Stony Brook University Social Justice Alliance
Newsletter #8
June 9, 2010
Hi everyone,
It’s been about two months since SJA’s last “newsletter,” mainly because the person primarily responsible for putting these together has been so busy. Many extremely important developments have taken place both in the world and here in the US. Due to the overwhelming number of relevant news stories, though, this newsletter focuses primarily on articles and analyses from the past several weeks, with a special focus on the Palestine situation and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On the first, see especially the essays by Stephen Shalom and Noam Chomsky, and the coverage from Democracy Now! There’s also a good (if lengthy) essay by Chomsky at the very bottom, dealing with the history of US imperialism.
As always, this collection has left out many important articles and issues. Please send article suggestions to sbusja@gmail.com.
Gaza
[Early in the morning of Monday, May 31st, heavily-armed Israeli military commandoes entered international waters and illegally boarded the humanitarian aid ships headed for Gaza as part of the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla,” the latest effort to break Israel’s illegal blockade of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Israeli forces executed at least nine foreign humanitarian activists, as some tried in vain to defend themselves with metal rods from the ships and pocket knives. Dozens more were wounded, and hundreds were kidnapped and detained for several days, with their money and personal possessions stolen by the Israeli military and police. Although Israeli spokespersons have accused the peace activists on the Flotilla of being “al-Qaeda mercenaries,” these claims haven’t been taken seriously outside the US and Israel. Foreign governments, international law experts, Nobel Peace Prize winners, and citizens all around the world have angrily condemned the Israeli assault, correctly characterizing it as an act of war and international terrorism. US Vice President Joseph Biden has defended the Israeli attack; President Obama has refused to condemn it, calling only for an “investigation” into what happened.]
But What Could Israel Do? - by Stephen Shalom, Israeli Occupation Archive – “What else could Israel do besides the blockade in order to protect its security? […] The simplest answer to [the] question of what Israel could do to maintain its security in place of a blockade is that it is precisely the blockade that causes the threats to Israeli security. Without the blockade, there would be no obstacle to negotiating a long-term ceasefire, which would mean the end to rocket fire and other threats to Israel’s legitimate security interests. But beyond a ceasefire, Israel could also negotiate a broader settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict. There are two obstacles to such a settlement. One of these is not Hamas, for it has long indicated—most recently on May 30—its willingness to accept a settlement along the lines of the Arab Peace Initiative [which calls for Israel’s withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, meaning an Israeli withdrawal fro Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem]. Hamas says it would not itself recognize Israel, but it also says recognition is not something that political parties do in any case; it’s what states do. Israel-apologists like to quote from some of the intransigence and repulsive anti-Semitism from Hamas’s 1988 Charter, but all serious observers—such as studies written for U.S. Institute of Peace, the Army War College, or the International Crisis Group—have documented that the organization has moved far from its 1988 positions.
So, no, the obstacle to a settlement is not Hamas. The first obstacle is Israel, which seems committed to denying the Palestinians an opportunity for a dignified independent existence. Of course, this can be seen most clearly in the statements of rightwing leaders like Prime Minister Netanyahu and his openly racist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. But the coalition government ruling Israel today includes the Labor Party, with Ehud Barak holding the Defense portfolio. And the Labor party veteran who serves as President, Shimon Peres, too takes positions—like insisting on Israel’s right to build new settlements anywhere in Jerusalem—that are guaranteed to thwart any chance of peace.
The second obstacle to peace is the United States…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/but-what-could-israel-do-by-stephen-shalom
Israel’s Ruthless Criminality: War Resisters International Statement on Attack on Free Gaza Flotilla – “The international nonviolent activists killed in the attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla did not regard their lives as more important than those of Palestinians - not more important, but nevertheless more visible. The ruthless criminality of this attack on an unarmed flotilla of nonviolent activists bearing humanitarian aid demonstrates for those who did not know before just to what extent the state of Israel regards itself as immune from international norms…” - http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwri-irg.org%2Fnode%2F10274&h=05577
Kill a Turk and Rest – by Uri Avnery, ZNet [Avnery is an 86-year-old Israeli journalist and peace activist; on June 6 he was physically attacked by other Israelis when he was attending a peace demonstration in Tel Aviv] – “This event points again to one of the most serious aspects of the situation: we live in a bubble, in a kind of mental ghetto, which cuts us off and prevents us from seeing another reality, the one perceived by the rest of the world. A psychiatrist might judge this to be the symptom of a severe mental problem. The propaganda of the government and the army tells a simple story: our heroic soldiers, determined and sensitive, the elite of the elite, descended on the ship in order ‘to talk’ and were attacked by a wild and violent crowd. Official spokesmen repeated again and again the word ‘lynching.’ On the first day, almost all the Israeli media accepted this. After all, it is clear that we, the Jews, are the victims. Always. That applies to Jewish soldiers, too. True, we storm a foreign ship at sea, but turn at once into victims who have no choice but to defend ourselves against violent and incited anti-Semites. To any normal person, this may sound crazy. Heavily armed soldiers of an elite commando unit board a ship on the high seas in the middle of the night, from the sea and from the air—and they are the victims? But there is a grain of truth there: they are the victims of arrogant and incompetent commanders, irresponsible politicians and the media fed by them. And, actually, of the Israeli public, since most of the people voted for this government or for the opposition, which is no different. http://www.zcommunications.org/kill-a-turk-and-rest-by-uri-avnery
[All of Democracy Now’s coverage of the assault is highly recommended. In addition to DN’s daily headlines, see the following features]:
Flotilla Passengers Huwaida Arraf of Free Gaza Movement and Retired Army Col. Ann Wright Respond to Israeli Claims on Deadly Assault - “[Israeli military and police] were laughing, giggling, commenting on wounded and dead. It was a very pitiful, pitiful performance by law enforcement people. And I think what we saw as internationals coming in there is the tip of the iceberg compared to what Palestinians see every single day from those types of law enforcement officials.” —Ret. US Army Colonel Ann Wright, survivor of the Gaza Flotilla massacre – http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/3/huwaida
US Student Loses Eye After Israel Fires on West Bank Protest –
A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t) – by Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch – “The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders—with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s. The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar…”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175239/tomgram:_noam_chomsky,_eyeless_in_gaza___/
What Exactly is the Blockade of Gaza? - By Yousef Munayyer, ForeignPolicy.com – “…a reference tool based on data collected by international aid agencies and human rights groups on the impact of the siege on the population of Gaza.”
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/03/what_exactly_is_the_blockade_of_gaza
Evergreen State College Students Vote to Divest from Israel – [by Jewish Voice for Peace] – “The students at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, announced that the whole student body voted overwhelmingly in favor of divestment from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and in favor of making their campus Caterpillar-free. What’s more remarkable is that the decision was not made by a student council and thus vulnerable to veto by just one person, as we saw in Berkeley. No, it was decided through a campus-wide vote…The results? The divestment vote won by a landslide 79.5%! The Caterpillar vote by an equally impressive 71.8%! The Evergreen College Board of Trustees and Board of Governors actually hold the purse strings of the Evergreen College and the Evergreen Foundation respectively. You can imagine the pressure that will be brought upon them to ignore the student votes. We need you to email them right and ask them to respect the voice of the students and divest!
Board of Trustees Director Carver T. Gayton (tescbot@evergreen.edu)
Foundation Vice President Lee Hoemann (foundation@evergreen.edu)
Also, go to http://tescdivest.org/ to sign a petition in support of the students! Immediately after the student vote, the student union passed a unanimous resolution requesting full disclosure of all corporations, including those held through mutual funds, in which The Evergreen State College Foundation and The Evergreen State College are invested and asking the Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors to make public a plan of action for divestment from companies that profit from the occupation of Palestine…”
The Mood inside Israel
Israel Rejects Call for International Probe into Attack on Gaza Flotilla – Democracy Now! – “While international condemnation of Israel continues, inside Israel the mood is quite different. An Israeli parliamentary panel recommended today that the Knesset revoke the privileges of Israeli Arab lawmaker Hanin Zoabi for participating in last week’s Gaza-bound aid flotilla. Right-wing demonstrators targeted a peace protest in Tel Aviv Saturday and reportedly attacked veteran Israeli activist, the eighty-six-year-old Uri Avnery. For more on the fallout of the flotilla attack and the reactions inside Israel, I’m joined now from Jaffa by Max Blumenthal…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/7/israel_rejects_call_for_international_probe
US Wars, at Home and Abroad
Afghan Jirga-Goers Part Ways Peacefully - by Jean MacKenzie, GlobalPost – “For three days more than 1,500 men and women from all over Afghanistan gathered in a huge tent located on the ground of Kabul’s Polytechnic University to discuss the wisdom and ways of negotiating with the Taliban. More than 140 million afghani (about $7 million) went into the planning and execution of the event. The results were more than a little surprising from a group advertised in the media as a hand-picked pro-government lobby. The unwieldy assembly was divided for ease of discussion into 28 committees, each of which was given the same list of bullet points to discuss…. In a county bitterly divided by ethnic, religious, and regional enmities, the committees produced a fairly consistent list of recommendations that will most likely give the Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his international backers a few sleepless nights. What was clear from the committees’ reports is that Afghans are desperate for peace…” [*most in fact called for an immediate end to the US escalation and a timetable for US withdrawal---this basic proposal is in accord w/ Afghan public opinion, judging by polls, though the proposal was an unplanned outcome of the conference]
CIA Drone Operators Oppose Strikes as Helping al-Qaeda – by Gareth Porter, InterPress Service – “Some CIA officers involved in the agency’s drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency, because it is helping al-Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.…The official called the operations ‘a major catalyst’ for the jihadi movement in Pakistan. Within the administration, it appears that the logic behind the program is that it has to be seen to be doing something about al-Qaeda. .Dissent from those who are involved in the program itself has little effect when it is up against what is perceived as political pressure to show progress against al-Qaeda — no matter how illusory…”
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/06/03/cia-drone-operators-oppose-strikes-as-helping-al-qaeda
U.N. Report Faults Prolific Use of Drone Strikes by U.S. – by David S. Cloud, LA Times – “The campaign of CIA drone strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan has made the United States ‘the most prolific user of targeted killings’ in the world, said a United Nations official, who urged that responsibility for the program be taken from the spy agency. Philip Alston, a New York University law professor who serves as the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, made the comments Wednesday as he released a report on targeted killings. The report criticizes the U.S. for asserting “an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe” in its fight against Al Qaeda and other militant groups. He also expressed concern about the precedent set by the U.S. program. Many other countries are seeking drone technology and when they obtain it, they are likely to copy U.S. tactics, he said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cia-drones-20100603,0,2216919,print.story
Afghan Escalation Funding: More War, Fewer Jobs, Poor Excuses – by David Swanson, TomDispatch – “This is $33 billion to be added to an unfathomable pile of waste. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Congress has already approved $345 billion for war in Afghanistan, not to mention $708 billion in Iraq. According to the National Priorities Project, for that same money we could have renewable energy in 1,083,271,391 homes for a year (or every home in the country for more than 10 years), or pay 17,188,969 elementary school teachers for a year. There may be 2.6 million elementary and middle school teachers in our country now. Assuming we could use 3 million teachers, we could hire them all for five years and employ that extra $13 billion or so to give them bonuses…Even these calculations, however, are misleading. As economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated in The Three Trillion Dollar War, their book on the cost of the Iraq war alone, adding in debt payments on moneys borrowed to fight that war, long-term care for veterans wounded in it, the war’s impact on energy prices, and other macroeconomic impacts, the current tax bill for the Iraq War must be at least tripled and probably quadrupled or more to arrive at its real long-term cost. (Similarly, the cost in lives must be multiplied by all those lives that could have been saved through other, better uses of the same funding.) The same obviously applies to the Afghan War. The fact is that military spending is destroying the U.S. economy…
Too broad a view? Then consider just the present proposed $33 billion escalation funding for the Afghan War. For that sum, we could have 20 green energy jobs paying $50,000 per year here in the United States for every soldier sent to Afghanistan; a job, that is, for each of those former soldiers and 19 other Americans. We’re spending on average $400 per gallon to transport gas over extended and difficult supply lines into Afghanistan where the U.S. military uses 27 million gallons a month. We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bribe various small nations to be part of a ‘coalition’ there. We’re spending at least that much to bribe Afghans to join our side, an effort that has so far recruited only 646 Taliban guerrillas, many of whom seem to have taken the money and run back to the other side. Does all this sound like a wise investment — or the kind of work Wall Street would do?”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175246/tomgram:_david_swanson,_did_you_say_$33_billion__/
Wealth Gap Yawns—and So Do Media: Little Interest in Study of Massive Race/Gender Disparities – by Julie Hollar, Extra! - “The Insight Center for Community Economic Development released a stunning report about the wealth gap for women of color: Single black women have a median wealth of $100 and Hispanic women of $120—dramatically lower than white men ($43,800), white women ($41,500) or black men ($7,900). The median wealth for single white women in their prime working years, age 36–49, is 61 percent of the wealth of their male counterparts, who own $70,030. That’s terrible, but the corresponding ratio between women and men of color is nearly off the charts, at just 0.05 percent—$5 versus $11,000. Almost half of single black and Hispanic women have zero or negative wealth. (Data was unavailable for Asian-American and Native American women.) A racial wealth gap had been well established, as had a gender wealth gap. But the intersection of the two had never been measured, and…almost more jarring is the near-complete lack of interest on the part of corporate media. According to a search of the Nexis database, the weeks following the report’s release witnessed one national television news mention, one NPR story, two opinion pieces which were republished in a few different papers, and a single newspaper report. It’s not as if the Insight Center wasn’t trying; it even held a media briefing at the Capitol building in Washington followed by a day-long symposium on the issue (3/8/10). Remember Hurricane Katrina and corporate media vows to bring race and poverty back under their lens? The deafening media silence on the racial and gender wealth gap lays bare corporate media’s true priorities.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4078
Massive Race Divide: Blacks Will Never Gain Wealth Equality with Whites Under the Current System – by Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report – “The gap between Black and white household [accumulated] wealth quadrupled from 1984 to 2007, totally discrediting the conventional wisdom that the U.S. is slowly and fitfully moving towards racial equality, or some rough economic parity between the races. Like most American myths, it’s the direct opposite of the truth. When measured over decades, Blacks are being propelled economically downward relative to whites at quickening speed, according to a new study by Brandeis University…”
The Gulf Oil Spill and Corporate Control over Government
[Democracy Now! has featured extended coverage and analysis of the oil spill—its effects, the reasons why it occurred, and the broader context of preponderant corporate control over our government. See http://www.democracynow.org/tags/bp_oil_spill]
BP Oil Spill Confirmed as Worst in US History; Environmental Groups Challenge Continued Oil Operations in Gulf Excluded from New Moratorium – Democracy Now! – “Although President Obama has extended the moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits for six months and halted operations at thirty-three deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico, some oil rigs are continuing their operations. The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a lawsuit to halt forty-nine offshore drilling plans in the Gulf of Mexico that were approved without full environmental review. Meanwhile, the group Food & Water Watch is leading an effort to shut down the Atlantis, another BP oil rig in the Gulf. The group warns an oil spill from the Atlantis could be many times larger than the current spill and even harder to stop…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/28/bp_oil_spill_confirmed_as_worst
Renowned Marine Biologist Carl Safina on the BP Oil Spill’s Ecological Impact on the Gulf Coast and Worldwide –Democracy Now! – “As we continue our discussion on the BP oil spill, we turn to its long-term ecological impact. Carl Safina, the founding president of Blue Ocean Institute, warns the ecological fallout from the spill may be felt across much of the world…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/27/expert_ecological_impact_of_spill_could
Former EPA Investigator Scott West: US Has Told BP “It Can Do Whatever It Wants and Won’t Be Held Accountable” –Democracy Now! – “One month after the BP oil spill, we speak to Scott West, a former top investigator at the Environmental Protection Agency who led an investigation of BP following a major oil pipeline leak in Alaska’s North Slope that spilled 250,000 gallons of oil on the Alaskan tundra. Before West finished his investigation, the Bush Justice Department reached a settlement with BP, and the oil company agreed to pay $20 million. At the same time, BP managed to avoid prosecution for the Texas City refinery explosion that killed fifteen workers by paying a $50 million settlement…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/20/fmr_epa_investigator_scott_west_us
BP Funnels Millions into Lobbying to Influence Regulation and Re-Brand Image – Democracy Now! – “We speak with Antonia Juhasz, author of The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry – and What We Must Do To Stop It.“The entire oil industry, will continue to use its vast wealth – unequaled by any global industry – to escape regulation, restriction, oversight and enforcement,’ Juhasz writes. ‘BP, now the source of the last two great deadly US oil industry explosions, has shown us that this simply cannot be permitted’…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/5/bp_funnels_millions_into_lobbying_to
Obama Administration Approves 27 New Offshore Drilling Permits – Democracy Now! - “The Center for Biological Diversity reports the Obama administration is continuing to exempt new offshore drilling operations from environmental review despite the Gulf disaster. Since the April 20th explosion at the BP rig, the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service has approved twenty-seven new offshore drilling permits. All but one of the projects were granted the same environmental review exemption used to approve the BP drilling site…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/10/headlines#6
BP Lobbyists Have Government Ties – Democracy Now! – “The Huffington Post is reporting BP has hired at least twenty-seven lobbyists who formerly worked in Congress or the executive branch. The hirings all came in the first three months of this year, before the April spill. BP spent $3.8 million on lobbying the federal government during the same period.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/4/headlines#10
BP And Halliburton Try To Buy Off Government Officials Investigating Spill – by Alex Seitz-Wald, Think Progress – “Facing possible jail time for their roles in the largest oil spill in American history, BP and Halliburton are building high-powered legal teams with ‘deep Department of Justice and White House ties.’ But the companies are pursuing other means to defend themselves as well. Halliburton’s campaign donations have spiked as it tries to curry favor with key members of Congress investigating the disaster. The company donated $17,000 in May, making it ‘the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008,’ Politico reports…”
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/06/03/bp-and-halliburton-try-to-buy-off-government-officials-investigating-spill/
Iran
Super Surprising Facts About ‘Our Enemy’ Iran Remind Us That We Don’t Know Squat – by Jeffrey Rudolph, Countercurrents – “What can possibly justify the relentless U.S. diplomatic (and mainstream media) assault on Iran? It cannot be argued that Iran is an aggressive state that is dangerous to its neighbors, as facts do not support this claim. It cannot be relevant that Iran adheres to Islamic fundamentalism, has a flawed democracy and denies women full western-style civil rights, as Saudi Arabia is more fundamentalist, far less democratic and more oppressive of women, yet it is a U.S. ally. It cannot be relevant that Iran has, over the years, had a nuclear research program, and is most likely pursuing the capacity to develop nuclear weapons, as Pakistan, India, Israel and other states are nuclear powers yet remain U.S. allies—indeed, Israel deceived the U.S. while developing its nuclear program…” [followed by 26 “quiz questions” on Iran, with some surprising answers] –
http://www.alternet.org/story/146673/super_surprising_facts_about_’our_enemy’_iran_remind_us_that_we_don’t_know_squat?page=entire
History
[The following is a superb historical analysis of US imperialism by Noam Chomsky, starting prior to the American Revolution and ending in the present. If you’re looking for a thirty-minute crash course on the history of US foreign policy, this is it! And even if you’ve read Chomsky before or already have a basic understanding of US foreign policy, you’ll still be interested in many of the quotations from former US leaders and intellectuals, and by Chomsky’s insightful analysis.]
Modern-Day American Imperialism: The Middle East and Beyond – by Noam Chomsky, ZNet – “…Talking about American imperialism is rather like talking about triangular triangles. The United States is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as an empire explicitly. According to the founding fathers, when the country was founded it was an ‘infant empire.’ That’s George Washington. Modern-day American imperialism is just a later phase of a process that has continued from the very first moment without a break, going in a very steady line. So, we are looking at one phase in a process that was initiated when the country was founded and has never changed…” http://www.zcommunications.org/modern-day-american-imperialism-the-middle-east-and-beyond-by-noam-chomsky
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Social Justice Alliance
www.sbusja.com
General Interest Meetings: Every Wednesday at 7PM in SAC Skylight Lounge (third floor)
Greetings everyone,
Most of you probably received our last newsletter, the April Fools’ edition sent out on April 1st (if not, it’s available on our website at http://sbusja.com/News/?p=55). Unfortunately, none of the stories in that newsletter actually happened. The Iraq and Afghanistan occupations continue in full force, Israel continues to occupy Palestine with US support in violation of international law, and we still live in a country where government policy prioritizes corporate profits and militarism over the fulfillment of basic human rights to education, health care, housing, and physical freedom.
But the April 1st newsletter was not meant to make you depressed. It was meant to offer a vision of what a new and just society would look like, or at least some of things that that society would feature, and to emphasize just how reasonable and commonsensical such proposals actually are (in fact, we received at least half a dozen emails from people who believed the first few headlines before realizing it was a joke). And as some of the stories below demonstrate, another world is not only possible, as the slogan says—it’s also being constructed on a daily basis, bit by bit, by concerned people everywhere.
Recent Action/Ideas for Peace and Justice
“Time for Rebirth: The U.S. Antiwar Movement is Grieving, Dreaming, Growing” – by Sarah Lazare, ZNet – “…the antiwar movement is not dead. Over the past seven years, while the number of people in the streets visibly protesting this anniversary has shrunk, the news cameras haven’t shown the movement building that has been happening, off the streets, under the radar, in communities…We are now seeing this organizing pick up steam as people have become disillusioned by the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush’s wars…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/time-for-rebirth-the-u-s-antiwar-movement-is-grieving-dreaming-growing-by-sarah-lazare
700 Protest NYC Fundraiser for Israeli Military – On March 9, 2010, a single-file silent procession of seven hundred people encircled the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. Organized by a coalition of twenty-five peace and Palestine solidarity groups, grassroots, community and religious organizations and endorsed by six Israeli and Palestinian groups and various American Jewish organizations, they protested the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, who were holding a fundraising gala inside the Waldorf honoring Lt. General Gabi Ashkanazi. Earlier the same day a public reading of the Goldstone Report, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, was held across the street. This six-minute video connects the destruction in Gaza to the readings from Goldstone and the signs directly related to the readings. The Friends of the IDF, which raised twenty million dollars that night for the Israeli military, is a U.S. non-profit organization.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZrNU12qehg
“Hundreds of Thousands Rally for Immigration Reform in Largest Rally of Obama Presidency” – Democracy Now! – “Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of Washington, DC, on Sunday to call for immigration reform. Estimates of the crowd size ranged from 200,000 to 500,000. Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force, emphasized the urgent need for Washington to act on comprehensive immigration reform…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/24/hundreds_of_thousands_rally_for_immigration
“Soldier of Conscience Granted Clemency, Released” – by Dahr Jamail, Truthout - “Last August, Travis Bishop refused to serve in Afghanistan. Having filed for Conscientious Objector (CO) status, Bishop, based at Fort Hood, Texas, in the US Army’s 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, was court-martialed and sentenced to 12 months in a military brig. He was released from the brig today…‘I can’t wait to get out of here, if only to tell people, “Hey! Look at me! If I can do it, surely more people can too!!”’ Now that he is free, Bishop plans to continue to speak out about conscientious objection and work as an advocate for other conscientious objectors.”
http://www.truthout.org/breaking-dahr-jamail-soldier-conscience-granted-clemency-released58011
“Notes on Building a Left in the Age of Obama” – by Paul Street, ZNet – [An analysis of the current political climate in the US and some “do’s and don’t’s” for constructing a strong grassroots progressive movement independent of the Democratic Party and electoral politics; Street notes that “readers should view the following admonitions and their accompanying explanations/elaborations with a healthy dose of radical skepticism, taking them not as an effort to impose ‘What is to Be Done’ doctrine but as a rough draft (with few if any claims to originality) of (some) key principles and ideas…”]
http://www.zcommunications.org/notes-on-building-a-left-in-the-age-of-obama-by-paul-street
“Becoming Internal Security Threats” – by Arundhati Roy, GRITtv [interview] - “People who are privileged are also the ones who are most hopeless, and they most easily decide that there’s no hope…The alternative, and the hope, is not going to come from the people who designed the system and who profit from the system…it’s going to come from the people being left out of it. They are going to say ‘enough’…And when that begins to unfold, there will be a domino effect…We must all become ‘internal security threats’…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/becoming-internal-security-threats-by-arundhati-roy
Health Insurance Reform
[Most leftists and progressives agree that the new health insurance reform bill falls far short of the health care system this country needs. However, some progressives have supported the recent passage of the Obama bill, arguing that it’s a step toward something better; others, meanwhile, have argued that the new law does “more harm than good.” This section includes three or four pieces from the latter perspective, one which offers reluctant support for the law, and one which lists the law’s potentially positive aspects]
“Pro-Single-Payer Doctors: Health Bill Leaves 23 Million Uninsured – ‘A False Promise of Reform’” – [March 22nd press release by leaders of Physicians for a National Health Program] - “As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House’s passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot. We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer. Instead of eliminating the root of the problem—the profit-driven, private health insurance industry—this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require millions of Americans to buy private insurers’ defective products, and turn over to them vast amounts of public money…”
http://pnhp.org/news/2010/march/pro-single-payer-doctors-health-bill-leaves-23-million-uninsured
“Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill” – by Jane Hamsher, FireDogLake – “Real health care reform is the thing we’ve fought for from the start. It is desperately needed. But this bill falls short on many levels, and hurts many people more than it helps…” [*CONTAINS A GOOD BREAKDOWN OF MYTHS/TRUTHS ABOUT THE NEW LAW]
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/19/fact-sheet-the-truth-about-the-health-care-bill/
“Single Payer Legislation vs. Reconciliation Bill” – by Physicians for a National Health Program – [*A SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON OF “EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL,” AND THE RECONCILIATION BILL (WHICH IS MORE OR LESS THE SAME AS THE BILL SIGNED INTO LAW)]
http://www.pnhp.org/sites/default/files/docs/2010/Single-Payer-Reconciliation-Comparison-Table.pdf
“The Real Winners in the Corporate Health Insurance Reform Bill” - by Anthony DiMaggio, Counterpunch – “…There should be little doubt that many of the reforms…will benefit the more than 40 million Americans who are without health care. Few progressives, for example, would disagree with legal initiatives designed to outlaw the abhorrent practice of denying coverage based on preexisting conditions. Additionally, the expansion of Medicaid and federal subsidies for poor and middle income Americans will certainly aide many who have difficulty in paying for health care. Having made these concessions, the central questions I am concerned with are: 1. What constituency is primarily served by this bill; and 2. Could Congress have passed a more expansive, meaningful reform package? On the second question, the answer is clearly yes….This bill is largely a victory for pharmaceuticals, medical professionals, and insurance lobbyists….Opposition from conservatives stems not from phony arguments about death panels and government socialism, but from the fact that under this bill affluent families making over $250,000 a year will be forced to pay a 3.8 percent tax on their investment income in order to help cover increased coverage for poor and middle income Americans. In other words, conservatives oppose health care reform primarily because they believe the well off shouldn’t be forced to support health care as a common good…”
http://counterpunch.org/dimaggio03262010.html
“America, Here Are 10 Things You’ve Just Won With Health Care Reform” – by Nick Baumann, Mother Jones - “You already know about the health care reform vote, but you might not know what’s in it for you. Here’s 10 things that will kick in this year…”
http://www.alternet.org/story/146134/
“Okay, We’ve Got an Insurance Reform Bill: On to Health Care Reform!” – by Rose Ann DeMoro [Executive Director of National Nurses United] – “If, as the President and his supporters insist, the bill is just a start, let’s hold them to that promise. Let’s see the same resolve and mobilization from legislators and constituency groups who pushed through this bill to go farther, and achieve a permanent, lasting solution to our healthcare crisis with universal, guaranteed healthcare by expanding and improving Medicare to cover everyone…As more Americans recognize the bill does not resemble the distortions peddled by the right, and become disappointed by their rising medical bills and ongoing fights with insurers for needed care, there will be new opportunity to press the case for real reform. Next time, let’s get it done right…”
http://counterpunch.org/demoro03252010.html
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Indonesia
“Massacre Caught on Tape: US Military Confirms Authenticity of Their Own Chilling Video Showing Killing of Journalists” – Democracy Now! – “The US military has confirmed the authenticity of newly released video showing US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. On Monday, the website WikiLeaks.org posted footage taken from a US military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed twelve people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. We speak with WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange and Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald…” [*THIS IS A TRULY DISGUSTING VIDEO, WHICH EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE REALITY OF THE OCCUPATIONS THE US IS PERPETRATING. NOTE THAT THE SOLDIERS WHO COMMITTED THE MASSACRE MAY SIMPLY HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING THE MILITARY’S “RULES OF ENGAGEMENT.” AS JULIAN ASSANGE SAYS, “THESE ARE NOT BAD APPLES. THIS IS STANDARD PRACTICE.” GLENN GREENWALD ADDS THAT “THIS IS SOMETHING THAT TAKES PLACE ON A DAILY BASIS.”]
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape_us_military
Who’s the Enemy Again? - by Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation – “When it comes to Afghanistan, it doesn’t sound like President Obama is in a negotiating mood. His in-and-out visit this weekend to Kabul, bomber jacket and all, included a rah-rah speech to US forces that didn’t mention a word about a political settlement of the conflict. He seems to have gone head-to-head with President Karzai, who’s at least engaged in peace talks with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party, a key ally of the Taliban, and who’s planning a peace council for the beginning of May. Unfortunately, Obama seems more concerned about Karzai’s corruption—along with that of his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who heads the Kandahar provincial council—than he does about Karzai’s peace efforts…”
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/547249/who_s_the_enemy_again
“‘The Enemy’ and ‘The People’ Are Hard To Tell Apart: Killing Civilians, Growing Insurgents” - by Gareth Porter, Counterpunch – “Gen. Stanley McChrystal has recently acquired the image of a master strategist of the population-sensitive counterinsurgency, reducing civilian casualties from airstrikes and insisting that troops avoid firing when civilians might be hit during the recent offensive in Helmand Province. One recent press story even referred to a ‘McChrystal Doctrine’ that focuses on ‘winning over civilians rather than killing insurgents.’ But there is a glaring contradiction between McChrystal’s new counterinsurgency credentials and his actual policy toward the politically explosive issue of night raids on private homes by Special Operations Forces (SOF) units targeting suspected Taliban. Since he took over as top commander in Afghanistan, McChrystal has not only refused to curb those raids but has increased them dramatically. And even after they triggered a new round of angry protests from villagers, students and Afghan President Hamid Karzai himself, he has given no signal of reducing his support for them…”
http://counterpunch.org/porter04012010.html
“Legitimation Crisis in Afghanistan” - by William R. Polk, The Nation - “In the media celebration of our ‘victory’ over the Taliban in the Helmand Valley, little attention has been given to the nature of insurgency: the proper tactic of guerrillas is to fade away before overwhelming power, leaving behind only enough fighters to force the invaders to harm civilians and damage property….Other operations are planned, so the Marja ‘victory’ has set a pattern that accentuates military action. This is not conducive to an exit strategy—it will not lead out of Afghanistan but deeper into the country…”
“‘Our President Is Deceiving the American Public’: Pentagon Papers Whistleblower [Daniel Ellsberg] on President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq” – Democracy Now! – “We are joined by a man who played a major role in efforts to end the Vietnam War in the 1970s. In 1971, the then-RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the media what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. After avoiding a life sentence on espionage charges, Daniel Ellsberg has continued to speak out against US militarism until the present day…” [Part 1 of the interview, dealing mostly with Afghanistan, is available here. Part 2, where Ellsberg talks about US policy toward Iran, is available here.]
“UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston Responds to US Defense of Drone Attacks’ Legality” – Democracy Now! – “The Obama administration has publicly defended the legality of drone attacks for the first time. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh said last week the use of drones in the fight against al-Qaeda was both legal and necessary. Koh’s comments come six months after Philip Alston, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, said that the strikes ‘might violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.’ Alston joins us with his reaction to Koh’s response…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/1/drones
“Is the U.S. Losing Its Grip in Iraq?” – by Michael Schwartz, Socialist Worker [interview] – “U.S. OFFICIALS are trumpeting Iraq’s elections on March 7, 2010, as a triumph for democracy in the Middle East. But the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki showed its weakness, both before the election, and during the results…”
http://socialistworker.org/2010/04/02/losing-the-grip-in-iraq
“Obama’s Bad Prescription for Indonesia” – by Amy Goodman, Truthdig – “News is breaking in Indonesia about the role of the Indonesian military in the murder of political activists in the province of Aceh last year, in the lead-up to elections. This is happening while the White House is engaged in fierce behind-the-scenes negotiations with Congress on whether to restore aid to the Indonesian military, including one of its most notorious elements, the special-forces command known as Kopassus. Military aid to Indonesia was suspended in 1999 after its military, the TNI, unleashed a campaign of terror on the people of East Timor….”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_bad_prescription_for_indonesia_20100323/
The War at Home:
Racial and Class Inequality and Corporate Impunity in the US
“The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste” – by Michelle Alexander, TomDispatch – [*THIS IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ANALYSIS THAT EXAMINES RACIAL AND CLASS OPPRESSION BY FOCUSING ON THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN THE US; ALSO, FOR ESSENTIAL RECENT INTERVIEWS WITH MICHELLE ALEXANDER, SEE HERE, HERE, AND HERE] - “Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s ‘triumph over race.’ Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America. Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that ‘the land of the free’ has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land. Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America. Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the ‘era of colorblindness’ there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have ‘moved beyond’ race…”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175215/tomgram:_michelle_alexander,_the_age_of_obama_as_a_racial_nightmare/
“Globalization Marches On” – by Noam Chomsky, ZNet - “Adam Smith concluded that the ‘principal architects’ of policy in England were ‘merchants and manufacturers,’ who ensured that their own interests are ‘most peculiarly attended to,’ however ‘grievous’ the effects on others, including the people of England. Smith’s maxim still holds, though today the ‘principal architects’ are multinational corporations and particularly the financial institutions whose share in the economy has exploded since the 1970s. In the United States we have recently seen a dramatic illustration of the power of the financial institutions. In the last presidential election they provided the core of President Obama’s funding…To date, growing popular outrage has not challenged corporate power. The future depends on how much the great majority is willing to endure, and whether that great majority will collectively offer a constructive response to confront the problems at the core of the state capitalist system of domination and control. If not, the results might be grim, as history more than amply reveals.”
http://www.zcommunications.org/globalization-marches-on-by-noam-chomsky
“Massey Energy Mine Cited for 1,300+ Safety Violations in Years Leading up to Deadly Explosion” – Democracy Now! - “Four people remain missing in a West Virginia coal mine two days after a huge explosion killed at least twenty-five miners in the worst mining disaster in the United States in more than a quarter-century. According to federal records, MSHA cited the Upper Big Branch mine for more than 1,300 safety violations from 2005 through Monday. Fifty citations came in the last month alone. We speak with Chuck Nelson, an underground coal miner for thirty years, and journalist Jeff Biggers…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/7/massey_energy_mine_cited_for_1
Israel-Palestine
“Norman Finkelstein Responds to Clinton, Netanyahu AIPAC Comments” – Democracy Now! – “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told attendees at the AIPAC conference on Monday that the US commitment to Israel is ‘rock-solid,’ but Clinton did criticize Israel for continuing to build settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. In a defiant speech hours after Clinton’s address, Netanyahu rejected US criticism and vowed to continue building settlements. We speak with Norman Finkelstein, author of the new book, This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion…” [Norman Finkelstein is an authoritative voice on the Israel-Palestine conflict; the interview comes in two parts, here and here].
“Israel Won’t Change Unless the Status Quo Has a Downside: Obama’s Peace Effort Is Doomed Because Israel Loses Nothing If It Fails” – by Tony Karon, TomDispatch – “…Once again, as when Obama demanded a complete settlement freeze from the Netanyahu government in 2009, the Israelis will fend off any demand that they completely reverse their latest construction plans. Instead, they will shamelessly offer to continue their settlement activity on a ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ basis, professing rhetorical support for a two-state solution to placate the Americans, even as they systematically erode its prospects on the ground…”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175222/tomgram:_tony_karon,_truth_and_consequences_in_the_middle_east__/
Latin America
“Dr. Paul Farmer, UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, on Haiti’s Challenges Following Catastrophic Earthquake and Years of Western Domination” – Democracy Now! – “Last year, the well-known activist medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer was appointed the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti. Farmer is founder of the charity Partners in Health, which provides healthcare for people with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other conditions in Haiti, as well as more than eight other countries around the world. He has vocally criticized US destabilization efforts in Haiti as well as major US corporations that have pursued profit at the expense of global health…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/1/paul_farmer
“Haiti: A New U.S. Occupation Disguised as Disaster Relief?” – by Arun Gupta, Z Magazine – “…If occupying Haiti is not about oil or aid, what is the motivation? The overarching goal is to keep Haiti within the “West Atlantic system,” that is, part of the American empire. With “rollback” guiding U.S. foreign policy in the region—support for the coup in Honduras, seven new military bases in Colombia, stepped-up hostility toward Bolivia and Venezuela—an occupation of Haiti fits into the overall scheme. Related to that, the United States aims to ensure that Haiti does not pose the “threat of a good example” by pursuing an independent path, as it tried to under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—which is why he was toppled twice, in 1991 and 2004, in U.S.-backed coups. Instead, Haiti must adhere to extreme neoliberalism and serve as an ultra-low-wage processing zone close to the United States…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/haiti-a-new-u-s-occupation-disguised-as-disaster-relief-by-arun-gupta
“Militarizing Latin America” – by Noam Chomsky, Orinoco International - “…Establishing US military bases in Colombia is only one part of a much broader effort to restore Washington’s capacity for military intervention. There has been a sharp increase in US military aid and training of Latin American officers, focusing on light infantry tactics to combat ‘radical populism’—a concept that sends shivers up the spine in the Latin American context. Military training is being shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, eliminating human rights and democracy conditionalities under congressional supervision, which has always been weak, but was at least a deterrent to some of the worst abuses. The US Fourth Fleet, disbanded in 1950, was reactivated in 2008, shortly after Colombia’s invasion of Ecuador, with responsibility for the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the surrounding waters. The official announcement defines its ‘various operations’ to ‘include counter-illicit trafficking, theater security cooperation, military-to-military interaction and bilateral and multinational training.’ […] In short, moves towards ‘a world of peace’ do not fall within the ‘change you can believe in,’ to borrow Obama’s campaign slogan.”
http://www.zcommunications.org/militarizing-latin-america-by-noam-chomsky
******As usual, the articles compiled in SJA newsletters do not necessarily reflect the views of all SJA members. Their purpose is to provide information not typically available in the corporate media and to spark thought, discussion, and action. Email sbusja@gmail.com with suggestions for news and analysis that you would like to see included in these newsletters.******
Greetings everyone, and welcome to the Social Justice Alliance newsletter, vol. 6. Below you’ll find a collection of recent news articles from around the web.
Spring is in the air, and several pleasant surprises in the news for this past week seem to reflect this change of weather as well. Enjoy!
“Gov. Paterson to Increase SUNY Funding, Scrap Privatization Plans” — Albany Times-Union — “New York Governor David Paterson called a press conference on Tuesday outside his lavish Albany mansion to announce that he had submitted a revised budget for 2010-2011 to the New York state legislature. Whereas the prior version had sought to slash funding for public education by hundreds of millions of dollars, Paterson’s new version ‘would restore badly-needed funding to New York’s public schools.’ The Governor also announced that he was scrapping a controversial plan to further privatize the SUNY system—known as the ‘Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act’—in response to public outcry over its core provisions of raising tuition by 6-10 percent each year and releasing the state of its financial obligation to fund SUNY. ‘Where will the money for SUNY come from?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Not from the students, the families, and the communities who can spare no further taxes, but from the people at the top—namely, those making over $1 million a year—who can easily afford to pay an additional 1% of their income to fund essential social services like public education’…”
http://albanytimes.com/morningedition/032410/paterson-scraps-PHEEIA
“Iraq, Afghanistan Wars End” — Washington Post — “President Obama shocked a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, announcing that ‘it’s time for a major change in how America conducts itself overseas.’ The first step, the President announced, was ‘a complete and rapid withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq, and a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan over the next six months.’ Obama added that the United States ‘owes Iraqis and Afghans a tremendous debt’ and that his administration would commit ‘a minimum of $100 billion’ to each country for what he called ‘reparations.’ ‘We can’t repay them for the hundreds of thousands of deaths we’ve caused in these immoral, illegal wars, but we can help them rebuild their countries,’ the President said. Before leaving Afghanistan, Obama added, the US would renounce its longstanding policy of supporting misogynist, theocratic warlords and instead ensure that Afghan women and secular civil society groups have a meaningful role in peace negotiations with the Taliban. Members of Congress reacted to the announcement with a mix of shock and joy. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), long known for his rabidly pro-war and pro-corporate politics, issued a public mea culpa, admitting that he had ‘simply been wrong,’ and was ‘moved to tears by the President’s courageous action for peace and justice.’ When asked for the reason behind his dramatic about-face, Obama cited the pressure of the domestic antiwar movement and the overwhelming international consensus over the need for US withdrawal from foreign nations. He also added that ‘this will free up billions of dollars for badly-needed social programs’…”
http://www.washpost.com/obama-for-peace?-%/)(03252010.htm
“AIG, Citibank, and Bank of America Taken Over by Janitorial Staffs, Broken Up Into Community Banks” — Financial Times — “The Manhattan headquarters of three of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent US government bail-outs have been occupied and taken over by their custodial staffs. The AIG, Citibank, and Bank of America buildings have been on lock-down for the past five days, after all white-collar workers were given the choice of leaving peacefully or joining the janitors. Since the headquarters were taken over on Tuesday, thousands of poor and working-class New Yorkers have swarmed into Manhattan to support the janitors in any way possible. As of Thursday a spokeswoman for the janitors, a Salvadoran immigrant named Domitila, said that the three banking giants had been officially disbanded and broken up into dozens of local community banks. ‘We’re going to serve families and communities, not the rich. There will be no more executives, no more wealthy stockholders, no more outrageous bonuses and profits,’ she said…”
http://www.financialtimezonline.com/breakingnews/032810-queryhhd
“Bush, Cheney Arrested; To Be Tried By World Court Next Month” — The Wall Street Journal — “In an unexpected and bizarre sequence of events on Friday in Washington, Former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney found themselves under citizens’ arrest by a large crowd that included four state Attorneys General, five federal judges, several hundred US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and a large contingent of Iraqi, Afghan, and American civilians. Citing the Bush administration’s ‘systematic violation of the letter and spirit of both national and international law regarding torture and wars of aggression,’ the crowd placed Bush and Cheney under arrest and escorted them to an unmarked helicopter, which flew them across the Atlantic to The Hague, Netherlands, where they will await trial by the International Court of Justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity starting on May 1. Lawyer Vincent Bugliosi, a former state Attorney General, speculated that Bush and Cheney would probably face at least a life sentence in prison, and could potentially face execution by hanging, in the style of the Tokyo War Crimes trials following World War II…”
http://www.wsjournal.com/bush-cheney-arrested
“Israeli Government to Withdraw from Palestinian Territory, Abide by International Law” — New York Times — “Following an Executive Order by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government on Friday suddenly withdrew all military forces from occupied Palestinian territory in East Jerusalem and the West Bank while ending the three-year-old siege on Gaza. Netanyahu also announced that all civilian settlements would be withdrawn from occupied Palestinian land by June, in compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the overwhelming international consensus calling for an end to the occupation. Netanyahu said that Israel’s new strategy was to ‘prioritize security over expansion, instead of the other way around.’ Palestinian leaders from both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority hailed the policy change as ‘historic’ and proclaimed that a new era of peace had come to the Middle East…”
http://www.nytimes.com/03-27-2010/israeli-gov-withdrawal/query-search?/#
“Conservative Evangelical Leaders Renounce Previous Political Ties, Affirm New Position on Many Controversial Issues” — Washington Post — “Conservative Christian Evangelical leaders James Dobson, Rick Warren, and Pat Robertson shocked the world with a dramatic reversal of position at a joint press conference yesterday. ‘Jesus was a socialist. Yeah, it surprised me too,’ said Dobson. The trio cited divine intervention as the source of their change of attitude, stating that ‘all we did was open up the Bible, and there it was.’ In more specific terms, the three Evangelical leaders continued to spell out the specifics of exactly what this change of heart would mean in the arena of national policy. According to Robertson, ‘It came as a pretty big shock, once we put this all in perspective. Where we used to coldly tell the poor [that] their state was either their fault or punishment from God, we now realize it’s time for us to start caring for people once they’re out of the womb, too.’ Warren quickly followed, disavowing his previous support for the controversial California Proposition 8, which denied the right to marry to same-sex couples in that state. ‘God created us all the way we are as a part of His grand plan. Who am I to judge?’…”
http://www.washpost.com/evangelicals-endorse-socialism?-%/)(03272010.htm
“‘Medicare For All’ Health Care Bill Passed, Overriding Obama Bill” — New York Post— “The United States has finally achieved something that most industrialized nations achieved decades ago—providing everyone within its borders with free, universal health care. The announcement came early in the morning on Thursday, in a press conference by Congressional leaders to announce the passage of HR 676, the ‘Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act.’ House Majority leader Nancy Pelosi said that ‘It was wrong and immoral of me to declare last year that single-payer was “off the table.” We in Congress have listened to the American people [laughter from press corps]—yep, we did for once! [laughs]—and enacted a system of free, universal health care. The passage of this bill nullifies the health insurance reform bill passed on March 21 about which so many people felt so ambivalent. It ensures free, quality care to all citizens, residents, and undocumented immigrants within the country, and furthermore it is infinitely more economical and efficient than anything else we’ve discussed. We should’ve listened to the opinion polls and to groups like Physicians for a National Health Program a lot earlier’…”
http://www.nypost.com/newsheadlines-03282010-singlepayerpassed
“Revised Obama Budget Slashes Military Spending; Money to Go to Education, Housing, Green Job Creation” — Fox News — “President Obama submitted a revised budget to Congress this week, telling Congressional leaders that his prior proposal had in fact been ‘just a joke,’ which he ‘didn’t think anyone would actually take seriously.’ Whereas the first draft had allocated a whopping $708 billion for the Pentagon, the new version reduces that figure by about 77 percent, to $163 billion. In a press conference, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the balance of $545 billion would be reallocated for things like ‘public education, affordable housing, mass transit, and the creation of green jobs for rebuilding our economy.’ Not everyone was thrilled, however: a throng of lobbyists from war profiteer companies like Halliburton, Raytheon, and Northrop-Grumman stormed the White House after hearing the announcement, only to be tasered and detained by White House security agents; Gibbs said that the lobbyists had been bound, gagged, and flown to Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan for ‘questioning.’ When asked later how he felt about the loss of profits for such companies, Obama said that ‘frankly, I don’t give a shit. The lives and well-being of ordinary people here and around the globe are infinitely more important to me’…”
http://www.foxnewsV2.com/obamabudge2010-11.htm
“Long Island to Build Cheap, Efficient Public Transit System” — Newsday — “In a joint statement with New York Governor David Paterson, officials from Nassau and Suffolk Counties announced that Long Island would soon have a cheap, efficient light-rail system of mass public transportation. Noting that the Long Island Railroad is ‘expensive, slow, and abysmally inefficient,’ Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said that it would be ritualistically destroyed upon completion of the new system in the fall of this year…”
http://www.newsday.com/LevyDoesSomethingRightForOnce-03-27-2010
“Obama Pledges to Cut US Emissions by 80% by 2020” — CNN — “President Obama reversed his prior stance on meaningful climate change legislation this week, accepting much of the blame for the failure of the December climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. He announced that the United States would cut its carbon emissions by over 80 percent in the next decade. ‘While there will be those naysayers who say this reduction is too extreme, and that it’ll be damaging to our economy, I would point out that we’re simultaneously launching a massive economic stimulus program centered around the creation of new, green jobs. This new program will prioritize clean, alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and electric energy while phasing out the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy’…”
http://cnnnews.com/obama-climate-pledge
“US Drug Laws Overhauled; Expected to Reduce Prison Population by 60%” —Fox News — “Congressional leaders announced a major overhaul of the nation’s drug laws on Friday evening. Calling the current laws ‘barbaric, racist, and designed to benefit corporate interests that profit from the incarceration of millions of Americans,’ Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said that the new laws, which will take effect on June 1, will reduce the size of the prison population by about 60 percent over the next decade. The new laws will largely replace imprisonment with rehabilitation programs and eliminate or dramatically shorten sentences for all drug offenders. ‘The current laws have ruined too many families and incarcerated too many nonviolent “criminals,”’ Reid added. ‘The US incarcerates 2.3 million of its people—more than any other nation on earth. That’s seriously f***ed up. It’s time for a major change’…”
http://www.foxnewsV2.com/SenateAnnouncementOnDrugLaws
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?”
-Eduardo Galeano
Hi everyone,
We hope this newsletter finds you well. Topics covered below include US wars overseas, Obama’s proposed 2011 budget, Haiti, immigration, health care reform, climate change, unemployment, and the Supreme Court’s January 21 decision allowing for infinite corporate funding of political campaigns.
Be on the look-out for many upcoming SJA events in the next two months! We are continuing our anti-militarism and pro-immigrant rights campaigns in full force, and have recently begun organizing in defense of public education in New York state. All of these issues are closely related, as some of the articles below make clear (see particularly the section on “US Militarism & Spending Priorities”). For more info, and to get involved, stop by one of our meetings. And again, feel free to email news articles to sbusja@gmail.com; it’s very easy to overlook important news items and issues when trying to keep track of everything that’s happening in the world.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine
The Assault on Marjah – by Patrick Cockburn, The Independent – “American, Afghan and British troops have seized the largest Afghan town controlled by the Taliban in an offensive seen as a crucial test of the new US strategy to roll back insurgents in Afghanistan….The assault on Marjah, in an operation called ‘Moshtarak’ or ‘Togethor’, has been heavily publicised by US commanders in recent weeks in order to avoid a fight for the town and also to garner support in the US for President Obama’s strategy of increasing US troop levels in Afghanistan to nearly100,000 men. Some 15,000 troops, American, Afghan, British and Canadian, are involved in the operation in and around Marjah…”
http://counterpunch.org/patrick02152010.html
Civilian Casualties Mount During US Offensive in Afghanistan – Democracy Now! – In Afghanistan, thousands of US and NATO forces have entered the fourth day of a major offensive in Marjah in southern Helmand province. At least nineteen civilians have been killed so far, including six children who died when a missile struck their house on the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile, the Italian NGO Emergency says that dozens of seriously injured civilians are being prevented from reaching hospitals in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, due to military blockades. We speak to Wall Street Journal reporter Anand Gopal in Afghanistan…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/16/civilian_casualties_mount_during_us_offensive
Malalai Joya: The Woman Who Will Not Be Silenced – by Johann Hari, The Independent – [*from this past August, but very current*] – “The story of Malalai Joya turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out. In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and—when when they were toppled—cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists. But she says: ‘Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. [That is] what your soldiers are dying for.’ Instead of being liberated, she is on the brink of being killed.
The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan—the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/malalai-joya-by-johann-hari
Sunrise or Sunset for Iraq? by Frida Berrigan, Foreign Policy in Focus – “Operation New Dawn. That is the name the U.S. military will give its operations in Iraq when U.S. military operations in that country end this September. Wait, what? Okay, once more, a little more slowly. The United States has nearly 100,000 military personnel in Iraq right now. In keeping with the January 2009 Security Agreement between Washington and Baghdad, the United States will withdraw all forces and contractors and turn over military installations to the Iraqi government by the end of 2011. In order to meet this goal, the Obama administration will begin moving troops out of Iraq this spring. The president promised to remove all combat personnel by August. In September, the United States will reduce its troop levels to 48,000 troops and bring down the number of contractors from 120-130,000 to 75,000. That new arrangement will be dubbed Operation New Dawn. Just as the Pentagon is preparing its exit plan—or at least the rhetoric for its exit plan—pressure is mounting for the military to stay. In a recent New York Times op-ed, long-time journalist and critic of Iraq War policies Thomas Ricks wrote that staying might be the new leaving. ‘I think leaders in both countries may come to recognize that the best way to deter a return to civil war is to find a way to keep 30,000 to 50,000 United States service members in Iraq for many years to come,’ he wrote. Kenneth Pollack of Brookings compared U.S. military forces in Iraq to a cast on a broken arm, saying ‘we can’t know for certain when Iraq’s bones have healed, we need to be very careful about how and when we remove the cast.’ This is a compelling argument only if one forgets that the cast broke the arm in the first place…”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/26
The Rationale for Keeping U.S. Forces in Iraq – by Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal – “With the deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of next year creeping nearer, the U.S. has to find some way to convince the Iraqi government to allow a continued military presence, which is the likely outcome despite the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement containing the deadline. One means by which this will be accomplished, relabeling ‘combat forces’ something else, perhaps remaining as ‘military advisers’ or something to that effect, has already been discussed. Thomas E. Ricks outlines another rationale for maintaining a military occupation of Iraq in the New York Times, offering up a variation on a theme that has been familiar throughout the war that is likely to become a mainstay in the political discourse. With a national election approaching for Iraq on March 7, Ricks opines that ‘the results are unlikely to resolve key political struggles that could return the country to sectarianism and violence.’ Therefore, what ‘probably is the best course’ for President Obama is to ‘once again break his campaign promises about ending the war, and to offer to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for several more years.’ Ricks emphasizes the theme of chaos in his op-ed, even writing that the consequence of U.S. troops withdrawing might be ‘a civil war.’ The notion of the U.S. military presence as a stabilizing influence in Iraq is certainly not unfamiliar, despite all evidence to the contrary, including Iraqi opposition—oftentimes violent—to continued occupation. It’s a theme that has also been used to justify the troop surge falsely credited with the decline in violence since 2007…”
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/02/25/the-rationale-for-keeping-u-s-forces-in-iraq
US Using Iraqi Political Discord to Justify Continuance of Occupation – by Dahr Jamail, Truthout – “As Iraqi national elections on March 7 approach, violence and political discord in the country have escalated dramatically. On February 22, Gen. Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, announced that the US was preparing contingency plans to delay the withdrawal of all combat forces from Iraq if violence or political instability increases after the national elections scheduled for March 7. There are approximately 96,000 US military personnel in Iraq. Under President Obama’s current plan, which is a continuation of George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq, the stated intention is to cut the number of US troops in Iraq to 50,000…”
http://www.truthout.org/us-using-iraqi-political-discord-justify-continuance-occupation57157?print
Gaza: Treading on Shards – by Sara Roy, The Nation – “I was last in Gaza in August, my first trip since Israel’s war on the territory one year ago. I was overwhelmed by what I saw in a place I have known intimately for nearly a quarter of a century: a land ripped apart and scarred, the lives of its people blighted. Gaza is decaying under the weight of continued devastation, unable to function normally. The resulting void is filled with vacancy and despair that subdues even those acts of resilience and optimism that still find some expression. What struck me most was the innocence of these people, over half of them children, and the indecency and criminality of their continued punishment.
The decline and disablement of Gaza’s economy and society have been deliberate, the result of state policy—consciously planned, implemented and enforced. Although Israel bears the greatest responsibility, the United States and the European Union, among others, are also culpable, as is the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. All are complicit in the ruination of this gentle place. And just as Gaza’s demise has been consciously orchestrated, so have the obstacles preventing its recovery…”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/roy
How Much Military Aid to Israel…Do YOU Provide? – “Between 2009-2018, the United States is scheduled to give Israel—the largest recipient of U.S. aid—$30 billion in military aid. Through its illegal 42-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, Israel misuses U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian civilian infrastructure, blockade the Gaza Strip, and build illegal settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem. How much of this total will your community provide? Is this a good use of your tax dollars? What else could your taxes be used for in your community? Find out on the interactive [here]”:
http://www.aidtoisrael.org/
Haiti
‘Haiti–The Politics of Rebuilding’: A Video Report from Avi Lewis of Al Jazeera – Fault Lines/Democracy Now! – “Much of Port-au-Prince remains under mountains of rubble, and Haitian officials say it would take years to clear out the rubble and begin the process of rebuilding the destroyed city. As pledges of billions of dollars of international aid and investment are made, debates over the vision of a new Haiti are already underway. Journalist Avi Lewis was recently in Haiti exploring the politics of rebuilding the shattered country. He spoke to a number of people, including Haitian presidential adviser Patrick Elie and economist Camille Chalmers…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/16/haiti_the_politics_of_rebuilding_a
[SJA’s information sheets on Haiti are now available at www.sbusja.com/flyers.php, along with the rest of our materials]
Health Care
Health Means Life; Health Means Freedom – by George Lakoff, CommonDreams – “Life and Freedom are moral issues. It is time for Democrats to talk about health in those terms, beyond just policy terms like health insurance reform, bending the cost curve, types of exchanges, etc. Health means life. If you get a major illness or injury and cannot get it treated adequately, you could die. And tens of thousands do. Health means freedom. If you have a serious illness or injury and cannot get it treated, your freedom will be limited in many ways. Your physical freedom: you may no longer have the freedom to move around. Your economic freedom: you may not be able to work or your medical bills may impoverish you. Your emotional freedom: you will not be free to live a happy life. Health is therefore a moral issue of the highest order. And it is a patriotic issue. Health security is a problem for far more Americans than military security. Your security is far more likely to be threatened by the lack of treatment for illness and injury than by any likely terrorist attack…”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/23-3
Healthcare Summit Ends in Deadlock; Single-Payer Advocates Excluded - Democracy Now! - After nearly seven hours of televised debate, President Obama’s so-called bipartisan healthcare summit ended Thursday without any substantive agreement between Republicans and Democrats. Republican lawmakers remained staunchly opposed to using the federal government to regulate health insurance. We speak to Columbia Journalism Review contributing editor Trudy Lieberman and pediatrician Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program…”
http://www.truthout.org/single-payer-advocates-excluded-health-care-debate57241
Do Not Resuscitate the “Public Option” – by Dr. Andy Coates [of Physicians for a National Health Program], Socialist Worker– “Like initiating CPR on a patient who was dead in the field and remains dead on arrival, the effort to resuscitate the ‘public option’ is mistaken—and futile.…The House bill included a feeble ‘public option’—a government-sponsored insurance plan to start in 2013 that would enroll perhaps 2 percent of the nation by 2019. The Senate bill simply nixed the idea. The president, in his latest proposal, also abandoned the ‘public option.’ But the ‘public option’ was never little more than a K Street phrase, a shadow puppet, a political posture. All along, proponents of adding a new government-sponsored insurer boasted talking points, but never offered workable health reform.[…]
Any successful ‘public option’ insurance plan would wind up covering the sick and the poor. It would be designed to lose, not win, the market competition. It would not prove affordable or comprehensive. Worst of all, a highly successful ‘public plan option’ could put our nation on a fast-track to permanent two-tiered health services, exacerbating deplorable disparities that plague us. Regrettably, the fact that the ‘public option’ has gained so much attention shows how deeply our culture has surrendered to neoliberal ideology, the ideas popularized by Ronald Reagan. It is a lie that the market will always provide, especially when it comes to health care…”
http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/26/dont-revive-the-public-option
Immigration and Immigrant Rights
Guatemala Protests Arrest of 3 in Florida Over Passports – New York Times – “The Guatemalan government has issued a public protest after three Guatemalans were arrested this month by immigration agents at a FedEx office in Florida, when one of the immigrants went to pick up a package containing his newly issued Guatemalan passport. Suspecting that the passport was fraudulent, FedEx officials called Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to alert them when the Guatemalans arrived to collect the package, officials of the immigration agency said. Two of the Guatemalans were illegal immigrants who have been deported, and one is in deportation proceedings…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19immig.html
Climate Change
The Attack on Climate-Change Science – by Bill Mckibben, TomDispatch – “The great irony is that the climate skeptics have prospered by insisting that their opponents are radicals. In fact, those who work to prevent global warming are deeply conservative, insistent that we should leave the world in something like the shape we found it. […] Every major scientific body in the world has produced reports confirming the peril. All 15 of the warmest years on record have come in the two decades that have passed since 1989. In the meantime, the Earth’s major natural systems have all shown undeniable signs of rapid flux: melting Arctic and glacial ice, rapidly acidifying seawater, and so on. […] Somehow, though, the onslaught against the science of climate change has never been stronger, and its effects, at least in the U.S., never more obvious: fewer Americans believe humans are warming the planet. At least partly as a result, Congress feels little need to consider global-warming legislation, no less pass it; and as a result of that failure, progress towards any kind of international agreement on climate change has essentially ground to a halt…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-attack-on-climate-change-science-by-bill-mckibben
Unemployment
18 Million Jobs by 2012 – by Robert Pollin, The Nation – “Obama’s call to freeze discretionary federal spending in nonmilitary areas is dangerously misguided. The fiscal deficits of 2009 and 2010–at between $1.4 trillion and $1.6 trillion, or around 10 percent of GDP—are indeed very large. But the freeze obscures what Obama and his advisers clearly know—that deficit spending is part of the solution to our economic predicament and will remain so until we see millions of people getting hired into decent jobs.
Here is what we need: a commitment from the Obama administration to create 18 million new jobs over the remaining three years of the presidential term. That would mean an average increase of about 500,000 jobs per month, or a bit more than 4 percent growth in job creation over the next three years. This can be done by combining two broad types of initiatives: measures to buttress the economy’s floor and thereby prevent another 2008-type collapse, and measures to inject job-generating investments into the economy…”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100308/pollin
Supreme Court Decision to Allow
Unlimited Corporate Funding of
Political Campaigns
Americans Rise Up Against the Supreme Court’s Decision to Create Corporate Frankensteins – by Jim Hightower, Alternet – “Americans of all political stripes have risen in overwhelming opposition to the court’s contortion of both the Constitution and common sense. In a Washington Post-ABC poll published last week, 85 percent of Democrats, 81 percent of independents and—get this—76 percent of Republicans reject this act of gross judicial overreach. So, with eight of 10 Americans decrying the decree and nearly as many demanding that it be reversed, we can expect swift and decisive action from Congress. Right? Uh…no. To get remedies that work, We the People will have to take direct grassroots action. Already, three major national coalitions have formed to retrieve our democratic authority from the court and its corporate clients: MoveToAmend.org, FreeSpeechForPeople.org and FixCongressFirst.org. Let’s get connected and get moving….”
http://www.alternet.org/rights/145804/americans_rise_up_against_the_supreme_court_decision_to_create_corporate_frankensteins
War, Media, & Militarism
Shaping US Public Opinion: The Real Objective of the Marja Offensive – by Gareth Porter, Counterpunch – “Senior military officials decided to launch the current U.S.-British military campaign to seize Marja in large part to influence domestic U.S. opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported Monday. The Post report, by Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock, both of whom cover military affairs, said the town of Marja would not have been chosen as a target for a U.S. military operation had the criterion been military significance instead of impact on domestic public opinion. U.S. military officials in Afghanistan “hope a large and loud victory in Marja will convince the American public that they deserve more time to demonstrate that extra troops and new tactics can yield better results on the battlefield,” according to Jaffe and Whitlock. A second aim is said to be to demonstrate to Afghans that U.S. forces can protect them from the Taliban…” http://counterpunch.org/porter02242010.html
Investigation Exposes Undisclosed Corporate Ties of Network Political Pundits – Democracy Now! – “A four-month investigation into the covert corporate influence on cable news found that since 2007 at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials have repeatedly appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure that they are paid by corporate interests. We speak to journalist Sebastian Jones, who carried out the investigation for The Nation magazine…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/24/the_media_lobbying_complex_investigation_exposes
All in the Family: Media Reporting on Israel - by Alison Weir, Counterpunch - Recent exposés revealing that Ethan Bronner, the New York Times’ Israel-Palestine bureau chief, has a son in the Israeli military have caused a storm of controversy that continues to swirl and generate further revelations. Many people find such a sign of family partisanship in an editor covering a foreign conflict troubling—especially given the Times’ record of Israel-centric journalism. … As it turns out, Bronner’s ties to the Israeli military are not the rarity one might expect…” http://counterpunch.org/weir02162010.html
US Militarism & Spending Priorities
[*including analysis of the 2011 Obama Budget (proposed)]
[The Obama administration is Spending 48 Percent of Our Federal Budget on the Military] - by the War Resisters League - “The War Resisters League’s famous ‘pie chart’ flyer analyzes the Federal Fiscal Year 2011 Budget (released in February 2010). Perfect for Tax Day! Each year, War Resisters League analyzes federal funds outlays as presented in detailed tables in ‘Analytical Perspectives’ of the Budget of the United States Government. Our analysis is based on federal funds, which do not include trust funds—such as Social Security—that are raised separately from income taxes for specific purposes. What you pay (or don’t pay) by April 15, 2010 goes to the federal funds portion of the budget.” http://www.warresisters.org/node/642
A Titanic Budget in an Ocean of Icebergs: Will the USS Budget Go Down? – by Jo Comerford, TomDispatch –[*Comerford is Exec. Director of the National Priorities Project, which runs a fabulous website that allows visitors to calculate the economic costs of war and militarism*] – “In his State of the Union Address, given several days before the 2011 budget was released, President Obama announced a three-year freeze on “non-security discretionary spending.” This was meant as a gesture toward paying down the looming national debt, but it should also be considered an early warning sign for leak number one. After all, the president exempted all national-security-related spending from the cutting process. Practically speaking, according to the National Priorities Project (NPP), national security spending makes up about 67% of that discretionary 34% slice of the budget. In 2011, that will include an as-yet-untouchable $737 billion for the Pentagon alone.
Within the context of the total budget, then, so-called non-security discretionary spending represents a mere 11% of proposed 2011 spending. In other words, Obama’s present plans to chip away at the debt involve leaving 89% of the budget untouched. Only the $370 billion going to myriad domestic social programs will be on the chopping block.
What’s in that $370 billion? Well, for starters, programs that focus on the environment, energy, and science. In the 2011 budget, these categories combined are projected to receive $79 billion or 6% of total domestic discretionary spending. Though each of these areas could actually use a significant boost in funds, that’s obviously not in the cards—and this will translate into less money at the state level. New York, for example, is projected to receive $247 million in home energy assistance for low-income folks, down more than $230 million from 2010. These funds mean an energy safety net for our communities, and also warmth and jobs in a cold winter, which looks like “security” to most of us, no matter what our captain says.
Asking for disproportionate cuts and efficiencies in programs in only 11% percent of the overall budget might perhaps be slightly easier to stomach if military spending wasn’t allowed relatively free rein in 2011 (and thereafter). The NPP estimates, in fact, that aggregated increases in military spending over the next decade will exceed $500 billion, drowning twice-over the projected $250 billion in non-security discretionary savings from the president’s cuts over the same time period. Consider this visible unwillingness to control military-related spending leak two in our budgetary Titanic. […]
In other words, if the 2011 budget and its projections proceed as planned, a great many Americans will be hungrier and still jobless in a harsher, meaner world, while what budgetary savings are achieved on the backs of the poorest Americans will be gobbled up by wars, weapons, and other “security” needs. Ordinary Americans will largely be left in a sink or swim world and the waters will be very, very cold.
Tell the radio operator. It’s none too soon. Start sending out the signals. SOS… SOS… SOS…”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175212/tomgram:__jo_comerford,_a_budgetary_sos_for_2011/
Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace – by Brian Knowlton, New York Times – [*No, this is not a joke—Obama’s Secretary of Defense says that “demilitarization” and public aversion to war are endangering the prospects for peace.*] – “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has long called European contributions to NATO inadequate, said Tuesday that public and political opposition to the military had grown so great in Europe that it was directly affecting operations in Afghanistan and impeding the alliance’s broader security goals. ‘The demilitarization of Europe—where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it—has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.’ […] Mr. Gates’s blunt comments came just three days after the coalition government of the Netherlands collapsed in a dispute over keeping Dutch troops in Afghanistan. It now appears almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops there will be withdrawn this year. And polls show that the Afghanistan war has grown increasingly unpopular in nearly every European country. [NATO] members, he noted, were far from reaching their spending commitments, with only 5 of 28 having reached the established target: 2 percent of gross domestic product for defense. By comparison, the United States spends more than 4 percent of its G.D.P. on its military…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/europe/24nato.html
Cultural, Economic and Workforce Structures Help Reinforce US Militarism – by Lauri E. Kallio, CommonDreams– “[T]here are powerful cultural influences embedded in our society which make if difficult to shift [military] spending to underfunded domestic needs. High among these influences is the symbiotic interconnection between sports and the armed forces. A second powerful cultural influence is the rally around the commander-in-chief motif, a correlative to ‘Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.’ Another variety of groupthink which has become increasingly prevalent in recent history is to label as a hero anyone who serves in a combat zone. The militaristic conditioning of our young is being fostered through penetration of military recruitment—often insidiously hidden—into our schools; the interactive video game fairs featuring images of military offensive power; and the displays of military hardware, employing spit-polished military personnel helping youngsters climb into tanks and warplane cockpits. Deeply embedded cultural factors make it difficult to significantly reduce the size of the U.S. military establishment…”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/27-2
Evaluating Obama
Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama – by Chris Hedges, Truthdig – “We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.
Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.
He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurers’ defective products. These policies would come with ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums and see most of the seriously ill left bankrupt and unable to afford medical care. Obama did nothing to halt the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environmental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMobil. He empowers Israel’s brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims’ lungs. And he is delivering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran.
[Yet] [t]he illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth upward in American history and the egregious assault on civil liberties, all begun under George W. Bush, raise only a flicker of tepid protest from liberals when propagated by the Democrats. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emotionally disabled. They appear not to feel….” -
******As usual, the articles compiled in SJA newsletters do not necessarily reflect the views of all SJA members. Their purpose is to provide information not typically available in the corporate media and to spark thought, discussion, and independent research.******
Dear friends,
A lot has happened in the past two weeks: the suffering of the people of Haiti has continued, much of it due to the inadequate and deeply-flawed response of Western governments, with up to 20,000 injured people dying each day for lack of medical care; the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that eliminates all restrictions on the amount of money that for-profit corporations can contribute to political candidates; an uninspiring, centrist Democrat lost a special Senate election to a far-right candidate in Massachusetts; and President Obama gave his State of the Union address in which he promised to freeze social spending, while dramatically increasing expenditures on the military, followed by the release of his 2011 budget requests on Monday. Not all was so bleak, however: SJA, for instance, had a good turn-out for our first meeting of the semester and we are cooking up a number of educational events, fundraisers, training sessions, and creative new ideas for the spring. We’ll be meeting this week, as usual, on Wednesday at 7pm in the SAC Skylight Lounge, and would love to see you there.
This past week also saw the death of the historian, activist, and public intellectual Howard Zinn, who passed away on Jan. 27th at the age of 87. Zinn was best known as the author of the famous A People’s History of the United States. As a historian and teacher, he rejected the historical narratives found in high school textbooks—which tend to focus on presidents, generals, business elites, and governments—and instead dedicated himself to publicizing the “countless small actions” of ordinary people, without which today’s world would be a far less civilized place. As an activist, he was closely involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s and 70s and in many smaller movements since. As a human being, he was a truly remarkable example of someone who pursued his values with courage, strength, optimism, and warmth. As Noam Chomsky pointed out the day following his death, Zinn’s “willingness to be on the front line all the time,” no matter how vicious the establishment’s attacks against him or how bleak the situation looked, has inspired thousands of activists and shown us that activism and organizing are worthwhile even when there is not yet a genuine mass movement like there was in the 1930s or 1960s. We strongly encourage you to read some of his work, if you aren’t familiar with it, perhaps starting with the two short Zinn articles included at the end of this newsletter and the recent retrospectives from those who knew him.
But at the same time, we must all remember that Howard Zinn was at root just an ordinary person who made a firm choice to stand up for his values, and there’s no reason why we can’t each take up that same struggle in our own lives just as he did, and just like the ordinary people whose efforts he dedicated his life to chronicling. As one of those people, early-1900s union organizer Joe Hill, said before he was to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, “Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize.” Howard Zinn would surely urge us to do the same. Even if things seem bleak—and it’s especially easy to feel that way on Long Island in winter!—there are always other like-minded people working at the grassroots level to change things. And as Zinn constantly reminded us, not only is positive social change possible, but when it has happened historically it has almost always been the result of ordinary people engaging in sustained education, organizing, community-building, and direct action.
Haiti
Covering Haiti: When the Media is the Disaster – By Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch – “Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences. I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.…And in disaster after disaster, at least since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, those in power, those with guns and the force of law behind them, are too often more concerned for property than human life. In an emergency, people can, and do, die from those priorities. Or they get gunned down for minor thefts or imagined thefts. The media not only endorses such outcomes, but regularly, repeatedly, helps prepare the way for, and then eggs on, such a reaction…”
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23698
The Haitian Earth Trembled - By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! - “There has been much reporting on the concerns about possible riots and violence that aid distribution might provoke. We witnessed the polar opposite, because an established community group was empowered to distribute the food. People lined up and got their supplies, leaving undisturbed the difficult surgery being conducted nearby. This has been typical as we’ve traveled through the catastrophe: People with nothing—hungry, thirsty, seeking their loved ones, burying their dead, caring for their injured—have shown fortitude, civility and compassion despite their quiet desperation…”
Doctor: Misinformation and Racism Have Frozen Recovery Effort at General Hospital in Port-au-Prince – Democracy Now! - “‘There are no security issues,’ says Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health, reporting from the General Hospital in Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, where 1,000 people are in need of operations. Lyon said the reports of violence in the city have been overblown by the media and have affected the delivery of aid and medical services…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/19/doctor_misinformation_and_racism_have_frozen
Af-Pak, Iran, Iraq, and Military Spending
Obama Announces Freeze on Most Social Spending, Dramatic Increases in Pentagon Budget – In his State of Union address, President Obama promised a freeze on most forms of social spending—in the areas of housing, the environment, health and human services, etc.—in order cut the federal deficit. However, the President has explicitly excluded military spending, which accounts for roughly half the US federal budget and about as much as the rest of the world combined. In fact, the Pentagon’s budget is set toincrease in the coming years. On January 13th Obama’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates met with private military contractors and promised that he will work to forge “a closer partnership” among the Pentagon, White House, and war industries, in order “to secure steady growth in the Pentagon’s budgets over time.” According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Obama’s military budget for 2011 could be about 8% higher than George W. Bush’s last military budget. (Obama just announced his budget proposals on Monday, requesting $708 billion in direct war and military spending—making the baseline military budget 7% higher than Bush’s last budget.) This is the exact pattern that is roundly rejected by the US public in opinion polls, relatively inefficient in stimulating the economy, and designed in large part to channel wealth upward. See the reports by Democracy Now! (including analysis by Noam Chomsky) and Politico.
America’s Secret Afghan Prisons - By Anand Gopal, The Nation – “One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished…Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat handwritten note on Red Cross stationery to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away. US forces had picked him up while he was on his way home from the bazaar, the terse letter stated, and he didn’t know when he would be freed…”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/gopal
An Alternative to Endless War: Negotiating an Afghan Agreement? - By Brian M. Downing, Counterpunch – “Reports out of Pakistan and now London suggest that Afghanistan, NATO, and the Taliban will seek a negotiated settlement. Reliable confirmation, however, has not been forthcoming. If meaningful talks begin, it will be welcome news. If they do not, they should be. Both sides face interminable war and must look for a negotiated settlement…”
http://counterpunch.org/downing01292010.html
UN: Time for Direct Talks with Afghan Taliban Leaders – By Robert Naiman, CommonDreams – “It’s an unquestioned dogma in official Washington that while of course every informed person knows that the endgame in Afghanistan is a negotiated political settlement with the Afghan Taliban, the time is not ripe for negotiations; the Afghan Taliban have to be weakened first through military escalation, because their leaders are not ready to talk peace. It’s never explained how U.S. officals know that Afghan Taliban leaders are not ready to talk peace, unless the definition of ‘talking peace’ is ‘acceding to U.S. demands.’ A reasonable inference is that these statements by U.S. officials are a dodge: U.S. officials are not ready to talk peace….”
Senate Quietly Passes Iran Sanctions Bill – By Grace Huang, Truthout – “The Senate quietly passed legislation Thursday implementing tough new sanctions against Iran that advocacy groups say will cause more pain for the citizens of the country than for the government it’s intended to cripple. The sanctions would target gasoline companies and Iranian imports of refined petroleum products. In addition, the bill includes provisions to ban imports to the US and exports to Iran, with the exception of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid goods. Assets of certain Iranian individuals could also be frozen. Aside from these direct sanctions, the bill, passed in a voice vote after only five minutes of debate, would also force the US to ban trade with foreign companies which continue to do business with Iran that is subject to sanctions…”
http://www.truthout.org/iran-sanctions-bill56532
Sanctions Only Hurt Ordinary Iranians - By Muhammad Sahimi, Antiwar.com –
http://original.antiwar.com/sahimi/2010/01/29/sanctions-only-hurt-ordinary-iranians/print
The Iraqi Oil Conundrum: Energy and Power in the Middle East - By Michael Schwartz (of Stony Brook!), TomDispatch - “…Since entering the Oval Office, Obama has not visibly wavered in the commitment to establish Iraq as a key Middle East ally, promising in his State of the Union Address that the U.S. would ‘continue to partner with the Iraqi people’ into the indefinite future. In the same address, however, the president promised that ‘all of our troops are coming home,’ apparently signaling the abandonment of the Bush administration’s military plans. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on the other hand, has recently voiced a contrary vision, hinting at the possibility that the Iraqis might be interested in negotiating a way around the SOFA agreement to allow U.S. forces to remain in the country after 2011. [...] Iraqi oil, too, has been a focus of Washington’s unremitting ambition tempered by failure…Speculation that Iraq’s production could—in the not too distant future—exceed that of Saudi Arabia may still represent Washington’s main strategy for postponing future severe global energy shortages…”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174779/michael_schwartz_the_prize_of_iraqi_oil
Latin America
Muscling Latin America – By Greg Grandin, The Nation – “In recent years, Washington has experienced a fast erosion of its influence in South America, driven by the rise of Brazil, the region’s left turn, the growing influence of China and Venezuela’s use of oil revenue to promote a multipolar diplomacy. Broad social movements have challenged efforts by US- and Canadian-based companies to expand extractive industries like mining, biofuels, petroleum and logging. Last year in Peru, massive indigenous protests forced the repeal of laws aimed at opening large swaths of the Amazon to foreign timber, mining and oil corporations, and throughout the region similar activism continues to place Latin America in the vanguard of the anti-corporate and anti-militarist global democracy movement. Such challenges to US authority have led the Council on Foreign Relations to pronounce the Monroe Doctrine ‘obsolete.’ But that doctrine, which for nearly two centuries has been used to justify intervention from Patagonia to the Rio Grande, has not expired so much as slimmed down, with Barack Obama’s administration disappointing potential regional allies by continuing to promote a volatile mix of militarism and free-trade orthodoxy in a corridor running from Mexico to Colombia…”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100208/grandin
The US Game in Latin America – By Mark Weisbrot, The Guardian – “In October 1970, President Richard Nixon was cursing in the Oval Office about the Social Democratic president of Chile, Salvador Allende…‘That son of a bitch Allende - we’re going to smash him.’ A few weeks later he explained why: ‘The main concern in Chile is that [Allende] can consolidate himself, and the picture projected to the world will be his success … If we let the potential leaders in South America think they can move like Chile and have it both ways, we will be in trouble.’ […] Nixon’s nightmare did in fact come true a quarter-century later, as one country after another elected independent left governments that Washington did not want. The United States ended up ‘losing’ most of the region. But they are trying to get it back, one country at a time. The smaller, poorer countries that are closer to the United States are the most at risk. Honduras and Haiti will have democratic elections some day, but only when Washington’s influence over their politics is further reduced.”
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23794
Obama at One
[The Nation magazine, in a forum entitled “Obama at One,” recently asked a dozen or so journalists, activists, politicians, and scholars to evaluate President Obama’s performance thus far. See the full list here. Howard Zinn, in some of his last public comments, said that “I've been searching hard for a highlight. The only thing that comes close is some of Obama's rhetoric; I don't see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies. As far as disappointments, I wasn't terribly disappointed because I didn't expect that much. I expected him to be a traditional Democratic president. On foreign policy, that's hardly any different from a Republican--as nationalist, expansionist, imperial and warlike. So in that sense, there's no expectation and no disappointment. On domestic policy, traditionally Democratic presidents are more reformist, closer to the labor movement, more willing to pass legislation on behalf of ordinary people—and that's been true of Obama. But Democratic reforms have also been limited, cautious. Obama's no exception. On healthcare, for example, he starts out with a compromise, and when you start out with a compromise, you end with a compromise of a compromise, which is where we are now…I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president—which means, in our time, a dangerous president—unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100201/forum/6#zinn
They Still Don’t Get It – By Bob Herbert, New York Times – “While the nation was suffering through the worst economy since the Depression, the Democrats wasted a year squabbling like unruly toddlers over health insurance legislation. No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful back-room deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits. The public interest? Forget about it. With the power elite consumed with its incessant, discordant fiddling over health care, the economic plight of ordinary Americans, from the middle class to the very poor, got pathetically short shrift. And there is no evidence, even now, that leaders of either party fully grasp the depth of the crisis, which began long before the official start of the Great Recession in December 2007…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/opinion/23herbert.html?ref=opinion
Supreme Court ruling
In Landmark Campaign Finance Ruling, Supreme Court Removes Limits on Corporate Campaign Spending – Democracy Now! – “In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court rules corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect and defeat candidates. One lawmaker describes it as the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case justifying slavery…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/22/in_landmark_campaign_finance_ruling_supreme
Shredding Democracy: The Supremes Bow to King Corporation - By Ralph Nader, Counterpunch - “Yesterday’s 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already attempt to influence or bribe our political candidates through their political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations. With this decision, corporations can now directly pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars. Without approval from their shareholders, corporations can reward or intimidate people running for office at the local, state, and national levels…”
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader01222010.html
Remembering Howard Zinn, and
learning from his example
The Optimism of Uncertainty - [a classic Zinn essay first published in the 1990s] - “…Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t ‘win,’ there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile…[But] an optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040920/zinn
Election Madness - by Howard Zinn, from The Progressive, March 2008 - “…Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to [fulfill them] by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.”
http://www.progressive.org/mag_zinn0308
Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove - Democracy Now! - “We pay tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn, who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of eighty-seven. Howard Zinn’s classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. It has sold over a million copies and was recently made into a television special called The People Speak. We remember Howard Zinn in his own words, and we speak with those who knew him best…”
www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/howard_zinn_1922_2010_a_tribute
Zinn Has Died. Long Live “Zinn.” – By Fred Branfman, ZNet – [A very nice retrospective by one of Zinn’s fellow activists, about what HZ has meant to him] – http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23744
Howard Zinn: A Public Intellectual Who Mattered – By Henry Giroux, Truthout - “What was so moving and unmistakable about Howard was his humility, his willingness to listen, his refusal of all orthodoxies and his sense of respect for others. I remember once when he was leading a faculty strike at BU in the late 1970s and I mentioned to him that too few people had shown up. He looked at me and made it very clear that what should be acknowledged is that some people did show up and that was a beginning. He rightly put me in my place that day—a lesson I never forgot…”
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23780
****The news and analysis contained in SJA newsletters are included for their educational value and alternative perspectives, but the viewpoints expressed therein do not necessarily reflect the views of all SJA members****
“When I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated…Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967-68
As Martin Luther King Day rolls around each year, politicians and the corporate media inevitably praise King’s struggle against racism and his commitment to nonviolence. What the conventional speeches and news stories omit, though, is that in the last three years of his life (1965-68), King incorporated his critiques of racism into a powerful indictment of capitalist society as a whole—of “the triple evils that are interrelated.” He was a strong and uncompromising critic of US intervention in Vietnam and was also actively organizing the poor and unemployed just before he was murdered in April 1968. In fact, it’s not unreasonable to argue that he was killed when he was—after the apex of the Civil Rights Movement—precisely because he and the mass movement of ordinary people he was helping to inspire had become especially dangerous in the eyes of elites and militarists.
This SJA newsletter includes news and analysis on issues about which King himself would surely have been vocal: the Haiti earthquake and the causes of Haitian poverty (with some links to reputable organizations so you can donate money), the ongoing “war on terror,” climate change, and a disgraceful situation right here in Huntington, NY. Finally, there are a few links to analysis of King’s life and the relevance of his message for the present.
We hope that you will read them (or at least skim them) and consider getting involved with SJA this semester in order to help build the kind of grassroots movement that King would be building today were he still alive. After all, despite King’s inspiring life and message, change does not come from extraordinary leaders but from anonymous people like us who organize ourselves and our communities to work for peace and justice.
HAITI:
The Earthquake and the Historical Causes of Haiti’s Plight
[US media coverage of the recent earthquake and horrible suffering that has followed has been characterized by two patterns: repeating clichés about Haiti’s desperate poverty without any substantive discussion of why Haiti is poor and underdeveloped, and portraying ordinary Haitians as a threat that needs to be contained lest there be widespread “looting,” murder, rape, etc…These articles are useful correctives, and highlight the utter absurdity of Clinton and Bush II—who have both been instrumental in Haiti’s torture over the past two decades—being appointed by Obama to lead US relief/fundraising efforts. The last two articles—including one by a former Goldman Sachs executive—reveal how many corporate elites are viewing the disaster as an “opportunity” to further remake Haiti along neoliberal lines.]
US Policy in Haiti Over Decades “Lays the Foundation for Why Impact of Natural Disaster Is So Severe”– Democracy Now! – [All of DN’s coverage of the earthquake is well worth viewing, but too extensive to summarize here] – “We discuss the situation in Haiti following Tuesday’s massive earthquake, as well as the history of Haiti, with two guests who have spent a lot of time there: Bill Quigley, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti…”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/14/us_policy_in_haiti_over_decades
US-Haiti – By Noam Chomsky, ZNet – [from 2004, but highly relevant for understanding the role of the US and other Western nations in Haiti’s poverty and the social reasons behind the devastating effects that “natural” disasters have on places like Haiti] –
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/8939
US Debt Policies Left Haiti Vulnerable to Catastrophe – By Allison Kilkenny, True/Slant – “The media is missing a valuable opportunity to explain why Haiti is so poor. Once again, Americans are receiving a hefty dose of miseducation. They are learning that Haiti is simply a poor country where bad things happen all the time. In reality, the country has a rich, fascinating story, but unfortunately its history is also dominated by western exploitation.”
http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2010/01/13/us-debt-policies-left-haiti-vulnerable-to-catastrophe/
Crushing Haiti, Now As Always – By Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch – “The US-run aid effort for Haiti is beginning to look chillingly similar to the criminally slow and disorganized US government support for New Orleans after it was devastated by hurricane Katrina in 2005. Four years ago President Bush was famously mute and detached when the levies broke in Louisiana. By way of contrast President Obama was promising Haitians that everything would be done for survivors within hours of the calamity. The rhetoric from Washington has been very different during these two disasters, but the outcome may be much the same…”
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick01152010.html
Rebuilding of Haiti Offers Opportunity for All Developing Nations – PR Newswire – “‘There is much we are planning as far as creating new and innovative ways of using international aid and government support to promote private investment,’ she [former Goldman Sachs executive Kathy Robison] explains. ‘Alignment and partnerships can be created between local governments, private domestic investors, private foreign investors and foreign aid such that all are moving in the same direction.’”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Rebuilding-of-Haiti-Offers-prnews-2947975308.html?x=0&.v=1
Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again – Democracy Now! – “We have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again…” http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/14/naomi_klein_issues_haiti_disaster_capitalism
HAITI:
Ways to Donate Money and Supplies
[While we have limited knowledge of organizations working in Haiti, the following organizations appear to us to be among the most reputable and most effective, but there are dozens of good relief organizations out there. See the end of this email for info about how to donate supplies (clothing, food, etc.) if you live in the NYC area*]
Partners in Health - http://act.pih.org/page/outreach/view/athleticchallenge/Svetlana
National Nurses United – “National Nurses United has launched a relief effort to send registered nurses to Haiti. Nearly 8,000 nurses have already answered the call. There’s just one problem: the cost of sending them. Every dollar you donate will go to providing the resources nurses need to care for the survivors of this tragedy…” http://www.sendanurse.org/
Red Cross – Donating to the Red Cross is easy: just text “Haiti” to 90999 and it automatically donates $10, which will be charged to your monthly phone bill.
Avaaz.org – [*perhaps a particularly good choice because the money will go to local organizations] – “Based on expert advice from leading humanitarian NGOs who have been working in Haiti for over 30 years, we’ll offer donations to trusted local organizations, including:
1. Honor and Respect for Bel Air, a big community-based network in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, which is also supported by our friends at the respected Brazilian NGO Viva Rio
2. Coordination Régionale des Organisations de Sud-Est (CROSE), which brings together some of the most active community groups in the South of Haiti where the earthquake struck hardest. These groups include: women’s groups, schools networks and local cooperatives…”
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_haiti
[There are MANY organizations doing relief work in Haiti right now. Longtime Latin American solidarity activists who are familiar with many of these groups say that although most are doing good work, if you want to be sure to donate to progressive organizations which have supported Haitian democracy, the following are good bets. For example, they have staunchly opposed the illegal US-backed coups against the democratically-elected leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004.]:
Haiti Reborn (part of the Quixote Center): http://www.quixote.org/haiti (At the top of the right hand column, there is a link to make your donation).
Haiti Action Committee: http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html
[One very important stipulation we should be demanding is that the aid relief that Western governments give to Haiti be delivered in the form of grants, not loans, and that Haiti's crippling debt be erased. There is a petition you can sign to this effect: http://one.org/us/actnow/drophaitiandebt/index.html?rc=haitidebtconfemail]
The Middle East, Central Asia, and the “War on Terror”
Holy Wars – By Howard Zinn – [In this recent speech, historian and World War II veteran Howard Zinn challenges mainstream views about the necessity of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and WWII, arguing that there were alternatives to full-scale warfare that were never pursued, and that elite segments of the US reaped far greater benefits from the wars—especially the Revolution—than did the general population. Classic Zinn, and highly recommended, even if you are familiar with the arguments Zinn makes, because of Zinn’s unique way of putting profound thoughts in understandable, everyday language—a skill which all organizers and activists need to develop.
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/1/8/howard_zinn_three_holy_wars
For Israel, A Reckoning – By John Pilger, ZNet – “The farce of the climate change summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet earth with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine….There is a clear momentum now. To mark the first anniversary of the Gaza atrocity, a great humanitarian procession from 42 countries - Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, old and young, trade unionists, writers, artists, musicians and those leading convoys of food and medicine - converged on Egypt, and even though the American bribed dictatorship in Cairo prevented most from proceeding to Gaza, the people in that open prison knew they were not alone, and children climbed on walls and raised the Palestinian flag. And this is just a beginning…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4111
Does Obama Understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? – By Jerome Slater, ZNet – [The notion that Obama simply doesn’t “understand” the conflict should be treated with skepticism—but this article nonetheless makes many good points] – “Early in the Obama administration there seemed to be a number of indications that Obama would change traditional U.S. policies of unconditional support of Israel and would put real pressure on that country to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Since this promising beginning, however, Obama has been in full retreat from any political confrontation with Israel and its U.S. supporters…”
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23609
Shooting Gnats with a Machine Gun: The U.S. Military, al-Qaeda, and a War of Futility – By Tom Englehardt and Nick Turse, TomDispatch – “It’s time to put al-Qaeda back in perspective—a human perspective, which would include its stunning successes, its dismal failures, and its monumental goof-ups, as well as its unrealizable dreams…The fact is: al-Qaeda is not an apocalyptic threat. Its partisans can cause damage, but only Americans can bring down this country…”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175191/tomgram:_turse_and_engelhardt,_shooting_gnats_with_a_machine_gun/
New Strategy for America – By Camillo “Mac” Bica [Long Island’s own, and the coordinator of Veterans for Peace!],Truthout – “There is no doubt that there are serious, complex and long-standing problems that must be confronted, many of which do not lend themselves to simple solutions….Since President Obama’s war-oriented advisers seem incapable of thinking beyond the gun, the tank and the drone, allow me to suggest another strategy for conflict resolution and peacemaking. I think Yemen would be a good test case for our experiment, as it now has become the latest ‘pre-emptive target du jour.’ Since killing, bombing and assassination have clearly accomplished nothing in Yemen or elsewhere, other than to exacerbate the problems, let’s dispense with all of that insanity and try something different. My new strategy begins like the old, with ‘shock and awe,’ but this time let us ‘saturate’ the cities and the villages of Yemen not with explosives and incendiaries, but rather with food, potable water, clothing, medicines and even money. For a change, let our policy be one of supporting life rather than causing death. Phase Two of our offensive will target the cities and villages with payloads of books, tools and building supplies to construct homes, hospitals and schools. For a change, let our policy be one of healing and of construction rather than of causing injury and destruction…”
http://www.truthout.org/109105bica
US-Led Forces Accused of Executing Schoolchildren in Afghanistan – Democracy Now! - In Afghanistan, hundreds have taken to the streets of Kabul and elsewhere to protest the US killing of civilians. The incident that has sparked the most outrage took place in eastern Kunar on December 27th, when ten Afghans, eight of them schoolchildren, were killed. According to the Times of London, US-led troops dragged innocent children from their beds and shot them during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from eleven to seventeen, all but one of them from the same family…” http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/6/us_led_forces_accused_of_executing
Honor Dr. King By Cutting Back the “Defense” Budget - [Legislative action alert from Peace Action New York State] - “The Department of Defense 2010 budget is almost $663 billion. The 2011 budget looks even worse-Obama’s Fiscal 2011 spending plan, set for release on February 1, is expected to seek $700 billion for DoD expenses [the figure the AP is reporting is actually $708 billion-a 13% increase over Bush's last military budget]! This record high request includes money for additional troops in Afghanistan….” Call and write your US Representative now and demand no more money for the military OR for US wars overseas:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2244/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2009
Closer to Home:
Wal-Mart and H&M Destroy Unused Clothes; Homeless Tent City Destroyed by Huntington, NY, Police
A Clothing Clearance Where More Than Just the Prices Have Been Slashed - The retail giants Wal-Mart and H&M have been caught destroying unsold clothing at several NYC locations. H&M has apparently promised to stop this practice as a result of the negative publicity, but no word on Wal-Mart doing the same yet. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/nyregion/06about.html and
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13453&news_iv_ctrl=1008
Police Destroy Huntington Tent City, Long Island Food Not Bombs Makes Call for Solidarity - Police recently razed a Huntington Station Tent City where homeless people live, destroying the property, food and shelter of over a hundred homeless. Many face the possibility of freezing to death. Long Island Food Not Bombs needs your help to prevent that from happening! Please spread the word, forward this article, re-link, re-tweet, etc… [Please visit
http://www.lifnb.com/action_alert/police_destroy_huntington_tent_city_long_island_food_not_bombs_makes_call_solidarity for the full notice, and ways in which you can help by donating supplies and writing letters of solidarity, etc.]
Climate Change
A Climate Change Policy Primer – By Robin Hahnel, ZNet – “Because misconceptions are commonplace a basic tutorial on the logic and implications of regulation, carbon taxes, and tradable carbon emission permits is useful. Hopefully this will correct some common misunderstandings about what different policies do, and do not do, and help leftists and environmentalists who are not professional economists avoid being brow beaten when debating environmental policy with mainstream economists who often do not share their values and priorities…” http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4105
Remembering MLK…and Not Just the Whitewashed Version
The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV – By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, Media Beat [from 1995, but still enormously relevant] – “It’s become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about ‘the slain civil rights leader.’ The remarkable thing about this annual review of King’s life is that several years—his last years—are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole. What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968). An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn’t take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever…” http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/003.html
Killer Obama, Dr. King, and the Triple Evils – By Paul Street, Black Agenda Report – “Dr. Martin Luther King’s ideas on the nature of peace and social justice bear no resemblance to those of the current occupant of the White House, yet another in a long line of presidential killers on an industrial scale. MLK, the social democrat, would have recoiled in horror at the trillions lavished on Wall Street Obama’s first year in office, believing as he did that ‘the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism’…”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/killer-obama-dr-king-and-triple-evils
[On the theme of “Evaluating Obama,” see also Hope Has Left the Building – Arun Gupta, The Indypendent, which discusses “how Team Obama, which surfed a tsunami of corporate money and savvy branding to victory, is doing exactly what it was elected to do: redistribute money upwards. It’s hard to think of a decision by this White House that would have not elicited cackling glee from the Bush administration. The number of horrendous policies enacted by the Obama administration in barely a year boggles the imagination. What follows is by no means an exhaustive list, just a few dozen of the worst…”] –
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/07/hope-left/
*More info on donating to Haiti:
[The following is pasted from an email sent out by the organization Pastors for Peace]:
Earthquake Relief for Haiti
Please join our response to the recent earthquake in Haiti.
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, Lakou New York, and MUDHA
(Movement of Dominican
Haitian Women) are organizing an immediate delivery of first aid
relief. MUDHA is traveling to the
Dominican/Haitian border, looking at how to reach affected areas.
WE ARE ACCEPTING THE FOLLOWING DONATIONS:
FIRST AID SUPPLIES:
- Ace bandages, gauze pads, bandage & tape
- Water purification tablets & Rehydration salts
- antibiotic and antifungal (Mycology) creams
- anti-allergy medication (i.e. Benadryl)
- anti-parasite medication
- Tylenol; children’s Tylenol
- cold and cough medicine
- diarrhea medication
- eye drops
- insect repellent
- hydrogen peroxide
- skin disinfectant spray
PERSONAL HYGIENE GOODS:
- Toothpaste and tooth brushes
- soap and deodorant
- sanitary napkins
- brand new under wear - adult (small & med.) and children sizes
DRY FOODS & OTHER ITEMS:
- Nutritional bars, fruit & nut bars, cereal bars (NO CANNED FOODS PLEASE)
- Tea Light candles & quality batteries (AA & D)
EVENING DROP-OFF HOURS ARE MON. & WED. 6:30-8:30 P.M.
HAITIAN WOMEN FOR HAITIAN REFUGEES
335 Maple Street, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn, NY (this is not a mailing
address) (718) 735-4660
Please use rear entrance on Lincoln Road between Nostrand and New York
Avenue. Enter through St. Francis Church parking lot
DAYTIME DROP-OFF HOURS ARE MON. - FRI. 11:00-4:00 P.M.
@ FLANBWAYAN HAITIAN LITERACY PROJECT
(718) 774-3037 208 Parkside, 2nd floor, Brooklyn, NY 11226
****The news and analysis contained in SJA newsletters are included for their educational value and alternative perspectives, but the viewpoints expressed therein do not necessarily reflect the views of all SJA members****
By Andrew Fraley
Wondering why all the Coca-Cola machines on campus are empty? This is because, as of June 19, Stony Brook University has entered into a new ten-year exclusive contract with Pepsi. As the transition is being made over the summer, new Pepsi machines are replacing all of the old Coke machines, and will be ready for the fall semester.
No more coke.
For the past three years, Stony Brook University has been under pressure for selling Coca-Cola products, due to the company’s alleged workers’ rights and environmental violations throughout developing nations. In a drive led by The Social Justice Alliance (SJA), and supported by numerous other on and off campus organizations, many Stony Brook students protested the University’s contract with Coke. For more info regarding these protests, check out Issue 10, Volume 29 of The Stony Brook Press from the Spring ’08 semester.
But this comes as a bittersweet victory to the SJA and other student groups involved in the campaign. While their ultimate goal to remove Coke from the campus was realized, the administration refused to recognize the groups’ accomplishments. “…The administration not only refused to let us take part in the announcement they sent out, but they also did not acknowledge the fact that SJA, and other organizations supporting the campaign, influenced this decision,” said Anita Halasz, member of the SJA, Graduate Student Organization (GSO) and student member of the evaluation committee for the new contract bid. The SJA and other groups played a vital role in pressuring the administration to make these changes. Their work with SINALTRAINAL led to numerous resolutions calling for the ban of Coca-Cola products from organizations, including the GSO and the United University Professions (UUP).
While Stony Brook successfully removed Coke from its campus, other SUNY schools missed the opportunity. Albany has, in fact, renewed their contract with Coke. “Albany had the same information as Stony Brook in front of them about Coca-Cola’s abuses, along with a petition signed by over 1,200 students. For them to ignore the petition, the United University Professions (UUP) resolution, the GSO resolution and all the documentation of Coke’s abuses raises serious questions about the democratic nature of Albany’s decision,” said Jackie Hayes, member of Students for Workers’ Rights.
The contract is another exclusive deal with another major corporation. This is not considered ideal by the SJA and other activists involved with the campaign, but it’s a step in the right direction. As Charlene Obernauer, SJA member, noted, “…no workers in Pepsi’s bottling plants have requested solidarity from international human rights activists.”
We are in the process of building our new website so there may be some hiccups and missing pages. Should be “done” soon.
