh al-Torture” Suleiman to blush with envy, not to mention Prince Nayef from the House of Saud – has been in power for 40 years.

And Bahrain’s King Hamad has been oh so generous; after all he commissioned a report on the repression. Needless to say, the report, even highly sanitized, hasn’t been implemented.

What makes it even more tragic is that these people are cowards. It would take just a single word from Clinton or Obama for the al-Khalifas to immediately stop their concerted repression, using their hardcore Sunni police force recruited from Pakistan, Syria and Yemen; release the thousands of prisoners; and rehire the thousands of workers who were laid off because they are “subversive”. Here’s why.

There has been a rumor in Britain that Nasser Bin Hamad, the son of Bahrain’s King, might be banned from attending the London Summer Olympic Games this summer. There are graphic reasons for it; he personally threatened many athletes, on top of being accused of torture. So what did he do? In haste, he deleted all his threatening tweets. Expect Nasser to be partying in Mayfair in July.

•  This article first appeared in Asia Times.

Reforms in Myanmar have made the past experience just described less dangerous. However, from time to time these days I find myself feeling like a hypocrite when speaking about American ideals and Democracy. Democracy in the United States, seen from abroad, looks more like Communism in China. American foreign policy looks more like mafia thuggery. I’ve begun feeling like I’m misleading my students who deeply believe in American political policy and projected principles solely for the reason that the United States government is – rightly so for a change of pace – Aung San Suu Kyi’s greatest ally.

My students aren’t absent any ideas about what Democracy means. All of them were ex-political prisoners or family members of political prisoners. The youngest among them was detained just six months ago after supporting her father’s single-person protest against an obscure land-seizure case that left his family farm in the hands of a corrupt government crony. The father was arrested and the daughter went to the police station to demand his release. She was arrested when she did so. Three or four years ago they would both have been sentenced to several years in prison.

These days, as Myanmar eases into sort of becoming a fledgling democracy in its earliest stages, reforms have opened doors and minds and after nearly a week, both father and daughter were set free without any pending charges — absent their land. Human rights abuses and injustices still occur wholesale in Myanmar, yet with less frequency except in the frontier regions where westerners are banned from entering. In the United States, human rights abuses and injustices still occur, yet more frequently every day.

When I see video’s of American police brutality against Occupy protesters, people being evicted from their homes, TSA security hacks accosting four-year old children at airports and calling the child “a suspect”, TSA searches of innocent American citizens travelling on buses, trains and sidewalks, police busting down the door of an African American Vietnam Veterans home in white Plains, New York and electrocuting him, then shooting him to death, and when I read the news of the madness of war zone atrocities of murderous drones flying over half of Arabia, bombing and killing at random, American soldiers pissing on corpses, raping and rampaging death and destruction on to impoverished uneducated people with no electricity in their villages, I wonder, what the hell is Democracy?

What is the United States anymore? I hardly can recognize it from the days long ago when I had Civics class in seventh grade; the American military had just finished slaughtering 3 million people in Vietnam, untold numbers more in Laos and was unquestionably responsible for the genocide of 3 million more in Cambodia. Didn’t Nazi Germany in Europe and Imperial Japan in Asia behave this way long before Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II? No country dared, then or now, to stand up to American militarism abroad and now that it’s come home to roost in the styles of fascism on American streets and in American homes. Few Americans actually can resist the police state without their lives and livelihoods being  destroyed more than they’ve become.

When the world finally stood up to the spread of fascism in the 1940’s it was too late to save the so-called civilized world from total destruction. That the United States was the only power left not destroyed was because of geography, not superiority. Can the rest of the world stand up to the United States military and security complex?  The BRICS nations are succeeding at bringing imperial American economic might down by devaluing the dollar to 65% of the world’s currency reserve from 85% a few years ago. But as our  politicians have caved like lemmings jumping over a cliff to the security industrial complex, more and more money is being wasted to reap death, destruction, and surveillance over the world and in the United States. American militarism is out of control. Americans collectively have  become like the solitary young man standing in front of the huge tank during the Tiananmen Square protests in China in 1979.

What has become of the United States? The nation’s police departments behave as if they are occupying army’s hell bent on subduing the populace that pays them, even to the point of a citizen being subjected to being stripped searched not once, but twice, for failing to pay for a traffic violation. That means if your spouse, grandparents or children forget or fail to pay a parking ticket, for whatever reason, they can be arrested, strip searched and stored away in a jail and possibly even left there out of professional  neglect such as the kid in California who was doomed to spend four days in prison cell by the DEA, forced to drink his urine to survive, he was never charged with a crime.

America imprisons close to 2.5 million people at a time, year in and year out. African Americans are  disproportionately jailed per capita more than are white people. Where is the democracy? What on earth could 2.5 million Americans be doing so badly that all of them deserve to be in prison? Millions more each year are subjected to the legal system of parole and probation.  Corporations run the prisons in the United States. They lobby for tougher laws in all areas of law in order to arrest and detain more and more American citizens, because they make profits from having people in their prisons. Police and judges have been exposed as being corrupted with kickbacks and payoffs in some places in America as they’ve been caught arresting and sentencing with abandon while getting paid commissions in the form of cash. It’s probable many more have not been caught.

I tell my students to go on YouTube and search “police taser” and watch the many, many videos of American police electrocuting its citizens. They report back to me in shock and horror. They proclaim, “This never even happen in Burma!” It’s hard to teach Democracy when you come from a country where Democracy doesn’t really exist anymore.  Where the police state is the enemy of its citizens, where every form of communication is captured and stored, analyzed and used for advertising or – who knows – future blackmail? American citizens are all “suspects” to the police state. They are now subjected to drones hovering in their air space. No more laying out topless in the back yard on a sunny day or going for a romantic walk in a cornfield or forest and finding a nice cozy place to snuggle. If seen by a police drone, the police will arrive to arrest, strip search, and imprison the couple and they will inevitably be labeled sex-offenders and have their lives forever ruined. All for being in love under the clear blue sky on a pleasant summer day. Clear except for the police watching.

What does Democracy mean regarding the upcoming presidential election? There’s a choice between two people for president who swear they will give more money to the security state, cut social safety nets, privatize public education, cut taxes on the wealthy, spend more money on drug prohibition, continue to kill, torture and destroy more in Afghanistan, and in many other countries in the middle east – for what? Oil? The minority of Israel’s leaders and their insane but wealthy American supporters who are extreme warmongers and zealots hell bent of attacking Iran and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their ancestral lands? Most Israelis and Jewish Americans oppose these warmongers among them. The American corporate media is complicit in fueling the airwaves with propaganda against Iran and Islam, immigrants, and any idea left of what was once considered fascism. In today’s bizarre political world Richard Nixon would be called a  progressive.

What are Americans doing about the injustices and high-crimes and misdemeanors of American government and its Wall Street puppeteers? Mitt Romney has a car lift in his home. He’s the Republican nominee – thankfully since all of his opponents were nearly intellectually catatonic  evangelical non-Christ-like Christians. He’s a hedge fund financier – or whatever they call such crooks these days. Call them anything except guilty as charged. Barack Obama is a traitorous liar who sold himself to the American people as a new deal liberal peace-loving reformer who would ends wars, curtail the security state, and fight Wall Street – hahaha. Last time I looked, Guantanamo was still operating full steam ahead.  Americans will be at war in Afghanistan until 2024. (Hasn’t the bloodthirsty response to the September 11, 2001 tragedy been satisfied enough?) Wall Street crooks are still robbing the nation with ease. Terrorism of all kinds rules the world around us.

I want to be clear. I fear terrorism. Make no question about it. I fear police drones watching me from above, being tracked electronically and fondled by the TSA, being  harassed by police at roadblocks – but I fear it coming from Americans in America. I fear it from a psychotic night watchman like Mr. Zimmerman who murdered Trayvon Martin for wearing a hoodie. I fear it from a policeman wanting to arrest me in case my auto insurance payment is late and my insurance lapses. Or maybe I might forget to put the little sticker on my license plate that says I paid for the auto registration. I don’t deserve to be arrested, strip-searched and put in prison where I or anyone one, male or female, could be raped by other prisoners or abused by under-educated, unskilled, under-paid power tripping prison guards working for a corporation.

Maybe we should lobby local towns and cities to blood test and strip search people who want to run for office. I can’t imagine why a person who is not criminally inclined would want to do so. Call it a pre-emptive test of character. If one is willing to be blood tested and strip searched in order to be an elected politician, then they are either going to be guilty of something or they are insane. In either case, they will not be fit for office. Maybe that way we can keep the criminals and crazies out of politics. And then we can keep politics out of American society and return America to the rule of law and not the rule of the wealthy corporatists and the police. Call it the rule of the people, by the people and for the people. What a dream it was to think it could last. What a nightmare American Democracy has become.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

— William Butler Yeats (1919)¹

In the past decade or so, millions of people endured shockingly brutal, lawless war-making and state terror on the part of Bush and his accomplices.  While millions were caught up in the whirlwind of destruction released by Bush et al., others back in the Homeland shook their heads in disbelief and disgust—and now shoulder the burdens of the staggering national debt and general wreckage of the economy.

A renewed interest in the psychoanalytic study of U.S. presidents has therefore emerged, most notably in analyst Justin Frank’s Bush on the Couch (2004).  Such character-studies are proving useful in evaluating candidates before they take office — or predicting the likely course of their decisions once they have been sworn in.  Indeed, Dr. Frank has recently published Obama on the Couch, an insightful study focusing on the troubled circumstances of Obama’s upbringing and his consequently over-conciliatory leadership style.  Highly informative and often convincing, the book to my mind is still entirely too sympathetic to Obama, a man whom Dr. Frank declares to be “generally in excellent mental health.”²  Certainly Obama’s penchant for blithely rationalizing illegal wa-making—or ordering illegal Drone attacks and assassinations—raises considerable doubts.

Any remaining illusions about a democratic electoral process, battered by the Supreme Court-enabled selection of Bush in 2000, have now been entirely shattered by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision (2010).  Yet Republicrat candidates, puppets of Goldman and other corporate patrons, nonetheless choose to run for personal motives as well.  Needless to say, those who aspire to the office of the U.S. Presidency are not overly conscientious about the veracity of what they say, claim to believe, or appear to act.  But what motivational force impels them to seek the office in the first place—undergoing a year-long rollercoaster ride of campaigning and primary contests (applause, adulation—but also demeaning ingratiation, placation, dissimulation, and constant travel)?

There is no single answer.  Manifest motives obviously include representing the interests of their super-wealthy patrons through passing legislation and curtailing regulatory enforcement (Romney).  But underlying personal motives may also include, among others:

1. an authoritarian  desire to impose their will upon others, forcing recalcitrant citizens or defiant client-states into submission (Cheney; Hillary Clinton?);
2.  an irresistible urge for destructive power on a mass scale, thereby satisfying sadistic (Bush) and/or predatory-vengeful impulses (Cheney).  Of course, once in office, the adrenalin-rush of exercising power on a grandiose scale — whether ordering Drone assassinations or “taking out” troublesome dictators, is a satisfaction few modern presidents have refused.

But perhaps the most common motive, unmistakably exhibited by Bill Clinton, is the pressing need for narcissistic self-aggrandisement.  My initial impression of the candidate Barack Obama was shared by many: the sense of a lack of any real convictions behind the often-soaring rhetoric of uplift and “hope.”  Obviously not all speechwriters are up to such phrasemaking as “a kinder, gentler nation” or “a thousand points of light” (P. Noonan, 1988-89), but Obama’s campaign rhetoric was a watered-down pablum of can-do inspirationalism and embarrassingly hackneyed, patriotic drivel.

Yet Obama’s paramount skill, his instrument, is undeniably his rhetorical talent. (“It’s a gift.”)  Indeed, Obama has often expressed admiration for President Reagan, B-movie actor in the “role of a lifetime,” whose stirring proclamations of nationalistic revivalism became the drum-and-fife soundtrack for his frighteningly reckless escalation of the arms race, murderous (secret) funding of Central American death-squads, ruinous budget-deficits, and disastrous de-regulation.  However modest his acting ability, Reagan used his oratorical skills to persuade Americans to believe him, trust him—and re-elect him.³ Yet unlike Reagan, who offered a simplistic vision of moral certitude, Obama is a more nebulous “leader”—one who, having attained the coveted office, does not necessarily want to take us anywhere.

Of course, even in ancient Greece people were wary of the hypocritical dissembling of politicians and others who presented themselves as wise leaders.  Socrates, as portrayed by Plato in Gorgias, rejects rhetoric as a skill of misleading persuasion or clever, but specious, reasoning (later termed, unfairly to the Sophists, “sophistry”); and Aristotle condemned “base rhetoric” as a tool of deception, manipulation, and control.

Curiously, having attained the coveted office of President, Obama’s manner of speaking began to seem increasingly pedestrian, detached, unengaging and unengaged.  A kind of sing-song delivery, weighing this but considering that, might be considered simply the pedantic, judicious style of a former law professor.  Yet it allowed him a smooth, if tedious, voyage between a reactionary Scylla and a centrist Charybis–to the safe-port of comforting Platitude.

In his recent book, psychoanalyst Justin Frank describes a childhood deficient in stable attachments and consistent guidance: an absentee Kenyan father who abandoned him, an Indonesian stepfather (temporary), and a Kansas-born mother who often parked him with his grandparents while she pursued anthropological fieldwork and employment elsewhere.  Such shifting and transient parental care could hardly have promoted a secure sense of stable, supportive attachments and the confidence of being unconditionally loved.  One might add that such an unusually multicultural upbringing, with its shifting social norms and caretakers, would naturally encourage a cultural if not moral relativism—a tendency which could only have been enhanced by the professional ethos of his anthropologist-mother.

I offer a more parsimonious, if less nuanced, viewpoint than Dr Frank and others.  Undervalued as a child — with a compromised social identity, damaged self-esteem, and the sense that love and acceptance could only be won through “specialness” — Obama would eventually pursue “the highest office in the land.”  He would, as it turned out, over-achieve his psychological imperative—proving indubitably to himself as well as others that he was indeed a highly “superior” person of ultimate status in society.  “Compensatory narcissism”: attaining the office was an end in itself, the ultimate status symbol and ego-prop for an otherwise “hungry” self-identity.  He did not aspire and attain the office in order to implement policies for the betterment of the citizenry or for world peace.  Rather, as we have seen, he will adopt whatever policies likely to be of advantage in securing a four-year extension of his exalted rank.  (Obvious example: this former law professor ordered the assassination of bin Laden on May 1, 2011—exactly eight years to the day after Bush kicked off his re-election campaign under a triumphal “Mission Accomplished” banner.)

What did Obama wish to accomplish as president?  What are his doctrines of public policy in terms of the civic values embodied in the Constitution and the landmark legislations of the past?  Does he believe in the “economic bill of rights” once outlined by FDR?  Does he believe in a National Health Insurance program as a citizens’ entitlement (first proposed by Truman in 1945)?  Does he believe in traditional standards of fairness and justice (as in the plight of foreclosed homeowners vs. bailed-out banks)?  Does he believe in international laws regarding legitimate war crimes tribunals (which, having indicted such figures as Milosevic and Charles Taylor, could also have indicted both bin Laden and Bush et al.)?  As a former constitutional law professor who has ordered assassinations of U.S. citizens and signed the NDAA bill, does he even believe in the Constitution (and Bill of Rights) which he swore to defend?  Ultimately, does he believe in anything—except persuading the public to support the exalted self-aggrandisement of President Barack Obama?  We have become so accustomed to politicians, once elected, “selling out” and “betraying their principles”—that we may fail to recognize the absence of any principles in the first place.

1. In the ironic sense of David Halberstam’s phrase “the best and the brightest”: largely Harvard-educated meritocrats “entitled” to elite-positions of wealth and power, such as Obama and the bankster CEOs who also summer on Martha’s Vineyard.
2. Justin Frank, Obama on the Couch, p. 3.
3. With regard to the “impression-management” of political actors, Plutarch recounts how in the 6th century B.C. the Athenian lawmaker Solon, hearing that “Thespis, at this time, beginning to act tragedies, and the thing, because it was new, taking very much with the multitude,” decided to see Thespis engage in his play-acting.  “After the play was done, he addressed him, and asked him if he was not ashamed to tell so many lies before such a number of people; and Thespis replying that it was no harm to say or do so in play, Solon vehemently struck his staff against the ground: ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘if we honor and commend such play as this, we shall find it some day in our business.’”- Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.  Trans. John Dryden (1683).

A few months ago I told the American people that I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.

— President Ronald Reagan, 1987¹

On April 23, speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, President Barack Obama told his assembled audience that as president “I’ve done my utmost … to prevent and end atrocities”.

Do the facts and evidence tell him that his words are not true?

Well, let’s see … There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Iraq by American forces under President Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Afghanistan by American forces under Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Pakistan by American forces under Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Libya by American/NATO forces under Obama. There are also the hundreds of American drone attacks against people and homes in Somalia and in Yemen (including against American citizens in the latter). Might the friends and families of these victims regard the murder of their loved ones and the loss of their homes as atrocities?

Ronald Reagan was pre-Alzheimer’s when he uttered the above. What excuse can be made for Barack Obama?

The president then continued in the same fashion by saying: “We possess many tools … and using these tools over the past three years, I believe — I know — that we have saved countless lives.” Obama pointed out that this includes Libya, where the United States, in conjunction with NATO, took part in seven months of almost daily bombing missions. We may never learn from the new pro-NATO Libyan government how many the bombs killed, or the extent of the damage to homes and infrastructure. But the President of the United States assured his Holocaust Museum audience that “today, the Libyan people are forging their own future, and the world can take pride in the innocent lives that we saved.” (As I described in last month’s report, Libya could now qualify as a failed state.)

Language is an invention that makes it possible for a person to deny what he is doing even as he does it.

Mr. Obama closed with these stirring words; “It can be tempting to throw up our hands and resign ourselves to man’s endless capacity for cruelty. It’s tempting sometimes to believe that there is nothing we can do.” But Barack Obama is not one of those doubters. He knows there is something he can do about man’s endless capacity for cruelty. He can add to it. Greatly. And yet, I am certain that, with exceedingly few exceptions, those in his Holocaust audience left with no doubt that this was a man wholly deserving of his Nobel Peace Prize.

And future American history books may well certify the president’s words as factual, his motivation sincere, for his talk indeed possessed the quality needed for schoolbooks.

The Israeli-American-Iranian-Holocaust-NobelPeacePrize Circus

It’s a textbook case of how the American media is at its worst when it comes to US foreign policy and particularly when an Officially Designated Enemy (ODE) is involved. I’ve discussed this case several times in this report in recent years. The ODE is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The accusation has been that he had threatened violence against Israel, based on his 2005 remark calling for “wiping Israel off the map”. Who can count the number of times this has been repeated in every kind of media, in every country of the world, without questioning the accuracy of what was reported? A Lexis-Nexis search of “All News (English)” for for the past seven years produced the message: “This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 3000 results.”

As I’ve pointed out, Ahmadinejad’s “threat of violence” was a serious misinterpretation, one piece of evidence being that the following year he declared: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.”² Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place remarkably peacefully. But the myth of course continued.

Now, finally, we have the following exchange from the radio-TV simulcast, Democracy Now!, of April 19:

A top Israeli official has acknowledged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Iran seeks to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.” The falsely translated statement has been widely attributed to Ahmadinejad and used repeatedly by U.S. and Israeli government officials to back military action and sanctions against Iran. But speaking to Teymoor Nabili of the network Al Jazeera, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitted Ahmadinejad had been misquoted.

Teymoor Nabili: “As we know, Ahmadinejad didn’t say that he plans to exterminate Israel, nor did he say that Iran policy is to exterminate Israel. Ahmadinejad’s position and Iran’s position always has been, and they’ve made this — they’ve said this as many times as Ahmadinejad has criticized Israel, he has said as many times that he has no plans to attack Israel. …”

Dan Meridor: “Well, I have to disagree, with all due respect. You speak of Ahmadinejad. I speak of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani, Shamkhani. I give the names of all these people. They all come, basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say, ‘We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right. But ‘It will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor that should be removed,’ was said just two weeks ago again.”

Teymoor Nabili: “Well, I’m glad you’ve acknowledged that they didn’t say they will wipe it out.”

So that’s that. Right? Of course not. Fox News, NPR, CNN, NBC, et al. will likely continue to claim that Ahmadinejad threatened violence against Israel, threatened to “wipe it off the map”.

And that’s only Ahmadinejad the Israeli Killer. There’s still Ahmadinejad the Holocaust Denier. So until a high Israeli official finally admits that that too is a lie, keep in mind that Ahmadinejad has never said simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we historically know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of various political stripes. In a speech at Columbia University on September 24, 2007, in reply to a question about the Holocaust, the Iranian president declared: “I’m not saying that it didn’t happen at all. This is not the judgment that I’m passing here.”³

Let us now listen to Elie Wiesel, the simplistic, reactionary man who’s built a career around being a Holocaust survivor, introducing President Obama at the Holocaust Museum for the talk referred to above, some five days after the statement made by the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister:

How is it that the Holocaust’s No. 1 denier, Ahmadinejad, is still a president? He who threatens to use nuclear weapons — to use nuclear weapons — to destroy the Jewish state. Have we not learned? We must. We must know that when evil has power, it is almost too late.

“Nuclear weapons” is of course adding a new myth on the back of the old myth.

Wiesel, like Obama, is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. As is Henry Kissinger and Menachim Begin. And several other such war-loving beauties. When will that monumental farce of a prize be put to sleep?

For the record, let it be noted that on March 4, speaking before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama said: “Let’s begin with a basic truth that you all understand: No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction.”⁴

Postscript: Each time I strongly criticize Barack Obama a few of my readers ask to unsubscribe. I’m really sorry to lose them but it’s important that those on the left rid themselves of their attachment to the Democratic Party. I’m not certain how best to institute revolutionary change in the United States, but I do know that it will not happen through the Democratic Party, and the sooner those on the left cut their umbilical cord to the Democrats, the sooner we can start to get more serious about this thing called revolution.

Written on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22, 2012

Two simple suggestions as part of a plan to save the planet.

1. Population control: limit families to two children

All else being equal, a markedly reduced population count would have a markedly beneficial effect upon global warming, air pollution, and food and water availability; as well as finding a parking spot, getting a seat on the subway, getting on the flight you prefer, and much, much more. Some favor limiting families to one child. Still others, who spend a major part of each day digesting the awful news of the world, are calling for a limit of zero. (The Chinese government announced in 2008 that the country would have about 400 million more people if it wasn’t for its limit of one or two children per couple.⁵

But, within the environmental movement, there is still significant opposition to this. Part of the reason is fear of ethnic criticism inasmuch as population programs have traditionally been aimed at — or seen to be aimed at — primarily the poor, the weak, and various “outsiders”. There is also the fear of the religious right and its medieval views on birth control.

2. Eliminate the greatest consumer of energy in the world: The United States military.

Here’s Michael Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, Mass. in 2007:

Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis — either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That’s greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million — and yet it’s a gross underestimate of the Pentagon’s wartime consumption.⁶

The United States military, for decades, with its legion of bases and its numerous wars has also produced and left behind a deadly toxic legacy. From the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam in the 1960s to the open-air burn pits on US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century, countless local people have been sickened and killed; and in between those two periods we could read things such as this from a lengthy article on the subject in the Los Angeles Times in 1990:

U.S. military installations have polluted the drinking water of the Pacific island of Guam, poured tons of toxic chemicals into Subic Bay in the Philippines, leaked carcinogens into the water source of a German spa, spewed tons of sulfurous coal smoke into the skies of Central Europe and pumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the oceans.⁷

The military has caused similar harm to the environment in the United States at a number of its installations. (Do a Google search for <"U.S. military bases" toxic>)

When I suggest eliminating the military I am usually rebuked for leaving “a defenseless America open to foreign military invasion”. And I usually reply:

“Tell me who would invade us? Which country?”

“What do you mean which country? It could be any country.”

“So then it should be easy to name one.”

“Okay, any of the 200 members of the United Nations!”

“No, I’d like you to name a specific country that you think would invade the United States. Name just one.”

“Okay, Paraguay. You happy now?”

“No, you have to tell me why Paraguay would invade the United States.”

“How would I know?”

Etc., etc., and if this charming dialogue continues, I ask the person to tell me how many troops the invading country would have to have to occupy a country of more than 300 million people.

Yankee karma

The questions concerning immigration into the United States from south of the border go on year after year, with the same issues argued back and forth: What’s the best way to block the flow into the country? How shall we punish those caught here illegally? Should we separate families, which happens when parents are deported but their American-born children remain? Should the police and various other institutions have the right to ask for proof of legal residence from anyone they suspect of being here illegally? Should we punish employers who hire illegal immigrants? Should we grant amnesty to at least some of the immigrants already here for years? … on and on, round and round it goes, for decades. Every once in a while someone opposed to immigration will make it a point to declare that the United States does not have any moral obligation to take in these Latino immigrants.

But the counter-argument to the last is almost never mentioned: Yes, the United States does have a moral obligation because so many of the immigrants are escaping situations in their homelands made hopeless by American interventions and policy. In Guatemala and Nicaragua, Washington overthrew progressive governments which were sincerely committed to fighting poverty. In El Salvador, the US played a major role in suppressing a movement striving to install such a government, and to a lesser extent played such a role in Honduras. And in Mexico, although Washington has not intervened militarily in Mexico since 1919, over the years the US has been providing training, arms, and surveillance technology to Mexico’s police and armed forces to better their ability to suppress their own people’s aspirations, as in Chiapas, and this has added to the influx of the impoverished to the United States. Moreover, Washington’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has brought a flood of cheap, subsidized US agricultural products into Mexico and driven many Mexican farmers off the land.

The end result of all these policies has been an army of migrants heading north in search of a better life. It’s not that these people prefer to live in the United States. They’d much rather remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed on them by American police and right-wingers.

1. Washington Post, March 5, 1987.
2. Associated Press, December 12, 2006.
3. President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University, Transcript, Washington Post, September 24, 2007.
4. Remarks by the President at AIPAC Policy Conference, White House Office of the Press Secretary, March 4, 2012.
5. Washington Post, March 3, 2008.
6. The Pentagon v. Peak Oil, TomDispatch.com, June 14, 2007.
7. Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1990.

Calling the audience “my brothers and sisters,” he praised the troops for their courage, patriotism, and endurance in fighting the endless battle in Afghanistan, a nation with no air force, navy, or organized military. He pointed out what brave warriors this generation of Americans had turned out to be.

Seven of the members of the audience expressed some concern when Obama announced that he might carry out a series of midnight drone attacks on Paris, France, within the week, because of a series of concerns that had been brought to his attention. Several unnamed members of his National Security Legal Staff had informed him that a known socialist might actually win the upcoming French election. In addition, French authorities had announced that their NATO forces were threatening to withdraw from several of the war zones that Obama had in mind for them.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back was a report from Homeland Security that three known terrorists had slipped into Paris sometime during the previous four months. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta and Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, both strongly urged his quick response to these threats, and expressed their total support for the proposed action. Clinton pointed out that at her urging, his Cabinet was 100% behind the President.

“National Security” was the explanation given for the proposed bombing of Paris, and no further clarification was needed in light of that rationale. Department of Justice head, Eric Holder, reiterated that the President has the authority to bomb large cities regardless of public opinion, given that President Bush was allowed to level Fallujah during the Iraq War, and Obama already had received authority to destroy any city in Pakistan or Afghanistan, according to his mood at the time. Congress had shown that they were unwilling to prevent the bombing or destruction of any place on earth, other than the hidden locations of their family vacation homes on tropical islands throughout the globe.

Extrapolating from the legal memos produced by Professor Adolph Yoo, at Berkeley, and Justice Benito Bybee, appointed as a Federal Judge to the Court of Appeals, the President explained that since the torture of individuals had been approved by the Supreme Court and Congress, destroying entire cities was clearly authorized as well. The Federal Courts had consistently supported the use of extraterritorial extraditions (“renditions” in Pentagon parlance), for purposes of torturing enemies of the U.S. abroad, and had thereby given the green light for Obama to use whatever force was deemed in the national interest against any other terrorists worldwide.

The seven military personnel who balked at the announcement were immediately discharged from the service without benefits, and told that if they publicly discussed their reasons for questioning the President’s decision to destroy Paris, they would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Bradley Manning was used as an example of what they would have in store, if they so much as uttered a word about the propriety of the destruction of the French capital.

One of the embedded reporters at the news conference expressed some concern regarding the destruction of monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, and some of the other well-known tourist destinations of Paris, but Obama assured the reporter that the action was necessary, if “Americans are to rid the world of terrorism.” He also hinted that the use of technologically advanced concussion bombs, which would kill all living creatures in the Paris area, might leave standing some of the buildings Americans had grown to love. With that assurance, 96% of the American people responded by signing petitions to “support our troops,” and promised to vote either Republican or Democratic in the upcoming election. Since both political parties had the same foreign policies, nobody in government was left to oppose the President.

But the only substantive agreement reached between the U.S. and Afghanistan – well hidden in the agreements – has been to allow powerful U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) to continue to carry out the unilateral night raids on private homes that are universally hated in the Pashtun zones of Afghanistan.

The presentation of the new agreement on a surprise trip by President Obama to Afghanistan, with a prime time presidential address and repeated briefings for the press, allows Obama to go into a tight presidential election campaign on a platform of ending an unpopular U.S. war in Afghanistan.

It also allows President Hamid Karzai to claim he has gotten control over the SOF night raids while getting a 10-year commitment of U.S. economic support.

But the actual text of the agreement and of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on night raids included in it by reference will not end the U.S. war in Afghanistan, nor will they give Karzai control over night raids.

The Obama administration’s success in obscuring those facts is the real story behind the ostensible story of the agreement.

Obama’s decisions on how many U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan in 2014 and beyond and what their mission will be will only be made in a “Bilateral Security Agreement” still to be negotiated. Although the senior officials did not provide any specific information about those negotiations in their briefings for news media, the Strategic Partnership text specifies that they are to begin the signing of the present agreement “with the goal of concluding within one year”.

That means Obama does not have to announce any decisions about stationing of U.S. forces in Afghanistan before the 2012 presidential election, allowing him to emphasise that he is getting out of Afghanistan and sidestep the question of a long-term commitment of troops in Afghanistan.

The Bilateral Security Agreement will supersede the 2003 “Status of Forces” agreement with Afghanistan, according to the text. That agreement gives U.S. troops in Afghanistan immunity from prosecution and imposes no limitations on U.S. forces in regard to military bases or operations.

Last month’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on night raids was forced on the United States by Karzai’s repeated threat to refuse to sign a partnership agreement unless the United States gave his government control over any raids on people’s homes. Karzai’s insistence on ending U.S. unilateral night raids and detention of Afghans had held up the agreement on Strategic Partnership for months.

But Karzai’s demand put him in direct conflict with the interests of one of the most influential elements of the U.S. military: the SOF. Under Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan came to depend heavily on the purported effectiveness of night raids carried out by SOF units in weakening the Taliban insurgency.

CENTCOM officials refused to go along with ending the night raids or giving the Afghan government control over them, as IPS reported last February.

The two sides tried for weeks to craft an agreement that Karzai could cite as meeting his demand but that would actually change very little.

In the end, however, it was Karzai who had to give in. What was done to disguise that fact represents a new level of ingenuity in misrepresenting the actual significance of an international agreement involving U.S. military operations.

The MOU was covered by cable news as a sea change in the conduct of military operations. CNN, for example, called it a “landmark deal” that “affords Afghan authorities an effective veto over controversial special operations raids.”

But a closer reading of the text of the MOU as well as comments on it by U.S. military officials indicate that it represents little, if any, substantive change from the status quo.

The agreement was negotiated between the U.S. military command in Kabul and Afghan Ministry of Defence, and lawyers for the U.S. military introduced a key provision that fundamentally changed the significance of the rest of the text.

In the first paragraph under the definition of terms, the MOU says:

For the purpose of this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), special operations are operations approved by the Afghan Operational Coordination Group (OCG) and conducted by Afghan Forces with support from U.S. Forces in accordance with Afghan laws.

That carefully crafted sentence means that the only night raids covered by the MOU are those that the SOF commander responsible for U.S. night raids decides to bring to the Afghan government. Those raids carried out by U.S. units without consultation with the Afghan government fall outside the MOU.

Coverage of the MOU by major news media suggesting that the participation of U.S. SOF units would depend on the Afghan government simply ignored that provision in the text.

But Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters flatly on April 9 that Karzai would not have a veto over night raids. “It’s not about the U.S. ceding responsibility to the Afghans,” he said.

Kirby would not comment on whether those SOF units which operated independently of Afghan units would be affected by the MOU, thus confirming by implication that they would not.

Kirby explained that the agreement had merely “codified” what had already been done since December 2011, which was that Afghan Special Forces were in the lead on most night raids. That meant that they would undertake searches within the compound.

The U.S. forces have continued, however, to capture or kill Afghans in those raids.

The disparity between the reality of the agreement and the optics created by administration press briefings recalls Obama’s declarations in 2009 and 2010 on the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq and an end to the U.S. war there, and the reality that combat units remained in Iraq and continued to fight long after the September 1, 2010 deadline Obama he had set for withdrawal had passed.

Fifty-eight U.S. servicemen were killed in Iraq after that deadline in 2010 and 2011.

But there is a fundamental difference between the two exercises in shaping media coverage and public perceptions: the Iraq withdrawal agreement of 2008 made it politically difficult, if not impossible, for the Iraqi government to keep U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011.

In the case of Afghanistan, however, the agreements just signed impose no such constraints on the U.S. military. And although Obama is touting a policy of ending U.S. war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military and the Pentagon have publicly said they expect to maintain thousands of SOF troops in Afghanistan for many years after 2014.

Obama had hoped to lure the Taliban leadership into peace talks that would make it easier to sell the idea that he is getting out of Afghanistan while continuing the war. But the Taliban didn’t cooperate.

Obama’s Kabul speech could not threaten that U.S. SOF units will continue to hunt them down in their homes until they agree to make peace with Karzai. That would have given away the secret still hidden in the U.S.-Afghan “Enduring Strategic Partnership” agreement.

But Obama must assume that the Taliban understand what the U.S. public does not: U.S. night raids will continue well beyond 2014, despite the fact that they ensure enduring hatred of U.S. and NATO troops.